All Hallowed Eve

I wrote this poem a decade ago following a magical Halloween evening with my daughter in which we walked through the Glebe, an Ottawa neighbourhood located on the (much) more expensive side of the (Queensway) tracks. 

Mostly because Sarah was absolutely beautiful and entirely electric, and partly because the night was unseasonably warm, we had so much candy thrown our way we could barely hang onto it all. (I was in potato chip heaven.)

I have never been much of a poet, but Sarah was always completely moved by anything I wrote. (“I love the rhyming ones Mum.”) I am solemnly grateful now, these ten years later, that I penned this simple poem (ironic in a way that only Sarah and I and our family would understand) for her in memory of one of the myriad magical times we shared together.

Along the boulevard they walk

down through the years entwined,

The lamp-lit amber leaves of fall

With starry night, combined.

And all around incadent blend

Of whoops and shrieks and yells,

Where fairy queens and gypsy kings

Enraptured tales foretell.

~

Along the boulevard their hearts

In merry tandem, one;

Enchanted by the children who

Brush past them, as they run

Called up to stately mansions where

The safe and sure reside:

Untroubled hearts and sterling souls ‑‑

What sins or pain to hide?

~

Along the boulevard, their words

Unspoken; arm in arm.

Swept up the leaves and mirthful sounds

Light holy, mystic charm.

Clatter of the children standing

Out against the forms

Of stately mansions; quiet pride,

Small smiles, free from harm.

~

Beyond the boulevard they walk

Among the costumed crowd,

And usher out the warmth of night;

The hallowed, safe with God.

 

The Best Is Yet To Come

At least once a day, if I am home, I check my site meter to see who’s been on my blog. I don’t always know the person behind the IP address although, after a time, a person (in this case, me) becomes cannily intuitive. Sometimes, of course, names of companies/schools/networks show up, and always I can locate the search engine and country and, generally, the city or town in/from which the blog is being read.

If I had more energy I might investigate further—the tools are all there—as I have done a few times in the past. But typically, I am happy to see the various search words and countries because they indicate to me that some of my former students are out there reading—in English.

In all of this writing time, people come and go, some reading more than once a day, some every week, some every month or so. Others come on for special occasions: birthdays; in memoriam dates; statutory holidays. The statistics and seekers are reliably variable and variably reliable.

Right from the blog get-go, however, I have had one remarkably consistent lunchtime reader. So consistent is she, in fact, that I am made aware of her holidays by the absence of her IP address on my counter. Occasionally, when she has not been on my blog for a few days, I worry that something might be wrong in her life.

Over the years this woman has become my, and our, friend. We met a year or two before I began writing these entries, and she has been keenly supportive in all of my writing endeavours, and especially kind to us when life has been difficult. For all of the people who deeply cared about Mary and me, or didn’t, after Sarah died, Michelle has never wavered in her support and her love.

Tonight as I type away, however, this diligent peruser is undoubtedly conked out (or close to it) following an evening of celebration. After more than two decades working as a translator for a national news corporation, Michelle was feted out the door today with a farewell package and a down-sized good-bye.

While her departure might seem less menacing in light of her recent—and ultimately victorious—battle with cancer, I can imagine the weird devastation...what Michelle referred to in a mid-afternoon email as “sitting in a bare office waiting for 4pm to roll around.”

We used to live in a world where there were some (real...I don’t mean monetary) benefits for having done a fabulous job; a sunset remuneration at the end of a proverbial day, where we could put up our feet and rest assured that we could rest assured. While there seems to be an awful lot of talk nowadays about “the end of the day” and the “journeys” we all seem to be on, the clichés cannot do justice to the reality of our everyday, and our not so everyday, lives.

I am, of course, veering off topic because I find myself angry (wasting my anger on anyone younger than fifty). And to say “it isn’t fair” doesn’t quite cut it either, because we live in a tumultuous culture where any notion of fair is long past discussion. The best any of us can hope for is an apathetic, rhetorical, “What’s fair?” and I suppose there is a kind of ironic justice in that.

What I am mostly trying to say is that when Monday rolls around and I pop onto my site meter, someone significant is going to be missing, and I am going to feel sad. My lips will curl down in mock defence of my long regret, and I will feel an ache for an encouraging friend who was present in my life almost every day, throughout all of the ups and downs. I will momentarily wish that I weren’t quite as selfish and that, like Michelle, I could be more outward looking, saying, as she also said at the end of today’s email, “It feels a bit surreal, but I know the best is yet to come.” With an attitude like that, she has to be right.

While I wait, I will keep my fingers crossed—there is translation work out there for sure—and in the meantime keep peeking in through the little green electronic window, hoping for my constant reminder, that kind-hearted friend, who has been here for me through every noon hour—through all of my various opinions—making me feel, always, as if I have something valuable to say.

Guess Who’s Turning Five Today?

The Little Doll

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white; dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.

But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears;
But I never could find where she lay.

I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terrible changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.

~ Charles Kingsley ~

 

Happy Birthday to Lainey Louise, the sweetest girl in the world. Google-blacks love from the Grammies XOXO

You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

There has been a lot of TV chatter this past week about parents not merely playing, but naming, favourites, as in, “I like Child A more than I like Child B.”

Anderson Cooper tackled the subject a week ago, followed by Kelly Ripa and her husband, Mark Consuelos, on The Rachael Ray Show, covered finally by the tag team over at The Talk.

