La Glace September 1st
Last night there was a thunderstorm. Judy and Paul and I went out to
get the cows. I drove the car (our round-backed old Mercury) and kept killing
it. We were afraid of Buck. He was nervous, pacing in tense circles, bolting
suddenly. Because they'd been nearly trampled a few evenings ago, Judy and
Paul were afraid. We hesitated beside the fence in the dark. There were
a few blurred thunder sounds among the wind sounds.
Paul ventured up to the fence. We were cowards but who can admit it?
We crawled under the fence. Again, a most awful stroke of lightening, nearly
on us. (Father said, in the morning, that twenty fence posts were splintered
in the same pasture - lightening ran along the barbed wire.) We flattened.
The cattle bolted. It began to rain in long hard diagonal strokes. The wind
rose. I turned the car and the lights pushed through rain and wind erratically,
blown about, as I slid on the newly wet earth.
I was excited when we got home, elated. There was no kerosene; the one
lamp burned very low. In the kitchen window, crowding the reflection of
my face, was the grey sky racing south and streaks of calm near the horizon.
I love rain and lightening and thunder-fear.
September 4 [letter]
Yes, I'm here in Sexsmith at Mrs Wold's house, repeating history by sleeping
in the room Jan slept in and even using the same pink tumbler for hair-setting.
A shelf is already crowded with books including the BOAC timetable for flights
anywhere in the world.
September 9
I went walking, just down the street and up. I love this street at night.
Branches hung down over the sidewalk. Like a child I couldn't help but jump
up to touch them. Two small boys leaned from an upstairs window to talk
to me. A man passed and his dim face turned to follow me. Children shouted
on the lawn. A white haired moppet in a red sweater stopped her shouting
to lean against the fence and say hi. The trees threw shadows. At the corner
near the lights the leaves of the trees are half light, half dark, a swaying
mass. In one window white-haired men playing checkers in suspenders. In
another was a bare-chested boy looking sulky. One house has red curtains
always closed at night and the light glows through it. I was conscious of
my body, of all my movements, of my white shoes, of my shadow on walls.
Cars slowed heavily at the corner. One of the boys I'd have been thrilled
about when I was thirteen leaned from a window to shout "Wanna ride?"
It didn't have the same kick. I hurried in with a berried branch for my
room. It is good to be back.
September 13
For dinner I took 25 cents and sneaked through the back alley (because
I was ugly and my nose shone) to buy three chocolate bars and a bag of peanuts.
The grass in the back yard was wet and tufty. All of the houses had flat
light and shadow sides in the sun. I love to sleek through alleys. For five
minutes in the afternoon I stopped to watch the train thump through in slow
iambic.
I'm plotting another article. Shucks.
September 16
The leaves are yellow. Dave and Dennis walked me to school.
September 18
And windows, top storey windows, are international too, many things.
I ran out into the street tonight in my bare feet, ran down the street to
the end, dodging streaks of light, touching the grainy sidewalk only lightly,
lightly (it was warm). I came to the end, poised, looking up into the tree
with a street light shining out of it, turned and ran back. When I came,
panting, to the hedge of my house, I hopped through the gravel (bare feet)
to the grass on the other side of the street and looked up at my window.
It had a rose-blue glow, very warm. The light shone through the red curtains
(tho' they are faded and rather ugly I am glad they are there for they give
my house such a "Me" look from the road.) I ran back up to my
room. Papers and books spread. Oh yes, the one who lives there must be bookish.
This morning I woke with the breeze in my face (because I insist on sleeping
head-end down by the window). I said while half asleep "Help me to
love everyone today. Help me to remember to."This morning I woke with
the breeze in my face (because I insist on sleeping head-end down by the
window). I said while half asleep "Help me to love everyone today.
Help me to remember to."
September 20, English class
Mr Mann is leaning against the blackboard with one foot on his desk,
his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, playing with a red pencil.
His voice shifts almost as his eyebrows, easing and tensing. What is his
charm? A bit of whimsy. He has a lean face with a sharp nose, small wrinkle-cornered
black eyes. Straight greying black hair curved stiffly over his head, a
perpetual beard-shadow and a nearly perpetual smile. He is very lean, and
shorter than he looks. His suit is double-breasted and old fashioned with
a careful mend on the lapel. He always wears the same grey suit flapping
loosely around his waist where it is meant to be buttoned over. He talks
to us, not taking himself or us too seriously, but smiling so warmly that
we feel he likes us and is interested in us.
