I’ve been writing this post in my head for months. To be honest I’ve really been struggling with whether or not to write it, and even as I’m typing I’m not sure I’m ever going to publish it. But regardless, it needs to be written. My thoughts are a thunderstorm, and I know from experience that until I get them down on paper they will just continue to occupy me. This is why I started my blog in the first place – to give myself a place to hand it all over. Some people pray, or meditate – I write. The difference being, when you blog your prayers, you make them public and sometimes that is cathartic - telling the world (or my 5 readers, whatever) about my struggles to love my body is something I am incredibly proud of – but I also believe in understanding the difference between a public life and a private life, so sometimes I struggle with how much personal information is too much.
So you’re probably wondering by now what it is that is that is so personal that the girl who seems to blog everything is struggling to put out there. Here goes nothing: my husband and I are struggling with fertility issues. We’ve been trying for about a year and half to get pregnant (12 months is considered normal). The day we decided we were ready to try was truly one of the happiest days of my life – it deepened my connection with my husband in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I was excited, life was grand, I was going to be a mom. 18 long months later the shine has worn off, and now my relationship with my husband is even deeper, but it’s deeper for having gone through something much harder than we expected.
Sometimes it feels like our whole lives revolve around this. At first it was just prenatal vitamins daily, and making a concerted effort not to drink every month around the time I was most likely to possibly be pregnant. About six months ago our family doctor referred us to a fertility specialist. Now it’s blood tests (I’ve had a lot), doctor’s appointments (my co-workers probably think I’m dying), daily temperature monitoring and charting. It’s moderately invasive medical procedures, that involve things like pumping water through your reproductive organs while taking x-rays to ensure there are no blockages – this one was so painful I could barely walk for almost a day and half afterward, and caused me to miss a big event for a friend.
Now that we’ve determined that my blood tests are a-okay, and I have not blockages, and the ultrasounds look good, it’s time for exploratory surgery. Wait, what? Surgery? Isn’t it a bit early for that? Isn’t that a bit extreme? Yeah, you read my mind. A month ago when my doctor told me that was our next step I was so shocked that I didn’t ask any questions. Why surgery? What are they looking for? Are there any other less invasive things we could do first? So when I got home and told my husband that this was the next step, he was rather surprised to find I had no answers.
We decided it would be best if he took some time off work to go to my most recent appointment with me, so we could make sure both he and I had a chance to ask questions. So why surgery? Turns out they are looking for endometriosis – which I found rather shocking. I don’t have painful periods, or regular abdominal pain, or any of the typical symptoms my friends with endometriosis have described. I’ve done some research since, and it seems that there are women who are virtually a-symptomatic but do have endometriosis and according to one web site it is one of the top three causes of female infertility. So many women have it, but never know until they try to get pregnant. My research has also confirmed that while there are alternative treatments for the pain caused by endometriosis, the only way to truly diagnose and treat it in a way that also aids with pregnancy, is surgery.
It still feels early in this whole process to be having surgery – but at the same time if I can do something now to help our chances of getting pregnant I can’t see a reason to wait. So tonight I’m going through a check list of things I have to do before I go in tomorrow. Remove all jewelry, check; remove all nail polish, check; fill T3 prescription, check; pack a robe and slippers, check. I feel remarkably calm right now – I’ve been anxious about tomorrow for a while now, but today I’m just glad the wait is finally over.
After that, depending how everything goes is when we start to talk about fertility drugs, which will give me hot flashes, and worsen my periods.
Are you tired yet? Do you feel overwhelmed yet? I certainly do.
Early on in this whole process we decided that we were going to keep it to ourselves that we were trying. We didn’t want everyone constantly checking in, and I didn’t want it to affect my chances for advancement at work. But it turns out that this is a pretty isolating approach. I’m sure I know women who have had similar experiences – but we don’t talk about them, so we effectively cut ourselves off from the support systems we might have. We don’t talk about the ugly bits of this whole process of becoming a parent. We don’t talk about how sad and overwhelming it can be. We don’t want to pour salt in each other’s wounds, or make others uncomfortable, so we pretend we don’t have the wounds in the first place. And the truth is that I am tired of living like that.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
My Body is Freakin Awesome. Fact.
I used to think that if I was thin I’d be happy. The odd truth about this is that I was thin. I look back at pictures from high school, and my early 20s when I hovered around a size 8 and I can’t believe I didn’t see what I really looked like. I mention this for a few reasons. It reminds me that when I had made my mind up that my body wasn’t good enough, thin would never have been thin enough. It also reminds me that being thin is like having money, if you truly get obsessed with it, enough is never enough; and if you aren’t happy without it, you will never be happy with it.
This is me in 2003, looking pretty thin and feeling fat because my weight was still 10 lbs over a "healthy" BMI.
Please don’t misunderstand what this is about… I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who run marathons, lift weights, love exercise or live the life they love in whatever way they see fit and find fulfilling. What I am saying is that hating myself for being less than perfect was a disease that was eating me alive, and I have to do something about that.
I’ve struggled with social anxiety and gone through periods of mild depression. Do you know what the common thread was, whenever I was feeling like my breath was nowhere to be found and my heart was beating just a little too fast, making my ears pulse and my skin tingle, until I could barely stand to be around people? It was always in periods of time when my weight was going up, and I was losing “control” of all the disgusting fat that was enveloping me. I didn’t want people to look at me and think that thing that we’ve all thought on occasion – that it was too bad I’d put on so much weight. How much prettier I’d been before. So I made up for my so-called shortcomings by acknowledging them, by telling people about my plan to fix them. As if by telling you about my plan to try weight watchers, or buy an elliptical, I was acknowledging that I was broken, but had a plan to fix it.
Well, now I do have a plan to fix it… by completely changing the way I look at the problem. By realizing that I didn’t even know what the problem was. By changing the questions, and statements in my head. I’m not broken. At least not in the way I thought I was – my body is not broken. But my mind certainly was. My mind has been fed poison for decades, and it rotted my ability to see myself.
The quote above is a bit problematic for me, because being fat is not only not worse than those things, it has nothing to do with being boring, cruel, vindictive, or any of those other adjectives. But the point is that the way we obsess about not being fat, the emphasis we put on not associating ourselves with it, implies that as a society we do think of it as the worst thing a person could be. You don’t see Cosmo publishing a lot of articles about how to better your soul by being a kinder, more compassionate person.
Here’s a new question: What is wrong with being fat?
If your answer is health, then I want you to ask yourself a question: Does the girl I described above sound healthy to you? The thin girl who could only see a fat, unworthy girl in the mirror because her body wasn’t Kate Moss skinny – does she sound ok? She wasn’t ok.
She wasn’t ok, but I am going to be. So how do you go about changing your mind about something you’ve believed most of your life? You change the story. You listen to the voices that are speaking your truth – you seek them out, even though they are quieter than all the others. You cheer on women like Gabourey Sidibe when they refuse to be put down – because they are fighting your battle alongside you, and they need you as much as you need them.
I love fashion, and I always felt like I couldn’t really participate in it if I wasn’t skinny – like I didn’t really have the right to wear certain things. A friend introduced me to the blog GabieFresh. I love Gabie because she dares to wear whatever she wants. She has even designed a line of plus size bikinis! If she can’t inspire you to be brave in your fashion choices, well keep looking I guess…
One of my main sources of fashion inspiration is pinterest, and at first glance it seems like every fashion pin is on a tiny little body… and yes, many of them are, but if you start looking – which I have – there is fashion inspiration to be found above a size 8.
Ever read that old trick that says you should pin pictures to your fridge, or the inside of your closet door that “inspire” you to envision yourself with your perfect body? Well I’m doing that. I’m collecting pictures that depict beautiful bodies.
I can’t make the naysayers disappear, or the world change its mind. Cosmo will always publish articles about how to get a beach body in 2 weeks, pinterest will always be filled with thinspiration memes, and someone will always think I looked prettier ten pounds ago. But I can stop reading bikini body articles. I can unfollow that friend’s board that is filled with quotes about how I’d be a better person with perfect abs which I could have if I would just stop being a lazy, good for nothing slob. I can recognize that what the world thinks of me is none of my business, and is irrelevant to my happiness.
Please don’t misunderstand what this is about… I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who run marathons, lift weights, love exercise or live the life they love in whatever way they see fit and find fulfilling. What I am saying is that hating myself for being less than perfect was a disease that was eating me alive, and I have to do something about that.
I’ve struggled with social anxiety and gone through periods of mild depression. Do you know what the common thread was, whenever I was feeling like my breath was nowhere to be found and my heart was beating just a little too fast, making my ears pulse and my skin tingle, until I could barely stand to be around people? It was always in periods of time when my weight was going up, and I was losing “control” of all the disgusting fat that was enveloping me. I didn’t want people to look at me and think that thing that we’ve all thought on occasion – that it was too bad I’d put on so much weight. How much prettier I’d been before. So I made up for my so-called shortcomings by acknowledging them, by telling people about my plan to fix them. As if by telling you about my plan to try weight watchers, or buy an elliptical, I was acknowledging that I was broken, but had a plan to fix it.
