Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir (5 page)

Ben asked me to help with the buying, but to do that I needed to work in the store to have a sense of the customers. I’d spent the past fourteen years at home with Yeats, and now I was dipping my toe back into the wider culture. I decided to work two days a week to start.

I’d begun my bookselling career in December,
1986
. I was hired as a temporary clerk over the Christmas season in a tiny old Classics store on Bloor Street. I remember standing behind the cash register on my first day, looking over the shop and feeling a profound sense of belonging:
This
is what I’m meant to be doing
. When that job ended after Christmas, I applied for a position at Book City on Yonge Street. Ben hired me, which was how we met, and he was my boss. So I guess we’d had some practice in these roles, however long ago it was.

Eventually, I became manager at the Book City on the Danforth. When I left to have the baby a customer said to me, “Don’t quit work and jeopardize your career. Don’t lose yourself.” I guess that had happened to her, but my wage at Book City would have covered daycare and not much else, so I didn’t even consider staying. Now that I was contemplating working again, the bookseller inside me was hopping with anticipation. I really did belong in a bookstore.

In the months leading up to the grand opening, I sometimes resented the near-constant companionship at home (which is crazy to think about now, when Ben works double shifts all week long and I almost never see him). I was used to having the house to myself and found sharing it with Ben an adjustment. Not that he was a disagreeable companion; just that he was there. I was reminded of my Uncle Dick who, on his first day of retirement, came downstairs to find a brown paper bag on the kitchen counter.

“What’s this?” he asked my aunt.

“Your lunch,” she said. “You’re not hanging around the house all day.”

By the summer, Ben had hired some staff, including Rupert and Danielle. We now had a basement office at the shop, which was fixed with desks and lots of metal shelving. The kids, along with a full-time employee, Lisa, started creating title cards on the computer system and receiving boxes of books. They had to unpack the boxes to make sure all the books were there, match the orders to the invoices, and pack the books up again until we could place them on the shelves upstairs. Upstairs was still under construction.

Over the Labour Day weekend, we engaged the help of family and friends to stock the shelves of the brand-new bookstore. It was very exciting for everyone. People picked their sections: our friend Mary chose to shelve kids’ books; June and Johanna covered the biographies; Sarah and Fiona did hardcover fiction. Yeats and his friends started with the humour section and moved on to travel. Everywhere people were opening boxes, moving shelves around, and standing back to look at their handiwork. By the end of the weekend, we were exhausted but glowing with satisfaction. We were ready for business.

THAT FIRST FALL WE
had two big parties in the store on back-to-back nights. We wanted to celebrate the grand opening of the shop with everyone we knew and we wanted to show our publishing friends that the store would be a good space for their parties. Eventually, we’d have not only book launches in the store, but weddings, showers, retirement parties, a play, even my mother’s eightieth birthday party. The space began to take on a patina of worn charm.

But in the early days everything was new and shiny. People walked in and gawked at the beautiful chandeliers and bookcases, and every time I was there a customer would say something like, “This is a real sanctuary on Bay Street.” “Bay Street” is synonymous with material wealth and success, but also with the rat race and with stress, something the shop’s ambiance seemed to counteract. We had the feeling right, we had the book selection right, and now we just needed about a thousand more regular customers to make it a viable operation.

To that end, Ben started accepting every bookselling opportunity, be it holding an event in the store or hauling boxes of books to sell around town. We agreed to sell books for Random House at Word on the Street, the annual outdoor book festival that took place at Queen’s Park at the end of September. This was where Yeats had his first taste of bookselling, and he loved it. He came with us to set up, piling books on the tables in the hopes of watching those stacks slowly shrink over the course of the day. He stayed all day without complaint and I remember thinking that it was in the blood, this bookselling, this willingness to stand around all day and talk about practically nothing but books.

Rupert worked in the store full-time for the first four years. Titus helped out at events for a while and then worked full-time in the store for about a year while he was between careers. Danielle worked in the store during the summers when she was home from university, and Yeats worked as many outside events as Ben would give him. It was a family business, and it didn’t take long before publicists and editors got used to seeing us everywhere.

But it was a big change for the family. Ben was working long hours and it was a whole new schedule for me. I said that if I didn’t work in the shop, I’d never see my husband. I said it as if it was a joke, but it was true.

“And how is that?” people asked. “How is it having your husband as your boss?”

“I compartmentalize,” I said. “He’s my boss at work and I’m the boss at home.”

The truth was a bit more complicated, however. I tried not to step on Ben’s toes but sometimes I just couldn’t help but stick my nose into the running of the store. One of my pet peeves was the lighting. The ceiling was so high in the shop that we needed a
15
-foot ladder to change the bulbs. The building maintenance guys did this for us but only when they had the time, since it wasn’t really in their job description. Sometimes fifteen or more light bulbs would be out around the shop and it drove me crazy. It was dark in the corners and a lot of our customers were older than me. If I was having trouble seeing things, they sure would be. Would you buy a book you couldn’t see?

