Dot laughed and slapped me on the back. “Looks like you just got yourself a weekend of peace and quiet! Why don’t you grab yourself a beer and sit on the front porch?”
So I did. And after that, Dot and I drove down to the beach for fish and chips.
“Does this look familiar?” she asked, laughing as she pulled into the parking lot of the beach where I had spent so many of my childhood summers. Where my brothers and cousins and I had raced around the sand while our parents lay on blankets along the shore. Where we had ridden the waves of Lake Huron, jumped off the pier, fed french fries to waiting gulls.
Dot’s knees were bad and she could no longer navigate the sand, so we carried our fish and chips over to a bench on the new boardwalk. With our dinners on our laps we looked out over a beach full of young families, kids running around on the sand, their parents sunk into collapsible chairs reading magazines, waves hissing against the shore.
We said nothing. Just looked back in time. Licked our fingers. Watched the clouds swell with the day’s last light. And suddenly it came to me: that just as I would not force Dot to walk on the sand—it was painful, made her unsteady, afraid she might fall—I could not force her to understand my dad. It was painful, made her unsteady, afraid she might—
I might never know the end of that sentence, but it was not mine to finish. I just had to stop writing my own version of how she should be and simply accept her as she was, frailties, disabilities and all. It didn’t mean that I agreed with her choices or decisions, only that I could choose to love her in spite of them.
Which was the least I could do, I realized, considering that that was exactly what I wished she would do for my dad.
“You kids never wanted to go home at the end of the day,” Dot said, laughing at the sight of some parents trying to coax their kids into gathering up their beach toys. “Your dad and I would sit there for hours while you kids played. My back would get so tanned …”
It was the first time she had mentioned him, and it was so casual, a sentence in passing. I turned to look at her, but she kept her eyes on the lake. Her profile was very similar to my dad’s. Their mannerisms, too, were eerily identical: the way they gestured when they spoke, raised their eyebrows to punctuate a sentence, quivered their hands when they got excited.
A few french fries fell from my hands and in seconds I was surrounded by gulls rushing to gobble up the offerings and squawking their thanks. A young girl came running towards the gulls, her bare feet slapping along the wooden boardwalk until the birds lifted off into a resting sky.
The next time I looked at Dot, I could only smile at how much I loved her.
FAMILY
Dad just turned seventy-five. To celebrate, he has chosen to organize a week with the whole family in Oxford, a place pivotal and nourishing to him as a young man and one that retains tremendous meaning for him now. He has rented a large and lovely house that sleeps fourteen: he and Lance, my brothers and their wives and children. My partner and son and I will be going, of course. And so will my mother and her sister.
We leave in just over a month. The e-mails travelling back and forth at the moment are all about which one of us will bring the Scrabble board and which one the Boggle game. We’re loading Gilbert and Sullivan into our iPods, checking the walking distance to the nearest pub, and the women among us are trying to figure out how to swing it so that the men do all of the cooking.
Whatever happens, we know that we can all accept and forgive one another, that the only thing of any importance now is to enjoy life together, and that the truth really does free all of us in the end.
Acknowledgements
On the second-last day of our sojourn in Oxford (the Cotswolds, actually, the glorious countryside to the north of the city), I received word that Alfred A. Knopf Canada wanted to publish this book. With my entire family around the dinner table I announced the news, and because my father is someone who virtually always has sparkling wine chilling in the refrigerator, a few minutes later we were all toasting the book’s birth together.
With a glass of bubbly raised again, I would like to thank my agent, Martha Magor Webb, for her perceptive eye and her patient, genuine championing. My ebullient editor, Deirdre Molina, has believed in this book since it fell into her hands and it has been an unmitigated pleasure to work with her on finding this story’s highest expression. Thank you for such delight and diligence. Profound thanks also to Louise Dennys at Knopf Canada and Marion Garner at Vintage Canada; I am honoured to be part of their library. And I am terrifically grateful to Scott Sellers for taking this book under his wing and helping it soar.
