ONLY THE NAMES ARE CHANGED

Pointe Gatineau, Quebec

Memoirs 23

Image created by author using Fotor AI

I began to remember once more in Pointe Gatineau. The memories begin with a winter scene in which we are living in a white house that had a veranda. It was a Wednesday, a day that had become our day for spaghetti. The image shows us watching television, a program called The Honeymooners.

Somehow, Christmas has come and gone without my mental presence. It was at this point in time that I learned about having nephritis. Mom always was complaining about how everything tasted flat, “tasted like shit.” These were the words she would often use because she had to cook with as little salt as possible because of my disease. Anytime anyone complained about the food she prepared, she would always use me and my nephritis as the reason for the food “tasting like shit.”

It wasn’t until later in the winter with the first melt of snow beginning to fall that my memory returns to what I can consider to be a normal full memory. My memories allowed me to see the modern school, a Catholic School, which we are attending. I was in Grade Five just as I had been at the start of the school year in Coaldale.

I was the youngest in the classroom because I had done grades three and four in Ottawa the year before. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Law, a large lady who wasn’t a…