The Ongoing Tale...

Back in the early 1960s, when my parents, grandmother and I would visit my grandfather’s grave every Sunday after Mass, I would be enthralled by the litany of surnames on the various headstones cloistered about Dada’s plot. Mount Hope Cemetery was, as was then the custom, divided into the Roman Catholic section and, then, everyone else. In recent years, I’ve noticed some other religious iconography amidst the ‘others’, but the RCs still have that bit to ourselves.

As a very – cripplingly – shy child, then of about eight, I never said much, especially not in school, but I soaked up everything into my ironclad sponge of a brain. I knew the names of nearly every child in the school, from Grade One through Eight, first and last. And, wandering about the cemetery a wee bit each week, before I was commanded to return in situ at Dada’s grave, I’d see surnames of the various children I knew if only to see, etched into the granite or marble. It was a very German community, the Kitchener-Waterloo of my youth – though I came with my family from Ireland – and the headstones read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Deutschland emigration. And nearly all the names corresponded with my lexicon of surname storage.

Occasionally, there would be a person or groups of people gathered at one of the other graves and I’d eagerly check to see if a child I knew from school might be among them. I can’t remember there ever being any, at least not one that registered in my vast busybody of a juvenile brain. And, so, I’d wait out the half-hour or so of prayers and general fussing and bustling about the grave and its flowers, banishing bits of paper or errant leaves that may have dared intrude upon it and, that done, pack it in for the week, a lone child amidst the mourning mature.

Dada died in 1963, when I was nine. I don’t know how many weeks it would have been – say about 40 – before I finally saw other children in the cemetery, not too far from where we stood at my grandfather’s plot. There were a lot of children at that particular grave site. The deathly shy person in me was terrified they’d see me, but the ever-observant and always-interested person in me took in the scene as best I could whilst feigning indifference.

I can’t recall the season, though I don’t detect winter wear in the scene that yet plays in my head. In fact, I can accurately deduce it was not winter in that the children’s heads could not have been muffled in any sort of fuzzy hats designed to keep the chill from heads and ears. This I know because I took special notice that they were dark-haired children, all of them. I’m sure I was vaguely aware of adults being with them as it’s unlikely that a roving band of youngsters would assemble graveside on a late Sunday morning, unaccompanied by grown-ups. I don’t think any of them looked my way, and I imagine I appreciated that. But I certainly took them all in, out of place as they seemed in that lonely world that had come to define my Sundays.

What most fascinated me about this surprising and sudden presence of other children in my cemetery was their dark, perhaps black, hair, and that there were so many of them. Children, not hairs. I desperately wanted black hair, for reasons inconsequential to this reflection. You may recall from details in in Part One of this tale, the Twin Cities - Kitchener and Waterloo - where we lived, was largely German in its origins. It was rare and, to me, exciting to behold such a seemingly exotic family within the confines of our boring little town.

At some point, totally unrelated I then thought, I remember my father talking about a place called “Graham’s Grill”, and overheard some talk about one of the owners. Adult talk. Nothing of interest to me. I knew it was a restaurant in downtown Waterloo. Calling what we had in central Waterloo ‘downtown’ is a tad laughable as it was barely more than a trumped-up village, but it had a main street, King Street, and it was on that street that Graham’s Grill was located. Somehow, that knowledge seeped into my immature brain where it’s been stored away for nearly six decades and remembered as if I heard it earlier today.

Life for a child being what it is, essentially a shemozzle or whirlwind of school, parents, homework, some play, dogs, maybe piano lessons, not yet assigned a particular order in a still malleable brain, I can’t pinpoint the exact time relative to other things, but I remember driving home from somewhere or other down Erb St., in the early evening, just as street lights were coming on; and passing by what I at first thought was a very large house.

In fact, I had noticed it before on previous drives through the area, and had given it no thought other than its ‘housiness’ but, this time, there were lights on inside what looked like a diner - a small restaurant – shining through windows that ran the length of the building’s ground level floor. And, despite what now so obviously looked like a commercial eatery at street level, the upper storey still resembled a house.

