On Solid Ground
Danielle's solace was Claude. She held him against her as he fed from her breast. He gave her a feeling of warmth, of fullness, of intimacy. He was her flesh and blood, he was near her, of her, with her. A distant husband and quarrelsome children could not undo the haven of close communion where Danielle and her child were one.
Then Georges broke his wife's heart: "It is time to wean Claude," he said with determination.
Yes, I said that. I said it with the insensitivity of a man who can never hope to penetrate that mysterious world of mother and child. But I said it with conviction. I had discovered that I wanted my wife and lover back. The corpse must be made to live again. I needed her badly as I felt she must need me. And the house was becoming cold as its central heating system — our common affection — had broken down.
As long as Danielle breast-fed our child, we could not break out of the prison of solitude. We could not be together at home nor could we leave home for a moment of togetherness. Claude's needs prevented us from finding the time to eradicate our daily pressures and fill ourselves with each other. Baby-sitters are not wet-nurses. These last six months, we had freely given our all to greet Claude among us. But the price of our dedication was fast becoming the sanity of the home itself. At least, that is what I felt. I knew it was imperative that Danielle and I be off together for a few days. I did not realise I was breaking a mother's heart.
All the explanations I gave Danielle were true. She understood them. That did not lessen the pain of seeing her child, her precious treasure, leave her forever. At birth he had already left his mother. But, as the time of birth had neared, he had become heavy and cumbersome. His mother had been only too happy to abide by his demand to be put down. She was also happy to see him for the first time, to touch him, to hear him. Birth was more Claude's arrival than his departure. Weaning, on the other hand, meant breaking off permanently a private affair, a union never to be had again with him. However reasonable this might be, it was heart-breaking. And it was a heart-break no one else could share or heal.
Reason was not all. There was Georges. Danielle had always practised her innermost belief that her husband was head of the family, the man in whose judgement she put her faith, in whose will she put her own. She was not a slave. It was her personal will-power that allowed her to give herself freely to the man she chose to love. She gave her opinions, discussed their projects, but "obeyed" his decisions.
Once Danielle even got a "liberated" woman to admit that the time she had been the happiest had been when she once gave in freely — not by constraint — to her husband's wishes. On another occasion, Danielle gave hell to a pastor for shying away from S. Paul's teaching that a woman should obey her husband. After all, was not S. Paul simply telling us what love is all about: that two should freely become one? Was this not the way Mary, the mother of God, became the Woman for all times?
Danielle practised her belief with such strength that it had become natural. As she put no pressure but only good will in our relationship, I generally considered Danielle's reasons or even whims to be the best. Even her absence of wishes left me free to fulfil what they might be. That is how she unwittingly got us to live two years in her beloved Switzerland.
There is a saying that often applied to our case: "In our family, the husband decides the important things and the wife decides the little things. Among the little things, there is deciding what is important or not."
This time, my decision did not harmonise with her wishes. It was perceived as painfully hard, yet as just, because it was mine. And she complied so willingly that I barely felt a trace of discomfort in her. Nothing to outbalance the importance of "our" decision.
Claude was first taken off breast-feeding at the meal he was the least thirsty. Cutting off one meal reduced the flow of milk and made it harder for Claude to suck milk at the other nursings. At the same time, the bottle proved easy to drink from, so Claude lost interest for his mother's breasts and within two weeks he was totally on his own.
Danielle suffered from her loss and felt a greater need for tender loving care. As Nicole accepted the impressive task of keeping all four children (including a wee baby), Danielle and husband took off on a honey-moon. The destination, again: Québec City. Past experience helped. The vast amount of house concerns Danielle wished to share with me were discussed during the two-hour bus ride. When we checked into a motel — Motel Louise — and closed our door on the outside world, we were freed from everything except ourselves: each one for the other, two solitudes transformed into one good tonic. The ghosts were gone; living flesh and blood were back.
It was so good, so unbelievably good to be one again. We had been lost so far far away from each other. Being away had been bad; but the worst had been that dreadful feeling that there was no way back. Each of us had gone through a kind of despair. We had sat in darkness with the conviction that light had been annihilated.
Now we were together, lovers of yesteryear, lovers of today, lovers undoubtedly of tomorrow and — with God's help — lovers forever. We realised that inloveness must regularly be shed because of our commitment to the fruition of love itself. But love need never die, even when its passion rests, and love will then resurrect inloveness if we have remained true to one another.
We had gone through difficult times before, but never to such a degree. Why this time? Because this time we were fully taken up by our responsibilities. This was the first time since our wedding that we had been prevented from sharing any of our daily preoccupations. Although Christine's birth had diverted Danielle from sharing much of my school work, she gave us a common occupation in caring for her. In Switzerland, Michel had separated us as Danielle took care of him and I of Christine. But because I worked at home much of the time, I talked a lot to Danielle of my intellectual vagaries and pitched in to help her with the household burdens. In this way we had kept abreast of one another and present to one another. Johanne had been a baby during summer holidays and was weaned after three weeks, which meant Danielle and I found time to be together. Then Claude had raised the barrier. Thank God he was only widening our hearts so Danielle and I would fit better into each other. It had been hard to learn this, but it was worth it.
