MARIE'S MUSES

  In 1962 I was 7 years old and in Grade 2.  I remember that year clearly, but then I have a good memory for remembering lots of years.  My teacher that year was Mrs. Hogan.  She lived just down the road from us and her husband was in the military like my dad.  I remember trick or treating on Halloween and knocking on her door, but I don't remember what she gave us.  She had breath that smelled like smoke and peppermints and I remember her sticking me out in the hall on a couple of occasions...once, when I stomped on someone's foot in the lineup to go into school in the morning (I was only retaliating...they had stomped on mine first!  but I was the one that got caught) and another time when I screamed as a spider crawled across my desktop.  (I hate insects...but I hate spiders most of all)  That year she read to us from a book about Leave It To Beaver.  Beaver was a huge North American icon...a little boy that lived in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood with his mom, dad and brother...and he got up to the most interesting adventures....the television show was one of the first and most popular of it's time...and remains so to this day....living on in reruns. 

Anyways, I digress.....at the end of the school year, as always, there was an awards afternoon.  This was a really special day in the school calender....it was the day when pupils in all the grades were acknowledged for their accomplishments both great and small...be it perfect attendance or most improved.  There were so many children enrolled in school in those days (we were baby boomers) that we all met in a large, or what seemed like large,  aircraft hanger,  on the airbase nearby.  I remember there being lots and lots of children and parents...everyone dressed in their finest clothes, and there was a definite air of excitement and gaiety in the air.  It was quite a long ceremony, as you can imagine...but being that I was only in Grade 2...our awards were given out fairly early in the afternoon...You can imagine my surprise and elation  when my name was called out as one of the award winners for my Grade.  I remember moving from the audience up onto the stage to receive it...my little dark ponytail bobbing up and down as my black and white saddle shoes tapped up the stairs and across the stage....I was wearing a pretty blue dress, tied with a bow at the waist, complete with crinoline.  (I always hated crinolines...they were so itchy)  I was a picture though...and my mother has this special moment captured in a black and white photographic image  of me receiving this award. I will have to ask her for a copy of it so I can share it with you at a later date.  In the photo, I am glowing, absolutely beaming...my grin as wide as my face....my hand held out as my teacher, facing me and bending down, hands me my award....all wrapped in white paper and tied with a ribbon...and a certificate.   I came 2nd in the class for that year....losing out on first to...Eileen Sargeant, of course!  I was so excited.  I did not open it until I got  home....not that I hadn't wanted to...but my mother wouldn't let me.  Sitting at home on our living room sofa...tearing off the paper, my family sitting around me watching in rapt attention, I don't believe I had ever been as excited about anything in my life before or nor have I been since. 

There, underneath the white paper,  lay a book....Mary Poppins Opens The Door by P L Travers.  I was thrilled.  I had never received a REAL book before...not other than a little children's Golden story book.....most of the books like that I had read had been borrowed from the station library and I had always had to return those.  This one was my very own and it was beautiful.  It's yellowy orange cover, complete with beautifully illustrated Cream coloured Dust Jacket lay like the finest piece of gold in my little hands and I could hardly wait to tuck into it and read the words held therein....and read it I did.  I amazed at the arrival of this very special and magical  nanny to what seemed like a very peculiar house, Number Seven on Cherry Tree Lane.  All the characters resonated with a spectacular vibrance in my seven year old mind....I thrilled with Jane and Michael Banks as they experienced adventure after adventure with this magical woman who had breezed into their lives at the end of an umbrella and would breeze out again with just as much magic....I wanted to experience drinking tea at a real tea party and floating up into the air with laughing gas with Uncle Albert...and I cried when the wind changed and Mary Poppins floated away again....She was a full and magical character, if a little bit strict and scary...but you could tell she really cared for those children a great deal...and I wanted a nanny just like her. (the realization that my parents would have to be rich to afford a nanny at all, entirely escaping me)  I devoured that book like a fat man devours a steak,  with complete relish and abandonment...and then I read it again...and again...and again.....I wore out the dust jacket...I wore out the cover and still I read it again.  It was my absolute favourite book of childhood.....and I am not sure if it was because I loved the story so much or if it  is because it was an award....or maybe a combination of both. 

I still had it up until about 10 years ago, along with various other childhood treasures, until one day my ex husband decided to clear away some junk and gave that book along with some other's of mine to a friend of his for her grand-daughters, without asking me first.  I was heart broken...he had given  away a childhood friend.  Nevertheless it lives on in my mind, and the image is not that of Julie Andrews singing "Just a Spoonful of Sugar"  but the beautiful black and white illustrations of Mary Shepard of a slight woman, wearing a long overcoat and a crumpled hat adorned with a bouquet of flowers...her haughty, tiny and very  proud nose slightly elevated above others...because as you know...she was much better than the rest...and sometimes in my mind's eye I go to Cherry Tree Lane again and just for a minute or two I am a child again and revelling in the arrival of a special woman who, at the end of an umbrella,  helped shape my idea of all that could be good and magical  in the world....if only for a moment....

I'm not sure if Jane and Michael Banks ever had this tasty dish for suppers in their nursery...but I like to think that they did:

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• #4 Comment from lindachapmanuk 
  23/10/06 20:32 | Permalink

  you have such a good memory! Im sorry about your book but I really enjoyed reading that entry! please try and get the photo from your mum! Linda xx
  http://journals.aol.co.uk/lindachapmanuk/metamorphing
• #3 Comment from ravenjuiced 
  23/10/06 18:47 | Permalink

  I never wanted a nanny until I turned fourteen or fifteen, and then it was for my own selacious reasons. ;)
  
  Fred
  http://journals.aol.com/ravenjuiced/those-eyes-that-the-cherubim-dre/
• #2 Comment from jeadie05 
  23/10/06 12:46 | Permalink

  This is a delightful account of a very special memory ,and what an amazing memory ,to recount so many details...GRR at the book being given away,how dare he ! ,are you calling a frilly petticoat a crinoline ?.....love Jan xx
• #1 Comment from susanebunn 
  23/10/06 11:28 | Permalink

  Oh Marie, how sad that he threw out your treasured prize book!  The memory of your special day is still fresh in your mind and the thrill of opening that parcel.  That's what counts.  If I had the choice of having the book or the special memory, I'd go for the memory!  Who's the bright girl then?
  
  Susie xx
  http://journals.aol.co.uk/susanebunn/ItAllStartsAfter50/