Dropped Threads 3 (34 page)

My answer would have been, “We all have a sense of humor,” but it amounts to the same thing. She wasn’t prepared to offer an analysis, which, at best, would capture only a thread or two of the thick fabric that binds our three generations. “Washing dishes the same way” was the short form of the very complicated stuff of family relationships. In our gang we are affectionate and loyal, we have similar views on matters of social responsibility, and we laugh a lot, but we are very, very different people. Even love, which Freud poetically called the “oceanic feeling,” can’t dissolve the secrets a heart holds.

Behavioural scientists say that people discover when they are only two years old that adults can’t read their thoughts. That realization carries with it a shocking message that, essentially, every individual is alone and unknowable. The universal search for the meaning of existence owes much to
the uneasiness felt by those who sense, to their horror, that they are hunkered down alone on the high seas of perpetual angst, and where is land?

This gives rise to dread, which in turn accounts for the popularity of how-to books and advice columns. The field is a splendid one for the improvement of a writer’s income, however clueless the author may be. I myself used to be quite good at giving advice until I noticed one day that no one was paying the slightest attention—unless what I had to suggest coincided with what they planned to do anyway.

In any case, dramatic and helpful insight often comes unsolicited and out of the blue, and from unexpected sources. When I was about twelve I was a member of a swimming team in Kitchener, Ontario. My best event was highboard diving, and I was taking first place in every competition until Dorothy Schaeffer came along with her forward layout flip. I couldn’t bring myself even to try it, so she moved into the winner’s circle. One evening during a meet, she over-rotated and went into the water with a huge splash. I was delighted. “Oh good!” I cried. A boy next to me, also twelve years old, said in a low voice, “That wasn’t very nice.” Drenched in shame, I discovered in that instant that I wanted to be a nice person a whole lot more than I wanted to win a ribbon. On reflection, I count him among the most influential mentors I have ever known, and I can’t remember his name.

Ever since the night of the swimming meet I have been working on a theology which looks pretty simple: it is that kindness is as close to godliness as humans can ever get. There is a law of physics that states that the only thing absolutely true in the universe is the speed of light. But light bends, I believe, so maybe that isn’t exactly true either. I am unalterably convinced, however, of the truth that kindness
is holiness in action. I am not speaking of the one-way kindness of acts of charity, that humiliate the recipient, but of the kindness that leaves both parties feeling better.

If I hold a door for strangers following behind me, the strangers are no longer exactly the people they were before that happened, and neither am I. They have been brushed by a very small act of consideration, which cost me nothing, and the world seems to them minutely more friendly, and safer. And I feel better too. On the other hand, people who let doors shut in someone’s face lower the human pool of goodwill.

I doubt anyone becomes kinder by being ordered to, but everyone can learn civility, which actually amounts to the same thing. Rules of good conduct are quite precise. “Please” and “thank you” are signals of respect. In most cultures, people greet one another by saying some version of, “How are you?” That show of concern has become ritualized, but it still carries a message that the well-being of others is an important matter. Similarly, the prohibitions on lying are not because the liar might be caught and suffer censure, but because the lying breaks the code of trust that is the glue of relationships. Good manners, fundamentally, are exercises in empathy. If we were not helpful to one another, our communities would turn into jungles full of angry animals, and every inmate would be lunch.

“We are all in this together,” sighed Kurt Vonnegut, “whatever this is.”

Thoughtfulness for others generally is learned in childhood when the principal adults in a child’s life show consideration to all comers. Rules of behaviour can be learned by rote, of course, without the support of genuine thoughtfulness, but they don’t do the essential job of warming a room. People have an unnerving capacity to reflect what comes at them. If there is a primary assumption that another
person is reasonable and good, that individual is quite likely to react by being both. On the other hand, the expectation that the other person is of a lower order of intelligence and worth deeply discourages co-operation. The best people can give one another is respect; actually, that’s a lot.

