Janina Fialkowska - A Note In Time

In Canada, my father worked for General Electric and then, when my maternal grandfather died, he retired from engineering and took over my mother’s third of the family estate, located on the western tip of Montreal Island, transforming it into a beautiful apple farm. He loved the property and was very happy living there, so long as he could travel each year to Europe or somewhere unusual. My father’s idea of heaven was to walk for hours in Paris, where he had studied as a young engineer, revisiting the “quartiers” of his youth. Since this coincided very much with my mother’s feelings about her early experiences in Paris, I always felt that their best times together were during our frequent trips to France as a family. My father was passionate about politics and read constantly, but although extraordinarily charming, in Canada he was very much a recluse, and could go weeks on end seeing no one but the family. Once he was in Europe, this changed dramatically and he became gregarious; I believe he just felt more at ease with the European style of life, of thought, of rapid conversation and discussion, as opposed to the natural reticence of English Canada.

But what my father cared for above all was his children. He was devoted to us and was always there whenever we came to him with any problem, wise and ready to support and reassure with reason and calm. My brother Peter had a particularly close relationship to him, and they often travelled all over Europe together while I stayed home with my mother and practised the piano.

Thanks to my parents, I grew up at ease with both cultures and inherited a profound love of Europe, a strong interest in politics and a passion for gardens and apple trees.

My ambitious mother suffered mildly from the notion that, because as a girl she had never received a university degree or even a regular high-school diploma, her intellectual upbringing was somehow disadvantaged. Au contraire, her massive general knowledge of history, politics, art, music, literature, and poetry (of which she could recite hours and hours in three or four different languages) would have put many a university professor to shame. What she possessed was a remarkable mind that positively thirsted for knowledge and remained sharp and ever curious right until the end.

She was also an inveterate organiser and a perfectionist and, perhaps due to her upbringing and early social status, was extremely self-confident in social situations. So, it was partially out of her own frustrations at not having had the chance to continue her musical studies or, indeed, pursue any other kind of profession, that she focused on her children’s development with passion and commitment.

My brother Peter, three years older than myself, is one of the family’s most delightful and gifted eccentrics. But he was definitely not the appropriate recipient of this barrage of ambition and discipline from my mother. Instead, he escaped into a fantasy world, which he generously shared with me. He created an entire universe with kingdoms and time machines, armies and palaces, knights, cowboys and gangsters (all inspired by books he read or countries we had visited) and magical, imaginary places like “Ishkabible” and “Iccadiccadaccidak.” Peter would be the narrator and would play the part of all of the characters but mine. I was entranced and enthralled by his imagination and his absurd sense of humour. I can still see us walking up and down the driveway for hours and hours after I had finished my work, in any kind of weather (even snowstorms and days of 30 below Fahrenheit), totally oblivious to the elements, completely caught up in our fantasy world.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had a brother who had utterly no interest in kicking balls and playing with other little boys but preferred my company and the world we created between us. He was always popular at school because he was so witty and such a good mimic, but his thoughts were never concentrated on anything scholastic or group oriented. For a little girl who was already sitting for five hours a day at the keyboard as well as attending regular school, those few hours with my brother each week were a true lifeline.

It was a crushing blow when he was sent away to boarding school in his early teens. My mother had had to give up forcing him to practise the piano because at one point Peter just dug in his heels and refused to co-operate, although he has loads of talent and had really become quite proficient. My father would patiently help him with his schoolwork and at university, seemingly without ever cracking open a book, he breezed through the courses and obtained his degree. Because of his good looks and talent, he was much in demand and always landed the lead parts in university theatricals, but the rigours of the acting profession were not for him, and in the end, he preferred a quiet life working for years as a television news-anchor and meteorologist in Peterborough, Ontario. His obsessions still include ocean liners, operas, railroads, sailing and trips to France. He was my closest ally as a child, as I was his, and he remains the best brother imaginable. My gorgeous Italian sister-in-law, Luisa, keeps him reasonably grounded, although many would affectionately consider him to be mad as a hatter. They have five children between them, and it is a relief to report that Peter’s two, Caroline and John, whom I love dearly, carry on the family tradition of eccentricity. Luisa’s three, Valerie, Andrea and John-Paul, are genuinely delightful and are an excellent counterbalance.

My mother found more fertile ground for her ambitions in her daughter. Peter was already playing the piano quite well when, at the age of four, I was clamouring to learn how to play myself; the sounds my brother was producing by pressing down the keys intrigued me. And so it was that my career began. My first piece was a Polish Christmas Carol, “Jezus Malusieńki,” that I played for my father as a Christmas present. Shortly thereafter, I was enrolled in the Sacred Heart Convent in Montreal as a day-pupil. My parents were unusual in Quebec society at that time, as my mother was a non-practising Anglican and my father a practising-on-his-own-terms Catholic. They decided the children should be brought up Catholic, as my father did actually attend church every Sunday and my mother never saw the inside of a church except for a funeral, a wedding or, more likely, as a tourist in Europe. I’m pretty sure they wanted us to be exposed to some sort of religion so we could develop our own theological philosophies later on. My father attended the village church regularly, but when we grew up and no longer went with him, he discontinued the practice because he found the local priests to be at best uninteresting and, at worst, as he would put it rather bluntly, “idiots.” He had strong beliefs, including some significant spiritual feelings for the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where he had gone to pray at difficult periods in his life, including his time in France during the early days of the war. But he often found Church doctrine meddlesome and intrusive, mixing into areas he felt were none of its business. In many ways my politically ultra-conservative father was, in fact, an extremely forward thinker.

Actually, my mother was a far more religious person than my father; I think she had a very strong sense of faith, even though she was a child of agnostics with no real religious background at all. She had a wonderful sense of irreverence towards organised religions and never failed to chuckle over some of the passages from the reams of Catechism I was forced to learn by heart every day at the convent.