A Half Century

I turned fifty. It had almost no effect on me at first, but it did after a time. It was sobering. I was half a century old. I guess I’m middle-aged now, I thought. In truth, I’d been middle-aged for a number of years already, but the realization had never quite dawned on me until then. The truth of it was written all over me, though. Grey had been creeping in for years. Aches and pains too, if truth be told. Injury took longer to heal. And I was getting up and going to bed earlier. I’d yet to scream at anyone to get off my lawn, as yet, though. I still haven’t and hope I never will.

The occasion had been marked quietly. Just dinner with Bev. My mother baked me a cake. My mother has baked me a cake for each and every birthday I’ve ever had. But I have never had an actual birthday party since I was a child. And being a December baby, I’d never had a birthday barbeque, or a lawn party thrown in my honour.

I wanted one. If only once.

So, I set about throwing myself a party. I made a Facebook event page, calling it MY 50.5 BIRTHDAY BASH, and set it exactly six months after my actual half century.

I invited most people I knew and liked, those people who’d been my friends for years or in years past, some of those I worked with. Then I sat back and crossed my fingers to see who would accept the invitation. My ego got a bit of a boost when Barb Strum, Bev’s closest friend accepted the invitation seconds after I posted the event. Other acceptances leaked in from time to time. I will not say that the event filled up. I’ve never had a wide circle of friends. Secretly, I hoped that the party I was throwing myself would not be a social shunning. My self-esteem was not at its highest at the time. I even went so far as to invite the toxic friend, offering an olive branch, hoping that it would be accepted, still not sure if our flagging friendship was my fault. Like I said, low point in self-esteem.

I got about thirty acceptances, altogether. Not bad, I thought, chalking it up to my having such a small circle. I was jealous of those people who can gather in over a hundred guests for such an event, but my family was not large, either. But I was pleased, if not thrilled.

The day grew near. I checked the forecast repeatedly. More so as the day grew nearer still. Twice a day or so. Rain was in the forecast. Of course there was. But there was a hint of hope. The day before was to be clear and sunny, hot. The day after was as beautiful. The rain might pass us by, I thought. The forecast will improve as we drew closer. It did not.

“Maybe you can move the event,” people told me. But one or two of the people who I really wanted to be there could not make it the next weekend. Moving it further conflicted with even more people’s schedule. It was summer, after all; people had plans; people had holidays; people were travelling.
The day arrived, and it did indeed rain. Buckets fell. Cats and dogs. A river of overflow raced down my street.

Should I cancel? Would anyone come? I considered renaming the event DAVID’S HURRICANE BARBEQUE BASH. “Oh well,” I thought, “rushing out into the biblical deluge to get what I discovered I was missing.

People did come. Most came. And some brought gifts, even though I’d specifically requested that no one do so. “It’s not my birthday,” I told them. I’d even said so on the Event page.
I cooked the burgers and sausages and dogs in the rain.
Once that was done, I settled in to not be the host. Make your own drinks, I thought. Entertain yourselves. I wanted to be a guest at my own party.
If you were there, thank you. You helped make my day.
If you were not, not to worry. Bev’s 50th BIRTHDAY BARBEQUE/HURRICANE PARTY was much the same the next summer.

Some further good came from it. I rekindled my friendship with Henri and Sylvie for a time. They invited us to their anniversary party a few months later. And then they invited us to join them on a Mediterranean cruise a few months after. Ports of Call: Venice, Mykonos, Athens, Istanbul, Nice (Capri and Sorrento), Rome (Orvieto for us), Florence and Pisa, and Barcelona. It was fun, but we weren’t attached to Henri and Sylvie throughout the cruise; we were used to going it alone while on vacation, me even more so than Bev. They may have expected us to be by their side throughout, but that didn’t happen; but, at least it always gave us something to talk about during dinner.

A return to Killarny Lodge followed the next year. I brought Bev to New Orleans and New York the next (a return for me, new ground for Bev, but I wanted her to experience what she’d missed in 2010), where on our first day in New York, the couple eating supper next to us at the Italian Restaurant next door offered us free tickets to the smash hit Bandstand. New Orleans brought the same excursions, but better music on Frenchman’s Street and Beignets here and there and Hurricanes at Pat O’Brian’s, while New York brought jazz at Dizzy’s Club Cocoa-Cola and at Smalls and Mezzrow’s. Central Park and Broadway and Little Italy.

Life’s been good. Life’s been a struggle. Life’s been an adventure. Life has been as life has been.

