Birthday Girl

It’s been a week of birthday celebrating for Stefani … who officially turned 8 today. Canada’s Wonderland with cousin Merick and others (she rode The Fly … whooo!) on Monday … a picnic lunch with Jessica her best friend next door on Tuesday … a party with presents from Mel, Ang, Maija and Nic on Wednesday … lunch and a few presents from Nic’s boyfriend Ali on Thursday … presents in the mail on Friday … an outing with Uncle Mike on Saturday … and today, Mom & Dad. Can you say – spoiled?

Webkinz, Wii games, clothes, earrings … everything an 8 year old pines for … a singing Hannah Montana helium balloon and a set of junior golf clubs.

But the best gift of all was …. Jonathan surprised us all with his presence … got a day pass and made his own way over with a gift. Money scrounged from the occasional $20 I slip him. Webkinz perfume – what every Webkinz pet owner sports with pride!

Pancakes for breakfast … fun in the pool … and then off to the driving range. Both J and Stefani are built for the game … I can feel some fun ahead!














Chinese buffet came next … where we all gorged until one more mouthful would have had us hurling across the table (nice visual, huh?) … and then into the car to drive J back to CAMH.

Another dip in the pool … and it’s barely 10 PM and we’re all spent … sun-kissed, happily tired and ready for sweet dreams and zzzzzz.

Nite nite.

Diamonds are a girls best friend

Has anyone ever asked you who you really were? Who the “real” you is?

Once upon a time, I believed that one day I would find the one definition of the “real” me and I kept trying each different part of me (the sad one, the geek, the wild one, the rebel, the arrogant princess, the poet …) on for size. And though each felt comfortable … none of these produced the “Ta dah” moment I was expecting. The epiphany I was so eager to find was nowhere to be found.

Somewhat older and wiser … I realize that I am but a sum of all my parts … like a diamond … fashioned from a lump of pressurized coal.

It began thousands of millions of years ago, 100 miles beneath the surface of our planet. In a perfect storm of geologic fury, billions of tons of the carbon rock we know as ordinary coal were transformed by heat and pressure into the hardest, most brilliant and most coveted substance on Earth: diamonds.

And I am A diamond with facets fashioned by time … experience … others … choice … fears … hopes … dreams … failures … scars … triumphs … loves and losses

Each facet unique onto itself … a whole that shines in the sunlight, casting its rainbows for the world …

Cliché … definitely.

But the discovery, the acknowledgement of this truth can not be denied.

Living vicariously ...

She left yesterday … boarded that ginormous Air France plane to fly over the Atlantic to begin her adventure in Saint Pierre de Chartreuse, France.

Her face and eyes puffy from tears, trying so hard to be mature and not show the world her fear, her excitement, her uncertainties. My mother’s eagle eye noted her biting the inside of her lip as she tried to contain the maelstrom of emotions literally waging war within her so-slight frame.

There are some moments I never photograph … preferring instead to relish the mental image in my mind’s eye. Nicole’s walking through the departure gates … waving back with a look on her face that basically said, “what the &^%$$ am I doing?” is one of those ...

259,200 seconds

Three days. That’s 72 hours … 4320 minutes … 259,200 seconds. The fact that I can practically do the math in my head (I had to use pen and paper for the seconds) makes it all seem so close. And if that’s not bad enough … a few years back it was an Air France 747 that skidded off the runway at Pearson and burst into flames (no fatalities thank god). I’ve been trying to push that back into the recesses of my mind for a few weeks with some success … but today the headlines read that an Air France 747 just skidded off the runway in Montreal this morning …
Arghhh … what’s a poor mother to do?
Only two days. I’ll spare you the math

