Truths and Half Truths

"Hurray. Hurray! The First of May! Outside screwing starts today!"

For as long as I can remember - and I have the best memory of anyone you know - that was always the first thing I heard my Mom say on this day. 

She would say it to each of her six kids as we came down for breakfast; she would say it to her friends when they came over for coffee;  she would cheerfully answer the phone with that greeting, not caring who was on the other end.  There was always a big grin on her face and a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

My Mom - and I have noted this before - was a woman of surpassing beauty (although we were, of course, oblivious to that). This is a picture of me and my older brother Jay and Mom from sometime in the 1960s - I'm going to guess she was in her early forties, although ... funny, huh? ... I can't wrap my head around looking at a picture of Mom and imagining the woman in the photo being younger than I am now.

On the morning of every May 1 since I moved out of my parents' house, I would call my Mom.  Every one of my siblings did, too.  We'd call just to hear the music of her voice as she answered the phone with "Hurray, Hurray!  The First of May!  Outside screwing starts today!"

It never occurred to me that this little bit of doggerel was in some way "inappropriate" to teach young children.  That's a label that has sprung up relatively recently.  I don't think any one of us was poisoned by what we heard.  It amused my Mom, it amused us greatly, and it became as much a part of our family fabric as any nursery rhyme we ever heard.

I didn't - and won't - call my Mom today. 

I know where she is right now, as I type this.  She's sitting in her green chair, across from my Dad's chair.  Dad is up in bed - he sleeps late now.  The TV is on, although if you asked her, Mom wouldn't be able to identify the program.

She'll probably sit there all morning, waiting for Dad to get up.  Now and again, she'll reach for her purse and fumble around inside it, looking for ... something.  She'll carefully undo each of the zippers and sift through the contents of the pockets of her purse.  She'll re-zip every pocket just as carefully, and set the purse down.  And in a few minutes, she'll pick up her purse and start looking through it again.

I'm not going to call, because Mom is sitting right by the phone.  And she will answer it.  "Hello?"  And it will once again break my heart.  And there's been quite enough of that lately, thanks.

But this morning, when I realized what day it was, I grinned and remembered.  And later today, I'll phone each of my girls, and when they answer I'll say:

"Hurray, hurray!  The First of May!  Outside screwing starts today!"

Seriously? Almost May.

Last year on this day I shot a respectable 83 at Stanhope Golf And Country Club.

No golf today.

On Being A Good Parent

In two posts, first here and then, in a follow-up, here, my friend and fellow Island resident Rob Paterson has asked some valid questions about what constitutes being a "good parent".  The posts - and the articles quoted - focus on what today's parents do to keep kids safe - and how relentless efforts to protect children from danger actually end up "protecting" them from living a full and rich life. 

As a corollary, there's the suggestion that adults who micromanage children's play time are doing more harm than good.

I couldn't agree more.  I get as exasperated with over-parenting as I do with neglectful parents.  I fear we're producing generation after generation of kids who won't have stories to tell about their childhood that don't start with "One day my Mom and I ...". 

The world is filling up with kids who have been so protected from danger and failure that they cannot enjoy risk and success.

                                       ***************

When Erin was about 9 or 10, she signed up for baseball.  They needed coaches, so I agreed to help out and ended up with a clot of pre-teens eager to draw from my vast knowledge of the sport. Well, good luck with that.  I've played softball and baseball, and know the basics - but that's about it.  I figured at that age, the basics would be enough, and I was more right than I expected.

We got to the first game and learned the League Rules.  In order to foster self-esteem among the players, the main rules were 1.  Every Child Goes Up To Bat In Every Inning; and 2.  Every Child Gets To Hit The Ball. 
There was no such thing as a "strike" or a "ball".  The pitcher kept pitching to a kid until that child made contact and felt the joy of running to first base.

Brilliant. 

How long do you figure that first game lasted?  It started at 6:30PM and went till 9:15 ... when it was called for bedtime.  In the goddamn fourth inning.

I mean, how could it not go that long?  Little Johnny or Janey would arrive at the plate, and anything that was thrown in his or her general direction was fair game.  Ten feet over your head?  Swing and a miss.  Ball thrown behind you?  Swing and a miss.  Whiff.  Whiff.  Whiff. 

Same kid at the plate for five minutes at a go, everybody - him, his teammates, the coaches, the spectators, everybody - praying that by some miraculous turn of events this child could accidentally make glancing contact with the ball so that it could dribble off the tip of his bat, squib to its resting place four feet in front of the plate, and dear Lord we could have another batter.

It was excruciating.

The next game, I called the kids over during warm-up.  I said, "How many of you signed up to play baseball?"  Every hand dutifully raised.

"Who can tell me what a strike is?"  Everybody knew.

"Who thinks the game we played the other night was real baseball?"  Not one.

"Who wants to play baseball, and not that game?"  Every hand shot up without one second's hesitation.

"OK.  Here's what we're going to try.  You can have as many balls as you want - the pitchers aren't that good.  But three strikes and ... what?"

A little red-headed kid ventured, "You're ... out?"