Well, now I do have a plan to fix it… by completely changing the way I look at the problem. By realizing that I didn’t even know what the problem was. By changing the questions, and statements in my head. I’m not broken. At least not in the way I thought I was – my body is not broken. But my mind certainly was. My mind has been fed poison for decades, and it rotted my ability to see myself.
The quote above is a bit problematic for me, because being fat is not only not worse than those things, it has nothing to do with being boring, cruel, vindictive, or any of those other adjectives. But the point is that the way we obsess about not being fat, the emphasis we put on not associating ourselves with it, implies that as a society we do think of it as the worst thing a person could be. You don’t see Cosmo publishing a lot of articles about how to better your soul by being a kinder, more compassionate person.
Here’s a new question: What is wrong with being fat?
If your answer is health, then I want you to ask yourself a question: Does the girl I described above sound healthy to you? The thin girl who could only see a fat, unworthy girl in the mirror because her body wasn’t Kate Moss skinny – does she sound ok? She wasn’t ok.
She wasn’t ok, but I am going to be. So how do you go about changing your mind about something you’ve believed most of your life? You change the story. You listen to the voices that are speaking your truth – you seek them out, even though they are quieter than all the others. You cheer on women like Gabourey Sidibe when they refuse to be put down – because they are fighting your battle alongside you, and they need you as much as you need them.
I love fashion, and I always felt like I couldn’t really participate in it if I wasn’t skinny – like I didn’t really have the right to wear certain things. A friend introduced me to the blog GabieFresh. I love Gabie because she dares to wear whatever she wants. She has even designed a line of plus size bikinis! If she can’t inspire you to be brave in your fashion choices, well keep looking I guess…
One of my main sources of fashion inspiration is pinterest, and at first glance it seems like every fashion pin is on a tiny little body… and yes, many of them are, but if you start looking – which I have – there is fashion inspiration to be found above a size 8.
Ever read that old trick that says you should pin pictures to your fridge, or the inside of your closet door that “inspire” you to envision yourself with your perfect body? Well I’m doing that. I’m collecting pictures that depict beautiful bodies.
I can’t make the naysayers disappear, or the world change its mind. Cosmo will always publish articles about how to get a beach body in 2 weeks, pinterest will always be filled with thinspiration memes, and someone will always think I looked prettier ten pounds ago. But I can stop reading bikini body articles. I can unfollow that friend’s board that is filled with quotes about how I’d be a better person with perfect abs which I could have if I would just stop being a lazy, good for nothing slob. I can recognize that what the world thinks of me is none of my business, and is irrelevant to my happiness.
Monday, December 2, 2013
5 Reasons Not to Ask your Married 30-Something Friend if She is Having Children
Something started the day after I got married – people warned me that it would happen – and it’s not that I didn’t believe them, it’s more one of those things like child birth – people can tell you until your ears bleed, but until you experience it for yourself, you can’t quite understand how true it is, and how bothersome it might in fact become.
The thing I am referring to is my apparent freakdom in being a married 30-something, with a house, a good job, and a dog – and no children. To those of you who have been here, like I said – it’s not that I didn’t believe you - it’s that I didn’t really understand how deeply frustrating peoples questions can become.
To one nosy person who would not let up, I finally used a friend’s recommended response “Whatever happens happens”, nonchalantly with a shrug of the shoulders. This should have been the end of it – right? Oh no – this was taken as a cue to continue fishing by stating that’s what they had said when they were trying. Does that mean you’re trying? I finally said “Well, it’s kind of an awkward question” and got up and left. I thought that would be the end of it, but this person still takes the opportunity to remark every single time anything to do with babies comes up.
For this reason I have decided to do something I normally don’t do here. I’m making a Top Reasons List. Here are the top 5 reasons you shouldn’t ask if someone is going to have kids.
1. It is none of your business – if it is your business, your friend/acquaintance/family member… will tell you.
2. If you don’t know the person well enough to know if they are interested in having kids, you probably don’t know them well enough to know all the reasons that question might be terribly painful or awkward for them to answer – Are you prepared for that person to respond with any of the following responses?:
a. We’ve been trying really long time with no luck
b. We can’t have kids
c. I’ve had an abortion
d. I’ve had a miscarriage (or several)
If your answer to any of these is “No” – then DON’T ASK. Chances are the person you are talking to is too polite to make you feel uncomfortable by responding in any of these ways – so why don’t you return the favour?
3. Not all 30 something women want kids. Just because I enjoy the smell of a new baby’s head, or coo at a cute baby photo does not mean I want my own, or maybe just not yet. We are not broken vessels because of this.
4. Asking is rarely going to be appreciated by the party whose privacy you are invading. In my experience most women have one of two responses to repeatedly being asked if they are going to have children – annoyance at being repeatedly asked or sadness at being reminded of something that might be difficult for them to deal with. Maybe there are childless 30 something women out there who feel differently, but I don’t think I know them and I certainly haven’t heard from them on this topic.
5. It is none of your business. I’m saying it again because it bares repeating.It is none of your business. Got it?
The thing I am referring to is my apparent freakdom in being a married 30-something, with a house, a good job, and a dog – and no children. To those of you who have been here, like I said – it’s not that I didn’t believe you - it’s that I didn’t really understand how deeply frustrating peoples questions can become.
To one nosy person who would not let up, I finally used a friend’s recommended response “Whatever happens happens”, nonchalantly with a shrug of the shoulders. This should have been the end of it – right? Oh no – this was taken as a cue to continue fishing by stating that’s what they had said when they were trying. Does that mean you’re trying? I finally said “Well, it’s kind of an awkward question” and got up and left. I thought that would be the end of it, but this person still takes the opportunity to remark every single time anything to do with babies comes up.
For this reason I have decided to do something I normally don’t do here. I’m making a Top Reasons List. Here are the top 5 reasons you shouldn’t ask if someone is going to have kids.
1. It is none of your business – if it is your business, your friend/acquaintance/family member… will tell you.
2. If you don’t know the person well enough to know if they are interested in having kids, you probably don’t know them well enough to know all the reasons that question might be terribly painful or awkward for them to answer – Are you prepared for that person to respond with any of the following responses?:
a. We’ve been trying really long time with no luck
b. We can’t have kids
c. I’ve had an abortion
d. I’ve had a miscarriage (or several)
If your answer to any of these is “No” – then DON’T ASK. Chances are the person you are talking to is too polite to make you feel uncomfortable by responding in any of these ways – so why don’t you return the favour?
3. Not all 30 something women want kids. Just because I enjoy the smell of a new baby’s head, or coo at a cute baby photo does not mean I want my own, or maybe just not yet. We are not broken vessels because of this.
4. Asking is rarely going to be appreciated by the party whose privacy you are invading. In my experience most women have one of two responses to repeatedly being asked if they are going to have children – annoyance at being repeatedly asked or sadness at being reminded of something that might be difficult for them to deal with. Maybe there are childless 30 something women out there who feel differently, but I don’t think I know them and I certainly haven’t heard from them on this topic.
5. It is none of your business. I’m saying it again because it bares repeating.It is none of your business. Got it?
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
My heart breaks...
I've had to stop watching the news over the last couple years. I hate being uninformed, and not knowing about the important things going on in the world - people often look at me with amazement when they realize I haven't heard about a school shooting in some US State, or missed the fact that Rob Ford admitted to smoking crack. But the truth is that my heart just breaks too easily. I've realized that anything truly earth shattering will eventually make its way to me. Most of my Facebook Friends are fairly like-minded to me - and I use them as news filters. They post the huge news items, or the really interesting discoveries for me to read - and I don't have to read about all the other shitty things that have gone on in the world on any given day.
If you know me through work you might think that I have a really thick skin. Depending on the interaction we've had, you may even think I am the kind of person who goes home and kicks kittens for fun. Don't get me wrong, I don't go around blasting my coworkers - but I do expect people to do their jobs properly (or at the very least take ownership of their errors), and I do expect people in other departments to respect my staff and the challenges they face. I will respectfully, but without sugar coating, tell you the truth. This is a skill I have honed at work - and it is one of my strengths as a leader. Anyway, this is not a post about my strengths and weaknesses at work (if it was, I could definitely tell you about a few weaknesses as well). The point is, that people who know me through work, might not understand, or even believe that on the inside I am human goo.
