Monthly Archives: March 2010

An Honest Scrap


Lora receives The Honest Scrap blogger award often, and I’ve enviously wished to be awarded this myself as I’ve read her scraps of self-truth.

Being a more interesting and less censored person than myself, it isn’t surprising that she is a frequent honoree. She does Gary Paulson’s creedo of “going there” proud via her blogging efforts. I don’t boldly go much anymore. Age isn’t a factor. Wisdom hasn’t come with wrinkles and fading hair follicles. I just live in the world more and am less inclined to be infamously known in my realtity.

Not that Lora is infamously known – that I know of – but more and more, people I interact with in real time read this blog. Honesty has become a hassle. Coy isn’t difficult to write, but it’s not all that engaging on a creative or personal level for me. So I don’t.

And I’ll bet you were thinking “she’s grown a conscience, chosen modesty or, at the very least, reconnected with her empathy bone”.

Silverstar blessed me with my very own Honest Scrap Award. It comes with the onus of relating 10 little known facts about myself, as if I have that many anymore, and the request to pass it along to other bloggers. Most of the blogs I read are written by anti-meme types, so I can’t bring myself to name names. I consider my readership to be go-getting self-prodders who will simply appropriate this award and write, or not, as the mood moves them. My blogging buddies are scrappy like that.

Little known? What does that mean exactly? Known to my readers – who are varied, sitting in front of screens that are thousands of miles away from me and whose faces I may not know if I were to encounter them somewhere?

  1. I believe in destiny and fate, but I don’t think we are at their mercy. Though most of the time you are locked into a path until it plays out, you still have options. Your actions have effects. Where you are right now is still mostly your own doing because our difficulties in life are usually the result of fighting destiny rather than working within the confines of our predestined trajectory.
  2. Enlightenment is more often rejected than it is actually elusive, in my opinion. It’s probably completely possible to learn everything you need to know without ever stepping foot on this planet. Life is a choice we make at some point, and I think it is the physicality of it all that lures us here in spite of the fact that confining our true selves to such flimsy and frustratingly needy vessels can cause us pain in equal measure to joy and pleasure. Life is addicting.
  3. I check the obituaries of the Des Moines Register daily to see if my late husband’s mother has died yet. Occasionally I will google the names of his aunts and uncles to check on their pulse status as well. If I never saw or heard from them again, it wouldn’t pain me one bit and I will be relieved when I am finally shed of the semi-annual sending of the photos ritual and their couple of Hallmark cards a year addressed to Dee – who has absolutely no idea who they are. She checks the cards for money. My mother and Auntie send cash. There is never money. I remind her of the sender’s connection to her. Her grandmother. She’ll frown. My mom is her grandmother and her grandmother sends money. Her Daddy Will’s Auntie Gem, who she hasn’t seen since her father’s wake four years ago. Auntie Gem solicits photos to distribute among the uncles. I haven’t heard from either of them since just after I wrote them in the summer of 2007 to announce I’d remarried and emigrated to Canada. Hmmmm. Okay, I should have said something prior but when I met Rob, I hadn’t seen or heard from any of them in 7 or 8 months. What I really wanted to do was not write. Just wait until they’d figured out I’d moved away and were forced to call my folks to find me. Or maybe they’d have called the police? One of the uncles had been a warden at the big state prison. He had connections. And it was evil but I didn’t do it simply because Rob thought I should write them at the very least. And so, the very least I did. And I look for(ward to) their obits.
  4. I sometimes miss television. Bet that seems like a mild revelation after the last one, eh? Some evenings I don’t feel like reading or writing and it was nice to be mindlessly entertained following a show with recurring characters and stories that spun out over a couple of months. I’m waiting on season two of The Tudors from the public library. Sure, the history is faulty and it’s mostly bad soft porn, but not thinking in a semi-active way can be okay here and there.
  5. For the first two years of Dee’s life, I let her daycare providers cut her finger and toenails because I was afraid of snipping her. Those women were saintly. I never changed a crappy diaper either unless it was a weekend or a holiday because Dee pooped once a day in the mid-ish afternoon. Kid is still fairly punctual though now it’s after she gets home from school because she refuses to do #2 in a public washroom if she can avoid it. Will was like that. Rob is like that. Not me though. If I have to go, I go.
  6. I like living in J’berg. If it ended up that we were here for the duration, I would be completely okay with that though Rob? Not so much. I have mainly lived unseen and unnoted in larger cities or crowded towns and here, I am recognized. Maybe not as “one of them” because small towns are a bit weird about the whole “nativism” thing, but I belong after a fashion and it’s all good.
  7. My favorite time of year is nearly upon us, sun days. Those longly lit days when the sun is up at 3:30 and barely dips below the horizon sometime well after 11PM. I would love to experience true white nights. I don’t think I could live there because it’s opposite are the night-days of winter, but maybe experience it one time?
  8. I don’t believe every child can be educated. This doesn’t excuse them from the duty of trying, but I don’t think everyone is born with the same innate ability to learn. We should come with a label: skill level may vary. I don’t think its genetic. My oldest nephew is clever as hell and he didn’t get that from his parents. It made it hard to be a teacher. Correction, it made it hard to work myself up about kids who just didn’t get it. They worked hard, tried their best and just weren’t very smart. And I can’t even say that it’s sad because generally, they were sweet kids who grew up to be sweet, hard-working, lovable and loving adults. Nothing wrong with that.
  9. I like Nickelback. I thought that pickle thing was mean. Keep your Nickelback hate to yourselves in my presence. It’s catchy. It pounds. The lyrics are suitably pop cheesy and I like growly voiced singers.
  10. If you have animals in your home, I will try to avoid sitting down – or being without shoes – because I am conscious of the dander, the hair and the fact that kitty litter does not stay in the box; it is everywhere your cat has ever pawed. Don’t kid yourself. Last night we stopped by the home of one of Rob’s friends to pick up a few things he needs to haul away an old Volvo of Edie’s. They have three or four dogs running loose and about 2 dozen cats that run in and out of their house. Right now, they even have a mama cat and kittens in their upstairs linen closet because the mama sneaked in and gave birth there a week ago. They haven’t moved them but instead, threw everything out of the bottom shelves of the closet into the hallway. Rob’s friend invited me to sit in the family room to wait while he and Rob rummaged around in the barn. I smiled. Nodded and after they’d disappeared took Dee outside. If I’d sat, I would have been covered with hair, and more cats than I cared to be and my nose was already running. If you have cats especially, I probably won’t sit if the visit is a short one and I will avoid long ones, but if I can’t – the only way I’ll sit is if it matters to me if your feelings will be wounded because I know it will appear as though I am judging you and I’m not. I lived with cats here and there, but fur and itchy throat and running eyes and nose are not something I will do for many people. If I have done it for you, you are special indeed.

