just when you think

that you can move forward...

Well,  most of the time I can get by, because I forget, for a while that anything happened. On the surface.

But I hug my kids a little closer. I called my oldest, who was watching my little one last Saturday. I was driving home from Toronto and I could see ominous storm clouds in the distance, moving into our area. I wanted to know that they were safe, at home. She said to me "Mom, if the storm is bad, I want you to pull over. You be safe, okay."

And we are, more or less, on the fringes. It's like the fraying of a favourite shirt, so gradual and silent, that we barely notice how the cuffs have worn themselves off. An undercurrent of warp and weave that runs a dark line through the brightness of our Ontario summer.

But then I think to myself, "Oh..."

The other day my dad (bless his heart, at 72 he has embraced email, facebook and digital cameras) emailed some pictures to me. They were supposed to be pictures of an outing with the grandkids, my youngest included, to a local safari park. He inadvertently sent me some photos he had taken of the van, at the wrecker's, post-accident. I assume they were taken for insurance, or legal purposes. My dad is not maudlin enough to keep them as mementos.

I can't stop looking at them. I accidentally downloaded them onto my phone, and I can't bring myself to delete them. I don't know why, because I get absolutely no comfort from staring at the images. I wish...I hope that the end came as swiftly as I suspected. I wish...I hope that the young man who plowed into my aunt's van makes amends somewhere, somehow on this planet. I'm not talking about jail time, or the legal system. Instead I hope that he stops at every intersection he encounters and looks carefully to the right and the left before proceeding. I hope he channels his sense of guilt and shame into something positive, works hard to bring the light and love into the world that he so carelessly snuffed out of it.

He didn't look. He couldn't have, or he would have seen the van smack in the middle of the intersection. I've driven through that intersection dozens, probably hundreds of times in my lifetime, never thinking that at any second, a vehicle could come plowing through. I took that road back and forth  from St Marys to London and back every day for almost two years when I was in college. Will I ever go back there? It's inevitable. But I will never cross through that section of road with the same lack of awareness, the same sense of safety that I once possessed.

It's that same awareness that I need to bring to my body, my life, the people that I love. it's entirely too short and unpredictable to bank on a future that may never happen, or that may be altered in a few seconds of ignorance. Live it. Revel in it. Every day.

Before it's gone.

grief

We've been fairly fortunate as a family. A few of us have been lost along the way but for the most part we are hearty, healthy and complete. Or we were, until last Friday.

My aunt - my mom's sister, who was married to my dad's brother - was killed in a car accident last Friday night. She was my other mom - so often, when we were growing up, our families were together, and we were just one big pile of seven, eight, and then ten kids, altogether. Five in each family. We took vacations together. We traveled across the country in my uncle's camper.  Seven kids and four adults. All of us in a single vehicle. On two occasions we even lived together, during housing transitions.

It's been a long week, and it's only Thursday. My sisters, nieces, daughter and I did the music at the funeral, which was very difficult, but far easier than sitting in the church with nothing to do but remember. My cousins are lost. My uncle even more so - he relied on my aunt for so many things. I am holding onto all those good memories, and the knowledge that my aunt lived a full and busy life. She was an amazing, strong, outspoken woman, a dedicated mother and grandmother, and a person who lived her beliefs.

She always accepted me for who I am. I will not forget that.

After the funeral, my cousin J and I (the only girls in a sea of boy siblings and cousins until her younger sister arrived when I was ten) talked for a long time. We are our mother's daughters. We are strong, independent women who do what needs to be done, and we fall apart quietly after everyone's gone home. We get stuff done. We hold our families close. We will survive, thrive, and carry her example with us.

In fact, we will keep on moving forward. Does that sound like a song?



Yes, this was one of the songs that carried my aunt home. With a few verse additions and deletions.

I will remember, and move forward.

the workshop

It was a Saturday morning - too early for me, and I'd only driven an hour to get there. It was altogether too early for Ivan Coyote, who had arrived from Vancouver the night before, and had gotten very little sleep. There were about a dozen of us who had gathered to attend a memoir-writing workshop, facilitated by one of my favourite writers. A few locals, a few fans, and a few attendees of the local storytelling festival that my hometown hosts each year. I fall into all three categories.

