Twelve Nice Things Said to Me, Under The Circumstances

1. “Have the whole bag.”

I’d asked if I could have another cookie. Mint Oreos were new on the market, and on a day I’ve otherwise tried to block from memory, my aunt’s reply remains vivid.

We’d gathered at my grandparents’ small house after burying Mama in the Catholic cemetery. I was nine years old.

Mama was my mother’s mother, an elegant woman with a silver French roll, and I missed her terribly. She’d had a difficult childhood, losing her mother as a teen, and she’d taken charge of her siblings and father until she got married. Today we scorn the idea of marriage as a means of rescue, but in her case, it was true: she needed an escape and my grandfather offered it. Then she bore seven children of her own and raised them in a two-bedroom wartime house, and somehow, she’d always had time to make pies and play with me; born when my mother was a teenager, I spent plenty of my early years in her care.

I took solace in the cookies. And just as a psychic astrologer once confirmed, I still seek support via sugar. “Sugar never lets you down,” she’d said. The truth hit hard.

In our family, we were scolded for being bold, an old-fashioned term for rudeness, but that day, with the bag of Mint Oreos already in my hand, I’d caught my normally stern aunt at a weak moment.

She told me to share with all my cousins, but instead I doled out a single cookie to each of the littler ones, like a young saint giving blessings, or like Mama did with her little cinnamon sugar roly-polys, made from leftover pastry.

2. “Yes.”

My father’s mother lived next door to our family as we grew up, and she helped to raise me, too. Whenever I needed comfort or attention I wasn’t getting at home, or an escape from my three younger siblings, I ran to Nana’s house. She wielded a firm No when needed, but mostly, she lived with a Yes at the ready, except for a brief moment when I was fourteen.

I still don’t know why she hated that drop-waist blue denim-like dress, patterned with big navy flowers, an asymmetrical collar and buttons on one shoulder. No doubt it wasn’t flattering on me, but I wore it weekly, even after she offered me $50 to burn it. She might have protested many other outfits: the purple plaid pedal pushers (say that ten times fast), the faded black dress that touched the floor, the stretched-out shaker sweaters, the cream overalls printed with tire tracks, the neon green mouse t-shirt….

But I digress. Nana was my champion, a port in the storm, always ready with a hug and tea and cookies. Even now, four years after her passing, she remains a source of comfort. I listen to her saved voicemails when I need her steadying force. My sisters do the same.

To all my other questions, a Yes was the answer.

Can I lick the bowl? Can I help you? Can you teach me to ice a wedding cake? Can I stay over tonight? Can I wear your pink nightie? Can I have a frozen frosting rose? Can I borrow money for school? Can my family and I live with you while we recover from a year in Montreal? Can you teach me how to love?

3. “Congratulations.”

Nearly thirty years ago, a writing friend congratulated me when I received a rejection. She said it each time I shared news of not getting a poem accepted. “It means you’re doing it,” she said. “Getting out there. Doing what you have to do to be a writer. It means you mean it.”

I took the sentiment to heart, and to this day it lessens the disappointment when my writing gets the “sorry, not for us” responses.

This friend and I drifted apart, but when I found out she’d had a baby and was suffering from post-partum depression, I wrote her a poem to praise motherhood and friendship.

I never heard from her again: a rejection that still stings.

4. “Write me a poem.”

I wrote a poem for a businessman and got paid a hundred bucks.

It wasn’t a flirtation; he was a married man and much too gabardined for me, but he found out I was a writer and wanted to read my work. I loaned him copies of five fresh poems.

When I woke up the next morning, an envelope had been slipped beneath the hotel room door, and in it, a hundred dollar bill.

This all took place in Mexico decades ago, when I was twenty-five and working at a hotel as the Social Activity Coordinator, which meant pouring shots for the Canadian tourists and playing Loteria in the lobby bar, even though I couldn’t speak Spanish beyond Si or No.

“An investment in your future,” was the gist of the note wrapped around the bills. A blast of positivity at a moment when I’d had enough of the hotel world and needed to make a change.

