PART FOUR: THE GRAVY TRAIN

Returning to full-time teaching after such a long time away required a leap of faith. I went from a controlled, perfect little family situation where there seemed to be no problems at all, to a classroom where I was seen mainly as another challenge for the more aggressive students. The class knew they’d run out their previous teacher. If they tried hard enough, surely they could get rid of me too.

In fairness, they weren’t all bad. Most were average kids and some were darlings, but there were a few who made it their goal to make my day as miserable as possible. As for my coping methods, they were initially non-existent. I cajoled, coaxed, sometimes bribed, frequently lectured – all the things teachers do when they’re desperate for cooperation in the class, but which can actually make things worse. Gradually, though, I began to relax a little, and I found ways to insert a bit of my own personality and creativity into the class. If they still hated me, they didn’t hate me “quite as much,” and I began to feel the teacher in me come alive again, after years of hibernation. I loved it.

In the meantime, my husband took a job as Sales Manager to a dealership. The week he was to start, he fell on an icy spot outside and broke his wrist very badly. It was so smashed that they couldn’t even connect the parts back together. Instead, he wore a frame on the outside, and each week he tightened the screws so the bones would be closer and could knit. He was very lucky. It healed well enough. The job didn’t last long, though, and soon it was off to another dealership, this time as a Fixed Operations Manager. Things weren’t good there either. It was a long drive away, he was working ridiculous hours, and the profits weren’t what they should be. One day, he got fed up and quit. We grabbed the boys after their soccer game and flew to the Bahamas for our first holiday in years, then immediately began to fret about the cost of everything. Going on a holiday when you’ve just given up a job isn’t always as relaxing as you’re anticipating it will be.

We were home a week when he got a call to go into a consulting company with a woman from Vancouver. She wanted a partner and assured him he could get lots of work. The problem was, it meant he’d be away a good part of the time.

The boys were in grades 7 and 9. I was teaching Grade 7 and bogged down with work each night, and now my husband was away as long as two weeks at a time, usually in Vancouver. Both sons were at the age when they needed lots of parental guidance, and here I was, buried in my office marking schoolwork. I still cringe at the nights I had to get out of bed at two a.m. and hop in my car to pick him up from his red eye flight into Toronto. There were times I’d get lost and circle the airport for nearly an hour. I was drained, he was exhausted, and the kids were getting short-changed by both of us.

To make matter worse, the money was only 50% of what he’d been told to expect, but we were starting to feel like that was par for the course. And he and his partner were fighting. She lived in Vancouver, but kept sending him to Vancouver and taking the Toronto jobs herself. And she had the nerve to call me late at night and say that I was interefering by wanting him home more often.

The writing was on the wall. It didn’t last. By one good thing came out of it. While he was out west, he had lunch with an employee from Reynolds and Reynolds, a software company serving the needs of auto dealerships. Steve suggested they hire someone just like him to head a professional consultants group. The gentlemen left with the idea, and wrote it up for the company suggestion box

Two weeks later, Steve got a call from a headhunter for an interview. In the meeting, he began to describe a certain job, not mentioning the company. Steve stopped him and finished the job description. Then he named the company,. Sure enough, it was the job he had envisioned weeks before over lunch. He was hired.

That began eleven wonderful years for us. Life wasn’t perfect, but Steve was challenged and happy and in control, free to think outside the box and answering to few people, as long as he kept making them money. He had a generous expense account and gradually he built up an excellent team under him. He travelled a lot and loved it, and I accompanied him when I could. We made a wonderful group of friends, most of them part of his team or other colleagues. He felt successful in every way and life was very good. Yes, we sometimes overspent and had to cover more personal expenses than we anticipated, but we accepted that. Quarterly bonuses sometimes were a disappointment, but we still managed to buy RRSP’s. We weren’t paying our debts down as quickly as we should have, but we still felt it still was under control. Things will be better next quarter, we told ourselves. And sometimes, they were.

Why is it that we couldn’t even conceive of things getting worse? We refused to even entertain the possibility. And why is it that now, my son often says we are too negative. Gosh, I was so far from negative that a co-worker used to call me “up person.” It embarassed me, actually. To him, being so constantly happy was equivalent to being dumb. But when I think of it, being an eternal optimist, having blind faith in my husband and his co-workers, not seeing storm clouds rising, not preparing a cushion to support our fall…..maybe I was really just dumb. And maybe he was too.

PART THREE: BLUE SKIES

Those years in our first home went smoothly. Our expenses were reasonable, our income steady. Best of all, we lived in a town that posed very few temptations when it came to spending. There was a single movie theatre, two small malls, and a few modest restaurants and a string of fast food places – that’s all. If we were in the mood for something more, we had to drive to Toronto, an hour south of us. That happened only rarely. We were content to have a quiet, simple life, and it did wonders for our marriage.

