White Wedding -- by Anne Shier

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sella who, more than anything, dreamed of getting married to a “knight in shining armour,” galloping off into the sunset on a white horse and living happily ever after. From the time of her childhood she has dreamed of him. He was tall with dark hair and so handsome it took her breath away. The real trick would be finding this knight, this prince, if ever there were such a man. Minor inconvenience, she thought. I’ll meet a special man one day who fits the bill.

        She wanted a white wedding with a white, flowing wedding dress, complete with a white veil and long white train. She would have her own bouquet of fresh, beautiful blue and white roses. Her three young bridesmaids would be in long dresses the same shade of blue as her blue roses and would have their own similar blue and white rose bouquets. There would be a little flower girl strewing blue and white rose petals onto the floor of the church just before Sella, the beautiful and breathtaking bride, marched slowly down the aisle to meet her handsome groom. God, I wish I had some idea of who the groom will be.

Of course all this cost money, which she did not necessarily have right now, but again, she thought, Minor inconvenience. If I let money stop me from having the wedding of my dreams, I may as well give up dreaming right now.

So Sella started what she referred to as her “wedding fund,” putting aside money from each paycheque, starting in her teen years, to pay for everything a bride would need: her beautiful and very expensive wedding dress, the minister, church, invitations, reception hall, wedding cake, dinner, liquor, flowers, fancy candles, bridesmaids’ and flower girl’s outfits, limousines and so on. She even put aside some money for the ushers’ and groom’s tuxedos. Have I left out anything?

The only thing Sella would not put aside any money for was her diamond engagement ring and their two wedding bands. She wanted her groom to look after these details and pay for them too. And she did not want these items to be cheap. Look, my darling, I’m not asking for the earth, am I? Your expenses are not going to be nearly as great as mine. However, it’s my wedding, so just go with the flow and accept it. That’s the way it is.

When Sella became a young adult, she knew she also had to start making plans of a different sort. While still saving faithfully for her big day, she now had to make concrete plans to first meet her ideal man and then persuade him that marrying her would be the best thing he could possibly do. How in heaven’s name am I ever going to meet the guy I’ll be spending the rest of my life with? Meeting him is one thing, but getting him to propose marriage is quite another. How is it going to be possible to meet suitable men?

Sella pondered long and hard about how to meet eligible men—a lot of them—and how to make a suitable choice. She knew going out to bars and nightclubs was not a good place to start because people going to bars were not generally looking for a mate. Better approaches were online dating (using Instant Messaging), joining a dating service or developing a hobby or two, which would allow her to meet men with similar interests.

How much time do I need to meet the man of my dreams? It was hard to say because relationships between the sexes were often not straightforward—they were usually complicated, and there was never a guarantee of any kind. If Sella wanted a greater probability of success, she would have to pick a dating method that would expose her to many diverse eligible men, allow her to ask some very pertinent questions of each one, and then start excluding those that did not qualify for the job of husband. In essence, she would have to go shopping for a husband. If she wanted to find perfect or almost perfect “husband material,” she would have to be particular about the kind of man she wanted to marry. Where and how to start looking for him was the big question right at the moment.

Sella had heard assorted things about online dating so she wondered if she should start with that method. She had seen TV advertisements about companies like eHarmony.com that described happy couples who had met and even married because of meeting online through this dating web site. Each person had to first fill out a detailed questionnaire with the idea that if a man and woman had enough likes and dislikes in common, they might want to spend more time together. Sella decided to give it a try for six months, reasoning that if she did not find a suitable man in that timeframe, she would quit and start all over again using another method.

Shortly after becoming a member of the eHarmony online dating community, she met several men online and chatted with them, but for some reason something was not right about any of them. Not that they were bad people or even bad potential mates—there were other, more important issues like the long distance between their residences and the times that each person was available for online dating. On a couple of occasions, just as Sella thought that she was finally making good progress with someone she’d met, he would suddenly indicate a preference for another woman he was also chatting with online. It all became too time-consuming and frustrating, and she decided it was a complete waste of her time. She decided to try something else.

Sella had also heard about speed-dating. Because she didn’t really know anything about it, she did some research. It intrigued her because she discovered that she could meet a lot of men, in person, for a few minutes each, in a relatively short period of time. It would all be conducted in a public forum, such as a community hall, and many other people would be there at the same time doing the exact same thing. There would be no fear of being alone with the wrong person since there would always be other people present. Ideally, it was a dating-like situation in which you had just enough time to ask a few questions of each other and get a feel for each other. If it worked like it was meant to, speed-dating might be just enough to make Sella want to see a particular person again. She could only hope that she was also going to make a favourable impression on him at the time they first met so that he would feel the same way as her about a possible relationship.

While the odds of meeting her ideal man might not be any better than with online dating, Sella knew that she could meet many more men in a much shorter period of time. She would not be wasting her precious time as in online dating; she could exclude men as she met them and would also know why she was excluding them. Hopefully, it would narrow the field of male prospects down to a manageable number and thus, take less time in the long run to find the man she did want.

Fortunately, after several attempts at speed-dating, she had met three men she would seriously consider for marriage. As she thought about her reasons for considering each man eligible, she realized it was because of the sort of questions she’d asked each of them and the answers she’d gotten. Some of the questions were: Are you married? Are you gay? Are you working? Do you want children? Do you live in this city?

Their answers to the first two questions had to be no for the interview to proceed successfully. After that, the answers had to be yes for the most part. These men could be easily excluded by their answers, assuming they were being honest.

For the honesty part, she relied on her intrinsic knowledge of body language to tell her things that could not be easily verbalized. As she got more experienced at speed-dating, she realized it was an efficient way to meet members of the opposite sex without having to make the emotional investment that one usually had to make in a budding romantic relationship. Sella developed her own questions to ask and at the same time became very good at reading their facial expression, body position and tone of voice.

Eventually she was also going to have to ask each man more delicate and detailed questions about the type of wedding he wanted and the financial commitment he was prepared to make toward it. Sella did not tell anyone that she had already been busy all these years saving for the wedding that she wanted. That would make their decision about marrying me too easy, wouldn’t it? But I am not going to make it easy for any man to choose me. My groom-to-be will have to prove his willingness to share all of the wedding expenses equally; if he is not willing to do that, then I will have to exclude him too.

Satisfied that she was now making real progress toward her ultimate goal, she set about designing a unique type of questionnaire that would be sure to “separate the men from the boys,” so to speak. That is, she would have to ask some very specific questions that each man had to answer without tripping over his tongue. He had to be confident in his answers. Then she would know that he was being honest and sincere and that she could trust the man she would ultimately choose. That essential quality of honesty would be the most important criterion in determining who her groom would be. If he was also tall, dark-haired and good looking, that would be fantastic. However, the quality of his character and personality would help her the most in making the “right” decision. Her prince, the groom, would be the man she wanted to be happily married to for the rest of her life. There would be no going back.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Three Fathers -- by Anne Shier

My name is Amy. Recently, on the evening of Saturday June 15, the day before Father’s Day, I took three fathers out to dinner. I had never done that before—take three fathers out for dinner all at the same time. I left the decision of the particular restaurant to my 8-year-old grandson, Joey, who was also present, and he said, “Let’s go to Shoeless Joe’s for dinner.” Joey always seemed to know which restaurants were the best places in which to eat. We all thought he made a great choice, so the five of us piled into two cars, and away we went.

