Our community was separated from the hullabaloo of summer visitors by a buffer of woods, meadows and unmowed grassland that kept our space light years away from the crowds and urban-like atmosphere in the larger park.
Yet for all my love of the place, there was nothing convenient about living on the Island. City people who came in summer said, “You live in Paradise.”
I laughed. “Come back mid-February during a snowstorm,” I said. “Maybe we can house trade.” There were no stores. Nowhere to buy food or toilet paper, or pick up an extra pair of socks on a cold day. We had to bring everything we owned, ate or drank by boat from the city.
No motorized form of transportation was allowed on the Island other than garbage or maintenance trucks, a school bus and a snowplow. It left us dependent on our feet or bicycles to get from place to place. We relied on carts, wagons and shopping buggies we called “bundle buggies” to shlep all manner of goods from the city back home to the Island. Whether bringing home a new fridge, case of twenty-four, a watermelon or a first-born child, that’s what you did. It didn’t matter if it was raining, sleeting, hailing or snowing, we shlepped.
Sandy and I lived together on the Island for three years, until the late 1970s. Somewhere along the way we realized the inevitable: we were at very different stages in our lives. It was time for each to move on.
I had gained confidence from our relationship and for the first time in years felt safe enough to dream again about having a family. But Sandy, at that time, did not share those dreams. He already had a family. I would have to find someone else to share my domestic dreams with — I knew I could never be happy in a marriage without children. When Sandy and I broke up, he returned to the city, a practical decision considering his career demands. I stayed on the Island. Alone, but unafraid. My past long behind me. Or so I thought.
After the airplane debacle in 1980, I opened up the Washington memory and could not easily close it. Therapy had begun in earnest. During the year of gruelling, gut-wrenching sessions, I relived my night of terror in Washington. I wept, screamed, cried and pounded. All to let out the horrors that had been locked inside for so long. It had taken me ten years to face them.
When I began my weekly appointments, I was still living alone on the Island. I was trying to lead my life and function day-to-day as best I could. On the surface I carried it off, but it was hard. I had become claustrophobic and couldn’t go anywhere I felt trapped or couldn’t escape from if I felt danger. Meaning, I was afraid to get into elevators (which could get stuck between floors) or onto the subway (which often stopped in between stations). I needed both to get to work.
Sometimes I became so physically drained and emotionally weak after a session, I couldn’t make it back home and would have to stay in the city at Barbara’s or at the house of another close friend, Ellie. They fed me and put me to sleep. I lost more than forty pounds over the course of the therapy. Thinner than ever before in my life, I spared people my discomfort when they’d say “You’ve never looked better.” I’d never felt worse.
Miraculously, I didn’t stop working. Three months before my trip to Tampa to see my parents, I had started a demanding job at CITY-TV. I was a researcher and story producer for The Shulman File, a one-hour public affairs talk show hosted by television personality, politician, city coroner and prankster, Dr. Morton Shulman. Amongst many other duties, I had to become an expert in whatever current issue we chose for Shulman to debate on air.
A prescription of Valium made all of this possible. Without it, I wouldn’t have left the house. Part of me wanted to do just that, not leave, but everyone advised against it. Their judgment was good. So was the Valium.
I landed the job at CITY-TV following the investigative article I had written for Canadian Business. The producer of The Shulman File happened to read it. She decided my skills were exactly what she was looking for. Would I like a job? I would, indeed.
When my panic attacks began, I was mid-season into production of the show. As long as I could keep up the façade at work, I would. The job paid my bills and stopped me from constantly thinking about myself. I swallowed a five-mg hit of Valium with coffee in the morning to send me off to work, another with a sandwich at lunch to get me through the day.
I made it through the production season, sure that no one at the TV station, including the producer, had a clue about my inner turmoil, though I may have been kidding myself. Showing a stunning lack of ambition, I never made any attempt to work my way into a higher position or asked to learn editing, directing and production skills.
