9 am----- I have
just had breakfast outdoors on the lawn in front of the cottage. Nora has
joined me in blue flowered flannelette pajamas and her heavy turtle neck yellow
sweater. “I was cold in bed” she announces. Well I know it; she crawled in to
sleep with me and spent the night tucking herself under my back. It was cold,
chilly cold, but I am wary of the oil heater so piled the blankets on instead.
It is an
alternating sunny cloudy morning. The
first ship of my day was ghostly. This is a noisy one with a crane on deck. One
of them lifting and piling what looks like great long beams. All the while the
crane is operating a bell clangs. Another long ship is hardly more than a
freighters length behind it. Perhaps there was a fog in the lower river. If so
there will be a parade while the locks at the Sault work overtime to clear the
backlog.
Nora is busily
making a sand family. This is the mother, this is the daddy, this is the mummy,
and this is the little girl in between. This is a dog, this is a kitty, and
this is the house. “Kay don’t you even know what a house looks like??”
Another ship
goes up and there are two long whistles from around the point, answering that
there is a down bound ship. The up bound one answers with a blast. A flat white
outboard leaves the dock two cottages down. The Daley’s from Detroit. I watched
them through the binoculars last evening as they sat in the boat on the edge of
the channel.. They pulled in a large pike. So this morning he has two
companions with him, a consumed fisherman.
The water is
lapping on the shore this morning and sparkling when the sun shines. It is
lovely sound. The rowboat next door moves with every wave and the oars make a
gentle thumping sound.
The down bound
freighter is moving slowly drifting unlike the up bound ones whose engines make
a thrust just about opposite the camp, to maintain speed against the currents
rounding the point. The down bound ship moves slowly towards the locks.
There is a speed
limit in the river, closely watched by the US coast guard who patrol up and down,
checking the freighter, checking the small pleasure boats, for “careless
driving” and for life belts per person. The Mounties patrolled for Canada in
other years, but this year their ship has fallen in the Ottawa economy drive.
Well the Coast Guard will protect us. Ironical isn’t it. Hands off our
industries, but where it is convenient we will welcome your services.
Casey comes out
with Sheila, and is tied to the tree, but ignores the tree and runs over and
lifts his hind leg against Nora’s sand house as she howls her objections.
“Stupid dog “she cries.
Poor Casey. He
is a confused dog, with many frustrations great panic and much love. Insecurity
personified I say “When you’re drunk you’re dumb! “says Jim.
“Casey is a
pest” says Nora
“Casey is
beautiful” says Catherine
“Casey is Casey “says
Mary. He is certainly unique, says I.
Jimmy in his last year of high school,
worked part time at the Small Animal Hospital. He heard of Casey, who was going
to be put to sleep. Casey was a frightened dog, Jimmy said, from the way he
acted, crouching, crying, and frantically friendly, and said that the dog knew
what was planned for him.
So Jimmy
convinced the owner that he had a good home for him and arrived at Mary’s door
with the shivering Casey in his arms.
Casey is a
character. He blunders. He misunderstands. He challenges Mastiffs. He chases
cars. He is accident prone. He writhes with remorse when he is scolded, and
then goes right back to commit the same sin.
“He is confused”
I say. “He is dumb’ says Jim “Dumb”, “He is Beautiful” Catherine says.
Casey isn’t
really beautiful, a la Catherine, or dumb, a la Jim. His personality is in the
eye of the one who beholds his transgressions or endearments. He is not
physically beautiful. He has a long plume of a tail, a long snout, a nicely shaped
body and very short legs. His tail and snout belong to a much larger dog. His
markings are unusual. Black spots on his white snout and one on the side of his
face are like freckles. The other half is black and both ears are black and
scraggly. Three legs are white. His body is black with a white underside, the
white under him like a fringe, and his tail is a black plume when held high.
His coat is silky soft and long. Ancestry??? His snout is pure Russian
wolfhound. The remainder is anyone’s guess but beautiful or dumb, Casey is
Casey, a dog who loves when not tied up according to his own law.
If I had energy
or ambition this morning I would lead an expedition to the blueberry territory,
which is not too far down the road. I have neither.
I sat last night and
watched a late night pregame “The wild, wild, west” It was fascinating because
it was so terrible. It had everything Cowboys, an ancestral Estate with
clanging iron gates and growling watchdogs. Where in the wild wild west? The
wind howled, the trees clashed their branches together, trap doors sprung and
there was an ape that gnashed his teeth; there was a human monster, a gentle
adopted ward, and a family secret. Three good guys, an old colonel, and three
bad guys’ triplets, who with the monster turned out to be quadruplets. The
monster was the family secret. The ward was locked in a swinging cage suspended
from a cavern roof while the ape raged loose in the corner. It reminded me of
the old “serials”. Every Saturday my brother Frank and I walked from the Glebe
in Ottawa to the old Fern Theatre on Bank Street to see the next installment.
We had left the heroine in dire distress, being heaved over a cliff, tied to a railroad
tracks, or being sucked under in a whirlpool, or screaming and cowering on the
top floor of a blazing building. When we returned, she would be in the arms of
the hero rescued, how we never questioned we just sat enthralled for another
Saturday Matinee, and left her again in the face of death.
Sheila has just come
out and I ask her to draw a picture of Casey. She has been trying and failing “When
I get him down he turns out to be an alligator”
I first visited this beach “Pointe aux Pins”
thirty six years ago. There were only a few cottages at that time clustered
around the rue Pointe. None on this shore where I now sit and more around the next
Pointe Louise or along the north shore. There is a solid line of them now. All
along the river bank, and some in the small cove where the lighthouse is. We
used to walk to the north shore then, wading in a swampy place, and climbing
the dunes to look over over Whitefish Bay. The Allagash was a swamp where we
waked across and climbed, the high grass topped shaggy dunes to brave the
chilly waters. Then, the North shore was only for the really hardy ones, and
then only on the hottest days of summer.
Wednesday and
Thursday were beautiful sun filled, breeze blown summer days. We have been
swimming and boating and water skiing and barbequing. I am so filled with
warmth and peace and quiet that I am gradually unwinding.
On Tuesday
afternoon I spent a lovely hour or so floating around on the air mattress, and
if you are very quiet, and float without paddles or splashing, you have a front
row center view of life at the river bottom. The small bunchy weeds grow in
regular rows and looking down on them from the air mattress they look like the
orchards on the farms coming into Toronto by plane. There are patterns on the
river bottom made by light reflected by the water. There are a few small stones
on the river bottom with snail trails between them, and the snail himself
looking like a small pebble. There are restless minnows darting amongst the
weeds, a small crab. I feel a little embarrassed lying prone on the air
mattress. Most of the other middle aged matrons on the beach sit in the shade
of the pine trees, but I am not embarrassed enough to join them. I know I’ll
have to forego such foolishness sometime soon but not this year. I figure that my ageing bones will have to
learn to live with me.
My tan the best I have had in years
accentuates the silver grey head too. Yesterday Suzanne and Michael drove out
from town early, and I followed later arriving about 1pm to find that an
expedition to the sand bar across the channel had been organized and everyone
was waiting impatiently to set out. The lunch was stowed in the boat, one of our
hurry up non gourmet lunches. Stale brown bread, the store was out of white, peanut
butter and egg salad sandwiches, cookies, apples and canned pop. We went over
in the boat in two loads, Suzanne was driving. Catherine, Paul and myself
first. Mary Sheila and Nora next. It was a wonderful few hours’ time, given
though we were illegally in American territory, because the sandbar is really a
low marshy island a few hundred feet off the US mainland. It must be government
owned because there are two range lights on it, a few weathered criss cross
timbers on a hammock towards the middle are the remains of what must have once
been a cabin. The shore is sandy, then there are low swamp alder bushes where it
slopes slightly in the middle. Sand pea and dry straw like grass grows. There
are driftwood pieces along the beach and part of a pulp log. In places the
scrub alder comes right down to the shore. I walked along the shore then cut
partly across and doubled back to where Mary and Suzanne had set up their beach
chairs on the shore. I had to watch carefully as I walked in bare feet although
no one lived there, and there was no evidence of many visitors. Old beer cans,
Hair tonic bottles, many of them broken in the sand along the shore with little
tracked pathways made by the shore birds.
Casey accompanied me. He ran wildly gallop, gallop,
jump. The long grasses lashed about wildly as he raced through them. He
couldn’t be seen except on the jumps. The sea gulls swooped and circled on him,
and I honestly think that Casey’s jumps were his efforts to take off after
them. Suzanne’s puppy Tyrone H Horneye followed Casey. There were birds’ nests
on the bank made of circles of dried rushes. Midway on the Island is a swamp,
where cattails grow shoulder high. I waded through matted wet grass, green sludge.
I took giant steps because it looked very much like snake country. We swam in
the water that was much warmer than on the north shore. The view was
magnificent from where we sat. To the west we could see through the narrow
opening where the ships rounded into Whitefish Bay, the whole expanse of the
bay with the headlands of Point Iroquois and Gros Cap in the distance. The
ships passed within a stone’s throw of the sand bar, moving slowly for the turn
and easing through the narrow channel into the river. Small crafts raced by and
we were always relieved that the small boat wasn’t the Coast Guard. I don’t
know what would happen probably a warning.
To the northeast
the Canadian shore. The rows of cottages like toy houses under the trees. To
the east in the distance the haze over the city and the bridge.
It was a lovely
sun soaked day. We had a barbeque and tried chuck steak. It was NOT successful.
Today I spent
the morning in town. Mother came down with Suzanne and me to see their little
house. She was quite worried as to where Suzanne lived, and was impressed with
the little pink house and its beautiful location. When Wilf and I got here this
afternoon Jimmy was here, Michael, Paul, Patrick, Mary and the McIntyre girls.
Michelle and Cathy Punch, Cathy Chiapetta a friend of Jimmy’s and Suzanne. We
swam in front of the cottage. They water skied then swam then water skied again.
Some went on an expedition to the store and Jimmy drove his friends Catherine
and Cathy Punch up to the bay to swim. Mary, Suz and I were left over, and
Michael. We left Michael to supervise the little ones when they came back from
the store and the three of us took off in the speedy yellow boat. In and around
Teen Bay, up the coast, the place where we had been two years ago, and then
around Point Louise. Oh the day was beautiful.
Cool breezes ruffled the water and the sun glinted on it. There is just
no feeling exactly like being in a small speedy boat skimming over the water,
the shore trees and houses whizzing by.
Marg Kelly was
sunning herself on the end of her dock as Peggy and the little girl next door
dove, paddled, turned somersaulted and tread water splashing like two young
porpoise. Bill came out on the patio and waved. Marg coaxed us ashore (it
didn’t take much) with the offer of a cool drink. We sat on the patio and
discussed the problem of the teens in the bay.