Creature of Habit

Two thoughts converged within my grey cells and here I am again … creature of habit that I am.
So I sit at this keyboard … almost arrogantly convincing myself of “difference”, a new leaf, an uncovered stepping stone, a break in patterns of old. And yet the words that I typed to a prophet I know who spins rhymes that melt even the coldest of hearts, were reminiscent of words typed before … and I wondered …
Am I simply changing the packaging … “new and improved” … adding “ers” to the same old product – me- as a form of masturbatory reinvention. And God forbid … could I handle it if the answer was “yes”?
Back to those grey cells … or a parcel of a story that speaks for itself. In my very early twenties, after a chance encounter in a Bracebridge bar … a result of my brother staying after the last set to talk to a bunch of Toronto-based musicians … I met Mike. Details flood my senses, even twenty years later … exquisitely wrinkled off-white linen jacket … black t-shirt and tight Levis … whiff of Paco Rabane … five o’clock shadow … lean, taut – a musician’s body … brooding black eyes, a mop of black hair … my “Italian Stallion” …
A summer of passion … music … intensity … connection …
But Mike’s insecurities could not fathom letting summer turn to fall with the “wild one” (yes, I was young, carefree, unafraid, open, wild and living in the moment at least once in my life) …
But I digress … allowing myself a selfish stroll down “what once was” … that very first night as I stood shyly (or coyly) behind my brother as he chatted with the drummer … I turned to that intense bass player/pianist and said, “you’re quite good … I’ve had years of classical piano lessons and I wish I could play with such passion and skill.”
I recall his eyes pouring into mine as he tried to decide if I was simply mouthing a line … or if I meant what I said …
Fast forward twenty four years later … Dave & I were at a small Italian restaurant on Lakeshore having a celebratory meal with another couple. Wine glasses clinked as silver ting-ed on china as people around us in the semi-lit room … ate, drank and were merry. As our first-courses were approaching their last bites, a black-suited piano man sat down at the grand piano in the corner of the room …
Soon the tickling of the ivories was filling the room … Billy Joel … Frank Sinatra … old standards … it wasn’t long before a couple or two were on the dance floor and someone got bold enough to make a special request to the accomplished pianist.
As he started playing “Writing” (Elton John) … I found myself walking past him … I turned … listened and when the song ended … walked up and said …
“you’re quite good … I’ve had years of classical piano lessons and I wish I could play with such passion and skill.”
He smiled and told me about his training and his love of music, piano and yes, he grinned and paused, even the accordion. He paused again and said as his eyes poured into mine – “you remind me of someone I once knew … your eyes are just like hers – I drowned in those eyes once. Oh my god, forgive me if I’m wrong … is your name Gail?”
The rest would be extremely self-serving to repeat … but the point of all this … is that when the words left my lips, I had no recollection of having ever spoken those words, in that order … or best yet, to the same man!
So what does it all mean? Feeling like … or knowing that … something has been done before … that reactions, emotions, thoughts are the same? A sign of honesty? Stagnation? Lack of imagination? Consistency?
Or are those the moments … the thoughts … emotions … that are the closest to the core, the least changed by time or compromises …
Subtle reminders that within the layers of the onion peels sits a constant core unchanged, unvanquished … my very own creature of habit

Of moss and stepping stones ...

Sometimes you can’t find where the next stepping stone is … and then sometimes they’re all around you (even those that belong to someone else) … and you can’t see nothing else.
It’s one of those time … I’m surrounded by stepping stones: Nicole’s as they approach her departure date for France (4 days away) … Stef’s as she reaches for her eighth birthday (5 days away) and the start of a new school year (7 days away) … Jonathan’s as he builds his transition from the pale green walls of CAMH to independent living (less than a month away) …
And because of those stepping stones … a series of stones have formed beneath my feet pointing in a myriad of directions that are mine to choose from.
The agony of choice, for me, has always been the possibility of making the wrong one. And that usually leads to the moss growing between my toes as I stand there in contemplation of the paths before me … kinda’ like tracing through a maze to pre-determine the correct path before putting the pencil to paper.
I’ve never been one for the unknown … always trying to peek around the corner to see what’s there … trying to pre-determine the final result to an nth degree of certainty.
Don’t laugh! It’s true … that has been my foolish quest …
A little older and wiser … I realize there’s no hope in hell to know the ending before the beginning … and every now my cynic whispers that since the end result is predetermined from behind the Matrix, the choice matters little … outside of validating that I’ve convinced myself that I have one.
The fear and the cynic nonewithstanding … my current state of mind thinks that the optimimum path with customized twists and turns is more like a gentle stream upon which my life’s journey is suspended … and that the stepping stones pointing the way are the ones that shine in the morning’s light, catching my eye for that extra second with their wink … and that the way to follow them is truly the path of least resistance both externally and internally …
I visualize this central point … all of our journey’s ends … with our unlimited stepping stoned paths radiating from that focal point as far as the eye can see and beyond …
… and me somewhere upon that path trying not to sidestep and mistake west and east for north …
… and then again, even west and east is better than scrubbing moss and fungus from my between my toes.

