Contents vignettes 03 Serving the Water Ladies By Lisa Hallett A Tale of Parking in Bowness By Jessica Clark
features Ogden vs. Lake Bonavista 04
Or how we moved from a gritty neighbourhood to a fancy one. By Jodi Egan
Girlfriend Abuse: A Solo Battle 06
He threatened her, and smashed things. Later, she agreed to marry him. Why? By Jenica Foster
Trapped in the ‘Friend Zone’ 08 When you’re there, it’s no fun. By Andrew J. Szekeres History Denied 10
After WWII, my German grandmother married a British soldier. There was more. By Devon Jolie
Chemical Restraints 12
My grandfather was drugged secretly after surgery. He’s not alone. By Tanis Brown
The Accuser and Us 14
After 5 years, the courts put distance between us— and our accuser. By Melissa Molloy
Contributors Lisa Hallet Jessica Clark Jodi Egan Jenica Foster
Andrew J. Szekeres Devon Jolie Tanis Brown Melissa Molloy
Faculty supervisor Janice Paskey jpaskey@mtroyal.ca 403-440-8744
Layout and design Eva Colmenero ecolmenero@cjournal.ca 403-969-5042
Print production Brad Simm 403-440-6946
Publishing information Profiles West (profileswest.ca) is published twice a year as a magazine supplement to the Calgary Journal (calgaryjournal.ca). Department of Journalism/Faculty of Communication Studies, Mount Royal University, Canada. Ogden home
02 u Profiles West u Summer 2012
Photo by Eva Colmenero
Cover photo supplied by istockphoto
vignettes
Serving the Non-Fat Water Ladies BY LISA HALLETT
I
t was Friday night and I just got my first table. We server trainees were working the back corner of the restaurant with a manager monitoring our every move. With three years of previous serving
experience, I thought the new job would be a walk in the park. I greeted the two ladies, probably in their late 50s, and offered them something to drink. “Oh no, no.” They replied. “We don’t want a drink. We’ll just have some water.” And water isn’t a drink? I got them their waters anyways and asked if they had any questions about the menu. “What’s the feature soup?” they queried. That’s what I forgot to do! Read the feature board. I quickly excused myself and went on a hunt to answer this question. “Moroccan chicken,” was the answer I came back with. Both of their faces sneered. The dish not my favourite either though, so I pretended I didn’t see their reaction. “I would like a steak,” the one woman stated. “But not a fatty one. I don’t want a fatty steak.” Okay. None of the steaks are overly fatty, but they all have a bit of marbling in them, I informed her. Not the answer she was looking for. This was off to a great start. “Okay then I’ll have a salad,” she decided. Perfect. “But none of that fatty stuff on there.” That meant no feta, no dressing, no pecans, and half the avocado, leaving her with a delicious mix of greens, shredded carrots and tomatoes. Yum. The other lady went for the so-called fatty steak, clearly not put off by her friend’s opinions of it. So off I went to put in their order. Not even a minute later, the salad lady was waving me down. Their coffee was too cold so could I please make a fresh pot? Absolutely. I returned a few minutes later with steaming mugs in hand. Could they please have some sugar?
But not the real sugar, only sweetener. No problem. I returned again. Oh could they please have some cream? But not fatty cream, only milk. And none of that two per cent. Just skim. Alright, no problem. I returned again. How long was their food going to take? Well seeing as they had ordered just over five minutes ago, it would be a few more.
“I would like a steak. But not a fatty one. I don’t want a fatty steak.” The food finally arrived. I made the routine two-bite check to make sure everything was up to standards. The salad was a little bland. No kidding. Could she please have some dressing on the side? But none of that fatty dressing. Just oil and vinegar. And she didn’t like how there were leaves with white bits from being close to the stalk so could I please take it back and have it remade with only the ends of the lettuce? She would patiently wait. But, of course. When I returned, I was informed they needed more sweetener and more milk and could I please adjust the lighting and turn down the music? I had almost had it. In all my years of serving, I had met a lot people with a lot of needs. But this was at a whole other level. Surely they would have been more comfortable sitting in their own homes, making salad with the parts of the leaves that they appealed to them and not eating fatty steak and drinking cold coffee with fatty milk.
The Parking Spot in Bowness BY JESSICA CLARK
A
partment hunting left me feeling dejected. I wanted a one bedroom with an office and above all something cheap. I suppose it was a lot to ask. But I knew Bowness would come through. I was directed to a townhouse with rent too low to believe. I hesitated, owing to cynicism and proximity to a slumlord’s previous offering of cheap living. But I went for the viewing and parked across the street. A potential new neighbour came storming outside in his sweatpants. “You can’t park here,” he informed me. I looked around for official indication that I’d made some sort of error. “My mother is handicapped and the bus comes to pick her up. Sometimes it needs to park a whole block up because there’s no room. The kids from the high school are the worst offenders,” he said. I shrugged, “I won’t be long. Does she plan to get picked up sometime today?” “Well, no,” he admitted. I sighed over the moot point. “Are you planning on moving in?” he asked. I studied his features. Neighbour had a difficult time looking me in the eye because his were crossed, but they were an eerie, lucid blue. He was missing front teeth and his hair was receding. “Yea, maybe,” I said. “Well, I’m up early in the morning. And when I start my truck, it’s loud. The lady who lived there before used to yell at me.” I turned and went to meet my new landlord. “Good to know,” I said. Neighbour rarely gets up before 10 a.m., but he bought a new truck shortly after I moved in, so the engine runs silent. I’ve yet to see his mother. Part of me believes I’ve got a Norman Bates situation across the street.
For the most part, the high school kids are respectful of our parking spaces and I’m out and about during the times they have classes, so we rarely cross paths. But neighbour, fed up I suppose, commissioned the city to put up a designated handicap parking space and sign. At least he’s proactive. On a Monday morning, I watch a group of teenagers pull into the newly-restricted space. They slam the doors on their silver Acura and head toward classes. Neighbour comes out of his front door, talking on a cordless telephone. He’s pacing the sidewalk
and waving his free-arm in frantic waves. Parking authority will show soon. I imagine there must be stress as a lone, homeowner amidst a block of rentals. But I have little sympathy for neighbour, his entitlement, his nosiness. Which I say, aware of the irony that I’m peering at him through my living room window. And on a random afternoon, I have to chuckle a bit when I see a parking ticket slipped under the wipers of his truck and no handicap permit on his rear-view mirror.
Photo by Jessica Clark
Across the street, a handicapped space for a homeowner’s never-to-be seen mother is guarded relentlessly.
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 03
neighbourhood / my story
Ogden vs. Lake Bonavista BY JODI EGAN
MY PARENTS MOVED US TO A BIGGER HOUSE WITH A NICER LAWN, AND MORE REFINED NEIGHBOURS. YET, IT’S ROUGH, ILLOGICAL ODGEN THAT I STILL MISS.
