I had broken free.Īnd now had to prove myself ALL OVER AGAIN. I simply thought myself honest.īut in coming clean I wiped my star-rated career slate clean, as well. I (again, unwisely? Yet still honestly) let it be widely known that I was quite pleased with my challenging new rôle - and would never again demean myself by such a surge toward rapid promotion. Within three working days I was dropped from my privileged (and upwardly mobile?) middle management platform, to a kick-butt sweatshop of an office supervising a small but defiantly opinionated cadre of clerks. So - VERY unwisely - that day I pulled a Pierre Élliott Trudeau and quite uncouthly told my boss to fuddle duddle, if you remember that historical vignette. I was chomping at the bit with suppressed fury at the clubbish oligarchy of a few clannish old boys that ruled my then-current privileged position.īecause privilege has its hard and fast obligations. Then, later on, again - when 1991 came, the free world was basking in the reflected Glory of Glasnost. And just like Father Chisholm’s long, forced purgatory in China, it took me down a few pivotal pegs! It was a stressful day seven years later.Īll Heck arrived on my doorstop. Francis - yeah, right, sounds like Fergus - Chisholm is idealistic, but he has one ACHILLES HEEL: he says whatever’s on his mind, no matter how awful it sounds. Yes! And this story of a shiningly idealistic young Scottish priest made a HUGE impression on me. And THIS - this was the first old book I unpacked - and then READ voraciously, cover to cover.įor I was now Catholic, and recognized Francis Chisholm’s Dark Night of the Soul as my own! And when my wife and I made the big move to OUR house in 1984, my Dad passed them on to us. She must have seen the gleam in my eyes, for in her will she bequeathed them all to me. That summer I PORED over them gluttonously. Strangely, that was inconsequential to the young, spoilt kid I was. Many of those were irreparably damaged in the long haul from central Utah. That same van included furniture, artwork and antiques. her THOUSANDS of books were soon to follow her - in a huge Moving Van. She always had fantastically imaginative stories to tell us kids! And that’s not all - for that magical summer of the move, after she came. And each visit she made to our previous little bungalow, before the big move that summer, had been for me like Alice following the March Hare into Wonderland. “Gagi”, as I had brokenly mispronounced the word Granny at 18 months, had stuck as her revered sobriquet. My parents had turned me and my younger siblings into the pampered offspring of a double-income, upwardly-mobile fifties family 6 years previous to this, and the plans for their proud acquisition of a new and modern split-level home - when I turned thirteen - had had enough gracious foresight to provide an ensuite apartment for my grandmother. When I was 13 years old, my wonderfully wise grandmother came to live with us.
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