The people who see the real me, or rather the whole me, could tell you that I've been known to disintegrate over a sappy Kleenex commercial - if I had a catch phrase, it would be "I'm not crying - my eyes are just watering." When it comes to human suffering, or even human triumph, I will cry at the drop of a hat. The triumph part is ok - I can live with the fact that I will cry watching contestants make it onto "So You Think You Can Dance" - there is something incredible about getting to see that moment when a person sees their dreams become a very real possibility. What I find more challenging is the other side of that coin - the side where I become inconsolable over injustice, the side that can't fathom a world where Tibetans are tortured for their beliefs, the kind of world where rapists are referred to as "Clumsy Don Juan's" and victims are vilified for wearing short skirts.
I can't count the number of times growing up that my mother had to remind me "It's not your tragedy - stop trying to own it." I have the ability to empathize with almost any situation - I can feel other people's pain. I'm not saying that if you experienced some terrible tragedy, that I know how you feel - but I can certainly imagine how I would feel in that circumstance. My heart breaks for you.
So Monday, as we drove home from the cabin, with CBC on the radio and heard over and over again about the massive human tragedy in that happened in the Philippines this weekend, I cried. I cried a lot. I cried when they talked about the 17 year old living in Canada who hadn't heard from her family. I cried when the little old lady got the news on Facebook that her son and his family were alright. I cried as I listened to the screams of terror recorded for radio play - it reminded me of September 11th, because I was at work that day and we listened to the whole awful thing play out on the radio.
Beyond the tears, I hold these tragedies in my heart. I try not to make them mine, and to understand that I am separate from them - but I always have to temper that with the knowledge that I can't separate myself to the point of apathy. It's a fine line. I try to close out the unecessary heartbreak, by ignoring mainstream news media as much as possible.
So what can I do? I can help the Red Cross put a band aid on it by donating some money - which I will do. I can remind myself how lucky I am to live somewhere that typhoons, and most other natural disasters, don't devastate lives. Whenever I am tempted to complain as the thermostat dips lower and lower this winter I can remind myself of how lucky I am that all I have to contend with is really shitty weather. I know all that is trite, and that it doesn't do a stitch to help the people whose lives have been devastated - but at the very least it shows some respect for the fact that by comparison I have very little to complain about.
If you know me through work you might think that I have a really thick skin. Depending on the interaction we've had, you may even think I am the kind of person who goes home and kicks kittens for fun. Don't get me wrong, I don't go around blasting my coworkers - but I do expect people to do their jobs properly (or at the very least take ownership of their errors), and I do expect people in other departments to respect my staff and the challenges they face. I will respectfully, but without sugar coating, tell you the truth. This is a skill I have honed at work - and it is one of my strengths as a leader. Anyway, this is not a post about my strengths and weaknesses at work (if it was, I could definitely tell you about a few weaknesses as well). The point is, that people who know me through work, might not understand, or even believe that on the inside I am human goo.
The people who see the real me, or rather the whole me, could tell you that I've been known to disintegrate over a sappy Kleenex commercial - if I had a catch phrase, it would be "I'm not crying - my eyes are just watering." When it comes to human suffering, or even human triumph, I will cry at the drop of a hat. The triumph part is ok - I can live with the fact that I will cry watching contestants make it onto "So You Think You Can Dance" - there is something incredible about getting to see that moment when a person sees their dreams become a very real possibility. What I find more challenging is the other side of that coin - the side where I become inconsolable over injustice, the side that can't fathom a world where Tibetans are tortured for their beliefs, the kind of world where rapists are referred to as "Clumsy Don Juan's" and victims are vilified for wearing short skirts.
I can't count the number of times growing up that my mother had to remind me "It's not your tragedy - stop trying to own it." I have the ability to empathize with almost any situation - I can feel other people's pain. I'm not saying that if you experienced some terrible tragedy, that I know how you feel - but I can certainly imagine how I would feel in that circumstance. My heart breaks for you.
So Monday, as we drove home from the cabin, with CBC on the radio and heard over and over again about the massive human tragedy in that happened in the Philippines this weekend, I cried. I cried a lot. I cried when they talked about the 17 year old living in Canada who hadn't heard from her family. I cried when the little old lady got the news on Facebook that her son and his family were alright. I cried as I listened to the screams of terror recorded for radio play - it reminded me of September 11th, because I was at work that day and we listened to the whole awful thing play out on the radio.
Beyond the tears, I hold these tragedies in my heart. I try not to make them mine, and to understand that I am separate from them - but I always have to temper that with the knowledge that I can't separate myself to the point of apathy. It's a fine line. I try to close out the unecessary heartbreak, by ignoring mainstream news media as much as possible.
So what can I do? I can help the Red Cross put a band aid on it by donating some money - which I will do. I can remind myself how lucky I am to live somewhere that typhoons, and most other natural disasters, don't devastate lives. Whenever I am tempted to complain as the thermostat dips lower and lower this winter I can remind myself of how lucky I am that all I have to contend with is really shitty weather. I know all that is trite, and that it doesn't do a stitch to help the people whose lives have been devastated - but at the very least it shows some respect for the fact that by comparison I have very little to complain about.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Atwood Aftermath
So, just in case you didn’t read my last post – Margaret Atwood was here last month. Like many other things in life, much anticipation was met with a somewhat anticlimactic outcome. I’m not sure it realistically could have come out any other way. Before she even appeared several announcements were made indicating that she was on a very tight schedule, as we would be leaving to go directly to the RWB for the world premier ballet adaption of the Handmaid’s Tale – after all, that was the reason she was in Winnipeg. Terry MacLeod would do a public interview for an hour. Directly afterwards she would sign books – as many copies of MaddAddam as you wanted, but only one of her other books. No chit chat. Period.
Our books were taken from us ahead of time so the page to be signed could be marked, and the inscription written out for her on a sticky note. When I finally arrived at the signing table I debated whether or not to say anything. I finally managed something along the lines of “Your writing has meant a lot to me.” She smiled politely and said thank you. So I managed to be trite, but not stupid – which I frankly think is nearly as bad, and certainly more boring. But whatever… what did I expect? To have a riveting conversation with her, become pen pals and have her offer to mentor me as a writer?
Onward and upward, right? Right.
If I want to make something come of my writing, impressing Margaret Atwood is not likely the way it’s going to happen anyway – writing more would probably be a good start. Alice Munroe’s recent win of the Nobel Prize for literature has got me thinking about short stories. A short story is an undervalued medium – so much has to be said in such a small framework. At the same time it is not as daunting to set out to write a short story. Also, setting out to write a novel when you haven’t even managed a short story seems akin to saying you want to fly, when you are barely shuffling along with proper footsteps.
What better way to get started, but to start writing short stories and getting them out there. So here you go – it’s a first attempt,and the more I read it the less I like it - but I have to just suck it up and put something out there - so be kind, but constructive criticism is certainly welcome.
Untitled
This place is stifling sometimes. Grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling – broken only by the odd shock of colour. The lime green velour arm chair, subdued shades of blue and purple floral in the bed spread. These are leftovers from before – placed here, just in case, but never intended to be used again. I wish they had thought to hang a picture on the wall. I have a vague memory, like a shadow in the far corner of my mind – if I focus all my energy on remembering, the edges become slightly less blurred – a warm hand in mine, sun on my skin, a faint spray of water across my face. If I quiet my mind, a difficult task when all you have are your own thoughts, I can hear a faint high pitched sound from shadows that circle overhead. When I am still to the point where I can no longer feel my chest move slightly up and down as my breath does its work to keep my organs alive, I can feel something hot, comforting and ever moving beneath my bare feet, as though the ground was alive that day. There is a boy with shaggy blond hair, playing in the malleable ground in front of me. This is the only picture I have of life before this place.
Everything I need somehow exists here – shelves stocked with sustenance, both physical and mental. Years ago she taught me how to use the tool with the circular blade to remove the top from containers, in order to extract food. I have no recollection of being taught to decipher the inscriptions in the many books that line the walls. I’ve read them all more times than I can count, and the ones I like best even more often. It’s hard for me to imagine the worlds that they depict – but then it is hard for me to imagine a time when it was safe to leave this place. She used to ask me, when I finished one, what did I think about it. I was never sure which ones told about things that were true, and which ones told things that were made up. I’d ask her “Is there really such a thing as a lion? A giant beast with a golden mane, teeth like jagged stone spires that could rip a man to shreds and a roar so powerful the sound of it would shake the earth?” And she would smile and nod in confirmation – “There was once such a beast, but it stopped existing a very long time ago. There are no more.” Then a few days later I would ask “Was there really a boy who never grew up? Who flew from Neverland to visit Wendy, and bring her back with him to be his mother while he had adventures with other boys?” And she would tell me there was never such a boy – that this story was made up by a man, who wrote it down so that other people could read the story. I had trouble deciphering what was real, and what was made up. It was good that I got through most of the books before the day she left.
She’d been talking for a while about the time before – about how I’d had a father, and how he’d taken us to a place called a “beach”. We’d pack food and eat outside – that was called a picnic. In books when people looked the way she did when she talked about the beach, the books called the look “joyful”. I don’t think that I have ever felt joyful. There is nothing in this place that makes me feel the way she does when she remembers the time before. I wish I remembered more about the time before, so I could feel joyful too.
