And Now Abideth Faith, Hope and Charity

All those humanly vital ingredients for survival
are there, in abundance, Faith, Hope, Charity.
Does the order and the singular manner of their
magnitude concern us in the dark night of despair?
Suffice that they manifest, for without those
sisters of survival, devastation, forlorn destitution
and graspingly greedy Death alone would remain.

One might assume that Dread Death had
feasted extravagantly enough as it was, consuming
a quarter million of Haiti's perennially
hopelessly indigent. But no, there he is, the
fallen angel, slavering over those newly delivered
to his bony maw by disaster-endemic choleric disease.

The millions of earthquake-displaced huddling
in makeshift hovels of canvas, plastic, paper and tin
against nighttime cold and winter rains, praise God
and fervently pray for deliverance from these
incessant tests of their simple faith. As they raise
voice in Hosannas their faith remains their hope.

They extend charity of thought toward the
outside world stricken by Haiti's pathetic presence
reflecting a people's miserable past, present and
destiny. Charity rains down heavy with morose
guilt from abroad as thousands of organized
charitable groups provide water, food, medicine.

Predators roam the squalid camps seeking out
the vulnerable; women and children. Who to keep
them safe from harm? People linger without
purpose, seeking comfort among their own, as
orphaned and lost children weep and seek
refuge and food to still their pangs of hunger.

Foreign governments pledge aid dollars that
slip effortlessly into the pockets of corrupt
officialdom. In crisply washed frilly dresses,
hair meticulously pigtailed, girls and women
join their menfolk in voodoo ritualistic ceremonies
and ruined cathedral masses where the bodies of
other faithful remain interred under the rubble.

In this ruined, bleak country the Three Graces
of timeless legend immortalized by human need
and nature's devastating deed, dance gracefully,
raising plummeting spirits. In Haiti, Faith, Hope
and Charity clasp one another with love and divine
forbearance. Well they might for what it avails. 

 

The Inner Self

 

 

Life is a difficult passage - from childhood
curiosity, stimulation and growing aspirations
to the development of memory, experience,
regret and profound concerns and finally,
disappointments. We are singularly fortunate
when the serendipity of personal fortune
outweighs the overlapping misfortunes that
are met and dealt with on our life-journey.

It is incumbent upon us all, in reflection of
the finer emotions we are gifted with, to care.
The manner in which we express that care, on
every conceivable level, identifies us as
individuals. When caring becomes an intolerable
burden that makes a misery of our lives, there
is a useful human antidote: humour.

There is no situation, however stressful and unhappy
in its dark bleakness that does not hint at humour
for even humour can have its grim edge, lifting
us from submission to despair. Before we
stretch the tether of emotional balance to its
snapping point, humour beckons to be heeded.

A lighter mood has its own perspective, capable
of reflecting hope and deliverance from the
destitution of lonely, devastating destruction of
confidence in the future. Where there is no hope,
there is no future. Where there is not future, there
is no reason to prolong life. The imperative is to
steer in the direction of life and the future. One
where the light of hope and comedic relief from
life's stressors liberate us from rejecting ourselves.

We can laugh and find humour everywhere; light
and carefree, or mercilessly dark. But humour,
withal. Transient but renewable, sturdily useful,
enrapturing at times, insightful and mind-directing,
it may become a tool of choice in our enduring
free-choice subliminal quiver of survivalist options.

 

 

Skip One Generation

 

It is a conundrum. Why, that is, people
have children. As a way to complicate lives,
nothing else quite matches child-rearing
for resulting agitation, confusion, frustration.
The child questions and challenges the parents'
authority while the parents attempt to fulfill
their parental mandate to guide, protect,
encourage and support their offspring.

Difficulties in achieving this most basic
of human social protocols, to obey nature's
first law of survival through genetic inheritance,
bumps hard up against nature's other imperative,
the child's quest for affirmation of independence.
The parent-child gulf of one separating generation
is so profoundly vast as to produce a malfunctioning
relationship not readily amenable to being breached.

The patent relief on the psyche of both parent
and child when they are finally free of one another's
daily puzzling divisions of temperament, values,
priorities, are profound. The parents' revenge, as it
were, is realized finally on seeing their children
join the ranks of parents themselves, confronted
by the very reflection of parent-child dissonance.

Only the grandparents are firmly in the child's
self-obsessed, entitled orbit, holding no brief for
their own children suddenly confronted by that
all-too-familiar challenge. Oppositional divides
widen, converge. The new parents' methodology
confronted by the old parents whose memory
of their own efforts remain sharply astringent .

Emotions lavished on the new generation in a
conspiracy linking children and grandparents,
excluding the parents, the agony of raising
children reveals its purpose as a necessary albeit
blighted tedium whose end result, the grandchildren
who can do no wrong, delights the grandparents
into a state of exuberant elderly amnesia.

