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My mom didn't say “I love you” to me, but she showed it in every move she did. I was admiring her brown, smooth and sturdy hands. I have a very clear memory of being six or seven years old and looking at her beautiful hands. As they grew, these hands became more meaningful. Calm hands that never clapped, and that moved with great care and attention.
Mom never told us she went to boarding school. She mentioned little things in passing, about the “sisters.” It seemed to be something peculiar, but no one explained to us why that was the case. My mom got married at 18 and moved to British Columbia, far away from her childhood life.
It was only when she braided our hair that the subject emerged. Sitting on the floor in front of her, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the slow, steady brushing. Thinking out loud, she let out fragments, I only understood that they were the “sisters.”
When I left home to go to college, she started saying “I love you” on the phone.
When I came back after my first year, she braided my hair while we were watching TV. There was a CBC miniseries about residential schools. I watched until the seaplane landed. “It didn't happen to you, did it? ” I asked him.
Mom verbalized her response without looking at me. She was thinking. Finally, in a neutral voice, she said yes. In the years that followed, the elements gradually came together. That explained the silence... Not only about the boarding schools, but also the one that reigned in our house. It was a quiet home. My mother never engaged in an intense exchange or passionate debate of any kind. During arguments, she would go downstairs to do the laundry and cry, rather than say what she was thinking.
My mother was taken to Saint Joseph boarding school when she was seven. The “sisters” she was talking about were the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. They ran a boarding school for girls in Spanish River, Ontario, which was operated in partnership with the Government of Canada. Along with the boys' school, it was the largest boarding school in Ontario.
My mom only came home for vacation, although the house was just across the river. She only spoke Anishinaabemowin, and didn't understand anything she was saying. “I didn't know anything, not even that I had to raise my hand to go to the bathroom. So I wet my seat and I was beaten for it.”
She's answering my questions now, the day before the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. She held back for over sixty years, but she answered in a direct and calm manner. In her own way. Articles, movies, and testimonies told me more about boarding schools than my own mother. It was the others who informed me. Looking back on their stories, I ask if there were older children who had been there longer and could serve as translators. Two of my mom's cousins were in the same class as her. “But they could only help me if they were told to do it,” she said. “I didn't understand, and it never left me,” she continues. “It was just... confusing. I never understood what was going on and then the fear and confusion never went away.”
My youngest is eight. He is in the room next door, I find myself imitating my mother's calm and calm voice. I check again, hoping she was attending a day school, even though I know she wasn't. My mind doesn't want to think about its little person there at night. “I stayed there until Christmas, or until summer. Even though my house was just across the river.” It's the idea that my mom was alone that makes me suffer the most.
Gabor Maté explains that this is the reason why trauma is formed, not just the injury itself. “[Children] are traumatized because they are alone with their pain,” he says. It seems so accurate to me in so many ways that it is unbearable.
My mother always liked to have her children present and close by. She raised four children and one grandchild. She understood why a protective eye was needed.
On the eve of the first of this very first national holiday, my mother describes her abandonment. In the choice of words, more than in the tone, I understand. She didn't have that breakup moment that's talked about in books, when a child has grown up and realizes that it hurts parents to leave their children.
“My parents believed in the Church, in the education system, and they brought me there.” I learned that the lives of survivors change when they hear that it was not a choice, that they were forced to do it. Maybe my mom didn't have that moment. I take a breath, and I say, “Mom. They were threatened with imprisonment if they didn't cooperate, right? ” Her voice is changing, it's getting a bit lighter.
She knew that, right? I wonder. It is not possible that she did not know that it was imposed. She had to know that... and wasn't that what she felt? Residential schools were another way for the government to try to break up Indigenous families, and churches were involved.
I wanted a photo of my mom for this report, the one I had in mind was a class photo at Spanish River School.
“I don't have it anymore. I ripped it up. One day I was so mad at the Catholic Church that I tore it apart,” she told me that evening. I raise my eyebrows on the phone, it's not like him. She repeated the sentence to insist, which is not like her either. I smile a bit as I visualize the scene.
That's how you heal.
As a journalist, I talk to a lot of people. I learn things in each interview, whether it's a heartbreaking story of racism or a brilliant project. Sharing these stories has given me the insight that sometimes gives me new points of reference for talking to my mother.I wrote about language initiatives while taking my first Ojibwe course.
My mom seemed a bit distant, telling me that “it's too hard to learn.” For decades, I turned away and shut myself up in the face of the least rejection. Now I'm taking a break and trying again. I tell mom that I am taking the class with my sixteen-year-old son, that it is “our” time together and that it is fun. I gave him a lesson received by a young and brilliant Sylix language teacher.
An elder explained what characterizes hesitant older learners and silent speakers. They cannot speak out loud until their pain is healed. My mother relaxes when she hears this teaching, and her voice changes. I hear him shaking his head and agreeing. That's when she said to me, “I only spoke the language until I was seven. And getting hit every time I talked to her made it difficult. It's there, but I can't verbalize.” For the last twenty years, I wanted to ask him “why”? Why didn't she tell us that?
We would have understood it, we would have felt less frustrated when it detached itself from emotional things. Instead, I am sharing what an elder explained during a cover exercise in Klahoose territory. In the circle, I asked the question and he answered. We didn't talk about it because we didn't want our grandchildren to feel that pain, I was told. Mom nods in. One of the most devastating consequences was being silenced. I say “was” because now we're talking about it. With each new testimony from my mother, my world is changing, rebalancing. We have become closer. Mom makes a point of telling me the following thing: “Let's be clear, there are others who have lived much worse than me in these places.” She wants me to know this so that I don't have questions, but she is doing herself a disservice by minimizing her childhood pain. It's not the time to ask her more, I'll talk to her about it next time.
Despite this introduction to what is called “education”, she attached importance to higher education. In her late 30s, she started working in the health care sector, improving and scaling her degrees as she went. She graduated as a nurse just as she celebrated her 50th birthday. The circle has come full circle, she has returned to her native land to work with seniors in long-term care.My mother says that this new National Day for Truth and Reconciliation does not change anything that happened. I understand why she feels that way. There are so many actions to take, and none of us trust these governments. My mom tells me about what hurt us. We communicate, and that makes us grow.
I love you, mom.