Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir Read online

  This was a whole new episode in our lives together, and it did take a bit of figuring out. I can’t count the number of times I bit my tongue, especially in that first year when we were sorting out how to work together. Most of the time, though, working in the shop was a pure joy. I loved hand-selling books to customers, talking about the titles I especially loved with whoever was around, making displays. Even the really slow days in the shop were a pleasure for me. By the time I arrived home at the end of a day, spent on my feet, I felt like I’d earned my wage.

  Most weeks I worked two shifts, but as time went on I began to work more events and at Christmas I took on more shifts, too. I started to let some things slide at the house — my standard of tidiness took a nose-dive until I couldn’t stand it anymore and went on a cleaning frenzy. Little projects, such as clearing old toys or clothes out of boxes in the basement, were wiped right off the to-do list.

  Ben worked much longer hours than he had at Nicholas Hoare, because of all our after-hours events. Yeats sometimes stayed late at school. It was harder to find time for everyone to be together, and I was starting to become concerned about Ben’s health. His feet were sore all the time. His knees were sore, too, and he didn’t eat properly. He’d forgo breakfast and lunch, eat a donut or maybe a croissant part way through the day, and then gorge on whatever we had in the kitchen when he arrived home at 10 p.m. My role as keeper of the household was slipping, which wasn’t all bad. Yeats, for example, needed more independence. I loved these guys, though, and wanted us to keep our customary closeness, not drift apart because of day-to-day busy-ness.

  THREE

  THOSE FIRST FEW MONTHS after the opening of Ben McNally Books were tumultuous for me and for the family. Ben was always tired, always working. We had many firsts of what would become regular events: the first televised announcement of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the first Word on the Street, the first International Festival of Authors, our first crazy Christmas season, and plenty of book launches in between.

  I hadn’t wanted us to be the official bookseller at the IFOA, which is the International Festival of Authors held at Harbourfront in Toronto each October. It felt too soon to me to open the store in September and then have to set up a second shop somewhere else, moving all those books in and out and staffing the ten-day event. But Ben’s mind was made up.

  “If we turn it down this year, we might not get a second chance,” he said.

  Ben loved the festival: being in the thick of things with authors and publishers from around the world, going to all the late-night parties. That first year, I worked more hours in our actual bookshop, and by the time I got home I was too tired to go to many of the parties. I wasn’t used to this type of work — being on my feet for eight hours and dealing with other people’s energy all day long. Our customers were far from rude or obnoxious, but they were people who required my attention and I couldn’t just go lie down on the couch for fifteen minutes to recharge.

  When I had first started working with Ben at Book City all those years ago, we didn’t have a computer system. We used small cards, like flashcards, to keep inventory, and we phoned our orders in to the publishers. We knew every book in the store because we were in such close contact with them all the time. I loved moving through that old store, looking for all the, say, books published by Ballantine, ordering the ones that were popular and pulling older stock off the shelves. It was unhurried work and I was good at it.

  At the new store, we had a computerized inventory system as well as the Internet. All our buying was done on the computer. Every once in a while we had to check the shelves to see if we really did have that one copy of the book the computer said we had, but most often we didn’t. At first I resented the computer. I wanted to gather up a fistful of cards and go count the books. I was afraid that I’d come to rely too much on the machine and had forgotten all my specialized knowledge. But I learned to satisfy my love of handling the books by making displays and spending time each day browsing the shelves.

  I adjusted. I adjusted to working outside the home and to using the computer, and I began to adapt to Ben’s newfound workaholism. Yeats worked weekends with us at the IFOA and at our monthly author brunches. But he was also adjusting to high school — finding his way in a new environment, just as I was.

  IN MID-NOVEMBER BEN AND I took a taxi together from the shop up to Jarvis for our parent-teacher interviews. Yeats liked most of his Grade 9 teachers. He found it amazing that they talked to the students as if they were adults who could make their own choices about how to run or ruin their lives.

  The teachers liked Yeats, too. He was one of the boys who listened. I was reminded of his Grade 3 gym teacher, who’d been new to Withrow. She approached me in the yard one day and said, “You’re Yeats’s mom, aren’t you?” When I said yes, she said, “I just want you to know that he’s one of only two boys who actually listen to what I say. You can be proud of him.”

  Six years later, he was still listening. He didn’t have that restlessness many boys experience, partly because he was so good at paying attention.

  One of his Grade 9 teachers said, “Yeats is one of those students you can’t rush. He needs assignments that allow him to go deep into something, not just skim the surface.”

  I couldn’t believe that someone understood Yeats this quickly — in less than two months.

  “He’s one of those students who’s making connections between things everywhere he goes,” he said, “but that kind of thinking takes time. He’ll get frustrated if people try to rush him.”

  When we got home later that night, I told Yeats about that conversation.

  He just shrugged. “That won’t stop them from making me do all the dumb little assignments. You’ll see.”

