A Hazy Shade of Winter

We had our first dusting of snow yesterday.

  

Most of it's gone now.  All that's left is a light sugar-frosting on the still strangely-green grass.  We're in the second-third of December and there is still green grass.  It doesn't seem to line up with the proliferation of Currier and Ives imagery that comes with the last page of the calendar.

It's hard for me to tell whether it's the age in which we live, or just the age I have reached, that makes me acutely aware of dissonance and disconnection.

I am hard-coded to love winter because, to me, it means mountains of snow, piles of blankets and the risks and rewards of a roaring fire.

The house I grew up in was a duplex with a common foyer and a staircase that swept up to the upper flat.  One of the ways we marked the changing of the seasons was the return of the boot tray and the pairs of wildly different winter boots that would wait for their owners there like cars outside a funeral home:  all lined-up and ready to go.  

It always seemed to me that the bigger you were the less of a boot you had to wear.  We kids had what used to be called over-shoes.  These were thick rubber boots that, surprisingly enough, went over your shoes.  They had what I would describe as a white woolen washer that looked like cauliflower that encircled the inside top of the boot to protect against snow getting inside and they were fastened with an adjustable strap and buckle arrangement.  They were very practical, but I always hated wearing them.  My dad and the grown-ups he ran with wore toe-rubbers: a kind of condom for the soles of their dress shoes.  The only time I saw my dad wear proper winter boots was when there was a big storm, or when he was headed out into the country.

I hated the overshoes because of the effort it took to put them on.  The boots were always the last thing to put on and once you had all the layers of clothing and sweater and coat and scarf on, the simple act of folding yourself in half to tug on the boots was daunting.  There was a whole protocol to dressing for winter both because, at that time, winter was an actual season and because nobody wanted their kid to catch a cold.

As we kids got older and harder to manage, the outerwear protocol got redacted and contracted. 

First to go was the use of that buckle and strap on the overshoes.  It was a minor act of civil disobedience, but it was a protest nonetheless and one that spread among the elementary school crowd I ran with.  In those days, it was not a crime to let your children walk to school and so you would see companies of kids coming from all directions with tiny nickle-plated buckles swinging from the rubber straps on their overshoes, each of them fighting the power.

After the boots came the coats.  

There's a line in "Ya Got Trouble" from Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man":  "The moment  your son leaves the house, does he re-buckle his knickerbockers below the knee?"  After being stuffed and crammed into our winter coats, throttled with scarves and blinded with scratchy woolen hats, once we were out the door, we un-buttoned, un-zipped and un-stuffed as best we could.  Safely out of sight, I would snatch the hat from my head and bury it in my pocket.  I have a larger than average-size head and sheathing it in a toque with a pom-pom on top was tantamount to wearing a clown nose and a "Kick Me" sign.

My nascent vanity may have caused me to rupture just about every blood vessel in my giant ears, but nobody was going to tell me what do to, especially if they didn't know I wasn't doing it.

At some point while I was in school, winter boots fell completely out of fashion and kids started wearing running shoes.  

This is where I mark the beginning of the end of winter and the start of global warming.  

When I started school, you had gym shoes.  These were shoes you kept at school and were to be worn only for gym class because the gym teacher was obsessive about his floors in a way that made him hard to take seriously. 

Most of us had canvas high-tops and they were considered a school supply and not a fashion essential.  At some point--I think it was in the early Seventies--Adidas broke through as the first brand that kids recognized and had to have.

In retrospect, you can see the now-classic wave of trend ebb  and flow.  First, only the "rich kids" had Adidas and they were a remarkable sight as in "Look, are those Adidas Richie Rich wearing?  Of course they are."  And then, "These Northstars kind of look like Adidas."  Followed by "Can you believe it?  Poor Paulie is wearing hand-me-down Adidas."

It didn't take long for the overshoes to be replaced by running shoes in the school cloak room and on the boot tray outside our front door.

When I was a kid, winter was a months-long event that you had to dress up for--like going the theatre, or getting married.  There was a definite hunkering down, a drawing closer for warmth and company because going outside was an ordeal full of harsh conditions and uncomfortable clothing.

As time has passed, as I have continued to ripen and leave my best-before-date to recede in the rear view mirror, there is less of everything.  The coats are lighter, the boots are thinner and rarely out of the closet.  There is less to winter itself and the renewal that is marked by the winter solstice and the many celebrations that are anchored to it.  For most, the holidays begin and end with sales:  they start with deep discounts on toys and end with deep discounts on holiday decorations.  It's all one big transaction:  we'll help you buy gifts for your loved ones if, when it's over, you help us by taking these decorations off our hands.

As a culture we have a fondness for stories about the traditions of the holiday season.  They connect us to an idea about family and home that, as adults, we work so hard to free ourselves from.  

This is the essential transaction of life:  we are insulated against a harsh environment by layers of protection, resist, resent, and reject that protection only to discover that colds are common because everybody gets them and they are not nearly as much fun when you have to take care of yourself.