Some of the
cottagers objected to them congregating, as if they could do anything else at
that age. Bill Kelly is a kind bluster of an Irishman, and excellent surgeon,
who looks relaxed and years younger after a month’s holiday He works very hard
as all good doctors do. He and Ernie Greco just down the beach from Kelly’s are
the doctors on call for the beach. I remember one summer when Ernie was so
badly in need of a holiday that his wife warned the children that if they cut
themselves she would sew them up, and if they had symptoms, she would diagnose
them, but no one was going to be treated by her husband. Bill Kelly was called
once that I know of in the past two weeks, for a car accident on the cut off to
the highway. We have used their resident service from time to time in the past.
Last year when Paul put his hand through the glass in the front door, Ernie
happened to be visiting at the next door cottage. Sixteen stitches. When
Patrick fell into the barbeque pit after some character had broken a bottle in it.
That was a visit to the Emergency Room and 20 stitches. The time Paul jumped
off the steps at the store and landed on broken glass. He was quite small then,
and he and Jimmy walked from the store through the Indian trail. By the time he
arrived at the cottage, his whole foot was a matted mass of pine needles dirt
and blood. Stitches again.
Suzanne got
staph from a cut on her foot and one year Mary Anne started chicken pox amongst
the tribe.
Ernie Greco is a tall dark and nervous man,
who is the very model of a family doctor. The specialist type of family
practitioner he was. He is tortured by his responsibility, and he treats
people, not disease. His older children and ours attended school together. John
and Mary Jane, Douglas and Suzanne, Ernie and Jimmy. I always as I pass the
Allagash see the ghosts of young Douglas and Suzanne fishing. They caught
sunfish and threw them back and caught them again.
Ernie joined
Jimmy his crew, as they trapped frogs after dark on the beach. John talked
seriously with Wilfred about the school he was attending in Detroit. They
played flashlight tag, trained chipmunks to eat peanuts out of their hands. How
many years’ since Attles Alley? How many
seasons and sunshine wind and rain and growing up.
The night has
closed in as I write. Mary has gone into town to do the washing and grocery
shopping. She will get Mothers lunch then come out with Michael tomorrow, so I
have a night out here, and can wallow in a peaceful morning. A swim right after
breakfast, coffee and toast outdoors at the river’s edge. I sat on the end of
the dock today while Nora and Wendy from next door swam .Looking down into the
water the sand bottom was humped in wavy patterns and I marveled at how clear
the water was in this age of pollution. I hope this river and Lake Superior can
be saved from the fate of the other Great Lakes. It isn’t polluted yet, although
yesterday as we sat on the shore on the island when the wind rose a bit and the
waves began to break at our feet, there was a sudsy topping to the waves. We
all hoped it was natural but it looked to me like detergent foam.
It is almost
1030pm and Mary Anne is at a bonfire at Russell’s down the beach, she will be
home by 11 pm. The dark has closed in over the river. The only indication that
there is another shore is the green red green of the range lights on the far
shore. This is the year that the government removed the warning bell from the
buoy at the point. Radar is the answer! A boat whistles down river. Probably asking
permission to use the locks or perhaps past Gros Cap. The dark is suddenly
filled and then shattered by sound. The plane from Toronto. This point is on
the landing run; the airport is almost half a mile to the north, so several times
a day we are reminded that civilization is just beyond the pine woods…
August 8 1970: Point Aux Pins
The boats talked last night up and down the
river as fog settled from Whitefish Bay to Lake George. Eighteen of them were
waiting when the fog lifted this morning. I heard their conversation, their low
key conversations for a while last night but not for long. I was too tired. Physically
tired relaxed and ready for sleep! Once during the night, removed Nora’s legs
from across my throat, and dug Casey’s nose out of the sheet of my back. Once,
I rose on my knees and lifted Nora from the foot of the bed. I looked at her
when I woke about 9am and wondered at her. She is a lovely child of six past. Her
tan is a golden tan, long blonde hair-utterly relaxed in sleep.
The morning was mist, enclosed but not over
the land on this shore, or at least not by the time I got up, but the river
still clung to a thin fog. To the south and east there were wavy layers of it,
undulating softly. The far shore couldn’t be seen at first when we went down to
our dock to look, but one small island was visible in the blur. Gradually the
lighthouse appeared and the shoreline. It was a morning like a France Hopkins
painting. I would not have been surprised if the prow of a freight canoe would
have appeared out of the mist.
We had breakfast on a tray on the dock, toast
and jam, coffee for me, chocolate milk for Nora. By the time we were finished
it was 10 am. Catherine came wandering out of her room glossy eyed with sleep.
Mary Anne was rolled in a sheet on the pull out bed.
We gave ourselves one half hour to clean up
the cottage. Swept the sand from the kitchen out the back door, shook the porch
and bathroom rug, vacuumed the main room and the front porch,( this machine is
ancient)folded the clothes . Nora made the bed crawling on all fours over the
cover, and finally Mary Anne,(14 years) dragged herself up from her bed, looked
painfully at me,( I had been vacuuming under her!), and disappeared into her
throne room,( the bathroom) to which she retreats frequently to ponder problems
the young have with the old.
We
swam for an hour and a half and had sandwiches on the dock.
Mary and Jim came out from town, and we swam
again, and, “Oh” we killed two bloodsuckers this morning, but even the thought
of the ugly little monsters didn’t keep anyone out of the water. I saw the
first one waving like a piece of black ribbon through the water, chased it with
a breakfast plate, and cornered it on the beach. Young Johnny Offidani saw the
other one on the bottom as he was snorkeling, and dug it up on a paddle. We
soaked up the sun, swam and dove, stood on our hands, turned summersault’s, and
wallowed in summertime.
Suzanne and Joel, John and Mary Jane, Pat
and Michael arrived. Suzanne on the
water skis looks like a pigtailed sprite. May Jane is even enjoying the
swimming this year, but we didn’t inform her of the bloodsuckers! We barbequed
pork chops and salad, with French fries, and ice cream bars. The young people
left for town, the little ones ( it’s now 830)are coaxing Mary to go in
swimming again. Wilf has his binoculars out and we are sitting on the front porch.
He is checking the ships as they go by.
I
have made a hat! A Panama belonging to the elevator boy at the hotel Suzanne
visited in Nassau last February. All the girls old hoops of earrings, from one
of their glamour phases on it. Dr. John has nothing on me!
Now for the
drive into town! Another lovely summer day!
Wilf just asked
me “What are you doing”.
“Writing a book”
I answer. No comment!
August 9 1970: Granny visits Point Aux Pins and the
memories it brings back.
Yesterday,
Sunday Mother held court at the cottage. At ninety years old as she sat on the bench
and soaked up the wind and the sunshine with a white sunhat on, and a yellow
throw over her knees to keep out the cooler St Mary’s River breezes. It has
made her very content to see what a lovely comfortable safe place it is. “I
won’t worry about the children any more” she said this morning. “There is no
danger for them, and you and Mary are surrounded by people”. That is the
understatement of the year. Vince Lenore Michele and Cathy were here yesterday.
Freda and George Penny , Debbie and Stevie, next door neighbors to Mary and
Jim, Jimmy, Paul, Pat and two friends of his. Suzanne and Joel, John and Mary
Jane, the McIntyre brood plus a couple of strays from the beach.
The boat was
surging back and forth to the bay with all the seats full. It was
dashing up and down the river with skiers in tow. We sat and swam and sat and
swam again. All up and down the beach in front of the cottages there were
groups of the same.
Sport, Tyrone,
and Casey dug happily in the sand and rolled around on the grass.
Wilf and Jim are on holidays. I hope the
weather holds for them. Wilf to swim and sit in the sun, Jim to golf, and sit
in the shade!
Mother won’t be asking me anymore why I’m
running out to “that place”. She knows we are not isolated in the deep dark woods.
She inspected and approved of the cottage.
We are a matriarchal family as most Irish
families are. Families such as ours are, anyway one of the few left, and I can
see that it will end with this generation. It has taken a long time for me to
step back and take an objective look and assess ourselves as such. Mother has
always been with us or us with her, whichever it is.
My grandmother lived with us when we were
growing up. Mother (this was a slightly different situation) lived with her
grandmother. Her father died when they were quite young and her mother became a
housekeeper for one of the wealthy storekeepers, and the children were cared
for by her parents, their grandparents.
On my father’s side the ties were not so
strong. Of course boys in the family were not expected to do as much as the
girls in Irish families. But Dad maintained my grandmother, (his mother) in her
own home that he bought for her, and was cared for in it by a younger daughter
while she lived. He made an annual visit, and saw that her needs were well
taken care of, a trek from Lethbridge Alberta to Kingston. When she died the
little house was left to him and caused a family feud because his sister
Frances, who had cared for her, felt it should have gone to her.
I remember how Dad used to defer respectfully
to my grandmother (my mother’s mother). She was a stern woman. I never remember
her laughing and having fun. I remember her sitting ram rod straight and
disapproving of Frank and me. She crooned over Mary, but she harangued at us,
me in particular because I sometimes “talked back” to her.
When Dad came in
from work he always spoke to Granny first, before he said hello to mother. At
the table he addressed himself to her, or ended a remark with “what do you
think” or “Is that not so Gran?” If he forgot to do this, we had a gloomy
presence at the end of the table. And mother would mention to him after the
meal that he had hurt her feelings, and to “be careful next time”.
Gran had an evening ritual. She retired to
her room early in the evening “to say her rosary”, but I think now that she
prayed quickly and then sat behind her lace curtains, and watched the
neighborhood goings on. She did pray a lot. She was “a religious woman”. She
had a tattered prayer book, bulky and stuffed with leaflets and loose pages of
special prayers and novenas, wrapped around with a shoe lace to hold it
together. I remember her old hands sorting gently through it to find the right
prayer for her special mood or need of the moment. In Lent we all joined
together in her room after supper to say the rosary. This was in the early
twenties because I remember Vincent and Eddy kneeling at the chairs using the
seats like a prie dieu. The adults Vince and Eddy took turns with the decades
saying the “Hail Mary’s” and all of us answered with the “Holy Mary “ending. We
said the Litany of the Blessed Virgin and I loved the rhythm of it. The lovely
sound of the phrases “Heart of Gold”,” arc of the covenant”, “Queen of Heaven”,
“Queen of the saints”, and our chorused “Pray for us”, in response. Then there
was “The thirty day prayer”. I forgot everything but the name. The name remains
with me because I thought it was called thirty days because it was so long. It
seemed endless, and before our family prayers were over, my knees hurt and
Frank was draped on his chair seat, and Dad was effectively attempting to
control our squirming with frowning glares.
