There should be some rite of passage for women who finally make it through menopause. It is a magnificent time, well worth marking and I have absolutely no idea why traditional society, at best, ignores it. If anything, most women, at least those held up in medical journals and magazine articles about the subject, are depicted as rather forlorn, sickly creatures who need to take hormone replacement or watch their diets. Most are seen as being over the hill and out to pasture. How sad that is.
Sad because, nothing could be further from the truth. And I will explain why.
First there was the actual physical suffering of menses for me when I was fifteen and realized, short of the need for a radical hysterectomy, I would have to go through this agony every month for the next 35 years plus! I can still remember my mother applying a hot water bottle on one side and a warmed iron wrapped in a threadbare towel on the other, in hopes the heat would somehow diminish the cramps which ravaged my body between my knees and my shoulders - I kid you not; it was that bad. When Mom told me to try to walk up and down the stairs, saying that exercise might lessen the cramps, I distinctly remember thinking. "Sure I will walk once this monster inside me stops trying to digest my organs..." or something to that effect. It hurt like heck and then some. What's more, that was before the invention of Tylenol, so I had no medical solution until much later.
Then there were the emotional mood swings. Need I go into details? Sometimes I even locked myself in the bathroom, in hopes that my need to yell at someone for extended periods of time would pass. I was Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde all over. Hated it.
Furthermore, there is the expense of supplies. It adds up and I always seem to run out of something at the most inopportune moments. And, when I was really young, there was this question of embarrassment. I can't tell you how many teen girls risked the wrath of even the strictest teachers to lean over and ask me, in a whisper, if they walked up to the pencil sharpener at the front of the classroom, could I please tell them if their feminine protection was leaving a "dent" in their jeans. Now, c'mon. You've done it too. You know you have.
And that was well before peri-menopause started. That time in a woman's life where she experienced all kinds of unusual, freaky symptoms like night sweats, cravings, severe insomnia, hot flashes and even more severe mood swings than previously - I mean, could they possibly get worse? And, for most, that time can start anywhere after the age of 30. In the midst of raising young children, for most, and even just starting a family for others. Is it any wonder most of us have "mother" issues?
I digress.
I haven't even gotten into the years of actual child bearing and what all that means to most of us. What we tolerate in the interests of propagating the species is downright cruel and unusual punishment and to top it off, most of us are told by well meaning parents, usually other women, we need to learn to suck it up and put up with a whole lot of crap, essentially, because, as women, we are born to suffering and we had better get used to it. The bottom line is there seems to be some kind of "paying our dues" conspiracy among women who share genetic material and that remains fodder for another article at another time.
Suffice to say, once we are closing in on our late 40s, most of we women are downright tired of and thoroughly peed off at this little "visitor" who has made our lives miserable for the past several decades and we happily anticipate a time when we can ignore that aisle in the grocery store where men fear to tread.
And then it happens. With very little notice, or sometimes not, it just disappears, as if it never even occurred and we are left wondering what all the fuss was about. Just like that. Gone.
Honestly? After having watched other women go through it all over the years, I don't know why there is not some kind of menopausal club or something. Really. Cause there should be; by George, we've earned it!
And then I remember.
I remember things like my mother's 45s club, which met every Tuesday. I remember all those ladies, well past the point of no return, who showed up whenever Mom would have her week of hosting and I get it. They all wore unforced smiles and I think nary a one was self-conscious about her standing or appearance. They'd scratch when and where they pleased, even belch on occasion and told the funniest, crass jokes a lady could get away with. The laughter ensued was honest, loud and confident too. I decided, even back then, I liked this age. There was just something special about these ladies.
They had arrived.
So now, I too, have arrived. I care very little if I offend, yet, share my two cents as tactfully as possible, when asked, just out of habit. Some kind of magic has left me totally indifferent to the opinions and void of needing the approval of others and that just feels really good. To top it off, I have concluded if my husband is still with me at this age, it isn't because I am drop dead gorgeous, so I have nothing to fear. I realize if he can have a pot belly, so can I.
Bottom line? I feel better, physically, mentally and emotionally than I have ever felt at any stage of my life and that discovery is blowing me away.
In summation, the way I look at it, perhaps that fanfare I referred to earlier is really all about a secret society that needs no public acclamation or corporeal recognition. Maybe just having survived what came before ushers all women into this unique place of contentment and wonder, to which they silently welcome new sisters as they walk over that final barrier called menopause. Where celebration happens daily in the lives of each woman who arrives and the giving of trophies and accolades involves skilled perception, honed over time and with each act of learning and sacrifice.
Either way, I can say with aplomb, it's a wonderful place to be.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Money Makes the World Go Round or Is This Why I'm So Dizzy?
When it comes to the world of business and high finance, I am a first class schmuck. I admit it and could never even begin to hide it.Yet, this out-of-the-closet, financial ignoramus seems to be making an observation about things lately; things that usually mainly concern the economists, politicians and bankers of our world.
I actually subscribe to a rather mainstream, conservative, small player financial site on FACEBOOK which discusses the day to day challenges of investing - very much used by the little guy - hence my interest. I guess that part of me that still maintains, someday my ship will come in, wants to know what to do with the excess when it does, so I have been loosely keeping my ear to the ground so I won't miss any distant, important rumblings.
Here is what I have observed. And for those of you who know this stuff inside and out, up and down, I apologize and beg your indulgence while I set the stage, cause I really do have a point to make here.
See, what I have noticed is that since I was a young woman, some thirty years ago or so, interest rates have slowly gone down and therefore, so have mortgage rates. I remember mortgage rates being as high as 17 per cent. Working class people in my home city were organizing meetings to see what they could do about it. It was the late 70s and early 80s and North Americans, indeed, most of the world, were experiencing ballooning inflation for the first time since the Great Depression. Times were desperate. Even buying a five pound package of sugar took some forethought.
So, rates are now as low as a bit over two per cent for floating mortgages - those which are dependent on base rates set by the banks of our nations - and that makes our economy look REALLY good. If we were aliens who had just landed, we would assume, upon our discovery of how inexpensive it is to borrow money to purchase or build a home right now, that the prices of all commodities are equally deflated. But that is just not the case. Indeed, from what I can observe, prices for just about everything else are so high our world has just survived a rather major, frightening global recession of sorts. Only the presence of long term credit has kept a good deal of us from losing our cars, homes and perhaps our lives, for those who are sadly worse off. Not a pleasant picture.
And that's a darned shame. Not that effort hasn't been made to rectify it.
In the U.S. in particular, the federal government designed guaranteed mortgages for people who had never owned a home before because of financial limitations. But we all know where that has taken them. Properties in Florida, in particular, are selling at all time lows as banks, now stuck with defaulted mortgaged homes that those same self buyers who took advantage of that special program, have vacated, mostly because, frankly, they were oversold. What a joke.
Elsewhere, the housing market has boomed over the last ten years or so, in response to low mortgage rates. Housing has inflated, somewhat artificially, in larger cities, almost double. I mean, WOW! When everyone started to purchase again and housing starts went up dramatically, housing prices and building supplies skyrocketed. Supply and demand, plain and simple. Governments' attempts to artificially lower interest rates and thereby mortgage rates, in order to stimulate buying, in the long run, backfired. I imagine being a homeowner in one of these cities is not unlike being on a rather desperate treadmill, that keeps getting faster and faster.
What I don't understand is why nobody had the foresight to see this coming. I mean, I'm no genius when it comes to this subject - I think we've established that much already - and I didn't miss it at all.
This is how it really went down:
People can't afford stuff so government cuts rates of borrowing money so they can - Once they can, they do and, everyone who has been hurt by the previous lull, jumps in with both barrels, takes advantage of the lower rates by raising prices of whatever the market demands and, voila, we have inflation, all over again.
I guess this is what Jesus meant when He said the poor will always be with us...
Smart man. But then, Judas was his treasurer and he dipped into the communal purse all the time when nobody was looking.
I actually subscribe to a rather mainstream, conservative, small player financial site on FACEBOOK which discusses the day to day challenges of investing - very much used by the little guy - hence my interest. I guess that part of me that still maintains, someday my ship will come in, wants to know what to do with the excess when it does, so I have been loosely keeping my ear to the ground so I won't miss any distant, important rumblings.
Here is what I have observed. And for those of you who know this stuff inside and out, up and down, I apologize and beg your indulgence while I set the stage, cause I really do have a point to make here.
See, what I have noticed is that since I was a young woman, some thirty years ago or so, interest rates have slowly gone down and therefore, so have mortgage rates. I remember mortgage rates being as high as 17 per cent. Working class people in my home city were organizing meetings to see what they could do about it. It was the late 70s and early 80s and North Americans, indeed, most of the world, were experiencing ballooning inflation for the first time since the Great Depression. Times were desperate. Even buying a five pound package of sugar took some forethought.
So, rates are now as low as a bit over two per cent for floating mortgages - those which are dependent on base rates set by the banks of our nations - and that makes our economy look REALLY good. If we were aliens who had just landed, we would assume, upon our discovery of how inexpensive it is to borrow money to purchase or build a home right now, that the prices of all commodities are equally deflated. But that is just not the case. Indeed, from what I can observe, prices for just about everything else are so high our world has just survived a rather major, frightening global recession of sorts. Only the presence of long term credit has kept a good deal of us from losing our cars, homes and perhaps our lives, for those who are sadly worse off. Not a pleasant picture.
And that's a darned shame. Not that effort hasn't been made to rectify it.
In the U.S. in particular, the federal government designed guaranteed mortgages for people who had never owned a home before because of financial limitations. But we all know where that has taken them. Properties in Florida, in particular, are selling at all time lows as banks, now stuck with defaulted mortgaged homes that those same self buyers who took advantage of that special program, have vacated, mostly because, frankly, they were oversold. What a joke.
Elsewhere, the housing market has boomed over the last ten years or so, in response to low mortgage rates. Housing has inflated, somewhat artificially, in larger cities, almost double. I mean, WOW! When everyone started to purchase again and housing starts went up dramatically, housing prices and building supplies skyrocketed. Supply and demand, plain and simple. Governments' attempts to artificially lower interest rates and thereby mortgage rates, in order to stimulate buying, in the long run, backfired. I imagine being a homeowner in one of these cities is not unlike being on a rather desperate treadmill, that keeps getting faster and faster.
What I don't understand is why nobody had the foresight to see this coming. I mean, I'm no genius when it comes to this subject - I think we've established that much already - and I didn't miss it at all.
This is how it really went down:
People can't afford stuff so government cuts rates of borrowing money so they can - Once they can, they do and, everyone who has been hurt by the previous lull, jumps in with both barrels, takes advantage of the lower rates by raising prices of whatever the market demands and, voila, we have inflation, all over again.
I guess this is what Jesus meant when He said the poor will always be with us...
Smart man. But then, Judas was his treasurer and he dipped into the communal purse all the time when nobody was looking.
Thank You Mr. Grinch!!
This morning I was furiously wrapping Christmas gifts for our children, while watching yet another one of those predictable Christmas specials - a movie about a woman who ponders whether she married the right man as she faces another financially tight holiday season. The movie carries us through some twists and turns - nothing challenging to the mind - and finally arrives with the protagonist having learned that, indeed, materialism is not what it is cracked up to be.
Years ago, I used to grind my teeth while watching those shows. Mostly because I thought, surely, they must have been part of some imperialist scheme to keep the poor content in their poverty. See, I grew up poorer than dirt and often suffered from the "if onlies"; if only we could afford that vacation or if only we could purchase that new television or car or whatever other significant "need" may have arisen in my child's mind in those years.
I was singlehandedly the most disappointed and frustrated young lady I knew. And that attitude carried over into my social life as well. I believed if I had only had at least a middle class income behind me, I would have been loved by all, befriended by many and left alone by class and neighbourhood bullies. I am not certain that I was aware, during those years, that I actually thought it through rationally, but, as the years have passed, I have come to realize and accept that this was most probably where my head and heart were.
And, sadly, as I watched that movie and wrapped those gifts this morning, I realized I have never exorcised the demons that accompanied that mentality.
See, it struck me that all of this gift giving; my being able to give my children what I could not have as a child, was actually being done for my benefit! For that little girl inside me who bought all those aforementioned lies for most of her childhood and even into adulthood, as it turns out. Hard to admit. Harder to renounce.
What I do remember is this:
In 1985 I gave my life and heart to Jesus Christ. It was like falling in love. And I knew my lover would never leave me. This is often the way it is with new Christians. But, dear reader, pay heed, because this is very important. My first Christmas with Jesus was horrible. Yup, you read it right the first time. But not because something horrible happened. It was quite the opposite actually. It was a lovely holiday, in which I met my future husband's family and even got to spend some time with my own family.
Rather, it was an issue of relativity.
You see, compared to what Christmas had meant to me in the previous 24 years, the day to day presence of Jesus in my heart, acting on my behalf, was astounding! Earth shattering! Profoundly joy filled! I could literally go on and on, expounding on the intense positive influence He had had in my life over a very short period of time.
I think that was when I had my first real run in with the reality of the futility of materialism. However, it never really took form in my mind. Again, there was only this fleeting sense of things, nothing really concrete developed in my mind. And so, I was too young to understand it's implications and how to apply it to my life.
