Early reader

When I was very small, probably around three, my mother went back to teaching. We lived in Newcastle Creek, in the Grand Lake area of New Brunswick and she taught in a small school in Rothwell, between Newcastle Creek and Minto. There was no daycare in those days and she probably didn't want to leave me with someone else anyway – so she took me to school with her.

We travelled to the school on a smelly old bus. I think it's understandable that my memories might be vague – I was pretty young, after all – but there are times I get a whiff of almost sickening fumes, maybe in a garage or a body shop, and I can imagine my mother and me back in that rickety old bus.

Our bus ride took us through the heart of the strip mining landscape that was the Avon Coal Company. Strip mining is not pretty. This isn't the Avon but it's a pretty good illustration of what strip mining looks like:

The school probably had three rooms – grades one, two and three. Mum taught grade two. I don't really remember the children in the class except for one girl named Star. How are you going to forget a girl named Star? She's memorable because of her name but also because she took care of me. My mother couldn't always deal with my needs so it was Star who supervised me at recess and lunch-time and who took me to the bathroom when necessary.

I think that must have been a challenge, particularly in the winter, because this school had an outdoor toilet, down at the back of the schoolyard. I don't remember how it all happened but I'm assuming that I must have been dressed in a snow-suit and boots and mittens. All that would have to be put on in the cloakroom, taken off after the walk through the snow to the outdoor facility, put back on for the walk back to the school, taken off for the rest of the classroom day.

For Star's sake, I hope this didn't happen too many times a day.

In what I have since come to think of as a very privileged placement, I was seated at a small desk at the front of the class, right beside the big teacher's desk. I don't know for sure what I did all day – I suppose I drew pictures and coloured and looked at books. I do know that at one point, my mother had to tell me firmly that I must not answer any more questions that she put to the class. I must be very quiet and let the grade two students answer.

Toward the end of that year, she noticed me one day holding a book, moving my eyes across the page, turning the page at appropriate times. She thought it was very cute, how I was pretending to read. When I asked for her help with a certain word, she obliged and then asked me if knew the other words. I assured her that I did and proceeded to read the page to her, stopping only on certain words that I couldn't quite figure out.

I was not yet four but from that point on, I read everything I could get my hands on.

At that age, my favourite books were The Bobbsey Twins series. This is the edition I remember best:

By the time I started grade one at the White School in Chatham, I had read many of the books in the series. The grade one teacher (and school principal), Mrs. Dorothy Gilliss, recognized early that my reading skills were quite advanced and she tested me and found I was reading at a grade six level.

Many years later, she told me she had been convinced I was reading at a higher level than grade six but that was as high as her books went. Mrs. Gilliss gave me a little assignment of going up front and reading to the class every Friday afternoon, which I enjoyed. She also put me into grade two in the mornings, grade one in the afternoons and after my first year at the White School, I went into grade three.

Now remember, I, in effect, started school at the age of three. And I'm telling this story not to preen about how smart I am. I believe that all kids are smart. I was talking to a friend from Belgium and I asked her when her two small children would go to school. Where she lives, children may go to school at two; they must go at three. That seems just about right to me.

I'm still surprised at the hostility this view is met with.

I'm a long-time admirer of the late Dr. Fraser Mustard, the pioneer in early childhood education. I tried to find a nice concise summary of his life's work but I didn't find anything suitable. If you Google Dr. Mustard, you'll find innumerable articles and studies that support his theories on early childhood. Meanwhile, there's a lot of information about the value of early childhood development right here.

My formal education begins

I went to the White School on Wellington St. in Chatham, N.B. for the first three years of my formal education.

Chatham was a tough little town and the White School was a tough school. I don't mean that in the academic sense. I mean some of the tough kids in town went there.

My memories of my days there look like old snapshots in black and white, some in brown, some in various shades of grey. Except for myself, of course. I see myself in colour – a tiny girl, a prim and proper little creature with my white blouses and red sweaters and pleated skirts and the long ringlets that my mother wound around her index finger with a hairbrush every morning. I was no match for my school-mates and I had little understanding of who they were and where they came from.

