| still at home volume 5 part 4 - 1963 june-august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Clearbrook, Saturday June 29, 1963 Ravel's Bolero on the radio and the strings of my heart are tightening as the music creshendos and breaks. "Does Frank know you're here? I thought he would have been around by now ..." No, Auntie, he doesn't know, although I am choking myself to keep from calling him. And in the taut refrain of Bolero I feel the many colored strings of my heart pulling. Judy [Doerksen] is married. He will be so alone! Why do I think of little else now that I am suddenly here? Why do I feel so sad at his aloneness? It seems part of mine. Strange dear Frank - I want to call him very badly, but if I did I would be promising something that I am not prepared to give. Yet there is a new wistfulness that the other, certain, brittle Ellie does not recognize. A softness. Babies. I have been hugging Eric, my smallest coz, and playing with Ruthie. You know, I have been sighing about not being among the Beautiful People. But the beautiful people are children! And children like me: in Sexsmith there were always urchins among the trees with a shouted "Hello Elliepp!" On the trip the middle Wiebe girl was my pet and followed me with her dog-tooth violets and chatter. Here little ash-blond Ruthie snuggles on my lap. I'm beginning to want a baby. The old mother instinct is growing in me and I don't want to be a career girl. My attitude is shifting for several reasons: I have seen marriages that are not stark like those of the joyless people in La Glace, and not agonized like that of my own parents. I've seen friendship in the strong liaison of the Windrims; I've seen affection here in Aunty Lizbeth's and Uncle Jake's. It is not quite the deception that I had thought. And I have begun to see what it is to be always alone, missing the half that makes a family, a whole. And I miss the touching. I lie back in the corner of the car when we travel with a sweater over my face to shut out what is real, and then slide shyly into the imaginary peace of a man's shoulder. I give the man a name and a face. I call him a redhead, but he is not a redhead really, he is an image of the other half I need to be a whole. A stereotype. Eh bien. My high school French is fini! Perhaps - I wrote the word absent mindedly. Was there something I wanted to say? It could have been any number of things because now everything I know is perhaps. This has been very much a year! By that I mean that it was been a year very full of changes. I lost my absolutes but I lost the terror of being without them as well. I have a new type of serenity, I have a new knowledge of the goodness and evil of people, but I have learned to accept the clay feet of my heroes - not to gild them blindly, but to see them minutely and to love them. I have wanted to tell you about my goodbye to Sexsmith: the examinations were terse times and I didn't do as well as I had hoped, and even worse, I missed a fifteen-mark, six percent question on the last page of the French examination. Before we wrote biology two days after Mr Mann arrived from a trip down-hall to say (affectionately) "You blundering idiot." And then hurried away on some business. Tears can be a conditioned reflect: and I had cried often enough about those fifteen marks to build the habit. (Wailing in my mind, "I grubbed for those six percent all year," actually feeling the griminess of my scraping fingernails and enjoying the masochistic wallow.) So there was Ellie leaning against the wall with her tears in her too-female eyes when Mr Mann hurried by on another business. Stopped. "Don't take it so hard." And a girl only cries harder at an evidence of sympathy. (Intuitional reaction - pity raker-upper. Girls is idiots.) I remember most of all his one finger hooked around mine and the very quiet whisper, "You'll go in there now and slaughter it." After that, poor fool, she had to run toward the washroom and scrub the redness from her eyes. She slaughtered the Bug Exam. Perhaps - I was going to explain that everything is 'perhaps' for more reasons than only loss of absolutes, tho' truly it is a large enough thing. But I am rootless now, more than I feel or realize, and much could happen to me. Shall I be in University next year? Why? Or shall I be saving money eight hours daily in a drugstore? But le plus grand, what shall I become? Cogito ergo sum. Non cogito, no sum? July 5, Aldergrove BC Dear folks - The hat is hung and I'm home. The 'peg' for my hat is a picker's cabin reminiscent of camp days: long, rectangular, with about twelve individual cells. So: [diagram] This is a spruce hedge with a thick underbrush growth of fern where one escapes to brush one's teeth. This is a very high spruce tree that the small boys climb for a test of courage. These are something very wonderful - showers! Utopia ... we of the berry-picking proletariat can bathe oftener than you of the stone-picking proletariat. My cell is quite neat and small: frayed squares from an old carpet for rugs; high, cobwebby rafters; two bunks (one waiting for Judy, the other two empty); my books; the ol' blue suitcase; a heap of fern on the table - it is the most curious thing, an albino fern plant, blond instead of green, yet alive - I'll send you a leaf - very clean - the influence of Mrs Wold clings! And it truly feels very Home. I should be sleeping, but evidently we cannot pick tomorrow so I had a yum late lunch of fried eggs and sausage and pickles. Went out to pick berries, just a few strawberries, in the moonlight, but c'est impossible (set awnposeebl - that's the pronunciation). And now shall scribble a bit. You'll want to know what happened after I arrived here: Left Chilliwack pm, met an interesting man on the bus (an Italian wrestler who spent five years in Caracas, Venezuela, and the time before that in Italy - handsome in a very brawny way - pointed shoes - black and white plaid suit, very