Category: Writing A Book-ish

The Grave Marker Maker

Where I came from, country people had a wry and realistic view of death. They had to. As farmers and stock keepers, the cycle of birth and death was up close and personal in their every day lives.

Roast chicken for dinner? No supermarket down the street where it was easy to pick up a roast chicken – cooked or uncooked. The hungry farmer sought out the poorest layer in the flock and headed to the butcher block. Off with its head.

I came from a small and mostly rural Canadian province. Stories about birth and death were awash in myth and mystery. And, occasionally, ridiculousness.

As a television reporter in the 80s, me and my cameraman were assigned to investigate a tiny graveyard nearly an hour’s drive outside the booming metropolis of Fredericton (population: 44, 000+).

CBC TV had been invited by a local historian to investigate a smattering of bespoke headstones in a small local cemetery. We were met at the cemetery’s entrance by a local woman who looked clearly discomfited at the arrival of nosey city folk.

What we saw at first glance was a field of small, boxy headstones, mostly lopsided and irregular in shape. Upon closer inspection, we saw that someone had carefully spelled out the name and birthday and date of death of each deceased person. In twigs.

It was evident the maker wanted to remember the deceased and grant them the dignity of a grave marker. In a spirit of love and generosity, he – I am assuming it was a he – had made over three dozen headstones, each painstakingly crafted by hand.

He had laid out the names and vital statistics in twigs in a wooden box and then poured concrete into them. Alder was the wood he used, I imagine, as it was plentiful and its’ young branches were long, thin and pliable. Two problems: the grave marker maker was a dreadful speller and had little sense of proportion.

The twigs didn’t cooperate very much with his aesthetic efforts by staying fully in place. What should have been straight lines were a little wavy. When the deceased’s name was too long, the grave marker maker simply rounded the corner of the box and finished up the name down the side.

The end result looked a little less than professional. More like the work of an earnest kindergartner to be accurate. Grave markers to be sure that were filled with misspelled and misshapen names and dates. Lots of them.

We didn’t do a story that day. I sensed that while the historian had a professional distance from the comical stones, the local who took us to them was clearly uncomfortable. There is a fine line between poking fun at someone who is in on the joke and someone who has inadvertently attracted ridicule.

Years later, I heard all of the stones had been replaced by more staid and suitable granite headstones. With the names spelled right and lines as straight as arrows.

Still, it is poignant to think of the hours invested by some earnest and well-meaning member of the community to properly remember his kith and kin. We pick where we choose to invest our labor on this earth.

It is sweet and a little sad to think that, in spite of the odd and disastrous products he produced, this chap felt he was doing sacred homage with his labors.

Then and now, I felt a little sad that his work did not survive. It is said that it is the effort we should praise and not the outcome. I can’t help thinking that the poor man’s efforts might have lasted a little longer on this earth than they did. And remembered with kindness, not ridicule.

Heaven on Earth

I have no traditional beliefs or hopes about going to an “afterlife” once I die. I do believe I have a spirit incarnated in this body at this time in the history of this world.

I also believe that my spirit might be reincarnated when this body I currently inhabit gives out. Shy of any solid, indisputable evidence, the jury is actually still out on that.

I do believe heaven and hell are here on earth. It makes sense to me that if your present living circumstances are such that belief in an eventual heaven helps you get through your days, go for it. Whatever gets you by.

That belief that so many people hold makes me a little sad though. It has allowed powerful and not-so-well-meaning people to suppress and keep people subjugated for centuries. Not naming names, but religious leaders are particularly culpable in this regard.

Advertising that you are in possession of an exclusive hotline to, and relationship with, the creator-god almighty is a pretty powerful cudgel. Combine that with limited access to education and even the ability to read and write, religious leaders have had a pretty easy row to hoe keeping people in line.

I once went to Rome and witnessed a papal audience. I worked in marketing at the time. My overriding thought at that event was that with the leverage of that storied history and artifacts shrouded in mystery and money, I could sell the Catholic party line to just about anyone. Over the ages, the Catholic Church has done just that.

It is fair to say that the Catholic “brand” has been undermined and tarnished in recent years. Widespread sexual abuse of children and a hierarchy devoted to preserving the mythology of “godliness” meant that internal corruption and coverups were almost preordained.

