Memories of childhood

This weekend I watched a panel discussion about the OFOS dynamic, and it reminded me of an article that I had written that is being published elsewhere and thought I would include a snippet in today's blog. These passages concern a period when as a very young child I lived in a large Victorian manor house, with rooms that were given to “working women", and to my grandmother.

…I remember distinctly that feeling of confusion and anger at being told that I was “just a girl”. On the day, Sheila, one of the women who worked upstairs, after hearing my story kissed me on the cheek and offered to get me cake and a glass of milk, and brought me to the upstairs living room. I loved visiting that room, it was always full of the most beautiful women who would talk excitedly among themselves, often forgetting that I was there. I would sit quietly in a room that smelled like an exotic garden, watching what seemed to me the artistry of a magician at work as they would spray and coif their hair and apply makeup, all the time laughing at stories that I didn’t understand. To me, each of these women was more beautiful than any storybook princess, and Sheila, the most beautiful of all. On this day that stays clear in my memory, I had been sitting on the sofa next to Sheila watching her apply the red to her lips when she suddenly and unexpectantly redirected her conversation to me “But you little one will never be like that, I know that you will be different and will always treat a lady right”, with no idea what she was talking about I nodded in agreement, as I would have done to anything she would have asked of me.

In the grand house, at the very top floor, in an apartment where the ceilings followed the line of the roof, lived my grandmother, and I couldn’t have loved anyone more than I did her. My grandmother was fluent in French and English and would often switch back and forth between the two languages in a single conversation. She had lived an extraordinary life worthy of a best-selling novel. My grandmother loved me, a love that came with clear expectations of the behaviors that I was to demonstrate. I was always to stand when a woman did, always offer a woman my seat, and when I got bigger, I was to learn to help her with her coat, and said my grandmother, if the woman had no coat, I was to offer her mine if there was a chill in the air. I was always to open and hold the door allowing the woman to pass through it first. I was to pick up what she dropped, and at 6 years old I knew I was to offer to light a woman’s cigarette. My grandmother informed me that I was never to allow a woman to walk on the side of the pavement closest to the road; and she took me for a walk to demonstrate why, as we witnessed the passing cars kick up water at the curb-sided pedestrians. My grandmother taught me which fork to use with which course, the appropriate ways to eat different foods, where my elbows went, and that there was no sin in being poor just acting as though you were; true wealth wasn’t measured by coins. Manners, and knowing how to behave, she said would open doors and give me access to places and experiences that no amount of money could ever do. And in my grandmothers’ eyes, as long as I never let my manners fail, I could do no wrong. I could play outside from sunrise till sunset, wear clothes bought for my brother, and donated by friends. I could pretend to be a cowboy, an astronaut, a soldier, a builder, or a race car driver. She never reacted when on some evenings I would sit with her on her bed in her tiny room, and tell her how Tracey wanted to marry me, but was upset that I kissed Sonia. My grandmother said nothing as I explained that I would prefer not to have a wife, just lots of girlfriends. And sometimes she would let me put a little dab of the aftershave she would on occasion wear because she “preferred the smell of it, rather than perfume” on her skin.