Rosebud, Roblin Blvd, Meryl and Marshall, horses and bloody boxing matches

I was 17 in this photo, with my kitten, Rosebud.  I know, I look 12, right?  I kept looking 12 till I hit 50, The era this photo brings from 36 earth years away, is exhaustion and being unable to sit up comfortably.  I remember having terrible menstruation pain and nausea, and bleeding half to death for about ten days each month.  I remember Meryl teaching me to eat once a day, whether it was spaghetti from a generic can or left-over hot fudge sauce from last night's hot fudge sauce with a little ice cream under it.  Sometimes we made cookie dough and ate most of the dough.  We went to the Fit Stop during the day, a gym where Meryl and her husband Marshall Quelch had free passes because, just by being themselves, they brought in  a great deal of business.  Marshall was a fairly famous athlete/football player and Judo champion.  The guy - my big brother - was/is amazing, even now at age 80.  His influence on my tender, naive 17 years is still apparent today.  Anyway, I digress, but with good reason - Marshall, living legend, will always be my big brother and I will always admire and love him.

 In this photo I am wearing Marshall's scruffy old bathrobe that wrapped around me about three times.  This ragged bathrobe is holds a great deal of emotional significance and I will no doubt get to that story another time.  It is probably morning - 11;00 a.m. was morning to me, although I could hear Meryl in the basement building stuff by 7:30 a.m.  She never wore out. Sometimes I would go to work with her - to whichever gig she was playing that week.  At only 17, I was illegal, but never got ID'ed.  I guess with make up, and wearing Meryl's homemade, but classy clothing   and high heels, I looked older than 12, and even may have passed for 18.  But considering Meryl was the entertainment, no one ever asked.  So between about 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. I sat and gazed at my sister, barely able to breathe in my new life of freedom - a strange combination of a hundred year old farmhouse with a dirt cellar, kittens everywhere, a St. Bernard, rodents in home made cages, horses, a falling apart barn, being able to wander seemingly endlessly over the prairies where I picked up that possibly Lyme-diseased tick who lived under the skin of my left buttock cheek till Meryl pulled it out, legs and all and we blew it up with a lighter.  Poor little guy.  Or lady.  I wouldn't do such a thing now!  Where was I?  Oh right.... the juxtaposition of living in a dirty old farmhouse and playing dress up every night and sometimes even being on stage with my sister trying to squawk  out a duo of some sort.  Pretty sure I always ruined it.  That, plus the boxing fights, front row, where you get blood and snot splashed all over you because you are Mr. Universe's sister-in-law.  (Okay, I'm not sure about the Mr. Universe thing.  He really was and is a big deal in the athletic world though!)  And afterward, we stand around, finely dressed, with plastic cups full of booze and ice.  Sometimes one of Meryl's duties was to sing the Canadian national anthem, pre-fight.  I never knew how to respond in these social situations.  I felt awkward and painfully bashful, but apparently I fooled a lot of people by smiling and just being related to the VIPs.  What I remember most was the physical discomfort, needing to lie down, sleep, or at least just not be around people, and certainly not in tight jeans and high heels.  Once at home, at Meryl and Marsh's rented farmhouse on Roblin Blvd, I'd retire to my bedroom and lie there aching.  Once, I went with a group of other young folk - from a church I think - to clean up a camp for the summer.  It was the summer Friday the 13th came out.  But I hadn't even been to my first movie in a movie theatre yet.  All I knew of movies were the Christmas films they'd show in the high school auditorium on Christmas eve, and all of us, moving toward the rear exits, single file, silent, embarrassed, because they'd turned off the Muppet movie when the Hare Krishna Muppet band dressed in their orange robes played a rocky tune completely out of sync with Prairie Bible Institute's odd code of morals. Odd indeed.  Having grown up there, I didn't really comprehend how odd it all was till my 40sC

Nothing has changed.  Not really.

So thing is, it can't have been the tick because I was already exhausted.  Before I flew the coop I was exhausted.  Food felt like poison even then.  After lunch, because I didn't have the discipline to eat only two or three bites, I'd return to classes, but be unable to sit up, and often, unable to stay awake.  It was this, the exhaustion, the physical discomfort, that shaped my social world.  Yes, my mother had a part in shaping my social world as well.  But as studies show, it is more our peers and peer environment that shapes our personality, along with the blueprints in our genes.  Our parents have very little to add after the 50% gene mix about nine months before we're born.

I had quit piano after going all the way through to Grade Ten Royal Conservatory of Toronto because my back and gut were too messed up and it just hurt too much to sit for an hour to practice, and my mother believed me.  I didn't really know how to practice then anyway.  Not until college in Grande Prairie at age 30 did I really learn how to practice. You memorize a piece right from the start, measure by measure.  It's the only way to learn to play properly and beautifully.  Problem with that method is, you need to be certain you've memorized it correctly.  At age 30, I would often practice for three hours despite the agony.  Why am I talking about practicing piano?  I guess because it's all there.  It's part of my story, the one I don't want.  The story I wish I didn't have in me to tell, or keep secret.  I just wish it was a very different story.  Don't get me wrong.  There are loads of beautiful moments to watch like vignettes of my soul's evolution even though I don't believe souls exist.  In fact, the reason they are such beautiful and even startling vignettes is because I had so little to enjoy.  Most of my life was an exercise in endurance.  I may still be breathing, but that doesn't mean I endured.