Though I had made considerable progress reducing my anxiety in therapy, I knew that working in television was too fast-paced and stressful for me, even without my present problems. Fortunately, I was offered a job at City Hall doing health promotion and communications work.
The feeling “I’m going crazy” had slowly subsided during the first year in therapy, but by the second year, while in my new job, something else replaced the fear. The butterflies were back in my gut, though they were falling into a pit rather than fluttering. It made me feel as though I was sinking into a dark, gloomy hole, flapping through my body with despair, slipping into a clinical depression. I experienced dark, dark days. Coupled with a genetic propensity for the illness inherited from both my mother and father’s family, the rigours of such intense therapy had been too tough. Forcing me to dig so deeply into my pain had exhausted me. Pulling up the residue of anger, fear, and powerlessness from years past sent my body chemistry haywire, downhill haywire.
It was time to find someone else who could put me back together. Again. Barbara, Ellie and I called anyone in our network we thought might know a therapist who would be right for me in my present state. We were now wary.
After a month, Ellie found the person we were looking for at the Clarke, the same institution I had begged Barbara to take me to two years before, after the airplane debacle. But if I had gone with Barbara then, entry would have been through the backdoor emergency entrance. This time, Ellie and I pushed open the institution’s plate-glass front doors off College Street, and headed straight to an outpatient office for an appointment with a world-renowned psycho-pharmacologist who specialized in treating depression.
I noticed very quickly that while the doctor was asking basic questions about my depression and its origin, he wasn’t pressing me to go into any great detail, or to go back too far into my life history. He gave me a standard chart to fill out to determine just how depressed I was, asking questions about sleep and eating patterns, thoughts of suicide, whether I wanted to be with people or withdraw, whether I suffered from guilt or shame and if I saw the future with optimism or pessimism.
Whatever the doctor needed from me on the chart, he got. Results from a blood test helped him reaffirm that the heavy-duty psychoanalysis I had been through played havoc with my body, contributing to my depression. Putting me back together was now a matter of raising serotonin levels back to normal. Enough talk therapy. It was time for medication to build me up.
The psycho-pharmacologist tried me on several drugs at different doses until he found the right combination with the least side effects. I could feel the Prozac kick in after three weeks. By one month, I was back to being me. Neither high me, nor low me, just me. I had forgotten who that was.
The doctor slowly weaned me off the Valium I was still taking to help me function — not daily, but often. I still carried one pill in my purse, just in case I got caught in an elevator or subway. My past feelings of being trapped without an escape hatch still lurked. One year after starting the anti-depressants, I took the Valium vial out of my pocket and threw it into the wastebasket.
To my great disappointment, though, I needed a five-mg hit of the anti-anxiety medication to get me through one of the happiest evenings of my life. I had been nominated for a National Magazine Award for my article in Canadian Business. I was still a little shaky, worried that such a big public occasion might overwhelm me. I was doing well, but still
haunted by the horrible years I had just come through. I worried about being in a room with hundreds of other people; having to smile, walk, talk and act normal. And what if, by any chance, I won and had to walk up on stage to receive the award with the whole room looking at me? What if I went crazy in the middle of it or had to escape?
One week after the awards dinner, the postman shoved a large manila envelope through the mail slot in my front door. I ripped it open, knowing what it was: a glossy photograph of me beaming as I accepted the Award. The picture also exhibited my smiling face framed on a too-skinny body wearing the dazzling pink, purple and red floral silk wrap-around dress I had bought at Holt Renfrew for the occasion. Only I knew that my convincing smile and beautiful dress hid a still fragile, vulnerable soul.
4.
Toronto’s Safe Harbours: Marriage and Adoption
Toronto and Toronto Island, 1983
AFTER A YEAR ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS, I became stable. I put on weight, had a social life, but most importantly, I could think about the well-being of people other than myself. Instead of wondering how I was going to make it through the next day (and whether I wanted to), I could start thinking about my future.
