The Elephant vs. The Blogger

“Hi, my name is Kathy and I am the wife of an alcoholic.”

I have never actually voiced those words to anyone, except to an empty room or to the hydro towers neatly placed in the green space that joins two walking paths near my house.

I have, over the last 50 years, reflected on who else dwells in the face in the mirror.

“Hi, I’m Kathy and I’m a battered wife,” 30 years ago.

“Hi, I’m Kathy and I have anorexia,” 25 years ago.

“Hi, I’m Kathy and I am so the unluckiest bitch on the planet between Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.” Pick a time.

“Hi, I’m Kathy and despite all of the above, I AM a writer and that’s what kept me from putting a gun to my head.”

 Like the family nobody wants to be born into (but I was), they are all related.

 I have often said to myself, “my husband is an alcoholic,” transferring the patient and his dependence to the pages of fictional third person where I have always felt it belonged. I have never really sat down and reflected on how my husband’s disease relates to me.

 It’s not like the measles or a cold where I can contract it on contact. However, I am a carrier. I was born with the ‘alcoholic gene.’ I come from a long line of drunks! I know this because of the 24 funerals I have attended over 52 years, half were the result, directly or indirectly of alcohol.

 In AA (Alcoholic’s Anonymous) the disease is referred to as “The elephant in the room.” Growing up, it meant the heavy drinkers sit at the end of the table where they can booze it up, smoke and play canasta.  I was born into it – and the wars as a result of it. I saw my first knock-down-drag ‘em out, donnybrook-cum-brawl when I was three. I remember most of it, despite being injured in the process. Most of all, I remember the Picton county cops showing up on a sultry summer evening in Rossmore, Ontario. Lights flashing, a few neighbours standing in their housecoats at the edge of my grandmother’s property at her small country home, pointing, whispering, shaking their sleepy heads. It’s such grand entertainment, after all. Overturned picnic tables, lawn chairs, broken glasses, loud voices, yelling and screaming. It wouldn’t be the last time. It would be just another story to tell 20 or 30 years down the road just like all the other drunken brawl stories I grew up hearing of the ones that had taken place 20, 30, 40 and more years behind me. Those stories even featured some of the main characters I’d seen in my first brawl. It made those stories absolutely real and not at all enhanced by heresay or fiction. That’s just the way it was in my family. It was accepted.

 I used to wonder if it was because we were Irish. My great-grandmother blamed the vice on the Irish side and not her Scot’s side. I once asked my grandfather if it was true about being Irish. He said, “shut up and eat your whiskey.”

 He died in 1969 of a cancer for which he’d been drinking to deal with the pain prior to resorting to useless surgery and faithful morphine.

 My great uncle, Aaron Babcock, was the brilliant out-of-touch with the world type who worked on developing the first U.S. Air Force Univac (that’s old school for ‘computer’ for those of you who weren’t born back in the day.) Life, however, and it’s day-to-day problems were something a drafting board and a mathematical equation couldn’t solve. But neither could the bottle, but it was – as all addictive substances are – cheap and available. He died of a massive alcohol-induced hemorrhage in 1977, on welfare and of no fixed address. Literally, or so my mother often said, in the gutter.

His sister, my grandmother, an evil piece of work by any description was the raging type of morose alcoholic. Verbally abusive. Self-destructive. Materially destructive. A sociopath who had to cut through the swath of thick blue smoke that surrounded her 98 pound frame as she consumed dozens of stubbies of Carling Red Caps and filterless roll your own cigs starting about 11 o’clock in the morning and carrying through until the wee hours of the following day. That in itself was enough to label her one tough old broad, the kind you’d imagine you’d find camped out in the local bar, wearing a faded silk blouse, tweed skirt and babushka. Her pale skin yellowed by smoke and broken only by a smear of Elizabeth Arden No. 6 Red lipstick. Yep – Mary-Gene – road hard and put away wet. The stench of stale smoke and warm beer clung to her skin to the point that I nearly vomited anytime I was forced to give her the mandatory holiday hug. Shabby. Anemic. Drunk. Hard to believe she used to be same beauty whose photos I have buried in the bottom of the sideboard drawer. Proof to me, I guess that however I remember her for all of my childhood until she died, she was once a person, a woman, with soul and a family. In the end, however, all she had was her booze. Fittingly, she died alone after a breaking her hip from a fall. I understand she lay at the bottom of the stairs in her condo for days before she was found. Not the same stairs she had once pushed me down as a child during one of her drinking binges and then blamed it on Sandy, my grandfather’s dog. In the end, it wasn’t the hip but alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver that took her.

