Kiss Your Past Goodbye

He wasn't my Pacey, or even my Dawson, he was just a guy I fucked around with.

Well, that might be selling him short a bit.

The attraction is still pretty much a mystery to me. I mean, he was blond, and a hockey player, and he had a tattoo of a snake on his bicep, heaven help me. Not my type at all. And we were together during a time in my life when I thought looking good meant wearing my corduroy overalls. True story.

We had no pretense of friendship. We probably wouldn't have liked each other very much, if we had bothered to get to know the slightest thing about one another, but ignorance is bliss, or so they say, and my god were we blissful.

I was probably 16 or 17, and I didn't believe in dating. Well, I believed it existed, but I believed it existed only for evil. As far as I could see, it turned reasonable girls into mindless dolts, and prohibited you from ever seeing the ending to the movies you'd paid to see.

While I didn't have boyfriends, I did have lovers, though I suspect that word is a bit too gracious for some of the eager yet inexperienced fumblings that some boys called sex (it's no wonder that I quickly acquired a taste for older men). And for the most part, this worked out well for me.

Not to say that Trevor was an exception, because he wasn't. Just that our "relationship" consisted solely of sex, with an occasional pre-bed drink or snack. The only time we spent out of bed, we watched a videotape of Eddie Murphy doing stand-up...and frankly, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Luckily, we filled in the awkward silences with mind-blowing sex, practicing feats of strength, endurance, and acrobatics that still give me shivers to think about almost 10 years later. Afterward we were too tired and sated to chat, so we'd doze on our separate corners of bed, until it was time for him to drive me home. In the car, I'd turn on the radio just loud enough to make attempts at conversation a foregone impossibility.

Eventually I stopped answering his phone calls, and we parted without saying so because break-ups aren't necessary when you were never together.

Why, then, when I was admiring the crisp redness of some sweet peppers at a local veggie stand and looked up to see him, did I feel an immediate need to duck into the shop and not be seen?

Hiding wasn't necessary, in the end, because he was walking on the other side of the street, and in fact, from that distance I couldn't even be sure that it was him. Just that it sure looked like him. But why hadn't I wanted to say hello?

The closest I could come to a good guess was that since we hadn't had anything to talk about while we were fucking 10 years ago, we'd probably have even less to say to each other now. And I hate the artifice of small talk, I hate being forced to ask How've you been doing? when the truth is, in all this time, I have seldom wondered what or how he'd been doing.

I was quite happy to leave Trevor in the past.

But it got me thinking, because a friend of mine has badgered me into joining Facebook, and even after 6 months of pestering, I'm still not sure why I opened the account. Maybe there are a lot of people out there thinking about lost connections, old flames, and friends who have faded away, but I'm not one of them. For the most part, I've kept in touch with all the people I've cared about keeping in touch with. I don't believe that all friendships are meant to last the ages. I think some are designed for a specific time in your life, and trying to rekindle them later on is almost always a mistake. People change, circumstances change. If you stopped talking to a friend, whether due to falling out, or neglect, they can't have been a great friend to begin with. And as for all the forgotten acquaintances - people who shared the halls of my high school, colleagues who used the copier after me, friends of old boyfriends whom I never should have dated in the first place...well, I have very little curiosity. The past is past, and I'd like it to stay that way.

But now it seems that either Facebook will drag these people back into my present, or, even more alarmingly, they might just move into my neighbourhood and catch me feeling up my vegetables.

So what's a girl who hasn't a nostalgic bone in her body to do when the past catches up with her? Invite it back to her place for cocktails?
Wear dark glasses and stop answering to her own name?
Pull up the pegs and run?

I mean, it's not that I don't love my life. I'm proud of who I am and what I've done. I've got a few twisted stories, but I'm sure I could boil it down to a saccharine story suitable to be divulged within the hallowed halls of Horton's. I guess it's mostly that I don't want to. Sorry Trevor, I guess my horny-meathead days are over.

Driving Miss Jamie

On the morning of my 16th birthday, I was up with the birds (you know, at the crack of dawn...or before noon...at any rate, early).

I tousled my short reddish hair, arranged my bangs ever so attractively across my forehead, put on a pair of cutoff shorts and a red and black striped t-shirt that I'd pilfered from a friend who was going to throw it away. I can only assume that at some point I looked into a mirror, at my un-shaped man eyebrows, my crooked tortoise-shell glasses, my pale complexion unaided by even so much as lip gloss, and thought, whew, I look good.

It's been nearly a decade since that image was captured forever on my fabulous Ontario driver's licence; years of cringing each and every time I've had to hand it over for I.D. Even just a year or two after it was taken, I often contemplated leaving the liquor unbought if someone were to card me. I've made a lot of money off my licence: time and time again, I have won the coveted 'Worst Photo Ever' award, and collected on many bets. Usually a flash of this photo garners me pity, sometimes laughter. At best, someone will refuse to believe that the picture can possibly be of me. Oh, how I wish that were true, but alas, it's authentic.

Just think how you would feel if the only form of photo I.D. you carry is a relic from your "what was I thinking?" days of high school.

It's been painful, excrutiating at times, but it persists.

Why?

Because I don't drive.

And they won't update the photo just for the sake of vanity.

It's a sad state of affairs, really, especially considering how hard my licence was to come by in the first place.

Oh, my mother was all too happy to bring me to the office the day I turned 16, she watched me take the written test, watched me have the Worst Photo Ever taken, even gave me a small box as a gift that contained a red corvette-shaped keychain with a gleaming car key attached...the key to her rusty old Ford minivan.

And that's where it stopped.

She would never take me out for lessons. She never let me drive, not even around the neighbourhood, not even in a parking lot, not even to the end of our driveway. Never.

So I sat through the embarrassments of driver's education. My grandmother would pick me up after school, with some cookies in an old prescription paper sack, and some lemonade in a mason jar for refreshment. I sat through the theory and then nervously got behind the wheel of the instructor's car, week after week being berated for not practicing enough (I never corrected the instructor, but actually, I wasn't practicing at all). I drained my bank account, 16 years worth of babysitting, lawn mowing and birthday money, to pay for driver's ed. But I never did get to practice.

But then one day, something astonishing happened. It was my father who offered me the wheel.

Maybe if I had stopped to think about it, I would have remembered that I hated my father, that his temper was non-existent, and that he was the last person on the face of the earth for the job. But I was excited, my first real drive! I ran inside to get my purse (the one I had begun carrying 6 months before just for such an occasion - as of yet, it contained only my license and a pack of gum, the gum being just for show, really) and then I performed my pre-drive safety check, kicked the tired, adjusted the mirrors, slid the seat up so that I could almost see over the dashboard, and like a brilliant flash of light (the kind of light that travels at no more than 25 km/hr), we were off!

Looking back, it seems inevitable that the soundtrack to this 6 minute drive would not be the poppy 90s music on the radio, but my father's screams. I remember being proud of how smoothly I handled the road, just as my instructor had shown me, and how my father found fault in it just the same. How could I have possibly expected any less?

Six minutes in, the screaming, the punches to the arm, the grabbing the wheel from my hands, it got to me. I still remember the exact spot where I pulled over, and my father yelled at me for that, too. He screamed for me to continue, but I got out. In the growing dusk, I cried as other cars zoomed by, flashes of pitying faces as my father yelled at me from the curb. I remember thinking I hate driving.

My father eventually got back in the car and finished the drive to grandma's house.

I walked.

And I gave up driving altogether.
I was the only 16 year old in my rural community without the hallowed permit. I pretended not to care.

In the next months, my mother finally admitted that my father was an asshole, and she left him. Thank god.

And she began to realize that perhaps if there was a second driver in the family - say, me - then she wouldn't have to get up before the sun to drive one sister to work, and another to hockey, and another to a sleepover, then pick the first one up from work, bring her to the mall, get the second from hockey, and bring her to the library...and so on. So she encouraged me to make an appointment to take the driving test.

And I did.

The date of my test got closer and closer, and I hadn't driven in over a year. I pointed this out to my mother, and she would only shrug. She never did take me out driving, not once.

The morning of my driving test, I was shaking, probably less with anxiety and more with fear - real fear of revisiting the screaming scene I had tried my best to forget. It was a friend who came to my rescue that morning, a dear friend, who cut school to give me an illegal driving lesson in the 20 minutes I had before my test.

It was thanks to her, and only her, that I passed.

I was 18.

I remember walking in late to my third period class that day - Mrs McM's history, I think - and the class applauding my late-blooming success.

But I always hated driving, and did so only when absolutely necessary.

A year and a half later, I moved to downtown Ottawa where I very happily gave up driving, and let my licence expire.

I am a non-driver, and embarrassing I.D. aside, it hasn't bothered me much.

But in the near future, Jason and I will no longer be living together. With him goes the car, and his licence. With him goes my mobility.

Like it or not, I may soon have to get back behind the wheel of a car. And it's not going to be easy.

In Ontario, we have what is called 'graduated licencing', conveniently implemented like, 30 seconds before I turned 16. It means there are actually 3 steps (and 3 long waiting periods) before becoming a "full" driver - not to mention 2 written and 2 driving tests to be passed, and paid for.

During the first phase, I can only drive when an "adult" is in the car with me, and I can't drive at night, or on any highways (hello, I live in Toronto! I can't really back out of my driveway without hitting a highway). If I was a shaky, hesitant driver before, I doubt that 10 years of being a passenger and pedestrian has made me any better.

But I just keep telling myself that if it means a new picture, then it will all be worth it. Right? Right?

Oh, and also: I need to learn to parallel park. Any takers?

Easter comes but once a year, but the chocolate you eat will stay on your hips forever.

What the hell ever happened to the Easter bonnet? When I was a kid, all 4 of us little girls (my sisters and I) would line up in our fancy dresses, with our little white socks with the ruffle trim folded down over our patent leather shoes, and my mother would curl our bangs just so, thus ensuring that our hair would be worthy and do justice to our Easter bonnets.


This picture was taken in 1984 when there were still only 2 of us, and only 1 of us had hair enough to curl, but by god we wore our bonnets, with all the frills upon it. We were the grandest ladies at the Easter parade. I sometimes think that my sisters and I were the last kids to ever wear the Easter bonnet because I haven't seen it since.

