FAMILY

KILLING SPIDERS: A Metaphor for Marriage
As a boy, I lived with my two brothers in my parent’s basement. Dad had the old man who lived next door put up some walls to divide up some of the space. No ceiling, just open rafters and cement floor. It was full of spiders.

They were everywhere. Of course, mostly you’d see them at night but practically anything left undisturbed for a day or so might hide one. Touch something in the basement and one would scurry off madly. Any corner with a bit of dust in it and chances there was also a cobwebbed hideout holding one of these predators.

I had difficulty sleeping from a young age and often stayed up reading. Out they’d come in the night. It got so I would stare at the page of a book and suddenly get a “sense,” a Spidey-sense call it, where I somehow knew there was one nearby. Like the feeling you get sometimes when someone is staring at you. You look around and, sure enough, some dolt is fixated upon you with bulging eyes as if they’d been at it for some time. It was like that, a little unsettling. A human you can stare back, with a spider, it’s just… a little spooky.

Whenever it came to me in the night, I could lift my eyes from the pages in front of me and in the dim light, see a spider somewhere near, hanging down from its thread of silk, ready to explore my bed. Sometimes it was inches from my head. Right there.

Or, I’d look at one of the walls and let my eyes linger, searching the wood chips in the press board, until I found the crawler which had summoned my attention, hiding there somewhere, in play sight.

Years later, I thought I’d put this all behind me. I was long gone from the basement with its eight-legged denizens and had lived in many places since.

Now, as a married man, for some reason it returned.  Missus had been her family’s eldest, coming as she did from a Northern Ontario mix of French and English parents. She was… outdoorsy, and pretty much fearless.

I’m not sure how it happened first. I suspect she encountered a spider and I demurred somehow. Perhaps, I only hesitated.  It’s my conjectured recollection she may have seized the moment to act. She was competitive that way. Perhaps, I’d already told her of the basement. I don’t remember.

I’m sure I did later or at some point. Likely, I had at a time we were both high, the drugs or booze fueling a prattling on about ancient nonsense. The eeriness of those spider encounters late at night while under the influence of Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Herbert and others would have been hard to resist retelling.

My father had gone through a sci-fi stage in the later 1960s and early 1970s. He read a couple hundred of these paperbacks and they were left around for his nine children. It was a time when our family had a bookcase in every room, even the kitchen. I read them all, not exactly an antidote to sleeplessness, but still.

It was much later, after going in during 1981 and spending all 1982 inside, and when I’d been transferred from the penitentiary to the farm camp next door, that dad came by for a visit. He brought his whole sci-fi collection and donated them to the meager library there. It was pure escapism, something the guys were thanking me for to the end of my bit.

So, however it happened, my missus at the time took over spider duty, and looking back, she seemed to relish this power over me. Blinded by self-importance, overlooking my own shortcomings, what at first was an acknowledgement of her courage at breaking stereotypes, well-intentioned but misguided idealism,  experimenting with role reversal after the social movements of the 1970s, it soon became an self-emasculating indulgence of male weakness.

See, I let her kill the spiders. Then, and going forward. All of them.

I could have killed spiders. I knew how. I’d killed many of them, maybe hundreds in my time. But I let her persuade me with false concern. It was, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” and up she’d jump with her winning smile to take care of the critter before I could give it another thought. It seemed harmless.

And, to me it was just a fucking spider, for fuck’s sake. “Look, if you want to kill the spider have at it,” I thought, slightly amused even. But it meant something else to her.

And, the more she was willing to kill spiders, the more I was willing to placate her. I felt obligated to be grateful. I played along. She was doing something for me it seems, and so I should be thankful. I was still essentially a polite Canadian boy.

It was part of my nice-guy syndrome. In those days, I championed people around me but with a covert contract in mind: when I tell you you are great, hopefully you will do the same for me. I’ll feel liked, even loved for it. Nothing for nothing. I faked my appreciation, as if it mattered, for her sake I told myself.

I didn’t have the self-worth to stand my ground. I sensed the con but stuffed it. What was I thinking? The tune goes, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, t’was blind, but now I see.” Hindsight.

For men are not loved for not killing spiders. This was a gambit that was ass-backwards. I’d fallen into a trap. I’d been given just enough rope with which to hang myself. I’d been led down the garden path. Like Tony The Waiter said, “Anyone can be walked, Chris, it’s just a matter of approach.” I was being walked. I was walking myself.

I’d been closed using my own words. For now, she had a weakness she could point to. She could use it as a token, a gambling chit, for leverage. She had constructed an Ace gaff for the Ace lock to my status. She could turn her counterfeit key and empty me at will, like the coinbox on a pay washing machine.

But what did I know at 25 or 30? Not much. I was too busy making sure I wasn’t killed that week, less worried about my image in front of her. I had not yet learned that women cannot abide a weak man, no more than a man can abide a disloyal woman. I needed pain to learn the universal pact between these energies. And, suffer I would.

For a woman can sense weakness in a man from afar. Using all the powers of her practicality, verbal skills, double-hemispheric thinking, and acute intuition, she can sniff it out like a cadaver dog looking for a body. Abuse of empathy is her birthright.

She maneuvers covertly, gathering intelligence,  watching and recording patterns, divulging only as much as needed to serve her pragmatism. Glad-handing, she can draw out her mark like a carney running a midway joint. She can run close interpersonal game as well as a politician can game the public.

And when she confirms weakness, she will sometimes tell you. You have heard me say this kind of woman is exceedingly rare, a unicorn in fact. It’s far more likely she will either rub salt in the wounds of your weakness or hold you in silent contempt.

General truth: Women don’t fuck men who don’t kill spiders for them.

In fact, it gets much worse. Killing spiders is a minor but fair representation of a man’s usefulness to a woman. Part of his power, but also of his expendability. Killing a Black Widow or Brown Recluse is not her risk to take. It’s ours, us men, because better we than she.

Give me a hundred years of feminism, that fact won’t change. Not now, not likely ever. Why would it? Self-interest is paramount.

No one should lament this lopsided arrangement. It is just how things are. She is more precious as the carrier of life. Who am I to question these forces? What hubris do I require to tell the universe it is wrong?

If you were going to bet, should you take odds based on a social movement embraced by a tiny minority for at most a century, more like a few decades? Or, should you go long on your investment based on Mother Nature herself?

I take nature. I wager on the force which says there are a hundred million stars in the Andromeda Galaxy and shut my mouth. You know what else? We lack awe. All of us. It took a long time to get things working as well as they do, why fuck with it? It took forever to train men to be married men, let’s not go off the rails now. We need to see ourselves as smaller in the the grander scheme of things. Awe, more awe.

My first marriage didn’t last. Big picture says that’s predictable, but you never know. Having trouble at home? Who kills the spiders?

My current missus is afraid of spiders. That is, her sister is afraid of spiders and the more she visits over the last 13 years, the more missus has become an arachnophobe. That’s fine with me.

I just don’t want the fear of spiders transferred to my children. So, I teach them about spiders, about all kinds of bugs. Practically every jar or plastic dish in my house has been co-opted as bug carrier. The kids are both fine, they think bugs are cute. Daughter calls them pets. Poor kids, I should get them a dog.

And, when that familiar shriek sounds out at home, I know what’s up. I like being relied upon and I don’t fail her. I have a Pseudo-Scorpion living in my bathroom behind the mirror who preys upon the drain flies which peak in numbers in the summer. It’s too cool to kill.

Other times, I’ve acted more drastically, especially when the cold of fall sends scurrying critters indoors for shelter.  Strolling over leisurely to capture her spider, I have looked at her and crushed it in my bare fist. Then walked away to wash my hand off, ignoring her reaction.

Me and the missus? All I can tell you is things are good at my house. Good indeed.

Stay powerful.

