Fright Night 2014, aka #USElections

Recently I had a conversation with another immigrant to Canada, a woman who has lived in both Vancouver and Toronto. I asked how life in the two cities compared. She told me that she prefers Toronto to Vancouver, but likes British Columbia much more than Ontario as a province. 'The beauty!' she said. 'Come on. My god!' I know what she means. I have seen some pleasant lakes and colourful woods in Ontario but nothing to make my heart go pit-a-pat. So, I made the flippant comment that the obvious solution is to move to California, where one could live in a dynamic city and on the spectacular West Coast, see the sun set (as it should) into the ocean, and without the incessant rain. But here my interlocutor disagreed, saying that life in the US is far too dangerous. Too many guns. She described a friend who, after travelling for some time in America, arrived in Canada having acquired a nervous distrust of strangers in the street.

This assertion ruffled my usually quiescent red, white, and blue feathers. I know there are too many guns in the US and I don't like them. I know there are rednecks and survivalists and conservatives and xenophobes and far too many people who are tired and poor.  The thing is, though, that such people exist in Canada as well; and that crime, violent crime, occurs with depressing frequency in Toronto (last week, in fact, in the next street over from ours). Nor do I feel that Canada, or at any rate Toronto, has solved the problems of deprivation and income inequality. Far from it.

(Anodyne platitude alert.). There are a lot of great people in Canada and I'm lucky to have some of them as friends. This doesn't stop me from appreciating the US as home to a vast number of brilliant, interesting, curmudgeonly, funny, cynical, liberal, bitchy, creative and dynamic folks in beautiful cities (I mean all the adjectives as compliments). It's my great good fortune that a few, a tiny proportion, of these people are my own family and friends. I can sympathize with someone who had a challenging journey from the New York islands to the redwood forests, but I find  myself wondering whether it's the travelling, the being a tourist, as much as being in the USA, that made the person jittery.

In other words, as is my occasional expatriate wont, I waxed patriotic.

However, today, I am duly chastened. The US is scaring me, too. Yesterday my compatriots (though I hope not my friends and family) voted into congressional office, into the US Senate in particular, a bunch of Republicans. From what I've read they are a divided group unlikely to cooperate enough successfully to press home their own multiple agendas, but  if they unite in anything, it will be in hobbling the executive branch for the rest of this term. Hang on to your Obamacare hats, everyone.

Very, very frightening.

Ageing in place

I used to attend rock concerts. Now I attend --- concerts. Often these are symphony performances (the wonderful Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the 'TSO') and sometimes they are a bit more rock and roll. But only a bit. Husband and I looked back on our non-classical-music ticket purchases of the past couple of years and we have been to hear Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, and  Steve Martin (with the Steep Canyon Rangers). All figures who have moved from superstar to super-icon, really. We felt comfortable at these venues; we were with our peeps. We weren't old.

On Friday we changed it up a little and attended an event at the International Festival of Authors (#IFOA), an interview with Colm Toibin (please envision a ' over each 'i') and Marilynne Robinson, two amazing novelists, a Catholic and a Calvinist (the former lapsed, he says). Before heading out the door I checked with 11-year-old daughter about my outfit, because for the first time in days- possibly weeks- I wore something other than jeans.

"How does this look?" I asked her.

"Where are you going?" she enquired.

I told her it was to listen to a couple of authors.

"How old will the other people be there?"

Puzzled, I told her they'd be the same age as me.

"Well, then it's okay. You look fine."

I thanked her but wanted to know why the age of the other attendees mattered. Unfortunately, she explained it quite cogently.

"If they're old, they might be colour-blind, or have some other vision problems. So then it doesn't matter that your dress is dark grey and your boots are black."

That's me put in my place, just where I belong.

'Quaint Canada'

As I've noted before (perhaps even droned on about), I listen to BBC radio most of the time. Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Radio 3. Every day I give mute thanks for our LogiTech internet radios, one upstairs, one down. On weekends I sometimes switch to NPR, especially for Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion.

But I wake up to CBC One, the Metro Morning show hosted by Matt Galloway, and when my eyes open and my vision focuses, I check Twitter for local Toronto information. Is the subway running normally or should I warn my high-school kids to expect delays? Will there be a blizzard? Has the world ended? Today I learned that Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani Nobel Prize-winning girls' education rights activist, would appear at the high school around the corner from us as part of a program called 'Strong Girls'. Afterward, Malala would receive honorary Canadian citizenship from the prime minister at a swanky hotel downtown. My 11-year-old daughter is reading about Malala in her grade 6 class and I emailed the teacher to share my excitement about this very local event.

I also listen to CBC radio in the car, although in the usual course of things, we don't often use our car. Today was an exception; I drove elder son to a cross-country meet across town to save him an awkward trip on public transit. It is one of my non-work days so we brought the dog and arrived early; the weather was crisp but bright, the trees full of colour, and there was enough time for me to have a bit of a jog around the lake while son supervised dog. On my breathless return, they both greeted me, dog with yips and muddy paws, and son with the news that there had been a shooting outside the Parliament building in Ottawa. 'What?' I asked. 'When?'

He consulted his phone. Twenty-four minutes earlier, apparently. Like everyone else here, we're in disbelief. In the car on the way home I listened to CBC. I've had it on all day long (bar 15 minutes for The Archers). The announcers were flibbertigibbet, almost incoherent at times, during the first couple of hours. The US was offering sympathy and assistance. 'This isn't what we're used to,' said one broadcaster to another. 'We're used to it happening in their country. We're the ones who offer sympathy to them.'

It is indeed a tragedy. A young reservist enjoying the honour of guarding the Cenotaph on Parliament Hill has died of the gunshot wound inflicted by the perpetrator. He seems to have been the single father of a young son. It could have been even worse, apparently, in terms of numbers of victims, but for the quick action of the Sergeant-at-Arms inside the Parliament building, because he shot dead the (a?) gunman who marched in with a large firearm.

We do need sympathy. And more information.

On Twitter I read a comment from the leader of a German delegation of Christian Social Democrats who happen to be visiting Ottawa today:

"We are all concerned and surprised that in quaint Canada, this kind of thing could happen,”  he wrote. “Everybody expects Canada to be remote from all the troubles of the world, peaceful and quiet and now we have this situation.”

This evening I listened to a CBC broadcaster interviewing someone in the government. She asked him whether he thought this event would change the way Canada operates. 'I notice that when the guards today, the RCMP, wanted people to move away, they said "Please move back. Please move." I don't think you'd hear that in Washington, DC. Do you think that will change here?' she asked her respondent.

'Oh, don't even suggest it,' he said in alarm. 'We're Canadians!'

Malala's visit and her honorary citizenship ceremony: both cancelled. For today, anyway.

The Centennial Flame, also called the Eternal Flame, in front of Parliament. I took this picture when I attended a conference in Ottawa last November.

Always Look on the Dark Side of Life

Canadians are famous for being nice, and it's a pretty well-deserved reputation in my experience. I've run into a few rude Canadians of course, but infrequently enough that it surprises me. (I've noted two situational exceptions: 1) being on a bicycle-- something about two wheels brings out the worst in the Canadian, or perhaps Torontonian, temper; and 2) being on the soccer pitch. I have not been able to play much lately while I recover from a sprained knee, but when I could, gee willikers, some of the women on the teams we encountered could be harsh, as I'm sure those women would say --did say-- about my own team.)

However, those exceptions aside, courtesy does stand out for me as a predominant attribute in my new country. I have a theory that the Canadian propensity for niceness and tolerance is linked to another Canadian trait I notice, which is a Scots-like tendency to dourness, evident in a national commitment to vicarious suffering. Recently my son's friend told me how much she is enjoying one of her high-school classes called 'Crimes Against Humanity,' which  explores the subject of genocide in detail and depth. This class is not the whim of an individual teacher, but a registered, approved course on the Ontario high school curriculum. It is offered by the Toronto District School Board and several other boards in the province. For comparative purposes, I tried to find a similar one on the website of my own alma mater, the Los Angeles Unified School District. Nada.

