Transatlantic Pilates

I loved my Pilates classes in England, and I’ve been happy with the two studios I’ve attended here in Toronto (though obviously less happy with the first; hence the second). The exercises themselves do me good of course but in addition I love the instructional patter, which is practically poetic. ‘Peel your vertebrae up slowly, like a piece of tape from delicate wrapping paper,’ said my current teacher. I knew exactly what she meant even without watching her demonstrate. There’s no shouting or exhorting in a Pilates class. Instead the words seem to hypnotize students into correct movement. Time floats by. The aching comes later.

Most of this instructional imagery crosses the Atlantic perfectly well. But every so often I’m reminded, in the midst of my trance-state, that I’m in Canada. Recently my teacher has been focusing on the upper body and she showed us some arm and shoulder exercises. ‘As if you’re kayaking,’ she said, expecting everyone to know. And everyone did. Later on she showed us a particular full-body stretch with limbs spread widely. ‘As if you’re scaring off a bear,’ she said brightly. Again, everyone understood. No one commented or questioned or said, 'my, um, yes, what an... interesting image.'

How to kayak and how to fend off bear attacks may very well be on the Canadian citizenship test. I shouldn't be surprised. I wonder whether  the exam also includes tightening the obliques and maintaining a neutral pelvis.

A little night coffee revisited

As Dorothy learned from her trip to Oz, if you can't find happiness in your own backyard, then you never really lost it.

After all my searching, it turns out that the Starbucks around the corner from me on Bloor Street stays open until 11 o' clock pm. So, here I sit, drinking my second flat white and tapping away.

Go Democrats

Iowa caucus tonight. Listening to WBFO, NPR's Buffalo affiliate; it's my station now. They even say 'and southern Ontario' in their station announcement. Darn it all. Guess this means I have to donate during their next fundraiser. Especially because they are announcing pretty good results.

Note to self: register to vote.

A Little Night Coffee

Sometimes I look back and think that the thread running through my entire life as a mother has been the search for after-hours espresso bars. Back in Durham, when we had only two children, husband and I instituted a hopeful plan of 'dates' so that each child had time alone with a parent. We chose Sunday evenings as date night, envisioning a cozy cocoa tete a tete. This proved misguided. We knew of children in the north of England who were fed and abed by six o'clock, which should have clued us in. During the, oh, month or so that this great idea lasted, we struggled to find anyplace to take a toddler out at the shocking hour of 7:00 pm. Pubs were the only game in town and toddlers emphatically not welcome (dogs okay). I remember driving around the first Sunday, having promised my little son a hot chocolate, and in desperation, ending up at McDonald's.  He was happy enough. I was not. We changed the dating plan.

A few years later our family moved south to Brighton (Hove, actually:) With no job for me, and with the older children often with after-school playdates, time alone with each of them came about naturally. What grew in me, perhaps unnaturally, was a huge craving for time by myself.  Somehow, I realized, I had none. Either I had not noticed it for the preceding six years, or it had newly evaporated, left behind up north with childcare and community and my research position and babysitters. The terrible mother within me could not deny a desperate desire to be on my own, to lay down the weaponry of maternity, to leave the house without pushchair or nappies or packets of crushed goldfish in my pocket. I wanted to arm myself with only a book or the latest New Yorker. Even a year-old New Yorker.  

Husband, bemused as only one in possession of an office with a door that locked could be, agreed to get home from work one evening a week by 6:30. That first time, I flew out the door and reached my pilates class exactly at 7:00, communed happily with my core for an hour, and rolled up my mat at 8:00. The night was young; these were the bright lights of Brighton, not the moonlit glow of Durham's quaint cobbled streets. I wandered along Church Road, heading for Caffe Nero, which was just closing. Costa Coffee, the same story. The charming little independent with the mismatched chairs had shut an hour before. All the open, well-lit doorways led to smoky pubs. So instead I drove to the seafront, parked beneath a streetlamp and read a chapter in my car. I felt degenerate, as though I were part of a drug deal. (Maybe wishing. No. Not really.) 

In subsequent weeks and months I tried variations: a hotel bar, a pseudo-American diner that closed at 9:00 and happily poured me the dregs of their dilute tan liquid ('free refills!') while mopping the floor around my chair, a fish-and-chips shop where they let me drink tea for a quarter of an hour, longer than it took to prepare the order I didn't really want. Pathetic, definitely pathetic. Eventually I found an available, affordable (if fundamentalist) nursery place for the youngest, and had two mornings a week on my own. Temporary heaven. 

The kids are now big and bustling with their own plans and yet in many ways, just as needful of parental attention. Most of the time I love it. But it turns out that my Inner Bad Mommy continues to call a few shots. She still wants a night off, which means a night out, because a night off in, isn't. I want to have some time to think and write, bracketed from parenting, housework, and real work. And here we are in Toronto, a city ten times the size of Brighton and Hove ('and Portslade'- in smaller font), which surely teems with late-night caffeine-based joints. 