 Born into it? Damn right. From the moment of conception.

 But the grand daddy of historic and renown drunks in my family was my great-grandfather Babcock. The true raging alcoholic. Driven to the bottle to cope with the horrors of WWI, he was, as legend has it, one of the nicest, sweetest people who ever trod behind a plow – when sober. Then he took a drink. The stalwart, God-fearing farmer-turned soldier-turned farmer unleashed a destructive storm of violence that included beating the shit out of my great-grandmother, their children, the shooting of firearms, small animals, threatening anyone and anything that got in his way to the point of spending a considerable amount of time in and out of the Picton jail. He was also a bootlegger during the Depression. Needs must and all that. Another brilliant man, self-taught, for whom reality was too cruel. He believed he had only one true friend. And it too deceived him in the end, ironically, on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1955. Dead of a number of alcoholic comorbidities.

So here it is, my resume into the world of AA. Luckily – very much so – I don’t have the head for binge drinking, or for any drinking for that matter. My stomach rejects anything more than a couple of glasses of wine. The rest of me doesn’t react all that well either so the bottle and I tend to steer clear of one another, in light of my excellent references.

But now I have a different battle. Someone I love has been snatched away by this obscene disease. Harming only themselves, so they think, I see a different kind of alcoholic. One who was led down the path to the slippery slope of ‘casual-social drinking’; the friendly guy who jokes and laughs easily, the life of the party and the straight up guy everybody wants to be friends with. The ‘sure, I’ll have another one’ drinker who started innocently enough only to be abducted and pushed into the vast pit of ‘I NEED another one…and another one…and a few when I get home from work and a few before I go to bed.  Make that a several, but only after my wife goes to bed.’ Obviously, I sleep too soundly to hear him get up and go to the kitchen cupboard where 2, 3 or sometimes 4 60 ounce bottles of vodka live every week. Yes, every week. I am also too deep in slumber to feel the mattress sag as he gets back into bed an hour or two later, kisses me on the cheek with a mouth tasting of vodka and whispers, “I love you” before burrowing into the blankets for the night, safe in the knowledge that I am seemingly oblivious to the dangerous game being played out in my own home – one I swore I would never have to face because I thought I had a choice. Because I thought I had closed up all the scars of my past and left them all behind in my bad memories and sometimes nightmares.

How wrong I was. That “elephant in the room” is now firmly lodged in my house. In my bed. In my life. For whatever reason God has chosen to place this affliction in my life once again, at least I know what I am facing. I can look deep inside its ugly heart and face it head on. Because this is one family member it’s not going to get. I know its tricks, its false promises, its weaknesses. It’s going to be a long, hard fight. I might not win every battle, but at least I know my enemy.

Because my name is Kathy and I am the wife of an alcoholic. And this is the beginning of my story.

Bumped In The Night!

"Shell Out, Shell Out - the witches are out."

They are also alive and well and living in Bradford, Ontario.

Today I consider myself to be more bitch than witch, because I know better. While trying to think of something witty and clever in keeping with the season, I realize that somewhere along the line I have traded my festive witchiness for bitchiness. Having said this, I decided to try and find out where I left the ghostess-with-the-mostess.

I used to love Halloween! Other than Christmas, which was a bit of a wait-and-see affair, at least I was a willing participant with some input in the costume department. Halloween was one of those calendar events where nobody threatened you with being good, or else! (Or else what? The presents have been in the bedroom closet for two months.) No going to bed early, no snow to contend with and being scary and scared was what it was all about. It was almost expected that you had to have at least one trick up the sleeve you were dragging on the ground or else what was the point? Besides the free eats. After all, there were houses to egg, pumpkins to smash and windows to soap. It was the one night of the year you could let loose and nobody gave a rat's ass.

That was before I saw the light, or rather praying for either the last kid to traipse up the porch stairs or my pail of overpriced, overprocessed and overwrapped treats gave out. Today I can't wait to douse the porchlight and lock 'er up for the night. To close my curtains and 'pretend'  I wasn't at home.  This coming from the kid who lived for those Hammer Films reruns on late night TV. The first turning leaf of fall meant scanning the weekly TV Guide for Charlie Brown and his Great Pumpkin. Long before the first B-B-Bat or marshmallow broom hit the stores (whatever happened to those anyway?) I could be found at my mother's Singer sewing machine with  her scrap bag beside me trying to create something original and stunning for the school costume competition.

