Dell on Going Viral & Vampires

Kevin and Shelley arrived this morning as I sat inside watching the rain on the lake. It's such a peaceful sound you would think it would be my favourite. Instead, I prefer the sound of rain on a tin roof. Did you know you can actually order these sounds online? Before Kevin put on the new camp roof, this was one of my life's simple pleasures; although I know he was right, the roof needed an upgrade. Now, whenever I get lonesome for that sound, I just take whatever book I am currently reading and go sit in the outhouse which still has the original tin roof. That Kevin is some kind of smart. He rigged a set-up using heated water line built into the outhouse floor, charged off the inverter, I can switch on up at the cabin before heading to the outhouse. I can sit in there with my feet in total comfort. Love comes in all shapes: a heated floor in the outhouse is just one.
Shelley said their tenting was wonderful and thanked me for minding Dorg. Then continued, "...and since it was raining, we thought we might as well be in the rain at the lake. [I think they missed us: or at least Dorg.] Shelley, Kevin and Dorg left just before lunch, heading across the lake to Ron's, in the rain. Ron will appreciate their surprise for him, a lovely rainbow trout packed in ice. There was one for my cooler, too. I took a pass on joining them, as my feet are aching. They'll be back in the morning to run me in to the Vampires at the clinic.
Shelley took a few minutes to look at what I'd been up to on the computer, then said if I was "going viral, she had to do something."
I told her I couldn't be viral. I have a card in my wallet proving I had the H1N1 shot at the clinic, last October. She said she'd explain later and gave Kevin an odd look. Was it something I said?
She made a few phone calls. Apparently, she has a freind with an extra email address they were willing to help out with, so now I have my own official email address. Her friend will have my emails directed here.  "I'll do it before we head to town in the morning," Shelley said, so it must be a simple thing, as we have to be in town for ten. Shelley had better not use that word 'viral' around Leona. That woman will be bleeding me like a leech before you can say, "Now take a deep breath."
Tomorrow's going to be a long one: shopping. We won't be the only ones. Running the gauntlet [my phrase for shopping], is one of my life's unfortunate necessities.
The only highlight will be the local Farmer's Market. A buddy rang me up this weekend to tell me the first fresh srawberries are on sale, as well as, asparagus and, for sure, I'm picking up fresh local eggs. Shelley generally sets the menu for our Canada Day celebration: she gets me to help out sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes, or fixing the strawberries. Again, love comes in all shapes: giving me the sitting down jobs, while she stands, is just one of them. Ain't life grand?

There was a fine looking full moon last night. The impending rain made it all misty and fuzzy around the edges. We're socked in as Graham, my pilot friend, would say. Clouds appear to be just above tree level. You know, I'm missing Dorg already!

Dell on Broken Hearts

Two posts ago, I said I'd blog on an incident in a small town. While I've changed bits to protect folks' privacy, it's a true tale, nonetheless.

A few years back, following my heart surgery, I spent the next six months recovering, staying with friends in a little northern Ontario community. Everyone knew everybody else going back generations. I made friends while I stayed there, but have never returned. Whenever my chest scar itches, I think of one friend in particular: Sammy.

For some reason, young people like to tell me all about their lives. Maybe it's their way of saying I can get on with the business of dying: they are ready to take on the world. Sammy and I became friends in early autumn as she strolled her year old daughter through the park. My surgery had left my chest some kind of sore and I'd walk a bit and then sit on the park bench until I could walk some more. Sammy would spot me at the park, wheel Nicole alongside and plop down beside me. "How's things going?" I'd enquire, and Sammy would be off and running.

She would tell me whatever new things little Nicole was doing. How Jason, Nicole's father, had been picked up by the police for showing up at her place again. Jason was in his twenties, quick with the fists and slow on responsibility. Mostly I just let her talk. She, Jason and Nicole had started out as a family until Jason decided to go a couple rounds with Sammy, who is a good fifty pounds short of his weight class. Children's services decided Nicole should temporarily live with Sammy's parents. Eventually, I met them and Sammy's brother, Trevor, too. He would have been about thirteen at that time.

