Scenes from Childhood: Dancing at the Nuns' House

The nuns' living quarters were in a tiny house beside the two-room school, which was attached to the church building itself. The three nuns (two teachers plus a housekeeping nun) lived on the upper floor of the tiny house. The main floor had an entrance hall, a largish room to the left, and, farther down the hall, the door to a small chapel. Although the chapel was just for the nuns, at some point during our eight-year attendance at the little school we students were allowed to visit the chapel. Perhaps it was only seventh and eighth graders.

 

I know we were allowed in there occasionally, because I remember one thing about that little chapel: it contained a Little Infant of Prague statue. Some day I'll look it up and discover the true story of the Little Infant of Prague. As a church artifact, it seems always to be a real doll dressed in sumptuous, hand-sewn garments. Ours wore a red velvet cloak trimmed in white fur and gold braid. He held an orb in his hands and wore a gold crown on his head. The Little Infant of Prague seems always to be clothed in real fabric. I don't know whether you could go to a Catholic outfitters' shop—the kind where you bought fancy rosaries and beautiful prayer books and plaster of Paris statues of the Black Madonna or Our Lady of Guadalupe—and buy ready-to-display Little Infants of Prague, or whether you bought a naked plaster doll (probably not anatomically correct) and took him home to dress in hand-sewn silks and velvets.

 

But I loved the Little Infant of Prague that was in the nuns' chapel, with its real clothes.

 

The year I was in the eighth grade, the front room of the nuns' house was made into a "rec room" for the eighth graders (the oldest kids in the two-room school). Being given our own, separate space was a big deal. I guess they'd noticed that we were too old for Red Rover. They (and who were "they"?) put a record player in the room and even seeded it with a few records. We were allowed to go into the rec room at recess time and during the noon hour (we all went home for lunch but would come back early to take advantage of this new, private space). The record I remember was a Glenn Miller recording of "Opus One." There may have been others. We danced to "Opus One" every day.

 

Now, why didn't I learn to dance in that room? The two Crosby girls, Carol and Mary, were in grade 8 with me. Their older brother, Tom, was the coolest dancer in high school, and I'm sure he was already teaching Carol and Mary how to do the "fast dance" that separated the sheep from the goats during the four years of high school.

 

So if the Crosby girls already knew, in grade 8, how to fast dance, then how's come I didn't learn it from them? Were they holding on to their precociously acquired skill in order to reveal it once they reached the social paradise of public high school? Or was I too bookish and standoffish and did I refuse to try to learn to fast dance?

 

Had I learned it, would my high school career have been more pleasant? Would it have made any difference at all? Would I have become a dancing fool and abandoned all my other interests in order to pursue ballroom dancing?

 

If Carol and Mary Crosby had taught me to fast dance to "Opus One" in the rec room in the nuns' house, who know what would have become of me? Whenever I hear "Opus One" now, I'm reminded of how my life did unfold, progressing along its path to end up in unlikely Toronto. My lifetime dancing career has consisted of two private lessons with Mr. Alexander, who has taught Dino and me to jitterbug happily in the privacy of our own dining room, with the table folded down and pushed against the wall.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca

Scenes from Childhood: Spitballs

The "little room" of my two-room elementary school was home to the first four grades, its pupils ranging from six to ten years old—quite a handful of an age span. Sister Mary Cecilia was equal to the challenge. She could listen to the times tables, explain the theology of that man on the cross, and clean up the pee from a timid first grader afraid to ask permission to visit the outdoor toilet. She could do all of this with one hand behind her back or—more to the point—one hand fingering the huge black rosary that hung from her waist.

 

But she couldn't deal with little Jack Anderson's spitballs. How do boys learn to make spitballs? Does Popular Mechanics run a yearly spitball article? Or is the skill passed from older to younger brother ("You want to tee off the teacher? Here's how. You take a bit of paper, chew it up . . .").

 

I don't know how Jack Anderson learned to make and send a spitball, but he was durned good at it. You'd be sitting at your little desk, one six nailed to a pair of parallel 1x4s, minding your own business. You might be intent on deciphering the answer to 2 plus 3. Minding your own business, as I said, or thinking about who you would play with at recess. Or looking at Mary Crosby's long black braids in front of you and longing to tug on them. Minding your own business.

 

And suddenly your exposed little neck would be stung. You'd slap the spot, jumping from the shock. And there, on your neck, would be a tiny, sloppy-wet little ball of chewed-up paper.

 

Jack Anderson strikes again.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca

Scenes from Childhood: Fear

In the old house where I grew up, the bathroom was on the main floor. Upstairs was a little half-bath with a toilet and a tiny sink, and our family of eight appreciated that extra toilet!

 

The little bathroom was right at the top of the stairs, and within it, just opposite the toilet, was a small door that opened into an unused attic space. A tiger lived behind that door. And I knew that any time I went down the steps, the tiger could emerge from behind the door and leap, in a single bound, onto my back. The tiger never leaped at me when I was coming up the steps. He attacked only from behind.

 

None of my siblings ever mentioned the tiger. But then, I didn't mention him either. I think that we all knew that the tiger was there and that we were all afraid. But no one spoke of it for fear of being ridiculed. Ridicule was a big part of our family culture.

 

If I made it around the hairpin turn in the steps before he leaped on my back, I was safe. But there were fewer steps below the turn than above it, so the longest part of going down the steps was the part where the tiger could leap on my back.

 

I would be brave when I started down the steps, telling myself that it wasn't true that there was a tiger. But after the first two steps I started getting scared. I could feel the tiger crouching to leap onto my back. I would go faster and faster down those remaining steps with a flutter inside me that shook me all over and made my legs and feet clatter faster to get me around that bend in the steps, safely away from the threat of the tiger.

 

I must admit that the tiger never did leap on my back. But I knew he could at any time. He was very large and very real. And I was little and scared.

 

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca