Watch the Sunrise

I have only watched the sun rise once.. But the story was like something out of a movie...


My mum and I were in Ontario for a wedding.  On our way to the City where the wedding was to be held we stopped and stayed with my great aunt and uncle. My aunt (who we will call B for the purpose of concealing her name) had a stroke and couldn't get down stairs to clean anymore. There was a man boarding at B's house just before her stroke, he was quite a dirty man (not in the sense of a dirty magazine but as in a pig pen!) Mum and I were to sleep in the boarders old room.

It was very late and dark when we headed down the stairs to our bedroom and we couldn't see enough to find the light switch for the stairway or hall so we literally felt our way straight along the walls to the bedroom turned the light on and that's the point I started freaking out... Quietly, of course, so as not to offend my family. I begged mum to come to a hotel with me; I didn't want to go in a cab alone because I have had bad experiences in my little city so I couldn't imagine what it would be like in Ontario! I promised to pay for the cab, hotel and for the cab ride back in the morning, to no avail... (I should mention at this point that I'm not even a girly girl when it comes to dirt, I camp in tents sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag, I fish which means putting a worm on a hook with my own little bare hands and taking the fish off the hook, I am also the person who gets to clean the guts out of the fish and cook them up for everyone else to eat, having a pup means I am the one who cleans all his messes up... I'll spare you the details of what his messes consist of!) but that room was more than I could handle!

Mum refused to leave and come to a hotel so I sucked it up and started "getting ready" for bed while some stained and dirty super-model in what you could barely (no pun intended) classify as a swim-suit stared down from her poster on the wall. It was summer so I only had a t-shirt which meant my arms would be exposed to the stained bedding I was looking at with horror... I braided my hair in 2 braids in case of lice and covered the pillow with a half-slip for the same reason (of course that meant I would have to attend and sing at my cousins wedding in a light skirt with no slip, but hey, I would rather let strangers see my silhouette than get lice and you would too so don't even pretend! ha!) I folded the stained bedding down so it wouldn't touch me and made my mind up that even if I had to shiver my way into hypothermia (not probable in the summer, even in Canada! ha!) I wouldn't be covering myself with those blankets... I then checked for all the bugs that, in my mind, would likely be creeping around the half empty (or half refilled) beer bottles, glasses and ash trays with my shoe in hand ready to strike. I put my capri pj bottoms on and I thankfully found a pair of socks in my luggage that would pull up and stretch enough that I could tuck my capris into so my legs would be covered and not touch the yellow and spotted sheets. I found my way into the washroom and washed up then carefully lay on the bed with my arms on my slip-covered pillow and began to cry while mom began to laugh... I told her it wasn't funny and my uncle Morton would never, in a million years, force his daughters to stay in a such place but she had no mercy...

After about an hour of mom sleeping and me laying terrified to move I realized there was no use, I couldn't possibly sleep there, I tip-toed back up the stairs to the parlour (or sitting room whichever you prefer to call it) and sat... All night... On a firm sofa... Awake... with not one thing to do other than regret I was not sleeping. My uncle came out of his bedroom at about 5:00 am; he was awake to start the day. We chatted and of course, when the obvious topic of why I was awake came into question I simply stated "I couldn't sleep and it must be the excitement of seeing the family" and my uncle accepted my explanation without question. While chatting about life we watched the sunrise, together. It was beautiful and not just because of the majestic, warm, red, pink and purple tones in the sky but because I was able to become completely enthrolled by my great uncle's stories of life and how he became the man he was.

Oh, I almost forgot the one of the best parts of the story! I heard mum stirring downstairs in the morning so I rushed back to get dressed in order to get on the road as early as possible for the rest of our drive... At the bottom of the stairwell and a bit to the left there were beautiful, white french-doors. I'm a curious little kid so I opened them to find a newly renovated tv room which still had that new carpet smell and a brand new soft blue sofa that looked like it had never been sat upon... I called mom over to see the new room and we both stood there laughing ourselves silly now knowing we could have slept just fine in the clean room a couple of feet away from the boarder's old dirty bedroom!  Fantastic!


All in all, I am glad the room was dirty so I could make and keep the memory of a sunrise, and more than that an uncle I might otherwise never really known.