Jolly hockey sticks

We've attended an ice hockey game! It was very lucrative. Eldest child won a sports bag easily worth the price of the tickets. We did hockey 'lite' and attended the university men's team game, rather than foregoing a month's groceries and buying tickets to Toronto's NHL side, the Maple Leafs. Husband refuses on principal as well as on price: 'Why are they not called the Maple Leaves?' he rants. He's got a point, I admit. In any case, the kids had a blast. We went with friends who also have three children and then by pure good luck we happened to run into a birthday party full of children from middle one's school and year (remote enough that there was no awkwardness about my child's not having been invited-- just barely). Kids ran riot around the nearly-empty arena. Apparently it's considered good spectator sport to amass as many pieces of broken hockey stick as possible, so the gang of 10-year-olds were nearly fully armed by the end. Youngest was given the game puck, I know not how or why. Heavy things, those pucks. Scary, if you stop to think about it. *

And then to make life truly scary, an oil-filled electric radiator given to us for use in one of the children's rooms leaked and none of us noticed. It filled the top floor bedroom with smoke and fumes. I couldn't smell anything because I've got a stonking cold, but youngest child noticed when she went upstairs, and eventually I tracked down the problem. It was really horrifying. I shouted at everyone to leave the house because at first I thought the carpet was on fire, then plunged into this cloud of haze to unplug the device. In the end we were able to get in contact with the maintenance man (I've dubbed him Prince Valiant) and he brought over a giant fan. This got rid of most of the smell. He also wandered the house assiduously checking carbon monoxide levels, though from eldest child's online research (aka googling) CO is not one of the constituents of the oil or the radiator. So though the CO won't get us, we may succumb to some chemical for which Prince V has no handy dandy detector. We dragged the upstairs mattresses downstairs and all the kids are sleeping (well at least *are*) in one room. It was either that or move to a vacant university apartment in the next street, which would have been so complicated. Of course if we wake up dead I'll be sorry we were so lazy.

* We won the game 5-3. I think.

to sleep perchance

We've celebrated our first family birthday here in Canada. The youngest child turned eight and asked to have a slumber party. What a misnomer. We invited several girls round for the night, but slumbering was the last thing on anyone's mind. Most of the girls were awake until 2:30 am, and they rose bright-eyed and bushy-tailed well before 8:00 am, demanding Lucky Charms and Froot Loops for breakfast. The birthday girl had a grand old time except for one dip near midnight, when she began to feel a little left out at her own party. These children have known each other a long time; we're still new. Her two best old friends did join the party from England, via skype, which was absolutely wonderful, but they weren't there with her in the deep dark heart of the night, and they weren't corporeal. The new friends did their best and eventually, after telling a round-robin ghost story, it all came right and joy reigned (noisily) till the wee hours... as I hope will prove the case for all of us, but perhaps not at that hour of night.

Meanwhile at the other end of our age spectrum, the eldest child, nearly 13, barely sleeps because he has so much homework, violin practice, Bar Mitzvah preparation, and he must keep up with his texting -- especially now that he has a girlfriend. Or at least, as he puts it, a girl with whom he is 'going out'. Tomorrow they will celebrate their one-week anniversary (most definitely not with a slumber party). I don't know her but she sounds nice, and my son is so pleased and proud. Very very sweet. But I pinch myself; it seems only yesterday that he was a baby. How can he possibly be dating? Or for that matter texting?

What I like about snow

More on snow (natch).

I look across the broad plain of the kitchen calendar, on which winter stretches far away to the end of January, trekking over February, pressing on to March... and wonder how long I will be able to stand having to find hat, gloves, coat, and boots just to pop out for a pint of milk, and then shed and array them all when I come back home. In -10 degree weather, the furthest I go from my front door untogged is to the garbage can. And very quickly back inside.

BUT I realized something the other day. The wonderful thing about freezing is that THERE IS NO RAIN. After 17 years in England, the lengthy absence of rain is definitely something to celebrate. Snow is cold but it is dry and it is quiet and it is, undeniably, beautifying. Unlike rain, snow tends to stay outside of clothing, and it is useful for fun activities like sledding, making snowballs, snow forts, and 'quinseys'. Rain, I've found, is quite difficult to throw.

