A Map of Memories

"It's all coming back to me now," Deborah Jackman says. She is sitting at her kitchen table. Sunlight pours through the window. On the table is a large sheet of paper. Deborah is drawing on the paper. "This is our house, right here," she says. Off to one side of the house, she sketches a vegetable garden. She stops drawing, thinks, then goes on:

By our house, the road sloped down. And there was a bridge. There were railings on it. And there was a little brook that ran down to the ocean. And there was our flake where we dried the fish.¹

She draws the beach, a wharf and boats tied up. The beach helps her remember digging for worms and mussels. She remembers being very small. She had the baby's carriage, and she let go the handle. The carriage rolled down to the beach. The family came running. They thought her little brother was in the carriage. Deborah laughs, remembering the fright they got.

As she draws, Deborah speaks into a tape recorder. Her words and her drawing slowly create a picture. The many details in the picture tell about her early life.

As Deborah draws her own house, she remembers where other people lived. She draws the houses of other families, their gardens and sheds. She draws a store where she and her sister went with pennies to buy candy. She fills in marsh and rocks. She draws the bushes where her mother spread quilts to dry in the sun. On the edges of the community, she draws large buildings—the church and the school.

As she fills the houses with people, she tells a story of life in a small Newfoundland community. As a young girl, Deborah learned how to spread and dry fish. Her mother grew most of the vegetables the family ate. Her father fished in summer, and went away to work in the lumber woods when the fishing season ended.

The children picked berries and helped with chores. There were 16 children in her family. Some of the older ones had already moved away by the time the younger ones were born. The outside world the older ones moved to seemed very far away. Sometimes, Deborah's brother would phone from away. When he did, her mother would race up the road. She would take his call on the only phone in the community.