Last night I was at my grandmother’s tiny, hot house in the small prairie town. The boys were with me, and we were looking through some of the treasures she’s kept for half a century. I had a damp cloth with me and would take to spontaneously washing walls or baseboards or chair-rails.
The air was stifling, and I sent the children out of doors where I could hear them squealing and laughing. Inside, there was no laughter. So many years of our lives lie trapped within walls. Our voices, reverberating there for generations, our conversations played out again and again for all time. Even so, I could not hear Gramps’ voice. He does not visit me.
I could hear only the harsh and cruel things my grandmother had said. The task of going through her prized possessions became a vicious quest to find something she had wished hidden, not to reveal it but to destroy it. Your ghost appeared at the bedroom door to ask what I was doing. I held up a gold ring with rubies inset and said, “finding things that held meaning only in that they were things”.
He said, “you probably shouldn’t be snooping in your grandmother’s things.”
“Now, or later,” I replied, “it makes little difference. These will still be the symbols of what gave her life meaning, since it wasn’t the people who have loved her.”
He shook his head and left the room. I closed the drawer. As I walked through the living room I saw that water was dripping through the ceiling. Knowing there were no eaves there, that it must be the pipes, I told the boys to fetch my Da, while His Nibs and I collected pails for the drips. A dozen pails later, my father arrived, cursing. I offered to turn off the water at the main, fearing the pipes were about to burst. Da nodded and began to survey the damage, which was extensive.
In the basement, I inched past an ancient boiler that has never existed. I shut it off first, the water main was further into the murk of a basement that does not match my grandmother’s house.
That was it. I dreamt of rummaging through my grandmother’s things and of turning off her water. WWJS?*
*that’s “What Would Jung Say?”. Not Jesus. Jesus hasn’t done dream interpretation since the sixties.
You’re going to get sick of seeing this, and I apologise. I don’t normally launch one-woman campaigns like this, but this one is an exception, I think.
When The Captain was in third grade, his class went on a school trip to the Motherwell Homestead. It may be a notable excursion in that I was a) not asked to leave the tour, and b) not in need of air-lift rescue. Also, both of my children returned intact, and stitchless (Stitchface, aka The Nipper, also came along with us).
The Motherwell Homestead is important for a number of reasons. First, it’s been declared a National Historic Site. That’s pretty important. Second, it is one of the oldest working farms in Canada. Certainly one of the oldest in western Canada. And by ‘oldest working farm’ here, I mean ‘oldest working farm that’s working in the same way it was working over a hundred years ago’.
So the Federal Government, in its infinite wisdom (/* <– sarcasm arm) has decided to severely reduce Heritage and Museums Canada funding. Because nothing says “we value our people” more than forgetting their histories, heritage, and stories. Anyway. One of the results of this asinine decision is that the people at Parks Canada who do the budgeting want to axe the educational programming at the Motherwell Homestead.
What does that mean?
Well, if you haven’t been to Motherwell, I’ll just list the things that will probably be gone should this decision go through:
1) The Working Horse program – the Motherwell Homestead includes a farm that is worked the way our great-grandparents would have worked their farms in the 19th century. With horse-drawn ploughs, threshing machines, and hay carts.
2) Interpretive employees – the people who work at Motherwell all wear period costumes and learn the history of life on a pioneer homestead. They show kids the toys that the kids of the 1800s would have played with on the farm (the tug-of-war between ALL OF THE KIDS and me was awesome…and watching a bunch of nine year olds trying to carry eggs on spoons had me cracking up).
3) The farm itself – I don’t know, but I suspect the horses will be gone, the cows they use for demonstrations (kids can learn to milk cows). The pigs will be gone, the chickens will be gone, and, probably, the amazing garden will be gone. They use the produce from the garden in the restaurant and at local farmers’ markets. They use the eggs in the restaurant. They probably use the pigs in the restaurant too…
4) An important piece of history and of our provincial heritage will be lost. The proposal is to produce a self-guided tour. With no one in period costume. With no hands-on exhibits. With no “pioneer experience”. With no smell of horses and demonstration of how to saddle a horse. With no PEOPLE.
