| still at home volume 4 part 4 - 1961 october-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Oct. 11 Thursday last week, Saturday & today we got the mail. There has been nothing. It is a week and three days since he left & he has not written. Sunday he said, "-unless something happens on the road you'll get a letter." Everything is possible but nothing likely. Meanwhile, I am confused & tears come to my eyes - never further - occasionally. I wander about Block's house bleakly & ask myself out loud what has happened. I do not feel scramblish tho', & even if I never again get a letter I will not grovel. Tomorrow is Thursday - mailday. Perhaps. I am not the only one who has troubles. When Mom came to get me from Blocks her lips trembled when she talked about her new job - teacher for older boys' Joy Bells. Walking to the house I asked her what was so frightening about that. She was obviously very disturbed. "It shows confidence in you," I said experimentally. "If it only did " she said bitterly. "But that isn't how it happened. I was left over. I wasn't even nominated. They just said, 'you're it.'" "Oh, it's pride then, is it?" I said coldly. "Snap out of it." She protested. She wasn't capable she said. "No faith" I asked bluntly. I hadn't known I could be so hard. "No faith," she said. "Then it's your fault. Very sympathetic I am not," I said and rushed on to the house. I don't know whether that was the right tactic but I had only instinct to go on. The sound of millions of geese squawking far away at the lake came to me clearly when I bounded to the top step. "They've been doing that for a long time now," I said. "A week and three days." I was back in my own problems. I wish I could stop being so
Deliver me from these. Please. Soon. And take care of Mom's troubles. And take care of Frank. Oct. 12 Helene's b.friend Frank has just been here for the weekend. He forgot his shaving lotion there - Seaforth's. That didn't mean anything to me, but she had some on her arms & I sniffed. "It's just like Frank's!" I screeked & sniffed it again ecstatically. But I should forget all that because it is a part of the long gone past. Only. Har. October 19 Again, snow - a blizzard all day. A box of apples arrived from the Okanagan. These were a source of great joy. October 20, Fri "On taking a walk 'over the hill' I discovered that it is a wonderful, fragile evening; that the snow creaks when you walk on it; that you can almost splinter the brittle cold between your fingers; that the sky is pale and the stars far away. I wonder how it is with Frank in B.C. on this Friday night." - this was an excerpt from a letter to cher Frank last Friday - yesterday - night. A letter to him, which is already 2700 words long, is to be mailed on Tuesday. I wish I could keep it for reference but I want an answer too. But a few excerpts: "Friday the 13th of Oct. Frank, how interesting! I've got questions, sir, just a few - will you give a statement for the press? News that you are a high school senior is a surprize, but still expectable from an he-can-do-anything person. Tell me, has this been brewing in your mind for a long time or is it just a new idea? When & how did you come to your conclusions & announce (the chin, meanwhile, becoming more Gibralter-like) "I am going back to school"? Did you make a dramatic announcement to the family, inc. Hm-m-m, are you doing this so you won't have to pay income tax on all your real estate? Now I've learned about another you-ism, about another word I can use on you. Courage. Don't hoot. It really does take more (an impolite word, but effective - 'scuse?) guts than many people have to walk back to school after a few years of adult freedom. Bravo friend. One thing in the last letter was a botheration. There were too many vague references to things like - well listen to them yourself: quote, "cause he is not intelligent enough," "due to stupidity ...," "because of stupidity ...," "some have it, some don't," "it hurts to study 5 hours a night & know you do about 1/2 hr ...". Now - whether this is the expression of a feeling of incompetence or just modesty is a ponderation, but in any case it is UNNESSESARY. Okay, she said briskly. Let us hear no more of this. Very late last night Mom came home bringing the mail with her after a P.T.A. meeting. The lamp had been put out long before & E was just watching lights from the road sway across the walls & thinking about things - some nice, some disturbing. Mom breezed in and said, "You're lucky. Most of the mail is for you." Besides quite a bulky letter (but really, not bulky enough for 10¢ postage) there was a big envelope full of the info I sent for from the Banff School of Fine Arts. This, & the letter, was gone over with a fine-toothed comb until all hours. Then the lamp went out again. E somehow did not get to sleep, but squirmed exstatically at the prospect of the B.S. of F.A. and was quite happy about the letter too. Early in the morning Daddy & Paul got home from Chetwynd. They found E, betouselled & sleepless, with the lamp lit again, re-reading everything. She got up to get them & herself a sandwhich, finally slept. The catalogue information boils down to this: my puny bank account will never cover it but by hook or by crook I shall get there. If the higher-ups can be inviegled into believing that I am sufficiently poor & sufficiently deserving, there are oodles of scholarships. Ah - but you have to have phenomenal grades to get one. Therefore, & however ... I shall probably be quite squelching about the Christmas visit idea. How did you know I would be? 1. Christmas seems to be a family affair more than anything. The Doerksens would certainly miss having Frank there. Besides, he would miss being with them. He really would. 2. what would you use for an excuse? 3. parent-type people would be faintly disturbed because "Das kind ist nur 16," or even, "what will the neighbours say?" 4. Christmas is less than 3 months away. This isn't really long enough because it makes the time on the other side of "see you" so much longer. 5. finally, I'd still like to see you! How about telepathy in television form? October 21 Some of my lovely expensive blue material has become a skirt, made nearly solo by me. A nightmare last night of me shrieking frenziedly at my Pop while he just leered at me. Oct 21 Saturday night My most appealing masculine friend here is Victor Siemens. He is positively charged with charm. Even if he is only in grade two those freckles and that grin are sigh-stuff. In spite of shocked glances from people who aren't listening to the sermon we wink at each other in church, and from the alto bench too. There now, all is confessed. Do you mind? - Just got back from choir practice & sat in the car for a while, reflectively listening to CFUN. Most of the songs were about lonesomeness. Funny. Pop's bright idea for the day was to make his oldest daughter drive the big International on the field while stacking clover hay. The truck underwent many bolt-grinding lurches and came home looking (feeling) years older. This was Saturday so you probably worked instead of going to school. Tomorrow you may go to church, & then you will sleep & be unsociable all afternoon. In the evening - who knows? - you may grab a pen & keep me company. Saw many geese today. They all reminded. October 22 Lonely watching at Rat Lake while "they" skated. Oct 22 Sunday, 11 p.m. Mom just stuck her head around the door & caught me reading over your letter looking for remarks that needed to be parried. This she would not understand, of course. "Hey," she said, "again?" "But this is only the first time I've read it today! " I protested innocently. She backed off, gave me a questioning look, and reeled away muttering something to the effect that I'd never "last" until I was twenty. (This was a big act, of course.) No, Frank, she is not sick & tired of Chinese food. It always seems to be - special - , and what they ate that Friday night was very good. Are you tired of it, maybee? Siemens's were visiting here this afternoon. Ellie study-ed. October 23 Wrote a poem I figured out yesterday. Wore the beautiful blue skirt I made on Saturday. Oct 24 Tuesday The clock just now said 9:30. It's a special night for ro-mance: there's a slivery October moon (like a sugar-dusted slice of lemon) and a shivery whispery October wind. However, since amour is out of the question for scholarly I, (har) letter-writing and mooning around substitute. There are new summer souvenirs strewed all over the table & they are responsible for the mooning .... Two films just got back from the developers (or developees, as the case may be) & I'm tickled that most of them turned out. There's a t'rrific one of Bill looking bashful, one of Barry snoozing during a dinner hour, of Milt & Lawrence grinning to themselves into their sandwiches, of George doing a belly-flop on the trampoline, of roses scrambling in through the east window at 3069 Clearbrook Rd.N., of you and Judy beside the car at Berthusen (something like that) Park, of my favorite bus driver getting off the "hound," and a blurry one of your tanned bare back swooping down onto a trampoline, with a Playland ferris wheel in the background, and a really good one of you unlaxing on P.J.Konrad's front lawn one Sunday afternoon looking luxuriously lazy, & contented, and not in the least "cut-here." Wasn't it a funny afternoon?! This was a very re-perking mail day: my pictures, letter from U. of A. Engineering frosh, letter from A-hem! I felt so high after all this that I let Mom wear my favorite (and only) car coat, & loaned Judy my heels. This last bit of generosity brought on a few pangs. - she looks so much better in them than I do. Barely thirteen, & she has legs like a chorus girl's, only better. sniffle, sniff, sniff. Ah well, she said stoically, let us change the subject. The "family" all went to a film - before going Mom slyly hid the chocolate chips, but this trickery was a disasterous move on her part because now the new pkg. of candied lemon peel (for cakes) is suddenly 1/3 empty. Telling me about the o-o so cute & fascinating little Japanese was a good move. Now I have something to lose sleep over! Talk about her quite a bit, please, so I can be anxious about the better half of the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" saw. Also, sprinkle this paragraph with much salt. This is something I read years & years ago, & remembered because it said something to me, & about me, & perhaps for me. (- glunk) (Whatever brought this on? Poor Frank Now she recites po'try to him.)
