by Alan Doyle
Most mornings that would be the end of it. Bernie and I would be washed, dressed and running downstairs to an awaiting mound of toasted homemade bread and jam.
But the Bathroom Ballet didn’t always go so smoothly. I recall one Sunday when we were all up and getting ready to go to mass, when Bernie insisted Kim give him a quick loan of the one hairbrush in our house. Kim, for whatever reason, outright refused. The argument grew heated and Kim ran out of the can and down the stairs with the long wooden-handled brush. When they reached the living room, Kim jumped up on the couch, spun around and cracked him as hard as she could on the head.
“Kim, give me the friggin’ brush.”
“No. I’m not done brushing my hair. Don’t you touch it.”
Whack. She cracked him a second time.
“Kim, if you hits me with that brush one more time, I’m gonna punch you right in the—”
Bernie did not even have the words out of his mouth when she whacked him hard again, right across the cheek.
I was getting worried. Mom and Dad were upstairs. So was Michelle. I was the only witness.
“Give him the brush, Kim, or he’s gonna punch you in the face,” I begged.
“He won’t do it,” she said.
Whack. She hit him a fourth time, the hardest smack yet.
Bernie’s retaliation is better described as a hard shove rather than as a punch, but either way, Kim went flying over the couch and out of sight. Total silence followed. I thought she might be dead. But no sooner had I thought it did she squeal, not in pain but in anger, and she jumped back up, ready for blood. She was on Bernie like a wrestler and they were both going for the belt.
I ran upstairs and got Mom. “Quick!” I said, when I found her in the bathroom. “They’re gonna kill each other!”
Mom came running down the stairs and separated her warring children. Mom’s presence could not quell the rage. She had to pry them apart as they both kept swinging.
“That’s some way to be getting on when we’re on our way to mass. Ye crowd are not fit to be in the church! Get up the stairs and get back in bed before I drowns the two of ye!” she ordered.
I stood there, not believing what I’d just heard. Surely, Bernie and Kim, the two combatants, did not get to go back to bed to sleep, while I, the innocent messenger, had to go to mass!
My face must have said what I was thinking.
Mom said nothing. She just pointed towards Skinner’s Hill and the road to the church.
“No way!” I protested.
“Yes way. Up the hill. Now!”
This was one of the rare times when me staying out of Kim and Bernie’s constant warring did not benefit me in the least. I am certain my patience for refereeing other people’s conflicts came from watching my sister and brother get nowhere with theirs. I was constantly rewarded for being the peaceful and easygoing kid, so I just kept doing it. I had no idea how well this quality would serve me in years to come. If a band is going to stay together for over twenty years, it’s got to have some decent referees in the mix.
There were times when all of us siblings worked together, and now that I think about it, one of the memorable moments of teamwork amongst us centred once more on that bathroom. As teenagers, Bernie, Kim and I had a party at our house in Petty Harbour while Mom and Dad were overnighting in someone’s trailer. They’d be away for the evening, so we could sneak in a few people and more than a few drinks. We invited this girl we knew who, oddly, had false teeth. I know what you’re thinking: a teenage girl with false teeth? Is that possible? All I can say is yes. Unfortunately for this gal, she was behind the locked door in the bathroom when it is presumed that she bent over the open bowl, most likely to rid herself of an overindulgence of alcohol, and then accidentally barfed her teeth into the can. Of course, no one knows for certain how her teeth were lost, but what is certain is that somehow her dentures ended up in the toilet and ended up flushed down it. Word travelled quickly through the party that a rescue mission was required. She was desperate to get those teeth back. She begged us for our help.
“They might still be in the sewer pipe,” Bernie suggested. “I mean, it’s possible.” The girl’s face lit up with hope. But the sewer pipe ran a dozen metres or so behind our house into the river. No sober person would have taken this mission on, but as we were all well lubricated, we launched Project Recover Dentures. The Daemon Liquor made us do it. Or at least he convinced us that it was not a totally crazy idea.