Fear

I sit on the battered chair in the so-called lounge, my ears assaulted by the too-loud sounds emanating from the television behind the metal wired cabinet … my eyes refusing to meet the pairs of eyes that are staring at me from across the pale green room. My arms are folded tightly across my chest in a “don’t you dare approach me” stance that I’m not proud of. I don’t know where to look, my heart is beating a little faster and my eyes are a drop away from overflowing …
An Asian woman shuffles past deep in conversation as a younger purple-hooded woman carefully cradles her orange juice in two hands as she slowly heads to the open door that I assume is her room. Walter’s booming voice fills the lobby as he announces that there are 5, 678 atomic missiles aimed at Washington at this moment (I know that I am doing Walter an injustice as I have picked a number from thin air … and Walter always makes mention of the same number and I do not remember the number) …
I’m ashamed to admit that I immediately tense and hope that Walter does not recognize me from my previous visits. But he does and comes shuffling over to impart his conspiracy theories to a live audience of one.
I nod … not meeting his eyes … and Walter having now spent as much time as my son in this place is aware enough to notice … and I watch his shoulders sag as he turns and shuffles away mumbling beneath his breath …
I am ashamed.

Plus ca change ... plus c'est pareille ... or is it?

So another whirlwind couple of days … my mom and nephew Merick came to visit and I’ve just returned from dropping them off at the train station. The rest of us are just in the process of putting up our feet, reliving the memories and cleaning up so that we can move on to other things.
Creating memories … good, bad or indifferent … is one of those miracles of life. But maybe more so is the process of distilling through all the available moments … (as we’re all doing individually and collectively) … to pull out and cannonize those moments that will become the representations of the time spent together …
… the contenders: (i) Merick’s face as he met Nic’s boy-friend, Ali (ii) Kyla coming home from work with the perfume my mother had mentioned the night before as being the scent she used as a young woman but could no longer find (iii) Merick and Peanut Butter coming to an understanding (iv) cooking hot dogs over the fire and eating way too many smores (v) Canada’s Wonderland and Behemoth (vi) Merick’s answer of “douche bag” (it’s a long story) (vii) my mother and I butting heads and actually coming to a friendly, “mature” compromise (finally) …… and the winner is …
Undoubtedly different for each one of us …
As for me, though I loved spending time with Merick and enjoyed watching the kids pick up from where they’d left off a few years ago … selfishly the winner is (vii) … my mom and I …
When we were battling, locking horns in what seemed an impossible stand-off … when the tones, words and voices repeated phrases that had echoed throughout our relationship for over four decades now filled the air … my stomach knotted believing that perhaps this relationship was never fated to move out of this rut in the hamster wheel of life.
It took two confrontations for there to be the parting of the seas … the rainbow appeared and behold … we both found ourselves on the other side. A little bruised and battered but both of us knowing that this battle would not see daylight again.
It’s a personal thing … but the moment feels holy … pivotal. And you know what … it doesn’t seem as bad anymore that the kids tell me that I remind them of gramma every now and again … I don’t just see the bad anymore …
… actually may end up being something that makes me proud …