I thought of this course when I listened last week to a radio talk show from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), called 'The Current'. The program covers timely topics each weekday morning at 8:30 am, but only timely topics that are also distressing and/or depressing. Recent episodes include the shutdown of a centre for disabled people in a remote northern town, mistreatment of elephants somewhere, freight train drivers falling asleep at the wheel, and the overprescription of opioids for chronic pain. At the show's core is the imperative to unfurl suffering and wave it in the face of listeners engaged in drinking their morning coffee or commuting to work. I try, I really do, to join in the rending of clothes and the daubing of ashes, but most mornings somewhere around 8:35 I give up and switch to BBC  (thank god for the internet). I feel sure that the Canadians, being a lot nicer than me, carry on listening and empathizing while they finish the last of their Tim Hortons (no apostrophe) double-double.

I cannot even bear to drink Tim Hortons no-apostrophe coffee. Sometimes I really worry that I may be unfit to become Canadian.

The Prophet of Yorkville

After a relatively chilly summer, we’re having a gorgeous autumn in Toronto. For the past week the weather has been sunny and warm, blue and green with early hints of red and gold leafiness. On Wednesday I cycled through Yorkville, the posh neighbourhood of boutiques and banks (I was going to the bank). On a street corner decorated with manicured trees in brick planters, a man looking a tad ragged around the edges called out in a business-like, almost professorial manner:  'Everyone! Listen! Close the schools! Get out of the office! Be outside now! We're going to have a TERRIBLE winter!'   I heard him repeating the commandment as I pedalled down the block. Maybe he was God.

 Anyway, I listened. I kept the two younger kids out of school the next day (well, it was Rosh Hashanah) and have not been back to my windowless office since Tuesday. I spent half of today sitting outside watching younger son play in a soccer tournament, which, miracle of miracles, after 2.5 hours of football with no substitutes, his team won.  Hooray. The dog had a great time too, scrounging for discarded pizza crusts on the sidelines.

Ploughed through a sticky morass of traffic to get home, tired, sun-kissed, victorious, celebrating with takeaway Thai food, and feeling virtuous for heeding the prophecy of the Yorkville Yeller.  Son interrupted my self-gratulation: ‘Mom, I think I left my backpack at the park.’ What’s in it, I enquired. ‘My phone, my wallet, my metro pass, my house-key.’  Oh, is that all? The tournament organizer replied to my frantic messages: nope, not with her. We appealed for help to elder son’s friend, who lives near the park, and he came thrillingly to the rescue, galloping off to investigate. At Rennie Park, with the help of his phone’s flashlight app, he found a lone blue-and-white backpack, along with one of our expensive BPA-free water bottles (‘Oh, yes, I left that too’), all contents undisturbed. Our hero!

It’s a pretty good city that way.

The Tyranny of the School Gate: A Love/Hate Relationship

Almost every weekday at 3:00 my phone starts buzzing. Elementary school lets out at 3:30; from my office, by bike, it's a 10 minute journey. From home, no more than five. Plenty of time (and yet, I know I'll be late), so I push 'snooze' and at 3:09, the annoying thing buzzes again. Repeat. At 3:18 I groan, and finally drag myself away from whatever was absorbing me: three days in the week, that would be work; the other two, perhaps reading,writing, gardening, laundry. Drinking coffee, maybe with a friend. Whatever. It doesn't matter; even the most mundane activity has its own arc from start to conclusion. Required attendance at the school gate interrupts that, and I resent it.

In the past I have been extremely grateful to the school gate and its enforced routine. It has in fact been a mainstay of my existence for over twelve years; sixteen, if you count nursery. Schools provide about 200 days per year of instruction, so that's 2400 days, approximately, of school-gate-attendance. Give or take. In the beginning, the September when my eldest entered Reception class (aka kindergarten) in Durham, I became an uneasy new supplicant at the altar, staying obediently behind the low chain link fence in the play-yard at St. Oswald's C of E Infant School. In the sunshine, then as the year progressed, in the wind and rain and bitter cold and occasional snow, with a toddler in tow and later on a baby too, I waited, slowly making new friends of the other Reception mums. Eventually the crocodile of children would straggle out, and press their little faces against the wire diamonds, looking out for a grown-up to claim. Oh, the agony of being late, back then! We would often head en masse to the little park next door, and let the children play for awhile. It was quite an evangelical establishment, that school; come spring, the children happily acted out the Crucifixion under a tree with a couple of large branches. The other mothers smiled on, benignly. Beatifically, even. I did not really fit in that group.

Moving from Durham, in The North, to Brighton, in The South, set me adrift: I had no job, no community, no friends. They came, eventually, the latter two largely from my attendance at the gate of the tiny private school we selected for our elder two, having been foiled by the state sector and the timing of our move. The youngest grew old enough to join her brothers there. Our family friendships blended into the children's, all built within the school walls but perhaps even more importantly at that old school gate. This particular school, The Fold (which, sadly, folded after we left) in fact had no gate but a front door, as if to a house, which in fact this school had been. I spent many hours in the small front hallway, crowded with other parents, reclaiming our children. At the Fold School, children whose parents did not arrive on time simply skipped out to the backyard for supervised play, free for the first half-hour (or so), then morphing into after-school childcare. If I were going to be late, I simply phoned and said so.  Many times, I arrived relatively promptly, only to be instructed by my offspring to please just wait till the end of this game, or to go away and come back later.  

Moving from Brighton to Toronto was a bigger adjustment, more traumatic in several ways, and again, the school gate provided salvation. Friends, knowledge, engagement: not only in a new city but a new country to learn. Finding familiar faces, arranging social activities for the kids and for us, the parents, were largely negotiated while collecting the children. This school gate is something between the rigid barrier erected at St. Oswald's and the relaxed hominess of the Fold. Children in Grade 6, my daughter's age, are set free into the Big Field and allowed to entertain themselves until parents arrive, or they can walk home on their own. 

Grade 6 is the final year of elementary school. Middle school looms, and parents do not escort their offspring at that age. Middle school has no gate. In truth, this child is already old enough, and sensible enough, to walk herself between school and home. Sometimes she does make the journey home with a friend, just the two of them. She resists, though, leaving school alone. She wants me to meet her. Practically, she wants me on the spot so that she can negotiate after-school social life, to  invite friends over or be invited, but also because she wants to need me still, to be a little child a little longer. 

I, on the other hand, really feel that I am ready to move on. It's nice to see my own friends at the school, but they would still be my friends even if we did not meet there. I've got their numbers.  I like being home, waiting for my children to come to me. My high-schoolers tumble through the front door and chatter over each other telling me about their day while I make tea, or empty the dishwasher, or start dinner. I feel more like my own mother at those moments. My mom never had to go through this particular transition, because from the earliest schooldays, she ushered her three children out the front door at 8:30 a.m.and received us when we got home at 3:30, until we were old enough to have our own keys. What she did in between was anybody's guess. If my sisters and I had to lay bets, we would probably have said that she sat in her bathrobe, drank coffee, and did the crossword puzzle, scurrying into clothes moments before we returned. Because there she was, ready with milk and cookies and seeming eager to hear what had happened at school. We ourselves changed into 'play clothes', ate our snack, did our homework, and ran outside to ride or roller-skate or play handball against the garage door, or snatch pomegranates from the neighbours' trees. We had to be home by the time the streetlights came on. That's how I remember it, anyway.

My sister, whose own youngest child has just started at university, said to me recently when I complained about the school runs, "I truly miss those days." I thanked her for sharing that, and tried to argue myself into appreciating them, and to cherish living in the moment. Nonetheless. Monday through Friday, at 3:18, as I reluctantly close the computer, pack up my things at the office, put a bookmark in my book, or leave the dryer half-full, I feel annoyed, and harried, and late. 

Can I be a little bit, just a tad, glad that I have a date with the school gate, for one more school year? Maybe. A tad.  At least, until the first snow falls.