flashy and urbane; when he said "I hope we sometime meet again. You hope we sometime meet again?" I borrowed Judy's sphinx smile for just a bit - it said nothing but meant? no. Grandma's first words (almost) were "Aber du ainelst deine mama!" And when Uncle George arrived that evening he gave a yip and said "Mary all over again!" That is another story. No sooner had I settled my suitcases than a blue wee-doubeyou (VW) came hooting onto the yard and there was Aunty Anne and family. It was good to see them; they are nice people, Mia included, Uncle too, and Aunty specially. And then - Aunt Liesbet and her gang. Uncle Jake was away at conference in Herbert, Sask (or Man?). The house was plenty full anyway so I went home with Aunt Liespet and kept her company for the night. She was fiercely lonesome so I felt I was earning my keep there by being company. Baby Eric is a wonder; pink and clean and very good. I couldn't help contrasting these clean healthy happy kids of Auntie's to the runny-nosed mob of Richardsons, where the poor babies slept on rubber mattresses (no sheets) under ragged blankets in their dirty underwear without even pillows. That is why Eric is such a wonder. He is so well kept and so well loved in that family. - On the next day, Sunday, we went to Grandma's for lunch - Uncle Pete was down so we had a living room full of adult conversation (Uncle Harv's parents too and Uncle George and Hilda and Auntie Anne and Harvey and rest ...). Auntie Anne is wearing 'shifts' of course and getting quite round but looks great. She's not (visibly) the least self-conscious about her pregnancy and it's a pleasure to see somebody enjoying it rather than cringing and slumping around in tents. Grandma's having a worse time than she is and fusses continually until Aunty is forced to say for the thirty-fifth time, "Mom, I am not an invalid!" Cute. (What would you be like in a similar situation Mom? I'll bet you'd fuss too - it's one way of getting in on the 'fun'.) Cousins are growing up. Ruthie has become a friendly, sweet, very pretty little girl, not recognizable as the screaming baby of last year. Roseanne is losing her little-girl appeal. Violet is winsome as ever. Walter is becoming very handsome, hell be a knock-out when he's twenty. But the biggest change is Alfred. He's grown all disproportionately, four inches last year. His features have suddenly begun to trip over each other. His energy is still immense, but he is a bit more polite and not nearly as aggressive as the Alfred who was Alfred before Alfred began to comb his hair so carefully. I was quite charmed. Monday morning strawberry picking began - yesterday it ended. Day before yesterday I moved here. Grandma saw to it that I have all anyone would need to stay a year but I've learned not to argue but just to say "Ja, Grandma" whether she wants me to eat a three-person supper or go to bed at eight-thirty. I've done both. However - you know, it's almost good to be mothered! As you've probably guessed Frank and I have found it impossible to ignore each other since (especially since) the place Grandpa found for me to pick at is across a field from his place, next door to the place where I stayed last year. We're compromising madly: dates are verboten but he comes over and relaxes a bit in the evening and we've been pretending to be buddies. Situation is rather hopeless because even the half-year of isolation since Christmas has changed nothing one iota. Well, it's my thorny problem and I can't expect any help from you tho' advice might be appreciated. I know there is little either of you can say. Enough for tonight. I'm yawning. This has been most scrambled and incoherent but you'll wade through it somehow. Where is Judy? Is she coming? Love to all, July 10 Edition #2: How am I? Fifty-two dollars richer, a little tireder, but still not quite over the numb post-exam feelings. The exams are haunting me a little - I think of them suddenly between raspberry rows and feel almost panicky. Also have had one good howl. I'm scared! Good to hear from you. The letter was at PJK's when Uncle and Judy came to get me for the weekend Saturday evening. We went to bed early thanks to Grandma. Sunday was glory-us: Clearbrook sunshine with all its 'bonuses' - views of the mountains, warm lethargy, flowers glowing all over. Church - the boys in the choir ogled Judy - and dinner - and afterwards as J's already told you we climbed the hill with LFD, a transistor radio, several books, and a pair of binoculars. We saw several garter snakes and a shy mule deer - didn't you know there were real deer in Grandpa's bush? Here's a secret: it's an enchanted forest. Our mealtimes at Grandma's are uproarious - you know what Uncle Harvey's sense of humour is like. Keen! He and Aunty make sly but affectionate little jokes about the foibles of Grandparents Konrad, Clearbrook society, and Mennonitism in general. We enjoy this hugely of course. Aunty and Uncle took us back to our cabin in the Sunday night rain and with a very little encouragement told us about the early (high school) stages of their romance. Cute! They are remarkable people and a remarkable couple. The Grandparents and I are getting along very well this year - thought you might like to know. They've been telling me a little about the individual whose wedding ring I'm wearing: family history. Judy hasn't been talking a great deal but I've heard a little about your trip to the mountains. You can tell me more. J seems alright - a little wistful, a little shy in her contacts here, but seeming to enjoy the new experience. I have trouble with automatically taking the dominating 'boss' role - she needs to learn a little aggression but the role of director seems too firmly rooted in bossy Ellie to be unlearned easily. We have had very few un-rainy days. This matters very little though as far as off-work activities go because when we come in at five we shower, have strawberries for supper