Back away

Hove again! So nice to be here, even in January. It still feels like home. How can that be, when Toronto (dammit) also feels very much like home? Two weeks ago I was in Los Angeles visiting my folks for a few days (jet-setting, me, albeit coach class, which wipes the shine off PDQ), beachcombing and bicycling in California sunshine, and, yep, that felt like home, too.

If home is where the heart is, I live in a jigsaw puzzle.

Does that mean my heart is broken?

Sign of the times?

When we first arrived in Canada, the phrase on everyone's lips was 'It's all good.' Or sometimes, 'It's all good!' This seemed to sum up a completely Canadian outlook. Business was booming, development flourishing, there was little indication of the economic hardships emblazoning the UK and US headlines.

Now I more often hear something different: 'It is what it is.' (Never 'It is what it is!') Are Canadians growing philosophical? Reflecting tougher times?

And on a completely selfish level, does it mean we might be able to afford a house next year, when we have to leave the warm cocoon of new faculty housing?

Taking stock

It's New Year! Happy 2012 to all 6 of my followers, their families, friends, pets, and assorted acquaintances. I'm watching the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade on TV, and coveting the bright warmth of a southern California January morning. Next up will be the Rose Bowl (football game), pitting the University of Wisconsin Badgers against the University of Oregon Ducks. Sports and wildlife all at once! May the best animal win.

We spent a wonderful 5 days in New York City. We drove there, stopping en route first for a delicious Christmas Eve dinner with friends in the charming town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and second at the stunningly-lit waterfalls in the tacky town of Niagara Falls. Oh yes, we also paused in Rochester. I love the fact that I live in a place from which I can drive to New York City. It is such a great place, in and of itself, and also filled with memories and roots for me. I knew all that, but had forgotten. And New York state is pretty amazing too. I've driven across it 4 times in the last 6 months so I feel I can speak with some authority.

But, Toto, we're not in California any more. Nor in England. Looking at the sunshine and flowers and blue sky on the television, and comparing with the weak gray light at my window, I wonder, again, a bit, about the halfway state (or province) in which we've landed. Neither there nor there. O Canada.

Now there's a sprinkling of snow outside, so maybe the kids will get to try out the new sled they got for Chanukah. We've been skating at one of the wonderful free ice rinks sprinkled across Toronto. We've enjoyed some lovely parties and gatherings and dinners with friends. We do have wonderful friends here.

And there. And there.

Pidgin English

I was reading a book the other day. I do that occasionally. In it the protagonist says she is 'making a mental note' to do something.

This bugs me. If I say to myself 'I am making a mental note of this', it is equivalent to my saying 'I am going to forget entirely about this.' If I don't write it down, and put it in my phone with 3 reminders heralding its imminent necessity, it's just gone. It might be saved by a well-placed post-it note but otherwise, that ship has sailed. It was just a waste of perfectly good thought energy.

Another thing bugs me about this book, which is written by a Canuck. (A book by a Canuck!) It's an enjoyable novel, though inhabited by fairly repugnant characters, and set in 1950s England. The protagonist is an 11-year-old female, whereas the author is an adult Canadian male. What annoys me is not the unpleasant characters, nor the fact that an adult man is channelling a prepubescent girl, but the fact that a Canadian is trying to 'speak' English. He doesn't do too badly, really, but I can't relax while reading the book. I don't feel comfortable in his hands.

Which makes me wonder how I write. I know I never picked up an English accent during my 17 years residing in the country but my writing is a different story (so to speak). When I reread something I've composed, it sounds neither fully US nor fully UK, and it's certainly not Canadian (or is it? Who knows, eh?). Do I make my readers (the few of them out there) feel uncomfortable in my hands?

Toodle-pip for now.

Business as usual

At first, my new job seemed very like my old job. Research work in Toronto mapped nicely onto my previous working experience in Brighton. The same interesting mix of meetings and seminars, communion with the computer screen, excursions to the library. Enjoyable work, problems to solve, deadlines to meet. The office set-up, too, is quite familiar.

But now a critical difference has made itself apparent. It's a biggie, too. It's the attitude to tea.

Or coffee. Hot drinks in general. In Britain, no one would hold a meeting of more than 10 minutes without offering or at least inquiring about A Hot Drink. The response might be 'Oh yes, please,' or 'No thanks, I've just had one,' or perhaps, 'I thought you'd never ask!' if there had been a pause for drawing breath between 'please sit here' and 'can I get you...?', but there would always be some sort of offer made. Failure to do so would be a breaking of the social contract, and indicate something wrong. Danger, Will Robinson.

Here, as there, my desk is in a shared office. When I get up from the computer, stretch, and head for the small staff kitchen, I always offer to make a tea or coffee for my office-mates. In the UK I'd get a yes, or a no (and a yes or a no-- there were a lot of us in there sometimes). Here in Toronto when I make such an offer, I generally feel that I've caused more consternation than satisfaction, breaking into the peace of the office, presenting a dilemma where none existed before. I've broken a different sort of social contract.