I compiled a list of 'ten best late-night cafes'. A whole list! My coffee cup runneth over, I thought. The list grew shorter when i saw that 'late night' actually meant, in some cases, 'open until 8:00 pm.' What kind of a big city is this, exactly?  Still, I didn't need all ten. One would do. The first place I tried, a mere five-minute walk from home, was in trendy Kensington Market. It seemed perfect: espresso only til 8:00pm, but tea all hours, a little wine, lots of beer, and spirits. End-of-day croissants for a dollar. There was a large butcher-block table and smaller 2-seater ones, several occupied by lap-tappers like me. The music grew louder and the lighting dimmer in the latter hours, but in a good way. I felt welcome and the place stayed open until midnight. It buzzed without being busy.

Then, two weeks ago, the cafe curse caught up with me. A large notice in hand-lettered orange crayon stood by the till: 'no laptops after 9:00'. It looked crude and threatening, like a ransom demand. I felt both disappointed and offended. 'Is this serious?' I asked. 'It seems kind of... mean.' 

The owner bristled. 'It's not mean,' he told me. 'I just want to make enough money to pay my staff. We need a more bar-like atmosphere.' I wished him luck, but left anyway, not wanting to sit there and wait for my curfew to arrive. 

My ten-best list had included another spot just around the corner from the dictatorial cafe.  I poked my head in, wary now, and found the tiny place quiet,  a smattering of customers, one of them intently reading a paperback book with several colours of highlighters nearby. 'Do you have a rule about no laptops?' I asked the barista-slash-bartender. The menu listed espresso drinks as well as a variety of whiskey-based cocktails.

'No!' she replied, with a shocked expression. 'Of course not.' 

'Well, I've just come from one that does,' I told her, and ordered an Americano. She shook her head in sympathy. I shed my coat and scarf and hat and gloves, and perched on a high stool at a narrow counter. The woman next to me picked up a blue pen and drew a firm line across a page.

The coffee arrived, not quite hot enough. 'Oh,' said the barista, accepting my tip, 'Just to let you know, the live band starts at about 8:30.' 

And so it did. The band must be a popular one, because the tiny space filled up. Standing room only, eau de underarm prevalent. Elbows jostled my mouse and the woman with the highlighters packed up and abandoned me. I saw- and smelled- which way the wind was blowing, ordered a bourbon sour (delicious), and after a close call with someone's shoulder bag, closed the laptop. I drained my glass as the band finished warming up, and headed home in time to help with homework and read a bedtime story.

I've since found a website with yet another list of late-night work-friendly venues in downtown Toronto. One of them is McDonald's.

All-American Spellings

Thanks for the hint, NYT. Still couldn't finish it.

Eh?

Snowbird

I've got a new, rather risque winter coat. It only comes down to my thighs. Ooh la la. 

When we first arrived in Toronto in the late summer of 2010, I went into immediate high gear preparing for winter. In the dripping heat of September, I started panic-buying outerwear and underwear for the whole family, dragging them first to MEC, Canada's premier outdoor store, then, shocked at the prices, to the discount mall down the road. I felt particularly anxious about snow boots. I bought and returned half-a-dozen pairs before finally settling. The kids began to hide from me. "Please try them on just once more," I begged. I outfitted them in sets of matching coats and snowpants, which latter the elder ones wore once and then disdained. Husband cavalierly selected an inexpensive puffy jacket and said, "It'll be fine." (It wasn't.) For myself I assiduously researched and chose the warmest coat I could find, ankle-length, with a faux-fur-rimmed hood, dull white in colour, utterly fashion-free. It resembled a sleeping bag and wearing it, I could be mistaken for the abominable snowman. People did a double-take when they saw me. "My," they stuttered. "Don't you look...comfortable." I didn't care. I lumbered along, armored against Canada.

Five winters later, I'm still fond of that shapeless duvet of a coat, but more as a security token than something I wish to don daily December to March. I've adjusted to Toronto temperatures. A couple of degrees above or below zero, which back in England counted as flipping freezing, is tolerably warm. If the roads are clear of ice, I'll even cycle to work (wearing my Norwegian neck-warmer). It requires a minus sign and double digits appearing on my weather app to scare me these days. Hence the new coat. It can lay no claim to haute couture, but in it I am at least recognizable as a human female. It is short, it allows free movement, it's kind of cute, and it's Danish. I've shed my armor.

The timing feels right. I'm acutely aware these days that no one ever knows what lies around the corner, but with our eldest set to finish high school in June, and the youngest becoming a teenager this weekend, I feel we could be at a half-way mark in our lives here. Another five winters, and chances are that husband and I won't be in thrall to the children's school schedule. Ignoring the nugatory demands of our own employment, we would then be able to contemplate abandoning Toronto during its coldest months. We might become snowbirds, a human sub-species rampant in Canada that migrates south in the winter, like the famed geese. I'm starting to eye up Winnebagos, though I don't tell my husband.

Our street with snow! Just like last year! And the year before!

The Californian in me still gets excited by the first snowfall, however. Last week I ran out to greet this one wearing my new half-way coat. I was fine.

The Valley Girl and the Wrong Trousers

Growing up I had no special fondness for my home and native land, California. The way I saw it, the 'real' United States lay east of the Rockies, where the mayonnaise  labels read 'Hellman's' rather than 'Best Foods', and where winter meant snow.  Not until I left the West did I come to appreciate its beauty and its relentless appeal to my soul.