Neither of us had been particularly ambitious when we first met, but gradually, that seemed to change. The same spirit that brought my husband trouble in school began to work in his favour now, and promotions came his way. Inevitably, he began to dream of bigger and better things. I couldn’t help but be excited for him, though in the back of my mind, I always feared the insecurity of his business ideas.

Those dreams came to fruition on one particular fall weekend, when he and another mechanic went to check out a garage in Toronto. Their intention was to rent it on Saturdays, where they would do repairs to supplement their regular income. He was gone for hours and arrived home on a cloud of euphoria.

“I’m starting a business,” he said.

“When?” I asked.

“On Monday,” he answered.

My jaw hit the floor. I wasn’t happy about it, but he’d made the decision already and there was no going back. I didn’t know it then, but it was the first in a series of impulsive career changes my husband would have throughout our marriage. Each time, I’d be blind-sided, but the truth was, his ambition and faith in himself, in contrast to my own rather limited self-confidence, amazed me. It felt wrong to squash his enthusiasm because of my own ingrained fear of risk. I felt powerless to do anything but close my eyes and hope for the best.

The move to his own business came with no plan and no extra money for the equipment he felt he had to have. Somehow, we managed, though not without going into debt. I became pregnant, and he sold his precious Mustang, saying it wasn’t appropriate for a newborn baby to ride in. The money helped keep us afloat for a while longer, until finally he gave the business up and returned to the job he’d left the year before.

In between, our marriage faced some personal challenges. We wanted to have children, and that proved to be a problem. It was a time when everyone seemed fertile but me. The joke I often heard was “I wish I had your problem,” or “I get pregnant every time my husband passes me in the hallway.” The idea of having a child of my own consumed me. After two years of trying, we saw fertility experts and I was put on clomid. Three months later, I was pregnant, and on cloud nine. Nine months aftere that, just one week past the baby’s due date, her heart stopped en utero, and my labour was induced. I never even got the chance to hold her, and I never really got over the loss. I’m not sure you can.

Having a baby became my obsession. I may, I was preganant again, but miscarried in August. I got pregnant in October, but miscarried in December. Two wweeks later I was preganat, but this time a I was under the care of a guynecologist who gave me propgesterone injections oince a week to heelp maintain the pregnancy. My son was born in September of 1977, and until he was walking and talking, I’m not sure I believed he was real. I was still in mourning for my daughter, though I didn’t know that then.

We quickly moved to a bigger, better house in Pickering, so Steve could be closer to his next job. Eight months into the job, we knew nit was not going to pan ou. We also found out I was pregant again, and accepted the fact that to make it financially, we had to take a few steps back and move to a smaller home in Brampton.

Soon Steve was promoted again, and at the age of twenty-eight, he became the youngest service manager at any Ford dealership in Ontario. Leadership came naturally to him. Within a year, he was president of the Ford Professional Service Managers’ Association. For the next fourteen years, there was the occasional roadblock, and sometimes a step backwards for a short while, but overall, his career flourished and he continued to be recognized as a bit of a maverick. He was chosen by General Motors to help develop the first automotive dealership college programme in Ontario. He represented his company at Rotary and sat on the executive. He initiated the General Motors Service Managers Association for Ontario. He won trips every year based on his department’s productivity and customer satisfaction ratings, and we travelled to places we’d never dreamed we’d see: Rio de Janeiro, Acapulco, the Canary Islands, London, the Pacific Coast of Mexico. In each case, we were treated like royalty; we ate in the best restaurants, saw 5-star theatre performances, stood in the courtyard of Blenheim Palace drinking mulled wine and watching the Queen’s Royal Guard march to “O Canada” in our honour. A private plane took us to Lanzarotte, where my husband snagged contraband volcanic rock to bring home (ironically, he has frequently blamed that rock for our bad luck since). On one particular trip, we were invited, out of the hundred and fifty other couples there, to sit with the top executives from General Motors Canada. People called him “a diamond in the rough,” and we both fully believed that nothing could stop him.

I can only write from my perspective in all this, because even though I often seemed in the background, I had some influence. Though I had less ambition than he did, I thrilled at his accomplishments. I had no trouble adjusting to the role of a woman married to a successful man, particularly when his colleagues seemed so warm towards me. I didn’t feel that I was spoiled, but looking back now, I was definitely living well. My husband told me constantly that I deserved it, and if I was dressed well, or spoiled in another way, he saw it as a reflection of his own success. It made him happy.

Perhaps you can hear it in my voice as you read this, but a subtle change came over me during those years. I’d married a mechanic, but he’d evolved into a true force of nature in the automobile business. I remember listening toithe song “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer,” then saying I can’t imagine loving someone who was incapable of dreaming. My husband had been the underdog in school, and as a teacher, I loved nothing better than to see an underdog surpass everyone’s expectations – particularly those who’d put them down.

