The Wisdom Of Age

I must have been ten years old when I started thinking.  I'm sure that I also thought before then but it was always feeling, sense or need based.  One day when I was walking to school--I was in the fourth grade then--it was as though suddenly I began to speak but in my mind, without using my voice.  By this time I was spending a lot of time alone.  We had recently moved to a new house and I for some reason was not able to make friends with other kids in the neighbourhood.  In the old house I was always with someone, it seemed.  With my closer friends, my brother, with other kids in the neighbourhood.  I seldom had to play alone though sometimes I did. 
     This was for me a difficult and painful transition.  My brother and I finally had our own rooms, which for him, at thirteen, was a huge boon because now he could close the door and masturbate in peace, which I sometimes wonder is why he really did clamour for having a room of his own.  And why my dad was so in favour of it.  I did hope this would mean getting hit and kicked less by him (nope, he just burst into my room and would pummel me right there, as did my mother, and my father, well, he was even worse!) and thinking of this made me all for it as well.
     I was reading a lot.  Especially the encyclopedia.  When we moved to the new house within two weeks Dad, on Mom's insistence (he otherwise wouldn't have bothered) bought us a current (1966 was the year) set of World Book Encyclopedias.  I was hooked.  I wanted to know...everything.  I still do.  Yes, I was one of those nerdy kids who didn't have friends and read the encyclopedia all day.  And I thought.  Constantly, I thought.
     I still think, well, I hope I do.  But it no longer is a detached voice in my head that talks like an android robot.  I no longer feel a need to detach myself in order to cope with abuse and stress and my emotions and thoughts seem to have more or less made peace with each other. 
     When I became a teenage Jesus Freak it was to put it mildly a very feeling experience.  My mind took a back seat as I was released into the joy and love of the Lord.  Mainstream church people are often threated by emotion and often like to deride and sneer at the emotional worship of charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.  If only they knew what they're missing.  If only they would admit how frightened they are by this.  It's easy for me to say because my Christian journey started with the Jesus' People and it was very emotional and very joyous.  As I mentioned already, I did check my brain at the door for a while, and that's where it belonged, at the time anyway.
     In my thirty plus years in the Anglican Church I have brought my brain out of mothballs, but not at the expense of my feelings.  Long ago I told them to kiss and make up and learn how to work together and play nice, and they do.  Whenever I am getting too cold and analytical something will creep in to thaw my heart of ice and suddenly something beautiful or horribly sad has struck me and I'm in tears, or emotional ecstasy.  Or I will be going through everything like a happy thoughtless idiot, a brainless, reacting fool and after one owie too many I have to stop, distance myself and let the brain take over for a while.  But usually they work now in harmony.
     Is this the wisdom of age? 

High Standards

I've been accused at times of having unrealistically high standards.  I often have trouble understanding what is meant by this.  I certainly like to do things well, or as well as I can on my limited resources and I don't think that I put these same expectations on others.  Or do I?  It is often really difficult to maintain one's balance.  On one  hand I feel bombarded by messages from my upbringing, my education, my job, my church, and my peers and friends to be the best I am, to do the best that I can and to not judge others for not living up to my high standards because I'm going to be disappointed.  Much as others are going to be disappointed that I haven't lived up to their high standards.
     I have also at times felt terribly inadequate around others with high standards even if they haven't been directly or intentionally judging me for not being as perfect as they are.  I'm talking about incredibly high achievers who have travelled the world, participated in community development and emergency aid in other countries as well as their own communities, for showing gifts of leadership, for simply achieving in a matter of a year more than I could hope to accomplish in a lifetime. 
     My expectations of myself have been decidedly lowered as I get older.  I no longer believe or even hope to become a famous writer or artist.  I don't even expect that I will ever see anything I have written published, or anything that I've painted hanging in a good gallery.  I don't even think I'm that good an artist or writer.  They are things I enjoy doing and I often enjoy the results of my creative endeavours. 
     The opinion of others is never a reliable gage.  I have noticed that my art is often openly praised while my writing, well, my short stories are often greeted with silence and I seldom hear any real critique of what I've written.  So maybe I could deduce that writing is not my strong suit.  Which is odd in a way because there are some who think my writing to be far better than my painting and, perhaps, vice versa?  So I can't really listen to what others say be it positive or negative but continue to carve out my course in life.
     I don't think I have an inferiority complex nor a superiority complex.  I would like to be friends with as many people as possible without having to make what I think to be unnecessary compromises, which is to say that I shouldn't have to pretend to be someone I am not in order to cultivate friendship.  These aren't real friendships anyway, not if we all have to keep silent about who we are and walk on eggshells with each other.
     I don't really think it is a matter of having high standards or not, but rather an inability to speak or understand the same language.  I have been finding this in the church that I am in the process of leaving.  I often have agonized over not being good enough for the people there only to hear from a trusted friend that actually it is the opposite that may be true, that people there do not feel they can live up to my standard, whatever the hell that would be.  I don't believe this.
     There are so many subtle clues, cues and signals in the way we communicate that I don't think one can simply say "this person thinks he's better than we are" or "he isn't worth the dirt under our shoes."  I see this rather as a failure of chemistry, or an inability to understand each other, and frankly, most people are usually too lazy, too indifferent, too selfish, or too tired and burnt-out to even want to try.  Even when I try to understand the others in this church, or anywhere, the gesture is rarely reciprocated because, well, people are just too busy.
     I will continue to have, maybe not high standards, but a drive and desire to do my best and be my best.  I will also continue to try to understand and accept those who aren't interested in me or my friendship, be they in the church or not.  I will also continue to struggle to see and touch Christ in them and in others and to not inflict my own standards on others.  In this regard I hope that my standards remain always at their very highest.