I glimpsed, but didn’t take note of, what would turn out to be a business sign. My attention was drawn from the sign and into the inviting and well-lit interior where, among heads of patrons chatting and, obviously, enjoying meals at a number of tables, I saw one of the dark-haired children from the cemetery. It was a quick drive-by, but I saw and absorbed enough to imagine she – and it was a girl – was about my age. Never one to comment aloud much about my thoughts or the things I took in to myself from my surroundings, I remember nursing this exciting bit of sleuthing the rest of the way home, wondering if I’d ever see this girl and her family again at the cemetery. Perhaps I was conjuring a friendship between us. It looked like her house would be a lot of fun, having a restaurant as part of it.

I can’t say for certain if those were my thoughts but, as I remember myself and the workings of my mind and fantasies in those days, I expect that’s exactly what the miniature story tellers who scribed my imaginary life were busy doing until I fell asleep that night.

In those days, Waterloo was a very small city. I remember when the population sign was changed to 20,001. I thought that was absolutely brilliant and wanted to congratulate whomever in the City Council had the sense of humor to go with that. It was very funny and, for a small city, as fusty as Waterloo, totally unexpected. I imagine I would have still been in elementary school, St. Agnes, when that happened.

Indeed, Waterloo was such a tiny place that it had only four separate schools (Roman Catholic for those not inculcated in how it works, at least in Ontario society). When we students reached Grade Seven at St. Agnes, a school lacking in such fancy things as Shop (Industrial Arts) classrooms or Home Economics kitchens, we were foisted upon the bigger school (with a Church attached), St. Louis, to learn those particular skills. Every Thursday, we girls in Grade Seven made our way the ½ hour walk to St. Louis and Mrs. Drohan, the Home Ec teacher in the kitchen-cum-sewing emporium, whilst the lads went there to learn the Art of Industry, or Shop which, I believe, consisted of cutting and nailing wood into various shapes and utilitarian forms.

Mrs. Drohan and I had a rather miserable relationship. I was bloody useless at all things home economic. The idea of a double-boiler was far beyond my scope of caring and, likely, patience (perhaps ability) and sewing or knitting…unthinkable. Perhaps the latter may be somewhat ameliorated in the telling of how awful I was in that I am left-handed. I just missed the last generation of those schoolchildren who were forced to print and write and use their right hands for everything. I’m ambidextrous, I know now that I’ve had time to play baseball and bowl and play tennis and such. Anything requiring power and force – overhand velocity – I can do only with my right hand and side. Underhand throws in softball, or bowling or, indeed, printing and such will forever be done with my left – ‘sinistra’ in Latin – hand.

I introduce the topic of Home Economics and Mrs. Drohan as a sort of an aside to the topic of St. Louis school and church as that is where this story is headed, eventually.

Even before Grade Seven, and our communal treks to St. Louis from St. Agnes for the specialty classes, our schools had communed. For First Communion, five years earlier. If you’re Roman Catholic, you will know that, when you are approximately seven years of age and in second grade (as they say in ‘the States’) or Grade Two as they call it in Canada, you will make your First Communion. This is, for the record, also when you make your First Confession, listing and repenting for – in exact numbers – every sin you’ve committed in your very young life; are then forgiven and, thus absolved, can go about your life fully comfortable that you are now without sin. At least until the next time. But, then, you would go back to Confession, be forgiven again, and so on and so forth. Catechumens and Ecumenical scholars will find fault with this simplistic description but it is, quite honestly, what most of us believed at the time.