We all had different reasons from being there, as was made clear by the round of introductions. But at the same time, we had a common goal - to write, whether we were at the beginning, middle, or end of a project.  I love Ivan's work. And I write. Years ago, I interviewed my grandmother for a memoir project that I neither started nor finished. But I never thought about the other writing I do, my personal reflections, as memoir until I began to read Ivan's work and hear her stories, both live and on the Internet. Up until then, I'd taken my own experiences and attempted to fictionalize them in some way. Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes it didn't. Even now, at the back of my brain, my inner critic mutters "but who would want to read about you?"

I learned a lot last Saturday. I learned that I don't have to know everything about a topic in order to write about it. I can write what I know, or I think I know; I can write what may or may not have happened. Somewhere in the spaces between the notes, the melody will appear. I learned that the "Heather's Pick" I was suckered into buying last week (for my US friends, Chapters is a Canadian bookstore chain that denotes so-called good reads as "Heather's Picks." ) was not a waste of fifteen dollars after all, but an opportunity to explore and evaluate some extraordinarily bad writing. These tips, in and of themselves, are invaluable for any writer. But I confess, right now, to deeper lessons, which were not overtly taught, but  much more poignant than I could have imagined.

• I miss my grandmother. I miss her a lot. She died just over a year ago, and was a mainstay in my life for almost 45 years. I miss her beautiful Dutch accent, which I never hear anymore. I miss her telling me that she doesn't like my hair - no matter how I had it cut, she liked it better the time before. She left me her stories. I have done very little with them besides hoard them on a bookshelf, waiting for the right moment, inspiration, time to research, plan, et cetera. Today would have been her 100th birthday, and I need to celebrate her remarkable life.
• While I initially said that I was there to work with my grandmothers stories, I recognize the validity of sharing my own unique experiences. "The truth about stories is, that's all there are." (Thomas King)
• I don't need to take any more workshops that teach me how to write, and where to find inspiration. I tell myself I'm a beginner when I am not. I constantly undervalue my own work. I'm not saying that I wouldn't choose to take a workshop with Ivan again, or Ferron (and I will, this August), or any other person I consider to be a mentor, or a personal inspiration. But when I am there, I need to recognize what I want and need to extract from the experience.
• I need: to take that ever-growing pile of writing that fills my notebook, my hard drive and my brain, and do something with it. I really have no clue what my next step should be. I need honest, constructive feedback on my work. I need some kind of mentor who can help me navigate this process, because I feel stuck in a mire of words upon words. Am I as good as I think I am? I don't know....
• When Ivan asked us to write about a room either in our childhood home or another room of significance, I should have avoided writing about my grandmother's kitchen (my other grandmother, this time). It was a cop out. I've written about my grandmother's kitchen many times. In fact, I wrote a piece about my grandmother's kitchen three weeks ago, when I was trying to formulate some early memories based on some photos I had found.

I should have written about the room I was sitting in. I was so triggered by that room. There I sat, in a circle of chairs, feeling very small and alone. Just as I felt when I was a little girl in Guides, and I would  sit with the rest of the troop in a circle in the very same spot, struggling for an acceptance that I would never find. The room resonated with that old energy, and instead of channeling it into words, I let it get the best of me. I should have scuffed my stocking feet along the hardwood floors and taken myself to the cathedral windows, leaned on the deep windowsills covered with cracked yellow paint. I could have looked out across the lawn, towards the United Church (they call it Church Street for a reason). I would have seen the blue/green glimmer of the river I love, in the distance. I might have remembered something positive about my childhood. I am no longer the child who doesn't fit. No Girl Guide leaders will whisper to each other about my undersized uniform, or my lack of a suitable gift exchange present. There are no girls who will giggle behind my back, or in front of me. They can't force me to sleep in a room by myself during the annual sleep over because it happened thirty-five years ago, and we are all gone from this place. If I can still hear their voices echoing from corner to corner, it's because I let myself believe, for one fleeting second, that they were right. I didn't belong. I would never succeed.