In some ways, you could say that my husband became my “project,” my prized pupil. I was in awe of his success. My role came to be one of support for him because it seemed that if I helped him, made his home life perfect rather than forging ahead on my own career, his success would come more easily, and would surely outshine anything I could accomplish as a teacher. I effectively “tied my horse to his wagon.” I stayed home, raising our two sons, and taking care of the mundane things that didn’t interest him: homemaking, cooking, cleaning, handling the bills. A couple of times I ventured out into the working world: two years in human resources and a year in social services. Then we moved to the home we’d always dreamed about, a country place still close to the city, and I fell into occasional supply-teaching assignments at my sons’ school.

It all felt perfect, until a particular day a year later when my husband called to tell me that he’d be home early, that he’d been released from his job of six years. The reasons for his dismissal were really never clear. He was told he’d done nothing wrong and was given a fair severance and letters of reference. The disappointment was that he’d believed that it would be his lifelong job. He was devastated.

A week later, in mid-October, the principal from my sons’ school called to ask me to take over a class whose teacher had gone AWOL. I had no time to think of the all the reasons why I really didn’t want to do it. I felt I had no choice. I said yes.

The balance of responsibility in our marriage shifted. For three months, my husband took over the homemaking duties, and I returned to the role of full-time classroom teacher after an absence of eleven years. We expected it to be temporary, over at the end of that school year. Fate had a different plan.

MIDDLE-AGE: BUMPED OFF THE LADDER

People talk about the difficulties of youth – their struggle to not only find themselves, but settle on goals and work towards them. Once done, they think there is nothing but smooth sailing ahead, particularly if a few darling little children have already rounded out and enriched their lives.

Don’t be embarrassed by your naivete. I felt exactly the same way at your age. Life was full of promise. Because we’d had some heartbreak in our first few years of marriage, I firmly believed our share was spent, that life could only get better from that point on. It was self-delusion in its grandest form and it predicted a perfect future.

I’m here to be a wet blanket, someone to tell you what you don’t want to hear – at least I didn’t want to at your age. The truth is this. You can set goals and plan and do all the right things, but if you grow too comfortable and rest on your laurels, your nice little life can all be pulled out from under you in the blink of an eye. In the worst of cases, your health or that of a loved one can fail. Sometimes, it’s one or two bad decisions on your part; sometimes it’s the people who decide you’re not “right,” and work to make a case against you. Often it’s the young up-and-coming executive who decide to protect his ass over yours. Yes, some people lie or choose to forget the truth, even people you thought were your friends, because when push comes to shove, the future of their career is usually more important than yours anyday, dear friend.

Hence, this poem written a few years back about a similar person who single-handledly started the 8-ball ruling that triggered the end of my husband’s corporate career.

MR. POLITICALLY CORRECT

He is really nothing special,
down deep feels it too, you know,
so he’s learned to play the charmer,
see how far the game can go.

His shoes are always shiny,
his suit pants nicely pressed,
his golf score breaks a ninety,
his very life seems blessed.

He flatters all the ladies,
he “yes, sirs” all he can,
finds a way to flee the radar
when the feces hit the fan.

He knows to smile when needed,
seems modest with his blush,
feigns innocence to save his hide,
maintains his Midas touch.

He’s young and climbing upward,
he’s old and scared to fall,
friend or not, you can’t trust him,
when his back’s against the wall

A year in employment limbo, a downsized positon where he was set up to fail, and finally, the pink slip. Six years later and we’re still feeling the effects, both monetarily anad psychologically, of that one momentous loss.

When you’re young, you can start out on a path where it seems you are invincible. Employers convince you that you have a brilliant future ahead of you as long as you “stick with the programme, and toe the line.” It’s a horrible thing to suddenly realize that you’ve planned poorly; that you’ve underestimated everyone else’s ambition and overestimated their loyalty to you. You’ve suddenly missed the boat; that in the game of musical chairs, you’re one of the people left standing. What’s even worse is knowing you’re 58 or 59, and your chances of regaining what you’ve lost are unlikely.

The one good thing we have gained, though, is that we’re much more realistic now. We’ve been through hell in the past six years and proven we are tough enough to endure just about anything. It’s a difficult transition, not knowing what comes next. We just have to rely on ourselves to make something happen, because it’s more and more obvious every day that no former colleague is going to turn this situation around and make it right for us. In fact, former colleagues seem to avoid us, perhaps victims of survivor guilt. For one or two people, it’s possibly even justified.

Everyone thinks it’s hard for young people who are just starting out in the work force, but at least they have years ahead, to win through trial and error. We have no time to waste, no time to completely fix what’s wrong.