Sept 21
It is always sad to go home on weekends but today there was a letter
from Frank .
Sept 22
Saturday - I went to the sink to clean my fingernails but it was dirty
so I had to clean sink - cupboard - kitchen - outside and yelled at Mom.
September 25
I walked quickly to the shabby Chinese café on Sexsmith's main
street to buy a chocolate bar - Crispy Crunch is always good. Colin Griffith
was there, long as ever and as beautiful, smoking a cigarillo - friendly,
pert, among a rabble in a crowded booth. As I stepped across the road the
passenger, a stub of a CN, came into the station. I ran, of course, to pace
the platform. The conductor asked if I was going - "No, wishing."
Sept 29
Weekend in La Glace. Baked bran muffins with many raisins in them, drove
tractor in the sun for a while and enjoyed it.
Sept 30
Stayed home from church so Judy could wear my girdle and I could escape
the Thanksgiving Fête to do homework.
October 2
Tuesdays are good - library night. I have to bring books home even if
I know I can't read them.
October 5
Friday. Impressed by Tennessee Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire"
from the libe. I get hungry on weekends. I can stay here in town all winter!
October 6
World Series - Yanks and San Fran Giants. So far tied up. We're still
threshing on our 6 quarters.
October 12
Fri - Snow this morning. Curled up downstairs with radio and a bit of
food and letters and songs and was wildly happy because I'm going to Europe!
I am!
October 13
In 2" of snow and much mud went home to find a shambles after Father
caned Paul - left Judy and Mom crying, Paul desolate, Rudy terrified. I
hate weekends!
October 17
I'm experimenting with food to make it stretch over two weeks - an egg,
cereal, milk, and handful of carrots. Feel hungry.
October 22
Mom phoned to say she wanted some stuff and told me about a letter from
Bonnyville. Dear Paul Sylvestre has been dead for two years, and he was
barely fifteen!! [died the.August after last seen him in February1960]
24 Oct
Gorgeous morning, nippy and cold and wildly colorful, all sorts of pink
streaks in the sky and street lights still winking among the bare tree branches.
I'm not up yet.
October 29
Tense world situation Cuba - Russia - US
October 30
Dennis and I will sit and talk and talk about the vital things to our
minds and Mr Mann will put in words. I love school..
November 4
I'm back in my room. It's home, I'm lying with the window open in my
pink pyjamas with a sense line across my shoulder where the neckline is
sliding off, and a sense spot on the top of my head where a roller is poking
me, and the firm compact sound of a car sogging by on the street, I'm not
looking but across the street I see a complete centre - the rectangle of
a lighted window, a flat surface object with a flat lamp in its exact centre
and the flat painted figure of a man slouching before his television set.
Now suddenly the conical splintery shape of a cough downstairs.
November 7
Outside was wonderfully warm for November, an evening like a September
night. I walked down the stairs silently in the dark, felt for the screen
door latch and walked outside in my new brown shoes. The end of the street
has the tree cobweb caging a lamp in its branches. I walked down toward
it, saw a light in an upstairs room where Dennis lives. Thought ah! Dennis
is studying.
November 10
Our pictures [school photos] came and I look young and somewhat fierce and arrogant too, which I am
- arrogant and hesitant and afraid of people - even Ludingtons and Mrs Wold
and Mr Mann.
November 23
Episode of the radio. Breakfast and peanut butter on the table. The radio
on a shelf, cord wound around it.
Mother asked would I take the radio? Father said of course not. Mother,
"Why?" "Your habit of setting things on edges goes against
you now." "Because I slobbered when I was a baby does that mean
I shouldn't eat in public now?" "That kind of reasoning will get
you nowhere." "You use it all the time" from Mother. I am
surprised. "Well I don't expect it to get any results," in a querilous
tone. I see Judy and Paul standing stiffly, Judy has her back to us as she
does when she is angry.
I walk into the living room and say in a whisper, although I don't care
about the radio, "Silly old man." I come back and say "It's
just that this is grade twelve and I have to stay on my toes with the news."
"And this is the last year she'll be home - this is the last year we'll
be able to do anything for her."
I stand with tears in my eyes and run to the living room where they fall
down and I wipe them away. It is cold. I wait for Father in the truck, eating,
propped against my suitcase. Father comes back and he has the radio in a
box against his knee as he drives. We neither of us say anything. He puts
it into Raynold's car and I want to say thank you but I say nothing.