I realized in therapy that I had been afraid to get too close to a man for the last decade — specifically, since Washington. Even with Jeffrey and Sandy, men I cared about deeply, I wasn’t able to make a real commitment. I was afraid of being trapped. I wasn’t the first woman, or man, to equate signing a marriage register with trepidation. But the trepidation only represented part of me. Through all the zigs and zags in my life, I never stopped longing for the day I’d be married and have a family.
It was time for a change. Enough time had passed. I was ready to find the person referred to in those days as Mr. Right. My single life on the Island had become too comfy-cozy. I wasn’t reaching out to new people. People, as in single men. I had to get strategic.
“I’m moving to the city for a year,” I told my Island friends.
“You’re what?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” I said. “I’m only moving off for a year. I’ll meet a guy and bring him back to the Island,” I added, with the false certainty of a first-time politician running against the incumbent.
A month later, I moved into a renovated attic in a charming, red-brick Victorian row house in the Annex area of the city. I loved the ease of a city life with buses, subways, hardware stores, cleaners. A 24-hour pizza joint at my doorstep was all a girl could ask for.
One night, several weeks after my move, I received a phone call from my friend, Judy. She had a plan. Did it have anything to do with my search for Mr. Right?
Yes, in fact, it did. Judy, also single, suggested we take out a personal classified in our national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. A writer for the paper, she received free ads as a job perk. We should muster the courage and do it, she said.
Courage was right. Running a personal was not something anyone we knew did, unless looking for a used vacuum or chesterfield. It was 1983, after all, light years before the advent of Lavalife, J-date or eHarmony.com.
We chose not to write a regular “personal,” one requiring us to describe ourselves and the type of men we were looking for. Both Judy and I were writers. We had dated and lived with writers. In her case, she had previously married a writer. We both knew, too well, you don’t really know someone from the snapshot of words they string together, no matter how appealing those words might be.
We needed a twist. I was reasonably fluent in French from my university days and travels, but in need of practise; Judy, recently returned from a Globe-sponsored French-language intensive in Quebec, also needed practice. Why not put together a French conversation group? We would write an ad asking men to join us. What a great way to meet guys without pressure on anyone, we thought. We might even improve our French.
Judy called in the ad.
Single, professional women in their 30s looking for single men between the ages of 30 and 45, interested in forming a French conversation group. No Parisian snobs need apply…
One week after the ad went in, Judy called. “I’m ready. I’m going to the box now. I’ll see if anyone responded.”
Ten minutes later, the phone rang. “There are over one hundred letters. I peeked at a few,” Judy added. “There are some good ones.”
“Now what do we do?”
“I don’t have a clue. Let’s start by reading the letters. We’ll figure it out from there.”
I ducked out of work. When I got to Judy’s office, she pulled out a stack of letters from a drawer and plopped them on her desk in front of us. The envelopes were of every conceivable size, mostly white, some blue, one yellow, one light green. A few were typed. Most were handwritten. I flipped through, aimlessly trying to analyze the handwriting.
We decided to read the letters aloud, taking turns, discussing each one before we moved on to the next.
“We’ll make a ‘yes’ pile for people we’d like to meet,” Judy suggested. “A ‘maybe’ for ones we’re not sure of. And a ‘no’ pile for the creeps,” she added. “There are bound to be some.”
We knew immediately when we hit a “no.” The giveaway usually reared its ugly head in the first sentence, if not paragraph. More often than not it contained mention of a male body part, in descriptive, florid language. We tore up all ten of those on the spot and tossed them in the wastebasket.
Then, every once in a while, something would go zing. It told us maybe we weren’t such goofs after all. If Judy was reading, she would start, then pause. She would look up, smile. I would already be smiling by the time our eyes met. The same word, phrase or sentiment that had caught her fancy had caught mine. Our hearts were going simultaneously boom.