Rite of Spring

 "Be careful not to overdo things with loved ones today.  They already know that you care.  Discretion will get you further than words or obvious deeds."  Alice, not having loved ones, decided to ignore her horoscope and turned to the crossword.  Her mother died twenty years ago and her father disappeared from the face of the earth before she had learned to walk.  She had no other family.  She was the only patron present in the cafe. The new server was a dark haired young man sitting on a barstool absent-mindedly staring at an open newspaper.  The little diner was small and old with eight roomy green vinyl upholstered booths, matching stools and a white counter.  She sat in her usual place by the big window that looked onto the park across the street.  It was late May and the vibrant green of Spring was leering in through the window. 

She wanted a cigarette, then remembered that she had quit last year.  The air was cool and she kept her sweater on, her favourite cardigan that hung on her like a loose turquoise curtain.  In this diner forty years ago, when Alice was fresh out of high school and newly arrived in the big city she ate a huge plate of ham, eggs and greasy fried potatoes washed down with turbo-charged coffee.  She then rented a room in the hotel across the street, which once stood where the park is.   

“Excuse me,” she said abruptly to the waiter.

“Excuse me”, she repeated, when he seemed to not hear her.  He looked up, lazily directing on her his languid dark gaze.

“Could I have the ham and eggs, please?” She tried to soften her tone, afraid that she might scare him away, or that he might not serve her.  She had been sitting here nearly an hour already, just drinking coffee.  She had been asked, or told, to leave many establishments in the past for overstaying her welcome. 

“How do you like your eggs?”  he asked, leaning over her.

“Fried.  Over medium.”

“White, brown toast or multi-grain?  Or would you prefer a bagel?  We have plain, sesame, poppy-seed and multi-grain.”

“White toast, please.”

“More coffee?”

“Yes please.”

The coffee was different from forty years ago.  Now they served espresso, which meant fancy drinks she could scarcely pronounce, along with a choice of light, medium, strong or decaffeinated.  She still wasn't sure if she liked it.  Recently the handsome waiter explained to her that all the coffee is now organic fair trade, meaning that the farmers and the pickers in Colombia or Guatemala get a better deal for their labours and the birds are also happy because none of their trees get cut down.  Their prices had gone up as well.  Her first plate of ham and eggs had cost eighty cents.  Now it was eight dollars.         

Her mental health worker had been hectoring her lately about structuring her time.  “I get up at six every morning, unlike a lot of people who don’t roll out of bed till one or two in the afternoon,” she had argued back.  “What more do you want from me?”  The worker stared, startled and a bit frightened at this unaccustomed display of defiance, then read off to Alice as though she wasn't even in the room a litany of possible volunteer positions she might want to fill as well as a couple of part-time jobs.  Alice was already doing volunteer work sorting clothes for the free box twice a week at the Living Room Drop-In Centre.  Most of her favourite clothes, including the turquoise cardigan, had come from the free box as well as her bright saffron skirt and crimson blouse she was wearing, and also the bangles that clanged musically on her wrist.  She had recently come to favour bright, strong and bold colours.

 She was keeping herself clean again following many years of intentional self-neglect.  Her hair, though it hung limp and leaden-grey over her shoulders, had a clean healthy sheen, despite the little care that she gave it.  She had no illusions about ever having been beautiful.  Forty years ago she was perhaps  passably pretty.  She still had left over acne then, and a slight underbite and oversize breasts that even then wanted to sag a bit. Even though nearly sixty she still had a figure, though she had put on a little weight over the years.  Had she taken better care of herself, had it not been for her illness and the pills that she had to take every day now she might even be, if not exactly beautiful then…maybe…striking?

They were playing her favourite song: “Just call me angel of the morning (Angel), Just touch my cheek before you leave me (Baby), Just call me angel of the morning (Angel)…Then slowly turn away.”  She had heard it in its earlier version here, in this same coffee shop while seated at the same table by the window forty years ago, breakfasting on her first plate of eggs and ham and home-fried potatoes, just after getting off the Greyhound bus.  She preferred the new version, which was stronger, louder and for her more present and it thrilled through her along with the cool fragrant breeze blowing in from the park through the open door. The young waiter brought her her breakfast and Alice stared at the two eggs that stared back at her like two yellow eyes struggling to see through cataracts next to the pink circle of pig flesh.  When she was a young child she once asked her mother where ham came from.  “From pigs” she replied.  How do they get it from the pig? she asked.  “It’s from the pig’s thigh”, she replied evasively.  But what happens to the pig?  Does the pig just let us have the ham?  “Yes, I suppose so, dear,” her mother replied listlessly while wiping down the cupboard doors.  Alice nearly asked her to somehow assure her that nothing happened to the pig, that it wasn't hurt or killed, but before she could open her mouth again her mother sent her outside to play.  Alice still had not worked up the courage to become a vegetarian.  Trying not to think of the living creature that it once was she dug in her fork, knowing that tasting the tender pink meat would be tantamount again to forgetting.

“How old are you?” she asked the waiter as he came to retrieve her empty plate.

“Nineteen.”

“You could be my grandson.”

“Do you have grandchildren?” he asked.

“I don’t even have children.” Then she said, “Are you a student?”

“Yes.  Classes are out for the summer.”

“You’ve only worked here for the last couple of weeks?”

“My mom’s the owner.”

“Oh, you’re Nora’s boy?”

“Indeed I am.”

“So your mom has given you a job to help tide you over?”

“Actually I have another waitering job downtown.”

“Do you live at home?”

“Yeah,” he said, slowly backing away with her dirty plate and utensils, “I live with my mom.”

“Do you pay rent?”

“She wouldn’t hear of it.”  He nimbly retreated to the kitchen where he remained hidden for some time.  Alice opened the paper again and hunted for the crossword.  While trying to think of a five-letter word for “Voodoo” the waiter returned to the barstool.  

“Are you from around here?” he asked.

“Not originally, no.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since I got out of high school.”

“How do you like living here?”

She didn’t want to hear any more questions, but did not know how to shut him off.  She stared at the crossword without answering.  She looked up and said, “Can you think of a five letter word for ‘Voodoo’?”

“How about ‘Magic’?