I acted accordingly, letting the opportunity to ask questions and create conversation slip away because of my sudden shyness. I forgot, for a while, to view my location and my situation from a place of power. But  I regained my equilibrium (in the car, but I didn't cry...I couldn't, my sister-in-law was waiting a few blocks away and ready to cut my hair, and it would have taken way too much explaining....)  I realized that in spite of asking very few questions, and therefore not getting the answers that I really needed, I received more than I could have hoped for.

Another time, given the same opportunity, I won't let those chances slip by me again. If I had a do-over, and achieved the same result, I would consider it time well spent. After all, I had a golden morning with one of my favourite writers, and storyteller extraordinaire. Priceless.

I've neglected this space

There's a lot going on. It's all good, but at the moment it's not allowing me much time at the computer.

I'm writing....daily...but write most of my work in longhand, in my notebook, with mental notes to transfer my work to the computer. This is how I write, but it takes time to transition from cursive to times new roman.

It probably seemed like I dropped of the radar when I met someone. I guess this is true, for all the right reasons. I was very lonely when I first came out, and now I'm not. I have someone to talk to, to hold, to love...and my need to unburden to a general population has changed. It's not that I have less to say. It's just that the things I want to say are very different than they used to be. There are facets to my life that bear recording, and repeating. My life and words have value. I'm a lesbian, a mother, a sister, a daughter, an earth-loving witch who has dreams, a full-time job and a lot of other work to do.

I'm not disappearing.

You see, three weeks ago, the girl and I decided that it was time to make the big move. The one I've been resisting. The one where I emotionally put myself on the line and make a firm decision. And once we decided that living together was the natural, right thing to do, everything else fell into place very quickly. She was offered a position in a local college that's almost the same as the one she has now. We've booked the movers. We're in the midst of sorting and packing, and trying to fit the trappings of two mature lives into one space. It's working. It will be as wonderful as it is now. But in the meantime, between now and the middle of June, I am a bit short on time. Parenting comes first, always. But then....

There's my poor, wretched waterlogged garden, yet to be planted. Will it ever stop raining?

The Conservatives won the election. Boo!

I am going to take voice lessons. I need to build my confidence.

We have summer plans...witchcamp in a few weeks, Pride events, a chance for me to attend a writing workshop with Ivan Coyote, a Ferron concert, Michfest, Melissa Etheridge in August.

My birthday. And possibly new ink....

Lots going on. Much to tell you...I'll be back as soon as I can.

camlin gets political

Canadian politics generally don't garner a lot of attention at a more international level. Unlike our neighbours to the south, our elections appear, on the surface, to only cause a minor ripple on the political landscape. This time, I feel it's different. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has characterized this election as unnecessary. I beg to differ.

For the uninformed (judging from my stats, more people from the US read my site than from Canada, so if you are Canadian, you can skip this part...) Canada is being governed by a Conservative minority. That means, the Conservatives hold more seats than any other party, but the other parties (four of them) have a combined total of more seats than the party in power. An election can be triggered by a vote of non-confidence, supported by a majority of MP's. This happened on Friday April 1st, sending Canada to the polls for the third time in seven years. Some people believe this to be a frivolous waste of time and money. However:

• The vote of non-confidence was declared because our Prime Minister has been found in contempt of parliament, for failing to disclose the true cost of several items - the purchase of a large number of fighter jets, corporate tax cuts, and a new law-and order agenda. This is akin to a President of the US being impeached. It's big. Harper has dismissed these allegations as frivolous political noise.
• Our government has become more secretive and closed, despite Harper's campaign, many moons ago, for a more open and accountable governmental process. At the early stages of this election, the general public has been held at arm's length, and the press has been limited in the number of questions they can ask our Prime Minister. The Canadian Association of Journalists released this letter describing the frustrations they face.
• Many of Haper's public appearances and photo opportunities are staged. The general press have been barred from attending and are kept at bay by the RCMP, our national police force. This prevents Harper from having to answer any potentially embarrassing questions.
• At two recent rallies, university students who had registered to attend were barred from the event. In one case, a political science student was barred because her Facebook profile featured a picture of her with the leader of the Liberal Party. In a separate incident, a number of enthusiastic students created a video and their own gathering, a non-partisan rally to encourage other students to get out and vote. Some of them subsequently found themselves barred from attending the Harper rally that was taking place on their campus, in spite of having been previously registered.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are attempting to mimic US-style, right-wing politics. They are trying to convince everyone that the Canadian "taxpayer" (as opposed to citizen, I guess) has one primary concern: the economy. And the best way to achieve economic stability is to lower corporate taxes, and cut unnecessary government spending. Apparently, spending twice as much as you said you would for an F-35 fighter jet qualifies as fiscal prudence. But child care is not a priority. Nor is child poverty. The Conservatives were touting a new program that would offer forgivable loans to immigrants that would help them achieve equivalent Canadian qualifications for their professions, but no one has yet mentioned the drastic funding cuts recently made to English as a Second Language programs.