 

 

Once Again To the Breach!

 

 

There, she's done it again. Your anxiously
lonely and obsessed, impetuous daughter
has chosen unwisely, and in your ears,
piercing your torn heart comes the
unleashing of the conflicted anguish. Out
it comes in an unending stream of emotional
bile against yet another man whose cavalier
approach to partnership in life has managed
to devastate expectations; are you surprised?

A brief nod to self-reproach as she moans
that her generous spirit and open heart
conspired yet again to leave her gasping in
frustrated disbelief. You cannot interject to
remind her of the imperious rejection of your
cautious advice, for now is not the time and in
fact there never will be a time. You are there, a
soft wall of compassion, absorbing her grief.

Note to self: you will shop for a luxurious set
of warm flannel queen-size sheets for your once-
again bereft child, hardly knowing where to turn
for the comfort of a life companion once again
denied her. It is a gesture the absurdity of which
will pass beyond her, and just as well, given the
circumstances. Those circumstances being nothing
you may now amend, after all those years.

Did you raise her so ineptly, arm her so sadly
insufficiently to recognize quality from liability?
Fail to imbue her with an acute awareness of her
own value and discerning discrimination well used?
Were those life lessons you imparted by word and
in deed so shallow and redundant? She is approaching
menopause. When does personal passage to life's
afflictions become one's rightful ownership? 

 

 

But It's Good For You!

 

 

He is a very small creature, but perforce not
to be judged by his size which nonetheless
houses a quite large ego, an odd belligerence,
and no small consideration of entitlement.
Ah, yes, not to be forgotten - an oversized
appetite as well, more suited to the need of,
for example, a hard-working sled dog. He,
by contrast, has naught to do but anticipate
meals laced tantalizingly with tidbits his
humans consume, and contemplate the weary
rest one is compelled to indulge in, afterward.

He is, to say the least, besotted with his
languid lifestyle. It is when, daily, the
presumptuous humans among whom he
deigns to live, assume he wishes to accompany
them on woodland rambles, that his patience
wears thin. Indolence, he feels, becomes him
so. No need whatever for the she to sigh that
he is becoming a tad too rotund, for he
most certainly favours rotund, and it is his
body, after all, under critical discussion.

Does he, to be fair, evaluate and stand in
judgement of her humanoid form? Perish
the very (awkward) thought; he has better
things with which to occupy his mind, like:
who goes there!? when they are engaged in
the silly conceit of marching through the woods
and leaving peanuts for squirrels. Yes, he is
presumptuously belligerent -- was not Napoleon?

What a futile, nonsensical pastime these
daily rambles represent, an affront to his
dignity and sense of self. His pace displeases
her; she wheedles and teases, pleads entreatingly,
resorts in irritation to authoritative tugs, which
he simply will not tolerate -- so he tugs back.
Is he therefore stubborn as she so bitterly
claims, then? Is the Pope, need we ask, pious?

 

 

The Compelling Winds

 

The shy little cousins of the wind - the gentle
zephyr, the breeze, stand by regarding the fully
mature wind with awe. The puissant grandeur
of the wind, its assured and determined mission
against which all of nature's creatures quail,
instructs and guides the breeze and the zephyr,
but they will never be capable of instilling
dread and fear in the pursuit of their assigned
roles within nature's indomitable schemes.

The gentle ones soothe, they cool and refresh,
they are met with calm expectation. Yet
they longingly regard the fearful esteem the
wind's fury elicits in its many fearful guises as
intemperate, fierce, pitiless, bitter, raw,
destructive and unstoppable in its self-tasked
guidance heralding atmospheric change, posing
by degrees as a hurricane, a tornado, a blunt
force blast furnace shielding its ferocious intent
behind innocent sounding names like el nino and
la nina. Snowy blizzards erasing vision and warmth,
torrential rains abetted by howling winds reveal
facets of the weather phenomena so genially
visited upon this Globe by the great Earth Mother.

Wind becomes a co-conspirator with fire,
wreaking havoc on the flora and fauna lest there
remain any doubts who sits at nature's right-hand
side; the sinister by right of conquest and
domineering intent. From the enabling resources
of the environment's firestorms to the sweeping
guidance of ice storms shredding all that stands
before them. Volcanic vapour and fiery ashes
spread far and wide over land, sea and air.
Wind-whipped ocean storms breeding gigantic
vessel-killer waves and deadly land-sweeping
tsunamis; the wind whips, master of all. 