Once reprieved from all your sins the previous seven years (I recall I hit upon the number 62 for the times I’d been disobedient to my parents; I was somewhere in the 30s for lies told), life goes on for you pretty much as before. Honestly, I hadn’t a clue and it was this, this planning how many times I did something, and coming up with what things I’d done, in preparation for stepping into that dark little confessional and pulling the curtain behind me that led me, somewhere in my 20s, to wonder why? I’m making up things to tell someone who will forgive me for those things when the things I’m telling him are, in actual fact, lies, things I’ve hit upon to relate, whilst – more than likely – forgetting to include bad things I may have actually done.

My relationship with Catholicism and its practice turned rocky during my 20s. I kept at it for my parents’ sake. My mother, I know, feared I would be hell-bound if I didn’t go to Confession and Communion weekly. I don’t know what was worse: pretending to be a good Catholic for her sake whilst thinking it was all a bit suspect; or lying to the priest about my many sins, real or unreal, and always itemized.

Back to First Communion.

In the Waterloo of 1961, there were, as mentioned, four Catholic elementary schools: Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Louis, St. Michael’s and St. Agnes. Our Lady of Lourdes school was in the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, as was St. Louis in the St. Louis parish. It would be a few years before St. Michael’s and St. Agnes schools would have their own similarly-named churches and, so, First Communion for the Grade 2 Catholic students of Waterloo that year necessitated unity. St. Louis and St. Agnes were bundled into St. Louis to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist and I can but surmise St. Michael’s and Our Lady of Lourdes combined their First Communicants into the Lourdes’ church.

Receiving First Communion was, and remains, a huge and exciting event in a seven-year-old’s life. It may not command the intensity of holy fervor among the recipients now as it once did but, I can assure you, in 1961, our classes were ecstatic. Prior to the actual Sunday in May, teachers at St. Agnes shepherded our Grade 2 class into their actual TEACHER CARS and drove us the 10 minutes to St. Louis for the First Confession that preceded the Eucharistic celebration and to familiarize us with the layout of the Church and where we would be seated; how to process and egress and, in general, how to behave. And, believe me, we were well-warned, even threatened, to behave. While I can’t remember, it would seem to make sense that the St. Louis Grade 2 class would have been in attendance that day, so as we could ensure no snafus or misplaced students – an Agnes where a Louis should be or vice versa – would happen on the day.

While we (and everyone before and after us) understood the religious importance of First Communion and most, if not all, of us felt honored and privileged to take this huge step into the sacred realm of Catholicity, there was also a blatantly material aspect of the occasion that thrilled us – especially the girls – beyond measure: the First Communion wardrobe. Granted, the boys may have felt a bit awkward in their black trousers, white shirts and bow ties, but the girls to a one felt something like exhilaration at getting to wear a new white dress, white gloves and veil for the occasion. Our souls, upon receiving the Body and Blood of Christ that first time, became the bride of Christ.

The dress and accessories were comparatively understated in those days half a century ago. In the years since, it has tended to become de rigeur among some Catholic societies (at least according to my godmother, once Principal in a Belfast school) to dress to the nines, focusing more on the spectacle than the sacrament. It wasn’t uncommon, she told me in disgust, for the girls to be whisked off to ‘the continent’ (spots in Italy, Spain and the like) for a wee vacation a bit prior to Communion Day, to get nicely-tanned for the occasion. And there were often no-holds-barred with each family trying to outdo the next in dressing their girl child for her special day.

At any rate, back in 1961, we thought we were the bees’ collective knees in our finery, but I do recall being well aware of the sanctimony and religiosity of the occasion. It was a bit of a rite of passage, but it was understood to be sacred and momentous. And it had to be memorialized in the usual way, photographs, with hands posed in prayer, with parents and for those with siblings, more photos. I have a photo of myself in our backyard with my parents, me at center, looking as shy and awkward as always, but with my head veiled and wee prayer book and Rosary beads between my gloved and prayerful hands.