  Of course he was right. But at least he knew that some of the teachers appreciated who he was. The teachers saw the calm, attentive Yeats, the Yeats who could deal with the pressures of school. In class, Yeats was unfailingly cheerful and helpful. He participated in discussions and did well on his tests and assignments. He wasn’t one of those kids who took his angst out on the world. (He saved that for me!)

  Since the start of high school Yeats had decided to do his homework on his own in his room. We had made a pact. I wouldn’t ask him one thing about his homework, ever, and he’d do it without coercion. Mostly I was able to hold up my side of the bargain. Sometimes I forgot.

  “How was school?” I’d say.

  He’d grunt.

  I’d say, “Did you do your presentation? How did it go?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did your teacher like the music you chose?”

  “Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  In an act of desperation or insanity I’d completely forget my promise and say, “Do you have homework for tonight?”

  “Mom! I can’t believe it! Stop asking me that! Just stop!” As though I’d been asking for ages when it had really been weeks since the last lapse. He’d stomp upstairs, heaving great sighs, slam his bedroom door, and play something loud on his stereo. At least I loved all his music.

  For some reason, one night he chose to do his homework at the kitchen table. My big mistake was not telling him to do the work in his room, but I guess I was happy to have the company while I prepared dinner.

  As he worked at his math, he became physically agitated first, then vocally, and then asked for my help, which I was unable to supply since my math skills no longer went beyond Grade 8. He ranted a bit about math in general, then about school, and the longer he went on the more my blood boiled. If he spent half as much time on the actual work as he did on complaining about it . . .

  My first response, which with tremendous effort I kept to myself, was to turn into a fire-breathing dragon and burn down the whole house with us in it. Instead, I threw down my paring knife and said, “I don’t need to listen to this. I don’t need to be part of this,” and then I stomped upstairs.

  I felt like a failure because I’
d risen instantly to such strong emotion, but I also felt touched by grace because I’d let it go almost as quickly. I sat on my bed and breathed for a few minutes, listening to him scratch away with his pencil, doing the work. I closed my eyes and asked for wisdom: how to help Yeats get through high school, how to balance what he needed from me with everything else I needed to do in my life. Why was it, I wondered, that my parents had known practically nothing about what my siblings and I were doing in school, while these days, everyone I knew was involved in their children’s education? I couldn’t work out if this was a good thing or not.

  When I went upstairs later in the evening, Yeats called to me from his bedroom. I went in and sat on his chair.

  He said, “Why do I have to do well at school? Why can’t I just enjoy myself and do okay, but maybe not really well?”

  We’d been over this territory a thousand times since Grade 1, but learning is a process of repetition, if nothing else.

  “Two things. One, it’s far more satisfying in the long term to do something well, to do the best you can. To know in your heart that you did all you could. It’s a personal reward. The other reason is more practical — so you can get into the university of your choice.”

  Big sigh from the big boy. “But what if I don’t want to go to university?”

  “Then you’ll work instead, or travel for a bit and then go to university, or volunteer somewhere and work part-time.” He knew all of this, but he needed to hear it again. And again.

  “I guess I’ll go to university. But I’m not interested in anything. I don’t know what to take. I’m not good at anything.”

  “Yeats, you’re interested in everything!” It infuriated me when he said stuff like this. He thought his teachers were crazy to give him high marks. Certainly nothing I could say would reassure him so I just said, “When the time comes, we’ll go over the course offerings together and see what appeals to you. You don’t have to decide on a major going in to first year.”

  “Hmph.”

  I was tired of this conversation but I knew it was important. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, just that I wished he’d have more faith in himself.

  “But high school, Mom. They’re always trying to make everybody into the same person. It was the same when we were younger, too. All school is like that, I guess.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Those teachers appreciate who you are, care about you as an individual.”

  “Maybe some teachers. But, I mean, the system as a whole. They want us all to behave in the same way and we’re all supposed to go on to university and make something big of ourselves. What if we don’t want that? There’s so much pressure,” he said.

  As I sat with Yeats, I thought about him on a kindergarten field day, just before he turned five. The boys were lined up to run a race, the teacher counting down from three, and off they went, running across the grass as fast as their little legs would take them.

  Halfway down the field Yeats stopped and crouched. He’d spotted something and took his time looking at it, gently tipping up whatever it was with one finger.

  The teacher yelled, “Yeats! Keep running!”

  He looked up at her, then at all the parents who were laughing on the sidelines, then at his classmates who were already at the finish line. He stood up and ran to the end of the field and then came over to me.

  “What was it?” I asked. “What did you see?”

  “A really pretty flower, Mom. A tiny blue flower, in the grass.” This was his true nature. Not one iota of competitiveness. He could care less about the race.

