Article Category Archives: Creative Nonfiction

A Curse and a Blessing

This entry was posted on by Pamela Stewart.

The Rural and Urban Divide by Brenna Lord

The zygote that became me was formed inside a poisoned woman. Tina’s heart was pure and strong, although it was broken by the man who provided half of my DNA.

The heart is a symbol of love in the same way a skull and crossbones signifies a poisonous substance. Sometimes the two collide. Tina’s blood kept pumping through her heart, but it was challenged by something far more insidious than lost love and being single, pregnant and Catholic in small town Cape Breton.

Maybe Tina doesn’t remember my birth on March 11, 1953, because she was in a Twilight Sleep. It sounds like a lovely dream, but it was a combination of morphine to relieve pain and scopolamine to dull the memory. Scopolamine was made from a plant called Angel’s Trumpet, but the drug has been called devil’s breath.

Our bodies are made of chemicals. We’re formed from a stew of life-sustaining proteins, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. The oxytocin in my mother’s body started labour. The prolactin that stimulates breast milk production also triggers tears.

This was the modern age, however, and women deserved to spare their minds from the pain of childbirth, their breasts from the tug and pull of a hungry child. DuPont advertised “Better Living Through Chemistry” and people wanted to believe that was true. So the devil came in the form of the drugs that took away the joy my mother should have felt giving birth. He hid in tin cans disguised as the perfect substitute for breast milk. Mum fed me diluted Carnation evaporated milk.

The devil also hid in the pond beside my mother’s house. Her family lived at the corner of Ferry St. and Walker St. in an area of Sydney known as the Hoople Block. It was located beside the manmade concoction known as the Tar Ponds.

When Tina was a child, she played in the toxin-filled soup with her siblings. They chewed the gobs of black, sticky tar like it was gum. We may be formed of chemicals, but the polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals that were run off from the steel mills don’t belong in the human body.

When I was a year old, we moved away from the stink and dirt of coal mines and steel mills. Toronto may have its own hazards, but they didn’t compare to the place I spent my first year of life.

Sydney was still in my mother’s blood—or maybe it was the hidden evil at the bottom of the pond. The poisonous chemicals were man’s mistake, and I say that because it was men who were the captains of industry. It was also the poor men of Sydney who worked in the coal mines and steel mills that created of one of Canada’s worst environmental disasters. But it was often women who bore the brunt of their sins.

Mum got breast cancer when I was eleven. She woke up from what was supposed to be a biopsy to find a deeply mined expanse where her right breast used to be.

My mother never committed the sin of vanity. She was a plain woman who didn’t wear makeup or jewelry, but her personality needed no gloss. At home, she rarely wore her bra, which had a prosthesis filled with something like birdseed. She said it was uncomfortable. She would leave her bra hanging on the bathroom doorknob. When I was sitting on the toilet, I’d squish it in my hand, like a bean bag.

I was also single when I got pregnant. The toxins I put into my body were alcohol, weed and nicotine. It was the early ’80s. I knew there was a baby growing inside me before I missed my first period, and as soon as I felt that call from my womb, I stopped poisoning that new life.

There was no Twilight Sleep for me, but an oxytocin drip to induce labour; nature replaced by the wonders of modern medicine. By the time my second son was born, I was careful about what I put into my body.

I watched my children grow strong and healthy as the demons hiding in my mother’s body made their presence known again. Her bones were rotted with cancer.

My two blessings were mine because my mother gave me life. When you hold your baby in your arms, you forget the pain of childbirth. But there is no Twilight Sleep to take away the memory of watching someone you love removed from this earth in a flurry of pain that no chemicals can tamp down.

The Sydney curse affected many of my mother’s relatives. The fruit of our family tree is breast, ovarian and colon cancer. I, too, got cancer. My right breast is still there, it just appears to have a bite taken out of it.

Sydney was never meant to be a Garden of Eden, but it didn’t have to be the Malebolge. The site of the Tar Ponds has been turned into a green space called Open Hearth Park. The sludge has been solidified and buried under grass where children play. It’s buried, but is the curse truly gone? Maybe, like cancer, it lies in wait.

I imagine my mother standing in Open Hearth Park. Her arms are outstretched and sparrows feed at her right breast. Her C cup birdseed breast becomes a B, then an A and disappears. Some seeds fall to the ground and where there was poison, there is now life.

Are You Listening?

This entry was posted on by Sheila Morrison.

