Tuesday, May 19 1964
Last night: had a walking date with one of my IH friends, Frank Nabotete
who is one of the most beautiful men I know, a Kenyan, in law school working
on his law degree. Very fortunately he 'belongs' to one of my girlfriends,
Heather Maki, who is at home working for the summer - so I have to keep
hands off but he is gorgeous. His story is very interesting: join us leaning
on the railing by the lake with the moon on the water and the waves piling
in on a line of foam, and hear about it. He comes from a town of about three
thousand people near Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, near enough to Lake
Victoria to sail across it to other parts of East Africa. He and his cousin
are the only people in his town who have gone to university. This happened
because his parents became Christians (missionary efforts - we had an interesting
talk about missionary impact on Africa - he is a living example of part
of that impact, and it is most interesting to notice how his religious views
have developed from the straight missionary-preached doctrine to a very
North American type of anti-denominational quasi-Christianity that is very
Campus) and realized the value of education early enough to see to it that
he got through the ridiculously tough elimination exams the Africans have
to go through as early as FOURTH grade, if anything could be more idiotic!
This continues: grades eight, nine, ten, and twelve are weeding-out years
for huge numbers of children. He is taking his law degree here, after a
BA in the US, and when he gets it he expects to go back to Kenya to practice
law as a means of living independently of government supervision which would
hobble him in a civil service job, and as his real interest, work for improving
standards of education and living among his own tribesmen. He is very interested
in this, and his face lights up as he talks about it. I don't think he is
going to tumble into the wayside among the so-many well-educated Africans
who plop into fat gov'mint jobs and fleece the people to carpet their Mercedes
Benz.
For coffee we dropped into the 'African Embassy,' the boarding house
where most of the African boys are staying. Music - African and Western
pop - and coffee and toast and stories about their boarding school days
in high school. Stories about how they used to get around the eleven o'clock
curfew by studying under blankets, about sneaking away to the bush to curl
up and read with the snakes in the trees, about forbidden feasts of 'gali'
(a staple something like potatoes) after lights out; as prefects or head
boys, they could not be punished openly for their écarts in order
not to lose face with the smaller boys, and so they were set to walk six
miles along a specified route and leave their initials at regular intervals
on the rocks along the path to prove they had been there. That is how they
began to leave their mark on the world - and they like to go back now to
show their friends the initials. Some of these same boys may be leaving
much bigger marks on their new countries soon because the educated are such
a small elite in most of their countries - it will be exciting to know them
later when they begin to leave initials on the face of their countries.
Monday was a holiday, and we had a huge festivity of it. First a picnic
lunch at Fort Henry, along the lake. Peter, Mrs Govia (the lanky and lively
South African Dutchie), Yiler (the kids' name for Miss Detweiler) in striped
pedal pushers getting a brilliant red-head sunburn in all the patches where
her freckles aren't, and I were taking care of about twelve of our thirteen
- Tony spending the weekend with a pair of prospective parents. You can
imagine twenty-four legs in the season's first shorts becoming lobsterish
red climbing on rocks and tumbling into the shallow water and tagging after
staff and eventually getting a dribble of mustard and relish ("No,
BOTH kinds of relish, just like SHE has!"). It was a wonderfully warm
afternoon, the beach was beautiful and covered with sailboats and canoes
and vulgar outboards - after hot dogs and watermelon most of the kids kidwise
spent the rest of the afternoon furiously throwing rocks into the lake,
but some of us curled on the beach and listened to a wonderful story Peter
was telling about the Dragon with the Purple Tongue who lived in the Land
of Purple Hills and Yellow Flowers.
In the evening was the event all of the kids had been waiting for for
weeks: firecrackers to celebrate Victoria Day. We had a magnificant Sunnyside
display in the back yard with prospective parents and old Sunnyside workers
back to join the hysteria (poor Joe was out of his wits for it all). One
of the favorite types of 'cracker was the sparkler, a small fitzling one
on a stick that goes off with a brilliant train of white sparks for about
three minutes while the kids run around waving them. It was beautiful to
see the crowds of spark stars bobbing and tipping all over the back yard
in the dark, up the slides and even in the Climbing Trees.
One more bit of news (oh, first, forlornly, my English 2 mark was a B)
- at suppertime last night Professor Dugal Campbell of my Psychology 2 class
phoned to let me know that my A in psych was the HIC!!!!! [highest in the
class] Which means a prize of something like $200. Cher Prof C has asked
me to come and see him about reading which I ought to be doing this summer,
and he spoke as well of recommending me for a scholarship - this will make
it a great deal easier to come home in September, and also a great deal
easier to get all the money I need from Miss Royce. But all money considerations
aside, WHEEEEE! I s'pose the reason it feels such a thrill is that it partly
proves one's academic ability in university, because the class was quite
a large one - and a reassurance of THAT is something one badly needs after
getting B's in English. Tell Mr Mann please? (And mention the gloat, gloat,
gloat 130 people in the class).
Olivia has passed everything which means she will be back next year,
and I'm very happy.
May 20, Thursday 2:15 a.m.
[journal]
I woke at midnight and turned on the phonograph and read Look Homeward,
Angel with the indolent piping lilt of Mozart's horn concertos. I was
reading about Eugene's first love with Laura. ("She was ugly
with a clean lovely ugliness. Her face was freckled lightly, over her nose
and mouth: her features were eager, unconscious, turned upward in irregular
pertness. But she was exquisitely made and exquisitely kept. She was like
something swift, with wings, which hovers over a wood - among the feathery
trees suspected, but uncaught, unseen.") And I thought of Frank, the
strawberry field, the hill and the grass in the afternoon.
He jumped from his window to hers in the moonlight. "Then they held
each other tightly in their cool young arms." He wanted to hold her,
and go away by himself to think about her.