Other things
stand out in my memory about Grandmothers room. Her trunk was kept under her
bed, and it was a great event when once in a while she let Frank and me look at
its contents, always under her supervision. I cannot remember even one item it
contained only the event. Gran had a sore leg, an open sore on one ankle. I think
now that it was an ulcer from varicose veins, but she blamed our back steps at
the house on Third Avenue. The lower step from the porch was a large flat
stone. Gran said she fell and bumped her ankle and it “never healed”. She
walked slowly and carefully always although she never to my knowledge used a cane.
She changed the dressing on it frequently, and packed the wound wit “zinc
ointment”. She wore bandages on the one leg, and I must have been an attentive
observer because I can picture the ridges on her leg made by the bandages, the
veins lining the open sore and her gentle cleansing of it, and the slow rolling
of the bandages into neat balls.
She had a holy picture in her room which
fascinated me. It had small brass candelabra on either side, and the front
opened. Inside the picture were small holy candles, glass dishes and a small
cloth, everything needed for a “Sick Call”.
Gran had statues in her room too, of the
Sacred Heart, St Joseph and the Blessed Virgin. She had great devotion to all
three, and in times of stress would call on them, “Mary Mother of God help us”
,”St Joseph pray for us”. I remember one year when there was no squirming at
prayers. Close to Christmas time I think when we were praying Dad home across
the stormy North Atlantic. He travelled to the “old country” the government man
accompanying shipments of cattle and then returned, “First Class” on the Cunard
White Star Line.
Thunderstorms
were a time of stress. She was terrified of them. Windows were closed, curtains
drawn, the holy water was brought out, and Gran prayed slowly somewhere between
a sob and a plea.
Eddy and Vincent
were most respectful to Granny and she accepted and tolerated them warmly.
Frank was a favorite as he “never crossed her”. Mary of course was a “special
gift from God” Gran hovered over her, but I just annoyed her. She made dire
prophesies to Mother when I refused to let her “tuck me in” at nights. It seems
like a very small thing now and why I objected to it, escapes me, but I did not
want my covers tucked in lightly around me. Because of this my mother was
warned that I would come to “no good end”. It was a nightly battle.
Her clothes were
different from the other grandmothers I knew, and I was always ashamed. She
wore a black dress, pin tucked down the blouse front, buttoned with all round
buttons, and with a high neck. It was tight waisted, and the skirts were full
and came to the ankles. She wore petticoats too, but what they looked like I
never knew. Over her skirt she wore a black sateen apron. She had a black knit
shawl. She must have had a coat, for her infrequent excursions out of doors,
but I don’t recall it. I have a vague memory of her going out to Mass, a great
fuss being made as she got into the car, so it must have been an event. Then
she wore her bonnet, which fascinated me but which we were not allowed to
touch. It was black of course and made of draped veiling with two long wide
streamers of the veiling tied in a large loose bow under her chin. It sat well
forward on her head and did not cover her ears. I have seen pictures of Old
Queen Victoria wearing the identical head gear. I suppose it was part of a widow’s
uniform, certainly of the Victorian age rather than the Ottawa of the
“Twenties”.
I remember once
she came to the beach with us and sat black bonneted in our open touring car,
Dads beloved “Dodge”, and watched us swim, only once that I can remember. Other
than that I remember her always meeting
Mother at the door when we returned from our Sunday picnic with a reproachful look
and “What kept you so late” and often with a glare at the telephone, “that has
been ringing off the wall”.
She was a very curious woman and the phone
infuriated her. She would not answer it refused absolutely because for some
reason it had an obscure connection with the devil. I think now that she was
too proud to admit that she didn’t know how to use it and wouldn’t “lower
herself” to learn. She wouldn’t answer it yet it annoyed her that she didn’t
know who called.
Only rarely were we left in Grans keeping
when Mother and Dad went out together. When it happened she spent an hour
before they returned, waiting at the front door, peering from the curtains,
mumbling complaints, and always a harangue when they returned which always
began “I thought something had happened”. No wonder they went out so seldom. Dad
went out the the "Knights" and to “shoot traps”, to hockey games, to
curl, but Mother was always home with Gran or us, or she took us out. I don’t
think we ever missed a parade or a celebration of any kind. We even attended
the “Orange Day Picnic” at the Exhibition Grounds with dire warnings of what
would happen if we told Granny. The inverted boots at the Military Funerals
impressed me and the flag draped over the coffin on the gun carriage, and the horses,
the harness and the creation of the metal sounds. The figures at the corners of
the War Memorial on cold November 11ths. The Ice Palace, the band shell, the
gardens at the Experimental farm. We must really have got on Gran’s nerves as
we were out with Mother so much. We did take “Evening Drives” when we had
company and we had a lot of it. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends always seemed
to be there, yet Mother never went anywhere. Uncle Will came with his bride for
a weekend and stayed several months until his new house on Fentiman Avenue was
built. Aunt Eileen lived the life of a lady. Mother waited on her. Dad
complained bitterly that Mother had to do this but would say nothing to hurt Wills
feelings. Aunt Henrietta and Uncle Pierce from New York, Maureen and Joe, their
children. Joe was a spoiled soft lump of a boy. I remember his constant chant complaint
“Mother Maureen is bothering me”. Aunt Bessie Brennan who brought me a beautiful
book and a brown Kodak too, and one year brought a carved wooden circus,
elephants and clowns. These are some of the memories of my young Mother that I
have.
August 11, 1970 Point Aux Pins
It is evening and there was a storm this afternoon grumbling for an hour, then roaring and thundering out of the west. The sky and the river became varying shades of purple, light and dark. The rain belted the river and the trees waved, shook, and shivered under it. Lightning streaked from cloud to earth here and there along the south shore, so that we only got the edges of its fury. The storm center was somewhere in Michigan, It swept past, and was suddenly over. The trees looked washed and clean, renewed by the fierce shower after the long heatwave.
The ships glide up and down, the long
freighters, the stubby Patterson liners, the huge Salties, the endless variety
of pleasure craft, Yachats, sailing vessels, powerboats. Today a blue and white
houseboat puttered up the shore and into the lighthouse cove just before the
storm broke. It headed down towards the
Soo, then as the storm winds rose and the lines of whitecaps lunged towards the
shore, it's struggled back and anchored in the bay again, only then to putter away
when the storm ended, the boat swarmed with children. It is for sale I hear for
$2500.00.
Lukenda’s boat just went by towing a skier.
Daley’s boat just came in a boy yelling we caught a big one “a pike”. Out on
the edge of the channel a green boat is anchored with three patient fishermen
in it.The flies are bad after the rain so I will go inside.
I have started reading Adlaire Stevenson’s biography. Catherine McIntyre and Betty Lou Lukenda are haunting me. They are worse than the flies. They are fascinated by my book. I won't let them read it and have told Catherine that I will make her number one pest on its pages, and she will go down in posterity by the name “Catherine the Pest”. Fine she retorted, that’s your name too, and Granny's.
I have started reading Adlaire Stevenson’s biography. Catherine McIntyre and Betty Lou Lukenda are haunting me. They are worse than the flies. They are fascinated by my book. I won't let them read it and have told Catherine that I will make her number one pest on its pages, and she will go down in posterity by the name “Catherine the Pest”. Fine she retorted, that’s your name too, and Granny's.
Wilf is foostering with the yellow boat. Jim
and Mary have gone in for the night, and he has decided to stay over. I think
he is sorry already. Wilfred likes the comfort of home.
August
12, 1970 Point Aux Pins: 8:15 AM
There is a ship talking its way up the river,
but the fog is so thick that I cannot see it. I can see the trees at the
water’s edge, and Joel’s boat anchored at the dock, but beyond that there is
only gray. The boat whistle woke me. The ship was bawling regularly with rhythm
like a stricken cow, baaw, baw, then a pause of about a minute or less. I think
perhaps then baw, baw, baw again.
It came from the direction of the Soo, the
sound coming closer and closer, then the sound of the engines as it bawled just
opposite the cottage.
I got the binoculars, tried to see it, even
the shadow in the fog, but there was only the sounds of its passing and now the
sounds are getting farther away. I am sure it has rounded the point. The grey
curtain still hides the river, but the sun is visible now to the east, curtained
too but it will breakthrough, and the fog will, not lift, but it disintegrates.
Now there is no sound so the boat is
free and safe in Whitefish Bay.
They are all beginning to move now. I suppose
that they have been anchored in the river and bay during the night. Here comes another one from down river again.
I walked out to the end of the dock and checked up and down the river with the
binoculars. Only the sound, closer and
closer until it is so loud that the bawling filled the river and bounced back
from the cove.
I could hear the engines and the slosh as it
cut through the river, but there was only sound, no ships, a ghost ship.
Air Canada is coming in right over the trees
and I can't see the plane any more than I can see the ships. The down bound ship,
by the sound is still beyond the point. Last
year the conversation would've been punctuated by the bell on the river buoy,
but it is been removed this year, and all ships travel according to radar. Here
she comes close by, but still not even a shadow of her passing so thick is the
fog.
It is 8:45 AM daylight saving time;
I am sitting on the shore, Casey quiet at my feet. I can barely see the
lighthouse. Now downriver the cottage docks are visible. I can see the road
clearly and cars’ passing but the river is still shrouded. A robin takes a bath in the shallow part of
the water; fish flies are buzzing and swarming close to its surface. A couple of land birds squawk in the trees. I
can even hear voices as the ships pass but not even the vaguest outline of the
ships are visible now. The lighthouse is
obscured again.
It is 857: The sun is getting stronger. Here comes the
lighthouse coming out of the fog as if moving closer. The water is moving
quietly undulating in rhythm with the fog. Francis Hopkins must have had a photographic
memory. Surely she did not paint as the
canoes probed the fog in the early morning. Even to sketch would not have given
her the mood of the pictures she has left us of the Lake Superior country. The
lighthouses are visible but still there is no color in the trees backing them,
only geometric angular white blurred and shadowy forms and even shadowier reflections
in the water. The river is lip lapping on
the sand. A gentle sound! Now the trees
that line the cove are making a gliding entrance and the tops clear and misty
green. It is so beautiful! The river edge is shimmering, even Casey is moving
quietly.
The sun is beginning to feel warm. Now I can see the cottages in the lighthouse cove.
But where is the fog going? Not lifting because the sky is blue above me. Not blowing away because there is not even a
breeze. Just going eerily! It is still
very thick downriver. We will have a
boat parade again later on.