Last week, during a visit home, I stopped by my father's office on Ventura Boulevard, in Encino, and feasted my eyes on his view northward across the western San Fernando Valley, mountains in the distance-- the Santa Susanna range running into the San Gabriels-- under a wide cloud-brushed sky.  As a child I had looked at the same view many times, counting the backyard swimming pools and disdaining the suburban sprawl. I fancied myself a cosmopolitan type and determined to live in the heart of a city when I grew up, not to skulk around its outer edges.

San Fernando Valley in December

I was always bad at being a Valley Girl. I failed my spoken 'like' quota and I truly loathed shopping. I still do; I'm terrible at it, always making silly mistakes and bad choices. Nonetheless, I found myself at the Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills on Christmas Eve day, prepared for fight and poised for flight. But it all turned out okay. Pre-teen daughter needed to do some gift exchanging before our return to Toronto on the 25th, so while she considered her choices, I browsed the sales rack, where I found a pair of nice black trousers, not jeans, with an interesting cut and a mysterious size label that made no sense. Held against my legs, they looked about right and just what I needed for work. I asked the shop assistant where to try them on; she gave me a funny look, but pointed the way to the changing room. A hasty check confirmed that the trousers zipped up and didn't require hemming and that the price fit my budget. They were $9.99! How could I go wrong? They also had enormous pockets. How, um, handy. I bought them. Daughter meanwhile selected bath bombs, lip balm, and walkie-talkies.

When we got back to my parents' house, my sisters had gathered with their children for an impromptu farewell deli brunch. Before piling pastrami on rye, I showed everyone my new purchase. One sister gave me the same funny look as the sales clerk. "Aren't those men's?" she asked. "No, they can't be. They were in the women's section," I replied confidently, but of course she was right. Stupid me. This explains the strange sizing and the backwards buttoning, as well as the capacious pockets. From the thighs down, the trousers fit me perfectly, like a glove. From the hips up, they are oddly roomy. Comfortable, mind you, and very convenient should I ever have a spare banana I need to store somewhere. 

I really am, like,  a terrible Valley Girl.

Warm with a chance of sane

Canada feels different lately. For one thing, today is December 11th, and it's practically balmy in Toronto: we had sunshine and a high of 14C (aka 57F). This is not Los Angeles warm, I admit; but just as I've converted from centigrade to Fahrenheit mentally, I've converted from southern California to True North sensually. (When I was a child, anything below 80 degrees Fahrenheit meant we had to wear a cardigan to school.)

The warmth extends to the social as well as the meteorological outlook. Yesterday the first 'wave' of Syrian refugees arrived at Toronto's Pearson airport, and the media coverage highlighted the effusive welcome extended to these new Canadians. That's what they were called, on CBC radio. The contrast to the media coverage of Donald Trump's 'keep out the infidel' rhetoric couldn't be more stark.

My Canadian friend, Nicole, says 'It's Trudeau. That's what's different. So quickly, it's like we are living in Canada again.' Her words make me all warm and fuzzy inside and lift my hopes for the quality of life here in the north. I'm worried about the USA though.  No doubt about it: Trudeau trumps Trump in every way possible. The First Amendment and the Constitution's insistence on a system of checks and balances may be all that stand in the way of (another) bigoted despot's attempts to destroy the American way. I wish Trump and his misguided supporters would read the poem by Martin Niemoller, 'And Then They Came for Me':

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me .

(http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/first-they-came-pastor-martin-niemoller)

Lost and found

Once, in my freshman year at Cal, I lost an earring at an Oktoberfest dance. A few girls from my dorm, Cheney Hall, had piled into someone's car to drive over the hill to St. Mary's College in nearby Moraga. We felt bold and adventurous leaving our own domain. Arriving at the small, pretty campus, we found our way to the festivities, drank illicit, bitter beer, and turned our attention to the heaving room. One boy invited me to dance, then another. Being asked to dance thrilled me more than the dancing itself, which in the crowded darkness involved more dodging than actual dancing. There were flashing colored lights and a hanging mirror ball. Sophisticated it was not. Somewhere after the third or fourth boy I missed the earring, and became upset; it was an opal, one half of the first pair my parents had given me when I got my ears pierced, age thirteen. The friends from Berkeley and my dancing partner kindly helped me look, but for nought. No earring. I resigned myself to its absence, mourned, moved on, kept its lonely twin in my earring tree, to remember. Freshman year held much of excitement, and there were classes and exams and term papers, too. I recovered. 

In late spring, a friend,  Carol, who also lived in Cheney Hall, invited me and a couple of other girls to stay at her house in the Waimea Valley, near the University of Hawaii’s Honolulu campus, in the summer vacation. I couldn't wait. As soon as finals were over, I packed up my possessions, moved them back to my parents’ house in Los Angeles, and flew to Hawaii from LAX. (Eventually, that is. I decided not to board my original flight because the airlines received a bomb threat. The flight departed anyway, and was fine, but I opted to go on the next one, which also got a bomb threat. By that point I felt as desperate to get to Hawaii as I was scared of blowing up, so I boarded. The plane arrived safely. Obviously.) 