Perils of the Full Moon

My entire life I’ve been haunted by old wives’ tales and silly superstitions … you know the stuff about ladders, black cats and cracks that’ll break someone’s back. It has taken concerted effort on my part to let go of these silly tales with no foundation in any kind of reality …
… but the effects of a full moon … now that’s a different matter. It isn’t that I totally believe that men sprout fully follicled body suits and howl at the moon … but when life takes a distinct side-ways tilt, I find myself searching the night skies. It never fails – I find the man in the moon looking down at me … a whole grin on his big round face.
Perils of the full moon …
Work relationships run amok … the household gets frenzied, alive with constant buzzing … it’s always during a full moon that full glasses of milk or other sticky liquid go flying across the kitchen floor or the pie I’m pulling out of the oven slips … and kerplats somewhere between the oven door and dribbles to the floor. It’s always during a full moon that life takes all the accumulated maybes and throws them at me.
Jonathan goes silent, the girls get snarly – we’ve got pre, menstrual and post all in one home, Dave gets talkative … the dog whines … the doorbell rings … I pay the pool guy without thinking when he hasn’t completed everything he promised to do …my Mom calls out of the clear blue sky and announces she’s coming to visit in less than 48 hours with my twelve year old nephew (first time in four years) … and I just stand there a little dazed … in the same sweat pants I fell asleep in ‘cuz I crashed after pulling a late-nighter finishing a report for an ever-increasing cranky boss. And it’s just 11 AM.
Maybe I’m the one with less patience …
Could it be my perception that changes once a month when the moon is full?
Can’t be me … I say somewhat less firmly than I would wish … as the dials, switches and gizmos in my mind try to ascertain whether balance truly exists within … like setting a plane to see if the bubble sits in the middle. System check determines I’m somewhat frazzled but definitely not as tilted as the rest of the world …
Phew …
Real or not … that system’s check gives me the green light to move forward as planned. All’s right in my world … let the others re-balance themselves. I’ll have to tiptoe a little more quietly for a few days, watch for flying glassware and subsequent liquid pools, stay a step ahead of tyrant boss and bite my tongue around

Human Bee-ings

Sunday evening :Everything was so loud today … Tim’s booming voice … girls squealing amidst splashes in the pool … the television … the iPod system churning music into the backyard … voices, dog, birds …
It’s like everything was amplified … and now that all has stilled … my head and ears are still buzzing … and trying to adjust to the quiet …
Or is that just a blood pressure surge …
Monday morning:So four hours of sleep later … (girls wanted a “girls night” so we stayed up until the wee hours watching movies … Penelope – absolutely LOVED that movie – quite impressed with the lead – James McElvoy who reminds me of a young Johnny Depp… and No Reservations – nothing special) I’m up ready to face another day. The sky is blue, the humidity is building … the red cardinal in the front yard is sitting dejected amidst the branches of the old pine (I forgot to fill the bird feeder again). Love this early morning coffee … just me and Peanut Butter. These moments are my internal stability ball … reflection .. quiet planning of the day … internal conversations … sometimes I even talk to myself out loud … which usually brings the dog to my side, looking up at me wondering what’s wrong …
… not so today … a sip of coffee and the day takes shape in my mind’s eye … with built in buffers naturally … with this many people in my immediate circle and all the outside forces, I’ve learnt to be adaptable.
There’s something about ritual however that soothes the soul … for we are creatures of habit at best. Ritual, routine … is communion with self. Those stilling moments that acknowledge our choice, our responsibility to ourselves and to things outside of our circle of gravity … peace amidst the chaos.
I love these stolen moments … though the “stealing” is a misnomer as these minutes are carved out of most days … found and made possible without much effort anymore. But there was a time when finding time was near impossible, or so I thought … now they flow naturally within the stream of a day … offering me different perspectives as they rarely occur at the same time two days in a row. These early morning breaths are the best … the air is still fresh … and I imagine that the birds and squirrels have just awakened, the bees have buzzed out of the hives with sleep still wrinkling their wings … it’s a god-like feeling. The grass is greener, dew drops more reflective … as my eyes spot the webs across the back fence near the pink “Stefani’s Garden” sign …
… and then the golden buzz is shattered by the first loud squeals of civilization … a lawn mower buzzes a few streets away, a garbage truck rumbles on a side street … children giggle as they ride down the street on their bikes … and before these sounds are fully digested, there are more … and the world becomes filled with the buzzing of our human hive …Time to get to work …