There were fifteen “yes” letters out of the hundred. One was from a thirty-seven year-old producer of documentary films at the CBC who had recently returned from southern France. His name was Robin Christmas.
“I’m 38, a TV producer with the CBC. Beyond things French, my interests are quite eclectic: music (Pat Metheny to Mozart), sport (sailing, baseball and tennis), films, the theatre, good food and fine wines — the usual stuff.
I work as a field producer for a public affairs TV show, travelling all over the place making documentaries on any subject that might interest an audience. Fortunately, given the nature of my job, I love travelling and have seen a large part of the world.
I was born in London, England, and came to Canada when I was five … I’m five foot eight, fit and healthy, love canoeing and camping; I read quite enthusiastically and follow the flow of world events with keen enthusiasm…”
Robin became one of the fifteen “yes” men we called for a 7:00 p.m. rendezvous at La Bodega, a French restaurant downtown. At 7:30, Robin walked through the front door. He had a kind, gentle face that registered panic upon noticing everyone at our table staring at him. Judy promptly kicked me under the table. I kicked her back. It was our way of saying “Two Thumbs Up” to his outfit. He was dressed in properly worn jeans, a tweed sport jacket, blue workshirt and nicely worn-in cowboy boots. Judy gave me a look that meant “go-for-it.”
“No you. He’s too short,” I whispered back. I’d long since learned that most men feel uncomfortable around women who are taller than them.
Judy ignored me and made room for Robin beside me at the table.
I took it slow with Robin. The first month we saw each other only at our weekly French group. It was the perfect way to get to know someone without pressure, and it required minimal personal disclosure. He slowly began to open up, telling me about his brother Stephen’s congenital illness, his father leaving home when he was nine, the ups and downs of living with his erudite stepfather, about his work and his desire to have children one day.
I eventually trusted him enough to open up about what had happened to me in Washington and how, after thirteen years, its ghost was still there, but fading. There were now days when it wasn’t my first thought upon waking each
morning.
It took time before we held hands, longer to kiss. Then, several months into the relationship, Robin was given an assignment to produce a documentary in Nicaragua for the CBC. His departure significantly heightened our feelings. His letters to me were beautifully written, passionate about the struggles in Nicaragua. Best of all, the letters were romantic, almost yearning. Being lonely in the middle of a war zone, far from home, is known to do that to a person.
I read Robin’s letters over and over in bed at night. I couldn’t wait for his return. When he came back, we began seeing each other daily, then nightly. He cared about me in a way that made me believe him when he said, “I just want you to be happy.” If there was something he could do to make that possible, he did.
One summer evening, as we were eating on the outdoor patio at the site of our first official date, Robin asked me to marry him. My answer to Robin was an enthusiastic yes.
We flew down to Florida so my parents could meet Robin. Both my mother and father embraced him with open arms, literally. They of course knew he wasn’t Jewish, but surprisingly, only made one small peep of disapproval. My mother pulled me aside to ask, “If you had to marry a non-Jew, couldn’t you at least have found one with a name like Smith or Harris? Did it have to be Christmas?”
“Fair enough, Ma. I ask myself the same thing.”
While in Florida, my dad would wake Robin at sunrise to take him out for breakfast at a nearby bagel joint, the supreme compliment from a man who normally liked sipping morning coffee solo. I was never invited to join them, which secretly pleased me to no end. I loved thinking my dad had someone new to love.
My mother noticeably brightened up around Robin, acting just shy of flirtatious. I liked that he brought out this schoolgirl side I had never seen before. She cooked and fussed, so much so I found myself mildly jealous, especially when she shared her private stash of Heavenly Hash ice cream, strictly verboten to her daughters.
“They clearly adore you,” I said to Robin on the plane ride home. “They can both rest easier now,” I said. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, their baby daughter was heading towards the altar. My father, particularly, could relax. In his way of thinking, it meant, finally, someone would be taking care of his Linda.
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