As I head into central commerce Collegiate, I’m feeling a rush of emotion. It’s not only because I’m about to watch my niece play Anne in a production of The Diary Of Anne Frank, though normally that would get the tears flowing big time.
I’ve just finished sitting shiva for my mother-in-law, Eileen, who went to this high school.
And I’m walking into the building holding the arm of my 93-year-old Auntie Ida. She was also a student here, as was my mother and my other aunt, Helen.
Central Commerce celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. A school rep, hearing of the arrival of an elderly alumna, descends on my aunt, making her promise she’ll attend the official celebration coming up later in the year.
“My picture’s up here somewhere,” she tells him. Then, to me, she says, “So’s Helen’s.”
“What about my mother?” I ask.
She looks me in the eye. “She didn’t stand first in her class.”
Though I’m feeling a little raw, I have a little laugh at this. They compete with each other to this day – and they’re in their 90s.
It was at this venerable collegiate that the rivalry deepened. And it was here that young girls, all of them with limited life choices, learned to type and to master the art of penmanship.
Days before my birthday, I always receive a card from Auntie Ida in an envelope addressed in the most ex-quisite handwriting.
I figured out where my late mother-in-law went to school when I received my first note from her in the mail, written with the green pen she often used. “Wow, superb script,” I said to my partner, Leslie. “Did your mum go to Central Commerce?”
When my own mother slowed down to the point where she could hardly walk, she was still able to wield the pen. She addressed every invitation to my daughter’s bat mitzvah, her hand unbelievably steady, all the flourishes still there.
We can measure progress, I suppose, in the fact that nowadays boys can type up a storm by the time they’re six. But the art of handwriting? It’s dying out with the generation of women who perfected it.
Later, after the play, on the sidewalk outside the school, it hits me that I’ve received my last note in that gorgeous green script.
susanc@nowtoronto.com
