Getting Married

March 28, 1972 - July 31, 1974

I met Margie at five p.m. March 28th 1972 at the card catalogue in the OISE library at U of T. She was attractive, smart and inviting. That helped me with my shyness and my biting sense of humour. People who don't get me, intimidate me. As they say even paranoid people have detractors.

Margie and I were in graduate school one building east of OISE. I was at the end of the first year of an MBA program on the fourth floor.  My focus was social psychology. Margie was at the end of the first year of an MSW program on the seventh floor. Her focus was counseling. The OISE library had things we needed. Lots of books and graduate students of the opposite sex.

When Margie told me she was in the counseling program I faked naive and asked “what does that train you for?” She replied “lie down” making a psychoanalysis joke.

I joined her group of friends for dinner at Switzer’s on Spadina. Over dinner I elbowed out a tiny medical student named Eddy who had been cultivating Margie for awhile.

The nite ended with Margie saying to me “if you don't leave now you never will”. Over the next week we grew close. And it was pretty clear to me that we would be getting married. I was 24. She was 22. It was all over but the shouting.

We stayed close but not engaged for 18 months. We were apart the first Christmas when she went home to Vancouver while I aimed to see the capitals of Europe but got confused and ended up in the south of Morocco.

There were some ups and downs. Stupidly I didn't join Margie at the Vancouver wedding of her close friend. She was pissed. My friend, also named Jerome, had to do some magic to repair the relationship.

That was a symptom of my inability to embrace commitment.

As our studies ended in April 73, our communications broke down. I took a job in Ottawa. Margie would have come with me but I didn't think to ask. She went to Vancouver for the summer planning to return in the fall to pursue post grad studies at the Family Therapy Institute in Hamilton.  

So we were separated, thousands of miles apart, dating others. Margie dated my cousin Sheldon a criminal lawyer in Vancouver.

I think it's fair to say I quit my job and returned to Toronto in the fall because I missed Margie. She took me back. While I had a place in Toronto I often stayed at her apartment in Hamilton commuting to my new job near Yonge and Bloor. Isn't that commitment

One consequential discussion we had that fall of 1973 was about children. Margie wanted me to grow up and commit to being a father one day.

Margie invited me to go to Vancouver with her over Christmas. I agreed. Isn't that commitment.

I was pretty moved seeing Margie on her home court. Her parents were great. I knew her sister who also lived in Toronto and there was a brother who was travelling in India. My kind of guy except he's still travelling 45 years later. And I was blown away by Vancouver and Margie's shi shi neighborhood which was more like Beverly Hills than anything in Toronto.

So I asked Margie to marry me. Isn't that commitment. She said yes.

Margie's parents were members of a well developed country club, business and volunteer community and they had extended family. They liked to party. They were over the moon about the engagement, their first. So most of the next ten days in Vancouver was a swirl of ad hoc parties, visits, dinners and other showings.

I loved meeting my new extended family. The western lifestyle has a tremendous relaxed atmosphere. I felt I was joining a club I never expected to be part of. I made a special effort to measure up. People liked me in part because they loved Margie and also because I was amazing at remembering names.

Wedged into the 10 days I traveled to Los Angeles to see my mother and tell her about the engagement. My mother had friends in LA but the atmosphere was nothing like Vancouver. Margie's parents were in their early 50s while my mom was already elderly, over 65, living a much more sedentary life. I was in and out of LA in two days.

We set the date for the end of July 74. Just seven months in the future. The wedding would be in Vancouver. Margie's parents were to make the major arrangements around the venues. The vast majority of the guests would be theirs. My family was small and mostly in Toronto. And most of our current friends were in Toronto and not that many could make the trip. Margie had a lot of friends from growing up in Vancouver. Sheldon wasn't invited. Margie was committed.

Margie came to Vancouver a few weeks before the wedding to manage the micro details. I arrived 3 days before the to get a tuxedo fitting and a haircut while attending the various events for out of town guests and sleeping on my future in laws couch when I wasn't required elsewhere.

The wedding day was designed around a lot of driving for everyone on an extremely hot day. As beautiful as the ceremony was, a touch more air conditioning would have been nice.

The reception and dinner were about 5 miles away at the Bayshore Hotel. There were about 400 people living it up.

Among the festivities my brother’s speech was memorable for it's over the top platitudes. The Vancouverites partied hard and late. Margie and I were glad for the attention, the presents and being an excuse for a pretty good time.

And then we were on to the adventure of marriage. Another psychoanalysis joke.

