Remembering My Bananas Brother

It’s sad and it’s sweet… and I knew it complete… when I wore a younger man’s clothes…

How can any person live 79 years and feel they’ve been shortchanged?

How can you have lived in 7 countries, have a wife and 3 kids, 5 grandkids, 2 great grandchildren, and somehow be cheated by death? You can’t really… except…

… it feels to me like he was cheated, like a million others, probably someone you love(d)… not by death, death is certain… but by a beautiful mind that became shrouded in dense cloud and mist. Alzheimer’s storm.

Today I write this blog post as an homage and tribute to my brother Robert who passed this week… my family of 5 siblings has winnowed down to 3 …

I really didn’t come to know my brother until my adult years… Robert and I were separated by 15 years in age, and when he moved from Hamilton to Edmonton to work on his PhD when I was about 5 or 6 years old, our age separation was multiplied by a few thousand kilometres of physical distance.

As I grew up, I heard stories of my “foreign” brother… mostly about how incredibly smart he was. Bright enough to skip 2 grades in school. I teased myself later on that I was a failure, a black sheep, because I only moved ahead one grade.

Robert married a lovely prairie girl Lois (another PhD student) and they shared an adventurous life of making babies (3 in total) while moving every few years to live and teach in a host of countries (Malaysia, England, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Wales).

In between their globe-hopping they would settle for a year or two in Regina or Saskatoon before taking on another international escapade.

Robert was also a bibliophile, a book lover.

Broadway District, Saskatoon

One day he opened a popular bookstore in Saskatoon, Broadway Book Merchants.

Broadway Street is a destination artistic haven to this day and his bookstore was a well-known stop for many many wandering the streets. Robert revelled in the authors who regularly sat in his store to autograph new releases.

He was never so happy as when celebrated author and storyteller W.O. Mitchell (Who Has Seen The Wind, Jake and the Kid) came to the house for dinner after a book signing. After dinner, Mitchell said in his lovely sonorous voice that he’d be happy to share stories with the family all night long, so long as the alcohol flowed liberally! Robert (an inveterate wine and beer maker himself) was delighted to oblige.

Bookselling retirement was eventually forced on him as the inevitability of the mega-online booksellers ate away at bricks-and-mortar retailers. He accepted the inevitable and moved on.

Somehow, over the years, my wife Maureen and I were able to meet up and spend bits of time here and there with Robert; never for long, but let’s say it was “quality time”.

Cross-country skiing over mountain passes in Jasper, organizing and coordinating family reunions, vacationing together in China, visits in Cusco, Peru, teaching me to add cumin to my chili recipe, and his many visits to our Okanagan home gave me the chance to “bond” with Robert.

A wee sip of Chinese snake wine… adventurous!

He and I shared a silly sense of humour that was always best expressed while taking in anything by the Monty Python crew…

Robert wasn’t a perfect man (he and I must be related!), but he had an inner softness and vulnerability that I loved.

We became “brothers” as adults when childhood hadn’t afforded us that opportunity.

On our shared journey across China almost 10 years ago, I could sense small changes in Robert’s mental functioning that said something was awry.

Sure enough, only a couple of months after we returned, the Alzheimer’s diagnosis was confirmed and his lengthy downward journey became his final unwanted odyssey.

This past year, I wrote a song (with an irreverent title but one that Robert would have laughed over anyways) about Robert’s decline that I’ll share with you here once again today.

Thanks for being my brother Robert…

BABY It’s Cold Outside…

“This is my brother Larry, the BABY!!”

Most would cringe and cower at these words, thinking “Oh shit, here we go again…”, mortified.

Most would hear those as fighting words.

Most would shudder especially when they reach 20, 30, 40, 50 years of age. BABY?!

Not me…

I always blushed with humble pride, almost as if I had done something skillful and miraculous to attain such an honour.

“Yes, well, it was nothing really, anyone who put in the 10,000 hours of intense effort could be the baby too.”

