Europe

Motorcycle Journey

Kathleen and I went to Montreal on August 11th, 12th and 13th for my Elementary School reunion in Rawdon. We did a lot in 3 days. 

 We arrived late Thursday night at Dorval Airport and drove to my friend Darleen's house on Ile Bizzard, west of Montreal. Darleen and I grew up in Rawdon together and she and I along with her husband Mike talked until midnight, reminiscing and showing pictures to each other. Kathleen, exhausted from the flight went to bed immediately. Though we didn't know it yet, we weren't going to get much sleep all weekend. There was too much to do, too many people we wanted to see and way too much we wanted to eat. 

Friday morning came, we woke and showered and headed off to the Supermarché with Darleen and her daughter Anita to find some Cheese Curd for Kathleen (she was jonesin' something fierce.) With the "squeak, squeak" that accompanied every bite, she calmed down. We also loaded up on plenty of healthy snacks for the next couple of days; May West's, Ketchup Chips, Pickle Chips, All-Dressed Chips and Smoky Bacon Flavored Chips along with some Cherry Blossom's and Coffee Crisps. It was 10 am and after seeing what we were buying the lady at the checkout asked if she could come and eat breakfast at our house.

 At 1 o'clock we went into Montreal and met my nephew Sebastian (Darko's son). We feasted on smoked meat sandwiches and then Sebastian showed us a bagel place where they were making hot fresh bagels the old fashioned way, in a wood fire oven. We were still stuffed from the smoked meat and the cheese curd from this morning but just couldn't resist chomping on one of the moist and chewy bagels that had just come out of the oven. (Good thing I was wearing my miraculous "expando-pants" on this trip.) We walked around with Sebastian a while and then met up with my niece Dahlia (Sebastian's sister) and her 2 year old son Yanni. (The presence of this child made me realize that my Dad is a Great-Grandfather. Yikes!) The 5 of us had a great time walking around checking out the Antique stores and searching for PEZ for Kathleen's collection. (We were very successful.)

 At 6 pm Kathleen and I had arranged to meet my oncle Pierre and tante Diane along with mon cousin Jean-Christophe avec sa blonde, Patricia at a restaurant in Old Montreal. Originally they tried to make reservations at a place called "Les Filles de Roi". It's a place that the waitresses dressed in period costumes and they serve traditional French Canadian fare such as Kathleen and my favorite, Tortierre (Can you tell that we were not on the Diet tour?) However my Uncle discovered that "Les Filles de Roi" had been closed down, prompting the comment, "Les Filles de Roi sont mortes, vive le Roi." So instead we met at Gibby's on Place D'Youville (Which my Mom informed me was not Place Meville, Theirville, Hisville, Herville, Myville or Ourville.) 

 While waiting for my Aunt and Uncle to arrive, Kathleen had realized that she left her sunglasses at The Main (The smoked meat restaurant.) We quickly called Sebastian who was still St. Laurent Street and he offered (in an extreme example of how gallantry is NOT dead) to pick up the glasses and drop them off at our restaurant, despite the late Friday traffic. He was truly the hero of the day.

 After dinner we drove in two separate cars from Vieux Montreal to Laval, communicating the whole way by walkie talkie. I take my little toys everywhere and always find an excuse to use them. My Aunt rode with us in our car, so she could practice her English and we could practice our French. If anyone was accidentally picking up our walkie talkie transmissions that evening I'm not sure what they would have made of the Franglais that was being passed back and forth. 

 Saturday morning we woke and had a delicious breakfast that my Aunt prepared which included the very tasty Croutin, a French Canadian Paté. (As you can probably tell, it's not only the Army that travels on its stomach, it's me and Kathleen as well.) By 11:00am it was time to make the final journey that this whole weekend hinged upon, to Rawdon. My skin tingles just thinking about it. Those 50 kilometers from Laval to Rawdon always brings on a sense of anticipation. For me, returning to the place I grew up is always bitter sweet. Dreading what has changed, embracing what is familiar and always the memories come flooding back. This trip was also about closure. This was the first time I was coming back to Rawdon after my parents had sold the house I grew up in. The logical part of my brain knows that it is impossible to maintain a residence so far from where you live. Unless you can come up a minimum of twice a year of more, it just becomes unrealistic, and as it was I was coming back to Montreal and Rawdon about once every 4 years. Still, the fantasy of coming back to this place to live, as an adult always seemed tangible as long as my parents held the ownership on the house. But now that was gone. 

 We dropped off our luggage at the cabin that's right next door to our old house. The cabin belongs to our longtime friends Junie and Eddie, who were kind enough to lend it to us for the weekend. My brothers and I had grown up with their children, when they would come to Rawdon on the weekends from Montreal, and they were more like family than just friends. We headed into "downtown" Rawdon (if there is such a thing) for the school reunion. I was a little nervous about who might show up, or who might not show up, but had already resigned myself to the fact that if NOBODY showed up, my memories were at least my own and that was good enough. I was pleased to see several members of my class had indeed come as well as several of my teachers. 