I
couldn’t tell if the sapphire-blue sky over my run-down childhood neighbourhood was actually better here than over in Lake Bonavista, my new community. Maybe the weather looked better in Ogden because my emotions brightened here. Ogden is a southeastern Calgary community that runs adjacent to railway tracks and alongside Calgary’s industrial area. Eighteen-wheelers and the loud rumble of trains are lifestyle elements— a little rough and a little dirty. Ogden has a seedy reputation. My new teachers in Lake Bonavista told me the paint chips and slouchy fences were offensive and screamed neglect and shady-dealings. The back alleys weren’t even paved! They were rocky, rough and narrow. There was no logic to the community. Streets just ended and intersections had illogical traffic signs that confused newcomers. There were grand houses with big white bay windows and manicured front lawns next to shoebox-sized houses that were nearly eclipsed by giant weeping willows that engulfed the whole front lawn. It was illogical, they said. I didn’t understand at the time what all that really meant. I always felt perfectly safe in Ogden and it didn’t need to make sense. I knew everyone on our block, if not by name then by face. My little mind couldn’t perceive the evils people saw in that rough little neighbourhood. As kids we identified Ogden’s roads and streets not by numbers and names, but by the strange or memorable design of houses that looked like stucco art pieces. The colours ranged from burnt orange to robin’s-egg blue, forest green to mustard yellow. Some houses were three stories and as thin as a single-car garage, while others were small and matchbox looking with tall pointed roofs and short stout walls. The majority of the driveways were homemade. People would break the sidewalk in front of their homes and pour their own concrete to make it more ramp-like. Driveways were made
from years of driving on the lawn. No pavement, just the absence of grass and deep-rooted tire tracks. I saw Ogden as a large playground. The trees were old, tall and extremely climbable. Their bark was rough and strong. The abandoned hot rods and “shaggin’ wagons” made for great hiding places. The random patches of green space made tag an anywhere any-time sport. Ogden had raised my sisters and me just as much as my parents had. The rough and gravelly cement sidewalks taught me to be cautious well before the message from parents ever registered in my reckless childhood brain.
Moving Out
In the late 90s, Ogden had becoming a bit dangerous for my mother’s liking. The grow-ops, the dealers, the Hell’s Angels clubhouse, and the welfare squanderers were taking a toll on her. She worried too much. Knife fights at the local school didn’t bode well with her either, especially since my eldest sister was nearing 13 and soon she would be enrolling and my middle sister wouldn’t be far behind her. When we were younger, my father worked three jobs: he was a crane operator in Ogden’s industrial area, a tradesman, and contractor. My mother, like most Calgarians, worked in the oil and gas industry – as a land administrator, whatever that means. Then, my mother got promoted, and my father finally made enough to quit his backbreaking manual jobs. My parents decided it was time to move on up in the world. My two older sisters and I were dragged away when I was 10. We relocated from the nicest house on a small street in one of Calgary’s grittiest communities, to the ugliest house on the main drag in the nicest community southeast Calgary had to offer us: Lake Bonavista.
The author returns to a diner in Ogden, a childhood neighbourhood of railway tracks, homemade driveways and illogical traffic signs. Home.
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Photo by Pauline Zulueta
The numbers help tell the story. We went from Ogden with an average family income of $50,000 to one with $105,000 and the difference was obvious. Although we moved only 10 kilometres down the Deerfoot, we might as well have moved to a foreign country. It was Ogden versus Lake Bonavista, and we kids lost that fight. After the move to Lake Bonavista, I had a rough transition. If Ogden was illogical, this place was nothing but conventional. All the streets were parallel to one another. All the intersections were perfectly straight and the signs were fresh and followed fervently. This community was born on paper, whereas Ogden seemed to be made up as it went. The thousands of houses that made up the perfectly cubic “lakeside” (The Lake is a manmade, flooded, injected with fish and then dubbed “lake.”)
Size Matters in Lake Bonavista
It was like there were five house designs and six colour choices (grey-blue, grey-yellow, grey, eggshell, and all shades of beige) that made up every house in this expansive southeast community. They looked as though they were made with a mathematical formula. Though mundane, they were about 2,000 square-feet, much larger than Ogden’s average 1,200 square-foot homes. In Lake Bonavista, size mattered. The house we moved into was one of the five designs/six colour options: basic bi-level, colour: grey-yellow. The backyard was half the size of the one in Ogden, where we could fit a seesaw, flower garden, tetherball pole, tree house and sand pit, along with a decent sized deck and a basketball hoop with a free-throw line. No, this backyard had a cement parking pad and one crab-apple tree that was all withered and unhappy. There was no creativity. The people weren’t much more exciting. To make matters duller, my neighbours were
This community was born on paper, whereas Ogden seemed to be made up as it went. all pensioners, the most common age group after middle-agers. They all had smelly houses and sour dispositions. Bob, our neighbour to the left, was batshit crazy. He bought a new car every year for god-knows-why. He had six cars when we moved here and now, 11 years later, he has about 10: three occupying every inch of his threecar garage, three in his driveway, and two in the street (it’s impossible to know how many he kept). The neighbour to the right died two years after we moved in; I never saw him once. There was one 10-year-old girl on my street who walked passed me on the street — I guess she was taught never to talk to strangers — the rest were retirees who kept to themselves and had obviously used their life supply of patience for children years ago. My mother was right about one thing: this place was safer, but infinitely more boring.
Photo by Jodi Edgan
At 10, the author’s family moved from the nicest home on this Ogden street to the home below.
outskirts of Beaverdam Flats— the most beautiful 10-kilometre stretch of Fish Creek Park. He looked like Harry Potter before Harry Potter was a thing. His black hair was slick, but stylish enough to make him look young enough. His wiry glasses sat on the bridge of his nose in a nerdy way that made you want to hand him a hard drive to reconfigure, or I guess in 1997, a floppy disk? I got to know Ogden residents fairly well due to my childhood mischief. I was essentially fearless. My sisters and I used to knock on random front doors in Ogden and Lynnwood. We would walk up to a bizarre house we’d never seen, press our thumbs into the doorbell and wait. When they answered, we’d usually just ask them in our sweet little voices if they’d like to play with us. We were young so they forgave our lack of tact, the worst we ever got was a “no,” and the best was a play session with the family pet or some cookies and milk. I wasn’t thinking of these people when I left. I didn’t realize I would miss them. I didn’t realize that the neighbourly feeling was so important to making a community feel like home.
It took me months to make a friend
No one spoke to one another, especially me, the newcomer “from the ghetto.” No one smiled as you passed them on the sidewalk. They either averted their eyes by contemplating the cement or the perfectly manicured lawns. Sometimes they’d stare you down, contemplating you (this was only if you were lucky enough to see a soul while walking around). It seemed like everyone was scared of you,
above you, or couldn’t look you in the eye for fear of turning to stone. Everyone drove their shiny black SUVs and luxury sedans to the corner store for milk. The bus stops were always empty and the dog-walkers made the 10-minute car ride down to Beaverdam Flats to walk their pooches. The kids all played inside on their video game consoles and watched the latest Disney-produced TV shows on their flat screen televisions. It took me months to make a friend. Odgen vs. Bonavista. There were the trees. I began to hate the Bonavista poplars. Every tree in the entire community was a poplar. They were common in communities like Bonavista because they grew like weeds. Because they grew unnaturally fast, they often got sickly, and rotted from the inside out. Limbs would fall off because of after the most moderate rainstorm. The leaves always budded late and fell early. By September, the branches were barren and dripped sap on the expensive SUVs that were so coveted by my neighbours. I hated these trees. They couldn’t hold the weight of a little girl trying to climb them. They were useless to me. I made the drive to Ogden to remember not to forget. All my childhood memories of this place are being replaced with the mundane and the ordinary, with people who stick up their noses, avert their eyes and accumulate wealth. I drive here to remember that there are still places like this that exist: places with crazy houses, crazy people, and crazy landscapes where nothing is mundane, nothing is typical and nothing is predictable.