As we road back home, Danielle became her practical self, proving that infatuation can be level-headed. (It's all quite logical, as infatuation concerns the goal and a level-head is concerned with the means of acheiving it.)
"You realise that, as my breast-feeding is over, I will now be fertile again. Are you ready to lose your wife once more for two years? There will be the sleeping sickness of the first three months and the impotence of the last three months. There will be the hectic weeks after birth with night feeding and days full of work. There will be the months of breast-feeding."
She got the answer she expected, the answer she wanted, the answer that was our own: "Our child is our love."
And so, by the end of May, another love was growing within her. He would be inconvenient and disruptive. So what? At the end of a school term teachers moan and groan that they are tired out. The first time one goes through such an experience, one feels he is not in the right profession, that he has made a ghastly mistake, that life must be anywhere but here. Those with experience then reassure him: to give one's all is exhausting. That is the price of success. Then they all commiserate together, finish the term, get rested up and are ready to start over again eagerly. Similarly, the final lap of a race is always the hardest, for that is when the runner is the most tired. This does not mean that he is farther from his goal: on the contrary, it is because he is nearer to it. That is why the spectators cheer him on.
Our next baby would devour Danielle's strength so that he should live; he would then muster and delete a household of energies so that he should grow — we should be ever nearer to the truth of our lives, not further.
Would the spectators cheer us on, help us over the last lap? Or would they hiss and boo because we happened to be tired? Would Danielle again be told: "It's all your fault. Your pregnancies are wearing you down."
We realised that our profession was not popular. We expected we would have to go at it alone most of the way. But we were ready for it. We were now on solid ground.
* * *
That summer, we were saved from the onslaught of galloping inflation by a private grant. A friend asked me to write a short, simple and direct booklet that could convey our common social philosophy. And he got me a few hundred dollars to do it. A hundred and twenty-three pages later, there was The Given Hand. It assumed that the given hand of collaboration is the best policy, be it in the home, at work or in politics; better than the clenched fist of revolution and the hailing hand of submission.
These few hundred dollars kept us afloat for the summer. What helped us most in the coming years was the clause regarding salary indexation to the rising cost of living that the union had wrenched from the government with the aid of our militancy. At least, that was the way the union spokesmen put it. The government recalled that it had freely indexed our salaries as our working conditions had been imposed upon us by a law voted in parliament. Though these conflicting tales bore little resemblance to The Given Hand, they may simply have been the grunts of collaboration as our society worked together.
* * *
Christine was now going on five, Michel was three and a half and Johanne had turned two. The street was filling up with new houses, couples and young children. Yet Danielle determined — and got my approval — to keep the restrictive policy by which our children should play in our back yard. The yard was vast enough to accommodate them and more. This way, our children would not bother any neighbour, neighbourhood children could come as they wished if they adhered to the rules of the land, and the younger of our children would not be left behind by the older ones.
This policy fitted Danielle's temperament and training and was contrary to all I had experienced in my boyhood. But it reaped such successes as to be unimpeachable. Except for the indecisive moments when the snow melted and the front yard became gradually off limits and for the rare whimper for change, our children soon began to have so much fun within the fenced yard that the neighbourhood children began asking to be let in. The fence was not an obstacle to freedom but the outer-limits of a playground. Should a newcomer begin to swear or fight, he would be told to leave till another time. These rules also applied to our own children, who were punished instead of expelled. To be punished in front of friends carried much weight.
The town had also organised children's playgrounds for the summer, where children from four to twelve were cared for and made to play by young organisers mornings and afternoons on week days. Though some of Christine's friends went there, we figured Christine would gain nothing there that she did not have in our little paradise. This was disagreeable for Christine; during the first days she lost some friends, but she was soon the overseer of her homeland and did not dislike it one bit. This also prepared her see those same friends leave for pre-school kindergarten that autumn as she stayed behind having been born twelve days after the age limit for admission.
* * *
This term, our college experimented with a new class-division technique. The required courses of philosophy and literature were each boxed in the same time periods and the students were given free choice of the teacher of their liking within those who taught the same course number. This technique was never again used. Evidently some teachers won out and others lost. But the winners turned out to be losers as their classes were full to the limit. The main losers in the popularity contest were a teacher in literature and another in philosophy. The latter was myself. I knew I had never mustered great popularity, but I was depressed by my downright bad showing. I had got mainly the left-overs. — There was a modest but substantial consolation: I had been deliberately chosen by a guitar-strumming poet who had talent. He claimed that my description of the human artistic endeavour in my previous course accurately expressed his innermost experience. I certainly had not made a killing in popularity, but was happy to get this confirmation that as far as the contents of my course went, there must be some wisdom in it.
Then there was another consolation, I should say a profound pleasure, in my philosophical profession. A new colleague, our first woman teacher in philosophy, had just arrived. She came from Laval with her Baccalaureate in philosophy, and from Louvain, Belgium where she had obtained her Masters degree. We instantly found ourselves on the same intellectual and philosophical levels. And she even laughed outright at my wry humour, the which tended to unsettle other teachers' nerves or, at best, to leave them indifferent.