But no 10,000 hours of training or effort are required to be the “baby”, simply luck of the birth order lottery.

Birth order… I guess it just has to be all the talk of Christmas and swaddled babies that somehow has me thinking about our own non-virgin births (I don’t want to tattle on your Mom and Dad, but yup, they did the dirty!) and the glittering point on the constellation where we shine within our family galaxy.

Reading things into birth order is akin to being a tea leaf reader or apprenticing as a Zodiac or Chinese Horoscope disciple. There may be some tenuous and practical connections, but the level of hogwash skepticism and requirement for faith is higher than that of pure science. If nothing else, it’s fun and entertaining, yes?

……….

1st child: When the first swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital and demand x-rays.

2nd child: When the second swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass.

3rd child: When the third swallows a coin you deduct it from his allowance!!

……….

I was born the youngest i.e. the BABY… of 5.

Three or 4 years separated each of us, meaning that the range of eldest to youngest was about 15 years… 15 years and 13 days to be exact.

When you hit 60 years of age, the title “BABY” begins to feel ridiculous, almost an insult or joke on the bearer.

Even so, I’ve always kind of treasured my role, my spot as the youngest. Youngest has a cachet, a semblance of specialness and reverence.

To be introduced as the baby has been a high honour while at the same time one needing guarded vigilance and defence.

Vigilance because inevitably, introduction as the baby in the family also comes with a tag-on comment, “yeah, he has always gotten away with murder, he is so spoiled”. 

What the H…? My hockey-skilled pugnaciousness comes to the forefront when I’m described as “spoiled”.

Are you kidding me? Spoiled? Me? Spoiled? Screw you….

Spoiled?

I delivered newspapers and magazines door-to-door every day from the time I was enrolled in Mrs. Putns’ Grade 1 class all the way up til the day I got my first McJob at 15 … yeah, at McDonalds.

Spoiled?

I always felt left out and empty because my sibs could go see boobies and bums on the movie screen or sip Singapore Slings in the bar years before I could even attempt to sneak in.

Spoiled?!

I was never lavished with parental gifts of expensive bicycles or cars or lavish vacation trips to Mexico or Hawaii. My parents never paid a cent for my college education.

I’m sorry, do I sound defensive? Maybe just a tad?

OK, I’ll grant you that I coasted just a wee bit in elementary and high school when teachers recognized me as another “Green” kid.

Every one of my older siblings had skipped a grade in school, so it was naturally assumed I’d been bestowed with a heaping dollop of inherent intellect. No proof required. 2 + 2 = … 6?

Wrong!

Sometimes it took the whole school year for amiable Miss Taylor or Mr. French to realize that I had maggot brain and was the simpleton in the family group!

There’s even a 2007 study that shows a correlation between IQ and birth order: the more older siblings one has, the lower one’s IQ. Not my fault… Dummy’dom is my fate! Thanks Mom and Dad…

(ASIDE: A recent study at Brock University in Ontario noted: “… men may be more likely to be homosexual if they share their birth mother with older brothers. Each older brother increases a man’s odds of being homosexual by approximately 33%.”… so… dummy’dom but not gay’dom for me… life is like a 50/50 draw.)

Now occasionally in school I was presented with Proof of Intelligence trials. Apparently, handing in one of my brother’s or sister’s previous year’s crumpled test sheets that they had aced wasn’t always accepted. WTF!?

One early testing trauma – my potential Waterloo – I encountered as the Baby was the Grade 6 Music Sight Reading Award. This was my opportunity to sink or swim in the family intellect pool.

Each of my 4 sibling elders had previously passed the challenging test of being capable of reading and singing music by sight from notation on the musical staff. The sight reading certificate was part of the Green family lore and pride.

Judgment day grew near… I spent sleepless juvenile nights awaiting my fate, a fate I felt certain would finally expose and recognize me as the “dunce” of the family.