He felt he must cry out in his throat for joy. Then he knelt beside
her, putting his arm beneath her and gathering her to him. She kissed him,
'Good night my darling. Don't go back by the window. You may fall.' But
he went as he came, reaching through the moonlight exultantly like a cat.
The young leaves of the maple rustled, the ghost of a dog howled. He slept.
"Laura! My dear! My sweet! Don't leave me alone! I'll always
be alone!"
"That's what you want dear. That's what you'll always want. You'd
get so tired of me. You'd forget forget!"
They clung together in that bright moment of wonder there on the magic
island, where the world was quiet, believing all they said. And who shall
say - whatever disenchantment follows - that we ever forget magic, or that
we ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the
gold?
Come up into the hills, O my young love. Return! O lost, and by the
wind grieved, ghost, come back again, as first I knew you in the timeless
valley, where we shall feel ourselves anew. There was a place where all
the sun went glistering in your hair, and from the hill we could have put
a finger on a star. You who were made for music, will hear music no more:
in your dark house the winds are silent. Ghost, ghost, come back from that
marriage we did not foresee, return not into life, but into magic, where
we have never died, into the enchanted wood, where we still lie, strewn
on the grass. Come up into the hills, O my young love: return. O lost, and
by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
I'm thinking of the walk I took last night with Frank Nabotete, the beautiful
dark face, beautiful dark body. We leaned on the rail over the rock beach
where small waves piled in slowly on a line of foam. Moon high in empty
sky. He told me about his plans to go back to his tribesmen in Kenya when
he has his law degree. ("What kind of person do you want to be Frank?"
"I think, useful." "Do you mean 'good'?" "If 'good'
is someone who helps, yes.")
Then we walked on down the lake walk, up Lower University through the
lower campus holding hands, up through MacDonald Park with its bright artificial
moonlight, to International House and then up a flight of stairs to the
'African Embassy' where two other boys live (one of them beautiful too,
the other strange, blunt, fascinating).
Frank put on some records and we danced a slow one, closer than I was
comfortable about. I am sorry that Heather got to him first (Heather -
meek, thin-faced, rigidly drawn up, wan and hollow-cheeked - but
very gentle and sweet) because there is such peace in his strong arms and
hard chin. It was strange to feel the muscles in his abdomen move. "May
I kiss you?" "No." So we sat to talk and argue and we had
coffee with the other two boys, joking about mission boarding schools, reminiscing.
Then we walked home and he didn't touch me again and I was rather sorry.
After a while tonight I went for a walk, in my old dirty tennis shoes.
Miss Detweiler was alone in front of the television set in her huge maroon
bathrobe, with her red hair on end. The curving lane in the dark, the gateposts,
the auburn glow of red maple leaves from the underside, from the street
light. Houses quiet. Only a few secret curtained windows lit. Then a wonderful
upright white house with its shutters and brick steps and now a lilac tree
in the backyard. Masses of shadow. Apple blossom, a scent of lilac untraced.
An armful stolen from a bush already bare on its street side. (I am thinking
of Shinglenail Mike's lilac bushes straggling in front of his yellow cardboard
house.) (And I'm thinking of Peter of course. I love so many men I can't
have!)
But don't want to marry anyone, I just want to live with someone and
sleep on his shoulder.
"Laura you will come back. You will come back!" "Don't
forget me ever!" "Never. Come back. Come back." "The
salt print of her kiss was on his mouth, his face, his eyes. It was, he
knew, the guttering candle-end of time. The train was in motion. He leaped
blindly up the passage with a cry in his throat. 'Come back again!' But
he knew. Her cry followed him, as if he had torn something from her grasp."
A vase of lilac, the small pitcher of apple blossom. The sad joy of Mozart
again.
[back to letters]
This black type does look different doesn't it, rather hard and unfeeling
- oh, but the feeling is still here so don't be put off.
One good thing about being out of residence now is the freedom to come
and go at any time of night - there were many evenings when Olivia and I
would hang out of our window and wish we could go for a walk, but it was
past locking-up time and we steamed in our room. Did I tell you that Olivia
phoned long distance on Sunday to ask about her marks? She has a different
job which does not involve lying. It is a factory job with long hours, but
it pays well, and if it is like my York Farms experience, it will be a good
toughening process for her - not that she should be tough but she
needs to feel less dependent and to realize her own strength and resiliency.
I have your crocuses in my drawer Paul and see them every time I open
it to fish out the typewriter eraser.
I'm listening to Hiawatha and the Peer Gynt Suite: Sunnyside
(Miss D and Miss A and Peter H) have such good taste.
Tuesday May 26
Your letter was waiting when I got home from Toronto on Sunday night.
Your letter was personal, partly, rather than from-all-of-us, Mother (what
am I saying? Your letters are all personal) - but what I am saying really
is that it was a thick, good, enjoyable letter and I was glad to get it!
"Got back from Toronto ?" you are asking: mm, yes, I spent
the weekend with Olivia, dissipating. On Thursday night at nearly ten Miss
Detweiler mentioned leaving for TO in the morning. At seven thirty next
morning I was with her (a fortunate weekend off) on the way to an Ontario
Welfare Council annual meeting at which Miss Allen was to speak. We had
three hours worth of good talk before we got there, and I've told you how
much I admire Miss D so you will know how enjoyable it was. She told me
the story of how Miss Allen ("Boss" is what most of the senior
staff call her) began to work at Sunnyside and built it up to one of the
foremost child rehabilitation centres in Canada, and certainly the finest
in the province. - And about her college experiences and how she came to
work at Sunnyside - and about Brian Wolfe - and about Sunnyside generally,
and social work and the quirks of child care workers, their feuds, etc.
Got to the conference and spent the morning listening to some very interesting
speeches about the disturbed child and his treatment - then phoned Howells
and arranged to descend on them later in the afternoon, then set off for
an adventuring-exploring afternoon in Toronto. The Colonnade is a huge palatial
shopping centre and apartment bloc with all sorts of exotic and luxury shops.
