This year has slipped past me in a blur of world events and life events, so much so I honestly don’t know where to begin. Do I need to remind anybody about the horrendous earthquake in Japan? The Arab spring that is now into winter? The world economy that is on its last legs and tottering badly?

So let’s jump to my microcosm. I’m still working on getting Off Air in publishable format, and I Ching Jukebox into paperback but both were put aside because I realized if there’s to be any real hope of sales they need to be in ebook format. The formatting was put on hold until I had an ebook reader to be able to verify them on. I am very happy to say that Jim took advantage of an online black Friday sale to get me a Kindle, so armed with that now I’ve been playing with it a bit to see how it works and reading the Lulu ebook creator guide. Checking out the pdf of I Ching I can see that the fonts and images are okay so it shouldn’t be too hard (fingers crossed) to get that one up. I was going to put out Off Air as a 6×9 paperback instead of a hard cover at first, but I’ve changed my mind on that. I’ll do the ebook first, and then the 6×9. I also found one of my very first books that I wrote when I was a teenager; I’m thinking that it would be great to do that one as an ebook as well mainly to see how good it actually was after its many rejections and to do the entire thing from scratch in ebook format. Beyond that, my soul is crying for creativity and I do intend to spend more time writing as my gift haunts me if I ignore it.

The university course I was taking was passed with flying colours. I enrolled in another, Web Programming to refresh my now rusty skills and I did a good start but alas it has now had to be extended due to a very strange summer and fall; I started my TMA 1 (there’s 4) and will hopefully submit it this Christmas holiday; the course itself doesn’t look too hard it’s just the time and motivation that’s bothering me this time. I have to finish it though because really, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to afford any more courses and I desperately hope I can at least finish this with a computer science certificate if not a degree. We’ll see, I’d still need 3 more courses. The upshot of this course is that it is web design and part of it is to design your own site so I do expect to update my Cathi’s Place site as part of it.

This has been a nasty year for so many people, and we’re no exception. The kids are doing very well in school; son’s big thing this year is music and I’m pleased to see that he is being encouraged in that. Daughter is knee deep in clinicals and is learning that being conscientious is a good thing even if it means losing out on sleep at times. She’ll be a great nurse when it’s all said and done, she just needs to build confidence and experience, which anybody does when starting out in a profession.

My year started strangely with the collapse of a project I was assigned to. We picked up the pieces and are carrying on and it will be done, though in a different form. What I’ve learned from this is that I have to find a job that is at least what my assignment’s pay has been; it’s become a necessity after a comedy of errors which I’m sure I’d be laughing at now if it weren’t for the mess it caused me financially. But what else is new? Sigh. At least I fixed the Jeep, but in doing so I got caught up in a back pay scenario that has devastated my credit unfortunately. I don’t know what to do about that, but things have a way of working themselves out so I am hoping dearly that it will indeed do so this time. Lesson learned here is that I can’t take chances any more.

I applied for two jobs in the maritimes, for a couple of reasons. One is that the children’s father moved on to his mom’s in New Brunswick so it would be closer for son to visit. The other was that it is less expensive to live there and Ontario has gotten way too expensive a place to be. Unfortunately the job I applied to in NB that looked so hopeful was cancelled, and the other in Nova Scotia that I thought I had a decent chance at I didn’t get so I am back to square one. Part of me wishes they’d just give me a really early retirement and I could go on my merry way, pay off the credit stuff and finish my degree. Somehow I doubt that would happen but you never know, they are cutting a lot of jobs where I am now so who knows. What I do know is that this coming year is going to be one of great uncertainty for many, myself included.

Our two companies ground to a standstill, but there is some hope for Talerocker~Dreamcat in the form of Jim’s game being on Hero Engine cloud. He was very fortunate to be offered a chance to build it for free on there following an approval process and he has been working on it; his nephew and I are also working on it and we’ve been learning Maya 3D animation/CGI but the one hitch is that we only have the student versions which means that to go live one of us at least has to have a licensed version to put out the commercial version of the game when it is done – that’s a big concern in that the licence is very expensive. I was thinking we should create our objects in student and then have a 30 day coding spree recreating the objects in the 30 day full trial version, get the game going then buy the license when we have subscriptions. That’s one option. The other is winning the lottery, lol.

Our other company, Indigo Starcrystal is pretty much defunct though we’ve kept the website we were building up for now; after 3 years of paying for web hosting and the domain name when the other 2 partners never paid is kind of pointless I think. I don’t think we will renew it this year. This one went down the tubes after a personality clash that turned friends into…well…not friends. I feel bad about that because looking back I’d rather have kept the friends had I known one partner would have turned into a very angry and demanding person when it came to business. We have since learned that this partner died earlier this year and that knowledge threw us both for a loop. We weren’t told when it happened so I can only assume they didn’t want us to know, which is fine I guess, but we are mourning the loss of a friendship that can never be repaired.

What do I see for the coming year? It isn’t pretty. I honestly don’t know how the damage that has been done to the world’s economy and the famous 99% can be repaired. The Occupy Wall Street protests were a symptom, and while the cities have had their camps shut down in North America for the most part, they may be gone but I don’t think they are out. The message that the corporate greed must stop being fed on the backs of the majority wasn’t really heard and I am sure the voices will get louder the more the banks and credit card companies and utility companies tighten the screws.

Lowering interest rates was a necessary thing, and in mortgages has helped hold off a tide of defaults at least here in Canada, but when this happened they just foisted the interest onto credit cards and got nasty to boot. I’ll give you an example: I have a credit card that goes back to the late-90s when they were offering these big limit, low rate ones. This card saved my life a few times with marriage breakdown and various other life events, and it was at the limit. I was always good about paying on time because it had a great rate (6%) so I could use most of what I paid. So – fast forward ten years and a misunderstanding about money owed to me that went from 10 days to 3 months. I got behind. I got the money, paid the card and learned that it is now 12% and no longer has any credit available. Every time I pay now, the limit goes down. In other words, it’s a loan not a credit card. The others aren’t quite that mean, they just doubled the interest and what was 10% is now 20% and virtually unusable. That is their tricks now, aside from over limit fees, administration fees, etc., that I am sure goes against the criminal code’s maximum 60% interest rates – and the banks have raked in record profit this year. All the while our finance gurus are decrying the horrendous consumer debt. Um, is there anybody out there that sees bilking people out of money with obscene interest rates might be a big part of the reason? There will be record personal bankruptcies in the coming year, I just hope I won’t be one of them.

Now, add criminal interest rates on top of the ridiculous gasoline, natural gas, electricity and water rates people are paying. Ontario Hydro had to pay to get surplus electricity taken off the grid, and we still pay on the $8 billion debt retirement charge that apparently has not only been paid but has had more than a billion over that paid by consumers. Toss in the massive layoffs that are just starting here in cost cutting measures and what do you get? You get the same thing the US, Greece, Italy, England, Portugal, Ireland, etc., are going through. In Canada we’ve been protected I think largely because of our small population, but we are beginning to feel it. We are on the cusp of an economic meltdown that is far beyond our borders but will happen here in much bigger numbers over the coming year. If the powers that be are truly serious at saving us, they need to legislate a maximum credit interest rate of prime plus 8%, and they need to ensure that the rates charged for utilities are not speculative but actually based on cost, not stock market cost but production cost.

