The Quality of Life
A tennis player can feel the tip of his racket all the way beyond his arm. A baseball player carries his sensation to the extension of his bat. Having never persevered in either of these sports, I speak from observation rather than practice. Personally, I never went beyond the length of my arm and was therefore never congenial at tennis or baseball. But I was better at crossing streets. As a little boy, I gradually mastered the technique of looking both ways before putting my foot into the street. Later, I managed to slip through moving cars without sustaining or provoking an accident. When dating, I was able to discern the space, distance and speed that allowed both my girl-friend and myself to cross a street. But the real challenge and success of my perception of distances and obstacles came with a little girl trotting at my side. Then a little boy. Than another little girl. I gradually incorporated their clumsiness, their learning, their capabilities in the realm of my own perambulation. Crossing the street became a matter of crowd control that became instinctive. I took in the car speeds in relation to the speed of my children's hesitations, starting time, acceleration and stop. They responded to my care for them with their trust. When father cried "halt!", they instantly fell in line beside me. When father said "Let's go!", they quickly trooped to the other side. Crossing the street and life both required a measure of care and trust between the children and myself. I should say between them and us: their mother followed my commands when we were all together and gave her own when she was the children's guide.
An amputee retains the feeling of all his missing limb for some time. This makes him clumsy until he manages to adjust to his restricted being. The same happens when a child takes away the trust he had put in his parents. We keep on thinking for his needs and his happiness. But the amputated member of the family no longer responds to our care. His actions no longer coordinate with ours. Uneasiness creeps in as we begin fearing for his own good.
A small child occasionally disobeys and sometimes forays out on his own. But he never totally banishes trust from his relationship with his parents, finally recognising their authority and coming back in line. This generally limits the harm done and allows escapades to nourish the experience of life. "I told you so," formulated or not, is often the proper conclusion of an incident. — My mother was visiting her brother, my uncle. A little girl, my cousin, was leaping from chair to chair. My mother warned her: "You are going to fall." A few moments later, my cousin missed a chair and hurt herself. She wondered how my mother, her aunt, could have prophesied the event. Of course, it was not a prophecy. It was simply the work of personal experience extending to another person's actions. Such experience often guides parental concern and instructions.
But adolescence goes beyond chairs into deep matters: into the mad passions of adult life where adults are often destroying themselves and wounding their dependants. Learning by experience in those areas can be deadly. That was the time of life of our eldest daughter and we had lost the trust she had in us. She was now able to play with fire, and we were loosing our perception of her.
Deprived of the inner complicity of minds, we were left with the outer management of our lives. Permissions were granted or refused. She wanted to go out, to go out, to go out! And there were the discos. Discos to be with her friends. Discos in order not to be alone. Discos to do as everybody else did. Discos just to have fun, to meet people and to be sociable. But discos, also, where the beat is bewitching. Discos, though organised and chaperoned, where beer was sneaked in. Discos where urges easily became needs. Discos where the fellows want to have fun and where the girls want to please. How far could home education be expected to bridle youthful extravagance? How much could we trust an immature will to face the upsurge of mad adult passions? To what extent was the trust our teen-ager asked of us due or naive?
The first discos were imposed by adults, organised, managed and chaperoned by the school. Did that make them safe? We didn't like this. We felt the student management by the school was naive. The problem with fanciful love is not ignorance. Fifteen minutes are enough to fill someone in on the matter. The solution is not organisation: no amount of organisation can beat the ingenuity of those who are out to outmanoeuvre it. The problem is in the mad yearning generated by promiscuity. The madder the yearnings, the stronger they are. The stronger the yearning, the more children need our support to stay steady, to find their way, to help maturity and to find meaning in life. What advantage can there be to provoke their passions?
The discos annoyed us. We could outlaw the discos of the adult world. But could we forbid the ones organised by the schools? and by the Girl Guides? Parental resistance would generate the righteous indignation of the youthful martyr. And granted permissions received copious assurances that the parental recommendations would be followed to the letter. Which remained to be seen.
Then, after a disco, school authorities phoned. They had been forced to repeatedly unstick our daughter from the boys. We were pained and worried. Pained because of her unawareness, of her contempt of her own body, heart and mind. And worried for the future. — The following discos, she behaved better. Or did she simply learn to keep a better look out for the adult chaperons? Who knew? Our perception of the missing member was unsure.
* * *
A fellow-student told our daughter about the advantages of his parents' divorce. He got favours from both sides, as his father and his mother vied for his approval. Perhaps they also unwittingly wanted to be forgiven for the gash they made in his heart. He was showered with gifts and attention. And, as each parent wanted to win him on its side, neither dared impose any obligation upon him. Our daughter was envious. No bossing no sharing! Everything for himself! She cried out: "You are so lucky to have divorced parents!"
