Metaphorical Dust Bunnies

My kid was not invited to a party last week and I emotionally imploded.  It turns out I am still 8 years old. In grade school. And miserable. Ok demons.. let's confront you.

When I was  kid I was very smart  and pudgy. I wasn't type II diabetes American obesity epidemic fat, I was 70s, boobies too early and chubby cheeked fat. I had a pair of jeans called Husky. I hate the word husky. There was this girl. She was a mean girl. I was her target for two years. I used to hide in the back of the library with Judy Blume so that I wouldn't have to deal with it, but she usually found me somewhere everyday and made my cry. I read a lot.

Years later I was working at my local pool and this girl, now an adult, showed up to swim. She recognized me instantly and her whole face transformed. She looked upset and remorseful and began to apologize. She told me it had haunted her, the way she treated me. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce and both her and her brother were assholes at the time. I told her it was all fine. I was fine. I had survived and it had honed my razor sharp wit and deep love of teenage novels. It did not kill me or scar me. At least not as badly as it seemed to scar her. That's what I thought at the time.

My daughter is in grade 2. She asked me if we could invite a friend swimming, so I called her mother. The mother said, oh. she is going to a birthday party. My kid overheard and her face crumpled. Everyone is going to x's party but me. X is one of my kid's closest friends. My heart stopped. What? Why weren't you invited? I felt tears burning, heart pounding, and I was instantly transported. I called this girl's mother. I couldn't stop myself. Why isn't she invited? The answer is simple. Because they are 8 year old girls and they use birthday parties as weapons...in the end she was invited and had a great time. This is not the point of my story.

The point of my story happened in my head as I tossed and turned in my bed that night. I imagined the next two years of my daughters life, feeling rejected and humiliated. I put my childhood on her and it broke my heart harder than I felt when it happened to me. I realized she was going to have to go through shit. Not exactly the same shit, but shit none the less. There was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I should do about it.  It is an inevitable right of passage.

I could go off an a rant here about today's parenting and their hamster-ball like over protection of their future anxiety disordered children, but I wont. Mostly because I fell prey, prey to trying to smooth my daughter's road. Of trying to screw with the hurdles she should have to leap. Of using terrible metaphors. The thing is, my childhood made me who I am, resilient, funny, adaptable and a reader and writer. Would I wish it on her? There are scars that make you beautiful. Not all do though.

Food for Thought

I don't know if is is the kinda cold dismal spring we have been having or some iron deficiency inspired by my peri menopausal hemorrhaging, but the last month or so I have been feeling quite uninspired. Spring is in the air though and I went trolling for stories.

 One great story came from a client whose family is Greek. It's not really a story, it is more a description. She was talking about her childhood, her dad and animals. They were poor immigrants and lived in a tiny apartment. There were always all kinds of animals in her house, most of which ended up in a pot of some kind. We talked about eating lambs heads and eyeballs and how she came home to snapping crabs in her tub. Once her brother came in with a live chicken he found, this is in urban montreal in the 80s, not some rural village, and how her mum killed and cooked it.

She said she liked eating everything, everything except quail. I asked her why not quail? She said because it reminded her of pigeons. Especially her pet pigeon. Which her mum cooked and fed to her one day after it had croaked.

 Strangely enough, this was a funny story, a touching story. Both us us were tearing up laughing when she told me about it. It was a story about how her dad was a macho Greek man and her mum was a superwoman who watched over neighborhood kids to make ends meet and fed her family on nothing. It was a story of living without much money but with life all around you. And it was a fucked up story about being made to eat your pet. She was so poor she had to eat her pet. Seriously funny.

 I have been bitching and stressing about poverty this winter. It has stolen my sense of humour and quite possibly a portion of my sex drive. Spending an hour with this woman and having this conversation put things into focus for me. It sparked me back up. I do often wonder how I will make rent, but I got to see my kid ride her bike with total confidence and no training wheels today, then she read me a book. On Saturday I get to dress up like a unicorn and perform an awesome number on stage with girls dressed as dudes. I am in a play where I am a super-villain graduate student with fists of steel and I am currently pinned under a shit eating dog and two cats. I get to walk on the mountain on Thursday mornings and I do actually love my job.

 Oh..and I am getting a tax return, so I will not yet have to feed my daughter her dog.
Life is all around me too.

