Reading as addiction, continued

it's been years since the beginning of this post.... and I don't remember the intended direction - if, indeed, there was one.  It was in my grade 3 year, i think, that my father bought his first home (he was a divorced single parent at the time). Just 4 doors down from this modest version of the dream home, as it turned out, lived my nemesis. Imagine living just a couple hundred feet down the street from someone who terrified (and terrorized) you. Fortunately, the evil woman kept pretty much to herself. She was huge, morbidly obese, and, aside from driving the 2 blocks to work at the school every day, didn't go out much.  Her husband was a sweet, gentle man who kept a beautiful yard and gardens at their home, and worked as the janitor in the school she had charge over.  I began to wonder in my grade 6 year if the mondays when we had to move the desks in our classroom farther apart to accommodate her girth down the aisles came after some domestic difficulty between the two of them, and if she was as nasty to hm as she was to me. She was always in a bad temper when she walked into the room to find that she couldn't pass between the rows of desks.  It seemed to me a nifty way for him to have the last word, and it brought me comfort.

reading as addiction

"i've never had a client who i had to counsel to read less before. Usually i'm trying to find ways to get them to read more."

reading has always been an escape for me. even as a child, i was hungry for the written word. in elementary school i was put in a class for 'slow' children, because my marks were low. the reading program consisted of shelves of color coded books. readers, they called them. when you'd done enough brown readers you did some assignments and took a little test and if you passed it you got to progress to the red readers. when you'd done your due diligence with them, you 'graduated' to the blue readers, etc. my test and assignment marks weren't good. mostly because i seldom did them. i'd rather be reading. by the time they sent me to the 'special class' i was running out of readers, so i was thrilled to find that there were heaps of new ones i'd never seen before in the 'special' room. we weren't very far into the first class before the teacher exclaimed, "why are you here?" and sent me back to the classroom. it didn't take her more than a few minutes to recognize that this child had no problem reading or comprehending the written word. this did not please the teacher who had 'diagnosed' the problem and didn't want to deal with it, back in grade 2 home room.

in grade 3 we got to go into the library and check out books every Wednesday after school. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven. a whole, huge room of bookshelves that reached the sky, filled with books i could borrow. i never missed a Wednesday library visit. even then, i'd read anything. i took home the Hardy boys, and 'boys' novels and how-to books and romances... anything that caught my interest - and not much didn't. till one day the principal was overseeing after school Wednesday in the library. she was a demon. and she intensely disliked me, from the very start. after fearfully waiting in line to check out my books, the demon sneered, "you can't read that." i didn't know what she meant. i'd been reading things similar to what i was checking out for weeks. why couldn't i read this batch? she pointed off to a shelf, and told me. "you need to get your books from there."

so, dutifully, i went to the shelf she indicated. it was filled with 'easy readers'. mostly pictures, and no tricky words. i remember being confused, thinking, "these are beginner books. they hardly even have a story to them. why would i want to read them?" then i got it. and i got angry. she thought i couldn't read anything more challenging than this fluff. so i went to the absolute lowest reading level and grabbed an armful of the easiest books in the library. when i slapped them on the checkout desk, the demon very smugly checked them through, gave me a prim smile, and said, "that's better." another teacher, who was the usual supervisor, was working alongside her, and gave me a long, thoughtful look as i went through. she knew the books i usually took out, and she knew i read them. and she understood what i was doing right away. from then on, if Ms. Demon was in the library on Wednesdays, i stayed away from her, or if that wasn't possible, i just dropped off the last week's books. this meant enduring a whole week without new books to read, but it was preferable to the humiliation of being refused access to the books i wanted...... to be continued......

why we do what we do.....

whole lives have been dedicated to attempting to understand the inner working of the human mind and psyche. grey matter endeavoring to understand itself. spirit tries to grasp substance, and substance strives to enclose spirit in a box. no matter how much we think we know, there will always be more unknown than known. even the size of our over-inflated human egos is infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. yet we can't seem to stop trying to comprehend matters too large for our brains to contain.