Lost in the woods; at home in the ‘hood

I’ve twice gotten lost in deep woods, both times in Canada. There’s that old saying: ‘Fooled me once, shame on you; fooled me twice, shame on me.’ Well, shame on me. The first time was decades ago, perhaps 1990, on an island in British Columbia. My friend John and I lived in Berkeley, California at the time, and were on an ill-planned holiday through the province, a place which neither of us had visited (yes, relationship story there). After finding a clean hostel in Tofino, a charming town perfectly situated at the tip of a peninsula on the west coast of Vancouver Island, we decided to do an organized rainforest tour the next morning. As neither of us had brought an alarm clock, however, we overslept the departure hour. No matter, we told ourselves, surely we could manage on our own.

Ah, youth. If only we had that as our excuse.

A friendly First Nations man in a small motorboat, whose command of English was adequate but not abundant, came to understand our request, and agreed to drop us at a rickety wooden wharf on the western edge of Meares Island, an enormous body of land, home to a primary-growth temperate rainforest and a First Nations village called Opitsat. Opitsat may have been on the island, but it was certainly nowhere near the splintered landing where we disembarked. We agreed, or believed we agreed, with our taxi-boat driver that he would return for us in three hours, clambered onto the dock, and waved farewell.

There was no one else around.

A wooden walkway led from the marshy water’s edge toward the forest, and then we were on a sort of trail, slippery with mud and moss. I can’t remember our footwear but it might well have been sandals. At most we wore tennis shoes with our shorts and tee-shirts. No hats, no food, no water. No one we knew had any idea where we were, or had any expectation of seeing us in the next few days. We had left our rental car parked at the hostel, from which we had already checked out. That was the extent of our planning.

After a quarter hour of walking along the trail, we had lost it. It wasn’t hard to lose; large trunks of fallen trees forced us either to clamber over them or walk around, then picking up a path that might or might not have been our original route.  “I think we’ve been here before,” I said to John, looking at one weirdly twisted hanging vine.   

He shook his head. “No, we’re fine,” he assured me. He was Canadian, although from Ontario, and had taken on the role of host during this journey.  I rapidly lost faith in his knowledge, however, and began to panic.

“Please, can we go back to the dock?” I asked, almost in tears. Well, okay, in tears.

He eventually agreed, and we set off to retrace our steps. Again, I was sure we were walking in circles, so John pulled out his handkerchief, perhaps the only useful object we had brought along, and began to shred it to make blazes. Our fifteen minutes of inward progress took us thirty to undo, but finally we saw the ocean, the unstable wharf, and in the distance, Vancouver Island. I had never experienced such relief.

Not for long though; as we sat on the wooden planks dangling our legs, looking idly for dolphins or whales, and for our taxi driver. What if he didn’t come? What if he hadn’t understood, and was waiting for us on the far side of the island? What if we rotted away and became mere slime on the trunks of the fallen trees? What if bears ate us? Actually, we hadn’t thought of bears yet; that came later.

After an hour, a man and woman emerged from the forest, singing. They carried stout, knobby sticks, and had thick rubber boots up to their knees. They both wore hiking vests with an average of a pocket every square inch. Wide-brimmed hats shaded their eyes, whistles hung from their necks, and heavy packs on their backs. In contrast, John and I looked naked, and the couple eyed us almost in pity. They lived in Vancouver, they explained, offering us a granola bar to share, and liked to get away for a couple of days of hiking and backpacking. The whistles? Oh, they were to scare away the bears.  John and I looked at each other. We were idiots.

A boat came to collect the Vancouver couple. I could hardly stand to watch them float away. “Could we come with you?” I asked, knowing the answer. Kind, but reasonable, they pointed out that our taxi was sure to return, and if the driver did not find us, he would be in a muddle. It was true. I told them we would call their hotel when we got back; if they didn’t hear from us, please could they send rescue? Of course, they agreed, but again, my trust was insecure. I did not believe. Sadness and fear overtook me as their wake faded.

Fortunately, our taxi turned up only minutes later. O frabjous day! That was it for me and forests, I vowed. Two days later we dropped off the rental car and boarded a ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington. A fleet of dolphins leaped and cavorted alongside us as we returned to the U.S. of A.  I haven't been to British Columbia since.

Fast forward to 2014, again in Canada, this time in middle Ontario, quite a bit north of Toronto, but far south of Hudson’s Bay, where the massive province actually ends. We are visiting friends at their gorgeous and lovely cottage on a lake, but today, our last of the visit, is rainy and chill. Perfect, we think, for a walk in the woods! The two mothers, three children, and two dogs set out for a bit of a ramble. I shoved my cellphone in my backpack because I wanted to be able to take photographs, and my elder son had his because he would as soon leave it behind as a limb. I did think to bring a bottle of water, because I do that to go anywhere, even the subway in Toronto (what if it gets stuck)?

Still. Fooled me twice.

Our cheerful hostess and guide asked whether we wanted a quick thirty-minute circuit, or if we could manage a longer walk? Maybe an hour? Oh, an hour is fine, we all said, even the littlest amongst us. Under the thick green canopy, the drizzle hardly mattered. We chattered and laughed, catching glimpses of the lake and then walking deeper into the woods, climbing hills and descending into valleys, passing brambles whose blackberries were nearly ripe. “This way,” my friend pointed. Then a note of puzzlement entered her tone. “I think maybe I missed the turning I wanted. But no matter, if we carry on along this trail, we will reach the road.” “Road” perhaps overstated the nature of the long, dirt-and-gravel lane that covered the 5 or 6 kilometers leading from the paved county road to our friends’ cottage (and “cottage” rather understated the nature of their domicile).

Another ten minutes of walking indeed led us to a road and we turned right to follow a little stream. The walking was easy now, but without shelter from the trees, we were soon sodden. At the bottom of the road, my friend stopped. “H’mmm,” she said.

In a yoga studio, ‘H’mmm“ might be mistaken for a mantra, and bring on a pleasing sense of tranquillity.  In the context of a crossroads in a woods, “h’mmm” is an oddly ominous sound. “We are on the wrong trail,” she said. A map of Algonquin Park on a rusted iron plaque attached to a wooden post let us know that we had definitely drifted off-course.

Shame on me. I surreptitiously checked my bag for food. Where had we seen those berry bushes?

“Never mind,” both of us moms chorused, self-consciously bright and cheery. “We’ll just retrace our steps!” And we did, this time building small cairns and making careful ‘X’es with fallen boughs. “Isn’t this fun?” we carolled.  “Gee, that hot tub will feel nice when we get back!” My son and I spotted a pile of poo, scat, spoor… surely deer? No, more like elk. Not bear. Definitely not. Elk. “Let’s all stay together,” I suggested, brightly. Shortly after, we passed a skeleton. Not human. Not even primate. And not elk.

 “Does this hill look familiar?” My friend mused. It looked familiar to me, but then all the trails looked both familiar and strange.

“Yes,” I tried.

“No,” she shook her head. “This isn't right. Let’s go back up.” We did, up and up, passing our cairns and crosses. At what seemed the highest point, my son pulled out his phone and announced, “This way is north.” Handy, but as we didn’t know which way was home, not helpful. I pulled out my own phone and sent an email, titled ‘little bit lost’. My friend typed in a description of the last point at which she knew for sure where we were, both of us thinking, but not saying, that if the message ever arrived, it would give them a head start looking for our remains. I mean, for us.

We waited a minute or two without getting a reply, though we had left said husbands happily attached to their computers. It transpired later that they had had other fish to fry: our eleven-year-old daughters, who had also stayed behind, decided to try some science experiments. One of these involved putting hand lotion in a frying pan and turning on the burner, which set off the smoke alarms throughout the house. The fathers ran to the kitchen and prevented it from going up in flames. (In retrospect, if it had, those of us lost in the forest would have had a nice column of smoke to aim for. And I must ask the girls sometime about their null hypothesis for the experiment.)