Now I have lived a rush of things since that time and place and here I am, still buying into the lie that the more I have or the more my children have, it is going to give us/them more peace, joy and satisfaction. It suddenly and sickeningly struck me I had tasted the best and gone back to the trash. Ouch.
That was followed by a deep conviction that I need to start praying, asking God to show me how to teach this most weighty lesson to my children in the midst of giving them all this "stuff". And I wondered if it were too late.
And then I remembered. Not only has He promised to be with us forever, even until the end of all things seen, but He has promised us guidance, protection and His peace and joy when we obey. Most importantly, He has promised us that, with Him, all things are possible.
All things.
Even eliminating the wounds imposed by a sadly mistaken and slow to learn parent like myself. And I am pretty sure He won't insist I throw out the Christmas tree and give all the children's gifts to charity to get it done, either. Not even close. Because, really? These kids are His and He is still in charge, on the throne and more than capable of cleaning up the messes I make without my assistance. And sometimes with it. Either way, He's the boss and He will do the best, because He won't go against His own Word.
Now that's what Christmas is really all about, wouldn't you say?
Years ago, I used to grind my teeth while watching those shows. Mostly because I thought, surely, they must have been part of some imperialist scheme to keep the poor content in their poverty. See, I grew up poorer than dirt and often suffered from the "if onlies"; if only we could afford that vacation or if only we could purchase that new television or car or whatever other significant "need" may have arisen in my child's mind in those years.
I was singlehandedly the most disappointed and frustrated young lady I knew. And that attitude carried over into my social life as well. I believed if I had only had at least a middle class income behind me, I would have been loved by all, befriended by many and left alone by class and neighbourhood bullies. I am not certain that I was aware, during those years, that I actually thought it through rationally, but, as the years have passed, I have come to realize and accept that this was most probably where my head and heart were.
And, sadly, as I watched that movie and wrapped those gifts this morning, I realized I have never exorcised the demons that accompanied that mentality.
See, it struck me that all of this gift giving; my being able to give my children what I could not have as a child, was actually being done for my benefit! For that little girl inside me who bought all those aforementioned lies for most of her childhood and even into adulthood, as it turns out. Hard to admit. Harder to renounce.
What I do remember is this:
In 1985 I gave my life and heart to Jesus Christ. It was like falling in love. And I knew my lover would never leave me. This is often the way it is with new Christians. But, dear reader, pay heed, because this is very important. My first Christmas with Jesus was horrible. Yup, you read it right the first time. But not because something horrible happened. It was quite the opposite actually. It was a lovely holiday, in which I met my future husband's family and even got to spend some time with my own family.
Rather, it was an issue of relativity.
You see, compared to what Christmas had meant to me in the previous 24 years, the day to day presence of Jesus in my heart, acting on my behalf, was astounding! Earth shattering! Profoundly joy filled! I could literally go on and on, expounding on the intense positive influence He had had in my life over a very short period of time.
I think that was when I had my first real run in with the reality of the futility of materialism. However, it never really took form in my mind. Again, there was only this fleeting sense of things, nothing really concrete developed in my mind. And so, I was too young to understand it's implications and how to apply it to my life.
Now I have lived a rush of things since that time and place and here I am, still buying into the lie that the more I have or the more my children have, it is going to give us/them more peace, joy and satisfaction. It suddenly and sickeningly struck me I had tasted the best and gone back to the trash. Ouch.
That was followed by a deep conviction that I need to start praying, asking God to show me how to teach this most weighty lesson to my children in the midst of giving them all this "stuff". And I wondered if it were too late.
And then I remembered. Not only has He promised to be with us forever, even until the end of all things seen, but He has promised us guidance, protection and His peace and joy when we obey. Most importantly, He has promised us that, with Him, all things are possible.
All things.
Even eliminating the wounds imposed by a sadly mistaken and slow to learn parent like myself. And I am pretty sure He won't insist I throw out the Christmas tree and give all the children's gifts to charity to get it done, either. Not even close. Because, really? These kids are His and He is still in charge, on the throne and more than capable of cleaning up the messes I make without my assistance. And sometimes with it. Either way, He's the boss and He will do the best, because He won't go against His own Word.
Now that's what Christmas is really all about, wouldn't you say?
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Christmas Tree Tale
Christmas around our house has always been anything but predictable, generic or conventional. If anything, it has been zany, bizarre and downright unusual. Not that we tried to make it that way, it just came OUT that way. In particular, most of that strangeness has centred on Christmas trees.
Let me fill you in.
The first year my husband and I were married, we rented this beautiful big house on the south shore of Nova Scotia which was surrounded by 18 acres of grassy field. The field was surrounded by several rows of various sized coniferous trees; there were pines, firs and good old spruce trees. To top it off, our kind landlord told us that, come Christmas, we were welcome to cut down and use any one of those. I was ecstatic and eagerly looked forward to December, at which time I began to stalk the perimeters of the property, looking for the perfect Christmas tree.
Before I knew it, the weekend before Christmas arrived and I still had not found that tree. So I asked my husband to go out and find one. That is when my world was rocked. That was when this strange trend started.
"Oh," he said, thoughtfully chewing his last mouthful of eggs and bacon as he looked out the window. "I don't think we should celebrate Christmas."
A bomb going off couldn't have created a bigger shock wave. I almost choked on the orange juice I had just swallowed.
"What?" I asked, hoping against hope I had heard incorrectly.
"Christmas is a pagan holiday and I decided we shouldn't celebrate it." Now he was looking at me, which, I decided, took some courage, considering what he had just said.
Needless to say, the conversation got very animated suddenly and the end result was he did go out, axe in hand, to get that coveted tree for our home.
It took him a while too, which I thought was rather strange. Surely it couldn't take that long to find a simple evergreen, cut it and haul it back, considering most of the good trees were within two or three hundred feet of the house. I mean, come ON.
Some two hours later, I heard a tapping on the windowpane. I looked out to see hubby, surrounded by great green boughs from the tree he had cut and hauled back. It was gargantuan; colossal - People, it was BIG!
I heard this grunting and scraping and then he came in and mumbled something about it probably being too big to get in the house and, if so, we could always put it outside.
The game was on, I could see, and I had no intention of losing. His strategy was clear. If he spent all that time finding a tree, THE tree, that was supposed to go in our house, if it was too big, SURELY I would relent and let him off the hook and he would have his way.
Nu uh. Not if I had anything to do with it.
So I told him if it were too big, he would just have to trim it back. Then I realized it would fit beautifully under the cathedral ceiling in the great room.
So he reluctantly started in.
Finally, after tugging, pushing and sawing off about two feet from the bottom, it was in the house and in place, supported by a complicated system of wires and hooks.
I stood in front of it and smiled smugly. I told him all we needed to do now was to decorate it. The room was silent and then he spoke.
"You can do that yourself. That's woman's work."
Just as I was going to argue about how sexist his last remark was, I bit my tongue, realizing I would get to call the shots on this project, so he had really done me a favour, begging off that part of Christmas. I hated getting into squabbles about where to put lights and baubles so actually preferred to work alone on things like this.
So I dug out our Christmas decorations and he slunk off upstairs to watch television.
I am not sure when it hit me that I should have given in to his suggestion we keep it outside. Could be it was when I ran out of red, blue and green decorations, or maybe it was when the last string of lights came out of the box and I had only managed to cover about half the tree, thus far.
Crap, I thought and wondered if there was a painless way to eat crow.
Then there was the time, once hubby decided maybe Christmas wasn't so bad after all, and we had moved back into Halifax, we hadn't yet bought our tree and it was, once again, about a week before Christmas. Just a few weeks earlier, a wonderful elderly gentleman, out of his abject poverty, had given us a belated wedding gift; an envelope containing a meager ten dollar bill folded into a beautifully illustrated copy of a marriage blessing. We knew this man was hurting financially and probably could not even afford that, so we had agreed it was a real gift of love. I had tucked that ten dollar bill into some dark corner of my wallet and prayed that the Lord would bless it.
It was late in the afternoon, about four o'clock, and I had been Christmas shopping and was all shopped out. It was cold and snow was coming down and I was downtown waiting for the next bus home, loaded up with bags and packages. I was looking forward to getting home, making a nice hot meal for us and slipping into a toasty bath as a reward for braving the stores that late in the season. Goodness knows, I earned it.
As my bus approached, I had this nagging sensation the highlight of my day was yet to take place. I got on the bus and as I rode closer to home, I knew I was supposed to get off at a different stop, at the Sears outlet store that was about a ten minute walk from our little attic apartment. And not only that, but I was supposed to get off at the back entrance, not the front one. I had no logical reason for thinking like this, but I knew, deep inside, I would miss a blessing if I didn't obey the urge.
So I didn't. And I got off that bus at the back entrance of Sears, packages in hand, with a sense of exhilarated anticipation.
I opened the back door of the store and trudged in, drawing a deep breath, hunger pangs reminding me I should really be at home.
"This had better be worth it," I thought.
Turns out it was.
Just as I entered, I saw two young male clerks dragging large, rectangular boxes to my left and I instinctively followed.
Those boxes contained artificial Christmas trees and there was a display with a sign that read "Last years stock - $10 each."
I nearly wet my pants.
And I chose a gorgeous white one that we used for many years; each year, using a different colour scheme.
And the weirdness did not stop there. A few years back, once our daughter, who has Down Syndrome, realized what Christmas was all about and that it was a good thing, she made the holiday season very memorable for us.
After I put up the tree, each morning, she would get up and ask whether "Ho Ho" had arrived yet. She did that for a whole month until Christmas had come and gone. Then, for months after I took it down, each morning, she came downstairs and said, "Wee (her word for "tree") - Gone!"
It got old.
Just when the weather started getting warm, about the time summer vacation started and school was out, she finally decided to ditch the "Wee - Gone" routine. We were mega relieved.
Did I tell you she was born in July? The end of July, to be exact. In the exact middle of the hottest season of the year, when the birds and bees are out and about and everyone goes to the beach to cool off.
It sure doesn't seem like Christmas time.
At least it didn't seem like Christmas to US. Reasonably, we thought we were free and clear. Big mistake.
About two weeks before her birthday, our daughter surprised me one hot summer's morning. We had been telling her that her birthday was coming and we would have a cake and presents. The usual. Never dreaming, for a second, the connection she was making in her mind.
I was sipping on my juice when she said it.
"Wee, Mommy? Ho Ho come?"
Like I said, Christmas at our house has always been really unusual.
Let me fill you in.
The first year my husband and I were married, we rented this beautiful big house on the south shore of Nova Scotia which was surrounded by 18 acres of grassy field. The field was surrounded by several rows of various sized coniferous trees; there were pines, firs and good old spruce trees. To top it off, our kind landlord told us that, come Christmas, we were welcome to cut down and use any one of those. I was ecstatic and eagerly looked forward to December, at which time I began to stalk the perimeters of the property, looking for the perfect Christmas tree.
Before I knew it, the weekend before Christmas arrived and I still had not found that tree. So I asked my husband to go out and find one. That is when my world was rocked. That was when this strange trend started.
"Oh," he said, thoughtfully chewing his last mouthful of eggs and bacon as he looked out the window. "I don't think we should celebrate Christmas."
A bomb going off couldn't have created a bigger shock wave. I almost choked on the orange juice I had just swallowed.
"What?" I asked, hoping against hope I had heard incorrectly.
"Christmas is a pagan holiday and I decided we shouldn't celebrate it." Now he was looking at me, which, I decided, took some courage, considering what he had just said.
Needless to say, the conversation got very animated suddenly and the end result was he did go out, axe in hand, to get that coveted tree for our home.
It took him a while too, which I thought was rather strange. Surely it couldn't take that long to find a simple evergreen, cut it and haul it back, considering most of the good trees were within two or three hundred feet of the house. I mean, come ON.
Some two hours later, I heard a tapping on the windowpane. I looked out to see hubby, surrounded by great green boughs from the tree he had cut and hauled back. It was gargantuan; colossal - People, it was BIG!
I heard this grunting and scraping and then he came in and mumbled something about it probably being too big to get in the house and, if so, we could always put it outside.
The game was on, I could see, and I had no intention of losing. His strategy was clear. If he spent all that time finding a tree, THE tree, that was supposed to go in our house, if it was too big, SURELY I would relent and let him off the hook and he would have his way.
Nu uh. Not if I had anything to do with it.
So I told him if it were too big, he would just have to trim it back. Then I realized it would fit beautifully under the cathedral ceiling in the great room.
So he reluctantly started in.
Finally, after tugging, pushing and sawing off about two feet from the bottom, it was in the house and in place, supported by a complicated system of wires and hooks.
I stood in front of it and smiled smugly. I told him all we needed to do now was to decorate it. The room was silent and then he spoke.
"You can do that yourself. That's woman's work."
Just as I was going to argue about how sexist his last remark was, I bit my tongue, realizing I would get to call the shots on this project, so he had really done me a favour, begging off that part of Christmas. I hated getting into squabbles about where to put lights and baubles so actually preferred to work alone on things like this.
So I dug out our Christmas decorations and he slunk off upstairs to watch television.