The rudder of conscience that steers me is homemade. Since I don’t know what built it, I am not in a position to pass on a training manual and, in any case, I cannot presume that it would serve another person. Mine is customized to fit me, just as others put together individualized rudders out of the stuff of their own lives.

It is, therefore, not particularly useful for me to pass along something that gives me calm, but I’ll end with it anyway. I find peace in my sense of insignificance; if I ever thought otherwise, I would be immobilized. I learned this about myself when I was a teenager racked by confusion. One hot July night when I dragged my mattress out to an upstairs balcony to be cooler, I discovered stars. I was enchanted. Such glory, such constancy, such mystery. By day I studied astronomy and at night I picked out the galaxies. At some point I was awed to realize my irrelevance in the vastness of space. Perspective set in and I felt my adolescent angst evaporate.

Since I live in a city now and the stars are opaque, I restore equilibrium these days by watching endless waves break on a shore. They rise and fall, rise and fall, one after another, after another, after another; forever. Long after I pick up my beach towel and depart, long, long after I am gone from the planet, the waves will still be coming in, as indifferent to my absence as they were to my presence. That is a comforting thought.

MARJORIE ANDERSON
My life was first made rich by being part of a story-telling family living on the edge of Lake Winnipeg, where we were surrounded by the wonders of its mists and lore. After years of teaching various combinations of writing, literature and communication at the University of Manitoba, I’ve shifted my professional focus to editing and being immersed in literary projects such as this one. My personal joys are still being with family and spending time at the edge of water, now with the mists and moonlight at our lake cottage.

MARGARET ATWOOD
I am the author of more than twenty-six books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and my work has been translated into more than thirty languages. My most recent novel is
Oryx and Crake
. I live in Toronto.

JUNE CALLWOOD
I’ve been a journalist for a very long time, and I don’t know any other profession that gives such a window on the world. In my era journalists rarely were college graduates and I never heard of a journalism school, so we all learned from patient colleagues—and developed a newsroom camaraderie that isn’t common any more. For a nervous teenager, far
from home, newspaper city rooms were my introduction to the kindness of strangers.

TRACEY ANN COVEART
Growing up, I was described (not always kindly) as a mother looking for a place to happen. Eventually, I happened. I blossomed with my three children—now teenagers, two on the verge of fledging, one a perpetual nestling—and they are my opus. A full-time mom and part-time writer and editor, I live on a hill in Port Perry, Ontario, within spitting distance of the world’s most devoted parents. Over the last twenty years I have managed to wedge a number of works—both published and unpublished—into the nooks and crannies of the time-space continuum.

LORNA CROZIER
Precious moments have come when I’m able to erase the outlines that separate me from another species and enter their sensory world, even briefly. I try to do that while being Chair of the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria, where I teach poetry. I’ve recently become more interested in the personal essay, partly thanks to Marjorie Anderson and Carol Shields, who first invited me to explore the form. I live and write in an old house on Vancouver Island with a big garden tended by Patrick Lane and appreciated by our two fine cats.

ANDREA
CURTIS
I grew up in the shadow of Georgian Bay with my nose in a book, went to school in Montreal, tree-planted in Northern Ontario and wound up as a magazine editor in Toronto. My first book,
Into the Blue
, is a creative non-fiction work about a 1906 Great Lakes shipwreck that devastated my family.
I live in Toronto with a houseful of boys. “The Writers’ Circle” recalls a time when I yearned to write more, imagining that committing words to paper would not only free me, but might also offer solace to the profoundly marginalized at a Toronto women’s shelter.

NORMA DEPLEDGE
“My Father’s Last Gift” is part of a larger work in progress, the working title of which is
How Slight the Shadow
. Other pieces of my short fiction have been published in literary magazines—including the
Malahat Review, Room of One’s Own, Grain
, and
Atlantis
—aired on CBC Radio, and anthologized in
Love and Pomegranates
(Sono Nis). In collaboration with my friend and colleague Claire McKenzie, I published a writing textbook with Prentice Hall. My novel,
A Better Plan
, was published in 2004 in broadsheet format by the
Victoria Literary Times
. I live and work in Victoria.

