Robert J Wiersema

The trouble with blogging is, perhaps not surprisingly, the doing it.  I'll have something that I want to write about, but it gets pushed to one side and before I know it, it just sort of vanishes into the mental ether.  Case in point: I had a wonderful trip to Galiano in November, with one of (if not THE) most intense readings I've ever done — for both myself and the audience — and I SO wanted to write about it, but the world got in the way.

So I'm not going to delay with this one.

Those of you who are friends on Facebook, or following me on Twitter, will recall a somewhat enigmatic note in December about having received an invitation for which I would need to buy a suit.  No, that invitation wasn't a summons, and I wasn't being buried.  I had, in fact, been invited by the BC Achievement Foundation to introduce Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown at the luncheon to award the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction: he had been shortlisted for his book The Boy in the Moon, along with Karen Connelly (Burmese Lessons), Eric Siblin (The Cello Suites) and Kenneth Whyte (The Uncrowned King).  I was honoured to be asked to participate, most especially because I adored Ian's book — I followed his series about life with his disabled son Walker in the Globe and Mail, and looked forward to the book through a couple of postponements.  And hey, flying over to Vancouver for lunch?  Always a good thing.

But that left the perennial question — what to wear?  I don't own a suit, and, really, have no intention of owning one.  (I DO own a tux, though, so I'm not a complete loss.)  Once I got past that issue — ie, fuck it, I'll wear something… presentable — I was able to look forward to the event.  (For the record, "presentable" ended up being a faded grey shirt, black jeans, leather jacket and Docs.)

I had NO idea, though, just how cool it would end up being.

I got up Friday morning and wrote my speech — yes, WROTE.  Generally (ie, ALL the time), I just wing it when I'm in front of an audience, whether I'm reading or introducing someone.  I much prefer the spontaneous, the unplanned.  But, I figured, this was a special, more formal occasion (and besides, I wouldn't be dressing up, so I wanted to give a bit of a favourable impression).

The lunch was at the Pan Pacific, a short walk from the seaplane terminal.  During the reception I talked to a lot of old friends and folks from the industry, including my editor, Anne Collins, who was at the ceremony becase she had edited three of the four shortlisted books (yup, a gasp would be apropriate here).  I also had a chance to touch base with Ian ahead of time, then it was on to lunch.

Lunch was… well, let's just say that I was seated at the head table, with Premier Campbell and his wife Nancy, Madam Justice Kathryn Neilson, former publisher of the Sun & Province Paddy Sherman, and former CBC icon Jugen Gothe, among others.  Premier Campbell reiterated what a fan he had been of Before I Wake (I just went looking for the original blogpost he wrote about the book, and found that it's listed under his favourite books on his Facebook profile…), and that he had bought a copy of The World More Full of Weeping, though he hasn't read it yet.  Which, disagree with his politics as I might, was pretty heady stuff.

The speech itself went spectacularly.  I've spoken to enough audiences to know when I've got them and when I don't, and I had this crowd from the slightly-off-colour joke that I led off with (which I won't reproduce here).  The response, after Ian was awarded the prize, was off-the-charts.  When the author you're talking about tells you he misted up, that's a good sign. When one of the jury members tells you that the speech nailed EXACTLY what he had felt about the book, that's a good sign.  (A sidenote on that — that jury member was Andreas Schroeder, who seemed touched when I mentioned how much his compliment meant to me, considering his reading in Agassiz was the first literary event I ever attended.)

And then, like a blur, I was back on a floatplane and, without any time seeming to have elapsed, taking Xander to dance class.

It was a wonderful, surreal day — lots of good conversations, VERY positive interest, and with good prosepcts for the future.  One doesn't get days like that very often — it's best to savour them when they come.  It's a long way from a ten-year-old kid watching a man read from a book he wrote (and thinking "I want to do that") to a guy in jeans breaking bread with the Premier…

(An aside — one of the unforeseen benefits of actually WRITING a piece is that it can then be shared.  So now, for those of you interested, here's the speech that I gave:

A few years ago now – five, I guess – I spent a weekend in the summer following Bruce Springsteen around the Pacific Northwest.  I’ve done this, well, more often than I care to admit in such august company, but this trip, those shows, have really stuck with me.

One moment in particular stands out in my memory.  Springsteen was introducing one of his songs by talking about his childhood, his parents and grandparents and extended family, and how his own life had changed when he became a father.  He said – and I’ve checked the bootlegs, so I know the quote is correct – he said, “The first thing you realize when you have your kids is that there’s this feeling that appears in your gut that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, no train you wouldn’t step in front of, to keep them safe.  And that’s a life sentence.”

That line was one of two that kept repeating themselves in the back of my mind as I was reading Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon.  Parental love is an indomitable force. We’ve all heard of situations where this isn’t the case, but we’ve heard of those situations because they’re the exception, not the rule.  Generally, parental love is one of the strongest forces in the universe.  It is fierce, and proud, and deep.  It is also, even at the best of times, tinged with sadness.  We know, as parents, that there will come a time where we will be unable to protect our children, where we will be unable to keep them safe.  We can only hope that we have guided them, and given them the tools and the skills they need to protect themselves.

Ian Brown and his wife Johanna were stripped even of that hope.  When he was seven months old, their son Walker was diagnosed with CFC, a genetic mutation so rare it has been called an “orphan syndrome”: only about 100 people in the world have been diagnosed with it.  Walker is developmentally delayed, and incapable of speech. He is hypersensitive to touch, but he has to be restrained to prevent him from hitting and kicking himself.  He has a heart murmur, and his vision and hearing are compromised.  He can’t chew or swallow easily.

As Brown writes, “Sometimes watching Walker is like looking at the moon: you see the face of the man in the moon, yet you know there’s actually no man there.  … All I really want to know is what goes on in his off-shaped head, in his jumped-up heart.  But everytime I ask, he somehow persuades me to look into my own.”

Brown, who is one of Canada’s best known and most well-respected journalists, and the winner of numerous National Newspaper and National Magazine awards, first looked into his own head and heart in public in a series of articles he wrote for the Globe and Mail.  Those pieces drew an unprecedented response from readers.  I remember well, Saturday after Saturday, sitting down with my Globe, reading about Ian and Walker, looking across the living room at Xander, my son, and thinking “There but for the grace go I.”

Those articles grew into The Boy in the Moon, which is shortlisted for British Columbia’s National Award for Non-Fiction this afternoon. It is a brilliant, staggering, humbling and heartbreaking book.  Brown writes with sharp, occasionally disturbing candour and forthrightness.  He does not attempt to minimize the difficulties and frustrations of life as Walker’s father, nor to apologize or explain away his occasional stumbles and failings.  He is frank about the ongoing toll that Walker takes on his life, and on his family.  He does not, however, attempt to minimize the moments of joy, moments of connection, moments where he catches a glimpse of the boy in the moon.  Any parent, any reader, will relate to the hardships, and to the moments of sorrow-streaked joy.  “There but for the grace go I”.

The Boy in The Moon is a chronicle of Brown’s attempts not only to “deal with” his disabled son, but to find his meaning, and to find, for Walker, a place in the world.  Through this, Brown is also attempting to find himself, to find his own meaning, and his own place.  It is, at its core, an attempt to answer the most ancient of questions: what makes us human?

Brown writes of Walker, “He made me stretch for him; for inexplicable reasons I am grateful to him for that, always will be.  Where would I have gone, without him?  He was such a little boy, featherweight, dependent: whoever was with him was his world, and I loved being his world, if he let me.”

It was William Wordsworth, not Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the other line that haunted me as I was reading The Boy in the Moon: “The child is father to the man.”

He is, indeed.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Brown.