Please come and make yourself at home as you read Dancing with Silence. I have done what I can to make it simple for you to follow the book by listing an index of sections at the left. If however you have difficulty bringing up any of the posts, please let me know and I'll look into it.
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So if you are ready to begin, please go to #1. JOURNAL, Tuesday, Oct. 2nd .
Welcome to Starla's world.
5.5.08
2.5.08
EPILOGUE, JOURNAL, Monday, Aug. 5th
It’s like a big fist breaking down my door,
I never felt such a love before. (“After the Rain” Bruce Cockburn)
Sharbot Lake
The Civic Holiday – what a perfectly uninspired name for a holiday that’s made special by its very lack of meaning. There’s no reason for it; we don’t commemorate, remember or celebrate anything in particular; it’s just a wonderful luxury of nothingness that marks how great it is to take time off.
I’m up very early this morning. I’m always restless the first few nights in a strange bed, but it’s a gift to watch the dawn on the lake and to have the chance to write a bit. I get to listen to the finches and morning doves singing back and forth, taking the soprano and alto parts in their choir. The odd loon, cricket and cow join in with a few other sounds that I don’t recognize – the percussion section.
I’m so glad that we were able to get this cottage for the week; it’s just what I need to mark what feels – more and more – like a new beginning for me.
My “New Year” is always early September. I enjoy the newness of everything at that time of the year: books, shoes, supplies. I love the back-to-school shopping trips that I indulge in: a few new outfits and always some new plastic containers for bringing my lunches to school – I’m a big fan of lunches.
But it’s too early to feel that excitement yet; this is different, more grounded and stable, as if I’m looking out on a new phase of my life, as I watch the sun of this dawn, breaking into the corners of the bay to the east.
Finishing up my summer course last week, I was glad to have it behind me. As Danny and I took some time to go apartment hunting before the great wave of student renters hits in August, what an eye opener we had! Every apartment that we saw was either cramped and damp in the basement of a house, or required that we share with five other people to pay the rent, or was a Feng Shui abomination, in some cold glass fronted high-rise whose hallways all smelled of floral disinfectant. We decided to stay where we are. Small as the apartment is for two people, it’s so much better than any of the alternatives that we saw.
I'm looking forward to moving things around so that we can each have a work area that won’t interfere too much with the other’s sleeping (we both burn a fair amount of midnight oil.) And and it will be fun to look for some new furniture, together, to replace the larger pieces that I’ve held onto since I scavenged and collected them, in my early days of apartment living. We’re both happy with the decision.
Last Friday afternoon another area of my life received some long overdue attention and I can’t believe how relieved and peaceful it’s made me feel. Jean and I had been talking a lot last spring, about the importance of symbols and ritual to mark significant events in our lives. Jean pointed out that although I’d written of a few occasions when I’d cried for Claire, I’d also mentioned that I’d never had the opportunity to properly mourn her. She suggested that perhaps I’d like to plan some sort of memorial that would let me honour Claire and our relationship, now that I’ve worked so hard to reclaim the memories.
Danny and I spoke of this memorial quite a bit, and I’ve realized that place is very important to me. Without even realizing it, after Claire’s death I was so disturbed that there wasn’t a specific location that I could picture as her resting ground, I had to give her a place of rest inside me. I realized that I wanted to identify a memorial ground where I could visit with Claire and know that her spirit was at peace.
I arranged for a tree to be planted and a memorial plaque to be erected at the park beside the lake not far from our apartment. There’s a bench nearby and a steady stream of families, joggers and cyclists who pass there. It’s a park that changes on a daily basis with the weather and the mood of the lake, yet reflects so much of life’s stability in all of its other facets that change so little: the lake itself, the rocks on the shore, the larger than life sculptures and the trees have all remained constant in the years that I’ve been walking through this park.
I’ve also realized that ritual is important to me in so many areas of my life. Many rituals I’d simply call habits, or my certain way of doing something, the same way each time with awareness of how comforting the repetition can be.
When I approached Fr. Barrie whom I’d met at the retreat last spring and explained the situation, I asked if he could be part of our memorial/dedication. He’s a wise and gentle man who joked that he doesn’t often get called to bless trees, but he let me know that he understood the importance of remembering a loved one in a special and tangible way.
I contacted the city to arrange for the donation and dedication of the tree and was surprised at how quickly it was arranged and accomplished. They assured me that it would be in place during the last week of July; a touching coincidence as it happens – it was eighteen years ago this week that Claire died. Everything just seems to have fallen into place.
We made plans to meet there on Friday at 3 o’clock. Danny and I were dressed up in light summer clothes, more for a wedding than a funeral. Poor Father Barrie: because he was “officiating”, he arrived in a grey clerical suit and collar on this, the hottest day of the summer.
The three of us stood there, grateful for the shade of the mature trees that surrounded us and the breeze off the lake. Father spoke so gently of how important our memories of loved ones can be, and read the Beatitudes from his tattered prayer book, so precious in its signs of wear. He told us that we were all blessed, Claire, Danny and I, by the bond that unites our past, present and future. He finished with a prayer then shook our hands and left.
I’d brought flowers. I bought a large bouquet of lilies and carnations in colours that reminded me of Claire’s hair and complexion. But as it came time to leave, I didn’t quite know what to do with them. My first thought was to leave them for Claire, beside the plaque that bore her name: “Claire Jamieson, 1980 – 1984”, and the inscription: “The moon and the stars still shine in your eyes.” But somehow it seemed inappropriate, knowing that they’d lay there untended, to wilt and dry up, only to be retrieved in a few days by some city worker, along with the candy wrappers and discarded water bottles.
So I brought them home with me and put them in a vase, which I held between my feet in the car as we left the city for our week at the cottage. They cheer me every time I walk into the front room and see their explosion of copper, cream and crimson. They remind me that we share a place now – Claire, Danny and I, an experience of solidarity.
After Father Barrie left, Danny and I walked along the water. We held hands, sticky in the hot sun, as if we were glued together. The wonderful cotton smell of his shirt against my cheek was as fresh and comforting as cool new sheets on a hot summer night.
My mind’s eye watched us walking along the asphalt path. “Would you like to get married?” I asked Danny.
He stopped and turned to me, looking deep into my eyes – to see if I was serious. Finally he smiled and said: “Do you mean right now?”
I laughed and told him that I kind of thought that we looked dressed for the parts – why waste a good suit and a bunch of flowers?
We walked a bit further and he stopped again and asked: “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I answered – strong and happy.
He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my head. I could feel him smiling.
When we arrived at the cottage the next day, we spent Saturday afternoon just sitting on wooden lawn chairs, watching the parade of boaters and canoeists. We drank white wine spritzers and tentatively spoke of wedding plans. It was a perfect day.
On Sunday, Danny’s friend who rented the cottage to us had also given us day passes for a music festival in the next village. I hadn’t thought much about it; it seemed like a nice thing to do for my birthday.
When we approached the site and the roads were so congested with cars that we had to park at a twenty-minute hike from the entrance, it occurred to me that this was probably a bigger deal than I’d expected. At the ticket booth, we were proudly told that this was the thirtieth anniversary of the festival and I realized, with that weird sense of synchronicity arising again, that Bill and mom might have been at that first gathering if they hadn’t left Ontario when they did, and that I might have been born here, (just like the babies at Woodstock) instead of in the Okanagan Valley. What a strange thought.
Danny, the jazz fan, is used to big city music fests, where porto-potties line the closed off streets leading to a main stage, featuring international acts and gigantic, ultra-sophisticated sound systems. This was all new to him and a bizarre time travel experience for me. Everyone was dressed in full hippie regalia and there were more beads and tie-dye shirts than I’d seen in decades. I felt like I had to keep looking for mom’s cook tent, and I could have sworn that I saw Carly and Rainbow and some of the others from the old festival days.
As I got used to the surroundings, several things came to me. First, was the interesting diversity that existed among the performers and spectators alike. I saw aged hippies with wrinkles and long white beards and braids, but also there were others of the same age who looked more like retired bankers and doctors. There were many young families with pre-schoolers running around (wearing clothes! – that was different too: at my festivals, as I remember it, all the little kids were naked.) There was an amazing number High School kids as well. (What would have brought them here, to party with their parents?) All age groups were represented and joined in the square dance, called by the semi-famous Rock star who was here to honour his acoustic, country roots.
But as the day went on and I relaxed into the music and drifted into my own listening place, what amazed me most was that at my twenty-ninth birthday, last summer, I would have reacted so differently to this experience. I probably would have tolerated it long enough not to embarrass myself, then I’d have told Danny that I had a headache and gone back to the car to read my book.
On this my thirtieth birthday, however, I got to take part in a Tai Chi class, I had my tarot cards read, I heard some great blues, folk, country and even baroque music. I was free to experience all these things without worrying about painful memories popping out of my subconscious to bite me.
On the way home, Danny asked if this was the kind of festival that I’d been to as a kid. I nodded but said that there were a few differences – many more high-end vehicles and fewer converted micro busses in the parking lots, and a wonderful lack of ageism that could never have survived for half an hour in the seventies, with a community who were proud to affirm that they’d never trust anyone over thirty.
I remember when Bill turned thirty; it was the year that everything started falling apart for us. He was stressed and upset about so many things that year with Claire and mom, that it never occurred to me to think that this dreaded milestone may have played a role in his own reactions to what was happening at that time. I still remember carefully choosing a card for him with a big 30 on the front; to me, a year older was always a step in the right direction, so a decade older must be ten times better. Bill was gracious and told me that it was the best card he’d ever had. There was precious little else that marked his birthday that year. But later I heard him tell a friend who teased him about crossing the great divide, that so far, thirty was shit!
I guess that we’re different people, Bill and I, living in different times, and at very different points in our lives. At thirty, I feel as if I’m on the edge of something wonderful.
“You embrace me with serenity and courage,
and lead me to places of wonder.”
I never felt such a love before. (“After the Rain” Bruce Cockburn)
Sharbot Lake
The Civic Holiday – what a perfectly uninspired name for a holiday that’s made special by its very lack of meaning. There’s no reason for it; we don’t commemorate, remember or celebrate anything in particular; it’s just a wonderful luxury of nothingness that marks how great it is to take time off.
I’m up very early this morning. I’m always restless the first few nights in a strange bed, but it’s a gift to watch the dawn on the lake and to have the chance to write a bit. I get to listen to the finches and morning doves singing back and forth, taking the soprano and alto parts in their choir. The odd loon, cricket and cow join in with a few other sounds that I don’t recognize – the percussion section.
I’m so glad that we were able to get this cottage for the week; it’s just what I need to mark what feels – more and more – like a new beginning for me.
My “New Year” is always early September. I enjoy the newness of everything at that time of the year: books, shoes, supplies. I love the back-to-school shopping trips that I indulge in: a few new outfits and always some new plastic containers for bringing my lunches to school – I’m a big fan of lunches.
But it’s too early to feel that excitement yet; this is different, more grounded and stable, as if I’m looking out on a new phase of my life, as I watch the sun of this dawn, breaking into the corners of the bay to the east.
Finishing up my summer course last week, I was glad to have it behind me. As Danny and I took some time to go apartment hunting before the great wave of student renters hits in August, what an eye opener we had! Every apartment that we saw was either cramped and damp in the basement of a house, or required that we share with five other people to pay the rent, or was a Feng Shui abomination, in some cold glass fronted high-rise whose hallways all smelled of floral disinfectant. We decided to stay where we are. Small as the apartment is for two people, it’s so much better than any of the alternatives that we saw.
I'm looking forward to moving things around so that we can each have a work area that won’t interfere too much with the other’s sleeping (we both burn a fair amount of midnight oil.) And and it will be fun to look for some new furniture, together, to replace the larger pieces that I’ve held onto since I scavenged and collected them, in my early days of apartment living. We’re both happy with the decision.
Last Friday afternoon another area of my life received some long overdue attention and I can’t believe how relieved and peaceful it’s made me feel. Jean and I had been talking a lot last spring, about the importance of symbols and ritual to mark significant events in our lives. Jean pointed out that although I’d written of a few occasions when I’d cried for Claire, I’d also mentioned that I’d never had the opportunity to properly mourn her. She suggested that perhaps I’d like to plan some sort of memorial that would let me honour Claire and our relationship, now that I’ve worked so hard to reclaim the memories.
Danny and I spoke of this memorial quite a bit, and I’ve realized that place is very important to me. Without even realizing it, after Claire’s death I was so disturbed that there wasn’t a specific location that I could picture as her resting ground, I had to give her a place of rest inside me. I realized that I wanted to identify a memorial ground where I could visit with Claire and know that her spirit was at peace.
I arranged for a tree to be planted and a memorial plaque to be erected at the park beside the lake not far from our apartment. There’s a bench nearby and a steady stream of families, joggers and cyclists who pass there. It’s a park that changes on a daily basis with the weather and the mood of the lake, yet reflects so much of life’s stability in all of its other facets that change so little: the lake itself, the rocks on the shore, the larger than life sculptures and the trees have all remained constant in the years that I’ve been walking through this park.
I’ve also realized that ritual is important to me in so many areas of my life. Many rituals I’d simply call habits, or my certain way of doing something, the same way each time with awareness of how comforting the repetition can be.
When I approached Fr. Barrie whom I’d met at the retreat last spring and explained the situation, I asked if he could be part of our memorial/dedication. He’s a wise and gentle man who joked that he doesn’t often get called to bless trees, but he let me know that he understood the importance of remembering a loved one in a special and tangible way.
I contacted the city to arrange for the donation and dedication of the tree and was surprised at how quickly it was arranged and accomplished. They assured me that it would be in place during the last week of July; a touching coincidence as it happens – it was eighteen years ago this week that Claire died. Everything just seems to have fallen into place.
We made plans to meet there on Friday at 3 o’clock. Danny and I were dressed up in light summer clothes, more for a wedding than a funeral. Poor Father Barrie: because he was “officiating”, he arrived in a grey clerical suit and collar on this, the hottest day of the summer.
The three of us stood there, grateful for the shade of the mature trees that surrounded us and the breeze off the lake. Father spoke so gently of how important our memories of loved ones can be, and read the Beatitudes from his tattered prayer book, so precious in its signs of wear. He told us that we were all blessed, Claire, Danny and I, by the bond that unites our past, present and future. He finished with a prayer then shook our hands and left.
I’d brought flowers. I bought a large bouquet of lilies and carnations in colours that reminded me of Claire’s hair and complexion. But as it came time to leave, I didn’t quite know what to do with them. My first thought was to leave them for Claire, beside the plaque that bore her name: “Claire Jamieson, 1980 – 1984”, and the inscription: “The moon and the stars still shine in your eyes.” But somehow it seemed inappropriate, knowing that they’d lay there untended, to wilt and dry up, only to be retrieved in a few days by some city worker, along with the candy wrappers and discarded water bottles.
So I brought them home with me and put them in a vase, which I held between my feet in the car as we left the city for our week at the cottage. They cheer me every time I walk into the front room and see their explosion of copper, cream and crimson. They remind me that we share a place now – Claire, Danny and I, an experience of solidarity.
After Father Barrie left, Danny and I walked along the water. We held hands, sticky in the hot sun, as if we were glued together. The wonderful cotton smell of his shirt against my cheek was as fresh and comforting as cool new sheets on a hot summer night.
My mind’s eye watched us walking along the asphalt path. “Would you like to get married?” I asked Danny.
He stopped and turned to me, looking deep into my eyes – to see if I was serious. Finally he smiled and said: “Do you mean right now?”
I laughed and told him that I kind of thought that we looked dressed for the parts – why waste a good suit and a bunch of flowers?
We walked a bit further and he stopped again and asked: “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I answered – strong and happy.
He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my head. I could feel him smiling.
When we arrived at the cottage the next day, we spent Saturday afternoon just sitting on wooden lawn chairs, watching the parade of boaters and canoeists. We drank white wine spritzers and tentatively spoke of wedding plans. It was a perfect day.
On Sunday, Danny’s friend who rented the cottage to us had also given us day passes for a music festival in the next village. I hadn’t thought much about it; it seemed like a nice thing to do for my birthday.
When we approached the site and the roads were so congested with cars that we had to park at a twenty-minute hike from the entrance, it occurred to me that this was probably a bigger deal than I’d expected. At the ticket booth, we were proudly told that this was the thirtieth anniversary of the festival and I realized, with that weird sense of synchronicity arising again, that Bill and mom might have been at that first gathering if they hadn’t left Ontario when they did, and that I might have been born here, (just like the babies at Woodstock) instead of in the Okanagan Valley. What a strange thought.
Danny, the jazz fan, is used to big city music fests, where porto-potties line the closed off streets leading to a main stage, featuring international acts and gigantic, ultra-sophisticated sound systems. This was all new to him and a bizarre time travel experience for me. Everyone was dressed in full hippie regalia and there were more beads and tie-dye shirts than I’d seen in decades. I felt like I had to keep looking for mom’s cook tent, and I could have sworn that I saw Carly and Rainbow and some of the others from the old festival days.
As I got used to the surroundings, several things came to me. First, was the interesting diversity that existed among the performers and spectators alike. I saw aged hippies with wrinkles and long white beards and braids, but also there were others of the same age who looked more like retired bankers and doctors. There were many young families with pre-schoolers running around (wearing clothes! – that was different too: at my festivals, as I remember it, all the little kids were naked.) There was an amazing number High School kids as well. (What would have brought them here, to party with their parents?) All age groups were represented and joined in the square dance, called by the semi-famous Rock star who was here to honour his acoustic, country roots.
But as the day went on and I relaxed into the music and drifted into my own listening place, what amazed me most was that at my twenty-ninth birthday, last summer, I would have reacted so differently to this experience. I probably would have tolerated it long enough not to embarrass myself, then I’d have told Danny that I had a headache and gone back to the car to read my book.
On this my thirtieth birthday, however, I got to take part in a Tai Chi class, I had my tarot cards read, I heard some great blues, folk, country and even baroque music. I was free to experience all these things without worrying about painful memories popping out of my subconscious to bite me.
On the way home, Danny asked if this was the kind of festival that I’d been to as a kid. I nodded but said that there were a few differences – many more high-end vehicles and fewer converted micro busses in the parking lots, and a wonderful lack of ageism that could never have survived for half an hour in the seventies, with a community who were proud to affirm that they’d never trust anyone over thirty.
I remember when Bill turned thirty; it was the year that everything started falling apart for us. He was stressed and upset about so many things that year with Claire and mom, that it never occurred to me to think that this dreaded milestone may have played a role in his own reactions to what was happening at that time. I still remember carefully choosing a card for him with a big 30 on the front; to me, a year older was always a step in the right direction, so a decade older must be ten times better. Bill was gracious and told me that it was the best card he’d ever had. There was precious little else that marked his birthday that year. But later I heard him tell a friend who teased him about crossing the great divide, that so far, thirty was shit!
