Colonoscopies: Getting the Bum's Rush

Tomorrow, because I have a history of bowel polyps, I will set off early in the morning for my (third) biennial colonoscopy. Had I not switched doctors in 2004 I might have developed undiagnosed colon cancer because my Ottawa doctor felt that the barium enema I had had five years earlier would serve as a ten-year prognosis. He also thought I was too young to have any indication of bowel cancer. He was wrong. And it was only because I had had an extreme bout with irritable bowel that I made an appointment with my new Toronto doctor to ask her opinion. Otherwise, I had no overt symptoms apart from the chronic IBS I have suffered (along with 25 million Americans) most of my life.

My sister also has a history of bowel polyps (they began in her forties), and our grandfather had a colostomy when he was in his sixties. I remember him coming to visit in Fredericton, humiliated by the bag at his side. I didn't really know him, but his shame permeated the apartment and made everyone well aware of how angry he was. Fortunately, he survived. That there is a genetic component to colon cancer -- although there needn't be for a person to have the disease -- is evident.

In 2003 my best friend, Kathy, was told she had eighteen months to live, after having surgery for two bowel masses and a diagnosis of metastasized liver cancer. Kathy is one of those remarkably optimistically strong women and, against every odd, she survived --- but it is no thanks to her St. John gp who kept telling her she had irritable bowel and that she, too, was too young to be concerned with colon cancer -- despite her brother having had a large portion of his bowel removed when he was in his twenties.

It is also important to note that both times I took the occult blood/stool sample test -- now touted on TV as the definitive test for colon cancer -- I had negative ( = no early cancer) results, and yet both times I took that test I had existing polyps that could have become full-blown cancer had I avoided the colonoscopy.

I am not eager to take this test, but I try to look at it this way:

The colonoscopy, without drugs, takes 20 minutes. And if you can have the drugs, the experience is apparently la la wonderful.

The prep, done the day before, is an excuse to take a day off.

The two small bottles of Citromag, ingested three hours apart, taste like salty, lemony soda pop, and they are easily digestible.

All day long prior to the procedure you are permitted to eat (non-red) jello, soup, juice or popsicles. You can sit up in bed and read, watch movies, or do crossword puzzles. In fact, I was able to lie back and enjoy Adam Lambert singing Mad World -- I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad -- on Regis and Kelly twice today.

And think of how you'll feel in the morning, stepping on the scales five pounds lighter. And what an excuse to indulge in your favourite foods later in the day. I am not exactly sure, although I should be, how early a person with a family history should be checked, but I intend to ask tomorrow. I am just grateful that there is someone out there who can take a peek and look after what needs to be tended.

*As it turns out, I decided to post this entry after the procedure (on account of my Cape Breton superstitious genes). But I'm glad I did because I learned...only 5% of bowel polyps become cancerous, and polyps that are smaller than 2.5 centimetres (the one I had today was about 2 millimetres) are typically benign -- although all are sent away to the lab for checking.

On the other hand, of the last 16 cases of colon cancer my doctor has diagnosed, 12 of those individuals were between the ages of 36 and 45. Colon cancer, while highly treatable, is on the increase, largely because of our high-fat red-meat diet. If there is a family history, the rule states that you should have your first colonoscopy when you are ten years younger than the person in your family was at the time of diagnosis. That said, there is a question of whether ten years is soon enough. Given the statistics the doctor quoted this morning, I wouldn't wait.

By the way, today I timed the appointment to be absolutely sure. I was in and out in twenty minutes...which feels bit short, considering how handsome my doctor is.

<:^)

Makin' Whoopi

Is it my imagination -- and it may well be only that -- or is Whoopi a little lop-sided today on The View?

She looks as if she has been bobbing for banger (and I don't mean sausage)...chugging down some bong juice...sniffing in the skunk weed. Maybe it's a one-hitter quitter, a kind of dual send off to tobacco and those abba-zabba highs.

Who am I to judge? I can't remember a day in grade ten when I didn't trot off to high school without a doobie in my bag...a thankful reminder that there was something, if not someone, to help get me through my days. Even now, if I hadn't developed that heightened paranoia, I wonder if I would not still, on occasion, be packing a bit of a roach reminder in my knapsack.

Still, I can't imagine the American public being too tolerant (and tolerant would be their word) of its daytime moderator vegging out on TV time. I mean, if they weren't easy enough to vote for Adam Lambert, then what will they think of Miss Walter's uber hostess coming into work a little wonky? (I have wondered before about the mood on their set, but today I'm thinking that I ought to be doing a little more than wondering. Jo Behar is looking awfully anxious.)

Either way, it really doesn't matter. It isn't as if Whoopi's kept her habit a secret. And I can't imagine she wouldn't find a dozen ways to defend herself should the subject ever come up. Even now, I can only imagine the number of hits I'll find if I search the subject under Google.

I only hope that if she comes under fire, people will remember that we all of us have our days. I drank so much white wine at work one night it's a wonder I wasn't fired by the bar manager. As it was, I needed help from two friendly customers to bolster me home. Come to think of it, that turned out to be my first date with Don, who sat up half the night with me and held my hair.

Life is hard. Life is complicated. And as long as I live in this glass house of mine, I won't be tossing any stones in that direction. Between a rock and a hard place is a familiar location, and between a rock and a hard place is a hard place to be.