© Christopher K. Wallace, Jan, 2019 all rights reserved
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https://ckwallace.com

Tough Love

I was drying out in the Civic Hospital. It was back in the early 1980s during the AIDS scare, but long before the discovery of Hepatitis C in 1989. I was in an isolation room as a precaution. So much was unknown then.

My liver markers were all off: leucocytes, reticular counts, liver function tests and bilirubin. I was also quite jaundiced and tired. Things were catching up with me.

Lying alone in my single room in the middle of the day, I was surprised when Ma popped in unannounced. I hadn’t seen her for a while so it was a mystery as to how she knew I was there.

She was her usual kind and accepting self, offering encouraging words and faithful support. But I noticed she was rushed, her answers short, a tension just under the surface of her demeanour that I couldn’t quite grasp and put a reason to.

After a few minutes, she told me to take care and that she was leaving, mentioning my father was outside waiting to see me. Of course, she didn’t give me enough time to ask why he hadn’t come in. She said goodbye and hurried out of the room.

As my gaze followed her out, she swung open the heavy door with its tiny porthole window common to the isolation ward. There I could see my father in rumpled suit jacket and tie, purposefully pacing back and forth in the hallway. Before I could say anything, she was gone and in he came.

I tried to say hello but he cut me off. Coming closer, he spoke with just a hint of some ill-defined emotion, the kind you might see when you can’t tell if the person is hurt or angry. He said something like this to me: “Christopher, if you keep living the way you are, surely, you are going to die…and soon. When you do, we will gather together as a family and mourn your passing. It will be our last goodbye. Afterwards, we will bury you and then… we’ll forget you.”

With that, he turned and walked out.

Admittedly, he’d caught me off guard. I was stunned. I was in a hospital after all. What a jerk, I thought. As the door closed behind him, the pressure in me rose. I railed internally with questions, invectives; the cussing in my mind going off like fireworks.

He had left right away, so it wasn’t like I could argue with him, making it even more frustrating. How absolutely unfair of him, I decried to myself.

Outraged, in my mind’s eye I saw myself in my hospital nightgown, following him down the hallway, demanding, what exactly did he mean by that whole “forget you” bit? And who was HE to be speaking for all of MY brothers and sisters? There are eight of them; had he done a poll? Was this all based on their consensus? I wanted to call them and check for myself.

The scene revolved continuously through my mind as I lay there on my bed, him long gone. I must have stayed steaming for quite a while, fuming to myself over the images. Mumbling at times out loud that it was none of his business, damn it, how I chose to live my life. This was my problem, not anyone else’s.

But in time, I calmed down. I couldn’t stay agitated forever. Eventually, my anger subsided enough to return to a kind of normal. My breathing slowed, my thinking became more introspective. The scene was still fresh in my mind. I kept going over its details: the way he’d left me there by myself; the harshness of his judgment and the finality of its imagery. Suddenly, I felt alone, very alone… and saddened by it all.

I thought about my sisters and brothers. Childhood images flashed by, with them as freckle-faced kids on adventures we’d shared. I was so hurt; I felt a clear and justified self-pity. It was cruel to come into someone’s hospital room—a real medical patient with real medical issues—and say stupid stuff. Anyone would sympathize with how wrong it was.

I felt sad, lonely, and sorry for myself, resigned even. It was all so depressing. As if I didn’t have enough problems.

The more I thought about it, I remembered the way my mother acted during her short visit. She was clearly preoccupied. She had gone through the motions of visiting, but betrayed a hidden agenda. It was then I realized my mother had been in on it from the start. It was a damn set up!

The nerve of her to come in here with her “sweet as a lamb” approach and then help him pull off this kind of bullshit. She was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that’s what she was!

Now I was mad again.

I could just imagine the two of them concocting their approach for maximum effect before arriving. “He’s in isolation?” he would have asked. She would have replied, “Yes, that’s what the others are telling me. Here’s the room number.”

Dad would have given marching orders: “You go in first; I’ll wait in the hallway. Don’t stay too long. I don’t want you making him feel any better.” She would have assented — like the devoted wife she was.

What a supreme jerk, I thought, envisioning how the whole scene played out in the car on the way over. The gig was up; I was on to them. That’s it, no more Mr. Nice Guy from me. They’re cut off!

After a while, having made that decision, I calmed down. My mind slowed its racing thoughts. My indignity had peaked and ebbed, like a tide of tension leaving shore for sea.

I felt alone again. Now, I was down. I felt it in my body, tired, sorry and sympathetic. It was sad, you see.

I imagined myself at a funeral, my own, watching all of my siblings mourn as they got ready to bury me. I could see my sisters crying in pain like they had when I’d been punished as a child — or like the time my father tossed me out of the house at age 15. I regretted I wouldn’t see them again, that I would have caused them pain. I was hurt, not for myself, but valiantly I thought, only for them.

That’s when I realized it was my father who was causing this anguish to befall my siblings. It was he who was making them turn their backs on me and to literally leave me in the dirt. It was he who was demanding once again the ultimate ostracism of one of his family members. Once more… what a jerk!

Now I was mad again.

The infinity loop

To be honest, I swung from one side of those emotions to the other for a long time after the incident at the hospital. I had no idea why; I guess I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I lacked the resources to give me a deeper understanding of my father’s intentions. Neither could I see the basis of how I was reacting to his attempt at tough love; as an effort to shock me into seeing my life as it was.

If I tell you a good joke, you will hopefully laugh. After a minute or two, you will stop laughing as your brain normalizes whatever incongruence made you see the funny.

If you watch a sad movie, you may be so moved by its story and characters that you weep. Once your tears are discharged as pent up tension, your body will adjust, return to some kind of equilibrium and crying will stop.

This is the familiar homeostasis at work on your emotions, returning them to a balanced state. Laughing at a joke or crying over a sad scene in a movie are times where we suspend our own personal disbelief to get the full emotion—laughter or tears—of a situation. In our personal lives, it’s less easily managed simply because we have more at stake: our sense of self.

So picture an infinity sign with two opposites of emotion on each of its ends: frustration, blaming, anger, etc., on one side; sadness, self-pity, depression, etc., on the other.

Something happens to trigger us emotionally. Start anywhere in the loop; it depends on the person.

Let say at first we become frustrated, angry, blaming or even fall into a rage. You can’t remain that way forever so in time we return along the eight towards our feelings centre—our internal balance.

However, since whatever triggered us wasn’t resolved, the pain remains… and staying in the centre is temporary. Instead, we might continue on to the other side of the loop, moving from frustration, blaming and anger to experiencing sadness, self-pity, depression, etc.  In turn, we can’t remain like that forever either. So at some point we return towards emotional neutral.

But again, since we weren’t able to resolve whatever it was that got us so upset, we think about it until we are angry again. This can go on for days, weeks, years even, where the cycle repeats over and over to exhaustion. Tony Robbins calls it the crazy 8.

It creates a tension inside us that craves relief, often an escape by whatever means necessary. Some go and get drunk; a way many choose to deal with emotionally charged events when lacking resources to respond in a more empowering way.

But it’s a never-ending loop, darn it. That’s why the infinity symbol is so appropriate: it goes on forever. The trick is to escape the infinity loop at the top, as opposed to exiting out the bottom. Taking the high road is the perfect metaphor, and it starts first with our own re-adjustment of the meaning we give things.

None of us is immune to the emotional swings of the Infinity Loop: attachment, fear, our expectations, shame and guilt, all of these conspire to put us under their emotional control. Where we differ is in how fast we can extricate ourselves from its cycle. That takes courage, honesty, acceptance, a fair bit of humility and forgiveness even; and often it takes space.

It’s all in the meaning

It took time, a few more years in fact, but eventually I resolved things in a way that gave me a deeper appreciation for what the old naval officer had been trying to do.

