Tuesday 26 November 1963
My friend at the desk downstairs (the one from Edmonton, not one of the
Lavendar Ladies who are on at night) cried "Ellie! Did you know that
there is a package for you?" So to oblige her and to avoid carrying
it upstairs I opened it there. It was of course the package you sent with
Friesens, mailed from Saint Catherine's, 79¢. Like Christmas - cookies,
apple pieces, SLIPPERS (good to see them, the floors in Ban Righ are getting
cold), PICKLES, and the surprise at the bottom, the bag of nuts. Mrs X downstairs
enjoyed the pre-Christmas with me. Thank you very much Mom, your dill pickles
have already been endorsed by Ban Righ Three (the endorsement goes something
like this, "Kin I have another one?" or "Shut that lid before
they all disappear") and the onions haven't been unveiled yet, but
wait!
Three days ago, no, two, our psychology class Dr Campbell had a rampage.
He was in brilliant humour, doing snarling take-offs on television commercials
and fattening us up generally for the slaughter that we weren't expecting.
Then, wham, he cut us down, chopped us fine, minced us, about our
last experiment report, holding up examples and running verbal daggers through
them until they - the examples - and we, quaked.
A funny thing about Queen's University - there are very few pretty girls
compared with for instance U of A. And a glance in the Who's Where (or little
green 'black' book listing all co-ed names and phone numbers for the benefit
of guess who) shows rows and rows and rows of people whose name begins with
Mc; is there a connection between the Scottish percentage and the frugal
number of pretty women? Another funny thing is the all-out-of-proportion
number of people whose fingernails are bitten down to nearly the roots.
About fifty percent of my music class, and it has only two freshmen! But,
granted, that music class does have reason to bite its fingernails. Just
as an example, Paul, the brilliant medical student, got HICs in all his
courses but music last year - and that one he failed. Anybody can fail!
Especially people with perfect pitch, especially people who know something
about it. We are trembling.
One funny incident today: while I was studying in an empty classroom
today two upperclassmen came in, talking about the English 2A course that
I'm taking. It became obvious that they were among those assigned to correct
papers for the last essay we handed in. While pretending to clear up my
books, my ears stirred under my hair, standing out at right angles to my
head. Said one, "Who is this Tom Hathaway?" The other, "I
corrected one of his essays, he's the brilliant freshman type - you know,
lots of ideas but no background. He said that Donne's poetry is negligible!"
"A good paper?" "Oh, brilliant, but he'll get a B."
"Yeah, after four years he'll be moulded."
The Christmas examinations are more than two weeks away, but the panic
is well upon us. Ooo, it is impossible to feel any amount of security. What
I would say is the largest difference between university and high school
is that the huge volume of work in university never allows you to feel at
all a master of your work, you just skim high spots - there is no time for
more. Frustrating. But you do learn more!
27 November
Dear Mom,
'Mary' was shining through 'Mom' in your last letter, good. It is unconventional
I suppose for Mennonites to be other than 'parents' to their children -
but is convention always right? We know it is not. So be Mary if you like
and no guilty feelings of not being properly parental, hmm? People are more
valuable than parents anyway.
And as for your relations with this 'Mary,' why be afraid to find
out what she is? Don't you think that in feeling firmly and totally Mary
it is easier and better able to be Mary, mother and Mary, wife and just
aggressively vitally MARY?!
You speak of never having had to rely on yourself totally in decisions
- but who do you think is the backbone of our family, who keeps it together?
We all know that you are and do. Whose interest in books started us into
the routes to a better way of life? Yours. And who made us aware of music?
And whose principles of loyalty (not as theory but as everyday living) are
valuable to us now? Who made the decision to fight for a unity in
our family even at such impossible odds? - To allow us so much independence,
even as very young children in even the vital matters of our New Dresses
(weren't you embarrassed sometimes to have me seen in the clothes I designed
and you faithfully worked out to our instructions?).
And who, for all those years and years of aloneness and poverty saved
scraps and engineered special surprises and glued us together, all this
with no one to complain to?
Mother, if you think I'm the one who's fighting against the wind - look
back a bit and see who really taught me. All right?
As for 'the kids,' Judy will certainly be alright - she has backbone
and softness too. I think she'll be the biggest Epp success. (And I think
I had something to do with it - is that illusion?) Paul - under the right
circumstances maturity should fix him, if he only grows to the point where
he can see his pitfalls. But he can - and basically he is a generous,
very intelligent person.
Rudy - our little 'fraidy cat. Is he becoming more self sufficient? What
are we going to do about him?
As for 'letting us go' - perhaps you'll find that wherever we go we'll
be taking you along, just as you are going to Queen's this year.
However - remember you are Mary and not (at least not in the FIRST place)
Mom: so you can't live through us. Your writing, though, is a great beginning.
And your education. [My mom was back in high school getting ready to go
to university herself.]
A thought - when we leave perhaps you can have a new beginning as truly
Mary and not eternally "Mom-where-is-the ..." So look forward
to 'booting' us out.
In the meantime - a little crafty battling to have Father call you Mary
and not Maw should do no harm. Here is a challenge for YOU: see if by the
next time I come home he won't have forgotten who Maw is and have remembered
Mary.
