One of the things I’m terrible at when coming to Oakville is visiting with friends. It’s not that I don’t want to visit with anyone else, it’s often that I don’t have enough time available in the area to do so. And there’s such a long list of people I should visit with that to do it properly could take a couple of weeks alone.
I opted to hit up Stuart and Theresa, largely as I haven’t seen them since 2015. To little surprise, they suggested dim sum.
We have a history of dim sum. Back when they lived in Calgary, pre-marriage, there was a history of dim sum. Almost every Sunday at the Silver Dragon, 11am. There were usually quite a lot of people, necessitating one of the large tables with the lazy susans. When Theresa and Stuart moved to Montreal, Chris and I had to find a new crew to Sum of Dim with.
They chose Legend Chinese, a restaurant on Yonge a few blocks north of Steeles. It’s a part of Toronto I’ve never been to, so that in itself was an adventure. That we’d also have to brave the 20-odd lanes of highway that is the Highway 401/Allen Road interchange was simply jaw-dropping to the girls.
Yeah, Calgary, in case you’ve not heard me rant about it before, none y’all have a clue what a real highway looks like.
We arrived a bit early, which was fine with me. I loathe making people wait because I’m tardy. And the 401 isn’t particularly predictable. As it stands, Theresa and Stuart (and family) were late as they had found a stray dog while walking theirs. Dutifully, they found the owner before coming to join us.
For the record, Legend Chinese is nondescript from the outside, which is exactly what you want to see in a great Chinese restaurant. The other thing is a lot of Asian people inside. Better still if your weak-ass Caucasian ears have difficulty understanding the accent.
Suffice to say, the food was great. I still prefer Silver Dragon, but that’s because I’ve been going there for 30 years.
I preferred my friends more. Theresa hadn’t aged a damn day, exactly how I remembered her, save for the blonde hair (she had always been a brunette in my memory). It suited her well.
Stuart had his hair shorter than mine, but looked much trimmer than I felt (someone needs to get on a damned treadmill). They brought their kids and an associated significant other along for the ride. Theresa sat next to Alex, while I sat across the large table with Stuart.
It is said that with a good enough friend, long absences can be crossed in mere minutes. Both of my kids watched in horror as he and I slipped into our old ways. Then Stuart engaged my kids in a full debate of Pixar Cars lore. I’m not sure who was more impressed with their full engagement on the topic, Stuart or me. Even Stuart’s son had to remark that we were nerds.
I do have to state that it still feels really, really weird to say that two of my closest friends from high school have adult-aged kids. (I’m still moderately wigged out that I have them, too.)
We ate until we could eat no more. And then, because the topic came up from my part of the table, we all went for bubble tea. Conveniently, the same stretch of Yonge has a plethora of them.
Bubble Tea & Me is almost across the street from Legend. And we had full run of the place. Conversation stopped only long enough for us to get in our respective vehicles, drive over, and take a table in the bubble tea restaurant.
It felt awful to leave them, but we had our own things to do. I don’t know how many years it’ll be before we see them again, but I pray it’s not too many.
Back down Yonge to head a bit west, this time to Yorkville. This is a mall of some legend, at least in my mind. I know people who have shopped there for years. I only vaguely knew where it was, I had never once set foot in it. At least, not until today.
Though we first went into Indigo. I can’t take my kids anywhere within a quarter kilometre radius of a bookstore without them wanting to go in. We came out with eight books. It’s a disease.
The rest of Yorkville was … frankly, disappointing. It’s a big mall, and I say that in terms of size. It looks like it should have two levels, but instead all the hallways are super-tall. Almost all the stores are single level, for no good reason. It’s wasted space. And many of the stores are expensive brands, which most people can’t readily afford without putting themselves at financial risk. Less and less do I understand commerce, these days.
We headed out to Oakville, bypassing Cathy’s for Dorval Road and the Bulow Garden Centre. Alex had found it yesterday whilst looking for seeds for the memorial service on Tuesday. We stopped to pick up a hostess gift for her cousin Tara, who had invited us to dinner.
The last time we’d seen Tara and Steve was also in 2015, when they’d lived over in Bronte. At the time, Tara was pregnant with child #4. Now we met her for the first time as a teenager. Their two eldest were away, one camping near Hamilton, the other in Greece.
Tara and Steve are Good Peoples™. (And A++ types, though without the accompanying overbearing egos that typically come along for the ride.) It was several hours of catching up, sharing stories, and asking questions (Tara’s a Superintendent with the Halton Board of Education, so she’s a tremendous source of information).
The girls and I spent a fair bit of time scritching their pets: a large lab named Moose, a wiener dog named Harper (the epitome of “cat software running on dog hardware”), and their black cat. I have quite a bit of champagne fur on my shorts as a result.
The fed us dinner, which was delightful. But like with all visits, there had to a limit, and ours was needing to get back so Cathy could go to bed – we didn’t have a house key.
We’ll see Steve again on Tuesday in St. Thomas, though Tara will be away for work at a conference.
