I Want to Return

 

I want to return to that place—

the comfort and ignorance of childhood,

the rooftops, the trees, haylofts, and attics,

the fast river and railroad tracks that led nowhere and everywhere,

green fields and barbed wire fences, and salt licks for sampling.

Free days.

I remember the scent of my father, the oil and hay, stale manure, and Old Spice.

In church, I explored weathered hands with blackened nails,

sucking Lifesavers while adults thought about Jesus.

I remember mum in floral house dresses with sensible shoes,

baking cookies, tender crusted pies, and fried bologna we thought was a treat,

berry picking and chauffeuring to Jeffrey’s Lake for a muddy swim with leeches.

Free days, happy days—at least for a child.

I want to return to that place before the angry shouts of opposition parties,

the heated debates about border, fentanyl, and sex trafficking,

the hot tears and anger with mass shootings and invasion robberies.

To the place with unlocked doors and no coded security systems,

to the place where every neighbor was a friend and helper and

not suspected of being on some sex offender’s registry.

Free days, ignorant days.

But there is no going back, I guess;

there is no unknowing and unseeing what the world has become,

and we would desperately protect our own,

hold off the darkness as long as possible; but

somehow it seems we have dragged our little ones along to this troubled place.

But I would return if I could.

 

 

Mail Domination!!!

Posted on April 29, 2012 

I wonder if they make femail boxes in this rural setting?  

This scene is very nostalgic for me, except for the locks on some.  Growing up you would never see that!  However, many a mailbox ended up stuffed with manure or firecrackers on Hallowe’en.  Delinquents!  . . . Not me.  . . .  What are you looking at?  I only used hay!

We collected our mail at the general store a mile from home.  I felt disenfranchised not having a shiny mailbox at the lane.  Finally, we got one!  Said “Cr____ and Son” on the top.  Nice try, Dad.  Your only son would run off and become a space-age scientist engineer person.  It must have been a sign that a month after the mailbox was up, somebody threw it in the river.  At least, that’s what we suspect.  A Hallowe’en trick.  Sometimes, pranksters would just exchange mailboxes so you found it a few farms over.  We never found ours, and the river was so handy.

Now if it had said “Cr____ and 6 wonderful daughters and one son,” no one would have dared such a sacrilege.  Oh, well.  Back to the general store.

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I Was a Perfect Child

I was a perfect child—no matter what my mother says.  How could I not have been?  I was raised by good godly parents on a sprawling green (when it wasn’t snowing) Canadian farm, before Americans had even invented acid-rain.   A tree-lined river bordered our fields.  The water ran clear when it wasn’t muddy, and you could actually eat the fish without fear of mercury poisoning—that is if you caught anything other than bone-riddled rock bass or sun fish.  Dad and Mom raised obnoxious chickens, pastured Holsteins, and free-range kids.  The air was clean, the dirt was dirty, and life was good.  So tales of my rebellious, pouty-lipped childhood have been most certainly exaggerated.

Mama said that as a toddler, I would never finish a bowl of oatmeal, spaghetti, or whatever.  The last bit needed to grace my curly, auburn locks.  Well, it may have happened once . . . or twice . . . and most likely it was accidental.  After all I was a perfect child. 

The stories of me painting my arm and a tiny wee bit of the floor with white enamel are in all points false.  I painted both arms, and some paint even landed on the walls.  But I was just trying to help lighten Mama’s load.  She had the whole room to do all by herself!

As a pre-teen, the four-inch nails I drove into the old elm tree by the milkhouse in no wise hastened its demise.  It stood tall and knobby—a hundred-year-old sentinel.  My plank board tree house perched as a crown in its grand, tired arms.  What better purpose could it serve in its waning years than to be homestead to my youthful fantasies, inspired poetry, and an almost holy communion of Jell-O tea and soda crackers? 