I realized it was my lifestyle that was causing others pain; but more importantly, I had no right to do that to people who loved me. Up to then, I might have thought it didn’t matter because I couldn’t acknowledge anyone cared. I had such a low opinion of myself that in my shame, I felt I had rights to self-pity, anger, and the dysfunctional life I lived. Perhaps I could let my guard down and see things by the light of a different day.

That minor shift allowed me to reconstruct the episode with more insight; in a way that to my mind gave us both back our dignity. I assigned new meaning to the hospital episode with my father based on a more profound perception of his intentions.

He wasn’t there to hurt me; he was there to protect himself and the others from the hurt I was causing by living so closely to destruction and death. It wasn’t malicious at all. In his clumsy way, it was an act of caring for his family. By extension, it was a desperate attempt to care for me too.

In the ensuing years after the hospital visit, I kept thinking of the old man and the way his lip quivered as he struggled to get the words out quickly so as to not lose the power of what he had to say. I’d overlooked the impact of that image in the aftermath of my reaction. But it was there; embedded in my subconscious as tiny flashes of recall, unavoidably part of the scene. All I had to do was focus on it.

He was in my hospital room, a deeply faulted man but still a naval commander and patriarch to a family of nine children—five of them grown sons—trying his best to be tough when it was obvious by the look on his face his heart was breaking. That’s the image’s meaning that has stayed with me.

His love wasn’t so tough; it was just plain love.

Stay Powerful,

Christopher K Wallace
©2015 all rights reserved

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Summer vacation is over. Charlotte hits grade two today and the school year is off! Little Howie, aged 5, starts senior kindergarten in two days. Charlie was a little pissed her brother got 2 extra days of summer vacation. The cost of maturity, I suppose.

As a man, and as a father to two young children, I tell you what I’ll be watching for in these next few years. Ideologies which run counter to science. I’ll be careful to scrutinize the curriculum which my kids are exposed to for bullshit.

Especially, I’ll be watchful for how it is boys and girls learn differently. Oh, why is that you suppose? Because, contrary to the well-meant idiocy I read about every day about gender being a social construct, on average I know males and females learn differently.

Why is that? Well, it’s because our brains are wired differently. Hormones do that. Chromosomes do that. DNA does that. Socialization? Very little.

How do you shut the feminists up about male/female differences on the spot? Here’s how: mention women respond to certain medications differently than men.

In fact, in one example from the emergent field of chronomedicine, men with colorectal cancer who took meds at midnight when a certain enzyme level was highest survived longer because the enzyme helped clear the meds and avoided painful side effects. There was no advantage for women.

Hang on here, I thought gender was a social construct?

The same goes for learning. Men’s and women’s brains operate differently. Any guy who has had to contend with their woman’s “logic” knows what I’m talking about. It’s not inferior, but it’s fucking different to say the least.

Consider these facts cited recently by the Gurian Institute:

“Boys, on average, have lower language arts and literacy scores than girls and, on average, use fewer words per day when reading, writing, and speaking are measured in totality (this is true of all industrialized and post-industrial countries).”  For more on this, go to google and check out the OECD PISA studies.

“Girls tend to excel in more fine motor activity tasks, especially in the early years, and boys tend to excel in more gross motor activities in the early years.  To confirm this, open any textbook or other book that deals with early childhood attachment and child growth. To go further into these sorts of differences, check out this Stanford University research:  https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html.

Boys tend to naturally seek out more aggressive, rough-and-tumble, and even physically dangerous play than girls.  This brain fact will also be confirmed in any study, textbook, or book you open on birth to five child development. If the fact were not in that resource—if someone tried to argue differently—the book would not get published or not find any audience, since all of us have confirmed this fact no matter our country or culture.” Michael Gurian

“Girls tend to talk about their feelings more during a given day than boys, i.e. have a higher words-for-feelings ratio; boys do not as easily or quickly access feelings when sitting still, while girls are more able to sit still and immediately access feelings in conversations.” (see The Male Brain and The Female Brain, by neuroscientist Louann Brizendine)

“Girls tend to move toward empathetic relational strategies more quickly than boys, while boys will often show their empathy through aggressive touch (e.g. pushing and prodding another boy to show love).” (see Why Gender Matters, by physician and neurologist Leonard Sax)

“Because males lateralize brain activity more than girls tend to, including moving activity from front to back in one hemisphere of the brain, and girls tend to move more activity between hemispheres, males more quickly apply logic (problem-solving) to emotional issues and girls are more likely to spend more time processing the emotions themselves, before problem-solving.” (see The Essential Difference, by neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen).

Another good resource is Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities by Diane Halpern, which sits on my bookshelf, now in it’s fourth edition.

Susan Pinker’s 2008 superb book, The Sexual Paradox, continues to be a valuable reference I use regularly. It’s a scholarly tome, so well-researched, but written in laymen’s language and replete with identifiable examples.

Then there are the popular titles about our differences which have been hitting the bookshelves since the days of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, first out in 1992. It’s worth noting John Gray is a PhD and continues to contribute to the gender discussion. Recently, he’s co-authors with Warren Farrell (another PhD) of the very well-researched, The Boy Crisis.

Is There Anything Good About Men, by Roy Baumeister, Professor Emeritus at Florida State is an excellent primer on the differences between men and women. Roy told me by email the feminists lambasted him for this book, which made me want to buy it even more.

Me, Myself, and Us, by Brian Little examines the Big 5 personality traits and mentions their differences in men and women. Professor Little works at Carleton University here in Ottawa, and Oxford: a pretty good academic spread.

The corporate training couple, Barbara and Allan Pease wrote a delightfully easy book to read called Why Men don’t Listen and Women can’t Read Maps, out in 2000 and still fun to reference.

I’ve just started on Man & Woman: an inside story by PhD Donald Pfaff. Like Diane Halpern’s Sex Differences series, Pfaff talks about small differences but doesn’t appear to hold back on big differences either. I’m looking forward to the rest of it. It goes deep on chemistry, which means estrogen, testosterone and oxytocin among others.

In reading Halpern’s Sex Differences for the first time, that’s what struck me. How alike we are in so many ways. And so much of the genders are similar. But the differences between us are real too, and often those define the relationship. It’s about our various interests.

Then, there’s my favourite Darwin quote:

Each animal species is a population of unique individuals who vary from one another. No feature or set of features is necessary, sufficient, or even frequent or typical of every individual in the population. Any summary of the population is a statistical fiction that applies to no individual.

Indeed. My wife has put the garbage out all but ten or so times in our 13 years together. I run the snowblower in winter and run the riding-mower in summer. She has cut some of the three acres needing mowing on occasion but hasn’t tackled the snow machine yet. She wants to though.

I change all the toilet paper and Scott towels in the house. I’m not sure why that is. I read to the kids before bed, she makes sure their teeth get brushed. At first she got me to slit the chickens and rabbits throats for slaughter, now she does it herself.

And I think that’s what you’ll find in most relationships. Men and women doing what it takes to survive. Preferences abound in the individual. Many of these are tendencies found in the wider sex. Men and women can pretty much do anything the other can do but they tend to have preferences. Where that’s the case, it ought to be respected without fear of transgressing someone’s errant model of the world.

Here’s another couple of interesting quotes.

“Our genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to the next as long as the two individuals being compared are two men or two women. But if we compare a woman and a man, the genetic differences are 15 times greater than the genetic differences for two males or two females.” David C. Page, M.D., Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different, not only in their internal function but in the ways that they experience illness. To care for them, we must see them for who they are: female and male.” Marianne J. Legato, M.D., in Eve’s Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine

Any guy who has grappled with understanding a sister, mother or significant other has known how different we are, maybe most of his life. Some close women friends have chided me, even telling me I needed to have a daughter to better learn about and understand women.

I scoffed at the idea at the time. Now I know they were right. Little girls teach men about love.

