The Gorge House: Snapshots

My earliest memories come to me in the form of isolated scenes, not particularly related to anything else, just a sharply focused picture of a moment in time, like a candid snapshot. When you come across a box of old photos, each separate picture carries with it related memories that fix it in time and space, and fill in all the details that the camera didn’t catch. Thus my very first memory. I must not have been three years old. Chris was a baby of about 5 or 6 months, sitting on Dad’s knee in a big chair in front of the dining room fire at Clovelly. He is wearing a particularly pretty jacket of fine wool, embroidered with flowers, a pale peach colour (This jacket Mom saved with other favourite baby clothes – when I saw it in my teens I recognized it immediately). In my expanded memory everyone is admiring the new baby, hovering over him in admiration. “Uppee. Uppee!” I cry, and am told that I’m too big to be sitting on Dad’s knee: it’s the new baby’s place now. Obviously this scene stayed in my memory because of the terrible pangs of jealousy it produced.

Another early memory also features Chris. He must have been the object of considerable rage and jealousy in my early years. In this snapshot, the family is standing together in front of the backyard chicken-coop. It is early summer, we are dressed for Sunday School; Chris in particular is wearing a brand-new outfit – shorts of bright yellow, with a white shirt. He is jumping up and down, flapping his hands behind him, as he does when he is pleased or excited. We are looking at a clutch of baby chicks, I suppose. Mom looks fondly at Chris: “You look just like a little chick yourself in that outfit”, she says. Why couldn’t it have been me that looked so cute?

Another one. Chris and I are sliding down the railing of the front steps. Everyone else is at school. Silly Chris falls off the railing into the shrubbery, and who gets the blame for it?

Riding The Railing Clip

A more agreeable snapshot shows Chris lying on his tummy on the cement sidewalk in our yard, drawing a pebbly picture. I can feel the hot sun, hear the murmur of bees, smell the grass and flowers.

Most of my earliest memories seem to feature Chris, because I suppose he and I spent a lot of time together then. Connie would be at school, so I would be 4 or 5. Connie became more prominent after I started going to school, and left him at home. I have very vague memories of Alice, our maid this must have been before even Connie went to school. Alice was hired to help Mum with the housework, as she had so many children to care for; in reality I believe Mum did all the heavy work, and Alice played with us kids, took us for walks. She was very good at hugs, I remember. One day she took us for a walk to visit her mother, Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones was so fat, so enormously fat, that she had to sit on two chairs at the same time!

This memory must be hearsay. I wouldn’t have noticed something like that without Connie to point it out.

I remember that one year we celebrated my birthday at the Japanese Tea Garden with strawberries and the first swim of the year. We all trekked over the bridge to the Tea Garden, various Aunts in tow, everyone carrying something. The Japanese Tea Garden had lots of pretty bridges over pools with water lilies and goldfish. Ladies had tea under large umbrellas, served by Japanese ladies in kimonos and clogs. There was also a shallow sandy beach there, which was why we’d come that day. This beach was called the “Pay”, to distinguish it from the “Free”, another public swimming area on the other side of the bridge. Mum had made me a new bathing suit for my birthday. She had knitted it in brown and yellow stripes, so that I looked like a chubby bumblebee. That is, until I went in the water, only to come screaming out a minute later with the whole thing clinging wetly around my knees, a heavy soggy mess, and the rest of me completely bare.

Stop this recording to listen to the video clip, then resume the recording.

Of the five of us children, Faith and Frank made the least impression on me. In those early days. Faith was far too grand and grownup; though only five years older than me, she gave the impression that she was more an adult than a child. Her word was law to us Three Little Ones, and we knew better than to get in her way. Frank was almost as grand, being Mum’s admitted favourite, was something of a hero figure to us. He could do anything — make little tanks out of an empty spool and a bit of candle, make a kite from brown paper, climb the highest tree. This last was a nightmare for Mum, she was ahways finding him high up on a slender limb of the ancient apple tree, or leaning precariously over the wobbly railings of the upstairs porch, even enticing us little ones out on the roof, four stories high! The more Mum screamed and carried on, the more risks Frank would take. Like Dad, he was a dedicated teaser, and Mum was the perfect subject. I was pretty good tease material, too. He knew he couldn’t get anywhere with Connie, she was too hard-headed, but he need only smile in a certain way and whisper “fat” to set me off in a gale of tears. Nothing Mum did would make him stop, so finally she gave me some good advice; “He only does it because he knows it bothers you; let him know you don’t care, and he’ll soon lose interest. Well, I tried it; through my blubbery tears I yelled “I don’t care!”; to no avail, it just gave him that much more satisfaction.

 

Faith one day decreed that we should all have nicknames. For herself and Frank she was uninspired – she would by “Lady”, Frank, “Man”. Of course these lackluster names didn’t stick, but at least they gave an indication of their status in the family. Us Three Little Ones got names too, Connie was “Nutlegs”, I was “Fishie”, and Chris, for some reason, was “Bags”, or “Baggie”. Connie was soon able to shuffle off her name, but Bags and I retained our hated nicknames for years, Chris until he started school, and me much longer, at school as well as at home, a continuing burden.

Siblings Clip

Next:

 The Gorge House: The House