Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told Read online

  For all our dear women friends,

  whose conversations and caring are sources of

  constant renewal and inspiration

  CONTENTS

  ADRIENNE CLARKSON Foreword

  MARJORIE ANDERSON Introduction

  End Notes

  JANE URQUHART Losing Paul: A Memoir

  ALISON WEARING My Life as a Shadow

  MARY JANE COPPS In My Mother’s Arms

  LISA MAJEAU GORDON An Exercise in Fertility

  BILLIE LIVINGSTON Cat Bag

  SHIRLEY A. SERVISS One Step Forward

  PAMELA MALA SINHA Hiding

  DANA McNAIRN A Marriage in Seven Parts

  LISA GREGOIR Northern Lights and Darkness

  Variations

  MAGGIE DWYER Like Mother, Like Daughter

  SANDRA MARTIN Snapshots

  BARBARA DEFAGO Inside Talking

  LINDA HARLOS The Fall, and After

  HILDEGARD MARTENS By Choice

  MARIANNE BRANDIS Virgin Crone

  FAITH JOHNSTON Debonding

  SARAH HARVEY Mother Interrupted

  C.J. PAPOUTSIS They Didn’t Come with Instructions

  Glimpses

  INGEBORG BOYENS On the Waters Edge

  MARY J. BREEN Nobody Needs to Know

  JENNIFER L. SCHULZ Toe-Ring

  DEBBIE CULBERTSON A Place on the Pavement

  WANDA WUTTUNEE We Are More Than Our Problems

  LINDA ROGERS Bettinas Hat

  MICHELE LANDSBERG Don’t Say Anything

  SUSAN SWAN My Secret Life as a Mother

  Nourishment

  KAREN HOULE Double Arc

  ELIZABETH HAY Ten Beauty Tips You Never Asked For

  CAROLE SABISTON Conjuring Up a New Life

  FLORA MacDONALD New Voices

  SANDRA BEARDSALL Life with an Overeager Conscience

  SANDRA BIRDSELL One of a Bunch

  MAUDE BARLOW The Coat I Left Behind

  ANN DOWSETT JOHNSTON The Boy Can’t Sleep

  SHELAGH ROGERS Speaking of Dying

  CAROL SHIELDS Afterword

  Contributors

  FOREWORD

  When I was seventeen, I read that one is not born a woman, one becomes one. The fact that this was written by a great woman, a French writer, who was at least the equal if not the superior of Jean-Paul Sartre, was incredibly invigorating for me. At first, I had no idea what to do with the truth of this statement. Now, many years later, I see that the truth is many layered and even (to the horror of my seventeen-year-old self!) disputable.

  When I opened the manuscript of this second collection about what women aren’t told, I realized that it was really about how these writers learned about becoming women. I still believe that the evidence weighs more on Simone de Beauvoir’s side. How else can we explain the intense pain, the immediate identification, the instant empathy with all the women who have written about loss, love and the fear of failure that are like a Bermuda Triangle of the soul for all women.

  Whether these essays deal with illness, broken relationships or the lack of the father figure, there is a female authenticity to them that is deeply moving. The loss of belief in the principle of male privilege is a constant throughout these essays, and the search for something to replace it—usually inadequate—is the weft of many of these women’s life experiences.

  The dilemma in which women after the second wave of feminism have found themselves is that it is perfectly acceptable now to be a brilliant lawyer, a great novelist or a caring doctor, but those attempting to do these things must make sure that they are in addition nurturing mothers, attentive wives and solicitous caregivers to the elderly. If the two sides of the equation don’t match, women are blamed, and the worst of it is that they accept the blame.

  Perhaps what we can reap in these accounts is something that will help us all not feel this “either or” situation. All the subjects here help us to understand that we are not alone. If we are fortunate to have a circle of female friends in different kinds and ages of life, we are learning that on a day-to-day basis through constant communication and conversation, which can make men feel either jealous or left out or both. Because it’s true that women talk to each other about what most men would consider to be “nothing.” They talk about how they feel, how they have reacted, how their bodies betray or support them. They are not afraid to be weak with each other and, on a regular basis, usually tell each other when they have cried.

