Monday, December 28, 2009
Grandchild
There she is, the lone
grandchild, basking in
the adoration of grandparents
hailing the exquisite
existence of one of
life's true miracles.
The child lingers on the
cusp of adolescence
venturing awkward steps
into adulthood, flashes
of the child still readily
apparent and exhibited.
Her adoring grandparents
see physical perfection,
applaud her lyrical grace
and pithy observations.
They delight in the presence
of this chimera whose
every emotion they clearly
read and exult in,
perfection incarnate.
Was it not ever so?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The Crystalized Wood
y
The Sky has rained frozen tears
for days, mourning the passage
of yet another year, bringing
us closer to old agedness.
How peculiar its empathy, for
we feel no such sorrow.
As we move through the woods
they too weep, but their grief
expresses their loss of twigs,
branches, limbs brought to
the snow-cushioned ground
with weight of snow and ice.
Tree trunks are glassed with ice
swaddling. The day mild enough
so droplets of melt move under
the ice sheathing like dark bugs
crawling down the trunk.
Finger-thick ice has brought
green boughs to utter decline
littering the forest floor. Above,
silently cruises the dark form
of a lonely crow. No wind, but
damp air and vanishing ice fog.
The sky, a bright pewter awning
has relented, halted its freezing
assault, and presents slivers of blue,
and there, the struggling sun. The
weeks-long frozen creek has
won its reprieve, runs free, burbling.
The Sky has rained frozen tears
for days, mourning the passage
of yet another year, bringing
us closer to old agedness.
How peculiar its empathy, for
we feel no such sorrow.
As we move through the woods
they too weep, but their grief
expresses their loss of twigs,
branches, limbs brought to
the snow-cushioned ground
with weight of snow and ice.
Tree trunks are glassed with ice
swaddling. The day mild enough
so droplets of melt move under
the ice sheathing like dark bugs
crawling down the trunk.
Finger-thick ice has brought
green boughs to utter decline
littering the forest floor. Above,
silently cruises the dark form
of a lonely crow. No wind, but
damp air and vanishing ice fog.
The sky, a bright pewter awning
has relented, halted its freezing
assault, and presents slivers of blue,
and there, the struggling sun. The
weeks-long frozen creek has
won its reprieve, runs free, burbling.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
A World Of Ice
Overnight our world has been
transformed, the sound of rain
tinkling our doors and windows
when the ambient temperature
should result in soft, billowy
clouds of white snow crystals.
Through bedroom windows a
soft apricot glow spread interior
light where darkness should yet
have reigned, reflecting not snow
but the mysterious light of the
cosmos glancing off evanescent
and bright crystals of ice.
The upper atmosphere has
played its little end-of-year prank
and what has streamed earthward
from the vast winter sky helmeting
the ground below has gradually
inexorably sheathed everything below.
Every tree trunk, limb and branch
has been limned in silver-white
the weight bringing down pine
and cedar boughs to cling to their
trunks sturdily now encased in ice.
Rooftops formerly sugared high
with snow now bear brittle frozen
sheets of sheer ice thickening as
daylight brings night to its close.
No birds will fly this day, nor
furred creatures venture outward.
Few living creatures take delight
in this gleaming beauty of the night
nor the later increase of the bright
and fabulous landscape. Fantastical
traceries of laced embroideries
etched on windows newly glazed
reminiscent of finest Belgian lace.
The treachery of broken boughs
hydro lines breached in the urban
landscape, and roads and highways
rendered dangerous pays homage to
nature's affect. Boundless beauty on
the one hand, cruel danger on the other.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Brownies, Anyone?
She was on her best behaviour. She really, really didn’t want anything to go wrong this morning. Last night she had laid out her wardrobe for the coming day. A ritual she had long accustomed herself to. A bit of a time-saver. Learned that from her mother who was always in a great big hurry. Doing that she hadn’t to worry what she’d put together in the morning, and with the time saved she could take a more leisurely shower. Even so, she would almost miss her bus, half the time.
Of course there were other things she had to do, like grab some breakfast, throw a few items together for lunch. Sometimes she’d get so interested in a novel, she’d sneak peeks at it before leaving the house, and just kind of forget the time. Her mother got kind of miserable about having to remind her. At her age, her mother said, she should have a keener sense of personal responsibility. Yeah, sure, Mom.
At her age. Well, she was in her teens, her teeny-teens, half-way through thirteen. She had chosen a white shirt with black jeans, and a crystal pendant, pink crystal in the shape of a heart that she really liked. Then she had changed her mind, because she’d already worn a white tee-shirt the day before. So she kind of reversed things, a black tee-shirt, with brown jeans, and the crystal pendant would be just fine. Even better, come to think of it, on a black shirt. Maybe a little of that blue eye-shadow? That’s another thing; putting on a little make-up took time, to do properly.
A little make-up. She definitely wasn’t interested in slathering herself with the stuff. Nothing on her skin. No lipstick, ugh. Just a bit of colour around her eyes. One of her better features. Her grandmother said she had wonderful hair, but she hated it. Her grandmother was critical of her wearing any makeup. But that’s what grandmothers are like, she consoled herself. When she mentioned this to her grandmother, she had laughed and said “that’s because grandmothers are old”. “No!” she’d responded, without thinking it through, “you’re not old, you’re Grandma.” Eliciting another indulgent laugh from her grandma.
She could get away with anything with her. Not so with her mother. Her mother thinks she knows everything about her, but she doesn’t. She thinks she can look clear through her, read everything in her mind. Whereas her grandmother is always surprised by things she says. Her grandmother always says kids these days are incredibly well taught in schools, they know so much, she can hardly believe it. Her mother says kids these days are incredibly egotistical, just think about themselves, think they know everything, and they’re rude, as well. So what’re you going to do about it? Life, it’s just life.
When she mentions these things to her grandmother, she sighs, and says it’s another world altogether. She just can’t keep up with things. It’s confusing, too fast-paced, and too invested in things that don’t really matter. Peoples’ values are confused and lacking. Who, she says, rolling her eyes skyward, can even understand this generation?
She’s got something there, who can? She still can’t puzzle out herself, why her best friend sometimes seems like a stranger to her. If they’re such good friends - and they’ve known one another for as long as she could remember - how come she still seems like she has some kind of secret agenda that she reserves for herself only. And how is it that she herself doesn’t feel comfortable enough to confide in her when there are things that truly puzzle her? It’s like when she’s at an impasse with some of her math homework and she knows she could call another friend who’se a wiz at math, but she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to admit to anyone that she could use some help. Instead, she tackles it, determined to work it through for herself.
Christmas lunch at school today. Following hard on last night's musical-dance performance for parents. A school tradition, just like the pot luck lunch they were having today, open yet again to any parents who wanted to attend. Her mother, of course, wouldn't be there, had to work. Hadn't come last night either, too bushed from everything she had to attend to; single parent, full-time job in the workforce, and another at home.
As for her, contemplating all the goodies laid out on two long tables, she chose to spurn the casseroles and pigged out on the desserts. Like the brownies that looked so luscious. And they were, they were just right, heavenly. With that deep, dark chocolate flavour and moist interior, just the way she likes them. Just the way she sometimes bakes them herself. This time, though, she’d baked a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. She’d take brownies over chocolate chip cookies any day, but she thought the cookies would go further.
She was still smarting over Morgan yesterday snarling at her to ‘shut up!’ when she’d been complaining about Miss McCullough. As though Morgan never does that. As though Morgan isn’t the one who is really the very one person who they could all count on to moan about Miss McCullough and her ranting hysterics, treating them all to those unbelievable melt-downs.
What kind of a teacher is that who can’t even get her act together? And expecting them to, after she screams at them that they’re impossibly stupid. She’s the retarded one, not them. Obviously. So she’d said to Morgan that she could just shut up herself. God, she was so tired of all that snipping and snapping back and forth. Why couldn’t they all just get along? Well, they do, most of the time, but sometimes something just seems to go kind of funny, and everyone acts truly weird.
She was glad to see that today everyone seemed in a pretty good mood. Maybe it was that everyone was looking forward to the open house. A Christmas special, an annual event at the school, where parents who had nothing better to do in the middle of the day would come out and be entertained by their coached kids, and eat all the food that they’d themselves brought over for the group pot-luck.
Not that the kids were looking forward to the parental-presence part of it. What kid is thrilled at seeing their mother or father at their school? There’s always that lurking danger that they’ll pull off some really stupid stunt that’ll make their kid look bad. It’s the thought of all that food, just waiting there; tantalizing their noses, and then their taste buds. That's what got them all excited, frantic to get at those tables.
So of course they all over-ate. Everything tasted really scrumptious. Everyone wanted to try a little bit of this and some of that, and hey, look what’s in that casserole over there! Lemmeatit! They were standing around, groaning, holding their bursting stomachs, and kidding one another about all the weight they’d gained, standing sideways so their bursting guts could be evaluated. At least the skinny kids were doing that. The ones with some flesh on them weren’t that eager to get into that particular game.
She thought that was pretty funny, actually. She had half a mind to tease Sydney, but didn’t, remembering what her mother said about the seriousness of some kids’ preoccupation with looking mean and lean. Sydney was all right, not too bright, and too concerned with her silhouette. Which was kind of crazy, since she was one of the few girls in the class who really didn’t have much of a silhouette. She resembled a notional drawing of a girl; straight up and down. So it was puzzling why she was so into her image.
Anyway, Bryanna and Lorna were standing right beside her when they each decided they’d go for another dessert. Actually, most of their lunch, like hers, consisted of ‘dessert’. With a few exceptions, like pizza slices and macaroni-and-cheese casserole, and a couple of samosas. She decided to go for another brownie, and snapped it up. She didn’t realize, because she wasn’t really looking, that the brownies hadn’t been cut right through and there was a companion piece to the one she held securely between her fingers. The extra piece didn’t quite make it, ending up on the floor. She knew that Bryanna and Lorna had seen what’d happened, but they looked the other way.
A dilemma. A few scenarios raced through her mind. Pick it up and put it back on the plate? Eauuu! Then some other kid would pick it up and enjoy it, never realizing it was full of germs. Couldn’t do that. Pick it up and place it in with the waste? What if the person who’d brought the brownies saw that and thought some ingrate felt their hard work was garbage? Embarrassing to both of them.
This weighing of options seemed to take forever in her mind, but of course she realized that wasn’t the case at all. Finally, she decided she would do nothing. Just leave it where it lay, beside the table, visible enough. Someone seeing it there would dispose of it. Knowing they weren’t the one who knocked it off the plate. And sure enough, when she looked back a short while later, it was gone.
Most of the kids in the class had tried to influence Miss McCullough about their performance time. They were really pretty psyched up right then, they told her, ready to give a terrific performance. Couldn’t they do it before lunch? They should’ve known better, understood that in their interactions with their teacher a kind of automatic reversal occurred; whatever they’d recommend she would resist and do the opposite. A little bit of psychology goes a long way she thought sourly; why couldn’t they ever remember?