History is the story of what has gone before. It is the story of the past. Heritage is the story of our PEOPLE. It is the story of where we have come from, who we were, how we lived, how we worked, how we died. Heritage is the tale passed down at every kitchen table about the time Uncle fell in the slop bucket and ended up sleeping with the pigs. It is the story about the women in the parlour who had to stay on one side of the curtain because women and men did not sit together after dinner. It is the connexions between us and among us. Heritage is where we have been, and that plays a big part in who we are now and where we are going.
“Guess what this was used for?” Won’t be something asked by a self-guided walking tour. You won’t see thirty wide-eyed children (and nine bored little pishers off in the corner trying to catch flies off the windowsill) all trying to answer at once. You won’t take home quilted swatches (another thing the staff at the Motherwell Homestead do – they teach quilting and, I think, baking). You won’t take home jars of Homestead honey or sandwiches made from wheat harvested *by hand* on a pioneer farm.
Think about this. Please think about signing this petition. Don’t let the federal government tell us that our heritage isn’t important enough to have people tell the stories to teach us.
Here is the petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/enironment-canada-parks-canada-maintain-the-historical-integrity-of-the-motherwell-n-h-s#
As this is something that has come up in discussion more than twice in the past week, I choose to believe the universe is conspiring to get me to post about it on my bournal. The universe works in mysterious ways, don’t you know. I am privy to none of them, but choose instead to make wild assumptions based on oddly-arrived at hypotheses.
Sometimes, we treat one another very poorly indeed. What is interesting is that most of the time, it is those closest to us with whom we are short-tempered and sharp-tongued. My crackpot hypothesis here is that this is because the people with whom we choose to spend our lives are the “safest”. We are not afraid to say or do things because we know (or we think we know) that those who love us properly will *always* love us, and will take the horrid little bits of coal with all of the wonderful diamonds that shine in our personalities.
I don’t think that’s *quite* a safe assumption. There is only so much crud we can take before we decide that it’s not that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but that there actually IS grass on the other side of the fence and we’ve been standing ankle-deep in pig manure for far too long. We may never get that smell out of our toenails.
I am the worst for this. You may not know this, but I have a wicked temper. When I get mad, monks in China weep. They write about my outbursts in the sports section of Russian newspapers. Small animals spontaneously combust. It’s…it’s not pretty. And, because I am a horrible person, my family bears the brunt of it. Now, like fireworks, I spark quickly and burn fast, and then there’s a bit of fallout. I’m not much of a smoulderer. I don’t *seethe* well.
It’s not an easy thing to learn to do (not lose my cool, I mean, not learn to be a better seether. Which is to say “learning not to lose my cool is a difficult task” and not “I wish I could be more proficient at seething”), and I suspect it will be a lifelong endeavour. When I was young, my mother and I got into these great, vicious, screaming fights that would last, on and off, for DAYS. She trained me well, I guess. And so now, the challenge is to un-learn all of those ‘first responses’.
I do think we take one another for granted. Most of us seem to have this idea that things will always be “this way”, when in reality, friends grow apart. Romances break up. Marriages crumble. I guess sometimes it’s because people change. Other times, it’s because they don’t change. I really don’t think ‘why’ matters. I think what matters is this: it is our *duty* to one another to be better. Not to be the best. To be better.
So I’m going to do my damnedest to be better. Especially when it’s “safe” not to be. Because those times, I think, are the most important.
We had just moved to a new apartment. You suggested we have our friend Smarty Pants over, with his Very Clever family. We also had the Screeching Girl and her sister The Tank. Everything was going well, for a while.
In putting a jacket away in the closet, I noticed rather a lot of …stuff inside the cold air return, which had been partially obscured by little running shoes. Rather than point this out to you, I lifted the grate and peered inside. There was a whole room down there.
Much to your distaste, I told the girls about this secret room – it was full of girls’ toys from the previous tenants. It was both exciting and deeply disturbing to find a playroom under the floorboards. The Tank hopped down and began poking through the toys that had been left there. She shot me a sidelong glance and wandered off when she didn’t find anything to her taste.