For an instant, the boy's facade fell. He gave her a hard cold stare full of suffering and anger. She supposed, without understanding much, that the advantages were balanced by some disadvantages.
* * *
A few years back, the Arabs found and flexed their muscle. As oil-producers, they had markedly hiked their price. Since they wanted more money, there were only two peaceful ways to satisfy them: either pay them with a stable currency giving them innumerable riches (goods and services) and depriving us of bare necessities, or else flood them with nominal riches (money) and preserve a sizeable part of our goods and services. The latter solution was bothersome but less catastrophic than the former. It was adopted. Or course, the overabundance of currency competing for the same amount of goods and services caused a vertiginous inflation.
In Quebec, union power and foresight had protected the unionised public sector membership against inflation by way of indexing tied in with the rise of the cost of living. Therefore, it was the private sector Québécois who paid for the economic crisis. As it must in a democracy, the Opposition barked against the government and found it profitable to defend the unions' interests against the common boss. But democracy has a catch. The Liberal Party finally lost the election in favour of the Parti Québécois and the unions' former ally became responsible for governing. There weren't many ways out of the economic crisis. The government, by any name, had to manage a balance that would penalise everyone equitably. Therefore, the prime minister asked the two hundred thousand and more unionised employees of the public and semi-public sector to accept a one year wage freeze. It was an honest proposition that asked for a gesture of solidarity from people who, till then, had been shielded against the common suffering. There was a weak point in the governmental position: the first half-year was still under a contract that promised a raise. The government was not only asking its employees not to seek a raise but also to forgo one.
Could the protest generation be expected to accept personal sacrifice? Its denunciation of other people's privileges had served to obtain its own and it wasn't going to let any of these go, in whatever proportion. The habit from past experience had taught unions that negotiations meant getting more and not less. What they had was considered a sacred right. The "privileged" were those who could be fleeced. We were the exploited, the underprivileged who only sought justice. Our fight was the workers' fight and would help others. We were the locomotive of social change that would pull the private sector towards ever-better working conditions for everybody. Dare we abandon such a noble cause? So our way of exercising our solidarity with the poorer people was by insisting on keeping our hard-won privileges. As one of us said at a union meeting: "If we allow the government to limit our raises, we will have less money to spend in our area and this will impoverish our neighbourhood. Justice for others demands we do not accept a raise-freeze."
But the governing party was no longer the party financed by the Big Bosses and the industrialists. The new government was the government "of the people, by the people and for the people" as all newly-elected politicians are invariably considered (for a short while), and the people were tired of being taxed more and more to pay more and more unionised government employees who would not do there part in the present economic misfortune. So, when the unions refused the government proposition, the government could be firm. Obliged to respect the signed contract, the government said: "You want to keep your 10% raise for a half-year? All right. Keep it. But your salary will be cut by 20% for the second half of the year to repay the ten percent you refused to give to social solidarity." Which was done.
Anticipating the evident, I froze my salary, putting aside the ten percent raise during the six months of plenty in order to use them during the six lean months.
Of course, the union members gave a two week bonus to the government by striking, which made them unpopular and allowed the government to legislate them pack to work without compensation. Grumbling in anger against our common misfortune, a colleague took pity on me:
"How do you manage with such a big family and a twenty percent cut in your salary?"
I told him my trick, adding: "Hasn't everybody done the same?"
He shook his head.
This was the first governmental victory against the unions in many years. It proved mentalities were changing. Was our population learning a greater social responsibility? Hardly. Selfishness was simply moving. The number of people suffering from taxes was getting to be greater than the number of people benefiting from certain social generosities. The citizen-taxpayers had simply made faces to the citizen-protesters. We were not entering abnegation county.
* * *
The innocence of a child's look is lost in the turmoil of adolescence and is found again only when the victories of maturity (of sanctity, Chesterton corrected) have established a reign of serenity. Maybe that is why feminine make-up wound a young girl's parents, or rather a young woman's parents. A touch of make-up highlights beauty. But when paint abounds, is it not an attempt to hide rather than open a heart? Of course, the break in habits and the change in sensitivities do not help a fair judgement by the parents and their youngster. And since communications had broken down, it was not easy to distinguish a cry for help from a change of age.
No doubt our sweet daughter became such a Fury towards her brothers, sisters and parents that the paternal reaction had some similar negativity. He called his daughter's make-up "war-paint". She disliked the expression but managed to contain her anger… till the day her unfortunate young brother Claude repeated it. As she was coming out of her room, he innocently commented: "You put your warpaint on?"
The explosion was memorable.
