• • •
I think now I finally understand what’s going on with me: animals are my conduit to the natural world. In their presence I get out of my frenetic, neurotic human brain, out of my messy, bewildering emotions, and I connect with my animal self. I stop thinking, and start to just be. As meditation is supposed to do (but I wouldn’t know … yawn … snore …) animals keep me in the present, because that’s where they live, inhabiting fully each ticking second of time. Around animals, I stop fixating on the past. I stop fearing the future. I’m in the moment, where I’m able to somehow transcend ego, self and all my petty problems; I’m even able to stop obsessing over the human condition with its incomprehensible pain and evil. And that’s as close as I get to being spiritual. Animals lead the way.
And animals will save my life.
Picture this: my sister is dying. My sweet, kind, beautiful, gentle sister, the person I love most in the world. Her imminent death, at forty-seven, will be the last in a chain of major losses. First, the man I’m living with, despite having declared commitment, walks out. Four months later, I lose my beloved mother; eight weeks later, my father dies. Four weeks after that, my sister is diagnosed with brain cancer. Five months later one of my aunts, who is also my godmother, dies. I feel as though I’m in a slow war, loved ones dying or going missing all around me. By now, everything that has ever given me joy—friends, books, good food, my music, my writing—is powerless to budge me even an inch out of my wild grief and suicidal depression.
Except animals.
As my sister’s illness progressed, as hope of her survival faded, animals became my lifeline. I had started riding again in my forties, so once a week I’d leave the city for the surrounding farmland. I didn’t have my own horse yet, so I rode other people’s—skittish young creatures that liked to buck and shy and bolt. In order to stay on I had to stop thinking about my grief. I had to stop thinking, period, and focus, through my body, on each nuance of the horse’s mood, each twitch of muscle or sudden movement. At the same time, in that heightened Zen state of awareness, I experienced the world in stunning, sharp relief: the shapes of clouds scudding over the hills; the scent of fresh-cut hay; the sudden surprise of deer popping out from green shadows.
The horses also gave me physical comfort. During that whole time of loss, except for the occasional hug or massage, no one touched me. I came to crave contact with the horses and their massive, gentle warmth. I loved the feel of their satiny bodies, their sweet, warm smell—the same smell I first inhaled in that dusty corral—and the way I could lean against them, surrendering my weight to their broad, breathing flanks. I loved that I could climb on and they would literally support me and carry me away.
But I always had to return—home to dread and trying to imagine how I would live without my sister. When I entered my house, though, my other totem animal came to minister. My cats had no clue anyone had died or was dying, and it was business as usual on the feline planet. Even if I lay sobbing on the floor, they insisted I feed them, play with them, admire their elegant posturing. During that time I also fostered kittens for a rescue group, and sometimes I’d bring my sister over to the house for what I called kitten therapy. She was having seizures by then, we both knew it was hopeless, and yet, as a bunch of striped fluffballs tumbled about and slammed into each other like tiny furry bumper cars, we’d be oohing and aahing and giggling like fools.
• • •
After my sister died, my doctor wanted to put me on anti-depressants. I resisted for two years, knowing my body chemistry tended to react in weird ways to mood-altering substances. And then I bought Beau—a purebred Canadian horse, or cheval canadien, a rare and amazing breed that few people know about. He’s what they call a black bay, the colour of bittersweet chocolate. Compact and curvy, with a voluminous mane that falls to his chest, he’s handsome and sassy and too damn smart—an equine rake if ever there was one. Financially, I’m now beyond broke, but I’m no longer wishing I were dead, and my doctor agrees he can now stop pushing Prozac.
The loss of my sister has changed me forever, no question. I was never an optimist, but what shred of faith I might have once had that good could triumph has vaporized forever. If Pinochet is alive, if Osama bin Laden is alive, hell, if Bush is alive, and my sweet sister dead, then there is no order, no justice, no reason in the cosmos. And I miss her. God, I miss her. Five years later, her loss is a wound that still hasn’t closed. I will always move in a darker space now, but if there’s still some light in my world, it’s because of animals. I love my cats, I love their liquid grace that alternates with Chaplinesque comedy, and their selfless commitment to sensuality. I love my Burmese’s soulful, doglike devotion, his unfailing radar that sends him to my side whenever I’m especially blue. But it’s Beau, my black Pegasus, who transports me up and out of myself, who gallops me out of thought and sorrow. And, if only for brief moments, it’s like bursting through tangled, swampy underbrush into the open, blue-gold dazzle of a perfect August afternoon.
