Time Now for the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange

by Stuart McLean

  And what a fight it was: two big lifeguards jumped in and dragged me out, kicking and screaming. They were yelling at me in German and wagging their fingers at me.

  I responded by turning around and jumping back into the pool to resume my fourth length. They were waiting for me in the shallow end. This time I didn’t have a chance. They forced me out of the pool, put a towel around me, and suddenly, good-naturedly, one of them said, “You have guts! I like you. You can jump off the tower. But take a rest first and be very careful!”

  Twenty minutes later I was ready. Still wobbly from my ordeal, I approached the tower nervously. I knew I was being watched. I looked up. Funny, the tower hadn’t seemed that big before. I put my foot on the first rung and began my ascent of the seemingly endless ladder. By the time I got to the top I could feel the adrenalin again. Finally, my dream had come true. I was “one of them”—a teenager! All the way up I rehearsed the perfect cannonball in my mind. And then, there I was, on the platform. I walked over to the edge and looked down, ready to execute my plunge to glory!

  I should never have looked down.

  But I did.

  I looked down, and then I turned around, climbed humbly back down the ladder, and strolled nonchalantly back to the shallow end. On the way, I felt a hand on my head. One of the lifeguards gave me a friendly hair rub. I turned around. He didn’t laugh or make fun of me. He winked and smiled. I smiled back, feeling very grownup indeed.

  Belleville, Ontario

  CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES

  I grew up in Edmonton. I remember the houses on our street— some were brown stucco bungalows with charming entrances; some had sunrooms in the front with small, square panes of glass looking out to the yard; some were three storeys tall with mysterious-looking attics. Ours was a wartime house—one of many built for the veterans who’d just returned from World War II. It was a simple, solid, white clapboard house with bedrooms upstairs and a front lawn that led to a boulevard lined with protective elm trees.

  It was 1954.

  Although I didn’t know the world had just changed, I could see that our street was changing. There was a surge of new people moving into basement suites, upstairs apartments, and spare rooms. Families were arriving from the Netherlands. For us it was wonderful, because there were so many new children to play with. In those days, when I was about five, it seemed as if children played all day long—mostly outside.

  The Dutch kids didn’t speak English, so our introduction was a graceful dance of smiling, nodding, and curiously staring at our different sweaters and shoes. There was a girl named Heddy who was my age. Heddy laughed hysterically when my brother made silly faces. She ran to get her sisters, and then motioned to my brother to do it again. He was pleased to have his silliness so happily received.

  Before long we were showing them our best climbing tree, or where you could find discarded pop bottles that could be taken to the store and exchanged for candy.

  They would point at things, then motion for us to say the English word. When we did, they would repeat it: tree … grass … window. We got them to say Dutch words that we could repeat, not one of which I can remember today.

  My dad was a harsh man. His voice was loud. There was also a great sadness about him—a sadness that I didn’t understand at the time. I remember telling him about our new friends. He said he’d been to Holland and told us we were to be good to those children.

  Once I overheard my parents talking. My mom said, “You should see the garden—the fences are covered with peas and beans. Every inch of soil in the back is planted; potatoes to the very edge of the alley.”

  In a low voice, my dad said, “They know hunger.”

  One day, Heddy’s mom said I could join them for lunch. I was delighted. We went to the back door of the house across the street, and as we stepped inside the melting aroma of freshly baked bread drifted up to meet us. The stairs creaked as we descended to their suite in the basement. Their home was two rooms—a tiny kitchen with white and yellow cupboards, a glistening linoleum floor, and crisp yellow curtains separating the kitchen from the bedroom. The small table was set with a sparkling white tablecloth. Everyone squeezed closer to make room for me. We all felt shy that day.

  Heddy’s family bowed their heads, and in their language, said a gentle, murmuring grace.

