Dyslexic?

Have you ever pondered your state of mind?

I have. I’m not questioning my sanity, far from it; I wonder whether I’m actually dyslexic. I never have before. I’d heard the usual presumptions that dyslexics see words or letters backwards, that words slide around or fly off the page for them, and thought, that’s not me. But I’d also wondered how people can read certain books in a few hours that might take me a week to complete. The easy answer to this is that I’m stupid.

That, I’m pretty sure, is not the case. I’m not saying that I’m a genius. I’m sure I’m not. But, as noted, I’m not a fast reader. I read at a speaking pace. Slower, in fact. I sometimes get stuck. I sometimes have to read a single word more than a few times, a sentence or passage repeatedly, and sometimes I lose my train of thought or understanding and have to reread a sentence, a paragraph, a page all over again, realising that I’ve merely been reading singular words or syllables for a while, with no clue how they relate to one another, or what they might mean. Indeed, reading has always been a struggle. I was placed in “special reading class” in early grades, still deciphering picture books with “See John run” in large print while my classmates were constructing sentences. It goes without saying that I did believe I was stupid. But, once my parents heeded the advice of my school’s principal that I had begun school too young and needed to be held back, I progressed well thereafter. I was not head of the class, but I was thereafter not the dumb kid.

This is not to say that reading did not continue to be a struggle. It remained troublesome. I therefore did not become a reader until much later. Since then, I’ve been an avid and voracious reader. If slow.

So, when did I first wonder whether I might be dyslexic? Not until this year. Am I truly, though? I do not know for sure, and I suspect I will never will, as I will never be tested. It matters not a whit whether I am or not. It’s not like I will never change. Prose excites me. Poetry inspires me. But some of it mystifies me, regardless how much I read, no matter how “advanced” a reader I believe myself to be. Some of it remains perplexing, even indecipherable. Online sources are a blessing then. Let’s call them modern-day “Coles Notes” and be thankful they exist, otherwise works by the like of Allan Ginsberg might forever remain a mystery.

Reading and writing are a skill and must be exercised lest they atrophy. I exercise my mental muscle in that regard every day. If you’ve read either of my blogs with any regularity you might already know that. That said, I do not post every day, either. Reading and writing can be exhausting. But it is also my most cherished skill, too. I suppose that is because it is the one most hard come by.

A Cry for Help

I was lonely, despite being married. What friends I had were not a support. In fact, they hardly seemed like friends at all. They only spoke to me when I sought them out, and in my mind, they only spoke to me when I initiated conversation. They never did. They never called. They never initiated get-togethers. What invitations I received only came when I sought them out and asked what they were doing Friday night. No one seemed particularly pleased to see me. Ever. That takes a toll on a person.

I was becoming perpetually sad. Long years prior, I was jokingly called Smiling Dave. I’m not sure if that was a dis; it may have been, considering the people who’d strapped me with it. No matter, I had friends then, and if those others didn’t like me, they could go fuck themselves, as far as I was concerned. But not being liked grated on me, too. But times had changed. I didn’t have close friends anymore. Not that I could see. My armor had gaps. I was becoming vulnerable. And sad.

I’d been sad for a long time. I was aware that I was, too. I was irritated by the slightest thing and would fly into a rage. I would scream “Why me?” at the world. And, “Why does this always happen to me?” Not that bad things happened to me, it’s just that I became easily flustered and impatient with whatever I’d happen to be doing. My mood swung to black without warning and I’d find myself in a funk that might last for days, if not weeks. It got so bad that I had a difficult time getting out of bed. I couldn’t seem to get through the door in time to make it to work on time. And when I was at work, I was just as prone to having a fit as not, maybe more so. Stress, and all that.

I decided it was time to talk to someone about it. I chose Lynn, a nurse at work. I’d known Lynn for years and I’d always found her to be a kind soul. She was as good a person to talk to, as any; even better, she was a nurse, and bound to some level of confidentiality, I assumed. In fact, I was counting on that. But it was still hard to come out and ask, “Do we have any literature about depression I can read?”
She looked shocked to hear me ask such a thing. Her smile fell away. She got serious, her face and voice filled with concern. “Are you feeling depressed?”

“I am,” I admitted. She gave me some literature, but she also gave me a number to call. It was the EFAP number, she said. The Emergency Family Assistance Program, or some such. It was a psychiatrist’s number, is what it was.

It took me a couple days to work up the nerve to call him, but I did and I made an appointment, keeping that fact a secret from everyone but Bev. She seemed concerned. She also seemed pleased that I had taken steps. Black moods and perpetual impatience are a hard thing to hide.

I stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall, afraid that someone would recognize me and that some stigma of mental illness might stick. There was someone leaving his office when I entered. I averted my eyes. I sat down and waited. I read the book I brought with me to pass the time. Yeah, I brought a book. I always bring a book if I expect to wait. I didn’t wait long.

The Doctor discovered me and greeted me warmly. I was vague when answering his, “How are you?” I said fine. It was reflex. Everyone says fine to that question. No one wants to hear any other answer, in my experience. My response was taken in stride; I expect everyone says “fine” to his initial greeting, when nothing could be further from the truth. Everything wasn’t fine, or I wouldn’t be there.

So began a process. We would meet at the appointed hour, I’d be led into the consulting room, and I’d be guided with ever more pointed, if gentle, questions.

They were generic at first. Introductions and instructions. Name. Age. Marital status. Kids? Tell me about your family. Tell me how you’re feeling. Why do you think that is? Let’s start at the edges and work our way in until we begin to get to the root of the problem.

It was difficult at first. It never got any easier. You have to tell the truth. You have to peel away the lies that you’ve been telling everyone. You need to peel away the lies you’ve been telling yourself, lies that you’ve been telling yourself for so many years now that you believe them to be true.

It’s never easy to hold up a mirror to yourself and see the pain and suffering written there.

What was I sad about? What lies did I tell myself?

None of your business. Suffice it to say that he told me, after a time, that I ought to write a letter. He told me to forgive the person or people that I was anger with. To not do so could wreak more damage in years to come than not. To forgive is to invite closure. Don’t just bitch. Be kind. Remember good times and good feelings, too.

