| still at home volume 5 part 5 - 1963 august-september | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
August 19, Monday New address: General Delivery, Yarrow After mailing the letter to you this morning we got the result envelope - it was with me all day today at work, and then I brought it home. Judy was all eagerness - a trembly sort of eagerness all mixed up with reluctance. And she is bitterly disappointed. I can very well imagine the frightened and hopeless things that are going about in her mind - but what can I say, do? I feel so helpless in the face of grief - you should know, what can anyone do to help someone who is valuable to them? And Judy has been such entirely good company - always receptive and companionable and helpful. I feel a little hurt with her, tho' things are probably not as bad as her dispairing mood tonight makes them seem. Mother, I want to reproach you a little - be, please, a little more careful about J's feelings. No more remarks like the one about her letter - "Judy, yours are good too, but you need practice." That one hurt! And this time the remark about her A in reading. She's fifteen - her feelings are inflammable. And that is enough chiding. I know that you certainly meant nothing derogatory, but from now on make much of her in these letters to us, and a little less of me. Okay? Now especially she will feel that she has let you all down by not coming up to my grade nine marks - quite (the reading and typing marks are very insignificant, really) - and she already feels a bit of unfair comparison between her and BIG SISTER. (It is dreadful to be "Ellie's sister" instead of "Judy - important by herself.") So that's the word to some wise people that will be sufficient. Now Paul, "those girls" aren't having an idyll entirely. Picking in sun and rain, and now spending 10 very weary and bored hours in the smelly noisy cannery every day with no Sundays off isn't idyllic really. We thoroughly enjoy our small adventures, that's all. And anyway, you've got all sorts of time to do things. Besides, boys can hitchhike, go North, work on tramp steamers, anything, which girls in sissy clothes and high heels cannot! Wait 'til you're in University! You'll have summertime escapades to set Mom's hair on its ends, bristling all about her head like sunbeams and frightening RUDY to DEATH! Has Dave Doerksen written you yet about the airshow here? He was knocked over by the blast from a jet exhaust but lived through it, chipper as a cricket. We can tell that you are tired, Mom - the short letter we got before this last one left both Judy and me with an acutely depressed feeling - we think you must have been depressed when you wrote it, for your length of sentence and general tone gave you away. You're a better writer than you know! The last one was better. Frank is going to enjoy your parody of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - we did, or rather, I did and Judy will, tomorrow or the next day. August 28 7:15 AM Hello all - Your beautifully thick envelope was waiting when I got home from work yesterday, and read from date to closing at jetliner speed: that seemed the only way to read it for that seemed to be the way it was written, in a tearing hurry - but very natural. When Frank read it last night he said, "... the only trouble with her writing is that when I read it I can hear her talking." I said: "That's no trouble - that's good." And he said "Sure, but it makes me want to rush up there and see them!" And the little sheet of yellow paper was exciting, though I half-expected the news and was not really surprised. So Queen's won't be only a pipedream after all - how long can this frabjous unbelievable luck of mine last? I feel, superstitiously (shame, Ellie, don't you know superstition went out with witch-burning?) that good things can only fall into one's lap for so long, and then Zeus will send a thunderbolt to strike me dead. So if he does, write in the blank called cause of death: "too much good fortune." I'm sitting on the table with my head pushed in uncomfortably under the food shelf. This is an old berry-shack custom designed to bring the berry picker (Judy will tell you) closer to the hotplate on cold mornings. Strange to have been up so early this morning, 6:30. Only four hours since I got home 'last night.' Frank and I went to Chilliwack for a celebration banana split and then talked 'rather lengthily' while the fog came down eerily and shifted all around us (like sand blown by the wind). Judy, I bought that dress! It fit perfectly, like kid gloves: it