  Her mom got up and brought food to the table. Warm, white, homemade bread, soft butter, sliced hard-boiled eggs, a plate of Edam cheese, and a bowl of chocolate sprinkles. I watched the others put together their sandwiches and I followed. I had never tasted homemade bread. I had never seen white cheese. I was astounded that people could be so brilliant as to think of adding chocolate sprinkles to a sandwich! I think they were surprised at the look of pure pleasure on my face. My sandwich was heavenly. And like the day my brother made them laugh, Heddy’s family leaned back in their chairs and laughed out loud at how their lunch had pleased a little girl.

  That winter, Heddy’s family moved to a house in St. Albert.

  For over forty years, on hot summer nights, my mom would sit on her front steps and watch the world go by. One night we sat together. She asked me if I remembered the Dutch families. I thought about how children reach out innocently, and can touch both the familiar and the strange, the old world and the new.

  My mom remembered their garden. I remembered their chocolate sprinkles.

  Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta

  LEARNING TO SKATE

  I never learned how to skate. Growing up in southwest Saskatchewan, land of perpetual Chinooks, “good” ice didn’t last long enough for me to get the hang of it. I’d try, tripping, falling, crawling to the edge of the rink to pull myself up. Some years I’d get the knack of forward, but I never figured out how to stop. I would crash into the boards when I needed a rest. So I grew up not knowing this most basic Canadian skill. It never bothered me, until now.

  Now I’m a Canadian mother. And not just a Canadian mother, but a northern Canadian mother. And, while there are some things missing in a community that’s over 350 kilometres from the nearest Tim Hortons, one thing we have plenty of is ice. Six or seven months a year. Acres and acres of lake ice and a big rink that’s always filled with NHL hopefuls.

  This year the town cleared the snow from two empty lots, one on either end of town, and flooded them, making two minirinks just for the little kids. No teenagers allowed. Plenty of opportunity to learn to skate.

  One sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-January, my husband and I headed down to the rink with our two boys—aged ten and six. We sat on the snowbank and laced up their skates. We checked to make sure they had mitts and toques. The older one stepped out somewhat cautiously, but was soon on his way. The younger one … I don’t know. I couldn’t watch.

  I peeked between my fingers as he took one or two faltering steps and crashed to the ice. He bounced back up as if he were on springs.

  Another step or two and down again. His dad and I cheered from the banks every time he got back up. The scene repeated itself over and over until, by the end of half an hour, he was making it from one end of the rink to the other in his high-stepping, trotting way.

  He cried when we told him it was time to go home, that his feet would be sore and his body would hurt if he kept going. He insisted that we take him back after supper so that he could practise some more. He’s probably skated more in the last month than I have in my entire life.

  And that’s when I knew, watching him that night skating in the dark, that there are so many things my boys are going to need to learn that I won’t have a clue how to teach them. I’ll do my best to supply them with the tools and to introduce them to the folks who know the ropes. But then I’ll just have to stand by and watch through my fingers as they fall, pray that they get back up again, and cheer when they do. I’ll have to learn to not interfere when they’re surrounded by those who are bigger, faster, and stronger. And let them go, even when every ounce of my being shouts at me to hold them close. I’ll have to stand by the s
ide of the rink, and watch them skate.

  Pinehouse Lake, Saskatchewan

  CHRISTMAS PACKAGE

  I listened to your story of Stephanie’s trip to London yesterday on The Vinyl Cafe. I too was brought up in London after the war, and Dorothy’s description of the Christmas parcel from Canada reduced me to tears.

  You see, we also got Christmas parcels from a cousin in Canada. Forever known as “René’s parcels,” they arrived for four straight years in the middle of November. I remember the day the first one came in the mail. We’d been out for a walk, Mum and I.

  That’s what you did during the war: walked around all the shops to see if they had anything—food or fuel—to buy. When we got home, tired and cold, my grandmother said a parcel had come for us, from René.

  The package was in the front room. Coal was rationed at the time, so we used to heat only one room. I remember opening the door of the front room and being enveloped in a rush of cold and a wonderful smell. When I asked Mum what the smell was she said it was from all the pine trees in Canada. For years, that’s how I thought of Canada—cold and pine trees.