November 27
Stayed until past 7:30 studying at school - being teased by the janitor.
"You make like fool of me. I hav' go home, eat doughnuts, maybe two
dozen. You be here, eat no supper, I eat, I hav' eat!" Wife: "I
make big pie. Is better to be happy than cry!" [janitors Mr Gruscilo
and Mrs Pinch]
[undated]
Saroyan:
"I'm doing what I can to keep this moment
solid and alive" - yes! "I love consciousness."
His piece is called "Myself Upon Earth."
It ended this way, "The point is this - day after day I longed for
my typewriter." "This morning I got it back. It is before me now
and I am tapping on it, and this is what I have written." (October
1934)
"I am sitting in my room, living my life,
tapping my typewriter." "I love and worship life, living senses,
functioning minds. I love consciousness. I love precision" -
yes! "I wanted To say something and see if it
was the right thing."
November 28
I work late every night after school and love the janitors.
December 20th
My one present that I was so pleased with is safely given. Rather awkwardly.
After school I had a very large and very heavy pile of books to carry home
(Mr Mann said, when he wandered in in his great black overcoat, thin man
with his half absent, half affectionate way, "Do I have to put a curfew
on you tonight?" "No - I'm going home - just organizing. Is it
okay if I take this book home over the holidays?" "Oh? Fine. Are
you going home home, or just home?" "Home home, I guess. Maybe
not 'til Saturday.") And wandered through the unfamiliar grade school
floor of the school looking for the janitor. She was talking to someone
and my books were heavy so I sort of pushed the package into her uncomprehending
hands and swung off up the steps. She said "T'ank you, oh. T'ank you"
in still a rather uncomprehending way and I walked home rather pleased.
It was a box of chocolates for her and for my dear teazing Mr Janitor friend
with his stiff black hair that parts in the middle.
-
It is raining outside. I can hear it on the roof. I'm seventeen. Today
I've been very briefly in several worlds - Salinger's Caulfield, Thomas
Wolff's Hills Beyond, worlds of people who write. And again I felt
as tho' I should write. But is there in me not only a wish but a way too?
Maybe it is too soon to tell. But I feel aware, I feel like a writer.
-
Last week on Monday I worked after school studying French. It was late
and had been dark for a long time (the new house nearby has Christmas lights)
but dark begins early and time is ungraduated after the sun sets. "When
the siren goes at 9:30 I'm going home. This is a bloody bore." I heard
steps in the hall and then a rattling at the door. Mr Mann, I thought, come
to tell me to go home. I nearly pushed the door accidentally into his face.
He said "Do you know that it's twenty to eleven?"
When I closed my books I had the strange confused sensation that I was
going to cry. I couldn't talk to him coherently. In the hallway - dim, half-lit
- he said, "Where's your shoes?" "I'm wearing them."
And I scurried down the steps. "Hop into the car," he said. It
was outside the door, and he got into it, and he drove me home to the brown
house. It was quarter to eleven. I hadn't eaten since eight in the morning.
We didn't talk much on the way through the streets. When he stopped at the
corner under the streetlights I looked across and saw him driving there,
and I thought of a dream I had once of him driving through a city with me
in the rain at night, red neon reflected in the rain drops on the windshield
and onto his face. I love him.
December 24
Today is the night before Christmas and I am sitting here in the living
room with my slip showing and in my lovely orange sheen dress with holly
pinned to my shoulder. Judy is beside me in the pink dress and my gold necklace.
Frank is in the kitchen with mother talking intimately. I feel rather left
out. On the first night here we felt strange, but yesterday when I was sick
on the couch it was better. I say to myself, Frank, not you, not you. And
yet he seems very dear.
December 27
The living room, it is past midnight, the album of Schumann's Concerto
in A Minor in the background, because Mother and Father were sleeping. Earlier
there were regular squeaks from the bedroom.
Everything he said and I said, and everything I learned from him, and
every time we touched, and all of this I want to keep. I want terribly to
keep.
I have lost you. I have given you up.
This morning in the dark I woke momentarily to a single awareness of
the window streaked with snow, the wind. A blizzard. I thought of Frank
sleeping in the basement and wondered if he heard it.
"A timbering process," he mentioned about today's final goodbye
- all of these five days of Christmas have been a timbering process. I don't
know how long this new feeling will last, but I feel as tho I'd fallen in
love with him again. Timbering process - that is what happened to all my
feeling for him. It was becoming feeble, but now it is intense and wild,
timbered by losing him.
