Mind Picking : Untouchable Silver Linings

Dear Husband,

Every time we talk about our first date at Chianti's, it has become family mythology that you telling me about your favourite scene from The Untouchables  – Kevin Costner taking the kill shot while simultaneously saving the runaway baby carriage; you acting it out in slowmo (the shot, the dive, the grab) until you were off your chair and nearly on the floor of the restaurant – this was the moment of connection; this was when we clicked. What I couldn't know at the time was that this was also a promise. Twenty-five years ago today I married you, and every day since, you have been that guy: the guy who can make the kill shot and save the baby at the same time; the guy who takes care of business and takes care of his family with equal dedication. In twenty-five years, you have never once brought a knife to a gunfight; never once stopped fighting 'til the fight was done.

What we never talk about is something that I said on that first date: in response to something or other you asked (I wouldn't have just come out with this, even if I can't remember what prompted it), I said, "I've never been engaged, but ever since I was nine years old, every boyfriend I ever had assumed that we'd get married; they would make these plans without ever asking me if I even wanted to marry them". This was meant to be jokey, but I remember you turning slightly sour and saying, "Don't worry, I won't be making plans to marry you". This moment was quickly recovered, but in my mind I was thinking, "We'll see about that".

Twenty-five years later – after moving across country together, buying four houses, countless cars, loving and letting go of two excellent dogs, birthing and raising two incredibly talented and accomplished daughters – after all this time and all that we've been through, can I just say one thing? I was riiiiiight...you wanted to marrrrrrry meeeee...you looooove meeeeee...

And I love you too, Dave. I can't wait to see what the next twenty-five years will bring.

That's my Facebook status for today and I just want to add one more thing: Dave and I were out driving the other night (getting Mallory a present for her high school graduation, actually) and I started thinking about this first twenty-five years of marriage. There really was a lot packed into these years – struggling in the early days, going from poor to not, and especially everything that revolved around the girls – and I posed to Dave this question: Looking at people like my parents and his parents who are now past their 50th anniversary, how do people fill those next twenty-five years? He figures eventual grandchildren will take up a lot of our energy and time, but as I pointed out to him, our parents love their grandchildren but aren't consumed with them. 

I suppose that it's the not knowing that makes it an adventure.

I had to take Kennedy to Chianti's when we were in Edmonton. Natch.

*Later edit: Dave isn't on Facebook, so I had to send him my post in an email in order for him to see it, and this is his (emailed) response:

Dear Wife, 

 I was planning on sending you this note even before you sent me yours but as usual…you were a step ahead of me!  

I’m glad I was alone when I read it as I’m not prepared for anyone around here to see me get all misty…which I did!  

That said, I had to strain my memory but I do remember you saying that and my response, but what you couldn’t know was that my response was not intended to be “sour” but just a reaction that I thought at the time was appropriate.  I didn’t want to risk coming off un-cool or anything.  Truth is I was thinking…"glad I didn’t start talk about what our wedding would be like or potential names of our future children"…too soon?    In other words…you were riiiiiight...I wanted to marrrrrrry yooooou...I looooove yoooooou...  

Safe to say, every Hallmark anniversary card overuses terms like “soul mate”, “my best friend”, “partnership” and “loyalty”…but my take is that these are for people that aspire to achieve even one of them.  No matter what else I may or may not accomplish in my life I can say with the utmost confidence that each of these words have always and continue to define you and me.  

My only wish in life is that Kennedy and Mallory find (or have found) what we have…nothing else could make me happier than I am today! I can’t wait for what the next 25 brings…now, the 3^rd quarter…"yep I guess I did"…I can wait!  

All my Love!  

BD

That's better than anything Hallmark ever came up with.

(And Dave's last comment about the 3rd quarter was a reference to an inside joke he made about his Dad on his way out the door this morning; don't ask.)

Tunesday : Suspicious Minds

Suspicious Minds

(Zambon, F) Performed by Elvis Presley

We're caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see
What you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

So, if an old friend I know
Drops by to say hello
Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?

Here we go again
Asking where I've been
You can't see these tears are real
I'm crying

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds

Oh let our love survive
Or dry the tears from your eyes
Let's don't let a good thing die
When honey, you know
I've never lied to you
Mmm yeah, yeah

We're caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see
What you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say?

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Don't you know I'm

Caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

I've been rushing my timeline for the last couple of months because I wanted to end up here in my life story on this day: tomorrow is Dave's and my 25th anniversary and it seemed important to get to our meeting before that happens; I certainly didn't want to spend today talking about some other guy. 

