For Joshua Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  for JOSHUA

  “I hope that when Joshua does eventually read this book, he has the maturity to appreciate his father’s act of bravery, and to learn from it. For the rest of us, For Joshua is a fascinating and moving portrayal of one man’s search for his heritage, his true place in the world, and in the process, his discovery of himself.”

  —Hamilton Spectator

  “The writer who did not know himself—and who blamed ‘the white man’ for his troubles—has become the man who understands how things happened and who resolves to go forward. This well-written and perceptive book shows that it is possible for aboriginal people—for any person—to get back from there to here.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “Real … honest …Those familiar with the native community will be nodding their heads in understanding. Those not very familiar will get a 228-page snapshot of the darker side … a darker side with a light in the distance that Wagamese seems to be constantly trying to find.… Wagamese writes his story with the spirit of a poet. In particular, the presence of Charles Bukowski can be seen coaching his prose from the sidelines as Wagamese revisits old haunts.”

  —Drew Hayden Taylor, The Globe and Mail

  “Paper-cut sharp, linear slices of a life lived in omission.… It’s a deep, dark path Wagamese sets out on, one he admits is an ongoing process, a circle he learns more from with each revolution.”

  —Georgia Straight

  “Graceful and reverberating.… A harrowing life story but also a ceremony, a gathering of traditional knowledge, and a love letter across the generations, For Joshua is a book we need, a book we can all treasure.”

  —Warren Cariou, author of Lake of the Prairies

  An absence of identity, and the struggle to attain it, lies at the heart of this powerful autobiography, in which Wagamese lays bare a disastrous life.… Dark and disturbing, still [Joshua] brims with emotion, touching chords of sympathy, even when empathy fails.”

  —The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)

  ALSO BY RICHARD WAGAMESE

  Keeper’n Me

  A Quality of Light

  Copyright © Richard Wagamese 2002

  Anchor Canada edition 2003

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Wagamese, Richard

  For Joshua : an Ojibway father teaches his son / Richard Wagamese.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-67479-9

  1. Wagamese, Richard–Correspondence. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)–Correspondence. 3. Wagamese, Richard–Alcohol use.

  4. Ojibwa Indians. I. Title.

  PS8595.A363Z547 2003 C813′.54 C2003-900638-7

  PR9199.3.W316Z497 2003

  Published in Canada by

  Anchor Canada, a division of

  Random House of Canada Limited

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  I was created to be Anishanabe-niini—Indian Man. Thus, I was born Ojibway. I emerged onto Mother Earth as a human being gifted with this identity—male Ojibway human being. Since 1955, learning to be who I was created to be has been my journey, my trial, my ongoing process of creation.

  This thing we call Native, Indian, First Nations, Aboriginal, Indigenous, or Original Peoples cannot be found in any one place. It is a cosmology, a belief, a way of being, unconstrained by geography, politics or even time itself. It is too immense to be contained in one simple definition. Only with the utmost simplification can one say, “This is what it means to be Indian.”

  The lives of Native people in Canada are ones of endless toil, frustration and heartache. This they have borne with great good humour, grace, and dignity. To say that I am one of them is my greatest pride.

  But I am only one—and this is but the story of one Native life, as experienced against the flux and flow of Canada over forty-six years. If it teaches, that is grace. If it evokes empathy, that is blessing. Should it enable one person, Native or not, to step forward towards who they were created to be, that would be reward enough for one Native life.

  R.W.

  for JOSHUA

  Once there was a lonely little boy. He had no idea where he belonged in the world. The boy had no knowledge about where his family was or where he’d come from. So he began to dream. He imagined a glorious life with a mother and father, sisters and brothers, grandfathers and grandmothers. He put his dreams down on paper and filled the pages with drawings, stories, poems, and songs of the people he missed so much but could not remember. But he always awoke, the stories and poems always ended, and the songs faded off into the night.

  As he grew, the boy carried this emptiness around inside him. Everywhere he went, it was his constant companion. Many people took turns caring for the boy, and many people tried to fill that hole, but no one ever could. Through all the homes he drifted the boy began to realize that all that ever really changed about him were his clothes.

  One day, the people around him said that he was old enough to go and find there. It was a magical place, this place called there, because everyone got to choose where there would be for them.

  But finding there was difficult. The boy took many roads, many turns, many long lonely journeys trying to find it. He grew older. He lived in many places and with many different people. But inside himself he was still a lonely little boy who could only ever dream dreams, create stories and poems and songs about the kingdom of there.

  Then one day he met a kind, gentle old man on one of the twisted, narrow roads he was travelling. This old man had been everywhere and seen many things. He was wise and liked the young man very much. As they sat together by the side of that long, narrow road, the old man began to tell him stories about all of his travels, and especially about how good it felt to return from those journeys.