There are other conventions that I took for granted in the UK and now realize how peculiar they are to that nation. The office Christmas party, for instance. In England they've been planned, reservations made, invitations sent, RSVPs received, menu choices decided, Secret Santas assigned. Here? Nada.

And another: in England, anyone who left town, on holiday or business, always brought back some food item to share, by placing it in the office kitchen. Anything will do: Hershey's bars from the US, shortbread from Scotland, maple candy from Canada. The airport shops were invented for the British.

The office parties, the foreign sweets, these I don't miss terribly. They were nice, of course, but I can survive without them.

However. The tea issue. That is a problem. I will have to work on that. After I put the kettle on, though.

@lectoronto

I'm now on Twitter. Thanks to Anne, my friend, guru and part-time personal shopper (Costco division), I've been initiated into what Sensei Anne calls the 'real-time' communication modality of tweeting. I mentioned my achievement to another friend, Jim, and asked him if he felt Twitter really was an improvement over email. Jim looked at me pityingly. 'Email is just so... 1990s,' he said, gently enough, but the point hit home hard. Ouch. That's me. So 1990s. If you too have moved on from last millennium, do look for me out there in Twitterland. Though perhaps I should change my name to @So_1990s.

I can laugh at myself over this, but overall I am feeling rather somber. The cue to my joining Twitter is sad. A local mom, Jenna Morrison, was killed last week in a cycling accident. Aged 38 years, she was 5 months pregnant, cycling to her son's kindergarten to collect him at lunchtime. She overbalanced near a truck and was crushed horribly under its rear wheels. I didn't know her, but her son attended a playgroup with children of friends of mine, a parents' cooperative playgroup, hence a fairly tightknit community. The whole city, especially the cycling population, has been shaken, and the parents in the playgroup just devastated. I joined Twitter so I could keep abreast of cycling groups and their reactions to Jenna's death. Should the truck have had underbody side-rails? Apparently they do in England (though I can't say I noticed, nor did I feel any safer around trucks there).

Catherine Porter, a columnist for the Toronto Star, herself a 38-year-old mom who cycles, wrote movingly of the memorial bike ride instigated by a cyclists' group (http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1086949--i-saw-nothing-but-bike-helmets-for-blocks?bn=1). Porter joined the thousand or more riders who accompanied a 'ghost bike', painted white, which was placed at the site of the accident. She described feeling committed to continuing to cycle, because of its benefits to health, the environment, and the sense of community. At the same time, she wants to live, and to survive to raise her children. I completely, completely empathize with this. I too want to keep on riding. I ride to work, I ride to the kids' school, I ride to the grocery store (I love the basket on the back). One of the great things about downtown Toronto is its cycleability. And I want my kids to have that joy too. But I'm also petrified for myself, for my husband (another cyclist), and for them. Why can't we each have a piece of the road, and peace on the road?

On a mildly humorous note, the way that Porter phrased her own heartfelt dilemma over this issue really highlighted for me, again, that sense of 'We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto' She wrote of her children, "I want to be there for everything:the first sleepover, the first canoe trip, the first love". Beg pardon? It's a canoe trip that comes between 'first sleepover' and 'first love' in Canada? H'm. Ah well. At least she didn't write 'first time wrestling a polar bear.'

RIP Jenna Morrison.

Be careful out there, people.

You'll Always Know Your Neighbor

We recently flew to the west coast of the US. For one reason and another (let's call them cost and outrageous, because that's what they were), we decided to begin our journey in Buffalo, New York, rather than fly from Toronto's Lester Pearson Airport. Who wants to fly from an airport called Lester, anyway, eh?

Middle child and I drove across the border in the dead of night, like fugitives. When we got to the edge of Canada there were no other cars queuing to leave. I sailed right up to the agent's booth. 'Is America open?' I asked him, suspicious that we'd happened upon a national or international emergency. 'America is always open, ma'am,' he replied brusquely.

On we traveled, reaching in under two hours an uncharming but sufficient airport hotel that promised to give us a place to lay our weary heads for the night, look after our car, drive us to departures, and collect us upon our return, all for the sum of about a hundred bucks. Why don't we just live there, I wonder?

We flew west to San Francisco, my birthplace, and stayed in Berkeley, my true spiritual home, with beloved family. Two days later we headed north to Seattle, passing volcano after volcano, till we landed between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker. The rest of the family joined us there for niece's bat mitzvah. All was swell; ceremony, celebration, and niece equally superb.

Three days later, we flew back to Buffalo. Blessed Buffalo! It begins to seem the center of all earthly delights. Home of the Albright-Knox Art Museum (the what?) and Frank Lloyd Wright houses (really?). We collected the car and made our way to Wegmans. Wegmans! Ah, supermarket of my heart's desire. Next door was Kohl's, where husband selected a sweater. Then, after acquiring a tank of All-American, inexpensive (well, it's relative) gas we drove home, arriving two hours later. Two hours. I live two hours from Buffalo, and I'm grateful for it! It was a city that once upon a time felt as remote as the moon and an equally unlikely place for me to visit. (Did Neil Armstrong ever hit a golf ball in Buffalo?) Before I moved to Toronto, all I associated with Buffalo was its spicy chicken wings dipped (oddly) in salad dressing, the Bills, cold, and the Erie Canal. It's true that I've always loved the song about the mule named Sal, who plied fifteen miles on the Erie Canal, where you always know your neighbor, you always know your pal, as well as every inch of the way from Albany to Buffalo. Still, I never expected to see the canal any more than I planned to meet the mule. How did it come to pass that it's now a source of true pleasure to know that in only two hours, with good luck and a following wind, I can be in Buffalo?

