My Last Years At Rollo Bay Consolidated

From Grades 4-8 I have lots of memories, but no pictures that I can find. Things are certainly different today. Parents document a child's whole life before they're even born, on a phone or other device. There is no event too small, too insignificant to add to the photo reel. I love taking pictures, I always have, but I'll never be an expert, and that's okay. I have lots of pictures of my kids at different stages, and today of course, the phone is a source of entertainment and a place for archives. It's so easy to take reems of photos, sort them out later, create a file for them, and pick and choose from them if needed. And sharing! Well, it's so easy and doesn't cost a dime!

But for any photos of my brothers or me during this time period, well, I lost a needle in a haystack once, and I'd have better luck finding that.

My brother Darrell mentioned that he disliked Father's Day and Mother's Day while in school, and I wasn't overly fond of it either. It's only natural for teachers to find some time to encourage their students to make an appropriate card for their parent, and I'm sure they were lovely. Kids still do that today, I know I loved getting my cards over the years from my children.

I don't remember Mother's Day so much, but I remember one Father's Day that seems to have stuck with me. It's in June of course, near the end of the school year, but still during lobster fishing.

Well, this particular class, the teacher had a student, a girl whose name was Maureen, but Maureen was hopeless at any kind of crafts. So the teacher made a big friggin fuss out of me, pointing out that since "Nova's pretty good at drawing, and since she doesn't have a father, perhaps she'd make your card for you. You wouldn't mind that, would you Nova?"

Well, in my adult mind sitting at my computer on this cool crisp morning, I can think of several things that could have been said. A smart retort perhaps. But even as I'm typing this, I am transported back to this poor kid at the mercy of this thoughtless woman, squirming in my seat, just wanting to leave the room, but too scared to ask. And again, I am not laying blame on that teacher, that was probably a great way to get me involved, plus help another kid.

But's that's not how I took it. I had to go and sit with Maureen and ask what she wanted on her card, fold a piece of paper and then start. Turns out her father was a fisherman, so she wanted a lobster on the card. Well, I remember clearly drawing and coloring a lobster on the paper. I didn't have a father who was a fisherman, but I had an uncle Everett who spent time on the shore with me, and taught me exactly how to find and catch lobsters, (and how to yodel) and take them home to cook. Now there's a clear memory, I knew damn well that lobsters are green, not red. I thought I was smart. I colored that lobster the prettiest color green you ever saw! Maureen thought it was great!

Well, guess who didn't think it was great? Yep, the teacher, who took the time to make sure each and every kid in that class had the opportunity to laugh their ass off as she held up the card to show them. I had to do the walk of shame as I headed back to my seat. There are no words to describe the profound embarrassment I felt. At ten or eleven years of age, I keenly felt the criticism of all my classmates. And any future projects that required working in pairs or groups, or being held up for scrutiny by my peers, I avoided. I just crawled into my shell, which by now was growing heavy.

In comparison, if you were drawing a beautiful black and white cow, you'd color it black and white, it's natural color, not brown and red, as in medium rare, when it's cooked. Boy, I never forgot that mistake.

But speaking of the shore, any time Everett was home from out West or the Beaufort Sea or whever he worked, that's where he would spend his time. We loved tagging along, and Darrell spent far more time with him than I did, but he was great fun. And he really could pry lobsters out from under the rocks, but this was well before the times of conservation and licensing and so forth. Everybody did it, there seemed no harm. Well, to us kids anyway! He would sing and holler and yodel, til his voice was ringing off the cliffs, just echo after echo. Then finish off by digging a bucket of clams.

Half my father's siblings lived in the States, Boston primarily. His brother Merlin married a girl from Boston and moved down there, and two sisters Mildred and Anna moved to different parts of Boston also.

Mildred was a Registered Nurse who worked in a large city hospital, St. Elizabeth, I think. This was in the early 60's when the Boston Strangler was still on the loose, assaulting and murdering women, and Mildred often was on her own to walk to and from shifts. It would have been a very unsettling time. She often spoke of it and told harrowing stories of that time, when she was finally safe and sound back on PEI. She and her husband Terry raised seven kids through some pretty tough times.