I started working at the Mayfair Hotel in Edmonton in February of 1989, and as I was totally broke, I was happy enough to take a job as a hostess in the hotel's restaurant -- even if it did mean minimum wage and no tips (I learned soon enough that that wasn't enough to support even my meagerest of lifestyles, but in the beginning, it was better than nothing). 

The staff at the hotel were all pretty young -- from the bar to the kitchen to the front desk -- so it had a fun atmosphere; even the managers were friendly and jokey. I was distracted enough by learning the job and trying to remember everyone's name that I wasn't spending my early days trying to figure out who I could hook up with, and as I remember it, no one was really trying to hook up with me. Even so, as Dave tells the story, he was interested in me from our first shift together and he decided to play it cool -- he decided to wait until I had shot down all the other waiters before asking me out himself. (There was this one guy with a unisex name -- Terry? Maybe? -- and he may have asked me out and I may have rejected him, because after Dave and I started dating, he liked to bad mouth Dave and suggest that he was patiently waiting for me to see the error of my choices; I don't remember anyone else.) 

So basically, I enjoyed being around everyone in my new job and I wasn't looking for love; Dave was just another coworker. But then...

As I was scurrying around in a back hallway during a dinner rush one evening, Dave was coming towards me, heading for the kitchen to pick up an order most likely, and Suspicious Minds was playing over the stereo system. The song got to the part where Elvis starts doing the hip-thrusting, karate-hand-jabbing dancing (dontcha know I'm...bomp! bomp!), and Dave stopped what he was doing to perform it move-for-move for me and I was mesmerised: as I've written before, I was a huge Elvis fan as a little girl, I recognised the dance that Dave was doing even if I had never seen anyone doing it in person before, and not only was it an emotionally-charged nostalgic moment, but Dave stopping in the middle of a rush and dancing for me was the perfect blend of playful and sexy: my childhood crush on Elvis was now transformed into a crush on Dave; he was no longer just another coworker; I believe I bounced on my toes and clapped with delight when the song was over. (This is the reason for this week's song choice: it is a literal selection with no deeper meaning about me being suspicious or feeling like I'm caught in a trap; unless you interpreted it in the nicest of ways.)

We're caught in a trap

I can't walk out

Because I love you too much baby

Not long after this, Dave asked me out: saying that a bunch of people were going out to dinner at Chianti's, wondering if I wanted to go along. I assumed that this was meant to be a date and was unsurprised when we got to the restaurant and Dave said that everyone else must have backed out at the last minute. Ah, the dance of new partners: each of us playing a part in a routine as old as courtship; each making feints that the other recognises as part of the dance; each pretending not to notice, responding in turn. I was happy to play along: I was attracted to Dave and I thought that this was the beginning of a new type of life -- Krista in the big city! No ties, no responsibilities to anyone but myself! Going out with lots of guys, sowing my wild oats, living wild and free! But, of course, it didn't quite work out that way: one date led to another, led to a marriage, led to years of happiness with this amazing family that we built. I wouldn't have it any other way.

But that first night: Dave was funny and charming, "famously" acting out for me his favourite scene from The Untouchables; gunning down the bad guy while diving to rescue the runaway baby carriage; him falling in slowmo from his chair to the floor of the restaurant. I was thoroughly entertained by this, but while Dave has always believed that it was this move that sealed the deal with me, I actually found it slightly alarming; it had the feel of a tried and true routine: what he used on all the girls. I was not all the girls and internally bristled at being treated as such. Pretty much everything Dave said had the feel of "a line" to it (when he said he was studying acting, I found that very interesting, so when I asked Dave who his favourite actor was, I meant "Who is your professional inspiration?" Dave's answer: Barney Rubble), so I decided that this very unserious guy was perfect for an unserious relationship. And that was okay. Krista gone wild!

We went for a walk after dinner and Dave brought me to the studio theatre at the U of A. Sitting on the risers in the audience, he pointed out for me where he had had to stand on a platform high above the stage when he was Poseidon in The Trojan Women; acted out how he had once choked on his crepe beard while deeply intoning, "I am the Sea...hack...God...hack...hack..." Dave told me that although he had suggested we go out as a group of friends, he had enough friends, and he hoped this was something more. I wondered if this was also one of his lines. I replied that I, also, had enough friends. Dave asked if he could kiss me. I wondered if this was also one of his lines; but who asks someone before kissing them? It was jarring and awkward and I blushed and turned away and Dave said, "Are you actually as sweet as you seem?" Finally, this didn't sound like a line; this was defences down and neither of us playacting; so much for Krista gone wild. Turns out I don't do unserious.