Sit yourself down, she says. Take the comfortable chair. You’re excited, I can tell. I hope I can help. Let me just put the kettle on.
Books in piles around her desk. Plants spilling from the window.
Glad you called, she says, smiling. Amazing, isn’t it? After years of broken snowsuit zippers, midnight feedings and car payments you look up one day and there it is: that glowing, fragile egg of a thing—the future you want to have. All along you wanted something like it, but it was hiding under a security blanket or the telephone bill.
And now here it sits, as if it had one eye cocked, challenging you: I’m yours if you want me, it says. It’s now or never, it says. Believe you me, I know what that’s like. I was fifty when I woke up and said, Annie—time to grab the future. Red Rose okay? I have decaf, too, she says.
Oh, let’s see: Hildegard of Bingen. Rachel Carson. Grandma Moses—seventy-eight when she got serious. Virginia Hamilton Adair. Mary Lawson. All late bloomers. Ah, yes, there are more talented women around than bus tours to Peggy’s Cove. Her laugh is like her voice: deep, seasoned.
Just tell that cat to get down, she says; just wants the body heat. Coyote, we call him. You’re not allergic, are you? And don’t let him do that—rude thing. Taking your picture, I call it.
You’re wondering: am I too late? Her eyes narrow. Can I write that novel, learn to sing, open a retreat centre for adolescents? Well, you can. Let me guess: the mirror is looking more like your mother and the years are disappearing like summer fog. Am I right? Her eyebrows are up, waiting for an answer. So, what’s stopping you?
Yes, I hear you. I thought that too. But, you know—oh, for goodness’ sake. Coyote, that’s enough of your tricks. Outside you go. He’s hungry, all right, but for attention.
Where were we? Would you like honey? Milk? Well, grab a pencil from over there. Now that I’m retired, I have more time for a good chat. My friend Marce calls this a chinwag. Ah yes, women: after thirty years of working in the academy, I am still struck by how little we believe in our own understanding.
Elizabeth. Susan. Seemeen. Frances. She puts down her cup, looks somewhere out the window. A woman—her name changes with the semester, the years—who has accomplished amazing feats, scaled emotional mountains, been lost in a dead-end marriage. A fiercely intelligent mother or sister or wife who can negotiate the rocky landscape of child-raising or minimum-wage work or chemotherapy or the death of a parent with wisdom, grace and the efficiency of a Swiss train. A wizard. Yet she appears on campus eyes down, racked with anxiety, apologizing for everything. Doesn’t know just how much she knows.
Have one of these crispy squares. Low fat. Easy. Remember the ad, the woman slaving over a hot stove to make them? Reminds me of my first year of marriage; I’d make the bed just before my husband came home. He was dazzled. “Wow,” he’d say. “You’ve been housecleaning!” Bless him.
So, here we go.
She looks to the ceiling, holds up a finger. This is the re
st of your life we’re talking about here. You’ve decided what you want, now how can you make the most of it? Oh, my dear, my dear, where to start?
Red shoes. That’s my first thought. Red to stand out in a crowd, with good support to move quickly without hurting yourself. Find out what your red shoes are—your distinctive feature or talent that sets you apart from others. Shine them up.
Travel light. What’s that rather crude saying—“It’s not the ups and downs in life, it’s the jerks”? You’ll be surprised by the characters you have to dodge. So the less you carry, the better. I mean, of course, grudges, your own demons, unfinished business, all that.
Be smart. I don’t mean careful, strategic, shrewd—those go without saying. I mean let yourself be smart, don’t hide your intelligence. Can’t tell you the number of students I had who didn’t know they were smarter than their own professors sometimes. Yes, smart. Smart with a smile is disarming, you know. She dabs a drop of tea off her chin, curls a slow grin.