“Thanks.”   She found his gaze not quite penetrating, nor really invasive, but curious and perhaps even friendly.  Still, Alice did not like being looked at.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Todd.”

“That’s a nice name.” 

Now she was trying to think of a nine-letter word for “children”.

“What’s your name?”

“Alice.”  They were talking like two five year olds making their acquaintance on the playground.

“Do you live in the area?”

“Yes.”  She really didn’t want to hear any more questions.  She was feeling tired and irritable.

He said, "I’ve always liked that park across the street.”

“There used to be a hotel there.” Why did she have to say it?  He would want to know about the hotel, it’s name, that she stayed there, that the fire took the building and every human life inside but her own.  She knew his kind only too well.  The good psychiatrist, the good case manager, the good occupational therapist, the benevolent social worker.  Each had had for Alice that same bland, kind, impersonal happy face that so many of them wore and turned on for her. It wasn’t because they actually liked her and certainly in most cases she did not like them, and not because they really wanted to know her or be her friends.  They wanted information.  They wanted to control her.

  She still cringed whenever she thought about that ridiculous movie they had shown on a movie night from the distant past in a boarding home where she once lived about a love affair between an eccentric elderly woman and a boy the same age as this wildly handsome twit whose name rhymed with “God.”  She still felt her flesh creep remembering the scene with the boy and the crone waking up in bed together, presumably naked but for the mercy of strategically arranged bed-sheets.  They were blowing bubbles.  Their faces were radiant with the delight of satiated lovers.  She still hated that movie.

She was curious about his body.  Not from elderly lasciviousness, but a sort of clinical, esthetic curiosity.  Where were his blemishes?  Even a young Adonis must carry his flaws.  She had  seen him recently wearing shorts and a T-shirt.  She noted his legs.  They were not perfectly formed, rather spindly with an abundance of dark hair that sheathed them like goat legs.  Without referring to herself as a lesbian Alice had long come to prefer the company of other women.  During her frequent stays in hospital, in transition houses, shelters, in boarding homes, if she had a romance on the stove it was always with one of the many other unfortunate women with whom she was stranded.  Nothing had ever come of these chaste little trysts, though there was a lot of sympathetic hand-holding and cuddling and weeping forlornly and desperately on one another’s shoulders.

Only once had she ever been to bed with a man.  They had met in the bar downstairs.  Alice was lonely, and broke, having exhausted her meagre savings.  She had just found a job as a store clerk, but she wasn’t going to get paid for a couple of weeks.  He was older, perhaps in his forties, a salesman with a family in Toronto.  He saw her at the bar and bought her a drink.  It was he who opened negotiations.  Alice had never done anything like this before, and now she was being offered money.  But she was hungry and already she had begun hearing voices.  It wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be, and once they had gotten through the clumsy maneuvres of sex between strangers, she did feel rather a maternal warmth towards this man who lay very still beside her.  She listened carefully for breathing and heard nothing.  She put her fingers on his neck, then laid her hand on his chest.  The skin felt cool.  There was no heartbeat.  She called to him and there was no response.  His body lay there like a large naked wax figure.  His eyes were wide open.  Alice didn’t move.  She lay in the dark next to this dead man who had just paid her for sex, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

All this she had told the police, the firemen, the doctors, the psychiatrists, the case managers, everyone who had a legal entitlement to know.  What she had told no one, and held still as her secret was the appearance of the child in the room.  He was small, perhaps five or six years of age, with curly blond hair and wearing what appeared to be a white nightshirt.  Smiling, he held towards her a beckoning hand.  Alice climbed out of bed and got dressed and followed the child out of the room.  There was already smoke in the corridor.  The child led her down a flight of stairs she had never known about.  As she stepped out in the alley with him, the building was suddenly engulfed in flames.  The last thing she heard was the terrified screaming of people burning to death.  When Alice woke up she was for the first time in her life in the psychiatric wing of a hospital.

“What are you studying in university?” she asked the young waiter.

“Psychology.”

Alice said nothing.  Her suspicions were confirmed.

“Hey, Alice, I was wanting to ask you something.”

She was summoning forth the six-letter equivalent for “Magus.”

“The Livingroom drop-in and resource centre.  You work there, right?”

“Twice a week.”

“Are they looking for volunteers?”

“Might be.  You want to talk to Moira.”

“I’m off at two after lunch.  Could I go in with you?”

“Just come over.  I’ll be there.”

She was unsettled by his sudden smile of gratitude.  She touched the amber beads that hung around her neck, her mother's final gift to her, and the dark sandalwood beads, which she had found last week in the free box and the blue and white rosary.  She almost never took them off.  She watched Sammy, who owed her money, push his overflowing shopping buggy past the café.  They had been friends in the Psychiatric Assessment Unit in one of the hospitals, as well as in a small psychiatric facility in a midtown neighbourhood.  He had been on the street for the last three or four years and had deteriorated badly.  She could see that he was muttering to himself.  One day she would muster the courage to tell him that she had forgiven him his debt.  It was only ten dollars.   It was Sammy who had given her the rosary.

The small park across the street was still ablaze with the fiery green of the May morning as lawn and trees and luminous flowerbeds vibrated with the colours of the season.  She sat on top of the granite memorial plaque in the centre that commemorated the hotel that had burned there to the ground.  She could almost see the child in the white nightshirt standing before her.  A luminous joy, like a flaming fire serpent, swept suddenly through Alice and she leapt off the memorial plaque and began dancing around in circles, whirling in the soft brilliant spring sunshine.  Music she had never heard in her life pulsed inside her head as she danced and spun and leapt and laughed, like a dervish, like Salome, like an ancient temple dancer, a splendour of turquoise, crimson and saffron here in the same spot where one night forty years ago her love had died in sacrificial offering and now here she was rising out of the ashes spreading before the sun the multicoloured wings that would one day carry her home. 