A long time ago, shortly after we’d moved away from Cochrane, but back when we were still returning for weekends at the cottage, returning for holidays and carnivals, Keith and I were playing on 16^th Avenue. It was a slow day. A weekend. Cold. Winter. Mostly bathed in sun. Clouds flowed past as we stormed the snowbank seawall of Omaha beach, or some such, hockey sticks cut to our height serving as rifles. We stormed that beachhead again and again, pretending to almost scale its height before the imaginary enemy took careful aim and shot us, killing us in turn. We posed melodramatically, our arms splayed out, and collapsed, rolling back down what seemed a precipice at the time but must have only been a few short feet, coming to rest at its foot, looking up at the sky until we rose to storm the hill again, to the same result. After unnumbered repetitions, we lay flat out on the street, looking up at the sky and the clouds. Dead. Quiet. Awestruck with imaginings. Imagining what we saw in their shapes, pointing them out after a time and finding what the other saw there, declaring, “Yeah, I see it,” once we did. Frogs and chickens and ships and horses. There was giggling. There was laughter. There were comfortable silences.

For all that imagining, for all those flights of fancy, we, neither of us, had any clue what was to come. Or what might become of us. We were just children, after all, just starting out, an eternity before us.
It has been a symphony of happenstance, of cause and effect, and despite the stumbles and setbacks, despite the pitfalls, it has been an adventure. It has been a truly awe-inspiring and epic discovery of what it means to be me.

Timeline, Part 2

Further dates, clarifying my timeline, as I did some time before, picking it up where I left off. Just like the other, I suppose this will be inexplicable to anyone who has not kept apace with my posts, and read them in sequence.

Should I apologize for such a confusing, and maybe pointless post? Certainly not. I created the first, and then this second, to set my memories in sequence, and to alleviate my own confusion. Dates get away from me. They always have. I seem to remember emotionally, and sometimes chronological order escapes me. 

No never mind. All those memories are available here, at both your and my disposal, as it were, should you take the time to begin at the beginning.

1983: Graduated high school

Entered Haileybury School of Mines

1984: Entered Cambrian College, 2^nd Year

Lived in Cambrian Rez

1985: Returned to Haileybury

Completed Technician program there, graduated

1986: Returned to Cambrian College

Not in Rez, this time, but rented in New Sudbury, a couple blocks away from the school

Completed Technology program, graduated

1987: Western University

Social Sciences program

Rented a room at Jamie’s house

1988: Left school

Worked for ERG Resources for 4 months in tailings reclamation

1989: Began work at Kidd in Backfill

1 week holiday. This was a long year, owing to my not having much time off

1990: Bought my first Car

2 weeks holidays

1991: Parents sold Hart Street house and moved to Victoria Ave.

1992: Manon and her suicide

My first solo road trip: Sudbury where I stumbled across a Watchmen concert

3 weeks holidays

1993: Blue Jays trip to Detroit and Toronto with Henri Guenette

1994: Jamaica – Hedonism II Resort, and Becky

4 weeks holidays

1995: Jamaica 2 – Trelawney & Negril

1996: Caribbean Cruise, Seawind Crown, with Henri and Sylvie

First trip to Stratford, "Waiting for Godot" and "Sweet Bird of Youth"

1997: Australia, live-aboard scuba Great Barrier Reef and tramp Cairns

Holly McNarland, and the Barstool Prophets, at Club 149

1998: Philippines, live-aboard and shore scuba

Sudbury 54-40 road trip

1999: South Africa - Contiki Tour

Ron Hawkins and the Rusty Nails at the Welcome with Neil Petersen

Dec. – met Bev

2000: Egypt - Contiki Tour

2001: Ecuador – Galapagos and the Amazon

Summer: bought house, Bev and I moved in together

9/11, Manitoulin

2002: Manitoulin 2

"Land of Lakes” festival in the Hollinger Park

Leafs road trip

2003: Manitoulin 3

We got Hunter after Albert rescued her on Nighthawk

2004: Engaged @ 39 and Married @ 40 years of age

2005: Honeymoon - Venice and Paris

2006: Indiana and Ohio road trip to visit the Tishlers

2007: Enter Engineering Office with Ground Control

New windows installed on the house

Toronto/Stratford

5 weeks holidays

2008: 3.8 Burst at Kidd, paste-fill project begins

Halifax and Quebec City

Gramma’s 99th birthday party

Gramma’s funeral

2009: Alma passed, we got Charlie

New Brunswick and PEI

2010: New Orleans and New York... without Bev (truly scandalous, vactioning without your spouse!)

