Author: carin

on a brighter note…

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

I thought on this downer of a day after the night that wasn’t, I might share a bit of ancient wisdom, one of the mini philosophies my dad was semi famous for in certain circles (some of which run along the lines of: A parking lot is the most dangerous place in the world, and Never go to bed with your vice grip open).

The one that strikes me as most relevant to the current state of affairs however, was one he delivered when I was about twenty and having some major drama from which I was certain I’d never recover. We were in the car, he was driving, I was in the back seat—I’m not sure why, a cat may have been involved in some peripheral way—and when I finally stopped whinging about whatever my tragic situation was, long enough to blow my nose, he said something like this:

I hope you know how lucky you are.

Huh? Maybe my ears had blocked. Surely what he actually said was oh-you-poor-sweet-trodden-upon-angel-would-a-hundred-bucks-help?

But no. He repeated the luck thing and then explained how, when you were about as low as you could go, you should be happy because according to the law of physics or the universe, or possibly carpentry, you have no place to go but up. In his books, gloom and doom was precisely the time to rejoice.

Then he added: It’s when everything is going just fine that you have to worry.

I don’t remember saying thanks. Probably blew my nose a bit longer and started talking to the cat; it didn’t matter though, he’d worked his magic. I’ve never forgotten the message. Ever since, every time life seems to suck, I think, okay, don’t panic, an upswing is around the corner. And every time, there is.

The point—and there is one—of all this, is to say I’ve decided not to mourn ‘What Could Have Been’ had last night’s election gone differently, but to accept the reality as a kind of juicy lemon. There may well be some sort of ‘law of balances’ out there and all will magically revert to good, but I think the real key to finding success after failure is the way failure can feel like a kick in the butt that rocks you out of complacency.

The point is this: as individuals, we all have choices about our future, including the kind of society we create, and despite what ‘They’ would have us believe, our lives are not in someone else’s hands and society isn’t built by governments but by what ‘We’ do and what we support. Let’s remember that we live in a country where we can exercise choices every single day. And in the long run, maybe making the decision to make those daily choices count is what will serve us best.

thirty truths: 30

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I was eighteen, my dad walked across a whole room to ask me to dance, I was with friends, I said “No thanks, not right now.”

Stupid.
Understandable, I guess, but stupid.

He’d have been 91 next week.
The truth is he was a great dancer.

thirty truths: 29

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I said I didn’t care, that it was just a wedding, a couple kids getting married, what’s the big deal? All that money down the pan. Who cares about The Dress? The whole thing’s a little too ‘too’ for my taste. I said I wouldn’t watch.

The truth? Ah well… didn’t they look happy?
Balcony kiss still to come.
And much to my own bewilderment, I’ll be there.

thirty truths: 27

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

 

Truth #27:  You never see hamsters in dove grey rooms.

Occasionally, when the piles of magazines and papers get a bit much, I daydream about having a house that looks like an In Style double page spread, dove grey rooms and linen cupboards straight out of Martha Stewart Living, a makeover kitchen in toasted almond and cookie crumb. In this dream I swan about all day in a cashmere bathrobe and turban towel and at night friends come by, sit on a perfect couch next to a perfect coffee table from which vantage point they covet our contemporary art collection composed of all the right things while sipping a perfectly shaken (or stirred) martini in the most current and fashionable flavour.

Strangely, this is about where the daydream starts to fall apart. Not only do I hate the idea of having to find space in the cupboards for martini glasses, and a shaker, no one in this scenario ever says anything of interest. It’s all about finishes and flooring and poured cement lofts and I stop dreaming and begin wondering: where are the shoes in these dove grey rooms? And the shopping and the keys and all those flyers from the mailbox and the mail that has yet to be looked at much less dealt with. And where in the double page spread do you put the weeds your slightly demented wheelchair-bound mother insists you pick as you push her about the neighbourhood because she thinks they’re so beautiful and she wants you to have them and even though they’re prickly roadside weeds covered in roadside dust you pick them, thinking you’ll throw them out later and she’ll never know—and indeed, she has forgotten about them, but by then they’re in a jar on a table and every time you look at them they make you smile.

