Monday, 23 December 2013
Toronto's woes
‘May you live in interesting times,’ goes the old Chinese curse. If so, my new city is definitely accursed. Last month in the New York Times, Stephen Marche wrote: ‘Toronto is starting to get interesting. It is a city making a spectacle of itself’. It is indeed. I felt I ought to say something about it. I can't bury my head in the sand forever. Especially when the sand is covered in snow.
In my humble and relatively uninformed opinion, the main problem is less Rob Ford himself and more that the city is constructed in such a way that he could be elected. He is almost entirely unsuited to his job. You could maybe elect him in Mayberry RFD, and make sure Andy Griffith was on hand as sheriff (anyone under 40 and not from the US may be puzzled; here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HSZ8xJoCIg) and Ford would not be much of a handicap; any buffoon would do. In fact, for sitcom purposes, a buffoon is better. But when a mayor has in his purview the quality of life of millions of people, their commutes, their cityscape, their cycling and walking safety, and their access to libraries, arts, and affordable housing, and when the police have their own agenda, look out. This particular mayor is a human wrecking ball. (I’m not referring to his weight or size. I don’t care about that and I have no patience for bringing the topic into the debate. His weight is not my business and his size does not affect his ability, or lack thereof, to do his job.) Received wisdom says Ford was elected by the poorer, less educated suburbs as a lesson to the wealthier, cultured 'inner city'. (I find this in itself odd; when- and where- I was growing up, 'inner city' went with 'poor' and 'uneducated', while 'suburbs' implied middle-class privilege. How did that change?)
I met Rob Ford briefly a few months ago, while chaperoning a school trip to City Hall. I shook his hand, as did the children I escorted. I'm slightly horrified now, thinking what those hands have been up to, but at the same time I have occasionally caught myself thinking 'poor Rob Ford'. I still believe he is unfit to be mayor; he is both a boor and, most likely, a criminal. But I’ve met him, shaken his hand, watched him smile at my group of children. It’s the power of the personal. I can pity him: he is human, if you cut him he will bleed.
Which, on further reflection, makes me sad, not for Toronto (well, not just for Toronto), but for myself. While I feel very enmeshed in my neighbourhood and my community, and extremely attached to my new friends, I also have many old friends, really good ones, that I see too rarely. If 5 minutes of being face-to-face with Rob Ford can evoke my pity, how much I am missing by my remoteness from the very many people I hold dear? It’s an insoluble problem I return to, with sadness, every so often. The people I love are scattered everywhere, places I've lived, places they've moved; to get them all together and near me would involve kidnapping and other illegal activities. (I'm thinking something like a forced relocation program.)
My mantra: I can be homesick wherever I am.
Which makes me very excited to learn that one of my dearest friends and her daughter will be coming to Toronto soon for a visit! Can't wait. I didn't even have to threaten them. Much.
Keeping time
The other night, climbing into our cold car, I huffed and watched the mist trail of breath. ‘I’m a dragon!’ I called to the kids in the back seat. ‘Look!’
‘Mom,’ chided the eldest. ‘That was funny when we were five. Not now.’
‘Teens,’ I groused to husband.
‘Hey, I’m not a teen!’ said the youngest, who is at the tail end of ten. ‘I’m still a kid. Treasure me! Treasure me!’
We all laughed.
But my heart is breaking a little, too. In raising children, as I remind myself when I feel impatient with mine, the days are long but the years are short.
To be truthful, I usually remember that aphorism just after I've been impatient with them.
Sigh. I do treasure them, tot and teen-- beyond all measure.
‘Mom,’ chided the eldest. ‘That was funny when we were five. Not now.’
‘Teens,’ I groused to husband.
‘Hey, I’m not a teen!’ said the youngest, who is at the tail end of ten. ‘I’m still a kid. Treasure me! Treasure me!’
We all laughed.
But my heart is breaking a little, too. In raising children, as I remind myself when I feel impatient with mine, the days are long but the years are short.
To be truthful, I usually remember that aphorism just after I've been impatient with them.
Sigh. I do treasure them, tot and teen-- beyond all measure.
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Ice storm!
A reminder to us that we live in Canada: winter is only a day old and already its depredations are taking their toll. Either ice fell during the night, or rain did and then the temperature dropped below freezing, but we are now living in a world of icicles. It's a bit like spelunking without the cave, with light, and only stalactites. Okay, then, not so similar. But there is a sense of enclosure, of being cut off from the normal world, of being inside even outside. An ice-covered branch came down next door to us leaving a possibly live power line draped over a fence. The fire department appeared immediately to apply a web of crime-scene tape, like a band-aid. They wouldn't touch the wire and said that Toronto Hydro (confusingly, the electric company) would be along when other, more urgent issues had been resolved. 'Stay home,' urged the friendly fireman as he drove off over a length of the tape held down by his mates; they had trapped their truck inside the web.
Several friends report being without power at home (and have been urged to come camp out with us). We are fine at the moment, but when the next bough breaks, it could start getting mighty cold here. I suggested to dear husband that 'repair fireplace' should move to the top place on our to-do list for the house.
Monday, 18 November 2013
A little beauty: our front lawn in fall
That is, in autumn.
I am still a little amazed that we have a front lawn.
What we need now, clearly, is a rake.
I am still a little amazed that we have a front lawn.
What we need now, clearly, is a rake.
Sunday, 10 November 2013
PR
Hallelujah. We've been approved for permanent residency. We still have to cross the border and come back in to 'activate' our status ('flagpoling', the lawyer called it),but supposedly all the hard work is done and we have been accepted by the Canadian immigration authority. We're all set, until it's time to apply for citizenship, or to renew our PR status. In Canadian immigration law, 'permanent' doesn't actually mean permanent, apparently.
This is really great news. I know that. I'm happy and relieved.
It's just that along with buying a house, and having that recent unsettling sense of feeling settled, it is hitting home that Toronto is, in fact, home.
Guess we had better get our hearth fixed. We'll need it.
This is really great news. I know that. I'm happy and relieved.
It's just that along with buying a house, and having that recent unsettling sense of feeling settled, it is hitting home that Toronto is, in fact, home.
Guess we had better get our hearth fixed. We'll need it.
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Leaves
A friend told me yesterday that she might move to British Columbia. 'Oh,' I sighed. I will be sad for her to leave here but I would stop no one from heading to the west coast. Sunsets! Ocean! Mountains. We joked about my going along with her.
Perversely, though, I then heard myself arguing for the benefits of living in Toronto. At this moment, I want to stay here, on my sofa, my dog on my feet, looking out my bedroom window. Lyrics run through my head: it's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free; it's a gift to come down where we ought to be.
It may be that I'm settling in.
Darn it.
If only there could also be the ocean and mountains and sunset...
Sunday, 27 October 2013
Coming clean
My cousin, an accomplished psychologist, writer, and blogger (http://goodenoughmothering.com/) asked me recently how I managed to find time for blogging along with all my other activities, which recently have included planning a bar mitzvah as well as moving, working, school volunteering, and permanent residency application along with the daily routines of parenting and householding. It does start to sound like a lot when I list it, especially as my natural tendencies are toward sloth and hedonism, so the question has resonated with me - how do I do it?- and I keep wondering about the answer. Here's my attempt.
Firstly, it's a better question to ask of my sister, who is the ultimate 'I don't know how she does it' woman. I don't accomplish anywhere near what she does in a day or week or month. But I have decided that what I do manage, I probably owe to two factors: 1) having a wonderful, supportive, contributing husband who has a hand in at least half of the household and parenting tasks and (confession time) 2) my being a truly terrible housekeeper. Most women say it, but for me it's the god's own truth. I do very little cleaning and the bare minimum of laundry. For instance I have no idea where our iron is, or if we have an ironing board. (When the kids were little they thought the iron was strictly for the funny plastic mosaic craft called, in England, 'Hama Beads'.) We have a cleaner once or twice a month and pretty good immune systems. I shop, and cook, and usually get food on the table before the kids' bedtimes, and we collectively feed and walk the pets. Our houseplants don't fare well because they are quiet in the face of neglect; kids and animals have the virtue of making a great big noisy fuss when they need nourishment, which goes a long way toward their survival.
But thank you, Elaine, for asking. Let me brag that I have just finished sweeping three flights of stairs, though I will admit it's because I'm procrastinating work on my contribution to a big grant application due this week. I couldn't find the broom or the brush or the mop, so had to improvise with a duster and disinfectant wipes.
Firstly, it's a better question to ask of my sister, who is the ultimate 'I don't know how she does it' woman. I don't accomplish anywhere near what she does in a day or week or month. But I have decided that what I do manage, I probably owe to two factors: 1) having a wonderful, supportive, contributing husband who has a hand in at least half of the household and parenting tasks and (confession time) 2) my being a truly terrible housekeeper. Most women say it, but for me it's the god's own truth. I do very little cleaning and the bare minimum of laundry. For instance I have no idea where our iron is, or if we have an ironing board. (When the kids were little they thought the iron was strictly for the funny plastic mosaic craft called, in England, 'Hama Beads'.) We have a cleaner once or twice a month and pretty good immune systems. I shop, and cook, and usually get food on the table before the kids' bedtimes, and we collectively feed and walk the pets. Our houseplants don't fare well because they are quiet in the face of neglect; kids and animals have the virtue of making a great big noisy fuss when they need nourishment, which goes a long way toward their survival.