The Buzz

There is a bee the size of a watermelon buzzing beneath the skylight, and he's buzzing in ways that sound very unhappy. (I always tell students to delete very from their lexicon, but sometimes the word seems truly satisfying.)

Anyway, this bee is so big I think I ought to name him and buy him a small car.

In the meantime, given my allergy, I am not sure what to do.

I could hose him down, but the problem with that is the obvious and enormous water blemish I would cause. The house is in iffy enough shape without incurring more damage.

I could bribe him with Spelt ginger cookies, but if he has no gluten problems my enticement might make him that much more belligerent. He might ask for 'real' cookies, and I haven't got any of those to offer.

I could turn on HBO and run the In Treatment series really loudly, and see if any of the patient -- oops...I mean client -- stories resonate. Mr. Bee might, in fact, feel himself aligned with the fighter pilot, and in this way could be talked down.

I could sing.

I could ask all of the cats to sit underneath him and stare at him for a long, long time.

I could net him, but I am not sure where I would find a net large enough. Besides, I have short arms and the skylight is a good eight feet above my head. (Think: Rosie O'Donnell)

I could read him passages from Canadian prize-winning poetry, which will probably put him to sleep almost immediately. (Come on! Have any of you read Loopy?)

I could engage him in a Q&A: How old are you? How long have you been in the city? What are your life's ambitions?

I could run for Prime Minister and, while I am out campaigning, he could either retire or die of old age. Better still, he might want to campaign against me and run as an Independent.

I could catch him in a jar and stare at him through the glass, making funny faces until he laughs himself into apoplexy.

I could read to him from my first novel, but then all of the cats, the fish, and the dog would die, too. (I can see the headlines: Nine Creatures Sacrificed in Death By Boredom)

For now, however, time's a wastin' and Mr. Bee seems to be trying to say something very important from his perch under the skylight. I think I will bring in all of the beautiful flowers that are blooming in the yard and trail a scent of pollen down down down the stairs and out the front door. And while Mr. Bee is buzzing his way out of the house, I'll check the renew date on my epi-pen kit.

Gotta run!

Honey is sweet, but the bee stings! ~ Proverb

Candy-gram!

Apart from the obvious (pregnancy, hormones in general, sunshine, hangover, disappointment, happiness, weight loss therapy rejection, rainy skies...) what does it mean when the first thing you want for breakfast is banana pudding? It was all I could do this morning to engineer my arm away from the refrigerator and toward the cereal cupboard, and even then I chose sweet-tasting granola over bran flakes. Of course, sugar begets sugar, so now I want Pepsi, spearmint leaf candy, and a peanut butter hot dog bun, which contains more sugar than you might expect.

As synchronicity would have it, just as I sat down to my cereal, Wayne Dyer sat down as Ellen Degeneres' guest. Typically I am not too engaged with Mr. Dyer. I think he's well-intended, but simplistic...that is, until he started talking about sugar and how (as he was taught by the belly fat doctor) 100 years ago (please don't quote me) the average American ingested 15 (or was it 25?) grams of sugar per day. Today, we eat ten times that much in any twenty-four-hour period, which, when you think about it, is scary enough to make a person want to spew her granola (17 grams in five bites' worth) across the room.

As an example of better living, and likely as a means of touting his new book -- is there any other reason people do talk shows anymore? -- Wayne Dyer lost 17 pounds in 30 days by reducing his daily sugar intake to approximately 20 grams per day. And I know he's right about sugar, because I fell back into the Pepsi vat about two weeks ago and I am packing on the pounds faster than you can say Fatty Fatty Fat Fat!

Years back, when Don and I went on the Hellmann diet -- I wish it had included the mayonnaise, because there is nothing tastier that a bucketful of Hellmann's slathered across cheap white bread -- I quickly learned what it meant to break from sugar addiction and how certain foods are monumental carbohydrate (which is another word for sugar) inducers. Even diet pop has a way of making a person want more more more...how do you like it? how do you like it?...more more more...and certain vegetables -- peas and carrots, for example -- are also carbohydrate inductive (if that's even the right way to say it). I know the reduction all works, too, because during those months when I was eating properly my body actually found a way to perspire, something it had not done healthily in years.

I know all of the reasons why I ought to try and do better. I don't need to list them here and, let's face it, you don't want to read them. But the thing for me isn't always about what I need to do. Sometimes it's a simple as...Oh...look at that pretty yellow pudding...doesn't it smell good? Remember how Mom used to make pudding from scratch, sometimes whipping it into Sunday pies with real whipped cream on top? And remember how she told me that I was beautiful and that it was only a bit of baby fat and that I would lose it, and how she put the word 'darling' on the end of all her sentences and would look at me as if I were the most wonderful girl in the world?

And then I remember how a lot of that didn't turn out to be true and that I wasn't the most beautiful girl (all right, maybe the second most beautiful...have it your way) and that it wasn't just baby fat and that, in fact, I wasn't always a darling. And then that tidy collection of thought and craving urge me forward, my chubby self lunging toward the refrigerator, spoon in hand, all of my senses and nonsenses merging, my reason overtaken by an irrepressible desire to gorge myself on yesterday's memories and today's marvellous promise of treats.

