The story behind my play...

 

Twenty years after the death of my short and sweet, cookie baking Grandma, I had the strangest dream.  Mabel Henrietta Benner Dallas had lived to be just shy of her 100th birthday.  Before she died, in 1988, she was much too polite to say, "I don't know who you are," so I had already lost touch with her when she passed away.

 

But in 2008, in the middle of the night, I saw her again.  In my dream, my white haired Grandma appeared in her comfy shoes, standing next to my centre-island kitchen counter. She walked in on the scene, like she was standing in a hot pink spotlight, as bright as Technicolour, as crisp as High Def TV, and she spoke to me.

 

"There's a picture you've lost," Grandma said. "If you can find the photographs, I'll put a Loony in an envelope for you.  The pictures are important."

 

I reached out to touch her arm and my fingers brushed the material on the sleeve of her polyester dress. A wave of warmth radiated from her.  A rush of love. I squeezed back my tears as if my throat were a fist. Grandma was not the weepy type.

 

"How is it you still look the same?" I said, holding on to her arm.  Like an actor who had spoken her lines, she was in a hurry to get off the stage. 

 

"Wait a minute, Grandma. Photographs? Where should I look for the photographs? I don't know which ones you mean." 

 

"Find the pictures. The pictures are important," Grandma said again. She was leaving and I couldn't stop her.  Now I was crying like a baby. She exited the scene as cheerfully and efficiently as she had entered.

 

I woke up, and she was gone. 

 

Never before (and I have always been an elaborate night time dreamer) have I experienced a dream so vivid.  Tears were streaming down my face in the dark.  There was a pen and some crumpled paper beside the bed, so I tried to scribble it all down before falling back to sleep. The next day, I posted the dream in a blog so I wouldn't forget about it.

 

And then I forgot about it for two years.

 

In 2010, my aunt, who had continued living in my Grandparent's place, decided to sell the white, wood-frame Dallas family home, in the heart of Vancouver.  Now that she had moved out, we had a final opportunity to browse through her house before the bulldozers flattened it like cardboard.  My aunt let us know the junkmen were coming soon, so we should let ourselves in and take whatever we wanted. There were only a few boxes left. Trash in the basement. Some books, china salt and pepper shakers. Tupperware in the kitchen cupboards. Because Tupperware lasts forever.

 

My son, Tim, and his fiancee, joined us at the vacant house for one last look.  My daughter-in-law-to-be had never been to my aunt's home, had never met my late Grandparents, but she had a connection - she was wearing the sparkling engagement ring that had once belonged to my Grandma.  Tim and Tam were rummaging around in the basement, when she came bounding up the stairs, carrying a box of journals. She held out a miniature, green, leather diary, dated 1918.  

 

"You're going to want to read this!" she said. "It's from World War One."

 

Who wrote the diary?

 

There was no name on the little war journal.  I held it in my hands and thought for a second that my Grandfather had written it, but then I recalled what my Dad had once told me - Grandpa did not serve in the First World War.  He had enlisted but did not make it overseas.  I opened the diary and read the first few pages.  What was that aroma?  Something faintly sweet. The author had been a military person traveling by train, from Vancouver to Calgary, then on to Toronto and finally reaching Halifax, where 27 nurses, 5 V.A.D's and 75 Officers boarded "The City of Marseilles" merchant ship. From there, they took a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.  

 

Here was the entry for June 2nd, 1918:

 

"Submarine sighted.  To boat Stations. Several depth bombs exploded.  Up all night.  On deck at 3 a.m. Sea like glass."

 

June 3rd, 1918:

 

"Sunrise beautiful.  Mutiny amongst fire-men in early a.m. Reported that captain horse-whipped them.  (East Indians) They resumed work and we re-joined our escort which we had lost for 2 or 3 hours. (14 ships)."  

 

June 4th 1918:

 

"Tilbury Docks 6:30 p.m."