I have an extended family:  "extended" in the same way that a rope bridge is extended across a crevasse, a canyon, or a pair of cliffs.  We are attached, but the bonds seem tenuous and the space between us vast.  There were many years--too many years--when crossing that bridge, relying on those bonds, seemed foolish, even dangerous.  Like the layers of winter coats I was so anxious to be freed from, I did what I could to release myself from those bonds, but as another year comes to an end and winter threatens, I now see a new value in sensible seasonal apparel and the worth of a good pair of overshoes.

I Wrote a Long Letter and Got Back a Post Card

I wrote the following letter, by hand, to Senator Robert Portman in which I attempted to articulate my concerns about healthcare policy and the importance of affordability.

I wrote to Senator Portman because I was fairly certain that our other senator, Mr. Brown is much closer to my position and because I believe it is important to engage in respectful debate.

It was not my intent to share this letter, but I was disturbed by the way the Senate bill emerged not as the product of the traditional legislative process of hearings and amendments, but by escaping from closed-door negotiations among a handful of members of the majority party.

That the finished product largely apes the House bill while delaying some of its more painful features until after the mid-terms are over speaks more to a commitment to job security than to the welfare of the governed.

I will say that I did receive a response to this letter which I will include at the end.  It was a particularly creepy response in that I hand-wrote the letter and got back an e-mail to an account I rarely use and the address of which was not included in the letter.

(Updated to reflect Mom's editorial comments.  Letter mailed 5/27/17.)

Dear Senator Portman:

I'm a new American, circa 2014, and a new voter.  I've lived in this country for more than 30 years, but it was only after a lot of hard work and saving that I was able to afford the attorney and other fees that would let me apply for citizenship.

I came here from Canada both because of the opportunities and because I had grown up watching Americans challenge themselves, rally to meet those challenges and then exceed their expectations all while my country seemed mired in questions of language and sovereignty and process.  We never seemed to be able to get anything done whereas Americans always seemed to be doing everything.

I came here ready and able to work hard and challenge myself.  I wanted to be a contributor, part of the team.

Unfortunately, my timing was not good.

I came in the mid-Eighties while the country was changing from a making country to a taking country.  I came at a time when people stopped wanting to be engineers and scientists and wanted to be lawyers and MBAs instead.  I came at a time when the future was changing from being limitless to being either a one or a zero.

One or zero; on or off; yes or no.

It was not long after I got here to attend graduate school that I saw a news item about an elected official proposing a Constitutional amendment to make English the country's official language.  It was like I had never left Canada.

But I stayed.

I stayed because I really wanted to teach, because I loved the work I was doing and because it felt like a grand adventure.  

Hard work, determination and a bit of luck and the possibilities are limitless:  isn't that the ideal?  Isn't that the headline in the national press kit?

Whoever developed that message deserves a raise because it's short, pithy and, to use a modern expression, "sticky."  It gets under the skin and becomes malignant.  If you weren't successful today, then you didn't do enough, weren't fast enough, weren't good enough and tomorrow you have do more, do it faster and do it better.

What is less apparent is that while one is busy focusing on one's adverbs, the goal line keeps moving.

I am not your core constituent.  I identify as a liberal democrat, but having said that, we do share some common ground:  I believe in hard work, I would rather pay my own way than get a handout and I am suspicious of regulation from whatever the institution.

Where we differ, I suspect, is on the concept of a common good.  

I do not believe this is a liberal concept, but rather one that is central to the concept of democracy.

If there is one thing that binds the country together, then there is more than one thing.  If we believe that a common defense is a shared value then we have to accept that there be some mechanism to pay for it.

That's an easy one.

As you go on down the list of things that are, or could be, shared, or common, values it gets trickier.

I understand that.

But I think that's why you have constitutions:  to remind you what we all think is important and what is worth fighting for.

I am sharing all of this because I want you to know that while much is expected from each of us, there are some things that are too big for an individual to handle on their own.  In just the same way that I cannot, alone, defend the country against all of its enemies, so too I cannot be counted upon to solve healthcare and provide for the protection of myself and my family--much as I would like to.

There is too much money in healthcare for any individual to change the system.  Why would it change for me, or for anyone else?  But, if there is research to suggest that our health outcomes per dollar spent are not comparable to other industrialized powers then should that alone not be reason for a stronger solutions-focus?  And by "solutions" I do not just mean reductions/elimination of public spending.  

The President has acknowledged that healthcare is a complex issue but addressing it has to be more nuanced than the binary public versus private insurance meme that permeates our conversation.

You no doubt know the numbers better than I, but there are a lot of people--my family included--who depend on the exchanges to make healthcare accessible.  I'm in my mid-fifties now but I still am not afraid to work and I still want to pay my own way.

I just can't.

Time and genetics have had their way with me and so I have had some health issues that puts unregulated private insurance out of reach.  Without healthcare and the access to more reasonably priced medications I would not be a contributing member of society and no longer be able to pursue the American Dream.

That's a choice that should not be forced upon any of our citizens, especially if it is within the nation's power to fix it.