If the current government is returned as a majority, I expect to see an erosion of the services and benefits that we take for granted as Canadians. And, our Prime Minister has previously shared his personal views on sexual orientation, before it was politically prudent to remain silent. He has eroded the office of the Status of Women, and has promoted aid programs that focus on abstinence, while ignoring women`s reproductive rights. There is currently no abortion law in Canada, as it was struck down by the Supreme Court a number of years ago - but a conservative majority might try to change this. In spite of the fact that Harper says gay marriage and abortion rights are not part of his platform, I simply don`t believe him. He voted against the recent Transgender Rights bill - which was passed, but then died as a result of the election. This government is completely lacking in transparency and accountability - I don`t think this will improve if they are given more power. Canada`s human rights record has been tarnished since Harper took office, and he has taken several large steps backwards with regards to environmental protection.

There is no doubt in my mind that Harper has to go. I just hope that the rest of the country feels the same way.

arrival

A trip down memory lane...if you were are familiar with small towns you might recognize some of these themes....

Arrival

The town appears unexpectedly, a ripple on the landscape of gentle hills and rich farmland. It owes its existence to the meeting of two rivers, one being the powerful Thames. Thousands of years ago, the rivers cut deep into the soft earth, forming the high-walled fortress of hills that surrounded and enclosed the town. The water’s strength compressed the earth, and over generations the mud became limestone, and the limestone gave the town its sustenance.

It began as a thriving village nestled in the forks, fed by the river’s energy which churned through man-made canals into the flour mills, the cotton mill, the lumber mills. It was sustained by the railroad, for as two rivers met in its centre, two prominent railway lines criss-crossed the skyline with towering viaducts, joining the tiny community to the outside world. People and goods could travel northeast to Stratford, southwest to London, west to Sarnia, and east to Hamilton.

As the town grew larger, houses spiraled up the hillsides, proudly built with the products of the lime quarries. Stately grey, chiseled, mortared solidly into place, these houses lined the streets, outlasted their inhabitants,  and remained unchanged as the town grew around them. Homes spilled into the higher elevations as the twentieth century began. Churches built their prominent spires on commanding hilltops, visually reminding the good citizens of their parochial duty, of the extreme and patriarchal authority of God.

Efforts were made to bring culture to the community. A group of enterprising sousl built an Opera House. Choirs and orchestras flourished in community centers. A town Hall was erected, and its limestone towers continue to dominate the downtown area. The pious citizens argued and raged over accepting Andrew Carnegie’s gift, but at last, a library was built. Goods came in from far away via the railroad. Life was comfortable convenient, familiar, for those who lived in town.

But even then, did the shelter of the hills insulate the residents from the finer points of acceptance? There were few initial ties beyond the railroad. Did the isolation create an environment where the hierarchy was strictly enforced, where the small-town stereotypes of clannishness and secrecy became fully operational?

Or, is this the way of all small towns?

Before the car, before the rapid, convenient transport of humans across distance, movement in or out of town was limited, remarked upon. Notices were, are sometimes still printed in the local paper:” Mrs. Andrew Smith entertained her cousins, the Missed Marielle and Ruby Langford of London last week.” People did not drive out of town to work, not until the eighties and nineties, when cars became more affordable and credit was easy to acquire, when the cost of gas was lower than the cost of property tax in bigger cities.