As priest after priest fell under the knife of justice for their unholy transgressions, I watched many lifelong Catholics go through the now-well-known stages of grieving. First, shock, then denial. Then anger when the denial defrosted.

I believe many Catholics were and are still stuck in the stage of depression without acceptance of their spiritual leaders horrific crimes. A belief system inculcated in you from infancy and supported by your culture is hard to throw off.

So there were justifications and diminishment of the grievous transgressions galore floating about in Catholic circles and out to the wider society as “the sins of the fathers” started coming to light.

“Think about all the good he did for the community,” I heard about one particularly unctuous Father. That priest had preyed on altar boys for years. He was convicted and died in prison. Devout Catholics from his parish shook their heads in disbelief and devastation for years after.

The appeal of an afterlife is understandable. In the face of individuals feeling powerlessness, having something better to look forward to after you depart this mortal coil is likely comforting.

It is also true that creating your own heaven on earth can be a daunting exercise. Life throws so many variables at all of us. Choosing the right path or pushing the right buttons often feels like an insurmountable challenge.

It is why I appreciate time alone. When I occasionally sink under the covers of my own busy external environment, that is where I have resolved some of life’s thorniest and most painful issues. I lived alone for many years.

Self-imposed isolation helped me gain my own clarity about many things in favor of other people’s dictates about what heaven and hell or a good life or bad life was. It also shaped my perception of what success is and isn’t.

With time and a little luck, we eventually grab the pebble out of the master’s hand. I was helped to articulate this position in a post I saw today. “When we are young we blame our parents for our troubles. When we are adults, we learn they are also just human beings and learn to forgive them. When we finally learn to forgive ourselves, we have become wise.” – Alden Nowlan

The goal of living is to tip the scales in favor of goodness and right. Bad things and injustice will fling themselves at you throughout your life with astonishing regularity. Your job is to hold fast to the mast of your own core beliefs. To become certain of your own values and to live by them.

I can’t say emphatically that heaven – if there is such a place – is here on earth or awaiting us after death. But I believe that if you stick to your guns and live what is true for you, you’ve got a much better shot at living a version of heaven here on earth than those who don’t.

As for an afterlife, I’ll get back to let you know if there is one when I get there.

Hot Cockalorum

One of the pleasures of adulthood is looking back and savoring certain childhood memories. Trying to figure out why they were so much fun at the time can be a joyful sentimental journey.

I practically lived inside the covers of my World Book encyclopedia and companion Childcraft books when I was a little girl. I remember they were bought from a traveling door-to-door salesman. I believe their purchase caused some consternation in the household as Dad accused Mom of buying something “impulsive and unnecessary.”

As irony would have it, when Dad died, I retrieved the World Book encyclopedia from his house, not Mom’s. Who knows what happened there. Divorce collateral damage.

For my part, I am glad Mom bought them. The story below I first discovered in Childcraft. The nonsense of it and the twisting around of words in my head and mouth were delicious to play with and read out loud. It was the same sort of rolling around of words in your brain as you might do in your mouth with a caramel toffee candy or dessert confection.

This tiny tale was no doubt partially responsible for igniting my love of words. For reasons unknown, I hung on to “hot cockalorum” over the years.

Do not expect common sense here. It is a silly story. But I am still impressed now, as I was back then, by how quick and clever that young servant girl had to be to remember all the crazy words the old man taught her just hours before.

Girls – including servant girls – rock.

Master of All Masters

https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/eft/eft43.htm

“A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. At last, a funny-looking old gentleman engaged her, and took her home to his house. When she got there, he told her that he had something to teach her, for that in his house he had his own names for things.

He said to her: ‘What will you call me?’

‘Master or mister, or whatever you please, sir,’ says she.

He said: ‘You must call me “master of all masters”. And what would you call this?’ pointing to his bed.

‘Bed or couch, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘No, that’s my “barnacle”. And what do you call these?’ said he, pointing to his pantaloons.

‘Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘You must call them “squibs and crackers”. And what would you call her?’ pointing to the cat.

‘Cat or kit, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘You must call her “white-faced simminy”.

And this now,’ showing the fire, ‘what would you call this?’

‘Fire or flame, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘You must call it ‘hot cockalorum”, and what this?’ he went on, pointing to the water.

‘Water or wet, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘No, “pondalorum” is its name. And what do you call all this?’ asked he, as he pointed to the house.

‘House or cottage, or whatever you please, sir.’