The Nipper came down next, and tore around the ever-expanding room like a banshee. I looked around myself, and realised it was a whole other apartment but it was the sort of place that must have been boarded up for years.
The linoleum was lifting and curling; the walls had begun to crumble, and there was discarded furniture and clothing and probably some trash as well. The room felt like a lonely and defeated man. I told the children to go no further than the well-kept carpeted area, and everyone but The Nipper listened. Of course.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and, ignoring his excuses, calmly and patiently explained that demons and monsters lived in the places the light from the small fixture in the under-grate room could not reach. I don’t think it was a lie, either, because I could hear something breathing out there, and it was a wet, rasping sound, as if someone were dragging a burlap sack full of bolts through new sod.
The Nipper wasn’t happy with the rule, but he complied when he heard that breathing. The Tank wanted a toy she could see in the half-darkened hall, but Smarty Pants and I glanced dubiously at one another and suggested perhaps another toy would be more prudent.
You walked away from me when we all surfaced. Without another word, you simply turned your back and walked away. I had the sense that you would not be back, and I woke missing you intensely.
I was going to make this whole big post that talked about how our platonic and romantic relationships can be seen and evaluated like any other system, and then I was going to break down the meanings of a few words in relation to such systems, but then I read that there is an entire field of sociology/anthropology/neuroscience/cognitive science that already does this. So, um. I guess I have a lot to read.
And here I thought I was being *clever*.
It was a good post, though.
You and I were on a video conference when, of a sudden, you stopped talking to me. Your face peered out from my computer screen, but you said nothing. I tried to draw you into conversation but there was nothing you were willing to say. You ended our chat without saying goodbye. Probably for the best, because I am not good at goodbyes.
But I decided to go to your flat, which had been renovated fairly recently. I showed up at your door dripping from walking through rain or snow. Or perhaps I was covered in blood. You stared at me, shocked that I’d come all that way just to see you.
“I love you,” I’d said. “I’m worried about you. You won’t talk to me.”
You shook your head, a very slight trace of a smile on your mouth. I left my clothes outside the lavatory door while I let hot water wash down over me in the shower. When I was done, you had left a thick bathrobe that smelled like you, hanging on the back of the door.
In the front room, you were watching Sherlock, and I sat on the wide chesterfield beside you. You took my hand in yours and asked me quietly how I was doing.
“Like I said,” I told you, “I’m worried about you.”
You smiled then, but your eyes were sad. You told me you hadn’t much to say anymore, and that made me sad. I felt my heart in my throat. The door opened and your brother jogged up the stairs. The brother you don’t have. His hair was red, and he was lean and very young. You introduced him as John, and he glared at me on his way into the dining room with a bowl and a box of cereal an a carton of milk.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “I’m wearing his robe because my clothes were …unwearable, and not because I’ve been with him in the bedroom up the hall.”
John smiled, and started in on his cereal. I began talking about the car accident, and you put your arm around my shoulders and drew me close to you. I could smell your aftershave – a spicy, soapy smell, on your collar.
The door banged open again, and when the well-muscled, slightly younger version of you popped his head into the front room, you introduced your brother Peter. You said he was the best-looking of your brothers, but I thought his eyes, when compared with yours, looked cruel. Hard. Unforgiving.
Peter didn’t say much to me either. From the dining room, John announced that you and I hadn’t been shagging, but that I had needed a shower and yours was the only one available to me. Peter didn’t say anything to me, but he looked you in the eye and said, “I thought you’d learned your lesson”.
His words cut you; I could tell. I bristled and was about to speak when you put your hand on my forearm and whispered “it’s just what he’s like. Forgive him.”
“It’s not me he’s wronged,” I said. “or should that be ‘it isn’t I he has wronged’? …I am not inconvenienced by his words.”
That was when you laughed. You kissed my forehead, and I thought everything would be all right. Even when the neighbour girl knocked on the door to ask for milk and we realised she was locked in the flat most days, your eyes had brightened and there was renewed energy in your step. But you were still strangely quiet.
