Rio Terrace (33/73)

My Mother seemed happy the next morning as she made me pancakes for breakfast. I took that as a sign that her and Jack must have made up and had a good weekend together. Shortly after we sat down and began to eat our pancakes Jack walked through the door with a bundle of flattened packing boxes under his arm. As he removed his shoes and came to sit at the table, I wished for a minute that the boxes were an indication that he was moving out. But I quickly came back to reality when I noticed that Jack also seemed the be in a good mood. Too good of a mood if he was leaving.

Once he sat down, my Mother sprung up to get him a plate. After she sat down again she began to tell me that we were moving into Grandma Lois’s house in the City. Now it all made sense. They were both in a good mood because we were once again moving. It seemed like we were always moving. My Mother and Jack were always behind on the rent and eventually it always caught up with us after any period of time at one place. Once again I would be starting at a new school after summer. It made it hard to bond with my class mates when we moved around so much.

I didn’t care that we were moving. It just bothered me that I would have to be the new girl at school again. I liked my current school and my class. I didn’t want to go into grade five without them. Especially considering we were moving into the community of Rio Terrace. It was a fancier older area in the west end of Edmonton and my mother was by no way fancy. Actually, I would be the poor kid going to school with other children who were lucky enough to have parents that worked upstanding jobs and owned their own homes. My Mother was quite the opposite; she was more content to collect money from the government than do something with her life. So that made our housing options very limited.

By the following weekend we had moved. It was a beautiful house. Four bedrooms, vaulted ceilings in the living room, kitchen and dining room. Complete with four giant windows that faced the inner circle of the U-shaped cul-de-sac. Not to mention the huge un-renovated basement. There was even a big back yard with an Elm tree planted in each corner. I hated to admit it but it was better than the dingy apartments that we had been living in. Grandma Lois always took good care of the house. She had permanent renters in the house since she moved out to the farm a few years before, but they had recently moved out and the house became vacant. My mother jumped at the opportunity to go live in the house because she knew that her very own mother would never evict her if she was behind on the rent.