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One nurse’s journey: now available

What a proud day! In hand is our first title published for a new author: she’s sweet and scrappy, courageous and honest, just like her story. I can’t wait to introduce them both.

When Freddie Gardner Played is a memoir of Mary Sheehan’s three years in nursing school, 1951-1954. It’s smooth with nostalgia and romance, yet gritty with the harsh realities of the healing professions – the injured children, the patients who did not survive, and the personal challenges that befell the close-knit group of girls who toiled over books and on their feet in a quest for the coveted white cap and black band. The story takes us through the hallways and into the wards of Aberdeen Hospital and its nursing school, but also on trips to downtown New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, for shopping and cherry Cokes, on a hitchhiking journey to the shore for swimming, and back to the farmland of the author’s childhood and her early dreams of becoming a doctor. Why did she become a nurse instead? Did she regret her choice? The author shares plainly and simply the knowledge she gained in medicine, and of herself, and the special conversation with a patient that inspired her journey and the title of her book.

Now, about Mary. She was Mary Foote, 19, when she began her nursing training in 1951. She is now Mary Sheehan, married to her high school sweetheart, mother of five, and grandmother of five. She served in the nursing profession for more than 30 years, until a diagnosis of non-malignant brain tumours ended her nursing career. She underwent four brain surgeries in the early 1990s and began writing in her recovery, dwtermined to preserve her memories in case subsequent surgeries or tumours erased them. As it turns out, her condition is now stable and her notes have become a book. She is delighted and, quite frankly, so am I. After publishing three titles of my own, this is our copany’s first forray into the publishing of another and I have to say, the only excitement that can match seeing your own book emerge from the box is making that happen for someone else.

When Freddie Gardner Played is a snapshot of a bygone era, a tribute to nurses, and a labour of love. It is now available for purchase through my website. And it remains an affirmation of why my 30-day KISS last month was so important, and a reminder of why I can never again let myself come last in my life. By stepping back and cooling the burnout, I had the energy to get this book to print, and have the enthusiasm now to help Mary share it with her audience. I am now, just a little, looking forward to doing the same thing soon with my own book.

Thanks for sharing! Talk to you soon.

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Lessons from a Dingbat

Another piece of childhood was buried this weekend with the passing of Jean Stapleton. God love her, she made it to 90 after a career in a profession known to take more than it gives. Jean’s characters on stage and screen were rich, vivid and plentiful, but to me and millions of fans, she is best remembered for the life she breathed into Edith Bunker.

I was 8 years old when I first met Edith. Our black-and-white TV got two channels, and one night a week, All in the Family became my family. I didn’t know what racist meant, or why it was such a big deal that Gloria didn’t take her ‘pill’. I loved the slapstick comedy, the blustery rants of the big guy in his armchair and the tittering giggles of his attentive wife. Edith was cute, but it was Archie I loved. My Grade 3 report on my favourite TV show detailed the scene where Mike is accusing Archie of using the vacuum cleaner on the linoleum floor. It’ll scratch the floor, Mike told him. ‘I know,” Archie sneered, “i wasn’t going to use the vacuum on the linoleum floor.” The camera lans to the Hoover upright standing squarely between them. “So why is this here?” Mike demanded. Archie draws to full height. “It likes me. It followed me in here.” I still find his comeback hilarious, but as a kid, I liked the fact that there was a comeback at all. Even at eight, I was tiring of the sitcom sweetness that insisted everyone in the world was patient, gentle, understanding, and capable in 20 minutes of soothing the hurt and sailing to a happy ending.  My mother rarely watched the show because it was too loud, but that’s what I liked. Real people argued, got angry, stomped their feet, and yes, even lied now and then to get out of trouble. I watched the show faithfully on air, then in reruns. But it would be 30 more years before I glimpsed the depth brought to Edith by the actress who gave eight years of her life to portray her.

It was easy to dismiss Edith as the stereotypical housewife, tied by her apron strings to a boorish husband and demeaning life. Even Jean herself once said Edith was a character she hoped most women would not aspire to be: uneducated, limited in her options, an object of ridicule. As a wife and mother now myself, I tried watching Edith with more mature eyes. Was she a pathetic figure sacrificed for the sake of a laugh? I had to admit it was possible. Then I saw the pilot episode, with the first incarnations of the Bunker family captured on film. Jean played the role of Edith not as a ‘dingbat’, but as the typical bitter, frustrated housewife to be expected putting up with the likes of Archie. Her voice was lower, her comments sarcastic, her demeanour one of passive aggression. It was fascinating to see, these two lives of Edith. Then, I watched a subsequent episode and Edith was back: her high-pitched shriek extolling her joy at Archie arriving home for dinner, her baffled expression as she tried to fathom his logic, her beaming smile as he bestowed upon her the title of ‘dingbat’ for the hundredth time that season, and I didn’t see a victim, a woman trapped, a life ensnared: I saw love. Beneath the bubbles of Edith’s airhead image beat the heart of a lion: devoted, dedicated, and wise. Edith was portrayed as a woman who stood by her man not because she was forced to by finance or circumstance, but because she saw through his bigotry, brashness, and anger to the kind person he was. Archie cut his teeth on the Great Depression, came of age in World War II, and energed to coat what remained of his feelings in the working class grit of the city and the cloak of gender where men would die rather than reveal their emotions, especially when it came to their wives. With every ‘Oh, Archie!’, Edith accepted this and revealed that she saw what we only glimpsed in the rarest of scenes: the tender side of Archie Bunker. With every stoic acceptance of his criticism, she protected his vulnerable side and the two communicated in away only true soulmates can.

Edith wasn’t weak. She was stronger than most of us will ever be.  And it took a most gifted, devoted actress to bring those layers to a character written solely to be a foil for the male lead. Jean may be gone now, but she remains a beloved role model.

“Those were the days.”