Chinese take out - on Route 66

 ROUTE 66 is what I have named my #alonetogether memoire - staying in place and hiding while the globe is experiencing Chinese take out.

What a terrible thing that so many apartment children have had their right to play taken away this year, and yet maybe the home atmosphere might re-awaken earlier times when we moved at a slower pace and took time to get to know one another.  It is hard to imagine all of the modern challenges when I only know living in a house that my parents purchased the year I was born and two years after they arrived to the shores of the New World. My immigrant parents arrived as Displaced People I guess it was a derogatory term back in the day and yet they managed to give me a beautiful childhood and gifted me with sweet memories that still yield a warm feeling of home.  Random memories of the shadows the Chestnut tree cast on my bedroom wall on a moonlit night still are clear pictures in my mind. Years later - as I moved to different rooms, in that same red brick house, I realized that my bedroom in those early years, was actually the room adjacent to living room and eventually became the piano room. My parents slept in what was meant to be the dining room. The living room always was the living room. The decor changed over the five decades my mother lived the house and in due course all of the rooms ended up being used as they were originally designed. Back in 1953 the bedrooms upstairs were rented out to single Latvians who were looking for a place to call home and the rent money supplemented my parents' income, much needed to pay for a house and feed a family. A poignant reflection as so many families have lost jobs and line up at food banks, April 2020.

My pre-school years were rich indeed - thanks in large part to the people who were my shepherds and  thanks to my cultural heritage of my motherland and my family in particular.  Children don't know the value of shiny things, or material things in general but if they feel the comfort of love and laughter and don't experience hunger then they are off to a wonderful start in life. I certainly don't have any memories of feeling deprived but I do have vivid memories of the sounds and smells from a simpler time.  Bells were used everywhere and were as common as bird song. each bell had a different ring. Church bells used to fill the still Sunday morning air - a musical mix of chimes some close and some far away. Hearing the bell of the knife man coming down Kinnell Street would make my mother and grandmother hurry about to look if any knives and scissors needed to be sharpened. The sound of a horses hooves coming from Inchbury Street announced the rag man way before I could hear his call. The milk man and bread man travelled in trucks and didn't really make identifiable sounds for my ears but they both delivered their goods right to the milk box, built into our 1917 house - a luxury feature that was included in many other houses up until the who knows when. The egg man delivered regularly on Saturdays and he was the one and only man who would come into our kitchen and chat about current events and the happenings at his farm. I understood him to be a man who lived this exotic life and didn't really understand much about what a farm was but I was captivated by his hands.  Hands which had large swollen fingers and were grey from what I thought was dirt and hands that didn't look soft and pink/white like my parents.  He would talk at length about things I didn't understand, and the conversations which seemed to last hours to a mesmerized kid probably were more like five minutes long. This was our world in Hamilton, Ontario in the 1950's, a precursor to AMAZON delivery but the weekly service came with knowing the names of the egg man, milk man and bread man and subliminally learning the fine art of pleasant exchanges and developing an interest in the people we encounter and their lives.

Our Milk Box was accessed through the back porch. There were three grey wooden steps that led up to the porch door and once inside there was the entry door to the house kitchen. The milk box was to the left of the glass panel kitchen door.  The milk box had one door on the outside of the house and the second door opened to the inside of the house.  Milk, cream, cottage cheese, sour cream and butter would be left in the cool cavity created by the brick walls. Once I learned to print, my assigned and valuable family chore was to fill out the order form for the milk man and this chore was assigned quite early in my life. Important to note - my mother dictated and I made the appropriate check marks.

 My mother taught at Latvian school which was held weekly on Saturday mornings. Two years old I simply had to tag along to her classroom and sit by her side while she taught older kids, day care had yet to be invented.  I remember sitting quietly by my mother's side, probable a memory tweaked to perfection with time. I sat quietly because my mother kept me occupied challenging me to draw sticks and circles which eventually became letters and numbers.
Latvian school was housed in the Latvian Lutheran church building, across the street from St Patrick' Catholic Church and near the local Red Cross. This was a serious destination and knew it the instant I heard the sound of the door hinges and the smell of linoleum clad stairs leading into the church basement. The stairs and a metal edge that made a distinct hollow sound depending on the weight of the feet pounding the surface. The cloak room was to the left of the basement landing and descended even deeper into this Saturday world. The basement auditorium remained the same for years, and was  where the big important assemblies were held and the room where I met Old Man Christmas who gave every excited child a cloth sac filled with treats that to this day I search out in mid December to have the feeling of Christmas recreated. Small round hard white icing ginger bread cookies that can still be found in German stores and paper wrapped "cow" brand fudge candies made in Poland. Some nice people of meagre means sewed these small cotton satchels and filled them and thereby spread the joy and magic to those Latvian immigrant kids. We were gifted with love.

Miss Smith taught Kelly Kirby at the Royal Conservatory of Music another important building in my life and far more impressive to my tiny brain.  I was enrolled in a group class when I was three years old. Miss Smith's class was at the end of the long corridor of doors where all of the music studios and practice rooms were. It took ages to walk down the long hallway and my ears would hear violin sounds piano sounds and sometimes a horn sound.  Accordion was something I only heard in the Latvian school basement, and I did become a terrible snob looking down on anyone who played what is actually a difficult instrument!  Kelly Kirby method had kids drawing sticks and circles and soon thanks to Latvian school, and Miss Smith's Kelly Kirby Class I mastered drawings sticks and circles and learned to find middle C and was on my way read musical notes.
Sticks and circles led to printing and printing led to 'Majorin Kundze'. She had beautiful cursive writing and supervised the early writing lessons for all the kids back in Latvian school. Majorin kundze had another great talent - she made beautiful cakes. Her other important role was that of the Latvian Girl Guide leader. She taught us how to sew and embroider.

 There was one slight problem. By the time I showed up at Loretto Academy for Grade one, I knew how to write in cursive. The Loretto sisters were (are) a teaching order - founded by Mary Ward back in the Middle Ages, 1609.  Mary Ward was a trail blazer in that she did not enter the nunnery seeking a contemplative life. She established a religious community and opened schools for girls as she believed women were as capable as men as long as girls were given education.  Somehow my mother registered my sister at Loretto Academy and when the time came I too entered this important life shaper institution.  Grade one at Loretto Academy meant learning to print. I was six years old now I  knew instinctively that it would be bad form to tell the nuns I could write in cursive. I can remember sitting at my grade one desk, afraid to be put in the polly wog pond and followed instructions.
I guess that is when I learned to be a rule follower and not to show off if I wanted to win friends and influence people.


And that is how I remember grade one and sitting still.