Trevor had the scars of having once been badly burned. Sammy told me he had been just three years old. and had woken up one evening, after being put to bed. He had gone outside and fallen into the coals in the campfire. Both his hands and one side of his body had been badly burned. Their father had been drinking, her mother at work. Sammy said she woke to Trevor's screams and ran outside. Too young to know what to do, she had pulled Trevor from the fire and dumped him in the wading pool. Then she had shaken her father, passed out in a lawn chair, until he woke up. Trevor spent years going back and forth to a burn unit for skin grafts. Sammy said Children's services didn't want to give Trevor back to her parents until they quit drinking.

"And did they? give him back?" Dumb question. He was living with them. "Did the drinking stop?"

"Yeah, they were perfect parents until Children's services backed off. The drinking's never got that bad again."

"Do you worry about Nicole being with your folks?" I asked Sammy.

"Nope. Trevor watches her like a hawk. He adores Nicole. If there's trouble, I'll hear about it."

Mid-winter, Sammy showed up at my friend's front door, looking for me. She had brought Nicole, tucked under a mountain of blankets in a snow sled. Sammy was over the moon with happiness; Children's services had returned Nicole to Sammy's care. The two of them came in to visit and warm up. Little Nicole was all over the place and into everything. Sammy had the patience of a saint with her daughter.

My failure to properly parent my own daughter had led to my becoming a better parent to my grand-daughter. She came to live with me when she was fourteen, after her mother's drunken boyfriend went after her. Her mother never asked Shelley to come back and my daughter died suddenly two years later. My post Where Were You? tells that tale. Raising Shelley, and being involved in her emotional recovery, gave me a whole new understanding on the role of parenting.

Sammy's folks didn't know who I was when I came up to them in the coffee shop one day. I had recognized Nicole in her snow sled, so I introduced myself. They were quick to say they had no use for Jason. He wasn't from town. Sammy had met him while visiting her aunt out west and Jason had followed a pregnant Sammy home. Sammy's father said he had offered to find Jason work at the mine until he got in that fight with Sammy. "He can piss up a rope sideways, for all I care. He'll move on once he gets the message," Sammy's father proclaimed with confidence.

Sammy had told me she kept hoping Jason would show her parents he could be a good father. Court orders forbid Jason going to Sammy's apartment and his visits with Nicole were always supervised by Children's services. With so many folks against Jason, Sammy's dreams didn't look like they'd be coming true any time soon.

Three weeks before I was due to leave, Sammy came running up to me, sobbing hysterically. "They took her, they took her," was all I could make out at first. As she calmed down, the details emerged. She had been home with Nicole when Jason showed up at the door with a puppy. Sammy had told him to leave but he put the puppy down and then followed it into the apartment. He wasn't there more than five minutes, according to Sammy. Then, minutes after Jason left, the police came knocking on Sammy's door looking for him. She admitted he had been there and had left. The officers then began to search her apartment. They found a single joint of marijuana on top of the fridge. Children's services were called. They immediately took Nicole and placed her with Sammy's folks.
"Honest, Dell, it wasn't mine. Jason must have put it there. There is no way I would risk losing Nicole by doing something that stupid."

"So what will happen now?" I asked, "is she going to stay with your folks again?"

"I don't know. Family court is next week." We talked for a bit and then, as she was walking away I hollered after her "Chin up!" She waved without turning around, but her shoulders were shaking and I knew she was crying again.

The time finally arrived for me to leave. I took a walk into town to see if I could find Sammy. Instead, I found her brother, Trevor. He told me Jason had left town quite suddenly. Family court had given their parents permanent custody of Nicole. Sammy had moved in with a fellow she'd only just met.
"How did it happen?" I wondered aloud to Trevor, "Surely to God they don't take a child from its mother for something as minor as a joint?"

"You know that saying It's not who you know?... In this case, who my parents knew was all that mattered."