I guess that we’re different people, Bill and I, living in different times, and at very different points in our lives. At thirty, I feel as if I’m on the edge of something wonderful.
“You embrace me with serenity and courage,
and lead me to places of wonder.”
Copyright 2003
30.4.08
JOURNAL, Wednesday, April 24th
The world breaks everyone, and afterward
Many are strong at the broken places. (Ernest Hemingway)
Well, that’s it then.
I’ve just reread the last letter to Jean: seventeen years summed up in eight or nine pages – wasted years that needed to be borne to get from there to here. When I mentioned this to Jean, she says not to judge those years too harshly, that there was healing going on under the surface, years of preparation for the work of the past few months.
Q: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, but the light bulb has to really want to change.
I didn’t know it when I stumbled, figuratively speaking, into Jean’s office and her care seven months ago, but I did want to change – and I was ready for it. What called me to her? How did I know that I was ready?
Whatever. . . – as the kids say when we ask them a redundant question, or questions without answers. The origin of the change isn’t so important as the need to stay on course. I can continue to feel valuable, and strong, and peaceful. Now I have tools and new memories of healing to sustain me.
So much has passed between us, I’m surprised at what I didn’t tell Jean of the years after Claire’s death: the events that added to the confusion and made me close in further upon myself. The Protector in me is still in full command of what I share with others. I show the letters that I write to Jean, Sophie and Danny, the people I trust, but I’d never show these, my journal pages, to anyone. Here my Protector allows me to look at those events that stand behind the deeper levels of pain.
Here I can remember the shock and revulsion I felt when I heard of Dale’s diagnosis – Did any young, gay men survive the eighties and nineties? His dreams, so firmly within his grasp when he left Vancouver for the National Theatre School in Montreal after High School, were as crushed and mangled as his body was by AIDS. Dale – the most beautifully dazzling butterfly of all - flew right into the bug light. I’m so ashamed of how I couldn’t bring myself to visit him in his last few months. Where was my so-called courage then when he lay dying in the arms of such a monstrous disease?
Here in this journal I can also feel the horror of the last time I saw Ariel. She had arrived unexpectedly and waited for me on the sidewalk in front of my High School. It was a beautiful day in late spring with nature in full explosion, and she stood there, dark, like some menacing specter come to claim me once more. I know how a cat feels when she arches her back and extends her claws in a defensive posture. I too bristled – a reflex action in response to threatening stimulus.
“Hello, Starla,” she said. It occurred to me that until then, I’d never heard her speak my name; we were always just “the kids”, Claire and I.
“What do you want?” I asked, my tone cool and even. I’d worked hard on even tones.
I remember noticing that she’d let her hair grow a bit and the dark and silver waves did much to soften the lines and angles of her face, which had aged.
“It’s your mom,” she said. “She asked me to come and see you. She’s been looking forward to coming to your graduation next week – planning it for months now…” She hesitated a moment, looking away from me and down to the ground.
I was stunned – What did this mean? Who had invited her? Who wanted her?
No. She couldn’t come and spoil my day. NO!
“You’re mom’s in the hospital again. That’s why she can’t come next week.”
You’re bloody right, she can’t come! I wanted to scream at her. But then I saw, through the shield of my fury, Ariel’s eyes, so tired, almost defeated. And I realized that she had used a softer tone than I had ever heard from her, asking for understanding – probably not forgiveness.
“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” I shot back, knowing the answer.
“They’re having to rework her meds; she’d been doing so well with the Lithium, it really saved her life. But now it’s not working as well as it used to…Maybe it’s her hormones. I don’t know.”
And though I wanted to spit on her and slap her face, at that moment I could see that Ariel loved mom. She worried about her and had stood by her.
We had heard stories, Bill and I, of how Ariel had called the police and an ambulance one night when they were visiting friends in Victoria and mom flipped out, grabbing a kitchen knife, threatening to cut herself. She had finally stepped over the line where help was inevitable. Ariel cared enough for her to wrestle with her madness and her petulance all these years. The diagnosis of manic depression or bi-polar illness came as no shock, but for me it carried with it a toxic mixture of relief and terror – relief that it had a name, terror that it might someday become my name.
But on the sidewalk in front of the school that day I just wanted to get away from Ariel and all the memories that she brought with her. I turned and started to walk away from her, fast and urgent. “She loves you very much,” Ariel called after me, following behind as I threaded my way along the busy sidewalk. “She misses you.”
At that I stopped dead, turned and looked full into her eyes as the passers-by flowed around us. “Fuck you,” I spat. “Fuck you, and fuck her too.” I delivered this parting phrase deliberately, seething yet holding in the full power of the explosion that I wanted to unleash: “I don’t ever want to see either of you again – Leave me alone.” I turned my back on her and left, determined never to look back again, not at Ariel, not at the times when my mother played a role in my life.
But much as I’ve wanted to excise my mother from my memory, she haunts me – yes, haunt is the right word, like a spirit that lives its life on the edge of my consciousness, close enough to make its presence felt yet just out of sight, so the presence is always a surprise when it shows itself. And I’ve still no idea what to do with her.
Today Joan came to visit the school with her new baby; I remember how tired and immense she looked at the shower we had for her last fall. Now here she is with her four-month old baby, looking so peaceful and happy that they can spend some time together, just the two of them, before she picks up her other kids from school. I marvel at the power of a baby – or a puppy or a kitten, for that matter – to call forth tenderness and awe from the crustiest among us. Her students surround her in the hall, they want to touch the baby’s fingers, brush his chubby cheek. And I have a flash of mom – whole and happy – playing with Claire on her lap when Claire was this age. And my heart melts at the memory, and once again I ask sadly: what am I to do with my mother?
I can’t love her; I will never trust her; I want to ignore her but her memory will not be ignored.
I swear my life has a musical soundtrack that pops in now and then, to emphasize or punctuate something that I’ve been thinking about: on the Oldies station the other day, they played Boy George singing his old hit: “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?…Do you really want to make me cry?” … And I realized that, once again, just like in the old days, George had something to say to me: No, mom didn’t want to hurt me – most of the time she probably didn’t even know that I was part of her world.
Is it forgiveness that I’m supposed to offer her? What would forgiveness bring to a relationship where it has never been sought? Does she even recognize that there might be something in our history that requires forgiveness?
If not forgiveness, then perhaps release is what I’m seeking – release for both of us. I would like to have the power to give all of those memories the freedom to allow “mom” to simply become “Sarah.”
Sarah would no longer be the mother who wasn’t there for me, or who was there to hurt me. I want to release her from all the expectations that were left unfulfilled, and all the responsibilities left untended. I want to remember Sarah.
Sarah – wounded, gifted, broken, complex.
Sarah – bewildered at the enormity of the waves in her emotional sea.
Sarah – who was so immersed in her negotiations with life that she never thought that others might need her to help steer their own ships.
And in that release, I pray that we might both find peace.
Meanwhile, I listen to Danny getting ready for bed: the comforting sounds as he turns down the blankets, my side as well as his. I hear him brushing his teeth, then talking softly to Pussywillow as he takes her from the bed for a little nuzzle before he puts her on the floor, and I realize how much of Sarah’s life was stolen from her; all the small pleasures of giving and receiving were taken away by her urgent need to devour, or be devoured by life.
And in complete peace and assurance, I go to bed this night knowing that her life will not be my life.
Daylight falls upon the path, the forest falls behind.
Today I’m not prey to dark uncertainty. (“I Think I Understand.” Joni Mitchell)
Copyright 2003
Many are strong at the broken places. (Ernest Hemingway)
Well, that’s it then.
I’ve just reread the last letter to Jean: seventeen years summed up in eight or nine pages – wasted years that needed to be borne to get from there to here. When I mentioned this to Jean, she says not to judge those years too harshly, that there was healing going on under the surface, years of preparation for the work of the past few months.
Q: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, but the light bulb has to really want to change.
I didn’t know it when I stumbled, figuratively speaking, into Jean’s office and her care seven months ago, but I did want to change – and I was ready for it. What called me to her? How did I know that I was ready?
Whatever. . . – as the kids say when we ask them a redundant question, or questions without answers. The origin of the change isn’t so important as the need to stay on course. I can continue to feel valuable, and strong, and peaceful. Now I have tools and new memories of healing to sustain me.
So much has passed between us, I’m surprised at what I didn’t tell Jean of the years after Claire’s death: the events that added to the confusion and made me close in further upon myself. The Protector in me is still in full command of what I share with others. I show the letters that I write to Jean, Sophie and Danny, the people I trust, but I’d never show these, my journal pages, to anyone. Here my Protector allows me to look at those events that stand behind the deeper levels of pain.
Here I can remember the shock and revulsion I felt when I heard of Dale’s diagnosis – Did any young, gay men survive the eighties and nineties? His dreams, so firmly within his grasp when he left Vancouver for the National Theatre School in Montreal after High School, were as crushed and mangled as his body was by AIDS. Dale – the most beautifully dazzling butterfly of all - flew right into the bug light. I’m so ashamed of how I couldn’t bring myself to visit him in his last few months. Where was my so-called courage then when he lay dying in the arms of such a monstrous disease?
Here in this journal I can also feel the horror of the last time I saw Ariel. She had arrived unexpectedly and waited for me on the sidewalk in front of my High School. It was a beautiful day in late spring with nature in full explosion, and she stood there, dark, like some menacing specter come to claim me once more. I know how a cat feels when she arches her back and extends her claws in a defensive posture. I too bristled – a reflex action in response to threatening stimulus.
“Hello, Starla,” she said. It occurred to me that until then, I’d never heard her speak my name; we were always just “the kids”, Claire and I.
“What do you want?” I asked, my tone cool and even. I’d worked hard on even tones.
I remember noticing that she’d let her hair grow a bit and the dark and silver waves did much to soften the lines and angles of her face, which had aged.
“It’s your mom,” she said. “She asked me to come and see you. She’s been looking forward to coming to your graduation next week – planning it for months now…” She hesitated a moment, looking away from me and down to the ground.
I was stunned – What did this mean? Who had invited her? Who wanted her?
No. She couldn’t come and spoil my day. NO!
“You’re mom’s in the hospital again. That’s why she can’t come next week.”
You’re bloody right, she can’t come! I wanted to scream at her. But then I saw, through the shield of my fury, Ariel’s eyes, so tired, almost defeated. And I realized that she had used a softer tone than I had ever heard from her, asking for understanding – probably not forgiveness.
“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” I shot back, knowing the answer.
“They’re having to rework her meds; she’d been doing so well with the Lithium, it really saved her life. But now it’s not working as well as it used to…Maybe it’s her hormones. I don’t know.”
And though I wanted to spit on her and slap her face, at that moment I could see that Ariel loved mom. She worried about her and had stood by her.
We had heard stories, Bill and I, of how Ariel had called the police and an ambulance one night when they were visiting friends in Victoria and mom flipped out, grabbing a kitchen knife, threatening to cut herself. She had finally stepped over the line where help was inevitable. Ariel cared enough for her to wrestle with her madness and her petulance all these years. The diagnosis of manic depression or bi-polar illness came as no shock, but for me it carried with it a toxic mixture of relief and terror – relief that it had a name, terror that it might someday become my name.
But on the sidewalk in front of the school that day I just wanted to get away from Ariel and all the memories that she brought with her. I turned and started to walk away from her, fast and urgent. “She loves you very much,” Ariel called after me, following behind as I threaded my way along the busy sidewalk. “She misses you.”
At that I stopped dead, turned and looked full into her eyes as the passers-by flowed around us. “Fuck you,” I spat. “Fuck you, and fuck her too.” I delivered this parting phrase deliberately, seething yet holding in the full power of the explosion that I wanted to unleash: “I don’t ever want to see either of you again – Leave me alone.” I turned my back on her and left, determined never to look back again, not at Ariel, not at the times when my mother played a role in my life.
But much as I’ve wanted to excise my mother from my memory, she haunts me – yes, haunt is the right word, like a spirit that lives its life on the edge of my consciousness, close enough to make its presence felt yet just out of sight, so the presence is always a surprise when it shows itself. And I’ve still no idea what to do with her.
Today Joan came to visit the school with her new baby; I remember how tired and immense she looked at the shower we had for her last fall. Now here she is with her four-month old baby, looking so peaceful and happy that they can spend some time together, just the two of them, before she picks up her other kids from school. I marvel at the power of a baby – or a puppy or a kitten, for that matter – to call forth tenderness and awe from the crustiest among us. Her students surround her in the hall, they want to touch the baby’s fingers, brush his chubby cheek. And I have a flash of mom – whole and happy – playing with Claire on her lap when Claire was this age. And my heart melts at the memory, and once again I ask sadly: what am I to do with my mother?
I can’t love her; I will never trust her; I want to ignore her but her memory will not be ignored.
I swear my life has a musical soundtrack that pops in now and then, to emphasize or punctuate something that I’ve been thinking about: on the Oldies station the other day, they played Boy George singing his old hit: “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?…Do you really want to make me cry?” … And I realized that, once again, just like in the old days, George had something to say to me: No, mom didn’t want to hurt me – most of the time she probably didn’t even know that I was part of her world.
Is it forgiveness that I’m supposed to offer her? What would forgiveness bring to a relationship where it has never been sought? Does she even recognize that there might be something in our history that requires forgiveness?
If not forgiveness, then perhaps release is what I’m seeking – release for both of us. I would like to have the power to give all of those memories the freedom to allow “mom” to simply become “Sarah.”
Sarah would no longer be the mother who wasn’t there for me, or who was there to hurt me. I want to release her from all the expectations that were left unfulfilled, and all the responsibilities left untended. I want to remember Sarah.
Sarah – wounded, gifted, broken, complex.
Sarah – bewildered at the enormity of the waves in her emotional sea.
Sarah – who was so immersed in her negotiations with life that she never thought that others might need her to help steer their own ships.
And in that release, I pray that we might both find peace.
Meanwhile, I listen to Danny getting ready for bed: the comforting sounds as he turns down the blankets, my side as well as his. I hear him brushing his teeth, then talking softly to Pussywillow as he takes her from the bed for a little nuzzle before he puts her on the floor, and I realize how much of Sarah’s life was stolen from her; all the small pleasures of giving and receiving were taken away by her urgent need to devour, or be devoured by life.
And in complete peace and assurance, I go to bed this night knowing that her life will not be my life.
Daylight falls upon the path, the forest falls behind.
Today I’m not prey to dark uncertainty. (“I Think I Understand.” Joni Mitchell)
Copyright 2003
28.4.08
Dear Jean;
The older I get,
The more clearly I remember
things that never happened. (Mark Twain)
I find it strange that despite everything that went on in my life before Claire’s death, this letter that I write you of the years since then seems to be the most difficult for me. They were difficult because they were empty years, defined more by what I did, not by who I was – for I was nothing. I wonder sometimes how I ever made it from there to here.
I remember going through the days, the seasons, then ultimately through the years by reaching from one goal to the next, from graduation to graduation: from Junior High, then from High School, from University and finally from Teacher’s College. I wonder sometimes if my graduate work, important as it is to me, wasn’t simply spurred on by a sense of having nowhere else to go and nothing else to achieve except another diploma.
I look back at the twelve-year old Starla living with her father, sandwiched in their first floor apartment in a house that also sheltered an aspiring Olympic runner and his massage therapist wife living above them, and a couple of bikers below. I recognize that that Starla is closer to the person I’ve become with your guidance, than all the other Starlas in between. She was open, sensitive and vulnerable. She was wounded and she wanted to be healed. She was looking for a model on which to build her new self but none was found. So over the years she enclosed herself: experience by experience, disappointment by disappointment, she built a wall that would sustain her in her life and protect her from further pain.
I could tell you of the years in Junior High when I was always being reprimanded for leaving the school grounds to escape the cattiness of the cliques; of girls who deliberately turned their backs to whisper to each other, looking over their shoulders as I walked by; of notes, hurtful and ridiculous, slipped through the louvered air vents into my locker, their presence invading my private space.
I could tell you about the rabbit who was kept in a large kennel type cage in the classroom, that I went to – as petitioners do in prayer – to lose myself. I would open the cage and he would come to me looking for the offered treat: carrot or celery sticks, apple cores rescued from lunch clean-up. The other kids called me a garbage picker – I knew I only did it because I wanted the rabbit to trust me. He would hop into my arms and allow himself to be folded into my small chest where we both found escape – he, as he nibbled the day’s treat outside the bars that held him in, I, in the troughs of his silken fur as the tips of my fingers drew their path over his back and along his long, cool ears. Then the bell would ring, or someone would come upon us startling him; his powerful legs and fierce claws would push on my arms to escape the embrace. The scratches on my hands where he had drawn blood as I struggled to return him to his cage, would sting for the rest of the day.
But I’d rather focus on the positive steppingstones that helped me get through those years, the things that helped me preserve some kernel of that softer Starla who so wanted to be part of a gentler life.
My first love – perfect and unattainable – was Boy George. This infatuation had nothing to do with music or pop culture but had everything to do with beauty and being defiantly different. Are you familiar with Boy George, Jean? Icon of the early 80’s whose geisha-like make up transformed the face of this young man into an androgynous, pouty object of the most delicate beauty. I would stare into each set of those gloriously defined eyes on each of the posters and pin-up pictures on the wall in my room, and listen to what they had to tell me about reinventing yourself to survive, and about wearing masks to protect yourself.
And I will tell you of Dale: my one true friend through High School and my own real-life Boy George. His creative, exotic and flamboyant personality was strong enough to envelop us both – the sad, shy young girl and the defiantly uncertain, gay young man – and protect us both from the worst of the teen scene. Among other things ours was a symbiotic relationship in that we rescued each other from the world of dating. We were a couple; granted we were a platonic couple in our deep friendship, but in High School any pairing of a guy and a girl was acceptable, and we were usually left alone.
Dale’s homosexuality was not a big issue between us. I remember the Saturday in November when he first told me of his confusion and frustration around what he was feeling, as we sat in our booth by the window at Mario’s Pizza, watching the rain fall. He knew that he wasn’t attracted to girls in the same way as he would hear other guys talking, but the world of High School in those days offered so little opportunity for anyone like Dale to explore who we was attracted to that he lived those years in a world of sexual ambiguity. For my part, I worked hard not to be attracted to anyone – I felt that I’d already spent my quota of emotional energy in my life; I had no interest in entanglements. So we “hung out” together, Dale and I, filling all those spaces in each other’s lives that were allotted to “friends”.