 

This had been a violent and potentially deadly trip, but the writer of the journal had completed the voyage and made it across to England. They had stayed and served in the war effort, until this entry:

 

November 11th, 1918:

 

"Armistice signed.  Off-duty."

 

It was time to go, so I closed the diary and stuck it in my purse.  We gathered our few found treasures, and locked up the Dallas home for the last time.

 

That night, as I walked in the door of my own house, my eyes went straight to the old scrapbooks I had already inherited from my aunt's basement. They had been sitting on my kitchen counter for a couple of weeks. Waiting. I hadn't had the time or inclination to look through them, but now, I cracked open the smallest of the scrapbooks, turning the fragile, musty pages. June 1918. The book was filled with faded photographs of military personnel from the First World War.  I grabbed the diary. The dates and handwriting matched. Instantly I recognized her, though I had never seen the photographs before.  I looked closer at the images of a woman, about thirty years of age, serving as an army nurse in WWI.  A "Bluebird."  She was beaming from the inside out. Posing with her friends by a canon. Fraternizing with soldiers. Having the time of her life. The young lady was the author of the war journal.  

 

Grandma.

 

Grandma, what did you do in the war?

 

Now, it came flash-flooding back to me.  In my strange dream, my Grandmother had spoken to me in this exact spot, right next to my centre-island kitchen counter, where I was now looking at the younger version of her face in black and white photos. Although she had never given me one detail about her big adventure when she was alive, Grandma Dallas had been a First Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Forces in 1918. I almost wondered if she would pop out from behind the fridge in her army uniform and hand me a Loony, now that I had found the pictures.  For the first time, two decades after her death, her photographs were telling me her story. Better late than never.

 

"There's a picture you've lost. Find the pictures. The pictures are important."

 

I wish I could have asked her, "Grandma, what did you do in the war?"

 

Instead, I decided to write a play about it: 

 

"Bluebirds"

 

I had a lot of questions like: Is it possible that people need to tell their stories, even when they are too "late?" A few members of our family were aware she had served in the army, but it had not been a point of discussion.  Why was it vital for me to discover the details of Grandma's story so many years after her death?  

 

One thing was obvious.  Seeing her pictures immediately started to heal old wounds. I had grown up in a fundamentalist church, where my family faithfully attended.  I had always wondered what Grandma thought of the ideas that had been been preached to us from the pulpit.  She and I had sat in the same pews, in the same church, listening to the same sermons: women were subordinate to men and therefore must remain silent, submissive and not take on leadership roles. 

 

I was seventeen when I left those ideas behind.  My exit wounds had never healed.

 

But now, decades later, my clenched heart was opening again.  Here was evidence that my very own Grandmother had been a woman of authority. She, like all the other Canadian Nursing Sisters, had been a senior officer, with a rank bestowed upon her by the Canadian army.  Although they did not tend to blow their own horns after World War One was over, there was nothing diminished about the nurses.  My Grandma was very much a woman of faith and this was not in conflict with her military service or status. I could see it in the war diary - the front pages filled with Bible verses. I also found evidence of her intelligence, her interest in traveling the wider world, and her willingness to face danger.  She obeyed a higher call. And you cannot argue with a Royal commission.  

 

Even so, I kept wondering why she didn't talk about her army service when she was alive. I wanted to explore that question in my play and I felt like I had a good story.  Problem was - the truth of it sounded like fiction, and I didn't even know how to write a fictional version.  I signed up for two excellent playwrighting courses with Vancouver writer and actor, Lucia Frangione, through Langara College and Rosebud School of the Arts.

 

By writing "Bluebirds," and rewriting it, I've found that my faith, although my Grandmother and I might express it differently, has held strong. My Grandma's story is her own, and out of respect, I didn't attempt to tell it for her.  In "Bluebirds," based on the details of her war diary, I imagined new characters with their own plot twists and turns.

 

Grandma will give me the real scoop someday when we meet again.  

 

I know because I've seen her.

 

 

 

"Bluebirds" is the nickname given to the Canadian army nurses by the soldiers of World War One.  The name comes from their blue dresses and white scarves.