Stone Cold Fox

I seem to be reverting back to death. I am surrounded by it. Most people would say that is dark, and sad and scary, but I choose to have it all around me. I work with the group of grievers. Every Thursday morning we go for a walk on the mountain. It is a support group of sorts, the people come to be with each other and spend some time in one of the most lovely urban parks I have ever been in. A forest at the top of a mountain with the view of the city island. A big red fox lives there. He visits us sometimes, making us point and grin and notice a real live moment. He appears like Aslan's sarcastic brother, giving us a knowing and amused look. Life still exists it says, don't forget about magic.

I love this group. They are mostly men, which if you know anything about support groups you will understand how weird that is. There is a gentle giant ex pro football player, who is trying to recover from a broken heart at the death of his mum. There are some widows and widowers and a lovely urban hermit who has opted to come out into the world after loosing both parents in the space of two weeks. And there is one widow in particular, who I tend to mention, whose grace and humour and intelligence make me want to behave more accordingly.

Sometimes we talk about the weather, or a movie or a crying jag. We have coffee and the football player likes to bring sweet stuff treats, continually sliding pieces in front of me. Eat he says. Death has an effect. It makes people sad. It makes them ache. It makes them cry because it is irreversible. It takes time to learn to live with the absence. They come to us quite broken, and over the weeks we see them brighten, bit by bit. For some the group is the thing that lightens them, the new friendships, strangely enough, the laughter, the leaves, the trees, my shit eating dog. He comes with us and the men like to take his leash. Though they all get smiles when I let him run free as he dolphins thorough the snow.

I have a new love in my life and he has also been surrounded by death. But not by morbid choice like me. He is sweet. He thinks of things like what flowers he should grow in his garden for his mother who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Purple is a the colour of recovery he tells me. His thought to plant lambs ears so she could have something soft to touch melted my heart. He has a grandmother who is entering palliative care this week, and a dead father, and nephew, and the list goes on. He is American and we woo electronically. I want him to walk with us. I want somehow to show him the fox. There is still magic and beauty. A space is left when someone you love dies, it feels cavernous at first, but then it fills. It fills with people you would never have met otherwise. If you let it.

Good Girl

I signed the last of my divorce papers the other day. Now all I have to do is wait and see if a judge who looks at them in my absence agrees that its ok for me to be officially single again. The lawyer's assistant at legal aide says that they will and on April 8th I will be legally divorced.

It was a bizarre encounter, my last trip to legal aide. They are very nice, and they divorced me for free, so it seems there are advantages to being poor. The time before the last time, I sat in in the windowless meeting room staring at the 4 page document that outlined our irreconcilability, our ownership of nothing and our 50/50 split on everything including our daughter . It was very short, very concise and rather unimpressive for a piece of paper that was borne of years of angst and struggle and hurt feelings. I didn't really feel anything. Until. Until the sweet, well meaning Romanian legal secretary looked at me with such empathy and asked me if I was alright. I was. Then I wasn't. Eyes burning, I okayed the document and thanked her and left. As I got to the elevator I started to cry. No thoughts really, just an unstoppable cry. I got a text from a boy at that instant asking me how I was, so I texted back, that I was fine, but sad because of where I had just been.. in his cute French/English he returns, good, so you now are marriable. It made me laugh.

A week later I get a call from the lawyer. She is the third that has been assigned to me because they don't last long at legal aide, and here you have to wait a year for the divorce to come through. She told me the court date was set for the 14th, but that we should not go. We just had to sign some papers and the court would make the decision without us since everything was agreed to in the 4 page summary encasing the end of my marriage. So you mean I DON'T have to go get divorced on Valentine's Day? I asked. Because there is nothing I would rather do than witness the death of my relationship on such holiest of holidays. We both started to laugh.. and she commiserated that the choice of date was less than ideal. Personally I thought it was perfect. I applaud the universes endless capacity to sarcastically poke fun at my failed relationships.

So there I was, two weeks after signing the agreed upon paper back in that same windowless room. So that's it? I asked the Romanian sweet girl. Yes, she smiled. Unless the court decides to say something, but they won't. And this is where I felt it get bizarre. The girl thanked me and said, you were such a great couple to work with, so easy and polite. Your ex too, she said, he asked good questions, was polite and nice, you two were great to divorce. So amicable, she remarked. I wish more clients were like you two. I found myself accepting the compliment, on behalf of myself and my ex, quizzically smiling. How do I feel about being great at getting divorced? A heretofore undiscovered talent of amicable pretense. Well, I said, you need to be a grown up right?

So it is done, and I did it well I guess. So did he so I give him that. Am I now marriable? I don't fucking think so.