In the Inn: Medication and Mirror by Roxanne Smith

Your child, who is joyful, creative and loving, metamorphoses at age 18 into someone you don’t recognize. She becomes a raging, frightened, lost soul who slams doors and forgets how to dress, sleep, talk coherently or perform any of the things we all do so naturally. What do you do? Knowing that your child is not a drug user or a drinker you do what any loving parent would do. You take her to the doctor, have her admitted to hospital, and sit clutching the pain in your heart. You wait for someone to say she is going to be just fine.

But they tell you it is your fault, that you have been a terrible parent. It is best you stay away, they say. But of course you can’t. You seethe at their stupidity. Why does no one ask you what kind of person she is, what she loves, what makes her heart soar? She is unable to dress herself, to bathe, to return a hug. And you are unable to grasp their words: This, they say, is a behavioral problem.

Sleep eludes you, and you wonder, have I missed something? Should I make room for their point of view? They discharge her and recommend tough love. Find a room for her and let her figure it out, they say. You find her a room in a home two blocks away and leave her there. You feel sick, certain that this is wrong, so wrong. In the morning there is a note in your mailbox. How could you, it says. Remove her from our home immediately. You take her back to the hospital. There is no choice.

And still, you are to blame. You are incredulous. You become mother bear. You speak on the radio, the television, you write to the newspapers. You fight for better care, for some acknowledgement of the terror of losing your child to something you don’t recognize. The drugs they give her make her eyes roll up until her irises disappear. Her hands tremble over piano keys that no longer meet her fingers and nothing makes sense. She is ignored, locked up, fractured, bruised, until one day, after eight years in hospital, a smart geneticist makes a diagnosis of a syndrome–she is missing some genetic material on her twenty-second chromosome–and it all suddenly does make sense but there is still the terror that no one can fix her. They do, however, try. A few kind souls emerge from the staff you find so hard to trust and they acknowledge that she is extremely ill. They offer soothing gestures. She is young. She has potential, they say.

Two more years go by in hospital. She is discharged again. The beautiful small option home has a piano! But it is next to a huddle of staff and housemates crowded around the television. The overwhelming smells of Comet cleanser, deep fried chicken, and staffers’ cigarettes coalesce and swirl around with the high-pitched voices of too many people jammed into too small a space, hollering, ordering, berating, complaining, and her brain short circuits once again.

Back in hospital the isolation, threats, electroconvulsive therapy, security guards, and the bedroom with peeling paint all reaffirm for her that there is no hope.

Five years later, and 15 years after it all began, they want to place her permanently in a locked facility in the community. We have nothing more to offer, they tell you. She no longer has potential. You say, I’ll take her home. You have seen the bubbles of wellness that they have missed.

She is home. The rages tear you apart. You struggle to meet her explosive moments with calm presence. But between the lows you see the tiny moments of clarity. You nurture them, coax them, reward them. Every baby-step counts. You are teacher, nurse, counsellor, paramedic. And always the loving parent. You tell her things will get better. Nothing is permanent. Life is worthwhile. One day, sitting in the dark beside her, you realize those words aren’t helping and so you stop talking and just sit. And sit. In those moments you hear your own racing heartbeat and become aware of your shallow breath. Although you don’t know it you have begun the practice of self-compassion. And out of that loving care for yourself, and the acknowledgement that it’s okay to feel helpless, comes the first real lesson. The one thing you can do well is simply sit. You are finally ready and able to listen.

In a moment of quiet you say to her, this is good. Just sitting here together in the dark, being quiet, this is a healing moment. Good for you. And she says to you, I don’t know how you do that, wait for me to settle. It’s simple, you say. You tell her there are no isolation rooms here, no withdrawal of privileges. Just moments of quiet sitting. You tell her she is doing the work of healing in this moment. And over time she discovers she has the power to choose to sit quietly. You keep her company. You listen to her words and your own thoughts. The rages lessen, stop. The quiet moments grow.

Spring finally comes. You watch as she re-discovers spider webs, leaf and bark patterns, cats, creeping vines, crunchy ice underfoot, a dropped penny, bits of coloured wire, tiny buds peeping up through the last of the snow. You see that the stillness has spilled into her days. And out of that stillness grows the sound of the piano and her beautiful, clear soprano voice, the smell of her freshly-baked cookies, the beauty of her photographs and paintings, her tiny clay sculptures and the sound of her laughter as her dog curls lovingly over her feet.

Hanging Out the Wash

This entry was posted on by Linda E. Clarke.

Abstract Blue Floral by Anya Holloway

Ma hangs the wash on the long clothesline in the backyard of our butter-yellow house. The sea rolls in the distance. I watch from my window.