And that, pretty much, is the origin story of us.

I want to add that I loved the Fine Young Cannibals' cover of Suspicious Minds when it came out, and I had fun watching the video for it this morning, so although this post needed to be officially about Elvis' version, I want to put up the FYC video too:

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time – that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

Shrill is basically a political book – progressive and feminist – so to understand how I reacted to it, I suppose it's appropriate to make my own politics clear: despite Lindy West's frequent disparagement of conservatives, I identify as one (albeit, of the Canadian small-c type; I also identify as a feminist) and what that means to me is that I believe in the inherent dignity of all people. I've never been into fat shaming, I don't laugh at rape jokes (or sexist jokes, or gay jokes, or racist jokes...), and I would never anonymously (or openly) troll anyone online: basically, I am already in agreement with the majority of what West lays out here. Yet, when the overleaf says, “Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny”, I suppose I should have known that I wouldn't identify with everything: I have zero interest in limiting any woman's access to abortion (which in Canada is pretty much universal and 100% covered by provincial health plans), I have zero interest in judging any woman for the decisions that she makes (yet am uncomfortable about free access to gender-selection terminations; isn't that a feminist issue too?), but I can't buy into the idea that there's anything funny about the procedure; that it's equivalent to “the time I had oral surgery because my wisdom tooth went evil-dead and murdered the tooth next to it”. I share all this because no one reads or reviews a book in a vacuum: if you are a progressive-type who is already rolling your eyes at what I've written, West probably confirms and celebrates everything you already believe in this book and you'll like it very much; if your politics align more with mine, you might find some of West's material provoking (and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with reading viewpoints that might challenge your thinking); if you're way out to the right of me, you might find no common ground here at all (but, again, that's no reason not to read it). 

Part of writing is choosing which details to include and which to discard. Part of reading is deciding whether or not you can trust your narrator.

I've never read Lindy West before, but am unsurprised to learn that she whet her chops on the alt newspaper The Stranger and the Jezebel blog: her whole tone is that millennial-focused, frequent cursing, this-is-what-I-think-and-if-you-don't-agree-the-problem-is-yours style of writing that can wear on me (which is why I can't spend much time on Jezebel or anything else Gawker-related). On the other hand, West is a thoughtful writer who makes solid arguments; when a person has this much to say, it's less important to me how that message is shaped. The first half of Shrill outlines West's childhood and how she made the transformation from “a terror-stricken mouse-person to an unflappable human vuvuzela”, and that was all interesting and cleverly-written and builds a good foundation for the second half, which is more about her professional career and adult relationships. Along the way, we read how West became a body-size advocate (and refused to back down in an online argument with her then boss, Dan Savage), she dug her heels in on the notion that rape jokes contribute to rape culture and are therefore never funny (and it's pretty much perfect to watch the video of West debating the issue with comedian Jim Norton, followed by the video of West reading a selection of the rape threats she got after that appearance; “rape culture” isn't a thing, eh?), and I was most touched by West's compassion for one internet troll who decided to set up a Twitter account in West's recently deceased father's name just to insult her with: she's a better woman than I. So, I enjoyed most of her stories, and for the most part, they felt important. And very often, she made me laugh:

Like most fat people who’ve been lectured about diet and exercise since childhood, I actually know an inordinate amount about nutrition and fitness. The number of nutrition classes and hospital- sponsored weight-loss programmes and individual dietician consultations and tear-filled therapy sessions I’ve poured money into over the years makes me grind my teeth. (Do you know how many Jet Skis I could have bought with that money? One Jet Skis!!!)

In the end, this wasn't a perfect read, I didn't love it, I'm not compelled to read more of Lindy West than I've already dug up from the Internet, but it's obviously more than a boring old three star book. Perhaps you'll like it even better than I did.

Vinegar Girl

“In my country they have a proverb: 'Beware against the sweet person, for sugar has no nutrition'.”

This was intriguing. Kate said, “Well, in my country they say that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

“Yes, they would,” Pyotr said, mysteriously...“But why you would want to catch flies, hah? Answer me that, vinegar girl.”

Having really enjoyed Howard Jacobson's Shylock Is My Name, I thought that I was going to love the whole Hogarth Shakespeare series, but now with Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl, only my second foray into the series, I have to say I'm disappointed: this one really didn't work and I think it's because The Taming of the Shrew is too hard to update to our modern times. I'll be specific, so spoilers beyond...