He also told me that I had to get busy. Change is work, he said. Change is hard. Change has to be earnest. Change required me to actively work at it, to instigate it, to address it. Change had to come from within. Or there can be no change without.

No growth.

He told me that I also had to forgive myself, too.

Then he sent me on my way. But not before he told me that I could come back anytime, if I decided that I needed more help.

I was pissed. I was angry. I was not ready to give up on therapy, yet. But I didn’t say anything, either. I internalized my anger, and focused it on him. You didn’t help me, I thought.

But I was wrong. He did help me. This series of remembrances, these missives, are proof of it.

It’s a letter to myself.

It’s me holding up a mirror to myself.

False Friendship

It had been years since I’d had a circle of friends. Friends slip away in my experience. My friends throughout high school had moved away to wherever life had taken them. A string of dedicated bachelors replaced them, men who had slipped into the trap of self-inflicted loneliness, their lives devoted to work and their siblings’ families. I had no desire to become one of them, so I replaced them with others more suitable to my age and interests. Long story short, I found myself peripheral. Not really fully completely apart of their circle of friends. They got together. I was met at wherever.

Maybe that was my fault, or partly my fault. I’m an odd sort. I straddle the line between introvert and extrovert. I crave company. But on my terms. I require substantial downtime, usually during the workweek, and in that time, I rarely saw anyone outside my family. That’s just how it worked out. I worked shiftwork. They did not. And I worked underground. They did not. Then they too slipped away. They married and had kids and moved away. Some craved younger company. I suppose I grew stale after ten years of acquaintance.

Then I too married. And those friendships I had drifted away further. Some of them divorced and expected me to play until all hours with them now that they were “free,” but I begged off, citing my new circumstances. I was married now, after all. And they weren’t. They wanted to meet women. New unmarried women were just a temptation for me. So, those divorced friends slipped away, too.
I was on the lookout for new friends for years and never found them. I became a solitary soul outside my marriage. But I still went out. Habit, and all that. But without friends, it was just drinking. The glow and lustre of the night had paled without companionship.

Then I met someone at work, close in age and, as it seemed at the time, of similar interests. Not a perfect fit, but no one is. But I believed we had some sort of report, so I asked if he’d like to join me for a beer one Friday evening. His wife was out of town on business. He was home alone. I thought he might like to get out of the house for a change.

He agreed and met me at the bar, Mickey Jay’s (Big House). There was a “quiet” band on stage. A two piece acoustic electric. Quiet by all performing standards. He arrived just before the band went on stage for their second set, he stayed for just one beer, and he left minutes before the band finished their second set, when he could have had a half hour of all the quiet he could stand. But before he left, he went into a fit about how he couldn’t hear and that pubs ought to be quiet so people could talk. He went on about how pubs ought to be silent whispery affairs, much as he was accustomed to in England, where he’d grown up (contrary to Ben Thompson who loved loud, rowdy bars and live music, and he grew up in England, too, so go figure). Personally, I don’t think he liked music that much. He was never attracted to live music, never listened to music at his desk, and didn’t have a varied collection, preferring to only listen to the music that was popular when he was a teen. When he did come out to see live music with me and Bev and his wife, he never tapped his toes, never whooped it up, never applauded or raised his hands in elation. He was a statue, throughout. Getting back, he had his fit and left. I was taken aback by that, a bit.

My “friend” didn’t like to go out, it turned out. He didn’t like going out to restaurants, either. He did like eating a greasy spoons that cost $5 a plate. Value, he called it. He preferred going to someone’s house, or better yet, having people in for dinner. He was generous with the wine, I’ll say that about him. There was much talk, but sooner or later, he’d had more than enough and the TV was turned on and channel surfing began. Conversation lagged.

What he did like was conspiracies. He loved them. He never stopped taking about them, about how the government was pulling the wool over our eyes, how they were watching us, analysing our emails and browser histories, tapping our phone lines. How GMOs were poisoning us. He also believed in ghosts, telling me on more than one occasion how his entire family had been haunted in their dreams by the same ghost one night; how it had run through each of their dreams in succession, terrifying them.
I listened to each of these stories in turn, and said that I didn’t believe in any of those sort of things. I’d never seen or felt a ghost, I said. And I thought governments had a hard time paving the roads, so I doubted they could control weather or keep tabs on us all, or keep it a secret, if they were, for that matter. Governments are just people, after all. You’d think he’d have taken the hint; but no, the conspiracies grew wilder by the year, if not the month.

I caught his wife rolling her eyes as these subjects came up, but she never shut the discussions down. Neither could I. Each denial of whatever he was pontificating about turned into a challenge to his beliefs.

He didn’t just rattle on about those odd beliefs. He bitched about his family to me. In private. He complained about his wife’s spending habits. He complained about their debts. He complained about his daughter and his son and their choice of education. He complained about how they ganged up on him. I didn’t want to talk about his personal problems, but he began asking me for advice. I didn’t want to get involved. Bev and I were likely to have dinner with them in a couple days and I didn’t want to have all that baggage about them in my thoughts when I saw them. It colours a person’s perspective, whether you want it to or not. And I’d have to keep his secrets, then.

Before I knew it, he was treating me to tales about how the U.S. government had been behind 9/11. I asked him to stop. He began sending me links to websites that when researched turned out to be conspiracy minded rags that never tabled any proof other than references to other conspiracy websites.
When I tried to suggest what I thought were reasonable explanations to the conspiracies he spoke on, or how governments and political parties might not be trying to enslave us, he began telling me that I was brainwashed by mainstream media.

He turned on me, in time. He began to “back check” anything I said on Wikipedia, unwilling to believe anything I said. That was tantamount to calling me a liar every time I spoke. He said that I spoke in “broad, sweeping statements.” That I lumped people and things together. It was like being picked at every day. It wore on me. It wore me down. It sapped my self-esteem. Then he began to ridicule those things he knew I liked. He marginalized what I had done, the travel, the music lessons, he went as far as to suggest that he and I should both write a short story or short screen play and have HIS family judge our efforts to see which was better. Like they weren't biased against me by then, because even his children had begun to talk down to me. It was like he was jealous. It was like he needed to break me to best me, no matter the cost.