“Mother?” I asked one day, when she was telling me about the beach.
“Yes?”
“Was there a boy too?”
Her face fell ever so slightly as she spoke, “There was once…” she trailed off.
“Where is he now?”
“With your father.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know exactly – outside maybe. But probably not. If he was outside, he would have come to find us when it was safe to come out.”
“Where else then?”
“Maybe heaven.” Her eyes are wet, but I don’t understand why. My eyes are only wet when I fall and hurt myself.
“What’s heaven? Did you bite your lip? Why are your eyes wet?”
“When your eyes are wet it is called ‘crying’.” She explains – I remember crying from books, but it makes more sense now. “I am crying because heaven is where people go when they die, and we can’t see or talk to them here on earth anymore. It makes me sad that I can’t talk to your father because I loved him. He was my best friend.”
A few sleeps later she decides that it is time to see if “outside” is safe. Outside is where we lived before – I don’t really understand why it stopped being safe. Mother says it’s because of “war”, but I don’t really know what that means because she won’t explain. Some of my books talk about war – it’s where there is lots of fighting and people die (OH! That’s when people go to heaven!) – usually the fighting is because men can’t agree on an idea (I don’t know why it is always men who can’t agree – where are all the women when they decide to have war? It seems like they are still dying, and the children too, even though they don’t get to decide about the fighting. Maybe they could make the men stop fighting if the men would listen to them?) but in the books the war always ends, and some people went to heaven, but many people stayed and it becomes safe again. So I don’t understand why we have to be here instead of outside. Mother usually answers all my questions, but when I ask about the war she has a look I don’t understand. I know that I don’t like the look, so I don’t like to make it happen.
So, mother is going outside. Then she will decide if I can come too, and she will come back. I am not to leave until she comes back.
Many sleeps pass, but mother doesn’t come back. Now when I think about mother, my face feels the way hers looked when I asked about the war. It’s not a good feeling, so I try not to think about her.
Thirty seven sleeps after mother left, I woke up with blood on my legs. It is very strange because normally when there is blood, the skin is scraped away and it stings. This time all my skin is not scraped and nothing stings.
In our place – my place – there are two areas. One is where we sleep, read, make food and do most things. One is much smaller – it is where there is water. Water is in the toilet, the sink and in the shower. Mother said we don’t know how much water there will be, so the shower is only for once every thirty sleeps.
I decide I should use some water to clean the blood. It hasn’t been 30 sleeps since the last time I used the shower, but I will use it anyway. Now there is only one of me here, so I can use the shower a little more. I clean away the blood that has begun to dry on the inside of my legs – I was right, there is no place where my skin is broken underneath. Where did the blood come from?
After I have dried off, I am sitting in just my skin, reading a book about a man who is not really man, but really a vampire – vampire’s drink people’s blood instead of eating food. I forgot to ask mother if vampires are real. They seem like they might be, but I hope that they are not – that’s when I noticed there is more blood on my legs and also a little on the floor where I am sitting. I realize that it is coming from the hole that leads inside of me. I am afraid a little – I have read in books where a person bleeds so much they go to heaven. Then I think that in heaven I might not be all by myself and I feel something tingly and nice in my stomach and chest when I think that.
I have three towels, so I take the one I dried off with, and cut it into strips around one and half inches wide by four inches long, and I press one to the hole. I don’t know if it will stop the bleeding – but I don’t know if I want it to. I just think that I don’t want the blood to get everywhere.
It keeps going for 5 sleeps – every day there is a little less – then it stops completely as though it never happened and I cry.
I go back to normal, only now there is no one to talk to even. I keep reading the book about the man who is not a man – the first time I read it was scary, but now I just think it is sad.
When my stomach tells me to, I open a can and eat something. I sleep a lot. More than I did when mother was still here. I think more than I did when mother was here. I never really thought before about trying to leave our place, but now I think about it all the time. If I leave and the war is still the war, then maybe I can get hurt and go to heaven. If the war is not the war, maybe there are other people? Maybe mother is there, but can’t find her way back to our place. Maybe she found the beach and is too joyful to come back. If I could find her there we could both be joyful together.
I finish the vampire book, and decide to read my favourite book again – even though I have read it more than all the other books. It is a book about a boy who has a very unhappy life, until one day someone comes and tells him that he can make magic. After that he leaves his sad life alone, and goes to a school with many other children who can also make magic. This story is so long that it had to be separated into seven books. The seventh is the one I read again and again, because once you get through all the sadness, just when you think that all hope is lost, you get to see that in the end the boy gets to be happy. I never asked mother if that one was real, but that was on purpose because I don’t want to know if it is not. I like to believe that someday someone might come tell me that I will get to leave this place and go to school with other boys and girls. I even wish that I could go on adventures, terribly hard and sad ones, and fight in a war for something I believed in – because even though those things are terrible, at least they are something. At least I could choose to be brave, or to run away. To choose anything would be better than to have no choices at all.
Twenty nine sleeps later the bleeding starts again.
After that I start to notice small changes – I am starting to feel more like mother – softer and rounder in some areas, hair begins to appear in others.
This time the bleeding lasts six days. Every night I wash out the pieces of towel and start over.
I begin to stare at the moving part of the wall, that mother left through. What do they call it in books? A door? In my mind I make up a million scenarios about what might be on the other side.
One night I have a dream about going through the door. On the other side I have to get through a castle where a vampire lives, and the stairs keep swinging around, changing their direction. There are men with guns and gas masks running through the halls. Just when I think I am about to make it out of the castle, a small explosion takes me off course. I run in the opposite direction, into a room where a waiting lion eats me alive.
I wake up drenched in sweat and my eyes are wet, but I am not actually hurt.
Now when I stare at the door I can’t help but feel the jaws of the lion closing around my flesh. I try to do everything I can to distract myself from it. I read for hours, wash the bed linens in the sink, like mother taught me. I count the new hairs appearing under my arms. There are eight of them now. I think about where mother might have gone, and I feel a new feeling – anger. I run in place for a bit – mother always said it was the best thing to do when I felt something I wanted to stop feeling. It usually worked, but not today. I decide to take a shower – mostly to spite mother and her rules. Then I eat six different cans of food – we are not supposed to eat more than three a day, to make sure they last.
I go back to get number seven, even though my stomach feels like a small man is punching it from the inside. I reach in to extract the can and my hand bumps the brick behind it, but rather than scrape my knuckle, there is give and the brick slides back a little. Now rather than the can, my hand has a new target – the corner of the brick. I close my fingers around its rough edges, there is not a lot of space to get any purchase from, so I dig my nails in a little and pull. The brick hesitates a little but slides heavily out of place. It’s dark in the cupboard and I have trouble seeing what might be behind the brick, so I reach my hand into the small empty space it has left behind. My fingers close around something cool and hard. A small metal box slides into the light.
Inside the box there is a small stack of paper – each paper is folded to make a sort of case, with more paper inside. On the outside there is a name, and some other numbers and words. Most fascinating though is the upper right hand corner, where there is a picture of a woman’s face. She is what I have always pictured when a book describes a woman as handsome, and wears something very ornate in her hair on the top of her head. I wonder why her picture appears here, what she has to do with the papers inside.
After thoroughly examining the cases I remove the papers from inside. There is a type of writing I have never seen before – fluid and scrolling, unlike the uniform letters inside books. I have trouble deciphering it.
Nov. 15, 2020
Dearest Emily,
I have now been at the training barracks in Salt Lake City for 17 days. I have barely had two minutes to sit down other than to eat a meal. Training is intense, and I am afraid of what is to come. We hear rumors from the frontline in British Columbia that inhumane acts are committed every day – I have heard of unspeakable atrocities, which I cannot repeat here – and I am afraid. The Northern forces are said to be pushing further South every day.
I’m sorry for this communication to be so short. I will write again as soon as possible. Until then take care of Violet and Aidan, and stay safe. If the fighting comes too near, move to the place we’ve made ready, and do not come out until I have come for you.
All my love,
Michael
***
Dec. 28, 2020
Dearest Emily,
Christmas has come and gone, and what a miserable one it has been. Not only am I far away from my family, but I have received news that we will be deployed to the frontline in British Columbia tomorrow. I pray every day for an end to this war – sometimes I can barely recollect what it is we are fighting for. The other men in my platoon are good men, and I am glad to have them here with me. I can’t say much more, and even if I could I’m sure the Bureau of Censorship would black out much of what I wrote.
Be prepared to go soon. It’s time to make sure you have everything you need.
All my love,
Michael
***
Mar. 1, 2021
Emily,
It is my dearest hope to see you again someday – but hope is nearly dead in my heart. The things I have seen have broken me in ways I cannot describe. I’m not sure you would even know me if you saw me pass you in the street tomorrow. Hope is a dangerous thing to hold onto – I have very nearly let go.