I am not sure when it hit me that I should have given in to his suggestion we keep it outside. Could be it was when I ran out of red, blue and green decorations, or maybe it was when the last string of lights came out of the box and I had only managed to cover about half the tree, thus far.
Crap, I thought and wondered if there was a painless way to eat crow.
Then there was the time, once hubby decided maybe Christmas wasn't so bad after all, and we had moved back into Halifax, we hadn't yet bought our tree and it was, once again, about a week before Christmas. Just a few weeks earlier, a wonderful elderly gentleman, out of his abject poverty, had given us a belated wedding gift; an envelope containing a meager ten dollar bill folded into a beautifully illustrated copy of a marriage blessing. We knew this man was hurting financially and probably could not even afford that, so we had agreed it was a real gift of love. I had tucked that ten dollar bill into some dark corner of my wallet and prayed that the Lord would bless it.
It was late in the afternoon, about four o'clock, and I had been Christmas shopping and was all shopped out. It was cold and snow was coming down and I was downtown waiting for the next bus home, loaded up with bags and packages. I was looking forward to getting home, making a nice hot meal for us and slipping into a toasty bath as a reward for braving the stores that late in the season. Goodness knows, I earned it.
As my bus approached, I had this nagging sensation the highlight of my day was yet to take place. I got on the bus and as I rode closer to home, I knew I was supposed to get off at a different stop, at the Sears outlet store that was about a ten minute walk from our little attic apartment. And not only that, but I was supposed to get off at the back entrance, not the front one. I had no logical reason for thinking like this, but I knew, deep inside, I would miss a blessing if I didn't obey the urge.
So I didn't. And I got off that bus at the back entrance of Sears, packages in hand, with a sense of exhilarated anticipation.
I opened the back door of the store and trudged in, drawing a deep breath, hunger pangs reminding me I should really be at home.
"This had better be worth it," I thought.
Turns out it was.
Just as I entered, I saw two young male clerks dragging large, rectangular boxes to my left and I instinctively followed.
Those boxes contained artificial Christmas trees and there was a display with a sign that read "Last years stock - $10 each."
I nearly wet my pants.
And I chose a gorgeous white one that we used for many years; each year, using a different colour scheme.
And the weirdness did not stop there. A few years back, once our daughter, who has Down Syndrome, realized what Christmas was all about and that it was a good thing, she made the holiday season very memorable for us.
After I put up the tree, each morning, she would get up and ask whether "Ho Ho" had arrived yet. She did that for a whole month until Christmas had come and gone. Then, for months after I took it down, each morning, she came downstairs and said, "Wee (her word for "tree") - Gone!"
It got old.
Just when the weather started getting warm, about the time summer vacation started and school was out, she finally decided to ditch the "Wee - Gone" routine. We were mega relieved.
Did I tell you she was born in July? The end of July, to be exact. In the exact middle of the hottest season of the year, when the birds and bees are out and about and everyone goes to the beach to cool off.
It sure doesn't seem like Christmas time.
At least it didn't seem like Christmas to US. Reasonably, we thought we were free and clear. Big mistake.
About two weeks before her birthday, our daughter surprised me one hot summer's morning. We had been telling her that her birthday was coming and we would have a cake and presents. The usual. Never dreaming, for a second, the connection she was making in her mind.
I was sipping on my juice when she said it.
"Wee, Mommy? Ho Ho come?"
Like I said, Christmas at our house has always been really unusual.
Freedom In Falling...
For those of you who don't know me personally, I am a Christian. I gave my life and heart to Jesus Christ in February of 1985. That's over 25 years ago.
During the first 20-odd years of that walk, I ran the whole show. See, I have always considered myself a liberal who thought as fairly and with as much input from the free world, as was possible. Pride made me believe I could conquer anything, given access to the right information. My mother always used to tell us that knowledge was power and we could easily solve any problem, if we only took the time to understand it properly.
In the Protestant, work-ethic driven society we have developed and maintained in North America, this attitude is expected. One could even go so far as to say it has become our religion.
Then along comes Jesus.
Jesus who reached out to people who were seen as having caused their own problems because of ignorance and stupidity, not to mention laziness, and not only forgave and accepted them, but healed them, and often reinstated their place in community. He, pretty much, behaved without precedent. It's in there. Don't take my word for it. By all means, read it for yourself. The Gospels of the New Testament are full of these accounts.
The most remarkable thing Jesus' approach to human suffering and sinful lifestyles taught me is this:
Deep down inside, we're actually all the same.
Gulp.
It took me over 20 years to learn that. I did so by falling hard on my proverbial backside amidst a major life crisis of heaping grief, shame and tragedy. Translation? I screwed up. Royally. Publicly. To my great chagrin. I came to the end of my own "good" efforts.
And as I was climbing out of that cesspool of human frailty and humiliation, I encountered the person-hood of Jesus, tenderly reaching down a helping hand to pull me up and out. In the aftermath of horrible life circumstances, He made me understand He wasn't looking at my recent past mistakes of colossal proportion, but at the state of my heart when He reached out to me.
See, I was feeling pretty sheepish and that was OK with Him. Wow.
I learned then, without His day to day personal presence in my life, I was always prone to mess things up. It really was and is that simple; even in the presence of genuinely, intensely sincere effort.
As I said, I also realized we are all prone to this downward spiral. Oh yeah, I know, there are millions who say, "I made it on my own - I am essentially a good person." And if we look at outward appearances, it is easy to buy into that illusion. After all, it is counter intuitive to live with a knowledge that our efforts in life are downright toxic. So we create this illusion within. It's called a defense mechanism. Even experts of human psychology will attest to this. The brain simply cannot function without it.
We all believe we are good, kind and right.
Remember that old adage, "You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can 't fool all the people all the time,"? See, most of us just don't have the ability to see into everyone's hearts all the time and we forget that important detail. So we are fooled. We believe the lie that humans are inherently good because there just seems to be no other viable option available. Let's face it, most of us are too busy just trying to survive to notice anyway.
Which is a shame. Because, guess what? Human goodness is the biggest lie in our pathetic, corporeal human existence. Deep down inside us all, there is something that is going to hurt us and others, given the opportunity.
Ouch.
Bet you are tempted to stop reading now. What an incredibly negative perspective, you are saying, and how can I continue living with this perspective? Doesn't it get me down - make me want to quit?
Nope. Not for a minute. Actually, it's quite the reverse. See, I have tried doing it the world's way with me in charge, doing all the "right" things and it didn't work. Only got me deeper in trouble. Because I did it without His input. And without, most importantly, His merciful healing.
When I first gave my life to Jesus, I told him in spoken words He could have my life. But it took a long time for me to learn exactly what that looked like. I was a passionate, young lady, with all the sincerity of young adulthood and, typically, not much gumption to back it up. I hadn't much life experience and did not dream what "dying to self" looked like in practice. And I had a history of abuse; abuse that had taught me to cling, fiercely, to the little bit of control I had managed to maintain over those first few years.
So I did not really surrender to Him. I was still in charge of my life, even though I read His Word daily, prayed daily, went to church and got involved in musical and drama leadership ministries. I was doing what I thought He wanted me to do for Him. Spinning my wheels, trying to keep the inner turmoil at bay, I was like a tightly wound up ball of rotting string, with many inner layers of "stuff" that still needed unwinding and releasing in order to be free.
During the midst of this, I blamed God every time my own misguided efforts brought me more pain. I did not recognize He was putting me in situations and circumstances so that ball of string would come unwound. Because it was that ball of string that was keeping me from getting true healing.
Then, after all those years of concerted effort, I finally fell - hard.
The pain was mystifying and intense. Not to say it was the first time I had known suffering.
But something was different this time. This time I was able to see how it was my own willfulness that had gotten me in trouble. Duh...
I submitted, only to find Him waiting to hold me close, love me and reveal the lies I had learned, through the abuse, that had been holding me back from understanding who I really was.
And I ate humble pie. That experience, which has had long reaching effects, has taught me to see I always have to stay close to Him and do what He says, no matter what my common sense is telling me.
I tell ya, I have been gaining weight, eating so many pieces of that pie. But it is a fatness, full of the joy of a full life, maintained only through daily encounters with His loving presence. Something words can barely describe.
Bottom line?
I am nothing without Jesus. And, happily, neither is anybody - including you.
During the first 20-odd years of that walk, I ran the whole show. See, I have always considered myself a liberal who thought as fairly and with as much input from the free world, as was possible. Pride made me believe I could conquer anything, given access to the right information. My mother always used to tell us that knowledge was power and we could easily solve any problem, if we only took the time to understand it properly.
In the Protestant, work-ethic driven society we have developed and maintained in North America, this attitude is expected. One could even go so far as to say it has become our religion.
Then along comes Jesus.
Jesus who reached out to people who were seen as having caused their own problems because of ignorance and stupidity, not to mention laziness, and not only forgave and accepted them, but healed them, and often reinstated their place in community. He, pretty much, behaved without precedent. It's in there. Don't take my word for it. By all means, read it for yourself. The Gospels of the New Testament are full of these accounts.
The most remarkable thing Jesus' approach to human suffering and sinful lifestyles taught me is this:
Deep down inside, we're actually all the same.
Gulp.
It took me over 20 years to learn that. I did so by falling hard on my proverbial backside amidst a major life crisis of heaping grief, shame and tragedy. Translation? I screwed up. Royally. Publicly. To my great chagrin. I came to the end of my own "good" efforts.
And as I was climbing out of that cesspool of human frailty and humiliation, I encountered the person-hood of Jesus, tenderly reaching down a helping hand to pull me up and out. In the aftermath of horrible life circumstances, He made me understand He wasn't looking at my recent past mistakes of colossal proportion, but at the state of my heart when He reached out to me.
See, I was feeling pretty sheepish and that was OK with Him. Wow.
I learned then, without His day to day personal presence in my life, I was always prone to mess things up. It really was and is that simple; even in the presence of genuinely, intensely sincere effort.
As I said, I also realized we are all prone to this downward spiral. Oh yeah, I know, there are millions who say, "I made it on my own - I am essentially a good person." And if we look at outward appearances, it is easy to buy into that illusion. After all, it is counter intuitive to live with a knowledge that our efforts in life are downright toxic. So we create this illusion within. It's called a defense mechanism. Even experts of human psychology will attest to this. The brain simply cannot function without it.
We all believe we are good, kind and right.
Remember that old adage, "You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can 't fool all the people all the time,"? See, most of us just don't have the ability to see into everyone's hearts all the time and we forget that important detail. So we are fooled. We believe the lie that humans are inherently good because there just seems to be no other viable option available. Let's face it, most of us are too busy just trying to survive to notice anyway.
Which is a shame. Because, guess what? Human goodness is the biggest lie in our pathetic, corporeal human existence. Deep down inside us all, there is something that is going to hurt us and others, given the opportunity.
Ouch.
Bet you are tempted to stop reading now. What an incredibly negative perspective, you are saying, and how can I continue living with this perspective? Doesn't it get me down - make me want to quit?
Nope. Not for a minute. Actually, it's quite the reverse. See, I have tried doing it the world's way with me in charge, doing all the "right" things and it didn't work. Only got me deeper in trouble. Because I did it without His input. And without, most importantly, His merciful healing.
When I first gave my life to Jesus, I told him in spoken words He could have my life. But it took a long time for me to learn exactly what that looked like. I was a passionate, young lady, with all the sincerity of young adulthood and, typically, not much gumption to back it up. I hadn't much life experience and did not dream what "dying to self" looked like in practice. And I had a history of abuse; abuse that had taught me to cling, fiercely, to the little bit of control I had managed to maintain over those first few years.
So I did not really surrender to Him. I was still in charge of my life, even though I read His Word daily, prayed daily, went to church and got involved in musical and drama leadership ministries. I was doing what I thought He wanted me to do for Him. Spinning my wheels, trying to keep the inner turmoil at bay, I was like a tightly wound up ball of rotting string, with many inner layers of "stuff" that still needed unwinding and releasing in order to be free.
During the midst of this, I blamed God every time my own misguided efforts brought me more pain. I did not recognize He was putting me in situations and circumstances so that ball of string would come unwound. Because it was that ball of string that was keeping me from getting true healing.
Then, after all those years of concerted effort, I finally fell - hard.
The pain was mystifying and intense. Not to say it was the first time I had known suffering.
But something was different this time. This time I was able to see how it was my own willfulness that had gotten me in trouble. Duh...
I submitted, only to find Him waiting to hold me close, love me and reveal the lies I had learned, through the abuse, that had been holding me back from understanding who I really was.
And I ate humble pie. That experience, which has had long reaching effects, has taught me to see I always have to stay close to Him and do what He says, no matter what my common sense is telling me.
I tell ya, I have been gaining weight, eating so many pieces of that pie. But it is a fatness, full of the joy of a full life, maintained only through daily encounters with His loving presence. Something words can barely describe.
Bottom line?
I am nothing without Jesus. And, happily, neither is anybody - including you.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Give Till It Hurts...
A good 75 per cent of our mail is junk mail. Junk mail, I am sad to say, from charitable organizations, competing for our charitable donation dollars.