Getting back to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Canada we should be calling it Occupy Bay Street, but anyway this is important on many accounts. First is that for the first time in decades, masses of people here joined together to protest and stuck with it – the apathy regarding important issues is falling away, and this is something that should be paid attention to. Who are the protestors? So far they’re young, students, unemployed, employed but committed to a cause, older and also committed to a cause. Now, let’s see some more layoffs, people going bankrupt because there is no other option, people too broke to go to university or college, the disenfranchised. Have enough people who have had their lives and dreams destroyed (or at least put on a very long hold) and see how loud the voices get. At a certain point they will be too loud to be ignored. Will that cause a complete restructuring of the financial system world wide (as should be done – no more fiat money and usury) or will it be the tipping point for World War III? I have my suspicions that we’re already in WWIII but that’s another topic. Which of course brings me to war.

The Iraq war is finally over, we’ve pulled out of Afghanistan, Gaddafi is dead as is Osama bin Laden and Kim-Jung-Il. Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast because Iran is sabre rattling, Somalia is a disaster, Pakistan is angry, there’s tension between Iran and Israel, and that’s just the obvious ones. Russia and China are lining up their allegiances, and the Euro zone is in serious turmoil. Find the right butterfly wing that flaps and coalesces all this tension and the results won’t be pretty.

Add to this the natural and unnatural disasters the world has been enjoying the past couple of years and we’ve got a huge mess on our hands that no one government, person or people can solve. We need to look beyond governments, religion, culture, our country to be our saviours, all of these have their failings and we need to accept that. What we need more than anything is to give a damn about people beyond our inner circle, give a damn about what’s happening to us, and show that we care. Loudly. Right now.

What will help is the same song I’ve been singing on these year end posts all along: compassion. Now more than ever, we need to show compassion towards one another and it needs to be reflected in our corporate and government policies. We need to call out those who are destroyers – entities or groups or persons – and not just call out but fix the problem. Over the past several years I’ve helped others – much to my detriment I will admit, though not all I’ve helped are detrimental – and my helping has come back to bite me. Okay. Will I stop? Well, on a personal level I think I have to, the well is dry and those I served lately can’t pay me back, but maybe on a bigger stage I can. I can by writing things like this, by complaining to companies when complaints are warranted, by helping with words where I can.

Things aren’t all bad here though. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I have two wonderful children who, in spite of all the nonsense in their lives they are doing remarkably well and are truly nice people. I have Jim, who stands behind me no matter what ridiculous turn my life has taken, no matter how many nights I cry at my follies and get down on myself, no matter how long I take in boarders I probably shouldn’t and help people who need it knowing I’ll never get paid back; who has been a strong and kind step-father even when he gets put down by people who don’t see the many evenings of being a scout leader or the hours in doctors offices listening to specialists and picking up children from school when they are sent home sick, driving son to and from school when he was small (and not being able to get a full time job because of that)…the list goes on. I am blessed to still have a mother by my side and who still listens to my life’s ups and downs and who, at 92 is a huge part of our lives even though we rarely have the time to see her in person.

As you can probably guess if you’ve read this far on, I have been fighting off the depression that is nibbling at my toes. It makes me tired and not quite as able to do everything I want or need to, but rest assured I will ride it out and do as I always do, take the darkness and turn it into something beautiful. Be it a song or a painting or book, this is what I do so stay tuned.

To everyone I wish you a happy and healthy New Year. Dream, and dream big. In times like these this is what we all need.

À la prochaine,

Cathi …..

In the past couple of years I have suffered an unending stream of financial woes brought on by various utility companies. First was the electric reseller that locked me into double the current rate for five years and I could get out of it by paying a mere $800 or something like that. Now before you think I’m totally stupid, I had been fed a line that the amount I’d be paying would actually be less than the current monthly rate due to another line that would rebate a certain amount. You have 30 days to cancel contracts like that after signing, but when your bill comes two months after the last one, well, you’re screwed. As I was. It took two painful years of bills that at times were in the range of $1200 and fighting to get it canceled – to their credit they did lower the amount to around the average rate but with the provincial benefit that gets added on to such accounts, it was high for the one year I suffered with that before I was legally able to tell them to stick it.

I did tell them that. And life was good. For one month. The next month the time of use hydro meters came in and my bill went from my happy $400 (this was the summer bill) to $770. Why? Who the hell knows but we’re walking around in the dark a lot these days, and laundry and dishes don’t happen until after 9:00 p.m. The next bill was about 2/3 which is better, but still very high.

Now comes the gas bill. I paid off my air conditioner and thought, yay! Here’s $100 a month less I’m paying. Am I? Nope. Like one of thousands of equal billing customers I was slammed with a $500+ gas bill because “oops, we made an error and it seems we underestimated something so sorry, you have to pay.” So I did and they recalculated my monthly bill to an amount that is, strangely enough, the same as what I was paying before when I was purchasing the air conditioner. And gas rates have gone down. How can that be? Who the hell knows.

I live in a town that up until a couple of years ago had reasonable water rates, much better than the neighboring big city. Then eegads, the system was substandard and had to be replaced immediately which would cause an increase in water rates. Then they put in new meters as well. My water bills doubled. Then last summer I got a bill of over $500 to catch up for a year and half worth of estimated bills. Seems their accounting system wasn’t working so they just guessed. There’s a big kerfluffle over that one so I, like many, haven’t paid the exorbitant mysteriously appearing bill while the town decides what they can do with themselves about this. My last bill was double the estimated double bill from before because it seems I have a leak. After the huge summer bill I did a bunch of replacing of flappers and leaking taps etc., and it seems that out of the goodness of their hearts they will give a one time rebate for people who’ve done repairs. Provided they give all the receipts. Now I don’t often hang on to all my assorted Canadian Tire receipts, especially when it’s for stuff I know I can’t return so I don’t have them. What do I do now? I fill in the form and say what the eff, how do I prove this. In the meantime my water bill is now as high as my hydro bills (and isn’t the similarity in names interesting?) so how do I deal with this? Who the hell knows.

Last night I came home to a lovely little pamphlet, beautifully printed and compliments of the provincial government explaining why they are increasing rates and helpful hints on when to live your life. We, according them, now need to be vampire bats in order to do such horrible energy hogging things like washing dishes and laundry and cooking and heating the house and reading and using appliances. If I want to live a normal life, well, there’s always a rock and pail of water and candles and a wood-stove to suit my needs.

There’s been a big hoopla in the news the last few days about a cap being put on internet usage so I thought I better check on our unlimited account. Effective today my unlimited account has a 25GB cap. I checked last month’s usage. Uploads and downloads combined, for 4 people using it, came to 167GB. At $2/GB over, well, if we do the same this month we’re screwed. That’s getting into hydro bill territory. So I phoned. There’s a limit they can charge more, that being $60 so then that merely puts the internet into water bill territory. I can add an overage amount for $15 more a month but that won’t take effect until next month. So how do we deal with this month? Who the hell knows.

If there’s anything I do know, it’s this: all of these bills are not being caused by extreme shortage or the weather or anything other than somebody signing something into effect without any recourse by the people who not only need these things but have no choice but to swallow it. I want solar, but apparently the one plan that allows people in my area to purchase by paying for it from what’s generated doesn’t work for older houses with trees nearby.

The problem with swallowing it is that even if I turn off all the lights, spend my evenings and nights huddled in blankets and only take baths once a week, my salary simply isn’t going up enough to deal with this.