I understand that there are powerful incentives to leave things as they are, or to make it the next guy's problem.  I understand that it is really expensive to get and keep an elected office.  I understand also  that America is about more than who has the deepest pockets and the loudest voices; it's about doing the right thing instead of the easy thing.  It's about staying when it's easier to leave, passing even though the net is open and "taking one for the team."

I'm about to lose my customer service job in part because I subscribed to the company's stated guarantee more than their monthly sales quotas.  It was my job to resolve the customer's concern about a product of service and I could not reconcile protecting their good will for the company with leading them to make a new purchase.  That's on me and so I cannot challenge them when they come to tell me it's time to go.  I did what was right for the customer.

Having come of age in Canada and socialized medicine and then been exposed to America's private insurance model, I have an obvious preference, but I know an "American" answer lies in some sort of a compromise.  My hope is that you are allowed the room to look for a honest compromise that celebrates life and the quality thereof over money and the quantity thereof.

Thank you for your kind attention.

The response:

Dear Graham,

Thank you for taking the time to write me with your concerns regarding reforms to our nation’s health care system. It is good to hear from you.

As you know, members of the House of Representatives recently passed a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. This bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), replaces Obamacare with a market-driven health insurance system and makes significant changes to the Medicaid program. Since the AHCA has passed in the House, it now comes to the Senate for debate. 

I have already made clear that I do not support the House bill as it is currently constructed. My concerns that the AHCA does not do enough to protect Ohio's Medicaid expansion population, especially those who are receiving treatment for heroin and prescription drug abuse, remain unchanged. We have an opioid epidemic in this country, and I will continue to work with my colleagues on solutions that will ensure those who are caught in the grips of this epidemic can continue to get the treatment they need.

This said, we must not lose sight of the fact that, for many Ohioans, the status quo is unacceptable. Individuals and families continue to face higher health care costs and fewer choices for health care providers. Insurance companies, saddled with costly and cumbersome regulations, continue to pull their health plans from the individual market across the State. Small businesses continue to pay more money for insurance premiums that could have otherwise been used to hire more employees or provide better pay for those they already employ. Congress must provide solutions to these problems, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to do so. 

After seven years of increasing costs and decreasing choices under the Affordable Care Act, it is clear that the current course of our health care system is unsustainable. Ohio families who are struggling to pay for health care need relief soon. Our nation’s health care system is broken, and while changing such a large and complicated system is no easy task, I believe that such change is necessary to ensure affordable access to high quality care for Ohioans and Americans across the country for years to come. 

  Sincerely,
Rob Portman
U.S. Senator

 I understand that nobody wants to go back to the summer of discontent that preceded the passage of the ACA, but there has to be a better way than one side imposing their political philosophy on the other:  that's not governance, that's bullying.

I wrote a letter because I wanted to live my belief in engagement and compromise solution.  I got back a letter full of boiler plate language.

I heard a lot about American exceptionalism and the remarkable healthcare system that is the envy of the world.  Why then do we appear hell-bent on making active choices to put it out reach to so many of our citizens?

For me, there is no more important context to this issue than the inevitable march of time and the decay and failure of our health and prospects.  We will all need healthcare; some sooner than later, some more than others.  We have a common interest in getting this right for everyone and yet will "fix it" so only a tiny subset of us can pay the cost of their own care.

To borrow from another transplant to these shores, "America:  what a country!" 

Those Who Were Seen Dancing

My step-father died this week.

That's not exactly right; he didn't so much die as disappear over the horizon, like a ship heading out to sea, or the sun clocking out at the end of a long day.

It wasn't very dramatic and it wasn't sudden; there were no heroic measures taken by doctors and nurses with "complicated" personal histories and no emotional musical underscore.

The end came with Eric and my mom holding hands.

They were, as they had been for most of the last three decades, together.

I say "most" because, for the better part of the last ten years, my mom has had to share Eric with dementia which resulted from a stroke.

For those whose families have not been touched by dementia, or Alzheimer's, no words can adequately explain the slow, inexorable dis-connecting that happens as lovers become partners, partners become acquaintances, and acquaintances become people who keep showing up, but whose names you can't quite recall.

For those who have been through it, no description is necessary.

I won't pretend to speak for my brother and sister, but it took me a while to get it.  I mean, I understood that Eric was the man that my mother had fallen in love with and it was clear that he was nuts about her:  that was clear from the beginning, but getting to know Eric as a person took time.

It took patience.

My dad was loud and one of those people who made an immediate impression:  you knew right away if he was happy or sad, furious or frustrated.  Eric was a much harder read.

One of my father's favorite jokes was "Get into the roundhouse, Mother; the brakeman won't corner you there."  

I don't know if Eric had a favorite joke.

Away from work, my dad liked transformational pursuits such as taking down trees, or fixing broken equipment:  he liked to solve problems.

Eric liked to watch.

Both my dad and Eric liked to be outdoors, but Eric was more interested in being a witness to the wonders of nature and, in particular, its birds.

Birdwatching?!?

When this word first entered my mother's vocabulary I couldn't understand its charm.  What could possibly be interesting about standing outside staring at small objects through binoculars?