Thursday 28
Yesterday a financial statement from my bank. My chequing account has
sixty-two dollars, I've some money with me, and a two hundred dollar board
payment due after Christmas - that will be a loan. So I think this year
will be all right, moneywise.
About cryptic remarks from professors saying "If this is all your
own work," no, it really is not too serious because they never give
any sort of praise without that sort of qualification - and the sheep are
herded into the ungoat section especially during exams. After a paper or
two written in a style rather different from that used on examination papers,
there is a strong smell of plagiarism in the air. Things 'out' sooner or
later.
What Mrs Voth writes about 44 below temperatures is rather incredible
- true, the top floor of ramshackly Ban Righ is icy most of the time but
outside is only mildly cold.
To answer some questions: No, I'm not singing in the choir because when
I spend some time babysitting I cannot justify any holiday on Tuesday. As
for International House, I've not been there for one reason or another,
babysitting, exams, etc, for a long time, but am definitely still interested
and affiliated. And definitely still reading for Jerry.
The library is getting a new addition. As a result our music classes
are a multisounded horror. We turn the record player up to full volume to
hear it above the pneumatic drills just outside the window, and it appears
that even the Brandenburg concertos were not written to compete with old
grind-and-roar.
Friday 29
Thursdays are always great!
There is a hypothesis for you, but as a hypothesis only it isn't very
valuable. So - here is an example: last night was the second concert of
the series - hush, all, and listen reverently - featuring Byron Janis. He
walked onto the stage like an ordinary mortal, stocky even in tails, a little
beetle-like. He sat down at the piano, stared at it for a long while, poised
his hands over the keyboard - and began. Haydn's Sonata in D Major. What
I remember most about it was the staccato, whimsical mouse-like sounds in
parts of it, and the precise but somehow very humorous way that Janis played
them with his fingers flickering over the keys.
When he began the next piece I felt myself hurled across Canada straight
into your living room because it was one of the pieces that I've heard often
there: Arabesque, opus 18 by Schumann. Do we have it? Is it one we borrowed
from Dennis? It was entirely lovely, liquid-like but firm at the same time,
perhaps fluid in the way that it was performed but firm in melodic quality.
Then Schubert's Impromptu number 2.
When he came back from a very short intermission he sat down at the piano
and looked at it for a while again, then began Chopin's Sonata in B Flat
Minor. It begins with a majestic movement, then moves on to a scherzo, then
to the "March funebre," then to a concluding presto. The funeral
march especially was outstanding. All through this sonata the audience was
intensely aware of Janis as a person, for he plays with his entire body,
leaning into the music he creates as into a wind, sometimes seeming to attack
it, and sometimes to stroke it out of the keys almost wistfully. But always
there is an enormous sense of energy about him.
Then there was an intermission. It is exciting to look at the people
who come to these concerts, trying to squeeze from their faces some inkling
of what they feel when they listen and to speculate about whether they actually
hear the music as you yourself do, whether they are alive at all in the
same way that you yourself are.
I saw Thomas Hathaway from a distance, in a fairly respectable blue suit.
He looks no less stork-like in it, and as good as ever, if you know what
I mean - that is, he really looks quite terrible, but it is terrible in
such an unusual way that it is enormously attractive.
During the intermission Jim White came over to talk - I've mentioned
Jim before, the Englishman with the naughty brown eyes. He was wearing one
of his British houndstooth check wool suits, not much like Canadian ones
but very very dapper. Sherlock Holmesian. He is an entirely spontaneous
person, rather carefree, cocksure, thoroughly masculine. Because his seat
was not very good and mine was not either, we decided to sit on a sort of
hard ledge behind a pillar in the balcony. So we sat, in effect, on the
floor, and had a better view than most expensive seats. And it seemed perfectly
fitting to sit and listen to Janis with our knees up under our elbows and
our chins in our hands like kids watching a wizard. Going to concerts alone
is a lonely sort of thing (though naturally solitary, I'm not often lonely
here, but at concerts the feeling is acute - why? I suppose I know the answer
to that: concerts, good music, is a superb type of communication and naturally
arouses a wistfulness to communicate as well, if only to communicate the
appreciation you feel for the superior communication of the musician.) It
was good, then, to have Jim there because he is a good friend and an alive
person.
Then the entire post-intermission period was taken up by Moussorgsky's
Pictures at an Exhibition. You have probably read snipits about it Judy.
It is a musical tour of an exhibition of art by the musician's friend.
"Let's go to Michael's for tea," Jim said afterwards. So we
walked out through the dark streets between the rows of gaunt old houses,
singing bits of the music we had heard, "bom bom bom-bom, bom bom-bom,
bom-bom, bom-bom."
Mike is a boyish English post-grad doing research here in chemistry.