Yes, please, help yourself to another. Was that the phone? I’ll let it ring. And that’s another point. This fragile egg—this goal you have. Give it room and time and space. Helps you focus. You know the old Maria Muldaur song—I can wash out forty-four pairs of socks, feed the baby, grease the car, starch shirts, give my man the shiverin’ fits? The woman was a magician, all right, but for whom?
Send signals that this is important. Put a sign on the door of your room—you have a room, or at least a corner, don’t you? Claim the part of the day when you are fresh. You’ll teach your family self-sufficiency, inspire your friends. Sleep better, too, knowing you spent that time. My friend Joan unplugs her phone. I used to mark half-day appointments with myself. Told people they were for dental surgery.
She stands up. Can you hear anything? Is that the cat?
Where was I? Oh, yes—choose good travelling companions, she says. Read. Make phone calls. Have tea, like we are. Get the backstories and horror stories. Don’t spread the negative; just make a note of it; there could be trolls under the bridge. Look around—find out who has integrity. Find your tribe, as Margaret Laurence said. Mary Meigs found one—did you see The Company of Strangers? You have family you don’t even know yet. She reaches for the box of tissues.
Look at you, she says. Full of mother wit and female wisdom. You can organize a birthday party for an explosion of nine-year-old boys; navigate a Stonehenge field of bureaucrats to find your father an assisted-care home; you know ten ways to nip a hot flash in the bud. You think those things didn’t prepare you? Listen, my dear, late bloomers are street-smart, savvy and generous. Every grey hair holds a truth, I always say—of course, I have to, look at this head—and every wrinkle a line of wisdom. Please—finish this last square. That cat is crying to get in and you need some hot in that. I’ll be right back.
No cat, she says and pours more tea. Yes, you’re right, of course. It’s gender. It’s about whose knowledge matters. Wit, common sense, intuition, embodied knowledge—put any words around it you want. What you know is valuable. The Wife of Bath—now, what was it she said? Here it is: “All these tales were written by men and scholars—now if women wrote them very different they would be.” Then she ripped out the pages of the book her husband was reading and threw them in the fire. Isn’t that a stitch?
She shakes her head, leans forward:
You see, here’s the thing. Official knowledge: rules, regulations—those are stories too. We tell ourselves stories in order to live, Joan Didion says. And theories and rules are just stories people tell themselves about how the world works. Or how they think it should. Stories change. Some are abandoned—take the flat earth theory, for example, or chastity belts. Some last longer than they should: fundamentalism, Colonialism, that a second X chromosome is needed for housecleaning and finding the mustard in the fridge.
But the unofficial stories—hard-earned wisdom—are just as credible, you see. Yet we’re taught to look outside. I grew up—Edson, The Pas, Saskatoon—certain that culture’s prime meridian was a street in Manhattan, or—in a pinch—Toronto. Answers were at the back of the book. Poems and stories and radio news had essential meanings that rose up like morning mist from a valley called Truth.
Oh, I’ve let my tea get cold, she says. I get so worked up! Dick and Jane and Sally would never have lasted a day in the real world. We jumped off the coal shed, played tag until dark, yet on Monday mornings, there they were in all their primer glory, writing Life for us. Illusions.
Think of Dorothy. When she pulled back the curtain, she found not a wizard but a funny little guy pushing buttons. That’s it in a nutshell.
We’ve got to push our own buttons, change the old patterns. Too often I see women seeking out rules, even if there aren’t any, looking for the right way, even when there isn’t one; and believing in the hierarchy, even when it is specious. You know, my dear, women believe the treasure—answer, solution, workable theory—is “out there” and seldom realize that we bring it with us; it’s been there all along.
So throw that book in the fire. Use your wits and …
You said it—trust your gut. How’s our time? she asks. Oh good. We’ll have a bite of supper soon.
Listen, you’re bound to step into alien territory, cross a line, get someone’s knickers in a knot. Don’t worry about it. Enjoy it! Late bloomers have little to lose except time. Use your moxie. Besides, middle-aged women are invisible to most people, so use that to your advantage.
