This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on March 29, 1941.
I did not know it could be done. But it can. Enjoyment begins when you learn to make the best of what is left and cease to mourn over what is gone.
Simon Peake, father of Selina Peake, in that much-read book So Big, told his daughter one of the secrets of happy living when he said: “The more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they are not pleasant. That’s living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it’s just so much velvet!”
Simon might have told Selina that there is one condition in this. You must know how to take it. But Selina found that out for herself. And that makes the story. That make’s everyone’s story.
Now today, for example, I went for a walk, which might not sound exciting to you who walk every day. But after looking out of a window for 10 days, even at a lovely scene of snow-capped mountains, with evergreens below, jagged against the blue and a street of little houses below that again, even all that narrows in time.
But today the world was given back to me, for I walked right out of the hospital (ambulance entrance to avoid stairs), through the grounds, past the weeping willows which have let down their hair for summer, across the street to the Red and White Store, which is also the post office (here I posted letters going both east and west); past the ball park and on to the theatre, and, turning down there, I came back on the street of little houses.
And everything was so clear and fresh in the morning sunshine that it all seemed new to me. On the green boards of the park fence I read the interesting entry that “Arthur loves Jean,” but the first people I met after that, though they might have been “Arthur” and “Jean,” were quarrelling noisily, he in anger, she in tearful protest, and I could not help but hear that she had sulked last night at the party and spoiled the whole evening for him.
“Every time I take you out, something happens, and I’m sick of it,” said Arthur, and that’s all I heard. I would like to know how it ended, but I couldn’t very well turn around and follow them.
I noticed the flowers, bursting up in the exuberance of spring, and the japonicas bright against the rough cement of the walls. The air was so clear today every snow peak was gleaming with a tense beauty, making a background for every picture. A man on a ladder was pruning a tree, washing rippled on many lines, round clumps of forsythia made pools of gold along the boulevard and a plane flew low overhead.
No one could feel sad in such a crisp, clean world. Even the dogs I met seemed friendly, but the sleek black cat that came diagonally down the steps of a house gave me a look of cold disdain, which somehow made me feel that life has not changed much after all. Children in the street were playing with a homemade airplane propelled by a string, and I stayed long enough to find out that only the seniors were allowed to perform this delicate operation. “Five and under” were not even allowed to do the outfielding.
That, I could see, was the basis of shrill argument, for Tommy, one of the little ones, would run every time the plane took off. I interceded on behalf of Tommy, telling the seniors they should let him carry the plane back, for how was Tommy ever going to learn if he did not get a start some place.
But the seniors informed me, in unison, that Tommy had already broken two planes, and this one (covered with green paper) was made by their uncle, who was a soldier, and he was not Tommy’s uncle, and if Tommy ever touched it even, they wouldn’t let him come in their yard, and they’d slap him, too, so I could see that the union had spoken.
Just then, I presume it was Tommy’s mother came out of a house down the street with a baby carriage, and Tommy darted out of the gate to meet her, steadying the carriage with a tender, though grubby little hand, and as the procession passed the flying field Tommy did not even look at the Wright brothers. Tommy had found out just as we all do, that when one door shuts another opens.
That’s part of the business of “enjoying poor health.” All is not lost when the old occupations suddenly fold up. The great human drama continues to unfold, and just as the old plants have to be removed to make room for the new ones, so life goes on — the old play — with a change of actors.
About 6:45 each morning, I am pleasantly awakened by the march of feet, strong, sure young feet in good stout shoes with rubber heels. I crawl out, find my bedroom slippers, grab a gown and stand at the window to see the nurses coming from the home for breakfast, and I find this march of youth a cheering sight.
It has in it a promise, as I think of these young ones, submitting to discipline and yet reaching for life with both hands; each one of them has a story. Miss M. and her soldier picked out their lot on their day off this week and will build a little house on it and get married when he comes home after the war.
Miss C. wants to be a psychiatrist and hopes she will be one of the nurses chosen for the Provincial Mental Hospital. She comes in to listen to the radio for certain musical programs. Even a few minutes, she says, rests her more than sleep, and she is studying music, too, for there is a place for harmony and rhythm in the cure of souls. If trouble and anxiety can put knots in the brain, surely love and sweet sounds and rich melody will help to untangle them.
This is an old hospital — 32 years old — and has evidently served at full speed all these years. It could do with some repairs; the linoleum in the halls is ribbed by the boards beneath; at night the radiators gargle in their sleep, and when the heat comes on there are tappings and thumpings below stairs. At first, I thought the repairs were actually being made.
But the human element is excellent, and the food as good as served at the Ladies’ Aid chicken suppers — and that’s high praise. (I should not say Ladies’ Aid. They are gone. The Women’s Association reigns in their stead, but the jellied salad, the white cake with the pink icing, and the cupcakes are unchanged.)
Today, as I write this, I see five apples on my table, three Delicious and two Yellow Newtons, and twice a day between meals, apple juice, amber and sparkling, is served to an increasing number of patients. Canadian people are not drinking as much apple juice as they should. It’s our own, and it’s cheap, and it is delicious. I prefer it to any other fruit juice.
This, with plenty of fresh vegetables, soups and meats, coffee, Fraser Valley butter, cream and brown bread, makes up the “light diet” prescribed for me. Even the dishes are a delight, with their little rosebuds and bunches of pin-cherries. I believe they are little rose-bows, but pin-cherries have more meaning for me. The first day I came there were three sprays of japonica on my tray, pink and white. Who wouldn’t enjoy poor health in this friendly place?
Since writing the above, I have had a further pleasure which came from my being a patient here. I had a visit one afternoon in a real log house in the woods, built by Finnish workmen, who know what can be done with logs, for one of the superintendents at the hospital. Here she goes for her holidays, and her few days of leisure, and on this bright Sunday afternoon she invited me to come with three others.
We sat in front of her greatstone fireplace, where black pots hang on iron arms, and ate Swedish bread spread with cheese, and drank coffee and admired her handmade rugs and curtains, her quaint old lanterns and samplers, and handmade tables and coal-oil lamps that brought me back to Northfield School in Manitoba.
There is not a nail in the construction of her house; the logs are fastened solidly together by the axeman’s skill. A deer’s head with topaz eyes looks down from the wall, and a huge brass basket held the wood, which she had cut herself as her bit of exercise.
“Wood that you cut yourself,” she said, quoting an old proverb which I had not heard, “warms you twice!” Certainly we received our share of the second warming, and the peace of the deep woods came in with it as the shades of evening began to dull the bright sunshine.
The next morning, in her neat uniform, our hostess came to see me, and we talked about the comfort that comes from having a little place we call our own, where we can plant something and see it grow. She told me she has put out cherry and peach trees and flowering shrubs, through her woods, and already some were showing buds.
I know what a feeling of comfort it brings. I have it, too. There is an eternal rightness in the soil that atones for life’s disappointments, and how would we know that if we did not run into some dark days?
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
