About Me — Mary Daurio
On that best portion of a good man’s life:
The best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. — “Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth (1798)
Quy Ma, having noticed some of your publications’ “About Me” stories, participating seemed like a good idea. Writing is sometimes used to express feelings relay knowledge or just for pleasure. My best friend many years ago was an old Underwood typewriter my parents gifted me because a teacher told my father the top I could hope for was to be a typist. If that were my future, he’d see I was the finest and fastest.
While typing helped my school marks and thirty-year Nursing Career (I passed in the top 10% in Ontario, proving my teacher wrong), it boosted my writing because my penmanship is atrocious. You should never accept anyone else’s estimation of your abilities. Not having had any formal training in writing, as a senior citizen, I’m now attending Brock University and taking a Creative Writing degree.
Family means the world to me. Staying with my now deceased husband, whose main occupation and hobby was drinking, to keep my boy and girl safe ended me in mental health care four times during our marriage. You’re thinking, why did she stay? What does she mean safe?
When I was a young girl, I suffered abuse at the hands of a man who worked on my father’s farm and stayed with us. My kind and loving parents went to their graves, never knowing. During one of my mental health crises, when the Psychiatrist learned what happened and how I stopped it on my own, he said it rarely happens that the abused stop the abuser without outside intervention. I’ve written about that experience in “I Sing to the Trees,” which I hope to publish on Medium soon so you can read it there.
I never once thought my husband would abuse his children. He was, for all his faults, a good and loving man. But if we separated and he had them for a weekend, there would be no telling what kind of folk would visit, and him passed out. We do what we do for reasons that often seem inexplicable to those around us.
People may wonder why my son is in a shelter that is not far from my home. A victim of Perdue’s Oxycontin, which turned him into an addict, he’d been clean for six years living with me. But four times in the last year, he has not taken his bipolar meds and gone seeking whatever illicit drugs he could get his hands on. He must have been trying to deaden the pain of losing his common-law wife to drugs and his best friend to a motorcycle accident. I feel for him but can not help until he wishes to help himself. His child, Kieran, who spent many sweet hours with me as a child, is coming to celebrate Christmas with me. I am so thankful for them. Hopefully, when I visit their father they will choose to come, but that is their call, and there is no judgment between us. Their father got their new name, Kieran, tattooed on his arm, but when under the influence, he said many hurtful things that Kieran is finding a hard time coming to terms with. The ones we love the most we often hurt the most. My daughter is supportive and listens when I talk about the situation which I try not to do frequently because it hurts. She worries about me and feels angry toward her brother while still loving him. I write poetry instead to get out my emotions. One “F — k you, Perdue” pretty well summed up my feelings. Perdue is the drug company that peddled OxyContin under false nonaddictive pretences. Some of my best poems come from a deep well.
I have great faith that has morphed over the years since I sang to the trees, hearing God in their aching groans. I do not believe that heaven is the prerogative of only Christians. Indeed, if there is a heaven, I will not enter its pearly gates( if there is such a thing, ha!)unless every known creed that the good folk on this Mother Earth practice has entry.
I fall into the tenant, do onto your brother as you wish him to do onto you, and that is something that crosses all religious boundaries. We are in this together, and if to make the load a little lighter or the way a little easier is something I can do; please do not let me falter in this task.
My mother gave me a bible. I’d requested a zippered one that was devilish-hard to find back when I went into nursing training in 1972. While I may not practice the tenets of the faith according to the church, some of the words in that great tome talk to me.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 1Cor. 13:1 RSV2nd edition. Zippered version(it still zips)
Three novels that need polishing are on my computer. I’m working on my memoir — A Horsewoman’s Vintage Vignettes, and I hope to publish them all someday and write more if time allows. Awaiting a final buffing are Joint Forces (a racetrack mystery in the vein of Dick Francis) and Time and Chance (a young boy’s coming-of-age story, an allegory on drug abuse).
I’ve had short stories and poems published in print and online magazines (Google me, I kid you not). But the greatest act I hope to achieve in this life. The only one that matters when my race has run its course — Is to love my fellow man. Bless you all, and happy reading and writing.
PS After writing this my son returned to the fold after walking the rocky road and life percolates on.
