Girl love

Drano cleans and opens drains - and other things

This is so similar to those jaw-dropping "douche with Lysol" ads that at first I thought. . . oh, surely not! But it's a "not". Still, it isn't much of a stretch, is it? The husband has that same look of cold contempt, as if he is (justifiably!) about to leave her forever, while she broods over what her sin might have been THIS time. If the Drano doesn't work on her drain, she could always use it for something else. After all, the Lysol killed "germs" and everything else in its path, so might a drain cleaner work even better? But her husband might be in for a nasty surprise during those intimate moments.

How you live is how you die

Yes, selfies and shark attacks can kill. But what we really fear is old age
Suzanne Moore


As we seek to prolong our lives, we shut old people away, only happy to see them if they are healthy and happy

Are we afraid of old people? Photograph: Alamy

Every day I read about something that will help me stay alive for longer. Usually, it’s something dietary: a bean, a berry, some kind of vegetable that we use to feed cattle. Then there is a message about moderation. Somehow, I soak this information up, regurgitate it to my friends over too many units as we nod in agreement that we should do something about ourselves. Information is power, but sometimes it feels more powerful to ignore it. Am I slowly killing myself ? Clearly. Will I live to regret it? No idea.

But there are always new things to worry about. One survey shows that more people died last year taking selfies and falling off things than in shark attacks. This isn’t funny really, but it seems to me I was always far more likely to die in the pursuit of some narcissistic exercise than anything that involves swimming. Is this stupid way to die any worse than some sensible way to die? Because the sensible way to die involves getting really old, which is terrifying.

The cool thing is not to be afraid of death, but of the actual dying bit – and when I was younger, I am sure I said that. Now I am afraid of all of it: cancer, Alzheimer’s, having every day overcast with cloudy, arthritic joints. Then I strip my fears to the bone and they are about being dependent. And losing my sense of self. And needing other people. And I wonder: is this a fear of dying of old age – or actually a fear of old people?

This may be a vile thing to say but it’s there, isn’t it? We constantly talk of an ageing population in an abstract way. This is the subtext to why we may benefit from taking in refugees. They will care for us in the end. We constantly express our disgust at the way old people are treated but we don’t want to see them unless they are healthy, happy and hiding their diseases. Jackie Collins was amazing to do as she did, but most of us couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep up appearances like that.

The reality is that many of the illnesses of old age will hit if we get to 80, and most of us are befuddled by what to do. We must keep alive and be kept alive while actually being given minimal care and regarded as an embarrassment. It is as if the time-bomb of this unproductive, decrepit layer of society is a theoretical discussion that is solved by bolting down green juice and behaving like immortals.

Doctors who deal with mortality, day in and day out, can be good to bad to brilliant. The best I have seen have been paediatricians – possibly because there is something so unnatural about children dying that it cannot be ignored. When one of my children was in an intensive care ward, two of the eight children there died on the same day. Everyone was openly devastated: the parents, the nurses and the doctors. They got us together and talked about how they felt and how they would work for our children.

On cancer wards, though, I have seen curtains pulled round a bed while a corpse is removed, with not a word said to the other patients. But what some of the best thinkers who happen to be doctors (Henry Marsh and Atul Gawande, for instance) are now talking about is both ageing and death, and how to have the best possible end, knowing that it is going to end. There is a consistent line coming from medics worried about the suffering caused by overtreatment. This means thinking about what to prioritise – especially with the elderly. It is to talk about quality of life and a return to personhood. What does this individual need? And the answer may not be medicine.

Gawande took his father’s remains to Varanasi, sprinkling his ashes in the Ganges water. He knows, as a good Hindu, that this rite is sacred. But as a doctor, he also knows that to sip the holy polluted water is dangerous, so he premedicates himself. However, he still ends up with giardia. But what comes from his experience is his father’s vitality, his work and connections remaining vivid till the end.

This is in sharp contrast to what we know is actually one of the biggest diseases of old age: loneliness. It may well be a cliche to contrast Gawande’s extended family to the atomised existence of the west, but the figures speak for themselves: a million people over 75 say that they don’t know their neighbours and haven’t spoken to anyone for a month. Their company is a TV set.

