Writing is turning me into a morning person

I woke early with thoughts of writing in my head. I started with this, and in a few minutes I’ll do my journal (where, dear reader, I record intimate details of my sex and love life and other arcana not suitable for this blog). For my final writing exercise this week, I write a piece with a character cycling through Frustration, Fear, and then Love). Tonight is class, where I have to face Roland the Dickhead again.

I provided tons to feedback to the other writers in the class, and pleasurably read several times over the positive feedback I received on my “fear piece” from April 15. One other student said she couldn't really feel my character's fear, and I have to say that I agree with her. Still, I liked the piece, as did Alex, the writing tutor. I logged into the writers' board to read his comments 3 times in 20 minutes. I am so craven.

Frustration, fear and love

I first noticed that Jackson was different from other boys on the soccer field when he was about 7. I remember it so clearly, how his blue and white jersey looked against the green field, how his blonde hair caught the spring sun. You could only see the difference if you watched very closely. Jackson would run up and down the length of the field, shouting but always somehow positioning himself to be away from the action. If the ball came to him by mistake he would quickly kick it away. There have been other signs too. He would play ball with me, but with no great joy, and only if I ask him first. And one afternoon, my wife Marcie shuffled me into Jackson’s room and laughingly showed me how he’d reorganized by colour all the clothes that she’d dumped haphazardly in his cupboards and drawers. She couldn’t understand why this upset me. O Lord, I do not want my son to be gay!

My brother Andrew had a rough time of it growing up in rural Ontario. In the winter, the other boys would spit on their snowballs to make them icy, and then gang up to bury him under a blizzard attack. On the golden summer days, the neighbourhood kids would ride our bikes out through the cherry orchards to the swimming quarry. Andrew was not exactly prevented from joining the troop, but he was not really made to feel welcome. He soon learned it was less painful to simply leave the bike in the garage, but even staying at home can’t have been easy. Our strict Mennonite parents loved Andrew, but they did not understand him at all. What bites hard now is that I know I chose to be neutral, rather than to be on Andrew's side.

As soon as he finished high school, he upped and moved to New York City. That would have been in the mid 1970s. He was dead 10 years later. Whenever I look at Jackson now, images from my childhood with Andrew also come spilling uninvited into my mind. And then I inevitably think of the last time I saw him, skeletal on that bed, barely able to breath and a crust of sores around his lips. Oh God, who will protect Jackson from all this? He is only 12 now. I read that times are different now, but I don’t know. Marcie refuses to talk to me about this. She doesn’t want to know.

It was my 46th birthday 3 days ago. Marcie made her special roast lamb to celebrate, and Lisa, my eldest, baked a blueberry cheesecake. I have to confess that I am rather in awe of Lisa. She is just 15 but she has an ancient serene wisdom about her. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I wonder where she came from. When it came time to open my gifts, she whispered that I should open Jackson’s last. Robert, our middle child, gave me some gardening book, chosen no doubt by Marcie, and raced off back to his Playstation before I’d even finished opening it. Lisa and Marcie gave me clothes; they think my wardrobe needs modernizing. And then Jackson handed over his gift to me, with a shy and embarrassed look on his face. Wrapped in plain white paper, it was a drawing of the family taking a walk down by Challer River. Jackson and I were set slightly apart from the other three. The drawing was very finely done. “Beautiful Jackson, just beautiful.” I squeezed him to me. “The best birthday present ever.” Lisa just watched and smiled, and then helped Marcie take the plates into the kitchen.