        The three fathers were my elder roommate, Dale, my younger roommate, Kent, and my son, Brad. Ironically, my own father was not able to attend. I had spoken with him over the phone earlier that day, wishing him a Happy Father’s Day. But since he lived relatively far from me—deep in the city of Toronto—he could not make it to our little celebration. I resolved to send him his Father’s Day card as soon as possible, hoping it wouldn’t arrive too late.

 These three fathers were very special to me. Of these three, I had been closest to Dale in the past (my son, Brad, was just 7 when we met him). I’d first met Dale in the late 1990s, and we’d become a couple a month later. He was a 45-year-old divorced father with a daughter, 16, and a son, 12. Two years later, Dale then became my ex-boyfriend, but somehow we stayed fast friends. We didn’t always see each other or talk all the time, but I knew he was a good and kind person—the kind of friend I needed to keep in my life. He was always there when I needed him and I had reciprocated on two different occasions when I had to call for an ambulance to take him to the hospital because of critical illness. There weren’t many people whose lives had had such an impact on me or vice versa, but Dale was one of those people.

 Later on, Dale came to live with me as my roommate in my new house in Ajax in November 2009. This house was “new” to me but was actually more than 50 years old. It needed lots of renovations and was considered a “fixer-upper.” Dale was relatively energetic in those days; he was still working at his full time job as a welding technician, but he planned on retiring very soon, in the spring of 2010. My new house was going to be his hobby farm, which would keep him busy once his retirement started. There was a lot of stuff that had to be done on my house—not all at once, of course, but over months and even years. I was thankful that he had agreed to move in with me.

 At the same time, the people in both our families seemed to think Dale and I were getting back together again as a couple, but that was not at all the case. Not only that, some of my teacher-colleagues at my school seemed to think the same thing. As unusual as this living arrangement was, we knew we would both benefit more by being friends, not a couple. That was the way we wanted it and that was the way it worked best, no matter what anybody else thought about it. We finally just decided to ignore what anybody else thought or said about our living together. We, ourselves, knew what the true situation was and that was all that mattered to either of us.

 Things went on for a while like this. My son, Brad, and his son, Joey, had also moved in with me; they were content to live in my finished apartment downstairs in the basement. It was a very nice but small apartment. However, Brad, being a 27-year-old single father needed to save money, and he knew both Dale and I would help him out with Joey whenever he needed us, which was usually on a weekend when Brad wasn’t working and wanted to party. That was also an unusual living arrangement, but it worked really well—until about a year and a half later when Brad suddenly announced to us that he was starting to feel really cramped in this tiny apartment and saving money was no longer the priority it had once been for him. He was aiming to move out into his own house in Oshawa. To this end, Brad had gotten what he considered a “good” deal on a house (0 percent down payment)—meaning that he didn’t have the money for the usual 5 percent down payment—but he very much wanted to move out and we didn’t try to stop him. He and Joey needed their own space, so away they went. However, since Oshawa was only 15 minutes away from us (via the 401), we knew we’d still be seeing them from time to time.

 For a year or so, it was pretty quiet around the house until Kent, Dale’s 33-year-old son, called his father one spring day and told him he needed to move down to Ajax from Keswick to work. He was not getting along well with his boss, he said, because his boss was a self-serving prick who constantly gave him the worst construction jobs that needed to be done on their current construction project. Not only that, his co-workers all sucked up to the boss, making the whole thing totally disgusting for Kent to continue working there. Kent was a good worker with great skills as a carpenter. His boss simply did not appreciate what he had to offer. Enter his new boss-to-be, Taylor, a seemingly fair, kind and considerate man.   Taylor, knowing what kind of talents Kent had as a carpenter and all-round construction worker, offered Kent a chance to work with him, just the two of them, on various construction projects in and around the Ajax-Pickering area. It was such a good offer that Kent could not afford to turn it down so he happily accepted.

 That’s how Kent came to live with Dale and me in my finished basement apartment that summer. It was just the right size for one adult. He had two young daughters from a previous relationship, but they lived with their mother most of the time. Dale, being Kent’s father, was the grandfather to Kent’s two young daughters, Kyra and Janine, so Dale was quite naturally delighted to have Kent living with us downstairs. The three of us got along so well and I could foresee no real problems living together, since I’d known both of them for so long. It was a good solution for all of us because I could use the extra money that Dale and Kent gave me monthly for their rent and household bills and Kent could bring his daughters over to stay here as often as he had the chance to, which Dale and I just loved.

  Given that we were all sort of thrown together by the random events in our individual lives, it was really nice to have what I would call “family” in every sense of the word. Though we certainly weren’t all related to each other by blood or marriage, simply by living together under the same roof at various times of our lives, made us “family.” If that didn’t constitute “family,” I don’t know what did.

   These three fathers have come to mean the world to me. I’ve depended on them for help with my household renovations and repairs, with my mortgage and household bills, for companionship and friendship, and for the togetherness of knowing them for at least a quarter of a century of my life. How many people can say that about the most significant people in their lives? Unless I include my parents and relatives too, there aren’t many people whom I would deem qualified as “significant others” in my life. It has given me a new perspective on life in the new millennium, when people often drift apart for years and don’t always reconnect. I am a very lucky person who has people who genuinely care for me, my son and my grandson, and I would not trade that kind of caring and compassion for anything in the world.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

The Secret Life of a Love Addict -- by Anne Shier

Catherine knocked on the door of room 206 of the Avalon Motel, half-expecting someone would answer. But no one was there, so she quietly let herself in. Reese hadn’t arrived yet, but she knew he would; she knew that he couldn’t live without her anymore than she could without him. She didn’t know why he needed sex so much, but she knew why she did. It was because of her constant need to feel loved by her man, and the only way she knew that could make her feel like that was to have sex. Only problem was that she didn’t seem to know the difference between making love and having sex. To her, they were one and the same. Reese was the one who could make all the pain go away and make her feel good, if only for a short while.

Catherine had met Reese while at work. She worked in a bank branch serving customers at the side counter. Her main job of counter officer was opening personal bank accounts of all kinds and helping people with transactions that were more complicated than the tellers could handle, such as selling travellers’ cheques and Canadian and foreign bank drafts and certifying cheques. Occasionally, she also had to open a current account for a business client. She liked her job and was very good at it. In fact, she could not really see herself doing any other kind of job that did not involve contact with people on a daily basis. Every one of her colleagues at the branch thought of her as a model banker, and they all admired her skill at doing her job and dealing with people so well.

When Reese first came into the branch, she didn’t know who he was. He became her customer because he wanted to open a current account for his business, a task that she completed for him. He ran a paper business, selling paper of all kinds to his customers. He was the manager of The Paper Shop and was the consummate businessman. There was no reason for her to think that he was going to be anything to her other than a good customer. He was an attractive man with short, dark-brown wavy hair, deep brown eyes, a straight and classical nose and a sunny smile. When he was in the bank, he would smile at her whenever he saw her and she would smile back and they would flirt with each other good-naturedly.

