Male Bonding

Male Bonding

            Talk is cheap. Action counts. A basis for male bonding! What possible rationale could support such a position?

Spoken words hold no candle to the reality of working or playing together for some time. Skills or lack of them become apparent. An individual’s mistakes reveal a person’s character. Do they learn from blunders, blame others, or easily give up? In the light of a person’s true nature a strong foundation for a lasting friendship may be forged. When words may be misunderstood or be misleading, what better way is there to really come to know another?

The proposition of action counts influences the development of male friendships in novel, Baggage burdens. Mike, Joseph’s uncle, hires young Thomas to work for him on the farm when no one else would. Thomas’ many years of faithful service results in Mike leaving a part of his land to Thomas when he dies. Respecting Mike’s final wishes, Thomas mentors Joseph on farming Mike’s land. Together they not only farm but also sell their produce in the farmer’s market. The bond between the two men grows so strong that Joseph sees Thomas as a father figure. Joseph’s father died when he was very young.

Working draws Joseph and Bill together. Bill comes to know Joseph through his wife, Jill. He’d met her at a family conference. However, by Bill puttering around with Joseph in his yard and Joseph renovating Bill’s basement their connection grows. After Joseph’s marital breakup, the only person who Joseph shares his phone number with besides his son, Daniel, is Bill.

When Joseph sees that his wife is unhappy he is compelled to remedy the situation. His strategies include buying her a car, taking her on a holiday to Hawaii, a highway drive during a snowstorm so she can visit her friend.

Caught in the perception that friendship must be earned through service, Bill goes to great lengths to try to help Jill after her divorce. At first visiting the hospitalized unconscious Jill is a result of him wanting to balance the books, repaying her for kindness when he was struggling with his wife’s prolong battle with cancer. Once she returns home he helps her find a car to replace the one that was written off in her accident. Later he coaches her on how to mend her strained relationship with her son, Daniel. When she asks him to accompany her to Ontario to see her grandmother, he agrees. Jill was afraid to go by herself. At one point Jill perceives Bill’s need to prove he is worthy. She tells him he is a good man. He doesn’t have do things for people to like him.

The question is not which is better, talking to each other or working with each other, but do both build strong bonds?

It is just as blessed to give as it is to receive. Really! My next bog explores this concept, as does Baggage burdens.

Creating Females Characters

Female Characters

Reading the blogs of Kate Elliot, an author, I came across an eye-catching article, “Writing Women Characters as Human Beings.” Given that I wrote about a female protagonist in Baggage burdens. I felt obliged to see Jill measured up.

  As one might suspect from Kate's title, she begins with an arching recommendation: “write all characters as human beings in all their glorious complexity and contradictions.” After offering a couple of disclaimers, she elaborates on her foundational statement.

Kate’s first suggestion is to create opportunities for women to talk to each other. They like to talk, a lot. This becomes especially true if the protagonist lives in a hard shell patriarchal society. Kate goes so far as to suggest the story should have many female tertiary characters, those that do little to advance the story.

Throughout Jill’s life women are important. Because of Jill’s father’s drunken behavior, Jill naturally gravitates to females. It starts in high school. Robin is her best friend. After Jill runs away from Dave’s place, Jill goes to Gramma Maxwell for help. While Jill only knew Josey, her grandmother for two months, their time together leaves an indelible mark on Jill. For the short time that Jill lived in her grandmother’s Brampton mansion, Jill took in two female renters. Mary, owner of the bakery in Camrose, becomes so close to Jill, that Mary is like a mother. That relationship becomes more important when Jill moves into a very conservative, rural setting. Jill accepts Rebecca, a farming neighbor, as godparent to her children. Ann, Mary’s sister, opens the door to Jill joining Ann’s church and the Sunday school staff, all females. Here Jill’s talents are treasured. She blossoms like the first spring flower. Ann also introduces Jill to Jill’s cousin, Julie. Julie turns out to be a lifeline to restoring a connection with Jill’s grandmother and restoring Jill’s self esteem.

Another suggestion from Kate is to have secondary female characters as energetic participants advancing the plot. In addition those secondary characters should also exist for themselves. I read that to mean that they also have a life of their own with their own goals. It also means showing some of their negative traits. In Baggage burdens. these conditions are present. Mary, Jill’s Camrose employer, has an uncanny knack of siphoning the latest news from her bakery customers. That glorious know-it-all image she willingly sacrifices for her husband when his health suffers. While Josey’s paramount interest is her family, she is an energetic church participant and successful business investor. Julie, Jill’s cousin earns the trust of both Josey and Jill, but then Julie finds she must break faith with each of them. Amber, Jill’s second child, loves her parents, brothers and sister but also has a passion for art.