I swapped out the toilet when I moved to this old acreage and its old farmhouse. Installing the thing, I broke the reservoir reaching for pliers, allowing it to fall over and crack. I went back and explained my situation and got a good deal on another one, 40% off. Guy felt bad I’d bought 2 toilets there in one day.

This left me with 2 toilet seats. They come in their own cardboard box, and the extra was left lying around my garage. One day, while cleaning up, Charlie was tagging along chattering away. I came across the toilet seat box.

“Here you go Charlie, here’s a present to you,” I said, handing her the big box. “For me daddy? A present for me? she replied. “Yes, you take that inside to your mother and open it up, see what’s in it,” was my answer. Off she went.

About an hour later, I’d forgotten all about it when Charlie suddenly appeared before me in the garage. She didn’t look so happy. “Why did you give me a potty-seat, daddy? It’s not a good present. I thought you were giving me something nice and it’s just a potty-seat. That’s not very nice,” she told me.

Well, well, I thought to myself. She’s right. It was careless and not very thoughtful at all of me to raise her expectations and then trick her like that. I felt about two inches tall. There was only one thing to do: apologize.

I sat her down and told her it was a joke. She didn’t buy that one at all. “It’s not a very funny thing daddy. Who wants a potty-seat for a present?” to which I had no countering argument. I had to tell her it was selfish of me and thoughtless and I was sorry for tricking her.

To my surprise, she forgave me after warning me to not do something like that again. I replied I’d do my best but sometimes I make mistakes too. The important thing is to say your sorry and I was happy she forgave me. You could say I was out of the shitter… for now.

What would have happened if I gave that potty-seat to my son? We’ll never know for sure. But I’d be willing to bet he’d think it was cool. Maybe he’d sit it down somewhere and use it. He stands up and pisses wherever he likes out back as it is anyway, we live on 200 acres of bush.

But that potty-seat taught me a valuable lesson. And it confirmed what my gal-pals were telling me all these years. There are big differences, right down to the very beginnings of life. At 3, Charlie emptied her dresser and we caught her laying out all her clothes on the floor, matching up the tops and bottoms. Howie couldn’t care less. Give him a superhero costume and he’s in.

One final example for you. I used to run sales teams for subscription drives for newspapers. I’d put up bonuses to incite production. Depending on the mix of gender in my van on any given night, I could predict which kind of bonus would be the democratic choice.

We could use top seller, winner-take-all bonuses. Or we could use top three, 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd bonuses. Or, we could use a van bonus, where if we hit a certain level of production, the whole van was rewarded somehow.

As soon as the mix was 50% female reps, the van bonus was preferred. It got to be where I’d call it out at the start of the evening, “So folks, what’s it going to be, capitalist or communist this evening?” If lots of females, the commies ruled.

The prediction was 100% accurate, even when there was a particularly aggressive female who could win up against any guy. She’d lay down her preference for the sake of being liked by her sisters in the van.

Today, the start of the school year for many, let the differences between how boys and girls learn influence your parenting.

While we are very much alike, what makes us different from male to female are qualities we should not allow to be snuffed out as if they are something bad. And certainly not to satisfy some ideologue with a personal ax to grind. I’ll be on the lookout for how I can reach each of my children based on their particular personalities, strengths and weaknesses, for each has their own way of operating in the world.

I’ll also be mindful of how their brains are wired differently.

Stay powerful,

cw
© ckwallace, 2018, all rights reserved
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QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS

It’s true what they say: The quality of your life is measured by the quality of your relationships.

Most of us are lucky if we can count on one hand the people we consider close enough to confide in, to turn to in times of turmoil and trouble. Even, to be able to say “I love you,” to someone, be they man, woman or child.

Or, just to check in and connect, somehow, on some level, to let others know you exist while recognizing they exist too. And I’m not even speaking about only being able to tolerate someone else’s company. Or liking them.

Liking a person is kind of important if you’re going to consider them a friend. You think? I bet we’ve all had friends at some point we didn’t care for, people we really didn’t like.

One of our brothers tonight called to say his dog passed away. It was an honour to take his call.

Thirteen years he watched over his friend. It was a runt from a champion line, but because of a heart murmur, it was going to be put down. My friend rescued the little pooch.

He spent ten grand getting her a heart operation way back in the early days. At six months it was attacked by big mean dog and had to have 18 stitches, undergone without complaint. All her teeth had been removed…

And today, bringing her into the vet to see if there was anything he could do to make her more comfortable, she waited patiently in his arms in a room.

He looked at her, she looked at him, she closed her eyes.

She was gone. Just like that. As if, “thanks boss, but I’m 95 in people years and we’ve had a great life together. Goodbye.”

His daughter is 21 today. Most of her remembered life this little dog was part of it. As her father, this rough-around-the-edges son-of-a-gangster won’t tell her now. Not on her birthday. He’ll wait and tell her later in the week in person. He’s like that now, a man. He wasn’t always.

And that’s the thing about life and love. We may start out with not a lot of it in our heart but if we give it time, if we allow it for ourselves and others, it will find us.

They say there are three levels. One is “what can you give me” type love. It’s Janet Jackson singing “what have you done for me lately” while shaking her ass. Fuck off.

Two is a trading relationship. We trade with others all the time.

You tailor my suit coat for a hundred bucks, saving me from throwing out a perfectly good suit jacket I had made in Hamilton by Bruno the Tailor in ’89, and we’re good. Do it right and I’m happy, you’re happy.

But is that love? I don’t think so. Yet, many of us have only a trading relationship to come home to every day. And that’s the thing, you see: It’s not quality.

It’s why my gruff friend, as hard as any guy, grieved today. Because his little dog gave him nothing but level three: unconditional love. The dog made itself belong to my friend, unquestionably, irrevocably, and loved him even on days where my friend may have been unable to love her back.

It’s part of a man’s DNA to take care of others. If he does it or not is another thing. It’s not enough to call yourself a man because you produce more than you consume, so there’s extra to go around. It’s bigger, much deeper than that.

I once knew a fella whose background was the Irish Mob in Canada. Eastern Canada based, he worked out west. I think it was mostly because all the guys above him had been whacked.

Those Montreal Irish, The West End Gang, purportedly connected to the IRA guys back home, scared the shit out of the bikers and the mob most days. They made Montreal bank robbery capital for many years. Forced the Canadian Bankers’ Association to undertake drastic changes in their procedures.

I noticed he always had a small dog with him. Little thing, probably a Bichon/Poodle mix or something. One day, I asked him, “Hey George, no disrespect or anything (respect is big with goodfellas, like a fucking religion), but why is it I see you with such a small dog all the time?”.

Fucker looks at me quickly, stares me in the eyes. I brace myself just a tiny bit. Suddenly, he softens a fraction and says to me matter-of-factly, “Because little dogs need protection too.” His eyes held mine for a moment and he looked, well, very human. Obviously, I accepted his answer.

In fact, I thought it was the best response ever. Sure shut me up, and no, I didn’t probe further. I knew there was something more to it but it wasn’t the time. What else could I say?

My friend today telling me about his little dog filled in a bit more about what George meant. See, my friend told me he grieved more today for this little dog than for his own mother and father when they passed.

More pain than the death of his mother or the death of his father?? Is that a sin of some kind? Maybe.

It’s just both guys had experienced little in the way of unconditional love in their lifetimes. Yet, their humanity, surrounded by a fortress of protection learned in a lifetime of pain, was there, mostly hidden, but intact.

It just took one little dog to bring it out.

In the quiet moments away from others, the loyal pooch and master found and celebrated what was important.

Not sad at all, I say. More like, hopeful. It’s a reminder to recognize pure love when we see it and know it’s real.

Because there lies the real power in life. If we are not standing up for good, we can’t even call ourselves neutral. Because good is love, and love is what counts. Indeed, it is love which is powerful.

Today, I salute all men and their dogs, big or small. Condolences to all of us who have lost a beloved pet. They are like family, perhaps even more. Man’s best friend is also a bridge to what is best in a man.