i'm in the business of building homes with and for low income families. i'm passionate about this, because from the time my first child was born, i knew, on a very deep, gut level, the importance of having a place where we belong. we need the stability and safety and comfort of an inviolate space. we all need it, but children need it most of all. when i first learned of Habitat for Humanity, i thought, 'have these folks ever got this RIGHT!' nothing breaks the cycle of poverty, and gives long-term financial and emotional security as well as home ownership can. i understood that in my bones long before i knew the statistics and the success stories that are now part of my daily work. and it's done with dignity, and the support of the community. a Habitat homeowner works hard for that home, and pays for it, just like anyone else who buys a home. there's a redeeming dignity in that, and healing and validation in the support of a community making this possible.

before i'd ever heard of Habitat i bought a run-down old country church in a small northern alberta town and spent 15 years making improvements on it. my 2 youngest kids and i began with a dingy single level, in an uninsulated shell with most of the windows broken and boarded over, only cold running water to a toilet standing in the corner, and almost no electrical wiring. a decade and a half later, this was a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 story super-insulated country cottage with varnished wood floors and drywall replacing the shiplap interior finishing. it had had a full electrical and plumbing upgrade, and lots of energy efficient windows, including dormers upstairs under the bright blue galvanized metal roof. it was bright and warm and very comfortable, with a fully modern kitchen. there were even towel warmers in both bathrooms. the lot had also been transformed, with uncounted hours of back-breaking labor, loads of topsoil and manure, straw and sand - from a wasteland of gravel and clay gumbo waist high in weeds, to a bountiful, orderly place of flowers, lawn, vegetables & berries, fruit and shade trees and a greenhouse. there was a little gravel lined 'creek bed' with marsh plants under it, and a bridge over it leading to a tree shaded firepit for summer evening gatherings, just beyond the garage. the house's cedar siding that was cracked and patched and hadn't seen paint in more years than i'd been alive was repaired with matching siding salvaged from a nearby deconstruction and painted a warm pale yellow, with white trim. Against the bright blue of the metal roof that creamy yellow was stunning. the second floor deck that wrapped around the steeple provided an upstairs fire exit down stairs to the garden. it was a heavenly place to watch the sun come up on a summer's morn, or watch it go down on a summer's eve. there was a double clothesline up there as well, off one end of the deck to a former telephone pole installed on the other side of the garden. i loved using that clothesline. everything was 25 feet off the ground, so clothes never got dirty or obstructed use of the yard and garden, and the smell.... i can't think of a smell i like better than bed sheets dried on an outdoor clothesline. funny how something so down-to-earth can make you feel so good it's almost decadent. this upper deck, and its support posts and side rails, i stained a gorgeous color, called 'wild raspberry'. i think i chose it as much for the name as for the color. it was a pinky purply shining brightness that smiled 'hello, welcome back!' every time i returned home. against the winter snows, it almost glowed. the run-down old derelict, abandoned building i paid $3500 for and was ridiculed for buying, i sold those 15 years later, within a couple of weeks of listing, for $80,000. that doesn't seem like much in some parts of the world, but in a little northern alberta town, at that time, it was a lot of money for a house.

i first read about Habitat for Humanity in a magazine, sitting comfortably in that beautiful home, surrounded by the work of my own hands, and i told myself "one day, this is what i'm going to do - i'm going to help Habitat or someone like them, help people who don't have the means or the skills or the help they need to do it, to own a home."

i don't know why difficulties make some work harder and want to make the world a better place, while others can't seem to find much motivation for anything. i don't know why some of us can't seem to stop dreaming and planning and hoping for more, while others have no hope, and no energy to expend. building foundations under dreams is, after all, very hard work. i don't know why i was so driven to make a dumpy, run-down little church into something exceptional, just to provide a home for my kids. why couldn't i have bought the mediocre bungalow that was for sale across the street from it, taken out a mortgage, and been satisfied with the status quo? why isn't it even in me to give more than a passing thought to doing that?

what is it, exactly, that drives me? to be the only person in my family with college / university education. to be the only one who wants to see the world. the only one who feels an obligation to leave things better than i find them. is this some need to prove myself to a family who marginalized me and made me a scapegoat? what do i think i need to 'show' them? or is it about them at all?

