“Don’t Break Your Fast.” The First Communion class was warned about this day after day. “You cannot have any food or water from midnight before your First Communion Sunday.” Even the miracle of grade one pupils having some appreciation of the great mystery of transubstantiation — bread and wine actually being turned into the body and blood of Christ — paled before the terrible sacrilege of allowing food and drink to touch our lips anytime after midnight preceding the big day. I became so preoccupied with Not Breaking My Fast that it took on alarming proportions. I, who never woke during the night, started to worry, What if I need a drink of water in the middle of the night and forget I’m fasting and Break My Fast? All I could picture was arriving at the school on that beautiful May morning in my starched white dress, gloves, and veil with its precious crown of seed pearls and green artificial leaves, and being taken aside and told by my adored Sister Mary Rita, “Sorry, dear, but you’ll have to wait till next week. I warned you not to break your fast.”
Father (later Monsignor) Denis O’Connor looks over the 1939 Communion class.
First Communion day finally arrived. I hadn’t Broken My Fast. I knew not to chew the sacred host when it went into my mouth, but rather to swallow it immediately. My parents dropped me off at the school where the Sisters lined us up properly for the procession into the church. I was still congratulating myself. I hadn’t Broken My Fast. It felt a thousand times better than Not Stepping on a Crack or You’ll Break Your Mother’s Back. However, my classmate Bernie Martin was not so fortunate. He looked spiffy in his new navy blue suit with short pants and his carnation boutonniere. As Sister straightened us out in line, she suddenly pulled Bernie out from his place.
“Bernard, what do you have in your mouth?”
“Gum, Sister,” came the innocent reply.
A stricken look appeared on Sister’s face. She told Bernie to sit at his desk, then hustled to the back for a hurried, anxious conference with our school principal, Sister Beatrice. Every so often they’d send a searching look Bernie’s way. He was oblivious to it all. If anything, he was chewing faster and faster, making the most of this single opportunity to chew gum right in a classroom.
My mind was slowly coming around to what was the problem. True, he wasn’t swallowing the gum, so in that sense he hadn’t Broken His Fast, but I could smell that tangy coating on the stick of Dentyne. Maybe my hunger pangs were sharpening my senses. Where did that tangy saliva end up? I knew and so did the nuns — in Bernie’s stomach! That kind gesture by a family member to help little Bernie avoid the rumblings of his impatient stomach had created a crisis. Only consultation with Father O’Connor could solve it. The principal rushed over to the rectory. A few minutes later, she breathlessly reappeared and whispered to Sister Mary Rita “special dispensation,” whatever that meant.
Little Bernie never knew of the crisis he’d created. For my part, I didn’t once break either the spirit or letter of the law around fasting until I was in university, where someone gave me a formula how to manipulate it. All I had to do was assume I was still on daylight savings time in the fall, even though the time had changed, or calculate when it would be midnight in British Columbia, even if I was going to Communion in Toronto, giving me a three-hour advantage. All that fiddling around, bending the rules as I got older paled beside one story an Irish friend told me. After Vatican Two, fasting rules had been relaxed. She was finding it difficult to switch from the old rules.
“Mind you,” she informed me, “In Ireland you couldn’t even lick a postage stamp before Communion or you were Breaking Your Fast.”
I remember my reaction, “How stupid.” I knew in my heart my beloved Sister Mary Rita might struggle over Dentyne gum, but never over a postage stamp.
Unfortunately, as much as I basked in the love and sentimentality of my introduction to things spiritual, it didn’t take long for a rebellious side of my nature to surface.
“What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
— Elisabeth Harvor, “Through the Fields of Tall Grasses” in Let Me Be the One
The heavy rain had finally stopped on that Saturday of the Victoria Day holiday. The mothers were on Queen Street picking up their pre-ordered hams at Littlefair’s and sweet potatoes at the Power Store. I was romping in front of our new home — the top unit in a Hammersmith Avenue fourplex — with some neighbourhood kids. We moved there from Beech Avenue in 1938 — the year I’d started school. It was from that Hammersmith sidewalk that the neighbourhood had gathered in October to watch a giant twin-motor Lockheed thunder out of the Malton airport, marking the inauguration of Trans-Canada Airline’s Vancouver– Montreal express service. I felt so grown-up to witness this with adults. Most activities between adults and children had clearly defined limits.
That May day, there was nothing much to do except float old sticks in the rivulets running down the pavement curbs. The McClelland kids from down the street had led us in marching fashion to their backyard. The grass there hadn’t yet been able to absorb the earlier downpour and the backyard turned increasingly mucky as we aimlessly sloshed around the yard in circles. Mrs. McClelland’s linens were hung on the clothesline, a stark white contrast to the muddy landscape.
As I plodded around the yard, my six-year-old feet perspiring in rubber boots, I wove my way through Mrs. McClelland’s bleached linens hanging above us. The towels inflicted a cold, clammy slap on my face as I pushed through them.
All of a sudden I felt a powerful urge to take over leadership of these straggly six- to eight-year-olds. It was a strong emotion I’ve never experienced before. With no premeditation, I reached up to the clothesline and begin pulling down one item after another, not even bothering to remove the wooden clothes pegs. As I wrenched the linens, some of the pegs twirled upside down on the line, as if staring at the havoc being wrought. With increasing fury, I moved from one end of each clothesline to the other. There was no sound except my huffing and puffing as I pulled each item down. There was a force within me that allowed no opposition. It moved through my body like a bolt of electricity. It was almost as if I was detached from that body. I watched myself run back and forth, my feet pounding those sheets deeper and deeper into the slushy ground. When I was sure they were all soiled, I stomped over them again to remove any vestige of that pristine whiteness.
My companions stood helpless. Even the two McClelland children were still.
Just as suddenly as I began, I dashed toward home. The others dispersed quickly. I ran up the stairs to our apartment and hid in the bathroom. Inside I regained control, then walked into the living room where my father was sitting. Daddy had just put my baby sister Suzanne to sleep in her crib in my parents’ bedroom. He was chuckling at a cartoon in his Saturday Evening Post. I got out my pencil and began connecting the dots in my colouring book. My mother was still out shopping, so we both sat there quietly, whiling away the time.
Some time later the doorbell rang. Daddy went to the top of the stairs and pushed the buzzer that opens the door. I heard Mrs. McClelland at the bottom of the stairs. She had barely started to speak when I rushed to the hallway and clutched my father’s legs.
“I didn’t do it, Daddy, I didn’t do it.”
I was sobbing so hard he could barely hear Mrs. McClelland, who had yet to explain why she was there. He signalled to me to go back to the living room and heard Mrs. McClelland out. After she left, he walked slowly back into the living room. This was a new situation for him. My mother was the disciplinarian, because he was away all week, on the road. With a sad look, he sat