My parents divorced in 2002.

Wait.  Hold on.  I think there’s a better way to start this story…

My parents married on July 6th, 1973.

It was at City Hall, if memory serves me correctly.  I wonder if they ever envisioned a day in the twenty-first century when 20-something couples would spend six figures (which they don’t have…) on a lavish ceremony and reception, but I digress.

Wait, wait, wait.  If I’m really going down this road, which it seems that I am, I need to provide a disclaimer:

I’ve been writing on Toronto Realty Blog for almost twenty years, and in that time, I’ve shared a lot.  This blog series will share intimate personal, familial, and financial details of my life and those around me.  My only ask is that if you want to judge my family or me, you do so quietly, as I know my mother will read this.

Now, where were we?

My parents were married in 1973 and had three children in 1978, 1980, and 1982, back when you were able to perfectly space out your children twenty-six months at a time.

They lived in various apartments downtown, first in the York University grad students’ apartments from 1972 to 1974 while my father attended law school, then at 25 Saint Mary Street from 1974 to 1978.  Then, on a cool, fall day in 1978, they purchased their first home at 289 Airdrie Road.

It was in this area called “Leaside,” which neither of them had heard of, but which their real estate agent introduced them to.

Ralph.

He was a hairdresser.

He was also, apparently, a real estate agent, and while he didn’t prove good for a whole lot in the end, he did introduce them to Leaside before it was even labelled “up and coming.”

They had their second child in 1980, and suddenly felt that their 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom, semi-detached house was feeling a bit tight, so they purchased a detached, 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom house around the corner on Parkhurst Boulevard.

Ralph listed the house at 289 Airdrie Road for sale, but didn’t have much success.

“It was three awful, miserable months,” my mother just told me on the phone.

“Your Dad was really loyal to Ralph, even though Ralph spent more time cutting hair than he did selling houses.”

Here’s my sister and me in front of the lawn sign in 1981:

I know exactly what you’re thinking:

“How did your mother survive without a $1,200 stroller from Uppa Baby?”

To anybody in their 20’s, you must be looking at this photo with the exact same reaction and thought process that I had when I was your age, and I looked at photos from the 1960’s…

In any event, poor Ralph struggled with the listing, and Mom and Dad eventually hired Richard Byford, who is still diligently working in Leaside today and has a brokerage office on the west side of Bayview Avenue, just north of Millwood Road.

Richard sold the semi-detached on Airdrie Road, and my parents closed on the new detached house at 128 Parkhurst Boulevard.

A third child came along in 1982, and the family of five grew into the four-bedroom house accordingly.

I’ve told a lot of stories about my parents and their real estate trials and tribulations here on TRB.  In fact, back during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when real estate activity was at a standstill, and I was looking for things to write about, I penned these:

April 3rd, 2020: “A Real Estate Conversation With My Father!”

April 10th, 2020: “A Real Estate Conversation With My Mother!”

There were 57 comments on the first blog post and 40 comments on the second, which is how you can tell this was during the height of “stay at home,” when people had little else to do than scroll online.

Bookmark those if you have time.  They were a fun read.

We lived at 128 Parkhurst Boulevard until September of 1992, when my parents purchased a house on Bessborough Drive.

As I detailed in previous blog posts, I have many memories of my parents going out on weekends to “look at houses,” but as a child, I had no idea what that meant.  They always seemed to be looking, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1992 that I found out what all that looking would lead to.

As I wrote previously, I knew that my father was out all day with Richard Byford, working on something.  I just didn’t know what.  My older sister told me, “They’re looking at a house, and suddenly, I felt a bit of anxiety.”

The phone rang around 7:00pm that evening.  I’m fairly certain that it was a Sunday night.  And it was the home phone, by the way, so whoever raced to it first got to answer.

I picked up the phone in my room, which was pink, as it had previously belonged to my sister, but she discarded it when she spent her allowance money on a cordless phone.  I said, “Dad, what happened?”

There was a long silence, a deep inhale, and then he said, “We bought it.”

I was hysterical.

I didn’t want to move.

I grew up in that house on Parkhurst Boulevard, and since I was too young to remember the house on Airdrie Road, this house on Parkhurst Boulevard was all that I had ever known.

Here’s a photo of my mother and me, standing in front of the house (which you can tell is a classic 1980’s “topped-up bungalow” from the brickwork and the position of the stairs), in the spring of 1992:

The new house was on Bessborough Drive, which was literally only 1.2 KM away and within the same neighbourhood and school district, but it may as well have been on Mars for me.  I had no idea where it was, nor had I ever ventured “over there” before.

We moved in the fall of 1992 after a rather lengthy, delayed, and contentious renovation (aren’t they all?), and the silver lining was that I got to take the day off school when we moved from Parkhurst to Bessborough.

