JOURNAL, Friday, Dec. 28th

We’re back home now and so much has happened in the past week. Danny surprised me by arriving late last Friday after driving through hours of holiday traffic and bad weather. I wasn’t expecting him at all; I was supposed to meet him in Toronto on Saturday. He said that he wanted to tell me in person that he got the job here in town. He wanted to see my expression, my eyes, when he told me.

When he spoke those words it was in an uncertain voice, presenting his news in a tone that seemed more like a question than a statement. Considering the anger and frustration with which he left a few weeks ago, I was so grateful that he would bother to come back to me at all, wanting to share his news with me. I took his hands and held them against my cheek – their coolness was so fresh and gentle. “I’m so happy for us,” I said into the palms that caressed my face.

Christmas presents are always difficult for me; perhaps it’s because I don’t have a lot of people to buy for – I don’t get a chance to become efficient or confident in my shopping. I want each of the three or four gifts that I choose to be meaningful, but then I worry that what’s meaningful to me may not touch the person who gets it. I want to express so much but I’ve always been embarrassed and frustrated by how little of myself I can share.

This year is a year of taking risks. I’ve made a commitment: I’ve decided that I want to share the story of my childhood – my letters to Claire – with the two people in the world who mean the most to me: Sophie and Danny.

For Sophie I used my calligraphy pens to embellish the pages of the letters and to add the quotations. I printed a cover page with a dedication that simply read: “To Sophie – Because you loved me. Starla.” I put the sheets in a hand-quilted portfolio, inside a matching box that I found at a designer craft show.

For Danny I bought a leather briefcase with a matching binder. In the binder I put the pages of my youth and a set of keys to my apartment. I wrapped them in a monogrammed towel to match my own. The dedication read: “To Danny, because I want to share my life with you. All my love, Starla.”

I had to give Danny his present that Friday night. I was too nervous, anxious, excited and committed to wait until Christmas day. I tried not to pace as he read the pages, I tried to avoid scanning his face for reaction. I have no idea what I was looking for from him, but what he offered me as he finished reading the letters and turned over the last page, was the best reaction of all: he sat down beside me on the floor where I was pretending to read a novel, he kissed my cheek and said, “Thank you.”

I knew that things were different now. The biggest step had been taken and that in continuing to share my past with him I would somehow find a future.

We packed Pussywillow in her travel cage and left the next day in freezing rain to spend two days with Sophie before she left on Christmas Eve to go skiing with friends. Danny drove. I’m not a confident driver at the best of times and I find that it’s always a long and painful journey along the highway to Toronto when the weather’s bad.

As we saw the first signs for Scarborough, I felt nervous and excited. So many times I’ve been to Sophie’s house since the days when Claire and I lived with her; I consider it my real home, the place where I first recognized who I was and who I wanted to be. But possibly because I’ve been thinking so much about those times this visit was different, full of a strange new awareness. It was like coming back for the first time after a long absence.

Sophie and Danny like each other so much. I’ve often thought that their friendship and affection for each other hasn’t anything to do with me. Sophie laughs a lot when Danny’s around, and he loves to be the recipient of all her culinary attention.

We exchanged gifts on the Sunday night. When she opened the box I presented to her, then the portfolio, she seemed delighted by their beauty but I could see the confusion on her face, not sure exactly what the present was. I explained that I’d been spending some time writing about my childhood. We’ve never spoken much of that time, Sophie and I, when she and Claire and I lived together. I never told her that I had come to appreciate what it had meant for her: the emotional and physical cost of picking us up from the despair where she had found us, the love that she gave us, then the helplessness as she watched us go on. I wanted her to know how much it meant to me, all that she had done for us.

Sophie cried as she read of our lives. I tried to explain what a positive experience the writing has been for me. With each page that I write it feels like I’m dismantling another piece of the enclosure that I’d built around me. It reminds me of the images of those people crashing through the Berlin wall: each blow loosening more bricks and mortar. A wall – built strong to keep lives separate, then torn down piece by piece, with equally great determination.

I had to make her understand that painful as the writing and the remembering might be at times, I have to do it. It’s the nature of change and risk I guess: when “what is” is no longer tolerable, “what may be” is always ripe with hope, no matter how uncertain its outcome.


Copyright 2003