Anne-Marie soon became a friend of the family. With her and a teacher of physics, Danielle and I rejuvenated ourselves by organising a weekly study group that lasted till our baby came.
Another arrival at college was Denis, a delightful teacher of English, a graduate from St. Boniface College, in Manitoba. I had taught him a few weeks of Introduction to Philosophy. But he had gone unnoticed in a class of sixty students. Denis and Pauline, his wife, carried with them a whiff of the western plains. We could even have fun by talking a mixture of French and English as I had naturally done for so many years in my youth.
With Anne-Marie, Denis and Pauline, we got the bosom friends in our town.
* * *
As Christmas neared, we sent my parents gifts designed to please and humour them. My father being an inveterate smoker — the kind that stops smoking every night, and takes up the habit again every morning — we found him a cigarette dispenser. When someone pressed its control button, a little plastic devil appeared, tempting its victim with a cigarette and cackling: "Ha, ha, ha! The choke is on you."
For my mother, there was a toilet-paper dispenser attached to a radio. Both gifts got their laugh, but the cigarette dispenser was the most widely acclaimed as my father and mother showed it off to a great many of their friends.
Danielle's parents went to their eight o'clock "Midnight Mass" — so we called it as for years a true Christmas Mass had to be the Midnight Mass — at their parish in Québec city and we went to ours in La Pocati re. The next morning, they would drive early to La Pocati re so that the family gift distribution be held before lunch when we all feasted on the Christmas turkey.
We eagerly expected them for the usual sentimental reasons. But I had a special reason: our first colour television. Maurice had decided to rid himself of his television set as his wife (and he himself, he added) had found him to be unable to resist to T.V. temptation. So he sold it to me. My father-in-law would bring it over.
As the Quéloz car pulled into the driveway, we all rushed out of the house to greet them. Mrs Quéloz had a terribly embarrassed look. She told us: "Do you know what we forgot?"
"The television set," I said in despair.
"Oh, no," she answered as if this was irrelevant. "We forgot the Christmas gifts."
I laughed. Was that all? The colour T.V. had arrived? I was relieved. She was not. She had worked on choosing and wrapping over twenty-five different gifts these past few weeks. They had all been laid on the ping-pong table in the basement, waiting for their great entry upon the Christmas stage where her grandchildren could enjoy them. Then, at the time of the great departure, the grandparents left their home forgetting neither the television set, nor the cheese for the Swiss fondue, nor the wine, …only the gifts.
Finally, everybody rallied to the idea that it would be more fun to have two Christmases instead of one since New Year's day was only a week away and the grandparents were coming back then. As we already had over thirty-five various gifts to give out, there would be no lack of fun for now. And we had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
* * *
Among the thirty-five gifts under the Christmas tree, there was one for each member of the family from nurse Denise, the student from my first year at college. She had been a practising nurse since mid-summer, but had a new and deeper profession in mind. Having made the Spiritual Exercises twice, she decided she wanted to be a nun. She hesitated between an active and a contemplative religious order. She formulated her problem before us and I reflected it back to her: she chose to be a contemplative nun, which I called God's lightning rods upon earth, both protecting us from a just wrath for our sins and drawing down upon us the divine Mercy.
Denise then hesitated between a contemplative order in La Pocati re and one in Québec City. The latter won out, as she felt it required more from its members. We suppressed our hopes to have her living nearby and were happy she was content with her choice. Denise would finish her first year of nursing in a hospital to gain experience which would later serve her sisters in Christ at the convent.
During that experience, she realised how much present-day hospital patients are in need of spiritual aid in addition to the material help they get from the secular medical apparel. She grieved to see how little of this was given and did her utmost to give such consolations. Another nun, from an active religious order scoffed before a vacillating unbeliever at the use of Christ as "an opiate". The unbeliever answered with keen insight: "You would no doubt prefer people to suffer without anaesthesia."
As this was Denise's last year among family and friends, she had given each of us a last material gift: next year she would give us her life as an eternal gift.
The two unmarried Manitoban musketeers also dedicated themselves to especially incarnating God in our times. Mouse became Brother Gilbert of the order of St. Benedict — a Benedictine monk. Ernest went off to Rome to study for priesthood within the order of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary: an order especially dedicated to the Eucharistic Christ, to the Mother of God and of the Church of men, and to the Pope, Bishop of Rome, successor to St Peter, caretaker of Christian fidelity.
* * *
Baby was expected for the end of February. When we talked of looking around for a helper, as Carole was no longer free, Denis and Pauline instantly insisted that Pauline would take on the job without any monetary retribution. They wouldn't take no for an answer. As they had already agreed to become the baby's godparents, that would be their first gift to him.
In the last weeks before birth, Danielle felt the baby inside her to be far more nervous than Claude had been. She surmised he would have Michel's temper. We found it amusing that this baby would be born under the same astrological sign as Michel and might have the same temperament, while Claude and Christine shared another astrological sign and another temperament and Johanne, with a third sign, had a third kind of temperament.
In mid-February, Pauline was offered a job teaching English at the local secondary public school. She took it but insisted on keeping her commitment to help us out after baby's birth. Denis would simply take his share of the work. And they managed it.
