Falling Backwards: A Memoir Read online

  Mrs. McCrae had big shoes to fill, but it didn’t take her long to fill them. She was different from Ms. Hurst, but equally inspiring. She had a really curly perm—on the verge of being an Afro—with a touch of grey sneaking in around her temples. Not a great look for a late thirtysomething Caucasian woman from Canada. She was stout and square and had a deep voice that was commanding. She kind of sounded like John Wayne, to tell you the truth. If you closed your eyes and listened to her speak, you would swear you were on the back of a horse riding somewhere in the Wild West with Mr. Wayne himself.

  Everything she wore seemed to be either brown or grey or beige. She didn’t wear scarves or lipstick and her shoes looked like the ones my dad’s mom, my grandmother Richards, wore: sturdy, comfortable, thick-soled shoes with laces on the side. I vividly remember those laces running up the side of her beige shoes. It looked like somebody had made a mistake when they sewed them up. They were perfectly polished shoes, though, so polished you could look up her dress if you were so inclined. Nobody was. She didn’t wear perfume; in fact, she kind of smelled like Vicks VapoRub all the time. Maybe she had a bad shoulder or something? She was lovely, though. She had a kind, trusting face. She looked you in the eye, put her hand gently on your shoulder and made you feel like you were the only person on the planet.

  Mrs. McCrae was different from any teacher I had had in my very long educational career. (All three years of it so far.) Every student was very attentive and orderly around her. She maintained the quietest of classrooms. There were no spitballs flinging about or graffiti being plastered all over the chalkboard; no children shouting or acting out. No wrestling or gonch pulling. (“Gonch” is what we prairie people call underwear. Out east they call them “ginch.”) We all just sat there and listened to Mrs. McCrae teach. If she told us to do something, we did it. She didn’t yell at us or talk down to us, she talked to us like we were people, real honest-to-God people and not a bunch of snotty dummies who didn’t know whether to sneeze or squeeze an orange. She’d find something good to say to you every day. She’d tell you she liked your shirt or your glasses or your printing. Compliments were better than any old gold star stuck on the top corner of a page. Compliments made your heart grow bigger. Stickers were just shiny. Encouragement is the best drug on the planet. It makes you taller, somehow, and braver.

  There was a little boy named Carson in my grade three class who was in a wheelchair. I am not sure why he was in a wheelchair but he was parked beside a desk right in the middle of the room, just like one of us. I was always in awe of how Mrs. McCrae made Carson feel so special and so normal all at the same time. Carson was always smiling madly at her, and she at him. Encouragement and compassion for another human being is something she showed us every day. I forgot about Carson’s wheelchair about a week after school started. We all did.

  I remember an art project I had been working on for weeks—a clay Eskimo. Every student was given the simple task of transforming a giant lump of clay into some sort of an Eskimo theme, whether that was a whale or an igloo or a dogsled team or, in one little girl named Laurie’s case, a rather large candy cane that had nothing to do with anything. She just decided to make a giant candy cane and call it a day. It is possible that Santa’s sleigh could have been pulled by a team of husky dogs with candy-cane runners.

  I wasn’t sure of what I was doing either or if what I was creating was going to look at all like an Eskimo anything. I hadn’t seen a lot of Eskimos at that point in my life, so I had very little to go on. I had had an Eskimo Pie, and although it would have been really easy to shape the clay into an ice cream sandwich, it would have been an instant fail, I think. What I did end up doing was this sort of 3-D portrait of a man in his big parka holding his spear. I stuck it onto a piece of cardboard made to look like a picture frame. He had a real fake-fur collar that I must have stolen from one of my mother’s old coats and glass eyeballs that I pulled out of an old doll.

