Read Online Passages: Welcome Home to Canada by Michael Ignatieff - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Ignatieff
Ads: Link
prestigious Massachusetts country club. They were now offering him full-time work. My mother was a doctor. By sitting for a simple exam (simple for her, anyway, as she had a real knack for exams) she could re-qualify as a doctor. The lifestyle they were contemplating was definitely an upper-middle-class one, with very few of the stresses and strains most immigrants face upon arrival in a new country. The decision was entirely up to my mother. Whatever she wanted, my father would abide by it.
She said no.
I telephone my mother to ask her why she said no all those years ago. Her answer is only one word:“lifestyle.” Her voice lingers over the
l
, drawing it out in a quiet sigh. Immediately an image rises in my mind.
We are at the swimming club, clouds like gauze scarves fluttering in the blue sky. My mother slowly descends the steps into the water. “Ma-Ma-Mummy!” We children make a furious dash across the pool towards her, each determined to get there first. She raises her hand, palm outwards. A nervous swimmer, she does not like being splashed. I am the best non-splasher. As my mother glides out and down the pool, her head above the water, I stay as close to her as I can. I love the feel of her legs kicking the water behind us, the smell of her perfume mingled with the chlorine on her skin. To me there is no one more beautiful than my mother in her purple one-piece bathing suit.
Later, when the sun is too fierce for swimming, we will return home. Sunday lunch is always special. Even while paddling in the water, I can almost taste the explosion of flavours in my mouth—the buttery yellow rice scattered with sultanas and cashews, nutty eggplant moju, succulent chicken curry, devil shrimp, dal, fish cutlets, and chocolate biscuit pudding for dessert. We come running into the house ahead of my mother, go to wash our hands, take our places at the table. We bow our head for grace. My father thanksGod for our meal, for the fact that we have food. It never crosses his mind, or indeed strikes any of us, to offer up thanks to the maid who laid the table, to the cook who made this lunch.
My mother, on the other end of the telephone, breaks into my reverie. “Then there was the Lodge.”
The Lodge. Or to give it its full name, the Ibis Safari Lodge.
My father was a man who took his great loves and turned them into money. Even before I was born, he abandoned the steady climb up the corporate ladder that his schooling and family background ensured. He had played Davis Cup for Sri Lanka and had been the national tennis champion, and he decided to go to Australia and qualify as a tennis coach. His other great passion was wildlife, and in the early seventies he became the first person in Sri Lanka to offer safaris. So successful was this venture that he built a hotel—the Lodge—to house his tourists.
How I used to love going to the Lodge, beginning with the journey in the open Jeep. Our route took us first through the lush foliage and rivers of the wet zone of Sri Lanka, then the road emerged onto the coastline and we would travel past miles and miles ofwhite beach, turquoise water. The change of scenery, as it always is in Sri Lanka, was dramatic. We always stopped at Tangalle Bay for a picnic lunch, which we children would eat quietly, hoarse by now from screaming out jokes and mild obscenities at the village children we had passed.
Within an hour from Tangalle the landscape completely changed again. We entered the dry zone. The hazy, moisture-laden yellow light of the wet zone gave way to brilliant clear whiteness (the same quality of light as a dazzling February day in Toronto). The trees on the sides of the road were stunted, with few leaves, yet filled with brilliant red and orange flowers. Vast arid plains stretched into the distance, a smell of dried clay pervading the air.
To get to the Lodge, our Jeep would then leave the main road and go along a narrow jungle path. So close were the trees that we had to sit on
She said no.
I telephone my mother to ask her why she said no all those years ago. Her answer is only one word:“lifestyle.” Her voice lingers over the
l
, drawing it out in a quiet sigh. Immediately an image rises in my mind.
We are at the swimming club, clouds like gauze scarves fluttering in the blue sky. My mother slowly descends the steps into the water. “Ma-Ma-Mummy!” We children make a furious dash across the pool towards her, each determined to get there first. She raises her hand, palm outwards. A nervous swimmer, she does not like being splashed. I am the best non-splasher. As my mother glides out and down the pool, her head above the water, I stay as close to her as I can. I love the feel of her legs kicking the water behind us, the smell of her perfume mingled with the chlorine on her skin. To me there is no one more beautiful than my mother in her purple one-piece bathing suit.
Later, when the sun is too fierce for swimming, we will return home. Sunday lunch is always special. Even while paddling in the water, I can almost taste the explosion of flavours in my mouth—the buttery yellow rice scattered with sultanas and cashews, nutty eggplant moju, succulent chicken curry, devil shrimp, dal, fish cutlets, and chocolate biscuit pudding for dessert. We come running into the house ahead of my mother, go to wash our hands, take our places at the table. We bow our head for grace. My father thanksGod for our meal, for the fact that we have food. It never crosses his mind, or indeed strikes any of us, to offer up thanks to the maid who laid the table, to the cook who made this lunch.
My mother, on the other end of the telephone, breaks into my reverie. “Then there was the Lodge.”
The Lodge. Or to give it its full name, the Ibis Safari Lodge.
My father was a man who took his great loves and turned them into money. Even before I was born, he abandoned the steady climb up the corporate ladder that his schooling and family background ensured. He had played Davis Cup for Sri Lanka and had been the national tennis champion, and he decided to go to Australia and qualify as a tennis coach. His other great passion was wildlife, and in the early seventies he became the first person in Sri Lanka to offer safaris. So successful was this venture that he built a hotel—the Lodge—to house his tourists.
How I used to love going to the Lodge, beginning with the journey in the open Jeep. Our route took us first through the lush foliage and rivers of the wet zone of Sri Lanka, then the road emerged onto the coastline and we would travel past miles and miles ofwhite beach, turquoise water. The change of scenery, as it always is in Sri Lanka, was dramatic. We always stopped at Tangalle Bay for a picnic lunch, which we children would eat quietly, hoarse by now from screaming out jokes and mild obscenities at the village children we had passed.
Within an hour from Tangalle the landscape completely changed again. We entered the dry zone. The hazy, moisture-laden yellow light of the wet zone gave way to brilliant clear whiteness (the same quality of light as a dazzling February day in Toronto). The trees on the sides of the road were stunted, with few leaves, yet filled with brilliant red and orange flowers. Vast arid plains stretched into the distance, a smell of dried clay pervading the air.
To get to the Lodge, our Jeep would then leave the main road and go along a narrow jungle path. So close were the trees that we had to sit on
Similar Books