My parents tried to weigh in on this every year. One year my dad got his way, dressed me up in one of his old hockey jerseys and toted me around the block. He insisted on lots of red food colouring around my eyes and nose because, as a former hockey player, his only kid, who was unfortunately a girl, had to hit the road as a goalie that year.  I was not impressed. Only a year earlier it was my mother who dressed me up as a leprachuan and doused me with - you guessed it - GREEN food colouring. Much more suitable for St. Paddy's day than Halloween, but I walked away with the kinder prize for best costume. Then I was finally old enough to travel the darkened streets of Oshawa with my friends like packs of wolves, our pillow cases bulging with sugary booty. I got even. Enough with the cutesy shit! My costumes were ghoulish, bordering on psychotic and way ahead of their time. Those were the days when I had a figure like Morticia Addams and could pull off black without it being sexist. My ghosts rattled real chains. My skeleton's bones came from the butcher, were boiled for hours then shellaced. My mother would shake her head and plead with me to be a clown or a princess, or wear my angel costume from the previous year's Christmas play. Nothing doing - let that be a lesson to you parents - there is such a thing as too cute!

Of course, every little boil and ghoul has to grow up. Usually when they discover the opposite sex. In my case, it was an older boy who played hockey in a league my dad coached. I think I remember the moment it happened. It went something like this: (handsome God-like boy comes to my dad's house and catches me trying on costume and comments) "Dressing up for trick-or-treat...awe, isn't that cute!"  There was that cute word again. Came back to bite me in the ass. That was the moment I gave up costuming for bra-stuffing and never packed a pillow case again.

The years rolled by. I found myself escorting my godchildren up and down the streets of Oshawa in their home made costumes. By this time, the merchandisers had started hauling out the plastic pumpkins at the end of July, the way they roll out the Christmas decorations at the end of September. It's shoved at you for months until you're just so sick of it that you want it to be over. I realized the thrill was gone when I found myself answering the door and staring UP at the trick-or-treaters. Home alone and the stranger on the porch is dressed like Jason and is the size of Tebow - handing out the snacks becomes more of survival technique than active participation. Then they vault off my porch, run across my grass and jump my fence. Must be all that sugar. I look down my street and see police cars patrolling, the mother of the tot toddling up the driveway in his Darth Vader outfit is concerned about preservatives. I get a dirty look if I don't offer a nut/gluten/sugar/something-else/free option. Trust me, it just wasn't like that in the good old days.

It is any wonder why I can't wait to unplug my plastic pumpkin and shoo the buggers back down the driveway - from which I have to move out two cars every year so the little darlings can get to the door.

Tonight will be no different. In the wake of having to secure the cats in the bedroom, eat an early supper (which I hate!) dig out the batteries for the flashing skull and try to find an extension cord long enough for the electric pumpkin, I will bitch and grumble. I am also aware that due to hurricane Sandy, more rain is forecast and there is a strong possibility that Halloween may become Hallo-wasn't. 

And in some way, the part of me who laboured for weeks over the ragged, red lace neckline of my Anne Boleyn costume will be a little sad.

Pass The Shovel! Digging Up The Family Tree.

"Find Your Anecestors."
"Where do you come from?"
"Start Your Own Family Tree."

AT all costs, do NOT get sucked into this.

Perhaps it's because we live in a country of immigrants. Except for the native peoples or aboriginals or whatever the government is democratically calling them these days, we are ALL from somewhere.  And, being human, we just can't resist the Pandora's Box of what may lie inside if we open the lid. Were our ancestors famous? Royal? Heros? Horse Thieves? The best thing I can say is that they were driven by passion. That's the romantic side of me covering up for what they really were - a bunch of hot-headed, war-mongering, Alpha males driven by their gonads, lacking any kind of moral fibre, and full of the other kind of fibre.

Now a family tree, like a real tree has roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. As the unofficial family geneologist, I consider myself the trunk whose mission it is to connect the branches to the roots. The branches and leaves of my family tree extend far and wide, some of them too many to count. The roots are a different matter. Any gardener knows if you start poking around the roots of anything you will find grubs, worms, insects, rot and disease. Many a tree has fluorished in shaky ground. Mine is no exception. In fact, I'm surprised lightning hasn't struck and burned the whole thing back to the stump! (Aren't we full of metaphors today!)

This is a cautionary tale of what happens when your curiosity gets the better of you. Remember the cat?