Bev’s Wellness weekend, Bev’s Manitoulin trip, Bev’s trip to the Cochrane cottage

New roof for house

2011: Transferred to Design group at Kidd

Vancouver, Whistler and Alaskan cruise (Celebrity cruises)

2012: Alberta, Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, the Canadian (cross-country Train trip)

6 weeks holidays

2013: Tuscany cooking vacation and Rome

Albert passed away

2014: Bev’s curling accident

Killarney lodge in Algonquin Park

I turn 50

2015: Mediterranean Cruise (Princess) with Henri and Sylvie

50.5 barbeque party

2016: Killarney, Algonquin Park, more hiking

Bev’s 50th barbeque party

Dad went into hospital with diverticulitis, then admitted to Extendicare

Mom moved into apartment, and sold house

7 weeks holidays

2017: New Orleans and New York, with Bev

Hunter and Charlie passed away at 14 and 16

Stars and Thunder

I began Memory posts

2018: We got Jasper

Ireland

Stars and Thunder 2

Stratford

The Festival Theater

I’ve mentioned Stratford more than a few times in this narrative. I love it there. I’ve no idea why. It just resonated with me from the first time I lay eyes on it. The plays, the parks, the statuary, the attention to detail. The food. The hotels and B&Bs. The Bookstores. Ontario Street. Its attention to the Arts.

Herein lies a list of plays I’ve attended. I may have missed one or two. I may have misplaced the year when I saw one or two. No matter. I’ve no doubt I’ll be back for more.

1996: Sweet Bird of Youth, Waiting for Godot 

1997: Oedipus Rex, Equus, Corolianus

1998: A Man for All Seasons, The Night of the Iguana

1999: Dracula, West Side Story, Macbeth, Glenn

2000: Hamlet, Fiddler on the Roof, Elizabeth Rex

2004: Guys and Dolls, Anything Goes

2006: Corolianus, The Glass Menagerie, South Pacific

2007: Of Mice and Men, Othello

2010: As You Like It, The Two Gentleman of Verona

2011: The Grapes of Wrath, Jesus Christ Superstar

2012: Cymbeline, The Pirates of Penzance

2013: Tommy, Blythe Spirit, Waiting for Godot

2016: A Chorus Line, The Aeneid

2017: Timon of Athens, HSM Pinafore, The Changeling

Albert

My father-in-law and I did not have an easy relationship. I can’t even say that we liked each other because I don’t believe we did. That’s odd, considering how alike we were in so many ways.

This is not to say that we liked the same things. We did not. There was very little overlap of interests. Albert liked to hunt and fish and watch sports. I do not hunt or fish. I never have. It’s not that I dislike sports, I don’t; I just don’t watch them often. Watching sports on TV takes a lot of time. Talking about sports takes even longer. About two hours for every hour watched, if observation of those people I work with serves as a measure.

But Albert and I both liked a good party. Maybe too much so. That goes for both of us.
We’d both been bachelors a long time, and neither of us had been what I’d call a stay at home kind of guy. We both liked our social outings, we both liked to chew the fat into the night.

I’m not sure why he disliked me. Maybe it’s because I stole his daughter away from him. Maybe it’s because I was not a hunter or a fisherman. I doubt that, though. He never once invited me to either. Maybe that’s because he knew that I didn’t do either, so he never asked, sure I would decline. I probably would have, too, but I would have appreciated the offer. Either way, he never asked.
We didn’t get off on the right foot. The first day I met Albert, he barely said two words to me. He was too busy repairing a broken lamp with a length of PVC pipe. When he did speak to me, it was to ask me what I thought of his fix. I thought it ugly. I thought he ought to just throw it out and buy a new one. What I thought is not what I said. “Does it work?” I asked. He didn’t know. He hadn’t plugged it in yet to find out. I was ignored after that, for the most part. I suppose he thought I was just a temporary presence and that I’d go away, after a time. I was just a boyfriend, after all. No need to pay me much mind.

I was confused. I was being introduced by his daughter. You’d think that would have meant something. It didn’t, apparently. I didn’t feel that welcome, and said as much to Bev, so I didn’t go back for quite a while.

Albert and I did not have much cause to cross paths much for some time, after that; not until Bev and I decided to buy a house together.