The people next-door are up, I am
beginning to feel self-conscious on my camp chair a few feet from the water’s
edge in my pink nighty and Mary's orange dressing gown, binoculars around my
neck, peering into the fog, writing furiously. The weird lady next-door! I wish I could paint. There is a crow calling now. Two small water birds skim low over the water.
The gulls are beginning to complain
somewhere near the shore across the river. The ravens are becoming noisy in the
Pines behind the house. They were certainly intimidated by the fog. Two long two short, the boat that passed down
river is whistling for permission to enter the locks. There are voices from the
cottages. The whistles have been everybody's alarm. Now the opposite shore is in places faintly
there. Now there is a breeze.
9:20 AM: I am dressed. I can see the houseboat
anchored in the cove. The wavelets are
sparkling. I can see the bay way down
river and the far shore is a long shadow. The houseboats engines start up and it moves
closer to land and is only partly visible now behind the chicken tree. They were fogbound last night as the Voyagers
where I am sure. Many of them took refuge for the night in the lee of point
Louise and along this bit of shore. No
wonder there are wrecks lining the bottom of this river before range lights,
before radar. A gull just landed now
takes off skimming the surface, feet dragging, and Casey takes off too racing
across the beach barking like a demented thing. I coax and threaten him into the house. Now I will have to reward him with breakfast. The
gull swoops down, splashes into the river and takes off sideways and then
straight up in a bounding motion. It is
having breakfast too
9:40 AM: The ship is passing, shadowed but visible, not
colored just outlined white, shadowy dark. It’s reflection in the water is as
clear as itself. The river is glassy now
not the tiniest ripple on its surface
The first motorboat of the day pushes out from
shore and anchors near the channel. A
summer day begins with the fisherman thwarted from earlier sport, by the fog. Two young girls pass along the beach, towels
draped on their arms swimming will soon start.
It is 9:45
AM: Nora is awake. She is sitting on the floor petting and talking and
reassuring Casey of her love.
“Is Suzie’s
dog a cocker spaniel Kay?”
“No he's a
mixture like Casey and Sport” Nora indignantly hugging Casey.
. “Casey isn’t a mixture he's just a mutt”.
“Look Kay”
and she pats Casey’s chest.
“He is a spaniel
here”, maybe there but his tail is pure Irish setter!
Nora brushes
her hand lovingly from his nose to his tail. “He’s all mutt on top”.
It is 12
noon: Wilf Sheila and I are on the beach
watching a barge pushing, not towing. The tug is pushed right into the stern of
the barge, up a bit so that wheelhouse has a view over the barge. Tugs make a
busy bustling no-nonsense sound.
Wilf is instructing
Sheila in Lake Lore. When they leave the river the captain can go to bed. The captain has to be on the bridge from
around Pine Island to Point Louise. The
only time the mate handles the ship in the river, is if he has a ticket. The Fort
Henry is the second fastest ship on the lakes, a little package freighter, is
so fast between rivers that the captain couldn't get enough sleep, so they put
two captains on her. The Cleveland-Cliffs Victory is the fastest ship on the
lakes. They are a mining company to
start with.
The river
is active. Little boys and rowboats near the shore, and in between the docks,
small girls and small boats, with small motors. Larger boys in boats with
water-skiers! They have the biggest ones. Launches and sturdy fishing boats! I am going to have to write a boat and cottage
book. I am stifled by the city. I feel human after being out here for a while
no deadlines, no momentous (slightly larger than minute they seem from here)
decisions. There is nothing more momentous than a frog hiding under the boat.
Casey is
barking wildly at the end of his leash. That’s
what Casey is “he's a frog hound”. We
should be able to figure out what he is by the end of the summer. This morning he was flopped on his back feet
waving in the air” he's a mattress hound”.
August 15, 1970
The moon
was orange tonight as we drove in from the cottage. It was a stormy windy day of
thunderstorms. Before the storm started, the waves slanted and roared from the
west across the river. Whitecaps, not a steady role but every which way as the wind
gusted and changed directions. The storm was in Casey. He chased cars. He darted like an arrow across the beach
barking at everything that moved. He challenged the great huge cross Mastiff at
least four times his size. He chased Tyrone (Suzie's dog) and tackled him from
behind literally, tackling him and rolling him, no bowling him over.
We had
chicken and salad. Jimmy's girlfriend is visiting us and their other friends in
the Soo. A nice girl with lots of personality, just right for Jimmy. I hope
they are mature enough to have the relationship grow, and wise enough to wait
until they are “established: and ready for marriage. I dare not say who is ever really ready for marriage. I am
tired, driving tires me, even passenger driving. I do not like the busy roads
or the swish swish swish of passing cars. I like winding country roads with
ruts in them, and stones, and dusty. Smooth pavement, white lines and dead
small animals at the side of the road depress me. I could never do much highway
driving.
Eric, Joel
and Suzanne's friend was out to the cottage on his crutches today. Suzanne on
night shift at the hospital is engrossed in a book and crabby at interruptions.
It is too rough for waterskiing. It is good to see the young men of the family
together. Joel and John completely relaxed and bantering with Paul, Michael,
Jimmy and Patrick. I am blessed with
family. Mary and Jim are good friends, as well as relatives.
John and Mary Jane head out tomorrow for
John's home in Parrsboro Nova Scotia. Mary Jane is nervous of the journey, and
John's chafing at the bit to get home to the Maritimes.The farewells under the
trees as they drove off was noisy goodbye, goodbye, and have a nice time, chorused.
Then John stopped the car and jumped out yelling “I forgot my sunglasses”. He
jogged to the house and jogged back with noisy encouragement, had one foot in
the car, when Mary Anne burst through the trees at the side of the cottage. “Wait wait, I haven't said goodbye”. John took
a dramatic stance arms widespread, she ran into them and hugged him. What John
didn't know was that she had been swimming in her clothes, shorts and top, and
was soaking wet. His expression as he enfolded her was something to see!
Dawning horror! Michael and Paul rolled
on the ground so “broken up” they were.
The storm has not cooled the air only added
humidity to it. Jim McIntyre sprained a finger swinging on the rope off the “chicken
tree”. He cannot close his hand around his golf club, which is utter tragedy
because he is on holidays. His favorite kind of golfing camping holiday. He
drives in to the country club every day for his 18 at (least holes), so I hope
the sprain goes away very quickly. It is not the first time his holiday has
been marred. Several years ago he had
been practicing with great dedication in preparation for a tournament, and had
his game honed to tournament quality. The day before the tournament I asked him
to cut a watermelon, and right, he sliced his finger to the bone. We tried to
convince him to have it frozen so he could play, but he didn't take such a
drastic measure.
Monday, August 23, 1970
Turn left at the smoke
This year our record number for a meal is 29. Last year talk it was 32. So many charcoal bits have been burned in the barbecue that it prompted Jim to give directions to the cottage as, “turn left at the smoke”. He has officiated at so many ceremonial cooking’s of meat that his only request for meals one day last week was, please nothing that is fried, nothing that is improved with charcoal coating, nothing that can be eaten in a bun. So we had ham and onion fried rice, but for them as they don't eat onions, mushroom rice casserole. Ham and green bean and cheese casserole, jelly salad made with fresh fruit and cantaloupe, and ice cream with chocolate cake, followed Casta Roya wine and Cassel Mendes completed the menu. Today we are back to peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch and leftovers for supper.
The weather has been poor for the past week. Last Thursday Jimmy and Sue drove about down to Webwood and Espanola, where they will set up their classroom for the fall term. That was the day Lively in the outskirts of Sudbury was leveled with what has been called a freak storm, with winds of hurricane velocity. I called Espanola at noon, because according to initial radio reports they would either have driven into it, or followed it closely. Instead they had a trip through bright sunshine with no hint of storm.
Sue Sunstrum has been visiting us for the past week. She seems a very fine girl and I couldn't hope for anyone nicer for Jimmy. The only worry is that they are both only 20, but what is only 20 these days. I judge with the view from another generation who considered marriage as an end instead of a beginning. We were supposed to settle down when we got married and take life seriously. Child-rearing was a chore and responsibility and a sacrificial worry. At least that was the code that I inherited. Perhaps I was even out of step with my generation. My children have always told me I must have led a very sheltered life. I denied it vehemently all through their growing years, but now I am not so sure. Don’t create trouble! Don’t be a bother! Don’t argue! Keep the peace! Keep out of sight! Don’t make noise! Work hard! Do more than is expected of you! Give, give, and give! We never learned how to accept. Give generously but except gracelessly! Be a martyr to the cause! Be an example of self-sacrifice! Children are seen and not heard! As a result or as a result of a combination of things, I still brace myself when I have to enter a room full of people.
I can still hear the words. You are too big to wear clothes like other girls my age. Too big to ride a bicycle! I craved a khaki midi and bloomers set, but no, I had to wear skirts because I was too big. The result was that my ugly fleece lined bloomers under my summer dresses made me feel awkward. When I was quite small I had a knitted sweater and pullovers and toque, but I guess even then I was big for my age because over at the rink at the church in Ottawa, Father Brett commented to mother “you have a nice little boy there Mrs. Gallivan”, and I never wore my knitted pullovers again without a skirt on top of it.
This morning Sheila, Nora and I were philosophizing under the trees about Granny and we decided that Granny was very very rich, because she had everything she wanted. People who are rich and money millionaires are not as rich as Granny because she has contentment. I said that Granny had a very deep faith and lived one day at a time, because “God is good”, and he would take care of the next day. Yes said Sheila “Granny talks like one of the apostles”. Nora had been listening at six on the outside edge of the conversation, so to contribute her share, she looked dreamily out into space and said “Granny watched the apostle blast off”. To Nora the Apollo moon shot is more familiar than the apostles.
Summer wondrously continues into August. Mary's birthday was celebrated yesterday, and although her date is August 20, Sheila made her an original card.
August 24, 1970
Sitting on the dock on still nights we can see the city, jeweled and sparkling in the distance. The aura of the international bridge is visible on clear nights. The arc of light from the airport searchlight swings across the sky at regular intervals.
I
woke to gray sky and gray disgruntled water, with the wind from the east. The day was so dull that even the trees looked
bored and drooped. This is the kind of day when it is easy to forget sunshine
and waterskiing, when the dresser drawers stick and the doors open only after
protests. For the confirmed camper it is a day of quiet and reading and peace,
for the unconfirmed, it is a day to grumble, for the children to toast
marshmallows in the fireplace or corn popping, and games until they get on the
each other's nerves.