But thank you, Elaine, for asking. Let me brag that I have just finished sweeping three flights of stairs, though I will admit it's because I'm procrastinating work on my contribution to a big grant application due this week. I couldn't find the broom or the brush or the mop, so had to improvise with a duster and disinfectant wipes.
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
Down the rabbit hole without a passport
Trying to stay for any time in a country that is not your own is a pain in the proverbial. Immigration services worldwide seem to pride themselves on being distrustful,suspicious, and convoluted. My own country, judging by what I hear from my foreign friends, is the leader of the pack in pickiness and penalty, but fortunately for me I only deal with them at the actual border. I've had to negotiate with Indonesia and with the UK to be allowed to live, work, and study, and while my memories of encounters there are not fond ones, they are at least well in the past. (Like childbirth, you forget.) In Indonesia once I sat in a waiting room at an immigration centre hoping to renew my visa. Next to me was a man from Zimbabwe, or perhaps it was New Zealand, who hoped to run a shrimp farm on the southern coast of Java. His problem was that the work visa required ten fingerprints, and he was missing one finger, so having been rejected on that score, he was here to argue his case. I never did find out what happened to him. When it was my turn to enter the supervisor's office to be interviewed, the only question he asked me before stamping my documents was 'Are you a virgin?'
They haven't asked me that one in Canada in our quest for permanent residency (PR, as we hopefuls call it). The university provides us with the services of a law firm because the process is so complex, and we know we ought to be grateful for their help. The only trouble is that the appointed law firm seems bent on making things harder for us. The assistant with whom we deal cannot get my name right twice in a row, randomly calling me 'Mrs Husband's-Last-Name', 'Carlin', and 'Dr Leslie'. Very occasionally she calls me either Leslie or Dr Carlin and I do a double-take.
This would be funny in some contexts but not so much in legal or immigration ones. I had to make my way to the lawyer's office recently to sign a notarized affidavit, and found that, after months and months of sending this firm documents, information, and completed forms detailing intimate aspects of our life histories, they had got wrong my title, my address, and my citizenship. With an outward show of good humour I waited while they corrected and reprinted the letter. We proceeded with the signing and stamping, but at the same time I could not help clocking the opulence of the office in a high-rise, high-rent part of town, and thinking about where our tax dollars are going.
Then there was the medical exam we had to undergo (not just our family; all PR applicants). While I cannot say that the doctor, one of a small handful recognized by the province as certified to evaluate our health status, ran anything but the most upright operation, his policy was to accept payment only in cash. The office occupied a basement suite of rooms in a seedy building in the low-rent part of town. We were the only patients in the place; there are five of us, and he had exactly five chairs in the waiting room, so just as well. I had the impression that once we left the premises, the Venetian blinds on the glass door would snap shut, and the office would transform itself into a den of iniquity, for gambling, perhaps, or purveying illicit substances, or jazz. It would have been perfect for any of those, but it was not at all suited to the practice of medicine. As we handed over cash, nearly $200 per person, to the smiling receptionist I asked whether she was checking for unmarked bills. To her credit, she laughed. I don't think she was Canadian. As far as I can tell we passed the medical exam but on what data, I am uncertain.
We had to apply to a total of four countries in which we had lived as adults, requesting police clearance records. Three countries came up trumps (I now know where in our 'hood to go to get my fingerprints taken -- for the FBI, of course). The fourth country is Indonesia, where I lived many moons ago, and whose police will only conduct a record check if the request is accompanied by official government documents-- documents on flimsy tissuey paper that I have long since discarded, or lost. When I phoned the police department in the city where I lived to plead with them to make an exception, the officer listened to me politely, asked where I was calling from, and then, once he understood something of what I wanted, said 'Ibu- Madam- I cannot hear you' and disconnected. This happened three times. Nor could the consulates or private expatriate services assist. Eventually, merciful Ottawa granted me a waiver. It's warranted; I'm fairly sure that the only crimes I committed in Indonesia were sartorial. There was a lot of batik.
I don't believe in borders, by the way. I never have, but I always thought that was my own little peculiarity. Recently, and thanks to Twitter, I learned that I'm in good company, or at least company: http://openborders.info/
They haven't asked me that one in Canada in our quest for permanent residency (PR, as we hopefuls call it). The university provides us with the services of a law firm because the process is so complex, and we know we ought to be grateful for their help. The only trouble is that the appointed law firm seems bent on making things harder for us. The assistant with whom we deal cannot get my name right twice in a row, randomly calling me 'Mrs Husband's-Last-Name', 'Carlin', and 'Dr Leslie'. Very occasionally she calls me either Leslie or Dr Carlin and I do a double-take.
This would be funny in some contexts but not so much in legal or immigration ones. I had to make my way to the lawyer's office recently to sign a notarized affidavit, and found that, after months and months of sending this firm documents, information, and completed forms detailing intimate aspects of our life histories, they had got wrong my title, my address, and my citizenship. With an outward show of good humour I waited while they corrected and reprinted the letter. We proceeded with the signing and stamping, but at the same time I could not help clocking the opulence of the office in a high-rise, high-rent part of town, and thinking about where our tax dollars are going.
Then there was the medical exam we had to undergo (not just our family; all PR applicants). While I cannot say that the doctor, one of a small handful recognized by the province as certified to evaluate our health status, ran anything but the most upright operation, his policy was to accept payment only in cash. The office occupied a basement suite of rooms in a seedy building in the low-rent part of town. We were the only patients in the place; there are five of us, and he had exactly five chairs in the waiting room, so just as well. I had the impression that once we left the premises, the Venetian blinds on the glass door would snap shut, and the office would transform itself into a den of iniquity, for gambling, perhaps, or purveying illicit substances, or jazz. It would have been perfect for any of those, but it was not at all suited to the practice of medicine. As we handed over cash, nearly $200 per person, to the smiling receptionist I asked whether she was checking for unmarked bills. To her credit, she laughed. I don't think she was Canadian. As far as I can tell we passed the medical exam but on what data, I am uncertain.
We had to apply to a total of four countries in which we had lived as adults, requesting police clearance records. Three countries came up trumps (I now know where in our 'hood to go to get my fingerprints taken -- for the FBI, of course). The fourth country is Indonesia, where I lived many moons ago, and whose police will only conduct a record check if the request is accompanied by official government documents-- documents on flimsy tissuey paper that I have long since discarded, or lost. When I phoned the police department in the city where I lived to plead with them to make an exception, the officer listened to me politely, asked where I was calling from, and then, once he understood something of what I wanted, said 'Ibu- Madam- I cannot hear you' and disconnected. This happened three times. Nor could the consulates or private expatriate services assist. Eventually, merciful Ottawa granted me a waiver. It's warranted; I'm fairly sure that the only crimes I committed in Indonesia were sartorial. There was a lot of batik.
I don't believe in borders, by the way. I never have, but I always thought that was my own little peculiarity. Recently, and thanks to Twitter, I learned that I'm in good company, or at least company: http://openborders.info/
Saturday, 28 September 2013
Busy-ness
I feel SO busy. But then, everyone's busy. Am I truly more harassed than others? It's so hard to judge. I'm definitely not one of those 'I don't know how she does it' women who seem willing and able to run the world; my tendency toward hedonism and slothfulness is too pronounced. But I definitely have trouble saying 'no.' Probably this is more from fear that I'll be left out of something than a desire to do good, but I volunteer for stuff and then find myself resentful. Recently I agreed to help at a charity yard sale, clarifying that my contribution would be packing up at the end (that way, I find, I'm less likely to be late). 'Oh thanks!' wrote the coordinator. 'We start at 11:00 am. Please come early and we will tell you where you're needed.'
No! I raged (to myself). I *can't* come early! I am too busy! But so is she, I answered me; clearly too busy fully to read my message. Oh yeah? I said. (Good thing no one else was around to interrupt this exchange.) Did that coordinator just move into a new-old house that keeps springing leaks? Is she trying to unpack hundreds of boxes that seem to increase rather than decrease in number? Is she in the midst of filing for permanent residency? Does she have three school-aged children and three pets to look after, and a husband who has left the country, albeit temporarily (or so he claims)? Is she hosting a bar mitzvah in three weeks including 40 out-of-town guests to whom she hopes to show effortless and generous hospitality on a shoestring budget? Does she have to give a research paper today at a hospital in... Oh hell. Gotta go.