I nearly bought a large wide-brimmed red hat there, but decided to play
safe and keep enough money to get back home on. Do you find that you are
much more materialistic than you had thought when you go window shopping?
I do - it is quite shocking how much one can covet pretty things, not a
house or a car, but a glowing turquoise rug, a ladylike pair of shoes, a
soft-colored etching in a gallery, a wood carving, a book of photographs.
Flowers in a shop window. Is that materialism? It must be, but it doesn't
quite fit my concept of materialism.
And there is still that certain exhileration and self-consciousness of
being in a large city again, with so many stiff perfect colorless faces
passing and repassing and blurring and jerking. And in the stiffness and
isolation, still occasional faces that you remember a long time afterwards
(the funny calf-eyed Armenian waiter who was so solicitous, the beautiful
white-faced blond woman sitting under an umbrella at a sidewalk café
table, the tranquil face of a retired stained-glass window artisan telling
me proudly of the churches that hold his windows).
An adventurous lunch: honeydew drink and a poppyseed cake.
The Lothian Mews, a shopping block all enclosed away from the street
with a fountain, balcony shops, sidewalk café, potted flowers, arty
small galleries, colorful things in all the windows. And Yorkville, a bit
like Greenwich Village, but shinier and newer - the same basement shops,
jazz and coffee dives, craftsmen's displays of leatherwork and wood carving
and weaving, small art galleries, beat-looking girls with varnished ash-blond
hair and racoon-ringed eye makeup.
Then in the terrible heat and confusion of five p.m. rush-hour on the
buses, to the coolcoolcoolllll shadey stretches of Dale Avenue where Olivia
lives. Granny kissed me, Olivia pelted down wet from her shower, the whole
family acted a bit the way you might have, and it was good to feel Howell
family! Olivia was exhausted from her day at the factory, but she seems
to be enjoying the experience of for the first time in her life, working
physically and becoming thoroughly work-weary, and making a wonderful
lot of money. Her summer is not going to be nearly as bad as she thought,
because she is too busy to be acutely lonesome or to feel sorry for herself.
We spent the first evening talking, went to bed early (unheard of for these
two reprobates), slept till noon, had lunch en famille on the patio the
Howells are building in the back yard (it used to be a muddy stretch of
grass, but Mr and Mrs Howell have dug it up and are laying large flat flagstones
on sand in a dug-up area - it is going to be nice and they are proud, and
keep sweeping it and sweeping it so that it will show off at its best).
[A lot of sweeping is actually part of the process of lodging sand between
the pavers.] Afternoon sunbathing and talking to the neighbours or the family
or each other (much to catch up on, and even just basking in company and
communication again was luxurious). The lilac trees in Toronto and in all
of Ontario that I have seen seem to grow wild, and are really large spreading
trees. The Howells have several leaning over their fence, and the scent
is constant - and the huge blooms of the horsechestnut trees are beautiful.
Trees in Ontario are wonderful! And nearly all of them are blooming now.
It is raining.
On Saturday night - and this is, was, funny - one of Olivia's objectionable
ex-boyfriends who is lonely in Toronto because he left all his friends in
Montreal, took both of us out to a kookie movie called The Pink Panther,
then stalled the car and didn't get us home until three a.m. when Mr Howell
came to rescue us. We were stuck in an 'interesting' part of town and got
all sorts of interested glances from fellows passing by in their souped
up 'bombs.' Poor Mr Howell was rather unhappy with all this -
On Saturday afternoon Marg Allen and Sue Cheshire were over for a while
and both of them were (a relief) natural and still the old Ban Righ friends.
Both have jobs there, Susan as a lifeguard.
Sunday afternoon train back to Toronto in the (ooo kids at the typewriter
account for the red unexpectedly) rain, with the light dimming gradually
and the countryside seeming to glow from a strange inside light - I've never
seen such green! So many of the trees, the wild as well as the orchard-kept,
are blossoming, the hedges are full of lilac. During the whole four hours
of the trip I felt that I was moving through an Eden with its old stone
houses and strange stone fence-remnants and glimpses of some vast misty
grey sea (Lake Ontario in many places comes to the edge of the tracks).
I forgot to mention that on the morning trip with Miss D, talking to
her about the Sunnyside type of work, I had a distinct feeling of having
found something I can fit into - this sort of work feels like home, it may
well become The Vocation. Miss Detweiler mentioned something that is especially
exciting: she feels there is an overwhelming need in the field of on-the-spot
workers who can articulate their experience - she says, "I know so
much, and I understand so much, but I can't verbalize it and it will be
lost - most of the people who write about kids-work don't know anything,
they write clichés about what should work, but it doesn't."
And when I mentioned that I was studying English because I would like to
hyphenate free-lancing onto social-type work, she seemed excited with the
idea. Excitement from Miss D is valuable, and I'm pleased. This feels good,
it is an indication of what my leanings are tho by no means a commitment.
Thursday May 28
The funeral you heard mentioned I know was my friend's - there is only
one Ed Luddington. Fuzzy white hair, querrelous old voice demanding attention,
laughing softball yarns, thumping cane on the floor, stubborn shuffling
walk, craving for cocoa-bars and coffee, company - the long tale of horse-dealings
and the funny defenceless mouth with its ring of white stubble, rocking
chair and pale blue eyes and a reluctant concern about other people, affectionate-wistful
inspection of some youngster's pitching arm - a mind full of things remembered:
old trees in the town where he grew up and the hot afternoon when he got
drunk on a jug of cold whisky he thought was water, anger and disappointment.
I hate it when people's minds die.
