Swing Low (6 page)

In the photograph we appear, almost, to have been taken by surprise, and years later she and I would try to remember who the photographer was and whether he or she had caught us off guard, or whether surprise was simply a permanent expression on our faces in those early years when so much was new.

One May evening a student of mine got caught in the rain on his way home from a softball game. He knocked on our door, drenched and dripping, wondering if he might come in out of the rain. Of course we invited him inside, even though we were both in our housecoats and ready for bed, and Elvira offered to dry his clothes in her new dryer. What would he wear in the meantime? he asked. Elvira rushed off to our bedroom and brought out one of my suits.

This student of mine was big for his eleven years, tall and stocky, and my suit fit him to a T! Oh, how Elvira laughed and laughed as I stood next to this boy trying to explain concepts of long division. Eventually she left the room but the boy and I could hear her muffled laughter from the kitchen and we exchanged nervous looks. Later, after the boy had gone home in his own clothes, I asked Elvira why she
had laughed so hard, and she told me, through fresh laughter, that the boy, in my suit, looked as old as I, and that I, in my housecoat, looked like an eleven-year-old boy.

For some reason I took exception to this (oh, for that to be my biggest beef now) and remained silent for a time until at last, around midnight, I said to her, Well, you’re young looking yourself, you know. And wouldn’t you know, this set her off again. I was concerned that the neighbours would be awoken by Elvira’s laughter. I leapt from the bed and closed the window and begged her to stop laughing. She wouldn’t though and insisted that I begin laughing, until eventually I did emit a chuckle or two and the two of us went to bed happy. We were young, twenty-one years old, learning how to live with one another, and filled with wonder.

Filleted with wonder. Wonder-filled. I’d like to apologize to someone for killing my wife. (Wife would be first choice, but of course wouldn’t mean much.) Will wait for opportunity. In the meantime …

Complete the following story:

One of my favourite assignments from the section “The Pioneering Experience in Western Canada After 1867 (Rural and Urban).” When I came up with it, I was only nineteen, fresh out of normal school and barely an adult myself. I changed the name from Elvira to Sarah and presto, an assignment my students can enjoy writing and I can enjoy reading. Of course, in grade six the girls were usually imagining that Sarah was their best friend and the boys that she was their older sister and that it wasn’t fair that Sarah could go to the social and they couldn’t. My students have provided me with more than a thousand versions of endings to this opening paragraph, the oddest having to do with a young woman named Sarah who poses by day as a Mennonite pioneer and by night as a wildly popular dancer and who makes a ten-mile trek to see her seem like two. Well, anyway … (Loud crash in corridor: nurse curses in Low German,
Deusant!
meaning “thousand,” as in a thousand curses. Shocking.)

Of course not everything about teaching school was idyllic. I had the odd parent who would call me up in a rage if their child had failed a test or received a low mark, or if the child had been bullied and I had failed to notice. I’ve had a parent threaten to tar and feather me if I didn’t pass his daughter into the next grade, back in the days when students could be kept back. My living-room window has been shot at with a pellet gun. I had one mother who was furious about another student accidentally spilling ink on her son’s pants. She screamed into the telephone, in Low German, asking me why I didn’t teach my students to be more careful, what was I going to do about her son’s pants, and how
would I make sure it never happened again. I assured her that I would remind my students to be more careful in the future, but she continued to holler. I told her I’d have my wife launder his pants (this was the fifties and I hadn’t used a washing machine ever. Still haven’t, mind you) but that wasn’t good enough either. I told her I’d reimburse her for her son’s pants, but nothing I said could appease her and she continued to scream at me over the phone. Finally I lost my cool. Elvira remembers this occasion as one of the few times I’ve defended myself, the other being with her brother Edward, who needed me to remind him that teachers work hard too, even if the pay isn’t spectacular. Anyway, I’d had enough with this irate mother and I interrupted her rant in a loud voice and said, in Low German: I don’t tell you how much salt to put on your potatoes and you don’t tell me how to teach school! And then I hung up!

I can’t remember a time before or since that I’ve hung up on a person, although I’ve dearly wanted to. That was the end of the ink incident, thankfully. I do regret not having given her the money for a new pair of pants for her son, because I can see now that her rage was born from desperate poverty, and that for her, a recent Paraguayan Mennonite immigrant, the purchase of a new pair of pants would have been an enormous expense, and that if the pants, very likely the boy’s only pair, hadn’t been replaced, he would have worn them and felt humiliated by the stains. I can’t remember if he got a new pair or not, but I hope so, and I wish I had paid for them.

D
eclarations of love and regret: I have read this in a newspaper article re the unfortunate men and women on death row in the United States. The article quoted a prison warden who, with this sentence (fragment), described the typical last words of those condemned to die. The prison chaplain is also quoted. He says that most men and women on death row find God in their final months, as did the men in the fox trenches of wartime.

Why do we wait, I wonder, until we’re caught? Do we mean it finally, that we believe? Or are we scared? If we believed, would we be scared? Is this what is meant by the fear of God? Are we saying please help me now and comfort me? I haven’t needed you till now but
deusant!
I’ve seen the error of my ways and perhaps I needed you all along but pretended not to and now I want to make up for it. It happens, doesn’t it, that we find ourselves praying in tense situations.