Well, I am sure that disappointed, but now I am done. Remember, you are welcome to take the scrap and run back to your own blog with it or just tmi all over the comments.

The Second Proposal


I am not one of those who had multiple opportunities to marry throughout my life. I know people who could have married anyone. Had numerous suitors and sorted through them like a closet stuffed with clothing. Not me. I can count on one hand the number of men who were even remotely attracted to me and not one of them saw me as a take home to mom prospect. For me there has only been Will and now Rob.

My first engagement was storied. Surprise. One knee, rose, wine and a ring in a box. Very school girl fantasy.

Rob and I were not school kids though I was hardly a girl with Will either being 35 and all. But Rob and I came to be engaged after knowing each other for just a tad more than three months, and I would characterize the courtship as not usual.

The third anniversary of our betrothal is tomorrow  – sort of – and I don’t think I have every really written about it.

Rob came down to Iowa to pick me up for a Spring Break trip. He actually began planning this vacation for me early in our friendship when we were still just friends. Destination – Arkansas. We took Dee to my folks but had headed back to my home in Des Moines to visit with BFF and her husband before heading out. We went to dinner and saw the raunchiest comic/hypnotist show at a local comedy club before getting home around midnight.

A couple of weeks early, we’d talked about my coming to Canada. I made it clear that a move of that magnitude was not whimsical nor could I do any “test-driving” of living together. It’s not that I am old-fashioned. I just think living together is not a test for marriage compatibility.

“Let’s see if we are compatible by playing at house.” is a stupid idea that is mostly doomed to failure because I have rarely witnessed two people do this having discussed in advance what they want or where they are really going. And playing is how children learn things. Adults at play are … well … adults just playing. Nothing more or less.