I was treated with what might have been fury. There was a barrage of questions, none of them friendly. “What are you doing? Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?” In his mind, we should have got engaged first, then married, then bought a house. That was the time-honoured tradition. And I was breaking that tradition. I couldn’t see how it was any of his business. It wasn’t the ‘50s, after all. I didn’t need his permission to ask Bev anything. I needed hers. And I was getting on in years, years I didn’t have to waste on time-honoured tradition if I wanted to have children. And I did.

Things did not really improve, not really. His anger cooled. But he never really warmed up to me. We came to an understanding, though. He really didn’t have much choice, after all. I’d become a fixture in his daughter’s life. Albert and Alma spent a few weekends with us on Manitoulin. But I was new to the place and wanted to explore, so we were up and about and not there all day, where Albert wanted me to be, so I could pitch in on maintenance. Albert apparently forgot that I’d had a back injury. Fetch and carry and working at height wasn’t my forte, anymore. I did my bit. I cleaned gutters and mowed the lawn and fetched water from the well, replenishing the kitchen and sauna supply. I was less inclined to participate in the physical maintenance of the place so the “boys” wouldn’t have to do anything when they showed up to hunt deer in November, something I was never invited to participate in. The fact that I was on holiday was less important than their being on holiday.

When I popped the question (a moot point, considering we’d been living together for years at that point), I sat Albert and Alma down, and with Bev sat my side, I asked for their permission to marry their daughter, Alma was thrilled. Albert did not say a word. So, I married his daughter without his permission. Like I said, it wasn’t the ‘50s, anymore.

Time passed. Bev and I did not have children. Albert brought that point up once or twice, especially after his son began to have his. “Don’t you think it’s high time you had kids,” he asked. I did. But I wasn’t physically capable of having them. I didn’t have the ovaries for it. I wanted kids, but we were getting on and when it didn’t happen, I considered adoption, and then as more time passed, that ceased to be an option, too.

Then Alma passed. Albert sunk into a funk. It’s hard losing a spouse. I don’t know how hard it can be, but I can imagine how devastating it can be. I suppose it’s like having your entire world pulled out from under you. Even more so when you’ve been together for many decades. He grew morose. He fell into depression.

We’d always spent Sundays with Albert and Alma. We carried on after her passing. I cooked dinner. I was hell bent to make sure he ate, too. I almost never cooked the same thing, either, thinking that he needed variety in taste and diet. Albert told me that I’d make some woman a good wife someday. I let that pass. I let a lot of things pass.

Sadly, Albert never really recovered from Alma’s death. His health suffered. He became diabetic. His hearing, never good for as long as I knew him, grew progressively worse, until we were forever raising our voices in his presence. His knees failed him and he took to a motorized chair. When that happened, his muscle mass faded away. He grew weak. His breathing became laboured.

He put himself on a list for assisted living, but passed when his name came up. His name never came up again.

He rarely left the house in his final years. He became timid. He became ever so lonely. He demanded that we spend more time with him than we already were. He argued when I said that would be difficult. So then it was my fault that his daughter had been taken away from him in his hour of need. I could have been more patient. He was in his 90s, after all. His life was coming to an end and I think he knew it, even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

But I was dealing with my own shit at the time. Not terribly well, I might add.
Before long, he became sick. Pneumonia settled in, and he was hospitalized.
Then he too passed.
I’m sorry to say that his passing was solitary. We did not have the same warning we had for Alma. There was no gathering of the family.
There was only a phone call to tell us that he’d passed away in the night.

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?

Engaged

My road to matrimony was a longer one than most. I met Bev at thirty-five and we were married just before I turned forty. This was my first long-term relationship. Prior to this, I was a long-suffering bachelor.

We did not have a lavish, expensive wedding. We’d bought a house instead and had sunk most of our money into it and its trappings and furnishings. We invited very few people, just immediate family and a few of our closest friends, thirty people all told. Had we begun to open up the guest list, there would have been no end to it and we would have been up to three-hundred people in no time, something we could not afford. But we could afford thirty people. We only needed to rent the glassed-in rear room at Cedar Meadows. It was small, intimate. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

Bev and I had been dating for about a year before we bought the house. Then we set about setting it up. I must say it was very much an empty building at first. We’d purchased a fair amount of the prior owners’ furnishings with the house, so that helped. We bought a lot of stuff on sale. We bought a lot of what we thought of as starter stuff from Canadian Tire, saying we’d upgrade once we were able.
Throughout all this I shopped rings, all the while listening to my future father-in-law talking about my putting the cart before the house and such things. I didn’t buy the first ring that I saw; I shopped around. I calculated what I could afford and when. I was under the thumb of weekly house payments, my savings erased and only inching back up since the purchase. In short, I waited. I didn’t want to buy a cheap ring. And I wanted to buy a set, you know, engagement and wedding.