All my love,
Michael
***
Feb. 17, 2021
Emily – take the children and go. Hopefully you have done so before this letter arrives.
M.
***
That was the last communication. Were Emily and Michael my mother and father? Was Aidan the boy I had the faint memory of?
More than ever, I want to open the door – my stomach starts to churn when I think of what might be on the other side. More than ever, I am frozen with fear.
Twenty seven sleeps later the bleeding starts again, and I am still locked in time staring at the door. I am no longer afraid of the bleeding, but I have also given up hoping that it might take me to heaven.
One night I am woken from my sleep by a deep rumbling noise. As I shake the sleep from my mind I realize I can no longer hear it. Did I dream it? I wait a few minutes, my ears straining, my eyes closed in the dark. Then it starts again. I think it is coming from above me. It lasts a minute and then stops again. When it starts again it sounds nearer. Now there is another sound – faint, barely there. Is it the sound of human voices? Slowly they grow louder – “just a little bit further now”, “we’re almost there”. I have never been more terrified and more hopeful in my life. Someone is coming for me.
The door rattles, and bangs open. All I can see against the blinding light streaming through the opening is the silhouette of a man.
Our books were taken from us ahead of time so the page to be signed could be marked, and the inscription written out for her on a sticky note. When I finally arrived at the signing table I debated whether or not to say anything. I finally managed something along the lines of “Your writing has meant a lot to me.” She smiled politely and said thank you. So I managed to be trite, but not stupid – which I frankly think is nearly as bad, and certainly more boring. But whatever… what did I expect? To have a riveting conversation with her, become pen pals and have her offer to mentor me as a writer?
Onward and upward, right? Right.
If I want to make something come of my writing, impressing Margaret Atwood is not likely the way it’s going to happen anyway – writing more would probably be a good start. Alice Munroe’s recent win of the Nobel Prize for literature has got me thinking about short stories. A short story is an undervalued medium – so much has to be said in such a small framework. At the same time it is not as daunting to set out to write a short story. Also, setting out to write a novel when you haven’t even managed a short story seems akin to saying you want to fly, when you are barely shuffling along with proper footsteps.
What better way to get started, but to start writing short stories and getting them out there. So here you go – it’s a first attempt,and the more I read it the less I like it - but I have to just suck it up and put something out there - so be kind, but constructive criticism is certainly welcome.
Untitled
This place is stifling sometimes. Grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling – broken only by the odd shock of colour. The lime green velour arm chair, subdued shades of blue and purple floral in the bed spread. These are leftovers from before – placed here, just in case, but never intended to be used again. I wish they had thought to hang a picture on the wall. I have a vague memory, like a shadow in the far corner of my mind – if I focus all my energy on remembering, the edges become slightly less blurred – a warm hand in mine, sun on my skin, a faint spray of water across my face. If I quiet my mind, a difficult task when all you have are your own thoughts, I can hear a faint high pitched sound from shadows that circle overhead. When I am still to the point where I can no longer feel my chest move slightly up and down as my breath does its work to keep my organs alive, I can feel something hot, comforting and ever moving beneath my bare feet, as though the ground was alive that day. There is a boy with shaggy blond hair, playing in the malleable ground in front of me. This is the only picture I have of life before this place.
Everything I need somehow exists here – shelves stocked with sustenance, both physical and mental. Years ago she taught me how to use the tool with the circular blade to remove the top from containers, in order to extract food. I have no recollection of being taught to decipher the inscriptions in the many books that line the walls. I’ve read them all more times than I can count, and the ones I like best even more often. It’s hard for me to imagine the worlds that they depict – but then it is hard for me to imagine a time when it was safe to leave this place. She used to ask me, when I finished one, what did I think about it. I was never sure which ones told about things that were true, and which ones told things that were made up. I’d ask her “Is there really such a thing as a lion? A giant beast with a golden mane, teeth like jagged stone spires that could rip a man to shreds and a roar so powerful the sound of it would shake the earth?” And she would smile and nod in confirmation – “There was once such a beast, but it stopped existing a very long time ago. There are no more.” Then a few days later I would ask “Was there really a boy who never grew up? Who flew from Neverland to visit Wendy, and bring her back with him to be his mother while he had adventures with other boys?” And she would tell me there was never such a boy – that this story was made up by a man, who wrote it down so that other people could read the story. I had trouble deciphering what was real, and what was made up. It was good that I got through most of the books before the day she left.
She’d been talking for a while about the time before – about how I’d had a father, and how he’d taken us to a place called a “beach”. We’d pack food and eat outside – that was called a picnic. In books when people looked the way she did when she talked about the beach, the books called the look “joyful”. I don’t think that I have ever felt joyful. There is nothing in this place that makes me feel the way she does when she remembers the time before. I wish I remembered more about the time before, so I could feel joyful too.
“Mother?” I asked one day, when she was telling me about the beach.
“Yes?”
“Was there a boy too?”
Her face fell ever so slightly as she spoke, “There was once…” she trailed off.
“Where is he now?”
“With your father.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know exactly – outside maybe. But probably not. If he was outside, he would have come to find us when it was safe to come out.”
“Where else then?”
“Maybe heaven.” Her eyes are wet, but I don’t understand why. My eyes are only wet when I fall and hurt myself.
“What’s heaven? Did you bite your lip? Why are your eyes wet?”
“When your eyes are wet it is called ‘crying’.” She explains – I remember crying from books, but it makes more sense now. “I am crying because heaven is where people go when they die, and we can’t see or talk to them here on earth anymore. It makes me sad that I can’t talk to your father because I loved him. He was my best friend.”
A few sleeps later she decides that it is time to see if “outside” is safe. Outside is where we lived before – I don’t really understand why it stopped being safe. Mother says it’s because of “war”, but I don’t really know what that means because she won’t explain. Some of my books talk about war – it’s where there is lots of fighting and people die (OH! That’s when people go to heaven!) – usually the fighting is because men can’t agree on an idea (I don’t know why it is always men who can’t agree – where are all the women when they decide to have war? It seems like they are still dying, and the children too, even though they don’t get to decide about the fighting. Maybe they could make the men stop fighting if the men would listen to them?) but in the books the war always ends, and some people went to heaven, but many people stayed and it becomes safe again. So I don’t understand why we have to be here instead of outside. Mother usually answers all my questions, but when I ask about the war she has a look I don’t understand. I know that I don’t like the look, so I don’t like to make it happen.
So, mother is going outside. Then she will decide if I can come too, and she will come back. I am not to leave until she comes back.
Many sleeps pass, but mother doesn’t come back. Now when I think about mother, my face feels the way hers looked when I asked about the war. It’s not a good feeling, so I try not to think about her.
Thirty seven sleeps after mother left, I woke up with blood on my legs. It is very strange because normally when there is blood, the skin is scraped away and it stings. This time all my skin is not scraped and nothing stings.
In our place – my place – there are two areas. One is where we sleep, read, make food and do most things. One is much smaller – it is where there is water. Water is in the toilet, the sink and in the shower. Mother said we don’t know how much water there will be, so the shower is only for once every thirty sleeps.
I decide I should use some water to clean the blood. It hasn’t been 30 sleeps since the last time I used the shower, but I will use it anyway. Now there is only one of me here, so I can use the shower a little more. I clean away the blood that has begun to dry on the inside of my legs – I was right, there is no place where my skin is broken underneath. Where did the blood come from?
After I have dried off, I am sitting in just my skin, reading a book about a man who is not really man, but really a vampire – vampire’s drink people’s blood instead of eating food. I forgot to ask mother if vampires are real. They seem like they might be, but I hope that they are not – that’s when I noticed there is more blood on my legs and also a little on the floor where I am sitting. I realize that it is coming from the hole that leads inside of me. I am afraid a little – I have read in books where a person bleeds so much they go to heaven. Then I think that in heaven I might not be all by myself and I feel something tingly and nice in my stomach and chest when I think that.
I have three towels, so I take the one I dried off with, and cut it into strips around one and half inches wide by four inches long, and I press one to the hole. I don’t know if it will stop the bleeding – but I don’t know if I want it to. I just think that I don’t want the blood to get everywhere.
It keeps going for 5 sleeps – every day there is a little less – then it stops completely as though it never happened and I cry.
I go back to normal, only now there is no one to talk to even. I keep reading the book about the man who is not a man – the first time I read it was scary, but now I just think it is sad.
When my stomach tells me to, I open a can and eat something. I sleep a lot. More than I did when mother was still here. I think more than I did when mother was here. I never really thought before about trying to leave our place, but now I think about it all the time. If I leave and the war is still the war, then maybe I can get hurt and go to heaven. If the war is not the war, maybe there are other people? Maybe mother is there, but can’t find her way back to our place. Maybe she found the beach and is too joyful to come back. If I could find her there we could both be joyful together.