... of CEOs and Tee Blocks

Tim,Carrie and the girls are down from Sudbury for the week-end … so we’ve got a full house. I’m catching a few moments alone this morning … here as well as tying up a few loose ends at work before pandemonium erupts.
Adults are going golfing (yipee) and the kids are being watched by the girls. Didn’t get more than 3 holes in last week before the rains hit … but today looks like it just might hold out for a whole eighteen. I should be able to “whack” my work-related stress out on the white ball (okay so I use a pink ball … but let’s not get that picky). My drives are always longer and straighter when I can imagine someone’s head on the tee ….
Work related stress … politics … it drives me crazy. So arrogant CEO keeps sending out mixed signals … and I’ve started noting the subtle put-downs in every conversation. Why does every boss I work for have to be riddled with insecurity? Is that a pre-requisite?
Do I perhaps come off during interviews as less threatening, less competent than I actually am? Funny … one of the reasons I accepted this contract was because of CEO’s feedback - I believed that he knew who and what he was hiring … and he actually mouthed back the words …
Or … is it just a case of not being able to handle what you’ve wished for. Maybe it’s incompetence … doesn’t the principle say that everyone rises to that level? Or … sigh … maybe it’s just personality.
Me, me, me … blah, blah, blah …
He doesn’t listen … he over-reacts … assigns blame … is inconsistent … and now, micro-management …the branches I’m talking to have nothing but horror stories all based on the same … he doesn’t listen … speaks consultanese which never really says anything … assigns blame …
Oh lord … my intuition tells me that this is another one of those situations where I lose regardless … and seriously, do I really want to win?
Not much sense in wasting more time on this … complaining isn’t going to get me anywhere … but (grin) … now I know whose head I’ll be smashing on the tee-block

Sizing jars ...

So have I finally found the secret? Have I finally reached some monumental threshold that I had originally anticipated would happen at the stroke of midnight on my eighteenth birthday? (I recall how disappointed I was the next morning when I didn’t feel much different than I had upon turning 15 or 16 or 17 … I’d spent so many years of my life up to that point absolutely convinced that wisdom would be bestowed upon me in my sleep on that milestone birthday … ) … has it finally happened close to 30 years later??
Have I discovered acceptance … a second innocence … the secret recipe of making lemonade from lemons? (Should I even be asking these questions … and acknowledging this new found state of mind? Superstitious seeds planted by my grandmother rear their seedling heads and whisper … don’t tempt fate) …
Or god forbid … is this the calm before the storm?
Last night, Dave had a fundraising event at Dirty Martini’s … firemen draw crowds … the place was packed.
I did my part … manned (or should I say wo-manned?) the guest list at the front door with Joey-Joe … did my bit of people watching … kissed the cheeks of friends and acquaintances … shook the required hands. Never did take off my red raincoat (how I love that red raincoat … with a skirt that twirls when I spin) …
Jus found out that Joey Joe visits New Hampshire every year … Laconia of all places … knows Alton well … isn’t the world a strange and wondrous place?
Good deed done … I headed home through the pouring rain … sharing my umbrella with Joey-Joe (he snuck out as well). I’m passed pretending to enjoy myself in a too loud, crowded bar with Britney breathlessly asking “Gimme More. Even when I was younger I was never really into the bar scene … and after all the years of running events … even less. I don’t get it … a sea of black-clad people, overly perfumed, preening and parading , lonely and trying to look interesting ……
Dave and his friends make me smile … a handful of 50 plus year olds … drinks in hand, trading the same war stories, oblivious to everything around them … caught up in the latest wrinkle on the job, or Darryl’s hole-in-one on Thursday, the latest funeral, divorce, wedding, graduation …
On a different night, I may have stayed and listened to the stories … and added my laughter to theirs … but there were too many wives around tonight. I just don’t relate … don’t understand why they still need to find approval elsewhere … plucked, tucked in, trying to erase ten years with skillfully applied make-up …
Don’t get me wrong … I comb my hair, spray the perfume and apply minimal war paint … but 20 I am not … nor do I want to be. I’ve never been one for small talk … so details of where ‘Oil of Olay” is on sale just doesn’t get my heart-rate elevated … and women are so bitchy and so competitive … and it gets worse until they accept that the clock won’t be turning back for them …
Anti-social maybe … smart – for sure … didn’t need to put anybody through the misery of my mono-syllabic conversation.
Give me a glass of wine or an ice-cold glass of water … a friend or two or three on the back deck … or comfortably seated in the living room … some good music playing in the background … some intelligent or humourous conversation … a card game … Trivial Pursuit … anyday …
Simple pleasures … guess I’m a simple gal at heart. Thank god I can stop pretending to be some kind of sophisticate … never was really good at that (a fact that can be attested to by all those who have watched me land my two feet in my mouth or better yet teeter off my high heels!)
So what is this newfound calm … this newfound ability to say “I like this” … “I don’t like that” … without the fear of insulting someone or saying the wrong thing? Is this … dare I say it … security? Have I finally found myself? Was it really no harder than simply acknowledging the first impulse / answer / question? Why then did this take me so long? Why did I allow thoughts, feelings, tastes to be filtered through this never-ending series of sizing jars, for the lack of a better term? If I’m really a good mom – I’ll say that I like afternoon tea … If I’m a really good daughter – I’ll say that I love raisin pie … if I’m a really good Canadian – I should say “eh” …
There’s been a hole, a void for so long … I’ve lived with this sense of impending doom as well as fear of failing the judgment call … and come to find out, the world doesn’t end when you’re different or yourself …
Go figure …

