Tearing down memories

They are tearing down my old alma mater. I guess I should shed a few tears. The thing is, I am trying hard to remember what the school looks like, both inside and out. David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, on the corner of Brimley and Lawrence, in Scarborough, Ontario. Well, at least I have a point of reference. The only picture I have of the high school in my mind is from a recent drive by, when visiting my mother in the old homestead. How is it that I have shut out almost all memories of my high school years? Were they that traumatic?

Actually, I would say that the opposite was true. They were so bland as not to deserve remembering. Washed away in the flow of time.

A few memories do remain, though:

- The school newspaper that we put together in Mike Jackal’s basement while listening to Cat Stevens, a newspaper that quickly went underground when we chose to bypass the school censor and hand out birth control pamphlets together with it. Probably my only ever visit to the principal’s office, where the school censor appeared scared, the principal ended up talking about the Kennedy assassination for some unknown reason, and somehow the matter was closed. It didn’t appear that anyone knew what to do with so-called revolutionaries in a Toronto suburb.

- My best friend and I, bored to tears in Math and Physics classes, deciding to keep what little was left of our brains alive by unscrewing and removing all of the handles on the Physics cupboards underneath each student desk and storing them in our locker.  It took us at least a week to remove them all, all done during regular classes, and another week before this was noticed - the Physics teacher bringing the no-nonsense Vice Principal in to view the situation during one of our classes. We shifted the “merchandise” to an undisclosed area just in case they decided to do a locker check. Locker checks were quite unusual at the time. Drugs hadn’t yet become much of a problem in Scarborough, and no one appeared to want to enter into the grey area of constitutional rights over Physics desk handles. I think we had more fun putting the handles back, bit by bit during the Physics classes. It simply drove them crazy, and that was the whole point.

- Then there was the intellectual discussion over whether it was possible to make love in a sleeping bag - a literary critique of one of Hemmingway’s books - to the chagrin of our teacher. Another English teacher thought my comparison of “A Separate Peace” and “Lord of the Flies” was brilliant and announced to the class that I would “go places”. That shows how much he knew, although I did make it to Israel.

- One of my most creative moments was when I wrote a paper for my Physics class disproving the existence of matter. I got a very high mark. Apparently the Physics teacher didn’t understand a word, and was still shell shocked from the disappearing cupboard handles.

- Another less demanding creative moment was when I went beyond the usual strategies of writing a book report without reading the book, by making up a title of a book, publisher, date of publication and storyline. I got a very high mark for that also. Best composition I ever wrote. That was before the days when a teacher could easily check such things through the Internet, if they knew how, and instead had to depend on their own common sense.

- My best friend and I, looking for new ways to amuse ourselves, took a creative approach to an English project by providing a tape of musical appreciation. Those were the days of cassette tapes and old tape players where we could attach a microphone. We would tape the beginning of a song, then come in with our own commentary, explaining the song’s meaning, history and relevance. These were all popular songs that we grew up with and we had a great time, rolling on the floor with laughter at times. The English teacher surprised us by giving us a mark of 100, and we never did see the tape again. I guess it is one of those treasures that teachers like to lock away. I guess we were surprised because we never thought that we were supposed to find learning that much fun.

- One of my warmest memories is that of a scholastic history class, run by Mr. Brown who played the devil’s advocate while we explored and compared the great revolutions: Russian, Chinese, French... I owe many of my critical skills to him. Yet, it was the same Mr. Brown who warned me about going to Israel when he heard of my plans to learn at an ulpan there. “I know you, David. You won’t be able to keep your mouth shut about what is going on over there and will probably end up in jail.” He must have seen the picture of me that had appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail, a few years earlier,  where I appeared in the front ranks of a demonstration at City Hall against the War Measures Act imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau during The October Crisis. Ah, those were the years when I still saw things in black and white, and didn’t understand that most of it is grey, and still more grey. My “liberal leaning” friends also weren’t appreciative of my going to Israel. Most of them disowned me long ago. Not that there were many. Friends, that is. You know, that thing that we used to have before Facebook Friends took over.

So they are tearing down my old school, freeing up a choice piece of real estate, as the school merges with a school nearby - or so I heard from a fellow Thomsonite through facebook. The other school received notoriety not long ago when one student stabbed another. Long gone from the days when underground newspapers and birth control pamphlets were the main concern.

For some reason, the thing I remember more from my Scarborough years is my elementary school - Knob Hill Public School. I still visit it, each time that I am back to visit my mother, when I go with my other best friend on the “neighborhood walk”. Leaving Danforth Road, we go up along Barrymore and then down Miramar Crescent where she lived. Turning left onto Gage upon passing the United Church, which keeps adding on new extensions, then over to Seminole and up to the school. At the back of the school I can still envisage myself playing foot hockey with a tennis ball during recess on the same small outside basketball court, which has changed little.  Then herded back into the school  by Mr. Wolf.