A brief recap of Shrew: Baptista won't allow his (universally beloved) daughter Bianca to marry one of her many suitors until her (universally despised) older sister Katherine is married first. Along comes an immoral gold-digger named Petruchio who offers to take Katherine off her father's hands, the pair are married, and after many days of depriving her of food and sleep and the ability to choose her own clothes – at the point where Katherine is willing to declare the sun is the moon if it allows her to eat and rest – they return for Bianca's wedding feast, where Katherine gives a speech on the importance of wives obeying their husbands, and all live happily ever after.

How to make that work in 2016?

Whereas Katherine in the original was a strong, sharp-tongued woman who speaks her mind and loves verbal jousting, our Kate is now a twenty-nine-year-old assistant teacher at a preschool (a job she loathes) whose main claim to snappy repartee is getting into did-not-did-too-did-not arguments with four-year-olds. She's sullen as a teenager at work (talking back to parents and supervisors), and at home, she meekly does all of the housework according her immunologist father's “scientific” plans while her trashy little sister entertains boys in the living room. When her father asks Kate to enter a marriage of convenience with his Russian lab assistant who is about to be deported, she at first balks, but soon relents. I was totally not impressed with Kate by this point, but the circumstance of the grudging marriage was a clever solution.

As in the play, the groom is late for the wedding, and although Pyotr shows up testy and acting rude (for good reason, but still, Kate is doing him the favour here...), she goes through with the wedding and rides along back to his apartment with him, where Kate watches him act horribly towards his landlady's caregiver. Pyotr still has matters to attend to, so he buggers off, while Kate finds nothing to eat, and as there are no sheets on her bed, she has an uncomfortable nap on a hard chair (so much like the original!). When Pyotr returns late to bring Kate to the wedding dinner at her aunt's house, he tells her she has no time to change (so controlling, just like in the original!), and when Kate's little sister attacks Pyotr during dinner (for what is actually a pretty good reason), Kate stands up and gives a moving speech about how hard men have it in the modern world – always expected to swallow their negative feelings and act strong – and she thinks everyone should just give Pyotr a break. Happily ever after? Yes: according to the epilogue, Kate quits the job she hates, goes back to college to get a botany degree, and eleven years later, has an adorable son (hey! Kate doesn't hate all kids after all), a happy marriage, and is off to accept a professional award.

At first, I thought that the meeting of Kate and Pyotr would feature a Tracy/Hepburn, Bogie/Bacall, Katherine/Petruchio level of verbal jousting, but this was about as good as it got:

“In my country they have a proverb,” Pyotr was saying.

Didn't they always, Kate thought.

“We say, 'Work when it is divided into segments is shorter total period of time than work when it is all together in one unit.'”

“Catchy,” Kate said.

So, the best part of the original play (Katherine finally meeting a man who could match her poison tongue) wasn't really used, Kate was pretty unlikeable, and Pyotr was a very nice man who didn't aspire to “tame” anyone. And then the wedding happened and Pytor started acting like a jerk and that's when Kate falls for him. I don't get it. What worked about Shylock Is My Name is that Jacobson used The Merchant of Venice as a framing structure for a thoroughly modern story. What doesn't work about Vinegar Girl is that it is neither entirely faithful to the original (a tale of abuse that, naturally, no one wants to see today) nor entirely modern: I have no idea who this Kate was or why she put up with the life she hates at the beginning or why she decides she's in love with a man when he is acting at his worst. Shrug. I like Anne Tyler: maybe she should have chosen a different Shakespeare.

I've seen plenty of Shakespeare but I've never seen The Taming of the Shrew, and this is probably why: who wants to see this story? In order to get an idea of what the source material was like, I watched some YouTube videos, and this was my favourite:

And that led me to look into the Broadway show/film Kiss Me Kate, and as it features a poster with a man actually spanking a grownup woman, I'm glad I've never seen that either:

*****

Books in the Hogarth Shakespeare series:

Shylock is My Name

Vinegar Girl

The Gap of Time

Hag-Seed

New Boy

Dunbar

Macbeth

And Related:

Nutshell

Tunesday : Stand

Up the Calgary Tower during the '88 Olympics

Stand

(Berry, B/ Buck, P/ Mills, M/ Stipe, M) Performed by REM

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West, think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't before

If you are confused, check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around

So, stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West, think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't before

Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Season is calling

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West, think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't before

If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around

So stand (stand)
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before
Now stand (stand)
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West, think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven't before