  “What is return?” the young man asked.

  “Why, it’s to get back to where you started, where you belong,” the old man said.

  “What does it mean to belong?”

  The old man smiled kindly and said, “To belong is to feel right. It’s a place where everything fits.”

  “How do you get there?” the young man asked.

  “Well, getting anywhere means you have to make a journey. But on this journey, to find where you belong, you really only have to travel one direction,” the old man said.

  “What direction is that?”

  “The toughest direction of all,” the old man said. “You have to travel inside yourself, not down long, narrow roads like this one.”

  “Does it hurt?” the young man asked.

  “Sometimes. But anyone who makes that journey finds out that no matter how hard the journey is, getting there is the biggest comfort of all.”

  The young man thought about the old man’s words. They were mysterious and strange. In fact, they weren’t answers to his questions at all, just more and more questions lined up one behind the other as far as he allowed his mind to wander. But there was something in the gentle way the old man had of talking that made him feel safe—a trust that everything he said was true. Even if he couldn’t understand it all.

  “Can I get there from here?” he asked finally.

  The old man smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder. “Here is the only place you can start from.”

 
I was that lonely little boy, Joshua, and I was the lonely young man who tried so hard to belong. Like him, I have travelled a lot of hard roads searching for the one thing that would allow me to feel safe, secure, and welcome. Some of them led to prison, poverty, drunkenness, drugs, depression, isolation, and thoughts of suicide. But many were glorious roads to travel—the ones that led to sobriety, friendship, music, writing, and the empowering traditional ways of the Ojibway people to whom you and I belong.

  There were many teachers on those roads. Always there was someone somewhere who offered things meant to teach me how to see the world and my place in it. But like most of us, I only ever trusted my mind—and my mind always needed proof. The sad thing is that when you spend all your time in a search for proof, you miss the magic of the journey, and I was on those roads a long, long time before I learned the most important lesson of all: that the journey is the teaching, and the proof of the truthfulness of all things comes secretly, mysteriously, when you find yourself smiling when you used to cry, and staying staunchly in place when you used to run away.

  I spent many years afraid of the questions. I was afraid of the questions because I was afraid of the answers, and that fear kept me on narrow, twisted roads deep into my life. My greatest fear was that after the search, after the most arduous of journeys, I would discover, at the end, a me I didn’t like, the me that I was always convinced I was: an unlovable, inadequate, weak, unworthy human being. And at that point of discovery I would be alone. Alone with myself. Alone with my fears. Alone with the one person I had spent so much time and energy trying to run away from.

  When I was scared I ran, from darkness to darkness. But flight is futile when the bitterest pain is the memory of the people that get left behind. The innocent ones bearing the hurts and disappointments of our leaving, standing by the wayside watching as we disappear down another sullen highway. They never really understand departure. They can’t. Because we are incapable of explanation. We only know that we need to move on, desperate gypsies seeking the solace of flight, the vague, lingering hope that geography, in some way, might save us.

  You are one of the innocent ones. You are six years old at this writing and because of the choices I made during the part of my journey since your birth, we are not together. I chose drink and isolation to deal with my pain, my fear, and the resultant overwhelming sense of inadequacy, and the effect of those choices is a life where son and father cannot live together—perhaps not ever.

  Today the ache of your absence is hard.

  Because I was there at the very moment you entered the world. I stood beside your mother when she delivered you. I received you from the nurse and held you, afraid that I might press too hard and hurt you, or not press firmly enough and let you tumble from my grasp. I held you like the treasure that you are. When I looked at you that April morning I found myself grateful for a Creator that could fashion such a magnificent being, such a beautiful boy, such a gift to me. Your arrival filled my heart with joy, and it was so great it spilled over into the empty side of my chest and made me more—bigger, stronger, more alive. I didn’t want to give you back to them when they asked to weigh and measure you. I didn’t want to give you back because I didn’t want to surrender that feeling your arrival had created in me.

  For a time I felt like a father. I’d never been one before and learning to change your diapers, rock you to sleep, feed you, and get you to giggle were private joys that I still carry in my heart. They are my pocket treasures and even though they’ve been worn smooth from handling over the years, it’s comforting to know that they are there when I need them.

  You and I would wander along Danforth Avenue in Toronto. I carried you on my chest in your carrier and talked to you about where we were going and what we were seeing. We got a lot of strange looks from the people we passed because I was not ashamed to talk to you out loud, laugh, and coax you to make some happy noise. There was a bookstore we’d go into almost every day and I’d read to you from my favourite volumes. We’d go to a small park and I’d sing to you as we swung slowly back and forth on the swing set in the playground. You used to love that. And as we moved together through the great, grand noise that is Toronto I heard nothing but you and felt nothing but the warmth of your body nestled against mine. I can’t enter that city now without a feeling of incredible loss or joy for you.