September 30th, 1992.  I can’t believe I remember the exact date, but I do.

It took some time, but I soon realized that living in a bigger, better, larger house with an incredible backyard and back driveway (which we turned into a half-court hockey and basketball rink) was an upgrade from Parkhurst, even if it caused a fair amount of trauma in my 12-year-old world.

I finished elementary school at Bessborough Public School, attended Leaside High School, and eventually went off to McMaster University.

And my parents?

Wasn’t this story supposed to be about my mother?

Well, yes, it is.  But as a child, you just sort of live in your own world, without understanding what’s going on around you.

It wasn’t until 2001, when I was firmly entrenched in university life and slowly making that transition from child to adult, that I learned my parents would be splitting up.

Sigh.

But most marriages end in divorce, right?

Not most, as it would seem.  There’s a 50% myth out there, but the actual statistic is 37% – 40%.

In any event, my parents did divorce and go their separate ways, but it wasn’t without a very, very unique path with respect to the matrimonial home.  One that I call “The 90210 effect.”

Do you remember the original Beverly Hills, 90210?

I’d like to avoid going off on a tangent here about how influential this show was, but suffice it to say, there are already enough podcasts and documentaries on the series.  What started in October of 1990 with a cast of teenagers in high school continued well into the characters’ early adult years, and at some point, a decision was made to write off the parents.

Jim & Cindy.

Poor Jim & Cindy!

Brandon and Brenda’s parents, of course, who were simply uninteresting characters by the sixth season.

Here’s where the writers of the show decided to do something crazy.

The storyline was: Jim and Cindy would move to Hong Kong, but they would leave the house behind for Brandon and Brenda to live in.  That way, the show continued without much interruption, other than the non-essential parents being gone.

I remember the reaction to the storyline, however.  People claimed that it was completely unrealistic for two parents to leave their Beverly Hills mansion in the hands of their early-20’s children.

I believe one of my parents might have made that comment, and it certainly did not age well…

Fast-forward to 2001, and my parents are splitting up.

It was as amicable a split as could be, in my opinion.  But like most divorces, it didn’t start that way.  It wasn’t until after many months of a stalemate that I stepped in, at age twenty-one, and decided to mediate between Mom and Dad, examine the financial implications, and propose a settlement that moved the divorce forward.

Yeah.

You want to talk about childhood trauma?  Ask me how I felt about that experience years later…

In 2002, my father moved to Unionville with his partner, and my mother moved to Scarborough with hers.

But what became of the house?

Well, we had a bit of a “90210 situation,” as the house wasn’t sold.  In fact, the three “kids” would live in the house, at various periods, from 2001 through 2005.

I started an internship at Celestica (don’t get me started…) in 2001, and I lived at home for sixteen months, while my sister was attending Teachers’ College.

I moved back to Hamilton in 2002 to finish university, but my sister remained in the house as she continued her studies in Toronto.  My brother moved into the house in 2002 for his internship, then moved back to school around the same time that I finished school and moved back to Toronto.

A little confusing, yes.  A little convenient, sure.  Maybe even spoiled, but I’ll be the first to admit it.

My mother moved out of Bessborough and into her new house in Scarborough in February of 2002.

She and her partner built a custom house, which had four bedrooms and four bathrooms.  That was my mother’s one stipulation for the new house; it had to have at least four bedrooms.

Why four bedrooms, you ask?  For just my mother and her partner?

I have a very distinct memory of her saying:

“I need to have four bedrooms because I have three children.  And while they’re all out on their own, and I don’t expect them to ever live with me, it gives me great comfort to know that they could if they needed to.”

I get choked up just thinking about it.

But if you really want to talk about choked-up, I’ll never forget the conversation I had with my mother when she left Bessborough in February of 2002.

It’s supposed to be the other way around.  The child is supposed to leave the parent, head off into the brave new world, and the parent is the one sitting alone at home.

But when my mother left Bessborough that day, she turned to me and said:

“I love you.  Now, don’t be a stranger.”

That was 24-years-ago and yet I have a tear in my eye when I write this.

She was leaving.  She was moving on.  Just like my dad had six months prior.

I mean, I was twenty-two years old, so I was an adult, and I’m not playing this off like I was an abandoned baby bird, but I guess I didn’t realize what was happening and how I would feel until she walked down the driveway for the very last time.

I told my mom, “I won’t be a stranger.  In fact, I’m going to come to your house every single week for dinner.”

That’s just something you say, right?  Like when you tell somebody, “We should get lunch,” but never actually reach out to make plans.

My mother has told me many times over the last quarter-century, “You said you’d come over every week, and you did.”

She gets teary-eyed when we have this conversation.