"That's right.  Three strikes and you're out, just like real baseball.  So if you swing at a bad pitch and miss it, that's one strike.  Swing at one over your head, that's two.  Swing at another and miss, you come back and sit down till your next at-bat.  Is everybody cool with that?"

They were.

I explained what was happening to the opposing coach, who looked doubtful.  "That's not how the league says we should do it," he pointed out.  "It's not fair to your kids.  I think we should play it the way we're supposed to."

"Oh, I'm good with whatever you want to do with your kids.  They can have as many swings as you want.  But my kids want to try this."

"Fine.  But I feel bad for them."

The game started, and our first batter was Luke, a big, goofy kid with a perpetual smile.  The first pitch was a mile high, and he almost fell over reaching for it.

"Strike One,"  I said.  His smile faltered.

The next pitch hit the dirt about five feet in front of the plate.  Luke swung and just missed tipping the ball on the second bounce.

"Strike Two," I said.  Luke frowned.

The next pitch was way outside, and he swung again.

"Strike Three, Luke.  Go sit down."  He looked back at me, eyes wide.  But the next batter was already prising the bat from his hand and Luke walked slowly back to the bench.

The next kid had seen what happened to Luke.  When the first pitch came in high, he didn't move a muscle.  Just like his heroes on TV.  He looked back at me and grinned.

Three or four pitches later, he got a good one.  He swung and made solid contact and I wish you could have seen his face when he arrived at second base ... the joy and excitement and sense of accomplishment just radiating from him.  He hollered back at the bench:  "It's easy, guys!  Just wait for a good one!"

And they did.  There were a few strikeouts after that, but they were honest cuts at good pitches, for the most part.  But almost all the kids got hits, and not little doinky hits off the top of the bat from swinging at a pitch three feet overhead - good, solid hits that rocketed through the infield.  Singles, doubles, even a couple of error-assisted home runs.

I felt sorry for the other team. By swinging at every ridiculous pitch (as their coach told them to), they were hardly able to propel the ball back to the pitcher.  Those times they  looked ready to wait for a good pitch, their coach harangued them to "SWING!"

The game was over in an hour and a half. We kicked their ass.  They were playing by rules set up by adults to "help" them, and they just could not overcome that obstacle. 

And when they did get a hit, there was no enjoyment in it.  They saw what we all saw - that their hits were mere chance, the law of averages coming into play. 

By protecting them from failure, the adults had managed to rob them of the opportunity to enjoy success.

                                      *************

When Erin was 13, she and her piano teacher Carrie-Ann decided she would do the Royal Conservatory of Music Practical Piano Exam.  It meant learning and performing a collection of difficult scales and short  compositions in front of a panel of judges.  Scary stuff, when you're 13.

The exam was on a Saturday.  On Thursday, Erin came home and said "I'm not ready.  I haven't practiced enough.  I don't want to do the exam this year.  Carrie-Ann says it's okay if I wait for a year."

"But you've known about this exam for months," I said.  "How can you not be ready?"  Erin shrugged. 

I knew what the problem was.  She has always had my work ethic, poor dear.  And what she also knew for months was that if she wasn't ready, she could back out.  Escape hatch.

I thought for a bit and said,  "No.  You're taking the exam.  We paid for it, you agreed to take it, and if I let you back out, what am I teaching you?"

She argued.  She cried.  She begged.  She promised.  She yelled, slammed doors, flopped on her bed, wouldn't eat supper, called me all sorts of names.  But nothing she did would change my mind.

Later that night, I heard her practicing.  She woke up in the morning and practiced, and when she got home from school on Friday she went right to the piano.  The pleading didn't stop, but when she met the brick wall she resigned herself to doing as well as she could.

Saturday came, and I drove her to the  exam venue.  I waited while she went in - no spectators.  I listened through the heavy doors as much as I could, and I heard some good things and heard some clunkers and it didn't much matter because I don't have anywhere near the musical knowledge to tell if she was doing well or sucking like a Hoover.

So I waited, wondering if I'd done the right thing.  If she did this and failed, would her confidence be shattered?  Would she give up piano?  Was I being a good parent, or was I trying to expunge some sort of childhood guilt of my own here?

She came out, and when I asked her how she did, she said,  "I don't know.  Some things I did okay, and some things I screwed up.  They'll mail us the results."

It took a month for the results to arrive.  When I found them in the mailbox, I had to wait for Erin to get home.  I wanted her to open the letter.

She got home, took the letter from me, and went down to her room to open it.  I waited.

She came up, beaming.  She had passed.  Just barely.  Not  Honours.  Not with Flying Colours.  She had squeaked through, but it didn't matter.  She had passed.

The thing is, she didn't need to take the exam that year.  I could have protected her from the risk of failing it, of having to go back and practice all that same stuff all over again.  I could have let her walk away from the fear.  But then what?

She's an elementary and middle school music teacher now.  She has a Black Belt in Karate and teaches that, too.  She does some things knowing she might suck but not afraid of sucking.

And she keeps her word.  When she says she's going to do something, she doesn't bail.