Carol's house was lovely, and had as much living space outdoors as in, with guava trees and plumeria and birds of paradise in the garden. The four of us girls crammed into Carol’s bedroom, on mattresses and folding cots and sleeping bags. I didn't really unpack, just shoved my suitcase into Carol’s closet, shaking out and hanging up the one dress I’d stuffed into the sea of shorts and tank tops and bikinis.  I don't recall us sleeping much; we were too busy. We hiked and snorkeled and shopped. One night we attended a comedy show at which Carol had to translate for the rest of us, because we didn't understand the lingua franca, Hawaiian Pidgin. 

Her closet had two sliding, overlapping hollow-wood doors that ran in a track, and on the second or third day, I found I couldn’t close one of them. To my dismay, it was stuck. Shit, I thought. I had broken Carol's closet and dreaded having to tell my hosts, her parents, a lovely Okinawan couple who spoke minimal English. How much might it cost to fix a closet? How many travelers cheques did I have with me?  It was as embarrassing as blocking their toilet. Before confessing, I investigated, discreetly,  having really no idea how the thing worked, just praying. Lo and behold, I found the problem: my opal earring lay there in the middle of the track. Its 14-carat post was slightly bent but the opal and its setting looked completely unscathed. I pinched it out from under the door's leading edge, stared at the thing in joy and amazement, and carefully secured it in my zippered jewelry bag. The closet door now slid smoothly; no confession necessary. I reunited the opal with its mate two weeks later back in LA.  The whole thing seemed miraculous and unbelievable. Eventually I settled on the explanation that somehow, the earring had been jostled during the dance at St. Mary's, had fallen into my clothing and become entangled, had hidden for months in a drawer in my dorm room, and then had ended up packed in the suitcase I brought to Hawaii. The scenario reflected badly on my laundry practices but short of invoking perfidy (someone stealing the earring and covertly returning it?) I could think of no other. I still can't.

I often remember this earring when I've lost something. Lost things and found things, the impermanence of possession, the illusion of loss. One of my children recently unearthed a cache of photographs and fridge magnets that had been packed away since the most recent move (2.5 years ago) and which I thought had gone for good. Now here the things are, back again, competing for space on our crowded refrigerator and on the bulletin-board photo gallery mounted on our kitchen wall. The kids as babies; husband and me on a holiday in Wales before we had any children. Things found, for now. Memories held, for now. Our eldest child, a tiny newborn in a fading snapshot, is currently applying for university places. He is already anticipating what he will need for his own dorm room, in his own freshman year. 

Talk about impermanence. 

I wonder where the opal earrings are now.

Rocky trip

Every year, thousands of anthropologists gather to talk to each other. It's kind of weird. We could all email, or phone, or facebook, or tweet, and in fact, we do quite a lot of that too, before and after and even during the meeting. Yet we still seem to want to get together face-to-face, microphone to mouth, bum to chair. (Good anthropological subject, no doubt.) This year, the conference took place in downtown Denver, mainly at the convention center, a place with the cavernous feel of an airport, albeit in this case an airport under attack by a giant blue bear. 

Blue Bear outside the Colorado Convention Center

Denver is an odd city even discounting King Kong's ursine cousin. Spread on the high plains that abut the Rockies, it has a western feel, though it lies east of the Continental Divide, an invisible geological feature that figures strongly in the Coloradan imagination. 'The Divide' comes up often in names of Denver's restaurants, bars,  menu items, and, cleverly, a fencing business. The downtown pedestrian mall looks shiny and tall and new, but is also home turf to a downtrodden lot of individuals who, in mid-November, already looked pretty darn cold. Upon arriving at our hotel we went for a walk and right around the corner found a posse of six or eight thick white policemen surrounding a small, dark, handcuffed man. "You're fine," one officer said cheerily to husband and me, "Go on through," as we hesitated, wondering whether to cross the street. Sure, we were fine. 

In the olden days, when they were small and inexpensive to transport, husband and I packed up the kids too and dragged them along with us to whichever North American city was hosting the anthropology gathering that year. We would fly in from England, and my parents would join us from LA,  to bond with and babysit for their grandchildren while we attended symposia, dinners, and business meetings. A little chaotic always, but fun. One year, in Washington DC, when the second child was a toddler, he got hold of his father's glasses and yanked, breaking them. Husband does not function well as a visual being without his specs, and the very next day he had to deliver an important paper (well, important to his audience). Disaster! My mother and I took three little boys-- my two plus the infant son of a friend-- to the Washington Zoo, down the street, while my father served as guide dog to my husband as they sought out an optometrist who could repair the damage. Fun times (mostly).  

The kids are less likely to destroy personal items these days but are also too old and too busy with their own concerns to tag along with us; they have school and friends and activities. (Plus we would have to pay the full price for their airfare.) So they stay in Toronto and I spend about as much time sorting out their schedules as I do preparing my presentations. Phone calls, emails, texts whiz back and forth.  Complex negotiation coupled with a sort of auctioneering generates a spreadsheet. "Who will have this child for Thursday night?... Sold to the highest bidder."  Eventually, we establish which child spends which night at each venue. But then who will walk the dog? Back to the drawing board. 