Mind you, a good topic—like anything that is deemed good these days—will be stolen at the drop of a hat (November sweeps hunkering just around the corner), but I have to tell you, this is one subject I wouldn’t tackle with a twenty-foot pole, most especially if I, like Kelly and Mark apparently, could actually name a favourite child.

I mean, really—who does that? Who feels this way in the first place and then, worse, who broadcasts these feelings for people—for one’s children—to hear?

I was gobsmacked.

I know how my mother felt about her children, and I know why. She loved each of us for different, and not so different, reasons. I also know that my father told me I was his favourite, but he was the sort of man who would arbitrarily spin alternating theories depending on his mood.

I have three children, which is no secret to any of you who read this blog. And I have (had) three remarkably separate, unique, distinct, singular, complex, matchless, discrete relationships with each of them.

I can’t begin to imagine how a parent could possibly delineate, let alone actually decide that one child is preferential to another. While some days are clearly better than others (and the same can be said of one’s children), and while some children cannot hide their parental preferences (they are children, after all), it is a weird and weary world when a mother or father can point a finger, definitively, and say, “You! You’re my favourite.”

Frankly (and in this I speak from experience), there is something quite frightening hearing these words; something that leads a person to wishful thinking, as in, “Dear God, please make this gene with which my father is afflicted skip several generations.”

I have all kinds of complicated feelings about the people in my familial universe, but when it comes to my kids, I have loved them all (while not always as well as I might have hoped) to the same degree, which is as deeply as I can possibly love anyone, ever.

You make me happy when skies are grey, you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you...

The Canadian Tenors On Sale Today At Noon

Apparently the Canadian Tenors – all four of them – are for sale at Roy Thomson Hall on December 22 and 23 at 8PM for only $89.50. I know this is true because this message was sitting in my inbox when I got home from the dentist.

And yet the ad also reads: “Just announced. On sale today at noon!”

So which is it?

And when the advertisers say, “home for the holidays” do they mean home as in Toronto, or my home (for example)?

Are the four tenors being sold separately or as a unit?

And do they know they are being sold, or is this some kind of Christmas surprise?

Do they all come with unbuttoned shirts, as pictured, or are ties included?

Is it first come, first served, or will there be a lottery?

Is there a discount for the short/er one? (I notice he is the only one wearing a neck chain and, with his non-smile, looks a bit like a cross between Peter Falk and Mark Ruffalo.)

Will they sing about the house unbidden, or will their owners have some say in this?

Why are they being sold? Is there something we don’t know but ought to?

Do we have to pay insurance or tax/es on them?

The ad also reads, “The Canadian Tenors have become one of Canada’s most exciting and sought-after exports.” But if they are Canadian, and they are coming to Roy Thomson Hall where they are to be sold, are they now to be considered imports? And if so, from where? Should the headline read instead, Exported Imports Reimported?

Will the owners have rights to the tenors’ hand gestures ?

And is the conveyor belt on which they seem to be standing part of the deal?

Is dry cleaning included? (Of their clothing, silly – not them!)

Anyway, these are just some of the questions that are rolling through my brain, although I see, from looking at the clock, that these have become moot points. It is now 2PM, and I have missed the sale by two hours.

Just my luck.

Cassandra and The Gift of Prophecy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Cassandra (Κασσάνδρα, also Κασάνδρα, Κεσάνδρα, Κατάνδρα, also known as Alexandra) was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the ironic condition of mankind.

~

I am neither the daughter of a king nor of a queen (although I had an uncle who was a little bit queenly). I am not Greek (although I love souvlaki). I am not beautiful (although the people who love me think I am, especially when I wear my hair a certain way).

But I do have the gift of prophecy. (And such a gift it is I have decided to give the pronouncement its own paragraph and parenthetical aside.)

While some people perpetually pretend they don’t believe (in) my predictions, I get into enough trouble with these people because, actually, they know darn well that I indeed know darn well.

And yes, I do possess deep understanding and am old enough to say so without it seeming like bragging. (Fools!)

I confess, too, that sometimes I test things out just to be absolutely certain that I know that what I know is true.

Some of you might ask – why would anyone take that risk? to which I would reply – it isn’t a risk at all. It is always – always – better to know what side of your side someone is on (the wrong side and the right side being the only two choices). Also, being well fortified by friends and family helps.

[Mind you, by the time I am obliged to test the theory (at which I have become masterful), I have already had plenty of proof as well as experience.]

How does one acquire the gift of prophecy (you might ask)?

Well, I can tell you. There is a recipe:

Age + trauma (= hypervigilance) + plenty of smart people in your corner, which is better known in psychological circles as (why are you all getting dizzy?) A+T(=H)+PSP=GOP

You cannot have the gift of prophecy without any of these three ingredients, I am sorry to say (especially to those of you who are 3/4s of the way there) (life is cruel).

What does the gift of prophecy allow a person to see (you might also ask)?