Today we are expecting company, Jim's brother Joe his wife Maureen and five children from PEI from age of 18 downwards. He is being transferred from east to west, and is stopping over here for the night. Mary went into town to prepare the chicken and the salads, and it is my turn to have the cottage in order. The day is poor for entertaining, the old gray cottage with its varnished boards inside, old Chesterfield and old rugs, shows its age and not its charm. If I were talented I would have the fire leaping and welcome when the guests arrived, but I have not been shown how the flues work and with my luck we would have to evacuate the place.
Today we are expecting company, Jim's brother Joe his wife Maureen and five children from PEI from age of 18 downwards. He is being transferred from east to west, and is stopping over here for the night. Mary went into town to prepare the chicken and the salads, and it is my turn to have the cottage in order. The day is poor for entertaining, the old gray cottage with its varnished boards inside, old Chesterfield and old rugs, shows its age and not its charm. If I were talented I would have the fire leaping and welcome when the guests arrived, but I have not been shown how the flues work and with my luck we would have to evacuate the place.
I
don't want Jim's directions turn left at the smoke to blow back into his own
face, so we clean the cottage and wear several layers of sweaters. I can just
imagine the scathing looks from Wilfred and Jim as they advance efficiently
towards the flues. I hope it smokes a little bit!
I woke at
eight this morning and turned away from the day to my book” Lillian Hellman's Unfinished
Women”. The first visitor was Casey. He leapt to the bed and had barely landed
when he took off again with my help. His
smell was overwhelming. His favorite place when he breaks successfully for freedom
is the Allagash with its reeds and stagnant stench. He spent some time there yesterday.
The second visitor was Nora. Sheila and Nora
sleep together. I heard them in their arguments during the night. Sheila had
all the covers. Nora was complaining “please just the corner” “shhhhhh I
haven't got a corner”, so the covers must be on the floor. I will go there if
there are any more pleadings, but there are none, just squeaks from the bed as
the covers are hauled aboard. So Nora, my second visitor, is leaning on the bed,
lower lip out, bursts out saying “Sheila had all the covers and I'm freezing”. “Hop
in” and I say closing my book. She cuddles under the covers and the thought
that has been in her subconscious all night bubbles out. “How about a game of
solitary K?” I laugh “no sir I want to read go play by yourself”. We had a long
session with a game last night. I am teaching her the only card game I remember
the rules for. I refuse to play all of their card games. I just say I don't
know how. Nora reproachfully “I can't play solitary by myself then”. “Why don't
you like playing cards K? I think for a minute why, will I tell her the truth? Because
I can't remember what trumps have been played! Because I had an overdose of
serious bridge with my father in my teens! Because I have rotten luck and poor
foresight and not enough patience! Because I never win and it takes too much
time! I say besides, what is the point of looking at a piece of paper and
matching it with another piece of paper and laying them down on the table and
counting and then doing it all over again!
It takes
time I would rather spend some other way. “I like it because it helps me spend
some time” says Sheila who by this time has joined us in the bed. Shall I tell
her that “the spending of time and the hoarding of it is in direct proportion
to the difference between 10 and 50 odd”? I use odd as a descriptive part of
that phrase
Nora looks sad “I guess adults just don't like solitary”.
Casey has just been bathed so that his relatives will like him and has just made a break for freedom again. Now I will vacuum the cottage. This is a day for walking, but we have strict instructions to stay close to the house and be here to greet the visitors.
Nora looks sad “I guess adults just don't like solitary”.
Casey has just been bathed so that his relatives will like him and has just made a break for freedom again. Now I will vacuum the cottage. This is a day for walking, but we have strict instructions to stay close to the house and be here to greet the visitors.
I last saw Joe and Maureen when they were
first married, no children. They huddled
close together in the living room on the Chesterfield then, and held hands and
devouring each other with their eyes. They have five children now almost 20
years later. Joe is successful in the business world; their first child Sheila attends
Queens this year. It is such close quarters for so many relatives who don't
know one another on a dull day!
It is 12:19 PM and all is well except that the day becomes grayer. Dare I tackle the flues! Casey now smells again. “He does not says Nora” she hugs him and buries her nose in his coat. Casey smells pretty! Sheila's eyes look towards the heavens. Casey smells pure Allagash.
We waited through the long gray afternoon, Sheila and Nora played games. Sheila listed names of penpals taken from an American newspaper, seven of them in different cities that she is going to write to. I finished my book. Nora practiced printing her cousin’s names. Sheila. Michael, Steven, Gregory, Jimmy and Pat. “Why do we always have the same names in our family?” asks Sheila. “We all have, because our forbearers have the same names, and we have the same forbearers” I say “named four bears” says Nora!
The fact that no one has seen any bears this year is really bothering Nora. I'm sure she feels that when they have been seen. You know where they are, at the Allagash, near the curves on the sand road far over by the point Louise Road. Such sightings pin them down, always somewhere. When they haven't been cited, well, then they are probably hiding behind the nearest tree or around the corner of the cottage or looking in the window. Every unexplained sound is probably a bear to Nora.
It is 12:19 PM and all is well except that the day becomes grayer. Dare I tackle the flues! Casey now smells again. “He does not says Nora” she hugs him and buries her nose in his coat. Casey smells pretty! Sheila's eyes look towards the heavens. Casey smells pure Allagash.
We waited through the long gray afternoon, Sheila and Nora played games. Sheila listed names of penpals taken from an American newspaper, seven of them in different cities that she is going to write to. I finished my book. Nora practiced printing her cousin’s names. Sheila. Michael, Steven, Gregory, Jimmy and Pat. “Why do we always have the same names in our family?” asks Sheila. “We all have, because our forbearers have the same names, and we have the same forbearers” I say “named four bears” says Nora!
The fact that no one has seen any bears this year is really bothering Nora. I'm sure she feels that when they have been seen. You know where they are, at the Allagash, near the curves on the sand road far over by the point Louise Road. Such sightings pin them down, always somewhere. When they haven't been cited, well, then they are probably hiding behind the nearest tree or around the corner of the cottage or looking in the window. Every unexplained sound is probably a bear to Nora.
The company didn't come. We waited through
the long gray windy rain soaked afternoon. By 5 PM Marianne was exasperated,
and Sheila was starving. Don’t worry Sheila; I'll try to reassure her, I'm sure
that if they don't come they will at least send us a care package.
At
515 two cars turned into the parking area. Paul with his visiting cousin Sheila
in the Volkswagen and Michael visitor Patrick in the Chevy. They have come to
collect us. Dinner will be in town, thank heavens, because the wind has risen
and the river is in a lashing fury.
Sheila and Joe do not sit holding hands and devouring each other with their eyes. They are a happy well-adjusted couple who have a nice-looking personable crew of children. Sheila is dark and dimpled. Michael is blonde and handsome and tall and a twin for Patrick. Steven is 17 years old today and Mary had a birthday cake for him. He is also blonde and handsome. Gregory is 11, I think and to quote his mother hasn't quite grown into his teeth yet. He has the potential of the others. Jimmy is a twin for Sheila, like Sheila McIntyre, thin sensitive and thoughtful. It is amazing how the genes perpetuate certain family traits.
The shocking news these McIntyre's bring with them, is that the McIntyre's are Scottish, not Irish, forbearers’ came from the Isle of Skye. They were on their way to Australia, when their ship was blown off course in a gale and was about to put in at Newfoundland when the crew mutinied. They sailed her out of port to land on Prince Edward Island and settle there. They were on their way to make their fortune in the Australian gold fields. “Just think” says Jim “we might have struck it rich in Australia!” “Just think” says Paul from his corner, “we might have all been Neufies!”
Sheila and Joe do not sit holding hands and devouring each other with their eyes. They are a happy well-adjusted couple who have a nice-looking personable crew of children. Sheila is dark and dimpled. Michael is blonde and handsome and tall and a twin for Patrick. Steven is 17 years old today and Mary had a birthday cake for him. He is also blonde and handsome. Gregory is 11, I think and to quote his mother hasn't quite grown into his teeth yet. He has the potential of the others. Jimmy is a twin for Sheila, like Sheila McIntyre, thin sensitive and thoughtful. It is amazing how the genes perpetuate certain family traits.
The shocking news these McIntyre's bring with them, is that the McIntyre's are Scottish, not Irish, forbearers’ came from the Isle of Skye. They were on their way to Australia, when their ship was blown off course in a gale and was about to put in at Newfoundland when the crew mutinied. They sailed her out of port to land on Prince Edward Island and settle there. They were on their way to make their fortune in the Australian gold fields. “Just think” says Jim “we might have struck it rich in Australia!” “Just think” says Paul from his corner, “we might have all been Neufies!”
The
evening was pleasant with wine and after dinner Irish mist, and much talk and
laughter. The older teens went down to the local hangout “Muio’s”, and the
younger ones walked to the neighborhood corner store for a treat. Catherine
almost 12 was in tears because she was practically a teen, but couldn't go. I
remember Mary Jane's famous reasoning at about the same age, “I'm almost 12 so
that makes me practically 13”, or was it 15 and 16, anyway the same idea.
Paul
was filled up with a book I had given him, “One flew over the cuckoo's nest” by
Ken Kelsey. He's going into medicine and is working this summer in the hospital.
He said after finishing the book, he
walked into 300Y the psychiatric wing at the hospital. I just couldn't believe
it, there was the glass-enclosed nursing station, and the people, the people. Oh
how I hated to close that book.
I
watched a tug yesterday, white and efficient looking, and low in the water and
thought the big ships in the Red River expedition must have been just about
that size. A canoe comes around the point. A left over Voyager perhaps?
I am haunted by the accuracy of Francis Hopkins paintings, how she
caught the ruggedness of the Lake Superior country, how she recorded it's beauty,
it's misty haunting beauty. Coming out to the point the other day the mist
along the hills, soft wisps of it, floated like ectoplasm in the valleys. Between
the hills the trees were blurred. There were moving layers of it in the far
field, but none close to the road or on the road. it was as if I was seeing the
country with her eyes. I get lonesome for her paintings. I saw one in the lobby
of the National Library at its opening. I have even seen prints but I must try
to locate them.
Pointe aux Pins: The Chicken
Tree
In the bay in Pointe aux Pins there is a Chicken Tree. It is tall, with convenient
branches. Someone had climbed the Chicken
Tree and tied a rope on one of the higher branches. The rope had knots in
it
and had such a
length that it does not drag the ground, but swinged above it.
If you are young
and
agile (or old middle-age
and
foolish) you can stand on a lump of moss covered
with sand, and you can then swing on the rope out-out-out over the bay.
At the farthest arc, you will let the rope go and then
go
down into the deepest
part of the bay. If you "chicken out” for a crucial moment,
you
either make a graceless plop in the shallow, or you swing
back
to hear
the jeers of "Chicken! Chicken!”,
by the young line standing and waiting for the
rope.