Stand in the place where you are (now face North)
Stand in the place where you are (now face West)
Your feet are going to be on the ground (stand in the place where you are)
Your head is there to move you around, so stand (stand in the place where you are)

To recap where I ended last week in my life story: in the spring of 1988, my first great love made a "career move" and left both me and his sick brother (whom he was supposed to be taking care of) in order to move down to the States and become a regional manager of a pyramid scheme (same old story, I know). As one might imagine, I was feeling partly vulnerable and partly fed up: I needed to do something to put a full stop at the end of that relationship. Meanwhile, in my group of friends, one of the Robs (because there were two) had recently started dating a girl named Hillary (making her one of two by that name in our circle), and this was the first girl that Rob (the cloistered Mormon) had ever dated, and tragically, within a few weeks of her first date with Rob, Hillary and her mother were killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. Rob and I were both feeling needy and depressed and we just kind of fell together.

After the raw machismo that had so attracted me to Glen, Rob's storklike frame and unconventional features were reassuring: I knew that I wouldn't lose myself to animal attraction; that Rob wouldn't try to impose himself on me. Once again, as was true when I was in high school, I was in total control of myself and my relationship, and mentally, that's exactly where I needed to be. Rob was sweet, and funny, and one of the quickest wits I've ever known. He was also smart and philosophical and we had wonderful conversations. I knew that if I was with someone new, I could never go back to Glen if he somehow showed up again (because for sure he wouldn't want me, so I needed to taint myself), and after Rob's loss, I thought that we were pretty much just using each other: I never introduced him as or thought of him as my boyfriend; this was both something more and something less. I didn't know that this was something much more to Rob.

Random memories: Sometimes, a few of us would drive the two hours up to Calgary on a Friday night to go to the cool bars there (especially to The Republik; an unintimidating punk club), and after drinking and dancing, turn around and drive the two hours back home. One night it was just me and Rob, and as we made our way north along the highway in the dark, I caught sight of a dead deer laying across my lane at the last second. We were jarred and jounced by the thump-thump of my little Honda Civic bouncing over the hump of its solid body and we were frightened and shocked that neither the car or either of us had been hurt. As we never bothered telling anyone (especially my parents) about these Calgary trips, we talked about how devastating it would have been if we had been the ones to hit the deer when it first leapt onto the road: my car definitely couldn't have gone through that without incident, and especially in these pre-cellphone years, we couldn't imagine the hassle of contacting my parents or a towtruck or the police. We wondered if there was anyone we should contact about that deer, but what did we know about such things? We assured and reassured each other that it was, indeed, a deer and not a person on the road: we both saw the actual deer before contact, but once the initial shock was over, all the grimmest of possibilities were suddenly plausible and needed to be explored. We made it to Calgary without incident and returned home with an exciting story.

One time (and I'm not proud of this), Rob and I were drinking cheap beers at the university pub, but since it was a dull night, we somehow got a few unopened cans and drove to the river valley to drink them. There we were, sitting in the front seats of my car, just talking and laughing, when suddenly red and blue lights started flashing through my back window. Dammit. The cops were always patrolling the park at the river bottom -- looking for bush parties, knocking on the windows of makeout cars -- but since we (other than the beer) weren't breaking any rules by just sitting there, I hadn't really expected to get caught (and I was probably mostly naive about this because it was the first and only time I ever had open alcohol in a car; I had sat in that park innocently talking with friends dozens of times without the cops' attention). I panicked and thrust my beercan at Rob -- Do something, I hissed -- and he propped both of the beers under his seat. The police officer knocked on my window, and when I rolled it down, he asked what we were up to and I replied, "Just talking". He stuck his head in the window and said, "I smell alcohol. Both of you, out of the car." We got out -- I'm sure my knees were knocking -- and he asked if we had open liquor. I looked him right in the eye and said, "No sir. We're students at the university and had a beer there about an hour ago. That must be what you're smelling." He assured me that the smell was coming from inside the car and he beamed his flashlight all over the interior, including under the front seats, and when he couldn't find anything, he apologised for the misunderstanding and went on his way. We didn't know if this was to give us a false sense of security -- if he was trying to get us to start drinking again so we could get caught in the act -- but after staring at each other wide-eyed with disbelief at our lucky break for several minutes, Rob retrieved the beer, threw them in the nearby trashcan, and we hightailed it out of there. I want to note: I understand how awful this story sounds, especially after Rob's first girlfriend had been killed by a drunk driver, but things really were different then. Today that cop would give me a Breathalyzer if he thought I smelled of alcohol, but back then, he was more interested in busting me for the bigger charge of open liquor. I drove many times after drinking too much and it was stupid and shameful and I am eternally grateful that I never hurt anyone.