So, as events unfolded, it was after lunch when she herded them back into their classroom, gave them a few short, sharp reminders about her choreography and pumped them up with endearments like “don’t make a mess of things like you usually do”, and sent them out on the stage to do their best. They did their best, and suffered for it, moving about as gracefully as a herd of rhinos. Their stomachs were full to bursting. She regretted she hadn’t gone to the bathroom, and thought her physical discomfort was well replicated by the others, evidence plain in their grimacing faces, belying the ‘elegance’ of their performance.
Should’ve known things would turn out like that. Don’t they always?
Of course there were other things she had to do, like grab some breakfast, throw a few items together for lunch. Sometimes she’d get so interested in a novel, she’d sneak peeks at it before leaving the house, and just kind of forget the time. Her mother got kind of miserable about having to remind her. At her age, her mother said, she should have a keener sense of personal responsibility. Yeah, sure, Mom.
At her age. Well, she was in her teens, her teeny-teens, half-way through thirteen. She had chosen a white shirt with black jeans, and a crystal pendant, pink crystal in the shape of a heart that she really liked. Then she had changed her mind, because she’d already worn a white tee-shirt the day before. So she kind of reversed things, a black tee-shirt, with brown jeans, and the crystal pendant would be just fine. Even better, come to think of it, on a black shirt. Maybe a little of that blue eye-shadow? That’s another thing; putting on a little make-up took time, to do properly.
A little make-up. She definitely wasn’t interested in slathering herself with the stuff. Nothing on her skin. No lipstick, ugh. Just a bit of colour around her eyes. One of her better features. Her grandmother said she had wonderful hair, but she hated it. Her grandmother was critical of her wearing any makeup. But that’s what grandmothers are like, she consoled herself. When she mentioned this to her grandmother, she had laughed and said “that’s because grandmothers are old”. “No!” she’d responded, without thinking it through, “you’re not old, you’re Grandma.” Eliciting another indulgent laugh from her grandma.
She could get away with anything with her. Not so with her mother. Her mother thinks she knows everything about her, but she doesn’t. She thinks she can look clear through her, read everything in her mind. Whereas her grandmother is always surprised by things she says. Her grandmother always says kids these days are incredibly well taught in schools, they know so much, she can hardly believe it. Her mother says kids these days are incredibly egotistical, just think about themselves, think they know everything, and they’re rude, as well. So what’re you going to do about it? Life, it’s just life.
When she mentions these things to her grandmother, she sighs, and says it’s another world altogether. She just can’t keep up with things. It’s confusing, too fast-paced, and too invested in things that don’t really matter. Peoples’ values are confused and lacking. Who, she says, rolling her eyes skyward, can even understand this generation?
She’s got something there, who can? She still can’t puzzle out herself, why her best friend sometimes seems like a stranger to her. If they’re such good friends - and they’ve known one another for as long as she could remember - how come she still seems like she has some kind of secret agenda that she reserves for herself only. And how is it that she herself doesn’t feel comfortable enough to confide in her when there are things that truly puzzle her? It’s like when she’s at an impasse with some of her math homework and she knows she could call another friend who’se a wiz at math, but she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to admit to anyone that she could use some help. Instead, she tackles it, determined to work it through for herself.
Christmas lunch at school today. Following hard on last night's musical-dance performance for parents. A school tradition, just like the pot luck lunch they were having today, open yet again to any parents who wanted to attend. Her mother, of course, wouldn't be there, had to work. Hadn't come last night either, too bushed from everything she had to attend to; single parent, full-time job in the workforce, and another at home.
As for her, contemplating all the goodies laid out on two long tables, she chose to spurn the casseroles and pigged out on the desserts. Like the brownies that looked so luscious. And they were, they were just right, heavenly. With that deep, dark chocolate flavour and moist interior, just the way she likes them. Just the way she sometimes bakes them herself. This time, though, she’d baked a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. She’d take brownies over chocolate chip cookies any day, but she thought the cookies would go further.
She was still smarting over Morgan yesterday snarling at her to ‘shut up!’ when she’d been complaining about Miss McCullough. As though Morgan never does that. As though Morgan isn’t the one who is really the very one person who they could all count on to moan about Miss McCullough and her ranting hysterics, treating them all to those unbelievable melt-downs.
What kind of a teacher is that who can’t even get her act together? And expecting them to, after she screams at them that they’re impossibly stupid. She’s the retarded one, not them. Obviously. So she’d said to Morgan that she could just shut up herself. God, she was so tired of all that snipping and snapping back and forth. Why couldn’t they all just get along? Well, they do, most of the time, but sometimes something just seems to go kind of funny, and everyone acts truly weird.
She was glad to see that today everyone seemed in a pretty good mood. Maybe it was that everyone was looking forward to the open house. A Christmas special, an annual event at the school, where parents who had nothing better to do in the middle of the day would come out and be entertained by their coached kids, and eat all the food that they’d themselves brought over for the group pot-luck.
Not that the kids were looking forward to the parental-presence part of it. What kid is thrilled at seeing their mother or father at their school? There’s always that lurking danger that they’ll pull off some really stupid stunt that’ll make their kid look bad. It’s the thought of all that food, just waiting there; tantalizing their noses, and then their taste buds. That's what got them all excited, frantic to get at those tables.
So of course they all over-ate. Everything tasted really scrumptious. Everyone wanted to try a little bit of this and some of that, and hey, look what’s in that casserole over there! Lemmeatit! They were standing around, groaning, holding their bursting stomachs, and kidding one another about all the weight they’d gained, standing sideways so their bursting guts could be evaluated. At least the skinny kids were doing that. The ones with some flesh on them weren’t that eager to get into that particular game.
She thought that was pretty funny, actually. She had half a mind to tease Sydney, but didn’t, remembering what her mother said about the seriousness of some kids’ preoccupation with looking mean and lean. Sydney was all right, not too bright, and too concerned with her silhouette. Which was kind of crazy, since she was one of the few girls in the class who really didn’t have much of a silhouette. She resembled a notional drawing of a girl; straight up and down. So it was puzzling why she was so into her image.
Anyway, Bryanna and Lorna were standing right beside her when they each decided they’d go for another dessert. Actually, most of their lunch, like hers, consisted of ‘dessert’. With a few exceptions, like pizza slices and macaroni-and-cheese casserole, and a couple of samosas. She decided to go for another brownie, and snapped it up. She didn’t realize, because she wasn’t really looking, that the brownies hadn’t been cut right through and there was a companion piece to the one she held securely between her fingers. The extra piece didn’t quite make it, ending up on the floor. She knew that Bryanna and Lorna had seen what’d happened, but they looked the other way.
A dilemma. A few scenarios raced through her mind. Pick it up and put it back on the plate? Eauuu! Then some other kid would pick it up and enjoy it, never realizing it was full of germs. Couldn’t do that. Pick it up and place it in with the waste? What if the person who’d brought the brownies saw that and thought some ingrate felt their hard work was garbage? Embarrassing to both of them.
This weighing of options seemed to take forever in her mind, but of course she realized that wasn’t the case at all. Finally, she decided she would do nothing. Just leave it where it lay, beside the table, visible enough. Someone seeing it there would dispose of it. Knowing they weren’t the one who knocked it off the plate. And sure enough, when she looked back a short while later, it was gone.
Most of the kids in the class had tried to influence Miss McCullough about their performance time. They were really pretty psyched up right then, they told her, ready to give a terrific performance. Couldn’t they do it before lunch? They should’ve known better, understood that in their interactions with their teacher a kind of automatic reversal occurred; whatever they’d recommend she would resist and do the opposite. A little bit of psychology goes a long way she thought sourly; why couldn’t they ever remember?
So, as events unfolded, it was after lunch when she herded them back into their classroom, gave them a few short, sharp reminders about her choreography and pumped them up with endearments like “don’t make a mess of things like you usually do”, and sent them out on the stage to do their best. They did their best, and suffered for it, moving about as gracefully as a herd of rhinos. Their stomachs were full to bursting. She regretted she hadn’t gone to the bathroom, and thought her physical discomfort was well replicated by the others, evidence plain in their grimacing faces, belying the ‘elegance’ of their performance.
Should’ve known things would turn out like that. Don’t they always?
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Letter To A Grandchild
Dear Angel(yne)
It was really nice to hear from both you and Mommy about that lovely surprise that Allison treated you with on Sunday. Imagine, waking up, looking out the window and seeing baskets full of chocolate, along with stuffed bears. Sounds more like a nice dream than a waking-up experience to me. Lucky you!
We had a very nice Sunday too, although we had lots of work to do. Zayde decided he would empty one of our composters to spread the compost over the gardens. Which he did manage to do. He was able to get four wheelbarrows-full, and spread two of them on the gardens in the front and the remaining two on the side gardens and the gardens in the back. And believe me, they reek!
You don’t know what the word “reek” means? Guess. How about stinky? Well, what is pure stinky-smelly to us, appears to be more like delicious-let-me-at-it! to Button and Riley. They sniff this stuff and go into pure rapture of discovery – yummy! Let me at it! Is that disgusting or what?
Next thing you know, we’ll have to take them over to the veterinarian to have their stomach pumped out. Gah! What this means is that as long as the compost smells like that we’ll have to accompany them outside to make certain they don’t gobble the stuff up! What fun.
What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Answer: You’re too young to smoke!
That was a nice, neat little pencil cartoon you did in that last letter that I just received. And to which I’m responding. Zayde opened it and read it out loud to me while I was doing some baking. Then I read it afterward, when I was sitting down to read the newspapers, relaxing. We both enjoyed your letter. And guess what? I’m laughing! So there!
Now you know, after going to work with your mother that not only does she do a lot of work related to thinking and planning and working alongside other people, but her work also involves a lot of getting about and walking around, so both her brain and her body are getting a good work-out. Right?
I’ve got to give you some advice: next time you try to write the word “dum” you should remember that it sounds just the way you spelled it, but you left out the silent letter which forms the correct spelling of the word. It is not DUM, but rather the correct spelling is: DUMB. Got it?
Having said which, I shall now relate a story about a dumb little doggy. All right, maybe she’s not dumb, it’s quite possible and I’m entirely willing to concede that it’s her owners that deserve the description. Here’s the story: Three days ago Zayde emptied one of our composters. The one that we’re no longer putting kitchen waste in, because we wanted to give the composter the opportunity to work it’s magic and turn all that kitchen waste consisting of grapefruit rinds, corn cobs, avocado skins and pits, lettuce, red pepper cores, cantaloupe rinds, and all the other stuff we toss into it – into nice decomposed compost. Well, Zayde took all that newly-produced compost (I shouldn’t say “newly-produced” exactly, because it takes a year to get compost out of all the kitchen waste) and filled up four wheelbarrows-full of it, and then went around to all the gardens, front and back of the house, sprinkling it liberally over the garden beds. That’s important when you want to enrich the soil, because of all the nutrients the decomposed waste contains. The garden uses it all to produce strong and healthy plants. Which is just what we want. Your mother could tell you all about that.
Well, guess what? Good compost isn’t supposed to smell. But guess what? Our finished compost always does. It literally reeks. Which means it smells awfully bad. Stinky, really stinky. But, just like the aged dog poop in the ravine that Button thinks it’s fun to roll it and Jordy loves to gobble up (Stevie too, I think) it smells tantalizingly good to dogs. Every chance Button gets now she heads straight for the garden beds, the sneaky little poop-head! She tries to gobble up as much of that muck as she can, before we can call her away.