Besides, what's a fat girl to do? I barely sweat as it is. It's either eat up that pudding or spend the better part of my late morning writing blog entries about it -- because everyone knows that as soon as I finish here I wouldn't dream of running top-speed downstairs and head straight for the fridge.

Sugar, ah honey honey,
You are my candy, girl,
And you got me wantin' you...

<:^)

Kris Allen versus Adam Lambert

You do the math.

Christian worship director (cum Danny Gokey/cast-off votes) versus stage singer

(and therefore red states versus blue)

tween voters versus Broadway-loving voters

tween voters versus rock-star-loving voters

straight versus non-straight

(and therefore red states versus blue)

clean-cut versus Goth

instrumentalist versus vocalist

married versus single

twenty-three versus twenty-six, which in Idol years is multiplied by 1.5

"dark horse" versus "glam boy"

(and therefore red states versus blue)

self-effacing versus confident

moderate versus risk-taking

Conway, Arkansas versus Los Angeles, California

(and therefore blue state versus blue)

Keith Urban versus Kiss

I don't know why everyone was so sure that Adam would win. I wasn't, and neither was Mary. After all, Adam was in the bottom three not that long ago, and it was made clear at that time that he might not be everyone's cup of ordinary tea. Simon Cowell may have been a diabolical factor as well, touting Adam from here to Kingdom Come, knowing full well how this could cost Adam votes the way it has cost other cotestants in the past. The factor that is alleviating, when all is said and done, is that Adam seems to know he will have a career no matter who won American Idol, and Kris Allen didn't appear to know that about himself even after he had won.

No matter, Kris and Adam are, in my eyes, sweet, talented young men, and while I feel that Adam has the more abiding talent (and oh, that laugh...), Kris is certainly musically gifted and appealing. As for people who claim that the judges lost the competition for Adam, I think the list above will help explain some of that. In the end, what stands out for me as the chief reason Adam didn't win American Idol is that people already saw him as a consummate professional -- in stage presence and vocal strength, light years ahead of typical Idol competition. And who couldn't love a young man who, coming second, said so warmly of the winner, Kris Allen, "I'm so happy for him. He deserves it. He's so talented, and he's a good
person."

The Circle Game

I was skimming and scanning a forum site today on in-laws looking for answers to questions of appropriate balance, and I came upon some advice from a daughter-in-law to all mothers-in-law out there, and I was horrified. The young woman suggested that her husband, who had lived at home and had been supported by his mother through a PhD until he was twenty-six, had outgrown his mother intellectually; that he could manage fifteen to twenty minutes of talking with her, per week, which in itself was "a chore" -- "an imposition on their time together" -- and that the mother had had her turn with him and that that turn was over.

I shook my head in disbelief. Fifteen minutes per week? An imposition? A chore? And I should add that what this woman had to say was, despite numerous spelling and grammatical errors (I can't help myself -- not in the face of a young woman who sees herself as intellectually superior to anyone), the best I could find on the entire site. While I admit that I had landed on a forum designed for airing fears and frustrations, I was shocked to find that so many of us who have been parents have been relegated to the slush pile.

But all of this got me thinking, again, of the many people I know who, familially speaking, either cannot satisfy, often through no fault of their own, or who cannot be satisfied.

I have a friend, for example, who longs to be close to the family of her late husband. She doesn't say this outright, but you can feel it in her occasional tremulousness and the sad look in her lovely eyes. It doesn't matter what she does or does not do, how hard she tries to make things easier, how often she swallows down rejection, how much she has done or tries to do for them, nothing works. It seems, largely, to be a question (more like a fact, to me) of jealousy, a case of divergent personalities.

I have another friend who, after years of physical and emotional abuse, finally found the courage to leave her husband. He lives a few houses away from her, and their two daughters can't see enough of him, despite his having threatened them with a gun when their youngest child was three. I am an avid proponent of forgiveness, but his alcoholism leads him into frequent rages that are always accompanied by terrifying outbursts. And still, his darling girls love him and stand by his side. Perhaps they are identifying with their kidnapper, but who really knows?

I have another friend who has two adult children. Her ex-husband used to flick cigarettes at her on his way out the door, leaving her helpless for days at a time out in the countryside. Her adult daughter speaks to her maybe once a year, and her son not much more often than that, despite the fact that both these children have children of their own. They clearly couldn't care less about their mother's isolation from her grandchildren. My friend practices yoga and travels to faraway places like India to cover her pain. In all the years I have known her, I have never heard her raise her voice. I think her children modeled their father's behaviour, deciding long years ago that their mother is worthless. They couldn't be more wrong.

I know an anxious man in his forties who would love nothing more than to have a relationship with the father he used to be so close to. But a few years ago his father remarried and hasn't been over to visit his son once, not even to meet his granddaughter who this year will be three. When the son goes up to the old homestead his father is not there, deliberately away, it seems, because his new wife does not want to have anything to do with her husband's family, three sons who might one day stand -- might have stood -- a chance to inherit.