            She soon felt tired and sat down in the still slightly damp grass.  A small dog, a beagle, ran towards Alice and leapt into her waiting arms.  While the dog licked her face and squirmed with delight in her lap, Alice, feeling the soft warmth of the sun all over her body like the eager hands of a youthful lover, began to weep, and vowed that she would go on weeping until every tear had washed away from her mind every bad memory of all the years of her life and bring her the joy she had always been deprived of.  While the dog settled and cuddled serenely like a freshly nursed infant against her breasts his owner,  a tall young woman in tight jeans, came over.

            “He’s not always so friendly with people,” she said to Alice who smiled up at her without speaking, gently gathered up the beagle and handed him over to the beautiful young woman.

 “Have a nice day,” the girl said with a hint of a smile as she attached a leash to the beagle’s collar.  As though she had never spoken to her she walked away from Alice with her dog and she remained on the grass watching them slowly grow smaller till they disappeared around the corner forever from her sight. She got up.   Todd was standing in the doorway looking at her.  Her bum felt a little bit damp from the wet grass. She waved to him feebly and he waved back.  She smiled and walked away, leaving the park and the vanished hotel and its burning dead and walked the short distance home to her little subsidized apartment.  When she opened the door she went straight to the kitchen sink, ignoring the clutter of papers, books and scattered clothing on the floor.  She sneezed twice from the dust then stood waiting for the running water to get cold. Just before she reached for a clean glass, she gently caressed the body of Jesus on the white plastic crucifix of her rosary and was scarcely aware of the soft little smile that was only beginning to form on her face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marpole

It used to be called Eburne.  Thirty-five hundred years ago it was an aboriginal settlement. In 1916 it was renamed Marpole, a community of under twenty-five thousand on the northwestern shore of the Fraser River, in South Vancouver.  There are two bridges that connect Marpole to Richmond, the flat islands that clog the mouth of the Fraser.  I grew up in Richmond, but in some ways I have always lived in Marpole. 
     There is nothing really interesting about this district of Vancouver with which it can commend itself.  Because it is crouched at the bottom of the south slope of Vancouver the legendary mountains cannot be seen and it is so far from the beaches and all the other attractions of Vancouver that it had might as well be in a different city. It was long known as the home for the poor old widows, Kerrisdale (the affluent district just north) being for the rich old widows.  My paternal grandmother was a poor old widow.  She didn't like my mother, who was of German parentage and sometimes felt as if her mother-in-law blamed both World Wars on her.  I recall that sometimes her tone towards my mother seemed disparaging or patronizing.  My grandmother was a Scot.  Even though she came to Canada as a girl of twelve (family legend has it that her uncle--she was an orphan--narrowly missed booking passage on the ill-fitted Lusitania) Grandma never lost her accent.  I don't know if there was ever a strong Scottish ethnic presence in Marpole, but it is the home of the Scottish Community Hall and friends of my father's extended family, all clannish Scots, lived or hung out in the area.
     My grandmother lived in a small house that must have been built just after or during the First World War.  I can always see it from the Granville bus.  The cherry tree still thrives in the back yard.  The house used to be white, then for many years it was grey.  Now it is painted a beautiful ultramarine blue.  My grandmother didn't choose the colour.  She has been dead for twenty years and many years earlier, when I was still a child she moved from the house to an apartment over the stores on Granville Street half a block away.  There was until two years ago a coffee shop and second hand bookstore just downstairs from Grandma's apartment.  I used to enjoy visiting this café and bought some of their modest selection of Spanish books.  A Chinese bakery has just opened there, speaking to the high Chinese population that has taken root in Marpole since the Hong Kong Handover in 1997.
     When I was a child of two my family lived for a year or so in Grandma's house, the site of my four earliest childhood memories: when I fell down the stairs; sitting on the living room floor at my mother's feet; riding in the stroller as my mother pushed me up the sidewalk; getting my arm caught in the washing machine ringer.
     My grandfather died in this house.  I heard it was from a heart attack during an epileptic seizure.  He was home alone at the time.  He had long been physically and mentally ill.  Now I wonder if he committed suicide.  I never met him since I wasn't born yet.  Grandma already worked fulltime in the laundry of one of the neighbourhood meat packing plants.  Marpole was, and still is, an industrial district, though less than when I was a child.  I remember the tall water tower, the smoke stacks and the fumes and how they somehow mingled with the sense of grey dark despair and depression that seemed to hang over this neighbourhood, as it hovered over my father, my grandmother, our family. 
     I have never liked Marpole.  There is something depressing, cramped, dismal and small minded about this community.  But when I open my eyes and see how it's changed, that it is much greener now with more parks and people who seem actually happy, or at least not miserable, then I wonder if I am still living in the quasi-nightmare of my childhood whenever I am in the area. When my parents' marriage headed south my father got two or three consecutive apartments in Marpole.  A decade later my mother moved there, first in one apartment, then another, her last.
     My father used to work in Marpole, in two different collision repair places.  The first no longer stands and he used to hang out in the beer parlour of the Fraser Arms Hotel across the street with his buddies and brothers after work.  They were all alcoholics.  Later he was at another collision repair place, which is down the street from one of the mental health teams that employ me.  I often walk past there.  He has not worked there in more than thirty-five years.  Now there are wild roses that bloom fragrantly next to the building.  I stop to smell them and think of Dad, even if my memories of him aren't equally sweet. When I am on the bus on the way to the mental health team, I pass on Marine Drive my mother's last apartment, where she lived till she died in hospital from cancer.  Like my grandmother's house seen from Granville I always make sure I see it.  I don't know why.  Perhaps to honour both these strong, stubborn women who raised me.  And maybe to remind myself of where I have come from.  It is a kind of connection, just as smelling the roses by Dean Bros. Collision connects me to my father (dead five years from Alzheimer's)
     As I have written in a recent post the mental health team in Marpole where I work, the South Team, is my mother ship, the first place that hired me after I did my peer support training.  When I mentioned to my employment counsellor about the family connection in the neighbourhood she suggested that I see this as an experience of redemption.  I agree with her.