I just keep telling myself “if it is to be, it’s up to me.” If we all say that, something good has to happen, don’t you think?

DEM’S DA BREAKS

Experts in human behaviour theorize that when you’re depressed or your life is “out of sorts,” you become more accident prone. I’m beginning to think that they’re right.

After finally getting our house on the market, I looked forward to writing about our “fall from financial grace” under the category “A HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE.” Then on Thursday night, after a busy, stress-filled day, guilt set in. I realized that while my husband had taken Cadeau out twice a day for washroom breaks, I hadn’t actually walked our little shih tzu in three or four days. Despite being well past dusk, I took him outside. At the end of our driveway, I looked left then right, deciding which way to go. I chose left, not my usual direction on our country road. It was the wrong decision. On my return, with the sky now black and no streetlights to show the way, my left foot caught a rut in the ground’s surface. I twisted my ankle, stumbled forward and fell over onto my right knee, right hand, and the right side of my face.

I knew it was bad – my teeth smashed together and I was sure one had broken (I was wrong). I was also certain I’d broken my cheekbone and my left foot. Two cars went by and didn’t stop to help me. Finally, I got myself up and limped home, crying all the way – not with the pain of it as much as the fear of what I’d done.

Bottom line: bruising and swelling of my foot and right knee, a black eye; cracked ribs high on my right side, a swollen, bruised cheekbone…and to top it all off, a broken right wrist that may still require surgery.

Needless to say, I’m pretty miserable. I’m not used to relying on someone else at the best of times, but asking hubby to blow-dry my hair so I don’t look like Janis Joplin, and dealing with the fact that even finished, I’m still Janis Joplin with a slight hair relaxer is, well….driving me nuts. I feel like a spoiled baby, but sometimes, after dealing with all kinds of serious drama in your life, it’s the silly last thing that happens that puts you over the edge (hence the straw and camel’s back expression).

Anyway, readers, this has put a serious dent in my typing abilities, so for a week or so, I’ll need to stay away from the keyboard. It’s too much to hunt and peck with my left hand, when it’s also still recovering from a break back in December.

And yes, a bone density test is on my to-do list for this week. *wink*

PART TWO: THE SEEDS ARE PLANTED

Right from the start, my husband and I realized we shared a similar philosophy towards money: it couldn’t buy happiness, but it was definitely meant to be enjoyed. Now, that doesn’t sound too unusual, until you consider the fact that together, we put a higher value on enjoying our money than we did on saving it. Until recently, I didn’t really consider the reasons for that shared view. To be honest, I was too busy just trying to make everything “work.” But in going through a situation like the one we’re in, you inevitably come to a point where you can no longer blame only circumstances. You begin to blame yourself. Self-recrimination is all part of the “mourning” process, but it can only go on so long, and once it was over, I had a lingering need to understand “why” we’d made some of our choices over the years. After all, we weren’t stupid. We weren’t extravagant. And to be honest, we weren’t terribly materialistic. So how did we get to this point in our lives, when we’re nearing sixty?

My perspective was clearer when I considered my husband’s beginnings.
His family had emigrated to Canada in 1957, in search of a better life than the one they’d left behind in East End London. Nothing came as easily as they’d anticipated, and my husband, just seven on his arrival here, learned quickly that it wasn’t fun to be one of the “have nots.” As soon as they were old enough, he and his siblings had to take on part-time jobs to help support the family, and much to the frustration of his parents, he usually spent his paper route money (on candy or cookies) the minute it was earned, sometimes even before he got home!

Those free-spending ways stayed with him through adulthood, the only difference being that with a wife and sons, there were three more people in his life to spoil.

Understanding my own situation took some serious soul-searching. I was the oldest of seven children, and my parents had to be frugal to feed and clothe so many. We were taught that wanting more was being greedy, and sometimes I found myself resenting the restrictions they lived by. Later, their financial situation improved, but to me, they didn’t reap the benefits of that as much as they could have. They didn’t ever seem to have “fun,” and it frustrated me because I could think of hundreds of things they could afford to do that would bring them pleasure: travel, dinners out, and entertainment, to name a few. I knew I wanted my life to be different. If I was going to work hard, I was also going to play hard. In many ways, the freedom to spend my own money as I wanted, to savour my share of the pleasurable experiences in this world, was a subconscious form of rebellion. And eventually, it led me to take too many financial risks.

The bad habits did not happen right away, possibly because credit cards were not yet a reality. The budget for my engagement ring was modest and would be not one penny more than the $225 my husband received when he sold his guitar amplifier. Our wedding, in July of 1971, was nice, but not extravagant. To save money, we spent the night in our apartment rather than a hotel. Our honeymoon flight was a present from his parents; our spending money, gifts from wedding guests. My going-away outfit, a wool-blend suit bought off-season and discounted by 50%, was a disaster. I sweated buckets and squirmed uncomfortably for the entire six-hour flight to England. I certainly didn’t feel like a big spender when we arrived at Gatwick and boarded the bus for another three-hour trip to our destination!