Catherine, ten years old, let go and sailed gracefully through the air, and pretended
that she can do it like Tarzan. Joel and John, Paul and Jimmy are
naturals. Patrick is timid
and
Michael dares him to go up the tree. He then decides to dive from the highest top of the Chicken Tree.
The tree is really a giant old pine tree, leaning just at an angle, slightly toward the bay. There is also a raft in the bay with a diving board.
A few years
ago there was a beaver pond. When the children
were little, we would row in the pond quietly,
and the beaver would swim past us with a stick in his teeth as he swam to his home.
It is summertime Nora has just come to ask me to go swimming with her. She is aged six with golden hair and golden skin. So beautiful!
" Get the raft I say " We can ease ourselves into the refreshing, chilly St Mary's River.
It is summertime Nora has just come to ask me to go swimming with her. She is aged six with golden hair and golden skin. So beautiful!
" Get the raft I say " We can ease ourselves into the refreshing, chilly St Mary's River.
River”.
This is
summertime, the annual recharging of my batteries. The place is Point Aux Pins!
I have been here two days babysitting for Mary while she and Jim stay in town
for shopping, washing, and attending of one of the big Italian weddings of the
season. Jim was asked to be M.C. at the dinner and reception and was honored
but slightly shaken by the invitation.
An Italian wedding is a ceremonial to end
all ceremonials! For an Anglo Saxon to be invited places a great weight of responsibility
on his shoulders. Fortunately Jim knows all the mores (and the family friends) of
the Italian community so he is on relatively safe ground. He is a favorite
adoptive son of this community so all should go well with the day. I am anxious
for Mary’s return to hear all about it.
Nora is waiting for me on the rubber raft.
The mist just lifted from the far shore .A little boy next door has caught a
frog and is attempting to confer with it in some unknown language.
This is
summertime!
August 29 1970
This is another Francis Hopkins foggy morning. The ships are moving,
inching their way along, Oomph, oomph, oomph--- then a one minute interval.
Two are meeting just at the lip of Point Louise, one down bound, one up bound,
and they answer each other--- oomph, oomph, oomph. I can see the up bound one,
but not the down bound. The up bound is approaching the point now, ghostly fog
covers it. There is a solid wall of fog right at the Point. It must be at
Whitefish Bay by the sound of the warning horn. The down bound ship must be
very close.
The sun is breaking through. The up bound is barely moving, inching
along. This is a narrow channel where they will meet, the narrowest part of the
channel. Downriver the mist is a layered, downy, covering over the city, low
between the shores. I can see a plume coming up out of it. The sky is blue
overhead and here, the sun is shining. It has taken eight minutes for the
outbound ship to pass from right at the cottage; its prow has now reached the
end of lighthouse point. The other ship must be stopped altogether. Up bound,
mid ships and stern are still visible. Cautiously! Cautiously!
Two children go past in a small aluminum boat adventuresome, on and aluminum coated morning. Now the prow is disappearing oomph, oomph, oomph and it is gone! 11 minutes to pass from our cottage front into the bay and it usually averages one minute. The wash from the ship is striking the sand. The sun is reflected on the water. The river itself has the color of liquid mercury, only a bit grayer and a bit less metallic. The pockets of fog have gone out of Lighthouse Bay and Point Louise is clear now, but beyond its line of trees the fog still rolls.
Two children go past in a small aluminum boat adventuresome, on and aluminum coated morning. Now the prow is disappearing oomph, oomph, oomph and it is gone! 11 minutes to pass from our cottage front into the bay and it usually averages one minute. The wash from the ship is striking the sand. The sun is reflected on the water. The river itself has the color of liquid mercury, only a bit grayer and a bit less metallic. The pockets of fog have gone out of Lighthouse Bay and Point Louise is clear now, but beyond its line of trees the fog still rolls.
The Sault is still covered. The fog is like
a curtain strung between the two shores. There is a small boat with fishermen
in it and a small boy's voice comes distinctly across the water. There is a man
casting off of his dock about five cottages away. The water at my feet is clear.
I am
sitting on the end of the dock my feet dangling in the water, watching the
morning battle with fog. It really isn't much of a battle. It is as if the
sun said quietly “scat”, and the fog is just slinking away. It goes so quietly.
There
is a breeze now coming from river to shore, an insistent cool breeze, but it
only barely undulates the river. There is a fishing boat a few cottages away
coming into dock. It is a silhouette, the windshield shining in the sun, but
everything is aluminum and gray. A yacht two decked one comes out of lighthouse
bay. The red and silver Air Canada flight to Toronto, going out on time roars it’s
singing up flight roar over the trees, and disappears. The wake of the yacht V’s
in a curving, flashing, undulating motion and now noisily, the river flaps and bubbles
up and down the shore. It is over in a moment and the water is still again.
The
curtain still hangs over the Sault and out of its middle the plume. It cannot
be smoke because it is the same color as the fog. The curtain is disintegrating
now slowly over the river at the Sault getting thinner and higher, going up to
meet the plume. The tern gulls are fishing close to shore skimming the water by
a few feet and then diving. They hover crouching in the air and then dive
headfirst sometimes disappearing. The minnows are foolishly close to the
surface this great morning. Sometimes the birds change their minds just before
they strike the surface. It is a lovely graceful exhibition of maneuverability.
Slosh there goes another one! The birds surfaces and skims over and mounts the
air in curving flight. It shakes visibly swallowing the minnow I suppose. A
rowboat is creaking its way along close to shore.
The fog whistles were the colonies alarm clocks this morning. A boy rowing his mother, she is leaning back on her hands utterly relaxed. Their voices are slow easy as the morning itself.
The fog whistles were the colonies alarm clocks this morning. A boy rowing his mother, she is leaning back on her hands utterly relaxed. Their voices are slow easy as the morning itself.
I
must be quite a sight in my blue quilted housecoat, mothers flannelette gown,
my bare feet stuck in the sand and Casey on guard at them. Now he has changed
position and is lying on the dock behind me his seat touching my seat. “I'm
still here never fear!”
The fog at the Sault has split into two
layers, one above the shore flattened and curved like a large umbrella. I can
see the span of the bridge on the American side. One ship is sliding into the
lower level of fog, there is blue sky sandwiched between the two layers of fog.
And still the plume reaching up from the middle span of the bridge .
The water is so still that it in it I can see
the reflection of the ship approaching down river. Something like that I wish I
could paint. I wish I could paint “Oh Francis Hopkins” to be able to record the
river now with its ships as you did your canoes. I am some so dumb I can't even
figure out a slightly complex camera so I could at least photograph it. Maybe
I'll concentrate hard this winter and learn.
The ship is barely visible now
going into a transparent gray curtain, a chiffon covering, its nose pointed
towards the American locks. A small plane putters over the trees. It is 9am and
Catherine joins me. A crow protests close by and the gulls squawk.
Last night we didn't have any
heat. Mary went into town without showing me how to work the oil heater or the
fire fireplace flue, so I left my striped sweater under my mother’s flannelette
nighty, put panties on and warm socks, donned a quilt and rolled myself in a
blanket so the sheets wouldn't touch me anywhere, assumed a fetal position and
pulled the covers up almost over my head and went to sleep.
Marianne and Catherine burrowed into sleeping
bags in bed. No protest from Nora and Sheila and the other room, so they must have
had no cover trouble. I think they wore their clothes to bed. I didn't check
because I didn't want to be involved in the decision as to whether it was
permissible or not.
Here comes another ship from downriver slowly
and close to this edge of the channel. Keep on the right people! Keep on your
own side of the road. The air is damp and cool; the river is ruffled now with
small breeze blown ripples. Now it is the incoming flight slowly moving in from
Michigan over the river, over the trees, and the singing sounds of coming in
for a landing. The breeze is freshening into a wind. I better humor my
arthritis a bit and get dressed.
Yesterday evening Nora and I took the Indian trail to the store. There is a short walk first along the gravel road, then into a narrow path behind the shed were a family of skunks lived earlier this summer. The trail winds through the pine trees a short distance behind the cottages. Between them and the road the woods are thick enough that in places neither cottages nor woods can be seen. The pines are tall tall Pines, good masts for ships they would make.
The ferns are flat-topped and thin stemmed and the Pine needles are thick and cushioned the earth. The path is worn down to sandy earth, crisscrossed with roots of trees, humpy and hollowed with many footsteps. Was it originally the Indians trail that cut across from Point Aux Pins to the North Shore? What a shock the spelling of the point was when I first saw it, because the pronunciation is bastardized into twangy Point aux Parts. I look under the upturned roots of trees in their course sand beds, but I never have been able to find an arrowhead. I did find a stone skinner at Kurt’s cottage one year after a heavy rain.
Yesterday evening Nora and I took the Indian trail to the store. There is a short walk first along the gravel road, then into a narrow path behind the shed were a family of skunks lived earlier this summer. The trail winds through the pine trees a short distance behind the cottages. Between them and the road the woods are thick enough that in places neither cottages nor woods can be seen. The pines are tall tall Pines, good masts for ships they would make.
The ferns are flat-topped and thin stemmed and the Pine needles are thick and cushioned the earth. The path is worn down to sandy earth, crisscrossed with roots of trees, humpy and hollowed with many footsteps. Was it originally the Indians trail that cut across from Point Aux Pins to the North Shore? What a shock the spelling of the point was when I first saw it, because the pronunciation is bastardized into twangy Point aux Parts. I look under the upturned roots of trees in their course sand beds, but I never have been able to find an arrowhead. I did find a stone skinner at Kurt’s cottage one year after a heavy rain.
Catherine found a chipped implement of some
kind on the roadside and I picked up a hollowed out sandstone dish on the shore
beyond Gros Cap. I have a basket filled with “mother’s rocks”.
I carried them to Toronto one
year in the trunk of the car, in space required for other more important things.
I nearly pulled my arm off lugging a net shopping bag full of my rocks on the
subway down to the Royal Ontario Museum for assistance in identification.
The girl at the counter where I
inquired looks suspiciously at me as if I was the carrier of stolen loot. “Where
did you say you found them” she asked glancing sideways at me. “Different
places” I said. On the shores of Lake Superior! I had to suppress an impulse to
say or sing ““Gitche Gumee,"
On the shores of Lake Superior- By the shining big sea waters- there I bent
my stiff old spine down- picked one rock from many others- packed it in my
shopping bag -carted it to big Toronto to the great Royal Ontario Museum .
“Oh well everyone is on holidays” (it was late August) “Everyone?”
