a frivolous five minutes over pizza with ‘k’ — age 58

July 26, 2013July 11, 2015 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

I met K in the 70’s. We used to work together for what now seems like a fraction of a second. Then I moved away and for a brief time we stayed in touch. Then I moved even further away, and further still, and eventually she moved too and married and remarried. Along the way there have been an assortment of cats and dogs, long ago mutual friends and at least one hamster, as well as a gap of years and years and years when all we did was send birthday and xmas cards. We rarely spoke and we never saw each other. Yet we remained connected in that peculiar way of old friends… where when the phone rings one day and you hear their voice for the first time in a decade and you start talking like no time at all has passed.

Recently, we’ve been meeting for lunch once or twice a year at a place about an hour’s drive for each of us. We rarely do phone calls and emails are few, yet when we see each other it’s like someone spliced out all the gaps and this lovely film just continues on from the last scene…

K always begins every lunch by explaining to the server that we’ll be there a while.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen her place an order. “And exactly what size are the peppers when they come out?”

She still has the most contagious laugh I know.

♦

How long could you go without talking? However long I’m asleep.

Do you prefer silence or noise? Noise, as in background… a fan at night, TV on while reading…

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Fewer than 10.

If you won $25 million? I’d fix the garage and the driveway, give some to family and Humane Society.

One law you’d make? Install a device in cars that prevents driving drunk.

Unusual talent? Am a ‘Name that Tune’ master.

What do you like to cook? One pot meals.

Have you or would you ever bungee jump? No.

What’s the most daredevilish thing you’ve done? Roller coaster at CNE. Hated it.

Do you like surprise parties, practical jokes? Yes.

Favourite time of day? Early morning.

What tree would you be? Birch.

Best present ever received? An opal ring I’d had my eye on. My dad gave it to me to me the year my mum died just before xmas.

What do you like on your toast? Peanut butter.

The last thing you drew a picture of? A map with directions.

Last thing written in ink. Birthday card.

Favourite childhood meal? My dad’s meatloaf.

Best invention? Car.

Describe your childhood bedroom. Pink with rosy wallpaper. Maybe. We rented and moved around a lot.

Afraid of spiders? Not spiders, snakes.

Phobias? Heights. [see bungee jumping and devilish thing; also declined hot air balloon idea]

Least favourite teacher? Mr. Something—made me put gum on my nose for chewing in class.

Favourite children’s story? Anything Winnie the Pooh.

Ideal picnic ingredients? Potato salad, devilled eggs, fresh buns and butter, pickles, cold cuts, strawberries, ice tea, no bugs.

Is Barbie a negative role model? No.

No? No.

Best thing about Canada? Landscape.

Best thing about people in general? Their differences.

What flavour would you be? Chocolate.

What colour? Pink.

What would you come back as? Medium sized border collie.

Favourite saying: “She offered her honour; he honoured her offer; and all night long he was honour and offer.”

♦

—the frivolous five, a series of frivolity

blackberries and a shrunken sweater — the things that stick

June 16, 2013June 16, 2019 ~ carin ~ 7 Comments

I was in Niagara recently, driving past the house where I grew up. An elderly woman was sweeping the front walk. I pulled over and watched, remembered how on that very bit of pavement, next to the stone planter, I wore a bathrobe with pink rosebuds and corduroy slippers and a bowl haircut and wrote my name in sparklers one firecracker night while my dad—in a Hawaiian shirt, cigarette tucked into a wide smile, face tanned and dark hair falling forward a bit, Clark Gable style—scrunched down, arms around me, for a photo.

He built that planter, two of them in fact, from stones I helped him collect at the beach. I see that someone has knocked one of them down and put nothing in its place.

On a whim I get out the car, pace in front of the house. The sweeping woman doesn’t seem to notice but it occurs to me the pacing might look odd so I decide to walk over, tell her I’m not staking the place out; I explain that I used to live here, that my parents lived here forty something years. She asks if I’d like to see around. I wasn’t expecting that, but yes. The woman’s name is Minerva. She’s from Nova Scotia and she says Come along then, my dear.

We start in the backyard. My dad’s gardens, rockeries [more stones from the beach] are wildly overgrown. Trees and shrubs haven’t been trimmed for years, a rose bush has become a tree. The vegetable garden is gone, but the conch shells my parents brought back from Bermuda thirty years ago are still there in a small triangle of white stones beside the patio. I ask about the blackberries that grew on a trellis and she shows me through a forest of leaves that, yes, they’re still there. She says there’s not much fruit though. I don’t explain about pruning, how that increases yield. She’s smiling the whole time, proud, beaming, clearly in love with this mad wilderness.

