Nineteen Ninety was a very strange transitional kind of year. The hippies were suddenly back, with a vengeance. Peace and love and wonderful drugs and guys with long hair and hand drumming circles and tie-dye T shirts and folk music and everyone was high and everyone loved...everyone? The cold, metallic, nasty and selfish eighties were a burnt-out shell. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transpeople were flexing their master and demanding equal rights and freedom from persecution. The Gay Games came to Vancouver. All the fundamentalist Christians protested and tried to stop them. I alone in our little community was in favour, or at least not not in favour of the Games. This further alienated me from Flippy, Dippy and Dopey. Global capitalism was being recognized for the menacing dragon that would swallow the earth and everyone wanted to save the planet. I welcomed and embraced it, though Flippy was too stupid and dense and Dippy and Dopey too preoccupied with the many abusers of their kindness and hospitality to care or notice.
I began to care for my dying mother. The others in the community, especially Flippy, saw me as a turncoat and that I had no business making my family more important than the Lord's work. I retorted that my mother in her condition was for me the Lord's work and proceeded to ignore him. Already I was slowly breaking free from him. My final and most brutal beating from him killed anything that still tied me to him. Since he would not permit me to kick him out, and I was really too weak and compromised to do anything, I gradually froze him out of my life.
I flew to Ottawa at the end of May. There was a lot going on there, with Gorbachev's visit followed by the newly freed and exonerated Nelson Mandela. I felt called to pray for the nations and what better place than the nation's capital. I wandered around the city, visited museums and the National Gallery. After three hours spent in the gallery I knew that I was an artist in preparation. I saw and watched birds I had never seen before: Baltimore orioles, a scarlet tanager, a pair of blue jays. I took a bus to Toronto where I stayed a day and a night then mistakenly boarded a train to Vancouver. I had foolishly booked coach, was unable to sleep and finally left the train in Winnipeg where I spent the night in a hotel, then flew back to Vancouver the next day.
When I returned home I noted that Flippy decided that God was telling him to plant a bunch of flowers in the shape of a cross on the patch of soil where I had been planning a herb garden. I had already told him my plans, he said nothing about it. This was typical of his style of undermining. He was also resentful that I'd gone on this trip, leaving him all alone with those two dreadful old women. Poor little misogynist, I feel so sorry for you!
I had already spent other time away from the house. In early April during a warm spell I spent the night in a vintage hotel downtown, and the following day and night in retreat in a convent in Shaughnessy. I spent part of the Easter week in Victoria, alone. I was detaching from Flippy, he knew it, resented it, and I simply hated him and wanted him gone.
In October I sensed very strongly that I would have to get my own apartment, away from Flippy. away from Dippy and Dopey, where I could safely live alone while caring for my dying mother. That night she fell and broke her hip and was admitted to hospital. We thought she would die in a day. She held on.
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