The piano, and a not too successful mother

Le Piano.

Ce matin je suis allée a mon professeur de piano. Elle est trés gentile, et je trouve que je peux apprendre beaucoup avec elle. Maintenant, j’ai presque fini mon premiere pièce de musique, qui s’appelle Swabisch. Cette une pièce dans le niveau trois dans les livres de Conservatoire. Chaque jour je joue le piano et practique cette pièce. La dernière section a encore besoin plus de travaille. Je veux memoriser toute cette pièce!

Now, as part of my saying farewell to old pieces, here's the opening to a story about a mother who's tried to be a big success, and, well, isn't.

The successful mom........

“You weren’t at work today; you weren’t at work yesterday, and I doubt that you made it at all to work this week. What’s going on?”


Lynn was a mother, distraught as all mothers become distraught. When do you stop worrying about your child? From the beginning, Cynthia had been difficult, mood swings in grade four, long before p.m.s. came into play.

Cynthia pulled her long hair back into a severe pony tail. “And when did this become your business, Mom? I think that you forget: I moved out of your house several months ago to avoid this kind of questioning. And now you’re spying on me, checking up on when I’m working and not working.”


“I’m not checking up on you. I happened to phone your office today and yesterday and I couldn’t reach you. So I was worried and I came over here to see what was going on.”


“And you find me at home, in my track pants, healthy instead of sick as a dog, and you decide to rant.”


“I assumed that you were sick, yes, and I worry, yes, because you’re my daughter. And so tell me. What’s going on? Why are you home?”

“I’m home, mother, because I want to be. I’ve got some things to work out and I can’t work them out when I’m sitting at the office with a bunch of complaining twits who should have found a life a long time ago.”

“Then what are you working out? What could you possibly be working out except looking at the bills for all your crazy clothes and wondering how you are ever going to pay for them?”

Cynthia stood up and began to gather up some of the clothes that had fallen onto the floor the last few days. A black blazer, several pairs of capri pants, one of them covered with silver sequins for clubbing. Lynn stared at each item as Cynthia hung them up in her closet.

Her girl was extravagant. She was sure that a large portion of her paycheck went towards clothes and more clothes. She had friends who were clothes horses and this didn’t help. But Lynn knew that you can’t save up much when you’re spending so much on clothes. And what could you do with all these unnecessary items.

Where in heck could Cynthia even wear some of these crazy things? That polka dot halter top, for instance, with puffed sleeves. It was silly. Men might like it, of course, especially since it cloaked Cynthia’s sleek young body, but that didn’t make the item any more ridiculous. It wasn’t a cheap, hooker outfit, but it bordered on strange and Lynn was uncomfortable with anything strange.

“Where did you wear that thing?” she asked, pointing to the halter top.

“Oh, I was out clubbing on Wednesday, I think. It’s cute, isn’t it?”

“Cold more like. Funny that I always taught you to wear sensible, non-revealing clothing.”

“Yeah, and look where it got me, Mum. I’m worse that your worst nightmare, aren’t I?”

“I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth. Girls have to go through all these stages.”

“Oh Mom, don’t give me all that psychology crap. Stage one development, part five. Teenage development. That chapter doesn’t fit me anymore. I’m too old. And I don’t think it ever fit me.”

“But I based my book on you!”

“Don’t I know it; and you revealed all my childhood and teen experiences at those talk shows. You made your career on me. First you watch me, analyze my behaviour, and then you write about me and your incredible strategies for dealing with a difficult daughter.

“You were never difficult. Just....”

“learning a separate identity, moving beyond parental patterns, reproachful but also simultaneously grateful for the strong, guiding influence’ See mom, I have your wonderful book by heart, don’t I?

Lynn sat down on the bed amidst the myriad of clubbing clothes. She looked at her neat little high heel shoes. She was always proud of her size five feet. “Cynthia, you’re awfully hard on your poor old Mom. Why aren’t you proud of me. Look at the success I’ve had. Admittedly you have been my case study. How else could I have found experience.”

“Why not test your theory out on rabbits instead? Or baby chipmunks for all I care. But no, you showed me again, as if I needed to have the message reinforced that you didn’t respect me.”