Low bridge, everybody down.

Of course there are those wings. Pass the dressing.

So this is why we are here

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a quick three times ten cubed.








And in conclusion, let me just say that it was even more beautiful than my piddly iPhone shots convey. The secret recipe included a warm, sunny, Thanksgiving weekend, some lovely friends, and Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. Don't add (rain)water.

Embracing uncertainty

Yesterday was Rosh HaShana, the Jewish new year (well, so is today, if you are of a more religious bent, but as it happens we are not that way bent). Last year, mere weeks after arriving in Toronto, we attended High Holiday services hosted for many hundreds, possibly thousands, at the Jewish Community Centre quite close to our house. This plan made sense then, as both sets of grandparents had descended on us and we were a rather unwieldy mob of disparately adherent Jews. We enjoyed the services but felt like very small fish in an enormous pond-- however wonderful to see how full that pond was, after the puddle in which we splashed in Brighton. (Sorry, I have beaten that metaphor right into the ground. Or perhaps I drowned it.)

This year we tried a different, and smaller tack: the Danforth Jewish Circle. We knew a few families there and ran into some unexpected familiar faces as well; always a good feeling. One part of the New Year service involves reading from the Torah, an honor generally bestowed on particular people. At the DJC, while such individuals did the actual recitation, segments of the congregation were invited to step to the front and to join in the aliyah, joining the blessing over the Torah. These divisions were defined by our relationship to uncertainty. Have you struggled with uncertainty in the past year? Or, have you embraced and relished it? Or, would you like to learn to live with and love uncertainty? I had to declare myself. In the end, I went with the middle group: I think I've spent this past year very much embracing the sense of being new, of not being sure of the route, of relishing the discovery of new people, places, and coffee shops. At least, I hope so. I fear that a critical review of these entries might not put my attitude in such a positive light (so I won't do it just at the moment).

Especially lovely was the DJC's 'tashlich' service in the late afernoon. This ceremony has something to do with dispatching one's sins and burdens while standing by open water. In this case the open water was a quarry pool at the Don Valley Brickworks, a revered Toronto location that we had none of us managed to visit yet. We very nearly didn't visit it this time as we became extremely lost. After abandoning the car, finally, in a neighbourhood of vast houses (I quickly added 'real estate envy' to my list of sins to be discarded) we wound our way down through field and wood to the former brickworks, where middle child spotted the congregation gathered by the pool. A heron joined us, standing silently by during the singing and talking, then taking flight as we did. (Can herons be Jewish? Sounds a bit close to 'Herod'. He was Jewish, I believe. Herod, not the heron, that is.)

A less pleasant encounter with water this morning: yet more flooding in the blasted basement. Several boxes lost. Carpet muddy where I dragged the wet monstrosities out to the street (not a clever move). The property manager maintains I'm cursed and the basement haunted. This time they will try to put in a new door. I asked the manager she knew where our Persian rug might be-- she had taken it away after it suffered basement-linked water damage during the summer. 'Oh yes,' she said. 'It's still at the cleaners. He couldn't bring it back because his van exploded.' It's the curse.

Happy new year!

The Day After the Day Before

Before:

It's all about the bar mitzvah these days. A wonderful event, a blessed event, a milestone. How has it come about that I'm the parent of a teenager? And what a teenager. I'm so proud of him. My cousin writes a blog about the good enough mother
(http://goodenoughmothering.com/) and that's what I keep asking myself-- am I one? I've uprooted my children, moved them across the Atlantic, and now we are celebrating this amazing time-- thousands of miles distant from most of the children and friends with whom he grew up. We created a slide show ('a photo montage', in the patois of celebratory events (we learned)). It's of our son's life, from early infancy to today. It was truly a labour of love, one of the most pleasurable aspects of preparing for this gala. But it also pierced my heart, because most of those adorable photos of the baby, the toddler, and the primary schoolboy show him with his English friends who won't be with us on the day.

I'm getting terribly stressed about all the things that shouldn't matter. My sisters are excellent listening posts as well as sounding boards. For the most recent upset, one gave sympathetic, reaffirming feedback and the other advised 'Drink wine!' I read that one at about 7 o'clock one morning and pondered whether to pour red or white on my Cheerios. What a duo! Between them, and with a lot of help from my friends in here in Toronto I'm doing okay.

At 24 hours before lift-off, my to-do list is still frighteningly long. I'm so anxious I can hardly sleep. I am never far from my magic vial of Rescue Remedy.