Dale sang in the halls and on the stage. He jumped from high places and wore garish clothes. I marvel at the gentleness inside him that allowed me to be his friend despite his wild exuberance: I was like a moth, attracted not to a killer bug light but to a tender beam that glowed and showed me how to have fun, and accepted me with my own restrictions and limitations. But perhaps it was my very wounds that allowed him to be close to me. His brave and smiling mask of self-assurance was so firmly in place to the rest of the world, but with me he would share the place of his sadness, where he knew that he was not the son that his parents had hoped for; their disappointment in him was a pain that he carried – not knowing how to soothe or heal it.
Dale poured most of his longing and creative energy into each theatrical production with which he was involved; he was a beautifully gifted actor on stage, where he could tame his natural clown. He was so good for me in so many ways. He got me involved in his theatre group where I would go with him to watch the auditions and then rehearsals. Later, I became a prompter, and went on to learn about lights and gels, and how to work the lighting board and sound systems. Over the years in High School, then in University, I spent many hours in tech booths at the back of so many auditoria, enjoying the isolation that my job afforded me, yet knowing that mine was a skill that was needed, that my contribution was essential to the production.
Besides my time with Dale, there were other oases during my teen years. In those days, I kept a journal. Well, not so much a journal as an assortment of doodles, poems, children’s stories, and rants about inconsequential things that Bill did to irritate me. I regret now that I threw them all away when I moved to Ontario. I remember a few of the poems though they hardly seemed worth the effort. But much more important to me than the writing was my reading – as if I had so little to give, and needed to be constantly replenished by an unlimited flow of words, phrases and ideas that I would seek out and take into me. I would steal time from studies and sleeping, use time on busses, and generally make time on weekends to read. Beyond the words and stories, there was a bond that I felt with the books themselves. Owning a book was not so important to me; holding any book however, even a library book, bringing it into my collection of “stuff” that I carried around in daily life, created a connection with all the other people who had cared for that particular story and enjoyed it’s richness. I cherish each book that I’ve read in my life: the good, the bad and the silly. They all hold that special key that allowed me to escape from a world that was too real, too harsh and too full of emptiness.
Another area of my life that sustained me through those years was swimming; the hours of training and practice that went into building up my endurance to achieve another level of proficiency were a positive influence in so many ways. At the time I only knew that they were necessary so that I could make it through to the next level, to finally achieve the papers that I needed to be a lifeguard and swimming teacher.
I’ve always felt so at home in the water – the deeper, the better. Heaven must be like this: swimming alone in a pool with nothing to interfere with the deliciously rhythmic sense of power and exhaustion that comes from moving endlessly – arm over arm, stroke after stroke, the whole body propelling itself, limitless, untouched by anything but water, until finger tips meet tile, signaling a shift – turn, push off the end of the pool and continue. It was the only place that I felt completely comfortable; swimming was a pure and unexpected gift opening doors to yet another world, and a sense of being relieved for a time of any sadness or frustration. I still carry this love of water and I try to get to the pool at least once a week.
During summer holidays I worked my way through the city’s day camp system, first as an LIT (Leader in Training), then CIT (Counselor in Training), to being a camp lifeguard and swimming instructor. Six summers, seven sessions per season, five or six classes per session: so many kids, all of them eager for their time in the pool. The summers flew by.
High School finally ended and I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I’ve always been a teacher I think; from the first days when I realized that there were other kids in the world who were just as confused as I had been, I’ve had a longing to calm that confusion and build skills that would help them move on to the next set of questions.
In applying to universities, I knew that I wanted to be near Sophie, to return to the one place in the world that I missed for what I had left behind. I knew that Sophie had given us stability and predictability, and I always associated these cherished characteristics with our time in Ontario. So I applied to UBC in Vancouver so Bill would feel that there was part of me that wanted to stay in the West, but I knew that I’d be moving East as soon as I could.
That last summer in Vancouver, as I bought a trunk and began to arrange things in it, as I dreamed of dormitory life, as I pondered the necessity of winter boots, I thought a lot about Bill and our years together. I wondered how he’d get along without me: who would see that the laundry was done and that the plants were watered? Who would see that he ate something more than pizza and toast?
Would he miss me? Would his life change in my absence? I realized with resigned melancholy, that the answer to these last questions was a firm yes – and no. Of course we would miss each other and our lives would be changed dramatically by this move. We’d grown comfortable in each other’s presence: anticipating reactions, enjoying the easy familiarity of each other’s “stuff” in our lives – we’d miss that. But we had also become comfortable in each other’s absences. Bill was away a lot with work, sometimes for a week or more. I thought that it might take him a long time to realize that we’d moved into a new phase of our lives where we’d have to make an effort if we wanted to remember each other.
Bill was an okay Dad, especially for me. I didn’t need someone to oversee my activities and look out for my safety – I’m so cautious by nature. I was safe because I kept myself safe. On the other hand, it was good for me to have a home to care for, groceries to buy, and a sack of laundry to deal with once a week. At twelve years of age, I was an adult waiting for my body and my peers to catch up with all I’d lived and seen and felt in my life. And in Bill’s home, I had the freedom to live that responsible adult life.
Bill would come home after a day, or a week, with tales of politics and red tape left tangled at the feet of some poor secretary in some government office. Bill was a clerical wild man: he delighted in the hunt, in the paper chase of arguments – won or lost, it didn’t matter. So long as there was a case to be made or a report to be presented, he did it with panache and a never extinguished sense of impending victory. He’s an amazing guy in the environmental world where real victory is virtually unattainable, and success is measured proposal by proposal, and tree by tree. They’re lucky to have him.
On Fridays, after playing hooky from his professional life for a few hours, Bill would arrive with some new style of pizza: spicy chicken, or spinach and tomatoes, or pesto and shrimp with peppers. He might have a new B.B. King tape, the product of a long, lazy afternoon in the second hand record store. He’d play it, as excited as any kid, pointing out the amazing finger work that always inspired him. We’d eat our pizza, Bill and I, and usually Dale, enjoying these small moments of what passed for family life. I wonder if he ate alone on Friday nights after I’d gone?
These were the good things of those years that I wanted to share with you, Jean. They were the people, and memories, and activities that preserved some sense of my wholeness, so that I might rediscover it now that I have this reclaimed life to live with Danny, and with myself.
Before I finish there’s one more thing that I wanted to share with you about those years. It was the most difficult aspect of my adolescence, and that which left me feeling more vulnerable and frightened than all the uncertainties of my younger life. Asthma played a very large role in shaping who I was in those days, and the ultimate caution with which I reacted to life was a direct result of my need to avoid extremes and just keep breathing.
I’m able to trace my first asthma attack to a drizzly Tuesday in the late fall, after I returned to live with Bill. A group of girls from this new Junior High had been taunting me at the bus stop after school, laughing at what they chose to point out on that particular day: my less than fashionable clothes. I turned from them so they wouldn’t see the tears that were stinging my eyes. At first I walked with an almost march-like determination to leave them all behind, but as the anger and shame grew in me I began to run. I wanted my heart to race and my skin to burn with the sting of the cold drops of rain against my cheeks, so I ran as fast as I could, holding my bag to my chest, holding myself in. I ran.
It would have been about twenty blocks from the school to our apartment, and I ran past flower shops, delis, cafes, hairdressers, and blocks of small square homes, their patches of fall flowers still shining with colour in the dullness of the grey, wet afternoon. I ran past a fire station, a playground, and a car dealership, each melting behind me as I kept pushing myself forward towards the safety of my world in our apartment. Then without warning, from behind a chain link fence came a dog, large and black, his fleshy round head surrounding the snarling mouth and rows of hard yellow teeth. The sound of his bark startled me back into the world of what was real around me, and I screamed with the last easy breath to come from my body for days.
I screamed and kept screaming as I staggered back away from the fence that held him in with all the tenuous uncertainty of a sheet of glass around a tiger. I screamed until my brain focused, grasping at the knowledge that he was enclosed. I screamed in anger that my hurt adolescent pride was being suppressed by a real threat. And when I stopped screaming, my lungs stopped working, as if in those screams I’d pushed out all the air I’d ever breathed in, and my lungs had collapsed on its expulsion.
I staggered on for the few blocks to the apartment, gasping with every step and fell inside, grateful for the warmth yet horrified at the realization that it did little to help my heaving chest. I got a drink; I lay on my bed; I propped myself up against the wall trying to keep the panic at bay. I focused on each Rob Lowe and Boy George poster on the walls of my room, scrutinizing each one, willing their perfection to help me through this crisis. I concentrated on the ceramic whale that Carly had given me before she left us that summer, which sat on the top of my bookcase and had never known the feeling of water around him as all whales should. I resolved that if I survived, and if I did not die from lack of air or lack of courage, I’d find an aquarium for my whale where he could live in water – perhaps in the company of a goldfish or two. I focused on anything that would keep me from thinking about what was happening to me. I gasped and gulped tiny little breaths at first, telling myself, through each strange sounding wheeze of my chest, that I only needed little breaths for now: like a person dying of thirst only needs a drop at a time to keep alive.
In time, as the grey outside the window became darker and the streetlights shone in, my heart slowed from its running pace to a merely agitated level. The tiny gulps of air became deeper and little pockets in my lungs began to open up, one by one, letting more air in, letting more air out – in until it hurt, out until I could push no more. As the crisis receded I became aware of the bag of school books that I still clutched to my chest, of my dirty shoes and wet clothes marring the new lace comforter that I’d asked Bill to get for me to cover my bed.
I would have given anything to cry at that moment, for the gift of wails and rants that would have emptied the anger and this new fear from where they took up all the breathing space inside me. But I dared not cry – I was too afraid that the little breath that was left to me, which was slowly ebbing back into my chest, would be claimed again.
So I sat on my bed removing one dirty sneaker and then the other, wiping at the marks of mud they left on the lace, and coughing with dry sputtering gasps through the night. When Bill got home he came to see me in my room. He asked why I was in bed so early. I told him I wasn’t feeling well. He listened to the coughs – dry and persistent – and said that he’d get some cough syrup in the morning, that it sounded like I was coming down with a cold.
I coughed for a week before I got to see the doctor who heard the wheeze in my chest and prescribed a steroid inhaler and Ventolin for the discomfort of acute episodes. The coughing wasn’t so bad, except that it attracted unwanted attention from those around me. But the memory of that feeling of helpless contraction in my chest left me terrified at the thought of it happening again. Because I was running and was upset when it first happened, I was wary of anything that I sensed would bring on another attack. So I lived my life in a world with as little threat as possible of physical exertion or emotional distress. It wasn’t until later that I realized that swimming was such good exercise for asthmatics and that it probably did as much for my lungs as it did for my emotional and physical well being. The asthma followed me through my teens but seemed much improved when I came east to university. Perhaps it was the different weather; perhaps I’d left enough ghosts behind and there was more room for me to breathe here.
University was a new world for me, with no one to care for but myself. I worried about Bill at first but realized that he would be fine, with or without me. I met Danny in my second year at school and we went through Teacher’s College together. Strangely, though I still can’t put my finger on it, he has always reminded me of the best of Bill and the best of Dale blended together. But mostly I was attracted to Danny because of his patience: with me, with himself and with life. Danny’s always been willing to wait for something good. He tells the story of desserts in his family, how he would always wait until everyone else had their piece of pie or cake before holding out his plate. I guess that his mother noticed this kind trait in him, and would save a particularly large piece for him at the end. Thus he learned that patience was more than a virtue and was often rewarded. I’m grateful that I know how lucky I am to have found him.
So there you have it, Jean; that’s much of my life until the tears started to flow and I found myself in your office. I’m ashamed to think of how little faith I had in the process that you offered, and how reticent I was to dig up the old memories. But I’ll be forever grateful for the sense of safety that you provided in which I was able to take this journey, back to those times, and forward, into the next phase of my life.
Thank you, Jean, for everything.
Starla.
Copyright 2003
The more clearly I remember
things that never happened. (Mark Twain)
I find it strange that despite everything that went on in my life before Claire’s death, this letter that I write you of the years since then seems to be the most difficult for me. They were difficult because they were empty years, defined more by what I did, not by who I was – for I was nothing. I wonder sometimes how I ever made it from there to here.
I remember going through the days, the seasons, then ultimately through the years by reaching from one goal to the next, from graduation to graduation: from Junior High, then from High School, from University and finally from Teacher’s College. I wonder sometimes if my graduate work, important as it is to me, wasn’t simply spurred on by a sense of having nowhere else to go and nothing else to achieve except another diploma.
I look back at the twelve-year old Starla living with her father, sandwiched in their first floor apartment in a house that also sheltered an aspiring Olympic runner and his massage therapist wife living above them, and a couple of bikers below. I recognize that that Starla is closer to the person I’ve become with your guidance, than all the other Starlas in between. She was open, sensitive and vulnerable. She was wounded and she wanted to be healed. She was looking for a model on which to build her new self but none was found. So over the years she enclosed herself: experience by experience, disappointment by disappointment, she built a wall that would sustain her in her life and protect her from further pain.
I could tell you of the years in Junior High when I was always being reprimanded for leaving the school grounds to escape the cattiness of the cliques; of girls who deliberately turned their backs to whisper to each other, looking over their shoulders as I walked by; of notes, hurtful and ridiculous, slipped through the louvered air vents into my locker, their presence invading my private space.
I could tell you about the rabbit who was kept in a large kennel type cage in the classroom, that I went to – as petitioners do in prayer – to lose myself. I would open the cage and he would come to me looking for the offered treat: carrot or celery sticks, apple cores rescued from lunch clean-up. The other kids called me a garbage picker – I knew I only did it because I wanted the rabbit to trust me. He would hop into my arms and allow himself to be folded into my small chest where we both found escape – he, as he nibbled the day’s treat outside the bars that held him in, I, in the troughs of his silken fur as the tips of my fingers drew their path over his back and along his long, cool ears. Then the bell would ring, or someone would come upon us startling him; his powerful legs and fierce claws would push on my arms to escape the embrace. The scratches on my hands where he had drawn blood as I struggled to return him to his cage, would sting for the rest of the day.
But I’d rather focus on the positive steppingstones that helped me get through those years, the things that helped me preserve some kernel of that softer Starla who so wanted to be part of a gentler life.
My first love – perfect and unattainable – was Boy George. This infatuation had nothing to do with music or pop culture but had everything to do with beauty and being defiantly different. Are you familiar with Boy George, Jean? Icon of the early 80’s whose geisha-like make up transformed the face of this young man into an androgynous, pouty object of the most delicate beauty. I would stare into each set of those gloriously defined eyes on each of the posters and pin-up pictures on the wall in my room, and listen to what they had to tell me about reinventing yourself to survive, and about wearing masks to protect yourself.
And I will tell you of Dale: my one true friend through High School and my own real-life Boy George. His creative, exotic and flamboyant personality was strong enough to envelop us both – the sad, shy young girl and the defiantly uncertain, gay young man – and protect us both from the worst of the teen scene. Among other things ours was a symbiotic relationship in that we rescued each other from the world of dating. We were a couple; granted we were a platonic couple in our deep friendship, but in High School any pairing of a guy and a girl was acceptable, and we were usually left alone.
Dale’s homosexuality was not a big issue between us. I remember the Saturday in November when he first told me of his confusion and frustration around what he was feeling, as we sat in our booth by the window at Mario’s Pizza, watching the rain fall. He knew that he wasn’t attracted to girls in the same way as he would hear other guys talking, but the world of High School in those days offered so little opportunity for anyone like Dale to explore who we was attracted to that he lived those years in a world of sexual ambiguity. For my part, I worked hard not to be attracted to anyone – I felt that I’d already spent my quota of emotional energy in my life; I had no interest in entanglements. So we “hung out” together, Dale and I, filling all those spaces in each other’s lives that were allotted to “friends”.
Dale sang in the halls and on the stage. He jumped from high places and wore garish clothes. I marvel at the gentleness inside him that allowed me to be his friend despite his wild exuberance: I was like a moth, attracted not to a killer bug light but to a tender beam that glowed and showed me how to have fun, and accepted me with my own restrictions and limitations. But perhaps it was my very wounds that allowed him to be close to me. His brave and smiling mask of self-assurance was so firmly in place to the rest of the world, but with me he would share the place of his sadness, where he knew that he was not the son that his parents had hoped for; their disappointment in him was a pain that he carried – not knowing how to soothe or heal it.
Dale poured most of his longing and creative energy into each theatrical production with which he was involved; he was a beautifully gifted actor on stage, where he could tame his natural clown. He was so good for me in so many ways. He got me involved in his theatre group where I would go with him to watch the auditions and then rehearsals. Later, I became a prompter, and went on to learn about lights and gels, and how to work the lighting board and sound systems. Over the years in High School, then in University, I spent many hours in tech booths at the back of so many auditoria, enjoying the isolation that my job afforded me, yet knowing that mine was a skill that was needed, that my contribution was essential to the production.
Besides my time with Dale, there were other oases during my teen years. In those days, I kept a journal. Well, not so much a journal as an assortment of doodles, poems, children’s stories, and rants about inconsequential things that Bill did to irritate me. I regret now that I threw them all away when I moved to Ontario. I remember a few of the poems though they hardly seemed worth the effort. But much more important to me than the writing was my reading – as if I had so little to give, and needed to be constantly replenished by an unlimited flow of words, phrases and ideas that I would seek out and take into me. I would steal time from studies and sleeping, use time on busses, and generally make time on weekends to read. Beyond the words and stories, there was a bond that I felt with the books themselves. Owning a book was not so important to me; holding any book however, even a library book, bringing it into my collection of “stuff” that I carried around in daily life, created a connection with all the other people who had cared for that particular story and enjoyed it’s richness. I cherish each book that I’ve read in my life: the good, the bad and the silly. They all hold that special key that allowed me to escape from a world that was too real, too harsh and too full of emptiness.
Another area of my life that sustained me through those years was swimming; the hours of training and practice that went into building up my endurance to achieve another level of proficiency were a positive influence in so many ways. At the time I only knew that they were necessary so that I could make it through to the next level, to finally achieve the papers that I needed to be a lifeguard and swimming teacher.
I’ve always felt so at home in the water – the deeper, the better. Heaven must be like this: swimming alone in a pool with nothing to interfere with the deliciously rhythmic sense of power and exhaustion that comes from moving endlessly – arm over arm, stroke after stroke, the whole body propelling itself, limitless, untouched by anything but water, until finger tips meet tile, signaling a shift – turn, push off the end of the pool and continue. It was the only place that I felt completely comfortable; swimming was a pure and unexpected gift opening doors to yet another world, and a sense of being relieved for a time of any sadness or frustration. I still carry this love of water and I try to get to the pool at least once a week.