The dreaded moment descended and Mrs. Brewer watched closely, her eyes burning into my sweaty-browed face, listening as I diligently sight read and sang the music sheet set in front of me…

… my most joyous childhood day was when I proudly received the Sight Singing certificate.

Now I’ve read that some qualities of a last born include being manipulative, charming, blames others, attention seeker, tenacious, people person, natural salesperson, precocious, engaging, affectionate, and… loves surprises.

The surprise of passing my Sight Reading Test was much more than a minor moment of crossing a tricky obstacle, a youthful Tough Mudder challenge.

I’d arrived. I truly belonged in the family, here was the proof!

I still possess and proudly admire the certificate to this day.

……….

Baby it’s cold outside. Christmas grows nearer and I love watching some TV Christmas classics like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Isn’t it charming and captivating when Clarice tells young Rudolph that he’s cute ?

And on this bright mid-December morning, wouldn’t you agree that it’s equally charming when child and family therapist Meri Wallace, author of Birth Order Blues says:

“The youngest can be cute because of ‘forever being the baby.'”

I’m cute! I’m cuuuutttteeeee…

HOGWASH!

Winter Wedding Bells …

The darkness is inky and suffocating.

Street lights are almost non-existent, a few stars shoehorn their way through the heavy cloud cover overhead and the moon hasn’t risen yet.

In November it was delightful and peaceful to see my breath in wispy frosted clouds and hear the soft swish of fresh snow beneath my boots. Fluffy, romantic snowflakes materialized magically out of the darkness, inviting me to open my mouth wide and feel the first cold flake on my tongue.

But now it’s early March and the lustre of the fresh chill has long gone; all that awaits now is anticipation, the teasing anticipation of longer days of daylight and the waitful suspense in tulip and daffodil bulbs forcing themselves through the half-frozen soil with spring’s promise.

The shouts of my pals Hugh and Jerome and Larry M. as we play street hockey are a great distraction to the seemingly endless snowdrifts and scarfs over my frozen cheeks.

But who am I kidding?

Those are my memories from living in southern Ontario and Yellowknife, NWT and BC’s William’s Lake where winter storms and frigid temperatures defy global warming now and show up as unruly revellers for the party, maybe just a bit less frequently than in years past.

Today I live in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley where winter usually graces the surrounding mountains, only rarely showing its true face in the valley bottom where most of my neighbours wonder if putting snow tires on their car, despite provincial laws commanding it, is really necessary.

I’ve flown in for my brother’s son’s wedding in southern Ontario this week. – a joyful family event that involves no caskets or urns or “Rock of Ages” hymns thank goodness.

It’s a nice change to put on a suit and tie with a lightness inside and stuffing kleenexes in my jacket pocket not to catch tears of sadness, but only those of gladness.

But winter, the icy, blizzardy winter that I had forgotten existed is still playing itself out in full force here in the populated heartland of the country.

Snowbanks are piled up to my waist all through the residential streets, fleece-lined parkas and down-filled jackets are zipped up to the chin and long lines of vehicles fill the highway air with great wispy clouds of vapour trails like jets passing high overhead.

I laugh inwardly when I ponder and reflect on how my ancestors who forged lives – difficult, harsh lives – in this frigid winter climate, would look at us today.

In great migratory hordes, we pack our bikinis and speedos into rolling closets and cram into airplanes every week by the thousands to join the birds who left in the late fall to fly south for soothing sunshine and balmy temperatures.

We fill white sandy beaches to overflowing with outsized beer bellies and screaming red-skinned shoulders for a respite, a week or two where we can forget our icy homeland.

Just 20, or 75, or 150 years ago, the great majority of us had grandparents or great-grandparents who crowded onto ships and trains looking to escape the challenges of their own homelands – famine, war, persecution, earthquakes, rape, floods – all manner of threats to life.

Harsh, inhospitable, often horrific lives were made livable and hopeful again when they landed on our shores. My own Irish ancestors left on big sailing ships from a land that refused to feed them or allow them to own land and prosper by the toil of their ingenuity and labours.

