On Speaking Terms

Tie up the 'phone' lines? They don't do that
anymore. Telecommunications have been
revolutionizing teens' compulsive behaviour;
the dire need to 'keep in touch', not to miss
out on instant information, playing the
'What's up?' game to remain involved and
cool, else what meaning is there in life? It's
the who that you know and the what that
accompanies it that explains the why you know.

And anyone of adult vintage who enquires
of the whyfores is beyond redemption, a sad
relic of the dim, unfortunately disadvantaged past.
Then, people spoke to one another in audible,
emotive, reflective tones expressing the purpose
of communication. The evolution of progressive
humankind as a communicating species has
advanced to the unspoken, yet remotely
effective use of text, as in text messaging.

Where nimble thumbwork provides the medium
for the incessant messaging and the tiny, perfect
communication devices of electronic perfection
gift their users with a cornucopia of choices,
from photography to music, videos to anarchic
devolution. There are no tasks which cannot
be complemented by attention devoted to an
unending stream of incoming calls, all requiring
the instant protocol of informed and blithe response.

From the bedroom to the classroom, the bathroom
to the lunch counter, shopping excursions to
dinner with the family; at a cottage, in a sailboat,
none too remote but that instant messaging
need be interrupted. An entirely new way of
life, a life-force has been re-engineered and the
blissful 'contact' sport engaged in a celebration
of this brave new information-contact world.

 

Eyes On The Neighbourhood

 

In the several decades we have lived in this house, on this street, there have been many occasions when we’ve had to regretfully wave good-bye to neighbours with whom we had warm relations.

Oh, you say you’ll keep in touch, and you mean it. You do, in fact, soon after the fact, keep in touch, usually through emailing one another, satisfying the nostalgic moments of reminiscing and up-to-dating, but somehow, those messages get fewer and further between, until you’re just left with the occasional twinge of remembrance and wonder…

We wondered, for example, why the black family that lived directly across the street with their two young boys, decided to move to the United States where he was given a job offer he felt he just couldn’t overlook. He had been the first person to knock on our door, to welcome us to the neighbourhood when we first moved in, and we really thought highly of those two, husband and wife.

Wondered too, why another family decided to sell their lovely home and move to a rural property for their retirement. Surely the conveniences at their age of libraries, hospitals, doctors, shopping at close range would have been more valuable as they aged? Then of course, a number of military families with adolescent children, moving on, moving on…

We stayed. Well, we’ve other good neighbours we have known since we moved into our house, and they too stayed. Their children grew from infancy to adulthood while we as their neighbours on the street, watched incredulously.

And then, of course, as old neighbours moved on, new neighbours came in. Sometimes older people, and just as often young families. It was interesting to see a house with three or four bedrooms previously lived in by just one couple growing older together, was vacated, to be possessed by a growing family of young kids, filling up the rooms of the house as they were meant to be.

Odd thing that, too. There resulted a balance between white-haired residents, sitting out in the summer on lawn chairs, and children running about the street, playing children’s games. In the winter, hockey nets would come out and the boys would play street hockey. In the spring, basketball nets were raised, and boys and girls used those, but more often the girls would huddle together and play different kinds of games. A lot of the families living in those houses had the added convenience with which to entertain their brood, of backyard swimming pools.

When, once, an older couple who owned a business nearby sold their house because his rheumatoid arthritis made the stairs in the house an agony, in moved a younger couple with a mixed brood. Mixed, because he’d been married before and so had she. His were older, between high school and university, while hers were young, all five of them. The children had had a Guatemalan father, and they were dark skinned, with glossy black hair. And beautifully mannered, just the loveliest kids, thanks to their mother’s careful tutelage.

A few years after that family moved in, a couple we’d known well who lived down the street, sold their house and in moved another family. An elderly man as it happened, with a young, vivacious wife, and their two very young children. The little girl a veritable princess and her younger brother a tiny prince.

They too had coloured skin, for their mother was Cuban. A dancer, she said proudly to me. Their father? An older man, a dour Scotsman, whom she had met at a diplomatic affair in Cuba, for he was a Canadian ‘diplomat’. Which, my husband later said, quite adequately explains their strange union.

He must have seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, my husband said, a bachelor with a diplomat’s position and salary to match, to an impoverished, artistically-inclined social climber looking to advantage herself and her extended family. For as it transpired, her parents came to visit from Cuba on his dime, and while they were there, temporarily living with their daughter, their grandchildren - and son-in-law matching them in age but not opportunities - they did work around the house - gardening, cleaning, that kind of thing.

Fact was, this was a man who was careful with his money, true to his heritage. I discovered that myself when I went out on the neighbourhood, doing the many door-to-door charitable canvasses I can never bring myself to refuse. The man would never part with a dime in exchange for a charitable receipt.

In fact, that’s the way I first met them. He responded to the door bell, regarding me distantly, disinterestedly, as I began my spiel. Which I interrupted to welcome him to the neighbourhood. At which he evinced some interest, as I explained that I lived up the street, myself. His wife joined him on the porch, just as I was explaining precisely which of the houses was the one I lived in.

She fairly scintillated, she was so lively and bubbly. Out came her life story -- or just about. And out came the children, one by one. The four-year-old little girl, a tiny replica of her beautiful, sensuous-looking mother, followed by her toddler of a brother. Who did not one iota resemble the elderly man who beamed at both children.