  In these extremely perceptive essays, bright women suffer because they are bright and know that the favour of their peers, especially in adolescence, is not going to be showered on them for their intellectual achievement. Or they know what it is like to suddenly discover a loving relationship becoming an abusive marriage. They feel the longing to make a transformation from working-class to middle-class life and then an equal compulsion to leave it. They have felt the horror of being treated like totally sexual objects and the disappointment of trying unsuccessfully to have a child.

  We are dealing with real situations here—chronic disease, personal discovery of sexual orientation and learning how to cope with a life that has been considered secret since birth.

  I wondered after I’d finished reading the text why I was so moved by all these different ways of telling what nobody has ever told you. I suppose one of the reasons is that we are expected in a kind of silent sisterhood to “know these things.” The fact is, none of us knows anything, and it is what happens to us in life that teaches us everything.

  Freud most famously said that he could not understand what a woman wants. This is probably the greatest example of one sex not listening to the other that has been documented. The accounts in this collection highlight for us that women want everything. And there is an unspoken historic and psychological barrier, which means that when women do try to be the most that they can be, they are stopped; they are stopped by the flaws that they have developed, by the society that they cannot manage or by the very idea that a woman could want anything.

  In all these essays there is a good deal of wisdom, some detachment and frequently humour. It is a distinctly feminine thing that in none of these pieces is there ever the idea that one could simply accept the stereotypes that we all grew up with—male breadwinner, female homemaker, inevitable children. These accounts tell us what life is like from a woman’s point of view, even in such small vignettes. Perhaps that is what women’s lives are really like—snowflakes with infinitely different patterns, complete in themselves.

  Adrienne Clarkson

  July 2002

  INTRODUCTION

  On a generously mild evening in February 2001, I joined nine contributors from the first volume of Dropped Threads at a local bookstore to take part in the Winnipeg launch of that anthology. We anticipated having a modest audience, composed mostly of friends and family members, to hear us speak of our involvement in the book and read from our contributions. What we hadn’t anticipated was the size of the crowd—over three hundred booklovers scrunched into the store’s café and beamed down at us from the second-floor balcony. And we certainly hadn’t foreseen the extent of the excitement and energy that would permeate the room.

  Variations of our Winnipeg experience were repeated at launches in other cities across Canada, from Victoria with Carol Shields and the West Coast contributors to St. John’s with writers from the East. The energy and enthusiasm from readers inspired similar waves of amazement and pleasure in contributors and editors. Our book had obviously tapped into a powerful need to share personal stories about life’s defining moments of surprise and silence. It was as if we were hearing a collective sigh of relief.

&
nbsp; In the months following that initial immersion, we were part of a country-wide discussion on what had been missing in women’s conversations—those hidden nooks of pride, blessing, injury or shame that are revealed only when there’s safety and a community of understanding. We were pleased to see that the anthology had been part of creating such a community. Whenever we heard from readers, especially at spirited book club gatherings we were invited to attend, they openly revealed why the stories had been particularly meaningful for them: “They offer affirmation;” “I don’t feel so alone or so crazy;” or “This could be a story about my life.” Readers also felt free to talk about the dropped threads in their own lives. Some would tell of being refreshed by a surprise or muted by a brand of shame similar to those found in the book; others recounted life-altering experiences that weren’t included in the anthology, but might have been.

  This focus on what was missing inevitably led to questions: what about lesbian experiences, the single life, relationships between mothers and daughters or the less-than-noble aspects of female interactions—where were these stories? Would there be a second volume, and could they send us their stories, just in case…?” Carol and I felt sure we were witnessing the stirrings of a new venture.

