Sunnyside, Union Street, April 26 1964, Sunday afternoon
Magnificent afternoon, magnificent day, magnificent job and this magnificent
Sunnyside. I have just been out with Kevin and Teddy at the Climbing Tree,
a rambling maple with long sturdy low-slung branches. The kids have fixed
up two trapezes in the tree, real circus-type swings with long ropes. They
climb into the tree, stand for a gloriously frightening moment on the branch,
then jump off into space with a whoop and dangle back and forth like acrobats:
beautiful, lively kids having a ball.
We have just had Sunday dinner, with the kids all talking at once. Mrs
Govia, one of the workers, shushed everyone up with an announcement, "Quiet
kids! Kevin is going to make a speech." And Kevin made his speech:
"For dessert we are having vanilla ice cream." Long applause!
There are many people you'll have to meet, but not all at once so you'll
have profiles scattered through most of the next few letters.
Today, I give you: Miss Allen, the director of Sunnyside. Tall, spare,
perhaps about forty-two, soft white hair in a Miss Grundy bun that is beautiful
and dignified on her, impeccible grooming, a wonderfully strong (but feminine)
face and a gracious friendliness. I know I am going to like her a great
deal. Everyone is a bit awed by her but it is a respectful and affectionate
awe.
Kingston this morning is one of the most beautiful places I've seen.
Maureen has gone home for a week and is letting me look after her bicycle
so the rattly old thing is stowed away in the coach house. Doesn't that
sound elegant? Actually the coach house is rather old and crumbling, but
it is a coach house. What is more, Sunnyside itself was once the Kingston
mayor's house, and the television room was a drawing room. All that is left
of the old style in the new warm disorder is the white plaster sculpture
where the chandelier used to hang.
All over the city daffodils are beginning to bloom, the lawns are over-run
by tiny starry blue flowers that begin by being planted in flowerbeds but
soon overflow like weeds over the whole lawn. But they are such lovely things
that no one minds and their rebellion from flowerbed confines is encouraged.
The lake is smoking under a haze and everywhere Sunday hats and Sunday shiny
cars are going their way in a sort of stupor.
My room is wonderful: small, with a green threadbare carpet and a hard
bed, two (still empty) bookcases, a desk, a dresser with so much space that
I have to put my shoes in it to keep it from looking completely empty, a
sink and clothescloset with more shelf-space, all hidden behind sliding
doors, and a wee cube of an adjoining room with a private toilet. It feels
like a hotel room. Robert Frost, Catherine de Neuve, my smiling golden Rembrandt,
my blue Klee, and my underground photo of the red fishes are on the walls
already, and the Spanish guitar player will come soon.
27 Monday morning
You must hear about yesterday afternoon. I had made arrangements with
Tom to work on the speeches we were editing, so wandered off through the
amazing afternoon on Maureen's bicycle to Alison's apartment. Knocked on
the door - Tom stretched out on the couch, all 6'4" with his feet understandably
overlappy, listening to Beethoven's second concerto for piano, waiting for
the others to come back from getting somebody to help us work. I've told
you about Alison and her apartment - the CUCND party. It was again just
recovering from a party, crumbs on the floor, candles dripping wax and empty
bottles and remnants of a few smashed ash trays littering the table, records
strewn in the corner. Alison came in looking like a fairy-witch with her
long hair streaming down her back, bare feet, old paint-streaked cut-offs,
a tee-shirt, no makeup. She looked at her living room, moaned "Oh we
can't work in this mess," swept the crumbs under the table, pushed
some of the bottles out of the way, and went happily to work. The speech
we were editing was so incredibly bad that we kept bursting out into rhetorical
readings of the thing for the benefit of Peggy [Morton] and Tom who were
working on another one. An 'interesting' afternoon - we had several breaks,
one when our Philosophy 1 professor (Alison's landlord) came to remove the
storm windows and put up the screens, one whenever Matt who was visiting
Alison and presumably studying politics in the kitchen came in to read us
a haiku he had just written, one whenever anyone decided to have a beer.
(Did you know there are two types of beers? The Hot-summer-day kind and
the Depraved kind. They decided, still recovering from last night's party
to celebrate end of exams, to have the Hot-summer-day kind and I had a very
chaste unexciting Pepsi.)
Very soon, in dropped Alison's brother and his girl and two other fellows
with big German beer steins, and the work dissolved into a rather lengthy
break to discuss books and the movie "Dr Strangelove" that I saw
a few nights ago and to listen to some rather shabby jazz and make millions
of both bad and terrible and rather clever quips - risqué and risky,
etc, etc.
Tucked some of the kids into bed last night. At the moment, Joey is the
Big Problem. He is a sober, long-faced nine year old with red hair and big
egg-shaped blue eyes, a meticulous sense of order and an infuriating way
of telling the staff exactly what they should do and how, a continuous nervous
anxiety that makes him a bit of a leech - and a loveable way about him that
all of these kids have. He can't stand the messy sentimental ways of other
children, so is stuck off in a room by himself opposite to mine.
There is a rule for breakfast time here that might be a good rule for
everyone's breakfast: no nagging, ever, at breakfast. Staff is not allowed
to scold. Any serious écart is punishable by banishment from the
table to the hall, but no parent-like barking. Good idea, hmmm?
Perhaps the most difficult thing about working at Sunnyside is going
to be looking suitably sober whenever the kids are being disciplined. Last
night at the dinner table one of them was being scolded and the one way
to smother my grin was the old trick of biting the inside of my mouth. Sharp-eyed
Joe-boy noticed of course, "Hey, why are you making a face?" And
try to explain it! (Innocence: "What? I'm not making a face.")