Riley did a little bit of it too, but he soon lost interest, sensible little dog that he is (even if he is kind of stupid). But Button is a different story. She’s determined, despite that she knows it makes us angry with her, to get as much of that decomposed foodstuff into her belly as she can. Ugh! No kidding!
Furthermore, as happens every spring, we’ve got to keep a sharp eye on her when we’re walking through the ravine. Why, you might ask? Your mother knows why. When all the snow and ice melts it uncovers nasty stuff which is sitting on the forest floor happily deteriorating. We can’t really smell the stuff, whatever it is (often decomposing poop) but the dogs can and they love it. They make a beeline right for it, and then happily roll in it, or eat it. Button, it seems, has got over the eating part, and just enjoys rolling in it.
There’s a certain spot on the trail which we discovered much to our dismay, that it just one of those spots. Two days ago we forgot to watch her and then realized she had rolled in something fairly disgusting. All the detritus had to be brushed out of her hair when we got home, and then we had to scrub her with soapy water. Instead of remembering and trying to head her off on our Wednesday walk in the ravine, darned if it didn’t happen again.
So she got a good scolding, and no treat. It just so happens that the miserable spot she loves to roll in is located very close to where we always stop to give them treats, halfway through the walk. Two days in a row she has been denied her treat, the sneaky little devil. On Thursday we’ll take greater care.
We’re thinking of wrapping them both up and giving them as gifts to unsuspecting cat, er dog lovers.
Ta-ta for now! And Cheerio!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Boredom's a Bastard
She was bored. Achingly, mind-numbingly bored. Boredom had been her companion in place of any other. Boredom greeted her as casually as her husband once did, as she rose from her bed in the morning. It had its coffee companionably with her, followed her to work, and came back home with her at night. The most faithful companion she could ever imagine. It never lied to her, encouraged her, disparaged her, or evaded her.
But it did drive her to the same kind of despair she had experienced when she'd had her affair - once she realized her husband was doing the same. That despair over the unfairness of it all. Him leaving her in utter contempt, simply for doing what he had.
Her boredom is all-encompassing. However, she does not live alone with her boredom. Her 15-year-old daughter, busy with high school, her friends, and everything that entertains and inspires and brings delight to the morose mind of a teen-age girl, lives with her. Unlike her younger brother, she has never forgiven her father for leaving them. Mostly because, as she said, her mother’s incessant moody fatigues and lectures about the untrustworthiness of men drove both her and her brother to distraction. It was not exactly fun for them, living with their mother. Still, she refused to even see her father, acknowledge his existence. Her mother had succeeded in at least instilling that level of defiance and anger in her daughter.
She herself never sees him. She hasn’t ever once confronted him, looked him in the face, spoken with him over the last seven years that saw them first separated, then finally divorced. If he calls, to speak with their son, she listens mutely, puts down the receiver and calls her son to the telephone. She never says “it’s your father calling”, she says instead “someone wants to speak with you”.
Her son, now that he’s thirteen, spends week-ends with his father. Her family tells her that’s the best thing, that he needs to be around his father, pattern himself after a man, have a man’s influence in his life, to grow up normally. Although she bitterly resents this, she is resigned to it.
She tries not to dwell on the thought of her son accepting his father’s second wife, her replacement. Although she wasn’t certain, she felt her ex-husband’s new wife was likely one of those easily-laid women he’d been with while married to her. Her son says not so much of a word about either his father or his step-mother. He knows his mother has no wish to hear anything unless it is to condemn either of them, and that he would not do. He had said, at first, that his father’s new wife was OK, didn’t bug him. Obviously then, her ex-husband wasn’t bored. She really, truly resented that, the bastard.
He didn’t have to leave her. He could have said to her that he understood how it was, how his philandering had led her to do precisely what he was doing. But he wouldn’t admit it. He refused, adamantly, to say he had started it, that it was his sleeping around with other women that initiated her into the possibility of sticking it to him by doing the same.
“You’ve no proof” he said. “What you have is a dirty little mind, accusing me of sleeping around.”
“Right! I’ve got the dirty little mind, have I? You’re not nearly as clever as you think, mister. I’ve had reports back from mutual friends that you’ve been seen in pretty compromising situations.”
“Gossip? You depend on gossip about me to take it as proof positive that I’ve done those things?”
“Damn right, bud. I have it on the best authority. Augmented, I should add, by little clues I’ve picked up on my very own.”
“Clues? Madam Holmes, you picked up clues?”
“You’ve been too sloppy with some of your credit card charges. I’ve seen them. I can put two and two together. I never received any gifts from you from the places on that detailed listing.”
“That’s it? That’s the extent of your ‘proof’?”
“No, no it isn’t. Don’t you think even from a male perspective that it’s odd a man chooses not to have sex with his wife over a period of months at a time? Am I supposed to think that’s normal? Or might I somehow deduce that it’s normal for someone who’s getting off somewhere else?”
“Yes, you do have a mind in the gutter. I don’t have to explain, and I won’t. If you wondered you could have come directly to me to discuss any concerns you might have had. You might have been surprised at the answers.”
She was no fool, and she knew what she knew. It was indisputable. He didn’t have the kind of job that required working late nights, nor week-end trips. And suddenly there it was, his professional life requiring both those elements, with nothing but the most casual explanation from him.
In the end everything worked out to favour him, not her. They’d split everything, the proceeds from the sale of the house, the furnishings, everything. She might have looked for another house, but she decided to rent an apartment, instead. She did, though, move as far from their old neighbourhood as possible. No wish to see their old neighbours, suffer their pitying looks; try to overlook the awkwardness. Anyway, she never did like that neighbourhood, it was his choice, not hers.
And then to discover, once she was settled with the kids in their new home that he had decided to rent nearby as well. It was infuriating. She always feared, going out, that she would run into him. Worse, coming across his new wife, even not knowing who she was, what she looked like. She would have the advantage on her; likely recognizing her from a family photograph. It was too much to bear. She hated him with a grinding passion.
Which did nothing whatever to relieve her constant state of boredom. And the two companion emotions, depression and loneliness. She deserved better. The man she’d had that affair with thought so too. He had offered to pay for her apartment. Of course that came with a price. He would also have a key. And that was just too awkward, even if the kids were seven years younger, back then. Unlike her husband he had no intention of leaving his wife. He no longer loved her, he said, but he felt responsible for her, felt pity for her, for her compromised health condition.
“You said you love me” she wheedled him.
“It’s true, I said it, I meant it” he retorted, after one of their many heated discussions, when she had tried to patch the hole in her life by convincing him that he should leave his wife and marry her.
“You love me”, she said scathingly, “but not quite enough to want to live with me. Instead you’re happy living with a woman whom you no longer love, and you won’t commit to me. That’s your idea of love?”
“No, no it isn’t, but you’ve got to understand, she has no one else, she needs to be cared for, and I have that responsibility.”
“What about me?” she'd wailed, despairingly, when he would not be moved to her argument. “What about me? I’ve lost my husband because of you, and now I have nothing.”
“You can still have me” he said quietly.
“I won’t agree to those terms” she said sharply. “I won’t be a kept woman, living in an apartment you pay for, worrying about my kids getting screwed up, seeing some guy they don’t know hanging around, waiting for his intimate opportunities as soon as their heads hit the pillow. How long could people keep up that kind of relationship anyway?”
“You’re right” he finally allowed. Said he was sorry. Sorry about everything. About both of them succumbing to the relationship they had developed, each of them covertly and deliberately enjoying the thrill of illicit sex and misleading their spouses. It was no way to live. And she was right about that. Still, he would not leave his wife. And that left only one alternative.
And so they parted. It was far easier for her to part with him than with her husband. It was the idea of it; one relationship carnal and infused with the excitement of the forbidden, the other comforting in its implied social and relational security, infuriating though her husband’s stealthy forays for sex outside their home was. It seemed important at the time, and far less so as time widened the distance between the reality of her discovery and her resultant rage, and what she now experienced, a great yawning distance of boredom.
She’d given a lot of thought to the barrenness of her social life, her lack of intimacy with anyone. Confided in one of the women she worked most closely with that she had decided to start an Internet-based dating service. Her friend observed that there seemed to be a lot of those around; why did she think she might be successful in starting up yet another one?
It was, she responded, her experience with being single, with being deprived of a life-mate, of a partner in life, that made her perfect for such an enterprise. She would bring to it a deep understanding of the trauma that people suffer after relationship separations. She knew from her very own experience how difficult it was to initiate new relationships, to discover others who shared similar interests, had like values, desperately wanted to find a companion. She could easily be a leader, someone to whom others could confide their disappointments and look to for guidance. Her explanation sounded entirely rational and impressed her friend no end.
Who offered a name for such a dating service. “Call it Lilith Garden”, she said. She had considered something like “Adam and Eve”, but then discovered that name had been taken. There were other possibilities, names including the word “Paradise”, that kind of thing, but when she did her Googling homework she always discovered those names had been taken. No one had co-opted Lilith, and she decided that made sense. She had someone help her with the artwork, and putting together a Web page, and couldn’t believe the number of people who responded, emailed her, eager to join her new group. The charge, she thought, was fairly modest; she had done her homework.
It was amazing how it lifted her spirits, brought her out of herself, to communicate with all these people. Lonely, like her, desperately looking for a companion, tired of looking in places where no one ever turned up but losers. Like themselves, though they never said that. She was generous in giving out advice, and people were eager to know what she had to say, they sought out her opinion. After all, she was running this greet-and-date operation, she had to know things that eluded them. She began matching people up according to their stated values, their tastes, their interests, their backgrounds. And encouraged them, when initial impressions didn’t match their anticipated longings, to be patient, give it a try, dig a little deeper into themselves to find a more co-operative spirit. In the short few months since she had launched her little enterprise she became a different person.
She felt alive again, fascinated by what she had begun, happy to act as a social chaperone, introducing people, encouraging them. She more than earned that money she extracted from her clients, she felt. They needed her, and she was happy to accommodate that need. She was less than thrilled when, on a few occasions, disgruntled clients blamed her for a series of unfortunate couplings when things most certainly did not turn out they way they even modestly hoped for. But that, she emphasized to them, sagely, was what life was like, wasn’t it? You had to take some chances, and your lumps along with them, to find in the end what you really wanted. And guess what? She archly said to them, it works, you’ll find the one you’re aching for, they’re there, you just have to keep on trying.
After another month or so she became acutely discouraged. It just seemed to flood over her all at once, as it were. One day she was alert and enthusiastic and everyone’s mentor, the next she was completely deflated, demoralized again, wondering what on earth she was doing. Finally admitting to herself she really had no idea what she was doing, playing around with peoples’ lives, encouraging them, pushing them toward a future that had no guarantees and, admittedly, most often no promise of success in discovering that coveted pot of gold at the end of their desperate social lives devoid of contact, of meaning.
Because, in fact, that was precisely where she was stuck. Mired in a life without satisfaction to her, without meaningful contact, a relationship with another person to whom she could devote herself, and who, in the end, would find her enchanting, desirable, who would cherish her.