Once, a few years ago, my husband gave something to one or two of these organizations he happened to think deserved to get some help and, since then, we have been inundated with mail from one of the many groups in North America which have charitable organization status. The list has grown with each year, too. It seems endless. Not a day goes by without one or another of their pleas for funds filling up our mailbox. I tell ya, if it weren't for someone asking us for money, we would be downright lonely.
OK, so that having been established, I assume we aren't the only ones getting this junk mail and I am most likely, preaching to the choir here. The choir that is getting very tempted to leave church, I might add.
My main concern is not about the number of pieces of mail I get but with the quality of the publications that are in those over-sized manila envelopes. My husband used to be in graphic design and I have worked for a couple of magazines and so we were privy to rough costs for printing fancy dancy kinda stuff like we see in slick, commercial publications. I can tell you, it is NOT cheap. That's why those magazines charge so much for their advertising space. All those pretty, shiny photographs and state of the art graphic displays of text and art work, add up to large sums of hard, cold cash, pretty darned fast, I can tell you.
And now we are just getting out of a world wide recession and, of course, charitable organizations have been hit hard too. Understandably so. Most folks just don't have that extra few dollars over the last few years and so, have cut back on their giving.
Everyone's hurting.
So why now, at this crucial time, aren't charitable organizations cutting back on the publication costs of their letters of solicitation? I believe anyone who is familiar with fundraising knows how few of those kits mailed out actually produce decent sized cheques. Let's say, one in three or four hundred, even though I suspect it may be much less than that. If you do the math on that, you come up with figures that are just staggering and make me wonder who is at the helm, making these decisions. Perhaps, if they stuck to simple public service ads on television or radio or through the internet; not to mention even lowering the cost of the mail outs, I expect most folks would honour the cause more readily. I strongly suspect I am not the only candidate who gets disgusted at the blatant waste of money in those letters that go out to the general public.
But as long as we keep on just throwing that junk mail in the compost bin - and I sincerely hope you are at least doing that with it - these groups just won't get the message.
If they were run like companies, they'd have fired their public relations staff a long time ago. Or have gone bankrupt. But, as far as I know, charitable organization CEOs don't get fired when they don't meet their quotas for donations in any given year.
Maybe that's part of the problem.
Once, a few years ago, my husband gave something to one or two of these organizations he happened to think deserved to get some help and, since then, we have been inundated with mail from one of the many groups in North America which have charitable organization status. The list has grown with each year, too. It seems endless. Not a day goes by without one or another of their pleas for funds filling up our mailbox. I tell ya, if it weren't for someone asking us for money, we would be downright lonely.
OK, so that having been established, I assume we aren't the only ones getting this junk mail and I am most likely, preaching to the choir here. The choir that is getting very tempted to leave church, I might add.
My main concern is not about the number of pieces of mail I get but with the quality of the publications that are in those over-sized manila envelopes. My husband used to be in graphic design and I have worked for a couple of magazines and so we were privy to rough costs for printing fancy dancy kinda stuff like we see in slick, commercial publications. I can tell you, it is NOT cheap. That's why those magazines charge so much for their advertising space. All those pretty, shiny photographs and state of the art graphic displays of text and art work, add up to large sums of hard, cold cash, pretty darned fast, I can tell you.
And now we are just getting out of a world wide recession and, of course, charitable organizations have been hit hard too. Understandably so. Most folks just don't have that extra few dollars over the last few years and so, have cut back on their giving.
Everyone's hurting.
So why now, at this crucial time, aren't charitable organizations cutting back on the publication costs of their letters of solicitation? I believe anyone who is familiar with fundraising knows how few of those kits mailed out actually produce decent sized cheques. Let's say, one in three or four hundred, even though I suspect it may be much less than that. If you do the math on that, you come up with figures that are just staggering and make me wonder who is at the helm, making these decisions. Perhaps, if they stuck to simple public service ads on television or radio or through the internet; not to mention even lowering the cost of the mail outs, I expect most folks would honour the cause more readily. I strongly suspect I am not the only candidate who gets disgusted at the blatant waste of money in those letters that go out to the general public.
But as long as we keep on just throwing that junk mail in the compost bin - and I sincerely hope you are at least doing that with it - these groups just won't get the message.
If they were run like companies, they'd have fired their public relations staff a long time ago. Or have gone bankrupt. But, as far as I know, charitable organization CEOs don't get fired when they don't meet their quotas for donations in any given year.
Maybe that's part of the problem.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Where's the Beef?
I am NOT a man basher; never was. Not for a minute. I have simply known way too many men I deeply respect over the years.
Having said that, I do ponder a few things I have observed in the stronger sex, from time to time; things that, frankly, befuddle me, and for which there is no anatomical explanation.
I studied psychology while doing my B.A. back in university days and learned about some very interesting things that make the two sexes unique. Fundamental differences in brain wiring seem to be responsible for a good deal of them and that is just plain fascinating. Remember - I said I was a geek.
My studies didn't cover it all, I was soon to learn. There's one thing in particular that all men I have known have done regularly and it just gets me. I don't understand it and I never will. It has to do with the location of "stuff".
Here is how it usually goes down:
We are eating supper, nearing the end of the meal. After dessert, the men express a desire for something more to fill those empty places. So they usually go to the fridge and open the door. As they should. I often do it as well. That is, after all, where all the good things usually are.
What happens next I have seen played out so many times I have lost track.
First, there is this blank stare and the male in question just stands there. Then out it comes; the predicable comment.
"Where is the (fill in the space with whatever they are looking for)?"
I usually say something like, "It's in there somewhere."
Now, see, this is where things get strange. This is when the males in my family lose that typical sense of logic and what they say next beats all evidence of common sense.
"I can't see it."
Now, when this happened a long time ago, of course, I got up and actually looked for the item in question and put it into the person's hands. Problem solved and everyone was happy. Everyone except me, that was, until I got smart.
Now I just wait for a minute cause I know what's coming. There is this shuffling of feet and clearing of the throat. I'm supposed to feel guilty, you see, because they STILL can't find what they are seeking. That's when they usually up the ante.
"I can't find it - you must have hidden it someplace."
Du uh. Yeah, I like getting up and walking across our rather large kitchen to lean over the open door of our fridge to look for something that I don't even plan on eating.
I count to 10. After I cool down a bit, and not until I do, I say, "Look, when you get your X-ray vision adjusted I'm sure you'll be able to see through all the contents of the refrigerator. For the time being, you'll just have to move things with your hands, like I would have to do."
That usually stops them in their tracks. Then, grumbling, they condescend to actually do the work it requires to move stuff around in the fridge and find the thing they are seeking.
And this happens several times a week.
It has gotten so bad, I've taken to buying special treats for myself and putting them in paper bags at the back of the fridge. Because I know implicitly, as long as the men in my family cannot see it without moving anything, or looking inside something, my coveted treat is safe forever. You have no idea how many pounds I have put on. And I blame them - I really do.
What's more, our daughter, who as Down Syndrome AND IS A GIRL, can find anything she wants whenever she wants it. She's never needed my help. I have often woken up first thing in the morning to her having taken things out of the fridge and cupboards - specific things which were hidden behind other things - and set them up on our kitchen table 'cause she thought she'd make breakfast. Go figure.
So, I have decided it is a biological, yet to be explained by medical science, characteristic of males everywhere. Either that or females have been enabling their men where fridges are concerned ever since they came on the market. Fridges, that is, not men. I think if men were on the market, we'd be keeping them in little paper bags behind the leftover lasagna and in front of the pickle jar.
Having said that, I do ponder a few things I have observed in the stronger sex, from time to time; things that, frankly, befuddle me, and for which there is no anatomical explanation.
I studied psychology while doing my B.A. back in university days and learned about some very interesting things that make the two sexes unique. Fundamental differences in brain wiring seem to be responsible for a good deal of them and that is just plain fascinating. Remember - I said I was a geek.
My studies didn't cover it all, I was soon to learn. There's one thing in particular that all men I have known have done regularly and it just gets me. I don't understand it and I never will. It has to do with the location of "stuff".
Here is how it usually goes down:
We are eating supper, nearing the end of the meal. After dessert, the men express a desire for something more to fill those empty places. So they usually go to the fridge and open the door. As they should. I often do it as well. That is, after all, where all the good things usually are.
What happens next I have seen played out so many times I have lost track.
First, there is this blank stare and the male in question just stands there. Then out it comes; the predicable comment.
"Where is the (fill in the space with whatever they are looking for)?"
I usually say something like, "It's in there somewhere."
Now, see, this is where things get strange. This is when the males in my family lose that typical sense of logic and what they say next beats all evidence of common sense.
"I can't see it."
Now, when this happened a long time ago, of course, I got up and actually looked for the item in question and put it into the person's hands. Problem solved and everyone was happy. Everyone except me, that was, until I got smart.
Now I just wait for a minute cause I know what's coming. There is this shuffling of feet and clearing of the throat. I'm supposed to feel guilty, you see, because they STILL can't find what they are seeking. That's when they usually up the ante.
"I can't find it - you must have hidden it someplace."
Du uh. Yeah, I like getting up and walking across our rather large kitchen to lean over the open door of our fridge to look for something that I don't even plan on eating.
I count to 10. After I cool down a bit, and not until I do, I say, "Look, when you get your X-ray vision adjusted I'm sure you'll be able to see through all the contents of the refrigerator. For the time being, you'll just have to move things with your hands, like I would have to do."
That usually stops them in their tracks. Then, grumbling, they condescend to actually do the work it requires to move stuff around in the fridge and find the thing they are seeking.
And this happens several times a week.
It has gotten so bad, I've taken to buying special treats for myself and putting them in paper bags at the back of the fridge. Because I know implicitly, as long as the men in my family cannot see it without moving anything, or looking inside something, my coveted treat is safe forever. You have no idea how many pounds I have put on. And I blame them - I really do.
What's more, our daughter, who as Down Syndrome AND IS A GIRL, can find anything she wants whenever she wants it. She's never needed my help. I have often woken up first thing in the morning to her having taken things out of the fridge and cupboards - specific things which were hidden behind other things - and set them up on our kitchen table 'cause she thought she'd make breakfast. Go figure.
So, I have decided it is a biological, yet to be explained by medical science, characteristic of males everywhere. Either that or females have been enabling their men where fridges are concerned ever since they came on the market. Fridges, that is, not men. I think if men were on the market, we'd be keeping them in little paper bags behind the leftover lasagna and in front of the pickle jar.
Tired of Keeping Quiet or "But, Mother - The Emperor Has NO Clothing On!!"
Recently, a journalist on CBC wrote and posted online a story about Sesame Street, the long standing, respected and loved children's educational program, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, having been given permission to air in Afghanistan. But there is a catch; the show will not be permitted to have singing or dancing or even the barking of dogs. The story invited comments. Having gotten tired of Islamic countries enforcing martial law on its citizens, even more increasingly in the last two or three years, despite intervention and aid from outsiders, I posted a comment I knew full well would upset some Muslim here in North America. I have removed the other person's name because I do not have legal permission from her to print her name. Incidentally, I did some detective work and discovered the other person also whose account on FB I looked at, has as her FB network, York University. Which means she is either an alumni, student or staff member there. She also subscribes to a Muslim teaching FB page, based in southern California. So I have to assume she is educated and lives here in Canada and, most likely, is of middle east origin (based on her name which I referred to earlier) and actively practices Islam.
Here is what happened:
Ellen Christine Smith · Holland College
How sad that children are not allowed to sing! It seems to me, any faith that supports deliberate suppression of honest joy is missing out on something fundamentally necessary to human existence! No WONDER they are all so anxious to get to "Paradise"!
Person with Arabic name:
Thats a fairly ignorant comment you just made. You have to understand the culture is different. Afghans celebrate expression and "honest joy" in other ways. Afghans do sing and dance, its just not something that is encouraged on television.
Ellen Christine Smith · Holland College
Why? Media and entertainment has, historically, reflected cultural characteristics...if you take offence at this, perhaps you should direct your comments to the journalist who wrote the article...I can only base my opinion on what I read...fair enough? Read it through, carefully, and I think you will have to agree that it does not give any information like what you suggested above in your reply...maybe this is a good opportunity for you to expound and explain your perspective, instead of knocking others who have read this article too...and please try not to use such inflammatory language when you feel a need to correct some mistake or oversight...it makes you look unnecessarily confrontational and oppositional...and I imagine you would NOT want to give that impression, would you?...rather, let's discuss these things as civilized human beings. :-) This is how we do things in Canada...
Person with Arabic name
No WONDER they are all so anxious to get to "Paradise"!
That above statement is a racist comment. Read a book about the country and learn about its history and culture, then base your opinion.
That above statement is a racist comment. Read a book about the country and learn about its history and culture, then base your opinion.
