Paul Kuitenbrouwer visited me at my country place today.
On my way to Madoc with the dog I was thinking of him, even though at that point I did not know that he was going to visit. I was thinking maybe I did him a disservice with the stories that I wrote about him in the National Post five years ago. Maybe, back then, I was too harsh, too critical of a guy who was, after all, just trying to rebel against the established order. Given how things have worked out on planet Earth in the 50 years since my father began his great one-man rebellion, can we really say that he was wrong and the forces of order were right? Today we have global warming and Donald Trump. Perhaps my father was right.
Even so, that does not mean that he was a good father. It cost the taxpayers of Ontario a lot in therapy, for me to be today somewhat balanced.
At any rate, the other day I had gone to my therapist (again on the taxpayer’s nickel) and told her that I don’t see my father anymore because I was sick of how he threw me into a tailspin whenever he would show up unannounced on my doorstep; and that, out of courtesy to Mimi, my wife, I had told him that he was only allowed to visit if he gave us two weeks’ notice, and since he is unable to give two weeks’ notice, because he is constitutionally unable to make a commitment, I never see him anymore.
“He is never going to change,” my therapist noted, and suggested that, instead, perhaps I should change, and grow accustomed to the fact that he will show up generally without warning, and I should learn to live with it.
The day after my therapy session I mailed a letter to my father, and tell him that I would be on our farm in Madoc on Sunday and Monday, should he wish to visit.
When I got to Madoc I took carpentry tools and walked out to the forest to work on a quixotic sugar shack project. I really want to make maple syrup next spring and I have decided to try boiling sap on the location of the old sugar shack in the forest. My first project is a tower next to the ruins of the old sugar shack, on which I can put a barrel to store maple sap.
Coco and I had barely arrived in the woods when my cell phone buzzed. It was a 613 number, which is the area code in Madoc, so I figured someone knew I was here, but not a number I recognized.
“Hi, it’s Paul,” said Paul. “Where is your place? I drove up the road but I could not find it.”
I explained how to find the place and then Coco and I walked out of the forest, through the rich pastels of the fall colours, and there came Paul, driving up the lane in a scratched-up black Ford Focus. He sat down and I served him tea and ice cream (the only thing I could find in my fridge suitable for a man with one tooth) and Paul told me at length about his recent trip to the Netherlands where he went to see his sister Geert, my beloved aunt, who was dying (and who has since passed away, God rest her soul.)
He told me about a bonfire he had held the night before on the farm that he no longer owns, but on which he has lived for over 40 years near Wendover, Ontario.
“I mailed you a letter to come to my bonfire,” he said. “Our letters crossed in the mail.
“I made 100 meatballs, he added,” with my friend Mel. And then he made some sweet and sour sauce for them. The bonfire was on Teepee Hill, it was a whole bunch of construction debris that Mel had hauled there. He said a sister of mine was there with her husband, child, and new dog.
“When I had eaten as much as I could eat and drunk as much beer as I could drink and smoked as much dope as I could smoke, I went into my little annex (the tiny house he built himself years ago) and it was full of people. And I said, ‘I think it is about time that you should go,’ and within five minutes everyone was gone, and so I went to bed.”
And so he celebrated his 82nd birthday.
I asked Paul whether he wanted to stay the night at my place.
“No,” he said, “because I want to get ready for my court date.”
Somehow it seemed fitting, and even made me glad, that the old reprobrate, having spent his entire adult life just one step ahead of the law, still had, at age 82, a court date to look forward too.
Turns out the court date was for a red light camera that caught him in Ottawa, which is penny ante stuff for an old con like him, but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers, and a court date is a court date is a court date.
Of course it was a completely bogus reason that he was giving me for why he couldn’t stay the night, but I really didn’t expect anything else (maybe all the therapy is paying off) and so I contented myself by taking him on a little drive into our forest (he can’t walk very well) and showed him where I plan to rebuild the sugar shack, and he seemed suitably impressed, adn we strolled around a bit, letting ourselves be illuminated by the afternoon light filting dimpled through the vivid yellows, oranges and reds of the autumn leaves in the forest, and then we said goodbye.
