My Story

Simple peace.  That is to say an untroubled soul, a clear, calm mind.  It's what I want most out of life.  If this happens to include a loving, healthy wife, a sense of satisfaction with what we do respectively for a living and how we live our lives, a child born of love and passion, and only one bad cold every few years, then so much the better.  If all of the above are not included, well, c'est la vie.

I was born in a small town in Northern Ontario, and raised in a slightly larger mining town, also in Northern Ontario.  It’s not quite polar bear country, but damn cold in the winter.  Some people call this town Hitchhiker's Nightmare.  Situated not far from the cold winds and waters of Lake Superior, my little town was often closed off to the rest of the world for days by snowstorms.

I attended a French, Roman Catholic school there where the French speaking students were not allowed to associate with the “English” on school property.  Our parents were discouraged from using it with us at home.

Religion was a daily part of the curriculum.  Darwinism was not.  Maybe I wouldn't be such an atheist now, feeling like someone was trying to pull the wool over my eyes if I had been given all of my options earlier on in life, and left to make my own decisions on how the world was created.  All I know for sure at this moment in time, is that too many deaths, too many wars and too much military turmoil and destruction are the direct result of differences in religious beliefs, then and now.  I find it hard to believe that anybody's version of God would have wanted it this way.

For a time, my family and I lived a stone’s throw away from a creek where I could catch small trout and the occasional soaker, and roam the trails nearby in search of furry critters and bird nests and dewy spider webs, and new trails I imagined nobody else knew about.  I used to love walking along these little paths by the creek, the warm sun twinkling and winking at me from above through the branches and leaves.  If it got really hot, I would head for the lake, a spring fed body of cold, clear, unpolluted water where a whole new world of fun and adventure could be found.  The summers of my youth were so good, however short.

Winters were pretty good too but then I didn’t know any better...  An abundance of snow was the norm and road hockey almost a nightly event, the traffic sparse, the northern lights and twinkling stars keeping a silent watch over my friends and me.  When we were tired of playing hockey we would build forts, and tunnels too, out of what else but snow, provided there wasn't any in the driveway that needed shoveling, and my homework was done.

A snowmobile was my means of escape in my early teen years during those long winters, a short time with freedom from the small world I lived in, time to find some new trails to travel and new lakes to fish on.  To this day I can just close my eyes and in a few seconds be on a quiet, snow covered lake, a jig line in one hand, a steaming cup of tea in the other, the sound of cawing crows echoing off the softly rolling hills around me and into the distance, breaking the early morning silence as the sun rose above the tree lines, warming my face, my hands, my spirit.

My three sisters and I mostly went our separate ways and tried to stay out of each other’s hair.  I hated the fact that I had no brothers. I love my sisters much more now than I did then.

My father was an alcoholic.  I loved him most days but hated him more at the same time other days   He quit drinking later on in life, after I left home.  He tried to make amends and restitution with his children before he died and was successful for the most part.  He had a lot more restitution to make with my sisters than myself.  I only had to suffer verbal abuse and the occasional drunken punch.  My sisters had to suffer in awful ways still not spoken of much back then.  I didn’t find out about it until after I had left home.

My mother could have been so much more than she was had she not spent so much time worrying about my father while caring for us kids.  She was good for us while we grew up.  She was the rock in the family.  She was the glue that held the family together.  Years after my mother’s death one of my sisters told me our mother knew about the abuse going on between her and my father.  I didn’t need to know that but I guess it’s for the best if it helps us all heal and put closure to this part of our history.

High school was an uncomfortable time for me. Being shy, skinny and self-conscious while battling acne flare ups didn't help to build my self-confidence much.  For the most part high school was something I lived with, a time of confusion, uncertainty and choices I was ill prepared to make.  A period in life I just wanted to get over with.  My home life at this point was a difficult one.  It was not exactly conducive to supporting and obtaining the education I needed to move on, but I managed.

By then I had had enough of education for a while.  Financing for a post secondary education wasn’t going to come from my parents so I chose to go find work and build a nest egg to live on at a later date.  And I needed to get away from my father.  My first full time job was a gem as far as life skills go.  I've melted the frost from one or two ladies with the basic skills a humble short order cook has to know.  And basic food preparation in a health conscious manner is priceless information for the rest of your life.

Not only did I learn a few things in the kitchen, but since the restaurant was adjacent to the north shore of Lake Superior, I was able to get away from it all once in a while, to find peace and solace near the crashing, soothing waves, windswept beaches and rocky cliffs and shores of this largest of fresh water lakes in the world, the one the native people called Gitchy Gumi.  I spent hours on end on those beaches and shores, looking for that perfect picture.  The air, sometimes wet, sometimes cold, was always fresh, cleansing.  