Another sister Anna also married an Island boy and they made Boston their home. Anna had a distinctive laugh that would ring out and you couldn't help but laugh too. She was awesome. My favorite memory of my aunt Anna is pretty sweet and pivotal to my adolescence and growing up.

In my seventh grade or around that time it became obvious that although Momma wished none of us would grow up, Nova was. As puberty raised it's nasty self, it dragged me along, none too happy. But there you have it. Everett used to ask me where I got the sweater with the bumps on it, but I digress. It was humiliating, as any girl that age would agree.

We only saw Anna and her handsome husband Charlie for a couple of weeks in the summer, and we got to reconnect with our three cousins Charlene, Billy and Shelley. And there was no one who loved the flats and walking the shore like Anna. It was legendary, she was definitely a cousin of Jopy Perry; the shore was their church.

One day, I'll never forget it, I can even tell you what the weather was like, Anna called me aside and took me to Momma's bedroom. Momma wasn't there, and I'm sure this little encounter was well planned.

From behind her back Anna passed me a little parcel and when I saw what it was, I'm sure you could have lit a match on my ears, I was that embarrassed. Mortified. It was one of those tiny little "training" bras, the ones some of us of a certain vintage can remember. There were actually two of them, one white and one blue, and Anna just gently spoke to me as she showed me how to put it on and adjust it. She was so kind and quiet, and then somehow lots of words were spoken. She asked me if I had any questions, and she hinted at the next big part of growing up that was going to soon start. She assured me not to be frightened and we'd talk some more later. I think, in fact know, that she sensed it was going to be a rough time for me, with essentially no one to talk to, and Momma would just roar and light another cigarette if I said anything about the changes I was experiencing.

Anna was so gentle, and next time she came, she had a supply of other products that she patiently went over with me until I wasn't so shy anymore. Without a mother to steer me into adulthood, I'm not sure who would have helped me, but I've always been glad that I had that to share with Anna. I will never forget her.

It was to be my last experience with my beautiful aunt Anna, as she died later that year in her early thirties. She had given birth to her fourth baby, who sadly did not survive, and while in hospital she had a brain hemorrhage and did not make it. She was on life support until Momma could get to Boston to see her and hold her one last time, calling her "little Anna bug." I remember it as a very dark time in our family, with Momma being dealt another terrible blow to absorb. And I will add that some of these details are sketchy and I was just a kid, so no one spoke to me about it, most of what I learned was told to me years later.

Charlie must have been made of some special kind of fiber. How terrified he must have been, being left to mourn his wife and baby, and try to face the future and rear these kids. But he did, and made some job of it. They are wonderful people, all three, and he made sure that every summer when he came home (he was from Ft. Augustus) the kids spent time with their grandmother, Momma. We watched them grow up too.

And if you're still reading, thank you, and I will share a couple more stories.

Momma was a voracious reader, she read every thing she could get her hands on and it wasn't that easy for her to get something to read. She loved picking up books and magazines at Larters and The Snack Bar. She loved "a little sauce" in her books, as her summer neighbor Mrs. Roach would say. She'd buy Harlequin Romance by the dozen at Bill's Used Furniture, she loved picking up cheap reading there. And speaking of cheap, do you remember the "True Confessions" magazines, and others like it? Oh my god, talk about subterfuge and covert operations. By today's standards they were pretty clean. But any time my grandmother got a trip to Souris to do some shopping, and then smuggled a "Larter's Pharmacy" bag into the bedroom, I had all the heightened senses of an RCMP sniffer dog.

What was in that bag that she swished right into her bedroom with, and closed the door?

Junk food perhaps? She had a legendary sweet tooth.

A perscription? No doubt.

A dirty little romance magazine? I just knew there was one hidden in her bedroom somewhere. I just had to wait til she was out of the house for a few minutes. And that was rare.

