Thursday

So this is a typical Thursday for me.  I began at one of the mental health teams where I was at a morning meeting then went for a walk with my supervisor and two of our clients.  Later I took one of the clients for coffee, then had a break for nearly an hour that I spent in a coffee shop with my sketchbook following escorting him back to the office with donated Starbuck's coffee for our social group.  After lunch I was with a social group of several clients where we had lunch together at a food court.  We returned to the office where I visited for a while with another client while working on a drawing.  Then I walked another client home who was having some health and breathing difficulties.  Ironically, the facility she lives in is the same building where I was born in 1956 and also the same building where my mother died thirty-five years later.

I stopped in an art store to buy a lighter and medium shade of aqua pencil crayons (I use a lot of this colour).  By the way here is the bird I am currently drawing.  It is called a Yellow  Backed Oriole and is from Colombia and neighbouring countries:



Isn't he gorgeous!

Then I bussed home, had a light snack then proceeded to my final meeting with my counsellor.  She is a young woman in her mid thirties getting ready for her second crack at motherhood.  We had a great wrap up session.  She thinks I'm doing well and has wisely cautioned me on not letting my abrupt endings with certain individuals and parties spread into places where I could end up getting hurt.  We also had an interesting little chat about telling children about the facts of life, as they used to call them.

It came out that not only are parents squeamish around their kids about matters of sex and reproduction, but so are children.  The door does swing both ways, eh?  I remember when I finally got the goods from my mother about sex.  I think I was ten, maybe just eleven years old at the time, but I felt that the science books she let me look at explained almost everything except the dirty deed itself.  She told me.  And I was grossed right out.  Then I asked her if that's what she and Dad did to in order to conceive me (though I didn't then know the word conceive).  She said yes.  And I was even more grossed out.

Then I remembered in the old house where the walls were a bit thinner, and just getting to sleep when I heard noises coming from Mom and Dad's bedroom on the other side of the wall.  Mom saying in a funny kind of voice "Oh Bobby!  Stop that!), then Dad muttering something, then Mom laughing in a very funny way that I had never heard from her before, then again Mom saying something and then the sound of a hand slapping a naked butt.

I confronted my mother the next day.  "Why were you spanking Daddy last night I asked?"  I can't remember exactly what she said in reply but I can honestly say that I had never in my brief little life seen her so embarrassed.

Following my session with my counsellor I saw a Mexican friend of mine for coffee and relaxed as we whiled an hour and more in the language of Cervantes.  Now I am home, Gentle Reader, and finding myself feeling strangely and wondrously grateful that my beginnings were so humble, so silly and so hilarious.