Do you remember the frog you sent for Mia, Mother? The parcel came after
I was back from New York, and I was too broke at the time to afford postage.
Besides, Mia had so much junk that it would have been a bit ridiculous to
send her more. So I took the frog to Sunnyside with me and it is a favorite
with little Cathy who has named it (twice - Timfrog and Polywog) and who
has promised to teach it to swim at her next bath time. Cathy is a tiny
seven-year-old with sparrow bones, silky taffy-colored hair, big wistful
blue eyes. She needs constant cuddling and attention, sometimes curls up
on the floor outside Peter's door (more about Peter later) with her pillow
and an injured look. Cathy's biggest trouble seems a persecution complex.
I was on duty for the first time last night, putting-to-bed time. Read
a picture-book story to three of the Littles (as opposed to the Bigs), helped
with homework, kissed and snuggled and admired and patted and shushed. And
loved it! Bedtime is very pleasant for all of us. After the kids are all
quietened around eight thirty, the staff goes off to the kitchen for coffee
or juice and cookies or apples or carrot sticks, or else goes downstairs
for clothes washing. Oh, incidentally, Mother, no chance of me having to
patch clothes for the kids - we have a housekeeping staff of three who patch,
clean, cook, wash and iron, and serve the staff their meals. They even clean
staff rooms once a week! And bed linen is given royal treatment - goes to
the town laundry. We have two automatic washers and a large dryer downstairs
and several irons.
Yesterday Tom and I had to work on speeches again - we worked in his
garret under the sloping roof on the third floor of an old house amid all
sorts of litter, mostly papers and books and half-finished cartoons and
clippings and drawing pencils. He is super-wealthy, by the way, despite
his two coats and one pair of slacks and a sweater. His sister was just
married to a Boston cream puff social-ladder-topper with five names and
a Jr. After so much red-penciling and re-wording and guffawing over Julian
Griggs' colorful diction, I can't even read a novel without mentally cutting
out deadwood words and substituting for colloquialisms - and I am reading
Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel which is a modern classic! Tom
also got in some advertizing about his vast knowledge of classical music,
his expensive collection of rare first records, his summer in Vienna and
so on. He is a phony, of course, but very appealing: I like phoneys.
April 29 Wednesday
Some more people this morning. Marilyn is a kitchen staff girl and housekeeper.
We had a long talk during her break yesterday afternoon. She is nineteen,
two months less a day older than I am, married since November, overweight
and untidy with enormous legs in extremely hole-y stockings, out of school
for several years. And she is the person who does staff rooms and changes
staff beds on Fridays - the contrast between her life and mine here is rather
painful, I'm still close enough to the bottom of the ladder to be bothered
by other people doing things like cleaning for me. Education is the difference.
Not quite fair, any of it, and again I feel incredibly lucky.
I mentioned Peter yesterday. Peter Hagedorn is a red-bearded young Dutch
artist with large teeth who works here as a sort of senior student worker.
He has been working part-time until now, going to Queen's, but has just
now graduated and will become a full-time childcare worker here at Sunnyside.
I don't know yet quite what to think of Peter: he does extremely good portraits
of the children and some other interesting work in his messy basement studio
here, he likes classical music (after work last night we listened to his
Saint Mathew's Passion, Bach, in German, an oratorio, on the staff
phono), he handles the kids beautifully with just enough firmness and just
enough affection. We shall probably be good friends after a while but nuttin
romantic. She said disappointedly!
Now that the exams are over and I'm still working only part-time, learning
the ropes, I have lots of time for study - German, a book called "Men
of Art" which is a sort of historic outline of the development of art,
photography, French (reading a novel, L'Etranger, in the original French,
sans dictionaire, exciting!), psychology (a manual on child psychology and
a fascinating book called "Personality and Sexuality of the Physically
Handicapped Woman"), anthropology, and four novels.
Next another of my kids: Peter. Peter is one of the most beautiful and
most intelligent of our little friends - also one of the most fiendly (not
a spelling error). Curly hair, spidery black eyelashes, pert nose, all the
rest. His prospective parents are crazy about him. I've been helping him
with his homework after supper, and he is quicker in his multiplication
than I am, although his concentration is all tatters.
Most of the kids here are nearly ready to leave, and we should be getting
a new lot quite soon. I often have to think of the 'normal' children with
two parents who need Sunnyside treatment. I wonder if this kind of work
is good training for being a parent? It is a pity that most of the people
working here haven't any of their own.
Ironically, one does have children: Mrs Govia. And she is a real shrieker!
30 Thursday
I seem to be doing little but go to staff meetings for the last two days.
Well, that isn't true because there have been other things (we'll come to
them she said joyfully) but there HAVE been a number of staff meetings.
We have one with our afternoon coffee every afternoon and a special one
with Dr Briggs, our child psychiatrist. (Dr Briggs is a slight young man
with a very light bridge of freckles over his nose and innocent but impenetrible
brown eyes. He looks like a hyper-intelligent and much thinner version of
Allan Heidebrecht.) We are trying to review the symptoms past and present
and the case history of one child per week, looking for places where he
has regressed or improved, and working on strategy. Yesterday and at this
morning's ten o'clock meeting we have been doing Stevie, a physically underdeveloped
eight year old who looks six and whose interests are about at the six level.
He has gone through five foster homes and when placed once for adoption
did not get along and had to be withdrawn. That was last time. His IQ when
tested earlier was as low as 75; now he is testing 109 or bright normal,
and the staff remedial teacher says it should be higher than that. This
is just an interesting example of the difference emotional status makes
on IQ ratings, and also stresses the inadequacy of IQ tests as measurements
of innate ability rather than plain and simple performance.
