The World Cup

In 1990 my wife and I were living in a small tropical island country far from home. That was where we caught World Cup fever for the first time. The country didn't have a team in the tournament, and with its population of only a million, it probably never will. But when the World Cup began, nobody talked about anything else. When there was a match on, the streets were deserted. Friends were an hour late for a dinner invitation, and finally showed up with their TV, since we didn't have one.

We knew nothing about soccer (football), but we quickly learned, and discovered how riveting the game can be when played by top-knotch players at the international level. We soon had our favourite teams (the underdog Cameroon sticks in my mind) and stars.

Since then, when the World Cup comes around it's a time of nostalgia and excitement. North America seems to be one of the few places in the world where people don't take much of an interest, and most of our friends think we're nuts. They roll their eyes when we rush home to see a game, or lament because a favourite team was eliminated, or go off our brains about the terrible officiating. But in a way, that just adds to the fun. It's our own excuse to share a little craziness once every four years.

Trinidad and Tobago's goalkeeper Shaka Hislop

Portugal's Francisco Costinha, Nuno Gomes, Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo
Saudi Arabia's Yasser al-Kahtani
Togo's Mohamed Kader Coudjaba and Emmanuel Adebayor celebrate a goal Switzerland's Alexander Frei and Tranquillo Barnetta share a hug
Mexico's Rafael Marquez
Brazil's Ronaldinho gives Japan's Hidetoshi Nakata a taste of his fancy footwork
France's Thierry HenryHe wears a suit well, too

Fatherhood

On Friday, we celebrated my son’s fourteenth birthday. Fourteen years since I watched my very premature son delivered by Caesarian section (as I was – “we weren’t born, we were surgically removed,” we joke). He weighed 740 grams (1 lb, 10 oz). The first time I held him, when he was five days old, it felt as if I was just holding the towel he was wrapped in. Now he’s a great tall lad, with a baritone voice, who goes snowboarding.

My daughter will soon be twelve and she too seems far too grown up, trading clothes with my wife and monopolizing the telephone to chat with her friends.

Today I’ve been contemplating what a blessing fatherhood has been. Each of my children has enriched my life in so many unique ways. They could not be more different from each other, and if ever I thought there was a single right way to raise a child, I quickly learned from them that there are as many right ways as there are children. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with both of them from the time they were babies. I have been able to watch them grow and take delight in each new discovery and accomplishment, and share in the frustrations and pain as well.

Even though they are so different, my son and daughter are remarkable mirrors of both their parents in various ways. This helps us understand each other, but can also be rather unsettling when we see our own faults and foibles reflected back at us. Sometimes as I take them to task, I feel as if I’m talking as much to myself as I am to them.

When my son was three, I shaved off my beard for the first time since before he was born. For quite some time, he refused to acknowledge me, and insisted to my wife, “That’s not Papa.” Finally, he agreed to compromise and refer to me as “Papa-without-a-beard”.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as we marked my son’s birthday, what our relationship will be like this time next year. My wife and I agree that it’s important for me to let our children know their dad is gay, and that it will be easier for them if we let them know sooner rather than later. I feel quite confident that they will take this revelation in their stride and that it will help them grow and strengthen our relationship. But naturally, there are nagging worries. Will they see me differently? Will I be forcing them to carry an extra burden they shouldn’t have to bear?

Looking back, looking forward

Late last year, after years of procrastination, I started seeing a psychologist. At the beginning of that experience, I wrote the following journal entry:

I suppose I am “in therapy”, whatever that means. Well, it means I have had one session with a psychologist and have another scheduled for this week. I’m really not sure what I think about this. At the first session, I obviously simply attempted to explain to the psychologist who I am and why I feel the need to talk to him. And he attempted to understand, and briefly outlined his own background and point of view. I feel quite uncertain about what these sessions can accomplish, because in many respects, I will be as much of a puzzle to him as I would be (and am) to those in my own community. So in some way, this could well serve to heighten my sense of aloneness. And yet somehow I feel the need to talk to someone who is well outside my own culture and even beliefs. Perhaps this is simply because I want to be heard without being judged. I want to be ungagged in a setting where I don’t need to be afraid. Not that I am completely unafraid in this setting. What am I afraid of? Strangely, I’m afraid of upsetting the delicate balance between my contradictory selves. I have a sense that this is already happening, but where it will lead is completely unpredictable. I know I will resist change tooth and nail. Yet my desire to be unmuzzled must be strong enough that I am willing to risk upsetting that balance.

Perhaps I see these sessions as an opportunity to say out loud, to myself, the things that have progressed from a deep, repressed place in my consciousness to my inner monologue, but for the most part no further. So in that sense I see them as providing something very much akin to my writing now. But the psychologist is not a neutral medium. I think I am afraid to face his values because this will force me to shine an intrusive light on my own. I am looking (as always) for comfort — relief from the muzzle — but I am liable to find something far from comfortable.