The Gospel of the all mighty dollar

Poverty blows. How do i write a rant on capitalism without coming off as some disgruntled overeducated, up my own ass whiny white privileged pot head. Oh wait.. I am all of the above, so I guess it is impossible. The pot head part is perhaps on hiatus, but it will return no doubt once the creeping anxiety ends. The anxiety will stop once the poverty ends. Ah endless circles of catch 22s.

I met a girl once at a party I threw. She was a standup comedian and I instantly crushed on her. I love a girl in a tie and caustic wit. We escaped outside to flirt and banter. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly we talked about feeling anxious and depressed and sex and open relationships. It was very hard not to kiss her. I remember one thing though.. when presented with the question "WHY?" As in why were we so fucked up as a culture, why were our relationships so difficult, why were we so depressed and anxious. I blurted out one word... Capitalism.

I used to make some money, not tons, but enough to own a car, take a vacation, buy stupid new electronics for my husband and order in Thai food when I was feeling lazy. I was not happy back then. I would go to my desk, answer my email, hawk the souls of my artists to advertising agencies and then go home tired and deflated to watch the television sell me stuff. I came to the conclusion that none of it made sense. They way we have turned money into god. Money buys you freedom, money buys you time, money buys you health, money buys you.

It is no wonder so many people are unhappy and anxious. Disembodied. We work to make money so that we can afford to buy time where we don't have to work to make money. The concept of saving for retirement is in itself soul destroying. Here, sacrifice your present so that one day when you are too old and tired to keep doing this thing that you hate you might be able to take a cruise to Alaska and play bridge with your pals. If you don't make this money now and save it in make-believe investments, then beware of your inevitable fate of spam eating and elder abuse.

I know I sound harsh, but I blame it on the likes of Stephen Harper and the rest of his criminal neo con gang. They have embittered me in this domain with their slashing of communities. I opted out. I decided to stop selling art and start massaging bodies. One person at a time, with my full concentration. I decided to work for pleasure, and helping and present moments, rather than pipe dreams of Nike commercials. So now I am poor and being poor is hard, because I cannot afford to buy time.

So what does crushing on a cute comedienne have to do with capitalism? Nothing really. She was on my mind tonight and it was the last time capitalism really made me laugh. Truth be told, I am not quite so bitter or downtrodden. I think of my clients as the travel I cannot afford. Their stories take me places. My financial advisor told me once that I would have to save 30k a year if I wanted to retire, so I opted out of worrying about it. I learned to do a lot with Spam when I was in Australia. I have instead opted into living in the present, shopping only for my basic needs, trading in buying new clothing and gadgets, for conversations and hugs. Sometimes my gas bill scares me, like right now in the middle of February, but I am happier. I am happier being an atheist who does not buy in to the gospel that money sets you free. Nothing is free in capitalism.

daddy issues

I went to see Hugo today with my kid. She is recovering from the flu and we needed to escape from the excavation of our basement. Maybe there are bodies down there, I wouldn't be surprised. Why do they kill parents? They love to kill parents. It seems that a kid can't be a hero unless they are orphaned.

I met a guy recently. He likes to take photographs. I dislike having my picture taken. It is like my face is trying to escape the scrutiny. He had lights on me and was obscured behind a lens. Then he started to ask me things. He asked me about my dad and I found myself at a loss. I wanted to tell him something. He seemed like the right person to tell things to, but I was blocked, I was thinking, all girls have daddy issues.

My father was a photographer. He was also unhinged. He had been a brilliant PHD student, destined for academic stardom, but he got sidetracked. Sidetracked by a Leica and a collective of New Mexican hippies, acid, Buddhism and a wanderlust. My mother and he had a very different relationship, I think, although it is all conjecture. She doesn't talk about it. She would if I asked, but I seem to know not to. He would wander and she would sometimes follow and sometimes not.I know he must have had girlfriends, I can see it in the eyes of one of his photo subjects.

Eventually she moved to Montreal from New York City and had me. My sister was already 3. We lived in Outremont, next door to a houseful of kids called the Rings. My father came to visit sometimes, until he had a psychotic break and was carted off to the local crazy house after leaping on my mum. My sister, 5 or 6 at the time, ran to the Rings for help. After that he went back to NYC where he continued to take photos of crumbling garbage heaps and dilapidated signage. I don't have any memories of him. The only one I can recall is looking out the window at the rain spattered glass while my mum told us that he had died. He fell out of a window she said. I was 4 and she says I cried. I don't remember. I just recall the view, obscured by those plastic decals of triangles and squares and circles that you could stick and remove and make houses out of.