She had lapsed back to the beginning of her intolerable, prolonged courtship with misery. And it was eating her up with anger, bitterness and utter dejection. Her children had no idea why their mother became once again that harridan that kept plaguing them with her objections to whatever it was they wanted to do.
Her friend at work hinted that perhaps she’d bit off more than she could manage, with her dating service. It was dragging on her, convulsing her own emotions with its incessant demands.
She agreed. She felt she could no longer continue the sham. She sent out a long emailed message to all of her subscribers, admitting that she simply wasn’t fit for the task of guiding them any longer. She realized, she said, that she was disappointing them all, but she emphasized that she was as greatly disappointed in her surrender to this defeat, as they would be. She had appreciated that they needed someone to lean on, and she thought she was strong enough to help them all, because she really, really cared about them. And, she said, she was prepared, to fully reimburse to any who were interested in making such a claim, that portion of their unused monthly dues that fell into the time-frame of the suspension of Lilith’s Garden's dating service.
People upbraided her through a series of emails, accused her of trifling with their lives, told her they detested her, that she was an egotistical user of people. It wasn’t the money, they argued, it was the trust they had placed in her, and she had never had the slightest intention of honouring that trust. They would never forgive her. Some threatened to take her to court, and she worried immensely about that, but it never did materialize. She emptied her bank account, grown so nicely over that six-month period, in reimbursing all the people who demanded their money back. Surrendering those funds did nothing to ingratiate her with those who now considered her a pariah, a social monster who took pleasure in manipulating other peoples’ tender emotions.
Finally, in worse emotional shape than ever, there was a telephone call. The voice sounded familiar but her mind was completely blank. It’s me, he said. Me? Who the hell was me? Frank. Frank?
“How are you?”
“Fine, I was just wondering how you are. I’ve missed you. You’ve no idea how much.”
“Really? How good to hear from you. I hardly recognized your voice, it’s been so long.”
“Yes, it has been. But you know, I thought of you constantly through the years. I haven’t been able to put you out of my mind. I recall all those good times we had together. I’d like to see you.”
“You would? Well, I suppose that could be arranged….”
She felt ecstatic, suddenly her boredom dissipated, she felt anticipatory, gloriously happy. Unaccountably happy, in fact, since this was a call from someone she'd scarcely given much thought to, over the years. Now, hearing his voice, she too thought back to the times they’d had. She contrived to recall those times as exciting, pleasurable, meaningful. Pushing back another memory of demeaningly covert meetings, guilt, and in the end, a bitter parting.
At work next day she told her friend all about the call, about the invitation, the yearning both had to see one another again. She knew, she confided, that if she agreed to meet, they would end having sex. She wondered, she threw out casually at her friend, if it would be worth it. She was dying to see the guy, he’d been really good-looking, skilled at love-making, said all the right things, bought her wonderful gifts, made her feel really special.
Well, responded her friend carefully, what’ve you got to lose? This, from a woman who actually felt scandalized by these revelations, who would never herself ever consider such an assignation. Of course this woman was sturdily, safely married, she could afford to spurn an opportunity for a little imaginative fun. She wasn’t lonely, bored, bitter. These thoughts running through her mind, she upbraided herself for thinking of her standards, not her friend's obvious need to be encouraged, to go ahead with what she most obviously wanted to do. It just puzzled her that her advice would be sought, under the circumstances. So she simply repeated, why not, what had she got to lose?
So, it was done. They met, they had sex, they parted. Meeting one another after that seven-year gap was interesting. Amazing how seven years could alter someone’s physical appearance. He wasn’t so handsome, after all. Sexy, well not so much, why did she remember him like that? But he did relay to her some interesting information. His wife had died. Of natural causes, due to her medical condition, and he was now single. After relaying that information there was an awkward pause; neither had much to add, other than her “sorry to hear that”.
And the sex, well it wasn’t anything, in fact. She had shopped beforehand, bought slinky black underwear, imagined the sensuous delight of allowing him to undress her, fondle her, speak of his urgency. That was what had happened years ago, wasn’t it? So much a part of his appeal to her? Well, all that happened, and big deal. She could tell he felt as awkward as she did, throughout the evening they spent together. Dinner was nice, the flowers he brought along very nice, but what the hell was she supposed to do with them?
Checking into the hotel was not very nice. She didn’t enjoy that. It had lost its appeal, that mysterious, mischievous frisson of pleasure mixed with social guilt that had shot through her when they’d done that, repeatedly, years ago. It had heightened the pleasure they both extracted from their furtive meetings; their frantic, exuberant, sex.
She was glad when the evening was finally over, when they parted, each awkwardly promising to keep in touch. Neither had any such intention.
Remarkably, afterward, she no longer felt bored, restless, miserable. She felt … all right.
But it did drive her to the same kind of despair she had experienced when she'd had her affair - once she realized her husband was doing the same. That despair over the unfairness of it all. Him leaving her in utter contempt, simply for doing what he had.
Her boredom is all-encompassing. However, she does not live alone with her boredom. Her 15-year-old daughter, busy with high school, her friends, and everything that entertains and inspires and brings delight to the morose mind of a teen-age girl, lives with her. Unlike her younger brother, she has never forgiven her father for leaving them. Mostly because, as she said, her mother’s incessant moody fatigues and lectures about the untrustworthiness of men drove both her and her brother to distraction. It was not exactly fun for them, living with their mother. Still, she refused to even see her father, acknowledge his existence. Her mother had succeeded in at least instilling that level of defiance and anger in her daughter.
She herself never sees him. She hasn’t ever once confronted him, looked him in the face, spoken with him over the last seven years that saw them first separated, then finally divorced. If he calls, to speak with their son, she listens mutely, puts down the receiver and calls her son to the telephone. She never says “it’s your father calling”, she says instead “someone wants to speak with you”.
Her son, now that he’s thirteen, spends week-ends with his father. Her family tells her that’s the best thing, that he needs to be around his father, pattern himself after a man, have a man’s influence in his life, to grow up normally. Although she bitterly resents this, she is resigned to it.
She tries not to dwell on the thought of her son accepting his father’s second wife, her replacement. Although she wasn’t certain, she felt her ex-husband’s new wife was likely one of those easily-laid women he’d been with while married to her. Her son says not so much of a word about either his father or his step-mother. He knows his mother has no wish to hear anything unless it is to condemn either of them, and that he would not do. He had said, at first, that his father’s new wife was OK, didn’t bug him. Obviously then, her ex-husband wasn’t bored. She really, truly resented that, the bastard.
He didn’t have to leave her. He could have said to her that he understood how it was, how his philandering had led her to do precisely what he was doing. But he wouldn’t admit it. He refused, adamantly, to say he had started it, that it was his sleeping around with other women that initiated her into the possibility of sticking it to him by doing the same.
“You’ve no proof” he said. “What you have is a dirty little mind, accusing me of sleeping around.”
“Right! I’ve got the dirty little mind, have I? You’re not nearly as clever as you think, mister. I’ve had reports back from mutual friends that you’ve been seen in pretty compromising situations.”
“Gossip? You depend on gossip about me to take it as proof positive that I’ve done those things?”
“Damn right, bud. I have it on the best authority. Augmented, I should add, by little clues I’ve picked up on my very own.”
“Clues? Madam Holmes, you picked up clues?”
“You’ve been too sloppy with some of your credit card charges. I’ve seen them. I can put two and two together. I never received any gifts from you from the places on that detailed listing.”
“That’s it? That’s the extent of your ‘proof’?”
“No, no it isn’t. Don’t you think even from a male perspective that it’s odd a man chooses not to have sex with his wife over a period of months at a time? Am I supposed to think that’s normal? Or might I somehow deduce that it’s normal for someone who’s getting off somewhere else?”
“Yes, you do have a mind in the gutter. I don’t have to explain, and I won’t. If you wondered you could have come directly to me to discuss any concerns you might have had. You might have been surprised at the answers.”
She was no fool, and she knew what she knew. It was indisputable. He didn’t have the kind of job that required working late nights, nor week-end trips. And suddenly there it was, his professional life requiring both those elements, with nothing but the most casual explanation from him.
In the end everything worked out to favour him, not her. They’d split everything, the proceeds from the sale of the house, the furnishings, everything. She might have looked for another house, but she decided to rent an apartment, instead. She did, though, move as far from their old neighbourhood as possible. No wish to see their old neighbours, suffer their pitying looks; try to overlook the awkwardness. Anyway, she never did like that neighbourhood, it was his choice, not hers.
And then to discover, once she was settled with the kids in their new home that he had decided to rent nearby as well. It was infuriating. She always feared, going out, that she would run into him. Worse, coming across his new wife, even not knowing who she was, what she looked like. She would have the advantage on her; likely recognizing her from a family photograph. It was too much to bear. She hated him with a grinding passion.
Which did nothing whatever to relieve her constant state of boredom. And the two companion emotions, depression and loneliness. She deserved better. The man she’d had that affair with thought so too. He had offered to pay for her apartment. Of course that came with a price. He would also have a key. And that was just too awkward, even if the kids were seven years younger, back then. Unlike her husband he had no intention of leaving his wife. He no longer loved her, he said, but he felt responsible for her, felt pity for her, for her compromised health condition.
“You said you love me” she wheedled him.
“It’s true, I said it, I meant it” he retorted, after one of their many heated discussions, when she had tried to patch the hole in her life by convincing him that he should leave his wife and marry her.
“You love me”, she said scathingly, “but not quite enough to want to live with me. Instead you’re happy living with a woman whom you no longer love, and you won’t commit to me. That’s your idea of love?”
“No, no it isn’t, but you’ve got to understand, she has no one else, she needs to be cared for, and I have that responsibility.”
“What about me?” she'd wailed, despairingly, when he would not be moved to her argument. “What about me? I’ve lost my husband because of you, and now I have nothing.”
“You can still have me” he said quietly.
“I won’t agree to those terms” she said sharply. “I won’t be a kept woman, living in an apartment you pay for, worrying about my kids getting screwed up, seeing some guy they don’t know hanging around, waiting for his intimate opportunities as soon as their heads hit the pillow. How long could people keep up that kind of relationship anyway?”
“You’re right” he finally allowed. Said he was sorry. Sorry about everything. About both of them succumbing to the relationship they had developed, each of them covertly and deliberately enjoying the thrill of illicit sex and misleading their spouses. It was no way to live. And she was right about that. Still, he would not leave his wife. And that left only one alternative.
And so they parted. It was far easier for her to part with him than with her husband. It was the idea of it; one relationship carnal and infused with the excitement of the forbidden, the other comforting in its implied social and relational security, infuriating though her husband’s stealthy forays for sex outside their home was. It seemed important at the time, and far less so as time widened the distance between the reality of her discovery and her resultant rage, and what she now experienced, a great yawning distance of boredom.
She’d given a lot of thought to the barrenness of her social life, her lack of intimacy with anyone. Confided in one of the women she worked most closely with that she had decided to start an Internet-based dating service. Her friend observed that there seemed to be a lot of those around; why did she think she might be successful in starting up yet another one?