Another Easter staple of my childhood was the poncho. The Easter poncho (hand knitted, of course) was especially exciting because we certainly didn't get to wear it just any old Easter. No, it had to be a very mild Easter indeed where we would be granted permission to wear the Poncho instead of the dreaded "dress coat" that we'd been wearing to church all winter long. You see, my mother was one of those militant types who strongly believed that if we didn't wear coats, we would all die messy, phlegmy deaths. So the poncho was a treat. It meant spring, and relief, was here.

We always hunted for eggs in the morning, even when we were all cranky teenagers and we didn't wake before noon anymore. This being Canada, we only hunted indoors, but my mother must have hidden hundreds of eggs around the house, some of which were never found, and are probably still rotting in dark crevices of that old house today (don't worry - we never used real eggs as some families do; we were strictly into chocolate). I never found as many eggs as the others because I am not a morning person and not particularly industrious either. Not to worry; my mother always insisted we dump the eggs into one communal basket and "share". Hah.

We often would receive small presents in addition to chocolate.

In 1990, as you can see, we received neon sunglasses. What you can't see is that we also got neon sandals to match. Styling. Often we would receive some "spring" toys, like bubble wands, skipping ropes, sidewalk chalk, and butterfly nets (which, though we never caught any butterflies, we often came home with toads, much to my mother's dismay).

This was also the Easter that my baby sister, then 3, caught the chicken pox and generously gave it to my father. While the rest of us ate ham, the two of them soaked in a baking soda-bath that didn't do much to relieve the itching. The rest of us tried to feign sympathy as we strutted about in our ponchos, caught toads, and pretended to eat all the chocolate.

When I was a teenager, I began to think that perhaps 13 lbs of chocolate was not the best thing for my waist line. Ingeniously, my mother took it upon herself to hide fruit that year. Of course, it's much harder to hide a watermelon than a tiny chocolate egg, and the results were as preposterous as you are imagining. I also had little use for frog-catching paraphenalia and my bonnet days were over (as I was then going through a bit of a mohawk phase), so my mother started me on my Easter purse collection.


It's so fuzzy and pink, could it be anything other than an Easter purse? I think not. It's also so impractical that if I didn't limit my usage of it to 2 or 3 days per year, it would either drive me mad, or turn into Easter garbage. It didn't come with money, it came with "cotton candy" pink hair dye inside - just the perfect colour to for ushering in spring.


This is my best-loved Easter handbag. The pastel beading reminds me of an Easter egg. This one I "inherited" from a deceased woman who had no further use for it. I've since seen other antique Goldco bags on ebay, but I've yet to see this exact one...and yes, I do wish I had the Easter bonnet to match.

These days I have relinquished my role as Easter egg hunter because I have become the Easter egg hider. No, I don't have children, but I do have a husband who missed out on some key elements of his childhood and as long as they involve chocolate, he is more than happy to relive them. If we're brave (or drunk), we may even try our hand at dying some eggs, because frankly, the stain-to-furniture ratio has been appallingly low lately, and let's face it, now that I've posted the neon glasses, what's left for next year? I'll turn out my famous Easter cakes and keep none for myself, watch Jason blow up Peeps in the microwave, and maybe, just maybe, I'll go outside without my coat.

Please feel free to share your own Easter memories/plans/traditions in the comments section.

And remember, real men hunt with a bucket, not with a basket.

The Best $75 000 I Ever Spent.

When I first went to that great institution of booze, blow jobs, and brainwashing, er, higher learning (called University), I moved into a glorified hole optimistically named Residence. Ah, residence, hallowed place where I showered in special shoes, drank Crown Royal for supper, and learned 101 more uses for shaving cream.

I lasted a month.

Which is not to say that residence was too much for me. The truth of the matter was, someone just couldn't live without me. So he threw caution to the wind and "rescued" me from the mysterious stains of Stanton Res and whisked me off to a comparatively luxurious apartment (read: a shoebox that cost as much as a 7-bedroom home, but which we loved anyway).

In some ways, that month spent living communally was one of the craziest I've ever survived. We wore beer steins on lanyards (in those days the University actually provided you with a plastic beer mug to wear around your neck - it meant beer at half price in the Byward Market); we collected pictures of topless Sunshine Boys, scissored out of the local news rag; we saved each other repeatedly from the dusty bowels of the research library and from the nerdy Carleton engineering students who tried to grope above their league. We lived intimately among strangers and became fast friends.

And then, as quickly as we had moved all of my shit up 8 flights of stairs (of course the elevator was out on moving day!), we moved it back down. Jason and I rented a big truck we couldn't drive and made 3 stops in 2 cities, covering several hundred kilometres during which it was often touch-and-go for my goldfish who weathered the move in a margarine container in my lap.

After 13 exhausting hours of hauling furniture in the rain (uphill both ways), we craved only sleep (and maybe some chicken), but instead we were treated to a going away party thrown by the 8th floor. Of course, people from several floors up and several floors down came too. I was hungry enough to eat an ox, but instead I had a very stiff rye&coke (well, whiskey and diet pepsi, actually), you know, the kind that you mix yourself in 40oz cups on my empty stomach, and then another, and then another.

And then a funny thing happened. A rainbow fell out of my mouth. Well, maybe not a real rainbow, but the vomit was so colourful it sure looked pretty. I spent the entirety of my own going away party on the floor of a public washroom. It was a multi-stall facility, but apparently I locked the main door and for the next several hours, as I fell in and out of consciousness, friends would politely knock and inquire as to the state of my rainbows.

Meanwhile, Jason had not quite reached the rainbow stage. However, he had reached the "it seems like a good idea to climb into this shopping cart and let other people race me" stage. He ripped a really expensive pair of pants that night.

When the sun was coming up and very few people remained standing, I bid them all adieu. I somehow managed to leave my toilet-fortress in order to thank my guests for such a fond farewell, but what I did not so adeptly manage was to stand on my own 2 feet. Soon I found myself splayed on the floor, my sexy backless dress failing me in every way imaginable (but please, for the love of god, try not to imagine this).

Long story short, the next day I resolved to start wearing underwear again.

Happy Monday, y'all.

The Edge of Seventeen

I was in the last months of that glorious age called 17 when I landed my first and last job as a waitress. It wasn't so much a restaurant as a bar, and not so much a bar as a seedy little hole in the wall of a trailer park.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

The clientele was what you'd expect - lots of cheap bastards, oily drunks, and old folk. The proprietress was a crazy old woman never seen without a snifter of brandy in her hand. She sped around her trailer park in a pimped-out golf cart, and it was whispered about her that she'd run over her share of small dogs, and once, a not-so-small child. The nicest thing I can say about her was that she was the very definition of an Old Bat, with never a single nice word to say about anyone, though she flattered herself constantly, or at least she did in her more lucid moments.

The bar was open only seasonally, this being Canada, during the summer months when people could actually live in trailers without freezing to death. Sarah, a college student, supervised the bar during her summer break. She was an alumna of my high school, just old enough so that we'd never crossed paths there. The bar had one of the highest turnover rates possible: the Old Bat reduced employees to tears on a daily basis. Each day's schedule was cushioned in case of firing or quitting, both of which happened constantly. Those of who stayed, stayed for Sarah.

The work was awful. Old men would leer. Some would attempt to touch, and then as more beers were consumed, grope. Many of them considered themselves masters of sexual innuendo, each believing that he was the only one to dazzle me with such "wit". I did this work for $5.35 an hour; waitresses receive less than minimum wage because their income is supposedly supplemented by tips. The tips I received at the trailer park were often nickels and dimes, and more often than that, nothing at all. Trailer park drunks are not the most generous of souls, as it turns out.

Wednesday night was Wing Nite, wings at 10 cents apiece. The bar would be filled to the gills and chaotic as hell on Wednesdays, and all the very best that a trailer park had to offer would come worming out of the woodwork on those days. Customers would order 50 wings, and an empty glass. We would find people shamelessly filling their glasses at the bathroom sink.

Friday was Fajita Nite, and fajitas being much more expensive, the night was much less successful. As we carried the sizzling platters from the kitchen to the dining room, we were made to yell "Hot Fajitas!" for reasons unknown to the staff. To this day, my forearms still bear tiny pin-prick scars from the splattering of hot grease.

The wait staff was all-female. We wore little blue shorts and a golf shirt that we were forced to pay $45 for out our own pockets. After our first shifts, every one of us had permanent grease stains in the boob area of our shirts, providing convenient targets for the stellar and upstanding clients. The bar was unairconditioned. The kitchen was so airless that they often cooked with the door wide open, allowing all kinds of interesting insects to come right on in and make themselves at home. The Old Bat was so stingy that we waitresses had to take turns scrubbing toilets and prepping salads. This is illegal of course, since we were paid below minimum wage, but illegal was not a word in this woman's vocabulary. She thought Canada had too many "crazy" labour laws to begin with. "Back home..." she'd say, and we'd tune her out. This is how I first became acquainted with urine cakes.

Each waitress had a paper cup in which we collected our tips. We plunked in our nickels and dimes, sometimes even pennies, and at the end of the night, someone would cash them in for us, and we'd go home three whole dollars in our pockets, on a good night. The first time I actually made enough to go home with paper money in my pocket was the night my mom and her friend came for dinner, generously leaving a tip on my table, which embarrassed me and delighted me at the same time.

It sounds like the job from hell, and it was, but I did not have a bad summer. I was 17, and the world is made for 17 year old girls. I remember going to Edgefest or the Warped Tour, one of those big outdoor concerts, and getting lost in the moshpits and feeling the hands of strangers move me along as I crowd surfed to Finger Eleven for the first time. I remember being at work the next day, the golf shirt slicing into my sunburned back, the blisters oozing, but eager to finish my shift and start over again.

Somebody tried to set my mother up that summer, with a man 10 years her junior. He and a friend showed up at a bonfire we were having, and while they didn't hit it off with my mom, they did with me. Having friends a decade older meant that I didn't even need a fake ID to get into trouble. Trouble was ready-made. They had cars and boats, and the makings of all the summer fun a girl could want. The first time they came to see me at the bar, I had gone home early. The next day, a fellow waitress told me that my father and a friend had been looking for me. No, that's not my dad.

