A Good Run

In the bustle and flurry of post-concert frenzy (mingled with passerby students finding classes at the prep college there,) I choked back brewing emotion. Mostly unexpected, I heard my voice cracking to find the words I just didn't know in French in order that I might express my profound gratitude and pleasure of being welcomed into and being part of such a superior group to the conductor. After months and months of struggling to communicatemy thoughts and feelings in another language and make a fair amount of successful exchanges/interactions with multiple scores of situations (and being usually very talkative in my own language but experiencing the frustration of being limited,) I found myself surprisingly short of vocabulary in any language. Truly a sign, even if it betrayed my outer confidence, that I was indeed choked up about the full-on realization I would not be playing with this group--or probably any like it--for a long, long while.

When, in my frustration and stop-loss emotion, the conductor acknowledged as much by stating in very clear English, "You can say it in English if you want." I looked at him just gob-smacked. I said, and I quote (I fell from grace and defaulted to my backwoods kid ways,) "You can speak English?" I mean, of course he could. He's an educated man and English is just as much a requirement to live in Quebec as French is over the rest of Canada, but I felt taken back, a little irritated, and overall astonished. Here I had been putting all my effort into assimilating, taking risks, making an ever-lovin' fool of myself, donning the mindset of a French person to secure the respect I felt for a land that is slowly losing its culture and language, only to insult a very talented, very accomplished musician and conductor who was probably speaking English before I was born.

Whatever manner and composition I had or was trying to regain was smashed into pieces in that one little moment with one rather unknowing comment. There was no recovering. No wonder I couldn't explain the cock-eyed twitch in his neck and posture. So, I did what I do best. I "quirked" it up, exhaled a laugh, and told him what a great experience it had been. (Uh-huh. Sure.) Then I finished with the flourish of fumbling my way out and made my way through a group of people. So much for a refined exit.

Then, I ran into my fellow bassoonist and a few friends. We talked lightly of being done for the season, while inside I felt the finality of forever, and while these kids had been adults in my eyes, before us stood the difference of them having their entire lives in front of them and me getting a 15-year-old start to mine (musically speaking.) In the tiniest fraction of a second, their eyes revealed a sobering moment, realizing that I may or may not ever see them again. It depends on whether or not we cross paths for the single lessons remaining I have at the conservatory with Paskale. Not wanting to be the Debbie Downer and leave that as their last picture of me, I smiled with new excitement as I shook their hands and said, in broken French that I knew would be bad and didn't care to correct, "N'oubliez pas moi!" Then I walked out of the Cegep for what will probably be the last time.

Adventurous Day From.... Well, Not Hell, Exactly

Ok. I've been chugging along the concert pace the past few days, performing not one, not two, but four (so far) concerts--one per day--and taking part in the rehearsals beforehand, making the time spent on site and on the road stretch out into full, every-man days.

It's been FABULOUS! This is the kind of life I imagined for myself when I was just a young thing. Playing professionally on a stage. Granted, it's not long-term and it doesn't pay, nor is it solo work, but I will not complain--how can I? The caliber of music has been a fantastic experience--and at my age now and in the unfolding of my life, I very much prefer playing in an ensemble to solo work. (Especially because bassoon isn't the most enthralling solo instrument--even I have a hard time sitting through a bassoon recital.) And as for pay, well, the quality of music and professionalism is self-paying.

But today unleashed a whole new monster of testing my confidence in all of my abilities, from music to language to chartering foreign territory to engaging socially!

Over the weekend, my very significant other accompanied me to the various concert locations--Metabetchouan (an hour and a half away) and Jonquiere (about an hour), and we made full days of it. However, it caught up with us and he needed to rest before work at 4 p.m. today and I needed to be at the hall, also in Jonquiere, but by 9 a.m this morning.

In addition, an appointment he made for our dog was scheduled for 8. For him to accompany me again, at that hour, after having gotten in late last night, we would have had to either a) get up ridiculously early and drop the dog off before the 9 a.m. concert call, leaving my poor boyfriend to twiddle his thumbs all day in an auditorium full of kids, no nap, go straight into 8 hours with homeless people and come home at 1 a.m. With no defined plans of when to pick up the pooch OR...

...b) still getting up early, doing the same thing to get to the hall, but leave him the car to pick up the pooch, go back home (a round trip of approximately 2 hours), get time to rest, return to pick me up, bring me back home (another 2-hour round trip), and take the car to work (another and third round-about of 1.5 hours.) One of the issues being a single car and two people with stuff to do. Another one being gas mileage. The other one convenience.

It's not really complicated. It's just that in supporting each other and loving each other to the hilt, we want to be there for all the things the other one is doing. Especially in a case such as my music. But without too much conversation about it, we decided that I would go alone, I would drop the pooch off, and I would get myself to the concert.

It would prove to be a fun, harrowing, tiring, and even!... a little emotional challenge to get there and back.

So.

I left the house in good time with a crudely hand-drawn map and made my way. The problem from the start was that I was not very familiar with the route from a driver's stance. Between here and in Chicoutimi, I got it. I know a couple of roads for getting there, I'm good in the city, and I've learned basic landmarks--the conservatory, Marc's work, his dad's place, the cathedral and the university. But to Jonquiere I've only driven solo there once, and that's where I had to be.

As for where I was going once I got there, it was easy as pie. Take the exit off the highway and go straight. Until the prep college and find parking. But to get there, well, I was nervous, and I had to find the veterinary hospital, where I've never been, and get back on the highway. If you've ever had to watch for landmarks and if you've ever missed them in a place you don't well, you know the feeling you get about a hundred times (give or take a few) thinking you've passed it.

I was thinking about the landmarks outlined on Marc's map (I love his handwriting!) when, just as I was to get out of town, I came to a line of stopped cars about quarter of a mile long. What was stopping us? I focused on the front of the line. Blinking lights drew my attention. *Bleep! I had budgeted stopping time for everything else, but not this. A train! A bluh-hee ole train! Yeah, sure I've driven over tracks in around La Baie, yeah sure I learned how to avoid them in my hometown fifteen years ago, but now? Now?! I hadn't even made it out of town and this would eat into every precious minute of road time and increase the pressure of finding the vet without missing it.

I looked at the clock on my CD player that still hadn't kicked in (a sensor/battery thing.) I waited. I despaired. I drew in a breath and exasperatedly exhaled. I looked at Emma, who was panting and careening to see out the window. Up ahead, cars were pulling out of line and making U-turns back. Yes, there was another way to the highway. I calculated the space between me and the cars around me and followed suit, going all the way back around, into town, and getting back on the other access to the highway. After an eternity (of about 5 extra minutes), I was finally heading out of town. Finally. I glanced at the map. I looked and looked for the exit that would take me to the vet. I looked and looked for the sign that said "Refuge Des Animaux," the only landmark I knew to watch for before taking the vet exit. Why, oh why didn't I pay attention to these drab buildings and dispersed houses before?