New families occasionally move in, sometimes having connections in town through friends and family. A family from outside can transplant successfully, given the right ingredients: money, prominence, and willingness to conform. It matters whether or not you join the Lion’s Club, the IODE, or the Odd Fellows. It matters whether or not you are eligible to join the Royal Canadian legion, or the slightly less-respectable Army and Navy, based upon your family’s participation in the previous war.

What you do for a living is critical. Did you take a job that Walter’s cousin applied for, but didn’t get? Did they hire you to bring a new perspective – if so, be aware that newfangled notions are not always welcome. Are you properly respectful of the old guard? Did they tell you all the established family names on your first day of work?

It matters where you shop. Are you buying in local shops,  thus assuring that goods are bought and sold in the historic, yet sadly-provisioned business district? Or perhaps you make a pretence of local shopping, but you are wealthy enough to travel to London, or even Toronto, and acquire your goods in fashionable, upscale establishments. Kingsmill’s. Simpson-Sears. Eaton’s – after all, Timothy Eaton was once a local boy. Do you dare admit your scarcity in a public manner and shop at the Salvation Army thrift store?

Anonymity does not exist in small towns. People watch you. They notice where you go. They remark upon your presence. Just being neighbourly, is all. They discuss what you wear, and how you present yourself, after you’ve left the room. They feign surprise at the door left ajar, the conversation overheard in the ladies’ room at the church bazaar. Are you pleasant, yet respectful, to the old guard, the denizens who can trace their family lineage in this town back to the nineteenth century?

You’re new here, aren’t you? Haven’t seen you here before. Know anybody, before you moved up? Did you know the Jackson’s, or the Reese family from London? They’re cousins of mine. How long have you been here? Found your way around yet?  After you’ve been asked the questions a dozen or more times, you become weary. Does it matter? Why does it matter? Your answers may become more elaborate, or they may become short and sharp. If you start asking the questions, or heaven forbid, provide any feedback, you are either greeted with over-enthusiastic warmth, or you are coolly reminded of your station. What right do you have to ask those questions? That’s the way it’s always been done, nobody’s had a problem with it before you came along. Maybe you should live here awhile before you pass those kinds of judgments.

You feel the resident’s coolness, watch them dance in tight circles, shoulder to shoulder, as they weave in and out of building, down sidewalks, past rows of chairs at PTA meetings. They dance facing inwards, with their backs to the forlorn, the misfits. The circle grows tighter and tighter until they are stuck, unable to move forwards or backwards. Their feet stomp in place for so long that they are digging themselves into the ground, buried in the stagnant, infertile clay of exclusivity.

You live here. You are an outsider. They will take your money, but not your advice. Your presence is required at PTA meetings, but you are expected not to speak. Your children are welcome at school, but please do not ask the bus driver to pick them up, you’re out of the busing area. We make allowances for some families depending on the difficulty of the walk. No, your children may not bring a lunch to school, even if it takes them twenty minutes to walk home at lunch time. Only bus students may bring a lunch.

And so on.

The streets are clean. The roads are deserted at night. The town is steeped in silence; there is a calm that cannot be found in your former urban home. It is so quiet that it’s hard to sleep, at first. And after your eyes drift closed, you are forcefully awakened by the blast of a train whistle.

Everything is closed on Mondays.

Mail is not delivered. You pick it up at the post office. The Post Office is a modern building that smells like a dusty stack of books. You ask for your mail at the counter, as you are on the waiting list for a post office box. You open your mail and discard the junk. Before you leave, five or six people have noticed you, eyes shifting away when you make contact. Some acknowledge you with a glimmer of a nod.

On Sundays you pile the kids into the car and go to church, six to a pew. Back pews are always filled, so you march the little ones to the very front, on the left hand side of the church, under the watchful eyes of the priest as he delivers his sermon. You make the sign of peace with everyone around you, but they do not speak to you as you hurry the children to the car. You are asked to join the Catholic Women’s League. You pay your dues and discover that only the executive meets, there are no regular events, and the single ongoing project is knitting red slippers for altar servers. You don’t knit.