When the heat of high summer is a skin and the sea breathes from its deep belly, in the midst of that season heavy with close dreams, she crosses the warm grass, barefoot, laundry basket lopping against her hip. She sets it down and stretches to see the dull blue of the water, the languid gulls. From the basket she pulls curtains of rain and lays them, smooth and silvered, over the line. Her hands are dark against their shimmer. A wind builds, sweeps, drops across the yard, bending tired petals, washing dull leaves, pittering against my window as I draw it closed.

At summer’s end, Ma reaches into her great deep basket and pulls out a sheet of heavy fog. She snaps it straight and pins it to the clothesline. It blocks the sea, the trees, muzzles the sound. The air sweats diamonds that cling to the green of the grass at the cliff’s edge, the spider’s web in my window.

One brittle morning she picks a heavy shawl of snow from the basket; white, edges as sharp as ice. Watching her pin it to the line, my breath frosts my window. Outside all turns grey and white; air as cold as steel, sea as cold as iron.

When the winter starts to ease, I watch Ma, wearing her red rubber boots, carrying a crisp new laundry basket, round and deep. She sets it down on the softening snow by the clothesline. She cracks her wintry back and smiles at the sea, up at the bluing sky. Digging into her basket, she pulls out a jacket of fresh grass, embroidered with tulips, lilacs, daffodils; its buttons: spring buds. She takes two wooden clothespins from her pocket and clips the jacket to the line. She walks to the shore, her path traced by the yellow, pink, the purple of flowers of make-you-weep beauty.

When the sky is high blue, I open the window and the dust winks in the sunlight. The air breathes against my cheek.

One morning I hear the creak of the screen door opening below and I watch Ma carry the laundry basket snug against her belly. She is wearing a white dress with fuchsia buttons and a whirl of butterflies across its back. I see the sun catch the down on her arms. Her hair curls against her pinking cheek.

She sets the basket down and reaches into it to pull out a blanket of frost-edged air, clear and knife-sharp. Carefully, she lays it over the clothesline and steps back, warming her hands under her arms. The wind rocks stray leaves to the ground where, unseeing, she crunches them underfoot.

The breeze turns chill. Ma catches her breath, picks up the basket and hurries indoors.
Below me, the door closes tight.

I draw my window down, noticing
jeweled leaves on the trees
deep blue of the sea
sharpening of the sky.

The early fall of night.

Silence. Please.

This entry was posted on by Lorri Neilsen Glenn.

Up Close and Personal by Virginia Houston

I am trying to learn silence. It’s not easy.

I am trying to remove clutter. That, too, is difficult.

By silence I mean moments of stillness longer than a few seconds. You know: when nothing hums, beeps, whistles, dings, roars, revs, crackles, or chirps. When no one talks, cries, yells, or mutters. When I can see an idea form in my head without interruption and can dwell on it for more than a millisecond.

And by clutter I don’t just mean the discarded bags, random receipts, single glove, broken pencils, and never-to-be-opened mail that gather by the door or spill over the counter. I also mean the to-dos waiting for me in my computer, on the desk, in the kitchen, or rattling around in my brain. It only takes few seconds after I wake in the morning for them to swarm around my mind, poke at me for my attention. They cling to me all day, despite my efforts to flick them off.

Like most women, I have no idea what it’s like to have nothing to do.

Quiet. An empty morning. A clean slate. Virginia Woolf, you’ll remember her, said every woman should have a room of her own.

Room? I’d be happy to have an hour.

The rare time I think it’s possible—usually when the chaos of the morning is over—a tiny bubble of effervescence forms in my chest. This is it. I can concentrate. I can go to ground. Begin to remind myself who I am, what I’m here for. Plan something. Read a page. Write a paragraph. Eat lunch in peace.

But when I pour a coffee, I notice jam stains and important mail on the counter. To heat my soup in the microwave, I have to put the turntable back on its moorings and scrape the red splatters off the walls. Does no one else notice these?

And those precious twenty minutes? Gone. Eaten up in the dishrag, expended on the phone, or flown into cyberspace in the form of “urgent” emails.

This is such an old story it’s cliché. I felt the need for quiet decades ago, and I’m still talking about it, but now with friends in the next generation. If it’s not doctors’ appointments or soccer games or all-night puking or the late-night run to the grocery store then it’s the meeting with the school psychologist (again) or a ripped zipper on the snowsuit. It’s the missing button, the late registration, and what the hell has the dog rolled in now?