Why didn’t I walk away? Because I thought he was my friend. There were statements of admiration at first. What seemed earnest complements. Then there were a few widely spaced backhand compliments. They became less widely spaced. Before long, I felt a knot in my stomach. Then there were shunnings. Somehow, I felt rejected. I tried to make things right, but after four years of courting a “friend’s” friendship, and failing, I’d had enough. I walked away. He kept at me to join him for lunch at work and I caved. I joined him. We made our peace, of a sort. Then he would lash out again and there were more shunnings.

We endured a car pool for a short time, but it was very short lived. He argued incessantly. When I finally lashed out after another barrage of insane conspiracy statements about GMO poisonings, the Queen’s assassination plots, the US surveillance of every person on the planet, the US shooting down passenger flights, I told him to “Shut the fuck up. I didn’t want to hear about it anymore.”
He got a speeding ticket on the way home. Somehow it was my fault.

As he pulled into my driveway, he beat me to the punch. He told me that, “It wasn’t fun, anymore,” and that he thought we shouldn’t travel together anymore. He wouldn’t look me in the eye or speak to me anymore at work, either. He would change direction when he saw me in the hall.

Soon after, he couldn’t get away from me. We bumped into one another at a corner. He turned and stared at a spot on the wall as I passed.

I looked straight at him. My gaze was withering. “Coward,” I said.

He scuttled away.
This is the most important thing I can ever tell you: Take a hard look at the people in your life. If they’re toxic. Get rid of them. As fast as you can. They want to destroy you.

The Musician

I’d picked at playing music a few times over the course of my life. I suppose if I had an extraordinary talent at it, it would have stuck. But, if anything, I am persistent. And I’d always wanted to play music, even if I’d never had the “opportunity.” I’d only had a couple weeks of Recorder while in Junior High and a couple weeks of choir, nothing else. I’d taken some extracurricular classes, but age and focus and bullying caused me to set it aside, then I got busy with college, then work, then laziness, I suppose. Time passed. A lot of time passed. I appreciated music, but I never pursued it.

Then the time came that I decided I was going to learn to play an instrument, come hell or high water, but which one? I’d always liked guitar. I’d picked it up off and on over the years. But I discovered that teaching oneself to read music while learning to play was a daunting task, at best. So, lessons. But where would I take lessons? I saw an advertisement on Facebook about the Timmins Symphony’s music school. Music is good for the mind and the memory, it said. My memory was troublesome at times, now. I’d always found myself in a room wondering why I was there, but more recently, I found myself groping for words, forgetting names of celebrities and musicians and bands with regularity. It was troublesome. It was troubling. I put one and two together and decided that maybe learning to play music was at least part of a solution.

But the Symphony Music School did not teach guitar. So, I had to choose one of the instruments that they did teach. French horn? Tuba? No interest. I’d never been much of a classic music fan, so those options available to me were a little foreign to me. Violin? Not me. I began to read about classical instruments and listen to sound bites of what they sounded like, just to see if anything stirred my soul. Some fell flat, some looked heavy, unwieldy, uncomfortable. My sister had taken piano lessons, but piano was frightening, what with each hand doing independent things, the eyes having to follow two staffs of notes, each wildly different from the other. I may not have been a classical music aficionado, but I did like jazz. Surprised? Don’t be. I’d been watching classic B&W movies all my life and jazz abounded within, especially in movie soundtracks and musicals of the period. I was well versed with Crosby, Sinatra, Dino, Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney, and the like. And I’d watched countless episodes of Lawrence Welk on Sundays. Don’t judge; we only had two channels and we watched what my parents wanted to watch. So, I knew what Big Band and jazz sounded like. I liked Louis Armstrong and he played trumpet. I liked Arty Shaw and Benny Goodman and Pete Fountain and the opening sequence of “Rhapsody in Blue” never failed to thrill me. And my sister had taken clarinet while in Junior High. I couldn’t choose, so I bought a student model of each along with very basic self-instruction books and set about teaching myself what I could in preparation of the beginning of the music school year.

Making a proper and appealing sound with the clarinet was difficult. It squeaked. It squawked. It sometimes made no sound at all, my breath stopped cold and backed up and almost blowing the top of my head off. The trumpet was even harder. The best I could produce was a warble, as far from what I thought a trumpet should sound like as can be. Then again, I was trying to be relatively quiet, too; no need to annoy the entire neighbourhood. I developed an even greater respect for Louis Armstrong than I had before. Indeed, all musicians.

Humans are like water. They find the easiest path. I was no different. I focused on clarinet. I began to develop a little finger memory. My tone improved a little, too. I suppose I still sounded like shit and probably no better than a toddler taking his first lessons, but I gave myself license to suck for a while. That may sound obvious, but that doesn’t come naturally to me; I demand perfection from myself, regardless how impossible that may be until perfection is a target that’s actually attainable, and am always impatient and frustrated when said perfection doesn’t surface quickly.

Registration day arrived. I drove up to the old Hollinger administration building where the TSO was renting rooms, climbed the flight of stairs to the entrance and followed the signs indicating where registration was being held.

There was no one my age there, not counting the TSO volunteers manning the tables, taking names. Even the parents were younger. There were quite a few children, and everyone seemed to know one another, as though they’d been returning there for years. I felt awkward. Did middle-age people take lessons? They must; why else would the TSO advertise in the Press and online, targeting middle- and older-aged people? Or was I the first?

I approached a table. Waited my turn. That seemed to take forever as TSO members and the parents chatted and laughed and didn’t seem in any hurry to complete their business and be on their way.
“Excuse me?” I said, pressing into the table.

“Yes? Would you like to register your child for lessons?” the woman asked.
“No,” I said, “I’d like to enroll. Me. Myself. Can I do that?”
Her composure seemed to shift. She perked up. “Of course, you can,” she said. “What would you like to learn?”
“Clarinet.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” she said, as though not many people chose clarinet as their weapon of choice. I discovered in time that woodwinds and brass had always been in high demand at the Symphony and that my choice raised their expectation that I might fill one of those not particularly sought-after slots.
She handed me a registration form and a sheet of rules I would be agreeing to. I signed on the dotted line and wrote a check for the first ten lessons. I’d be billed later for the second semester, they said. Dates were not mentioned.

“When do lessons begin?” I asked.
First week of September, she said.