is a deep chocolate brown double-knit, starkly untrimmed, casually fitting, and totally gorgeous. Elegance. This is a sketch: Also got an A-line skirt and an ultra-good Dalkeith straight skirt - fully lined and very well finished inside. The A-line skirt looks like the sketch. Now, Mother, this is a good opening for an answer to: when am I coming home? Two facts to keep in mind: 1. Queen's has asked me to arrive there on Sept 21, which means I shall have to leave on the 17th - it is a 3-day trip, plus some hours, to Toronto by CN. 2. I am making over $50 per week at York Farms. And one more fact 3. I desperately need all the money I can get. Maybe it will help to tote up some of my expenses:
If I work to the end here at York Farms - to the time just before the 17th, I can probably gather a total of about $250. A little arithmetic: 600 - 250 = 350. Three hundred and fifty dollars still unaccounted for: I shall probably have to get a part-time job for the second semester, borrow a little, and fish about for another smaller scholarship. You can probably read the scribble on the wall: I can't afford to come home at all, and certainly not now, or soon. Besides that, coming home would be another expense - and an expensive period of not working. Now what do YOU think? One suggestion: CPR goes through Edmonton on its way east. If you were to be in Edmonton just as I was passing through you could see me off - but that's the best I can do! If you think of anything better, say so. And here is a consolation for you. I have resolved ("I do hereby solemnly promise ...") to write at least one page of letter every day to somebody of the family, so you will get your weekly letter and if you don't you'll know it's because I'm broke and haven't the 5¢ postage. Okay? Another consolation: Queen's puts all frosh women into residence - more expensive, much! But you'll have no worries about soup and toast malnutrition (eg groceries for one week: 3 pkgs soup 45¢, 1 loaf bread 25¢) or starving in a cold garret (dramatically). They've sent notice that I'm to be safely tucked away in 49 Ban Righ Hall with two hundred or so other scared little freshettes. Whee-ee! What do you think of that? I wonder if you think, perhaps, that I'm being a little over extravagant on the clothes-cost estimates? It is just that it seems very necessary to be well dressed when you are beginning a completely new life - you do probably understand this. Work is beginning to be rather fun - crazy at times. when tincans get stuck on the line (Judy can vouch for this) the tincan putter-onto-the-liner must grab a very large stick and march along the line to locate the culprit, and then poke it out viciously and scuttle back to fill up the line again. I feel like Joan of Arc when I go tin-poking: helmetted (rollers in my hair), dressed in chain-mail (my clothes are never washed, so encrusted with dirt), and carrying a stout lance off to fight the bloomin' English (a silly row of chattering tins) for my Charles d'Orleans (the forelady!). And the cabin is peaceful (tho lonesome sans Judy - but toujours gai - write me about the trip, sibling?): early morning sun coming through the grape vine and our dusty window (I say 'our' because I still think of it as being half your cabin Judy - oh, when I gave Frank your special thank you message for the banana split he thought a little and said "... and you tell her that she's a swell kid." Now from him that's a high compliment.) I should describe some exciting episodes to make this thing a little nearer the 'bearable' rating on an interest scale, but shucks, no episodes happen! Shall I make some up? That's nogood. My, you people are keeping some real Nob Hill company - Manns, Windrims, the Superintendent of County Schools ... zooks! What will Sieberts think? They'll make remarks about how you are rising so in society that you don't have time for neighbours. Oh! You must hear about this: just as I was coming off duty last night, the new people on the night shift were being pushed into their places. A dress caught my eye: an orangey sunrise color dress. Immediate recognition. I ran after the woman, and of course it was Mrs Siemens. What with beginning a new job and being rushed to her stall on the peach line and suddenly seeing a face that had no business being in BC at all, and at York Farms, she was in a complete frizzle - couldn't utter one articulate syllable, just babbled a bit and finally managed to blurt "I didn't even know you were here!" just as the forelady was dragging her away. Perhaps I can chat a bit