Your kids are divided at school. Separate playgrounds, different teachers, each child concerned with preserving their own social integrity at all cost. This could mean that your daughter mocks your son, as she trudges the long road to and from school with him. But, in the face of adversity on that walk, they become unified. They turn their backs with stoic despair, having learned from you that it is better to ignore those who taunt them, than to rise to the insults. You really didn’t know how bad it was, you tell yourself later. In the other world, the world that was, they whooped and hollered their way to school, with friends fore and aft.

They don’t fit. Their clothes don’t fit. They don’t understand the distinction between town kids and country kids, what passes for the racial dividing line in a sea of white faces. They don’t laugh at appropriate moments, like when the kid from the dairy farm arrives with a head full of straw and muck on his boots. They don’t know not to laugh at the girls who huddle in a circle, giggling at nothing. Their silence at home about such matters causes you pain. You only overhear them as they whisper to each other after dark, consoling each other at the end of another long day.

In winter, they are the kings and queens of the best toboggan hill in the south ward. All the kids become their friends for a hour or two. Everyone goes home at night, and arrives at school the next morning with a bemused expression and frosty silence when your kids greet them with familiarity.

In winter the snow piles high. Schools close when it storms. People stay indoors, watch the snow swirl and settle, and wait for the plows to clear out their streets. You learn to carry jumper cables, you buy a block heater for the car, and you invest in snow tires. The children walk to school, trudging from one end of town to another four times a day because you are five houses away from the busing area. At lunch, they barely have time to take off their wet mittens before you send them back out the door. If they’re late, the principal will call you and suggest that you re-organize your schedule so that your children arrive at school on time.

Here, the trees are taller than you had imagined, healthy and abundant. Your children laugh and squeal at the squirrels, still a novelty. They play in a huge back yard filled with trees, alive with the voices of birds and the rustle of movement from the wind. Bats swoop from leafy branches at night and settle in the vacant barn, in the lot next door. You sleep with the doors unlocked, the windows wide open, and you awaken to a chorus of birdsong every morning. There is no traffic. There are no squeals of bus brakes, no distant hum of transport trucks moving goods along the 401.

Your friends and family are long-distance calls away. They visit when they can.

You walk alone for hours when the kids are at school. You travel along the riverbank, by the abandoned railway. There’s a dirt road that follows the Thames for miles out of town and you hike along its dusty track. You take the kids with you, and teach them to wade in the water, and to fish. All of you watch in awe as a great heron flaps its wings and sails skyward, with long legs trailing gracefully behind. Your kids expand their vocabulary and knowledge, learning about cattails and milkweed, burdock and skunkweed. And skunks. You listen as the water cascades over rocks, an endless burble, a trickle between your bare toes. You rest on the limestone banks and forget time, forget place, forget that you are a stranger.

You are here.

family restaurant

Every small town had one.  In the days when people didn't leave town as often as they do now, there had to be a place for the locals to hang out, for the older folk to bring their families for Sunday dinner after church. My small town was no exception. You’ve seen one like it, I’m quite sure. Maybe you got lost one day, and end up in my hometown, driving down the main street with cars parallel parked on both sides. You probably noticed the striped awning below the white sign with red lettering. “Family Restaurant," it  announced proudly. The windows were partially occluded by grease, but the sidewalk in front of the building was swept clear of any offending particles of dirt. Through the window, you could see the photos of hockey teams sponsored by the restaurant, and dusty, artificial plants.

Somehow, I ended up working in this fine establishment.

The uniform puzzled me. Why deck waitresses out in black bottoms and white tops, in a greasy spoon where everyone dines in jeans and their work clothes? Why bother telling the waitresses that skirts are mandatory? I worked briefly in a teahouse, where the chef served fresh scones with double Devon cream and cranberry chutney, and even there, I wasn’t required to wear a skirt. I left that job for a different one, with more hours and the promise of better wages, and instead I ended up looking like an oversize penguin in a French fry wagon.

Black skirts are mandatory, and the shiny polyester hooks on the jagged counter as I sidled past Jimmy, the owner. His eyes never met mine; his hair was greasy and slicked back. Some weeks he trimmed his mustache, and other weeks the hairs dipped past his upper lip and into his mouth. He was a slight man, shorter than me, and he constantly wore a dour expression, broken only by insincere smiles of welcome and departure as the patrons arrived and left, pushing their wallets into their back pockets as they strode out the front door and into the main street of our town.