No! I raged (to myself). I *can't* come early! I am too busy! But so is she, I answered me; clearly too busy fully to read my message. Oh yeah? I said. (Good thing no one else was around to interrupt this exchange.) Did that coordinator just move into a new-old house that keeps springing leaks? Is she trying to unpack hundreds of boxes that seem to increase rather than decrease in number? Is she in the midst of filing for permanent residency? Does she have three school-aged children and three pets to look after, and a husband who has left the country, albeit temporarily (or so he claims)? Is she hosting a bar mitzvah in three weeks including 40 out-of-town guests to whom she hopes to show effortless and generous hospitality on a shoestring budget? Does she have to give a research paper today at a hospital in... Oh hell. Gotta go.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
High and dry(er)
So, moving to Canada seemed a good idea for many reasons, some large, some small. One of the seemingly less weighty was Big Laundry: the possibility of doing in one load the washing which in England would require three. This sounds trivial until you have a family of five and are responsible for everyone's clean clothes, all the time. The U of T rental house provided us large though old machines, and I got used to the efficiency-- albeit not to the dank and creepy back basement where they were situated.
Our new house came complete with a used but heavy-duty Maytag washing machine, the signature brand of Sears, itself a Norman Rockwell-like signifier of American tradition. Great. But no tumble dryer. So I shopped around and found one that seemed fine and could be ordered online; relatively cheap, basic, not too many settings and features-- Amana, another good old tried-and-true American brand. I checked the size; the machine was big, but would fit easily into its designated space. I negotiated well with the company (or so I thought) to get both a low price and free delivery. Clever me.
Alas, not so clever. Our new house is in fact quite old, dating from 1899, and the upstairs hallways are very narrow: ours had a bottleneck of 26.5". Lifting, twisting, turning, and shoving failed to get the dryer, whose narrowest dimension, depth, measured 28.5" with the back panel removed, beyond that point to its intended destination. Everyone, from the deliverers, to Jan the Man (who is in charge of coordinating and managing our inadvertently major overhaul of the new house), to husband, to an engineering friend, said 'Nope, it can't be done. Send it back. Get a smaller one.' But Big Laundry was part of the dream. Again, trivial, but not to me. I couldn't let go. After two weeks without laundry (and a lot of me saying 'Careful! Don't spill! You'll get that dirty!'), importuning friends, even contemplating an evening at the laundromat, I was ready to give in and Go Small. Then Jan said, 'Wait! We have a crazy idea.' Greg, an ex-gaffer who is one of Jan's band of merry minstrels, said he felt confident that they could wrap the dryer securely, haul it up the side of the house with ropes and a ladder, onto the roof of the extension (husband's study), up again and over the rail of the third-floor sundeck, then downstairs to the second floor and into the back room intended for laundry.
It sounded mad. It was mad. I asked whether they had insurance. They laughed. I worried about whether the dryer would survive. I also worried about accidental death, both out of sincere concern for the Merry Minstrels, and for our future lives in a home marred by tragedy. A friend to whom I described the plan said that the crime scene tape would be in the shape of a rectangle with two feet sticking out. Husband worried about damage to the roof of his study.
But they did it! And it all went swimmingly. Everyone lived. Up, over, and down in under half an hour, and later in the afternoon they had the dryer connected and running (though the washing machine had sprung a leak-- I think the gods are telling me to stop doing laundry). Jan and the minstrels are miracle workers. We will miss them when they go. Jordi the dog will be especially sad; he anticipates the men's arrival every morning, yapping with excitement when he hears them at the door: Adam, Adam, Ben, Chris, Greg and of course Jan, plus a few who come and go before I learn their names. It's sort of like our family has suddenly grown.
So, yes, it will be a bit lonely when they are done and gone. But I think we might get used to it (except for Jordi). In any case, we are ready to find out.
Monday, 9 September 2013
Discoveries
We are unpacking in a random, slightly desperate, frantic lack of order. Late last night, in the basement, we opened some of the boxes that had remained untouched since we left Brighton and others that had been packed up in Durham, almost a decade ago. Some had flies or bits of mouse poop caught under the wide strips of brown packing tape, like extinct insects in amber. We may re-discover evolution.
We did make some quite wonderful discoveries, like a 480-count pack of our favourite Sainsbury's Red Label tea bags, bought before we moved to Toronto. Frabjous day. Does it matter that the best-before date is 2011? Still hoping to uncover our big brown teapot. It's been so long that I wonder whether I just imagined owning it.
I found a birthday card to husband from the girlfriend before me.
The dryer has to be sent back. Our friend and expert, Karl, says it can't be shifted to the laundry room without removing many bits of the house. He did detach some of them, to our slight horror, and it was not enough to move the machine. Karl then obligingly returned the bits to their designated positions. Relief.
And to make life even more interesting, the washing machine seems to have caused a leak in the kitchen ceiling.
Will the fun never stop? Because really, I'm ready for some nice, soothing boredom.
On the plus side, my friend Hilary has come to visit from California (YAY!). Today she helped with kids and house. Tomorrow we are gonna have us some fun. Watch out, Toronto.
We did make some quite wonderful discoveries, like a 480-count pack of our favourite Sainsbury's Red Label tea bags, bought before we moved to Toronto. Frabjous day. Does it matter that the best-before date is 2011? Still hoping to uncover our big brown teapot. It's been so long that I wonder whether I just imagined owning it.
I found a birthday card to husband from the girlfriend before me.
The dryer has to be sent back. Our friend and expert, Karl, says it can't be shifted to the laundry room without removing many bits of the house. He did detach some of them, to our slight horror, and it was not enough to move the machine. Karl then obligingly returned the bits to their designated positions. Relief.
And to make life even more interesting, the washing machine seems to have caused a leak in the kitchen ceiling.
Will the fun never stop? Because really, I'm ready for some nice, soothing boredom.
On the plus side, my friend Hilary has come to visit from California (YAY!). Today she helped with kids and house. Tomorrow we are gonna have us some fun. Watch out, Toronto.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Moving experience
It was a long day. We sure do have a lot of boxes. Truly, a lot. It was like the Million Box March.
Movers arrived at the old house at 9:15 a.m. and dropped off their final load at the new one at 11:30 pm. It poured, poured, poured with rain. A thunderstorm hit around mid-day. The men left quite a few things behind, including numerous boxes in the basement; they couldn't be moved (said the movers) because their bottoms rotted, thanks no doubt to our several floods. At 2:00 a.m. husband and I were sorting through the collapsing cartons, like miners after gold in a particularly grotty cavern. At 4:00 we slept in our new house. For the next few days we went back and forth retrieving forgotten detritus.
We are still recovering. Temporary recuperation was at hand in the form of a visit to friends with a spectacular cottage in the area north of Toronto. To these friends we say 'thank you for our sanity'.
Now we are back home (home!) with all three children, and trying to live a normal life. Having no kitchen just makes it a bit more challenging. Oh, yes, and does anyone have any ideas for getting a dryer down a hallway that is one centimeter too narrow? Answers on a postcard please...
Movers arrived at the old house at 9:15 a.m. and dropped off their final load at the new one at 11:30 pm. It poured, poured, poured with rain. A thunderstorm hit around mid-day. The men left quite a few things behind, including numerous boxes in the basement; they couldn't be moved (said the movers) because their bottoms rotted, thanks no doubt to our several floods. At 2:00 a.m. husband and I were sorting through the collapsing cartons, like miners after gold in a particularly grotty cavern. At 4:00 we slept in our new house. For the next few days we went back and forth retrieving forgotten detritus.
We are still recovering. Temporary recuperation was at hand in the form of a visit to friends with a spectacular cottage in the area north of Toronto. To these friends we say 'thank you for our sanity'.
Now we are back home (home!) with all three children, and trying to live a normal life. Having no kitchen just makes it a bit more challenging. Oh, yes, and does anyone have any ideas for getting a dryer down a hallway that is one centimeter too narrow? Answers on a postcard please...
Friday, 23 August 2013
Compare and contrast
Packers moved through the house at a rate of knots, wielding rolls of tape and Sharpie markers. The three women were efficient, friendly and calm, asked me for no hot drinks, and completed in one eight-hour day (including a lunch break) what it took three cranky men four days and multiple cups of tea to accomplish when we left the UK. Admittedly a proportion of our belongings has remained boxed up and stored since then, but we've also acquired three years’ MORE stuff. How to explain the difference? Gender, nationality, personality? (I couldn't possibly comment.) As the women left, with smiles and good wishes for our new house, they said ‘the boys’ would arrive on Monday to finish off the last bits (the kettle, the toaster oven, the furniture) and do the actually moving. Maybe that will give us an extra, critical data point.
Our house décor is now Modern Box. Eldest child and I quite like the look, as do the cats, who leap from one tower to the next. It reminds me of the first few weeks of living in Toronto, while our possessions were still on the high seas heading west. We wonder: do we really need all this chazzerai? Now, as then, we seem to be coping fine without it, although it must be said we have been subsisting on a raw-food diet other than when kind friends invite us round for a proper meal.
Thank you, kind friends in Toronto. And not just for the dinners.
Our house décor is now Modern Box. Eldest child and I quite like the look, as do the cats, who leap from one tower to the next. It reminds me of the first few weeks of living in Toronto, while our possessions were still on the high seas heading west. We wonder: do we really need all this chazzerai? Now, as then, we seem to be coping fine without it, although it must be said we have been subsisting on a raw-food diet other than when kind friends invite us round for a proper meal.
