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Lynn Johnston interview - continued
Johnston: That's right, and they had a Depression mindset. After I got this job at the syndicate, I started sending them money so they could go on trips and do the things they could never afford to do. All the while, I never knew that my mother was socking money away. And when my mother passed away, I found she had a bank account with $60,000 in it! Heintjes: How long ago did she pass away? Johnston: It's been four years now. Heintjes: It sounds as if you've reconciled your feelings toward your parents. Johnston: It's taken a long time. You know, when she died, I didn't cry. I stood by the bed she had just died in, and I remember being very clinical, thinking, "She is still warm," folding her arms across her body, tilting her head. It was very strange. Then I came home from the hospital, and I was sitting on the side of her bed, looking into her closet. I looked at her clothes, and you know what I thought of? Heintjes: What was that? Johnston: I thought of the Wicked Witch of the West, who turned into a puff of smoke after the house crushed her, and all that was left of her were her shoes. That's what I thought. And it took me a long time before I could see past that and see her as something else - a strong, positive influence on me in many ways. Heintjes: I'm having a little bit of trouble reconciling what I'm hearing now with what you wrote of your childhood in the 10th anniversary For Better Or For Worse collection. Johnston: That book was written before my parents passed away. I was very, very protective of my parents. We were never able to resolve all these issues. We never talked about it. I remember after my mother's death, I thought my father would talk to me about it. It was a perfect time to talk about it. One beautiful sunny Saturday he and I were taking a walk along the river, and we were talking about our lives together and growing up. And I said to him, "Dad, I want to talk to you about Mom beating us."And he said, "I will not talk about it." So part of him was acknowledging that it happened, and part of him was saying that it never happened at all. So when something goes unresolved, you have to resolve it some way. One way to resolve it is with the death of the people, because there is a certain romanticism that comes with death. I know it sounds crazy, but I have had far more connection with my parents after their deaths. I'm not a great driver. I often get extremely frustrated with great big trucks in front of me and people driving too slowly. And just the other day, I almost killed my daughter and myself because I didn't wait for a sensible place to pass. I was thinking that somehow there's a hand on me that's keeping me safe. One time I was on an airplane in a terrible storm. The woman sitting next to me had white knuckles, staring anxiously out the window. And I wanted to say to her, "We're not going to crash - you're with me!" I lead a charmed life, I really do. Heintjes: Are you religious? Johnston: I don't like organized religion where people tell me I have to follow a certain dogma. I don't like other people interpreting Scriptures for me. I like to interpret them for myself. Not that I feel that I'm the only one who can, but I just feel ...let's put it another way. Only a couple of times have I ever been to church and felt enlightened by it. When I was a kid, I was in the choir, and I remember the politics of the choir. The favorite kids got to sing solos, the kids who were not favorites didn't. When I was 16, I was in the choir, and I was taking off my surplice after a performance, and this old gray-haired guy from the bass section grabbed my breast from behind. I spun around and said, "What are you doing?!" and he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I was helping you off with your surplice." And the way he said it, I thought, how can I believe that he wasn't trying to help me? But when I got out of church that day, I thought, "How could that happen in church, of all places?" So church for me was always politics and lies. Heintjes: Did your household have a pretense of being religious? Johnston: It was "do as I say, not as I do." Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church. Heintjes: Really? Johnston: Oh, yeah. They went to church on holidays. Heintjes: Did you mind going to church under these circumstances? Johnston: Well, I loved to sing, just loved it. I loved to sing harmonies. So the choir for me was wonderful. The dogma of the church was secondary. After I proved I could keep a tune, I loved getting to sing solos. Heintjes: Did you devise any sort of escape mechanism for the life you had? Johnston: I was very reclusive. I spent hours and hours in my room drawing. That was my release, and that was my way of surviving. You see, anything I imagined, I could draw. And I found that if I was in a terrible depression and I closed my eyes, the blackness would appear to go on forever. But if I put it down on paper, it was no bigger than 8 1Ž2 by 11, and I could deal with that. If you have a horror inside of you, it goes down to your marrow. But on paper, it's not so bad. Heintjes: So drawing became a form of therapy. Johnston: It was a way to survive. If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper. [laughter] If I wanted to draw funny pictures, I would draw them, and I remember loving watching my brother laugh at them. My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created ...what power that was! Heintjes: How did your upbringing affect the way you rear your own children? Do you find yourself reacting against the way she brought you up? Johnston: [Pause] I treat my children both like my mother and myself. But I really need to answer that question later, because I had to go through so much before I learned how to raise my children. I had a terrible marriage the first time around because I had no self-confidence, even though I had tremendous self-confidence. That was the strange thing. That's why I'm a perfect Gemini. One part of me says that no matter what happens, I have a talent that no one else has. I could sing, I could write, I have so many gifts that I could fall back on. I knew I wouldn't have to work at Woolco. I could go into show business. I knew, deep down inside, that I was never going to starve. The other side of me said, "You're fat, you're ugly, you don't deserve the best." I never believed I was in love with a guy unless I was crying into my pillow. Any kind man who brought me flowers and remembered my birthday, I thought, "You wimp!" Any guy who treated me like shit, I wanted! "Please God, don't let him go! He said he'd call me!" So I went for these guys who treated me like shit, and I married one of them! The guys who treated me badly were the funny guys, and I always went for the guys with the sense of humor. But I married a guy who treated me very badly, but I was happy. I was miserable, so I was happy.
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Copyright@1997-99
Hogan's Alley Magazine. All rights reserved. |
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Heintjes:
Both of your parents had come through the Great Depression. 