I’m at my wits’ ends and I’m not the only one. I watch with a mixture of curiosity, hope and fear at the situation in the middle east, most particularly Egypt. We’re seeing a nation of fed up people. We’re seeing people made even more angry by the controls on their communications. The government clamps down, but enterprising people are finding a way to get the word out, and equally resourceful people are hearing those words.

My country, the one of which I am so proud and thankful to live in, is making it nearly impossible to use what are considered by most rational and sane people as necessities and now, as of today, the extent of my words are being limited on the internet.

What am I going to do, now that my utilities are effectively more than half my take home pay?

Who the hell knows. But what I do know is that add enough of me together, let a few people die of the heat or cold in this very extreme weather country and you have the makings for some pretty serious business. Just ask Egypt.

——-

Sign the petition! http://openmedia.ca/meter

An American company offers to download stuff for Canadians and ship it to us on CD: www.canadiandownload.com

Welcome to my end of year message, written on New Year’s Eve, on time this year!

I have been terrible about updating my website this year, and for that I am sorry. When I went to write this I was shocked to see that the last entry was March – I really thought I had done something in August but obviously, I didn’t. So to catch up on the highlights, for me it was participating in The Prince and The Prior in July; it was a wonderful experience and one that reminded me how much fun it is to act. I got to be a upper class lady from the 1860′s in Arnprior’s reenactment of the visit of the Prince of Wales to Arnprior. It was quite the production and I took part both in front of the camera and behind it for TV Cogeco. I am going to be doing a “making of” show for Cogeco early in the new year when I’m done my Unix course – this year has been so wild I am now on my 3rd extension and desperately trying to finish up my labs and get studying for the exam before the end of February so it’ll be a while before I can get going on that but it’d be fun to have that show produced in time for the one year anniversary of the event. I’m also on the board of directors for the newly formed Friends of the Arnprior Museum so we do hope to have more reenactments in the coming years, though not on the same scale as the Prince and The Prior. Check out this page http://www.princeandtheprior.ca/ for details on The Prince and The Prior, including stuff with me in it in the media section!

So this year has been a bit of a rollercoaster in many ways. On the good side, my assignment at work turned full time for a while (latest is mid-May) but at the point it’s hard to say if it will continue beyond May; if it does I’ll likely stick with it. If not, I think I really need to find a job at at least the same level I’m at for the assignment. Pay-wise there isn’t much difference at the moment since the end of one level isn’t much more than the start of the next, but to go back to my previous level would be a drop and being in the next level means that there are annual increases at least until the end like I am with my regular job. Money is an issue for me, a big one. And that has been a major theme of this year where I’ve been hit with huge bills out of nowhere, mainly for utilities. I’m not alone in this, but it has been exacerbated by having a houseguest for a good part of the year. So to make a long story short with respect to work, I’m enjoying working on the systems end of things and hope to continue in some way in that; if not then I need to look for a position that pays well doing what I’ve always been doing.

Daughter had a good year, finishing her first year of university, spending the summer in the same city as her special guy and landing a part time job that was just great for her, then managing to switch universities so she and boyfriend could be in the same place which is also very close to many of her dear friends. It’s much farther away than being here of course but she’s on such a good life path with everything just falling into place, how can anyone not be happy for her? We all are, and we wish her all the best, as always.

Son in doing well after graduating middle school and is now a big high schooler, enjoying it more than the middle school so that’s great. I think that having a little more choice in what classes he takes and having opportunities to get involved in things that interest him like band is great; add to that the school trips are good too are certainly a bonus. This year he’ll be off to Quebec City.

Jim’s year was a bit sadder, with the shocking loss of a brother-in-law in September and in December the sudden passing of his long time friend Larry. In times like this Canada feels like a world away, and I know this year has been hard on him in other ways as well. If there’s anything I can say in all this – I thank you Jim for your love and your patience, and whatever the future brings these past nine years have been special indeed. May this coming year bring you happier days, you deserve it.

So. The big issues. Well I live in Ontario which means that we are taxed and utility-billed beyond belief. Add to that the local water bills here in my small town are frightening due to a new system and I am truly worried. My last electric bill was just over $700. Why? I have no idea, my summer one was just over $400 which I expected because of the air conditioning. What scares me is that if my electricity bills, and the scary water bills (now standing at $800 – $500+ for their “catch up” bill and $244 for the most recent) continue I may have to sell my house and move. But that presents a problem because where would I go if I did sell and move? And who would buy looking at the ridiculous utility bills? I have a fairly decent job but it isn’t enough like it had been five years ago. I find it very hard to believe that the electric and water resources got that much more expensive for reasons that are truly real; it all strikes me as very political and I sincerely worry about people who make less than we do – how will they afford heat this winter? And if they make it through this winter what about the next? They also don’t make it easy to pay the bills with anything other than cash – a very chilling response of “That is not an option” from Hydro One when I asked about Amex meant a very lean Christmas here. So we now have a Jeep that has needed a major brake job for the last 3 months parked in my driveway waiting for these huge bills to stop, and two people who need a vehicle for work. Can we move to the city? No, because the house we have, small as it is, is what we can afford and to buy in the city just isn’t possible for the same amount. Very frustrating indeed, but if it’s anything I do know we’re not the only ones in this bind and so at the very least we have company in this.

This leads to my world view point. The economy is not rosy, and what improvements we’ve seen are largely due to massive influxes of cash from our taxes to make work projects. These projects have an end, and those jobs too will end. We have credit card companies charging horrendous rates at a time when the real interest rates are very low, and though people are encouraged to get off them for their financial health, the huge jumps in utility and gasoline costs mean that people are using their cards as soon as they pay them just to get by. I know very qualified people who have been unemployed for over a year, even longer (house guest is now 3 and half years out of a job). 2011 quite frankly worries me a lot. Unless something is done to stop milking the middle class for everything they have, more companies will go under as people curtail their spending out of necessity and stop buying goods. That means more job losses. The divide between rich and poor is widening with more and more middle class people barely able to afford the essentials. If the world economic mavens really wanted to see an improvement they would make sure that necessities like heat, water, electricity, gasoline were affordable, and they would force credit card companies and other lending institutions to keep their rates in line with the interest rates, which they should keep low. That’s when you’ll see true improvement. And that’s also why you can see my fears for 2011 and beyond could very well be real, because these solutions are pipe dreams.

Now that I’ve said the scary bits I think there is hope. There is hope in people getting fed up and fighting back by what ever legal means they have. That means voting for politicians who are willing to make a change, it means starting class action suits against companies who are clearly treating their customers unfairly, it means ensuring laws that work for us instead of against us are passed, it means speaking your mind and supporting the truth. Can we do it? Well, if enough people are pushed to the brink, yes it can happen. For me, I’d like to see companies offer things like solar power panels at little or no cost to homeowners so we can get off the grid, alternate fuel vehicles be made affordable and easily available to consumers. These are the things that would make a real difference and it would show me that big companies are serious about how drastically we need to change. Right now – and forgive me for being cynical – companies are jumping on the green bandwagon to charge more for things they say will save the planet, at the same time making sure that legislation is passed forcing us to pay more for what exists and most of us can’t afford to change from.