At night, she would go home to her husband, Harold, a man who worked at his own business managing a car repair garage. He hired car mechanics to repair the vehicles that came in, which were mostly foreign makes and models. He was also a qualified car mechanic himself, but only did the actual repairs whenever there was a shortage of help or his main mechanic was off for a day, sick at home. He was also the consummate businessman. They had gotten married when they were only 20 years old, just out of high school. She started attending the University of Toronto in her first year of arts and science and he attended then called Ryerson Polytechnical Institute for a while in his first year of radio and television arts. He had wanted to be a broadcaster or a radio DJ or a film producer (he wasn’t quite sure what), but somehow, had lost interest in the program and quit school when he got the opportunity to work for a local television station. That job had lasted all of a year when he’d gotten fired for not being an effective leader of his subordinates. Apparently, no one wanted to listen to some young punk kid who thought he already knew everything there was to know about television.

Catherine was determined to continue with her part time schooling and was intending to apply, eventually, for the physiotherapy program at Queens University or the University of Western Ontario. It was unlikely that the University of Toronto would accept her into their physiotherapy program this year, however, since she’d had to drop biology this term, which she would have needed to enter U of T’s program now. But she would pick it up again next year. Biology was boring anyway; dissecting small animals was not her thing, but according to other people she knew who were already in a physiotherapy program, they were busy dissecting human cadavers. Somehow, that did not bother her. She was working on a kind of “premed” program anyway, so if physiotherapy didn’t work out, she would consider a nursing program or something like that in the medical field.

The idea Catherine had was that she did not want to work in a bank all her life; she felt she was destined for better things than just being a bank counter officer. But, her husband wanted her to keep working in the bank full time; he felt they needed to have a steady income because running a business was uncertain at best. If he made money in any particular month, it was because business was unusually good, or the mechanics didn’t raid the till while he was out, or because he’d done an extraordinarily good job on a customer’s car and the customer actually showed his appreciation by bringing in some new clients. Despite the fact that he turned out to be a very good manager of his business, it was largely a matter of luck if he made money.

Unfortunately, when Harold did make money, he spent it on various things that were not deemed to be necessary expenditures. For example, he’d sent his mother and sister to Europe on an extended vacation last summer; he’d invested some of the extra funds in short term GICs and CDs; and unbeknownst to his wife, he’d treated his current girlfriend to a night out on the town. His wife knew nothing of his girlfriend and would not have found out anything about her either, except that one day he decided to take his girlfriend out of town overnight but told his wife that he was going to see a male friend in Hamilton. Only problem was, as far as Catherine knew, she didn’t know of any male “friends” Harold might have had in Hamilton.

The day soon came when Catherine finally found out what Harold was up to. That particular day while working at the bank, she found out that the bake sale ticket that she’d purchased from one of her clients the previous week was the winning ticket (meaning that she’d won $100), and she was so happy at this news that she wanted to share it with Harold. When she found out Harold was neither at work (and wouldn’t be in for a day or so) nor at home, she phoned her friend and co-worker, Ginny, who had also coincidently booked off sick for the day. Oddly enough, Ginny wasn’t home either. Catherine wondered where she could have gone when she was supposed to be at home, sick. And she started to think—were the two of them together? At first she thought this might actually be the case, but then she shrugged it off as the wild imaginings of an insecure wife. Harold wouldn’t fool around with another woman. He doesn’t have the guts to do that and think that I wouldn’t find out, she thought. But Ginny’s another story. Ginny might very well fool around with my husband; after all, she’s had other liaisons with other husbands. Why should my husband be off limits?

Catherine decided to wait and see, keeping an open mind. After all, the possibility of an affair between them was real because Harold had met Ginny when she was at their house once for a brief visit. As it turned out, Catherine’s instincts had not steered her wrong, even though she wished, for once, that they had. Ginny, unable to keep a secret, told Catherine about the date she’d recently had with Harold; that Harold had seemed very interested in her and had actually asked her out for a date! Catherine was shocked at this revelation but did not think Harold was totally to blame—after all, it takes two to tango and Ginny was definitely capable of having an affair if anyone was. She later asked Harold about his date with Ginny, but he did not want to talk about it with his wife, of all people. Still, Catherine knew that it was true.

After finding out about Harold and Ginny, she no longer trusted Ginny and treated her as an ex-friend (more like a harlot). Nor was she sure anymore about Harold’s ability to remain faithful. At this point, she resolved that if she got an opportunity to get involved with an attractive man, she was not going to turn it away. Though she did not want to admit it, this incident had caused her deep and searing pain and she did not know how to deal with it. She wanted to run away, get drunk, get laid, anything to get rid of the relentless pain. It was horrible finding out that her husband was so selfish that he could only think of himself. Obviously, he wasn’t thinking of his wife at all, if he ever did. She now felt like a used and abused wife and knew that it wasn’t at all fair. She also felt that if she didn’t have the courage to leave Harold and start over again, she should, at least, get even. At that point, maybe there’d be something left to salvage between them and if so, they might be able to start afresh later.

When Reese came along, neither Catherine nor Reese was looking for a relationship, certainly not a sexual one. They seemed to have a lot in common and always had something to talk about whenever he came into the bank. He took to calling her on occasion at work and, gradually, they became close without even realizing what was happening. One day, he asked her to visit him at The Paper Shop after work, and Catherine, not wanting to miss an opportunity to get to know him better, accepted. As far as Catherine was concerned, their relationship was a long time in coming and she was not going to have any regrets about it no matter how it turned out.

The sex between them later that evening at the Avalon Motel was fantastic; it made her forget her problems at home and made her life more bearable. However, it wasn’t the sex between them that she would remember most. It was their first kiss, so tender yet passionate. The emotions they both felt at that moment were unmistakeable.

She could no longer look at Harold with the same trusting eyes. At some point she was sorely tempted to tell him about her affair with Reese, but quickly realized that telling him would be the worst thing she could do. Reese was a good man, but Harold would see him, no doubt, as an interloper. So Catherine and Reese made a commitment to see each other as often as it was deemed “safe” to do so, and at the same time, promised each other that they would tell no one else about the affair; this was going to be private, strictly between them.   

Catherine and Reese got together once a week or so. It didn’t take long for Catherine to realize that her life without Reese was going to be unbearable. She was going to have to decide soon whether to stay with Harold under these uncertain circumstances or leave him and start over again on her own. Meanwhile, her happiness, even for a little while, seemed to be the order of the day with Reese. Her pain at Harold’s cheating was slowly waning, but her joy in being wantonly sexual with Reese was worth any price she might have to pay for it later on.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA 

I Got You Too, Babe -- by Anne Shier

(Inspired by an article in the Toronto Sun, June 2007)

Maya Davidson had fought many battles in her young life – with her mother (as a pre-teen), with her father (as a teenager), and later on, with her ex-husband, Mel (when she was a young adult).  Now, she faced the biggest battle of her life – to save her young daughter, Bree, from the ravages of juvenile diabetes. 

        Yes, Maya was certainly a fighter – she had been a professional ballet dancer for many years.  She had fought her way up the ladder of success, rung by rung.  She was most famous for her portrayal of ladies who had struggled for their independence.  Maya had been given the news about her 12-year-old daughter, Bree, just one month ago.

