MY PARTNER THREW ME THE WRITER’S LIFE-LINE - TIME AND PATIENCE

Suzanne and I have enjoyed a good life immersed in history. There was no other girl I dated back then, who could have handled a relationship with a guy who pre-occupied as both a writer and antique hunter. She not only helped me change my life away from the bars and beer swilling cronies but helped our antique business survive, through as many ups and downs as my lengthy jag as a writer. I’ve quit the profession 500 times in three decades.

At one point I possessed about 40,000 old books here at Birch Hollow......60,000 less than my book buddy, Dave Brown, who had jammed 100,000 books into his small Hamilton bungalow. After he passed away,.....and I make no apology for reiterating this, the executor’s of his estate couldn’t remove the books from the basement first.....as they had planned, because they were holding up the beams of the first floor. They only found this out later, when the floor began to sag, and they had to stuff the load-bearing books back in place. Dave’s wife left him at about 40,000 books but Suzanne, being the good sport she is, stuck with me despite, as she said, “having way too many books.” I’m way below that now as I have had two years to cull it all back to a modest 10,000 or so. I saw the look of divorce in her eyes but never got the paper-work.

Suzanne has been enormously patient with me as both a collector / dealer and a writer, two professions known for their eccentricities and obsessive behavior. I’ve never once heard any one call me normal or someone without baggage, so I’m assuming eccentric fits somehow into my character profile. No one’s stepping up to write my biography, so I’ll deal with that later.

While always prepared for a writing funk, or a collector’s hiatus (when I can’t find any treasures out on the hustings), Suzanne refuses to let me wallow in self pity. The very fact she refuses to validate my feelings, always makes me mad, but at the same time, she knows full well it will push me back to the keyboard.....or out to the local second hand shop for another wee peek at the new offerings. She has never made a habit of reading my copy, although there are times when I will read a column to her, to get some feed-back on a controversial issue. As for her picking up a copy of the publications I write for......or have written for, since we married, it doesn’t happen. Suzanne recoils when I mention this but it’s undeniable. It’s not that she doesn’t care what I write about but she doesn’t want her opinion to be the pivot, or the crossroads, of whether I stay writing, or decide to become a golf pro. I realize the worst thing I could do is ask her opinion of my work. It’s one thing for a legal opinion, because we have strict rules about that in my copy, but quite another for her to be put on the spot, to have to critique a highly sensitive spouse.

We live in a museum, she knits and I write, and we occasionally watch television......Coronation Street being the one show all things stop for at Birch Hollow.....even the cats cease running around or else. Strange right? We’ve been Corrie fans for years.

My partner has opted to give me the room to create what I wish to create. Her influences are subtle, and while I don’t think about it daily, I know when I get all biographical and stuff, her indifference is more of a challenge than condition of avoidance. For years she’s been my manager, and handled thousands of calls from happy readers, and from those who wanted to hang me in the town square. Hers is the voice of reason and over the years, she has made friends from my adversaries, simply by exceptional phone manners. And don’t think for a moment that she’s on-side with my opinions, just because she’s supportive most of the time. We have a lot of differences of opinion. She knits and I write. I don’t tell her she’s knitting a wonderful pair of socks and she doesn’t tell me I’m a budding Joseph Conrad. It works.

When I started out in the news business, I used my status to impress my lady friends. Shortly after starting at The Beacon, in MacTier, my girlfriend at the time, was enthralled by my ability to gain access to events, and mingle up close and personal, with politicians and leaders of the business community. She admitted I had a good job and the perks weren’t bad either. For the next five years I had a number of short-term girlfriends, who liked going out to dinner shows at big Muskoka resorts, as guests of management. I milked it baby.....I milked it! It seemed like the good life, and I enjoyed having partners who liked to watch over my shoulder as I lived the Hemingway dream. I was an exotic guy. Well not really but that’s what I thought. Truth was they’d soon leave me for a toothless hockey or baseball player, from the local industrial league, who couldn’t spell two words in a row.

Suzanne was interested in me. Not because I was the editor of the local rag. Not because we got to go out a lot, on someone else’s dime (I do realize I was in ethical conflict a lot), or hang around with people a lot richer than us. We’d known each other back in high school, and we both liked the same things.....a nice house, a close-knit family, and good company. She proved to me I didn’t need a groupie as a partner, but more of a Punch Imlach, Toe Blake kind of coach......seemingly unfeeling about my bo-bo’s......my injured ego, or my many stalemates in either writing or antiques. If you asked Suzanne what her husband did, as a profession, she would answer without hesitation....”he’s an antique dealer.” They would have to ask, “he wouldn’t be the Ted Currie, who writes that column?” She won’t lie that’s for sure. But she won’t go much further than admitting. “Yea that’s him.” Half expecting to get reamed for some indiscretion I committed in the past 30 years, of both entertaining folks and pissing off the other half. Like I wrote in the beginning, she’s been a brave soul facing my audience as my manager and spouse.....not being able to separate the two. Which only comes in our house when she knits and I write as individual passions that must never collide.

I just finished the final edit of a preface, I wrote for a friend’s book of short stories, anecdotal and otherwise, about life on a modern day homestead. She asked me one day, as I was writing it, whether it was a “War and Peace,” kind of tome, because it was taking me so long to compose. She doesn’t usually make such comments but she wanted the computer. I wasn’t sure if there was a point here. Was I slowing down. Having been trained in a hectic newspaper office, I was pretty efficient with copy in, and copy out. She must have thought I was losing my touch or that this assignment was tougher than usual. Maybe it was a little of both. I do find myself polishing a little more than usual these days. It was then, like a hockey player being accused of slacking, and lacking enthusiasm, that I decided to up the ante, and start spending more time working-out at the keyboard. I’ve had a dozen projects on the back burner, and have decided to get them done. So the other night, after a two week writing frenzy to meet some tough deadlines......I said to her, one night, while she was knitting away...... “Hey, are you ever going to get those socks done?” It was like a skit from a situation comedy. “You mean these ones,” she fired back, pulling a finished pair from her knitting bag. Of course these were the ones I thought she was working on, as I had seen her with the night before. What a jerk, right? Point taken.

Suzanne’s policy has always been, to allow her eccentric husband to enjoy the freedom of space and time, and the opportunity to create without imposition or intrusion, limitation or restriction of what I need, to get the task completed. I haven’t asked her if I could have a muse as the great bards enjoyed but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t care....... as long as it wasn’t her. She has no interest in being the source of my inspiration......it would be too hard to live with me if that was the case. I’d have too many expectations. I’d want her to stand in the garden, a silhouette against the lilacs, or standing with a flower in her hand, looking wistfully into a dreamscape of my concoction. It’s not that we’re not romantic together, it’s just that we don’t really understand each other’s craft. The ticky tack of those knitting needles drives me nuts and my vigorous tapping at the keyboard demands volume increases on the television. Still, we arrive at the end of the day, contented by each other’s company.

Later this afternoon, she will come home and file this editorial. I don’t know how. I refuse to learn. That drives her crazy. But she’s given up trying to show me. And she won’t read one word of this copy before its saved to the hard drive. We seem to thrive on our respective eccentricities.

The great equalizer is that we both very much enjoy hunting for antiques and collectibles. The weekends are ours to roam. Until I see that she’s brought my competition along for the ride. The knitting bag. I’m going to find a muse!