Let me see—what else. Ah, yes: send postcards. I mean—tell everyone where you’re headed. Sister, partner, favourite grocery store clerk—let them know when you’ve published an article, earned an A, written a song. That way, when you’re slogging through sloughs of despond or up to your kneecaps in a pothole, they’ll be like water bearers at a marathon. And—you know this—you’re more likely to persevere because they’re with you.
Good grief. The sun goes down early, doesn’t it? Over there, she says; the switch is at the base.
Start now. One of my students cared for her autistic son, held three part-time jobs, gave palliative care to her mother, and still managed to finish a master’s degree and enroll in a doctoral program. Paula didn’t wait—things weren’t going to get easier. Take whatever small steps you can. Funny, though; as Paula persevered, doors opened—to scholarships, work that served her goals.
Pat’s another example. We wore Cowichan sweaters in high school, became stage rats at Aden Bowman Collegiate. We loved poetry. Three years ago doctors removed everything cancerous they could find, and then some. Bald and gut-empty, Pat began to write poetry, to rethink those hundred-hour workweeks. She saw a shaman, Buddhist monks, inhaled poetry books. And wrote. Full, she says, I’ve never felt so full and whole.
Finally, candles—celebration, faith, ritual, all rolled in one. I wrote a novel, someone will say, but it wasn’t nominated for the Giller. Yes, I wrote a song, but I’m not Connie Kaldor. Forget the yes-buts. Get out a journal—write down all you’ve done; turn around, see how far you travelled. Kick up the heels of those bright red shoes.
And never forget that little girl writing chalk lines along the sidewalk to jump into and over, an arc at the turn-around end. Pedestrians scuffed it. Rain came. Every night the girl slept hard, dreamed. And every morning she went out again with her chalk, writing herself into the landscape.
Now, she says, rising, reaching out her arm. That’s enough from me. Let’s put some soup on. I want to hear all about you.
“Promise me this,” I urge my nieces, as we sit around a bonfire on the edge of the lake we all love. My family has traded secrets and elicited promises here in the late-summer twilight for five generations.
“In the next few years,” I venture, from my vantage point on an upended stump of wood beside the flames, “you’re going to try some grown-up stuff.” I glance toward the cottage a few hundred feet away. Their mother, my elder sister, has retired there to read after dinner. Her two girls, their lips smeared pink and their sho
rts too short, wave marshmallow sticks at the fire and giggle.
“No. I know you are,” I say. “We all do. I got loaded on Kahlúa at your age, thirteen or fourteen, and did a face-plant in the snow in my friend’s backyard.” They whoop with laughter. Their hilarity seems fuelled less by the fact that I’ve ever been drunk than by the exuberant notion that I, their aunt, should be telling them so.
“It’s true,” I go on, smiling. “It’s crap, Kahlúa. Haven’t touched it ever since.” I lean in too close to the fire, wincing at the heat as I wedge in another pine log. “I’m just saying that this goes with the territory of being teenaged. You’re going to try booze. You’re going to find pot. And I fully expect that you’ll be asked by some good-looking guy in your high school to …” I try to think of the current slang for casual sex, “to hook up.” I gesture vaguely. “Or whatever.”
They stare at me, their firelit faces bright with expectation, awaiting a punch line. I am the irreverent Elder in their lives, I suppose. The one who quips, and blithely smokes and wears fashionable shoes from Berlin. My adolescent nieces and nephews have read passages in my books about one-night stands and characters who drop LSD. Of course, it pleases and surprises me that they go to the trouble to read my books, but sometimes I worry that my writing is like the in-house, familial version of the purloined Playboy. A treasure trove of outré adult behaviour just for them.
“Listen to me, girls,” I say, hoping like hell that my sister wouldn’t strangle me for this, “experiment with alcohol! I’ll give you some tips. And go for the pot, it can be incredibly fun, as long as you only take one puff of a joint. One puff. No more.” The girls trade looks of wide-eyed glee. “Just confine your experiments to those things,” I say, “and only with your girlfriends. Okay? Promise me that you won’t hook up.”
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