During summer holidays I worked my way through the city’s day camp system, first as an LIT (Leader in Training), then CIT (Counselor in Training), to being a camp lifeguard and swimming instructor. Six summers, seven sessions per season, five or six classes per session: so many kids, all of them eager for their time in the pool. The summers flew by.
High School finally ended and I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I’ve always been a teacher I think; from the first days when I realized that there were other kids in the world who were just as confused as I had been, I’ve had a longing to calm that confusion and build skills that would help them move on to the next set of questions.
In applying to universities, I knew that I wanted to be near Sophie, to return to the one place in the world that I missed for what I had left behind. I knew that Sophie had given us stability and predictability, and I always associated these cherished characteristics with our time in Ontario. So I applied to UBC in Vancouver so Bill would feel that there was part of me that wanted to stay in the West, but I knew that I’d be moving East as soon as I could.
That last summer in Vancouver, as I bought a trunk and began to arrange things in it, as I dreamed of dormitory life, as I pondered the necessity of winter boots, I thought a lot about Bill and our years together. I wondered how he’d get along without me: who would see that the laundry was done and that the plants were watered? Who would see that he ate something more than pizza and toast?
Would he miss me? Would his life change in my absence? I realized with resigned melancholy, that the answer to these last questions was a firm yes – and no. Of course we would miss each other and our lives would be changed dramatically by this move. We’d grown comfortable in each other’s presence: anticipating reactions, enjoying the easy familiarity of each other’s “stuff” in our lives – we’d miss that. But we had also become comfortable in each other’s absences. Bill was away a lot with work, sometimes for a week or more. I thought that it might take him a long time to realize that we’d moved into a new phase of our lives where we’d have to make an effort if we wanted to remember each other.
Bill was an okay Dad, especially for me. I didn’t need someone to oversee my activities and look out for my safety – I’m so cautious by nature. I was safe because I kept myself safe. On the other hand, it was good for me to have a home to care for, groceries to buy, and a sack of laundry to deal with once a week. At twelve years of age, I was an adult waiting for my body and my peers to catch up with all I’d lived and seen and felt in my life. And in Bill’s home, I had the freedom to live that responsible adult life.
Bill would come home after a day, or a week, with tales of politics and red tape left tangled at the feet of some poor secretary in some government office. Bill was a clerical wild man: he delighted in the hunt, in the paper chase of arguments – won or lost, it didn’t matter. So long as there was a case to be made or a report to be presented, he did it with panache and a never extinguished sense of impending victory. He’s an amazing guy in the environmental world where real victory is virtually unattainable, and success is measured proposal by proposal, and tree by tree. They’re lucky to have him.
On Fridays, after playing hooky from his professional life for a few hours, Bill would arrive with some new style of pizza: spicy chicken, or spinach and tomatoes, or pesto and shrimp with peppers. He might have a new B.B. King tape, the product of a long, lazy afternoon in the second hand record store. He’d play it, as excited as any kid, pointing out the amazing finger work that always inspired him. We’d eat our pizza, Bill and I, and usually Dale, enjoying these small moments of what passed for family life. I wonder if he ate alone on Friday nights after I’d gone?
These were the good things of those years that I wanted to share with you, Jean. They were the people, and memories, and activities that preserved some sense of my wholeness, so that I might rediscover it now that I have this reclaimed life to live with Danny, and with myself.
Before I finish there’s one more thing that I wanted to share with you about those years. It was the most difficult aspect of my adolescence, and that which left me feeling more vulnerable and frightened than all the uncertainties of my younger life. Asthma played a very large role in shaping who I was in those days, and the ultimate caution with which I reacted to life was a direct result of my need to avoid extremes and just keep breathing.
I’m able to trace my first asthma attack to a drizzly Tuesday in the late fall, after I returned to live with Bill. A group of girls from this new Junior High had been taunting me at the bus stop after school, laughing at what they chose to point out on that particular day: my less than fashionable clothes. I turned from them so they wouldn’t see the tears that were stinging my eyes. At first I walked with an almost march-like determination to leave them all behind, but as the anger and shame grew in me I began to run. I wanted my heart to race and my skin to burn with the sting of the cold drops of rain against my cheeks, so I ran as fast as I could, holding my bag to my chest, holding myself in. I ran.
It would have been about twenty blocks from the school to our apartment, and I ran past flower shops, delis, cafes, hairdressers, and blocks of small square homes, their patches of fall flowers still shining with colour in the dullness of the grey, wet afternoon. I ran past a fire station, a playground, and a car dealership, each melting behind me as I kept pushing myself forward towards the safety of my world in our apartment. Then without warning, from behind a chain link fence came a dog, large and black, his fleshy round head surrounding the snarling mouth and rows of hard yellow teeth. The sound of his bark startled me back into the world of what was real around me, and I screamed with the last easy breath to come from my body for days.
I screamed and kept screaming as I staggered back away from the fence that held him in with all the tenuous uncertainty of a sheet of glass around a tiger. I screamed until my brain focused, grasping at the knowledge that he was enclosed. I screamed in anger that my hurt adolescent pride was being suppressed by a real threat. And when I stopped screaming, my lungs stopped working, as if in those screams I’d pushed out all the air I’d ever breathed in, and my lungs had collapsed on its expulsion.
I staggered on for the few blocks to the apartment, gasping with every step and fell inside, grateful for the warmth yet horrified at the realization that it did little to help my heaving chest. I got a drink; I lay on my bed; I propped myself up against the wall trying to keep the panic at bay. I focused on each Rob Lowe and Boy George poster on the walls of my room, scrutinizing each one, willing their perfection to help me through this crisis. I concentrated on the ceramic whale that Carly had given me before she left us that summer, which sat on the top of my bookcase and had never known the feeling of water around him as all whales should. I resolved that if I survived, and if I did not die from lack of air or lack of courage, I’d find an aquarium for my whale where he could live in water – perhaps in the company of a goldfish or two. I focused on anything that would keep me from thinking about what was happening to me. I gasped and gulped tiny little breaths at first, telling myself, through each strange sounding wheeze of my chest, that I only needed little breaths for now: like a person dying of thirst only needs a drop at a time to keep alive.
In time, as the grey outside the window became darker and the streetlights shone in, my heart slowed from its running pace to a merely agitated level. The tiny gulps of air became deeper and little pockets in my lungs began to open up, one by one, letting more air in, letting more air out – in until it hurt, out until I could push no more. As the crisis receded I became aware of the bag of school books that I still clutched to my chest, of my dirty shoes and wet clothes marring the new lace comforter that I’d asked Bill to get for me to cover my bed.
I would have given anything to cry at that moment, for the gift of wails and rants that would have emptied the anger and this new fear from where they took up all the breathing space inside me. But I dared not cry – I was too afraid that the little breath that was left to me, which was slowly ebbing back into my chest, would be claimed again.
So I sat on my bed removing one dirty sneaker and then the other, wiping at the marks of mud they left on the lace, and coughing with dry sputtering gasps through the night. When Bill got home he came to see me in my room. He asked why I was in bed so early. I told him I wasn’t feeling well. He listened to the coughs – dry and persistent – and said that he’d get some cough syrup in the morning, that it sounded like I was coming down with a cold.
I coughed for a week before I got to see the doctor who heard the wheeze in my chest and prescribed a steroid inhaler and Ventolin for the discomfort of acute episodes. The coughing wasn’t so bad, except that it attracted unwanted attention from those around me. But the memory of that feeling of helpless contraction in my chest left me terrified at the thought of it happening again. Because I was running and was upset when it first happened, I was wary of anything that I sensed would bring on another attack. So I lived my life in a world with as little threat as possible of physical exertion or emotional distress. It wasn’t until later that I realized that swimming was such good exercise for asthmatics and that it probably did as much for my lungs as it did for my emotional and physical well being. The asthma followed me through my teens but seemed much improved when I came east to university. Perhaps it was the different weather; perhaps I’d left enough ghosts behind and there was more room for me to breathe here.
University was a new world for me, with no one to care for but myself. I worried about Bill at first but realized that he would be fine, with or without me. I met Danny in my second year at school and we went through Teacher’s College together. Strangely, though I still can’t put my finger on it, he has always reminded me of the best of Bill and the best of Dale blended together. But mostly I was attracted to Danny because of his patience: with me, with himself and with life. Danny’s always been willing to wait for something good. He tells the story of desserts in his family, how he would always wait until everyone else had their piece of pie or cake before holding out his plate. I guess that his mother noticed this kind trait in him, and would save a particularly large piece for him at the end. Thus he learned that patience was more than a virtue and was often rewarded. I’m grateful that I know how lucky I am to have found him.
So there you have it, Jean; that’s much of my life until the tears started to flow and I found myself in your office. I’m ashamed to think of how little faith I had in the process that you offered, and how reticent I was to dig up the old memories. But I’ll be forever grateful for the sense of safety that you provided in which I was able to take this journey, back to those times, and forward, into the next phase of my life.
Thank you, Jean, for everything.
Starla.
Copyright 2003
23.4.08
JOURNAL, Sunday, April 14th
You are a child of the universe;
No less than the trees and the stars
You have a right to be here. (Desiderata)
Synchronicity is such a buzzword these days, describing how sometimes our lives seem to be scripted like a movie, operating in themes with parallel occurrences that seem too well coordinated to be possible in a random world. Yet there it is: things do sometimes come along and come together at exactly the right time.
On Friday afternoon, Susan, the Kindergarten teacher, had her kids with her at school because the family was leaving for a special weekend in Montreal right after class. This is Susan’s first year at our school so I don’t know her very well. I knew that she had four kids and that the oldest, ten-year old Tracy, had been disabled by a premature delivery and very difficult birth. I knew that Tracy had a nurse who tended to her needs on a daily basis, and a team of caregivers whose coordinating schedules seemed to occupy much of Susan’s spare time, but until Friday these were just words.
The handivan arrived at the front door of the school at noon. Tracy was wheeled off the bus and into the school in her very elaborate wheelchair. Susan ran to greet her with hugs and kisses. A large terrycloth bib lay draped over Tracy’s bright red Roots jacket. Beneath her unfaded jeans were tiny withered ankles in braces fitted into ironically clean running shoes. Her head lolled from side to side, her eyes rolled back in her head and she drooled from one corner of her mouth. Her long twisted fingers seemed fused into a folded posture and waved uselessly in the air.
From the library, I watched as Susan’s three other kids and some of her students came over to join them in the entrance. I was stunned when I first saw the degree of Tracy’s disability and realized the overwhelming role that she must play in all their lives. I was intrigued by my reaction: I noticed that Tracy’s brother, Paul, was about eight-years old, just two years younger than her. How could Susan have contemplated another pregnancy little more than a year after the shock of such a terrible birth and its consequences?
Susan removed Tracy’s hat, kissing her head as the locks tumbled to her shoulders. She undid the snaps on her coat, talking in animated tones about the school and the afternoon’s activities that she had planned for them. Paul wheeled Tracy to the Kindergarten room; Susan’s other two children followed, to play with some of the kids from her class. For the rest of the lunch period, Tracy was an honoured guest as Susan and Paul wheeled her around to show her the school and introduce her to the kids and staff that they met in the halls. When they arrived in the library, I was just getting things set up for the group that were to arrive after the bell. When Susan introduced us, I bent over to touch Tracy’s arm in a gesture of recognition and welcome. Tracy didn’t seem aware of what was going on as Susan brushed a few wisps of her blond hair from her forehead and spoke of the things that she liked to do at home: watch T.V., especially the music videos, and be with her grandmother when she came over to make cookies with Tracy every Tuesday morning. Susan spoke of Paul’s soccer team that would be starting up again soon, and of how the younger ones have been nagging for a PlayStation to play the new videogames.
In the few minutes that we spent together, I became more relaxed in their presence. It was obvious that Susan saw nothing heroic or even unusual about her family; they were simply as they were. I would have given anything to be so bold as to ask her of her fears, of the pain and discouragement that they must feel at times when thinking of the future that Tracy will never have, and of the courage that it must have taken to have contemplated other children. But to bring up such questions in the face of their obvious ease and happiness with each other would have been insulting. When they left the library and I went back to my arranging, I had much to ponder, most of it to do with Susan’s three “normal” children, and how they may not have had a chance at life but for her courage and willingness to take risks.
Watching Susan’s children at our school was just the latest in a series of occurrences this week that have had me thinking long and hard about questions of having children. Synchronicity seems to have dictated that that’s to be my theme for this week.
I’m never surprised when I see myself doing something completely unexpected. I’ve grown to trust the other aspects of myself, the Protector, the Observer, the Curious One who live within me, and who sometimes appear to operate independently of each other, but always seem to act for my good. A few months ago when I went to the doctor for a check up and to renew my prescription for the pill, without expecting it at all I heard myself explaining that before going on the pill my cycle was quite erratic, and asking for a referral to see a specialist about it.
As with any specialist, it took some time to get an appointment, and as synchronicity would have it, I got to see the gynecologist this very week, when I’ve been struggling with so many questions about the gene pool that I’ve been allotted, and all the risks involved in becoming a parent that have nothing to do with conception.
I didn’t really learn anything new at this appointment. He said that based on what I told him, he thought that pregnancy could be possible, but that it would probably take time and persistence, and that he’d know more with some tests. Without realizing what was happening, I was booked for blood work before leaving the office. I came away requisition in hand, feeling a little stunned, as if someone had shot a starter’s pistol in a race that I didn’t know I was running. His assumption that pregnancy was the obvious primary goal of my coming to see him was not surprising; no doubt that’s why most of the women with strange cycles would seek his help. I came away curiously challenged, as if a new goal had been laid before me, something to achieve.
It’s a characteristic of mine that I’ve always been swept up by the excitement of new challenges, intrigued to see if I can rise to their demands without questioning too seriously how much I really want to achieve this particular goal. This time, obviously, I’m afraid to let my enthusiasm get the better of me.
It’s hard to imagine a thirty-year old woman in a warm relationship with a great guy for the past eight years, having avoided questions of fertility, pregnancy and parenting for all this time. Yet that’s the situation in which I find myself. My fears about depression and my questionable fertility have happily coexisted in my mind, supporting each other and allowing me this fantasy life where I could pretend that issues of parenthood were no more within my purview than matters of flying to the moon. Yet, since my visit to the gynecologist and the course of medical investigation that he’s set before me, the possibility of pregnancy is nudging me to look at my fears, and to question how other people deal with the overwhelming issues of having children under any circumstances.
I’m not brave and I’m not wise but I am growing in strength. Watching Susan and her kids, and thinking of the families of so many of the children that I deal with each day, I know that for everyone life is one big risk. Control is an illusion that I’ve been clinging to for many years, to maintain the balance that I needed to keep myself on track. The irony is that when I look at how I’ve changed over the past few months, I realize that it’s this desperate clinging to control in my life that has made me most unbalanced. Through the writing I’ve come to trust life more; I believe in Danny and me, and I feel more peaceful and am able to move more with the flow of my life. Is that not the balance that I’ve always wanted?
And what of Danny in all of this? Perhaps he’s been too patient with me, never pushing the difficult questions that have settled themselves between us. One thing about Danny is that he never goes looking for trouble; he doesn’t want to upset what we have, so he’s always been willing to let me be with my idiosyncrasies and my demands. Maybe I needed to be challenged more, to be more aware of what he has wanted and hoped for all these years.
In our situation, this question of parenting is so much greater than the basic desire to have children that everyone faces at some point in their lives. For us, for me, it seems to be intimately tied to our relationship. For the first time I feel that I’m able to commit to examining painful questions that unite us. It’s no longer my pain and fear that I’m wrestling with but our pain, our confusion, our decisions when facing the possibility of infertility – or worse.
Danny’s an amazing person. Because there had been so much of myself that I’d kept inside, I was always under the illusion that I was a mystery to him; I never believed that he knew me very well. Did he know me well enough, I wonder, to know that I might someday be whole? I would never have suspected it myself.
Copyright 2003
No less than the trees and the stars
You have a right to be here. (Desiderata)
Synchronicity is such a buzzword these days, describing how sometimes our lives seem to be scripted like a movie, operating in themes with parallel occurrences that seem too well coordinated to be possible in a random world. Yet there it is: things do sometimes come along and come together at exactly the right time.
On Friday afternoon, Susan, the Kindergarten teacher, had her kids with her at school because the family was leaving for a special weekend in Montreal right after class. This is Susan’s first year at our school so I don’t know her very well. I knew that she had four kids and that the oldest, ten-year old Tracy, had been disabled by a premature delivery and very difficult birth. I knew that Tracy had a nurse who tended to her needs on a daily basis, and a team of caregivers whose coordinating schedules seemed to occupy much of Susan’s spare time, but until Friday these were just words.
The handivan arrived at the front door of the school at noon. Tracy was wheeled off the bus and into the school in her very elaborate wheelchair. Susan ran to greet her with hugs and kisses. A large terrycloth bib lay draped over Tracy’s bright red Roots jacket. Beneath her unfaded jeans were tiny withered ankles in braces fitted into ironically clean running shoes. Her head lolled from side to side, her eyes rolled back in her head and she drooled from one corner of her mouth. Her long twisted fingers seemed fused into a folded posture and waved uselessly in the air.
From the library, I watched as Susan’s three other kids and some of her students came over to join them in the entrance. I was stunned when I first saw the degree of Tracy’s disability and realized the overwhelming role that she must play in all their lives. I was intrigued by my reaction: I noticed that Tracy’s brother, Paul, was about eight-years old, just two years younger than her. How could Susan have contemplated another pregnancy little more than a year after the shock of such a terrible birth and its consequences?
Susan removed Tracy’s hat, kissing her head as the locks tumbled to her shoulders. She undid the snaps on her coat, talking in animated tones about the school and the afternoon’s activities that she had planned for them. Paul wheeled Tracy to the Kindergarten room; Susan’s other two children followed, to play with some of the kids from her class. For the rest of the lunch period, Tracy was an honoured guest as Susan and Paul wheeled her around to show her the school and introduce her to the kids and staff that they met in the halls. When they arrived in the library, I was just getting things set up for the group that were to arrive after the bell. When Susan introduced us, I bent over to touch Tracy’s arm in a gesture of recognition and welcome. Tracy didn’t seem aware of what was going on as Susan brushed a few wisps of her blond hair from her forehead and spoke of the things that she liked to do at home: watch T.V., especially the music videos, and be with her grandmother when she came over to make cookies with Tracy every Tuesday morning. Susan spoke of Paul’s soccer team that would be starting up again soon, and of how the younger ones have been nagging for a PlayStation to play the new videogames.
