Soliciting

There we go again, perennials
coming up in springtime gardens
offset by the perennial staging
of neighbourhood canvasses
for health charities. Volunteers
doing their door-to-door soliciting
writing out receipts to reflect
the value we place on health
education, disease sufferers'
support, and research funding.

This is an occupation, brief as
it is, not for the faint-of-heart.
For it is no mean conceit to knock
on doors, pleading the home-owner
part with precious cash resources.
Many resent this social inconvenience
right mightily, and icily stare down
the volunteer, an irritating mendicant
albeit nonetheless a neighbour.

At other homes, a cheerfully
welcomed guest, whose cause and
its messenger are honoured with
respect and the generosity of an
open wallet, weather and social
comments gratuitously fulsome.

These are the moments that bind us,
or blind us to the social contract that
no man is an island to himself, and that
which strikes down others, strikes
us all as well. Pluralist in ideas
but not in values, we offer ourselves
so that ill humours may be countered.

Nature's Peevish Nature

Yesterday, sunglasses and
shirtsleeves. Today, jackets
and gloves. A stainless steel
cover has been clamped down
hard, over this springtime sky.
Snow flurries are busying the
atmosphere, wind braying in the
treetops. A Pileated woodpecker
rises, its shrill cry piercing
this transformed landscape.

Snow fallen overnight, crept
in on padded feet, to astonish
us with its pristine white wash,
is melting, rushing the slopes
of the ravine, flooding the creek,
bubbling hastily downstream.
Crows darken the sky in a
pattern of wings flapping above
swaying tree tops, into the forest.

A temporary weather setback
in spring's itinerary. Coltsfoot
hide their bright yellow faces,
awaiting the sun's return. Apple
blossom buds bate their unveiling.
Honeysuckle and gooseberry bushes
await release. Trilliums, unheeding
of the cold, wave crimson flags.

Wild ginger begins its early
presence, where wild strawberry,
spring violets, raspberry and
blackberry canes, and thimble
berries too, find their comfortable
presence. Earth's gifts to the
animals that Nature so amiably
nurtures, in between her tumultuous
bouts of peevish hysteria.

Living Her Age

I think it likely that people who have not been here will be interested to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh from care-free and frivolous 69, and was disappointed.
There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill you and make your eye glitter and your tongue cry out. “Oh, but it is wonderful, perfectly wonderful!” Yes, it is disappointing. You say, “Is this it? - this? After all this talk and fuss of a thousand generations of travelers who have crossed this frontier and looked about them and told what they saw and felt? Why, it looks just like 69.”
And that is true. Also it is natural; for you have not come by the fast express, you have been lagging and dragging across the world’s continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country melts into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the change: 70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67 - and so on, back, and back, to the beginning. If you climb to a summit and look back - ah, then you see!
Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country and climate that you crossed, all the way down up from the hot equator to the ice-summit where you are perched. You can make out where Infancy merged into Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; Youth into indefinite Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into definite Manhood; definite Manhood with aggressive ambitions into sobered and heedful Husbandhood and Fatherhood; these into troubled and foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old Age, white-headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the worshippers in their graves, nothing left but You, a remnant, a tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that was so ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the time; nothing left but You, centre of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice-summit, gazing out over the stages of that long trek and asking Yourself “would you do it again if you had the chance?” (December 1905) Mark Twain

**********************************************

He had pottered about most of the afternoon, and so had she. At their age winter seemed to last longer every year. Behind them now; they were in early spring. And it was quite wonderful. They were now able to go out of doors without hauling on heavy overcoats and boots. Same for their little dogs. Figuring what was needful for themselves was no less so for those very small creatures sharing their lives.

He had, earlier in the day, read aloud to her a short, succinct and somewhat bitter observation about growing older and becoming ensconced in old age, by none other than Mark Twain. They’d both laughed, not uproariously, but knowingly.

Still, they were doing pretty well for a pair of old codgers married 55 years with no end in sight of their partnership nor their love for one another. Thankful for their good health, and the immense enjoyment of their lives. And they had ample to be thankful for.

In the afternoon he had hauled out from the basement where it was stored over-winter that huge brown canopy - now faded by two summers’ exposure, into a softer shade of brown - to fit it over the metal infrastructure that comprised the form of the canopy shielding them from direct sun exposure, on their backyard deck.

While he was busy doing that, refusing all offers of help from her, she was out at the front of the house, hauling out lilies that were crowding into other beloved perennials. Something she should have done last fall, but was too busy with other garden chores, to attend to that one.

It was a warm day, unseasonably warm for early spring. There was a robin singing from the top of the ash tree across the street, and its trill was loud and sweetly brilliant, thrilling her to her very core. It was her husband who took their older dog downstairs early in the morning to let it out to the backyard while she slept in a little longer. With the younger, smaller one right beside her, directly under the covers. And her husband always whispered to her, when he got back into bed, how liltingly beautiful the trill of the cardinal was in the backyard at that early morning hour. Or the song sparrow, or the chirping of chickadees, which she always seemed to miss.

She felt guilty, she always did, that he was the one to go out so early; get up out of their warm and comfortable bed, to meet an obligation their 17-year-old dog required. The consequences of not doing so were unpleasant, but even when that occurred her husband, refusing to scold their little dog, did a good-natured clean-up.

She felt guilty because she really got a better night’s sleep than he ever did. He was up repeatedly, thanks to his bladder being pressed by his oversized prostate. He did a half-hour of therapy - kegel it was, to strengthen the bladder muscles - every day - sitting, counting the number of muscle-tensing exercises he performed, until he finally reached into a figure that satisfied him. When he’d first started doing this, years earlier, there had been an improvement, and they’d anticipated ongoing improvements, but they’d been tardy in unfolding. The initial improvement remained, but the promise of other, greater improvements simply did not materialize. He was grateful for the relief that did occur, and remained wedded to the exercise protocol to ensure that at the very least, that minimal relief remained.

He always said since he had to get up at six anyway to relieve himself, it was no additional bother to go downstairs with the little dog and take her outside. He would go out with her in case the raccoon was around. Even though he put bungees on the composters the resident raccoons never seemed to give up hope. They had disagreed about that, about tying down the composter tops to dissuade the raccoons from their night-time raids, because before tying down the tops they’d come around regularly and never left a mess. She didn’t begrudge them whatever they could use from their kitchen waste. But her husband reasoned that they were a threat to their little dogs, particularly their ten-year-old toy poodle, because it was stupidly aggressive and wouldn’t hesitate to attack any other animal impinging on his territory.

So that little routine was his and his alone, up out of bed as soon as he heard the female dog leap off the loveseat in their bedroom where she slept the night. Tie on his cuddly white dressing gown, tromp downstairs after her, out the sliding glass doors into the back garden. While she remained blissfully in bed, to sleep another two hours. It wasn’t fair, but it was their ritual and although they lived with it, she remained uneasy at her too-easy capitulation to his reasoning.

By early afternoon that day, after he had finished cleaning out the garden shed and re-assembling everything neatly back into it, placing the snow-thrower right at the very back where it wouldn’t be noticed again until the snow began flying, and she had finished her little bit of gardening, they wondered at no telephone calls. And it occurred to him to pick up the receiver and listen. No dial tone.

She’d done it again. Picked up the telephone sitting directly beside her upstairs desk-top computer, and not replacing it properly in its cradle. So the telephone was effectively out of commission all day. They’d been on tenterhooks, waiting to hear the results of their daughter’s job interview. Even if she’d dialled their cellphone it would never be heard. The cellphone was tucked securely into his shoulder bag, hung in the cupboard next to the door leading to the garage. It was only used when he was out of the house, checking back to let her know where he was, when he’d arrive home from his errands.

And sure enough, the upstairs telephone hadn’t been properly secured. He said nothing, but she felt the fool. Again. It happened so regularly. Their granddaughter would sometimes text-message her and next time she’d retrieve her email she’d read “Grandma! You forgot to hang up the telephone again!”

Damn! She cursed her lack of attention. If their daughter called, tried to contact them, leave a message, she couldn’t. He had finished his work. Had gone down to the basement store room to pluck a pair of long cushions out of there, and take them upstairs to make the glider plump and comfortable for her. “There”, he said, “just sit there, get yourself in the mood to relax”. He’d even brought the newspapers out for her, and the mobile telephone, now in working order. She set it beside her, under her skirt, and beside her on the other side, he sat their apricot poodle, a lazy little dog that wanted nothing but to cuddle and to sleep.