  The parcel was carefully sewn into a flour sack, which Mum painstakingly unpicked stitch by stitch while I danced with impatience.

  I was about four at the time and had only heard about the wonderful Christmas presents wrapped in colourful paper that would come my way when the war was over. To me the parcel contained all the riches of Araby wrapped up in a flour sack.

  Eventually Mum got the sack, covered in colourful stamps, unpicked. She set it carefully aside. She later made the sacks into tea towels, aprons, and pillowcases. But now she began to carefully open the cardboard box inside.

  And instead of the riches of Araby wrapped in coloured paper there was—food! I was a bit disappointed at first. Until Mum began removing the contents. She and my grandmother exclaimed over every item. There was a Christmas cake laden with dried fruit, and a one-pound bag of sugar—more sugar than we’d had at one time since rationing started. The parcel always contained things that were rationed, in short supply, or just unobtainable—all things I’d never seen. And there was always one small present for me—a comic book, a leather bag, a pair of fancy hair barrettes that were so unusual people would stop Mum in the street to ask where she’d got them.

  One year there was a chicken in a glass jar—a wonder indeed. As Mum took it out of the box she said, “Here’s our Christmas dinner,” and it was. Together with the Christmas pudding it made a festive meal.

  Then there was the year Customs opened the box, the first and only time it happened. They included a note telling us they’d searched the parcel, but in the search they cut open the paper bag of sugar. They put it in another bag and put it back of course, but it had spilled all over the box and its contents. Mum spread a cloth on the table and wiped the sugar off each item. Then she carefully flattened the box and shook each grain of sugar into a bowl, going over each seam and fold again and again to make sure no grains were missed—all the while tears pouring down her face at the unfairness of it all.

  Mum cried again at the end of the war when René wrote to say she’d heard that things were back to normal in the U.K. now that the war was over and she didn’t think we needed any more parcels. I wanted Mum to write and tell René that conditions were still dreadful. Mum explained that the cost of the food and the postage were probably too expensive for René, so we wrote and thanked her for her help instead.

  Eventually I visited René and her family. Later, I moved to Canada and met my husband. I’ve been here ever since.

  When René passed away a few years ago, instead of placing flowers on her grave, I placed a small box wrapped in Christmas paper.

  I got a few odd looks, but René, my mum, and I knew what it meant … and that’s all that mattered to me.

  Winnipeg, Manitoba

  DRIFTING HOME

  This afternoon, at the stable where I keep my horse, some women were reminiscing about things they’d done back in their twenties. One recounted buying a farm with her husband and another couple. She went on at length about the hardships and dreariness of farming in the winter: the trials of deep snow, the tribulations of mucking out and feeding cattle.

  I grew up on a dairy farm. As I drove home that night I began to reflect on the bleakness of dairy farming in mid-winter. The mornings always began in the darkness. Windows had to be left open because of the coal furnace, so I used to jump out of bed and run down and stand in front of the wood stove while Mom put my clothes on. Of course Dad had been out the door two hours earlier to do the milking. Frozen pipes, empty cisterns, wet woollen mittens, rubber boots with no linings, dinners of macaroni and cheese or potato soup—all were facts of existence, never questioned or thought about.

  But then, of course, not all of winter was adversity. We could ride on the toboggan behind the work horses, not even noticing the manure. Or, when we did, just the warm fresh scent—all sweet and leathery. There were forts and tunnels in the snowbanks, and quick, hard snowballs thrown when Mom and Dad weren’t watching.

  Most special of all were the afternoons when we trekked down to Stainton’s pond, built a fire, and skated, slapping pucks between the boots we set up as nets. I learned how to skate while Ken Stainton held me between his arms in hockey skates handed down from my brother (toes stuffed with newspaper so they’d fit). For those few hours the boys were Frank Mahovlich, Rocket Richard, the Pocket Rocket, Davey Keon, Gordie Howe, and Boom Boom Geoffrion.