‘You must call it “high topper mountain”.’

That very night the servant woke her master up in a fright and said: ‘Master of all masters, get out of your barnacle and put on your squibs and crackers. For white-faced simminy has got a spark of hot cockalorum on its tail, and unless you get some pondalorum high topper mountain will be all on hot cockalorum’ . . . That’s all.

Time and Place

There was something I did not know when I was young but know very well now. In our lives and usually beyond our bidding, there is a time and place for everything. Finding out what works for you in whatever time and place you are in at the moment is the challenge. 

There are distinct phases in our lives but they don’t present as some kind of script to follow. Something about the zeitgeist shifts around us as we come up to and pass certain milestones. High school graduation, as an example.

In the weeks and months leading up to that event, there is much activity and preparation. Not only for the exams and essays required to get you past the graduation finish line but much thought and preparation has been invested into what you will do afterward.

Take the summer off or work to earn some coin in the local supermarket? Take a whole gap year and travel the world before you settle into full-time studies or an entry-level position in the career of your choosing? Or spend your time sowing some wild oats and grabbing what little is left of childhood freedoms before the responsibilities of adulthood kick in?

I remember the subtle but significant pressures that kicked in at various stages and with every passing year when I was young. Family members can say tons without saying anything much of anything at all. “So, how’s your love life?” the jovial uncle might ask when you are obviously still very much single.

“I hope your parents live long enough to become grandparents,” the jovial uncle’s wife – my aunt by marriage – chimes in with a chuckle and the mildest hint of a harumph. 

I felt a subtle shift and FOMO (“fear of missing out”) kick in when my younger sisters had children and I had none. Let me emphasize here that FOMO is an extraordinarily stupid reason for choosing a mate and having children. I believe many do it though, but call it something else.

Shortly after my marriage imploded, I opined that I had put more thought into choosing carpet colors than choosing my children’s father. In my defense, I didn’t know then what I know now. But damn. Take about hasty and flakey decision-making. At that time, generally, I was paying more attention to others’ expressed needs and wishes than I was to my own.

Life set out to teach me fundamental lessons after that which, up until that point, I had blithely ignored. More telling, I believed certain expectations didn’t apply to me. I mentioned before the messages we got as children about being “special.” The rules that applied to mere mortals didn’t apply to me. Hubris is an ugly and limiting affliction.

I got schooled. Big time. I didn’t understand what this strange yearning was that in the weeks leading up to delivery that made me want to create a safe and orderly home for my infant child. And so I learned about nesting. 

So while I went through most of the so-called normal benchmarks of adult life, it was never on a path I felt that I was choosing freely. That’s a great form of denial and I was pretty good at that. 

I had missed out on the steady guidance of healthy female role models I assume other women had. My mother abdicated her role as a mother early in my existence and struck up a close relationship with pills of her choosing. 

Other potential role female models in my life died too soon or otherwise faded from my life. In any case, when it came to the finer points of parenting, and specifically mothering, I was woefully unprepared.

I do not recommend entering parenting without some sort of stable and viable support system. Independence is great but its allure tanks dramatically when a helpless human being needs you 24/7. I believe people couple up as much for someone else to cover diaper duty as for the deep emotional and social satisfaction of having a life partner. 

In a similar way, subtle hints come along in life’s journey to move you forward. Time to go for that promotion or look for another job. Time to move house or even move out of your community. Time to move on from any unsatisfactory situation, whether personal or professional. A wake-up call behooves you to focus on your health and well-being above all other considerations. If we aren’t here on the planet, or struggling to physically make it through our daily lives, all other considerations are moot. 

By a certain age, we start to look back and see how our own lives were shaped by variations on all of these themes. Choices we did and didn’t make. Opportunities we did or didn’t accept. I once read that we all must make most important life decisions with insufficient data and limited foresight. And sometimes we deliberately choose to abandon reason, flout the rules, and go with our gut.

A favorite saying of mine is about second (or third or fourth) marriages. They have been described as “a triumph of hope over experience.” There are certain variables that even the most carefully laid out life trajectory can flout: love and longing and desire. The heart wants what it wants.

If the allure of “the road less traveled” appeals to you on some deep level, you may understand what I’m talking about. Or if, in fact, you have taken an alternate path in your own life, you understand what that means in your very bones. And you may be happier than many.