“I can’t do the first two weeks of September”, I said, “I’m on vacation. Can I get a deferment, or make up the lessons?” I asked. I didn’t think they would. The agreement I’d just signed clearly noted that absentee lessons would not be made up.

“Sure,” she said.

They may have been desperate indeed to get new clarinet players to ignore their own rules even as I signed on the dotted line.

Indeed, no sooner had I begun my lessons did the Concert Master ask me, “Clarinet?” when she heard what I was studying. “Do you want a job?” Everyone assumes that someone in their forties must have been engaged in whatever they were doing for years, decades in fact.

I’d only had a couple formal lessons by then, so I said, “I think that may be premature.”

The Writer

I’d been writing for a few years by then. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to go to France, to see with my own eyes the hallowed hills of Vimy Ridge, where my great-grandfather had very likely fought during the Great War.

How did all this begin? With a picture. Two pictures, actually; one of striking miners carrying banners down what would become 3^rd Ave in the early days of Timmins’ mining history, the other of a lady prospector with a pistol on her belt in the years before the Great Fire of 1911.

I began earlier than that. I’d begun as a teen, to no avail. I was fascinated with the process of imagination. I’d break out my parents’ Underwood, lugging the hefty typewriter to the dining room table, and hammer out a page of two of the most atrocious drivel akin to ‘50s red menace horror films, melodramatic tales of monstrous insects mutated by near-miss nuclear tests. They were as camp and kitschy as you’d expect, not good, simple, devoid of plot, just the hint of a story, without developed characters, without any idea how a story should unfold, let alone end. They certainly didn’t begin, either. Prior to that, there were hints of my interest. My mother preserved bits of poetry I’d produced. I pursued nothing. I was discouraged by my lack of understanding of story.

I required experience. I required reading. Years of reading. I required untold pages of story and text before I was prepared to take a stab at writing.

Then I saw those pictures. They sparked something within me. I bought a notebook. I jotted a few lines. I went to the museum and inquired as to what they had on the subjects, asking the curator as much, but beginning with the awkward statement, “I know this sounds stupid, but I have an idea for a novel and I’d like to find out more about what lay behind those pictures. Do you know what pictures I’m talking about?”

She did. She was even enthusiastic about the prospect of someone interested in the city’s past and that person’s desire to write about a chapter of its history. I wonder how many others asked her such a question? A few, I suppose. We’ve some local historians who’ve self-published their books. Not many novels, though, if any.

She invited me to visit as often as I liked, awarding me access to what materials the museum had. I began to pore over details of the Great Fire of 1911 and the Great Strike of 1912, deciding that the two might make good a beginning and end to the story I had in mind.

I wrote throughout my research, small passages of text, some advancing my plot, others filling in gaps I’d left behind. It was a rather haphazard approach. I had a beginning. I had an end. I had no idea what happened between the two. That resolved slowly.

I began to think about character. Where did my characters come from, what brought them to a mining camp at the dawn of the century? What motivated them? That led to more research. What sort of immigrants came to Timmins then? What did they do when they got here? Where did they stay? What pasts had they? I decided that my protagonist was a veteran of the Boer War, suffering from his experiences there, yearning for better, to be free of his torment, and needing money to chase his dreams.
I knew I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. Not true. I’d read a lot over the years and had an instinct about whether what I was doing was any good. But I needed better skill. I knew that, so I began to read books about story structure, writing technique, elements of style, and grammar. I read histories, too. I read books of collected letters from that age. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I did not read fiction for a time.

Then I stalled. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block. I was just struggling with how to connect the dots.
Then I read about short story competitions. So, one evening I wrote the lion’s share of a fictionalized account of one of my travel experiences, the one where I found myself upon a glassy Sulu Sea with the Milky Way above me and a sea of effervescent plankton below me. What do they say? Write what you know? I can say that I knew a little about me, so that’s what I wrote about. I polished it for a month while reading short stories in Literary mags, and rereading “Elements of Style” while I was at that.

Then I began to send “She, the Sea, the Stars” to magazines, getting a ton of form letters back in return. I did get a few encouraging letters, those few who applauded passages and said I had a talent for writing, newfound skill, but “thank you for your interest, but we will have to pass at this time.”
I was still stalled on my first novel, so I began to write whatever came to mind. A story of a soldier of the Great War resolved from them. Once again, I had a beginning and an end, but not a middle. More research, this time histories and novels of the time. I decided that the main character was my great-grandfather. To be clear, I have no idea what happened to him during the war, but I had stories about what did up to when he left and what happened after he came back. He never once mentioned what happened to him while there. Not many veterans of the Great War did, but enough of them published memoires, enough to begin developing a narrative. I recalled my first novel and how my characters yearned to escape to Paris and decided that they too would be part of the story. Then that too stalled. What was it about? I asked myself. Without a theme, without an understanding of the human narrative, the story, it was just a collection of anecdotes. And I had no clue what that theme was. Not yet, anyways.

I returned to the first novel. I reread what I had. I rewrote whole passages. And in time, those passages were linked. I had a story of a Boer War veteran (Michael) who travelled to a mining camp to make money so that he could go to Paris to write, and a woman (Kimberley) who came North to find herself. He was adrift. So was she. He was just running away. So was she. They met, he fell in love with her, and she with him. But another man (Gunter) already loved her, and he flew into a rage at the loss of his unrequited love. Then the strike happened. Michael recalled a similar strike he’d been embroiled in years past and tried desperately to avoid this one. He failed and was caught up in it. Kimberley killed Gunter when he tried forcibly to take her. Michael disposed of the body and they ran away to Toronto, and ultimately to Paris and the Great War.

I finished the first novel and called it “A Three Penny Opera,” and began to send out writing samples to publishers. Those met the same response as “She, the Sea, the Stars.” No thanks. You have talent, but no thanks.

When I discovered the theme of the second novel, "Sticks and Stones," the love and camaraderie of men in times of war, and it all but wrote itself. I completed it in three months. I began to send that one away too. And it met a similar fate. Thank you for your interest. One publisher said, “We’d love to publish this, but we are already publishing a war novel this year.”