That’s what I remembered of the photo opportunity that day. I remember bits and pieces of the Mass and feeling somewhat saintly as I’m sure many of us did. And all of us, students of St. Louis and St. Agnes, did ourselves proud. As we filed into the church, the St. Louis children right side of aisle, St. Agnes to the left, we felt the eyes of everyone in attendance – and it’s a big church – on us. I know I was beet red in the face by then, as my mother assured me thus, but it all went off without a hitch. At the end of Mass, we filed back out, through the narthex and out the front door into the blinding sun, still prayerful, heads down and newly-resolved never to sin again. I don’t remember seeing my father there taking photos, and have never seen a photo of myself exiting St. Louis that day, but he was there and he was taking photos. And that fact leads me to the next part of this tale.

(The next part)

It was at some point at least 10 years later that a wholly weird - and not in the least bit coincidental - discovery cemented the fact that some things and some people are preordained to be part and parcel, one of the other. I’ll get a bit ahead of myself and divulge that it was a photograph, taken on that very day of First Communion. Until its discovery all those years later, it was a photo of total strangers.

And, then it wasn’t.

But, I’m ahead of myself. I must look back.

A wonderful thing was announced some time in advance of my class moving into Grade Seven. Whereas the Catholic elementary schools in Waterloo had been responsible for educating their pupils from Grade One through Grade Eight, we learned that – wonder of wonders and coolest of cool – Catholic Waterloo was getting a Junior High School wherein all students from Grade Seven through Grade Ten would be brought together in a semi-pseudo high school atmosphere, with lockers and huge gyms and lunch rooms and all the things that all the kids on American TV had going for them. It was a dream beyond all imagining. Visions of Patty Duke and Gidget and cheerleaders and how very grown up it all seemed rippled and cascaded through my cerebral channels. I mean… LOCKERS!

My Grade Seven school year began in September of 1965, when I was 11. Sadly, it didn’t begin at the new junior high school, to be named St. David, but back in a classroom at St. Agnes. The new school was, as yet, still under construction, the ‘cafetorium’ - as the gymnasium-cum-cafeteria would be called – lagged in completion. We were dismayed, disappointed and apoplectic with rage. (I suspect I may have been the only one stricken with enraged apoplexy, but no one was happy.) Still, we soldiered on, in our four schools throughout Waterloo until mid-November when, wonder of wonders, all the Grades Seven and Eight students were reassigned, overjoyed, to our shiny new JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL. With lockers! And a cafetorium!

I can still remember, quite clearly, the smell of the sheer newness…the shine of the floors, the aromatic redolence of recent carpentry, the ambrosial cavern of my locker’s interior. And we were issued locks, like so many grown-ups. I still remember my combination: 33-22-12.

And, no longer did we remain in one classroom the entire day, suffering through every subject and – for my particular class – the terrifying dictatorship of our St. Agnes teacher. she-whom-I-cannot-name (as I know someone whose mother was her best friend). Tyranny, thy name is Betteridge. Her reputation preceded her, for she had taught Grade Seven at St. Agnes as long as there had been St. Agnes, which was seven years by the time I entered her class in the terror befitting the occasion. For years, everyone throughout the school could hear her screaming at her class, berating, bellowing. She was known (and rightly so, I discovered) to fling at an errant child who displeased her whatever was closest to hand, be it a pencil or ruler, book or chalkboard eraser. Rumour had it she once flung a pair of scissors. In all honesty, I wouldn’t doubt it.

Now, however, in our new St. David digs, she became solely our ‘Home Room’ teacher. Core subjects, mornings only. The afternoons became a whirlwind of such hitherto unimagined joys as Music and Art and Typing. There was a special room for Science, with Bunsen burners. I didn’t know a Bunsen burner from a Cinnamon bun, but it was great. And each different classroom and subject had a different teacher. A new teacher. A teacher that wasn’t HER.

Our class was overjoyed. We still waited in agony every morning, in Home Room, spying through the windows at the teachers’ parking lot, willing as one unit for her car not to appear. And, quite often, it didn’t, especially through the snowy, stormy winter months as she lived in a nicely-distant rural area. I suspect she knew she was loathed, and had had enough of our bullshit as I’m sure she considered it. And, she must have been close to retirement age. At any rate, she retired after seeing our Home Room class through to our seventh year end.