Well, without delineating endlessly, I will give you a partial list of the sorts of things I/we can see:

 

• Gay people who are pretending to be straight (although I have an edge there)
• Bisexuals who are pretending to be straight (I have a bigger edge here)
• Selfish people who pretend to be giving
• People who are engaged (ironic word, that) in shenanigans
• People who are inherently cruel
• Dupers and fiddle dee dee’ers [Hint: there is typically a fairly constant physical manifestation: eye widening, speech affectation, shoulder shrugging and so on]
• Prurience
• People who scapegoat others, and why they do so
• Insincerity
• Liars (physical ones included)
• Thieves (emotional, psychological, moral, financial)
• Jealousy, which is often astonishingly well-hidden
• False flattery
• Users; the mercenary
• Magnanimity
• Straight people who are pretending to be gay/bisexual
• Loyalty
• People who could never be cruel
• Honesty
• People who could never be inauthentic
• Earnestness
• Wisdom
• Courage
• Fearlessness
• Humility
• Compassion

I could hammer this list (home) with the power of a Papal bull, which now reminds me of the Minotaur, which takes me right back to Greece and, indirectly, to Cassandra.

What I often don’t count on, however, is that bad people are sometimes justified in their dislike of others. I have too much Pollyanna in me [is that a mixed metaphor?] to keep that in my head, although eventually it all, like dust in a westerly wind, comes rolling back.

What I also often don’t count on is that good people always – always – always – come forward, in all shapes and guises, tattered and torn, heeled and hemmed, hobbling and striding and (in the case of the more athletic) running to the rescue. En garde!

In the meantime, back here in prophecy land, I am stuck...part Cassandra, part Jennifer...a little bit gay, a little bit straight, a little bit bisexual, a little bit jealous, a little bit prurient (come on! Cape Breton genes, people!), a little bit selfish, a little bit proud, a little bit afraid, occasionally unwise...but a lot loyal, direct but not cruel, stupidly earnest, never a thief or a user, and always authentic.

Like Cassandra, I believe I am deeply perceptive and generally powerless. And like Cassandra, I sometimes feel cursed. But unlike Cassandra, I live in the age of computers and, while it is true that no one might ever (ever ever) listen to me or believe me, I have a blog...oh yes I do...where I can announce to the world my ironic condition among mankind.

And if that doesn’t sit well with any of you, you can just call me Sandy and leave it at that.

No Reservations

Yesterday, after a luxurious afternoon in Stratford with Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, St. Jacob’s Stone Crock turkey buffet never looked more delicious. In fact, I am still bloated from succulent turkey, creamy mashed potatoes, garden-fresh peas and carrots, home-baked bread slathered in real—real—butter, a modest helping of gravy (unwise for the lactose intolerant) and a triple-threat dessert: pumpkin and lemon meringue pie and a scoopful of peach cobbler.

Sinful, really, but always comforting to people who, like me, grew up on the edge of starvation.

Still, I have had decades to recoup my losses which, judging by my girth, I have done admirably. I do not stint when it comes to second helpings, an over-abundance of carbohydrates or a late afternoon Pepsi. While I know the multiple challenges faced by overweight people, I have not yet learned how to push myself away from the table. This is what childhood starvation does: a person always feels hungry, even when she’s full.

Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme, as you can undoubtedly guess, is food. While I could write at length about the subtle and less-than-subtle effects of (physical = emotional = psychological) starvation, I have learned that there is only one way, if there is any way at all, to help make a difference: being direct.

 

• Approximately 815 million people worldwide are undernourished, with over 16,000 children dying per day from hunger-related causes.
• In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty."
• Every year 15 million children die of hunger.
• For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.
• Throughout the 1990s more than 100 million children will die [have died] from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could [have] be[en] prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days.
• The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving. Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over four million will die this year.
• One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of five. United Nations Food and Agriculture
• The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
• Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion—a majority of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF
• Three billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
• In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of six elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
• In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991, 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
• The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
• One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
• Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
• In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
• Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide—a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death.
• About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age.
• To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion--what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
• The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
• Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.
• It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

Taken from http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Statistics, however, aren’t always enough of a reminder that we are not doing, or giving, our share. I, for example, am not always as moved by statistics—where human lives are reduced to numbers and equations and where it therefore becomes that much easier to slough off personal responsibility—as I ought to be.

But put me face-to-face with a human story and I am often guided to my better self.

I think now of a woman I met in the mid-1990s...a nurse who, in her mid-sixties, had come back from Rwanda to Canada for cataract surgery. She was in Ottawa at the clinic where I worked (it was my job to measure the length of her eyes so that accurately-sized implant lenses could be ordered) at a time not long after the Rwandan 100-day genocide had eradicated close to 800,000 lives (about 20% of the country’s population), its remaining citizens left struggling to survive.

I sat there facing her, unable to accurately imagine what life would be like in Rwanda, and I felt shame because I knew, and had asked, so little.

The woman leaned over the A-scan machine and touched my arm, anxious to know how long the surgery and recovery time would take, in a hurry to return to her work, which, if I am pressed to compare, seemed more like com/passion…an obsession to do whatever she could to save lives.

I sat there, taken with this woman who, clearly past retirement age, was so eager and still able to perform the harrowing task she described:

She slept five or six hours a night in a hut

and spent the other eighteen hours standing behind a table, where she sorted and selected and doled out bits of food to the mostly orphaned children,

many of whom, she said, died before making their way to the front of the line.

 

   

I sat there horrified.

It is one thing to live without sustainable amounts of nourishment—my school friends were often spiriting me lunches, and sometimes my father would drive over to the schoolyard to sneak me some change—but I was dumb-stricken by the notion—the reality—that children at the back end of a line would never make it to the front.