Yesterday the Annual Meeting or 'Sunnyside's Birthday' was held in pomp
and glory in a perfectly sterilized house with gleaming kids in their Sunday
clothes and a house full of elaborately arranged flowers. I remember: Brenda's
face shining because she was "smelling pretty" (my 4711 cologne),
a horrible boardmemberwoman in a stern yellow plaid suit with a monsterous
wildly flowered hat, Bobbie passing cookies shyly at the tea party shining
with pride and our scrubbing, Marlene and Sherry conducting a charm-sopping
house-tour for a dubious reporter, pouring tea from a silver tea service
myself for the kids after the VIPs had moved on home: "Will you have
milk and sugar Miss Cathy?", Joey quivering with excitement and stuffing
himself with cookies, supper with the kids getting sleepier and sleepier,
watching Carol's freckly-monkey-imp-beautiful face falling asleep and sitting
on the floor beside Bobbie's bed as he drifted off.
And then staff had a party downstairs, everyone strangely unrecognizably
elegant (at last I could wear the orange dress), a beautiful bowl of pink
punch called 'bowle' made by our house manager's beautiful German husband
(strawberries soaked in brandy, wine, cognac, etc), heaps of food (smoked
oysters, shrimp, caviar which I dislike intensely, baby tomatoes, fresh
pineapple and heaps of grapes). A fire in the fireplace. The party was pretty
dull or is that just the nature of parties? Anyway, Sushila was feeling
low because of Nehru's death, Miss D was wit-congested with a cold, Peter
got slowly sillier because he cannot stop drinking; the good things were
talking to Mrs Kuhnemann's husband about travel in Europe and Germany in
particular, talking to a German friend of his about the modern German youth's
reaction to what they learn of the war years that never really touched them
personally, eating pineapple, and sitting outside ALONE after the ghastly
socializing was over.
Peter H is sporting something new and Daring - a pair of 'trousers' whose
pockets are red-lined so that it looks as if he is wearing red underwear
and his pants are side-split. He loves them and he is wearing them constantly
"so that you can get used to them."
While he was happy last night, he started telling stories of the boobs
he used to make in English before he understood implications etc, and then
there was the morning when he got up sleepily, went downstairs, heard his
big dog Buffy shuffling in around the corner and said "Hel-lo muttikins-baby,
sweetie-puss, howareyuh honeypatch doggie er, Miss Allen! I thought you
were a dog I mean, I know you aren't a dog, but I thought you were
I mean ..." And Miss Allen, coolly, "Why Peter, that is the nicest
welcome to Sunnyside I've ever had."
A record of Handel's arias is on - it meets Peter's record of Maria Callas
at the corner of the hallway.
Am invited to Bob Schwab's for supper tonight, to plan an IH party for
tomorrow.
May 30, Saturday
Last week's letter isn't mailed yet because of all sorts of bad excuses
- I will try to be more faithful (it isn't an effort to write them, only
to get them mailed) now that things are routine again.
The big upset this weekend was an International House party that Bob
and I planned and hosted independently on Friday night, with fear and trembling
that nobody would come and it would be a huge foozle. Friday - flower arranging,
flower pushing, food buying. And before, on Thursday night, tubby Bob invited
me for dinner with his Pakistani roommate Monnie and himself to make up
guest lists and phone people and so on. For the first time since months
ago with you, I peeled potatoes! Bob has a deadly lethal hand with pepper
and spices - everything, potatoes, steak that he had previously pounded
savagely with a Catsup bottle, corn, gravy (fortunately not the watery Jell-o
- but the aftertaste took care of IT), the whole enormous heaped gravy-floating
plate tasted like pepper which I dutifully enjoyed for Bob's sake, but resolved
to have "an upset stomach, nothing serious, a bit of flu" next
time I'm there for dinner.
The party WAS a success, one of the most interesting we've had. Instead
of the dull old cookies which usually are all an IH party boasts, we had
a large bread board with long thin loaves of fresh rye bread, and crumbles
or slices of white cheddar cheese, a bowl of cherries and another of pickles;
it was good, so was the coffee, so was the beaty party music, so was the
conversation, and some of the shy people who usually haunt IH parties for
a doleful half hour and then leave, were blossoming. I'm thinking of Hassan
from Pakistan particularly, a tall thin boy with a lot of straight black
hair parted in the middle, glowing black eyes behind thick glasses, a perpetually
wan studious steriotype-scholarly face. He told me he was working on his
second Master of Science degree, and I said "Then you must be a great
deal older than you look," but he is nineteen, and had his B.Sc. at
sixteen. I'd never seen him speak a word, but yesterday he was approaching
GIRLS and making conversation - this after several hours of the atmosphere,
and quite a bit of encouragement.
Another thing that was good about the party was Annie and Doritt. When
the party was much too short on girls, Bob suggested in desperation that
we invite two strangers, girls who live in the apartment across the street
from IH. So we ran across the street and up a stairway and met two terribly
attractive Dutch girls who said they had wished they could go to IH parties
for the whole winter, but had been too shy. They were a smash hit at the
party, and perhaps Kingston will be less lonesome for them now. Vicky and
her tall handsome shy Estonian boyfriend Toival were there, and Maureen
came too, and discovered that her red-head vivacity soon trapped her a beautiful
and HUGE, mustached Indian graduate student. Amil was there of course, showing
off a shy little brunette he has acquired somewhere. Is HE adapting fast!
Notable: the star mixers and ice-breakers of the party were a hockey game
and a crocenole set! The Pakistanis, Indians and Chinese especially love
the hockey set.
Tonight Sunnyside is having another celebration - this one to give Jackie
a send off because she is leaving for summer school and this is her last
weekend here. For the occasion Sushila made mushroom rice and a festive
curry chicken, and for dessert, mandarin orange slices with sour cream.
Porgy Johann the dog loves both, but is distainful of Canadian hamburger
and even - sniff - Gravy Train dog food. Joey loves Gravy Train.
