Esme Meets Mary

It's such a beautiful morning - the sky is clear blue and from my office I can look north to the Golden Ears mountains and they are simply gorgeous with their pure white peaks.

And so I thought today I would share a "pure white" moment that Esme and I had this week.  Esme is my Golden Retriever who is my Therapy Dog and I will share with you how she came into my world in a later post but for now suffice it to say that this beautiful creature is an angel in a dog's body.

Monday the 24th of January Esme and I went for our little visit at Langley Gardens which is a congregate care home in Walnut Grove.  We visit on the "Care Floor" which is mostly dementia patients.
  

When we arrived for our little visit and after Esme had shmoozed her way around the crowd Jayme, the co-ordinator, asked me if we would come and visit a very special person.  Her name is Mary and she is blind. She is very sad right now because her husband recently passed away on that floor and she hasn't wanted to come out of her room very much.  In her younger days Mary raised Shelties and competed in agility with them.  Jayme knocked on the door of her room and quietly asked if Mary would like a visitor.  Well, not so much. But then Jayme mentioned that her visitor was a dog - and with that we were welcomed into her room.  Her bed is situated so that she has a beautiful view out of a window - that she cannot see.  When we came into her room and around the corner where her bed is, there lay, lost among the sheets,  a sweet, fragile, tiny woman dressed in the prettiest mint green eyelet nightgown.  Esme walked right up to her and put her head on the edge of the bed close enough so that Mary could reach over and pat her.  At that moment I witnessed something truly special.......a spark seemed to shine in Mary's eyes and Esme just sat there and loved every moment of being loved on.  We chatted a bit about her shelties and she gave me some tips on training Esme.  When it was time for us to leave she asked me to be sure to come and visit her again. And we will most certainly do that.  We have a very special lady who Esme and I are going to learn many life lessons from.

 

As we were leaving the floor and Jayme was entering the code to let us into the elevator a pastor/priest walked past us ( not sure which but he had a white collar!) and he asked Jayme rather sternly if that dog should be up here........and Jayme's reply......"absolutely".........

 

The love of a dog.........is unexplainable but I know this........Esme is a very special dog that was chosen especially for me.......to help me heal and to bring so much love to other people.  I have found my "bliss".  "To Whom Much Is Given Much Is Expected".

 

If you feel that you just cannot "do it" one more day or that your hurt is too much to cope with.......I can honestly say" I understand your feelings" and " Hold on tight because there will be a day that you will have a "pure white" moment..........you will have many many of them - this I promise you.

 

Words can be weapons

" You're just like your father."

My mother's most often used statement to me when she was exasperated with me.  Not that I probably didn't exasperate her numerous times!  But......these words were spoken in a harsh and critical manner by someone who hated my father. This was not a compliment.

Obstreperous was another word she used often - apparently both my father and I were obstreperous.  If you Google this word this is what you find: resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly. 2. noisy, clamorous, or boisterous. Well, that's food for thought. I was far from noisy, clamorous or boisterous - quite the opposite. And I don't think I ever resisted control because I never had any control, an issue that has caused a whole lot of collateral damage in my life. I kinda think my mom didn't really know the meaning of that word and actually neither did I until 5 minutes ago. My mother knew it was not a complimentary word and it most certainly fit my father's pattern of behaviour but to this day I truly do not understand why she felt that I was like that.  I was not an angel.  I was strong willed but could be restrained with the LOOK in a heartbeat. And if the LOOK didn't work it was "wait until your father comes home" and that resulted in my father using the belt on my behind. Doubt that he even bothered to ask what I was in trouble for. I feared my father because he yelled constantly, ruled the roost by tone of voice and when he felt the occasion warranted it he used his belt. Needless to say the LOOK worked on me pretty good! 

My father had some very wonderful qualities which I did inherit from him.  He was strong willed and so am I.  Thank God because that is what has saved my life. He was intelligent and very interested in politics and always kept up with the news of the world, an interest that we both share. He was a hard worker and provided well materially for his family. How I wish my mother would have used that phrase in a moment of praise for one of these fine qualities of his.

Words are weapons when used incorrectly, by the wrong people at the wrong time and spoken to the wrong person. To be told that I was exactly like the man that my mother hated was frightening, left me feeling insecure, and completely unloveable.  As I write this post the feelings that I had when those words were used are still very vivid and it still hurts terribly. It breaks my heart when I picture a child being spoken to like that. It breaks my heart that it is my heart.

The Perfect Victim

Issues......we all have them......some of us are toting more baggage than others and some people just keep leaving their baggage on the side of the road for everyone to trip over.