And what about the faces? It seems that the only faces that I remember, or recognize - when flipping through the old D&M Thomson yearbook - are the same faces who were with me at Knob Hill Public School. One day I tried looking up a few of those faces on Facebook. This may not be the best idea, for our saved image of people is nowhere near to what they look like now. And if they have changed that much, then what does it say about us? But we are tough. We can take it. So, you Thomsonites out there  - if you want to drop me a friend request, I promise to accept, and we can talk over forgotten times. I hope your memory is better than mine.

Home is where the Heart is

“There is no place like home! There is no place like home! ” Dorothy exclaims, clicking her heels together three times,  as she is magically transported back to the Kansas farm she calls home.

I grew up in the same house in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, for the first 18 years of my life (minus the first 18 months in Belleville where I was born). This was the only home that I knew throughout my childhood and teen years. And when, years later after I had left Canada, my parents informed me that they were thinking of moving to a place further north, I was shocked at their news. This was my home they were taking away from me!

It didn’t matter that I barely made it back for a visit once in every five years, because of the constraints of being a kibbutz member at the time. The little house in Scarborough was still home to me. Probably even more of a home than the kibbutz where I had lived for over ten years. I think this feeling was augmented the first time I took my three small children to visit. I saw the world I had left behind, and memories from my childhood, through their eyes. And this awakened the Canadian in me, more than anything else has ever done.

If my parents had moved, would my concept of home have moved with them? How much does home belong to the heart and how much to things that we must touch and hold?

“I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home, only to no home I'd ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a cab.”
~ Sleepless in Seattle

Why would some of us be tempted by the World of Oz to stay, while others never lose sight of their roots? Is every person who travels abroad for the first time a potential “expat”? Or are expats genetically wired differently? I don’t think an expat ever expects to live abroad for the rest of his/her life. It starts out as an adventure and somehow way leads on to way, and then there appears to be no way back. This is the main difference between an “expat” and an “immigrant”. An immigrant plans to live the rest of his/her life in a foreign country from the very start. Of course there is always a “physical” way back, even for an expat. But the heart has changed, somehow.

And then some of us may lack a real heart and go out into the world searching for one, just as the Tin Man did. But it may not be about the heart. It may all be about the journey.

I never felt completely at home in Canada, even at an early age. I felt that something was missing, as if I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I suppose that I romanticized the notion that there was a place out there for me. I just had to go out and find it. So, after finishing high school, I was ready to set out. My plan was to travel through Europe for a few months and then go to a kibbutz ulpan in Israel. “I have no idea when I’ll be back,” I told people.

Europe came up empty. It was the last place I could ever call home. And then, one day, I arrived in Israel. The flight had been delayed because of security concerns and I missed the last bus to the kibbutz, so I slept on a bench in the airport. I should have been uncomfortable there and quite nervous. The bench cut into my back and kids my age walked by me in army uniforms, touting guns. But I felt more at home, at that moment, than I had ever felt before. And this feeling stayed with me for quite some time on the kibbutz. I often wondered if I had been somehow genetically programmed to find my way there, perhaps a lingering gene from a missing generation. If I had been Jewish, this might have made more sense.

I quickly discovered, though, that people are still people - the same everywhere. Well, I didn’t discover this all that quickly. I had to learn Hebrew first. When Israelis stopped trying to speak English with me and gave into Hebrew, I knew I had reached that threshold where I could properly gauge where I was and what to expect. But my most important discovery was the revelation that you can’t run away from yourself. You can change continents, language, culture... but things will catch up with you in the end. It may take months, years, or decades. But we are what we are.

This led to a sudden epiphany, one day while walking with my wife along the Palmachim beach.
“I’ve realized something,” I told her.
“What?”
“The reason why I have stayed here all these years. The reason why I probably will never leave.”
“I have to hear this,” she said.
“Well, before I came here, I never fit in well. Not in Canada. It was as if I was a foreigner in my own land. I thought that if I could find the right place, all this would change.”
“And this the right place?” she asked.
“For a while I thought so. But slowly things caught up with me. I don’t feel any more at home here, now, than I did in Canada.”
“So why do you stay, then?”
I sighed, staring over the vast expanse of sea.
“Because, I have an excuse, here. I am a foreigner. I am not supposed to fit in easily. Back in Canada I have no excuse for being such a misfit.”
“You aren’t a misfit,” she said. “You have fit in. You have become very Israeli and most people  have no idea that you aren’t Jewish.”
I nodded, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

Maybe it all is in the mind... or in the heart.