He had already abruptly refused to part with any of his hard-earned cash, to my invitation to donate to the Cancer Society. But we stood there, neighbours, me waxing eloquent about the wonderful neighbourhood, its amenities and its great residents.

The children dashed about, up and down the driveway, one chasing the other, then doing a turn-about. They were clearly the apples of their parents’ gleaming eyes. And I marvelled, regarding the young mother standing beside the grim-faced elderly man, what life might be like for her, living with such a one as he appeared to be from outward appearances.

It took some time before it was fully revealed just what life might have been like for her. I knew she was busy, ferrying the children about, driving them to a private school some distance from where we lived. I knew she was involved with some of her countrymen, artists of one dimension or another, who often were to be seen at the Cuban embassy, where she too would be invited. When she was absent, her mother would be there to tend to the children’s needs.

Another of our neighbours, who lived directly across from us, where the black family had used to live, had a marked interest in the neighbourhood. From her vantage point at the curve of the street, she could see, from her upper bedroom windows, up the street in one direction, down the street, in the other direction. And she could see directly into peoples’ garages, sometimes into their backyards, and perhaps not so oddly, she acquired information about those neighbours that others were not privy to.

This information she was obligingly happy to share with anyone else who might be interested. Actually, not quite true; she was not all that friendly with most of the people on the street, but she was with us, for some reason.

It was she, in fact, who had alerted us to the fact we needn’t really have needed to know, that another of our neighbours was cheating, in the most spectacular way, on his wife. And here’s the strange thing about that: this neighbour, whom I’d known for decades and really liked an awful lot, was also considerably older than his wife. He had never been previously married, his wife had, and she had two young boys, whom he adopted as his own when they married.

And now that they were in high school, this very sociable man was making very bold moves with a friend of his wife, another young blonde and attractive woman. Making out with her, according to this neighbour, right in the garage, while his wife was busy hostessing at one of their many pool parties. I wasn’t surprised, knowing how much he liked women, but I was disappointed.

Years later he too feels the same way, because he’s alone, the boys gone off on their own lives, now young adults, and his wife long separated from him, and adamantly refusing to listen to his pleas to please return, he misses her, loves her, regrets his behaviour, and he now has problems with MS.

He is a dear man, and I do appreciate him, and I commiserate with him, rattling around that big house all alone. He’s tried out a few girlfriends, a few even moved in, but it just didn’t work out. It’s hard, he tells me, to find women, at his age. Although he’s a gallant, a teaser, a good-looking man still, who looks after himself. Finally, he’s got a little cat, and that helps. From the animal shelter. He loves that little cat.

More latterly, our neighbour across the street who was able to look into that poor man’s garage, was also able to view at leisure everything that happened in and around the house with the morose old man and the sparkling young Cuban woman. Lots of shouting, she said, plenty of crockery being tossed around. Ever notice a red car with diplomatic plates parked alongside the driveway? Nope. Well, it’s a Cuban man who works at the embassy. And he’s been hanging around plenty. Especially when the husband is out of town. Oh dear.

Oh well, that was years ago, as it happens. And now, when I knock on that door to say I’m collecting, variously, for Heart & Stroke, Kidney, MS, Cancer, CNIB, for example, I’m greeted by that rictus-grim smile, a shrug and the little line that “times are tight”.

He does not pay child support. His lovely wife is nowhere to be seen. He does, this crotchety old geezer, have his children with him. He is now retired, living well on a gold-plated pension, and he takes tender, loving care of his children. They are all he has, and that is quite a lot, come to think of it. When speaking of the children, his smile becomes genuine, and his face softens and he has the look of a father.

One of the younger bi-racial Guatemalan girls confided in me not all that long ago that she had been awfully upset when another of the girls on the street informed her that she might not play with her any longer. The reason being, the tiny princess, now somewhat grown into a pretty girl, informed her that one shouldn’t play with “blacks”. I advised her to take no notice, since her detractor’s skin colour is very like her own beautifully burnished colour, and she smiled beatifically. Her mother, I’m certain, would take good care of her children’s robust self-esteem.

It’s spring again, and good weather brings the children out to display their growing limbs, to permit the warming sun to kiss their faces, and to enable them to play all the games that children clamour and long for during inclement, dark winter days when the cold keeps them indoors far too often. All the little girls appear to have been reconciled with one another.

However, our neighbour, mother of the Guatemalan children, advised me they were preparing to sell their house and return to whence they had come, the east coast of Canada. There to settle once again, among their extended family to share in their warmth and loving embrace. It would be good for the children, she said, with a deep longing in her voice and her eyes, to be re-united herself, with her mother, her sisters, her cousins.

Yes, it would be good for those children whose father had long ago abandoned them. But whose new step-father had taken them deep into his heart. They will all be missed.

Not, though, by our neighbour who lives directly across the street. The one who fills us in on all the street gossip we would never be aware of, otherwise. She will be glad to see them go. The parents have a habit of installing those big clumsy stands at the top of which hangs a basketball net, across from their own house, at the curve of the street, beside our angry neighbour’s house, and it’s a nuisance.

