When I Was Young and In My Prime

When I Was Young &

In My Prime

Alayna Munce

NIGHTWOOD EDITIONS

GIBSONS, BC

2005

Copyright © 2005 by Alayna Munce.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5,
www.accesscopyright.ca
, 1-800-893-5777,
[email protected]
.

The characters in this book are the product of fancy; any resemblance, in whole or in part, to any person, living or dead, is unintentional.

Nightwood Editions

Box 1779

Gibsons, BC, Canada V0N 1V0

www.nightwoodeditions.com

Edited for the house by Kathy Sinclair

Cover design by Anna Comfort

Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts and the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council, for its publishing activities.

           
         

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Munce, Alayna, 1973-
When I was young and in my prime / Alayna Munce.

ISBN
978-0-88971-209-6
(paper)

ISBN
978-0-88971-284-3
(ebook)

version 1.0

I. Title.

PS8626.U53W48 2005
           
C813'.6
           
C2005-903448-3

Note from the Publisher

In this digital edition, Nightwood Editions has endeavored to remain as true as possible to the original formatting of the print version of
When I Was Young and In My Prime
. However, due to the variety of e-reading devices that may be used and the innumerable programs and formatting choices offered by e-reading devices, the formatting of this e-book version may be affected or altered in ways that are beyond Nightwood Editions' control. By transforming Alayna Munce's work into digital form, we hope to capture the fundamental spirit of this book, rather than create an exact replica of the print edition.
 

...which is to say

a truth in nostalgia:

if we steel ourselves against regret

we will not grow more graceful,

but less.

— Jan Zwicky

orbiting

I lie in the dark listening to the creak of the clothesline outside, shirts catching punches of wind. A siren whines listlessly for an emergency somewhere. Pigeons flap against the eaves and settle again. James sleeps beside me, his breath letting itself in and out of his body as if it's always lived there and always will.

I lie there with a fat lip of a heart, watch his eyelids twitch in the moonlight.

Eventually I pull my knees up and slip out from under the quilt, its dark wool squares cut from old men's suits. My side of the bed is against the wall, so I have to climb—gingerly— over him.

Some nights I stay in the kitchen, put the kettle on for tea, turn on the radio and trawl through bands of static for a voice to keep me company. Other nights I go to my desk and sit by the window, waiting for the sun to rise and relieve the streetlights, writing a little.

In the middle of the city, this delicate effort: to reel a clear voice in from the cluttered night air.

HEYANDwho'llgimme50forthewashboardhere

who'llgimme50andgo50andgo

longest day of the year today

the old bird feeder on the dresser beside Mary's reading glasses

it's all downhill from here,
Peter said

the creak of line through pulley

aerial,
they call it

furrow by furrow 'til you can see the whole of the crop

Watch that step folks, the last one's a lu-lu

The end begins with a whole fall and winter of Mom going to the house every weekend—every weekend, a new project. Occasionally she bargains with my stepfather until he agrees to go with her. Sometimes I tag along.

One week she untangles all the jewellery, making piles on the bedspread: to be cleaned, appraised, kept, given away. Piles according to size, worth, style. Costume jewellery here, heirlooms there. She throws out some unmatched earrings, puts others aside to be re-set. She finds hinged boxes for the rings. The details crowd until I feel as if I'm surrounded by setting cement and have to excuse myself to take a nap on the couch.

The next week Mom goes through the closet washing all the clothes, making Grandma try them on. The skirts and slacks and cardigans that no longer fit, she packs into green garbage bags, replacing them gradually over the course of the winter with brightly coloured oversized track suits on sale at Eaton's, the Bay or Sears. I can't help thinking I'd rather be a childless baglady than someday find myself wearing a fuchsia track suit.

This week we're going through boxes of old papers: letters, exams, bills, clippings, lists. Grandma is smiling, amiable, reading old Christmas cards from her students. She spots me in the door frame and, beaming, says,“Here, you can take these home with you if you like.”

Mom reaches for them with an overly bright,“Thank you!” and puts them in the box of things to be thrown away.

A few minutes later Grandma is crying, demanding she be allowed to keep the name tag from the UCW conference. HELLO my name is:
Mary Friesen
. And though Mom must know it would be so much better, so much easier to just let her have the thing, something in her won't give.

The house is a brick bungalow, trim and squarish, squatting on Silver Street in a subdivision on the outskirts of town. They bought it when they sold the farm, chose it for the double lot (which meant lovely big garden) and in spite of the swimming pool (which meant nothing but nuisance). No one has yet mentioned selling, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that the current arrangement isn't sustainable. So, though we don't talk about it, we are, like good Protestants, preparing for it.

I volunteer to sort the books.
The Scrabble Dictionary,
three bibles, an etiquette guide,
Grimm's Fairytales.
In among all the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
volumes and
Reader's Digest
condensed classics, I find two small five-year diaries of Grandma's from the '60s and '70s. The usual kind: leather bound with a flimsy gold lock, four lines for each day, five years worth of January first on the first page, five years worth of January second on the next.

Kneeling on the musty grey rug by a shelf in the far corner of the basement, I hesitate, taking a moment to sound the absence of a sound mind from which to ask permission. It's for form's sake, I suppose, more than anything else; as if a hesitation before an act of invasion somehow softens or buffets it.

Last Christmas, while rooting through some photo albums, I found a notebook of Grandpa's, a kind of journal or ledger from his farmhand days out west. It was clear to me in that case: permission should be granted before it was read. When I asked, he consented with a shrug so nonchalant that I wondered at first if he'd really understood what I was asking. Or maybe it was a shrug of resignation—one more invasion, one more indignity in the gathering mob of indignities that seemed to comprise old age. In the end, though, I settled on the assumption that the notebook simply represented a self so far gone he no longer cared about that character's privacy.

In the basement, with Grandma's diaries in hand, I hesitate politely, then pick one of the locks with a bobby pin.

It's filled: all four lines for all five years on almost every page. I start reading somewhere in October:

Peter got new tires for the car today. Irene brought me a blue clothes hanger, covered. Tonight I attended “Our Wedding Gowns Past and Present” at the Paris Presbyterian Church, with Marjorie McPherson and Hazel Pelton.