 

 

The Untouchables

 

There, she caught herself doing it again. She wasn’t really thinking about what she was doing, it was a habit that just seemed to develop, over time. Her father teased her about it, said he was prepared to take the mirror off, to help her. His very own Miss Personality. She thought it amusing at first, then tired of hearing him say it. Her mother defended her, saying it was just natural for a young woman to try to make certain she looked all right, before confronting a stranger. Not that it was only strangers that came to the door. So she had glimpsed herself in the mirror, to make certain she looked all right; big deal.

She was running late, really didn’t want to have anyone at the door. It would be the second time this week if she arrived late at work. Mr. Peters wouldn’t say anything directly, but he noticed and he took note. It was Sheila whom it impacted. She was mature and experienced, and cut her younger colleague some slack. Even though it meant she would be harried and a bit upset, doing work they both were tasked with.

Sometimes she just got carried away, forgot the time. What with her early morning run, and too many things she let slop over from the night before that took her time the following morning, it was always a race against time to make sure she left when she should. And right then, it was time she left. Right when the doorbell rang.

It was the last few Tweets that did it. Oh, and that email she sent her cousin, just some last-minute updates on their trip. She forgot the time, got too involved and wasn’t even certain she had given a clear explanation of why everyone in the area was becoming so nervous.

Anyway, there she was, ready to leave, and now she had to respond to someone at the door. Always some kind of nuisance factor to complicate life, she sighed.

Like her Dad, putting up last-minute objections to the trip she and Nora were preparing for.

“I know young people are curious and like the idea of adventure and going to new places, but you two are out of your minds, planning a trip to Central America. You have any idea of the number of people robbed, injured, even murdered there?”

Like he did, as though he kept up to date on stuff like that. He was interfering as usual, inventing reasons why she shouldn't pursue something of interest to her. She'd be in her cousin's company, after all, and Nora had travelled on her own, before. When she mentioned this to her father he always snorted and said who'd look at Nora. She thought that was really offensive, but she said nothing about it.

“Yes, Dad, we do. We’ve talked about it. We’ll mostly be in cities, and the few side-trips we take will be with a guide. So relax, we’re not exactly stupid, you know.” They wouldn't use the services of local guides, they'd decided that. Nora knew her way around and knew how to get around, and they wanted this to be a different kind of adventure; she had confidence in her cousin, even if her dad hadn't.

“Not stupid, I never meant to intimate that, just innocent of what can happen when you’re in a strange place”, he grumbled.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake” her mother intervened. “All the young people are doing that, travelling before they get bogged down with life. They’ll be fine. They’ll be together, after all, and they’re both responsible adults, they’re not kids, after all.”

She could always count on her mom to come to her defense. Her father was just too protective, fearful of anything that could happen to his little girl. Her mother said he’d been like that since she had emerged from the womb and they both had a good laugh over that.

Theirs was the only house in the area that had a storm door over the regular front door. No one else saw the need for that. Oh, it was practical all right, to air things out in the summer heat, installing the screen part, but it wasn’t for that reason her father had installed it. It was so that he could teach her that it represented a barrier. When she responded to the front door and there was no one else around in the house, she could open the front door, and decide whether she would unlock the storm door.

Now, confronting her visitor, it was clear there was no need for precautions. She knew him. Not personally, but she knew of him, knew what he looked like, what he represented, his reputation and power in the community. She knew other things about him too, of course, everyone did. This was a small community, only six thousand people, and everyone more or less was aware of everyone else. Strangers would stick out in this community.

Even so, peculiarly alarming things had been happening in the past year and a half. There was clearly a violent predator on the loose coming from somewhere and everyone was nervous. Not her, not exactly, she felt all right, just that she was aware, as any intelligent woman should be. You can't be frightened all the time, you've got to live your life, or it's no life at all, her girlfriends had all agreed. The violently gruesome death of one young woman in the area was felt to be an isolated incident. That was a year ago and the investigators had turned up nothing at all.

There was no linkage, as far as anyone could tell, to the two women who had been bound, heads covered, raped and beaten, both within the space of a month. They'd been alone for the night. Just coincidence, or did someone local know that because they'd been stalked? Little wonder the whole town was on alert. It was top of the gossip charts. The mayor did his best to calm fears, and so did the OPP. These were rare, anomalous events in this sleepy little town.

Everyone was convinced some nutcase from Ottawa was involved, likely from one of the suburbs which weren’t, in fact, all that distant. Police had done a thorough job questioning anyone whom they thought might be involved from the area, and they’d come up with one huge zero. Anyway, nothing else had happened for awhile; it was possible whoever it was had decided to play his deadly games somewhere else, or moved, or … who knows?

“Can I help you?” she asked. “My parents have just left.”

“Hello, Miss Jackman. Heidi, I know that’s your name. Is it all right if I call you that?”

