What might he ask the author of this dreck? There were no revelations here, just manipulations and make-believe. The abyss was the guy's own creation, its battle-won wisdoms self-serving and contrived: it was no great trick to build up a hard man only for the tear-jerking purpose of making him fall. This wasn't a novel, Ash thought, blowing his nose softly into a napkin. It was a con.
I don't think that I, as a rule, like novels about novelists. And when this main character is unlikeable – with him protesting it unfair for readers to analyse his work and hold him to the opinions he has expressed on the page; with him being snide about the literary efforts of others (both the amateur and the bestselling); with him assuming that his interpretation of the world, as an artist, is superior to that of everyone else's – there's a danger of deciding that the author himself is unlikeable; that he's really writing about himself here. And while on the one hand, I get that Pasha Malla is likely purposefully, ironically, provoking me to this conclusion with Fugue States, on the other, it can't help but colour my opinion of him and this book. I didn't much like the experience.
Fugue States is a highly planned and structured work: Playing off both common senses of the word “fugue” (the disassociative mental state and the jarringly contrapuntal musical form), the plot starts and stops and repeats and changes. Another reviewer said that it reads more like a collection of short stories – with some sections more enjoyable than others, as in any such anthology – and I agree with that to a point; because I can see what Malla is trying to achieve with this disjointed format; the planning he put into shaking up the novel form in order to capture what was in his mind. In an interview, Malla says that this book is about “accepted scripts that exist – socially, culturally – in terms of not just masculinity, but racial and cultural identity for writers and artists, for relationships between men and women, for family relationships, for caregiving relationships. The book is really set around this idea that these kinds of expectations and scripts that exist are based in false narratives, or at least very reductive narratives.” That's a complicated theme, hung onto an ambitious framework, and while it may be highly literary and intellectualised (“esoteric” is the word the narrator uses to describe the kind of author he admires), it just doesn't make for a good reading experience. Malla can use a novelist-as-protagonist to ironically scorn the author-reader relationship, but if it was all going over this reader's head, then I can't call Fugue States a success.
A brief summary: Ash Dhar (the son of a Kashmiri immigrant man and the white hippy who once loved him) is a novelist and book-themed radio host whose father has recently, suddenly, died. Among his father's papers, Ash discovers an unfinished novel about a “hero's” journey along the famous Amarnath pilgrimage, and when Ash's oldest friend Matt (a ridiculous pothead womaniser; a white moron that Ash doesn't actually seem to like) suggests that they make the mountain trek themselves in honour of old Brij, Ash declines: he's not going to be some brown cliche, seeking his father in the abandoned homeland. When Matt goes to India anyway and gets into trouble, Ash finally makes his own kind of pilgrimage.
There were nice bits – I enjoyed everything about Chip and his disabled son, the final reminiscence about Ash and Brij's last day together was remarkable, there was a nice balance to discussion about the Troubles in Kashmir – but there were parts that irked me, too. In a novel about cultural identity, where Ash and Malla himself are both half-white and born and raised in Canada, I was turned off by the conclusion of the scene where Ash and a little boy meet at a hotel pool and the boy wants Ash to sing O Canada with him:
And they sang, and they sang. Ash with one eye on the exit should the kid's parents appear – should anyone appear – and find him here, belting out this ridiculous, nonsensical song, with everything he had, with all the fake, patriotic love in his heart.
How should I not be offended by that? It's like when Yann Martel declared Canada “the greatest hotel on Earth” as he accepted his Booker Prize; as though this rich and welcoming country is simply a vague idea to which it would be inappropriate to commit. (And how am I not surprised that the first approving link I found to that statement was from the Globe & Mail, where Malla used to work?) So, related: I had no idea how I was supposed to react to the deplorable Matt – he's constantly on drugs and alcohol, shaves his entire body, tries to “turn” a lesbian (but abandons her after a horrible scene), and his behaviour towards Ash becomes progressively more abusive and more incomprehensible (even as his vocabulary is spiked with “frigs” and “poops” and “goshdarns”; who is this guy?) – and then I found Malla's explanation in that same article above: I just imagined what would have happened in the situation if this absurd character, who believes himself to have agency in every situation, enacts this privilege that he is oblivious to. Ah, so that's the point: that's how to subvert accepted scripts and upend reductive narratives; nothing reductive about that.
Fugue States is obviously the result of a thoughtful design, imagination, and skill. Malla has plenty to say, but little of it reached me through the obfuscating layers of construction. It's no con, but I can't consider this an overall success.
Mercutio: Any man that can write may answer a letter. -Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene IV
In Juliet's Answer, author Glenn Dixon pretty much ticks all the boxes on a modern day travel memoir: His real life has provided a situation rife with dramatic irony (in his case, a tale of woe; of unrequited love) which he was able to finally confront and interpret through a trip to a foreign land (complete with a highly interesting project while in Verona, Italy), and then reinterpret in the routine life that followed (as a high school English teacher guiding his students through a reading of Romeo and Juliet back home in Calgary), and throughout this personal story, he adds in the history and geography of Verona, as well as research on the neurochemical and social underpinnings of human romantic love. While on the one hand I was always aware that Dixon probably had an editor over his shoulder saying, “You need some history here, some sciency stuff here” – while there was something obscurely formulaic and nonorganic about the format – I can't deny that the content was all interesting enough to keep my focus. I read this book on the beach, just a few weeks before heading to Italy (including Verona) myself, and it was all that I had hoped for and more.
It's a bit pretentious, I can see that now. I guess I thought I had to adopt a certain tone with Juliet. Perhaps you have some words of wisdom for me? I mean really.
That's what I stuffed into the red letter box in the courtyard across from the statue of Juliet. Juliet of the golden right breast...There was nothing to do now, except go back to Canada and wait for my answer.
Forever unlucky in love and something of an expert on Shakespeare, it wasn't by chance that Dixon decided to spend time one summer in Verona as one of “Juliet's Secretaries” at the Club di Giulietta: apparently, anyone can write a letter to Juliet (and either drop it in the mailbox in front of her family home or address it to Juliet c/o Verona, Italy – it will reach her) and with a staff there that can respond in nearly any language, one can expect an eventual handwritten and personalised reply by mail. Dixon himself volunteered to be one of the English language secretaries, and as he had hoped, reading the love letters of strangers and being forced to consider appropriate responses focussed him on his own emotional needs and beliefs about love. I found everything about the Club di Giulietta – its history, staff, the types of letters they receive and the efforts to respond appropriately – to be totally fascinating. While in Verona, Dixon sought out those places mentioned in Romeo and Juliet, and even he was surprised to learn that the pair likely did exist (Dante even placed the Montagues and Capulets in his Inferno). There's also some traveloguing – Dixon sharing his favourite gelato and pizza places – and again, I found this all interesting.
