In the end, my mother won, but the truth is that my teacher was right. For in a few months I will turn forty-five and still I have not the slightest idea how to conform.
LOST AND FOUND
“Close your eyes—and try not to feel.” These were the instructions I gave to my father as he lay back in the reclining chair of the family room and prepared to count to ten, and I scampered off to find a hiding place. I was probably four or five years old. My plan—I could not imagine why I hadn’t thought of it before—was to hide behind his back. He would never think to look there. The only technical difficulty I envisioned was that I would have to crawl under his reclined body. Thus the instructions.
Always the good sport, my father did as he was told. I burrowed into a spot beneath his shoulder blade, and when he reached “TEN!” he bounded up and wandered around the house looking for me in all the usual places, accenting his search with many a declaration about how challenging it was to find me.
Scarcely containing my laughter, I sat on the reclining chair, nestling into the warm imprint his body had left on the leather. As I heard his footsteps approaching, my entire body tensed with excitement, so full of glee that I had to stuff my hands between my legs to keep all the giggles inside. He clapped his hands and shrieked when he saw me.
“How did you get there?”
My laughter slapped every wall in the room. “I was hiding underneath you!”
That was the first time I realized how clever I was.
The second occasion came near the end of a long drive to a cottage, where we were to spend a month of our summer holidays when I was four. It was late, and the gravel rumbled beneath our tires as our car wound along a maze of narrow, dark roads. Not a street or house light in sight. Black sculptures of trees on either side.
My parents were muttering in the front seat, consulting handwritten directions under the thin beam of the car’s interior light and pushing frustration and question marks back and forth at each other across a small map. Then, a solemn declaration sounded from the back seat.
“I know where we are,” Paul announced gloomily. “We’re lost.”
“No we’re not,” I insisted, pointing towards the front of the car. “Look, Daddy has his headlights on!”
For a few happy moments, my parents’ voices lifted into laughter, the mood in the car lightening so palpably that I was convinced I had struck brilliance again. “We can’t be lost if we can see where we’re going, silly Paul!”
Eventually we arrived at the cottage, as I had known we would, and had a beautiful holiday full of creaky screen doors, weedy swimming, my dad reading Gourmet magazine while tanning himself on the dock, and evenings that sparkled with loon calls. Some mornings I awoke before dawn, pushed my arms into the sleeves of a pale yellow sweater my grandmother had knitted me, and sat with my cat on a steep granite cliff overlooking the lake. Chin on my knees. The cardigan’s top button a hard candy between my teeth. And the day’s first light like soft warm ribbons in my hair.
Mine was a carefree childhood. When I went missing, someone looked for me; when we got lost, we found our way. We laughed, played, ate well, loved each other.
All the essentials.
BATHTUBS AND POLITICAL EDUCATION
One way to encourage two children out of the bathtub: Okay, kids, it’s time to get out of the bathtub.
Another way: Okay, kids, I have a tube of toothpaste behind my back. Whoever chooses the hand with the toothpaste in it gets to stay in a little longer.
A third way, and the option preferred by professors of political science who are keen to see their children grow up with a modicum of vital political knowledge: “Okay, kids, I’m going to teach you the names of all the prime ministers of Canada. Whichever one of you can recite them back to me the fastest gets to stay in the bath the longest.”
When one is born the child of a professor of political science, one assumes as normal the following: spending the chilly evenings of several weeks going door-to-door—not unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, come to think of it—canvassing for the Liberal candidate of your riding; being allowed to stay up late only on the nights of leadership conventions and having to feign enthusiasm when what’s-his-name wins; living with a large poster of Prime Minister Trudeau’s silhouette in the garage and his annual family-portrait Christmas card hanging prominently in the front hall, all year long; and being asked to learn the names of prime ministers as part of a bedtime ritual.
Thus, a typical scene from the Wearing household circa 1972: A corduroy-clad man with black horn-rimmed glasses and short, curly hair climbs the stairs, adjusts his glasses as he notices himself in the hallway mirror, walks four steps down the hallway and opens the bathroom door. His two eldest children, aged five and six, instantly drop their bath toys and shout in unison: “MacdonaldMackenzieMacdonaldAbbottThompsonBowellTupperLaurierBordenMeighenKingMeighenKingBennettKingSt.LaurentDiefenbakerPearsonTrudeau!”
To be accurate, it wasn’t quite in unison. While the litany was recited perfectly by Paul without so much as a fumble, I, being more of a musical learner by nature and therefore inclined to focus on the lyricism of words rather than the accuracy, rattled off something along the lines of “McDonald’sCandyMcDonald’s … Tom’sson’sBowels … Uproar … B-b-boredMeKingKingMeKingBenNetKingSayLeron … D-EasyBakeOvenTrudeau!”
Paul always won.
