AROUND
THE KITCHEN TABLE
Joan
Eyolfson Cadham
Sometime in the 1990s after I had discovered the rich possibilities
in a book of 800-year-old Icelandic fairy tales, I decided to reconnect
with young people through oral storytelling. My crowd of unofficial
advisers, always ready to help, circled around to deliver large doses
of their version of reality.
“Forget it. It’s
not going to work,” they insisted. “Kids today are sophisticated.
They are more modern than we were. Kids are computer savvy. They watch
television. They’re not going to sit still while one person stands
in front of them, without even a book with pictures, and tells old stories.”
I had worked with emotionally disturbed kids and in nursery schools and daycare centres for 20 years in Montreal. I knew the power of stories. I still cherish the afternoon when an aggressive 13-year-old boy cried when I read Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax.
We don’t give our kids enough credit for recognizing fun. Some
years later, firmly established as the Viking storyteller, I asked a
Grade 4 class in Yorkton to tell me the difference between watching
TV and listening to a storyteller. One little girl in particular obviously
had something on her mind that she really wanted to share. “When
I watch TV, they make up my pictures,” she said. “When I
listen to you,” and she positively purred, “I get to make
up my own pictures.” She hugged herself with sheer joy.
So I wasn’t surprised to discover that the 13 youngsters who had
come out for the combined Vatnabyggd Icelandic Club/Bertdale Recreational
Co-op June picnic were more interested in playing old-fashioned games
than they were in having lunch — although, as well as stuff they
were going to write off as strictly adult foods, the table was piled
high with chips and fruit and chocolate.
The first round of games, with Noreen Markusson in her traditional picnic
role of Games Mistress, had been designed for inside, just in case of
the weather. They were all multigenerational. Even reluctant adults
were drawn into the fun. And the kids? Trade an afternoon of games for
TV or a computer? Not likely. When the call came for food, and the MC
said the kids could go first, the kids announced that they wanted to
go outside and play. Noreen agreed to run three-legged races and a tug-of-war
and finally had to insist that everyone come in to eat.
So what was the reward in these games? Winning appeared to be incidental.
Most of the games were co-operative, anyway. And the prizes, when somebody
remembered to pass them around? A licorice rope. Bubble gum.
One of my clearest, finest childhood memories is of the summer’s
day we went to Uncle Sam and Aunt Lily’s farm for Sunday dinner.
Dinner at Lily’s was not an unusual event. What happened after
dinner was so unusual that it has stayed with me.
Stuffed full of food and needing to run it off, we youngsters left the
adults to the dishes and went out to play softball. But the adults followed
us. There were Mom and Aunt Lily, in their cotton prints, buttoned up
the front, cinched in with their narrow belts, still in their aprons,
taking their places out in the field, swinging a bat, running the bases.
There was Dad on first base, squinting, concentrating as he waited for
the fly ball to come close enough for him to snag.
In my childhood world, adults never played with us, not as equals, not
as part of the team, not having fun just because there was fun to be
had. Adults taught us the rules of games, taught us the moves in checkers
and the requirement for meld in canasta — except for this one
perfect afternoon, when the rules of living changed for two or three
hours. The memory, picture perfect, remains.
And I wonder, 50 years from now, which one of those 13 youngsters will
remember the day when everyone, kids and adults together, gathered in
a circle in the Elfros Hall, all equally committed to keeping four balloons
afloat, using fly swatters as bats.
Eyolfson Cadham is an award-winning columnist and freelance journalist
who moved from Montreal to Foam Lake in 1992. She is a member of Sask
Writers Guild and is an oral storyteller with professional status with
Storytellers of Canada.
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