So when physicians talk of the myriad problems of treating the elderly, when we talk about palliative care and assisted suicide, we must be honest. The reality is a set of policies that have slashed social care, underpinned by the idea that caring is itself a low-status, feminised activity. The corollary is that what it means to be cared for is to be the lowest of the low. Old. Alone. Helpless. So we shut old people away as we seek to prolong our own lives. Indeed, a privilege of the west is we now fear not dying, but ageing, as much as we fear death itself. We literally cannot face our own futures.

This piece from The Guardian sums up so much of what I feel, and don't talk about, around the subject of ageing and death. Bill and I watched his parents fade over time, each in their own style (Dad fighting and cantankerous, Mum wryly humorous and grateful for everything she had). If we live so long, we don't know what our end-style of living will be, or how our dying will unfold.

I often say - probably too damn often, it's one of those things I've started saying - that the way you live is the way you die. Gangsters are shot down in cold blood. Drunk drivers drive drunk and die (often taking others with them). The grumpy die most reluctantly, wanting to win just one more battle and failing. The grateful, like Mum, go out as gently as a tide.

Talking about and looking at old age is deeply taboo in a culture that still worships youth, or at least only accepts old people who act unnaturally young. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a news item about an "oldster"? They're always reaching some incredible milestone like being 114 years old, or getting married at over 90, or running a marathon. No glimpse of adult diapers, of speech contorted by strokes, of infirmity. And certainly, no loneliness.

I'm over 60 now, though I still can't quite believe it, and Bill is nearly 70. I don't say this to him, but when he dies I will be very tempted to go with him. I'd like to. I don't want to outlive my mate. He's my mate, for God's sake, my life partner. I would never be one of these widows who boo-hoos into a kleenex for 5 minutes, then takes off on a cruise. There would be no new boy friend to scandalize the family.  My life would be over. No, really, it would. I don't care how correct or incorrect that is, and I don't care if "most women adjust just fine" and "only grieve for a year" (apparently having an "on/off" switch somewhere in their soul).

I can face looking after him for years, being infirm, institutionalized, anything. We did say "in sickness and in health", and we also said, "'til death do us part". But they didn't tell us how to do it.

I'm not much good at this life thing, and in many ways I really think it would be better if I wound it up in the next couple of years. Suicide is hard on the family however, and the memory of it never quite goes away. It would be cowardly, because the apocalypse is coming in the next ten years, and maybe I need to be here, and maybe not. Depends on who else is left.

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How many times can a song make you cry?

This is why nothing happens to you

EDNA'S case was really a pathetic one. Like every woman, her primary ambition was to marry. Most of the girls of her set were married - or about to be. Yet not one possessed more grace or charm or loveliness than she.

And as her birthdays crept gradually toward that tragic thirty-mark, marriage seemed farther from her life than ever.

She was often a bridesmaid but never a bride.

That's the insidious thing about halitosis (unpleasant breath). You, yourself, rarely know when you have it. And even your closest friends won't tell you.

Sometimes, of course, halitosis comes from some deep-seated organic disorder that requires professional advice. But usually - and fortunately - halitosis is only a local condition that yields to the regular use of Listerine as a mouthwash and gargle. It is an interesting thing that this well-known antiseptic that has been in use for years for surgical dressings, possesses these unusual properties as a breath deodorant.

It halts food fermentation in the mouth and leave the breath sweet, fresh and clean. Not by substituting some other odor but by really removing the old one. The Listerine odor itself quickly disappears. So the systematic use of Listerine puts you on the safe and polite side. Lambert Pharmacal Company, St. Louis, Mo

This Smart Moire Cosmetic Bag FREE with PURCHASE OF LARGE SIZE LISTERINE
THE HIT OF PALM BEACH at your druggist's while they last
This offer good in U. S. A. only

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The wife-tossing contest

He really means this stuff. He thinks it really happens. That's what drives me crazy. Today my husband starts to tell me about this "custom" they have once a year on Skytrain: that everyone (in unison, presumably) drops their pants. I didn't believe it and cross-examined him.

"No, it's true. It's once a year. Everyone does this at the same time."

"WHY?"

"It's a custom, kind of a celebration."

"But why do they do it on Skytrain? Is it some sort of protest?"