Paul Quarrington

Why wasn’t I published? I don’t know. I had friends and family and co-workers read all three and they said they liked them, but maybe they weren’t critical enough. Maybe the novels just weren’t good enough. Maybe it was because I had no patron. I once saw an interview with a Canadian writer, Paul Quarrington, who’d taught at many writer’s workshops. He hummed and hawed, thinking, avoiding eye contact when asked, “how can new authors get published?” He never actually answered the question posed to him.

What he did say was, “I’m trying not to say, ‘Get you famous writer friend to submit your manuscript to his publisher.’”

But he did say that, didn’t he?

Chronic

I was happy to be back in Oreflow, but I was angry. I’d just spent eight months in Hell, never having been so ill-treated in my whole life. I’d almost quit. But I didn’t. And I was back.

I was also injured. I was in a lot of pain. I was taking pills to get through the day. And since the accident I’d done nothing but go to work and lie on the couch at home, unable to do much more than that. Even sleeping was agony: any pressure on my lower back burned; it also raised the urge to pee, waking me, making me toss and turn before I fell back asleep, if I did at all. I couldn’t walk the length of the Timmins Square (a quarter mile) without having to sit at least twice. Standing on concrete killed me. After standing or walking on concrete for twenty minutes I’d inevitably be laid up on the couch for two hours of more, my back burning and throbbing, my legs numb. I hid that fact at work, always telling myself that I was getting better, and popping a couple T3s and anti-inflammatories to prove it.

Luckily, the work was light, well, light-ish, and so long as I worked upright, I was fine. Should I have to bend forward slightly, I had about twenty minutes of work in me before I was useless. I probably should have gone to the appointment with the surgeon my GP had made for me, but I didn’t; I ignored it, telling myself that spinal surgeons rarely did anything for chronic pain sufferers and that spinal surgery risked even greater pain, or a fused spine. So, I did nothing. I lay on my back and wished the pain away. Light work was okay. I found that continuous light work strengthened my spine and the chronic pain receded. So too light exercise. All I did for the first year was man the 3 Mine cage and operate the slurry plant. Both jobs required some pre-starts and a little clean-up, but for the most part, both jobs required sitting. I was okay with sitting.

This went on for the better part of two years. And still I wasn’t getting any better.

Nothing changed until we got Hunter. Hunter was part Lab, part hound (maybe boxer). She loved to run, and if she didn’t get enough exercise, she’d get bored and get in trouble, chewing up shoes, digging up strands of carpet fiber, clawing at furniture. I had to do something about that, regardless how painful walking might be. I began to walk the nature trail behind my street, the one that crossed McLean and wound its way around rock and creek and beaver dam until rising up behind Timmins District Hospital and crossing Ross to connect with the Gillies Lake circuit.

One day I took her out on leash until we gained the trail. I detached her and gestured for her to run. She looked at me with disbelief or misunderstanding, but after a few more sweeping gestures and a few more meters gained, she got the picture and took off like the wind. I followed at a meager pace, pleased at how soft my footfalls were on the granular “A” bed, even more so when walking on duff.

I’d call out to her on occasion and she’s return as far as the next bend in the trail, her tail and ears high and at the ready, her eyes bright with excitement. Once she spied me, she’d either disappear up the trail again or bound towards me, leaping high like a gazelle as she passed.

Those first walks were short, no more than a third of the trail’s length before I stopped, rested, and waited for Hunter’s return. Luckily, the Mattagami Conservation Society placed picnic tables along the trail. Then we’d head back and I’d attach the leash when we were getting closer to McLean. I’d have to bear the pain on some walks, sitting at each stop, my gait slowing to a crawl when all I wanted to do was get on all fours and do just that. The walks got longer as the summer progressed, extending into the fall, and then into the winter as I noted that the trail remained open and accessible, fully packed down by passage of MRC sleds and hundreds of footfalls. My back loosened up. The pain lessoning with each and every month. And soon, within the year, I was walking the full length of the trail, at least as far as topping the hill just behind TDH.

And before I knew it, I could actually jog down that hill and not feel like someone was impaling me with a red-hot poker. I was still on the pills, though.

Hunter and I kept up those walks even after I decided to take a gym membership. I did so with a degree of trepidation. Pumping iron was not what I’d call light work. Running on a treadmill seemed tedious at best. But I took it slow. I was assessed by a fitness employee, I raised my concern about my back, taking care to be clear about my injury and my level of pain. He started me on light weight, instructing me to never lift more than I was comfortable with, and how often and in what increments to increase the weight I was working with. He also showed me proper stretching techniques and ways to support my back while exercising.

And in time my back began to get better. I say that, but that’s not true. I feel the pain still, even all these years after, but my body has adjusted to it. My spine has strengthened because it had to. It supports the ruptured disk. And I did not feel pain in my spine the same way. I am desensitized to it. I can experience pain that would probably drop you to the floor.

Because it used to drop me.

The Uncle

Do I have many stories about my nephews? Some, a lot, and not many. There’s the usual: their birth, Christmases, birthdays, sleepovers while my parents babysat.

I was young when they entered my life, just twenty when Jeff was born, twenty-two when Brad was, in ‘86 and ‘88 if I recall properly. I was at school much of that time, only around on holidays and during the summer, and I worked shiftwork then, and far more interested in spending time with my friends than hanging out with my sister and her babies. So, I saw them Sunday dinners, more often than not, and not much more than that. That said, they had a profound, if not direct impact on my life. I am Godfather to the elder, but not the younger. That’s pretty light work. That sounds horrible, but it’s true. I loved them, love them still, but they’re not my children. I was not the babysitter; they had my mother for that. I’m peripheral.

I suppose I was the cool uncle. I bought video games and taught them how to play them. I bought them more gifts than was ever required of me, instructional at first while still preschoolers, whole Lego sets where I could get my hands on them later. We’d sit together for hours putting them together. I bought them bats and balls and baseball mitts, footballs, basketballs, whatever my mind could imagine was fun. I bought every Disney animated feature, and those others I thought as good, An American Tail, and All Dogs Go To Heaven, and the like. And I was there for them, were they ever to need me. I don’t suppose they ever did.

There were moments when I was of some use, I suppose. One Sunday, unbeknownst to us, Jeff had been playing with a three-ring binder in the living room while we had tea in the dining room, and it clamped shut on his belly. He screamed. I was the first to respond, releasing him from its jaws, but Mom and Grandma were there less than a moment later, and we all want Mom to make it better; that’s her job, after all. No need to break that belief too early. Mothers have power. Mothers are protectors. Uncles are peripheral.