Actually, it wasn’t until we’d been married for nearly two years and decided to buy a home that we started to take financial risks. It came from a sense of our own “power” – just how much we could actually afford if we put our minds to it, just how “tight” we could live in order to get the things we wanted. Within three months of borrowing $2000 to buy a 1970 Mach I Mustang (gorgeous, by the way), we’d found the house of our dreams, borrowed $500 as a down payment on the house, paid off our car loan, and arranged a “hidden second” mortgage with the builder.

Two years into our marriage, at the ages of just twenty-two and twenty-three, we didn’t have a cent in the bank, but we had a house, and we felt invincible.

Next installment: Sometimes, we succeed despite ourselves.

PART ONE: A BRICK WALL

I haven’t posted a blog entry for over two months now, and you’re probably wondering if I’m just one of those “fly-by-nights” who start blogs with lofty intentions, then abandon them. I promise you, that’s  not what’s happened. It’s “life” that’s gotten in the way, and while the mess and stress of it has given me lots of inspiration, guilt has stood squarely in the way of me sitting down to write.

I envy writers who are able to practice their craft no matter what is going on in their world. I find that “fiction” becomes an impossibility, and the non-fiction I want to write is just too close to home. There are others who would be affected if I wrote about all that’s going on around me, and the last thing I want to do is have them embarassed by my willingness to “bare all”  in my writing.

Recently, I watched a couple on Oprah talk about their downturn since the recession. He was a newscaster, earning well over $200,000 a year. He lost his job due to downsizing and they were quickly in trouble. Now he works as a veterinary assistant, making just $30,000 a year, and he’s happy.

I guess the fact that he’s well-known was the “hook” to draw viewers. It certainly wasn’t because he and his wife had suffered more than others; but they had suffered nonetheless, been humiliated and forced to gratefully accept bailouts from friends. And I thought to myself, if they can go on Oprah and talk freely about what has happened to them, why should I be so hesitant to go public with our ordeal?

To tell the story properly, though, I have to go way back to the beginning, when life was less complicated, and all things seemed possible, as long as you worked hard enough.

REFLECTIONS ON AN AFTERLIFE

June 6th., 2009

Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were still alive, she would have been seventy-eight years old now, and I have no doubt she would still be impressing us with her fortitude and personal faith. It’s something rarely seen anymore. Nowadays, such conviction is not just suspect, but often an irritant. How can we trust someone who seems to have all the answers to life’s mysteries? Yet, while my six siblings and I were little, those explanations, told to us as she ironed clothes or baked cookies, formed a solid blanket of security around us, and helped us embrace events that normally would have brought childhood dismay. For that, I am grateful.

As fate would have it, Mom lost her own mother at a very young age, and was sent by her less-than-nurturing father to a convent school at the impressionable age of twelve. She was bright and headstrong, and the only girl in a family of hard-drinking, hard-fighting older brothers. There was a new stepmother, and life at home was growing steadily more difficult. What could be safer and more respectable than a Catholic convent school?

It was exactly what my mother needed to put structure and meaning into a life that was sometimes chaotic and dysfunctional. The world of the convent was a simple one: a time and place for everything; a logical explanation behind every rule; a common goal of discipline and purity; and above all, faith in a higher power.

My mother loved it, and in many ways, those very strict, proper nuns were the closest she ever experienced to mothers in her teenage years. She did well, graduated from grade twelve at fifteen years of age, and within two months had been appointed teacher at the one room school in her hometown. All of that helps explain why she found it so easy to profess her beliefs to others, without being self-conscious, without wavering. It also must have been an asset in later years, when there were seven children of her own asking her to explain the meaning of life and death and everything in-between.

That’s what I find myself thinking about today, on what would have been her birthday. I find myself hearing, all over again, the things she told us.

We asked her why God allowed people to suffer, and she told us that life’s tragedies were not God’s doing, but the result of living life in an imperfect world. She said that somewhere, God was crying for us just as we were crying. She reassured us that God had a special place in heaven for all people who had lived hard lives on earth. Best of all, she said that when we died, we would discard the ailing, aging bodies we had on earth, and magically transform into beautiful, angelic spirits. She said paradise had every wonderful thing that we’d ever loved in our lives on earth, and that there would be nothing but perfect happiness there.

I’m not sure if her interpretation of heaven was altered for the sensibilities of children, but it gave us great peace. Now that I am older, I often yearn for that wonderful reassurance of a perfect afterlife, especially on a day like my mother’s birthday.

HOW DO YOU KNOW HE LOVES YOU?