January 2 1963
One last frustrating day at home. I feel bitter, hard, a terrible person.
January 13
"I wanted to tell you something." I bent to put on my boot.
"I - while you were watching television I took a piece. I helped myself.
I shouldn't have. I didn't ask you. It bothered me. I don't know why. I
wasn't hungry." She said, of course, "You were welcome to it.
This is a bad day, everything is bothering you today." She said "You
shouldn't bother about that. That was fine. You go upstairs and sleep."
January 14
Biol test, 90%. It is not enough.
January 16
I'm short of food.
January 25
Last night while I was working late at school Mr Mann came in, walked
over to where I was sitting alone in my desk, said "Don't you ever
stop working? What are you working for anyway?" "University"
I said. "Is that good enough?" He put a hand on either side of
my shoulder quickly and dropped his chin to the top of my head.
January 28 English class
What does it feel like to be a word on a blackboard, the word paramecium
written firmly in white chalk? I feel myself actually stretched out flat,
with a sharp edged sort of anguish, looking down at the sharp chalk peaks
of my body.
March 5
I returned from school tonight at about five to ten, pm. When I looked
up from removing my boots I saw the box on the table - long, florist green,
narrow. Ripping of paper, snapping of green string, unfolding of white paper,
wax paper, plastic. I noticed the soggy newsprint around the stems first.
Carnations - red and white. A small card - "Happy Birthday Ellie."
No name - only "Vancouver, B.C." Frank then. Mrs Wold said "I
didn't know who it was from - Peter Dyck or your boyfriend." Hilda
said "They're beautiful. They're beautiful. I couldn't wait to see
what they were."
I turned off the big light and now have only my small glow. It's nearly
11:30 pm. There is an amazing apple-sauce-spice smell . It is the carnations,
it must be.
April 23
Everything here in Sexsmith is finally dry but the creek is flooding
its banks.
May 18
Tonight we had a party at the school, a wiener roast in the grass near
the creek. It was different from the high school parties we used to have
- no, I'm different. I felt like a middle-twenties aunt having a good time
with the kids. I felt wonderfully free - how? The freedom was the freedom
from want. This is the first time I've gone unescorted to a party, especially
a firelit party, without pulling into myself with the pain of aloneness.
But tonight was wonderful. I sat with with Bert in his feathered hat
padding the bongos, near owly-eyed Ray Olesen and Pat cross-legged, guitar
strumming. I like the sparks careening among the stars, but redder than
the stars; the firelight on faces; Pat singing "But I'm sad to say,
I'm on my way, won't be back for many a day," the soft thud of his
wooden tom-toms, the seedy rattle of the castanets; the smiles around the
music; the ash on Pat's hair; Dennis standing alone with his hands deep
in his pockets.
I was one of the first to leave, hating the tho't that Mrs Wold might
lock me out, and not wanting to worry her. So I said my goodnight and walked
across the dark field. It was a beautiful night, dark enough now. I was
glad and light, and still savoring my freedom. Then a light swung up behind
me, the white car I had half-expected to see. Dennis and Dave. I like the
car because it is narrow enough so that when I sit in the middle I can touch
both of them on either side with the length of my arm. We drove around quite
a few blocks, around and around, listening to parts of Camelot on the car
radio, ("I'll vivisect him, I'll subdivide him ") talking in the
wonderful isolation of a car in the dark. After a long while I came home.
May 24
It began to rain tonight. When I walked home there was left only a spattering
mist and wet sidewalks - and an earth smell; a thick grey sky curving in
and out around the trees; lighted windows (two ketchup bottles and a tea
kettle silhoetted against the light in Knobby Clark's shanty); fluid red
streaks of neon far down the street beside the hotel; gleaming new leaves,
wet, heart-shaped, dripping; shiny boards on the footbridge too slippery
to run across as I usually do. I thought as I crossed the gravelly road
to my street, "I would like to do this forever - work during the day
in some busy, important place, and then come home at night to a street roofed
with these giant trees and peopled by friends."
I could hear very clearly the sound of rain on a patch of tin far down
the street, splintering against a tin chimney.