Whatever the outcome, choosing to live life at your own speed and at your own pace may land you in a place of your own making. That can make a significant difference in how you see your life looking backward. And forward, too, if you are brave enough to follow that path.

There is no time limit on courage regardless of the time and place you are in at the moment.

Beautiful Chaos

According to the Urban Dictionary, beautiful chaos means someone whose life and/or personality are hectic or chaotic. When you have long defined yourself and your output as a “hot mess,” this positive reframing is welcome.

Tidiness and order do not come naturally to me. I am sure this deficit in me is attached to a trauma-filled childhood. Parental modeling has to be another. My mother’s aunt raised my mother to believe: “If you don’t learn how to do housework, then you’ll never have to do it.”
That view seemed fairly short-sighted on great-aunt Grace’s part, then and now.

I believe my great-aunt Grace was preparing my mother to live a life above her birth station. What it accomplished was a domestic incompetent who was inordinately proud of being so. Mom may have secretly suffered for her lack of housekeeping and cooking skills, but like many other things, she made a joke out of it.

“Cooking,” she would say, “is like murder. You only have to do it once to be one.” In her back pocket, she had but a handful of “go-to” recipes on the few occasions that I remember her making a homemade meal. “Joni marquette,” for example.

Joni marquette was an elevated moniker for a tasty dish of ground beef, macaroni, and a can of stewed tomatoes. Easy to throw together and admittedly tasty. In moderation.

But if there was a meal to be made and Mom was the only person available to do it, joni marquette was likely the main course. I later discovered that “joni marquette” was actually based on a US-Italian recipe called Johnny Marzetti. The Wikipedia article on the origin of the dish is an interesting read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Marzetti

The joni marquette entree was occasionally followed up with a dessert dish Mom was fond of making. We weren’t especially fond of it, but no matter. If dessert was called for, floating islands are what we got. That dish was prepared much like one would make meringues.

You know the crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside cookie confection of soundly whipped egg whites, infused with sugar and vanilla, and baked to golden brown perfection. A French derivation and specialty made popular by French cuisine superstar Julia Child. In French, they are called oeufs-a-la-neige. (eggs on clouds) https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/19050/floating-island-oeufs-a-la-neige/

Mom’s variation was to make the beaten egg white base with sugar as directed. She would then carefully ladle individual “islands” into a warming milk bath in a frying pan to cook. And voila. Floating islands.

To me, there was something vaguely off-putting about floating islands. It may have been their squishiness. Sort of like marshmallows but not nearly as firm and awash in milk. They felt funny in your mouth as if you were chewing on sweet foam. Maybe they weren’t so bad when I think back. Maybe it was their frequency as Mom’s “go-to” dessert that rendered them vaguely unappetizing.

Mom’s lack of domestic skills was a great source of humor for her. She often touted Dad’s skills around the house as being well above her own. He had been a bachelor practically forever when they met and married so was well familiar with domestic necessities.

Dad could cook and enjoyed it. He was also a little guilty of overdoing the “one-dish I’m good at.” In his case, it was cod au gratin. He would buy a large piece of cod – preferably fresh – and mix it with what I now know as roux. That is a flour, milk, and butter-based white sauce that he made extra thick and seasoned with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

He would pour this mixture into baking dishes I now know are called ramekins. He topped each ramekin with about an inch of sharp shredded cheddar cheese. Then he popped the ramekins in the oven until the cheese melted and the fish and roux had heated sufficiently. Pretty good eating.

But a little like Mom’s joni marquette, Dad’s cod au gratin was served excessively. Seems the mindset was that if you have a winning recipe, why deviate from it? A generational thing maybe.

My cooking adventures have been a combination of both parents’ approaches. I have a few “go-to” standards but take great delight in experimenting a little more than they did.

Of course, now if a new dish I am making doesn’t work out exactly like the picture on the New York Times recipe page, I am happy I no longer have to describe it as a “hot mess.”

What you have in front of you, I will say, is my own self-curated special dish, Beautiful Chaos. Would you care for some more?

The Birthday Box

Today is my birthday. A milestone, so that narrows it down some. But I am not going to share exactly how old I have become today. The reason is old-fashioned and likely a little vain. For my mother, it was a survival strategy. Especially in the workplace.