And, besides that, the boy, the oldest of the bi-racial children, once backed his mother’s car out of their garage, and the car just kept going, until it ramped over their lawn, and hit their back fence, destroying a good portion of it. The boy‘s parents, of course, replaced the fence with many apologies. But of such incidents are relationships built -- or not.

The latest information we received from our loquacious and curious friend is that, though a young and vigorous woman, she suffers from a genetic default that brings early vision problems to members of her family. She may be unable to view from the top floor of her home on its essential neighbourhood-viewing site all that occurs in the area, for a while.

An operation for glaucoma has more or less put her out of commission. Post-surgery it has been impressed upon her the dire necessity to rest on her stomach for many hours at a stretch, facing downward, to aid in the full restoration of her eyesight.

 

 

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 Haunting

She had confidence in herself. In her own intelligence. She felt that she knew her mind was sharper than those of most others her age. She seemed to be able to see what they did not. She had no confidence in the greater world around her. She could see what was happening. People behaving as though they owned something that others were lacking, and because of that, they were better, somehow more elevated -- certainly in their own opinion -- and that allowed them to mock others, avoid them, pity them, and have contempt for them. She had learned all of that because she experienced all of that.

From the time she was small and lithe and her mother thought she was athletically-inclined and enrolled her in a dance studio for the summer, so she could gain confidence and grace, she was taught such lessons. She hadn’t wanted to go, had no intention of allowing herself to go, but what could she do? She was only six years old, and had to do what she was commanded to do. Entreated, convinced, that it would be of huge benefit to her. To be fair to her mother how was she to know that her daughter would be placed in a group of young girls who had already had the experience of two years’ exposure to the program?

Girls who snickered when she was unable to make the right moves; laughed at her awkwardness, and refused to partner with her, always moved away from her. Pay no mind, her mother said. They’d get over it once they saw that she was as competent as they were. Anyway, her mother said, that’s what girls are like. Little or older they gather in exclusionary cliques and there is always someone who looks in from the outside, spurned. She should know, her mother said, she was one of those ‘outside’ kids.

Take it from her, she always said, you’re better off being with people more like yourself. The ones who think they’re special, never are. They’re just self-absorbed, petty, vindictive and nasty and you want nothing to do with them anyway. That wasn’t how she felt, though, moving up through the elementary school grades, watching the pretty, self-confident girls gather admirers around them, girls almost as pretty, but never as confident, drawn to the stand-outs in the class, wanting to be just like them. She was always with one or two other girls who were as left-out as she was. And even then, found little in common with them. But it did represent companionship, however lacking. And some measure of social acceptance.

Now she was older, and she had become remote from all of that. She recognized it for what it was. Her mother was perfectly right; sometimes she was right, mostly not. She did come around to recognizing that this was the veneer of meaningless fluff. She was as pretty and as clever and as capable as anyone else, she simply lacked that kind of social aggression that seemed to attract the notice of others.

But she did find her niche, among girls who were social outsiders like her, but who devalued the over-rated and utter meaningless of pride in being with the in-crowd. Not the way she did, for the useless facade that it represented, but mostly out of a sense of their own pride. Still, she had to admit to herself there were other girls that were excluded from close acceptance in her own, small group. Others, refused entrée to the luxe cliques and hoping to find acceptance in the lower-tier social groups.

She would have nothing herself to do with the pretensions of these sad girls whose prodigious efforts to ingratiate themselves was so distasteful to her. She was herself. Proudly. She never made an effort to portray herself as anything but what she was, how she felt about things, her perceptions, her values. Take it or leave it, her personality and character there, up front, visible and clearly defiant of pretension. Those who recognized that and became close to her were her companions, and from and with them she sought solace, though she would never call it that; it was self-affirmation matched by social validation.

And now that she was preparing to enter high school she knew she would be exposed to yet another level of social interaction on an even greater scale offering little gifts of humiliation and occasionally the opportunity to rise above it, continuing to be herself. “You’ll see”, her mother said “it will be different, but don’t get your hopes up, not all that different; just another level.”

Hopes up? She had no hopes. She was cynical, more given to half-full glasses, a term she detested, than viewing life rosily. She was actually, she knew, like her mother. In that sense, if in no other. She would never be like her mother entirely. She would never adapt herself to her mother’s life-style, never.

She had her own aspirations and they didn’t include what she saw of her mother’s life. Dependent on a male partner who never made an effort to consolidate the relationship with an equal effort. None of them, one after the other was worth more than a pile of crap. Losers, every one.

She hardly remembered her father, was left with a dim memory of someone on the sidelines, there but not quite there. Nothing emotional to be recalled about him, as though he’d had nothing emotional invested in her. More than adequately proven by the very fact that though he lived nearby he had never in the decade since their separation, made any effort to contact her Mom, make enquiries about his daughter.

He was so fearful that he might be called upon to contribute to raising her, not by his presence, but by paying child support - which she very well knew was required by law -- that he was more than eager to maintain that distance. One her mother had demanded of him. She had promised she would never make an effort to impose child-support payments on him as long as he left them alone. So that was that.

A succession of “Dads” was history. The latest one a quiet guy who tried to be friendly with her, but whom she rebuffed since the day he entered her mother’s life three years earlier. She doubted she would ever become like her mother, so dependent on the company of a man. For companionship, her mother always explained to her. But she couldn’t quite see the ‘companionship’ angle, because it never seemed to work out that way. Seemed to her, the guys were getting a free ride, not investing anything in the relationship, a one-way-street to misery she had no intention of emulating.