When the cafetorium was completed, and a stage erected leading through to another gymnasium, our student body was treated to something else new and exciting: Assemblies. There had been no such thing back in our elementary world as there were no dedicated areas for such a panoply. In fact, when we’d occasionally have a weekday Mass at St. Agnes, it was held in the hallway, with the altar a table altered, just outside the Principal’s office.

As if having Assemblies wasn’t enough of a thrill and treat of a school day, we’d get to miss class to gather as one, from the youngest at 11 to the oldest at 16 or so. I can’t really remember the reasons for most of the Assemblies, certainly not the earliest one, but I doubt anyone did. The novelty was all that mattered. It was, in the argot of the time, groovy, fab, gear and cool. We were cool, all of us.

I certainly thought I’d arrived, me and my long hair. I grew and coaxed and tried to assemble my locks in the style of a Beatles’ girlfriend’s, them with their long bangs and poker straight tresses. Sadly, however, my hair was incorrigibly and determinedly wavy; no amount of ironing or setting it on hollowed-out pop cans would deter even a strand from the wayward curl. No hairdresser for me, of course – my mother would have been adamant – so I tried to cut my bangs in the hopes they would resemble Paul’s or George’s girlfriends’ styles. I failed miserably, of course and, instead of being long and lush, they were skimpy and plastered to my forehead in curlicues. But at least it was long, my hair. Of that I was most proud though, had I let on to my mother, she’d have had it lopped off the following Saturday lest I let my hair go to my head. VANITY! So determined was my mother that I not become vain she told me if I looked at myself too long in the mirror, or admired myself, I’d see the devil looking back at me.

Well, there was no chance of my admiring my mirror image as my face was home to a tribe of cystic acne warriors, constantly pustulating and fulminating for attention. And, though it was long, my hair was a constant let-down, so to speak, never achieving the glory of my juvenile Beatles-obsessed fantasies, but at least it wasn’t short. It would have to do.

I don’t know what Assembly it was. Perhaps it was the very first to be held in our near-sacred junior high; perhaps another down the road a bit, but it was that year of Grade Seven. Of that I’m certain. I was standing not too far from the stage at front, with a classmate whose identity is a tad iffy. I think I remember who it was, as I didn’t have many friends, but she (indeed it would have been a ‘she’) is neither here nor there, though she was there with me…whoever she was. Whether or not we were engrossed in whatever our Vice Principal was saying at that moment, or just rubbernecking to see who was there and where the ‘cute guys’ were, I don’t recall. What I do recall was something so totally out of left field and unexpected that I remember it 56 years on as if it were yesterday.

Something touching my back. The Assembly was rather packed, so incidental brushing against one another was inevitable and not in the least noteworthy. But the sensation on my back continued, beginning to feel like I was being tickled. As shy as I was, I contemplated ignoring it, but curiosity must have won out as I turned around to catch IN THE VERY ACT of patting, or playing with, or examining my hair another student. Two actually. They were commenting to each other on my hair. I suspect my first reaction was embarrassment as I realized how un-posh my locks were in the grand scheme of things Carnaby Street and Haight Ashbury, but I would have been quickly disabused of that notion as the two were, in fact, admiring my tresses. I think it was the length that intrigued them. Whatever, I was suddenly and uncharacteristically filled with a tiny flicker of joy, mixed with satisfaction. SO…my hair may yet become my crowning glory!

As memorable, and surprising as this encounter was in and of itself, what made it truly stunning was the identity of one of the hair-apparents. It was the dark-haired girl, the very one from the cemetery…the one from the restaurant. You could have knocked me over with a feather had I not been rather rotund (let’s call it big-boned) for my age.

And this is where the story ends, and the history begins.

(Stay tuned for the next chapters in this series…please.)