Am I liable to learn anything about myself (or the world) that I did not already know? Perhaps, but I’m not betting on it. At the moment, it feels as if seeing the psychologist is part of a pattern of acceptance (resignation?) that began very long ago but has built up momentum over the past months. So I suppose in that sense that delicate balance is inevitably changing. But I can’t imagine what the end result might be. That I certainly find terrifying.

When I read this now, I am struck by how much my perspective has changed in that short time. True, I still feel as if I am on a journey toward an unknown destination. Yet in many respects, the way does seem clearer.

Yesterday, for the sixth time I told someone that I am gay. Now this may not seem like a very impressive milestone. On the other hand when I wrote that journal entry a few months ago, the thought of telling anyone was enough to make me break into a cold sweat.

I think being able to talk openly with those few people has made an enormous difference in my view of myself. I had certainly begun to accept my sexuality as something I couldn’t change, and even as something I didn’t need to change. But each time I told this to others, I was able to tell myself again too. And each time they reacted with acceptance and understanding, my self-acceptance was strengthened. As a result, I feel as if little by little, the wall between my contradictory selves is coming down.

So whatever the new equilibrium I find looks like, whatever way I find to reconcile the contradictions in my life, I feel increasingly certain that openness will be a key part of it: openness about who I am, what I believe, and the challenges I face.

Remembering Grandpa

Yesterday I was listening to a recording of Grieg piano pieces I hadn’t played for a while. Hearing the opening bars of “To Spring”, I suddenly remembered that that had been a favourite of my grandfather’s.

My grandfather came to Canada from England, with his parents and older sister, at the age of three. They crossed the Atlantic early in 1912, weeks before the Titanic’s fateful maiden voyage. They settled in a remote little town out west where my great grandfather was to work on the railway, but he was soon shipped back to Europe where he experienced the horror of trench warfare between 1914 and 1918. After the war, they were resettled in a larger centre, where my grandfather would grow up and spend the rest of his life. He met and married my grandmother when he was in his thirties, and Mum was their only child.

Grandpa was a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man and a true old-fashioned gentleman, always to be seen wearing a suit and tie, and never without his fedora. He had what I imagined to be a rather tedious job at the post office, but he was fascinated with just about every aspect of life, and was always quoting some interesting fact he’d gleaned while reading, or reciting passages from Shakespeare or the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He loved to travel, and after his retirement, when he and my grandmother weren’t away, they were planning their next big trip.

From as early as I can remember, Grandpa was my favourite grandparent. He always took a genuine interest in us kids and spent lots of time with us, teaching us to play chess or card games, telling jokes, playing charades. He took great pride in all our accomplishments and always encouraged us in our interests. It was often remarked that I took after my grandfather in various ways, and I certainly did seem to share his temperament and his love of language and music.

When I was a teenager, I was surprised to learn that in midlife, my grandfather had had a mental breakdown, and had spent quite some time in hospital as a result. At his request, he’d been given electroshock therapy at a time when it was falling out of favour with psychiatrists. As he approached old age, Grandpa began to experience emotional problems again. He became increasingly agoraphobic, and eventually virtually cut himself off from everyone but close family.

Little was ever said about what prompted these episodes; Mum just said he’s been troubled by experiences he’d had as a young man. But recently, she confided to my wife that he had had doubts about his sexuality, that he’d “questioned whether he was a real man”. Grandpa, perhaps you and I had more in common than either of us ever knew.

I’m listening to the Grieg again, and thinking about my last memory of my grandfather. I am sitting next to his hospital bed, and I’ve been reading him stories by one of his favourite authors, Stephen Leacock. He asks me about what I’ve been doing, and how the family are. I ask him about his childhood memories, and he begins to tell me how difficult things were for his parents, the contrast between Lichfield and the isolated Canadian town with no paved roads. But too soon, our visit is over. It’s time for Grandpa to go to sleep.

Paysage choisi

The name of this blog comes from a poem by the 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine, which is in a collection called Fêtes galantes inspired by Watteau’s rococo paintings. Verlaine’s words have been set to music more than once, but it is Fauré’s setting that has been going through my head a lot lately. I find the themes in the poem very close to home: wearing masks, going through the motions, hiding sadness, life’s sad beauty.

Poetry is notoriously untranslatable, but I offer my humble attempt below.

Clair de Lune
Paul Verlaine

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Your soul is a choice landscape
enchanted by masqueraders
strumming lutes and dancing. There’s a hint
of sadness hidden beneath their fanciful disguises:

as they sing (in a minor key)
of love triumphant and good fortune,
they hardly seem convinced of their own happiness
and their song dissolves into the moonlight,

into the tranquil moonlight, so sad and beautiful,
that sets the birds in the trees dreaming
and the fountains sobbing with ecstasy,
the tall, slender fountains among the statues.