I wondered if you wanted me to try at all.
I guess some people think it’s pretty. But I think it’s a death trap.
I spent the half hour before the kids got away to school going through the letters I have in my little Tin of Letters that I have hauled with me through dozens of moves, through dozens of years. Most of these are letters or notes I received from the first boy I fell in love with. Many of them are heartbreaking, because I know how the story ends.
I found myself wondering whether he kept any of the notes or letters I wrote him. I long to know what I told him. As I read his words, I remembered some of what was happening in my life then. It was terrible. And he was amazing. He probably still is.
Something that struck me like a lead hammer to the sternum was how mature he was, at sixteen. How he knew who he was, and how the insights he had into the way things worked in the Really Real world were, for the most part, spot-on. I should have listened to him.
One letter in particular…one letter. Apparently I had asked him to tell me what he was thinking. I had asked him to give me his opinion. I don’t know if this was when we had broken things off or if it was when we were still together or trying things out again…but he lay bare everything that had happened, and he didn’t pull any punches. I always have admired him for what he had the balls to say to me, none of which was very nice, and all of which was accurate and true. He hit the nail on the head. Many, many times.
He wrote about how I was selfish and uncaring. How I treated him, and others around me, like shit. How I used him. How I manipulated situations, and people, to get what I wanted.
I remember reading that letter for the first time, and feeling like I’d been slapped in the face. Not because I didn’t think anyone would figure it out, but because I hadn’t realised the ways in which my actions had affected other people. Because he knew things about me I didn’t know. Or wouldn’t acknowledge. Or couldn’t see. Or whatever. Now, re-reading that letter from more than 20 years ago, it became very clear to me that many of the criticisms he launched against me are probably still very much a part of my personality. Maybe not so much the manipulation, although I’m sure I do that too (I really, really try hard not to, though. I prefer to be forthright about my motivations and my intent), and not so much using people (I don’t think I do that any more).
What I think is still a very concise criticism is that I come across as being a know-it-all. I don’t mean to. I really don’t. I don’t know how I keep getting myself wrapped up in this one, but it has been something I have been told by more than one person. By more than one former lover, in fact.
It is true that many times…most of the time, most likely, people dislike discussing things with me because I am unwilling to accept that I don’t know all the facts. I don’t really know how to get away from this. I *don’t* know all the facts. And I *know* I don’t know all the facts. Maybe I need to focus more on asking questions, rather than talk out of my arse. Maybe I need to be more clear that when I say “this is how I think things are”, what I really mean is “this is how I think things are” and not “this is what I know to be true”. Perhaps my hypotheses are based on incorrect assumptions. That’s a fairly safe statement to make, in fact.
I don’t *think* I’m unwilling to listen. I don’t *think* I’m unwilling to accept other perspectives. But maybe I am. Maybe the reason I don’t like getting in to debates is because I don’t really like to be challenged. Someone once said that I am a control freak. I don’t think I am, but maybe I’m wrong about that. I do have control issues about *some* things. I don’t like group projects, for instance, because I have no way of …well… controlling what someone else does. And if it’s my butt on the line, I like to make sure that my butt is well covered. I don’t like depending on other people to cover my butt.
That could be part of it, here. I have issues being dependent on others. This is probably, the head-shrinkers would say, at least in part a result of being the child of an addict. Because I have very little practice with depending on others. Because I have been let down many, many times, and there are only so many times you can kick a puppy before he turns around and bites you. You know this about me already. I don’t know that that makes me a control freak. It does make me viciously independent. Maybe those are the same thing.
But at sixteen, I was still just a kid. And the young man I had fallen in love with was far too good for me, I think. Reading his words this morning made me want to slap myself in the face and tell myself to smarten the fuck up. I wanted to, as Bne did that one time, phone myself in the 80s and tell myself that I was about to make a huge mistake. Several times. The long-distance charges on time-travel communications must be ridiculous, but maybe it would be worth it.