In the few minutes that we spent together, I became more relaxed in their presence. It was obvious that Susan saw nothing heroic or even unusual about her family; they were simply as they were. I would have given anything to be so bold as to ask her of her fears, of the pain and discouragement that they must feel at times when thinking of the future that Tracy will never have, and of the courage that it must have taken to have contemplated other children. But to bring up such questions in the face of their obvious ease and happiness with each other would have been insulting. When they left the library and I went back to my arranging, I had much to ponder, most of it to do with Susan’s three “normal” children, and how they may not have had a chance at life but for her courage and willingness to take risks.
Watching Susan’s children at our school was just the latest in a series of occurrences this week that have had me thinking long and hard about questions of having children. Synchronicity seems to have dictated that that’s to be my theme for this week.
I’m never surprised when I see myself doing something completely unexpected. I’ve grown to trust the other aspects of myself, the Protector, the Observer, the Curious One who live within me, and who sometimes appear to operate independently of each other, but always seem to act for my good. A few months ago when I went to the doctor for a check up and to renew my prescription for the pill, without expecting it at all I heard myself explaining that before going on the pill my cycle was quite erratic, and asking for a referral to see a specialist about it.
As with any specialist, it took some time to get an appointment, and as synchronicity would have it, I got to see the gynecologist this very week, when I’ve been struggling with so many questions about the gene pool that I’ve been allotted, and all the risks involved in becoming a parent that have nothing to do with conception.
I didn’t really learn anything new at this appointment. He said that based on what I told him, he thought that pregnancy could be possible, but that it would probably take time and persistence, and that he’d know more with some tests. Without realizing what was happening, I was booked for blood work before leaving the office. I came away requisition in hand, feeling a little stunned, as if someone had shot a starter’s pistol in a race that I didn’t know I was running. His assumption that pregnancy was the obvious primary goal of my coming to see him was not surprising; no doubt that’s why most of the women with strange cycles would seek his help. I came away curiously challenged, as if a new goal had been laid before me, something to achieve.
It’s a characteristic of mine that I’ve always been swept up by the excitement of new challenges, intrigued to see if I can rise to their demands without questioning too seriously how much I really want to achieve this particular goal. This time, obviously, I’m afraid to let my enthusiasm get the better of me.
It’s hard to imagine a thirty-year old woman in a warm relationship with a great guy for the past eight years, having avoided questions of fertility, pregnancy and parenting for all this time. Yet that’s the situation in which I find myself. My fears about depression and my questionable fertility have happily coexisted in my mind, supporting each other and allowing me this fantasy life where I could pretend that issues of parenthood were no more within my purview than matters of flying to the moon. Yet, since my visit to the gynecologist and the course of medical investigation that he’s set before me, the possibility of pregnancy is nudging me to look at my fears, and to question how other people deal with the overwhelming issues of having children under any circumstances.
I’m not brave and I’m not wise but I am growing in strength. Watching Susan and her kids, and thinking of the families of so many of the children that I deal with each day, I know that for everyone life is one big risk. Control is an illusion that I’ve been clinging to for many years, to maintain the balance that I needed to keep myself on track. The irony is that when I look at how I’ve changed over the past few months, I realize that it’s this desperate clinging to control in my life that has made me most unbalanced. Through the writing I’ve come to trust life more; I believe in Danny and me, and I feel more peaceful and am able to move more with the flow of my life. Is that not the balance that I’ve always wanted?
And what of Danny in all of this? Perhaps he’s been too patient with me, never pushing the difficult questions that have settled themselves between us. One thing about Danny is that he never goes looking for trouble; he doesn’t want to upset what we have, so he’s always been willing to let me be with my idiosyncrasies and my demands. Maybe I needed to be challenged more, to be more aware of what he has wanted and hoped for all these years.
In our situation, this question of parenting is so much greater than the basic desire to have children that everyone faces at some point in their lives. For us, for me, it seems to be intimately tied to our relationship. For the first time I feel that I’m able to commit to examining painful questions that unite us. It’s no longer my pain and fear that I’m wrestling with but our pain, our confusion, our decisions when facing the possibility of infertility – or worse.
Danny’s an amazing person. Because there had been so much of myself that I’d kept inside, I was always under the illusion that I was a mystery to him; I never believed that he knew me very well. Did he know me well enough, I wonder, to know that I might someday be whole? I would never have suspected it myself.
Copyright 2003
21.4.08
JOURNAL, Tuesday, April 9th
Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Mamma’s going to buy you a mockingbird. (trad.)
It’s so depressing these days, getting up early to write. Since the clocks have changed to daylight saving time we enjoy the longer evenings of sunsets that hold back until well after supper, but we pay for it at the other end of the day, getting up in the dark. It’s as if nature is laughing at all the progress we’ve made in the last few weeks at pushing back the night to an earlier and earlier sunrise. “Fooled ya,” says the morning to our sense of accomplishment. “You have to start back where you were six weeks ago when it was dull and drizzly and it felt as if there was hardly any light at all in the world.”
I woke this morning after a dream that has me so angry that I think I’m just venting against the burden of the morning’s darkness. It was just a snippet of the dream that bothers me, a sliver at the end of a story that I can’t even remember. Someone or something is holding me facedown, pushing against my back so I can’t get up from the ground on the edge of a pond where I lay. It’s trying to push my head under the water, trying to drown me. It occurs to me, as I struggle and fight to free myself, that this is a rather ineffective assassin: the pond of water in which it wants to drown me is several inches below the earth where I’m lying, so all that’s happening is I’m getting my hair and forehead wet. But it’s the oppressive weight, the pressure against my back that bothers me most, until I realize that mom is standing beside the figure that keeps me pinned down, and she looks down at my struggling figure, laughing at me with her over exuberant laugh, always too loud and too full of anticipation.
What a pathetic piece of work I am. I’ve not seen my mother in nearly twenty years, yet I allow her to invade my dreams and take up precious emotional energy in me that deserves a more worthy recipient. She’s of no consequence to me; it’s not as if I have to live with her or deal with her on a regular basis. What’s the point of going through all the pain only to remember how betrayed and lonely I’ve felt for most of my life – I don’t want to do it…
Yet since the retreat in February, I’ve known that no matter how much I try to deny it or wish it weren’t so, her hold on me, on the little girl who used to lean against her pregnant tummy listening for sounds of the baby within, is as strong as any bond could be.
Jean once told me that it’s the therapist’s job to help people tell more optimistic stories about themselves. And she, Jean, has succeeded in doing just that in so many areas of my life. But I know that I resist talking to her about mom; I know how much work there is to do…too much.
It occurred to me the other day, as I was writing of the different people that I blamed for Claire’s death that I never really blamed mom. I think that’s because I reserved my anger towards her for my own stolen childhood: she had failed miserably at being my mother, she took me away from Sophie, she exposed me to a sense of evil at the farm that makes me shudder to this day. The wounded relationship between us was tattered enough in itself, it didn’t need guilt around Claire’s death to make it any more ugly.
But strange as it is to express it, I think that what I’ve resented the most in our relationship is that mom used herself to create me – as if knowing how damaged she was by her depression, she should have looked for more acceptable, more perfect genetic material to make me, her baby. After all, she would never have used sub-standard ingredients in her baking; am I not as important as a bran muffin, or a loaf of twelve-grain bread.
How ridiculous does this sound? Yet deep inside, I’ve always resented that she would pass on her defective gene pool to me. I’ve spent most of my adolescence and beyond, waiting for my own depression to take over. I’ve worked so hard to try and avoid this: I’ve always tried to stay in control, I never drank all through university, I seldom take drugs of any kind, even to the point of worrying about the steroid inhalers and the Ventolin that I took for my asthma. I’ve always wanted to maintain a clear mind so that I could be alert to the “signs”…when it would be my turn to face her depression.
My first year of teaching, I remember going back to work on Monday morning after the Christmas break feeling fine, if perhaps not as rested as I’d hoped to be after that first term from hell. I remember standing in the hallway watching as the kids filed into the library for the first class of the day. The bell rang; I looked into the room of agitated faces, and I had a total meltdown, not knowing what to do with all the energy that had been unleashed in them over the holidays.
I began to shake in a full-blown anxiety attack. I left the class alone and managed to make my way into the staff room where I collapsed into a gasping mass. I lied: I told the principal that I had a fever; it must be the flu. Someone, I think it was the secretary, drove me home and as I closed my apartment door behind me, I dropped to the floor and sobbed uncontrollably. I lay there crying into the old oriental rug, grimy with the dirt of previous tenants that I’d not been able to clean away. After the initial wave receded, I lifted myself and went to the bedroom where it started again. I cried for three days. I cried into towels and screamed into pillows. I’d stop long enough to wipe my face and blow my nose, then I’d start again. I had no real idea what I was crying about: nothing and everything, about life and hope and despair and fear. Mainly I cried from fear; I was anticipating that this episode signaled my entrance into mom’s world of insanity and unreliability.
Isn’t it strange that of all the things about being Sarah Burchill’s daughter that I could worry about, the one that was most ominous to me, the one that most terrified me in its consequences, even at this crisis point in my life, was that I would be irresponsible and unreliable just like her.
After three days, just like the flu, I remember waking up and feeling as if I wanted to get dressed and have something to eat. It took me another couple of days to get back to normal, but right from the bacon and eggs that I prepared for myself that morning, I knew that the worst was over. I also knew that I’d come through something very dark and powerful, but the important thing was that I’d come through it. That knowledge, however, didn’t keep me from anticipating the next time that I’d be cut down in the middle of the flow of life, and forced to empty myself in what felt like an infinite wash of tears.
I remember reading Timothy Findley’s book, Headhunter a few years ago and I was so taken by this line that I wrote it down: “I would never not be I,” she was thinking, ”But I would gladly, this night have been born some other I, not mad.” The poetry and longing of those words stunned me when I read them. They sum up the only wish that I’ve ever had for my mother, and what I would have wanted in a relationship with her. There were so many reasons why I loved her and admired her and wanted to be like the wonderful part of her. But always the madness, disguised as anger, sadness, insensitivity and selfishness would intrude upon our lives.
And so I must admit that the worst of mom’s legacy to me at this point in my life is the uncertainty. I trust myself enough now to believe that her demons probably won’t be part of my life. I believe as I approach my thirties and go beyond the usual age for mental illness to present itself, that I’ll be okay. But how can I ask Danny to commit to the uncertainty that would haunt our every thought of children, even if conception were possible? How could I live with myself, knowing that the emotional turmoil that could destroy any happiness that we would have as a family, had come from me? How can I accept that responsibility? How do I know if my longing for the wonderful family life that I see portrayed in the photos in Jean’s office is a selfish wish, or a selfless one in which I want to give of myself to Danny and our children?
I’m so afraid.
Copyright 2003
Mamma’s going to buy you a mockingbird. (trad.)
It’s so depressing these days, getting up early to write. Since the clocks have changed to daylight saving time we enjoy the longer evenings of sunsets that hold back until well after supper, but we pay for it at the other end of the day, getting up in the dark. It’s as if nature is laughing at all the progress we’ve made in the last few weeks at pushing back the night to an earlier and earlier sunrise. “Fooled ya,” says the morning to our sense of accomplishment. “You have to start back where you were six weeks ago when it was dull and drizzly and it felt as if there was hardly any light at all in the world.”
I woke this morning after a dream that has me so angry that I think I’m just venting against the burden of the morning’s darkness. It was just a snippet of the dream that bothers me, a sliver at the end of a story that I can’t even remember. Someone or something is holding me facedown, pushing against my back so I can’t get up from the ground on the edge of a pond where I lay. It’s trying to push my head under the water, trying to drown me. It occurs to me, as I struggle and fight to free myself, that this is a rather ineffective assassin: the pond of water in which it wants to drown me is several inches below the earth where I’m lying, so all that’s happening is I’m getting my hair and forehead wet. But it’s the oppressive weight, the pressure against my back that bothers me most, until I realize that mom is standing beside the figure that keeps me pinned down, and she looks down at my struggling figure, laughing at me with her over exuberant laugh, always too loud and too full of anticipation.
What a pathetic piece of work I am. I’ve not seen my mother in nearly twenty years, yet I allow her to invade my dreams and take up precious emotional energy in me that deserves a more worthy recipient. She’s of no consequence to me; it’s not as if I have to live with her or deal with her on a regular basis. What’s the point of going through all the pain only to remember how betrayed and lonely I’ve felt for most of my life – I don’t want to do it…
Yet since the retreat in February, I’ve known that no matter how much I try to deny it or wish it weren’t so, her hold on me, on the little girl who used to lean against her pregnant tummy listening for sounds of the baby within, is as strong as any bond could be.
Jean once told me that it’s the therapist’s job to help people tell more optimistic stories about themselves. And she, Jean, has succeeded in doing just that in so many areas of my life. But I know that I resist talking to her about mom; I know how much work there is to do…too much.
It occurred to me the other day, as I was writing of the different people that I blamed for Claire’s death that I never really blamed mom. I think that’s because I reserved my anger towards her for my own stolen childhood: she had failed miserably at being my mother, she took me away from Sophie, she exposed me to a sense of evil at the farm that makes me shudder to this day. The wounded relationship between us was tattered enough in itself, it didn’t need guilt around Claire’s death to make it any more ugly.
But strange as it is to express it, I think that what I’ve resented the most in our relationship is that mom used herself to create me – as if knowing how damaged she was by her depression, she should have looked for more acceptable, more perfect genetic material to make me, her baby. After all, she would never have used sub-standard ingredients in her baking; am I not as important as a bran muffin, or a loaf of twelve-grain bread.
How ridiculous does this sound? Yet deep inside, I’ve always resented that she would pass on her defective gene pool to me. I’ve spent most of my adolescence and beyond, waiting for my own depression to take over. I’ve worked so hard to try and avoid this: I’ve always tried to stay in control, I never drank all through university, I seldom take drugs of any kind, even to the point of worrying about the steroid inhalers and the Ventolin that I took for my asthma. I’ve always wanted to maintain a clear mind so that I could be alert to the “signs”…when it would be my turn to face her depression.
My first year of teaching, I remember going back to work on Monday morning after the Christmas break feeling fine, if perhaps not as rested as I’d hoped to be after that first term from hell. I remember standing in the hallway watching as the kids filed into the library for the first class of the day. The bell rang; I looked into the room of agitated faces, and I had a total meltdown, not knowing what to do with all the energy that had been unleashed in them over the holidays.
I began to shake in a full-blown anxiety attack. I left the class alone and managed to make my way into the staff room where I collapsed into a gasping mass. I lied: I told the principal that I had a fever; it must be the flu. Someone, I think it was the secretary, drove me home and as I closed my apartment door behind me, I dropped to the floor and sobbed uncontrollably. I lay there crying into the old oriental rug, grimy with the dirt of previous tenants that I’d not been able to clean away. After the initial wave receded, I lifted myself and went to the bedroom where it started again. I cried for three days. I cried into towels and screamed into pillows. I’d stop long enough to wipe my face and blow my nose, then I’d start again. I had no real idea what I was crying about: nothing and everything, about life and hope and despair and fear. Mainly I cried from fear; I was anticipating that this episode signaled my entrance into mom’s world of insanity and unreliability.
Isn’t it strange that of all the things about being Sarah Burchill’s daughter that I could worry about, the one that was most ominous to me, the one that most terrified me in its consequences, even at this crisis point in my life, was that I would be irresponsible and unreliable just like her.
After three days, just like the flu, I remember waking up and feeling as if I wanted to get dressed and have something to eat. It took me another couple of days to get back to normal, but right from the bacon and eggs that I prepared for myself that morning, I knew that the worst was over. I also knew that I’d come through something very dark and powerful, but the important thing was that I’d come through it. That knowledge, however, didn’t keep me from anticipating the next time that I’d be cut down in the middle of the flow of life, and forced to empty myself in what felt like an infinite wash of tears.
I remember reading Timothy Findley’s book, Headhunter a few years ago and I was so taken by this line that I wrote it down: “I would never not be I,” she was thinking, ”But I would gladly, this night have been born some other I, not mad.” The poetry and longing of those words stunned me when I read them. They sum up the only wish that I’ve ever had for my mother, and what I would have wanted in a relationship with her. There were so many reasons why I loved her and admired her and wanted to be like the wonderful part of her. But always the madness, disguised as anger, sadness, insensitivity and selfishness would intrude upon our lives.
And so I must admit that the worst of mom’s legacy to me at this point in my life is the uncertainty. I trust myself enough now to believe that her demons probably won’t be part of my life. I believe as I approach my thirties and go beyond the usual age for mental illness to present itself, that I’ll be okay. But how can I ask Danny to commit to the uncertainty that would haunt our every thought of children, even if conception were possible? How could I live with myself, knowing that the emotional turmoil that could destroy any happiness that we would have as a family, had come from me? How can I accept that responsibility? How do I know if my longing for the wonderful family life that I see portrayed in the photos in Jean’s office is a selfish wish, or a selfless one in which I want to give of myself to Danny and our children?
I’m so afraid.
Copyright 2003
15.4.08
JOURNAL, Thursday, April 4th
Gotta let go of the things
That keep you tethered
(“Mighty Trucks of Midnight” Bruce Cockburn)
I’m drawn to reread the last letter that I wrote to Jean over and over, as if I’m still looking for some detail that I’ve missed or I’m trying to fill in the pieces that Sophie might have been able to offer me; but I have no new insights, and I see nothing more than I did before.
If I put on my teacher’s persona, and listen with teacher’s ears to what’s revealed in the letter about how Claire lived inside Starla, how they listened to the poems, how they were bound and healed, I’d say that there was something particularly bizarre and significant in the student’s perception of self, yet as I said, I had nothing to compare it to.
For the first few years I fully lived this fantasy of Claire’s existence as part of me, and her liberation from the bondage which was her body. Yet if I was so convinced that she lived on in me, and that we were intimately bound in this way, I wonder why I had such a need to list the people that I blamed for her suffering and death.
I can trace my journey to maturity by tracking those I’ve accused.
First there was Jacob and his pack of Satan’s spawn. (I have met at least one “Jacob” every year since I’ve begun working with disturbed children: a child seemingly evil, who is consumed with resentment and strikes out in anger at anything weaker than himself. I find it ironic that the one person that I’ve met in my life who instilled real fear in me was only eight years old and furthermore, like some tragic myth, I’m condemned to be his helpmate, year after year, in each of his new incarnations.)