But they did keep me company on a lot of quiet shifts. They would sit at the bar, drinking beers and leaving me disproportionately large tips. Sometimes Sarah would suggest staff "constitutionals" after work, which meant crossing the border into Quebec and drinking lots of cheap beer. We would go to Riviere Beaudette, or else to Ste Eustache, which she pronounced La Moustache. I was underage no matter where we went, but surrounded by older friends, it never seemed to matter. I didn't lose touch with my school friends that summer, but it did mark the beginning of a distancing that seems inevitable at that age. When we all left for university, we all went down our separate paths. Nothing gold can stay.

That summer opened up a lot of possibility. I did things that I was not supposed to experience for a number of years yet. I was also propositioned by more dirty old men than I could shake a stick at, and believe me, I needed more than a stick to shake some of them off. In fact, on several occasions we had to call in the OPP when fights would break out, supposedly over the affections of an indifferent waitress, although when you're a lonely old drunk, you only need a superficial reason at best to swing your fists.

One hot July evening, I stayed in the family pool until just minutes before my shift. My mother drove me to work in the van, and I, still dripping and smelling slightly of chlorine, changed into my uniform in the backseat, and smudged on some eyeliner in a bumpy, moving vehicle. I knew it would be a long night at the bar, sweaty and gross in the stale air, and particularly so since that night was Elvis Nite. Oh yes, Elvis Nite.

Now, I wouldn't say that this particular impersonator looked much like Elvis. He was 50 if he was a day, short and squat, but he did have the rhinestone jumpsuit, and I guess that's what matters. The bar was packed. Standing room only, in fact. The Old Bat was in fine form, stumbling around in her gypsy dress, finally spilling brandy all over our interac machine, short-circuiting the thing on our busiest night of the summer. The bartender quit on the spot. Sarah sent me in as a replacement.

Yes, it was illegal to have an underage person preparing or even serving alcoholic drinks, but like I said, this wasn't exactly a lawful establishment. The crowd was hot and thirsty, and Sarah had no choice. That was the first time I ever shook up a martini. I made caesars and white russians (ew!), singapore slings, and many drinks that I essentially had to improvise, not having the faintest clue as to what went in them. But Elvis was there, so my paltry skills were hardly noticed. Elvis threw scarves at screaming blue-haired ladies. He sweated so much I feared he might have a heart attack. I sliced so many limes that night that the sight of them made me sick for several months afterward, but it was the sight of Sarah grinding with Elvis that got me through the night.

When last call was announced, we realized suddenly that we had actually survived, and the staff treated themselves to many celebratory drinks. We danced ourselves silly, long into the night, and at one point, sitting sloppily in my lap, Sarah said to me "You can never forget this night. This is it. 17. You won't ever be 17 again."

And she was right. I turned 18, went back to school for my last year there, and felt surely that I had changed. Sarah went back to college, got drunk one night, and fell into a deep sleep on the second floor of a loft. Sometime during the night, she fell to her death.

In the front yard of my high school, a tree is planted in her honour. A nice gesture I guess, but a tree seems like not enough to really represent a bubbly, happy light that burned out much too early. I remember being at the tree-planting ceremony. I remember it being October already, the air cooling around us, summer gone as surely as Sarah was. I don't remember the somber words that must have been spoken, but I remember feeling that it was my own mortality being planted there in the grass.

Sarah was right. You can never be 17 again.

Unhand Me.

He presses our hands together often, though the results are always the same. His hands are bigger than mine. This we know. He laughs about it every time.


***

I remember when I was small, my mother came home with a stack of papers in her brief case. All of her fellow educators had photocopied their hands, palm-down, and they had spent the week trying to guess each one's identity. My mother laid each black and white copy on the dining room table, making a tableau more beautiful than she could know; every hand similar and not similar at the same time, every hand the same basic shape and the same finger count, yet every hand made distinct by the whorls and lines that demark us as unique.

Each hand says this is me. With these hands, I live my life.

My young eyes quickly identified my mother's hand amid 20 or 30 others. There was no doubt: those were the hands that had fed me, bathed me, held me. I remembered those hands from when she coloured beside me at the kitchen table. Oh how I envied the beautiful way she stayed inside the lines, choosing the most sumptuous colours, richly shading in each of her drawings. I remember those hands from when she showed me how to bait your own hook, even while the worm still squirmed about. Those hands had cracked eggs for my pancakes, braided my hair until they were arthritic, warmed mine when they were cold. Those were my mother's hands.

I was right. First try. No doubt.

Each of my three sisters was just as successful.

My father, however, was not. He declared that the game was stupid, made 6 attempts and failed 6 times before stomping away in frustration. For 15 years those hands had worn the rings he'd given her, but he did not know them.



***


I am always astounded that moments after a tiny red blob of a human being comes hurtling out of a too-small canal, its little bald head still pointy from the adventure, the cooing adults around the bed are immediately able to pronounce that He looks just like his Daddy, or, He's got my eyes, or, She takes after her mother, thank god.

I have never seen it. I don't see it in other people, and I have never seen it in myself. Do I look like my parents? No one has ever told me that I do. In fact, I could never see that any of my sisters were actually related to our parents, or to each other. But as my youngest sister grew into a woman, I was taken aback at how often I felt I was looking at picture of my mother when she was first married. I began to search my mirror more earnestly for signs that I shared genes with the people who'd made me. I found none.

Well, that's not entirely true. I found one, no, two.

My thumbs.

My thumbs are my father's thumbs.

They're short, they're squat, they look deformed. They look less out of place on his hands, his hands being man hands. On my hands, they look quite absurd. (Go ahead, I know you're dying to scroll up to that picture again, so you can point and laugh at the freak on display.)

I could wish that my hands had taken after my mothers', the way she rubbed my back as I sat sick and hunched over the toilet, the way they turned jump ropes so expertly and packed lunches so lovingly. But what I have inherited instead are my father's ugly thumbs. Any time I sit and think of all the things my father has given me over the years, I come up with this:

1. An unsightly red tablecloth that he won at a company Christmas party and didn't want.

2. His thumbs.

The tablecloth is long gone; for a time, it lined the crate where my dog took her dumps.
Tablecloths are easy to dispose of, but genetics are a bitch. You can't return them, you can't regift them. They're gifts that keep on giving (at least until I have an unfortunate table saw accident). They are a souvenir from my father, and every time I play Grand Turismo and fail to make a turn, or play thumb wars and lose my lunch money, I curse him for this awful gift.


***


Palm to palm, our hands say I love you even when our lips do not. We hold hands while we sleep, together even in our dreams.

For Us, There Is Only The Trying.

I remember walking up the crumbling steps to my grandparents' home, into the sloping porch where the horrendous gold-and-green vinyl-covered glider always sat, and finally into the familiar kitchen that always smelled of Grandma's cookies.

My grandfather was always seated near the door, at the head of the kitchen table. He'd take the cigarette out of his mouth with his tobacco-stained fingers, look up from his evening paper and say to me "Did your Daddy do your hair?"

I would giggle as I removed my shoes and tossed them into the corner. Sometimes I would be brave enough to shout "No!" in his general direction as I ran to the relative comfort and safety of the living room, where my sisters and I would play quietly on the floor and not get in the way until Grandma said it was time to open up the tin canisters and divvy up the cookies.

My grandfather believed that children should be seen and not heard...and seen very little, for that matter. He was a farmer transplanted from the old country. He believed himself to be the patriarch in a disappointing dynasty that had only produced one male grandchild to carry on the name. No matter how full his house would be, he only left his reigning seat in the kitchen to watch a hockey game with his oldest son. He spoke little. He rarely showed interest in anything but his crops or anyone other than the son who had inherited the farm, piece by piece. He did not show emotion or affection. I have no memory of ever touching or hugging my grandfather, or even of being in close proximity of him, save for his usual greeting - Did your daddy do your hair? This was partly my own fault - I was deathly afraid of the man, and I thought, with good reason. He was an imposing, impenetrable figure on his best day.

The only contact I ever had with my grandfather was indirect: usually too shy to respond to his greeting in any way, my sisters and I would nervously break for the living room, filled with dusty rose furniture and an old television set that lacked cable, and that we would hesitate to turn on anyway. My grandparents had 11 grandchildren, and only 2 toys to speak of - an ancient edition of the boardgame Payday, missing most of its original pieces, and a plastic horse that was too big for our Barbies to ride successfully. The bulk of our entertainment on these Sunday visits would therefore be left to the ritualistic raiding of the couch cushions. My grandfather, traditional to the core, unfailingly took a nap on the couch while my grandmother got his dinner ready. The coins from his trousers would roll from his pockets and get lost in the couch, hidden treasure for my sisters and I to unearth during our visits.

My sisters and I received no allowance, and the family had little money to spare. These dimes and nickels were precious to us; a rare quarter was something to be marveled at and discussed with passionate whispers. These coins that had fallen from a farmer's green overalls were as close to my grandfather as I would ever get.

I was 11 years old when he died suddenly, though not suddenly enough in the end. He had contracted a Strep A bacteria that would become known as flesh-eating disease. My proud grandfather was felled, eaten alive. He was betrayed by his own body, the body that had reaped, reared, planted and produced. His grown children saw his anguish and watched his deterioration while his grandchildren were denied entrance to the intensive care unit and denied the opportunity for goodbye.

Would I have said goodbye? I know the answer. The answer is no. I lacked the words. He was a stranger. There was no precedent in our relationship for any kind of intimacy at all. I doubt that it would have made a difference.

As my classmates cut heart shapes out of red construction paper, and decorated doilies with glitter, my family sat in the second hard-backed pew of a church that seemed to be as imposing as my grandfather had been. Strangers stood and talked of a man who, to me, was completely disconnected from the man I had known. A bagpipe blew us out of the church, into the cold air, and into an irrevocably changed life for my family, though we hardly knew it then. On the way back to the old farm house of sloping floor and outdated furniture, my mother suggested that it would be kind to give my grandmother a hug.