Perception

This has been a day about perception.  Not perceptions, which have to do with opinions, but perception, the act of seeing, or not seeing.  It began with a misperception at work this morning.  I was in the psychiatric facility where I spend Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons and chatted briefly with a client who appeared friendly.  As he became quickly and increasingly hostile it occurred to me right away that I had misperceived him. 
     Later on the Canada Line, which is one of our transit train routes in Vancouver, I asked a man in a suit if he could please move his suitcase so I could occupy the seat next to him.  He was going to let me have both seats but I assured him that if he positions the luggage well he can still sit (it was a train coming from the airport and I have taken this route many times following a flight and have never had trouble making room for my luggage and the person in the next seat). He sat down with his suitcase positioned in front of his legs.  I assumed him to be an accounts manager in a bank.  It turns out he works in a business that promotes renewable (wind, solar and geothermal) energy.  We had a great short conversation and I inwardly laughed at how clearly I had misperceived him.
     At the Canada Line train platform I waited for my client, and waited and waited for her.  Forty minutes later, just as I was ready to go home it occurred to me that I had stopped one station too early and for some reason couldn't see the signage.  To cut myself a little slack, the letters on the signage are not very clear or easily seen, but I still might have looked for it had I not been so smugly certain that I was in the last place.  After all, wasn't my client depending on me to help her find her way around town on public transit?  The fact of the matter is I was so engrossed in this interesting conversation about renewable energy with the guy seated next to me that I completely lost my perception of where I was and got off at the wrong stop.
     My client was incredibly forgiving and then I led her out through the wrong exit.  As we were talking together a young man likely younger than twenty-five (the male brain does not develop fully until age twenty-five, though I tend to believe that it doesn't happen till much later) walked right between us to read a sign and seemed absolutely puzzled when I called after him, "Excuse me." A Canada Line staff member teased us both good naturedly about how much he was seeing of us today.
     We got out at the right exit where a very sad looking panhandler thrust his hand in my face for money.  He must have perceived me to be wealthy, though I likely earn not that much more money than he does, but such are perceptions.  Our bus arrived fifteen minutes late.  While we were waiting another young man, clearly younger than twenty-five rode his bike right between us while we were talking.
     At Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park I saw a distant swan on the water that my client could not see without my direction.  She praised my ability to perceive things and then I reminded her of why we got started half an hour late today! 
     Leaving the park, on a street corner, on a metal fence surrounding a vacant lot hundreds of aluminum pie plates cut out to look like stars have been fastened, each with a different wish or message scrawled on it.  I saw just two: "Be kind" and "Believing is seeing".  With both those messages I have nothing left to write today.

My Day Job

I'm still feeling lazy so here's the transcript of a presentation I am giving next week to some of my colleagues.  Yes, this is what I do for a living:

I would like to begin by telling you a bit about the peer support worker I know best, which is to say, myself.  I have been doing this for ten years. The South Team is my mother ship. I did my practicum here and then I was hired when a position became immediately available. I have worked altogether in seven different mental health/addiction sites.  My work is my sole source of income, I have never been on disability and my job is my only income.  I currently work six contracts in four sites: the South Team, Kits Team, ACT, and Venture.  I was treated by a private psychiatrist for four years, without medication, without hospitalization.  My lived experience of mental health recovery, along with my peer support training and experience make it possible for me to work well with clients in their journey towards mental health recovery. 

         Peer support is very simple yet very complex work.  The core strength of peer support is in having had lived experience of mental health recovery.  Other skills and experience are often necessary and helpful. That is the simple part.  Where peer support gets complicated is how each therapeutic relationship between client and psw becomes a kind of unique dance because peer support is very relationally based.  We are out in public with the client, in the community, as we support our clients towards meeting their goals towards a fuller quality of life. I have often noticed that my clients are more confident, and present as more well when we are out in public together. As they gain comfort and confidence the public sphere becomes for them their personal canvas on which they can paint a new version of their lives.  Their posture changes and they walk with confidence.  The conversations become interesting, open and unguarded.  There is often laughter and humour, and time taken to appreciate interesting and rich details of our surroundings. 

         Being out in public is sometimes very scary for someone who is not used to venturing beyond their home environment except for clinical appointments, especially if they have been ill and hospitalized for significant periods.  This is where the role of the peer support worker can be critical to a clients' journey towards recovery.  We often become a trusted link for the client to become accustomed to being out in the community.  It's like helping someone grow accustomed to the shallow end of the pool, first dipping in a toe, then the foot, and only slowly moving a little bit deeper according to their level of trust and comfort.  The objective of course is client independence.

     Peer support is goal oriented, but not goal centred.  The client is always at the centre. The goals, made by the clients with clinical support and input, are made by the clients.  Many clients are ready to make significant steps forward in their recovery, and may only need a peer support worker for several weeks or two or three months to access volunteer or part-time employment, or learn a transit route, or access activities, like an art class, or yoga or swimming or routes for going for walks or bike rides.  Some require longer term support, especially if they are isolated and lack experience living independently or being out in the community and are on extended leave.  These clients, or peers, will often need longer support with a peer and the role of the peer support worker, as well as facilitator, will be also to provide ballast and support.  These peer arrangements also involve goal setting, but the pace is going to be slower, gentler and longer term.  What we try to do is move at a pace to which the client is comfortable, only very slowly and gradually picking up the pace and speed to help them move forward.  Some of the clients I have worked with who have benefited from longer term support, say for even up to or longer than two years have one or any combination of these life situations: they are on extended leave, they are living with addictions, they are chronically and severely ill with little hope of recovery and need maintenance and long term support, or there is a language barrier that the peer support worker is best qualified to assist with.  In my case, because I speak Spanish fluently, I have often worked with Spanish speaking clients who have little or no command of English, and having someone longer term to offer support in their own language and help connect them with the community has been invaluable to helping enhance their quality of life and also to motivate them towards learning and improving their English..