Of course, this was more than thirty years ago when the world and I were both in a different place:  everything was go-go-go and birdwatching was stop-stop-shhhh!

Or, at least, that's what it seemed like, before I went out in the woods with Eric and my mom.

As they built their lives together and I had the privilege of spending more and more time with them, I came to appreciate that going out "birding" was an active pursuit, a conscious choice to seek stillness and quiet in  both the environment and one's self.  It was a meditation practice to quiet the noises in your life so that you could hear the song and see the movement that would help you train your "bi-nocs" on another entry for your life list.

Eric's stillness and his patience yielded an extensive list of birds and made him an ideal partner for my mother who came into the marriage looking for strength and stability.

Watching Eric out in the woods, you would see him almost disappear among the trees he was scanning; and not just because he was tall.  Eric would get to a spot and then he would stop moving.  For long periods of time, it was like he was rooted to the spot listening to the forest, picking one bird's song from another until he focused on the one that he wanted.  In a flash, the glasses would come off, one ear-piece would go into his mouth as he raised the binoculars and scanned for his target.  Like a sniper, he zeroed in, captured the image in his mind's eye and then he moved on to another spot, another set of sounds, another bird.

Try as she might, I don't think my mom ever reached the same zen-like state of birding.  Perhaps it might have been because I was there--she was always worried about her guests--but she would always move from a spot before Eric did.

It was a revelation to me to watch the two of them together.  

After growing up in a house where it always seemed as though my parents each had very different interests, seeing Eric and Lois together, in the woods, scanning the canopy for birds was compelling.  I never got the bug for watching birds, but I always interested to watch them, together.

For those to whom birdwatching is a thing, I know it can be pretty exciting to see the heretofore unseen, but, for me, the most exciting part was the annual swan count.  This happens in the winter and involves teams of counters racing around the back roads of the British Columbia interior looking for patches of open water to estimate the number of birds at each location.  It was still birdwatching, but interrupted by occasional fits of road racing.

Eric was a company man; he spent his professional life working for The Hudson's Bay Company, first in retail management, then as a sporting goods buyer and finally back in retail management.  He weathered the often rough seas of retail and corporate life with the same relentless patience that he took into the woods whenever he could. 

In his role of buyer, Eric traveled extensively in Asia and Europe which fed his interest in people and his curiosity.

After retirement, he was able to travel to Africa, see its animals and meet its people.  I know this was an important experience because of the care he took in documenting the trip and cataloging his photographs.  And I know because of the passion he brought to sharing those images and stories with me.

At first "passion" might seem to be an out-sized word to use in describing Eric, but I know it to be an accurate one.  

While he could seem like one of those inscrutable stone heads on Easter Island, it didn't take long to recognize that, like those immense figures, Eric was a witness.  He would watch, he would listen and, quite often in my experience, ask the right questions, or call you on your bullshit.

Eric's passion was evident in his love of jazz, of nature and of my mother. 

It was rare to see him angry, but when it did happen it was most often because he felt that one or the other of her kids were not treating my mother the way he felt she should be treated.  

Eric Burton McAlary was a good man, a kind man and, most importantly, the right man for my mother and it is just cruel that it took so long for them to find one another and, once together, that he should be taken from her in such a manner.

My last visit with Eric was about a year ago.  

At that time he was living in a long-term care facility.  Whether he knew who my mother was, or that she was just a nice lady who came to see him regularly, is hard to say.  He wasn't speaking much.

But he was watching.

At one point, he was in the day room standing next to the window and staring out at the trees that were just across the narrow courtyard.  Now, whether he was looking for birds is anybody's guess, but that is how I would like to remember him:  as a witness to nature; a totem recording history and pointing toward the future.

At one point, my wife worked for the local chapter of the Alzheimer's Association and she told me about one of the people who came to their adult daycare facility.  Her name was Sarah.  She was a petite apple doll of a woman who had bright eyes and a quick energy about her.  She was very verbal, but the language she was using at that time was Pennsylvania Dutch, her first language. 

Sarah was anxious to communicate, but could only do so in a language that nobody at that facility understood.

Kristen explained to me that one way to understand dementia is that it impacts the ability to make and keep short-term memory as it erodes long term memory.  Like peeling back layers of an onion until, at the end, all that is left are your earliest memories.  In essence, you become your true self, before experience, culture and society have taught you what to hide and what to show.

This is where the dancing comes in.

Later that same day we visited Eric, we came back for their Friday dance party.

When we got there, Eric was dancing with staffers, other residents and, eventually, with my mother.

I believe he was fully present in that moment, because I would like to believe that was who he was:  someone who loved life, experienced true passion and was possessed of a poet's soul.

Which, inevitably, brings me to Nietzsche who said:

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

 Farewell Mr. MaCallery and thank you for letting me add you to my life list.

The Ripple Effect

I drove my mother's car into the back of a parked station wagon and was scared shitless because I was going to have to tell my father when he got home.

I was about a block away from our house when, after stopping at the corner, I looked both ways and proceeded through the intersection.  A flash of light caught my eye, I turned to my left, and noticed a camera crew filming about half-a-block away.  

