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| Author Gabriella Goliger (left) meets Raylene Burke, her Grade 1 teacher, 63 years later at the Jewish Book Festival in Vancouver, February 12, 2019. |
By Gabriella Goliger
I was six years old, a shy, nervous child of immigrant
parents, aware in my bones of the emotional burdens my parents carried, and of
their struggles adapting to a new land. She was my Grade 1 teacher, aged 19:
lovely, confident, sparkling, full of carefree enthusiasm. Everything my
parents were not. She was Jewish, like my parents – but New World Jewish. Her
warm, generous smile spoke of a genuine love of teaching and kids. How could I
not be smitten? The only teacher from grade school I would ever remember, her
name tucked away in a corner of my heart.
Fast forward 63 years. I was a published author now,
on tour with my third book in Vancouver, many miles from home. Out of the blue,
came an email from a woman who’d seen the notice about my presentation at the
2019 Jewish Book Festival in Vancouver. “Was I the little girl she’d once
taught back in Montreal in the 1950s?” She gave me her first and her married
names, which meant nothing to me, but her maiden name certainly did. Oh Miss
V.!
She came to my reading early so that she could
introduce herself and at first glance I would never have recognized her. Well,
I’ve grown a few grey hairs too in the intervening years, but here was the once
tall (in my memory), youthful Miss V. gone white-haired, slightly stooped and
shorter than my own five-foot-three. But the moment she spoke, I felt a
familiarity and connection. Or at least an answering leap of joy along with my
surprise. She was still so eager, warm and sparkling. Age had diminished none
of her spirit. And then, not a flicker of unease appeared on her face when I
outed myself as a lesbian by introducing my female partner of many years.
That’s not always the case with people of her generation, nor mine, nor younger
ones either.
We met again when I returned to Vancouver about a
month later. Over dim sum (her treat), she filled me in on the intervening
years between 1955 and now – on a life of bitter surprises and struggles, but
also of wonderful resilience and achievement.
In her early-20s, she married her college sweetheart,
left Canada with him so that he could pursue his medical career in the U.S.,
had a baby, then another. The birth of their first child made the social notes
of a Canadian Jewish newspaper. By every measure of 1950s expectations for
womanhood, she had it all – with a rising star doctor for a husband to boot.
But he left her. He abandoned the family without warning, leaving his young
wife to fend for herself and two children under three in a strange city and a
foreign country. It was a time when divorce was a dirty word. When such things
weren’t done and, if done, were spoken of in whispers, with the whisperers
usually opining it was the all fault of the wife. She could have... She should
have...
The erstwhile Miss V. coped, as have so many women in
her circumstances. She returned to Montreal, returned to teaching, found a way
to both earn a living and raise her kids. Persisted in finding a better
apartment in a good neighbourhood despite encountering grim-faced landlords who
asked “Where’s your husband?” and who, despite the proof she could show of a
steady job, closed the door in her face.
From teaching, she moved on to retail sales and later
to a position as a hospital volunteer director. In the late-1970s, when Quebec
seemed on the brink of separation, she pulled up stakes and headed west with
her teenaged kids, worried about job security and her children’s future. It
meant resettling yet again, but thus began her 22-year career as coordinator of
volunteers for the Burnaby Health Department. She is proud to have built the
organization from the ground up, from zero volunteers to 250 by the time she
retired.
In her 60s, she started yet another venture as an
English-language tutor to new immigrants, adding to her already large circle of
contacts and friends. She travelled widely. She never remarried. Now 82, she
continues to be fully independent and active, though connected with her grown
children, who live nearby.
In the Chinese restaurant in Richmond, she insists on
ordering plate after plate of dim sum delicacies for us to share, though
there’s no way we could finish them all. “So what,” she declares, with the
triumph of someone who loves to enjoy life’s pleasures and refuses to worry
about trifles. I’m struck once again by her exuberance and lack of bitterness,
despite the hard knocks she’s undergone. I show her a photo of myself as a
young child and am deeply moved when she recognizes that long-ago face.
“You used to hide under your bangs. You were quiet and
shy,” she recalls.
She herself can’t explain why I, and a few other
pupils, stand out in her memory. Perhaps it’s because we were among the first
she taught. But still, it seems remarkable, a precious gift. To be remembered
as a child feels so validating, like being rescued from the mists of obscurity
– a piece of my long lost self is restored. We all only truly exist through the
eyes of one another. And to reconnect with the first love of my childhood
heart, to discover who she’s become in the intervening years! That’s quite a
blessing, too.
Ottawa author Gabriella Goliger’s most recent book, Eva
Salomon’s War, was reviewed in the September 17, 2018 edition of the Ottawa
Jewish Bulletin.
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