Good ‘ole Ogden
We remembered friends back in Ogden. The people in Ogden were much like the houses — you didn’t know what you were going to get when you turned around the corner. Down the street there was that deranged old lady with the squinty eyes and wispy white hair that snapped back onto her balding scalp when she chased us off her garbage dump of a lawn. There was Sye, a good friend of my father who always smelt a little off. His thick orange-grey moustache was friendly enough over his smile of yellowing, tobacco-stained teeth. About five years after the move, my father had admitted with a snicker that Sye had a small grow-op in his dingy basement. That’s when I learned what pot smelt like, old man. There was my Grade 2 teacher who lived on the
Photo by Jodi Egan
Moving to Lake Bonavista meant trying to understand a reserved, beige, affluent neighbourhood.
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 05
relationships / my story
Photo from istockphoto
Relationship Abuse: A Solo Battle HE FLIRTED WITH OTHER GIRLS, TOLD HER SHE LOOKED UGLY, NEEDED TO LOSE WEIGHT. THE POLICE CAME TO SAVE HER. IN RESPONSE, SHE AGREED TO MARRY HIM.
T
ilt your head back and run your fingers slowly from the bottom of your chin to your clavicle. Feel the way your tender skin awakens under the pads of your fingers. The way your muscles move when you swallow, the small hole at the base of your neck and the steady beat of your heart. There is no statistic that says in clear terms the most fragile part of the human body. From a physical standpoint some think it is the spine, because if it is broken there is a high chance of paralysis or death. In an emotional sense, some believe it to be the heart. For me, the most fragile part of the human body is the neck. It can be choked, strangled or slit. But above all, the neck is vulnerable because it exposes feelings, thoughts and insecurities, like an unlocked diary just waiting to be read. “When people are insecure, troubled, scared, concerned, worried or nervous, they cover or touch their neck,” writes Joe Navarro, an ex-FBI agent of the behavioural analysis program. Navarro uses his research and practical experience observing nonverbal communications for the FBI to write a blog for Psychology Today. One post titled, “Body Language Secrets of the Neck” discusses the different meanings of neck touching. Unlike other body parts, I’ve noticed the neck is rarely touched by anyone else. The only exception is by a lover or an aggressor. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference, especially in relationships. Much like my friend Jamie, as she seemed to confuse her abuser with her boyfriend. Four out of 10 people in Calgary have experienced abuse in current or previous relationships, says Connect Family and Sexual Abuse Network, a Calgary service with a 24-hour support line. The Network conducted 451 online interviews with 16 to 69-year-old Calgarians. The interviewees were presented with eight scenarios adapted from a Alberta Children and Youth Services survey and were asked to rate their current relationship against those scenarios. Other data supports this. Of the approximately 849,430 15 to 74-year-old people living in Calgary, about 339,772 people have experienced abuse in a relationship, according to the 2011 Civic Census. That’s an alarmingly high number.
06 u Profiles West u Summer 2012
BY JENICA FOSTER Gaye Warthe, chair of the department of social work and disability studies at Mount Royal University, found similar results. Her 2010 study of Mount Royal students detected that approximately 30 per cent of students had experienced violence in a current or previous dating relationship. Warthe says most abuse occurs because of an issue of power and control. If it looks like the abuser is going to lose control, such as the end of a relationship, Warthe says this is when the victim is most at risk. While a friend may seem like the logical person to turn to for someone who is being abused, they generally don’t know how to handle the situation, Warthe says. I experienced first hand the truth of her words on a dark spring evening. It was 9 p.m. My friend Jamie and I were driving to her house after a long day of working at the mall. I was wearing a high-waisted skirt with a grey tank top and ballet flats. My long blonde hair curled in loose beach-waves around my shoulders, and my eyes sparkled with iridescent shadow. We walked in the front door and noticed a jar full of blue decorative balls was smashed on the hardwood floor. A glass cup was shattered in the kitchen and there was an empty bottle of alcohol sitting on the coffee table. The only other person who had access to this house today was Jamie’s boyfriend, Steven. Steven had been under psychiatric care at the Foothills hospital only a week before for mixing prescription drugs and ecstasy with alcohol, causing him to hear things no one else could. He was released on good behaviour into his parents’ care, but stayed at Jamie’s house during the day to escape his parents. Steven had a history of abusing Jamie both emotionally and physically. He frequently told her she looked ugly, needed to lose weight, and he was seen flirting with other girls. But at 21, Jamie loved him and left her engagement with another man for Steven. A messy house and relationship troubles weren’t enough to ruin our nightout dancing. We cranked the tunes, turned the curling iron on and retrieved our mascara. Less than 10 minutes later, there was an incessant pounding at the door.
For me, the most fragile part of the human body is the neck. It can be choked, strangled or slit. But above all, the neck is vulnerable because it exposes feelings, thoughts and insecurities.
“Oh no, it’s him. Don’t open the door,” I said. But, like any good horror flick, the main characters seem to throw good judgment out the window. Jamie opened the door to find Steven on her doorstep. And despite his irrational behaviour and previous abuse, she invited him in. While they talked in the living room, I hid out in the bathroom around the corner. After all the bad news I had heard about him, it was disconcerting to see someone just like me. I pictured a tall, well-built male in ripped jeans and a black leather jacket with blood shot eyes and silver rings on every finger. In reality, he was 21, had short brown hair, jeans, and a black V-neck T-shirt that framed his fairly skinny arms. But then again, abusers rarely fit the hard-core biker, gang member stereotype. Jamie ended up kicking him out of her house. The catch was he only left momentarily. He came back pounding on the door begging to be let in. I was cowering in the bathroom imagining all the ways I could protect myself. I could lock myself in the bathroom, but there were no windows if he managed to break down the door. If he tried to attack me I could burn him with the piping hot curling iron, or try to use those self-defense techniques I learned in gym class. But that was five years ago, and I’m out of practice. I settled on running to the adjacent bedroom, breaking the window, and making a run for it. The only problem was I couldn’t justify leaving Jamie to fend for herself, so I hoped the adrenaline coursing through my veins and my beauty supplies would be enough to keep me safe. The next thing I knew Jamie was screaming and threatening to call Steven’s parents if he didn’t leave. In a last attempt at defiance, he thrust his fist through the porch door, breaking the plastic and shattering the hinges. Jamie was a hysterical mess. Tears caused black mascara to run down her face and her chest was moving so fast she was practically hyperventilating. Her cell phone vibrated and Steven’s voice rang clear as he said, “If you call my parents I’m going to hit the highway at 120 (km/h) and kill myself.” There is no way to know for sure if Steven had any intention of committing suicide, or if he was just manipulating Jamie. But either way, his threat had value because his brother committed suicide. As much as Jamie hated Steven at the moment, she didn’t want to be the reason he killed himself.