Bree, who was a very talented artistic gymnast, was diagnosed in May 2007 after complaining of fatigue, constant thirst and unexplained weight loss.  When Maya later talked about Bree’s disease with her ex-husband, Mel, she would tell him that she did not want to admit how very scared she was.  Neither of them, in fact, wanted to admit that.  Being in denial was a way to protect themselves, as well as to cope with this horrific news – it couldn’t happen to their kid.

        Like her cousin, Ryan, whose son Michael likewise had juvenile diabetes, Maya had also been involved with the Sick Kids’ Foundation for many years.  She had seen many families with kids come and go in the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto.  However, being there with her own kid hit her like a ton of bricks.  Life as the Davidson family had known it would never be the same.

        It had been a very tough year for Maya – she’d recently retired from her very demanding professional dancing career and had been through a controversial divorce from Mel, amid rumours of a romance with a famous male surgeon.  She had recently gotten re-married to Lyle, a younger and more handsome man than her ex-husband.  In addition, she was considering a new career as a television broadcaster, as, she would wryly put it:  “I have a natural gift-of-the-gab and I should use this to my advantage.”

        Maya was so proud of Bree.  She felt that every bad thing that had happened to her in the past year did not matter anymore – not compared with this.  She would shout encouragement to her daughter during Bree’s gymnastics competitions, calling out praise after Bree would perform well on an event.  It seemed that she was so active and healthy-looking that it was truly frightening to hear from her doctors that, if not managed carefully, juvenile diabetes could lead to life-threatening insulin shock and coma.

        Maya had come to realize that Bree’s health was more important than anything else in her life.  She would tell those people close to her just how emotional she would get about it.  In fact, seeing sick kids at the hospital had always made her feel that way, especially when kids said that their last wish was to see Maya.  But, she’d been able to leave those kids and their families behind to deal with this disease and go home and hug her own family, thankful for having them.  Now, she had to deal with it as well, and was so thankful it was a manageable disease.  A positive aspect of the news was her resulting truce with Mel after their rather bitter and public divorce, which was played out in all the newspapers.  But, they were both able to set their feelings aside for the sake of Bree.

        For the most part, Bree herself coped very well.  Her first question after getting the news from the doctors was:  “Can I still do gymnastics?”  She was told that she could, as long as her diet was controlled properly and she took three insulin shots per day.  After all, if Steliana Nistor of Romania could win a silver medal in women’s artistic gymnastics at the World Championships while coping with Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes, Bree could certainly participate in the same sport.  Not only that, Bree had discovered that Steliana had also developed juvenile diabetes at the tender age of 12.

        Bree wanted to be treated like any other girl who played amateur athletics, but there were definite restrictions.  Her mother would come over at the halfway mark of a competition to supervise the testing of her blood glucose level; it had to be done then, as well as before and after any competition.

        Maya would also take her turn with Mel at giving Bree her insulin shots.  This was quite a feat for Maya who was actually quite squeamish.  But, even though giving needles was not “her thing”, she resolved to do whatever she had to do for Bree.

        As the competition was coming to a close, Bree left the floor exercise area and dutifully pricked her finger for the blood test and tested her glucose level, as she should, while Maya looked on.  “Six to eight, that’s good, Bree!”, Maya said, with relief.

        You might be wondering how Bree, herself, felt with her private life so exposed to the public, but Bree had given her parents her permission to go public with her disease.  Though such a young girl, Bree showed that she wanted to raise awareness about juvenile diabetes.  She wanted people to know about its dangers, but said:  “It’s very easy to handle, once you get used to it”.  She said she wanted to help raise money for a cure, showing an infectious grin.  And, she wanted her whole family to get involved with fund-raising, as well.  Amazingly enough, Bree, with the united help of her family, in just one month, had it under control.

        In June 2007, the entire Davidson family, including Maya’s elder daughter and ex-husband Mel, united together at the annual Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Walk for a Cure at Ontario Place, lending their name and support to a cause that had suddenly become very personal.

        At that point, Maya was beginning to realize that being in the public eye could have its advantages.  And, she also realized that engaging in a fight for her family’s future was going to be a fight she needed to win.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

A Tragic Christmas -- by Anne Shier

Have you ever experienced the loss of a family member? Did this loss affect you in some terrible way?

Christmas is particularly one of those times when the death of someone you are close to affects you so deeply. It’s a holiday season that is supposed to be happy and joyful. For me it was like that for many years. Before 2002, I could not envision Christmas Day without every one of my family members being there. But on Christmas Day of 2002, all that changed for me and my family. After that, nothing would ever be the same.

We had all gathered at my parents’ place in Agincourt, as usual. There was my Dad, Ethan, who was in his usual jovial holiday mood, drinking his wine. And my Mom, Aileen, equally jovial in her element, was busy cooking a big turkey dinner in the kitchen. There was my sister, Carrie, her husband, Matthew, and their two kids Elena and Johnny. There was also my brother, Ralph, his wife, Barbara, and their two girls Teresa and Jackie. Then, later in the afternoon, my youngest sister, Suzie, would arrive from Port Perry, Ontario, with her husband, Dennis, and their three young kids Danny, Shirley and Bobby. My name is Andie (short for Andrea) and I was there, naturally, with my teenage son, Brad.

We all came to Mom’s and Dad’s place every year at this time because Mom was the centre of our Christmas Day celebrations. It was something we all knew but never said out loud. Without her to “weave her magic” in the kitchen and produce a meal that was absolutely perfect and delicious, it wouldn’t have been nearly as special. She certainly knew how to cook and bake! I’m sure she learned these skills from her own mother, my grandmother (known as “Mummu,” in Finnish) who was well-known as an excellent cook and baker in her day!

My mother was a warm and loving woman. She was, in fact, the quintessential matriarch. We all loved her so much. I used to call her “my Mummy” and tell her, “I love you, Mummy!” whenever I visited. I would then hug and kiss her. I know she loved getting that kind of attention from us kids. She certainly never complained about all the loving attention we lavished upon her. I think she was an excellent role model for how to be a mother. I was lucky in that respect.

Mom could not only cook and bake; she could sew up a storm on her sewing machine, as well as knit, pearl and crochet. These were skills that were prized in homemakers when I was young. She also kept a spotless house, did the laundry for all of us as our family grew in size and washed and dried the dishes every evening after dinner.

Later on, when I was a teenager, I also learned how to cook and bake. In fact, baking cakes and pies became my specialty and was one of my favourite pastimes. I would help with the dishes after dinner most of the time, babysit my kid sisters whenever Mom and Dad went out and do whatever I could to keep my own bedroom clean and tidy. Mom never spoiled me, and I was grateful for that. She taught me how important a good work ethic is. She was a hardworking, stay-at-home mother until I turned 15. Then she went back to work full time at the CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce). She had always worked full time previous to my birth, so working outside of home was not at all unusual for her.

During her 15-year banking career at the CIBC, she managed to work her way up to the level of branch administrator (a supervisor of a few dozen part-timers and full timers). Since Mom had had only a formal education up to Grade 8 but had clearly demonstrated abilities far beyond that, the CIBC personnel department eventually upgraded her employee record to show that she had achieved the equivalent of Grade 12! She was, indeed, a very talented person, both at home and at work!

On Christmas Day 2002, we had all gathered together as usual at my parents’ place. All seventeen of us were present. Mom was busier than usual in the kitchen, but she was so organized, she made the task of cooking Christmas dinner for seventeen people look relatively easy. We all had our preliminary drinks and snacks, and then dinner was ready about five thirty. It was delicious as usual, with tender turkey meat, homemade stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, turnip casserole, carrots and peas, dinner rolls and a luscious dessert.

