There I am sitting fearfully in a red chair, the image now and then of my mother sure. I saw it many times through the years especially when I lived with her for the better part of ten, maybe it was more counting the days when we all tried to save the family business. Fearful she was and why wouldn’t she be? How many late night conversations had I heard she and Lionel have about that business and its faultering finances? How many times had I felt that Irene disagreed with what was decided and thus what was done? And her distress focussed on her now and then but also on her later when he was dead and gone and her younger son was running it? What would happen,when all the bills were paid and the real balance sheet arrived for her appraisal, after the funeral and grief and all the bills were paid, the ones not known about? Were there any of those? So, yes, she had reason to fear what was happening, for maintaining her status and circle of friends, simple as it was, mattered, and that couldn’t be done with a small pension and thrifty shopping. Nor did such diligence lend itself to what she’d always done for many years, quietly and well with her women friends, the curlers and the golf course crowd (although she never played), her Church friends and those who enjoyed bridge more than perhaps anything else. Fearfulness was a natural reaction both while Lionel lived and later when he didn’t. And this goes back probably, her fear, to when she was born and her mother didn’t survive, and she thus grew up with a step-mother I got the impression she wasn’t thoroughly fond of. She loved her father but I didn’t ever know, ever see what, she thought of Nana beneath the acts of a dutiful step-child. And I have railed away when situations confronted me when fear assaulted me and from positions I didn’t believe it would, that my reaction was mother induced, she was the cause that I hadn’t overwhelmed what it was I trembled from, shook and quaked from all these years, and finally, to complete my adolescent deductions, she was the reason I was frequently running away, away. And there, in part of a dream, was I sitting fearfully in a red chair, one she bequeathed me the image now and then of my mother sure. How I hated her for what I thought was her fault when the dealing with these shakes and shivers was something of my cross to be born, a cross that never really reached the full breadth of my shoulders. I ran away from this lifting and buried myself under clouds of smoke and waves of beer and scotch and the paltry humour I found in bars in company of those who did the same, but for other reasons. Such an extended leaving has my life been, departing early goodbyes, late arrivals, no shows and open thank yous, invitations that never got sent me for I’d declared that I wouldn’t be there. Yet when I did attend a gathering, a party, an event of these kinds I viewed them as fearful when I wasn’t even really there, sitting aside alone wishing I hadn’t come, reading a book or amusing myself with asides, a pet if there was one, or a curious child. Then it would be too much to bear any longer and I’d leave as hastily as I could not noticed and that I hoped would be the case. Thereafter the stories of this party and that made me cringe, pictures and anecdotes I didn’t want to see or hear, and nothing else, for running was beginning to wear.
-July 2005