We sat in the dark for half an hour, trying to process the information and decide what to do next. The lights of Steven’s car flashed by as he drove in circles around the block. He knew we were still home. Jamie’s shaking fingers dialed 911 on her pink cell phone. The Calgary police arrived within 20 minutes. I tried to act nonchalant, like this wasn’t a big deal for me. I tried to be the supportive friend, when all I wanted to do was break down and cry. I knew the police were there to help, but giving a statement took me from simply playing the role of a bystander to a witness. I didn’t want to be involved. I wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened, but like it or not I was tied to the event. It wasn’t a bad dream I could wake up from. It was real, and I was completely shaken. The funny thing is, despite Steven’s abuse, Jamie was engaged to him only a couple months later. This is fairly common behaviour, says Warthe, the Mount Royal university professor who researches dating violence. She says people often stay in abusive relationships because they are embarrassed, feel responsible for the abuse and don’t want other people to know what’s going on. I didn’t, and still don’t understand the full extent of Jamie’s relationship. But I do know that at one point she was happy with Steven, and that has to count for something. Despite multiple chances, Jamie didn’t marry him. At a friend’s going away party less than a month after the engagement, Steven punched her in the face and tried to strangle her. He was charged for domestic abuse and mischief. She says, “Currently he claims he would like to get back together and make it work, but I’m still scared to be around him.” Jamie’s fingers caressed her neck many times through the course of her relationship with Steven. Maybe he thrived on the power it gave him to see her vulnerability so easily displayed. While Steven is mostly known for being an aggressor, I can’t forget he was once also a lover. This confusion and Jamie’s vulnerability lead to her being taken advantage of. But it’s easy for me to say she shouldn’t date him because I wasn’t directly involved. At the end of the day it is up to each person to decide how to live, friends are merely a support system to fall back on. We alone must decide when to uncover our necks and expose the contours of our bare skin.
Photo from istockphoto
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 07
relationships / my story
Trapped in the ‘Friend Zone’ BY ANDREW SZEKERES
SHE MET ME IN A SILKY, BLUE NIGHTIE AND INVITED ME TO HER BED. WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED NEXT?
W
e were lying on her bed watching (500) Days of Summer. She snuggled up to me, as I placed my arm around her. She then threw one of her arms around my waist; our eyes met each other. She gave a cute little smirk and proceeded to say, “You’re an awesome friend.” Boom! There goes the dynamite. Libido gone and out the door. So you try to start a relationship with someone, but for some reason or another either she doesn’t want a relationship or you just don’t have the nerve to ask her out. By then you have become great ‘friends,’ despite what you might perceive as ‘sexual tension.’ At this point you are stuck in a friend relationship. Congratulations, you’ve just been ‘friendzoned.’ Laci Green, a University of California Berkeley-trained sex therapist covered the topic in a Youtube video posted in 2010. “The friend zone is a dark, lonely corner of relationships, where romantic potential comes to die,” said Green, 22. This is where almost any chance of becoming romantic is squashed. It is a platonic relationship, where one half is the lovelorn loser, and the other half views the relationship as just ‘friends.’ I was caught in this situation with a young woman I met at school.
She was an image made from glory. She had beautiful light brown hair that looked blonde in the summer. She was just a little shorter than me, athletic and petite at the same time. When we first met, we discovered we were similar to each other in many ways. At first we would meet after classes, enjoy some coffee and head back to one of our homes to spend time with each other. We spent hours listening to our favourite music.
“The friend zone is a dark, lonely corner of relationships, where romantic potential comes to die” Before long, we were inseparable and spent almost every day together. I wanted a relationship, but it became harder to pursue one. Friends said I was over analyzing the situation, and I just needed to dive in. But at this point I had become worried that if I asked her out on a date, she might say no and
The author, left, ponders being relegated to the friend zone.
08 u Profiles West u Summer 2012
I’d never see her again. When I confronted my friends with my predicament, I was usually given the response “find someone else.” I’m not going to lie; these were not the best or most comforting responses I had hoped for. However, one day in March things changed.
The Punch
She called me around 11 p.m. She was crying nonstop and struggled to piece together words without falling into another crying fit. She wanted to talk to me, and asked if I would come over. I drove the half-hour drive to her house and called her when I turned onto her street. She said her parents were still up so I’d have to sneak in to her room. Thankfully, her room was on the first floor and I could easily slip in through the window she left open for me. There she was in her silky baby blue satin nightie. Balls of used tissue paper covered her bed and partially her floor. Apparently there was another guy she had been interested in and they had slept together recently. However, he decided to go back to his ex-girlfriend. This is where I, the ‘good guy friend’ came in. I was choked that she was sexually interested in someone else, but I tried to not let the knots
Photo illustration by Andrew J. Szekeres
Photo illustration by Eva Colmenero
“I brought my boyfriend along, if that’s okay.” My heart sunk faster than a boat made out of rocks. in my stomach show. I comforted her, gave her hugs, and told her how amazing she was. When she finally calmed down from crying, she plopped in (500) Days of Summer into her DVD player to get her mind off the situation. When women watch (500) Days of Summer, they see the movie as a cute, romantic flick that stars the ever loveable Zooey Deschanel. When guys see this movie, they see the emotionless Zooey Deschanel string along Joseph GordonLevitt’s heart, while he gets caught in the friend zone before finally starting a relationship…then gets dumped. So there we were under her soft and silky blanket, arms embraced with each other. In my mind, I was still hoping this would lead to a romantic relationship. But then she’d said ‘we’re good friends’, and all hope was seemingly lost. At least that was what I thought. A few days later, we bought a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc wine. We spent the night drinking from the bottle and watching Yes Man starring, who else but Zooey Deschanel, as well as Jim Carrey. Once again, we found ourselves in her bed. Maybe we were just drunk and our emotions were vulnerable, but we hooked up. At first I was in my glory, but the days to follow would prove otherwise.
She Missed Me
Every time I called her, she either didn’t answer or told me she was busy. When I finally saw her in person, she pretended that night never happened. It wasn’t until the summertime when she called me. She told me that she missed me, and wanted to meet me at a bar for a couple of drinks to show me something important. I put on my best Chuck Taylor shoes, and wore my trusty fedora. I walked into the bar and
spotted her immediately. She saw me and came running towards me with trails of her purple dress fluttering behind her. She threw out her hands and hugged me, exclaiming how much she missed me. She then grabbed my hand and started to lead me to another part in the bar. I was thinking that she and I might finally be a couple, but that was until she proceeded to speak. “We’re sitting over here,” she smiled. “We’re?” I asked. “I thought it was just us.” “I brought my boyfriend along if that’s okay,” she said as her lips fell into a natural heart shape. My heart sunk faster than boat made out of rocks. It was that day I realized that we were never meant to be. It felt like no matter what I did, I was always going to bear that label of ‘friend’ to her. I learned a valuable lesson to never fall into that dark area of relationships again.