On Michel’s fourth birthday, at the beginning of the evening, we left for the hospital. And once again the contractions ceased. I waited some time then finally argued that I might as well go home to bed as I had done during the previous labour. But Danielle remembered how the nurse had been late in calling me for Claude’s birth, so she reluctantly agreed to let me go. She bent forward to kiss me good-bye when suddenly she said: "This is it!"
The baby’s amniotic liquid was pouring out onto the bed. It was nine o’clock.
"You are staying," she imperatively told me even though I reminded her it might be hours before the contractions came to full strength.
I stayed. My head doddled as sleep kept calling me. Sitting by Danielle, I finally laid my head to rest upon the side of her bed. The small contractions had begun, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. At three o'clock a nurse gave me a cup of coffee which at last made me the fitting companion for my wife in such a momentous occasion. Then the strong contractions wrenched Danielle's insides. She remained in control. After a while, she told the nurse to call the doctor. Her time was fast coming. The nurse measured the opening and remained sceptical even though Danielle argued that a fifth birth might be something quite different from a first or second one. A short while later, Danielle renewed her demand with insistence. The nurse agreed to another measurement, then went into near panic and ordered a companion to summon the doctor quickly from his home. Danielle was wheeled into the delivery room. The contractions were now in their final stages. The doctor had not yet arrived.
"Don't push, don't push, hold back," the nurses told Danielle.
Danielle didn't obey. She pushed with all her strength at each contraction. The doctor appeared in the doorway: "Do I have time to wash and get ready?" he asked.
"No! no!" both nurses cried out. "Hurry!"
He slipped on his green smock leaving it untied and rushed to help baby whose head was already coming out. Baby was Philippe (His Most Catholic Majesty, king of Spain and the New World). A boy. Two boys in a row broke our girl-boy pattern, but respected the proportion of boys and girls as the ratio had to be three to two on one or the other side. He was a nine-pounder (4 kilos) and twenty-one inches (53.5 cm) in length. It was four in the morning. Everything had gone exceedingly well, a textbook birth with a healthy mother and babe and a fully conscious father.
Later in the morning, the chaplain, for whom Danielle was only a name on the hospital ledger, came into her room with a merry: "Hiya! Are you here for your first baby?"
"No. This is my fifth," Danielle answered with the same merriment.
The chaplain's face instantly converted to a reverent solemnity.
"Allow me to congratulate you, Madame Allaire," he said.
Then he exited in some confusion which Danielle thoroughly enjoyed. Afterwards, the chaplain would always be the exemplar of reverent politeness towards her.
That evening, Anne-Marie, Denis and Pauline visited at Danielle's and marvelled at her good health and fine spirit. She glowed with pride.
* * *
Danielle was once again alone in a semi-private room. She breast-fed Philippe. This allowed him to be with her for relatively long periods of time. On the third day, after taking his fill and while resting in his crib, he suddenly began screaming till his face turned purple. Danielle made sure he was all right. Then she let him continue his speech in baby language. As suddenly as he had begun screaming, he stopped. His look was of intense concentration. Again he screamed. Again he stopped. He listened to the silence. Philippe was discovering his voice.
Philippe was part of our growing experiment in living. He proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that crying and screaming did not have the same meaning for him as for us adults. Whenever we cry or scream, it is generally because of our desolation, our suffering or our exasperation, as we have other modulated frequencies for other meanings. And we easily project these meanings upon a screaming baby. Yet for the baby, screams and crying are a universal language. As his hands first beat the air aimlessly and grasp at everything before learning to diversify their actions, Philippe's cries were his sole sounds which could later become articulate and specialised.
We had been told of psychological speculations which would have it that a baby's entry into the outside world was a near-traumatic experience expressed by a first cry which was like a howl of pain. Fiddle-faddle. A child of three will scorch his knee and bleed; then, after a few words of consolation and a bit of mercurochrome, he will run out again and play with his friends as if nothing had happened. A child of nine will get hit by a baseball in the face and, after crying for a few moments, will resume his play. After that, one would seriously suggest that a nearly totally unconscious babe born into a world that is as yet meaningless to him could have a life-lasting experience? We believed instead that some adults project their present inability to face up to some present distress into their unknown past — in neverneverland. When Philippe was screaming his head off in Danielle's maternity room, he was merely exercising his vocal cords and was quite interested by it. There was no metapsychological meaning there.
Others have suggested that babies are naturally wise in their private expressions of need. It is suggested that they have a natural equilibrium unknown to the socially perverted adults. Therefore, their cries should be instantly obeyed as they mirror the true needs of the child. Thus, the French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is renowned for having said: "Man is born good; it is society that corrupts him." Fiddle-faddle again. It is unfortunate he is less known as the man that dumped each of the children he had by his mistress into public orphanages.