One story that has gotten a lot of mileage is the time Mama chased me round and round the big kitchen table with Daddy’s leather razor strap.  (I think I was thirty-five at the time.)  She said that I was eventually going to need to stop.  She would catch me, and I would receive the spanking that I supposedly deserved.  If I kept up my aerobic rebellion, it would be a spanking or house arrest, or possibly both.  I opted for the lumps—the sacrificial lamb.  I’m sure I must have been framed by one of my more devilish siblings, because I was indeed perfect.

The pile of hay strewn on the barn floor was a complete misunderstanding.  How else could we jump from the rafters and not get hurt without undoing a few dozen bales?

As a college student, when I made a tearful call home to tell my folks of the trouble I’d gotten myself into, I must admit I didn’t feel too perfect.  My heart was breaking.  I was afraid my parents would be disappointed in me.  When I explained my situation, Dad cried with me.  He said he only wished he could be there to stand alongside and help me through the pain.  I had made a huge mistake, but I was still his perfect child.  The college dean didn’t think so, but I know it was true. 

The Bonnechère

A river snakes through sylvan lands

with quiet ebb and flow;

the birches greet with silver palms

in evanescent glow;

and slipping on past concrete piers

where children’s stones are cast,

the river sings of dreams and things,

fond wishes from the past.

A river snakes through sylvan lands,

past rich and fertile soil,

tilled by firm and tawny hands,

nails blackened from the toil.

Giant alders both frame the land

and shelter river’s lee,

and still the water moves along

with strength to carry me.

A river snakes through sylvan lands,

through boroughs and through town,

then rushing brazen through the dam,

its course comes crashing down.

Over rocks and rapids poured,

strength begins to wane,

till quiet and obsequious,

the river slows again.

A river snakes through sylvan lands

with steady quiet lilt,

quick to catch the private thoughts

on which our dreams are built.

I was the child upon the bridge

with little stones to cast.

I love the secret waters deep

that flow into my past.

Sepia toned pictures were taken by my mum, others by me a long time ago.

Aunt Eva

            Aunt Eva lived in a small addition attached to Uncle Wilfred and Aunt Dorothy’s grey stucco farmhouse.  She lived alone. But with her eight nieces and nephews next door and the steady stream of piano students, never alone. 

            Her black hair was sprinkled with hints of gray and rolled into a tight sausage that circled the back of her neck.  It must have been the hip style in the Holiness Movement because my mother wore hers the same.  I remember one time being surprised to see Aunt Eva comb her hair out.  It fell halfway down her back—thin, with a hint of a wave.  She washed it with raw egg.

            Every Tuesday, I walked from my one-room school in the Canadian countryside to Aunt Eva’s for a fifty-cent piano lesson.  It was a good deal for an hour of piano, tea, and cookies.  I’m not sure if she wasn’t a good teacher, or if I was just a poor student, but I never learned to read music very well.  I had a good ear and would memorize those Royal Conservatory pieces, then play, looking at the sheet music, pretending to sight-read.  She probably wasn’t fooled, especially when I’d improvise, though she never seemed to mind my own special touches.  We sat together at an old upright.  On top of the piano sat a cherished china figurine of Liberace at his piano.  She admired him.

Sometimes in the winter, my hands would be so cold she’d have me warm them by the old wood stove until I could move them enough to manipulate the piano keys.  They were never quite warm enough for scales and arpeggios, however.  That required too much discipline and practice.

            She didn’t hit me on the fingers like one of the nuns I’d heard of in town, and she never stopped me from expressing my own voice in music.  However, I never did place in piano at the local music festival. My performances were rather “individual.”  The adjudicator’s remarks always included things like: “A nice start, but . . .”  or “Good expression, but . . .”  Regardless, Aunt Eva was proud of her students, and she was always proud of me.

            She had never married.  Eva appeared content the way she was except for the fact that she had been “dying” all her life.  I wouldn’t say she was a hypochondriac, just fearful and addicted to worry.  As a young girl, she’d contracted scarlet fever, and whether there were real and actual symptoms left over from that, I don’t know.  But, at times, she was convinced death was near and would panic. Who knows what she was really feeling, but I think perhaps I’ve inherited her disorder. 