Kevin is back from the hospital; the plastic surgery was successful,
and the dreaded experience was not nearly as frightening as he thought it
would be. He is slated for another, but it will be considerably later.
While I was playing boats with Bobby in the bathtub today, he said
"See, I'm making wrinkles in the water." Carol is so friendly
and accepting now, while she was so completely hostile at first. Four of
the littlest girls and I had a cooking session in the afternoon, to make
puffed rice cookies - four squirmers to keep off the stove, and to split
'turns' of stirring or measuring among with painful exactness to give everyone
just the same amount of 'helping' privileges.
A wonderful many edged plot is underway at Sunnyside, to hoodwink both
the Board and Miss Allen in one blow, and instead of getting one dog to
replace Buffie, to get two dogs, a labrador and a Saint Bernard.
Miss Allen is in love with a lab puppy who has "such a marvelous personality"
but Peter wants a Saint Bernard too. So Peter is going to buy the labrador
puppy himself, have the kennel man tell Miss A that her darling has been
sold. According to plan, she will then resignedly okay the Saint Bernard,
which the Board's money will cheerfully buy. When this other puppy is safely
a Sunnysider, Peter will sneak in the labrador. She can't and won't
object, and the Board has no voice over worker's pets - then, gradually,
the labrador becomes Sunnyside's dog rather than Peter's, and we've won.
Maybe.
That record of Handel and Bach arias is so good. It is wonderful to come
home from a party of sociability and listen to it.
31, Sunday
Bob Schwab and Monnie and Vankatesh (a very attractive from-India Indian)
took out Cathy and Joe, and Tom, for a hot dogs pop ice cream picnic in
the park, and all three of the guys seemed to enjoy it as much as the kids
- these fellows so starved of family contact are a gold mine for our kids.
It has been a wonderfully sunny Sunday - how was your day? Do you still
sleep in the afternoon and have a cake-lunch late in the afternoon and then
do chores and then - listen to records and CBC Sunday Night?
1 June, Monday
In the pouring slopping rain today I bought a bicycle in a funny little
bicycle works downtown. It is a hoary, rusty old warrior whom I am going
to call Beowolf after the Norse warrior-hero in an Old English epic. Rust,
a clattering basket, a brake that must be held half a block before one wants
to stop, a seat padded with some old maroon sweater that left a rainy red
spot on my rain-wet backside but he rolls and the basket is a joy
because it prevents the precarious one-hand steering of a basketless. And
caught a sale in time to snatch a light-knit suit in white and navy for
nine dollars rather than the former twenty. It looks like this [sketch]:
and needs dry-cleaning. With red shoes and a red hat and white gloves it
will be very nice. Do you nave a new summer hat Mother?
The green that Kingston is in the rain never stops being a miracle.
We have a new worker named Glynis - my unkind reaction to her is that
it is nice to see someone else being the greenest of greenhorns. Besides,
she simpers at the kids and it is revolting.
Peter, sleeping in the room next door, has been throwing ashcans out
the window - oops, not Peter H - this is Little Peter.
There was a hard-hitting play on CBC Playdate tonight, called Image
of Love. It was about a plain girl who spent hours and hundreds on clothes
and hair and makeup to attract her dream man, a hollow executive type who
was fed up with executivizing and really wanted only to be a carpenter,
but stayed in his executive job because although it was "half hot air
and half front" it "looks successful." Her next door neighbour
is a plain, scrawny man who dreams of the sophisticated blond office girl
who is as hollow as the executive. The development of the play satirizes
the way advertizements and image-builders prefabricate people's ideas, and
not only their ideas but their dreams as well. At the end, both people are
disillusioned with their prefabricated dream-people and with themselves,
but in their loneliness they compromise. George says, "Why don't we
get married?" "But George, I don't love you. I've always wanted
to marry someone like Greg." "I don't love you either, and you
know I've always dreamed of a girl like Zanda. But nobody else seems to
want us, and at least we wouldn't always be so lonely." "Maybe
all marriages are only that ... But George, I want a white wedding! It will
be something to remember." One of the advertizments that interrupted
the play was the Miss Clairol "Do blondes really have more fun?"
Depressing play, hopelessly true, but I wonder if second best and compromise
is all there really is. It frightens me a little. And it makes me respect
energetic and productive spinsters like Miss D and Miss A because they are
obviously people who refused the George-type second best. [In retrospect
I suppose Miss D and Miss A were lovers, but the thought didn't occur to
me in 1964.]
Tuesday June 2
Joey today explained very earnestly that Sushila Solomon is a "skwak"
because she is Indian and Indian women are - so we had a long discussion
explaining about squaws and North American Indians. Another of the kids'
bloobers is in their skipping song where they sing "He goes corking
one, two, three."
A prize example of adult bloobers was the letter Joey's worker in Toronto
sent him. She explained coyly that she was one of the "kind big people"
who tries to "help children," and ended by saying "We are
trying to find a new home for our nice friend Joseph." Staff found
this - ugh - thing a demonstration of how not to write to children, hideous
condescension.
Mrs Thompson has such a refreshing way of waking one up in the mornings.
She slides into the room, touches one's toe very gently, and says "Miss
Ellie ..."
I am going to inherit a cat when Enid Easterbrook leaves for Australia.
The cat is Tinker, alias Christine (because we got her when the Keeler scandal
was raging and she was such a wanton little scratchy female) and is a reserved
tabby with grey 'honest' eyes, who never purrs or meows aloud, but who is
rumbling like a motor softly, down inside so that you know she is purring
only when you hold your face against her side.
And the Board has approved our Saint Bernard! Our schemes are going well.
Steven has problems - he has been running away, and today was gone for
most of the day, nobody knows where, because he doesn't like school. Someone
has to take him there and fetch him. and he spends hours by himself in the
furtherst bushes of the property. No one knows exactly what is bothering
him.