MAGGIE DE VRIES
After five years as children’s book editor at Orca Book Publishers in Victoria, I am in the middle of a transformation, from commuting editor to at-home writer who edits. All of a sudden “at home” means more to me than it ever has before: husband, cats, garden, friends, family. I wrote “The Only Way Past” because I wanted to tell about learning to face life squarely, no matter how hard that might be, and now I find that the life I am facing delights me.

M. A. C. FARRANT
I was born in Australia to a wandering mother and a Canadian seafaring father but, luckily, at age five, was settled on Vancouver Island to be raised by my father’s sister. These events are the subject of my memoir,
My Turquoise
Years
(Greystone/Douglas & McIntyre, 2004), and of the piece included in this book—my early training about men and Amazon housewives. I have also published seven books of humorous and satirical short fiction. Writing full-time and occasionally teaching at the University of Victoria, I live near Sidney, B.C.

LIANE FAULDER
I’ve lived most of my life in Edmonton, though I came to love Toronto while a journalism student at Ryerson. As a feature writer with the
Edmonton Journal
, I’ve learned to work with the material that comes my way, and that’s been helpful in my life too. My contribution to this anthology was inspired by my two sons, Dylan and Daniel. Being the mother of boys came as a shock to me, and I’ve been figuring out why ever since.

NATALIE FINGERHUT
After eight post-secondary institutions, five cities and four careers, I have finally found a happy place for myself as an editor in Toronto with the love of my life, Rob Winters, and our beloved Raphael. Though the misfit’s journey to personal acceptance is long, the rewards are many, namely being able to pass time at bar mitzvahs by talking wrestling with the guys and debating diapers with the gals.

MARIE-LYNN HAMMOND
I’m an air force brat; got my love of storytelling from my Franco-Ontarian
maman;
became a singer-songwriter, with detours through playwriting and broadcasting; now work mostly as a writer and editor. My remaining sister and my niece make life worthwhile, along with all critters great and small and my dream of someday doing flying changes on a
little black horse. Why this essay? Because I want humans to remember we’re animals too and ought to stop fouling our nest. Because maybe you don’t need a guru, a therapist or a million bucks; maybe all you need is a cat.

HARRIET HART
I’m migratory, a snowbird who winters by the shores of Lake Chapala, Mexico, and summers on Kagaki Lake, northwestern Ontario. Born on a prairie farm, I’ve been cast in many supporting roles on my life’s journey from Manitoba to Mexico: daughter, sister, wife, mother, divorcée, other woman, friend, employee, landlady and stepmother. In retirement, I play the leading lady in my personal drama. I wrote “She Drinks” to share how I quit drinking and did it my way.

FRANCES ITANI
I grew up in a Quebec village and began to travel and study at age fifteen, when I finished high school. I’ve been writing for more than thirty years, and my books include
Deafening
and
Poached Egg on Toast
. I was born with energy and optimism of spirit, and am thankful for both. I love children and have two of my own, now adults. Voice and language have always been of interest to me in my work. I wrote “Conspicuous Voices” as a tribute to the extended family that surrounded me in childhood, one more thing to be thankful about.

MELANIE D. JANZEN
Three years ago, I decided to leave my rewarding teaching career to return to university to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Womens’ Studies and Education. It was through my coursework, my amazing advisers and my
research in Uganda that I have come to truly appreciate the extraordinary circles of women in my life. My life in Winnipeg is further enriched by the unwavering support of my husband, Keith, our foster daughter Cayla’s teenaged antics and the love of my family and friends.

GILLIAN KERR
I live in Toronto where I have a career in food marketing and retailing. My profession has taught me the shortcuts available in supermarkets that make it possible to serve food with pride and love without having to sacrifice the best part of a Saturday afternoon. I have been writing creatively for five years. Many people have asked me how I learned to cook. “Tiny Tomatoes” is an answer to that question as well as a reflection on the ways creativity is taught. It asks: what do our talents owe to the passion of our teachers?