* * *
Residing in a cathedral-parish, we had the Bishop at important liturgical moments: Christmas, Holy Week and Easter, and Pentecost (with the sacrament of Confirmation). Bishop Charles-Henri Lévesque had the now-rare talent of giving his sermons by heart. No paper, no notes. He looked at his people and talked about Our Lady, Christ, God, the saints of our history and also against the crime of abortion that allowed for no exception. Vatican II Council had been hard and clear on a practice that was barely going public at the time: "abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes." This was said with a relative ease in 1965. But years had gone by since then. The practice of "voluntary pregnancy interruption" had spread. Concerned to being in with their times, few members of the clergy dared repeat such judgmental words. Charles-Henri Bishop Lévesque dared. He was firm. And he preached relentlessly on the subject. He felt the matter was serious and now.
His words were obvious to us, but it was good to hear them. A reality that is not regularly brought to the fore easily lapses into the unreal. Ever since the provincial government had dropped its judicial pursuits against abortion centres, children had not more public protection if ever they happened into their mother's womb at the wrong time. That the banner for life was raised in a church lost somewhere in Quebec by a man, whose authority was hardly recognised by anyone, was still soothing for our hearts and minds.
At home, each new-born child was proof to his brothers and sisters that he wasn't just nothing. And our Bishop had the kindness to confirm us and our children in our fidelity.
We also explained to our children that sexual intercourse is not a harmless show of affection. It makes children. They knew that because we said so. But nobody outside the home admitted it or taught it. This was before the coup that transformed the schools into propagandists for universal contraception. It was a time of silence, of emptiness. Far away, Pope John Paul II spoke loud and clear. But local clergy were religiously silent on the matter. As one of its members told us: "Our task is to de-radicalise the Roman teachings." In simpler words (which he would certainly consider too radical), he was saying in effect that his job was to contradict the Pope's teaching. When a couple heard from some indiscreet media the Pope's teaching that contraception was totally prohibited by God and a total disrespect of their conjugal love, this man of God, as with many of his colleagues, would feel it his utmost duty to ‘‘nuance" such a teaching. As one said: "Love without contraception is an ideal", meaning few people could ever hope to attain such moral heights. There were isolated priests here and there that would be faithful to their faith. But for sure our children would never hear the "opinion" of their Church in their course of Catholic catechetics.
Well, if it was taboo to tell our children that making love is life-giving, at least we had a Bishop that had the courage to tell his people that destroying the conceived child was a crime.
* * *
There was a rush of excitement in the general public and especially amongst the pen-scribblers. The personal computer was born.
Not long before, there had appeared on the market place a game that allowed people to play ping-pong or hockey on their television screens. A luminous dot was propelled from one side to the other of the screen by two luminous bars. A high-cost and fascinating game that was a best-seller. When prices began falling, we gave one as a Christmas gift to grandfather Quéloz.
Then Commodore came out with its Vic 20. This time we couldn't afford it and grandfather Quéloz bought himself one. After programming the scrolling of his name on the screen and a few such elementary operations, he didn't find any use for it. So he gave it to us with a few games that had a far greater definition than the previous dots and bars. Michel became the champion of champions as new games piled up. His dad was a near competitor.
Then Commodore went beyond the bounds of imagination with its Commodore 64. And then Apple's Apple IIe made waves in the educational community. The fluttering of joy became an obsessive urge when a course on word processing was given at the college. All my life, I had scribbled by hand and hit the keys of a typewriter, handwriting a rough copy, typing a hopefully final draft, then retyping full pages when major changes became imperative, while trying hard to avoid this necessity. Now the rough copy on the screen would always be a clean copy, words and sentences being alterable at will, paragraphs flying here and there, allowing to work ten times the same text while writing it only once. An obedient machine took in all these operations and a printer issued sharp amended copies on demand. This was the writer's magic wand.
How I would have loved to own such a machine. But the Apple IIe and its competitor, the Commodore 64, cost thousands of dollars that I did not have, unless I starved the family. Some wives considered their husband's computer-passion to be an older child's fantasy. But my wife understood that this machine was a legitimate tool for a good part of my activities. However, legitimacy did not yield us fodder.
A friend in Quebec City told me about "compatibles". Various small companies made computers that were compatible with the Apple computer and cost a lot less. But the lesser price was still not affordable. That is when my widowed mother took out of her meagre fortune the unthinkable amount of money needed to purchase an Orangepeel Apple-compatible computer with a Gemini 10 dot-printer. The works of the mind could now be laid upon matter in an easier, more efficient and productive way. Also the clarity of a clean printed copy helped to seek and correct all types of errors.
Soon an electronic dictionary was added to the word processor comparing the spelling of the typed words to a bank of words and indicating those that did not fit. Or course, grammatical errors were not indicated, but a good number of spelling mistakes could be corrected. Some mistakes were mental; some were the result of slips of the fingers. Alas, others were the product of ignorance. The dictionary was humiliating. I realised people had read many of my writings and gently failed to indicate my failings. I realised the depressing fact that I simply cannot write a text without error. I found consolation in the corresponding fact that my persistent discovery of errors meant that I was cleaning up my act.