This was very exciting.  Movies were just beginning to be made in Montreal and the sight of camera crews was still a novelty.  Of course, it could have been a TV crew shooting a piece for the six o'clock news.  I couldn't be sure which it was and, as I was trying to recall what exactly I had seen, my still moving car came to an abrupt halt in the back of the aforementioned station wagon.

The right-front quarter panel connected with the left-rear quarter panel:  fender to fender, panel to panel, crumple to crumple.

Shit.

What happened next is a bit of a blur:  the police came, forms were filled out, information was exchanged and, eventually, I was able to get the car the remaining short distance to our house.  It is a sad commentary on my nascent skill as a driver that I was almost an old-hand at accident protocol by this time--although I had never hit such an obvious and stationary target as a full-size station wagon.

What I do remember is having to make "The Call."

I had to call my father and tell him what had happened.

Shit.

I had to own up to my stupidity and start the clock--the angst-o-graph--that measured the increasing amount of stress over the reducing time until my father arrived home.

You have to remember, this was a very different time:  a time when parents, well my parents, were less interested in whether or not I had been injured than in the impact on their insurance rates and the access to the family's second car.

This was long before relativism entered the parenting skill set.  A scratch and an accident resulting in debilitating, or paralyzing injury, were treated the same way.

I called my father at his work and told him that I had had the accident and his reaction was devastating:  he said almost nothing except the dreaded "We'll talk about it when I get home."

SHIT.

That was worse than yelling; it was worse than corporal punishment.  It was like the opening of A Touch of Evil:  you know there's a bomb in the trunk of that car, you know when it's going to go off, you just don't know where.

(I think about movies a lot.)

By my reckoning, I had about six hours to kill until the bomb went off.  Six hours to contemplate how he would react, what he might do, how I would be punished.  And, as each of those three hundred and sxty minutes wound down, my anxiety ratcheted up.

I remember killing some of the time by going to a movie, Robert Altman's A Wedding--I was a weird kid.

I was experiencing dread even as I tried to watch this movie.  I chose it because it was within walking distance of the house and I needed to be somewhere else--somewhere where my father was not.

It's not because I was specifically afraid of him or how he might react.  It was more about the unrealized potential of his reaction;  the anticipation of his anger.  It was a negative space that was irresistible to all of my anxieties about the accident and the self-loathing resulting from the stupidity of hitting a parked car.

I am definitely a product of the "Just You Wait Until Your Father Gets Home" generation, although, truth be told, it's probably more like Just You Wait Until (Insert Name of Authority Figure Here) Gets Home."

I deserved the anxiety--maybe not the Altman film--but I certainly deserved to be strung out for having done something so stupid.  This and similar experiences have informed my life and made me very aware of the Ripple Effect.  There would always be consequences; every action causes a reaction as permanent as the crumpled metal quarter-panel.

Accidents can be repaired, sheet metal can be replaced, but there will always be evidence of the trauma.  Wear and tear is no longer uniform, there are scars, tool marks and the fit is never as tight as when it came from the factory.  Every human error leaves fingerprints.  No matter how many times you click your heels; Kansas will never look exactly the same after you have been attacked by flying monkeys.


I remember walking home after the movie and thinking that maybe the damage was not as bad as I first thought.  Even though the police had had to pry the fender off the right front tire so that I could drive the remaining block to my house, I thought, perhaps, my dad might not even notice.


So, I am hallucinating about how he'll react when he gets home and how much trouble I will be in and I have given my father an extra six hours to imagine how bad the damage was before seeing it.  With one shoe already landed, the size of the second one was getting larger the longer we waited for it to drop.

When I got home, I still had a few hours to kill before my dad got home, and so I paced.

I walked the floors of our home--upstairs and down--stopping every few laps to look out the dining room window at the car.  Not content to fantasize about the impending trauma, I also had to periodically go outside and re-ink my mental impressions of the damage.

It's only as I write this--almost forty years later--that I fully understand the genius of Anglo-Saxon guilt as a teaching method  Like our Northern European brethren, we believe in the volume of that which is not said:  it last longer.

I remember the fear, the stress, the irrational thinking.  I remember the dramatic scenarios that I concocted around what my father "might" do when he got home.

I remember not wanting to re-live that experience ever again.

And it is that fear that informs much of my adult life.  How will people react?  How upset will they be?  How disappointed?  What will be the impact of the choices I make?  The ones I don't make?

What I no longer remember from that experience is how my father actually dealt with it.

I know that the car got fixed.  A few years later, I drove it away to graduate school in Indiana where it served me well....

...Until I had an accident.

Until Someone drove their car into the back of my stopped wagon.

I was stopped at a light and some guy who had come to Bloomington the night before to s Supertramp concert, got distracted and plowed into the back of my car.

It's tempting to think in terms of karma, but all I can think about is how much trouble he was going to be in when his father found out.

Le Mot Juste

I am a writer because writers don't have to say anything until they can say the right thing.  There is no limit on the number of drafts and no maximum on the number of words; writers determine when all is done and said.