The envelope enclosed is for Paul (the British Guiana stamps for him
from Dud, the Jamaica "Miss World" from Dennis) and is a souvenir
of an evening at International House. Three of the fellows invited me and
another girl for dinner. The boys are Dud, an Indian (Hindu-Christian) from
British Guiana - attractive, round-faced, a shiny brown color with huge
mischievous black eyes and a lot of wavy black hair, working on his BA in
chemistry I think; Dennis Stamp - the Jamaican with a bit of a beard whom
I've told you about because he is rather a special friend - M.Sc.ing in
biochemistry; Leslie - moon-faced Chinese from Trinidad whom I have also
told you of, fat and giggly but a surprisingly good dancer.
At five thirty when I arrived, Leslie was in the kitchen stirring a milky
looking mixture into a frying pan. It turned suddenly thick and transparent
and pinkish colored. He took a bowl of knobby deep-fried objects from the
oven, dumped them into the mixture, and voila! sweet-and-sour pork. Then
Dud came along and diverted me from the kitchen to meet the other girl in
the party, Doreen Ramsaroop, another Indian from 'BeeGee' or British Guiana:
it seems there are great numbers of Indian immigrants in BG. Doreen is terribly
thin, but stylishly dressed in a wooly suit and high heels rather than the
sari and sandals she wears sometimes. Her hair is short too, unusual in
an Indian girl (Sushila's is very long). Until dinner was ready, guess what
we did - played hockey!
Dinner began with a bowl of egg soup - tiny strands of egg cooked in
a flavoured broth, rather like very delicate noodles. Then the sweet-and-sour
pork, rice with chicken-and-mushroom chow mein, a vegetable dish of celery,
green pepper, pork, mmmm! Many helpings for everyone, loud celery-crunching
and pork-bone crackling, a steady stream of compliments for shining-faced
Leslie, especially from Doreen who is all feminine charm and knows how to
admire three men constantly and extremely verbally for a whole evening.
I watched and took lessons.
Soy sauce was one of the condiments, but everyone ignored it in favor
of a yellowish paste that I was warned not to touch because it was so fierce
(so I did have two helpings, just to show them, meanwhile swallowing slowly
the smoulderings of my palate!)
For dessert, the international ice cream with a Robin Hood cake to which
Dennis had added lots of nuts so that Doreen could truthfully rave about
it to him, sharing chef's honours so that Leslie didn't get all the schmalz.
And then a very pleasant evening listening to Indian music and calipso
and looking at photographs - Dennis is really an excellent photographer,
as you will remember from the photo I sent you.
As thank you for the dinner and the evening I baked two dozen chocolate
chip cookies for them, with love! It is good to have a kitchen here which
works, has mix master and huge oven and all the necessary paraphernalia.
Tuesday June 9
Liebe Familie in der? Die? Ferne
I would like to send you a newsreel of how it feels to whiz down the
campus streets on the bicycle in the late afternoon green-saturated sun-sopping
AIR smelling whiffs of trees and flower beds and the distinctive smell of
the library. There is a sculpted head of some dignitary in the middle-floor
row of windows, that looks like a staring human face from the sidewalk below.
It sees a large number of people on bicycles passing on University Avenue,
girls walking barefoot on the grass with shoes in hand, workmen in helmits
puffing on coffee-break cigarettes, funny dirty alive Mr Ferguson with his
head stuck forward on his shoulders and the grizzly hair on his neck (like
a scraggly mane) shedding over his inevitable, filthy, black suit - high
school students using the library to cram for senior matric finals (and
I look at them with a condescending fondness that says - I've been through
all that!). Lilacs are past now, and iris are blooming in daffodil-recapitulation
yellows and orchid-dotted browns and terribly royal purples. And hawthorn
- aren't you curious about hawthorn? I always was, because I loved the sound
of the word. Hawthorn is tree-bushes with small red flowers in clumps, very
pretty - I have some with white maythorn in a yellow jug, on my bookcase.
And iris next to my quaint, friendly Rembrandt. Robert Frost is in comfortable
austerity on the back of my door.
The beach this afternoon had people in small groups of ones and twos,
reading, sunning, staring at the waves and the half-dozen perking sailboats
(last night when I was over at Mike's playing chess and drinking coffee,
he had a Mendelssohn violin concerto on his stereo set that sounded like
sailboats on the water. You could hear the variously sized sails - jib,
main, top - flapping ever so lightly when the wind changed, and the teasing
ripples on the water, a hint of wind, and a blurry suggestion of haze. The
violin theme itself was the expression of the feeling you have when you
sail, a swooping and an airiness and freedom. I don't think that was what
Mendelssohn meant to write the concerto about, but he would be delighted
with this interpretation if he ever sailed at all.) oof, I have such a confusing
habit of intending to insert a brief aside in parentheses, but then going
on and on and losing track, stream-of-consciousnesswise. Anyway, on the
beach, there was even a man in a business suit with paper-crammed briefcase
beside him, staring and staring at the lake. And the Ich-verstehe-Ihnen-nicht-Sprechen-Sie-Deutch?
trick still works well on would-be picker-uppers.
Where are Windrims moving? Do you have their address? Did you go to their
farewell?
Sunday afternoon three of my kids went eventuring with me - Joey, Marlene,
and Sherry - the tall fairhaired blue-eyed boy and the two little dark girls.