After a little more tramping, mein hostess said, with certainty, “Here it is. I’m sure,” and turned decisively right onto a narrow, wavering trail. We all wanted to believe. We did believe. We clicked our heels together, and lo! The trail led us home. A ray of sunshine pierced the grizzled gray clouds as we reached the welcoming front door, just under two hours after leaving it. And yea, the hot tub felt wonderful indeed, as did a quick swim in the lake with my younger son. My friend, apologetic (needlessly), whipped up a quick batch of chocolate chip cookies. All in all, a successful hike. How we laughed! 

And you know what? It really was one of the highlights of the summer. 

Back to the ‘hood, for the tag end of vacation.  It’s been a full year since we moved in to this house in Harbord Village. Today in fact is the annual Harbord Village Residents’ Association Fall Fair, held in the small park directly across the street from us. 

Last year, we wandered over, wandered through, uncertain but pleased to participate and buy a few raffle tickets, spying a few familiar faces, and trying to put names to them. This year, we were in the front lines. Husband volunteered on the Silent Auction table, and I helped out serving burgers, hot dogs, barbecued corn, and pop (‘Please may I have popcorn and a hot dog?’ a girl asked. ‘We don’t have popcorn,’ I told her. My customer looked puzzled. ‘No. Pop. Like, Coke. And some corn.’ Toronto is in the pop zone. Where I grew up, it would be ‘soda’.) My shift was noon til two pm, but at 2:00 no replacement had arrived.  At 2:30 I roped in my middle child and his friend, gave them a brief training session, and said sayonara. They did a stellar job and, according to reports, enjoyed themselves (not that they admitted it to me). They’ll get credit for volunteer hours too—kids in Ontario schools must do forty hours of volunteer work before they can be graduated from high school. Through my open window right now I can hear the band playing covers of rollicking rock music.

It’s nice, being home.

Check-ups

We've just celebrated an anniversary: four years in Toronto. Four years! Yet I still feel like a newcomer. I spoke to a friend yesterday who also moved to Toronto from England with her son and husband. My friend told me that she checks in with her son every so often to ask him whether he feels Canadian.They've been here several years longer than we have but her son always answers 'No!' My friend confesses that this pleases her. I think I would feel the same way if my children also answered 'no', and I wondered why.

Perhaps because I don't think I will ever feel Canadian. I lived in England for 17 years and never felt English, so it's reasonable to suppose that the same will be true with regard to Canada,But somehow, here in Canada, that is something of a subversive attitude. In England no one ever expected me to 'feel English' or to become English. I might have taken British citizenship (though I didn't, to my regret and to my husband's dismay), but even if I had, there would be no possibility of my claiming Englishness. In Canada, acquiring Canadianness is the goal. People eye us up and almost seem to test us on our degree of integration, to discern whether we are yet woven tightly into the Canadian fabric (which I envision as a bright woollen blanket from the Hudson Bay Company). Immigrants can be heard on television and radio proclaiming 'I am Canadian!' in proud and possessive tones.

I can't see myself doing the same thing. 

However, the four-year check-up reveals that I have nonetheless found happiness in Toronto. I love my house, my street, my neighbourhood. I very much appreciate being based in North America. Last week, daughter and I took a road trip to Asheville, North Carolina, to see dear friends from Sussex who now live in Norway-- but were spending much of the summer in the USA. It was a long trip for us (longer for them of course) but a beautiful one, on highways clinging to the spine of the Appalachian mountains. I never knew there was so much of West Virginia, or that it was such a stunning state. Mountain mama, take me home. As Bill Bryson said of Durham (England), 'Go there now. Take my car!' North Carolina itself is also lovely and Asheville a hip and happening town with excellent food (Over Easy, Curate) and home to the exceedingly friendly and comfortable Windsor Hotel. But mostly Asheville (and The Windsor) contained our beloved friends, a family including one of my daughter's two closest friends from Brighton. The joy of getting to see the girls together made every inch of the (very very very) long drive worthwhile. Not that anyone is asking, but 2600 km. -- over 1600 miles-- in 6 days. Eight degrees of latitude (43 to 35 N). Halfway to California! After that trip we added another 650 km round-trip to visit friends at their gorgeous cottage by a lake. The True North.

Another aspect of the four-year check-up reveals how much our family's life has changed simply due to the passage of time rather than to relocation. No surprise I suppose, and yet, I am surprised. This summer has been busy for everyone, but for everyone differently. Each of the five of us has spent a substantial amount of time away from the rest of the family, at camp or with friends or home without the others (the adults). This very evening, in fact, husband and I sat on our front porch eating takeaway Thai food in the gloaming, just the two of us and the dog.  Eldest child had gone on his own by bus to Cambridge (the Ontario one), middle child to stay with friends in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and youngest negotiated a sleepover with one of her chums in the neighbourhood. 

Peaceful. Pleasant. And yet a little, just a little, melancholic.

My parents recently gave me a printed copy of an email I sent them fourteen years ago. I tend to deride them for printing things rather than letting electrons live happily as they are, but I'm so glad in this case that they did have a paper copy. The account from which I sent that message disappeared unexpectedly when husband and I closed our phone account in England, so I no longer have access to the gazillion messages it stored (stupid OneTel). In the email I described our firstborn at the age of two years. I reported his utterance of many adorable bon mots: for instance, of his newborn brother, he said 'I make him happy!'; he sometimes called me 'Lady', and his father 'real Daddy' to distinguish him from a photograph. What drips from the text, and that I at the time took entirely for granted, is that his father and I were our son's whole world. Our boy attended nursery for a few hours a week but would never choose to spend a night apart from us. How slowly, but inexorably, did we reach the point where he disappears off to a yurt with a gang of friends for 5 days, or wanders about Germany with his brother? I know and I don't know; this transformation is still a mysterious process in my eyes. I've done so little in comparison with my children's marvellous accomplishments. 

I did get some good news today about an accomplishment of my own: a story I submitted to a competition was awarded an honourable mention! I'm thrilled: 

http://momayapress.com/awards/momaya-press-awards-2014/

The Single Life

Sob. My family have gone off without me, leaving me home alone for 10 days. 

Wow! My family have gone off without me, leaving me home alone for 10 days!

I'm suffering mixed emotions. Husband took the three children back to England to see their grandparents, to connect with a few friends, and to attend a conference (husband, that is, with the two older children) in Germany. I stayed home to tend to the pets and to my new obsession, the garden. I weed daily. I water when it doesn't rain. 

By the way, is this one a weed? I hope so, because I pulled it out.  I am often tugging plants out of the ground and then suffering Weeder's Remorse, convinced that what I just destroyed was in fact a desired plant that I forgot to recognise.

So, anyway, I'm a temporary Swinging Single. And boy do I know how to live it up! When I'm not working or tending to the garden, I have occupied myself with scrounging food. Yesterday the dog and I shared a free hot dog from Fancy Franks, around the corner, to celebrate National Hot Dog Day. (Sorry, I neglected to send out cards for that.)  Working late at the office one evening (because I had no need to get home), I scored big on some leftover pizza. I decided that I would not spend my Alone Time cooking, so when I cannot find ready-to-eat stuff outside the house, I have been subsisting on Cap'n Crunch cereal and peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream. I can't tell my kids, who aren't allowed sugared cereals in the house. Or my mother. And it must at all costs be kept from my dental hygienist, who would be very disappointed in me.Because some VERY kind friends have taken me out or taken me in for the odd meal, for which I am *extremely* grateful, my nutritional status is still adequate. Also I did eat some gorgeous orange cherry tomatoes off one of the plants in the garden, and supplemented them with a few springs of just-picked parsley. (Okay, Mom?) Tonight some friends and I are hoping to dine on free appetizers from the fairly funky Wind-Up Bird Cafe (homage to Haruki Murakami, that), which is hosting a neighbourhood block party. Their offerings might be healthy.