I was in danger of getting rammed because Quebecois drivers are 1)c-R-aZ-Y and 2) probably all working people, familiar with the road, but I was desperate to see the dog pound sign, so I just tried to use my old fast-scanning skills acquired when I waitressed, and I found it. Then I was careening for "the" exit and after that, the vet. When I saw an intersection approaching in the distance, I really freaked, I thought I missed it. After all that success before 9 in the morning, my heart dropped anew. Trees were blocking the approach for near a mile, I didn't even know if the intersection would take me back to the highway (since I'd just come from there), and I would have lost major time getting back to the highway the way I'd come, never mind miss the pooch's appointment. Thus, I theoretically saw myself missing the concert (oh, the horror!!) and doing who-knows-what with the pooch.

Out of a force of sheer stubbornness, I kept driving. I knew that if the veterinary hospital magically appeared, it would be on the left. Et voila! There it was. I was still too pinched for time to relax, but I was still relieved. I zoomed into the parking lot like a professional stunt driver, parked, and shuffled a cute but very hairy and dirty Emma in through the front doors. "Le pression" did not stop there. For me or for Emma.

Inside, a man with two very large, very beautiful dogs stood at the reception counter. First thought: oh shit, this is going to take longer than I thought. Second thought, oh, poor Emma. She was cowering by the door and positioned funny. She was peeing on the rug. Great. I picked her up and held her close to me to feel my body and felt her shaking. I knew I should have kept a hold of her once we were inside. Poor thing.

Finally, it was my turn. I had already negotiated small interactions in French, and I always prided myself on being professional with service clientele in English, so I sucked in my breath and surged forward. Maybe it was the panic I was masking, my head in a million other places than there, but the words came out far more fluidly than ever before.

"Oui. Bonjour. Mon chum a fait un rendevous pour son chien, Emma."

Just like that. Wow! I saw two 'me's. The one who just has shit to get done and lurches headlong into doing what needs to be done, and the other me who hides behind the other one sometimes and always joking around. The Goofy Me was looking at Serious Me in that split second, slapping the Serious Me hard on the back and laughing heartily. (Have you forgotten? I'm Gemini.) (Yes, that's my excuse.)

For the following 2 minutes--oh yeah, I was counting--discourse en Francais was had, the nice girl behind the counter at first unable to find the appointment at all. Great, another obstac- Oh, wait, not quite yet. What's my phone number? Oh. For a Marc-Andre? Yes. There it was. She found it. Whew. What? Est-ce que veux... quoi? (Do I want... what?) "When someone brings their dog in, they cut their fur" she explains in French. Ohhhh!! Yes! Yes, please, and more 'merci beaucoup' from me before she took Emma.

Out to the parking lot I stride, in the parking lot I break into a run. I didn't have time to revel in my success--there was still about twenty minutes of road to get to the hall in about ten minutes' worth of time and I quit believing I had any time at all.

Gently gunning my V6, dual exhaust on bald tires, I took a risk. I could either check out the intersection that was right there or go back and retrace my steps like I had planned, adding who knows how much more time to time I didn't have. I chose the intersection. Good gamble. Jonquiere ahead on the signs, with arrows, no less. Just like that, I was back on the highway and started to see familiar buildings.

It wasn't over yet.

It wasn't over until I was standing in the green room with the other musicians. I looked at my clock again. Sometimes it comes on after a while. Nope, not this time. I had a general idea of the time, but I needed exact minutes. We were down to the particulars now.

I sped where I could, taking a ginormous risk on top of already driving without a current license (the story involves waiting for my permanent resident card and the antics of a nationalistic province) and *squeak* no insurance (I need my license), but I was also too scaredy-pants to push too far. I waited for the indicators, read the green highways signs, and finally, finally...

...found the exit. "THE" exit. I zoomed all the way down the strip, parked fast, walk fast, and did so in lumbering strides with my purse and block cement bassoon case in hand. I got to the door, around the corner, into the green room, and down the stairs. I made it.

* * *

After three days of concerts, I can only say this: man, I've grown. But when I came out, again in a rush to get the car back to Marc, the skies opened and I was drenched before I crossed the street. With scrap tires, I was hydroplaning all the way home. Only to find I had missed him. He'd gotten a ride from his uncle.

People Who Dialogue In Between The Lines

Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. Those people that can't say a straight line and mean exactly what they say. The ones who claim to say things at "face value" but communicate cryptically or put their terms in broad, analogical, sometimes poetic terms to hide that they can't actually articulate (admit) what they're really feeling. The ones who also undercut spoken dialogue with an entire undercurrent of loaded phrases or words, leaving some half-intelligent person to wonder if there was a subterranean attack launched or if their words meant nothing.

I am one of them.

Yeah, that's me. I have said or have written things that I know will hurt people in vague ways so that I don't have to take responsibility for the outcome of their effects.

Face value.

Why am I admitting this? Well I got on here to write something else, a quote actually, nothing original, found a friend's pragmatic entry on a site, and found it absurd that I could feel contempt for his efforts when I was nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in a place to be looking down on him. It made me remember that "coming clean" about truths that are actually easier than they seem is not that big a deal. Well, in terms of relative sanity anyway. (This would be an entirely different ball game if I had been, say, and ex-con.) It's always harder to be the one working so hard to keep certain truths at bay than it is to be the one judging them, and so if coming here and in doing all that I did by coming here last summer was for anything, it was for ripping through the barriers and screens of my own secret truths and freaking exercising new muscles of genuineness and authenticity.

And also, I'm just getting tired of it. Tired of the cycle of trying to be better than somebody else (the proverbial anybody else.) It's just old. Old news, old like a 1920 newspaper, and twice as mind-numbingly irrelevant. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing my voice on it. I'm tired of hearing the same words come out of the same vocal pipes, and I hate how I sound. I hate how I seem to be so damned insecure that I have to find some vastly-wide sweeping words to zero in on a point that doesn't even work. I'm tired of putting on a facade that I think will somehow make me better. I mean, really. Double-U. Tee. Eff.