After this first summer in Verona, Dixon returned to teaching again, and this section felt a bit forced to me. I understand the usefulness to this book of going through the highlights of Romeo and Juliet with a grade ten class – Dixon gets to stress which parts are important and explain their deeper meanings as though answering the questions of first time readers – but I got the sense that these sections didn't literally occur as written: I didn't really believe that some couple got together because they were stirred up by the balcony scene; that the girl in the hijab was absent for a few days when Juliet's father started talking about her arranged marriage. In the end notes, Dixon explains that these students were amalgamations (which I figured would have to be the case to protect their privacy), but that everything he wrote did happen at some time – and I buy that, but it still rang a false note in the moment: I expect my nonfiction to all be true. Dixon himself went through some emotionally charged experiences this year as well, and where the details of his life dovetailed with the text of the play at the exact same time, I again had the feeling of facts having been arranged to suit after the fact: not untrue, perhaps, but manipulated. Still, Dixon does have a story to tell.
The following summer, Dixon returned to Verona; older and wiser. This time, he was present for (and participated in) the annual festival that the Club di Giulietta holds in honour of Juliet's birthday – all fascinating to read about – and this climactic celebration coincided with a happy transformation of events in Dixon's own life. As I said at the beginning, Dixon's life does have dramatic irony worthy of documenting – his tale follows a satisfying story arc and the supporting information (Shakespeare, Verona, the Club di Giulietta) is rich in interest – so my only complaint is really that of formatting: the way that Dixon's story has been moulded into a cookie-cutter memoir; likely not his fault. Bonus: Now I know how to ask for chocolate in the bottom of my gelato cone.
This was a buddy beach read with Kennedy - we'll be heading to Italy together here soon and I thought this book would add to our excitement - but she's pretty impatient with Dixon's writing voice (which I found colloquial, and Kennedy finds pretentious). Her problem, as she sees it, is that her least favourite English teacher in high school was a man and she can't stop picturing him as the author - which makes the author seem amateurish and reaching beyond his station to dare to write a book when he should be simply teaching them. This is not a problem for me - I do think that Dixon's particular story and the unique knowledge and travel experience he brings to its telling is memoir-worthy - but I've decided to add Kennedy's dissenting voice for balance.
I mailed my letter in Verona....
...and read some Shakespeare overlooking Juliet's courtyard.
Jane Eyre is another one of those classic novels where I thought I knew the basic plot – the storied romance between Jane and Mr. Rochester; a something in the attic – but until I read the book, I didn't really know it (and I really didn't know what the deal was in the attic). So, while this is the kind of book that – despite having its fingerprints all over Western culture 150+ years post-publication – rewards even the modern reader as a piece of entertainment, I am sorely disappointed that I will never have the experience of reading it in the full context of when it was first published. A bit of Googling around reveals that it was not only thought scandalous in its day (the independent, plain, unmonied young woman resisting her betters) but this was apparently the first literary use of a character's inner monologue – Jane is forever mentally weighing her options and comparing her desires to society's strictures, then choosing which she will accept and which she will reject as unfair. Although there were those at the time who found this device to be vulgar and unliterary, it was still groundbreaking – and so common today that even knowing Charlotte Brontë was trailblazing here, I can't mentally put myself in a place where it elicits sufficient awe. So many reasons for the modern reader to pick this up.
No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.
Jane Eyre often feels like it's borrowing from fairy tales, so it's not surprising that when Rochester first sees Jane he's put in mind of elves and fairies. The plot: Her childhood was straight Cinderella – orphaned and given to her mother's brother to raise, when Uncle Reed subsequently died, his widow met her barest needs, preferring her own children in all things – and while the boarding school she was then sent to (banished to the wilderness a la Hansel and Gretel) would eventually give her the space to prove her own worth, the physical and mental hardships that Jane suffered early on might have crushed a lesser spirit. It's interesting to note that while these school years also serve to reveal the hypocrisy of the supposedly pious Christian, Mr Brocklehurst – the director of the subscription charity school for the improvement of orphaned girls, his family wears silk while his charges go hungry – Jane never abandons Christian ideals: she may have questions about faith, but she is always charitable, forgiving, and adheres to a strict moral code that forces her to deny herself earthly pleasures. After graduating and then teaching at the school for two years herself, Jane suddenly realises that she has the power to leave – and after secretly advertising for a position as a governess, she accepts a role at faraway Thornfield; in the employ of the stormy Edward Rochester. For the first time, Jane is a member of a warm household – teaching the spirited Adele (who may or may not be the lovechild of Rochester and a French chanteuse) and spending her evenings in friendly conversation with the housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax. Has she escaped the fairy tale? No, for Rochester has a Bluebeard-like secret locked away in the garret, and while he and Jane eventually do fall in love, his secrets mean that they cannot marry; and she refuses to be a mistress. Jane runs away, and with no means of supporting herself, she is soon reduced to the sorry state of the Little Match Girl; gazing longingly into a candlelit parlour as she succumbs to the elements. Yet here comes another fine Christian man – the saint-in-the-making St. John Rivers – and he insists that Jane be brought into the home (though he feels no real pity or kindness; his duty as a future Missionary merely compels him). Rivers arranges for Jane to teach at a newly opened school for poor local girls, and while she is finally self-sufficient – and what more could a homely orphan girl have ever hoped for? – Jane misses her evenings of intellectual stimulation among Rivers' sisters. When Jane then learns that she is the sole inheritor to an unknown uncle's fortune – and then learns that the Rivers siblings are her first cousins and estranged relations of the same dead uncle – she divides the inheritance amongst them all so that they can retire to Moor House and resumes their happy days of study and leisure. This doesn't sit right with St. John – he will never gain a martyr's reward if he doesn't go on his Mission – and he tries to bully Jane into marrying him so she can come along to India; after all, as he points out, she's such a homely thing and will probably never get a better offer (and yet, at barely nineteen, this is her second proposal). Jane leaves to visit Thornfield one last time and discovers it in ruins; learns that her beloved Rochester has suffered a terrible accident, and like the protagonist from Beauty and the Beast, she is able to see the man within the monster.
