CHAPTER NINE

As the Juniors’ dining room was on the way to ours, we saw the little kids, some as young as five, every day. They marched by us, two by two, with dedicated staff like Ruth Connors leading the way. They never passed us by without getting lots of attention. It didn’t make up for them being lonely or us missing a younger sibling at home, but it was enough for lots of laughs and smiles, back and forth.

The first morning at school with Mr. Allen and Mrs. Beaton had put me on the right path, but there was another big problem in my way. I was still wetting the bed at age ten and had to wash the sheets in front of everyone in the bathroom before going to school. It was almost as bad as the teasing at my other schools but I wasn’t the only one and I was not the oldest by far.

It was two weeks of that awful routine until one morning I was called out of class and told to report to the nurse’s station. I had no idea for what and neither did the messenger. When I got there, a motherly nurse talked to me like the day was meant for me. After helping me onto a bed table, she introduced the doctor and he, too, was friendly and talkative.

When he finished, mostly pressing down on the muscles in my lower back, he looked me straight in the face and said, “Robert, I promise you that from now on you’ll not be wetting the bed, ever again.” I thought at first that he was telling me to promise him, but, no, he promised me, and from then on it was good morning sunshine and good riddance to nocturnal enuresis: bedwetting. I don’t know what he did exactly or why it worked, but it did, and, after that, I got to make my bed each morning with the other kids.

I’m sure the School thought that a well-dressed bed made for a happy day—or at least for a neat and tidy room in case of visitors. All the beds were exactly the same: single, iron-framed with white fold-down sheets and a rust-brown, woollen cover. It was twelve or so beds to a dorm, no more than two feet apart, and a bunk bed or two when too many sardines enrolled for the same can. It was hospital corners all around and new sheets once a week. Clothes were marked in indelible ink, mostly by mothers at home, picked up on Thursdays and delivered the next day.

One of the boys in the dorm next to mine walked in his sleep and I can’t remember whether it was that year or the one following, but one night he sleep-walked right out the window and fell two storeys to the ground. Apart from a broken arm, he was fine and, like me, never to wet the bed again, he never again walked in his sleep.

On the weekends, my new friend, Gary, signed me out and we travelled the streets of Halifax, walking miles to every car dealership we could find. Gary loved cars more than food and for a time even more than girls. In our travels, we collected colourful brochures on every car in the showroom and every model, too. Gary knew all of them by heart and whenever he said “Wow!” I looked around, expecting to see a girl walk by, but it was just another car.

I took it all in and remembered none of it, having no interest in cars whatsoever. But that wasn’t the point; Halifax was a big city, I loved to walk, and I had a friend to lead the way. Gary was old enough at thirteen to leave the School premises and old enough to sign me out as well. Letting on that I was interested in cars was a small price to pay for all the walking we did and the fun we had over the next few weeks and for years after that.

When thirteen or in Grade Seven, the boys could go out and off the School property by themselves. The girls were less fortunate, not allowed off the school grounds until all of sixteen and, even then, only with two other girls of the same age or older.

In that first month or two at the School, I grew up plenty. Gradually, the homesickness went into hibernation and I surfaced, no longer feeling inferior or left out. I was still very shy and withdrawn and, although I hid that away when older, it’s still very much a part of who I am. Regardless, I’d made it, but not without a lot of help!

Apart from the good things happening in the classroom and new friends, there was that transistor radio my grandmother had given me on my tenth birthday, just before I left for Halifax. It cost her more than she could easily afford but she knew all about being homesick, having left her family in Lebanon when only fifteen, never to get back. She knew I’d need something to get by.

Before long I knew every song on the hit parade. I listened to baseball games from Baltimore, hockey games, and even the news, once in a while. It brought other kids to me, kids who heard a song they liked or the siren that told of a goal at Maple Leaf Gardens or the Montreal Forum. In later years it was evening programs and plays on the CBC.

I learned a lot from that radio and, more than that, it helped me to stop thinking about home, “out of mind, out of me.” If I could go back there today, grown up, I’d make sure every kid had a radio and I’d make sure this time that my grandmother knew how much it meant to me.

It took a lot of time but, eventually, I got good at not thinking about home. I felt guilty but it was so much better than being homesick. Sometimes days and later on weeks would pass with not more than a few thoughts of home.

It was a great help for me as well to see older boys showing the way forward by just being there and doing what older boys do. No matter how visually impaired they were, and many of them totally blind, they did things I thought incredible, like playing the piano, building model ships in woodworking class, writing and reading Braille, running a student newspaper or a drama club, and having girlfriends as well. When I looked up at them, I knew why I was there. I didn’t wish it but I knew why.

In a way, most everyone there, at one time or another, was a student, a teacher, an older sister or brother, a guardian, or just a friend to someone else, as my friend John Eves who adopted me for a few weeks when I first arrived. He didn’t have to watch over me and may not even remember it, but, in so doing, he taught me to do the same.

Many of us read letters from home to kids who couldn’t read and I can’t count the times that one of the older boys helped me with my homework, or how often I did the same for kids, older and younger alike. On the ice rink and on the dance floor, I tried to give some attention to the girls who seldom got asked.

One of the older boys showed me how to use the Gestetner to copy pages for the School newspaper. I was warned about the ink but no matter how careful you were, you were sure to ruin a shirt or waste an hour afterward trying to wash it off.

One evening during study period, Noel Brown, one of the older students, saw me and a friend of mine looking at an ad for maps in a magazine. “It’s a nice way to learn geography,” Noel said. “Go ahead and order them and I’ll pay the $9.99.” The maps arrived a few weeks later and, for the rest of that year, Grade Five, and maybe the next, maps of seven continents covered the classroom walls, each adorned with copper-coloured stickers where copper was mined, silver ones for silver, and so on. I never think of those maps without thinking how kind it was for Noel to have done that; it was a lot of money in those days, even for an older boy.

Examples like these speak to one of the most important aspects of the School: not just the blind helping the blind, but one member of a large family looking out for another. Even in that first year at the School, I could turn to Brian Lucas, John Eves, or a host of other kids if I needed help, and sometimes just a kind word or a simple “hello” passed from one person to another made the difference.

As the weeks passed, I found it less difficult and more fun to be there. I was no longer the only one in the crowd who couldn’t see the blackboard and being with kids like myself, that brought out the best in me. Life was far less stressful and there was always a chance of finishing the race and possibly even coming first for a change. And, yes, there were parties, too, but not every day as Mom had promised.