Resisting Exile

05Feb 2023 by Linda Bayley

Making Do

At the beginning of 2019 I made a public pledge not to buy any more new clothing for a year. At last count I had 43 t-shirts in my closet, and that doesn't count the shirts that I've set aside to alter or repair. I really don't need anything new. Four years into that automatically-renewing pledge, I have more or less held the line, and have only purchased new clothing that I couldn't make myself or wouldn't want to buy second hand: a bathing suit, a couple of sports bras, socks, and underwear. I have been given socks and two sweaters as gifts, and I purchased a pair of used jeans so I could learn how to hem them. I don't miss shopping for clothes. A few months ago I…

29Dec 2021 by Linda Bayley

Three ways of looking at a grilled cheese sandwich

Musings

1. Toy box I am three years old and sitting on my toy box against the wall where the kitchen becomes the living room. I am eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The air is golden but also filled with the sound of my parents arguing. I am sitting placidly, eating my sandwich. They are yelling. I remember this, but it's possible that none of it is true. I am supposed to have told my mother at one point that the separation was her fault, because she was the one who yelled. I don't remember saying that, but it's possible that I did. The toy box has holes drilled into the back, each the size of a silver dollar. My father drilled these holes in case I get into the box…

14Dec 2021 by Linda Bayley

Speaking Ill

Musings

"Cherished grandfather of 14 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren," says the old man's obituary. You read the obituaries every day: not every single one, not all the way through, but this one has caught your eye. You scroll through the comments. "My condolences," say the mourners. "He will be missed." Standard stuff, nothing new here, something you might have written yourself, if only you'd known the fellow. But at the bottom: "He was not Cherished by his grand children, nor his great grand children. Not from me or mine anyway." What? The comment is signed by someone with the old man's last name. A grandchild, you guess. Someone not named directly in the obituary. The old man's life has been measured and tallied and this guy wants a recount. 'Too…

24Oct 2021 by Linda Bayley

Communion

Musings

When my Gramma was dying in a palliative care facility in Paris, Ontario, she asked me to take communion with her. I gave it a great deal of thought, and then declined. I could have done it. I was baptized and confirmed in the Anglican Church, which means that as far as the Church was concerned, there would have been no problem with me taking the bread and wine. The problem was with me. At that point, I had long since stopped going to church, despite having two excellent godmothers who have never stopped trying to encourage my faith. I stopped when I realized that I could get through an entire church service, saying all the right words at all the right times, without ever once cracking open the prayer…

12May 2021 by Linda Bayley

And Counting

Affirmation, Stigma

Content Warning: suicide, and a tiny bit of blood I have been living on borrowed time for twenty-nine years. It was today, twenty-nine years ago, that I cut deep across my wrists with a razor blade, hoping that I would drift pleasantly off to sleep and not wake up. So, obviously, that didn't work out. But it might have, and so I have a blessing to count today. I was mocked for my attempt. I know this, because my suddenly-ex-boyfriend told me so. Word had gone around at school that I hadn't really meant it, because I cut crossways, and not lengthwise. Well, what did I know? I was eighteen, and that's always how they did it on television. Believe me when I say that I was sincere. Although I…

04Mar 2021 by Linda Bayley

Grace

Love, Musings

January 30, 2001 - JournalGrace tells me that when I was little I pulled a button clean off her muskrat-collared coat. She says we were out for a walk, and I kept tugging on her sleeve. I wanted to know, she says, what was I going to call her if she married my Grampa?I don't remember this incident. I'm not even sure when she came on the scene. First, there was Granny. After Granny died, quiet. And then there was Grace.I wasn't invited to the wedding. I don't know if any of the grandchildren were. To my childish logic, this was a rejection. I think that must be when I vowed she would never be my grandmother. Childish logic, indeed. I'm ashamed of that logic now, of course. It's the…

25Feb 2021 by Linda Bayley

Monolith, continued

Musings

In a post last year, I talked about why I'm writing about my father as much as I am. He was looming so large in my thoughts that I couldn't not write about him. At the time, I mostly just wanted to knock my experience with him down into bite-sized chunks that I could digest more easily. It's also possible that I wanted to knock the man himself down a few notches, prove to him that he wasn't the great man he thought he was. The first motivation is fair. The second is not, and needs to be addressed. I've mentioned elsewhere that I have my father's permission to write anything about him that I need to. At the time of that conversation, and during much of the telling of…

20Feb 2021 by Linda Bayley

The Stories

Action, Musings

When the mother of one of my uncles died, about twenty years ago, he told me that he’d discovered that she’d put little tags on most of the furniture to tell each piece’s story: where it had come from, who it had belonged to, when it had been acquired. “I mean, who cares?” he said to me. “It’s just stuff.” Well, his mother cared, for one. I would have cared, too. “Stuff” carries stories with it, and I always love to hear them. I remember this conversation especially well because my own Gramma’s funeral had been just a few days earlier, and I had been through her apartment with my father and my cousins, and I’d had a list of the things I wanted to take home with me. None…

08Feb 2021 by Linda Bayley

How to Drink Tea

Poetry

For Audrey Boil the water. Listen to the roiling tempest as it builds in the kettle. Hold the back of your hand against the kettle’s hard surface and wait to feel the warmth on your skin. Pour the water slowly into your best mug, the one too big for its coaster, and watch the water turn black, the colour of tea leaves. Wait for the steam to hit your face, smell the subtle aromas of sunrise and awakening. Set the mug beside your work. Let it cool. Let it cool. Let it cool. Sunrise can be harsh, melting your tongue if you fly too close, too eager to wake. Send word to a friend, reminding her to sip from her own best mug, urging patience while the tea cools, but…

05Feb 2021 by Linda Bayley

Safety

Musings

Content warning: this is an essay about bullying. Some violence is described, but not graphically. I walked past your old place on Drinkwater the other day. I stopped for a moment and looked up at the doorway where you and I used to stand watching thunderstorms, huddled together under the sheltering archway. We counted alligators between the lightning and the thunder. We counted Mississippis. Standing there with you, with your arm around me, I knew I was safe. That was one of our first doorways. Our last doorway was different. Behind that last doorway, you were a target: you had forgotten what safe was like. You insisted that you weren't a victim, so I told you to stop acting like one. But you couldn't. It’s hard to picture you as…