WARNING: This story contains adult content
WARNING: Chapter One, Three and Fourteen contains themes of suicide that may be triggering for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
Resources
Chapter Two: Surprisingly, Mother did allow my aunt to teach me to knit.
photo by ldyck
Chapter
Three
For
many generations, my dad’s ancestors worked the soil of Blondous.
The Bjarnsons were
one of the
pioneer families. Dad was expected to claim his inheritance. When
Afi—Grandpa—retired,
the deed to the farm was to slip from his hands to his sons’.
Steini and Kris would devote their lives to working the Bjarnson’s
homestead. They would ensure it survived and prospered.
However,
Afi couldn’t
foresee the future. He hadn’t factored in Mother. Like a cobra, she
wrapped herself around Kris. She seduced him, gave birth to me and
claimed him. To Mother, my dad wasn’t a farmer, merely a beautiful
toy she had to have.
Kris
Bjarnson became a devoted father. No matter how hard he worked, he
always found time for me. When Mother worked late, which was
frequent, I curled up onto his lap, and he would regale me with
stories. He always began the same way…
”In
the land of here and now and right away, lived a little girl named
Gwen, or was it Amy?
“Her
hair was golden blonde or black. Does it matter?
“She
was your age? Or was she older? Or a little younger? Oh, you know, it
doesn’t really matter.
“She
lived a humdrum life, in a ho-hum way, but one day, one day…”
He
transformed my daily life into a captivating adventure. My dad was a
magnificent storyteller. He had a gift for taking the mundane and
making it magical. There in his lap, snuggled up close to his flannel
shirt, I was rocked to sleep by his words. Soap and water couldn’t
hide his farmer’s cologne—a heady blend of sheep, hay, and soil.
Mother’s
fame as a talented doctor grew. It got so I couldn’t go downtown
without someone stopping me. “I came too close to losing this
finger. Without your mother, it would be gone. She’s a skilled
doctor. You should be very proud.” The story was always the same,
only the body part varied.
Soon
black limousines drove down our lane. The car parked
and a faceless man in an expensive suit knocked
on our door. “Is Doctor McNamara at home?” He came to offer
Mother a position at his hospital in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and
eventually, Vancouver.
I
think Grandpapa McNamara’s hand was at work there. The Honourable
Doctor Alexander McNamara was all-powerful. Tons of people existed
only to grant him favours. He pulled strings to get his darling
daughter into med school. He would have moved mountains to bring her
home to BC.
For all I know, Mother could have written him sob stories begging him
to rescues her. After all, she did hate the farm.
We three sat as a family in our living room as the man in the suit
informed us, “St. Paul’s in downtown Vancouver is an acute care,
teaching and research hospital. Excuse me for saying so, but here
your talent is largely wasted. There you’ll be a highly-respected
member of our world-class team.”
The
suit left. I sent to bed and eavesdropped as my parents continued to
talk.
“Oh,
Kris, don’t you see? I have to go! The offer is just too good to
pass up.”
I
know what Afi would
have told her. “You are my woman. Your place is here on this farm
with me.”
What
did my dad say?
“Of
course, honey, I understand. Wherever you go, I will follow. I love
you too much not to.” And so, we left.
Well,
not quite. First we had to say a few good-byes. Most were tearful and
heartwarming.
Mother
gave her notice at the hospital. Nurses, staff, and patients
organized a potluck dinner to send her off in rural-style. They shook
her hand and wished her luck.
She
glowed, her ego swelled, but she didn’t care.
Tears
were shed, hugs were given, but Afi’s
eyes were dry. His arms folded in front of his chest. His face was an
angry shade of red, and steam came out of his ears. “I knew you
were bad news the minute I met you. You have no respect for
tradition, for our ways,” he roared.
Mother
roared back. “And you think a woman’s place is in the kitchen, in
bed, or under your feet.”
“Kris,
be a man. Control your woman.”
My
dad’s face was white; he gulped, but didn’t say a word. This
battle was between Mother and Afi.