                                     *********

The point of all this is not "Oh, look how smart I was," or "Oh, I was the best parent ever!".  I was like any other parent. I screwed up more than I'd like to admit and sometimes it feels like my kids survived and thrived in spite of me rather than - as we all would like to believe - because of me.

When people ask me if I'm proud of what my kids have done, I demure.  Their accomplishments are not mine, and while I can admire what they've done, I won't appropriate their pride in it.  The risk is theirs, and the pride is theirs.

But I am proud of them as people - as decent, kind, productive human beings - and proud of the job we did in staying out of their way so they could become everything they are.

And that's the key, and the point of all this.  We stayed out of the way and demanded our kids take risks on their own, that they not play things safe, that they face the spectre of failure one on one and do their best to beat it back.

Being a good parent isn't about protecting your children from danger.  When we create a society where children are kept captive by their parents' paranoia, shuttled from activity to activity, shielded from the bogeyman in the darkened bushes or the possibility of failure or disappointment or falling short, we cheat both our kids and ourselves.

Our kids, because they lose an essential element of childhood.  And ourselves, because we foolishly squander the potential they once possessed.   

On Being Bald

As many of you noted, on viewing the picture of me and my grandson in the previous post, I am bald.

I have what is called male pattern baldness.  (Note that I "have" it.  I am not "afflicted" by it.  I do not "suffer" from it.  I am not "fighting a battle" against it.  I am not applying for a handicapped parking tag for my rear-view mirror.)  I started losing my hair in my late 20s or so and although I'm no longer keeping track, for all I know I am still losing it.  If I left it alone, I would have a smattering of fine, sparse hair on the top of my head, but I use a razor to tidy that up.

Like any guy (and there are so many of us) who has grown up with this, I have  heard every bald joke in  creation.  And really, there are only so many.  They're not particularly fresh or clever.  Men have been going bald since the dawn of time, and people have been trying to make them feel bad or inferior about it since the very first follicle hit the ground.  When you make a bald joke, you are ploughing very tired soil.

What always interests me about bald jokes is the motive behind them.  I mean, when someone who despises me makes a bald joke, I get that - they want to let me know that they feel superior to me because they were able to arrange their genetic structure in such a way that they won't experience male pattern baldness.  As you might imagine, this doesn't work as well as they hope.  Instead, I sort of feel smug about their inability to grasp simple scientific concepts.

But what bemuses me is bald jokes coming from my friends.

See, bald jokes aren't the kind of thing where you're "laughing with" someone.  If you're making a bald joke, you're probably not bald.  Because of the way society views baldness, you probably know that the person you are making the bald joke at has spent years being pitied, mocked, dismissed, overlooked, or teased for his "affliction".  So, when it's your friend ... why would you do that?

The thing is, I don't think it's a mean-spirited effort to hurt.  But there's a fascinating short circuit in our social wiring when it comes to baldness. It's as if my baldness - in and of itself - gives you permission to sneer about it.

Most of us would never dream of mocking friends about other notable genetic characteristics they have.  "Hey, leave some air for the rest of us, Big Nose!"  "Nice map of Albania on your forehead there, Gorbachev!"  "Wow, is that your ass or are you shoplifting an ottoman under that dress?"

But baldness?  The bar is, evidently, open.  Curious, that.

Look, I know I'm bald.  And I'm not defensive about it.  I'm not defiant about it, I'm not embarrassed by it, I'm not proud of it.  I'm not anything about it.  I don't have hair in the same way that you do have hair.  I don't notice it - or, I guess, I don't notice not having it - until people try to make a funny joke about it.  And even then, it's not my baldness that's the issue to me - it's them.

I don't look into a mirror - or look at that picture of me and Owen - and cringe about my lack of hair.  If I did, would I ever stand in front of a camera?  Nope.  I'd be one of those annoying people who makes a huge fuss and draws attention to him or herself whenever anybody gets a camera out, all "Oh, don't take my picture, I'm so ugly, I never take a good picture, but please feel free to compliment me and cajole me into having my picture taken by telling me I'm not as bad as I say I am." 

(Why don't we just let them take the damn picture?  It would shut them up and - given the type of passive-aggressive bullshit maneuver they always pull to make us compliment them - it's not like they add value to any memory the picture preserves.)

I don't wear a hat to hide my baldness.  I wear a hat because I got nuttin' up there to protect the highest part of me from the sun, and if you've never had a sunburn on your head you can't appreciate how painful it is.

Other than that one practical consideration, I don't notice my baldness until you say something about it.  And what you say doesn't make me feel bad about my baldness.  It kinda makes me feel bad for you, though. 

Because I'm not bald by choice.  But you?  You stopped to think, then you made that joke.

Some people noted that Owen and I had the same hairline.  He may grow up to have male pattern baldness.  Or he might have a full head of hair, like my brother did.  His hair might be white blonde like mine was when I was young, or bright red like his Dad's or thick and curly and red like his other Grandpa, or ... well, lots of possibilities, I suppose.

I don't hope he has any particular colour of hair, nor do I much care whether he keeps it his whole life or loses it in his 20s.