Mom used to talk about “the box people put you in.” Once people knew how old you were, she reasoned, they made assumptions. Often erroneous. Inevitably “limiting.” It is still the way it is “out there.” A 19-year-old singer on America’s Got Talent is viewed more favorably than a 27-year-old. Longer-term marketability, the younger they are.

In Mom’s case, she was a woman in a profession dominated by men. Truth be told in her generation, every professional field was dominated by men. There were a lot of truths about living in that reality, shared as sly witticisms that most women could relate to.

“To do as well as a man in the workplace, women have to be twice as good and work twice as hard as men do. Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.”

Or a more veiled reference: “It is hard to soar with eagles when I am surrounded by turkeys.” I remember a cartoon that circulated in Mom’s workplace. A down and dejected bald eagle is in the center of a group of blank-looking turkeys. The point hit home.

I knew the frustration of being expected to be a “hard news” reporter when that was the predominant role respected in our TV newsroom. If your strength was current affairs or my wheelhouse, human interest, you were clearly of less value than the ambulance chasers or political analysts.

Never mind that I actually enjoyed doing human interest pieces and that they were well-received. They were never going to grant me a shot at being a war correspondent or a bureau chief or heading up a newsroom.

Mom’s challenge was even harder in the 60s. There were distinct “ladies’ pages” in the newspaper business. And ladies, of course, were expected to “cover” issues of interest to other ladies. Teas, weddings, and significant births and deaths in the community. The social pages. Writing obituaries was clearly women’s work.

Mom fought for a “beat” like her male colleagues. After much cajoling and complaining she finally got her wish. She ended up covering the port of Saint John, New Brunswick with the comings and goings of major vessels and reports on the cargo they carried.

To my chagrin, she liked to announce to all and sundry when I was too young to see the humor that she had a job “working the waterfront.” The conjured image of my mother in fishnet stockings and too-high heels made me writhe in discomfort when she shared her little joke with my friends.

Today is more of a day of stock-taking for me. I look back on the other birthdays of other significant decades. I think about what I have and haven’t accomplished. Most poignant, of course, have been challenges that I did and those I did not overcome. Loss became a constant companion if not exactly a friend.

My dear friend Ursula Wawer, MD became a forensic psychiatrist. On a trip we once took, she seized upon a piece of art. It was a drawing of a maze of sorts with many paths but all leading ultimately to the same destination. She said at the time it was much like the healing path many of her patients took.

Not everyone comes to the same desirable destination of love, peace, and fulfillment via the same path. Ursula concluded it doesn’t matter how you get there. What does matter is that you keep putting one foot in front of the other. Do the work to eventually arrive where you want to be and not where others deem that you should be. That journey can take a lifetime.

And so it has been for me. Lots of learning along the way and many lessons I would rather have read about in a book instead of learning about them firsthand. Life isn’t fair and that is one of the biggest and most important learnings of all.

When you land at a point of your life at a destination you only once dreamed about, that feels like a life – if not consistently well-lived – then at least you can say it has been a life of some value.

As I “celebrate” my birthday today, just as you might be celebrating yours today or soon or certainly someday, that feels like the greatest present of all.

My life to date has been valuable to me for all the challenges, children, lessons, dear friends, adventures, and romantic experiences along the way.

I greet the upcoming decade with a warm welcome. Intention being about 99% of the success of any endeavor – another lesson I’ve learned. Bring it on. Happy birthday to me.

Margot’s Chateau Margaux

Oh boy. Some things pop up on the Internet and you just gotta shake your head.

Book merch, for example. It’s a thing.

Check out this Esquire article.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44449495/book-publishing-influencer-merch-explained/#%F0%9F%8D%BE%F0%9F%8D%B7

I’ve often bemoaned the widespread dereliction of words and literature. Increasingly, consumerism trumps education and literary exploration as a leading social value.

And why does that matter? Because good literature gives us insight into the human condition and the amazing range of roles we play as humans on the planet.

Text speak has reduced “what were once words” to a series of acronyms and emojis. So now, whatever we’re feeling, we just have to match it to the closest emoji to convey our feelings to the world. Hoo boy.

As a former professional “marketer,” I hold my nose over the introduction of book merch. Umbrellas with a favorite author’s new book title on it? Galoshes and raincoats and book covers and whatever else to show your allegiance to the words of whomever? Seriously?