Another weekend, years later, my sister had need to go get diapers on some summer day. For some reason my mother went with her. No sooner had they left, Brad had a mistake. I didn’t believe that someone could small that bad, but there you have it. There was a bit of a breeze flowing through the house, so I placed him as close to the exhaust as possible. That helped a little, not a lot. I looked high and low for a diaper, not knowing that there were none to be had. Had I some parental skills I should have stripped him down, cleaned him up and rinsed out his soiled clothes, but as I said, I was lacking in parental skills. Luckily for Brad, he didn’t have to wait too long for proper parental care to return, because I was at a loss. I can’t say I wasn’t relieved when my mother and sister were back within a half hour. I’m sure Brad felt the same.

So, yeah, I wasn’t much of a caregiver. I hadn’t had much practice. I’d never been a babysitter. That wasn’t a guy thing then. And I’d been away during the baby years, too. Karen had married during my college years and divorced soon after I’d returned. Andy, my future brother-in-law had entered the picture, and I found that if I wasn’t actually required before, I wasn’t needed afterwards, either. I was peripheral.

Probably a good thing. I was suffering arrested development, failure to launch, a number of other clichés. I’ve covered this before, so here are the Coles Notes: More than a few people had filled my head with imminent disaster, that the market had crashed, that inflation was rampant, that interest rates were so high that I’d never be able to buy a house, that just then was the very worst time to graduate from school. There were layoffs hinted at. Indeed, six months after I’d been hired, there was a hiring freeze, not just at Kidd, but just about everywhere in the mining industry. That freeze only lasted for seventeen years; not worthy of mentioning, really. Then the axe fell on 250 employees two years after I’d been hired. We were informed as much beforehand, invited to take an early severance if we’d a mind to. As I’d only been working for about two years, that severance would have been a pittance, so I elected to take my chances. The only thing that saved me was my payroll number. Someone in Human Resources had not taken note of start dates, only payroll numbers, never imagining that an employee kept the same payroll they might have had during an earlier employment. Long story short, there were people with more seniority than me who lost their jobs. Rumours of further layoffs were never far off. Copper slipped to 67 cents, zinc to 34. We expected to close. I grew no roots.

The kids grew up, becoming pre-teens and then teens. Jeff and Brad stayed over more often as Karen and Andy worked night shifts. They were thrilled. More time to play Uncle D’s games.

I suggested what I thought were better movies, doing my best to steer them away from Happy Gilmore and Dude, Where’s My Car, and the like. Jeff liked them, then. I didn’t, and tried to convince him otherwise. Jeff wasn’t convinced, not then, anyways. I didn’t argue with him, sure his tastes would develop with time. I probably watched a ton of crap when I was his age, too.

When my parents moved from Hart Street to Victoria, I thought it was high time for me to move out. After years of uninterrupted and unrealized predictions of doom, I’d become to desensitized to it, and had begun to think that it was just talk and that I ought to get my own place. My parents convinced me otherwise. Dad had been out of work for a while, only recently finding new employment, and my mother convinced me that having me around, paying room and board was the difference between making ends meet and not. So, I stayed. Big mistake. I ought to have spread my wings. But I didn’t.
Once we’d moved to Victoria, I began visiting my sister, just once a week, for a chat and a coffee; she only lived a few blocks away, so I thought this was a good opportunity to bond with her after my being away for so many years. Sometimes it was just her and I; sometimes I’d help Jeff and Brad put together their Legos. On occasion, Andy joined us. So, until then, I think I was a constant presence in my nephew’s lives, more or less, certainly more of a presence than my uncles had been in my life.
Then one day I was not.

Maybe something was lost in translation, maybe the message was somehow misunderstood, but one day my mother told me that my sister had called and had told her to tell me not to come over anymore. Just that. Don’t come over anymore.

It was like getting hit in the gut, like being slapped across the face. I was floored. I was confused. I was hurt more by that than by anything before.

I was never offered a reason or explanation; in fact, it was never brought up again. Ever. Not by me, not by my mother, not by my sister. I doubt they even remember it.

I’ve never actually been close with my sister since. We meet on holidays, on special events; I’ve always been there when asked. And I suppose, so has she.

But I’ve always kept my distance, from that moment on. Emotionally.

 

Musical Chairs

There was an abundance of routine between holidays. Work, rest, weekends, repeat. Work weeks were largely spent alone, weekends with friends…maybe I should say close acquaintances.

Even weekends were routine. I’d begin my night at Casey’s. If there were friends about, I’d stay. If there weren’t, I’d migrate to Dirty Dave’s, and then for a time to Club 147 on Algonquin, a pool hall that brought in Bands for a time. Usually up-and-comers that weren’t too expensive.

We were all surprised when they announced that they’d booked The Barstool Prophets. The Prophets had CDs. They had videos being played on Much Music. And they weren’t that expensive, only $20 a head. More expensive than cover bands, to be sure, but not as expensive as we’d have expected for a band that had two CDs and played in festivals across Canada. The fact is, they would play anywhere by then. Napster was killing them. They had to tour relentlessly to just make ends meet.

Just about everyone I knew was there, making that night one of the best in years. It was also the beginning of the end, in more ways than one. Peter would move away soon, opting to teach in Japan since he couldn’t get into teachers’ college, no matter what he did to help beef up his resume. And over the next few years, just about everyone else moved or drifted away. Jeff O’Reilly left for Ottawa, Terry Laraman for Barrie. Fran and Mike would eventually leave too, landing in Alberta. Then Cathy. The list goes on.

I was hanging out almost exclusively with Dawson and Lena by then. When there were bands in town, we spent the night there. When there weren’t, we invariably settled in at Casey’s. New faces joined theirs, younger ones. Tom and Roz Gauthier, Scott Sargalis, Monica Willcott, others whose names are lost to the depths.

Monika stood out more than most. She was from Newfoundland. She was a teacher. She was living at Dawson and Lena’s. She was loud. She was brash. She spoke her mind. Should she meet another Newfie, her accent rushed back, and thickened as her speech sped up, until she was speaking so quickly, in such a dialect that none of us could make head or tails of what she and he were saying. She was attractive, too. Short curly hair, teeth that crossed ever so slightly. Yes, I had a crush on her. Why else would I remember her so vividly?