I can out-haughty you, I thought. I won she
said “well just a minute then” and she disappeared into an inside office. When
she reappeared she was unsmiling, obviously a “kooky kook” with a bag of stones
was not really welcome in the inner sanctum of the Royal Ontario Museum. “Do
you know where the Indian display is” she said down her nose. “Yes” I said and
I thought very well. “Many of them come from my part of the country. The second
painting on the left in the first room is Paula Kane’s painting of Sault Sainte
Marie. Another one is a canoe holding station not far from there. The beadwork
in the cases is pure Ojibway. The large glass case is a mock-up of prehistoric
life on the Manitoulin”.
Do I know the Indian display! It
is the reason I like to stay in part at the Park Plaza, so I can slip over
before Wilf wakens in the hotel room in the morning and say hello to the
exhibit. “Yes” I repeat “I know where it is”. “Well if you go through the far
room someone will talk to you”. Yes I thought whoever can't make a fast getaway.
Your PR people wouldn't like this. “Thank you” I say as I heave my string bag
up.
I sagged through the displays. An attractive but bored looking young woman met me at an open door, a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth. It wagged as she spoke. “You have artifacts?” “I'd like to know if I have artifacts!” I said shortly. I unpacked my treasures. She picked them up eased back from her smokescreen, turned them over and said, ‘Dr. ? is on holidays. This might be, and this, “I don't know about this?” “What do you want to do with them? “Just identify please” I said with more patience than I feel. “But don't bother, I'll come back another time”. “What do you want to do with them?” “Well I don't want to sell them if that's what you mean neither do I want to donate them to the Royal Ontario Museum. I will donate them to a museum in the Sault if they have any value when they are identified”.
I sagged through the displays. An attractive but bored looking young woman met me at an open door, a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth. It wagged as she spoke. “You have artifacts?” “I'd like to know if I have artifacts!” I said shortly. I unpacked my treasures. She picked them up eased back from her smokescreen, turned them over and said, ‘Dr. ? is on holidays. This might be, and this, “I don't know about this?” “What do you want to do with them? “Just identify please” I said with more patience than I feel. “But don't bother, I'll come back another time”. “What do you want to do with them?” “Well I don't want to sell them if that's what you mean neither do I want to donate them to the Royal Ontario Museum. I will donate them to a museum in the Sault if they have any value when they are identified”.
I packed up and glared at her!
“Thank you so much!” as she turned her back to me in the trailing’s of smoke. She
hadn't once removed the cigarette from her mouth. Hadn’t puffed either, just
seem to absorb it into her system. She then disappeared into her fossil chamber.
I have studied archaeological reports and put my own identification on my own
traveling exhibit. That was one Indian trail I traveled. Now back to last
evenings Indian trail.
Mary Anne in the water I must go and watch!
September
1, 1970
The
temperature last night was 42°. Today it is 65 at 9 AM. I drove out early to
let Mary go in to shop for school. Today is Marianne and Catherine's turn,
shoes and dresses etc. I have Sheila and Nora out here. The river is twinkling
in a very light breeze a thousand stars dancing on its surface. The sky is
clear blue, beautiful at 9 AM. The beaches are deserted; the swimming lessons
are over for the season. One ship moves by, the only activity exactly the same
as the summer. “Sheila of the little bottles” is spraying the dock with an old
detergent container. It could be Suzanne standing there where she did a few
years ago, only we were next-door them at “Attles Alley”.
1947: the
first cottage was at Patterson’s when Mary Jane was not quite one year old. We
didn't have a car but we did have two weeks holidays. Suzanne was due in
October. It was early July, and the weather was terrible. The heat was provided
by a fireplace, only. one 3 AM we were all there sitting huddled by the
fireplace. The last day with no means of getting groceries, and Wilf’s brother
who was to pick us up, late coming, we had a can of soup and a dozen of beer. We
existed on that for the day and Wilf scrubbed the cottage on beer energy
Wilf and
Marge Hussey came out we had spaghetti and meatballs, and after Wilf Hussey consumed
mountainous amounts, he made himself peanut butter sandwiches which prompted
Wilf punch to say “Huzz you must have a tapeworm!” to which he replied “then
it is a contented tapeworm”.
Every invitation to camp should be accepted as.
Come weather permitting and bring your own supplies. If overnight come with
sleeping bags. It is both presumptuous and unfair to swoop down on cottages, which
are inconveniently far from supermarkets, deplete their supply of food and
beverages, use the gas in their boats, and then swoop off to the comforts of
home. Mary and I out sat the uninvited one day a few years ago!
The young
couple in the cottage next door are coming to the end of their rope as well as
the end of their holidays. It was very still today, no speedboats roaring up
and down the river St. Mary's, the air and water was still and voices carried. Especially
voices rose in irritation, and they irritated each other and their children
irritated both of them. The little girl about 2 to 3 was paddled first for
taking the little boys (about 18-month-old) toy. The young father had walked
the beach early this morning with the little girl on his shoulders while mother
and son slept. The busy landlord was at his busiest, he loves his property and
I don't blame him I love it too and I own not a grain of sand or a blade of
grass. He was cutting the grass again and again; he cuts on all his days off
and twice on Sundays. I think it is his excuse for a tour of inspection, but he
is a good landlord. He moved all the beach chairs from one side of the path to
the other. Nora and I retreated to the dock and the beach respectively, and up
and down he went a cutting.
The manual lawnmower had a much pleasanter sound than the power beast. He asked if I had enough oil. I said I wouldn't know, Mary could tell him as I wasn't staying out overnight so he went away happy. This is what he wanted to know I am sure, and then he went over to sit with the young man next door.
The manual lawnmower had a much pleasanter sound than the power beast. He asked if I had enough oil. I said I wouldn't know, Mary could tell him as I wasn't staying out overnight so he went away happy. This is what he wanted to know I am sure, and then he went over to sit with the young man next door.
He is renting from him too, at least not
really from him. The young man's mother-in-law rents the cottage for her sons
and daughters and their husbands and families three weeks every year. This is
the last of the three; the others were up here together. The grandmother keeps
assorted grandchildren in town for two or three days at a time and everyone has
a chance to relax and visit. All three girls live in cities far away I think. The
discussion was about the owning of a boat. The landlords power launch is
anchored tantalizing just offshore and is not included in the renting of the
cottage. It is only used about three times a season for a dignified tour of the
bay with VIP visitors of his choosing. “Certainly not for the use of the
tenants”. “Me” said the young man. “No I don't, I am broke I can't afford
anything like that”. “I have a friend who owns one, but certainly not me!”
The river is oily smooth tonight. The day has
been in the high seventies. I hope the weather holds for tomorrow. We are
having a joint birthday for Mary Jane and farewell party for Paul. I wish I
could make it a steak do, but it will probably be pizza and hamburger. We’ll
see! He needs socks more than steak. It is a shower sort of affair, with small
gifts, hankies, toiletries, socks etc.
Mary Jane was 24 on August 30. She was in
Toronto after a holiday tour of the Maritimes, so we celebrate tomorrow. I must
go in now and bake cakes.
I am bitterly disappointed today! Jimmy’s
results from Algoma College and he failed his English literature- 46%. I am
surprised it is so high; as he refused any help I might give him, disagreed
with his professor, and read a minimum of course books. He deserved to fail!
On to town for ironing and cake!
Point Aux Pins 1970 Observations!
Catherine
and Betty Lou Lukenda have a fighting friendship most of the time!
Bill Kelly rounds the Point in his powerboat, just cruising until he sees the Daley’s small launch almost at water level, heads of teenagers packed close. His son Mike is sitting on the side, another boy the same size balancing on the other side. He makes a swift turn in his boat,” What the hell do you think you are doing? Trying to drown someone Mike? You know better! How many life preservers do you have five? Alright seven of you come in this boat! So seven including the embarrassed Mike, cross into the Kelly's launch.
Towards the end of the season the kids get
careless and Bill has seen too many accidents from the receiving entrance in
emergency at the hospital, to take any chances.
Bill’s mother is visiting from Ottawa; she
always wears pretty flowered dresses and petaled hats even for an afternoon at
camp. Bill always don's shirt and tie, and sports coat to drive her into town. Nice
to see the “cantankerous surgeon” become the small boy on the escort, on best
behaviors for his smiling mother.
September
3, 1970
Thursday:
I'm the sensible down to earth type. years ago when the children were very very
small I started conditioning myself for the time when they would spread their
wings and start out on their own into the wide wide world. You do not possess
them, I kept reminding myself, and they are not yours, they are only on loan
for a very short time. Ease off gradually, when you are ready to let go, no
problem, you just face up to it gradually then it is easy and natural. Balderdash,
it may be natural but it is never easy. If you have rehearsed the scene many
times it is easier I suppose, but never easy.
This morning, it was goodbye and Godspeed you
to Jimmy. I told myself all the right things about his going. He has a good
beginning job as a teacher only a couple of hundred miles away. He is happy in
his chosen profession. He has a good place with meals to stay. He has a very
nice girlfriend whose family lives close by so he will be in a warm family
circle. He is a happy outgoing guy who will always get along well with people. What
more can I ask for, nothing really, because you're only successful as a parent
when the children readily accept responsibility for themselves and become
independent, so says Dr. Spock. Well so I am a success. Not so much of a
success as the husband and father who is sleeping soundly upstairs. So what is
success, a rational adjustment to gradual loneliness that hurts in the stomach,
in the back of the throat, and dribbles out at the sides? We said goodbye and
then he had to make final look around to see if he had forgotten anything, then
look in the closet, to see if there was anything of value he could let lift,
then to the fridge for a final drink of apple juice. It suddenly dawned on me
that the independent noisy outgoing 20-year-old was reluctant to take the final
step. Like myself prepared, but reluctant. So I spoke my lines. “If you don't
leave Jim I will be bawling” and he picked up his cue, and flung his arms
around me in a great bear hug. “So long Mom” and down the steps and away,
tooting a little noisy tune on the horn, and I am bawling at another chapter ending.
That’s
three down and one to go and it doesn't get easier. I'll have to be more than
careful with Michael, not to expect him to substitute for all three, and at 17
he is going to have his guard up. Well I'll just start rehearsals again for him.
Mary Jane left home at 16, eight years ago. She
was unhappy, restless, and bursting to go. She was too young but it was the
only way to keep some lines open with her. She was rebelling against everything;
school, home, authority of any kind. We would either let her go with our
blessing or lose her forever and at the same time damage the whole family.