But it bugged the hell out of her, having guys around. Her Mom’s guys, to be specific. She felt no attachment to them, no attraction to them, no emotional investment whatever. The one before this guy lasted three years and he was always ordering her around, like he was her father.

So she had no interest in any guy hanging around, because that’s all they ever did. Never made themselves useful, just got in the way. Whenever she wanted to take a shower, he was taking a shower. You’d think she would have priority, but that wasn’t the way it worked. It was her house, her home, not some guy who made nicey-nicey with her Mom for a while and then moved on. Mostly because her Mom got to the stage where she couldn’t stand them any more and invited them to move on. Although the way she carried on when they obliged, you’d think she had lost her one true love.

That’s another thing, she often mused to herself, is there anything like a one true love? Someone like Edward, she giggled to herself. She loved the Twilight books, but even she could recognize them for what they represented, an escape from real life. As though vampires really existed. Made for a good story-line, though. She preferred Jody Picoult, at least there the stories were honestly portrayed, taken from life as it occurred. Thank heavens she has her books, her runaway from life, her escape, her lifeboat.

Boredom still assails her. There’s just so much anyone can do to entertain themselves. She knows she should help her mother, do things around the house. Her mother. Who always speaks of herself as a ‘single mom’. She is that, sure. But she’s still dependent on having a man around. Men who don’t deserve a second thought, another look. What, she wondered, ever attracted her mother to those losers? That they were available, and flattered that a woman like her mother, trim, attractive, smart, a professional, accepted their failings?

She couldn’t quite figure it out, but did figure it to be an easy ride for those guys. Nothing to invest, just hang around and pick the low-growing fruit. She could see this clearly. Why couldn’t her mother? With the first one that she could remember, after her mother’s separation from her father, it was different. She was only four, she was encouraged to call him “Daddy”. And she did, and he did become her daddy. There was someone else who called him Daddy, a boy older than her, but not by much, who came to live with them on the week-ends. Whose mother lived somewhere else, with someone else. And this one she remembered fondly for the seven years he lived with her Mom, and her. He was interested in her, he was good to her, she relied on him. He took her side when her mother went into one of her rages at her 'atrocious' behaviour.

After that, it was downhill all the way. And she resented their presence in her life. Why shouldn’t she? “Be a little more considerate” her mother would tell her, in her better moods, at those times when she wasn’t yelling at her out of sheer frustration, calling her behaviour “atrocious”, telling her she was beyond obstinate. If she was obstinate where did she get it from? From a mother who didn’t know when to give up and who kept trying to find the perfect companion? She would have settled for a lot less than perfect, she would have settled for adequate at the very least, but she could see with her own discerning eye that the entire succession of them were far beyond adequate. On the scale of adequate they were in the dungeon.

But today her mother said she would go out shopping with her. She could look around, “refresh your wardrobe”, as her Mom called it. And it would be only her and her Mom. No hanger-on today. No guy to pull her mother places where she didn’t want to go. Who was more important, anyway to her Mom? Her own kid or some guy who she wasn’t even married to?

They went downtown together. Where a lot of the nicer shops were. To give her a chance to look around. She’d prefer being there with one of her girlfriends, but her Mom didn’t think it was “safe enough” for her to be downtown in the city where they lived, at her age with a friend. Alien abduction? Did her Mom think someone would descend from a hovering spaceship and pluck her out of the crowd?

It was hot, and humid, and looked as though it was going to be a tough slog. When the sun went in and they got a bit of relief then dark clouds loomed on the horizon, gradually nudged the white ones out of the way and threatened to benefit them with a cloudburst.

She felt kind of gloomy, and didn’t want to. Wanted to make the most of this occasion, having her Mom to herself for a change, just the two of them, out shopping for stuff she needed.

And then, walking up to the enclosed mall, sitting on the sidewalk, there was that girl. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than herself. Sitting on the sidewalk, her back hunched forward, behind her a brick wall, the side of a building they were passing. It was gritty and more than a little unappealing with all kinds of detritus lying about. And there was the girl, just sitting there. Her hair long and dank, although it looked as though it would be really pretty, washed and clean and shiny. Which it was anything but. Then she lifted her face, and their eyes locked. She knew the girl was looking directly at her, had raised her head as though aware that someone had fixed a stare on her. That face was utterly devoid of expression. Dead hollow, like her glassy eyes with no depth, just a huge vacancy.

She tried to turn away. To pull her eyes away from those of the girl. The girl remained as she was, her head lifted, protruding like a turtle's though her back was still hunched into her body. The girl’s stare at her was unwavering. She wanted to look away, she didn’t want the girl to think she was intruding on her. Intruding on her? In this public place, where she sat, a forlorn figure, a young girl who was obviously homeless. She had seen other people, shambling men who looked like human wrecks, sitting on the pavement and asking for “spare cash”. Few people, she noted, bothered to acknowledge their presence, let alone hand anything to them.