Find it early or find it late, we must all find love.

Rest in Peace Trixie. 2005 – 2018

Thank you.

Stay powerful gentleman,

CW

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The wisdom of Mrs. Singh,

For many years, my gal pals have told me quite directly I needed to better understand women. One went so far as to strongly suggest I have a daughter to really “get it.” Not the type to back away from a challenge, nor good advice, I say thank you Mariko. Charlotte has taught me plenty.

I remember once asking my father about this question. It was only in later life, in my 30s, 40s, and even 50s where my relationship with him permitted me to broach these kinds of subjects, without the usual judgments I would have received at a younger age. I needed those years to build emotional muscle I think. Perhaps, physical muscle as well. By then, I could take my old man; indeed, while his fearsomeness had not waned with time, my own had increased.

In any case, I remember asking about understanding women and he answered, “You’re not supposed to” with finality. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to hear this from him. My father, the man surrounded by books his whole life, who read one per week or so most of his adult life, and who could easily construct an impromptu lecture on the building of cultures and civilizations since the dawn of recorded history with little encouragement, came up blank when we discussed gender.

To be fair, it’s possible he liked the magic of not knowing, for there is some of that mystery in our sexual counterparts. But as a man with five daughters, that day my expectations were greater than he could meet. It was the only time I can recall being let down by his answer. Instead of his usual erudition, seeded with life-lessons he’d share at length: nothing.

I was on my own when it comes to sex differences. Of course, I have used the question of differences between men and women to shoehorn in greater understanding of others in into this thick skull of mine. For to look is to find, and It’s undoubtedly helped me evolve in other ways.

So, it was recently I found myself speaking with Mrs. Singh. She wore a beautiful green and gold sari, telling me she was too lazy to get dressed in anything else that morning. I remember thinking I do the same thing sometimes and put on track pants and a t-shirt. Comparatively, she looked wonderful; I would look like I was dressed in track pants and a t-shirt.

It was at her furniture store, an ample space filled with living room and bedroom sets built in an ornate style befitting someone who wore a brocaded sari. She interrupted our conversation only once when she went out back to ensure her delivery man had unloaded inventory correctly and counted the pieces that came in. Her desk set up against one wall midway into the cavernous space, littered with invoices and other evidence of commerce: It was her mission control and she ran it all easily on her own.

I was there to sell her commercial energy, something I do during the day. Unlike the newspaper business from which I came and has been radically reduced by the forces of creative destruction in the internet age, energy will last. 80% of the world uses electricity so demand will only rise.

Alas, I discovered she was already on a contract. It’s in these cases I get to act more as an advisor than as a provider, and the burden of compensation is removed from our interaction. Assessing her bill and doing the calculations, I could see she was overpaying. Determining this makes me her ally, her advocate.

Here, I took the liberty to call the 1 800 number of her supplier on my phone, getting us through to the right agent. Mrs. Singh went through the required identification process and rather than me prompting her in the background, stated my name and her desire I speak on her behalf.

Cancelling her existing contract would have cost her almost a grand. She could have justified it by the savings gained at the low price I’d give her for her remaining term. But then, her supplier’s customer service agent sensed she had a pro on her side and offered to drop her price right down to near what I could do. I was being used to grind the competition into chasing her business.

Given the length she had left on contract (23 months) my advice was as long as they gave her the same price for her household contract (for which I calculated they were overcharging her by even more) she should take their deal and I’d see her in a couple of years. My visit had dropped her rate by a third and I’d get nothing from it. She insisted I sign up her natural gas business, which I did, but it was a tiny contract in comparison.

I’d spent two visits and over three hours on this appointment with little to show for it. But then again, this is where I’m reminded I’m not in it for the money. I’m in it for the conversations.

My life can be seen in part as a series of quests to update and replace my father’s teachings and to go futher than he ever could.

To my polite prompting, Mrs. Singh explained the basic tenets of Sikhism, especially the part about we are all equals according to the guru’s teachings. At the Gurdwara, she explained, we all sit on the floor, no matter who it is visiting. Doesn’t matter if it’s a head of state or the poorest of the poor, they are welcome to sit as equals together.

And the langar, the food prepared by a cadre of volunteers, it available to all visitors, regardless of caste, colour, religion, ethnicity, rich or poor. Surprisingly, it’s a tradition adopted from the Muslim Sufis back when Sikhism started with Guru Nanak in the 1500s I later learned.

She explained the difference between baptized and non-baptized Sikhs, and told me of her upbringing in Amritsar, India. It was here I asked her about the differences between North American parenting and the parenting she’d used successfully with her daughters and sons, all educated professionals. I was rewarded with anecdotes.

Once. she wanted to attend the movie theater with her friends back home. These kinds of events were difficult for a Sikh girl, for the members of her community would talk and confront the family if she was seen. India is a dangerous place for a young girl, even if accompanied by others. “There’s a lot of rapes” she said. Her mother hesitated, but finally told her to go, but not tell anyone.

She went and had fun, returning home on time. When her mother asked her how it went, she fibbed and told her she did not go. By doing this, essentially, she got a “go to the movies” free card she could use another time. She laughed as she told me she used this trick three times, seeing movies each time all on the one permission.

I was reminded of how simple things we take for granted in Canadian culture are not held in the same regard by those coming from other places where conditions are different. As I listened to her, I take her implied counsel seriously.

My missus has told me she won’t allow sleepovers for our children. Her experiences growing up has made her realize the risks of a child being hurt of damaged in such unknown circumstances is too great, so she’s got this one rule. I’m fine with it too, for it appeals to my protective side.

Turns out, Mrs. Singh says the same thing. “No sleepovers” she stated unwaveringly as her first rule of parenting. She encouraged her daughters and sons to visit their friends but no matter the time of night, she is there to pick them up and take them home. As teens, the boys stayed out latest 1 am, the girls, 11 pm. Why the difference, I asked? Girls are more precious.

And when her daughter was 20 and in college, she begged her mother for leniency. Lovingly, Mrs. Singh agreed with her daughter’s newfound need for freedom. The new curfew is midnight.

Once upon a time in Amritsar, Mrs. Singh wanted to attend her friend’s wedding. “I got married at age 21,” she said, “and my friend was 20. I had to go and see her get married.” Not yet married herself at the time, it would be an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about. So, she pleaded with her mother, telling her how important it was that she go, after all it was her best friend, and this was her big day. Mother, in her wisdom, finally relented and said she’d agree, if her father gave his blessing.

Mrs. Singh begged her father for the opportunity to go. She told him how much it meant to her and how disappointed both she and her friend would be to miss it. She used all her charm, cashing in a lifetime of smiles to get her father’s approval. “You can go as long as your mother goes with you,” was his answer.

Not quite willing to let his daughter go, clear in that a daughter’s friend’s wedding was no signal that his role was now obsolete, he got the best of both sides in his decision. His emissary and co-parent would chaperone, and his sweet daughter’s request would not be denied. The Mrs. Singh before me wasn’t put off at all by this prospect as she recounted her parent’s decision. To the contrary, she was thrilled.

At the wedding, her mother took her aside and told her she was not there to spy on her, to prevent her from having a good time. Nor was she there to judge her behavior, or to possibly reprimand her. She’d raised a good daughter and trusted she’d act accordingly.

And she did have a fun time, telling me of how she played games the whole day and shared in her friend’s joy. In her explanation, I could see the satisfaction and excitement return to her face in the retelling of this unforgettable day. And the way she explained her mother’s role was an inspiration.

Then Mrs. Singh told me something so profoundly good. I struggled to remember it verbatim, so I could rush home and share it with missus. For we have a daughter… and daughters are precious.

She said a daughter’s mother should be like her best friend. She should be able to come to her mother with anything she encounters, any feelings she has, any doubts or fears, and that the mother must be a safe place for her.