Room

i've just finished reading 'Room' by...... About a young woman who is kidnapped and held captive for 7 years in a shed in a her captor's back yard. She has a child, who is 5 when they manage to escape. my daughter, Raven commented, coincidentally, just before i read 'Room', on men who isolate their spouses and children - comment made in reference to her father, who dropped the 3 of us- her elder brother, her and me, pretty much to fend for ourselves in a cabin on the banks of the Yukon River then went off to live his wilderness adventurer fantasy. i hadn't thought of it in quite this way before. then i read 'Room', and was astonished at how deeply the story affected me. and, though the isolation in our case was somewhat voluntary (mostly because i hadn't enough sense or self respect to NOT agree to go along with it) there are many parallels. we were entirely dependent on him for everything. it was quickly established that i had no 'right' to ask for anything more than very minimal basics. (we're talking fetch the water from a creek in a bucket, heat the water for laundry on a wood stove after you've chopped the firewood yourself and wash the clothes by hand minimal basics.) a bag each of flour, rice and dry beans and a rack of dried salmon you caught, cleaned and salted yourself to make meals from minimal basics. a pole nailed to two trees to hang your butt over in -50 Celsius and call that an outhouse minimal basics. i didn't earn any money, so i wasn't entitled to have any to spend. i'm a good cook, because life in the Yukon bush taught me to make do with very little. i don't need a recipe to make bread or biscuits or pancakes or muffins.... or most anything really. and to this day, i really hate to see good food wasted or thrown away. it was so cold in that cabin sometimes, that we wore our parkas and snow boots inside all day. knobs of frost nearly an inch thick formed on the heads of nails driven into the INSIDES of the log walls. and he was there sporadically, working and eating in town, taking periodic adventure jaunts up the river. eventually, i'd had enough. i walked out, 5 miles overland through the mosquito infested, up and down thickly forested hills with no road or trail on a very hot August day, carrying a 2 1/2 year old child and a backpack, 5 months pregnant. i'd miscarried that spring, and half expected another miscarriage to result from the trip out.

another appointment with my counselor. early in the process, he had me do a collage. he called it a 'burden collage'. he said, you're carrying a lot of stuff around with you. "i want you to just go through magazines, and cut out any picture that makes you pause, or say, 'aha!' or anything that invokes strong feelings. then stick it all on a piece of paper. there are no limitations as to size or color or how things are arranged. you will find what needs to be there, and they will go where they need to go on the page. this isn't a work of art; it's an emotional exercise. don't make it beautiful, don't get too involved in, or attached to the final product."

so i ended up with a full sized sheet of red bristol board covered with bits of glossy paper. there were a lot of photos, but there were even more words. i knew i was supposed to use images. he said images, and not words, but i couldn't leave the words alone. they jumped out at me and demanded to be included. for instance, the word 'home' appeared 14 times. and when i couldn't find the words to make the phrase, i cut images of women into the letters that form the phrase, 'who do you think you are?'

nothing was insignificant to him, as he looked over my collage. even the number of times something occurred was important. so, not only is the word 'home' and its meaning of high importance, but in eastern numerology, a number like 14 (the number of times the word 'home' appeared in my collage) would have its 2 separate numerals added, to make 5. he explained to me that this means that 5 is a very important number to me. then he asked me why 5 was important. i didn't know. he led me through some examination of that, and we found there are many fives in my history.

i am one of 5 children

i have 5 children. this wasn't apparent to me until, after asking how many children i have (4), he then asked "any still births or miscarriages?" yes. one miscarriage early in the second trimester

i have owned or shared ownership of 5 homes

each of my (3) marriages / commonlaw relationships lasted 5 years

i don't seem to be able to maintain a full-time job for more than 5 years unless the job has major scope for evolving / advancement / change. the only thing i've done for longer is teach violin, which has been part time over 30 years - a constantly evolving and changing thing. even my current job, which i love, was entered into from the beginning with a '5 year plan' already begun in my mind. even as i was pulling it all together and getting the job, i was aware, on some level, that i expected to be doing something else in 5 years.