"No. Just something they do."

"Who's they?"

"Everybody. You know, that group."

"What group?"

"The group that does it."

But wait, there's more. Another day, he says all women on Skytrain are allowed to take their tops off. "Then they walk down the street," he said. I wanted to say: They. Do. Not. Walk. Down. The. Street. With. Their. Tops. Off. But it was no use. He is firmly convinced that it happens. 

This man has a Master's degree in biochemistry. He is not a doofus, supposedly. His last delusion was the "Wife-Tossing Contest" which he described in detail to me and two of my astonished grandchildren. Yes, he believes there is a wife-tossing competition somewhere in Scandinavia (he didn't specify where), a festival with costumes, ethnic foods, wine, etc. I asked him "wouldn't they be badly injured?" He said, "oh, no, they lay a whole lot of mats down first." He MEANS this, he thinks it really happens, and now they pull their pants down on Skytrain.

It's some testicular thing, maybe. The women parading around topless, certainly. But wife-tossing.  I just had a Finnish Facebook friend tell me, a bit piqued, that they have a wife-CARRYING contest there, and sure, I've seen footage of it. It's hilarious. The wife doesn't have to do much except hold on. And somewhere along the line, though I can't find any YouTube videos to support it, I've heard of dwarf-tossing. I wonder if he just conflated the two. 

On our first date or so, one billion years ago B. C., he decided to amaze and impress me with a whole lot of True Facts. Bill then was like someone who walked off the set of Revenge of the Nerds, or maybe a very retro version of The Big Bang Theory. He wore plaid shirts rolled up to the elbow (and the lower part of the sleeve was several shades darker, for some reason), white undershirts that showed at the neck, a plastic pocket protector, and glasses held together at the bridge with electrical tape. He showed me his slide-rule tie clip once, and when the romance had progressed a little further, his "Peter Meter", a device for measuring the penis that is handed out on your first day of engineering school.

Some of our first hot and heavy dates were in the lab, in which I got to see him cooking up "bugs": microorganisms which were designed to eat oil spills. Later I typed part of his Master's thesis on an old Olivetti manual typewriter. 

I think it was in the London Cafe, sitting there eating our cheeseburgers and chips, that he looked at me and said, "Did you know that you have over 200 bones in your foot?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"You mean you haven't heard of it before?"

"No, I didn't know that because it's NOT TRUE."

We had no internet then, so sat arguing about it for half an hour or so, then had sundaes. Eventually I came up with the correct information in a medical book. Bill was nonplussed. No, I mean it. I mean he was the correct meaning of nonplussed, which is "surprised and confused".

"You're saying there aren't 200 bones in your foot?" He still looked doubtful. I didn't have a Master's degree, so how would I know?

"Maybe in your foot."

"No, I mean are there 200 bones in everyone's feet."

"Yes," I said. "IF THEY'RE RUN OVER BY A TRUCK."

Another date, another amazing bit of information: "Did you know that in some parts of the world, a hedgehog can grow to be 200 pounds?"

By this time I was getting a little used to it, but we still had a vigorous argument about tribal myths and glandular beavers. No one won, but I still didn't believe in the 200-pound hedgehogs. Many, many years later I heard about the South American capybara, a rodent not unlike a giant guinea pig that can easily top 200 pounds. Another conflation? Who knows.

Part of me is nonplussed, and the rest of me surprised and delighted that such a smart person could say such dumb things.  They're endlessly entertaining, of that I have no doubt. I should have written all of them down, I'd be making money at this gambit by now. The only one that sticks in my mind now is his version of the animated show Beavis and Butthead (and he wasn't being funny, he really thought it was called this): "Buttwist and Weasel."

When his errors are pointed out, it doesn't bother him. At all. He has this giggle. The more hotly I contest his blatantly untrue fact, the more he giggles.  He doesn't care that he was wrong, maybe because secretly, against logic, against reason, against all that is holy and visible in the universe, he KNOWS he is right.

Post-blog blag: I've been corrected about 150 times, so I guess I have to admit defeat. This appeared in the redoubtable, always-influential, ever-readable newspaper 24 Hours:

Scores of SkyTrain riders were travelling by the seat of their underpants on a chilly Sunday afternoon for the fourth-annual No Pants SkyTrain Ride.

