Father’s Day
I don’t have as many fathers in my life as I do mothers. For some reason, I have much stormier relationships with men than I do with women. Ironys of ironys, I sit here writing this Father’s Day morning as a storm brews up outside.
In order of importance, my fathers are:
My Pseudo-stepdad. Now not pseudo as in pretended, false, fake but as in almost. My mother and him have been a couple for over twenty-five years. They are each others business contacts and support. They do not share a house: she’s usually in town, he’s usually out at the farm. I didn’t start calling him my stepdad, not even in my head, until recently. The family crisis I wrote about at the end of March dealt with him. This crisis made me clarify my feelings about my pseudo-stepdad. He’s always treated us fairly; treated my brother’s kids, better than their own grandfather did. He saw them more for one. This year, I sent him a Father’s Day card even before I sent one to my own father.
Which brings me to my biological Father. Yes, I choose this term carefully. Nine times out of ten this is how I see him. He impregnated my mother with four children and then left when my younger brother was a few months old and I was barely a year and a half. I didn’t see him again until I was twelve or so. He contacted my mother because the Catholic Church needed her to sign off on her marriage to him before he could marry my stepmother in the church.
After that, we spent occasional summers with him and his new family. In my adulthood, after I graduated with my MLIS and was in my thirties, I lived with him, my stepmother, my youngest half-sister (who was also an adult) and her child. I got to know my father better, got to see him as human and flawed and myself the same way. I can understand why he had to leave my mother (they are very ill suited). I’m not sure I can ever understand why he gave up on being part of my childhood.
This concerns me because I see my brother and nephews repeating this pattern. At least one of them is only being a Baby Daddy. For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, a Baby Daddy is “the father of the child, not currently involved with the mother.and more than likely not supporting, or involved, with the child.” Those last two points are the ones that upset me the most. I believe anyone, male or female, who participates in creating a child needs to be involved, financially, legally, absolutely, in that child’s life.
I will admit that I am confused on what the roles of a father should be. No, I believe, that after birth, the role of the father should not differ from what is expected of the mother. That both parents need to raise their child and both need to be involved financially, legally and absolutely in that child’s life.
There was no familial male authority figure involved in my childhood. My mother did not date until after all her children had finished high school. I saw my grandparents mainly on holidays even though one lived, on the farm, less than two miles from town. I don’t know why he wasn’t more involved. Okay, maybe I do – my father was not his favorite child (and maybe not even his if I choose to believe the rumours) and my father was his mother’s favorite. On the other side, I was named after my father so my mother’s mother had problems with that. Thus, no close male authority figure to observe and learn from.
My mother was the primary “Bread winner” during my childhood. The government provided the major support and my grandparents provided what they thought we needed. As did neighbours, it was a small town, this help usually centered around holidays and charity. I remember it being an issue when one of my older sister wore something to school and a classmate pointed out, to everyone, that it use to be hers. After that, my mother and a friend traded skills – she sewed for us so that we would have clothes that were unique to us. (And that’s a whole other story about me and my sister’s hand-me-downs 
).
When I did see my father, he was a strict disciplinarian. Mostly for all his children but he does have favorites and it’s easy to figure out who they are. Out of his first family, only my eldest sister and I contact him regularly (and will send him greetings today). This story would be greatly different told from her point of view; she was almost five when he left. I know she has a different view of him: we’ve talked.
Growing up my father had no legal responsibility for us. He was a deadbeat dad. When he did come back into our lives, to get a legal divorce and moral annulment from my mother, the courts ordered him to pay child support of $2.00 a month. Yes, that is correct; fifty cents per child per month. Which I think he paid maybe twice! The reasoning behind this was partly that my mother was on government support and partly the reality that he was not able to financially support both families. But still!
As you can tell, this annoys me. Where are my role models? Men confound me! My father didn’t care enough to be there. My grandfathers let emotion get in the way. My mother’s father I had to cajole and placate into loving me; my father’s father saw me as a quiet, loner who preferred to be off reading a book. Not wrong, but still, they could have tried to get to know me on a one to one basis. My father’s father took his favorites to Scotland with him. The plan, he told us, was always to take each of us eventually but he got sick before this happened (and then why did his favorite grandchild get to go twice before he died?).
This is why I am child-free. I am not strong enough, financially and emotionally, to put a child first. And I believe that this is what a good parent must do. A parent needs to be strong enough to work with their co-partner, whether in the same household or not, to raise a healthy, mostly well adjusted child that knows that both parents love them and will do their best to raise them to be happy productive adults. Who will be there, no matter what, to love them.
I chosen very consciously to not have children. I choose very consciously to love and support my nieces and nephews, as I can, both actually and financially. I know what I’ve chosen to lose and why. There are still too many knots in my upbringing for me to untangle so that I can raise both a healthy me and a healthy child. Perhaps, I’m being selfish by choosing me. Perhaps, I’m not.
No one is asking “How much do you love me? Do you love me?