If a boy looks at her a certain way, or smiles at her, or says something to her, it’s to her mother she must come for advice and reassurance. When her body changes, it’s her mother who will help her accept and incorporate these changes into her identity.

She must convey to her daughter, “your secrets are safe with me.” The implications were clear: the mother must be the bridge between adolescence and her daughter’s budding sexuality and the expectations of full womanhood.

How many women do I know who have had no such relationship with their mothers? And how tragic it is when this happens?  What pain does a daughter carry with her into the future, often for life, when she feels misunderstood by the very person from whose flesh and blood she is made? What a burden this rejection, and how despairing for all concerned.

Someone once said a child can get along without a father but will die without a mother. At a very basic level of nurturance this makes sense. At the higher levels of self-concept, even more critical. The Grant Study speaks to mother’s acceptance and importance longer term in a man’s life. Doubly important for girls, I think.

I have learned it’s the connection between adults and children which allows our young ones to feel valued. From that sense of feeling valued, a child or adolescent has the emotional foundation to learn discipline, to decide to delay gratification in service of a greater cause.

It’s as if absent emotional connection, all further learning is hampered. Like Maslow’s need hierarchy, we must first feel safely held in someone’s regard before we can move forward with higher order steps of learning. After all, children are motivated; they want desperately to be rescued from themselves.

I may not have made much visiting Mrs. Singh’s furniture store off Walkley Road in Ottawa, but I left with much more than something as trite as meeting a sales target.

Instead, I was paid in a different currency, in the great Canadian multicultural tradition. I gained a glimpse into another life which, in turn, enhanced my own. I’m reminded too that the world over, we are all people struggling with the same issues. It doesn’t much matter if we are talking about a daughter here, or over there.

I will do my best to be as good a man as your father was for you. I will ensure our home allows my daughter the kind of relationship you had with your mother.

Thank you, Mrs. Singh: precious indeed.

Christopher K. Wallace
©2018 all rights reserved

Dearest Brother Gavin.

I appear before you and your Ottawa clan with only love and wisdom, here on your 18^th birthday.

Regardless of whether you can buy beer in Quebec or Alberta, and not in Georgia, when a man is old enough to don a uniform to fight and perhaps die for his country, he is undoubtedly a man.

And think for a moment of all of your experiences to date, everything that has brought you this far. All your trials and missteps, lessons learned along the way.  These are behind you now.

And think a bit about what you know; adding the sum of your knowledge to date and you will probably immediately realize you have much to learn. It’s something you will say to yourself again at 30, 40, 50 and each decade beyond.

And think about your parents. Think about your father.

Realize now how all of us inherit the temperaments of our fathers and our father’s fathers. You will have a great deal of Barnaby in you, and in turn, some Howard Carew Wallace, some Howard Vincent Wallace, some Thomas Patrick Wallace, some John Wallace and even some of his father, our founding immigrant Thomas Wallace.

Each of these men will echo endlessly down through time in you, as well as other men and cherished women who have come before you and contributed to your being. One day you will echo endlessly in others.

You are the culmination of two centuries of improvement, of 200 years of refinements in the search for freedom.

For that is what each man lives for: for freedom.

That is the past. You have the future to look to. Your growth will be based on how well you negotiate and improve on the temperaments of the male predecessors from which you came.

Never to be rejected, only assimilated and improved upon. You are a Wallace.

This is a journey each man must take alone. Oh, you will always have your clan by your side, and if not physically, at least in spirit. But your travels in spirit and wisdom are yours alone. It’s as if you are lost in the forest and no one is coming for you; by your own wits you must now find your way home, to freedom.

I have no earth shattering advice for you. Well, actually, I have plenty.

The first is to watch for key decisions. You will know when these occur because of their difficulty. These are the moments upon which a life turns. Make a good one and advance, a poor one and retreat.

It is these times when you must take your time and consult widely amongst your trusted circle, family and clan, uncles and siblings, advisors and trusted individuals.

To do that you must keep these people close to your heart. Attachment to others is our greatest need. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” said John Donne in Devotions.

Connection to others can mean your life or your death; you must choose wisely outside of your clan for who these people will be.

When you make such decisions, have a goal in mind and work it backwards from there to the moment you are deciding your direction.

Other than that, realize that everything in life worth having will come from doing that which is good for you, for those around you and for your society at large. You will find service to the greater good to be the fastest way to fulfillment.

And you must develop your personal power. For men, it is through their careful cultivation of power over their lives and power wielded for good that brings them freedom. Your life will be a series of battles, with some defeats and many victories; each a death and a rebirth, each another step to freedom.

Power will also get you the attention of females. Women are hopelessly attracted to men of power and confidence. To know this is to know the secret to unlocking the doors of love.

Which brings me to this book:  it’s called The Way of the Superior Man. It is used, slightly dog-eared as the best books often are. If you have the balls to read it at your age, it will answer many of your questions. I can answer the rest. Seriously. Or ask Uncle Matt. He knows a thing or two.

It is the book I would have written. When I read it, its eloquence was so precise that I bowed to the author in respect. I will one day write a sequel.

It will teach you many things if you dare read it.  Among them: how to handle premature ejaculation using an ancient eastern breathing technique.

And if you find the notion of becoming a Superior Man daunting, I’d ask you to consider not fear as fear; instead… think of fear as excitement. Fear is but a call for action. Action is the only thing the universe recognizes.

So with much love and affection, hope and goodwill I say:

Go forth my young nephew. Be bold.

True and Free.

Kids need to orient towards a parent. It is how nature made us.

If that orientation is broken or weak, your children will orient elsewhere.

It’s just like a parent-less baby duck or goose bonds with a human, or a doll or a cat or a dog, imprinting and following them around as if they were its mother. You don’t want that.

Video games, drugs, risky behaviours, poor choices in friends and an over-reliance on peer groups are some of the ways a teen will make up for a lack of connection with a parent or parents or family.

What the heck do peers know? In general: not much. It’s scary how little.

Orientation is often the issue when kids go off the rails. And, after age 14, it becomes more difficult to maintain parental orientation as time goes by. Can you reclaim orientation? Yes, indeed you can. Why? Because teens want desperately to be rescued from themselves. Desperately.

So the heart of parenting is connection. It’s worth repeating. It keeps it simple. The key question to ask your self is this: Is what I’m doing going to increase connection… or weaken it?

If it increases connection, you are probably doing what nature intended. If it weakens or severs connection, that is wholly unnatural. Unnatural, I say. It goes against the natural order of things.

Ask yourself this question often; make it part of your approach.

So to me, it’s ALL about connection. Focus on connection right from the start. When parents realize it’s really this simple, many aha! moments ensue from its simplicity. Connection is surface simple but vast and deep in practice.

To connect, you need time. Not “quality time” so much as just time spent in connection. Safe, secure, predictable. The need to belong is universal. It’s largely what drives us in life.

From connection, the child will feel “valued.” Feeling like you matter to someone or a group of people is at the heart of attachment–our primary psychological need.

Connection’s opposite is loneliness. We do a lot of messed up things out of loneliness. How many of us have been in a group of people in our lives… and felt lonely? It sucks.

Imagine a child or teen feeling lonely while in your house? As part of your family? Happens all the time.

From connection and time and a sense of value, you can coach a child or teen to anything. What you want to teach them is self-discipline.

I don’t mean bootcamp discipline. Rather, the ability to delay gratification. It is the single best predictor of a successful life.

Intelligence helps a person live well but the advantage stops at just above average.

No. It’s self-discipline that counts.

Know any intelligent losers? Of course you do. We all know plenty.

Know any self-disciplined losers? Doesn’t happen. In fact, the two are opposites.

We could talk about how feminism is ruining the cultures of the western world. Dare me.

Or how the banking system uses interest to create scarcity and competition; its unrelenting need for growth forcing more parents into work to earn for their families. Double dare me.