Next I blamed Ariel. As I made my way through puberty and into the arena of awareness about sexuality and relationships, I resented Ariel and her influence on mom. I saw her as the force that “turned my mother into a lesbian” - more specifically turned her into someone who preferred to live among those strange, dark women than to be with me. I wanted to believe that without Ariel, mom would have been back home baking muffins. It was Ariel’s sharp, angular edges that I most resented: the rock hard jaw line and cheek bones, the ramrod posture, her clipped way of moving and speaking represented to me a person calculating enough to plan and execute Claire’s removal from Sophie’s home, to bring her to the Family where her destruction was only a matter of time.
When I was sixteen and going through the rebellious stage of adolescence, I blamed Bill. Whenever events of importance were happening in my life, Bill was often away saving the world by lawyering or affidavit seeking or doing whatever else it is that Bill does. I blamed him for not recognizing and dealing with mom’s depression from the very beginning; if he could save the world, how come he couldn’t save us?
But I’ve come to realize that Bill, and mom, like so many others of their circle, relied on avoidance and denial as their strategy for life: “Only that which I acknowledge, exists.” Although I resented Bill’s lack of awareness, which I believed eventually led to Claire’s death, I mostly blamed him because he was convenient and because he was my dad, and you’re supposed to be angry with your parents at sixteen.
As I went on to university and began studying psychology and sociology, I even blamed society. I resented all of their social safety nets, so full of holes that they could allow a child to be taken from a loving, stable home in Scarborough and land her on a farm in the wilds of British Columbia with a houseful of lunatics who were unable to distinguish nurturing from neglect.
But when it came right down to it, any blame I lay at someone else’s feet was simply building a wall of illusion to distract me from the knowledge that I blamed myself. So with Claire coexisting inside me, I could give her the chance to live her life while I lived the caregiver’s role that has become so much a part of who I am when I’m at my best, when I’m with kids like Claire.
Should I be embarrassed or angry that I’ve spent all these years living a life that’s been motivated by a combination of atonement and guilt? Would I have been driven in the same way to do the work with kids that has been so rewarding for me and, I hope, has helped a few of them along the way? I don’t resent how I’ve lived my life and I don’t know, given the opportunity, that I’d want to have changed its direction.
When I left Saltspring with Carly, it wasn’t lost on me that what I was leaving behind was the very best and the worst that life had offered me so far. Reliving that time, difficult as it has been, has helped me to realize that all that was good and bad in that experience is part of who I am.
I would never have met Dorrie and John Ross if I hadn’t gone to Saltspring; and who would I be without them? The relationship that we have built over the years, as they would take me to tea when they were visiting their daughter in North Vancouver, and later as we sat for hours in the wonderful garden that Dorrie nurtured so beautifully at the nursing home in Kitsilano where John Ross went to live after his stroke, taught me so much about fidelity and love. It’s probably thanks to them that I’ve been able to build any kind of a relationship with Danny over these past eight years.
My relationship with them was as extreme in its positive gifts as my time with the Family was negative; I’m sure that much of my perception of both experiences is coloured by their proximity to each other. Was the farm really as tainted with evil as I remember it? Was the cottage such a perfect haven of beauty and peace? Neither image could last in the real world where time has a way of softening the roughest crags and tarnishing the most beautiful gardens.
“Suffering insists on being taken seriously.” This is one of Jean’s favourite lines to explain some of the weird things that happen to people when they’re in pain. Since I’ve been working with Jean, I’ve learned to let the suffering flow over me and not to be frightened by it. It’s still painful as it makes its way over broken skin, stinging and burning, but I’ve come to recognize its healing properties, which help to make it much less destructive than if it was flowing through me.
There is wisdom in knowing when to deal with pain. Much as I have wished that we had talked about what happened then, I probably would have resented the intrusion if I’d been forced, at that time, to acknowledge the cold, cruel reality that Claire and I had lived.
Perhaps life has given me a gift of such timing that I didn’t recognize until now. It allowed me to build a life that was firmly founded on my desperate need to be of service to the kids that I see suffering, yet it has recognized another need at this point in my life, the need to build relationship and a loving life with Danny. Life has given me a chance to examine, evaluate and discard some of the useless bits and pieces that I’ve been carrying around, leaving us – Danny and I – room to grow together.
Finally, writing about Claire has been like composing her eulogy, a tribute to her presence here on earth, and all that she meant to me. She never had a funeral. Her passing was never marked by ritual or a special place where we can go to visit her. No wonder she needed to live inside me; she had nowhere else to go.
I can still hear her giggle now and then.
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must all have perseverance and above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
-Marie Curie
Copyright 2003
That keep you tethered
(“Mighty Trucks of Midnight” Bruce Cockburn)
I’m drawn to reread the last letter that I wrote to Jean over and over, as if I’m still looking for some detail that I’ve missed or I’m trying to fill in the pieces that Sophie might have been able to offer me; but I have no new insights, and I see nothing more than I did before.
If I put on my teacher’s persona, and listen with teacher’s ears to what’s revealed in the letter about how Claire lived inside Starla, how they listened to the poems, how they were bound and healed, I’d say that there was something particularly bizarre and significant in the student’s perception of self, yet as I said, I had nothing to compare it to.
For the first few years I fully lived this fantasy of Claire’s existence as part of me, and her liberation from the bondage which was her body. Yet if I was so convinced that she lived on in me, and that we were intimately bound in this way, I wonder why I had such a need to list the people that I blamed for her suffering and death.
I can trace my journey to maturity by tracking those I’ve accused.
First there was Jacob and his pack of Satan’s spawn. (I have met at least one “Jacob” every year since I’ve begun working with disturbed children: a child seemingly evil, who is consumed with resentment and strikes out in anger at anything weaker than himself. I find it ironic that the one person that I’ve met in my life who instilled real fear in me was only eight years old and furthermore, like some tragic myth, I’m condemned to be his helpmate, year after year, in each of his new incarnations.)
Next I blamed Ariel. As I made my way through puberty and into the arena of awareness about sexuality and relationships, I resented Ariel and her influence on mom. I saw her as the force that “turned my mother into a lesbian” - more specifically turned her into someone who preferred to live among those strange, dark women than to be with me. I wanted to believe that without Ariel, mom would have been back home baking muffins. It was Ariel’s sharp, angular edges that I most resented: the rock hard jaw line and cheek bones, the ramrod posture, her clipped way of moving and speaking represented to me a person calculating enough to plan and execute Claire’s removal from Sophie’s home, to bring her to the Family where her destruction was only a matter of time.
When I was sixteen and going through the rebellious stage of adolescence, I blamed Bill. Whenever events of importance were happening in my life, Bill was often away saving the world by lawyering or affidavit seeking or doing whatever else it is that Bill does. I blamed him for not recognizing and dealing with mom’s depression from the very beginning; if he could save the world, how come he couldn’t save us?
But I’ve come to realize that Bill, and mom, like so many others of their circle, relied on avoidance and denial as their strategy for life: “Only that which I acknowledge, exists.” Although I resented Bill’s lack of awareness, which I believed eventually led to Claire’s death, I mostly blamed him because he was convenient and because he was my dad, and you’re supposed to be angry with your parents at sixteen.
As I went on to university and began studying psychology and sociology, I even blamed society. I resented all of their social safety nets, so full of holes that they could allow a child to be taken from a loving, stable home in Scarborough and land her on a farm in the wilds of British Columbia with a houseful of lunatics who were unable to distinguish nurturing from neglect.
But when it came right down to it, any blame I lay at someone else’s feet was simply building a wall of illusion to distract me from the knowledge that I blamed myself. So with Claire coexisting inside me, I could give her the chance to live her life while I lived the caregiver’s role that has become so much a part of who I am when I’m at my best, when I’m with kids like Claire.
Should I be embarrassed or angry that I’ve spent all these years living a life that’s been motivated by a combination of atonement and guilt? Would I have been driven in the same way to do the work with kids that has been so rewarding for me and, I hope, has helped a few of them along the way? I don’t resent how I’ve lived my life and I don’t know, given the opportunity, that I’d want to have changed its direction.
When I left Saltspring with Carly, it wasn’t lost on me that what I was leaving behind was the very best and the worst that life had offered me so far. Reliving that time, difficult as it has been, has helped me to realize that all that was good and bad in that experience is part of who I am.
I would never have met Dorrie and John Ross if I hadn’t gone to Saltspring; and who would I be without them? The relationship that we have built over the years, as they would take me to tea when they were visiting their daughter in North Vancouver, and later as we sat for hours in the wonderful garden that Dorrie nurtured so beautifully at the nursing home in Kitsilano where John Ross went to live after his stroke, taught me so much about fidelity and love. It’s probably thanks to them that I’ve been able to build any kind of a relationship with Danny over these past eight years.
My relationship with them was as extreme in its positive gifts as my time with the Family was negative; I’m sure that much of my perception of both experiences is coloured by their proximity to each other. Was the farm really as tainted with evil as I remember it? Was the cottage such a perfect haven of beauty and peace? Neither image could last in the real world where time has a way of softening the roughest crags and tarnishing the most beautiful gardens.
“Suffering insists on being taken seriously.” This is one of Jean’s favourite lines to explain some of the weird things that happen to people when they’re in pain. Since I’ve been working with Jean, I’ve learned to let the suffering flow over me and not to be frightened by it. It’s still painful as it makes its way over broken skin, stinging and burning, but I’ve come to recognize its healing properties, which help to make it much less destructive than if it was flowing through me.
There is wisdom in knowing when to deal with pain. Much as I have wished that we had talked about what happened then, I probably would have resented the intrusion if I’d been forced, at that time, to acknowledge the cold, cruel reality that Claire and I had lived.
Perhaps life has given me a gift of such timing that I didn’t recognize until now. It allowed me to build a life that was firmly founded on my desperate need to be of service to the kids that I see suffering, yet it has recognized another need at this point in my life, the need to build relationship and a loving life with Danny. Life has given me a chance to examine, evaluate and discard some of the useless bits and pieces that I’ve been carrying around, leaving us – Danny and I – room to grow together.
Finally, writing about Claire has been like composing her eulogy, a tribute to her presence here on earth, and all that she meant to me. She never had a funeral. Her passing was never marked by ritual or a special place where we can go to visit her. No wonder she needed to live inside me; she had nowhere else to go.
I can still hear her giggle now and then.
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must all have perseverance and above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
-Marie Curie
Copyright 2003
7.4.08
JOURNAL, Monday, April 1st
It’s hard to dance
With the devil on your back
(“Lord of the Dance,” trad.)
- Easter Monday, April Fools’ Day.
We got back from Sophie’s late last night and I’m still frustrated about our time there.
I brought a copy of the last letter that I wrote to Jean for Sophie to read. I wanted to speak to her of what happened. I’d finally found the courage to break the silence around Claire’s death and ask about some of the details – to try and see those days from an adult perspective, as the adult I am today, through the adult eyes that Sophie had then.
It was difficult to find the right time to bring up the subject. When I mentioned to Sophie that I wanted to talk to her sometime over the weekend of those times, she brushed it away saying that she didn’t remember much. All weekend she seemed agitated, like there wasn’t enough small talk to fill all the quiet moments that I might have taken to approach the subject with her. On Saturday afternoon Danny made plans to meet with an old friend in the city and I thought that this would be the time for Sophie and I to talk. I took Jean’s letter with me to the kitchen, the same kitchen where Sophie sat pulling the napkins apart as mom took us from her so long ago.
I told her that I’d been continuing with my writing, that the last letter I’d written dealt with the time right after Claire’s death until when she, Sophie, came to be with me later that summer. She stood up suddenly and started cleaning the lunch dishes from the table. I asked if she remembered those days and I told her how much her presence had meant to me then. She filled the sink with hot soapy water.
I said how I wished that we had been able to talk about what happened, among ourselves. She mumbled reassuring comments into the sink: “Yes, it was a difficult time,” “You were such a sensitive child,” “Bill was so upset,” – as she rinsed the dishes. I got up and took a tea towel to dry them but she shooed me away saying that I should just relax, that there was no need. I had the feeling that she wanted me to stand away from her.
I left the copy of the letter in a folder on the table, beside the stack of weekend newspapers. I told her that I’d be happy if she would read it sometime. It lay there undisturbed until we left on Sunday afternoon.
And the silence in my “family” lives on, reinforced by time and distance, powerful in its ability to keep us isolated from any healing that we might offer each other.
On the Friday afternoon, I went to a church in Sophie’s neighbourhood; a modern building with white stucco walls between dark wooden beams stretching like giant fingers to the high peaked roof. They read the story of Jesus’s last day as he appeared before the authorities who were to condemn him. And I was struck again by the evil power of silence, turning this gentle preacher and prophet into an almost willing accomplice to his own destruction.
I was so disturbed by the story, heard now in the fresh light of recent events and my examination of unnecessary deaths. Jesus was a profound teacher whose words have had the power to survive and come down to us through thousands of years. He was the child who held wise men and teachers enthralled with his arguments when he was twelve years old. Why would such a man remain silent in the face of his own demise? What could have been his intention? I wanted to slap him and yell: “Speak up! Speak up for yourself, but also for the weak, the lonely, the lost, the abused, for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
But the story never changes; he remains mute and submissive before the authorities and dies…for what purpose?
The main reason why I wanted to speak with Sophie about Claire’s death is that I’m at a point in the writing process where my curiosity and sense of self lead me to ask about certain missed details. It’s become a research question, a writer’s curiosity, wanting to fill in the blanks of what I may have missed in the narrative.
Yet there are other areas of my life that I prefer to leave in silence. Those darkest corners, the ones where my mother’s madness lurks, where her indifference and selfishness abide, I feel are better left undisturbed. Now that I’ve opened the door to my childhood and have worked so hard to clear out some of the garbage that I’ve been lugging around, I’m too exhausted to deal with that last trunk of destructive junk that sits in the attic of my psyche.
Every time I try to look at my feelings about her I can’t get past the list of hurtful things that she did to me. The academic in me wants to list what my mother did and put all these events into categories: insults, physical abuses, indifferences, pettiness, acts of omission, acts of pure evil.
And I can’t seem to get beyond rearranging them. I don’t know how to separate them from each other. I have a feeling that if I were to take out a single scene, to examine it in the process of doing away with it, it would latch on to all the other scenes and drag them all out of the memory trunk too, leaving me surrounded by an ocean of writhing bits of pain that would be impossible for me to deal with. I prefer to leave the trunk in its darkened corner, sealed and hidden.
In writing this, I understand that the frustration that I brought home from our visit with Sophie is probably tied to the anger that I have in realizing that despite all the emotional excavation that I’ve done over the past few months, despite all the things that I’ve acknowledged and accepted about me and my life, that these things are not quite enough.
But damn it, it’s going to have to be enough because I’m too tired to go on digging. I have no more energy to deal with someone who means nothing to my present life. I’m going to leave my mother and all she has meant to me locked far away, in that emotional trunk and someday, maybe, I’ll take her down to the curb to be put out with the rest of the garbage.
(“Lord of the Dance,” trad.)
- Easter Monday, April Fools’ Day.
We got back from Sophie’s late last night and I’m still frustrated about our time there.
I brought a copy of the last letter that I wrote to Jean for Sophie to read. I wanted to speak to her of what happened. I’d finally found the courage to break the silence around Claire’s death and ask about some of the details – to try and see those days from an adult perspective, as the adult I am today, through the adult eyes that Sophie had then.
It was difficult to find the right time to bring up the subject. When I mentioned to Sophie that I wanted to talk to her sometime over the weekend of those times, she brushed it away saying that she didn’t remember much. All weekend she seemed agitated, like there wasn’t enough small talk to fill all the quiet moments that I might have taken to approach the subject with her. On Saturday afternoon Danny made plans to meet with an old friend in the city and I thought that this would be the time for Sophie and I to talk. I took Jean’s letter with me to the kitchen, the same kitchen where Sophie sat pulling the napkins apart as mom took us from her so long ago.
I told her that I’d been continuing with my writing, that the last letter I’d written dealt with the time right after Claire’s death until when she, Sophie, came to be with me later that summer. She stood up suddenly and started cleaning the lunch dishes from the table. I asked if she remembered those days and I told her how much her presence had meant to me then. She filled the sink with hot soapy water.
I said how I wished that we had been able to talk about what happened, among ourselves. She mumbled reassuring comments into the sink: “Yes, it was a difficult time,” “You were such a sensitive child,” “Bill was so upset,” – as she rinsed the dishes. I got up and took a tea towel to dry them but she shooed me away saying that I should just relax, that there was no need. I had the feeling that she wanted me to stand away from her.
I left the copy of the letter in a folder on the table, beside the stack of weekend newspapers. I told her that I’d be happy if she would read it sometime. It lay there undisturbed until we left on Sunday afternoon.
And the silence in my “family” lives on, reinforced by time and distance, powerful in its ability to keep us isolated from any healing that we might offer each other.
On the Friday afternoon, I went to a church in Sophie’s neighbourhood; a modern building with white stucco walls between dark wooden beams stretching like giant fingers to the high peaked roof. They read the story of Jesus’s last day as he appeared before the authorities who were to condemn him. And I was struck again by the evil power of silence, turning this gentle preacher and prophet into an almost willing accomplice to his own destruction.
I was so disturbed by the story, heard now in the fresh light of recent events and my examination of unnecessary deaths. Jesus was a profound teacher whose words have had the power to survive and come down to us through thousands of years. He was the child who held wise men and teachers enthralled with his arguments when he was twelve years old. Why would such a man remain silent in the face of his own demise? What could have been his intention? I wanted to slap him and yell: “Speak up! Speak up for yourself, but also for the weak, the lonely, the lost, the abused, for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
But the story never changes; he remains mute and submissive before the authorities and dies…for what purpose?
The main reason why I wanted to speak with Sophie about Claire’s death is that I’m at a point in the writing process where my curiosity and sense of self lead me to ask about certain missed details. It’s become a research question, a writer’s curiosity, wanting to fill in the blanks of what I may have missed in the narrative.
Yet there are other areas of my life that I prefer to leave in silence. Those darkest corners, the ones where my mother’s madness lurks, where her indifference and selfishness abide, I feel are better left undisturbed. Now that I’ve opened the door to my childhood and have worked so hard to clear out some of the garbage that I’ve been lugging around, I’m too exhausted to deal with that last trunk of destructive junk that sits in the attic of my psyche.
Every time I try to look at my feelings about her I can’t get past the list of hurtful things that she did to me. The academic in me wants to list what my mother did and put all these events into categories: insults, physical abuses, indifferences, pettiness, acts of omission, acts of pure evil.