It is pretty bizarre living alone. In 8 days, I've only had to take out one bag of trash. The washing machine is silent and even the dishwasher only gets to do its stuff every few days. The milk is going off rather than running out. The dining table is littered with piles of paper and books, leaving one semicircle clear for me to sit and eat my Cap'n Crunch or ice cream (or both together- yum), or to plant my laptop. Yes I have my study, but I also have the kitchen, the sitting room, the playroom... It's almost obscene, really. True confession: some days, I don't even bother to shower. 

The dog and the cats suffer. They must fight for scarce lap space and have only one human to see to all their needs. Which reminds me, I must go feed them (not Cap'n Crunch). And then change the cat litter.They are going to be so excited when everyone returns. 

Me, too! Me, too!

Holy jet lag, Batman

When we lived in England and regularly visited California, eight hours behind GMT, we knew jet lag would feature strongly in the travel equation. We coped, with first one, then two, then three small children, all of whom seemed to have some bat DNA anyway and tended to stay up late. Jet lag was just a fact of life, like rain. They say it wears off at the rate of an hour of time difference per day, so in total, both directions, we were affected by weirder-than-usual sleep patterns for over two weeks, each trip. That equals a lot of rain.

An advantage of moving to Toronto was meant to be a reduction in the impact of jet lag on our travel lives. Three hours between us and California, and only five to the UK. Easy peasy.

However. Last week we returned from 10 days in Los Angeles, where we had a lovely time staying with my parents. We've been back home for three days. It is now three o'clock in the morning, and not one person in the household is asleep, including two overnight guests of the eldest child. Husband has just marched into my study to announce that even the pets are wide awake.

Is jet lag both intractable and infectious?

The 4-1-1 on 3-1-1

Last week I had an encounter that necessitated calling 9-1-1, the North American version (prototype, if I am not mistaken) for the UK's 9-9-9 emergency service (see previous post).

This week, I used 3-1-1.

What a brilliant idea! I had heard of it, but never used the number. I was suspicious. But it is great. I thought that it was a totally Toronto innovation but now know better; it exists in a number of cities or communities across North America. The Great God Wikipedia says this:

"The telephone number 3-1-1 is a special telephone number supported in many communities in Canada and the United States which provides access to non-emergency municipal services. The number format follows the N11 code for a group of short, special-purpose local numbers.

The number 3-1-1 is intended in part to divert routine inquiries and non-urgent community concerns from the 9-1-1 number which is reserved for emergency service only. A promotional website for 3-1-1 in Akron described the distinction as follows: "Burning building? Call 9-1-1. Burning Question? Call 3-1-1."

My issue was definitely not a burning building. So I called 3-1-1 and asked to have some deadwood trimmed from a city-owned tree in front of our house. No problem! I asked whether the one-way signage on our street could be made clearer, as there are occasional cars who drive up it the wrong way. It's on the list! They'll investigate! I asked whether the laneway behind our house could have a 'no exit' sign posted at its mouth, to repel drivers who vainly attempt to use it as a shortcut and end up stuck at the bottom making 10-point turns to get back out again. Again, someone will come and check it out, and they'll all Let Me Know.

And lo! Service request numbers were issued to me for all of those items. And the woman on the other end of the phone was bright, friendly, knowledgeable and business-like. If I could vote, I'd have the 3-1-1 team for our mayor. Not old Rob Ford.

L8L8L8-- but it could be worse

Some days it seems you just can’t catch a break. How do people manage to get anywhere on time? I seem to be missing a gene or perhaps a meme. When I lived in Indonesia, where the concept of 'jam karet' or 'rubber time' is the rule, I was fine, well within social norms. I strive to get to work by 10 am on the 3 days of the week that I work. That should not be difficult, really, but I am constantly having to work at night or on non-dedicated work days to catch up. The youngest child, who still relies on a parental escort to get to school, complains bitterly that I make her late. She's not wrong.

Middle of last week, we had to say farewell to good friends who are westward bound, heading to Vancouver (where they'll get three extra hours!). I will both miss them and envy them. The Pacific Ocean! Spring! Landscape with contour lines! Their younger daughter, Sarah*, has been one of my daughter's first and best friends since we moved from England, and we were honoured that she chose to spend her last night in Toronto with us. The two girls chattered and giggled half the night and who could blame them? They will be apart for a long time, though we have every intention of trespassing on the family's hospitality, encouraging further juvenile sleep deprivation, and getting to know Vancouver. It is nonetheless very sad to see them go. A taste of our own medicine, but still sad.

Sarah's father arrived promptly in the morning to collect his child, so I can't blame him. I can't blame my older children either, as their respective school terms had ended already, oddly out of sync with the school board's official calendar. The eldest, in high school, explained that once his exams were over, he no longer needed to attend school. We believed him. The middle one graduated from middle school the previous week (or, as he poignantly expressed it in his valedictorian's speech, his ‘ride in the glass elevator is over’.)
So there is Sarah's father, on the day of his move across country, ready, not late, and waiting. We have not even served breakfast (ie the toaster had not dinged) and truth be told the girls might not yet have been dressed. Mournful and meaningful farewells had to be uttered very quickly, in a blur of action. Too quickly, it turned out. As I raced upstairs to get myself ready for work, my daughter shouted up, "Mommy! Sarah left her backback here!" Freud laughed.

I promised Sarah's parents to drop the bag at their house on my way to the office. ‘Half an hour! Maybe 45 minutes!’ I said confidently. An hour later, having scattered various messages for my still-sleeping teenagers, I wedged the wayward backpack into my bike basket. The backpack was so heavy I checked to be sure that Sarah herself was not in it, less perhaps a Freudian slip than a Freudian cannonball. I cycled up the road to Sarah's family's almost-former, nearly empty house, thinking sad thoughts about how next year the girls would have been old enough to walk back and forth unaccompanied. Dropped the backpack, avoiding toes, hugged more goodbyes, and pedalled off toward the office. Gray gathering clouds spurred me to speed as much as the data waiting for analysis.

Clear coast. Sprained knee healing nicely so I made good time. There was hope. Screaming on my left. Really horrific female screaming, as from someone who has been severely wounded, or given the worst news ever. I looked over to see a young woman writhing on the sidewalk at the foot of some wide concrete steps leading to the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. (This club is located at least 4 kilometers from the lakeshore, which does not seem to bother its members for some reason.) I swerved across the street on my bike and knelt down to speak to the woman, or rather girl, who was not fully conscious and not responding to me at all. I managed to rest a hand on her Tom's shoe-clad foot and speak to her in what I hoped were calm and encouraging tones while scrabbling for my phone. By this time 2 or 3 other passers-by joined me; a young man in a suit who crouched by the girl's head, and a woman, Jasmine, who like me dialled 911 (though I very nearly rang 999). 'Which service do you want?' asked a crisp voice. 'Paramedics' I yelled to be heard over the sound of the victim's shrieking, and got put through immediately. I could hear Jasmine having the same conversation, so when my operator answered I told him someone else was also speaking to emergency services and could I ring off, but he insisted I stay on the line. 'Does she have a history of epilepsy? How old is she? Is she on any medication?' I guessed she was about twenty, and explained again that she was a stranger to me, but apparently the operator had to run through his list. And it turned out that the girl was wearing a medic-alert bracelet saying that she is prone to panic attacks, though this was certainly not a panic attack: she was having seizures, was semi-conscious, saliva and then bile leaking from her mouth (the besuited man rolled her onto her side). I wrestled with her purse and then handed it to someone who located her health card, so I could then report her name, M, and age (19 years old). Eventually I spotted her phone lying by her duffel bag and saw that she had been in the middle of texting someone, someone whose name ended with the label 'Staff'.

M began to recover, her eyelids fluttering and her gaze focusing, and the 3 or 4 of us nearby all began to speak to her. I asked her for the passcode to her phone and said I would call the name there, if she agreed. She struggled to articulate but had no problem remembering the code (sign of the times?). I called the staff member who, relieved, told me that M lived in a nearby group home. A group home! Who knew, there amidst the fancy, expensive houses of the Annex neighbourhood, a sanctuary for troubled youth nestled? How nice. (I looked it up later; it is charitable, and indeed very discreetly nestled.)