With this increasingly inescapable theme of pointing fingers and blame ("for every finger pointing at you, there are three pointing back"; "take the plank of wood out of your own eye before helping someone else with the sliver in their eye"), it has become an irreplaceable, incredible, life-changing tool that, although once a childhood anecdote (or so the repetitiveness of those sayings would seem), is now re-encrusting itself into a sheer, undeniable and fundamental truth in the core of me. I've blamed just about everything and everyone I could get my proverbial hands on, and quite frankly, it doesn't work. I've known for some time that I've had a problem communicating as well as I could have, even in spite of trying to be the "fantastic-est communicator ever," and it boils down to lack of ability to truly articulate my thoughts and feelings. It has always been easier to give a picture of what I'm thinking instead of trying to sit down, think about it, and put them into nouns and verbs that express my feelings and don't actually implicate someone because I'm trying so desperately hard for the situation to NOT be my fault. I actually relied on this tactic too much, and that's the problem. I mean, it's part of my personality, but when it comes to balancing the two sides (there it is again!), the sweeping fru-fru of descriptive language far out-weighed the boring (or agonizing) truth.

And it doesn't even matter how genuine I am, I know I still f*** up and will most likely be f***ing up for a while. I'm trying not to think about that. I'm just trying to think of how to be more articulate, and that requires being honest with myself and being accountable.

That being said, I've been on the other end of loaded words. I think it's seeing this that has, in part, made me realize that I'd much rather struggle to define and articulate my thoughts than hand over one more loaded, double-edged slice of poetry. (The other part is seeing how much pain I've caused by doing that.) I've been the half-intelligent person, too--the one I referred to at the beginning of this entry. I'm fairly intelligent, I'd like to believe, but I don't always catch the intended double meaning, but because I've been afraid to miss it (for fear of looking like a simpleton), I learned how to take almost everything with double meaning in certain situations, with certain dynamics. Screwed up, ain't it? Well, don't laugh too heartily just yet. It was a default program I set up to avoid looking like an idiot.

My poor, poor pride, eh?

My world might have been a little happier a place if I'd chosen not to give those loaded words double meaning. It certainly would have helped alleviate the nasty little habit I got into of giving words double meaning that didn't exist. I chose to write this nasty little confession because I had originally intended to explore this very same trait in another friend, but just could not. For one, me being snarky just doesn't help anything or anyone. For two, let he (or she!) who is sinless cast the first stone. I haven't gotten nearly the start on being genuine as I had hoped when I came here, when I chose to make my life something else, because I just felt so bad about all the pain, uproar, and damnation it caused that I couldn't see past the guilt. But there is a whole other world past my narrow, 2-dimensional point of view, and I'd rather be the person who gets railed at in my blog than to continue even one teeny, tiny little step back in the old direction. Because for every and any bit I could throw out, it is a bit that makes me a self-righteous hypocrite, and, well, we really don't want too many more of those kinds of entries now, do we?

My new toy!

I would like to interrupt this drama broadcast to deliver a special bulletin.

I got a car! Woo hoo!

Yeah, I've already posted the few pics I have all over Facebook and Photobucket for my friends and family to see, but it bears repeated action here (OH yeah, I'm gonna post them here, too!) because I am just that damned excited.

Last Friday, my boyfriend and I narrowed down the list of Kijiji car ads in the area to two choices and phoned to see the cars. After looking at them both (the make of the other one escapes my memory) and doing so with our mechanic friend, we settled on a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix for $1500. I know, right? Totally good price!

I know what you're thinking. I got shafted. For that price, that year, heck even just because I was paying for looks. Well the answer is yes and no.

The guy who sold us the car hadn't moved the car in 9 months, and upon initial inspection, it was... OK. Our mechanic friend just wasn't as sold on this pretty one as he was the other car--which had a really good motor, good transmission response, good suspension, and working lights, but was a pearlescent mint green and in need of a new windshield and brake pads (which the owner had purchased but hadn't replaced and was throwing in for the asking price.) The Grand Prix got a similar-but-less "test score" from our mechanic friend with us, but it also had a good motor, good transmission, suspension, working lights, good brakes, even the oil was pretty clear and all the fluids good; it had just been sitting the whole winter. And with that comes risk.

And I would find out (today, specifically) that the garage found about $2500 worth of work to be done. Ouch-like. Some bearings have to be replaced, the mufflers are cracked, and the tires are as scrapped as Kojak. But the guy had also cut the ABS line because he didn't like ABS. Wtf? Granted, I hate ABS, too. I'm old school that way. But really! And the emergency brake--he cut that, too. Really, how dumb do you have to be? It's one thing not to like it (I catch the brake lever with my foot every time I get in the car--maybe he did, too), but it's completely another to disable a major safety feature. Yikes!

But... it could be a lot worse. $2500 is not a lot to put into this machine when you consider that A) the major parts are good--the engine and the tranny, the brakes and the suspension, all which would have been singularly, hellishly priced and B) to have "walked" away with that car for that asking price and have none of the problems be life-threatening (save for the duel mufflers that are cracked--which means not letting the engine idle lest the fumes choke the children.) No problem! We're going to be taking care of the issues on the list long before my girls get to ride in back.

And anyway, it was my first choice. I hadn't expected it to be in as good of working condition as it was, but when I got see it and finally test drive it, the steering was good, the brakes, acceleration, turn signals, and gleefully most of all, POWER! (V6 engine with dual exhaust--oh yeah,) reeled me in big time. I know I should have been more concerned that the ABS light came on, and the check-oil light, and made sure that all the joints and bearings were greased (lubricated), but when I opened her up on the highway, I could hardly care. All things could be fixed. But this... this was an engine, a machine, to be reckoned with. And she roared like a lioness at dawn. The best part was being able to open her up on the highway--gently--and thump some tunes out of pretty damned good sound system, for being factory and all...

In the meantime, all the girly things that matter about a car are there--working buttons and functions, CD player, well-maintained upholstery, heater, equalizer, pretty colors (black and silver), sporty look (without the sporty insurance!), and nifty little drink holders that flip out from the console both for front and back seat passengers.

Most of all, VERY most of all, it is a reconciliation with my independence. It has been twelve years since I owned a vehicle. I mean really, really owned it, in my name and everything. And the last one barely counts because it was a ratty old 1977 Ford F150 that my dad had taken from my brother and fixed up for me the day before I went to move into my very first apartment 6 months pregnant--I didn't earn it, I didn't pay for it, and in the end it spent more time on the side of the road than it did on it. This... is mine. No lease, no having to return it, and it's pretty effing sweet, even with the cracked rear light cover and spots of rust on the door.

Head wounds

"I can see that you bottle things up," she said. "You need to talk about things. You can't be a stuffer, like I am." I was facing the aunt on her couch, acutely aware of the mint green walls of her living room. It had been what, a day, a week since my girls and I plus our bags were dropped off here?