And I can’t seem to get beyond rearranging them. I don’t know how to separate them from each other. I have a feeling that if I were to take out a single scene, to examine it in the process of doing away with it, it would latch on to all the other scenes and drag them all out of the memory trunk too, leaving me surrounded by an ocean of writhing bits of pain that would be impossible for me to deal with. I prefer to leave the trunk in its darkened corner, sealed and hidden.
In writing this, I understand that the frustration that I brought home from our visit with Sophie is probably tied to the anger that I have in realizing that despite all the emotional excavation that I’ve done over the past few months, despite all the things that I’ve acknowledged and accepted about me and my life, that these things are not quite enough.
But damn it, it’s going to have to be enough because I’m too tired to go on digging. I have no more energy to deal with someone who means nothing to my present life. I’m going to leave my mother and all she has meant to me locked far away, in that emotional trunk and someday, maybe, I’ll take her down to the curb to be put out with the rest of the garbage.
Copyright 2003
2.4.08
Dear Jean;
Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.
(“Big Yellow Taxi”, Joni Mitchell)
Before I started writing these letters about my life, if anyone had asked me what the most pivotal experience of my childhood had been, I would probably have said that it was when we left Scarborough to come back out West. I wouldn’t have said that my mother had abducted us, or that we had been taken from a loving, stable home to a world of danger and uncertainty. I would have looked at it simply: once we were there, then we came here…I never wanted to acknowledge that crisis played a part in my life. I wanted to believe that my existence was even, predictable.
But I realize now what I couldn’t admit for so long: that it was the crisis of Claire’s death that has most coloured how I saw myself, and the world. I’m sure that this fact would have been apparent to any sensible observer but for many reasons, most of them having to do with pain and guilt, I didn't see it.
When I left the farm on the night of Claire’s death I was not quite twelve-years old, yet I remember feeling a power within that made me unstoppable. Certainty abides in the soul of those who can focus on something as precise and concrete as putting one foot before the other. They see nothing but the road before them and in that cloistered assurance, they don’t recognize the necessity for anything as intrusive as a plan. I walked without hesitation or anxiety along the road, focusing on the light coming from John Ross’s workshop. I remember thinking of the star of metallic paper and cardboard that I had made for the Christmas mural at my school in Scarborough, and the wise men that followed a star to someone or something that might offer peace.
I remember individual scenes of what happened during the next few days; they’re clear and identifiable memories, but disconnected from each other by the minutes and hours of emptiness that were stretched out between them.
. . . In the darkness of night I lifted the latch on the gate from the road to the path that led to their front porch. I walked up the steps to the wicker settee that Dorrie usually occupied when we had our tea and lemonade in the afternoon. The crickets were pulsing and a few birds called in the still, dark morning. I curled my feet up under me on the settee and tucked Claire's blanket around my shoulders and legs. I lay my head on the pillow of the armrest, and slept.
. . . Through the fog of my sleep, in the grey stillness of the early dawn, I heard the side door open then close. Soon after I felt Toby’s soft hair under my hand as he nuzzled me to scratch him behind the ears. He laid his head on the padded cushion beside me and I think we slept like this for some time.
. . . The sun was bright and warm on my face, though filtered through the leaves of the trees. I heard Dorrie calling Toby but he didn’t move; neither did I. I wouldn’t have known what to say so I lay there until Dorrie came around to the front of the house looking for Toby. She gave a small cry when she saw me, as you would when coming upon an animal that’s injured and can’t move to scurry for cover. “Oh, my Dear. Oh, Starla!” she said, making her way up the stairs. She opened the front door on the way past and called in to John Ross to come quickly. She came to me and knelt, looking into my face as I lay with my head on the armrest; she had such worry and compassion in her eyes that it startled me. She brushed my hair back with her fingertips and said my name in the gentlest of tones. John Ross came onto the porch and I sat up, keeping the blanket close around my shoulders.
“Starla, what has happened?” Dorrie asked, taking my hand in hers and holding it as one would hold an injured bird.
I hadn’t put any thought into how I would explain my presence on their porch. I had assumed that somehow everything would be obvious, and that I wouldn’t have to say the words. But it wasn’t obvious and I did have to say them, so I spoke in the most measured and rational voice that I could find: “My sister is dead. Could you please call my father to come and get me?” I remember these words so clearly, the simplicity and rawness of their delivery has been echoed back to me so many times in the work that I do: sometimes children are so weary of living the story that is their life, they have no energy left for anything but the raw and unadorned truth.
To their credit, Dorrie and John Ross didn’t cry out or respond explosively in any way. They just sat there looking at me for some time then Dorrie asked: “Could you tell us what happened, Dear?”
I liked her way of calling me Dear. It was always said without affectation or condescension and, unlike with some people, it wasn’t used to cover up the fact that the speaker has forgotten your name. With Dorrie it was a habit, she called everyone Dear, but I liked that it made me feel cherished.
I began by telling them about the search in the woods and finished by saying: “They told me that my sister drowned in the creek. My mother’s not a strong person, I can’t stay there anymore.” Dorrie motioned to John Ross to get the afghan from the couch inside. She draped it over me, tucking it in around me with great care. I lay my head down and closed my eyes, clutching the blankets around me for warmth and protection, though I imagine that Dorrie’s intention was more to guard from shock than cold. Now and then I would open my eyes and watch the bees and the hummingbirds moving at their frenetic pace. I was reassured by such movement, it told me that the whole world had not stopped turning, and that I could just lay where I was and let it spin on without me.
. . . I sensed Dorrie’s footsteps coming across the porch; I opened my eyes. The sun had displaced the shade where I lay and I was hot under the blankets. I could hear the haunting sounds of a piano coming through the window from the stereo – I didn’t know the simple, mystical piano music of Eric Satie then, but it stayed with me for many years as Claire’s theme and always makes me think of her.
Dorrie came over to the settee. Raising myself, I made a space where she could sit beside me. I noticed that she was wearing her straw hat and was warm and moist from sun and exertion.
“Starla, I’ve been to see your mother’s friends,” she said. I was ashamed that Dorrie had been exposed to the Family. I had wanted to protect her and John Ross from any contact with that other side of my life. “I’ve told them that you are here and that you’ve asked that we call your father to come and get you.” I could hear a hummingbird by the rose trellis in front of the porch. “They said that they thought that would be a good idea.”
She paused for a long time before she went on to say that she hadn’t seen my mother. I never knew if they told her what happened to Claire or what was wrong with my mother that she couldn’t meet with her. I can only guess that no matter what the details, it was Dorrie’s judgment that I’d be better off away from the farm. As no one seemed to object to Bill coming for me, I guess she decided that was the most sensible course to follow.
We went into the house and I stretched out on the couch without being invited; it was a lying down kind of day, as if everything that was happening was within the context of a dream. John Ross brought me a glass of cold orange juice and I remember thinking as it trickled down my throat, that its rich taste was misplaced; it was like swatch of colour in my colourless world. I felt no pain, sadness, anger nor fear; I was an empty being lying in an empty world.
I couldn’t remember our phone number in Vancouver but I gave John Ross our address and Bill’s name and he went off to use the bedroom phone. When he returned, he took up his station in one of the big sitting room chairs. Seldom in my life have I had such an experience of being so unaware and uninterested in the passage of time. I remember, as if through a fever, Dorrie sitting in her chair beside the couch, her fingers gently brushing through my hair; I remember John Ross whose large body was usually in perpetual motion, watching mindless television, waiting for life to unfold.
. . . Sometime between the soaps and cartoons on T.V., Dorrie brought the familiar tray of cookies, fruit, tea and lemonade. She must have been trying to coax me to have some food by triggering the memories of happy afternoons together. I was relieved to sit up and shake off some of the layers of the emotional weight that I’d been wrapped in all day. Dorrie asked how I was feeling. I answered with sincere gratefulness: “Thank you for helping me.” Dorrie’s hand flew to her lips to hold back a cry. She put down her delicate teacup, the one with the sweetheart roses and the lily of the valley painted on it. She lowered her head and came over to sit beside me on the couch. Her arms scooped around my shoulders and she brought me to her, saying over and over as she rocked me back and forth: “Oh, my Dear. Oh, my Dear.”
. . . I felt the evening move in with the change of how the light filtered through the lace curtains on the windows and how the game shows took over from the news on T.V. Distantly, I heard a car pull up in front of the house without registering its meaning; I remember feeling that my brain was too heavy to think. John Ross went to the door and when I looked up, I was confused, knowing that this person who had come in was familiar to me, yet as I saw Carly standing in the doorway, I didn’t recognize her as the friend who had come to rescue me from the hospital when Claire was so sick, and with whom I’d spent many wonderful hours in mom’s kitchen at the collective. I didn’t move. John Ross introduced himself to her; Dorrie went over and clasped her hands in a double handshake. “You are most welcome here, my Dear,” she said. I still didn’t move and continued to stare at the television screen, but as recognition worked its way through the layers of lethargy and shock, I was glad that Carly had come and that she was sitting beside me now on the couch.
I wanted to move, truly I did, but something held me there, immobile, focused on on the T.V.
My body was frozen but my mind was racing. I was replaying the scene of Carly’s arrival over and over, each time recognizing her immediately and changing my reaction to her presence. I could see myself running out of the house and into her arms as she got out of the car, throwing myself into her pool of comfort. Then I replayed the scene, watching myself getting up in surprise as I see her through the window, going over to the door but waiting for her to come into the house before offering her a warm handshake, as Dorrie did. Another time, I could see myself wrapping my arm around her shoulder (we looked to be nearly the same height now) and quietly telling Carly that Claire was gone, and comforting her as the news sank in. Each of these scenes, I could replay in my mind but all I could do in reality was sit on Dorrie’s couch and look at the T.V. screen, clutching the small yellow blanket around my shoulders.
Then from somewhere on the evening breeze came a memory of Oreos and their crunchy sweetness that we had shared, and of Carly who took care of me before when I was alone. I turned my head and looked at her; I asked if she could take me home to see Bill. “Of course,” she said, her voice gentle and unhurried as she took my hand in hers.
. . . We spent the night in Dorrie and John Ross’s guest room.
You hear of people who wake the morning after a shocking experience and have forgotten that their world has been changed forever. On waking, when they realize where they are and what has happened, it’s like reliving the trauma in a telescoped time sequence that leaves them even more vulnerable for having suffered the experience all over again. That’s what happened to me. When I woke early the next morning, at first I was pleased to be surrounded by the lovely morning scent of the garden coming in through the window and the feeling of soft cotton against my cheek; then the look of my new world slowly took shape and I lay frozen in the fear that comes with shadows in a strange room and the realization that life can never be trusted again.
And as those who have lost too much will do, I began to worry about losing the tattered bits of my life that were left to me. Laying in the bed beside Carly, staring at the flowers on the wallpaper across the bedroom, I had waking dreams of flying witches pulling me away from Bill and lashing me to clawing trees like those in the Wizard of Oz. I jumped up from the bed and went to the window, gasping for air and willing myself to connect with the reality that was Dorrie’s house, her garden, the grass, and the fields, all in their hazy, pre dawn beauty. I was just catching my breath when the light in the sky came up enough for me to see in the distance the trees from the farm where mom was. In the haze I could see her witch’s face on every tree that surrounded me, reaching out to grasp and hold me and keep me from ever seeing Bill again.
I came back and sat down on the floor beside the bed. I buried my face in the warm cotton of the pillow that I had been laying and began to cry, quietly at first, then as I began to rock myself back and forth against the side of the bed a momentum built up that shook me all over. I closed my eyes to shut out the world, but every time I did the witch faces would come back to me. I kept my eyes open, now wild with panic and I held the pillow over my mouth, shaking in terror. I held onto the pillow as if it were Bill and sobbed into it, redirecting the pain back inside me from where it had come, moist, acknowledged but not diminished. Carly came to me and held me. I remember that she didn’t shush or console me, she didn’t say that it would get better; she just held me as I rocked myself through the sobs and into the daylight, with all my pain and my tears and my visions of witches, where I would learn to live with them.
. . . When it came time to say goodbye, Dorrie had packed us some cookies and juice for the ferry ride from Nanaimo. She handed the bag to Carly and gave me the copy of The Diary of Anne Frank that I’d been reading. She insisted that I keep it, even though it was a book that she had brought from the library; she said that she wanted me to have something with which to remember our afternoons together, and that she would replace the library’s copy. I thanked her and hugged her, holding the book between us.
John Ross kissed me on the top of my head as I wrapped my arms around his waist. His left hand came around and presented me with one of his framed photos of their cottage. He told me to keep in mind how much happiness that there is in life and that such cottages can pop up around any corner. I wrapped their gifts in the yellow blanket and followed Carly to the car. We waved as we backed out of the lane and turned down the road.
. . . On the ferry to Vancouver I stood for a few minutes on the deck, but the breeze was too strong and the sun too brilliant for what my body could tolerate. We went back inside and sat at one of the cafeteria tables where I lay my head on my arms and looked at the pattern of gold speckles on the Formica under my nose. Carly explained that she had received the call from John Ross because she had been staying at Bill’s place while he was in Clayoquot on the other side of Vancouver Island, working with the forest protesters there. She had left a message for him in Tofino and one with the organizers at the head office in the Vancouver, but she wasn’t sure if it had reached him yet. She promised the she would find him.
. . . When we arrived at the apartment, she gave me one of Bill’s t-shirts to wear. I wrapped his scent around me and waited for her to tell me what to do. She made us some popcorn and we sat on the porch curled up side by side, watching the city live its life, like spectators at a show that was only mildly interesting. I didn’t want anything to touch me.
Bill did get the message but didn’t make it to Vancouver for a few days. He had flown to Nanaimo first, where he got a car and drove to Saltspring to find mom. He spent a few days dealing with investigations, reports and arrangements. I assume that Claire is buried somewhere on Saltspring, or perhaps she was cremated. I never knew. We never spoke of what happened.
. . . I remember that I was watching Scooby-Doo on T.V. when Bill walked in. He didn’t wait to gauge my mood or my reactions as others had done during that week. He just put down his bags at the open doorway and fell to his knees. He opened his arms to me and knelt there, like pictures of Jesus in the garden, tears streaming down his cheeks. I ran to him and he wrapped both arms around me, burying his face in my neck as I lay my head against his and we cried together, never saying a word. I held my Dad for a long time; he never spoke Claire’s name.
. . . Sophie arrived a few days later. She had brought the copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses with her, the one that I used to read to Claire. Sometimes she would turn down the T.V. (I never wanted her to turn it off) and she would read to me. If I didn’t say anything about it that would upset her or make her think that I was being weird, I could believe that she was reading to both Claire and me.
For the next few weeks, she read to us for hours each day, the same poems over and over. And with the comfort of their familiar cadences, she lay a foundation on which I was able to cautiously rebuild a sense of ability and timid confidence:
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.
(“Big Yellow Taxi”, Joni Mitchell)
Before I started writing these letters about my life, if anyone had asked me what the most pivotal experience of my childhood had been, I would probably have said that it was when we left Scarborough to come back out West. I wouldn’t have said that my mother had abducted us, or that we had been taken from a loving, stable home to a world of danger and uncertainty. I would have looked at it simply: once we were there, then we came here…I never wanted to acknowledge that crisis played a part in my life. I wanted to believe that my existence was even, predictable.
But I realize now what I couldn’t admit for so long: that it was the crisis of Claire’s death that has most coloured how I saw myself, and the world. I’m sure that this fact would have been apparent to any sensible observer but for many reasons, most of them having to do with pain and guilt, I didn't see it.
When I left the farm on the night of Claire’s death I was not quite twelve-years old, yet I remember feeling a power within that made me unstoppable. Certainty abides in the soul of those who can focus on something as precise and concrete as putting one foot before the other. They see nothing but the road before them and in that cloistered assurance, they don’t recognize the necessity for anything as intrusive as a plan. I walked without hesitation or anxiety along the road, focusing on the light coming from John Ross’s workshop. I remember thinking of the star of metallic paper and cardboard that I had made for the Christmas mural at my school in Scarborough, and the wise men that followed a star to someone or something that might offer peace.
I remember individual scenes of what happened during the next few days; they’re clear and identifiable memories, but disconnected from each other by the minutes and hours of emptiness that were stretched out between them.
. . . In the darkness of night I lifted the latch on the gate from the road to the path that led to their front porch. I walked up the steps to the wicker settee that Dorrie usually occupied when we had our tea and lemonade in the afternoon. The crickets were pulsing and a few birds called in the still, dark morning. I curled my feet up under me on the settee and tucked Claire's blanket around my shoulders and legs. I lay my head on the pillow of the armrest, and slept.
. . . Through the fog of my sleep, in the grey stillness of the early dawn, I heard the side door open then close. Soon after I felt Toby’s soft hair under my hand as he nuzzled me to scratch him behind the ears. He laid his head on the padded cushion beside me and I think we slept like this for some time.
. . . The sun was bright and warm on my face, though filtered through the leaves of the trees. I heard Dorrie calling Toby but he didn’t move; neither did I. I wouldn’t have known what to say so I lay there until Dorrie came around to the front of the house looking for Toby. She gave a small cry when she saw me, as you would when coming upon an animal that’s injured and can’t move to scurry for cover. “Oh, my Dear. Oh, Starla!” she said, making her way up the stairs. She opened the front door on the way past and called in to John Ross to come quickly. She came to me and knelt, looking into my face as I lay with my head on the armrest; she had such worry and compassion in her eyes that it startled me. She brushed my hair back with her fingertips and said my name in the gentlest of tones. John Ross came onto the porch and I sat up, keeping the blanket close around my shoulders.
“Starla, what has happened?” Dorrie asked, taking my hand in hers and holding it as one would hold an injured bird.
I hadn’t put any thought into how I would explain my presence on their porch. I had assumed that somehow everything would be obvious, and that I wouldn’t have to say the words. But it wasn’t obvious and I did have to say them, so I spoke in the most measured and rational voice that I could find: “My sister is dead. Could you please call my father to come and get me?” I remember these words so clearly, the simplicity and rawness of their delivery has been echoed back to me so many times in the work that I do: sometimes children are so weary of living the story that is their life, they have no energy left for anything but the raw and unadorned truth.
To their credit, Dorrie and John Ross didn’t cry out or respond explosively in any way. They just sat there looking at me for some time then Dorrie asked: “Could you tell us what happened, Dear?”
I liked her way of calling me Dear. It was always said without affectation or condescension and, unlike with some people, it wasn’t used to cover up the fact that the speaker has forgotten your name. With Dorrie it was a habit, she called everyone Dear, but I liked that it made me feel cherished.