My curiosity was benignly militaristic. I have (had) a number of family members who were in the Armed Forces during the big conflicts which involved our country under the Crown. (That was pre-Trudeau!)  With the many anniversaries revolving around major battles - Hong Kong, Dieppe, Vimy - I decided to contact the Department of National Defence (DND) and Veterans Affairs to see if I could obtain copies of my collective grandfather's service records.

The thing is, like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

You see, when you signed any kind of military/governemnt document, you automatically forfeited your right to privacy - much like today. So you had to put down your parents, siblings, family members, wives and/or common-law wives and assorted children as dependents.

And that's when the skeletons fell out of my closet and bit me in the Ass.

Oh, Edna! Oh, Albert! Naughty, naughty! What a tangled, little web. Proof positive that the current
generation did NOT invent sex. Clearly, even without t.v. and video games and with the drudge of wringer washers and mopping floors, you found the time for other things. Did you ever stop to think that 80 or 90 years down the road, your future generations would end up having to re-write their own history?  I now understand how Marty McFly felt in Back To The Future. If I were to open up the dozens of photo albums in my possession, would I find half of my family slowly fading into oblivion all because of one little omission? Would my revelation, in essence, change the future? Would names cease to exist, birthdates be eliminated? Are these too many questions to ask? Not funny, Bertie.

As I have yet to inform the pertinent family members of my discoveries, I'll leave out the gory details. I'm not really certain I should say anything to anyone and keep my discoveries to myself. I'm not into opening up cans of worms anymore. I would rather the world keep blindly turning at it's own pace since it's worked fine so far. I therefore have decided to keep my secrets and re-bury the skeletons deep. One side of the fence can keep showering their leaves, procreate like rabbits and scatter their progeny across the earth. Be fruitful and multiply...I shall snicker and not speak ill of the dead.

I will give you one final tribute, Bertie, and that is I believe I have inherited your Machiavellian sense of how to manipulate a plot. Comes in real handy when I'm trying to rescue what we writers call a "sagging middle" or a "blah ending." Proof that fact really is stranger than fiction.

The other side of my family tree is just as evil and unrepentent. Really Robert? FIVE cases of syphillis? It's incredible that you managed to decorate yourself out of the trenches at Vimy. It sounds like you spent the Great War fucking your way across France. It's a wonder you had any time to do enough fighting to win those medals. Don't get me started on the still. Oh well, they say God suffers idiots and drunkards. The fact that you managed to make it back to Rossmore alive lays to rest any doubt about that. Sir William must have been spinning in grave. However, when examining more closely your own Scot's ancestry, you behaved no more or less nobly than one would expect with your blue blood and noble heritage. It is men like you who gave Scotland it's greatest myths and legends. Your tribute ends with a line from the great John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pile of bodies and a whole lot of digging to do.......

Diddlyi'm Irish!

Happy National Irish-Canadian Day aka St. Patrick's Day!

Yes, I'm Irish - waaaaay back - on my mother's side. I thought I'd take this opportunity to express exactly what it means to be Irish, or at least, be blessed/cursed with an Irish heritage since I'm not strictly limited to being green one day a year.

Yes, I'm a redhead.
Yes, I have a miserable, rotten temper - at times.
And, yes, the gift of gab and a love of telling tales in definitely in my blood.

So, to begin with, here is a primer of ME, the Irish woman.

Yes, I was named after an Irish ballad, "I'll take you home again, Kathleen." It's an incredibly sad, teary tale usually only warbled late in the day on the 17th of March by people who have been convinced by voices they hear coming from their pints of green beer that they can, without a doubt carry a tune and that anyone within hearing distance must also be convinced of same.
Sucky, but true.

Many years ago when I was offered my first publishing contract, a little clause called "Author's Pseudonym" popped up on about page 34. I thought long and hard about what to call myself. The answer came yet again from the green Isle. Chevon Gael. It is originally spelled 'Siobhan', in Gaelic, and nobody, drunk or sober, can manage to pronounce it properly. In the Irish language it means "The Woman" and "Gael" is, of course the Gaelic word for "Irish." Hence, the literal translation of Chevon Gael is 'The Irish Woman.' End of Gaelic lesson for today. If I ever become famous enough in the literary fashion to be known only as Chevon Gael, it is entirely possible that my forename, Kathleen, may disappear completely. I used to think about this because I thought it was important to know what name to put on my grave marker. Since this decision takes up too much time which I don't have anyway, I have decided that "Here Lies An Author" is sufficent.