This year we considered leaving eldest son, age 17 1/2, in charge. But it turned out that he had joined his school's Model UN team and would spend three of the four days of our absence in camera at the university, arguing the case of Persia in the Peloponnesian War. Impressive and all that, but not much use to us. 

A workable spreadsheet emerged eventually, a column per child, a row per day. A list of names, numbers, email addresses below: in case of emergency. Kind friends new and old stepped up to the plate. The kids helped each other too. Everything sorted; we could head to the airport confident that our children would be safe, fed, and warm. The pets too. Off we flew, ready to conference. We kissed the children and told them we would see them in four days. Except, of course, that's not really how it works any more, is it? Before we even boarded our flight inToronto, we rang the elder two to ensure they had woken up in time for school. "Don't forget to walk the dog!" we admonished.

Soon after we reached Denver, eldest child emailed to ask where his father keeps his dress shoes, required for the Model UN stint. From our hotel room in Denver that night, via the magic of Google Docs, I helped youngest child edit an assignment she had to hand in the next morning. (The only problem was that she was working on it in real time, with me, and it was midnight in Toronto.)  The next day, after my presentation finished, I found a quiet corner of the convention center, beneath the Blue Bear's beady gaze, and set about sending and receiving a dozen texts to ensure that the younger two had met, walked the dog and that elder had escorted younger to home of the weekend hosts. "She hasn't arrived yet," reported my friend, the incipient hostess. "Where is she?" I texted middle child to find the answer. "Where are you both?" I typed, hoping he couldn't hear my gritted teeth. "At home, drinking tea," he replied. "We'll leave when I'm done." He had instructed his younger sister to walk the dog while he put his feet up, it seemed. Not a lot I could do about it.

And so it continued. I lived in two worlds, anthropologist at work and play, and mother supervising the home front. On the one hand, how nice; I could be away and yet still feel connected. On the other hand, 'connected' wasn't quite the right word. 'Tethered' might be more accurate. Electronically staked out. Unable to escape. Unwilling, perhaps, too, but sometimes that's not the point. Often we don't want what it is we actually need. (Who sang that?) 

Still, it was a good trip. I presented some work on how clinicians manage their chronic pain patients; husband spoke about seduction. I obtained a wonderful new book by Frances Larson, published by W.W. Norton: Severed: the Story of Heads Lost and Heads Found, a historical perspective on decapitation. I met interesting new people, real people, not their email accounts. Husband and I managed a romantic interlude, skiving off for the last half-day of the conference to visit the gorgeous, delightful town of Boulder on a sunny blue day. We wandered the Pearl Street Mall, and the university, and then we managed a short steep hike up to the Flatirons, stopping only when the trail became too icy. 

As soon as I could, I emailed a photo to our children. "We're on our way home!" I told them. "We can't wait to see you." 

But of course, the electrons got there first.

Decline and Fall

Autumn has been both mellowly fruitful and ferociously fraught. One of my brilliant, beautiful, beloved nieces, a college student, became critically ill and hung for a few days on the edge of tragedy, multiple organs failing, in first one then another ICU in Los Angeles (the second one far far better). She is, thanks to the magics of medicine and mother-love, on the mend (not to downplay fatherly devotion, but it does not alliterate). When I last saw my niece, 3 days ago, she was totally sedated and hooked up to numerous devices. Today she ate ice cream and texted my daughter. Miracle girl. The power of youth.

Only days before her precipitous decline, I had been thinking about mortality and the continuity between life and death in a completely different context. I produced these great thoughts while riding my bike through a graveyard. As one does. Toronto is home to the cheerfully-named Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, which is like a huge park that happens to have dead people under it. It has lovely winding paths, greenery, flowers, and now, autumnal colours.

Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, with jogger

I cycled under great arching orange-leaved trees, sharing the way with a mother pushing a baby buggy and a jogger. Life and death united in the nicest possible way. Completely unlike the ICU.

Our own house fares well in the fall, too, mainly thanks to the neighbours' gorgeous Japanese maple. We are grateful.

Our house and the neighbours' maple

'Tis the season: Toronto turns technicolor

Toronto is showing off lately. The Blue Jays (baseball team) *almost* got to the World Series. Our new prime minister beams from the front pages of the paper. The weather has not been awful. And best of all the leaves are strutting their stuff, changing to their annually marvelous colours. At least, I think they are marvelous;  a colleague at work disagrees. "I grew up in the north," she told me. "Surrounded by sugar maples. Now those leaves are really brilliant. Down here you don't get anything like such intensity. Once," she reminisced, "we had an early snow followed by a sunny day. The red of the leaves against the white drifts..." She gazed down the fluorescent-lit corridor of our uninspired building, seeing beauty.

Autumn in southern California, where I grew up, is a poor show in comparison; any leaves that are not evergreen turn a soft shade of yellow and drop uncertainly and sparsely. Someday perhaps I'll head north -- further north-- to see the sugar maples in their autumnal glory.  For now, I am happy to enjoy the entertainment offered by the trees of Toronto, our (self-proclaimed) 'city within a park'.