No one is asking the questions I wish I had the courage to ask my parents.
Laundry Day
Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
so early Monday morning.
This is the way we wash our clothes,
wash our clothes so early Monday morning.
I did my laundry today. Sunday is, of course, not the traditional day to do laundry. If I were following tradition I would wash my clothes tomorrow. LOL.
As Monday is Wash Day; Tuesday is Ironing Day; Wednesday is Sewing Day; Thursday is Market Day; Friday is Cleaning Day; Saturday is Baking Day; and Sunday is to be a Day of Rest. According to the song. 
I like schedules. I like to know what I am doing when. It is a comfort. The schedule above might work for me if I had a Monday to Friday type of job. But I don’t! In fact, my days on and off change weekly – which I will admit drives me crazy.
So, that’s one reason the above schedule doesn’t work for me. The other being I don’t iron or sew and my apartment is so small that I tend to do all my chores at once. So today was not only laundry day, it was also cleaning day and I still had time to shop and I will watch a movie after I finish this, my weekly blog post. Oh, the blessings of having modern conveniences to help me do my chores.
My grandfather, in his youth, would have been appalled at me doing any sort of work on a Sunday. He mellowed as he got older – partly because it suddenly became his responsibility to cook and clean and do the laundry. He saw how absurd and unrealistic it is, in a busy household, to only do one chore a day.
I know he remembered when laundry took all day. When one had to boil water, and wash clothes in basins, and then hang them up to dry. By the time I was a child my mother had a wringer washing machine and by the time I was a teen she and my grandparents, as well, had evolved to using automatic washing machines.
When I was in Kindergartin, my best friend got her arm caught in the wringer washer and was off school for about a month. Ouch!
How I do laundry has also evolved. Not quite as drastically though. I lived in one place where I had access to a wringer washer but for the most part, I’ve being using automatic washers and dryers all my adult life. Not for me the clothing line. I hate how my clothes feel when they are left to dry on the line. Though I will admit there is an artistry involved in hanging clothes out to dry. My BF swears that line-dried clothes smell so much fresher.
I’ve been lucky. Almost everywhere I rented I’ve had access to a Laundry Room. Whether in the basement or just down the hall such a service is indeed a luxury. And, in my opinion, well worth the cost. Which has gone up from a low of a quarter a load to my current charge of a dollar and a quarter. So, to wash and dry costs me $2.50 a load and I rarely have more than a load a week. Though, today I did have both a dark and a light load.
I’ve had to lug my clothes to Laundry Marts. Thankfully, I’ve never had to carry my laundry more than five blocks (this was in the suburbs of Montreal). I’ve never owned a car and though I’ve lugged both a vacuum and many bags of groceries home on the bus I draw the line at everyone having sight of my dirty laundry! Keep your eyes off my laundry!
Most Laundry Marts do look like this
There is both a practicality and a certain romance to Laundry Marts. I never found romance there but there did always seem that maybe I could, as Dr. Horrible did.
I am very grateful that I can do my laundry just down the hall. It only took me two hours today to wash, dry and put away all my clothes. And I was able to sit in my own chair and surf the internet. Which yes, these days, I could probably also do at the Laundry Mart just two blocks away.
I hoping that the next stop in my evolutionary laundry road will be somewhere that will let my do my laundry after midnight if that is so my want. I miss combining midnight movies and laundry on calm, quiet evenings.
Have I mentioned I’m strange. ;-p
Cooking
I cook for no one. Not even myself.
I make food. I do the basics well. Meat, potatoes, vegetables. I make a mean chili. It’s my signature dish. I mean how can you go wrong with chili; throw in some meat, tomatoes, spices and whatever else you have kicking around the house. It’s a great clean the fridge type of meal!
I eat. I know I have to eat. But nothing I make inspires me or tickles my taste buds.
I don’t care what anything tastes like right now. Except maybe raspberries.
When I was married, my husband cooked. This was during my brief Hollywood marriage. (We knew each other for five years and were married for two). I worked days, he worked nights. I loved not having to think about meals. I would come home to good, basic meals and would then be left with the clean-up. Which, honestly, I felt to be a fair trade. He was much more excited by food and meal prep than I ever was.
He made a mean Farmer’s Breakfast. For those of you not familiar with this dish, you need a cast iron frying pan, eggs and leftovers. You beat up the eggs, pour them into the frying pan, slice up leftovers (potatoes, onions etc) into the mixture, fry it on the burner until the bottom is somewhat firm and then put the frying pan into a 350 degree oven until it is baked and firm. (I take no responsibility for if or how this turns out if you try to make it based on these directions. Remember, I don’t cook!) Bliss. And always different.
My boyfriend, in Montreal, F cooked about half the time. He lived at home and had never been responsible for meals on a regular basis so was quite excited to experiment with flavors and textures.