and then are too solemnent [somnolent] to even write letters - we flop onto our bunks and doze over books. That doesn't sound encouraging toward any or all forms of misbehaving does it? Write again. Love - [journal] July 30 Tomorrow will be the last day of July and the last day of raspberry picking here. I haven't kept any of these days, and yet I feel panic at the thought of losing them. I must keep at least snatches and swatches of them ... We wrote our last exam, chemistry, on Thursday morning. At noon Mother called to tell me I would leave for BC with Wiebes the next day, early morning. Only one afternoon left for Sexsmith, and there would be no time to say goodbye as I had wanted to. The sun was bright outside while I packed, sifting the year's sediment of papers and clippings and packing what would be criminal to throw away. Many boxes later - freedom. On my way to school with forgotten books I met Dennis. He was in baseball practice clothes, looking dirty, rumpled, curly-haired, and so entirely dear that I very nearly cried when I said goodbye to him. Then at school there was a last hurried look at our untidy classroom - the room that was as familiar and dear now as it was unfamiliar last September. Last flirtations with Bert and Patrick. Then a shy wandering into Peter's room to give back the two books he had leant me and to say a vague goodbye to him as well. He was in his lean sports clothes after a day's outing with 'his kids' and looked a bit sunburnt. While I toyed with a stray jar of relish and he sat at his desk we talked about various nothings, "... saying goodbye to Dennis was hard." "He is very likeable isn't he?" "He's a dear. I hate saying goodbye to people!" I included him in that. And because the conversation was only about nothing I left soon, walked toward the door. "I can't think of any famous last words so - see you." And it wasn't until I was several steps on my way downstairs that he stood up to call after me "I can't think of any famous last words either, except - we will miss you." I would rather have been missed by a singular than by a plural, and even at the plural, the careful expression, I was not sure what he meant, or how personal the missing would be to him. I rather hoped that he did mean "I will miss you," but Peter is ever-elusive and I can never tell. Then I walked out of Sexsmith School for the last time. Hilda and I watched television restless. I slipped across the street to say goodbye to Windrims. Mr Windrim, sick in bed, got up, scraggier than usual in his bathrobe. Dwight and Patty said their brief children's goodbyes to me and went to bed. I sat in ... silence with Mr Windrim and wrote a note to Doris. I left her lovely Czechoslovakian cherrywood flute (the magic words) with the note "... how much your warm house and your warm friendliness have meant to me this winter. I will remember the lighted window across from mine with affection." Suddenly Dwight burst into the living room, dressed for bed in only his shorts, leggy, thin and freckled. He seized my hand impulsively and said "Goodbye Ellie - good luck." And with tears in my eyes I could only grip his child's hand as hard as I could and say "Goodbye Dwight." I love that kid! And Mr Windrim's hard handclasp when I was about to flee was again a reassurance that we had been friends. I will remember Gerry Windrim as a deeply good and honest man, shaggy and kind, a prophet and priest and loving, earthy, human. Here was a man whom I could respect and adore as a hero, this craggy small-town minister with his crooked face and thinning rebellious red hair, and the pastoral prayers that were almost an extension of my own feeble communications with the Almighty. I could say that I love this man as I love his small son, as I love his wife, and yet with even the small added intensification by the fact of his maleness ... Strange. But I could have told his wife that I love him. I lose these people when I leave them in Sexsmith. I miss them. I miss the streets of the town and the trees of the town and the homeness of it. I went for a walk after I said goodbye to my neighbours: down the street past McCrums to see for the last time their warm-windowed house, to notice the newness of the house across from theirs, to look with affection at the Catholic church, to drift towards the school, noticing that Peter's car was at home and wishing that he were with me on this goodbye ... Inevitably I came to the school - stood in front of the door and looked at it. Saw my reflection pass raggedly on the windows, left it with finality. Brushed through the grass of the ball diamond and the stream bed that is so lovely in the spring. Walked past Peter's house without looking at it. Passed the lighted windows of Mrs Philip's house, thinking of the evening only several days before her death when I went to see her, thinking of the glow of the brassware she brought from England. Passed the caragana hedges, the trees, of my route to school, passed the library, passed under the spreading trees of my street, passed the windows of the square black house, of the small shanty house, of Cooks' flower-blooming porch. A rude hurry to pack my things. The unreality of goodbye. Unreality and wistfullness. It was home. At five-thirty the next morning my departure in Wiebe's car to go toward summer, toward the total newness of my release from school forever. Cornerstones and milestones. I think of Holden Caufield - "Never tell anyone about anything because when you tell them about how it was you start to miss it all so much." A fuzzy indestinct day - drowsiness tangled with a sheepish wistfullness and a lonesomeness for that redhead, dreaming of a very shy and 'accidental' napping on his shoulder, a fright of the rootlessness and homelessness of being gone from Home. A dinnertime stop in the woods, the sharp scent of evergreen and freedom, sun and a National Geographic magazine. Friendship of a small piquant-faced