November 2, 2018

January 10, 2019

Engaging Trump. A Psychological Memoir

2016

In my earliest years up until grade five I was one of the popular kids. Lots of friends. Multiplication champ in grade three. Good at sports.

My dad died after grade four. I felt some shame and when we moved to a new neighborhood for grade six I made friends but I became a periphery guy.

That was my own shaky analysis. Never felt I totally belong.

I was the youngest of four and my parents were tired so I was usually fighting for attention with boundary behavior, being contrary and joking.

And my dad while he was alive was not one to spare the rod so I had fear instilled. One implication is when I put my foot in my mouth I fear that I'm going to be ostracized. Once it actually happened. You know what they say; “even hypochondriacs get sick”.

I had my first political thought around grade two. I became very angry at Harry Truman for firing General MacArthur. If he hadn't, MacArthur might have run the table on the Korean peninsula and maybe Red China. I don't recall where that piece of right wing conspiracy thinking came from but there it was. Grade two.

In grade six I was assigned to write the Castro takes Cuba article for our class newspaper. This was before we knew Castro was a communist and would murder two million innocents.  My article was two paragraphs assumed from the Toronto Telegram.

I got a lot of kudos for the article. That didn't attract me to journalism but it was a step on my road to being a political junky.

We moved to LA after grade 10 and I was slow to make friends. I was alone but not lonely. During that time in high school I was a magazine maniac. At one time I enjoyed 13 subscriptions; Time, Newsweek, Look, Life, National Review, a Soviet picture magazine and more.

You see these magazines supported what people said I was good at. Political reading filled my alone time with activity so I didn't feel lonely.

One time in grade 12 I was the only guy on a team with three popular girls in a poli sci class. My significant knowledge got us the class medal for facts. Not that it helped me with the ladies.

Another thing about my personality -I can't entirely grasp the reasoning - is that I generally root for the underdog. It may be the periphery guy thing. I seem to feel that I'm on the outside looking in and that the underdogs are my allies.

Thru undergraduate life in LA in the 60s I was knowledgeable about political stuff but I wasn't passionate. I went to anti war rallies but I wasn't angry like some people.

It wasn't that I saw both sides of the argument. It was that I saw that there were people on both sides and that one side seemed to be the righteous insiders and the other side were the less popular outsiders. If you're old enough think smooth and well spoken Bobby Kennedy vs. older less well known Eugene McCarthy. I gravitated to McCarthy. On the periphery like me.

Then through the seventies, eighties  and nineties I graduated and got married and had kids and built a career. I was busy. I kept my hand in by being a voracious reader of The Globe and Mail. I remember liking Crossfire on CNN when it was a singular left vs. right political program.

One more personality characteristic. I agonize buying a car. It’s important to me that the car I drive is a great choice but not a big seller. I want to appear discerning and smart with my major boy toy.

Fast forward to the 2004 election in the US. I was with about 10 men watching the results. I was the only one rooting for George Bush, the conservative Republican candidate, against John Kerry the liberal Democrat.

I had made a big change in the previous five years moving from neutral to being a committed conservative. This evolution had several aspects including beliefs about what is right and wrong in government and the tribal aspect of affiliating.

Conservative fits my personality. It’s a peripheral, sometimes contrarian view. It seeks to be a smart choice, like how I choose a car.

Thanks to the internet there is a wealth of news and conservative commentary available so I can fulfill my political junky passion.

So in 2015 when Trump came along I had been a conservative for a long time. I didn't really know much about him at first. I'm not a reality TV watcher and had not read his books. But the way he articulated his platform prescription was exactly my vision. I believe lower taxes are good and that many government regulations serve the interests of a small group to the detriment of the economy as a whole. 

I admit Trump is hard to gravitate to. His warts are public and his public posture is different for a president. He fights back against his critics. He relentlessly tells his truth. He pushes his policy with vigor and patience.

So what’s the attraction. What’s worth the sneers, the arguments and the lost friendships that come supporting an unpopular politician.

For me it’s attention to the bottom line. What is government for anyway. Is it to please the late nite talk show hosts who earn a living by being interesting and pointed.

Or is it economics, raising the standard of living for the disadvantaged.

For me it’s the latter.

Even CNN, no friend of Trump, makes it obvious that there’s been strong growth in the US economy. That's good for the poor in many ways.

So whatever the warts and boils, Donald Trump is the easy option for me. Remember what Bill Clinton campaigned on. It’s the Economy Stupid.