Then he sat himself across from her, and discommoded at the temporary absence of his mini-laptop, was fiddling with a short-wave radio. The laptop was used for nothing but listening to radio stations, anyway. Like National Public Radio. He valued the debates, the in-depth news coverage, the flow of the conversations. She preferred her newspapers. And the laptop? In for repairs. It had taken a serious dive. Actually thrust itself out of her husband’s hands as he was conveying it from the dining room to the breakfast room. And arced straight across from the kitchen onto the porcelain tile floor of the breakfast room.

This was a lovely floor, in black-and-white squares, very classical, and it was pleasant being able to see it through the glass top of their breakfast-room table. But this was most definitely not a surface that dealt kindly with suicide-prone baby-computers. What had been whole became pitiably fractured. Her husband had been stricken. As much as their little dogs were animated companions, his laptop was an inanimate companion, one that informed and pleased him mightily.

He swore, (she thought swiftly, now there’s an end to all that incessant noise; good riddance). He picked up the pieces, and examined them. Actually, the computer did not completely shatter; there was merely the separation of a few pieces, one of which was the long metal hinge covering the vital conductors between screen and hard drive; the other the sliding door covering the battery. And, after putting it all back together, slowly, carefully, hopefully, it worked! “Isn’t that fortunate” she said dryly to her husband. He grinned back at her, triumphantly.

But in the days that followed it became clear that the little computer was feeling a trifle queasy, not quite up to itself. One of the hiccoughs was that it was no longer keen on following orders. As in ‘shut-down’. It would display the message that it was ‘downloading updates’, but that was merely a ruse. It was downloading nothing, just taking him for a fool. In it went for critical care, and he was bereft of its presence, even thought of teaching it a lesson by acquiring a second one. Prudence prevailed.

So now, fiddling with the short-wave radio he zeroed in on the weather, and then went to the local news. One of the news items was of a very local accident. The area, an hour’s drive from where they lived, was almost where their daughter’s house was located. A fatality. She felt her face grow heavy, and her chest pinch. So well did he know her that he looked sharply up from the radio and regarded her. Quietly, he said, that wouldn’t be her. Don’t you start worrying now, over nothing.

When she worried and got tense and upset her body went into lock-down. She would develop a rash, and break out in dreadful, suppurating sores. Her gut would refuse to process the food she ate. She would feel ill, and there would be a shut-down of her alimentary canal. He dreaded that; she put up with it. Their son, who lived halfway across the country, occasionally would send his mother books with titles like “Women Who Worry”, and “How To Deal With Stress”. She would dutifully read partially through each of these self-help books, then have a conversation with herself about how idiotically presumptuous people were to write such witless, useless tomes. The books would be shelved, she would thank her son, and go back to worrying.

Her husband tried to engage her mind, wanted to talk about their imminent vacation, but she felt capable of nothing but nodding her head in agreement with whatever he said. Suddenly, the piercing call of the telephone. They both jumped, and she looked frantically for the telephone; not on the little table before them, while he rushed into the house to grab it off its cradle. She was puzzled; the sound was so clear, so near, and when he came back with a disgruntled look on his face reminding her that it was in her direct possession, she remembered she’d placed it beside her, covered by the fabric of her skirt.

She was, quite frankly, amazed at her inability to react, to understand fully what was happening, instead of being thrown into the panic of blank confusion. The telephone rang, clearly enough, loudly enough so that it registered that it was there, right there, not inside the house, but there, beside her, where she had secured it in just the very event that it would eventually ring, and she would respond to the ring. Instead, she had been confused, blanked out, couldn’t recall she had a mere half-hour earlier placed the telephone beside her, secured it so she could simply pick it up and respond. What was wrong with her?

“Hello?” she said, holding the telephone close to her left ear, hoping she wouldn’t have to confront, this time, a situation where, as so often happened increasingly, she could barely hear the words on the other end. Her faculties, clearly, were on the fade-end of usefulness.

“Me”, came her grandchild’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“Just home from school?” she asked the girl. “Had a snack yet? Got much homework?”
The usual. She was speaking in a clear, calm voice, nothing betraying the disquietude she felt. Fearful that the girl’s mother, a single parent with huge responsibilities would be unable to find another contract quite as quickly as she hoped to, fearful that the child was at home, alone, while her mother was still out somewhere, fearful that it was her daughter who’d been involved in an accident nearby her home, fearful that she herself was beginning to sink into a morass of old-age inclemency, where she could no longer depend on herself to react appropriately even to minor, day-to-day situations.

She would be going out this evening, after dinner, to do the canvass for her street. Something she’d done for more years than she could even recall, unless she really put her seemingly overworked mind to. She still did that three to four times a year, for various health charities, collecting donations from their neighbours, writing out the receipts for taxation purposes.

It was fine, she got through the process, even though it was one she detested. Going to peoples’ houses, knocking on their doors, appealing to their better natures to donate a few dollars for charity. Mostly, their neighbours responded well, and she was grateful for that. Not so grateful for the sense of dislocation that would occasionally overcome her; unable to even remember the house number while writing out the receipt, attempting a feeble stab at humour to cover her confusion.

And feeling overwhelmed, sometimes, not knowing quite why she would feel like that, but she would suddenly feel weak, tired, chest tight, and one of her neighbours would bring her inside, tell her to sit still for a few minutes. These episodes she kept to herself, unwilling to share them with her husband. Because, really, there was nothing at all wrong with her. She had plenty of energy and stamina, more than capable of brisk walking for lengthy distances, cleaning their large house, working in the garden. All things she took pleasure in. Just that, occasionally, going up the risers at a good clip she would suddenly feel a loss of strength at the top of the stairs, and have to lean against the wall for a few minutes until the spell passed.

That need not necessarily happen this evening. Just a by-product of aging, obviously. The weather is gorgeous and there’s no reason not to get out there and finish up the canvass. Her neighbours are, after all, anxious to off-load their excess earnings in a good cause. And anxious too, come to think of it, to exchange neighbourly and neighbourhood information occasionally called gossip, with her. She hasn’t much to gossip about, but she is a good listener. And people like that.

Not long afterward, she did speak with her daughter. The interview went well. But the company isn’t really doing the kind of things she does; she’s a little higher on the professional scale. They wouldn’t be prepared to pay her what she knows she should be earning. She wouldn’t be working out of the house, from her home office as much, working there. She wouldn’t have the autonomy she now enjoys. And she has her doubts that she’ll be offered the job.

Later, on the late-night local news, when she returned from canvassing her street, they both listened to the details of the accident which she hadn’t mentioned to her daughter. It was, evidently, caused by a woman who hadn’t stopped at a stop sign. Went right through. Hit head on with a transport vehicle. Not much of a power contest with the Volkswagen Jetta that the woman was driving. One death, the only occupant of the Jetta, the driver. And the driver? A long-time area resident, a 93 year-old woman.

How’s that for living your age?

Spring Snowfall

Today, no song sparrows, robins
or cardinals sing in the trees;
they huddle, fluffing feathers for
comfort, seeking quiet haven from
the falling sleet and snow. Last night's
imperious winds ushered in a weather
front that raged inclement. Impish
nature, scrubbing about in her bag
of tricks, hard at work again.

Neighbourhood roof tops, blanched.
Roads and lawns whitely gleaming
as Nature dropped her winter coverlet.
In the garden, bright yellow, orange
and red tulip heads nod forlornly.
The Magnolia blossoms are prettily
capped, white-on-pink. Emerging
blooms on apple and plum trees, arrested.

Only the bright orange blossoms of
the Japanese quince are unmoved by
this sudden, quirkish transformation.

My Spring Garden...

It is nothing short of bliss; seasonal
perhaps, but no less perfect, for that
feeling of being at home with nature.
The warming sun, slight breeze,
and rich moist soil in my garden
conspire to render my day perfection.
Up come the perennials: spurge,
primrose, bergenia, fritalleries, violets,
bleeding hearts, apple trees and our
awesomely lovely, perfumed Magnolia.

Delightful whiffs of rich blossoms and
that of the welcoming soil as I pluck
tiny heucheras and move them elsewhere
in the garden, imbue me with a power
and a purpose borrowed from Nature.
Unmounding roses, trimming stalks
as bees whip themselves into a frenzy
of anticipation, while a cardinal sings
nearby, offering its brilliant voice for a
duet with an spring-worm-ecstatic robin.

The comfort of bare arms warmed by
the sun as I fuss in the garden, two small
dogs silently padding after, muzzling new
grass, spreading themselves on the lawn,
baking in the sun alongside one another.
Purple lungwort, white anemone, red, white
and yellow tulips, red primrose and
forget-me-nots raising insouciant heads.
Ritual renewal awakens us, each
and every one, to life's rich offerings.