After dinner, we opened our gifts. All the little kids got lots of presents on purpose, but the adults had just picked names from a hat to see for whom they would each buy a gift. Each adult would only have to buy one gift for one adult. However, the kids got as many gifts as anyone wanted to give them. I thought I had drawn Matthew’s name from the hat, but in reality, it was Mom’s name I had drawn. What I think happened was that I lost the slip of paper with the selected person’s name on it and then was too embarrassed to try and retrieve the name I’d chosen. Because of my mistake, I felt so bad now that Mom had no gift and Matthew had two. So, Matthew offered Mom one of his gifts (a hard cover novel) but, Ralph said he would take Mom shopping right after Christmas instead and she could pick out something for herself. He said I could pay him back for her gift later. Around eighty thirty or nine we were all thinking about going home. Brad had gone out earlier with our family friend Dean to go snowploughing, as it had been snowing heavily all day. They were going up to Richmond Hill, north of the city, to work for Germaine, who owned a snowploughing business and had lots of clients up there who required this kind of service. Meanwhile, I did not have a ride home. I would’ve gotten a ride home with Ralph again, but I believed he and his family were going somewhere else besides straight home that night.

Dad then offered me a ride and wanted Mom to drive, as he’d been drinking fairly steadily and didn’t think he should drive (and he was right!). Mom said she was willing to drive, but when I thought about it later, I didn’t know for sure if she really was.

Anyway, we wanted to take off soon after everyone else had left. Brad and I lived at Sheppard Avenue East and Meadowvale Road, and it was a fair distance away. The roads were snowy and slippery, and we had to go slowly and carefully. I hoped there wouldn’t be any problems. There weren’t many cars on the road at that time. I guess most people had had the good sense to stay home. On later reflection, I wished I’d phoned for a taxi, but even taxis were few and far between that day. I guess I could also have stayed over at my parents’ place that night; I probably should have made that suggestion, but somehow it did not happen.

When we finally left my parents’ place, Mom was driving, Dad was in the front passenger seat and I was in the backseat behind Mom. We started out by taking the back-roads route over to Huntingwood Drive; from there, we went east to Brimley Road and then south to Sheppard Avenue. From there we went eastbound along Sheppard toward Meadowvale.

On Sheppard, just east of Neilson Road, I had noticed that the snow had been ploughed on the westbound lanes but not yet on the eastbound lanes. As a result, a small snow drift had formed right in the middle of the road. The car’s left wheels kept getting caught in this snow drift, and the car was beginning to swerve back and forth as a result.

All of a sudden, the car started spinning wildly around and around very quickly in a thick cloud of snow. I had no idea where we were headed. Then, just as suddenly, the car jerked to a stop.  Apparently, during its rapid spinning, the car contacted something hard right on the driver’s door, which had injured my mom, but I wasn’t aware then of what that “something” was.  The next thing I remember seeing was my mom’s face as she lay unconscious,  her eyes open, across the top of the front seat. I was chilled to see her like that. Still, I had no idea how seriously she was hurt. All I knew was that if she was unconscious, it meant she’d been knocked out by something. Meanwhile, I could not see my Dad at all. I seemed to be okay but could not move at all; my leg seemed to be pinned in place by the front seat which seemed to have moved sideways during the collision.

After that, I’m not sure what happened next. I felt numbed by the impact. I was told much later that the fire department had arrived speedily to examine the accident scene. Apparently, a neighbour nearby had heard a loud crash and called 911. The EMS guys had also arrived to examine my mother and father first for life-threatening injuries. I was left for last since I didn’t seem to be injured at all. Apparently, the firefighters had been forced to cut the roof of the car right off in order to get me out of the backseat. I didn’t know until later on that they’d done this, nor was I aware of the reason. As it turned out, it was impossible to open the back door on the driver side of the car.

I was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital by ambulance after my parents had already been taken there, but I still had no idea how bad off they were. It was only at the hospital that I was finally told the terrible news—my father was critically injured and my beloved mother was dead! Dad had suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, but at least he had survived. Tragically, Mom had died of a blunt-force trauma to the head that had killed her instantly.

Apparently, the car had hit a cement hydro pole right on the driver door after spinning out of control. I was completely devastated to hear this, as were my sister, Carrie, and her husband, Matthew, who arrived at the hospital’s emergency department shortly after I’d arrived there.

It was my Mom’s untimely death on Christmas Day that hit me so hard. Every member of my family was terribly shocked by the news. The police had asked me what had happened. That’s when I told them about the snow drift in the middle of Sheppard Avenue—how the left wheels kept getting caught in it—and about all the snow that was on the eastbound lanes where we were driving probably covering black ice on the road.. They came to the conclusion that she could not have caused this tragic accident. Nobody believed Mom had personally done anything wrong while driving out there in that horrific snowstorm.

With the exception of my dad, who was still in the hospital, on December 29, 2002, we all had to attend Mom’s funeral and were now faced with how to accept this horrible loss in our lives. For the next several weeks, I was totally immersed in grief. I was away from work for at least two weeks since I could not find it in myself to face my students at school under these circumstances. There is no way I could have concentrated on teaching my kids. I just fervently hoped they would understand; I had no intention of forgetting about them, but I could not go back there just yet.

And, for the hundredth time, I wondered why this tragedy had had to happen on Christmas Day or why it had to happen at all. All I knew was, Christmas would never be the same again for any of us, without my mom there. We had always loved her so much and always would.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

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The Profession I Love -- by Anne Shier

How does one go about finding the “perfect profession” or career? If you believe that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction, the truth of the matter is, I couldn’t get into the teaching profession from the late 1970s to the early 1990s in Toronto, my hometown. God knows I tried. I was determined, but the school boards just weren’t hiring teachers at the time. I wanted to teach high school full time more than anything.

I wouldn’t have called myself a traditional teacher type by any means. For example, I didn’t like classroom teaching for the most part. It was the standing-up-in-front-of-a-large-group-of-students part that didn’t particularly appeal to me. It was never my intention to do formal classroom teaching and management. Rather, I liked teaching subjects like physical and health education (PHE), which often involved teaching in other environments, such as outside in nice weather, or in the gym, or in the pool area during swimming classes. Classroom teaching was for me only when health-related subject matter had to be taught, which I accepted since it was part of the curriculum for PHE.

Many times I considered that maybe I should really have gone for training as a professional coach of women’s gymnastics instead of going to teachers’ college. I’ll never forget the times when I was watching the Summer Olympic Games on TV—something I still do religiously during Olympic years. And who did I see on TV one year? Someone with whom I used to judge gymnastics competitions regularly in Ontario! She was now one of the coaches for the Canadian Women’s Olympic gymnastics team! I had to look twice to make sure it was Carrie. That’s when I knew that, even if I did get a full time teaching job in a high school in the PHE department somewhere, it would never even come close to equaling her role, the way I saw it at the time. Carrie was doing something I had always sort of dreamt of, never thinking it was possible, but here she was, actually doing it. I couldn’t help but envy her ability, perseverance and determination to get what she truly wanted in life—a full time position coaching women’s gymnastics.