Ellen Christine Smith · Holland College
tsk tsk tsk...you are in Canada, young lady...it is high time you started to honour OUR culture! If I behaved in your country the way that you are in mine, I would be put to DEATH!! Or, at the very least, kicked out! The last time I checked, we have freedom of the press and freedom of speech in Canada. Maybe you should start to appreciate the diversity of where you live instead of calling "racism"...the way I see it, Islam has produced national policy in the countries where it is practiced, that puts women at risk and has extremely little tolerance for the religions and opinions of others...case in point; recently Iran has begun a blatant attack on Christianity within its borders, to the point where individuals have been tortured, raped and sometimes put to death - not to mention losing their civil rights - I mean - ARE YOU KIDDING ME? :-) That kind of behaviour you are displaying lost its credibility with North Americans a LONG time ago. And for your information I have read MANY books about Islam and the history of the Middle East...in fact, my husband has read the Islamic holy book from cover to cover and his take was, it's a good thing that a good deal of Muslims practice their faith liberally, because if they did not, the rest of the world would be dead! So, yeah, if you want to call that racist, go ahead. I, for one, am tired of all of the abuse of other belief systems at the expense of Islam...and I am tired of the politically correct climate that insists we not expose truth for what it is! As I suggested above in my first reply to your comment, perhaps you need to get to know someone before assuming something about them...I believe in the protection of the unborn, in the sanctity of the family and I live a moral life...BUT I do NOT insist on my rights, because MY faith and my God protect me! I do not have a deep seated need to do that...but when I see others being abused, I will always stand in the gap and do and speak on their behalf...I also believe in the separation of church and state, even though, perhaps like yourself, I realize that any government without divine direction, is bound to flounder...but that is what prayer is for, wouldn't you say? So, stop calling "racism" each time you run into North Americans who have had it with suicide bombers and religious fanatics who refuse to honour or dignify human life...THAT is what I strenuously object to here...I am normally a woman who minds her own business and has, very much, a live and let live approach to all things...but THIS truly angers me!! Look, it comes down to this...if you want to practice your religion here in Canada, you have that privilege - be thankful that the majority of people who live here only express their frustration for the atrocities that are going on in our world with WORDS! Cause, young lady, perhaps if you were at home, you would not only not have this freedom, but your life may be forfeit!!!
Person with Arabic Name
And now you are trying to justify your racism. Tsk tsk.
Ellen Christine Smith · Holland College
....How sad...that is all you have to say after what I wrote above? No defense of Islamic actions? No acknowledgement of the gross injustices going on? Or even some kind of explanation or rationalization of them? I have news for you - if what I said above can be legitimately classed as racism, then human rights organizations are obviously racist too!! Give me a break! LOL...I won't comment further, just simply could not resist the opportunity to make some necessary obvious points...for those of you are reading this, notice the crafty avoidance of providing information that would otherwise enlighten us all...and prove me wrong. Instead, you used this very good opportunity to call names. What a shame. We would have listened too...
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Oil Boil
Is it just me or does anyone notice what is going on with oil pricing regulation in P.E.I. lately that seems just a wee bit "out there"?
Let's circle back for just a minute.
I read an article in The Guardian about IRAC's recent decision to NOT put heating fuel prices down 10 to 15 cents a litre on the first of the month, because Irving would not like it. IRAC, which is short for Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, is a board of people who make decisions about things like enforcement of Island property laws and other bylaws and, as what concerns me today, prices of fuels, in particular, furnace oil. Generally, fuel prices, both furnace oil and gasoline for automobiles, go either up or down on the first and fifteenth of each month, here in P.E.I., because of the intervention of the members of this board.
In order to determine what they call fair prices for consumers and vendors alike, the members take many factors into consideration. The usual; prices world wide and in the North American market, time of year, strength of the economy and so on. No secrets there.
Irving, on the other hand is the oil processing company that supplies a good deal of the oil products in the Maritime provinces and even further afield. For those who are foreign to this soil, K.C. Irving, who founded the corporation many years ago, based in New Brunswick, was one of the world's wealthiest men before he passed away. He wasn't known for being gracious.
What made me sit up straighter while reading this article was something the IRAC rep said to the reporter. He said, they would have LOVED to put prices down as an early Christmas gift to Islanders but felt they couldn't because it would affect supply and demand. I scratched my head, wondering what he was talking about, as, to the best of my knowledge, there is still no shortage of oil on planet earth quite yet. And here is where I started to see red. He said if they were to put prices down right now, Irving would refuse to supply the retailers with product and there would be a shortage here on Island.
Duh.
ISN'T that sort of how extortion works, folks? As long as you give us your money, we won't beat you up. I mean, this is nothing short of ridiculous and it does not take a genius to see through it all. And yet, this article made the papers with very little fallout. I believe I was the only one to point out the obvious on The Guardian website, after it was posted online.
When I was in high school, my big brother got interested in socioeconomic theory. He started reading books written by Karl Marx and Lenin, whose literature and lives were hugely instrumental in the Russian revolution at the turn of the last century. As a result of his interest, my brother got involved with the legal Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Canada. So he brought home all these newsletters citing financial atrocities done with our tax dollars in favour of big business, at all levels of government. Stories about multi-million dollar grants having been given to large corporations out of public coffers. And many of these dealings were actually exposed by decent journalistic efforts in years to follow. My brother's hobby was vindicated.
Now, before we go any further, don't get me wrong. I am not saying I support communism or think China, the U.S.S.R. or North Korea were and are somehow doing better things than we.
Nah, not by a long shot, because I know, full well, that human nature, left to its own devices, sucks. These ways of governing have proven to be just as faulty and corrupted as the ones we question here in what we call the "free world".
BUT - We really need to take a deeper look at what is going on all around us. This imbalance of financial justice, as rendered by Irving's apparent monopoly of the oil product market here in P.E.I. is, to me, just one prime example of how we are being blatantly, financially abused and we are not lifting a finger about it.
And what's sad is, if this had happened about fifty years ago, the company would have, at least, tried its best to hide what it was doing, because a monopoly, to the best of my understanding, is actually illegal in this country - Isn't that the whole fulcrum of healthy capitalism, after all? That it thrives in a system which refuses to harbour those companies who want total control of any particular market in order to make as high a profit margin as possible?
It's kind of like the old story about the frog who got boiled to death. It hopped into the pot when things were rather cool and inviting and slowly the heat was turned up, so that the frog barely noticed. Frogs, being cold blooded, don't respond to the change in temperature with any sense of panic and you know the rest of the story.
Perhaps because we have been in this pot of water for so long and have had the temperature turned up so gradually, we aren't aware of how hot it is. I say this because, sadly, based on the typical lack of response from the public to the IRAC article, it appears as if we really don't care.
I think it's called learned helplessness. What a sad state of affairs.
All I can say is, the CEO at Irving must really like frog's legs.
Let's circle back for just a minute.
I read an article in The Guardian about IRAC's recent decision to NOT put heating fuel prices down 10 to 15 cents a litre on the first of the month, because Irving would not like it. IRAC, which is short for Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, is a board of people who make decisions about things like enforcement of Island property laws and other bylaws and, as what concerns me today, prices of fuels, in particular, furnace oil. Generally, fuel prices, both furnace oil and gasoline for automobiles, go either up or down on the first and fifteenth of each month, here in P.E.I., because of the intervention of the members of this board.
In order to determine what they call fair prices for consumers and vendors alike, the members take many factors into consideration. The usual; prices world wide and in the North American market, time of year, strength of the economy and so on. No secrets there.
Irving, on the other hand is the oil processing company that supplies a good deal of the oil products in the Maritime provinces and even further afield. For those who are foreign to this soil, K.C. Irving, who founded the corporation many years ago, based in New Brunswick, was one of the world's wealthiest men before he passed away. He wasn't known for being gracious.
What made me sit up straighter while reading this article was something the IRAC rep said to the reporter. He said, they would have LOVED to put prices down as an early Christmas gift to Islanders but felt they couldn't because it would affect supply and demand. I scratched my head, wondering what he was talking about, as, to the best of my knowledge, there is still no shortage of oil on planet earth quite yet. And here is where I started to see red. He said if they were to put prices down right now, Irving would refuse to supply the retailers with product and there would be a shortage here on Island.
Duh.
ISN'T that sort of how extortion works, folks? As long as you give us your money, we won't beat you up. I mean, this is nothing short of ridiculous and it does not take a genius to see through it all. And yet, this article made the papers with very little fallout. I believe I was the only one to point out the obvious on The Guardian website, after it was posted online.
When I was in high school, my big brother got interested in socioeconomic theory. He started reading books written by Karl Marx and Lenin, whose literature and lives were hugely instrumental in the Russian revolution at the turn of the last century. As a result of his interest, my brother got involved with the legal Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Canada. So he brought home all these newsletters citing financial atrocities done with our tax dollars in favour of big business, at all levels of government. Stories about multi-million dollar grants having been given to large corporations out of public coffers. And many of these dealings were actually exposed by decent journalistic efforts in years to follow. My brother's hobby was vindicated.
Now, before we go any further, don't get me wrong. I am not saying I support communism or think China, the U.S.S.R. or North Korea were and are somehow doing better things than we.
Nah, not by a long shot, because I know, full well, that human nature, left to its own devices, sucks. These ways of governing have proven to be just as faulty and corrupted as the ones we question here in what we call the "free world".
BUT - We really need to take a deeper look at what is going on all around us. This imbalance of financial justice, as rendered by Irving's apparent monopoly of the oil product market here in P.E.I. is, to me, just one prime example of how we are being blatantly, financially abused and we are not lifting a finger about it.
And what's sad is, if this had happened about fifty years ago, the company would have, at least, tried its best to hide what it was doing, because a monopoly, to the best of my understanding, is actually illegal in this country - Isn't that the whole fulcrum of healthy capitalism, after all? That it thrives in a system which refuses to harbour those companies who want total control of any particular market in order to make as high a profit margin as possible?
It's kind of like the old story about the frog who got boiled to death. It hopped into the pot when things were rather cool and inviting and slowly the heat was turned up, so that the frog barely noticed. Frogs, being cold blooded, don't respond to the change in temperature with any sense of panic and you know the rest of the story.
Perhaps because we have been in this pot of water for so long and have had the temperature turned up so gradually, we aren't aware of how hot it is. I say this because, sadly, based on the typical lack of response from the public to the IRAC article, it appears as if we really don't care.
I think it's called learned helplessness. What a sad state of affairs.
All I can say is, the CEO at Irving must really like frog's legs.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Kitty Kudos
I really like cats. Growing up, my family always seemed to have one around and I learned their language over the years. I also learned to respect them.
Many people claim that dogs are actually more intelligent and loyal, but I honestly believe that is because they just haven't taken the time to understand cats. I also think that those who say these things have had bad experiences with them. Which is a shame, cause cats are really neat.
OK, now that we've established that, let me tell you why I think this way.
Primarily, I admire them for their loyalty.
When we were first married, we adopted two different cats. First Naomi, who was a Tabby-Siamese mix and then, Amber, whose mom was an Abyssinian and dad was - who knows? The owner's daughter bred Abbys and one of her females got outside one time and bred with a tom who just happened to be passing through the neighbourhood. So she was giving away this batch and her mother was one of the first recipients, only to discover she was allergic to cats and could not keep it. That's where we came in.
Naomi had been with us for a couple of years, so she was sort of our first born. You know the type. More like the adults; all serious like. When Amber came along, she mothered the younger kitten for awhile until Amber decided she was going to be the new boss in our home. Amber, being part Abyssinian, was dominant by nature and lorded it over Naomi, who outweighed her by about 10 pounds. If I sat too close to Naomi, Amber would spit at her and Naomi would take the hint and move further away from me. With the establishment of this new pecking order, you'd think things would be tense in our household. But, each evening, we'd still see them cuddled up together somewhere and Naomi grooming the smaller cat.
They were, admittedly, strange bedfellows, but it soon became clear they had a deep, albeit, unusual bond. A couple of years into Amber's fast paced little life, she disappeared one autumn day. We were heartbroken and began our search for her in the neighbourhood, all to no avail. There was no Amber to be found. On the first day of our search, I got this zany idea to actually ask Naomi where Amber was. So I did. My husband was skeptical, but went along with it. I don't know who was more surprised, hubby or me, when the older tabby started across the street and into a neighbourhood we figured the two cats just never visited. My husband followed her until she came to a stop on a curbside next to a busy street. I guess she just sat there and looked up at him with her big, green eyes wide open. He didn't know what to do so just picked her up and carried her back home.
What a waste of time that had been. Of course, Naomi could not understand what we had asked her and had just lead us on a wild goose chase.
Or so we thought until, two days later, we had just about given up looking for Amber and, on a lark, he decided to go, once again, to the spot where Naomi had taken him. While he was there, a man came walking with his dog and saw my husband searching along the road. He stopped him and asked him if he might be looking for a small, grey coloured cat. My husband said, "Yes." The man told him he had found the little cat, obviously our little Amber, who had apparently been hit by a car on that first rainy day. He examined her and, finding she was dead, buried her on the side of the road, close to the spot where Naomi had taken my husband earlier.
And that wasn't the first time Naomi amazed us. She was smart, too.
Before Amber joined our family, we lived in a small, attic apartment in the west end of Halifax. Because the apartment was on the top level, we overlooked a flat roof that covered the other two apartments our landlord had added to the side of his house. Our bathroom and living room window gave us a full view of that rooftop. Which wasn't so bad because we were surrounded by old trees whose foliage gave the impression we lived in a tree house. For some reason, our bathroom had no screen on its window, so, in order to have a cross breeze in the hot summers, we had to keep that window open, despite the lack of protection from insects. As a result, Naomi would sneak out through that open window and onto that rooftop where she'd snoop around, no doubt, watching birds and passersby when they least expected it. Because we were two stories up, she was at risk for injury or even death, if she fell, so I knew we had a problem.