Here in my blog, I have written about the rampant “commodification” of book writing and publishing. Book coaches. Book retreats. Book writing challenges. Book webinars (pick a genre, any genre). I note there is no industry accreditation for any of these purported “experts.” Just plenty of chutzpah.

The book publishing industry has gone way, way, way beyond satisfying the simple ego motivations of self-publishing, or encouraging impatient authors to utilize the so-called “vanity press.” Sadly, like cultivating love and friendship and a career “calling,” the mystery of writing as a gift of the fates and happenstance has also evaporated.

“Find your ideal life partner by following these five easy steps!” “How to make 20 friends in 20 days!” (with a money-back guarantee! No, I was just kidding about getting any money back). “Fifty ways to leave your lover.” (No, wait that was by someone else about something else.) No matter. You get my drift.

I am first to admit guilt in the realm of needing a fairly swift kick in the ass to have me consistently put pen to paper. In full sentences. Mostly.

But I never see myself giving in to the marketing claptrap of “book merch” to claim I am “successful.” I simply define success (as most writers I respect and admire) as just putting your bum in a seat every day and cranking out something. Anything.

Then again, hold up. The possibilities are undoubtedly endless for a Chateau “Margot” Margaux. Jeesh, I am a soft touch.

But seriously. Ptooey!! As if I have anything to say that is going to change or “influence” anything ….

Old school values die hard.

Happily Married

Happily married? An oxymoron in my world. My family background is filled with marriages that ranged from just okay to horrific. And everything in between.

My oldest paternal uncle drank to excess. It was a family disease. His wife solved the problem by keeping up with him. I am told their daughter cut them out of her life after one visit with them. Cleaning under the bed after her parents went home, daughter Betty found countless empty booze bottles. High marks for the integrity of not trying to cover up their problem?

Orlo and Aline produced four children and had long lives. Beyond the drinking, I heard of few other issues. The marriage seemed stable enough. But my mother shared Aline’s confidence that she spent the entire first year of their marriage “crying over the sink while doing the dishes.” Ergo, the compromise. Since Aline couldn’t beat him, it appeared, she joined him.

Within the family, I heard countless stories about regular and casual beatings of my female ancestors by their husbands. It was partly a familial characteristic but also a cultural one. Punishing one’s wife “to keep her in line” or “straighten her out” was seen in some bizarre way as a husband’s “duty.” Talk about a free pass. Go patriarchy.

Other marriages I heard of in my family were more benign and at least congenial. There were healthy working partnerships here and there. My father’s brothers made good marriages that could be called true partnerships. But inevitably, there were issues. My Uncle Doug died suddenly at just 49 years old. His wife Pat remained a widow for the rest of her life.

My own parent’s marriage fell in the horrific category. There wasn’t much to cheer about except maybe the black humor that came out of it. The marriage was riddled – as was my childhood – with pills and pain and violence and infidelity and histrionics. That marriage came to a decisive end with Mom’s suicide attempt at 42.

Having crawled out of the gutter of addiction and mental illness, Mom eventually found work at a city newspaper. Dad had moved to Newfoundland to find a paying job after the dissolution of his marriage and businesses in New Brunswick. On a visit back to New Brunswick to see his kids, he visited Mom in the newsroom.

A colleague of Mom’s gushed on meeting him: “Oh Mr. Brewer, I can’t tell you how happy we are to have your wife here with us.” (The labels die hard in New Brunswick, with intervening legalities like divorce a mere nuisance.) Without skipping a beat, Dad replied: “Madam, I can’t tell you how happy I am that my wife is here with you.”

To say I had skewed notions of what a marriage was or could be as I entered adulthood would be something of an understatement. A steady boyfriend in my late teens gave me a sweet anniversary card during our relationship in which he wrote: “Let’s make this the first in a long string of anniversaries.” I froze. I could not conjure a mental picture of what that life might even have looked like.

So, of course, I sabotaged the relationship and, in my mind’s eye, “released” him to find a steadier and more suitable life partner. Something stuck though. I never stopped regretting the loss of that relationship.

My first marriage on paper was an unmitigated disaster. I entered it for all the wrong reasons having succumbed to all sorts of social and familial pressures which had nothing to do with what I wanted or needed. In a way, the marriage was as much a victim of my immaturity as his life generally was of his own.

Then I met Hank. Later in life. On the internet. A half a continent away. From a different generation. Ballsed that one up pretty well, too the first time around. But the love didn’t die. We reconnected again three years after to broke up.