He has problems with school, but his formerly fearful (terrified of punishment
without any real threat) and reticent behaviour has changed and he is acting
out his anxieties now in tantrums and destructive behaviour. While this
sort of thing is not exactly encouraged, it is a sign of improvement and
he is not punished severely or constantly for it as another child perhaps
would be. He is a dear and perfectly charming child usually, with his small
bones and his few round little freckles and his large blue eyes. His history
is appalling, with really very few happy moments at all; one foster home
which he did like couldn't keep him for very long and since then Sunnyside
has been his one happy place. Stevie's story is especially sad because it
is so much a story of what adults have done to him: his mother is unmarried,
his father a married truck driver (incidentally, and this is interesting,
truck drivers as a norm have higher than average IQs). Oddly enough, one
of Steven's former tricks especially in school was humming to himself to
cut out the sounds of the real world with its bossy adults that he could
not cope with. And back to adults, his foster parents have consistently
tried to milk the poor child to satisfy their own emotional needs with no
real regard for Stevie's needs at all. Miss Allen says this happens unfortunately
often, adults using children in some way because of their own inadequacies.
This is why it is so important to have good foster homes with well-balanced
parents who take the child on as a job to be done as well as possible, and
not as a small lump of humanity to manipulate for their own satisfaction.
A strange thing about Joey is a compulsive habit he has of sliding into
a peculiar imitation of an Englishman, with garbled meaningless speech and
wild fluttering gestures of his long arms. I'm not sure why he does this,
but it must be some way of divorcing himself from reality.
Saw Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan on television last night, excellent. Also
saw an excellent Japanese movie at the film society program. Staff often
sit around in the playrooms or staff sitting room at night to drink coffee
and snack and quip and watch TV or listen to the phono.
[journal]
The last day of April.
I thought the profile of the man I sat down beside last night was Martin
Ware's, but he was looking at me and I didn't dare to turn and look at him
until he was concentrating on the movie again. Instead I took off my gloves
- French kid! - very slowly and smoothed them out in my lap and noticed
their good leather smell. Then I looked carefully sideways and it was Martin
Ware, with his hair untidy all over his large intelligent English schoolboy
head and his usual sprawl.
History. I could say to him, "I don't really care what you are like.
I don't care really if you are a dissipate or a homosexual or a lewdy. I
like you Martin Ware because I liked your voice reading from the Old Testament
in chapel one morning; and because I met you walking in the rain one day,
and when I smiled at you, you smiled back like a blessing on the joy of
the day; and because of the day when you ran and steamed and stumbled and
ran for an hour in the drizzle of Lower Campus in boots and cricket shorts
and a rough sweater."
The movie was a Japanese film with beautiful ghosts, passion, samuris,
gore, the usual; in photographic wistfulness.
In the intermission I opened my Camus (a red book, L'Etranger)
and had fumblingly found my place when the lights flicked off. He made some
laughing comment in the dark. I saw that he had noticed my child psychology
book. The movie had scenes of magic. I remember one scene of a flat boat
emerging like a ghost with the mists of the morning in shreds all about
it, the woman leaning on the large oar at the back and singing a song thin
and vague as the fog. A throat-catching beauty.
Then there was a grim scene of war, blood, plunder. But in Japanese movies
even the heroes scrabble about like beetles, darting here and there so ludicrously
in fright that they seem to mock themselves. In the large respectful silence
surrounding this scene Martin and I began simultaneously to laugh and we
felt a smiling closeness to each other in the laughter.
I was glad for the obstructing head of the man in front of me, so that
I could lean sideways toward him just a little. Eventually our elbows brushed
very lightly, but it was warm and chaste and friendly. But not that
chaste.
And there was a scene that was unreal: ghosts singing "All the finest
silks, all beauty has faded" in the charred timber of an old warlord's
house. Ghosts singing, magic; answering a remark Martin Ware leaned over
to say to his friend, "Strange, but oh no, not boring."
Near the end, the pretty, patient woman-wife covering over her sleeping
husband and their child, then taking up his sandals, clapping them together
softly to knock off the dust of his travel, his sin, his honor, and arranging
them neatly on the domestic hearth.
I said "oh" very quietly to myself and to Martin Ware; and
he said "ooh-h" very quietly to himself and to me. Somehow the
sandals were a bond.
But the lights came on and we walked quickly outside and I saw his head
mirrored in the glass of the door behind me as I passed through. Rain outside,
unbreathing dark, splinters of light exploding in the hard black puddles
on the street as raindrops fell into them. Swishing tires of cars passing.
The books heavy on my arm, my hair becoming wet. Martin Ware somewhere with
his friend, blond Mike somewhere with a little girl in fragile dancing shoes.
Martin Ware ... I walked home in the rain muttering to myself, "Oh
darn, darn, darn, darn, darn," and telling myself firmly that if I
knew him he would probably be a disappointment.
The wet branches of bushes at the Sunnyside gateposts gleaming, the lighted
porch of this beautiful white house, apples and music and books in bed,
Saint Joan on television.
But regret and a wistfulness.
[back to letters]
Saturday, May 2
I'm slouching over this thing [typewriter] after a bath, after my first
eight hour full-day stint of Sunnysiding. Something wonderful which sounds
opera and Mozart is on the radio (a luxury included with the room) (beat
up old thing with a cord so short that it has to sit under my bed, but the
sounds it produces are fine - tho' grantedly Kingson daytime radio is BLAHH),
supper was a big apple, the late day sun is shining on the daffodils, life
is good.