As we said our good-byes, he shook my hand, then looking at his scarred palm said, "Sammy always looked out for me. She would have been a great mom. She just never got a chance."

Dell On Criminalizing the Canadian Citizen

I was playing around in blogspot earlier and all hell broke loose. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad. I finally figured out what I did wrong, all by myself. Not bad for an old guy.

Anyway...I'm back, with part two of my thoughts on Canada's tough on crime policies.

A decaying society typically includes the criminalization of its citizens: tough laws, more jails and jail time, more police state behaviour. Now why is that?

It always comes down to money. As the gap widens between the haves and have-nots, the necessity to control those at the bottom, requires a heavy hand. Take a look through history if you think I'm making this up.

Who is usually targeted for criminalization? the poor, minority races and anyone who threatens to end the gravy train. You might be surprised to find it's you next in line. Nonsense  you say. Consider this:

Over the last decades, Canada's family and criminal laws have changed. The system of agencies meant to provide supports and assist the severest cases of family problems, have instead become the power tool in the systematic and endemic criminalization of Canada's citizens.

Prior to these changes, if a marriage was in trouble, family, friends or a church minister stepped in and talked to the couple. People who actually knew the couple helped them through their troubles. Only in truly difficult cases would the police or social services be called in to work with a family. 

Family matters are now routinely dealt with by government services. These agencies almost always claim a mandate to keep families together. In practice, almost without exception, they have the exact opposite effect. Intrusive, manipulating, controlling and punishing, they exhibit the hallmarks of bullying: police, mental health services, the legal system, social welfare, child protection services and the list just keeps growing.

A typical scenario now goes like this: John and Mary get married, have a couple kids and all is well for some years until the local manufacturer closes down and John is out of work. Stressed out and worried, John who was never been a big drinker begins regularly having a few beers. Mary is concerned but figures once John gets back to work he'll be fine. After some months of this, John's drinking is beginning to become a real problem. When his EI cheque fails to show up one week, he gets in a foul mood, proceeding to get really drunk. He's hollering, banging doors and Mary is yelling at him to settle down. The kids are upset and one of them runs outside crying. The next-door-neighbour has seen the crying child and heard Mary yelling and calls the police. The police arrive and can hear Mary yelling, "Don't....don't...John...don't!"

The police officer knocks on the door. John answers and is asked to step outside. Quite drunk, John tells the officer to, "Go f**k himself!" and proceeds to head back in the house. Before he can figure out what's happening, he's on the ground, knee in the back, cuffs on and out to the cruiser. Mary and the children are in shock at this. The police officer takes down the particulars of the situation as he sees it. Mary says John didn't hit her, but the officer notes a bruise on her arm. Mary says she got it moving a table out of the dining room. She insists John has never been violent with her or the children. She is informed that John is going to be charged with assault. They don't know if an assault actually took place. That's what court is for. One officer takes the oldest child aside and asks, "Has your Dad ever hurt you or your mother?" Not sure what the officer is asking, the child says nothing. Within the hour a Children's Agency worker shows up wanting to interview the children.

Mary and John are now under the thumb of the system. They will spend the next couple years paying for lawyers or rely on legal aid. They will have to jump through hoops to get the Children's Agency worker out of their lives. Mary will be required to see a family counsellor who will then recommend she see a psychiatrist for depression. The psychiatrist will put her on medications and refer her for ongoing mental health evaluation. John will have to see an alcohol and anger management counsellor. The children will be assigned a counsellor at school. Not surprisingly, the children will  begin having all kinds of school troubles. John will keep losing jobs because he misses so much time for court ordered counselling, anger management, and court hearings that keep getting put over. Eventually the charges are withdrawn...but not before John and Mary's marriage breaks down.

A formerly okay family, who might well have managed, given time and family support, to gresolve issues surrounding John's unemployment and drinking, is demolished by the very system that claims to serve them. Who is gaining from all this? It sure isn't the families.

More on this subject in tomorrow's post. Right now, Dorg needs outside, then I'm headed for the sack.