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
Not only is Jane a protofeminist, but Brontë seems to have anticipated Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: When she was a child, Jane craved safety; at school she yearned for better living conditions and friendship. When she made the move to Thornfield, her mind turned to love and proving herself the equal of her social betters; she planned to save enough money to someday open a school herself. When circumstances gave her the little school she had always dreamed of, Jane realised that what she actually wanted was to spend her time in study and stimulating conversation – that's a long way to come for an abused orphan. And yet, she's still a young woman – and a young woman of her times – so the love of a man could make Jane forget herself. Consider her two proposals – that of the Byronic, unattractive but rich, Rochester:
You – you strange, you almost unearthly thing! – I love you as my own flesh. You – poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are – I entreat to accept me as husband.
And that of the gorgeous but sanctimonious St. John Rivers:
God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must – shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you – not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service.
While it's easy to cringe at Rivers as he insists that a loveless marriage of convenience is God's will and Jane would be defying Him by rejecting the proposal, Rochester is no prize either: just what is that in the attic, and why doesn't he explain the full situation before leading Jane to the altar? When their marriage was called off and Rochester suggested that they could run away to France and live in sin – after all, Jane had no friends or family to answer to and he had had a string of such affairs across Europe – Jane still invoked a morality outside of herself to declare the plan impossible; as she later stresses to Rivers, Jane wants to do God's will, but just as she won't enter a loveless marriage, she also refused to enjoy love without the benefit of marriage: she may have been this shocking literary character who spoke back to power, and insisted on her equality and self-determination as a person, but Jane Eyre wasn't trying to tear down all the walls.
Reader, I married him.
And yet, in the end, she marries; even though Jane is an heiress who could spend her days working on Maslow's highest level of self-actualisation, Brontë goes for the fairy tale ending; Cinderella must have her Prince Charming; Beauty, her Beast:
“Am I hideous, Jane?” “Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
I can imagine rereading Jane Eyre: it had some surprises for me, and moreso, it has given me much to think about after the fact. (Just please don't tell me that Rochester is the greatest romantic lead of all time. He's a heel.)
(O'Dowd, G / Moss, J / Craig, M / Hay, R) Performed by Culture Club
Give me time to realize my crime Let me love and steal. I have danced inside your eyes How can I be real.
Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry Precious kisses words that burn me Lovers never ask you why. In my heart the fire is burning Choose my color find a star Precious people always tell me That's a step a step too far.
Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry.
Words are few I have spoken I could waste a thousand years Wrapped in sorrow, words are token Come inside and catch my tears You've been talking but believe me If it's true you do not know This boy loves without a reason I'm prepared to let you go
If it's love you want from me Then take it away Everything's not what you see it's over again.
Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry.
Give me time to realize my crime Let me love and steal. I have danced inside your eyes How can I be real. If it's love you want from me then take it again.
Two weeks ago I wrote about my eye surgery - where the cataract was taken off my right eye and an artificial lens was inserted - so today I'm following up with the second surgery, on my left eye. Once again, this is not the song I had planned on using before the fact (I had been trying to decide between The Guess Who's These Eyes and Billy Idol's Eyes Without a Face - who knew there was such a rich eye-related catalogue from which to choose?), but once again, the circumstances in the moment dictated the only possible choice; this may look like a fairly melodramatic song selection for this week, but it will make sense in context.
To begin with, as I noted two weeks ago, I had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon the day after my last procedure, and when I asked him at that time if it would be possible to put close-up vision in my left eye, he suppressed a sigh and said he thought we had already discussed that (we hadn't), and then we went on to other topics. There was a second follow-up appointment later that week, and one of the first things that the doctor said to me was, "Have you considered offsetting the lens in your left eye in order to have some close-up vision in it?" I said that I thought that sounded like a good idea - the best possible outcome would have to be not needing any correctives at all in the end. He waggled his head back and forth, as though trying to decide if that would be the best outcome, and then said that he would make a note in my chart to offset that lens. (And I should put here that I found it very non-reassuring that my high tech eye surgeon then proceeded to hunt and peck, painfully slowly, on his computer keyboard to add these notes to his files.)
Fast forward to last Friday: After having been away for my last surgery, Dave took the day off work to drive me this time. I had had to perform all the same pre-op prep (a series of eyedrops the day before, no eating or drinking after midnight), and I arrived at the hospital quite anxious: Whereas before the first procedure I had been assured that it would be no big deal (by people who had had the standard laser cataract removal surgeries), my more invasive procedure left me dreading a second go round; I was suppressing tears all morning - not like I wanted to full out cry, but I could feel tears springing unwillingly to my eyes every time I really thought about what was going to happen to me. I'm so weak.
So, Dave came with me to register and then came with me to the Day Surgery waiting room. And just like when Kennedy brought me last time, Dave was asked if he wanted to accompany me into the pre-/post-op ward; and again, I was the only one in there with an attendant. (Weird note: as we were moving through the ward, we passed an open door to a room that was decorated with balloons and streamers and had a table piled high with potluck foods - it was apparently the last day for one of the nurses on the ward and this was her going away party. While all of us patients arrived with our bellies empty as ordered, the delicious smell of warming meatballs filled the entire ward throughout the morning.) Funny, but while I didn't mind having my daughter stand around bored while I had all my info taken and eyedrops administered the first time, I knew that Dave was planning to go to the cafeteria to work on emails during my operation, so I encouraged him to leave his cell number and take off as quickly as possible; wouldn't want to bore the husband unduly.
So, the prep was the same as last time - the eyedrops, the Ativan under my tongue, taking off my top to put on a gown while keeping on my pants and shoes, laying on a hospital bed, and waiting for what I knew was coming soon. I didn't have the briskly efficient older nurse this time, but this younger one was interesting in her own way: at one point she came back to my curtained off cubicle, brushing crumbs off her lips as she entered (I heard her joking later with an old woman in the next cubicle that she's probably making herself pre-diabetic because she can't stop grabbing cookies from the pot luck table); when she asked me if I wear glasses and I replied, "Only to drive and probably not even then anymore", she replied, "Oh you're lucky. I have to put in contacts every day. I can't wait to get cataracts" (which I found to be a fairly insensitive thing to say as I lay there trembling in dreadful anticipation.)
Because I was dreading this procedure, and the closer it got, the more I trembled; the more I worried that I wouldn't be able to control the tears any more. I told myself to just breathe; to concentrate on my surroundings, and that's pretty much the first time that I realised there was a radio playing in the ward. And as the slow opening voice and chords of a familiar tune began to play, I started to smile and then to quietly laugh when I realised that I was listening to Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? It was just such a corny and melodramatic song for fate and chance to throw at me, and it was the relief I needed right at that moment.