What does Sunnysiding consist of? Today it was up at 7:15 to be ready
to get my monsters up at 7:30, hover about the boys' room (there are two
boys' dormitory rooms and one girls') for half an hour glowering at anyone
who whispered because the whole lot had been high-jinxing in the early morning,
and so had to make up time - spend extra time in bed either in the morning
or in the afternoon, one of our most effective punishments. My bunch was
Tony, Tom, and Kevin - Kevin was hopeless during his making up time so had
an hour in the afternoon. Most of the kids are testing, testing, testing
me now as they understandably do all staff, to see whether I'm a softy who
doesn't mean what she says. As a result, I had to wrestle Bobby into his
corner this afternoon just to prove to his satisfaction (and mine!) that
I'm tougher than he is - I am, she said with great satisfaction.
Then dole out cereals and juice and try to keep peace at the breakfast
table. Then out with the kids after breakfast to help build forts, play
ball with forlorn little Joey, play whale and kangaroo with Teddy (a game
we made up), patch up bumps and split up quarrels and send rascals to cool
their little pink heels on the hall bench for a while. Saturday is allowance
day as well, and the imps all went off to spend their ten cents on candy.
Listen to Teddy's story of what he will do when he finds a magic wishing
ring, sympathize with Brenda's loss of an earthworm, admire feats on the
trapeze and try to save Bobby's face when he chickens out on it and has
to be rescued, pull a bellowing Joey out of the tree when he gets stuck,
have a quick cup of tea to cool down, and attempt a smothering of the grin
that threatens to upset our beautiful discipline when Joey shows his Grand
Defiance by calling Peter "Guloshes Ears."
And now, off duty reassuring Vicky that just because the rest of the
staff hasn't been talking to her doesn't mean that they disapprove of her.
Vicky [Lee] is the other student to be working here this summer, a pretty
and beautifully shaped redhead with large grey eyes and a considerable intelligence
and a lot of ladylike quiet charm and a tall handsome boyfriend: she will
keep a certain untidy "little dark girl" (your words Mother, for
which, thank you although they are prejudiced) on her toes, ironing things
before they are worn again, etc.
Your froggy, Mother, was put to excellent use as an ice-breaker for last
night's first bathing session with the five girls. Most of them loved it
so much that they did not notice or fuss that someone new and green was
'doing' them.
Kevin last night when I came to tell him good night and bring him his
cookie was crying broken-heartedly. At first he said he was crying about
his rage at Bobby who was evidently the entire universal cause of his troubles,
but after a while, he pushed his hand under his pillow and pulled out a
fistful of cookies, "Here, stole 'em." And soon he was confessing
theft of sugar from the kitchen, lies, things going 'way back. Terrified
of going to hell, pauvre petit, crying terrifiedly. We let him talk it out
and cuddled him up and when he finally went to bed he was happier.
Sunday morning, May 3
Two exciting things on this glorious Sunday morning: first was a miles
long bike ride into the outer fringes of Kingston where I saw the houses
of the other half - lots of doors open and kids lying in the patch of sun
on the hallway floor reading comics. At the arena grounds, a man with a
young fawn-colored horse proudly watching it graze. Soon almost a dozen
trotters with the very light wagons for a driver came out onto the race
track around the arena and flashed their beautiful legs round and round,
practicing I think, warming up gradually. Their trainers wear large coverall
outfits and sit precariously on their very small carts. One of them was
a serious-looking young man with round spectacles who left streams of pipe
smoke behind him all the way around the track. The man with the colt was
a bit tubby, long-haired, hobo-ish, but he laughed huge belly laughs of
glee whenever his colt pranced or reared. There was a great deal of horsey
talk and horsey joshing from the men who were leaning on the fence (like
me) watching. My bicycle felt drab, shabby, and spiritless watching the
horses, but I took it down a hill on the way home and it recovered some
of its old joyousness.
The second and best-of-all exciting thing is a secret I've been keeping
until it was more certain: I've passed my announcer's test and will be doing
a classics show on CFRC during the summer! I went down to the radio station
this morning to see Roger Granit about the test - he put me through a grueling
series of Italian technical terms, allegro to pizzicato to maestro that
I stumbled all over and then through some station identifications and some
mock announcements of impossible French composers, then said "Would
you like to announce the next one?" so we went through the procedure:
as the end of the record came closer, my little green light flashed and
he said "Stand by" into my earphones, then as the last "dum
DUM" of the music arrived, he pointed suddenly (in radio language "you're
on!"), and I took a deep breath. "That was Mozart's Concerto #17,
with Artur Rubenstein as soloist with the RCA Victory Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Alfred Wallenstein. Next we have the I Musici (ee muzeechee)
Baroque String Ensemble with concertini numbers one and two by Giovani Battista
Pergolesi." Then I returned the sharp finger-point and Roger in the
operator's seat set the next record on. Then through the private intercom
to my headphones: "Very good. You passed! You've got what we call a
late show voice but for a classics program that is fine. Enunciation and
diction good. So now all you have to do is to arrange with Mrs Angus and
you can have a show." Wheee, so I shall have to practice things like
pronounciation of those monsterosity Italian names and browse through the
wonderful record library and set up a show and somehow get over microphone
fright.
May 4th
[journal]
Hezitate to find the date, hezitate because you need time to think back,
circle back, and discover that it is May and that in all of the universe
in all of the chaos is creation and Lake and you.
Afternoon. A flat rock with its gritty surface pressed into my skin and
the gritty small-spined surface of sun pressing into my skin. A small bit
of green slime waving and thrashing over the tiny pebbles on the lake bottom.
A question-mark coil of wire swollen with rust. A white pebble, a red-streaked
pebble, a brick pebble gleaming. Water warm - touching water, stroking it,
examining it. What does water feel like? Is it only Warm and Wet, and does
it have no real Water feeling?