During Reading Week of 1988, most of our group wanted to go to Edmonton again (as we all had two years before), but since the Winter Olympics were happening in Calgary, Rob and I went there instead for a couple of days. We weren't able to get event tickets, but we were very impressed with the international vibe that the Olympics had brought to Cowtown; loved going up and down elevators with other young people who were all speaking foreign tongues. I have a few pictures from this trip (*as above) but it's funny how few details I remember; I don't even recall where we stayed.

That same spring, my parents announced that "we" were being transferred back to Ontario. I was twenty, in my third year of university, had been dragged ever west across the country by my parents all my life, and the last thing I wanted to do was start (socially, educationally, culturally) all over again from scratch just because my constantly-fighting parents had "ambitions". They made several trips to Ontario over the next few months (this was also when they started buying up forest lots in Nova Scotia for their eventual retirement plan), and when they closed a deal on a big, beautiful house in Burlington, Mum was excited to show me how lovely my new bedroom would be; me silently screaming, I don't want to go with you. They made their plans, I never spoke up, and never spoke up, and just a month before they moved I told Mum that I was going to Edmonton instead. Kyler refers to this, still, as me "running away from home". 

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before

Curtis had already moved up to Edmonton over the summer, and when I started thinking out loud about what my options might be, that was the obvious place to go. When Rob said that he would come with me, I thought that he was also looking to escape the crappy small-town vibe of Lethbridge, and I never really considered that he was doing it all for me: his parents had expected him to spend this academic year on a Mission for their church, and it was incredibly hard for him to disappoint them and they were hurt but supportive; this was all vaguely on my radar, but I was selfishly working through my own issues; figuring out how to tell my own parents that I wasn't going to follow their script. In the end, we worked out the details and moved up to Edmonton and Curtis gave us a place to crash.

Soon enough, Curtis said we needed to get our own place -- understandable, lol -- and we rented a two bedroom apartment: Rob was not my boyfriend, and although he had given everything up for me (a fact I still wasn't really appreciating), I was feeling stronger -- totally over Glen; deliriously happy that he didn't even know where I was -- and I no longer needed Rob as a crutch. I thought he was going through a similar growth and detachment. We couldn't really afford this apartment (I don't know why we thought we could), and when some friends of ours said that they were going to rent a house and needed a couple extra roommates, Rob and I abandoned the apartment and moved into the house (yes, that came back on me later, but when Dave wondered why I didn't track down Rob to make him pay half the penalty for breaking the lease, I knew that this was the least I could do for Rob because of what came next).

Not long after moving into the house, I got a job at the Mayfair Hotel as a hostess in the restaurant, and that's where I met Dave, and we started dating. Rob was not my boyfriend, but I think he thought he might become my boyfriend if he waited patiently enough. When Dave started coming around the house, Rob would kind of lose his mind -- muttering and stomping and running off to his room, crying -- and one time when I was at Dave's place late at night, Rob walked halfway across the city to stand on the sidewalk outside his apartment building and moan my name. Dave yelled at him from the balcony to leave, and then Rob started pushing the buzzer at the entrance, and Dave threatened to come down, and Rob yelled that he just wanted to talk to me, and Dave said he was coming down and Rob left. At home, Rob told me that he thought he was having a nervous breakdown and I was sympathetic and let him vent, but it wasn't going to change anything: Rob had never been my boyfriend in my mind -- he was a rebound, a transition -- and by now making his declarations, a part of me hardened against him; Rob was breaking the rules of whatever it was we had between us, and unfairly, I started feeling less for him. Rob decided to move back home.

I was home the day Rob left, watching silently as his old friend Chad carried his few boxes and bags out to his truck; glaring at me the whole time. I remember the hate in Chad's eyes but can't remember anything specific about saying goodbye to Rob; I felt totally ashamed about the whole sorry situation; where I had spent a year and a half thinking that we were using each other to get over our personal demons, it turned out that I had only been using him. I can still call up that shame, knowing that I had done a terrible thing to a very good person.

As for the song choice: Rob liked a lot of really out there music (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo & the Bunnymen), and even though REM was still considered alternative at the time, they were the most accessible to my pop-trained ears, and Rob was a big fan. This one's for Rob.

If you are confused, check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around