When I stepped into the kitchen and struggled out of my black patent leather Sunday shoes, my hair was indeed fancified, but no one asked who'd done it. My grandmother sat stoically in the seat where she'd always sat, whether writing on flowery stationary, trimming green beans, or pasting obituaries of people she'd known into a yellowed scrapbook. She sat there still, as if nothing had changed, but my grandfather's chair sat empty. Awfully empty. Conspicuously empty in a house crowded with relatives and not enough seating. It remained empty the whole day.

I did not hug my grandmother that day. I remember thinking about it, I remember trying to muster the courage, and I remember being defeated by bashfulness and my inability to remember having hugged her before. And I know that we did, when I was small. But also that we hadn't in any of my memories. I couldn't do it. I didn't know how to go up to this woman who must have been mourning but never showed it. I didn't know how to hug my own grandmother.

Years later, I would wonder if this non-hug had changed the course of our lives. If, perhaps, it had made it easier for her to reject me in deference to her son, my father, who no longer had a place in my life. If the non-hug had facilitated her descent into non-grandmotherhood.

After my grandfather's funeral, I began to include him in my nightly prayers. Soon, I was engaging him in full-blown conversations. During my prayers, I kept him abreast of family goings-on, told him all the trivial details of the life of an 11 year old catholic schoolgirl. I talked to him in death the way I never did in life. A year later, I felt extremely close to a man I had never really known on earth.

Somewhere along the way, I lost faith in religion. My prayers dropped off, and with them, the closeness I shared with my dead grandfather. But I had made my peace, and I had said goodbye.

When my grandmother died, I didn't belong to the family, and I was acutely aware of not belonging at the funeral. I didn't go. I chose not to go. While Jason and I toasted quietly to our first wedding anniversary, the rest of my family sat on the same hard-backed second pew.

This time, I ached for the easy rapprochement that prayer had offered, but I could never get it back, not in the innocent way of an 11 year old girl who simply believed. Goodbye has been a longer journey this time around. I'm still trying. We're all trying: the living, the dead, the yet unborn. We're trying, and we're getting closer, but we're not there yet.

Happiness is Not A Fish That You Can Catch

One of the last things my mother said to me was You're not as happy as you pretend to be.

It really made me think.


I remember when I was 3 years old, my mother had a weekly ritual called Craft Night. Half a dozen ladies (I call them ladies, though I realize in this moment that my mother would have been younger than I am at the time) would congregate at someone's house to do some needlework and gossip. Today this is called a stitch-n-bitch, but in the more prurient days of the early 80s, Craft Night it was. Every so often it would be my mother's turn to host. I remember she would buy fancy little cheeses, and serve chips and dip in a ceramic sombrero she had glazed herself.

Before the ladies started ringing the bell, I would be tucked into bed, supposedly fast asleep though I was not. In the summer months, nothing would excite me more than the sound of a chip truck's bell and our screen door slamming as someone chased down the street with money in hand. On those nights I would be lured down the stairs in my Rainbow Brite nightgown, where I sat in my tiny rocking chair and did cross-stitch (the plastic "needle" was the size of a crayon; the holes into which I would stitch my craft were big enough to fit my wrists).

I suppose it was inevitable that such a group of women could not stay friendly forever. One particular Craft Night, while one of the ladies was moaning about her impending divorce, she pointed the needle at my mother and wondered aloud why it was that she never "aired her dirty laundry."

Words were exchanged; my mother never talked to them again. The Craft Ladies broke up, allegiances were made and then broken, the rift never repaired.

And here we were 20 years later, and my mother was basically accusing me of the very same thing. I do not air my dirty laundry.

Well, at least not to my mother. My mother already tells me that I am "filled with hatred and negativity" which, perhaps I just watch too much Gilmore Girls, is not a very nice thing to say to your daughter. Especially your daughter who dances in her kitchen like it's a national sport, declares it a good day when seedless green grapes are on sale, and finds joy in the liner notes of her CD collection.

Filled with hatred and negativity? Does my mother even know me at all?

But I do know my mother. And I know that she is constantly looking for cracks in the foundation. Maybe because her foundation was smashed to smithereens, she has to find evidence of fissures in others' as well. So I admit that I was guarded with her. I didn't send her monthly bulletins of every fight I'd had with Jason. I didn't know they were necessary.

I don't think I pretend to have the perfect marriage. I don't even believe they exist.

Do Jason and I fight?


Um...


HELL YES.

When my mother and father would fight, my father would be loud and violent, and my mother would shut down. Even when angry with her children, she would always use the silent treatment. I remember once when my father stormed out of the house, my mother locked herself in the bedroom. Time went by. I knocked and she didn't answer. I was maybe 7 at the time. The baby was crying. I worried about dinner - I wasn't even allowed to use the stove. I don't know if she was in there several hours or 20 minutes, but it felt like eternity. I felt abandoned. And when she did finally come out, I felt angry.

I have resolved to live my life at a louder decibel than she did. When I'm upset, people know it. I'm not afraid of my emotions. They get expressed, and sometimes quite loudly. In fact, if my mother really wanted to keep tabs on my fight record, all she'd have to do is keep her windows open. Jason gets yelled at, and is learning to yell back. And it feels good. It feels good to have everything out in the open. Generally, our fights get resolved in 5 minutes; 10 for the really tough issues. This is probably why people think we're so goddamned happy - we don't waste time being unhappy. Life is too short. Sure, we could grumble for 4 days, then hold grudges for another 10. But that's not the way I choose to live.

My mother disapproves, of course. Any time I voice my opinion I am "filled with hatred and negativity." It's exhausting to live in a fishbowl, knowing that your family is watching, and hoping that you'll fall.

Will I fall?

I don't know. But if happiness is a fish, I can tell you this:

Jason and I are in the stream, jeans rolled up to our knees, net stretched between us, and we're trying like hell to catch him.

Growing Up Is Hard To Do

Today I am taking a little stroll down memory lane, which in this case is probably more appropriately termed 'a walk into the bowels of hell', but hey, I'm resilient, you're resilient, we can take it. This little piece of self-indulgence can be credited to Miss 3T herself, who stumbles through life and finds that the third time's the charm. She writes with insight and warmth, sharing the mistakes we all make with such dignity that I can hardly express how proud I am of her strength. She asked: what one event or aspect of your childhood has affected you the most psychologically?

And the answer is....


By the time I was 5 and a half, I had 3 younger sisters. I don't ever remember having a single moment alone with my mother, though I often craved it. The youngest ones always came first, and if I could get a word in of complaint (which was rare), I was told that "you are the oldest, and you should know better."

I ached badly, longing for a mother who was right in front of me the whole time, but always just out of reach. I struggled with this confusion as a kid, and I am at a loss to put it into words even now. I knew I couldn't have her to myself, but I also knew that I never even got a piece of her. Someone else was always holding her hand. Someone else got to help push the grocery cart. Someone else sat beside her at supper. And it's not to say that she was a bad mother, because she wasn't. She did her best as a mother, and as a substitute father. But from a young age, I was acutely aware of not belonging. My sisters formed a trifecta that was always in opposition to me. They vetoed my choice of television shows, restaurants, vacation spots, movie rentals. It was so constant that I didn't really feel outnumbered, I just felt lonely.

I didn't have a bad childhood. I did well in school and had lots of friends. At home, I turned inward. It was easier to sit in a quiet corner of the house reading than to butt heads with the family. But looking back, I just cannot escape this underlying current of separateness that I always felt. When all the hours of a day were spent, there just never seemed enough to get around to me.

Still, it all went rather smoothly until the 4 girls all living in one house started hitting puberty one after the other, all the while our parents were going through one of the worst divorces in history. There was a decisive crack in the foundation of our family, and we all went our separate ways and dealt with it on our own. To keep track of each other, we kept a family log book where we left each other funny messages. We were probably closer than we had been in years through that book. It was easier to pour your thoughts out onto a blank page than it ever was to talk to one another. But that book was also my undoing.

One day, after another bout with my abusive father, I locked myself into the bathroom (the only room in the house where I had any privacy), and I set pen to paper. I penned an angry poem filled with teenage angst and frustration. I wrote until my tears dried and my blood stopped boiling. I left the poem in the log book, where eventually my mother and sisters would come to read it, and leave comments.

When I happened upon the poem a few days later, I found one single comment, left by my mother. It basically said that I should refrain from leaving such "serious" words in the family log book. She made me feel badly for daring to write them. And that was it.

That's still it. That is the one event of my childhood that has had the most profound psychological effect on me. I was crushed at her lack of empathy, her lack of basic understanding of me. I was young, maybe 11 or 12, but already I was winning awards for my writing and starting to think of my words as not just an escape from an unsatisfactory existence, but as a means to an end. Her response crushed me. I would have taken criticism more kindly because even that would have meant acknowledgment.

From that day on, I felt like I hadn't a friend in the family. It was Me against Them. I realize how black and white it sounds, and I know that there must have been a lot of gray in the following years. Certainly we had some good times. I still loved them. But I wasn't part of them. I was separate.

I never felt like my mother didn't love me, but I often felt that her love was more the obligatory kind, like the kind you have for a distant, elderly aunt whom you barely know. Of her 3 younger daughters, she had the clingy one, the cuddly one, and of course, her Baby. That was enough. They kept her busy. I kept myself busy.

My mother and I didn't have a lot to say to each other when I was growing up. In many ways, it was like she was growing up too. She and I would fight over who would take the car out on our date on Friday nights, and then which one of us would get up early Saturday morning to drive the girls to work, or hockey, or a friend's house. She had boyfriends, and I had boyfriends. I didn't like hers, and she didn't like mine. When I told her so, she called me insolent. When she told me so, she forbade me to see them, and grounded me for weeks. We both pretended I didn't sneak out at night. When her boyfriend slept over, we looked the other way. When mine slept over, I became the Bad Daughter.

But I had my eye on the ball: I was moving out. When high school was over, I made sure to pick a long-distance University. I asked for her input, she flatly refused to even look at the brochures. Suddenly, I was made to feel that post-secondary education was just further evidence of my being the Bad Daughter.

I moved out, and on, anyway. She saw me off to university, and on our parting, she pinched my cheek and cried. I sat in my room, void of sisters or mothers, for a long, long time, thinking about what that meant. Why had she cried?