I hope he'll be healthy.  That he'll have lots of friends and will treat them well.  That he'll grow up surrounded by love.  That he'll make good decisions, find something he's passionate about and pursue it.  That he'll never stop learning and loving and laughing about life.

But his hair?  Sort of low on the list of things to care about.

Same as mine, ya know?

I don't want people to stop teasing me, or taking the piss out of me, or laughing at me.  I dish it out, and I really do love taking it.  But I tease you about what you do or say, how you act.  Try that with me.  No end of fertile ground, and if I can break you of the habit of making bald jokes, the world is a (slightly) better place.

And if you did make a bald joke, and are now feeling mortified and hurt that I didn't understand you meant it in gentle fun - stop.  I do understand.  You're a friend, and you really - really - didn't hurt me.

It's just not the best way to go.  And now you know. 

Finally, I'll leave you with words from Christine Lavin, one of my favourite singers:

Everybody know it's testosterone
That turns a bushy-haired man into a chrome dome.

But testosterone's what makes a man a man;  the more that he's got, the more he can

Do the things that make the women go "Oy!"

I'll take a bald-headed man over a big-haired boy.

Big-haired boys make very good friends, but they cannot compare to bald-headed men.

Me 'n My Guy

Some moments in this life are so sublime.

It's Been Awhile ...

... and I'm not quite ready for words yet. But some things are worth a thousand words ... so here's 3,000 or so. Words to follow ... at some point.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs

My friend Laura at Vitamin Sea invited us to do a meme about signs around our town.  Since I'm a collector of signs - especially goofy ones - I thought I'd play. 

You may have seen some of these in previous posts, but they amuse me and fit the theme, so I'm including them here.  Click on the pics if, like some people, your eyes are starting deteriorate with advancing age.

First, a dire warning on the dangers posed by the physically challenged:

Be very careful - they bite.  Fortunately, they can be outrun.

(I sent this picture to my friend Patti, who has been terrorizing innocent citizens from her wheelchair for decades.  She was disappointed that here on the Island, we're on to her and her ilk.)

Next up are a pair of pictures of a now-defunct restaurant in Charlottetown, run by a certain type of pirate.  Arrrrrrr, Billy.  Have you ever been to see?

And my final picture isn't from "my town", so it's a bit of a cheat.  It's one of my favourite signs from my various tours in the U.K.   I found this sign in Llangollen, in Northern Wales, and it shows better than words ever could just why the Welsh are unlikely to ever rule the world.

Go to Laura's blog for links to other signs, and if you want to play, leave a comment there so she can link to your pics.

And You Think Your Children Have Bad Table Manners

Seriously.  53 seconds.  Real time.  It's like piranhas on a side of beef, except WAY cuter.

Seven out of eight adopted, and a lineup for Sadie, the cutest of the bunch for my money.  Holly is also adopted - she'll go with one of her pups.  Click the link at top left for more pics.

My Big Brother

I was sitting in front of the TV late on Wednesday night, January 30, (well, early Thursday morning), half watching an old Simpsons episode, half surfing the net on my laptop. It had been a couple of long days on the Island; an ice storm had crippled the power supply, and what started as annoying, sporadic blackouts turned into extended periods without power. But by late Wednesday night that seemed to be behind us, and I was able to catch up on both my TV watching and my blog reading.

My cell phone vibrated on my hip.  I glanced at the clock and winced.  (Remember when it was fun and exciting to get a phone call after 11:00 at night?)

I flipped my phone open.  It was a text message from my sister, Andrea.  "You still awake?"

I snapped off the TV, clicked over to MSN Chat and messaged her:  "What's up?"

"Bad news."

"Ah, shit," I groaned.  I'd just gotten back from three weeks of taking my Dad in for daily radiation treatments, and this was the call I'd been dreading.  Of course, the other possibility was that my Mom had slipped away - she's fairly fragile now.  Which one ...?

"Who?" I asked, bracing myself.

"It's Jay," said Andrea. My brow furrowed.

My brother had collapsed in his home office and they'd rushed him to hospital.  Andy was just waiting for a call from my sister Barb, who was at the hospital, so we could get an update on his status.

So I waited with her - chatting about inconsequential things, neither of us believing that anything serious was wrong with Jay.  After a few lines, she messaged:  "Sec.  Barb on phone." Sure, no prob.

Then:  "Fuck.  He died."

I stared at the screen, my jaw slack, trying to make some sense of those impossible words. 

"He died."?  Who died?  Jay?  OK, I knew full well that could not have happened.  So this was ... a typo?  A mistake of some sort?  If it was a joke, I was waiting for the funny that would cancel out the mean.

There was no funny.  No mistake.  No typo.

At age 57, my brother Jay died on Wednesday night, January 30, of a massive coronary.  It happened mercifully quickly - paramedics had done as much as possible to resuscitate him en route to the hospital, but the thinking is he was dead before he crashed to the floor.

No.  No no no no no.

The two of us, Andrea and I, sat a half a continent apart, gazing at our screens, unable to fathom what we were talking about, unable to take in the enormity of it all, the finality.  We couldn't comfort one another - the medium doesn't lend itself to that.  I shut down the computer, snatched up the phone and called.