She had seen other young people, guys and girls, but they seemed like they were kind of comfortable being there where they were, hanging around, occasionally approaching a passerby, speaking briefly, then moving off again, re-joining the others. Her mother pulled her along, told her not to stare. She wasn’t a little kid, she didn’t need to be told not to stare at these anomalous figures. She’d seen them before, on other occasions. And took their presence for granted. Part of the background. Like the buskers, the entertainers, the musicians and singers whom people did notice, and for whom there was always an audience who offered coinage in appreciation. Her mother had told her they were university kids, some of them, making some extra money to help further their education. They weren’t down-and-out, her mother stressed, they were enterprising young people.

So who and what was this girl? A stray. A runaway. Homeless, friendless, hopeless, miserable. These thoughts crowded her head and made her feel queasy. She did, finally, look away. Left the girl sitting there, because they were striding onward toward their destination. No longer in sight, she could forget the girl. But she couldn’t.

Her head was crammed with thoughts she had no wish to contemplate. She felt as though her forehead was being compressed toward the back of her head. Why didn’t she say something to the girl? Anything. “Hi” would have done. She was a person. She ignored that girl as though she was worthless, as though she existed only as a freak, sitting on a sidewalk, abandoned and utterly alone.

It seemed to her, much later on reflection, that the girl had not perhaps felt entirely alone. And this thought gave her a truly eerie feeling, as though something was creeping outward from her interior. She remembered, that while she was locked in eye contact with the girl, she had become aware of a sound, deep within her. It was a voice, a voice she had no idea existed. What was it doing there, screaming, screaming endlessly? And then, silence. Just as she felt she was about to panic, the voice was silenced. And it was at that point that she had turned her head away from the girl.

What would she do if she ever had the kind of misfortune that had obviously led to this girl being alone? How could she look after herself? She knew about predators. She knew about the helpless submission of girls to the pestering nuisance of the guys at school. This was a whole lot different. This girl, how could she defend herself? How would she feel, seeing a girl like her, privileged, walking along with her Mom, someone who couldn’t bother even noticing her other than as an object of curiosity, walking away, not a care about anything.

She felt as though the air had become suddenly dark and thick, crowding her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe properly. She fell back, no longer matching her mother’s pace, in the crowd of people they had entered as they came closer to the entrance of the mall.

“What’s wrong? Keep up!” her mother said. And then she stopped, looked at her daughter and said “You feel okay? Something wrong?”

“I’m okay. Just didn’t feel too good for a bit. I’m coming.” 

 

 

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.

 

Life Sucks. No, Really...

 

I.Hate.My.Life.

No, really. I mean it. I really do hate my life. You would too, if you were me, if you were living my life. I know life doesn’t have to be like this, but for me it is. I get really fed up, tired of it all. I know I haven’t lived much of my life yet, but what I’ve seen of it so far hasn’t been much to be happy about. And I don’t know why you think that’s so funny. It isn’t funny to me.

You’re just like my Dad. He laughs at me all the time too. Says I should grow up, learn to be a man and just deal with it. He should talk. He's always yakking about sports, and the FIFA Cup, as if it's the best thing going. Mom can't pry him off the TV. Or he uses that little lap-top, or his cell to get the latest scores, soon as he's home from work.

That's another thing Dad has against me, I think organized sports sucks. I only go because I have to. You can bet I wouldn't, if I had the choice. And Dad thinks my efforts are half-assed, that's why I dislike soccer, that's why I don't do well at it; so he says. Anyway, I don’t see what being a man has to do with this at all. And I’m trying to grow up. It’s just kind of hard. Deal with it? I’d like to see you deal with it.

It must be so cool not to have any brothers or sisters. Kids who don’t have a kid brother or sister don’t know how lucky they are. I kind of imagine sometimes what it must be like. It must be kind of wonderful. My Mom tells me I should be more patient with her. I’m twice her age, she says, as though I don’t know that. I do know, though, that when I was five I wasn’t like her. She’ll change, Mom says, we’ve just got to give it time. Anyway, she tells me, I’m lucky I’ve got a sister. It would be an awfully lonely experience, she says to me, to be an only child. She should know, she says, she was an only child.

I’ve asked the kids at school, the guys I kind of hang out with what it’s like for them, at home, the guys who have brothers and sisters. They just kind of shrug. Bruce says it’s okay, they get along all right. He’s the youngest in his family so I don’t know what that counts for. Eric says his little brother is a pest, but an all-right kid. Mark told me when no one else was around that his brother and sister are really only half-related to him, but they’re okay, he just kind of doesn’t hang around with them, they’re older than him, by a lot. So it looks like no one else I know has anything like my problem.

I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m complaining for no good reason at all. Not. Meredith is an incredibly spoiled brat. Well, it’s not even that. She’s not a spoiled brat in the sense that she gets everything she wants, and gets to think she can have anything she wants. She’s just a nasty kid, that’s what she is. I overheard a neighbour say that about her, actually. I felt kind of offended too, to hear someone talk about my sister like that, but then I realized that’s just what she is. She’s selfish and miserable, she doesn’t care about anything or anyone else than what she wants and she wants it right away. And if she doesn’t get what she wants she screams. These awful high-pitched screeches. They’d give a saint a headache, my grandma once said.