Also, I would have two or three more weeks to write during the summer. Gone was the buffer zone needed to retype the summer's rough copies. It took some time to be able to compose directly on the screen. First, I began writing letters; then short texts. Finally, I was able to drop the habit of copying a hand-written draft. The childhood of writing was history. The technological revolution had freed man of the pen as the chain saw freed the lumberjack from his axe.
At the end of summer, there were only two chapters of our autobiography left for the following year.
* * *
The choice of our first child's godparents had followed a generous impulse. We had offered a dream couple to Christine: Carlos and Maria-Martha. But they had gone back to their native Argentina and Christine was thus deprived of their presence and support. And the contrast with the following godparents soon became evident. The lack of uncles and aunts was compensated by the presence of godparents. Michel, Johanne, Claude, etc., each had godparents they could meet with some regularity. Christine did not. As compensation, we decided to put a monthly allowance aside to allow her to visit her godparents in Argentina when she would be fifteen. This time was near. But we were having second thoughts. A trip to a Spanish-speaking country through an English-speaking continent presented certain difficulties for a unilingual French-speaking girl. Also, our daughter no longer had the happy translucent look of childhood innocence that her parents had so often praised in their letters to her godmother. Mightn't it be better to give her a vacation in Switzerland where her French-speaking relatives would gladly greet the sweet Christine they had held in their arms some years ago? And the plane trip only necessitated a stopover in French France. Our daughter liked the idea.
With the coming of summer, the relationship between parents and teenager had bettered. Communication was still nil. Our daughter was with her girl friends most of the time. But her temper calmed down. She no longer reacted violently to what we told her. This allowed a relaxation of the nerves and moments of mellower conversation. It then came to us that the Swiss vacation might be an idea suitable to our own tastes. Getting to know relatives and friends and seeing old sites might not be what our daughter would prefer. Was there something she would like better that we usually could not afford?
I found the answer in a tourist flyer: a week of horse riding with a girl friend at a ranch. Maybe a week this year and a week next year. We would pay for both herself and her companion. Our daughter loved horses. These weeks on the ranch would top three series of horse-riding lessons she had already enjoyed. Her face lit up at this suggestion and she forgot her usual moroseness for the time of this adventure. As for international trips, she could go on them when she could afford and appreciate them.
So she enjoyed horsing around, far from the people who didn't understand her.
* * *
On September 14, Mireille was born by caesarean at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital (La Pocati re hospital). She weighed seven pounds and one ounce, which is also 3.2 kilos (two ounces less than Isabelle) and she was twenty one inches long, which is 53.34 cm (same as Isabelle). The 14th was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Entering hospital on the eve, Danielle joked: "I hope this means we will benefit from the Cross and not that God has chosen that day to crucify us." We benefited. The surgeon who had raised the scare of a badly damaged uterus after the first caesarean couldn't even find the scar from the prior operation.
The day Mireille was born, her eldest sister wrote with indifference in her diary: "Today, a sister of mine was born." Her interests were elsewhere.
The mother's convalescence went marvellously well, without complication. Eight days later, Danielle and Mireille were back home and two days later, on Saturday, Mireille was baptised. Her mother was disappointed not to be able to breast-feed her. At hospital, baby Mireille had been over-fed milk in between her breast-feeding and wasn't interested in her mother's milk. Consequently, the surge of milk did not happen in the rest and calm of hospital life. At home, Danielle wasn't at leisure to do so. So she bottle-fed her baby. Conversely, this allowed her to regain her strength faster.
Mireille was our first blue-eyed child. They weren't exactly blue. More greyish blue. But they were distinctly blue compared to her parents and brothers and sisters. She was a cute and gentle baby: calm, smiling, adorable, a pleasure for the eyes and a joyful company. Later, when she would happily walk about and be spontaneously affectionate, I underscored: "She's the girl the doctors did not want."
* * *
Mireille forced another Bed-Waltz. Richard (one and a half years old) left his bars for the lower berth in his room bumping his three year-old brother Jean-Paul into the neighbouring room. Jean-Paul bumped his five-year-old brother François to the upper berth. Marie (seven years- old) was bumped from her upper berth to upper berth in Richard's room and her twin sister, Isabelle was sent downstairs. Richard remained in the end-room because he slept longer in the afternoon than Jean-Paul. So he shared his room with a sister who would be at school and did not need her room during his nap. Jean-Paul would soon drop his afternoon nap and thus occupied the room where the toys were stored.