girl. A hamburger with mushrooms and potato chips. The rain in the canyon; the monochromatic drama of mountains and trees after sundown, the line of lights heading upcountry for the weekend, a row of impersonal and unconnected round lights, the whimsical comparison of these cars to tincans on a belt, each filled with the regulation number of people (16 oz guaranteed) and sent shuttling toward the Weekend. Cars 'can' people, separate them, make them faceless and without identity, clump them and separate them. Chilliwack's lights. The Empress Hotel with its dreary expanse of lobby (a bronze Chinese vase with one dragon chipped, set precisely on a white doily with the chipped side turned toward the wall) and its enticing, mysterious red-carpeted corridors. A room at the end of the hall. Three lights to turn on. Two windows open wide with shouts of Friday night jollity in the hotel parking lot below. The curtains blowing a little. The quiet streets slanting away from the courtyard. Shadowy figures of people, one of them whistling far and away. The room dark and my head under the quilt at the wrong end of the bed, the end nearest the window. A midnight walk downtown for a hamburger and glass of milk, the hamburger taken home in my purse to eat in my room. Morning. A home feeling. Letters written on hotel stationary. A banana split breakfast. A new pair of bluejeans, very stiff. Judy's tan dress neat and uncrushed and smart. A feeling of prettiness. A bold tune thumped on the austere lobby grand piano. A long look at Ellie, newly graduated, in a lobby mirror, a feeling of kinship to even the friendly charwomen. The mysterious corridors mine for the morning. Bus to Clearbrook. Handsome Angelo from Italy, with his passport stamped often in Venezuela, his black and white checked suit all urbanity, his intelligence and friendliness and his Italian attentions to me. "I hope we meet again. Who knows? You hope we meet again?" Clearbrook glowing with flowers. Old roots found in the familiar road. The welcome of Grandfather hoeing in the garden. The warm acceptance of myself by these amazing people on merits of a relationship that has nothing to do with me. August 7 Berry picking now over. A strange farewell to berry picking people - strange, because it was sad as farewells are, yet without reason for none of these people had been important to me ... And yet, they were. People are important to me. Albert: hostile; pale blue eyes; an adolescent smirk which was appealing in spite of its arrogance because of the element of wistfulness it held as well. Ev - a sprite, a capricious imp with slender legs and a slender girl-waist, legs in thong sandals, running, tossed blond hair and coquettish ways. Ron - solemn and large eyed, boy entirely. The Browns - Ron's four little brothers, freckled, shy, blue-eyed, sweet: littlest Mark, snub nosed Gordy, stripling Rickey, second-one Larry. Children who never quarreled! Ellie - sharp-faced Elvira, slender as a girl, tall and graceful - even grey blue eyes, freckles, a lean chin and small mouth, long tawny hair - Ellie whose little boy was already six years old, tow-headed and earnest. Fred - a stripling of about seventeen, lean as a birch, dressed like a dandy (carefully, with polish and creases and a neat cowlick after his shower), polite and rather shy, somehow enormously attractive to any girl. 'Peter and the Wolf' - brothers: Wolfgang with a bushy brushcut the color of wheat chaff, wide blue eyes, a jet and a warm girl and a human warmth - I will miss Wolf. And his little brother, sharp eyed Peter with freckles and a taciturnity. Mr Reimer, their father - 69 years old, sleeping in the grass looking forlorn as Old Age, but courtly as a German Kavalier when awake. Corney - tanned and towheaded demon whose laugh at the window startled us to grins and hooted us to embarrassment thonged feet and bluejeaned legs flying past. Jane - a little plump beside her sylph-friend, earnest and thoroughly 'nice,' her pale red-gold hair tousled around her sunburned face. Mr Dyck - jaunty in working clothes, loquacious at any opportunity, smiling, cheerful, optimistic, very kind. I shall miss him too, and I do respect him. And sibling Judy! Taffy hair rumpled and bleaching in the sun, thin nose peeling a little, legs long and shapely under her black shorts, midriff turning pink under her tucked-up shirt. Responses across the row sometimes tired, sometimes a little grumpy, sometimes spirited. (Remember the afternoon at Jesse's when we play acted to make the time go faster? "'I do believe you are right' she said blushingly, and they paused as the clock struck three" - a riotous giddy satire of machine-method writing and clichéology.) I will miss our cabin: the curtain hung from a string that dipped across the window; two faded rectangles of a Turkish rug, fraying badly, laid out for our carpet; cupboard bulging with dishes to be washed, bread for toast, unwashed applesauce pot, the row of books and the smudgy mirror; the tidy green-checked table cloth laid precisely on the table; lacy flowers leaning from a tumbler, books on the bed; rafters above and lines of light filling the cracks at night. An apple tree outside. The steps dripped with tar and wet after a rain. Ferns poking up between the cracks. Our sandy sneakers leaning against each other tiredly. Moonlight at midnight. The mysterious trees in black paper cut-outs, precise as a Chinese print, each leaf separate and lovely. Mount Baker glowing mistily and distantly, austere as Olympus. Yellow light just solid enough to stay in the cracks under the roof beams, but soft-looking, like butter. The sky a grey-blue square through the window. Slightly flattened round moon. Gravel - individual pebbles highlighted and shadow sided. Early morning. Mist like a floating white dust on the fields, enclosing our world in the evergreen hedges about the farm. An exuberant climb into the tall evergreen, climbing higher. Pausing