As a matter of fact, there is no inner good or evil — only sickness and health, pleasure and displeasure — till a person has become conscious and capable of responsibility. Of course, baby cries correspond to something. A scream may mean physical pain. But it may simply be an exercise in speech, as Philippe's were. It can also express a state of tiredness preceding and requiring sleep. It can even become a game as a child finds it fun to have an adult running each time he makes this particular noise. There is no wisdom in crying. The wisdom or folly will be in the adult's interpretation and response to the cry. Should Danielle have interrupted Philippe's vocal exercises? What if she had panicked and, by her fears, made her child insecure? That would have been silly. And when a child was crying out of tiredness, picking him up out of his crib would make him even more tired. Also a child learns the meanings of his sounds and actions from the adult's reactions — that is why the child of an English-speaking person becomes so "naturally" English and the one of a French-speaking person becomes so "naturally" French. To react obediently to a child's cries is to teach him that crying is the proper intercourse with adults. In such a way is the tantrum-child made.
Of course, it was only normal that the nurses at the nursery give Philippe a nipple as soon as he began crying there. Whatever their conception of the meaning of cries, they certainly could not allow him to wake up the whole orchestra of his fellow babies. This was a social wisdom.
* * *
Five days after the birth of Philippe, he came home with his mother. That same afternoon, Philippe was baptised in our parish church by our vicar. We had hoped a young parish curate we liked a lot would do it, but he was out of town for a few days and we preferred an immediately reborn child to particular gratifications. And, true to our unsocial selves, we forgot to invite the vicar for the small feast Pauline had prepared for the occasion. We belatedly begged pardon.
True to prediction, Philippe had Michel's temperament. Thanks to our experience with Michel, Danielle was adapted to this from the start. She kept Philippe on a strict schedule, always picked him up the same way, bathed him the same way, fed him the same way, was never brusque with him. She made his life as predictable as possible and Philippe grew up as a perfect baby. Interestingly enough when Claude had grown to reach the edge of his crib, he quickly indicated he wanted to move out. Philippe felt safe near the edge and was moved to another bed only when he had truly outgrown his crib.
Philippe brought rejoicing in the house and among our bosom friends. But a fifth child provoked silence elsewhere. Hardly any acquaintance sent us a card of congratulations. We had expected this and certainly had no time to care.
Yet an interesting experience came out of our expanding inner society which brought some light upon that reaction. One day I had a black and white picture taken of us all and made into a poster as a gift for the Quéloz grandparents. My father-in-law put it up on his office wall at his workshop. He reported how nearly everyone who came to see him congratulated him for his daughter's impressive family: this was usual courtesy. But then an impressive number of them began explaining why they had no more than one, or the usual two, or the exceptional three children. One said he couldn't afford more; another that his wife's health was not up to more; another said his wife wanted to work outside the home.
As Mr Quéloz kept coming up with these anecdotes, we suddenly realised that the poster had become a reproach for many persons who felt the need to confess or rather explain away what appeared to them an uncomfortable restriction of birth. It appeared to us that some of the hostility and tongue wagging we had received was a defensive reaction from people who saw in our action a reproach against their own.
We found that other women went through a similar censure, when they chose to leave their job (one was a teacher, another a secretary) to be able to take better care of their children, even when these women limited themselves to the social norm of two children. None of their woman co-workers gave them any sort of encouragement. Instead they insisted how life at home would be miserable and how these mothers would soon regret their unfortunate choice. There was none of the acceptance one would expect from a free society where women are deemed free to go each their own way. Why?
* * *
On Holy Tuesday evening, the phone rang. Danielle answered. My mother was calling from Manitoba, a fairly usual event. But she began saying my father was ill. Danielle did not understand the English word my mother used. But she understood my mother was in turmoil. She hurriedly passed the phone to me. My father had suffered from a "stroke". He had not been feeling well lately. He became dizzy. He felt weak. Now he had fallen down and was in bed in a state of partial paralysis. Would I fly to his side?
Certainly. We would soon be on our Easter holidays. I would take the plane Thursday. I did. Christine came along.
My father greeted me from his sickbed. He spoke in a hushed voice. He did not know what was wrong with him. His doctor had not found anything specific that explained his weak spells. Now things were worse. He was comforted by the presence of a pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima which was then in the Winnipeg area and had been taken to his bedside. He placed belief in the piece of sculpture itself but considered it as a sign of Mary's presence by his side in this moment of need.
The following day, Good Friday, the remembrance day of our Lord's death, we decided it would be better if my father went to the hospital for a check-up. I accompanied him. After the usual senseless and insensitive wait in the outpatients' waiting room, a doctor took my father for X-rays. Then we waited some more. At least my father was now laid upon a table stretcher. The doctor came back and, taking me aside, he whispered solemnly that my father had a brain tumour and that he would have to stay at the hospital for further examinations and possible treatment. I wondered at such solemnity. I figured if there was a tumour, all the doctors had to do was to operate and get rid of it. After all, my father was a young elderly man of sixty-seven and doctors exist for that kind of thing. I passed on the full information to my father, who took it in calmly.
The next day came the wallop. The doctor phoned my mother. The tumour was cancerous. My mother, though outwardly calm, was in shambles. And she insisted that I do not inform my father of this piece of news that day. I argued that I had to fly back on Monday and that it was better that I break the news to him before then.
"Wait till tomorrow," she asked me.