One day I met a girl I could eventually pour my heart and soul out to.  She taught me a few things you can't learn in the kitchen, and we learned together that no person is an island.  It was a time of relative happiness for me...

A fire almost snuffed us both out one early winter morning, destroying all of my few worldly possessions, my camera equipment, and the pictures I had so carefully collected of my mostly solitary romps.  My first love was the first thing I threw out the back door, myself the second, flames licking my heels and singing my hair, both of us naked as jay birds, the cold January wind keeping us acutely aware of the horror of the moment.  And suddenly, it was time for a change of scenery. It was time to move on, to forget the nightmare that had made me realize just how short life can be...

Lacking the confidence to choose a road I had never traveled before, and not wanting to stray too far from a young woman who'd stolen my heart but hadn't decided if she needed the change of scenery too, I chose to follow a path similar to my peers', my friends', my father's, and started to work for the "Company", in the town I had called home for so long.  Confidence is one of the most important traits parents can instill in their children.  A good word at the "hiring department" can also be construed as a show of love.  But that's a different story...

I tried my hand at several different things during my employment with the town's mainstay, some of it underground, some of it three miles under a lake, in dark, wet- walled tunnels, a constant fifty or so degrees of moisture laden foggy air flowing around me, a yellowish light shining from a battery powered lantern on my hard hat, cutting through the darkness formed between the 60 watt bulbs spaced hundreds of feet apart.  This made me feel like a mushroom on the side of a road on a cold rainy night.  Not all of it was like this, but only a little can wreak havoc on the psyche, and a northern Ontario winter day can seem short enough as it is...

And there was the above ground processing plant, two miles away as the crow flies, if you could handle the heat, the hot steam, the dust, in every nook and cranny, in the air, on every metal beam and wooden support, waiting for the next vibration, to fall and flow into yet another corner, darkening everything it touched to a cold gray...

At shift's end I would watch the hunched over, older men walk alongside me, in front of me, up to the building which housed the showers, the "dry" as it was called, the last few hundred feet of the walk on an incline, taking it's toll on those close enough to look forward to retirement, but not much of it.  I didn't want to be one of those men...

It was time to go back to school.  I had nothing to hold me back really.  I was single again.  We had both changed respectively as we morphed into full adulthood and we had eventually realized there was no future for us together.  I had been putting school off for too long already. Everybody was raving about the opportunities opening up in the computer field so I decided to go into that area.  At twenty-four years of age I finally found myself in college, already feeling like I was too old to start learning full time again.

There is one thing I miss about working for the "Company".  That is very simply, after a long night shift, watching the sun come up and over the softly rolling hills surrounding the lake beside the little town I called home, a pleasant uplifting of the heart reminding me of just how tired I was and how well I would sleep very shortly.

I'm forty-seven years old.  I don't look it yet, people say. Mostly genetics.  I’m not a bad looking guy.  I finally grew out of my acne.  I’m not Robert Redford but I look more like Redford than the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I have strawberry blonde hair. Good thing too. It hides the gray quite well so far.  Time will tell.  My eyes are blue or green, depending on what I happen to be wearing that day or how angry you can make me.  I blush easily, when flustered, embarrassed, harassed, or laughing uncontrollably.  Some women find it cute.  I hate it.  It's hard to hide your feelings when you wear them on your cheeks...

Currently, I work for a large wholesale electrical and electronics distribution company in southern Ontario.  It’s not the best job in the world or the highest paid, but it’s not the worst by far.  I like it just fine.  It suits my needs for the time being anyway and I’ve never been refused a raise (after much impedance) when I’ve felt I needed one.  I learn something new everyday and I feel needed and appreciated.

For a time I lived in a small condominium I bought mostly as an investment vehicle.  One of the other reasons I bought it was because it was fifteen minutes away from work.  I was close to all amenities and there was a small sports bar nearby where “everybody knew my name”.   I’m not into sports much but a cold beer or two with friends on a hot day after work is great, and good for stress and tension too even if it’s not hot out.   A fine Australian or Chilean cabernet, at home with friends or not, with new age jazz or soft rock in the background can bend my ear and be good company too.

I try to look after myself.  I try to walk to work and wherever else I can, with a purpose.  I go easy on the cholesterol-laden foods but don't entirely deny myself of their part in my diet.  A pound of steak doesn't appeal to me at all though.  I take my vitamins.  I finally gave up cigarettes in 2001.  About a year later I started putting on a little weight.  I don't get called stick boy any longer so I guess I was probably too skinny anyway...