[from Mary Stolz I think?] October 25 A myschievous day in which teacher-annoyances were thought up, e.g. staring fixedly at Mrs. Lowe' hem (she scuttled off to check whether her slip was showing) Oct 27 Friday The coldness, a halo of heat around the battered old monster of a heater in the living room. & a house to myself brought out a domestic & very practical streak. Result - both cookie jars are filled, clothes are sudsed, hair likewise, in Co-op detergent. It is already Saturday morning, due to a long gab with Pop beside the heater about such enthralling things (really, they are; I want to write about them someday) as the Revolution, the famine in Russia, & all my eccentric old relatives." [end of letter excerpts] October 27 In there anything better in the world than to be warm, to have a red apple, to read a book such as "To Tell Your Love", and to cup in your hands warm thoughts of a dear person? - And to be young. I love him. Extremely pm, Sunday Oct.29 Since the horrible week when he didn't write me, I resolved not to mail a letter for him until the 24th of Oct. It was 21 days, three weeks exactly between letters, & his piled up! There were four this week, two on Saturday. It had the usual address, date, heading, signature, but all it said was "Remembers Cares You ...." This was the only one to make me feel even faintly repentant. I took it into the bedroom, laid my face on it, and was shaken by his - call it affection. If he comes at Christmas I must explain to him, tell him somehow not to like me too much. I've prayed that I won't ever hurt him - it is like a reversal of "To Tell Your Love." I cannot like him too much, I feel myself receding when he is possessive. I have too much to do & find & keep - my youth & my happiness first of all. If he endangers this I withdraw & run. "Dear, funny, nice, Frank The dream you had & the dream I had were too much alike - it is uncany, really it is, that we should dream the same dream. A few details did not jibe, but basically - 1. people - you, & me 2. scene - undefined & hazy 3. plot - in your version, X and then sobs, hysterics, tears. - in my version, first the sobs & hysterics & tears, & then an X that fixed it. When I woke up it seemed that it had been an almost violent dream - emotional, not really understood, a fantasy (perhaps). Strange." The dream was an upheaval - perhaps I've told it. I was stumbling from the red steps to the red truck. Frank was following. "Ellie!" he said (his voice was strangled & unreal, "Why do you have to walk that way." I burst into hysterical tears. We clawed our way into each other's arms and he kissed me frantically, draining all tears & feeling. Oct 29 "Moderately pm, Sunday The sunday school convention is all over. One interesting thing - my psychology correspondence teacher was there so I met him, & even stranger, he's turned out to be an old flame of Mom's. It has been interesting to wonder how it would have been had Mom married him. He's terribly conventional, unexciting, almost stuffy, but "nice." If he'd been my father I doubt I'd find myself very interesting. You probably wouldn't either (supposing, rashly, that you do ...) Evidently Mom got her revenge for naming me after Pop's old gal-fren'. My brother is Paul Edward - the old flame - you guessed it - is Paul Edward Oct 31 Blizzard. I am snug with a book smuggled from the teacher's room - "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" November 1 Cold, cold wind. Nov 1 Weds, study period Yesterday's Hallowe'en came with a howling, sleeting, freezing, raining, shrieking, snowing blizzard, as tho' all banshees and all other bezerk forms of the supernatural were on a drunk. ( - not that I really can believe in witches, but it would be nice to be able to. A long time ago I'd pretend to be an Elf) However - Inside it was warm & Paul's jack-o-lanterns glowed beautifully. Because of this and because I was busy with a purry, not-witchy type kitten & an apple & a book, no hobblegoblins bothered to step into the ring of light from my "rustic" lamp. Isn't mystic a nice word? Exitement yesterday took the form of a chimney fire - there was a dreadful roaring up the stove pipe & flames spurted out the top of it. Amid much smoke & extremely much drama Pop & Jim clambered onto the roof & put it out with salt & a bucket of water, then went back to pouring the footing with Mr. Siemens. Mom was left to clean the pipes. My valuables - blue suitcase, pink poodle, & a ragged stack of exercise books that make up my Journal - are heaped around & I've been admiring them. It was decided that the last item would amuse you a great deal. Horrible poetry in purple ink; intense, although unoriginal, prose; parts where a little 13 year old girl thought she knew all about things such as death & love & happiness; parts where she pretended to be a cynic; quite a few extatic paragraphs about some goon's curly long eyelashes. These parts especially would tickle your chortle-box - Extremely, extremely pm, November mmm 4 Salted peanuts, & two bags - a long letter - no other guy in the world has ever sent any girl two bags of salted peanuts. That makes you special & makes me feel special. But how funny! When I'm a skinny old maid spinster I'll think about the salted peanuts and giggle. Wunderbar! Wunderbar you, that is. Nobody writes letters as interestingly as you, and certainly not as frustratingly. It took a long time, first of all, to discover which side came after which because they weren't numbered. Then, there was a sentence I never did find the end to. It began, "Judy mentioned she has a classmate who is your - ..." Pray tell, what comes after that? Your letters are fun to read because you have a tricky habit of forgetting periods & such-like unnecessary punctuation. Please - I'm not complaining. It is fun. Sometimes there are three or five sentences all fused into one long one & they have all kinds of different meanings depending on where I stick the mental period. Then I pick out the meaning I like best. & enjoy everything. Sometimes, also, it takes three readings to catch on to what you mean by something & some I never catch on to at all. This of course adds much! Nov 5 Sunday afternoon A song on the radio just now has dragged me off on a "sentimental journey." - it's the weird tune called "Michael" that you caught me humming too often & that sent me off into a semi-trance everytime a fragment of it was heard. The sentimental journey was to the afternoon in July when we were on our way to Stanley Park. When we stopped at a fruit stand for some cherries a faint bit of that song drifted into the truck from somebody's radio. For a moment I felt, now, that I was back in the red truck wearing the bluish, greenish dress, waiting for you to come back. Why would I be shocked at the thinness of your face? I get visions of you, gaunt & hollow-eyed with a quarter inch of stubble; this gives me a temporary feeling of motherliness & I'm tempted to order you to get nine hours of sleep every night & not drink so much coffee & not be so relentlessly determined ... Christmas - I guess we'll see what happens. Last letter I didn't know whether I wanted to squelch or encourage. You've brain-washed me. I want to encourage. But I don't know whether I should want to encourage. For selfish reasons I'd say "please do," just to prevent the kind of Christmas I had last year - spent Christmas Eve & Morning feeling very miserable & lonesome, & went to church with red eyes (nuts!) It took until the middle of the sermon, which I didn't hear a word of, to grip myself by the collar, shake well, & say "grow up." With you here there wouldn't be any question of this happening again. But if I was going to be noble I'd say "please don't" You'd have a better Christmas at home. Really, you would. Even if you don't see me at Christmas, Easter, summer, or ever - why, you've still got your comfortable philosophy of "what will be, will be" - (que cerra, cerra) The 84 on your English composition paper does not surprize me. Your "composition" has always been fine. After church We were having what Mr. Block calls an "opportunity for testimonies" in church this evening. There was a dead silence. Everybody sat ridgidly waiting for someone else to say something. I observed all this from the alto bench. Silence - and then, a shrill, tinny clattering that carried right to the back corner. Everybody jerked - their heads swivelled toward the sound - to the front platform - to the choir section - to the alto bench - to my purse. My ALARM CLOCK was ringing!!! A dive silenced it but the effects were sensational. The mens' bench behind me quaked from suppressed guffaws. The sopranos giggled. Paul smirked at me knowingly. Father looked intensely embarrassed. I don't know how it happened or what set it off, but the timing was perfect. It broke the ice - testimonies began popping up left & right. Mom rebuked me afterwards for not feeling embarrassed enough. "As soon as I heard it," she said, "I thought to myself, now she'll go home & write Frank about it, & write it up in her diary, and not be properly embarrassed at all, just as if it had been a big adventure." She shook her head at me disapprovingly but couldn't stifle a chuckle. Now you can telepathically chide me but I shall be unrepentant. It was an adventure, so there." November 8 A cold was an excuse to stay home and I read Mom history of Fr. revolution. Buck, Jim, Mr. Seimens and Dad are building the forms for the basement of our "someday" house. November 13 Quite a few men to begin pouring cement. Nov 20 Monday There was a party, on Saturday night. There was a polished floor, blue smoke & beat music curling through Schwembler's living room, kitchen, hall. There were "mixed drinks" - Pepsi & 2-Way. There was chocolate cake. There were chocolates, 2 kangaroos called "Mike" & "Spike" with pink ribbons around their necks that I gave Sharon & Myrtle. There was Curry Hofflin, tall, slim, indolent. (He and Glenda walsed, whether the beat was bop, jive, or twist.) The big light in the living room was turned off and only a little red light sifted through the lamp shade on the phonograph. They jived; I watched, enjoyed watching, chortling at Marianne's abandoned, attempted sexy way of jiving. The shottische is the funniest thing around. They hop around a room, stop, clap their hands, point to their heads, waggle their hips, and then continue. The bunny-hop is cute. There were Gary & Dorothy nuzzling in the dark kitchen, serene and close, reminding me of Frank and a certain serenity I've known too. There was Gerald, laughing, drumming on the waste basket, teasing, giving me one of his impulsive hugs, grinning always. There was Ingrid, pretty & strangely silent, well dressed, shy, learning to jive with Ray (Ray was proud, silent too, fingering her long hair shyly behind her back) There were come & go moods. While they were dancing I felt awkward, in a way. But later, when Fay Olsen went home & some of the grade ten boys, the party improved. I was an alien and surprized to be accepted at all, but I had a good time, truly. My skirt was blue, worn with the white blouse & jangly long necklace, & my heels, & run-less nylons. (Myrtle said, "You're so pretty