Dell on Knowing When to End It

It has been an absolutely gorgeous day here at the lake. I was sitting on the dock with Dorg, thinking about my rule for knowing when to end a relationship: business, friend, spouse, children, acquaintances, strangers...doesn't matter.

My rule is this:  If there is no love in it, end it.

Let's use the example of a business relationship: How does love come into business? you ask. Okay, substitute the term "goodness" for "love", since goodness is a form of love.
You are in a business relationship. Over some months, you realize that your associate has a behaviour that is somewhat self-serving. Do you end the relationship?
...what if this self-serving behaviour clearly feeds something emotionally undeveloped in them?
...what if others or yourself are getting hurt?
...what if, having spoken to your associate regarding this behaviour, having pointed out it is hurtful to yourself or others, the associate still persists. Just when should you end the relationship?

We all want to be liked and, when it comes to a spouse or family member, a decision to disengage can be difficult. So how does one know when to end it? As my mother [and probably your mother] always said, "It's all fun and games, until someone loses an eye." Yet, it is not always necessary to disengage or end a relationship, even if someone is getting hurt. In fact, being patient while another person processes is a normal part of human relationships. We should be as patient with others in this regard as we hope others will be with our own failings. It is inevitable that even those who love us will hurt us. Just because we identify the other's behaviour as self-serving isn't necessarily a call for action.

It's the intent behind the behaviour and the resulting effect that need to be discerned, and it is at this point I apply my rule. I absolutely must disengage as soon as I realize that there is no "goodness" to be found anywhere in what is going on: the other person is engaging in a behaviour which has no "love" in it, nor any hope of love. Even if I were willing to put up with whatever is going on, I must not participate and I must disengage. By applying my rule I find I am able to make a decision without too much difficulty.

One thing is certain: No amount of love you bring to a relationship will have any effect whatsoever if there is no love there, excepting your own.

Dell on Where Were You

Alan Jackson's Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning) was playing on the radio this morning.

 911: September 11, 2001.

I know exactly where I was: at home, in the living room, waiting for my grand-daughter Shelley to finish getting dressed. The television had been on while we had eaten breakfast. That had been a solemn affair as we digested our bran flakes along with the phone call the night before.

We had been putting new line on Shelley's reel in anticipation of September's usually fine fishing. She was reeling  across from me while I was sitting in my chair holding a pencil stuck through the spool, feeding line out to her. The phone rang. Since I have hearing problems, I keep the volume settings high. Shelley listened as the police officer ... regretted to inform....as next of kin...had been found dead...alcohol...pills...but appeared to be natural causes...there would be an autopsy... had died at home...Shelley's fishing line lay pooled and tangled at the foot of the couch, where she had dropped it the evening before as she ran to her room.

This was my daughter who had died, but my own grief was secondary to Shelley's pain. Her mother had been trying for years to quit drinking with no success: the demons that drove her, I had realized too late, were in part my doing. I had provided the material things for my child; unforunately, I had been too wrapped up in myself to be the father I should have been. I failed to give my child the tools she needed to cope with life and had barely seen my daughter after she married David after her eighteenth birthday and moved out west.

If it had not been for David, Shelley's father, I might have lost contact with my grand-daughter, too. David made sure Shelley spent many weeks of her childhood in Ontario. He worked at long-haul truck driving and would give me a call when he was heading this way. I generally met him somewhere, and would keep Shelley until the call came and she went home again. By the time she was seven and her father was killed driving his rig near Toronto, I had a fair idea David had been sending my grand-daughter to me whenever her mother's drinking was getting out of hand.

After David's death, I only saw Shelley during her summer holidays. As long as I covered the travel expenses, I was welcome to Shelley for eight weeks. It was no financial hardship for me, but I kick myself now to think how things might have been if I had been more involved with Shelley the other ten months of the year. As it turned out, by the time she was fourteen, Shelley came to live with me permanently. And now her mother was dead.