I wake up in a state of awe and gratitude every day. I am happily married. There’s that oxymoron again. My husband is like the manifestation of a dream I had a long time ago. Lots. of compatibilities in spite of different nationalities, different generations, and wildly different family backgrounds. On top of the list is our sense of humor.

As I have read it is supposed to be, those differences are strengths in our marriage. We are as much friends to one another as we ever were lovers. We are companions as well as each other’s critics and cheerleaders. He spends a lot of time rolling his eyes at me as I come up with yet another cockamamie plan or idea. I spend a lot of time feeling like the little kid who sulkily defers to the inherent wisdom of his age and experience.

I sometimes wonder what Mom would think. She never remarried after she and Dad divorced. Indeed, I raised my kids alone and stayed single for decades we often muse that god decided s/he was sick of seeing me and Hank flailing around in our respective lives and steered us toward each other.

Though no one can predict how much time we’ll have together, I prefer to focus on what we have today and every day: a happy marriage. Not without issues but full of love and fun and satisfaction.

Don’t know what I would tell Mom if she were still here today. Maybe, whodda thunkit?

Broken Birds

It is commonly believed – somewhere – that a fertile young woman inclined to get herself in the family way will seek out the strongest, healthiest mate she can find as a father to her children.

The reasons are two-fold. A strong healthy male might be expected to produce the strongest and healthiest babies. A strong healthy male might also be expected to be a good provider.

I’m the first to admit that these are wildly, out-of-fashion assumptions, and options in the baby-making realm these days are just as wildly variant. Many young women plan to not only have but raise and take care of their babies all by themselves, thank you very much.

But abused children as adults do not necessarily seek out what is good for them. Quite the opposite, in fact. I saw this manifest in my mother operating as an adult from her own abusive background (though she would rather eat nails than admit that it was.)

My mother was repeatedly drawn to the birds with broken wings. She invariably sought out others as abused and oblivious to its impact upon them as she had been. Our childhood was filled with an assortment of ne’er-do-wells and problem drinkers and people “not quite right” whom she could and would take under her wing.

She aspired and identified with the local “intelligentsia,” who willingly came to her countless parties and drank copious quantities of free booze. The professors. The lawyers and judges. Occasionally doctors, but her conversational boundaries with them were reached pretty quickly. Doctors were usually much too starchy and grounded in reality for her liking. She much preferred philosophers.

Mom married a bird with very broken wings indeed. His childhood of physical and emotional abuse showed up in adulthood as sex and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, and an inferiority complex the size of Greenland.

In retrospect, she would say about her attraction to him, “I was going to love him so much he would heal and get better.” And of course, he never did. Not with her. What she didn’t say is that water seeks its own level.

People change themselves if they are going to change at all. They may be motivated by someone else but the work of “changing” is theirs and theirs alone. And the “savior complex” my mother had was never completely altruistic.

There was something reminiscent of trying to remove a splinter in someone else’s eye while ignoring the log in their own. Mom came to see – after years of enduring my father’s abuse and her unceasing pain – that her assumptions about her marriage were painfully naive.

But she never really fully let it go and moved on. She liked having been married to a lawyer. It meant a lot to a small-town country-raised girl. I used to say that their divorce was only on paper.

And after the parents’ divorce, Mom continued attracting broken birds to her circle. The “recovering” alcoholics. The “between real jobs” handymen. The sketchy English professor who was “down on his financial luck.” She was inordinately proud of helping them. If they could be helped.

To me, they seemed like a rogue’s gallery of lesser men of even less fortune who were happy to prey upon my mother’s vanities and vulnerabilities. Children often see things differently than their parents.

So, in kind, I picked a broken bird. Our shared history of parental alcoholism was a bonding issue. But dysfunctional backstories do not set a firm foundation for a lasting marriage. My own views were so crippled and skewed that on our wedding day – carrying our first child – I blithely mused: “If it doesn’t work out, we can always get a divorce.”

Life and the children I would bring into this world drove the message of my own naivete home in waves of dull pain for all of the following years to date. I still have to carefully bridge conversations where my daughter bemoans the “fine line” she has had to walk her whole life between her father’s world and mine. “Mom screwed up,” is all I can muster by way of comfort.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course. But in choosing a father for my children, I did what I had been taught to do. “Pick a broken bird and make him better.” Poppycock, of course. I can only say that my children were the catalyst for my own embarkation on a healing path.