He looks like an eighteen year old blond version of the Earl of Snowdon,
but as he got his degree in 1959 he can't be all of that young. With him
in an apartment lives Tim, another English post graduate doing research
in organic chemistry - Tim has grown a magnificent bushy beard and looks
like a sheepherder, not a chemistry semi-professor. Also having tea with
the two was Gordon, the Saint Andrew's exchange student. So that added up
to a most gratifying sum of four intelligent and attractive men (the accent
they have adds an infinite something) to one overawed relatively stupid
and unfortunately Canadian accented female. But their word for it is 'lass,'
and as they gallantly say, a lass adds something to even shop-talking bachelor
teas. Splendid! The whole lot of them are rabid avid mountaineers, climbers.
The upshot of it all was that we sneaked into the chemistry building at
midnight in the eerie red light of the exit sign and spent the next two
hours looking at mountain-climbing slides in the chem building library.
It was exciting for even two hours. Then we bowled merrily home at two a.m.
If this is an example, do you agree about Thursdays?
Saturday 30
As a last fling before the serious work of exam-stuffing I went to International
House last night at about 10:30, after studying. It was an extremely good
party - ie my favorite people were there (including Jim and Ghazali) and
there was a man-girl ratio of about 3-1. This is unfortunate in some ways,
because in the middle of an avid discussion on what Canada should be doing
for India one is hailed and hauled away, but it is gratifying to be in demand,
even if only because there is no one else!
It had been raining when I arrived, heavily and very wetly. But when
we left at midnight-plus, a miracle of sorts. It had begun to snow, very
large wet flakes, clinging to the trees and sifting down through the light
around the street lamp. Ghazali (with his gallant moustache aperk) stood
for a long while and looked. This was his first snow.
Norm walked me home, and when the front door of residence appeared we
were chin deep in a political discussion, so decided to continue the thing
inside, in the common room in front of the (unlit, but what's imagination
for) fireplace.
By l:15 when 'visiting hours' were over most of the Ban Righ girls had
come in glowing and shaking water from their hair - it was inevitable,
really it was, although it was a bit late, that we had a conference in Marg
Spurgeon's room afterwards, knitting and setting our hair and talking, running
to the window once in a while to exclaim about the snow. (Lying like a fairy
tale on the sloping tower roofs of Ban Righ and sifting into patterns in
the ivy - Hans Christian Anderson.)
And this morning everything is wet and white - even the delivery trucks
passing on the Avenue were completely frosted, like ghost trucks moving
so soundlessly on the snow.
You can tell from all this girlish lyricism that the snow is something
of an event; we know that we'll hate it later, but today it is a stroke
of magic and we are all children.
There is a lone med student in the park across the street playing football
in a floppy straw hat!
Sunday 1st December
At Sunday dinner today several of the girls had brought their parents
- it made me wish I could bring you all.
Saturdays are sometimes as good as Thursdays. Yesterday was, because:
1. The campus was beautiful, and everyone was in highest of spirits.
2. Thomas Hathaway had had to miss several philosophy classes last week
so we arranged to spend some time in one of the empty classrooms in the
Arts Building, going over my notes and filling him in on the main points.
And quite naturally the philosophy session turned into a good conversation.
I've discovered his sense of humor - he does take-offs on MacMillan, Bertrand
Russell, acting them out uninhibitedly. Also, it seems that, although he
dresses like a pauper, he seems to be a fairly wealthy Bostonite playing
at being poor. And he has a brother in Japan, studying Japanese philosophy,
in Japanese! Anyway, I have a feeling that we are friends of a sort.
And then I had to dash downstairs in the cold and the snow to get a birthday
cake for Cathy and a pair of snow boots. It was magnificently cold - everybody huddled on
the street corners with their parcels or steamed along with only a cloud
of breath emerging between their collars and their hats to show that these
walking fur coats had humans underneath. And the shoe stores had been hit
by a human holocaust: the piles of open boxes heaped up in the corridors
as more and more people dug through them to find snow boots.
Then, at about eleven (Judy won't like that "at about" bit)
Olivia came in and we left my psychology books for a cuppa and a long long
talk. We are friends, I think. She tells me I am a hard-boiled, tough, ivory-tower
isolate. I tell her she is an inconsiderate, self-centered child. But we
like each other enormously - funny isn't it. We talked a long time last
night about Europe. She has been there several times, but wants to go again,
on her own. I can't think of anyone I would rather go with. So if it works
out - and it will, both of us despise dreaming without doing, and we will
do - if not together then seperately. But we will. Signed in blood.
She wants to show me Wales and the Riviera. And we want to do it with
just as little money as possible, camping and hitch-hiking and probably
stealing fruit from orchards. There is something appealing about being dumped
into Europe and knowing that you have to live by your wits entirely. To
get lost, cut loose from past and present, see what you are outside of your
society.
December 2, Monday
Are you filing these things?
Went to church twice yesterday, hem! Both in the evening - two showings,
seven and nine. The first was a special Advent carol service in Saint George's
(Anglican) Cathedral with the men's and boys' choirs singing some breathtaking
music, including some Palestrina. The organ was huge, a pipe organ with
the pipes rising high above the congregation to the domed ceiling. The choir
filed by in candlelight, all in white gowns, with the smallest boys first.
There were the nine year old sopranos and tenors, most of them already expertly
trained and professional sight-readers. At the end of the procession walked
a man carrying some sort of emblem on a long pole. He was a negro, with
his shiny dark skin in dramatic contrast with his white robe, all dignity
and halo-ed in the candlelight.