“That’s absurd and unkind. What greater respect can I give you, lets even use the word honour, than to use you as my starring subject in books that have helped a nation of girls.”

Lynn was gesticulating small, almost frantic movements with her small hands, those same hands belying what she said, for some small part of her realized that what she had done was not right. That respect and honour were not the right words to use. But this knowledge was shoved into a tiny part of her brain that she refused to access.

“Okay, Mom” Cynthia ventured. “Imagine I were at a bar tonight.”

“You’re not going out again tonight. You can’t. You’ve got to make it into work tomorrow. How can you keep your job...”

“Stop it Mom, this is just an example. Again. Imagine I were at a bar.”

“The last place you should be,” her mother piped in. I never condoned drinking. I know that in adolescence some people feel the need to....”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it. Just imagine me, drinking, dancing, wearing one of these outfits.” Randomly she picked up the polka-dot puffed sleeves.”

“You’re causing me pain,” Lynn said. “But carry on."

Cynthia smiled. "But there I am at the bar. I decide to pick up a guy. You’re watching me, but there’s nothing you can do. You know that the guy is a jerk. Let’s say he’s the sons of one of your publisher’s: a spoiled, selfish brat, but for some reason I must find him attractive.

..... to be continued?

On sleep

C’est Mecredi. Ma fille a un rhume aujourd’hui, et elle reste chez nous à la maison pour toute la journeé. La pauvre fille! Aussi, elle a l’asthme, et elle tousse beaucoup. Elle a la difficulter de respirer. C’est un jour tranquille, et j’ai decidé de nettoyer toutes les salles de bain. J’ai déja fini
le salle de bain à l’étage inférieur, et je dois nettoyer les deux salle de bain en haut.

Trouvez sous, ma description d’un mon experience avec le sommeil. Maintenant she dors très bein. Mais il y a quelques années j’etais beaucoup de problèmes de sommeil.


It is 2 a.m. I am still awake. My thoughts wander, as I lie in bed, waiting for sleep, longing for that merciful moment of sleep. Sleep is a very strange phenomenon, and one that a lot of people, especially young people, take for granted. But people who fall into patterns of insomnia, as I have done lately, know how precious, how wonderful sleep is, and just how hard it is to accomplish. For sleep cannot be simply accomplished. You cannot will yourself to sleep. Willpower has nothing to do with that gradual sense of falling that we experience. Sleep just happens or it doesn’t. Sleep happens when you are utterly relaxed. Your body and mind both have to be relaxed. It is not enough to have one or the other relaxed. They both must together allow that gentle movement into sleep happen.

Falling to sleep is almost an unconscious action. As you fall into unconsciousness, you are not really aware that it is happening. You are not aware. That is the beauty of it. When you are aware, you are not asleep yet. You lie in your bed, aware of your body’s level of relaxation, aware, aware, aware, not blissfully unaware. You think, my head is heavy, very heavy, my limbs are heavy, but my mind, and here is the problem, my mind is alert, active, monitoring the state of my body. Your eyes are not open, and yet you are entirely awake. How can your body be relaxed and your mind still be going on and on in circles

. At these moments, you play mind games with yourself. For instance, you might try, “I will lie in this position at all costs. This is my final position. I will not move again until I fall asleep.” And this seems to work for a few minutes. You manage to keep your body relatively still for a time, but then a certain restlessness hits you, and you turn. So much for that one.

Another game I have tried is the game of imagining myself falling. The movement into unconsciousness is often seen as a moment downwards, a falling. So perhaps these images are enough to bring on sleep. I imagine a roller coaster, whee, whee, whee, over and over, down and down, never up, always down. Then my mind turns to a childrens’ slide. Yes, I’m at the top now, and I come down again and again. Then I’m joined up to an IMAX film, or a Disney ride where I believe that I’m in a boat or starship and I’m moving very fast and downwards. Children scream. Down I come.
Not being able to sleep drives you a bit insane. You get more and more tired, each day, hoping against hope that sleep will come blissfully this time. Hour after hour pass by, and, nothing, nothing at all happens. What time is it anyway? 2.30. Read a non-exciting book. I’ve heard that helps. I read a book that I actually like, and it turns out to be more exciting than I had anticipated. I read, kept in suspense, and my mind stays as alert as ever. I think to myself. Boy, my eyes should be closing now, really they should be drooping down, like an older person whose head falls down and down.

