Patio season

After several months of intense focus on work and family, I'm emerging from my shell, or cell, or hole, like a mole, or perhaps like a groundhog. I sniff the air and smell barbecue plus the slightly pharmaceutical waft of patio heater. It's the scent of Toronto in the summer.

Two female American friends and I met for dinner on the patio of a trendy restaurant near my house. "Ours is a sharing-based menu," the waiter informed us in a brisk, practiced chant. "But it's not tapas. We don't like to be tied to any one ethnicity. We are multi-cultural and draw on cuisine from across the globe." How Canadian, we commented, and the waiter dipped his head as if accepting a compliment. "Five or six dishes should be enough for you," he estimated. We embarked on a trip around the world, stopping at gnudi with mushrooms, chopped salad with avocado hummus, albacore tuna with sun-dried tomatoes, puffed farro and lamb.  Google Maps would have been very confused if it tried to locate us by the ingredients we consumed.

What I loved even more than the food, though, was the conversation. We talked about our kids, yes, and our husbands, a little, but mostly we talked about ourselves, work, our neighbourhood, urban planning, local politicians, travel. We completely aced the Bechdel Test. Why are women like us, and conversations like ours, so rare on screen or stage or in print?

Possibly because we're ordinary and boring, I suppose, but if that's the case, why did we laugh so much? It can't have been only the cocktails.

A stout chaser

Splashing out

I must have the most generous friends and family in the world. Seriously.

Every year Heart & Stroke Canada organise a charity event to raise funds for research into cardiovascular disease and treatment of people living with it. The main event is a bike ride along two of the major motorways in the city: the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. "What, really, they close the freeways?" I asked when I first heard about it.

They really do. I always planned to join in, but never quite got around to it. Then, terribly sadly, just over two years ago, a Canadian friend of ours died of a heart attack in Durham, England ("Requiem for Joe Cassidy"). The Ride for Heart took on new meaning and importance and in 2015, I signed up. The designated June morning was wet, cold, and grey. I got soaked, chilled and fulfilled. I'd raised a few hundred bucks and, as I pedaled, I thought about Joe, who had worked in Toronto for a time. "I used to live on that street," he would say of almost every block in the Annex, when our families walked around together.

Since then, I've come to know more people affected by heart disease and stroke and have reason for gratitude that research and treatment are available.

This year I determined to do the ride again and set out on another rain-drenched June morning for another splashy slog. I finished absolutely wet to the bone. This ride was my first attempt at sustained exercise after an agonizing back injury last November, and so turned out to be both a physical and a fundraising triumph. Friends and family had donated over twenty-five hundred colourful Canadian dollars! Truly amazing, truly heart-warming. Heartfelt thanks to any of you reading this now.

Spring shower, CN Tower

I forgot to ask for towels. Next year.

Don River rising: starting to wonder whether to pedal or paddle