From that reverent service we dashed through the snow to a carol service
in the Baptist church, featuring the RMC (Royal Military College) Glee Club
singing some more unusual carols, and very well too, and a dramatic mezzo-soprano
singing negro spiritual carols. When she sang "Go Tell it on the Mountain,"
Father, I thought of you. In between, we sang a great many carols as congregation,
very loudly and enthusiastically, typically evangelical mission style. I
enjoyed it needless to say, and also the picture of all the strong-featured
enthusiastic young men on the platform (the RMC's) putting so much of themselves
into it. Our song leader was another typicism of the evangelicos, a stringy
young man all flopping joints and leering grins, a 'happy Henry.' And the
master of ceremonies was probably wound up before the service and pushed
onto the stage because from his first "It is a GREAT PLEASURE ..."
in progression through a series of teeth-showings that might have been smiles
if they hadn't been screwed on, to his last "I wish to thank ..."
he didn't deviate from the PRBI [Peace River Bible Institute] formula at
all. They sprang a semi altar-call but it was so unintelligent and so entirely
without dignity that I was ashamed for them.
Yesterday afternoon the Kingston Children's Hospital had an open house,
so I wandered in between studying and took the tour. Particularly interesting
were the research departments studying the effects of a certain blood protein
in causing mental retardation in babies before birth and the remedial feeding
of the preemies to prevent brain damage in them. Also, a bit of a thrill
was a demonstration (two doctors, a nurse, and a baby doll with a tangle
of equipment) of the blood replacement technique used in newborns like cousin
Steven, when he was jaundiced. Anyway it concerns the RH factor mainly -
I asked about it a bit more than what they explained, and they said that
if the doctor suspected an RH difficulty of this sort he would deliver the
baby by Cesarian up to six weeks early and perform the blood exchange then,
thus preventing what could have been a stillbirth. I think, Mother, that
they could have saved Susie if they'd had this in Grande Prairie.
Wednesday 4
Enclosed is something you can pin up on your bulliten board for a while,
and then put into my letter-folder, please. Nice isn't it? I was rather
disappointed though (in spite of being so pleased that I winked at kindly
old Professor Robertson) because I thought it should be more difficult to
get an A.
I'm enclosing a cartoon from the Queen's Journal, yesterday's edition
- it is a good cartoon, don't you think? Now look at the name in the right
hand corner [Tom Hathaway] - he is very interested in cartooning and has
already begun to submit cartoons to publications in New York (whether they
are being accepted or not he didn't say). He also is very interested in
writing, wants to do it as a sideline to teaching high school. If you could
just see him!
A psychology essay is due on Friday - the topic is "How do we gain
information about our environment?" and the things I'll be dealing
with are first the senses, then the nervous system which transports the
codified sensory stimuli as nerve impulses, then the factors within the
makeup and background of the individual himself which modify the purely
physical sensations from the senses and organize it into patterns of perception
- a gigantic topic involving a great deal of reading and some interesting
information-finding on the senses of ants to be used as illustrative examples.
I think I am in the right major subject, for psychology is both the most
exciting course I am taking and the one I am doing best work in. Writing
essays is the best form of studying there is because you have to understand
your subject so well in order to organize it properly.
I'll have to tell you about Bonnie - in many ways we are alike in background
and the fact that we are both on scholarship. But Bonnie is a worrier! She
worries about her marks so constantly and studies so much that she is not
enjoying university or learning any of the important non-subject things
that one should be learning here, or finding any sort of thrill in her learning.
She frets, complains, can't even sleep at night. I think her method of going
about this thing is just as wrong as the social butterfly's - both types
are missing the point. Poor Bonnie, she has no outside interests and as
she doesn't read or listen to classical music or even talk very intelligently
I'm wondering if she didn't memorize her way through high school without
much understanding.
Saturday 7
Whahoppin? Nothing really catastrophic, but a psychology essay due and
too little time to do it in, and yesterday a mental paralysis that would
have made any letter pure drivel but twelve hours of sleep last night were
good therapy.
Your letter last week arrived with one from Frank: general conversation
about weather and a new land deal. Frank's ex-best friend who was married
last Christmas is newly a father - this of course drew a sardonic comment
from LFD.
It is good to think that the people of Sexsmith are
thinking of me as a native daughter because I do feel like one. I am often
very homesick for the town and the nameless tree-lined street and Mrs Wold's
tidy little world and the warm light in the Windrims' window across the
street from mine, and the people - Mr Gruschilo and Mrs Pinch, the Manns,
Dennis and Dave, funny Brian Coleman, even! All the dear little old people
wandering around in the streets, the familiar houses - all nostalgic ravings,
these, but they are a good illustration of what I mean when I say that I
miss it. I wonder why it is that I so thoroughly felt part of that town
which was home for less than a year, while I never think of La Glace, and
far from miss it as a place, aside of a few people.
I met an Edmonton girl here, by the way, a Ross Shepherd High grad in
first year arts. She came in on the General Motors Scholarship - her average
was one percent lower than mine, and I'm a bit cheesed because the General
Motors provides for up to 2000 dollars a year - but then, her extra-curricular
record was extremely good. Still - I wonder how these things are arranged.