And I Become Eve

Primitive in its ancient lineage
its early spring blooms of hugely
impressive presence send waves
of divine fragrance washing over
and around my beloved garden.
All winter, I anxiously surveyed
its bare branches, its fizzy-plump,
grey buds hoisted skyward as sleet,
snow, icy winds and freezing rain
washed over that very tree.

Its proudly outstretched branches
seemed to take no notice - those
flower buds persevered, then swelled
mightily as winter progressed into
spring. Now, hundreds of those
pregnant buds, magenta creeping
out from within, have transformed
that Magnolia, my garden, my home
to a splendid, richly-embroidered
tapestry of colour and sublime aroma.

Each bud and blossom a singular
presentation of exotic perfection, the
eye becomes a prisoner, captured,
unable to withdraw from the
captivating presence of its majestic
allure. Sumptuous beyond credit,
this magical tree of floral abundance
must surely have had an honoured
presence in Biblical Eden...

At its feet, a companion, luxuriant
Japanese spurge, in partnering white
bloom. And when the Magnolia's
gorgeous flowers are spent, and its
large, dark-green shining leaves
arrive, the delicate fairy rose resident
beneath will boom its pink echo.

Your Daughters (1)

David always answers the door, just as he’s always the first to grab for the telephone when it rings. He enjoys those little breaks in his daily routine. He stands at the door, widely grinning, nods amiably at the inevitable spiel and when they run down like an overplayed record, extends the money. We only donate to medical research and from March into June there’s a steady stream of canvassers soliciting for Salvation Army, heart fund, cancer, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, you name it. David, in his way, is helping the unfortunates of our society - or so he often solemnly declares.

I was glad to have him take over my role of reluctant lady bountiful because I dread those calls. At first they used to ask to see “the lady of the house” but I told him to say “my mother’s no lady - tell ME” and he says this obligingly, eagerly, and although many are likely taken aback, at the very least bemused, they’re polite and carefully explain what they’re campaigning for. Ironic really, to be met at the door by one whom society pities as yet another type of ‘unfortunate’.

Fortunately, David doesn’t know that - yet. He feels he is taking his place as a responsible member of this community. I don’t like to conform myself, but David, like his father, is very socially conservative.

Which makes for some very interesting conversations around the dinner table where many of our discussions take place. So the boys are exposed to opposite sides of any social or political conflict, as it were. And though we’re spirited in defending our views, we don’t try to foist them on each other, or on the boys. Although just recently, from sheer exasperation, Cliff said “Donna, you’re beginning to sound like your brother, a raving lunatic?, when I ventured a certain opinion critical of a recent government initiative.

“Anarchist”, I repeated firmly. I like the ring of the word. I’m no Red Emma, just a hausfrau who dislikes most of the obligations society burdens us with for the sake of propriety - observation of ritualistic ‘norms’. I have no intention of inciting my boys to riot, yet would like to teach them that there is nothing wrong with civil disobedience under certain circumstances. Nothing wrong with questioning the questionable. Alas, they don’t understand, perhaps don’t choose to - they’re too young, and the only disobedience incurred here is in relation to my homely little dictums like “take out the trash”, “cut the grass”, “wash the windows”, and zoom! Everyone disappears when minutes before no amount of gentle persuasion could entice them out of the house to enjoy the benefits of fresh air, sunshine, exercise and all that other good stuff mothers are supposed to be concerned about. Pity David isn’t as quick as Robbie and Denis, as he gets left holding the bag - rather the trash, the lawnmower, the Windex.

But on that particular occasion, the boys sat there bug-eyed until Robbie said “Gee mom, anarchists are dangerous loonies, they get zapped, like Sacco and Venzetti”. I swung on him in astonishment. “How’d you ever hear about them?” I asked, never having heard him offer anything outside sports-related trivia before. “social history”, he mumbled, stabbing his meat and proceeding to cut it so vigorously the rest of us had to stabilize the table until Cliff hissed at him.

“Well, not all anarchists are violent, there’s something called passive resistance” I told him, them, defensively. “And the educational system is so backward they don’t teach you THAT. They’re probably still teaching about how savage the natives of Canada were - subhuman inhabitants of a land that belonged by right of destiny to whites who herded the savages onto undesirable land, paid them a joking pittance to stay there, diseased them with apathy and alcohol and now point at the meagre, sorry remnants and say ‘Ha! We told you so!”

“Now just a minute …” Cliff began, but I don’t like to be interrupted.

“AND THEY DO THE SAME WITH THE REST OF US TOO, only we’re too stupid to notice”, I overrode his objection and he settled back, knowing from long experience who useless it is to try to interrupt me. “ … all of us unsuspecting fools are herded onto urban reservations to become fodder for commerce”. I glared at him. “We’re subservient to the whims of a handful of political egotists stifling individuality and initiative with an insidious long-term program of depersonalization. We all conform to the consumer norm, cheer the banners of national pride and boost the gross national product - and the national product is GROSS!”

Why bother. Not only are they unconvinced, but puzzled as well. Granted, I tend to get carried away, my voice rises, my face gets red; the boys sit there careful not to say anything that will set me off again. Cliff, on the other hand, is always calm, considers his words carefully, is sparing of them and of everyone’s ears.

Robbie giggled nervously. Cliff regarded me with that concerned look a parent often bestows on a naughty child.

David though, David was loyal, undemanding, ready to appreciate. He regarded me with admiration. He knew he could never get HIS tongue around such a mouthful and he repeated lovingly, “Mom’s an aynarkist”.

“You said it!” Denis whooped, splattering mashed potato around the table.

“You’ve learned a new word, but let’s keep it in the family”, Cliff advised, laughing. But he meant it. I’ll tell you how conservative he is, he’s a chartered accountant and you can’t get any more strictured than that, can you? But I shouldn’t knock it, that’s how we get our bread, as Robbie would say.

Disagreements are surface though, in our family. When it comes to the things that matter to us, we’re all agreed, relaxed and reasonably content. We like each other’s company, get along fine. Learning to live with what life throws at you helps - or does that work in reverse?

I was, I am, a nurse, though I haven’t worked for a while, and one learns to be practical. Sometimes, just to ease the tension, I flaunt some little idiosyncrasy. Cliff is very understanding.

Most people seem to think that nurses should know better, that, like doctors, they have all the answers, about health and sickness, that kind of thing. And it extends to other areas as well. Well, tain’t necessarily so. Starting a family late in life, the risks are greater. My mother once ventured the opinion that the wrong genetic material came from Cliff’s side, but I put a damper on that.

The last several years the younger boys have spent their summers at my family’s place in the Annapolis Valley. No use sending David. My mother wrote the neighbours wouldn’t take kindly to him, you know how things are. No, I don’t, I wrote back. How are they? But she didn’t reply to that and I don’t really care. We’d rather him him with us anyway. Summers are easier with the other two away and only David with us here.

Cliff and I decided it would be a good idea to get David accustomed to an outdoor experience early, so he’s become a competent hiker, climber, canoeist - in the winter, snowshoer. We go climbing in the Gatineaus throughout the spring and the fall; hike through the woods and canoe on the lakes in the summer.

We try to keep him busy, give him learning opportunities, interest him in solitary-type activities, especially now that he’s getting older. Fifteen last month.

“It’s hard on him”, Cliff said. “I mean, I explained as much as I could and he says he understands but he doesn’t even have the normal outlet of a boy his age, mingling with girls, talking with them under normally developing circumstances.”

I won’t tell him, I decide, that some woman up the street, newly moved ink knocked at the door a few weeks ago, asked me to keep ‘that boy’ at home, ‘please’. I felt my face tighten, but smiled, asked why.

“He keeps calling”, she said, obviously embarrassed.

“Oh?”
“At my house”, she explained. Asking for my daughter.”

“Does he know her?”

“He walked into our backyard one evening, just walked in, introduced himself. Said he hoped we’d like living here. It was very NICE of him and we didn’t know how to discourage him. I mean, what could we say? Go away? He made himself comfortable on one of our chairs and chatted with us, me and my husband. Our daughter was playing with the cat and this boy, oh, I am sorry - your son said he wanted to take her out.”

“Oh, did he?” Little beggar, he didn’t mention anything to us, about asking girls out. Getting brave!

“Yes. Well, of course we said she’s too young. She’s only thirteen, not that that makes any difference. Then he picked up a magazine I had been reading on interior decorating, leafed through it - I mean, he SEEMED up until then like a reasonable boy, even if … that is to say, we were surprised, he stabbed the magazine at a certain page, said “know what it says here?” And we said “No”. And he replied, “it says here she’s going to kiss me, probably marry me, too.”

“Oh dear!” I had to repress an impulse to laugh. Nervous tension. I was not amused.