I got on Ben’s case about the bulbs. I asked him every time I was in if he’d called Scott. He reminded me that Scott couldn’t just come; he had to wait until there were two of them with nothing else to do. Someone had to hold the ladder. Then another couple of bulbs went out and I nearly lost my mind. I had to bite my tongue or risk having Ben lose his temper. Would he really do that? When was the last time he really lost his temper at me? I couldn’t remember, but I didn’t want to risk it.

The light bulbs were just one example. Staffing was another. We had four full-time staff in the beginning: Rupert, Lisa, Rachna, and Simone. Over the years we lost Lisa and Rachna, and then Rupert. Ben didn’t replace any of them. Business wasn’t as busy as we would have liked, but there were times when we needed more staff in the shop. By the time we had consistently hectic days, we were chronically short-staffed. Ben was often the only person there in the morning, which meant he couldn’t catch up on his administrative business. The way he saw it, though, he was saving money on wages.

I wasn’t the boss. I tried not to interfere, but sometimes I walked a fine line. If he was in a good mood while I was razzing him, Ben would cock an eyebrow at me and say, “Really?” If he was pissed off for some reason, or just exhausted, he’d say, “Yes, dear.” That was my cue to shut up. He never used the word “dear” as an endearment.

If Ben was particularly annoyed about something, a shipping or billing problem for example, I’d say to Simone, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure we fool around tonight and he’ll be better tomorrow.” She’d groan and say, “Too much information.” Or we’d wait until Ben was in the office downstairs and we’d go on a clearing spree behind the cash. (Ben never threw anything out.) Simone and I developed all kinds of eye signals and facial expressions to help one another get through Ben’s moods. Actually, Ben wasn’t really a moody man, but he was full of colourful expressions and sudden bursts of disapproval and frustration. During those fourteen years at home, I hadn’t seen much of this side of him, so I told myself I’d have to find a way to navigate around his humours.

This was a whole new episode in our lives together, and it did take a bit of figuring out. I can’t count the number of times I bit my tongue, especially in that first year when we were sorting out how to work together. Most of the time, though, working in the shop was a pure joy. I loved hand-selling books to customers, talking about the titles I especially loved with whoever was around, making displays. Even the really slow days in the shop were a pleasure for me. By the time I arrived home at the end of a day, spent on my feet, I felt like I’d earned my wage.

Most weeks I worked two shifts, but as time went on I began to work more events and at Christmas I took on more shifts, too. I started to let some things slide at the house — my standard of tidiness took a nose-dive until I couldn’t stand it anymore and went on a cleaning frenzy. Little projects, such as clearing old toys or clothes out of boxes in the basement, were wiped right off the to-do list.

Ben worked much longer hours than he had at Nicholas Hoare, because of all our after-hours events. Yeats sometimes stayed late at school. It was harder to find time for everyone to be together, and I was starting to become concerned about Ben’s health. His feet were sore all the time. His knees were sore, too, and he didn’t eat properly. He’d forgo breakfast and lunch, eat a donut or maybe a croissant part way through the day, and then gorge on whatever we had in the kitchen when he arrived home at
10
p.m. My role as keeper of the household was slipping, which wasn’t all bad. Yeats, for example, needed more independence. I loved these guys, though, and wanted us to keep our customary closeness, not drift apart because of day-to-day busy-ness.

THREE

THOSE FIRST FEW MONTHS
after the opening of Ben McNally Books were tumultuous for me and for the family. Ben was always tired, always working. We had many firsts of what would become regular events: the first televised announcement of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the first Word on the Street, the first International Festival of Authors, our first crazy Christmas season, and plenty of book launches in between.

I hadn’t wanted us to be the official bookseller at the
IFOA
, which is the International Festival of Authors held at Harbourfront in Toronto each October. It felt too soon to me to open the store in September and then have to set up a second shop somewhere else, moving all those books in and out and staffing the ten-day event. But Ben’s mind was made up.

“If we turn it down this year, we might not get a second chance,” he said.

Ben loved the festival: being in the thick of things with authors and publishers from around the world, going to all the late-night parties. That first year, I worked more hours in our actual bookshop, and by the time I got home I was too tired to go to many of the parties. I wasn’t used to this type of work — being on my feet for eight hours and dealing with other people’s energy all day long. Our customers were far from rude or obnoxious, but they were people who required my attention and I couldn’t just go lie down on the couch for fifteen minutes to recharge.