As I reached over to shut off the television, the sight of the two towers stopped me in my tracks. There was smoke coming out of one of them and when I turned up the volume, the reporter was saying a passenger plane had just crashed into the tower. I quickly shut off the set as Shelley joined me. There was no way I was going to share that bit of news with her as we headed up to the city to make her mother's funeral arrangements.

Once on the highway, I pulled in at the Trading Post for gas. Shelley got out and went into the restaurant for a coffee and hot chocolate to go, while I pumped and paid for the gas. Finished with gassing up, I was surprised when she still wasn't done in the restaurant. There weren't many cars in the lot: tourist season was past its peak. Pulling my truck out of the gas bay I parked, just as Shelley appeared at the door waving me to join her.

That morning there were a dozen or so people in the restaurant; mostly travellers lingering over their breakfast coffee. Shelley simply pointed to the television. I listened to a reporter's shaken voice saying a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center's other tower. Then the now famous video clip of the moment of impact rolled on. Shelley and I walked outside into the sunshine, got in the truck and sat there, holding hands, crying tears of our shared and personal grief.

Where were you?

Dell on Seniors & Dogs: Naming the Puppy

My dogs are still hurting: my feet, that is. My UK second cousin would say, "My dogs are barking!"

Having those dogs on my mind, naturally got me thinking about the many great dogs I've known. Seniors often decide to give up keeping a dog once they stop driving. Who is going to want hair all over their car when you have to take the dog somewhere? What if you have to be hospitalized? What if you die? Who will take over the pet's care? My thought on that subject is this: if you cannot manage to keep a pet, make sure you have at least one you are seriously attached to among your friends or family. There is nothing like a dog to make a human a better person.

My grand-daughter, Shelley, is my wheels these days and her dog is as welcome as she is, here at camp. When Shelley first showed up with her dog it was just six weeks old, solid black with a tiny white star on the chest. He was the product of a pure lab bitch caught, as my mother would have said,  before her spaying date with the vet. This inexperienced lab bitch had nine pups, its owner told Shelley the day after they were born.

"Is there a runt?" Shelley had asked.

Shelley is so much like my sister Elaine: she's got this soft spot for the underdog. No matter what's up for grabs, whatever is left, after everyone's had their pick...why, that will be the very thing Shelley will pick right off the git go. And, yes, there was a runt: being hand fed by the owner's daughter. The lab bitch had plenty enough teats and milk. The problem was the stronger pups wouldn't let this one at mother's milk.

Now, I'll take a step back here and explain something about Shelley's childhood and dogs. Her mother [gone...meaning dead...nine years ago] kept dogs: just a few mind you, Samoyeds. The thing is, the part of Shelley's mother that was broken [check out my post - Dell on Family] played out with Shelley's mother putting all her focus into those dogs, instead of young Shelley. Amazingly, my grand-daughter recognized her mother's relationship with animals was not normal.

My grand-daughter grew up around the wilderness. Shelley had no problem watching me butcher a moose or clean a partridge. Pets were different: they depended on you to survive and dogs lived to please their owner. Shelley's mother's relationship with her Samoyeds was different. Nonetheless, Shelley has a healthy relationship with animals. From observing her mother's approach to training, punishment, Shelley knew she didn't want to train the pup she planned to adopt, using her mother's methods.

Even before she got her own pup, Shelley was so excited the time Oprah had Tamar Geller on her show. Shelley went out and bought the book The Loving Dog, and then the DVD, too.

Shelley was keen to show me the pup after she picked it up. She still hadn't decided on a name for it, but she knew the criteria: something gender neutral, one syllable, strong [to make up for size, I guess].

I think it would have been about eight weeks old, a good deal smaller than a normal lab pup, when Shelley came by my town place one day to show him off. She asked if I wanted to join her doing some animal therapy up at the seniors' home. Doc Simpson had given the pup a clean bill of health and the required vaccinations, so we were good to go.

There were oohs and aahs from the residents when we set the pup amongst the walkers and wheelchairs. It's little red collar and tags jingled as it went from person to person, getting acquainted.