Nearly immediately, an orderly came to roll me out into the hallway outside the OR, and she put the heart monitor on my finger, stuck the conductive patches to my chest, and placed the blood pressure cuff on my right arm (and though she didn't give me the tip about keeping that hand tucked under my bum like the last orderly had, I tucked it away nonetheless). She noted that my wedding rings were taped (I was given instructions to have my rings cut off if I couldn't pull them off in the pre-op package, but the receptionist at the surgeon's office assured me that that was general info from the hospital and taping them would be fine for eye surgery), and then the orderly said that she had an upcoming surgery and had several piercings that couldn't be removed; that because she worked at the hospital and was expected to know how things worked, she didn't want to ask anyone what she should do. I had no reply to that.
The orderly left me and I began to concentrate on my breathing again, and that's when I made out what was playing on the radio that I had left behind in the ward: Afternoon Delight. Again, this made me smile - I was put in mind of the duet in Arrested Development, the singalong in Anchorman, and my friend Delight who hates this song. I couldn't help but smile.
Before I knew it, the orderly was pushing the last patient out of the OR and the surgeon came out to greet me; squeezing my shoulder reassuringly, and after confirming that we were doing my left eye, he pulled a pen out of his breast pocket and put a mark over my left eyebrow (I had forgotten that detail the first time). Suddenly, the orderly was back and pushing me into the small OR, lining me up under the lights and pumping my bed up higher. Although last time the nurses had introduced themselves to me, this time no one did, mutely attaching wires to my various patches and heart monitor, my blood pressure cuff. Once again, the surgeon swabbed the entire area of my left eye (maybe with iodine?) and draped a blue sheet over me from the top of my head to the soles of my shoes, with a small clear circle centered and then adhered over my left eye. The sheet must have been draped across my face slightly differently this time because while last time I had the surreal chameleon-like experience of bifurcated vision - with one eye surveying my corpse-like body under the sheet while the other "watched" the surgery - this time I couldn't see under the sheet at all.
Again, I don't know if the Ativan was all that calming: I trembled through the entire experience; flinching and cringing every time I saw the flash of silver instruments heading for my eyeball; startling every time a splash of some liquid hit my eye. I don't know if I was actively resisting the procedure, but at one point the surgeon said, "I know it's hard, but can you look straight into the light again?" Funny, but I had assumed that with the eyeball numb, he had attached something to it to hold it straight; weird that I had the freedom to roll my eye around as he cut and dug into it.
Last time, as I recounted, I found the entire experience to be very surreal: the strobing lights, the flashes of geometric shapes, the weird machine noises, suddenly tuning in to a radio playing incongruous music in the background. This time I seemed more aware of actual reality and I grasped for the weird; looking for lights and shapes and sounds, but stuck in my body; trembling and wincing and probably streaming tears. Because I was listening for it, I was aware of the radio playing in the background the entire time - the soft rock that the surgeon intermittently sang along with - but it didn't amuse or astound me; I found it unbearably sad to listen to him sing softly along with Christopher Cross' Sailing while I was trapped in my helpless body.
Despite taking fifteen or twenty minutes, and my pathetic reaction to it, the procedure went by quickly enough, and before I knew it, the surgeon was removing the blue sheet, cleaning off the area around my eye and taping on the clear plastic eyepatch meant to protect it until I got home. I was rolled back to the ward, given a glass of ginger ale, and told to dress myself when I felt up to it as the nurse went to call Dave. I was dressed and ready nearly immediately, and another nurse led me to a chair to wait for Dave, who had apparently left the hospital during my procedure - he went home to cut the grass and have a swim and had been in the car on the way back when he got the call - and although I waited for probably less than ten minutes, I just felt so sad sitting there; helpless and alone; the party room just visible off to my left.
The balance of the day proceeded like last time - I was happy to eat; had trouble staying awake and dozed in front of the TV - and Dave, and then the girls, were solicitous and wanting to help me; but I didn't need much from them (Mallory attempting to put in my eye drops for me was actually pretty frightening: why would she think it's less intimidating to drop them from a height instead of squeezing the bottle against the corner of my eye? I was happy she wanted to help, though, so I bucked against the drops and thanked her for them.)
With my first eye, I woke up the next morning to a wonderful experience: I could see things at a distance with greater clarity than even my driving glasses had previously afforded me; I couldn't have been happier about what I had gained and the discomfort of the surgery had been totally worth it. With my second eye, despite having my vision focussed at about the reach of my left arm, I have pretty much lost my near vision: I can't read my phone's screen or the keyboard on my laptop without reading glasses (which I never used before) and I can't help but feel sad about all I've lost. I understand that this surgery was medically necessary, not vanity - the cataracts would have eventually blinded me - but my new reality has much to get used to: when I'm eating, I can see the food as I put it on my fork, but I lose focus on it as it nears my mouth; and that's weird. But still better than going blind.
I had my follow-up appointment with the surgeon the next day, and he was pleased with the results: the vision in my left eye is focussed right to where he intended, so this is just the way it is. I have no idea what it will be like to go back to work in a couple of weeks.
Words are few I have spoken I could waste a thousand years Wrapped in sorrow, words are token Come inside and catch my tears
So, yes, this was a melodramatic song choice this week, but I'm feeling melodramatic and I'm pleased that the universe sent it along to me at just the right time; Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? was certainly one of my favourite songs when it first came out and deserves a place in this discography. Of course, no one hurt me: while uncomfortable and somewhat distressing, the surgery itself was pain-free. And I do know that it helps me: I pretty much understood that having the permanent lenses inserted would prevent my eyes from changing focus like they would have naturally, but until that was my reality, I couldn't really have imagined it - it feels like a loss, but I know it is amazing to live in a time and place where this kind of surgery is available, without cost, to me.
Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry Do you really want to hurt me Do you really want to make me cry
And a final note: When I was telling Mallory about my first surgery, and how like a Kubrick film it seemed, she (a film student) was very interested; said she'd love to try and film that. So when I had the second eye done, she wanted more details and I had to say that it was just...different. Which was too bad because her intent had been to lead me into comparing this experience to another Kubrick title: Eyes Wide Shut.
Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs, one way, as if craving alms of the sun.
Far north, in the back end of Nowhere, England, stands the medieval manor house known as Wuthering Heights – we are constantly reminded of the rains and winds and swampy, deadly moors – and the people here are insular and fractious; aware of and bound by the rules of their class, but wild in private and downright rude to strangers: the kind of place, one imagines, where ghosts might walk. Down the hill lies Thrushcross Grange – another manor, known for slightly better manners – and as though they house the only two families in the world, Wuthering Heights recounts the interminglings and intermarriages between these two estates around the turn of the nineteenth century...and the tragedies which ensued. Naturally, I had heard over the years that the love story between Heathcliff and Catherine might be the greatest of all time, but this is really more of a hate story – one of cruelty and abandonment and revenge – and I probably liked it better for that. I'm going to proceed as though there's no such thing as a spoiler for a 150+ year old tale.
