Tapestry of Yesteryear: Growing up on Pilley's Island
by Gwendolyn Poole Molnar

It is a miracle that I survived my birth and am alive to tell this tale. My mother went into labour on a sultry August morning in 1915 attended by the local midwife, Aunt Lizzie Simms, and a couple of well-meaning neighbours. (Later with my knowledge as a maternity nurse, I presumed I must have been a breach birth.) In any event, when I finally emerged, blue and still, the good souls just dropped me on the bed in the next room and gave all their attention to my weak, exhausted mother.

Just about that time, another neighbour, Aunt Jane Cook arrived. Most older people were called aunts or uncles though in reality were not related at all. She saw the frenzied activity as the women worked on my mother. Then it dawned on her that something was missing. “Where is the baby?” she asked. “Oh, the baby is dead. She’s in the other room.” Aunt Jane decided to see for herself and that is when she saw the faintest flutter of my eyelids. With great dispatch she produced two pans of water, one hot and one cold, and proceeded to dunk me from one into the other, until I emitted a feeble squawk. From then on it was all uphill. My mother revived and was happy to hear that little Gwendolyn Dorothy was alive and kicking, thanks to the ministrations of Aunt Jane Cook, who from that day on held a special place in my mother’s heart.

All went well and my two older sisters, Gladys, five, and Geneva, nearly four, were delighted with their baby sister. In fact, Gladys was so delighted that when I was a week old and my mother’s back was turned, she gathered me up in her arms. She was presumably taking me for my first airing when – whoops! – she dropped me on the doorstep. When my mother came weakly tottering up, Gladys looked up with an angelic smile and said, “It’s all right, Mommy, it was only her head that struck.” There were no doctors, no X-rays, and presumably no cranial damage. Hearing that story in later years, I blamed all my faults and failures on that one crack on the head.

I was a placid baby and thrived on breastfeeding, my only blemish being my left eye, which was slightly crossed. To quote my mother, “It had a cast in it.” It was very noticeable in early childhood. In fact, my very first memory is when I was a chubby three-year-old playing with Ada Rideout, who lived nearby. From her advanced age of five, she looked down her nose at me and said, “You’d be pretty if you didn’t have a crossed eye.” I was shattered. Quite likely, that remark was responsible for the inferiority complex that dogged the years of my youth.

My mother, Mildred Alcock, was born in Leading Tickles, two hours away by motorboat, the child of Mary Jane Budgell and Robert Dudley Alcock. I know little about them, except that Grandfather Alcock was a well-read aristocratic-looking gentleman whom my mother always addressed as “sir.”¹ At some point Mary Jane died and her father remarried. My mother called this woman “madam” and, when she too died, forever after referred to her as “poor madam.”

When she was eighteen, my mother came to Pilley’s Island to live with her uncle, Will Budgell and soon after that she met my father. He proposed to her in Uncle Will’s front parlour and soon they were married.

My father was born in 1883 in Sop’s Arm, the first son of Edward Poole of Hant’s Harbour and Lucy Way of Herring Neck. He never had any formal education. As a child, education took second place to working with his father. When he was about six, his father would take him to help with the nets. If he were caught dozing on his oars, Grandpa would flick salt water in his face. Hearing that story, my heart ached for the little boy that he was. Somehow, I couldn’t make the connection between that and the kindly, gentle grandfather that I knew and loved. But times were harsh in the days of my father’s boyhood and children were treated accordingly.

In the early months of their marriage, my mother, with great optimism, set out to teach him to read and write; she would get pencil, slate, and books on the table, but halfway through the lesson, my father would be snoring in his chair. Time after time this was repeated, until finally, frustrated and in tears, my mother abandoned the project, and so my father, a man with a natural intelligence that impressed all who knew him, lived out his ninety-five years able only to sign his name

When I was very little, we shared a house with Grandpa and Grandma Poole, and Aunts Lillian and Ethel. They lived in the one side, we lived in the other. There was no connection between the two sides, and we had to go outside around the back to Grandma’s. We each had a large kitchen and “front room” downstairs, two bedrooms and a large hall and stairway upstairs. The house was built under a hill. It had three-quarters of the foundation on the ground, the other quarter over the water on a breastwork of large logs. It was in a land-locked harbour, and when wind arose, we would lie awake and hear the waves crashing against the house. When I was old enough, I slept between Gladys and Geneva. During a storm we would lie in bed and cuddle up, so deliciously safe and snug, while we felt sorry for anyone out in that wild Atlantic night.

Grandma was a pretty woman, with high cheekbones and raven hair. She was very intelligent, and when she was sixteen her parents decided to send her to England to finish her education. But then she met and married Edward Poole, and that was that. I’m sure she never regretted it as they were supremely happy. The next year my father, Jesse, was born and the others followed in quick succession, twelve children in all.

Before I went to school, I spent a lot of time with Grandma. She was a fountain of Bible knowledge. I adored her and loved nestling in her lap while she told me Bible stories. I was devastated when she died of cancer at the age of fifty-two. With no merciful drugs to alleviate her pain, she lay patiently in bed, never complaining, and always welcoming us with a smile. She had religious mottos all over her bedroom walls. One day, when my sister Geneva stole a grape from her bedside stand, her eyes fell on a motto which said, “Be sure your sins will find you out.” I have no idea where the grapes came from; they were like gold dust to us, and I wouldn’t touch them for anything. According to Geneva, that grape was bitter gall in her mouth.

After weeks of growing steadily weaker and thinner, Grandma died as quietly and unobtrusively as she lived. Grandpa himself made her coffin. I stood and watched as he worked with skilful, loving hands, and with tears streaming down his cheeks. I was ten years old.

I loved my grandfather as much as my grandmother but in a different way I think I was Grandpa’s favourite, perhaps because I had inherited his eye defect, or perhaps because I took his lunch to him every day as he made barrels at Blackmore’s Cooper Shop. I wore a yellow pinafore a lot and he used to call me his little yellowhammer. I didn’t mind the tickling of his bristly moustache when he kissed me.

When I was four, he made me a doll’s cradle for Christmas. I can see that cradle still, and it was a beauty! It had rockers and was stained with rosewood varnish. It was my most prized possession. I was just as happy as if the doll I placed in it had been new, and not my sister’s hand-me-down, but we were easily pleased.

After Grandma died, my father changed the house a bit, making connecting doors, so that now we had four rooms downstairs and four upstairs. Aunt Ethel had already left home to go teaching, and Aunt Lillian and Grandpa lived with us. My mother was pregnant with my brother Don, who was born in March, and Grandpa died in April. He, too, had the dreaded disease, but he faded so quickly after Grandma’s death that everyone said he died of a broken heart. Their devotion to each other had been a beautiful thing. When he was laid out in his purple shroud, I kissed his cold cheek and whispered, “Goodbye, Grandpa, I love you.”