But in the end, it misses what’s important. It’ll be the rare person who gets to 80 and says they wished they worked more or took up yet another cause.

Very few get a diagnosis of terminal cancer with months to live and wished they had a Ferrari.

No. Time and again, in the end people wish they’d spent more time with their friends and families, especially their children. Connecting with loved ones folks.

So just focus on connection. If you get that right, most of everything else takes care of itself. By putting connection first, everything seems to fall into place. It’s nature’s way.

Here’s a pithy quote:

“As long as we feel safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love us, we will climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects. Children and adults will do anything for people they trust and whose opinion they value.” Bessel Van der Kolk.

Find it early, find it late, you must find love. We must all find love, and it starts with the family of origin. Ideally, it’s where we learn how to love and be loved. This must be part of your legacy to your children.

Connection is your key.

© CKWallace, 2017

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Howard Carew Wallace, my Chief

It’s Happening to Me

I have to admit, it’s happening to me,

It was something I could not foresee.

Decidedly, I’ll just let it be.

Oh, I may have dreamed it long ago,

But being so young, I did not know

Of all that was to follow.

Despite it all, for the life of me,

And my attempts to live contrarily

Now resigned, eerily,

For the truth is, I’d no longer rather

By this living eulogy you’ll gather

I’m turning into my father.

ckwallace, 2016

18 June, 2017

Today is Father’s Day. Dad has had more than sixty, each one earned.

Like many boys, my father is my hero. Though there came upon our relationship a darkness that lasted a decade. Even during this estrangement, there were lessons unfolding for both us, perhaps, more so for me. Though, it’s hard to tell.

It was my father who inadvertently gave me my animal totem when he told me at the age of fifteen there wasn’t room for two roosters under the same roof, and since it was his roof… What a great gift.

Regardless, eventually we got over it and I metaphorically became a cockerel (three children too!). Not so bad when you consider that the bird stands for pride, honesty, courage, vigilance, arrogance, strength, watchfulness and flamboyance, all traits I share with my father.

On top of that we are descendants of Celtic tribes, who considered the rooster a creature of the underworld, serving as a messenger of the hereafter, screeching out warnings of danger and calling out to the souls of those fallen on the battlefield. Perhaps my father knew I’d be an envoy from darkness, sent to share light.

Forgiveness is one of life’s greatest tests of virtue. It was my father who taught me this. His father was a troubled man, a WWI veteran with an impatient irascibility about him that bordered on meanness at times. War does that to people.

Dad was a dutiful son to his father right to the end. My father wrote a short account of his father’s passing for our family site at trueandfree.ca. Reading about how he sneaked in to hold his father’s hand at the very end of Gimpy’s life, until his father’s hand returned the faintest of signal and then, before him, was no more, serves as a beacon, a triumph of kindness over anger, of putting love first despite all else. It’s an image I continue to hold dear.

Of course, my father also taught me patience… using golf as his instrument. Hitting that damned little white ball all over Eastern Ontario with passion and commitment required enormous patience. He set an example, we followed.

My father’s invitation that we golf with him meant that along the way, I also learned behaviourism. Intermittent reinforcement being the strongest reinforcer is plain to see in the game: you hit close to a hundred shots in a typical round, most of which are going to be not so good. But there will be one that’s absolutely amazing. One shot that makes all the pain of the rest of the shots dissolve away like salt in warm water.

In fact, I won the family’s last golf tournament with a perfect seven iron on a par three that bounced once just before the pin and almost went in, landing a foot and a half away from the hole. The rest of that day’s game? Less memorable. I could curse him or thank him for the gift of golf, depends on the day. But I keep coming back. Patience indeed.

I learned to accept homosexuals from my father. While still just a single digit in age, I spied a sister cuddling her younger sibling while watching TV, and called them lesbians.

I was invited for a chat in the inner sanctum of my parent’s room. There my father asked if I knew what a lesbian was. Of course, I really had no idea. He explained that it was a woman who loved another woman. He added that it was just how they were made and that, in the end, they were just looking for love like anyone else. With that understood, I was dismissed. It was the 1960s.

Once through the homophobic peer pressure of my teen years, I returned to that wisdom. With maturity, I gained a greater sense of justice. Those words came back to serve me: “just looking for love like anyone else.” It was all the justification needed for tolerance and understanding. Simple, effective, and just.

Later, at some occasion the subject came up again, this time with some of my adult siblings around. In one of dad’s famous quips, he said: “Sometimes, you just have to brush your teeth, close your eyes and keep an open mind.” I’m sure that ended the conversation. I’ve never had the nerve to ask him about it either. Some things are better left unsaid.

My mother taught me to read but it was my father who made books available. We had bookcases all over the house. Even now, when I imagine a room, I see a bookcase there. Dad made it perfectly normal to sit and read, all day if necessary. Learning is my top strength and dad’s influence is never far.  I’m mostly a non-fiction type and I have some of his old books. The pages are yellowed and delicate like rice paper; each one a treasure. Like my father, I have a book habit. Not so bad an addiction at all.

When I began to scribble words of my own, it was my father who helped me along, patiently correcting my stuff with his editor’s pencil. I still look over the notes he put on texts I sent him.

He also taught me to be frugal about using swear words in my writing, despite dropping F-bombs most of his life. In one of his juiciest lessons, as a kid he told me swearing was “good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon expressions of emotion.” I was allowed to swear, just not at him or at ma. He wisely figured that as we grew socially we’d soon learn from the reactions of people around us and temper our language accordingly. How very true…

Dad taught me to be honest. As a younger man, I didn’t know anyone who was, so it mattered not as much. Over many years of conversations with my father, I’ve watched as he found just the right words to describe a subject.

He’d go to lengths for precision’s sake, keeping reference books nearby to look up a fact or a definition. What emerged for me from the way he did this was the need to search for truth. There was truth, there was lesser truth, and there was falsehood. Often the lines between them are blurred and hard to discern; but truth is there, every time. It just takes a little effort to find.

Watching my father meant learning to dig a little deeper, to broaden the scope, to see a larger or more refined view. And in this way, he taught me that intent mattered. By filling in the history of a subject, a population, or a place, we learn something of the motivations of people, even nations. We do not exist alone. Having seen more than fifty countries during his navy service, I have visited the world through my father.

As a young man in Ottawa growing up during the seventies and eighties, I went to practically every large rock concert and saw many smaller bands that came to town. I had an extensive collection of vinyl music from the heyday of rock and roll. Later, my tastes grew from rock to blues to funk and jazz. All of these genres form the basis of my musical identity, so can anyone explain why it is that I now listen almost exclusively to the CBC?

As I write this, a collection of opera is playing on a second laptop nearby, someone’s favourites uploaded to a YouTube channel. I think it started when I put a radio in my garage.

There, puttering around, doing something handy, I found opera and the classics to keep me company.

As a young boy, watching my father at his workbench, with old tools, each one a place to return to after use, is one of my best memories. Opera still plays Saturday afternoons at one, perhaps just like it did back in the day on my father’s little radio. The smell of wood, the sounds of sawing and hammering, and the possibility of fabricating something out of raw materials left an indelible impression on me. Perhaps the radio keeps me close to dad when I’m away. After all, the CBC teaches, just like my father does.

My father taught me about love by way of his example with my mother for the sixty two years they were married before she passed away. Theirs is a love for the ages, and no mention of my father’s teachings is complete without also mentioning ma. I heard his sweet reassurances to her in her final hours. It was essential attachment, a juxtaposed tragedy and triumph of human love.

Though, for the record I’d best explain that it was probably more my mother’s patience and virtue that lay at the foundation of their longevity as a couple. What a beautiful gift that was. It meant that you could be as faulted as my dad, even as annoying at times, and still be loved. There is hope for us all is what it says.