In the book I am reading there is an older woman who never sleeps. Older people often don’t sleep well. Something happens with age that make sleep more difficult. Parenting doesn’t help, and if you are a woman, and a worry-wart, and a parent, your chances of sleeping well are not particularly good. Stress causes sleep disorders too. Some people have anxiety attacks in the middle of the night. Their heart races and they become very frightened. They panic, and sweat.

But back to sleep and now, a celebration of falling to sleep. I can only describe sleep’s arrival as the arrival of grace, a grace that cannot be controlled, but is given, suddenly bestowed. And you can’t thank anyone for the gift, for you are gone.

And where do we go when we sleep? We all have memories of dreams, subconscious pictures, reflections, images, distorted ones of real life. But are these pictures so wrong? Why do we assume that our waking lives are the reality? Maybe our sleeping life is tuned into the real world.

That’s why I liked one fantasy book very much, that was half dream, half real. That dreamy land of the surreal is a neat place, and reflective of our psychology. Lots of people have written about dreams. The ballet is so often dreamy, a place of dreams. I think, for instance, of Swan Lake, where the young male dancer dreams of his snow queen, and the dark queen dances into his dreams and he dances with her in a beautiful dreamy sequence of movements. The whole of ballet is like a dream, much more so than opera. Opera is full of heart flesh, guts. It is visceral and in your face. But ballet is distant, dreamy, ethereal.

I once played a fairy in a Gilbert and Sulllivan play called Iolanthe. The play opens with we fairies lying on the stage with that dreamy, fairy mist floating above us. How many sets use that stage gas to create a misty atmosphere? I wonder what its made of, anyway. The chief fairy, I recall. Her real name was Gretchen, waved her little wand at each of us and woke us up. The effect was very dreamy.

Another dreamy scene, I recall from the novel, Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening,”. In it, the young heroine is caught between the world of dreams and a beautiful yet tragic awakening. Then scene occurs in a drawing room where an older woman is playing Chopin. There is not much dreamier than Chopin. If one closes one’s eyes, one leaves the planet for a few minutes to join the fairies and dance about heaven for a while. Maybe that’s what happens when we fall asleep.

13 ways of looking at a library plus some French

La langue française

C’est très difficile d’écrire de la langue français. Mais je veux essayer beaucoup de jours. Il va m’assister d’apprendre cette langue difficile.

Aujourd’hui je fais le lavage. Il y a beaucoup de vêtements dans mon panier de lavage qui sont très sal.

Trouvez ici une pièce d’écrire sur le sujet de les bibliothèques.

Thirteen Ways of looking at a library. Part I.

Way #1: Libraries and Children.

Some public libraries are not that kid friendly, which is unfortunate. Some kids never go into a library until they reach school, when they are escorted in and out for specific library times. This is sad, but perhaps not surprising.

How have libraries been represented in the past by the media?

In all the old fifties movies, libraries shushed children. Now libraries are rarely shown in movies and seldom represented in books. What does this mean? Why the neglect?


There are two different ideologies working here:

One is romantic(think Wordsworth). Children in a library should be discovering and developing. Sound familiar? We all pay lip service to this romantic ideal, but do our institutions really do this?

Then there’s the older ideology of childhood that hearkens back to the eighteenth-century and further back still. Children were seen as little adults. Little immoral adults to be more accurate. They had to be trained and frightened into growing up into adults who would fit perfectly into a shush/be quiet kind of library.

So what should we do? What kinds of libraries should we be building?

What does your local library do for its kids?


2) The French word for library is bibliotheque, biblio referring to books, presumably, and interestingly related etymologically to the word “bible.” A friend once told me that the bible contained all other books; all stories were within it; I wonder. The bible does contain many stories, and it is arguable that there are only 12 stories in the world (with variations), but I still can’t believe that bible contains all. This is a rather Northrop Frye mythic outlook.