Thank you, kind friends in Toronto. And not just for the dinners.
Saturday, 10 August 2013
Saturday, 3 August 2013
Moving on. Part 2.
Where was I? Oh yes, the bully bid.
We had no idea if this mad idea (the one to buy a house that we had fallen in love with but seemed unlikely to be able to afford) would go anywhere, so we returned to our round of viewings, buzzing through another three or four houses that afternoon. A couple of them were quite nice, but our hearts weren't in it. And we never did get to see the one I’d originally spotted, which it turned out was already under offer, way WAY too expensive, and had no parking.
We said good-bye to Kate without having heard any news. We stopped for distraction at the pie shop before retrieving children from their various friends and tried not to think about the house. It was too unlikely. Then at 6:30 in the evening we heard from the sellers’ agent that yes, the owners would 'entertain' an offer! Our hearts leaped. But there was a caveat: they were obliged to contact everyone else who had viewed the house and left their details. Fortunately for us, the house had only been on the market that one day, and the weather had been chill and drizzly, so there were not many names to be reached. Further, it was a Saturday evening, so anyone who didn’t already have financing might be stymied. (In fact, as it turned out later, we ourselves didn’t have quite the financial security we thought we did. As it turns out, it was enough, but the possibilities still give me nightmares.) The agent commented in a by-the-way manner that his one-month-old baby (his first) was ill in hospital so there might be a little delay in responding to messages. That put the deal in perspective.
The roller-coaster ride began to get more exciting.
Kate joined us at our dining table and we all began to read the home inspection (72 pages—we didn’t have enough printer ink so we read directly from the screen) and then to construct an offer. What would constitute ‘worth their while’? How much could we throw at this? We calculated percentages, conjured with kabbala, read tea leaves, and signed our initials in the red circles Kate stamped on the forms. We tried to reach our mortgage man; he ignored our calls but answered Kate’s phone at 7 pm and said okay to our proposed offer. A few days later we found out to our horror that he was talking through his hat and that we actually had no guarantee of approval. But, confidently ignorant on that Saturday evening, we filled in the spaces after the dollar sign as if we had the blessing of a major bank, Kate took the paperwork off to wherever it is that offers go, we served two of the kids a hodge-podge dinner, and then I headed across town (again) to collect the eldest child from a birthday party. I was given several other party guests who needed delivering to their respective parents, and began weaving generally homeward, taking northern and eastern forays for the drop-offs. My phone rang and my son answered it. ‘It’s Dad,’ he reported. ‘He says to come right home. You need to improve your offer.’
Good grief. I pulled over and tried to understand; apparently, we were bidding against one other competitor, and if we could offer something convincing, the house might, just might, be ours. Unbelievable that we had gotten this far; I tried not to look too much further into the face of hope. It might blind me. For the time being all I could do was disconnect and hurry home, but hurrying is not easy, or wise, on a Saturday night in Toronto. After a somewhat dubious stop that required depositing two brothers on one street corner and watching them walk across the intersection to be swept into a taxi by a woman they had assured me was their mother, we got home. ‘Shoo,’ I told the children. ‘Go watch something.’
Husband was brewing tea. He, Kate and I looked for an ‘improvement’ that we might make. I asked about the unwell baby; no news, but Kate said she would find out. More money was needed; again, we called Mr. Mortgage, and again, he said ‘sure, go for it’. More red circles, more initials; I suggested that we make the offer amount end with the digits of the house’s address to try and make some sort of personal connection. We wanted that house. Not just any house. This one, tonight, felt already like our own and tears came to my eyes as I thought of someone else living there. I imagine that adopting a child is similar-- though of course much more profound-- in the stage before the paperwork is all done.
In fact this was an example of real estate recapitulating romance and the building of a family. We had already fallen in love with the house. Now Kate (the midwife?), raced off across town with her delivery, to the Place Where Offerings Are Made (Mount Moriah, perhaps). We had stipulated that our offer, this one, with our initials in half a dozen red stamped circles across the multiple pages, expired at 12:30 am. It was now 11:00 p.m. We sent our neglected (actual) offspring to bed and sat down to pretend to work and read. Now we felt echoes of the birth of our second child, with whom we went to the hospital a few hours too early and sat around watching a movie starring Debbie Reynolds and Rock Hudson as we waited for my labour to progress (and then progress it did, with a rapid bump and the precipitate arrival of an adorable baby boy, and we never saw the end of the film—we’ve always wondered what happened, but don’t recall the title). We looked at the online listing of the house, clicking through the photo gallery, wondering why none of the rooms looked familiar. We had a slight panic – are we making an offer on the right house? —and then recognized a bedroom with framed posters of anatomical drawings that we recalled from our brief tour. Relief. But really it was crazy; we had been in the house for no more than 30 minutes. I’ve spent longer choosing a pair of shoes.
Tick, tick, tick. Midnight. Twelve-fifteen. At 12:29 a text from Kate: ‘they are still deciding’. I flipped blindly through an issue of Bon Appetit; husband looked at his computer screen. The phone rang at 12:31 and we answered on speaker. ‘So,’ Kate enquired, ‘have you thought about which bedroom will belong to which child?’
O Joy! Jubilation! We couldn’t believe it. Shock, awe, laughter, tears, muffled so as not to wake the kids. Husband and I looked at the pictures on the screen again, then harnessed up the dog, left the children sleeping, and walked the five minutes to the house- our house (-to-be) just to look at it and reassure ourselves it was there. Our new arrival.
Of course, there was the afterbirth, the messy part about making a deposit and negotiating the mortgage. And it turned out this baby needed more than the average amount of postnatal care, because the mortgage was not in fact as fully formed as we had been led to believe. For several weeks after we had committed ourselves legally to buying the house, we were on tenterhooks waiting for the bank to grant us mortgage approval, something we believed we already had. ....[REDACTED AT HUSBAND'S REQUEST. I AM A SURRENDERED WIFE.].... Eventually, though, a manageable mortgage came through, as did one from another company, and we had the luxury of choosing the better deal. For a few weeks, though, I tried to imagine what life in prison might be like. I wondered whether it might be a productive place for reading and writing. Who would look after the kids? Could husband and I take turns serving our sentences? At this point, house-buying came to resemble those early days of infancy, with little sleep, unpredictable feeding times, and labile emotions. The phone would ring and anything might be happening on the other end.
But to keep a long story from getting too much longer, in this instalment anyway, we got our mortgage and our lawyer and all our papers signed and abracadabra, we own a tiny little piece of Toronto. (At least, our bank owns it.) In a few more weeks, we hope to move in.
Already I feel more as though I belong.
The poorly baby, the son of the sellers' agent, recovered and was absolutely fine.
____________________________________________________________
I looked out the window by my desk for quite a while. That man, the one with the little girl, came out of the Athletic Centre, walked to his silver Voyager, jumped in, and drove away, smiling at someone on the pavement. He didn’t get a parking ticket. Lucky duck.
We had no idea if this mad idea (the one to buy a house that we had fallen in love with but seemed unlikely to be able to afford) would go anywhere, so we returned to our round of viewings, buzzing through another three or four houses that afternoon. A couple of them were quite nice, but our hearts weren't in it. And we never did get to see the one I’d originally spotted, which it turned out was already under offer, way WAY too expensive, and had no parking.
We said good-bye to Kate without having heard any news. We stopped for distraction at the pie shop before retrieving children from their various friends and tried not to think about the house. It was too unlikely. Then at 6:30 in the evening we heard from the sellers’ agent that yes, the owners would 'entertain' an offer! Our hearts leaped. But there was a caveat: they were obliged to contact everyone else who had viewed the house and left their details. Fortunately for us, the house had only been on the market that one day, and the weather had been chill and drizzly, so there were not many names to be reached. Further, it was a Saturday evening, so anyone who didn’t already have financing might be stymied. (In fact, as it turned out later, we ourselves didn’t have quite the financial security we thought we did. As it turns out, it was enough, but the possibilities still give me nightmares.) The agent commented in a by-the-way manner that his one-month-old baby (his first) was ill in hospital so there might be a little delay in responding to messages. That put the deal in perspective.
The roller-coaster ride began to get more exciting.
Kate joined us at our dining table and we all began to read the home inspection (72 pages—we didn’t have enough printer ink so we read directly from the screen) and then to construct an offer. What would constitute ‘worth their while’? How much could we throw at this? We calculated percentages, conjured with kabbala, read tea leaves, and signed our initials in the red circles Kate stamped on the forms. We tried to reach our mortgage man; he ignored our calls but answered Kate’s phone at 7 pm and said okay to our proposed offer. A few days later we found out to our horror that he was talking through his hat and that we actually had no guarantee of approval. But, confidently ignorant on that Saturday evening, we filled in the spaces after the dollar sign as if we had the blessing of a major bank, Kate took the paperwork off to wherever it is that offers go, we served two of the kids a hodge-podge dinner, and then I headed across town (again) to collect the eldest child from a birthday party. I was given several other party guests who needed delivering to their respective parents, and began weaving generally homeward, taking northern and eastern forays for the drop-offs. My phone rang and my son answered it. ‘It’s Dad,’ he reported. ‘He says to come right home. You need to improve your offer.’
