MEMORY OF OUR FIRST WEEKS WITH MOM AND DAD 1980

Another vivid Memory, of our arrival back in Canada, was that of spending the first few weeks at my mom and dads, while we decided where to settle. I had come to a shocking realization that although I felt the need to return to Canada, the world as I knew it was not, in fact, stopped in place and waiting for my return! After saying Hi to everyone and recounting a few of our stories, everyone basically returned to work and to their life. I don’t know what I expected but I guess I thought everything was waiting for me to get back, hmmmm. Well we bunked in with my parents and started to find out what our future would hold.

Mom and Dad took to the new baby right away. Mom commenced to instruct her about life, right and wrong, how to play games to the death. She also learned that nothing other than winning was acceptable and other parts of the family mantra. She ate it up. Her Grandpa, on the other hand, pulled out his guitar and spent hours singing all of his songs to her. Mom also took to Deysi immediately. She was wheelchair bound and was running out of victims that would let her trash them at any game she could convince them to play. AHHHHH she thought, fresh meat. In her best, syrupy voice she said “come over here dear, let me show you how to play scrabble”.

Deysi was unsure but her nature was to do whatever anyone wanted. “Should I let her win she said”? “Not on your life I replied” so then my mother sat her down and introduced her to scrabble, gin rummy, cribbage, monopoly and many others. Deysi found out soon enough that she would need to play her heart out to not get crushed. You must remember Deysi was a few days out of Peru at this time and learning a game in a foreign language. Did that matter to Mom. Nope, not at all. There was no quarter given in her life. Meanwhile, our daughter, was sitting closely listening to grandpa’s music out of one ear and learning her base standards and policies from grandma.

A couple weeks into this gaming binge. Mom decided that she needed more of a challenge. So armed with Spanish/English dictionary proceeded to learn Spanish and play scrabble in Lilia’s language. She fought over each word, as if she was still playing in her native language. Oh what fun we had, those few short weeks at Mom and Dad’s. A footnote and a couple of year’s later some of grandma’s teachings had rubbed off on her granddaughter. During one session together Grandma asked her “is its ok if I call you ronny?” To which this little smartass replied “sure is it ok if I call you granny?” To which Mom replied “don’t you dare, you little devil!” That pretty much ended the nickname issue.