Spare diaper // Spare Change

(The story of my life from my 2^nd birthday to the day before yesterday. An Abridged version) 

1962, Vancouver

Well I don't actually know that I was told on precisely the 17^th of August 1962, but knowing my parents, they would have believed that their news would be a gift.

Two years previously, my parents had passed the rigorous Suitability Test for Catholic Adopting Parents (more on that another time) and I was adopted at 5 weeks old from a Catholic institution for "unwed mothers" in Vancouver.  I have a sort of recovered memory that I spoke out in Gestaltian Self-dialogue therapy using my little girl voice: "I don't like how, with their heads covered (was I foreseeing Sally Fields as "the Flying Nun"?), I couldn't smell their hair"... 

In those days, a  Catholic girl "who got into trouble" would leave her family home to go "visit" another city on whatever pretext suited her particular circumstances. She would have her baby and then give it away. My bio-mother left l'ile Perrot just west of Montreal as she had before on one of her frequent trips: around North America or to Europe; and came out west to Vancouver.

(The documentary The Forty Year Secret (2009)

Is an exposé of some of the less savory aspects of that “solution”… )

  

1960, Vancouver

Soon as I was born my bio-mother was applying her lipstick and gushing to the nuns about how much in a hurry she was to get back to Her Exciting Life in Montreal. It is documented in my file that she didn’t even look at me before dashing off. 

My bio-mother was exceptionally free for a Catholic girl, young woman really, in late 50s Québec, where the Church dominated absolutely. 

Much was made of Megan Draper's libertine Zou Bisou Bisou dance at Don's birthday party. It was considered an inaccurate portrayal of a young woman from Ultra Conservative Catholic Québec, even in the early 60s. True, Mad Men got her parents' French accents all wrong as well as Megan's perfect English, but given the apparent liberté d'esprit of my bio-mother in the late 50s I wonder if Megan was just another exception to the rule. She did move to New York to be an actress after all... 

1962, Vancouver

As a baby, or so I am told, in learning to walk I didn’t try: I just waited till I knew I wouldn’t fall down. I was 18 months old when I finally started walking (without falling and with my spare diaper in hand just in case). 

And so the "gift": I was to have a New Baby Sister. From declaration until her arrival a couple of months later, my spare diaper was repurposed as a weapon for whacking every smaller than I child who crossed my path... 

February 1985, California

As a sort of Suitability Test for Travel Companions, AN (Mr Jeremiah from my post:  Endurance: for the Glory or in the Gulag) invited me to hitchhike with him from Vancouver to San Francisco. On our way back up north, while resting in the parking lot of a supermarket in some very dusty, sun bleached corner of California, a rough and rugged Ronald Reagan cowboy type sauntered over and asked if we had any money. Did he need money? Was he the sheriff who was going to harass us for our lack of sufficient funds as had the American Customs Officers who'd Refused us Entry to The USA on our way south, demanding we return with more cash? (Which we did). 

Some, I mumbled as ambiguously as possible hoping to satisfy both plausible reasons for his question. 

He then pushed his large calloused hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of spare change...  

We went into the supermarket and bought a bag of tart green grapes; paying with little piles of American nickels and dimes. 

1987, Seoul

Re-entering the airport in Seoul Korea after a brief wander around a nearby working class neighbourhood, we, CL and I, were stopped by a Security guard. In searching my carry-on bag it became obvious he had never before seen an OB^R Tampon, a spare of which I had tucked discreetly in a small pocket. Without a common spoken language, I was obliged to either toss it out or defend its innocent purpose through mime. After a few minutes of hilarity (mine) and embarrassment (his) I kept my spare.

1993, Montreal

During the summer after my father died, I moved from Hipster Mile End to former working class-turned welfare-class community St-Henri. In the summer my cake baking business was limited and money was scarce. In paying for cake ingredients with the spare change left in the closet by the previous tenant I would visit 3 separate supermarkets to avoid paying with more than 2 or 3 dollars of spare change in any single store. 

  

1997, Montreal

During Global TV’s filming of one of Studio XX’s monthly women, art and tech salons, les Femmes Br@nchées, they kept the camera on a punk girl presenter, at the expense of other costumed participants. (We were big on playing thematic dress-up – it was the era of grrrl power and virtual world avatars). Photogenic punk girl came up to me afterwards and asserted that I (in spite of my Jetson’s era Martian look) seemed the type of woman to carry a spare tampon! 