Good grief. I pulled over and tried to understand; apparently, we were bidding against one other competitor, and if we could offer something convincing, the house might, just might, be ours. Unbelievable that we had gotten this far; I tried not to look too much further into the face of hope. It might blind me. For the time being all I could do was disconnect and hurry home, but hurrying is not easy, or wise, on a Saturday night in Toronto. After a somewhat dubious stop that required depositing two brothers on one street corner and watching them walk across the intersection to be swept into a taxi by a woman they had assured me was their mother, we got home. ‘Shoo,’ I told the children. ‘Go watch something.’
Husband was brewing tea. He, Kate and I looked for an ‘improvement’ that we might make. I asked about the unwell baby; no news, but Kate said she would find out. More money was needed; again, we called Mr. Mortgage, and again, he said ‘sure, go for it’. More red circles, more initials; I suggested that we make the offer amount end with the digits of the house’s address to try and make some sort of personal connection. We wanted that house. Not just any house. This one, tonight, felt already like our own and tears came to my eyes as I thought of someone else living there. I imagine that adopting a child is similar-- though of course much more profound-- in the stage before the paperwork is all done.
In fact this was an example of real estate recapitulating romance and the building of a family. We had already fallen in love with the house. Now Kate (the midwife?), raced off across town with her delivery, to the Place Where Offerings Are Made (Mount Moriah, perhaps). We had stipulated that our offer, this one, with our initials in half a dozen red stamped circles across the multiple pages, expired at 12:30 am. It was now 11:00 p.m. We sent our neglected (actual) offspring to bed and sat down to pretend to work and read. Now we felt echoes of the birth of our second child, with whom we went to the hospital a few hours too early and sat around watching a movie starring Debbie Reynolds and Rock Hudson as we waited for my labour to progress (and then progress it did, with a rapid bump and the precipitate arrival of an adorable baby boy, and we never saw the end of the film—we’ve always wondered what happened, but don’t recall the title). We looked at the online listing of the house, clicking through the photo gallery, wondering why none of the rooms looked familiar. We had a slight panic – are we making an offer on the right house? —and then recognized a bedroom with framed posters of anatomical drawings that we recalled from our brief tour. Relief. But really it was crazy; we had been in the house for no more than 30 minutes. I’ve spent longer choosing a pair of shoes.
Tick, tick, tick. Midnight. Twelve-fifteen. At 12:29 a text from Kate: ‘they are still deciding’. I flipped blindly through an issue of Bon Appetit; husband looked at his computer screen. The phone rang at 12:31 and we answered on speaker. ‘So,’ Kate enquired, ‘have you thought about which bedroom will belong to which child?’
O Joy! Jubilation! We couldn’t believe it. Shock, awe, laughter, tears, muffled so as not to wake the kids. Husband and I looked at the pictures on the screen again, then harnessed up the dog, left the children sleeping, and walked the five minutes to the house- our house (-to-be) just to look at it and reassure ourselves it was there. Our new arrival.
Of course, there was the afterbirth, the messy part about making a deposit and negotiating the mortgage. And it turned out this baby needed more than the average amount of postnatal care, because the mortgage was not in fact as fully formed as we had been led to believe. For several weeks after we had committed ourselves legally to buying the house, we were on tenterhooks waiting for the bank to grant us mortgage approval, something we believed we already had. ....[REDACTED AT HUSBAND'S REQUEST. I AM A SURRENDERED WIFE.].... Eventually, though, a manageable mortgage came through, as did one from another company, and we had the luxury of choosing the better deal. For a few weeks, though, I tried to imagine what life in prison might be like. I wondered whether it might be a productive place for reading and writing. Who would look after the kids? Could husband and I take turns serving our sentences? At this point, house-buying came to resemble those early days of infancy, with little sleep, unpredictable feeding times, and labile emotions. The phone would ring and anything might be happening on the other end.
But to keep a long story from getting too much longer, in this instalment anyway, we got our mortgage and our lawyer and all our papers signed and abracadabra, we own a tiny little piece of Toronto. (At least, our bank owns it.) In a few more weeks, we hope to move in.
Already I feel more as though I belong.
The poorly baby, the son of the sellers' agent, recovered and was absolutely fine.
____________________________________________________________
I looked out the window by my desk for quite a while. That man, the one with the little girl, came out of the Athletic Centre, walked to his silver Voyager, jumped in, and drove away, smiling at someone on the pavement. He didn’t get a parking ticket. Lucky duck.
Sunday, 28 July 2013
Coda: ripples into tsunamis
Of course, following my friend's advice about dropping pebbles into ponds is part of how we ended up moving here. When husband was offered the opportunity to be considered for his current job at the University of Toronto, he asked me for my opinion. I said 'Sure, why not? Hey, maybe you'll get a free trip to Canada out of it!' As it turned out, that was no pebble. It was a boulder.
Not about the house: pebbles and ripples
A very good friend of mine is a successful, smart, somewhat scary academic. She has a dream job now, one which she richly deserves, but before getting there she kissed a lot of employment frogs, so to speak. She did this from the vantage of someone who had a perfectly good post in a well-respected university. I used to wonder why she bothered accepting requests to apply for and then turn up at interviews for positions she had little intention of filling, sometimes traversing vast distances at inconvenient times to do so. 'Because,' she told me once, 'a lot can happen when you agree to an interview. I've met people and collaborated with them on some of my most rewarding projects. I've found opportunities for my students. It's like dropping a pebble into a pond; you don't know where the ripples will go.' (Probably physicists will tell me that they can in fact tell where the ripples will go but that would be missing the point.)
A few nights ago another friend, visiting from Durham, where we lived when my children were born (gee, I love writing that: 'where my children were born'. I have children! I bore them! It still amazes me) brought two of her own children to stay with us. When I met these little girls 15 years ago, they were aged 3 years and 1 year. At that time my eldest son was 2 months old, tiny, fragile, adorable, and endlessly precious. I had great difficulty feeding him. (Now he is muscular, sturdy, handsome and still endlessly precious. The only difficulty feeding him is in keeping the fridge stocked.) We were all attending a first birthday party, a party that constituted my launch into the social life of parenting, and set the bar for how I would be a mother.
Magazine articles and child-rearing guides always commiserate with new moms about the isolation they experience becoming parents. I was lucky to live in a small, friendly university town as a new mother, but not many of my academic friends had tiny babies. When my son was only a few weeks old and I was home on maternity leave, I decided to attend one of the mother and baby groups advertised in the local paper, where for the admission price of two pounds, I was offered a seat on a minuscule chair and given a lukewarm cup of tea. I perched there dumbly for a time cuddling my son; I might even have hidden away at one point to shed a few tears over my nursing troubles. But then I was approached by an amazing, dynamic and sociable woman, pregnant and with a toddler of her own, who greeted me, asked for my life story and then my telephone number. I gave them to her, surprised and pathetically willing. She listened, smiled, and left me to chase after her little girl. Finally the children and their mothers gathered in a circle, clapped to 'If You're Happy and You Know It', donned coats (it was May, in the north of England) and said good-byes. I struggled home in the rain with a crying baby and no dinner planned, feeling rather silly. What had been the point of taking a 5-week old infant to a playgroup? He didn’t care about seeing other children, or having a biscuit and a cup of juice. But a day or two later the friendly woman called, asked me to her house, and made me part of her group. The party invitation followed. I met the friend with the two daughters, and her friend, and hers. We gathered regularly. We compiled a cookbook. These friends commissioned a song to be written and recorded for me, about me, for my fortieth birthday, the most creative birthday present I've received since my father quit smoking when I turned twelve.
So, it was a pebble. And this week, watching the two chattering teenagers set off on public transport to survey the lights of Toronto from atop a 550 meter tower thousands of miles away from northern England, I felt a tidal wave of love and wonder rush over me. So this is how life works. Pebbles make ripples. Our children grow up. We move around the globe-- the Pebble Woman now lives in Switzerland-- but we don't have to grow apart.
A few nights ago another friend, visiting from Durham, where we lived when my children were born (gee, I love writing that: 'where my children were born'. I have children! I bore them! It still amazes me) brought two of her own children to stay with us. When I met these little girls 15 years ago, they were aged 3 years and 1 year. At that time my eldest son was 2 months old, tiny, fragile, adorable, and endlessly precious. I had great difficulty feeding him. (Now he is muscular, sturdy, handsome and still endlessly precious. The only difficulty feeding him is in keeping the fridge stocked.) We were all attending a first birthday party, a party that constituted my launch into the social life of parenting, and set the bar for how I would be a mother.