Alrighty, that’s enough soap box talk for now. Regardless of this long missive of complaints I do have hope for the new year, I always do. Communication in all forms is changing and the world is becoming more open, smaller; that means people are sharing knowledge and experience with one another. Some say technology is killing our social skills but I don’t think so – I think it is widening our world and we are befriending people from various cultures and countries and ages. The silos are crumbling – is this a bad thing? Society is changing because of this and so far I like what I see. It’s hard to stay locked in a mindset when your mind is opened to so much else that exists. From Facebook to flash mobs singing in shopping malls, more and more we are connecting and as the flood gates open, the harder it is to hide the truth from people. As the saying goes, the truth will set us free. At least I hope so.

And in my microcosm, I have hope when I look at our children – that wonderful group in high school and university are shining lights to me. To them I say, keep your honesty and your openness and your curiosity and creativity. Please don’t give into our cynical and selfish baby-boomer/generation X ways; your caring and your collective society will some day do us all proud.

So what do I want for this year? Aside from winning the lottery so I could get all those close to me out of the deepening chasms we’re in, I do plan – not hope, plan – to publish Off Air this year and to make I Ching Jukebox available in paperback on Amazon. I plan to get the Making Of The Prince And The Prior out and on the air, and I’ll pass my Unix course and start my advanced web design course. It would take a lottery win for me get my certificate in Computer Science in the coming year (I’d need to study full time to do it) but every course I take is one step closer to my degree, and one more thing I can do. I need to start another novel – it’s haunting me – and more than that, I have to be able to do what I love most which are my creative things: writing, painting, music, photography/film. Can I do it? Well, just watch me. A new year is a new page and yes, I’m up for it.

A very Happy New Year to every one and may your dreams come true in 2011!

À la prochaine,

Cathi …..

Slightly touched by experience and yet

Not enough to be jaded – that’s a good thing

A lifetime stretching far in front

A close and yet so distant childhood

So near you can still feel it.

When you are nineteen

You can be all the things

You wish to be if you want to, maybe.

There are roads to take

Paths to follow

Words to read (so many!)

And listen to

Then evaluate

Forms to fill

Classes to take

Dreams to fulfill

Or not, as is your will.

‘Cause the dreams you dream now

Are what become your tomorrows.

Words of wisdom are wonderful

If understood they are filtered

Through lives lived by others

Good to heed but not to lead

For your road is the path

Not taken yet.

Have faith.

Believe in yourself

Remember always

The days and nights given

Are numbered to you and you only

Those shared are special

But in the end

Have few regrets

Those anchors weigh you down.

Life your life with all your heart

And all your soul

For what matters most is

Not how good you were

But the good you did for others

And for yourself.

Live, love, be happy.

Be smart, work hard, study.

Most of all, be true to yourself;

Everything else falls into place.

Nineteen, for all its wonder and its angst

Is a truly incredible place to be.

(c) Catherine M. Harris, July 5, 2010 and we all know who this is for.

When I think of my dad it’s hard to pick any one image that would suit him.  He was many things in his persona, a chameleon in a way, mercurial in his moods and wit.

Anyone who knew him socially could tell you that he was a charmer with a very quick wit and a dark sense of humour; he would come out with these comments that on the surface may seem very sharp-edged and yet were just so incredibly funny that those listening would either be appalled or would be crying in laughter.  A lot of how you responded depended on just how quick you were in the uptake and how good a sense of humour you had.  A testament to his fine Irish roots I guess.

There seemed to be a fair bit of crying related to my dad.  Not just laughter, but frustration or anger.  This happens in any person’s life one has to agree; there just was a little more of it with him around.  It’s something you understood or you distanced yourself from him, it was all a person could do because that was simply who he was.

It’s taken me fifteen years to put pen to paper and write an essay about him.  I was going to put a commemoration in the newspaper on the fifteenth anniversary of his death but when the time came I just couldn’t.  It brought forth a lot of issues that are probably best left alone.  So I didn’t.  More importantly though was the fact that one small rectangle of expensive words in a newspaper isn’t nearly enough room to say what I’d like to say. Oh I could have put a soppy poem instead or a canned message that gets the point across but that would be a waste because if anything else, as a tribute to my dad it is probably the last thing he’d like to see in print anyway.  So there we have it.

My dad was raised in Lowertown, the Irish Catholic end of an Anglo-Irish capital that had the more well-to-do Protestants in one part and the work-a-day live by the moment Irish/French/Italian/Native mostly Catholic other side.

A child of the Great Depression he was the oldest of five children who lived with his mother, father, very Irish grandmother and her very cranky parrot.  His dad was a trolley driver for the OTC, now called OC Transpo.  My dad loved to regale us with stories of this time, some of the real, some of them questionably real, some of them just him playing a joke on us.  And that was fine by me because I loved his stories regardless.  He was a good story-teller with a lovely voice, a voice if I think about it I can still hear in my ear all these years later.

He was in the choir as a boy.  His dad would have him sing for his friends I remember him telling me, and later on he would tell me stories of singing in bars in faraway places like Washington or Rome.  He said he would walk down the street in Rome in the evening and sometimes the people in the street would join in with him, a band of strangers singing in the wee hours with the howling street cats and very probably people shouting out their windows to be quiet.  This could have been one of his fanciful stories but having met some of his friends who knew him back then in that time and place they say it’s true so I believe it.  Knowing him, yes it probably is.

My dad loved to sing, and he loved it when I sang with him.  There’s people who said he sang off-key but he didn’t with me so I guess it could be that when he had a bit too much to drink he’d lose it, I don’t know.  Singing was one of his passions, that much I do know, and I know that one of his greatest disappointments near the end of his life was when the throat cancer robbed him of his much of the strength of his voice.  He told me one time then that if he couldn’t sing, he didn’t want to live.  That made me so sad to hear and I told him he should practice talking – talk to the plants, talk to cat, read stuff out loud, do anything like that to help get it back, the radiation damaged things but maybe it could be fixed but he didn’t like to hear himself like this so he didn’t.

His favorite song was Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”.  It was his theme song and certainly a very appropriate one for such an individualistic person.  He was independent, maddeningly so often times, and I admired him for that.

To this day I wish I could have just one small pinch more of his individualism; I’d be a full-time writer and student if I did.  I got some of my talent from him, that much I do know.  He was a good story-teller and singer but he was also a very good artist.  When he drew his sketches they made me wish I could just sit down and sketch something like that.  So I practiced and eventually did learn to do that.  He painted a few paintings and I wish I knew where they were, gone to time I guess, though he never did have the nerve to try to sell any.

It saddened me that he didn’t have the courage to do that, and this loss to the world is to a very big degree what has made me go and try to sell short stories and books and paintings.  I’ve gone ahead regardless even though my book sales are pitiful and the paintings that have gone on show have never sold.  That’s alright, to me, I don’t care I just want the world to see and if they get something out of it great, if not, that’s fine too.  My dad lived on a more fragile edge emotionally than I do though so I can see how the disappointment of not doing well in something he loved and that meant so much to him would have been too much to bear.

My dad was incredibly bright and he had street-smarts learned from his days in Lowertown. He was a page-boy in Parliament when he was a teenager, and he left home at a young age to go work in Churchill Manitoba for a while.  He had many funny stories of walking the streets at night with lanterns ever vigilant of the polar bears, and had a girlfriend that inspired another story that I won’t repeat because I don’t know if it’s true or not.  He was definitely a charmer though and he blended in well with people of all ages and social strata, so anything is possible really when you look at his stories.  Was he a liar?  I think more often he embellished the truth, because as I have gotten to know some of his friends over the years there was an element of truth in pretty much every story he told.  And that’s good enough for me.