October 19, 2018

January 15, 2019

What Becomes of Us

November 9, 2018

Last Friday in Los Angeles I visited three men who were close friends in college 50 years ago. I hadn't seen or talked to them since 1970.

I moved to Toronto from LA in 1970. I was in LA a number of times from then until the early 90s for a variety of reasons.

But I never went to the trouble of reconnecting during those years. That was before email so the trouble was letter writing or finding phone numbers but too much for me. None of us were letter writers.

Margie and I spent last week with some friends in Palm Springs. With the miracle of email and flights in and out of LA I was able to connect and set up the visits over lunch and coffee.

Recovering memories from fifty years ago is hit and miss. One hit was the way Ed Wolkowitz walked. In the late sixties he was always out front, a little bit ahead, getting to destinations first. One miss was sixteen hours in a car with Marc Sniderman driving to Tucson, Arizona from LA. I remember seeing my girlfriend at the University of Arizona. I didn't remember that Marc and I made the long journey together until he reminded me. Another hit was Steve Levy's infectious good humour.

We met at an office, hotel, shopping complex named Century City. Think of Yorkdale with more office towers, a big hotel and the shopping exposed to the elements. While the weather last Friday was typically LA perfect, the mood in the city was subdued. The Malibu fires had sprung up late the previous day. There was a huge cloud of smoke visible in the north west over the mountains and canyons that separate Malibu from LA. Driving in to LA after breakfast Margie and I could see the cloud from 75 miles away. That was a biblical scene.

The schedule had Margie and I at lunch with Ed and Marc with their wives at Javier's, a Mexican restaurant in the far north west corner of Century City. Margie and I arrived way early. We had budgeted four hours to drive to LA from Palm Springs. One thing that LA and Toronto have in common is that driving needs to be planned. People consider optimal routes, schedules and parking before a trip. Gridlock does that. One difference is that LA has more roads, freeways and rapid transit. But it's not enough. The multitude of people and cars is overwhelming.

While we avoided the worst of it Margie and I witnessed the impact the Malibu fire had on traffic. The fire closed the Pacific Coast Highway pushing many cars onto the northbound San Diego Freeway. We saw the tail end of the backup which might have been 50 miles long.

Ed, the fast walker in high school, stayed in character as he grew up. He became the mayor of Culver City a town of 40,000 in the inner suburbs of LA. While not the biggest of cities Culver City is the home of the Sony Pictures studio which provided Ed some show biz perks.

Ed spoke of a successful life as a lawyer in addition to his public service. While he was outwardly happy as lunch proceeded a solitary tragedy emerged. One of his three children, a son, had died in his mid-thirties from an aggressive cancer. It couldn’t become a focus of conversation in a group of six people in a noisy restaurant but it took the atmosphere down a notch. In the microcosm of the meal, as in the big picture of life, the death of a child created a direction that could not be turned around.

Marc in university was a doer. Tall and athletic with a shock of black hair he was a whirlwind of activity back in the day. I remember two things from 1970. He had a very cool car. Commonly known as a Road Runner it was a souped up early generation Dodge Charger. And Marc was a skier. Skiing usually takes a certain commitment and effort. There’s driving. There’s cold weather. There’s a need to stick to it before you get good. And that was Marc.

Now in 2018 Marc remained active in his career as a Hollywood accountant and he was still a doer. He had skied all these years. He cycled. And traveled. He and his wife were the first people I’d ever known who had gone on multiple safari holidays in Africa. They said ‘they liked the big cats’ and they had some intimate pictures, almost selfies, with lions in Kenya.

Marc had paid for his life of activity. Like me he’s had two knee replacements. He’s also had an ankle replacement which I hadn’t heard of before. His hands were gnarled from some type of arthritis. But he still skied, cycled and traveled to Africa. Once a doer. Always a doer.

My third visit was with Steve Levy who was a friend from a different orbit in the late 60s. He was happy but not go lucky. He did his undergrad and law degree at UCLA. I've never been much of a drinker but I do remember crashing one nite at Steve's after a toga party, too drunk to go home. Steve's mother took care of me or at least positioned me so I wouldn't be vomiting on any of her carpets.

Steve's tragedy was that his first wife died early. In her mid fifties. Of cancer. He's remarried.

And he's the same happy guy he was in the sixties. A big smile. A positive outlook. Lots of fun to be with.

So what becomes of us. From my small sample of three I'd say not very much. The three of them had accomplished a bunch, lived good lives and had crosses to bear. But none of them, I'd say, was all too different than when I last was with them fifty years ago.

And on reflection neither am I.

November 16, 2018

January 15, 2019