Meanwhile, Bev and I had discussions about what the future held. We discussed actual marriage (with me listening very carefully for clues as to whether she’d accept should I pop the question), and we talked about children (I talked about children all the time; I wanted them; just about everyone I knew had them and I always thought that having them was the logical progression of any relationship—and I was getting on in years, thinking that were we to have them, we ought to have them soon or risk putting off retirement until death). Bev usually said the same thing during these discussions, about tying the knot, about having kids: “It’s a big step.”

A Big Step? I spent a great deal of time trying to decipher that statement. We’d been living together for more than three months, so as far as I was concerned, that “big” step had already come and gone. It had as far as the courts were concerned. That “big” step was only a piece of paper by then. Whenever Bev brought up her parents and what they thought, I told her that I wouldn’t be marrying her parents.

In time I thought I had it all figured out (that shows you how naïve I was) and bought the engagement ring. I’d even made a few payments.

But where to pop the question? And how? Traditionally, on one knee? Romantically, over champagne? I thought not. Champagne was not in the budget then; and ordering champagne would have spoiled the surprise, wouldn’t it? And what if she said no?

In the end, I proposed while we were out for dinner. I asked her where she’d like to go; she said East Side Mario’s. I fumbled with the box in my pocket, my palms clammy. I’d been fumbling with it almost continuously, fearing that I’d lose it, forever touching it to reassure myself that it was still there. I wondered if I should wait until she left the table and have it presented before her when she returned. But she usually never left the table until after the meal was done and I didn’t think that displaying the ring amid dirty dishes and the bill made for romantic presentation. In the end, I decided to get on with it after we’d ordered.

The restaurant was loud, clashing, clanging, the volume flowing here and there, the gaggle of conversation bouncing about, an undulating roar punctuated by the clatter of cutlery. I brought the box out in a fist, then offering it up between both hands in hope that neither would betray my nervousness. They did not tremble. Or at least I think they did not tremble.

I popped the question. Maybe I mumbled the question. Bev smiled when she received the box. The smile grew broader after opening the box and seeing the stones catch what meager light there was to catch.

I’m not sure if she said yes just then. I’ll admit that my memory is a little sketchy on the moment. I might have been in a mild state of shock. Fight or flight may have risen up as I waited for a response.
She did say yes, though.

I know. Not terribly romantic. But what do you expect from an old bachelor with limited experience in such endeavours? I suppose most proposals are fumbled affairs, fraught with trepidation, if not panic and terror. Hollywood has set the bar higher than most of us mere mortals can aspire to.

Her acceptance prompted more shopping. The wedding rings had to be chosen. The plans made. We set the date for later that same year. What was the point in waiting?

I proposed September 19th. Bev’s and my birthdays were on a 19th, so I thought I would never forget the date if it too were on a 19th. We were not married on a 19th, or September. Father Pat told us we had to compete a Catholic ritual of a Retreat first, to learn about what it was like to live together, on how to budget, on how to bring Christ into our lives and marriage. That was well and good for the twenty-year-olds, I said; they hadn’t had our years of experience, and they (some of them, anyway) hadn’t already been living together for years. I also told Father Pat I planned to be married that year, before I turned forty, whether I was married by the Church or by the Justice of the Peace. Father Pat said he would talk to the Bishop. The Bishop waived our need to do the Couple’s retreat, owing to our age and circumstance.

In the end, Father Pat agreed to a series of meetings at his house to accommodate us. We’d already set a tentative date in October, after all. We booked the church and discovered that we were to be the final couple married in Nativity before it closed.

Father Pat forgot about our first meeting. We were waiting at his residence when he pulled into his driveway, a puzzled look on his face when he saw us waiting there. Then he discovered that McDonalds had given him the wrong meal. He was conflicted. He wanted to return to get what he had ordered. But he was already late for our first meeting, with barely enough time to complete the curriculum as laid out by the Church. He stayed. We began the course.

I asked my sister to be my “best man,” and Bev asked her brother to be her “matron of honour.”
We booked the “hall” and the decorator; we ordered the cake. It was easy. No waiting. The wedding season had passed and everyone was free. We even got discounts on almost every service rendered. We finalized what needed finalizing.

I, we, were getting married.