His ability to quickly pick up language and to fit in with wherever he was made him a good candidate for foreign service and that’s exactly what he did for many years.  He lived in Washington and Rome and Geneva.  He has so many great stories of those times that I couldn’t possibly retell them all here, though one story is undeniable and that is that he met my mom in Rome and they married and had two children.  My sister was born back at home, and I was born in Switzerland.

I wish that my parents had stayed in the foreign service because imagine things we would have experienced!  However, it was a time in their lives that family was getting older, important people were getting sick and dying and they decided it was better for everyone if they stopped those wandering ways and stayed in headquarters.  That was a good idea in some senses, however for my dad he lost that life that suited him so well, where he truly shined.

Things weren’t easy growing up.  My dad was restless and we moved apartments many times all over the city.  I went to something like eight different schools and for a very shy girl all this moving meant I didn’t have many friends.  Fortunately I did always manage to have at least one very close friend and I took a lot of my alone time to live in my imagination.  I wrote elaborate stories in my head and when I was old enough, I put them to paper, and sometimes I’d win awards.

My dad at the time was out a lot, and he loved to entertain when he was home so I got to hear stories from his worldly friends and I especially liked when my dad and his best friend would cook food from the countries they had been to.

My mom had a good job and that made up mostly for the lack of focus my dad had.  She would travel, bring one of us with her (which I loved), and the one left behind would be looked after by my dad, or a friend or a family member. When it was my dad he would often take us for a drive and we’d set off for somewhere and end up somewhere else.

I remember going on a trip that was supposed to be to the Mill of Kintail which he liked to visit and somehow we managed to wind up in New York state.  We couldn’t do that now certainly but I still wonder how we got across the border without ever stopping. If I can say anything about life with dad, it was never boring.  We lived a roller coaster life, one of highs and lows and we never knew from one day to the next what the moment would hold.

I look a lot like my dad, who looked a lot like people in his family.  My mom’s side came from the other side of the tracks, the upper crust side, and they were blonde Anglo-Irish as my aunt used to describe them.  He and I had that little bond from our skinny bodied, dark-haired and fair complexioned  countenances and that was fine by me.  I used to get people stopping me in the street when I was  a kid and they’d say, “Oh!  Are you Nelson’s daughter?”

I would be on a bus or just walking down the street when they’d do that.  It’s been many years now that I’ve been stopped in that way and a small part of me wishes just once that someone would do that again, but I’m thinking that like him, many of these people are gone from this world now.  Fortunately I work with people who worked with him and we do reminisce sometimes.  I like it when people do that.  He went far too young at aged 63, but on the other hand it does afford me this little bit of holding on to his living memory for that much longer.

As we grew older the roller coaster ride with my dad got much wilder and there were some very dark times too.  People turned away from us at some points, I had friends whose parents wouldn’t let them come over. I had friends whose parents let me stay there more often than perhaps I should for my sake I think, and as my teenage years began there were police and hospitals involved.  At the time it was shameful and scary – we learned he had something called manic depression and there were pills he took and then didn’t, and treatments that must have been terrifying for him.  In the early 70′s such a thing was hushed up; mental illness was much more a keep-it-in-the-closet thing than it is now.

Part of why I haven’t written an essay about him until now was this; I don’t want to diminish who he was because in the whole of it, he was a pretty great guy.  I loved him dearly and miss him terribly though there were days I have to say I hated him and the things he would do.  That was his illness that did those bad things though and it is in the bringing to light of that that I wanted to share this fact here.

Things devolved to the point that I ran away and was brought back; I was constantly in trouble, acting out, lost in a whirlwind of uncertainty.  Still, I survived and what’s more I think it’s made me a stronger person.  It took many years to work out all the emotions but I have and I have learned skills that have helped me in other ways, most notably for being able to deal with very difficult people and situations and to live a walking-on-eggshells kind of existence.  I am adaptable, and I think that it is my ability to find the good in whatever horror story that is presented to me that has made me the moderate success that I am today.  I could have mired myself in this and gone off the deep end but I haven’t.  My dad almost did, but being the survivor he was he didn’t.  In the end he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, took a couple of crappy jobs that led to him getting a decent job and his life settled down, albeit on his own.

Living on his own was the best thing for him really, and he admitted it.  As much as he loved people the responsibility sometimes was just too much and being on his own he was able to cope fairly well.  After the family broke up for good when I 15 my dad tried to keep in touch with me.  I was angry at everyone and really just wanted to be out on my own by that point, but one day it came to a head.

He’d been told I was seen smoking at bus stop during school hours and he laid down the law with me and told me I was going to be punished.  Now what that punishment was going to be I don’t know because he wasn’t living with us, but that was the tipping point for me.  I shouted back at him, “You’re not living with us, you haven’t acted like a father with me and you’re not going to start now!  You have a choice, you can be my friend or you can just forget it!”

My dad to his credit didn’t respond back in kind.  He said yes, I was right.  He wasn’t much of a father, and it probably wasn’t the time to start now.  He would love to be my friend, if I’d let him.  I said yes, and from that point on he never did try to tell me what to do.  Instead he listened, and I listened; we did things together, and when we had nobody, we hung out together.  We had mutual friends, and it was through him that I met my ex-husband.  In typical dad-style, he told me one time, “You have to meet this guy, he’s a scientist, you’ll like him and you’re the only one I know who can f*cking understand what he’s talking about.”  I still laugh at the memory of that because it’s true, science was and still is one of my abiding interests and is still something I’m studying in university.

My dad and I were best friends.  I can truly say that.  We’d cry on each others’ shoulders.  We’d drink together, laugh together, do absolutely nothing together, lean on each other and advise each other.  We stood up for one another, even when it was a hard thing to do.  I remember one night we were having a glass of wine after work in a local bar and some man beside me started hitting on me, bothering me.  Nothing I said could get rid of this fellow so my dad, who had been talking to someone else and overheard what was happening put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Hey, what are saying to my girlfriend?”  The guy just gave a sneer and said to me, “Right, this is your boyfriend?”  I said yes, and my dad said, “See? Now get lost.”  And he did.  You just have to love a quick thinking person like that.

We looked out for one another.  When his illness took a turn for the worst I’d be there at the hospital in the dead of night talking with psychiatrists, and when my life took down turns he’d be there for me in the depth of the evening listening to my latest tales of woe.  There were days when it seemed all we had were each other and that was fine for us.

My dad mellowed as he got older and as time went by his illness did calm down as well.  He was doing okay, and it was around this time that I married that man he’d introduced me to who was also a close friend of his, and we moved to Mississauga and had a child.  Things were pleasant and for what was probably the first time in my life, pretty much what could be called normal.

My dad had the chance to retire at 60 and he took it.  He looked forward to reading and to doing his painting, spending time with friends and no pressures.  There were pressures because he didn’t have quite as much money as he used to, but he was still doing fine when he asked me one day what to do because his family doctor was away; the prescription for antibiotics just wasn’t working after the third go around and his throat was bothering him.  I was going to be there on business in few days so I told him we’ll see what’s up when I got there and if it was really bad to go to the hospital.

He met me for dinner at a restaurant near his apartment and my hotel; he was having trouble swallowing and complained of a swollen gland.  I felt it – it wasn’t like any swollen gland I’d ever known; it was soft and didn’t move.  He looked thinner than usual and choked when he swallowed.  It scared me but I did my best to be calm and told him to please just have soup and liquids and he had to get to a doctor, this was something that wasn’t going to go away on its own.