tonight. Funny, anyway! You will remember that dress. She used to wear it to church. The dear little old Swedish man I tol' you about last letter is still working next door on labeling. He's a honey! - We come to work in boots and ballooning old bluejeans and hairnets and dirty gloves looking incredibly like trolls ("Little Billy Goat Gruff, I'm going to eat you up!"), but he twinkles anyway and tells us how good we look: "If you feel the way you look this morning, you feel hundred percent!" And though we know it's a lie, it is a nice lie and sweet of him. There are so many nice people working with me - funny about the Mennonites; there are hoards of them there but they clump disgracefully. Ie eat in a different lunchroom, talk only to "die Pannachsche und die Savowtche und die Appche" (that was purely phonetic and you'll have to sound it out). Next Sunday and Monday Labour Day will probably be off, so I'll try to arrange to go to Clearbrook to see Elizabeth Anne and the Honey Toews if they're still there, and hear about the wedding. You'll get a good report then - and now I must wash some socks! Judy, be sure and tell them about Gino and Tony, and the cabin, and Reimers, and all that stuff. Were the blouse instructions clear enough? Please write about:
August 31 Dear Epps all - After 'dashing off' (ie prespiringly composing) letters to the Honourable Messieurs Andruski and Toews, plus cleaning out under-bed boxes, plus catalog-browsing, plus apple-breakfasting, there's little morning left before trotting-to-work 10 AM, but I have a family-writing itch and shall scratch it just a little. You must hear about yesterday. We were off work early, so I walked down to G'parents Epp to tell them my glad tidings. (Barefoot - I really have no shoes other than my heels - dramatically 'pou' - Judy can explain that word to you). Grandma had just been to Chilliwack to see her doctor, so it was a while before I had a chance to tide my tidings. But when I did, a tide: Grandma cried! "Are you sure it is not two hundred?" Grandfather said, "So? Na, das ist ja gut. Mama, varum veins du?" and went calmly outside to do some gardening. When I thought about it later I realized that this reaction was very like the kind Father must have had when he heard about it - cool and a little unimpressed, but pleased in a dignified way. Am I right? Mom, you didn't cry, did you? I haven't been having any wild jubilations either, but I have been percolating inside. And sometimes at work reedy little voices inside my head shriek "I'm going to Queen's. I'm act-u-ally going to Queen's!" And in some of our breaks I memorize the campus map - isn't that ridiculous? Grandma mentioned your visit with them, Judy, and said she had enjoyed it. She was very pleased with you! Especially with the way you had handled her questionnaire about "Bist du bekarrt?" - Oh yes, she told me all about it! Oh, family, has Judy told you about Alfred? According to Uncle Harvey he bounced home from camp last year, eyed his mother, and announced very briskly: "Nope, Mom, you don't have to ask. I didn't get saved!" And according to Grandma Aunt Lily is expected today - I hope I can see them tonight. And while coming home from the grandparents, with cucumbers, cake, and 'gerestete' buns, their Eaton's catalog, and a Readers Digest, I heard music coming from the Goertz house and stopped in to see Ruby and Lottie. They are very much like Alvina with their music, and will sit down at the piano before long in any visit: no apologies, no hesitation. And play! They have a catalog-size volume of Beethoven sonatas, all of which they play beautifully - and played for me also Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood," a collection of short pieces that are reminiscing about various childhood memories. I was in a state of ecstasy all the way home. Judy, we'll have to see if we can get them on a record - and Chopin's Impromptu too. Please tell me about the records! Do you remember last letter's description of Betty? Yesterday I couldn't resist rushing up to her before work and saying "Betty, I got that scholarship." And she hugged me! I was so pleased. And now - another nine mucky hours! But toujours gai; I'm incredibly lucky. - Same evening. Did you open the letter you marked "Very Important"? If not - it announced that I was being offered the Steel Company of Canada Bursary of $2000. The amounts being equal, I have - of course! - rushed an acceptance to Queen's and a polite 'sorry' to U of A. Now that business is over. I phoned Clearbrook half an hour ago; Aunty Anne answered, and