AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE

Maureen Weber
 
An artist’s rendition of the new high school to be built in our community was sitting on the coffee table at work recently. An HCI crest was visible on a main wall, the same crest that was embroidered on the oversized Grade 9 jacket I wore nearly 40 years ago. I felt a crush of emotion at the thought of the demise of the old school, but I hasten to add it’s not because of any aesthetic appeal: this school has no architectural charm. Its antiquity is more of the shabby linoleum floor variety.

Bright new schools are lovely to tour. Usually they have common areas with high ceilings and lots of light, hard, serious floors, glass gym doors through which you can see breathless students, a central library that looks both comfortable and functional and, if they’re very fortunate, dark theatres in which there are no bad angles. I’ve often wondered if schools like this absorb the spirit of the people within them, or if their presence merely bounces off the concrete walls and out the door when they graduate.

The classic HCI crest resurrected memories of growing up in the old school — I’m an old-school kind of girl.

My dad taught at HCI for more than 30 years starting in the 1950s. The main hallway was long and windowless, with light fixtures high above that did little to dispel the dimness. Smoke and laughter would curl outward into the hall when the staff room door opened.

The home ec lab with its quaint kitchen was located far from anything, in the oldest wing where you might escape through pull-up wooden window frames if you tried. I wanted to the day my then best friend called me “fatty” when we were learning to take measurements for sewing. I remember where I was standing and exactly what I was wearing at the time. I guess that’s why I ordered the school jacket a couple of sizes too big.

Even unremarkable buildings can have a particular appeal, and I loved that school. When I was very small I would draw on chalkboards with long, smooth pieces of chalk, and climb in and out of huge desks. Best of all, from Dad’s office near the angled front entrance doors and down a short corridor lined with championship banners and framed ’50s photos of basketball, curling and volleyball teams, was the gym. Despite my later aversion to participating in sports, I think it was in the gym with its wooden floor that sighed and echoed where I felt most content. Inside you could taste the sweat of decades of teen angst, and the tears of grads who marched through its transformation into a ballroom every June. Dad used to bring me to the school the night before grad to see the wonders that could be achieved with crepe paper and streamers.

When I reached Grade 9, the old school was in the beginning stages of change with the construction of a new gymnasium, renovations, and my beloved old gym converted into a theatre. It was a worthy transformation for a venerable space. Because my dad had a passion for music and the arts, it was a proud accomplishment for him to be part of the planning that would lead to the first and only bona fide theatre in our community. Eventually the back walls would become lined with posters of elaborate school play productions, and it has housed community and travelling theatrical productions, concerts, festivals and countless other cultural events.

I rarely have occasion to visit the high school now — the youngest of my four children graduated last year. But a few weeks ago, my son and his music friends who comprise a saxophone quartet played a small concert in that theatre. It hasn’t changed since the initial renovation 37 years ago — the seats, curtains and carpeting are still the same, as is the wooden stage floor, painted black.

We have memories of places, but I think places themselves hold memory. I went backstage before the concert and could see the line in the floor that marked the doorway to the old gym. Underneath the black paint was the honey-coloured floor of my childhood — you could still feel the way it would give beneath one’s feet and I willed it to yield the leather-soled sound of my father’s footsteps. Looking up high into the darkness it felt like being within a pyramid, the memories of childhood entombed.

Some people look for their loved ones in a graveyard. I have not visited my parents’ grave since the day each was buried. No memory there. But in this place where my dad gave so much of himself, I can speak to him and he listens.

Dad loved the sound of a saxophone and I want him to hear his grandson’s music this night. The Desenclos Quatuor they play is insistent, at times dissonant and frantic. It rises to fill the stage and mingles with the dust in the curtains that hang thick with the spirits of actors and musicians past. Year ago at a school variety night Dad played the part of one of the Muppet hecklers, and sat in a makeshift balcony that overlooked the stage. I imagine him sitting there now with a slight smile on his lips and his hand on his chin in that way he had when he was pondering. He would have been intrigued by this unfamiliar French classical style with elements of the ’50s and ’60s jazz he so loved.

I don’t know if this theatre will survive the wrecking ball, but I hope it does. The site plan for the new school project doesn’t include one.