The ambulance arrived and I offered M's phone to the paramedic, who spoke to the staff member. The rest of us stepped back, breathed, and looked each other over. The man in the suit, Jasmine, a young man with a straggly beard who had hared off but now returned with a cup of juice intended for M, a man from the Yacht Club who stood by, and another man in a tee-shirt with some sort of insignia. We all said nice things about one another; I thought briefly of exchanging details and then did not (would we have a reunion?), and instead helped gather up M's belongings, put them on the stretcher with her, and said goodbye. She murmured something I didn't hear. 'She said thank you,' the paramedic told me. 'You're welcome,' we all said to M. 'No problem.' She was tearful. I touched her shoulder and told her what I hoped would be true: 'Someday, you'll look after someone else.'

I did get to work ahead of the rain, but not until 11 o'clock. Again. Some days, you really can't catch a break.

Some lifetimes, too.



*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Durham dreamin'

My children were all born in the northeast of England, the eldest in Newcastle, making him a Geordie, and the younger ones in Durham, making them travel a shorter distance home from the hospital. Last week, the New York Times published an article about this corner of England. It made me nostalgic, homesick even, almost to the point of tears. I hope the link works here:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/travel/lost-in-time-in-englands-northeast.html?referrer=

It's a lovely piece, written as it happens by one of my favourite novelists, Jane Smiley, apparently during her stay in one of Durham University's colleges. She mentions the first street in which I lived in Durham-- Dun Cow Lane-- and describes Durham's appearance of belonging to a time long ago. It's true. It's properly called a city because it is home to a cathedral, but really it's a small town. It's old, and it's folded into nooks and crannies and constrained by its oxbow of a river. 'It did not remind me of anywhere else I have been in Britain,' Smiley wrote.

I agree. It does not remind me of anywhere else at all. I like to quip that, having lived in so many places, I can be homesick wherever I am, but the homesickness for Durham has a particularly poignant quality. Durham is where my life as it is now began and yet, while I am lucky still to have wonderful and dear friends there, I have no material or traditional hold on the place, no real right to feel homesick for it. It's not my hometown nor my husband's. We only passed through, but like magic, were completely different coming out from going in.

(Durham Cathedral with scaffolding, just as a reminder to self that the place was not perfect)

See How The Garden Grows

I'm feeling a bit like the sorcerer's apprentice. I keep acquiring things to put in the garden. Plants, plants, more plants! I am not alone. Suddenly there are native plant sales, neighbourhood plant swaps, and a mini-garden centre that has sprung up at the corner store. There is a fevered quality to gardening in Canada, perhaps because the growing season is so short and concentrated; it doesn't really start until late May. A couple of weeks ago I cycled over to Christie Pits Park to attend the North American Native Plant Society's annual sale, with the main aim of collecting some milkweed seedlings for a friend. I came back with not only the friend's baby milkweed (good for attracting monarch butterflies, yet another species whose population is declining) but several more specimens to wedge into my own pocket-size patch. They included a small tree. It was an interesting bike ride homeward, accompanied as I was by a number of children and the dog. We stopped, precariously, for ice cream on the way:

The tree, a grey dogwood, is now the centre-piece of the back garden, along with a little stone path, built by eldest child, which is bordered with sweet woodruff.

Last weekend our neighbourhood, Harbord Village, held a plant-sharing event, in which neighbours with too many plants donated to those of us in need. I turned out to need strawberries (ordinary and wild), nasturtiums, sweet peas, and a wild yam vine. Also I learned about burying sprouted potato chunks to improve the soil. We have tried to plant mostly native species, both for political correctness and for ease of maintenance. (It's so nice when those two things coincide.) That said, I have been yearning for bamboo, of which I had a small collection in England. It was difficult to find any here in the True North (England, at higher latitude, must be the False North), but I finally sourced some specimens at a mega-garden-store way out to the west of the city. After clarifying to the sales staff that I wanted actual, live, growing bamboo plants, not bamboo canes, I took the plunge and bought one, genus Fargesia, the favoured food of giant pandas. According to the pot label and a gardening website, it is hardy enough to survive in Toronto, but we shall see. Planting it is my expression of hope that the next winter can't possibly be as tough as the last one. Right? Right? To be on the safe side, we won't adopt a panda just yet.

In the front yard, with its little expanse of overgrown lawn, we are trying to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, although not with milkweed, as it's poisonous to dogs. And our dog, sure as shootin', would try to eat it, sweet foolish beast. I wonder whether a panda would have more sense.

Isla Vista and murder in paradise

As a graphic display of data, this table is missing a couple of essential elements, for instance, what time period? (I'm guessing this year to date, but it ought to say.) Also, it would be nice to have a row listing the populations of each country.

Still.

Today is US Memorial Day and three days after the rampage by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista. It is awful to find out about any murder, horrid for murder to happen, and yet this one, these ones, strike me as more awful and horrid than -- terrible to say-- usual.

For me, it has to do with the fact that the perpetrator was born in the UK, in Sussex, and then moved to Los Angeles. He grew up only a couple of miles away from where I did, in Woodland Hills. His high school is very close to the home of my sister's family. He spent much of his childhood in therapy; both of my parents are child psychologists with offices a stone's throw away.

Isla Vista-- the Santa Barbara area in general-- is lovely. Beach, hills, greenery, flowers. Bougainvillea everywhere (I yearn to live where bougainvillea grows). I've been to Isla Vista several times, including most recently on a family trip with the kids during which we bought sandwiches at the Isla Vista Deli, where one of the recent victims was killed. He came from Los Osos, where, on that same trip, we camped for the night. My nieces and nephews who are college age might easily have chosen to attend UCSB; some of their friends did. Fortunately for us, none was hurt.

These points of contact are chilling. It's nothing spooky or spiritual; it is an extra-forceful reminder of the fragility of happiness, of the luxury of taking life for granted. For the sake of sanity, we tend to regard it as a necessity. A right, even.

I keep thinking of the novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin. As a new-ish parent, I read the book with some trepidation, but found I was able to enjoy it because it seemed so caricatured; no mother, I felt, could get into such a situation with her child. I read it as allegory, as fable, and as such, found it powerful and memorable, but not believable. In real life, though, reports say that the parents of Elliot Rodger were immensely upset, but not shocked, to be told that their son was the perpetrator. Not so allegorical, perhaps.

I've been following Twitter on the topic of the shootings and gun availability, and found a thread retweeted by Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) lauding Canada for its relatively few gun deaths and trying to explain why. One Canadian tweets that Canada 'as a culture' is not paranoid about foreigners or about 'being invaded'. An American then applauds Canada's 'diversity without fear/tension', as well as its beauty, and asks if there is space for one more. Another Canadian tweets a caution, however: Canada is 'less decent' and more 'rightwing crazy' since Harper became prime minister. (Yep, figured that one out. A real shame.) The general consensus at the point when I stopped following (as I do), seemed to be that the US problems all stem from the Second Amendment and its insistence on citizens' rights to raise a standing militia at any given moment. For that, apparently, you need to have guns at the ready.

The problem is those militias of one with an agenda and an unbalanced mind. Where do one person's rights end and another's begin? Which constitutional amendment addresses that question?

Celebrating Victoria Day

Chilling on the front porch with a cup of Trader Joe's mango black tea. This is the life.

Bonus relaxation time owed to the fact that younger son's 14-year-old birthday party was cancelled -- well, postponed, anyway-- due to lack of guests. He wanted to arrange it all himself. Life lesson learned: give your friends, even the really good ones, more than 24 hours notice.

Putting down roots

We have begun gardening. For the three years we lived in the faculty rental house, there seemed no point, bar placing the odd pot of herbs. Now we have Land. Not much, certainly, but our own: our outdoor domain extends to an L-shaped plot about 15 feet by 8 feet in the back, and a scruffy patch of lawn, slightly bigger, with two borders for flowers, in the front.