Stay Away from The Friend Zone
So how can you avoid that horrid place of romance? Rob Cribb, of the Toronto Star, wrote that people need to “grow a pair, take the rejection if it comes, and understand that it frees you from the torment of braiding her hair while talking about boys.” However, if that answer is still vague, then Laci Green identified five actions that her friends did, that led to ending up in the friend zone: 1. They told too much about themselves right away. 2. They became a ‘personal’ therapist and seem to always have time to listen to her problems. 3. They weren’t flirtatious or create any sexual tension. 4. They were too clingy. 5. They became overtly awkward to their friends
and were too open about their inexperience in relationships. Laci Green has listed five reasons on how to avoid the friend zone: 1. Be more mysterious and don’t include so much information about yourself at first. 2. Don’t volunteer to be there emotionally, let them come to you. 3. Subtle acknowledgement of interest, be flirtatious, and inadvertently let them know of your interest. 4. Make yourself ‘mildly’ unavailable. 5. Don’t be clingy; go easy on the texts and phone calls. So as you can see, there are ways to avoid and get out of the friend zone. You just have to play cool in the pursuit of happiness. And if you’re wondering whatever happened to “us”, she went on to date that guy. Even though she was promoted in her job, he used her financially by quitting his job and letting her support his drug habit. She eventually kicked him out, but we still don’t see each other anymore. I still think about her, and the memory hurts. However, I use this emotional pain as a reminder of how to treat the people you want to be in a relationship with. I now know I should have realized that we weren’t going to be more than friends after we saw (500) Days of Summer. My story didn’t have a happy ending, but it should show that the friend zone can be extremely avoidable. There is hope for love out there, we just have to make the most of our chances and not let them slip through our hands. In our lifetime, we will encounter many friends, so don’t be afraid to burn some bridges before you find the one for you. If there is someone out there you like, then break all barriers and see if she likes you back. It’s better than ‘what if?’
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 09
family history / my story
History Denied BY DEVON JOLIE
Post War Happiness: Ursula Schroder married British soldier Dennis Rogers in 1948
Photo courtesy of the Jolie family
BORN AND RAISED UNDER THE THIRD REICH, MY GRANDMA LIVED AT THE CENTRE OF NAZI GERMANY. EVEN AFTER MARRYING A BRITISH SOLDIER, SHE HELD ALLEGIANCE TO HITLER, AND HER CONVICTION LEFT ME WONDERING, “WHO WAS SHE REALLY?”
M
y grandma loved Hitler. You may never understand it. I may never understand it. Despite the hard numbers, the concrete facts, the hundreds of documentaries that present the truth of the Holocaust, my German-born grandma never believed any of it. About seven million Germans, including soldiers and civilians died in World War II according British journalists Roger Boyes and William Horsley, some of those were my grandma’s own family and loved ones. She witnessed first-hand the death and destruction Hitler brought upon the people, but she loved him. And while you may be quick to condemn her, please don’t. My grandma was deceived. Like Eve, in the Garden of Eden, she was misled by a serpent. My grandma fell prey to Hitler’s silken words, to his promises of happiness and truth. Without her consent, her mind and thoughts were shaped and cast in indestructible steel. No matter how the truth exploded against her mind, Granny could not believe it. But despite it all, she was as loving as a grandma could be. My grandmother Ursula Schroder was born in Hamburg in 1926 and lived there until 1948 – the year she married Dennis Rogers, a British reserve solider. They moved to Bristol, England. I can count the times I’ve made the 12-hour journey to Bristol on one hand. The time spent with both my grandparents is the equivalent of two months. And of the time I have been old
10 u Profiles West u Summer 2012
enough to remember, maybe three weeks. And from what I can remember of my grandma, before she passed away almost three years ago, she was as loving as a grandma could be. She had a glorious garden, filled with juicy red currants and crisp green beans. I can see her in her uniform: cream button-front blouse and a horribly ugly floral skirt, tending to the pruning. She’d yell “Roy” at my grandpa, followed by some command to get a watering can or a basket. In pictures, I see her holding my hand, my face covered in the ice cream my mom had asked her not to buy for my sisters and me. I’m sitting in her lap, our bleach blonde hair matching and our smiles wide. The last time I saw Granny was two Christmases past. Her hair was greying, standing up on end. Her blouse hung off her shoulders, having lost all the soft pudginess that made her Granny. Her bright smile was now unsure, her eyes lost. She was sick: kidneys failing, cancer, gangrene. Her home was still filled with Christmas. A tiny tree adorned with tinsel, a giant nutcracker guarding chocolate and German Christmas music blaring loudly from the television. That Christmas she taught me to make traditional potato salad and somehow persuaded us to let her portion the 22-kilogram turkey from her seat in her walker. These are my memories of my grandma. After the funeral, my mom came home with a suitcase full of sepia photographs and parchment documents. We sat on my parent’s bed, rifling through the
pictures and the German papers we couldn’t read. Then I saw it. The eagle and the Swastika. The symbol of the Third Reich. All of a sudden, everything my eyes touched was from Hitler’s Germany. Pictures, documents, letters, medals. I’d always known the story. My grandma had been a teenager living in Hamburg during World War II. She was a member of Hitler’s Youth. Her fiancé, a German fighter pilot, was killed in action. Then there were the bombings. Bombings. And starvation. My grandpa, a British soldier, met my grandma while she was working in an office in Germany. He soon left the country and returned to England but they kept corresponding. In a letter she pleaded with him to save her; she was starving. He brought my grandma from the destruction, depression and death of post-war Germany back to England. And that was that. The ending was supposed to be they had six children and lived “Happily Ever After” in drizzly ol’ England. But with my grandma gone and that suitcase of history before me, I sat there trying to piece together who my Granny really was. Now, it would be unfair to say that I had never known my grandma’s involvement and support of Nazi Germany. But as is human nature, things are far easier to ignore without tangible proof. Yet, with the eye of the Reich eagle staring up
The Rogers celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998.