            Since we assumed Aunt Eva was perfectly content with her multitude of relatives, piano students, and church acquaintances, it came as quite a shock when, with blushing cheeks, she announced that she was to be married.  To Bill.  She was sixty-three.

            Bill was a man of great patience, I guess, for he had asked her thirty years before.  They were married in our little church in town, and there never was a more radiant bride.  Aunt Eva twinkled!  Not a small thing at sixty-three.

            I noticed a remarkable change in my aunt.  For one thing, she appeared softer around the edges as if she was always moving in diffused light.  She loved and was loved.  It washed over her in waves of smiles and blushes and a knowing look. 

            Bill and Eva were married for about ten years when the car accident happened.  I don’t know whose fault it was—just one of those things.  But Eva went down hill over the next couple of years.  She weakened.  I visited her in the hospital, and my sisters and I sang some hymns.  She smiled for us, but continued wasting away.  I think she had stopped “dying” for those twelve good years with Bill, but at the age of seventy-five, she really did die. 

            I miss Aunt Eva’s wonderful brown sugar candy.  I miss being served tea in a fancy cup and saucer.  I miss the way she pronounced the “O’s” in the word “cookie” like “cool.”  She loved music.  She loved God.  She loved us, and she really loved Bill.  When I’m sixty-three I hope I won’t be afraid to try something new—to take a radical step, to stop dying and live.  And maybe even twinkle.

           

My Teacher Carried a Shotgun

My teacher for grades one through eight brought a “shotgun” to school every day. It contained a mysterious white powder and rested on her big, wooden desk at the ready. She appeared as a terrifying specter in my young life: demanding, critical, and sometimes physically abusive. In that one-room schoolhouse in the idyllic Canadian countryside, she towered. She was tough and unquestionably in control.

Whether it was sweeping the hardwood floors, printing, coloring in the lines, cleaning the fish tank, singing in the choir, nothing was ever good enough. She required perfection. I was not, however, a perfectionist and so I lived in terror of her criticism. I was one to find art in the process more than the outcome, and so my insecurities under her tutelage grew. I always felt inferior.

My supportive parents did much to soften the psychological blows on my sensitive nature, but one day some of that insecurity melted at school when Mrs. _______ announced to the whole class that I had written a wonderful spring poem. She had contacted the newspaper, and they were going to publish it; which in fact, they did. I can’t say all was completely rosy after that, but I realized that my gift with words was valuable, something worthy of even the tyrant’s praise. It was a turning point in my young life.

There were other defining moments. When I got to high school, I was intimidated by the much larger school. Walking the lunchtime gauntlet, being sized up by peers, was terrifying. My old insecurities and natural shyness kept me from really stepping out much and expressing myself creatively. I had a small group I was comfortable with, but taking risks was scary business. Then, I learned to play guitar. Suddenly, my songwriting was off and running, and you can sound really good with only a few chords. Best of all, I had something to do with my hands, and I had this big chunk of wood sitting on my lap to hide behind. And piano, even bigger! I re-created myself in the image of Lilly the Folksinger / Rock ‘n Roller. I was able to express myself, my fears, my faith, my humor, in ways that I was too inhibited to do before. The more praise I received, the more my confidence grew. The more my confidence grew, the more opportunities opened up for me. Being able to share what I had written, that part of my vulnerable self, gave me a sense of power, a sense of significance. And when others were moved, encouraged, or just simply grooved to my tunes, my old fears of inadequacy and inferiority started taking a back seat.

It makes me realize how important affirmation is. It’s easy to be critical, and I have to watch that in myself because I have a tendency to see flaws first. I look for things to fix. But my desire to “help” must be tempered with the awareness that, just like me, a fragile self is only waiting for the right encouragement to blossom.

By the way, Mrs. _______ really did love me and only wanted what was best for me as her student. I saw that later . . . much later! She had some pretty weird ways of showing it, but she was proud of me and was spurring me on to do well. And the shotgun? I realize now that what she called her “shotgun” was really an inhaler. She was asthmatic. So the big, bad tyrant had weaknesses after all.