So, what does it mean to be Irish? There are two explanations: what the world believes is Irish, through the stereotyping, advertising, myths, legends and often general misconceptions of those who are non-Irish - and the rest of us who actually are Irish.

For instance:
Irishmen do not smell like mint, clear flowing streams and fresh grass. Your typical Irishman heads to the pub after a hard day of slogging it out and the first thing that hits you is the rank combination of sweat and stale cigarettes. Add to that a few pints of brew and the flatulence of kippers and blood pudding at breakfast, a cold lamb and relish on black bread for lunch washed down with a generous glass of buttermilk and a fried something or another for supper - along with whatever was noshed down at tea - and you have an aroma which cannot be described in any little green bar of soap. Depending on the season and back in the day, this scent was often enhanced by wet, boiled wool and sheep shit caked to the wellies. You get the picture! NO MORE GREEN SOAP. I have, on occasion, heard it been said that modern Irish women consider their average man to smell like old socks and pussy! And that ain't special.

Next on my list:
We are jingoistic, popish drunkards. False! Not all of us are Catholic.

Like any race and nation in the world we have great standouts and also things we deserve to hang our heads over. Here are just a few:

Guinness - GREAT - the best meal of the day
Riverdance - well...it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Michael Flatley - we are SOOOO sorry!
Jonathan Rys Davies - you're welcome!
Oscar Wilde - First in coming out of the closet.
Bram Stoker - he did it first, he did it best.
The Famine - yes, we had a holocaust too except we didn't have the money to keep advertising.
The Kennedys - jury's still out on that one.
Leprechauns - once and for all, they're shoemakers, damnit! Get over it.
Pot Of Gold - just chocolate, my darlings. Sorry.
Corned Beef and Cabbage - flatulence, part 2.
Potatoes - carbs, carbs and more carbs. Deadly if you add butter, sour cream and melted cheese. (In Kay-bec, they fry it up and call it Poo-tine. Only a Frenchman would start a meal with the word 'shit'.)
Green Beer - Every Irishman on the planet has a BOLO out on the asshole who came up with that idea. Including me.
John Ford - thank you for "The Quiet Man" and "The Informer."
John Wayne - thank you for NOT attempting an Irish accent.
Tom Cruise - waiting for you in a dark alley!!!!
Bono and U2 - again, you're welcome.
Celtic Woman - upholstery in harmony.
The Irish Tenors - can beat the crap out of Il Divo.
Wakes - gatherings where everyone drinks, including the corpse, and somebody always starts a fight.
Maureen O'Hara - National Treasure
"Danny Boy" - melody origin is unknown but the words were written by an Englishman - Oh, the agony!
Drinking songs, dancing songs, crying songs - damn, were good!
EXCEPT - The Irish Rovers - I hate that fucking Unicorn song with a passion.

...and also including, but not limited to: horseracing, golf, lacemaking, roses, the book of Kells, castles, The Temple Bar area of Dublin, Jameson Whiskey and Waterford Crystal.

The final lesson of the day: The national colour is BLUE, not green. The national symbol is the HARP, not the shamrock and St. Patrick was a foreigner for crissakes.

All in all however, we are pretty good at making a name for ourselves, even if that name is only remembered once a year - hey, just like Christmas but with less angst.

So, as you head out to the pub today with your shamrock pinned to your vest and that nightmarish green dollar store tie around your neck, remember this:

"May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be at your back, may the dew settle softly on your fields and may you be an hour in Heaven before the devil knows you're dead."

Chevon

New Year's Resolutions - High Or Otherwise

Happy New Year.

I'll start by nagging about celebrating safely. This does not mean encasing your champagne bottle with a condom. A taxi is a hell of a lot cheaper than having your ass sued off - and yes, it can and does happen all the time. Crashing on a sofa is more comfortable than waking up in the tank and that embarrassing trip to court later on, or thumbing it in the freezing cold of winter because you lost your licence and your car is impounded. Nuff said.

On to 2012. Several life-evolving events have taken place recently. Both involved family members, one young, one old. Those were in addition to the toxic stress levels of things happening within three feet of me at any time. I completed school and managed to graduate at the top of, not just my class, but the entire college (kudos for the menopausal fat broad!) and actually land TWO jobs in my field. I'm still living in a construction zone and hope that the next floor quotation will be the last before we start ripping out broadloom. All in all, I have dubbed 2012 officially "The Year Of The Change."

