Friday, July 29, 2011

You Don't Say?

“Count no woman wise, until thou
 hast received a letter from her hand;
but love none thou hast not seen
face to face, for she who is
 not foolish on paper is worth knowing”


~Frank Gelett Burgess~



I love writing. Even more than writing, I love receiving written notes. There's nothing better than opening the mailbox to find a letter handwritten from my Newfie friend Jan.  When you're in love, there's nothing better than a card or note from that special someone pouring out their heart to you.  When you're in a slump, it's such a pick me up to get a crazy "thinking of you" card from your wackiest and most faithful of pals.

Too often we don't thank our friends enough, or people in our circle of acquaintance who go out of their way to make life more civilized. I'm trying to get better at that.  I have yet to write a very important thank you to my gal-pal Vicki who helped me move some large items in the dark of night thanks to her hubby's truck that was borrowed under the strict condition that it would not be used to move anything. Thank you Vicki. Hallmark thank you smut to be mailed .....soon?

Have you ever written a "love letter", or more accurately, a letter to your lover? That's a serious sitting down to write something really important. These are the letters of the wishes of our heart. Have you ever felt like you need to clarify something you said, or explain the essence of your very self? Has it ever been something that you just so badly want someone else to understand that when you read the sentiment back to yourself,  you hit the delete button, or scribble out the words, or just shred the paper, because you  can't put yourself out there? I mean, we've all heard the quotes about love and madness.

I've done that a few times - crumpling the paper, or hitting the delete button.  Just today in fact. I began an email, typed it all up, got to the part that I really, really needed to say, froze completely, and deleted the whole darn thing.

Years ago I (likely in an inebriated state) I wrote a veritable tome to someone who turned out not to be the love of my life.  One of my best friends read it and in the most gentle way possible said, "McDish are you nuts?! If you send that I'll kill you".  So I didn't.  That may have been the only wise thing she's said since I met her almost ten years ago. That, and, "Get your purse and run!"...but that's another story.

About a month ago I came across the very  letter my friend told me to toss. I had written it  in one of my many notebooks, and I was so relieved that I took her advice.  I would never want that letter in anyone else's  hands but my own now. Reading it over, I realized how much I've matured, and how much more I like "me" now.
Everything I said in that letter shouldn't have needed to be said.  In intimate relationships, the really important stuff should just flow.  We should just know what someone else wants or needs. Or should we?  I really don't know. By this stage in life, we've all been knocked around a bit, and have a few battle scars to prove it. Making yourself emotionally vulnerable is a huge risk.

Two of my older and much wiser friends have given me two good pieces of advice;
1)     A relationship only changes when a woman decides it needs to be changed.
2)     Men  really  just want to please us, they just don't know how.

It's the repetition of the same issues that wear a relationship down.  When needs are expressed and ignored, communication just seems redundant. It's not quite as simple as wining and dining us and buying sparkly jewelry.  Wouldn't that be simple. When I talk to my friends (both male and female) in their time of relationship frustration and need, the same themes repeat themselves: time, communication, respect. 

How do we negotiate our time? How do we communicate, at what frequency, about what???  Respect is the biggie...respect me enough to spend time with me, respect me enough to communicate openly and honestly, respect me enough to make me feel welcome without ghosts of relationships past hanging around like bad art. That fine balance of defining your space, both domestically and socially, individually and  as a couple, lies in navigating the elements of what the other partner values the most.

So, today I deleted a great pouring out of my heart. Older and wiser? Older and cynical? Maybe just older.

I wonder though, what would happen if we all chose to strip ego-bare, and vulnerable in our most intimate relationships? Would we all soften up and evolve into more authentic relationships? What would you say?





Thursday, July 21, 2011

Meet Clint

"The only difference between
a cult and religion
is the amount of real estate they own"
~Frank Zappa~



Meet Clint, your friendly neighbourhood devout Christian, marijuana addicted, real estate agent....



The house was tidy.  Thank goodness. Some home owners didn't take enough care preparing their homes for sale, which made his job much more difficult. Clint looked at his watch impulsively as he rushed to open the patio doors, reaching into his left pocket for his lighter.  From his right pocket he drew a very small joint, almost finished, but enough to get him through this showing.

In the three o'clock shadow of the October sun, he lit his smoke and inhaled deeply, checking hurriedly over his shoulder.  Yes, the fence was high enough, surely any nosey neighbours  in this little bedroom town would think he was just smoking a a cigarette.

It had been over two weeks since he closed a sale.  He needed this .  The church was expecting his annual donation for their Thanksgiving food drive.  How could he, as one of the elders, let the congregation down?

Checking his watch again, Clint took a long, last drag of his cigarette, madly waving the smoke away from his head as if swatting at flies.

His addiction sated for the moment, Clint relaxed into his new state of mind. "Gosh those chrysanthemums are wild colours," he thought to himself, "God is good man. God is good."

Satisfied that the breeze had made it's baptismal offering by blowing away the smell of his inhaled afternoon delight, Clint sauntered back into the kitchen, opened the fridge and stared blankly at the contents.  The fridge stared back.

"Ah, thank-you Jesus - they have cake," Clint thought as he reached into the back of the fridge and pulled out, what was a  a less than a fresh dessert leftover.  He peeled back the plastic wrap which clung to a top layer of the cake, picked up the entire piece, and shoved it into his mouth all at once, "Mmm...." He crumpled up the plastic wrap and pressed it down on the empty plate, shoving it all back behind bottles of who knows what.  Clint hung onto the door and continued to stare into the refrigerator.