I complied. On Easter evening, at my father's bedside, I told him: "They say it's cancer."
"It's cancer, is it?", he answered calmly.
Then he held my hand tightly. As I returned to my boyhood home and to my mother, a chill went through me. And I wept.
Of course, cancer was not the incurable sickness it had once been. But in the short time I had been there I had got the impression that my father was fast slipping away. The cancer had been gnawing at his brain these last weeks and was now attacking his consciousness. He might soon be dead. Death, personal death, the only real human death, had suddenly become a reality.
As I arrived at my parents' home, the tears had gone. Numbness had set in, a numbness that never left me afterwards when I was confronted with my father's sickness.
On Easter Monday, Christine and I flew to Québec City then came to La Pocatière. Christine had disliked the whole experience of serious sickness and its atmosphere.
My mother regularly phoned in the news: good news. The cancer was being treated with cobalt. The illness was regressing. My father was regaining control of his mind then his body. He could get up, walk again, return home. We were elated.
Danielle and I had decided to visit my parents in mid-June for what now promised to be a happy occasion. Denise, soon to be Sister Denise, readily accepted to stay a whole week with Christine, Johanne and Claude; we took Michel and the baby with us.
During the flight, Danielle got her usual one in two plane rides air sickness. Her stomach settled when the plane settled at the end of the runway. We were greeted by a healthy-looking, albeit weak, grandfather who was proud to talk with the eldest of the boys among his grandchildren and to hold in his arms a newborn baby boy. He felt much better, he told us, and was out to win against his cancer. It had totally been eliminated from his brain and sent back packing from where it had come: the lungs. Damn cigarettes.
We returned to La Pocati re in high spirits.
* * *
That summer, Johanne definitely confirmed she was quite different both from Christine and Michel. As Danielle cared mainly for Philippe and I for Claude, Christine and Michel challenged directly our care for Johanne. They fought vigorously for the short free moments Danielle could have from a demanding baby and I got from a monopolising Christine-tempered Claude. Except for those rare privileged moments when she needed our direct care, Johanne drifted listlessly on her own, shying from competition with her more boisterous brothers and sister. Danielle and I deplored the fact. But we had too little time, energy and imagination left over from the mountain of needs and demands imposed on us by Philippe, Claude, Christine, Michel and house-keeping, to devote much effort to bring her back into the mainstream of family life.
Then Johanne went on her first vacation with her adored godparents. She was ecstatic and Jeannine, who was proving to be sterile, poured all her maternal affection upon her goddaughter. Only she felt she had to correct an injustice done to Johanne. Danielle, she had concluded, was an overly strict mother and Jeannine would free Johanne from restrictions. During Johanne's vacation, our little girl's whims became law. Compounded with her difficulties at home, this threw our three year old daughter into open revolt and regression at home. Whereas she had been the earliest to dress by herself, to eat by herself, to be rid of her diapers, now she became incapable of obedience, of dressing, of eating correctly and began to wet her bed once more and had to have diapers again.
She certainly got more personal attention. But not the kind she would have liked. And as she had a temperament different both from Danielle's and mine, reacting towards her appropriately became acutely difficult.
Yet, even this crisis may have been beneficial on the long run, for we emerged from it with a better defined child and parents more attuned to her particularities.
* * *
That summer we had also taken an important material decision. We needed a territorial expansion to go with our demographic expansion. Christine and Johanne bunked one above the other in the girls' room. Michel bunked above Claude and Philippe slept in a shorter bed in the boys' room. Already three in the same room seemed crowded, especially as Philippe would eventually need a longer bed, which would dearly limit the usable space in that room. And, whenever some day another child came, he would also be in need of space. Time was ripe to have the basement finished into two bedrooms and a playroom.
My ten thumbs could hardly be of help to us here. As it happened, a Montréal friend knew a young carpenter who would fix up our basement for peanuts. Which he did. It only cost us, in addition to the peanuts, a stolen bicycle one evening he had gone to a hotel bar. He did great work and willingly came cheap. He proved one of my father's favourite sayings: "Do God's thing and let God do yours. As he is the better worker of the two, you'll necessarily win out." Even though François, our carpenter, hardly shared our religious convictions, we felt him to be another one of God's helpers arriving in our time of need.
* * *
In August, the news from Manitoba began looking bad. My father was no longer progressing. Indeed, he began regressing. And the doctors no longer gave him his cobalt treatment. As the school year began and we got into September, the news was the worst. His brain had been saved but the lung cancer was now out to get him. My father faltered in his walk. He got in need of support. He still believed he would win. But the evidence was now pointing the other way.
Then he was bed-ridden. The doctors said his case was hopeless. The hospital lent a hospital bed with upraised sides that prevented my father from falling out. A nurse came regularly to teach my mother to adapt to her beloved's growing helplessness.
My father kept his wry sense of humour — I had inherited from him. Once when my mother was shaving him, she exclaimed: "I should have married an Indian and I wouldn't need to shave him."
"You might soon be having the chance," my father retorted in a sick hush.
Needless to say my mother did not find this funny.