to think that I am a girl in bluejeans and a ponytail and lipstick. That I am eighteen. That yesterday my marks came. That they were unbelievably good. That I am on the top of my world and delerious with joy. The afternoon before had been sunny, a Friday. I shall remember the date. August 2. It had been an especially good day. In the morning, before the sun had burned away the mist, fat John, our supervisor, turned to me and said "It will be a hot summer's day." Later in the morning I met Ranje Mahet, the handsome Hindu picking on the next row. (And this Ranje is extraordinary! Going to University, he has a full time night job at Woodlands, the Fraser Valley mental institute. Even now he works through the night and then picks berries after breakfast. And he is beautiful - brilliantly white teeth, a face nearly negroid in color, a black beard shadow, black curly hair on his arms, a quick smile and a lordly way of walking ...) We shouted a conversation across the row and from then on were friends. I sang in the berries, "Oh what a beautiful morning," and we made friends with Lila Gubbe. An 'English schoolgirl' with glowing dark hair parted in the middle and perfect teeth, a Western Board silver medalist and grade nine violinist. She liked my voice, and her admiration made the day even better. At three we went inside with her for a cup of tea in the kitchen. We hadn't been back in our sunny rows long when Grandfather walked slowly past, his stomach ahead of him and his steps already old. I thought first of my garb! Bare feet, draggled ponytail, juice stained brown shorts, dirty sweater tucked under to bare my midriff. "Grandpa - " I called. He turned. "Komm mit zu die Karre" he said. His voice was ominous. "What have I done?" was my first frightened thought. But I jerked my sweater down and followed him. A letter from Mother. On the corner, written "Extremely urgent. Exam results" - inside a white slip:
Average, 92%! One percent more than I had dared to hope! And my French mark was in actuality a 97! This should be enough. I ran to the row to show it to Judy. There are berry stains on the slip now. Lila admired it, Ranje admired it. We sat in the row and ate cookies while we admired it. I couldn't help telling people about it. I was not quite aware, though, how much it meant. But I thought it was enough. I thought Mr Mann would be pleased. I knew I had disproved Mr Toews' assertion that "a ninety average? Nope." I thought my weekends had been repaid. I thought Peter would be pleased. And up in the tree I paused to think that this too had been a climb. And I hesitated to climb higher because I was afraid. "This is high enough" I thought, but I swung higher still. The sun was high enough in the sky to touch my treetop. Magically, the evergreen limbs fanning out below and around me were hung with spider webs, morning-wet with dew and iridescent in the sun. They were all about me roping the boughs that spread, both green and rust, to the roof below and the layering branches above. A bird whistled and I whistled after it. Frank had come the night before. I had expected him, but I wasn't quite ready when he came. Judy gave him the slip while I put on my stockings, so that he could see my marks. I wanted to rush out and hug him, but I am not that sort of person ... So I walked outside very slowly and sat on the steps with him. But my head flew to his shoulder while he read Mother's letter. I need a friend as much when I have good news as when I have bad! ("I can't offer you anything but friendship." "I appreciate that very much, Frank, and I need it very much.") He had brought several bottles of 7-Up. In a cut-glass goblet from the community kitchen it looked like champagne. At near ten, Frank lured us out to the truck on the promise of a surprise. Night and silence. The lights of Mission City below as we coast down a long hill. Grey reflections along the somber black bulk of the piles in the river. It is beautiful. The street where Judy Doerksen walked with us once on my 16 and one half birthday. The music shop. The Prawn House. White table cloths and napkins folded like small paper crowns. A glorious celebration - egg swirl pea soup and sweet and sour pork served in pink sauce with chunks of pineapple, egg rolls light and round and filled with bits of shrimp. Green tea that I poured. Another plum has fallen into my lap and we are celebrating, my sister and I and a quiet strange man who loves me. Street outside cool. Cars cruising past as we stare through the window of the music shop and then turn to peer into the sky with our hands clasped like children. A sudden swoop and this strange quiet man has seized me, lifted me, and is whirling me about. The street watches. I do not squeal. I am rather pleased. This man who loves me is very dear. We drive into a strange country of mists and black trees. We pause on a familiar road, climb from the truck to look at the lights. The air is cool and I want to cling to my friend. We drive on and he tells me of a fishing spot in the mountains where the water roars and there are no other people. We reach home. He parks mysteriously on the road and we climb through the ditch to the evergreen hedge. We walk softly along it. He holds my hand. Then the cabin door closes behind Judy. His arms slide about me and I move mine slowly around his shoulders. Then I am open, vulnerable. We do not often hold each other in this way. Usually my hands are folded against his chest between myself and him. This tonight I am not afraid of him and I feel his body warm all down the length of mine. We are very close. We breathe solemnly and deeply. There is fleeting desire and enveloping peace. The moon is caught in a tree branch and it strains away as we strain together. Then it struggles free, and we too touch reluctant farewells and part. I lie in bed for a while and slowly realize how fortunate I am. There was another evening. His mood was restless when he