But even that was empty.  We talked for a few minutes - not saying anything of substance, mired up to our axles in the awful truth we were experiencing.  We agreed to talk the next day.  "I love you,"  I said, my voice crumbling.

"I love you," she whispered, and was gone.

I sat there quietly in the warmth of my family room, embers in the woodstove glowing, a cat curled up at the far end of the couch, my mind alternately whirling, then slowing, engaging, then disconnecting.

Jay.  No.

The last time I saw Jay, he hugged me and said "So, there's this guy, and he's driving around in the WalMart parking lot, and it's 30 below and he can't find a parking space.  He circles and circles, but he knows he's going to have to park way at the far end of the lot and freeze his ass to get in the store.  So on his last pass, he closes his eyes and says, "God, all I want is a good parking spot.  Please, God.  If you get me a spot close to the store, I'll never ask you for anything again."  He hears a celestial choir, opens his eyes and there, right in front of the doors, a car is backing out.  The guy looks up to Heaven and says, "Oh, never mind.  Found one."

That was one of thousands of jokes Jay told me over the years.  Me, I'm a funny guy, sometimes, but I can't tell a joke joke.  I can't remember them, for one thing.  And if I do, I screw up the inflection or miss a detail and the best I can get is a nod and "Heh."

But Jay?  An inexhaustible supply of jokes, most of them unprintable or objectionable or inappropriate for any audience.  Which never, ever stopped him.

And you know what?  The boy could pull it off.  You may be sitting there thinking, "Oh, I'm sure he could tell a hideously offensive joke to some folks and get away with it, but I hate those kinds of jokes, and I don't think I'd enjoy being around a guy who tells them."

But you know what?  You would.

For my kids - in fact, for all the nieces and nephews - he was the "fun uncle".  He was an unmerciful tease (everything I know about teasing I learned from him), and he was the master of the straight face.

So here's a story Allison told just the other day:

"About two years ago, my family was discussing things in our house that we should get rid of, things that we have had forever but no longer need, or things that are so out of style that they should have been trashed years ago.

"Like the painting of Mom!" I said, laughing.

Mom and Dad looked at me curiously.

"What painting of Mom?" Dad asked.

"You know, the clown one?"

"Yeah, the sad clown on the wall upstairs...." Erin knew what I was talking about.

"Yeah, some painter guy painted a picture of Mom dressed as a clown...." I started to trail off, now unsure of myself.

"Uhm....who told you that?" Mom asked us.

"Uncle Jay!" We said together. But as soon as we said it, we realized.

What a bugger.

I think I'll miss him most. After all, I was his "favourite niece."

(Without meaning to burst her bubble  - and Allie knows this - at one time or another he took every kid in the family aside and whispered that he or she was his "favourite".  And they all believed him.)

When I was in grade six, I was a tiny, scrawny kid almost two years younger than the rest of the children in my grade. Because of my size, I was easy prey, so I was bullied and hounded every day by a couple of other guys from school.  They were bigger than me, and tougher (well, everybody was tougher than me), and every day as we'd go home for lunch they would follow behind me, tripping me up, pushing the books out of my hand, poking at me, making my life miserable.

I must have mentioned it in tears at the table, because one day I was walking home, and they were behind me, and as we got to the corner of our street one of them tripped me - and then Jay came leaping over the Friesen's hedge, grabbed my tormenter by the lapels, and lifted him bodily off the ground.

(The kid knew who was dangling him - Jay had a well-earned reputation as a fearsome street fighter, one of those guys who gets into a fight and people get badly hurt.)

He calmly explained to this terrified kid how this kind of thing was over, and that not only would these guys no longer bully me, but he was assigning them to be my bodyguards.  If any other kids bullied me, Jay would hold these two personally accountable, whether they were involved or not.  "Think of yourselves as the Secret Service," he said.  "And think of my brother as the President."

I was never bullied again - not in elementary school, not in junior high, not in high school.  I was Jay Ling's little brother, and you did NOT fuck with Jay Ling's little brother.

I had looked up to my brother Jay since ... well, forever. 

We weren't best friends - there was a four year age gap.  But we were shelter for one another.  With a pilot for a Dad, we often found ourselves left alone with only one another to counter the flood of estrogen from my Mom, my Granny, and four sisters.

We did this the only way boys know how:  we became expert and ruthless teasers and tormentors.  In this picture of our family after church on some long-ago Easter Sunday (note the bonnets), you can see that Barb is in tears; Mom and two of my sisters are looking on, concerned; Jay is grinning like a fool, and I am looking up at him worshipfully.   I'm willing to bet that he started whatever was going on.

Jay often got stuck with me as his tag-along.  Sometimes he resented it, and made my life miserable - one Hallowe'en my Mom dressed him as Zorro and me as his sidekick (whom Jay dubbed "Zero"), and instructed him to watch me all night despite his protests that I would slow him down and reduce his take from trick or treating.  His solution to the dilemma was to urge me on from house to house by poking and slashing at me with a sword fashioned from a curtain rod. 