Isabelle was bumped downstairs. When we came into our house five years before, we gave the largest room downstairs to Philippe knowing that he would someday be called to share it because of family additions. That was family planning. Philippe was then the youngest of the older children and should be best adaptable to change. At that time he was four. At nine, the difference in sexes mattered more. So we gave Philippe lone possession of Johanne's room, moved Johanne to Philippe's prior room where Isabelle was also sent. And all was done.
This meant four basement rooms had one occupant and one had two. On the main floor, two rooms had two children and one had two parents and a baby. When Mireille would have three meals a day (at three months old), she would go into the bar-bed in Richard and Marie's room.
* * *
At the autumn session, I again taught philosophy of sexuality: "On the Philosophy of Love and Mystery of Sex", I told the eleven students attending the first course. Two disappeared. Two others officially dropped the course. Seven persevered till the end.
The previous year, I asked my "victims" to explore, oppose and possibly reconcile three books of the Old Testament: Leviticus, Deuteronomy and The Song of Songs. In order to alleviate the temptation of copying past essays, it was better to make a change. I decided to keep The Song of Songs. It helped to explain the two sides of reality: the more something is valuable and desirable, the more we must be ready to defend it against its enemies. To love is to war. I added to the loveable text a fighting text, once again a text of law, but of more recent vintage. Near the end of Pope Paul VI's reign, the Holy Congregation for Doctrine and Faith made a Declaration Concerning Certain Questions of Ethics that was directly opposed to contemporary mores.
The Song of Songs was generally well received, because it flattered the passion of love. I commented on my student Rina's essay: "You enjoyed The Song of Songs. So did I. I am glad you noticed the erotic strength and beauty expressing the lovers' tender, full and yet uneasy love. Your one hesitation: doesn't this mad passion shut them off from the outside world? However, there could be something true in what Socrates said of lovers: they find such strength in their love that they can defy the whole world and even change its face. Chesterton said sham love ends in compromise whereas true love ends in bloodshed. Isn't the love expressed by the lovers in The Song of Songs of the kind that defies the compromises of a mercantile society? Isn't it the kind of love that gives boundless courage rather than calculating the cost of life? Isn't it the kind of madness that overthrows systems that exploits people because the person has been found to be priceless? Look at these lovers. They did shut their door on the outside world. They left the world to be able to enter it again stronger than before: «Under the apple tree [she says], I woke you. There your mother was pregnant of you, there she who bore you was in labour. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.» Her priceless treasure, her beloved, her man, comes from his mother's silent love and the seal of their love is to meet in the same kind of love. And when a couple meets there, a new life explodes into the world. «My child, she should say, you are not the product of vulgar planning. You are the fruit of a madness of love that asserts that all the employees and officials in the universe have but one justification: to serve you and not to enslave you. My child, your worth is beyond everything because we have flowed into you with endless fervour.» And these lovers, like many others, will love each other in their children, will relentlessly fight for them, and I hope they will never have the cowardliness of regretting the time they had the courage to love beyond the norms of mercantile love."
If The Song of Songs suited the feeling of love, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was definitely unpopular with its numerous prohibitions. Like Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Sacred Congregation formulated the instructions for sex by warning against the deformations of sex, allowing thus its free expression. It expressed the needs of a generous sexuality to a world lost in the arid fantasy land of me-love. And I tried to show the essential tie between the feeling of love and the anger against the cheaters of love.
I told Rina: "The richness of love you so admired is coveted by the merchants of love: those who would buy the pleasures, joys and tender moments of love without giving themselves in return, and those would try to make a profit by selling these as a merchandise. The richness of love is priced and devalued. Mustn't we erect a wild barrier against those who would turn us into merchandise? Isn't this where you should put the fury you first aimed at the Sacred Congregation's moralising?
"Couldn't it be the same fury that fills the strange Churchmen you read? They are mad against fornicators? It's because they are mad against people who debase love into impersonal frolics and fleeting sighs. They're against masturbation? That's because they do not want a child to build a fence around him against the beloved he may some day meet. They dislike homosexuality which has no future and can only consume the life of the heirs of heterosexuals. They claim with all their might the same thing as The Song of Songs: «Love is as strong as death… [and] If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would surely be scorned.»
"It doesn't erase the follies done by many Churchmen of the past, the present and the future. It doesn't prevent the text from being written in a repellent style rather than in flowing words of love. But, with all their clumsiness, these people are fighting against something. They're fighting the cold mechanisation of fertility: how else could you explain their insistence for a child to have a home? They're against the use of the sexual drive to repress the gift of love: that's why it is necessary to take the mutual commitment of love (marriage) before plunging into each other's intimacy.
"In other words, if you both take off your boxing gloves, it could very well be that the gentlemen of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and yourself are in agreement upon the value of human love and the inflexible protection it must receive."
