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