this 'importance of 5' seems a bit weird and hokey to me, as i know nothing about numerology, and it seems completely without any rational connection, but, despite my desire for things to be rational, something about the subject makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

there is, he told me, significance in the location of each image on the page. the sheet of paper all these pictures and words are stuck to is like a map. everyone uses the same place on the page for childhood/developmental concepts, for issues related to personal growth, for past, present and for future. it has to do with the part of our brains that these things are connected to. he said he has tried to consciously make a collage that doesn't do this, and even when he thinks he's placing things contrary to where he thinks they should go, the final result falls in place with the pattern. sometimes a collage will need to be rotated to see this, but it's always there, in the correct position, relative to the rest of the page.

the number of words, of actual text, is also significant. words showing up in a picture collage are not uncommon. what is unusual about my collage is the sheer number of words. each word, i'm told, represents a story. this collage, then is indicative of many, many stories that need to be told. many things that need to be said. journaling is one way to tell them, to say them. so he then asked me to write one story - just free association, no attempt to write great literature - using every word i had pasted on my collage.

then, when i had the collage and the 3 pages of single spaced text it took to include all the collage words in one free-flow monologue, he told me, " now we're going to cut them up. i want you to cut the collage into pieces that show how some are related to each other." we then spent some time discussing the groupings, and how i felt about them.

then he said, now i want you to sort these according to how you feel about them. one pile for good things you want to keep, one pile for things you need to let go, and a third for things that need to be worked on. he kept the things that needed to be let go and the things that needed to be worked on in his office, and told me to take the good things home with me.

at the next session, he had me pick the first (most important) thing to let go of. we talked about it, then he sent me to the beautiful stone fireplace in the room he uses, to burn it. it was terrifying. i began to cry, and had to blow my nose. when i asked for a garbage to throw away the tissues i'd used for this, he said. "we're not going to throw them out. they're not garbage. we're going to burn them too. there's something very powerful about burning your tears along with the things you're letting go. this honors your pain. validates it. it was very hard to get some of those bits to burn. in the course of doing it, the room filled with smoke and i had to re- light some of them numerous times. this too, he told me, was significant. after i left that day, i felt extremely uncomfortable, to the point of nausea - as if i was coated with the smoke from the burning. very unclean. all i could think of was getting home, throwing the clothes i wore in the washing machine, and having a very thorough shower. and i wasn't comfortable until i had done it. this too, he told me the next week, was significant.

let's be realistic

the year in review. having just read the new year's resolution post, i'm reminded that i should be:

writing about emotional things - not stuffing them. so maybe i'll try the journal idea Rob, my counselor suggested. i'm afraid of it. in the past, journaling has made me depressed. but i've been depressed for a year now - can it be much worse? maybe done in moderation it will help.

getting a divorce - the papers are in my files. is this why i'm avoiding cleaning up my home office area? just going near it gives me a feeling of hopelessness and failure. i will set up the new location and resolve to work there a bit each morning or evening.

making time to play - it's summer, and i have a water dog and a kayak who seldom see the water. nuff said. just DO it.

Preschool

PRESCHOOL

I was 3, I'm told, when my adopted mother left. It wasn't till years later that I learned that she had a drinking problem, even then. they fought, I'm told. and she claimed that he threatened her with a gun when he discovered that she had gentleman friends. His lady friends weren't in question. He was a man. That was different, acceptable. But in a woman it was cheap, trashy, and humiliating for her spouse. So the final blow–out was violent, and she never went back.

They’d started out on a farm together before they moved to town. Mostly grain, but a few animals for food. They had 2 boys then: Vern, born in 1950; and Don, born in 1951. Having both grown up in rural families, I guess farming seemed like a natural choice. Len had done a turn in the army before marriage. There he learned the heavy equipment maintenance and repair skills that eventually become his livelihood for life.

