Bamm, Spam

How many of you can claim to be “spam” in the daily life of your parent? I would bet you would lose the argument if you proposed that the ultimate desire of a child of a parent is to earn the designation of “spam”.

Let’s go back for a bit. The word “spam” to me conjures up a less-than-wholesome-existence. As I know it, spam is a pretend meal. It is what we ate as children – well, at least I did -- all the while pretending it was real enough that we would qualify as children-who-are-living-in-the-world-of the Canada Food Guide. It didn’t fool me then and it doesn’t fool me now. Go ahead, Google it and you will learn of its barely disguised deception as real food. But it sure fills the stomach when you are hungry, as I was in a just-above-and-approaching-realm-of-poverty.

Let’s go forward a bit. In living my dreams, I have been graced with a life companion, the father of my children, who believes his offspring are greater than the best sirloin. He has delivered me Lynn, Corey, and Kelly. He has blessed me and I am satiated with their love for their Dad and for me. And our love for them. We are sirloin in my past history of spam.

There is lots of history about my dad spamming me I can’t relate here, but perhaps I might someday. Suffice to say that, in a recent venture to contact my father, I had to face the inexplicable reality that my own father has characterized me as “spam” in his life. The e-mail I had sent was returned – confirming without doubt that I am spam. In the acerbic aol language, I was advised that I was no longer welcome. Not only that!! His own grandson, the small person who delighted his days, has also been relegated to spam. That hurts.

I can’t imagine my spamming my children, and I would not countenance Jim doing it even if he ever would. You make a commitment to the beings you bring into this world, else your efforts to live gracefully and peaceably on this earth are for nought.

A postscript: as I wrote this on Thursday night, I got angry that my child was spammed – and by extension his child. I phoned my Dad and “had it out with him” over it. He claimed not to know about the spamming technology (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and lay it at the feet of the wicked stepmom). He immediately called Corey, so at least my call had some effect.

Though there is no lingering doubt that I am still spam. The wicked stepmother left me a message on my answering machine on Friday that my calls were not welcome and that I was harassing her. Rising to the occasion, I hit the “delete” key right away.

Spam. Delete. Tie Game. Sigh.

A Life Not Coloured by Regret

Those of you who are on an automatic feed of my blog may have read my post “The Greatest Remedy is to Live Well”. It was up for an evening and I took it down the next morning. I did that because of a comment that I got from a reader:

Thank you for sharing your painful past and your ways of dealing with it on your blog; that is very brave of you.
If I were you, I would def. be putting more of the blame on your mother than the man she brought into your lives. In fact, if she were my mother I would hate her very much.
Do you have a relationship with her? Has she acknoweldged [sic] the pain she inflicted on your life via her love life? What a shame. Sure, it brought you to today, but still, what a shame your mother did that to you. She sacrificed you. That's not cool.
How could any mother allow a man to stop her from loving and taking care of her wonderful daughter? Your mother does not sound like a good person.
God only knows what she suffered from her parents in her youth. The cycle of betrayal.

I took the post down for a couple of days because I wanted to reflect on the comment and the questions. I didn’t want others feeling the same way as this reader did, and blame my childhood on my mom. I certainly wouldn’t blame it on her – although there were times in the past that I did fault her for introducing a monster into our midst.

In order to understand how she could have put up with it all, you have to understand the nature, motives, and tactics of a sociopath. I would urge you to read the link here. This is the person who stole my dreams and irreparably harmed my sisters.

He manipulated and twisted my mom the same way, and even more than, he did the children under his supposed care. Though she may have had a lot to answer for in terms of the damage that he did to us, I believe that she was as helpless as we were in understanding that there were viable and safe escape routes. And she suffered greatly for it.

Blaming mom would be tantamount to blaming an abused woman for staying in a relationship. And, thankfully, we have learned where to squarely place the blame in those situations. It is the man who is the abuser and it is the man – and the man solely – who shall take the blame.

I don’t blame my mom, although I would hold her accountable for taking the path of least resistance and, on many occasions, exercising wilful blindness to the catastrophic measures that the resident sociopath was using to destroy her life and the lives of her children. Accountability is different than blame. Accountability calls for an individual to be well aware of the consequences of their choices, and to recognize and acknowledge those consequences. Blame is more centred on notions of perpetrator and victim. I choose not to hide behind a shield of victim, so why would I want to wield a sword of blame?

The reader asks if I have a relationship with my mom. I don’t now but that is only because she passed away nine years ago. I had a wonderful relationship with her for the prior twenty years and before she died, we were firmly at peace with each other. Although mom was not really good at acknowledging faults (a trait I inherited!), it was clear that she regretted many choices that she had made in her life. Though she could not undo the past, she could – and did – make sure the present was filled with joy, love, and safety. She became my biggest and best cheerleader as I recaptured the stolen dreams of my youth.

I wanted to let the reader know that I appreciate the comment and questions. I especially appreciate that the comments made me pause a bit and re-assess the post. I am careful about being too raw and open in my writing. At the same time I want to be honest enough to share my life with others – a journey that many seem to enjoy.