As my children wrestle with their own issues emergent from a dysfunctional background, I hope that owning up to my own mistakes will give them better emotional grounding and source material than I had to work with.

One of the greatest lessons I have learned about life is that hope springs eternal. Indeed it is often said of “second marriages” that they are a triumph of hope over experience.

With the all too human “compulsion to repeat” from those of us who emerged from dysfunctional families, it is one of those quiet blessings for which I often express thanks and gratitude.

Meandering Around the Mall

I was 18 years old when I got my first writing job at a newspaper. Full disclosure, my mother was one of the co-owners. And she was the newsroom equivalent of chief cook and bottle washer.

Mom and a similarly disgruntled journalist friend who met at the Telgraph-Journal in Saint John, NB were sick of the bland and myopic editorial point of view espoused by The Northern Light in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. To read its competitor and dominant local news source The Northern Light was to be assaulted with consistently positive stories about the city’s overseers with zero political or social analysis and scant actual news content.

The rest of the provincial newspapers were owned or influenced by the powerful and famous/infamous K.C. Irving and his family.

The complaint was the Irving corporation’s interference in its’ newsrooms and its’ journalism. Offensive or unseemly stories about Irving’s business practices or government entities or friends of the Irvings were largely ignored and swept under the rug. Bumpy rug.

My mother and Sharon Miller cooked up a plan and were determined to put a stop to it. The paper was published weekly and included a section in French. The paper was composed on old typesetters in those days long before computers became widespread, printed, trimmed, and attached with wax to the broadsheet page template.

My first assignment was to produce copy for the Meandering Around the Mall column in its regular weekly slot. I hied myself to the Bathurst Mall to meet and chat with people. If I knew them, the more the better. But often the interviews were along the lines of, “What brings you to the mall today?” “And is that your granddaughter with you?” “And oh, it’s her birthday?” “Which one?” “And is she having a party?”

From this meaty exchange, I would dutifully jot down both grandma and granddaughter’s names, record her age (the granddaughter’s, of course, not the grandma’s), and weave this information into flowing and supple prose. Of course, I had to talk to a few people or the column would have been very thin indeed.

Three to four people were usually enough to give me adequate column inches. Interspersed this with upcoming deals or events or special guests coming to the Mall. It must have been paid advertising but I never saw it as that.

But looking back, it was pure New Brunswick. People are curious about other people. Most people back then loved to see their names and the names of their loved ones in print. In any section but the obituaries. Depending on the relative.

A fond memory I had was the frantic activity around “putting the paper” to bed. We had a deadline at the printer in another city three hours away. And sometimes the typesetter would pile into the company van and head down the road with our precious cargo. The formatted newspaper original laid in a broadsheet-size box.

The printing press worked us into the schedule among the dailies it produced. We’d wait at the printer all night. I still remember sleeping on a pile of mailbags in the press room. The next morning, the published paper was loaded into the van. We trundled back to Bathurst, turned the van over to the distributor, and the newspapers were dropped at their appointed destinations all over the New Brunswick North Shore.

Meandering Around the Mall was an extremely modest forerunner to Facebook, which has taken the model to unimaginable heights. But it does hearken back to much simpler days when – essentially – stalking and chatting people up looking for personal information wasn’t a slightly sketchy or maybe even a criminal act.

I had some wonderful adventures at The Bathurst Tribune but my newsroom tenure didn’t last long. I started there in the spring and by early August, I had been admitted to university. My life was about to change dramatically.

The Bathurst Tribune didn’t last long either. It survived until finances and local hostility from the powers that were in charge at the time killed it off. Just under two years in all.

In retrospect, the Quixotic journalism effort seems faintly quaint and very twentieth-century. But there was a sense of being involved in a meaningful upstart project designed to disperse “hard” news that the population might otherwise never hear about.

Meandering Around the Mall was clearly not that. But it was a charming “slice of life” that elevated locals to mild levels of recognition when that sort of thing mattered.

I wrote “hard news” stories, too about politicians speaking in town or union meetings or car accidents and their outcomes. But for some reason, it was that odd little weekly column that sticks in my memory.

To this day, I can still have a lively, if fleeting, conversation by engaging a proud grandma with her granddaughter at a shopping venue. Some things never change.