I like to write because it is only on paper that I have the time and the real estate to make my case, capture a thought and describe a feeling.  On paper is the only place I can communicate without being interrupted, or shouted down.

I grew up with a tremendous respect for language and I grew up surrounded by people who understood the power of words.  

From elementary school I can still remember the teacher's example of a misplaced modifier:  "Wanted a piano by a woman with fat legs."  From watching The Two Ronnies on TV, I remember the importance of proofreading.

All through school, I was gifted with teachers who loved language.  They introduced me to the poetry of Shakespeare and the precision of Wilde; the craftsmanship of Shaffer and the ruthlessness of Albee.

My favorite characters in books, on television and in the movies always had the right words and said them without having to think about them, search for them, weigh them for their potential impact.  

My favorite people in real life spoke without stammering; their words arriving fully formed and without reservation.  There may have been a time when I could say what I meant without first undergoing extensive research and development, but that was so long ago that I do not remember what that felt like.

In the following example, I am Shaw in a world full of Whistlers and Wildes, not because I liken myself to Shaw--he always seemed to have more than enough words--but because whenever it came to being put on the spot, I never felt up to the task.

Writing is an experimental medium where you can write, erase, re-order and repeat as often as needed in order to get ideas across just as you intend; real life is far messier, far less precise and much less forgiving.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently because I have been processing the deaths of two significant influences on my life.  It is important to me to record their passing and catalog the impact they have made on my life.  What skill I may have and the perception that guides it are, in no small part, a tribute to these people.

Both are teachers and guides, oracles and sentries:  they enriched my world view, took an interest in my development and treated me with respect.  I am simultaneously greater for having known them and lesser for having now lost them and that is how it should be.  It is the nature of life to always have more questions than answers and to appreciate benefit primarily in the light of loss.

Only rarely do I open the alumni magazine from my undergraduate school.  I do not have the fondness for college life that so many do.  I have no social skills, no taste for beer and less than zero interest in sports and so, needless to say, I was a theatre student.  The magazine is always full of stories of graduates who are far more successful than me, living lives to which I cannot relate, or were in programs with which I had no contact.  I did, however, open the magazine recently to discover that my high school English teacher, Mr. Gilbert Plaw, had died.

Two lines: apparently more than enough space to record his name and year of graduation, but are in no way sufficient to capture his influence on me and generations of students who passed through his classes.

Mr. Plaw was one of those characters that are far more common on the page than real life.  

He was a large bear of a man with a full beard, animated eyebrows and eyes that could quickly size you up and cut you down.

He took full advantage of the luxury of small class size to introduce his students to the power and the subtleties of their own language.
 
This is the job of the English teacher and he obviously took a great subversive pleasure in it.  

Against a backdrop of seemingly endless conversations and legislation about language and culture, Mr. Plaw delighted in teaching the works of everyone from Shakespeare to Ferlinghetti; Stephen Crane to T.S. Elliott; Alice Munro to Leonard Cohen.

Teaching English to high school students is a thankless task, particularly in what is now a post-literate time, but I am certain it was no fun even then.  But the thing is, Mr. Plaw made it seem like fun.  He had what I came to discover was an all-too-rare talent among teachers:  the ability to make words and ideas come alive and illuminate the writer's work in a way that made me want to read it.

I remember reading "The Recruiting Officer" a Restoration comedy by George Farquhar.  It was a revelation to learn that the play is almost exclusively about sex and that nothing that was said could be taken at face value alone.  It was a whole category of theatre that was like the improv game "If You Know What I Mean."

I immediately connected with this less out of prurience than a keen appreciation of words and their multiple meanings--I just didn't understand that one of those meanings could be sexual.

Did I mention I was shy?

Mr. Plaw was in his element teaching that play because all he had to do was raise an eyebrow, or hold a look for an extra beat and everyone in the classroom knew exactly what he was talking about.  In those moments, everyone--student, teacher and playwright--was on the same page, literally.

For four years, we read all manner of material and Mr. Plaw and his colleagues, brought the same creative energy to every page we turned.  We read modern plays "Equus" and "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel," classics like "Henry V - Pt. 1" and "Sister Carrie," essays from The Sunday New York Times and extracts from the Norton Anthology.  I am a painfully slow reader, but what grounding in literature I do have I got in those classes and from Mr. Plaw and it has served me well to this day.

But perhaps more importantly than the education, Mr. Plaw served as an object lesson in a kind of cautious joy.  He always struck me as a very open person who enjoyed people and seemed to take a real interest in his students.

Many of the graduates from my high school went to school in the States and so American Thanksgiving was a time when we were in school and they were not.  Year after year, former students would return to the school during the day just to reconnect with him.

And he always seemed genuinely happy to see them.  He would never miss an opportunity to hug the females and make some remark that would evoke a smile, at a minimum, and a blush at best.

It was enviable, the impact he so obviously had on students and he made me want to be a teacher.  I am certain that, even then, I had no misapprehension that I could do as he did, but he made me want to try, to share the power of ideas and the impact of great writing.