It was, she responded, her experience with being single, with being deprived of a life-mate, of a partner in life, that made her perfect for such an enterprise. She would bring to it a deep understanding of the trauma that people suffer after relationship separations. She knew from her very own experience how difficult it was to initiate new relationships, to discover others who shared similar interests, had like values, desperately wanted to find a companion. She could easily be a leader, someone to whom others could confide their disappointments and look to for guidance. Her explanation sounded entirely rational and impressed her friend no end.
Who offered a name for such a dating service. “Call it Lilith Garden”, she said. She had considered something like “Adam and Eve”, but then discovered that name had been taken. There were other possibilities, names including the word “Paradise”, that kind of thing, but when she did her Googling homework she always discovered those names had been taken. No one had co-opted Lilith, and she decided that made sense. She had someone help her with the artwork, and putting together a Web page, and couldn’t believe the number of people who responded, emailed her, eager to join her new group. The charge, she thought, was fairly modest; she had done her homework.
It was amazing how it lifted her spirits, brought her out of herself, to communicate with all these people. Lonely, like her, desperately looking for a companion, tired of looking in places where no one ever turned up but losers. Like themselves, though they never said that. She was generous in giving out advice, and people were eager to know what she had to say, they sought out her opinion. After all, she was running this greet-and-date operation, she had to know things that eluded them. She began matching people up according to their stated values, their tastes, their interests, their backgrounds. And encouraged them, when initial impressions didn’t match their anticipated longings, to be patient, give it a try, dig a little deeper into themselves to find a more co-operative spirit. In the short few months since she had launched her little enterprise she became a different person.
She felt alive again, fascinated by what she had begun, happy to act as a social chaperone, introducing people, encouraging them. She more than earned that money she extracted from her clients, she felt. They needed her, and she was happy to accommodate that need. She was less than thrilled when, on a few occasions, disgruntled clients blamed her for a series of unfortunate couplings when things most certainly did not turn out they way they even modestly hoped for. But that, she emphasized to them, sagely, was what life was like, wasn’t it? You had to take some chances, and your lumps along with them, to find in the end what you really wanted. And guess what? She archly said to them, it works, you’ll find the one you’re aching for, they’re there, you just have to keep on trying.
After another month or so she became acutely discouraged. It just seemed to flood over her all at once, as it were. One day she was alert and enthusiastic and everyone’s mentor, the next she was completely deflated, demoralized again, wondering what on earth she was doing. Finally admitting to herself she really had no idea what she was doing, playing around with peoples’ lives, encouraging them, pushing them toward a future that had no guarantees and, admittedly, most often no promise of success in discovering that coveted pot of gold at the end of their desperate social lives devoid of contact, of meaning.
Because, in fact, that was precisely where she was stuck. Mired in a life without satisfaction to her, without meaningful contact, a relationship with another person to whom she could devote herself, and who, in the end, would find her enchanting, desirable, who would cherish her.
She had lapsed back to the beginning of her intolerable, prolonged courtship with misery. And it was eating her up with anger, bitterness and utter dejection. Her children had no idea why their mother became once again that harridan that kept plaguing them with her objections to whatever it was they wanted to do.
Her friend at work hinted that perhaps she’d bit off more than she could manage, with her dating service. It was dragging on her, convulsing her own emotions with its incessant demands.
She agreed. She felt she could no longer continue the sham. She sent out a long emailed message to all of her subscribers, admitting that she simply wasn’t fit for the task of guiding them any longer. She realized, she said, that she was disappointing them all, but she emphasized that she was as greatly disappointed in her surrender to this defeat, as they would be. She had appreciated that they needed someone to lean on, and she thought she was strong enough to help them all, because she really, really cared about them. And, she said, she was prepared, to fully reimburse to any who were interested in making such a claim, that portion of their unused monthly dues that fell into the time-frame of the suspension of Lilith’s Garden's dating service.
People upbraided her through a series of emails, accused her of trifling with their lives, told her they detested her, that she was an egotistical user of people. It wasn’t the money, they argued, it was the trust they had placed in her, and she had never had the slightest intention of honouring that trust. They would never forgive her. Some threatened to take her to court, and she worried immensely about that, but it never did materialize. She emptied her bank account, grown so nicely over that six-month period, in reimbursing all the people who demanded their money back. Surrendering those funds did nothing to ingratiate her with those who now considered her a pariah, a social monster who took pleasure in manipulating other peoples’ tender emotions.
Finally, in worse emotional shape than ever, there was a telephone call. The voice sounded familiar but her mind was completely blank. It’s me, he said. Me? Who the hell was me? Frank. Frank?
“How are you?”
“Fine, I was just wondering how you are. I’ve missed you. You’ve no idea how much.”
“Really? How good to hear from you. I hardly recognized your voice, it’s been so long.”
“Yes, it has been. But you know, I thought of you constantly through the years. I haven’t been able to put you out of my mind. I recall all those good times we had together. I’d like to see you.”
“You would? Well, I suppose that could be arranged….”
She felt ecstatic, suddenly her boredom dissipated, she felt anticipatory, gloriously happy. Unaccountably happy, in fact, since this was a call from someone she'd scarcely given much thought to, over the years. Now, hearing his voice, she too thought back to the times they’d had. She contrived to recall those times as exciting, pleasurable, meaningful. Pushing back another memory of demeaningly covert meetings, guilt, and in the end, a bitter parting.
At work next day she told her friend all about the call, about the invitation, the yearning both had to see one another again. She knew, she confided, that if she agreed to meet, they would end having sex. She wondered, she threw out casually at her friend, if it would be worth it. She was dying to see the guy, he’d been really good-looking, skilled at love-making, said all the right things, bought her wonderful gifts, made her feel really special.
Well, responded her friend carefully, what’ve you got to lose? This, from a woman who actually felt scandalized by these revelations, who would never herself ever consider such an assignation. Of course this woman was sturdily, safely married, she could afford to spurn an opportunity for a little imaginative fun. She wasn’t lonely, bored, bitter. These thoughts running through her mind, she upbraided herself for thinking of her standards, not her friend's obvious need to be encouraged, to go ahead with what she most obviously wanted to do. It just puzzled her that her advice would be sought, under the circumstances. So she simply repeated, why not, what had she got to lose?
So, it was done. They met, they had sex, they parted. Meeting one another after that seven-year gap was interesting. Amazing how seven years could alter someone’s physical appearance. He wasn’t so handsome, after all. Sexy, well not so much, why did she remember him like that? But he did relay to her some interesting information. His wife had died. Of natural causes, due to her medical condition, and he was now single. After relaying that information there was an awkward pause; neither had much to add, other than her “sorry to hear that”.
And the sex, well it wasn’t anything, in fact. She had shopped beforehand, bought slinky black underwear, imagined the sensuous delight of allowing him to undress her, fondle her, speak of his urgency. That was what had happened years ago, wasn’t it? So much a part of his appeal to her? Well, all that happened, and big deal. She could tell he felt as awkward as she did, throughout the evening they spent together. Dinner was nice, the flowers he brought along very nice, but what the hell was she supposed to do with them?
Checking into the hotel was not very nice. She didn’t enjoy that. It had lost its appeal, that mysterious, mischievous frisson of pleasure mixed with social guilt that had shot through her when they’d done that, repeatedly, years ago. It had heightened the pleasure they both extracted from their furtive meetings; their frantic, exuberant, sex.
She was glad when the evening was finally over, when they parted, each awkwardly promising to keep in touch. Neither had any such intention.
Remarkably, afterward, she no longer felt bored, restless, miserable. She felt … all right.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Marking Occasions
There's a treasure chest
full of distinctive memories
beautifully visualized and
created to celebrate times of
joy and happiness through
our long years of shared life.
Cards fashioned with love
and with care, humour
and pride to honour family
events. Children teased by
cartoons emphasizing their
interests and accomplishments
and their graduation from
one year to the next.
He is sequestered now
and I dare not intrude on
this creative aesthetic
for my birthday is swift
on the holiday horizon
vying with Christmas and
New Year's, for remark.
The years have passed
since we were young. Our
grandchild now the very age
when we met and our future
was inexorably set. Sixty
years later, you take up
pencils and pastels and
landscape me a blessing.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Winter Solstice
This has been most auspicious
this scintillatingly bright day
beyond bone-chilling
given plunging temperatures
high humidity and incessant wind.
Our boots crunch deeply
into the ice-caked snow
as we pass trees in seasonal
white festoon, wind still busy
urging cakes of snow to !plop!
The sky blue, with drifting
white banners decorating the occasion
a silvery scimitar of a moon
lost in the greater grandeur
of that amazing cosmos.
It is not yet mid of the afternoon
sun sending long shadows
as our legs assume slender
proportions as of gliding tentacles.
As bright as the day has been
there is a darkening quality
hovering in the atmosphere
the sun all too prepared to set.
There is a supreme tranquility
on this shortest day of the year
ushering in calendar winter
though the winter season has long
preceded the calendar.
One an event of nature's making
the other a notion of humankind.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Vanishing Species
The little ones - they were there in various sizes and attitudes - tumbled and frolicked, shrieking with unbridled joy, as they tossed themselves into the billowing crystalline formations that had transformed their green-hued landscape overnight. The alteration in temperature that accompanied this transformation appeared not to trouble them at all.
In their abandonment to the pleasures of losing themselves within the undulating hills of soft, comforting crystals, they paid no mind to the cooling ambiance. They were enraptured at the light nuances, at the sudden, twinkling change from white to colour, as they dove, and swam through the tender thickness of the crystals. The bright, light filaments of their hair flung about their heads echoed the colours of the crystals.
Just as their own skin began to turn shades of pale colour, thickening as it changed, so too did the crystals, as though they were cleverly mimicking them, and they screamed aloud with ecstasy at the very thought that they and their antics were capable of altering that in which they sought out such rapture.
Unlike the changes that occurred in those lively bodies and limbs of flailing little ones, however, it was simply the colour, reflecting their own, that the crystals adopted. The light, flaky crystalline presence did not alter, become coarse, or thicken, as did the skin of the little ones.
And, as their skin thickened and coloured from pale to bright to dark in contact with the cold, the children stood in mock horror, pointing at one another, claiming to have been altered from the delicate woodland creatures that they had been, to the robust, and feared plains creatures they so assiduously avoided - by the sage advice of the wizened, bearded elders whose experience was their history, just as their environment was their living laboratory of knowledge gained year upon year.
Memory was such that they could recall previous years of just such transformations, but details escaped them, and now, directly confronting the reality, it was as though each year’s experience was fresh, unanticipated, beautiful well beyond recall, and invigorating to their very souls. For souls they certainly were possessed of. Quite lovely souls, in fact, which made themselves available on request at times of uncertainty, when comfort was sought and sturdily given.
There were many of these small creatures sporting within the landscape. Some small groups could hardly be distinguished one from the other, for each within that group precisely resembled one the other. And in other, larger groups there were even smaller groups with distinct resemblance one to the other. Readily explicated when one became aware of the wonderful attributes nature had endowed these creatures with.
Their abodes were blended into their wooded landscape, exceedingly well disguised but readily distinguished by those who had familiarity with them. The interiors, however, were quite amazing in the quality of the luxury afforded the inhabitants. Deep, glorious colours abounded, with plush appointments for the comfort of those who lived there; the small among the middling among the large and finally the elderly. Generations lived together in harmony within their dwellings, and dwellings there were many.