My dad loved cooking and eating exotic food but more than that he loved his cigarettes and his scotch.  The phone call he gave me a few days later confirmed my worst fears.  His doctor took one look and said “this looks ominous” and immediately scheduled him for an examination by an oncologist. My dad had cancer.

There would rounds of radiation therapy – the thing that broke his voice – and surgery.  Throughout it all he was a fighter, determined not to give in to this demon that had killed his parents.  In the meantime I had a small daughter and was desperately trying to get an assignment or something that would bring me home.  People told me I was crazy to try, how was I going to manage that?  But try I did because my dad loved his apartment and Ottawa and refused to come live with me; sadly I wasn’t able to do that.

Looking back on it now it’s probably better I didn’t for I would have stayed and there would be no son who was born a year after my dad died, and my sister would never had mended their relationship.  You could say it was fated that I stay where I was however hard it was at the time.

He had a remission and for a while it looked like things were going to get better.  Cancer is very cruel though, because after remission it often comes back with a vengeance and so it was with him.  It had spread.  His only hope was a visit to a specialist in Toronto so he came to stay with me for a couple of weeks.

I took him to Sunnybrook Hospital, a place now closed, but at the time it was an old and decidedly scary place to be.  In the waiting room for one of his appointments I had my little daughter with me and one woman who was obviously very ill kept watching us, thoroughly enjoying my daughter’s happy chatter.  She said a few words to her and then an alarmed look crossed her face and she leaned over to me and asked, “You’re not here for her are you?” I told her no, we’re here for her grandfather, and as a total relief swept over here, she said, “Good.  You have a lovely daughter.”  I do.  My dad thought the world of his little granddaughter and I am so very glad he lived long enough to spend time with her.

My dad had to come back for an operation in a few weeks so he went home, despite my desperate pleas he stay.  In the meantime I was trying my best to be strong for him, as I had been all along.

In the beginning of this horrible journey he told me that he was getting fed up with the long faces and the somber talk he was getting.  He told me, please, just be myself, make him laugh.  He needed the laughter and some semblance of normalcy.  I was dying inside from the worry but I told him that certainly I’d do that, how was he ever to get better if people are all being sad all the time?

Well this got me in trouble with others; nobody understood what I was doing.  My husband thought I wasn’t showing enough concern; others wondered about my mental stability and suggested to my husband that I get mental help, how could I be joking at a time like this?  I could because I am my dad’s daughter, and because that was what he wanted me to do.  Were I in the same situation, you know what? I wouldn’t want the long faces either.

I stuck it out, regardless of the long discussions several people had with me on my seeming lack of understanding at the gravity of the situation.   Understood I did – very well – I had planned to be a doctor when I was a kid and I certainly looked at all the medical literature I could find on his cancer and I knew the prognosis was not very good at all.  So like my dad, as much as I hoped he would be one of the lucky ones, I didn’t want what was likely to be his last few months or weeks or days to be mired in sadness, I wanted it to be light. I told people there’d be time enough to cry after he’s gone, right now we want to laugh. I know my dad appreciated me for that and from my physical distance through most of this, it was the best that I could do.

The last time he visited he had an operation that was to remove additional tumours in his neck and one lung.  I brought him to Sunnybrook to be admitted and it was very hard for me to be calm, and I knew he was scared too.  By this time he weighted about 90 pounds, and the pre-admission exam confirmed that.  We had one particularly officious nurse who was snapping at  him to do this, do that, and more than once demanded he provide her with a sample.  He was getting fed up with her asking him for it and went into the washroom but there was no sample bottle and he told her that.  She snapped back at him, “Well I’ll get you a bottle then!” To which he replied, “If you’re bringing me a bottle, there better be scotch in it!”

She shot him a terrible glare and we both burst out laughing.  That was my dad, and though I’d been reluctant to leave him alone overnight I felt better knowing that when they kicked me out, he was going to be just fine, at least for that evening.

He had his operation and it went well.  The frankenstinean line of clips and stitches on his neck and shoulder told the true story when I saw him next.  Though the doctor was optimistic, I could see that this experience had taken the wind out of his sails.  He came home with me for a few days until he was well enough to travel, and against my pleadings, he did go home.

The last time we saw him he was so thin and small in his wheelchair, and as he waiting to be taken to board his plane he hugged me and told me he loved me.  He said to my husband a simple, “see you” and with the look in his eyes we knew he knew it might not be.

He had had enough, and he told his doctors no more.  He was put in palliative care at home, and that week he phoned and asked me to come see him.  I had told him if he needed me all he had to do is call and that weekend he wanted me there.  My husband said next weekend we could go, it would be Easter and foolishly I phoned my dad back and told him sorry, I couldn’t this weekend.  It was the last conversation we ever had.  That Saturday night he passed away, in his apartment, my sister on hand.

There’s very few things I regret in this life and this will always be one of them.  He knew he was dying and instead of just saying to my husband, “the heck with that I’m going,” I didn’t.  I know my dad would tell me not to worry about it but I do feel awful that this very important time I let him down.  I have learned from it though and I did learn to stand my ground better; I just wish I could erase that last moment.

There weren’t many “I wish I could haves” with my dad though and for that I am grateful.  My dad used to love to hear me sing and I would play the guitar and sing for him; I made recordings every year for a few years of my songs and other songs I liked that I would sing.  He always told me that he wished I would record things of me singing acappela, because my guitar playing is not the greatest and I promised him I would.  He especially liked when I sang Anne Murray’s song “I Needed You”, and it was hearing that song again after many years that led me to writing this essay.  I had planned to put an acapella song on my tape after I moved to Mississauga but work and being a mother of a young baby made it impossible to do another tape at all, there just wasn’t the time or the quiet to record it.

When he died this omission was something that bothered me, and when we were cleaning up his apartment mention was made of my tapes and why I even did them; his many owls were left on a counter to be taken by people or thrown out – the tapes and all of the owls I swooped up and brought home with me because only my husband and I in that time and place knew the significance of these things and I was so glad I did get there before all those crazy owls were thrown out.

The tapes inspired me to sing acapella for him one last time at his memorial service.  It wasn’t going to be for a few weeks so it gave me time to do something really well, and I decided that with his love of Italian (he could speak Italian fairly well and did on occasion) that I would sing Ave Maria in Italian.  I had a tape of the Neville Brothers singing it and I thought with the words and the Neville Brothers to practice with I could do it.

The problem was that I knew the tape was in the basement last I saw it, but in what box?  I tore everything apart and simply couldn’t find it.  I had taken everything out of every box, put them all back in and closed them; it just wasn’t there.  I sat on the stairs and cried.  I said to the silence, “Dad, if you’re out there and you want me to do this, please help me find this tape, I can’t do it without it.”

Several minutes later I lit up a cigarette, wiped my eyes and much to my amazement, there on top of the box in front of me was the tape.  I knew then what I know now:  in some way, shape or form, my dad is still with me.  I learned the song and a few days before the funeral taped me singing it to bring with me to play on a tape recorder in case I got so choked up that I couldn’t do it.  I didn’t need the tape; I sang probably better than I ever have in my life.  People walking by stopped and stood to listen.  I could feel his presence so strongly and I know he was happy.