“Exactly!” she said indignantly, forgetting perhaps, that I was the mother of ‘that boy’. “since then he’s been coming around pestering her to go for walks with him. Look, I realize he’s uh, special, and we’d like to be understanding, but what guarantee have we … Look, I’m sorry, we just don’t want him around. My daughter is almost hysterical with same.”

“Well, we can’t have your daughter hysterical.” I shouldn’t have said that. I know I shouldn’t have, and our parting was somewhat less than amicable although I did say I would look after things.

And the confused look on his face when I confronted him. Oh, not a confrontation, that’s not right, just a quiet conversation. He had a right to be confused after all. Hadn’t he just done what any other young boy might do, having conceived an interest in a particular girl? Seems he’d selected the girl, noticed her around the street, thought she’d be the right one for him. He explained. He doesn’t like the girls, the few girls who attend special education classes with him. They have, he says, “funny faces - fat, Mom”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Hugged him instead. My funny, fat-faced boy.

But he has to learn there are certain things people don’t, or won’t understand. And trying to explain this to him was almost like a re-play of a problem we had when he was much younger.

Absent-mindedly, either when he was contented or agitated about something, he’d simultaneously suck his thumb and grasp himself, begin fondling his crotch. It took a long time to break him of that. And that was the first time we’d ever got really angry with Robbie and Denis; when we discovered that they were imitating him, ridiculing him, encouraging him … faster, faster.

“How will we make him understand?” Cliff asked me. In a panic not to do the wrong thing, which was to make David feel guilty.

“We’ll just have to tell him it will upset people, if they see him doing it”, I told him, oh so wearily Because it seemed to me I had tried everything else, and that was the last resort, telling hi that he’d be upsetting other people. Me, the non-conformist. But it meant a lot to him, pleasing people. He is always so anxious to please.

“The nicest feeling things are private, David, remember that”, I heard Cliff tell him cautiously. “People get funny about nice things, they get jealous, they want to share, and that’s only for yourself. So if you want to keep it for yourself, you have to keep it private.”

Since he felt very protective toward his diddle, very possessive about the ‘nice’ feeling, he finally learned, and if, sometimes, during the learning process, we’d see him get that dreamy expression on his face, his hand gently begin probing his pants, one of us would urge “David!” He’d smile slyly, snatch his hand away, slap it with the other, and say “no diddling, Da-vid!”

************************************************************************

On our right lives Mrs. Wright, who is convinced she is. Soon after we moved to this house she approached me as the self-appointed ‘representative of neighbourhood concern’.

“She’s worried about us, Cliff, feels we should take steps to ‘protect’ ourselves from ‘a troubling future’”, I told him, afterward. “Said we should give serious thought to institutionalizing him. In her words: “best for him, for you, for the rest of us”. I told her to get the hell out.”

He seemed pained, listening to me. And I didn’t know what hurt him more; the thought of David institutionalized or my uncivil behaviour. Mean and little of me. I knew he didn’t give a damn about her, he just likes to observe civil propriety, wished I would maintain a polite distance.

David knew the woman didn’t like him, so he stayed away from her property. When Cliff told him never to trespass, even accidentally cutting across lawns, not even to smile - for David has a smile even for her - David understood.

She doesn’t see him as a human being. To her, he’s sub-human. “He leers”, she’d said, and calmly at first, I’d corrected her: “he smiles”. Useless, there was no point. She sees them all as the stigmata of sin. We must be dreadful people for God to have punished us with this living blemish. As some people see blacks or Orientals as depersonalized ‘looking all the same’ so does she see our David as a leering moonface, better locked away in shame and fear.

When he was ten, we got him - oh really all three boys, it was for all of them - a dog, a boxer. A first they all played with the dog. It was only a puppy. But then it became a chore to look after and Denis and Robbie had so many other things to do, friends to play with. And since David had no other friends, Sami became his pet, his friend.

We left the pup’s ears unclipped, just docked the tail, and the ears hung loose and floppy, the dog’s round, pushed-back snout clown like, funny, and in its clumsily affectionate nature it almost resembled David. When it romped with him, its hind end would wag ponderously from side to side, altogether hilarious. As it grew older and bigger it, like David, didn’t recognize its own strength and was capable of affectionately bowling over an unsuspecting object of its attentions.

They would wrestle on the grass, the two of them, and the dog slept in David’s bedroom, on its back, legs crooked into the air, and when the dog dreamed at night, it often yelped little messages, kicked its legs about. Like David, who had always been a restless sleeper.

We had a little trouble the first several months, for the dog would invariably head for the lawn of the neighbour on our right, to evacuate or otherwise relieve itself. She complained vociferously to David, told him to shovel up the mess. He’s very obliging; the first time he shovelled the dog’s ordure, he piled several days’ worth in a neat little pile on her front porch and she, unsuspecting, slid into the morass on hurriedly exiting her house one morning. You cannot imagine the embarrassment, the apologies, the “it won’t happen again” promises.

Unrepentant joy lurked behind the remorse in his eyes when we told him (Cliff told him, I secretly applauded him) his action was irresponsible, not cute, and had Mrs. Wright fallen she might have hurt herself. As it was, only her sense of dignity had been impaired but she railed at David more cautiously, convinced perhaps that ‘that boy’ might be capable of ANYTHING.
Time passed, the puppy became a mature dog and learned to control the venue of its evacuations. Time passes and with David, one problem gives way to another. He is now as he always was, as a younger child, eager to please, to introduce himself to ‘new’ neighbours in the hope that he may find some friend, someone who won’t be ‘nice’, but still want to spend time with him. And he tries to be helpful, offers to rake lawns, take pets for walks. But his presence annoys people and they turn down his offers. No matter, I always find things to do around here, to keep him busy.

I try not to think too much about how he often walks down to the municipal swimming pool and stands there, watching the other kids having a great time. I came across him there once, just passing by, and saw him leaning on the wire fence surrounding the pool, his face immersed in his old dreamy look, but his hands firmly locked above his head, on the wire.

He’s got Sami. The two of them start every morning with a little exercise. Before the school bus arrives to pick him up, he gets out his bicycle, puts Sami’s leash on and they pedal and run for several miles. If I have some letters to mail from the day before, he’s pleased to have that to do, on his way.

But he gets restless. Sometimes when you think problems have been solved, they haven’t been, not at all. They’re just submerged and they’ll re-surface, sooner or late. We were just kidding ourselves thinking his sexuality could be kept on a back burner. If it’s not natural for any other boy, why should it be for him? He’s taken to cutting the sleeves off tee shirts, like some of the other boys around, to show off the muscles in his shoulders. He’s a well developed boy; stocky, musclebound. Let me tell you, he’s so healthy that he’s never had to have anything done to his teeth, not even a filling. The dentist says it’s unheard-of. Funny, he survived a precarious babyhood, several heart operations, continuous susceptibility to attacks of pneumonia, and now he’s a lovely physical specimen.

It didn’t work though. All that show of muscle and not one nibble from any girl. Naturally. I’ve tried to imagine just what might be going through his head. It’s not possible, of course, even Cliff can’t guess. Correct that; we can surmise and it doesn’t make us anything but uneasy. We catch him now, observing his reflection in the mirrors around the hosue whenever he passes one, pushing out his chest, fisting his hands to make his biceps bulge.

“You’re stuck on yourself!” Denis giggles and ducks to avoid David’s good-natured slap.

“Honey, this can’t be ignored”, Cliff tells me.

“right, so what do we do? Talk to him again? You want to talk to him again?”

“Yes, that too. But it’s not enough. He just nods his head, says “Sure Dad, I know”. But does he? What DOES he know?”

We pit it off. We were waiting for some opportunity. Oh, not that, trying to figure out just what to say, to do. At one point we decided we were being unnecessarily alarmist. He was going through a phase of pre-adulthood, like any other boy.

Then one day Robbie and Denis spoke to us, said we had to do something about Davd. “Jeez, we’re the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. Everyone’s having a grerat laugh on us. He’s going around telling all the girls he’s going to marry them They scream and run away and he goes on to the next one. What’s he expect? That some girl’s gonna want to go out with him? ‘s he have to act like a freak as well as look like one?

They were as stunned afterward as we were. Our children, his own brothers. They said they were sorry, even cried. It was pressure. Peer pressure; wanting to be accepted does that to people. That’s why I’d rather not present as an accredited member of society. But I haven’t been able to imbue the boys with that distance; they want acceptance.

Later, Cliff proposed what he said was a solution.

“Why, WHY do we have t go those lengths?”

“I’ve spoken to Dr. Clinton about it, he suggested it as a solution. They’re doing that now. Vasectomies for boys, sterilization for girls.” It wasn’t easy for him.

“It’s immoral, do they even ask the kids? Do they explain? Can they make them understand? It smacks of Nazi purification of the race!”