I was a daughter of a father I never really knew. The last time I spoke with him (in my thirties) he had invited me to lunch because I was in the city where he lived, attending school. (At that point, I had seen him once in ten years.) I called his office excitedly, nervously, wanting to thank him and reply to his lunch suggestions. He never called me back, despite my repeated attempts to contact him. His wife had never liked me or my sister, of course, and I know this factored into his decision. He died seven years later, and although I was by his side during his last hours, he could no longer speak. I wonder if, in his last minutes, that felt like a relief for him.

Everywhere I look I see mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers (you see where I'm headed) who no longer communicate with one other. Jealously, selfishness, heightened sensitivity, indifference, imperiousness, and an inability to forgive seem to permeate our society. I know that many families are closely knit -- most of my daughter's friends have relationships with all of their (dysfunctional or not) families, for example -- but for the life of me, I cannot understand a world -- have we all become sociopaths? -- that decides that fifteen or twenty minutes a week, offered up like rare jewels to a mother who seems to have done so much for her son, is an imposition, a chore.

Her son may imagine himself intellectually superior to his mother, but he and his wife are, in my view, morally vapid. No matter, his mother's work is done; she has lost her usefulness. As it is, I wonder how she gets through what must sometimes be her unhappy hours, waiting -- what I suspect is eagerly -- for her fifteen minutes of dutiful conversation every week. I wonder if he'll even notice when she dies. Perhaps he'll be too busy on another dissertation, expounding on theories of human behaviour and its ever-increasing decrepitude.

There is always room in your heart for one more. ~ My mother, Sarah Smith MacKinnon, who died in 1974

Fitness

So, today I went downstairs to make a cup of tea, and while the kettle was boiling (it's a cobalt-blue laddy dah Paderno kettle, and they take hours to boil because you can't set them over high heat because if you do the bottom curls off, and the only reason I bought this extravagant kettle is because it was on sale and purchased as a gift, which is ironic because I am the only one who drinks tea now that my mother and Mrs. Walker are dead [and you can hardly call throwing nine teabags into a cauldron of boiling water tea]).

So while the water was boiling I despaired once again over the backdrop wall tile because somewhere in its history part of the white had stained brown. Remembering my mother's fondness for Javex (she cleaned appliances with it, washed clothes with it, and put it in her basin of foot water at the end of a hard day), and recalling how my younger son had inherited that gene and at age sixteen used to bleach the kitchen counters while his father and I were at groceries -- what a thrill to come home to a clean main floor, I cannot tell you -- and although Javex always gives me a headache, I took out the bottle of bleach-and-water spray I concocted a few months ago, and went to town. Going to town in this kitchen is a bit of a misnomer and a pain in the ass because both fish tanks are sitting on the counter until the paint fumes up here dry, and besides, I always worry about getting water on the old GE radio I bought Don at Consumer's in Charlottetown so many years ago.

Pushing the pottery canisters aside, I squirted that section of wall, mortified to see the water turning instantly brown. Even the fish stopped swimming for a moment to look up and sigh. I could see their little lips moving and their gills heaving in and out. I thought I heard the name Jennifer, too, but who knows if that was only my imagination?
Anyway, as I took to the task of the counters, the kettle still not having boiled, I could see that I would have to move the wooden plant shelf away from the back of the sink (a clever concoction used by the last owner to hide, and sell, disreputable windows and dirty wall tile), and while doing so I noticed that some of their little leaves had wilted and died. (I heard the fish sigh again, and this time Sneakers came into the room and sat down.) Stopping to spruce up the plants (which reminds me of a man who went to live in my mother's family home when he was in his early 90s. He would sit the kids up on his knee -- he had no teeth -- and say, "Now let me tell you a little thrpruth" -- a spruce is apparently a Cape Breton usage for anecdote), I noticed the dog panting at my side, requesting to go out in the backyard ("Please, Jennifer, may I go out in the back yard?"), so of course I let her out and then realized she would be thirsty when she came back in so I picked up her bowls and I washed them. (We should be so lucky sounded from down near my ankles, not two feet from where Sneakers was sitting.)

Meanwhile, as I bent over to pick up the dog bowls -- the kettle still not having boiled -- I saw that the side of the stove bore (bore?) spaghetti sauce stains, so I went to work on that while the rest of the spray soaked into and ran down the walls. As I was washing the stove, I noticed that the lid that was still sitting on the porridge pot was terrible streaky, so I decided I had best do the dishes and polish the pots. While I was working on those, I realized that the stainless steel breadbox (purchased from Gloria's store) was also a mess, and after I finished washing the stove and the dishes I set to work on rectifying the problem.

At this point, Sneakers began speaking more loudly in that rich baritone voice of his, asking me why the dog was favoured and was it true that carbohydrates were the things that had made me so fat. I ignored him and, putting the breadbox on top of the fridge, I saw the mountains of dust...so I dusted and then, knowing that 2+2=4, I cleaned out the fridge and the back of the microwave (ew ew ew) and then, just as I had completed these tasks -- the kettle not making so much as a squeak -- I looked down and saw the filth of the floors at which point I heard both my mother and Sneakers speaking simultaneously: "Cleanliness is next to godliness," they said, and knowing this to be true, I set to washing the floors.