And where are the cat’s catnip toys? And if we had a dog, a very big dog, where would it eat in the cookie crumb kitchen? And never mind dogs, what if we had a hamster? Where would its cage go with all those woodshavings and slopped water dishes—you never see hamster cages on the In Style pages—and and why in every single dove grey room is there nothing to read that looks interesting and where are the fridge magnets? The kind that say I ♥ the Cook—bought the first time somebody made somebody else a meal ten thousand years ago and that has been on at least one other fridge before this and is still relevant—or the one with those words of comfort and fear by Somerset Maugham about how there are three rules for writing a novel but no one knows what they are, or the homemade one: a collage of four faces in a photo booth in San Juan.

Despite all those excellent questions, the other day I found myself in the grip of another dove grey delusion and began clearing off the fridge door once and for all. Peter walked by as I was stripping the thing of Peanuts and Bizarro and a red tulip drawn by my niece, a collection of photos: young nephew in oversized swimming goggles, wrapped in towel by edge of pool, looking like a large chilly insect; the elegant tail of a friend’s cat; a donkey in Algiers.

What are you doing, he said.

I explained the naked fridge zen of Martha Stewart. I said something about martinis.

To which he replied: How can you do that? The fridge door is who we are.

My reaction of course was mild insult. After all, a fridge door is a far cry from a cashmere robe. I made a small sound that suggested he couldn’t possibly understand my delusions and carried on until I’d removed every photo, every cartoon, including the one where Michaelangelo is putting the finishing touches on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his dad shouts up to him, pointing: you missed a spot! Then I spritzed the door with my lovely new eco-bio-cleanser and stood back to take in the gleaming ‘space’ of it. Then, after admiring its whiteness for about a second, I put (most of) the stuff back where it belongs. Because who am I kidding—I’m a fridge door.

thirty truths: 26

~ carin ~ 5 Comments

 

The truth of my coffee drinking history and why I now drink tea:

The first time I heard the word my dad yelling it from his workshop in the basement: coffffeeee!!  It meant he’d like one, pdq. A slice of cake wouldn’t hurt either. And while you’re at it, bring him a cigarette willya…

As a teenager I found, bought, won or was given a blue coffee mug with the word Coffee printed on it, from which I drank triple triples.

In my twenties I went camping with friends and someone forgot to bring the sugar—might have been me—so all weekend I tried to drink coffee with only milk but it was so awful I preferred it black. I liked it so much, in fact, that I continued to drink it black and sans sucre ever after.

Then one day at what was then the Bellair Cafe, I had a cup of coffee that made my heart beat so loud it scared me.

I chose decaf but it was never the same.

In France I once asked for a decaf cafe au lait.  Just once.  I got the message [via The Look] loud and clear.

Then in England I discovered black tea. (Different from the herbal teas my mother made.) I drank it with milk and sugar and chocolate covered digestive biscuits until a few years later I was sitting on a rooftop in Aspen, Colorado, with the lad formerly known as the Chef and two large paper cups of take-out orange pekoe. He’d forgotten to ask for milk and neither of us wanted to run down five flights so I drank it black with sugar, which I discovered was much nicer. (I’ve since discovered stevia, which is nicer still.)

I never returned to coffee and eventually lost the ability to make a decent cup for anyone else. I’ve since given up on it entirely.

So if you come to my house now you will be offered tea—green, orange, chamomile, lapacho bark, east friesan, rooibos, peach flavoured oolong, mount everest black, jasmine phoenix pearls, pear cream, yerba mate, ginseng, mint, fresh raspberry leaves when in season, or calendula, sage, sumach, even cedar if that’s up your street.

If none of those strike your fancy, there’s plenty more.

There is no coffee.