Until one night I burst into tears in the middle of my stumbling recitation and my father suggested we return to the earlier ritual of choosing the hand that held the toothpaste. At this, I was impressively adept.
Once we were prime-ministered, brushed and into our pyjamas, my father would read to us, not from Winnie-the-Pooh, as most of my other five-year-old friends’ parents were doing at the time, but Great Expectations. Being a Dickens fan, my father felt it important that we be exposed at a young age. I do not remember much of the story itself, although the mere mention of the title brings up a vivid image of young Pip helping the convict file the shackle from his leg, as well as a memory of being very glad I didn’t live in England, where such things went on.
I’m not sure how much of the story Paul and I understood, but I do remember that my father encouraged us to ask him to explain unfamiliar words, and we certainly had plenty to choose from.
From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber; or it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mold, and dropping to pieces.
Generally Paul and I would choose only one or two words per paragraph to ask about; otherwise, the story never seemed to get going.
“What’s dis-earn-a-bull?”
My father would stop, look pensive. “Something that’s perceptible. You can see it or perhaps sense it. There is a discernible smell coming from Paul’s side of the bed just now, for example.”
For me, the memorable thing about Great Expectations was not so much the story as the cello song of my father’s voice, the way we lay on the bed all together, limbs relaxed against limbs. Often I would drift from the storyline and simply enjoy my father’s pleasure, the animated way that he read, the way different voices felt when I closed my eyes, the funny way the English had of saying ought or I know not what, and how much my father seemed to love Dickens’s wit, laughing out loud when something amused him. We did not learn typical stories from my father; what we learned was the joy that can be found in the telling. Such an invaluable lesson.
How it has fed
me throughout my life.
MUSICAL DEBUT
My early musical career was a sweet scene, beginning as it did on the “cello” at age four. Born tiny as a crab, I was only slightly larger than a lobster by this point, and I found it too difficult to hold and manoeuvre even a child’s-size cello. I was therefore given a viola (an instrument moderately larger and lower in pitch than its cousin the violin) to turn upside down and hold between my thighs as a makeshift cello. This was, I was later told, awfully cute.
Because I still existed in that glorious but oh-so-brief phase of childhood graced by unselfconsciousness, I thought nothing of holding a little viola between my legs and sawing off one brutalized note after the next. I even attended several rehearsals of the Peterborough Youth Orchestra, sitting at the end of the cello section, eight-year-olds towering around me, my mother at my side. I joined them for only one or two pieces, both requiring little more than a couple long bowed notes and a few shorter ones, and was invited to play in their upcoming concert.
The day of the first Youth Orchestra concert is a shard of a memory, pointy and uncomfortable to hold. My dress was tight around my neck, my tights itchy and pulling at the crotch. There was a lot of yowling and straining of string instruments being massacred by children with hopeful parents in the audience, mine among them. When it was my turn to join the orchestra, I remember not wanting to play and being gently coaxed to sit down. The guillotine dropped when I set my very wee instrument between my legs and heard the snickering, looked out at the small audience and noticed people watching me, some of them pointing, many of them laughing quietly behind their hands. The phrase awfully cute sounded above the rest of the whispers, but I heard it as “awful, cute” and the rest is a hot-faced blur. I don’t believe I played a note.
So much for the “cello.”
I did take up the full-sized instrument later, at the roaring age of seven, alongside my father, who decided it would be fun to learn together. I don’t know how long it lasted—a year at most—but I remember it as a laboured period punctuated by fatherly frustration, a lot of sighing and no-no-nos and try-it-agains.
One might assume that two pianistic parents would produce three little Mozartesque offspring with the same ease and inevitability that two Mexican parents produce a Spanish-speaking brood, but that was not the case in our family. We all had music spun into our cell tissue, but we sloughed off any attempts at lessons and teaching as soon as we were old enough to protest. My parents didn’t insist; neither was the pushy type, fortunately for us. My mother spent her days giving piano lessons to children, so probably did not have much inspiration left at the end of the day to wrestle her children through more of the same. And my father was busy making other music.
I knew that my father was a professor of political studies at Trent University, but what he actually did was a mystery of books, papers and unbearably boring discussions about elections, Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party. In the evenings, however, he would often return to the university to do things that were exciting and made sense, like conducting chamber choirs or Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Though he didn’t lead a choir or direct an operetta every week, his heading back to Trent in the evenings for rehearsals was a fairly common occurrence.
No doubt my mother resented him for dedicating himself all day to intellectual pursuits, coming home to eat, then dashing out to dedicate himself to musical pursuits—although I detected no such resentment at the time. Her own intellectual and musical aspirations were so routinely and consummately consumed by the demands of domesticity that none of us noticed it when that happened, and no doubt it did, daily.