In a group of students, there is often a black sheep: a person who thinks differently from the others, who goes against the stream and who explores what everyone else ignores. So Stéphane applauded what others despised and despised what others applauded. Flesh or spirit? People nowadays prefer flesh over spirit. He preferred spirit over flesh. But, what if there was a spirit of the flesh?
I wrote on his paper: "Is the sexuality «of the flesh» really «secondary in love», as you say? Couldn't it possibly be primordial? — Think: when two persons of opposite sex are in love, they walk hand in hand, they are proud to be seen in each other's company, to cry out to everyone that the beloved is theirs. And when they meet in love, they hush their voices, they shut out the outside world. And when they consummate their love, they close the door, lower the lights, moan in a padded world. For the outside world, they didn't do anything. They simply disappeared. And when they come back into the world, they do and say all kinds of things and behave in such a way in public that they appear to be married. Their sex life seems to be so non-existent that they appear not to have one. The most intimate persons in their lives are their children, living in constant company with them and they find it difficult to imagine that father "sleeps with mother" in any erotic sense. Yet, these same children are the living proof that their parents must know something of the matter.
"Is the veil behind which lovers hide their erotic rapport a veil of shame because they consider it to be something debasing or a veil of distraction because they find it to be unimportant? Yet the beloved were so proud of each other. Why did they hide? They talk about many things they do together. Why don't they talk about these?
"Of course, some people talk about sex. Some dance naked in public. Some sell their sex lives. It looks as like a choice between a true love that is disinterested in matters of the flesh and a thirst for flesh that has nothing to do with fidelity to love.
"But couldn't there be another possibility? What if the lovers shut the world out of their sex life because of the infinite richness of their embrace? What if they did not speak about it because this richness is found in their total intimacy? Wouldn't disclosing their frolics incite feelings from strangers that would assail the warmth of their intimacy? Some would be cold, which is an insult to deep love. Some would be aroused and enter promiscuously with their imagination into the lovers' private lives, which would be debasing. Others would transform a personal and infinite lovers' embrace into a scientific or anecdotal event. Better to be silent. But this silence hides the consummation of two people made one by a full mutual donation. The spirit and the heart of the lovers are encased into a full physical warmth. This is not a relationship of the flesh as opposed to a spiritual or a psychological one. This relationship of the flesh means that the total living body of a person becomes the full presence of the person. Religiously speaking, God made himself more present to men by entering into a living flesh: God in Jesus Christ. Similarly, lovers are all flesh, all life one another in a total fusion.
"It is the pricelessness of this total fusion, the infinite richness of an infinite fusion fully incarnate that explains the abhorrence of true love before a flesh that is divorced from heart and spirit. It is the primordial value of personal sex that prohibits the impersonal actions of false, inhuman and deceptive sex.
"Here is an indication of the unique value of that relationship of love: it is the place where the love of the spouses joins eternity by the possible arrival of a new person forever, a person who is the love of the spouses attaining the level of miracles: the (pro-) creation of a new freedom, a new love .
"Paradoxically, the sexual revolution, which made sex a public thing, is timid. It isn't sexy enough to be accepted by human beings who are truly in love."
I do not know whether Rina understood something in my ramblings. But I noticed Stéphane had corrected his insight.
* * *
Stéphane recalls: "I had vaguely heard about the Allaires. Like almost everyone, my opinion about them was fed off rumours and tattle-tales. I was following a course on human sexuality given by Mr. Allaire. I was taken in from the start. The course respected its title. It wasn't obsessed with genitalia but endeavoured instead to fit sex into the perspective of the whole person. The teacher showed love as something generous and faithful rather than cold and empty. Still, I found the courses intriguing. I took the habit of visiting in his office this man who dared teach about true love against predominant fashion.
"In private conversation, Georges was the same as in class. He had the same force and honesty. When he invited me to his home, I accepted. But then I started thinking. My impression of the Allaire family was common prattle. Class allowed me to suspect a life of self-giving and authentic love. But contemporary wisdom proclaimed that "to have so many children nowadays shows a total lack of maturity and responsibility." I wondered. I imagined poorly dressed children, badly fed with a timid and reserved mother. I fretted I should be stealing their scanty rations.
"When the day came, I was nervous. I was torn. I believed in big families and yet I considered them to be an impossible ideal. My experience in the modern world proved it. I had to be called to order.
"After a ten minute walk, Georges showed me his house. I came into shock: it seemed so terribly small for so huge a family. It just couldn't be. He read my thoughts. "You should know that my wife is a champion space-maker. She finds place where there is none." He opened the door. His wife's greeting overwhelmed me. Danielle said a charming hello that immediately made me feel at home. Then she was surrounded by smiling and inviting children who all greeted me. I wasn't just the ordinary "Stéphane, a friend" that comes as a surprise and a bother. Here, I was part of the gang.