When I had first started working with Ben at Book City all those years ago, we didn’t have a computer system. We used small cards, like flashcards, to keep inventory, and we phoned our orders in to the publishers. We knew every book in the store because we were in such close contact with them all the time. I loved moving through that old store, looking for all the, say, books published by Ballantine, ordering the ones that were popular and pulling older stock off the shelves. It was unhurried work and I was good at it.

At the new store, we had a computerized inventory system as well as the Internet. All our buying was done on the computer. Every once in a while we had to check the shelves to see if we really did have that one copy of the book the computer said we had, but most often we didn’t. At first I resented the computer. I wanted to gather up a fistful of cards and go count the books. I was afraid that I’d come to rely too much on the machine and had forgotten all my specialized knowledge. But I learned to satisfy my love of handling the books by making displays and spending time each day browsing the shelves.

I adjusted. I adjusted to working outside the home and to using the computer, and I began to adapt to Ben’s newfound workaholism. Yeats worked weekends with us at the
IFOA
and at our monthly author brunches. But he was also adjusting to high school — finding his way in a new environment, just as I was.

IN MID-NOVEMBER BEN AND
I took a taxi together from the shop up to Jarvis for our parent-teacher interviews. Yeats liked most of his Grade
9
teachers. He found it amazing that they talked to the students as if they were adults who could make their own choices about how to run or ruin their lives.

The teachers liked Yeats, too. He was one of the boys who listened. I was reminded of his Grade
3
gym teacher, who’d been new to Withrow. She approached me in the yard one day and said, “You’re Yeats’s mom, aren’t you?” When I said yes, she said, “I just want you to know that he’s one of only two boys who actually listen to what I say. You can be proud of him.”

Six years later, he was still listening. He didn’t have that restlessness many boys experience, partly because he was so good at paying attention.

One of his Grade
9
teachers said, “Yeats is one of those students you can’t rush. He needs assignments that allow him to go deep into something, not just skim the surface.”

I couldn’t believe that someone understood Yeats this quickly — in less than two months.

“He’s one of those students who’s making connections between things everywhere he goes,” he said, “but that kind of thinking takes time. He’ll get frustrated if people try to rush him.”

When we got home later that night, I told Yeats about that conversation.

He just shrugged. “That won’t stop them from making me do all the dumb little assignments. You’ll see.”

Of course he was right. But at least he knew that some of the teachers appreciated who he was. The teachers saw the calm, attentive Yeats, the Yeats who could deal with the pressures of school. In class, Yeats was unfailingly cheerful and helpful. He participated in discussions and did well on his tests and assignments. He wasn’t one of those kids who took his angst out on the world. (He saved that for me!)

Since the start of high school Yeats had decided to do his homework on his own in his room. We had made a pact. I wouldn’t ask him one thing about his homework, ever, and he’d do it without coercion. Mostly I was able to hold up my side of the bargain. Sometimes I forgot.

“How was school?” I’d say.

He’d grunt.

I’d say, “Did you do your presentation? How did it go?”

“Fine.”

“Did your teacher like the music you chose?”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”

In an act of desperation or insanity I’d completely forget my promise and say, “Do you have homework for tonight?”

“Mom! I can’t believe it! Stop asking me that! Just stop!” As though I’d been asking for ages when it had really been weeks since the last lapse. He’d stomp upstairs, heaving great sighs, slam his bedroom door, and play something loud on his stereo. At least I loved all his music.

For some reason, one night he chose to do his homework at the kitchen table. My big mistake was not telling him to do the work in his room, but I guess I was happy to have the company while I prepared dinner.

As he worked at his math, he became physically agitated first, then vocally, and then asked for my help, which I was unable to supply since my math skills no longer went beyond Grade
8
. He ranted a bit about math in general, then about school, and the longer he went on the more my blood boiled.
If he spent half as much time on the actual work as he did on complaining about it . . .

My first response, which with tremendous effort I kept to myself, was to turn into a fire-breathing dragon and burn down the whole house with us in it. Instead, I threw down my paring knife and said, “I don’t need to listen to this. I don’t need to be part of this,” and then I stomped upstairs.

I felt like a failure because I’d risen instantly to such strong emotion, but I also felt touched by grace because I’d let it go almost as quickly. I sat on my bed and breathed for a few minutes, listening to him scratch away with his pencil, doing the work. I closed my eyes and asked for wisdom: how to help Yeats get through high school, how to balance what he needed from me with everything else I needed to do in my life. Why was it, I wondered, that my parents had known practically nothing about what my siblings and I were doing in school, while these days, everyone I knew was involved in their children’s education? I couldn’t work out if this was a good thing or not.

When I went upstairs later in the evening, Yeats called to me from his bedroom. I went in and sat on his chair.