We move inside where things are tidy with doilies on furniture, tea cups in a china cabinet. There are homemade quilts and afghans, newly stencilled walls. The bathroom is bright blue with a nautical theme, maybe for memories of Nova Scotia. A mural of flowers and trees is painted on the inside of the front window. She takes time finding the switch to turn on fairy lights woven among some branches in a large floor vase, a gift from her son. She likes to knit. She shows me a yellow dress for her granddaughter.

The whole time, I’m kind of listening, mostly remembering. She’s made changes, yes, but not as many as I imagined. (She kept a wall-sized mural of a beloved Bermuda beach scene that my dad painted a million years ago.) It’s different, definitely, yet absolutely familiar. We are everywhere here—my mum, my dad, my sister. And we are nowhere. They’re gone, it’s just me.

And Minerva.

And her life in this house. Her son, her grandkids.

And it’s okay. It’s very good in fact. If anyone had to live here, I’m glad it’s her.

We’re oddly connected, all of us.

She tells me to come back anytime.

I couldn’t find that firecracker night picture, but here’s another. Five hundred years ago, the blackberry trellis in the background. He, wearing a sweater I gave him that my mum accidentally shrunk and that he would not let her throw out.

◊

humour me

June 7, 2013June 7, 2013 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Not that there’s anything wrong with this…

Just wondering how possible it would be for the general population to even imagine as ‘normal’ an ad showing the get-ups done the other way round, i.e. the girl as pirate and the boy as singer.

Easy enough to imagine kids dressing up the other way round… I’m talking about an ad showing this.

And why is that so unlikely, so rare? And what, exactly, is normal? And who says? Who???

And although this is simply an ad in a toy store brochure [and not that big ugly toy store either, but a small, supposedly-aimed-at-cleverness one] and so why make a fuss and question anything… It’s precisely because this sort of always-everywhere subliminal messaging has an ever-increasing effect on how and what we think of ourselves.

At increasingly younger ages.

While we shrug and say it doesn’t matter.

And maybe little TommyJoe prefers being a pirate and sister JennieJune adores singing or doll collecting or wearing feathery hats, that’s not to say it’s the only scenario that can be played out in advertising. Because for every boy who vrroooms a truck over a carpet, there’s one longing to make sponge cakes with an Easy Bake Oven. And if they have smart families they’ll be allowed to have both truck and kitchen accessories in their toy box. I’d just like to see that broader world of ‘play’ reflected by toy manufacturers… both in packaging and in advertising. And though I suppose strides have been made, take a walk in any toy store or flip through the ads… seems it’s pretty much still about compartmentalization and stereotyping of genders in order to create more effective demographics.

Another name for childhood?

yin yang win win

May 24, 2013April 6, 2022 ~ carin ~ 9 Comments

I leave the house because I’m tired of screens. I want to work with a pen in my hand. That callous on the inside knuckle of my middle finger needs improving.

I head for the library where I find some books waiting for me, one of which is Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings.

I am not allowed to read it. I’m supposed to be working.

I decide I can’t be trusted so take the books out to my car.

My car is parked down the street and in the back seat I notice a few things for the cleaner which is right there so I bundle them up and walk over.

The cleaner isn’t open even though the sign says 9 a.m. and it’s 9:30.

It occurs to me that I haven’t had breakfast so I walk to the deli, thoughts of a fresh Kaiser, unsalted butter and a splitch of shaved Black Forest Ham dancing in my head.

The door is unlocked but just as I open it I see the sign says 10 a.m. And it’s only 9:35. The woman behind the counter looks up, sort of smiles… the lights aren’t even on yet… and when I ask if they’re open she very sweetly says well, not really. I can tell she’d sell me something if pressed but would prefer not to. I used to work in a deli, I know enough to smile and say I’ll come back.

The cleaner is still not open at almost 9:40.

The Giant Tiger, however, is selling some banged up but still quite lovely hanging baskets of geraniums and something else for $5.

I drag three of them into the store [still carrying my bundle of un-cleaned cleaning]. The line to pay is unusually long but I’m just happy for a moment’s rest. I watch a woman admiring a sundress; she stretches it to see how wide it will go. Not wide enough apparently; she moves on. Another woman rifles through a rack of floor length, strapless, muumuu type things while her children run around in circles wielding pool noodles. It makes me sad to see that the girl wields a pink one and the boy, a blue. Part of me wants to speak to them, to introduce them to the joys of orange and yellow and green.