"Then, I began observing the children: they were well dressed, laughing and having fun. Then came the meal. After grace, I distrustfully thrust my fork into my food. Surprise: courage would have been necessary not to eat what was there. Everybody ate more than enough. I was offered a second serving that I unfortunately could not accept because I had my fill with the first serving.
"I realised that these people were truly happy. To think that I believed fairy tales are found only in books."
But, as Chesterton said, fairy tales always have trials. People are put to the test.
* * *
What was our eldest daughter doing when she was neither at home nor in school? God knows. And maybe the Devil. But we didn't. The family schedule was strict. No one went out in the evening, save rare exceptions. Everyone got up at 6:30, because of the oft presence of a baby. Early to rise, early to bed. Our bodies couldn't take much night-birdying. But what was our cloistered daughter doing outside the walls? Without available data, one could imagine the worst. But was the worst probable? At times a mothering Danielle considered it and gave accordingly unwanted advice that elicited no reaction.
"The day you take your panties off for a boy, you will be pregnant," she told her daughter, because sensuality surges in a girl at times of fertility.
For his part, the father was confident things were fine. He knew that in the human race the erotic passion is stronger in the male than in the female. Experience had told him that the woman of his life had fallen in his arms only through the influence of love. He couldn't imagine his big girl, even through rebellion and self-affirmation, jumping into bed with just anyone. As for the man of her life, there was no sign of him about. So father was reassured and reassuring. And mother dearly wanted to believe him.
* * *
There's mind and then there are irrational fears. What if his daughter became pregnant? He knew the answer. He had already answered that question in class. But he had also known then that his daughter was not pregnant and would not be. The scares of life were not pounding on his door.
He was out of touch with her. He was tired. A new-born baby at home and his teaching well into the session were wearing him thin. Students were passing along the corridor, as usual. Some colleagues were in their offices; others were in class. Ordinary routine. Suddenly his imagination jumped in: he was gripped by fear. His heart was squeezed, his head crushed. What if his daughter became pregnant? It was impossible. But, what if…?
He taught respect for conjugal love life. He was as intransigent in this area as a doctor confronted by illness, because he, like the doctor, was concerned for the health of his "patients". Yet, what would be the look in his colleagues' eyes? What would people say? For months, a public shame would grow in his child's body. For months, they would be filthy in everybody's eyes. No. Our daughter would never do something so stupid. But if she did, what would become of us in our world?
An instant would suffice. All the medical paraphernalia needed to correct youthful mistakes was there, on demand. Everything confidential. Nobody would know about it. The people we denounce loudly from our comfort are used to seeing us rush to them for help when we are in anguish. A little vacuuming or a thrifty clip and the misadventure becomes but a bad memory. And we could even possibly take things where we had left them and join again in pro-life songs. Abortionists have so often had the last laugh, The practitioners of the quality of life medicine can put up with words. They are for free speech as long as they are allowed to practice their selective "charity". And they expect us to alter our discourse after a while, with experience. No to abortion? Of course. Yes for life? Certainly. Save for the exception. The exception? One's poor distressed daughter and her shamed parents. Save the exception.
But everybody is the exception when distress and fear strike. Nobody is part of those who should sacrifice their life because of a silly accident.
His head was turning, in turmoil. Those he has "moralised" were swirling in his mind, jeering at this… grandfather! It would be so easy. Was this a cry of the soul, of the heart? It came from hard gut.
Between heart or hard gut, we had to choose. The voice of reason, the way of the heart, appeared terribly weak, wrong, astray. The "need" to feel good reeked with truth. "Don't hurt me!"
There are two voices in us. Both have different views of reality. The concern to feel good and the need to be good sometimes meet, but their goals differ. "I do not want to die" and "I do not want you to die". At the divide, we have to choose. It's a matter of freedom. "I don't have the choice," our feelings tell us. But we know we have a choice. No denial of guilt can erase this knowledge. And we know we are dirty when we sacrifice other people's lives upon the alter of our fears. We know it. But we would rather not know. At least, that's what our feel-good voice says.
The Devil's voice. Undoubtedly the Devil's voice.
He never tempts us with something wrong. He always tempts us with something good. "Think of your poor daughter. Think of her brothers' and sisters' reputation in a small town. Think of the good you will be doing. Don't think of the child who haphazardly happens to be there. He is bothersome, your shame, your misfortune. He who is innocent is the guilty party. You are not guilty. You are the poor victim."
But with all that anguish, the voice of truth was not completely silenced. Whence freedom. Whence conscience. Whence possible remorse. Walking the corridors of shame in school, the streets of shame in town? Unacceptable. Unaccepted?
But the fallacy of the "final solution" spewed by anguish is unmasked if it is told to a just and honest person. That's why the Devil wants it to remain hidden, silently eating up the soul, torturing conscience and toying with the imagination. Anguish in solitude.