For most of my teen and adult life I've been denying that I suffer from depression.  I inherited this along with my hair.  Genetics at work again, for better and/or worse.  Medication, therapy, a change in diet and time to heal old wounds has made me realize just how good life can be.  For so many years I told myself I was just a melancholy guy who got the blues more often than most.  What a crock I was feeding myself.  All I was doing was short changing myself and my ability to function normally.  I’ve missed out on a lot of what life has to offer because of depression.  I’m not bitter most days but I do wish I had gotten help earlier, seen the warnings signs and admitted to myself that I had a serious problem.  It’s hard to admit such a thing to yourself let alone the rest of the world. I suffered in stubborn, ignorant silence, consoling myself with the fact that no matter how hard life seemed there is always somebody worse off than me.

I met a cute Canadian-Italian lady a couple of years ago. We’ve shared our second New Year's celebration together.  Sometimes my arms ache to hold her close to me.  I thought that only happened in movies and romance novels.   Without a doubt in my mind she's made me happier than any woman I've ever had a relationship with, and I love her very much.  Not being under a cloak of depression anymore has certainly made that more plausible.  She’s my closet friend and my partner in so many aspects of life.   We bought a home in the spring of 2004.  I asked her to marry me in December of 2005.  I think we’ll be fairly happy together.

We do have our moments though, as most couples do.  I don't make things easier on us.  I'm not your average kind of guy.  I need a lot of personal space.  Not because I need a lot of room for material things, because for the most part I’m a minimalist.   But for a time, while still at home with my parents, I slept in a makeshift bedroom in an unused hallway.  Yet another time my bedroom was a space behind a curtain placed in the living room in an apartment we lived in while we waited for a vacancy in another apartment in the same building.  It was hard to find a space to be in where I could gather my thoughts, think things through or just be alone.  My fiancée often thinks I just want to be away from her but that's not the case.  One day I hope she'll come around and realize I just need more space than others. 

I make no concessions anymore in matters such as these.  I'll always remember the things I did without.  I'll always humbly cherish and enjoy to the fullest the things I now have.    

Life in general sometimes makes me someone other than who I want to be or makes me feel other than how I want to feel, so I like to spend time by myself to sort out why I feel as I do, or why I reacted as I did, after a particularly stressful day or event.  This way I can maybe deal with life's little thorns somewhat more intelligently and with less stress the next time around.  I like to think this will make me better able to achieve and acquire what I want most out of life.

I lived on my own for so long.  I'm selfish now, in a manner of self-preservation, because I seem to lose a part of myself in every relationship that hasn’t worked out.  Marriage has been for the most part in the future but on the back burner because of how I was feeling as I wallowed in depression and self-pity.  Holding a tiny, helpless “babe in arms” makes me experience heart-felt pangs of regret and remorse.  I've always been slightly afraid of small children old enough to argue with me, especially the whiny, sticky ones who sometimes smell a little funny.  I'm told they smell differently if they're your own children.  At my age I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably never know.  

I hate throwing food out.  I'll have the same thing for dinner three times in a row instead of throwing it out.  A World Vision commercial had quite an impact on me one day while I was feeling sorry for myself, and my better half and I are now  sponsors.  This doesn't make me a hero but if say, all the coffee drinkers in the world bought just one less coffee a day, and gave that measly pittance to wonderful organizations such as World Vision, together, we could literally wipe hunger off the face of the earth.  Then we'd all be heroes.  World wide,  thousands of children die of hunger each and every day through no fault of their own.  And those are just the ones accounted for.

Years after I left my home town, the local high school had a fifty year reunion.  I didn’t attend but I did see some of the pictures of the alumni that did and wished then that I had attended.  It would have benefited me greatly to see how far I’ve come, who I’ve become.  Sometimes you can’t see a difference until you have something to compare it to.

I’m just now getting to know who I really am, whom I can be.  As I get older, what is no longer or wasn't ever feasible becomes more obvious.  Is that wisdom?  Regret?  Circumstantial result?  A combination, I think.

I feel like one of the luckiest guys on earth on some days.  I can't believe how unjust, how random, how unfair life can be.  Some people say there is no heaven and hell, that you dish out in a previous life what you have to live with in the next one.  I tend to be a supporter of that theory.  I think I may have been a cat or maybe a dog in a previous life.  I love being scratched and touched in a lazy, loving manner.  I can’t seem to get enough of it.  I hope I never used to bite people…