But as years passed, I saw Dawson and Lena less as they opted for other, younger faces than mine. Joel and Denise. And friends of those new friends.

My phone stopped ringing. My “crowd” met me later at night. And when they did, I somehow became the guy who watched over their coats and purses while they all raced for the dancefloor, or spotted someone else they had to talk to.

I was not pleased. A fog settled over my spirit, growing thickening with time, growing blacker with each empty night. There were days it became a rage, red hot and black with the smoke that surely radiated from me in ever widening circles.

One night at Casey’s, I was again left to guard the coats. I was pissed. I was left alone again.
I scanned the bar and saw Neil Petersen and friends over by the Galaxia machine. I was thrilled to see him, so I grabbed my leather jacket and left to go join him and them. “Fuck ‘em,” I thought as I left. “Serves them right if their shit gets ripped off.”

I spent an hour with Neil before returning to the table. They were leaving to go to the Welcome for last call and I meant to join them. I decided I should tell Dawson and the others I was leaving. They’d begun calling me Disappearing Dave for my leaving unannounced; then again, they took their time noticing that I was gone, too. For the record, I always told someone I was leaving. They just never bothered telling anyone else. So, I began to announce my leavings with great fanfare.

The table was a-dither with panic. They were shifting coats left and then right.

“Where’d you go,” they asked.

I gestured back towards Neil.

“Have you seen my coat,” Joel asked.

“No,” I said. “I haven’t been here. You can’t find it?” It was a stupid question. They were shifting the coats again as we spoke.

No, Joel said, before deciding to trawl the bar for his missing, and presumably stolen, coat.

I helped for a few moments, not expecting to find anything. I didn’t take too long, though; I wanted to be gone.

Then someone called out to the table. “Come quick! Joel found the guy who stole his coat!”

I was up with the rest, throwing on my coat, following the others to the front entrance. There was a crowd gathered there in the atrium and we had to elbow our way through them. Once through, I saw Joel manhandling a guy wearing a motorcycle jacket remarkably like his own.

“Those are my bugs!” Joel was screaming at him. The coat had been spattered with them.

Joel and the guy shifted and shuffled, and they went down to the pavement.

Someone else sucker-punched Joel. Jim broke free and tackled the guy who did the sucker-punching.
Another guy grabbed Joel in a headlock.

I saw red. Rage boiled up in me. But I was also oddly, deathly calm, too. Maybe it was the three-on-one I walked in on, maybe it was anger at my friends for abandoning me, but still expecting me to help in their hour of need, but I wanted to mess up that fucker’s face.

I ran forward and slammed into the guy who had Joel in a headlock, landing on top of him. I heard the breath driven from him. I rose to my knees. I gripped his shirt. I prepared to drive my fist into his face. My arm pumped up.

And I was hit from behind. Shoved hard.

I flew off the guy, I rolled and came quickly to my feet, expecting that whoever had hit me from behind to follow through and tackle me and hit me. Whatever. No blow came.

Back on my feet, I looked back into the melee and saw Brian Reid pulling people apart. Mike Reid was right beside him, glaring at me.

“Hello, Mike,” I said.

Mike gave me a look that said step away.

I did, my hands up, making space.

Someone punched Brian from behind, and Mike flew into a rage. “You punched my brother,” he screamed, driving his fist into the idiot that punched Brian.

I heard sirens.

I watched five cop cars race up the entry, bouncing hard over the cracked asphalt.

I stepped further back, turned and walked a ways, digging my smokes out and lighting one.

I watched the cops dive into the fray and start hauling people into the cruisers.

I wondered if Neil had gotten away before the shit began to fly.

More than likely, he was still inside.

What’s In a Name?

What's your name? Simple question. For some, there’s no simple answer. I just happen to be one of those people.

I was adopted. I’ve always known I was adopted. My parents never made a secret of it; they’d told me so, and declared how lucky I’d been to have been loved enough to have been chosen. After Dean was born, they wanted more children, but didn’t want a repeat of what had happened, so they looked to adoption for an answer.

Karen came first. I followed 23 months later. Not exactly; my parents collected me at 3 months, after all the paperwork had been finalized. My Great Aunt went along for the ride. Once she heard what my parents were about, when passing through North Bay, she dropped everything, told Frank where she was going, and tagged along. She was one of the first in my family to hold me, and always doted on me, evermore, always a wonderful sensation, that sort of embracing love. Everyone in my greater family knew, knows, and it had never been an issue for anyone, so far as I knew. I’m David: son, brother, grandchild, nephew, cousin, and now uncle and husband.

So, I’ve always known, and never thought twice about it. I had a home, parents, family. I never once felt the need to go in search of my birth parents

One day my parents, my mother specifically, came to the conclusion that the house on Hart Street was too big for them. It had served them well for years, and had even been added to, constructing a sizable living room out back, replete with an almost wall width stone fireplace. I loved that fireplace.

Especially at Christmastime, logs crackling, before cable TV had made real fires irrelevant.

But Karen had long since moved on, and although I was still in residence, waiting year by year for the axe of the economic downturn that never seemed to fall, my father had not been so lucky. Dad had been laid off from Caterpillar Equipment while I was still at school and it had taken him some time to find further suitable employment, before finding it with Cambrian Welding Supplies. The years of economic disparity had taken its toll, and Mom said that they were getting older, the house was too big for three people, too big for her to clean, and it was costing them too much. It was time to move somewhere smaller and more affordable.

House hunting began. Packing began, as well, not terrible quickly, at first. There were yard sales, open houses.

I mentioned that it was probably time for me to move out and get my own place now that they too were making a change, but they convinced me that it would be good for me to move with them, to continue to save my money, that I might lose everything were I to be laid off, that they still had need of my rent, and a host of other reasons. Inertia took hold and I didn’t leave. I ought to have, but I didn’t. I’d grown too comfortable, and too complacent since moving back in with my parents. Food prepared for me, laundry done for me; a few chores here and there. Aside from arrested development, it seemed a sweet deal at the time.

There wasn’t any rush at first. But once the new house was found, and an offer tendered, packing began in earnest. I found my parents in quiet, but intense discussion over a large brown business envelope on the dining room table.

