The paradox of "No" in pursuit of an abundant life

 The ‘catch phrase’ abundant life which has been at the front of mind for many years, is a moniker that has so many different faces and applications, along with both circumstance and supplementing and complementing guideposts.

At first blush, for anyone to claim that s/he has attempted to follow such a potentially ambiguous and abstract notion, without having been formally coached, mentored and even classically conditioned into that perspective, seem arrogant and narcissistic and self-congratulating in the extreme. Thinking back, remembering a childhood trying to navigate between two parents of very different tendencies, approaches and attitudes, one highly vocal, somewhat spontaneous, verbal, physical,  demanding, and aggressive, the other more restrained, silent, tolerant, compassionate and passive, on reflection, the irony seems to have been that the assertive/aggressive kinetic parent in my family was the mother, while the more sensitive, collaborative, moderate and deliberate and retiring/reticent was the father. Given the traditional stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, these two people presented very paradoxical versions of their respective gender.

Verbal combat frequently erupted between these two ‘protagonists’ although, as might have been expected in the fifties and sixties, the public was curtained off, ignorant of the domestic violence and the daily and hourly tensions that could develop, against a backdrop of turbulent weather the extremes of which could/would appear without warning or forecast. Muscular opinions, with or without supporting evidence seemed to be counter-balanced by a vacuum of opinion, and this seemed especially evident when the subject of ‘other people’ was under consideration. Denigrating, demeaning and dismissive views of those of ‘lesser’ value were a normal part of the ambience were the expected verbal line drawings from mother, while silence, tolerance, and even kindness was the preferred attitude to others from father.

Into this cauldron, wrapped in summer with vibrant floral rock gardens and bountiful vegetable gardens, framed in disciplined rows of raspberry bushes, a highly disciplined and rigorous ‘work ethic’ dominated. In winter, sidewalks were meticulously shovelled, as were porch roofs, and a back-yard ice rink glistened under a single 200-watt light bulb hanging from the clothesline. The imposition of the work ethic for me emerged in a requirement of daily piano practice, increasing as the years passed, and invariably including Saturday mornings extending to three hours. It is not so much the notion of getting things done that prevails in memory, but the intensity of the emotions, mostly domineering, mostly critical and, on reflection mostly self-loathing projections onto the world that seems to have been at the heart of an over-achieving, insecure and highly ‘masked’ practical and professional nurse. The French phrase, “formation professionelle” addresses the influence of one’s training in any field, almost like a kind of branding with regard to the things that are important, and the lens through which the world is perceived, and the methods and the protocols one learns and masters, as integral to that ‘formation’ that then carry over into one’s daily, yet non-professional or domestic life.

Spending three years, interrupted by a full year of health-related illness due to severe eczema, under the tutelage of the nuns at Saint Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, after a first decade living in a boxcar in the bush in Brent in Northern Ontario with only a pet dog and dolls for play-mates, has to have been a recipe and a diet of considerable discipline, minimal social interactions, and exuding ambition for mother. Today, we might use words like anal-micro-management, including hygienic perfection that overflowed into scrutiny of ticked notes when I practiced piano, and cleanliness evocative of the hospital emergency room.

On the other hand, a son of a Baptist clergy father and a kindergarten teacher mother, born in Alvinston, and moved to Burgessville, Thornbury and then Parry Sound in the first decade of his life, the eldest of four, bore the bruises of scarcity, a stammer of social insecurity and a muscular and athletic body. Living in conditions of considerable poverty, recalling frozen water in wash basins on dressers in winter, and summers on sandy fields for baseball (later known as softball), my father was the epitome of the PK (priest-kid) who rarely spoke and if and when he did, he uttered mostly pablum epithets about the weather. Any emotive expression, especially those of anger and frustration, while rare, were usually extreme. Appeasing his partner was so familiar, having learned the ‘skill’ in his home, almost as a religion.

Into this familial melting pot of bombast and appeasement roared a hot-headed, highly articulate and charismatic protestant from Northern Ireland, the new clergy in the local Presbyterian church. Hell-fire and brimstone were the promised after-life conditions for ‘sinners’, according to him and his religiosity, himself the product of a very different ‘formation professionelle’ in an ethos of religious strife that sounded fifes-and-drums and rifles at home and spread dark clouds of religious hatred and bigotry and violence around the world. For the decade from six through sixteen, our family attended church regularly, and we were expected to attend “Sunday School” and Sunday School picnics, and sing in Christmas choirs. And, the Sunday morning ritual began with a one-mile-plus walk, (we did not own a car), to the service, irrespective of weather.

Steeped in the often over-heated home of unpredictable and often violent emotions and verbiage, not always easily or even partially understood, naturally I preferred being outside that home, including in classrooms, church, music lessons and playgrounds where I could be reasonably confident that I would be, in a word, ‘safe’…Safety, and the predictability of safety, might seem an exaggeration to some. However, the combined impact of being unable to have even a hint of the ‘mood’ of our mother whenever we entered the house, and the absolute conviction that to let anyone outside the family ‘know’ about the dynamic that was unfolding inside this little brick box, ‘mascared’ by lily of the valley, peonies, gladiolas, and evergreens throughout the double yard, was what comprised ‘normal’ for the first seventeen years. Little did I know that, while other kids may have endured different pain and struggles, this family of origin had some unique features.