Hmm.

I wanted to make this work.

But I just couldn't shake my reservations about this woman. I looked at her and my eyes pleaded for someone to fall on, someone who could understand the hellish nightmare of uncertainty, injustice, confusion, and pending loss of a know-nothing, newbie immigrant.

Granted, I was only an American coming into Canada, but still. I had nothing. I had only been there a year with no status, no job, no provincial driver's license and it had been a year of major upheaval and transition--my husband's 2 other cancer episodes, moving five times with a toddler, a new baby, his just-barely-there new career, and all the post natal emotions which hadn't even subsided by this third diagnosis. There hadn't even been the time, much less the money, to start or pay for application of residency. So. To recap. I had no job, wouldn't have been allowed to work (immigration rules), and had no car with which to even escape. I relied totally and completely on everyone else.

And here I was. In the house of a stranger, wondering how I got there, how I got to that place in my life, no more assured of where I was than my own children. (I had been an independent woman before, hadn't I? I guess writing bad checks and scrambling to make ends me for me and my baby barely counted as independence, but it was hard to remember. It seemed like a lifetime ago.)

I looked at her. I was going to try this anyway. This getting-to-know-her thing. She was family albeit not the kind of family I knew. Maybe there was some value to us sitting there on that couch that winter day, her trying to get me to talk; and what did I know? Except for not to judge at first glance? But I was oblivious. Things? Stuff what things? I didn't even know what she was talking about, much less what I was thinking or processing.

I sputtered a response that somehow had nothing to do with my then-current state, something scattered and half thought out about the way I grew up. I think that's what she wanted to hear. I was able to pry into something more than just my current state. I waited for her response. This would be anecdotal or wise.

I don't remember what she said.

Whatever specifics that were exchanged, all I remember is being left with a feeling like she didn't understand what I was going through. I should have used that opportunity to tell her, to scream it maybe, "My life is a freaking nightmare and here's why!" I guess I just thought that she would be like every other basic compassionate, observe that I was young with two very young daughters, and put it together herself that being newly married and facing what our whole family was facing was terrible!

But maybe that is quite a lot of information to assume someone could know or put together. She at least knew that her nephew and I were newly married with a second child because she came to visit us back when the baby was born. That had only been 5 months prior. Hmm. The fact that she missed it just exhausted me more, and I at least sensed that she wasn't perceptive enough to be the person I should be talking to.

Then, just like that, I was beginning to feel like I was under a microscope. Instead of being relieved to find someone I could talk to, I just shut down (or realized that talking about my fears with this woman was just not going to happen,) and diffused her questions with lighthearted (if you could call it that) small talk, well-being of the in-laws, and... rent.

***

There seems to be a common theme in those times, and for several occasions and moments after. The way my brain was working. For all of the hard times I've had in my life, I've been able to look back now and understand that for what I was lacking in being able to acquire things/resources to make my life better, to help myself, it has been FAR less due to being wiser on this side of the fence than it is the compounded number of dramatic things to have happened in my life in those days, less than a year after having been behind the wheel of a rollover in August of 1999. My head was bashed around so bad that I was in ICU for three days with a concussion, and I've had to wonder just how much that head injury affected all/any of my abilities to process things in a logical fashion.

I have been hesitant and irritated to develop this theory too far. It doesn't speak to the choices I made, it doesn't excuse the shit decisions I've employed, and it wouldn't get me off the hook for anything. But I am curious just the same. A whole lot of unspoken, blurry time was spent searching for answers when I couldn't even recall the simplest exercises in memory (where I left my house key, my papers for school, even how the campus layout was from the year before) and then when my fog cleared--or what I thought was my fog clearing--my responses were always emotional, not always rational, and concentrating took on a whole new effort. I would get headaches from concentrating on something--the kind of pain I had after the accident.

Sometimes, even today, 12 years later, I will feel myself get dizzy from time to time. It's only slight, but it feels too familiar... I think that I would have made ridiculous jumps in conclusion for just about anything, but most especially when I was in a state of stress. Being the mom of two young girls, being young myself, and having a young husband in the hospital living with an aunt who upped the rent every month of our stay with her and threatened to call Child and Family Services on me when I couldn't fathom what or why out of thin air would qualify as stress.

It wasn't until I worked at the crusher of a local excavating company and had lots of time to journal, reflect, and otherwise beat myself up about stupid shit in my life that I actually felt such a clearing of my mind, I had to wonder if I snapped. Lucky for me, my snapping came in the form of realizing the world was opening up and I could match logic to emotion (a sweeping miracle for someone like me!) It was to be the beginning of being responsible for myself, rather than waiting for someone to come rescue me and live for me; and I was relieved for that. But it was extremely painful to take a look on my past with that puzzle piece in my hand and see with new understanding all that I could have done.

The aunt

So when we got in, it was a bit of a whirlwind. My so-called, so-very-different-from-me friends were right behind me in the doorway with some of my belongings. I had my 5-month-old in one arm, a bag and my 2-year-old's hand in the other. I budged into the tiny entryway area, hesitant to track in snow or grit, encouraging my girls to go into the stranger's home. Both girls took one look at the woman in front of them, who was already wobbling toward us, not helping us with our things, and clung to me. My baby twisted in my arm, turning her head over my shoulder away from the woman she did not know, and clenching my jacket. Even my sociable, bubbly 2-year-old was wincing and finding protection behind my arm. The friends who had driven me two hours to get there were dropping my belongings at the door.

The flurry of activity and rush to get out of the January cold subsided momentarily. In the arrested moment, I couldn't dispel the feeling that washed over me that this was not going to be good. Small, needless talk was made. Whatever introductions and formalities were exchanged between the friends dropping me off and this aunt of my husband's were so fleeting and perfunctory that whatever hope of good there could have been from this new arrangement disappeared as quickly as we came in.

I feebly, desperately thanked my friends, the wife-and-husband duo I'd been living with for two months prior. My gratefulness for them bringing in my belongings was washed away in a moment of desperately wishing I could turn around and go back with them. But it was done and I knew it. We were here. Now. And it hadn't been working out between the three of us and our three kids (my two, their one), so here I was. I knew they were probably just relieved to get their house and life back; not have a living zombie of depressing emotions moping around in their house and the wife of a cancer victim to make their lives depressing. It still stung, though, when the moment for them to leave came and all of us stood in the entryway with nothing more to say and they left without pomp or circumstance. Nor telling emotion. The way they swept out of there made me wonder just how relieved they were to have me off their hands.