I could write much more about my father and his impact on me. It’s easy to get carried away with this kind of thing, writing words in ways he taught me, listening to music he influenced me to hear, searching for truths the way I learned them at his knee.

Like the time he told me it takes a hundred years for an immigrant group to acclimatize to Canada, several generations—something I still hold as my benchmark of understanding. After all, we are all immigrants here.

Or when I was worried about being a father for the first time: He, with nine children of his own, said to me: “Babies are like little miracles, son, they don’t take up much room, they really don’t cost much, and somehow, all of us find a way to move over a little bit to make room and welcome them into this world. You’ll do fine as a father.”

I’ve used those exact words countless times with new fathers and each time they have reassured as much as I was over three decades ago.

I believe attachment to each other is our most fundamental need. My father told me of the people from where I came. By widening my understanding of our family’s history, I got a sense of my place in time, and how I live at the crux between the many who have come before me and those after. If we exist within each other as endless loops reverberating down through the ages, knowing your ancestry means you are never alone. My father is part of me, and I continue to pass along his fine lessons to those who follow.

Rather than reluctance at becoming like my father, glimpses of him that show up in my life are hints of a re-discovered familiarity, and it gives me strength. My father is who he is, unapologetic, unafraid, and unique: good personal aspirations for any man. I welcome the part within me that is him, like an old friend sent to keep me company, as an elder looking in on my life with love and compassion.

I’m very proud to call myself his son. So happy Father’s Day my dearest Dad, may you live to a hundred.

© Christopher K. Wallace 2017

Gilles Chenier passed away this week from cancer at age eighty-eight.

He lived two doors away from my parents on Falcon Avenue in Ottawa for more than six decades. He had a pool table in his house when I was a kid. This was the height of cool in this youngster’s mind in the 60s. Imagine that? A table in the basement…

I remember coming back from my first communion where Gilles and his first wife Marie had become my godparents. I was just sort of hustled through the ritual, not really getting it. The idea of having godparents didn’t register either. I saw it as a plot to foist me on another family where I would be barely tolerated or even ostracized. I was often in trouble for one thing or another in those days and our house was a little crowded. I remember my mother and Marie talking about things that day, though I couldn’t tell if they were discussing how I was dressed and the ceremony… or when the hand-off would occur.

Someone baked a large cake shaped like a lamb—for the Lamb of God. I’m pretty sure my new godmother had either arranged it or baked it herself. I was so impressed; there was something in all this for me after all. It was covered in white icing and a lot of coconut. I thought this was inspired decorating. It was a decadent treat for a boy who came from a family of nine kids. I can’t resist coconut to this day.

Our families were connected more so because my mother and Marie were pals. Through the years, it was understood that the Chenier kids were an extension of our clan. In an era that saw sixty kids living on our small block, Gilles’ two sons and daughter from two doors over were like one of us. The house between us was occupied by Gilles’ father, whom we called Grandpa Chenier. He roughed in the basement rooms in our house for my father. He also grew a large back yard garden each summer and had a quiet and patient side to him with us kids.

Tragedy struck my godfather at the very height of his powers as a husband and father. He and his wife were backing out of a driveway after music lessons for his beloved daughter when they were struck by a drunk driver who had crossed the center lane, killing his little girl. This broke her mother’s heart, her survivor guilt drowned in a secret alcohol habit for many years. When the family finally discovered what was going on and intervened, she was days away from death from cancer. She had kept this information from everyone. They had scant time to say goodbye.

I moved on from my parent’s neighbourhood and saw my godfather only here and there over the decades. Recently, I returned to my hometown to be near my aging father. On occasion this summer, I’d see Gilles out on his porch taking in some fresh air. I took these opportunities to go and rekindle our relationship. He was accepting and grateful for the company. He had terminal lung cancer and was sent home to die. Drink and smoke whatever you like, he was told. Several times the missus and I with our two children in tow sat on his porch and steps with him and his dog and talked about life. Once my father ambled over with me to sit and visit for a while.

He’d remarried and outlived his second wife, Simone, her leaving him a little pug named Simon. My children delighted in visiting with Gilles and his little dog. They were surprisingly well behaved and Gilles was patient and kind and sweet. He was grandfatherly.

He was too old and too experienced and too short on time to mess around with polite and safe small talk. Open and forthright, he cut right to the chase on every subject we discussed. What a great lesson it was to witness and be a part of: all of us should speak and act as if we have little time left. By way of his example, this was part of his gift.

I talked to him about how people who die don’t really leave us. I explained how I thought the idea that we live in our own bodies and minds—separately from those around us—was an inadequate way to describe human reality. I said it is more likely that a part of us resides in others just as a part of them remains in you. That we exist in each other is a more appropriate description. And that people continue to echo endlessly on down through time in those who have known and loved them. Though the part of me that might reside in you becomes uncertain after you pass; the part of you that resides in me unquestionably remains.

I had taken a risk telling him this. Who did I think I was? But his answer surprised me.

At the time, the traumatic event in Nice, France had just occurred. Gilles told me that he’d been thinking of his second wife Simone and how they had walked the streets of Nice on a trip, the very streets that were shown on the news. He said he could picture himself there as if reliving those moments all over again; like she was still with him. It felt so real he said, and it happened often, he added. He said he believed me. He said, “You know, Christopher, I think that’s true.” I was relieved and happy for him at the same time.

He was an interesting man who only ever worked for one family: the Ottawa Greenbergs. He mentioned when he was a teen he took an evening course in bookkeeping at an academy on Dalhousie Street in Ottawa’s Lower town, a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill. In those days, the area was an enclave for poor Jewish, Irish and French Canadian families.

One day on his way home, the family matriarch, buxom Mrs. Greenberg, leaned out an upstairs window as he walked by and asked him to confirm what she’d heard, that he was taking a course in bookkeeping. After answering yes, he was invited by her to join the family business. He told me he didn’t know much about bookkeeping because he had just started his course but the auditors who did the company books got him set up and working.

Minto Developments went on to build much of the nation’s capital residential and commercial developments over the following decades. Gilles Chenier worked there his whole career, retiring as vice-president 40 years later.

Another interesting anecdote was the matter of a pension. Gilles recounted that once he caught Mr. Greenberg in a good mood, he could be approached about anything. Since Gilles was one of the top company numbers men, he picked his moment to bring up pensions for Minto employees. The answer was as baffling as it is amazing. Mr. Greenberg told Gilles it was a really good idea. But, any man who devoted his life to working for the Greenberg family would never have to worry about a pension. And that was the end of the discussion.

At age eighty-eight, Gilles was still receiving his weekly salary from Minto Developments though he’d been retired for over thirty years. On top of it, he still got his Christmas bonus every year too, just like any other employee still on the books. And all this was done on a handshake. It was a time of high work ethic and loyalty long gone. If Gilles hadn’t told me these things himself this summer, I might not have believed them possible.

He also lived in an era that saw the deep sacrifices of The Great Depression mold people’s attitude so that they were ready for the great post-war boom of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Besides courage, perseverance and grit, he also had character and charm; a handsome man with a booming voice. He appreciated a pretty girl.

My father and I sat with him on his porch this summer, reminiscing over the six decades they had known each other on this street. My sister saw us and came by to say hello. After warm kisses on both cheeks, Gilles got a big welcoming hug. Unbeknownst to her, and while she was still in his embrace, he stuck his tongue out at my father as if to say, “I’m having my way with your daughter.” We nearly pissed ourselves laughing.

And that was another lesson from Gilles. His body racked with tumours and growing weaker by the day, he chose to laugh. Resigned to his fate, he could have moaned and been consumed by self-pity. No. That was not his style. Instead, he looked forward to one last fishing trip with his sons, laughing every chance he got.

He was an inspiration, and for what it means, it was an honour to call myself his godson.

Goodbye sweet godfather. You are not gone at all.

CKWallace,

© 2016, all rights reserved

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