at me from a pile of papers, I could no longer deny that I was a descendant of a Nazi-lover. Love. A word I was so hesitant to use to describe Granny’s views of Hitler and the Nazis. Love is how we feel about our families and our best friends. Love is what moves us to sacrifice for them, to do anything for them. Love is what we call mothers who die for their children. Could I say my grandma, who undeniably loved her family, loved Hitler too? It took three days to gather the courage to ask my mom. “Did Granny love Hitler?” Sad pain crosses her face. “She did.” Try to pin point that emotion, that feeling. The moment you hear your loving grandmother loved and worshipped a mass-murderer who is reviled world-wide. Confusion. Disbelief. Denial. Betrayal. All coursing and swirling through my mind and heart, launching bombs at the beautiful memories of my beautiful grandma. But underneath it all, sadness. Sadness that Granny, a woman who had Jewish friends is lumped together with those evil men and women of the Reich who destroyed so many lives. You may never understand how decades after the Holocaust my grandma believed it never happened, how despite all the evidence against Hitler, she still thought he was the sun. I may never understand it. My mom says Hitler was Germany’s saviour in a time of economic turmoil and the constant fear of war. In all his outstanding and powerful orations, Hitler gave my Granny hope. Internationally recognized as the leading historian of modern Germany, Michael Kater is a German-born university professor, currently teaching York University. In his book, Hitler Youth, he wrote that the Nazi rulers offered a world view that granted status, certainty and power to young people and who, “with their ideals and energies, would have been especially vulnerable to such values in their own search for identity and meaning.” At the age of 11, my grandma signed up to serve her country as a Hitler Youth. Surely, her young mind soaked up whatever propaganda she read or watched or heard, with the naïve belief that it
was pure goodness. In her history, she wrote she was proud and happy when her SA Stormtrooper father was called to war. Even though her cousin died in the battle her father would soon join. And years later, living in England, she would call herself a Nazi. My mom says, “If anyone ever made a comment about how Hitler was a bad person, she would defend him. She would always say it wasn’t Hitler; it was other people who were the corrupt ones and were influencing him.” While we condemn those who love Hitler and still uphold his ideals today, my grandma deserves no such condemnation. Granny was a victim. In a study published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society, historian Alan McDougall analyzed the transition of Hitler Youth post-war. “A consensus emerged around the idea that young people had been victims rather than accomplices of Nazism,” he writes. The war victimized my German grandma just as much as it did Jews, soldiers, and those who opposed the Nazis. It seems like an endless list of Hollywood exposés about the inhumane treatment and the victimization of Jews during the Second World War. Schindler’s List, The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank, and many more document the horrendous genocide that has marked our recent history. But I always thought, “What about my grandma? Wasn’t she a victim of the war too? What about the Germans?” And then I watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Never have I felt so ill, so shaken as I did after I left my social studies class that day. I remember the tremble that left my knees weak and my hands grasping for the banister as I stumbled to my locker. Because for the first time, I saw my grandma’s world. I saw the Holocaust through her eyes. In case you haven’t been subject to the movie’s horror –though I implore you to watch it—it details the life of a German boy and his ignorance of the treatment of Jews, spawned by black-andwhite images of happy dark-haired children, running free in “special camps.” I realized as I took the stairs that day, my
Photo courtesy of the Jolie family
breathing shallow and my heart slamming in my chest, that this is what my Grandma saw every day. Every day she was fed convincing lies of the fair treatment of the Jews in pamphlets, on the radio and in those same black-and-white images. And with every waking moment of her youth filled with lies, how could she know the truth? And even after the war ended and the truth surfaced, wasn’t the evidence of the Holocaust present in the same way as the Third Reich’s propaganda? Pamphlets, news reports on the radio and black-and-white images on the TV. My mom says that Granny was brainwashed. And I have every reason to believe it. You make think I’m going too far. After all, she loved Hitler and believed fervently that the Holocaust never happened, even till the day she died. Yet, I saw her as loving. The stuffed bunny she sent me one year for Christmas still sits on my book-shelf. The signet ring I wear on my middle finger reminds me of all the money she sent. And 16 teddy-bear birthday cards, one for every birthday before she died. And it wasn’t just the things, the objects that she gave that made her a beautiful soul. Granny: a woman who fed bees from her hand, a woman who joined the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade, a woman that dedicated her life to teaching children, and a woman whose home was always full of chocolate and treats for her grandchildren. And even in her darkest hour, her abounding love crossed the great divide of ocean and earth. I felt it. You may never understand it. But I understand it. Even though my German grandma was a proud Nazi who loved Hitler, she was also a victim of one of the most heinous crimes of our history. Hitler didn’t simply take away her comfort in Germany and the lives of loved ones; he invaded the very thing that makes us who we are. He stole into her mind and branded it with falsehood, leaving her posterity to wonder who she truly was. While thoughts were tainted, her actions never showed any hate. Hitler, despite it all, could never touch my grandma’s heart and the love that filled it. And what is in the heart is what makes us who we are.
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 11
family history / my story
Photo by Kim Wright
Chemical Restraints BY TANIS BROWN
MY GRANDFATHER HAD SURGERY AND ENDED UP WITH DELIRIUM. WORSE, HE WAS THEN DRUGGED WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE. THEN WE FOUGHT BACK AGAINST RISPERIDONE AND THE SYSTEM.
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I
fought back tears as I held the wrinkled hand of my 83-year-old grandfather while trying to calm him after a hysterical crying fit. His once bright-blue eyes were clouded over as he directed my attention to the standard-issue sprinkler that was secured onto the ceiling of his hospital room. In a hushed tone he explained that the metal object was no longer a fire-prevention method, but a murder weapon. This was just a week after he had undergone an elective hip-replacement surgery. As a man who had always loved to travel, arthritis was really cramping his style. He wanted a new hip so that he could walk around the deck of a ship on the Alaskan cruise we had dreamed of going on together. The reality after the surgery however was not the one of an icy landscape framed by beautiful sunsets. Seeing him then, wrestling with nurses and unnecessarily fearing for his life, made it feel as though we were on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg. Our dreams were a sinking ship. I remember the phone call from my mom telling me that the psychiatrist at the hospital had diagnosed my grandfather with post-operative delirium. I immediately hopped onto the Internet. The Mayo Clinic defines delirium as, “A serious disturbance in a person’s mental abilities that results in a decreased awareness of one’s environment and confused thinking.” This explained my grandfather’s newfound fear of sprinklers. I read that delirium is a common problem for seniors. Calgary physician Jayna Holroyd-Leduc wrote in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that the prevalence of delirium can be as high as 74 per cent amongst elderly surgical patients. The trauma of surgery causes a mental breakdown that typically subsides within a few
weeks. After breathing a sigh of relief, I optimistically googled “whale watching Alaska.” For the next two-weeks I rushed out of school and head over to the hosptial to spend time with my grandfather. After his assessment from the psychiatrist we noticed a drastic change. He was still confused, but instead of throwing his food tray at the nurses he just held a blank gaze. His body was there, but his mind seemed to have disappeared all together. We had yet to realize that this change was a sign of something much more disturbing. My grandfather used to be one of the most charismatic men I had ever known. His zest for life saw him behind the wheel of dune buggies in his 50s and cruising on desert roads in Arizona in his 70s. Yet, he was unrecognizable as he sat locked in a geri-chair, the light drained from his face. Worst of all, he could no longer think up the words to say, “I love you.” My grandmother was devastated, my mom stressed and I was just plain heartbroken. It is hard to see the man who was one of your biggest sources of joy your entire life sit drooling in a chair as you try desperately to make him smile for hours every week. I would tuck him in bed every evening, kiss him goodnight and leave the hospital with tears streaming down my cheeks. He should have snapped out of it by now. I hopped on the Internet looking for a cure. I found research studies on post-operative delirium focus on preventative techniques rather than a cure. I shook in anger as I revisited the same article that reported the shocking statistics on the incidence of post-operative delirium. Dr. HolroydLeduc notes that patient care methods should avoid the following: the use of bladder catheters,
sleep deprivation, immobilization and exposure to beeping noises. My grandfather pulled his catheter out just two days after his surgery, screaming, “it’s driving me crazy.” The constant beeping noise that echoed through his room day and night from the nurses’ intercom would shake him asleep mere moments after dozing off. He would murmur, “that god-damned beeping is making me nuts,” as he attempted to fall back asleep. The greatest source of his frustration was the bed rails that kept him and his healing hip stuck in a hospital bed. “If I don’t get out of bed, I am going to lose it,” he would complain. Even in his delusional state he was able to come to the same conclusions as hundreds of published medical studies. My grandfather became one of the statistics. As there is no cure for delirium, it was just commonly accepted that he was one of the 74 per cent of elderly patients who experience this complication. No matter whom we asked or consulted, the statistic along with the frustratingly vague recovery time of a few weeks to a few years was all we got. Didn’t they understand that Alaska was waiting for my grandfather and me? A transitional nurse came by to discuss my grandfather’s only option—a rehabilitation centre. All the equipment that my grandmother had rented in preparation for his recovery at home was returned to the Red Cross. It was as if we were in a courtroom and my grandfather had just been convicted of falling victim to a failure of our medical system. “Maybe this will be a good thing, it’s quieter here,” my grandmother said as we walked into the nursing home where my grandfather would be staying during his rehabilitation. As soon as I entered his dark room and saw him crying, so was I. Moving to unfamiliar surroundings was something medical studies said to avoid in delirium patients. It took a few weeks, but slowly we did see a small improvement in my grandfather’s mental state. After months of not being able to hear him say, “I love you” he blurted it out over a piece of carrot cake in the cafeteria. He called me by my mom’s name, but I would take what I could get. While our family was relishing in the small triumphs we were seeing in my grandfather’s ability each week, we quickly learned that the staff at the rehab centre did not share our
The author’s grandfather in happier times.