As the end became evident, he became troubled in his conscience. He became obsessed by some groundless guilt feelings. Luckily, an elderly priest friend came by and, upon hearing my father's confession, ordered him in God's name to stick to divine mercy and forget all guilt. From then on, my father was at peace.
In La Pocati re, we prayed with the children for God to assist both grandfather and grandmother in this most trying moment of their lives. Otherwise, we were burdened by our impotence. I could not leave my job and family to be at my parents side for what might be weeks of sickness. Yet I felt a certain guilt for my absence.
By the twentieth of September, my mother called, urging me to fly out, as she believed my father was nearing the end. I asked my dean of studies for a leave of absence. He insisted that, for myself and my mother, the risk was too great. Cancer is known to be an unpredictable illness that can drag for any length of time. What would I do if my father survived for a week or two or more? After I had returned to classes, I could not expect my college to give me a second leave of absence.
I uneasily decided to wait. Four days later, my mother called. My father had died. Would I now come? I did.
With her, I finalised the details of the burial. I ordered flowers for the funeral home. I found a lawyer to take care of the legal formalities of death, of the widow's pensions, etc. I answered the letters and notes of condolence.
I was at my mother's side in the funeral chapel where prayers were said for my father's everlasting life. I then stood beside her as family and friends passed with words of sympathy. My mother grieved. I was stupidly numb, reacting absurdly with a joke for each person I knew. I felt a terrible revulsion for that kind of ceremony. Till this day, I still wonder why we should go through the intimate torture of contemplating the corpse of a beloved departed. As I had watched the open coffin, I kept saying to myself: "This is not my father. My father has left. He now lives in eternity, in God's presence, care and peace. By God! he is presently living near us, within us."
I came back to La Pocati re with my numbness at the tragic separation and my conviction in faith that my father still lived. On my first evening home, Danielle tried to alter our evening prayer in separating my mother from my father and saying something special "for the soul of grandfather Allaire". To this I said no. If my father still lives, as we believe, then we will still pray "for grandfather and grandmother Allaire". Danielle recognised this to be the truest prayer.
* * *
Christine now went to pre-grade-school kindergarten on weekday mornings. This was the first time she really left home and had things taught to her by adults who were not her parents. Danielle worked hard so that Christine got to love and trust her teacher and enjoy kindergarten. When Christine came back at lunch time, Danielle took great interest in all she had done that morning. We put Christine's paintings on her bedroom walls, sent some of her drawings to her grandparents, and applauded her various songs and dances learnt with her new friends. Kindergarten became an integral part of our home life.
Then Christmas time neared. One morning the teacher told the children that Santa Claus would be coming next Saturday in a big parade and could be seen on television. She suggested they get permission from their parents to watch it. "Why not?", we thought and that Saturday Michel, Johanne and Christine watched their first Santa Claus parade. The floats, clowns and music bands fascinated the children.
Some time later, at kindergarten, Christine heard for the first time the story of Santa Claus. We had always thought Santa Claus to be rather irrelevant to our Christmas. When the children saw pictures of him, we had simply told the truth: he is an image people make of the spirit of Christmas. For ourselves, we were content to stress the fact that Christmas, as the word implied, referred to Christ. It is birthday. We recalled that two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem to bring us the good news that God loves each of us, and to bring us into this Love by his death, his resurrection and his presence within the Church. This was reason for rejoicing. Since Christmas is a birthday, we offer gifts. We give Jesus the gifts of our joy and of our mutual love for one another. Jesus has brought us love. That is why we give each other gifts: as expressions of that love.
But Christine was hearing a whole new story about Christmas. Santa Claus was a gentle elderly man who, with the help of dwarves, kept track of each of the world's children in order to know whether they were good or bad. And on Christmas night, he went about flying through the sky, in a sleigh pulled by magical reindeer, leaving gifts at the home of every child who had been good. The teacher insisted that they were all presently being spied upon by Santa Claus' dwarves and that they should be especially good children.
"Mother," Christine said as she arrived home that noon. "Mother, teacher has told us that there is a Santa Claus and he brings us gifts at Christmas."
Christine said this as a revelation. She was disappointed when her mother simply answered: "Your teacher has told you a story. It's a nice and interesting story. But it's only a story."
"But teacher did not say it was a story," Christine objected.
"Come now," he mother told her, "she did not have to tell you it was a story. She simply told you the story itself."
"Do you mean to say there are no real dwarves spying on us?"
"Of course there are none, Christine. Only Jesus knows everything we do. It is because of him that we must be kind; because he loves us and not because we want to get some gifts."
Christine couldn't understand what was going on. She knew her parents never lied to her. She knew the difference between stories and real life. He father had stressed over and over again that some things shown on television were faked and others were real. He had made jokes about eating Bugs Bunny when they had some rabbit for lunch, but he said it in such a way that everyone knew it was a joke and not the real thing. Why then did the teacher not tell her class that the Santa Claus story was just for fun. Could it be that her mother was wrong?
At lunch, father explained: "You know very well, Christine, that your Christmas gifts come from your father, mother, grandparents and friends. Santa Claus does not bring any gifts. He just represents the spirit of Christmas."
Christine thought her parents must be right. Her teacher must have been telling a story.