We all went outside, and Bernie and I stood knee-high in the river. I was armed with a spaghetti strainer, which I pressed up against the end of the drain pipe. Meanwhile, Kim was upstairs in the bathroom, and when we gave her the thumbs-up, she started flushing the toilet repeatedly and shouting through the open window: “Anything yet?”
“No! Just toilet paper and water. Keep going!”
After an hour or so of flush-and-check—which beyond the spaghetti strainer also involved peering up the pipe with a flashlight and digging up it with a bamboo trouting pole—we gave up. To this day, I cannot pass that drain pipe behind our old house in Petty Harbour without thinking that the poor girl’s teeth are stuck in an elbow. Or maybe there’s a strange-looking marine creature lurking in the river in Petty Harbour with one sweet-looking set of false teeth.
Once the Bathroom Ballet was behind us on any given day, it was time for breakfast. Our family almost never had what you would call a normal breakfast. Sometimes on Saturdays there might be bacon or ham or my favourite, bologna with eggs, but most times there were unlimited mounds of Mom’s homemade white bread and butter. And that was just fine with me.
Two or three times a week, Mom would bake six to eight loaves of fresh bread. She would start early in the day and add the white flour, salt and butter to a massive white Tupperware container. She’s start gently mixing and kneading the ingredients by hand, and in no time at all, the loose water and flour became a baby-sized wiggling living thing that seemed to protest her every touch. She’d punch and stretch and tear its flesh until she broke it into submission. Once it lay willingly under her hand, she’d soothe and smooth it into a perfect shiny mound and cover it with a damp cloth to let it rise and swell.
A while later, she’d pull bowling-ball-sized chunks from the mound and press two of them side by each in rectangular baking pans. She’d toss them in a warm oven and in no time at all, the greatest smell I’ve ever known would be wafting through the house.
At breakfast, the six of us would inhale slices of toasted bread and wash them down with one of the two other dietary staples of our young life, Nestlé’s Quik and Tang orange-flavour crystals. We invented ways of recreating these drinks every morning. What would it be like to make cold Quik with no milk, just water? And what would happen if you put two packages of Tang crystals in one glass? Breakfast was a constant chemistry experiment.
I would venture to guess that I ate at least two slices of Mom’s bread every breakfast of my life from the time I was one year old to when I moved out at the age of nineteen. That adds up to about 730 slices per year. This means I ate 13,870 slices of Mom’s bread from the time I was old enough to eat till the end of my teens. And that’s just for breakfast. I won’t bother with the math of the remaining meals, which were all based around or bolstered by Mom’s magic bread. If I had to pick one thing that was responsible for my joyous and completely satisfied childhood, I’d say it was my family. If I had to pick two things, I’d say my family and Mom’s homemade bread. And while it was the North Atlantic cod stocks that fed the Napoleonic armies, Mom’s homemade bread fuelled the Doyles on Skinner’s Hill. Our delicious but often Spartan meals were always well rounded with heaps of it.
“How do you make a loaf of bread, Mom?”
“Alan, honey, I don’t know how to make a loaf of bread. I only knows how to make eight.”
ALAN DOYLE: Mom, I’m trying to put your recipe in my book. Can you help me out? What ingredients do you use?
JEAN DOYLE: I use a bag of
flour.
ALAN: A whole bag?
JEAN: A seven-pound bag. And about a cup of butter. And some salt in the palm of my hand.
ALAN: Some salt in the palm of your hand?
JEAN: Yes. Just some salt in the palm of my hand. I mix it all up, dry.
ALAN: In a bowl?
JEAN: In the pan I’m making the bread in. Then, I make like a hole in the centre of the flour, the flour and the butter and the salt that I just mixed up. In the hole there, I put in two tablespoons of dry yeast and two tablespoons of sugar.
ALAN: Sugar?
JEAN: Got to have the sugar for the yeast to rise.
ALAN: I didn’t know.
JEAN: And then, what I do is use the whisk and just pour in the water.