How do you know when a guy really loves you? An old song asked that question and suggested that it was “in his kiss.” But these days, kisses are doled out so freely that they’ve depreciated, so what’s the answer to that age-old query now? Is it in the romantic gifts of flowers, candy, or jewellery traditionally given on special occasions like Valentine’s Day? Is it in the gestures of support we get on a regular basis – the sudden compliment, the chores done ungrudgingly around the house, the much-needed dinner out?

All of these matter, but I may have found the definitive answer to whether your partner really loves you. It’s the extent he/she is willing to go to protect you from harm.

Now, many people have told me how lucky I am to have a “superhero” for a husband. He is devoted and protective, a “Saint Bernard” of a man. Standing six-foot four and with hands the size of a catcher’s mitt, he moves through life like a force of nature. Few people would ever challenge him on a physical level, and being loved by him brings a sense of safety and security. But there is one aspect to his readiness to protect that can have a downside. Occasionally, his reactions can be considered a little extreme. I know, because several years ago, he tried to save my life.

It was late-May, unseasonably warm, and I was in the kitchen preparing supper when one of our sons burst into the house, his shirt blood-splattered and his knuckles skinned. It was obvious he’d been in a fight.

It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t seen before. Life near a large suburban community carried its share of danger, and he seemed to have inherited his father’s reactive adrenaline surges when he felt threatened.

Before I had a chance to speak, he started telling me what happened. “I just had a fight with Matt*,” he said, closing and locking the door.

The news wasn’t totally unexpected. I knew my son’s temper and I knew Matt*. Even as a youngster, he could be trouble. Now that he was older, with the rumour of a tough gang of friends to back him up, he seemed a legitimate threat.

Our young “caped crusader” supplied a few more details of the altercation then jumped into the shower. An hour later, he left for work, but not before telling us to keep our eyes open for a strange car in the driveway that night. “Play it safe and keep the doors locked,” he said, only half-jokingly.

Despite our paranoia, the evening passed uneventfully, and soon it was time to turn in. Our bedroom was warm (we had no air conditioning at the time), so we left the windows open and the blinds up to catch the breeze. A ceiling fan added to the comfort.

Miles from the city, it was dark except for moonlight. I squeezed earplugs in to drown the regular sounds of stray cats, crickets and my husband’s snoring, and snuggled down for the night. Despite a few pangs of worry about our son’s safety, I finally drifted off.

I was asleep less than an hour when I felt my husband’s big “paw” shaking my shoulder. I was startled, only half awake, and my earplugs muffled his words. Irritated, I asked him, “What is wrong with you?” My first thought was that he was having an unusually intense dream. He was agitated, almost panicked, and covered my mouth to stop my questions.

More than once, I tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down. He was frantically whispering something, but what? Finally, I managed to get an arm free to yank out an earplug. “It’s Matt and his friends. They’re shooting at us,” he hissed. “They’re in the backyard.”

A loud and rapid-fire, “Pop, pop, p-p-p-pop, p-p-pop” filled the air. Still, the meaning of his words didn’t register. Unlike my superhero, my adrenaline had flat-lined in my sleep. I looked towards the two large windows in our room, and realized screens would offer no protection from the volley of bullets outside. In the space of a few seconds, my lack of understanding turned to terror. I couldn’t move.

Suddenly, the shots seemed to grow closer and louder, and my husband went into rescue mode. He started to pull me onto his side of the bed. The problem was that in the confusion, he wasn’t explaining why he wanted me there, and I was too stunned to think it out myself. He also couldn’t see well enough to move me carefully. In one fell swoop, he threw his arm around my neck, grabbed me by my head, and yanked me backwards, off the bed and onto the floor on the other side.

Together we waited, our hearts pumping wildly, until silence came. I’m not sure how much time passed before we decided it was safe to move. We were still too frightened to stand, too sure they were lying in wait. Finally, my husband slithered across the floor and made his way to the windows. He reached up from the side and was able to pull down the blinds, hiding us from our attackers. Then, he crawled his way to the doorway and turned on the light.

The source of our terror was right before us!

Floating high above our bed was a partially-deflated helium balloon, a souvenir from my husband’s birthday the month earlier. It had come loose from its doorknob mooring and taken flight. 

How can a helium balloon mimic the sounds of gunshots, you ask? Just get it caught in the blades of a ceiling fan.

My neck was a little stiff and sore the next day, and my husband felt pretty foolish, but one undeniable truth came out of it all. My husband will always protect me, even if he kills me in the process.

I guess that means he loves me.

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*Note: “Matt” is a pseudonym.

MARRIAGE INFIDELITY: INTRINSIC TO HUMAN NATURE… OR NOT?

I am exhausted. Not just sleepy, or tired to the bone, but exhausted on every level: physically, mentally and emotionally. Okay, that last part is an exaggeration. Emotionally I’m doing okay, though sometimes I wonder how that’s possible, considering everything’s that’s going on in my life lately.