When there was distance between us, there was a growing closeness between us. Eventually, my mother treated me as a contemporary. She talked to me as a friend. She confided in me about her ongoing battles with her ex-husband and my ex-father, and about my sisters as they when through the Terrible Teenage phase too. It was surprising and refreshing to have her back in my life in this capacity, or any capacity, but it didn't last long. In fact, it ended with my marriage.

She didn't like it much when I moved in with Jason. I don't think she cared much for our engagement either, but to her credit, once she accepted it, she launched herself into wedding plans like there was no tomorrow. At times, she seemed genuinely happy for me. I could have sworn it was so. I remember crying myself to sleep for the sheer happiness it brought me to be deep in the bosom of my family.

But once I was married, she backed off. She turned cold. I questioned her, and she told me that she didn't want to "horn in." I quashed her worries, but wondered to myself whether she was being honest. Nothing much had changed; Jason and I had always lived together. She wasn't any more or less of a nuisance post-wedding as pre-. But the chasm grew.

All of my sisters still lived with my mother, and life went on. I had mine, and they had theirs. I thought that given time, they would adjust to having a grown-up family, but to my dismay, they simply counted me out. News from them was sporadic. I heard about them from second and third hand sources. I approached them about it once. I said that I was hurt to be so thoroughly excluded, but I knew that whatever I said, it was pointless. It all goes back to the poem in the book. If I'm upset, I should keep it bottled up. I am not entitled to my own hurts and feelings. The four of them bond together, and have a mob mentality when it comes to outsiders. I am an Outsider.

I suppose it is inevitable to find out that your family is not infallible. Maybe I expected too much. I remember when I was little, my mother used to eschew the cool relationships between the extended family, and it was a point of pride with her that we would never be like that. I guess I believed the hype. But we are like that. If I have a falling out with one of them, I have a falling out with all of them. I will always be a misunderstood poem, AND I'M OKAY.

It is a lucky and rare thing for family and friend to be synonymous. I feel lucky myself, in that my friends have become my family. My husband is my undisputed best friend, and we have an extensive network of friends that now span several cities, and that is where we feel at home.

That one aspect of my childhood has made me who I am today. I am not dependent on family. I choose the people I let into my life. I refuse to repress feelings for fear of the response they'll illicit. My mother has often insisted that if I feel out of place in the family, then I am either jealous, or depressed, or both. I think maybe she's just afraid of what people will think of her family. But you know what? It is my belief, and philosophy in life, that you are poisoned by all the things you keep inside. I don't hold things back. If you were a fly on the wall of my home, your tiny fly ears would ring with all the words exchanged between Jason and I. But I am committed enough in our love to air our differences, and her cares enough to hear me out and take me seriously.

Now I find that whatever relationship I have with my family, I am fine. And better than fine. I am fabulous.

He lied to me. He stole from me. He told me I was nothing.

He knew we were hungry and wanting, but he preferred prison to palimony.

He locked me in a car once, for hours, so that I could not escape his abuse.

He kicked me out of the house for wearing shorts to a family BBQ.

My tears were his fuel.

He used his children as:
a) tactical weapons against our mother
or
b) ornaments to be paraded around family events twice annually, and then ignored

He hit me, and called me names, but it was never enough to dull his anger.

He taught me to be wary of everyone, and that some bruises you wear forever, and that 'deadbeat dad' is not just an expression, but a pretty apt description.

And then when I told him that his services as a father were no longer required, he never looked back. Not a trace of regret in his cold, blue eyes. He took his family with him. My aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my grandmother, and my godmother, orchestrated a simultaneous turning-of-the-backs. A whole family history, wiped away in one fell swoop.

Most days, I do not think of him. Most months, I do not think of him. If there were good times, I don't remember them. If he ever hugged me, or said kind words to me, they are lost now, forever. I haven't seen or spoken to him in years, but I woke up today and thought It's his birthday, 6 days after mine. Did he think of me then? Does he think of me ever?

I wonder sometimes if he knows where I am.

I wonder if he knows what I'm doing, or if I'm even still alive.

I wonder, when he meets someone new, if he says he has 3 children, or 4.

I wonder when it will all stop hurting.

5 Year Retrospect

5 years ago on this very day, I sat in a cafeteria draped with countless tartans. Bag pipes sang their screeching songs. It was so hot that I worried I might sweat through my cap and gown.

I graduated high school 5 years ago, and it's hard not to remember the date without some introspection, such as: what the hell have I done with my life?

The first 3 years after high school are easy to measure. I immediately left home and moved in with my boyfriend. My mother had no interest in the decisions I faced, so I chose my post-secondary education, my future home, and which scholarships to accept on my own. But despite my burning tendency toward procrastination, everything was arranged in time for the fall session of my first year of University.

My first choice school was Waterloo, because clocking in at 7-8 hours away from home, it was an attractive choice. I also applied to Guelph (6 hours away), and Queens (under 2 hours away, which I felt left the possibility for afternoon visits, eep), and Ottawa (1 hour away, so it wasn't much of a choice at all...in fact, I laughingly called it my "safety" school).

I was accepted into all of them of course, with generous scholarships being offered by all 4 schools. And so of course I picked Ottawa, my last choice, the choice that was barely even a choice. I picked Ottawa because my boyfriend at the time felt we would drift apart if we were any further apart than that (such confidence he had in our relationship!). And so I can proudly say I picked the University of Ottawa for all the wrong reasons (namely, a boy), and it turned out to be great.

My mother and my boyfriend escorted me up to the campus, where they insisted there was no way I would fit all of my crap into such a small living space. They were both so overcome by their sentiments that they forgot what a hard head I have. It all fit, dammit. And then my mother pinched my cheek and cried, and left me all alone.

It was great. It was better than great. The University of Ottawa is a beautiful campus in downtown Ottawa. I lived in an apartment in Sandy Hill, just a block or two away from campus. I instantly made all sorts of great friends. We went on pub crawls, got lost on the bus system that was new to all us, and got into more trouble that I ever dreamed possible. I think I may have gone to a few classes here and there also, but my memories of this are a little hazy. On the second day of my new life, my boyfriend made the trek back up to Ottawa and was shocked to find me not at home. I was already out and about, socializing my ass off. I think this made him a bit worried, because within a month he reestablished his life up in Ottawa to be with me.


Tabaret Hall


University was just as easy for me as high school had been. I wrote exams and 30 page research papers with one hand tied behind my back. I took classes for interest, played around in the lab, and loved the tiny discussion classes that had fewer than a dozen students, where I could discuss politics, religion, or Dickens, and actually be understood by my peer group for the first time in my life. It was exhilarating, and I couldn't get enough. Full-time studies mean 4 classes per semester; some people take 5, I took 6 or 7. I majored in psychology which was never dull, not for one moment, but I took classes in many faculties to broaden the scope of knowledge.

I worked the whole time I was in school. I started out landing a great job for the University itself. I created programs for staff learning and development. It was challenging to work the behind the scenes at the same time, and since the school is bilingual, I was able to keep up in both languages that I was born into.

My boyfriend proposed to me, and became my fiance before my first year of university was complete. Everyone found it their business to tell me I was too young and that it was too quick, except for a select few who knew that Jamie knows what she wants, and gets it.

At school I had a lab rat named Sniffy, and I adored work in the sleep lab. My favourite days were spent in counseling, where I paved the way for a future career.

Later, I worked for the government. I worked right in the centre block of the Parliament buildings, underneath the Peace Tower.


Centre Block, Parliament Building of Canada

I brushed shoulders with the biggest and brightest of Canada's political system, Senators and Members of Parliament alike. I also met delegates and political figures from around the world. Joe Clark held a door for me; Colin Mochrie shook my hand and told me my uniform was "cute"; Jean Chretien bought me a drink; I gave John Ashcroft the pen with which he signed his name on the accord after 9-11. I met tourists from around the world. I saw presentations from around my own country. It's funny how quickly the marble floors and the gothic architecture of Canada's most famous symbol becomes "work". Every morning during the summer months, I walked through the changing of the guard.



Every few days, a major protest took place on Parliament grounds. I often had to elbow my way through throngs of people telling me that my uterus was not for sale just to get to "work". On other days, young men with rippling muscles would throw frisbees on the hill. On the weekends we were often interrupted by wedding pictures, and a couple of times, even the weddings themselves. Christmas was the most beautiful time to work at Parliament because of the Lights Across Canada display. Not just the hill, but the whole city and indeed cities across Canada, are lit up brilliantly.


Rotunda, Centre Block

And this is to say nothing of the tulip festival in April, and winterlude in February. I had the most amazing opportunities, and after about the first week of walking around in an impressed daze, I took them all for granted. But it was a great experience, and I made many good friends. It's a strange thing to say that our office parties consisted of Parliamentary Balls, but there it is. Good times. Through it all, I went to school and earned brilliant grades, and planned a wedding that turned out spectacularly.

Jason and I moved around a fair bit; packing and unpacking boxes became habit. We didn't both get home from work until 10pm on a week night, and then we would lie in bed exhausted going over my neurobiology units. I volunteered in spare time: in the mental health field, with the elderly, with the homeless, and with the developmentally challenged. These were busy, but good days.

Within 3 short years, because of my accelerated academics, I earned my degree. Convocation took place at the National Arts Centre, which was heady stuff. Walking across the stage I thought about all the greatest talent the world has to offer standing in the very same place. I accepted my diploma and couldn't help but think that at the age of 21 I had a degree, a home, a husband. A few days later Jason and I celebrated our first anniversary, and I was officially caught up in the wide berth of possibility in front of me.

I took a summer off during which I read for pleasure, and celebrated life with my friends. In the fall I found a job that meant a lot to me; it gave me the opportunity to use my degree, and help my community. All I had to do was complete my CPR training, and it would be mine.

And then my life derailed, and the path I was on was no more. I got sick, suffered through a month of misdiagnosis before reaching another few months of surgeries. It was tough to watch my dream job slip between my fingers.

Months followed filled with setbacks, frustrating rehab, and another move, a demoting move back to Cornwall. I clawed desperately for the life I once knew. I rarely saw my friends since I was not overly mobile. I also lost the waist I once had thanks to months of limited movement. I had low moments that were exacerbated by a family that didn't act like a family.