Leaving the window closed was simply not an option. So, as soon as I knew she had escaped, I began to tempt her back in with tidbits of her favourite foods. Bacon and cheese were on the top of her list. It got so she would come running as soon as I said the words. I often wonder what the neighbours thought whenever they heard me calling, "Naomi. Bacon. Cheese," in the tops of those trees. Perhaps that was the real reason we didn't get invited over for tea and crumpets.
In the meanwhile, I came to the conclusion that Naomi understood English. I tested my theory by calling out other words, like, "donuts," or "applesauce," using the same tone of voice I used when saying, "cheese," or "bacon," and she'd just stay put on that roof, looking at me as if to say, "Are you kidding me?"
Eventually, that screen appeared on the scene and, some years later, Naomi eventually went the way all cats do. But I shall never forget how that cat got savvy to get a tasty snack.
Yup. I really like cats.
Many people claim that dogs are actually more intelligent and loyal, but I honestly believe that is because they just haven't taken the time to understand cats. I also think that those who say these things have had bad experiences with them. Which is a shame, cause cats are really neat.
OK, now that we've established that, let me tell you why I think this way.
Primarily, I admire them for their loyalty.
When we were first married, we adopted two different cats. First Naomi, who was a Tabby-Siamese mix and then, Amber, whose mom was an Abyssinian and dad was - who knows? The owner's daughter bred Abbys and one of her females got outside one time and bred with a tom who just happened to be passing through the neighbourhood. So she was giving away this batch and her mother was one of the first recipients, only to discover she was allergic to cats and could not keep it. That's where we came in.
Naomi had been with us for a couple of years, so she was sort of our first born. You know the type. More like the adults; all serious like. When Amber came along, she mothered the younger kitten for awhile until Amber decided she was going to be the new boss in our home. Amber, being part Abyssinian, was dominant by nature and lorded it over Naomi, who outweighed her by about 10 pounds. If I sat too close to Naomi, Amber would spit at her and Naomi would take the hint and move further away from me. With the establishment of this new pecking order, you'd think things would be tense in our household. But, each evening, we'd still see them cuddled up together somewhere and Naomi grooming the smaller cat.
They were, admittedly, strange bedfellows, but it soon became clear they had a deep, albeit, unusual bond. A couple of years into Amber's fast paced little life, she disappeared one autumn day. We were heartbroken and began our search for her in the neighbourhood, all to no avail. There was no Amber to be found. On the first day of our search, I got this zany idea to actually ask Naomi where Amber was. So I did. My husband was skeptical, but went along with it. I don't know who was more surprised, hubby or me, when the older tabby started across the street and into a neighbourhood we figured the two cats just never visited. My husband followed her until she came to a stop on a curbside next to a busy street. I guess she just sat there and looked up at him with her big, green eyes wide open. He didn't know what to do so just picked her up and carried her back home.
What a waste of time that had been. Of course, Naomi could not understand what we had asked her and had just lead us on a wild goose chase.
Or so we thought until, two days later, we had just about given up looking for Amber and, on a lark, he decided to go, once again, to the spot where Naomi had taken him. While he was there, a man came walking with his dog and saw my husband searching along the road. He stopped him and asked him if he might be looking for a small, grey coloured cat. My husband said, "Yes." The man told him he had found the little cat, obviously our little Amber, who had apparently been hit by a car on that first rainy day. He examined her and, finding she was dead, buried her on the side of the road, close to the spot where Naomi had taken my husband earlier.
And that wasn't the first time Naomi amazed us. She was smart, too.
Before Amber joined our family, we lived in a small, attic apartment in the west end of Halifax. Because the apartment was on the top level, we overlooked a flat roof that covered the other two apartments our landlord had added to the side of his house. Our bathroom and living room window gave us a full view of that rooftop. Which wasn't so bad because we were surrounded by old trees whose foliage gave the impression we lived in a tree house. For some reason, our bathroom had no screen on its window, so, in order to have a cross breeze in the hot summers, we had to keep that window open, despite the lack of protection from insects. As a result, Naomi would sneak out through that open window and onto that rooftop where she'd snoop around, no doubt, watching birds and passersby when they least expected it. Because we were two stories up, she was at risk for injury or even death, if she fell, so I knew we had a problem.
Leaving the window closed was simply not an option. So, as soon as I knew she had escaped, I began to tempt her back in with tidbits of her favourite foods. Bacon and cheese were on the top of her list. It got so she would come running as soon as I said the words. I often wonder what the neighbours thought whenever they heard me calling, "Naomi. Bacon. Cheese," in the tops of those trees. Perhaps that was the real reason we didn't get invited over for tea and crumpets.
In the meanwhile, I came to the conclusion that Naomi understood English. I tested my theory by calling out other words, like, "donuts," or "applesauce," using the same tone of voice I used when saying, "cheese," or "bacon," and she'd just stay put on that roof, looking at me as if to say, "Are you kidding me?"
Eventually, that screen appeared on the scene and, some years later, Naomi eventually went the way all cats do. But I shall never forget how that cat got savvy to get a tasty snack.
Yup. I really like cats.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
They've seen Paris So Forget It...
One important thing we did not anticipate when moving to Prince Edward Island was the state of medical care in the province. Having previously lived in capital cities; first, Halifax and then, Ottawa, we had become accustomed to having access to a broad choice of physicians at any given time.
We did not realize that, because P.E.I. had no medical school, it was literally without the ability to attract new med school grads and, therefore, hadn't had enough doctors for its population in years. Its declining population, I might add. It seems to me that P.E.I. has actually experienced negative population growth in some recent years, because of its young people leaving in search of employment; in particular, going to Alberta while the oil boom was on. Yet, there are thousands of people on provincial registries who still haven't managed to get a family physician, sad to say, despite the lower numbers.
Experts say the problem is universal and is caused by a combination of young grads wanting shorter hours than ever before and women entering medicine in larger numbers. Women take time off for pregnancy or child care leave. But the number of spots in med schools has not increased to compensate for these dramatic changes. So, essentially, there are fewer doctor hours available for people, worldwide. Add to that the lack of a med school and the fact that grads often find work or start practices in the provinces where they study, that leaves little old P.E.I. with a huge problem.
So we did not get a new doctor right away. Which was OK because our youngest would qualify for care from a pediatrician because of special needs and otherwise, we are pretty much a healthy family. Besides, we figured we could always go to clinics or the emergency outpatients department at our local hospital.
Yeah, sure.
If we did not mind waiting a minimum of three hours to see a doctor or having to compete with others vying for a spot in line in one of the clinics' foyers - I have literally seen lineups, during flu season, of 20 or 30 people, a couple of hours before a clinic opened its doors.
There have been some suggestions made to government about how to remedy the problem. Suggestions tailored to bring radical, positive change to the system. Like bringing in physicians' assistants, which are, incidentally, used in many American hospitals on the front lines, for similar reasons. And then there have been incentive programs set up to attract out-of-province and, sometimes, out-of-country doctors here to Spud Island. But none of it seems to be working.
Let's talk about why.
First of all, I'll share my experience with the one doctor I actually was assigned to after being on the "list" for about four years. The first time I saw him, I was really impressed with his professionalism, ability and bedside manner. I also got the feeling he really cared and wasn't in it for status or money or because everyone in his family had been a doctor. He explained things to me in a way that did not leave my head spinning. So far, so good. Then he sent me for a whole lot of blood work. While I was getting that done, the blood tech said that I must have Dr. So and So and, because she was right, I asked her how she knew. She told me that he always ran a lot of tests and that he wasn't making the province happy with it, either.
Gee whiz - I could hear this train coming before I saw it.
I guess none of the tests were positive so I did not see him for a few months after. But when I tried to see him again, the receptionist at the clinic where he had his practice told me he and his family had moved back to the States. Something about his wife missing her family.
Of course! And it had nothing to do with the fact he was repeatedly requesting tests that the province just did not want to pay for.
So, about six months later, lo and behold, I got another one of those phone calls from the province. Apparently the patients from the previous doctor were being given to a new one who had just moved to the Island. I had lucked out. But I didn't even get to see him before, he too, moved back home.
Which begged the question, "What the heck was going on here, anyway?"
And then I started thinking. In summer, P.E.I. is a pretty place to be. The ocean warms up and there are many sandy beaches as well as world class golf. It never gets too hot because there's always a cool breeze blowing.
But that's for about three months out of the year, otherwise known as the tourist season. I have heard it told that P.E.I. can see almost two million tourists in a good year. When you consider the population of the province is just under 140,000, that speaks volumes about how this little island literally comes to life around June 15 each year.
What those who only visit don't know is, on or around mid October, the whole Island, with the exception of Charlottetown, Summerside and possibly Montague, shuts down, culturally, for a long, bleak off season. The locals, born and raised here are fine with it too. Heck, they've been waiting on, cleaning up after and entertaining Off Islanders for possibly more than a hundred summers now, so they've earned their peace and quiet. When you couple that with the fact that the other two industries which support the economy are fishing and farming, you haven't got what we call really good chemistry for trendy, state of the art, cultural integrity.
Not to say it's completely dead here. No, we have our university and a few colleges as well as a lively bar scene in the capital. But leave Charlottetown and, other than outdoor sports, there isn't really much to do of an evening outside of the tourist season.
And don't get me talking about the shopping. Or should I say, lack of. Suffice to say, even Islanders with well established family roots regularly pay that awful bridge toll to shop in either Halifax or Moncton. When a designer clothing store dares to open, it is rarely patronized and generally goes under, sometimes within a couple of years.
Strange but true.
Finally - and I left this for last 'cause it really is the clincher - Islanders have this way of politely keeping newcomers at arm's length for long periods of time after they move here. Haven't a clue why. But it's true. Since having arrived here some 10 years ago, my family and I have been relegated to the population of what we affectionately call Come From Aways. We've only managed to get close to two families and they moved here from off Island too. Luckily for us, we were warned about it before we moved so were amply prepared to dig in our heels, come what may. We take a humorous approach to the whole thing, actually. But we have known others who are mystified and hurt by the cool reception they have received.
So, tell me - if you were a physician with a higher than average family income who has practiced and lived in a city - any city; either in Canada or the U.S. - would you relocate here?
I rest my case.
We did not realize that, because P.E.I. had no medical school, it was literally without the ability to attract new med school grads and, therefore, hadn't had enough doctors for its population in years. Its declining population, I might add. It seems to me that P.E.I. has actually experienced negative population growth in some recent years, because of its young people leaving in search of employment; in particular, going to Alberta while the oil boom was on. Yet, there are thousands of people on provincial registries who still haven't managed to get a family physician, sad to say, despite the lower numbers.
Experts say the problem is universal and is caused by a combination of young grads wanting shorter hours than ever before and women entering medicine in larger numbers. Women take time off for pregnancy or child care leave. But the number of spots in med schools has not increased to compensate for these dramatic changes. So, essentially, there are fewer doctor hours available for people, worldwide. Add to that the lack of a med school and the fact that grads often find work or start practices in the provinces where they study, that leaves little old P.E.I. with a huge problem.
So we did not get a new doctor right away. Which was OK because our youngest would qualify for care from a pediatrician because of special needs and otherwise, we are pretty much a healthy family. Besides, we figured we could always go to clinics or the emergency outpatients department at our local hospital.
Yeah, sure.
If we did not mind waiting a minimum of three hours to see a doctor or having to compete with others vying for a spot in line in one of the clinics' foyers - I have literally seen lineups, during flu season, of 20 or 30 people, a couple of hours before a clinic opened its doors.
There have been some suggestions made to government about how to remedy the problem. Suggestions tailored to bring radical, positive change to the system. Like bringing in physicians' assistants, which are, incidentally, used in many American hospitals on the front lines, for similar reasons. And then there have been incentive programs set up to attract out-of-province and, sometimes, out-of-country doctors here to Spud Island. But none of it seems to be working.
Let's talk about why.
First of all, I'll share my experience with the one doctor I actually was assigned to after being on the "list" for about four years. The first time I saw him, I was really impressed with his professionalism, ability and bedside manner. I also got the feeling he really cared and wasn't in it for status or money or because everyone in his family had been a doctor. He explained things to me in a way that did not leave my head spinning. So far, so good. Then he sent me for a whole lot of blood work. While I was getting that done, the blood tech said that I must have Dr. So and So and, because she was right, I asked her how she knew. She told me that he always ran a lot of tests and that he wasn't making the province happy with it, either.
Gee whiz - I could hear this train coming before I saw it.
I guess none of the tests were positive so I did not see him for a few months after. But when I tried to see him again, the receptionist at the clinic where he had his practice told me he and his family had moved back to the States. Something about his wife missing her family.
Of course! And it had nothing to do with the fact he was repeatedly requesting tests that the province just did not want to pay for.
So, about six months later, lo and behold, I got another one of those phone calls from the province. Apparently the patients from the previous doctor were being given to a new one who had just moved to the Island. I had lucked out. But I didn't even get to see him before, he too, moved back home.
Which begged the question, "What the heck was going on here, anyway?"