Well, one thing led to another -- the kettle only now faintly hissing -- and the long and the short of it is, I washed not only the floor but the windows, opened the mail, made the bed, cleaned out the bathtub, vacuumed, did two loads of laundry, carried two indoor plants outdoors (one of them snapping, half-stem), scraped the rest of the glue off the walls, repainted the sewing machine (this time with Sico paint and not Farrow and Ball, and let me tell you...), and got in a word or two to the cat on the subject of bad manners. Just as he was refuting my argument, his eyes widened, alerting me to the sound of the faintly whistling kettle. Anyway, it's not a worry because he and I always go on in these ways, back and forth, frick and frack, and besides, who cares? He went off to the corner store and bought Peek Frean sugar cookies, and when he got back we sat at the dining room table in the afternoon sun and enjoyed the best darned cup of tea we ever drank.

Tea for two
And two for tea
Me for you
And you for me...

<:^)

In Memoriam

Farewell to Fred

American Idol Victory for Adam Lambert

Instead of doing the laundry, mopping, dish-washing, writing, tap dancing, fish-feeding or cat-brushing chores that I ought to be doing, I, overly invested in tonight's voting outcome of American Idol, have been trolling youtube sites finding, listening to, and favouriting videos of Adam Lambert performances. While I know that Canadian Idol was last won by a musician -- Theo Tams -- who is openly gay (I thought at the time, there's hope for us all), Canadian Idol has since gone off the air (temporarily they claim, but you never know).

And who can say, apart from Adam Lambert, whether he is gay, bisexual or plainly curious? But what I love, my mouth hanging wide open, are the hundreds and hundreds of posters on the various sites who have left comments declaring that they couldn't care less what Adam's sexual orientation is and, more, outrageously defending his right to be gay. The fact is, they think he's sexy and that he can sing, and they have no interest -- none whatsoever -- in who he might or might not be having sexual fantasies about.

I think back now to the 1970s, coming out of The Quest, a groundbreaking and now-defunct gay bar on Yonge Street, where I had gone to dance and drink with friends. I remember a horrendous, strangely hollow rumbling echoing along St. Joseph Street where fifty or so self-proclaimed heterosexual men with baseball bats had gathered and were beating the bejesus out of another 50 or so non-heterosexual men who were poring out of the Manatee Club. And I am not so stupid or ill-informed as to think that these sorts of grotesque incidents no longer occur. A baseball bat episode occurred not five years ago in downtown Toronto, and as far as I know not enough people cared or took action.

Still, gay bashing is now labelled (and even often treated) as a hate crime in Canada, and Parliament has legalized gay marriage. We have moved far enough forward since the 1970s that changes are visible, and in some cases, tangible. But sitting at my computer today, I wasn't expecting this outpouring of support for a young man and his talent, regardless of his sexual orientation. Call me old (see yesterday's entry), but I am generally optimistic (and probably too foolish) about what I think is the good-natured intent of anyone who might be voting for a singer on American Idol. (I can't believe I just wrote that.)

On the other hand, I will always be cynical enough (but just enough) to think that there is every possibility that Adam will not make it through to the final two -- too many Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, Sarah Palins...are in media evidence and remain popular with too many extremist Americans. But judging from the volumes of passionate support, and given his explosive talent, his engaging, charismatic personality, and his firm sense of self-worth, in my book Adam Lambert has already won.

'Til Death Do Us Part

There are perks to getting older. In fact, not being dead seems to be one of them. But there are times when I waver on the entire point, finding myself variously delighted, annoyed and sometimes puzzled by the wide range of responses I receive out in the world.

Today, for example, I went into the pet store to buy a small vial of fish food for Edith and Truman. The two women behind the counter -- one playing with the in-house cat, the other struggling with a crossword puzzle -- looked at me as if I needed a walker and a cane. "Can we help you, Ma'am? Do you need a bag for that? Do you need help to your car, Ma'am? Can we open the door for you?" I showed them my Do Not Resuscitate card, thanked them, and hobbled out of the store.

My next stop, at Home Depot, sent one staff member running -- running -- to retrieve a cart for me; another dashing to raise his arm an extra 1.5 inches to recover a plant pot, and a third coming up the rear, asking me if I needed help with the six small items I was pushing, in the cart, toward my car.

If that wasn't enough, when I went into the liquor store to purchase a Special Occasion Permit, the man behind the counter bowed to me deferentially, as if I were some aged queen -- he himself having to be at least 65.

It can't be the colour of my hair. I have had that since I was twenty-five, alongside millions of other prematurely greying individuals. It can't be the crows feet or the jowls, either, because those have been stamped into my face for decades. Truth be told, in these ways I have looked like Howdy Doody since I was seven. And I can still, most days, stand upright and eat my food without drooling.

Mind you, half-kidding aside, the statistics on Alzheimer's Disease -- a new case diagnosed every 70 seconds -- frighten me. I remember a patient in Ottawa -- a sweet man of fifty, so lost in Alzheimer's by the time he was 53 he was unable to return to our office. I am so worried about the possibility (for any of us) that I cannot bring myself to watch the new series on HBO, which I am sure is perfectly crafted and vitally important. I remember those many beautiful faces looking up at me -- innocently, with outrage, in heartbreak -- wondering just who they were and what they were doing in that chair, this strange 'young' woman poking at their eyes.