 Unexplained and seemingly incoherent and irrational decisions were both gratifying occasionally and highly confusing at times. New hockey gloves immediately prior to a Saturday morning game, for example, like the over-laden plates at meal-time, especially if we had guests, were signs of a generosity that served as a counterpoint foil for the emotional volatility. Rejection of the invitation to an all-star hockey tournament in Collingwood from the coach, ‘because he (I) did not win the singing festival last week’, while never challenged, was also never explained or justified. When confronted by a suggestion to stop smoking cigarettes, her response rings hollow to this day: ‘If God had not wanted us to smoke, he would not have created tobacco!’ I had no rebuttal at eleven;  I have no other response than a bewildered shrug at eighty.

The tension, however, did induce, birth, generate or energize a continually ‘on-edge’ mind and sensibility that was then, and has never ceased to be, almost radioactive as a radar testing the ethos and the meaning of that ethos for my safety, acceptance, alienation and disapproval. Immediately upon opening the door to our house, I could “feel” (although I would not have ascribed the experience to my emotions as an adolescent) looming conflict, deafening and tomb-like silence, or that certain ‘weather-signal’ the false-jutting lower ‘plate’ and the doleful whistle…a sure sign of unhappiness totally unhinged from a specific trigger. That ‘sixth sense’ of basically fear and apprehension is more inextricably embedded in my psyche than the hairline, now having receded completely, on my head.

If fear and apprehension, underlined with repeated ‘you’re no good, just like your father’ chants comprise the ‘soil’ in which this seed has been planted and expects to grow, then one quickly develops the vital and vibrant mask of how to perform when ‘in public’ so that no one will suspect the cavern of shame within. Performing at piano recitals, at special occasions for service clubs’ ladies nights, at music festivals including the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition), and the preparation that was required, along with regular if not yearly piano examinations under the aegis of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto, engendered a public mask of some modest acclaim. It also covered the dark interiority of life at home.

While these brief glimpses merely draw pencil lines illustrating the skeletal outline of childhood and adolescence, they might be helpful in ‘showing’ some of the impulses that energized my thoughts, feelings, fears and aspirations. And thoseb impulses came then, and have continued to accompany me, on the various and somewhat unpredictable and certainly unimagined journeys over the last several decades.

Facing fear and the unpredictable acts, words or especially attitudes of others, was a constant lens through which I viewed, assessed and responded to all others. Letting my guard down, rarely if ever, was on the occasion of what I now see as unexpected acceptance, even if merely minimal, and normal for others. A boss who wryly jokes, upon hearing a panting and grunting noise from a grocery store basement, ‘that has to be John’ to the laughing delight of co-workers, when I was thirteen, rings like a vote of confidence. A public-school teacher, after listening to a less-than-optimal performance of a Bach Prelude, at a Lions Meeting, comments sardonically and ironically in passing, ‘That was a nice piece’ to which I sadly reply, ‘Yeah, if only we could find someone to play it!”

In fact, that approach, soon to become a habit, of self-deprecating words depicting a less-than-perfect reality of performance, morphed into another facet of the same attitude: scepticism, questioning, debating both with self and others, and engagement with the world, partly as a fascination with the unknown, and partly as a way of ‘soothing’ and escaping from the pain of home life where the cacophony of the grinding parental tectonic plates of seemingly irreconcilable world views, faiths, and even ethics seemed to generate ‘emotional earthquakes’ that could not be forecast, prevented nor explained. And the residue of those several quakes, while unsettling and disturbing, and, in adolescence, pinned almost exclusively on the irrational and the unstable words, acts and attitudes and beliefs of mother, is never far from consciousness.

Where was there safe space? With whom? What did that look and feel like? What are the options available when one does not feel safe? And what actions must one contemplate and take in order to “feel safe”? These are not, on their surface, complicated questions. They become more complex when they drive feelings, perceptions, and potential actions. They impose a kind of invisible time clock on each moment; they evoke scenes in which escaping to a bedroom for quiet is clearly not an option when in public; alternative methods of ‘looning’ or ‘diving’ underwater, both physically and emotionally, served as surrogate. The gestalt of such questions has the impact of collapsing time, metaphorically, to the moment when, while, at eighteen, lying on a beach on and island in Georgian Bay, I uttered what I now consider a seriously flawed and yet also poignant prediction, ‘I do not expect to live past forty!’ without a spec of physical, financial, emotional or intellectual evidence of either mortality or danger.

Learning, almost embodying an impatience and a kind of energetic ambition to live in words that today would read, ‘on steroids’, in a very short period of time, has cast a shadow over a lifetime, exclusively from my own DNA and history. When the fire-brand evangelical proudly and unequivocally chanted what were totally intolerable judgements from his elevated pulpit, as I listened, at sixteen, in horror and disgust, I knew that ‘saying no’ was the only available option. Telling his congregants, most of whom ‘hung on his every word and faith utterance,’ that Roman Catholics were going to Hell, those who drink wine are going to Hell, those who attend dances or movies or prepare meals on Sunday are going to Hell, so light a fire in my belly that I vowed I would never attend another service in that church, while he was the clergy. And, although my father served on the Session of that church, and my parents had a long history of adherence there, nevertheless I never returned.  (Sadly, and regretfully, I relented and participated in a first marriage which he co-conducted!)

So, at the heart of this attempt to embody an abundant life beats the drum of when and how and where to say, “No!” for the sole purpose of being true to myself. And the repercussions of that pounding drum, both literally and metaphorically comprise the narrative of now eight-plus decades.