The Year in a Deluge

It’s snowed again.

I barely noticed it this morning, and I forgot that the drive to the train station last night took place in the soft snowfall, the flakes glistening in the headlights like diamonds.  We’ve had so much of it lately.  We’ve had more water this year than we’ve ever had before, for as long as anyone’s been keeping track.  When it falls softly  in the hard cold it’s easy to be surprised by the amount.

Now that she’s been gone a good three months, I’ve begun to understand my mother in a way I never could before.  There was something wrong in the way we related to each other but I always had the sense that it was determined, unchangeable.  Fixed, failed reactions to a persistent reality that wouldn’t change.  That the variables in the dynamic had been set in place and they would not be moved, no matter how aware we became of the motives. And they were fixed, that’s a certainty. I spent almost all of my life angry at my mother for what turns out to be good reason–but I couldn’t see how helpless she was until she was gone.  I couldn’t see how helpless everyone was until she was gone.

Christmas eve I counted out dinner plates with my brother, we were trying to determine the number we’d need for his family, my family, parents, and his guest.  ”We need nine,” I announced, and my brother thought a second before saying, “No, we need eight.”  I corrected him, “Nine…count them out:  four for us, four for you and your family, and one for…”

“I know what you’re doing, but we need eight,” he said.  I was still counting my mother in the “us”, even though she wasn’t there.  It’s an old habit I can’t break.  Now that she’s really gone it’s occurred to me how much I missed her when she was here, how much I needed her when she was here but I had to do without her.  How angry that made me, for so long.  How I could never get past that anger, long after I became “an adult”, even long after I could see how desperately she tried to make that up to me.  How much she needed me and how impossible it was for me to respond.

I let that anger rule over everything.  I have trouble determining where it starts.  The first time I knew it was there I simply walked away from home.  I was barely old enough to walk, but I climbed and kept moving.  There were a number of instances when I was a schoolgirl where I just walked.  I’d walk out of my house and into the street and into the city, it would be hours before anyone knew I was gone.  I took myself out of school and out of family life and out of whole days this way, and it was rare that anyone would notice.  It was the only way to take myself out of feeling furious.  The only way to make myself think of something other than what I was contending with at home, why no one could seem to stop it.  By the time I got to be 12 years old it was so painful that physically removing myself was the only way I could cope.  I was completely broken, and I knew my mother could see that.  What I couldn’t see was how badly she wanted to change that but could not.  How sorry she was for not acting, not being able to act.  I never forgave her for that, not for the trying, but for the inability.  I never saw it until now and now it doesn’t matter.  Blame is such a stupid thing–all it does is confirm your own poor judgment.  Whatever it was I needed her to do for me, she needed me to do for her.  We were both limited, both blind, both paralyzed.  Anger was just a dumb animal response I wish I’d been smart enough to see past.

What do I think?

Of course I have an opinion on the matter of the dreaded “Political Crisis” in Canada and the matter of the Coalition in the House.

And my opinion is: the vast majority of Canadians who talked themselves past the known futility of the election process in this country did not vote for Harper. Despite what Harper wants to say about Stephan Dion’s weakness as a leader, despite what he says about the Quebeçois and their insistence on having the nerve to be heard in Parliament, and despite Harper’s fondness for whinging about Separatists and Socialists destroying the country (after trying desperately to form a coalition with the very same “separatists” himself, unsuccessfully, not six months ago–who says Harper has no sense of humour?), 65% of Canadian voters did not want a Harper government of any kind, regardless of the leader of the opposition in question.

Because our voting system isn’t actually representational, we’re stuck with a Harper minority government (truly, no one voted for his party outside of his own riding). More accurately, we’re stuck with a Harper government shored up by Mike Harris’ former Goon Squad. Let’s everyone in Ontario remind the rest of the country how much good Harris did for our economy here, shall we? From the fact that we’re still counting up the death toll, literally, from the closed hospitals and gutted public health system that failed when SARS hit the city, to the thousands dead from poisoned water when Harris privatized the water quality monitors, and to the Harris-orchestrated assassination of Dudley George when he protested the theft of his peoples’ land, contrary to a signed treaty.

A Coalition aligned against Harper’s minority government is not only not a “crisis”, it’s actually the government most Canadians elected to power. If this is the way we have to go about getting what we want in this country now (until we get to work on fixing the enormous problem we’ve got with actually representing what voters want in their ridings) then so be it. I’m all for it.
On top of that, this is what is supposed to happen in a minority government. Forming coalitions is the opposition’s job, especially if there is no confidence in the government’s agenda.

And there is no confidence.