Starting at 1 p.m., riders doffed their pants in an effort to spread a little stripped-down mirth to beat the winter blahs.

According to social media sites spreading the word, riders were encouraged to board their train cars and then strip out of their pants as soon as the doors closed.

Tips for explaining the unusual behaviour included telling fellow passengers they simply forgot their pants, and insisting it’s a coincidence others made the same mistake and boarded the train minus the lower half of their wardrobe.

For those feeling a little shy about the stunt, it was suggested modesty could be upheld by wearing two pairs of underwear.

On the Vancouver No Pants Skytrain Ride Facebook page, 199 had confirmed their intention to take part.“This is the best way to start off a new year. Count me in, and count my pants out,” posted
one confirmed participant.

“I am so getting granny panties for this,” posted another. “This is priceless — how can I not do it?”

The No Pants Subway Ride is an annual event organized by New York City prank group Improv Everywhere, whose motto is “We cause scenes.”The initial ride took place in the Big Apple in 2002 when seven brave riders unzipped. According to the group’s website, the pant-less ride has today spread to 60 regional rides in more than 25 countries.








OK, but I still don't get it. My mind just keeps going to a certain scenario. Young men - OK, sometimes old men get boners all the time, and we KNOW they do. They can generally hide them (or they think they can) if they have pants on. But with mere gaunch (gitch, gatch, gotchies), they won't be able to hide a thing. I'd have to look at a whole lot of stiffies, whether I wanted to or not, and to be honest with you, I don't.

Is this concern far-fetched? Think about it. You think you won't see stiffies on men who are staring at a few hundred women in their underwear?

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Why my husband is NOT my best friend

BLOGGER'S NOTE. I am not ashamed to say that this is a repeat. I just can't keep feeding this insatiable monster, not with my mind so embroiled in completing the final edit for my new novel, The Glass Character (soon to be a major motion picture - oops, not yet, but it's soon to be published by Thistledown Press in spring 2014). What I wrote then, I believe now.

So, OK. . . what's on the top of my head today? I'm not halfway through my enormous Starbuck's mug yet, so who knows how coherent it will be, but several ideas have been forming like baby icebergs in my brain, waiting to calve.

I have been married for 40 years, to the same person I mean, and as with a lot of life's more arcane mysteries, I can't really talk about it. I've attempted to write about our relationship before, either in this blog or "that other one", the Open Salon experiment that backfired so badly.

So I won't write about it except to say a few things, maybe dispell a few cliches. If you read this at all, and let's hope somebody does, you'll realize I keep yammering away at certain themes: horses, Anthony Perkins, Harold Lloyd, frustration as an author, etc. But it's the cliches that really get down my neck, chief among them "everything happens for a reason" (with a side of "God never gives us more than we can handle").



These sayings are idiotic in my mind, because there are murders, disasters, jihads, planes flying into towers, world wars, child murders, and all manner of things that happen for no reason at all, except perhaps human stupidity and indifference. And as far as good o'l God seeing to it that we aren't overburdened, as a friend of mine likes to say, "our prisons and mental hospitals are full of people who had more than they could handle".

Amen.

So what do we attack today? So to speak. I hear this phrase all the time: "My husband is my best friend." I have never felt that way about my husband, and I will tell you why.

I have a best friend already. That's part of it. To her, I can tell all the woman-stuff that guys, sorry about that, just don't getand won't get in a million years because of their hormonal structure and brain physiology. 

So if I already have one, how can my husband be my best friend? To me, the term implies a buddy-buddy-ness, being there to listen on the phone when you lose that promotion, walking along the beach skipping stones together or sitting in Starbuck's over a double caramelized Machiavelli, just gabbing away.

We don't do that.

It also implies, to me, sexlessness. I'm not saying we're Romeo and Juliet, but our marriage is not sexless and never has been.

Saying "my husband is my best friend" is supposed to be totally positive, but to me it's totally weird if you really look at it (and that's the thing: how many people LOOK at it?). It's like roommates who really get along and even do each other's laundry in a pinch. (He does his own laundry, by the way - always has - it's why we're still married.) So if we aren't best friends, what are we?