Then it was good to reach my own shabby, square house (square houses
have a sort of architectural poise), to leave my shoes in the porch and
drift upstairs to my own room - my warm, orderly room that is so full of
my own things - a twig in a drinking glass, my typewriter, the 'Japanese'
fabric print on my wall, the upside-down map of Norway on my ceiling, my
raised-eyebrow Robert Frost, my mysterious-beautiful Catherine de Neuve
on the wall, my curtains and my books and my straight green chair.
There was a tatter of flute music on the radio, and when I leaned outside
I could hear a train grating through the suddenly quickened rain-sounds.
May 31
Graduation evening. There are several things I'm proud of. I wore a dress
much different from what everyone else wore. I wore my orange and gold and
I swished. The other six girls were in pastels and chiffons. (But Ruthie
- pink cotton with composure. Rah!) White carnations on my shoulder - I
smelled them through the whole ceremony. And I am proud of my speech, my
valedictorian address. It was unconventional. I said nothing about life
being a river meeting the sea or a road with forks. I was honest. Ruthie
finished her Ogden Nash-ish po'm "... lest we should all end up distresses
..." and "Maxwell they call him, whom some say's a menace, but
there again - it just depenace ...." And then earnest nervous Bert:
"Our Valedictorian ..."
Teachers Parents friends:
Most early societies had initiation ceremonies to mark the boundary between
adolescence and adulthood. Our modern graduation exercizes remind me of
those early rites because they too are more than an official release from
high school - they are also an introduction to the complexity - the challenge
- the bafflement - of being adults. Every year the graduating class is -
symbolically - the New Generation. This year, we are the New Generation.
And as the New Generation of 1963 we will have to carve our way through
the debris left us by other generations - chaotic politics - only half-rational
moral issues - and worst of all, the ragged personal relations. It is from
these that we will have to build a security for ourselves, and not only
for us - we must build a serenity for the rest of the world. No other generation
has been able to do this. Yet, we are expected to. We should be reluctant
to leave high school. We should be frightened, as other generations are
frightened for us. But we are not reluctant and we are not frightened. We
are confident. - And we are not confident only because we are naïve
and a little arrogant. We are confident because our years here have given
us something to be confident about. Our message to you as members of the
adult society into which we will step after graduating is both a thank you
and a plea. We are grateful for what you have been to us. You have been
more important to us than we know yet. There have been those among you -
parents and teachers - whose warmth and integrity has made you people valuable
to become - people such as we ourselves would like to become. Your success
as adults reassures us that we too can succeed. It is because of you, more
than anything else, that we are confident. There is something we want to
tell you. We want to accept the challenges you hand us independently, as
adults - but we want you to remember that we still want your friendship
- and we want to continue to learn from you.
Applause. Thud. Thud. But I know that very few people understood what
I was saying to them from the heart of the New Generation. I was disappointed
by people who said "I wish I could say big words like that." But
I was delighted by people who said, as Mrs Windrim did, "Yours was
the best speech there. Everyone walked all around the point, Jerry too.
But you went straight up to it." That is why I am proud. And Mother:
"I want a copy of it. It was oh, I want to talk to you at home!"
>> 2005
July 5, Aldergrove BC [letter]
You've probably guessed Frank and I have found it impossible to ignore
each other 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.
July 10
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.
August 7
This morning an early mist on the fields enclosing us in the evergreen
hedges around the farm. An exuberant climb into the tall fir tree, climbing
higher, pausing to think that yesterday my marks came, that I'm delerious
with joy.
In the morning, before the sun had burned away the mist, fat John, our
supervisor, had turned to me and said "It will be a hot summer's day".
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." What have I done was my first
thought but I jerked my sweater down and followed him.
He'd brought a letter from Mother. Written on the corner "Extremely
urgent. Exam results." Inside it a white slip. I ran to the row to
show it to Judy. There are berry stains on it 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 wasn't 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."
Up in the tree this morning I hesitated to climb higher because I was
afraid but I swung higher still. The sun was high enough in the sky to touch
my treetop. Limbs fanning out below and around me were hung with spider
webs wet with dew and iridescent in the sun. They were all about me roping
the boughs that spread to the roof below and to the layering branches above.
-
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 that 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.
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. "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. "
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.
August 28
[There had been a letter from Queen's University offering me a 3-year
scholarship]
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.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.
August 31
We were off work early, so I walked down to G'parents Epp to tell them
my news. 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.
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.
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 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."
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."
La Glace September 16
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. "Dies ist ja Ellie. Ich muss gratulieren."
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."
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.
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......."
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 . "I with no right in this thing,
neither father nor lover."
| 