I used that money to pay for my first month’s rent in Todos Santos, where I moved, at this man’s encouragement, to follow my dreams of being a writer.

I’m still writing.

5. “We’ll give you the money.”

On the Atlantic coast of France, four months into my solo European cycling trip, I began having trouble with my hands.

My body was strong and healthy—despite my daily baguette and Camembert—but I knew the symptoms meant trouble. I’d been cycling an average of eighty kilometres a day, and after biking through the Pyrenees, things worsened. Tingling fingers. Difficulty clipping my nails and tying my shoes. Discomfort when I braked down long hills. It was time to go home.

I’d planned on riding back to Paris, then flying to London, to finish my vacation with a friend. Instead, I took the train to Paris and then Calais, ending up in Dover, England. Once I found a B & B, I was finally able to call the airline to try and change my flight home. This was in 1997, when flight changes were even more troublesome than now, and the airline wouldn’t do it without a huge penalty. A fresh one-way ticket was cheaper, they advised.

Trouble was, I’d run out of cash and my credit card was maxed. My parents were unreachable for a wire transfer. Yes, I am that old. Yes, I was that young and that unprepared.

Then, the sweetest couple from British Columbia heard me crying by the B & B’s telephone table, and offered to spot me the cash. They owned a rescue farm: I was simply another creature in need.

Once I was back home, able to work again after my wrists had healed, I returned the money, although they’d insisted they didn’t want it back. It felt like another gift, to send them what they’d given so freely. Heart-strengthening. Affirming the goodness in the world.

6. “Your place or mine?”

It all started with a babysitting date. I’d “put it out there,” as they say on the coast, that I was interested in love, and a young handsome father of a toddler picked up the message.

Ours was not a traditional courtship; he had half-time custody of his son, while working two jobs and playing bass in three bands, and I—well, I was pregnant with another man’s baby.

No carefree wining and dining ensued as in other courtships; instead, he and his son came over to my house, where I was looking after my two-year-old niece, and we had a play date.

When judging character, I place a lot of weight on how someone interacts with children, even when I’m not pregnant. He passed the test. It wasn’t long until things progressed—and fast. He moved in before the baby was born.

Twenty-three years later, he’s still here.

7. “It’s a girl.”

Did I say it first? The midwives didn’t. They like to let the mama find out. All I know is that I secretly wanted a girl, and when that’s what she was, I felt relief that went beyond the birth being over.

It feels a little shameful to admit this. My stepson was three at the time, and it wasn’t the easiest for me, stepping into that role; two boys might have proven wonderful, but at the time, the idea of being the lone female in the house seemed untenable.

Once the baby was born, they held her up so I could make the call. I started crying. In part because of her gender, which she fully embraces, but mostly from the elation of it being over, having birthed a baby on the living room floor, all systems working. Having been part of the miracle of birth for the first time (and last).

They placed my daughter on my belly, where she faced breasts twice the size of her head. And thus we began the work of love and carried on, and so it continues, decades in.

8. “Julie Paul.”

I won.

I won?

Oh my God, I won.

The cascading surprise and joy when my name was called for the city’s book prize felt like a sudden burst of water from a spring. The photos from that moment reveal the jubilation. Me at the podium, stunned and wide-eyed. Afterwards, celebrating with family and friends.

I want to tap into this self more often than I do. Three years into a pandemic, it’s especially good medicine to remind me of better times. Not the winning, but the feeling. The excitement. The party.

I don’t have many photos of me in the moment of creation, hair wild and face contorted, fingers flying, but that’s just fine—they’re better kept as private reminders. Still, I miss seeing my writing groups in this state, deep in the throes of making art, and when we return to in-person meetings again, I will savour it even more.

9. “What would you be doing, otherwise?”

The surgeon’s young understudy asked me this before I went under the knife for a lumpectomy and lymph node dissection. We were waiting for the doctor to glove up, for the count backwards into my oblivion, for the cancer to go up, up and away, out of me, after a long, heavy summer of waiting.