“Don’t be unreasonable, Donna, please. Let’s not have a lesson in sociology or politics this time. This is a problem we have to deall with on a personal level, without rhetoric or histrionics.”

“Cliff, what about the fact that these kids have low sperm counts - it’s true, I should know.”

“Yes, Dr. Clinton told me. I think I knew anyway. Nature’s way of inhibiting reproduction of an inferior product”, he said bitterly.

“There’s NOTHING inferior about David!”

He looked at me, a glum expression on his face. I felt badly for him. For me. Most of all for David. And what good would it do, the sterilization?

“Cliff, what’s the point? A vasectomy will do nothing to diminish his sex drive.”

“Yes”, he acknowledged. “That’s perfectly true.” And we looked at each other. God help us.

I’d always half-seriously considered David my innocent metaphor, my response to a society hung up on facile social convention, everyone marching to join the social mess. Docile clones. Now it appears that the fuse of my metaphor is burning a short wick.

An Azure Sky, A Molten Sun

Nothing, not the merest scintilla
of a cloud formation, neither wisp
not bouffant masses, obscures
this day's perfectly crowned sky
of soft, uninterrupted blue. Wind
there is, but presenting as a modest,
muted, friendly cooling breeze.

On the floor of the forest, still bare
of summer's ardent green, a blanket
of dry leaves, twigs and expired botany
nurtures the soil beneath,wheedling
ferns, brush and seasonal wildflowers
to emerge, triumphant over their
tediously long and frigid slumber.

Bumblebees, hoverflies, solitary
bees, present themselves and their
infinite errands, erratically whipping
the air as they busily recall themselves
to duty. Comes the slight, emphatic
and lonely call of a single peeper;
desolate, from nearby wetlands.

Mourning cloaks, orange commas
and azure spring butterflies slip
among the yet-bare tree branches,
seeking out elusive mates. From
a branch high above, the black, hunched
shape of a crow, taking note, its
clever brain recognizing creatures
not of the forest, but within it.

A croak, and he flaps off. A pair
of red squirrels, in territorial lunacy,
whip madly in hot pursuit, one of the
other, then turn and reverse the chase.
Seen too, and heard, a small quadruped
in camouflage, prowling and dashing
in half-hearted, futile chase, each time
the frenzied squirrels pass by.

Nature, Teasing

Nature is an irrepressible mischief,
delighting in teasing and often
tormenting us. Today the tease
presents. Only yesterday we
waxed rhapsodic, bathed in warm
sunshine, caressed by sweet breezes
ambulating in pleasure through our
leisurely woodland ramble. Today
all has been mysteriously reversed.

We cannot linger, move briskly on,
while the chill damp of this day sends
its icy fingers into our very marrow.
The cloud-capped sky, a watery gray
as though we view it through the lens
of rarely-ambulatory aquatic creatures.

Though we hasten to outstrip the
sharp, probing wind, we still note small
treasures; lichens brilliant in the dim
light, toadstool shelf-fungi clasped
tightly against tree bark, water-striders
flailing mightily in their return to
the ravine's creek-tributaries.

American bittersweet vines are
awakening, black cherry trees lustily
leafing and dogwood bushes tentatively
testing the atmosphere. Our very small
companions, though enraptured by
newly-released fragrances, are yet
eager to move along, cold penetrating
their defences, as it does ours.

Nuthatches' prolonged calls penetrate
the woods, then the calls of crows,
settling and rising, flapping through
the landscape, and the staccato of
neighbourly woodpeckers. A cardinal's
sweet lilting whistle encircles our
environment so swiftly adapting from
rigid frigidity of winter newly-escaped,
to this hailed, uncertain spring.

They Await Us

They await us, the small wild
creatures of the forest, wise in
their ways of survival and swiftly
attuned to opportunities, knowing
every position of every cache we
leave behind, doling out their
peanut treats, even on occasion
sharing them with chickadees
and nuthatches,while crows
observe curiously, from above.

This is another extraordinary
day of no clouds lidding the sky,
with full sun exposure and a kindly
dispositioned breeze. Trees have
begun their leafing-out process,
the maples, poplars, willows, ash,
birch and bass, while oak, sumac
and hawthorne yet hesitate.

The understory bracken quickens,
so too canes of raspberry, blackberry;
gooseberry and hazelnut bushes.
Bedding grasses have initiated their
lush, soon-fragrant appearance on
the forest floor, along with colonies
of lilies-of-the-valley, foam flower,
woodland violets and dandelions.

We lope along, the fragrance of
spring releasing tensions, bringing us
back into the world of nature. We
breathe the essence of our woodland
surroundings, their soul-cleansing
affirmation of our place in that vibrant
landscape. It lies at the heart of our
very existence, refusing to be waylaid.

Free Birds, Wild Botanicals

Above, as we make our way
down into the ravine this
perfect spring day the shrill
cries of a pair of circling hawks,
the coarse croak of a raven,
the unforgettable fragrance
of distantly discharged skunk,
all pervading our newly-roused
spring-aware senses; we forge on.

Inside the ravine, the wind that
blows so assertively above gently
kisses our faces turned toward the
trail-encircling woods. Under a clear
blue sky, shifting white-puffed clouds.
The sun heats the forest floor.

There, tiny wild white strawberry
blossoms wink their presence.
Among them, small purple and
white wood violets, and the modest
yellow flowers of trout lilies, the
winkling scarlet of trilliums.

Above, wild apple trees begin to
set their buds among the blooming
floral-white blossoms of scattered
serviceberries. Wild gooseberry
and hazelnut bushes have come alive;
green and scarlet fiddleheads unfurl.

Primitive horsetails colonize and
monopolize the marshy swales, as
baneberry, red and white, emerges.
Old long-fallen tree trunks glow
with their luxurious moss carpeting;
nurseries for pine and spruce seedlings.

A pair of somnolent Mallards rise
in sudden panic from the still, clear
waters of the creek below, flapping
energetically, to settle beyond our
intrusive gaze. There, high on a
branch close to an entanglement of
trees, a sole brilliant scarlet cardinal.

Morning Has Broken

We waken to the pulsating glow
of that ineffable brightness
filtering through our house, chill
yet from the damp that permeates
with the inevitable infiltration
of days on the weary end of dark
skies and incessant rain.

Now the house glows with the
energy of light, the sun's early
spring rise, its bodily celestial heat
singing through the house, ourselves
lifted and transported from the
gloom that descends in its
unhappy, lamented absence.

The atmosphere, outside and
within, fairly thrums with the
release of bright energy. There is
a low-pitched melodic strain of
graceful sound; the music of the
spheres come to console and to
energize all living organisms. We
have not been forgotten, abandoned.

The elevation of our spirits
delight of welcoming birdsong,
greening of the gardens and woodlands,
awakening of creatures of the soil,
the sentient others all dependent
on Nature's temperament and tantrums.

The Earth pulsates as an entirety
and we, a cog within, once again
celebrate our place in this eternal
vision and wisdom. The sun, an
ageless ode to Mother Nature.

Gloom

Subtly invading the consciousness,
an element of gloom pervasive like
a dark cloud obliterating the light
and life-enhancing glow of the sun.
It is, in very fact, precisely that;
a sturdily overcast sky presents
a day as closed to light and warmth
as the lidded interior of an iron cauldron.

Unremitting chill, sending icy fingers
exploring the interior of our fragile
bodies, coupled with the loss of
that golden glow we so desperately
cling to, presents as an all-encompassing
gloom, so deep our psyches shrink
and pale in the distress of withdrawal.

Houses, dependent on the heating
orb in the sky to warm interiors,
become mausoleum chill and miserable
as stone. Home interiors transform
to dark, brooding places where their
dwellers move about in quietly
deprived, ghostly discord of mind.

We become pensive at nature's
inclement moroseness, so highly attuned
to her unforeseen episodes of intractable
vicissitudes of atmospheric upheavals,
forgetting in our deprivation that she is
immensely capable of treating her creatures
to far more impacting disturbances
than mere weather inclemency.

Soon enough, we recall, the warm hugs
of the life-restoring sun will be returned
and we in the meantime take refuge in
exchanging them between ourselves.

The Cloud-Lidded Sky

Nature's message for this day
is dismal, darkly overcast
accompanied by damp chill
and an unrelenting drizzle
beloved of early spring robins.
We set out on our quotidian
ramble in our nearby ravine.

Underfoot, on the woodland
trail, a squashed mash of fall's
remnants. A lone, brilliantly
male-plumaged Mallard duck
steams silently along the
rain-swollen ravine creek.