For the longest time, I thought everyone, every student, gets at least one really talented teacher.  Surely, over the course of thirteen years of continuous education, everyone gets the teacher they need at some point.  It can make all the difference in the world in shaping the future:  in opening it up, or closing it down.

As time has passed, I have come to understand that not all teaching occurs in the classroom and not all teachers have the same talents.

Good teaching is like art:  it reaches the student where they are and guides them along a personalized path toward understanding.  A good teacher gives you a compass and a map and tells you what time dinner will be served.  

Learning how to navigate in a world of ideas turns out to be far more valuable than learning how to follow directions.

I remember visiting London.  I had been there before, but I wanted to show it to my girlfriend and so we took a guided tour bus ride that stopped at all of the major landmarks and gave a ninety-minute summary of hundreds of years of English history.

On this bus, along with the photographers and the videographers and the pointers and those who had to read every sign they saw, was a man sitting by himself with his head buried in the register of his checkbook.  He was not interested in what was passing by his window so much as he was in writing down everything that the guide was saying, as though there were going to be a test.  

Perhaps that check register was a more valuable souvenir for him, a way to document his experience and remember the historical significance of the places we visited, but I still can't help thinking about what he thinks about when he thinks about visiting London.  Does he see the Tower of London, or does he see the check register?

About once a generation, Hollywood makes a movie about a teacher who have a transformational impact on their students.  "Goodbye Mr. Chips" and "The Dead Poets Society" are two examples that come to mind, but I am sure that you can think of others.  These are the movies that leave you with a lump in your throat thinking about the one or two gifted teachers who may have crossed your path.  Watching Robin Williams teach English and see the impact he had on his students made me think about the time I spent with Mr. Plaw and all that I have learned from him.

My Aunt Janet lived through the inauguration of fourteen American presidents and thirteen Canadian Prime Ministers, including Arthur Meighen.  She was the toughest, most resilient person I have ever met, but Donald Trump proved to be too much even for her.   

Like Mr. Plaw, the life of my Aunt, its reach and  impact also cannot be easily recorded.  As I write this, I am aware of how difficult it is to be both accurate and fair.  Her life must be accounted for and her loss recorded without hyperbole, or cliche.  She was a complicated woman who, with her warmth and hospitality, could make a house full of strangers feel like friends; and, when she was hurt, the world was not big enough.  I keep coming back to the idea that she, perhaps more than anybody else, taught me how to be an adult.

Much of my world view was, and is, mediated by television and the movies and their over-simplified ideas about the ways of the world.  The hero's journey and that of the audience is to set off on a quest and overcome obstacles en route to a resolution.  All is resolved and the murderer is revealed before the final fade-out.  Love is absolute and unquestioning, all families like each other all the time.  All endings are happy.

Those were the movies and TV shows that I watched growing up and so when Mr. Plaw had us read work that did not conform to this world view, I neither liked nor finished them.  They felt somehow wrong.

It is the lesson plan of adulthood to learn that absolutes are more the exception than the norm, a bug and not a feature.  Good and evil, love and hate, right and wrong do not exist as opposites, but as end-points on arc that is described by a swinging pendulum.

I spent about the first half of my life being afraid of my Aunt Janet.

She could be incredibly warm and generous, and she could also, in what seemed like an instant, turn on people and say the most vicious things.

I have many memories of family gatherings that seemed to go on for hours that began with drinks and laughter and ended in anger and hurt feelings.

It took years, decades really, before I had something close to a full understanding of what was going on.  All I knew was that we would go to parties at her house and my parents would come home angry and hurt.  My mom would be deafeningly silent and my dad would be drunk and all I knew was somehow my Aunt was responsible for this.

And yet we kept going back.  Christmas after Christmas; Easter, Thanksgiving, we would go to her house and the play would begin again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

In between these family gatherings, my Dad would make regular visits on his own.  These too would end with him getting drunk and upset.  He often came home from these visits and it would be as if we had all gone because the effect on the house was the same:  my mom was not talking, and my brother and sister and I would retreat to whatever corners of the house we could find until my dad finally went to sleep.

As I got older, I came to understand that Janet had an accupressurist's skill to find the right nerve to press to elicit a response.  It seemed as though she could see right through people and identify their weaknesses, their hopes and their fears and then press on them until they squealed.  I described her to others as "my aunt with the sabre-toothed fangs."

It could be very funny when she used her powers on others and devastating when they were turned on you.

It was at her house that I learned the importance of weighing my words, of measuring the risk versus benefit of what I said.  I would try hard not to say anything that I didn't want brought back up.  Feelings and opinions were equally dangerous things to have where she was concerned because they could come back to you when you least expected them and were not ready to defend them.

I used to think that she lashed out because she was a mean person, but I no longer believe that.  I think she roared at people because, like the lion in Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion" she was hurting.  She roared because she could not find anyone who could remove the splinter from her paw.

She had many splinters and they came in many different sizes.  I don't pretend to know what they all were, or where she got them, but I know that she hurt.  