For a second, in fact, I wanted not to believe her. I wanted to believe that I lived in a world where people wouldn’t let this happen; where, singly and collectively, we would be moved, at the very least, to make waves. I wanted to believe that I lived in a world where I, a well-fed woman of forty, was not only better informed, but had equipped myself to make a difference.

 

But I had done nothing. I hadn’t even bothered to know.

I will always remember this woman, her eyes shining despite the milk-white hue of her cataract eyes, and I will always be grateful to her for sharing her world with me and for gently helping me realize that there was something I ought to be doing to help.

So here it is, a few years later, and I am wondering what else, what more, I can do, we can all do, to help stop world hunger. And really, in this, I already know.

Imagine, for example, if all of those already wealthy Hollywood actors donated the money they make in the name of having their names on a bottle of perfume; if working adults gave one percent of their income to assist people in poverty, or if every Canadian citizen donated one dollar per week…imagine what we could do.

We could still line up at holiday buffet tables and heap on extra helpings of potatoes. We could drool over a pizza commercial and order out for an extra large. And even though we shouldn’t, we might sneak in an extra weekend-Pepsi or two.

We can’t all be the example of this magnanimous nurse who gave up her time and her life so that others could live.

And yet the cost is no more than a newspaper a week; a half-cup of coffee; three-quarters of an apple. The cost is no more than whatever we choose it to be…minor, miniscule, unnoticed.

If we do not take it upon ourselves to feed the hungry, we are no better than, and in fact are the people, who keep the poor hungry.

Today is Blog Action Day and the subject is food.

Invite the world to your table.

You Born Today

You live in a cobalt-hued glass bottle

on the window ledge

the sun pouring through the

smile of you whose favourite colour is blue.

 

You live in an elegant pewter flask

on top of the piano

the notes singing up through the

heart of you whose favourite pleasure is scotch.

 

You live in a simple wooden box

in a chest of drawers

the scarves wrapping round the

face of you whose favourite season is fall.

 

You live everywhere –

In the sun and the seasons and the songs

 

In my heart.

 

Jennifer Coffey

In memory of Don Ives, October 15, 1952 – January 19, 2004

Presents: Past and Future

I was walking through the Sheraton Hotel today on my way to the bank when I remembered I needed to buy a birthday card for a friend. (Toronto is nothing if not convenient, and I am nothing if not giddy near a plaza.)

I love buying gifts and greeting cards. In fact, purchasing presents and pretty paper products is one of my pet pastimes. (Okay. I’ll stop.) Everywhere I look, I see people I love: a wristband for Mary, a shirt for Noam, toys and books for Lainey and Blue, silver bells for the cats, and so on.

Every now and again, and less and less as the years go by, I think of the son I no longer know. Something will pop out at me – today it was a red necktie – in a store window.

I think about how much he loved colourful ties – even the vintage ones (I bought him a Coca Cola tie years ago) – and I will, as I did today, stop and touch it, run it through my fingers, imagine him wearing it with a grey shirt and one of his beautiful dark suits. I will feel a small catch in my throat and my heart will pump a little bit harder.

I will linger a minute or two and then, just as I did today, remember (the point of) the birthday card. Then I will move along. There is nothing else to do; nowhere else to go. In the end you have to move on, because that is what life – that is what living – forces you to do.

NBC’s Parenthood

Susan Faludi [as I already knew in part, and just read in whole from a website] is “a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women [which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction],” a tome that argued [as I read elsewhere, no source cited that I could find], that “feminism and women's rights were undermined by the media and corporations—just as the previous wave of feminism lost ground to a previous version of backlash, convincing women that feminism and not inequality was the source of their frustration.”

Faludi’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, and I know, from what I have perused in Backlash, that she is smart in the way I find Fran Lebowitz smart…which is far smarter than I am.

(For example, what I mostly key into is that Faludi is an Aries and Lebowitz a Scorpion, and that it is this sort of absence – my absence – of true knowledge/perception/intelligence that might explain the following entry.)

Nevertheless, I shall push on.

Faludi contends in Backlash—well, I ought to be careful here, because my recall skills are equal to my culinary talents (woe are we)—that Parenthood (I forget whether she was speaking directly of the film or of its first short-lived television offshoot, although the two are essentially the same) falls under the category in which women are betrayed, gulled into believing that our path to true happiness is located in equivocal sources.

I think now of the scene at the end of the movie—all those happy new babies and family women either in, or close to, labour (Faludi might have referred to this scene in her book), and I cannot help but be reminded of sprawling Mormon or Amish clans, their female members sitting in sepia-toned maternity waiting rooms crocheting pink and blue nursery caps.

Nevertheless, I have been hooked on this second television series of Parenthood from its onset, and wonder, despite those parts that might feel offensive to some, why the program and its enormously talented cast have been bypassed, as far as I can tell, at every awards show.

I don’t think there is a weak actor among the entire crew, and the script is so well-written that I find myself fastened to my chair every Tuesday night, my eyes locked and my ears highly attuned.

While it is true that I sometimes also find myself mildly irritated by the Braverman tribalism, the program reminds me week after week of the relevance of family and of—within and without that standard—the meaning of and constant need for patience, forgiveness, humour, acceptance, compassion, honesty, loyalty and flexibility. (If you think these are simple qualities to remember, attain and act upon, you ought to look around and pay some hard attention to detail and fact.)