Fences and merry-go-rounds

No matter how hard I scream at god, allah, vishnu … whatever damn name the circus conductor goes by …. “STOP … I want to get off” … my screams fall on deaf ears. The ride goes on … up and down … round and round … spinning faster and faster …
Hell I’m dizzy, sick to my stomach and finding it harder and harder to pretend any kind of sympathy or interest in my neighbour’s trivial chit-chat over the fence. Can’t they see? Do I have to spell everything out??
The cops were here again last night … Jonathan’s worst episode … spurred on by some Captain Morgan and too much time on his hands (trying to add reason to something that is un-reasonable somehow makes the world make more sense … though I do realize on some level that this is all senseless and just my grasping at straws).
It was chaos, mayhem … Funny how autopilot takes over … no time for thought or ponderings … the answers and choices are made without question. Who needs “Nightmare on Elm Street” … we’ve lived horror … the kind that just rips your heart apart and leaves you shaking, helpless … spooked.
3 AM found me sitting in the Emergency Room … waiting to be escorted behind the cold, metal doors to see some over-worked psychiatric in-take worker … to repeat the story once again. Don’t they take notes … same questions, same answers, same “I don’t know’s” … But this time, it slipped out … “I don’t know if I can handle this a second time in my life.”
The in-take worker’s eyes and ears perked straight up … “Excuse me ….?” I babbled something about this having happened to Jonathan’s father … and how helpless I feel. The eyes and ears settled … guess that wasn’t as interesting as the possibility of the mother being unstable as well ….
I can’t sleep so I’m in the backyard tending to the jasmine tree that Jonathan brought home … picking the occasional weed … doing a rather decent job at looking busy and yet I was unable to stave the onslaught of the social commentary over the fence.
Why am I so mad at this poor woman? She’s just being friendly … wonder what she would say if I just blurted out all my troubles? I smile … probably run for the hills. But then again, she’s had her fair share of darkness. Rumour has it that ten years she came home to find her husband had committed suicide in the family car in the garage. We all have our crosses to bear, don’t we?
Smile, Gail … it’ll get easier and after all, it’s not about me, is it? Jonathan is the one who is lost … I’m still here, free, relatively sane … with the sun kissing my skin on this bright sunny day …
… never did like merry-go-rounds …