And here I am today, occasionally bitching about the cold weather outdoors. Woe is me. Oh puhleeeeease…. whine with that cheese anyone?!!!

No one else will, so I pinch and remind myself.

I remind myself of how fortunate I happen to be, living in a 21st century world where colourful, flavourful food from every corner of the world is at my fingertips …

… I awake in a home that comes to a cozy, comfortable temperature at the flick of a switch on the wall …

…. War is something I pay money to see in a theatre, a bag of hot buttered popcorn in my hand …

… Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods? I only visit these on the 10 o’clock TV news …

… Sure, ravaging viral and bacterial plagues are worrisome but tiny in number to those of even a hundred years ago.

It’s so important that I remember that I’m living a king’s life only because countless other of my relatives – and yours – struggled and survived and used ingenuity and intelligence and perseverence.

So when I sit next to my siblings and nieces and nephews, smiling proud, watching my nephew recite his vows of love, honour and betrothal to his lovely bride, I’ll open my eyes and take a moment to look outside at the late winter snows and frigid winds.

And instead of grimacing and lamenting how nasty and cruel the forces of nature are, I’ll take a deep breath in … Namaste!! – and appreciate the incredible dream of a world I’ve inherited.

It’s through the trials and labours of my grandparents, great-grandparents and their grandparents, that I’m typing a blog post on a computer that wirelessly connects me to anyone in the world in an amazingly comfortable, warm chair in a hotel room …. while just 5 feet away through a wall … a late winter freeze blasts away and I’m practically oblivious.

Why would I buy a lottery ticket? I’ve already won the jackpot!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choosing My Own Path…

THERAPY TIME!

My Dad was ashamed of me fairly frequently as a kid, teenager and young adult (He died when I was 23, so I never saw his take on my later years.)

I was a good kid, a pretty good son.  I think I was one of the white sheep in the family (I won’t mention any “black sheep” by name!).

I was:

• a good student,
• a fair athlete
• respectful of adults
• had some musical talents
• I delivered newspapers every day and paid for most of my own “extras”
• I didn’t do drugs.

Of course I wasn’t perfect.

I was also:

• a lazy student (then AND now!).
• I was a bit arrogant – my Grade 2 teacher did mention my “superiority attitude” in a report card
• I became moderately chubby in my early teen years
• I illicitly sampled frighteningly horrible mixtures of my friends’ Dads’ homemade Italian and Hungarian wines on a regular basis from the age of 13 onwards.
• I snuck into crowded wedding receptions at the local Greek Orthodox church to get free alcohol.

I realize now the great power that resides in the hands and words of parents as they raise their young, often unknowing the good and bad they impart so innocently to the cherubic sponges in their care.

SHAME is a nasty thing to hang on your kids. I was lucky, really, because so are physical or sexual abuse, or neglect, or a bunch of other mean, nasty things that somehow end up screwing with our heads for months and decades to follow. Those were never a part of my life experience.

But my father tried to put me in jail. The warden was called, “Mr. What Do People Think of You“.

I’ve lived now almost as long as my father – I still don’t agree with everything he did, but in every year that passes, I gain a better understanding of who he was and why he did the things he did.

There is wisdom to be found in the Indian prayer:

Oh, Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”

Understanding.

Yup … Understanding.

I’ve thrown away my ignorance and I “get” it.

Whaddy mean? “Get” what?

Well, I get the things we normally shake our heads at and say, “why did he/she do that? … what could possibly motivate a person to live their life that way?”

And if I don’t truly “get” it, then I can at least remind myself that something in their history has shaped them and pushed them in a certain direction.

I UNDERSTAND, even if I don’t really get it.

Understanding is one of the reasons I enjoy travel so much. In the people I meet and the places I go I develop a growing understanding – a realization that everyone simply wants the best for themselves AND for their families.

No matter how old I become, I still carry in my head my father’s disapproving voice, his disappointed expression, because my hair was too long, or my grades too low, or my decision to live common-law before marriage not acceptable to him. There’s not enough street drugs or Lucy’s 5 cent therapy to rid the voice and facial disappointment.