More, the show makes me laugh out loud—a lot—and I don’t think an episode has gone by where I have not cried, moved by pressingly real stories of alcoholism, adultery, job loss, romance, career, surrogacy, triumph, love, homelessness, education, failure, friendship, pregnancy, celebration, aging—in short, all of the things that have affected my life and the lives of the people I love.

And given that I am a person who longed all of her life for a ‘real’ family; whose second favourite word is gas-lighting, and who could easily bear some resentment of same (especially knowing firsthand how exclusive and tendentious so many Westernized families are), I feel fairly safe in proclaiming that Parenthood is a program for everyone—even for those feminists who have been unfairly blamed by other women (and men) as a source of frustration.

There are so few well-written, splendidly acted, considerate themes on television, and I can only hope that this will be the year that viewers and critics alike will take notice of Parenthood and will finally, as my mum always said, give credit where credit is due.

Today’s Weather

October 11, 2011: A mix of sun and cloud. High 25. UV index 5 or moderate. (Judging from the view, and the haze that is poring through the upstairs bedroom door, which is wide open, the Martians are coming.)

High of 25.

That’s 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Three degrees away from 80.

In 1963, the Toronto average daily mean temperature for October was listed as 10.6 C/51.08 F (with an average deviation of 1.5); the daily maximum as 13.8, and the daily minimum as 7.3 (with an extreme maximum temperature of 30). Thirty is the extreme maximum, however, not the average daily temperature.

I have been so hot overnight for the past ten days I regret having put the fan away for the season. The bedspread has been kicked off repeatedly, and the cats are as flat as if we were enduring high summer heat. In fact, just yesterday Sneakers begged me to make lemonade.

It has been so hot that we entertained the notion of a weekend swim, chatting about lake possibilities as we sat [anagram for sweat] on the porch in our shirtsleeves, drinking wine, at 2 AM.

On the one hand, I’m not complaining. (Well, I am often complaining; that’s not what I mean.) I absolutely love strolling down Queen Street in October in shirtsleeves and jimmy pants. I feel exhilarated as I step around scaffolding, men fifteen feet up in the air painting storefront signs. And I couldn’t be more taken with pre-school-aged children who are standing with their mothers in the shade of an awning eating ice cream, hoping it won’t melt too quickly.

Still (still still) as I look through this window, I wonder. If the average mean temperature in October, 1963 was 10.6, and the average mean temperature in October, 2011 is 20.6, does that mean that the average mean temperature in October, 2057 will be 30.6 (which in my childhood days read as 87.08)?

I continually hear people say that the notion of global warming is a crock. I think those people should rethink their assertions. Because as easy breezy as it is to sit outside (now year after year) in the warm evening air on Halloween [which I stubbornly persist in spelling Hallowe’en], feet planted on the railing as I fan myself with a newspaper, something about the warmth feels weird.

As if Ontario winter is going to disappear.

As if the planet is eventually going to burn right up.

As if the Martians really are coming.

For Sarah at Thanksgiving

 

The turkey sat on the backyard fence

And he sang this sad, sad tu-u-une...

Thanksgiving Day is coming, gobble gobble

And I know I'll be eaten soo-oo-oo-oon

 

Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble

I would like to run a-wa-a-ay...

Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble

I don't like Thanksgiving Day!

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. XO

Giving Thanks

Galoshes looked up at me an hour or so ago and said, “Okay, what are you thankful for?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You mean because it’s Thanksgiving?”

“My new argyle collar,” he said, paying no attention to me. “I really do like it. At first, I wasn’t sure about the pale blue—it didn’t seem manly—but the more I look at it, the more Harvard scholar I feel.”

“Terrific,” I said.

But his question did set off the thankful wheel in my head, which is difficult to look at given, and in, the absence of Sarah.

So…what am I thankful for?

Well, the cynical part of me is thankful for discovering who my friends aren’t, which ties in with those who feel superior because they are heterosexual, blessed with large, happy families, and have great group plans for the weekend.

Come on Wilfred—help me! That’s right. That’s it...piss on yaz! Who needs your big fat homophobic turkey dinner and your smug...

Wait a minute.

It’s Thanksgiving. Thanks giving. Yes.

Well, then, let me tell you what I am thankful for, and this part is easy.

Mary

Noam

Lainey

Blue

Family members, who know who they are

Old friends, who know who they are

New friends, who know who they are

Sarah’s friends, who know who they are

Galoshes, Sneakers, Slippers, Ralph, and Jeeves

Mary T and Jenny

People who email regularly and keep me occupied and laughing: Sheila, Zach, Joanne, Mike, Peggy, and all the rest of you who put up with me

My beautiful and soon to be more beautiful home

Books and the people who discuss them with me

Flowers

Swimming and especially the two lakes

Television programs that make me laugh, think, feel. (Some people would argue that there is no distinction between think and feel, but I beg to differ)

Clichés

Volunteering

My ability to walk 8k/5m downtown and in such glorious weather

Road trips

Movies and film festivals

Sweet things that shine (especially when they’re made of glass)

Harold Pinter in Stratford

Turkey buffet in St. Jacobs

Blue

Lainey

Noam

Mary

And always always always—Sarah—gone now with her magnificent father and my beautiful mum.