We can crow all we want about how feminism has improved ordinary women’s lives. And to some extent, that’s true. I was chief cook for our first thirty years of marriage; my husband is in charge for the next thirty. Our one remaining resident offspring cooks and cleans. Okay, not to my standards—red splatters, remember?—but it’s a start.

I often leave my own house to have a thought. I am lucky to be able to do this; most women I know cannot. Recently, I flew across the country to go on retreat with my sister in an abbey outside a prairie city. I found a room, uncluttered days, and avoided email. Or tried to.

As I sat watching the magpies on the tops of the pines, looking at the snow sparkle on the horizon, I remembered my mother’s words when she was old and blind and only a year away from death.

I feel useless, she said. No one needs me. What’s life if you’re not useful?

I argued with her then. Don’t be silly, I said. None of us needs to be anything other than our selves to be valuable. We only need to be: that’s what’s precious. You are you.

I believed what I was saying then. I believe it now. But I still struggle. What would happen if I didn’t write that letter, clean up that mess, call the clinic, answer the door, attend that so-important meeting? Would someone else see the crud on the sink? Remember the birthday? Would I feel freer, or would I feel guilty about not showing up, not pulling my weight? The forces of our culture—family habits, community and gender expectations, that rushing river of life pulling us forward–are difficult to resist. How much noise and clutter in my life is out of my hands? How much do I create? Do I have a secret wish–god help me, Mom–to be useful?

I’m not sure. But I’m off to make coffee in a clean kitchen (not my own) and to settle into a chair by the window where I can overlook an unfamiliar horizon, and think about it.

Never a Mother

This entry was posted on by Anna Quon.

Lost Stories by Sally Warren

I have never been a mother to a human child. I have never tried to become one.

At one time, I thought it would be my lot in life, but this was more a gloomy conviction born in the depths of depression—I would end up an impoverished single mum—and the opposite of an aspiration, more of a resignation, even though there seemed no rational reason it should be so.

I came from a family that was supportive and comfortably off, where getting an education was held in high esteem and where we were encouraged to pursue our interests, but where my own mother was unhappy for various reasons. Among them was the fact that she had become a mother in her early twenties—a depressed one who I imagine found coping with a colicky, red-faced newborn like me as frightening and difficult as being asked to carry around a live hornets’ nest.

I love kids, even if they’re having tantrums, whining and drooling; when I am not depressed, I enjoy being around them and their noisy exuberance. I have thought a lot about the best ways to treat and educate and raise them (as so many annoying, childless people like me do). But I have never, ever, seriously considered having any myself.

It’s partly because I have a mental illness which has littered my path through life with extreme and sometimes lengthy periods of instability and dysfunction. I felt strongly during my childbearing years that I would not have been able to care for a child, as evidenced by a stint as a nanny that helped land me in hospital. I remember standing at the kitchen window of the kind people whose child I was looking after, washing dishes with the little girl on the floor beside me, and watching a grey piece of wallpaper come loose from the dark walls inside my mind. I was falling apart. I had been struggling for a while, but in that moment it was terrifyingly obvious that I was incapable of taking care of her.

My memory is that I left the house in the middle of the night and went to the hospital, with the little girl and her parents sleeping soundly in their warm beds. I was thankful then that she wasn’t my own child and that her world was safe and loving and intact when I left it. I know that little girl was fond of me, but I also know and am forever grateful, that I wasn’t the real rock of her life because I feel I would have been a shattered stone whose edges cut and scarred her.

There are plenty of people with mental illness who can be, and who are, wonderful parents. I have no doubt about that. A loving family is a loving family, and all families have their problems. But the truth is, when I was in my twenties and thirties, besides struggling with illness, I was thinking of other things. Things like getting a job, whether I needed more education, and becoming a writer. That last had been a dream of mine since junior high school. I didn’t really long for a husband and babies, but for creating and publishing novels, poetry, and essays.

Of course, some women and men find it possible to both write and raise their kids, but I am not a person who finds it easy to divide her energies. Now, however, as I enter middle age, I can envision parenthood from the point of view of a healthy person, if I’d had a stable partner and home and enough material resources not to worry about my kids while I dealt with words.

I never had that kind of partner or resources. The few guys I had relationships with were, like me, disabled in some way by illness and not on a path to becoming providers for kids. I wasn’t looking for one. I wanted to find a way to be well, be happy and move forward in my life, and to provide for myself. That seemed enough.

It still is enough. There was a brief moment of panic driving down a busy street when I realized my body would soon be unable to have children, but I realized that wasn’t because I wanted to have kids of my own, I just didn’t want to lose one of life’s possibilities—because I cherish possibility, as though it were a child itself.