I resolve to begin Change. I do not resolve to lose weight, save money, be kinder to the environment or pay more attention to my health - they all go before me without saying. They are not part of Change but a daily on-going battle. None of which will ever happen overnight. The same goes for world peace, curing life-threatening diseases or giving up chocolate.

I will start with small Change - literally, like emptying my wallet once a week and portioning out my pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and twoonies (which I think should be spelled 'toonies) into individual jars and tins. I did that for the first time a number of years ago and find that by RRSP deadline, I have a tidy sum I didn't have to scramble for to deposit into my fund.

And speaking of retirement...my mother-in-law, who will be 91 in March, finally resolved to go into a nursing home. It has been rather an emotional ordeal for all of us as, at first, she didn't really want to go, and although no one could make her, common sense prevailed. Not to mention that her two main caregivers both sustained fractures within a week of each other and that left no one to take are of MIL. She lived in a small, French-speaking, fishing village in northeastern New Brunswick, population about 1200. They all know her. That is, they all know her personality and assisted-living needs. Without malace, I state simply that she is extremely hard to get along with. She is a strong personality and very demanding in what she wants. Although her body is failing, mentally she is sharp as a razor. Nothing gets by this old broad! I only hope I will be as stubborn and well-grounded if/when I reach that age. Realizing that we could not longer find someone to drive Miss Daisy, my sister-in-law stepped in and helped to relocate MIL into a senior's facility in Fredericton. For the bargain basement price of $4000 a month, mother gets the best of care. For that price, she should have six Nubian slaves carry her around on a litter. The government pays about half. Those of us planning to retire within the next 10-20 years, take note. This is an average cost. Take the increasing ratio of aging Canadians to available facilities, inflation and a government who are merely serving drinks on the Titanic and by the time I need accommodation in this type of facility, I'll be lucky to get space on an ice flow. I may laugh now but I am seriously considering getting a quote on retrofitting my house with ramps, grab bars and a lifetime supply of supplemental oxygen.

Which brings me to my next Change initiation. A younger member of my family recently experienced a health speed-bump. I am happy to report that this person, whose identity and confidence is sacred, is none the worse for wear. However it has made me stop and think - very hard - about the next half of my life and reflect on all the things I said I would do before I got here. Most of all I think about all those things I haven't done. Yes - I've travelled, I've written, I've loved - not enough of any of them to my satisfaction, but to the extent that it is more than most people I know. Having no children of my own, I will leave only the memory of myself to those dear to me, and a few ISBN's in the Library of Congress. I therefore resolve to finish at least one book this year. I also resolve to begin planning my next travel adventure. I want to go to Ireland, the land of my ancestors. I want to find out what makes me part of every other little red-headed, Guinness-drinking, battle-ready punt with a sometimes crappy attitude. It's in my blood and I therefore claim the God-given right to stagger from pub to pub in the Temple Bar area and puke in the river Liffy. I can quote, ver batum, every line in "The Quiet Man." My great-grandmother came from the south of Ireland and spoke a dialect called Lilt. I believe whole-heartedly that a piece of me is still there.

I want to see London because it's old and, well, a fortune-teller once said I had an old soul. It must be true because I am constantly fascinated by castles, museums and drive my hubby crazy with re-runs of Jane Austen movies. I pant at the mere thought of Season 2 of "Downton Abby." I 'get' British humour. I'll finish the tour in Scotland, because there's scotch. I will tour a scotch distillery or two, (or three, four, five, six...) and attend a scotch nosing, or - well, why repeat the obvious. I do get chills when I hear the pipes. I've never met a haggis I didn't like. And also because ancestors on my mother's side were born there. I have old sepia-toned pictures of stalwart-looking women whose foreheads and no-nonsense noses I see every time I look in a mirror.

I want to see Paris because everyone I have ever known who has gone there has been changed by it. I want to walk thousand year old streets, be rudely snapped at by its citizens and have a bistro breakfast of cafe and a butter croissant before touring the Louvre. I want to tour the outskirts of the city where farmer's fields were once muddy trenches that harboured battle-weary soldiers and wonder from which whorehouse my great-grandfather caught syphillis - seriously. (Treated 3 times during the Great War, I'm surprised he had any time to fight the Huns!) And because I'm into Change, it's going on my bucket list.

I spent Christmas with my mother, who is heading back to the cutting table for joint replacement no. 3. Therefore I'm doing all the above soon before my own body decides to rebel in ways it can never recover. And smoothly this takes me to the next Change...