Full Disclosure: I have never had children so my vision of childrearing would likely have been quite different had I been a mom myself.  But......I was a child.  So my comments on childrearing are from a child's perspective many years later. 

My parents never set out to "ruin" me as a child. In fact, quite the opposite - they parented with the hopes and dreams of every parent.  It's just that what they truly wanted for me and how they went about "achieving" that resulted in huge self-esteem issues for me.  This lack of self-esteem would later prove to be the subtle and silent invitation to a predator.  Abusers seek out and prey on the weakest link.  Self esteem can be destroyed with words or the lack of words; actions or reactions. 

My father was a very intelligent man and he expected nothing but the best from his children.  His idea of praise was " You can do better than that".  That was his idea of encouragement. Drive the will of the child to excel. Both my sister and I did very well in school but her marks were always higher than mine. I came to hate report cards and parent/teacher interviews. If I brought home an A in a subject my father would not praise me for that - he would look down at me and tell me that I could do better and I could get an A+. The result was actually two fold - I hated my sister and her honor roll marks and I felt like a failure because I did not achieve what my father expected.

My mother's challenge with me was my weight.  I was a chubby child.  Actually I was probably more than just chubby.  This was a constant battle for my mother and I.  It seemed that every discussion about my weight was in front of a group.  We never had those lovely delicate mother/daughter moments of close conversations.  Nope. In front of a group of visitors one summer afternoon my mother announced to everyone in the room that she had offered me $2 for every pound I lost before school started in the fall. I can still picture that event - in the kitchen, the ladies of our family friends sitting around the table while their children swam in our pool, and I, standing on the top stair of the landing feeling utterly mortified. There were many of these moments.  My favourite drama over my weight occurred in Grade 8. I was singing in the chorus of the school operetta ( Gilbert O'Sullivan I think)  and all of the girls were asked to wear maxi dresses - which were all the rage that year.  I had asked my mother to make me one and the answer I rec'd was " if you lose 20 pounds I will make you a dress". Well, the day that I took home the paper with the instructions as to costuming was priceless. I was getting my maxi dress.  Case closed. I win.

Food became an obsession for both my mother and myself.  She was constantly telling me what I could not eat and I worked around that by sneaking food and hiding it under my bed. Of course when she missed the food in the freezer ( ice cream) or in the cupboard ( potato chips) she would look at me and I would look back at her and boldly lie right to her face.  I did not eat it. To this day, at the age of 52 I have a very hard time eating in front of other people. The graduation dress/weight loss on-going battle was the bane of my Grade 12 year.  My mother paid for me to go to Weight Watchers.  Coming home with no loss to report was not fun. There were no arguments - just that LOOK.  I failed again.

I was a failure at the weight loss and a failure in the eyes of my father with my grades.  Might I mention that I always brought home A's and B's. I grew up trying hard to please my parents, I wanted to be the best, I wanted them to love me and I wanted them to be proud of me.  Perhaps they were in some way, I don't know.  They both died before I could reach the maturity to have these hard discussions.

What I know for sure is this: I was a child who was dying to be loved, to have attention paid to me, to be held and hugged and told "I love you just the way you are",  to not be a failure. Living in a tornado of an alcoholic father and a retreative mother who had her hands full just living life herself - I was the perfect victim.

Who needs a driver's licence anyway?

Somewhere around the time I was 11 or 12 years old the law was enacted to deal with drinking and driving.  My father had 3 things: a sense of entitlement, no common sense and a lot of money.  Money that would buy you "friends" to drink with.  I remember the Railway Hotel being one of his haunts. He had several - he would go to town for the mail or to haul a load of grain and not come home for hours.  Living in a smaller community of around 13,000 people there were people who knew everyone and there were people that everyone knew.  My father grew up and went to school there, my grandmother taught school for many years there, my father was a reeve on the rural council and we owned a rather sizeable grain farm not far out of the city.  And......the police knew my dad well too!  When the drinking and driving law came into effect my father collected several of these infractions.  His licence was taken from him at least 3 times that I know of.  As he was a farmer he was allowed to drive farm equipment to and from the various fields that he needed to get to but it was my mother that became his personal chauffer.  Now, you would think that during these times that he was unlicenced he would curb his drinking....not the case.....this is where his money would help him because his drinking buddies were more than happy to oblige him and drive him around because he paid for their booze as well.  So did losing his licence repeatedly stop him from drinking?  No, he simply found other ways to get where he needed to go. He would come home very drunk and just itching to get into a fight with someone.  He was slightly embarrased that he had to have his friends drive him around and apparently that was everyone's fault but his.  He would arrive home mad at my mother because she had refused to take him into town and he was ready to go for the full 10 rounds.  My mother retreated to the bedroom.  The rest of scattered like rats on a sinking ship.  My father was a hunter, as most people on the prairies were.  He carried rifles in the gun rack in his truck and he had a rack of guns on the wall in his office in the basement.  More than once those rifles were waved around in the midst of his rants. He was going to shoot himself, no, he was going to shoot one of us, no, he was going to shoot himself.  Today, I find that almost amusing because he wouldn't even have been sober enough to load the gun never mind aim it and hit something.  But to a child of 11 these were very scary moments.  No adult was there to protect us from him. More than once the police would phone my mom and tell them that once again they had stopped my dad and taken his licence on the spot.  And my mom would go get him. The winters were the worst as being a grain farmer my father had many hours of freedom whereas in the spring and summer he was busy seeding and harvesting. But I do have some beautiful memories of being the early riser and going with my dad to the fields at 5 in the morning.  He taught me how to grease the combine (a skill that has proven to be as useful as Grade 7 French) and he would let me drive the big machinery.  Eventually it was my job to drive the big grain truck along side the combine as he unloaded on the move. I was thrilled!  Between us - neither of us had a driver's licence most of the time!!! I have some happy memories that I cherish and I cling to.