For the wildly beautiful workspaces in which I wrote sections of this book, I offer my sincerest gratitude to Nancy Rocha, Heather Morgan, Anneke & Adriaan de Monchy, Deb Gibson and Don Shipley. Each provided a version of paradise—quiet, gorgeous, sacredly private space—just when I needed it. I am also very appreciative of an Ontario Arts Council grant, as passersby who happened to witness my dance by the mailbox could attest.
Stefan Lynch and Pink Triangle Press generously gave permission for the use of Michael Lynch’s writing. The excerpts from The Globe and Mail have been used with permission as well.
This story first came into form as a one-woman play thanks to the insufficiently heralded genius of Stuart Cox, who once saw me do an animated reading at a bookshop and was kind enough to break the news that what I was trying to do was actually called theatre. For his vision, direction and collaboration, I will probably never be able to thank him enough. Gracias a Janet Dawson and Doug Clark, who are the kind of tireless trumpeters that every artist dreams of having in their life.
Can-do-it-all Catherine Hume picked up my theatrical threads and helped me to sew them together, while continually bringing me back to the heart of the little girl in this story. I thank her for so much laughter-laced help and for sharing her dazzling creativity for a pittance. (Once, after I’d thanked her for an insight, she commented: “Hey, you’re not not paying me for nothing, you know.”)
Several friends helped write this book in that they kept me true to myself and to what was true for me. For such essential soul nourishment during this project I am particularly grateful to Trish Cannon, Citlalli Peña, Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez, Rosa Beléndez, Lourdes Álvarez and the radiant Wendy Roman. Samantha Albert was the first reader of the manuscript (with a ruler!) and her astute observations and kind suggestions were immensely helpful. And Stuart Cox and Michael Johnson were gracious enough to pass the final copy edit under their erudite and meticulous eyes.
My mother walked with me during this process with more grace than I knew a person could embody. I bow to her with the very deepest respect and gratitude. My ever-chuckling brothers were both brave and selfless in letting our lives spill open across these pages. They may always regret giving me that Careful or you’ll end up in my novel sweatshirt for Christmas, but I hope not. My step-family has been in every way a stairway-family, in that they have brought my life to greater heights by being in it, and I am so glad history played out in such a way that we all came together. I am one of the few people in the world to have a “real” fairy stepmother and his presence in my life these last 30+ years has been a magical and hilarity-filled privilege.
Jarmo and Noah Jalava have watched me dance around in every other art form but words this last decade and they had every reason to give up hope that I would ever write another book, but somehow they did not. I thank them for such deep love and faith. And for everything else that goes into our colourful, musical, crazily gorgeous life.
It was lovely, by the way. That week in the Cotwolds with my family. I am quite certain that I have never laughed so much or so hard as I did during those seven days, nor have I ever adored my family more. Every evening, the long dining room table shook with riotous laughter, songs and general silliness, and seeing my parents so genuinely enjoying each other’s company meant more to me than I ever had imagined it would. One afternoon, I watched my mother, her sis
ter, my fairy stepmother and my father wander happily down the driveway to go sightseeing together, and the quartet of cackles that drifted back to the house felt like both the tiniest of miracles and the hugest of gifts.
Which reminds me. I’ve thanked everyone but my father, who has given so much to this book that his name really should stand alongside mine as co-author. “No no,” he insisted. “It’s your book. Use whatever you want, but you’re in the driver’s seat. I’ll just stay in the background and try to get over my Victorian modesty.” Victorian modesty? “I do have a little bit!” he giggled, looking around him. “Somewhere …”
From my heart, Dad, I offer you a lifetime of love and thanks. For being precisely and exquisitely who you are.
AJW
Stratford
June 2012
ALISON WEARING’S first book was the bestselling, internationally acclaimed travel memoir Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. Since then, she has dedicated herself to music, dance and theatre, and her original one-woman shows, including a stage adaptation of Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter, have won awards across the country. She lives in Stratford, Ontario.
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