Birds, one like a very old woman clucking to herself, others in trees
bright and glitter-sounding. Some cries like human voices and I am startled.
Afraid. I want no one here. Not even the very small children who ran over
the rocks to touch water, and not even the laughing man in the motor boat.
Alone - and DH Lawrence with his closed singing aloneness too: The
Plumed Serpent, Mexico and drums beating around the fires of the men
of Quezalcoatl.
The annoyance of my own body, my eyelids in the sun seeming like a red
soft blanket wrapping my mind in a bundle on the flat rock in the sun.
Footsteps? No, squirrel.
The sky a flat heavy blue and nearly opaque. Grey and black exactitudes
in the branches of pine tree, cedar, aspen, willow. Dark green pine tree
strong in its color war with the sky. Masculine. Cedar light-tipped, shred-silhoetted.
Willow trailing long branches of new leaves, a startling yellow-green on
the flat sky, movement against solidity, bright and flat, the yellow as
tho' a tree were in a spotlight alone. What is it, woman and man? No, but
perhaps man and woman, the tree and the strong sky? Sense and body? Soul
and whatever? The relationship is separate but contrasting, two strengths,
one vibrancy, one passivity.
I feel both, pressed by stone and pressed by sun and exploded in my mind
from the small soft red bundle to the strong yellow of new leaves. A brushing
of sky carelessly (or eagerly?).
And body bakes hard, the collected dark fluids evaporate: need, ennui,
and a
Strong star-shaped points of light crawling over the pebbles like spiders,
below bubbles on the surface of the lake.
Forgotten sounds of a generator, of hammering, of cars. Ignored.
A stone lifted from the bottom and set aside. Under it, a mass of transparent
eggs. No one can see the life in them. I put the rock back. There were no
more under other rocks, only under the first I raised. What is it, a fertile
summer? A gift for the afternoon? Afternoon found by me, spoken by me, brushed
carefully together, and kept, here. Tied up by the light bubble of lake
brushing rock.
[back to letters]
4 Monday
There is a peculiar itchy feeling along the back of my neck that promises
to be a sunburn - but such a good time getting it this afternoon. And a
tan too! Found a wonderful sheltered place with flat rocks and the lake
lapping and bubbling up against the rocks, birds clucking and giggling,
cedar trees and weeping willows with glowing new leaves waving over a solid-seeming
dark blue sky. Hot sun, peace, evaporation of any residue of weltschmerz
in the corners of my psyche. Read, wrote a little, watched and listened
and felt as though I was absorbing both peace and resiliency.
And last night - Olivia came to Kingston to spend the weekend with Andy.
She finally got a phone message to me on Sunday, but I was on duty so it
happened that Olivia was here in my room from midnight until her 4:03 a.m.
train back to Toronto. It was good to see her again although she'd had about
six hours of sleep in three days and was none too coherent. So a bit before
4 a.m. we stole out by taxi and I saw her off. The station was so echoing
and empty, the taxis like prowling tomcats, streets deserted; it was an
adventure to steal through all that stillness, and then to watch the passengers
alighting like sleepwalkers. And the sound of the whistle and the beat of
the train's wheels that you feel before you hear it, mmm, it does get into
your blood, trains are still a bit magical, especially at night.
Then up at seven this morning to get the kids up and help them dress
and supervise breakfasts! And at nine (split shift), a bath and into bed
and sleep until darling Joey pounded on my door "just to see if"
I was in. This is more a parent situation all the time - some annoyances
too. Joey is 'funnier' than he seemed at first. I think he is the only one
of the kids who really is looney ("seriously disturbed"), he seems
to be a budding schizophrenic, and as Peter says, he seems to be vegetable
rather than human. He reacts like a robot, is not really hurt when scolded,
can seem to build up no communication with anyone. He is particularly sad
because it seems impossible to reach him. Different with kids like shy little
Brenda
whose big problem is timidity. It is thrilling to watch her open out and
to see her smile when you remark on her wonderful long eyelashes. But Joey
-. But there must be some way to find the spark of the boy huddled up inside
the vegetable.
As part of the job yesterday afternoon, I took Teddy and little Peter
on an Excursion - ie a walk down to the lake to throw stones into the water.
They threw a few at each other as well, but ho-hum, only small ones: I took
the boulders they wanted to throw away.
6 May Wednesday
It seems a bit sacreligious to type while Mozart is on. It is the Symphony
#104, fluty and rather fragile. You have probably heard it on the radio,
it sounded familiar.
Woke up at three thirty this morning in the dark, for no reason except
what seemed a magnetic attraction to the outdoors - couldn't resist creeping
out barefoot and lying for a while on the damp grass looking at tree branches
and stars. Things like this make one wonder a bit whether one is a little
crazy, but I don't think so. Mike and I last night were talking about this:
is there something primeval in man that responds to and feels drawn to the
outdoors, storms, running water, trees?
How much have I told you about Mike [Easton]? He is semi-tall, very thin,
crew cut blondish, has nice eyes and a knobby Adam's apple and a wonderful
telephone voice, a lean and hungry look, a passion for matching himself,
both wits and skeleton, with raw nature - canoeing, hiking, sailing (oh
yes, he did make it into the water first with sailboat this year again!)
(and is crowing), and even in his work: he is manager of a struggling new
fiberglass manufacturing plant (we have good discussions of labour, manager,
foreman, production problems both practical and philosophic, and it is good
to see into this different world through his eyes). We went out briefly
last night for some frivolous spumoni ice cream (rainbow colored and heaped
up in fragile glass dishes) and talked for quite a while. He is good, comfortable
company, intelligent and congenial on a lot of subjects, independent and
strong and therefore easy to respect - and so on. No danger of romantic
involvement on either side and a good understanding of this fact. And after
the ice cream we stopped at the yacht club to look at the boats tied up
and listen to the water beating, beating, beating against the pier.