     There has been a recent trend towards trying to shorten peer support arrangements and this appears, in my experience, to produce mixed results.  It seems that the best and most thriving arrangements are when the client, the psychiatrist, the rehab worker, the case manager and the peer support worker are all onboard together and are able to work in a spirit of collaboration and collegiality.  It would be primarily the client's decision as to when the peer support should come to an end.  This will need to be taken into account along with other considerations according to the observations of everyone involved in the client's support.  For example sometimes a client will want to prolong the relationship with the peer support worker because the arrangement has taken on the characteristics of a friendship.  This is counterproductive because one of the chief goals of peer support is to encourage independence while maintaining safe and secure boundaries within the continuity of care.  There are other situations where the client might want to end things prematurely without fully taking into account some of the benefits they stand to gain while working on other goals with the peer support worker.

     There is no perfect length of time for peer support.  If a client is ready to become more independent and self-actualizing the arrangements are going to be shorter term, perhaps for one or two or three months.  In some situations that require more intense and longer term support it might have to go on perhaps for a year or two or even longer, though ideally six months to a year is usually sufficient.

     I would say that the heart of good peer support lies in encouraging client empowerment.  While I try to suspend expectations and sometimes even personal hope for the outcome for some of my clients I try to never lose faith in them and I believe that by believing in the client without preconditions, judgment or expectations can be key to blowing upon the seemingly dead coals until they begin to ignite again.  This is a work that of course involves a complete and integrated team approach.  I have found that my most productive situations with clients have involved a thorough  contingent of all professionals involved in their support and recovery and for this reason it is invaluable for the peer support worker to be in close contact with the case manager and often with the psychiatrist as well as with the rehab professional they are working with.  Good team work where there is trust and good communication, I have found, can often help generate a dynamic symmetry that supports and helps energize the process of working well with our clients.

     The process of setting up a client with a peer support worker is very straight forward.  At the case manager's, and psychiatrist's discretion, a client who either needs extra emotional and moral support, or support in moving forward in recovery, or as in many cases both, will be referred to the rehab team to be set up with a peer support worker.  Depending on the nature of the client\s goals or needs, either an occupational therapist or a recreational therapist will supervise the arrangements.  A prior meeting will be set up, attended by the client, the peer support worker, the occupational or recreational therapist and the case manager.  The client will express their stated goals and expectations which will be written down on a goals and outcomes sheet, either by the rehab worker or the peer support worker and they will agree together on the most propitious approach that would be required for meeting the goal.  During this meeting the peer support worker will explain to the client the nature and purpose of peer support work and will in his own words disclose that he has also been through a mental health crisis from which he has recovered and has received the appropriate training to work as  a peer support worker.  It is always essential that the peer support worker and only the peer support worker self-disclose about their mental health background.  This helps maintain an atmosphere of respect as well as clear boundaries.  Things are usually reviewed after the first three months.  If the client has not achieved their stated goal, needs more time, or would like to work on a new goal, or simply needs more time of basic support from the psw, arrangements can be renewed for another three months and so on.  Throughout it is good to remind the client that peer support is a short and limited time arrangement and completely voluntary. 

     Sometimes the client might experience a relapse, might need respite or a medication change and could wind up in hospital or at Venture.  At the case manager's and psychiatrist's discretion it is often appropriate that the peer support worker continue seeing and supporting the client during such periods of transition.

 

Persephone

I'm feeling lazy again so I thought I would give you another one of my short stories to read, or put you to sleep.  This tale is set in Pacific Spirit Park.  One reader has tactfully suggested that I post my stories in parts divided among three consecutive posts so that the reader can stay interested (or not bore themselves to extinction?)
     Just to guarantee that you are going to read it I have divided the story into three parts, but they are all on the same post.

Enjoy...