I worked at Celestica at Don Mills & Eglinton, and every Thursday night, I’d cut out of work early (don’t get me started…), do a workout at the old Dunfield Club at Eglinton and Lillian, then drive out to Scarborough for dinner with my mom.

Every single Thursday, until I went back to McMaster in the fall of 2002.

When I returned in the spring of 2003, I continued the tradition.

I started in real estate in 2004, and yet I still went to my mother’s “new” house in Scarborough for dinner every Thursday night.

I moved downtown in 2005, and I still went to my mom’s for dinner regularly.  I honestly can’t say that I went “every week,” because while I might be able to remember a particular song that played at a birthday in 1985, I can’t remember 2005 through 2020 nearly as well.

My mom kept the house in great shape.

She was very house proud, and like most older folks (I’m stereotyping here), she loved to “putter around” and fix things.

The house was the furthest thing from luxury, but it was immaculate.

My mom retired in 2005 after nearly four decades of teaching public school and had time to plant deeper roots in the community.

She regularly babysat for the children on her street.

She volunteered at the Craiglee Nursing Home and implemented “Art With Carole,” which was a weekly program at first, but because of popular demand, she began to visit more regularly!

She taught herself to play guitar, and then volunteered at another nursing home while doing “Music With Carole.”  This was before Spotify and Apple Music, of course, so she would ask me to download obscure 1930’s songs on Limewire or Kazaa so she could play them for Mabel, Dorothy, Gladys, and the gals.

She did volunteer work with the Victorian Order of Nurses and helped look after the newborn babies of single mothers.

She took up knitting, which I believe is a mandatory requirement once you become a Senior, and she donated thousands of blankets, hats, and booties to the young mothers and newborn babies at Rosalie Hall.

My mother also took up a volunteer gig with the Canadian Cancer Society, where she would drive cancer patients to their treatments.  I’ve seen my mother drive, so I think the success here is a win for everybody involved…

Somewhere along the line, she split with her partner and became the sole occupant of the house, which she continued to look after.

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” or so the saying goes.

2002 was the start, but time has a way of catching up with all of us.

My mother was fifty-four years old when she moved into the new house in 2002, but by the time age seventy-two came around, something changed.

It was 2020.  A lot changed.

My mother had made maybe two or three comments about “downsizing” in the years prior, but it was more conversational than anything else.  It was like discussing any rite of passage, but I never thought it was something she was considering.

Then February of 2020 came along, and the entire world got turned upside down.

By March, the you-know-what hit the proverbial fan as COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, society shut down, and we were all told to stay home.

We’ve all got our memories of those early days, but there is a single moment that stands out in my mind from that time.  It’s one I’ll never forget.

Not only that, I can’t forget that moment, since I have it captured in the form of a photo.

This is March 21st, 2020, at 11:45am:

That’s my mother in “self-isolation.”

She had just returned from a cruise, which was about one week from being the worst possible timing you can imagine.

In the foreground are a bunch of plastic bags (remember those days?) from Loblaw’s, as my mother couldn’t go out to get groceries due to COVID, so I came to drop off groceries for her.

I’ll never forget her waving at me from the front porch.

Years from now, we’ll all examine our actions and decisions during the pandemic, but suffice it to say, most of us did what was asked of us back then, including my family and myself.

No contact.  No interactions.  And if you have an elderly, vulnerable family member, you’re still not allowed to skirt the “rules.”

This was around the time that moving my mother became a serious discussion.

Back in 2002, she was younger, had a partner, worked for TDSB not too far from where she lived, and had all the support in the world from her community.

But in 2020, she was 72-years-old, alone, retired, and most of the people she grew to know in the neighbourhood had moved on.

My brother and his family live in England.  My sister does what she can to help my mother, but my wife and I were her primary support.

Seeing her standing alone on the porch in that photo, my wife said to me, “Maybe we should consider helping your mom move closer to us.  Like, very close to us.”

Imagine that?

We’d just had our second child, who was barely two months old, and our daughter would be turning four that fall.

Imagine their grandmother and biggest cheerleader living close by?  Like, maybe in the same neighbourhood?

But Mom would never go for it.  No way.

I don’t like change.  We all know that.

But my mother?  She makes me look flexible by comparison!

Nevertheless, I thought I’d broach the subject with her, so I called her one day in May of 2020 and said, “Mom, we’ve got this crazy idea, but hear me out.  Maybe, just maybe, you’d like to consider moving out of Scarborough and closer to us?  And maybe, just maybe, you’d consider moving back to Leaside?”

“David,” she started, before a lengthy pause that made me regret bringing this up with her, “I’ve been thinking the exact same thing,” she said.

(TO BE CONTINUED)