Got a letter from Frank yesterday. It is a good letter talking about
the Douglas firs he has planted, about the Valley, trees blossoming and
the fresh snow on Mount Baker, juniper trees, a hawk, very little about
himself. But running between the lines of his letters and his philosophy
of life is always a depressing fatality, a feeling of "ultimately everybody
is a loser." Olivia has this as well, but she can easily burst out
in her abandoned Welsh joy and the two moods balance; but Frank doesn't
have enough joy.
I've been reading a DH Lawrence book called The Plumed Serpent
set in Mexico, full of color and intensity and mysticism. So real that when
you look up from the page to the hot sun and the pale motionless lake and
the rocks (you know how colorless everything seems for the first minutes
after your eyes have been in the sun) you feel as tho you are in Mexico
or beside the Mediterranean.
By way of the self education program for this summer, have been listening
to a strange ballet called The Unicorn by Menotti: the music is sung,
in the madrigal sort of tunes that were common when Middle Ages people really
sang about unicorns, but the composition is modern. The madrigal fable tells
the story of a strange Man in the Castle who "shunned the Countess'
parties, and did not go to church on Sundays." [Goes on to tell the
whole story.]
Last night Peter and Brian (an eighteen year old ex-Sunnyside kid who
spends quite a bit of time here while going to high school. He is delightfully
spontaneous, his language is shocking and almost quaint in its directness,
he has knocked about from one end of the country to the other, railroad
bumming to Georgia and hiking west for harvesting and working at all sorts
of labour jobs. Now he is back in school working on grade eleven and wants
to be a history teacher because he likes to work with kids and is extremely
intelligent and well-read. He is winning, likable, but loves to argue at
great length about things he is ignorant of, dogmatic as an old old Mennonite!),
and Anne Baxter and Enid Easterbrooke (two of the girl childcare workers
here, about twenty two, both of them, I think) and I gave up the television
late movie in disgust and Peter got out his Callas opera recordings. We
spent several very nice hours in the cozy staff sitting room with the dog,
the music, good talk, and a pile of sandwiches someone had donated, left
over from a tea party.
All of the staff become more and more likeable: my opinion of Miss Detweiler
rises all the time. She is stocky but not plump, freckled, about forty five,
brisk, capable, rather impersonal on the surface; her hair is short, red
and wiry, bristling up all over her head; eyes a pale turquoise; sensible
clothes (flat shoes and sensible laceless slips etc) but she does add feminine
touches like scarves and so on. Her language is a mixture of gusty slang
and technical psychological terminology, a good foil for her very tart sense
of humour. With kids she is no-nonsense but warm and intuitively 'right'
in her attack (I say with chagrin, because it is piquing to be a green apprentice).
More and more this job does seem like an apprenticeship in psychology and
social work, because our staff meetings and my own research relevant to
these meetings and to the individual files I'm studying on these kids bring
up all sorts of knowledge and questions on the real behind-scenes workings
of psychological and social work agencies, especially because Sunnyside
works closely with psychologists, psychiatrists, adoption and childcare
agencies, mental hospitals (some of the children have a background of mentally
ill parents, alcoholic parents, unwed parents and so on - this brings these
agencies into the picture as well).
May 8, Friday
The Sunnyside lawn is full of blue and purple and yellow violets, the
leaves are coming out slowly, showing now in a mosaic of all different shades
of green. I keep dragging pots of flowery leafy stuff up to my room and
the kids are dragging pots of it into the dining room, until yesterday Miss
Solomon gave up in disgust and moved some of the bigger branches off the
table to make room for food.
Have I told you about Miss Solomon? She is a tiny, beautiful Indian remedial
teacher who floats about in wonderful many-colored silk saris that make
us feel like drabling moths, clumsy and huge. But she is thoroughly nice,
and good with the children. She always pours tea for our afternoon tea-and-conferences,
the perfect feminine female playing the feminine tea ceremony like a duchess!
Even her name is pretty: Sushila Solomon. She has been here for several
years, but I think intends eventually to go back to India.
The other remedial teacher is a girl I admire a great deal, Joan Styles.
Slender and pretty in spite of a plain face, phenomenologically (such word?)
patient with the kids, understands them better than nearly everyone and
is worshipped by them. They crowd around her at noon when they get back
from school, "Miz Styles, Miz Styles !" I've mentioned her husband
Fred who is to be ordained in the United Church in several weeks - a big
hearty lout of a man with a good singing voice (used to do night club shows)
but a shivery huddly little ego that constantly needs the reassurance of
talking to everyone about himself, quipping to stay in the centre of attraction
(rather feeble jokes now), being the friendly good Joe so that everybody
will like him. I find myself thinking about him as about the children: what
is it he needs and what approach should one take to feed his starving little
soul without spoiling him or making him over-dependent? I think he would
be lost without Joan, but it is too bad that she can't have the kind of
guy she deserves, somebody strong enough to support HER once in a while
for a change.
Large boats are going uplake now, more every day. They move very quietly
and deliberately, hardly disturbing the water at all, and only a long time
after the boat has passed pulling its sky-fishline of smoke behind it do
the ripples reach the beach; and then they are nearly smooth. At night and
in the early morning we can hear their fog whistles very faintly, more like
a smudge than a sound. But, like train whistles, the sound prods at some
dormant restlessness.
One of my inevitable vases of stuff is really special: sticky unfolding
leaves and tassels of a red maple, and two daffodils: try to see it, the
wine-ish red branches and leaves, bright yellow daffodils: wonderful contrast.