I suppose, then, that there are worse things than being offered a seniors' discount at the movies years before my time or having young men run willy nilly through a parking lot locating inanimate objects for me. I could be sitting on a couch in a lonely residence, the late afternoon sun catching the small drips that run from my nose onto my dinner tray. Still, I wouldn't mind if, just once in a while, when I go out into the world someone would call me young woman or darling. There is a time for everything, after all.

Special Delivery for Mother's Day

I am torn on the subject of Mother's Day. On the one hand, the day seems a commercial contrivance, (modernly, at least) designed to encourage mass shopping. I would love to be that fly on the wall flitting from store to store, tallying up the cost of flowers and chocolates and ceramic candy dishes. On the other hand, I both had a mother and am a mother, and am therefore not averse to the occasional clump of daisies or Mars Bar myself. I suppose the question is one of balance, but who am I to judge?

When I open my Funk & Wagnalls to page 884 I read (following moth-eaten)

moth-er n. 1. A female who has borne offspring; female parent. 2. A female who adopts a child, or who otherwise holds a maternal relationship toward another. 3. The characteristics as regarded belonging to a mother: It appealed to the mother in her. 4. Anything that creates, nurtures, or protects something else. 5. Usually cap. A title given to nuns of certain rank, especially to the head of a female religious community. 6. In Christian Science, the divine and eternal Principle: God. -- adj. 1. Native: mother tongue. 2. Relating to or characteristic of a mother: mother love. 3. Holding a maternal relation: the mother church. 4. That is a mother: a mother goat. -- v.t. 1.To bring forth as a mother; produce; create. 2. To care for or protect as a mother. 3. To admit or claim parentage, authorship, etc., of.

I will not add the second definition (also known as mother of vinegar) or the hyphenates and (other) compounds that follow. I think it enough to say that Funk & Wagnalls has provided a fine set of definitions from which (or whose) denotation all connotative meaning shall derive.

Henceforth...

This is easy enough to understand, along with the word's various attributes/qualities/characteristics/associations. We will each of us have our own, of course, but as Billy Joel once sang, and so it goes. Here's where the word mother takes me:

a) Down a curving garden path with Mr. McGarrity on a hot day when the gladiolas are taller than my knees and sold by that tender woman in the shaded hat in her Fredericton yard when I was five and sent there by my mother to choose at my will and wonder (a dollar left over for twenty chocolate popsicles), and home again along the river and past the colourful clapboard houses to make my way through the park and the children playing in the dandelions not yet picked and beyond the tennis courts that in the winter became a skating rink where I was taught by my mother to skate, first holding and pushing the chair, then scarf-tied on board for a rest, my mother's mittened hands clasping its back and the sound of her laughter mingling with mine, around and around in the blackness of winter night lit only by soft dust of snow and the swirls of her cigarette smoke.

b) Thin dandruffy legs propped in cold stirrups, nurses' shining foreheads obstructing my view of the baby about to emerge, the doctor calling out centimetres faster than Mark Twain can shout "Two fathoms!" on a Mississippi river boat, knees knocking together (mine, not his) (although from where I was lying I didn't have the best perspective) in fear and anticipation, nurses yelling, "No dear! Don't do that!" and four women in labour (one in the hallway), and one of the nurses asking, "Is there a full moon?" and me looking over at the incubator wondering why it's there and knowing it's because I am, she is, two months early, and her father sedated in the room next door, and whoosh! out she comes, one warm push flying into the world on water and blood (and a wing and a prayer) and behind her the most beautiful ball of purple and pink and me, so young and naive, asking, "What is that?" and the shiny-headed nurses all smiling and saying. "Afterbirth, dear," and she, tiny baby, rushed away in the plastic bed only to come to me three days later, hairy and red, and me, in my delicate housecoat, saying softly and carefully to the ward nurse who was sitting on the clean white sheets, "Oh, that's not my baby -- that's an Indian baby" -- thinking then of my own darling new-born brother whose mother was no mother at all, and she so tiny and dear with hardly a nose and two slits for her eyes and the mouth of an angel with diaphanous wings and a child I called mine and a woman she later called mother.

c) Solid and less dandruffy legs not propped in cold stirrups but spread on the bed, her partner needing sedation out in the hallway too afraid that the tattoo on her lower back would cause multiple problems and nothing quite working in terms of the freezing and panting and pain of the labour that seemed to go on forever and ever and ever and finally a baby, a glorious girl, the most ethereal colour of red mixed with grey popping out and her eye/s on the world as she swivelled her neck, first left and then right, taking a breather before doing the rest of the work she had come here to do, and unshiny nurses in much quieter light saying, "Isn't she lovely?" and yes they were right, but lovely doesn't quite do it for me. (The Hallelujah chorus just popped into my head: Beautiful! Glorius! Wonderful!)

d) The Singing Nun (Dominique, nique, nique I will tell of Dominique, His goodness to acclaim); The Sisters of Mercy (they are not departed or gone...); Nuns on the Run; The Flying Nun; Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story; Meg Tilly in Agnes of God; Rosalind Russell and those troubled angels; Two Mules for Sister Sarah (and whoa! Shirley MacLaine's eye make-up); Lilies of the Field (they toil not, neither do they spin), and perhaps my favourite, The Bells of St Mary's -- the beautiful tuberculin Ingrid Bergman innocent in her rocking chair, white wimple framing her wide eyes and warm translucent skin.