PERSEPHONE   You Dumbass!  Why couldn’t you see it coming?  But, of course, and as I suspected, you were too hopped up on steroids and crystal meth to notice anything outside of your superhuman powers.  Now what remains, now that the bus did its work?  A mangled mountain bike and a mangled body.  Of course you weren’t wearing a helmet. I am not going to blame myself.  I did not deliberately stick my umbrella in your wheel spokes.  I was simply trying to dodge out of your way as you careened out of that narrow trail and down the equally narrow slope to the road, almost taking me with you.  That was the third time?  The first time, in June, I tried to ignore you and just hoped you wouldn’t hit anyone.  The second time, two or three weeks later, you did it again and this time I yelled at you, “thanks for the warning!” and saucily in the middle of the road you stopped, turned around and replied, “You’re welcome.”  I replied that you should take care now that you don’t get run over.  I didn’t have to mention, by the way, that I’m old enough to be your father.  Why did you even bother riding your bike in this forest?  You were going so fast you couldn’t have noticed the beauty around you, nor heard the birds singing, plugged into your I-pod listening to who knows what sort of god-awful rap music.  You had no business here.  You were not worthy of this forest.  A destructive drone is what you are.  And now you’re in a coma on life support. This is the third time.  I swore at you this time, but it was too late.  You went flying out of control in front of that bus.  The poor driver.  He will probably have to go on sick leave for a while, he looked so shaken up.  Thank God neither he nor any of his passengers were hurt.  Why didn’t you just kill yourself, jump off a bridge, take pills or hang yourself like other people do.  No one needs this drama! This is what? My third visit?  You’re such a prone mess of tubes, wires and bandages, I wouldn’t recognize you.  Of course I have never had a chance to look at your face.  I only saw you at a distance when you turned around on your bike in the middle of Sixteenth Avenue to give me your sarcastic little riposte.  I would guess you to be not much more than thirty.  Averagely handsome Caucasian features, perhaps a chin and nose just a little bit too prominent, pale unremarkable eyes and a lean build just verging on muscular.  Not ugly, but I’m sure that not all the ladies (or gentlemen, for that matter) are readily slain over you.  But now, in this hospital bed you have an appearance of sloppily packaged meat, perhaps a gigantic pork loin, or maybe a slab of goat meat in a Halal butcher shop or a chunk of beef in a Kosher store.  Not that I would know the difference: they’re all killing each other in the Middle East and all their men are circumcised.  Not that I would bother to check in your case, because as well as being a huge indignity against you that I would never think of committing you are not exactly someone who elicits my curiosity.  I do know your name now.  You are Jake Farmer.  You’re ex-brother-in-law last week also furnished me with a few biographical details: Born thirty-five years ago in Charlottetown, New Brunswick, where you also did military service and even found yourself in Afghanistan from where you were sent home on a dishonorable discharge that was drug and sex related.  That was when your wife of six years divorced your sorry ass.  She is still in New Brunswick raising your four-year-old son.  Her brother said that she is not going to fly out to see you.  She’s struggling on welfare raising your kid, but he also mentioned other issues.  You used to hit her, it turns out.  You even put her in hospital a couple of times.  She is afraid of you.  She likely is also afraid that she will dance on your grave if she hangs around here long enough to see you breathe your last.  Ted, your ex-brother-in-law and I have so far been your only visitors.  This is why I come here.  Because I feel sorry for you?  Well…you’re a human being, I guess.  I was amazed that the police and paramedics gave me permission to accompany you to hospital where I learned your name.  I did tell the police officer about the umbrella.  I have nothing to hide.  It flew out at an angle and briefly jammed your wheel.  According to the cop such a thing probably would have slowed you down a bit.  Had it not been for the bus… But you know you little doofus, it isn’t you that I really care a rat’s ass about so much as Ted your brother-in-law.  Last time I saw him, on the weekend, he was crying.  Your only friend it turns out.  He is young, not more than twenty, and very religious.  A small, slim little guy with a couple of pimples left over from high school and a gentle smile.  If his sister is anything like him then you really did marry out of your league.  As I sit here in the corner reading my latest murder mystery I notice a change in the machinery surrounding you. A flat tone, like a subdued smoke alarm.  The nurse, followed by another comes rushing in: they look, they check, they poke and prod and check and listen.  One of them looks up at me.  “Is this your son?” she asks.  She’s Asian, I think Filipino, small, pretty, and gentle. I shake my head, gently.  “I’m afraid—”  she says in a halting voice.  Her colleague, a blonde-haired girl tries to perform CPR.  She stops, checks, listens, then kneads your chest again, stops, listens, and keeps kneading and pushing and pumping and breathing her young life into your dead mouth and I think, why even bother, you’re gone, you probably wouldn’t want to return to that wreck of a body even if you were given the choice.  The doctor comes in, looks, pokes, prods and checks.  He is tall and slim, I think Iranian.  Somewhere in his forties with a thick thatch of greying black hair and black-rim glasses.  He mumbles something to both the nurses and they mumble back.  The doctor approaches me and says, “Are you related to Jacob Farmer.”  I reply that I’m a friend.  “I am afraid that I have some sad news that I have to tell…”   Hey readers, that was part one.  Now go to the fridge for a snack. You have been dead for over a week.  There was a small funeral attended by me, Ted, a half dozen friends from his church and the minister, his pastor who has been so kind as to send you off into the next life.  I know why your ex-brother-in-law has been weeping almost nonstop.  His were the only noticeable tears during the service.  I sat next to him, dry-eyed with my hand on his shoulder.  He may be the only person who has ever loved you, Jake.  I don’t know what kind of parents you had.  He says you have been out of touch with your family since you were fifteen.  If there is a story there, he isn’t saying.  His sister knows and sends her condolences.  I’m sure she wasn’t smiling.  I wonder what she’s said to your kid?  He’s only four.  What were you like when you were four?  Did you play a lot?  Run around like a manic dwarf, laughing and shouting and singing?  What happened to you?  Does your boy ever sing?  Did you? Ted and I have already visited once this week.  He has claimed me as a friend and I have given him my consent.  He is a beautiful kid.  How could you ever have earned his friendship?  I could almost say that he is becoming like a son to me.  My own boy is far away, in Israel with his wife and two little girls.  We don’t communicate often, mostly for political differences.  He is a blindly-devoted Zionist and I only wish the Palestinians would kick his arrogant ass off their land.  I don’t have a problem about Israel.  We have to live somewhere, I guess, but the occupation has to stop.  My son thinks I’m a traitor, but I still love him and he knows it and his infrequent e-mails are still redolent with shame-faced affection.  My own wife died from breast cancer ten years ago and I can’t live with anyone.  She had plenty to put up with from me.  I always wanted my space, to be on my own, to do everything alone.  I don’t even know why I bothered to get married.  She was beautiful, and I was still going to synagogue and getting married is something you have to do if you are an observant Jew.  I haven’t been observant in years.  I still believe.  Ted’s form of Christianity seems appealing but I don’t know.   I’m not sure if I’m still redeemable, that maybe I’ve lasted well past my best-before date.  