came to see me. Our conversation shifted to religion. I walked with him down a random path to the dogwood which stands at the edge of the strawberry field. This tree is almost like a pavilion for conversation for its many trunks rise in curves from their roots to form a domed roof above and hollows below. We clambered into the tree and, each leaning away along one of the glowing dogwood stems, we talked. He seems to have found a serenity. To me he seems to have capitulated to an enemy. He quotes Biblical verses to me ("Broad is the way that leadeth to damnation") and I feel my face stiffening to the shape of anger. I am not angry with him but with this capitulation of his. I turn my face away in rejection of him. And see my hand against the tree trunk. It is slender and brown but the curved fingers have strength; and the plain gold ring has beauty. I stare at it. Finally I turn. "Frank it makes me feel a thousand miles away from you. It makes me so angry." There are tears in my eyes. He cups my shoulder in his hand and I feel his face briefly brush mine. Why am I so alone without him? "I don't think it's fair to make us ignore our intellect when that is the only thing that we were given for our protection. We're expected to kow-tow with our eyes squeezed tight shut" I say bitterly. "... an adolescent groping about for absolutes which are not there ..." I spit this out but soften. "I don't really mean that." "I didn't think so." We are cold and we walk back to the cabin. I am jerky and stiff. I think "Why don't you go" as he follows me silently. But he comes in and sits on the chair near the door while I turn my back to him as I sit on the table near the red hotplate. He moves near me. We write what we cannot say on a piece of paper. My writing is angry and uneven. But gradually I see what I have been and forgot before: that this man is really different. I cannot retreat to my solitude from him for his is a part of mine. We are a solitude together, but individually not alone. And before he leaves this evening we stand locked together for a long while, in fright and in peace and in joy. There was a Sunday afternoon just after Judy came. We walked together to the back of Grandpa's land, and climbed the hill. I remember highlights (like the colored pictures from a slide projector brushing onto the wall and way. Sun bright and many colored.) I lay on the hillside with the valley spread out far to the opposite ridge of hills. The radio played Hayden, with birds whistling their careless songs into the score. Ferns grew around and we lay with a frond over our faces. Frank's arm was under my head and the side of his body touched mine. We listened to the music. "We are lovers" I thought, with wonder, for I am not easily a lover, I do not give myself easily and I am very cautious. But I trust this man, and we were truly lovers in the grass. Judy sat nearby with her back towards us, bent over a book. I remember her walking ahead of us looking slender and tall as a goddess in the slim pink dress with her hair glinting to her shoulder. Her carriage is always queenly. Later we ran down the hillside together and capered like children among the long-stemmed daisies. We picked flowers, ran excitedly from stump to stump (these stumps are huge and many are hollowed to form little black-walled rooms, I feel the same excitement on seeing them now that I felt when I was seven years old), pulled up ferns, looked under the secretive branches of cedars to see what was underneath, stopped to watch a tiny mule deer picking her ladylike way across the meadow, watched a snake curving and recurving as it flicked through the grasses, swung our hands and laughed. One evening that I remember with curiosity: Frank was visiting and had been at our cabin only a little while when I began to feel - dramatically despairing and very alone. I was afraid of my examination results and still bewildered at my sudden rootlessness. For weeks I had felt a dullness and lack of communication, as though I were muffled in a long grey shroud that softened all perception and emotions. And now, suddenly I began to cry. Frank touched my hair and was silent. After a while he said "Do you want to be alone?" and after I nodded the door closed silently behind him. I went to bed and cried in desolation until I slept. And then there was a letter: I felt, as I came home for that weekend, "There will be a letter from Peter...." In spite of its very peculiar address, it reached me: two long sheets of yellow lined paper and one close-scribbled sheet of white. "... that to me you are no longer a 'kid,' nor just a casual acquaintance. I can no longer merely laud your intellectual acumen ... to me you are a young woman to whom I am for many vague and larger reasons impellingly attracted. You spoke once of Miss Universe. Little did you realize that in my book of 'prayers' you are she." And "I am not morbid, but often lonely and full of milling thoughts, some of them surprisingly clear and some of them very confused." This was Peter, not Mr Dyck, communicating with a woman. I have read the letter many times and will reread it many more. It was a very honest and human letter, and its honesty was a tribute. Strangely, it also dispelled the soft grey shroud and I knew again that I was alive and receptive, tingling to all the sensation of my color-resonant world. Vancouver August 8 We will never know his name or where he was from. We will remember him though - well dressed, well groomed, staring at the obelisk here in Victory Square with a dream in the line formed from his hand to the chin in his hand. Pigeons drift down from the top of the obelisk, the undersides of their wings flashing white in the sunshine. Bleak long windows of shabby hotels stand open as long curtains flutter inside them. A row of patriarchal bearded men sit along the benches in the stereotype old-man position, with their canes between their knees. Women in white