the voyage

It wasn't like an escape from Tibet through the high Himalayas without a yak but travel from England to North America in the early fifties wasn't without hardship of its own. In March of 1953 we traveled by train to Southhampton where we would board a ship to take us across the Atlantic. As we walked along a huge pier we saw a dozen tugboats towing a giant ship into dock. I don't remember the remarks between my parents as we watched its stately progress but it's a conversation that was recounted many times as I grew up. My mother said, 'How wonderful you found us such a beautiful ship to sail on. I know I won't be afraid in that'. To which my father replied, 'No, that's the Queen Mary and we won't be sailing on her. That's our ship just over to the left of us', and he pointed down at a little Greek liner docked nearby.

I didn't know why she was crying. I was six, a young six even for those times, and I remember standing in the doorway of our living room watching my mother cry as she finished laying out the china that had been sold along with the dining room set and all the other furniture. We were going to Canada because I was too weak to remain in England's damp climate in the post war years what with rationed food and overburdened hospitals - the ones that hadn't been bombed or burned. There were strict limits on how much immigrants could take on the ship so almost everything had to go. Even my dolls. I was allowed one but not my favorite because a neighbor had borrowed one of the others and had sewn and knitted little outfits for him. That was the one who came with us, packed away in a trunk somewhere.

We must have boarded but I have no memory of doing so. Do you remember I mentioned it was March? That's a very nasty time of year to sail the North Atlantic with its high waves, squalls and even storms blowing. The ship was small and not having the stabilizers used on modern cruise liners resulted in me not seeing my mother again until we reached the far shore. Seasickness is a very unpleasant experience. I had my own little cabin but was too ill to get out of my bunk. I have a vague memory of a stewardess bringing me a little bowl of mashed potatoes saying they would help settle my stomach. It must have worked.

Next morning my dad came to get me. He'd been in the navy for more than six years during the war and he loved ships. There was no way he was going to leave me throwing up and moaning with the mighty ocean waiting just along the companionway and up the stairs. He said the sea air would soon set me to rights. Warmly dressed and a little wobbly kneed at first I held his hand as we walked around the outer deck. I was fascinated enough by the gulls, the deck chairs, the life boats hanging near the rails, the ropes, the giant ventilators curving up from the deck and every big and little thing but my father had a destination in mind and urged me along.

He'd been making friends with the captain and the sailors too and had permission (at least I think he did) to take me on a visit to the engine room. We went through a door and down dimly lit long narrow staircases - far, far down. The throbbing noise of the engines grew louder as we went deeper into the ship. Finally we were at the last staircase and below us were dozens of men feeding boilers, turning dials, rushing back and forth as whistles blew, steam vented and bells clanged. It was pretty crazy. Meanwhile, my dad, who'd spent his navy career in just such a place, tried to tell me what everything was and how it all worked in harmony. I knew it was important to him that I understood but I was so completely boggled by the dirt, the dark, the heat and the overwhelming noise that I all I remember now is an impression of what I saw.

The trip lasted nearly eight days and was by far the longest time I'd ever spent alone with my father. Every day he'd take me by their cabin where my mother would give me a weak little wave before collapsing back into her blankets. Most of the other passengers rarely left their cabins to come on deck so my dad and I had the ship to ourselves. We visited the captain and officers on the bridge who were kind enough to let me hold the wheel until I got bored. They let me blow the foghorn too - which was okay because it was foggy that day. The dining room tables were like big trays with shallow wooden borders so your plate wouldn't slide off during heavy weather.

Everyone was supposed to participate in the lifeboat drill but dad and I were the only ones there the afternoon the sailors demonstrated their finesse at launching the things. He reminisced about riding zip lines between ships in waves much higher than these and told me about the naval battles and ships being bombed from the air. He learned how to swim from a ship in the Mediterranean when that sea was so clear you could see a mile down to the bottom. He told me most sailors don't swim because if your ship goes down there's no place to swim to. I had a feeling my mother wouldn't approve of all he told me.

There was one place we loved to go every day and that was to stand at the bow while the ship cut through the waves. Water poured through the scuppers and dad held my hand as we watched the sun set. He told me a little saying familiar to all sailors everywhere, ' They went to sea to see the world but all they saw was the sea'.

♥

how Crow met susan

Crow here. Since I've never told you how I first encountered susan I thought today would be a good time to remedy that oversight.

One spring morning long ago in human terms, but not so very distant in mine, I happened to be flying over the green rolling hills of the southern Ontario countryside. It had been a long flight that left me feeling in need of rest, so spying a tall tree just beginning to sprout it's foliage, I took on the guise of a normal crow and prepared to land. What to my surprise should I discover beneath the tree but a little girl making dandelion garlands? She seemed to be perfectly content but it was a strange place to find a child all alone for it was a cemetery and not too far away from where she sat were rows of old headstones and a little old church in the distance.

Being too curious to maintain my usual reserve I had to ask, 'Why are you out here by yourself, child?'
Not the least surprised about being addressed by a bird she answered, 'I just got expelled from Sunday school.'
'Why was that?'
'The teacher told me since I wouldn't stop asking impossible questions and was disrupting the class I couldn't be there anymore.'
'Does that upset you?'
'No, I like it out here better.'
'What's better about out here than in there?'
'Out here I don't care about the questions I asked in there.'
'I see.'

I stayed nearby until her father drove into the lane near the church and she ran off to meet him. By then I'd taken an interest and planned to return.