My white blouse was a shiny faux satin and it gaped in front. I hated blouses and buttons because nothing ever fit right. I tried to fix the gape with pins, but that never worked; there was always a telltale mark on the front of the blouse. Nylons were mandatory, and I was been told that heels were acceptable but I stuck to comfortable shoes. I thought about waitresses from the 1950’s behind lunch counters, effortlessly serving coffee and pie to hungry men who sat on red vinyl stools. I thought about the TV show Alice, where Mel the cook was blustery, but had a heart of gold. The girls at Mel’s Diner wore pink dresses and frilly aprons, so I guess I was better off.

We had vinyl-covered booths and counter service in front. The back of the restaurant looked dark, because of the burgundy flocked-velvet wallpaper and fake mahogany wainscoting. Red Tiffany lamps were suspended over tables surrounded by overstuffed banquettes.  The owner hoped to attract a different crowd in the dining room, people who could afford his hot beef dinners, lamb chops, pork schnitzel. But most of the people who bought those things spent their Sunday Dinner budgets at the fancier place around the corner at the old post office, where the windows were two stories high.

There was always something to do, unless you were in the boss’ good graces, and then you could sit whenever you wanted. I didn't particularly care to be in his good graces, so I filled Heinz bottles with cheap substitute ketchup and  wiped the sugar bowls when it wasn't busy, I mopped floors, cleaned bathrooms and sanitized counters over and over again. I took orders, and tried to remember who ordered what. I brought the tickets to the kitchen where the owner’s nephew made comments in Greek that may or may not have been sexually suggestive.

 I learned to fill drink orders first. There were round plastic trays with cork inlays to catch the drips of liquid spilled by careless hands. I would open a spigot and pour pop into an ice-filled glass half way, and then let the fizz bubble down before I filled the rest of the glass, just as he taught me.

There was so much to remember. Pick up. Walk down the stairs without falling. And always his hands were on my waist as he moved past me, fingers inching lower, accidentally brushing my buttocks once, twice.  He would casually sidle past me to the bar, to serve a favoured customer, to stand at the other end of the counter instead of this one. On that particular morning, coffee was in order for almost everyone, and I grabbed the steaming pot as I walked past the drink station, deftly avoiding both the blank stare and creeping hands of the owner.

My co-workers tittered when Ethel walked in. They didn't seem to notice Jimmy's hands, always creeping, the air full of suggestion, the meaningful looks he gave them under greasy locks. They didn't see anything wrong with the monthly staff meetings where he plied everyone with beer, even the underaged, and then ruminated about the skirts (shorter) and the blouses (tuck them in).  But when an undervalued customer walked through the door, they screeched about like starlings that flocked to the same branch, weeding out the undesirable element for the sake of conformity. Other times they were like seagulls, pecking over a single scrap of hot dog bun from a vendor’s cart.

“You’re newest,” they told me. “You get to wait on her.”

I didn't understand. I’d seen her all my life. She often stopped into the convenience store where I used to work,  asked for “Export A” cigarettes, bought a Coke and a sub, and left again. She always said hello. Always thanked me. Not so tall, but taller than I am. Built like – a man, I guess, with her square frame, her gravelly, cigarette-soaked voice, and her hands, large and rough. Most often she wore farmer green coveralls, winter and summer, and black rubber boots with red soles, winter and summer.  Our town drew farmers from three nearby counties. It was the nearest place to buy groceries for miles around. When they were in town, the farmers picked up the local paper, stopped for a coffee, and heard the news on the bench outside the  Royal Bank. They almost all wore the same thing, except on Sundays; coveralls and black rubber boots with red soles, often with muck and straw clinging to the heels.

She was loud and confident, shooting the shit with the other farmers she met, and sometimes ate with. I knew her farm; had seen her truck parked at the end of her laneway. She lived on the Winterton road, in a place where the creek had cut a cleft into the hillside. On the property there was a big old yellow-brick farmhouse. The fields and yard were well cared for, and there was a barn in back of the house, like almost every other farm on that road. Beautiful horses grazed her fields, horses that wandered and galloped under her watchful eye.