kerchiefs, whose round faces have the color and rigidity of wood, sit opposite them. [Probably Sons of Freedom Doukhobors demonstrating against prison sentences.] Chimes ring. A blessing. It is four o'clock. We have been here an hour and a half. We have been here sitting on the rocks above the square since dinnertime when we ate our hamburgers, soft warm butterhorns, and sticky squares of cake from a brown paper bag, with a glowing sense of adventure. He turned quite suddenly on his bench below us and said "Don't you girls get bored here?" He was a mystery, quite obviously intelligent: "I was working on something ... I wouldn't tell you what it is. That's why I'm not working ... I haven't had a normal life. I've been in every city in Canada. My life hasn't been - well it hasn't been exactly normal. I wouldn't say it had been wrong. But - no, not according to the accepted normal. You have to conform in some things, like your relations to people, but you don't have to conform in what you think." One of the bearded old men, in sandals and a flat white hat, whose hair (it is like floating white cornsilk) is held behind his head in a rubber band. His nose is red, his eyes bright as he scatters seed to the birds. They drop to the pavement around him. Their wings flap like wooden wings clapped together. Motors sound on the streets around us, their roar a chain of individual bursts. The inscription on the obelisk is significant: "Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by?" And here in the park is a misplaced people and a lost young man. The voice of an old woman and a girl rise in a melancholy Russian chant below the larger sound of trucks. Pigeon wings flap by. A park in the afternoon. - A Danish Modern furnature store - line and color, song and spirit, curve, joy. A small Turkish bench with camels inscribed on the leather seat, and a mono-ting bell at its end. A tiny chest with precise drawers and a glowing wood top, a chest for only treasures. A blue glass vase with a flowing slender neck. And the rugs! A green one in varying stripes, a blue, a red ... A large long-wool rug in greens and white: the green of the sea, of sky, of water in glass, of wind, or grass. White of glaciers and rock and light. Ninety-five dollars. And a small red rug on the wall, glowing in various colored blocks like a stained glass window, alive, alive! Only thirty-five dollars. I am in love with these. I am in love with something else too, a picture in the window of a shabby little cleaning shop. It is a chalk sketch, casual and misty, of a Spanish guitar player and his guitar. The man's face is bent over his music, completely shadowed. His fingers are in highlight, blue shadowed, precise. I want that picture. I walked inside and offered to buy it. "It isn't for sale." I was there again this morning, and if necessary, the morning after. I want that picture! - A pavement around the wharfs - the WN Lundgren flying a gold cross on a blue field. A band of rust on the bottom. - And as I was describing the Lundgren, suddenly death. The police siren wails. A police car draws up. The red light of an ambulance turns slowly. Two stretchers are at the wharf next to ours before the police boat draws up. Our small running steps take us farther up the wharf where we can see. A dark-faced woman is on the stretcher. A man whose face is bashed and bloody staggers up the ramp between two officers. A reporter in incongruously dapper tweed darts about and winds his camera jerkily. There is a smell of tar, a sound of engines. People have begun to cluster at a safe distance. A blond young man asks us "What happened?" "Two injuries and a wet policeman" we tell him, "What does that add up to?" But that is not all. A dark tugboat noses in. It is called the Grappler. It seems to us ominous and evil. Another tug pushes through the oily, olive-drab water. Behind it is the half-sunken wreck of a cruiser, with splintered boards spearing the air and wobbling in the spray. And there are two more stretchers carried down the ramp. These go slowly. We nod to ourselves, "There are two dead." We watch as their bodies are folded in the arms of the officers and stretched onto the white sheets. They seem grey blue and very heavy. Their arms flap heavily to their chests. A sheet is drawn over their heads and tucked in. The ambulances have gone. The reporters are scribbling their stories. Two people are dead who were not dead an hour ago when we strolled beside the Lundgren and were whistled at by bronzed sailors with red life in them. Their red life, and ours, does not comprehend. The cluster of policemen and reporters does not comprehend. The bloody survivors do not. And I am frightened. We remain, and the spidery black shadows of masts on the water, and the low sun, and the pigeons on the pavement. And smoke, and sailboats, and the scarlet of the fireboat opposite us, and the sky very blue. A boy sitting on a gatepost at Victory Park, crosslegged in faded blue jeans, sand colored soft boots, a shirt rolled to his elbows. One arm clasped around his legs and one about his ankle. His arms are brown and strong cords stand out on his wrists under his ID bracelet. He has a long jagged face, questioning, lean, poetic. His hair is long, swept sideways across his forehead like a small boy's. He fingers the stubble on his chin. I think he is entirely beautiful - a piper, a Peter Pan, a poet. - At Uncle Peter's in bed - A few more pictures to remember - the walk home, when our shadows glanced ahead of us like skaters (swift moving and deliberate) as we capered, with the juice of a nectarine and a pear still wet on our chins and the remembrance of our day still near us - the Doukhobors singing in the square, a worsted harmony made of many threads of different color-values (clear yellow of glinting descant, violet of bass shading ...). Chants in a minor, protest songs. (The face of my lean-jawed poet tilted to receive the music.) "There is