I also want to go deep enough so that others might identify with my thoughts or circumstances. Another reader who commented certainly did identify, having had some childhood issues herself that have deeply affected her. She also offered that a therapist had told her that it takes twice as long to heal as it took for the originating events to unfold, although in my reader’s experience it can take longer. However, sticking with the twice-as-long proposition, I find it coincidental and yet cathartic that the moment of healing for me would have been in the year leading up to my mother’s death. At no other time in my life was I as close to my mother as I was in that year.

With that knowledge, I am affirmed in my philosophy that one should not live a life coloured by regrets. Instead, I am grateful that I have the strength, support, and stamina to plan my own biography.

The Greatest Remedy is to Live Well

A friend of mine who knows and understands about the depth of my dysfunctional childhood, the impact of which I still occasionally feel, asked me how I was able to get past it all and maintain a happy and flourishing life. I tried to answer her question, although I felt curiously inarticulate as I explained the process that I took from being a young child to today.

True to form, a day or so later I read a passage in a book that explained it so much better than I did or could:

Your past is who you are. It is your particular fate. You may wish
it had been different, but it is what it is. It is your starting point,
the place you always go back to in memory. You carry it with you.
[The trick to a successful future is to] learn from your past,
analyse it, then close the door and move on. Though the past is still with you, it becomes less of a burden.

Significantly, the book proposed that what you do with your past is more important than what it threatens to do with you.

My youngest sister eloquently expresses the payment extracted from me during the dysfunction of my youth. She said, “Brenda, you had your dreams stolen from you”. And that is – or was – so true.

I grew up a product of divorce at a time, especially being Catholic, when divorce was a sin. Hence, children of divorced parents were looked up unsympathetically and with undisguised distain. I remember a year when, living just shy of the poverty line, my mother was seeking help from the Catholic Church for a Christmas Gift Basket. (At that time, the Catholic Church used to provide food and toys for the needy as part of their spiritual undertakings.) My mother was refused because she carried the stain of “divorced woman”. A Scarlet-Letter-brand. I remember my mother’s visible anger at an institution that she believed and worshipped in. More importantly, I will never forget the barely disguised pain in her eyes that she would now not be able to find a way to make our lives more “normalized”. Christmas would be barren. According to the Catholic dogma, we – our family, her, me -- were something to be ashamed of.

I can’t help but feel that this is one of the situations that drove my mother into the arms of a sociopath. A charming, intelligent, and manipulative man, yet a reptile at his core. Along with his reptilian sociopathic behaviour, he was also a pedophile. Early on, he attempted to convert me into a willing victim to his deviant and dysfunctional sexual tendencies. When I refused to succumb to his despotic control, I became expendable. He got back at me by stealing my dreams. He engineered it so that my mother wasn’t allowed to love me; he made sure I got kicked out of the house before I had even finished high school; he cut me off from my family; and he played upon my teenage insecurities to the point where I believed that I would never fulfill my aspirations.

Although I know there are many others who suffered more that I, there is no doubt that I could use my life story to excuse a future life of victimhood. There are many more examples that I could give beyond the ones I have cited in this passage to support my claim as a victim. But that approach would shift the power from the present to the past. And long ago, in a lonely time, I refused to do that.

I have spent a considerable amount of my life understanding how my past informs my future. I have analysed my behaviour to determine if it contributes to my quest to take back my dreams. I have made many mistakes along the way. I may regret those mistakes in the sense that, looking back, I wish I had taken a different path. Nevertheless, I have understood – and forgiven myself – that those faults are necessary. Had my development not been brutally arrested at seventeen years of age, I would have the benefit of excusing my mistakes to an immature psyche. With the grace of that pretext stolen from me, I can take full accountability and delight for the learning that all of my transgressions consequently deliver to me.

More significantly, in making my mistakes, analysing them, closing the door, and moving on, I am taking back control. I can now live my dreams on my own terms. There is power in that.

Back to the beginning. When answering my friend’s questions on how I have managed to re-claim myself despite my beginnings, I might have been best to borrow from The Talmud:

Live well. It is the greatest revenge.

Hey, sociopathic pedophile, you didn’t win. You tried to steal my dreams. Watch me; I’m living them. Despite and -- I fervently wish you’d appreciate the irony – because of you.

Living with a Two Year Old – Always an Emergency!

It is early on a Monday morning. Corey has gone off to work and Natasha is trying to cope with the whirlwind of activity that accompanies life with an almost-two-year-old. In the near distance, she hears Ayden playing with the telephone, a favourite activity of his as he pretends he is talking to his aunties in Trinidad, or his new best friend, Grandpa, or indeed Elmo.

Just then Natasha hears Ayden calling “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom” (he always calls her name over and over again until he is satisfied he has her full attention!). He hands Natasha the phone and she thinks he wants her to play along with the fantasy. HOWEVER, on the other end of the line is a 911 dispatcher!!!!!