I finish the vampire book, and decide to read my favourite book again – even though I have read it more than all the other books. It is a book about a boy who has a very unhappy life, until one day someone comes and tells him that he can make magic. After that he leaves his sad life alone, and goes to a school with many other children who can also make magic. This story is so long that it had to be separated into seven books. The seventh is the one I read again and again, because once you get through all the sadness, just when you think that all hope is lost, you get to see that in the end the boy gets to be happy. I never asked mother if that one was real, but that was on purpose because I don’t want to know if it is not. I like to believe that someday someone might come tell me that I will get to leave this place and go to school with other boys and girls. I even wish that I could go on adventures, terribly hard and sad ones, and fight in a war for something I believed in – because even though those things are terrible, at least they are something. At least I could choose to be brave, or to run away. To choose anything would be better than to have no choices at all.
Twenty nine sleeps later the bleeding starts again.
After that I start to notice small changes – I am starting to feel more like mother – softer and rounder in some areas, hair begins to appear in others.
This time the bleeding lasts six days. Every night I wash out the pieces of towel and start over.
I begin to stare at the moving part of the wall, that mother left through. What do they call it in books? A door? In my mind I make up a million scenarios about what might be on the other side.
One night I have a dream about going through the door. On the other side I have to get through a castle where a vampire lives, and the stairs keep swinging around, changing their direction. There are men with guns and gas masks running through the halls. Just when I think I am about to make it out of the castle, a small explosion takes me off course. I run in the opposite direction, into a room where a waiting lion eats me alive.
I wake up drenched in sweat and my eyes are wet, but I am not actually hurt.
Now when I stare at the door I can’t help but feel the jaws of the lion closing around my flesh. I try to do everything I can to distract myself from it. I read for hours, wash the bed linens in the sink, like mother taught me. I count the new hairs appearing under my arms. There are eight of them now. I think about where mother might have gone, and I feel a new feeling – anger. I run in place for a bit – mother always said it was the best thing to do when I felt something I wanted to stop feeling. It usually worked, but not today. I decide to take a shower – mostly to spite mother and her rules. Then I eat six different cans of food – we are not supposed to eat more than three a day, to make sure they last.
I go back to get number seven, even though my stomach feels like a small man is punching it from the inside. I reach in to extract the can and my hand bumps the brick behind it, but rather than scrape my knuckle, there is give and the brick slides back a little. Now rather than the can, my hand has a new target – the corner of the brick. I close my fingers around its rough edges, there is not a lot of space to get any purchase from, so I dig my nails in a little and pull. The brick hesitates a little but slides heavily out of place. It’s dark in the cupboard and I have trouble seeing what might be behind the brick, so I reach my hand into the small empty space it has left behind. My fingers close around something cool and hard. A small metal box slides into the light.
Inside the box there is a small stack of paper – each paper is folded to make a sort of case, with more paper inside. On the outside there is a name, and some other numbers and words. Most fascinating though is the upper right hand corner, where there is a picture of a woman’s face. She is what I have always pictured when a book describes a woman as handsome, and wears something very ornate in her hair on the top of her head. I wonder why her picture appears here, what she has to do with the papers inside.
After thoroughly examining the cases I remove the papers from inside. There is a type of writing I have never seen before – fluid and scrolling, unlike the uniform letters inside books. I have trouble deciphering it.
Nov. 15, 2020
Dearest Emily,
I have now been at the training barracks in Salt Lake City for 17 days. I have barely had two minutes to sit down other than to eat a meal. Training is intense, and I am afraid of what is to come. We hear rumors from the frontline in British Columbia that inhumane acts are committed every day – I have heard of unspeakable atrocities, which I cannot repeat here – and I am afraid. The Northern forces are said to be pushing further South every day.
I’m sorry for this communication to be so short. I will write again as soon as possible. Until then take care of Violet and Aidan, and stay safe. If the fighting comes too near, move to the place we’ve made ready, and do not come out until I have come for you.
All my love,
Michael
***
Dec. 28, 2020
Dearest Emily,
Christmas has come and gone, and what a miserable one it has been. Not only am I far away from my family, but I have received news that we will be deployed to the frontline in British Columbia tomorrow. I pray every day for an end to this war – sometimes I can barely recollect what it is we are fighting for. The other men in my platoon are good men, and I am glad to have them here with me. I can’t say much more, and even if I could I’m sure the Bureau of Censorship would black out much of what I wrote.
Be prepared to go soon. It’s time to make sure you have everything you need.
All my love,
Michael
***
Mar. 1, 2021
Emily,
It is my dearest hope to see you again someday – but hope is nearly dead in my heart. The things I have seen have broken me in ways I cannot describe. I’m not sure you would even know me if you saw me pass you in the street tomorrow. Hope is a dangerous thing to hold onto – I have very nearly let go.
All my love,
Michael
***
Feb. 17, 2021
Emily – take the children and go. Hopefully you have done so before this letter arrives.
M.
***
That was the last communication. Were Emily and Michael my mother and father? Was Aidan the boy I had the faint memory of?
More than ever, I want to open the door – my stomach starts to churn when I think of what might be on the other side. More than ever, I am frozen with fear.
Twenty seven sleeps later the bleeding starts again, and I am still locked in time staring at the door. I am no longer afraid of the bleeding, but I have also given up hoping that it might take me to heaven.
One night I am woken from my sleep by a deep rumbling noise. As I shake the sleep from my mind I realize I can no longer hear it. Did I dream it? I wait a few minutes, my ears straining, my eyes closed in the dark. Then it starts again. I think it is coming from above me. It lasts a minute and then stops again. When it starts again it sounds nearer. Now there is another sound – faint, barely there. Is it the sound of human voices? Slowly they grow louder – “just a little bit further now”, “we’re almost there”. I have never been more terrified and more hopeful in my life. Someone is coming for me.
The door rattles, and bangs open. All I can see against the blinding light streaming through the opening is the silhouette of a man.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Um, hello Ms. Atwood – you write good…
Atwood. She’s coming…
I have been a reader and writer since I was a little girl. They are the two things in my life that have just always come naturally to me. I don’t remember learning to read. As far as my mind is aware, I’ve just always been able to do it. I love books like some people love religion – they feed me. They are to be respected and treated with reverence. They have the power to change your entire way of viewing life. Over the years there have been four instances where a book has changed something fundamental in me – they’ve altered me so profoundly that they have left scars on my heart. I have a scar on my right thumb, right below the nail, from my best friend’s first car, where it scraped off my skin one afternoon while I was trying to get a very stiff hood release to pull up. Whenever I look at that scar I am flooded with happy memories of trips we took in that car – I remember singing to Sublime at the tops of our lungs, I feel the warmth of summer nights spent driving around aimlessly, I feel the icy January mornings waiting for heat to start coming through the vents. Those are the kind of scars these four books left on me – the kind that make you instantly remember how you felt in a particular moment. Two of those books were written by Margaret Atwood.
When I was 15 I read The Robber Bride – it was the first time I’d read one of her novels. It was also the first time I remember reading more than just the words on the page. I felt like I’d discovered a jewel she’d hidden between the lines for me to find. In short, the story is about a group of women who have little in common other than their love/loathing of the female antagonist, Zenia. At one point in each of their lives she has gained their trust and even their love, only to betray them by stealing their men. You want to hate her – it’s easy to hate her. But real relationships are never that simple and my revelation was this: the women who lost their men to her were in terrible relationships with men they shouldn’t have been with. The one relationship Zenia never succeeds in completly destroying, is the only one in which the man is likely right for his female partner. In removing these men from their lives (or in attempting to, in the one case) Zenia had not only forced them out of these negative relationships, but she’d also forged a bond between the other women that they would not have had otherwise. In essence she created a situation that allowed them to access the most important and valuable relationships of their lives. To this day this book reminds me that relationships are more complex than we can ever really know from the outside, and that when things go wrong the answers are never black and white. It’s easy to vilify the person who committed the most glaring wrong – but there is always more to the story.
A few years later, after I’d moved from Manitoba to Ontario, I read Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners. I felt a connection to this prairie born author, who had also move to Ontario – I felt as though her words were my Canadian birthright – telling the tale of the Scottish families (like mine) who had settled in the prairies. For the first time I felt like I’d stumbled across an author who not only inspired me, but made me believe that even a girl from the prairies could become one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. She described Canada, and Manitoba, in a way that I could only someday aspire to live up to. It may sound small, but in many ways this might be the most important gift any book could have given me.