Yes, I do intend to incorporate better health practices. I want the stamina it will take to fulfill my dreams of travelling. I will put away a few extra dollars any way I can so I can afford to take myself where my heart desires. I will keep writing as long as my brain can function to put words on paper (or the screen) in hopes that some hundred years or so from now, some student or reader will be moved by something I've written and be curious enough about the author to find out if any of those promises she made to herself were the result of the Changes she wrote about on that New Year's Eve of 2011.

Have a Happy and Prosperous 2012 and may your own Changes start something wonderful!

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2011

I usually don’t get involved with
discussions involving politics or religions but I have a certain bee buzzing
around in my bonnet. It has to do with
the de-naming of “Christmas.” Now, I
consider myself to be a fair person of average tolerance regarding Canadian
multiculturalism. From time to time I do
weigh in on subjects that push my feminist equality buttons. This year, for some reason – and I think it
has to do with the number of e-cards I receive which dance around the word “Christmas”
– my internal defence mechanism kicked in by about card no. 14.

So far I have received the following euphemistic
phrases on greeting cards: Happy Yule, Happy Holidays, Joyous Winter
Celebrations (as opposed to cards that enthusiastically announce June 21st
as the official beginning of summer, no “Let’s Celebrate Not Having to Shovel
Cold, White, Shit Out Of Our Driveways For The Next Three Months Or So” – so far
none have shown up in my in-box), Season’s Greetings (that old stand-by),
Winter Solstice, ad infinitum…just as long as the sender doesn’t feel he or she
is offending someone by using the word “Christmas.” Why not go all the way and join R. Lee Ermey’s
Marines by singing “Happy Birthday, Jesus” with all the blind enthusiasm that
prevents getting your teeth kicked in by Gunny.

Who decided Christmas was a bad word? And when did it become so passé to wish someone
“Merry Christmas”? Why did something
that has been so acceptable in Christendom for over 2000 years suddenly become
taboo? Let me think about this for a
moment and I’ll get back to you.

I personally love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. I like the music, the lights, the frantic
rush, the endless baking, the exhaustion and I love complaining about it. Of
course, I was raised in a Christian household.
My mother was a practicing High Anglican and my father, at some point in
time, went to a parochial school in Montreal, complete with creeping nuns
dressed in black. The celebration of
Christmas was mandatory. Belief was as
unquestionable as the sun rising or the rain falling. My great-grandmother, the reigning matriarch
of our family, had a basic grade school education but could quote the bible
backwards and forwards and had a rather large, worn tome which met with the
back of my head or my rear end more than once in my life. Jesus was the son of God and that was
that. You celebrated his birth on
December 25th, no questions asked.

From a theological point of view, you could
break down through layers of semantics and get to the heart of Christ’s
origins. He was Jewish. So is Adam Sandler and everyone else he sings
about in The Hanukkah Song, which, by the way, I find hilarious everytime I
hear it. While I’ve never heard of Jesus
playing with a Dredl or exchanging chocolate gelt with his Hebrew playmates, I
certainly wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if that’s what went down. He preached the word of God. His disciples brought the idea of
Christianity into play at the risk of being crucified or eaten by lions. Somewhere along the line, Christianity grew
along with the settling of the Western World.
Our English and European ancestors told us that celebrating this day was
important and we’ve all merrily rolled along.
The little Hebrew kid is over 2000 years old now. I really think it’s too late to change the
party invitations.

Now I come to the heart of this blog. Those who disapprove of the word “Christmas” –
DO SO AT YOUR PERIL! If you don’t like
Christmas or feel offended and overwhelmed by it, by all means, use that gift
which the God I was raised with gave you called Free Will and choose to leave
until after New Years. There are flights
out of the country even on December 25th. No one will stop you. Choose not to put up
lights, no one will care. Don’t buy
presents, I didn’t get you one either. Turn
off the radio, Mr. Grinch. Try hard
enough and you can find a station that doesn’t drone on about the most wonderful
time of the year. You don’t have to
watch movies about singing priests, Santa in court or a pregnant Hebrew
teenager on a donkey, that’s what satellite is for anyway. BUT STOP PISSING ON MY PARADE.

I will continue to wish people “Merry
Christmas” with no expectation of reciprocation. I will sing Christmas carols from the top of
my lungs. I will fight with strings of
lights until I am dead. I will put up my
Christmas presents under my Christmas tree.
I will continue to celebrate the birth of Christ until he puts a stop to
it himself.