If I ever make any kind of sarcastic comment about Melanie, my parents jump all over me. They accuse me of hating my sister. I don’t hate her, I just don’t like her. You can’t hate a relative, they’re your relative. But you don’t have to like them, and I don’t like Melanie. Everyone loses their cool around her. No one knows what to do about her. I’ve seen my grandma plunk herself down on a chair and just cry her head off. I’d never seen my grandma do anything like that before, her shoulders all hunched up, her head down and in her hands, heaving these great big horrible sighs. I didn’t know what to do. I stood beside her, tapped her on the shoulder, then put my arm around her and hugged her. She’s kind of too big and round to hug, but I tried. After awhile she put her head up and looked at me. She looked awful.

“It’s all right, Stevie, I’m all right. I don’t know what got into me. I’m all right now. You’re a dear”, she said, pulling me around in front of her and hugging me. No problem her hugging me. I could hardly breathe. There isn’t as much of me as there is of her.

“Don’t tell Mother”, she said to me. “Don’t bother mentioning it. I don’t want your mother worried about me, asking me questions. I’m just fine.”

“Sure, Grandma”, I said. But I knew what was wrong with her. Melanie was what was wrong with Grandma. That was last summer, once school was out and Mom wanted to keep her job, and asked Grandma if she would sit us. Not ‘us’, so much as Melanie, because even though I’m twice her age, Mom and Dad don’t think I’m old enough to supervise her. That’s something to be grateful for.

So when Mom asked Grandma close to the end of the school year this time around if she might consider looking after us while she worked, Grandma said she wasn’t sure. Then she said, maybe two days a week. She needed some summer-time to herself, she said, with that kind of apologetic sound in her voice that people use when they’re uncomfortable about something.

“Sure”, Mom said. “I understand. I’ll look for someone to come around, someone in the community, maybe some high school girl, who wouldn’t mind sitting for the other two days of the week.” Grandma nodded, said that would work out just fine.

Mom works four days a week, Monday to Thursday. She’s home on Fridays, and then there’s the week-end.

Mom says she’s got to get out of the house. Actually, before Mom started her job she used to argue a whole lot with Dad, and that’s kind of stopped, now. They’d discuss Melanie, see, and that would escalate, as they say, into a shouting match. They’d try to tamp it down when we were around. Hard to do in a house where we’re all together. Sometimes when we’re supposed to be outside, playing or whatever, they don’t keep track and when I come in I can hear them. Mom says she’s frustrated, doesn’t know what to do, how to handle Melanie. I know just what she means. I could give her a few hints. I’m not supposed to do anything to Melanie, like slap her or anything, even though she’s always slamming away at me. But Mom could do it, turn that kid over and whack her backside, as the saying goes.

She won’t, though. She tells me I’m never to do anything in retaliation for what Melanie does to me. She says it’s normal for a little girl to be like that, ready to pop off her cork at any time when she insists she wants something and she can’t have it. I’ve never seen Mom do that, she just shrugs her shoulder and gets on with things. Dad and Mom never argue about anything like one wants something the other doesn’t or anything like that. It’s only about Melanie, far as I can see.

Hey, I’ve even heard Grandma tell Mom she should use physical discipline if nothing else works. And believe me, nothing else works. Whenever anyone tries to talk to Melanie, tell her she’s not behaving, and she’s old enough to know better, her face gets all scrunched up and hard and her eyes get into these little nasty slits and her mouth turns down at the corners and she looks like a crazy bat, honestly. That’s some kid sister.

Well, I’m like Mom that way anyway, I don’t go around thinking it’s okay to hit anyone. I just wouldn’t do it. And that’s something, matter of fact, that Melanie is always doing. Always smashing things around, banging things, and hitting. When she’s mad, and that’s half the time, she just begins smacking everyone. Even Dad’s been whacked by her. For a little kid, her fist can really hurt. But she doesn’t only rely on slapping and fisting, she throws things. If she’s mad enough, and you never know - she’ll pick up anything that isn’t too heavy for her to lift and toss it. At me, or whoever happens to be around, ‘bothering’ her. She doesn’t like being ‘bothered’. I’ve tried to explain to her that she bothers me constantly, like all the time. She thinks I’m dumb. She calls me dumb ass. Mom lectures her about that too, but it doesn’t help. Nothing seems to.

So here I am, stuck with a kid sister who just happens to be a menace. It all seems so hopeless, sometimes. Grandma tells me, quietly, so no one else can hear, to ignore her.

“Just pay her no mind”, Grandma says.
“I’d like to” I tell her. “But it doesn’t work. If I step around her and pretend she isn’t there, then that gets her mad too. And she gets right in my face about it.”
“Take it from me, darlin’”, Grandma insists, “if you ignore her baby tantrums she’ll find she has no audience and she’ll cool off.”

Like that would help, like that would work. Listen, I’ve tried everything. Nothing works.

I knew Mom was looking for someone who lives in the area to come in to just kind of be around, while she was at work. Not that I need anyone looking after me, but Melanie sure does. And I’m not about to offer myself as her personal punching bag, someone else can have the pleasure of telling that brat what she can and shouldn’t be doing, and watch her reaction as she goes into one of her berserk moods. I’ll be around, but I won’t be doing anything to look after that kid.

Anyway, I heard Mom on the telephone speaking with someone, asking if she would ask her daughter if she would be interested in coming over to our place two days a week. There was a lot of stuff back and forth, and when I asked Mom later, she said she wasn’t certain, but she thought she had someone who could spell Grandma who would take the other two days of the week.