tonight. When I came in you were standing over there by the lamp & you were a knock-out" - this was pure gush of course, but she's a good kid anyway. Also she said, "Are you having a good time? I have a feeling you're not." She was pretty herself, and sophisticated looking. Got home at nearly 1 a.m. Rode with Ray & Ingrid. He forgot to open doors but he's a nice feller. It is exhilerating to come home a.m., not p.m. for a change. Had to write F a note as soon as I got home. Must go talk to him now. November 20 The man who lives with my mother is a bitter, dizzy, unreasonable old neurotic. November 22 During a difficult physics test it was amusing to hear Gerald behind me, swearing under his breath. November 25 "Not as a Stranger" gives me queer feelings. November 26 By some miraculously lucky chances got out of church both morning and evening and had a good time writing my article and fighting with J. November 27 I feel a glowing tickling exitement. I don't need opium. I don't need a love affair. I'm young. I'm suddenly terribly happy. There is no reason I should be. It is just something that bubbles like a gueyser from some strange hidden place inside. I am sitting here, looking as I always do, not paying attention to physics as I never do. Nothing is changed. But suddenly I feel bouyant. Perhaps not suddenly. Perhaps this is just a crisis. Yesterday, and before I have had sudden feelings of well-being, sudden consciousnesses of being young & abnormally happy. Why? When I felt it now, the situation was nothing abnormal. On the desk before me is my open physics book, my notebook, my blue sweatered elbow. There is a Life Magazine, flipped open to a spectacular movie review about "West Side Story." I thought fleetingly & vaguely of Frank (I think I would feel the same way if I had broken up with him) and then queerly the glow spread & I sat smiling to myself at the wonder of it. Evening - excerpt from letter Kitchen table with a dim lamp, alone. Everyone else in the living room. Cher Frank; They made an agreement, once, to write only when they felt like it. Strangely, the "only when" has become an "almost always." Queer. Why do you s'pose this is? Need for self expression? Need for companionship? Boredom? No, not boredom. I'm just not bored. That was what I was going to tell you about. A peculiar thing happened this morning. You can maybe tell me why. At 11 a.m. this morning, while sitting in school, everything was normal. It was physics class. I never pay attention. Ye olde mind was wandering, but there wasn't anything special on it. Suddenly I had an intense feeling of exitement, a glow, almost. It just swept in, stayed about half an hour while I wondered about it & smiled wildly to myself, and then melted away in the noon-hour noise. There was absolutely nothing that could have brought it on, and yet it seemed a climax to something, perhaps to the vague feeling of well-being that's been hovering around. (This feeling is perhaps only an awareness of the fact that I am always so peculiarly happy, even when under the glooms, there is a gladness of being capable of being sad, just a gladness of being. Do you know what I mean?) There must be a psychological basis, something to do with life on a subconscious level, perhaps an altogether different life than the conscious one. It is, horrible cliché, "food for thought." Accept my most humble apologies. (humble? Har) It is utmostly bad taste to talk ceaselessly of oneself in a letter. We will talk about you next time, yes? It is a promise. And tell me what you make of the topside harangue. You may as well know it. It's nice to know you." *** I write this letter with, not a vague uneasiness, with abandon, but still a fear that it will make him love me more than he does now. Even when I write an utterly goony letter this feeling pops in. Remember Reiner? I used to think anything I said would make him love me less or not at all. And now I am afraid anything I say to Frank will make him love me too much. - even the senseless letter I wrote last week. Excerpts:
Please don't choke (deposit all garbage in government containers. Don't be a litterbug) The horrible thing has been sitting on my brain. I just wanted to get rid of it! P.S. Do you know how to kiss in French. Paul wants to know but I couldn't tell him, so I'll ask you. Do you? Judy thinks that if you come for Christmas she'll go for walks with us, only if it's too dark or too cold or if we want to tramp a long ways, she won't. Also she may sit in the kitchen when we visit after supper with her book to keep her eye on us & make sure you don't get fresh. She'll be extremely bored, will she not?" This was stated blandly, a big invention on my part because it was interesting. She squalled a bit, until I had to add this P.S. for her. "What I said about what Judy is going to do is a big fat lie. She bit me and threatened to take off my big toe when I told her about telling you. The part about "big fat lie" was dictated to me." Ellie X November 28 Inspiration - by Seventeen magazine. $5. I took the leap and subscribed today. Making Christmas orders - panties and bra (lace, satin, foam rubber) for Mom, skirt (my size!) for Judy. November 29 Minus forty-four degrees. Last night sleeping was a very complex undertaking - old corderoy jumper, tight, queer things, and a cold night. December 1 Mr S. sez my editorial was very professional - people whom he'd showed it say, are you sure she wrote it? Monday 4 of Dec. More letter - - living room floor beside the heater, surrounded by books & cushions & cats After last week's cold today's sunshine is especailly glittery and especially warm. It's a good day. It would be a good day to go for a walk, but - I just need someone to tell me, "c'mon, we're going walking," but as it is I'll just stay right here by my fire, thank you. Mom & Dad & everybody went to Siemenses for dinner. I was invited too, but not wanting to burden Bernie with having to entertain me, (what could be worse?) I stayed home & kept the radio company. Later They just came home. Judy kept her ears open, profitably, all the while they were there. Larry & Leona's Christmas visit was discussed - also yours. Mrs Siemens is understandibly getting ideas. ("Coming at Christmas, you know, and so soon after he came at Thanksgiving.") She isn't the only one either, & after Chirstmas there'll be even more. It'll be fun to giggle up our sleeves at them all, won't it? Headlights moving past in the dark are alluring. You see only lights - the splotchy headlights coming and the red taillights going. If you didn't know that cars, people, were attached to the lights, or if you could somehow forget it, they would be only lights & streaks of light moving in blackness. It's interesting to separate what you know something to be from what it looks like. What if things really were what they looked to be? - places where shadows are really would be dark, lights on the road would be only lights, and the Hawaiian music on the radio would be only sound coming from a square box, not connected to the microphone on a beach beside palm trees at all. I take back everything said about Daddy last time. He's really very nice. On Friday, when we got up late to have breakfast & too late to make lunch the last I heard while disappearing out the door was Pop saying "Doesn't she take lunch? Oh mein yammer!" and then ran all the way down the driveway after me with 30¢ for dinner at the café, this with jacket & boots flapping in 40 below. (only 10¢ was spent on a chocolate bar & the rest was saved. It's nearly Christmas.)" (After long monologue about the hospital) The familiar homesickness has caught up. It's as poignant as your homesickness for the bent-pin fishing days. Isn't it nice to have something you can be homesick for? People, too. It's very nice to have people in the same world with you whom you can like well enough to miss. - E December 10 A cool minus forty or 50 degrees cooperatively kept us at home all Sunday to listen to radio, read, work on the article I'm pretentiously writing for Family Herald. Dec 11, evening Possibly cher Frank; 2 remarkably thick letters have arrived this week. It would be nearly impossible to forget you under such a bombardment. Every new one in the mail brings the inevitable and collective sigh from Family, Inc. Speaking of neighbours, the dear lady from across the road was riding home with Mom a few nights ago. Seeing a light at our place from a distance - it was extremely late - she sez, "Ah that'll be Ellie, sitting up and writing letters!" She was informed next morning that it had not been Ellie - Ellie's alibi was very good - she had been miles deep in sleep at the time. But you see what smart neighbours we have. A quote from you - "Of course you wouldn't freeze if you chatted out in the car with me." H-m-m-m, she said speculatively. Why not, Frank? Strange how your family & mine both have such deadly teasing ideas. And isn't it funny about little sisters' look-in-your-eye intuition? Tell me something, when you get "that look" that Marg so adroitly interprets for you, what are you thinking of? (Don't say "you." I mean specifically. Past, present, or future? Chemical analysis? Remember when's? Mind-pictures? If it is mind pictures - most thinking is, says my Psych text - what are the mental pictures of? Faces? Things? And are they detailed or fuzzy? I want to know.) I'm pleased you tho't I was a flirt when you began thinking, punct. 