Losing My Marbles
1957, Chapel Street Public School, Georgetown, Ontario, kindergarten with Mrs. Smith. If you misbehaved, “behind the piano” was your place of penance.
We kids lived for recess, when we could “play marbles,” or allies, as we also called them. (Mrs., Smith was neither a big fan of marbles nor of the word “kids.” We were admonished for its use, with a pithy rebuke: “I don’t see any little baby goats.”)
Be that as it may, to a five-year-old boy in the late 1950s, a marble collection could look like a secret treasure spilled from a pirate’s chest: cat’s-eyes flashing green and amber, milk-glass swirls glowing like tiny moons, and clearies catching the afternoon sun, becoming whole galaxies in the palm of one’s hand. Each one had its own magic – cool, smooth, and heavy with promise – turning an ordinary game in the pock-marked dirt beside the side door of the kindergarten into a glittering kingdom of colour, luck, wonder, and fierce, anarchic competition.
During learning time, I would surreptitiously stare at and caress these jewels, which would sometimes spill from their velvety blue bag stuffed in the back corner of my old wooden desk and clatter across the classroom floor, occasioning another punishment period behind the piano, as well as dreaded confiscation.
Nearly 70 years later, with the death of my dearest wife, my Anne, I feel as though I’m “losing my marbles,” as my precious jewel is gone forever.
If you feel like reading more about Anne’s cancer journey, I’ve chronicled it in prose and poetry here:
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/news/
For more on marbles, follow this link to a wonderful story of how kids would “play allies” in southern Ontario, in those days oh-so-long ago:
https://phlbrwn.com/2014/ lore:04/18/for-all-the-marbles/
And you can read a compendium of marble lore here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_(toy)
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