The next time I saw her was winter, nearly Christmas, and a school pageant featuring a play written by her teacher had been planned and rehearsed for weeks. The expected captive audience of these events - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins and neighbors - were all gathered to see the children perform. As I stood in the wings waiting while they donned their costumes and all was made ready on stage I found a copy of the script which appeared to be about Santa, Mrs. Santa, toy making elves and the reindeer having a boisterous adventure on their way to meet the Baby Jesus and his retinue. Forgive me for not being able to discern a more detailed plot synopsis but it was clear the writer was never going to challenge my old friend Will Shakespeare. The good thing about it was that it allowed parts for all the children of the second grade as well as their pets and some favorite toys to be on the stage at once. The audience members were checking their Brownies and flash attachments.



The curtains parted and the play began. Unfortunately, the children had only rehearsed in daytime without an audience and without the pets dressed up with bells and antlers. Chaos ensued.

Suddenly one little girl yelled, 'Stop!' and everybody went very still and looked at her. Wearing her little fairy crown and fancy dress my little susan imperiously and in no uncertain terms told the other children they were standing in the wrong places and weren't delivering the correct lines. So they all shuffled around and started over while the audience erupted in gales of laughter. Her parents, sitting near the front, tried to hide their embarrassment.

How could I not love a little girl like that? She was going to need some help.

childhood summer

In 1954, not too long after the end of WWII, with England heavily rationed, hospitals laboring to look after the wounded and much of the country still scarred by bomb craters and debris, my parents decided to move to Canada with their asthmatic daughter.. me. We went directly to cottage country by a little lake 25 miles north of Toronto and that's where I grew up.

Lake Wilcox was close enough to the city that it was a very popular spot on summer weekends. Although you could drive to the bigger lakes further north, doing so wasn't practical back then since the only way to get to them was by two lane roads many of which weren't paved. Going that far was possible but it had to be for a week or two just to make the drive practical. So never mind Sauble Beach on Lake Huron with its miles of white sand, Sunday picnics often meant Ash's Beach at Lake Wilcox and it sometimes seemed as if half the population of Toronto drove in. The cars were filled with irritated sweaty grownups and tons of kids just plain looking for a place to stop. Most of the beaches were private and there were no parking lots so once the park itself was was full the only hope of a spot was a slim chance that someone with a pregnant woman would have to drive to the hospital right that minute. Come to think of it there were likely a few babies born in those circling cars. All was chaos on the weekends.

But there was a roadhouse with beer (except on Sunday when people brown bagged the stuff), pool tables, pinball machines and a good size contingent of bikers usually on hand. Across the road was Ash's booth that sold soft drinks, ice cream, burgers, fries and hotdogs. Next to it was the entrance down the stairs to the beach and next to that was the dance hall - jukebox, jitterbug heaven. I didn't get out of the house after dark to check the nighttime action for years but we knew it could be dangerous.



































Even though the weekends were crazy and the nights could be it was the days that belonged to us kids and the mothers who occasionally paid attention to what we were getting up to. We spent the summers in and around the water. There were artesian springs that fed the lake and we loved finding where they'd sprung up from one summer to another. You could put your arm or leg into what appeared to be a wet hole in the beachgrass and feel the icy cold as deep as you could reach while the sun baked the rest of you. We'd cover each other with wet clay and then go dashing into the lake to clean off. Since I wasn't allowed to swim until July I often had to find other ways to entertain myself and one of my personal favorite places was a very old and decrepit roller skating rink further along the beach. There were hundreds of pairs of old roller skates lining the walls and the trick was to find a pair the right size with unbroken straps you could fasten to your shoes. I liked to spend hours pretending I was a famous skating queen or a magic flying fairy.

Now our own beach was a lot of fun but the cool place to go during the week was Ash's Beach. Every winter big dump trucks filled with sand would drive out onto the lake and dump their loads on the ice of Ash's so there'd be mostly sand under the water and not weeds.. a very big yuck to all of us. There were also things to play on at Ash's - water slides, diving boards, rafts that floated on big empty barrels and the boats. All of them were great places to play pirate and, since every year Mary Martin appeared live on television to do her Peter Pan role, we were all very big fans of pirates.



































Jean Ash, who was also mother to two of the kids, ran the ticket area for the beach. The .25 cent admission was about as much as any of us got as a whole weeks allowance so paying admission wasn't exactly on the agenda. But Jean was very cool, our own local version of Bettie Page who really had seen everything, and she pretended not to notice when we came swimming around the fences that went out into the water. She'd even tell us stories about some of the wackier people who came to swim - like the butch women who demanded to rent men's bathing trunks. None of us knew what to make of that but it was pretty funny.

One of our favorite activities was climbing down the rope that anchored the rafts. The idea was to stay down there holding your breath as long as possible. Strangely enough, me with my asthmatic chest, won those contests more than anyone else.

Then there was the Booth. My friend Rita's mother was one of the women charged with watching me since both my parents had jobs in Toronto and Linda's mother worked at the Booth doing the food preparation and serving the customers. One weekday afternoon Linda and I heard shrieks of laughter from behind the closed shutters so sneaked inside to have a look at what all the fun was about. A lot of ladies at that time were what you might term statuesque, not necessarily fat but big, buxom women who'd given birth to several children. An old brass balance scale was part of the kitchen equipment inside and when we peeked around the ice cream coolers we couldn't believe what we saw them doing. There were five women with their blouses unbuttoned and their bras lifted up or unfastened and they were having a contest of their own to see who among them had the biggest, heaviest breasts. Linda and I sneaked back out without them knowing we'd been there.