  Mrs. McCrae went down each row of desks and said something very quietly and privately to each child about their own particular project. She finally came up beside my desk, put her hand on my shoulder, as she often did, looked down at my questionable work of art and simply said, “Jann, that is just a beautiful Eskimo person.” I think I blushed to the point of needing a blood transfusion. I honestly believed she meant every single syllable that fell out of her mouth and onto my Eskimo masterpiece. I wish I still had that thing, but I am pretty sure it disintegrated in 1975, despite my mom’s best efforts to keep every piece of art any of her three kids brought home. I have a file full of various works of art in my basement that makes me laugh hysterically every time I pull it out. I have a dozen or so scribblers filled with musings from my English classes. Some of my short stories were nothing short of comedic genius, though I was trying really hard to be serious. I have a number of drawings and a few paintings. I am so glad my mom saved all of that stuff for me. I never thought it would turn out to hold such sentimental value. No clay Eskimo, though. It’s vaporized into the Great White North itself.

  —

  About halfway through the year, Mrs. McCrae announced to our class that Jennie Elliott Elementary School would be putting on a musical about Jiminy Cricket. I knew exactly who Jiminy Cricket was because I watched The Wonderful World of Disney faithfully every single Sunday night. Our whole family did. That and The Ed Sullivan Show and The Carol Burnett Show, without fail. (I do need to mention that we were the last people on our block to get a colour television set, and I still blame my parents for that.)

  There were going to be auditions for the various parts in the play, but for some reason I didn’t end up auditioning. I was just kind of handed the part of Jiminy. The school principal, Mrs. McKill (I kid you not), called me to her office, sat me down and told me I was going to be Jiminy in the play. She didn’t even ask me, she told me. She and Mrs. McCrae thought I would be a perfect little cricket. Maybe it was because I was the smallest kid in the class and I’d fit the little, green outfit; who knows? All I know is that I had to sing two or three songs and had a lot of lines to learn, but they were sure I could do it. I was glad somebody was sure, because I couldn’t even remember where I hung my coat most days. My own mother said that I very conveniently forgot to put a brush through my hair at least four days of the week. I wasn’t a victim of fashion, I can tell you that. I didn’t care how I looked, what I wore, or whether or not I fit in with the other kids. Thank God, because no kid should be worrying about that crap in grade three.

  To this day I don’t know why they thought I could act and sing in a play. I could talk a lot; everybody was quite aware of that. Every report card I ever had said that I basically could not and would not shut up. Whatever it was that those two teachers saw in me, I will never know. I was a funny kid, but that is no indication of any musical talent.

  Singing? I would be singing? I don’t think I had sung a note in my life up to this point. I really don’t. I may have hummed an Anne Murray song or two. Who didn’t do that? “Snowbird” was the only song on Canadian radio for eleven years. Things I do remember:

  The giant papier mâché whale that our class took weeks to build for the set.

  Slathering millions of paper strips dipped in goo onto the whale’s chicken-wire frame. Painting it an edible-looking blue.

  Eating the goo whenever possible. Feeling sick because of it. It tasted like rotten marshmallow, but I liked it.

  The curtains sweeping open and all the parents sitting in the crowd looking like they had all swallowed canaries, they were so proud. (I know my parents must have been relieved that I didn’t faint and fall off the stage.)

  I also clearly remember flashbulbs (real ones) going off and Mrs. McCrae mouthing words to me from the side of the stage, like she was willing me through my entire performance. Whenever I forgot a word or two (or twenty-seven), I was relieved to have her there. She was my very own conductor in the wings, with her arms flapping and her eyes widening, her brows rising and falling. I am sur
e I completely wore her out. She probably drank a bottle of wine all by herself when she got home from that play, and perhaps even puffed away on a menthol cigarette. That would explain the Vicks VapoRub smell. They may have made boxes of wine in those days, and if they did, I am sure Mrs. McCrae would have been drinking from one. Mrs. McCrae and I survived Jiminy Cricket, and we still liked each other.

  I don’t remember being afraid at all during the performance. I can’t recall a single nerve or hesitation, just an unfailing boldness that would become my saving grace over and over as my life continued to unfold.