  Then I remembered when Laurie, Greg, and I were teens, and how Dad used to ask us at night, “Did you win today?” This question always made me want to explode, but we weren’t allowed to get angry so I just sulked and scowled and told him I didn’t know what he meant since I wasn’t in a competition. Of course I knew what he meant, but I didn’t like this implication that there was winning and losing and nothing else. Dad came from a family with huge expectations and he raised us in the same way. I remember him asking my brother Greg, when he’d made 98 percent on a math test, what had happened to the other 2 percent. He also regularly asked, “Where do you see yourself ten years from now?” I hated that question too. I tried to convince him that knowing where I was right now was far more important. He didn’t buy it. I was loath to impose that level of expectation on my son, because I remembered so clearly how I’d reacted as a child. But I was conflicted. On the one hand, aiming for success had been bred into me; on the other, my measure of success was quite different from my father’s. As a parent, it made me ask myself: Is it a blessing or a curse to be in this world without worldly ambition, without the drive to win and accumulate?

  When we were finishing high school, Dad’s definition of success became more concrete — success meant a respectable, prosperous career. Laurie wanted to study physics at university, but Dad told her she’d wind up working for the government in a dead-end laboratory job. Dad, a star hockey player in high school, had been drafted to play in a professional Ontario league. His mother had said no, there wasn’t enough money in hockey. Then he wanted to study medicine, but his father said no, business was a better option. Now he told his daughter that she should study economics, instead of following her passion, so she did.

  And I remember, too, the day Greg called from university, where he was in second-year engineering. Dad had done an engineering degree before going on to business school, and it seemed this was Greg’s path, too. But Greg was bored to death by engineering and had decided to switch to economics (which sounded dreadfully boring to me).

  I answered the phone and Greg told me why he was calling. He said, “Dad won’t understand. He’s going to be really mad.”

  He was nervous, but I pointed out that I’d done way worse than that. “Don’t you remember, Greg? I took a whole year off university, between second and third year. I went travelling, for God’s sake! Then I switched universities. You’re just switching programs.”

  “Was Dad mad at you?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Do what you have to do.”

  Laurie and Greg both went on to get MBAs, while I had my more or less useless undergrad degree in history. But I remember one day Dad said to me, “You’re just about the only kid I know with a real university education.” I took that as a compliment, and then I watched my brother and sister take jobs with management-consulting firms and proceed to work themselves to the bone. Within a few years, both of them ended up leaving that business, questioning the path that had led them there.

  I, on the other hand, had no path at all. I just went with whatever seemed to come up. It was how I’d always lived and how Ben lived, too, and it informed how we raised the children.

  We all live with unintended consequences, and maybe we should have been pushing Yeats, and our other kids, to be more productive during their growing years, so they’d have more to show for themselves on their resumes. Maybe working for their bookselling parents just wasn’t enough to give them a taste of the world and all its trials. The real world. But then we would have been untrue to our ourselves.

  Some days I agonized over this. But I reminded myself it was good to challenge people’s notions of how to live, and this was something that Yeats had been doing, naturally and quietly, since he was born.

  AFTER A QUIET NEW year and a busy spring, we went up to the cottage. We arrived at the lake and stood on the dock at the golf club. We’d called ahead, so Greg and his little boys would be coming in a boat to pick us up, but for these few minutes we stood and breathed Muskoka in.

  Ben said, “It’s nice here,” as we watched a couple of cormorants fly past, low to the water. He put his arm around me. “Thanks, Lynn.” I nodded, made speechless once again by the familiar beauty of the lake, the view of islands and boathouses and dark blue water.

  It was the May 24th long weekend — time to officially open the family cottage for another season. We came north with the birds, durin
g their yearly migration. We stocked up on staples: baking goods, oils and spices, bags of dried beans, rice, raisins, coffee. We had a bag of books to read, too, although we knew we had hours of chores ahead of us. It was the same every year and something in that sameness comforted me, made me feel rooted in that landscape.

  Our first weekend of the season was always a busy one. We moved the deck furniture out from the screened-in porch and replaced it with the white wicker furniture from the main bedroom. We got the dock furniture from the boathouse and the floaty-toys down from one of the boathouse bedrooms. We cleaned the eavestroughs at the new cottage and swept pine needles off the roof of the old cottage. Pine needles are very acidic and will eventually rot the shingles.

  Someone had bought bedding plants, and we all worked together in the garden. Planting had taken most of a day when the children were small, but now that they were old enough to help it took only a couple of hours.

  Every year, though, something was amiss. Perhaps it would be a broken water pipe under the old cottage, or the dishwasher leaking all over the kitchen floor because it hadn’t been properly hooked up. Perhaps the chimney flashing would have come loose, rainwater making its way through the roof, or an animal would have ripped holes in the screens. This year, it was a nest of dead mice in an old coffee pot.

  At the end of the day we had a big family dinner. Everyone crowded around the table, which was full of bottles of wine and Ben’s fresh bread, candles burning and Van Morrison on the stereo. That first weekend together was always joyful for me and, I think, for the entire family. Muskoka was our cherished place, a never-changing refuge from our everyday lives.