It was kind of a theme in my life. Needing way more emotional support than anyone could give. It made me realize that I asked too much of people. So instead of figuring out how I could fix that, which I neither had the time for or the patience (and that time in my life being when I needed someone to feel sorry for me the most,) I just balled it up and choked it down, just like every other injustice I'd learned to tolerate. I did it again just then, in that moment the door closed behind my friends, and I turned to the next endeavor. The aunt.

* * *

Did she welcome us? Smile? I don't remember. What I do remember is standing in that strange new doorway, feeling as alien and wanting to hide as my own children, praying and hoping that this would be a welcoming new start. A place to find refuge from the tsunami that was my life just then. I also remember the aunt, with her waddling gait and cold black eyes, who didn't give me a warm impression at all. If she was trying, it got lost the moment my 2-year-old started to whimper and the aunt dragged her away from me telling her to come into the house, forcing adjustment on my little girl, rather than waiting for her to warm up with my support.

I remember her taking the baby from my arms so I could take my shoes off, but when I finished and stood up--all of a minute--she was in front of me with my two children. The picture of this strange woman, who I'd only met once before then, with my children beside her, was an eerie snapshot of wrongness. The aunt looked almost... what was that look... defiant. Without being able to put it into words, I just knew it didn't feel right. I moved in towards my children to comfort them and take them back. It was a silly thought and I shook it out of my mind as I stepped further and further into this strange house, strange life, strange world to reassure my little ones that Mommy was right there. But it was just the thing that haunted me, an inaudible and undefined feeling: take them back. It was a ghost of a feeling that would stay with me for my duration there. What was that? What was that exchange? It was just another of many more gut feelings I'd learn to set aside. What else could I do with no landed immigrant status to get a job, no car, no money, none of my family around?

Not one to be easily defeated, I followed her to I don't remember where. Did she show me around first? Did she show me my room? Did we sit on the couch that day? It doesn't matter. I proverbially and literally tip toed around everyone in that house---the aunt, the uncle, their daughters, who were practically my age and remarkably normal in comparison--and tried desperately to keep a low profile so I could do what I was trying to do, and get out.

It wouldn't be that easy.

On top of everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING else, I was 21 years old. To everyone else around me, I was still just a know-nothing kid, which pissed me off. It worked against me in every way youth works against even the most level-headed, ambitious, qualified or intelligent person.

It is for this very reason alone, I digress, for why I can never and will never tell a young person that their opinions don't matter or wave off concerns I know, standing on this side of the age fence, they will outgrow with some dismissive, diminutive gesture or guffaw. Even when my ear has been bent by the same person for the same things ad nauseum and I get frustrated because I don't feel like they're doing anything for themselves to better their situation, I still shut up. I just listen. And then I try to ruffle up some inspiration with a tidbit for them or use my creative ability to offer a suggestion or two, based on the limits of their situation. (You'd be surprised about how giving someone something they can really chew on will actually enable them to see where the options are for themselves.) The fact is, you just don't know what their life is like. You can make intelligent assumptions, you can make belligerent ones, you can make generalizations, you can be as self-righteous or as concerned as you want to be, you can even be really good at understanding. But at the end of the day, you don't wear their shoes and you don't put your head to rest on their pillow. That deserves understanding.

Irony that isn't irony

When I say something, nine times out of ten, I'm serious. As in, I meant what I said. For the other one percent, I'm usually kidding around, but if you know me you can tell. My humor is not that dry, and I usually fill those "gotcha" kind of one-percenters with funny expressions, eye brow shapes, and puckered mouths. I've even taken to doing this nod thing with my nose where my chin kind of stays elevated to signal that, yes, indeed, I'm joking around.

But ten times out of ten, and when it has to do with critical subject matter, I mean serious business.

What does it take to get people to LISTEN?

The fact that I have to declare that at all makes me crazy. I don't have time for this today. I have an exciting performance tonight with the youth symphony playing at the mall! To me, having to declare or question why I can't be taken seriously speaks to the way in which I may have been perceived, perhaps depending on the way I've carried myself, and finally what weight or worth my words have. It even speaks to the possible opinions/perceptions of those who regard my miseries as misfortune I have simply brought on myself, which I have been told, which have stung, and which in actually reflection is only about 2% true.

I thought I had the right balance of seriousness and sarcasm/humor. At least the kind of balance I wanted where when I was joking, people would know and when I was serious, they would take what I had to say and digest it or at least... shut. Up.

I know, right? Sounds totally deluded. Like, WHO do I think I AM, right? Or at least what makes me feel like my words should be regarded with such weight, right?

Well it seems I there is a recurring theme of not being taken seriously in my life. I could factor in where I was, where I've been, the people around me, where they've been, what's brought us all to that point, my various inabilities to gauge when to stop joking around (my dad was big on getting us kids to realize we constantly overdid the humor thing,) my astrological sign (Geminis are known to be "childlike",) my idealistic take on some things, but at the end of the day, each time I was fighting to be taken seriously was time which amounted to the summit of experience I had in my life at those times, thus deserving (I figured) the same damned respect I've given others, even those with far less life experience. And since I do have a buttload of life experience (I've thought about doing stand-up, wondering how I would organize my material,)--every year adding a little more--I figure that someone, at least one person or a few, would recognize when to laugh and when to shut. Up.

But maybe I'm not worth taking seriously. Who knows. Hard to say. I don't really care. Save for how it frustrates the ever-lovin' bagoomus out of me. I just got another message from a guy I knew a long time ago, who tried taking advantage of the vulnerable situation that was me back then, who I deflected, thwarted off multiple times, deleted, blocked off, chopped off just after stating my position of "NO!" clearly and bluntly, and eventually was able to forget. Leave it to Facebook to open new avenues of "connecting with friends" !@#$%! Besides angering, it's humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.

I don't have time for this crap. I don't have the time to keep looking back, nor the desire to keeping looking back, on a former line of living that involved serious, grievous, erred ways of thinking and relating to others, especially on account that I still have yet to grieve the loss of my marriage and am concentrating on this wonderful, relatively new relationship I'm in now. It feels amazing to be this loved! The things I have learned! The ways I have grown!

But even if it wasn't this to aggravate my running theme of people in and out of my life not respecting boundaries, it would be something else, somebody else, and I'm sick of it. Maybe I'm being foolish to think I am wise, but then if I am a fool, I should rejoice because there will come the day where the foolish shame the wise.

Spring fail!

It's days like these that just make me want to brood. Cloud cover and still tons of snow on the ground hamper the mood of seasonal change, just when the weather was starting to be sunny and melty. It's as though the snow and gray themselves are a heavy blanket over my shoulders and face. Argh.