Sunday 8
If you'll let me begin at the end, I'll tell you first about tonight.
Studied until 10 pm, then walked out to go home only to find that the rain
was falling heavily and warmly, that everyone was running home in the streets
with umbrellas, or just holding hands and splashing. Our snow has been melting
for days, and now there are just clumps of ice here and there on the ground,
surrounded by running water like islands. And it was roaring into the gutters.
I thought, "the lake!" and ran.
I should tell you about the slant-street. It is a very short one, officially
called "Lower University Avenue," but it is too individual to
be called "Lower" anything, and what is more, is hardly an avenue.
Well: it is short, its pavement is cracked crossways in many fine running
lines and it pelts itself downhill into the far grander and busier Stuart
Street. At the top of the street, nearest to the university, is a huge old
hulk of a house with many turrets and bulky juttings and an ugly beard-like
red-brown hedge around it. Next to it, huddled along the slope, are funny
ratty little houses in a row, tattered curtains, crooked-board fences, stone
walls with provocative doors set high off the street, and at the bottom,
a tiny grocery shop looking out toward the lake.
Ah, and the lake in the rain and the dark. Deserted of course. Covered
with mist, nearby lights looking far away, the foghorn sounding faint as
mist too, far out along the cove; the ludicrously solid sound of the electricity-generating
and heating plant grinding out electric light and radiator warmth for the
university and the hospital (whose lights rise tidily and precisely in rectangular
rows for about seven stories, very close to the lake) at the same time as
the primitive waves soliloquized.
It was too dark to see the waves, but only, regularly, a curly line of
white running along the curved beach and disappearing again immediately.
And a catching-up sound just before another line of white ran. The rain
falling on the houses across the road (old, tall houses with steep roofs,
three stories) made them look haunted, and the lights on the street corners,
isolated. Their reflections, though, reached the trees along the beach and
highlighted the texture of their bark. One tree that I like especially stands
just above the pebbles: it is a young and slight tree, but tough (like me)
and it stands in the midst of a heap of rock with its two trunks bending away
from each other.
What else to remember - the steam rising spookily from the heating plant,
highlighting from the back, white and luminous. The 'pong, pong' of rain
falling on tin roofs along Slant-street, the tweedy-textured sheets of light
reflected from the wet streets, the ropey streams of water carousing into
drains, the eager faces of boys leaving their dates at Adelaide Hall and
running home happily with their collars up.
Hmm, prosaic again. My hair is of course wild and my coat dripping from
a hanger behind the door. Sweet old home. Oh, family, you don't really mind
if you find your letters filling up with all sorts of crappy girlish discriptions?
They are things I want to remember (yes, even the "pong, pong"!),
in case I ever forget that once I was young and Ellie and went to Queen's
and rhapsodized by the lake in the rain.
Now for the beginning. Queen's officially celebrated Christmas today,
because next week all will be studying feverishly, and the weekend after,
all will be home for the holidays. Church at Chalmers United this morning,
mainly because Bonnie wanted someone to go with her. Very tedious. A lovely
church, a good choir, but dull, unforgiveably. Think I'll stick to the padre's
service or the Cathedral's. The United did have a baptism, which was interesting
but rather pointless. Three babies: everyone said ooo aren't they sweet.
Alright, so I would have said it myself if everyone else hadn't been.
Dinner was a special affair, the year's Christmas dinner, served at the
table rather than cafeteria style, with candles at the tables and the huge
tree decorated. Behind the Dean's chair. Of course. Turkey, dressing, carrots,
peas, potatoes, cranberry, gravy, Christmas pudding with sauce. The floors
sat together with Ban Righ 3 seemingly unusually unified: we know each other
well enough now to love each other and to detest each other all at the same
time, family style. After dinner studying until the official tea. Then,
standing outside the dining room door, Ban Righ III singing carols for our
supper. We sing extremely well together, with no non-tune-carriers and many
harmonizers, both traditional and daring. A good blend of voices.
Tea with cake and shortbread cookies and mincemeat tarts, sandwiches,
celery and olives. A catastrophe when Santa Claus came and lost her stomach
in front of the Dean's table where our beloved padre was honoured guest.
A speech from the Dean, radiant in her red dress. What she said was this,
at the end of her very short talk, "I want to end by telling you all
something that we use as a special sign of affection in our family, and
I want to say it without affectation or maudlin sentiment: thank you for
being you." She is great; we all think so, all of the Levanites on
campus, and when 'Santa' gave her her present, she said "And this is
for our mother." We didn't want to stop applauding her. I think, Mother,
that this is one of the 'memorable women.' How does one know when to be
tough and when to be tender? (How does one be either, effectively?) She
seems to.
And then Ban Righ III went singing up the stairs, lit a candle in the
window, turned out the hall lights, and sat on the floor around the phone
for a carol sing of our own. Vulnerable girl-faces by candlelight, a feeling
of closeness, and a thrill at the loveliness of the music.
There is a huge and glowing Christmas tree in the front hall at Ban Righ.
We have one here too, a hideous pink broomy one with blue and red balls
on it, dreadful; Olivia and I detest it but the other kids think it is sweet.