For Mother's Day(second Sunday in May, in North America) I asked husband and children to accompany me to the Evergreen Brickworks Garden Market, in the Don River valley, a community-based enterprise that specializes in native and low-maintenance plants. The 'low-maintenance' part especially appealed to me. We acquired a trillium-- the state flower of Ontario-- along with a dwarf cherry tree, some grasses, a raspberry, meadowsweet, thyme, and a number of other plants whose names escape me. Everyone got to choose something. After a hot drink and a wander in the grounds of the Brickworks, we came home and worked together, in amicable cooperation, whistling happy tunes, for five hours. I lie, of course. But the point is we did work hard, digging, weeding, preventing attempts at escape by children and pets, planting, hauling the dog back from next-door. Five hours times five of us. That's 25 human-hours, right? Well, here is the 'before' picture of the back yard:

And here is the 'after':

Five hours. Times five. Disappointing, to say the least. We have much to learn, Kimo Sabe, about gardening in Toronto.


Locals have been helpful, though. I met a neighbour from the street behind ours, a 'lane-mate' (their house backs onto the same alleyway as ours). She offered advice about starting plants indoors, because the gardening season is so short, especially in years like this one with a never-ending winter, and about where to get plants, for instance at nearby Christie Pits Park, next weekend:

http://torontobotanicalgarden.ca/event/north-american-native-plant-societys-native-plant-sale-in-christie-pits/

This particular neighbour, Jessica, popped round Sunday morning to tell my daughter and her friends that the mouse had died. This pronouncement luckily did not have the same import as saying that the rabbit had died (children, long ago, that's how a pregnancy was determined) but was nonetheless news of some moment. Jessica, along with her small son and my daughter and her friends, had on Saturday tended to an injured rodent in the park across the street. They fed it Doritos, and in fact named it Dorito (alternatively 'Daphne' if it proved to be female). They made a nest (more of a hospice) from a discarded blanket before being called home to dinner. The kids were prepared for the mouse's demise, and philosophical about it. Perhaps morbidly, they were actually fairly excited about the prospect of a funeral. Before even eating breakfast the next morning, they were all out of the house and following Jessica across the street. I brought up the rear, and a shovel. The memorial was lovely, the headstone (which they had prepared the day before) ever so tasteful.

Requiem for a mouse:

Once we had a chance to chat, I asked Jessica about herself and what she did. She provided one of the more surprising answers I've heard: 'I write books on genocide.' And so she does:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/jessica-dee-humphreys/

The book is written in concert with a Canadian general called Romeo Dallaire, who is apparently well-known in Canada, though not (yet) to me, about the atrocities in Rwanda.

We live in such a wonderful and interesting neighbourhood. Not, I hasten to add, that genocide is wonderful and interesting, but to have neighbours who care enough to write about it certainly is. I am growing to appreciate Harbord Village more and more, especially now that the streets and paths have thawed and I can actually chat with its denizens, who seem to have blossomed with the appearance of sunshine, much as I hope our garden will do.

Our trillium:

Chuffed

'Chuffed' is such a great BrE word. It makes the list of vocabulary I try to promulgate on this side of the Atlantic (along with 'loo' and 'queue').

And it describes exactly how I felt when I had a short story published in the Toronto Star last week!

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2014/05/02/star_short_story_contest_2nd_place_laughing_tiger.html

Whimsy

Dorothy Sayers chose the perfect name for her ultra-English aristocrat detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. There is a particular British talent for inserting the whimsical into the mundane, or even the serious. It's hard to pinpoint its absence, but completely recognizable when it appears, as at St. Pancras station last week, where pianos were tethered at intervals and music spontaneously erupted.

Almost a passport

I visited England last week after my longest absence since moving there 20 years ago. My last trip was during the summer of 2012, for the Olympics.

Nearly two years. I was homesick.

A combination of work and pleasure got me across the Atlantic, at last, the timing arranged so I could attend a particular meeting in Cambridge. To get there on time, I had to arrive a day early, giving me from mid-morning til evening on Thursday all on my lonely own in London. That never happened when I actually lived in the U.K. I went sightseeing! First stop after landing was the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see an exhibit of David Hockney's amazing prints. Some of them I had viewed at Saltaire many years ago, but most were completely new to me, and the curation, which included stories surrounding the prints, could fairly be described as gripping. The gallery itself, which somehow I had not visited before, is a gem. I arrived with my little wheeled suitcase in tow, hoping it would be allowed in the cloakroom. Instead the cheerful fellow at the entrance said, 'Just leave it with us. We'll stick it behind the desk. No worries.' How is it possible that I had never been to this gallery? Dulwich itself was a posh surprise, a short ride from Victoria and so utterly different. A friend tells me that someone he knows asks people whether they prefer their coffee 'Brixton', 'Herne Hill', or 'Dulwich', the names of the three stops on Southeast Rail, to gauge the quantity of milk to add. The main colouring I noticed in Dulwich was green. It is the exemplar of 'leafy suburb'.

After Dulwich I made my way to the British Library, another institution I'd neglected to make time for when I lived in the country. What a shame. I'm now the proud possessor of a Reader's Pass, having acquitted myself well enough at the interview and having remembered to bring a proof of address. It is almost as good as the British passport I neglected to acquire during my 17 years in the country (to my husband's ire). The pass admitted me to the Reading Room, where I had reserved a book I wanted that is not held in Toronto's library, but even someone without a pass is welcome to visit the building, to sit in one of the cafes, or to gaze upon Jane Austen's tiny writing desk and her itsy-bitsy spectacles, or to look at one of the the original Magna Cartas.

An evening with the in-laws, followed by a day in Cambridge with colleagues, and then I took the train north. I had made use of my no-longer-resident status to purchase a BritRail pass, a most marvelous invention for those of us who are merely touring Britain. For a set amount of money, depending on length of stay and travel habits, one is allowed on any train, any time. Remembering the days of having to go to the station days in advance to purchase an affordable, unalterable ticket, in order not to pay unholy amounts of money, I felt like royalty simply stepping on to any old train, even during rush hour. True, I had to stand for the occasional stretch, but never more than one station stop. Joy.

The trip from Cambridge to York (via Peterborough, of course) was so hauntingly familiar that it made my throat ache. Not beautiful, not at all, but so particularly English: sheep grazing in grassy fields tucked up against a cement factory on one side and a housing estate on another, like a jigsaw puzzle perfectly cut and reassembled. During the decade I lived in Durham I found the journey frustrating, so near to to loveliness and yet escaping it by an ill-placed power station or a industrial park, but now I drink it in, the accommodation of the British sensibility to necessity. Why should people in houses want only to see other houses? Why not a factory, or cows chewing cud?

Maybe, like Dorothy in Oz, you have to leave a place in order fully to appreciate it. Or I do, anyway.

Signs and portents

Sign of age: my children's piano teacher told me I am like a second mother to her.

Sign of trouble ahead in a book group: after much difficulty obtaining the chosen volume (short stories by Mavis Gallant), and only halfway through reading it, I found my copy completely soaked by an unsecured water bottle in my bag.* Maybe that was an omen rather than a sign. My take on Gallant's In the Fifteenth District: lyrical, elliptical writing, stodgy pace. I didn't make it to the end of the book, or to the book group.

Signs of spring in Toronto: a few bold snowdrops, crocuses, and aconites in bloom; buds on trees. Still bloody freezing though.

Sign of success: I came second in the Toronto Star Short Story contest! I am over the moon.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/04/24/brendan_bowles_wins_star_short_story_contest.html

*For how to dry a wet book, see
http://www2.lib.udel.edu/Preservation/wet_books.htm

Moving on up

Our sixteen-year-old, whose birthday we celebrated in New York City last month, also hosted a birthday party for his friends. A dozen teens gathered at our house after school one Friday. What would they want to do? I imagined them wishing to huddle in our kids' eyrie, the 'games room' on the top floor, far from adult eyes and younger siblings' interference. Maybe they would play loud music and dance.