Magazine articles and child-rearing guides always commiserate with new moms about the isolation they experience becoming parents. I was lucky to live in a small, friendly university town as a new mother, but not many of my academic friends had tiny babies. When my son was only a few weeks old and I was home on maternity leave, I decided to attend one of the mother and baby groups advertised in the local paper, where for the admission price of two pounds, I was offered a seat on a minuscule chair and given a lukewarm cup of tea. I perched there dumbly for a time cuddling my son; I might even have hidden away at one point to shed a few tears over my nursing troubles. But then I was approached by an amazing, dynamic and sociable woman, pregnant and with a toddler of her own, who greeted me, asked for my life story and then my telephone number. I gave them to her, surprised and pathetically willing. She listened, smiled, and left me to chase after her little girl. Finally the children and their mothers gathered in a circle, clapped to 'If You're Happy and You Know It', donned coats (it was May, in the north of England) and said good-byes. I struggled home in the rain with a crying baby and no dinner planned, feeling rather silly. What had been the point of taking a 5-week old infant to a playgroup? He didn’t care about seeing other children, or having a biscuit and a cup of juice. But a day or two later the friendly woman called, asked me to her house, and made me part of her group. The party invitation followed. I met the friend with the two daughters, and her friend, and hers. We gathered regularly. We compiled a cookbook. These friends commissioned a song to be written and recorded for me, about me, for my fortieth birthday, the most creative birthday present I've received since my father quit smoking when I turned twelve.
So, it was a pebble. And this week, watching the two chattering teenagers set off on public transport to survey the lights of Toronto from atop a 550 meter tower thousands of miles away from northern England, I felt a tidal wave of love and wonder rush over me. So this is how life works. Pebbles make ripples. Our children grow up. We move around the globe-- the Pebble Woman now lives in Switzerland-- but we don't have to grow apart.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Moving on. Part 1.
Date: 23 April 2013
Something just happened as I looked out my window. It wasn't the thing that was supposed to happen, which was receiving inspiration about how to pull together my presentation abstract, due tomorrow. Instead, I watched a father park his silver Plymouth Voyager and help his little daughter out of the car, on the street side, right into the bike lane (only a dad...). I held my breath, but all was okay; he was watching carefully. A good dad. Oops, they forgot something. He opened the car's front passenger door and retrieved a water bottle, which he handed to the child. She smiled up at him and they trotted into the University Athletic Centre, the sequins on her purple trainers flashing in the low sunlight. They're late for her swimming class. Or maybe it's dance, or track and field. Not gymnastics; that entrance is around the corner. The man hasn't bought a pay-and-display parking ticket, so clearly he feels lucky. Very lucky. His chances are not good.
I knew all that. I've made the same dash, from right across the street, with my own children. I've been looking out this self-same window for almost three years, and I feel I am part of the view. I look down into open sunroofs (a black Volvo station-wagon) on to the tops of busses (good old number 94, always early or late, never on time, plying the currents of Harbord Street). In the winter, even now in the 'sprinter' (spring resembling winter), the trees bear only thin dark boughs, no leaves to block my sight. But the tips have buds. Spring will come.
And I thought, suddenly, 'I love this city.' And then a split second later, the shock hit. Whose words were those?
We did fall in love though, 10 days ago, with a little bit of the city. It was with a house. After a month of dogged hunting, we walked into a house that felt, right away, like home. Our realtor, Kate, had commented many times in the preceding weeks about how 'open-minded' husband and I were. That was a polite circumlocution for 'lacking discrimination', we knew. But in fact, almost every house she picked out for us to view had some redeeming, appealing feature, usually more than one. Maybe it was a crappy building but in a lovely little cul-de-sac of a street, with a little library box at the end.
(It turns out that this is a whole movement, the Little Free Library thing. Get yours here: http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/index.html)
But after viewing 24 houses, some more than once, many of them utter wrecks that would take months or years of work, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and bucketloads of imagination to put in tolerable order-- and others so polished and grand we feared our tattered furniture and selves would degrade them unforgivably. We made tentative offers on a couple of houses, one of which we actually liked a lot. The way it works here, offers are binding contracts in themselves, made with documents in triplicate, signatures, drops of blood, etc. There's no willy-nilly of England: 'oh, yes,' I'd say over the phone to some seller's estate agent, 'tell them we could offer £350,000,' before ringing some other agent and putting out a tentacle in a different direction. No, in Canada, or at least Toronto, once an offer is accepted, earnest money immediately follows and any breach of agreement is treated seriously indeed. So although you might see two lovely houses in a week, if they have the same offer date-- and generally these seem to be on Tuesdays-- you don't dare make an offer on both or you could end up having promised to buy both (worst case, but still). But still, just because we had made offers on the previous two Tuesdays, we did not *have* to go through it again on the next Tuesday. Only if we found a house we really wanted to live in.
Then one grim and rainy Saturday we set off with the hero of the piece, Kate the Realtor, to see another batch of houses, starting with one we had seen a few days earlier and after a few days away from it, had convinced ourselves it was really rather appealing. Back we trekked to 'Little Italy' into a wonky structure with missing floorboards and odor of rodent, trying hard to believe we could make it our family home. 'When is the offer date?' husband inquired of Kate.
The selling agent told Kate that he had received a couple of 'bully bids' already, so the offer date wasn't really relevant. 'What? What's a bully bid?' we asked, innocently, unaware that within a very few hours we ourselves would not just understand the strategy, but deploy it to wondrous effect. First though we had our list of viewings. Next up: a tiny little treehouse in Regal Heights. What a nice name for a neighbourhood; it even included a vague upward slope. We loved the street but the house, although listed as four-bedroom, was really only big enough to house The Borrowers. It was one of the very few houses we saw that we were able to reject out of hand.
‘Kate,’ I asked, as we left. ‘There’s a house for sale on Brunswick. I have seen the for-sale sign a couple of times. Probably there’s some reason it’s not on our list but perhaps you could check?’ Oblingingly, she did so; nodded into her phone a few times, disconnected and said, ‘Actually that one sounds like a possible. Their agent will be there for another half-hour so if we go right now we can see it. Meet you there!’
‘Okay,’ we agreed, though this would mean criss-crossing town again in order to see the others on our list. ‘See you at Brunswick and Lowther.’
‘What? No, at Brunswick and College.’ She paused with her hand on the car door.
‘Really? That’s not the one I asked about.’ I was dubious.
‘Well, never mind; the agent is waiting for us now. Let’s go have a look.’
So off we headed, with no high hopes, since this wasn’t the house I’d spotted, almost feeling irritated at the extra driving on such a chill, wet day. When we found the house, I was surprised; it was on a lovely block, around the corner from our rental home, and in fact I had cycled down the street only two days earlier en route to middle child’s school. There had been no ‘for sale’ sign then, just an unbroken row of graceful semi-detached homes with lawns and a wide grass verge. A true avenue.
‘No,’ the agent agreed. ‘It’s only just gone on the market.’ We walked in and all three of us thought, ‘What a great house!’ This was the one we had been seeking. Tattered and shabby round the edges, certainly no show home, but not a wreck either; proper Victorian (for husband), a double garage (for me), lots of rooms, four bathrooms, a sundeck with a view over downtown and a west-facing front porch and a little park across the street and a set of back stairs. We knew as we wandered through it that we could never afford it; it was much bigger and more desirable than the house we’d lost out on the week before. I admired it, and loved it, and mourned its loss all in the 15 minutes we explored it. I kept running to the front windows to check on the car, which was illegally parked across the road. This felt like our house, but we knew we couldn’t have it.
‘Kate,’ I whispered, ‘Would you want to go in on it with us?’ I was formulating a plan.
She laughed. ‘I’d love to! Unfortunately it’s not ethical.’ Oh well.
On the way out, Kate asked the young, smiling seller’s agent about the offer date. He named a day almost two weeks away. ‘Why so long?’ Kate inquired.
‘The owners are going away; they won’t be back until then,’ he explained. Kate persisted. ‘When are they leaving?’ Tomorrow, as it turned out. Husband and I sighed again, and shrugged. After 10 more days on the market, everyone and his brother would have seen the house and entered a bid; we would absolutely not be able to compete. Someone else was going to get our house. But Kate wasn’t done.
‘Would the owners consider an offer tonight?’ She held the other agent’s eyes. ‘Tell them we’ll make it worth their while.’ Husband and I exchanged glances. What was going on?
‘I’ll ask them,’ the young man agreed. ‘I can let you know in the next couple of hours.’
‘Fine,’ Kate said, handing him another card. ‘We look forward to hearing from you.’
She pulled us outside. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘Let’s throw everything we can at this one. You want it, don’t you? If you do, we have to get it before it goes to open bidding.’
A bully bid! We were making our own bully bid!
To be continued.
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Matchmaker, matchmaker
In another lifetime, my chosen career would be matchmaker. I can see myself as the yenta in some shtetl reminiscent of the one in Fiddler on the Roof, without, however, the Cossacks, the cold, barnyard animals in the sitting room, and the poverty.