Do any of the female characters of this novel sound like you want to meet them and know more about them?

One might ask, what about the males? They are the subjects of the next blog. Expect to find them complete with glorious complexity and contradictions.

Grand Mothers

Aren’t Grandmother’s Wonderful?

In one short story I wrote, A Man for a Moment, I recall my grandmother as being a teacher, a comforter, and a bear, a mother bear. During my junior high years I spent every summer on the farm with grandparents and uncles. My grandmother taught me how to pick raspberries so I wouldn’t miss a single berry or break a branch. After I’d been supremely rebuked for driving the tractor in the wheat field to make a large figure eight, I hid in the basement in the potato bin. My four-foot-eight grandmother found me in the dark musty room, hugged me and promised everything would be all right. Fifteen minutes before supper that night my formerly angry six-foot uncle apologized for his earlier harsh criticism. Grandmothers are wonderful!

  I had many summer holidays to come to know and appreciate my grandmother. Jill, in Baggage burdens. didn’t. She only had two months, the summer she ran away from home. During that short time Jill came to know Josey, her grandmother, as a very wise, capable, loving person. That was sufficient for Jill to treasure her grandmother.

In Jill’s eyes Josey was awesome. Josey had salvaged a couple of Jill’s high school courses even though she quit attending. Josey, who lived in Oshawa, convinced the Brampton education officials to let Jill take two summer school courses. Jill changed from having no place to sleep to housing-sitting Josey’s Brampton mansion. When Jill rented out two spare bedrooms to a couple of women, Josey let Jill keep the rent money.

As good as Josey was, she had faults. Over estimating Jill’s love or Jill’s need for her was one. That mistake cost her over twenty years of being separated from her grand daughter. Josey also never fully understood her daughter’s love for her husband, Frank. Josey's ambitious desire to curb Frank’s drinking made her persona non grata. All communication with her daughter and her family was cut off for decades.

As author, I know Jill’s grandmother better than Jill does. I know Josey is very resourceful. Without Jill’s parents knowing it, Josey taps grape vines to know how her daughter's family is doing. She does the same for Jill, when Jill runs away. It takes longer for her to set up. I also know that Josey holds the keys to heal Jill, to convince Jill that she is a loveable, loving person.

Do you love your grandmother? Tell stories about her. What better way is there to keep her alive in your heart and that of those close to you?

From the little you’ve learned about Josey, a secondary character, you may wonder if I’ve done a good job in designing her character. Next blog I share a few tips I read about writing women characters in a novel. Then the character, Jill, in Baggage burdens. will also come under the microscope.

Family Tree: A Stump

Family Tree: A Stump

Part of Jill's Family Tree

For most of her life Jill in Baggage burdens. had a peephole view of her family tree. The opportunity to gain strength from the values that her family tree could impart was absent thanks to her grandmother’s well-intentioned meddling and her father’s inferiority complex. Ambivalent feelings about her mother resulted in an anemic impression of Jill's family tree legacy. Picture this tree rooted in a parched sandy ground.

The deeds that could have lead to Jill believing that people are good, are loveable became diluted by her father’s self-serving high expectations and frequent criticism. Jill's failure to meet his standards during her elementary school years left her with the impression that she wasn’t worthy of love. Nourished by her father’s inferiority root, Jill concluded that her school friends could not love her either. Critical teen eyes concluded her frequently intoxicated father deserved no love. When her peace-loving mother attempted to salvage some redeeming feature of her father (Frank Rezley), Jill dismissed her mother’s love as foolish. For Jill the love nutrient had little value.

The dormant gene of love, love for children, parked itself deep in Jill’s psyche, emerging when she had her own children. Unable to settle for a half hearted-love, what Jill mistakenly suspected of her mother, Jill became troubled when she suspected her children did not see her as the most loving parent. Had Jill known her grandmother, Josey, (Josey couldn’t have any thing to do with her children or grandchildren––Frank’s order), Jill would have learned that loving mother’s make mistakes.

For decades Jill’s family tree legacy, little appreciation for loving others, or for being loved, is rooted too deep to cause her to change. The love and trust freely given to her by Mrs. Maxwell and Josey after Jill ran away from home, Joseph, Ben, and Mary surprised her.

Can a greater knowledge of your family change how you see yourself? For Jill it takes time and the revelations from her grandmother, her sister, and her mother’s final words before the branches on Jill tree produce fruit.

How has information about the life of other members of your family helped you?

Aren’t grandmother’s wonderful? With such a question you can imagine the nature of next week’s blog that focuses on Josey, Jill’s grandmother.