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Cloud kennel

Everybody was crazy about Mrs. Brisbin, who taught Grade 2 at Malmo Elementary School in Edmonton.  The fact that we kids from Michener Park--what our parents called Married Student Housing--and were all estranged from somewhere and someone was also a factor.  Mrs. Brisbin was a nice sequel to Beatrice Kelly, who was the school principal and also taught First Grade.  Otherwise we were typical "elementos", or squirts as my 9 year old used to call them.  Elementos suggested some sort of imbecility, as if we were all mental, and maybe we were.
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Mrs. Brisbin's fiancée was an opthamologist and had donated a poster on the parts of the eye to our class after he was guest at an assembly devoted to eye hygiene and eye safety.  Don't rub your eyes, he said, which was comparable to other advice we were given (e.g., don't put anything bigger (they always said bigger when the word was smaller) than your elbows in your ears.  So why were Q-Tips on wooden sticks still used to remove ear wax?  And how else are you supposed to get the "matter" out of your eyes.
Image result for vintage parts of the eye posterImage result for q-tips
But all these things to one side, Mrs. Brisbin was a marvel unto herself.  Mrs. Kelly said I would "never amount to anything" because I was always crying, but Mrs. Brisbin believed in me somehow.  She put me in a sunny window when I was overfaced with the arithmetic problems in the tablet we were given at the start of the year.  The tablet (workbook) was drab newsprint with questions picked out in powder blue ink.  Those questions shouldn't have been hard, only there were so many of them--pages and pages every day and for homework besides.  Maybe practice makes perfect, but in the meantime, like my friend Patrick Aloysius (Al-o-wish-us) who worked with me at Tanaka's drug store, I "couldn't handle the questions".  Pat definitely meant something by that--I wish I had had his candour and courage in Grade 2.  It might have saved a lot of tears.  Maybe not.
Image result for vintage arithmetic tabletImage result for vintage arithmetic tabletImage result for vintage arithmetic tablet
Given that we had met Mrs. Brisbin's fiancée, it shouldn't have been traumatic that Mrs. Brisbin got married and went on a honeymoon.  But shock, like surprise, is a human response, and we were all guilty, some more  than others.  In the case of Mrs. Brisbin's temporary departure, I was definitely guilty of a human response.  I fretted and stewed and worried when I wasn't outright crying my eyes out and balling my head off and sobbing inconsolably.

But even if it felt like we had lost Mrs. Brisbin forever, she never really abandoned us.  Indeed, she even anticipated our distress, and, in addition to the thankyous for wedding gifts she must have written before she departed on her honeymoon, she printed by hand a card for each and every one of us telling us where she was going, for how long, and so on.  She told us she was taking the plane, and that her dog Gidget was accompanying her and her husband in a cloud kennel.  The substitute (supply) teacher was given instructions to place the cards in their hand addressed envelopes on our desks--laid out in rows to show our allegiance and obedience.
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Mrs. Brisbin even explained what a cloud kennel was and drew a little picture--remarkably similar in everybody's handwritten card.
Image result for vintage cloud kennelI know it didn't look like that, but her description made it sound so comfortable.  At least Gidget got to go with her.
But in spite of--it really felt as though it was a response to--the attachment cries of her pupils, Mrs. Brisbin came back, and we were happy to get rid of the sub, and we went on to watch Apollo 8 on a television perched high on a trolly that was rolled into our classroom.
NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpgRelated image
We left Edmonton before Neil Armstrong made his one small step for man and one giant step for mankind.  We left before the original moon walk.  We left before the splashdown.
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We left before I had a chance to say goodbye to Mrs. Brisbin and to Malmo Elementary School.  To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, we weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be alright.

After that there was the Stetson Motel on McLeod Trail in Calgary to get used to.  And eventually there would be Mrs. Dawson and another Apollo--this one a stereo purchased with points at Esso, its lens warping a Japanese record left on the turntable in the sun--and other things with which to form uneasy bonds.
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