A week later, just before the end of school, I found out who our -- or Melanie’s -- sitter was going to be. I just couldn’t believe it. I kind of yelled, YES!

That was embarrassing, I couldn’t believe I did that. We were sitting at the table after dinner when that happened. Dad looked at me, Mom looked at me, little brat-sister looked at me, and I felt like screwing myself deep into the chair I was sitting on, becoming invisible. How would I explain that to them? I mumbled about how I just remembered something about Mikey, that he had told me his mother was going to pick me up for the game practise later in the week and I’d forgotten to say anything about it.

Dad and Mom kept looking at me. Guess they wanted to hear more. I didn’t say anything else. What could I say? Tell them that our neighbour two houses down the way who is going to be coming over to sit Melanie is someone I really, really, really like? I get all funny even looking at her. Funny feeling, not funny ha-ha, you know? We take the same school bus, she gets off just before we do. She’s really good-looking and a whole lot even nicer than she looks, if that’s possible. She’s not snotty like most of the other older girls, the girls in grade 8. She’s friendly, always says hi!

And this is the last year I’ll be seeing her on the school bus, because she’s graduating, and going to high school next school year. I’ve felt really miserable about that. I know I’ll just never get to see her. But that was before I learned she’d be coming over here two days a week. I can’t believe it! I better be careful too, about how I am, around her. I don’t want anyone to get any ideas about that. If my bratty kid sister ever heard anything about it, that I’m stuck on Dakota she’d scream it all over the place and make everyone laugh at me. That would absolutely kill me, absolutely.

And then, a couple days later, Grandma told Mom that she changed her mind. I got really quiet when I heard her say that. I felt Grandma was going to say she would come over four days, not two, and Dakota wouldn’t be needed, to be coming over. But it wasn’t that at all. Grandma said she changed her mind, she decided she just couldn’t manage to come over here two days a week, even though her house is only a ten-minute drive from ours. Mom looked really upset, so did Grandma. Grandma said she was sorry, she just couldn’t stand the thought of having to … discipline Melanie continually.

So then Mom called over to Dakota’s mother again, asked if she thought Dakota would be all right with coming over four days a week, not two, and how much did her mother think my mother should pay her? She was thinking, she said, between $40 and $60 a day. Wow, I thought that was a lot of money. Seems Dakota’s mother thought that way too, and said she thought $40 sounded reasonable. She’d be coming over here at 8:30, just when Mom would be leaving, and Mom would be back from work around half-past three.

Dakota is fourteen. How do I know? Because a few weeks back one of the older girls shouted out to her on the bus, happy birthday, and what did she think about being fourteen? Dakota laughed, shrugged, said thanks. Said she feels the same old her. That’s only four years older than me. And I’m going to be eleven in another month. So she’s not even four years older than me, that’s nothing. Lots of people… Well, I’ll catch up, you’ll see. I know that guys take longer than girls to get going, growing up, but by the time I’m her age, I’ll be as big as her, probably bigger, and then maybe she’d look at me kind of differently.

The first day Dakota stayed with us while Mom was away working was really neat. Melanie was her usual bratty self, and threw something really hard at Dakota. It hit her on the leg, and she was really calm about it, although I knew it must’ve hurt. A couple days later I saw she had a bruise out of it, so it must’ve hurt. What she did was she talked to Melanie, as if that would make any difference. She was trying to reason with her, and you can’t reason with someone as self-centred and unreasonable as my bratty sister. I thought that was really nice of her, instead of hauling off and smacking the kid, like she deserved.

What was really neat about that first day was that Dakota treated me like I was her friend, and that I was there along with her, looking after Melanie. I liked that a lot. We played games in the backyard; we’ve got a basketball hoop set up there, and a badminton court kind of, and stuff like that. She’s a good sport, and she didn’t care who won, and I’m not sure but she may have let me win one time, although if that’s true I’d feel bad about it, because I want to win because I’m good at something not because someone wants me to feel good about something. All the other times, no matter what we were playing, the games were ‘won’ by Melanie.

And Dakota baked chocolate chip cookies. I’ve always loved helping Mom bake cookies, that’s the one thing brat-sister and me agree on, helping with the baking, and Mom lets us have some of the cookie dough before it’s baked. So did Dakota. Actually Dakota ate lots of the cookie dough too. We did a lot of laughing and it was really tons of fun. Would’ve been a whole lot better if brat-kid wasn’t around.

And then, on Thursday, the absolute worst happened. Just a whole lot of absolute crap that I couldn’t do anything to help avoid, even though I tried, and Dakota knows I tried. I wanted to impress her, make her believe that I was more than a little kid … a little kid a bit older than the brat-sister she was baby-sitting. But then I lost it. And I don’t know what I can do to turn things back to where they were before it all happened.

Before Thursday Dakota and me together looked after Melanie. We worked together on this project, know what I mean? I felt that Dakota respected me as if I was someone her own age, someone she got along with really well, and we had a kind of understanding, like as if I was her age and stuff like that. It’s hard to explain. She just made me feel good about everything. Made me feel as though she relied on me to help her. Like it was me and her and then there was Melanie. I know it doesn’t sound like much, sounds like I’m making things up or something, but honestly, I’m not. Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Is she going to think about me like I’m another little kid, like she’s looking after me, along with Melanie?