An unfortunate "grandfather" wrote in a small Catholic family magazine. He had gone through the same temptation. But his grandchild had won. The child was alive and well. The grandfather thanked God.
This man had been right. Life was the proof. His grandchild was the fact that refuted the fancies of fear. His wife, his daughter and he himself hadn't tied their lives to fear. They had followed the way of the heart. They had matured into life: a life with quality, the quality of life.
* * *
For her part, Danielle was practical in matters of body, heart and mind. She did not wander about courses in psychology, biology, sociology or, for that matter, in sexual education using scientific garb to convince the girls and ladies to surrender their intimacy to fickle male appetites in a shame loves allowing the gentlemen to spray their wild oats into them. Years ago, at college, her Ethics' teacher, a male and a priest, had explained to his classfull of girls that frolics in dating spelled infidelity in marriage.
She felt pride when she had her first flow of femininity, knowing she was made for love and not for frolics. Then life confirmed her being. She had the joys, sacrifices and happiness of true love: loving with generosity. That her body was made for her child and her child was the fruit of her body was as factual as the blue in the sky and the greenness of grass. As soon as our eldest daughter began her estrangement from us, Danielle was conscious that her daughter's body could stray as well as her mind. From that time, she knew that priority should always be given to the innocent child who could come. Should a child, someday, enter the life of our precious gem, he would have the right to as much care as she had. His interests would have priority upon our own. Our obligation to him would be to offer him a loving and mature home and not an immature one. He should have a full-time father and a full-time mother through adoption.
Nonsense. Nothing of the sort would happen. But there was now steadiness of body, heart and mind, ready for anything. A child doesn't come alive for the comfort of his parents or grandparents.
* * *
We were well into autumn. The first flu made it round in the house. It was midnight. Marie was coughing in the next room. Her mother could sleep through a tempest, but woke at the slightest murmur of a child's malaise. The coughing broke into a fit. Danielle got up. The ointment was downstairs in our eldest daughter's room, who also needed it.
The father heard his wife calling him. Her voice was hushed not to wake the household. But there was urgency in it.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Our daughter is not in her room."
The room was full of emptiness: empty room and the empty bed. She was gone. And yet we had seen her off to bed. She had been there. She wasn't there anymore. Near the window, a chair was the first step. The desk was the second. The window was open. It was used as a door.
This escape into the night was a slap across the face. More than a rebellion, it was an infidelity against our affection and all our efforts to help our child. Our minds were mixed with incredulity and anger, and the useless query as to her whereabouts. Where to look? Where to find her? Where?
Danielle cared for Marie, gave her a rub down and the cough cleared.
What should we do then? Except for shutting the window.
Lock the doors to indicate our disapproval? That would simply send her God knows where. Beat her? This wasn't in our habits and we felt the uselessness of trying to bend a body whose soul had fled.
We shared our powerlessness and our disarray for some time, and then decided that I should go back to bed while her mother would face the rebel. One parent was enough. And she had the better skills in human relations.
Danielle laid down on our daughter's bed. From one to two. Her heart ached and time became an eternity. Finally she came back to our bed where neither of us slept.
At three, a door opened. Someone was going downstairs. We knew who it was. What was there to say? Nothing for the moment. Finally slumber carried us away.
* * *
We had lost our daughter for three years. Far more than we had thought. The next day, she confessed she had been going out nights for two years. For two years we had been blind to her double life. All La-Pocati re-by-Night knew about her escapades in all its bars with her friends. In them, the age limit was so little a matter of concern that many local youth were tired of them when of age. Thus, adults and young alike in our town had been her accomplices. Each night, we had gently accompanied our daughter to her room and wished her good night. We had shut her door, and she had run away to freedom-land. We now understood her tiredness in the morning. We had figured this was the product of her physical transformation into womanhood.
There was nothing to say, because of the immensity of the situation. We felt totally powerless.
And yet, strangely, our daughter came back to us. Confronted with our discovery, she unloaded everything, told us all. With the lifting of the burden, the sweetness of her yesteryears came back. She fitted anew in our family. She became serviceable and good company. It was an inexplicable but terribly welcome reversal.
She confessed her escapades. She told us about her marvellous boy-friend: a young night-bird, a good-looking and hard-working young man. She talked of this as things of the past, as a dream become nightmare.
The young man still wanted to be part of her present. He came by her window to pour out his wounded love and beg for her return. He got hysterical cries from our daughter who called her mother's help to repel the pretender.
The good days when her presence was sweet to us all came back. Christine took to loving her marvellous baby sister, Mireille, and to find pleasure in common company with her brothers, her sisters and her parents. Our lost child had come back.
In the worst of times, the best was given back to us.