3) I’ve been in a number of different libraries; I spent the most time in Robarts library, on the corner of St. George and Bloor in Toronto. It is a massive concrete building, which is an example of the brutalesque style. In other words, it is as ugly as hell, inside and out. The building is supposed to be the same shape as a bird of some kind, I can’t remember which. Inside it is a busy place most days, with rows and rows of computer terminals, with anxious students staring into them. Upstairs are many floors of stacks, an extraordinary collection of books that you can easily get lost in.

One of my favourite areas to go to was the section with old periodicals from the Victorian period. You could read “The Strand” there, and see the original illustrations for Sherlock Holmes. You could also read Dickens’ and George Eliot’s works in their original chapter by chapter publications. I loved the old advertisements in these periodicals and even more, I liked the editorials that made fun of authors and poets that are now turned into untouchable and hallowed “great writers.” The Queen’s library I spent less time in, for I was young and less interested in libraries. But I did recall hearing about a couple that bought a pizza and slept the night together in the underground stacks as a kind of erotic entertainment.


4) Many people have large home collections of books that really deserve the name of library. Some have fantastic science fiction and fantasy collections, all organized alphabetically. One such famous library is in Toronto and called the Merrell collection. Unfortunately, you can’t visit it without supervision, and you can’t take a book out. But these books were all donated by a collector. Some people collect only certain authors; others certain genres. Some people just hoard all the books they c can find. Book collecting can easily move from a hobby into an obsession, and I’m sure that there are all kinds of conventions for people who want to talk about their home libraries and make lucrative deals to buy and sell different words.


5) Very, very special libraries cannot be seen at all by the ordinary plebe. If you travel to the bibliography section of Robarts, you will find all kinds of little slim volumes about such special libraries. For instance, there are many special collections of Byron’s poetry, early editions etc. There is a very specific way to write about such collections, and it requires a master of codes to understand what one might find in these holdings. Code words refer to sizes of books, types of print, types of paper, different ways that papers are folded etc. etc. I knew professors who were in love with bibliographic studies and fascinated by such details. I had a hard time understanding them and believed them to be unimaginative bores. Why is the outside of a book more important than the inside. Now, I am a little more respectful of their work. A great deal of information can be had from studying the original form of a work. From that stand point, it might be worth all the travel and red tape required to actually visit these special library collections.


6) The dreaded Dewey Decimal System. I wish I knew it better. As a child, and even as an adult, I have never got my head around the the dewey decimal system. I liked university libraries better because they are organized an a system that I became familiar with. I always know, for instance, that Byron, Bronte and Dickens could always be found in the PR section, and that the American novelists were further ahead, in the PN section, and that PS always held very modern British things. It all made sense to me, perhaps because I was so familiar with it. The history books, if you needed them, were to be found two floors down, a quick walk down two flights, or a long wait on a busy elevator.


7) My home library, the library I grew up with probably shaped my life and way of thinking. My father had all kinds of German books, which I was interested in, but couldn’t read. My favourite book of his was the Washington Gallery pictures, a volume full of pictures and right-ups that I pored over many times, loving the Dutch painters most of all, probably because of their simplicity. My Mum had old books by Somerset Maugham, like “Of Human Bondage,” that I read and only partly understood.

My parents’ basement library was my private area. The books that they had long since lost interest in became my playtoys, and I read, read, all day long most days. I organized the books alphabetically in grade 7, and then I vowed that I would read them all, cover to cover, going right from A down to Z. I made it through all the Austens pretty well, read all of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (11 years old), But I really was slowed down by Dickens. I must have read five or six of his novels before I lost patience with my plan. But Dickens really influenced me. I look back at a short story I did in grade 9, and it is full of names like “Bumble” that are very Dickensian.


8) Any discussion of libraries must include some comment on librarians. I've met lots of librarians, most of them very helpful. A big thank-you to those who help people navigate!

9) Library behaviour. What do people do in libraries? In public libraries, you avoid any kind of interaction, perhaps occasionally bumping into another browser accidently. In student libraries, it is a different matter. I’ve seen an uncanny amount of flirting, fighting, sexual encounters even. Typically, grad students flirt with each other in the stacks. They find each other’s carrels and hang about them, discussing ideas and making a substantial lot of eye contact.