I'm to be fetched by someone either tonight or tomorrow. Aunt Lillian and her family are here; Aunt Lily, according to a phone call from Grandma Epp, has not arrived. We sliced peaches today, on an ingenious knife that spears the pits and halves the peaches in one wrist flick. I was rather pleased to be able to work today, for most of the people had a holiday. According to Dot, they were holding only their "better workers" so that the peaches could be finished quickly before the long weekend. Flattering! So I took my opportunity and guzzled a few Okanagan grade A's. Home by 6 instead of 8:30 as usual. I miss Rudy! Why doesn't he write? Clearbrook, September 1 What is a face more than skin over flesh? What is my face, that I love it? I have been framing my face to a self-portrait: "Portrait of a Young Woman" framed in the concentric enclosures of mirror, wall, room of a civilized house on a civilized road; enclosures of music and slanting light. Enclosures of the year and the age and the spiraling wicker horn that holds our human story and culminates into the round frame of Me Now. I should like to have the portrait to keep. What is this face? An arrogant angle of eyebrows. A brown glowing skin, a strong face with sturdy boning but a mobile cast. Brown dress. Hands curved with nails short and well-outlined. Orange flowers in a vase. Defiance. Confidence. Cockiness. Hostility. But strength, I thought, "I am beautiful only very rarely, when the light falls at such an angle and excitement illuminates the underskin. But I like this face because it is a strong arrogant face, and I shall need such a face." But then I leaned forward and half-closed my eyes. The image in the mirror, the valued self-portrait, dimmed to black and white. It was suddenly only smudges of light and dark, unreal and frightening as the negative of a photograph, and sinister. Yarrow September 10 I woke this morning before six, when it was too dark to see my watch. From my bed I could see the window, black squares of frame enclosing the solid outline of grape leaves against a dusty grey-pink dawn. This cabin, because I will leave it tomorrow, was suddenly dear: the shelf with its Corn Flakes box of pears and cucumbers, my shoebox full of hair rollers, my two milk cartons with their tops sawn off to form containers for knives and pencils. My chair, half drawn to the table, promising a letter written or book read as two chairs drawn together promise friendship. (Frank, why haven't I seen you for nearly two weeks? I sat alone in the plum tree last night, waiting to see whether you would come. The light from a distant lamp post slanted under the boughs to light up the undersides of the leaves around me. I could see every leaf outlined, tidy and motionless, hung on its branch in its own place. The tree is on a corner, where I could see headlamps of cars from both sides passing. Curled on a fork of branches in this plum tree I felt a watching that was almost an entity, a characteristic separate and distinct, like loneliness or love.) Suddenly now, like a touch on the side of my face, the sun rose and flared orange through a crack in the door. The sky above my grape leaves is a lighter pink. Water is boiling on the hotplate. This will be a good day. As I lay in the dark, early, I heard a train pass far away. A very soft whistle, a continuous blurred thumping in the hills. Trains are exciting! The last evening, when I was with Frank and had just heard of my scholarship, a train passed. The whistle was nearby; poignant, almost shrill, strident and hysteric, then soft and lonely. The excitement I felt was a sudden flare, and I reached in the dark for Frank's hand, fumbling hardly at all to find it, and held it very hard until the train had passed. I will leave for Kingston in a week ... I've been reading too, this morning. Conrad's short story, Youth. "... and I remember my youth and the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth and all men: the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength: the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires - and expires too soon, too soon - before life itself." I know about this, don't I - there was a night, remember? When I cast my shadow on the wall and felt this very triumphant conviction of strength, as I feel it now. Frank knows about it too: there was a night in the park here in Yarrow, when he lay on the grass and looked at the hills: "Do you ever feel as though you could live forever?" he said. "I do. I wish I could live to see these hills worn down. (That's a long time.) Think of what I could do!" I thought this morning, I am fortunate to know this man when the heat of life is hottest within him. Women who love him later will have just a little less than I have. I went out to gather some fruit later, plums, apples, pears. The morning was good. The scented air was good. Last night when I returned from my plum tree vigil the light was yellow through my window shade, and the woodsmoke smell was very sad -
