Kissed by Spiders

Sister Mary Albert was a blackbird with a white throat.  Her habit flowed behind her tall gaunt exterior like a little black tail as she clicked down the school corridors on bird feet - her mean, suspicious beak seeking those whom it could peck.  Children were afraid of this nun and when I saw her approaching I would hold my breath.

When she spied a troublemaker - someone who had disobeyed some rule like running in the hall or wearing shoes instead of the slippers required upon entering the building - her scowl would tower over him while she fingered the dark brown rosary beads that hung from her waist like a flagellant’s precious perversion.  In particular, I remember her long, mottled fingers, which to this fifth grader were stilettos of pain.  While scolding me, her thumb and forefinger would pinch my scrawny arm to the bone - like a spider’s kiss.

She wasn’t always severe, this bride of Christ; sometimes she would smile and for a moment you could almost trust her.  The menacing clouds would retreat, the sun would shine and you’d be tempted to remove your storm gear.  On one occasion I remember her lighting up when I spontaneously donated ten cents for the Children’s Missions.  But in those days the little professor within me could not trust the interplay of cloud and sun in this love-starved woman.  Her short-lived invitation to lower my guard was never accepted.

Being scheduled into her classroom in the sixth grade provoked anxiety; after all, she was the Sister Superior, the principal - a martinet who let nothing slide by her.  When her glowering form entered the room all were expected to rise as one and proclaim, “Good morning, Sister Mary Albert!”  No one sat down until she did.  Everyone was expected to have his dictionary lying on the left hand side of his desk - not the right side.  When you were spoken to you rose, then sat when she nodded.  When she exited the room, all stood whether it was the end of class or not.

There was a host of rules that were to be followed, and it was the red ink decree that I will never forget.  The rule was simple; it stated that you could not write in red ink; only Sister Mary Albert could do so because she marked your work in that colour; blue ink was mandatory for everything, but math, for which only pencil was to be used.  One day, when she surprised us with a quiz I found that my blue pen would not write.  Fearing a zero on the test, I decided to risk using the red one (You were not allowed to borrow from another student once she’d announced a test.).

When the tests had been collected, she quickly discovered my felony, confronted me before the class and told me to follow her.  She led me to a back room where she held out my hands and strapped them with some grey belting that was used in those days for punishment.  My hands shared ten swats, and when I began to cry she stopped and hugged me at which I righteously pushed her away.  She discounted my tears, told me to dry them and to get back to class.  I was later mollified by the knowledge that my classmates were about to leave in protest (A revolutionary act in those days.).

Soon after that incident which I never shared with my parents, our family moved to another city.  The years passed, I graduated from high school, and one summer as a junior in university I saw her standing alone at the entrance to a mall: still a blackbird whose hollow bones now seemed vacuum packed in skin.  Because I was now bigger, she no longer seemed a great heron with an edge…more a taught, vigilant sparrow surveying the terrain around her.  She recognized me, we shared some pleasantries, but there wasn’t much to say, so I wished her well and let her slide back into the humus of memories long past.

Forty-three years have elapsed since that mall encounter.  And as I write, I feel a strange tenderness for her, kindled by the sunny moments that peeked quickly from behind her storm.  I ask myself: Who was Sister Mary Albert?  Was she born wrapped in the black’n'white pinions of the Sisterhood?  Or was she once a sixth grader like me? - Someone with a name like Rachel or Cathy; a giggly young schoolgirl with a honey-blonde ponytail - her father’s little princess.  As a young woman had she ever fallen in love?  Or was it love betrayed that had made her so bitter?  Perhaps she was just passing something on when she kissed my skinny arms like a spider.  Perhaps she too had been kissed, by spiders greater than she.

Gifts Unwanted

To say that Maurice* likes to talk is an understatement.  This short, round septuagenarian is an avalanche of words, shoulder grips and backslapping mirth that demands complete attention.  For a time I observed him from a distance, reluctant to immerse myself in his typhoon of anecdotes, chirpy laugher and small, circular eyes - I felt overwhelmed just watching him.  But there was something that I liked about this little man - something in his manic, quick quick, two-step dance that flung energy at you like some dynamo on overdrive.  It was the genuineness and innocence with which he practiced his art that attracted me; with which he delivered his spontaneous outpourings like gifts that wanted to bless you.

One Sunday, from across the Fellowship Hall, I saw him emerge from the sanctuary and decided to take a chance.  I wanted to know more about him and what impelled his extroverted stream of consciousness; so I introduced myself.  His handshake soon evolved into several shoulder grips; an offer of a xeroxed article on Don Cherry that he withdrew from his shirt pocket; a spontaneous recital of two Bible verses; a brief history of his interrupted training as a tail gunner during the war; an anecdote of how he met his wife - while pointing her out; a short delivery in French, and finally an offer of another article which he kept in the other pocket - all without my having said much.