I still remember him making a sauce, out of the leftover cherry wine that I had in my cupboard, for the pork chops. The wine came from his older sister, whom I never did meet, as a housewarming gift for my new apartment. I had barely drank any of it so it sat in the cupboard for at least a year before F used it to enliven the pork chops.
Not something I would have thought of. Wine was not something my family cooked with. For one, we never had any sitting around the house as it was too expensive and two, booze was for drinking not cooking. Another reason it was not in my mother’s house as my father was an alcoholic and when he left the booze left also.
I started being responsible for meals as a young teen. We depended on our garden for most of our food. Thus, potatoes were plentiful as were vegetables. Meat came from the local farms, usually provided through the grandparents or barter, so usually consisted of beef or pork. Fish was constant, as well, because there were many lakes nearby and my mother’s father loved to fish.
I learnt that meals consisted of plenty of potatoes (boiled, fried, bland); vegetables (boiled, bland) and meat that got the heck fried or baked out of it. No rare meat ever sat on my childhood table.
So, I can throw a bland meal together in a matter of minutes and then cook the heck out of it. I always burnt the hamburgers and the fried potatoes. As the local delivery persons could attest to – the delivery schedule coincided with our supper schedule. I’m a book worm and would try to read and cook at the same time; oh alright, I still do this. Feeding my mind has always been more tempting then feeding my body.
I never really enjoyed food as a pleasure until I moved to Montreal. Good, cheap food was plentiful and easy to find. The local bakery provided over ten different breads and bagels and pastries. There was a Chinese grocery a block from my home. Montreal was the first time I shopped in a delicatessen, ate smoked meat, had bagels and lox and the first time I had to buy fish that someone I didn’t know caught.
In Montreal, I tried authentic Indian food and more varieties of Chinese then I could find at home. I grew up in a small Saskatchewan town so I already was familiar with authentic Mandarin as this was where our local Chinese family had immigrated from and she would cook us authentic meals as she and my mom were best friends both struggling to raise kids alone (she was widowed, Mom was divorced).
You will notice, however, that all this variety did not inspire me to experiment in cooking for myself. I like my food to come as prepared as possible. I am not a cook; I do not aspire to be a chef.
I do read food blogs. Such pretty, pretty pictures. I do have around ten recipes bookmarked that I like enough that I may try them some day. Some day when I not too busy reading or there is someone coming for a meal that I really, really want to impress. The Queen perhaps.
Here are the some links if you are interested:
Cheddar and Blueberry Pancakes, Chocolate Apple Pie, Coconut Cream Popsicle, Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal, and Hot Toddy Pudding Cake. Enjoy
A cook is the first person I will hire when I finally make enough money to have such disposable income or if I win the lottery. This is how I will know I am rich – I will have someone else making all my meals for me!
gigi (not necessarily)
Closer
June 28, 2009 at 7:55 pm (Movie Commentary) (Clive Owen, Jude Law, Julie Roberts, London, Natalie Portman, United Kingdom)
It started here with the video of The Blower’s Daughter by Damien Rice.
I loved the song, played it three or four times never really watching the video. I must have looked up at just the right moment during my last play though because my brain went “I know that movie.”
Jude Law. Julie Roberts. An affair. They’re betraying their partners. This thought lead to an IMBD search. Which lead to Closer. Which took me straight to my local library’s website to see if they had a copy. They did. I reserved it, online (Thank you Library for having the technology
), waited two days, picked it up and watched it last night.
Well, rewatched, I think. As I started the DVD, there was my brain again going, “we’ve seen this. I’m sure we’ve seen this before.” I think too much.
I’m still not sure when I saw this movie before. It would of been on DVD, it was probably this same library copy, and since it only came out in 2004 that does narrow it down to the last five years, approximately.
Confused yet?
Aren’t we all. I’m not sure I like this movie. I know I wouldn’t like these characters to be people I know in real life. Though, of course, I do know people like this in real life. We all do. I’m one of these people in real life.
And then there’s the actors. It’s such a different role for Ms. Roberts and Jude Law has always rubbed me the wrong way. And, like everyone one else, I bring my own presumptions and experiences to the movie.
For a great discussion thread on IMDB about Dan, Alice, Anna and Larry; go here. I don’t agree with all the opinions stated there. For one, I think Alice is telling the truth about not having slept with Larry. For another, more needs to be explored about the relationship between Dan and Larry.
I want to be close, just not too close. Not closer. The closer I am to you the less I see myself. I change. I mutate. I become only what the other creates. I have a long history of becoming someone else’s ideal something. My mother sees a perfect daughter, my ex saw a perfect wife, my Montreal boyfriend saw a mother figure.
The only time I can be myself is when I keep myself separate. There is DANGER in getting too close. In being closer. This movie hits too close to home, for me, and thus I block it out of my consciousness.
What, ultimately, is Closer about?
Is it a story about love and trust?
Is it a story about truth and lies?
Is it a story about what we lose when we become functioning adults?
Honestly, I have no idea. I didn’t like the movie, didn’t love these characters, but I am glad I watched it (again).
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