Whatever mothers are, we are not Freud's excuse for everything bad. Most of us do the best we can with what we have been (and have not been) given. And unlike the lilies of the field, we toil and we spin. We sit up nights and sicken ourselves with worry. We lose our tempers and wonder why. We play Bingo and share our winnings. We go to pageants and we cry. We bake lopsided cakes and burn cookies. We buy special treats. We take our children to school and to our work to learn life's lessons. We bring puppies and kittens into our homes, along with other living and lively things, such as birds and fish and Chia pets. We tramp into the woods and chop down Christmas trees and race to the beach after school. We play baseball in the park and slide down churchyard hills on cardboard in the snow. We help with paper routes, with homework, and with bullies. We share stories and movies and clothing, and offer up money when we can and sometimes when we shouldn't. We love ardently, bravely, and freely, and occasionally -- occasionally more than occasionally -- we make mistakes.

And sometimes, when we're very very lucky, we are given suede-and-leather laptop writing tables and brand new cameras, and flowers, delivered by kind-hearted middle-aged men -- "Hold the bottom, dear" -- who are obviously married to mothers who know both the thrill of opening the door to elegant and fragrant bouquets of yellow-striped purple irises, dainty bluebells, mauve daisies, pink carnations (a white sports coat...), purple-wine asters and a happy spray of baby's breath, as well as the thoughtful, compassionate, generous daughters and sons who send them.

Happy Mother's Day to you all.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. Oscar Wilde

American Idol Contestants Vilified

Unfortunately, Lynn Crosbie can’t be charged with defamation, although I am not sure how her victims would feel about that. Funny, too, that she does not see the irony in her criticisms of an online journalist who mocked Adam Lambert in the same way that she makes fun of just about everyone else.

I feel the same passion for Adam, by the way, that Lynn Crosbie purports to feel, so it isn’t that I am not equally appalled by the aspersions cast against him (and against Liberace, in fact). I am riveted to the television when he performs, and I sit on the edge of the couch waiting for his wonderfully half-wicked laugh. He seems warm and kind and somewhat self-effacing, and he has an appealing awkwardness that I find charming in anyone.

But in liking him and appreciating his expansive talent, I have no need to defame everyone else, as Lynn Crosbie has so cruelly managed in her Tuesday, May 4 article for Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

At first, I couldn’t believe what I was reading: “…trash like Kellie Pickler, plainly disturbing screakers like Fantasia Barrino, and plankton-eaters [a synonym for bottom-feeders] like Ruben Studdard.”

What does Crosbie mean by trash? Has she listened to any of Pickler’s interviews, for example, in which the young woman talks openly about her extremely abusive childhood and her struggle with depression? Has she watched Pickler’s face fall into tears as she sings beautifully lyrical songs she has written about a mother who abandoned her so many years ago? And what is a screaker? Is this a coy hybrid of squawker and screecher? Is that how audience members felt listening to Barrino sing Summertime? And why is Ruben Studdard relegated to the bottom of the sea? Or is there some underlying prejudice at work here, an insidious slam against the poor or against those who happen to be brown-skinned? Who can tell, given that so much of what Crosbie writes is so abjectly grotesque.

It isn’t enough that so much of her writing is relegated to the easy hook or to feigning a glibness that I thought had passed out of our culture last year, but that Crosbie needs to offend the poor, the marginalized, Mormons, Christians, middle-aged women, anyone guilty of a “butch” stance, musical adaptations, and the contestants themselves is appalling. I have no idea why she needs to dismiss Kris Allen as “best using this show as a costly, occasionally mortifying curriculum vitae for record offers” but I am horrified—horrified—by her slander of (a man she describes as a “huge favourite”) Danny Gokey. Crosbie writes:

“Why is Gokey, this 29-year-old, evangelical Christian, Frankenstein-awkward, nasal destroyer of music, a favourite? Some maintain that it is because his wife of seven years, Sophia, died four weeks before he auditioned, a tragic detail the producers milked, and that Gokey himself exploited by performing Endless Love, crying and flashing his (usually not worn) wedding ring, several weeks ago. Gokey never looks sad, or even a bit blue. I have grieved goldfish longer than him. No one grieves by auditioning for American Idol.”

First off, what has Gokey’s religion to do with his singing? Second, if he is a nasal destroyer of music, why is he being favourably compared to Michael MacDonald, a gold- and platinum-selling singer/songwriter and noted member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers? Third—and unspeakably unbearable—who is Lynn Crosbie—who is anyone—to criticize or even speak to the question of loss and grieving? That she claims it her right to do so, that she accuses this man of using his dead wife, whom he apparently does not mourn, as a stepping stone to fame is perhaps the worst example of jaded sensationalistic journalism I have read in a long time. In fact, there are few words to combat what appears to be Lynn Crosbie’s soullessness.

I am surprised that her comments about David Cook, “flushed with approbation” as she puts it, and “hitting big notes the plain songs [Eleanor Rigby has suddenly become a plain song] could scarcely accommodate” (how is it that he won, I ask myself) didn’t sink into the abyss of now-dead brothers with brain cancer.

