How Not To Run A B&B: A Woman's True Memoir

by Bobby Hutchinson

  “Of course not,” I assured her. “My second husband had Parkinson’s disease. He wouldn’t hear of having anyone else help him but me, and if I hadn’t divorced him, I felt I would have died. I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I did. Taking responsibility for someone else’s problems is not only arrogant, but self defeating for both of you.”

  She shot me a grateful look. “My life, it has not been happy, or my mother’s life, either. And I worry that without family here to visit her, she will not be well treated. The rest home is government, not private. So every year I save my money and fly to visit her, although she knows me no longer.”

  Ingenuously, she told me how much her pension was, and I could only imagine the small and large sacrifices she must have to make to afford plane fare and lodging.

  “My mother died two years ago,” I told her. “I know how difficult it is to see your mother slipping away.”

  “She lived in Vancouver, your mother?”

  I shook my head. “In a little coal mining town about a twelve hour drive from here, in interior British Columbia. The town where I was born, where my brother and sister still live, and most of my nieces and nephews and cousins. I was the only one who moved away from there.”

  “I think you are very brave, Bobby.”

  “I didn’t feel that way during the time my mother was alive. I felt like a coward much of the time. As the eldest daughter, I was nominated to do the difficult things when I went home for a visit, like telling her she would have to give up her driver’s license, move into a senior’s home. And I would tremble, telling her. My mother was not an easy going lady. She had this way of looking at me that made me feel like a child who’d misbehaved.

  “Ahhh, I understand. We were not always—how do you say? Companionable? My mother and I.”

  “Compatible. My mother and I weren’t either. She was difficult, my mother.”

  “And mine. I think all mothers are so, no?”

  I grinned. “Except for thee and me.”

  But Katie had no children. She’d been married twice, same as me, and both had ended in divorce. We nibbled cookies, traded war stories, and agreed we weren’t going to try again at the marriage sweepstakes.

  Katie was the ideal house guest. Quiet and retiring, she kept both her room and the upstairs bathroom pristine. She was gone early each day, spending her time at the hospital. She came home in the evening, drawn and tired.

  I frequently invited her to share a meal with me, but she never would. She insisted she’d eaten with her mother at the hospital. I guessed that she didn’t want to feel indebted. Or maybe it was just too stressful, having to speak English and eat at the same time.

  She adored my back garden, however, and would spend quiet hours sitting on a lawn chair by the pond, reading. But of course, Louie interrupted her at regular intervals with tales of Sammy’s prowess and rights of ownership to my garden. I’d warned her about him and suggested she might not want to go over and see his house. Early on, I’d been lured into a tour, ostensibly to see his plants, which ended up in his basement where he began showing me photos of nudes. I’d only lived in the neighborhood a week at that stage, and it dawned on me that no one knew where the hell I was. I doubted Louie was a murderer, but if he was, my body would probably never be found. Breathing heavily, he flipped the pages of the book, and I could see they were art studies instead of hard core porn, but still. There were plenty of boobs and pubic hair on display.

  “That’s not appropriate,” I barked in a trembling voice, edging towards the stairs and the door to freedom. I never ventured into his house again.

  Katie clucked her tongue when I told her that. She was coolly polite to Louie, but I could see he irritated her more and more as the days went by, and finally she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She exploded in my kitchen one evening, in a quiet, reasonable, Katie fashion, of course.

  Why was Louie allowed to roam around the neighborhood, disturbing everyone, she asked me? Why was he not in a government home with other people like himself? In Germany it would be taken care of. Why did I allow him free run of my garden, how could I be so eternally patient with him? Why didn’t I tell his guardian, Caroline, once and for all that he was not to be in my back garden all the time? I could put a lock on the garden gate. I could forbid him to trespass on my property. He was—she paused, searching for an English word—he was a disturbance.

  I agreed. Louie was indeed a disturbance, a major one. So then I told her the story of my son, David.

  Dave was born profoundly deaf, and when he was little, wearing his hearing aids and making the loud discordant sounds the deaf often make, well meaning people often told me I should put him in a home.

  “He is in a home,” I’d respond, wanting to hit them, wanting to scream, He’s in my home. I’m his mother, can’t you see how much you’re hurting me when you say this about my baby, my beloved son?

  Dave was now in his early forties, a skilled carpenter and handyman, married to a woman who was also profoundly deaf. He has two beautiful daughters, both of whom are hearing. He’s a fantastic father, a reasonably happy, functional man who’s somehow learned to survive quite well in a hearing world.

  But how was I to know, all those years ago, that things would turn out almost okay? A piece of me had been wounded by deafness, was wounded anew every single day once I knew the name of the calamity that had befallen my child.

  “He’s not mentally challenged, like Louie is,” I told Katie. “But Dave is handicapped. And like all handicapped people, life has been tough for him. He was bullied and teased as a child. I remember when he was about seven, a group of boys chased him and put lit firecrackers down his jacket. They figured he couldn’t tell anyone. He had a hard time in school because he was dyslexic as well as deaf. Although he’s immensely capable, there are a great number of jobs he can’t apply for because they require hearing, or reading skills. He’s just--different. He talks and lip reads, but some people avoid him because they’re afraid they won’t be able to understand him.”