'N fact, there isn't any impression you could have had that is less disappointing. A flirt? Maybe you were more right then than now. ("teasy, capricious, in love with life, giving as much as you love it, always receiving more than you expect" - that's what he said. It makes me humble) Probably. Sometimes I think so. But flirting - it's almost a nasty word, isn't it? - is something you can do with conscience. (The principles of flirting: #1. Never flirt with someone who can't take care of himself. #2. Don't pretend not to be a flirt if you are one. No hyppocracy. #3. Flirt only for fun - not for gold-digger diggings) But a flirt, me? Nice idea. Flattering. Too bad you're immune to them. But maybe you aren't - we'll see at Christmas. I could go on a long time, translating telepathy wave lengths too short to reach B.C. into English for you, thinking out loud. Sleep is such a waste of time, yawn. Such - a - wa-s-s-te of z-z-z-z. Friday night My impression of you has been modified not drastically changed. I thought, "here's an Older Man - urbane, casual; his approach is something to be wary of it could be all line and quite practiced. However, it's summer. I don't mind going for a ride." It turned out, tho', that this Older Man was not so terribly Older, and still human, though urbane. December 14 A long choir practice, the last of this year was spent exaustively on "God so Loved the World" for tomorrow night. Dec 16 Saturday night Nearly 40 below again. The prairie chickens will be "bundling" furiously to keep warm, po'r things. Do you think it will help or will we find frozen small bodies in the morning? [I thought of the way he held me that windy cold night when I wrote this, the way he laughed so warmly when he said "We'll have to make like the prairie chickens to keep warm."] We've decided that if you come for Christmas we'll have to roll your sleeping bag out under the Christmas tree & you can sleep with pine needles raining down on your face. I just looked at the calendar - time has been sneaking by on little cat feet (apologies, Carl Sandberg) I asked Mom whether she thought it would be possible to get mistletoe in Grande Prairie. She raised her eyebrows, grinned, and said, "I think Frank would take you up on that!" I said, Oh no, you'd never do such a thing, I should know. But she made a smacking sound & we both roared because it was very funny. Sunday the weather was agreeable today - cold enough to keep us home from church. Mom & Dad are sitting by the fire smooching & whispering, which inexplicably reminded me of you & prompted me to peek in for a bare moment & say hi on a cold Sunday night in December. "Hi!" (Sweetly) I wonder if you've thought, today, that it is 2 weeks exactly. Just a skimpy two weeks, until Chirstmas Eve. Too bad there isn't going to be time to wait for it. Remember how long every day was before Christmas when we were young & blissfully foolish? (Altho I still am - young, and blissfully foolish. But you're not. - E Monday, December 11 In the dim lamplight tonight, on Fred's clacking typewriter, Daddy and I made a masterpiece. A business letter. It was typed twice, polished and done without errors, slowly. Father's phraseology was gone over, made more elegant, by I. Then we both looked it over, were proud. It was folded in the correct way, signed carefully, placed in an envelope with a meticulously written address, and admired by both of us. Here am I, daughter teaching Father his grammer. His spelling was not even terribly good. But we wrote a letter, both of us, that Mr Highhatic's snooty secretary would envy (?) Dec 12, Tuesday Cher (no-doubt-about-it) Frank: I must be at least nominally careful to stay on Frank's good side - his letters are too good to miss. Where on earth could I find another guy with such bizarre ideas as a letter enclosed with 3 sticks of Dentyne and a Peppermint flavored whatchamacallit? The peppermint has been eaten & enjoyed; a stick of gum is being chewed in your honour. Today's trip to town in the big International with Mom, Dad, Paul, and half a ton of coal was a pre-Christmas bonus and great fun. Many unsuspecting people got looked over, classified. There was one bit of irony - a shapelesss scraggly haired old lady in the lingerie department fingering black lace unmentionables 15 sizes too small for her. Another interesting incident - in the IGA, I was looking over a pile of fuzzy poodles. An extremely interesting young man with the beginnings of a beard & a fascinating little European accent looked up & said, "Nice, aren't they?" "Very." He side-stepped closer, lowered his voice confidentially, and suggested, "Why don't you ask your boy friend to get you one?" "He already has," I said & went on my merry way chuckling. Do you know, it's very pleasant to spend money? I've never been able to before. Altho' it was cold, shovey, noisy, town was great. Because: there were endless streams of people to watch & study & wonder about; it's nearly Christmas, and town is always special then; today was a 2-year anniversary of an adventure I'll tell you about sometime. [the time I read a half-chapter on C.F.G.P., Dec 12, 1959] It was even lots of fun being oogled! (Mom says nobody oogles her. Is there an age limit or something?) Sorry, Frank, my Christmas schedule is booked to the eyebrows. I won't possibly have time to see you. Oh, wait! I will be free, let's see - Saturday, 23rd, Sunday, Monday, Tues, Wed., Thurs, Fri, etc Your Friday night offer of a ride with you ("... a chunk of waterfront, Broadway and Hastings, seaport with lights reflecting ...") would have been accepted
In case you're stumped, (b) and (c) are correct. No electric fences, eh? Ha! We'd see about that! At the supper table while I was reading your letter after getting the mail on the way home from G.P, Mom mentioned something about your coming for Christmas, maybe. Pop looked up abruptly. "What kind of friendship did you say that was?" he asked me, one eyebrow hovering like a helicopter. "Platonic," sez I, without looking up. His come-back was pretty fast. "M-hm," he said, "Isn't 800 miles pretty far to come for a platonic friend?" Now how was I s'posed to squelch that? Friday, 15th of December You won't be expecting a letter - but this much is written so you may as well get it. S'posing you leave for La Glace too soon - it wouldn't get there in time if I sent it Tuesday so I'll mail it tonight. A most interesting surprise came in the mail today - 'Member I told you about Harold Remple, ex-Clearbrookite, now undergrad at U. of Sask in Regina? Got a Christmas card (very nice) and note from him. The address was screwy. ["Miss Elly Epp, Valhala Centre, Alberta." Underneath was scribbled in red, "try La Glace"] but it got here. I'd like to write him a note to say thank you for remembering me. Would it be in bad taste? If you get here before it's mailed you can help me compose it & make sure I don't say anything to scare him. Okay? Tonight is La Glace's traditional Community Christmas concert. The schools and all the churches have a part in it. Our church has a fairly difficult piece, "God So Loved the World." We sounded terrible at the rehearsal last night, but ... News - Christmas Eve is open for visiting with F (distant relative. May be coming for Christmas. He's quite a guy. You must meet him.) The Sunday School program traditionally on Christmas Eve will be on Friday (22nd) which is also the night of our school Christmas party. (Guess which one good little Ellie will be at! Phooey) Mrs. Seimens hopes Larry & Leona will be there for the program but it's not likely. - That's what was in a little short letter mailed in the snowy dark before tonight's program. Tonight I feel a tremendous urge to write to Frank but no good now. It gets closer to Christmas and (perhaps, she inserted cautiously) seeing a friend I like dearly enough to want him near for even the purpose of talking, not only snuggling in the cold, altho' that's in it too, very much so. I'd like to tell him about tonight - I wonder if he'd guess that my eyes searched the squirming crowd for him, or for something, while I stood against the wall in my blue suit, holding the camera I took care of for the Yearbook. I felt abstractly, distantly joyous tonight. The feeling was accented when: - watching Janeen's face in front of me, lovely & expressing some of what I felt, shadowed, soft & pink, lovely - shoving my eyes over the rows of heads, to the boys in the back - Bruce, Bernie, Lloyd, Garry, the rest - and the housewifely faces between and the children's faces - while watching Lloyd's (Alstad) hands on the piano, making spidery runs & yet struggling to fit in with Mr. Lima's voice in "How Great the Art." - while smiling across the rows of heads at Wayne & receiving in return his open wide smile - watching Hilda's lovely mobile face & hands as she worshipped and becconed, an angel in a pagent, a solemn little boy angel with curls, an angel whose face was always on the edge of tears or a smile, an angel with a tremulous lovely face - watching the grade 3 pagent, the blond etherial angels, the solemn Joseph with his bow-tie peeking from under his blankets, the shepherds in bathrobes, the big-eared, be-goggled wise man December 16 Today's mailday brought my order - such an anguishing hilarity of substitutions! December 18 Suddenly its nearly 50 below again and time is spent busily sewing Christmas clothes, writing paragraphs in school. Mr. Shatts - "your writing is so alive!" There are always moments when he is further away - spiritually, or rather mentally ( - sounds better) and physically, as now. He is at the table in the spreading ring of lamplight & I can see, from my place in the big chair near the heater, the top of his head, dishevelled, curly, young, bent over the jigsaw puzzle. It is outlined against his blue sweater. His eyes scan the table without consciousness of me (for a while only. This I know.) His ears, luckily are small & flat against his small head. He is not as peculiar looking as I thought. The jigsaw puzzle is not alone with him either - Mom & Dad are with him & they talk to him as one of us, only a nicer one, whom they like. Now suddenly he gets up, walks into the kitchen, from a pocket takes a paper-bound. He has shown it to me before - "Introduction to Jung's Psychology." He wants to forget it here. Now he is bent over it; his brown hands hold it loosely. I do like his hands. I'll talk about them some day. Later. He had a secret. I used means to convince him to tell me - he wanted to get it off his chest, he had doubts, but he told me, standing by the cupboard soberly, his eyes hurt but still hopeful. I wish he hadn't. He got there after many side-trackings and my own hurt grew & comprehended his. At Seimens' he had been silent. I thought he was being unsociable; I was provoked. We went into the living room just a bit after lunch (we sat at the table, he across from me, and we touched feet warmly under the table - it was like holding hands under the table cloth) When they teased him he didn't crack a smile & I wondered. The conversation had been gay, wacky. I enjoyed it. But when we were alone I asked him, "What's been bugging you Frank?" And he said, nothing, he was just tired. But across the table in the kitchen we sat with our heads close. I could see he wanted to tell me. But he took a long time. First I had to promise to tell neither parents or syblings, & he asked me to promise to take it with a grain of salt. And then he began to talk slowly. "I went upstairs. First Larry started, & I thought, what have I done to deserve this? And then Bernie joined in. They said, why wouldn't the old Ford start, anyway? He never takes them anywhere. They're always bumming rides off Sieberts or us." [the reason for their irk was that we'd been invited to dinner there today, couldn't make it, & came a lot later in Abe Siebert's new Wee W. Unknown to us, they'd been intending to go to Nick Seiburt's this while] So I muttered brave words to him & he didn't know how much it hurt me. "It's a good thing that we aren't dependent on what other people think of us." "You didn't have to be bothered by that, Frank." But as I stood beside him my teeth were biting my lip under my calm hands to keep back tears, and when Frank left, matter-of-factly this time, I rushed into my room & felt tears. There was