Galoshes is still sitting on the sewing box, in the sun. I just heard his little bell jingle as he looked over at me. He’s getting up now, ambling over to give me a hug. He’s like that. He gets things. He misses Sarah, too. He is thankful for her. (She found him, after all. )

He reminds me that there is always so much to be thankful for, even in the absence of the people we love most. Even if it’s an 8-inch blue argyle collar, a little pale for sure, but scholarly nonetheless.

Tiny Talent Time

_{Do you remember years ago...watching a Sunday afternoon TV show (I think it was produced in Hamilton) called Tiny Talent Time? The evangelical host would kneel down really low and ask the nervous boy or girl, “If you had one wish, what would that be?” and the anxious child, coached at home by mum and dad, would typically answer, “World peace.”}

_{Then the talented knee-socked youngster would take off across the stage tipping and tapping or singing a lively song, and I would think, “World peace? Couldn’t you have asked for a million dollars or a barge holiday on the Seine?”}

_{Anyway, last week on youtube I saw two singers performing an Adele song, and they sounded terrific. Today, the duo turned up on Ellen DeGeneres where we learned later that the talk show host had signed them to her record label.}

_{A week ago, I saw another talented singer, also signed by Ellen, on Ellen.}

_{In fact, it seems every time I tune into Ellen another allegedly phenomenal singer is taking the stage.}

_{Tonight I am half-watching the X Factor—not to be confused with American Idol, where dozens of fabulous musicians show up every season—and I keep hearing, over and over, “Wow...she is the best young singer I have heard in ages!” and “Oh my God, I haven’t heard anyone sing like he can, not in forever!”}

_{Although my ears disagree with some of their choices, I also find that many many many many many many many many people sing really really really really really really well.}

_{When you add in The Voice, The Singing Bee, America’s Got Talent and how many other vocal shows I don’t know about and haven’t looked up, a person begins to wonder...who can’t sing?}

_{And then, after you include all the runway designers, supernova rock stars, slam poets, stand-up comics, top models, hip-hop salsa rumba cha-cha tango tap ballet contemporary dancers, apprentices, chefs, bakers, ventriloquists, magicians and flame throwers, well, it’s fairly depressing. At least if you’re me.}

_{I can sing, but not well enough for youtube. I can dance, but only drunkenly at weddings. I can bake, as long as I don’t have to make a crust. I can cook, as long as the recipe isn’t complicated. I can do one—one—magic trick, sling a few poems (but never slam), repeat a joke (if you don’t mind that half the words are missing) (and sometimes the punch line), and maybe once in my life I was able to throw my voice halfway across a very small room.}

_{In short, I am spectacularly devoid of talent.}

_{My friend Zach, just for one example, is home tonight tinkering and toying in and between and among song-writing, guitar-playing, oil painting, drawing, and finishing his novel. And he works full-time besides.}

_{And my friend Sheila, who also emailed tonight, can write stories, songs, and poems; play guitar; sing; hang-glide; cook; make preserves; garden; separate the Tudors from the Plantagenets, and so on.}

_{This sort of list/ing holds true for almost everyone I know. It’s fairly sickening, in fact, especially when I turn on the television and see that everyone in the free world seems to be a quintuple threat.}

_{Everyone, that is, save me.}

_{I wonder, then, as I sit here in envy...if I hadn’t made fun of those kids wishing for human harmony; had I not thought that a few dollars or a river holiday wouldn’t beat all...if I had invested my time in practice instead of procrastinating, would I be able to sing?}

_{I’m marginally too old for knee socks, and I was never photogenic, but, maybe, if I buy a big hat that will cover my face and run down to the dollar store and pick up a harmonica, I could make my way onto youtube and maybe, just maybe, one of those talent scouts will come upon me. And if I should happen to make my way onto the Ellen Degneres Show and she asks me what it is that I want out of life. I know what I’m going to say.}

_{World peace. Definitely. World peace.}

Cellphone Call Limits Suggested By Health Canada

The Canadian Press

Posted: Oct 4, 2011 5:07 PM ET

Last Updated: Oct 5, 2011 8:38 AM ET

Parents should encourage children under 18 to limit the time they spend talking on cellphones, Health Canada said Tuesday in new advice on mobile phone usage.

The guidance is a nuanced change from previous advice, which suggested that people could limit their use of cellphones if they were concerned about an unproven suggestion the devices increase one's risk of developing brain cancer.

"Really it's more proactive in encouraging cellphone users to find ways to limit their exposure, and … to empower parents to make healthy choices to reduce their children's exposure," explained James McNamee, division chief for health effects and assessments in Health Canada's bureau of consumer and clinical radiation protection.

MAP Driving and dialing bans across Canada

The new advice, a response to a World Health Organization report issued in May, reminds people they can reduce their exposure to radio-frequency energy by limiting the length of their cellphone calls and substituting text messages or chats on hands-free devices in the place of phone-to-ear cellphone calls.

Radio-frequency energy is the type of radiation emitted by cellphones. It's also given off by AM-FM radios and TV broadcast signals.

Canadians own and use an estimated 24 million cellphones. Worldwide it is estimated that five billion people owned cellphones in 2010.

Cellphone users can take practical steps to reduce exposure, such as replacing cellphone calls with text messages. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

There have long been questions as to whether the devices increase a user's risk of developing brain cancer. Despite the fact that dozens of studies have looked at the question, there is no clear answer.

But a statement issued in late May by the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the cancer arm of the WHO —classified cellphones as a category 2B risk, meaning the agency acknowledged mobile phones are possibly carcinogenic to people. McNamee sat on the panel that took the decision.

Health Canada says more research needed

Health Canada says the data suggesting the link is far from conclusive and more research is needed.

 

But in light of the shift, the department decided it should tweak its advice on cellphone use, especially as it relates to children.

"We want to make people aware that there is some uncertainty in the science, particularly for children. Because there have been no long-term studies, or very, very few long-term studies with children," McNamee said.

"They are often more sensitive to a variety of agents than adults. They're not little people, in essence. Their brains are still developing, their immune systems are still developing. So you can't say the risk would be equal for a small adult as for a child, per se."

Little change from status quo, industry says

Still, the department isn't advocating set limits or changing the safety regulations for cellphones. In fact, an industry spokesperson interpreted the statement as little change from the status quo.

"It would be a slight shift in messaging, I suppose, but I believe that the updated information from Health Canada is simply a reminder to Canadians about the state of science on this topic, and any steps that individuals, and their children, can take," Marc Choma, director of communications for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, said by email.

"I think Health Canada is reiterating that, to date, the science has not shown a link between cellphone use and health concerns, but that more research is recommended. The industry has always supported any calls for continued research that is deemed necessary by the international scientific community."

Health Canada did not appear to want to hit the message too hard.

McNamee objected to the suggestion the department was "urging" parents to restrict cellphone use by their kids. The tone the department is trying to set is more accurately reflected by the word "encouraging," he suggested.

"It's not urging. Cellphones can certainly be beneficial for parents and for children. And they're a convenience."

"Not much has changed," McNamee added. "The advice to Canadians is largely the same. The science hasn't really changed. Health Canada's just being a little more proactive on this, in a nutshell."

© The Canadian Press, 2011

[I am not sure this is worthy of reprint, given the hedgy tone of the article and the fact that people – me among them – tend not to listen. But in case this helps someone, here it is.]

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

I have to write this before the pain sets in, and I can already feel the grip taking hold and the pressure building up in my face. What price beauty, yes?

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was challenged by a wicked combination of several negligent parents (over the years, I had many) and (too many: two extra) bad teeth. One of my teeth was so crowded, in fact, it peeked through and sat on my upper lip, even when my mouth was tightly closed. (How and where I had that one removed is worthy of a short story.)

Another tooth grew out of the inside of my cheek, ultimately resulting in a diagnosis of osteomyelitis and a refinement of my lower jawbone. If I live to be 110, I will never forget the foot-long needle filled with adrenaline. But that, too, is another (longer) short story.

My teeth were so crooked and crammed that people actually stared into my mouth, probably wondering why of those many parental figures (my well-heeled father, for example) none were interested in or capable of making repair.

Over the years I developed a horror of dentists, not only because freezing was unheard of in my childhood, but also because I spent countless hours, hands over miserably pained face, my teeth rotting out of my head and my propensity for abscess (14 thus far) showing no signs of letting up.

Add to this my skin graft hemorrhage in my family dentist’s office in Ottawa – who knew I had an artery at that particular spot in my palate? – and you can see why I suffer some anxiety.

It was with great trepidation, then, that I found myself a few years ago in a new (to me) dentist’s chair in Toronto. Apart from my history and the long explanations (the veneer, the pins and posts, the bridge, the artificial tooth, the empty spaces, the abscesses, my allergy to epinephrine and cotton – all those new toothpastes and cotton wadding have bleach in them), I didn’t think I could face this straightforward, no nonsense professional who clearly must be wondering why, at my great age, I had not taken better care of my teeth.

It didn’t matter that I had obviously had some good work done and that I had an A1-A2 colour rating, because the gaps from missing molars were impossible to ignore. (When I smile widely I look like a Halloween pumpkin.)

This is all to say that in the past few years, along with another abscess and subsequent root canal (I have had so many root canals I am afraid I might need a sump pump), I have had several crowns/caps (is there a difference? Probably not), fillings and refillings, cleanings and reminders to floss.

No matter how bright and cheerful the office and staff – and it is and they are – I never get used to going to the dentist’s. My last appointment two weeks ago was therefore no different.

I went in, following a routine cleaning and exam, for some bonding...a need to tidy up darkening spaces near my upper gum where it looked as if I had food stuck permanently between two of my teeth. (Garbled explanation...I apologize.)

While I was lying back in the chair, my dentist and her lovely technician – the staff really are exceptional – were chatting over my head (I mean that both ways), stopping occasionally to ask me about my veneer (when and why) and commenting on my (now only one) persistently crooked front tooth.

I had no idea what was going on until the word ‘liner’ cropped up. Liners, in case you don’t know, are those marvellous see-through retainers that act as modern-day braces. (I might not have this description exact, but I think the comparison is close enough for my purposes here.)

Long story less long, it turned out that my dentist had been entertaining the idea of straightening this tooth but, alas, cosmetic dentistry is not covered on my plan. (Is it covered on anyone’s plan?) Long story even less long, I could not (cannot) afford the asking price, which begins in the four figures.