We went to a bare little park with no swings or junk, but next to a little
port with rows of boats anchored and many of them heading in or out. The
kids were soon stripped to their slacks and puddling in the shallow water
with delightful improvised boats. Lunch was elegant - peanutbutteran'jam
sandwiches, their favorite food above all, and apples and cookies. We had
a ball and books and paper as well, and many heads turned in the cars going
by to see the kids having such a good time. When a man stopped to take a
picture of the boats, Joey rushed over and said, "Will you take a picture
of us?" He then introduced himself and the girls, posed them in a row
and compelled them to smile, thanked the man and ran back to his
fun. That was a typically Joey incident. When it began to rain, classically,
for doesn't it rain on picnics? - classically, we ran for shelter under
trees and played ball until it stopped. Joey's compliment was a thrill:
"I like you. Most staff make us go home when it rains." And when
it did stop raining a lady from across the road came out and Joey engaged
her in one of his charming conversations, introducing everyone and shaking
hands, etc. What a ham! Except he is perfectly serious about it. But the
lady found herself inviting them in to tour the house, have lemonade and
cookies and meet her only-child little blond daughter. Her husband was reflected
in the entire house - guns in a glass case, a beautifully carved wooden
bowl, portraits of favorite people, books on Eastern philosophy, landscapes,
polished and varnished driftwood, and his friendly, charming, interesting
self - a doctor doing research at Queen's. After a long visit they found
themselves invited to Sunnyside, and the kids found themselves invited back
to the Seymor's. It is great to take these kids on excursions because inevitably
they scare up interesting people and situations. Another good thing is that
they are not my own children so I can enjoy them and not ever be embarrassed
by their behavior as it seems real parents must.
Spent the afternoon at the movies seeing a film the Dycks and I saw in
New York for the second time, the Italian movie called "8 1/2"
by Fredrico Fellini. [Still hadn't got it right.] Some movies are absolute
garbage, but some, like this one, are so good and so sensitive and so true
and so communicative that they should be seen three or four times, just
as a good book should be, because new images, meanings, humour, come to
the surface with each new reading or seeing. I'm just beginning to realize
the vast artistic-communication scope a movie maker has, and that while
some books and some movies are dime-novel girlie-whodunits, other books
and movies are Dickens and Tolstoi and DH Lawrence. This kind of movie is
relatively new, I think, however.
Am trying to spend several hours a day on German, and have been reading
a Costain historical novel, but it seems that one loses an appetite for
novels after a while, and it is difficult to finish one. One interesting
book I've been reading is called The Art of Loving by a well-known
philosopho-psychoanalyst called Erich Fromm. He says that people cannot
be expected to manage to love one person, whoever it is they've married,
alone. They have to make love a part of their personalities by loving everyone,
working at loving with 1. discipline 2. concentration 3. motivation. According
to him, loving people actively renovates tired personalities and remakes
people - could it be that altho he is a Marxist-leaning socialist, he is
talking Christianity? It rather sounds that way. Another interesting book
is Child Care and the Growth of Love [Bowlby], about things vital
to Sunnyside.
Wednesday, 10th
Kingston by day is so demure, lavendar-scented, warm, and ladylike. But
at two a.m. she wears strong scents (Hussy-Lilac and Come-Hither-Trees),
tosses her street-skirt branches like a cancan dancer, lurks in shadowy
gardens that are prim by day, laughs at the stone houses with all their
lights off (they don't know that there are goblin-shadows squirming on their
chimneys).
Last night's prowl was at 2 a.m. of course, coat over pyjamas and delightfully
sneaky slippers, out of the big red front door, down the black drive in
the deep shadow of all our trees, through the street-lit gateposts with
their "Sunnyside" sign, no cars, empty streets, warm air tossing
a little under the restraint of a ground-fog, pockets of light in the trees
near a streetlamp like leaf-spiky nests. The long hill down to the lake,
white ghostly mayflowers spilling over a fence. One street to cross, pause
until two people have gone by, holding hands. Then the long cool lawn, the
edge of the beach, and the lake moving in and out on a line of white spray
in the dark. Lying flat on the grass, a line of trees and streetlamps stretching
in one direction along the lake, the hill and old houses across the street,
a solid silhoetted maple nearby, and behind, the lake crashing and soughing.
Stars like powder. Terrifying and peaceful at one time. One would like to
sleep there, or live at the edge of the lake forever; but if you are too
substantial, and besides too bookish, to be a nymph - you go home again
because it is getting cold.
Do you know what an orgy is? It is arranging flowers you've stolen from
somebody's yard, eating scrambled eggs with cheese and chocolate ice cream,
reading, looking at Rembrandt, writing letters, and going to bed at three.
The staff has given Miss Detweiler a dozen red rosebuds with a note,
"To Det for braving the Board." (About the Saint Bernard which
is due to be picked up next week.)
Thursday 11
What a kooky and rather wonderful lot of people these Sunnyside staffers
are! An example I come downstairs at two a.m. for a brief walk outside,
and there in the sitting room are a touselled Miss Detweiler and a lounging
Peter listening to Bach's Saint Mathew's Passion and passionately
discussing prison reform! And when they catch me sitting on the stairs listening
to the music, they say "Why don't you come in and sit on something
softer? We'll not talk too loudly." Then the three of us listen, they
drink rum and I drink lemon Coke and we all discuss prison reform until
at three thirty a.m. I leave them to go to bed, and they are only half-way
through the Passion.
I have to be up by six for kids getting-up duty, so there is no point
in going to bed. Read a novel until five thirty. It is bright out, and Kingston
must be asleep. Bicycle, empty streets, the campus already warm and green,
but deserted. A fat lady walking to work, shouting a bit of conversation
after me. A worker in a steamboiler room leaning from his window to whistle,
later a newspaper boy, a taxi driver too grumpled from night duty to smile,
no one else.
The bike's wheels turning through the reflections in street-cleaner puddles,
strange white-washed sky, paths in the parks clean and bare, the black iron
lion and the statue of John A like signs of imagination in the town, a black
door with an elaborate knocker, a tall elegant old house with geraniums
and underclothes on its back balconies, the lake by the yacht club dock
smooth as if there were a thick transparent milk-like skin over it. The
boats moving ever so slightly on the water, their black and wood masts in
swaying reflections that seem to be screwing straight into the water, the
"Royal Tramp" with its stateroom curtains pulled shut, the "Second
Try," the "Enigma" perhaps there somewhere too. A red freightboat
on the horizon. A long time standing and looking at it all.