But most often he tolerated my existence, and sometimes we'd have memorable afternoons on the vast Canadian prairie that surrounded the air force base we lived on.  We would go out into the fields to hunt gophers, for which the farmers paid us ten cents a tail as bounty.   (Which was enough to get you into the Saturday feature at the base theatre.)  (In case there was any doubt I am goddamn old.)

While the richer kids (or kids who came from families with fewer than six children) would hunt with BB guns, Jay and I would venture out with only a length of twine with a loop at one end.  We'd encircle a gopher hole with the loop, back away, lie down in the grass, and silently wait, the other end of this makeshift lasso wrapped around Jay's hand.  If I fidgetted, he'd quiet me with a glare.  Eventually, a gopher would stick its head out to see if the coast was clear, and BAM!

Now, walking around with a piece of string is one thing.  Walking around with a piece of string with a dead gopher on the other end is quite something else.  We'd parade around the neighbourhood with our trophy, letting the other boys admire it (or even, if they asked nicely enough, touch it); we'd swing it over our heads; and we would chase the girls out of the playground.  There are, we discovered, no end of things you can do with a dead gopher on a hot prairie summer afternoon.

Jay and I shared a room, which meant that for about ten hours a day he was Lord and Master of the Universe (at least, our Universe).  Mom and Dad had a rule that once lights were out, you stayed in your room.  Coming out to tattle on your brother for tormenting you was not considered an acceptable reason.  In fact, if you were out of your room after lights out, your pyjamas better be smouldering and the flames licking at your ass.  You don't end up with six kids by letting the first four or five wander around the house after dark.

So when the door closed, Jay became Boss of the World.  He would, of course, abuse the power - ordering me around, teasing me, practicing fighting moves -- just generally being mean.  There was no point ratting him out in the morning, because you knew later that night the lights would go out, the door would close, and through the darkness you'd see Jay's head lean out over the top bunk, peering down at you, deciding on the fate of the little snitch below.

By rights, Jay and I should never have been in the same school at the same time after Elementary.  But I was a superior student who skipped a couple of grades, and he ... um ... wasn't.  By high school, he was only 2 years ahead, blazing a unique trail, so that by the time I showed up in classes, the teachers would pause during the first attendance call.  "Ling, Nils," they'd say, then peer up overtop the clipboard.  "Would you be Jay's brother?"

"Yes," I would say.

"Uh-huh," they'd say, examining me more closely, perhaps jotting a note or two beside my name.  "Let's move you up to the front, shall we?"

But that wasn't the only trail he blazed.

My brother was a street-fighter and (unaccountably, to me) a ladies' man.   He was a "bad boy".  The girls adored him. 

So, brother of a tough guy and womanizer.  Much was expect of me in both regards.  And in both, I failed completely and utterly.

(I was -- well, hell, just look at me.  I was a nerd.  I am wearing a cardigan in this picture.  It was my favourite sweater.  I preferred pale blue denims, worn with a crease.  I was the kind of kid who couldn't take a drink of water at a school fountain because there would be someone like Jay walking past to smack me on the back of the head. Not exactly a chick magnet.)

There were, I admit, times when I bridled at being regarded as "Jay Ling's brother".  The bar was pretty damn high, and I was so unlike him in so many ways that it all felt unfair.   

It took him awhile, but Jay found his place in life.  He found a wife to settle him down (somewhat), and he had three sons that kept him busy.

As we grew older, our friendship grew stronger.  When I moved away, we'd keep in touch on the phone and when I'd go back to Winnipeg, I'd always find some time to grab a coffee or a bite to eat with him.  He'd always want to go somewhere with cute servers (and he knew all the places), and I would cringe and blush and apologize for him as he would banter with the woman bringing us our food and drinks.  (The last time we went out, our server, who was very attractive, wore a nametag which shortened her name (Billie Jean) into simply "B.J.".  God, for him, that was like shooting fish in a barrel.)

It's still incredible to me that he's gone.  I keep expecting a call from him, confessing that it's all a joke. 

When the people at the funeral home asked how many to expect at the service, we guessed that his friends would fill the 250 seat chapel.  At the end of the service, the Funeral Director came to me and said that not only was the chapel full, but also the auxiliary chapel and the reception room.  More than 400 showed up to pay their respects to my brother.  He'd have loved that.

He'd have loved the tune that Erin and Allison played: a tune Allison had  composed for him on her fiddle - a tune fittingly titled "Uncle Jay's Favourite".  He would have been proud of his sons and grandson as they  spoke eloquently and emotionally about what he meant to them.

I was asked to deliver the eulogy.  This is what I said:

This is going to be tough for me.  Which I know would amuse Jay greatly.  He loved to see me squirm.  Well, anyone, really.  But me in particular.

A eulogy feels inadequate for Jay.  I’m a skilled writer, but I can’t possibly squeeze the essence of a spirit that big onto a few pages.  Sum up Jay’s life in a few minutes?  Impossible.

So if I’m doing the impossible anyway … why stop at a few pages?  Winston Churchill once wrote, at the end of a long letter:  “I’m sorry this letter is so long.  Had I more time, it would have been shorter.”