Finally, and yet minorly when viewed against everything else, several lessons in comma and semi-colon usage, subject/verb agreement, redundancy, misplaced referents, and sentence fragments wouldn’t hurt a woman who works for one of Canada’s major newspapers. Someone also ought to tell her that, even more than grammar, the critical elements of fine writing are compassion, empathy, balance and truth. Then again, what do I know? I am, after all—as Crosbie disingenuously describes women of her own generation—a sexually depraved star-maker who writes blog entries for no fee at all.

In Treatment: Life-Altering TV

It may be because I had (albeit arguably) the worst psychotherapist in history -- when I told her that I was, apparently, an INFP, she said, without a hint of humour, "Oh. Is the n for neurrrrrrrrrotic?" which didn't come close to her calling my mother a prostitute (not true. My mother was an alcoholic) or telling me I had to pay for sessions I could not attend, including the appointment I missed on account of skin graft surgery where I happened to hemorrhage -- or the fact that she is Israeli (I saw a documentary years ago about recidivism rates in prisons around the world, and Israel had the lowest rates, which was partly because inmates have their own therapists, one on one) but probably mostly because she had long ago left her home country and, unfortunately for me, moved to Ottawa -- all of which left me curious about the Israeli-borne television program, In Treatment. She was so egregiously horrible, in fact, that Don and I convinced ourselves that she was playing the role of my father in an effort to make me realize how abusive he had been so that I could work through the torment and come out cured (like a ham) on the other side. Talk about stupid.

I wasn't into my first session of In Treatment, however, when I was hooked, what with young gymnast, Sophie -- played uncannily well by actress Mia Wasikowska -- so believably convincing me that she wanted to convince herself that her bike mishap had been, truly, an accident. Truth be told, there isn't a session goes by where I don't see some part of myself, my family members, my friends, my enemies...all of us vulnerable and awkward in the face of our own frail and occasionally failed humanity, sitting on that couch or tiptoeing around the room peeking into private corners. And therapist Paul, played expertly by Gabriel Byrne -- who is even older than I am and yet still considered vitally alive -- seems to have stolen my parents and made them his own. (Speaking of stealing, some of the incidents are so close to my own life that I wonder if that awful woman in Ottawa took my notes -- I wrote the notes, she didn't. I brought them into her office and read from them, so terrified of her was I, and I left them with her at the end of the fifty minutes -- and packed them up and took them with her on her semi-annual pilgrimages to Israel.)

Anyway, this week I watched the episode with that darling chubby-cheeked child, Oliver, whose mother was just off on what she said would be a one-week vacation (I am panicked now, of course, that she won't come back. I was told when I was seven that I was going to my father's for a two-week vacation and, five years later, on August 31, my mother came to get me), and I saw in his troubled face that he feels as if he has disappointed his parents to the degree that he is the source of all of their woes, which isn't how my youngest child would have ever had to feel, of course...but...the thought that I chose to leave our home on the island to take up a one-year masters program four provinces away when my boy was a mere ten years old, and that I didn't in any way understand that this could a) devastate him b) change our relationship permanently c) create myriad misunderstandings in his head about my feelings for him is mind-boggling.

It isn't enough to say that, despite a brand new honours English degree (with a 92% overall standing, so I ought to have been employable), I could not get a desk job on the island (I had not, after all, been born there, which accounted for about 85% of unemployment in those days); that we were desperate to move away, and had been desperate to move away for years; that I wanted and badly needed to improve my career options; that when Don had had to go away on business for months at a time, which was rare but did occur, the household ran well and happily, and that, were I out-of-province, Don could then apply for a lateral transfer. As a kind woman once told me about adult behaviour in general, "There are reasons, but no excuses." And she was right. I ought to have taken my son with me. The other two children were older and happy to help out at home with Mom away for a few months, my older son ultimately thriving and my sixteen-year-old daughter getting to sip sherry for the first time.

Anyway, as it turned out, I couldn't bear to be away from my children or from Don, and for this and other marginal reasons I handed back the $15,000.00 scholarship after attending three weeks' worth of classes. In the meantime, Don applied for a lateral transfer, and that's what brought us all together in Ottawa four months later and, in fact, to that nightmare of a therapist. (Ironic, isn't it?) But had I not gone to that she-devil, I might never have tuned into In Treatment, and I might never have experienced those TV moments -- important moments -- that have taken me further back to my mother and father, to my friends and enemies, and to my lovely child whose hair smelled like freshly-cut hay and who cried for ten hours straight hours the day his mother set off in the K-Car at 5:00 a.m. Were I to do it all again, of course, I would understand my importance to my children and the fact that, despite their wonderful father, I mattered, too. And I would have packed a little suitcase and taken my boy with me, and while he would have also missed his Dad, he would have blossomed on account of our wonderful mother-and-son adventure.

Apart from a handful of television programs -- The New Adventures of Old Christine; Samantha Who?; The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency -- I don't have a lot of positive comments to make about prime time TV. But I can't wait to tune in to In Treatment on Sunday and Monday nights so that I can discover the kinds of things about myself and about all the people in my life that help me heal and homogenize -- and I don't have to pay $150.00 an hour to do it. I have plenty of regrets about the many mistakes I have made but, once in awhile, when I am lying back on the couch with my Pepsi and potato chips, I listen to Paul and I know that somewhere, someday, someone will forgive me.