Everyone's favourite uncle gets to share the love
September 15, 2008
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Don Maybin
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
This week, TouchWood Editions publishes Nobody's Father: Life Without Kids – a collection of essays by childless men. Today, Living begins a five-day series of reprinted essays from the book.
My roots are in rural Alberta, between Calgary and Banff, in the middle of nowhere, where people from everywhere now seem to visit.
My childhood was idyllic in ways I would never realize until I moved away. I commuted daily (two hours each way) to school on a dilapidated bus full of screeching banshees. The country institution I attended went from Grades 1 through 12 and included innocent, primary school primates and aspiring, snobbish senior-high debutantes. Home was a cross between heaven and hell. Surrounded by fields and forests, we roamed freely in a veritable safari park complete with the occasional deer or bobcat. My principal playmate was my younger brother, whom I called Fathead. Our relationship had as many ups and downs as a roller-coaster ride at the Calgary Stampede. There were rare moments of sibling serenity, but most of the time we were engaged in bouts of brother bashing.
As for my extended family, there were just one or two eccentrics on my father's side, or at least that is how they were depicted by my mother. Basically, our world was matriarchal; my maternal grandmother's house was the centre of the universe. Every weekend, my mother cleaned floors with Granny until late, and the kids – my brother, me, and an endless stream of cousins – were left under the watchful eye of whichever of my younger aunts or uncles was still living at home.
We raced about Granny's house, hiding in the coal shed, banging on her upright piano, chasing chickens around the yard, strangling a cousin or two. I suppose we were like a Mafia clan, private and proper under the gaze of outsiders but capable of any outrage within the confines of the family compound or when an outsider threatened our world.
I always assumed I would have children of my own. But gradually, I began to perceive a parallel reality, to sense that my rules and desires were not necessarily the same as those of everyone around me. Maybe some of my cousins were developing a similar blueprint for life, but I sure as hell didn't know about it. I am gay, and for someone of my generation, this realization meant that a family, at least the traditional version with a wife and 1.8 kids, was not in the cards.
Fortunately for me, we moved to the hedonistic west coast just before I reached puberty, thereby lessening the stunted nature of my sexual awakening. On the other hand, the edicts of family, real or imagined, were still very much in place. Model student, rebellious son, church-group holy roller, hellraising disco diva – I was everyone's everyman, except perhaps my own. By the time I entered university, I had a girl on my arm and a man behind my back in the shadows. I told myself this was cool.
As my younger cousins began to pair off "permanently" with the opposite sex, I knew that getting married would be unfair to everyone, including me. I didn't really have a problem with being alone, but I did feel shortchanged knowing I would never have children.
But another brother showed up, born 10 years after Fathead and 12 years after me, a glorious mistake who dropped into our lives like a bolt of pure joy. After heading off to university in Vancouver, I made every effort to spend time with Sausage, getting my mum to send him over on the ferry from Vancouver Island so that we could see a movie or eat out at fancy restaurants I could ill afford. I treated my youngest brother almost like a son, particularly after my parents' marriage blew apart. He survived – we all survived – but even today I feel that I could have done more for my little brother when our house of cards collapsed.
Trapped in the varsity cliché of classes and clubs, intellectual discussion and drugs, I found myself, at the lowest point, depressed and contemplating suicide in the basement of the house I was renting with four other students. I knew I had to leave everything behind or lose my sanity. I found a job and moved overseas, in my case to Japan, where I have remained to this day.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to make friends in a number of countries, many with children whose lives I have been blessed to be part of. With my knack for telling tall tales, playing hand games à la patty cake for hours and the freakish ability to touch my nose with my tongue, I seem to be everyone's favourite weirdo uncle. In Saskatoon or Swansea, Budapest or Beverly Hills, I have grown younger watching "my kids" grow up.