And so I found myself at 23 with nothing..or that's how it felt. I was in Cornwall, where a university degree counts for nothing. I was not employable unless I wanted to work at Walmart, which I did not. But I turned a new leaf, and then another.

It started on a sleepless night, when I got it into my head that I might like to try cake decorating. From there, it flourished and soon enough I was selling my concoctions to hungry patrons.

When the Christmas rush died down, I looked around and thought to myself, what next? And so I turned to my first love, writing, which I had pursued passionately from the age of 8-18, but had kept only on the back burner since University and more pragmatic thinking took over. But these days I have little to lose. I promised myself a whole year to pursue writing, and see where it takes me. It's been a fun ride so far.

But I look around me, and I wonder really how far I've come. I don't have a "career", and in fact I have not ever used the diploma that meant so much to me to earn. It remains buried somewhere that I don't have to happen upon often because I fear the disappointment may overwhelm me. But I am in a good place, I am proud of the words I write, and have managed to remain fairly upbeat and optimistic through it all.

All I can say for sure is that I am not where I imagined myself to be when I was sitting in my cap and gown on that night 5 years ago. According to my year book, I have failed miserably:

Ambition: Join the circus, have 17 acrobatic carnie children, make lotsa money & be exceedingly happy
Probable Destination: To get a sugar daddy, 2 dozen credit cards, and too many shoes to count.

Well, okay, I am happy, and I do have lots of shoes.

And to my fellow graduates of the class of 2000, how have you fared?


Anna, your ambition: to be somewhere tropical & to have more than 1 tattoo.

Sarah: being a software engineer with my own company.

Kelly: To become the highest paid real estate appraiser with a house in every corner of the globe.

And so my dears, are we any closer to achieving our goals?

The City of Cornwall

This is either the easiest or the hardest post I've ever had to write - and I'm not sure which. I have at times been quite verbal about my beefs with this city, and yet I live here, at least temporarily...so it must have some redeeming qualities, right? Shane, astute questioner, amateur astrologer, and profound blogger, saw fit to ask me recently just what it is I like about the city where I grew up. Shane, here is your answer (and what a brave soul you are for daring to ask):

The first thing that comes to mind when contemplating the enigmatic city of Cornwall causes me to borrow from the motto of my high school: small enough to know you, big enough to serve you. I think this is a fair assessment of the city, after all, we do have a Walmart now (though I remember the days of yore when we traveled across the border to behold such a sight). We have a couple of actual chain restaurants, enough liquor and beer stores to keep us well-lubricated, one Tim Hortons for every 5 people, and one hardware store for every 10. And we manage to live in this lap of luxury with the low, low population of just 45, 642 inhabitants. I personally know 45, 639 of them, but haven't had a chance to bring a casserole two blocks over to the new family just moved in. I will get around to that later this week. I would vouch for at least 300 of them, and warn you not to lend money to maybe half.

I mentioned before that my family would cross the border back in the day, and this is true. Many still do it now, but in the late 80s and early 90s, Canadians headed into the U.S. en masse to take advantage of good prices, and if lucky, Canadian dollars at par! We marveled at stores like TJ Maxx, Winners, and Payless Shoes. And yes, we're all very embarrassed about that now. Every Sunday, we would hop on the bridge that connects Cornwall to Massena NY. The van would be running on fumes, so if there was any traffic at the toll booths, we'd have to coast down the other side of the bridge. Gas was really cheap back then, and we frequented an American gas station weekly - this was so ingrained in family tradition that my mother told us all stories involving my "adoption". She swore that one of the Native gas attendants had given me up in exchange for a bucket of chicken (never mind that I am the fairest of the bunch, at times we all believed it). We would hit the big mall dressed in our very worst apparel. We wore pants that barely buttoned, shirts that were frayed, and big floppy winter boots that I particularly found embarrassing. If our shopping was successful, we would change into the new clothes and toss out the old clothes - the road back to the bridge was always brimming with discarded Canadian clothes. If my mother was in a good mood, we would get a special treat: buffet at the Ponderosa! Oh how we loved that buffet...although I remember a time or two when I sat sulking over my cherry coke (cherry coke!- oh those zany Americans, what will they think of next?), trying to hide the fact that I was wearing old lady boots up to my knees in the middle of April. Yikes.

But Cornwall is not just the gateway to New York. We also sit against the border to Quebec, which in some ways is better than New York, because the legal age for drinking in Quebec is 18! Score! So by the time we were 14 we could convince an older sibling to drive to le depanneur, which is a cleverly located corner store within spitting distance of the border, which profited from selling no name liquors to underage kids (I remember buying lemon-beer from there once, and how badly it burned coming back up). Quebec is a lovely place to visit for great dining and shopping also, and the strip clubs in Montreal are fah-bu-lous! Montreal is a drive of only an hour and half, Ottawa clocks in at about an hour's drive away, Kingston an hour and a half, and Toronto maybe 5. I like to think of Cornwall as the little hub that could.

One of my favourite places in all of Cornwall is the library. When I was a kid, the library had maybe half a dozen tiny branches each containing fewer books than I had in my closet (Babysitter's Club #1-infinity, same with Sweet Valley High) dispersed throughout the counties. Some years ago it amalgamated into one big site in an old building that used to be a post office. It is ornately done in marble, and you can either lose yourself in an overstuffed chair, or sit on a bar stool watching traffic whiz by as you flip through a magazine. It feels historic and rich, and is perhaps the city's main jewel.

Otherwise, most of the city's best attributes are outdoors. The bike path, for instance, stretches from one end of the city to the other and beyond. Jason and I partake of it often. It runs parallel to the beautiful St. Lawrence river so the view is breathtaking. There are benches and gazebos and picnic tables dotting the path, where we can sit and share apple slices, or wine, or hand jobs. Er, cookies. It was a great privilege to grow up near the water, where I often fished for perch with my grandfather, made pitiful attempts at water-skiing with friends, and was often thrown violently off of inner tubes after being towed behind a speed boat, and dumped ceremoniously in front of a mob of hungry bar patrons at one of the many riverside pubs, like the good old Blue Anchor in Glen Walter, which was my childhood neighbourhood.

Glen Walter was a lovely place to raise children. We had friends instead of neighbours. We would jump on our bikes and accumulate members of our posse, making revving noises as we sped around the suburbs. Almost all of us had a pool in the backyard, with an acre of land to spare for general running around on. We had a playhouse, a big deck, lilac bushes, and a fire pit. The hill in our backyard was great for tobagganing in the winter, and slip-n-slides in the summer. The land fell so that we also had a sizeable skating rink in the winter with plenty of room for snow castles and snow people aplenty. Sometimes we saw deers or foxes in our backyard, and once we even saw giant rats! Well, that's how my sister saw it anyway. They could more accurately be described as beavers, if reality interests you. We would go frog-catching at the pond, and after a spring rain we would dig for worms because our Pa paid us a nickel a piece!

I have picked my own strawberries in the patches nearby, as well as apples in the orchards. I have eaten corn grown by my own family's farm, and drunk milk fresh from their cows. I have enjoyed the peaceful serenity of Cooper's Marsh, and visited the Bird Sanctuary. I have shorn sheep and watched cheese be made at Upper Canada Village. My lungs have thanked me sincerely for all of the delicious fresh air I have breathed in over the years.

I live in the kind of city where the people leave their doors unlocked (if American, see the movie Farhenheit 9-11 for more of this odd behaviour). People are nice to each other. When my mother's house was on fire, one neighbour rubbed her back while another offered booze. Twice I've lost my purse, and twice it was promptly returned, and the finders were hesitant to accept my reward money. Crime is not unheard of, but it's not rampant. The police have time for other things, like the R.I.D.E. program run by the O.P.P. - every single time I've been stopped at a check point and asked how much I've had to drink, I am thankful to live in a place where crime is not just attended to, but prevented.

I live in a sleepy town where everybody knows my name. In grade 8 our graduation ceremony was held at a Chinese kareoke bar. Me, and the 6 other graduates, crowded around the microphone to sing Yellow Submarine. Many of us have kept in touch. The city newspaper features either myself, or someone I know well, within its pages every few days (and no, I don't just mean the Police Blotter). In Cornwall you can see a movie for $4.25, and buy a beer for $2.50 (talk about a cheap date).

Cornwall, scene of my youth, current home, city where the Woody Allen movies will always be on the shelf for me to rent, where the bartenders are happy to make "these martinis you speak of" if only I provide a recipe, and where dwellers are excited to enjoy the "gourmet" stylings of -shock!- pasta: you are not so bad a place to come from. Not so bad at all.

[Have a burning question for Jamie? Nothing is too trivial, and by god, nothing is too bizarre. Ask away. Send questions to: the amazing willy wanker @ g mail . com (no spaces).]

God of Wine

The Lamborghini races along the old highway, going nowhere in particular, but going there fast. The road traces the contour of a familiar river; the car becomes a red blur along this road. I am unimpressed by the car. I think it's ugly, but there aren't many like it in the area, indeed there are not many people from a certain income bracket in the area, which makes the car, and its driver, conspicuous.

Strands of my hair whip around my face, threatening to mar the cerise lip gloss I have carefully applied. The wind is strong, but the sun is hot, and it feels good. The flowers on my skirt ruffle with the breeze. My toes, painted red for the summer, are up on the dashboard. Any oncoming cars would have quite a show, but there are none. It's just me, and Justin, and Linda. Linda is the car. He named the car. I try not to judge him too harshly for this.

Unlike me, he is tanned. When I am close enough, I can smell the sun in his skin, as if he's marinated in it. He looks over, and smiles. One eyebrow is raised cockily over his Raybans. God he's good looking, and damned if he doesn't know it. It’s that smile, so disarming, that got me here in the first place. He is charming and aloof, and irresistible to women. He is sure of himself, and sure of me.

At his house, we sit out on the patio, indulging as the night brings cooler air. Wolf Blass, Yellow Label. My toes are in the grass, my sandals long forgotten. We talk of the Mordecai Richler I am currently reading, and sip the wine, wine that will forever taste like summer evenings to me. I am 17, and impressionable. I don't know it yet of course, I feel worldly and sophisticated when I'm with him, but the fact remains that I was young, and a lot of what happened that summer shaped me in ways I am still discovering today.

