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Thanks to author, Kathy
Shaidle for sharing her writings.
Kathy Shaidle was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1964, and was
diagnosed with SLE and myositis at age 27. Her first collection
of poetry, Lobotomy Magnificat, was recently published by Oberon
Press. The above article originally appeared in Catholic New
Times as part of her popular series on living with lupus. These
columns received four Canadian Church Press Awards; they will
be published as a book-length collection called God & the
Single Girl in the fall of 1998. This will be the first lupus
memoir written by a Canadian. For more information about this
book, call Northstone Publishing at 1-800-299-2926 or visit their
website at www.northstone.com
Where the Clocks
And The People Don't Work
by Kathy Shaidle
A
Monday morning in January. Subzero. Six inches of snow. Not the
day I'd have chosen for my first annual Disability interview.
I cursed (under by breath) as I slipped along unshovelled Parliament
Street. At the taunting, wobbling panhandlers (still celebrating
New Year's?) encamped, like a stranded Arctic expedition, at
the corner of Gerrard. And (aloud) at the speeding car that grazed
the stroller being pushed by the bundled -up mother beside me
as we were about to cross that street.
When I arrived at the Family Benefits office, I shoved my papers
to a harried worker through a slot in the bulletproof glass.
It was 9:50, but the clock that hung behind her read 11:47, and
remained in that state of karma-breeding maya for the duration
of my visit.
The other waiting clients seemed just as broken. One longhaired,
tattooed man knocked persistently on the glass partition, demanding
an immediate replacement for a lost cheque. Refusing to believe
that cheques weren't printed on the premises, he just kept spelling
out his name, letter by letter, and rattling off his Social Insurance
& caseload numbers, as if they constituted a mystical lock
combination, or magic spell which, if recited often enough, would
grant him his impossible wish.
The rest of us were mute, save for the odd sniffle. The downcast
crowd, with their makeshift vinyl winterwear & mismatched
mittens & casts & canes, resembled a none-too-successful
junior hockey team, waiting for the bus back to Orillia, or wherever
home was.
Bus terminals are terminally pathetic, but at least they have
coffee & donuts. And clocks that work. And the promise of
eventual departure.
I’m grateful to live in Canada, where a doctor I didn’t
pay could convince a government I didn’t vote for to give
me money for doing nothing more spectacular or productive that
just getting well.
And I hate it. I hated that office. And as ashamed as I am to
admit it, most of all I hated the shabby, beaten-down clients.
Any myself. Because that morning I was, by implication, "one
of them.."
I suppose I always have been, having lived below the poverty
line much of my life -- a fact which shocked my hardworking mom
and I when the Single Mother With Child level was announced one
night on the news. I was nineteen then, and equally amazed a
few months later, when my college loans officer asked if my mother
had "left out a digit" in the form-box marked "Income."
I’d never thought I was poor.
And I thought of my colleagues at Catholic New Times, just a
few blocks south of the Disability Office. When they’d hired
me, years ago, they’d apologized about the modest salary.
Why? Given my lifelong frugality, it was more money than I knew
how to spend--even in high-priced Toronto. I still didn’t
think I was poor.
And still didn’t when I laid out those CNT articles about
"solidarity with the poor." To me, that meant just
about anything--except being actually poor
What gets me now isn’t my income (interestingly, it’s
virtually the same as my old CNT salary). It’s that today,
I have a worker instead of being one.
This isn’t what I wanted to do when I grew up; showing my
bankbook to a total stranger under the staring eye of a stupid
broken clock.
More importantly, this isn’t who I wanted to be. I’d
gone to all the right rallies & read all the right books.
And had turned into just another loser with a superiority complex,
with more compunction than compassion.
When my interview was over, I hoped for a sudden deus ex machina,
a lightning-flash vision that would reveal, through my tears,
Christ in the faces of the frozen, unblinking clients I was leaving
behind. But instead of God’s voice, the only sound was the
scratchy bellow of another client’s name being mispronounced
over the loudspeaker. And all I saw & felt & smelt was
fear & disgust.
I wanted to run all the way back to my flat, but the snow was
too deep & my home was too far.
Continued
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