I know because after my father died, I used to stay at her house whenever I came back to Montreal and she talked to me.  I know because I collected the wine bottles and emptied the ash trays.  I know because of the way she talked about the important people in her life who had left her behind.  I know because the wounds never scabbed over and when she even hinted at them, they were as vivid for her as if they had just happened.

It was in these conversations that I understood how much she loved my father.  She could reduce him to tears when he was alive, but they also laughed and enjoyed one another's company.

When I was younger, I used to think that my father's drinking was a way to bury the hurt done to him.  He could forget the pain and that made it possible for him to go on and also to keep going back to those people who hurt him.  He didn't remember what had been said or done so it could be said and done again and again.  

That's what I used to think.

What I learned from my Aunt Janet is that you don't forget, or forgive, for that matter.  Life is more nuanced than black and white.  You can hug your enemies and hate your friends.

Like the lion, Janet was limited by her circumstances. 

A fiercely intelligent woman, Janet was born into a time when there were few, if any, opportunities for such women outside of the home.  She was expected to get married, and she did.  She was expected to have children, and she did.

And that was about it.

Her brothers, on the other hand, were expected to do the same and also to be successful in business.  They got married, they had the kids, but successful in business?  I know my father never considered himself to have been successful and I am pretty certain that my Uncle George never was.  Where Janet was limited by the conventions of the times, her two brothers had opportunities and never seemed to capitalize on them.  They were passive and Janet was not.  She wanted more for them than they wanted for themselves.  I know that had their genders been reversed, Janet would have thrived in business in much the same way that my sister has proven to be the son my father never had.

As was noted at her standing-room-only memorial service, Janet was advised by the minister who married her and my Uncle Bob, to make her home a source of "constant refreshment."  The line never fails to get a laugh as those who knew her recall that her door was always open and the liquor cabinet was never locked.

Janet's connections to the world beyond her doorstep came in many forms and she welcomed all of them.  The refreshment provided was bilateral:  for every glass poured, she seemed to drink in her visitors, their stories, their lives.  She was the Priestess of Grosvenor:  she took confession, offered advice, dispensed absolution.

Over the years since my father died, she began to reveal more of the pain she endured and the depth of her feelings on many topics.  Like Tiny Tim trapped on the wrong side of the toy shop window, she could clearly see the present and future she could not have, the pathway to it so clear and yet the barriers unconquerable.  It was in these moments that she would often remark, "It's a long road without a turn."

In my family, we talked a lot about family and our Scottish roots.  My grandfather and his two sons were presidents of the local St. Andrew's Society and proudly wore the kilt.  We paid a lot of lip service to the extended family and the cousins, aunts and twice-removeds,  but Janet actually did the real work of staying connected to them.  She was the last one who understood the connections and ties to the farm in southwestern Ontario and back to the "old country."  She often represented the "Montreal cousins" at the hatchings, matchings and dispatchings when no one else could, or would.

I did not understand until quite recently how important family was to Janet.  Stuck as I was with the powerful images of pain and hurt caused to my parents, from my childhood, it took a look time to appreciate that she and her son thrived on those connections and the sense of rootedness that they provided.  

This is not to say that Janet was all-forgiving.  She wanted the family relationships, but on her terms.  She was never so desperate that she would be taken for granted, or disrespected.  Like the other members of my family, she had a long memory and was often reluctant to forgive.  Janet was often strategic in her forgiveness; it was often given in the interest of preserving a connection.  She would call to remind you that you should have called; she would take an action in order to reset the conversation.

As we struggled to find the right words to mark Janet's death and freedom from the splinters that had plagued her in this life, it seemed important to me to move beyond platitudes.  To talk about Janet and not at least try and capture some of the complexity of her personality and the dimensions of her impact on others seemed to marginalize her impact on the world and I choose "impact" on purpose.

I mentioned earlier that I had been a theatre student in college.  I was never an actor, or a designer, but I made the stuff that designers drew and actors used.  As a result, I spent a lot of time watching artists trying to give life to words and, most often, falling far short of the mark.  I took it into my head that I could be at least as good as many of the directors I had worked for and so set about finding a play I could put on its feet.

There was only ever one choice and that was Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"  This is a marathon piece for four actors who say and do horrible things to one another during a long night of drinking. I knew this play and these characters and with a certainty that has eluded me in many other aspects of my life, I knew I could get college students to get to the heart of the story.

It's facile to dismiss this as a drunken brawl of a play.  It's a romance; it's a love story built upon ruins and disappointments, regrets and recriminations. It's a romantic story about grown-up relationships in all of their complexities and nuances.

I knew that story because I knew my Aunt Janet.  

Janet taught me about words and the importance of those that are said and those that are not.  She taught me that life is not a spectator sport and, no matter where you sit, you are going to get some on you.

It is the writer's job to find the right words to describe and document the world as they see it, but words can disappoint; they often cannot capture feelings and the lives that evoked them.  Sometimes it can take a whole other life to gain the distance and the perspective from which to choose the right words.

I count myself lucky to have learned from great teachers who helped to appreciate good stories and the drive to keep looking for the right words with which to tell them.