Three years on, the Manse is a cozy, happy place

Our living room, filled with warmth and nice things, where we spend a lot of time. It’s something happy to reflect on as Raymond and I mark the third anniversary of owning this great old house. And yes, the vintage curtains – the ones that hung here in my childhood – are still there!

Well, people, here we are: three years and counting. Three years of Manse ownership, that is; it was on this very day three years ago (Jan. 30, 2012) that Raymond and I became the owners of this great old house in beautiful little Queensborough, the house that happens to be the one that I grew up in. Today is also the third anniversary of Meanwhile at the Manse; our first day of ownership was also the day of my very first post. And you can read that post – which explains how we got here, and kicks off the 940 (yikes!) and counting other posts that were to follow it – right here.

On the first anniversary of our Manse acquisition, I used my post (which is here) to speculate about whether the subsequent 12 months would see the start of our much-discussed but not-yet-started renovations of the house. (They didn’t, by the way.)

On the second anniversary (the post is here), I was busy ruminating on my non-buyer’s remorse for failing to snap up a vintage telephone table at a bargain price. That’s kind of funny, actually, because non-buyer’s remorse is a recurring theme at Meanwhile, at the Manse, and I was going on about it again just the other night, in a post about vintage cheesy but endearing paintings of big-eyed urchins that you can read here. (Also, by the way, I did eventually get a great telephone table, which I told you about here.)

As I thought about what I would write tonight, to mark the end of Year 3 and the start of Year 4, I decided there would be nothing better than to reflect on what a cozy and happy place the Manse has become, unrenovated though it may be.

That 1970s carpeting! It’s got to go. Sometime.

Yes, it’s still a little rustic. Our bathroom is, while very clean, alarming in many other ways; pieces of the flooring are torn up in various places; sections of the walls are missing wallpaper and showing crumbling plaster underneath; there is still horrendous early-1970s wood panelling in one of the guest bedrooms; and that orange-and-yellow broadloom on the front staircase just won’t quit.

And I didn’t even mention the tiny pantry kitchen with the Harvest Gold stove and the washing machine – the washing machine! – conveniently (not) located in its far-too-constricted space. Oh, well, I guess I have mentioned it.

But despite all of these imperfections and jobs waiting to be done, the Manse is a cozy and a happy place. At the end of every day, when I return home from work as a professor of journalism at Loyalist College, and Raymond sets aside his duties as editorial consultant for the National Newspaper Awards, and we’ve cooked a nice dinner in that tiny kitchen, we make ourselves comfortable in our living room. Often we watch a television program (there’s only ever time for one before my early bedtime), but sometimes we read or do more work on our laptops. (For one thing, there’s always a Meanwhile, at the Manse post that needs writing.)

Our electric fireplace might someday be replaced by a real wood fireplace, but its cheerful red colour and warmth make us happy on a cold winter night.

And let me tell you, that room is just the nicest, happiest place you can imagine. Warmth radiates from the cranberry-red electric fireplace in the corner; there are books, including a lot of volumes of local history, in the bookcase and all over the room; there are framed photos of Raymond’s lovely grandson Henry; there is vintage furniture, and a vintage floor lamp, and there are vintage knick-knacks, every one of which has a story behind it; there are kerosene lamps in case the power goes out; there are artworks, one old and one new, featuring the Manse; and there are the very curtains that hung in that same room in the 1960s and ’70s when I was a kid growing up here. Yes, people, the curtains are still there.

Sieste the cat, on her bed (or should I call it her throne?) in the Manse’s living room.

And best of all, there is Sieste the cat, who loves to sit with us and watch whatever’s going on, making the occasional comment – whenever she’s not doing the hard work of catching up on her beauty sleep.

We love our cozy living room. We love our Manse. We love our cat. We love each other. And: we love those curtains.

So happy third anniversary to us!

Every nook and cranny of this house tells a story.

The banister in between whose posts my little brother John once got his head stuck, creating a kerfuffle once upon a time at the Manse.

Every now and again when I am rattling around in the Manse, I am caught up short (and sharply) at how absolutely full of memory every square inch of that place is for me. I mean, yes, it stands to reason; it is the house I grew up in, and that I have now come back to after an interval of almost four decades. So of course it’s filled with memories, and most times I just bumble along with that notion just buzzing around in the background. And the fact that Raymond and I are creating a new (though very part-time) life at the Manse means that often the older stuff really is shoved into the far background, and I’m focused more on new things that are happening that will make newer memories.

This is a cute (I think) photo of my brother John in the Manse kitchen when he was maybe a bit younger than at the time of The Banister Incident. (Photo by my grandfather, J.A.S. Keay)

But the other evening as I was climbing the front staircase (not to be confused with the back staircase), I caught myself absent-mindedly thinking, “Yeah, that’s the place where John got his head stuck between the banister posts.” And of course it was: when he was very little, my little brother John one day got adventurous (or something) and managed to get his head in between two of those posts. After which (you can see where this is going) he couldn’t get it back out again. Much wailing and worry ensued on the part of little John; much hilarity on the part of his mean older sisters, Melanie and me. I imagine it was Dad (who was the United Church minister, which was the reason we lived in the Manse) who came along and calmed everybody down and got John’s head back where it belonged (which was not in between the banister posts). In the years since then – this was probably 1968 or so, when John was 4, and that was not exactly yesterday – Melanie and I have every now and then hauled out the old story for a bit of a giggle at John’s expense.