It’s made me a little impatient on some levels and I find it’s erupting in unexpected ways. This week, when no one offered to help me in a home improvement store, turned away from me in fact, I got so angry that I found a cart, lifted a huge pail of tile paste (nearly 50 pounds though it felt like two hundred to me) from the floor into the cart myself, grew angrier when no one helped me get it into the car, and hurt my back stubbornly trying to do it all myself.

All week long I have been reminded of that decision every time I move or twist a certain way or try to lie down. It was foolish at my age and with my health issues, no matter how frustrated I was.

A similar thing happened in a discussion regarding infidelity. A writer friend made the point that monogamy wasn’t natural in the animal kingdom and that people needed to remember that humans are most closely related to chimps, therefore monogamy is also unnatural in humans.

That in itself wasn’t my problem, but it bothered me to think that we should expect infidelity, that we should accept that it is more natural than monogamy because of our connection to the animal kingdom. To me, it provides a very simple answer to a complex relationship that’s been around for thousands of years. Nothing is ever that simple – is it?

I wrote a response and realized I sounded like judgmenetal and more than a little “pollyanna-ish.” Here, though, giving such a strong opinion seems more appropriate. After all, it is my blog, correct? lol

The topic started with a reference to an online dating service for married people who were interested in casual relationships outside their marriage. We were asked for our opinions. This is my response:

Personally, I think for one person to be unfaithful behind their partner’s back is unconscionable. If it’s a joint decision, I wonder why they bother to be together at all, but at least they aren’t hurting each other. Society, possibly. Any children they may have, certainly, Their families, no doubt, but each other, probably not.

I could never go so far as to excuse infidelity on the basis of humans being mere animals, most closely related to the chimp. I do not see infidelity as a naturally occurring instinct, suggesting that there is no choice involved. It seems to give people permission to do what comes naturally, what they were always “meant to do.”

More likely, I think infidelity occurs as a result of people marrying for the wrong reasons: because the prospective spouse is attractive, or fun, or society tells them it’s time, or there’s a child on the way, or the person has a bright future professionally. We have these images of “Barbie and Ken” in our heads, with perfect kids who will never stray. We imagine our lives will be like the ideal ones we see on family-oriented shows, with money in the bank, a membership at the golf club, and problems no worse than those on Leave it to Beaver or Family Ties. All of those expectations set people up for a load of disappointments, and they sometimes realize that it was the promise of the future life they were in love with, not the person they married. It may only be one person who’s disillusioned, but that’s all it takes.

The bottom line is, I believe when two people are really right for each other (and it does take both of them) they find a way to grow together over time, not apart, and the urge to be unfaithful is practically non-existent for them.

Let’s face it. Getting married is much too easy for such a huge step. For many people, the only difficulties are around the ceremony and finding the right dress and venue. How much better it would be if getting married required the same kind of work and preparation as our careers. Maybe then they’d be better prepared to make and honour their commitments to be faithful.

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Side note: It’s been suggested that I mention condron.us in my blog. It is a blog search directory that promises to increase traffic to your blog. 8>)

 

LOSING CASEY

Cats have always been a big part of our lives: serene comfort when we needed it, and in more ways than one, a source of joy. None has touched our hearts as much as our gentle giant, Casey.  The grief we felt when our beloved pet died surprised even us in its intensity.

LOSING CASEY (2006)

We are a family of cat lovers, and the one we love most is dying.

His name is Casey.

For over a year, Casey has not been well, but we are stubborn owners, and we have faithfully medicated him and pampered him to prolong his life. We have tried to believe in miracles, and sometimes, Casey has almost convinced us we should. Finally he has developed an illness that is stronger than we are. He has cancer, and we know his time is short.
Once a giant furball of nearly twenty pounds, he is less than half that. Steroid medication is the weapon of choice as we fight this newest enemy. It boosts his appetite, but only makes his death all the more inevitable: despite having a voracious appetite, his body is wasting away.

We’ve finally agreed that soon we must call our compassionate veterinarian and arrange to end Casey’s life. We’ve decided to keep Casey here on the property he loves. We will build a cedar box to hold his body and bury him under a shade tree at the back.

Casey hasn’t moved much in the past two days; has, in fact, just stayed in his bed downstairs and left only to walk the short distance to his litter box or his food and water. But tonight we decided to take his bed outside and let him enjoy the outdoors for a while. We placed the bed on the deck, his food nearby. We did not expect him to stray. We underestimated his will.

Within five minutes he managed to leave the deck and we found him lying in the thick grass near the neighbouring farmer’s field. It’s always been a favourite spot of his, a place where he could spy mice or butterflies, a place where he could explore for hours. I shook my head when I saw him, amazed that he was able to walk that far. My husband told me not to worry, that Casey wouldn’t go anywhere else, and then he left for his soccer game.

