"Will you stay in a lovers' story? / If you stay, you won't be sorry / 'Cause we believe in you / Soon you'll grow, so take a chance / With a couple of kooks hung up on romancing"
These David Bowie song lyrics always make me think of my childhood. My parents, Terry and Pat Ryan, with their long hair and red-and-yellow plaid, bell-bottomed pants, were a "couple of kooks," who moved out of the city to a rundown house with no plumbing, in the middle of nowhere, in the early seventies. Peace, nature, freedom, and love were on their minds. They were after a new beginning, and took on the challenge of making a life on an old farm in the small community of Sunderland, Ontario. The farmhouse should have been torn down. There was garbage everywhere, and the walls were crumbling, but my parents liked the view of the sky, so they bought it. They also bought two horses and let them run freely around the property. They cooked on a hibachi outside, and took baths in a washtub in the middle of the floor with water they boiled. They went to the bathroom in a hole in the ground. Everyone thought they were crazy, and maybe they were, but they were in love and they were happy.
My parents weren’t the kind of hippies who do drugs and have sex with lots of people (at least not that I know about!), but they did love rock and roll. They spent their time in the country listening to the Beatles, the Doors, and the Rolling Stones. I was named “Angie” after the song—that is how much they loved the Stones! Mom also wrote poetry, and Dad made sculptures. They rode their horses for fun, and had picnics in the woods. Dad would climb the tallest tree around to take breath-taking photographs of the rolling hills and the sunset. Mom would pack a lunch in the saddlebags, and meet Dad after his long day of digging postholes with a kiss and a smile. Mom had huge vegetable gardens where she grew their food. They also bought some pigs, a cow, ducks, and chickens. My parents experimented with nature by switching the duck eggs and the chicken eggs. The little banty hen would go nuts when her adopted babies would swim in the puddle!
After two years I was born, and then a year and a half later, my sister Ellen was. We were truly supported and loved. Our artistic talents were nurtured, as we had an easel and access to paint at all times. We were always dressing up in costumes from Mom’s dress-up box and putting on plays. We had a multitude of pets, including cats, dogs, turtles, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, birds, hamsters, mice, gerbils, and, of course, horses. When I wanted to do a science project with rodents and a maze in grade eight, my mom drove me to the pet store and let me pick out a new rat, hamster, gerbil, and mouse. I kept them all in our house in cages that Dad built for me. We always had fun searching our farm for new kittens in the spring. Later, when I was in high school, I had a pet rat. I wanted her to have babies, so Mom and Dad let me go out and buy a male rat. I watched the miracle of rat-childbirth. Soon we had ten rats, all known by name.
Throughout my childhood Mom and Dad always got Ellen and I out into nature. We’d walk down to the creek in the warm weather. We’d wade in it with our rubber boots, catch frogs and crayfish, and bring frog’s eggs home. I always managed to get a soaker. Dad created hiking, riding, and skiing trails throughout our property. In the spring, summer, and fall, Mom and Dad would take Ellen and I horseback riding almost every day. I remember the signature line from Mom in a singsong voice: “Get your riding clothes on!” In the winter they’d drag us cross-country skiing. We had to ski across two ten-acre cornfields to get to our apple orchard where the hills were. As soon as we got there, Ellen and I would take off our skis and slide down the hills on our toboggans.
My parents always fed us healthy food. Whole grain (often homemade) bread and organic vegetables filled our plates. Mom used to pick apples from our trees and make applesauce and apple crisp. We would feast on wild asparagus that grew by the roadside. Mom would save the juice from cooking vegetables and freeze it. She’d make soup with her collection when the containers were full. Mom went through a sprouting phase where she’d sprout beans, peas, alfalfa, and onions. She also had her own herb garden. I always enjoyed our food, but I do recall secretly wishing ice cream was as good for you as carrots. My parents were very supportive with my choice to become a vegetarian when I was twelve. Ellen and Mom joined my diet of choice soon after, and Dad pretty much did too. Lentils, brown rice, chickpeas, and tofu became regular household foods.
My family’s health care ideals are somewhat different than most people. We have always focused on natural health care and used natural remedies. We’ve always tried to avoid medications and instead chose herbal tea and garlic. Echinacea and St. John’s Wort were common in our medicine cabinet before they went mainstream.