The other one is "soul-mate". I don't know about that one either: I dislike like it for reasons that are hard to articulate. It just doesn't hit the mark, and maybe nothing can. My husband is my husband, and occupies a unique place in my life and has occupied that place for the vast majority of my life (since I was ten when I got married - one of those cultural betrothal things). He is my life partner, the father of my children and grandfather to my precious grandkids. And guess what: a best friend doesn't do that. 


"Friend" is great, it's wonderful, but it only goes so far. When you're in the trenches together for nearly 40 years, you find out about the deeper levels of commitment that most people seem to ignore.

There are three of them, actually. Everyone goes on and on about commitment, and it's fine. But you can be committed to a dog, a job, a fitness plan. Will that be enough to keep the bond strong as life's hurricanes blast you out of your chair?

No.

The next level, as I see it, is devotion. Great-sounding word, isn't it - and a leap beyond commitment in emotional content. But is it enough to stay married?

Double-no.

The third level is one that doesn't even occur to people, and I call it covenant. In case you think I'm going all religious on you, let me define it now:


cov·e·nant   [kuhv-uh-nuhnt]  Show IPA 

noun 

1. 

an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons todo or not do something specified.

2. 

Law . an incidental clause in such an agreement.

3. 

Ecclesiastical . a solemn agreement between the members of achurch to act together in harmony with the precepts of thegospel.

4. 

( initial capital letter ) History/Historical . 

a. 

National Covenant.

b. 

Solemn League and Covenant.

5. 

Bible . 

a. 

the conditional promises made to humanity by God, as revealedin Scripture.

b. 

the agreement between God and the ancient Israelites, in whichGod promised to protect them if they kept His law and werefaithful to Him.

OK, I see where this is going all Biblical, and that puts people off. But what I'm trying to say is: you don't sign a contract with your best friend, unless you happen to be business partners. You don't even sign a contract with your soul-mate, as a general rule.

Marriage is legal. It's something that holds up in a court of law. Most people seal this covenant in a public setting, often very elaborately and expensively, as if to show off the intensity and sincerity of the covenant (though more often, it's the elaborateness of the trappings, including the supposedly-virginal white wedding gown. This ubiquitous bridezilla-mania represents a return to a deeply sexist tradition that makes my hair stand on end).

But the truth is, as people sign that register and smile their faces off, they don't really think that they have signed on for the long haul.

Remember how it goes? Forsaking all others; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. . . so long as you both shall live.

If you think it sounds cold to define marriage as a covenant/contractual agreement, then why do people still insist on it? A few decades ago, the prediction was that legal marriage would become completely obsolete by the year 2000 (always named as the watershed year when absolutely everything would change). People would just live together, or if they married at all the marriages would be loose agreements with lots of escape clauses built in, based on the concept of "serial monogamy" (which still exists: it's called a pre-nup).

Most of us don't have prenups unless we're George Clooney or something, and last time I checked, I wasn't. So OK, why has marriage become more popular than ever, with crazed brides stampeding each other to upstage their girl friends and nab the perfect virginal white gown? On one level at least, it has to do with the kids. Raising kids can be brutal, and it's long and it's very expensive. "Commitment" won't do it. This isn't a Dalmation. Even devotion might wobble and collapse in the storm.

So we're back to that old, creaky, Moses-esque concept of covenant, because it has been the glue in profound human attachments for millennia. Can I step out? OK, it's just my girl friend, she'll never notice. Oops, wait a minute. . . she's my wife. Not only that, she's the mother of my kids, who just happen to have my name on them.

We won't go into the ramifications of last names right now, except to say that the awkward double-barrelled name seems to have trickled away in popularity. (Think of it: the next generation would have four names, the one after that eight. . . It just doesn't work.) Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, that "little piece of paper" people used to scorn is about as unimportant as the Magna Carta and other little pieces of paper that have made a bit of difference over the years.The bits of paper that have changed the course of human history.

Why are we still together? I only have one husband, and he occupies a unique position in my life. To say he's some sort of patriarchal figure would be completely inaccurate, except for his innate need to be protective in his love.

We signed on the dotted line all those years ago, and during those inevitable stormy times when it looked like we might be over, one or the other of us would say: wait a minute. Let's wait it out, work at it for just a little bit longer.