But it’s none of my business really and, anyway, the line is slowly moving after the lone cashier hollers for help. As I try to manoeuvre my unclean clothes, a notebook and three hanging baskets, the mother leans over and offers a hand. It occurs to me that this is my chance… I can thank her, then casually toss in something merry but subliminally message-filled about the controlling ways of retailers who sell far too many pink and blue products and do we really want to be so corralled in our choices? But the kids are hooting and waving their noodles and I doubt she’d even hear me so I just smile and thank her most sincerely and pretty soon it’s my turn to pay and when I leave I thank her again and she looks so frazzled with those pink and blue children running around, and she there, clutching a floral print muumuu. I hope it brings her some peace.

I clunk away with my three baskets, my bundle of clothes and my notebook [did I mention a water bottle?] and head back down the street to my car, cursing the dry cleaner the whole way. The deli is in the opposite direction. I have too much to carry to go back there. And I don’t feel like it anyway. So much for breakfast.

Then I remember the café at the library.

Perfect!

Except they have nothing I want. What I want is a fresh kaiser even though I should probably stick to non-gluten.

The world is obviously against me.

I almost leave but starvation dictates I stay.

Turns out the banana bread is excellent. And the woman who is doing a bagel for so long I think she’s ignoring me, turns out to be awfully nice. Turns out she’s just doing a bagel. Probably a really good bagel too. Might have that next time. Screw gluten.

Back at the library I write for a while. Some good stuff. Some crap.

Later, heading back to the car, I see that the cleaner’s door is propped open.

I take my stuff in. I am not smiling. I am prepared to make a statement about signs in windows and punctuality in business and people having to trundle about the street and Giant Tiger with bundles of men’s trousers.

The woman speaks before I have a chance to say anything. In fact she even turns down the TV that is always on some station whose language I can’t understand. She has never turned the TV down before.

She says oh what a terrible morning she’s had, something about the bus and how she still had to do laundry and cook and something about her husband and her kid and she tries but there’s all the sewing [she does tailoring too] and the floors to wash and how it’s hard coming to a country with nothing and a different culture and her kid is studying so hard and her husband works so hard and he wants her to have nice nails, he tells her to get a manicure, or fake nails, he wants her to have nice things, but look!, she says, and holds out her hands. She says she works too hard to have nice nails. They’re short and ragged and painted pink but most of it has worn off. I tell her my parents were immigrants too, that they came here with a suitcase, nothing else, not even language. She says yes, just a suitcase. I don’t ask where she comes from and she doesn’t ask about my parents. It doesn’t matter in the slightest.

My dad used to want my mother to have nice nails. Something she could never quite manage. She just worked too damn hard to achieve that lofty goal. Haven’t thought of that in years.

I’ve been looking for a new cleaner ever since mine retired. I’ve been to this place a few times, but the TV always annoyed me and the woman seemed grumpy and sullen; before today she hardly ever spoke.

And she might go sullen again. Might leave the stupid TV blaring.

Still…

I think I’ll bring a bottle of really good quality, long-wearing pink nail polish next time I take in my stuff.

And I will smile.
The very bloody least I can do is smile.
Photo courtesy of WikiCommons

willie nelson on a bridge

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Willie Nelson walks across a bridge behind the art gallery carrying a plastic shopping bag—Metro, Food Basics, A&P maybe. Long white braid down his back and a red lumberjacket over jeans. We pass and momentarily catch one another’s eyes. He is grizzled and possibly hungry, but he does not look unhappy. Or even slightly mad.

Going into the Quicker’s Dairy Mart, which is next to the place that will cut glass to size for you, is that blond guy from The Dukes of Hazzard. Not him grown up but as a kid. He stops to let me go by. He’s only about fourteen so I think this is sweet; in fact his politeness amazes me.