enthusiasm. To our protest, he was deemed to have vascular dementia without a proper medical diagnosis. An article by David Meagher published in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment in 2001 points out that around 25 per cent of delirium cases are misdiagnosed as dementia. Great, grandad became another statistic. Another set of transition nurses paid a visit to my grandfather’s room and my family and I sat there powerless as they told us he was going to have to be put on the waiting list for a long-term care facility. In that moment, only one thing ran through my mind, my grandfather’s comment just a few months before his surgery. “If they ever try to put me into a god-damned nursing home I will kill myself,” he said. While my grandfather waited to be sent to his
While my grandfather waited to be sent to his own personal prison, my mom and I desperately grasped for anything that could save him. own personal prison, my mom and I desperately grasped for anything that could save him. We pored over medical studies and caught a break. A review written by Dr. K. Alagiakrishnan and Dr. C. Wiens published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal in 2004 stated, “Successful treatment of delirium depends on identifying the reversible contributing factors and drugs are the most common reversible cause of delirium.” After months of learning the hard lesson that in this province you need to be your own health-care advocate, we marched into the nursing home the next day and demanded a list of the medications that my grandfather was taking. We recognized them all, except one—risperidone. According to medlineplus.com, Risperidone is an anti-psychotic drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder that works by interfering with natural substances that occur in the brain. It is often given to difficult patients in
place of physical restraints. One of the serious side effects listed is confusion. You can imagine my rage as I squeeze the computer mouse as if it was a stress ball. Not only was he put on a drug without our consent, a major side-effect of it is the only major symptom that is keeping him from being the grandfather that I remember, the grandfather that was supposed to be accompanying me to Alaska. Further research into risperidone yields results that are even more infuriating. An analysis published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information in 2009 found that the prescription of antipsychotic drugs to treat elderly patients with delirium, dementia, or Alzheimer’s is on the rise. Furthermore, a Health Canada warning issued in 2005 states, “treatment with atypical antipsychotic medication of behavioral disorders in elderly patients is associated with an increased risk for all-cause mortality.” We phoned the doctor in-charge of his care immediately. We found out that a doctor at the hospital had first prescribed him risperidone just a week after his hip-replacement surgery. This was right around the time that my family noticed a fog come over him. We were happy that he was no longer battling with the nurses, yet naive that his uncharacteristic Zen-like state was due to chemical restraints. It was just after Christmas when we made the discovery and demanded that he be taken off the medication. We immediately noticed a change in his cognitive abilities as he was slowly weaned off of risperidone. The day he moved into the nursing home, he was down to just half of the dosage that had been poisoning his ability to live his life for the past three months. Tucking him into his new bed that night he said, “I love you, Tanis,” without a hiccup. I caught a glimpse of the man who had dreamt of Alaska with me and once again envisioned the two of us setting eyes on that icy landscape. Today my grandfather is free of the chemical restraints that he surrendered months of his life to. Slowly, we are working on transitioning him home. While this experience brought my grandfather and I closer together than ever, it was still a shipwreck that I wouldn’t wish for anyone. Still, if this situation was the Titanic, we were the lucky ones who got on a lifeboat.
Photo courtesy of the Brown family
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 13
family history / my story
The Accuser and Us BY MELISSA MOLLOY
FOR FIVE YEARS, WE ARE HAULED THROUGH THE “SYSTEM.” MY HUSBAND SAYS: BE NICE. IT HAS OUR LIVES IN ITS HANDS. I.
So the cops come to my house. God, I think my husband has been killed in a car wreck when I see them outside with their flashlights. The black hair on the back of my dog stands straight up. I hold the leather collar around his neck tightly in my fist – his rumbling growl shakes beneath my skin. “We’re here to check on the safety of Ellie*,” one of the large, solid-looking officers says. He seems deeply concerned, and so does his partner. Me – well, now my heart is slowing to a somewhat less-hysterical pace. My husband is not dead. There is no tragedy. I know entirely what this is all about. My stepdaughter’s grandmother has a mental illness that twists her mind with paranoia. She often involves the law – mostly the family-court with various orders. But this is the first time the cops have come to me. “Can we take a look at her?” the taller one asks– he must have noticed my sudden ease because he seems a lot less stern. “Of course – she’s actually sleeping,” I say as the three of us walk down the hall of our tiny home. I see the glare of their flashlights dart into my kitchen and my bedroom checking for the markings of an unfit parent, I guess. But they find nothing.
My six year old is fast asleep in her little bed, our black cat curled in the nook of her legs. She starts to rub her eyes as the flashlight crosses over her face. “Hi, sweetheart,” the cop says very gently. And that is that. We all walk back to the door. They ask me if I might know in general about what this is all about. I know they don’t have time for the ins-and-outs of the last five years. The months of calm followed by out-of-the-blue packages summoning my husband to court. The horrific and often bizarre accusations of abuse and neglect coupled with a plea to have full custody of our child. I know these men are too weary for the drama of it all. They’ve seen real children in real danger. “Her grandmother has bi-polar disorder,” I say. “She does this kind of thing quite a lot. I can’t really tell you why.”
II.
I close the door and lock the handle behind them – crouch on the sofa by the window and watch the officers sit in their car outside. I think about how my house is that house right now. Maybe the neighbours are watching and wondering. I feel a strange mix of shame and contentment. I’m that neighbour on the street with the cops at their door, but I also might be the one call those guys get tonight that brings them relief.