I can only practice as an amateur here in my world. One of the matches I've long yearned to bring about is between two of my favorite radio and newspaper personalities in England. The two of them do double- and triple-duty as entertainers, and can be described equally as comedians, radio and television hosts, newspaper columnists, and poker expert (her). It's one of the things I love about the UK; talent grows and flows and then overflows. Someone who is bright and funny can make a living as a humourist in multiple media and also as a thoughtful writer on issues of public policy and political contention. Sometimes they cook, too. David Mitchell and Victoria Coren both wear several hats, being hilarious, clever, right-thinking, and left-leaning. Victoria had a head start, coming from a family of pundits, writers, and opinion-makers. She is also a champion poker player who earns money at it, writes about it, and provides live commentary, in such a way that even I enjoy following the game. (If she covered cricket too I am sure I would be a fan, pleasing my husband no end.) Both of them host comedy game shows on TV and radio and have that wonderful, ineffable quality of being always on top of the conversational current; as a viewer or listener, you can relax and know that whatever happens, whatever gaffes or goofs occur, David or Victoria will remain serene and produce a funny, yet tasteful and not unkind zinger to get the audience laughing and the other guests back on track. Canada does not seem to produce or promote such individuals, or perhaps if it does, they leave. The US too seems to funnel its talent into single lanes; TV hosts host TV and that's it. They don't also write a newspaper column or dance professionally. (The two successful crossover-types I can think of on this side of the Atlantic are Garrison Keillor and Steve Martin. And I can see Barack Obama with a career in stand-up when this politics lark is finished.)
Thus it had long been my wish to match up Victoria Coren and David Mitchell. My goodness did they suit one another! Think of the fun to be had at their joint breakfast table! I harped on about this plan to my long-suffering husband, whose fondest wish is that I mind my own business. I may even have made the odd comment online in response to a column one or the other had written for The Guardian or The Observer, to the effect that each should seek the other out. I'm just saying maybe.
So,idly listening to the BBC Radio 4 show 'Heresy' earlier today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sjjyf), hosted by Victoria Coren, imagine my reaction to hearing her say to her guest David Mitchell, 'Remember when we were on holiday in Portugal and you ate meat on a skewer?' WHAT? One quick Google and I learned that the two of them got MARRIED 6 months ago, in November 2012! My dream come true! How did I miss it? I have lost out on half a year of joy, and also half a year of making jokes about another celebrity couple called 'David and Victoria'. I doubt anyone will confuse the two twosomes.
How wonderful. All is right with the world. But.... how is it that I did not know sooner? The internet is wonderful in so many of its incarnations. We can read The Guardian online, we listen to BBC Radio, the kids can watch Premier League football, we feel comfortably connected to the Old Country in a way that would have been impossible to emigres not so very long ago. It is indeed all good. Yet something like this brings home to me with a hard thud that I live here, not there. Here is Toronto. Here is now, for better or for worse, home.
We are connected by massless electrons, not by breath and flesh and atmosphere. From far across the Atlantic, belatedly and virtually, I send good wishes and mazel tov to David and Victoria the Second.
I can only practice as an amateur here in my world. One of the matches I've long yearned to bring about is between two of my favorite radio and newspaper personalities in England. The two of them do double- and triple-duty as entertainers, and can be described equally as comedians, radio and television hosts, newspaper columnists, and poker expert (her). It's one of the things I love about the UK; talent grows and flows and then overflows. Someone who is bright and funny can make a living as a humourist in multiple media and also as a thoughtful writer on issues of public policy and political contention. Sometimes they cook, too. David Mitchell and Victoria Coren both wear several hats, being hilarious, clever, right-thinking, and left-leaning. Victoria had a head start, coming from a family of pundits, writers, and opinion-makers. She is also a champion poker player who earns money at it, writes about it, and provides live commentary, in such a way that even I enjoy following the game. (If she covered cricket too I am sure I would be a fan, pleasing my husband no end.) Both of them host comedy game shows on TV and radio and have that wonderful, ineffable quality of being always on top of the conversational current; as a viewer or listener, you can relax and know that whatever happens, whatever gaffes or goofs occur, David or Victoria will remain serene and produce a funny, yet tasteful and not unkind zinger to get the audience laughing and the other guests back on track. Canada does not seem to produce or promote such individuals, or perhaps if it does, they leave. The US too seems to funnel its talent into single lanes; TV hosts host TV and that's it. They don't also write a newspaper column or dance professionally. (The two successful crossover-types I can think of on this side of the Atlantic are Garrison Keillor and Steve Martin. And I can see Barack Obama with a career in stand-up when this politics lark is finished.)
Thus it had long been my wish to match up Victoria Coren and David Mitchell. My goodness did they suit one another! Think of the fun to be had at their joint breakfast table! I harped on about this plan to my long-suffering husband, whose fondest wish is that I mind my own business. I may even have made the odd comment online in response to a column one or the other had written for The Guardian or The Observer, to the effect that each should seek the other out. I'm just saying maybe.
So,idly listening to the BBC Radio 4 show 'Heresy' earlier today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sjjyf), hosted by Victoria Coren, imagine my reaction to hearing her say to her guest David Mitchell, 'Remember when we were on holiday in Portugal and you ate meat on a skewer?' WHAT? One quick Google and I learned that the two of them got MARRIED 6 months ago, in November 2012! My dream come true! How did I miss it? I have lost out on half a year of joy, and also half a year of making jokes about another celebrity couple called 'David and Victoria'. I doubt anyone will confuse the two twosomes.
How wonderful. All is right with the world. But.... how is it that I did not know sooner? The internet is wonderful in so many of its incarnations. We can read The Guardian online, we listen to BBC Radio, the kids can watch Premier League football, we feel comfortably connected to the Old Country in a way that would have been impossible to emigres not so very long ago. It is indeed all good. Yet something like this brings home to me with a hard thud that I live here, not there. Here is Toronto. Here is now, for better or for worse, home.
We are connected by massless electrons, not by breath and flesh and atmosphere. From far across the Atlantic, belatedly and virtually, I send good wishes and mazel tov to David and Victoria the Second.
Monday, 13 May 2013
Scoring points
Somewhere I used to live-- US? UK? -- has bumper stickers on trucks reading 'How's my driving? Call...' (Must be America.) I could do with a tee-shirt similarly asking for judgement : 'How's my Canadian-ness?' (A sweatshirt would be more appropriate, regardless of the fact that it's MAY. Grrr. See below.)
Scoring:
1) We're buying a house. That's pretty much a commitment. 10 points.
2) The local hockey team, the Maple Leafs, are in the National Hockey League playoffs (which are, confusingly, international, comprising both Canadian and US teams). The format is best-of-seven and the seventh game is tonight. I won't be watching, as I'm chairing a school council meeting. Nul points. Possibly negative points, because my main reaction is irritation that they are called the Maple LEAFS rather than the Maple LEAVES.
3) I am a co-chair of the middle school's parent council. 10 points.
4) I neither have, nor want, a canoe, and have nothing to contribute to discussions of fibreglass versus non-fibreglass construction. Some friends keep theirs strapped, upside down, to the top of the children's climbing frame in the back garden. I thought this was a sweet, creative addition meant to increase the children's climbing pleasure. Not in the least. It's for storage only. Nul points.
5) It SNOWED and HAILED yesterday, in May. On Mother's Day yet. We enjoyed a lovely lunch in a bland strip mall in the small, unremarkable town of Orangeville and then, to the children's dismay, persevered with our plans for a hike in the 'Forks of the Credit' Provincial Park. (Where might we find 'Spoons of the Debit', we wonder.) The dog, who is Canadian, loved it. The rest of us would have been in tears, except we worried they would freeze on our cheeks. 5 points.
So, how's my Canadian-ness? Waiting for your call.
Scoring:
1) We're buying a house. That's pretty much a commitment. 10 points.
2) The local hockey team, the Maple Leafs, are in the National Hockey League playoffs (which are, confusingly, international, comprising both Canadian and US teams). The format is best-of-seven and the seventh game is tonight. I won't be watching, as I'm chairing a school council meeting. Nul points. Possibly negative points, because my main reaction is irritation that they are called the Maple LEAFS rather than the Maple LEAVES.
3) I am a co-chair of the middle school's parent council. 10 points.
4) I neither have, nor want, a canoe, and have nothing to contribute to discussions of fibreglass versus non-fibreglass construction. Some friends keep theirs strapped, upside down, to the top of the children's climbing frame in the back garden. I thought this was a sweet, creative addition meant to increase the children's climbing pleasure. Not in the least. It's for storage only. Nul points.
5) It SNOWED and HAILED yesterday, in May. On Mother's Day yet. We enjoyed a lovely lunch in a bland strip mall in the small, unremarkable town of Orangeville and then, to the children's dismay, persevered with our plans for a hike in the 'Forks of the Credit' Provincial Park. (Where might we find 'Spoons of the Debit', we wonder.) The dog, who is Canadian, loved it. The rest of us would have been in tears, except we worried they would freeze on our cheeks. 5 points.