a new feeling too, that of standing on the edge of adulthood faced with an abyss of bitterness & suspician it will be so easy for me to fall into. And then the tears were not for a soft hurt but for a hard terror that I will not be able to take it, that I will become as my father is, incapable of happiness, and incapable of giving happiness - bitter, suspicious, wary. Mother came in & asked hesitently if there were something wrong. I had to tell her a bit, but kept my promise. I wanted to tell her for the same reason Frank wanted to tell me - he wanted to share his hurt, & I wanted to share mine. It is a selfish wanting, tho', and was even selfish of Frank to tell me, but I'm glad he did, I think he felt better. "It's true tho', it's perfectly true," I said to Frank. "Maybe, but I think of it this way - I've got faults, he's got faults - why talk about 'em?" True. I wonder about this Frank and I think of wild things - what it would be like to be married to him. I like him more than ever for some of the new nicenesses I've discovered. I wonder if he will stay that way; I think of how he talks of his relatives - they seem to have a tendency toward being moody, terribly intense, & morose. "Judy & I have a good chance to become that way" - (a few aunts drink, 2 are prostitutes, uncles go to pieces after the war that sort of thing) Yes, he does have every chance to become something like Daddy - and he has one chance to become what his father is - a happy useful person. And if he does find his way to the good end, he will be the father of children who again have every chance to become an alcoholic or a prostitute, and the mother of his children will be either miserable with him or very happy sharing everything with him & learning to know his complexities. It is a risk someone is not likely to pause before taking because he is what he is - loyal, compelling, tender, strong, and always very dangerous. A risk and a gamble. But a risk someone will not hesitate at. I am afraid and yet glad, that the risk may be mine. But what will be - will be. We'll see what happens. Our Christmas Day, 1961, has been more peculiar than any. Frank's voice was there, in the next room, when I woke. I felt light & gay, and I bounced on our springs while I got dressed. When I slipped into a carol along with the radio his voice called out "Hey, turn up the volume!" I got into my new pink outfit with a Christmas-present green ban-lon sweater & his lucky silver dollar. I felt dressed, gay then, & cleaned up laughingly & then bounced into the kitchen. "Morning Mom!" "Morning Rudy!" Frank was tying his shoes. "Morning Frank!" I could see he liked the way I looked. We had breakfast together - coffee, brown bread with butter and gemeinschaft. I did the dishes. He watched. Then I cleaned up, & we sat at the table to talk & read some stuff out of his books, poetry mainly. Even "How Do I Love Thee"! and I parodied with my voice the sonnet about "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" and "Trouble heaven with my bootless cries." We read Early English & Scottish Ballads, some Elizabethan sonnets - "Who is Sylvia?" "Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure." To Celia - "Drink to me only with thine eyes Leave a kiss but in the cup and I'll not ask for wine." Seventeenth Century poetry, "Shall I, wasting in despair, Die, because a woman's fair?" "For if she be not for me, What care I for whom she be?" - a man after my own heart! "I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more." Gray's "Elegy" which has bored me before, but not when watching Frank read it, " - short and simple annals of the poor," "the paths of glory lead but to the grave." The Romantic Age - "Ode to a Grecian Urn" - "More happy love, more happy, happy love! Forever warm & still to be enjoyed, Forever panting and forever young." "I don't go much for this happy, happy business," says Frank & I laughed with him. The Victorian Age - Tennyson - "Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold & bramble dew, Steel-true, and blade-straight." Kipling's "L'Envoi." Modern. Frank's beloved Houseman - "Loveliest of Trees," "When I was One-and-twenty:" "When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say Give crowns & pounds & guineas But not your heart away Give pearls away, and rubies, but keep your fancy free. But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was two-and-twenty I heard him say again, the heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue, And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true." As he read this there was humor in his warm voice, and a meaning too, that is personal enough, especially on "but I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me." The mood switched back & forth as it always does when we come together. We had a gay breakfast, a sentimental midmorning, and then at noon tension grew - we didn't know where we'd be for dinner, the whole family grew restless. I sat on the couch beside Frank. He was distant, moody. Pat Boone sang carols with bubble & bounce. I was caught in the sticky webs of gloom all around him (This would not happen if I were not close to him, you see) "Pat Boone shouldn't sing carols," he said. I got up, turned off the radio, & went out. I stayed in my room for a while. I brushed my teeth while he was outside, & then put on some lipstick. I was standing by the cupboard when he came in. "Something's been added, I think," he said, and moved in. I moved out, tho', and went into the living room to sit in a chair by the window and stare out. My skirt was very pink. He followed me and his face came closer to mine. "I think you're trying to get gloomy," he said. I didn't say anything. I was. It was partly a ruse tho' - when he's blue I automatically become blue too, but I've found that the best way to cheer him up is to make him cheer me up. How funny. But when he cheers me up I just melt into gladness & light again. But it is always either very happy or very sad. Any emotional stability I ever had goes all kaffoo-ee when Frank is within ten miles of me; perhaps a hundred miles is more accurate. Tuesday, December 27 Now there is today left, & tomorrow & on Friday he is going to go back to B.C. He has not been here yet today, but will come later this afternoon, perhaps at 4 as he did yesterday. I waited for him a long time; Mom and Dad went to visit someone, & left Paul sick, Rudy lonesome, & Judy reading. I had orders to feed the cattle, but wanted to wait until he came, to go with him. But it got later, so I went alone, (armed with a new paint & hair job) The sun was amazing & cheerful & bright, especially because the air was so cold & so snappy. Bales & bundles were soon thrown down to the steamy backed cows. My hands got numb from the metal handled fork, and I was glad to hurry away from the cold & down to the warm sunshine in the bottom barn. Steam had frosted onto dangling straws, to make crystal chandliers. Sunshine landing on - of all things - a lump of manure - made it something throbbing with color, and lovely. I hezitated only a split second to look at it tho'. Because I missed Frank I skipped up the hill to the shack, looked around, and skipped back. I saw him then, running around the bush toward me, still a long ways away, and I was glad. We walked back slowly to the house, not touching. Touching came later. In the corner by the stove it was a tentative and tender touching. Sitting by the table, around a corner from each other, it was less tentative, and yet still tender. The lamp was dim & smokey. We talked, while tête-à-tête, about ordinary things & special breathless things. "Why did you tell me about it - did you expect me to be bothered?" referring to telling me about a date he had, ('member?) "No - I don't know why. I don't know." There was some goofiness - He hugged me hard. "I just thought of a good adjective for me now" I said. "What?" "Crumpled up like tissue paper." "Pretty good." "If I was going to pun I'd say it was made up under pressure." It was pleasant to watch the laugh spreading over his face. Time went very quickly when we just sat, having fellowship of a sort, storing closeness for lonely evenings later on. Our faces are comfortable together, and our hands fit into each other's hands as they always have. His arms are strong. It is sweet to be with him. Rudy was feeling lonely. He leaned his face in his hands, and propped his elbows on the table to stare at us solemnly, trying to be friends. We talked on. He'd interrupt us. "What's funny about that?" he'd ask wistfully when we laughed. He'd roar his helicopter, and the blue light would flash at us. "Are you still bothered?" I asked him. "No," and he smiled. "Good. I'm not either." "You never were." "I was, too. I dampened a whole handkerchief last night." "You did?!" "Mm-hmm." "I shouldn't have told you - " And I asked him about some other things too. There was one question rather difficult to ask. I snuggled (confession) just a bit while asking. "Tell me about the girl you liked when you were nineteen, Frank. Just curiosity." Reactions were a bafflement of my "unnatural curiosity" - silences, morose starings-into-space, and a few dribbles of information. "You ask some questions. I don't want to just blunder around. It's an unfair question. name - Margaret Anne Chambers, 5-3 1/2, 130 pounds, brunette, glasses, lives in Abbotsford. "Taking teacher training at U.B.C. - University is pretty tough sledding, I hear." "U.B.C. - that rings a bell!" "Oh? I thought you'd have thought of that long ago - " (referring to a letter from a U.B.C. undergraduate) "Yes, but what's she like?" "I told you." "I mean personality." "Oh - just, I never heard her say a bad word about anyone. It was a mistake, that's all." Margaret Anne Chambers, you don't sound like a menace. I wonder if you were as much to him as I am now? You sound a bit clumsy, a bit heavy. Not too beguiling. But his tribute to you shames me. He will never be able to say that of me. of course, you had two legs, medium pretty - does he think of you often? And when he does, is it wistfully? But in spite of the questions I want to ask, I do not resent you. Maybe he learned things from you that I love in him now. He loves me now & if he still loves a bit of you I shall not mind that. Even if he should go back to his first love - I do not think he will - I shall not dislike you, Margaret Anne; you would be nicer to him than I, he could love you better perhaps. He was nineteen and you were eighteen. Young. Now he is older. I wonder, do you still love him a lot? At all? You have something of him still, as I will have something of him when he is gone from me. I could not resent you, Margaret Anne. This terse conversation was followed by a flurry as we hustled off to Sieberts to see if we could get a ride with them. He convinced me to go along with him. It was cold, deathly cold. The