So I don’t need a few pages, or even a few sentences to sum up Jay’s life.  I can do it in a word:

Joy.

Did you ever meet a guy who loved to laugh as much as Jay did?  I mean, I know he had his serious moments, we all do.  But damn, that man could enjoy a good laugh.

And did you ever meet a guy with so many jokes, right at the tip of his tongue?  Something for any occasion?  I mean, you’d be sitting around talking about – I don’t know, a nature series you saw with penguins – and Jay would start in:  “So, a penguin, a priest, and a Scotsman walk into a bar …”

(Actually, I just made that up.  But it does sound like a joke he’d tell, doesn’t it?  Probably not one I could repeat in mixed company.) 

He was relentless.  He wanted you to laugh, and he didn’t care how he’d do it.  He would tease – and man, he could hold a straight face – ask any of the kids.  Like Ashleigh – who is now married to our nephew Cole.

The first time Cole introduced Jay to Ashleigh at a wedding, he looked at her and said “Wait – you aren’t the one he introduced me to last week …?”

Well, Cole was able to fumble his way out of that.  So later Jay was on the dance floor with Ashleigh, and he said, “So you and Cole have been together a while?”  Oh, yes, she said, about six months.

“So I guess you know about his little secret, then,” said Jay.

“Secret?”

“Well, the cross-dressing thing.  I’m sure he’s told you about that.  No?  Oops.”

My wife Joyce will tell you about the first time she met Jay.  It was at my sister Kathy’s wedding.  I introduced them, and Jay asked her to dance.  As he led her around the dance floor, he leaned in and whispered, “I wish women had been created with three breasts – two in the front, and one in the back for dancing.”

Oh, he wasn’t done.  He leaned in and said, “Want to see me undo a bra with one hand, through clothing?” 

Joyce said, “Uh, no.”

Jay said, “Oh.  I guess I should do it back up, then.”   

I was always horrified by what he would say to women – whether he knew them or not – and always in awe of how he would get away with it.  I could never pull that kind of thing off. 

But Jay would say the most outrageous things, and just by the sheer force of his personal charm, he would walk away unscathed.  Well, until Marg got hold of him later. 

But it wasn’t just charm – I think when he said stuff like that to women, they wouldn’t feel threatened or insulted because he was this big, harmless, cuddly teddy bear of a guy who drew them right into the joke with him.

And he’d laugh at himself as hard as anyone.  He didn’t care if the joke was at his expense.  As long as people were laughing, that was OK with him.

We should all live our lives with such unbridled joy as Jay lived his.

When we look at our lives, or others’ lives, we often focus on what is not there – on what we haven’t achieved.  It’s unfair, of course, because life is so designed that all of us fail in so many ways.  Even the greatest baseball players who ever lived failed to hit the ball two-thirds of the time.  No fisherman walks away having cleaned out the lake.

Instead, let us judge ourselves on the quality of our character; on how much pleasure we can squeeze out of what life has dealt us; and on how much joy we create for the people we love. 

By that standard, is anyone here the equal of my brother?  I know that I will be a better person if I can achieve in my life a fraction of what he achieved in his.

As I go through this life, I know I will hear many, many more jokes.  And every time I hear a great joke, I will remember that Jay would have heard it first, and would have been the one who told it to me, and stood there with that goofy grin, waiting to see me laugh.

I want you to do that, too.  Every time someone tells you a great joke, I want you to hear Jay. 

Remember him that way.  Nothing would have given him greater joy. 

There will be a reception in the room outside, a chance for you to say something to Marg and the family, offer your respects and condolences. 

And yes, there will be tears, but I hope you’ll also tell them some way that Jay made you laugh. 

He loved to make people laugh. 

There.  I guess it’s not so hard to sum up a life in a few words, after all.

Ring in the New

I'm in Gimli, Manitoba.  It's a small town on the shores of Lake Winnipeg where I spent part of my childhood.  My parents must have fallen in love with it, because when they finally decided to retire, they moved back here.

I'm here because my Dad is sick and is into a round of aggressive radiation treatments.  He needs to go into the hospital pretty much every working day, and because my Mom can't be left by herself and bringing her along isn't an option, having an extra sibling around should be a great help to my sisters.  I can take Dad in or sit with Mom or run errands or do whatever needs to be done. 

With me being 2167 miles away, my sisters have been shouldering more than their share of responsibilities for the care of my parents.  And when I say it like that, it doesn't reflect how any of us feel about it, at least in the abstract.  In the abstract, it's a privilege to give back just a little of what they blessed us with over the years. 

Mom always talked about parenthood as giving your kids "... the best food off your plate."  And she didn't just talk the talk - she lived it.  So in the abstract, taking care of them is quite literally the least we can do.

Of course, as any loving mother will tell you, life isn't lived in the abstract, and as much as it's a privilege to have the opportunity to take care of them, the reality is it can be a lot of  ... er, opportunity.  So when my sisters called and asked if I'd like to come for a couple of weeks and  share this richness of opportunity, what kind of person would I be to say "No."?

It's bittersweet, I have to say.