And oh the glee when I found it! And I always did, I was a nosy little 12-13 year old, with no where to find stuff out. And although the reading material didn't have an age recommendation, and really was just garbage, I could read those juicy articles faster than General Lee went through Richmond, as my friend Donna says. I devoured them. And I found out lots of information that I filed away for later, when I was old enough to wear make-up and date. What a brat I must have been. But hey, wasn't that my job?

Another wonderful memory I have from those years was learning how to skate! I cannot even find the words to describe the feeling of truly finding something that I loved so much. To find a patch of ice in a frozen field, or be the first one on the freshly Zamboni-ed sheet of ice, with that particular "rink" smell, feeling that cold air as you glide around the familiar oval, well it can't be beat. And it's one more thing to add to the list of things the Mooney family did for me.

During a Christmas break at this time I spent a few days at the farm and winter seemed to come earlier in those days than it does now. At any rate, winter had arrived, everything was frozen, you could ski from the house to the barn, snow was thick on the roofs, steam rose off the animals when they ventured out to the barnyard and it was COLD!

There was a lot of kids out there, and neighbor kids too, and one late afternoon it was announced that the pit had frozen over! Well, that meant nothing to me, but it seemed to excite everyone else. So nothing doing, everybody was going skating. I got quiet, (a rare occurrence, I'll admit) and nobody noticed that, but my uncle Art caught on. Nova didn't know how to skate. And I certainly didn't own a pair of skates. They weren't going to leave me behind though, so between the jigs and the reels, someone found an old pair they thought might fit, and my cousin Irene took me under her wing. A group of us walked down the St. Catherine's road til we got to the pit road, and we walked in there. It was sheltered from the wind, a blessing because that wind was relentless and bitter. It was like any pit, a hollow in the ground surrounded by trees, unseen from the road, and enough water had collected that it had frozen quite smoothly, some rough spots, but what did I know. I think at one point there was talk of Art dropping off a bale of straw for a bonfire, but if I was paid I don't remember if there was or not.

But somehow Irene tied the way-too-big skates on my little feet, and by jesus, I wasn't getting off the ice til I was skating. I learned to hate skating that day.

Most of my skating was either on my knees, my poor elbows, or my ass. I was battered and bruised and full of hot tears, and saw no redeeming qualities in it. I just wanted to go back to the nice warm farmhouse where I knew Kathleen and Art were probably enjoying some well deserved peace and quiet, but there would also be some awesome food waiting.

My ankles and feet were killing me, since the skates didn't fit, and I was getting pretty sore. It was soon time to go, and I was never so happy to get something off my feet and get my boots back on. There was a lot of us, including Harold, the closest Mooney to my age, we are the same age in fact, and no doubt Eric, Errol, Merlin, David were there and perhaps some of the younger ones, but it was a bitter cold evening by now and I don't remember. There was Hennesseys too and god knows who else, but upon leaving there was one thing I'll never forget. There was a weak spot on the edge of the pond, and Irene was doing perhaps her last lap, but the ice broke, and she fell and got soaked to the skin. Why I'll always remember it is because in the very chilly air, her pants froze solid as the crew made its' way back down the St. Catherine's Road. She could hardly move her legs, she was frozen right into her pants. But it didn't seem to bother the rest of us, as we skipped and hollered and told jokes and pitched snowballs and headed for the house. Poor Irene!

But a couple days later, a different pair of skates was found, gleaming white figure skates, closer to my size, and we went again. Now, that was better! I learned to love skating that day. It still wasn't graceful, or pretty, but I found my feet. And like riding a bike, I was off! I just needed practice. And that one little seemingly unimportant event touched off a life long love of skating, and perhaps in different circumstances I could have pursued it. I was fast, and competed all over the Island til my High School years. Only someone who has toed the line in a freezing cold rink, among top competitors, nervous and uncertain if I needed to pee or throw up or both, just waiting in the silence for a whistle can understand why people continue to do it for years. It was exhilarating, even with no one to watch or cheer me on.

I made sure all my kids learned to skate, and I continued skating with them all as they entered school and the skate program. Perhaps they didn't all love it, but like bikes, they know what to do. And they've played together and skated together as adults. And even at 65, I sometimes wish I'd kept it up.

If you're still reading, thanks, more next week...........