Swing Low (9 page)

Occasionally his sisters or one or two ladies from the church would take pity on my grandfather and bring a hot meal of something other than eggs to the house or offer to do the laundry or wash the floors or the children or both. Over the years, however, it became clear that my grandfather would need regular help in the home and with the children,
especially during the seeding and harvesting seasons, which found him out on the fields virtually day and night. He had during this time attempted to court a fine young woman from down the road, but alas, she had turned him down.

After mulling it over a bit with his sisters, it was agreed that my grandfather would “hire a girl” to help him. In exchange for room and board (and all the eggs she could eat) this girl would keep house and mind the children. Word quickly got out that Grandfather was looking for a housekeeper, and in no time a seventeen-year-old Holdeman (an extremely conservative sect of Mennonites) girl was hired by committee (the sisters) and put to work. It turned out to be a very good arrangement for all concerned. My grandfather was able to farm without worrying about the children, the children adored Helen the Holdeman girl, and Helen relished her so-called independence from her strict parents.

What happened next is predictable. My grandfather and Helen fell in love. How perfect for everyone, you might think, may they all live happily ever after, and may my grandmother rest in peace. Unfortunately, as usual, it was more complicated than that. When Helen’s parents found out she was being courted by my grandfather they forbade her to remain in his employ, took her back home, and locked her in her upstairs bedroom. Why did they object so strongly to any type of romantic entanglement between their daughter and my grandfather? Not because he was an older widower in his early thirties with several dependent children, or that she was a minor, or that he was an impoverished farmer, or that he ate too many eggs, but because he was not a Holdeman, and Holdemans are forbidden to
marry outside of their church. And of course at that time one did not have relationships outside of marriage. It would have been assumed that if my grandfather and the Holdeman girl were in love, that they were planning to marry.

So there was Grandfather, back to square one, except that now instead of losing one woman, he had lost two. The Mennonite church he belonged to grudgingly allowed its members to marry Holdemans, who would then become ordinary Mennonites, but Holdemans were not allowed to marry ordinary Mennonites, who were thought to be too liberal-minded, which is all relative considering that the Ordinary Mennonite Church used to shun and cast out members that bought soft-top cars, owned radios, danced, smoked, drank, doubted, or had red telephones installed in their homes or avocado-coloured fridges.

My grandfather managed to send a message to Helen. He would appear at her window the next day while her parents were at evangelistic meetings, and, if she were willing, they would go to the city together and elope. If not, he would understand (or try to) and never interfere with her again.

The next day at the appointed hour, my grandfather, perched on a ladder, appeared at her window (I suppose there were no dogs in the yard) and Helen gave him her answer: Yes! But accompanied by tears, no doubt, for she was only seventeen and about to leave childhood behind forever. One day she’s locked up in her bedroom like an unruly child and the next she’s the wife of a thirty-four-year-old farmer and stepmother of four! I wonder sometimes if, by eloping with Helen, my grandfather was acting selfishly, but that’s a troublesome thought that brings into question
the very nature of love and need and so on and I haven’t the time to delve into it.

The two of them caught a train in Giroux and spent a day in the city of Winnipeg having their picture taken (not allowed by Grandfather’s church, too vain) and shopping for new clothes (ditto, clothes were to be made by hand) and, ultimately, being married by a justice of the peace (not done!).

I’m not sure who took care of the children while Helen and my grandfather were sinning in the city, but I imagine the older girl, who was to become my kindly Aunt Margaret, would have known how to prepare eggs at least.

For some reason or other, maybe because the elders of the church pitied my unfortunate grandfather, his wife’s death, failing crops, hungry kids, or maybe because a collective inner secret part of them admired his pluck, who knows, they shunned him and his bride for three months only. My grandfather was required to confess his sins to the Brotherhood, a group of church elders, and then was asked to wait in the church lobby while the Brotherhood hammered out the details of his shunning. When the elders finally emerged from the sanctuary with the verdict, they found my grandfather slumped over on a wooden chair, fast asleep.

That is my favourite detail in the story. The Brotherhood could do with him what they liked. He had what he wanted. He and Helen went on to have thirteen children together in addition to Groutfodasch Abe and the three older kids at home.

I
would like to have my grandfather here with me now, telling me even more about that time, perhaps dandling my father, Henry, on his knee. My father as a child, before the time he cried at Mrs. I.Q. Unger’s kitchen table. It’s interesting that my father, after a three-month depression spent in bed, became an egg producer! One would think he’d had enough of eggs. Or perhaps he realized their intrinsic value as they had kept not only him but his entire family alive in the years after his mother’s death. Perhaps the egg came to symbolize comfort for my father. Perhaps the business of selling reasonably priced quality eggs was, in my father’s mind, an act of kindness. It was my father’s uncle, the brother of his mother, the woman who died of a blood clot at the age of twenty-six, who gave him a loan to start his egg business after denying him a raise at his job at the feed-mill, after which sales at the feedmill plummeted.