Nature had endowed these creatures with qualities of social grace and physical beauty, genders distinguished by the exquisite delicacy of the females, the sturdy physicality of the males, though there were many overlapping character traits where personalities often reflected similar views acculturated by the species’ proclivity toward quiet reflection and grave attention to an unspoken but revered social contract forbidding strife.
Within that framework there were vast differences both physical and attitudinally between the inhabitants of the settlement of that forest blessed with an abundance of other wildlife kindly regarded, and plant life affording their landscaping abilities to the greater appreciation of all those sensate creatures.
Now, there was a perfectly logical reason why - although there could be a vast physical difference in the facial and bodily features of these creatures - there would appear to be groups of the little ones who so remarkably resembled one another. Within their homes, sumptuously laid out with all manner of creature comforts, there also existed in each a peculiar slate-like apparatus which, despite the greyness of its exterior was still capable of perfectly reflecting the visage of one who stood before it.
And that one, if it be little, could invite the reflection to step outside the confines of the apparatus, and join it. Whereupon the like reflection would stand beside the original. This could be repeated many times. Each of the evoked reflections, however appearing precisely similar to the original would manifest various character differences; moody, exuberant, reflective, sad, even combative.
After a period between the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun, the original would select which of its reflections it would like to remain companionably with it, throughout the course of the following day; the remainder were absorbed back into the slate apparatus. This process of creation, temporary though it was, could be evoked only by the little of the species; the middling had had their opportunity, and the large no longer had the capacity with which they had been earlier endowed.
The more frequently the little ones chose a particular character trait to accompany them and play with them and share the day’s various activities with them, the closer the original little one began to resemble its choices, imbuing its character more decidedly with the chosen traits, be it humour, optimism, wisdom, languor, assertiveness or compassion, for example.
As the little ones evolved over the years, almost imperceptibly forming their character traits, they were modestly influenced by a growing awareness of the middling ones. It was the middling ones who were identified by a gradual subduing of the little ones’ enthusiasm for everything about them, whose collective sense of adventure, creative fun and challenge of their environment enlivened the days of the large ones who contemplated their antics so fondly. And who knew, from learned experience, to maintain a distance between themselves and the middle ones, urging the little ones to do likewise.
For the middling ones, struggling with the completion of their identities as unique beings, having absorbed those elements from their slate-shadows over the course of many years, were a rather surly lot. Uncertain of their choices, yet unwilling to contemplate the possibility of shedding some, embracing others, utterly confused by their inexorable transition from little to middling, and fearing the inevitability of becoming large. A prospect that left them embittered at the potential of stifling stolidity in obeisance to custom, their little years of freedom and discovery and happy unmindfulness long left behind.
They resented their isolation within the community. For they no longer sought the company of others like them; that was left behind when they were no longer little, genial of temperament and accustomed to moving about in groups of light-headed delirium with love of life. Their short tempers and obvious resentment earned them another type of isolation, where the elders looked gravely upon them, doubting the final evolution, at the same time regarding the little ones with fond endearments, encouraging them to delightful excess.
The middling ones were confused, upset and worried that they no longer felt wonder at all that surrounded them. There were no more mysteries whose source should be sought and revealed, for they had absorbed what they felt were all the dreary aspects of their future, based on what they observed of the large among them.
They brooded and they suffered, and they formed small cliques to gather where none other could detect their presence, and they plotted to become other, not to meld into the creatures, stolid and maturely plodding that was theirs to become.
Even they, however, played music, for music elevated all their souls, the rhapsody of sound that brought to mind everything that nature, their great benefactor and sometimes-antagonist brought to their lives. Stiff, hollow grasses were plucked from the earth and these they fashioned into pipes and into flutes and the thin, reedy sound of the music they played, passed down by venerated absorption from one generation to the next, drifted wraithlike and thrilling to all ears that cupped and loved those sounds.
The music played by the middling ones was ever sorrowful, full of regret for something they were unable to identify. The little ones’ music was fresh, lilting, bordering on the chaotic, but always seeming to find the melody that expressed their zest for adventure, fun and the thrusts and parries of exploration in their world of the forest. The music of the large was stoic yet placid, hauntingly beautiful, while the elders’ music was melancholy with regret for time that passed them by.
Their sensual appreciation for all the wealth of nature that surrounded them, magnitudes of vegetation that offered berries, edible roots, tree-fruits and grasses to be pounded into grains and nuts and seeds, nectar, honey that sustained them through storage in the dark months spoke of their place in the centre of this world unseen by creatures who had no business in their realm.
In the growing seasons they habitually and ostentatiously plucked floral offerings to decorate their homes. They constructed wreaths and garlands whose fragrance followed where they went, looped fantastically over their bodies, the aura of sweet and spice permeating their surroundings, wafting on the air wherever they went. This was their life. Unique creatures of creation itself.
They were so utterly involved with and among themselves, took such great delight in their presence in this cradle of their existence, they were ill-prepared for the sudden, unexpected swarming by the prairie creatures so like, yet so unlike themselves.
The comforts in which nature indulged them, their harmonious and egalitarian society, their presence in that wooded area that afforded them such grace of being had long been envied by those others. Others whose presence they were acutely aware of, but which were so seldom observed, heard or considered as an imminent, and dire threat that when that dark day of oncoming spring when the creeks thawed and the ground gave up its winter covering bringing thoughts of a fresh new growing season, also brought hordes of evil-smelling, yowling and leaping, armed and violent creatures intent on annihilating them, they were in no position to defend themselves.
Alas, all the structures that were built decayed, the tiny meadows within the forest that had been tilled became overgrown, and memory of the creatures that had been, faded. When next the bright white crystals of snow fell upon the forest the birds and the small furred creatures that lived there huddled for warmth and waited for spring. But the sounds and sights of excited, happy little ones no longer rang on the air with their boundless enthusiasm for life.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The Winter Forest
The winter forest is an enchanted
glistening landscape of
chilled silence, muffled and
deeply peaceful. Contoured in
its serene season of rest.
A gust creates an ectoplasmic
drift slowly unburdening
a laden spruce bough.
A lone crow leisurely crests
over steep forest spires.
Tiny chickadees flit
among the trees,
a companion nuthatch
minding their order.
The sky's blue canopy
ribboned by evanescently
diffused clouds as lightly
transparent as the snow
below is opaque, fully
blanketing the frozen earth.
Today's languid wind chill
far less urgent, small wildlife
come suddenly awake to a
day of sun and glorious prospects.
Mice and voles burrow deep
under the warm weight of
their enveloping comforter.
Late-season wildflowers
nod their winter-dried heads.
The forest stream lies hushed
and frozen, glinting back
the sun's crystalline shine,
banked with snow drifts.
Friday, December 18, 2009
School Days
It’s really quite amazing, when you think about it, how physically mature young girls are in this new generation. Obviously they’ve a long way to go to emotional maturity. It’s the development of their bodies, that mature delineation that is amazing. And their social maturity. Their knowledge about all the current pop-culture figures, the celebrities, the issues revolving around current technologies, films, popular teen novels, that kind of thing.
They’re also, obviously in the habit of groping around, metaphorically, trying to get a fix on things that puzzle them, mostly personal relationships. And thinking, thinking and wondering about all those confusing, sometimes troubling emotions that don’t quite know how to handle. And that three-letter word that is so confusing. Does it equate with love? Can't, not possibly, the way it comes out sounding so ... squalid. And awkward, unbelievably miserable, actually.
Just have to think back (squeamishly for some) of the sex education classes thrust on them from ... let's see ... grade five or thereabouts. When some of them really resented having to focus on things like that because it was boooring, and after all they were kind of young for that kind of thing, weren't they?
The girls at this school represent rural children, raised in a countrified atmosphere not far from a large, cosmopolitan urban centre. They are, themselves, cosmopolitan to a good degree. How could it be otherwise in a world of instant, constant communication, where everyone has a cellphone, access to computers and the Internet, and the rumour mill is constantly grinding out fascinating stories of adventure and social misadventure.
It’s a two-story school, originally built to accommodate roughly 350 students. The student population has been gradually declining, due to the fact that the families themselves are aging. Currently only 161 children attend the JK-to-8 elementary school. Which meant that classes were most often combined to make more functional use of classrooms and teachers.
It’s the Grade 7-8 class that’s out for recess this wintry day of minus-6-degree windchill. Not all that cold, to be sure, but plenty of snow accumulated. The class is a small one, divided between boys and girls, the girls having a slight edge on the boys. Ages twelve to thirteen, taught by a young woman with ten years teaching behind her, all at the same school. Her reputation has always preceded her; the students in grades 6 and 7 having been informed through the living grape-vine of school talk that she has a tendency to hysteria.
All the students had ample time over the summer months to prepare themselves for a new school year replete with plenty of homework, a new curriculum, and an instructor whose propensity to screeching never endeared her with any of her former students.
In fact, some of the students from the previous year’s graduating class, now attending high school in another nearby town, still regularly text-messaged some of the younger kids with whom they’d established friendships, occasionally asking about the most recent melt-downs of their former, detested grade 8 teacher. It was easy to whoop with laughter when you were no longer in her class.
For those remaining at the elementary school, anxious to complete the year and go off to first year high school, their teacher was an oppressive presence rather than the guiding hand most of them wished for. The school year hadn't, actually started out that way. Despite her reputation for bullying and solving problems of insubordination by hysterics, she hadn't yelled at them all, at first. Those were the honeymoon months.
Since then, she has repeatedly informed her class that they're collective nincompoops, learning-impaired, lunatics and malcontents. And they reciprocate by stony silence, then a whispered "retard!" between them, expressing their contempt for their teacher.
That, however, is beside the point of the events that occurred yesterday, when the class was out at recess on a blowy, snowy day. The girls perambulated separately from the boys, of course. They were as two separate species, acknowledging mutely the presence of each gender, but strict avoidance really worked best.
It was a trifle too cold for the more casual gear most of the boys and some of the girls had latterly effected. This day everyone wore hooded jackets, even if the hoods weren’t being worn. And many also wore ski pants - or more likely snow-boarding pants, to enable them to fool about in the snow and not end up with wet, cardboard-hard jeans afterward that would make them miserably uncomfortable for the remainder of the school day.
Two girls walked together in close conversation. They were long-time friends, had gone through the school system together, and lived not far from one another; one in an converted log cabin that had once been the local schoolhouse since modernized, the other in an old farmhouse on property owned by several generations of her family. They were very tall girls, very well developed, standing equal in height to their teacher. Who was out, doing yard duty that day.
The girl with the curly hair in a black-and-white checked jacket with a faux fur edging around the jacket’s limp-hanging hood (no self-aware - and they are all magnificently, vulnerably self-aware - teen would be seen sporting anything that could be taken as an actual pelt, or part of one, of nature’s environmentally embattled creatures. Faux does very nicely, thank you, and the more outrageously-elaborated-and-tinted-obviously-faux, why the better) first saw a younger classmate approaching and warned her partner.