So what if she called herself Hal and her name was really Ethel? If my name was Ethel, I’d change it too. So what if she lived with another woman – that was the rumor. A dyke, the girls called her, and giggled behind their hands at her like she was  about to proposition them, run her hands subtly around their waistlines as she passed them in narrow spaces. I approached her with trepidation, waiting to be swallowed whole, so fearsome did the other girls make her sound.  I felt afraid, even though I knew her, even though I was aware that there was really nothing to fear. I was conscious, as always, of my shiny skirt and squeaky shoes which betrayed my inexperience, my newness in this place.

“Yeah. I’ll have the breakfast. Two eggs over easy, bacon, white toast,” she said, before I could pull out my little notepad and look official.

“Would you like coffee?”

“I sure would, ma’am.” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes, clear and blue. Her face was dark tanned, her skin rough and uncared for. She turned back to the man in the booth next to her, and continued their conversation about the hole in the roof of his barn, and whether or not he could fix it himself.

What’s the big deal? The other girls were smirking at me.

“Oooh, she likes you. If she really likes you, she’ll leave you a big tip.”

I didn't get big tips. I was a lousy waitress. I hated this job. I was only putting in time until I started college in January.

The two girls I worked with were lifers. One worked there because she left school at sixteen to have a baby. She used to be in my class, before she dropped out. She was nice enough, but I never knew her well. She was always flawless-looking in high school, with perfectly blonde hair and big, blue eyes. The fatigue she felt in every bone in her body was clearly visible. The rings under her eyes, her sweet smile, and the redness of her fingers should have drawn her more tips than the older girl, but they didn't.

The other one was waiting to marry her fiancé when he graduated the next year from Lakehead University.  She was always angry. She took all the regulars, flashed her big fake smile at them, and was always ready with a joke. But as she served, she swore and muttered and mumbled under her breath at the same people she just smiled pretty at. She got the tips. Most of them.

I wanted to ask my old school mate, “Doesn’t it creep you out when Jimmy….?”

But nobody talked about it. They might fawn over the local vagrant with strong family connections. They would greet the mayor with a welcoming smile. They'd go out of their way to serve hot chocolate to a cement-plant bastion for a twenty-five cent tip. But they fought over who must serve Ethel, just as they argued over who must serve the residents from the Community Living Centre. And they took the owner's advances as a matter of course, as the price to pay for the privilege of working here.

When other waitresses moved with grace, I was awkward in my role. I stumbled over nothing. My larger-than-average body took up too much space. Perhaps that's why Jimmy’s hands were always touching me, gently moving my soft curves aside so that he could pass, brushing just a little too close. I preferred working on the days that his wife was there, as taciturn as she could be. And I noticed that when his daughters were working, they were not subject to the same treatment as the other staff.

I poured Ethel's coffee, and I carried her cup to the corner booth, near the front window. Her green cotton cap was sitting on the table now, and there were bits of straw falling out of her short, untidy hair. She was no different than the other farmers we served, who frequented local establishments complete with the tools of their trade. They'd been mucking out stalls and milking. Nobody paid any attention to their attire, or to the mud they tracked through the front door, because local merchants were conscious of the need to retain their steady business. But Ethel, a farmer, with the same boots and hat, was considered a pariah, an eyesore, an embarrassment to the community.

I slide the cup onto the formica table. “Thanks dear,” she said to me, without looking up.

My shift was over. But the other waitress pleaded with me to stay a bit longer.

“Can you finish Ethel's table before you go? She really creeps me out.” So I did, serving her breakfast and clearing away the dishes, waiting as she lingered over her coffee. For my trouble I pocketed a three dollar tip, almost as much as my hour's wages. And I learned something about what the others might think of me, should they discover the secret of what I did last year, when I was a counsellor at an all-girls summer camp.

The owner watched me from his station at the till, lowering his eyes so that we didn't connect in that way. Always watching, shaking hands with my father, smiling widely for the mayor, sweeping the store front on Main Street as the important people walk by. He shoved his fingers in his pockets and jingled his keys as the young single mom, her face flushed and warm with effort, moved to the counter to fill a drink order. He sidled past, with his hands on her waist, and brushed against her in the narrow passage between the lunch counter and the service area.