And, another one too, a white paper thing decorated with a set of ribbons
in Queen's colors. One good touch today was that Santa was wearing a Queen's
scarf.
At dinner, the turkey and the Christmas pudding evoked a great many near-tears;
homesickness. But during our Ban Righ III song fest somebody said "I'm
not homesick now. I feel as if I am at home."
December 10, Tuesday night
Why does mail never dribble in piece by piece and why does everything
especially good arrive in one day? As a result of today's mail, you - Judy
twice, Father, Mother, Mr Toews, Lynn - are tacked unsquirming on the bulletin
board; the closet is guarding a cache of nuts and apple pieces from Grandma
Konrad, with a few candies and cookies; and a fat letter from Peter; and
the new blue blouse in my closet. Thank you, Mom, very much. I'll wear it
tomorrow.
Olivia and I have just been squatting crosslegged on the floor with a
newspaper, an empty Coke bottle, and the wastepaper basket between us -
why? - because we have been cracking nuts with the bottom of the bottle,
on the newspaper, and putting the shells into the wastebasket.
Judy, your picture is very good: you look cool as ice, composed, regal
rather than sensible, rather haughty. Mom, you're natural: that expression
I've seen often. and as for Father - I'll let Olivia's comment say it: "Hey,
your father is good looking." And Mr Toews - good ol' Mr Toews, the
crusty superintendent of schools who was not crusty at all, nice man.
You must be sure to tell me in detail about the La Glace Community Christmas
program. These things begin to be interesting after one leaves.
Wednesday 11
At 1:15 am last-night-this-morning Ban Righ III still hadn't realized
what time it was. Olivia and I were hopelessly entangled up in a talk, Marg
Spurgeon was finishing a novel, a few people were studying: but all up and
down the hall, lights still showing through the transoms above the doors.
That reminds me of an interesting French class lecture. Our oral French
prof is Mr Shortliffe of the 'sunny West' originally, Edmonton, but that
was a long time ago. He is fantastically intelligent: we always leave his
classes feeling keener than we thought we could, and enormously stimulated.
He knows such a lot about everything, taking examples from German, Italian,
Spanish, Old French and Latin to illustrate what he tells us about our French.
As a sideline to some point he was making he told of the early Germans going
southward to France. Being pretty barbarious, they had not a clue about
windows, doors, contraptions of that sort. But they left words behind them.
And voila! The French word for transom is "vasistas." Neat, isn't
it?
Now, English, Philosophy 1, and a little 'morceau' of French. Oh, guess
what: it is two weeks today from Christmas, and the ground is bare.
Thursday 12
Did you know how funny apple pieces are? On Tuesday night when Olivia
was in talking we became exceedingly hungry and I got out my apple pieces
from Grandma. Olivia had never seen anything at all like them: wizened,
brown things with a woody-acid-sweet taste. We had been talking about all
sorts of morbid things but these apple pieces were too much for even our
gloomy atmosphere. We howled. Perhaps the time had some effect on our sense
of humour, two ayem.
It is snowing this morning.
Friday 13
I persuaded the 'man' to take off my storm window! It is colder without
it, but when it is on we can't lean out of the window, and even worse, it
blurs the view. (I told him that it gave me claustrophobia, and it is true,
altho a little exaggerated.)
Our first exam will be tomorrow, philosophy in the morning and English
later on. Cram, everybody! It would be interesting to do a sociological
study of the effects of pre-exam tension on undergrad girls: hysterics,
overeating, undereating, oversleeping and undersleeping, red eyes in the
morning and bizarre dreams all night. The boys just go out and get drunk.
Girls play practical childish jokes on each other.
Saturday 14
Two down, three to go: but it is good to know that these are not 'counting.'
You will remember, Mom, from last year, having to write an essay in three
hours on a vast, exciting and unwieldy subject. That was my case in today's
English exam: I was to discuss the ability of three writers - Chaucer, Jonson,
and Donne - to discuss satirically the paradoxes of life and the follies
of the human race, with illustrations from their works. And in only one
hour!
Funny day this was: woke up growly and depressed, knowing I had a lot
of studying to do before my afternoon exams. Then your letter, Mother, which
was none too cheering. By the middle of the morning I knew Ban Righ was
due for a flood (ie instigated by me) so I 'escaped the flood' by running
down to the lake. What was even better than the lake today, though, was
that while I was on the way to it a boy I didn't know who was passing on
the sidewalk said "Isn't it a great day" as though he couldn't
help himself. This is different, because no one ever speaks to anyone
he doesn't know here, except of course at meals or classes. But not as spontaneously
as this. So it made my day. And later, a little old woman smiled too, and
remarked about the cold. It was comforting no end.