  While my brothers were dreaming their way to Maple Leaf Gardens, Mom frequently sent me to take a bag of apples to Mrs. Mabel Wright. Mrs. Wright was confined to a wheelchair, but she still had to bake her weekly pies. I didn’t mind the walk north up the hill because it led me into the steamy warm kitchen of Mrs. Stainton. Lean, tough, and no doubt exhausted, she always greeted me with a delighted smile and an insistence that I come in and sit. It was one of those kitchens that seemed to go on forever. I would slip into a wooden chair and watch in wonder as she reached up to the shelf on the top of her Quaker stove and pulled down trays of hot cinnamon buns. Of course I had to have one, and I had to have it with butter. I often wished I could stay there, in that room wafting with rich and effusive aromas. She always took the time to wipe her hands on her apron and ask me how I was. She was concerned if I had a cold or had lost weight after suffering from the mumps.

  She was what I imagined a grandmother might be, except that she wasn’t old. As a child I could only think that she must be the perfect mother. Why did mine always have something for me to do—another chore? More piano?

  Mildred Stainton, in my childhood mind, was forever in her kitchen, kneading dough, pulling magical culinary wonders out of her oven, and inviting me in.

  Of course as an adult, I know that Mrs. Stainton was a mother too, and as a mother she would have made the same demands on her three sons that our mother made on us. Both struggled with the poverty of farm life and both tried to lead their children to easier lives. Their foundation of unrelenting support gave all of us confidence and an undeniable reassurance that we could become whatever we wanted. And, yes, my life is easier than my mother’s. Yet as “dreary” as farm life may seem to some, without a doubt, what makes my life so satisfying as an adult are the memories of those winter mornings, the snow drifts, the pond, and the cinnamon buns.

  Toronto, Ontario

  CLASS PICTURE

  Every once in a while I like to dig out my old class pictures. I have a laugh at the hairdos, shake my head at how things have changed, and grow quiet as I let those long-ago images of elementary school take me back into the swirling, misty moments of time past.

  Grade three. South School. I walked to South School every day, across the wooden footbridge over the trickling Waskasoo Creek, always a stick or branch in my hand, always pausing to spit into the little creek off the little bridge. Spitting off the footbridge was an essential, instinctive ritual that seemed to be restricted to the specific social group known
as “boys on their way to school.”

  Often, I would walk with Glen. Glen lived in a broken-down house (more of a shack really) down the street from me. If the timing was right, we’d join up on our way to school, kicking rocks down the sidewalk in the fall, throwing the odd snowball in the winter, floating little matchstick boats down the gutter rivulets in the spring.

  We never said much to each other. Glen wasn’t much for words. He’d been “held back” a grade or two in school and was taller and bigger than the rest of the grade threes. To me, he always seemed a bit embarrassed about that, slouching in the little desk in Mrs. Lougheed’s class.

  But everyone liked Glen—and everyone liked his dog, Blackie. Blackie was a big old black Lab, as quiet and gentle as Glen himself. Outside of school, the two were never apart.

  Often, Blackie would walk Glen and me to school, and then make his way back home by himself. Often Blackie would be there all by himself at the end of the school day, waiting to walk us home again. Those days with Blackie were Glen’s favourite days. Mine too.

  Blackie wasn’t supposed to be at the school, though. Glen’s mom had been told that dogs weren’t allowed on the school grounds, and Blackie didn’t have a licence or even a collar for that matter.

  There’d been a couple of incidents with dogs biting kids at the school, but we all knew that Blackie would never bother anybody.

  One spring day, the recess bell rang and I looked out the classroom window and saw Blackie sitting in the school-yard. He was sitting in the shade by the baseball diamond. He’d heard the bell too, and that big old tail started wagging because he knew Glen would soon be there.

  When the bell rang we all ran out of the classroom to the yard.

  Glen made a beeline straight for Blackie, with me right behind him. We were both instantly rewarded with a woof and a lick, but Glen was worried. He told Blackie to go home, that he wasn’t supposed to be there, that he would get into trouble. Glen never raised his voice, he just told Blackie very serious-like. Blackie knew he was in trouble. But Blackie wasn’t going anywhere.