Scenes from Childhood: Farmhouse Grates

When I was little, we and our cousins used to eavesdrop on the adults when we went to the farm for holidays. The two-story farmhouse was very simply built, with no heating vents on the second floor. Instead, each room had an opening to the first floor, predicated on the notion that "hot air rises." The openings were covered with cast-iron grates, to keep the children from falling through, and the heat from the first floor was supposed to rise up and then warm the upstairs rooms.

 

This never worked very well, but the grated openings were ideal for eavesdropping.

 

The adults knew where all the grates were, and they surely knew that we clustered around them. But in the flush of gossiping or arguing, they always forgot that they had an audience. They held nothing back until one of them would suddenly mutter, "Little pitchers . . ." and they'd all look toward the kitchen ceiling and become silent. For a moment or two. But then they'd be irresistibly drawn again into unguarded, delicious, adult conversation.

 

I can see us now. Four or five of us and at least two of our three boy-cousins, huddled on the bedroom floor around the grate that overlooked the farm kitchen, where the adults always congregated. We looked like a scene from a Busby Berkeley movie, heads to the grate, legs and feet straight out behind us making a star-wheel. We knew how to be silent, since our silence was the key to hearing the good stuff. Inevitably one of us would bump another (accidentally on purpose) and the whispered bickering that followed would escalate into sounds that the adults could hear. And then it was, "You kids get away from that grate!" and we'd scurry away, scattering to the farthest corners of the upstairs rooms, only to creep back again as soon as they'd forgotten us.

 

What on earth did we hear? I implied above that there was "good stuff." Actually, we heard about the state of the farm crops and the chickens (at one point Uncle John T. had been seduced into investing in an egg-farm facility—the kind with caged hens and automated egg collecting). There were interminable discussions of the mileage and routes of recent trips to Indianapolis. Or death reports on old people in the county—people we'd never heard of and about whom we cared not at all. Perhaps we occasionally heard a cross word exchanged between our mother, Eileen, and her sister-in-law, our Aunt Jeannette, who was almost permanently green with jealousy over Eileen's high-achieving offspring.

 

We really never heard anything juicy. But the very act of getting away with eavesdropping was its own reward.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca

Scenes from Childhood: Thinking Good Thoughts

Scenes from Childhood: Thinking Good Thoughts

 

When I was in my teens, we used to call our mother an ostrich. We children felt that she kept her head in the sand. She would not look at the world squarely. I remember being incensed by this when I was an adolescent. I was trying to figure out the world and I could have used some help. But I got none from her. Instead she tried to lead me to be more like her, less judgmental, less critical. I'll admit that being less judgmental might have improved my prospects, but this was not something that I was willing to learn from my mother. She refused to see the world as it was (i.e., as I saw it), and this drove me crazy.

 

One day my mother and I were discussing a family that attended our church. Their older daughter, whom I'll call Jane, was a year ahead of me in school.

 

Jane was very polite to all the older folk at our church, passing the time of day with them after Sunday Mass, while my own inclination was to avoid contact with anyone at all; I just wanted to get away from people, to race home and put my nose in a book.

 

One day Eileen and I, sitting at the dining room table, were discussing Jane and her family, and Eileen was extolling Jane's virtues, along the lines of "why can't you be more like . . .?"

 

This approach has never, to my knowledge, changed any teenager's behavior in any way. In order to defend myself and perhaps open Eileen's eyes a little, I said, "Jane has a bad reputation at school."

 

"What does that mean?" asked Eileen.

 

"You know. Everyone says she's loose. Everyone says she makes out a lot. You know. With boys." I was stumbling a bit, not really sure what this all might mean.

 

There was a silence. At last, I thought, Eileen is coming face to face with reality. After all, she had always emphasized that sexual misbehavior was the worst shame a teenager could inflict on her family. Finally Eileen would have to admit that not everything is the way she thinks it is.

 

The silence continued.

 

And then Eileen said, "Oh no, that can't be true. I know it isn't true. Jane is always so nice to older people."