Before you wonder, I told Will the exact same thing when he was basically spending every minute at my house within a month of our dating. I don’t live with someone unless we are getting married in the very near future. I don’t believe that two people learn anything from the process that simply having frank discussions about wouldn’t reveal and compatibility is like happily ever after – a matter of mindset and resolve. If I am in love and committed, do socks and underwear on the floor or snoring or never remembering to start the dishwasher before bed so there are clean dishes for the next day really matter all that much? Shouldn’t tightwadness or ditzy behavior have already been apparent? Sexism isn’t something that is easily cloaked until close quarters flushes it out and if you need to “test drive” someone, isn’t that really a red flag?

I knew that Rob and I were compatible. I wasn’t so naive that I believed that marriage is some flower and singing animal strewn forest of nuptial bliss. I didn’t need a test drive. Do you test drive friendships or do you just have them?

Before we went to bed, Rob took a box out of his suitcase and showed me the rings. An engagement band and a wedding ring.

“I’m not ready to ask the question, but I want you to wear this,” he told me.

I protested. I didn’t want this until he was ready. I could wait. He insisted.

We headed out the next morning to stock the ice chests for the trip and then hit the highway south with me ringed. It felt strange to wear a ring again. I’d taken my wedding ring from Will off the day after his funeral and it took months of rubbing my ring finger raw to get used to it being gone. Now it felt funny to have the finger encased again. I chalked it up to my whole thing with jewelry in general. I just am not meant to be adorned.

The second night in Arkansas – and again we were in bed – Rob said,

“You know what I wasn’t ready to ask? I’m ready. Will you marry me?”

And I said yes because I was too.

On the way back to pick up Dee at my folks’, we had a marathon discussion session. I don’t think I knew as much about Will after several years of marriage as I did about Rob after Arkansas. Very little was left unsaid. Full disclosure then and since. Too often we fall into this trap of believing that all will be revealed over time through gestures and situations and that another person can be learned through proximity. But I lived with my parents for 18 years and I don’t think either one of them ever really knew me. And it wasn’t for lack of time or love. We just didn’t talk. Really talk.

Closeness is more than sharing a bed and bath.

Wolf Hall


Wolf Hall was, maybe still is, the ancestral estate of the Seymours. Jane was Henry VIII’s third wife and the mother of Edward VI. She came in between the headless wives and contrary to popular myth, Henry did not routinely murder his wives. His first and third wives died of age and childbirth respectively. He’d divorced number one because he became convinced he’d sinned in marrying his brother’s widow, as she was, and that this was the cause of his son-less state. A hugely big deal in the Middle Ages. Well, let’s be real, being without sons is still considered tragic to lesser or greater degrees depending on where in the world you stand. He annulled his fourth marriage on grounds of ugliness and bad breath, and wife six survived him but only just. Wives two, five and six were adulterers to varying degrees with two and four losing their heads over it and six barely managing to outlive him before being arrested for treason herself. Wife two’s guilt isn’t proven but five and six were definitely involved with other men which given Henry’s reputation was just plain stupid.

Wolf Hall is mentioned infrequently in the novel of the same name by Hilary Mantel. In fact the Seymours only appear when the author wants to foreshadow or make a specific point about creeping evil. Jane Seymour’s father was a lecher who carried on with his daughter-in-law at one point and may have even fathered his own “grandchildren” on her. Jane herself is a quiet voice of practicality who is continually affirming Cromwell’s (the main character’s) information about the debauchery that goes on in her childhood home.

Wolf Hall represents the slip on the slope and it’s not until the end of the novel, after Thomas More’s head is piked on London Bridge that Cromwell heads off on his first visit to the Seymour’s. But an astounding amount of teetering on the top of the slope has taken place by this point and even if I didn’t know that Thomas Cromwell will lose his own head at a not to distant point in the future, I’d be able to guess it.

I love Tudor England. Sometimes I wonder if my affinity suggests that I lived a life or two there. There are only a few other time periods I am drawn to so perhaps.

It was not a simple or simple-minded time. Henry is neither monster nor misunderstood. Thomas More is no saint and Cromwell not as soulless as the history books would like us to believe.

History is suspect. It’s written by the winners and the vanquished never get to tell their side of the tale. Tales, being multi-sided like houses and books, should represent, don’t you agree?

Wolf Hall is a sumptuous read. It’s so hard to find decent fiction anymore that I am a bit sad when I finish. Thick text though so be aware that an audio version might be better. I found a delightful discussion about it at The Slate and will leave you with a pulp version of Tom and Henry.