They and their 2 young sons left the farm, moving to Grande Prairie. They had a place near downtown first, which was, I’m told, pretty primitive. At some point they decided that they wanted another baby. They didn’t, however, want to take their chances on getting another boy. What they wanted was a girl. So they adopted me. Then they rented a house near Len’s parents, Ethel and Ole. It was there that I met my first boyfriend, Morris Martindale. I was 2, he was 3 or 4, and we were, by all accounts, inseperable.

One very hot summer’s day, we went missing. This was in the late 1950’s, when a child’s back yard was the entire neighborhood. No one worried about where the kids were; everyone in the neighborhood was watching them. If they fell and skinned a knee, someone would gather them up and bring them home for repair. So, who knows how long it took for my mum and Morris’ mum to realize we weren’t anywhere in the neighborhood, and no one had seen us for hours, but when the truth dawned, the entire neighborhood turned out to look for the missing kids. Who were nowhere to be found. Then the nearby creek started to look like a dangerous place to everyone. In fact, by evening, the police had boats on the creek and were searching for bodies downstream, when 2 very tired and dirty, but perfectly healthy and happy toddlers wandered home. We’d been to the United Church, over a mile away, and on the other side of the innocent creek, to be married. The pastor, sadly, hadn’t consented to perform the sacred rites, and, unable to get an address or clear location of our homes from this pair of romantic babies, had assumed that we must live nearby, given us a nickel for ice cream, and told us to go home till we were a little bigger.

I don’t remember the fighting. I remember moving to the ‘new’ house – a rental. We had the main floor; another family had the second floor. I recall climbing a china cabinet in that house, to get to a wrapped birthday gift, that was sitting atop it. It was so easy – just open the door and climb the shelves like a ladder…. Till the whole thing tipped over and came down on me. Inside the bright wrapping and ribbons was a beautiful china tea service. The glassware and the china cabinet, sadly, were not as resilient as I, and some breakage occurred.

I thought my dad was a handsome giant. Measuring well over 6 feet in height, he had to stoop to get through the doorways in the house when he carried me on his shoulders. Then I was a giant too. I loved riding on his shoulders. There was a birthday party… my 3^rd or 4^th? …with lots of cousins and aunties and uncles, cake and ice cream. The memory of it has a feeling of being very special, very loved. The yard around the house was huge, a double lot, with room for a lawn out front, a big garden in the back, a garage for Dad to work on his vehicles, and a wild area in the front corner with an old holiday trailer or movable camp building in it. This was a favorite place to play, but I think we must have damaged it, and it was removed. That corner of the yard was wild and weedy. It was an adventure being there. Along the front sidewalk, was a hedge. I didn’t know or care what it was called. I thought of it as the squirtberry bush. I waited impatiently for the berries on it to ripen each year, and never tired of squeezing their ripe, juiciness till they popped. There were red berries and orange berries. Honeysuckle, I learned later – and thought it sounded magical. I loved to pick dandelions from the neighborhood lawns and make the daisy chains as my grandmother Ethel had shown me. I probably didn’t have an article of clothing that didn’t have those telltale circular stains on it from dandelion milk.

There were families all along the street, with a herd of children. Those were the days when, after the evening meal on a warm summer’s eve, all the homes in town would exhale children like a sigh, and we’d gather in the streets to play. We played tag, hide and seek, red light/green light, Simon says…. Or we just ran wild for the pure joy of being alive.

In winter, there was a skating ring nearby, in the schoolyard. Rectangular, and surrounded by a 4’ high plywood fence, with an open area on one narrow end, it, and the children who skated there, were exposed to the elements. Mum liked to tell a story of how she left me with the boys to skate one day. I was still a preschooler. She’d had enough, and wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay on, so she left them with instructions to watch me. They’d been pulling me around the rink while she was there, as I couldn’t yet skate on my own. I expected this to continue after she left, but they had other ideas about how to spend their time, and were enjoying using their new hockey sticks and puck. No amount of whining and wheedling would convince them to pull me, so I stomped the two blocks home in my skates. Without the blade covers on them, just because I knew that would get someone in trouble. I stormed into the house, still wearing my skates, throwing myself under the kitchen table and kicking holes in the linoleum, shouting, “Boys are so difficult!” Mum laughed about it as she told the story, but I’m sure the holes in the linoleum weren’t funny at the time.