Dad continued to renovate our farmhouse throughout my childhood. He cemented two full walls with large stones that he found on the property. He was always tearing down a wall to put in more windows and wound up installing four skylights! Both my parents produced paintings that hung on our walls. Dad also painted stumps and called them “Goons” and hung them around the house.
Respect and appreciation for one another were values that my parents instilled in my sister and me. Even today, our family continues our tradition of making one another homemade valentines with poems expressing our feelings of love.
My parents raised my sister and me to have open minds. Perhaps it’s because we never went to church that I feel totally open to other religions. I see how Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Baha’i faith all have wonderful things to offer. I don’t feel that just one is right. I’ve also always been open to other people. I remember playing with the underdog in elementary school, and sticking up for the kid whom no one liked. Interracial marriage is something that came naturally for both my sister and me.
I consider myself to be an environmentalist. I get frustrated when people don’t recycle, and lawn pesticides infuriate me. When a law was passed in Ontario banning the use of lawn pesticides for cosmetic reasons, I cheered! My concern for the environment started with my parents. To save energy, they heated our home with a wood-burning stove. Dad would roll the wheelbarrow full of hand-chopped wood right into our living room, and Mom would hang our clothes out to dry on the clothesline. They also always had a compost pile. For as long as I can remember we were sorting eggshells, carrot peels, and apple cores. (The horses, dogs and cats always liked to investigate the compost for anything tasty.) As a child I was concerned with saving the rainforests and endangered species and became a member of the Jane Goodall society.
Mom and Dad taught Ellen and me to stand up for what we believe in. They were actively involved in protests and petitions. They protested against plans to build an airport in Pickering and against plans to put in a gravel pit on a farm down the road from us. When I was eleven I organized a school petition against McDonald’s Styrofoam packaging. A year later I was proud to hear that McDonald’s had switched to cardboard, and that a major factor influencing its decision was letters from school groups. I had a part in that, and it felt amazing.
My parents are now retired and, as always, happy. They’ve made their rundown farm into a peaceful haven complete with a greenhouse full of flowers year round and a homemade pond with waterfalls. The pond is their favourite feature. Dad lugged rocks from all over our property to the pond, so it looks as though it were part of the natural landscape. The pond is full of lily pads and weeds, fishes and frogs, and water trickles over three different waterfalls. Dad built a deck right beside it, and Mom and Dad eat many meals there.
Mom and Dad have recently overcome hardships and trying times: my father survived a heart attack, and my Mom beat breast cancer. But today, they can often be found skiing at a local ski resort, and when they’re not hitting the slopes, Dad is active with his carpentry and woodworking hobby in the deluxe workshop he built inside an old shed. He still creates his quirky sculptures, a few of which pay tribute to Monty Python. There’s a nine foot tall, four foot wide tin man, “the Knight who Says Nee,” and three variously sized “Icki-Icki’s,” who have pails with horns for heads. Mom tutors, paints, and keeps up a dollhouse hobby. She also has the greenest thumb of anyone I know. I send my limp, dying plants to her, and she has them in full bloom in no time. Mom’s gardens are full and alive with colour. They still have horses, dogs, and cats.
Mom and Dad can be seen working on the farm or relaxing by the pond. Dad might be reading in his hammock with dogs napping beside him, the wild birds feeding from the bird feeder, and the cats with their new kittens playing in the flower gardens. Mom might be weeding the garden or feeding the fish in the pond as the frogs watch her, unafraid. The horses are just on the other side of the fence, grazing and swishing their tails.
Being raised by a “couple of kooks” was fine by me. I remember Mom singing that song as we picked wild raspberries from our bush, and when we went barefoot together practicing on the balance beam Dad built for us. A lot of my parents’ values are now mine. I long for peace, nature, freedom, and love. I compost, have pets, and have an art room in the basement. Perhaps my love of wild colours and bright clothing also stems from them. Even as an adult, I still find joy in making dandelion chains and wearing them in my hair. My “hippie” parents taught me to celebrate life and to be myself. They gave me a love of learning and of discovery. They taught me to be creative and to express myself. Most of all, they truly made me believe that I could do anything I put my mind to. Now as I rock my own children to sleep, I sing “will you stay in a lovers’ story? If you stay you won’t be sorry . . .” And I look at my husband, with whom I’m so in love, and wonder, have I become a “kook” now too?