We're not best friends. We're married. Still married. And somehow, as intimate and exclusive as we are with each other, the marriage is part of a much bigger picture, a network or matrix of kids and grandkids, uncles, cousins, in-laws, and other people we probably wouldn't be able to stand otherwise. And may I say this? Marriage is the basic social unit of society, a whole lot of interlocking puzzle pieces of people at least making an attempt at commitment to living in a manner based on love.  Or devotion.

Or that which lies beyond devotion, and always will.

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My 40th anniversary: something you remember

The most momentous times in your life have a way of stopping you in your tracks.

Or is it like this? You never know how momentous those times are until they go rushing past you.

As Oscar Levant (or was it Oscar Wilde? Almost everyone gets them mixed up) once said, “Happiness isn’t something you experience, it’s something you remember.”

Ah, yes. Yes, once. Once I was happy.

What’s happy, anyway? I’ve never been one to experience long sweeps of unbroken happiness. I’ve always found a way to spoil it somehow. So much of life is lived in the middle, muddled through while you’re busy making other plans.

Once, forty years ago (today!), I was a 19-year-old girl, I was clueless, I was profoundly in love, and I got married. I have been trying to write about it ever since.

It’s impossible, like writing about God (though neither of us are remotely godlike). Somebody once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and that’s nothing to writing about a 40-year marriage. Which is not to say I've never tried: since 1973 I've written newspaper columns, blog posts, epic poetry, and even a song I recorded on a CD, all of which made him cry. But did any of it really express the truth?

I will say that this particular anniversary really bothered me. It’s that “forty” thing. It’s so foursquare, so cornery and table-like, so lost-in-the-wilderness-ish, so Noah’s-rainstorm-ish (though 40 days and 40 nights of rain is nothing compared to these parts). "Fat and forty". "Fifty-four forty or fight" (and what the hell does that mean, anyway?). It’s like no other number. Heavy, dense, blockish, a complete square, a cube of lead.

It makes me feel, not so much old, as abandoned by time. All the best times rushed by so fast that they barely left an imprint. It’s like that superb Truman Capote quote from a few posts ago: "Happiness leaves such slender records; it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented."

I had traumatic times that nearly finished me and left scars on my family, and now I know it was from an illness, not any cruelty or weakness on my part. If I had been weak, all that would be left is a tombstone. I won't recount them now, because I don't have to - living through them once was enough.

So why aren’t I writing about Bill? He's half of this, isn't he? This past year has brought great change, yet we seem to be getting along for the most part. He has retired, and that has been a huge thing for him. He’s the type of person who keeps busy, but his busyiness has no real substance to it intellectually. If it weren’t for my alligator-wrestling engagement with the writing process every day, I might be in the same place.

A small surprise, or maybe not so small, is the fact that I usually don't feel like killing him. He slips around and does his thing while I concentrate ferociously on my work or making stuffed critters for the grandkids. He comes and goes. We take walks around LaFarge Lake and look at the ducks (a favorite activity: the ducks are very entertaining). We eat cheap because we don't have a lot of money. 

I honestly wondered how it would be with his constant presence in the house, after all those years of having the place to myself. We fairly recently had one huge fight that I worked into a piece of fiction about my ambivalence over turning 40. Afterwards I said to him, “Do you expect us never to fight at all?” The same things always happen: God, are marriages stamped out with a cookie-cutter, or what? Why do fights always come out the same? Why is the same ammunition pulled out, decade after decade?  I know how much he has on me, and it terrifies me into keeping my worst objections to myself.

But he has rotten little habits too, the very worst being chuckling when I am really furious and have a serious, legitimate grievance. He doesn’t laugh out loud, just smiles and bobs his head. I could kill him at such times, and why not? Could anything be more soul-negating than having your partner of 40 years LAUGH when you are angry and hurt and desperate for understanding?

I have told him one thousand times how much this devastates me. And he still does it. Every time.

It’s  a way of slicking me off. One time he said to me, Margaret, I HAVE to ignore you or I just wouldn’t be able to stand it. That’s how I cope with you.

I’d say all the good things about him now, but it’s my party and I’ll bitch if I want to.