  Drinking is why we are separated.

  That’s the plain and simple truth of it. I was a drunk and never faced the truth about myself—that I was a drunk. Booze owned me. I offered myself to it when I was a young man and it was only too glad to accept me into the ranks of its worshippers, the ones who are willing to pay with everything for one more round. I drank because it made things disappear. Things like shyness, inadequacy, low self-worth—and fear. I drank out of the fears I’d carried all my life, the fears I could never tell anyone about, the fears that ate away at me constantly, even in the happiest moments of my life, and your mother did the only thing that she knew to do and that was to take you away where you could be safe. I don’t blame her for that. I’m thankful in fact. I drank on and off, like I’d done all my life, and your mother grew tired of my constantly returning to the bottle. She refused to let me see you. When I finally got sober I knew I had responsibilities, but by then we’d been apart more than two years. This book is my way of living up to some of that responsibility.

  As Ojibway men, we are taught that it is the father’s responsibility to introduce our children to the world. In the old traditional way, an Ojibway man would take his child with him on his journeys along the trap lines, on hunting trips, fishing or just on long rambles across the land. The father would point out the things he saw on those outings and tell his child the name of everything he saw, explain its function, its place in Creation. Even though the child was an infant and incapable of understanding, the traditional man would do this thing. He would explain that the child was a brother or a sister to everything and that there was no need to fear anything because they were all relations.

  The father would perform this ritual so the child would feel that it belonged. He would do this so that the child would never feel separated from the heartbeat of Mother Earth. So that children would always feel that heartbeat in the soles of their feet. He would do it so that kinship was one of the first teachings the child received. The father would do this to honour the ancient ways that taught us that we are all, animate and inanimate alike, living on the one pure breath with which the Creator gave life to the Universe.

  And he did it for himself.

  He performed this task so he could learn that devotion is a duty driven by love, one which has its beginnings in the earliest stage of life, and that teaching, preparing a child for the world, begins then as well.

  This book is my way of performing that traditional duty. I do not know if or when we will be together. Because of the way I chose to live my life, the price we’ve paid is separation. I am neither a hunter nor a trapper. I am not a teacher, healer, drummer, singer, or dancer. Nor am I a wise man. But I offer this book as a means of fulfilling that traditional responsibility. I want to introduce you to the world, to Creation, to the landscape I have walked, to some of the people who have shaped my life. All I have to offer is all that I have seen, all the varied people I became, and maybe you will glean from all of it an idea of the father that my life and my choices have denied you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Initiation

  I - Innocence

  II - Humility

  III - Introspection

  IV - Wisdom

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  INITIATION

  I was thirty-two years old the summer I met John. I remember feeling like a much older man throughout that spring and early summer. I was weary from the effort of trying to hang on. I’d been hanging on for a
long time by then. Meeting him was like the feeling you get after a long portage, when you see open water again and feel the relief and the expectation of a better journey.

  My first marriage had ended two years before, and I felt like a failure. I felt there was nothing I could do, nothing I could build that would last, nothing I could choose that would bring me happiness. So I’d spent two years trying to get as drunk as I could so that I could forget. Two years choosing numbness over feeling. Isolation over the tug of life. When you give yourself up to it the way I did those two years, liquor becomes something you immerse yourself in, not just something you drink. And when you drink, you drink down.

  There’s a belief in the beginning, with that first swallow, that you’re elevating yourself somehow, lifting yourself above the problems, the pain, confusion, and fear that live in your belly. You drink to drown these things, to fill your belly with courage, your mind with painless thoughts, your spirit with abandon—and you believe you raise yourself above it all with one liquid rush. But you always drink down. Because when you give yourself to alcohol, in the complete way that you do to love, sometimes, or to God, you surrender the right to innocence, to humanity, and you forfeit the permission to enter those glittering palaces filled with the laughing, energetic folk you crave to be among. Instead, you learn to pay the most expensive dues in the world and join the club of drunks and sots who drink the way you do, or preferably even worse.

  You drink your way down to dank, dark rooms where conversation is a mumbled order for one more round, and downward further to one-room mansions where a jug is the only furniture needed, and then downward to the riverbanks, back alleys, and isolated places where solitude is a virtue. You drink down from languid sips from splendid glasses to furtive gulping from cheap bottles. You drink down from Scotch and vodka to mouthwash, shaving lotion, rubbing alcohol, and Lysol. You drink down to the point where you forget everything about being human and you learn to live for the burn in the belly that says you can last one more hour, one more jug, maybe one more day.