Not these teens. They gathered in our living room to laugh, sing along to a guitar, and play games. After a while they departed for nearby Kensington Market, where the birthday boy had planned a scavenger hunt, with prizes for 'weirdest item you can buy for five dollars' and for 'spotting Rob Ford's face'. They regrouped at our house for the prize-giving, followed by dinner of home-made shepherd's pie. They played first charades and then sardines, a reverse form of hide-and-seek in which 'it' hides and the rest seek.

Husband and I sat, bemused, pleased, sipping tea in the kitchen, enjoying their joy and marvelling over the similarities between sixteen and six. We gathered them up for cake with candles and ice cream.

The next week, son headed to Service Ontario and obtained his driving permit. The test was easy, he reports. He has already taken me for a spin around the block.

Give me your tired, your poor

Last month, the eldest child turned sixteen. Years old. Not days or weeks or months, but actual whole years. ‘How is this possible?’ I asked him. ‘Only yesterday I was changing your nappies.’

Son gave me pitying glance and carried on studying the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, though really he knows most of it already. I’m sure that when I was his age, I was completely ignorant in comparison.

His actual birthday coincided with the school district’s March Break, so we decided, pretty much at the last minute, to drive to New York for a few days' mini-holiday.

On our last family trip to the big apple, we stayed in Manhattan, but I remember that as we drove away westward across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey(thanks, Chris Christie, for leaving it open that day), I related tales of my own childhood visits to New York, to grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, mostly in Brooklyn. When can we see Brooklyn, children (and husband) asked. So for this visit, I found us a charming apartment in a brownstone house on a quiet street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I had no preconceived ideas of the place, since during my childhood visits, I never navigated, and only recognized the actual streets on which my grandparents lived. Hancock Street in Bed-Stuy turned out to be lovely, with free parking, the flat three short blocks from the subway. And we saw a lot of cousins.

The actual day of son’s birthday was spent, at his request, touring the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which involved taking the subway to Battery Park and showing us one of the reasons people prefer to live in Manhattan. The C train did its job of getting there, but kept us waiting for some time, time enough for youngest child to start counting the rats running past under the rails. Native New Yorkers with tails.

Wonderful day, sunny blue weather, perfect for sitting on the top deck of the ferry. The kids loved it all, the statue, the Liberty Museum, the Ellis Island tour. For me, Ellis Island was a sort of pilgrimage site. My maternal grandparents alit there as children coming from Eastern Europe, from Russia or the Ukraine. The story my grandfather told me is that he crossed the Atlantic on the Lusitania, but that would have required him to embark from Liverpool, which seems unlikely. I have not yet traced his landing but my grandmother’s arrival and transit are documented. Their names are both on the Ellis Island Wall of Honor. New York is part of my life history. One of the pleasures of living in Toronto (I keep having to count them) is that New York is now a (long) day’s drive away.

We also spent a couple of hours at MoMA, which conveniently is open late and is FREE on Friday evenings. (I heart New York.) From there, we eventually found a legitimate taxi, narrowly avoiding kidnap by one of the meter-less shiny cars that scoop you up and demand an exorbitant fee, which took us to a great Spanish restaurant on the Upper East Side, one recommended by cousins, and at which we were joined by another cousin and my niece. The birthday concluded with a stop at Dylan's Candy Bar, a colorful emporium with every sort of sweet imaginable, and handily open until 11:00 pm.

We began that next day with a perfect brunch in my niece’s charming apartment in trendy Williamsburg, and then a guided wander through her neighbourhood. After that, just the five of us again, we embarked on a trip down my Brooklyn's Memory Lane, making a pilgrimage to the two apartment buildings where my grandparents had lived during my own childhood. The first, 781 Eastern Parkway, is where my mother grew up. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and writing about my mother’s childhood and my grandparents’ experiences. My own children and husband were more mildly interested, but kindly humoured me. On Eastern Parkway we met a woman who now lives in my mom’s former apartment building, a lovely Russian Jew who tried her darnedest to lure us to the Lubavitcher Purim festivities. She wanted to know what my grandparents were called, and in which apartment they had lived. I didn’t remember, but I described it, the long wood-plank hallway running from front to back. ‘Oh, it must be one of the ‘A’s, on that side, she said, gesturing. ‘I’m over there, in B. So, how much rent did they pay?’

The rent, my mother tells me, was ridiculously low, due to municipal control, but eventually, her parents had to move out as the building had no elevator. The new apartment was on Washington Avenue, across from the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and that was our next stop. This building, a lovely one but in a dodgier neighbourhood, I remember with much greater clarity, since my grandparents lived in it during my teen and early adult years. In fact, in my senior year of university I made a snap decision to visit them there on my own. They sent me the money for plane fare. At least, I believed that was what they intended me to do with the check. I remember that I either called them or asked my mother to call, telling them of my plans. I'm sure of it; I’m almost certain. However when I arrived on the red-eye from California, it turned out they were definitely not expecting me. Fresh from a year abroad studying in England, backpacking around Europe during the breaks, I had lost the habit of advance planning, and perhaps of courtesy.

When my grandparents did not turn up at the airport to meet me (as they had always done in the past), I found a bus to Brooklyn,but had no clear idea of exactly where I was going and had not thought to bring a map. When I descended from the bus, in the predawn dark, the streets were deserted. (And they were mean streets.) No convenient subway entrance presented itself, but a taxi did. I gave the address but also warned that my funds were limited, so the taxi dropped me some distance away from my destination and pointed out the route. ‘Be careful,’ the driver warned. At least by then it was light. I lugged my suitcase and myself to 1035 Washington Avenue. The doorman was not on duty that morning; the building could only afford to hire him a few days a week, giving the burglars free reign the rest of the time. (My grandparents were either mugged or burgled almost monthly in the last year or two they lived in Brooklyn.) I rang the buzzer to my grandparents’ apartment. ‘Who’s there?’ a scared voice demanded.

‘It's Leslie!’ I said. ‘I’m here!’

‘Go away,’ my grandfather’s voice rattled tinnily. Or maybe my grandmother’s. ‘Leave us alone.’ I stood, puzzled, shivering (it was December) and tired, with my luggage, uncertain what to do, when a woman approached the building and opened the door with a key. I must have looked pretty dishevelled, but also harmless, or just pathetic, because she allowed me in. I found my way to the fourth floor, and knocked on their door.

Now they really sounded petrified. ‘Who is it? Go away!’

‘It’s me! It’s Leslie! Let me in, please.’ By then their near neighbours were roused and one of them came into the corridor, echoing my plea that my grandparents let me in, and allow the rest of the building to breakfast in peace. Emboldened or perhaps embarrassed by the presence of others they finally undid the bolts and opened the door. Two more incredulous faces would have been hard to find. To their credit, they welcomed me and begged forgiveness. The boot was on the other other foot, I came to realize sometime later, but then I graciously accepted their apologies. I was a young idiot.

On that trip, I discovered for the first time how remote Brooklyn was from the island of Manhattan, which, on my several previous visits hadn’t seemed to matter; I went where I was taken, and visited whom I was told, and it was all delightfully exciting and fun. Now, I had become an independent soul and wanted to come and go and see whom I pleased, and my grandparents spent the week beside themselves with worry and responsibility. I can pity them now, but at the time I merely shrugged and laughed and demanded a doorkey.

It was good, this time, with my own family, to go back to Brooklyn and see it afresh. We wandered through the still barren Botanic Gardens in spring sunshine, and I remembered walking there with my grandfather, when the roses were in bloom.

My lovely cousin invited us to dinner at her lovely apartment on the Upper West Side. It is the only family home in New York that is still the same from my childhood. Nothing else remains but the buildings themselves. And the Botanic Gardens. A strange realization.

It was a long, long time ago.