snow just around the corner was deepish so he threatened to carry me. He bent over, there was a slip, and we both nearly landed in the snowbanks. But hoisted I was, & set onto the road. But one of my boots was full of snow. He had to hang on to me & shake it out, all at once, and then put it back on my cold foot. This accomplished, we ran away to Sieberts, ran back, dressed hurriedly, (war paint, teeth brushed) and ran back to Sieberts. He had a checker game with Harold, and another. And lost both! (Ha! I thought) At Siemenses, Leona cried, "Judy! You came!" and said a casual "Hi," to me. I thought nothing of it. Bob was there in a blue shag & cowboy boots & looked very handsome ("He's got an older brother who's terribly handsome - I had a crush on him 2 years until he got married" I told Frank. "If he was handsome, what's wrong with this guy?" said he. Henry & Lawrence were there. Allan & Harold were. Lorraine & Alvina. Verna ("that blue girl - is she terribly nervous or does she do that to attract attention?") Bernie, Larry & Leona, Melita in black velvet. We played some games - the worst of which were 1. "electric current," when I had to hold hands with Bernie and Harold, (this was not unpleasant) 2. passing oranges with your neck - horrors! George and Harold, and 3. "wink" - this was interesting. I had a lovely time escaping Frank, (who gallantly rescued Lorraine from George) & winking at Bernie, Bob, others. While playing "upset the fruit basket" to break up the sex segregation, there were many flying arms & legs, some of them mine. We were given names of fruits - "strawberry" was the one Leona gave me. When Frank came over she said to him "You can be a strawberry too, since you like 'em so much!" Somebody shouted "strawberries and peaches." Frank & I both lept for each other's chairs crashing into an accidental mid-air clinch, flopped back into the chairs. This happened again. The next time I got to a seat & Frank came crashing down on top of me. My tongue was bitten but it was fun anyway. One game was fun - "auma shwauta kauta," poor black pussy-cat, to be said without laughing. While sharing a chair he got morose. "Are you getting tired, Frank?" I asked him. "I'd give anything to have a five-minute talk right now with either Marvin or George - they say you can count on one hand all the friends you make in your lifetime. I doubt that I'll fill up all of one hand Marvin will be trying to get his redhead out, or maybe back in the bush. George won't be playing with marbles " And I thought, Frank I wish I could be a friend of yours. But I'm a girl, & it is different with them. You are my friend but I wouldn't count you on the hand I count Janeen on. I can understand you. But the evening ended. Frank said, "Thank you for a nice evening. You took the rough edges off it for me." December 27 Judy and I had a rare tiff. Thursday, 28th He strode in yesterday at lunchtime, straight from the cold outdoors, happy, smiling, dear. He talked to me in the living room. My red "journal" book was there. He picked it up, but it was hurriedly put away. "Hey, will that thing to me when you die, eh?" After lunch when Auntie & Uncle were gone we sat side by side on the cupboard to visit. The lamp was dim-ish, so we had to be jumping off continually to pump it up. Paul went to bed, and because the light fell on his face we had to keep the door shut. "What a blessing Paul is!" Frank quipped. So we had the kitchen to ourselves and had a good talk. He smiled often, and in a special way. We talked about: - Giving away the bride. "Nobody's going to give me away, nobody owns enough of me to give me away." "Hey, I thought you were going to be a spinster." "Oh, I am - I just have to decide that sort of thing in case of emergency!" - Songs. We both like all the same ones! Uncanny. "I'm crazy about 'The Gypsy Rover" he said. We all are too! "Green Door." "The Wayward Wind." "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." - A secret he had - about something he noticed about me at the party. I tried to wheedle it out of him - all kinds of tricks were tried. Then I pulled out my last one "Okay, you don't have to tell me," I said, but forgot to stay sober & sweet. He laughed. "Ah - you've tried that trick before and it worked!" But he did finally tell me - a small matter of a laugh. "You schemer!" he exclaimed. "But you're a likeable schemer," he said and gave me one of his joyous hugs which was cut off abruptly when Danny walked into the door. - I teased him about his age - "You are terribly old. Ancient. Soon you'll have wrinkles & white hair. You grandfather." "Hey, that's not fair!" he protested. It's true. He's a whole 5 years older than I, and sometimes he seems adult and distant. Yet we have such rapport, this demi-adult & I. Perhaps I am a demi-adult too. We sat on the cupboard, he and I, while I teased him. I was handy for squeezes (because of teases) We had fun. Dec 28, evening - Dec 29 morning Laughter & closeness in the dim kitchen with Paul. Secret jokes. Terseness and unsureness. For a moment, anger. Often, near tears. More often, smiles. "I thought it over yesterday and made some deductions. If you'd grown up in East Aldergrove I'd have thought you were just too smart for me." I felt the familiar anger at this, and a quick fear that, as my handicap has made him love me more, my strong-point will make him love me less. "You fooled me about that, & only about that. I thought you were just average. Your report card should have tipped me off but it didn't. But I read your paragraphs & I've been levering information out of Siemenses." Dismayed, I hovered around the table where he did jig-saws, wandered, wriggled, stared outside. "Look at how blue it is outside, Frank." "It's getting dark." I walked into the kitchen, sat on the table, & stared out with my chin on my fists, my elbows on my knees. There was a strip of yellow along the sky, brushed by black tree-tips; a clothes line and a cement mixer were in the foreground. "That'd make a good modern art picture. Take away the trees, cube the cement mixer, cube the sunset. Do you often do this? Sit and look at the sunset?" "No." "Are you reflecting then?" "What is a reflection?" "It's when you see things bounced off the past." "No, it's not a reflection then." "What?" "A half-baked sort of introspection, I guess. It's depressing." "Oh? That's what I thought was happening to you." "Sometimes it's lots of fun to be depressed." "I know exactly what you mean. I enjoy being depressed too; the more I enjoy it the deeper I go; the bluer I get, the more I like it." "My cure is company." (You're a good cheerer-upper, I thought - and a warm warmer-upper.) We sat by the window a long time & loved each other with joy and a certain gayness, even. Perhaps our togethernesses are so especially poignant because we are always saying goodbye, and some sort of last moment is always looming. My pen grows heavy. I love him Dreadfully & I will think of him until I am asleep. Frday. Again about last night Sneakily, he has been pretending to try to kiss me. He has me in close and then turns my face, but always I escape at just the right moment and he laughs joyously, or smiles. He would be disappointed if I let him, I think. His not kissing me is a bond between us, stronger than any kissing could be. Wednesday night my resistance was dropping fast. I was beginning to think, please, please, instead of no thank you. so after an attack I went limp instead of wriggly. He stopped - "Hey! You weren't reacting right that time," he said. My tactics are quite varied, but effective. The most common is a sideways head-turn ending in a safe lodging of my face against his neck. I've had to think of a few new ones. Last night, while we were discussing all this, we got a chess analogy. "You'll have to say 'check' when you've got me in a bad position," I suggested. "Hey! This could be a game! When I've got you I have to say 'check,' but if you can't escape, ah! Then I can just move in." "You're certainly not a bishop and tho' you're a bit rocky, you're not a castle, so I guess you're a knight. And you travel in an 'L' just like a knight does - tomorrow you'll be going west, and then south, that's an L isn't it?" So he got me in check: arms pinioned, face firmly held. This called for a new maneuver. I had to tickle, fast. "Might not always work tho'. Margaret can tell you I can be completely tickle-proof when I want to," he said. Once he tried holding my eyes closed & then moved in. It was a rascally maneuver. He slid his mouth to the point where it was just "lightly, lightly," backed out, and laughed at me. "I could use six arms - I just about need them. Two to take care of your arms, two to hold your face still, and that still leaves two " he said. "You could be writing an account of it with the other two." "Ellie! Why did you say that? I was just going to say it myself!" We stared at each other solemnly, wonderingly. Our unspoken communication is a real thing. It happens so often. I've wondered whether it was because of thought patterns formed by our reading. But this incident disproves that. Neither of us have ever read about having 6 hands & using one pair to write an on-the-spot report of what a kiss is like! I wonder how much we transmit unknowingly? We talked of our letters. "You never write any I'll be able to giggle over when I'm a spinster." "Naw. But you wouldn't want me to, would you?" Course not, but Frank, how can I know if you won't tell me? He never did tell me, all this time, that he loved me. Not in words. And only once, yesterday, did he say, "Ellie, Ellie." "I'm going to miss you, Frank." "Are you sorry you came, Frank?" "What do you think? No! I'll have to do a lot of writing when I get home." "Why?" "Because this is a Christmas I didn't go fishing." I think he did have a good Christmas. And I think he did like my gift. He said so. "Ellie, it's the nicest thing you could have given me. I do like it." And his gift to me is lovely. He knows I like it too, and I've told him that I've not taken it off since he put it on Christmas Eve. I've discovered a weak point - he can't stand having his ears blown into. I did ("your ears are warm today. Warm & dry.") and he'd shake his head like the cat does when I blow into its grey ears. I stared at him yesterday when he wasn't looking. He wore his boots laced to the top, tight blue jeans, the thick blue sweater that looks so good on him, a white teeshirt under it, his hair curling & unruly. I would look at him, at the curve of his shoulders, his brown neck, his golden arms. (They are beautiful arms. His forearm and wrist is lined by veins and hairs. His arm curves thin. I ran my fingers over the curve. He was pleased, I think, and hardened his muscle for me. It was solid under the skin, living and hard. His arms are somehow a special part of him. They are expressive. They speak. They are warm. They