He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.
In brief: Mr. Earnshaw – master of Wuthering Heights – while on a trip to Liverpool, found a dark, abandoned child (naming him Heathcliff) and decided to bring him home to raise along with his own son, Hindley, and daughter, Catherine (there is scholarly speculation that Heathcliff was either the child of immigrants, gypsies, or was Earnshaw's own bastard; in any case, a cuckoo in the nest). Hindley bitterly resents the intruder, but Catherine and Heathcliff are hell-raising soulmates from the start. When Catherine suffers a dog bite and must recuperate for some weeks at Thrushcross Grange as a teenager, she is exposed to the fine comportment of the family there – which includes the fair and delicate siblings, Edgar and Isabella Linton – and there seems an inevitability to Catherine and Edgar eventually marrying; Catherine might be in love with her step-(or is that half-)brother, but custom, class, and inheritance laws make the preferred union impossible; even so far from civilisation. After the old Mr. Earnshaw eventually dies and Hindley returns from university with a wife to accept his role as the new master of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff leaves for some years and then returns a wealthy gentleman: bent on destroying both families and acquiring both homes. It is soon after Heathcliff has accomplished all of this that the story is actually set.
It is the framing device that I actually liked the best: As Wuthering Heights begins, a dandy from London – a man who has played loose with the affections of young ladies and must now lay low in the back end of Nowhere, England – named Lockwood arrives at Wuthering Heights in order to rent out Thrushcross Grange. The people he finds at the grand manor – the snarling master, the inhospitable housekeeper and incomprehensible groundskeeper (Joseph's dialogue is a nearly unreadable brogue), the ill-mannered young lady, a brutish young man, even the vicious dogs – are unlike any Lockwood have encountered before. After spending the night as Heathcliff's unwanted guest – during which his nightmares of a ghostly presence trying to enter his bedroom kept him awake all night – Lockwood returns to the Grange, hoping to persuade his own housekeeper to gossip a bit about the weird characters up the hill. And Ellen “Nelly” Dean is happy to comply: The rest of the book is either Nelly going into intimate details about the lives of her employers (she had been the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff was first brought home; in many situations, she was his only friend), or Lockwood recording his own impressions about Heathcliff and his entourage in the present. And I loved Nelly's tone – she is self-important and sly, aware of giving a rare performance as she shares every private thing that one could fear a housekeeper might share. And why shouldn't she? Not only has Nelly spent her entire life in the boonies, sent here and there at the whim of this master and that, but as she reveals, it was she who often directed the action of this tale – breaking confidences that she had sworn to keep, deciding not to pass on a message that might have averted this tragedy or that.
As to the love story, it's pure Gothic romance that both Catherine and Heathcliff decide that if they can't be together in this world, they will meet in the next. Catherine explains their supernatural link:
I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees – my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he's always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being.
And after Catherine dies in childbirth, Heathcliff raves:
I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you – haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
Now, because Catherine and Heathcliff never married, I had assumed that theirs was a chaste love (I'm so naive), but scholarly opinion tells me that every time they “met”, I can infer that they “coupled”, and opinion apparently has it that after Catherine died and Heathcliff dug up her grave to be with her one more time, the reader should infer that they coupled once more. Ew; that's your greatest love story of all time. And it must be noted: Heathcliff is a brute and a bully, beating this person, kidnapping that; he's cruel to children and animals; he has no concern outside of his own desires and revenge fantasies, and he would never be my pick for the greatest leading man of all time.
And so how does it end? Lockwood returns to the Grange once more and asks Nelly this very question; which she is avid to answer. After Lockwood had shared his fearful vision from his night at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff started roaming the moors in search of Catherine's spirit; eventually starving himself and then dying in her childhood bed; the window open and his corpse covered in icy rain; a glint in his eye and a smile frozen onto his dead face. And as it turns out, the two young people that Lockwood had met at Wuthering Heights were Cathy (daughter of Catherine and Edgar) and Hareton (son of the late Hindley and his wife from away), and although they had been enemies at first (due to Heathcliff's machinations), Cathy had managed to gentle the brute and their union sees a type of cosmic justice: the two family homes to which they would have been heirs if Heathcliff hadn't wrangled them from their parents were restored to them upon Heathcliff's death; united upon their marriage. Even the site of the graveyard – where Edgar, Catherine, and Heathcliff were all buried alongside each other – prompts Lockwood's final peaceful passage:
I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Ultimately, while the plot is a little soap operaish (without going full out schadenfreude-inducing revenge romp like The Count of Monte Cristo; one of my very favourite books), the language and the framing device (and especially Nelly Dean herself) thoroughly delighted me. I did get a little tired of characters constantly needing months of bedrest and porridge after getting caught in the rain, but as Brontë herself died at thirty (out of the six Brontë siblings, none saw forty), maybe that's just the way things were back then – and it's important to remember that Wuthering Heights is from “back then”: Brontë captured her own time brilliantly, but with enough modernity to make the whole thoroughly readable. I'm happy to have finally read this and know what the fuss is all about; it merits fuss.
Being ill like this combines shock – this time I will die – with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself. It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself. Now one belongs entirely to nature, to time: identity was a game. It isn't cruel what happens next, it is merely a form of being caught. Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head. It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do.
Having only read some of Harold Brodkey's anthologised short stories, I was nonetheless intrigued enough by the concept of a memoir of his final illness, This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death, to pick it up. And I'm glad I did: despite its brevity (177 small pages in my edition), it contains everything a memoir should (brief overview of childhood, career, relationships) and everything that a talented literary mind might note about the experience of impending death. After finishing it, I was unsurprised to learn in my Googling around that what might seem like flaws in the tone this work – arrogance, defensiveness, self-absorption – are criticisms that had been flung at Brodkey throughout his entire career; indeed, all of his fiction might be considered reworked memoir, with This Wild Darkness his necessarily focussed capstone. I was never unaware that Brodkey, having been given a terminal diagnosis, had a unique opportunity to shape a reader's final impression of him and his work – it would be impossible to say what is plain truth and what was moulded for posterity – but I choose to take Brodkey at his word; this is an affecting and enlightening account of a life, and a death.