ALAN: How much water?
JEAN: I don’t know. It’s about … I’d say probably seven or eight cups. And you got to get the feel of it. I pour in the water and I whisk it. And then when it gets too heavy for the whisk, I get my hands in there. I whack it.
ALAN: You whack it.
JEAN: Yes. And I knead it, until I gets it right nice and doughy. And then I make it into a ball in my pan and put some butter on it and cover it over and let it rise until it’s double what I had when I started. And then I knead it down again—well, I do, but some people don’t knead it down a second time. After, when it rises up again, I put the dough in the pans. This batch will make eight loaves.
ALAN: How long do you cook it for?
JEAN: I cook it at 415 degrees for thirty minutes. And take it out and then I brushes it with a bit of butter. And yummy.
ALAN: You make it sound so easy.
JEAN: Oh, it is.
We never really sat at the table as an entire family until suppertime, but we did that every single evening. Our suppers were delicious, simple and very consistent. Most often the fare was roasted beef, pork or chicken or fried fish, with piles of potatoes and gravy. My mom can make gravy, incredible gravy, from anything. I’m fairly certain that if you gave her a bucket of rocks, an onion and a cup of water and told her she had to make a gravy out of it, she’d find a way. And it would be awesome. From waking to sleeping, Mom is in a constant state of movement, always was. If you can get her to sit in an armchair, she’ll reach to one side, grab a knitting project and in no time at all, a sock or hat will materialize in her hands. Magic.
Usually the smell of something roasting in our oven started in the late afternoon. By five, we’d all be salivating at the thought of that roast and the gravy Mom would make from it to pour over boiled potatoes and some canned peas or corn. I would venture to say that we had potatoes and some kind of gravy for supper more than 250 times per year. Which was nowhere near enough for me.
There wasn’t always as much meat as we wanted, but there was no shortage of bread. “That’s all the roast we have. Fill up on bread,” Mom would say—a common refrain in our house. Mom would say it like it wasn’t a good thing. But it was. It still is. Ask Mom what she did today, and she’ll probably reply the same as she always did: “Nothing at all, honey.” But if you look in the kitchen, you’ll see eight fresh-baked loaves of bread on the counter and a large boiler on the stove full of recently jarred homemade preserves. And there’s sure to be a pot of beef stew simmering away somewhere, and every flat surface in that house is so clean, you could eat off of it.
When I was growing up, I always sat in the same place at the table. We all had our spots. Not sure if they were strategically set up by my folks, or if in true Petty Harbour fashion, I sat in that place simply because I always had.
Our table was just barely big enough to fit six people. Dad sat at one end with Mom immediately at his left, closest to the stove so she could be cooking right up until the last second. Next to her, my little sister Michelle was in a high chair and later in a regular chair, with my sister Kim on her left. Mom and Kim would split the duties of helping Michelle eat her food. Bernie and I sat on the other side of the table. Bernie was next to Kim, I suppose so they could harass and abuse each other more conveniently. I sat between Bernie and Dad, both a challenging and advantageous place to sit.
There was no grace or any formality to our meals. It was load and go. To this day I eat like I’m in imminent danger of my food being taken away. At fancy dinners and restaurants, I’ve devised strategies to make myself look less like a total savage. I take a few forkfuls, lay my fork down, put my hands under the table and count to fifty, or sing a verse of a song in my head before I pick up the fork again. I’m serious. I have to or I’ll be staring over an empty plate while others are still buttering their bread.
At the supper table of my youth, Bernie and I almost always got our food first, most likely because we were the most vocal about how hungry we were. Bernie would often have his plate emptied by the time the others had been served their first plate. Dad would follow close behind. I learned to eat fast because if I didn’t, either Dad on my left or Bernie on my right would snatch something from me.
Kim would help Michelle with her plate, then attempt to eat her food at a sensible pace. But I imagine it was hard to do that with me staring at her like a starved gull and Bernie literally circling his fork over her food. Kim would guard her plate from Bernie with a sharp knife, and he knew she would use it.
