Friday, May 30, 2008

Friday Flashback

When my parents bought the big white house in Boston, they used a realtor named Mary. She worked for a company in Brantford called Iezzi & Iezzi Realtors. Why do I remember this? No idea, but Mary appeared in a dream this week to say hello, and it all came right back.

Mary drove a big shiny black car, not a Cadillac, but to 8 year old me, it might as well have been. She had a little chihuahua named Paco that danced and shivered all over the car, everywhere she went. She gave us a lovely glass and walnut barometer as a housewarming gift, wrapped in silver paper. I never had any idea how that thing worked, and it seemed like it was usually wrong.

Mary's daughter and grandchildren moved kinda/sorta nearby a few years later - the Simmons family (though that was not Mary's last name.) Vicky was my age, a friendly, beautiful biracial girl. Black was not a colour on the race spectrum where we lived, the only people of colour we ever encountered were on Channel 7 out of Buffalo. We liked her, and we played with her, but she wasn't European 2 generations back, or United Empire Loyalist 200 years back, or Native as far back as time began, so we didn't know what to make of her. But I guess we figured it out. In high school, Vicky was our Prom Queen. Her king was a fresh scrubbed white kid, European two generations back.

So anyway, hi Mary! Hi Queen Vicky and King Theo, too, wherever you are.

2 comments:

Tanya Brown said...

This is a little off-topic of me, but it isn't it actually kind of fun to be given things like barometers that don't work? They become kind of a family joke and one gets a sense of affection toward them.

Vicky aka Stichr said...

Like that Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story? yup, we have fun joking about that one!

Seriously, I thought I was Queen Vicky, and here you have another one?

sheesh...