But I’m OK with that, because …

I’ve Chosen My Own Path.

I’ve decided it wasn’t my Dad’s fault when he wanted me to be a star for all the neighbours and relatives to look at and see the shine reflect back on him.

He was likely raised in a lake of shame himself and it was a part of his genetics … a part of my genetics that I have to push back against cause my Mom swore to me that I was his son. My Ma would have never lied to me, right?

My mother, like so many mothers, was always the counter-balance, the unconditional loving sort that took me as I was. Aren’t (most) mom’s great?

My Dad probably journeyed through life with one or both of his own parent’s voices ringing in his ears, and my kids probably live their days with my voice in theirs’ – poor sots …

Watching the movie WILD this week (a great movie BTW in this reviewer’s opinion!), I was reminded of how we all seek meaning and understanding in our own way.

Reese Witherspoon (as the main character Cheryl Strayed) wanders the difficult Pacific Crest Trail while fighting an internal battle in her mind that wanders uneasily through the difficulties of her life – until at the end of the exhaustive trail she gains a greater understanding and acceptance of herself.

She chooses her own path knowing there are missteps and fumbles, loves, losses, joys – and realizes that her life is all about her own choices – good or foolish – that eventually brings her to a peaceful place and an acceptance of herself.

My Dad wasn’t a bad man. He was a good guy who supported a household and a family of 5 kids. He kept us safe and well fed. He went to church on Sunday and paid his taxes. He laughed at his own bad jokes and drank alcohol infrequently.

He wasn’t a perfect man or father, just like I’m not a perfect man or father to my kids. I resented him for many years. But I’m past that now that I’ve lived and walked some of the roads that he travelled.

I’m choosing my own path and learning understanding along the way.

Thanks for taking the time to be my therapist … Your 5 cents is in the mail …

 

 

How I Lived as CinderFella …

 

The pristine look of my Step-Mom Jean’s kitchen in reality…

 

It was a nasty thing to do but I was feeling a bit ill-natured. What can I say, I was a teenage boy.

I inclined my face to just the right angle so I could see the reflected light from the overhead fixture, then slowly dragged my finger across the brown metallic finish of the kitchen stove hood, squiggling my name in the light greasy coating on its surface.

This is how she thought it looked after I fingered my name in grease on the stove hood….

 

A Scrooge-like pleasure pulsed through my body.

It was the passive-aggressive approach of a hormonal, acne-stricken 16 year-old adolescent to a fresh, unwelcome presence in the house.

My house. Not her’s.

My retired Dad’s new wife Jean – he married her just over a year after my Mom died from a heart attack – was a clean freak, and I had found a chink in her hygienic armour.

Jean cleaned everything top to bottom three times daily. The house was cleaned more frequently than the air exchanged. How had she missed cleaning this surface?

When my mother was alive just 18 months earlier, the discovery of a light film of animal fat on any kitchen surface would have been commonplace.

She wasn’t a slob by any means, but Mom didn’t give her life over to the deity of Mr. Clean.

I know this because my job on most Saturday mornings before or after my Peewee hockey game, was to go about the house, joyfully spraying over-generous wafts of Lemon Pledge – aren’t those spray cans single-use only? –  on any wooden furniture surface and buffing it to a wonderfully citrus-scented sheen. There was always a light layer of dust anywhere I went with my cloth.

“Larry, you only need a very light spray to remove the dust and make it shine”, Mom would say.

“Yup“, I ignored her, as I continued on my merry aerosol-aplenty way. I loved how the Pledge hit the wood surface and magically bubbled up into a white foam like painful hydrogen peroxide on a nasty, gritty wound.

Many of us at some time in our lives find the need to adapt to a new face sitting across the dinner table in place of our Mom or Dad.

It might be through divorce or separation, or as in my case, the death of a parent.

