Saying Goodbye to a Friend

Usually when people ask me about my brief legal career, I laugh and say, "It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time." In reality, however, many, many good things came out of that decision, and I would not go back and change it if I could. Mainly because of the people I met along that path.

Matthew Ryan, QC, was one of those people. He was one of two partners in the small law firm where I spent my legal years, and one whom I counted as a good friend. He passed away on Thursday after a battle with leukemia that lasted the past couple of years. He was only 62.

Those of you who know me, know that my memory for many things is not good. I often joke that I won't remember most of my life until I develop Alzheimer's and it all comes back to me. However, I clearly remember the first time I met Matt.

It was the summer after my first year at law school, so working at a firm seemed like a good idea. Matt was on vacation when I went in for an interview with his brother David, the other partner in the firm, and David offered me the position for the summer. Matt was still on vacation when I started work, and I had been there a few days before he returned. By the time he came back, I was ensconced at a desk and had some assignments, so I was busily working away that first morning. He said hello to me as he passed my desk and I reciprocated, of course. A few times over the course of the morning I noticed him glance at me thoughtfully, but we were both busy, so I didn't have too much time to wonder about it.

Finally, when the day was almost over, he came back to my desk and said, "Who are you, anyway?" I guess everyone thought that someone else had told him I had started working there. We had our first laugh together (of many) over that. I went on to work there as an articled clerk and practice law for a number of years, so we became good friends and colleagues.

I also remember one time he "came to my rescue." This was after I had been practicing with the firm for several years. I had a client in my office, a client who had ignored my advice and consequently found himself in a pickle. He was angry, and starting to yell, and although I was handling it okay, I suspected that it would not be long before I burst into tears (confrontation not being one of my strong points, hence one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer any longer, but I digress...). Anyway, Matt obviously realized what was going on, knocked and came into my office, sat down and started talking to the client in a very reasonable way, got him to admit that he had caused his own troubles and it was no fault of mine, got him to apologize to me, and quietly got him to leave. To me, he was like a knight in shining armour, although of course he shrugged it off like it was nothing. He never made me feel like I needed rescuing (although I think I did). He was just helping out. That's the kind of man he was.

Matt was a very kind, easygoing person, not the kind of lawyer who is overly impressed with the fact that he's a lawyer, if you know what I mean. All those lawyer jokes you know, were not about him. All those lawyer stereotypes, ditto. He was a great teacher and mentor, but never seemed to feel that his experience gave him any particular status other than the ability to pass along some advice to those learning the ropes. He taught me more about drafting contracts and drawing up wills and dealing with clients (even the difficult ones--maybe especially the difficult ones) than any law professor did. And more importantly, he modelled integrity, professionalism, and care for others--things we should take away from law school but often don't.

Honestly, I could go on for a long time here, but I won't. I have laughed while writing this, and cried, and I think if we have friends who can exert this much influence over us even after they've ceased to be part of our day-to-day lives, we can be confident that they'll stay with us for a long, long time to come.

It comes down to this: I am privileged to have known and worked with Matt, and I will miss him.

Plodding Along

The re-installation of my new hard drive continues...is this three days now? I've lost track. I can only work on it for so long before I start to get a headache and have to take a break. I've done all the "easy" stuff (not that it was all easy, but at least I could do it without help) but now I'm going to need some technical assistance from my husband to do the rest. With luck we'll have a chance to work on it tomorrow night.

I've found the entire process strangely depressing. I've read so many old emails and opened so many documents to see what they were, only to be reminded of times past, projects started and abandoned, attempts to get organized that fell flat--so many things have been either melancholy, bittersweet, or downright downing.

At the same time it has made me ponder just how much of my life has become caught up with the computer. One could reconstruct an amazingly accurate picture of the past five years by combing through the archive of my hard drive. Is this a good thing? I don't know. But it is rather interesting.

In the interest of fairness, I should say that I've found a few gems that I'd forgotten about, like a poem my daughter and I co-wrote so long ago that neither of us remembers doing it. So it's not all bad. But even that is one of the bittersweet things, at least in mu current state of mind. Which I think may be succumbing to the onset of a bout of winter blues. I'm trying to fight them off. We'll see how that goes.

Journaling, Blogging, and other Writing

Okay, my earlier post about Mermaids was not my final post for NaBloPoMo! I was thinking earlier about writing in various forms.