I used to go on and on – I don’t any more, cuzzadafact that now I know it isn’t true – about what a miracle our marriage was because our temperaments and our interests/proclivities are so different, so nearly the opposite, and yet. . .

I know now that’s complete bullshit. We are EXACTLY THE SAME.

We both have analytical minds. We are both intensely curious and need a great deal of mental stimulation. We are both ferociously loyal, stubborn, territorial, profoundly devoted to family, furious when faced with insincerity and other forms of bullshit, oversensitive, sentimental (he’s worse than me, WAY worse, and cries at commercials), opinionated, and doggedly, bashing-the-head-against-the-brick-wall persistent. We laugh at the same things, which is no small matter. We are two introverts, two INFJs, two cave bears who found each other and chose, without consciously deciding, to mate.

Similar enough for you? Why did it only take 40 years for me to figure that out? We even have a similar interest in science, though mine is just sprouting up due to the sometimes-enlightening things I see on what remains of educational TV. (Remember how TLC stands for The Learning Channel, and A and E is Arts and Entertainment? Like, Honey Boo-Boo is art.) He'll tell me, "There's a show on National Geographic Channel tonight about the Neanderthal genetic code." (He knows I'm crazy for anthropology.) I'll say, "Museum Secrets is all about the technology of medieval weaponry." We'll probably watch these shows separately, but isn't it nice we know each other's tastes?

Marriage is sort of profound, and sort of mundane, an arrangement. Even a deal. Sounds awful, but since it involves everyday routine, it’s true. Every deep relationship has rules. Yes, RULES. Try breaking them some time. Try stepping on your partner’s personal minefield and see what happens to you. And you never marry just one person. If you’re close at all, you drag your family history behind you like a five-thousand-pound circus tent. If you have children together, you literally mingle and commingle your genetic material into a new person. It’s fantastic, it’s incredible, and it happens every day.

We all live in the moment, but it’s something of a bubble, a fragile one that can be pricked by anything. The past usually comes back, not in a flood, but in scenes, parts of scenes, brief flashes. I am immensely gratified by YouTube, because my memory of all those moments from TV that I saw at age six are accurate down to the bone. TV themes, cartoons, Howdy Doody. . . PROOF! Proof that yes, this IS how things happened, see, see, I was right, my memory of things is crystalline and perfect, and you with your mossy-brained amnesia couldn't be more wrong.

I like this sort of thing, I like being right, but he never acknowledges it. He just goes about his business, frying eggs or doing something under the sink. This is what it’s like to be married for forty years, or maybe four minutes. And at this time of life, you begin to dread, absolutely dread being left alone. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Sacrificial lamb (short fiction)

May 24, 2013

This is The Day, but I don’t feel like celebrating it. I just feel like kicking my life into the gutter. There seems to be nothing to celebrate but rancor, unresolved issues and chronic pain.

I am completely fed up by the last “episode” which happened yesterday. I’ve been thinking of giving Carol a gag gift for her birthday (on Monday – we’re babysitting the grandkids then). I thought of designing and knitting a doll that looked like her, but had no luck and turned it into something else.

Then I thought: Desiree has been nagging and nagging her to get a dog (and she hates dogs), so what if I did her a little dog? I’ll tell you, it was one of the hardest and fiddliest things I ever tried. I went through 3 different patterns and once I settled on one, threw 2 nearly-finished ones out. Had to go to Michaels to find some wool I could use, even though I am drowning in wool and have bins and bins of it. It was all extremely expensive and not suitable.

Plus would an executive like her want a little knitted dog? She isn’t the type to put it on her desk. Hardly. And she doesn’t want to be reminded of her mother, does she, how she sits there and knits all day when she could have made something of herself?

Well, maybe Desiree would adopt it. She likes dogs. So finally yesterday I made something I thought was OK, but put it aside, thinking, I probably won’t give it to Carol. Then (typical of me, never giving up when I know I should), this morning I got up and thought, hmm, it’s really not so bad (a sane person would have thrown it out, probably) and began to personalize it, giving it features, perked ears and a long tail, collar and tag, etc. I truly believe that my persistence is the worst trait I have because it never leads to anything good.