But what hit me so much the other evening wasn’t so much being reminded of that long-ago comical (especially in retrospect) situation; it was the fact that I can look anywhere, anywhere, in that house, and come up with memories. Probably dozens of memories per square foot. Stories that would be too boring to the average outsider (you, good reader) to bother relating, but that mean something to my family and me.

What a gift it is to be in that place full of memory.

The beloved cat who will never see the Manse

Bayona Brassard, our much-loved roly-poly cat, who died yesterday and whose loss has left a great big hole in our hearts and lives.

Regular readers will know that Raymond and I are fond of cats, and especially of our two cats, Sieste and Bayona, whom I first wrote about here. In that post from last August, I speculated about the possibility of ever bringing “the girls” (as we call them) to the Manse. The good part, I wrote, would be how much they would enjoy the great big yard full of things that would interest a cat (birds especially, but also butterflies and snakes and doubtless other creatures) and a house that’s a lot bigger than the one in Montreal, with many nooks and corners to explore and two staircases to charge up and down. The bad part would be the four-and-a-half-hour trip between Montreal and the Manse in Queensborough, during which Sieste, who hates to travel, would yowl constantly.

Bayona, by contrast, a fat and contented cat who wasn’t much bothered by travel or anything else, would have been fine. But I say “would have” deliberately, because now we will never know. Bayona died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday, and our hearts are more than a little bit broken. And with the loss of one important member of our four-member household – and probably the nicest one at that, though Raymond comes awfully close – the household feels very empty indeed right now.

Raymond’s daughter Dominique called Bayona “a ball of love,” and that’s exactly what she was: a big ball of love. She was skinny as all get out when we adopted her from the Montreal SPCA 10 years ago this past Easter, but the skinniness was only because she hadn’t been properly fed in her old home. Once she joined us, she fattened right up, and she was just a chubby and happy and slightly dopey but very, very affectionate cat. She never bothered anyone, and she loved to have her tummy rubbed, and she would come and rub our legs when we sat at the dinner or breakfast table – or at the computer, as I’m sitting now.

I miss my good girl Bayona rubbing my legs.

And I feel so sad that she will never get to charge up and down those two staircases at the Manse. (It probably would have worked wonders as a weight-loss plan.)

Anyway, in memory of Bayona (Honey Bunny) Brassard, born sometime in 2001 or 2002 (approx.), died June 2, 2013, who brought a lot of love and happiness to our household, here’s a little photo gallery. You can click on the images to enlarge  them. Please feel free to tell me how lovely my fat cat was!

Fat cat on mat – Bayona’s favourite place by the back door looking out at the deck.

Bayona and her dad (Raymond). Leaning against his lap was her favourite place to be.

Bayona and Sieste, getting about as close as they ever got. (Sieste, our first cat, was never too sure that we should have subsequently acquired Bayona.)

Fat cat on mat (II). In the TV room, waiting for people to come join her.

A favoured sleeping position. She loved it if you would come along and rub her tummy.

Bayona and me, January 2012. Is that not one big ball of love?

Bayona rousing herself from her nap to watch a little TV.

Cats in the sun, which is just where cats should be.

Cat in box and cat on mat.

Bayona on deck.

The girls in black and white.

Bayona Brassard, May 2013, with her pop. One happy cat.

Easter at the Manse

This is me (at left) and my younger siblings John and Melanie at the Manse in 1966 – the era when we were at the prime age for enjoying an early-Easter-morning Easter-egg hunt. My youngest sibling, Ken, wasn’t yet born; when he came along, he just added to the Easter-morning ruckus. (Photo by my grandfather, J.A.S. Keay)

It has been a happy but very busy Easter Sunday here in Montreal for Raymond and me, which means I am sending out Easter wishes to readers very late in the day indeed. But better late than never, I think: happy Easter to all of you, wherever you may be! And if you are not of the Christian persuasion, then this: happy spring! (Because I think it really is here, despite the snow flurries that are showing up in this week’s weather forecast, for our part of the world at least.)

Because it was a busy day here in Montreal, I didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on Easter Sundays at the Manse back when I was growing up there. But there is one thing I do remember well, and I’m quoting the Grinch here: “The noise, noise, noise, noise!”

The fact that there were – and are – two staircases at the Manse (as you can see in this photo: in the foreground is the rougher “back” staircase that leads down to the kitchen, and beside it, with only a plaster wall separating them, is the more formal “front” staircase) made our childhood Easter-egg hunts all the more rambunctious.

That would be the noise of four little kids, early on Easter Sunday morning, charging up and down and all around the house looking for hidden chocolate Easter eggs. The Easter Bunny (in the form of my mum, I believe) had a system at the Manse whereby the egg hunt began with a little piece of paper on which was written a clue to one child – and I think it started with me, as the eldest, but I could be wrong about that – about where the first one was. So all four of us would go charging to that general area, and when the egg was found, with it would be another piece of paper with a clue for the next child (that would be my sister, Melanie), so we would then go roaring after that, and then there’d be a clue for my brother John, and then one for the youngest, Ken, and then it started all over again with me. And if I’m not mistaken, the Easter Bunny arranged it so that one find would be downstairs and the next would be upstairs, and that pattern would continue throughout the hunt. So there was much crashing up and down the stairs; and wasn’t it happy for all concerned that in that house there were, and are, two sets of stairs? All the better to crash up and down on!

Those are happy memories, as you can imagine. In my mind’s eye, the sun always shone on Easter Sunday morning. And then after the big chocolate-egg hunt, it was off to Sunday School and church at St. Andrew’s United as usual. With the great Easter hymns and a wonderful feeling of celebration at church, and the sanctuary packed full.

A joyous day, always. As today has been. I hope it has been for all of you too.