His proximity within my personal envelope allowed me to smell his breath; but he meant well, this whirling dervish of thoughts and actions.  He had maximized a good thing, and it had become a weakness.  Like most of us, I reasoned, he probably wants to give in ways that are meaningful to him rather than in ways that are meaningful to another.  He is like a lover who gives his woman flowers because he believes they are beautiful, when in fact what she really wants is a break from the kids.

I looked at my watch, extended my hand and said I had to leave, which triggered a sally of well-wishing whose content I cannot remember.  As I walked toward the exit I felt endearment for a man who does not mean any harm, despite feeling singed by him.  I drove home wondering about his wife - about whether she was an introvert like me, and how she had adapted to a man who proffered gifts - sometimes unwanted.

 

*Maurice is a pseudonym.

Young Love

I saw them lounging on the shore of Brandt’s Creek, two thirteen-somethings barely visible in the arms of what seemed to be a tryst.  It was a hot day and I noticed them, as I rode past slowly on my bicycle, nonchalantly peering over at me as if I’d distrubed something private.  In a burst of intuition I simply smiled and thought, “Young love…”

A few minutes later I decided to end my exploration of the new neigbourhood that had been springing up around the creek.  I wheeled back down the dirt path that traced the tree and bush lined waterway and saw them again ambling across the street in a way that was simultaneously endearing and funny.

She, in short-short white pants and tangerine T-shirt - long honey-blonde hair cascading on her shoulders, was literally head and shoulder taller than he; while he, black calf-length pants, and baseball cap askew, held her buttock in his hand.  I giggled inside and couldn’t help but look back -her left arm draped over his shoulder, his right hand still in position - both practicing romance; perhaps seeking a more secluded hideaway, on a hot hot afternoon.

Lord of Life

I’d gone to buy some Feta, to create a Greek salad that would feed my hunger and would be light and fresh enough for a scorching summer’s day.  As I walked up to the market I saw an old fellow - grizzled beard, long white hair and clothes that looked like they’d just been swiped from someone’s dirty hamper.

He seemed to be rooting through a garbage can - those ones that are fitted and locked within a cement container to prevent vandals from messing with them.  I felt sorry for him so I too rooted, in my pocket, and found a single Loonie (Canadian Dollar) which I decided to spontaneously give.

As I approached I noticed his socks - thick sport socks - into which a pair of soiled sweat pants had been stuffed.  He seemed to be fretting with some plastic grocery bags that were filled with bits and pieces that I imagined had been rescued from the garbage.  I was filled with compassion, and regretted that I didn’t have more cash to give him.

“Hi, ” I said, coming up from behind.  I realized this approach had been the wrong one when he gripped the seat of his bicycle that lay casually beside him.  “I’m wondering if you’d like to have this Loonie?” I asked, proferring this lonely bit of metal to a hand that reflexively opened to receive it. He looked at the coin on his palm quizzically and asked me in a sincere voice, “What makes you think I need this?  Look at all the food I’ve got in these bags?”

I was taken off guard by his reply, thinking that he’d be grateful for my offer.  He pointed to the grocery bags again, and they were indeed filled with food.  It seems that I’d interrupted him in the act of loading his shopping onto his bike.  I was embarrassed as he gave me back my Loonie.  “Sorry, ” I said.  “I thought you were taking stuff from the garbage can and could use the money.”  Later, I couldn’t believe I’d said that.  I felt like someone who wants to make a good impresson but can’t stop tripping on his words.

“No problem,” he replied, “thanks for your kindness.”  He’d been gallant - a gentleman whose elegant, refined remark had forgiven me my false assumption.  Although he still seems like a paradox, he has become, for me, a Lord of Life - someone whom fate brings to teach me sacred things that I’ve forgotten.  In this case it was something I learned in the first grade: don’t judge a book by its cover.

We Were Feral Children

We were feral children, safely lost in the rainforest - tree forts high in the emerald canopy, half-naked, at war, raining cones on those who would climb to dislodge us.

We were urchins - immigrant children, crusty, irreverent, defying the trespass of strangers - amoral in our torture of earthworms, just to see what would happen.

We cussed and spit, and drank from cold rivulets that wound perfectly around moss-covered giants fallen centuries ago.

We dared to explore the secrets of our bodies - but not too far because we knew it was sacred - but far enough to be amazed.

We lost ourselves in our immortality.  We were endless beings who changed from one day to the next, leaping delighted and frisky like dolphins in the cold lakes of summer.

But then it happened - the little pencils that measured our height in the doorway, the unbidden changes that encroached relentlessly on our kingdom, and the girls, who had left in ages past, calling us from the edge of our enchantment.

They called us by names we could not resist.  We struggled as chrysalids struggle against the waves that release new birth.  We shook our hands above our heads like sea fans waving beneath the waters - and suddenly became no more - beings in an alien land weeping for dreams we could not remember.

Future Shock

Future Shock is history.