2015, Vancouver

So the day before yesterday I was waiting as AK braved the freezing AC of the No Frills grocery store on Denman St. Outside on the sidewalk in the sun, I sat on my wheelchair (which I bring just in case Parkinson’s decides I will no longer be able to walk, until it decides that I will). I took off my fav visored-cap - a gift from NZ a friend who loves hats - careful to avoid placing it inside up... 

As a man walked by, I noticed his backpack was unzipped, wide open. Instinctively I raised my hand to get his attention. Before I could explain why I was attracting his attention, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of spare change. 

Endurance: for the Glory or in the Gulag

en·dur·ance

inˈd(y)o͝orəns

noun

The fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.

"She was close to the limit of her endurance" (Italics mine)

Synonyms: stamina, staying power, fortitude, perseverance, persistence, tenacity, doggedness, grit, indefatigability, resolution, determination. (Google Chrome)

When I was studying Philosophy at UBC in my early 20s, I took a Russian Lit course as an elective. The gnomish professor, Dr Futrell, would go on to introduce me to Buddhism (and my boyfriend at the time to the principles of Tantric sex!).

In class, we read Solzhenitsyn and I learned of his “writing”, while imprisoned in the Gulag, by imagining, memorizing line by line, each day reciting, in his head, from the beginning of the story…

He possessed sufficient endurance to overcome the deadly situation that had befallen him. A writer without pen and paper, he stayed alive by composing the story in his head.

The Gulag was not a challenge he had chosen. So, my early-20-something year old self asked my prof, how does one achieve Solzhenitsyn’s “overcoming”, his endurance, without being forced by circumstances? You chose to take the difficult path, he replied, as for example Buddhists in letting go of ego, of desires, etc …

It was then that I saw certain challenges as either chosen (and thus for the Glory of their notable accomplishment beyond the everyday-ness of life) or as challenges not chosen but imposed by circumstances (the Gulag). Admittedly a Buddhist wouldn’t use the term “glory”. Seeking Nirvana is nonetheless a choice to go beyond ordinary daily living. It is an exceptional path.

Endurance is necessary for both these types of challenge.

Cycling Vancouver to Montreal in 41 days during the late spring of 1985 was a challenge undertaken for, amongst others things, the “glory” of saying “I did that!” The physical and emotional endurance required, the motivation to keep going, was easily found because it was a chosen challenge. (The endorphins helped…)  This in spite of:

•    damaged knee ligaments;
•    a foot of Rocky Mtn snow outside our tent and still needing  to pee in the -10C night;
•   a young moose on our side of the road making eye contact;
•   a bale of hay leaving the back of a pickup at 120 km/h and hitting the pavement a few metres in front of me;
•  tornado rain 200 kms north of the eye of the storm forcing even cars off the road;
•  endless loaves of peanut butter and banana sandwiches;
•  my friend’s terrible singing voice and very limited repertoire (how many times in a row can one sing Jerimiah was a Bullfrog?).

Before I had Parkinson’s, recalling that trip (its glory) often served to re-enforce my confidence in my ability to achieve much more than I had been lead to believe that I could. My mother actually bet me the $300 I owed her in long distance phone bills (pre-internet, it wasn’t cheap to break up with someone in England while one was in Vancouver) that I would not make it to Montreal!

Parkinson’s changed all that: reduced motivation is a symptom of the disease itself. Reduced dopamine = reduced motivation. And the range of the challenges of my life have become rigidly circumscribed.

The challenge of living with PD, the endurance demanded of me, is far too often limited to getting through the day. I endure pain not to reach the summit of Roger’s Pass, but merely to make lunch.  Performing the tasks of daily life, of independent living, brings no glory, no sense of accomplishment. Particularly as I am not cycling 160 kms/ day while performing those tasks!

Parkinson’s is my personal Gulag. And I am not Solzhenitsyn.

In writing as he did while in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn also achieved Glory. The extremity of his accomplishments and of the circumstances under which he achieved them renders my life today too insignificant.

And I, a blogger without 2 working hands with which to type: ever determined; I have to find my inner Solzhenitsyn.