  That following summer, we started collecting pieces for this volume, and it was an exciting and consuming task. We put the word out through our droppedthreads.com website and also by direct invitation to writers we hoped to include. The submissions poured in, each one moving in some way for its honesty and intimacy. We understood that these were not just stories, but parcels of women’s lives that deserved care and attention. The thirty-five that appear here are offered to you in that spirit.

  Many of the essays we’ve included carry on in the tradition of those in the first collection. Readers will again experience the shock of recognition that comes from bumping up against thoughts and feelings that mirror their own. Other writers expose us to unfamiliar terrain, dark patches of brutality or misfortune that many of us may never experience personally. What is common to each of these accounts, though, is a journey to the heart of one woman’s private experience that she wants—and needs—to tell others.

  In the first section, “End Notes,” writers chart their movements through trauma, loss and bewilderment to an understanding of how incidental moments of attention and caring can transform a life. Commonplace things like the sound of a bird singing, the protective embrace of a sibling or a glance at a particular book on a shelf become instruments of survival for these women. And for us they become haunting images or startling insights that linger long after the reading experience.

  The essays in “Variations” balance the celebration of women’s commonalities with emphasis on the individual shadings of their lives and experiences. More than one writer recounts her version of a familiar female circumstance, such as breast cancer or child rearing. But of course, no two are exactly alike from the inside. Each writer points to different moments of intensity and to individual strategies for coping, all of which draw our attention to the unique particulars of women’s lives.

  In “Glimpses,” women show how they manage to envision themselves beyond either their own limitations or the restrictive expectations of others. For some, this creative leap is achieved simply by imagining bolder versions of themselves. For others, it requires piercing the assumptions that lurk behind familiar decrees on normalcy and politeness—to be “nice,” to prefer the love of men over the love of women, or to defer to authority, whatever the cost. By casting aside these restrictions, the writers reject what stifles the spirit and, in turn, demonstrate ways to insist on living authentically.

  It’s fitting that this anthology of writing by women ends with pieces under the banner of “Nourishment.” It is what we offer to and receive from each other. It’s what we soak up from our conversations and connections—whether over a pot of popcorn in the kitchen with a child, across language barriers with women of different cultures or when a dear friend is dying. And it’s what these writers trust in themselves: the guidance from the nudges and whispers inside—to move, to learn, to release their tips, their wisdom, their secrets and sorrows.

  Nourishment is exactly what I have received in abundance over the four years I’ve worked on the Dropped Threads anthologies. It has come from the continued connection with my gracious friend Carol, the model for all nourishers, and from my liaisons with the wise, talented and—glory be—organized women who helped with these projects. And, of course, from all the writers who honoured and trusted us with their stories. I feel safe in the universe we’ve created together. It’s not made up of atoms that can be blown apart; it’s made up of stories that connect us and sustain us.

  Welcome to this place of sustenance and continued conversation.

  Marjorie Anderson

  August 2002

  End Notes

  Losing Paul:

  A Memoir

  Jane Urquhart

  That summer evening, the phone was not working—probably a bad connection, interference from someone operating machinery in the village or perhaps a distant August storm. I remember that the receiver seemed to melt in my hand as he told me the job in Toronto was not working out, that he was going out with some friends for a beer, that he would begin the 150-kilometre drive home in an hour or so. It would be longer than that, I knew, because this had happened before, the beer or two with his friends after a disappointment. Not often, but enough times that I knew what to expect. At best, he wouldn’t be home until after midnight. Still, something about the difficulty of hearing his voice, something about the way I had to ask him to repeat what he was saying, caused the anger I might have felt to be replaced by a twitch of fear.

  The sense that the phone was melting in my hand—that’s what I remember most. That and the fact that I was wearing green shorts and a tank top because it was so hot, and my bare feet were absorbing the relative coolness of my grandmother’s linoleum floor.

