love and relationships

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship


Two years ago today I received the famous “Evil Twin” message from Rob via the widow board where we were once active members. It was in response to something I had posted in reply to a post he’d left in the general message forum.

I’ve been immersed in the timeline due to the memoir. The constant combing through old emails. blog entries and such drew my attention to the fact we were approaching a milestone, and so I mentioned to Rob that we had now officially known each other for two years.

Because Rob saved much of what he’d written there*, he was able to look up the message to find the exact date – Dec.16 at about 1 in the morning. He even had the replies – mine plus the three or four others. An interesting bit of time traveling and one which makes a person more thoughtful about the whole “digital footprint” thing.

Two years seems like such a long time and yet it’s gone by at a such a swift pace.

I was going to write once again about our meeting but decided to simply post this link to something I wrote last December on the subject of Rob and I and the circumstances that took a beautiful friendship to another level.

I know some people consider the acknowledging of all the little anniversaries to be overkill girly style, but I like to look at these dates as turning points in my life. The days where my life converged or merged or simply had a light bulb moment that changed everything.

*When I had myself deleted from the board I had in excess of 1600 posts. Curiously, they were mostly replies to other people’s posts. I shared my experiences, offered what encouragement or sympathy I could and occasionally lost my temper with the thick-headed. But I originated fewer than 25 posts myself. I didn’t realize this until Rob pointed it out to me and encouraged me to at least save those posts. I elected not to. Most of them were simply expressions of sadness or despair that were largely ignored and just made me feel sorrier for myself. That is not worth saving. Rob’s post were always reflective (when he wasn’t annoying people sticking up for his wife) and more importantly told his and Shelley’s story. I didn’t share much of mine. There wasn’t anyone there who could relate to me or what I went through.

Becoming Jane


I lured my husband into watching an uber long film about one of the many possible scenarios for the tragic long affair which put author Jane Austen off the idea of marriage. As if the early 19th century views of women as chattel and marriage as a financial arrangement wouldn’t have done that without any help from a failed romance.

Having watched Pride and Prejudice not long ago, I have to say that Austen is not for those who prefer mono-syllabic dialogue or characters who, when they insist on speaking in sentences, do so using very small words. Austen makes my brain hurt. It’s like an episode of Gilmour Girls with better diction, grammar and word usage.

One thing that struck me over and over again during the movie was how much it sucked to be a woman. The only thing we were good for was marriage and then motherhood. In fact Jane’s reverend father practically begins the film with a lecture to his congregation on the virtues of a stupid woman because being clever will bring all women to misery.

In the course of the story Jane, whose prospects are portrayed as poor despite the fact that at least three men are panting after her, falls in love with a young man who is dependent on his uncle for university and eventual career. Since the young man’s mother had married for love, he is their only financial assistance and hope. Farming out one’s children to wealthy, childless relatives was a common practice. I wonder why that stopped?

Jane and the young man are eventually forced to run off, which is scandalous for her, but she decides in the end not to marry her love because his family depends on him and she can’t live with their ruin and her own too.

As I thought about it, I realized if the social structure of that time had survived my dad would have had three daughters to marry off and one son who wouldn’t have been able to hold on to any inheritance he was left. My younger sisters were pretty and complacent and wouldn’t have posed much of a challenge, but I would have ended up a dependent old maiden auntie.

Rob though would have simply forged a trail of his own. All that handymanlyness he possesses would never have saddled him with the onerous task of sucking up for his keep.

This made me wonder about Jane’s young suitor. He had a new world to flee to and start again, but he let her convince him to stay within the confines of a social system which was designed to assess people monetarily and cage them within polite expectations of family, neighbors and community at large. How sad.

She at least was able, mostly due to her modest gentry origins, to maintain her freedom and pursue her writing, but what about women who hadn’t “talent” or tolerant family? What happened to them?

It was, as I mentioned earlier, a long movie with ear grinding dialogue and unless you enjoy pondering the larger questions of sexism and societal impositions on personal choices, it is a movie better left alone.

If You Lost your Job is the Monday Meme


Leah McLaren is probably one of my favorite columnists. She writes for the Globe and Mail, and I envy the hell out of her job. I would love to be paid to have an opinion as opposed to just having one for free like I do here. She wrote a piece about long distance relationships back in August ago citing her own rather steady diet of them as the basis for her authority.

It seems that Ms. McLaren has always chosen her career over her relationship of the moment because she was not of the mindset that putting one’s relationship ahead of one’s chosen profession was the proper way to go about things. She felt that those who went in the opposite direction did so because they hated their jobs.

And that’s key.

Career versus job.

She makes the mistake that all people with careers do. They assume that the majority of the world works at something they deem a career rather than simply having a job that affords them (more likely not) with the means to live their lives. Most people I know have jobs. Jobs they would walk away from without a second thought if they won the powerball or someone offered to sugar-daddy them. Jobs can be great. They can be fun and stimulating and all those things that a career is – but they aren’t the core of who a person is. Not in my opinion.

I loved teaching. Lots of stuff about it I still miss. But it wasn’t my core. It didn’t fill me up. Or make me stupid enough to confuse work with life or value it above friends and family.

Very waspy way to look at things for a Canadian, I thought when I read her piece.

But I think many people have confused what is really important in this life. After all, if civilization as we know it ground to a halt in the next few years – and don’t think it couldn’t – what would you have going for you? If the job/career was gone? If you had to start with just the possessions in your possession right now and with the people who share your life right now. What then?

What does a life outside the model we have been conditioned to believe in look like?