Slush is another matter, being noisy, dirty, and undignified. I now understand what a new Toronto friend said to me back in October, which at the time made me doubt his sanity: 'The problem with Toronto is that it's not cold enough.'

H'm. Does that mean I agree with him? Now I'm beginning to doubt my own sanity.

Snow

Yep, we've got it. At last. Snow snow snow. As promised. As threatened. For the first few days joy reigned supreme and sledding was the order of the day. But today, as we set out to tromp through more of the thick white stuff, middle child tentatively ventured that he was perhaps a bit tired of snow. Yes, well, I warned him, it's only early January. We will get tired of snow long before snow gets tired of us. I keep thinking about First Nations people and the colonial settlers in days of yore, making do in this landscape without 600 tog down coats (what the hell is a tog anyway?) and thinsulate boots, without central heating and automobiles and subways and supermarkets. I'm warm enough in my gear (as I should be, after my obsessive research) but I would not like to walk a mile in moccasins today. I don't mean to sound like a spoiled JAP (JCP?) and we certainly do a lot of travel under our own steam (steam! steam! please! more steam!), but I don't think I'd cope well in beaver skins and bark canoes. Oh well I guess in those days you didn't have to keep leaving your shelter to take your kids to school or soccer matches or violin lessons, much less skating classes.

And I wonder again, as I have for much of the past 17 years, what on earth we humans are doing in such northern latitudes. Surely if god had meant us to live where it was so cold, god would not have arranged for us to evolve on the African savanna.

Bade ui!

Bittersweets

Farewell 2010. Welcome 2011. We greet the new year in Los Angeles, escaping northern climes for a couple of weeks.

We did the same last year, too. To welcome 2010 and to celebrate my father's 80th birthday, my extended family gathered at a restaurant in Santa Barbara on New Year's Eve. We all went round the table and shared our wishes for the coming year. I hoped to become less afraid of dealing with money. (No success yet. I shall try again for 2011.) One of us hoped to drink more water. My husband's wish was that the move to Toronto would go smoothly, and would make us happy. Has it, and has it, I wonder? It's so difficult to answer. Yes, I acknowledge that we are, for the most part, quite happy in Canada. Happier than we would have been had we stayed in England? I don't know. Which is the best, or even the better, place for all of us? The tyranny of the path not taken...

A seeming tangent, but one that has occupied my mind and heart for the past few weeks: on December 30, the Brighton and Hove Coptic Church held a funeral for Tony Magdi, a greengrocer in Portland Road, Hove. An angry idiot of a cyclist beat Tony to death one Sunday morning as he parked his car outside his shop, above which he lived. He sold fresh, delicious fruit and vegetables, at low cost, beautifully displayed in white ceramic bowls. Tony dealt out advice on food preparation (I learned how to deal with beetroot from him), on cooking, and on holding your children dear. I used to take my youngest with me to his shop on Fridays after nursery; I would buy as much as I could stow in her stroller and then Tony would press on me an extra bowl of his tomatoes (so tasty), or a bunch of bananas, and (usually) a lollipop for my then- toddler. She adored him. Many many years ago Tony had lost two babies to a horrible congenital illness and would brook no scolding of children (my own, I mean) from me. Tony always closed the shop for a couple of months in January and February so he could visit his native Egypt for warmth and family, and again in August to relax at home. As my kids grew older and I went back to work I visited less often-- shopping at Tony's was enjoyable, but not quick. I never said goodbye to him before we left and imagined stopping in when we returned to visit, explaining that we'd moved to Toronto. I regret it now.

There has been a huge swell of grief and anger from the local community (I know from the news online, and from the website that friends of his organized). The perpetrator has been arrested and the trial is set for Lewes Crown Court January 7. Such a horrible act. Such a waste of lives of Tony's but also of his attacker's. On the day of the funeral I went for a bike ride in Tony's honor, and to try to atone for the sins of that other cyclist.

But it's the path not taken that haunts me. What if we hadn't moved to Toronto? Might I have been driving past Tony's shop when the cyclist attacked? Might there have been a different outcome? I know, I know, the world doesn't revolve around me (more's the pity); I'm a speck of grit, insignificant; I don't have such power. But I wonder, nonetheless.

I conclude that life is random; death a certainty. To repeat: bittersweet.