As a young man, before I went to normal school (no jokes, please), I worked for my father, delivering eggs to restaurants in the city. How I hated it! Some of these upscale restaurants had the filthiest kitchens I’d ever seen. I’d make mental notes of these deplorable conditions, going to elaborate lengths all my life to avoid having to dine at those establishments. Even as an older man, as a grandfather, I remembered the conditions of certain restaurants (bug infestation, vermin, rodents, mould, rot, mildew, animal droppings), some of which are still operating today.

I recall a time I made Elvira laugh. It’s funny now because I hadn’t thought it very funny then, if you know what I mean, but Elvira had been through some hard times and needed a bit of relief, I imagine. On this occasion she had accompanied me on my egg-delivery duties and our last stop of the day was the CN train station on Main Street. After dropping off the eggs I crumpled up the carbon copy of the receipt and dropped it down a stairwell in the station. I said, Call your floor, please! For some reason Elvira found my imitation of an Eaton’s elevator lady hilarious, and it was some time before she could stop laughing and carry on any type of conversation. Of course, because I was me and not Benny Hill, I was more alarmed than flattered. I felt that her laughter was disproportionate to the strength of the joke, and I remember thinking I’d have to muzzle myself next time we were in public together to avoid the undue attention of strangers if she was going to laugh at the drop of a hat — or a carbon copy.

Later that same day, Elvira and I were enjoying Cokes in a local restaurant, and I guess I was talking a bit about my
awful job, my hatred of chickens and eggs and so on, and in the course of this I must have mentioned the word “capons.” Elvira, knowing very little about chicken farming, asked me what a capon was. I was flustered by the question. Er, well, a chicken that’s … male, but … well, you know hens are females … er, and well, a rooster is … Elvira couldn’t contain her laughter. I have often wondered if she had known all along what a capon was and was simply having another go at me.

I have forgotten the time. I see red numbers on the clock radio but I don’t know what they mean, or what they signify. It is the “time” I know, but … I have forgotten my call again, or have forgotten to make my call. How will I know when to do it? What is wrong with right now? Well … am I agitated? Check my file! And make a note: Dwindling spirits — Will rally. By the way, the impatient nurse has left my room. Her parting words: You’re not helping yourself.

What I need to do at this time is follow Samuel de Champlain’s example and establish an Order of Good Cheer. Unfortunately, the only other patient I know is Hercules, and he weighs less than four pounds and is going home soon anyway.

If I were to attempt to establish an Order here at the hospital, who would join? Apparently my days of establishing Orders of Good Cheer are over, as are Champlain’s. I always enjoyed that point in our studies. It was a favourite assignment of mine, a chance for my students to come up with extravagant costumes and often hilarious renditions of life in the early 1600s.

Every year the creativity and innovation of my students amazed me. I remember the year Jerry Goosen played the role of Champlain with such fiery intensity that he forced his scurvy-ridden settlers, at gunpoint, to “kneel” and “obey” and “now celebrate properly.” Naturally a few of the girls began to giggle and one or two boys, pretending to be drunk on apple cider, made vomiting sounds, which so infuriated our young Champlain that he fired off a round of caps from the gun that he had earlier assured me was empty, while screaming at top volume for the real fun to begin. Obviously he had taken the Order of Good Cheer literally. I quickly intervened and told poor Jerry that a very loose adaptation of events was all that was needed and certainly
gunfire was unnecessary. But Jerry then reminded me that Champlain had had a tendency to fire off his rifle at strange times, particularly while battling with the Iroquois. Yes, Jerry, I said, but this is the Order of Good Cheer. These are Champlain’s own men! (And women: it wasn’t historically accurate that women would have been involved with the Order, but we made this adjustment to accommodate the girls in the class who refused to dress up as men.) Yes, I know, said Jerry, but I have to be fierce with my own men because later they come up with a plot to murder me, which I barely escape. It says so in the book. And why would they want to kill a man they liked?

And it was true. Unfortunately, my principal at the time reprimanded me for flagrant misuse of the classroom and questioned my motives in allowing my students to dress up and “play act with loaded guns.” Naturally I assured him that it wouldn’t happen again and that the students had learned a lot from the exercise. But I was upset by his reaction.

Tell him to blow it out his ear, Elvira said as she slid a bowl of vanilla ice cream topped with the usual chocolate syrup, banana slices, and chopped walnuts across the kitchen table. Eat this, you’ll feel better. Elvira and I, and later the girls, enjoyed this special dessert twice a day, after lunch and supper, for many, many years, and after the first bowl Elvira would always say, How ’bout another one? She could, when it came to ice cream, eat us all under the table. Some days I would come home from work to find her and her brother-in-law, Lorne (a diabetic!), hunkered over a tub of Heavenly Hash, spoons in hand, not even bothering with bowls, and competing for the soft, smooth ice cream that lined the
outer edges of the cardboard container. Even in her early forties, when she announced that she was going on a diet consisting of half-grapefruits and dry whole wheat toast, and beginning an exercise regimen that involved riding her blue bicycle twice around the town perimeter, she refused to give up her ice cream desserts. She insisted that, with the addition of the banana slices and chopped walnuts, they provided her with a complete protein.