Mother, I don't disagree about there being enough of beauty and ugliness
in the world, but if there is a great deal that is monotonous and meaningless
I think the person who experiencing the monotony and meaninglessness is
partially at fault, don't you? Just for example, La Glace does have first
snows and rains too, you know, and no less often than Kingston. And instead
of the lake you have some magnificent bush. You don't do much tramping,
do you Mother? Maybe that is your trouble? No, that isn't it at all: your
trouble is that you are too darn unselfish - and I want you to read this
aloud. Because I know how I used to take advantage of your unselfishness
and I am ashamed of myself. I wish you could and would start indulging
yourself: there may be a lot of virtue in unselfishness, but it is bloody
boring and not fair to you or anyone. Of course it is monotonous! Yes, I
know that it is easy to talk when one is in a situation that is so much
better, but I remember enjoying life before too, and going to bed rather
breathlessly every night thinking of all the good things there were to be
breathless about. You are right though, capacity for joy in small things
in infinitely valuable and I do intend to fight to keep mine.
Do you remember a poem by Rupert Brooke called "The Great Lover"?
It is just a list of things he has loved all his life, listen:
- Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light: the strong crust
- Of friendly bread: and many-tasting food:
- Rainbows: and the blue bitter smoke of wood:
(You probably have more of the "blue bitter smoke of wood down in
the basement than you really appreciate.)
- ... and the rough male kiss
- Of blankets: grainy wood: live hair that is
- Shining and free
The whole poem is exciting - I'd like to find you a copy. But what I
was going to say is that I'd like you to make a list, and Father too, of
things like this that you've loved, because I think it would be a valuable
part of you to keep: I'd like to have it, please? Better than a photograph,
to keep what is valuable of a person, and to remember with.
-
Sunday night, oh, very cold. I've been away at the Union all day, studying
psychology in one of the dim bare little study rooms way up under the roof.
For nearly twelve hours, with no dinner and no supper, and you can guess:
an enormous feeling of nobility! A lovely Sunday on campus, with everyone
too busy to appreciate it. [Was cramming the whole of Hebb's The organization
of behaviour.]
The bare little rooms, though, have a view out over the rooftops and
trees. I always feel as if I am studying in a castle tower somewhere in
Germany years and years ago. That is, when I'm not feeling as though I am
in an old castle-university in Italy, or at Oxford. It is just that the
student life is such a universal thing and so time-spanning. I feel part
of a tradition that has been strong and special throughout all of the civilized
world before, even, the Renaissance. And it is from these universities that,
eventually, most books and inventions and ideas have grown. What a splendid
place to be! That word, 'splendid,' is actually jolly useful. Whenever I
use it I feel guiltily that it must be an affectation, but Jim and his English
friends use it so well that I feel cheated at having been born Canadian
and unable to use it too.
No more letters for this week.
December 16
[journal]
Along aisles behind me, Christmas jutting like nodes in a hollow wheat
stem to mark the selves I have been. Telescoping back -
Last year, red wooly suit and green prickly holly, soft
hair and soft eyes and the first time I had been completely in love. Agony
in the cold room at night; his hand warm and his arm strong in the day.
A wandering cow-crooked path back into the fields, cool cheek; cracking
nuts together and sharing an apple on Christmas morning. - I wrote him a
letter last week and I said "I did love you, and I'm glad. But in past
tense, Frank. I promised to tell you when I knew." I haven't decided
yet what I will do this year: will I eat half an apple, keeping the ritual
that we began last year? I think I will take a nickel and buy the largest
shiniest apple I can find, wrap it carefully, put it away in my suitcase.
Then, when I am in New York I will eat half of it. And the other half too,
for I've no one to give it to.
The year before, it was Frank too. A party one evening,
standing together in the fading lamplight of the kitchen with Paul's sleepy
breathing. He in the blue sweater, thin, male, dear. Bitter cold, frost
on his eyelashes.
A lonely rebellious Christmas, the last at the 'home place',
with a shuddering cry in bed on the Morning, and singing in choir with my
eyes red, but growing, through "Low, how a rose, e'er blooming"
peaceful again, quiet. Letters from Reiner, one that he wrote hurriedly
during a party, one I treasured "Ellie, you know I love you."
Adolescent hungriness, einsamkeit. - Reiner? In university. We write uninteresting
notes sometimes. We have little to say.
In Edmonton for a hospital Christmas; flickering blue light of the television
set and a boy I called Sal Mineo because his eyes were so large and Italian.
A very tentative love-feeling there. Myself a fourteen year old with a cropped
head and a mouth newly pink from experimental lipstick. A kiss in an elevator.
Friends throughout the long, long corridors. - Paul Sylvestre has been dead
for three years; vital and enchanting Paul.
A thorn-tree for a Christmas tree, stuck with gum drops
that tasted slightly spicy afterwards when we nibbled them off. A pumpkin
pie baked in the trailor oven, "Butch" the Marine walking quickly
by, too shy to stop. A special crinoline as a gift, gaudy and pink, a 'fifty
yard' type that swayed when I walked. - And the California desert is still
where it was? Lost to me, for I cannot know it is still there. Perhaps I
shall spend a Christmas there again. No, of course I can never spend
another where I have been. Those nodes in my thin life-stalk are far behind.
A Christmas at home, when I was ungainly twelve. We celebrated with Henry
Sieberts, and Mother had made over a dress for me, a hideous sheath-style
that made me look even more awkward. The skating rink after dinner, with
Judy's first pair of skates, and mine. I couldn't skate then but I thought
I would learn - I cannot skate, I shall never be able to; but shall I always
feel a tearing desire when I skate in my mind, see heel flashing over, across,
down, back?