So, for the potentially offended I say, “put
up or shut up.” If you don’t like it,
then by all means, feel free to opt out of the statutory holidays this seasonal
celebration provides. We’ll even let you
give back the money you get paid by not having to work! And if you feel claustrophobic standing in
line this time of year, consider this - according to their calendars, the
following religions have listed their “holy days” for 2012:

Muslins:
7
Jewish:
23 – 15 of which no work is permitted at all
Buddists – 139, if you take in all factions
of their religion which use one or more days for different celebrations for
deities and prayers
Hindu – 19
Pagans – 5

So, party-poopers, leave our three little
days alone and allow me to celebrate my Christmas, my way.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, one and
all.

A Jackson Family Rememberance

The following is a factionalized account of what happened in Hong Kong 70 years ago today. It is meant as a memorial to a man I never knew but who is entirely responsible for my being here. The facts were gathered from several books, websites and what few family passages were handed down to me over the years:

December 19, 1941

British Territory of Hong Kong

“The Ridge” - An abutment overlooking
Sai-Wan Bay.



D106529

Pte JACKSON A.

"The Ridge", 1941 Dec 22

1941/12/19

Sai Wan Memorial

Column 27.



Private Albert Jackson and three of his Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (R.C.A.S.C.) are taking heavy fire in a hastily hollowed out trench – along with over 1900 Canadian and British troops who arrived in November of that year to support the defence of Hong Kong, the Asian
“Jewel in the Crown” of Great Britain.

Winston Churchill said, “Hong Kong will never fall.” It was a promise he made to President
Franklin Roosevelt at the outset of America’s entry into the Second World
War. It was a promise he could not keep.

When Albert Jackson and the rest of “C” force departed from Vancouver that fateful day October, 27th of 1941, did he know that he had less than two months to live? Did he know that of the 1977 soldiers sent to Hong Kong to defend it against what would be a seismic wave of Japanese infantry, he would be one of the first 290 Canadian casualties to die in the Pacific theatre?

Back in Montreal, Edna Mae Jackson (nee Cavener) appears in the Montreal Gazette as part of a puff piece of war propaganda “Soldier Doesn’t Know About Twin Daughters.”
The article goes on to state that Edna, who gave birth to the twins after her husband departed to Hong Kong, has no way of reaching him to tell him the news. Albert may never know that his pregnant wife gave birth to two daughters, leaving only a 3-year-old son to carry on his name. He would go to his death remembering the infectious smile of a sandy-haired toddler, mugging in front of the camera wearing a miniature soldier’s uniform, including a forage cap. Seventy years later, that smile is still just as infectious in a man who barely remembers a father who went to war and never returned.

Seventy years ago today, a battle raged that changed the course of one family forever.
Pinned down on “The Ridge” with spent ammunition and forced to use hand-to-hand combat, scarce and faded eye-witness accounts would tell of the South-African born and British-raised father of three who took a bullet – probably more than one, - which ended his life. In their fervent rage and haste to overrun the remaining soldiers and staff barricaded in Stanley Hospital, the Japanese would raze “The Ridge” with tanks, burying the wounded and dying as they went.

Private Albert Jackson (posthumously promoted to Corporal) would be confirmed as KIA (killed in action) on December 22nd. His body would never be found. Four days later, British forces surrendered the island of Hong Kong. But before that happened, a massacre of inhuman proportions would take place. In the outlying jungle, on the beaches, in bunkers and in the hospital itself, Japanese soldiers murdered any wounded soldiers they found. Several nurses in
the Stanley Hospital were raped, some murdered, shot or bayoneted as they tried to defend themselves. The remaining troops would be herded onto “Hell Ships” and transported to the island of Japan as slave POW’s and sent to work in the mines. Many would die in captivity – murder, starvation, disease – or simply worked to death. Some would make it through to liberation. The lucky ones would recover and be sent home. Some would say they never left Japan. Most will say that part of them never recovered at all. They would live to envy the dead.

What remains of Albert Jackson’s legacy and service to his country can be viewed at these links:

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/images/collections/books/bww2/ww2033.jpg

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/Detail/2128678

The man whose name is carved in Column 27 is scarce remembered only by a single living relative now. For those of us who are here because of him, look into that part of yourself which is proud of the country in which they live, that may display bravery in the face of odds and who believe that honour still exists. Never wonder where it came from.

I have been asked if he was a hero. To that I say, “no.” He was however a man who volunteered to serve his country; a soldier who went where he was told and who died doing what he
was trained to do. He was a patriot. He was a Canadian.

The rest of us who are here today and share his blood must never forget he was also a father.