Sunny day in Sunnybrook Park, with daughter and dog 

In Which Canada Votes, I Don't, and Justin Trudeau Wins

Like the rest of the country, I can hardly believe it.  Conservative PM Harper's out; Liberal Trudeau, a former teacher, is in. Not at all what the pollsters predicted. Bless.

Canada feels different already.

"I am not the one who made history tonight," says the new prime minister in his victory speech. "You are. You put me here."  Well, not me per se, since, as a non-citizen, I cannot vote.

In fact, Trudeau said it in French first. The man's got all the right words, in English and French. "This is what positive politics can do!" he exclaims. "Kids, Daddy will still be there for you!" he reassures his (currently sleeping) offspring. It's a little like a fairy tale.  

Being a leftie-liberal-hippie-pinko type, I have not been best pleased to find myself living on the side of the border ruled by an evangelical, anti-abortion, tar-sands-exploiting, trickle-down economics guy,  who to top it all off, forbad federal scientists from speaking their own minds.

Those days are history, at least for the moment.

I'm keeping fingers poised to pinch myself come morning. I have had weirder dreams.

May I say 'YIPPEE'?

Refresh in: 36Seats to form majority: 170

PARTY NAME	LEADING + ELECTED	ELECTED SEATS	POPULAR VOTE	CHANGE IN SEATS (?)
Liberals	184	174	39.6%	42.7%
Conservatives	100	92	32.1%	-22.0%
NDP	43	30	19.3%	-18.1%
Bloc Québécois	10	8	4.9%	2.4%
Green	1	1	3.3%	-0.3%
Other	0	0	0.8%	-4.5%

88% of polls reporting

From The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-election-2015/ridings/

Got milk? A rant.

Our house has only a tiny back garden, with no lawn. In front, though, there is a little square of grass. In addition, our street possesses what in local parlance is called ‘a boulevard’, meaning that a width of grass runs the whole length of the block, on both sides, between the pavement and the road. (In the L.A. suburbs of my childhood, this was called ‘normal’.) Recently, I've been looking at these grassy stretches with an appraising eye and wondering what the law says regarding common grazing rights. How much grass do cows actually consume? I'm thinking I might get one or possibly two. In my beloved BBC Radio 4 soap opera, The Archers (“an everyday story of country folk” -- known to us ' tweetalongers' with its hashtag: #TheArchers) , I listened the other day to an episode in which 21-year-old Pip milked the whole of the Brookfield Farm herd while flirting with one of the Fairbrother boys. (Toby, the dashing, dubious one.) As I listened, it occurred to me that milking just one or two cows couldn't be all that difficult. Could it? Jerseys maybe. All I want is enough milk for my little family.

I’m driven to such fantasies by the difficulties I face obtaining milk in local stores. My requirements are simple: I want healthful, safe, and tasty milk for a reasonable price in a simple, sensible, rigid container with a reclosable top. Modest desires. What I can get within my budget at grocery stores, however, is a floppy plastic bag filled with white liquid. Yes, that’s how most milk is packaged in Canada, or at least in Ontario. After five years here, I'm still shocked.

It’s like this.  Three 1.3L transparent plastic sacs of milk are nestled into one large colourful bag whose top is secured with a twist-tie, making up four liters in total. At home, the hapless consumer wrangles one of the three small bags into a small container with a handle (purchased separately for the purpose), leaving the top of the bag poking out, but hopefully not too far out, because then one snips off the corner of the milk bag with scissors, or if they are missing, a knife. Too small a hole and the milk won’t pour, but too large a one leads to messy overflow. It’s sloppy even with a perfectly-sized hole (I'm told, not having achieved such nirvana myself) because some drops of milk will always dribble down between the bag and the container’s interior. Almost nobody washes out the jug between bags.

And in a family of five, a liter-and-a-bit sac of milk empties in day or less, triggering the annoying rigamarole of Changing the Bag with great frequency. A sort of hot-potato game evolves, to avoid finishing off the last of the milk, at least when there are witnesses. (Where are those damned scissors? Oh never mind, I'll just have green tea. Even though it tastes like dirt.) And, adding insult to injury, the milk is left in the fridge with its gaping hole, easily spillable, and, you know, open. Yuck.

It's a crazy state of affairs, I tell you.

Why is it thus? I asked the locals when we first arrived in Canada, to no avail. I present my case: milk is a fluid, gravity exists, plastic bags are flexible and pierceable and really pretty unsuited to the transportation and service of milk. Shrugs. I, however, have not accommodated. My irritation and annoyance have only grown with the passage of time. 

Milk in cartons can be had, albeit at double the price:

Milk in bags (4L):                                     Milk in cartons (2L):

$3.97 ea ($.10/100 mL) $4.39 ea ($.22/100 mL)

Hence, the recent bright idea of starting my own dairy herd.

Luckily, though, in the nick of time, someone mentioned to me Mac's Stores. I was already vaguely aware of this chain of convenience stores with a winking red owl as their logo. Apparently, went the rumour, Mac's were allowed, by special dispensation from the Queen or some such (I made that up) to sell milk in 4-liter rigid (though still plastic) jugs. I ventured in one day, and sure enough, it was true! Four liters of milk in a decent-sized container WITH A TOP. At the moment such treasure costs $4.99, plus a returnable 25 cent deposit. Calloo, callay!