I got into Winnipeg Friday night and drove up to Gimli the next morning.  On the way up, I passed the golf course where my mom and dad used to be such active members -  when I was playing hide and seek once, and had the best hiding place ever, up in the tree in our yard, but my brother saw me and it was a race to home, so I tried some sort of half-assed Tarzan move, swinging down from the branch I was on and plummeting to the ground, landing on my wrist and hearing a sickening *snap* and looking down at my arm and almost passing out just at the sight of it - they sent a golf cart out to the 12th hole to call my parents to the hospital.  (Dad:  "We've only got seven holes to go, and he's in good hands at the hospit --".  Mom:  "We're going.")

On the way to their condo I passed by our old house - #59 on 6th Avenue (Gimli has six avenues.  Total.)  As always, I marvelled at how a tiny bungalow of perhaps 1000 square feet (being generous) could hold a family with six kids.  How did we ever all shoehorn into that place?  Impossible.  Dad built two bedrooms in the basement to go with the two bedrooms upstairs and we had Air Force issue bunkbeds Dad had liberated from some barracks somewhere and it was a day when families had less stuff and more of each other and to be honest, I don't remember it being so bad.

Dad always called himself "the world's worst handyman", but I don't remember them ever calling a carpenter and lots of rooms were built over the years.  I never once saw a plumber in our house, even with six kids putting pressure on the facilities.  (Well, that's not precisely true - one time my Mom and Dad went out to some event at the Officer's Mess, and apparently Mom caught some sort of flu there because she came home and spent a long time groaning over the toilet while Dad said she was fine and chased us back to bed.  And the next morning, Dad called a plumber who  took the toilet off and fished around and came out with Mom's false teeth and advised my Dad just to put them in boiling water and wash them ten or twelve times and just never - ever - tell my Mom where he found them.)

But mostly it was Dad doing any repairs that needed doing.  So when I got to their condo and used the facilities and the downstairs toilet wouldn't flush, I was surprised to hear my Dad wheeze that he keeps forgetting to call "the guy" to fix it.

I peeked in the tank.  The chain on the ball flapper (hee!) was broken (well, torn, actually - one of those craptastic plastic connectors).  I zipped down to the hardware store, got a new ball flapper (hee!) and the repair took me about 45 seconds.  Using skills I learned from watching my Dad.

I drove Dad into Winnipeg for a single treatment on Monday.  He has today off, then treatments every day.  So we'll go to my sister's place in Winnipeg for the balance of the week before bringing them back home on the weekend.  Mom gets a little anxious when she's away from her stuff, but the hour-long trip in and out of the city is just too much.

When I went over to get him, Mom got a little upset. She doesn't like it when people take Dad away, even when it's me.  (I was always the Golden Boy, her little favourite,  and still her face lights up when I come into the room.  But here again, the cold chill of reality  kicks in: the other night, I came in and gave her a big hug and talked about the trip in and went off to deal with the toilet, and after I left Mom asked my sister, "Who was that nice fellow?")

So she was a little agitated about that nice fellow taking her husband away, but I just laughed and told her not to worry.  "I'm not gonna keep him, Mom.  Hell, would you keep him if you didn't have to?"  And she got a little grin on her face and everything was okay and I realized that I calmed her down the way I had learned to diffuse any bad situation - with a little twist of humour.  And of course, I'd learned that from my Dad.

As we drove into town in Dad's car (why the hell will they not give that thing up?  Sell it and take limos for the rest of your life and you'll still come out ahead!), I was conscious of him watching me drive.  When i drive, my eyes dart all over in a repetitive pattern: side mirror, gauges, the road ahead, rear view mirror, gauges, road ahead, side mirror, road ahead ... my eyes always moving, always aware of everything around me.  We got to a light that had just turned green and I slowed in time for some asshole running the yellow to clear the intersection - I'd slowed because I never trust other drivers to do the right thing.

"You're a good driver," my Dad said.  "Smooth."

Of course he thinks I'm a good driver.  I drive just like him.  He was a jet pilot - the compulsive checking of gauges, the constant need to know where you are in relation to everything around you - that's all him.  I remember him hammering into me that you assume all other drivers on the road - particularly ones you encounter at intersections - are stupid, drunken assholes and give them a clear berth and respect the breathtaking sweep of their assholery, and that gives you a better chance of staying alive.  My girls will tell you I hammered the same message into them.

This has turned into a long, rambly, stream-of-consciousness post, not the kind of story I normally tell.  I guess the point - assuming I had one - is that I'm spending these days being acutely aware of just how much I owe these people.  Giving me the best food off their plate meant preparing me for a million little aspects of life, showing me by example how a life should be lived, both in the abstract and in the cold, hard light of reality.  And life doesn't get colder or harder than what Dad's got ahead of him.

It feels like I'm doing the right thing by being here and doing a few small things to help out my sisters - and again, they're the ones who are throwing themselves into this phase of our lives with everything they have, and I'm incredibly grateful they're here to do by proxy what I can't do from a distance.

But doing the right thing - and again, this is something my Mom and Dad taught me - isn't always easy.  This is hard.

A good hard.  But hard.