But it is nice to think that maybe Jesus does love me.  It is nice to feel wanted, after all, I suppose. Ted swallows all that claptrap about me being one of God’s Chosen.  I almost told him to please not make me throw up.  If I’m God’s Chosen then what is he?  If I am God’s Chosen, Jake Farmer, then what are you?  Well, what are you now? A slab of chemically-embalmed rotting meat and bone moldering in the ground?  But I know you are somewhere else. Maybe you’re strumming a harp while dancing on a pink cloud in Heaven?  More likely you’re wiggling on a pitchfork while some junior devil barbecues your lost little ass on the flames of Hell? Or you might come back to haunt me? Yesterday, Ted and I had lunch together.  He wouldn’t let me buy him a beer.  He said he moved out here from New Brunswick for university, then ran out of money so now he works in a mental health boarding home.  It turns out he’s a bit older than I thought.  Almost thirty.  Doesn’t look it.  He doesn’t live too far away from me as it turns out.  He says he’s seen me shopping in the Joe’s No Frills Supermarket in the mall.  Quite a needy kid, it turns out.  It seems that outside of some people in his church, you were his only friend.  His sister didn’t seem to mind and appeared to rely on Ted as a conduit of information.  I think that she was just afraid that one day you would move back to New Brunswick, find her and hurt both her and the kid.  Well, I hope she’s a little more at ease now.  It turns out that she was crying when her brother told her the news.  Love can be the strangest thing, I guess.  That was part two.  Now look at your email, or check your Facebook status. We are almost there.  I have just taken him down that narrow little dirt trail that meets up with the wider gravel trail that ends above Sixteenth Avenue.  Ted wanted to see where you died.  He is carrying a small bouquet of flowers, lilies, I think, and red roses.  Just where you passed me for the last time he has silently laid down the bouquet, off to the side where no one can trample it.  It is a clear, sunny day, and warm, and the leaves are luminescent with the transfiguring afternoon sun.  I have added to the bouquet the sky-blue hydrangea I have just picked and two orange day lilies.  These are the kinds of flowers Irene used to lovingly tend and cultivate in the garden when we had that brown stucco bungalow on King Edward Avenue.  Irene’s hydrangeas were a slightly darker, richer shade of blue. Incongruously, they have been growing here in the forest like wild flowers.  Ted has tucked in among the flowers a photo of your infant son, his sister and one of himself along with another photo that shows all of you smiling together in front of a Christmas tree.  We have been mostly silent during this walk, this small portion of my hike through this forest that I try to take almost every day now that I’m retired.  On the way up the trail again towards the coffee shop I initiate your brother-in-law into the culinary marvels of the wild huckleberries, salal berries and thimbleberries that are growing everywhere.  We even managed to harvest a couple of leftover salmonberries, still sweet and delicious.   In more than ten years of living in Vancouver he has never seen this wonderful forest. This little café is a well-guarded secret, surrounded by a village of townhouses occupied by university students and teachers.  I thought of moving here myself, just after Irene’s death and just before my retirement.  Instead this apartment in the West End came available.  I had been on the waiting list and it is near the park with controlled, affordable rent.  I have no regrets about starting over there, post-marriage, post Irene, post Classical Studies teaching.  The young lady is on duty again.  She is beautiful with a Raisin Maid or Judy Garland as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz kind of wholesomeness.  Her smile lights up everything around her and I am almost embarrassed by all this unabashed sweetness and loveliness. “Hi Sarah!” I hear Ted say as she prepares his ice mocha and her smile becomes even brighter… On the patio we sit with our iced drinks in the shade and underneath the hanging flower baskets where a hummingbird quickly explores an electric-purple petunia.  Inside a young Korean girl—I know she is Korean because we have chatted a few times: she works here part-time—is playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the upright piano inside.  She plays well, and I think that with a little practice she could easily be concert material. Ted has been lingering inside for almost ten minutes talking to Sarah, whom, he has just informed me, goes to his church.  There is no need to apologize.  Young love is something I always like to encourage. “Maybe it’s time you two got better-acquainted,” I say. “She has a boyfriend.”  He seems more defensive than disappointed. “Why let that stop you?” “They’re thinking of marriage.” “All the better reason to get her while you can.” “I could never do that to Stephen.  He’s a really nice guy.” “Friend of yours?” “We hang out a bit after church services.” “But not lately?” “He’s pretty serious about Sarah.”  I know not to put my foot in any deeper.  This I have noticed about Ted.  He is gentle, almost whimpish, but very defensive and will close himself up like a pugilist’s fist if I push too far.  I walk him back through the forest and see him off at the bus stop.  I will be spending at least another hour or two walking among the trees.  Sarah is her name, the beautiful Sarah with the goddess-radiance.  But which goddess?  Not Aphrodite, though she is beautiful. Certainly not Artemis or Athena.  Hera?  No way.  Demeter?  Not quite but almost.  My wife Irene would have been a good fit with Demeter.  She had not one green thumb but two.  I still miss the garden.  Demeter’s daughter?  Persephone!  Yes, but Persephone before Hades abducted her and her distraught mother soon cursed the earth.  Before that bright innocent beauty was subsumed into the shadows of death.  I have brought the umbrella.  I did not leave expecting rain today, but now this bank of cloud is moving in.  He doesn’t know about the umbrella in your wheel spokes.  I am not going to tell him.  The sun is fading and no longer linger the blotches of golden fire that were gilding the tall trunks of Douglas fir.  It is early evening and nearly everyone has gone home.  There is no further infestation of joggers and cyclists in the trails.  They can really spoil it for the rest of us, the solitary walkers, the dog walkers, small families, and couples in love.  They move too fast and make way too much noise. The forest is silent again.  I feel almost like I’m the sole human being underneath these trees.  There is a sound of distant thunder and something wet has touched my shoulder. It is like a tropical cloudburst and the golf umbrella barely shelters me against getting soaked.  The bus approaches and slows down by the curb.  The girl next to whom I am seated reminds of Irene when I married her and I have to force myself to not stare at her.  She also looks a little like Sarah.  Form her carryall she pulls out her cell phone and her beauty vanishes like a broken spell as she hunches over to text a message.  I only hope she has the good manners to not talk on it till she's off the bus.  On the way back through the forest, just before the rain began, I passed again the orange day lilies, and I plucked and ate three petals.  Irene in the summer used to serve them in salads.  They have a rich, mildly peppery flavour.  They die quickly, daily, and this why the are called day lilies.  At least tis is what Irene told me.  the perfidy of the flesh, the brevity of beauty, this brief flourishing of life swallowed up in eternal darkness.  I almost wish Sarah would dump her boyfriend and take up with Ted, if for no other reason than to save her from her descent into the Realm of the Dead that the earth not be cursed and winter be eternally deferred.  When I get off the bus I see that the rain has stopped and for a few grateful moments I lose myself in the swelling crowd of young people who are on their way to the beach to see the fireworks, and I look and crane my neck in vain to see one single god or goddess or angel walking among them.   The end.  Still awake?  Hello?  Hello!!!