It had all started for me when I was a young girl learning gymnastics as well as ballet and tap dancing. To my mother, it was important that her little girl grow up to be elegant and graceful. I loved dancing and performing. I got many chances to perform, and every time I did, I knew I was pleasing the audience. But whether I was in front of an audience or just in my backyard during the summer months practicing my tumbling moves and dance routines, my heart was completely into it. I often dreamt that I was choreographing routines of all kinds on the floor, beam and uneven bars. My routines were always very fluid, with great connections and superior difficulties, including wonderful mounts onto and dismounts from the apparatus. The free exercise event on floor was by far my personal favourite, but the beam was a close second. The uneven bars event was, unfortunately, something I never really became good at because of the arm and shoulder strength that was needed for this event, and that was one of my big regrets. However, when I started judging gymnastics at the age of 20, I got chances to judge every event on a regular basis in various cities of southern and central Ontario. At first, bars and vaulting were two of the harder events for me to judge because it was a challenge to watch every move, write it down and evaluate it all at the same time. These events were very quickly executed, but I got better with practice. I judged gymnastics in Ontario for seven years and then moved to Alberta, where I judged for another three years until after my son was born in 1984.

While I was actively engaged in judging gymnastics in Ontario during my 20s, I was attending university full time, earning first my bachelor of science and then my bachelor of education. Then, because I could not find a full time teaching job right away, I decided to do supply teaching for a year or two. This involved getting different teaching assignments at different high schools throughout the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), often on a daily basis, but sometimes for longer. I had to be very flexible and adaptable to my new job. It wasn’t a full time teaching job, to be sure, but it did pay the bills for a time and gave me some much-needed experience in classroom teaching and management. Unfortunately, supply teaching experience is not recognized officially as “teaching experience.” Still, I continued to prefer teaching PHE whenever possible. It was a subject I loved to teach. Nothing else would have made me happier.

The thing about supply teachers was that one was more or less forced to work for at least four different school boards, rotating around as needed: City of Toronto, North York, East York and Scarborough. Etobicoke and Peel each had their own boards too, but they were just too far away for me to travel to daily. Peel was never part of the GTA anyway. At the end of the year, I’d get four different T4 income tax slips to file with my tax return and I’d think, Okay, this is the price I have to pay for not being able to land a full time teaching job. Much later when I actually did land a teaching job in the now-amalgamated Toronto District School Board, I would learn that some supply teachers who had taught just as long as myself were simply in the right place at the right time and landed a job because of who they knew in the profession rather than because they were good potential teachers. When I found this out, I thought again, Life is not fair at all, is it? I really should have gone to college instead of university and gotten trained as a professional gymnastics coach. Why didn’t I do that? But I could never come up with a good answer. I only knew that a fact of life is that you sometimes just get lucky when landing a job. I was to find this out many times over the years when I would be working at other unrelated jobs after I’d finally left supply teaching for good.

The day I got an “edge” into full time teaching, I was fully qualified and experienced as a computer programmer/analyst, due to having attended Seneca College for three years and graduating with honours. A high school in the GTA approached me with a very unusual job offer. They asked me, “Would you teach the Turing programming language to a Grade 11 class?” Apparently, the teacher who had been teaching this course was not very good and was either fired or forced to resign right in the middle of the semester, I’m not sure which. Anyway, they needed a qualified teacher as soon as possible, which I was due to having earned my permanent teaching certificate. The teacher they had identified as being “qualified enough” to teach this course did not necessarily have to have computer science on his or her teacher’s qualification record card; he or she just had to know the basic programming concepts and maybe one or two languages. I had several programming languages to my credit by this time, so I became the teacher candidate of their choice. That didn’t mean I knew Turing though. As it happened, I’d never even seen the language! That’s what made the whole situation so unusual! God knows how that job interview happened and resulted in a job, but it did; I don’t think I would’ve believed it if it had happened to someone else.

After that first successful teaching experience, landing full time teaching jobs, even as an LTO teacher, was relatively easy. But in order to land a full time permanent contract teaching job, I had to take a summer additional qualification (AQ) course called computer science senior (a.k.a. computer science—part one).
So I took the required course the following summer, and the very next fall I landed a much-coveted teaching job—full time with benefits and a pension! I was so happy. Incredibly, it only took a quarter of a century to land this job, but I did it and was so proud of my achievement! Now I could smile and look forward to my job each and every day, knowing I was finally doing something I loved, and spending every day with kids in an educational setting. I am, indeed, a very lucky person to be in the profession I love.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

The "Glass Is Half-Full" Theory of Life (Part I) -- by Anne Shier

(Inspired by the website http://www.ehow.com/facts_5127032_alcohol-abuse.html.)

Of the two main philosophies people generally have in life, my own philosophy is that “the glass is half-full.” To this end, I consider myself an “eternal optimist.” I have always tried to see life in this positive way.

  Let’s face it though: life is not a bowl of cherries—it’s full of obstacles, headaches, heartbreak and tragedy. I have certainly had my share of these things in my life, but I’ve gotten through them somehow. Whoever designed our human lives here on Earth clearly did not want human beings to have it easy. Luck or fate or a higher power, if you’ll have it, wanted us to have plenty of trials and tribulations in our lives, constantly testing us to find out what we are each made of. Would we pass the “test of the day,” or would we fail it miserably? Regardless of the particular test, however, would we thank a wonderful fate for giving us this marvellous opportunity to prove ourselves, or would we curse the fact that this same disagreeable fate had just given us a test that had the word “failure” written all over it? That is a question I’ve not been able to answer satisfactorily, but I’m trying my best.

  For example, what does one do when a big financial problem appears in one’s life one day and there is no easy solution? The choice is whether to sit down and have a badly needed drink and try to delay making the tough decision about what to do next. If that drink is not immediately available, however, what other choice is there? Some people can decide that they have a definite responsibility to their own future lives and that the choices they make every day will affect their future lives. Other people find it easier to just pour themselves a drink or two, sit down and forget about making any important choices. Unfortunately, one drink can turn into two, two can turn into three, three can turn into four, and so on. When is it enough? Surely it is not that difficult to stop this kind of destructive behaviour early on and make the tough choices that are such an integral part of a happy, productive life.

  My name is Lisa. Something pivotal happened to me one evening while I was at a bar, drinking alcohol socially with my best girlfriend, Marilyn. The drinks at this particular bar during Happy Hour were ridiculously cheap at three dollars each—and I started foolishly consuming what I thought I could handle. After about four rye-and-ginger-ales in quick succession, I told Marilyn I was going to the ladies’ room.

  While in the ladies’ room, I managed to pass out completely, and when Marilyn came looking for me and saw me lying on the floor unconscious, she could not revive me. She told me later that she got me home by asking some guys she knew well to take me home. Shocked, I asked her the next day if anything had happened with these guys that shouldn’t have happened (sex?). I asked her why she didn’t call 911 instead and have an ambulance take me to the hospital—that would have been the safest and smartest thing to do.  But, Marilyn told me that she did not want me to be embarrassed by later having to explain my unconscious state to the authorities. She said that her good buddies were eminently trustworthy and that, together, she and they merely put me on my living room couch at home, which was where I woke up the next day.  She insisted to me that she would never have allowed anyone to take unfair advantage of me while I was in that comatose state.