Oh, I have toyed with the idea of having a child, particularly during the few times when opportunity presented itself on a platter. I suppose I am reasonably good-looking (at least if you are attracted to bald and gangly), intelligent (incomprehensible in about 10 languages) and entertaining. (You try whistling the "William Tell Overture" while making frog noises!) I have been approached by several women about, as the ditty declares, "having my baby." One of the more direct requests came from an American woman when I gave her a ride home on my motorcycle after my classes at a rural school in Japan. The woman was a guest – a friend of a friend – and she was particularly taken with the youngest group of 5-year-olds, who tended to use me like a jungle gym, swinging from my arms and legs.
With the woman clinging to me as we swung around bends in the road, the post-class discussion on education mutated into a blurted request from the back of my motorcycle to be a sperm donor, as the hands clutching my waist started to head south. Fortunately, I kept my composure and control of the motorbike.
In truth, the hardest thing about these propositions was saying no. I really did want children of my own, but what these women had in mind was a vending-machine version of my dream, a drop in the bucket, as it were, with little if any involvement once my offspring came into the world. But I wanted to be involved from the onset to the end.
In recent years, the gay community has been demanding the right to adopt. There are so many unfortunate children who need a caring home, a chance for a better life. Heterosexual fundamentalists of any stripe do not have a monopoly on love, and I believe adoption by gay couples is a wonderful thing. But having now passed the benchmark age of 50, I feel it's too late to pursue this route to parenthood.
As for arranging a surrogate, I am not in an Yves Montand mood. While the latter gent sired a child in his sixties, who wants to be in a wheelchair for his son's or daughter's high school graduation?
We had finished a late Sunday lunch, and I was doing the dishes while my Japanese partner of 16 years stretched out on the sofa for a catnap with his bevy of felines, domesticity personified. The phone rang: it was a close Hungarian friend calling from Europe in a state of distress. She suspected that she was pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, a Jamaican exchange student who had returned home to his wife, unaware he was potentially a father. She wanted to move on without his involvement. Her only concern was the fate of her child if she were run over by a tractor or buried by a blizzard before the baby grew up. Would we take over as guardians for the baby, should she meet an untimely end?
I paused for a second to look at my unsuspecting partner. "Agi thinks she is pregnant by Rickie and wants to know if we'll take care of her baby if she gets run over by a tractor."
He stopped stroking his favourite cat, Romeo, and looked up at the slowly turning ceiling fan for a moment. "Sure, why not?"
As it turned out, the pregnancy was a false one, and we were out of luck. But this episode did set the stage for hope. A few years later, my baby brother and his wife asked if we could be put in their wills as guardians for my youngest nephew, should anything happen. This child is adored by every member on both sides of the family, so I asked, "Why us?" His answer was that he thought that we would provide all that life has to offer, particularly an education. So I now find myself on several legal documents as a potential guardian.
When my oldest nephew was about 5, we spent a day together pigging out over ice cream sundaes and taking in an early Disney cartoon. My nephew had questions: "You're not married are you, Uncle Donald?" ("Well, uh, no ...") and "You make a lot of money working in Japan, don't you?" ("I wish"), followed by the cherry on the chocolate parfait, "Who's gonna get all your stuff when you die?"
I patiently explained to the little boy that Uncle Donald spent his money doing fun things, like going to movies and eating tons of ice cream. So when he died, Uncle Donald probably wouldn't even have two cents left in his pocket. This seemed to satisfy my nephew, but it got me thinking: Who will get my stuff when I kick the bucket?
Granny used to declare at family gatherings, "No bastard will get rich when I die." I have come to accept that "my kids" are all of those youngsters – not relatives, but the children of friends or colleagues – who grew up around me. They call for advice concerning problems they fear to discuss openly with their parents. It feels good knowing I can help someone I love in a time of need or confusion. My mantra, that time really does change all, seems to help them and me. As for my will, there are enough names on it to fill a classroom roster, and each has a special place in my heart. And, Granny, no bastard will get rich when I die.
Originally from Alberta, Don Maybin has lived for 30 years in Japan.
Toronto Star