Her friend, in a hot-pink jacket that emphasized her long burnished-blonde hair, grimaced as they both turned to await the approach of a grade 7 girl whom they both detested. The girl had her own group of friends, and why she insisted on bothering them continually was a bafflement and an irritation to them both. The younger girl, dressed in a full suit of purple jacket and matching snow pants, stopped just short of them, and performing an elaborate twist, kicked up a thick dust of snow against the legs of the older two girls. Who stepped back from the approaching snowdrift, turned their backs on the younger girl, and proceeded to walk away. When they stopped again, to continue their conversation, they became aware that the other student had followed them, when another drift of snow hit their jeans-clad legs.
“Stop that!” said the girl with the black-and-white jacket, turning angrily on the younger girl. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re not wearing ski pants, and we aren’t thrilled about getting snow all over us, thanks to you. What’s the matter with you?”
The younger girl smirked in response, and again repeated the twist and thrust, sending another spray of wet snow and ice bits onto the two girls’ jeans. Then stood there, hands on hips, waiting. A sudden silence seemed to envelop that portion of the school yard, as the younger girl’s companions, standing not far off, watched intently. An unfolding drama, just the kind of interesting event that gripped everyone’s attention on an otherwise-boring day.
“I told you to stop it”, said the girl evenly, her voice steady, but a threat of response lingering in the statement.
“Too bad, so sad”, trilled the other, and let loose with another spray.
“Warned you, didn’t I?” the older girl said, as she aimed a kick at the younger girl’s legs. Accurate contact.
The younger girl ran off, stopping in front of their teacher who had observed everything.
“Well, who told you to keep bothering them?” she asked.
Later, in the gym, the class was assembled for a co-ed dance, none of them wanted to engage with, and everyone quietly grumbled about. This class was very good at quiet grumbling, and even better at class rebellion. It didn’t take much for them to form a chorus of dissent, unwilling to give attention to a teacher given to melt-downs instead of firm control. This, she informed them firmly, was important. A choreographed dance routine for the school Christmas concert.
But then, they were soon diverted by another little drama. The same grade 7 girl, of almost equal height and weight as the two grade 8 girls whom she seemed to constantly shadow, once again approached the curly-haired and the blonde straight-haired companions. Stopping directly in front of the curly-haired girl, to shout directly in her face that she was a “horrible bitch” for having kicked her.
The girl receiving the message hardly blinked. But she did, emphatically, order the other to “back off, stupid. Don’t screech in my face. Get lost, Psycho”.
Which enraged the younger girl even further and she stood her ground, belting out a series of profanities at the older girl who reiterated her previous demand that the younger girl cease and desist: “I don’t appreciate stupid kids screaming in my face. Kindly back off.”
When nothing resulted but further denunciations of equally shrill dimension, along with a number of choice expletives, the older girl raised her hand and slapped the other in the face.
This was the first and only time the older girl had ever allowed herself to succumb to physical reaction in the face of any kind of provocation. She could recall her grandmother having told her, years ago when she was little and had been a victim of a bullying child, to hit back. She had recoiled, said to her grandmother she couldn’t do that, it wasn’t right. Now, after her hand had made contact with the cheek of the other girl, she felt a flood of released energy melting away her fury. She felt good about what she had done. And, as the enraged younger girl continued her rant-and-advance, she raised her hand to whack her again.
Which was when she became aware of many hands pulling her, pulling at her shoulders, her waist, pulling her away from the other girl. And that obnoxious pest, she saw, was also being pulled away from her near presence.
This was not a good day, nor a way to end a less-than-sterling school day.
Later, when the young girl with the curly hair got back home after school, she texted her grandmother:
They’re also, obviously in the habit of groping around, metaphorically, trying to get a fix on things that puzzle them, mostly personal relationships. And thinking, thinking and wondering about all those confusing, sometimes troubling emotions that don’t quite know how to handle. And that three-letter word that is so confusing. Does it equate with love? Can't, not possibly, the way it comes out sounding so ... squalid. And awkward, unbelievably miserable, actually.
Just have to think back (squeamishly for some) of the sex education classes thrust on them from ... let's see ... grade five or thereabouts. When some of them really resented having to focus on things like that because it was boooring, and after all they were kind of young for that kind of thing, weren't they?
The girls at this school represent rural children, raised in a countrified atmosphere not far from a large, cosmopolitan urban centre. They are, themselves, cosmopolitan to a good degree. How could it be otherwise in a world of instant, constant communication, where everyone has a cellphone, access to computers and the Internet, and the rumour mill is constantly grinding out fascinating stories of adventure and social misadventure.
It’s a two-story school, originally built to accommodate roughly 350 students. The student population has been gradually declining, due to the fact that the families themselves are aging. Currently only 161 children attend the JK-to-8 elementary school. Which meant that classes were most often combined to make more functional use of classrooms and teachers.
It’s the Grade 7-8 class that’s out for recess this wintry day of minus-6-degree windchill. Not all that cold, to be sure, but plenty of snow accumulated. The class is a small one, divided between boys and girls, the girls having a slight edge on the boys. Ages twelve to thirteen, taught by a young woman with ten years teaching behind her, all at the same school. Her reputation has always preceded her; the students in grades 6 and 7 having been informed through the living grape-vine of school talk that she has a tendency to hysteria.
All the students had ample time over the summer months to prepare themselves for a new school year replete with plenty of homework, a new curriculum, and an instructor whose propensity to screeching never endeared her with any of her former students.
In fact, some of the students from the previous year’s graduating class, now attending high school in another nearby town, still regularly text-messaged some of the younger kids with whom they’d established friendships, occasionally asking about the most recent melt-downs of their former, detested grade 8 teacher. It was easy to whoop with laughter when you were no longer in her class.
For those remaining at the elementary school, anxious to complete the year and go off to first year high school, their teacher was an oppressive presence rather than the guiding hand most of them wished for. The school year hadn't, actually started out that way. Despite her reputation for bullying and solving problems of insubordination by hysterics, she hadn't yelled at them all, at first. Those were the honeymoon months.
Since then, she has repeatedly informed her class that they're collective nincompoops, learning-impaired, lunatics and malcontents. And they reciprocate by stony silence, then a whispered "retard!" between them, expressing their contempt for their teacher.
That, however, is beside the point of the events that occurred yesterday, when the class was out at recess on a blowy, snowy day. The girls perambulated separately from the boys, of course. They were as two separate species, acknowledging mutely the presence of each gender, but strict avoidance really worked best.
It was a trifle too cold for the more casual gear most of the boys and some of the girls had latterly effected. This day everyone wore hooded jackets, even if the hoods weren’t being worn. And many also wore ski pants - or more likely snow-boarding pants, to enable them to fool about in the snow and not end up with wet, cardboard-hard jeans afterward that would make them miserably uncomfortable for the remainder of the school day.
Two girls walked together in close conversation. They were long-time friends, had gone through the school system together, and lived not far from one another; one in an converted log cabin that had once been the local schoolhouse since modernized, the other in an old farmhouse on property owned by several generations of her family. They were very tall girls, very well developed, standing equal in height to their teacher. Who was out, doing yard duty that day.
The girl with the curly hair in a black-and-white checked jacket with a faux fur edging around the jacket’s limp-hanging hood (no self-aware - and they are all magnificently, vulnerably self-aware - teen would be seen sporting anything that could be taken as an actual pelt, or part of one, of nature’s environmentally embattled creatures. Faux does very nicely, thank you, and the more outrageously-elaborated-and-tinted-obviously-faux, why the better) first saw a younger classmate approaching and warned her partner.
Her friend, in a hot-pink jacket that emphasized her long burnished-blonde hair, grimaced as they both turned to await the approach of a grade 7 girl whom they both detested. The girl had her own group of friends, and why she insisted on bothering them continually was a bafflement and an irritation to them both. The younger girl, dressed in a full suit of purple jacket and matching snow pants, stopped just short of them, and performing an elaborate twist, kicked up a thick dust of snow against the legs of the older two girls. Who stepped back from the approaching snowdrift, turned their backs on the younger girl, and proceeded to walk away. When they stopped again, to continue their conversation, they became aware that the other student had followed them, when another drift of snow hit their jeans-clad legs.
“Stop that!” said the girl with the black-and-white jacket, turning angrily on the younger girl. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re not wearing ski pants, and we aren’t thrilled about getting snow all over us, thanks to you. What’s the matter with you?”
The younger girl smirked in response, and again repeated the twist and thrust, sending another spray of wet snow and ice bits onto the two girls’ jeans. Then stood there, hands on hips, waiting. A sudden silence seemed to envelop that portion of the school yard, as the younger girl’s companions, standing not far off, watched intently. An unfolding drama, just the kind of interesting event that gripped everyone’s attention on an otherwise-boring day.
“I told you to stop it”, said the girl evenly, her voice steady, but a threat of response lingering in the statement.
“Too bad, so sad”, trilled the other, and let loose with another spray.
“Warned you, didn’t I?” the older girl said, as she aimed a kick at the younger girl’s legs. Accurate contact.
The younger girl ran off, stopping in front of their teacher who had observed everything.
“Well, who told you to keep bothering them?” she asked.
Later, in the gym, the class was assembled for a co-ed dance, none of them wanted to engage with, and everyone quietly grumbled about. This class was very good at quiet grumbling, and even better at class rebellion. It didn’t take much for them to form a chorus of dissent, unwilling to give attention to a teacher given to melt-downs instead of firm control. This, she informed them firmly, was important. A choreographed dance routine for the school Christmas concert.
But then, they were soon diverted by another little drama. The same grade 7 girl, of almost equal height and weight as the two grade 8 girls whom she seemed to constantly shadow, once again approached the curly-haired and the blonde straight-haired companions. Stopping directly in front of the curly-haired girl, to shout directly in her face that she was a “horrible bitch” for having kicked her.
The girl receiving the message hardly blinked. But she did, emphatically, order the other to “back off, stupid. Don’t screech in my face. Get lost, Psycho”.
Which enraged the younger girl even further and she stood her ground, belting out a series of profanities at the older girl who reiterated her previous demand that the younger girl cease and desist: “I don’t appreciate stupid kids screaming in my face. Kindly back off.”
When nothing resulted but further denunciations of equally shrill dimension, along with a number of choice expletives, the older girl raised her hand and slapped the other in the face.
This was the first and only time the older girl had ever allowed herself to succumb to physical reaction in the face of any kind of provocation. She could recall her grandmother having told her, years ago when she was little and had been a victim of a bullying child, to hit back. She had recoiled, said to her grandmother she couldn’t do that, it wasn’t right. Now, after her hand had made contact with the cheek of the other girl, she felt a flood of released energy melting away her fury. She felt good about what she had done. And, as the enraged younger girl continued her rant-and-advance, she raised her hand to whack her again.
Which was when she became aware of many hands pulling her, pulling at her shoulders, her waist, pulling her away from the other girl. And that obnoxious pest, she saw, was also being pulled away from her near presence.
This was not a good day, nor a way to end a less-than-sterling school day.