The kids at the White School crossed socio-economic lines. Some of them came from what I suppose, were called "poor" families. There was one boy who used to stand near me and watch while I ate my apple at recess and ask me if I'd save him the "cord." When I'd give him what was left of the apple, he'd eat the whole thing, including the seeds and stem. This horrified me mostly because I wouldn't even put my mouth near where someone else had bitten or chewed. I wouldn't take a drink of pop out of someone else's bottle. I began to save more and more of the apple until eventually, I was only eating one or two bites before I handed it over.

Chatham was a distinctly divided town – Catholic and Protestant, the huge majority being Catholic. Most of the kids I remember – not all but most – came from big raucous Irish Catholic families. (There were also big Acadian Catholic families, openly looked down on as "the French." The dynamic around them, both within and outside their families, was very different from the Irish.) In retrospect, I think growing up in those big families – some of them – was probably a joyous experience. But it was the very opposite of our family. We weren't a big family, or Catholic – and we most certainly weren't raucous. I didn't know how to react and I had no defense when, almost every day, I was chased around the school-yard being yelled at: "Catholic Catholic ring the bell! Dirty Protestant, go to hell!"

There were two boys – I could name them but I'm not going to – who would lie in wait for me every day after school, just past Hill St., about half-way to St. Andrew's St. I don't remember either one of them ever attacking me on his own. It was always the two of them together. They claimed to "like" me and they held me down in the ditch and kissed me all over my face. I really hated it and I dreaded that walk home after school.

The worst thing that happened to me at the White School was on the day I went from the grade one classroom to the basement. (The "basement" was the euphemism for bathroom/washroom/toilet in that school. The request to the teacher was, "May I go to the basement?") I remember the school as very big although that's probably an example of that phenomenon where things from one's childhood always seem much bigger in life's rear-view mirror than they really were. In memory though, it seemed a long long walk down a dark stairway to get to what must have been a communal toilet as there were already boys there when I got there.

They were big boys – grade six, I suppose – and they were smoking. I went into the stall and they began to talk loudly. They first said they were going to go into the stalls on either side of me and climb up and look down and watch what I was doing. Then they decided they could get a closer look if they came right into my stall and they announced that they were going to come under the door. They were laughing and coming close to the door so I could see their feet.

I was paralyzed with fear. I had no idea what to do and the truth is, I have no idea what I did. I must have escaped somehow because here I am. I never went to the washroom in that school again. I never told anyone what happened, not even a couple of years later when I had an embarrassing accident because I was too afraid to go to the "basement."

I have never recovered from this incident. I approach life with a certain wariness. I'm not adventurous and I'm consciously careful not to get myself into a situation where I'm trapped. I don't embrace new experiences for these very fearful reasons. It's not the unknown I fear as much as it is getting caught with my back to the wall.

Looking back now, I can't imagine why I was sent to the White School. I think of my parents – particularly my mother – as being protective, overly-protective even. What would make them – her – think that this was the elementary school for me?

The stories

The stories I'm telling here are about me. They are, therefore, mostly of interest to me — and to my family and perhaps to my friends.

On the other hand, if I tell them well enough, maybe they'll be of universal interest and even if you've stumbled upon them by accident, you'll say, "What a good story!" and you'll come back and read some more. Even if you don't say, "What a good story!" I'm pretty sure, at some point, you'll say, "That happened to me too." Or maybe you'll say, "I once had a friend/teacher/neighbour like that."

I hope if you do, you'll come back and check out the stories now and then.

I'm not a natural blogger. I'm an editor and writer and so even telling my life stories, I'm not comfortable dashing it off. I want to choose the right words, make sure my facts are accurate, try hard for clarity. I will try to be interesting if not exactly chatty.

I will continue to publish from my archives over here. I've been on a self-appointed sabbatical but I'm going to get back to work and I look forward to seeing you, both here and there.