  Life will shoot you out of a cannon whether you want it or not. The universe is the cannon and we are the balls …

  chapter three

  A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY

  Grade three would be my last year at Jennie Elliott Elementary School. My parents had decided to move the family out to an acreage west of Calgary, which meant I would be changing schools. When we found out we were going to live out in the sticks, it was devastating. It was for me, anyway. I have no idea what my brothers were thinking.

  I mean, the country? Like, farmers with cows and chickens, for crying out loud? Any kind of change when you’re eight years old comes as a shock. You don’t see anything outside of your mundane, wonderfully banal routine. I worried about all the simple things. Where would I ride my bike and what about my stuff and what would we eat and what would happen to my friends and what would the new school be like and how would I ever meet anybody ever again and what if the kids didn’t like me? It’s hard meeting new people when you’re eight. You have extremely high expectations of other people. (I’m kidding.)

  Besides, by the time you’re eight you’ve already made friends, dammit, and you don’t want to start all over again. I worried constantly for weeks leading up to the actual move away from the city. I had never worried before about anything in my life. Worry felt like a weight that poured over me when I was trying to sleep. I thought that this was a direct effect of getting older and turning into a grown-up person. If that was the case, I didn’t want to grow up at all. I had to figure out some way to stop worrying and stop growing up—and the sooner, the better.

  I wasn’t sure how one went about finding and making new companions. I felt like I had just always known the ones I already had, that making friends required no effort whatsoever. You were born and, shortly thereafter, your “forever friends” were handed to you by God himself. End of story. I think making good friends is the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life. My friendships are my greatest accomplishments. My friends to this day are my greatest treasures. They represent the truest part of my character and the best part of my soul.

  I’d be leaving behind my dear pal Gary. His family lived next door to us on Louise Road, we had gone to kindergarten together, and our parents were fairly good friends as well. He and I were inseparable. When your houses are three feet apart, you get to know your neighbours and just hope that they are God-fearing, decent people who don’t have strange things in their basements. You hope that they aren’t worshipping the Dark One and that they don’t have an elderly, sickly relative hooked up to a feeding tube and an oxygen tank in the back bedroom. They didn’t seem to have any of those things. Gary’s grandmother lived with them but she was very short and harmless, and smelled good and could cook anything under the sun. She always told me I was full of sass and that I was cheeky. I happened to like “sass.” It must have been an English thing because Gary’s gram was from overseas and they said things differently than we did in Canada. She probably meant to say that I was full of shit, but sass sounded a lot better to me and to her, I am sure. Yes, I could very well have been full of sass.

  Every day after school either I was at Gary’s house or he was at mine. He was the best colourer I had ever seen in my life. I am sure “colourer” is not a word but I am using it anyway. His colouring skills were epic. I often wondered if it was his short, sweet English granny doing all that colouring for him late at night and Gary was just claiming colouring victory when we all laid eyes on the pictures the next day. I never actually saw him colour anything in front of me. (Sorry, Gary, but I didn’t. You can come clean about it anytime you want. Nobody can stay in the lines that well. Nobody! And that colour palette? Come on! Your skin tones were legendary!)

  I still like colouring to this day. Give me a box of crayons and a big old Snow White colouring book and I am a happy girl. And maybe a box of wine. Yeah, crayons and a box of wine. That’s the ticket.

  Gary and I played with John and Jane West dolls for hours on end. They were plastic western figures that had these really detailed boots and hats and accessories. (I guess boots and a hat are accessories). They came with their own horses, Thunderbolt and Cherokee, who in turn had their own perfect miniature saddles and bridles. John and Jane even had their own ranch house, complete with a cast-iron stove in the kitchen; it was beyond awesome. Martha Stewart would have been happy in that kitchen!

  They had little vests and chaps and cowboy shirts. I loved playing with my John and Jane West dolls. They had bendy arms and legs so you could hang them off lamps and drawers and coat hangers and toilets, if need be. As I recall, they were very hard to melt, but I won’t get into that. John and Jane were happily married, or so Gary and I made them out to be. We would muck about with those figurines for hours. Time evaporated in our imaginary world. Eventually we’d be faced with having to go for dinner. My mother would holler my name and that meant it was time to go home. Her voice could literally penetrate a concrete bunker. I could hear her call my name if I was sixty miles away. It was a good skill to have.

