My home town - Part I
Here's the church
And here's the steeple
Save the rectory!
This is a bit of an out-of-character post for me since I’m much more of an introvert as the few friends who visit my LJ would agree. These days, however, I’ve gotten a feel for living outside my comfort zone and I kinda like it.
So this evening I went for a spring walk through my village after a stressful day at work. There’s not much in the village central of Chelsea, Quebec -- a store, a pub, a coffee house, some homes, a couple of artistic type galleries and the church and graveyard property. It’s pretty much the same scenery as it was when I was a child growing up here. Little has changed except my elementary school and school yard. The school is now a community centre and non-denominational too. And where did all those great big trees go that I used to hug and that frost fence that Donna Hayes licked and got her tongue stuck on one cold winter day. And to be sure, right next door is the Catholic school counterpart with the same name of St. Stephen. On the same grounds as the church, the dilapidated rectory now closed and condemned and the historic graveyard. Some local artists are trying to stir up interest in fundraising to save the rectory but these days most of the locals only want sewer systems, waste water treatment plants and high density housing also known as a ‘tax base’.
So getting back to my nostalgic trip through the landscape of my childhood I can’t help but be flooded with some of the memories surrounding these places. There’s the old country store where old Gerry Murphy, the aged owner and postmaster would dole out penny candy to the ‘good’ kids along with the mail; the local pub that used to be a house with a ghost in the attic and of course the church property. The church-life which I could tell as many humourous stories as Frank McCourt did in Angela’s Ashes -- like my very first time attending mass and I peed in the pew because I couldn’t hold it, ending up embarrassing the hell out of my father and earning his wrath; how the nuns used to pin a tissue to the girls’ heads if we forgot to bring our kerchiefs on Friday church morning and how my sister used to get enrage the nuns (every time) by using the tissue to blow her nose; my brother picking his nose up on the altar wearing the finest altar boy clothes in front of the whole congregation and the ultimate memory: meeting the coolest Prime Minister Canada ever had and who used to frequent our church.
The adjacent graveyard now houses the graves of both of my parents and my bestest girlfriend Joanne who died of cancer when I was 10. It took me until only a few years ago to find her grave and rekindle a relationship with Pete and Terry her parents. Pete has since passed on and I know Terry doesn’t get enough phone calls from me but we swap birthday/christmas cards and she still keeps the poem I wrote for her daughter over 30 years later. One day I will go and collect the little white rosary she wants me to have from Joanne and my first communion day. Till this day when the church bells of St. Stephen's ring I remember exactly what I was doing and what the weather was like when those same bells rang out the news of Joanne's death to the community.
Now the rectory brings back some of the strongest memories of all - they say the olfactory sense is the strongest stimulus for nostalgia and for some odd reason I equate the sickly sweet smell of cigar smoke with conversion from the Anglican religion to Catholicism. This would be the time when I was between 5 and 6 years old and Mom decided that if her children were to be baptized and educated in the Catholic faith then so should she. Each Monday night Mom would go to the rectory for lessons with Father Brennan and I accompanied her. I was not allowed to go into the rooms where the priest conducted his lessons with Mom but was to sit on the high bench outside the room waiting. My legs were too short to touch the floor and if I sat back against the back of the bench then the angle of the seat edge cut painfully into the backs of my legs. So all I could do was literally sit on the edge of my seat with my legs dangling taking in my surroundings waiting for Mom to be converted. Mabel, the live-in trusty housekeeper had the comfy chairs in the parlour and I wasn’t allowed to sit with her. She only liked priests and certainly not children. So there wasn’t much to see or do for me in the darkened entry way but always take in that present and persistent odour. Father Brennan, when he wasn’t spraying incense, was a serious cigar smoker. Years later that same rectory saw me and my husband taking marriage prep lessons. And you guessed it - I married an Anglican. The ceremony was conducted with not the least bit of cigar smoke odour present either.
So in my village, as in most villages, the church and its grounds are still the focal point structures. I left the church for many years - it held only hellfire and damnation for me until a few years ago when I re-discovered prayer. And while not a devout and fully practicing Catholic I came back to a place that is as uncaring or as caring as the people who go there -- pretty much like everywhere else. And that includes my home town. Most of my school chums’ parents still go every Sunday even if their kids have moved away. I know for a fact though that if any of them were to come for a visit to the village square they’d end up smack dab in the same place I do. There’s nowhere else to go -- that is not until the developers have their way. And the church and the periphery of woods and nature will fade into obscurity forever.