I imagine sometimes this is easy, but in most cases, it’s difficult to transition a Mom or Dad.

These are the people who changed our diapers, walked us to school on fog-soupy days, held our hand when we jittered nervously, waiting in the dental office.

Our lifelong security blanket has been taken away forcibly and suddenly, and tossed into the trash. We realize how Linus feels when Lucy steals his blanket, except it’s not as funny as in the Peanuts comics.

In its place a shiny new substitute has been handed to us. And it doesn’t really matter how nice or beautiful or competent or loving the substitute is. We know it’s not the original that we bonded with from our moment of birth, the familiar smell, the sound of her/his voice will never be the same.

It’s a bit funny in my case because I kind of welcomed the entrance of someone – anyone – into our lives. My Dad and I had lived as solitary bachelors for a year (technically my brother Gord lived at home still, but with a fiance in his life, he was seldom seen) and it was an uncomfortable co-existence.

Really, it would have made a great sit-com if there was any humour to be mined. Two guys, one bald and retired in his late 60’s, the other a long-haired 70’s-era kid. Think of the fun possibilities! I can hear the laugh track rollicking over our stunted, confused conversations. Think Jack Nicholson living with Justin Bieber. Who wouldn’t bust a gut over those conversations?

Somehow the sit-com scenario played out more like a dull, lonely drama in real life. So what did we say to each other? Not much.

There was a lot of silence and conversations kept to the required minimum of “Will you be home for supper?“, or “I’d like you to cut the lawn today“, or more threatening, “You need to get your hair cut.” That last one was a constant thorny itch to make a moody teenager’s blood boil.

Then when Jean, an old family church friend entered the picture, it was a good thing.

My Dad needed companionship that a 16 year-old son had no ability or intent of providing. Jean was a talkative, cheery presence that filled a major gap left in an eerily quiet home after Mom’s sudden departure.

She was just what the doctor ordered to make an older, lonely fellow’s life something whole once again, and he too filled a chasm that existed in Jean’s world after her husband died a few years earlier from emphysema. It was a win-win for them both.

I just didn’t see it that way from a younger son perspective. She was perfect for my Dad, but not for me.

I was living in a perceived hell I hadn’t asked for.

I missed my Mom terribly.

I’d never had anything resembling a close relationship with my Dad. I wanted an escape but had no clue how anything could possibly change.

And then, like a Disney wand had swept through with its magic, it happened.

My older sister, Betty, who had lived and worked in B.C. for a few years, decided to move back to Ontario early that summer to be closer to our family. In a moment of weakness, and probably, with her social sciences background, feeling great pity for me, she suggested that I move into an apartment with her, and, well, the rest is history.

By the end of summer and the start of my Grade 13 school year (Ontario was the only Canadian province that held onto that tradition), my Dad and Jean were happily living alone in their love nest, while I shared a small nearby apartment with my saviour, my sister.

I completed my Grade 13, then studied at college for a couple of years until I was a certified Medical Laboratory Technologist winging off to my first professional job in Yellowknife, NWT.

In looking back, I never really disliked Jean. She was a bit like a stray puppy with a waggly tail that pushes its way through your back door one day unexpectedly. She wasn’t perfect. But I wasn’t perfect either.

And fortunately, when she discovered my little scrawled trail of grease on her presumed pristine stove hood, instead of unleashing a burst of anger at me, she laughed and laughed at the humour of it all.

She continued to talk and laugh about it for the next few years of companionship she offered to my Dad in his declining years.

Bringing a new woman into our home wasn’t the easiest, smoothest move my Dad ever made. There were difficult, tense moments.

Oily, slippery, dirty moments come about in all our lives. We need to hang on tenuously by our fingernails sometimes and remind ourselves that eventually, this too shall pass.

I may have harboured some bitter, resentful feelings towards my Dad for “replacing” my Mom. But I got over that simmering emotion years ago. Now I can smile knowing my Dad’s last years were happier and more contented with Jean around, even if the stove hood was a bit greasy.