The bright green spears of
nascent lilies-of-the-valley
clustered about tree trunks have
made their appearance right on
schedule, joining the trout lilies
and trilliums earlier assembled.

From high on an unleafed poplar
mast a scarlet cardinal whistles
his high-pitched song, sweetly
counterpointed by a robin's
piercing trill. Interspersed on
the forest floor, small ponds have
appeared temporarily, inviting
the appearance of jewelweed.

Overnight the first tentative
thrusts of horsetails have begun
to colonize the forest floor. Ferns
begin their resolute unfurling, and
mosses gleam brightly insouciant
through the dim, filtered light
under the cloud-lidded sky.

Simple Truths

It is just that, a simple truth;
in a huge bureaucracy no one
is indispensable for the facts are
otherwise. Pride in quality and
quantity of work as a principled
professional credits oneself.

But in the larger scheme of
indifferent boardrooms, skill,
experience and capable productivity
present as immaterial. Corporate
or governmental "memory" may
be lost and with it required
precedence - yet so be it.

Succumbing to the despondence
of unrecognized merit, confused
at the callousness of casual dismissal
is merely oneself, with a conflated sense
of vital, unaddressed importance.

The decision to overwhelm oneself
with personal responsibility in an
uncaring, impersonal nest of
officiously-entitled elites whose
accomplishments start and stop at
the manipulation of others' talents
remains a personal attribute of
pride and capability; drop it.

Look elsewhere for the satisfaction
of due recognition as a resolutely
performance-oriented cog. Without
your resolute determination and
institutional knowledge and the
finessing of details, the wheel will
still continue to turn, be assured.

Your Daughters

David always answers the door, just as he’s always the first to grab for the telephone when it rings. He stands at the door, widely grinning, nods amiably at the inevitable spiel and when they run down like an overplayed record, extends the money. David, in his way, is helping the unfortunates of our society - or so he often solemnly declares.

I was glad to have him take over my role of reluctant lady bountiful because I dread those calls. At first they used to ask to see “the lady of the house” but I told him to say “my mother’s no lady - tell ME” and although many are likely taken aback, at the very least bemused, they’re polite and carefully explain what they’re campaigning for. Ironic really, to be met at the door by one whom society pities as yet another type of ‘unfortunate’.

Fortunately, David doesn’t know that - yet. He feels he is taking his place as a responsible member of this community. I don’t like to conform myself, but David, like his father, is very socially conservative.

Which makes for some very interesting conversations around the dinner table where many of our discussions take place. So the boys are exposed to opposite sides of any social or political conflict, as it were. And though we’re spirited in defending our views, we don’t try to foist them on each other, or on the boys. Although just recently, from sheer exasperation, Cliff said “Donna, you’re beginning to sound like your brother, a raving lunatic“, when I ventured a certain opinion critical of a recent government initiative.

“Anarchist”, I repeated firmly. I like the ring of the word. I’m no Red Emma, just a hausfrau who dislikes most of the obligations society burdens us with for the sake of propriety - observation of ritualistic ‘norms’. I have no intention of inciting my boys to riot, yet would like to teach them that there is nothing wrong with civil disobedience under certain circumstances. Nothing wrong with questioning the questionable. Alas, they don’t understand, perhaps don’t choose to - they’re too young, and the only disobedience incurred here is in relation to my homely little dictums like “take out the trash”, “cut the grass”, “wash the windows”, and zoom! Everyone disappears when minutes before no amount of gentle persuasion could entice them out of the house to enjoy the benefits of fresh air, sunshine, exercise and all that other good stuff mothers are supposed to be concerned about. Pity David isn’t as quick as Robbie and Denis, as he gets left holding the bag - rather the trash, the lawnmower, the Windex.

But on that particular occasion, the boys sat there bug-eyed until Robbie said “Gee mom, anarchists are dangerous loonies, they get zapped, like Sacco and Venzetti”. I swung on him in astonishment. “How’d you ever hear about them?” I asked, never having heard him offer anything outside sports-related trivia before. “Social history”, he mumbled, stabbing his meat and proceeding to cut it so vigorously the rest of us had to stabilize the table until Cliff hissed at him.

“Well, not all anarchists are violent, there’s something called passive resistance” I told him, them, defensively. “And the educational system is so backward they don’t teach you THAT. They’re probably still teaching about how savage the natives of Canada were - subhuman inhabitants of a land that belonged by right of destiny to whites who herded the savages onto undesirable land, paid them a joking pittance to stay there, diseased them with apathy and alcohol and now point at the meagre, sorry remnants and say ‘Ha! We told you so!”

“Now just a minute …” Cliff began, but I don’t like to be interrupted.

“AND THEY DO THE SAME WITH THE REST OF US TOO, only we’re too stupid to notice”, I overrode his objection and he settled back, knowing from long experience how useless it is to try to interrupt me. “ … all of us unsuspecting fools are herded onto urban reservations to become fodder for commerce”. I glared at him. “We’re subservient to the whims of a handful of political egotists stifling individuality and initiative with an insidious long-term program of depersonalization. We all conform to the consumer norm, cheer the banners of national pride and boost the gross national product - and the national product is GROSS!”

Robbie giggled nervously. Cliff regarded me with that concerned look a parent often bestows on a naughty child.

David though, David was loyal, undemanding, ready to appreciate. He regarded me with admiration. He knew he could never get HIS tongue around such a mouthful and he repeated lovingly, “Mom’s an aynarkist”.

“You said it!” Denis whooped, splattering mashed potato around the table.

“You’ve learned a new word, but let’s keep it in the family”, Cliff advised. I’ll tell you how conservative he is, he’s a chartered accountant and you can’t get any more strictured than that, can you?

Disagreements are surface though, in our family. When it comes to the things that matter, we’re all agreed, relaxed and reasonably content.

I was, I am, a nurse, though I haven’t worked for a while. Most people seem to think that nurses should know better, that, like doctors, they have the answers, about health and sickness, that kind of thing. Well, tain’t necessarily so. Starting a family late in life, the risks are greater. My mother once ventured the opinion that the wrong genetic material came from Cliff’s side, but I put a damper on that.

We try to keep him busy, give him learning opportunities, interest him in solitary-type activities, especially now that he’s getting older. Fifteen last month.

“It’s hard on him”, Cliff said. “I mean, I explained as much as I could and he says he understands but he doesn’t even have the normal outlet of a boy his age, mingling with girls, talking with them under normally developing circumstances.”

I won’t tell him, I decide, that some woman up the street, newly moved in, knocked at the door a few weeks ago, asked me to keep ‘that boy’ at home, ‘please’. I felt my face tighten, but smiled, asked why.

“He keeps calling”, she said, obviously embarrassed.

“Oh?”

“At my house”, she explained. “Asking for my daughter.”

“Does he know her?”

“He walked into our backyard one evening, just walked in, introduced himself. Said he hoped we’d like living here. It was very NICE of him and we didn’t know how to discourage him. He made himself comfortable, chatting with me and my husband. Our daughter was playing with the cat and this boy, oh, I am sorry - your son - said he wanted to take her out.”

“Oh, did he?

“Yes. Well, of course we said she’s too young. He said she’s going to kiss me, probably marry me, too.”

“Oh dear!”

“Exactly!” Look, I realize he’s uh, special, and we’d like to be understanding, but what guarantee have we … Look, I’m sorry, we just don’t want him around.”

The confused look on his face when I spoke to him. He explained he doesn’t like the girls who attend special education classes with him. They have, he says, “funny faces - fat, Mom”. My funny, fat-faced boy.

On our right lives Mrs. Wright, who is convinced she is. Soon after we moved to this house she approached me as the self-appointed ‘representative of neighbourhood concern’.

“She’s worried about us, Cliff, feels we should take steps to ‘protect’ ourselves from ‘a troubling future’”, I told him, afterward. “Said we should give serious thought to institutionalizing him. In her words: “best for him, for you, for the rest of us”.

David knew the woman didn’t like him, so he stayed away from her property. When Cliff told him never to trespass, even accidentally cutting across lawns, not even to smile - for David has a smile even for her - David understood.

She doesn’t see him as quite human. “He leers”, she’d said. Calmly at first, I’d corrected her: “he smiles”. Useless, there was no point. We must be dreadful people for God to have punished us with this living blemish. As some people see blacks or Orientals as depersonalized ‘looking all the same’ so does she see our David as a leering moonface, better locked away in shame and fear.

I try not to think too much about how often he walks down to the municipal swimming pool and stands there, watching the other kids having a great time. I came across him there once, just passing by, and saw him leaning on the wire fence surrounding the pool, his face immersed in his old dreamy look, his hands firmly locked above his head, on the wire.