On a bench in front of Benjamin Moore sits Glenn Gould smoking a cigar without gloves. He wears black rubber-soled shoes and grey socks, a grey winter jacket and blue jeans. Not jeans but blue jeans, the kind that might be belted up around his rib cage. I can’t tell. The jacket is zipped. The cigar is two inches long and he holds it carefully, ceremoniously, as if he’d just signed a contract for the biggest deal of his life and he’s celebrating with the best cheroot his filthy lucre can buy. He inhales with a slightly addled smile, a kind of wide grimace that stretches his mouth a little too much [there’s a hint of yellow teeth] then exhales like a goldfish breathing, mouth rounded and pulsing like he’s trying for smoke rings. But you can tell smoke rings are the last thing on his mind. I suspect he may not even know what such a thing is. He goes on, rapidly, inhaling and exhaling like this, making those faces, until the cheroot is nothing more than a tiny stub, which he tosses onto the pavement. He stands, walks a few steps as if to leave then leans down when he spies a good-sized cigarette butt. He returns to the bench, finds his cigar stub and uses it to light his latest smoke. When it takes, and just fort the merest of moments, he smiles for real then returns to his weird face isometrics all the while watching a boy in a purple hoodie do tricks on a silver scooter.

trashy spring thawts

April 9, 2013April 9, 2013 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Who would be a worm? Such a thankless job. Having survived all winter in frozen ground with slim pickings food-wise only to be lured to the surface by a splash of springtime rain then end up stranded on scratchy bits of pavement as sun shines and feet and wheels are everywhere carelessly about.

Worse, though, to be forgetful. Worm or human. To not have the sense you were born with. What else but a dose of dementia or dangerous daze could explain how it’s possible to find a lovely place for a cup of something and then wander off without it? Alas, beware, poor sweet forgetful soul! There are brick walls and open manholes out there…

But the saddest thing of all must surely be the human who lives the sort of life where four large bags of garbage every two weeks cannot contain its rubbish so it must sneak under cover of darkness to public receptacles where it crams its excess…

…forcing purveyors of said receptacles to take action with locks and smaller entry points.
(This of course does not apply to worms as they are clever enough to eat their own detritus.)

inject into rattling discourse as necessary

April 5, 2013April 5, 2013 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Am cheating today and scooping a little something that was sent to me— thought it might come in handy should you be socializing any time soon and require bon mots or merely questions to change conversational direction or stop people rattling on about pet bunnies [or equivalent]…

You’re welcome.

♦

1. IF A TURTLE DOESN’T HAVE A SHELL, IS IT HOMELESS OR NAKED?

2. IF YOU GO INTO A BOOKSTORE AND ASK WHERE THE SELF-HELP SECTION IS, DOESN’T THAT DEFEAT THE PURPOSE?

3. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

4. IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?

5. WHERE DO FOREST RANGERS GO TO “GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?”

6. IS IT OKAY FOR ENDANGERED ANIMALS TO EAT ENDANGERED PLANTS?

7. WOULD A FLY WITHOUT WINGS BE CALLED A WALK?

8. CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?

9. WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?

10. ONE NICE THING ABOUT EGOTISTS: THEY DON’T TALK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.

11. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?

12. IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?

13. WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD ‘LISP’ TO HAVE ‘S’ IN IT?

14. WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?

15. CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST AN ACT OF GOD?

this morning

March 21, 2013March 10, 2014 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Seven cars idling.

I’d like to tell you it’s a line from a new xmas carol I’m writing but there were in fact seven cars idling on my walk this morning while drivers were inside…their houses, presumably waiting until… until what?? Until their cars got to the boiling point? Just how hot does someone need an interior to be before they slip their tender selves into it?

A pitiful sight. And the smell was worse.

I mentioned this briefly the other day but I’ll say it again… this is what makes me really hope that oil prices get raised to ridiculous levels because it seems that money, not common sense, is the best motivator. [I’m thinking of the ruse used by grocery stores for a while—that quarter we got back if we returned our shopping carts to the right place rather than leave them strewn about the parking lot. Because it seems we’re an untidy bag of bones unless we’re paid/bribed to be otherwise.]

So much to be proud of.

But here’s the kicker. When I see one of the idlers come out of his house and get into his car I notice that on this chilly morning he’s wearing a light jacket that isn’t even done up. Then again, why bother? He’d only break into an uncomfy sweat if he wore a buttoned up winter coat inside a car that had been sizzling for ten minutes.

I was tempted to write a note in chalk on his driveway after he left, maybe offer coat buttoning lessons, introduce him to the concept of hats [easily taken off when things get toasty, the way they do as you motor along]. Heck, for the sake of less filth being spewed into the atmosphere, I’d even go so far as to lend him a pair of gloves.

“P.S.” I might add. “The next time an entire eco-system is drenched in oil spill, or even just a part thereof, wings and gills gummed up until there’s nothing to do but suffocate, and your children are crying over pictures of greasy little ducklings from the back seat of your over-heated, over-sized ‘vehicle’… all you are allowed to to say to them is— So what? Doesn’t affect us.”

snow henge, big feet and other unexplainables

March 18, 2013March 19, 2013 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

No idea who built this but it’s uncannily aligned to follow the path of clouds in the shape of snow shovels.