Moiling for Coins

The other day I rode my bicycle to the air pump at the Shell gas station on the corner of Kane and Glenmore.  When I arrived I saw an elderly man on the other side of the pump - white, thin hair, black pants shiny from use and a shirt that seemed bought at a cheap discount warehouse.

He was rooting around in the dirt with what looked like a garden claw, which puzzled me because he was moiling in a patch surrounded on all sides by cement and asphalt.

As I began to pump air into my tires he stooped down and picked up something.  “Ah..,” he said with delight, “…a penny.”

“You digging for money?”  I asked, curious about how he’d decided to dig in this peculiar spot in the first place.

“Yeah, ” he replied.  “I found twenty-one cents so far.”

I still wonder how he’d come upon that one spot to dig in.  But at the time, asking the question didn’t figure in my experience of this odd moment.

During our brief conversation he found a couple more coins and he vounteered that he would be giving the money to a missionary at the small Pentecostal congregation he attended at the Presbyterian church up the road.

I felt both amused and puzzled by the situation as I would be by a naked person suddenly walking into the elevator in which I was riding.  I simply let it happen as if it were an event as common as dandelions.  But I also felt impressed by this man’s simple generosity.

It was a quaint slice of life dished up by fate as an hors d’oeuvre to be savoured: an old man moiling for coins in a bit of earth at a gas station.

The Great Invasion

I remember a time without television.  It was a time when we children played outdoors and our parents saw us primarily at lunch or at supper.  In the evening we read books and played board games – endlessly.  In 1962 I was living in Prince Rupert, British Columbia and we’d read in the newspaper that television was finally coming to our city.  Everyone was delighted but didn’t foresee the social changes that this medium would bring.  All we knew is that we would have entertainment nightly, instead of paying 50 cents for a movie and popcorn on weekends.

 

The night on which the great invasion was to occur, I was at my friend’s house because his father had bought a television for the expected event.  The picture was poor, and the programs were old pre-recorded series like Cannonball and Juliette which nowadays would be less entertaining that watching paint dry.  It was television created for simple minds with a fifth grade education.  But we didn’t care, and neither did my friend’s parents because it seemed magic – a silver screen that ushered us from the periphery of civilization into what we imagined to be the main stream.

 

In the middle of one of these programs my father called me to say that he too had bought a television.  I was delighted, and asked my friend’s father to take me home immediately.  When I arrived, I plunked myself down on the sofa before a grey cube that displayed muddy black and white pictures that sometimes were so dark I couldn’t see what was happening in the background.  But I didn’t care…it was television, and unbeknownst to us it would irredeemably change us forever.

 

Sweet Sixteen

I remember a time when gender roles were rigid.  Women wore jeans with side zippers while a man’s rose up the centre;  men had their hair cut in barber shops - by male-only barbers - while women had theirs cut in beauty parlours; men swore because it was tough while female lips never uttered obscenities.  There was a peace about this demarcation of gender - at least for the men - a sense of knowing who you were in the greater scheme of social relations.  But this division also had its dark side which often brutalized women as well as men. 

I remember accompanying my mother on a shopping trip to downtown Prince George where she decided to enter a clothing store for young women called Sweet Sixteen.  I never went in with her because males in those days would not have been caught dead in a ladies’ boutique.  It was bad enough being fourteen and being caught shopping, downtown with your mother.

There are many examples that arise in my mind about gender roles in those days, and the prevailing sensibility that suffused male-female interaction.  I remember the braggadoccio that was typical of those times among emerging young males.  Immature and lacking confidence in what it meant to be a man we would say things like: ”In the North, a man is a man, and a woman is glad of it.”  Nowadays, things have changed enough so that we can say: “In the North, A man is a man, and a woman is a man.”

I confess that I have a certain nostalgia about the old gender roles that governed our relationships.  I am not suggesting that we return to the sexism of the 1950s and early ’60s, but I think that, at least ceremonially, I prefer a culture of gender that celebrates and highlights our unique strengths.  Androgyny is not my preference.

But I digress…this article is dedicated to the past when there were two entrances to beer parlours - one for men, and one for men and their escorts; women would not be caught dead in a pool hall; a man’s hair was always short; men could wear whatever colour of suit they wanted, provided it was black; occupationallly, women were streamed to become homemakers, nurses or librarians…the list of now obsolescent manners and sensibilities is inifinite.

Yes, gender roles were rigid; but have we made any real progress during the great social revolutions of the past sixty years?  Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater? - never mind that nowadays, as I read in the newspapers, men are getting pregnant too.

Swearing Around Girls

I remember a time when teenage boys didn’t swear around girls.  If someone did, the other guys would scold the malefactor with a sharp “Hey!  There’s girls here!”  and he would stop.  That all changed around 1967 when “Fuck” became the word without which young women could not be cool.  Girls and guys became indistinguishable not only in the way they dressed but also in the way they related sexually.  Once upon a time guys had their feet on the accelerator while girls had theirs on the brake; now, they both press on the gas…and here we are.