Slowly my parents' marriage was disintegrating but this was in the middle 1970's and single parent homes were rare. The summer when I was 14 was the pivotal point and things were about to get very bad.

Close your eyes and breathe

These moments of sheer panic and fear come in tsunami waves. I need to go to bed for the night.  I have made the rounds of the house.......I have unplugged every lamp and appliance.  I have held my hand on each burner of the stove and on the oven door to make sure that they are cold. I have held my hand on the toaster oven to make sure that it is cold even tho I can see that the outlet is bare of any cords. I go to bed and get under the covers.  But......I must get up and make the rounds again in case I have forgotten something. Did I check the coffee pot?  I try to turn on each lamp - darkness. I put my hand directly on the burners - cold.  I put my hand on the oven door - cold. I put my hand on the toaster oven - cold. Yes, the coffee pot is unplugged and the carafe is cold. Breathe I tell myself.  You have done your job.  The house is safe and I can go to bed.  I repeat this ritual time and time again.  Finally, I am so tired that when I go to bed for the last time I will myself to stay in bed and breathe.  This happens night after night after night. Some nights I sleep for an hour or two and then get up and make my rounds again. Some nights I sleep on the couch because I have this feeling that if I am in the middle of the house I will be in control of anything that should happen to me or my house in the night. Please, I tell myself, just breathe.......deep breathes......the morning will come. And.......I will start all over again.

The Early Years - Part 1

This is MY story.  My siblings may or may not have the same memories or experiences.  There are 4 of us - and none of us have a close relationship with each other.  We are 4 individuals bound together by DNA. We are the product of a dysfunctional family and each of us is living our lives the best way that we can.  I do not even know where one of my sisters lives - and that is her choice not mine. But life is about choices - sometimes - and sometimes choices seem to have been made for you as you will see in later posts.

I am the eldest child - my father was an only child and my mother had 8 siblings. My early years as a child growing up on a large and prosperous farm were happy years.  We lived right next door to our grandparents and we were in and out of their house all day every day.

I don't really remember the CHANGE in our lives, probably because change can be a gradual series of events as opposed to a singular stunning defining moment. What I do remember is my father becoming more and more an angry person and my mother choosing to cope with his anger by retreating.  Often times the person who failed to retreat the fastest was left to deal with the fallout.  My father's drinking went from social drinking to all day drinking and amazingly he was able to function and run our large farm.  He often drove while he was impaired  - these were days long before drinking and driving was an offense. Many times he drove home late at night from visiting with family friends with his precious family in the car and he was impaired. It's hard to know whether his anger increased his need for alcohol or his alcohol exposed the angry and bitter soul that he was.  I remember being in our large gold colored 4 door car - an Impala I think - when my father sideswiped the power pole at the rear of our property behind the house.  He hit the power pole on the passenger side - my side.  I have no idea why he was driving the car at that time or why he was driving there or even why I was in the car.  I do however remember my mother being extremely angry with him that I was in the car but as soon as my father raised his voice to her she retreated to the house.  My mother has stated many times that she felt that if she left the scene my father would have no one to argue with and would cease.  Wrong.  My father simply railed against the person that was not lucky enough to leave in time.

Breathe........just breathe........

"Just breathe, breathe, breathe" I tell myself repeatedly. You can do this. Be strong. You must "suck it up Buttercup" and leave your home to get to my client's apt. " I can do this", "No I can't", "Yes you can".......this is a constant dialogue in my head that I live with every day all day.

How did I get here? How did this happen to me? Will it ever end?