10) Every old English house had what was called a library, just as many had private chapels. In many Victorian novels I’ve read, the heroine, staying as a guest at such a house, sneaks off to the library and reads either very educational books appropriate for her station, or finds access to a different racier kind of book, like French novels. How many Victorian ladies are corrupted by such racy reading! In novels, a person’s character is often indicated by the kinds of books he or she keeps in the library. In Charlotte Bronte’s first novel, the devilish Hunsden keeps all kinds of French novels and republican texts. When this is mentioned, we know that he is a dangerous radical, an unpredictable libertine perhaps, or one who believes in Rousseau’s freedom. I like one of Trollope’s novels, in which an extremely indecisive man hides a lost will in a book in his library, and then stays in the library for weeks and months because he is too frightened to leave the room in case the document might be discovered. In the past, men retreated into these libraries, and I always wonder where women retreated; nowhere, I think. Like Jane Austen, they permanently were faced with the company of others and never had a private library of their own. Hence Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.”


11) I am forgetting one excellent library, the one in one’s head. We all have whole collections of books and ideas in our heads, many of which we unfortunately can’t access a lot of the time. If all the books I’ve read are really in my head, and they are, somewhere, the details are not readily available as they would be on a screen or text.


12) The Library of Congress? I'd love to visit it one day.


13) It makes sense to conclude with the computer library. The internet can be seen as one, extremely large library. And it is a lucky thing that you can’t see all the books contained in it at once. The mind can only handle so much.

learning to drive at 30 years old (um...over ten years ago)

You're thirty and you can't drive?


For many Canadian women, turning thirty can be an important time to reevaluate their lives and ask important questions: Should I have children, and when? Is my career where I want it to be? Should I get married, or continue living with my spouse?

Before I turned thirty, I found myself more and more concerned with the fact that I still couldn't drive. Although I knew that other women (and men) hadn't learned this important skill, I felt alone with my problem; everyone I knew could drive and had been driving for as long as they could remember. So where did that put me?

Sometimes the subject of driving would enter into a casual conversation, and I would pretend to be a driver like everybody else. "And don't you hate those people who don't signal?" I'd hear myself say. Or, "I'm pretty good at finding my way through a new city," which was at least partly true, as I'd had years of reading the map and directing the car - from the passenger's seat. At other times, I would cautiously admit that I wasn't a driver, which would cause the inevitable tactless person to exclaim loudly, "Really, you don't drive? Why not?" leaving me red-face and apologizing incoherently.

My reasons (or excuses) for not driving sounded reasonable to others, but weak in my own ears: "I have always lived in the city" I'd say, or "I think driving only contributes to the urban smog". Even worse, I'd find myself sounding woefully unliberated with "My husband drives me everywhere I need to go," which was only partially true, anyway.

Not being a driver was more of an inconvenience than I wanted to admit. I couldn't drive on my own to the grocery store, to the library, or to my weekly choir practice. I couldn't think of night classes at inconvenient or only partially safe locations. If I went out to a friend's for dinner, or went to parties on my own, I had to rely on others to drive me home, or pay a rather nasty cab fare. Even worse, I knew that I wouldn't be much use in an emergency, as I wouldn't be able to take the wheel. Most inconvenient of all, I couldn't write cheques or be admitted into a dance club without a licence, one of the few forms of picture I.D.

After much reflection (and much trepidation), I made my big decision: I would brave driving in Toronto and get my licence before I turned thirty; instead of berating myself for having waited so long, I would tackle driving the way I had tackled other problems in my life, like finishing my education.

My life was changed when I first walked through classroom door of a reputable driving school, for in those few seconds I realized that I was not alone. Although there were a few teenagers in the room, the vast majority of the would-be drivers in the class were in their twenties, thirties and forties, and many of them were women like myself. For a wide variety of reasons, they also had never actually completed their driving tests.

From an adult's perspective, the first portion of the driving school's curriculum was not really appropriate. We didn't need to be insistently reminded of the dangers of the road, hammered over the head with frightening statistics and gory videos. Many of us had lived long enough to have experienced or witnessed car accidents that had left unforgettable images in our memories. We were no longer cocky teens who needed to be reminded of the serious responsibility of driving.