I'm really okay with not having a job to go to and having the time to write during the days, smoking my cigarettes, and deciding what I want to truly do with my life, jumping up sporadically to do laundry, housework, or go snow-shoeing, but it's been a bit of a mental struggle to be okay with it. I have worked every day of my life since I left home, in some fashion or another, knowing and feeling it was never okay to just sit around and laze around on my bum (which is what I would rather do!) I have also never had this much sit-around time.

(Click on the various photos for fun facts.)

I go to my French course, take bassoon lessons once a week, and play with the youth symphony (above photo is of the conservatory), but those are in the evenings, so the day time has seen me grow more accustomed to spending time on the computer, reading, and practicing. I've always scoffed at these kinds of people--the person I am being right now--who don't have day jobs on account of some artistic excuse, but even if I could let that go (or change my position on it--after all I am artistic and idealistic,
what use is there in denying it?), there's the whole question of what I am contributing to the overall well-being and betterment of my own life and consequently, those lives which surround me when not bringing in money, not furthering my education (save for some mastery of the French language), or doing anything of worldly substantial value.

Blown glass museum in La Baie

It really speaks to the idealistic side of me, the side of me that is tired of taking on 'petty' jobs (even to help myself reach the ends to the means), when I say they're not really helping me. It's idealistic, if not a little deluded, to say such a thing because I did learn a lot about myself and others, even my capability to encourage others, be a better leader, be better at serving others with all the other jobs I've had; and I am not above any job or any person. These were jobs where the most education involved was a high school diploma (which is what I have, so I speak carefully) and those with more were the kids coming back for summer jobs, yet off to bigger and better things.

What hampered things somewhat was the locale, isolated, left to its own devices, the closest neighboring city being four hours away, and the dwindling population/reduced number of choices of available jobs, never mind higher education. (Where I was, they tried, but it didn't coincide with my music, and I just couldn't relent, no matter how much the locals raved.) I'm sure that added to my experience dramatically because when I think about the differences between a thriving big city and a small, northern, isolated bush-town, I am almost convinced that my options would have been a little greater in number and the chances of feeling good about a means-to-the-ends side job (the job that helps me get through school or advancement of any kind) would have been higher, even if only for the difference in size and despite overall economy.

But none of these jobs were entirely fulfilling because I was not maximizing... something. My intellect? My capacity to understand intricate instructions? My craving to be challenged? I had some level of those factors in all of my previous employments, but even when I rose to the occasion, there was always someone else who was there first, who did it longer, who did not appreciate that some newbie coming in could keep up, or something wrong with the way I performed a task. In fact, I realize how much I had compromised the ways (and manners) in which I thought, acted, and talked after experiencing conversations and interactions with others outside of the place where I was living. I could use the language I used once upon a time (the one with the "big words" that I was made fun of), I could talk about abstract concepts without getting the Glaze-Over or the Old Stink Eye, or even worse, the good, old change-the-subject tactic. Even getting back into music and sitting under the conducting of a professional with other professionals (yes, these kids are professionals) reinforced the 'maybe I used to be smart' thought with "oh, effing sweet! I know what they're talking about!" and brought me the relief of a thousand years. I'm really not crazy and over my league after all--I'm just who I am! I really am that person! This kind of stuck my idealistic theory in the ground like a general with his flag that I do need an educated job.The worst thing about these realizations, though, is that I sound like a complete effing snob. A real pretentious snipe! And this exactly the reason I hunkered down and took on jobs that I felt were a little humiliating. I had no more qualifications on paper that could land me a higher-paying job, I was not (and still am not) above any job, and at the end of the day, I was damned lucky to have any job, regardless of position on the globe and with respect to global economy. I have ex-military brothers qualified to get into law enforcement of land security/patrol-type jobs who struggled to keep their jobs when the economy took a dive. I remember my mom agitatedly reminding me that I was not above any job, too, when I was pregnant and young. Maybe it was just the situation and my attitude that gave her a little panic about my idealism, or maybe it was a plain lesson in life, but it has stuck with me all these years.

At the end of the day, though, snob or not, unreasonable or idealistic, those jobs were not fulfilling. Or at least not in a way where I could go home and leave work at work for a general majority of the time. And let's face it, I'm 31 years old. I'm too old to be fluffing around. Getting another job like that, here, seems counterproductive to what I was trying to do by coming here in the first place. It seems like I'm waiting for the perfect job to come to me, rather than going out and looking for it, even though that is not entirely, exactly true. I've always been of the mindset that a person has to make their life what they want it to be, rather than standing around waiting for it to just fall onto their laps, although I haven't necessarily practiced it. But in the end, after all the go-get-it, dive-in, make-it-happen Cazares attitude to life I've had, after 7 months of feeling self-conscious about what I've done or not done to significantly add to my life, which I will share with my girls, I know I'm being groomed for something even in spite of seeming like I'm not taking all of the grooming into my own hands. While it doesn't feel like it now, I know I'm learning something about life and how I'm going to go about it on my terms, without apology, exhibit the strength I'm trying to teach my girls about going after what they want (living what I preach), and not relenting to what others would have them (or me) do, like I did before. I've had so many new experiences, met so many new friends, and such a healthy outpouring of such different mindsets (keep in mind, I spend my whole adult life in that small town, forming a shell of collective, amassed opinions as my own guide for how to live there) that I feel refreshed and more installed of the real me than I've felt in years.

And now I'm here where I get a chance to rest and see the gray clouds and talk about them, as well as wrap up to go do some housework, which is just as relaxing as writing because it's productive.

Ice-breaking Coast Guard boat (La Baie)

Le Pyramide de Ha! Ha!--made of yield signs

Ice fishing cabins organized over La Baie

The bridge in Chicoutimi


La Petite Maison Blanche--one of the only little houses to survive the 1996 flood in Chicoutimi;
The Saguenay Symphony played its season premier opener here last summer

Overlooking the Chicoutimi River

Life is hard, but hope is vital

Life is hard, you know that? It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what your background, what your ancestry, what kind of job you have, how much money you have or don't have, life is just damned hard.

Consider the following:

1. A country whose leader is refusing to step down and turning on his own people with military force, even despite an international warning to back off (several countries working together at an emergency summet in the U.N. this week), which hangs on a delicate balance---this fool's pride/arrogance/deranged-ness. An entire people, innocent and wanting change, prospectively attacked, the families of those people potentially suffering--all the very real effects of extremist behavior that have happened in the senseless taking of lives in the history of the world. Yet this man in power is so.... what?.... so within his own fucked up sense of right and wrong, entitlement or demonstration of force that the situation has become the very fragile potential to singularly ripple through dozens, if not hundreds or thousands (depending on how it unfolds) of relatively innocent human beings? How does one person get to that fucked up state of mind? Even much more than that is how do similarly insane people get so much power?