And do we do the same with loved ones? With parents and children and brothers and sisters? Towards the end when things become clear … we do, don’t we? Declarations of love and regret. We’re no different, in the end, than the prisoners on death row, except that we feel we have lots of time for declarations later. I mean, I’m not alone, am I?

C.S. Lewis, one of my favourite writers, said that we read to know we’re not alone. I’m … There’s a person here. Person has left. Knows me, but I haven’t a clue who he is. Have lost train of thought. Wonder how I greeted him. Can only imagine. Forgot to count the beats.

I have always wanted to write a book about the life of my friend Henry. He has had a fascinating life, as a young boy fleeing with the other Mennonites from the Russian soldiers, witnessing the death of his grandmother along the way, at the age of ten, making his way to Germany and finally to Canada. Today he is a jovial man who hates to lose at cards. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? One day, several years ago, he and I and our wives drove to the town of Souris. I asked him if he’d be brave enough to ride a bike across the Souris swinging bridge, the longest of its kind in North America. Of course, he said, but I don’t have a bike. I asked one of the local boys who was hanging around the bridge if Henry could borrow his bike and ride it across the bridge, which is only about two feet wide, quite bouncy, and fenced in with some flimsy rope. Sure, said the boy, and off went Henry! At the age of sixty-two! I enjoyed that man’s company. Am beginning to suspect he was here moments ago. That he was the visitor. Would explain why he came to mind. Hope he returns.

All my life I have read biographies of famous men and women, mostly politicians and journalists, and these life stories help to give my own a little context, and also inspiration. They give me tips on living, goals to strive for, pitfalls to avoid, they teach me about life. I look up to these individuals. I suppose that sounds boyish but it’s the truth.

We read to know we’re not alone. C.S. Lewis was a brilliant man in my opinion. He believed in God, he was a good writer, and a kind person by all accounts. One question I would have liked to ask him, however, is this: how does a man feel less alone when he can no longer read?

Some faith in words, but not all. Where to turn when words stop making sense? The book on Henry won’t get written, after all, at least not by me. So what’s left? Declarations of love and regret? Arsenals of medication? Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners?

Lined paper, unlined paper, stiff recipe cards, notebooks, notepads, Post-its, paper, paper, paper. All blank. These were the gifts I gave my daughters and not much else, I’m afraid. I have neglected them horribly and it’s much too late now to make amends. They tell me in big block letters that I have not neglected them, that I have provided them with everything they could ever want in life, with holidays and riding lessons and music lessons and summer camp and new bicycles and a cottage at the lake and university and … They tell me I was a good father, but they of course are lying to me, trying to make me feel better. Oh no, I say, that’s not
enough. Then they tell me I was no different from any father of my generation in this town. Fathers worked, they say, period, that’s how it was. They cite examples. Write it down, please, I ask them, and they do. (Needn’t be in big block letters, I don’t say.)

I have pages and pages of YOU’RE A GOOD FATHER, A GOOD MAN, AND WE ARE PROUD OF YOU. THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. WE LOVE YOU AND WE KNOW YOU LOVE US. Please write it down one more time, I ask them, and they do. I have vowed to be honest with daughters the next time I see them and break it to them that I’m able to decipher cursive.

You should have seen my face light up when my daughter brought these notepads in to the hospital, along with a package of Bic ballpoint pens. I tried to write down what I thought were the pertinent points. I often asked her to repeat them. First and foremost on my mind was when I was going to be reunited with Elvira. Soon, she said, very soon. And twenty seconds later I’d ask again. I wrote it all down as best I could. I reminded myself of phone calls I needed to make, questions I needed to ask, but towards the end I was going in circles. Towards the end I was going in circles. Towards the end I asked her to write it down for me.

When I was a boy I fell out of a crabapple tree and broke my arm. My mother had three words for me: Can you write? For some odd reason, I cherish that moment. I have never felt closer to her, before or since, except for maybe when she added “ice cubes” to what not to give the baby. Baby, now grown, due to arrive for visit soon. Will try to tell him what he wants to hear. He talks about Mother. He compares
my reluctance to discuss my problems to Mother’s own inability to admit to her drinking problem. This comparison horrifies me. Mentally, I make a note of the differences between Mother and me. Oddly, I focus on this detail: that Mother once sold Elvira an old copy of her
Reader’s Digest
magazine for twenty-five cents after Elvira had expressed some interest in one of its articles. I recall how intensely ashamed I was of Mother’s pettiness. I tell myself that I am generous with money. There are, of course, more relevant differences, but I cannot seem to move away, in my mind, from this
Reader’s Digest
incident.

My mother was an interesting woman. She attended church regularly, same pew, different hats, was always well dressed, disapproved of drinking, was an avowed teetotaller, wrote a gossip column called “Pot Pourri” for the town paper for more than forty years, and, from time to time, stole bottles of vanilla from Economy Foods and drank herself into a stupor. At various intervals the manager of Economy Foods would tally up the cost of all the bottles she had shoplifted and I would write him a cheque. This is a typical small-town agreement having to do with the preservation of dignity. Or it is a means of not rocking the boat, a lie. An arrangement available to those with money and status, and not to the general alcoholic public.