I said “Tennis,” without hesitation.

This seemed to be the right answer, not only because it was true—it was a gorgeous September day, and tennis is my game of choice—but because it seemed to warm up the room. Ahh, tennis. Yes. A normal thing to do in another place than this, with real, fresh air, and two bouncing healthy breasts.

A goal for the surgeon, to get me back on the court.

An image for me to hold onto while the drugs kicked in, one that lasted for weeks, through the days alone watching Netflix while the tissues healed, the rehab exercises, the excruciating wait for the margin and nodal results.

I was back on the court before winter hit.

10. “See you in a year.”

Back in the waiting room after I’d had “the squish,” sweating in my blue ill-fitting gown, I waited for Ruby the ultrasound nurse to consult with a doctor about my scans. I’d met this compassionate nurse before, but this was my first mammogram since having breast cancer surgery the year before.

“Yes,” I said, when she called my name.

“See you in a year.”

“Really?” I croaked, instantly crying.

“Yes,” she said, with a huge smile. “You’re all clear.”

I’m crying even now remembering. That was five years ago—six since the surgery. Five is the magic number, they say.

I like magic.

11. “I made it.”

During the first year of the pandemic, my daughter, twenty-one, drove our aged Honda Civic across Canada from the west coast, alone. The car didn’t start breaking down until she hit the Prairies. We were on the other end of the phone, but that’s only so good, only so helpful, and it does nothing to calm a mother’s worry.

After a few misdiagnoses—and a lot of duct tape and YouTube tutorials—she made it to Manitoba, where the car broke down again just outside of Winnipeg. An older, God-loving potato farming couple came upon her and became instant grandparents, taking her in for the weekend. Together, they canned peaches, picked carrots, and even watched church on TV—she went with the flow, and for this, I felt very proud.

This family made completing her trip possible: not because of their mechanic’s fix once the weekend was over, but because of their warmth and willingness to reach out and help someone in need—just like the couple who’d bailed me out in Dover. They filled her trunk with root vegetables before she left, and even became part of our group text for the rest of the journey.

The car, however, was barely hanging on. It would only run for an hour before overheating, so my daughter stopped every hour, for days, until finally she rolled into the driveway of our family cottage in Eastern Ontario, where my father was waiting.

“I made it,” she said, when she called from the cottage phone. “I’m here.”

Relief and joy, just like when she was born, washed over and through me. I exhaled fully for the first time in weeks.

12. “Welcome to Montreal Jazz Fest, 2021.”

It had been so long since we’d heard live music, or gathered together to listen and dance at a concert, that my husband and I teared up as the Montreal blues singer Dawn Tyler Watson sang her heart out on the outdoor stage in downtown Montreal. Lit by a gorgeous September sunset, our daughter and her boyfriend danced beside us, both of them musicians who’d been unable to perform live for a year, except at occasional outdoor open mics.

Our whole visit to Montreal felt coloured by an ease and warmth that seemed nearly impossible, given its time in history. Or was it because of exactly that? We savoured each moment together. We followed the rules but we didn’t let them get in the way of living. We ended up at a fancy restaurant and toasted the day, and all of it felt dreamlike, surreal. Perfect in a way that felt almost unlawful.

Looking back, it still seems like a dream. But I have the Jazz Fest water bottle to prove I was there, and the photographs, and these words to compress and hold the memories, the way heat turns maple sap to syrup. I have the energy from that journey to get me through to the next.

Julie Paul is the author of three short fiction collections, The Jealousy Bone (Emdash, 2008), The Pull of the Moon (Touchwood / Brindle & Glass, 2014), and Meteorites (Touchwood, 2019), as well as the poetry collection The Rules of the Kingdom (MQUP, 2017).

The Pull of the Moon won the Victoria Butler Book Prize, and The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her personal essay “It Not Only Rises, It Shines” won the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award from The New Quarterly. She lives in Victoria, BC, Canada.