Fearsome signs of big foot and/or Bigfoot.

And not that we were speaking of squirrels but I can’t help wondering why their nests don’t fall out of trees in high winds yet I once found our very solid steel patio chair in the pool…

As if that’s not enough to be curious about for one morning, there is also the mystery of the Seemingly Forever Idling Car in the Driveway, which, when I loop the block and pass by again a full ten minutes later, there it sits, still idling and spewing gunk from its exhaust. This kind of thing is Exhibit ‘A’ in my case for increasing oil prices by at least 300 percent (with all those ‘extra’ profits going into cleaning up the mess oil makes in the first place).

But the biggest unexplainable is how, later, I find myself at the beach on this gloriously windy day, all set to snap some wild and wooly waves only to have my camera tell me its batteries need changing. And I haven’t brought any spares.

Nuts.

Because the waves are BIG alright, and beautiful too, but even better than that there’s a madwoman, madder even than me, also with a camera, who walks a few metres out onto the pier against which the lake is slapping and sloshing something fierce, which is what she’s shooting. And probably getting some brilliant shots. But it’s completely crazy to take the chance. The pier’s not wide and the waves not always predictable where they come up over the side. I can’t take my eyes off her and steel myself for action if necessary, locate the bright orange life saver near the “At Your Own Risk” sign. I exhale only when she starts walking back, all annoyingly calm and smug.

By now I’ve convinced myself I don’t want photos of stupid waves anyway. But I’m sorry I’m not able to take a picture of her.

The one picture I take before my camera dies is this.

Your guess is as good as mine.

for all those women

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Two years ago on this day I was feeding my mother breakfast. I was sitting beside her bed tearing toast into bite size pieces and wondering how it was possible for anyone to chew so long on a miniscule bit of scrambled egg. Watching as she reached for her coffee or juice, her fingers shaking and the whole thing taking so long I just wanted to grab the cup, hand it to her… but I resisted. Reaching for her own drink was one of the few things she could still do.

I remember that the radio was on and they were talking about it being International Women’s Day. I expected my head to fill with thoughts of strength and achievement in this celebration of voices, past and present, loud and clear against the best efforts of those who’d prefer they remain silent. Suffragettes. Women who climbed various mountains to change the world.

But on this morning, two years ago, I found myself considering a different aspect of womankind—I thought about all those women everywhere who are caring for women, and how that’s often the way it goes… how the women so often outlive their men and how it’s the daughters, sisters, granddaughters, nieces, friends, that you see in the hallways of nursing homes, arriving with fresh nighties or flowers, a case of Ensure, a toilet frame… visiting, care-giving, and then I thought how it’s my mother’s hand I recall on my five-year old, eight year old, fourteen year old forehead when I had a fever, bringing me something for an upset tummy, a sore throat—my mother’s hand that comes to mind whenever I smell Vicks VapoRub. I remember my dad’s part in things too, how he’d thunder in at the end of the day and I’d hear his voice, anxious, asking how The Little One was, then a few minutes later appearing at my door trying to look casual, smiling, telling me I’d be up and at ’em soon. He’d cough, say Okay, get some sleep now! then escape to kitchen for a smoke—god bless him and all that, but it’s my mother that slept on the floor beside me one year when I was so young I can’t remember why.

And so there in my mother’s room on International Women’s Day two years ago, instead of thinking about a century or more of feminists who paved the road so that we could all walk more easily, I was thinking about the time I saw my mother-in-law leave the hairdresser with a friend. Both of them in silver perms, frail, careful of every step, helping each other to the car, and how I knew that to have intervened, to have offered my arm, would have taken away what they still needed to know they could give each other.

I thought of the woman who came to the nursing home every day and on Wednesdays took her mother’s laundry home in a basket to wash and hang on the line, even in winter, for the fresh smell.

And as I helped my ninety year-old mother with her breakfast and waited as it took forever in the washroom and got her back to bed, I glanced occasionally at a picture by the window where she no longer sat because even sitting took too much out of her. The picture is of her and my dad in the alps, at the top of a mountain they’d just hiked. They’re all smiles and twenty-something gorgeous against an endless sky.

Both my mum and my mother-in-law have since died. I don’t know about the woman with the fresh laundry.

I want to celebrate strength on International Women’s Day but I find myself celebrating love instead.

Then again, maybe they’re one and the same.