On the other hand, we all benefited from the in-depth explanations of driving techniques. Unlike teenage learners who were often more concerned with just getting their license, we cared about learning how to drive well: we knew the value of life, and wanted to learn the best methods of preventing any accidents at all. If it was important to keep space between cars, for instance, we would learn how to do it.


The next step in learning to drive required the most courage because over the years I had actually built up some fears about taking the wheel. So it was not without much apprehension that I sat in the driver's seat with my instructor and learned how to turn on the ignition and position the rear-view mirror. My instructor had a great deal of confidence in me, however, and from the first day worked to instill that confidence in me. He made me understand that I could do it, that I just needed some practise.

I can't describe the wonderful elation I felt after that first ride and after each of the many rides I took with my kind instructor. I remember telling all my friends about each of my new successes. "I learned how to make a three-point turn" I would say proudly. Or, "I made my first lane-change today, and my instructor said that I did it perfectly!" My friends were always as pleased I was, sympathetic and encouraging. They admired my courage, they said, reminding me that it takes guts to learn to drive later in life.

After driving for a while, I made my second revelation. Driving was not a mysterious ability, divinely given to those lucky members of society who happened to be mechanically minded. Neither was it the exclusive territory of the aggressive and overly confident. And it did not make one a superior human being. Driving was simply a skill, one that could be learned at any time in one's life.


It took me three tries to get my driver's licence, and there were definitely moments when I second guessed myself, but after working very hard to get this far, I wasn't prepared to turn back. Both times I failed I cried for the rest of the day, feeling humiliated and even a bit angry. And when, after the second try, I came home to a bouquet of flowers, which my husband had bought me to celebrate my anticipated success, I burst again into a fresh set of tears. Still, I soon nerved myself up for a third try, and in the dead of winter, on a blizzardy day, I earned my license.

That day I felt more proud of myself than I felt after any other successful venture in my life. This meant more to me than getting any job, or even getting my degree. By earning my driver's licence, I had conquered one of my biggest fears. Although I knew that I would still often prefer to walk rather than drive, I felt empowered and more independent. After tackling driving in Toronto, the sky now seemed the limit.

New goals

What do I really want to do in life? The trick is to decide and then stick with that decision. Hmm. Why don’t I do that? I keep making a decision, motor along well for a while with that decision, and then change my mind!

I was darned sure that I wanted to be a teacher. I worked hard for two years reading educational texts (can’t say I enjoyed those much), and passed that degree with flying colours.

Good for me!

Then, after three unsuccessful interviews - unsuccessful meaning I didn’t get the jobs - I’m all ready to give up and try something new. What does this mean? I’m fickle? I can’t stick with a decision?

One day at a time. I’m trying to think up a motivating writing goal. The 100 day plan is working well for cello and piano, so it’s a possibility, and Nano works well with that.

The reality in our economy right now is that there are not a lot of jobs around, so what me worry. We’re okay for money, and something will work out in the end.

- - - - - - - -

We tried out tennis aerobics for the first time at “the bubble.” My first response was .. hey... where’s the change rooms.... then... what’s that loud echoing noise all around me? I was informed that it was the air circulator/heater. It took a while to get used to it, and gosh, why did I drink that cup of jo in the morning that’s making me dizzy and weird feeling. Then, into the tennis aerobics, and I was feeling great.

I highly recommend tennis aerobics, even if you’re not really into tennis.

-------------------- --------------------------------


Lastly, the move has been made. My computer is sitting right here, upstairs, and I’m looking at trees, grass, and a yellow fire utility whatchamacallit.. Much better.

There’s light here, and a great picture of two wolves sitting on icy looking hills during a lightning storm. There’s inspiration for me! Also, need a new poster on my right. Will look for something inspiring.

One problem....My little one just brought up all my junk. Uh.oh.. The lair is spared, and my new habitat is now cluttered. Okay. It’s time to ditch the old broken disks, and rid the house of unneeded items. There’s a couple of hours work.

A demain. (Hey, maybe I’ll start practicing my French on this blog - that would be a great challenge. Just have to figure out how to do those accents.