When I was finished, or at least I thought it was finished, I told Roy I was going to give it to Carol as a gag birthday gift (I'd been talking about making her a dog for weeks) and asked him, “what do you think?” He looked at it for a while, then said, “It could be one of two things. A small bear or a lamb."

A lamb, a fucking lamb! With a collar and tag and a long black tail. I was just so bloody upset after all that hard work, told him I was going to throw it out, headed over to the garbage pail, grabbed the scissors to eviscerate it, then he started saying things like “You’re crazy!” 

I couldn’t believe Mr. Wonderful and Perfect would say such a thing. For me, it’s the worst there is. It’s like saying, “it doesn’t matter how much hard work and effort you’ve put in over years and years to try to get your life back on track after a horrendous mental breakdown that nearly destroyed you. YOU’RE CRAZY.” This is exactly what my sister (the most vindictive human being I have ever had the misfortune of encountering) used to say to me when she really wanted to twist the knife. My sister, the one who used to invite me to those drunken adult parties and could not understand why I wasn’t “grateful”.

No one, but no one can begin to fathom the loneliness of a mental breakdown, the long, long wilderness walk, so often stumbling and falling on my face, the utter disgrace of the hospital, the guilt and filth in my soul that can never be washed clean. As long as I “act normal” I am more or less OK, but routinely, at intervals, I must have “you’re crazy!” hurled at me by the person who loves me best in the whole wide world. To keep me in line, I suppose.

It almost works.

Even though he is basically an asshole, it always ends up with Roy acting like he is the Saint, the one who “puts up with” this banshee of a woman, this crazy woman who actually has EMOTIONS and doesn’t keep it all inside like she is supposed to, who sometimes just boils over, and “why would that be?” Then he comes out with “you ALWAYS say that,” “it doesn’t matter what I say, you always yell at me, I’m always wrong,” etc. He does not know how many times in the course of the day I bite my tongue just to keep the peace and to keep him from putting on his martyr routine. Honestly, I wonder if I walked out or just died, how long would it take before he even noticed? He would have to find some other instrument for feeling constantly wronged and hurt without any provocation whatsoever, so maybe he’d miss THAT. He’d miss being crowned the Saint every day.

These are the things that never get solved, and they come up again and again. No use “trying to explain it to him” as I’ve been told to do 100 times, how much it hurts me for him to say these things. He pulls them out and uses them again and again because he knows damn well it is the worst thing he can possibly say to me. I always felt if we went into marriage counselling we’d just walk away from each other, as too many things would be dragged up from his side, i. e. putting up with my “craziness” for 40 years. (I’d know enough to keep my mouth shut. Mental patients have no rights.) I try to get past it and finally have to let it go because there’s nothing I can do about it.

How is marriage supposed to be? Nobody tells you, any more than they tell you how to be a mother. You just flail around and hope for the best and try not to kill each other. I think people think: hey, he doesn’t drink or smoke or screw around, so why can’t you be happy? This is as good as you will ever do. What's the matter, aren't you grateful?

Now I really don’t know whether I should give my daughter what I made for her, that lamb or bear or whatever-the-fuck-it-is, knowing her propensity for zingers. I certainly don’t need any more of THOSE in my life. I just want to show her I care about her. We aren’t a very demonstrative family and the very rare time I hug Carol, she stiffens like a tree trunk.

A LAMB. Oh yes, I’d be giving her a baby lamb for her birthday, that makes a lot of sense! I might as well play the tape right now, of she and her husband denigrating it when they’re alone. Yet, strangely, after all that work and effort I don’t want to throw it away or give it to someone else. I know she believes that I have basically wasted my life and spend all my time knitting and making stuffed animals. It’s as if she sucked all the ambition and achievement out of me and used it for her own purposes.

Anyway, today at this moment I am reminded of Sylvia Fraser calling families “killing fields”. They are all I have and I feel so poorly equipped to handle any of it, so I just go along with everything and when I do explode, I am “crazy”. They should live inside my skin for ONE day and see how easy it is.

So today, we are 40 years old and I regret every goddamn minute of it. If I had a loaded gun, I wouldn’t trust myself in the same room with him. My life partner, the one who has endured me for all this time and put up with my incessant craziness and the fact I don’t contribute anything to the marriage at all.

Happy anniversary.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm