Too Much Happiness

was no notion of a reconciliation, or any blessing. My mother was no fool.
    She had been devoted to me-not the word either of us would have used, but I think the right one-till I was nine years old. She taught me herself. Then she sent me away to school. This sounds like a recipe for disaster. The mother-coddled purple-faced lad, thrown suddenly amongst the taunts, the ruthless assaults of young savages. But I didn’t have a bad time, and to this day I’m not sure why not. I was tall and strong for my age, and that might have helped. I think, though, that the atmosphere in our house, that climate of ill temper and ferocity and disgust-even coming from an often unseen father-may have made any other place seem reasonable, almost accepting, though in a negative not a positive way. It was not a question of anybody making an effort, being nice to me. There was a name for me-it was Grape-Nuts. But almost everybody had a derogatory nickname. A boy with particularly smelly feet that did not seem to benefit from daily showers cheerfully put up with the name of Stink. I got along. I wrote my mother comical letters, and she replied somewhat in kind, taking a mildly satirical tone about events in town and in church-I remember her describing a row about the right way to cut sandwiches for a ladies’ tea-and even managing to be humorous but not bitter about my father, whom she referred to as His Grace.
    I have made my father the beast in my account so far, and my mother the rescuer and protector, and I believe this to be true. But they are not the only people in my story, and the atmosphere in the house was not the only one I knew. (I am speaking now of the time even before I went to school.) What I have come to think of as the Great Drama of my life had already occurred outside that house.
    Great Drama. It embarrasses me to have written that. I wonder if it sounds cheaply satirical or tiresome. But then I think, Isn’t it quite natural for me to see my life that way, talk about it that way, when you consider how I made my living?
    I became an actor. Surprising? Of course in college I hung around with people active in the theater, and in my final year I directed a play. There was a standing joke, originating with myself, about how I would manage a role by keeping my unmarked profile always to the audience and walking backwards across the stage when necessary. But no such drastic maneuvers were necessary.
    At that time there were regular dramas on national radio. A particularly ambitious program on Sunday evenings. Adaptations of novels. Shakespeare. Ibsen. My voice was naturally adaptable and with a bit of training it improved. I was taken on. Small parts at first. But by the time television put the whole business to rest I was on almost every week and my name was known to a certain faithful if never large audience. There were letters objecting to bad language or mention of incest (we did some of the Greek plays as well). But on the whole, not so much rebuke raining down on me as my mother was afraid of, when she settled in her chair by the radio, faithful and apprehensive, every Sunday evening.
    Then television, and acting was over, certainly for me. But my voice stood me in good stead, and I was able to get a job as an announcer, first in Winnipeg, then back in Toronto. And for the last twenty years of my working life I was host of an eclectic musical show presented on weekday afternoons. I did not choose the selections, as people often thought. I have a limited appreciation of music. But I had crafted an agreeable, slightly quirky, durable radio personality. The program received many letters. We heard from old people’s homes and homes for the blind, from people regularly driving long or monotonous distances on business, from housewives alone in the middle of the day with the baking and ironing, and farmers in tractor cabs plowing or harrowing some sweeping acreage. All over the country.
    A flattering outpouring when I at last retired. People wrote that they were bereft, they felt as if they had lost a close friend or member of the family. What they meant was that a certain amount of time had been filled for them five days a week. Time had been filled, reliably, agreeably, they had not been left adrift, and for this they were truly embarrassingly grateful. And surprisingly, I shared in their emotion. I would have to be careful of my voice, so that I would not choke up as I read some of their letters on the air.
    And yet