In the spring of 1993, Brodkey was diagnosed with AIDS, and just short of three years later, he would die. Over those years, he continued to live his life – with the support of his devoted wife, the novelist Ellen Schwamm – continued to work on his previous writing projects; continued to travel; began composing what would become This Wild Darkness. I could summarise his biography as Brodkey shared it, but I really only want to let him speak here; to use a few snippets to demonstrate the evolution of his approach to his own death. Immediately post-prognosis:
Having accepted death long ago in order to be physically and morally free to some extent, I am not crushed by this final sentence of death, at least not yet, and I don't think it is denial. Why should it be different now? Ought I to crack up because a bluff has been called? I am sick and exhausted, numbed and darkened, by my approximate dying a few weeks ago from Pneumocystis, and consider death a silence, a silence and a privacy and an untouchabilty, as no more reactions and opinions, as a relief, a privilege, a lucky and grateful symmetrical silence to be grateful for.
From the spring of 1994:
Often in the afternoons I wake after a nap with an awful sense of its being over and that it never meant much; I never had a life. The valuable sweetness and the hard work are infected by the fact of death: they no longer seem to have been so wonderful, but they are all I had. And then I want to be comforted. I want my old, unthreatening forms of silence, and comedy-and-cowardice. I want breath and stories and the world.
From the summer 1994:
I don't want any human gesture of solidarity. I feel quite human anyway, infinitely human, which is to say merely human, and I don't feel the need for physical reassurance. I find the silence of God to be very beautiful, even when the silence is directed at me.
And from the final entry:
I am standing on an unmoored raft, a punt moving on the flexing, flowing face of a river. It is precarious. The unknowing, the taut balance, the jolts and the instability spread in widening ripples through all my thoughts. Peace? There was never any in the world. But in the pliable water, under the sky, unmoored, I am traveling now and hearing myself laugh, at first with nerves and then with genuine amazement. It is all around me.
I was constantly marking passages in this book – Brodkey's turns of phrase suit my taste to a tee – and his stated acceptance of his fate seems a lesson in grace and dignity for us all. Sad but true: while in his lifetime Brodkey was expected to be “the American Proust” and elevate memoir to a form that would live forever, none of his books (two short story collections, two novels, this memoir, some posthumous releases) are carried in either my local library or the bookstore where I work; twenty years after his death, Brodkey is all but forgotten. And that's a pity.
All
deaths are ironic, cancer, heart attacks, all of them. They hardly
suit what the man or woman was except as ironic comment.
What most intrigued me about this book was the relatively long timeline that Brodkey had in order to document his evolving thoughts and attitudes about his own demise; an observant and gifted writer, what he shares here ought to be of interest to us all. We sure don't all get the opportunity to form and communicate our thoughts, in the manner we would wish, at the end of our lives. My father-in-law's favourite cousin - they grew up together and were more like brothers; best friends - was named Bob Marino, and his recent passing was swift and shocking. Despite being nearly 79 (and a large man who loved his food and drink), Bob had never suffered a serious illness in his life. It was surprising, therefore, when a recent exam revealed that he had colon cancer. With further testing, it was discovered that the cancer had also spread to other organs - stomach, bowel, pancreas - but this was not necessarily an immediate death sentence: When Bob's oncologist asked him what his goal for treatment was, Bob replied, "I would love to reach my 80th birthday". And whether it was realistic, or just some helpful positivity, the doctor agreed that that was certainly attainable. Bob committed to an aggressive plan of chemo and radiation, and the night before he was to enter the hospital to begin, he had a priest over to his house: they had a meaningful discussion and Bob was given an annointing for the sick. He called my father-in-law, Jim, immediately afterwards to tell him how encouraged and at peace he felt. A few hours later, Jim got another phone call: apparently Bob had suffered a major stroke, and speechless and half paralysed, he had been rushed to the hospital. Even worse: because of the cancer, Bob couldn't be given any of the blood-thinning medications that might have mitigated the stroke's damage, it would spread the disease like wildfire; because of the stroke and some newly discovered blood clots in his legs, he could no longer be given chemo. When Jim went to visit, Bob was understandably upset and impatient. When he regained some ability to speak, Bob said he didn't want to live like this; he was ready to die. Maybe a week later, when Bob was spending less and less effort trying to communicate with his visitors, Jim brought his barber gear along to the hospital with him on a Friday night and gave Bob a shave and a haircut. Jim said that when he tried to help Bob sit up, his hand was batted away dismissively, if weakly, but when he was done, Bob squeezed his hand in thanks; managed to breathe out a faint, "Jim". Bob was dead by Sunday. I met Bob many times over the years and found him to be intelligent and curious about the lives of others and ready to engage in any conversation - as Dave says, "Bob Marino was the smartest man I knew, and he wasn't afraid to tell you". Dave has also always said of Bob, "He became a Catholic priest just to get the free education - once he was ordained, he quit". Dave likes to tell that as though Bob pulled a big trick on the Church; as though that was both schemed and admirable. But I think Bob's journey was more subtle and searching than that: he was always a man of faith; of community. Dave and Jim went up to Peterborough last weekend for Bob's funeral and were pleased that he was given the full rites of a priest; they both agreed that Bob would have loved that. As an intelligent and garrulous man, I can only imagine that his limited powers of speech would have been the greatest hardship for Bob in the end. From initial diagnosis to his last breath took about six weeks, and Dave and I agreed that that could have been a kind of gift - enough time to set his affairs in order and say his goodbyes; no long lingering in pain and helplessness; better than being hit by a bus; certainly preferable to being hooked up to machines for months. But it's never enough, really. Most of us will not be given the three years Harold Brodkey had in which to think and feel and evaluate; to work our sensory and mental impressions into suitable, into lasting, words and phrases. Bob went too fast, too soon; I know he had more to say. Bob's obituary (I have no idea if this will be online forever, so I'm going to copy/paste the whole thing):
Dr. Robert Vincent Marino
