They moved here, to this street, to the corner house top of the street a dozen years ago. He'd had a job in California as a software designer. They moved back home to Canada and to Ottawa where their extended family was, so he could start his own business. It was highly successful at first, and then when the dot.com bubble burst it took his business with it. After that he had a series of well-paid but too-short contracts.

When they first moved here I became acquainted with her when we both waited at the bottom of the street for the school bus. I waited with my grandchild who was attending junior kindergarten, and she with her then-six-year-old fraternal twins, a girl and a boy. Apart that they hardly resembled one another in their facial features, the girl was far taller and larger than her brother. A factor of a more robust umbilical cord in utero feeding more blood to the female fetus than the male. A fact she did not tell me, but that I learned independently much later. That size disparity is even more pronounced now that the twins are eighteen.

I recall back then how the two children would act in unison, even though they did not seem particularly bonded as twins to one another. There was, in fact, a rivalry between them. I still remember how mystified I was when I watched as they swarmed a younger child waiting by himself for the bus to arrive, aggravating and frightening him with their subtle matched and threatening movements toward him. It was so obvious what they were doing, I couldn't understand how their mother seemed so oblivious. I brought the situation to her attention and it seemed to me she feigned surprise, then called them off, expressing a concern she obviously didn't feel, and telling the twins blatantly that their behaviour was bothering me.

This was a couple that thought big; they took trips abroad for holidays even when their finances were really tight. And they would often go away on week-ends, sometimes asking us to look in on the little dog they left behind on its own, locked into the mudroom off the kitchen, to change its water bowl, see it had enough to eat, and take it into the ravine for long walks with our own two little dogs. Or, the little fellow was left with another neighbour, living temporarily in her house with her three cats. She never allowed that little dog to enter the house beyond the kitchen; if it tentatively tried to join them in the family room it was ordered back into the kitchen. Hard not to deplore such stern and exclusionary control.

Before her husband was unemployed she took up a job working part time at a local walk-in clinic, using her nursing background to get along, but she never liked the job. Trouble was, nursing positions were in short supply. So she decided to go back to college and earn a teaching diploma. And then, realized there was a downturn in employment opportunities for teachers in the province. A real dilemma, since she had put so much into furthering her education, only to discover it was for naught in the employment-prospects sense.

She applied for employment with the federal public service, while her husband took intermittent contracts. Eventually she was offered a position in Toronto, so for a year-and-a-half she rented a small apartment in Toronto and commuted on week-ends back home to be with her family. She did not lack in ambition nor work ethic, and it was obviously a difficult time for her and her family.

But then, finally she was successful in obtaining a transfer back to Ottawa. Because neither she nor her husband can rely on any kind of pension plan outside what they will be able themselves to arrange, they placed a down payment on a condominium unit, and rent it out, as landlords, the income they derive helping them to save money in a RRSP for retirement purposes.

They plan, when the time is right, to sell the condo before they retire, but to move into it beforehand to claim it as their principal residence, to avoid paying capital gains taxes. She feels confident their little scheme will work nicely for them.