So, how's my Canadian-ness? Waiting for your call.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Walking to America for hot chocolate
Sometimes I love being in Canada. There are things you can do here that are not possible in England. For instance, last month the kids and I and some friends visited Niagara Falls to become deafened in a large indoor water park for two days. (Okay, that you can do in England. But wait.) When the fun finally palled and our hearing had begun to return, we ventured out the door of the hotel/park complex and saw the gleaming, snowy banks of the U.S. of A. across the narrow Niagara River, with the charmingly named Rainbow Bridge providing a connection. We could walk it. And, armed with passports, we did. But first we had to pass through a turnstile costing 50 cents per person. One of our group, who shall be nameless but is a teenager, decided that leaping over the barrier would be both economical and entertaining. Out from behind a mirrored door came a severe voice reprimanding said teenager and threatening deportation. Well, not exactly, but the voice's owner was seriously displeased.
A short walk commemorated by a lot of cellphone snapshots brought us to the American side of the falls. US passport control welcomed the kids and me with smiles and warmth. They were less friendly to our companions, traveling on Canadian passports.
It also seemed to be a lot colder now that we were in the north. Not much in the way of shelter or commerce beckoned at that time of year but as luck would have it, we found a Hard Rock Cafe perched on the perilous shore, and we tumbled gratefully in to consume hot chocolates with lots of cheap American cream. Yum. Then back out into frigid air, across the bridge, into southern Canada, where the weather seemed warmer but the the border guards cooler, at least to me and my kids. We endured a series of suspicious questions about our right and reason to enter the country. They let us in, finally, clearly unimpressed with our yen to walk to my homeland for no better reason than to say we had done so. And of course for the hot chocolate.
PS Youngest child, a girl, commented that for the second year in a row we went to the water park without her father. Her father hates such places with a passion, so the timing was in fact both not coincidental, and in his favor (he was in Portugal at the time). Daughter looked at her 2 elder brothers and said 'I feel sorry for you.' They asked why. 'Because when you grow up you'll be dads, and you will have to miss all the fun things.' I wonder if that counts as turning her into a feminist.
A short walk commemorated by a lot of cellphone snapshots brought us to the American side of the falls. US passport control welcomed the kids and me with smiles and warmth. They were less friendly to our companions, traveling on Canadian passports.
It also seemed to be a lot colder now that we were in the north. Not much in the way of shelter or commerce beckoned at that time of year but as luck would have it, we found a Hard Rock Cafe perched on the perilous shore, and we tumbled gratefully in to consume hot chocolates with lots of cheap American cream. Yum. Then back out into frigid air, across the bridge, into southern Canada, where the weather seemed warmer but the the border guards cooler, at least to me and my kids. We endured a series of suspicious questions about our right and reason to enter the country. They let us in, finally, clearly unimpressed with our yen to walk to my homeland for no better reason than to say we had done so. And of course for the hot chocolate.
PS Youngest child, a girl, commented that for the second year in a row we went to the water park without her father. Her father hates such places with a passion, so the timing was in fact both not coincidental, and in his favor (he was in Portugal at the time). Daughter looked at her 2 elder brothers and said 'I feel sorry for you.' They asked why. 'Because when you grow up you'll be dads, and you will have to miss all the fun things.' I wonder if that counts as turning her into a feminist.
Sunday, 31 March 2013
A very Good Friday
The whole family was invited to a party last night. Our Evite read 'It's that time of year again! It's time to nail cheeses to the cross. Cheeses welcomed. Hammer and nails provided.' And so they were, on the kitchen island, along with a wooden cross made of two-by-fours, all narrowly overseen by a tiny molded-plastic dashboard-style Jesus. Guests did their own hammering.
An evening of wine, women and whiskey ensued. (Some delightful men and children attended too, including my own, but they don't alliterate.) The whole thing was a blast and bordered on the sacrilegious--very much outside my experience, so far, of Canadian social gatherings. I loved it.
An evening of wine, women and whiskey ensued. (Some delightful men and children attended too, including my own, but they don't alliterate.) The whole thing was a blast and bordered on the sacrilegious--very much outside my experience, so far, of Canadian social gatherings. I loved it.
Friday, 8 March 2013
Leaving Eden
In five months, at the end of July, we will have been in Toronto for three full years. It is scarcely credible; I still feel like such a newcomer. What looms now, and why that three year mark is critical, is that we will shortly be kicked out of our residential playpen, aka 'New Faculty Housing', and have to make our own way in the big bad world of real estate. We will have to get our own house, our own account with 'Toronto Hydro' (electricity company), heating company (not sure what that one is called), and whatever else is required of home-owners.
Yes, we hope to be home-owners. It may be a stupid hope, because the real estate market here is in what people keep describing as a bubble, and it may be a vain hope, because we have no idea how much we have to spend. Our finances are in dire disarray and we are only starting to come to grips with the Canadian way of assessing and issuing mortgages. So far, it has not gone well. We contacted our bank to find out how much they would give us. An email from Our Man at the Teller's Window (let's call him Michael) pointed out, politely, that they issue mortgages up into multiple millions, and asked precisely how much we are requesting. There is some failure to communicate here, as this does not make sense to me. If Michael will lend us more money, we'll buy a better house. Isn't it up to him to calculate how much he is willing to risk on us? That's how it worked in England. I assume at some point, after circling each other a while longer, each of us will realize what assumptions the other is making that are not, at present, shared, and an actual amount will be mooted. Then we can go shopping.
Until then, I'm dreaming of Casa Loma, 'Canada's Only Castle,' just a couple of kilometers from our playpen. Michael, what about those multi-million dollar loans?
But I do wonder about the heating bills....
Yes, we hope to be home-owners. It may be a stupid hope, because the real estate market here is in what people keep describing as a bubble, and it may be a vain hope, because we have no idea how much we have to spend. Our finances are in dire disarray and we are only starting to come to grips with the Canadian way of assessing and issuing mortgages. So far, it has not gone well. We contacted our bank to find out how much they would give us. An email from Our Man at the Teller's Window (let's call him Michael) pointed out, politely, that they issue mortgages up into multiple millions, and asked precisely how much we are requesting. There is some failure to communicate here, as this does not make sense to me. If Michael will lend us more money, we'll buy a better house. Isn't it up to him to calculate how much he is willing to risk on us? That's how it worked in England. I assume at some point, after circling each other a while longer, each of us will realize what assumptions the other is making that are not, at present, shared, and an actual amount will be mooted. Then we can go shopping.
Until then, I'm dreaming of Casa Loma, 'Canada's Only Castle,' just a couple of kilometers from our playpen. Michael, what about those multi-million dollar loans?
But I do wonder about the heating bills....
Spin
I just learned that what in the UK we called a 'gap year', a year off between school and university, in Canada is called a 'victory lap'. Love it.
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Happiness Canadian-style
There's a feelgood story in today's newspaper about a local musician who lacked money to produce his album. So he crowd-sourced, in what sounds like a sort of cheap and cheerful way. The big difference: he did not solicit actual cash, as in that printed by the Bank of Canada, or indeed that of any other country. Instead, he collected 'Canadian Tire' money, which is more easily mistaken for the bills out of a Monopoly set than for legal tender. It is stuff given out by cashiers at the eponymous, nationwide chain of stores (which sell nearly everything, though I have not yet seen tires there) as a sort of primitive version of a customer loyalty card (without the self-interested benefit of actually getting market-worthy information about the customer). It appears mainly in denominations of 1 or 5 or 10 cents. So, the musician, Corin Raymond, collected more than $6,000 in real (Canadian) money in Canadian Tire cash. The total stash weighed something over 60 pounds and counted out at more than 32,000 pieces of paper, providing a good workout in addition to the capital for creating his appropriately-titled album 'Paper Nickels'. In the article Raymond seems delighted and talks about the enthusiasm with which his supporters donated to his cause. Says he: “It made them happy in such a Canadian way.”
It leaves me feeling good, of course, but also wondering: what is happiness the Canadian way, exactly? How does happiness differ nation by nation? How do I go about learning to be Canadianly happy? It seems important.
It leaves me feeling good, of course, but also wondering: what is happiness the Canadian way, exactly? How does happiness differ nation by nation? How do I go about learning to be Canadianly happy? It seems important.
Ode to cold
I love scanning Twitter on the go, but lately the iPhone icon I click on more than any other is Accuweather. Who writes for them? There must be professional meteorologists(and what a great job title that is) on staff who fill in the blanks for temperature, precipitation, dew point and so forth. But who gets to write the pithy little descriptions? Today, Tuesday, Toronto is experiencing a low of minus seventeen (one-SEVEN) centigrade, and a high of minus thirteen (brrr-RRRR). The one-line description says 'brisk and bitterly cold'. Brisk? Brisk? Where is this writer from? Antarctica?
Tomorrow, luckily, with a forecast ranging from minus fifteen all the way up to minus nine, will be 'very cold with snow showers'. By Sunday, with a high of minus three, we will experience weather that is 'cloudy and not as cold'.
Break out the bikinis.
Tomorrow, luckily, with a forecast ranging from minus fifteen all the way up to minus nine, will be 'very cold with snow showers'. By Sunday, with a high of minus three, we will experience weather that is 'cloudy and not as cold'.
Break out the bikinis.
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