And then I started thinking. In summer, P.E.I. is a pretty place to be. The ocean warms up and there are many sandy beaches as well as world class golf. It never gets too hot because there's always a cool breeze blowing.
But that's for about three months out of the year, otherwise known as the tourist season. I have heard it told that P.E.I. can see almost two million tourists in a good year. When you consider the population of the province is just under 140,000, that speaks volumes about how this little island literally comes to life around June 15 each year.
What those who only visit don't know is, on or around mid October, the whole Island, with the exception of Charlottetown, Summerside and possibly Montague, shuts down, culturally, for a long, bleak off season. The locals, born and raised here are fine with it too. Heck, they've been waiting on, cleaning up after and entertaining Off Islanders for possibly more than a hundred summers now, so they've earned their peace and quiet. When you couple that with the fact that the other two industries which support the economy are fishing and farming, you haven't got what we call really good chemistry for trendy, state of the art, cultural integrity.
Not to say it's completely dead here. No, we have our university and a few colleges as well as a lively bar scene in the capital. But leave Charlottetown and, other than outdoor sports, there isn't really much to do of an evening outside of the tourist season.
And don't get me talking about the shopping. Or should I say, lack of. Suffice to say, even Islanders with well established family roots regularly pay that awful bridge toll to shop in either Halifax or Moncton. When a designer clothing store dares to open, it is rarely patronized and generally goes under, sometimes within a couple of years.
Strange but true.
Finally - and I left this for last 'cause it really is the clincher - Islanders have this way of politely keeping newcomers at arm's length for long periods of time after they move here. Haven't a clue why. But it's true. Since having arrived here some 10 years ago, my family and I have been relegated to the population of what we affectionately call Come From Aways. We've only managed to get close to two families and they moved here from off Island too. Luckily for us, we were warned about it before we moved so were amply prepared to dig in our heels, come what may. We take a humorous approach to the whole thing, actually. But we have known others who are mystified and hurt by the cool reception they have received.
So, tell me - if you were a physician with a higher than average family income who has practiced and lived in a city - any city; either in Canada or the U.S. - would you relocate here?
I rest my case.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Pondering the Gene Pool
Our sixteen-year-old son makes me very proud. Yeah, sure, he can cop an attitude once in a while and I have to remind him to put his homework before gaming about once a week. He even refuses to take his laundry downstairs and throws his used Kleenex on the floor when his allergies are acting up. In this respect, he's a typical teenager. No big deal. Those things, I have decided, are mutable and I am the lowest common denominator in most of them. Which means, I am probably able to change them all with a bit more genuine effort.
When his baby sister was born, he had been the king of the roost for almost three-and-a-half years and was accustomed to being the centre of attention. Typical first-born. Then, along she came and, right from the get go, stole that spot light from him, by merit of her medical conditions. She was born with Down Syndrome and had some life-threatening issues, like septicemia, thick blood, elevated hemoglobin and the need for open heart surgery to correct a serious heart defect. Just a few days after she was born my husband and I were brought into a conference with her medical team. I had a chance to talk without interruption and told the team we wanted to have another child so our firstborn would not grow up to be selfish. I added, "I guess there's not much chance of that happening now." I meant it as a rather brave attempt at humour, but you could hear a pin drop.
And, I have to say, through it all, he has shown an amazing sense of awareness of the unspoken, as he has sailed through the ins and outs of his sister's special care needs over the years. Even before she was born, when my belly was big and made it hard for me to navigate, he would open car doors for me, in the absence of having been shown how to do that by his father or uncle, who lived with us during that period. Only once or twice has he ever voiced any suspicions of having been overlooked because of his sister's needs. And I am pretty sure it wasn't because he was shy about it, either. That just isn't his style. He's always been very transparent. If there was something wrong, he'd let us know, sooner or later. And, I might add, it wasn't like we were ideal parents, either. God knows we made loads of mistakes.
No, it had nothing to do with our being that picture perfect family. I won't try to delude anyone about that. It was simply that this young man has something really special going on inside him. Something undefinable, unique and unexpected. He knows things and he acts in accordance with that knowledge. He always has. Even as a toddler, whenever he met someone new, he would step back and we could almost see the wheels turning inside him as he sized up this stranger, whether it was a child or an adult. Whatever he said to them, once he came to any kind of conclusion, usually summed things up pretty astutely. It was uncanny. He nailed them every time. He seemed to have some kind of radar for what was going on inside people. Once, that ability mortified me when our new landlord approached him and he said, "Bad man," right to the man's face. We all laughed and I mumbled something about him watching a cartoon on television. As it turned out, the guy was stepping out on his wife. Who knew?
I have heard it suggested that all children have this ability to read people, to see through their subterfuge. But it has never left him over the years. If anything, it has gotten more finely tuned. Perhaps out of necessity.
When he was about eight years old, I took his sister and he and moved out of the household, for reasons I won't disclose here. We lived in another city about a 45 minute drive from the children's Dad. It was tough on all of us, but we adjusted, somehow. Each weekend, I drove the children to their Dad's house, where they stayed until first thing Monday morning and then it was back to my house for another week of school.
We did this for almost seven years. Then, with healing, we reconciled and remarried in 2010.
So our children have experienced some hardships. Through it all, I did my best to teach them, little by little, to be responsible for themselves; to be in tune and do their best to help themselves. It was all I had to give them and my circumstances, operating as a single mother with no family support, left me no choice but to do things this way. At the time, it felt like abandonment. But I knew it was the best thing for them so I persevered.
Yet I can't take credit for many of the characteristics I began to see developing in our son.
I'll give you an example of what I mean.
When he was about 10 or 11, he was dealing with some frustration that would lead to losing his temper.It happened on a regular basis, mostly because he has a mild learning disability which predisposes him to some confusion over abstract ideas. It wasn't too bad because he wasn't physically violent but he would get upset and then not have as much time to get his work done on that particular night. So, I realized he needed to learn to nip it in the bud. So I tried to explain it to him. He just listened, not saying too much.
Then, one night, I could see he was brewing something inside. All the signs were there. He was using words that indicated his frustration and I expected the inevitable. Then, nothing. Instead, he turned around and slowly walked upstairs. About fifteen minutes later, he came downstairs and apologized to me. I asked him where he had gone and why and he told me he had given himself a time out in his room until he could calm down and think.
I tell ya, I have never been so surprised and delighted. Who woulda thunk it?
Now, he's getting older, beginning to make plans for his life and, each time he reaches a new plateau of understanding and intimate insight about life and its ups and downs, I inwardly salute his strength of character and realize, truly, when we dedicated this young man into the care of God at a tender age, it was a very good decision. Because, despite the errors in judgement we have made over the years, he has, slowly but surely, shown by his actions and insights, that he is becoming a well-adjusted person with wisdom beyond his years. And I wonder, how did that happen and was he swapped at birth because I don't remember being the same way at his age. Nor does his father. Truly astounding.
Then I catch him teasing his sister, who tells him, "Be nice," and I remember, he is, after all, a teenager with foibles, shortcomings and growth pains.
Either way, he sure has taken us by storm.
Oh yeah, have I told you? I'm really proud of our son.
Comic Relief
The other day, having reached a point of no return with something, I blurted out, "Eep". Yes, you read it right the first time. Pronounced just as it is spelled.
Until that moment, I honestly thought nobody ever actually said it. I assumed it was something that had been made up by cartoonists, who had all gone to the same commercial art school. Birds of a feather and all that.
I was alone. Talking to myself. You know how it goes. You're on your fifteenth attempt to accomplish something and it just isn't happening. Steam is building up inside and you just want to let a bit of it vent. So, you let slip the first thing that comes to mind. I could have just as easily said, "crap", or some other mild expletive. I blushed slightly when I realized what I'd said, too. Not because it was "naughty" but because it just seemed so bizarre. It was like someone had taken possession of my mouth for a moment.
Then I chuckled. And I remembered.
You see, my father was a bathroom reader.
I grew up in a tiny little house in steel town, Nova Scotia. This tiny little house, like many of its kind, had only one bathroom, which was also tiny.
I'll try to give you a picture.
Once, my mother had to make arrangements to have the old, cracked sink replaced and I suggested she might want to consider having a cabinet installed under the new sink. But she told me there just wouldn't be room for it. And I realized she was right. Later, she asked a handyman about installing a fan and he told her to just open the window a crack, because it would not take long for such a small room to air itself out. Problem resolved. There was no room for the usual cleaning supplies or extra rolls of toilet paper, either. She kept them on a shelf over the basement stairs. Forget about a box of Kleenex. She told us to use some of the toilet paper, instead. And there weren't any towels except for the small hand towel to the left of the sink and the fancy pair over which my mother would spread her worn out shower cap, when we took a shower, to prevent them from getting wet. From a sitting position we could reach out and easily touch every wall.
To this cramped environment, at some point, my father introduced his collection of reading material.
My father, like many aging parents - I was born when he was well past forty - had, shall we say, "digestive" issues. Which translated into concerted effort and extended bathroom time for him. Somewhere along the way he discovered, with a fair amount of mental preparation, things went more smoothly; which came in the form of simple reading, involving simple reading material - his comic books. In particular, Archie or Sad Sack comics, with a couple of issues of Beetle Bailey thrown in for good measure. Understand, he bought these comics himself. He never borrowed, begged or stole any of my brother's or mine.
So, despite the lack of space in that bathroom,there were always at least a couple of them on the floor, next to the tub. Once "seated", I could rarely resist reading a few pages. It wasn't like there was much else to do.
Hence, my first exposure to the word, "Eep".
And there were others. Like "gadzooks", "peachy keen", "nifty" and the infamous "egad". All of which I have casually used when the occasion merited it. I justified their use with the fact they were real words.
But I never used "Eep". Mostly, I think, because I was never really convinced it was a real word and I am picky. If it ain't in the dictionary, it ain't comin' out of my mouth.
And there were even longer phrases I remembered. Like "Dilton Doiley's Down the Drain", which was from a story about Archie tutoring Moose in English grammar and the lesson of the day was on alliteration. I can still see Dilton peeping up through the manhole slot in the curb, while Archie tore around town, shouting the aforementioned, panic-struck sentence. Moose, having finally gotten the concept, complimented Archie on his superior use of the literary device. And Dilton remained in that drain. In response, Archie tore his hair out and said, "Eep."
Then there was the story from Sad Sack where our hero and his fellow soldiers were on bivouac in the wilds and it was raining. The cook was serving homemade soup and told them all to "take all they wanted but eat all they took". The scene pans to Sad Sack, sobbing over his bowl of soup, sitting in the rain. No matter how fast he supped, he could not seem to come to the end of that bowl of soup, as the rain kept refilling it.You guessed it. The story ended with him saying, "Eep."
Suffice to say, Dad probably read those comics hundreds of times and so did we.
I often wonder what would have happened if he had been interested in physics, investing or medical science.
Don't get me wrong. Outside my father's "reading room" I read earlier and more often than most children I knew. In fact, I was considered the smart nerd in my neighbourhood who withstood an onslaught of teasing because of it. I read everything I could get my hands on, from adult novels of questionable origin to a lot of the great classics of English literature. By the time I was 12, I was a regular at our city's library, going there after school, once a week, to get my latest tome. If memory serves me correctly, I retained, at least for a duration, a good deal of what I read, too, because I was always spouting some kind of non-essential stuff to my peers - hence, the torment I suffered at their hands.
So here we are, many years later. Dad is gone to that great bathroom in the sky - I really do hope they have some new editions of Archie up there for him - and I still read a lot of good material. My sixteen-year-old son has an uncanny interest in Archie and the gang - he owns a collection of digests he keeps on the top shelf of his desk in his bedroom but I haven't looked at them at all. Honest.
To top it off, I am a self-avowed word wonk. I am a journalist, editor and writer. I love how the parts of language all flow together; rhythm and sound evolving into symbols that bear relevance for us all.
And yet, what comes out at the point of my greatest frustration?
"Eep."
Until that moment, I honestly thought nobody ever actually said it. I assumed it was something that had been made up by cartoonists, who had all gone to the same commercial art school. Birds of a feather and all that.
I was alone. Talking to myself. You know how it goes. You're on your fifteenth attempt to accomplish something and it just isn't happening. Steam is building up inside and you just want to let a bit of it vent. So, you let slip the first thing that comes to mind. I could have just as easily said, "crap", or some other mild expletive. I blushed slightly when I realized what I'd said, too. Not because it was "naughty" but because it just seemed so bizarre. It was like someone had taken possession of my mouth for a moment.
Then I chuckled. And I remembered.
You see, my father was a bathroom reader.
I grew up in a tiny little house in steel town, Nova Scotia. This tiny little house, like many of its kind, had only one bathroom, which was also tiny.
I'll try to give you a picture.
Once, my mother had to make arrangements to have the old, cracked sink replaced and I suggested she might want to consider having a cabinet installed under the new sink. But she told me there just wouldn't be room for it. And I realized she was right. Later, she asked a handyman about installing a fan and he told her to just open the window a crack, because it would not take long for such a small room to air itself out. Problem resolved. There was no room for the usual cleaning supplies or extra rolls of toilet paper, either. She kept them on a shelf over the basement stairs. Forget about a box of Kleenex. She told us to use some of the toilet paper, instead. And there weren't any towels except for the small hand towel to the left of the sink and the fancy pair over which my mother would spread her worn out shower cap, when we took a shower, to prevent them from getting wet. From a sitting position we could reach out and easily touch every wall.