At Abe Sieberts, I think, joining the families in the small house, reading
a book alone in a corner while my father's voice chipped bitterness in the
next room, and the gay ones skated on the creek. - His voice is still bitter.
When will he have peace? The sweater I sent him should be chain-mail, warmth
of reassurance, color and joy. Father, whom I love and hate at one time.
No, I think Christmas dinner at home with Christmas pudding and candles.
Mother surely tried.
Another hospital Christmas, the small tree in a shabby sixth floor ward:
gifts on my trays, other gifts brought, carollers passing through (university
students - one stopped to talk). Dark-eyed Helen the Czeckoslovakian, in
love with Ken in his farm boots. - She was fourteen. She must be long-married
now. And that ward is a men's psychiatric supplementary space. I didn't
know Reiner or Paul or Frank: I had never heard of Queen's University or
Peter Dyck. Was this myself? What is the connection of myself to this child
whom I remember only so dimly?
Christmases at home, sitting around the table in the living room because
the kitchen was too cold, the tree in the corner. Sometimes a chicken, sometimes
a turkey. Sometimes Christmas pudding wrapped in a white cloth, steamed
out. Orange peelings. The 'bags from church' with their twisted figure-eight
candies and the oranges that were eaten before we had them home. A recitation
in the Sunday School program, the flurry afterwards. Always jarring cold
outside. - The cold is still there. For them, little has changed. But they
have a record-player and I am here.
At Grandma's in Clearbrook, a child among adults, handing gifts around
after dinner. Clearbrook means more to me now, and the pasture hill behind
it, and my grandparents too - nostalgia, a looking back. With tears in my
eyes; Ellie you have a shoe leather soul and a durite id: why are you crying?
Before? A nebulae. I remember only mornings of stirring and scampering
under the tree. Stockings hung. Plates. Mother arranging. Nothing clear.
A doll, one year. But I don't remember, and I have lost my stock of time
in a blurry distance. Where was I before?
- And no less blurred, where shall I be in years from here?
[back to letters]
December 19, Thursday
Tomorrow morning at 8 am I write my last midyear exam and from 9 am on
I'M ON HOLIDAY! Had I explained about Lloyd Zbar? He is in his last year
of medicine here, and through a fantastic whimsy of fate he lives in the
same area as Auntie and Uncle, and isn't even interested in accepting money
for the ride, because he is fairly well off evidently. If you are worrying
about my being led like a sheep into a cross-country wolfing jaunt, don't.
Two other girls are coming, my friend Marion with the wild hair and her
friend Jane. As for Dr Zbar, he seems (telephone) very nice - and fanatically
dedicated to medicine. He is intending to leave either Friday afternoon
or Saturday morning. At any rate I will have tomorrow to pack. But I am
not going to spend it packing because I am going to go down to the library
and spend the day looking at books I couldn't spare time for before. Mmm!
Girls have been leaving one by one for home and holidays. Olivia was
one of the first to go, on Tuesday. She was in a characteristic Olivian
tizzy, very nearly missing the train because she hadn't phoned for a taxi
early enough, losing her clothes and tearing at her hair. To accentuate
her little-girl misery was the fact that she didn't want to go home and
dreaded the thought of what would happen when she arrived. She has such
a melodramatic talent that she can work out everything that everyone will
say in exact detail with gestures and expressions.
"I'll come to the door and everyone will sort of say hello, and
then Father will say 'Did you pass your exams?' and I'll say 'Father, I've
been writing exams for the last week and I just don't want to talk about
them.' And he'll say 'Well I have some right to know what my money is being
spent for.' And Mother will say, 'You can talk about it later, let her alone
for a while.' And he'll say, 'Why did you have to send for money to get
home? You have your allowance and you get twenty-five dollars a month. That
ought to do you. What do you spend it on anyway.' 'Well I have to get things
like toothpaste and soap and things.' 'Tell me, just how many tubes of toothpaste
did you buy last month?'"
That is Olivia! She worships her father, but he is evidently a rather
austere person, and he frustrates her enormously. And her mind exaggerates
everything to the size of a Greek epic.
Nancy has just gone, three of the kids are taking the 4 am train out,
and a few will straggle out between tomorrow morning and Saturday night.
No one who stayed here this afternoon did any studying for there is a high
holiday fever that devours concentration.
December 20
Friday night after writing a French test at eight o'clock (you've noticed
what queer exam schedules we have? Eight in the morning, eight in the evening,
several four in the afternoons) I cozied up to the radiator on my green
rug and thought back rather lonesomely to all the Christmases I can remember.
The ones before the California one [at twelve] are already very disorganized
and dim. There was a Christmas day at Henry Siebert's when we went skating
in the afternoon - when was that? A strange thing about looking back at
Christmases is the feeling of everything having been only such a short while
ago.
Donna sent a card from nursing school, and seems thrilled with it. And
Mrs Voth sent a package marked "Do not open until December 25"
so I'll have to take it along to New York. (New York? ACTUALLY? Me?)
part 5
- raw forming volume 1: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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