She had rejected
her final months in high school, by simply at Christmas time stopping all
attempts. To appease us somewhat she stayed in school and did try to get two
subjects. Her teachers also arranged that she make a beginning in typing and
business English. She was the catalyst in her crowd, the stirrer upper, the
planner, the arranger, the dareing one. We fought to hold the reins loosely, but
we enrolled her in a business College in Toronto and got her into a residence
for students for young business girls. It was all we could do, and she did not
like the few restrictions placed on her there, but we had negotiated and
bargained and had come to terms. It cost us far more for her than for any other
person who had a full year at University with many extras, but looking back it
was worth the struggle. Perhaps we did some things wrong, but we did what we
thought best at the time. Hindsight is a luxury! It worked out after a
labyrinth of turnings, very well for her and for us and for the family. She met
John in Toronto in a coffeehouse in Yorkville, when Yorkville was at its height,
while it was making headlines but before it deteriorated.
She got her
diploma at Business College, but just. She did not do well. Her residence was
sold and she convinced us that in order to get a good place to stay, she would
have to leave before it closed. We fell for that and she and her roommate at
the hall got a small flat. She was free, free at last out, but not ready. I got
a phone call from a “relative” that I had better get down to Toronto to
straighten out a bad situation. Mary Jane and her friend were being evicted. The
call came Thursday evening; I was on a flight early morning the next day
without telling Mary Jane I was coming. By the time I walked up the front steps
of her house, I had had her beaten, raped, drunk and disorderly, on drugs, and
practicing the oldest profession! The “relative”
who reported the situation was fighting with the landlady in the front hall. The
“relative” was stunned to see me, so was the landlady, so was Mary Jane!
The complaints were, noisier than the
landlady would have, very bad housekeeping, late homecomings, empty beer
bottles in the garbage. Mary Jane glibly explained everything, and I was on the
surface on her side, but the landlady had legitimate complaints. I went to
Rosary Hall her former residence and pleaded her case, my case really. The same
complaints were of their noisy room and untidiness. The mother superior had
seen infractions of all the rules. Mary Jane penitent was called into the “parlor”.
She had been cooling her heels in the
hall. She was penitent for only one reason, and she is very convincing actress.
She had a choice. She either returned to Rosary Hall or she can come home with
me, and the Hall in her eyes was the lesser of two evils.
It was late Saturday when the final
arrangements were made. I was able to get a moving van. Her partner in the
apartment was going to space provided by a distant relative, and we had a
hectic ride across Toronto. I am the middle in the front seat of the truck between
two drivers who had differing views of driving. Mary Jane and friend were in
the back of the van with their trunks and other gear. She finished her course. She got a job immediately, left Rosary Hall
and we helped her set up with a friend in a nice apartment in a good building. She
and her friend did not get along well together; they could not maintain the
good apartment. She left the apartment for an “apartment” (it didn’t deserve
the name) in an old house on the outskirts of Yorkville.
I went to Ottawa for a conference and stayed
over a day in Toronto. The place where she lived was terrible, in a broken down
old house with lumpy ugly furniture, but it was complete independence. Not
quite complete because we made the greatest mistake of subsidizing her from
time to time.
She moved and I visited her again. This was
even worse! A basement room, kitchen and living room combined and a curtained
off corner with a bed in it. So this was independence? She had cold after cold
and then bronchitis. She was desperately thin! She worked as a secretary by day
and for kicks by night waited on tables in a coffeehouse. Her boyfriend was
thin to the point of emaciation. He played in a Yorkville band. His parents
were separated, his mother was a prostitute, so he told Mary Jane, and his rich
grandmother periodically pulled his butt out of the fire. She got pneumonia! Her
father and I went down! Her father took one look at the apartment and we went
house hunting. We put up a $200 security for an apartment in a high rise. It
would be ready for occupancy shortly. We bought her some furniture and her
aunts gave her some also along with dishes. We told her that this was our last
effort, she was now completely on her own and we meant it. Fortunately she met
John and we met him and liked him immediately. He also played in a band, he was
desperately thin, long red hair a beard the whole bit, but clean and friendly
and open. We chose a place to take them out to dinner and he apologized and
asked us to consider another place. He might cause us embarrassment because of
his beard and hair. This was only five years ago. They were married at home
here in 1967, lived in Toronto for a while and now live in the Sault.
Suzanne
came next she chose nursing, was accepted at St. Michael's in Toronto and also
at the General here. She decided after an interview in Toronto to train at home.
I was overjoyed and she graduated and except for a few months in Toronto when
she almost gave up nursing forever, she has been at home. She graduated in 1969
and was married in 1970. She lives in the Sault so I really should count my
blessings shouldn't I.
Two girls married to nice young men living here in the
city. One 20-year-old now on the way to a small town not too far away! A
17-year-old sleeping upstairs about to go to grade 12! How silly to cry! I am
really very fortunate, and after all I am sensible and calm about things and
well-adjusted to change. Then why does my stomach hurt and my throat ache and
my eyes drip?
I'll get mothers breakfast, my own, and call Wilf.
I will go out to camp for a while and think about the answer tomorrow or the
next day or the day after that.
It is
so darn spooky still here tonight, black, dark, with only the lights on passing
ships, but once in a while the presence of the river. There is no moon no stars.The Belecs and Disano’s have gone and the Wizeinski’s and Zeppa's, so we are very much alone in the colony. So still I can hear Mary Anne breathing in the next room. Every once in a while Casey rumbles low in his throat. Pat has his radio turned on so low that I can't hear voice or music. All I can hear is the spaced bleep, bleep, of the radar so I know it has its ears flapping in time to the bleep. Possibly the stillness gets in my bones! I feel part of the dark.
September
5 1970 Point Aux Pins
Sunday:
tomorrow is Labor Day the last day here. Labor Day truly and Mary and I clean
the cottage this afternoon. We are sitting on the front lawn. There is a
stiff breeze and choppy water but the sun is strong.
Catherine
just brought a small brown bird to us, dead. Looks as if the neck is broken, a yellow
line at the end of the tail, a soft soft brown black on its head. Sheila took
it and threw it into the woods at the other side of the road. “I said a prayer”
she said solemnly when she returned.
Yesterday a beaver lay by the side of the road
at the Allagash. Killed by the propeller on an outboard motor! I don't know the
details. Catherine was amazed by the size of its webbed feet; Sheila couldn't
believe the tail could be so flat. Yesterday the Farrell’s were out, Dave Jean
and five-year-old Steven, four-month-old Terry. It was a lovely pink gray blue
sky in the evening. Quiet along the shore, more peoples cottages empty. Nora
and Steve and I walked along the beach wading part way. I'm trying to soak up
the peace and inside quiet to store it against the fray ahead. It is sailboat
weather a stiff breeze. One just went down river blue-and-white striped sails
up. Another is just doubling the point (I think that's what Bigsby called it) a
red topsail, and red and white hull to match.
Last night after dark when Wilf Pat and I
walked out to the car, I was overwhelmed by the stars. The Big Dipper was easy
to find slanted over the trees. It was so clear and so many millions upon
millions of stars certainly makes for a feeling of awe and insignificance.
I hate to leave this place. Somehow I must get
myself a small piece of this sandy Point Aux Par. Mary and I are “boat watching”
each with a pair of binoculars, watching the big freighters and the sailboats
and speedboats, and today there have even been a rowboat or two.
I guess the wind and waves present a challenge.
The US Coast Guard has gone past true to its name “cutter” the prow is so sharp
it slices through the water.
Sheila and
Nora convinced me to go in swimming with them. We took the mattress out and
rode the whitecaps. The water was surprisingly warm relatively speaking of
course. It did not have yesterday’s chill. The wind is from the southeast the
waves are swaying along the shore, yet it seems so shallow today, strange,
perhaps the underwater is being pulled out. Mary joined us and we dove and swam
and Sheila stood on her hands and did backward somersaults.
Now the boys next-door have gone in the water,
I suppose they feel if the gray-haired lady next door can stand it they can too.
Mary has gone in to put the vegetables on. I cooked roast beef and made gravy,
did new potatoes this morning in town, so we can have dinner with the fresh
rolls and fruit and cheese for dessert with red wine. Dave Farrell was quite
astounded yesterday when we served wine with the barbecued hamburgers. “Why not?”
Wilf and Jim say that they do not want to have anything between two slices of
bread until at least next summer.
September
7 1970 Point Aux Pins
Monday: Summer
is over today. It was cleaning day! We went out, just the two of us, the
cleaning ladies, Mary and me. Wilf was working but Jim offered to come to help!
Horrors it would've been! “Why bother cleaning, no one is moving in. It will only be closed for the winter”. But it
is a matter of principle to leave a rented cottage in better condition than when
we get them, in particularly so with this one because the landlady is an
arthritic at present under treatment in a Toronto hospital.
We went out
at 8 AM. It was a gray drizzling rainy day. The river was in a frenzy whipped
by the wind, frothing and riding this way and that. Joel’s boat was stranded
several feet from the shoreline up the beach! There must've been a very high
wind last night.
We started each one of us to our own
particular work. We have cleaned so many that we don't have to discuss the
routine. Today I did the kitchen and bathroom, packing leftover groceries as I
went along, doing shelves, scouring under the sink, shining the fridge and
stove, doing the windows front and back. It sparkled as we left the floors glowing
with wax. There was no speck of sand left on the rug. On the front lawn were
towels, tables, snorkels and lawn chairs ready for their winter hibernation. The
little gray weather-beaten cottage we decided was one of the easier ones to
clean. Kurt’s was the hardest because of the expanse of tile floors. Every inch
had to be scrubbed.
At Pozzebons where there was a railed
breakwater with Gladiolas planted along it, we had to do a bit of furtive transplanting
from a relatively unused spot near the boathouse, to the favorite leaning place
of the young fry. I hope that Mrs. Pozzebon didn't have her plants counted or
wonder why the yellow bulbs had come up red.
We packed the station wagon to its roof,
bedding and water-skis paddles and lifejackets. Last night we had the two cars
filled! How do you collect so much?
Mary Jim Pat and Casey with the loaded station
wagon, Casey dug in under the front seat. Wilf Marianne and I in the front seat
of our car, and Sheila and Catherine and Nora in the back, with the predatory Molly
a curled up in a ball of gray fluff on Nora's knee. Molly is one of those rare
cats who accept things as they come rolls with the McIntyre’s so to speak. When
we pull up at Ford Street and open the car door, she jumps out, arches her back,
stretches and walks unhurriedly towards the back of their lot where the woods
begin to check her field mice preserve.
I suppose tonight summer really ends in the
laundromat. Sheets and blankets washed before storing again for another summer,
beach towels bleached of their sandy tone, and baiting suits wash too.
There are still a few tourists the laundromat,
but older ones not the ones with children chewing gum and drinking pop and
racing through the walkway into the shopping plaza.
I wonder what another year will bring. My project is a rowboat.