I walk back to bed, and hope that this never happens again. Hope there is someway to ease the woman’s broken mind. To help her see that the only abuse Ellie is getting comes from moments like this – police, social workers, and worn out judges – each of them obligated to search, and each of them finding nothing but parents doing the best they can with a child who is turning out pretty damn great. Just pray, I guess, for a miracle or something. Or for a judge that will finally say, ‘enough is enough, you can’t do this anymore.’
III.
The Bowness location sits above a neighbourhood pub and a high school for ‘troubled teens.’ A group of 10 or so adolescents are huddled outside of the doors to the office, smoking cigarettes. They look like the kind of kids that had parents called to this very office at one point – they seem to wear all the markings of poverty on their bodies. Dull skin from years of poor-family dinners: macaroni with tomato soup for sauce, or no name peanut butter sandwiches on white bread. They all wear faded, ragged looking clothes, two sizes too big or too tight. The girls’ faces are heavily made up. The skinny ones seem to buzz with sex and trouble. The chubby girls reek with self-revulsion.
Photo by Ross Tucknott / flickr
*Name has been changed to protect identity
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One boy leans against a rusted bike rack with large headphones pressed over his stringy, long hair. His pockmarked face bobs methodically, and his eyes seem to rest on something that no one else can see. He looks like the kind of kid that will never fit anywhere. I feel their bleak pasts colliding with my confused present. I feel the tug of that invisible web that strings us all along, and ties us all irrevocably together – the way the world keeps precariously spinning on a handful of belief systems – most of them lies, but the kind of lies that can deprive a child from ever having a fair shot. Everything inside of me swells with despair.
IV.
We sit in a long room, with a long table. Twenty or so chairs, only three of us. A crooked pile of worn children’s books lay in the centre of the bleached oak. Something about the social worker’s tone rattles me. Irks me. I feel as though she wants me to shrink into something beneath her and somehow justify her being there. One should never talk back to government workers. “She holds our life in her hands,” my husband tells me afterwards. I can’t do it. I sit, fuming. Why am I even here? She asks me to stop cutting her off when she speaks, and from the corner of my eye, I can see my husband’s head shaking, his lips pursed – his eyes full of shame and shouting, shut up! So I do. I shrink into a long silence. My body curves like those disillusioned adolescents and I dish out a silent protest. I play with the wooden elephant hanging from the keychain around my neck. I scrape leftover polish from my nails. I listen to the social worker and my husband dish out the drama. Talk about our daughter’s ‘crazy’ grandmother and all the things she’s done in great detail. So sick of hearing about this. I can tell the worker loves my husband. I can tell by the way she’s glued to the bizarre tale that brought us here in the first place. He cuts her off, but she does not reprimand him. Inside, I’m sinking further beneath something heavy. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut. The social worker wants to pull me back in – makes comments about the room being cold – laughs awkwardly about the bar filled with creepy middle aged drunk men beneath her office. I try to resurface. Try to smile, fake it even for a second, but nothing comes. My eyes won’t even move – they are resting firmly downward. She has lost me. And I have lost control of that part that can play pretend. I don’t know how, or when – but that switch is gone, or buried, or broken somewhere. And the world seems to have no room for people who ask why?
V.
Calgary Court The building is one million square feet of bullet, bomb proof glass and concrete. The largest court facility in all of Canada, the architects used primarily triple glazed windows to build the two towers, representing a very literal transparency. A sense of ‘open democracy’. I’m in the lobby, just one more head in slow shuffling line towards solid looking security guards. There seems to be only two types of people here in this heavy march: poor folks and lawyers. We all trudge toward the metal detectors to have our bodies scanned and our belongings x-rayed. I suppose it is past these heavy gates that one gets to find their democracy.
VI.
The open concept building cannot snuff out the suffocating energy that wafts through the family court floor.
Photo by Taber Andrew Bain/ flickr
As soon as I step out of the glass elevator, I see a man with a large group of onlookers. “This is bullshit!” he yells out while another man holds him back from the crowd. I send him a silent wish for peace. It is bullshit, I think. Around the hall I wait in a line to have my husbands files stamped. One cannot avoid overhearing others speak openly and angrily about their current problems. The clerks at each kiosk give off the impression of having heard everything before – and I’m sure they have. I need him to understand that he can’t just come see her whenever he wants, a young mom tells the tired looking lady behind the glass. Does he pose any threat? How long were you cohabitating? Does he use drugs? We need to figure out what kind of order you are looking for. It’s been over three years and he has never paid for child support, another young mom tells the clerk in the kiosk next to them. Papers are signed and stamped. Lives and futures are altered.
VII.
A courtroom is like a church. But not like the churches I went to as a kid – a courtroom is like one of those evangelical churches – thick pews with a modern dark-cherry stain. The rows of them facing the pulpit of court clerks typing away beneath a very tall desk that seats the judge. Everything here is costumed in the history of men. In the pew in front of me sits our accuser. She has brought a friend, and from the back their frazzled pony tails look strange paired with their fitted dress suits and silk scarves. Looks like two flew over the cukoo’s nest, my husband leans over and whispers in my ear. I giggle, but a sense of guilt stunts any further laughter. This entire spectacle is due to mental illness – manic thoughts of grandiosity coupled by paranoid images of her granddaughter in danger have brought us here, and while even yesterday my veins pulsed with self-righteous resentment, today I am humbled by the realness of her psychosis. I know that this middle-aged woman in front of me, diligently penning notes and observations for her allotted time before the judge, loves her grandchild – but she has lost a grasp on the material world somehow and believes in every nightmarish thought that makes it into her mind.
VIII.
After an hour or so of hearing other cases, my husband’s name is called to stand before the court. As the step-mother, I’m asked to sit in the front row of the pews, but clearly separated from the actual hearing. My husband’s side is backed with a social worker and the estranged biological mother of our daughter. Ellie’s grandmother carries a thick binder, strewn with papers and covered in cursive notes, to the lectern. Before speaking she carefully places round reading glasses over her nose. As she begins to speak a strange energy sets itself inside the courtroom. Everything about her is over-pronounced and animated. Her pointer finger flares up over her head with every point she makes before the judge, while another hand rests arrogantly on her hip. She moves and speaks like we are all in a movie –and from the corner of my eye I can see the other folks still waiting in the pews watching with stunned, bemused faces. “She showed up at my house with red and black nail polish, covered in tattoos,” she tells the judge. “And we all know what those colours mean.” The judge makes a request to hear from the Child Family Services representative, who briefly tells the court that she has assessed our daughter and sees no red flags, no trauma, no evidence of abuse. I do, however, feel that the child is at risk while in the care of her grandmother, she says as she concludes her statement. It takes another twenty minutes or so of bizarre rants and mentions of a strangely absent lawyer before the judge makes her final ruling. I’m removing all contact between the grandmother and the child, the judge states, and there will be no further court dates allowed for a period of two years.
IX.
Something lifts. Our accusor stands, livid and still fighting as we are shuffled out of the courtroom. The social worker pushes open the heavy doors before my husband and I. Do you want security to escort you out? Oh no, we should be okay I think, my husband says – I noticed his face has finally regained its colour. We walk away – from the judge, from the gated entrance, from the glass towers. Hoping this is all over.
Summer 2012 u Profiles West u 15