 

And that was the end of that discussion.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca

Scenes from Childhood: Swings and Swifts

I've told you that I spent hours lying on our local merry-go-round when I was little, listening to its metallic groans. I implied that that was all I ever did when I was at the playground. Not true.

The playground had two large swing sets, with four swings on each set. These were the old-fashioned, heavy-duty kind of swing, sturdy 2x6 boards supported by strong linked chains. The supports were heavy steel tubes, with the usual angled posts at the ends and a crossbar at the top from which the swings were suspended. The angled posts were perfect for shinnying up, if that's what you liked to do. (Climbing poles was difficult for me as a child, since the only exercise my arms got was turning pages and carrying stacks of books home from the library. So I seldom tried to shinny up a pole. But I liked to watch others do it.) And after you shinnied up the pole you could, if you were strong and brave enough, perch on the crossbar at the top and taunt your friends who couldn't make it to the top.

But all that happened during the day, during recess.

At dusk I had the playground to myself. I don't know why I was never called home. Well, I do know. I was never missed. Most of my time at home was spent curled up in a chair, out of the way, my nose in a book. If I wasn't visible, they just assumed that I was reading in some corner. But instead, often on a summer evening I was at the playground, either lying on that merry-go-round or sitting in a swing.

Because the swings had long chains, they were perfect for winding and unwinding. Using your feet, you would twirl around and around, twisting the chains as tight as you could. Then you'd give yourself a shove and let the chains unwind. As the chains sought their normal stasis of hanging parallel, first you'd go around and around one way, and then the momentum would carry you into rewinding them in the other direction and then the other way and then the other way. While it lasted, it was as good as a carnival ride.

So that's one thing I did while sitting on the playground swing at dusk.

But mostly what I did was I watched the chimney swifts. I knew nothing about kinds of birds.

I just knew that there were hundreds of birds that darted through the air at dusk, all around the chimney. There were so many and they flew so fast and so erratically that my eye couldn't pick out just one to follow. The sky above the school's tall chimney was black with them, even as the light faded and a cloak of darkness began to fall over the playground. And finally, just when dusk turned into dark, all the birds were sucked into the chimney in a single fluid motion, like water being sucked down a drain. And then they were gone and I knew it was time to go home.

Just as I still feel in my bones the groaning vibrations of the merry-go-round, I can still remember the peace of sitting in a swing, barely moving the swing with little pushes of my legs, and watching the chimney swifts. I didn't attach any meaning to them, and I certainly didn't attach a name to them; it was only years later that I read about chimney swifts and made the connection. But I remember watching them as they wheeled and darted, changing direction on a dime--those typically swiftian movements that make them so efficient at catching bugs.

In Wolfville, N.S., half a block from our daughter and son-in-law's restaurant, Tempest, there's a little market-place, with a visitor's bureau right at its center. The area used to be home to a factory with a tall chimney. In a flurry of urban renewal, the factory was torn down, but the chimney was allowed to stay, specifically because of the swifts that inhabited it. From the restaurant windows you can see the tall free-standing chimney rising from the empty market-place. (If you look in the other direction you see the local tidal basin that is either mud or an extension of the Atlantic Ocean, depending on the tide.)

Every evening, the swifts that live in the chimney come home from their daily activities. Tourists gather in the marketplace to watch, and the local mosquitoes think of this as their own private restaurant. At first you can barely see the swifts. The tourists with the sharpest eyes call out, "Here they come!" Finally everyone can see them dart and circle. Oohs and aahs unite the group of strangers. Two or three bold swifts disappear in a wink down into the chimney (wanting to get the best nest location, perhaps) while the others continue to circle. And finally, just as all the tourists have been bled dry by the giant Nova Scotia mosquitoes, the rest of the swifts spiral down the chimney. If you blink you'll miss it, so fast do they disappear. The tourists leave immediately for their own evening activities, still scratching and slapping but satisfied to have seen the magic of the chimney swifts.

I revel in the connection between my childhood playground swifts and the swifts that my daughter and her children see every summer night.

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
http://www.anntudor.ca/