All is not perfect, however. Perish the thought. Mac's stores in Toronto generally do not have car parks attached, so acquisition is a bit tricky, and outings to purchase milk have come to seem like surreptitious forays for contraband. Psst. Got any 2% left? Often I swing by the Mac's on a corner near my office, riding my bike. I can fit two 4-liter jugs in the basket.There's another Mac's just next to the orthodontist's office with street parking nearby, if it's before 4:00 pm.

It may not be the Queen herself who issues the Dairy Decree, but the Government is involved in regulating milk packaging. In fact, Container Controversy still rages. A year or so back, Mac's wanted to sell milk in three-liter containers. Horror! The Ontario dairy industry along with various provinicial ministries reacted strongly against this apostasy:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/11/its_official_you_can_buy_3litre_milk_jugs.html

I can't help but think they are all totally nuts, but as long as i get my fix of milk in a container that respects gravity, I will be satisfied. At least I'm not entirely alone, as I discovered recently:

http://www.producer.com/2014/08/ontarios-great-milk-jug-debate-puts-dairy-industry-in-odd-situation/

The most recent twist in the story has me a little scared. Mac's Stores are being taken over by a US-based chain called Circle K. Their logo is, unsurprisingly, a letter 'K' inside a circle. Farewell, then, to the winking owl. I can live with that. But I am on tenterhooks waiting to find out whether they will still sell milk in jugs. Until I can be certain, I'm keeping my eye on the price of Jerseys.

Great lake

When I was a map-reading child, I loved the idea, the sound, of a region called 'the Great Lakes'. Why couldn't we refer to California as 'the Wonderful West'?

Now that I actually live here, the Great Lakes often disappoint me, even though I came to understand that 'great' refers to their size, not their aesthetic supremacy (or Superiority). However, last month, en route home from a work trip to Kingston, Ontario, I decided to stop in Prince Edward County, because so many people had told me of its loveliness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought, dubious. I have not been overly impressed by the local landscape. (Well, okay, Niagara Falls deserves its rep.)

I had toted my bike from home all the way to Kingston, 300 km away, on the back of the car, which I now parked in the small town of Picton. After a frugal lunch of tuna salad sandwich in the bookshop cafe, I rode the 15 km to Sandbanks Provincial Park, on the shore of Lake Ontario.

All of it impressed me: the cute town of Picton, the kindness of its bookshop employees (here, hey said, take my map), the rolling agricultural landscape of the county, the judicious sprinkling of art galleries, and finally the widely dramatic sweep of the lake beach at Sandbanks. I sat there listening to the rush of waves for as long as I dared before dusk crept up, and then rode the 15 km back to my car.

It's not the Amazing Pacific, but it will do. Quite nicely in fact.

Spartacus and the Shoreham air show crash

Home again in Toronto, reunited with my pets, my garden, and my beloved tumble-dryer. The garden has run amok. There's an impenetrable jungle of tomato plants in which the ripe fruit hide, stems of gigantic squashes grabbing at our ankles, and towering Jerusalem artichokes blocking the sunlight. A vine toward the back has produced gorgeous purple trumpet-mouthed flowers but they are mostly hidden behind other foliage. I've got my work cut out for me and I look forward to pottering around in the warm sunshine tomorrow. I would look forward to it more if pottering weren't going to be accompanied by the sound of screaming jets.

It's the air show at the annual Canadian National Exhibition, or 'Ex', a sort of county fair on steroids.

The Ex was one of the first topics of conversation among the kids after we arrived in Toronto because we passed it on our slow way home from the airport. "Can we go? And when will they have the airshow?" asked the youngest, looking out her window, staring upward at a ride that seemed to swing occupants into the clouds. She had already had two visits to the amusement park on the Brighton Pier and one to Canada's Wonderland this summer. (She did wangle a trip to the Ex, as it happens, but not during the air show.)

"In a week," I said. "For Labor Day." Well, it is now Labour Day weekend and the jets make a huge racket over our house on their way to the lakefront to perform their daring tricks.  I cringe even more than I did in previous years because only a couple of weeks ago we were on the fringe of the Shoreham air show tragedy.

On our last Saturday afternoon in England I sat with two friends in a shady grove in Bentley, East Sussex, while our daughters swung from ropes attached to treetops. A beep indicated a WhatsApp message on one friend's phone and she read it out. "I heard about the air crash. Are you okay?" The three of us automatically looked up. The only things crashing through air were our children, who were secured by harnesses. My husband, returning from Norway, had sent a message only moments earlier to say he had landed safely, thank goodness.  A quick internet trawl found early reports of the horrific crash by an old WW2 jet onto a busy road, the A27 in Shoreham. We had driven the same road, further east, an hour earlier, to reach our bucolic woods.