“I
knew you wouldn’t act to defend our ways. You’ve never had a
backbone. Your mother coddled you, and now look at you, you’re not
a man. You’re a mouse. You let this woman walk all over you. You
let her rob you of all you have. You don’t stand up to her or teach
her to mind.”
My
dad said nothing in his defence, but Mother tried. “Don’t talk
that way to him. He
respects me.”
Afi
ignored her, didn’t even look at her, simply continued his tirade.
“You’ve turned your back on family history, on our way of life,
and you’ve endangered the survival of the family farm.” He turned
and glared at Mother. “If our ways aren’t good enough for you,
then you aren’t good enough for us. Get off my land.
Leave. Now!”
All
families operated by a code. Taboos were made clear, if not by words,
then by their lack. Afi
made the family rules. We’d broken them.
If
we were Mennonite or Hutterites, we would have had a word for it. We
would have called it shunned, but Afi
was Icelandic-Canadian. We read our
fate on his bitter face and quickly left.
Mother
single-handedly destroyed my family, crushed Afi,
and callously ripped my dad from the land he loved.
My
dad, the master of animal husbandry, had no avenue for his calling. We didn’t even have a cat, because he couldn’t stand the
idea of confining the poor animal. Yet he endured the prison himself.
In
our new home, my dad stood out like a piece of straw on a lace
tablecloth. He was a little too friendly, a little too open, and a
little too down-homey. He unnerved our neighbours. His attempts to
make friends were ridiculously unsuccessful, as was his tendency to
just drop by uninvited.
Soon,
he discovered an old solution to his new problem. He turned to the
bottle.
He
could have sought professional help. Meet with a therapist, joined
Alcoholics Anonymous, but he didn’t. He just couldn’t. Those
solutions were too foreign to him. He was raised to rely solely on
his family. The only family my dad had was Mother and me.
“Oh, we are so much happier in this place! We eat out anytime we
want to, go to the theatre, go shopping. This is the good life. Don’t
you agree, Kris?” Mother asked—it was a rhetorical question. She
didn’t need to hear him and she didn’t. “I’ve
taken us out of the pig sty into the castle.”
Mother
was in love with our new life. She didn’t see how her success
emasculated him. Our neighbours called him “Mr. McNamara”, and
Mother never corrected them.
She
spent all her spare time plotting and planning with Grandpapa
McNamara. They would stop
at nothing to reach their common goal to establish Mother’s
dominance in the Canadian health care system.
And
me, I was a self-centered teenager. I only saw how my dad’s
behaviour affected me, and I promptly abandoned him for my peers.
Dad
woke up dry and passed out plastered. He became a suburban joke—the
tired, old alcoholic. By his actions, he was crying out. Month after
month, no one heard. He finally drank himself into an early grave. A
neighbour found him behind the steering wheel, the car wrapped around
a telephone pole. That was the rumour. I was sheltered from the harsh
reality of his demise. What was hidden from me, I created. I was
haunted by horrific images night after night. My grief was a subject
no one wanted to address.
Why
did he leave me?
After
his funeral, I searched for the answer I hoped I would find. In the
attic, I opened an old trunk and dug through its contents. There,
hidden away from Mother’s prying eyes, was my dad’s handwritten
manuscript, secretly recorded and privately kept. His words comforted
me. Not even death silenced his voice.
The
memoir was a prayer of yearning for the life he once knew—long
summer days, hayfield hearty lunches, lambing. His stories reawakened
my senses to the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the farm. He
had died of a broken heart. Mother had killed him. And I hated her
for it.
Driven
to action by rage, I wrote a carefully crafted note in which I called
her a greedy, selfish, old cow and thereby, severed our relationship
forever.
Is
reuniting with Mother the task I must perform? Has she been pining
away for me all these years, living blinded by a veil of tears? If I
go to her, mend her broken heart, will I be free?
The Sweater Curse
Chapter Four
She didn't mourn. She moved on.
Wednesday, November 5 7 PM PT
965 Kings Road Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC
Meet the DC Reid Poetry Finalists
Thursday, November 6
Governor General's Literary Award (GG Books) winner announced
About my week...