  Katie was listening, looking at me with the expression I’d come to recognize when I told someone about David. It was a combination of pity, compassion, and a sort of shamefaced relief—this was a situation up with which they didn’t have to put. It was like I had cancer and they didn’t. They never knew what to say.

  I’d planned to stop there, just leave it as it was, but I suddenly got the bus syndrome. You know, you sit down beside a stranger for a long journey and after a few hours you pour out stuff you’d never tell the people who think they know you.

  “I found out he was deaf when he was fourteen months old,” I said, remembering the medicinal smell of the doctor’s white coat, the rank odor on his breath from the cigarette he’d smoked before he came into the stuffy little room where I sat clutching my baby son on my lap. I clearly remember how my knees shook underneath David’s diapered bottom, how my belly gurgled because I hadn’t been able to eat since I sat in that soundproof cubicle and smiled at my son as noises that hurt my ears didn’t make him blink or turn.

  “Your baby is profoundly deaf,” he’d told me in a detached voice. I started to cry, because I knew now this was forever. David wouldn’t get over it, not like a cold. And neither would I.

  “You can cry for the rest of your life, but it won’t help your son,” the doctor warned me in a tired voice. “He needs someone to teach him language.”

  So I took my baby home and did my best. Isn’t that what everyone does, the best they know how at the time?

  That had been thirty odd years ago. I smiled at Katie, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking.

  “David was the most engaging, good natured baby, smiling at everyone, mimicking facial expressions and actions. He had a perfectly square little face and a wild crop of thick brown hair that grew straight forward, and his eyes were different colors, one blue, one brown. He was my middle child. I was twenty one when he was born. I’d married at eighteen and had my first, perfect son te
n months later. My husband drank and I was beginning to realize that his abject apologies and promises that he’d never hit me again were not to be believed. For a long time I thought David was deaf because his father knocked me down and kicked me in the stomach when I was five months pregnant.”

  It had taken me a long time to forgive not only the man, but the person I’d been then. “I was such a dumb girl,” I told Katie. “Until Dave was diagnosed, I didn’t even know that babies could be deaf. I thought deafness was something that only happened to old people.” I also thought alcoholism was curable, and promises were promises. I did know the earth was round, but that was about the extent of my worldly knowledge.

  Katie reached across and laid her slender hand on my big one. Pat pat, pat pat. “I am sorry this happened to you, Bobby.”

  “Thank you, but you see, the deafness turned out to be a gift,” I corrected her. “I was an impatient person, and it taught me patience. I was proud, and it taught me humility.” It also forced me to begin searching for a spiritual path that made sense to me, but I didn’t tell Katie that. Time enough in the rest of her four weeks here for me to burst out with my spiritual Tourettes.

  “Louie,” she said after a long silence. “He also was born this way?”

  “I heard it was a shortage of oxygen at birth, but I don’t know for sure.” I also knew it didn’t matter. David’s deafness had been studied by geneticists, given a fancy label, documented in something called the Green Journal. All that medical notoriety didn’t make him any less deaf.

  What is, is.

  “Louie’s mother lived to a hundred and two, she died five years before I bought this house,” I confided. “Louie was an only child, born late in her life. The father died when Louie was young. So there was only him and his mother. She wasn’t always kind to him. Caroline says she made him wash all the walls of the house over and over, until even the plaster was ruined. But she also told Caroline she couldn’t die until she was sure he’d be cared for, safe in the house where he’d grown up. So Caroline agreed to be his guardian, and Louie’s gone on living next door.” I grinned at her. “More or less. Whenever he’s not roaming in my garden.”

  Katie didn’t smile. “I understand. I thank you for explaining.”

  “It’s just that I know exactly how it was for them. For Louie and his mother. Especially for his mother.”

  “I hope you will forgive me for what I said.”

  I put my arms around her and hugged her stiff, slight body. “No forgiveness is necessary, because no sin was committed. No sin ever is.”

  My belief system embraces the concept that there’s only one of us here. Everything outside of me is a projection of myself, of some emotion or action that I really don’t want to admit is really in me, something I need to look at, acknowledge, forgive. Projection is perception. As I see you, I see myself. As I condemn you, I condemn myself.

  So the only logical course of action, because I also believe that all of this is a dream, has to be forgiveness for whatever hasn’t been done. It couldn’t have been, because this is a dream, right? When we awaken from a dream, it fades away, it isn’t real. All I needed to do was concentrate on loving whatever was in front of me—at this moment, Katie.

  “Will you have some homemade soup and bread with me?” I knew she’d say no, she always did, but I went on asking anyway.

  Her rare smile flashed, and she was momentarily illuminated. “Thank you, yes. I would very much enjoy.”

  After that, we often had dinner together.

  When Katie’s visit came to an end, she asked if she might have a copy of a picture I have on my wall. It was taken at Easter when I was a year and a half old.

  My mother’s hobby was photography, and she’d posed me sitting outside in a little chair, wearing a smart bonnet and matching coat. My fat sausage legs stick straight out in front of me. They’re encased in white stockings, my feet in black boots. I’m staring seriously down at a single egg in a bowl on my lap. The photo is black and white. I look pretty much like a dork, a fat Buddha baby studying its navel.