To this cramped environment, at some point, my father introduced his collection of reading material.
My father, like many aging parents - I was born when he was well past forty - had, shall we say, "digestive" issues. Which translated into concerted effort and extended bathroom time for him. Somewhere along the way he discovered, with a fair amount of mental preparation, things went more smoothly; which came in the form of simple reading, involving simple reading material - his comic books. In particular, Archie or Sad Sack comics, with a couple of issues of Beetle Bailey thrown in for good measure. Understand, he bought these comics himself. He never borrowed, begged or stole any of my brother's or mine.
So, despite the lack of space in that bathroom,there were always at least a couple of them on the floor, next to the tub. Once "seated", I could rarely resist reading a few pages. It wasn't like there was much else to do.
Hence, my first exposure to the word, "Eep".
And there were others. Like "gadzooks", "peachy keen", "nifty" and the infamous "egad". All of which I have casually used when the occasion merited it. I justified their use with the fact they were real words.
But I never used "Eep". Mostly, I think, because I was never really convinced it was a real word and I am picky. If it ain't in the dictionary, it ain't comin' out of my mouth.
And there were even longer phrases I remembered. Like "Dilton Doiley's Down the Drain", which was from a story about Archie tutoring Moose in English grammar and the lesson of the day was on alliteration. I can still see Dilton peeping up through the manhole slot in the curb, while Archie tore around town, shouting the aforementioned, panic-struck sentence. Moose, having finally gotten the concept, complimented Archie on his superior use of the literary device. And Dilton remained in that drain. In response, Archie tore his hair out and said, "Eep."
Then there was the story from Sad Sack where our hero and his fellow soldiers were on bivouac in the wilds and it was raining. The cook was serving homemade soup and told them all to "take all they wanted but eat all they took". The scene pans to Sad Sack, sobbing over his bowl of soup, sitting in the rain. No matter how fast he supped, he could not seem to come to the end of that bowl of soup, as the rain kept refilling it.You guessed it. The story ended with him saying, "Eep."
Suffice to say, Dad probably read those comics hundreds of times and so did we.
I often wonder what would have happened if he had been interested in physics, investing or medical science.
Don't get me wrong. Outside my father's "reading room" I read earlier and more often than most children I knew. In fact, I was considered the smart nerd in my neighbourhood who withstood an onslaught of teasing because of it. I read everything I could get my hands on, from adult novels of questionable origin to a lot of the great classics of English literature. By the time I was 12, I was a regular at our city's library, going there after school, once a week, to get my latest tome. If memory serves me correctly, I retained, at least for a duration, a good deal of what I read, too, because I was always spouting some kind of non-essential stuff to my peers - hence, the torment I suffered at their hands.
So here we are, many years later. Dad is gone to that great bathroom in the sky - I really do hope they have some new editions of Archie up there for him - and I still read a lot of good material. My sixteen-year-old son has an uncanny interest in Archie and the gang - he owns a collection of digests he keeps on the top shelf of his desk in his bedroom but I haven't looked at them at all. Honest.
To top it off, I am a self-avowed word wonk. I am a journalist, editor and writer. I love how the parts of language all flow together; rhythm and sound evolving into symbols that bear relevance for us all.
And yet, what comes out at the point of my greatest frustration?
"Eep."
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Referendum Rant or Making It Clear For My Yankee Friends
One of the most challenging topics of conversation for me when I was discussing Canadian culture with Americans on my frequent visits to the Pacific Northwest was trying to explain why and how English and French Canada became two distinct nations within one. Needless to say, describing the subtleties of the relationship the two cultures had with each other often seemed beyond even my talkative bent.
But it never stopped me from trying.
I'd usually begin with a history lesson; Americans are big on all things militant, so I'd usually hold their collective attention whenever I'd do that; you know, talking about how the French held Fortress Louisbourg in Cape Breton, then the English had it, then the French and finally the English - then I'd usually go on to explain that was how things went down in Maritime Canada. It had been different in what we formerly referred to as Upper and Lower Canada, which are now Ontario and Quebec provinces, respectfully. At this point, I usually got smiles and often, totally baffling responsive comments like, "Well, the French are like that. Look what they did after 9/11?" and other hugely unrelated stuff.
But at least, it was tragically clear they were, at least, trying.
Generally, when the listeners reached this point of total misunderstanding - which I classified up there with telling me they had visited Canada once before, whenever I told them I was from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada and wasn't that near Vancouver? What's more, they REALLY liked Canadians! They were REALLY nice!! - I would notice my teeth begin this autonomic grinding. And then I would start this eye blinking I just couldn't get a handle on. Have you ever been with someone who was blinking rapidly? It is most disconcerting and leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that they would much rather be interrogated in the Spanish inquisition than be present with you.
Being the polite, accommodating Canuck that I am, I hesitate to leave anyone with this impression so I searched, high and low, for a solution to my dilemma.
I had learned, in short order, to make the connection for this bunch it was going to take more than a few history lessons and quotes from General Montcalm. For awhile I was really mystified about how, exactly, to accomplish this, until I fell upon the solution - quite by accident.
At this juncture, I want to make it perfectly clear that I did not blame my Yankee friends at all. I understood there were huge cultural and sociopolitical reasons these folks would never understand what I tried, over and over, to convey and failed so miserably at. But they really did try to grasp it all with genuine enthusiasm. It just seemed so impossible. Short of sharing whole chapters of detailed history books, I knew it was a losing battle. Like explaining light to someone who was blind, or the concept of budgeting to Paris Hilton. It was hopelessly pointless and I knew it.
Just for the record, though, I want to reiterate, I have NEVER been so affably misunderstood. I guess that was what made me keep trying.
In the meanwhile, until I discovered how to get through to them, I would usually smile sweetly and move on to easier topics like barbecue recipes or Obama's popularity or lack of it, depending on who I was conversing with.
Then, out of the blue one time, I remembered something from my first years married to my husband. Something that brought the relevance all back to my cultural exposes and with which no American could respond by regaling some personal irrelevant experience or fact about U.S. federal policy. It became, please excuse my French, my piece de resistance - as cliche as that sounds.
(I wonder if the ironic use of those last two phrases will be lost on anyone but my Canadian readers?...)
And here is what I recalled.
My husband's mother was born and raised in Shawinigan, Quebec. In French Canada, being French Canadian, of course. Incidentally, which is, for those of us in the know, the same Shawinigan in which resided the illustrious family of one of our former Liberal Prime Ministers, Jean Chretien and a few professional hockey players, if memory serves me correctly. In fact, one of my mother-in-law's sisters had dated one of his brothers, but, as she told it, the young lady actually had her eye on Jean. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you are on, he never asked her out and so ended that fine tale.
Apparently my mother-in-law was not infected by the same Liberal virus while growing up alongside the Chretiens and, like many of her thinking Francophone peers, she developed a nationalistic bent. Which was understandable. Having traveled several times to her other sister's abode and heard the honest stories of how the English land and business owners lorded it over the poorer, struggling French Canadian labourers in the days of their childhood, I could empathize. I grew up in Cape Breton and learned how blue collar workers were downtrodden by those who ran industry, including in the coal mines and at the Steel Plant in Sydney.
But remember, I was trying to find a simple, yet delicate way of explaining the French/English conflict back home to Americans who hadn't a clue. So this is how my memory served me well.
It seems to me that during Chretien's last years in office, which coincided with the early years of my marriage to my husband, a provincial vote was taken, called a referendum, in Quebec, on behalf of residents, to decide whether the province would declare itself a nation and separate from Canada. And for those of you in my readership who either grew up in Canada or are still here, this is not news for us, as there had been several other votes of this nature taken previously, which culminated in the government of Canada granting special benefits to the province of Quebec in exchange for that province staying in Confederation.
One day, just before the vote was to take place, I had a short but telling conversation with my mother-in-law, who had moved with her English-speaking husband to the Maritime provinces some years earlier, but who had, very much, kept her ear to the ground when it came to all things Quebecois. I had to admire her tenacity and cultural loyalty.
I asked her how she thought the vote would go and she shrugged her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her words gave me succinct ammunition, south of the border, whenever the urge overcame me to educate my American friends on Canadian cultural diversity, for some time after.
And that was this:
"I am sad to say that some of the young separatists in Montreal really want to separate." Emphasis on the word, "really".
I think it speaks for itself.
But it never stopped me from trying.
I'd usually begin with a history lesson; Americans are big on all things militant, so I'd usually hold their collective attention whenever I'd do that; you know, talking about how the French held Fortress Louisbourg in Cape Breton, then the English had it, then the French and finally the English - then I'd usually go on to explain that was how things went down in Maritime Canada. It had been different in what we formerly referred to as Upper and Lower Canada, which are now Ontario and Quebec provinces, respectfully. At this point, I usually got smiles and often, totally baffling responsive comments like, "Well, the French are like that. Look what they did after 9/11?" and other hugely unrelated stuff.
But at least, it was tragically clear they were, at least, trying.
Generally, when the listeners reached this point of total misunderstanding - which I classified up there with telling me they had visited Canada once before, whenever I told them I was from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada and wasn't that near Vancouver? What's more, they REALLY liked Canadians! They were REALLY nice!! - I would notice my teeth begin this autonomic grinding. And then I would start this eye blinking I just couldn't get a handle on. Have you ever been with someone who was blinking rapidly? It is most disconcerting and leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that they would much rather be interrogated in the Spanish inquisition than be present with you.
Being the polite, accommodating Canuck that I am, I hesitate to leave anyone with this impression so I searched, high and low, for a solution to my dilemma.
I had learned, in short order, to make the connection for this bunch it was going to take more than a few history lessons and quotes from General Montcalm. For awhile I was really mystified about how, exactly, to accomplish this, until I fell upon the solution - quite by accident.
At this juncture, I want to make it perfectly clear that I did not blame my Yankee friends at all. I understood there were huge cultural and sociopolitical reasons these folks would never understand what I tried, over and over, to convey and failed so miserably at. But they really did try to grasp it all with genuine enthusiasm. It just seemed so impossible. Short of sharing whole chapters of detailed history books, I knew it was a losing battle. Like explaining light to someone who was blind, or the concept of budgeting to Paris Hilton. It was hopelessly pointless and I knew it.
Just for the record, though, I want to reiterate, I have NEVER been so affably misunderstood. I guess that was what made me keep trying.
In the meanwhile, until I discovered how to get through to them, I would usually smile sweetly and move on to easier topics like barbecue recipes or Obama's popularity or lack of it, depending on who I was conversing with.
Then, out of the blue one time, I remembered something from my first years married to my husband. Something that brought the relevance all back to my cultural exposes and with which no American could respond by regaling some personal irrelevant experience or fact about U.S. federal policy. It became, please excuse my French, my piece de resistance - as cliche as that sounds.
(I wonder if the ironic use of those last two phrases will be lost on anyone but my Canadian readers?...)
And here is what I recalled.
My husband's mother was born and raised in Shawinigan, Quebec. In French Canada, being French Canadian, of course. Incidentally, which is, for those of us in the know, the same Shawinigan in which resided the illustrious family of one of our former Liberal Prime Ministers, Jean Chretien and a few professional hockey players, if memory serves me correctly. In fact, one of my mother-in-law's sisters had dated one of his brothers, but, as she told it, the young lady actually had her eye on Jean. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you are on, he never asked her out and so ended that fine tale.
Apparently my mother-in-law was not infected by the same Liberal virus while growing up alongside the Chretiens and, like many of her thinking Francophone peers, she developed a nationalistic bent. Which was understandable. Having traveled several times to her other sister's abode and heard the honest stories of how the English land and business owners lorded it over the poorer, struggling French Canadian labourers in the days of their childhood, I could empathize. I grew up in Cape Breton and learned how blue collar workers were downtrodden by those who ran industry, including in the coal mines and at the Steel Plant in Sydney.
But remember, I was trying to find a simple, yet delicate way of explaining the French/English conflict back home to Americans who hadn't a clue. So this is how my memory served me well.
It seems to me that during Chretien's last years in office, which coincided with the early years of my marriage to my husband, a provincial vote was taken, called a referendum, in Quebec, on behalf of residents, to decide whether the province would declare itself a nation and separate from Canada. And for those of you in my readership who either grew up in Canada or are still here, this is not news for us, as there had been several other votes of this nature taken previously, which culminated in the government of Canada granting special benefits to the province of Quebec in exchange for that province staying in Confederation.
One day, just before the vote was to take place, I had a short but telling conversation with my mother-in-law, who had moved with her English-speaking husband to the Maritime provinces some years earlier, but who had, very much, kept her ear to the ground when it came to all things Quebecois. I had to admire her tenacity and cultural loyalty.
I asked her how she thought the vote would go and she shrugged her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her words gave me succinct ammunition, south of the border, whenever the urge overcame me to educate my American friends on Canadian cultural diversity, for some time after.
And that was this:
"I am sad to say that some of the young separatists in Montreal really want to separate." Emphasis on the word, "really".
I think it speaks for itself.
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