But he gets restless. Sometimes when you think problems have been solved, they haven’t been, not at all. They’re just submerged and they’ll re-surface, sooner or late. We were just kidding ourselves thinking his sexuality could be kept on a back burner. If it’s not natural for any other boy, why should it be for him? He’s taken to cutting the sleeves off tee shirts, like some of the other boys around, to show off the muscles in his shoulders. He’s a well developed boy; stocky, musclebound. Let me tell you, he’s so healthy that he’s never had to have anything done to his teeth, not even a filling. The dentist says it’s unheard-of. Funny, he survived a precarious babyhood, several heart operations, continuous susceptibility to attacks of pneumonia, and now he’s a lovely physical specimen.

It didn’t work though. All that show of muscle and not one nibble from any girl. Naturally. I’ve tried to imagine just what might be going through his head. It’s not possible, of course, even Cliff can’t guess. Correct that; we can surmise and it doesn’t make us anything but uneasy. We catch him occasionally, observing his reflection in the mirrors around the house, pushing out his chest, fisting his hands to make his biceps bulge.

“You’re stuck on yourself!” Denis giggles and ducks to avoid David’s good-natured slap.

Then one day Robbie and Denis spoke to us, said we had to do something about David. “Jeez, we’re the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. He’s going around telling all the girls he’s going to marry them! They scream and run away and he goes on to the next one. What’s he expect? That some girl’s gonna want to go out with him? ‘s he have to act like a freak as well as look like one?”

They were as stunned afterward as we were. His own brothers. They said they were sorry, even cried. It was pressure; wanting to be accepted does that to people. That’s why I’d rather not present as an accredited member of society. But I haven’t been able to imbue the boys with that distance; they want acceptance.

Later, Cliff proposed what he said was a solution. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Clinton about it, he suggested it as a solution. They’re doing that now. Vasectomies for boys, sterilization for girls.” It wasn’t easy for him.

“It’s immoral, do they even ask the kids? Do they explain? Can they make them understand? It smacks of Nazi-ideology race purification !”

“Don’t be unreasonable, Donna, please. Let’s not have a lesson in sociology or politics this time. This is a problem we have to deal with on a personal level, without rhetoric or histrionics.”

“Cliff, what about the fact that these kids have low sperm counts - it’s true, I should know.”

“Yes, Dr. Clinton told me. Nature’s way of inhibiting reproduction of an inferior product”, he said bitterly.

“There’s NOTHING inferior about David. Cliff, what’s the point? A vasectomy will do nothing to diminish his sex drive.”

I’d always half-seriously considered David my innocent metaphor, my response to society hung up on facile social convention. Docile clones. It appears the fuse of my metaphor is burning a short wick.

A Walk In The Woods

The leafless trees, their pole-tall shapes
and rigid bark coloured in hues of white,
grey and brown on this spring day, are
unmoved by the wind soughing
through their limbs. In the understory
seedlings and saplings that will in
time become towering firs, spruce
and pine sit below their parents.
Hemlock and yew line the hillsides.

A tiny brown wren flits swiftly from
rock outcropping to creek log-jam
along the waterway, rippling, glinting
in the early afternoon sun. The sweet
trill of a cardinal singing above, trails
through the wood. Later, the demented
loon-like call of a Pileated woodpecker,
punctuates the air, contrapuntal closure.

Trillium heads nod brightly scarlet,
not far from sunny coltsfoot. Trout
lilies, their spotted leaves spearing
the damp spring soil, colonize the
moistly receptive woods in their brief
moment of glory, soon to be overtaken
by more determined ferns. The green-
red tender sprouts of brush glow softly.

The cawing of far-off crows, their
argumentative calls eclipsing the steady
roar of the wind, soon give way to the
shrill, syncopating calls of three hawks
circling the trees, speedily ascending,
turning direction, whisking themselves
through the air as only raptors can,
resolutely seeking their elusive prey.

A small black, stump-tailed squirrel
observes quizzically the passage below
his perch of two small dogs, equally
entranced yet puzzled by newly-released
scents sifting like mist above the forest
floor. Freshly-awakened beetles, bugs
and butterflies fly lazily about, for this
is their introduction to another season.

The Devil's Handyman

“We found some abandoned water cans but no signs of the missing children. As dark was coming down, I tasked the Tunisians to extend the search higher up the volcano the next morning and returned to Kigali to try to quiet flying rumours.
The Tunisians found the children the next day. They had all been murdered except for one young girl, who my soldiers carried to a nearby hospital. I dispatched Brent, another officer and a local translator to the site. After a long drive and foot march, they came to the place where a boy of eight and five girls between six and fourteen had been strangled to death. Deep violet rope burns cut into their necks. All of them had also suffered head wounds and the girls had clearly been gang-raped before they were murdered.” Lt.Gen. Romeo Dallaire: Shake Hands With The Devil

At night they lay together in silent communion, his body cupped around hers, comforting her. She could feel the heat of his body enveloping her, slowly thawing the misery that held her so tightly in its grasp, so all-encompassing at times that she wondered she could still breathe and compel her body to obey her brain’s signals, for she felt her brain to be utterly wasted by despair.

“Don’t, Love”, he said to her. “There will be other times. This happens to everyone. Some women don’t even know they’re carrying. It’s just that you’ve always been so well attuned to your body. It just didn’t take. It’s nature’s way”, he said, softly wiping her tear-stained cheeks. “Next time it will be different.”

He should know, he was a medical doctor, even if his speciality was not gynaecology.

He had been so concerned for her that he’d taken the trouble to call in a colleague to cover for him in the hospital clinic. He’d stayed home with her for the remainder of the week. Cradling her, telling her that she would recover. They would try again. They would succeed.

He wanted children, she knew, just as much as she did. They had always planned on having children. During that bleak time she was reminded of just how much she loved him. She depended so heavily upon him to counter her black thoughts of barrenness. He had laughed softly when she’d fearfully brought to light that fear. Told her to trust his professional knowledge. She would bear them as many children as they wanted, eventually.

They had held off for years, because the time wasn’t quite right, despite both their wishes to begin a family. And finally when the time seemed right, this happened. It certainly wasn’t because she hadn’t taken adequate care. They were beside themselves at the certain knowledge she was carrying their first child. His tender treatment of her, his loving concern was not lost on her. She returned that love, anxious to produce what they both wanted, knowing they would cherish their child and all the others that would follow, giving them all the emotional support and loving direction that children needed.

First aware of the pregnancy, he had assured her she could continue working if she really wanted to. On the other hand, both he and she had no intention of her doing anything but staying at home, looking after their eventual brood. No one other than herself would care for her children, their children. She would entrust them to no one’s care other than her own. And he had agreed.

There was nothing new about this. They had been married long enough to know one another at the most intimate level of introspection, each sharing the other’s values. He was, she conceded, far more emotionally stable than she was, and he gave her the balance her life required. Without him she would be unable to function as a capable, self-assured human being, she was convinced. She had once proffered that thought to him and he had denied that to be the case. She fulfilled his needs as much as she felt he did hers, he assured her, but this did not translate to utter dependence. She was as capable as he was of finding solutions to their inadequacies left to her own devices. She denied that, hugged him fiercely and murmured to him that he was her salvation.

But something seemed not quite right, afterward. She became shy of physical intimacy beyond sleeping together in one another’s embrace. Their love-making became constrained. He kept telling her to relax, to be less restrained, to remember how it had always been between them. Then he introduced a technique that shocked her at first, but at the same time she found titillating, and it seemed to work. They would both leaf through a pornographic magazine and she found herself becoming heated with the physical pull of his presence, and then their sex became wildly successful. She slept far more peacefully, then, felt less need to snuggle into him for comfort.

They enjoyed wild, abandoned sex of a kind she would never have been able to imagine. She was in a continual state of arousal, it seemed to her, and she relaxed right into the excitement of it. He was pleased, and urged her to look at the magazines even when he wasn’t around. It was good therapy, he said. Forget all about the usual social constraints; such publications had their legitimate use. Wasn’t she aware that most couples used these things to achieve better, more satisfying sex lives? Take it from him, he knew. So many of his patients confided in him. All she had to do was look at the improvement in their own sex lives, right?

She conceded that, readily, happy with the transformation that had taken place within her. Until, as though a curtain had abruptly come down on a play she had been observing, she took a sudden revulsion to the very thought of those magazines and the orgiastic display of abandoned sex they portrayed. It was sordid in her view now, and she wanted nothing more to do with them. Nor with the kind of demented, as she now viewed it, sex they had been engaging in. she felt repulsed, ashamed, filthy. He was nonplussed. And as she withdrew from what had become an almost-nightly ritual, he too withdrew, becoming quietly closed away into himself.