speak warmly and move warmly, and transmit warmth. His fingers are square, and cleaner, now that he is pushing a pencil. His hands are square too. His tan is deeper than mine now. I watch his arms with my eyes, & yet I watch more with my skin cells. He talks to me with his touching. I should like to be able to tell you in words how it is when he touches me. He tells me through it that he likes me very much, that he has missed me & will miss me, that he wants me and likes to be near to me. He makes it an approach. He smiles first and looks down at me. Then he moves closer and my face touches his ("This reminds me of a jig-saw too, fitting two pieces together." I marvel at the way we fit together Frank and I, how our faces and hands interlock so easily, how even our minds fit into each other.) softly & speakingly. Then perhaps one of his arms slides to touch the side of my face, my throat, to pull my head down to his shoulder. I feel a hand spread out on my back, and while I stand and wait, his mouth travels over my throat lightly; his face is against my shoulder as mine is against him. His hands tighten. I'm drawn closer to him. He doesn't just quietly hold me tho'. He moves constantly & shifts me back & forth effortlessly. In this there is a type of understanding too - a sensitivity to what he wants, what I want. He seems so much better looking than he ever was. His face is lean. His eyebrows are straight & frosted, his eyelashes long as ever, his eyes so very blue & so very nice. There have been incidents, warm incidents, even when in the midst of plenty (of parents & siblings). While putting together jigsaws sometimes, in the lamplight, I would sit, thinking only of Frank Doerksen. He'd look up, smile at me secretly, and wink, & I'd be close to him even across the table. We talked of time, too. Each of us had a pair of walnet shells in our palm. "I wish I could take some time & put it into these shells and save it for Saturday nights," I said wistfully. "Why do you want time on Saturday night?" he asked. "Not any time. Some of now." "Yes - only I'd never get any studying done, except I'd study Ellie." "Ellie how? Biology? Anatomy? Psychology?" "No. Just Ellie." He was amused, Wednesday, when, in a clinch, I muttered, "You wouldn't get away with half of what you get away with if it wasn't for the fact that you're going home on Friday." And yesterday he agreed when I supplemented this with, "I wish I could have this in smaller doses, more often!" "This is sort of storing up for famine." This morning we had a goodbye. Last night he didn't even say goodnight. Daddy drove him home after we spent some time lunching in the kitchen. There were no goodbyes then. But this morning they came to pick up his stuff - suit, shoes, rifle, 7 books. (my "Exodus" and Mom's Shakespeare) He ran in, all youth &, to me, all everything, and got his stuff. And with the books under his arm, and Mom near us (and not blind either) he took my hand. When I said "Good morning, Frank," he said, "Good morning, Ellie, except that's the wrong word for it." "Why?" "You know why." And then he kissed my hand, walked out the door (around the corner of the door he gave me a grandfatherly peck & I gave him a grandmotherly one) and then he was gone. Oh - one kiss-resisting tactic I forgot. In another deadlock I found that by levering up my chin his was levered up too, and therefore non-dangerous. I told him a few things I've wanted to tell him. "You're not very good for me Frank." "Why? Explain yourself." "Any emotional stability I ever had goes all kuffooee when you're around. I'm always either all the way up or all the way down." "That is bad." His cutest blunder was this. E. "You shaved today didn't you?" F. "Yeah, with an electric shaver. They're not very good." E. "So I see - you missed a few whiskers under your chin." F. "They won't hurt." E. Peals of laughter. F. Protests, "That was an unfortunate pun!" In an effort to drown the gloom sweeping into our house on Chirstmas Day Frank & I got walnut shells & birthday candles ready to try an old Bohemian tradition. They say that on Christmas Eve or Day each person in a household is to take a walnut with a lighted candle in it and float it on a dish of water. If your shell heads for the outside edge you will travel. If it clings to someone else's boat, you & that person will be good friends. If it drowns, you will die within the year. Daddy's sank immediately. Mom's survived everyone else's. Mine lit out straight for the edge. When I shoved mine to the middle once, it sailed straight for Frank's. (Ah-ha! thought I.) His went out between Judy's & Mom's, just before mine. It was most interesting. I moved to the stove, to warm myself. He came too. He teased me about things too, and I discovered that pouting with Frank is fun. I had a forelock to tug, and tugged it while he closed in & smiled down at me. Teasing him always brings on such violent reactions. "For such a grandfather you're quite Casovanic, Frank," I told him. He swept his strong arms about me and I staggered into them from plain strong-arm tactics. This time he held me with overwhelming authority & my arms around him tightened too, until it was almost a desperation. I found myself breathless. I wanted to pant. In a book they'd call it "urgent." That's what it was - urgent and frightening. I struggled out & walked unsteadily (so it seemed to me) to the table to pump up the lamp. Shortly after, Daddy & Mom came back and we sat around for a small lunch before he walked home. We argued until late, about strange new topics: Do idiots, imbeciles have souls? Frank and I argued no, Mom & Dad argued yes. Frank had an apple I got for him. When he took it I thought sneakily of Eve. While he talked on, arguing, laughing, I sat back & watched him. Solemn reflections flitted around - reflections like this - what a beautiful man! He caught a bird outside; we looked it over & checked the Encyclopedia - it's a snow bunting, a beautiful bird with lovely black & white wings. It looked sick. Someone suggested wringing its neck - Frank didn't because of what he knew I'd think of it. So he let me hold it for a minute. It slipped out, flew in wild circles, crashed through the Christmas tree until Frank caught it again. He fed it aspirin & we put it in a pail to see what would happen. When we sat and talked we could hear an occasional tapping sound from it. (On Thursday afternoon it was five o'clock when he came. Mr. Christiansen was sitting at the table talking to Daddy over their coffee. He knocked. I ran to the door. He came in, with sunshine and wind blowing in with him and his blue sweater. "You're a good bird doctor," I told him. "Hm!" he said and walked out to sweep off his boots. While he was outside, things were explained to Mr. Christiansen. Daddy accidentally coughed over his cake. "Hey, Pappa, take it easy!" Mr. C. quipped. And then Frank came in again.) The morning after, the bird flew off into the blue sky. *** There is much to write down - yard upon endless yard. First, the Thursday before Chirstmas - I went to town with Blocks after school. Highlights of the trip were 1. buying a big lovely purse, 2. having chicken chow mein in the Nu Palace alone (a man a few tables down kept staring up into my eyes whenever I looked up from my soup), 3. wandering luxuriously in the Bay's furniture department. (There was some furniture I want to keep in mind - a four poster bed with dust catcher, a gorgeous dining room suite in Danish modern - grey - fawn wood with gold touches, a coffee table which was sort of a Colonial piece - hinges & little cubby holes perfect for pencils, an orange chair, a blue-purple-turquoise chair, and Lane cedar chests that smelled lovely when you opened them just a crack. There were pictures too - a blue shaded modern of sailing boats, and a picture I looked at a long time, of an indolent Cavalier with a feather in his cap pausing just a moment to kiss the satin gowned serving girl. He looked ready to fly on, she stood quietly with her long hair down her back, her hand curving over his shoulder. His hands held her face lightly. In the background were stone steps & shadows. I longed to take home my favorite furniture pieces and arrange them decently. The clerks were affable & handsome young men - not hard to get rid of. I'd just say, "thank you, I'm just admiring," or "thanks, just letting my imagination run away with me.") That was Thursday & cold & Christmasy. One more thing - I got mistletoe in Cambell's flower shop. The boss was a tweedy & pleasant pipe-smoker. All around were golden & glorious crystanthemums. Friday before Christmas. At school we saw the film "Perri," an emotional and aesthetic experience which (unsurprisingly) few people enjoyed as much as I did (comments - "never saw such a dumb show") But it was a trip through the seasons of a forest - it told of a hybernating squirrel's dream, of baby animals you had to love, of fire in the tree-tops. Of spring and "together time." For a while before it, Dot and I played hookey in the café, having a coke and some gab. I wore my new pink outfit to school - it was admired. I was told how lucky I was to have Frank come for Christmas, & agreed. But my present was a flop - something ugly & useless. My gift to Donna was a beautiful flop-eared doggy in blue. I loved him myself. I took a picture of the top of Mr. Shattsie's desk - as messy as it never was before. At the program Friday evening I felt definitely well-dressed because I was wearing my blue suit with the full skirt, my heels, the big purse, & my new powder. (Blushing Angel Face) I knew Larry & Leona were there & thought perhaps Frank would be too. While on the stage singing our song, I looked. Nothing. Outside, Leona said hi, asked Judy & me to a party. "If nothing else, Frank can take you." "Is he coming?" I asked cautiously. She explained how he hadn't 'phoned yet but they expected him the next day. So I escaped, feeling disappointed. Impatience & this sadness weren't improved by the bleak feeling as I sat alone by the radio in the dark & heard Daddy yelling in the kitchen. Is this all my Christmas will be? I asked myself & cried in the dark. Two oranges I took to bed with me were no comfort. I tried Frank's face, but it was distant & distainful, and no comfort at all. Saturday before Christmas. This morning was one of growls & glooms. I wore the blue tights & sneakers, my wide blue skirt and my pink shirt-waist blouse. We slept late, & it wasn't long until dinner. Afterwards I was just wrapping Frank's gift. There was a soft knock on the door. Paul, I thought, but when I heard Daddy say "Merry Christmas" I shoved Frank's present into a drawer and peeked into the kitchen. I felt oddly shy & ready to pop a finger into my mouth. He fished in his pocket, handed me a card & some letters he wrote on the way here. He looked happy & completely at ease and energetic