After:

It was marvelous. My boy acquitted himself beautifully. He told us, tells us still, that he was nervous, but you couldn't guess it from looking at him. So composed! So grown up! My baby, my baby. I'm so very proud of him. Maybe I am a good enough mother after all. Or, maybe it's all down to his dad, who is truly fantastic. In any case, somehow, to misquote Rogers and Hammerstein, 'We Must Have Done Something Good (Enough).' There was the odd glitch, which only highlighted son's ability to handle adversity. He stayed calm, cool, and collected for the nearly two hours he was 'on'. And I got through my own speech to him without dissolving in tears (I had done that a few minutes before, listening to his father's beautiful words).

And the party! What fun! I expected to struggle through, to endure rather than to enjoy, but it was great! I think everyone enjoyed it, particularly the 30-odd kids from son's grade 8 class. And it was so wonderful to see how much they care about him. One of his best friends very sadly couldn't make it yesterday and that was a real blow, but it's perfectly clear that he's got a great group of terrific mates. What an affirmation of our move to Toronto. It was so gratifying to watch them having such a blast together. The DJ company which cause me such aggro only days ago did a fantastic job of entertaining the kids and even the adults. All the boxes were ticked. Hours of dancing, games, joy, dancing the hora, chair lifts, speeches (well, one, from Simon), more joy.

The slide show, though. The 'photo montage'. It was beautiful, cute, funny, enjoyable. But it lacked the 'ooohs' and 'Hey! Hey!' and 'That's me!' exclamations that usually pepper such viewings. I had so few photos of this new group of friends. None of them cavorting in playgrounds, splashing in wading pools, toddling tipsily in nappies. The kids displayed on the screen with the toddler version of son are in Durham. The children he horsed around with at primary school are in Brighton. And here he is now, in Toronto. We have moved. On. And away.

But also 'to'. Somehow, he has kept his balance, gained composure, and achieved a place amongst new peers. Thank heaven for our families, so many of whom joined us: the grandparents in the photos were there all along, and again last night, as were the aunts and (most of) the uncles and cousins. I don't know about blood being thicker than water, but it certainly travels better. And we are so very grateful.

The 'to do' list? Still with me. Still contains unticked items. 'Iron the tallit'. Not done. 'Try on dress'. Nope, never got to that. 'Practice the havdalah blessings'. Again, undone. But you know what? It's over! It was fantastic. What was important in the end was what happened, not what didn't happen.

Mazel tov to all of us. So. Until the next time. Two years till younger son is thirteen. Oy vey! I can't wait.

My Favourite Plague

My scalp was itching the other day, so I pulled the nit comb out of its bathroom drawer, slathered my hair in conditioner, and had a good trawl. Nothing live, just sand, from a recent beach volleyball experience. Tant pis, I thought.

Yes, that's right. Shocking, but true: I have a sneaking fondness for lice. My view could not possibly be more unpopular. On the occasions when I've voiced my lack of disgust at the critters' existence, you would have thought that I'd expressed admiration for the Marquis de Sade or for the killers of baby harp seals. But quite honestly, they (lice, not harp seals) have done me, and my family, more good than ill. Here in my new home, Toronto, that confession makes me a pariah or at least a totally lone voice. It's pretty much the attitude across North America, it seems. Here there are whole companies dedicated to louse eradication, at the cost of hundreds of dollars. I know plenty of families who have hired their services.

But really, think about it: what damage do lice cause? They itch (not as much as mosquito bites, though). They don't make you sick, they are not vectors for microbes that make you sick, and they don't stink. If I had to choose a plague, lice would be it.

My children have largely outgrown the age of nits. Now galloping into the teen and preteen years, they don't sit huddled in the sandbox or clustered over dolls' houses, their tousled tresses pressed against their friends'. But in those preschool and primary years, while living in the temperate climes of Sussex, we had our fair share of infestations. (In the north of England, we were told, the winter temperatures dropped enough to kill off the stock and keep the numbers in check. In the south, the pests are endemic, or thriving, depending on your point of view.) The middle child in particular was a magnet for them, the population in his scalp achieving numbers I dare not share in print. He was proud of his livestock! We even named one 'Bob', and for some time when said child was about 7 or 8 years old, we could always find Bob lurking within a month or two. Once, during a lengthy spell of unoccupied hair, Bob even sent a postcard to us, evidently from the north of England, describing the sights of the Peak District.

We didn't ignore these infestations: far from it. In a way, we relished them. Taking the boy children to the barber, I might find myself called hither for a quiet word in my shell-like: 'he has a few nits. Just wanted to let you know.' The haircut would continue, scissors cleansed afterward and clippings swept up and ejected, just as would happen with any customer, lollipop chosen from the jar, and off we'd go. Or girl child's preschool teacher, an eagle-eyed (American) spotter, would alert me to the need for a clear-out. (Eventually, I learned to notice them myself.) That night I would perch on the edge of the bathtub, combing through the children's hair, one after the other.