At the supper table of my youth—(around the table from left to right) Kim’s hand, Bernie, me, Dad and Michelle. (Mom must have moved Michelle into her seat so she could take the photo.) If you look carefully, you’ll see the two little shining eyes of our dog, Pal, under the table awaiting droppings from me and Bern. Mom’s gravy was so good, Pal never got much.
Mom would have two bites of her meal and scrape some of it off onto mine and Bernie’s plates, much to Dad’s disappointment.
“Go on, Tom. You had enough grub to do you the winter.”
If in some lucky twist of fate there were leftovers, they got shoved to the boys’ side of the table. As long as I was quick, I could get them first. So I was quick. Real quick.
Every once in a while, Mom would get adventurous with a meal and try something “exotic,” like a sausage casserole she found a recipe for in the newspaper.
“Sorry, Mom. This is gross. Can we go to Maureen’s and get bologna for sandwiches?”
“Ye crowd never wants to try anything different. All ye wants is meat and potatoes and gravy.” It was true. Mom would get so upset with our attitude that she’d sometimes go upstairs by herself. But as I said, this was very rare, and most nights we inhaled every last bit of whatever was prepared. I have no memory of leftovers in our fridge. Ever. We ate everything immediately and loved it.
I discovered a funny thing when writing this book, something I have no explanation for. My long-suffering editor, Nita, asked me to describe what we talked about around the table. I did not know what to say. This, you may not be surprised to learn, almost never happens to me. I told Nita I’d ask my family. I asked my brother and sisters and parents what it was we talked about at mealtime. They gave the same look of surprise. None of us could remember many, if any, topics of conversation. This is truly amazing because I can guarantee you we did not stop talking to eat. No Doyle on Skinner’s Hill in Petty Harbour ever has. So what did we talk about with our mouths full?
There were never any niceties or the polite “How was your day, dear? What did you learn at school?” For sure, we talked about how much we wanted to eat the leftovers and who would get them. In fact, I suspect most of the talk was jockeying between Dad and Bernie and me for the last spud.
Apart from that, we rambled on about nothing in particular. Does the fact that the topics of conversation aren’t memorable mean that they were not nearly as important as the fact that we were there together every night? I don’t know for sure. I just recall feeling more at ease at our table than anywhere else. I never had to entertain or be entertained there. Maybe that’s what Home is.
I can still feel the sting of Dad’s hot tea spoon on my forearm as he would playfully touch me with it im
mediately after stirring his hot tea. He did this every night just to watch me jump and to make everyone else laugh. I remember my sister Kim wiping the food from little Michelle’s face and imagining what an incredible mom she would be herself one day. She is. I can still hear Michelle, just a toddler then, but singing in remarkable pitch. I suspected all along that she would one day become the best singer in the family. She is. I remember Bernie and me sneaking the fat from the meat down between our chairs to feed our old dog, Pal, under the table. And I remember the satisfied smile on Mom’s face when all her kids were around her, happy and fed.
The cleanup was most often done by either Mom and Dad or Mom and Kim. There were many attempts over the years to get me and Bernie to help, but I’m not sure any of these attempts were successful. We’d fight over the dish drying and break a plate and eventually we’d be kicked out of the kitchen and ordered to bring in wood or perform some other “man duty.”
Once cleanup was done, we kids would take the same places in the same chairs at the table. Part of the Do Something Golden Rule was that we had to do homework, even if we weren’t assigned any. This rule was mostly in place for us boys, since Kim always had her perfectly organized exercise books out and her assignment checklists ready to be ticked. Bernie and I would have preferred to run outside after supper and take hockey shots at each other till bedtime, but Mom and Dad insisted we do our homework. Bern would help me with math, my least favourite subject. If not for his tutelage, there’s no way I’d have passed a single math course after Grade 8.
“Hey, Bern, you know that thing about the sides of a right triangle? How does that go again?”