In my early 20s, while I was living in Japan, my mom sent me a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The inscription she’d penned in the front cover said something along the lines of “A story about adventures far from home – may yours be just as growing, but not nearly as dangerous. Love, mom”. I’ve heard that it took Kingsolver something like 20 years to write this book – which wouldn’t surprise me given the depth of the plot and character development. Each chapter tells the story of one of the women of the Price family, dragged to the Congo on the verge of civil war, by their religious zealot, preacher father. Needless to say, things do no go well for them. To properly sum up how I feel about this book, and the lessons it taught me would be impossible. I will keep it to the two most important ideas I took away:
First - Our perspective of right and wrong is all relative to our experiences in life – or as it is so aptly put by Kingsolver herself: “Everything you know is right can be wrong in a different place.” Traveling in India really helped drive this home for me, because so many times I had to question my core beliefs about what was “right”.
Second - Pain, sorrow, suffering and fear are as necessary to human growth as fire is to a forest. Without being pushed to our outer limits we can never truly know the strength we hold inside – they carve out a sense of our own capability that we might never otherwise be aware of. So when life is joyful, not only can we truly appreciate it, but we can know in our hearts that we have the strength to battle through the inevitable pain that some new day will bring – and we will come out the other side a new incarnation of ourselves.
Atwood’s The Year of the Flood was the most recent book to have this kind of lasting impact on me. It is the second book in her recently completed Maddaddam trilogy. It was the first one I read in the series, and so far my favourite of the three (although I’m not quite half way through the final book, so I suppose I may feel differently by the time I am done) – the first two books happen more or less congruently and are different aspects of the same timeline, the third brings the two together, and hopefully provides us some closure on the story. Atwood has branded this genre of writing as “speculative fiction”, differing from “science fiction” in that it describes a future very much routed in a possible outcome of our current state. The genius of these books is the plausibility of the bone chilling future Atwood paints for us. The detail is stunning – down to the practices of the new religions that emerge, and the scientific meddling in all aspects of our lives to “improve” the way we live. Nothing is spared: food, cosmetics, clothing, sex – all engineered to deliver optimal results with minimal effort.
Food, and the many ways in which we’ve perverted it, is a recurring theme in the Maddaddam trilogy. From the prolific fast food chain “SecretBurger” (reminiscent of Soilent Green), to the 20% real fish, fish fingers served in the high school cafeteria, we are inundated with images of how distorted food has become. I was standing in line at Ikea for lunch one afternoon, when I was struck by the depth of the impact this story had on me. We were all herded into metal railed corrals, placidly staring around, while holding trays or pushing food carts meant to allow us to stack and carry many trays, waiting to be fed cheaply and quickly – and I watched in horror as person after person walked by carrying plates of brownish grey food, devoid of any colour save the lingon berry jelly for the spongy Swedish meatballs. It was so reminiscent of the way Atwood describes the food industry in her story, that I felt a wave of panic.
My worst fear is that someday we will view Atwood as a prophet, and not just a talented writer with a wild imagination. I wish I could send a copy of these three books to all the major world leaders with a note. The note would read “It’s not too late to change course!” But they’d probably see me in the same way the wealthy and powerful of Atwood’s world view environmentalists and those who believe in real food – a fringe lunatic.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because Margaret Atwood is coming to Winnipeg next month. The thought of meeting her both thrills and petrifies me. I’m going to meet the woman who penned two of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. I want to tell her all this, but somehow the words I say out loud never live up to the ones that run through my head – not to mention I’ll probably have no more than a minute or two as I hand her my books to sign to sum up the impact she has had on my heart. I want to tell her that part of the reason I love and respect her writing so much is because sometimes she writes books I love, and sometimes she writes books I hate (She has written 22 novels, 15 books of poetry, 11 works of nonfiction, and 7 children’s stories according to the information inside my copy of Maddaddam) – I have started Alias Grace no less than 5 times and have never been able to get more than about 50 pages in – because I think this shows how diverse her writing truly is. There’s probably someone out there who loves Alias Grace and hates The Year of the Flood.
When I was in University, I had a friend named John, who I worked with at Blockbuster video. John felt about the Tragically Hip the way I feel about Atwood. He’d grown up in Kingston, but they were famous and long gone by the time he was old enough to realize any of this. One day he was walking down the street, past the house where the guitar player’s parents still lived – and there he was, sitting on the porch playing “Grace Too”. John finally had his chance to express the impact their music had had on him. He took a breath, gathered his courage, walked up to the porch, looked his idol straight in the eye and said “Hey man. That’s Grace Too.” – “Yup” the guitar player responded as he continued to play. John turned and walked away, and as he went he thought to himself “That’s Grace Too???!!! – REALLY?? REALLY?? He knows it’s Grace Too – he wrote the fucking song!!!” I wonder if John ever really forgave himself for missing what might have been his one opportunity to tell this man what his art had meant to him.
Of course, in the grand scheme of life there are worse things than getting tongue tied in front of someone you deeply respect – but that doesn’t stop me from fearing the same fate. “Um, hello Ms. Atwood – you write good…”
I have been a reader and writer since I was a little girl. They are the two things in my life that have just always come naturally to me. I don’t remember learning to read. As far as my mind is aware, I’ve just always been able to do it. I love books like some people love religion – they feed me. They are to be respected and treated with reverence. They have the power to change your entire way of viewing life. Over the years there have been four instances where a book has changed something fundamental in me – they’ve altered me so profoundly that they have left scars on my heart. I have a scar on my right thumb, right below the nail, from my best friend’s first car, where it scraped off my skin one afternoon while I was trying to get a very stiff hood release to pull up. Whenever I look at that scar I am flooded with happy memories of trips we took in that car – I remember singing to Sublime at the tops of our lungs, I feel the warmth of summer nights spent driving around aimlessly, I feel the icy January mornings waiting for heat to start coming through the vents. Those are the kind of scars these four books left on me – the kind that make you instantly remember how you felt in a particular moment. Two of those books were written by Margaret Atwood.
When I was 15 I read The Robber Bride – it was the first time I’d read one of her novels. It was also the first time I remember reading more than just the words on the page. I felt like I’d discovered a jewel she’d hidden between the lines for me to find. In short, the story is about a group of women who have little in common other than their love/loathing of the female antagonist, Zenia. At one point in each of their lives she has gained their trust and even their love, only to betray them by stealing their men. You want to hate her – it’s easy to hate her. But real relationships are never that simple and my revelation was this: the women who lost their men to her were in terrible relationships with men they shouldn’t have been with. The one relationship Zenia never succeeds in completly destroying, is the only one in which the man is likely right for his female partner. In removing these men from their lives (or in attempting to, in the one case) Zenia had not only forced them out of these negative relationships, but she’d also forged a bond between the other women that they would not have had otherwise. In essence she created a situation that allowed them to access the most important and valuable relationships of their lives. To this day this book reminds me that relationships are more complex than we can ever really know from the outside, and that when things go wrong the answers are never black and white. It’s easy to vilify the person who committed the most glaring wrong – but there is always more to the story.
A few years later, after I’d moved from Manitoba to Ontario, I read Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners. I felt a connection to this prairie born author, who had also move to Ontario – I felt as though her words were my Canadian birthright – telling the tale of the Scottish families (like mine) who had settled in the prairies. For the first time I felt like I’d stumbled across an author who not only inspired me, but made me believe that even a girl from the prairies could become one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. She described Canada, and Manitoba, in a way that I could only someday aspire to live up to. It may sound small, but in many ways this might be the most important gift any book could have given me.
In my early 20s, while I was living in Japan, my mom sent me a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The inscription she’d penned in the front cover said something along the lines of “A story about adventures far from home – may yours be just as growing, but not nearly as dangerous. Love, mom”. I’ve heard that it took Kingsolver something like 20 years to write this book – which wouldn’t surprise me given the depth of the plot and character development. Each chapter tells the story of one of the women of the Price family, dragged to the Congo on the verge of civil war, by their religious zealot, preacher father. Needless to say, things do no go well for them. To properly sum up how I feel about this book, and the lessons it taught me would be impossible. I will keep it to the two most important ideas I took away:
First - Our perspective of right and wrong is all relative to our experiences in life – or as it is so aptly put by Kingsolver herself: “Everything you know is right can be wrong in a different place.” Traveling in India really helped drive this home for me, because so many times I had to question my core beliefs about what was “right”.
Second - Pain, sorrow, suffering and fear are as necessary to human growth as fire is to a forest. Without being pushed to our outer limits we can never truly know the strength we hold inside – they carve out a sense of our own capability that we might never otherwise be aware of. So when life is joyful, not only can we truly appreciate it, but we can know in our hearts that we have the strength to battle through the inevitable pain that some new day will bring – and we will come out the other side a new incarnation of ourselves.
Atwood’s The Year of the Flood was the most recent book to have this kind of lasting impact on me. It is the second book in her recently completed Maddaddam trilogy. It was the first one I read in the series, and so far my favourite of the three (although I’m not quite half way through the final book, so I suppose I may feel differently by the time I am done) – the first two books happen more or less congruently and are different aspects of the same timeline, the third brings the two together, and hopefully provides us some closure on the story. Atwood has branded this genre of writing as “speculative fiction”, differing from “science fiction” in that it describes a future very much routed in a possible outcome of our current state. The genius of these books is the plausibility of the bone chilling future Atwood paints for us. The detail is stunning – down to the practices of the new religions that emerge, and the scientific meddling in all aspects of our lives to “improve” the way we live. Nothing is spared: food, cosmetics, clothing, sex – all engineered to deliver optimal results with minimal effort.