something wrong. Look at their faces. They are not happy." The warm response in a boy's face as his car edged past our bus and I smiled impulsively at him - the interior of the bus, and myself curled upon the seat with my eager face at the window - my face in the mirrors of stores, trying on a red hat, merely passing: cheek bones well defined, face brown, eyes arrogant and certain. Hair flying - a new pair of pettipants in a vibrant green/bronze print - the hills as blue silhoettes with naked lights scattered on them, reminding us of Arizona and making us homesick - a 'girl talk' with Auntie as she sat in her gracious living room with her long hair down, and we sat on the carpet near her. The children's choir sang pathos behind us, but she spoke with nearly a radiance when she said "It is wonderful to know that you have married the right man." Wistful thoughts of Peter whenever I saw a white car. Thoughts now of Frank. Reflections of a totally thrilling day. Saturday, August 10 With a cup of fragrant tea at the edge of my page, I am waiting for dinner in a red-and-brown Chinese restaurant. The hostess is trim, Oriental, very chic. Our shrimp fuyung at 85¢ made us think of 85¢ sausage dinners of long ago - dreadful grey heaps of mashed potato, hard little green peas with a hexagonal surface, and slippery mottled sausage burned to a ridge along one side. Times are different - new clothes from the 'bottom up' and small luxuries, and the anticipation of University are not mere surface vanities - they signal an escape from what is grimy and belittling in the sausage dinner days: ragged underwear, dirty windowsills, quarrels and whining. How real is this escape. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Chinatown, Vancouver. Long-necked ducks roasted crisp and shiny hang in the windows with a hook just below the eye. They are naked, and the slant of their bare greasy bills seems agonized to us. Four old men sit along the curb, knees drawn up, wide feet pointed outwards, turning their heads after bypassers. Wind chimes tinkle in doorways of tourist shops as a breeze passes. A small woman with a net bag full of strange vegetables and a wide hat pulled low about her face shuffles up a small hill. Dark doorways with Chinese inscriptions above their doors are sinister. A high-pitched, excited music with a monkey-chattering set of lyrics winds from another shop doorway. Polished wooden Buddhas throw up their hands in laughter, and small carved fishes peer from the display windows. Lanterns, jade, chests - we covet them all. - Adventures of the afternoon have been unorthodox! Walking through the luxury shops downtown, being chased from under a wharf by a stern-minded policeman, ambling through bookshops and art galleries (buying two books of poetry and a Chinese print of white herons), talking to a bearded potter, and then, the long jaunt to Stanley Park - throbbing feet bare at last, rubbing against grass at last. We were spreading our bags when Gino and Tony dropped down beside us. Then began the funniest bit of play-acting I ever did! An Italian man is difficult to handle at any time it seems - two of them, when they are young and coltish, as these were - are even more difficult. So we pretended not to speak English, and for the next two hours I was a skittish little German immigrant girl named Sarah, twenty-two years old; passionately devoted to Aida, opera; fearful of being touched even ever so lightly on the shoulder; eagerly interested in sports cars and a flirty black squirrel; married to a German named Henry; angrily opposed to anything Nazi; shy, giggly, easily startled. Judy was Maria, my slightly younger and smarter friend. We carried it off brilliantly, making blunders and jumping at every slightest pretext. "This is different, it's fun - talk to an English girl and they tell you where to go. These are kinda' cute." And one more adventure before our stay in Vancouver ended. It was Saturday night, late. Behind us was our day full of walking and chattering and seeing. We were blowsy looking and very tired. The last blocks to the bus depot were long. When we counted our change we didn't have the twenty three cents each for busfare. I had a dime and two pennies. Judy had nothing. But I had a twenty dollar travellor's check that should be easily cashed. But: "No, unless you are taking one of our buses ..." "We should but we don't, I'm sorry ..." "Perhaps the larger hotels ..." So I left Judy with our packages and retraced the blocks to a hotel we remembered. A dim, small lobby. A thin night clerk with his back to me and his stiff hair folded over his head. Confidently, "Could you cash a travellor's check please?" "Are you a guest here?" "No " "I'm sorry, we don't. And I am sure none of the other large hotels do either. The banks won't open until Monday morning." And he turned again. I stood thinking with my elbows on the desk. Dark Saturday night. Tired feet. City isolation. A sadness and a child's fear. The night clerk turned back. "There is nothing I can suggest, I'm sure, Madam." His voice was entirely stiff. The stubborn frightened child in me turned to the door and I felt large tears rolling down my cheeks. A doorstep looks out onto a street. People passed infrequently. Suddenly a man stood in front of me with brandy on his breath - "Why din'cha polish your shoes this morning?" Absurd. I ignored him. "You're crying, I can see that." I don't remember what he looked like for I never really looked at him. But he was digging in his pocket. "Never leave a lady in distress," he said, and tucked three man-sized kleenex into the crook of my elbow. And vanished. Bless him! The next hotel cashed my cheque, under the curious but well-bred stare of a varnished blond secretary. And I remember a brassy blonde walking a dog in the dark, swaying on too-high heels. Judy and I laughed hysterically in the depot. Eventure.
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