2. Two girls whose dog gets put down after only 8 years with her due to a chronic degeneration of the hips. They have to learn about loss and about the hard things of the world over a Skype session, just months after their parents split up. Meanwhile their mother can't even be there to hold them. They have to learn about what they can and cannot control, true responsibility, and grieving from a truly personal place. They are only 10 and 12.

3. Men and women who come home from war only to discover their world was not like they left it, even in the most ideal situations where the spouse has guarded over every detail of their lives and waited faithfully with devotion, but keeping in mind for every one good setting there is an unknown, multiplying number of shitty situations, far from ideal and end in heartbreak, domestic warfare, mental issues, post-traumatic symptoms, and inability to keep jobs. Even the ones in the middle who manage to come home and live productive lives, they are never the same. War kills the soul.

4. The kid whose vivid memory of his dad leaving him at 2 years of age and being bullied on the playground surging into the scars of adulthood. He grows into a respectable man who knows and lives responsibility, taking on the tasks of life with fervor and with reverence, but the pain of rejection is never far, and so he has to work twice as hard as anyone to overcome fears that would not otherwise cripple another. He has to differentiate between realistic concerns and irrational fears more analytically. It plays into all of his relationships.

5. The mom who is teaching her toddler to use the toilet, hitting and missing, having to clean up messes, having to pull from a basic parenting skill set but more or less flying by the seat of her pants to ensure her own parenting is what she wants to make of it, including the love she gives and all the things she does to encourage her little one. She realizes this is a part of growing up and is excited for her Baby, but it pulls at her heart strings because she knows these years are precious and fly by too quickly.

6. The spouse who watches over the other in a hospital because he/she is sick, dying, or somewhere in the middle. Day after day of looking into an even more uncertain future than those simply struggling to make ends meet. Life and death is on the line, their point of relativity changes, accomplishment and success are suspended or at least take on new meaning.


The point to my Depresso Rambling here is that none of this is without hope. None of it! The very real problem is that it seems hopeless, feels hopeless sometimes, but that's because we give up first. We really do. We feel defeated because we see trends in society, percentages of failure (rather than success), get balled and bagged down by our own experiences, the news, other people's experiences, wondering at last if there is anything substantial about this life. But that's just what that the negative forces of existence are expecting us to believe. Because it draws our attention away from all that is positive, good, right, light, and loving. At the very least, we are at war for our souls--trying to save them from despair and there being an exponential increase with people (and groups) who are trying to help us win that war (think of any proactive group you've heard about, types of really exemplary people our generation alone has known, the importance of taking care of ourselves, the return to hope and love), but there still being a host of crap in the world that would fight us no matter how much hope we hold onto.

You don't have to be an emo to understand these things, either. While I confess to a few random emo 'moments' in my early twenties, I've generally been a hopeful person. Even when I was going through all that I went through (which was mind-numblingly boggling, intense, angry, contemplative, bargaining, unresting, and unfair--and probably more than any emo could make up) I refused to give up on my beliefs. I didn't feel good about it because it didn't change my situation and it didn't make me not angry or not resentful---and the much cooler choice would have been to wall up and tell the world to fuck off---but I believed in the promise we were given in and around 2000 years ago and had seen so many really, super-drenched good things that such things were proofs in and of themselves that something so much better than this life existed. How can a person refute an inexplicable silence in a whirlwind of storm in the heart where, when pleading for these impossibly grave things to pass, an inexplicable wave of peace settles over the core of the body, allowing tears and relief to flow? It only happened for a moment, but it was just the morsel I needed to carry on. True story.


The fact is, very few believe that kind of stuff anymore. It's time to turn our heads back to our Creator already.

Souffrance

What is suffering? What do we know about suffering? Why do we suffer? Why can some of us deal with it and some of us not?

Well I don't have the answers. I don't know any more than any psychologist. And quite honestly I believe that at least half of psychologists have barely the same or worse ability to deal with their crap than the rest of us--talk about the blind leading the blind! Not all of them, but enough. Don’t get me wrong, psychologists and psychiatrists are also human beings who are no less prone to life full of hardships and the struggle that comes with us trying to heal from them (or not—some just don’t live by their own wisdom) and they are a valuable asset for the least and the most of us, but it is rather hard to stomach getting help from those who cannot help themselves. I would know. On two accounts. 1) Receiving advice from those with personal, massively scarred history that was still bleeding OR could not even begin to draw from any relatable prior experience; 2) giving advice when I was struggling with my own inner toils. In the end, I still believe in the healing their profession brings and studies in that field to date which bring a scientific method to overcoming our personal wounds.

Anyway, I don’t have the answers, but I have done a lot of thinking about it. In these past 7 months, with my daughters living over 2,000 miles away, it has been its own kind of hell and I've had lots of time to think about the decisions I've made that brought me here (to this point in my life, to this particular location on the map, everything.) No mother has ever been as upset in the world as I have been for having to apply theory to reality: understanding that children need the freedom to make choices, giving them that choice, and having to follow through--allowing their choice to stand. The pain of their absence re-roots itself like a knife in the soul every single time they experience something I can't be there for. And though all things in life change and will change, especially as the cycle of life renews itself, it must be stated that sometimes there are just no other ways out.

That being said, it is not them I blame. No way, not for one singular, tradable moment in the world. I blame myself in adequate measure. I blame myself primarily for letting my own life get to a point that I felt like leaving drop, stock, and barrel--with them--was the very last but only, critically singular option there was. I also put fault with a few other things, other situations, and yes, some people in equally adequate measure, adequate to mean ample but not overdone. But this is not about that blame. This entry isn't even about what I can and cannot control, or how hard it has been to stay the course without having been able to fully explain these things that have taken me years to come to. It's about suffering. Everyone suffers, even if not continuously.

And what suffering brings.

Is it supposed to bring something? Interesting thought, isn't it.

Generally, yes. It is. Suffering was designed for something, and not just to make us feel like crap and emotionally paralyzed. If we go back to the first account of human suffering, we could take Adam and Eve in the bible, when God kicked them out of Eden and told Adam he'd have to sweat and work his butt off to bring home the bread ("till the land") and to Eve she'd have to experience pains in childbirth. Immediately, obtaining food and bearing children, things that God was just going to give them for nothing, were to become the rewards for the hardship.