“They’re his,” my father was saying. “He should have them.”

My mother was not as convinced as he was of that fact.

My father called me over. He pointed to the envelope on the table. “These are yours,” he said.
My adoption papers. I gazed at the old envelope for what seemed ages but was actually only mere seconds.

My father opened the envelope for me and began to spread the papers out on the table.
I sat and leafed through them, noting specific points, names, and dates, here and there.
Birth records: born Grace Hospital in Ottawa, December 19, 1964 to a young woman, age 21, single, a girl, actually. No father given.

I was stunned. I really didn’t know what to say. 

The rest was important and inconsequential. Baptismal records, medical history, church records. I leafed through them again, and carefully set them back in the envelope when I was done.
I saw trepidation in my parent’s faces.

“Well,” was all I could think of to say at first.

They told me what I’d heard hundreds of times before, that I was loved, that I was lucky, and that I’d been chosen, that I had parents. All true.

I told them not to worry, that I knew all that.

But it was the first time I’d actually seen the birth records, and adoption records. It was the first time I’d ever seen my birth name, and my birth mother’s name. Those new old names had somehow unsettled my identity. Who was I? Where did I come from? How did I come to be? Was I missed? Did anyone wonder about me? Had anyone tried to find me? Was it worth my trying to find them? Would they want me to? Those unvoiced questioned rose up and were immediately pushed aside by the next in sequence. I was trying to process; not successfully, I might add.

I was still in a bit of a funk when I entered Casey’s that Friday night. I must have looked distracted and vacant, because Janice Kauffman and Cathy Walli asked me what was wrong, so I told them.

“I just saw my ‘real’ name,” I said. “My mother’s name was Gloria.”

I paused for a moment. They didn’t interrupt me.

“Apparently, I’m David Gary Kilmartin.”

I had no idea what that meant. Was it supposed to mean anything at all?

Timeline

The timeline of important dates, as I know them, reaching quite a way back. If you’ve been following these missives from the beginning, these dates will correct any mistakes I’ve made. I’ve skipped around some, so this will place them in perspective. I’ll take it to about where I am in my memories and recollections. After that there'd be spoilers, and we can’t have that.

Robert Patterson Murray (Bob), my Nanny’s (Hilda) father, was born in Greenock, Scotland on Oct. 21^st, 1878. Bob was a fire marshal for Eaton’s in Toronto.

Joseph Meclea Gauthier, my Poppa, was born in Quebec on Sept. 23, 1897. Mec had 3 siblings that I know of: Fernando (no kidding; Mec’s elder brother, also a pharmacist) of Matheson, Anita (Mrs. G. Bradshaw) of Kenora, and Cleo (who’d served in WW2 in the RCAF, was shot down, requiring a plate in his head).

1880, Susan, Hilda’s mother, was born in Toronto.

Approx. 1900. Bob and Susan were married.

1902. my namesake, David George Murray, my Nanny’s brother was born in Toronto. David was a telegraph operator for the Canadian National Telegraph, and then the Toronto Star, rising to supervisor.

1903, my Grandfather (Grampa), Jules Auguste, was born in Herstal, Belgium.

1905, my Nanny, Hilda was born in Toronto.

1907, Jules immigrated to Canada.

1908, Blanch Valarie Blondeau, my Grandmother (Gramma) was born, in Fillhilla, Saskatchewan, of Joseph and Valerie (nee Hamelin), of Labret, Sask., and Fort Range, Manitoba, respectively.

1909, Marion, Hilda’s sister was born.

1916, Bob Murray enlisted in the army, as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 170th Battalion. Service #681074. He went on to fight at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, etc. He was never injured as far as I know.

Approx. 1919, Bob and Susan divorced. There’s a lengthy story to this. Maybe I’ll tell it later on. Susan took in boarders to make ends meet.

Approx. 1924, Mec and Hilda met at Susan’s boarding house.

1925, Mec and Hilda married.

Approx. 1926, Jules and Blanche met at a cotillion, in Saskatchewan.

1926, Mec and Hilda moved north to Matheson.

Approx. 1926, Jules and Blanche were married. They moved to Timmins, Ontario along with my mother’s sisters, Angel, and Marie (and her husband Frank). Jules and Frank worked for the MacIntyre mine.

1928, Mec and Hilda moved to Cochrane, opening his drug store.

1928, Aunt Lorraine, Jules and Blanches’ eldest was born.

1930, Uncle Laverne, J&B’s 2^nd was born. (Don Tishler, of Detroit)

1932, Uncle Ronny (Ronald), J&B’s 3^rd was born. (Denise)

1935, Uncle Jerry (Jerome), J&B’s 4^th was born. (Hazel, then Beverly)

1936, Edgar, my father, J&B’s 5^th was born in Timmins. (Marlene)

1937, Marlene, my mother was born in Kirkland Lake, and was soon adopted by my grandparents.

1945, Uncle Derik, J&B’s 6^th was born. (Larry)

Sometime in the late 40s or very early 50s, Jules and Blanche moved to Cochrane, where Jules worked for CN until his retirement in the 60s.

1947, Susan, my Great-grandmother passed away.

1952, Bob, my great-grandfather passed away, while at a Leafs game. He used to usher the games, as far back as when they were the St. Pats.

1956, my parents were married.

1958, Great Uncle David died, from a heart attack, at work.

1963, Karen, my sister was born.

1963, Mec retired.

1964, I was born in Ottawa, and am adopted by Ed and Marlene.

1969, I began Kindergarten, and promptly lost my mitts after Christmas.

1970, we moved from Cochrane to Timmins. I began Grade 1 at Pinecrest School.

1972, Mec passed away. 74 years old

1972, I was held back in Grade 2.

1973, my Aunt Hazel passed away, from Cancer.

1977, I left Pinecrest and entered St.Theresa. Karen entered R. Ross Beattie.

1977, Uncle Ronny passed away, from a heart attack. 44yrs

Cookie, my first dog (corgi) died, and Piper (West Highland White Terrier) joined our family. We traveled to London, where we met and adopted her.

1979, I graduated from St. Theresa, and entered O’Gorman High School.

1980, Grandpa died, from a stroke. 77 years old