Green Acres [apr/may 2005]
By Kathy Buckworth

For years my little family of four lived in what might be called "Uptown Toronto." Twenty minutes from downtown, it was close enough to a trendy intersection known as "Young & Eligible" to still qualify as 'in town.' We scorned our suburban friends and relatives, scoffing at their love of mini-vans, junior hockey games and the inability to get anywhere without driving. They had traded in their Starbucks lattes for Tim Hortons' double-doubles, and not only were they comfortable with this, they were proud of it. This horrible fate would never befall us. We needed the 'buzz' of the city, the 'feel' of it, 'living large,' in Canada’s most exciting city.

So here's what happened: Baby Number Three officially put us over the top in terms of children per square foot in our tiny old semi-detached home. 'Living large' had taken on a new meaning. Naturally the pregnancy was discovered within six seconds of the completion of extensive renovations. We had updated our 1920s abode to about somewhere in the 1980s in terms of heating and plumbing, and it had been as painful as these things always are. We would stay put, and be cozy, we decided. Ironically, the size of the house would turn out to be the least of our problems for our young and expanded family.

It wasn't until I had circled the block for the sixth time that I realized that it shouldn't be this hard to find a parking space simply to drop my seven-year-old daughter off at Brownies. The same was true at the public skating rink, the ski lessons, the swimming pool, and the ever-popular twisty slide at the neighbourhood playground. Everywhere we took our children there was a line up, a delay, or a 'full' sign to be met.

It must be nice to live within walking distance to such great restaurants, we would hear. Huh, I suppose so…if your definition of a great restaurant is anywhere without an attached indoor playground, which were the only places we could take our brood. And we had to travel by car to get to one, as the fast food places in the city didn't stoop to providing such luxuries. In a moment of quiet desperation, (and after the thirteenth head whack to our newborn on a low slung car door), we broke down and bought a mini-van. Not surprisingly, the extended version wouldn't fit in our luxurious city driveway, so we had to settle for a van, which could provide seating for all of us, but not room for a stroller.

Like the stench of stale, sat-upon and squished around diaper, it finally hit us. We were attempting to live a suburban lifestyle in an urban location. Fortunately for us, we were paying a huge mortgage for the privilege. We began to salivate over the high figures our neighbours were receiving for their modest city homes, and began to dream of hall closets, rec rooms, and separate bedrooms for the children. As our real estate agent waxed over our two car driveway (our lead selling feature), our "Muskoka-like" basement (two paddles hung on the wall), and our "original" kitchen, we knew there was no turning back. Hello commute, goodbye snow-clearing army. Mississauga it would be.

(At this point I will confess to flashing back to the WKRP in Cincinnati episode where Johnny Fever purchases a suburban tract home on the "Gone with the Wind Estates," and is ridiculed endlessly about his very fashionable address, Pitty-Pat Lane.) I smugly thought that we could avoid that embarrassment.

So now, as I sit in my new home on Maid Marian Place in the heart of Sherwood Forrest, work has begun on removing the mirrored wall, the pastel striped wallpaper, and the fleshy pink paint from the walls. We've started where our last home left off, in the 1980s. Children are playing in the free-from-parked-cars street, the three slides at the playground down the street are always open for business, and I've just booked all four children in lessons over the Internet. No waiting.

On our first walk around the block, I had to convince our older children that it was okay to cross the street without holding our hands, as the last car to pass had been fifteen minutes earlier. We traded in the mini-mini-van for a gargantuan SUV (my husband's last pathetic gasp at coolness), and the junior hockey practices are now a part of our schedule. We still love Toronto, only twenty minutes away, but we enjoy the quiet streets, knowing our neighbours, and mostly the feeling of space. Oh, and did I mention there's a Starbucks we can walk to from here? There's a Tim Hortons across the street from it, which looks good too...