9 Saturday
A gale today, with whitecaps on the lake and seagulls struggling for
balance. My quiet bit of beach with its flat rocks was spray wet and the
wind was too cold even in the corners between rocks to stay very long. While
I was standing as close to the water as I dared, enjoying the spray in my
face, a final year Meds student came along in his Sprite, stood and got
drenched with me while his pipe sent up drowning smoke signals. He is in
Lloyd Zbar's class, and they are still writing finals after weeks of the
grind. This is their final year and it is internship next. We sat in the
Sprite for a while looking at the waves and talking and being howled at
by the wind. He wants to do Peace-Corps-like work either in the North or
in Africa, and his hero is Tom Dooley.
Send me a whiff of your springtime - leaves yet, soon? Violets and those
starry white flowers that grow with them? The houses in this neighbourhood
are new, but built mostly in the old-fashioned solid casement-window, fireplace,
knocker on the front door style, and they are surrounded now with large
red tulips, orange, yellow, pink; trilliums; daffodils; flowering yellow
shrubs. It is lovely. I miss the long-grass wildness of the pastures tho'.
And how strange to have a spring without mud.
Am listening to an album called The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies: Elizabethan
madrigals and ballads sung by a counter-tenor who has a strangely female
high voice, accompanied by guitar and lute, and a recorder.
Later: the music on the radio, folk music, makes me lonesome for the
Ban Righ Three crowd. During the last weeks we spent most of our breaks
in Sue's room singing at once exuberantly and sadly because we knew that
nothing would ever be the same again. By the end of the year we were good
at harmonies and variations, Sue was an expert on the guitar. We would sing
with the windows wide open to the beginning-spring and people going by below
would stop to listen. Our room was full of sound, the corridors echoing,
girls from the lower floors coming up to see us and standing rather wistfully
in the doorway. Now and ever after when we think of those times it will
be as if WE are standing wistfully in the doorway. We hate to leave good
times even if we are confident that there will be more - but leaving them
means forgetting them, and forgetting is losing. You must continue to write
down you childhood Mother - and Father, we know so little about yours, couldn't
you write yours down too, or dictate it to Judy for recording. It makes
me frantic to think of your stories being forgotten and lost - do you have
this near hysteric feeling sometimes too, at the thought of time and events
passing and no way to hold them and keep them but to record them?
11 Monday
A distinguished guest who is staying with us for a few days to inspect
is Mrs Elbargo, a large Dutch lady who is methodically and rather spiritlessly
'going through' the institutions for children in Canada. She has huge legs
in slipper-like flat shoes, grunts when spoken to. A contrast to our totally
Lady Miss Allen with her wispy white hair, her tall slim figure and stylish
clothes, her chirpy high voice, her exclamations of "How ut-terly fan-tastic!",
her slim legs in high heels slanted at just the proper angle from her chair
- reminds me rather of Mrs Christianson.
Yesterday Bob Schwab (International House executive - treasurer) stopped
to see how I was, was immediately besieged by kids (Cathy looking like strawberry
ice cream in her pink Sunday dress, and as gooey too, plopped herself down
on his rather plump knee and both of them loved it) and so my visitor-entertaining
consists of wandering about the grass and trees holding hands with the kids
(NOT with Bob, I discouraged that firmly) and tumbling them and picking
flowers with them and it was delightful! Bob said he hadn't felt so completely
at peace with the world for a long time, and was so captivated by the kids
(even ugh Joseph) that he is planning to invite several of them and me to
his apartment to have a hot dog supper with his Indian roommate and him:
he has even asked Miss Detweiler if he may come and tumble with them. (I
can see that entertaining Mr Peter D is not going to be any problem - I'll
just sic a few of my charming little girls on him). But the biggest joke
came when he began to go home and found his bicycle tire flat!
Last night I slid out to mail your letter, Mom, and decided to go for
a walk. Warm dark, a mysterious flower scent. And then, suddenly, on someone's
dark lawn, a pink tulip tree! You have never seen them, but at night they
are fairyland - small broad trees covered with waxy tulip-like pink flowers
shedding their petals on the grass. They take your breath away when you
come upon them by surprise. [Sounds like a magnolia.]
All of the trees have small leaves and dripping catkin blossom; even
the grass has a scent; and there is a hole in the Sunnyside fence that we
can creep through at night to get back to the house via the trees (one of
the trees has a distinctive squeak) rather than by the drive, and glimmer
in the kitchen door and up the steep winding servants' staircase to the
second storey where the floor is solid in some places but treacherously
creaky in others. I must draw you a diagram.
Sunday May 17
It has been several days since I've spoken to you - for a peculiar assortment
of reasons. 'Flu, hours and hours of overtime work as Sunnyside secretary
while our regular secretary was away (typing and telephone answering - I
was thrilled to discover I could manage!) and a series of celebrations with
their recovery periods.
First it was Peter Hagedorn's Indonesian dinner. After bedding the kids,
as a sidelight to the late show, Peter barricaded himself behind a counter
in the kitchen with heaps of pots and spices and rice and what he calls
'gunk.' Enid ("Miss Easterbrook," our nursery school director,
a very nice girl with a quiet-pleasant personality) and Brian and I and
Vicky sat around on the counters cutting up green peppers ("Not too
small, not too big") while Peter hacked onions into big chunks. Stirred
all of them up in a pot to cook in butter, added hamburger with fistfuls
of various types of curry, soya sauce, wooden spoons. Boiling rice with
arguments about how much water - "But look at all the water left on
the bottom!" "No, let it sit there and it will soak up."
"I think on the package it said ..." "Look, it is all right
now, the water is gone." "Ha, Peter, what did I tell you?"