And then, she discovered she was pregnant. He was ecstatic, reflecting her own reaction, hugged her compulsively, almost threw her into the air in celebration. Then sobered, and took account of the physical excess and was satisfied to just sit there, smitten with her, with her new condition, with their suddenly burgeoning future as parents. They both felt completely confident that absolutely nothing would go wrong this time. There would be no other miscarriage. She would carry to full term, they would finally start their family.

She wanted, she needed to have - she told him in an excess of exuberance she recognized as a triumph over her earlier worries of being unable to conceive - at least four children, like her older sister. He hugged her, nuzzled his face into hers.

“That sounds manageable“, he said finally, standing back, grinning at her.

She groaned inwardly at the fullness of her content. She absolutely adored her uxorious, child-loving husband. He was incomparable, the best companion in the world, the most empathetic, understanding, sweet-natured and kind person she had ever been privileged to know. She was blessed. Life was good, nature had been excessively kind to her. She vowed to be a better person than she was. She owed it to him, to their children yet to be born.

“Four kids sounds ideal”, he repeated, beaming at her. “Wouldn’t be any problem sending them all to university!” he laughed uproariously, pleased with himself. And she, enormously pleased with him, laughed right along. That evening they talked quietly, but with an undercurrent of excitement, about the future. Their future with their soon-to-be brood. And about time. Although that was her thought; he intimated no such thing. He was patient to a fault, she thought, happily.

They were really, truly happy. And she felt a kind of confidence she had never before experienced. Which proved to be short-lived when she suddenly realized a few weeks later that, unlike his usual self, he hadn’t made any physical overtures to her. Nothing, apart from smiles and pecks on the cheek. No languorous kisses they always had engaged in, preliminary to sex.

Even though she admitted to herself her sex drive had plummeted, she was prepared, concerned with his physical well-being, to accommodate him. But he made no overtures, no effort to have sex again. Not since she had rejected their old routine of using pornography for arousal. She felt guilty, that she had deliberately deprived him of a deep pleasure, and herself as well. But nothing she could say to change all that occurred to her now. She thought to herself she would allow him time to re-engage. She simply waited for him to come around.

But he didn’t, he expressed not even a hint of interest in sex. This perplexed and worried her. On the one hand they were both happy about her pregnancy. And she glowed with pleasure at the very thought of giving birth to a child they would raise together, love and support in every conceivable way. And then, on the other hand, there was her beloved - oddly withdrawn physically, albeit not emotionally.

She cudgelled her mind trying to find answers within herself, but came up empty. And then, although she always had the option of directly asking him, since they had always had a very open relationship, keeping lines of communication open, she shrugged that off, and decided to just let it go. Things would resolve themselves.

And then things changed again. She had been reading a book, a first-hand account of the genocidal war in Rwanda. She had been curious, becoming aware of the Darfur conflagration in Sudan, and wanted to try to understand what would drive human beings to perpetrate such horrendous acts of cruelty on one another. She had long owned the book, but had put it away, always meaning to read it. She’d actually forgotten it on the bookshelf, then re-discovered its existence, and began to read.

She did not, in fact, manage to get much beyond the first hundred pages. At one juncture she had read enough, could go no further, her heart palpitating in actual pain at what she had read. It was just simply impossible, she told herself, that such horribly sordid and cruel things could happen to children. Barely out of infancy, rising through childhood in desperately poor places of the world, only to fall victim to unspeakable atrocities. She wept and she railed, she felt utterly disconsolate, and spoke to him at the first opportunity of her misery.

She felt herself falling into the depths of depression that she knew would, if she did not speak of it to someone else, envelop her and tamp down her ease in carrying their child. She knew very well what depression could do, how it overtook the psyche, plunged the very soul into a deep, dark, hollow, suffocating place of misery. How it put the sufferer in a very private, deep dark place of overwhelming despair. She was herself a clinician, dealt with people who suffered grievously from that devilish condition, and knew that she was as vulnerable as anyone else in society.

As usual, he rescued her, brought her out of that inner grief, not even questioning why she might feel so afflicted about something that had occurred decades ago, in a far-off deeply-deprived country experiencing a horrendous civil war.

“Look, be reasonable”, he said quietly. “There is just so much that can be done in areas of the world that are tribal and primitive in their customs. These are not advanced societies. You know that we try to do what we can to alleviate the strains among ethnic groups gearing toward war, as civilized societies, through the UN, NATO, NGOs.”

“I can’t bear it!“, she sobbed, inconsolably, “I think about young children, about my sister’s kids, about the baby we’ll be raising, and then I think about these horrendous things. How is it even remotely possible that human beings can do these things to children!”

“Well”, he said slowly, “Consider the source. Civilized communities don’t do these things. These are Africans, tribal, clannish people whose minds and values have not gone far beyond the miserable, primitive world they've always inhabited. In a sense, it’s what you can expect from them. They’re totally absent of empathy, of morals, of a decent value system.”

She accepted that from him. She wanted to believe that such things could happen, and could happen only there, in dark, primeval Africa. It took the atrocity she read of out of the realm of civilized human norms, and in a peculiar way assured her that her child would be growing up in a world in which safety and security, respect and decency were assured. She accepted that because it was a soothing balm, and served to pacify her. He comforted her as he always did, drawing her into his strong, protective arms.

She thrust all thoughts of what she had read out of her mind. She refused to read newspapers. She knew in her innermost being that child-predators existed everywhere. That knowledge assumed huge, suffocating proportions in her mind, until her husband assured her in the way he was skilled at. She tamped down any further thoughts, expelled them from memory, exiled them from her knowledge files, and went on her with her life.

And then, a little worm of suspicion began to gnaw at her. After all this time, still no sex. She would have been content enough to let it go; she felt little urge to make love at this juncture, even if she hadn’t yet begun to evidence physical signs of pregnancy.

But he was such a sexually-charged man, she could not help but wonder what was happening? She began to suspect that he was satisfying himself somewhere else, with someone else, and she wanted to know. She couldn’t ask him, he would be appalled at the very suggestion he would do such a thing. Either because he had not and his reaction would be authentic, or because he was surreptitiously finding release in sex elsewhere.

And she thought she had a right to know. She wanted to know. She would not approach him to insult him with the charge of being unfaithful. She had no evidence. There was her intuition, certainly, but there was every possibility she could be wrong. She wanted to be wrong. She wanted to believe that his sex drive had simply plummeted just as hers had. But she found that bordering on the impossible for her to believe. There had to be a logical explanation. And logic told her that because he was not having sex with her he was finding it somewhere else.

She steamed about that conundrum for a while, wondering what she could do, how she might discreetly find clues that might clear up the mystery. She went through the mail, found nothing there. Snuck peeks at his cellphone but that didn’t enlighten her. Went into his files on his computer, because she knew he didn’t use a password, but found nothing there, either. And berated herself for being an evil-minded suspicious harridan. Had pregnancy done this to her? What on earth was the matter with her?

But stop she could not. She regarded him, speaking with her, doing things around the house. He was handsome, young, virile, highly intelligent. She was the most fortunate woman on the planet, she told herself. He was loving, compassionate, kind and wryly amusing. She loved his clever wit, the way he could use irony to excellent advantage.

One day he inadvertently left his notebook at home. She called him, asked if she should drive it over for him, knew how much he used it. He laughed, said not at all, he’d use one there, just transfer the data to his own later on. Something held her back from turning it on. Finally, she submitted to her urge, to sneak into his mind through what she might find on his notebook.

It took a while, but she finally found what at first she thought might solve the questions that had been burning in her mind. But no, it was just a video he’d taken, she guessed, of one of his little patients. She thought she recognized part of the interior of one of the hospital operating rooms. She did see a vaguely-filmed figure in green scrubs. And she thought why isn’t that child anaesthetized if it’s undergoing a surgical procedure?

The anguished cries of a child in distress were loud and unnerving; she turned the sound off. Then watched, mesmerized, saw the figure, back to the camera, head obscured by the limitations of the frame, then as the camera moved closer in and began to focus on the infant concentrated her attention there….

It was hideously repulsive, and soon enough clear that this was no surgical procedure. This was some sadist - clearly a sexually-depraved lunatic - deriving pleasure from torturing a child.

Later, after controlling her gorge, after what she had seen had coalesced into the realization that there was much more than had met her eye yet to be revealed, she closed the notebook, and dialled her sister’s number.

She related to her sister what she had seen, her voice hollow. There was a prolonged silence, then she heard her sister’s uncompromising voice: “You know what you have to do. Pack a bag, and come here directly you’ve reported it.”

She heard her voice, dully, mechanically, agreeing.

“Are you okay?” her sister asked. “Want me to come along and fetch you?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I’ll be just fine” she said.