We sit in 2 scooped canvass chairs; we hold hands between them, watching the sky turn orange, then burn into pink, glare briefly in red, and then go out in a convoluted blue. There is music playing somewhere, it goes well with the wine, intermingling somewhere between my tongue and my heart. He pulls me to my feet. We dance in the grass; there isn't dew on it yet, but it feels cool between my toes. We don't dance cheek to cheek, that only happens in the movies; we dance cheek to chest since in my bare feet I am a good foot shorter than he is. His shoulders are so broad that I get lost in them when he holds me tight.

He tells me I have beautiful collarbones, then leans down to trace their contour with his tongue. Finally, he reaches my mouth. He controls his desire, taking his time, driving me crazy. He leaves me breathless in the moonlight with his kisses, and then leads me back inside.

A little while later, he is tending to my carpet burns. We laugh, and languish, and polish off a second bottle of Yellow Label. I sit between his legs, leaning against his chest, and I feel him stiffen with excitement, ready to go again. He may be a decade older, but he’s as eager as any boy I’ve ever known, just far more deliberate.

As he takes a nipple possessively in his mouth, I think to myself, So this is growing up.

Hi. My Name is Stereo Mike.

(A love letter to Ed.)

The music is slick on my skin, sealed in by a thin coat of sweat. It's hot in here, the sultry kind of hot; the sticky kind of hot; the best kind of heat I know.

Cigarettes will kill you. I think this when you take a drag. I wish I was a cigarette, that your lips were on me, drinking me in. I wish I was the cloud around you, that I was the scent you carried.

You always have a drink in one hand, and one for me in the other. So I'm sipping on a juice and gin and it awakens my kaleidoscopic mind. Red is the vision. Red is the feeling pulsing all around us.

You have a pretty mouth, you say. A dirty little mouth. The hairs stand up on my body, I lean in close. You haven't touched me yet.

There are people all around us, long legs and big tits, and you never take your eyes off mine. I'm the prettiest mess you've ever seen.

You tell me you don't dance, but we do. Close. And I want a TV embrace. I want you to push me against the wall and kiss my neck. Your hand touches my arm and I ignite. Friction is turning to fire.

Tell me where you'd hide, you whisper in my ear. Your hot tongue darts out and licks my lobe, searing my skin, marking me as yours. I am.

I tell you how I wish I was in your apartment tonight. I bite my bottom lip. I see you watching; you grab me and pull be close. My breath a tickle on your neck, I whisper I want to see your clothes beside, your clothes beside your bed.

I guess I'm just a fool who never looks before she jumps.

You take me by the hand and lead me through the crowd. I know people will talk. I know just what they'll say. I wish I could say that everyone was wrong. I wish everyone was wrong. I know they're not and I don't care. I will only regret the things I don't do. I don't have many regrets. Who'll risk their own self respect in the name of desire? Lovers will.

We sit close in the cab; the city speeds by under stars I can't see. You tell me you're too old for me. I tell you I'm older than my years. Your hand is on my thigh. I am so alive I could die. You are the fire brought to my babylon, you tell my shoulder, so intimate the words lick me and leave me wet.

Every time I play an ace my partner always trumps.

At your place, we walk into this room and fumble in our haste. Clothes are quickly discarded. We lay it down. You devour me with taste. You stretch me with your hands. You love to watch me beg. You offer a la carte. It must feel good to stand above me while I worship at your alter and watch the ripples fade away.

I wake up in your twisted sheets the next morning, your hand still holding my breast. I find bruises on my thigh; souvenirs I will take home with me. So this is goodbye. This isn't for madder love. This is goodbye.

I guess I'll go through life just catching colds and missing trains.
Everything happens to me.

Time passes, I see men come and go. And how I wish I was in your bed tonight. To taste the salt upon, the salt upon your neck. To feel your body press, pressing down on me.

You are an indellible imprint on my mind; a sensation I can't forget. I know that life is for the taking. I still want that TV embrace.

You Are More Dead To Me Than Your Dead Mother

This is my attempt at flash fiction.

Anyone who has been here even once before knows that I am a long-winded bitch, and no one knows that better than me (oh, my aching fingers!). I wanted to see if I was capable of being succinct, and this is a challenge to me not only because I write a lot, but because I hate to self-edit. This one clocks in at 387 words, so yay for me, and yay for you, a quick read for once!

...

The buzzer from the downstairs lobby sounds in my apartment, and my heartbeat quickens in response. Who dares drop by unannounced? I send my query down the voice box, and the crackling voice that responds is my mother’s. My mother’s! Four months I’ve been living on my own, and she picks today to surprise me with a visit.

All I can do is send her up. I have to. I have 15 seconds at most as she walks up the flight of stairs and squints at the rusty numbers nailed to our doors. I survey the scene: empty pizza boxes, laundry both dirty and clean, textbooks and foolscap scattered haphazardly, trampled CD cases, empty bottles of Crown Royal, junk mail and take-out menus, candle wax, and gym bags. The mess is monumental. But it’s not my fault, at least, not really. I go to school full-time. And I work full-time. That’s 2 full times! Logically, each person can only have one full-time since full-time suggests all the time is full. And yet I fill my time twice, somehow, and am learning to be a wife and co-ed and a self-sufficient adult at the same time. What I don’t seem to find time for is tidying the apartment as much as I should. And now my mother will know. Shit.

I run first to the small bathroom, and do what I can in there. It’s not enough. Not enough by far. Then I kick things hurriedly under the bed, and try to cover the most obvious stains on the bed with rumpled sheets. I fill my arms with all manners of sin and stuff them in unforgiving, bulging closets.

And then I hear my mother’s polite knock. I’m not ready to open the door. I can’t possibly dream of letting her in, and yet every moment she spends out in the hallway is another moment for her to notice the burnt out light bulbs, the mysterious stain on the carpet, or the intense scent wafting from the drug dealer’s neighboring apartment. So, I pull back the chain and twist the deadbolt while silently praying to a god I haven’t said hello to in quite a while. I smile bravely as I open to the door to my mother, feeling that I have officially failed as a grown-up.

Adventures in Babysitting

I was a teenage babysitter. Since then, I have been many things to many people: a waitress working for tips one bloody nickel at a time, a starving student, an underpaid & undervalued salesperson, an office scapegoat, a reluctant ambassador to my country, a perfectionist confectionarist, a tired wife, a wordless writer, an unwanted daughter, a counsellor who takes it personally, a wary advocate, a friend who tries her best and often fails, and after all of this, I can tell you only two things for certain:

1. babysitting is the hardest job on earth
2. see #1

There is no glory in babysitting, no fortune to be made, no resume-building, no lunch-breaks, even. In fact, when you are tired and need a break, you have to make lunch for other people, convince bratty kids to sit and eat it, then clean up after them. These may be the joys of motherhood, but they are the bane of every babysitter. Babysitters have lower tolerances for snot and other bodily fluids; those things are only cute to the person who pushed this kid out into exitence. You may wipe his various orifices with nary a second thought, but trust me: I do not. Three New Year's Eves in a row, I cleaned the puke of 3 different boys (and this was before I was a drinker!). Did I get a big cash bonus? No. An employee of the month award? Nada. Not even a preferred parking space.

The real kicker is when the parent asks you to do something that they know very well they've never been able to do. One mother would always remind of the 8:30 bedtime, and when that time rolled around, the kids would invariably kick and scream and raise holy hell, but I would get them to bed for better or worse. That's what a babysitter does, even if it doesn't win you any favours with the kids. But the parents are the boss, and like any boss, they have no qualms about delegating all their dirty work down to you. On the drive home, this mother would ask at what time they had gone to bed, and when I told her 8:30, she would always say "Well, they never do that for me!" Gee I'm shocked. I think she just wanted someone else to fail at parenting her kids for once, so every week she set me up for failure, and every week I showed her that at age 13 I was a more competent caregiver than she was. But impossible bedtimes are the least of your worries when you're babysitting because parents have no shame. They'll ask you to do anything:

-"Oh, did I mention the kids are having a sleepover? You don't mind 3 or 4 extra, do you?"

-"Billy's going to need your help studying for his math test. It's tomorrow and he hasn't started yet."

-"Can you bring over some of your own movies? I didn't have time to rent one. Oh, and no hooters."

-"I need 4 dozen cookies for tomorrow's bake sale, but can you do them after Kaitlyn's gone to bed? I think she's got chicken pox or something."

-"Do you know papier mache? I kind of told the kids you'd help them recreate the first Thanksgiving."

-"Can you give the twins a bath? By the smell of them, it's been 3-4 days and they're starting to crust over."

-"Here's a list of 30 Scout Moms - can you see if one of them will switch Den Mother nights with me this week?"

-"If Chris doesn't eat all his broccoli, make him clean his room and his brother's."

Babysitting can be quite hellacious, you never know what's going to come up. But once you're there, you're committed. Parents try to rush out the door before you can even ask too many questions, and then you're left with over-tired, sugar-high kids (because parents are always generous when the babysitter's coming over!) who start trying to take advantage of you the minute parents are gone("Didn't Mom tell you? We're always allowed chocolate for supper on Saturdays AND we can stay up as late as we want AND we can say swears!").

One of the regular gigs I had when I was 13 was for 2 brothers just a year apart in age, but just a couple years younger than myself and both already much taller and broader than I. We all went to the same elementary school so we would walk to their house together when the bell rang. They lived just down the hill from the school, beside a big fenced-in building we used to call the ______ Institute, a very politically- incorrect term for their cultural/religious sect. During recess, we were terrified of that end of the school yard. If you accidentally kicked a ball over the fence, it was a goner. I don't know that these people were all that bad (probably just misunderstood - remember, we were a bunch of white Catholic kids), but they did sacrifice rabbits in front of our young eyes, and that was enough to keep us scared from pre-k through the 8th grade. The worst offense was to have your shoes stolen and thrown over that fence. You would be walking home barefoot that evening because not even the teachers would go near the fencse.

So, it was enough that this house sat beside the dreaded fence, but it had a second thing going against it too: it was an almost-exact replica of the Bates Motel. It was a big, old house, and the later it got, the louder it got. The floorboards creaked for no reason. Huge elm trees tap-tap-tapped against the windows. Some rooms sat empty, echoey, and dark. I sat up long nights, fully spooked, counting down the hours. I had to work 8 hours to earn $20, and in those days, you couldn't buy anything for less than $20.