Then Peter hauled out something that looked like long strips of solidified
glue. "What the heck are those Peter?" "They're pfhoochs.
You'll see." He dropped them one by one into hot peanut oil, and one
by one they started to swell, until they were twice their former size and
white, and crisp. Slightly salty, good! We added salted Spanish peanuts
to the heaps of rice and 'gunk,' and enjoyed it.
Then there was last night. Enid felt her domestic self stirring so she
proceeded to make Indian food from a recipe of Sushila's. Chicken boiled
tender in some wonderful spicy broth, on rice, with a cool tangy salad.
And American ice cream to wash it down. (Incidentally, I have told you about
bacon-and-egg pie haven't I?) (Imagine a job with this kind of kitchen privileges.)
Again, delicious. Many contented sighs.
But most of all, Friday night. Our marks, you see, were posted on Friday
and we dashed out immediately after bedding the kids to the basement of
the old Arts Building to check the lists of subjects with their lists of
names and grades. While I was on my way down I met Maureen coming the other
way and she came along to check mine with me. Peter H already had his and
was discouraged because, although he had all his subjects, he didn't have
the B he needed to get his BA next week. Jackie had passed hers. I was none
too eager to see mine because it's really a bit different from last year's
expectations. The English marks weren't posted yet. French - B. Sigh of
relief. Psychology - A. Well I expected that. How many others out there?
Ooo - only four in the class, not bad! But ol' Alistair McLeod has one too,
and he beat me at Christmas, bad. Philosophy - A. What do you know! Music,
I'm afraid to look. "You look, Maureen." "A." "That's
the wrong column." "No, it says A." Music? Impossible. But
it was an A and I think that is about the biggest joke of the year. Not
that I mind! You see, for Music exam I had only one afternoon and evening
to cover the whole course because of the dreadful setup of the exam schedule.
It was the last exam and I was raving tired. Moreover, I didn't know my
material at all. (But the rain in the morning of the exam is always a good
omen.) When I sat down to the exam I looked it over and couldn't remember
any of the diagrams. I had studied blindly until two, then gotten up at
five to study until breakfast. Not the best sort of prognosis for an exam,
but here is this freak A.
Maureen came back with me and we talked for a long time, she is one of
Vicky's good friends too. Meanwhile, Peter had discovered that there was
a separate list of people to receive their BA's and that his name was
on it. So he phoned Detweiler and Allen, hauled out the rum and brandy,
and we all sat around yakking until three. There had been a strange big
box waiting for Peter to hear about his marks, and when he opened it now,
there was a mortar board and a gown which he immediately put on over his
maroon pyjamas and blue brocade robe, setting the mortar board at a foppish
angle over his beaming redbearded face. Detweiler and Allen appeared to
admire him. Detweiler smoked cigarillos and got slowly happier and happier
(tho' by no means sodden) while Miss Allen crossed her legs and sipped something
delicate and frowned at the cigarillos. Both of them are dears, and I like
them better all the time. You should have seen Miss Detweiler in her ballooning
maroon housecoat and her wild red hair, she made me think of the Ghost of
Christmas Present in Dickens.
Peter as well got vaguer and happier on a strange horrible mixture of
rum, brandy, milk, and sugar. When he went upstairs finally he was weaving
like one of the kids playing train-going-up-the-mountain. Enid and I washed
up glasses in the kitchen!
It is the quiet Sunday morning, most of the kids are at Sunday School.
I miss church, couldn't go because I was on duty getting kids up. Quiet
flamenco guitar music. A low ground fog outside with the wonderful green
shining through it, and fog horns from the lake.
Why haven't I heard from you for so long, nag, nag? I dreamed last night
of a funny little church where all the men sit on one side and the women
on the other.
Frank wrote, an answer to my letter to him just after exams. He says
his work program is on schedule, everything going well. He sounds, for Frank,
quite contented and happy. He is enjoying the orchard blossoms, fishing
trips, birds. He says that Judy's child is retarded. That hurts me too.
Olivia has written as well, she has a job in Toronto selling magazines
from door to door. She tells about the sales pitch they are to memorize:
"We start off by saying 'Hi there.' (I am going to scrap that part
and say 'Good morning.') 'I represent the EDUCATIONAL department of the
Better Reading Foundation.' Then we mention that the radio and tv are sponsoring
programs for children, educational. This is nothing to do with the magazines
but that is beside the point. Then we offer them this Children's Guide to
Knowledge, FREE!!!!! Then we say that they will have to let us place
in their home two children's magazines at 25¢ a week. We don't tell
them that although they pay 25¢ a week the magazine comes out only
once a month, that it is cheaper on the newsstand. And that the Children's
Guide to Knowledge is a useless pile of paper! All the people there are
absolute crooks. Every time I say that pitch it makes me sick. I hate lies
and I'm so blunt as you know, that I find it impossible to smooth-talk people.
But the leaves are finally coming out, which is news for me because I think
it's the most important thing that happens every year. Oh to be a university
student again instead of a 'representative of the EDUCATIONAL department
of the Better Reading Foundation.'"
I feel lucky about Sunnyside!
We do have problems tho'. Kevin is terrified of his plastic surgery operation.
Joey is hysterical about his confirmation this afternoon. Cathy is jealous
of the new girl Helen who is a pretty, sturdy, bossy little engine. I keep
realizing how much work and frustration you've had with us Mother! Getting
kids up in the morning and putting them to bed, oooooof. At the end of a
day we tend to collapse in front of the television set and stare blankly
at some terrible show, munching passively, listening to someone else quip
with Peter or Brian. And shop talk about the kids.
part 2
- raw forming volume 2: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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