Friday 12
While Mrs Styles was in a staff meeting yesterday morning, I had to look
after the school kids. Ordeal! They did FINGERPAINTING, wiped their mucky
fingers on themselves and the furniture, decided to paint the spade, sticks,
jars, got indelible ink on the desks, and then Brenda, who resents anything
ever being 'different' (refused to fingerpaint because I decided we would
do it outside, for example, because "We do it INSIDE") spent the
last half of the morning feverishly scrubbing everything with a paper towel.
Outside, however, the rest of the children became very creative and added
small stones and bits of grass to their wet paint designs in a semi-mosaic
that was very interesting. Sunnyside is very aware of children's art, and
it is an interesting topic, because it is so characteristic of both the
child and his age group, and often his disturbance or his attitudes toward
us and toward life come out in his pictures much more clearly than in anything
he could say to try to explain his feelings.
All of the kids are buzzing tonight about the Wonderful Sunday School
Picnic that they are going to tomorrow afternoon. We are going with masses
of other people to a lake about thirty miles from here, and if it is as
warm and lovely as it is today, we will be swimming too.
Be sure your late nights will find you out - in spite of all resolutions
to get up at six every morning, duty or not, Angela, when she came to clean
my room, reported to Olga that I must be sick because it was noon and there
"She still asleep. You think sick?" Embarrassing.
Another International House party tonight.
June 14, Sunday evening
Interruption by Peter K banging on his door and howling.
Huge yellow irises with massy white peonies, roses.
Norman McLeod was a pleasant surprise visitor last night as his job brought
him near to Kingston and he has Saturdays off. He is a salesman, door-to-door
or rather farm-to-farm, for a nursery firm selling strawberry and other
plants, landscaping services, and things like plant sprays - he is doing
quite well he says, but works six days a week for long hours. But in short,
he was so selling-saturated and shop-talking and (probably) intellectually
tired that he was, until one thirty in the morning, a BIG BORE and not his
usual fun self at all. I fed him toast and classical music and rapt attention
for what seemed hours - I hope he enjoyed it tho and talks about something
besides selling techniques next time.
The Sunday School picnic was a huge success because the sun was hot and
the water warm and the kids all healthy. I had my first summer's swim. The
afternoon reminded me of our Kinderfests to the point where I started feeling
the traditional Kinderfest blues - how I used to hate 'em. Paul, who wins
things at them and doesn't have kind people giving him chocolate bars on
the side while other kids have to earn them, probably enjoys them - but
my nine-year-old kernel-self still silently curses those sympathetic ladies.
We rode to the lake for the picnic in a chartered bus - it was a beautiful
ride through the eastern Ontario countryside greenness and stillness. The
shelfs of bedrock fascinate me, as well as the crumbling old old barns and
the luxurious trees. The East doesn't feel strange, but familiar and 'home',
probably because it is so much like the Fraser Valley and partly because
so many books are written in this almost New England setting. It would be
easy to put down roots here. Except for the too-gentle springs and perhaps
the inability to see for as far as you can see (to the observation dome
on Saskatoon Mountain, and further) on a clear day (and the nearness of
the Rockies that lets you pretend cloud-formations on the horizon are mountain
tips - as they sometimes are). And I would like to keep your sunsets and
sunrises, your view across Rat Lake from Weber's Folly, and the creek and
the bush at the Old Place.
SCC staff were hugely amused yesterday by something that happened to
us on the bus to the lake. The director in charge stepped in and asked "Is
Sunnyside here yet?" I said, "Yes, we're here." And he said,
"Oh, I couldn't tell. Everybody looks so alike in a crowd."
Monday 15
This morning Tom Murphy who is long and thin and hollow-eyed, put on
his monster-robot act in which he freezes his face to steel-mask rigidity
and shuffles with stiff legs like a machine. He was chasing a screaming
Helen around the tables where we were eating breakfast. To get a little
order, I had to grab the 'control box' on his back and put him out of commission.
We could almost see the springs and screws popping out as he crumpled slowly
to the ground. All the children unexpectedly began to clap and cheer until
the ceiling rattled - the land was delivered from the monster robot! I shudder
to think what would have happened to the good time if Mrs Govia had been
on, because she pounces on every little disturbance, but Peter was with
me and both of us could only manage to laugh. So the morning left everyone
feeling a bit light-hearted. Times like these make you like the kids.
Later - this is a story about a cape. It rained very hard this afternoon,
so when I saddled up the bicycle to take my paycheck downtown to the bank
I had to wrap a plastic bag around the leaky red sweater. It rained furiously
the whole time, and seeing all the people with umbrellas or hunched shoulders
made me feel enormously superior to be riding along with my clothes and
hair draggled and heart so dripping-light. Some people smiled. So it was
a good afternoon. Spent covetous hours among the classics shelves in the
record store. Bought a pair of stack-heeled red shoes. And then walked into
a small exclusive shop and bought a raincape. Blue and stiff with a swashbuckling
red lining. It swishes magnificently behind me and I can't help swinging
it so that the lining shows. It gets a lot of admiring glances, and this
as well as the lines of the cape make one walk very tall and straight. It
is so dashing and nineteenth century romantic that it makes you feel both
feminine and smart - the red shoes go with it, and the red hat I've promised
myself, as well as a pair of white short gloves. This is it: [sketch].
Tuesday 16
Guess who has poison ivy.
The family picture is good even to the plug-in and the plywood
in the background. It is especially nice of you, Parents, looking so suitably
pensive about the goodbyes! [taken the day I left for Queen's]
part 3
- raw forming volume 2: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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