Dispatcher: M’am, we have officers on the way. Is everything okay? Are you alone?
Natasha: (Thinking it was Corey playing a joke) Of course, I’m not alone, crazy person. I’m here with Ayden.
Dispatcher: Is everything okay? We have officers on the way M’am.
Natasha: (Realizing it’s no joke) My son must have dialled 911 by mistake!!! I’m so sorry; we’re fine.
Dispatcher: We have officers on the way, M’am.

Just then, there is a knock at the door and there are three officers standing there, no doubt in ready-stance with hands just hovering over their gun belt. Natasha tries to explain that it was her child who called 911 by mistake while he was playing with the phone. She is beyond embarrassed.

Officers are trained not to accept a bald assertion that everything is okay just because you say it is. An intruder could be holding you at gunpoint and telling you that your life is over if you admit his presence. He could be in the cupboard or the washroom, listening.

So they ask her who she is. Who is the child; is the child hers? Show us birth certificates. Let us check all the rooms.

The officers attempt to ask Ayden if he was the one who make the call (as she’s telling me the story, I’m thinking they likely don’t have, or don’t remember life talking to, a two year old). He says no, no, no, no (he never says that word once either). He says mom, mom, mom, mom (not really blaming it on mom, but one of the words he likes to say often).

The female officer finally asks Natasha how old Ayden is. She tells her “twenty-one months”. “Oh, that explains it”, says the officer smiling.

They take their exit. Emergency over. Family safe.

Natasha phones Corey to relate the latest events in life-with-a-two-year-old. Corey howls with laughter.

She calls me. Jim and I howl with laughter.

Jim goes to his volunteer gig at the jail. He tells all of the “residents” (jail euphemism for “inmates”) about how his grandson was wearing prison-issue orange colours when he visited us on Sunday and then about the 911 mishap. They howl with laughter.




Of course, Ayden is oblivious to all of the chaos he has caused his momma. Like this little guy, what he wants to know is “can I have the phone back?”

Emergency over. Ayden once again entertains from his two-year-old stage of life to an audience howling with laughter.

Misty Water Colored Memories

I had an awesome experience last Saturday. I was blessed with a momentary glimpse into the enduring power of love, despite the tyranny of aging, the silence of incalculable loneliness, and the horrors of Alzheimer’s.

Let me give you some context.

A few years ago, I decided to volunteer at a seniors’ home. I was assigned to head up the cappuccino bar, a Saturday morning event where volunteers served cappuccino to the residents in the main lounge area. Immediately, I noticed how the residents just sat around and stared at the walls while drinking their sweet drinks. After all, how could a simple cup of cappuccino erase the boredom of living within the same four walls with the same people day after day, with no freedom to wander outside like the rest of us?

I asked Jim if he would come in to sing for them. Fast forward, almost three years later and the lounge is now filled on Saturday mornings with songs, laughter, smiles, and memories of days gone by -- lighting the same once-empty eyes of my resident friends. Indeed, it is such a popular, life affirming event that the home has now scheduled its tours for potential new residents and their families while we are tending the bar. You can see how these new people think: "Wow, life might still be fun in here for dad (or mom, or grandma, or grandpa); I can stop feeling anxious and guilty".

Typical of my “jukebox Jim”, he sings songs of love, of loss, of country, of war, of fun, of rocking and of rolling. I am his shill – alternating swooning, pantomiming a good cry, belting out the chorus, marching off to war, pole dancing with the internal light stand, or doing the twist. Together we are a team that reminds them of the days our resident friends spent singing, loving, and living life. And once again they are free to live on the outside.

There is the context.

And here is a couple I want to introduce you to. Let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Wilkens.

Mrs. Wilkens has Alzheimer’s disease. Over the years, it has steadily and stealthily stolen her memories and her moods. Depending on the day, she is angry, distant, morose, or simply vacant. And yet Mr. Wilkens is always there by her side, making sure to bring her from her solitary room on Saturday mornings to sit in the lounge with him. Despite the unalterable fact that she doesn’t know who he is anymore, he looks upon her with love, and patience, and understanding, and compassion, and yesterday.

He tells me that she used to love music, and singing, and dancing, and joy. Often, I wonder if he hopes that she will find him again – and the love they obviously once shared – in the pulse and pull of the music they once shared. In the misty water of her memory, she will identify with those feelings she once had; the ones that Jim now echoes in the hall.

While I shill with Jim, I make sure that the cappuccino cups are always filled to the brim. Last Saturday, as I went to fill the cups of Mr. and Mrs. Wilkens, I found them both crying. Oh, how I wish I could remember the song we were singing at the time. How I wish I could invite you into that moment. Gently I said to them, “Is this song one of yours?” “Yes”, said Mr. Wilkens, with the tears unabashedly spilling over.

And then the moment happened.

From the unfathomable depths of her stolen consciousness, with tears rolling down her own cheeks, Mrs. Wilkens gently took his hand. And it was truly in that moment I believed that music is the voice of the angels.

Memories, light the corners of our mind.