I recall the first time I heard the Christmas Story. It must have been Christmas Eve. I went outside to look at the sky. There wasn’t a lot of light out of doors on a winter night then – not a lot of street lights or traffic, so the sky was brilliant with starshine. I wanted to find the Christmas star. I picked out the brightest star I could find, and felt certain that was the one. There must have been some clouds somewhere in that ebony sky, because huge snowflakes were falling on my face as I gazed upwards in wonder. They caught on my eyelashes and kissed my cheeks as I worried over a baby I thought was being born that very minute, outside, in a barn, on a night in the deepest part of winter. I cried for him, because wanted him to have a safe, warm house like mine, and a big family around him. I wanted him to have birthday parties and aunties and uncles and cousins and neighbor kids all around him. I didn’t see how anyone who had to be born in a stable could have any kind of a life at all, and I was very sad for baby Jesus. I wasn’t all that sure what a stable or a barn was. I looked over at our garage – an unheated, dark building of rough boards with a dirt floor and nails in the walls to hang things from, and I wondered if a stable was something like that. Poor baby Jesus, to be born there.

Then she was gone. There was no mother in our house, and the memories thereafter have no feeling of security. Joy became a rare spark made more bright by the lack of warmth and light around it.

First, there were some caregivers who came and went. I believe Dad advertised for someone to care for the 3 of us. By this time Vern and Don were in school, so there was only me to watch over during the day.

There was one young woman. I don’t remember her name, or her time with us. What I do remember, is being out in the yard playing on a warm sunny day, when a car drove up to the curb, and she got out of the passenger’s side. I know I knew her, and liked her. She went into the house for a short time, then came back out. I remember being very embarrassed because when she came over to me then, she made a big fuss over me, hugged me, and apologized…. I didn’t know what for. She seemed very sad…. Was she crying? I can’t remember. Then she got back in the car and was gone. I think she was someone who had been hired to care for us, but hadn’t stayed long. She seemed very nice, and she was clearly distressed about leaving. Why didn’t she stay?

From time to time, Grandma Ethel cared for us. I can’t imagine Grandpa Ole being happy about this. He was a bit of a patriarch and had little patience for anything that interfered with the way he thought his life should be. I imagine it cost her some serious disharmony with him to be there for us. It was during one of her stays that I learned that I was adopted. There was some small squabble between my brothers and me as we played out in the yard. In retaliation for something I’d said or done, one of them said, “Who cares, you’re just adopted anyway!” He said it as if it was the very worst insult he could come up with. And I didn’t know what it meant. But I did know it was meant to be hurtful, so I ran, crying, to my grandmother. She went to a great deal of trouble to explain that ‘adopted’ meant that my parents had chosen me, from a whole lot of other children. That I was chosen because they wanted a girl, so they picked me especially. I was happy with that explanation, till I ran back to tell the offending brother. The smirk on his face told me he’d heard the same thing, but didn’t believe it was true. Adopted wasn’t ‘special’ at all. So, for the first time, I felt like an outsider.

there's a photo of the boys - Don, Vern, Steve and baby Mike, sitting around Vi on the couch and the floor in the living room. i'm in the picture too, the only one standing, behind everyone. looking like an afterthought.

Then Vi came. I don’t know how she and Dad met, or what the arrangement was, but I do know that there were two bedrooms in that house. The boys had one, and the other one was off limits to me. I slept on a cot in the living room.

Then there was a baby. For a while. My memory about this is vague. For years I thought the baby was my youngest step-brother, Mike, and that I’d just got chronology confused. When it came up in a conversation with Lesley, years later, she told me the child was born after Vi came to us; that it was my father’s child, and she gave it up for adoption.