           The whole incident scared me enough to make me realize the real power that alcohol can have over you. I resolved not to repeat that particular experience.

 The next day, after I’d fully awakened and realized what had happened at the bar, I called Marilyn. 

“I know that you care about me, Marilyn, just as I care about you.  But, due to my extensive first aid training and experience, I know that a person found unconscious could be that way for any number of reasons.  If something bad had happened to me for any reason, it would have been on your shoulders because you didn’t do the proper thing by calling 911. So, I want you to promise me that you will never again take it upon yourself to help a person who’s unconscious and needs medical attention.”

“Okay,“, Marilyn replied. “You’re right and I should have called 911 instead of asking those guys I knew to take you home, passed out as you were.  I promise you I will never, ever do that again.”

 Generally, as far as I know, if a man or woman consumes only one or two drinks per day, it is relatively harmless to their health. Generally, a woman should probably drink less than a man per day since women usually weigh less than men. In addition, a non-pregnant woman is generally considered less at risk than a pregnant woman when it comes to alcohol consumption. I remember consuming a small glass of white wine once during my second trimester while I was pregnant with my son, but I don’t remember it as a problem then nor is it one now, after the fact. But alcohol consumption can certainly become a problem when the amount or frequency of drinking increases. This is what’s so dangerous; it just seems so easy to “drink your troubles away” instead of facing the difficult issues and making the hard decisions that need to be made. Some people are better at it than others. These are the people that are so successful in running their daily lives. They don’t have to resort to alcohol to help them manage their own lives.

   If people drink habitually, continuing in this pattern, one day they may start to depend on alcohol to alter their mood. I remember a few people I had known who thought the occasional drink could improve their mood, and for a little while, it did. Eventually, however, because their drinking did not stop after their mood improved, their mood began to depend on whether alcohol was available to them. It isn’t always obvious to us that the people we see drinking are actually dependent on it at this point. Drinkers may seem jovial, but, we won’t ever know for sure that they are dependent. Though we don’t realize it, these “social” drinkers have started thinking more and more about drinking alcohol and its “beneficial” effects on their mood.

  Someone in my family, Walt, had developed a severe drinking problem over a period of years. He was a distant uncle whom I did not know well in my adult years. In his youth, he had been a very good-looking young man, with short, dark-brown, wavy hair, a good muscular build, and a drop-dead gorgeous smile. All I knew about him was that he had started drinking as a relatively young man in his teens.
However, he could not or would not stop drinking as he got older. He eventually became estranged from his family and ended up living on the streets of Vancouver, barely able to survive. He had no one to help him and he owned nothing, as far as we all knew. His name would come up in family conversations at odd times, but nothing good was ever said about him. He seemed to be a hopeless case of alcoholism. I felt a certain amount of sadness for him because he was one of my relatives, even if I didn’t really know him. It didn’t seem fair that someone to whom I was related should be shunned and ignored by his entire family, but he was. This is how many severe alcoholics end up unless and until they decide to change their lives and stop drinking for good.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

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Mommy, Don't Hurt Me -- by Anne Shier

(Inspired by an article in the Toronto Sun, September 2007.)

The death of a child is always accompanied by many unanswered questions. This is one of those things in life that people find so difficult to accept and understand. I know I do. And it is really hard to understand why an innocent child like Lara had to die in such a horrible way—by her own mother’s hand. As a result, Lara’s mother, Sasha, was charged with the second-degree murder of her young daughter, and her life would be changed forever.

Sasha’s family broke down in utter despair outside the Downsview, Ontario, suburban home where 3-year-old Lara’s body was discovered. Sasha and Lara had been living in the basement apartment that Sasha had rented there. The day after Lara’s body was found, Sasha’s father, brother and sister all came to the semi-detached house located in the northwest part of the city. Her grandfather collapsed on the front lawn and, curled up in a fetal position, moaned and rocked back and forth in grief. The brother staggered out onto the street in front of his sister’s home and fell to the pavement in tears. The family embraced as they finally returned to the vehicle that had brought them to the crime scene. The brother was still crying as they pulled away.

The neighbours were shocked at this turn of events in their neighbourhood. It was a very quiet place and had been like that for the last 20 or 25 years. None of them had ever witnessed this kind of violence. They had seen the little girl on occasion, though they commented to police that they rarely saw her playing outside. Whenever they did see her, she was being carried to the car by her mother. They couldn’t help wondering why they’d never known what was really happening to Lara. It was only when her death became front-page news that the neighbours suddenly started to wonder. There were never any children’s toys outside, and Sasha had not been close to any of her neighbours. They basically knew next to nothing about Sasha or her young daughter. All that was about to change.

Lara had only really been close to one person in her mother’s family—her aunt Maria, who had come to visit several times. Sasha apparently had only been in contact with her younger sister on a regular basis, but not with the rest of the family. That was another mystery to which no one knew the answer. Of all the members of Sasha’s family, Maria was the one who was truly the most shocked and grief-stricken by Lara’s death, despite the outward demonstrations of grief displayed by her other family members. It seemed that Maria was the only one Sasha had felt comfortable talking with about her life as a struggling single mother. Conversely, Sasha’s parents seemed to blame her for all of her own personal and financial misfortunes and did not support her in any way. Thus, Sasha found herself largely on her own while raising Lara, with no external support system.

A week or two before the tragedy, Maria had had a vivid nightmare about Lara. She had dreamt that Sasha had gotten very angry with Lara and had then hurt her by burning her hand with a lit cigarette. In her dream, Lara would cry and plead tearfully, “Mummy, please don’t hurt me. Don’t be angry with me. I just wanted to have some fun with my toys. I’ll clean up the mess I made.”

Then Sasha, feeling remorseful for what she had just done, would tell Lara, “I was not trying to stop you from playing with your toys. I want you to stop getting on my nerves with your incessant talking to your baby dolls. Mummy’s very nervous right now because sometimes parents have big problems to deal with that their little kids don’t understand. Just leave me alone for a while.”

A year ago, Maria had had a similar nightmare. That particular time, she had dreamt that Lara had taken something of Sasha’s that Sasha did not want her to have—a pink lipstick. Lara had only wanted to play with it. She liked playing “grownup,” but in doing so had angered Sasha, who had then hurt Lara by screaming at her and then beating her behind with a wooden spoon. Lara cried for a long time after that beating, and Sasha could not calm her down for quite a while. Lara again pleaded with her mother, “Mummy, please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to take your pink lipstick. I just wanted to play at being a big girl.”

One couple drove to the house carrying a photograph that they had taken of a smiling 3-year-old girl whom they had met in a shoe store at nearby Sunnyside Plaza. They had taken the photo of this pretty little girl, all dressed up in pink, as she had laughed while trying on a pair of red women’s high heels in the shoe store. Lara had even given their little niece a warm hug. When the couple later heard about her untimely death, they drove by the house wondering if the girl in the photo was the same lifeless child that they’d heard about on the news. At the same time, they wondered why they had never heard back from the mother, even though they had mailed a copy of the photo to her for a keepsake.