It was lovely. Time-consuming, yes, but I grew to cherish that enforced closeness, that bubble in space and time empty of television, computers, the written word, telephones, games, even of cooking or other household chores. Eventually I improvised a more comfortable seat, and we would begin, becoming absorbed in our task, combing, talking, counting the little buggers (again, I'm not telling), and finally, rinsing. We learned about the life-cycle of the louse, and knew that in four days' time, we needed to repeat the procedure. We never pursued every last little one; that, I recognised early on, was impossible and unnecessary and painful. We aimed for control, not eradication; at about the time patience ended, so did the operation. Over a period of a couple of weeks, with about three rounds of combings, the scalp was clear. For a while. In a couple of months, the cycle would repeat. And our chats, our jokes, our funny songs, would revive and evolve.

Not, I hasten to add, was nit-combing the only time or even the best time I spent with my children at those ages. We snuggled in bed, read stories, watched movies, had picnics, played in the park, walked, drove in the car, rode on trains. (Still do.) But it was certainly a bracketed, focused, intensely one-on-one refreshment between mother and child. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

So, Robert Burns, I'm with you and your ode, 'To a Louse.' Praise the good lord for all her creations, lice included.


18 January 2016: news flash! Thanks to entomologist Dr. Richard Pollack, instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health and senior environmental public health officer for Harvard University (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/richard-pollack/), I have scientific, as well as poetic, support for my heretical position. See Dr. Pollack's site on head lice management https://identify.us.com/idmybug/head-lice/index.html

Displaced person

It's been an emotional trip. We've traversed the Atlantic yet again. When I entered the UK the immigration agent looked at my passport and was able to detect that I'd had a permanent resident's visa previously. 'Are you sure you want me to do this?' she asked, her stamp poised over my passport. 'Once I stamp it, the resident's visa is invalidated.' What a question. What a choice. What could I do? It's done already. I'm a visitor now. A tourist. A transatlantic outcast.

We've had a tremendously lovely time, all told. The kids immediately bonded with their old friends, in Brighton and in Durham. We enjoyed numerous joyful reunions followed all too soon by tearful farewells. People in Brighton seemed surprised to see us. 'What are you doing here?' many asked. As if we'd leave and never return! But I guess that's what some do: they move on. I don't feel that way, but I realise that unlike Durham, where we lay claim to some form of rootedness (it's where we met, where we lived when we married, where we had our children), we might be seen merely to have passed through Sussex. Yet our six years there marked me, with irreplaceable friends and essential memories. It's the first place I ever moved with the actual intention of spending my life there. It proved me wrong and taught me bittersweet lessons about the illusion of permanence. It's been a bittersweet journey all through, this voyage home. Because I do feel at home in Brighton. And in Durham. And in California. And, also, in Toronto. I'm not so much displaced as over-placed. Or perhaps misplaced. I must reflect.

Back to Blighty

This is it. It's our maiden voyage home. Or not home. England. Wherever.

It's a bit scary, I have to say. I've been jumpy and touchy and snapping for the last few days (my family probably can't tell the difference to me in my normal state, but I can). There's so much to do, so many people to see, so many conversations to conduct. How can I pack 17 years into 2.5 weeks? I'm not a magician.

After many years away from Durham, our home for a decade, we learned how to visit. We joyfully see the people we must see: the critical core. Then we can add in others as a sort of rotating treat. We know what things we have to do: walk in Flass Vale; play in our old street; wander along the river beneath the Cathedral; pop in to see Sting (well, it happened once). I'm looking forward to our visit there with pure pleasure, except for the long drive. But returning to Brighton for the first time feels so overwhelming that it's really scary. I want to see everyone, do everything, recapture the feeling of living there.

I'm afraid I won't be able to leave again.

Rudeness in Toronto

This is big city-- fifth largest in North America, I'm told (though how can that be true, now I come to think of it. Oh well, it is big. You can tell by the traffic jams). There are crimes, car crashes, bike accidents - lots of bad city-type things happen here. But while I've encountered impatient drivers, I don't think I'd ever had someone be rude right to my face here. It is a city of friendly people-- some born-and-bred Canadian, but about half not. Toronto is a place where if you stand on a street corner lost in thought for a few moments, a passer-by is quite likely to approach and inquire if you are also lost in body. (I'm sure i was about to solve unified field theory once, at Bloor and St. George streets, when a friendly citizen came to point out the subway entrance-- what a shame for science.) But today I encountered a genuinely rude person, a woman at the St. George subway. It was such a shock! She pushed in front of me to buy a token after we had both waited for a nice young Englishman to learn that he could not buy a week's Metro pass on a Thursday (why not?? but that's a different story). The woman thrust her money at the attendant and when I said 'excuse me, I was next,' she didn't hesitate a whit; she just snatched her change and her token, and said sneeringly, 'Well then be quicker. I don't have all day to wait for you people.' You people? You people? Who is you people? I must have looked as shocked as I felt because after she strutted away, the attendant consoled me and said, 'Don't let it bother you.' But of course it does bother me. I tried imagining that her husband had just left her, or that she recently suffered a bereavement, to explain her behaviour. Hey, maybe it was both: she killed the husband because he stepped in front her while they were waiting in a line. Or she has no friends. (Yeah, that's it. No one ever reads her blog!) Mostly I think of all the things I could have said or done, and didn't, to her face. Just as well, no doubt. Anyway she will probably have to leave the country soon because they just don't allow rudeness here.

Let there be light

It's summer! It's warm! Toronto has sprung to life and is celebrating its survival of another winter, and even more, another spring. One can hardly navigate the roads for all the street parties and festivals.We've been to big ones, small ones, ethnic ones, bicycle ones, and one that was actually just a family having friends over that we mistook for a public event. (They were sweet about it though, and they grilled their burgers to utter perfection. (I'm joking.)) We do feel a little out sync because we continue to use our oven rather than barbecuing all our food. We purchased a barbecue, because I think it's the law here, but it's still in its box. The smell of smoke pervades everything. It must be tough for the fire department. The raccoons are happy, as the pickings are good. We have a little posse of them living off the crumbs under our picnic table. One grew especially bold and climbed inside our rubbish bin, just the tip of its tail left hanging out, then popped back up and scampered off holding a bag of something in one paw, like a child going to school.

Hi Yael!

Good deeds

I did two good deeds today. The first one was saving a child's life. Well, maybe, anyway. A friend and I were walking south, home from school drop-off, on the narrow street that intersects our large one. We were chattering away (what, me, talk?) as we crossed the foot of a church driveway from which a large shiny black SUV was slowly reversing out. We hardly broke stride because we felt so confident that the driver saw us, as indeed s/he did. S/he braked. I love the fact that pedestrians have the right of way here (as they do in the UK) and drivers actually let them use it (as drivers in the UK do not). In England I'd definitely have checked whether the car planned to carry on regardless, hitting me if it must. Anyway, we walked safely past and the car resumed reversing. A tiny little boy, age 3 or so, on a tiny little bike, brand new, came zipping past us, heading north. I glanced vaguely round for his grown-up and realised he didn't have one anywhere in sight. I turned and grabbed his bike to halt him before standing behind the still-slowly-reversing car. The boy's head height was below the tops of the SUV's tires and it was impossible that the driver could have seen the child. The little boy looked surprised, the car came to an abrupt halt when I appeared in its rear window. My friend and I scanned the road for a grown-up in charge of the child. Finally we located her, riding a bike on the street several yards ahead and separated from the sidewalk by a wide grass verge. She had paused at a T-junction controlled by a stop sign. She turned to look for her son, spotted me holding onto him, and glared at me as if I were a madwoman. I called out 'The car was reversing!' but she didn't seem to hear or understand. I let go of the boy and he caught up to his mom. Luckily my friend was wheeling her own bike with a child trailer attached, which lent us credence as upstanding maternal figures rather than potential kidnappers. My friend and I walked on and continued our previous conversation. Not until a few hours later did I mentally return to the scene and think with a shock, 'I nearly saw a child killed today.' At school pick-up in the playground the friend and I reviewed the incident and agreed that it was all slightly unbelievable, but really happened.

My next good deed was to serve tea to the men cutting down a large tree in the empty yard next door. They said 'thank you'. And they gave me a log to use as a garden bench. We have a lot more light in our yard and kitchen now.

close encounters

He came to gobble up crumbs of matzo left in our garden. The cat, hissing at the back door, alerted us to his presence. Can raccoons be Jewish? If he comes back, we'll call him Elijah. Maybe I should leave out a glass of wine. Manishevitz, of course.

Culture shock

Some things just work differently here.

Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack...

Youngest child has joined a baseball team. She knows virtually nothing about baseball. We took her to one Blue Jays game, where she learned that you can buy an enormous Coke and a paper plate of French fries (that is, if your parents thought ahead and sold the family silver).

I took her to her first game. She was delighted to go, because two of her best friends were on her team. The rest was pretty much irrelevant. Nonetheless, she had to go to bat when it was her turn. One pitch: strike. Two pitches: strike two.. Three pitches: strike three. But wait. Four pitches: strike four! And so on, and so on. It turns out the little kids can bat until the pitcher (aka the manager, i.e. a grown up) gets bored. Then, even if the child hasn't managed to hit the ball, he or she may still run. It's like rounders in England: the players get to make up the rules as they go along. So off daughter goes, heading for first, confused but happy. Next up is daughter's very good chum. Again, one, two, three, four, five (etc.) strikes, and then - strike me pink- this child hits the ball! She runs to first base. My daughter, delighted for her friend, stands there with open arms, waiting to greet her with an enormous hug. They dance in circles, in each other's arms, around the square white cushion. 'Run! Run! Run!' we're all screaming at daughter. Eventually she looks up from her celebration, catches the drift, and trots off, smiling, to second base.

I see some practicing in our future...

What they say about spring

Two months ago I wrote 'We survived winter! Hooray for us!' This now comes under heading 1a: 'crowing too soon.' Also 1b: 'counting chickens before they have hatched.'