  Regardless, I had a copy made of the photo and gave it Katie, totally baffled as to why she’d want it. We both cried when she left.

  Months later, I received a letter from her, with several hundred euros tucked inside, along with a photo of a wall in her house.

  She’d put my picture at the top of a grouping of family photos. Next to me was Katie when she was little, wrapped in a tiny fur coat, scowling out at the world. On that wall in that house in Germany, we are sisters.

  I think the lesson here is that we never know what anything is for. In telling Katie about David, I clarified for myself the mixed feelings I have about Louie.

  What I do know for sure is that it’s never about money. Every year since then, Katie has sent me a Christmas card with a lovely letter, and a hundred Euros.

  I send them back to her, telling her to put the money in a special fund so she can come and stay with me again.

  But her mother’s dead now, and Katie isn’t well. It’s unlikely she’ll ever come back to Canada, and I don’t like to travel. So I doubt I shall ever go to Germany.

  It doesn’t matter.

  We had our time together. I’m convinced the guests who come to the Blue Collar have a contract with me, made long ago. We have things between us to settle, to forgive, to understand. I don’t know what those things are, or why they’re important.

  I only know that those who are meant to come to you will come. Your job as host is simply to offer a comfortable pillow topped bed, a lavish breakfast, an attentive, listening ear, and as much non judgment and forgiveness as you can muster up on any given day.

  Sometimes—rarely, and only when it’s relevant--you can offer snippets of your so called life. But keep it brief and topical. Keep in mind that people don’t want to listen. They’re often desperate, instead, to be heard.

  Listening is your job. It should also be your pleasure.

  SPIRTUAL TOURETTES

  OR ANOTHER VERSION OF THE BANG THEORY

  (I’m nowhere near smart enough to have figured this out on my own. There’s a great book called The End of Reincarnation, by Gary Renard, that explains it much better than this.)

  Before the beginning, all was joyous extension. No beginnings and endings, only eternity. Created in the Creator’s image, we were unflawed oneness, existing in boundless, unimaginable ecstasy. What happened next didn’t really happen at all. As in a dream, it only appeared to occur to one small aspect of the Whole. It was a tiny, mad idea, something like, what would it be like if I went off and played by myself?

  The Creator didn’t respond to it, because the idea was not of perfect oneness. And what is not perfect oneness cannot exist in the Creator’s eternity. But in that cosmic instant of seeming separation, we fell asleep, and in our dreams duality was born, and the ego.

  Deep inside, we have the memory of perfect oneness, calling us to return, to waken from the dream, but one thing led to another, and waking up became more and more difficult for us as we created time and projection and individuality, which seemed to produce more and more aspects of ourselves.

  Because with that tiny, mad idea, fear was also born, the horrific feeling that we’d done something terribly wrong arose in us. Separating was monumental, and we would be punished for it. And so the ego rose to the occasion, saying, “You’re in big trouble now. You’ve pissed off the Creator, and It’s going to get you for this. But I know a place the Creator isn’t even aware of. You can hide there, you’ll be safe there.” Other, wiser voices said, Don’t be silly. There is no such thing as punishment. You know you are Love, pure and simple.

  But our fear was overwhelming, and everything was strange and topsy turvy, so we agreed to side with the ego. And in that instant, this universe was created. That was the Big Bang, and we made earth and stars and animals and guilt and sin and all that we mistakenly label reality.

  And thus we became enmeshed in density, in duality
, in this pesky dream of separation, and in this entire imaginary creation of ours, this universe, which has absolutely nothing to do with our Creator. It—He, She, All That Is--isn’t even aware of the existence of this crazy place. How could It be, when It is perfect Love? As for us, we are not really here at all. We’re safe at Home, but we’re having trouble waking up.

  The events in a dream are of no consequence, because they’re not really happening. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for us to endure the seemingly endless lifetimes we spend here, or the pain we inflict on ourselves because we feel we deserve it and more for that first mistake, because the events in this dream feel real to us, and the wheel of reincarnation is not easy to get off. It has been done, by Jesus, and Buddha, and Krishnamurti, and countless others, all of whom illustrated that it can be done by you and I, by the application of true forgiveness—by totally accepting that you haven’t done anything to me at all, or I to you. How could we hurt one another if this is a dream, and you, my beloved, are just another extension of myself? You are giving me a gift by allowing me to choose forgiveness—Love—instead of blame.

  Every single thing that appears to happen to us is really an opportunity, another chance to change, not the world, but the way we view the world. My choice is to see you as myself.

  This is my belief system, and it works for me. The only true test of any spiritual concept is whether or not it brings joy and peace and comfort when we find our baby is deaf, or our mother is dying. I’d never presume to say, this is right for you. For me, it keeps me on the straight and narrow. It gives me direction.

  I’m trying to apply it. I’ve been trying on an hourly basis for maybe twenty years. Most days I make it to noon without judging. I’d like to think I’m getting better at it, but I’m reminded pretty often of how far there is still to go. And reminded as well that angels fly because they take themselves lightly.