On Thursday the weather was awful. Non-stop, heavy rain, so we couldn’t get out much at all really, couldn’t use the trampoline, couldn’t use the badminton nets and run into the sprinkler, that kind of stuff. Melanie started out the day whining and complaining and being really miserable, heaving things around, demanding - actually just being her usual self - plus.

She kept eating freezies. And Dakota told her she’d had enough, no more until lunch. If she was hungry, Dakota said, have an apple. Then Melanie said Dakota had to make her lunch and then she could have more freezies. Dakota said it was only half-past ten, too early for lunch, have an apple. No! screamed Melanie - I WANT FREEZIES!

“Too bad” Dakota said. “You’re getting to the age where you have to start learning that you can’t have everything you want whenever you want it.”

See, that’s what Dakota is like. She thinks she can reasonably explain things to Melanie. She said to me once that she was a brat when she was young, and she knows what it’s like, and she also knows what it’s like to be refused things you want, and she thinks that if things are explained reasonably, kids will understand and be what she says is more compliant.

Melanie began throwing stuff all over the place, and Dakota told her calmly, to stop, that doing that kind of stuff won’t make any difference, she still won’t get what she wants, and will only work herself up into a frenzy. That only made Melanie worse, and she began screaming in that awful high-pitched sound that makes my ears hurt so I have to stick my fingers in them.

Dakota sat Melanie down, despite Melanie kicking her, and held her and tried to explain that Mom said Melanie wasn’t supposed to eat a lot of junk.

“Melanie, you want to grow up into a healthy girl, so you need healthy food. Those freezies are only junk food and if you keep having them you won’t have any appetite left for good, nutritious food. That’s what this is all about”, Dakota said quietly to her. And the minute she let Melanie go, the screeching started all over again.

And next thing you know, there’s Melanie with three more freezies in her hand, defying Dakota to get them off her. This time Dakota began to yell at Melanie and that ended in Melanie giving up two of the freezies and eating one of them, but still crying and screaming that she wanted more.

After lunch we went downstairs to play some hockey. There was me against Dakota and Melanie and it started out all right, but Melanie got bored and began bashing everything with her hockey stick. Dakota told Melanie to stop doing that before she broke something and then felt sorry about it, or even worse, hit someone with the stick and then she’d be sorry. Of course, Melanie just ignored her, so Dakota took away all the sticks, including mine but I couldn’t play against myself anyway.

Dakota asked if Melanie wanted to hear a story. She would read to us, and that would be fine, because we both like that. But Melanie wouldn’t agree to have a story read, and just glared at both of us. I told her she was a horrible brat and I was ashamed she was my sister. Next thing I knew, something hit me hard, on the side of my head and it felt like it was crushed.

I heard Dakota yell at Melanie that now she’d done it. I sat down on the floor, and began crying. I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know why I let myself do that. It’s like I couldn’t help it, it hurt so bad. Next thing I know, Dakota is kneeling down beside me, asking me if I’m all right, and I’m blubbering. I tried to stop, but I just couldn’t, it really hurt. She pulled my hands away from my head to have a look, I guess, said it didn’t look bad, but I’d probably get a good bruise out of it, and picked up the croquet ball Melanie had lobbed at me.

I stuck my head back in my hands and began kind of swearing, mushing the words to kind of make it sound as if that’s what I was doing all along, just swearing, not blubbering all that time. And then I realized that it wasn’t fooling Dakota any, she could see all the slob and snot all over my hands and my nose and chin from my crying just like a girl, like a kid. And how could she respect me any more after this?

I hate my kid sister, I really do. You have no idea how much I hate her.

You have no idea how humiliated I am, how much I hate my life. It’s over.

I have nothing left to live for. 

 

 

Today, You...

You drew your naked torso beside mine,
threw one leg over me, nudged and kissed
me this morning in bed, then we arose, late.
You carefully re-attached my gold loop
earring when it fell off in the shower. You
smoothed skin cream over my back where I
cannot reach. You surreptitiously gave
bacon treats under the table to our little
dogs at breakfast, ignoring my reproaches.

You took out the compost pail after breakfast,
then collected the dogs' morning deposits
to flush down the toilet. You took my favourite
electric broom down to your workshop and
built it a new handle, after the original fell
apart. You told me that was a pee-wee,
singing in the woods, on our daily walk there.

You stood out on the porch for quite a
while, speaking with the hopeful candidate for
City council, and modestly acknowledged
his compliments in recognition of the
faultlessly-installed cobbled floral-bordered
piazza and walkways leading to our front door,
which you worked on using a stonemason's
basic tools of chisel and mallet, then you said
thanks for coming around, he had your vote.

You went back down to your workshop
to continue on your latest stained-glass
window. You took our little dogs out for
some fresh air and pee-time after the
thunderstorms stopped rolling through.
You told me you'd rather I did not inform
people that we are almost 74 years old.

You took the tiny snail I discovered in the
strainer when I was rinsing the basil and
oregano leaves back to the garden where it
belonged. You chopped up all the fresh
vegetables to place on the yeast dough I
rolled out on the pizza pan. You selected a
film video for us to view in the evening.

You are my peerlessly perfect partner.