I began by telling them about the search in the woods and finished by saying: “They told me that my sister drowned in the creek. My mother’s not a strong person, I can’t stay there anymore.” Dorrie motioned to John Ross to get the afghan from the couch inside. She draped it over me, tucking it in around me with great care. I lay my head down and closed my eyes, clutching the blankets around me for warmth and protection, though I imagine that Dorrie’s intention was more to guard from shock than cold. Now and then I would open my eyes and watch the bees and the hummingbirds moving at their frenetic pace. I was reassured by such movement, it told me that the whole world had not stopped turning, and that I could just lay where I was and let it spin on without me.
. . . I sensed Dorrie’s footsteps coming across the porch; I opened my eyes. The sun had displaced the shade where I lay and I was hot under the blankets. I could hear the haunting sounds of a piano coming through the window from the stereo – I didn’t know the simple, mystical piano music of Eric Satie then, but it stayed with me for many years as Claire’s theme and always makes me think of her.
Dorrie came over to the settee. Raising myself, I made a space where she could sit beside me. I noticed that she was wearing her straw hat and was warm and moist from sun and exertion.
“Starla, I’ve been to see your mother’s friends,” she said. I was ashamed that Dorrie had been exposed to the Family. I had wanted to protect her and John Ross from any contact with that other side of my life. “I’ve told them that you are here and that you’ve asked that we call your father to come and get you.” I could hear a hummingbird by the rose trellis in front of the porch. “They said that they thought that would be a good idea.”
She paused for a long time before she went on to say that she hadn’t seen my mother. I never knew if they told her what happened to Claire or what was wrong with my mother that she couldn’t meet with her. I can only guess that no matter what the details, it was Dorrie’s judgment that I’d be better off away from the farm. As no one seemed to object to Bill coming for me, I guess she decided that was the most sensible course to follow.
We went into the house and I stretched out on the couch without being invited; it was a lying down kind of day, as if everything that was happening was within the context of a dream. John Ross brought me a glass of cold orange juice and I remember thinking as it trickled down my throat, that its rich taste was misplaced; it was like swatch of colour in my colourless world. I felt no pain, sadness, anger nor fear; I was an empty being lying in an empty world.
I couldn’t remember our phone number in Vancouver but I gave John Ross our address and Bill’s name and he went off to use the bedroom phone. When he returned, he took up his station in one of the big sitting room chairs. Seldom in my life have I had such an experience of being so unaware and uninterested in the passage of time. I remember, as if through a fever, Dorrie sitting in her chair beside the couch, her fingers gently brushing through my hair; I remember John Ross whose large body was usually in perpetual motion, watching mindless television, waiting for life to unfold.
. . . Sometime between the soaps and cartoons on T.V., Dorrie brought the familiar tray of cookies, fruit, tea and lemonade. She must have been trying to coax me to have some food by triggering the memories of happy afternoons together. I was relieved to sit up and shake off some of the layers of the emotional weight that I’d been wrapped in all day. Dorrie asked how I was feeling. I answered with sincere gratefulness: “Thank you for helping me.” Dorrie’s hand flew to her lips to hold back a cry. She put down her delicate teacup, the one with the sweetheart roses and the lily of the valley painted on it. She lowered her head and came over to sit beside me on the couch. Her arms scooped around my shoulders and she brought me to her, saying over and over as she rocked me back and forth: “Oh, my Dear. Oh, my Dear.”
. . . I felt the evening move in with the change of how the light filtered through the lace curtains on the windows and how the game shows took over from the news on T.V. Distantly, I heard a car pull up in front of the house without registering its meaning; I remember feeling that my brain was too heavy to think. John Ross went to the door and when I looked up, I was confused, knowing that this person who had come in was familiar to me, yet as I saw Carly standing in the doorway, I didn’t recognize her as the friend who had come to rescue me from the hospital when Claire was so sick, and with whom I’d spent many wonderful hours in mom’s kitchen at the collective. I didn’t move. John Ross introduced himself to her; Dorrie went over and clasped her hands in a double handshake. “You are most welcome here, my Dear,” she said. I still didn’t move and continued to stare at the television screen, but as recognition worked its way through the layers of lethargy and shock, I was glad that Carly had come and that she was sitting beside me now on the couch.
I wanted to move, truly I did, but something held me there, immobile, focused on on the T.V.
My body was frozen but my mind was racing. I was replaying the scene of Carly’s arrival over and over, each time recognizing her immediately and changing my reaction to her presence. I could see myself running out of the house and into her arms as she got out of the car, throwing myself into her pool of comfort. Then I replayed the scene, watching myself getting up in surprise as I see her through the window, going over to the door but waiting for her to come into the house before offering her a warm handshake, as Dorrie did. Another time, I could see myself wrapping my arm around her shoulder (we looked to be nearly the same height now) and quietly telling Carly that Claire was gone, and comforting her as the news sank in. Each of these scenes, I could replay in my mind but all I could do in reality was sit on Dorrie’s couch and look at the T.V. screen, clutching the small yellow blanket around my shoulders.
Then from somewhere on the evening breeze came a memory of Oreos and their crunchy sweetness that we had shared, and of Carly who took care of me before when I was alone. I turned my head and looked at her; I asked if she could take me home to see Bill. “Of course,” she said, her voice gentle and unhurried as she took my hand in hers.
. . . We spent the night in Dorrie and John Ross’s guest room.
You hear of people who wake the morning after a shocking experience and have forgotten that their world has been changed forever. On waking, when they realize where they are and what has happened, it’s like reliving the trauma in a telescoped time sequence that leaves them even more vulnerable for having suffered the experience all over again. That’s what happened to me. When I woke early the next morning, at first I was pleased to be surrounded by the lovely morning scent of the garden coming in through the window and the feeling of soft cotton against my cheek; then the look of my new world slowly took shape and I lay frozen in the fear that comes with shadows in a strange room and the realization that life can never be trusted again.
And as those who have lost too much will do, I began to worry about losing the tattered bits of my life that were left to me. Laying in the bed beside Carly, staring at the flowers on the wallpaper across the bedroom, I had waking dreams of flying witches pulling me away from Bill and lashing me to clawing trees like those in the Wizard of Oz. I jumped up from the bed and went to the window, gasping for air and willing myself to connect with the reality that was Dorrie’s house, her garden, the grass, and the fields, all in their hazy, pre dawn beauty. I was just catching my breath when the light in the sky came up enough for me to see in the distance the trees from the farm where mom was. In the haze I could see her witch’s face on every tree that surrounded me, reaching out to grasp and hold me and keep me from ever seeing Bill again.
I came back and sat down on the floor beside the bed. I buried my face in the warm cotton of the pillow that I had been laying and began to cry, quietly at first, then as I began to rock myself back and forth against the side of the bed a momentum built up that shook me all over. I closed my eyes to shut out the world, but every time I did the witch faces would come back to me. I kept my eyes open, now wild with panic and I held the pillow over my mouth, shaking in terror. I held onto the pillow as if it were Bill and sobbed into it, redirecting the pain back inside me from where it had come, moist, acknowledged but not diminished. Carly came to me and held me. I remember that she didn’t shush or console me, she didn’t say that it would get better; she just held me as I rocked myself through the sobs and into the daylight, with all my pain and my tears and my visions of witches, where I would learn to live with them.
. . . When it came time to say goodbye, Dorrie had packed us some cookies and juice for the ferry ride from Nanaimo. She handed the bag to Carly and gave me the copy of The Diary of Anne Frank that I’d been reading. She insisted that I keep it, even though it was a book that she had brought from the library; she said that she wanted me to have something with which to remember our afternoons together, and that she would replace the library’s copy. I thanked her and hugged her, holding the book between us.
John Ross kissed me on the top of my head as I wrapped my arms around his waist. His left hand came around and presented me with one of his framed photos of their cottage. He told me to keep in mind how much happiness that there is in life and that such cottages can pop up around any corner. I wrapped their gifts in the yellow blanket and followed Carly to the car. We waved as we backed out of the lane and turned down the road.
. . . On the ferry to Vancouver I stood for a few minutes on the deck, but the breeze was too strong and the sun too brilliant for what my body could tolerate. We went back inside and sat at one of the cafeteria tables where I lay my head on my arms and looked at the pattern of gold speckles on the Formica under my nose. Carly explained that she had received the call from John Ross because she had been staying at Bill’s place while he was in Clayoquot on the other side of Vancouver Island, working with the forest protesters there. She had left a message for him in Tofino and one with the organizers at the head office in the Vancouver, but she wasn’t sure if it had reached him yet. She promised the she would find him.
. . . When we arrived at the apartment, she gave me one of Bill’s t-shirts to wear. I wrapped his scent around me and waited for her to tell me what to do. She made us some popcorn and we sat on the porch curled up side by side, watching the city live its life, like spectators at a show that was only mildly interesting. I didn’t want anything to touch me.
Bill did get the message but didn’t make it to Vancouver for a few days. He had flown to Nanaimo first, where he got a car and drove to Saltspring to find mom. He spent a few days dealing with investigations, reports and arrangements. I assume that Claire is buried somewhere on Saltspring, or perhaps she was cremated. I never knew. We never spoke of what happened.
. . . I remember that I was watching Scooby-Doo on T.V. when Bill walked in. He didn’t wait to gauge my mood or my reactions as others had done during that week. He just put down his bags at the open doorway and fell to his knees. He opened his arms to me and knelt there, like pictures of Jesus in the garden, tears streaming down his cheeks. I ran to him and he wrapped both arms around me, burying his face in my neck as I lay my head against his and we cried together, never saying a word. I held my Dad for a long time; he never spoke Claire’s name.
. . . Sophie arrived a few days later. She had brought the copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses with her, the one that I used to read to Claire. Sometimes she would turn down the T.V. (I never wanted her to turn it off) and she would read to me. If I didn’t say anything about it that would upset her or make her think that I was being weird, I could believe that she was reading to both Claire and me.
For the next few weeks, she read to us for hours each day, the same poems over and over. And with the comfort of their familiar cadences, she lay a foundation on which I was able to cautiously rebuild a sense of ability and timid confidence:
“I called a little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me
For I am very small.
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.”
We slowly reclaimed some sense of direction and came to believe that there were things that we could do, Claire and I; but it was only as “we” that I could face my life.
We slowly reclaimed some sense of direction and came to believe that there were things that we could do, Claire and I; but it was only as “we” that I could face my life.
“We built a ship upon the stairs
All made of the back bedroom chairs,
And filled it full of sofa pillows
To go a-sailing on the billows.”
I remember very little of the rest of that summer. I didn’t speak much and they never pushed me. I suppose that if it were today, I’d have been into counseling, and art or play therapy and survivor groups, but silence was no stranger to our “family”. And I did come back, gradually, to a place that most would call normal; I had nothing to compare it to.
I have a sense that if I had faced some of my confusion and anger at that time, I might have had a different life, but who knows? I’m happy with the life I’ve led and I’m happy that I’ve taken the time and energy to look at it.
I’m doing some research for a paper that I’m writing for my adolescent psychology class and in one of the books, I came across this quote from Sophocles that I found particularly appropriate for my situation: “Examined lives are indeed more worth living.”
Thanks, Jean, for helping me find the way to make my life more worthwhile.
Love,
Starla.
I remember very little of the rest of that summer. I didn’t speak much and they never pushed me. I suppose that if it were today, I’d have been into counseling, and art or play therapy and survivor groups, but silence was no stranger to our “family”. And I did come back, gradually, to a place that most would call normal; I had nothing to compare it to.
I have a sense that if I had faced some of my confusion and anger at that time, I might have had a different life, but who knows? I’m happy with the life I’ve led and I’m happy that I’ve taken the time and energy to look at it.
I’m doing some research for a paper that I’m writing for my adolescent psychology class and in one of the books, I came across this quote from Sophocles that I found particularly appropriate for my situation: “Examined lives are indeed more worth living.”
Thanks, Jean, for helping me find the way to make my life more worthwhile.
Love,
Starla.
Copyright 2003
25.3.08
JOURNAL, Monday, March 25th
This morning we made love, and in the moments that followed, as we lay in the luxury of a few more minutes in bed, the real world gently nudges me to consciousness and reminds me that I have to bring an article to school for Karen, that I have to go to the dentist before class tonight, and gently but persistently it reminds me that I’m dealing with Death.
Death – it’s like a dull ache that sometimes goes unnoticed, only to resurface when I begin to relax. I’ll be settling in to read for a few minutes before going to sleep when some word or phrase will trigger morbid and persistent thoughts of last week’s activity that stay with me throughout the night. Or I’ll be soaking in the tub after coming home from the work and I’ll close my eyes only to see Amanda and Claire, their faces blending into one single mask of suffering. I scrunch up my eyes and shake my head to dislodge the vision, but still I’m left feeling sad and lost.
It was a week ago yesterday that we heard about Amanda. That night I couldn’t sleep in our bed. I told Danny that it was because I didn’t want to disturb him in my restlessness but it had more to do with not wanting to be touched. The shock, the half told story, the violent images made me instinctively want to protect myself. I could never have slept thinking that I may be startled in the night by the sensation of skin brushing against skin or the weight of a hand on my chest. That night I wrapped myself in a fleece robe over long pajamas and cocooned into a sleeping bag on the couch, burrowing far into the crease where cushions meet.
Of all the emotions that I experienced last week, this instinct to protect myself, even from Danny, was the darkest and most upsetting. It made me question why I would turn away from him at such a time, and it made me wonder if I’d really come as far in my trusting of him as I thought I had.
I spent a lot of time during the week thinking about my reactions to what was happening and I realized with a strange sense of relief and even gratitude, that although everyone around me was grieving for Amanda, they had no way of knowing that I had also just lost Claire.
It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to understand why Amanda and Claire are one in my mind these days. Having to deal with Amanda’s passing is a morbid and urgent gift that has allowed me to feel all that was ignored for so many years, and to look at all that was left unsaid and undone after Claire was gone.
On Saturday morning, I decided that although he was fully aware of how difficult things were with Amanda’s death at school, I had to let Danny into the rest of the story that I was living. I don’t want secrets between us. I asked him to sit with me on the couch and we read the letter that I wrote to Claire about the day she died. I wasn’t embarrassed that he should know that I write letters to dead people; I wanted him to understand what I’d seen and felt
I have come to trust Danny’s love and I think that I understand now that there are times when every individual needs to shield themselves for a while, and times when they have to share, but that they are all times that will bring us back together.
Sometimes I still feel that I don’t deserve him, that I’m not capable of such unconditional love in return. When I speak of this to Jean, she tells me that baby steps are better than backward steps; she speaks of the courage that it takes to heal and to seek help in the process. She believes that I can learn to trust myself.
We read Claire’s letter together, Danny and I curled up on the new couch, and when we had finished, Danny read it over again then put the pages down. For a long time he said nothing as we sat there in the gray afternoon light, watching the cold, hard raindrops on the window across the room. Pussywillow jumped up on his lap and brushed my cheek with her tail as she padded to find a comfortable place to join us. We laughed at the intrusion. Finally, Danny pulled me closer to him and kissed the top of my head. “I wish I could have been there with you,” he whispered.
He lifted my hand to his face and kissed the tips of my fingers and held my palm against his cheek.
Danny heard this week that his contract is being extended through next year so we’ve discussed looking for a bigger apartment. I’ll be sorry to leave this place; it’s so much a part of me. But despite feeling emotionally washed out by everything that’s been going on, I’m delighted to realize that I can actually look forward to apartment hunting with Danny, and establishing a place that we can build together.
Copyright 2003
Death – it’s like a dull ache that sometimes goes unnoticed, only to resurface when I begin to relax. I’ll be settling in to read for a few minutes before going to sleep when some word or phrase will trigger morbid and persistent thoughts of last week’s activity that stay with me throughout the night. Or I’ll be soaking in the tub after coming home from the work and I’ll close my eyes only to see Amanda and Claire, their faces blending into one single mask of suffering. I scrunch up my eyes and shake my head to dislodge the vision, but still I’m left feeling sad and lost.
It was a week ago yesterday that we heard about Amanda. That night I couldn’t sleep in our bed. I told Danny that it was because I didn’t want to disturb him in my restlessness but it had more to do with not wanting to be touched. The shock, the half told story, the violent images made me instinctively want to protect myself. I could never have slept thinking that I may be startled in the night by the sensation of skin brushing against skin or the weight of a hand on my chest. That night I wrapped myself in a fleece robe over long pajamas and cocooned into a sleeping bag on the couch, burrowing far into the crease where cushions meet.
Of all the emotions that I experienced last week, this instinct to protect myself, even from Danny, was the darkest and most upsetting. It made me question why I would turn away from him at such a time, and it made me wonder if I’d really come as far in my trusting of him as I thought I had.
I spent a lot of time during the week thinking about my reactions to what was happening and I realized with a strange sense of relief and even gratitude, that although everyone around me was grieving for Amanda, they had no way of knowing that I had also just lost Claire.
It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to understand why Amanda and Claire are one in my mind these days. Having to deal with Amanda’s passing is a morbid and urgent gift that has allowed me to feel all that was ignored for so many years, and to look at all that was left unsaid and undone after Claire was gone.
On Saturday morning, I decided that although he was fully aware of how difficult things were with Amanda’s death at school, I had to let Danny into the rest of the story that I was living. I don’t want secrets between us. I asked him to sit with me on the couch and we read the letter that I wrote to Claire about the day she died. I wasn’t embarrassed that he should know that I write letters to dead people; I wanted him to understand what I’d seen and felt
I have come to trust Danny’s love and I think that I understand now that there are times when every individual needs to shield themselves for a while, and times when they have to share, but that they are all times that will bring us back together.
Sometimes I still feel that I don’t deserve him, that I’m not capable of such unconditional love in return. When I speak of this to Jean, she tells me that baby steps are better than backward steps; she speaks of the courage that it takes to heal and to seek help in the process. She believes that I can learn to trust myself.
We read Claire’s letter together, Danny and I curled up on the new couch, and when we had finished, Danny read it over again then put the pages down. For a long time he said nothing as we sat there in the gray afternoon light, watching the cold, hard raindrops on the window across the room. Pussywillow jumped up on his lap and brushed my cheek with her tail as she padded to find a comfortable place to join us. We laughed at the intrusion. Finally, Danny pulled me closer to him and kissed the top of my head. “I wish I could have been there with you,” he whispered.
He lifted my hand to his face and kissed the tips of my fingers and held my palm against his cheek.
Danny heard this week that his contract is being extended through next year so we’ve discussed looking for a bigger apartment. I’ll be sorry to leave this place; it’s so much a part of me. But despite feeling emotionally washed out by everything that’s been going on, I’m delighted to realize that I can actually look forward to apartment hunting with Danny, and establishing a place that we can build together.
Copyright 2003
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