The Search for Joyful Read Online Free PDF

languages—French, Russian, Plattdeutsch . . . and Cree.
    Only England, fighting alone, stood against this genocidal policy of the Third Reich. True, England had done its share of conquering the dark peoples, but it didn’t enslave them and it didn’t annihilate them.
    Now that England was fighting for her life, and Canada too, I knew I had to act. Oddly enough, I knew what I would do. In some subterranean compartment of my brain I had worked it out. Without a word to anyone, not telling even Connie, I applied to a nursing program given in Montreal at the Daughters of Charity Hospital and sponsored by the Royal Canadian Army. The letter of acceptance lay in my pocket all week, while I got up courage to tell my family. After graduation I would be an army nurse and go overseas to join the war effort.
    So this other self of mine, this dark, generally silent Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter, stood up at Christmas dinner 1941, under another brave little tree with its dyed loops of macaroni, Papa Mike’s homemade wooden ornaments, and the store-bought angel—stood up and told her family of the personal commitment she had made.
    â€œMontreal?” Mama’s cheeks flushed, and the light caught in her red hair. “You’re going to Montreal, Kathy?”
    â€œYes, Mama.”
    Like a torpedo slipping along underwater, my announcement did not immediately explode. It was into silence I continued, “There’s a serious shortage of nurses, and I’ve been accepted into a two-year course at the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul Hospital. It’s under the auspices of the army, and when you graduate you automatically receive a commission.” I picked my words carefully. I didn’t say I’d see action. But I would.
    Connie was the first to recover herself. “It sounds like a marvelous opportunity.”
    â€œBut Montreal,” Mama protested. “It’s a French city. To all intents and purposes, French.”
    For Mama this implied gambling, drug trafficking, and worse.
    â€œThe Daughters of Charity, Mama—it’s a very fine institution. Ordinarily I couldn’t afford the course they offer, but it’s subsidized by the army.”
    â€œYou’d come out of it a nurse and an officer?” I shot Connie a look of gratitude as she plunged on. “Just think of it, Mama, we’d have to salute her.”
    â€œI am thinking of it,” Mama Kathy said, “and I know Papa would not have approved. It’s sin city, Kathy. That’s what he always said, full of vice, and as a Mountie he was in a position to know.”
    I didn’t say anything. Although I could have said that he was the one who told me I would make a good nurse in the first place.
    Connie intervened in her older sister way, as though she somehow sat above the fray, “This is the first time since the world was made that women are being called, asked to help, to be part of things.”
    â€œYou’re right about that,” Mama agreed, and then made what I considered a concession. “It would mean pulling up stakes. And,” she added with asperity, “it would mean Montreal.”
    â€œThey say those things about any city, Mama.”
    â€œNot about Boston they don’t.”
    Boston was where Mama was born.
    â€œA nurse,” Connie mused. “How long have you been thinking about it?”
    â€œSince the beginning of the war, really.”
    â€œA nurse,” Mama echoed, by which I knew she was thinking about it too. Then, “There must be a lot of wounded to patch together.”
    I jumped up from my place to hug her.
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THESE WERE THE skeins responsible for my being on this silver and blue train, speeding toward what would be my life. Each taut thread played its part, but I wondered if it wasn’t Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter who gave me the courage to actually be on it. It was six years from Papa’s death, and the whole