  We had been living in my grandmother’s empty house in an Ontario village ever since our return from Nova Scotia a month before because we had no money to live anywhere else. The art college he had attended in the East had arranged this Toronto job that was not working out, a job in a fine arts print studio where he hoped to use his skills as a lithographer. But the studio in question seemed to believe he was there to work free, as an apprentice or an intern. By the time he made the call on that August evening, we were so poor that we had been living for three days on raspberries, which, despite neglect, continued to flourish in my grandmother’s abandoned garden.

  I had described to him the profusion of this garden in its prime: snapdragons, hollyhocks, gladioli and sunflowers on the one side, tidy rows of beans, carrots, potatoes and peas on the other. He had been impressed—especially by the news of vegetables—as we were both pretty tired of the raspberries. Fortunately, I had relatives in and around the village who had been feeding us fairly regularly since we’d come back from the East. Also fortunately, we were young, bound to each other in the twin-like, telepathic intimacy that only the young seem able to muster, and not overly frightened about what might come next because we were fairly certain something would. He managed, until that evening, to have a job, and I would likely get one soon.

  During the five or six years I had known him, he had acquired a variety of skills, and although we were young when we’d met he already had a repertoire of talents that greatly impressed me. He knew how to cook and how to darn socks, for instance (two activities I had not yet mastered), and he knew how to carry out certain tasks I associated with a far-gone time: how to saddle and bridle a horse, how to bank up a coal furnace, how to dye clothing in bright colours to make them seem new again. He could make a split-rail fence and boil down maple syrup in the woods, roast chestnuts and make Dutch pea soup. We were young, but we’d been married for almost five years, and there had been other periods of scarcity we had emerged from unscathed: the time he had miraculously been taken on as a repair perso
n in a shop full of Swiss violin makers, for example, because he could tell from the shape of a musical instrument how it would sound. Or the time out East when I had miraculously been hired as assistant to the information officer for the Royal Canadian Navy, despite the fact that I had spent the previous three years enthusiastically and publicly objecting to military activities and should not have passed the security test. We had a car and, for the time being, a roof. We had the relatives and the raspberries and a credit card that we were using only for the gas he needed to drive back and forth to Toronto. It was summer, and our life together so far, much of it spent as students, had led us to believe that nothing really begins until September. “Drive carefully,” I said before I put down the phone. Those were the last words I ever spoke to him.

  My grandmother’s house was in many ways a testimonial to absent men. In the active part of her life, my grandmother had risen every morning at five-thirty to make breakfast for six sons, one husband and one hired hand. She had two daughters as well—one of them was my mother—but in the stories I told myself about my grandmother’s labours, the daughters were never part of the collective that she cooked for. In my imagination, and very likely in reality, they were often at her side peeling potatoes or stirring the porridge or removing warm, aromatic bread from the oven of the wood stove that still dominated the kitchen, where I had been talking on the phone. They were placing cutlery and dishes on the table and waiting for the men and the boys to come through the door after completing a series of masculine outdoor chores.

  The boys grew up eventually, stopped coming through the door, went off to wars or city jobs or farms of their own. Two of them had died. My grandfather and the hired man had died as well, the former from a heart attack while pitching hay in the barn, the latter following an accident involving a horse. My grandmother was not a woman given to cleaning up after death, and as a result the house was crammed with male paraphernalia. Shaving brushes and suspenders and important papers stuffed into cubbyholes of the rolltop desk. Air force and army uniforms in the closets. Marbles and comics and model planes in the drawers of pine dressers. Books about mechanical engineering and animal husbandry on various shelves. Baseball cards. A pile of Farmer’s Almanacs from the forties and fifties. Election campaign buttons. And lots of practical clothes: workboots, jackets and rain gear. Even the hired man’s plaid shirts remained in his trunk in the storeroom. And my grandfather’s clothes were still in the room where we had chosen to sleep. It had been startling at first to see my young husband’s jeans hanging on a hook beside my dead grandfather’s overalls, but after a few days I had become used to the sight.