Food, and the many ways in which we’ve perverted it, is a recurring theme in the Maddaddam trilogy. From the prolific fast food chain “SecretBurger” (reminiscent of Soilent Green), to the 20% real fish, fish fingers served in the high school cafeteria, we are inundated with images of how distorted food has become. I was standing in line at Ikea for lunch one afternoon, when I was struck by the depth of the impact this story had on me. We were all herded into metal railed corrals, placidly staring around, while holding trays or pushing food carts meant to allow us to stack and carry many trays, waiting to be fed cheaply and quickly – and I watched in horror as person after person walked by carrying plates of brownish grey food, devoid of any colour save the lingon berry jelly for the spongy Swedish meatballs. It was so reminiscent of the way Atwood describes the food industry in her story, that I felt a wave of panic.
My worst fear is that someday we will view Atwood as a prophet, and not just a talented writer with a wild imagination. I wish I could send a copy of these three books to all the major world leaders with a note. The note would read “It’s not too late to change course!” But they’d probably see me in the same way the wealthy and powerful of Atwood’s world view environmentalists and those who believe in real food – a fringe lunatic.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because Margaret Atwood is coming to Winnipeg next month. The thought of meeting her both thrills and petrifies me. I’m going to meet the woman who penned two of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. I want to tell her all this, but somehow the words I say out loud never live up to the ones that run through my head – not to mention I’ll probably have no more than a minute or two as I hand her my books to sign to sum up the impact she has had on my heart. I want to tell her that part of the reason I love and respect her writing so much is because sometimes she writes books I love, and sometimes she writes books I hate (She has written 22 novels, 15 books of poetry, 11 works of nonfiction, and 7 children’s stories according to the information inside my copy of Maddaddam) – I have started Alias Grace no less than 5 times and have never been able to get more than about 50 pages in – because I think this shows how diverse her writing truly is. There’s probably someone out there who loves Alias Grace and hates The Year of the Flood.
When I was in University, I had a friend named John, who I worked with at Blockbuster video. John felt about the Tragically Hip the way I feel about Atwood. He’d grown up in Kingston, but they were famous and long gone by the time he was old enough to realize any of this. One day he was walking down the street, past the house where the guitar player’s parents still lived – and there he was, sitting on the porch playing “Grace Too”. John finally had his chance to express the impact their music had had on him. He took a breath, gathered his courage, walked up to the porch, looked his idol straight in the eye and said “Hey man. That’s Grace Too.” – “Yup” the guitar player responded as he continued to play. John turned and walked away, and as he went he thought to himself “That’s Grace Too???!!! – REALLY?? REALLY?? He knows it’s Grace Too – he wrote the fucking song!!!” I wonder if John ever really forgave himself for missing what might have been his one opportunity to tell this man what his art had meant to him.
Of course, in the grand scheme of life there are worse things than getting tongue tied in front of someone you deeply respect – but that doesn’t stop me from fearing the same fate. “Um, hello Ms. Atwood – you write good…”
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The year's last, loveliest smile
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
What is it about September that feels so promising? I love September - everything about it. I love the crisp in the air, the pumpkin spice lates, fuzzy wool socks with boots, the deep rich jewel tones... there is nothing that is not great about September.
When you start to really think about it, September should be sad and depressing... another summer is over, cold weather is moving in, the trees and other greenery begin to die, summer holidays are at close and we are all returning to our school/work routines. Even those of us who do not get entire summers off know that nothing much gets done during the summer... or should I say, nothing new gets started during the summer. There are too many people away at any given time to consider new projects.
So again, I ask: Why is it that despite all this, September is so full of promise?
It could be that those years between 5 and 18 have so engrained us that we will always see September as the month the new year actually begins. Maybe we like our routines and the daily grind more than we care to admit? Maybe, if you are like me, you just love that “back to school” feeling that new adventures are around the corner.
I have to say that summer 2013 was really good to me. Sean and I spent 3 weeks traveling in Italy and France. My first real travel in Europe – I say “real” because I was in Germany when I was 15 for gymnastics, and didn’t actually see much more than the insides of gyms and stadiums; in 2002 I met up with some girlfriends in England and also spent time in Scotland – but they don’t really consider themselves part of continental Europe. What an unreal trip… I live a charmed life.
August brought my Nan’s 90th birthday – you wouldn’t believe she was 90. She’s got more love and more joy in a few strands of her white hair than most people are lucky enough to experience in a whole life time. My whole family came in from Ontario, the US, etc. It’s so rare that I get to see my whole family – we have our moments, but I was lucky enough to be raised side by side with my cousins at our family cabin in the summers, so I can say with complete honesty that I really, truly love spending time with them. I wonder what it must be like for my Nan to look around and see this enormous group of people (she has 14 grandkids, and there are a LOT of great-grandkids these days), and know that if it weren’t for her, none of them would be here.
Last, but certainly not least, my best friend got married. We’ve been friends since we were 10 years old and seeing her get married was one of the highlights of my adult life. She’s said for a long time now that she was happy in her long term partnership, and didn’t want to get married. So when she called me last spring and told me she was going to ask him to marry her, I was more than a little surprised. It was a whole month of wedding events, with the shower, bachelorette and then the wedding. They had a beautiful celebration at her family cabin, the last weekend of August.
So, like I said, this summer has been great – busy, full of fun and celebration. But the truth is that no matter how wonderful any summer may have been, I still feel a sense of excitement when the air starts to cool and I know fall is coming. I happily pull out my sweaters, tights, boots and scarves and I curse the days that are too warm to wear them. I secretly hope for highs of 15 degrees for the day. I start dreaming of baking apple pies and sipping cider.
Fall holds my heart... it snuggles me in fuzzy wool, and comforts me with delicious, spicy flavours and it wraps it all up in a stunning jewel toned bow.
What is it about September that feels so promising? I love September - everything about it. I love the crisp in the air, the pumpkin spice lates, fuzzy wool socks with boots, the deep rich jewel tones... there is nothing that is not great about September.
When you start to really think about it, September should be sad and depressing... another summer is over, cold weather is moving in, the trees and other greenery begin to die, summer holidays are at close and we are all returning to our school/work routines. Even those of us who do not get entire summers off know that nothing much gets done during the summer... or should I say, nothing new gets started during the summer. There are too many people away at any given time to consider new projects.
So again, I ask: Why is it that despite all this, September is so full of promise?
It could be that those years between 5 and 18 have so engrained us that we will always see September as the month the new year actually begins. Maybe we like our routines and the daily grind more than we care to admit? Maybe, if you are like me, you just love that “back to school” feeling that new adventures are around the corner.
I have to say that summer 2013 was really good to me. Sean and I spent 3 weeks traveling in Italy and France. My first real travel in Europe – I say “real” because I was in Germany when I was 15 for gymnastics, and didn’t actually see much more than the insides of gyms and stadiums; in 2002 I met up with some girlfriends in England and also spent time in Scotland – but they don’t really consider themselves part of continental Europe. What an unreal trip… I live a charmed life.
August brought my Nan’s 90th birthday – you wouldn’t believe she was 90. She’s got more love and more joy in a few strands of her white hair than most people are lucky enough to experience in a whole life time. My whole family came in from Ontario, the US, etc. It’s so rare that I get to see my whole family – we have our moments, but I was lucky enough to be raised side by side with my cousins at our family cabin in the summers, so I can say with complete honesty that I really, truly love spending time with them. I wonder what it must be like for my Nan to look around and see this enormous group of people (she has 14 grandkids, and there are a LOT of great-grandkids these days), and know that if it weren’t for her, none of them would be here.
Last, but certainly not least, my best friend got married. We’ve been friends since we were 10 years old and seeing her get married was one of the highlights of my adult life. She’s said for a long time now that she was happy in her long term partnership, and didn’t want to get married. So when she called me last spring and told me she was going to ask him to marry her, I was more than a little surprised. It was a whole month of wedding events, with the shower, bachelorette and then the wedding. They had a beautiful celebration at her family cabin, the last weekend of August.
So, like I said, this summer has been great – busy, full of fun and celebration. But the truth is that no matter how wonderful any summer may have been, I still feel a sense of excitement when the air starts to cool and I know fall is coming. I happily pull out my sweaters, tights, boots and scarves and I curse the days that are too warm to wear them. I secretly hope for highs of 15 degrees for the day. I start dreaming of baking apple pies and sipping cider.
Fall holds my heart... it snuggles me in fuzzy wool, and comforts me with delicious, spicy flavours and it wraps it all up in a stunning jewel toned bow.
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