Spring has nearly done us in, or rather done me in. It's been cold, grey, miserable, and otherwise an extreme disappointment. The kids seem more resilient (youngest says: 'never mind, Mommy; we have lots of warm clothes now'). What's interesting is hearing what locals say about the season. There are two stock responses: a) 'Oh, this is really unusual! Last year at this time we had been wearing shorts and tee-shirts for a month! Wait till next year;' and b) 'Oh yes, this is spring in Canada. It's always cold and wet. Sometimes we even get snow in June! Ha, ha, ha. You'll see, next year.' I'm not sure which reply makes me feel worse: that we are a) unlucky and bearers of bad meteorology, or b) that we're not. The best response so far has been from a friend who said to me on a freezing cold, dismal, gray April day (my birthday, as it happened): 'Please let me apologize on behalf of the entire country of Canada.'

I'm thinking about it.

Needing a workout

Last week I decided to bake muffins for eldest child's school bake sale. This is not usually a good idea as no one ever buys my baked goods, but I found an easy recipe for which I had all of the ingredients to hand: chocolate bourbon muffins. All went well until I licked the spoon, and the bowl, while the muffins were in the oven, and honest to Betsy, the batter made me tipsy. Good thing I was only walking to younger children's school for pick-up; in my batter-addled state surely I was unfit for driving. My alcohol tolerance needs a workout! I'm ready for a gals' night out. The sad coda to this episode just reached me this evening: it turns out that son left the bag of muffins in his friend's father's car, so the fruits of my labor did not earn the school tuppence. And, again, no one bought my stuff.

springing forward etc etc

We seem to have survived our first winter-- hooray. Spring starts tomorrow, heralded by a 'supermoon'. (We just popped out to look at this 'supermoon' and find it almost indistinguishable from the 'moon'.)

Last week a Toronto local told me, knowledgeably, that she she could feel spring in the air. I just felt cold, but it turns out she was right. It's spring. There is ground everywhere. The local playground sports sand, not snow, beneath the swingset. My children now run out to play soccer on the nearby field, wearing tee-shirts and shorts. My own soccer team held its weekly practice outdoors this morning. That was a bit extreme, and I wore about 4 layers of clothing, but we all survived and even perhaps thrived a bit better for the chilly sunshine.

This past week schools have been having March Break. My friend and I took our combined 6 children to a 'sugar bush', a woods on the outskirts of the city where maple syrup is made. We followed the path downhill (a hill! a hill!) through the trees, looking at the taps in the maples dripping into galvanized buckets, tasting harvested sap, watching 'Granny Maple' stir the liquid in giant iron cauldrons over open fires, using 40 buckets of sap to make a single bucket of delicious syrup, the old-fashioned way. We sampled sap and syrup, and decided that the effort of boiling is definitely worth it. Further along the trail we saw the 'modern' method of syrup-making: very primitive-looking blue plastic tubes strung from the taps in the trees to larger black tubes that wobble through the woods, conveying the sweet liquid to the 'sugar shack', where a single, enormous vat is heated in order to transform sap to syrup. Somehow I think there must be an even more modern, more efficient way to do this, but maybe not. Syrup is awfully expensive; perhaps this is why. Afterward we all had pancakes with yet more syrup at the cafe. Yum yum yum, especially with sausages, and hot apple cider.

Last week was also St. Patrick's Day, whose North American significance I'd forgotten. It was a day of frolic and greenery: green beer, sidewalk parties where everyone wore sparkly green clothing, and wandering leprechauns. The kids and I saw it all as we walked to the dentist, to piano lessons, and home. In the UK, where Irishness is freighted with deeper ethnic and social meanings, celebrating this quintessential (or do I mean 'essential'?) Irish holiday has heavy political import, and is done, if at all, quietly. Here it's just another event on the frat boys' calendar. When I was a child if you didn't wear something green to school on March 17, you would get pinched. In the dire event that you forgot (woe is me), you would tell your classmates that you were wearing green underpants, and pray they didn't check your claim. Some children even dyed their hair green. (Ricky Branson did that in sixth grade. Many years later I heard he died of a heroin overdose.)

Another reminder today of how very nice Canadians are. We made a family outing to St. Lawrence Market, a Toronto site of which we had heard much but not yet experienced. It's a big indoor hall with lots of food stalls (meat, fish, produce, cheese, chocolates, 'condiments'), expensive knitwear, shea butter in 28 varieties, and food samples at every turning. Great fun. After some shopping we treated ourselves to a late lunch, sharing a table with a lone young man who, prior to our invasion of his spot, had been reading on a Kindle-like object. We struck up conversation and he proved very friendly, sitting with us throughout our meal, recommending restaurants and discussing bookshops. At the end, as we all packed up to leave, he said, shyly, 'Here, I'd like you to have this,' and gave us a packet of small, smoked elk sausages from one of the stalls in the market. Now, that would not have happened in England, methinks.

Cleaning house

The house is clean for the first time in six months. It took two people 10.5 hours to slog through all the muck, which is quite embarrassing. If I weren't so busy relishing the order and cleanliness, I'd be mortified.