 The day could not have been more perfect. Prior to arriving in Canada, I kept checking the Internet to find out what the weather was going to be like. My Uncle had warned me that it had been a cold summer with lots of rain. But not today. Today it was one of those idyllic summer days, the kind that you remember being better than it really was. The sky was blue. Crystal clear Canadian Blue actually. With the tiniest white puffy clouds here and there, just to remind you how blue the rest of the sky was. It was warm with just hint of breeze blowing through the trees. 

 Kat and I walked around the new school looking at all the memorabilia that had been brought over from the old school; old class pictures, trophies and photograph of a very young and attractive Queen Elizabeth that had hung in the entry hall of the old school. Though part of me was sad that they were abandoning the old school building, there was definitely a feeling of vitality in this new building. The spirit of the Rawdon Elementary School was alive in this new place and I could feel it. I sat and talked with some old classmates and we caught up with each other and reminisced. We hung out with Julie Potocnik and her brother Stanley for a while and traded e-mail addresses. We were all shocked when our 1st grade teacher Mrs. Parkinson walked up and remembered all of our names. How does she do that? She was retired now and must have taught over a 10,000 kids in her lifetime. 

 We looked around the playground and found that they had brought over the Monkey bars, See Saw and Swings from the old school, the very ones we had played on as kids. So naturally I had to have a go. I used to be able to swing for an entire lunch hour. Now I get a little motion sick when I swing too high. A lot of people asked about my brothers and even my Mom and Dad, as they were very active in the PTA. I told them that I was the only Jasenovic to make the trip and as the nostalgic one, I was the natural choice. But everyone asked about Ivan and "Michou" and they all remembered and asked about my Mom (how can you forget her?) and some even had pictures of her when she worked in the soup kitchen at the school.

 A big moment for me was when I saw an old classmate, Tami Marlin whom I had been in love with from Kindergarten through 6th Grade. Ever since leaving Rawdon I fantasized about going back and marrying my childhood sweet heart. She was a sweet as ever and she's now teaching at the school. That must be a strange feeling to teach in a school that you once attended. 

 After the reunion we went to visit the parents of a good friend of mine. to say hello. Every where we went, to my Nephew's, to my Uncle's, to my friend's parents, Kathleen kept commenting, "Everyone is SO nice." I could make jokes about "Of course they're nice, they're Canadian - And that's the law!" but it's true, the people from my childhood were wonderful and this was a great place to grow up. We spent the evening walking in the woods around the cabin (feeding the mosquitoes) and then drank some wine with another next-door neighbor, Mr. Puric who was winterizing his basement so he could keep making his violins all winter long.

 Sunday morning we woke to the sound of songbirds. (Much better than waking to the sound of Interstate 280, like we do in San Bruno.) We showered, dressed and walked though the forest again, so I could take some pictures and then made our way back to the city and spent the afternoon walking through Old Montreal. The entire trip I never felt hungry because we never stopped eating, and though we talked of nothing but poutine the entire trip, we never had the opportunity to eat any. As the day wound down (and Sunday was another spectacular day) we headed over to Brossard for dinner with Junie and Eddie who had so graciously lent their cabin to us.

 On the way to Junie and Eddie's I had to stop and see some other friends that I hadn't spoken to in years. This whole trip turned out to be very cathartic. Mr. and Mrs. Panic (No jokes please, it's pronounced "Panich") were close friends of ours who had a cabin just up the hill from us in Rawdon, and had coincidently lived just a few miles from my father's family in Croatia before coming to Canada. (When I was young, their son Frankie, who was older than us, would take care of us and keep us entertained. From the outside, he may have seemed like a lousy role-model, because he drank, and smoked , he was very self aware of his faults and made sure we didn't make the same mistakes.) On Saturday mornings in Rawdon I remember running up the hill to see if they had come from Montreal for the weekend (as did many of the families around our house). Mrs. Panic, or Cuma as we called her (Say "Cooma" a Croatian term meaning Godmother) would cook us eggs over an open fire. In all my life I have never eaten eggs as tasty as those. The secret ingredient you ask? It's as simple as taking an iron skillet, cooking bacon in it until you have a good 2 centimeters of grease sloshing around in the pan, remove the bacon and cook the eggs in the grease. MMmmmm, and totally fat free. (Right.) Even now, I'll occasionally cook eggs that way when we go camping, and I still call them Cuma's eggs. 

 We went to Junie and Eddies and had a great time with them. They took us to a great Vietnamese restaurant and then to the store so Kathleen could once again get a Cheese Curd fix. We spent the evening looking at old pictures and talking.

 After seeing all these people in 3 days, and especially after not having seen some of them for over 20 years and yet being welcomed with open arms, I wondered to myself why I had no friends like this in San Francisco. Was it because they were nice Canadians? No I don't think so. It's just that you simply cannot put a price on that kind of history.

 Monday we woke WAY too early to catch our 8:45am flight and headed to the airport. During the weekend a lot of people commented on how a 5 hours flight from San Francisco to Montreal seemed really long. On the way back it didn't seem that long, considering that it had brought me back 23 years. 

-Alan