The mind is a
strange and wonderful entity (how else ought I describe it?) Sitting quietly or
engaged in some active pursuit, one can suddenly venture internally into a
space occupied years earlier under vastly different circumstances. This morning
while enjoying my breakfast cereal, I found myself remembering the first job
that I held. It was the summer I would turn 13. I had just graduated from grade
eight and would be launched into the biggies that fall at the local Brockville
Collegiate Institute and Vocational School --- BCIVS as it was colloquially
known. A lady down the street from our house on James St W hired me for the
rich sum of a dollar a day to help her each morning, 8-1PM to assist with
household duties and the care and feeding of her three children under the age
of five. This was a great deal of money for me as my needs were small – a lot
of candy could be purchased for $5 in a week! I began eagerly, arriving
promptly at her house, watching over the munchkins at their feed, washing the
breakfast dishes, making the beds, dusting the furniture, vacuuming the rugs,
taking the kids outside to play, supervising lunch, and finally, washing the lunch
dishes. For the first week I was all diligence and enthusiasm and the lady gave an
excellent report to my surprised mother. By the second week the novelty had
begun to wear off though and I found myself less keen to be the helpful bunny.
When I went upstairs to tidy up I would take time to peruse my employer’s stack
of magazines. The gig had become boring and tedious, and the five bucks an
insufficient inducement to roll me out of my summertime bed for slave labour
down the block. Besides by then I was taking a few babysitting jobs that my
sister Linda had been too socially active to accept. It was considerably easier
to sit in someone’s living room reading my books, periodically raiding their
frig or cupboards, and being paid 25 cents/hour while their children slept.
Yes! My dream job.
It wasn’t as though
I had been brought up to be a household slavey. I think that we fixed up our
beds in the morning and washed the dishes after supper. Otherwise, my mother,
until we moved to Ottawa a year later, had always stayed at home and so kept all
other chores in her domain. She managed it in her own way, I’m sure seeing
clearly how much easier was her lot as a housewife than had been that of her
mother, Alberta Stewart Craig, the domestic centre of an eight children
farmhouse, in pre-electricity, pre-inside plumbing Lanark County. Mom hadn’t
been brought up to closely attend to the domestic herself. She had two sisters
older than herself, Alma by ten years, and Leola by four. These gals both left
school after the usual (for the time) grade eight, in order to assist their
mother. The three younger children: Mom, Ethel (Chick), and Milton (Bob) were the
little kids whom I think mostly had a chance to play and later to go on to high
school. Mom boarded throughout those five years at the Catholic girl’s school
in nearby Calabogie. She loved to read and did well as a student.
Once we were in Ottawa
she got a job in the credit department of Simpson-Sears. In the early 1950s it
was considered shameful for a man’s wife to have to work. Ever conscious of
maintaining social proprieties, my mother explained to their mostly
better-heeled friends that she simply wanted another challenge to shoulder.
They politely accepted her version though probably had some awareness that my
father’s work in a small company didn’t bring home enough to feed their middle
class existence. The truth is though that the job was good for mom, even though
juggling the roles of worker, mother, and domestic, as well as honouring what
she considered her “social obligations,” put her under considerable stress
(tell me about it, you all scream!) She worked hard at her job, was professional,
and earned respect as well as the position of assistant manager. A woman went
no higher in those days.
Both of my parents
worked hard at their jobs and at keeping our home together. They had come of
age during the Depression and though not suffering directly from the severity
that it inflicted on some, they imbibed the values, work habits, and concerns
of their parents and their generation. While I lived with them my parents
occasionally gave vent to their opinion that I was extremely lazy – lazy as
sin, my father would say with some exasperation – usually in reference to my reluctance
to work around the house. My mother found my slack school habits trying as I
limped ingloriously from grade to grade. I must acknowledge that I do believe
myself to be a lazy person, not at all as keen as many of my friends on various
levels. I don’t especially feel any shame or self-condemnation about that fact;
it’s just something that I’m aware of. I said something about this to my
daughter, Elizabeth recently, and she said something really fine to me: Mom,
she said, you’re not lazy. You just like to choose the places where you put
your energy. If something doesn’t interest you, you just don’t give it a lot of
focus. What a smarty-pants and what a lovely daughter!
Well, all this is
to show how my mind wanders about in the early hours of a Vallarta morning.
Tomorrow we embark for Mexico City where we will enjoy for five nights and days
its splendours. I see it almost as the kind of air lock that one enters on one’s way in or
out of a submarine or a space ship. It’s my air lock, my transition space between
Vallarta and Toronto. I plan just to BE there, to walk around and check out
some of the areas that I know from my five or six previous visits, and to cogitate and
meditate further on the great past, present, and possible futures that I shall experience.
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