Some months later I had a dream and he was there, standing in a doorway.  He told me that he was fine, he was happy and not to worry about him.  I was so happy, he seemed like his normal self, healthy and strong and yet when I looked at his hands he still had that Dupuytren’s Contracture where his last three digits had curled in towards his palms.  I said to him, “Dad, if you’re okay and you’re healthy, why don’t you fix your hands?”  He laughed and I laughed, and once again from whatever faraway plane he is on now, we got to laugh again.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him, and many many times it is achingly hard; like today for instance. I can have good friends and family, but nothing can fill the void that was his spot except for memories.

As I was writing this my inner critic said “Eep, you can’t say that!”  Then I remembered the one thing that stood for my dad his entire life and that was that he did what he wanted to do regardless of what other people said, he just did it.  He liked my writing and I’m sure he’d understand that regardless of whatever toes I may step on by putting this out in the ether, it is my story.  Other people who knew him have their own stories and they are free to write it if they so choose, and that’s fine with me.

For whatever else, I am Nelson’s daughter.

_________________

If you’d like to hear the back up tape of Ave Maria I made, here it is:  http://www.aerendel.ca/cathisplace/Ave_Maria.mp3

Catherine M. Harris (c) June 20, 2010
all rights reserved

Dear Me:

Sixteen is such a magical age, isn’t? You’ve discovered love and a bit of yourself in the process, you’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as far as school goes and that’s pretty great. I even think you’re learning to love yourself, if only just a little bit, and you’re back to believing you’re going to be a writer some day. Want to know a secret? You know all those stories you send out? Some of them even get published. You’re even going to publish a couple of books all on your own. I’d like to say they are best sellers but um, they aren’t. At least not yet.

I like that you’re trying to follow the big dreams. And I like that no matter how hard it gets to keep following those dreams – and it will get devilishly hard when the kids come along – these little lessons you’re learning now will follow you for years to come.

A bit of advice? Please don’t put so much stock in your boyfriend and your friends. You will learn in a short time what most people learn and that is that life has a way of throwing forks in the road and leading everybody down different paths. It’s fine to live for the moment but don’t for a minute believe that anyone will put their hopes on hold for you, ’cause chances are they won’t and you doing that doesn’t make you a hero or a saint in their eyes. In fact, you won’t even know where they are in a few years so please, take the chance, go do Katimavik, go get that university degree. Who cares if the love of your life wants to be a machinist and can’t fathom you being a doctor?

The love of your life isn’t, sweetie. If you must know he’ll mean a hell of a lot to you and you’ll always wonder how he is, but he’s going to break your heart and you’re even going to have a good friend help in that aspect, so you know what? Love being in love for what it is – the beginning of more love in different forms later on. Keep your self respect, don’t fall so much in love you’re scared he’s going to die. He is, but it won’t be in your time, but there will be one dear friend who does. You haven’t met him yet, but his friendship will also throw your heart into a blender and make you re-evaluate your definition of what a boyfriend should be. You’re going to lose on that one, by your own choice, but you won’t lose the lesson and he will be one of only a very few true regrets you’ll carry.

Try not to carry regrets. They are a heavy weight and in all honesty, don’t we all make mistakes sometimes? Spending all that time rehashing every stupid thing you think you said, or blushing ad infinitim over wearing the wrong thing or doing that foolish move – most people don’t remember these silly things and if they do, so what? Don’t they do stupid things too? Laugh often. Laugh long, laugh until you cry, and when you cry find something to laugh over. It’s in the little joys you will find your bigger joys. Those huge giggle-fests with friends and even strangers, hey, those are things they’ll remember, not that booger on the corner of your nose. And you know what? If they do remember that and endlessly remind you of it, who needs them? Your own naggy voice is more than enough nagging to listen to in your life.

I know you’re very self-conscious right now, but try not to be. When you have kids and spend hours on gurneys getting what seems like dozens of hands groping your privates like you’re a turkey getting ready for your Christmas dinner you’ll lose this timidity. Why not lose a little of it now? Maybe later on you won’t recoil in horror when somebody suggests you dance with someone you like, putting you on the spot. Say yes! What have you got to lose?

My girl, you’ve got a lot going on and your world is about to get so very much bigger. Treasure your dad even more than you do now, he won’t around as long as you’d like him to be. Love your friends but never close the door to new ones, they will brighten up your next phases. If there’s anything you should do wholely in the moment and not lose patience with, it’s your children. It seems like a lifetime getting cranky babies to go to sleep but those little ones grow big very fast. I can tell you this because when one day you write this letter to yourself, your oldest will be 18, older than you are now.

So sweet dreams, 16 year old Cathi, no matter how old you are or how dark some days will seem, it’s those dreams that carry you on.

Catherine M. Harris

Now here’s the link to the site, to buy the book or post your own letter! http://www.dearmebooks.com/

There is one area for which I am not tolerant though, and that is intolerance. That’s right. I can’t tolerate intolerance. Perhaps what bothers me so much about this is that there is just so much of it out there. We like to think that we are all broad-minded people, happily living our politically correct lives, forgoing our Christmases and Christmas trees for the more generic Holidays and Holiday trees but you know, the older I get the more I see that most of this is just chimera. We behave the way we do because that is how we’re supposed to, and we can feel proud of ourselves for doing it. We’re paying lip service to propriety.

The problem as I see it is that we aren’t tolerant of one another’s differences. Not really. We live our lives in our own comfortable circles, following beliefs we are taught to accept as the right ones and we feel virtuous for doing so. Where I have a problem I guess is that I have not in my 47 years, ever been able to put a finger on what exactly is the “right” one for anything.

Take religion, for instance. Please. I put this number one on my list because it befuddles me that we have all these organized and quasi-organized entities running around telling us that their way is the right way to believe. With hushed tones and deepened voices they will tell you, “It’s how God wants it to be”.

So here’s the thing: which God are we talking about? The Protestant God? The Catholic God? The Muslim God? The Jewish God? The Buddhist God? How about one of the Hindu ones? And if you chose any one of those, you also have to navigate down to the various sub groups, like Baptists and Sikhs, for example. Every one of those religions has good aspects and some not so good ones, and determining that all depends on your perspective. The sad thing is that if you look – and I mean really look – at all of them they do have some things in common. You just have to get past the rhetoric to find it. Things like honouring your mother and father. Being selfless. Loving your fellow man. Caring for those less fortunate. All very nice things.

But to me, it means nothing if you feel virtuous donating to feed the poor all the while you’re voting against increasing the minimum wage because you’re worried it’ll up your taxes. Nor do I see that sanctioning the murder of doctors who perform abortions (but they murder unborn babies!) as very loving or compassionate. Especially if the law is that abortion is allowed.

We are told that love between partners should be sanctioned by marriage, and yet those of us who are biologically programmed differently aren’t allowed that sanction, in fact they are excommunicated or worse, murdered all in the name of faith. It’s one thing to be told to be honest, quite another to vilify people who are honest about themselves. If we are all made in God’s image, then what are the so-called deviants made from?

Charity begins at home it is said. But to me, sadly, that charity often extends only to those whose home is the same as yours. If their culture or colour or language or sexual orientation is different, well then all bets are off. It only extends so far as when they believe the same thing you do. And that’s a rather myopic way of looking at this very varied world wouldn’t you say?

Some years ago I took the train from Ottawa to Vancouver. I was 21, all by myself, proud of my independence and simply loving all the different people I encountered. I sat for a while beside a man who came from Scotland. He was disgusted with the many hours of trees and lakes and rocks we passed. He was bored silly, and couldn’t understand why we didn’t want towns to be interspersed with the odd cow and farm and then back to civilization. I explained to him that we are here because this is exactly how we like it – all this empty meant an awful lot to us. If it didn’t we’d be in Scotland too.