One of the neighbours, while later talking to police about Lara, said that he thought he kept hearing a child crying. He could never pin down the location the crying was coming from because it was so faint, but he now felt certain that Lara was the one who had been crying. He didn’t know why she’d been crying so much, but he was curious that a child that he hardly ever saw always seemed to be so miserable. There was never any overt evidence of child abuse or mistreatment of any kind, nothing that he could call “a red flag” and, thus, be able to call the police and lodge an official complaint. He didn’t know Sasha well enough to be able to say that she was the one who was causing it.

At Lara’s funeral four days later, Sasha was absent (due to being remanded for Lara’s murder), but the rest of Sasha’s family was there, and so were most of the neighbours.

Maria, in her eulogy, said, “Lara was such an innocent young child—a victim in a society in which neighbours are strangers and no one really cares what happens to its children until a single mother, desperate, lonely and badly needing emotional and financial support, can no longer keep her own child safe in her own home. In fact, Sasha herself is a victim of this same society in which it is easier to lay the blame for Lara being a victim of violence at her mother’s doorstep. But the reality is much more complicated than appearances indicate. We are all to blame for Lara’s death because until we acknowledge that single mothers are also society’s victims, other children can become victims of their parent’s frustration and rage if these parents don’t get the support they need from other people around them—their families, neighbours and other parents.”

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Headed for Hell II -- by Anne Shier

Life in a witness protection program: Can you imagine what that must be like for the person who has to do this? Caroline (now known as Jessica) lived in a new little town with her daughter, Cathy (now known as Janet), and finally started to feel secure in her new environment. Gone for the moment were the daily fears she used to suffer because of her ex-husband, Mark, who had managed to make her life a living hell over time. She could hardly believe she used to love him very much and at the beginning of their relationship could not have envisioned her life without him. However, all that started to change after she found out she was pregnant and had to make some serious decisions about the course of her life.
        However, her life in this makeshift witness-protection program was hellish just on its own. If she and her daughter were to remain anonymous in their new lives, Caroline could no longer contact her family or any of her friends from her previous life. Instead, as Jessica, she had to create a new life with new friends. God knows what she was supposed to do about her family. Only if she stayed completely away from people she had known and loved would she be assured that Mark could not track them down. Even so, there was no guarantee he would not be able to find them. She reflected back on how it had all come down to this.

Marrying Mark had seemed like such a good idea at the time because he had professed to love her at least as much as she loved him. They seemed like a match made in heaven and she was positive that he would never even dream of hurting her or the baby. Then he started drinking for some inexplicable reason—indeed, he couldn’t seem to stop—and that’s when her life started down the slippery slope to hell.

She never was able to figure out why he had to drink so much, nor could she accept that every time he got drunk, he would abuse her mentally and physically. Of course he always woke up the next day with a huge hangover, regretting his heinous actions toward her and apologizing vehemently. And she, likewise, forgave him because she felt he couldn’t possibly know what he was doing. Surely he couldn’t be intentionally abusing her. It wasn’t possible that someone whom she knew could demonstrate love more than anyone else in the world could turn around just like that and act like the devil in disguise. There wasn’t any feasible explanation for it, but she would forgive him anyway. She could not envision what not forgiving him would do to their relationship—until, one day, she found out that abusers, once they start abusing someone close to them, don’t just stop cold.

Being beaten repeatedly and raped by Mark since she’d become accidentally pregnant with his child was bringing out the worst in him. And the thing was, she had not expected him to marry her—he’d insisted. Caroline, in her naiveté, thought it was because he needed to have someone warm to come home to after his workday was finished.

He worked hard at his engineering career, which was flourishing after he’d finally graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Engineering a year ago. Caroline, on the other hand, had not yet been able to graduate as a teacher. Being a new mother had taken all of her free time, and returning to school full time to finish her education studies at McMaster University in Hamilton became impossible. She had almost forgotten about it, but not quite. One day, she promised herself, I will return to school. Just because a woman is married doesn’t mean she should be forced give up all her life goals. When the time comes, Mark will just have to accept it. He won’t have any choice in the matter. The more she thought about it, the more determined she was to finish her studies, with or without his consent.

The day she told Mark what she wanted to do, Cathy was just slightly older than 3—not quite old enough to attend elementary school full time. Mark, shocked that Caroline still wanted to return to school and become a teacher, did his utmost to dissuade her from doing so.

“Why do you need to return to school?” Mark asked her. “Don’t I give you everything you need for yourself and the baby? Aren’t you fulfilled as a full time wife and mother? I could understand it if you wanted to work part time or do some volunteering from time to time, but going back to school is a major commitment. If you’re looking for emotional or financial support from me for this purpose, I won’t do it. I need you here at home too much.”

“Mark, “she replied, “you’ve had your career opportunities and they’ve been plentiful. You’ll always be able to find a good job no matter where you live. I, on the other hand, will only be able to get a menial job as a clerk or secretary and it wouldn’t pay much at all. I’m smarter than that. I need to be able to reach my potential, and being a teacher will allow me to do that. Besides, there are tons of women out there juggling jobs—being a wife, mother and housekeeper at home and maintaining a job outside of home. If they can do it, so can I.”

They would occasionally talk about it after that, and every time, it came down to the same thing: Mark was insistent on her being a full time housekeeper and wife, as well as mother to their daughter. It didn’t matter what Caroline said about improving the quality of her own life, reaching her potential or just wanting to finish something she’d started long ago. He would not accept any of her arguments as anything he wanted to hear.

When he started actively drinking to the point of getting drunk at least twice a week, she knew it was only a matter of time before the storm broke. Either she had to have him charged with spousal abuse, or she would continue to suffer endlessly at his hands. So one day, she did it—she had him charged and he was consequently arrested, tried and convicted. Her testimony at his trial had everything to do with the outcome. He was then sentenced to three years for his abusive behaviour against her.

But that was only the beginning. Upon moving to a new town and changing her and her daughter’s identities and her appearance, she was still afraid of him and what he would do to her when he got out of prison. Mostly she was afraid that he would track her whereabouts and try to kill her. The police were committed to protecting them from him, but she knew that if he wanted to find her badly enough, he would. She was positive that deadly revenge was on his mind. If he had to go back to prison after killing her, it might actually be anticlimactic for him—a small price to pay for getting back at her.

So what were her options? Fight or flight? If she stayed and fought him, he would surely win since he was much stronger, even if she had a weapon. She could install an alarm system in her house or get a guard dog. Nevertheless, he was not someone who could be easily deterred from getting to her if that’s what he intended. But if she decided to flee, where else could she go with her daughter? She had already embarked on a witness protection program of her own making—changing her and the baby’s identities (with the help of some acquaintances) and changing her appearance as much as possible. It was a problem to which she did not know the answer. Maybe nobody knew the answer.

She could either wait for Mark to decide what to do after he got out of prison or decide for herself now. She was very much afraid that he would come after her and the baby to harm them, and that meant she’d have to fight back. It was not her way to fight, but if there was no other choice, she would. And there was no doubt in her mind that it would be a fight to the death.

Mark’s first parole hearing was coming up next month, and she planned on being there to try to prevent him from being released early. If that didn’t work, she would get a restraining order, which would enable the police to prevent him from harassing her and the baby. At least it was a beginning. She could also invoke other preventive measures like getting a big dog and installing an alarm system. What she would not do anymore was run. She had tried that avenue already, but it wasn’t always a “fail-safe” method. To stay and fight for her and her family’s survival was the only thing that really mattered from now on.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA