The song of survival

First I was afraid

I was petrified

Kept thinking I could never live

without you by my side

But I spent so many nights

thinking how you did me wrong

I grew strong

I learned how to carry on

You will have surmised by now that I have parental unit issues. Who really doesn't? But, it's amazing how parents can smother the life out of their children with well-meaning intentions.

Over the past four days - the weekend, plus yesterday and today, my parents have called me exactly seven times. That's more than once a day. Tonight, it was my dad's turn. They're worried. What else is new? If it's not to double-check whether I've changed the filter in my furnace this month or paid all of my bills, it's to enquire whether I've eaten that day, purchased travel insurance for my upcoming trip and today, it was to demand that I provide my location details, telephone numbers and emails of the people I will be visiting on my last leg of my trip.

I'm venturing by train to Bristol to visit friends who I met while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. They are respected members of society, a mom and dad team with two kids in tow. Not exactly the druglords my parents envision.

My response: I will email you when I get there via Hotmail but I am not providing a background check for these people (my mother did ask). I will call you when I arrive and IF there is a problem, you'll be the first on my speed dial.

As I got off the phone, I was bewildered that, at the age of 38 years old, I am still treated like a 15-year-old by the two people who have done their utmost to instill in me a good set of values but also what they consider to be a healthy dose of fear. For years, all I heard was "Be careful." "Watch out for strangers." "Don't drive on the highway because you'll die." "Don't fail." Is that healthy?

What isn't healthy is that they assume I will purposely put myself in danger, by inviting strangers in, not locking my door at night, jumping off of a cliff... you name it, they thought it.

Tonight's request was not my father's doing. It was my mom coaching my dad from the sidelines. Make sure she has enough travel and health insurance, coach her on the importance of keeping your passport and traveler's cheques close, don't talk to strangers on the train, don't get on the wrong train. They think they are preparing me for life. At 38 years old, I had hoped their job was done. What they don't realize is that by constantly pointing out what I should be doing and how I should be doing it, they are chipping away my self confidence.

Eight years ago, my mother uttered eight words that I will never forget: "You'll never survive on your own without me." Those eight words are engraved in my brain, and however I try to erase them, they remain, sometimes in neon lights. While on the job, organizing my home life, choosing a life partner, paying the bills, looking for my next employ. "You will never survive."

Has it hindered me? Yes and no. Any therapist will tell you if you're told you are one way over and over again, it's often difficult to think any different. I am in a constant struggle to keep those voices at bay. "You will never survive." "Be careful." "Don't fail." "Don't fall." "You will always need me to take care of you." How do I break this cycle?

It's highly likely that I will fail at some point. That is life. You jump in and learn from your mistakes. I just need to feel that it's okay to make those mistakes in the first place. Margaret and Joe need to realize that they have prepared me as much as they can. Otherwise, I will be pre-determined to sit on the sidelines and wonder "what if I fail," "what if I get hurt," what if I can't survive on my own without them."

No parent is perfect. No child is perfect. No one is perfect. Scribe is not perfect and neither are her parents. But, I will always love them.

Oh no, not I

I will survive

As long as i know how to love

I know I will stay alive

I've got all my life to live

I've got all my love to give

and I'll survive

I will survive

I'm sure Gloria Gaynor did not have this post in mind when she first sang this song. It is all about survival though, in love and life.

Rememories...

When I was little I constantly mixed up memory and remember. Easy to do, isn't it? I thought so, and my parents thought it was ever-so cute that they still tell the story. "Remember when you used to say 'I have a really good rememory'?" And then they'd laugh, at their cleverness, at me, at my cuteness.

I no longer mix up the words but sometimes bring it out at opportune times to get a giggle from my dad. He'd then launch into another memory - about me, at 18 months old - wearing really, really big, pink sunglasses. I mean really big. Really. Or about my very first black eye. Okay, I've had only one, but the story is cute so he insists on telling it.

I had decided in my wise five-year-old brain that it was a brilliant idea to fashion a train out of two bikes joined together by a long skipping rope. What I hadn't taken into account was the physics of the task, with my oversized tryke and my friend's oh-so-cool but much squatter two-wheeler with training wheels. All was well until we went around the corner . She went one way, I went the other and landed face first on the pavement. And from high on my perch, it was quite a tumble.

But, I didn't cry, and I think that's what my dad was most proud of. Not one tear. Instead, I calmly walked back to my house, went inside to where my dad was reading in his bathroom library (I actually gave him a sign that read "This is a bathroom not a library," until he reminded me that I was afflicted with the same bathroom reading disease). I calmly asked if he could come out and look at something. He opened the door and I said in my five-year-old voice: "Daddy, is this black?" I explained what had happened and he handed me a cold face cloth and said "Don't tell your mother or you'll never be allowed back on that bike." I wondered then how he could be so intuitive. Well, I wondered how he could be so smart as I had yet to learn what "intuitive" meant.

I have a lot of rememories, from as far back as I can remember. Some are as clear as day and others are a little blurry from years of trying to remember particulars. Sometimes I still feel like that little girl who was inaugurated into the world of black eyes, who would run past doors in the basement for fear of hands reaching out to grab her, or would hide behind her father's legs when she was too shy to even say hello. I've outgrown my shyness to some extent, but in new situations I still wish I could fit behind my father's legs. I wish he could still swing me into a pool and cheer when I managed to swim up to the surface.

He's older now, approaching 80, but don't tell him. He'll just deny it. But I couldn't deny it about eight years ago when he went into the hospital to repair a bulge in his aorta. My mother was a basket case, which is a normal occurence, and I was going through the start of a messy separation and subsequent divorce. And here was my father, my hero, my slayer of dragons, the man who would tell me we were going to Timbuktu when we were driving only an hour north to visit my grandmother, hooked up to intravenous tubes, oxygen and a mess of EKG wires monitoring his huge, loving heart. His damaged heart.

I fainted. I felt so weak, like I did at four years old, scared of the monsters lurking beneath the stairs. But this time the monsters were real - a potentially fatal bulge and a threat of oncoming pneumonia - it was the first time, in my 30 years, that I was faced with my own father's mortality. It was close and I wanted to hold my breath until the monster went away.

The story has a happy ending. My father and I got a reprieve. The operation was a success, and while the recovery was a tough one - pneumonia did rear its ugly head - we fought the monster together and we've had almost nine more years of memories.

I've always thought my dad was cool. While I often romanticized my mother's Scottish upbringing, it was my father who held the cool card. A third-generation Canadian in Ontario farmland, my father grew up in the time between the Depression and World War II. He not only knew what a "teddy boy" was, he was one. He had a pet crow that would land on his head on his way home from school, he knew how to rollerskate, ride a bike and a horse and he could whistle any tune. When I was 12 and entering into my pre-teen world, my father offered to drop me off at the roller skating place - SkateCountry - and I was mortified when he announced that he would skate too. Until he put the skates on and did five laps around the rink -- he could kick my butt on rollerskates, blindfolded.

At 78 (or 80 as I often add two years on for good measure), Joe is still cool. He's Joe Cool, the epitome of cool, and though we may disagree on some key points, I know that he'll always offer me refuge behind his legs. I can always count on him for a quick joke and a teasing tone and a twinkle in his eye as he says he should have got another dog instead of having me. A quick wink and I know he's got his fingers crossed behind his back. Thank goodness for reprieves.