Siren's Call and Telephone Calls

The phone’s ring crashed the morning’s quiet … and don’t ask me how or why … but I knew that the caller ID would flash --- unknown caller. And wouldn’t you know it … right again!
Steady now … and a few unintentional breathless moments later … the dead air left my lungs in a fell swoosh … J was safe. As safe as anyone can be in the Psych Ward. And so back onto the merry-round we go …
… social workers looking for reasons behind every tear, every pause, every “I don’t know” …… psychiatrists with their Cheshire Cat smiles betraying nary a thought from behind their tortoise-shell glasses and their surprisingly pop-culture reassurances.
If any one ever tells me to put my stresses and worries into a box again … they’d better run fast and far … for I won’t be responsible for my actions.
Imagine … a shell-shocked family … each member mourning the demise of J as we knew him … while at the same time harbouring fears that maybe something we / they said or didn’t say may have been the “cause” … or at least the straw that broke the camel’s back … and what does the ultimate authority on the mental health strata offer as advice … “just take your troubles, put them in a box … place the box oin a shelf … and move forward.” There’s a television jingle in there somewhere … if I could only put my troubles in a box long enough to think straight.
My entire life I’ve had faith in that system … and believed in the science of psychology and psychiatry … only to have cold water splashed in my face. Actually the system consists of restraints, removal of priveleges, medication of every colour of the rainbow, long days of wandering the halls in hospital gowns and paper slippers … waiting, waiting … for the medication to kick in.
Once fully medicated the rush is on to get the patient home … and yet the system knows that the chances of the meds being taken regularly are slim to none … and the patient file stays open …
The second time Jonathan was hospitalized I was greeted by the charge nurse with this comment – “Oh wow … has it really been 9 months since we last saw Jonathan … I thought we’d see him much sooner than this …”
So I educate myself … at the library, at support group meetings, online … I know all about the side effects of the meds, which meds are typically prescribed … fuck – I’m a walking mental health library …… schizophrenia … schizoid affect … bi-polar … mood disorders … Where’s the pop quiz … I’ll surely ace this one ….
I visit Jonathan today … and as I leave the ward … my eyes fill with tears … for though the voice that droned responses to my questions was my son’s voices … and the arms that hugged me were familiar … the eyes were those of a stranger … a very frightened, confused stranger.
J … where are you?

Omens ...

Something written earlier this summer ... another side to the chaos.

Omens … foreshadowing … we learn about it at school. Every book, every movie and every TV sitcom leads us by the nose to the promised ending through the clever use of foreshadowing. Without it, we’d be lost … lose our tender grasp of the loose-ends of the plot.
It was the second bird crashing into the window that set chills running down my spine … I could clearly hear the voice of my grandmother, Aiti, as it had bristled in my youth upon similar omens. Heraa Yumala … she would have uttered, shaking her white grey head in acknowledgement of the foreshadowing of the gods.
Lessons learnt while young are hard to shake … even if they don’t fit within the logic of our adult lives. Superstitions and old wive’s tales are just that … folk tales created by a less educated generation. Or are they?
Jonathan had been doing okay … not your typical 20 year old … but then again Jonathan had never been typical. The day had dawned bright and sunny … but I’d awoken with nervous butterflies trapped in my stomach … another omen?
Pushing away old wives’ tales and the sense of impending disaster … I set about the business of pretending that everything was as always. Prepared breakfaxt and a healthy lunch for my seven year old vegetarian (did I forget to mention that none of my children are typical? Sorry). Hugged her as she walked out the door on her way to school with her Dad as she did every morning.
Jonathan was wired … restless … and intent on some special project of his own. The last two years had taught me to still my tongue and not judge activities which, in all honesty, spooked me. My precious child was dangling between a world of opportunity and a troubled future marked by incoherence and agitation.
Two years ago all our dreams of a bright future for Jonathan crashed to pieces in the livingroom as Jonathan succumbed to the siren song of a world I can not imagine.
A world that I have had far too much contact with … and yet no understanding of. I just intuitively understood the road signs and slight ‘out of key” sound of the interactions.
Outwardly, he’d been doing well … but now I sit here wondering where he is and I scoff at my own arrogance. By whose measure was he doing “well” … did I have any clue as to what was really going on in his world? in his head? Inside?
It’s amazing really … we can care for and nurture a child through his adult years … buying presents that “suit them”, trying to guess their wishes … and often, arrogantly believing that we know who they are, what they like, what they want, what their troubles are …
What did I really know about Jonathan … about any of the children really? All just cliched snapshots of who I wish they were and what they have chosen through the years to present to me as their “child personna”.
Stereotypes within my own family … now that’s something to chew on. Melanie the responsible one, Will the salesman, Nicole the princess, Stefani the aspiring singer … Jonathan the rebel who was too smart for his own good … the eccentric one.
The one most like his father … in looks, temperament and perhaps, mental illness.
I’m sure every parent faced with saying goodbye to the smashed dreams they had fashioned for their child while they were still in diapers … thinks the same thoughts – “what a waste … too bad … it’s so sad … he was sooo smart … he could have done sooo much!”.
My mind is searching for anything to grab on to … so that I don’t have to face the real issue at hand – where is Jonathan. So here I go wondering if I am sad for myself … and not for Jonathan. Is this like death? Where all the funeral attendees are really just relieved that their number hasn’t come up yet?
But enough babble … his eccentricity and arrogance built up all day … and I could see the questions in Nicole’s eyes as she tried to reason with her brother. Normal questions, if there’s such a thing as normal … why are you like this? Are you doing this on purpose? Why are you not the same as before? How come I don’t have a brother?
And god only knows what other questions she may have within … what anger and disappointment and ugly thoughts she must deal with … that leave her feeling unloving and unaccepting …
True to pattern, Jonathan’s behaviour escalated … the only time he was quiet and focussed was when he was working on his ruler project … ruler project you ask, what’s that? … wish I could tell you. It sounded complex and mathematical while at the same time totally insane.
Insane … there’s that word … we never use it around the house. But it’s always used. It’s used by the mere fact that it’s never used … it’s tip-toed around, it’s avoided and shooshed far away the minute it even threatens to find itself close to someone’s tongue.
The day ended as always with Jonathan retreating into his computer world … and the rest of us retreating into welcome yet uneasy sleep. Uneasy because we had once again not been able to make a difference … we had not found the “magic” combination of words that would get through to Jonathan and snap him out of “IT”. Uneasy because we all knew that we were fooling ourselves … fooling ourselves into believing that everything was okay … fooling ourselves into believing that everything would go back to normal … that one day we would all laugh at this … fooling ourselves into believing that one day Jonathan would be the person we remembered and had made him out in our minds to be.At some point as we all dreamt our uneasy dreams and restless turnings … Jonathan marched to his inner music. Early the next morning, I spotted him on the side of the road sitting in a sofa … looking up at the sun.
Why did I not approach him? Probably because I knew that I would say the wrong thing. That I was not accepting and still in throes of making him better … from what I have yet to discover. I drove past …
Once home, I made note of this to Dave … hoping that he would strike the perfect balance of words and attitude to create the magic that continually eluded me. But there is no magic … just like there is no magic text book or instruction manual …
… and so it came to this … Jonathan returned home in a frenzy … and walked out just as quickly. In crisis … out of touch … a steel rod in his backpack … rings dangling from his glasses … a woolen cap on his head, his ears covered by large earphones. My son looked like one of those disoriented people I have met on the streets of Toronto and offered a few coins to.
How had it come to this?
I saw the fear in his eyes … I felt the bottled up emotion raging through him as he tried to make himself understood despite the words coming out too quickly. And I heard the scream of anguish as he screamed – “I am not crazy” … “I am not crazy” …
The night before I had asked of him numerous times … “J … what is it? What’s all this about?” … What is it? …
What is it? He asked of me this morning as he left … think about that sentence … take the time to put the emphasis on different words …
WHAT is it?What IS it?What is IT … is what he kept asking me …
So it’s been a day … and it keeps getting harder and harder to not let the worry eat me up inside. Scenarios play around in my head … some at the forefront … others in the far reaches of my conscious where I can barely hear or see them.
Is he safe? Is he okay? Do I call the cops? Do I call the hospital again?
Omens …