He knew her name. How odd was that. She warmed to him. The way he was looking at her. He had a reputation for being stand-offish, and there was nothing too stand-offish about his frank admiration. Suddenly she felt embarrassed. “Sure, she said, that’s all right. What can I do for you?”

Was he looking for directions? Wanting to ask her something about her parents? Her mother was involved in the local social club, maybe that was it.

“That’s all right, it isn’t your mom or dad I’m interested in”, he said, smiling broadly.

A large man, well built, must be close to 50, but doesn’t look it, she mused. Married; he and his wife famously a power couple in the nation’s capital. Bought a ‘cottage’ in the area; a lavish one-story brick house in fact, but because of its location, right at the river’s edge, it was termed a cottage. She should be so lucky, she thought wryly. Husband a wealthy industrialist; a social stature and affluence she might only imagine, and clearly politically well connected.

The town was flattered by their presence as summer residents. Pumped up with the importance of having someone like him around. It was well known that the mayor and his council deferred to him, invited him to their closed-session meetings. And it was also on the rumour mill that he pulled his influence where it mattered, to the gain of the town. More; it was bantered about he was considering opening a branch plant. There would be openings for local jobs. He had everyone’s respect.

So it was kind of puzzling that Marie, whose family owned the local pub, described to her friends a taciturn man who showed up there regularly once a week to order the ale brought in especially for his refined tastes, settling himself at the bar far from any locals in hot conversation. But here he was, Mr. Friendly, demonstrating his reputation as the jewelled presence of opportunity in situ.

“Oh, what then?” Interested in her? She wracked her mind to think why he might say that. Nothing special about her as far as influence went. She was involved with the town’s Little Theatre group but she didn’t sell tickets to their performances. Could he be an aspiring thespian? Why come to her, why not Adrian, who made all those arrangements?

“Me? You want to ask something of me?”

“May I come in?”, he asked.

She blushed again. So busy inside her head trying to find meaning in his presence she’d forgotten her manners. She glanced toward the driveway. There was his big BMW blocking her Toyota. “I’m … kind of late. I’m supposed to be at work in ten minutes”, she explained.

“That’s all right", he said, easily. 'I won’t take much of your time. Just a few minutes. You can spare a few minutes for me, can’t you?”

Her parents would never forgive her if she was rude to the man. Besides which, this was flattering, ego-appealing. Being noticed by someone like him …

“Sure”, she said, “I can spare a few minutes. Please, come in.” And she pushed the storm door wide, inviting him entry.

Stepping across the threshhold. Entering their house. Looking around. Spotting Tigger, her little orange-striped cat. “You’ve got a cat! My wife and I, we have cats”, he said.

“Yes”, she said, “I know”. And then cursed herself for saying that. Tried to make amends as though to tell him she had no personal interest, wasn’t nosy about him herself: “It’s just that”, she stumbled, embarrassed again, “everyone seems to know everything about you.”

He laughed self-deprecatingly, and drifted into the living room. Looked around, as though appraising the value of the interior. Cocking his head toward the stairs, and she wondered why. She invited him to take a seat on the sofa, and nervously sat across from him, but he quickly got to his feet again and said he didn’t mean to take any more of her time.

He wanted, actually, to show her something and it just happened he’d forgotten it in his car. It would take him a moment to get it, but on the other hand, it might be quicker, more efficient, if she just accompanied him to the car, he’d extract it and give it to her for her consideration.

Consideration? Was he offering her a job? The thought of a hefty salary doing something interesting flooded her mind.

“Just a minute, then, I’ll get my things …" She’d just jump into her own car afterward and make off for work.

“No“, he said, “don’t bother, you can get your things together once I’ve left, there’ll be ample time. This will only take a minute.”

And he grasped her firmly by her shoulders, leading her weakly protesting, out the front door, to his car.

When her mother returned from work late afternoon, she assumed her daughter was working late. Or she’d gone shopping with a friend, after work; that wasn’t unusual. But she noted the telephone answer machine light blinking. And the message was asking where her daughter was, her colleague was being swamped and couldn’t handle everything on her own. The next message fairly well repeated the original one. Finally, there was a third message, from her daughter’s employer and the man sounded fairly put out.

It was too late to call the place, they had closed for the day. She fumbled with the telephone book to find the number for her daughter’s employer, and called him. No, she hadn’t shown up to work at all that day, he grumbled.

A slow panic overtook her. She heard a sound and jumped, her worry suddenly evaporated, ready to grasp her daughter in a panicked hug of relief. And then tell her in no uncertain terms that her odd behaviour today had worried her no end, and that she had a lot of explaining to do to her employer.

But it was her husband, returning from work.

In a growing state of shock and fear they contacted the police.

“Please, Ma’m” the desk officer said, “calm yourself. Is there anyone else there we can speak to? I’m having difficulties understanding, your words are kind of running together.”