Basking in the richness of the cake, Clint was alarmed by a sudden loud knock at the door, followed a few seconds later by another.

His watch said 3:45pm. "Cheese and Rice!", he was running late.  They were supposed to be here half an hour ago, they being one Livinia Stone and her daughter Bridgette, prospective buyers.  Clint scrambled to collect himself, checked his lapels for any lingering aroma and flung the front door open with a wide grin on his face.

"Mrs. Stone? " he asked.

"Ms.", Livinia replied as she stopped into the foyer, "This is my daughter Bridgette," she purred as she smiled up into Clint's cloudy eyes.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

Keep Summer Simple Silly

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within
Most mysterious calling harbour
So far but yet so near
I can see the day when my hair's full gray
And I finally disappear.

~Jimmy Buffett~


I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, summer was really simple.  Days ran into weeks, running barefoot between the beach and the water sprinkler in the yard. My wardrobe consisted of a bathing suit and baby doll jammies and Noxema  for the occasional sunburn.  Footwear? Simple; Flip flops and my Bionic-Woman running shoes. I can't recall whether I wore socks between June and September at all. I remember being dumped in a tub to scrub up with Ivory soap and drifting off to sleep with that smell on my clean, sun kissed skin.

I grew up in a small town, and had all of the freedom afforded of such an environment. Your conscience wasn't imposed, it was bred into you like your hair colour and your heart beat. If you weren't blood-related to someone in the little town, they surely knew your dad or grandpa.  Nobody but nobody would hesitate to let them know of any indiscretion you might hope to conceal.

I remember one summer day, my cousin and I thought that we should hold what I like to refer to now as, "Hallowe'en" in July. We scratched out a couple of Hallowe'en masks from the upstairs storage closet, grabbed two grocery bags, and were out the door. We only made it to three houses. Behind door number three was an old lady who hated Hallowe'en so much in October that she gave out pennies and peanuts instead of yummy-sugary treats. She sat us down in her kitchen while she called my mother. That was the abrupt end of what could have been a terrific summer tradition.  Mom let us eat the two cookies that the other nice old ladies dropped in our July trick-or-treat bags, after we went back and apologized for being so bold, of course.

Besides the Hallowe'en in July cookies, food was simple. Mom would dish up cereal or eggs with toast "fingers" most mornings, and we would be out the door as fast as our barefoot legs would carry us.  Kool Aid  could have sold stock in our town, and we routinely melted chocolate covered graham wafers in the sun on the sidewalk. We ate them when the chocolate was soft and melted, shaking away the ants and sidewalk debris the best we could. Do you remember the Tupperware iced pop molds? Mmm, there was a recipe that used Jello and Kool Aid, and I loved it!

At some point during our daily adventures,we made our way through the back yards of grandparents, aunts and uncles. That's where we would snack. Maybe we were hungry, maybe we were just kids looking for a bit of mischief, but our snacks were pilfered from neighbourhood gardens. Tomatoes were always best from my grandma's garden patch behind the woodworking shop. My aunt's carrots were the very best, but she'd get upset when we ran the garden hose out to rinse off the crunchy yummies. She used to yell out the window to, "Shut that hose OFF!".

Raspberries and pears. Mmmmm!!!  They were kinda fun to get. My neighbour Pete was old. Like antique-old, born in the 1800's old. But he was nice. He was like a big kid  and when we wanted pears or raspberries, he used to just smile at us as we made our way through his weedy berry bushes and dodged bees to get the pears.

Lunch. I don't remember many lunches. I'm sure we had them, likely sandwiches and mac and cheese. Lunch would be around the time that Mr. Dressup came on, followed by the, "News at Noon". At 1pm, most of the ladies in town would be transfixed by Days of Our Lives, and as long as we didn't interrupt, we were free to play in the yard, down the street, or at the beach. That's also when we did a lot of chocolate wafer melting on the sidewalk and sucking the nectar out of pink clover.

At the end of the day, everyone sat down for dinner with their family. When I grew up, I thought my mother was the BEST cook in the whole world. Summer menus were different than winter menus. During the winter  it was usually some kind of roasted meat, potatoes and veggies from a can. I think this was the quintessential rural Canadian meal. Summer was different. Potatoes and meat were cooked in the back yard on the big brick BBQ, and mom had lots of cold, fresh salads ready. Food was simple and delicious.  Dessert was often whatever fruit was in season with vanilla ice cream or cake.

Corn on the cob.  Grilled chicken, steak, fish, and sausage from the butcher shop. Fresh strawberries, , lettuce, peppers and green onions from the garden and cucumber picked fresh and tossed in some vinegar with salt and pepper. We had pies made with peaches, elderberries, currants, apples and cherries from our yard or our neighbour's.

We had such an abundance of fresh food that we spent hours and hours in August putting up tomatoes, beets, chili sauce, jams, peaches, pears, corn, beans.....and in the winter we would eat them, and would remember the work we put into preserving our food.

Summer was simple. Simple because we were kids. So this summer, the best gift I can give my kid is to keep it simple. Simple, fresh food, lots of time outside in the pool and beside the lake. Simple dinners. Simple ball games. Simple late nights watching the thunderstorms roll in. Simple, simple, simple.