He said, “Why do I have to do well at school? Why can’t I just enjoy myself and do okay, but maybe not really well?”

We’d been over this territory a thousand times since Grade
1
, but learning is a process of repetition, if nothing else.

“Two things. One, it’s far more satisfying in the long term to do something well, to do the best you can. To know in your heart that you did all you could. It’s a personal reward. The other reason is more practical — so you can get into the university of your choice.”

Big sigh from the big boy. “But what if I don’t want to go to university?”

“Then you’ll work instead, or travel for a bit and then go to university, or volunteer somewhere and work part-time.” He knew all of this, but he needed to hear it again. And again.

“I guess I’ll go to university. But I’m not interested in anything. I don’t know what to take. I’m not good at anything.”

“Yeats, you’re interested in everything!” It infuriated me when he said stuff like this. He thought his teachers were crazy to give him high marks. Certainly nothing I could say would reassure him so I just said, “When the time comes, we’ll go over the course offerings together and see what appeals to you. You don’t have to decide on a major going in to first year.”

“Hmph.”

I was tired of this conversation but I knew it was important. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, just that I wished he’d have more faith in himself.

“But high school, Mom. They’re always trying to make everybody into the same person. It was the same when we were younger, too. All school is like that, I guess.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “Those teachers appreciate who you are, care about you as an individual.”

“Maybe some teachers. But, I mean, the system as a whole. They want us all to behave in the same way and we’re all supposed to go on to university and make something big of ourselves. What if we don’t want that? There’s so much pressure,” he said.

As I sat with Yeats, I thought about him on a kindergarten field day, just before he turned five. The boys were lined up to run a race, the teacher counting down from three, and off they went, running across the grass as fast as their little legs would take them.

Halfway down the field Yeats stopped and crouched. He’d spotted something and took his time looking at it, gently tipping up whatever it was with one finger.

The teacher yelled, “Yeats! Keep running!”

He looked up at her, then at all the parents who were laughing on the sidelines, then at his classmates who were already at the finish line. He stood up and ran to the end of the field and then came over to me.

“What was it?” I asked. “What did you see?”

“A really pretty flower, Mom. A tiny blue flower, in the grass.” This was his true nature. Not one iota of competitiveness. He could care less about the race.

Then I remembered when Laurie, Greg, and I were teens, and how Dad used to ask us at night, “Did you win today?” This question always made me want to explode, but we weren’t allowed to get angry so I just sulked and scowled and told him I didn’t know what he meant since I wasn’t in a competition. Of course I knew what he meant, but I didn’t like this implication that there was winning and losing and nothing else. Dad came from a family with huge expectations and he raised us in the same way. I remember him asking my brother Greg, when he’d made
98
percent on a math test, what had happened to the other
2
percent. He also regularly asked, “Where do you see yourself ten years from now?” I hated that question too. I tried to convince him that knowing where I was right
now
was far more important. He didn’t buy it. I was loath to impose that level of expectation on my son, because I remembered so clearly how I’d reacted as a child. But I was conflicted. On the one hand, aiming for success had been bred into me; on the other, my measure of success was quite different from my father’s. As a parent, it made me ask myself: Is it a blessing or a curse to be in this world without worldly ambition, without the drive to win and accumulate?

When we were finishing high school, Dad’s definition of success became more concrete — success meant a respectable, prosperous career. Laurie wanted to study physics at university, but Dad told her she’d wind up working for the government in a dead-end laboratory job. Dad, a star hockey player in high school, had been drafted to play in a professional Ontario league. His mother had said no, there wasn’t enough money in hockey. Then he wanted to study medicine, but his father said no, business was a better option. Now he told his daughter that she should study economics, instead of following her passion, so she did.

And I remember, too, the day Greg called from university, where he was in second-year engineering. Dad had done an engineering degree before going on to business school, and it seemed this was Greg’s path, too. But Greg was bored to death by engineering and had decided to switch to economics (which sounded dreadfully boring to me).

I answered the phone and Greg told me why he was calling. He said, “Dad won’t understand. He’s going to be really mad.”

He was nervous, but I pointed out that I’d done way worse than that. “Don’t you remember, Greg? I took a whole year off university, between second and third year. I went travelling, for God’s sake! Then I switched universities. You’re just switching programs.”

“Was Dad mad at you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Do what you have to do.”

Laurie and Greg both went on to get
MBA
s, while I had my more or less useless undergrad degree in history. But I remember one day Dad said to me, “You’re just about the only kid I know with a real university education.” I took that as a compliment, and then I watched my brother and sister take jobs with management-consulting firms and proceed to work themselves to the bone. Within a few years, both of them ended up leaving that business, questioning the path that had led them there.