Yet back at the kindergarten, she found that the Santa Claus story was becoming more of a reality, not less. Their teacher had them draw a picture of Santa Claus which she told them to put in their room so that Santa did not forget them at Christmas. Then she promised them they would soon be getting a visit from Santa Claus himself at the kindergarten.
When Christine told this at home, her father laughed and told her to pull upon Santa's false beard when he came, so she should see he wasn't for real.
"Why then," Christine insisted, "doesn't our teacher tell us it's not a true story?"
"Maybe because," her father answered in a serious manner, "there are some parents who like their children to believe in Santa Claus. So as not to make them angry, your teacher simply tells you the story without saying either that it is true or that it isn't."
Christine was no longer sure of anything. She no longer knew who to believe. Then came the day of the Santa Claus visit. Santa Claus first appeared not to be coming. Christine wondered if he were not a fake after all. The teacher suddenly began crying and calling out for Santa Claus. She cried so much that it seemed she really believed he existed. Everyone was becoming afraid Santa wouldn't come. Then he was there. He was there in his red and white costume, his white beard, with his typical "ho, ho, ho". He was there giving out candies to everyone. What a party. And yet Christine saw some black hair beneath Santa's white hair. Could it be that her father was right, after all?
On Christmas day, grandfather and grandmother Quéloz were to arrive at about ten in the morning. After that the gifts were to be opened. When Christine got up that morning, she saw there were no gifts under the Christmas tree. She remembered her father had explained that the gifts were in his office at college. He would go and get them in grandfather's car when grandfather arrived. That is what happened. Father and grandfather came back from the college with boxes full of gifts for everyone.
Christine then knew for sure that Santa Claus had only been a story. He had brought no gifts. All the gifts had been brought by father and grandfather. Christine knew her father and mother had told her the truth.
Once the gifts were all under the Christmas tree, father told everyone: "Christmas is Jesus' birthday. We will first say a prayer to Jesus to thank him for the joy he gives us. Then we shall open our gifts."
Everyone knelt before the manger and said a prayer father had invented: "Good day Jesus, our big brother, our friend, our Saviour and our God. Help us to be as kind and obedient as you, to love others as you love us, to save others as you save us and to love you with all our might. We love you, Jesus."
Father added: "We thank you for this marvellous Christmas. Happy birthday, Jesus!"
The next day, Christine told her father: "Papa, there are many Santa Clauses."
"How is that?", her father asked.
"There is one in each family," Christine said.
"And who is Santa Claus in our family?"
"You are," she answered.
That is how Christine discovered Santa Claus.
* * *
At the end of November, Philippe had become a big and lively nine months old boy ready to pass directly from breast to cup. Danielle had shuddered as I suggested we might be able to take off two or three days during the Christmas break. She had understood — and I had clearly confirmed it — this meant putting an end to breast-feeding. We had jolly well come through Philippe's entry into our family. There had been the inevitable tough times, but we now knew what they were all about. We no longer lost hope. Thus, though Danielle's feelings were strongly adverse to weaning, she had set her mind to the task in a more peaceful way than last time. And it had been done.
After Christmas and New, we went off to the far far away land of Montréal. It was a five hour bus ride, quite a trip for us who barely left our private society, Manitoba having been the exception. We visited Michel's godparents who had now moved from Manitoba to Montreal.
It was the first time since the Christine birth (more than six years ago), that Danielle had been so long without being pregnant — ten months. The usual had been seven months. Danielle felt free as a bird; without babe in arm, without sleeping sickness, without her physical energy eaten up by someone inside, without the final months' impotence. We delighted in socialising with adults in an adult world.
Yet as we returned refreshed on the third day, we were glad at the thought of our five loves each waiting for us at home, each with gleaming eyes as we would pick him or her up, as we would listen to his or her adventures, as Danielle and I would be reunited in our fruition, in our own private poem. We were not coming home to a group of five, but to each of five persons with each of whom we had an intimate affair.
Going away was fine. Being "free from" was fun. As long a there was a coming back. As long as there was a being "free for". And that meant being free for each of those who were there and for whoever would follow.
* * *
As I advanced into the winter term at college, Danielle was still not pregnant. Philippe was becoming less dependent. Danielle's high spirits freed the children's imagination to play among themselves. I myself was more cheerful. And, the ball rolling that way, Danielle got time and energy to begin cooking our deserts and even baking our bread. We put no stops to the next child, but he seemed to be waiting in the wings.
Our new baby sitter allowed us to go out for supper once a month. She told us how much she liked sitting at our place: "It is far easier to sit here with five children than at other places where there are only two," she told us. "Your children know how to behave, how to ask politely for something, how to thank, and even how to take no for an answer. And when I put them in bed, they do not get up again."
Of course we are bragging. Who wouldn't with such a testimony?
A saleswoman came over one time. She saw our "huge family" and was flabbergasted.
"They are not all yours?" she asked.
"Yes, they are," we answered. "They're a good beginning. We hope to have ten children."
"You are joking," she objected.
"Well," said I, "I believe we are going in the right direction."
"Uh-huh," she conceded, overwhelmed.
When she had gone, we broke into laughter.