Later, when the young girl with the curly hair got back home after school, she texted her grandmother:
Hello, im so frustrated with Mrs.Mccauley i swear im going to kill her she got all mad at me today for a million little things where i dont know what i did wrong like during math, lunch, crafts and dance. (gym) Then theres this girl darby who i almost murdered today she kept kicking snow at me because i wasnt wearing snowpants so she thought that was ok. then during dance/gym she kept screaming in my face so i told her to stop and she got louder so i pushed her away and of course she did it again so i slaped her and once again for the millith time she came back and then people started to kind of pull us apart thank god because i was about to kill herHer grandmother sat there, staring at the message, aghast. All those spelling errors. What were they teaching young people in school, these days?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Snow Imprint
The forest floor, well on its way
to freezing - encouraged, bullied
by impending winter's
dominion over land
and inland waterways...
Those ferocious icy blasts
have brought new, permanent
snow, covering that rigid floor.
Snow flurries pause lazily in
downward spiral toward
winter's certain depths.
Wind whips bare branches.
The scarlet head of a woodpecker
brutalizing the trunk
of an ancient pine, shards flying
reveals a wide, white gap;
the bird rewarded for its
destructive industry.
Clouds catapult their spare
contents with diminishing returns
as an insistent gust sweeps them
imperiously aside to reveal
an azure promise.
Beams of modest brilliance
modified by the season
yet still sufficiently solared
illuminate a child's
luminous snow-angel.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Good Husband
Four more previously-cherished and lavishly cared-for dogs for the local humane society to shelter. Animals confused by the sudden absence of the woman who had cared for them, loved them, took them out for daily walks in the quiet neighbourhood of single-family homes with its adjacent parks. She is no longer there to feed them, speak to them, assure them that each day will be the same as those it succeeds. Her future is now a chasm of silent grief, and theirs is separation, confusion and a woebegone sense of something gone dreadfully wrong, that no human could quite discern or attribute to a species other than their own. They are two large-dog breeds, two middling-sized. Each with its own personality, and needs. As a group they made a very well-disposed team, with her to guide them past little lapses in their social compact.
Now they languish, ears flat to their heads, tails tucked firmly into their haunches, eyes solemnly following the activity of the staff at the human society animal shelter. Each to a cage, none knowing nor quite caring about the whereabouts of the others, waiting, in their patient, canine way for order to be restored to their lives and their caregiver to walk through the door with her huge welcoming smile.
They had lived with her for all the years of their lives worth remembering. When she was absent during those periods when she was at her job, they awaited her return. Mostly sleeping, occasionally engaged in solitary play. But all four, when the time arrived in the late afternoon when some arcane animal sense informed them she would soon re-enter their lives, circled around the front door, then sat stoically, until she finally entered to be regaled with a chorus of welcome. She would rub the tops of their heads in greeting, bustle about a few minutes, then haul out their leashes, and take them out for a quick run through the neighbourhood.
The neighbours were always aware of her presence. She was not shy, not averse to greeting them, talking about neighbourhood things. She had good relations with them and they liked her living close to where they did; a good person, and a good neighbour. When she eventually brought home a young man, to introduce him to her dogs, everything seemed fine. He was a nice young man, with sandy hair that streamed over his forehead, deep brown eyes, and a good manner. She had met him when she’d taken the dogs to a far-off quarry turned into a recreational park for companion animals where their owners could let them run free off the leash. He wasn’t a dog-owner, but he had been there, walking about, and they had stopped to talk.
Over the course of the next several months he called often, and they went out on casual dates. It wasn’t that she was lonely and felt she needed a man to complement the quality of her life. She was happy enough with the family she had; herself and her dogs, and her extended family with whom she kept in constant contact. He liked her practical, matter-of-fact nature, accepting him for what he appeared to be, not closely questioning him, asking, prodding, why he didn’t have a regular job. He had enough of that from his family. He was happy to work when he felt like it, at casual, part-time jobs that paid just enough. And when he got tired of working he managed to manoeuvre himself into a job loss, and still qualify for unemployment insurance. Giving him the time he wanted to just mosey about life, at his own speed, fulfilling his very own need.
She had a regular, full-time job, a responsible one, as a professional, with a department of the federal government. You could see that she earned a respectable income, since she owned her own home, and he admired that. He had great admiration for her love of life, her sparkling good humour. It gave a nice balance to his moods, when she went out of her way to sympathize, to lift his spirits. He loved running his fingers through her long, straight-silky hair, worn shoulder-length. It suited her, with her green eyes, her fine complexion, her neat facial features; a pretty woman with an athletic build, nicely contoured.
He appreciated her casual disregard for social custom. He felt that same way himself. So it was a little surprising, he felt, when she said after six months of comfortable companionship that she’d like him to move in with her, but it wouldn’t work for her outside of marriage. He hadn’t anticipated that kind of conventionality from her. But he didn’t mind, after all. Because truth was, he did love her, and he told her that, and he could see how much it pleased her to have him say that, and to hug her whenever the mood took him. Oddly she didn’t like holding hands in public. But that made good sense, since the dogs’ leashes were often at the ends of her hands when they were out in public, other than at night during their decreasing number of nights-out dates.
Their marriage was a muted affair. A few of her close friends from her high school days, from her office, and her sisters, father and mother although they were separated. His father attended, and a few of his cousins; friends, none. Everyone seemed to get along. It was kind of festive, he liked that, and so did she, the casualness of it all.
He always went with her, when she visited with her family. They made him feel welcome, and he felt comfortable enough with them. The dogs, they were always brought along, too. Everyone had long ago accustomed themselves to the reality that wherever she went so too went her dogs. Bad enough, she said, she had to leave them at home while she was out working. In her leisure hours they deserved her company.
He actually didn’t mind. He enjoyed watching her with the dogs. They more or less ignored him, but came alive when she was around, and he thought that was interesting, the dynamic between them. He watched her set out their bowls at feeding time. Her assiduous attention to their regular appointments with the veterinarian he knew were expensive. Her life, her earnings, she could do what she wanted with all of that. It had no impact on him, other than as an observer, and an equal-opportunity recipient of her warm attentions.
Well, sometimes he felt irritated when he was in the house alone with the dogs, and they might be curious about something he would be doing in the kitchen, and he’d snap at them. That would effectively clear the room. They’d slink out, find somewhere else to install themselves. He was, in fact, alone often in the house with them. So, she said brightly to him and to anyone else who might remark on it, how terrific it was that the dogs were no longer lonely, with his presence.
Occasionally the neighbour whose house was closest to theirs heard shouting during the day, and understood that the dogs were doing something inconvenient, irritating or plain bad, and he was disciplining them. He never laid a hand on them for physical punishment, though. He respected how she felt about her dogs. Why shouldn’t she?
She had told him once how those dogs had come into her life. They were all what she called ‘rescues’, dogs that had been abused, abandoned, and she had taken them in. She had coped with their aggressive suspicion, determined to turn their temperaments around, to invoke trust in them, to treat them well, to gain their trust. It took a long time, but eventually, each of the dogs came around and became loyal and trusting of her. When she had taken in the last dog, one that had been rescued from as far away as Iqaluit, it had taken her the longest time, she said, sighing, looking at the dog as she spoke, lying comfortably before her feet, its thick husky-fur on its large, muscular shepherd body resembling a placid bear. He respected her enormously, he told her, for her conscientious kindness to those animals. Not that he particularly cared for dogs, any dogs, but he could, he told her, relate personally. As one who had been abused, neglected. That won her heart, he was convinced of that.
She didn’t seem to mind that she was the bread-winner. In that sense, she simply continued what had always been her reality. She had simply added another member to her family. She never chided him for his lack of enterprise, his unwillingness to apply himself to working, to look around to find something he would like to do, rather than limp along from one impermanent service job to another. And that was really good of her, he thought, and he appreciated that too about her.
So at the funeral mass, when the good Father, speaking of how loving a person she had been, remarked “Unfortunately Gwendolyn’s love was not reciprocated” he was wrong, dead wrong. Gwen loved him and he loved her, he most certainly did. No one could take that away from him, from them. He always would love her, recalling the soft smoothness of her skin, her arching back when they made love, her cuddling into him afterward, her soft words of love. They loved one another very much. No one could take that away from him, not her family who blamed him and now hated him, nor the pastor who in his ignorance thought he could take away the love he had for her.
His father sat well back in the last pew at the church during her funeral mass. He described to him later how there were so many people, extended family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, all there to mourn his wife’s too-early death. And his father sat there, later, comforting him, telling him not to worry too much. Things would unfold as they would. He would be there, at the trial, to testify on his behalf.
He knew his son, and he knew the kind of relationship he’d had with his wife. He saw them, after all, each and every week, since they visited him every week-end, and he could see the mutual love and respect they had for one another. He knew there had to be a reasonable explanation for what had happened. It wasn’t his son’s fault, he was a good husband, and he loved his wife. Something had happened, quite obviously, but it would all come out, and his son would be exonerated. Hadn’t he said to the police who came to arrest him at his father’s house where he had stayed the last few days, crying his broken heart out that his wife had refused medical treatment? And then they took his boy away.
It would be revealed that she had a medical condition that threatened her life, but she refused to seek out medical help. What could his son do in the face of such an indomitable will, other than submit to her wishes? He knew how much his daughter-in-law meant to his son, how she turned his life around, how he stopped drinking incessantly after he met her. How happy he was with his new life. He knew from observation, and from knowing his son. Why, when they were separated while she was off at work and his son at his own workplace - sometimes even helping him with a roofing job - they were always using their cellphones, staying in touch.
It seemed odd to him that an autopsy had been performed on his daughter-in-law, but that was likely standard procedure in such mysterious sudden-death cases. He had been concerned for his son’s state of mind. Completely inconsolable, weeping, tearing at his hair, mourning his wife. “Buck up, fella” he said, patting his heaving back. “The truth will out, and everyone will realize that you’re beyond suspicion. Her medical condition killed her, and that’s the truth.”
But police detectives thought otherwise. And after the results of the autopsy were revealed to them they knew their first instincts were correct. Trauma to the lower body, legs and feet. The upper body badly burned. Her body discovered in the basement of the house.
Well, if they asked, and it will likely be a matter of enquiry during the trial, her bereaved husband could explain that, too. How, sometimes, he’d had to correct his wife, instruct her. He had no intention of causing harm to her, and she knew that. That was a huge component of his love for her. She never, ever judged him. She would ask him quietly to stop doing something that bothered her. And then when he calmed down, she would talk, talk, talk to him for what seemed like an interminable period of time. Sometimes all that talk gave him a raving headache and he would tell her so. She was so concerned for his well being. She would immediately stop talking, cuddle him to her, run her slender, loving fingers along the top of his head, and rock him until he fell asleep. She was his very own treasure. He will never, ever get over her untimely death. No one would ever know how much he loved her, how he would miss her.
And the dogs? Well, their separate photographs appear on the website of the Humane Society. One by one they have also appeared in newspaper advertisements, in the hope that people at this time of year, preparing for Christmas, might feel it in their hearts to have some compassion for truly lost dogs looking for a home. For all the dogs, the description includes nothing of the misfortune which befell them, but the legend “much loved, high-energy dog needs a new home” follows them all.
If they were to be adopted by some kindly souls looking for the company of faithful companions at the Christmas season, it would please the ghost of their mistress so very much. A matchless gift to her on her 34th birthday, this coming Christmas.
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