Several times I checked Casey in the next half hour, and he hadn’t moved. When it started to grow dark, I went outside to bring him in and spotted him turning the corner around the shed near the neighbour’s field. He was no more than seventy-five feet away. He was moving slowly, and I didn’t expect him to go far.

I was wrong.

By the time I got down the deck stairs and to the spot where I had seen him, he was gone. There was only one place he could be, and that was in the farmer’s field of tall hay. In the distance, I could hear another farmer who had already begun harvesting. All I could think about was the idea of Casey dying deep in that field, then being chopped up by a harvester.

I began to call his name, walking up and down the fence that divides the farmer’s land from ours. Our other two cats, Cleo and Gypsy, came as if to join me in my search. I grabbed a flashtlight and a bag of dry cat food from inside the house. My left hand shook the bag of cat food up and down, the universal call to cats to come and eat. My right hand held the light, and with it I pushed the deep foliage and hay as best I could, this way and that, aiming the beam towards the dense roots. It was too dark to climb the fence and try to make my way through the hay myself. Instead, I called his name over and over, shook the bag harder and harder. I listened for his “meow,” but in the past few days it’s been barely audible. And I realized that if he found the strength to make his way into the farmer’s field, he likely didn’t have strength left to answer by meowing, let alone make his way back to our home.

Suddenly grief overwhelmed me. The image of the dead baseball players walking into the farmer’s cornfield in “Field of Dreams” played through my head. Casey was walking into his field, and would not come out again. It fit in perfectly with the almost “mystical” quality we’ve always seen in him, the feeling that he was more than just a cat.

I searched for over an hour, until my bad knees were cursing me and my tears had exhausted me. Then I came inside, accepting the death Casey had chosen, but dreading having to tell my family. I sat at my computer, wanting to say something, but feeling too tired and a little foolish for my emotional outburst. And I said a prayer, just a little one asking that he come back, so we can be nearby when he dies, so that we can lay him under the shade tree.

Resigned to the loss, ten minutes later I walked back outside to call my other two cats inside for the night. The deck was dark. I flicked the outside light on, and there was Casey, in his bed, looking up at me as if to say “You needn’t have worried. I made it back.” I picked him up and cried my relief into his fur.

I ask myself why the death of a pet can be so hard. Perhaps it is because those of us who believe in an afterlife don’t see death as permanent; we tell ourselves we will see our loved ones again. But no one talks about the pets that have won our hearts throughout our lives. No one mentions an afterlife for them. There is no promised reunion.

People will say it is silly, that I must be unbalanced, or at the very least neurotic to have such a reaction tonight. After all, he is only a cat, they will say.

But then I remind myself that they don’t know him, so how can they possibly understand?

EPILOGUE

A few days later, we knew it was time. As much as he wanted to get outside and lie on the grass, Casey could no longer walk.

He was upset on the way to the vet, but too weak to protest very much. When we brought him to the back of the hospital, near the operating room, he sensed something was up. We placed him on the examination pad and he even lifted his head, wondering about the light that was shining down on him. He was very alert, looking at each of us as we spoke to him. The end was very peaceful for him.We wrapped him in the towel we’d brought and took him home.

My husband had already finished his coffin just before we left. My son found a large amount of blue velvety blanket cloth, the kind they use in expensive hotels. We took apart an old pillow to pad the interior and I cut the blanket to line the coffin’s top and bottom.

I shampooed his fur and blew it dry to make it fluffy. I told myself that people would think I was nuts, but doing it felt right. He deserved it. He was the most fastidious of cats before he was sick, and I’m sure he hated feeling so dirty and unkempt in these past few months.

Casey barely fit into the coffin. He died at little more than 7 pounds, his normal weight being close to twenty. He was such a long cat that the coffin couldn’t have been an inch shorter.

We picked flowers and lay them in the coffin around his head and feet.

My son and husband dug a grave next to the hedge at the side of our property where Casey liked to sleep, the same place he’d disappeared to that night. The ground was really hard and it took hours to get it deep enough.

By the time he was buried, we were emotionally exhausted. Maybe it’s because we give ourselves permission to mourn our pets the way we want to, whereas when we lose people we love, we try to put on a brave face. We worry more about upsetting the person who is dying, as well as others around us. We also are fully aware of the person’s suffering, and we can’t bear to see that. And if we are religious, we find comfort in knowing they are going to a better place.

It is different with a precious pet. Watching Casey suffer, knowing that he didn ‘t understand why it was happening, was heartbreaking. Part of us went with him. We can only hope that it’s true what some people say, that our darling animal friends are part of our afterlife, and Casey is there waiting for us, eager to play again.