So while my mother stayed home washing dirty dishes, playing bingo with Flip, and wishing, perhaps, that she could have been channelling Chopin at the piano, she shipped Paul and me off to rehearsals with my father, and we were happy to oblige. Or rather, my dad adored taking Paul and me to rehearsals with him and we were happy to oblige. Not sure which. Either way, we loved going.
Trent University at night was this: long, empty hallways, silence, and air that smelled like sand. Endless hiding places. Tall, heavy doors that opened onto rooms that went hush. Wide carpeted expanses where we could run wild, diving into imaginary pools until we came away with rugburns on our elbows.
Once we’d exhausted ourselves with exploring, Paul and I would heave open the door of the university’s Wenjack Theatre and hear music rising up from the stage. We would wander through the amphitheatre’s row upon row of cushy seating, running our fingers along the fabric until we found just the right spot to settle in and watch our father bob around the stage inspiring people to sing silly songs about silly things. Pretending to fall in love. Pretending to be rejected. Pretending to be gondoliers. Pretending to be Japanese. And all of them daft, no matter who they were pretending to be, because that is the nature of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
It was better than television.
On the way home, my father would sing an assortment of ridiculous libretti that made the drive go by like a finger-snap:
I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical.
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical.
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
On cue, Paul and I would rise up in the back seat (pre-seat-belt era), Paul conducting with the same verve and enthusiasm my father had displayed earlier in the evening, and the two of us chiming back the chorus:
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse!
By the time the performance dates arrived, Paul and I had attended so many rehearsals, we knew everyone’s lines, spoken or sung. We loved the thrill of the performances, the costumes and excitement, and we refused to miss a show, sometimes attending two in a single day. Apparently the actors found it helpful to have us seated in the front row, for if their memory lapsed they had only to glance over to where Paul and I were sitting and, completely unaware that we were doing so, mouthing the words to the entire operetta.
For months following the shows, we would insist on listening to a recording of the performance as we were falling asleep, placing a small tape recorder in the upstairs hallway between our bedrooms and turning up the volume to near-distortion level so we could all hear. Who knows what effect listening to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas ad-well-beyond-nauseam has on impressionable children, but we did, all of us, grow up to be as silly as we are musical.
BLINDNESS AND SOLITUDE
Throughout my life, every three to six months or so, a blind man would come to our house to smooth out the air. It wasn’t always the same man, but they were all blind, their eyes like marbles lodged at strange angles in their heads. They were also shy and soft-spoken and they all carried the same wide leather bag. In general, my parents’ friends were a boisterous lot, people more apt to cackle than titter, so these quiet, blind men with the wide leather bags were a rare curiosity for me. I was both fascinated and frightened by them.
They would sit alone in the living room, sounding squiggly lines into the air and then gradually working out all the kinks. Sitting at the grand piano with its long lid raised high, the internal harp of wooden felted hammers and coiled metal strings exposed, the blind men would play the same notes over and over and over again, reaching into the quivering belly of the piano with their small wooden instruments and adjusting the corresponding pegs with slow, creaking precision. When they were satisfied, they would move to the next note. It took hours.
Somehow they never got bored, though the same cannot be said for my brothers and me, required as we were to be quiet for the duration of the piano tuning and inclined as we were to stray to the
rabble-rouser end of the behaviour spectrum whenever silence was requested. Often we were sent outside, a relief in itself, for the act of tuning involves feeling around in the dissonance for the space where the note sings free, and it is not a euphonic exercise.
In fact it’s agonizingly tedious. Except if you’re blind, I concluded.
Eventually, an unfamiliar car would arrive and take the blind man away. My brothers and I would stream back inside, kicking our boots off in all directions and listening to my mother spinning grand, looping arpeggios from the soundboard like invisible cotton candy.
“There are no bumps in any of the notes anymore!” Flip once commented.
And it was true. After the blind men visited and tinkered with the piano, the air in the house felt all smoothed out.
“Their hearing is more refined,” my mother explained when I asked why it was that our piano tuners were always blind. “When we lose one sense, the other senses often compensate by developing more acutely.”
“Schools for the blind teach piano tuning because it’s a skill the blind can develop well. And it gives them a profession,” my father added with a sort of jolly conviction, dusting his rolling pin with flour and rolling out pastry dough on the counter.
The Blind. It was a category I hadn’t yet created in my mind. It sounded a bit like The Catholics (a term I had learned from my grandmother, who never spoke about them without letting her eyeballs circumnavigate their sockets) or The Tories (a group of bald men, in my imagination, with pot-bellies and hair coming out their noses) or The Bank, who sometimes called when my dad was at work.
“The Bank called,” my mother would say. And I would picture a long line of people in black hats all dialing our telephone number at once.
“Can The Blind hear as well as Ida?” I asked, sitting on the floor with the black Lab’s head in my lap.
Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter Page 4