But Adam and Eve didn't get away with such a clean break. They had to learn how to make clothes, take care of their children, one of whom ended up killing the other, and surely a great number of other things that we could read in the book of Genesis in the bible, or only speculate on as their lives unrolled until they died. Through their choice to disobey, they came to know suffering.

But God did not abandon them. Through their choices, they lost paradise, they had to suffer, but they were not alone. Their creator was still there with them, manifesting Himself with them, speaking to them, and giving them morsels of relief, companionship, and establishing an order.

The NON-depressing part of this new routine Adam and Eve came to know, of what we now know as the daily grind, is that because of this first stupid oops, a plan of hope which was set to unfold was engaged. Yes, even with evolution of man or creation and the thousands of theories to befall or explain our existence on this planet—all human explanations, mind you—there was suffering (suffering to get what we needed and then what we wanted), but just as instantly there was hope in being told (by God himself, through prophetic persons, and later by Jesus himself) that a saviour was coming. A new hope to be relieved of our suffering. Even people who didn't believe it or thought the news of some promised man to come ('future king', 'saviour of the world', or other such terms so foreign on the tongues of secular or pagan crowds) was far-fetched were aware that Jesus was someone people believed in; and were no less prone to suffering than anyone else.

So he came. This light of the world, prince-of-peace fellow came into the world. And he suffered. He suffered so bad—more than any other person in the entire world because it was physical and emotional torture of literally, all ages—for the sake of every person in the entire world to have existed or would exist, whether they accepted him or not, giving every single human soul all the chances they could handle in their lifetimes to choose (or not to choose) to make heaven their final destination—an infinite afterlife with a loving, majestic god, his loving son, the spirit that unites them, all the angels and saints, Mary, Queen of Heaven (just to name a few), loved ones, with experience of love so full and brilliant, it encapsulates the soul, saturating a soul with the kind of bliss it could not contain. (Imagine that high school crush falling in love with you, a major epiphany in your life, a warm towel after a shower, the glee of going to your favourite musician’s concert, and the sun in your eyes altogether in one heap of emotion times a billion, I’m guessing.)

In that ultimate price, ultimate suffering, and ultimate redemption, humanity was given multiple chances to make that choice on their own, multiple choices of right or wrong, to screw up, to get it right, to learn, to grow, but every single time a choice that was completely and totally his or her own until death. He suffered for us as a human, among us in our very corporal humanity, so that if we ever chose to come to him, to see him in our lives, to invite him into our hearts, or even just to open ourselves to the hope of his message (which you can’t argue was pretty damned convincing and loving) for even ONE second, we could never accuse him of not understanding us.

At the very least, Jesus was so central a figure in history that we measure time according his existence on earth. B.C., or, before Christ. All of us humans, only on this side of the A.D. fence, know what life is like on this side of the fence--since the days of Christ. Whether we are Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, Catholics, Muslims, protestants, the hardest core atheists, agnostics, white witches, satanic followers, extremists, diplomats, peacemakers, scientists, fanatics, communist, socialist, democratic, common man, simple, however instrinsic, intelligent, bright, handicapped with disability, whatever country, whatever creed, whatever race, we ALL measure time in A.D.

We only know the values that came from life after Jesus was on earth, every generation imbedding their own take on the next generation, based on what they were taught, since the dawn of time and of the days of Christ, regardless of faith, in spite of or in connection with any given moral set. His existence has created more controversy over beliefs and system of choice than any other figure in all of history or time, even to say that the ancient religions prior to Christ were also affected in some way after Christ because they are not all practiced in their purest forms today, if there is such a thing.

Confucius in all of his wisdom still doesn’t quite stir up the kind of animation that Jesus did. There were far less divisions of basic faith systems before Christ than after (generally derivative of Christianity) and all matters of creed and belief were changed in some way, even for those who could say their beliefs were not changed because no one in all of history has sparked so much debate and reflection as this one man. Whatever calendar we measure by, whatever inaccuracies are in those calendars (Gregorian, Julian, Aztec, Chinese, etc.), whatever variances in the time line created by Before Christ and everything Anno Domini, it is all still measured by that point in history, and when we have to work together as a world, we still arrange meetings, conferences, summits, roundtables by the calendar, the calculator, and the clock that was configured A.D.

God knew this.

But he gave us the choice. To believe as we choose, to be inspired by the precepts of others or swayed by fallacies, to discern between them, to ignore them altogether, to pretend like none of it matters or choose nothing at all. He gave us the choice between right and wrong and with that, the right to choose the same thing over and over again, to stop choosing, even the choice to reject or accept his very proof of love for us (an only son, the only truly pure thing he had to give who was the only soul capable of taking on the literal weight of the world for the stains of many.) He gave us all the choice to accept love, too, a concept evermore declining in the world’s society, the choice to accept mercy, compassion, loyalty, holiness, and devotion, even in a world today where consolation, touch, emotion, and vulnerability have been tragically abused. He gave us all the choice-making freedom we could handle from the very first day. And he did it for a love of a people he created, even those that would reject Him or “just” break his laws.

He did not grandstand Adam and Eve on the day of their sin, with his almighty power, to make them feel scorned and shameful, nor did he damn them. He asked them one simple question, which he already knew the answer to, and which implied accountability as much as truth. “How did you know you were naked?” The consequence of their choice to eat the apple was immediate awareness of their bodies and subsequently to hide themselves and to explain to God why they were hiding. God was teaching them this accountability, which any parent might recognize as the root of the lesson, but he did it with love.

Their self-consciousness was not to be the only consequence of a seemingly harmless act, but also their removal from Eden and engagement with suffering and the suffering for the rest of humanity. Suffering became the price we would pay for our disobedience, not just one time but repeatedly over time, not just individual but also communally, and not just for Adam and Eve's mistake but also for our own.

However, it was not without recompense. We would eventually learn that it was not the punishment of a wrathful entity, but part of the plan of a loving god—the way it had to be so that humans could come to appreciate Our Father for his love and forgiveness. (How much more do we appreciate good days because we have bad days?) God himself promised aid and protection all throughout the history of the bible as long as we remained devoted to him, but in our freedom to choose—free will—humanity chose repeatedly to concern themselves with themselves, rather than God, and so therefore were defeated or chastised or ignored by God.

With the suffering and resurrection of Jesus, a new order of love, life, suffering and forgiveness came into effect and we could put our suffering to different use. Even if Adam and Eve, the tree, and the serpent are all just primeval analogies for the way man began and simply give us a general base of morale, there is still a more powerful being than us who taught the first lesson in responsible decision-making and that consequence always follows choice. In the plan he designed, the plan he created with love out of love because He is Love, he gave us choice because, in love, it was to be all the sweeter when the subjects he loved chose to love him back.