Journaling, for one. The other night our writing group was discussing journaling and keeping journals. It came to light that much of what was journaled by various members came when they were down or going through a difficult period in their lives. They didn't tend to write as much or as consistently when things were good. I joked that perhaps that was why I've never been good at keeping a journal--I'm too happy. (This does not count the reams of terrible poetry I wrote during high school. I think the stuff I wrote during university had improved somewhat, or at least some of it had. But I digress...)

Back to the journaling, it was only a joke, but it does make a kind of sense, especially when you think of Tolstoy's quote,

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Meaning, I think, that there is a lot more emotional territory to mine for a writer in an unhappy family. Ergo, there's a lot more emotional territory to mine in a journal when times are unhappy.

Blogging, however (while I'm not especially consistent with that, either) seems to broaden the scope of journaling simply because it's a public venue. When we journal, we generally do not have the expectation that it will be widely read. When we blog, we know that many people *may* read it. Thus there's more impetus to make it interesting, to share thoughts we think others might appreciate or understand. The occasional rant or complaint still pops up because we have made this place our personal airing-space, but I think the best blogs offer more than those things. That's why I do better with blogging than I ever did with journaling. Because it's not just about me.

As for writing fiction, I think my feet were really set on that path by my junior high school English teacher, Mr. Patrick Reilly. He made me think that maybe I had something--not necessarily a talent, but an affinity, perhaps?--for storytelling and working with words. And although there have been detours along the way, I'm still on that path many long years later. So he might have had something there. I've just done a quick scan and I see that, not counting works in progress, I've written well over 600,000 words of fiction, poetry and non-fiction since I started writing seriously. I guess perhaps I do have an affinity for words. I sure do seem to like writing them down, at any rate.

The Five Most Impressive Sights of My Life

Helen asked on her blog, "What are the five most impressive sights of your life?" Keeping in mind what I said earlier about my long-term memory, here are the things I think of:

1. When I was in university in Halifax I remember one snowy night when a bunch of us decided to go for a walk. The snow was coming down in big soft flakes and it was quite beautiful. Then we came to one of the other universities in the city (it's a big university town) and walked past the chapel there. There were lights on inside, setting a big stained glass window glowing. The window was flanked by two big evergreens, their branches heavily powdered by now with fresh snow. And the big flakes continued to fall past the glowing stained glass. To say it was beautiful is an enormous understatement. It's embedded in my mind.

2. My children just after being born. Now that was impressive! Both times!

3. The multicolored patchwork of the Canadian prairies, as seen when flying over them.

4. The azure/turquoise blue of the water around the Bahamian Islands, also as seen from above.

5. The drawings of Stephen Wiltshire, the "living camera." If you haven't watched this video, you must. It puts me in awe of the mostly untapped power of the human brain.

First Purchase

Today I visited Daydreaming on Paper looking for inspiration. There's a very nice randomizer there that is sure to provide something to inspire you (if you click on it enough times!). Today it asked me "Do you remember the first thing you bought with your own money? With your first paycheck?"

I decided to write about the first thing I bought with money I made from my writing. I wanted it to be something memorable, although I'm sure there were other more practical things I could have chosen. The money was the pay from a short story, "Little Things," I sold to Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine. I decided to buy a piece of art that I could hang in my office.

The picture (this is not the best shot of it--bad lighting and lots of reflections) is of a Victorian-style home, surrounded with lovely gardens. It drew me first because it reminded me of my grandparents' home and also the house where I grew up--neither of course is exactly like this one but they have the same feeling. It also looks like it would be a lovely place to write, at a desk looking out one of the upstairs windows, or perhaps curled up in a chair on the veranda.

I love peacefulness when I write. It's just a commodity that's usually in short supply. ;-) I'm very glad that I invested the pay from that story in this picture. It's a concrete reminder that my writing goals can be achieved.

Christmas Shopping

Today I finally got started on my Christmas shopping. Well, I suppose I actually was started, having ordered a few things online, but this was my first trip to the stores. My sister and I went and managed to get quite a bit accomplished.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a strange memory problem--it's not a short-term memory thing, it's long-term memories that give me trouble. However, I have one early memory that is very vivid and involves Christmas shopping. I remember going to a store in the next town and shopping for a gift for my grandmother. I wasn't very old at the time, maybe seven or eight, and I didn't have much money of my own to spend. But I found a beautiful little changepurse, pink and studded with small crystals, that was perfect. I thought it was beautiful, at least; I don't know for certain what my grandmother thought, although I know she would have told me she loved it regardless. It's strange that this memory is so vivid. I can close my eyes and see the changepurse there in my hands.

