“I think I will miss you forever, like the stars miss the sun in the morning skies.” – Lana Del Rey
Before I went to India, I was so busy with all kind of activities that I totally forgot to mention to Lynda that I had an opportunity to send $100 to the lottery which was running by the City of Brampton for affordable housing. In all honesty, I never expected to hear back from them. However, when I got back from India, the next day Lynda wanted me to get in touch with the person who had contacted her in my absence.
If I remember correctly, the City of Brampton was in the process of creating a suburban district called Bramalea by developing a community separate from the city which was located in the former Chinguacousy Township. It was going to be the first satellite community developed by one of the country’s largest real estate developers. They decided the best way was to start this initiative to run a lottery.
Lynda also shared with me the conversation she had with the guy who called. Apparently, we won the lottery for a detached home in Bramalea and we were supposed to deposit $5,000 within 10 days to start the process. She tried to explain to the person on the phone that she would deposit the money immediately as I was away for 4 weeks, but he said that wasn’t acceptable. However, he said to Lynda that as soon as I got back from India I should get in touch with them. There was a possibility that there might be some townhomes instead of detached houses available to purchase.
To make a long story short, I spoke to the person and he confirmed that all detached houses were gone but they had a couple of townhomes left to be allotted. We rushed to go there and made the deposit to secure a 3 bedroom townhome. Lynda picked the townhome and she went through the selection of carpet, type of flooring for kitchen and bathrooms, appliances, colour of walls, etc. Then we were taken to see the plot where our townhome was going to be built. We were told that it would be built and ready to move in within three months.
The next thing we did was to take the girls and mom to show them the plot and explain the features of the townhome. We started going there almost every week to monitor the progress of the construction and drive around to check the other city facilities in the area. We found out that the Bramalea City Centre Mall was close by and the City was providing the dial-a-bus service for the new community. That would allow Lynda to go to the mall as we had only one car and Lynda was so busy with all the other things that she never got around to get a driving licence yet.
While I was away, there were some changes at the store where I used to work part time. The Assistant Store Manager was promoted and transferred to a different store in the Dixie Plaza which was a 35 minutes drive from where we used to live. He offered to have me work for him as a Section Manager in his new store which was a promotion for me. I discussed the opportunity with Lynda and she thought it was a good idea but she also realized that as a result of the change I would not be able to come home for lunch. I used to leave home around 9:00 in the morning to go to work at the store from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Then I would go to my main job and work until midnight before coming home.
Our new place would be 20 minutes farther from work than our current house. Driving time wasn’t necessarily a problem and gas wasn’t that expensive either. But I missed seeing my family. Lynda still used to wait for me with a hot meal every night but by the time I got home I used to be bone-tired. Therefore, as soon as we moved in our new home, I quit working at the store.
The mortgage for the house wasn’t any more than what we had been paying rent for the apartment and Lynda was very happy with the house. She already had ordered drapes to go with the light-blue carpet in the house. She bought new furniture for the house and garden, including a barbeque for the garden. She bought bits and pieces for the garden as Lynda loved gardening.
The sad thing was that Ruth decided to go back to living with her dad as she thought the only reason we wanted her to live with us was because we needed a permanent babysitter for her brother which wasn’t true. Furthermore, I was ashamed of myself, thinking that I had failed to be a good step-father to the girls as they didn’t have any confidence in me. I attempted to justify my lack of enthusiasm toward them by thinking that I was so terribly focused on working hard and making enough money to support us all. But that was an excuse.
While I was still trying to find something to do during the day in the vicinity, I came across a better day job in my own field through an agency to work days. I started working for Beaver Lumber Company to deal with their computerized warehousing system. It was a much better and challenging job with a substantial raise in my salary. I didn’t like to leave Playtex because they had been very good to me but I explained to them that I needed to make more money as I had a family to support now. I offered to work nights for them until they found somebody to replace me. I worked both jobs for a little while and made some extra money which Lynda didn’t mind.
I found out that Beaver Lumber Company was one of the several subsidiaries of Molson Brewery. Beaver Lumber was a building supply chain, Canada’s fourth largest building supply materials in 138 stores across Canada. In 2000, it was purchased by Home Hardware, a cooperative of over 1000 independent Canadian Hardware Stores.
The person who hired me, Gord Scott, was used to be a big shot with Molson Brewery. He was on loan from the head office. He was in charge of all Data Processing Departments throughout their subsidiaries. He was at Beaver Lumber with a team of system analysts, programmers, and system support folks to design and implement a new computerized warehousing system and he was faced with all kinds of challenges. They had a unique computer system called Singer system 10. I thought they only make sewing machines.
If my memory serves me correctly, I do recall my interview with Gord Scott. He told me that he liked my background and he asked me what I was looking for. I told him that while I am curious to learn new tricks of the trade any day but right now my focus is to make more money to support my family and the new house that we just bought. He said I like your straightforward attitude and asked me would I take the job, if he made an offer. I said it all depends how much the job is going to offer as I am not desperate for a job, I already have one. What I needed is a better job with more responsibilities and more money. He said there’s nothing wrong with that approach but my problem is while I am impressed with your background on paper I am not sure if you are capable of helping me. He said, if you help me to get out of the mess I am in, I can promote you right away. As soon as I heard that I stood up and shook his hands and I said you got a deal. He said don’t you want to know how much I am going to offer you right now. I said I will leave it up to you and we became life-long friends.
I got promoted within 5 weeks to take over their computer operations which operated around the clock. Now I was making more money than I used to make by working two jobs. Lynda was happy. What she was not happy about was that in addition to working day shift, I used to carry a pager with me which used to beep all the time. If it would beep which meant they need me at the datacentre to trouble shoot the programs they were having trouble with. I would get on the phone right away to help them out. It was a kind of annoying as it used to get beeped mostly in the middle of the nights and I would get on the phone to talk to them for a while which was definitely disturbing for the kids. In some cases, I had no choice but to drive to the office in the middle of the night, if the problem wasn’t resolved on the phone.
After working there for a little while, Gord Scott invited us to come to their place one weekend. Maxine was away that weekend, so we decided to take Adam with us. Gord and Margret had a beautiful home in a small town some 25 kilometres away from our place. Lynda and Margret got along very well and we had a nice meal at their place.
If I remember correctly, Margret was pregnant with Melody and she was much younger than Gord. Eventually, we found out that Margret was the third wife and Gord had grownup kids with his other wives. It didn’t make any difference to us as Lynda was completely impressed with Margret and they became friends.
We celebrated Adam’s first birthday in our new home. Lynda invited kids from next door. Lynda’s sister Estelle with her husband, John and their two kids, Debby and Peter also came to the party. Of course mom was there, too. The kids played together for a little while and we all had a nice meal cooked by our beloved Lynda.
Nepean, Ontario, Canada 08 February 2023