So I wasn’t sure why the conversation continued along as if no one had heard me say, “Oh, that’s a fair bit of money,” or noticed my eyes rolling so far back into my head that I had to jiggle myself to right them again. Not even my accelerated breathing or the sweat beads forming on my brow seemed to alert anyone to my anxiety and, in fact, these two dental professionals continued to smile broadly.

Well, if you have come this far in the story you might by now have figured out what took me that much longer to understand. The liner was being offered for free.

As in no charge. As in on the house. Complimentary. Gratis. At no cost. Out of the kindness of her heart. Generously. Munificently. Compassionately.

I have been the recipient of kind deeds throughout my life. I could fill pages with details of Christmas gifts given to me by Ottawa ophthalmic patients. I could talk on and on about the extra tips people left me throughout my bartending years. And the outpouring since Sarah has died, in hard fact, has been remarkable.

But for all that I have received, no one has ever made an offer such as this.

When I asked why, her answer was that she just (just) wanted to do it for me; she wanted me to experience the pleasure of straight teeth. She made a sweet comment that I could mention her – thank her for my beautiful smile – on my book liner when I win the Giller Prize.

Anyway, you can see why this entry is especially long. Good deeds deserve some sort of recognition or reward, even if it is merely a deeply appreciative thank you.

And if you are wondering why my dentist remains, here in this entry, anonymous, this is only because I am averse to releasing her name should readers think that she is somehow available to offer everyone free service/s. Conversely, for anyone who wishes to know more about her – she is an unusually skilled dentist, after all, and she is taking new patients – you can reach me through this blog.

As for me, you will know me anywhere. I’ll be the middle-aged woman strolling the streets and grinning like the Cheshire cat, the sun glinting happily off of my front teeth. And if you come really close and listen extra carefully, you will hear what they are saying...Ping! Ping ping! Ping ping!

Then the traveler in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

Twinkle, twinkle all the while, brightened by my brand new smile.

              

                 

Remodelling

I read today that Martha Stewart’s daughter reveals in her memoir – I hope you are sitting down – that her mother leaves the bathroom door open – open – when she uses the toilet to urinate!

I know. I can’t tell you how shocked I was, either.

When I read this, it made the part where her mother made her daughter wrap her own Christmas presents (with the admonition not to look) seem somehow less weird. Besides, I know a thing or two about anaesthetized behaviour, and some things I am willing to forgive even when they’re none of my business.

Fortunately (I think) the two women are still close.

It all seems so ass backwards (no pun intended) to me, though. All of these healthy sons and daughters running around griping about their parents, even when their parents are lovely, decent people and not Martha Stewart...not that she isn’t her own version of lovely and decent (that’s not what I mean).

I mean that I miss Sarah. I miss my girl who consistently made me feel like a million dollars. I miss my daughter who always said thank you no matter what it was for: buying her a Pepsi, telling her she was beautiful (and oh, she was beautiful), helping her work through a problem.

I miss that lovely young woman who thought I was the smartest, funniest, kindest, warmest mum on earth, even when she was annoyed with me, which, fortunately, wasn’t often.

I miss the person I could call on the phone and say, “Oh my God – did you read that Martha Stewart’s daughter wrote that her mother left the bathroom door open when she peed?”

And oh, how I miss the howling that would have ensued, as Sarah and I recalled her father walking around the house in nothing but his navy blue Stanfield underwear, or the time I called her into the bathroom – I was soaking in the tub – to yell at her because I thought my eyebrow pluckers were burnt from you-know-what (and not, as it turned out, because her brother had a mild pyromania problem).

I can’t even begin to imagine anyone less likely to write a bad word about me, no matter how many times she might have griped about me to her friends. (Let’s be honest: what daughter doesn’t gripe? The kind of daughters who can’t afford to.)

But having a moment about your mum to a friend is not the same as writing a diatribe for the world to read. (Trust me, if it were that easy, this blog would look a lot different than it does. I had a violently abusive stepmother, after all.) And to do that while you’re having a reasonable relationship with one another is beyond me.

I understand what Cindy Crawford did. After all, her mother was dead. Besides, abusers should be outed. And difficult behaviour should be revealed, too, if the revelation is going to help other people work through their own messy stuff. I don’t have any problem with that.

But I do wonder as I sit here late night after late night, what I wouldn’t give to bring my daughter back: the person who would have handed me the toilet paper if I had asked or dashed off to bring me some more, standing there afterward chatting with me about what we were going to have for dinner.

I mean, if that’s one of the worst things someone can say about her mum, then a person needs to rethink her priorities. Because to complain about nothing tends to invalidate the valid criticisms a person has.

For example, what good would it do for me to say that my stepmother tried to kill me with a metal stool (a block of wood, poison, whatever) if I also say she sometimes stayed in her nightgown until noon?

And what good does it do Martha Stewart to have a daughter who needs to talk about her mother’s bathroom habits?

The world would be so much richer if mothers and daughters who have even a half-decent relationship would spend more time focusing on the good half. Because let me tell you, when you no longer have your lovely mother or darling daughter at your side anymore, all you are going to remember is what was wonderful about them and all that you miss.

My friend Peggy reminded me the other day that in this life we don’t “get” to do anything. We have it, we do it, we don’t do it, we don’t have it, but whatever it is, there is no guaranteed tomorrow for anyone.

So if you’re going to complain, make sure you understand the repercussions. And if you’re going to love someone, make sure you do it well.