MARINO, Dr. Robert Vincent - August 25, 1938 - July 9, 2017 With great sadness, the family of Robert (Bob) Vincent Marino announce his passing on Sunday, July 9, 2017, at University Hospital in London, Ontario, in his 79th year. Beloved father of Robert (Megan) and Samuel (Paulette), grandfather "Poppa" to Kirsi, Lorenza, Nora, Esmee and Reid, and close friend and former husband of Susan Birnie Marino. Will be dearly missed by sisters Antonia Rosebush (Ward), Dorothy Williams (Lenny), Barbara Chapman (Robert), Joanne Marino and Patricia Damianopoulos (Tom), and by many cousins, nieces and nephews. Thanks to close friends and family for their ongoing love and friendship over the years and during his recent illness. Bob was born on August 25, 1938 in Peterborough, Ontario to Anthony and Christina Marino, and into a large and close family, who were always proud of their strong Italian roots. He grew up among the many relatives and friends coming and going to and from his home at 182 Lake Street in Peterborough where hospitality and his father Tony's cooking were famous. He ran with the "Lake Street boys", relished the position as the only son and brother in a Canadian-Italian family, and graduated from St. Peter's High School. He entered the Redemptorist Junior Seminary in Brockville, pursuing his vocation to become a Catholic priest, which he credited for steering him in the direction of higher education and lifelong learning. He transferred to Holy Redeemer College in Windsor, achieved his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and then graduated with a Bachelor of Sacramental Theology in 1964, after spending his 3rd year in Italy, studying and becoming proficient in the Italian language. Bob was ordained a Redemptorist Catholic priest in 1964. He believed his formation and experience as a priest cultivated his passion for community development, multilingualism and multiculturalism and diversity in the Canadian culture. His first parish assignment at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in the Kensington Market area of Toronto was with the Portuguese community. During this time he spent several months living in Portugal in order to better serve this community in their own language and culture. His influence and reputation in this community led to his involvement in the Kensington Market area politics and social development in the late 1960s. In 1968, Bob left the priesthood. He entered the University of Toronto, School of Social Work, from which he graduated with both a Master's degree and later a PhD in 1984. He married Susan Catherine Birnie in 1970. During this period, he became the Director of COSTI, a multicultural agency providing services to new Canadians and their families and was formative in developing expanded educational and vocational services there. Together with Susan and their young son Robert, Bob moved to London, Ontario in 1977. Here he became an Associate Professor and later the Director of Social Work at the University of Western Ontario, King's College. In 1979, Bob and Sue welcomed their second son Samuel. During his tenure at King's University College, Bob developed an interest in international education before retiring in 2004. During these years Bob became known for his fabulous cooking, his homemade wine, the annual "Spaghettata" prepared with Lino Canzona for their colleagues, and frankly, made the best meals that anyone had ever tasted. After retiring from Kings, Bob moved back to Peterborough, then returned to London five years ago, desiring to be closer to his grandchildren, making sure they became aware of their Italian heritage, gardening with them, and teaching them to make homemade pasta, and "zeppole" at Christmas. He continued his pursuit of lifelong learning, and during the past few years, in addition to studying Islam, he added to his proficiency in five languages and studied ancient Greek, wishing to be able to read the Bible in its original Greek form. He enjoyed his many philosophical chats with his friends, family and colleagues right to the end. Bob did not suffer a long illness having only recently been diagnosed with cancer and then unexpectedly suffering a stroke in June. Thanks to his many friends and colleagues who provided much support and love during his illness. Bob was particularly proud of his sons Robert and Sam, whom he believed grew up with their unique view of the world, determined to lead value-based lives in their vocations and as husbands and fathers. Bob lived a full life and at the end expressed gratitude for his life, for the many opportunities to have learned and in turn to have taught, and for his many relationships.
I don't care if Monday's blue Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too Thursday I don't care about you It's Friday I'm in love
Monday you can fall apart Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart Thursday doesn't even start It's Friday I'm in love
Saturday wait And Sunday always comes too late But Friday never hesitate...
I don't care if Monday's black Tuesday, Wednesday heart attack Thursday never looking back It's Friday I'm in love
Monday you can hold your head Tuesday, Wednesday stay in bed Or Thursday watch the walls instead It's Friday I'm in love
Saturday wait And Sunday always comes too late But Friday never hesitate...
Dressed up to the eyes It's a wonderful surprise To see your shoes and your spirits rise Throwing out your frown And just smiling at the sound And as sleek as a shriek Spinning round and round Always take a big bite It's such a gorgeous sight To see you eat in the middle of the night You can never get enough Enough of this stuff It's Friday I'm in love
I don't care if Monday's blue Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too Thursday I don't care about you It's Friday, I'm in love
Monday you can fall apart Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart Thursday doesn't even start It's Friday I'm in love
Despite my slow meanderings through my timeline, I realised that I had gotten ahead of myself and that there was a story from 1992 that I wanted to share; and going over a list of the hits from that year, this was definitely the top song that I wanted to add to my discography here. Today, I have a nineteen-year-old daughter who half believes that she rediscovered The Cure out of obscurity, but of course I knew them way back when - looking at a bunch of their videos with great nostalgia just now, I had to smile, recognising that all my friends and I back in the day looked just like these New-Wave-Goth-Punk-Rockers - but I was never really a fan until Friday I'm in Love came out: This was a much more accessibly poppy tune, and by 1992, I was much more accessibly poppy myself. As a short bit of background: When Dave and I got engaged, he had bought my ring by himself, choosing the cut and style with no input from me. Even at the time I understood that this is just the way it was done, but even so, he had made some particular decisions. If I could remove my rings, I might take a picture of them, but I'll just note that from a head-on view, my diamond is mounted on two cut out hearts, and the band itself isn't circular, but has two points meant to keep the ring from spinning. When Dave gave it to me, he explained that what most impressed him was how this ring looked in a set - the wedding band has the same mount and a smaller diamond, and as the salesperson had explained to him, it would look even better with a third ring - identical to the wedding band - which it would be appropriate for him to gift me for, say, our 10th anniversary. When we went to order our wedding bands together, I could see what the set was meant to look like, so I told Dave that he ought to have a wedding band with three diamonds on it to match mine: and as my diamond chip wedding band cost something like $120, and he was immediately set up with three stones, I warned him that I would be sorely disappointed if he expected me to wait ten years for another diamond chip. I explained that it would be much more appropriate for him to get it for our first anniversary, and he laughed like I was joking. I made sure he knew that I was not. When our first anniversary came around in 1992, we decided to spend it in Vegas - the first time either of us had been there. I was still working at the bar and Dave was working at the theatre, so we had money, but we still did it on the cheap and if I remember rightly, Dave did all the planning. We didn't even have a direct flight from Edmonton: we stopped over in Salt Lake City, and then boarded a prop plane (yikes!) for the final hop. Our immediate impression of Vegas was crazy - with the clanging slot machines and the buzzing neon lights in the airport and then the palm trees (the first that either of us had seen in real life) lining the boulevard away from the car rental company - and we cruised along, gaping like yokels and craning our necks up to look for familiar casino signs. Dave had booked us into the Excalibur - which at the time was brand new and the very last hotel on the strip - and we parked the rental and I went for a nap; this had been a long day already with the stopover and an early morning takeoff and I wanted to be fresh when the night came alive. I slept for however long while Dave went to check out our hotel and when he came back, he woke me sadly and said that he had lost big at the casino - something like twenty dollars, and