"And we all nodded at him: we nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone - has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash - together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions." Oh, I know it! - Perfectly satisfactory day. Those prim adjectives are bursting with meaning. What a day! Some quick scenes: Lydia's Delicatessen (I've never been in a delicatessen) small and dark, romantic with wine bottles and French loaves of bread, European magazines, exclusive bottled jellies, sausages under glass, lemons in the window. Fat plodding Lydia like a dull watchman pondering through the Louvre, a caretaker alone, untouched by the romance of her charge. The park with wet grass under bare feet, the exotic, luxurious German fashion magazine babbling of "die neue Mode," "die Früling's Mode." German pastries savored there in the park, and a bar of halvah. Talking to Agnes Matties in the porch of her house: her face earnest and ringed by hair escaped from her queue, her weight awkward. But we talked of our handicaps, and how little they are. And I was glad for the world - glad to be me. Chatting with the handsome shoe repairman, as a friend, while he mended my heels. A glimpse of my face in the moving glass of a door, a quick glimpse that made me feel almost fey. The thick letter in the mail, twelve pages from Peter. Ooo-oo I thought, this will be fun. The first reading was stimulating; the second was hilariously funny; the third was warm. Later readings have been a combination of them all. This crazy redhead is so ugly but so attractive that I feel at once mother, wife, mistress, sister, and disciple to him. (You don't believe me? Well, perhaps that exaggerated it slightly; you're right.) Lying in my cot in the packing-up chaos in my green petti-slip reading the letter he wrote from the middle of a field of breaking, howling with laughter at a pun he'd overlooked (perhaps). Reading the Sun with a Coke at the corner store, dressed in my stacked heels and a new dress (a 'wool burlap' in beige with a pleated skirt and no 'junk' - a graceful thing). My very large purse. Supper at G'parents Epp. Grandfather seated solemnly at the head of the table in suspenders with his soft charcoal-grey hair shadowing the rigid old-man hollows of his face. His eyes eager, his face humorously questioning. His gracious conversation. Grandmother loquacious and anxious, but graceful in her spare, straightforward way. I would like to have known these as people. What are they, really? Who? How much of them am I? Bone and flesh, gene and heritage; how much? The visit with Lottie. Moments of watching her play her piano, an unembarrassed dreaminess of expression. Direct, ringing notes. Communication - I thought of Peter, thought how much I would like to play as she does, for him, as language. Walking home with Ruby and Lottie, between them in the dark with the mosaic pebbles of the pavement rough under my feet. Sitting on the corner by the road posts talking with them in the hard lacquer-light of the street lamp. Awareness of University and Europe, of Frank and Peter and Lottie and Grandfather, of Conrad and Chopin, of Lydia in her delicatessen and I in my unbounded joy-streaked young world. - [the following from a different, spiral-bound source] I feel that I am approaching a Significance. In two weeks exactly I shall board a train which will take me to Kingston, to an address called Ban Righ Hall. And I realize that in this context, which will be entirely new, I shall want to be something entirely new. Feelings about this are mixed: I am afraid of what I was and will be if I continue here. But I am also afraid of leaving everything that I know for a complete New, and of the threat/promise of a metamorphosis of Me. Fear of the new is something I've not known before. I was surprised too, a few evenings ago, when Frank and I parked in the foggy countryside to talk impersonally and carefully amid the ghost banks of mist. (Moving, elusive, like that quintessence of ourselves that would not precipitate to clear and careful discussion). We spoke of the nearing Change. "I'm