I can't say I'm feeling any real Christmas spirit yet, however. The Christmas music playing in the mall sounds oddly out of place to my ears. Perhaps it's the mild-ish weather we've been having, or the fact that my mind is still mostly on NaNoWriMo. It certainly isn't that the malls aren't busy!

I've done more and more shopping online the past few years; I know it's not that great for our local economy, but it's such a time-saver for me that it's difficult not to take advantage of it. This year I've done minimal shopping online so far, and it's starting to get a little late for it--I worry about things not arriving on time. I might have to bite the bullet and put a few more miles on my sneakers this year.

One thing I find depressing about mall shopping is the sheer volume of absolute JUNK that's for sale. When I think about it all ending up in landfills it just makes my heart sink.

Oops, what started out as a fairly lighthearted post has degraded rather horribly. Maybe a rousing chorus of "Jingle Bells" to cheer us all up again...

Thanks to gamerzero at morguefile.com for the money photo.

The Clothesline Debate

It seems the "clothesline debate" is on again in certain parts of Canada. Ontario's Minister for conservation has made a recommendation that the province move ahead with legislation that would effectively negate all restrictive covenants that disallow clotheslines in subdivisions, condominiums, etc.

Personally, I think this is a good thing. The misguided sense of asthetics or false modesty that prompted these restrictions in the first place is outdated. Conservation has to be the overriding concern, and I think people who would like to save money and energy by drying their clothes naturally should have the option to do so. In a world where we are constantly bombarded by advertising for feminine products and sex-enhancing medications, some people are offended by the sight of clean underwear? Give me a break. People who argue that clotheslines have a negative effect on property values just aren't living in the real world.

To tell the truth, I don't even particularly like line-dried clothes. However, it was my intention to put up a clothesline this summer in order to enhance the green shade of my ecological footprint. I confess I didn't get the job done, but it's still on the list for next spring.

The clothesline was a constant in my childhood. We had one, my grandmother had one; everyone did. In the springtime a man would always come around door-to-door selling new clothespoles, the back of his truck piled with straight, smooth poles, stripped of bark, and nicely notched on one end to hold the line. Sheets and towels would always be flapping and snapping in the breeze, and I do remember the lovely outdoor scent if you buried your (hopefully clean) face in them. I didn't mind hanging out the clothes, but I never liked the chore of bringing them in--having to shake each piece vigorously to dislodge any tenacious spiders!

The radio discussion included one of the authors of a book about clotheslines, which I believe was this one: "The Clothesline" by Andrea VanSteenhouse and Irene Rawlings. I'll have to double-check the CBC website later to make sure I have this right. At any rate, it sounded like an interesting and fun book of reminiscences and photos. I'm thinking I'll check the library for it (when I have time to read again!).

Thanks to cohdra for the lovely clothespins photo!

Brief Encounters with Trains

Helen's post about her adventures on the trains got me thinking about my own train encounters. I know she was speaking about commuter trains, but those are in short supply here (read: none). I was thinking of the VIA Rail trains that used to run between here and points west. They're still running, but not where I live. The service was discontinued years ago, which I still think is rather appalling.

When I was in university, passenger trains ran from here to Halifax, so it was an option for us students coming home for a weekend or other holiday to travel by rail. I only travelled that way a few times, but I remember liking it. The seats were acceptably comfortable, there was a canteen for getting snacks, and the trip felt a little like an adventure. The scenes in the Harry Potter movies on the Hogwarts Express reminded me of them a bit; not necessarily the look of the cars but the sound of the train trundling along the tracks, that slight swaying motion, the scenery zipping past outside.

When the trains stopped running we were left with the option of the bus, which fell far short in terms of comfort and general pleasantness. Buses were, by contrast, rather crowded, with less comfortable seats and personal space, and also, at that time, horribly dense with cigarette smoke. I learned to fall asleep pretty much as soon as the bus left Halifax and wake up about ten minutes from home. It wasn't ever a particularly restful sleep, but the time went quickly.

I think it would be a great adventure to travel across Canada by train. However, I don't think I'll be doing it anytime soon. I've just looked it up on the VIA Rail website for fun, and it would cost $2,396.85, just for me, one way. Whew! Perhaps most of my encounters with trains will stay in my past...