that was enough of a warning for him to stay away. (I tried some slots and some blackjack later myself, but that's a boring way to lose money; gambling has never had appeal to either of us.) We were there for basically a long weekend, and I'm sure I don't remember everything we did, but I do remember going to some Legends concert, I think an amateurish standup show, we saw an Elvis impersonator in a pub, and hunted down 99¢ shrimp cocktails; cheap buffets. We drove out to the Hoover Dam, but didn't go on the tour. We walked through every hotel and casino we had ever heard of - marvelling at the ugliness of the gamblers, their sizes and outfits, their cigarettes and oxygen tanks, their impassive faces even as their machines spat out piles of coins - and played nickel slots ourselves for the free cocktails. A definite highlight: We walked out to the International Hotel because Dave needed to see where Elvis had his Vegas show, and as we were sitting in the bar, we noticed some hub bub not far away, and that's when we realised that they were filming a movie on the other side of the same big room. We saw the cameras and the crew, and followed the buzz of people to where Robert Redford and Demi Moore were just entering - and while we can't be seen in the background of Indecent Proposal, we know we're there. So, whichever day was our actual anniversary, we got all dressed up and went out for a (likely discount) steak dinner. I don't remember what Dave actually gave to me, or what I actually gave to him, but I know I did not get my diamond chip anniversary band. And when I pointed that out to Dave, he was surprised: he had already told me that I would need to wait another nine years for my not exactly expensive third band. I pointed out to him that if I needed to wait another nine years, it had better be more than a chip. And while this was nowhere near a fight - it was much more playful than I'm making it sound - it just felt unfair to me: Dave had three diamonds already because I was supposed to have three diamonds, and while completing my set wasn't expensive, I was supposed to wait for it. Why? I needed to earn it somehow? With the years of my life? Let's see: $120 over ten years is $1/month; that's what I'm worth and that's on a layaway plan. And here's what was most frustrating: I made so much more money than Dave, yet some unspoken but binding patriarchal tradition dictated that I needed to wait and be presented with this ring instead of just going and getting it for myself. I had no say in what I would wear on my finger for the rest of my life and now I had no say on when I would get it. The whole thing sucked, but we did continue to have a great trip and a happy anniversary (he would never know how this upset me). I could end my story there, but I may as well add what came later. When my brother Ken got engaged, he already knew exactly what Laura would want (they had discussed it, which was a good thing because she has unique tastes) and Ken went to a local jeweller and had a beautiful white gold ring with a central pearl and diamonds - it looks like a flower with the diamonds arranged in leaves around the pearl - custom made. When they were planning their wedding, Laura went to the same jeweller and had him make a wide wedding band with more diamonds that nests into the first ring, and the whole thing is beautiful and very her. When my other brother Kyler got engaged, he went out and bought Christine a huge rock on a platinum setting - hard to go wrong with that, and as expected, Christine loved it. We were kind of friendly with our neighbours in the second house we bought in Cambridge, and when we were over there one night, the wife was showing off the diamond encrusted eternity band that her husband had just given her for their tenth anniversary. The wife of another couple showed off her eternity band and said, "I told Mike I wouldn't wait ten years for mine, so he got it for me for our eighth." I looked at Dave to see if he was paying attention to what people actually do - spend the money on a tenth anniversary ring that they didn't have when they were first starting out - but it was hard to tell if the message was getting through. When our own tenth anniversary arrived, we went away for the weekend (to Stratford to see some theatre this time; a bit more grown up than Vegas, Baby), and before we left for dinner, Dave handed me a ring box. He was so pleased, and I was so anxious, and when I opened the lid, my heart fell: there was the cheap diamond chip ring that Dave had always assured me would be mine one day. There's no way he knew I was disappointed, and he excitedly told me about how proud of himself he was for remembering his promise to me, how he went to the Spence Diamonds in Mississauga and they were able to access his original purchase order from their Edmonton location and make me an exact replica - right down to stone chip size and former finger size - and I beamed and forced it onto my finger; it hasn't been off since; couldn't pull it off if I wanted to. That summer, when we made our annual pilgrimage to my parents' place in Nova Scotia, I was sitting on the dock with my sisters-in-law, watching my girls swimming in the lake, and Dave came down and said, "Did you show them your ring yet?" Laura and Christine both squealed, "Oooh! A ring? Show us the ring!" And I was so embarrassed - for me, because it made it look like a stone chip was all I was worth after ten years of marriage; for Dave, for just not knowing any better - and I held out my hand and there was just the slightest of evaluative pauses before my lovely sisters-in-law said all the right things and let Dave tell them about his success at being able to exactly recreate my wedding band; the execution of his happy plan that was in play for over eleven years. Maybe even ten years later, the pearl in Laura's engagement ring started to loosen, and as she had inherited some of her grandmother's loose diamonds after her Dad died, she went back to the jeweller she had used before and reworked her entire engagement ring; it is now 100% of her own design, and it's beautiful as a set with her wedding band, and very Laura. And of course Ken didn't mind: he just wanted Laura to be happy with what she was wearing on her hand every day. After that, Dave asked me if I would want to go have my own set reworked - we could certainly afford bigger diamonds now, and sheepishly, he noted that I could finally have a say in what I'm wearing every day. And know what? It just doesn't matter any more. I was unhappy about it for a very long time - and as the fashion over the years led to bigger and bigger rocks for what seemed like everyone else we ever met, I would usually keep my hands out of view in public - but I've come to accept that I will never own anything flashy; that it was shallow of me to ever think that my own value was reflected by the size of the diamonds on my finger. When Dave made this offer, I assured him that it was more important to me to have what he gave me (which, for the engagement ring anyway, was the best diamond he could afford at the time) instead of what might impress anyone else. And I mean that, completely. And yet...there's something awfully old fashioned and patriarchal about a guy doing all the choosing for an engagement ring; by proposing for that matter; why so one-sided? I don't know how traditional my girls will want such things to be, but wouldn't it be better if they and their future mates could just decide, "Hey, we should get married. Let's go pick out some rings together." In a perfect world... But let's go back to 1992: Dave and I were young and in love and spending our first anniversary in Las Vegas. We couldn't know at the time how our lives would play out - what good things would get even better, what bad feelings would cease to matter over time - but Dave has stayed just exactly the same: sincere and oblivious, with zero clue about what really goes on in my head. Which is actually a good thing - on a few occasions, I have nearly mentioned to him how disappointed I was on our first anniversary when I didn't get my ring; how more disappointed I was to wait all that time and then actually receive it for our tenth. That would serve no purpose but to hurt his feelings, and despite what I may sound like here, that is never my intent.