scared, Frank. I've never been scared before." His fingers tracing my eyelash found it wet and I borrowed his hanky. (While washing it today felt the tender domesticity of the dilletante sock-washer who knows nothing, really, of sock washing.) "Keep something of yourself" he said. But Ellie feels rejected because she is not good enough for patrician societies of Ban Righ - yet she does not approve of the flinty soulless Ellie who could be. What to be, how to be what - I feel desperate to delineate somehow my goals; to outline my dangers and star them with red asterisks; to impress resolution on the new skin of a new environment; to change miraculously from this perpetually awkward creature with bushy hair and a too-plump figure to a thoroughbred and gracious Enviable. How truthful is my sense of choice? If I could only (it tells me) put a tool of dexterity into my hands and probe all Is for the Is file that relates to me, I could diagram tidily
I am an actress, basically, at any rate. If I can only choose my part widely the performance will be creditable. But if my groping intellect cannot close its fingers on Is, the performance in total will be like a role in a dream, where we make our entrance only to find that the other actors are alien, the cues tangled, the play suddenly unfamiliar. And because we are actresses and still believe in the critic who will call our performance Great, we do not run for an exit but trust ourselves to 'catch on' just early enough to save the play. I want to know my part before I make the entrance. Who is the Ban Righ Ellie to be? Ah, deliberately, deliberately, I form her. But I fear her! I am afraid for her! Afraid that my will cannot be large enough or strong enough, that I shall create a Frankenstein. That all my learning will be only such as that of Caliban: "You taught me language, and now I know how to curse." Is everyone thus afraid of himself? This creation is no simple thing: it involves grooming, clothes, social participation or nonparticipation, choice of friends, choice of books, hours of study, Sunday occupation, relationships and habits. But I must have a policy! An internal policy, an external policy. Departments of labour and commerce, of social welfare and health and sanitation. I. Basically I want to be
I want a return of faith and outlet for my dedicational capacity. I do not want to become a chilly Hemingwayistic intellectual, continually the prophet shouting "Vanity!" But this must be resigned to moral and intellectual integrity, honesty. La Glace September 16 End of summer. But not an end in disillusionment, as is traditional. How will I remember my goodbye to Sexsmith? Mostly as an encirclement of love - Grandfather Windrim holding my hand in both of his and struggling to delineate his thought in words, vocalize his human-ness. "Dies ist ja Ellie. Ich muss gratulieren." Bob, "Now I want to talk to Ellie for five minutes!" Denny at the door: "Hey, hi Ellie!" and his unceremonious burst as he dashed away in front of me, "Hey, Uncle Bob, Ellie is here! Hey Mom, Ellie's ..." Mr McCue grinning from his bench, Mr Mann stroking back his hair, Peter impeccable, beautiful above his correcting papers, the faculty in the staff room warmly well-wishing. Mr Mann's arm about me as we wandered down the steps: "We really were very proud of you." And Peter following us to the laboratory, then going back alone to a room upstairs. Mr Grushchilo in the middle of the gymnasium floor with his broom, leaning against it, radiating. The familiar click of my heels down the hall. The mud outside on the way to Mann's. My boot stuck and Peter's hand steadying me, then his gallantly bent arm pulling me through the muck. "Hey, I'll remember you with size 25 feet!" Luddingtons "We recognized you as you were just coming up the walk!" Mrs Wold's phone call. Gerry Windrim's warm "God speed you!" The Hamms' "Both my wife and I want to wish you..." Peter far and away, a bit forlorn on the chesterfield. "You can kill a thing by probing it ..." Pouring coffee into his cup rather female-ly. Watching him standing by his car after leaving without saying goodbye to him, feeling the wrench from him and from this town that I love achingly. Mr Mann standing on the doorstep. "We do wish the best for you. You know I mean that, don't you?" "I guess I do." He put his arms around me and kissed my forehead with the affection Theodore Rilke [Roethke] knew, "I with no right in this thing, neither father nor lover." Yet both, and as a human being, more.
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