Maybe I do have regrets. I do regret the way I acted with him. I regret how much I hurt him, and how much my actions ended up hurting myself. I don’t regret the outcome of all of that, because it did help me to figure out a lot of stuff about who I was, about who I wanted to be, about what love is and about what love isn’t. It helped me to realise what I *didn’t* want, and even though I wouldn’t find out what I *did* want for another eleven years, there is something to be said for ruling out some of your options.
I feel a bit sorry for the young man I went with after my first love and I broke things off for good. He never did measure up. He couldn’t. He didn’t have my heart.
I hadn’t expected to get into a fight with Silent Winged Coyote. It just kind of happened that way. He was upset with me, though, because I kept beating him on all the games of chance. It was uncanny, really. Statistically, he ought to have won the challenge, but I rolled a six, and he couldn’t manage to make anything happen on his rerolls. Then he got Very Upset with me when he learned that the weapon I was using (a Very Special Knife) did more damage than he assumed it would. Kind of “I’ve just killed you with one hit” sort of thing. So I healed him enough that he wouldn’t bleed out, and I left the room.
I went to find my family. I told them what had happened. I don’t remember now what had prompted the fracas. I think it had something to do with him threatening me, and me deciding to stand up for myself. I was playing a character that was a sort of mix of one of my favourite characters and one I haven’t played yet but about whom I’ve thought about quite a lot.
Then came the part where SWC’s King announced that the Codex had been breached. That I needed to be punished because I had broken the rules. The King (played by Shoulder Boy) was vehement about this violation. The White King (played by someone I haven’t met, a lovely young woman with white-blond hair) was curiously silent about the issue. I stood and defended my actions.
“I did not break the Codex,” I said, and my voice rang out through the room (which was a kind of theatre in the round, with high-rising platforms circling it on three sides). Everyone stopped and turned their faces in my direction. I hadn’t spoken to anyone but my family before this.
“You attacked this man outside of honourable combat,” the Black King challenged.
“Yes, I did,” I said. “Has the Black King forgotten that the Commandment states that we shall not *kill* one another outside of honourable combat?” The room was silent. “Have all of us forgotten that Commandment? I did not kill that man. In fact, I *healed* him. *He* threatened *me*. Would you rather I allow myself to be berated, threatened, and browbeaten? Would you rather I allow this man to weaken my resolve? I abhor violence, but recognise it is the only language some of us understand.”
“For someone who abhors violence, you seem to know how to use it quite well. Unprovoked, it would seem. Witnesses say you struck first.”
“This is both correct and incorrect. I struck the only physical blow. And I prevented him from dying. I did not wish to kill this man. And I understand that my actions will lead only to his drawing out this conflagration into a true vendetta. I will have to live the rest of my life knowing that that man,” I pointed at SWC’s pale and motionless body lying limp on the floor at the Black King’s feet. I had healed his most grievous, life-threatening wound, but had left the rest of them to knit on their own. “Will now go out of his way to cause harm and dissonance to me and to those close to me. This is my punishment. This, and the knowledge I carry of what I have done.”
“I think I get to dole out the punishments around here, sweetheart,” the Black King said.
The White King stood forward. Her voice was high, pure, and musical. “That language is not appropriate. You do *not* get to dole out the punishments around here.”
The Black King flushed. “Quite right. WE get to dole out the punishments around here, and it’s my position that your pet there needs a leash and ought to be swatted with a rolled up newspaper.”
“That is quite enough,” the White King stated with finality. “The Codex has not been broken. There will be no further discussion of punishment for this one,” she said, gesturing toward me.
The venue then moved to a version of the Royal Alberta Museum which has never existed. But I wish it did. Like a blend between the Parliament buildings and the British Museum, it had grand marble staircases and velvet curtains cordoning off enormous rooms full of tapestries and artworks. It was closed for the evening, and Rico Suave was the head of after-hours security, so he’d got us all clearance to be there.
I spent the rest of the evening mostly in an alternate incarnation, listening, padding through the halls, and slipping into the spaces between places. I was to find out everything I could about what dangers we would be facing, and report those back to my siblings, one of whom was the Bishop.
I woke longing for that game, for that venue, and for that character.