Later on in the Prairies I was joined by a teenaged girl who was happily looking forward to being a veterinarian for farm animals. She was enthralled that I came from Ottawa – that big city – and even more so that I was of such an exotic extraction as being Irish. She’d never met anyone Irish before. They were all Polish and Ukrainian. I told her that where I come from, that’s a bit exotic, Irish people were everywhere. Then she asked what I thought about a teacher from her province who was being fired and charged with hate for teaching that the Holocaust didn’t exist. She wasn’t sure it was such a bad thing, but I told her a lot of that ambilivance comes simply from not knowing Jewish people and their culture. Imagine, I said, if you were a Polish person surrounded by the Irish and we decided that your history was wrong even though you knew people who had lost family to this, and that you were less than something because of the virtue of the family you were born into? Would that be right? A little light bulb went off in her mind and she thanked me for helping her understand. A little understanding goes a long way.

Sometimes I think we are suffering from the problem that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Recently I was at a dinner where “those knives that those Muslim people wear” came up. I held my tongue, having known a few of these very foreign people – but I did tell them that knife was called a kirpan. What I didn’t tell them is that it is only the Sikhs, not all Muslims who wear these and there are specific reasons why they do. Perhaps I should have said that they are forbidden to draw those knives but I didn’t want to start a war at the table. They had a new word for their vocabulary but I’m a little disappointed with myself for not explaining the little that I know about the subject. I just wasn’t sure it would have made any difference at all in their opinions, as fixed as they appeared to be.

It all comes down to one’s perspective of things. In general people want answers, they want the simple way and if it means parking logical thinking or one’s emotions to follow those rules, so be it. It’s far easier to say, ban smoking from public places and throw insults at smokers than it is to realize that this is a strong addiction to a substance that is legal to procure and use. I smoked a lot when I was going through my marriage breakup, and to the people who clucked clucked as they passed by me outside, or said disparaging comments I often wondered what the reaction would be if they were to switch “you xyzing smoker” with “coloured person”. How acceptable would it be then? Not very much I would say. As much as I wanted to point that out I didn’t because my heart was breaking, I was under a lot of stress and I was self-medicating the only legal way I could and still function. But I’m saying it now: be careful of publicly approved insults. This is just another form of discrimination.

Discrimination happens in all sorts of ways, and the hardest to stomach for me is the ones against physical disabilities. There are those who will berate people who park in handicapped spots who aren’t in wheelchairs that never know that there are some who are entitled to them; perhaps they have a heart condition and can’t walk far. I have a child with an autistic spectrum disorder and I was thrown into the world of the invisible disability a few years ago. I have had people shout insults at me when my young child was having a meltdown in public. I had a lady chase after me with a box of crackers insisting I was starving my baby, couldn’t I see? Actually he had just eaten and was disturbed by the lights and the crowds in the store. But I was a bad mother, not a mother desperately trying to cope and managing the best I knew how. I have had the police called on me for middle of the night meltdowns (the night was storming him and the windows were open because it was hot). I have been told I need to discipline him better, that one child could go to a birthday and but not the other because he was just “too much” – and an aside here, one of the reasons I dearly love my daughter is because she had the courage at a very young age to tell that lady that if he can’t come she wasn’t either. We have been thrown out of McDonald’s, harassed at Wendy’s, and all because something is different and I tried as best I could for us to be normal.

I used to say to my friends that I don’t know what normal is. You know what? I still don’t. Six year olds who still couldn’t sleep through the night to me was normal. Being a single mother and abandoned by friends and some other people who I thought would be supportive when I left a hurtful situation was normal. Trying to find love and be whole and creative and publish my writings without a degree was normal. “Living in sin” for me is normal, because it is legal and I choose to live that way. Divorce is a long and painful process, expensive and wearing and I choose not to put myself in the possibility of that situation again. Some would argue I should have held the marriage together for the children, but to me raising a child in an unhappy home is not normal, or fair.

Life isn’t fair. If there’s anything I’ve learned and truly believe it’s that there is no black and white, only myriad shades of grey. Laws are made based on votes of elected officials and these elected officials are supposedly representing the majority of our society. For the most part, it works. I would hate to live in a society where we are dictated as to how we should feel or think or believe. There is a little of that here, no doubt about it, but I am grateful to live where I do where there are so many differing opinions and cultures and beliefs. I can choose to agree or disagree. I can be confident that most likely the law will err on the side of compassion, and I like that. It doesn’t mean I’d ever have an abortion because for me that decision would haunt me forever, but I would never deny a person the right to choose that option under the law, and I would never vote for a law that denied a woman that medical procedure. I will not be the person screaming at a stranger to stop doing what they’re doing if it is their right to do it. I’ve been on the other side of that voice and I can tell you honestly it hurts like hell and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

We all have a right to our beliefs and opinions and that’s good. It’s just sometimes people don’t see the hypocrisy in what we do. There are bumper stickers that people put on their cars these days that drive me crazy. They read: If you don’t support our troops, feel free to stand in front of them. Now I’m all for supporting the troops’ efforts, but how is threatening people to support them or they’ll use their weapons on you something that will make me want to support them? Isn’t that kind of behaviour what we’re over there fighting against?

There is too much fighting in this world. On the grand scale, in our tiny lives. If we just step outside of our own view of things, just for a moment and try to feel things from the opposite end, well, I guess you’ll be just as messed up about life as I am.

And I’d be very happy if you were.

© Catherine M. Harris, June 2009.

Silken and spotted
He answers your questions
Talk and you think
He understands

Like any cat
You know he knows
With a glint in his eye
Inscrutable
A word of wisdom
Fixed on what?

That’s the question.
If it’s a mouse
There’s a twitch in the
Swishing tail
Chatter from tiny teeth
Sharp

Not one to be messed
Around with.
Unless of course you
Are a dog.

Then all bets are off.
Big puppy horses
With hearts larger
Unbelievably
Than the stomach

They all  say all he wants
Is to play
Be it with a rubber bone
Or with a tiny tire

But as any wise cat
Will tell you:
A dog is a dog
With gnashing teeth
And a gleam in its eye
Large, so very large indeed
Not something
To trifle with
Even if

As we all know

The cat is the one who
Rules the roost.
No.
When faced with
The prospect of brute force
Loving or not
It just isn’t dignified
(or so he’d have us believe)
To be chased by
A big black dog.

And so he is
The cat on the stairs
Standing behind the gate
His kingdom waiting
(and he won’t mention
the other big orange cat
who just doesn’t care
and just ventures everywhere
anyway)

No.
Instead our big strong cat
With wild blood
And polka dots
Banned in places
Who just don’t know
A bengal is a spotty
House cat

Doesn’t.

The secret’s safe with us
Until and when
The feline world is safe again
With sleeping dog trapped
Behind the little mental bars
Of his cage
Where he lies sleeping
Oblivious

Of wandering cats proclaiming
The territory once again
Until it seems,
Its daytime.

For you must know
As every cat does
That daytime is for dogs
And squirrels.

Night time is
The domain of cats
On the prowl
And that’s that.

So spotty cats
Will wait upon a stair
Expentantly.
Not impatient, no
Without a word or notice
That would be unseemly
For such a noble cat.

A boy and a dog