New York's finest were thieves back then, and they stole his cameras. They left the prints though, and I have them. They are my only evidence. I can see his humor, his intelligence and his complicated view. There was interest a couple years back and a gallery contacted me so they could mount a show. They did and through that I got in contact with a woman who was one of his closest friends. She sent me the story of his death, because she had been there. By now I knew he did not fall. The story was heart wrenching. He did not die right away. She found him, three stories down on the ground, and in the ambulance he was telling her it was alright, he was going where he wanted. She thought he was going to survive.

I thought about the pain this must have caused her. She knew something was wrong some days before, but hippies like to let people be. They don't question the weird. Strangely enough, I don't either. Sometimes I feel that I should feel more. Some kind of loss, some kind of deep pain. That I should be broken somehow, as orphans often are. I am not. I had family and love and I was young. I don't miss him. There is no hole.

I like this photographer, and I also have a weakness for academics, it seems. My daddy issues must be there somewhere, like it is for most girls. I come to the end of this post feeling much the same way i did when I was questioned under the lights. Thinking that I am trying to say something, but not sure what it is.

Pets

First off I want to say thank you to those of you who wrote me such kind words of encouragement. It is not that I forget that I have an audience, after all, I am writing with you in mind. It is more that I am continually surprised that you stay and listen decide to come back. It moves me that this blog gives you something.

I was torn about what to write about this time. I wanted to write about my shit eating dog and then I also wanted to write about love. I wonder if there is a way to put them together? Let us start with the dog.

I have a dog. He is perfect in every way. Except one. One very very imperfect way. He likes to eat shit. More specifically, his own shit. Well he will eat the shit of other dogs too, but what he loves most is his own fresh shit. This dog is beautiful, sweet, loving, obedient and silly. I would let a two year old walk him. I want to train him to be a therapy dog because he is so perfect. I think I love him.

I got this dog because my ex husband was depressed. I have always had cats. I still have them. My ex had a dog when he was a kid, and somehow I thought a dog would help him. Maybe get him to walk outside and have a buddy. Someone on his side that he could just get support from in a way only a big furry mop of a dog can do. So I found this big black muppet of a dog and he had a fatal flaw. The kind of flaw that makes you hate him. The kind of flaw that makes you consider getting rid of one for. How can you love a dog who just ate his own shit?

I fell in love with my husband at first sight. That has never happened before to me or since. I remember walking into the bar where I was supposed to meet him and sitting down across from him and looking into his face and knowing instantly that the game was over. That this person across from me was who I was going to be with. I even knew he felt exactly the same thing at the same time. We were together every day from that point onwards. We were repulsively affectionate and sex was in a place I had not been before. We fit. I remember the second time I saw him. He came over and we sat on my porch swing surrounded by the branches of the tree that was planted below and we held hands. We stood up in the kitchen and we kissed. All I wanted to do was lift my shirt so that the skin of my belly would touch the skin of his. I did. And when our stomachs touched it radiated a warmth that melted me.

Later in our marriage he wanted fish. I hate fish. I said to him, they are your fish. I am never taking care of them. He wanted them anyways so we had fish. When he moved out he left them. I saw it as a passive aggressive fuck you and at the time I was mad at him still. Mad at him for not being happy I suppose. I was stuck with the shit eating dog and the stupid fucking fish. I am not proud of what I did next, but I did it anyways. I could not bring myself to flush the fish, and i certainly did not want to be vacuuming up fish poo and cleaning filters and dealing with all the horror that it is to maintain a tiny glass box filled with imprisoned fish forced to live in a world of plastic plants and weirdly coloured rocks. I was always told that fish were delicate, that if the water got cold or the filter was broken that that would die instantly. Well it turns out that is not true. it turns out that guppies and neon tetras can live for a couple of months.. in stasis.. with no food, no filter no water change in a green sludge of algae. I would go in each day, hoping that they would be dead, but they weren't. I was horrified at my cruelty, yet I could not bring myself to either flush them or feed them. I just sat there and watched them slowly die. They did finally. There is guilt there .

I still have the dog though. Over the years I have learned how to curtail his shit eating ways. He gets some sometimes, but it is not often enough for me to hate him. My yard is spotless and I diligently ensure that I can still love him. My ex takes the dog on the weekends with our kid. I think the dog makes him happy now, they wrestle and hang out. The fish tank is long gone. Thank fucking christ.