  I have no idea what Gary and I ever talked about. Maybe we didn’t talk at all. Maybe we talked to each other through our John and Jane West dolls? Once in awhile we included my older brother’s G.I. Joes in our make-believe world. G.I. Joes were plastic army guys with five o’clock shadows and big guns. G.I. Joe often shot at John and Jane West, but thankfully John and Jane had their own western rifles and pistols, so they shot back.

  G.I. Joe was always the first to die. I made sure of that. I don’t know why, but G.I Joe seemed like a bad guy to me. As I recall, the makers of G.I. Joe gave him a fairly big package, if you know what I mean. John West didn’t seem to have wieners or beans. He was a much more modest doll.

  My brother Duray hated me playing with his stuff, and G.I. Joe was his doll, after all. I mean, he would get really, really mad and threaten to kick all the spokes out of my precious bike or something equally horrifying, like hiding all of my marbles or pulling my underpants up to my waist. I can’t tell you how much I hated having my underpants pulled up to my waist. It was a terribly uncomfortable feeling. The underpants never survived the attack, but I knew how to get back at Duray.

  I threatened to tell my mother that he was stealing her maxi-pads to make G.I. Joe’s bunk beds—which he was—and that put an end to all his threats. Maxi-pads apparently made perfect little mattresses for G.I Joes. The old maxi-pads even had straps on them that you could tie to trees like little hammocks. The new ones had adhesive strips which weren’t really good for anything. (I remember the first time I used an adhesive-strip maxi-pad like it was this morning. I put in on upside down, which meant the adhesive strip was stuck on me and not my underpants, but I digress.)

  When we weren’t colouring or playing John and Jane West, Gary and I rode our tricycles around and around and around the block. (At this point we hadn’t clued in to the fact that riding bikes was exercise, and that we would one day hate every second of cardiovascular activity.) I knew where every crack was in every single inch of sidewalk. I knew where every kid lived and what their names were and what kind of swing set they had in their backyard. I knew what cars would be parked in the front driveways and when they came and went. My neighbourhood was mapped out in my heart and I never wanted anything about it to change.

  I had put a pet turtle into my pocket on one of those bike trips around the block with Gary, and sadly I
discovered it quite dead after a few hours of pedalling. Why I thought a turtle would survive inside my pants for hours is beyond me, but live and learn, I suppose. I cried rivers and oceans of tears over that dead turtle. I am sure Gary cried too. I hadn’t seen many dead things by that point in my life. We conducted a funeral for the turtle, said a few words to Jesus about “his only something-or-other son” and then proceeded to flush him/her down the toilet. John and Jane West also attended the funeral and were very straight-faced through the ceremony. Life, it seemed, was going to be getting harder.

  After the funeral, Gary and I took our twenty-five-cent allowances and walked down to the only convenience store in town and bought a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a cream soda, respectively. That would leave us with enough money to buy five pieces of Dubble Bubble gum. If I forwent the Dubble Bubble, I could buy a box of Eddylite Easy Strike matches. It was a hard decision to make. Gum or matches? Thank God they didn’t have flammable chewing gum.

  First the gum … I would chew all five pieces at the same time, almost causing my jaw to lock and my saliva to overtake my head. The pain was unbearable but necessary. You can’t chew just one piece of Dubble Bubble—that’s nuts. You have to have at least three pieces in your mouth to make it worth your while. You have to blow out a bubble at least as big as your head to make it any fun at all. You then have to pop the bubble so the gum sticks to your hair and perhaps end up cutting off some of your bangs. I never had to cut my bangs, unless you count the time I fell asleep with the wad of gum in my mouth and woke up with my whole head stuck to my pillow. The gum was the least of my problems. My parents could deal with the odd chunk of hair being cut off of my head. But when I opted not to buy gum, I bought wooden matches.