because of the cold outside. I tried to read his letters while he told enthusiastically of the bus trip & school. He watched me wash doors in the kitchen. While scrubbing the fridge Pop brought in the gas. By a twist of irony, it slipped, spilled because of the way he set it, just as he's prophecied Mom will. This was tremendously humerous. I sat back on my heels & snickered before thinking. Pop snapped "You shut up!" right in front of Frank and grew quite "disturbed." However I escaped to the living room to wax the floor. While I was beginning Mom came around and told me off solidly for laughing at poor Pop. This of course made me feel quite miserable. "What's more," she said, "I'll bet you anything Frank is on his side too." I said "that won't break my heart" with some decisiveness, but that one sank in all the way. After that the depression grew, & when I caught Frank smiling around the door at me on my knees waxing, I closed the door quickly. Tears dribbled too, just a few of them. However, I think he noticed because he looked at me strangely and said "I don't think waxing floors alone is good for you. You shouldn't do it." He was wonderful to have here - cheered Daddy up, coaxed him into a good mood. He supervised setting up our tree and decorating it. Goodness knows he was good for me! During the afternoon I ran out to over the hill, pinched my cheeks before coming in. "Hey," he said, "I'll have to get you outside often. You get two spots of pink on your cheek." Sneaky, eh? I was glooming on the couch. He walked over, grabbed my wrist as he did the first day, and hauled me off to the Christmas tree. "You're going to help me decorate it," he said. So I did. We hung the things up, & put the presents under. Then he read me some poetry! I was embarrassed a little because this is so different but it didn't take long for me to learn to enjoy it uninhibitedly. Supper was soup. At the table afterwards, dishes done, he sat down and said "I've a bone to pick with you - remember?" So we picked a very juicy bone together & it was so much fun that when Mom wanted to start reading Scrouge we had to be called often. Mom began to read. I sat wanting to stare at Frank and to touch him. All the time I was conscious of him, of the fact that he was unusually handsome too. When the story mentioned "cold" and "snow" we smiled at our secret jokes, something just-between-you-and-me. We smiled at each other via window reflections too. Once, when I steadied the lamp as he pumped it, our fingers touched. I thought it an accident and moved mine away, but he covered them firmly with his & it was another secret. It seemed to me that everyone likes him, that he is suddenly special & sweet, that he's a man who is smarter than I! (This does not make me completely happy.) While Mom and Dad bathed Judy & Paul were usually in the room but we sat by the table and talked to each other. Sometimes he would touch my face or my hair briefly, in spite of Judy and Paul. I found myself telling him what had been bothering me & has for a while. "I'm terrified I'll grow up to be a shrew." It is a driving fear. I see myself becoming more like my father. I see a gross selfishness, a tendency to nag, an unkindness that is near ruthlessness, a self-centeredness. I pray desperately about it. I brood. But am I doomed to be incapable of happiness, as he is? "I don't like myself," I told Frank. "I don't understand you," he said, and I knew he liked me anyway. For an example, I said "I made Daddy mad this afternoon." "Yeah," he said, "that was you all right." There were sudden sounds behind the kitchen door - slaps, screams of rage from Daddy. Something strange happened to me. I found myself shaking with horror and breathing into my arms. Frank sat motionlessly & silent. When the noises had ended he told me about some of his own experience with spankings. Again I felt horror at a story of a rubber-cord whipping his father gave him, of the welts, the mental agony greater than the physical. Eventually he went home, his last crack being about how he'd make sure I'd have to go to church tomorrow. There was a let-down feeling when he left that brought me near tears. But there was one more thing to do. Daddy was alone after I'd bathed. "Daddy I would like to appologize for laughing this afternoon." A stiff appology. Sunday, Christmas Eve day. Larry & Leona came to get us, Leona all spick in a blue suit & white gloves. Frank wore his best suit - the handsome suit & the very handsome man. Larry had trouble starting the car, and we had a warm moment by the living room fire. Judy sat between us in the car, but may as well not have been there because we chattered back & forth behind her head. After singing at church, we had no teacher so were invited to the adult class. Frank & I walked upstairs together - now what? I thought in panic. If we walk in there he'll sit beside me & pow! it'll amount to an engagement notice. So I sneaked into the baby room. Mr. Heidebrecht rambled on in the usual uninspiring way. He asked a question, "Why was it the shepherds the angels went to?" He waited for the usual answer. When Frank's hand went up I waited expectantly. "I think it was because the shepherds were the only people awake at that time," he said. Mr. Heidebrecht looked distinctly uncomfortable & was distinctly relieved when an older man came up with the answer he'd wanted. I was very pleased with Frank. On the way home I sneaked in the car so I could sit beside Frank. "Hey, how'd this happen?" he exclaimed. "It was all arranged," I said demurely, so we rode home together. He wouldn't come for dinner tho'. But later in the afternoon he came & we sat together by the kitchen table with his lit book. We spent a great deal of the afternoon on Chaucer - about the Nun, the Monk, etc. All quite interesting. We had a cold candlelight supper with ham and dill pickles and coffee with Christmas cake. Then Larry & Leona came & we scurried into snow clothes. Judy couldn't come because Pop said no. The car was cold - we drove to La Glace, collected Toewses & Heidebrechts. It was a fiercely cold night, clouded over to hide the moon and to hide us from the moon. At Fast's where we were first there was deep snow. My boots were snow traps most definitely. Because of these two things he scooped me up & carried me across the deep snow. This was a tremendous surprise & I was embarrassed too. "Idiot!" I said & kicked, but he let me down. We went through "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World." Then we shouted "Merry Christmas" & I ran back an around way, leaving Frank behind. In the car he looked at me anxiously, "You're not mad at me, are you?" he asked. I wasn't of course. All evening he was quite enfoldo. Because Harold & Allan were usually there, and Bernie always, I thought a little more decorem would be fine. But he was immoveable. "You're stubborn tonight," I protested. "Yes, but it's the only chance we have to be stubborn," he said. "Yes Frank." So we were close & let Harold think what he will, and Allan too! He was a wonderful warmer-upper. The evening was a hazy succession of events, all in the same pattern - a light outside the window where we sang - a fast walk back to the car - the warmth of a car - Frank's hand curling around mine - my cold feet slowly warming - a ride that swayed or seemed to sway because I saw nothing of it - mostly I saw a face and two solemn eyes looking at me - and a stop again - doors opening - running to a house with a window where there is light. Toward the end my feet were numb, and when not numb, painful. He took off my boots, my wet socks, put his dry lumber jack socks on my feet, wrapped them up in his touque, and they were well taken care of. My hands too - he held them. It was nice to be there with someone. Last year I hovered, knowing full well that I wanted to be with some sort of someone. It was nice to walk up a lane holding his arm. It was nice to have a special place reserved in a spot beside a special person. When we turned in at our place there was a scramble for my belongings & his, a last minute squeeze, and again the sound of doors slamming. Leona, Larry, & Bernie came in for cocoa and doughnuts. Frank acted peculiarly, according to Mom - he got out his poetry book & read me some stuff. He didn't get far on that tho', so read to himself while I acted hostessy, to a point. Then they went home. It was already late, past midnight. When the dishes were cleared away we sat down while Mother handed around gifts. Frank & I sat on the couch, quite near. I got the package from Grandma - nylons and an apron! A dollar bill from Grandpa E, as always. A grey leather covered Philips from Mom - a green sweater given to Judy, really mine. A black cuff-links box was from Frank. (He'd forgotten it, & in the afternoon we went to Seiburts - who were not home! - and phoned from their empty dark house. I remember grinning to myself when Frank asked for this black box and a pair of long-johns) I kept it to the last. It was provokative, tantalizing. He opened the gift from Mom, an unsuitable Moody book, which he was not expecting. And then Mom gave him the parcel inscribed to a ladies' man - (he put the piece of paper in his wallet) He opened it - the Philips Translation testament I got him, inscribed - Frank from Ellie, Christmas '61. ("There are several things in it typical of you, the dash for one.") It was a blue foil package wrapped with blue ribbon & with a swirly-bow thing. I'd had a lady's face on it but the paste dried and it fell off. I stuck experimentive fingers into the black box. Hm-m, a chain & a round flat object. Finally I pulled it out. A '61 ("It had to be 1961," he said) silver dollar engraved with two "E's" ("I had a mischievous idea about that - but I decided I better leave it as it is") on the Queen's side. Summer of '61 - I'll always remember it & the very dear person who made his Christmas present to me. Of course it was special & personal! He leaned closer when he said "I like it very much." He quipped later, "I'm so glad you didn't get me a tie-bar," "or cuff-links," I added. There was perfect understanding again. He put the chain on me with his own hands and I haven't taken it off yet. We stayed up until 2 a.m., for the last half hour alone in the living room. It happened that carolling had not been the only time to be stubborn & he gave me an extra-long squeeze before I trotted off to bed. "Can't I ever escape?" I asked. "In a minute." So in a minute I did escape & took half an hour getting ready. He slept in the living room, in his blue sleeping bag. It was an exceedingly nice Christmas Eve. December 30 Tension and irritability grow in this house daily. December 31 Learned to play chess at Seiberts and won my first game - wrote letters, organized "Impressions" into three groups, total about 70,000 words.
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