One very elderly gentleman, heartier than the majority there, declared, "That is one fine looking dorg you've got there." and proceeded to remark, it's a tad on the puny side, and then talked about the dorgs he'd known, gave advice on raising dorgs, asked if she had a name for this here dorg of yours, while Shelley grinned from ear to ear, smothering her laughter, lest he think she was laughing at his speech. Nothing was said until we got back to her truck and had the pup secured in the travel carrier; then we peered inside at the pup and together chorused: "Good Dorg!"

Tamar Geller's training relies on love to motivate your dog. If there's anyone who should know how to get that right, it'll be my grand-daughter, Shelley.

I'm off for a bite to eat and then a nap. I think yesterday's run to the clinic in the rain is still taking it's toll.

Dell on Family

My grand-daughter keeps me up on the latest goings on. She's quite a woman. Sometimes I refer to Shelley as a kid. She's no kid. She survived a childhood that was awful, due in part to my hand in things. Now, how in the hell, you're asking, could I have had any effect on the life of a child two generations removed?

Have you read The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold? Shelley loaded it into the Kindle  for me. It could have been the story of my family if you left out the dying bits, changed the circumstances and switched the personalities around some.

I won't spoil it for you, but let me say this, Alice Sebold is one smart writer. I couldn't wait to finish it to find out how the situation would get resolved. I tell you, she nailed it with the mother who was pretty much like my mother and my sister Elaine: women unable to see their children as separate from themselves, wrapped up in putting on a public face.

When it came time to get myself married, everything seemed so wonderful in the beginning: this woman, who stole my heart and would bear my children, was my whole world. (I'll post the story about the actual romancing part another day). When I brought the future Mrs. Carver out to the east coast to meet the family, she got the stamp of approval the minute they laid eyes on her. That should have been clue number one that things were headed for disaster, yet I remained clueless for another dozen years. I couldn't see myself and I sure as heck wasn't seeing my wife clearly, either.

Having moved out to Ontario after university, looking for work, (stopped in Montreal for a bit: a tale for another day) I  married and ended up staying there. It was years before I understood that I had  purposely put distance between myself and my family only to recreate that same family in Ontario. Then there were days I would look at my wife in the morning and do a sort of check list of myself to see just how much I was looking like my own father.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my father, but knowing nothing else I thought what went on at our house went on at other homes. He was a successful businessman even during the depression. I rarely saw him and when I did all I could think was what a disappointment I must have been to him: nose in a book, more often than not at the library. Sure, I played ball with the boys and such, but the older I got the more I retreated into books. My two oldest brothers were both on their way to being lawyers and Marty was selling insurance and making a fortune. By comparison my successes were modest.

I'll cut to the chase: each bit of my life after I left home, either socially, economically or even emotionally, unfolded as a  repeat of everything I had wanted to leave behind. Worse, the longer it went on the more our daughter, Shelley's mother, suffered. My only child, the dearest little girl in the world, would be hanging on my pant legs before I could get off to work. Hell, I didn't want to spend five minutes with her mother yet I left her there day after day. Eventually, I had so many things on the go, the only time I spent at home was breakfast, dinner and sleeping. It wasn't my wife's fault any more than my own. We were just doing what we thought was expected; it was all we knew. No one talked back then about how these things might affect a child.

Our child, the one I spent no time with, married and was out the door before she was eighteen. A girl who could have been anything, she married the first fellow that said he loved her and then she put a couple thousand miles between her and us. Then my grand-daughter, Shelley, ended up being raised by my divorced daughter who changed men in her life faster than you can say jackrabbit. Her mother eventually got a taste for liquor, too, just as my older brothers had turned to the bottle. Shelley grew up with a childhood I wouldn't wish on anyone, yet she's grown into a fine woman who knows up from down where family is concerned.

Living this long, I've seen the effect my choices had on those around me. The miracle is that many folks love me anyway, including Shelley. Ain't life grand?

I lit the fire when I got into camp at supper time. Just a small one to take the damp out. My feet are still hurting so I'm going to crawl into bed now and see if getting horizontal doesn't help ease the pain. Sure hope I can sleep.