With the infant stage for each of our two children passing us by – they are walking, they do not need to be spoon fed, they are out of diapers – my wife and I have to raise them to become actual people. They are not just babies for us to coo over anymore. We have to teach them things about the world so they become functioning citizens. We chose Chatham to raise, teach, entertain, and partake in every other influence that goes into parenting, which is the same city where all those things happened to me. From 1970 to 1989, I spent the formative years of my life growing from baby to teenager to young man in Chatham before heading off to education and career opportunities. Twenty-two years after I left as an eighteen-year-old, I returned to raise my own two boys. Some things are different, some are the same.
One thing that remains the same is that we are surrounded by farms and fields. The evidence is everywhere – tractors lumbering down the country roads, smells that farmers pass off as fertilizers, and the reference to corn detasseling as a summer job known only to communities like ours. Several of my childhood friends lived on farms. I played in barns, jumped in haystacks, and ran through cornfields, but my parents never took me to buy farm-fresh eggs, organic vegetables, or grass-fed beef. The food I knew as a child was very different – there was no artisanal, no free range, no heirloom. My boys spend time at local farms as well, where they not only play, but see that we personally know the farmers who provide our eggs, meat, fruits, and vegetables.
Similar to farms, parks in the 1970s and 80s were wide-open green spaces. Now parks have so much to keep young people stimulated. The hill in Kingston Park is accompanied by water spouting from the ground and pouring from buckets in the sky at the splash pad. The concept of a splash pad was not something that had been dreamt up yet when I was a kid, and would have seemed as futuristic as a spaceship if someone had shown us one back in my day. When I played with water, it was on the banks of a dirty creek behind our house to catch minnows, explore nature, and get very dirty. My kids meander by that same creek, watching Canadian Geese and Great Blue Herons, and it now has paved footpaths that attract roller bladers, dog walkers, and couples out for late-night strolls.
Many of the buildings we visit as a family are essentially the same. The main library is structured the same, but the layout is all backwards to me. I used to go upstairs to scan the bookshelves for Gordon Korman, Beverly Cleary, and Judy Blume books. The children’s section is now on the main level, and educational computer games, a Lego table, a craft table, and a pet fish are mixed in with all the books, making it more of the community gathering place that libraries have become, rather than just a way to stock up on reading material.
The Memorial Arena – the old behemoth of a skating rink known as The Old Barn – is the same as when I went with my dad and brother to watch the Chatham Maroons. When we go skating there, as much as being on the ice, my boys love running up and down the long wooden bleachers that run the length of the arena, the same way my brother and I did. We were there last winter for the live broadcast when Memorial was in the running as a Kraft Hockeyville finalist. After a commendable effort by the community, Memorial secured funds for renovations as runner-up in the contest. Until those upgrades happen, every time I step inside this arena, even though it is a bit rough around the edges, it smells and feels exactly the same as I remember it, which is how my boys will know it too.
In the corner of the Downtown Chatham Centre, I used to go to an arcade to play video games on giant machines. My boys play those same games on the touch screen of a smart phone smaller than a paperback novel. In that same space were the arcade stood long ago, my boys have spent time in more mobile and engaging activities by digging for dinosaur bones in a paleontology pit, as well as learning songs, beats, rhythm, and dancing through the musical programs of Kinder Music.
One thing I have learned from my kids in this process of parenting is that children take it all in; every moment of every day they notice everything around them as part of what becomes their life. The farms, parks, splash pads, creeks, libraries, arenas, and malls that surround children shape who they become. I was raised here, my kids are being raised here, and we will share and contrast memories of places around town as we continue to grow up together.