Embracing the winter

When we first arrived in Toronto, seasoned Canadian residents advised us to 'embrace the winter'. Basically this seemed to mean that you must overcome your inner ursine and reject the urge to hibernate. Get out there and confront the white stuff, build snowmen, slide down hills, skate. So a few weeks ago, on 'Family Day' weekend (Canada's answer to the US 'President's Day', which says it all, really), we packed up kids, pillows, ice skates, sleds, snow gear, food, tea, and more kids, and headed north. Yes, further north. Nuts or what?

First we had to overcome the big thaw, which turned our snowy backyard into a lake, and denied us access to the garage unless we donned scuba gear. So loading the car was accomplished by dragging all the paraphernalia from the front door and along the sidewalk into a nearby parking lot.

Done. Get everyone in the car. Head north, reminding ourselves that we wanted to do this. Then, GPS notwithstanding, we made a wrong turn and launched ourselves the wrong way on the 401, which was enjoying bumper-to-bumper traffic and offered NO EXIT (help me, Sartre, help help me Sartre...) for 6 kilometers. The kids didn't mind as they were allowed to deploy the in-car video entertainment system. But after 30 minutes of stop-and-go driving, middle one declared his stomach was feeling a little .... yep, long story short, he upchucked. We threw him plastic bags but his aim and the bags' seals were imperfect. (That sentence construction involved a zeugma, if I'm not mistaken.) After 30 minutes of overpowering stench, we found an exit which promised a service station. It was certainly a station of sorts; in addition to all the usual facilities, the ladies' room featured an unsheathed hypodermic needle resting delicately on top of the toilet paper dispenser. Only sheer good luck saved me from being punctured by it. (Even more fortunately, daughter had accompanied father to men's room, so did not come near it.) Ever the good samaritan, I scooped it up in wodges of loo roll and tried to be discreet in bringing it to the attention of the staff. Discretion was not necessary, it turned out. 'Hey Mike! This lady's found another needle!' shouted the clerk to the manager. Mike brought me a rubbish bin and said, 'Just toss it in there. Thanks!' We're not looking for houses in that neighbourhood...

Onward and northward, through gradually diminishing traffic and accompanied by a persistant odour of vomit, it took us another two hours to reach the cabin in the picturesque Muskoka region. Actually at that stage we had to take the guidebook's word on the 'picturesque', as it was now not only dark but replete with alternately driving and swirling snow. By some measure of fortune and by judiciously ignoring the GPS in favor of the written word, we located our rented cottage on the shore of Clear Lake. (We never did see a lake, but there was certainly a large, flat, oblong, treeless white area in the vicinity.) 'Just pull your car up here,' the proprietor said, with typically proprietorial joviality. I backed up in the dark, with the car packed to the gills, and hit a tree. It didn't feel like much but in morning we realised that the poor car will never be the same again.

But you know what? After that harrowing journey, we had a fantastic time! We tried snow-tubing and cross-country skiing at a nearby provincial park. They loved us there. After park staff assured us that we couldn't get lost looking for the tubing hill, we a) did get lost, and b) when we found it, nearly pitched the car right down the chute. But once we got the hang of it we were hooked. It was such fun. Then back to the park headquarters to request cross-country ski gear. By then we had so endeared ourselves to the staff that they let us use the equipment for free for two hours. Later, the friendly lady at the desk confided that she had really admired my quashing, earlier, of a rude man who kept interrupting our transaction. 'I can't bear people like that,' she said to us. 'He was just trying to jew me down.' At our startled looks, she hastily corrected herself: 'That's not the right word.' No, it was not.

In the evenings we cooked lovely food, watched Back to the Future and Freaky Friday on the laptop, read books, and snuggled to sleep in the warm cabin. The next day we all completed some homework and then went out to a family downhill ski lesson. Everyone did brilliantly and the only one who got hurt was me, when I fell on my head getting out of the chairlift. Obvious thoughts arose, but I seem to have survived. Sobering, though. The kids were amazing, especially middle child, who had never skied before and yet was able to advance to proper chair lift runs after an hour of lessons. We all wanted more, which seemed a good time to go.

Homeward journey unremarkable. Just as it should be. I think, winter, we can consider you well and truly embraced. Now please go away and give us flowers. In England the daffodils must be blooming. Crocuses and snowdrops are long past...

Seedy Sunday

Eldest child went skiing for first time ever, on a day trip with school. He loved it. As a family so far this winter, we've now skated, skied, sledded and snowball-fought. Younger son loves the building 'quinzhees' in the school playground; these are igloo-like dome-shaped shelters formed of snow. I envision their collapse and consequent suffocation of children within but my concerns are ridiculed by children and other parents alike. What do I know; I'm a foreigner in these parts.

So, snow and ice are the order of the day. But it turns out that today is in fact Seedy Sunday here in Toronto, marking the official start of the growing season. As far as I can see only the icicles are growing but I was persuaded to buy three packets of tomato seeds, which I will plant. Indoors.