Surprise Party

The past weekend was the Cabbagetown Festival. For a few years now Snake, her mom, dad, aunts and uncle have congregated at my place and then we go and explore the festival. I live in Cabbagetown so it works out well. A large part of the festival is the vendors in Riverdale park. What usually happens is mommy and the aunts will examine not only every stall, but 98% of the wares therein. After that is complete they decide which stalls to go back to. It's an incredibly time consuming process but at the end of it one of them, perhaps all three, will come away with a handmade, ornamental 18th century style shoe tree, or some such thing.

The timing of the festival coincides pretty closely with Auntie Monkey's birthday so we usually take her out to dinner after all the vendors have banned us from their stall screaming, "no I don't have it in mauve. You've seen everything I have already."

This year I was unable to attend either the festival or the dinner. My aunt was having a surprise party for my uncle's 50th birthday and then my dad wanted to take my brother and I out to dinner. My job for the party was to bring my uncle to my aunt's place at 2:30pm. I said I'd pick him up around 1:45pm as I had some errands to run in his neighbourhood. I was running late because even though I wasn't going to the festival Snake and family were still using my place as a base. When Snake arrived she wanted to play chess. I never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate my dazzling intellectual ability by beating a six year old at a game so I agreed. I'll be honest and say that I lost the game but in my defense she did get help from her mommy and aunt, also her little sister Rooster ate my rook and two pawns so that put me at a disadvantage.

We tried to call my uncle to let him know that we were running late but he doesn't have a landline, only a cellphone and it wasn't on. Cellphones are great for reaching people anywhere anytime, the trick is, they have to be on. "Can you hear me now? No . . .how about turning your damn phone on." We did manage to get to my aunt's right on time. The surprise worked well and it was good to see a lot of my relatives who I rarely get to see. My great aunt is almost 95 and still very active and quite sharp. She ends every story with "of course, he's dead now."

"Do you remember Walter Hefferlump? He played the organ at the church. Had a wooden leg and a dog named Skippy. His wife used to churn her own butter. Contracted the measles when he was seven. Tattoo of a hula dancer on his right arm. Wore brown pants once. Wonderful man . . . of course, he's dead now."