Back in the day, I operated under the principle that my mother had taught me: always leave the house as clean or cleaner than you found it. To that end, I spent many nights chasing kids around, picking up after them. When they went to bed, I would do up the dishes. Often, there were already plenty of dirty dishes piled precariously in the sink, and I would do them all. And I did it for $2.50 an hour.

You know what's ridiculous? Making $2.50 an hour, that's what. Oh, we like to make a big fuss about the poor children in other countries toiling away in sweatshops for peanuts, but we look the other way when we're the ones opening up our wallets to the little 12 year old girl who watches our children. We acknowledge that the teenagers wrapping up our sandwiches should make minimum wage, but how about the person who cares for our children? Apparently not. And what does that say about our priorities? Your children's safety and well-being should be worth more to you than $2.50. At any rate, I have always said that if you can't afford the tip, then don't go out to dinner. Similarly, if you can't afford a fair wage for a babysitter, then either stay home, or suck up to the in-laws.

Chaos off My Back and Onto the Page

Two looping divinities chase each around a figure-8 race track. Around and around they go, infinitely. There is no space to stop, no time for rest. They will make their perfect circles forever.

The sun and the earth intertwined, confusion and chaos combine, perfect chaos results. Chaos is perfection, I wear it proudly. A tiny speck am I, a fraction of the end result, one dot among many, but a contribution to chaos all the same.


chaos

In the beginning, there was chaos, vast and mystical. When darkness was wrapped in darkness, before there was death, before life, before mortality or morality, before there was existence itself, before night or day, before even the idea, there was chaos. Chaos contains the seeds of everything that existed before Order. Chaos precedes everything, even time. Chaos breathed life where there was none before. Chaos gave birth to the universe. Chaos is the mother of all things. Chaos is the gap between heaven and earth. Chaos is brooding and mysterious. Chaos brings creation.

We are the children of chaos.


*****

The man at the counter was big, and white, and hairy. He showed us a picture of his angelic children, tattooed on his thigh. We looked at each other, and wondered what we were getting ourselves into. Gulp. Double gulp.

We were brave that day, or else just out of our minds. We sat in the bookstore across the street, trying to find just the right elephant. The kind of elephant you could live with for a lifetime. We flipped through the pages, giggling nervously, and then made the selection. We marched proudly back to the big hairy man, determined.

She was nervous, I was not, so she went first. I held her hand and watched the artist get to work. She made faces, maybe she cried a little, but soon there was an elephant. There was no turning back. Elephants are forever.

When it was my turn, I sat backwards in the chair. A man I didn't know rolled up my shirt and tucked it into my bra. I sat that way, exposed to anyone who came in the front door. Chaos made its way onto my back, in a tender place. It hurt. A lot. But still less than I'd braced myself for.

On the way home, chaos was jostled and raw, but the pain was a nice reminder of what we'd done. Chaos was a new beginning. It was the start of something I didn't quite understand yet.

Chaos is 5 today, which means that Anna, it's time to wish you the happiest of birthdays. I can't believe how old you are! I hope elephant is doing well, and that your day has all the right kind of chaos.

All Dogs Go To Heaven

Patches was a mutt that we brought home from the local OSPCA. I think he was adopted for a mere $35. My mother thought it was a good idea to get a dog after my budgie (Polly, named after a very similar-looking budgie from the Polka-Dot Door) was fed a Barbie brush by my youngest sister, and then choked to death.


Patches became a member of the family the instant he appeared on the scene. I remember playing around on the kitchen floor with him, as tentative as he was. The people at the pound had indicated that there was a good chance he'd been abused as a puppy by his previous owners. For as many years as we had him, he remained insanely afraid of the water. He hated baths. He even cowered when we brought the hose out back to fill his water bowl. It took a long time for him to trust us, but eventually, he was a cuddly and happy dog. For the first half of his life, he lived outdoors. He was always tied up, but to a very long rope that allowed him free reign of the backyard. With all that space, it was funny how he really preferred the very edges of his territory. He would run back and forth on the last path of land that his rope would allow him to reach, so there was always an arc or worn grass in our yard. I remember one day going out back to say hello to him, and his lips did a strange snarly thing at me. I thought he had rabies and ran back inside. Later, I realized that that's how dogs smile. When Patches rewarded me with a smile, it made my day.

He loved spaghetti and cheese slices, and sticking his nose out of the window during car rides. Sometimes he would smell home and jump out of the moving car to race there before us. He once made friends with a rabbit in the yard, and even began imitating the bunny's hop. He was terrified of thunder storms, and would claw his way up around my shoulders to sit out their duration.

He slept in the basement every night, and in the mornings we would let him out to do his business. In the snow, he would act insulted that his paws should touch such cold stuff. Often he would roam a little around the neighbourhood, but when we called him back, he always came. Then one day, when we opened the door to let him back in, he was there, without being called. He slinked in the door, and went downstairs. No vying for breakfast crumbs. No scratching himself under the coffee table. When I followed him downstairs, he bared his teeth at me, and gave a half-hearted growl. He was hiding himself in with the storage. And then I noticed it: blood. He was attacked by a German Shepherd that had been stalking the neighbourhood of late.

We rushed Patches to the vet, and he was saved, but just barely. The doctor retrieved pieces of the other dog's teeth from a hole in Patches' neck. His recovery was lengthy, and though he did recover physically, he was a different dog. He no longer spent his days outdoors. He became a house dog. He slept with me at the foot of my bed. He was intrigued with the wall of mirrors I had in my room; his reflection was sometimes a source of amusement to him, and sometimes a source of apprehension.

His health slowly declined. He had arthritis and was going blind. He was becoming less and less mobile. We made the painful decision to put him down. I should say that my mother and I made that decision, and while we were at it, my mother also decided that it would be best not to saying anything to my sisters until after the fact. The few days we had left for him were hard for me: I got to say goodbye, I snapped a lot of pictures, but I had to do it quietly.

I held him in my lap as we drove to the vet's. Truthfully, I think he knew. The vet gave him the first shot to "relax" him. I wish there had been a shot like that for me. I got to stay with him while the shot did its work. Eventually, his legs didn't work for him anymore, so he just laid in my arms and rested. It was heart-wrenching. The worst feeling and the deepest sadness I have ever known. Then the vet came to get him, to give him that last shot. He laid on a table that had an old Star Wars blanket on it; I noticed it because I had the matching sheets on my own bed, inherited from an older cousin. Patches took his last breath, and closed his eyes.

My mother and I sat in the van in the parking lot for a long time, neither of us able to drive home. To this day, I have never cried harder. We also knew that at home we would have to tell my sisters what we'd done. I still miss him.

My mother vowed that she would never have another dog again because she knew she could never go through that last scene again. For a long time, I felt the same way, but the fact remains that I love have a doggie around, and after I had moved in with Jason, I felt that presence was missing. We mulled it over a long time (which means, I begged Jason mercilessly). Jason had previously been a cat person and wasn't sure how he would get along with a dog. Finally, he realized that my nagging wasn't about to stop any time soon, so we braced ourselves and went out into the world of doggie adoption.

My instinct was to search the OSPCA again, so we toured all the dog pounds in the area. We spent hundreds of dollars in cab fare going from place to place, and the end result was Jamie in tears. I couldn't stand all the sweet faces looking up at me from their cages, begging to be brought home. I couldn't adopt all of them. As it turned out, I couldn't adopt any of them. The shelters only had bigger breeds, and though we didn't have any breed in mind (mutts are still okay by me), we had done our research, and wanted a small dog to suit our apartment lifestyle. Jason comforted me, and realized that he had a lot more on his hands than he had bargained for. His girlfriend had a broken heart.

That's when Jason did what he does best: he swung into action to make sure I got what I wanted. He called around to pet stores, and found some suitable possibilities. We walked into one, and there she was, our new puppy. She was the tiniest, sweetest little thing I had ever seen. She was a cockapoo (cocker spaniel-poodle mix), and had curly black hair with splotches of white. She was extremely friendly and cuddly from the get-go. We bought all sorts of doggie paraphernalia, and brought her home.


The first week we had her, she was a no-name dog. We tried out many, but none seemed to fit her personality. Finally, it was my mother who made the suggestion Mabel, and that was it. Mabel was a funny little dog. She hated exercise. I adore going for walks, but we soon learned that Mabel was good for one lap around the block, and that was it. Any further and we'd have to carry her home. She loved to play, though, and did so actively. She would bring us her purple dinosaur, and when we threw it, she would take off like she'd been ejected by a canon. She never got used to the hardwood flooring, and she would slip and slide, and body-check herself off of the bed and just keep going.

Mabel got a bit taller, but never much bigger. We had to groom her regularly because of the poodle in her. She would have weekly baths, and act insulted but really reveled in the attention. I would towel her dry, but she still insisted on laying her nose to the carpet in the hallway, and rubbing herself dry on the flooring. Mabel was a real princess. My sisters adored her, and she made friends wherever she went.

It was a good thing she was so cute because she got into a lot of trouble. Garbage was her real passion in life, and she made enough of her own to leave us baffled that so much could come out of such a small little dog. We became concerned over her too-many bathroom trips and inability to gain weight. We took her to the vet's, who told us to put her on a special diet and monitor her progress. We did, but nothing really changed. When we bathed her, we could see her skinny little ribs sticking out.

The next trip to the vet was tragic. He told us that our Mabel had a twisted stomach and that she would not ever be healthy. She would suffer, and die a drawn-out death. He suggested to us that the best thing for Mabel would be to leave her there and have her put down. Knowing that something is 'for the best' does not make it easy to do. We said our goodbyes, as she smiled at us, wagged her little tail, ever eager to play.


Mabelline

So, two dogs, two good friends, two broken hearts. It's been two years since we left the vet's without Mabel, and I'm starting to get that itch again. Am I crazy? Mabel and Patches are irreplaceable, and losing them was awful, but I can't help but feel like a doggie would be a nice addition. I love coming home to that happy face. I love making someone's day just by getting out the leash. I think it's getting to be puppy time.