Yes, we were okay, but I feel have been on the fringe of too many air show disasters (which I know is a silly statement as any is too many). The Shoreham crash happened on a stretch of road only a few miles from our former home in Hove. I travelled it often. The airshow is, or at any rate was, annual, and we saw some of it most years that we lived in Sussex, though without ever attending it on purpose. One year we were picking blackberries along the link trail to the South Downs Way while airplanes were doing tricks over our shoulders. Another year we watched it in the background as elder son's football team, the Southwick Rangers, played on a pitch at the edge of Shoreham. Parental attention wandered from the action on the field to the action in the air. A murmur went up from some of the adults on the sidelines. "Where did it go? Did you see it come back?" An old warplane, flown by an ace, had crashed. The pilot died.

We used to have occasional outings to the Shoreham Airport (now renamed Brighton City Airport, I notice), the base for the airshow. It's tiny and in Art Deco style, the only airport I know to which the adjective 'charming' could be applied. When characters in Agatha Christie stories are filmed flying someplace (usually Paris), footage of the Shoreham Airport is used. We enjoyed going to the little airport cafe for tea and cakes, because it's that cute. I helped organize a field trip there for younger son's primary school class, during a unit on transportation.

'Brighton City' aka Shoreham Airport (from Worthing & Adur Chamber of Commerce)

Finally (I hope finally) many many years ago, when I was an undergraduate studying at the University of Sussex, I went with some friends to see the Red Arrows, the British team of elite performing fighter jets. Actually I'm not sure they fight, but they do perform. I watched the team swoop and dive over the Brighton Pier, a few yards off the seafront. The pilots pretended almost to collide with one another. They reminded me of the preschool boys I babysat that summer, feinting and saying 'ka-pow' with toy cars in their tiny fists. The Red Arrows divided into two groups, four heading west, five east. Then they looped around, the western group heading east and the eastern ones west, racing toward one another with trailing streams of exhaust so they looked like scarlet fingernails on clasping hands. The planes slid past one another with seemingly no room to spare.

"Wait. One is missing," said my friend. We counted. She was right. We could see only eight planes turn tail and head north, ending the show. In those pre-internet days, it took some time for the news to filter through. One of the pilots had panicked, thinking his shiny red fingernail was about to crash into his opposite number, and he had ejected, leaving his plane hurtling uncontrolled toward the pier, which was packed with onlookers and consumers of fish and chips.

It missed. It also missed every one of the myriad small boats bobbling in the sea. The pilot lived, to face disciplinary measures. The plane plunged deep beneath the water about fifty yards from the pier and the military quickly erected a security cordon around the area until they could retrieve their treasure.

So that makes three air show disasters in my sight or near vicinity. And I'm not an airshow aficionado, which makes me think that a) airshows are too often disastrous or b) it's me.

I'll go with (a). So, why are they allowed?

"You could ban them but pilots taking calculated risks in exciting manoeuvres is what people want to see... This is a gladiatorial display – that is what people go to see,” said David Learmount, a 'consulting editor' (what's that?) at FlightGlobal magazine.

Gladiatorial, indeed. Mr. Learmount seems to think that's a good thing. Would Spartacus agree?

The Canadian equivalent to the Red Arrows is the Snowbirds. The name makes them sound delightful and friendly, but these are loud, fast, frightening machines that consume masses of fuel and create more noise pollution than the M25, for the purpose of entertainment. They scare the horses, along with the dogs and small children beneath their path. This weekend they will shriek overhead while I wrestle with my unruly squash blossoms.

Pegging out

Instead of an engagement ring, I sometimes think I ought to be wearing a tumble dryer on my left hand. A dryer was the first major shared purchase husband and I made when we began living together, and as such it had huge significance, at least to me. I've discovered anew how important the machine is to the running of my life, though perhaps not quite on a par with marriage. I say 'perhaps'.

My family and I have spent most of August in England, having swapped our house in Toronto with that of friends in Brighton. It's lovely, our borrowed home, perched on a hill in a neighbourhood not far from, but quite different to the one that used to be ours when we lived here. Ours was on a flat tree-lined avenue by the seafront. We love getting to have a vacation in our old hometown and at the same time to explore it from a new angle. 

This house has comfortable sofas, large and light rooms, and cosy studies for self and husband. It has numerous floors and an interesting layout, and for several days we amused ourselves getting lost on the way to the bathroom. It has a dishwasher and a washing machine, two ovens and an elegant, four-footed cast-iron wood-burning stove in the sitting room. There's a television with a games console on which the boys are currently playing FIFA 2000-something. It has wi-fi.  There is a charming and well-tended garden filled with fruit and flowers and curious cats. We have picked all the ripe produce we could reach; several apple crumbles have been baked. There are friendly neighbours next door.

The house has, however, no tumble dryer, something which does not make it at all unusual in this part of the world. I'm not sure I know anyone in Toronto who has a washing machine but no dryer, while I have discovered anew on this visit that quite a few of my friends exist in what I see as a laundry half-life. During my five years of living in Canada I had forgotten about the puzzling English indifference to this convenient contraption, and thus I decided to conduct a casual survey, the better to understand, in keeping with my mission, the transatlantic divide. A few sample responses to my questions about ownership of a dryer: 'It damages the clothes, doesn't it?' 'Dryers use so much energy.' 'Clothes smell better when they've dried outdoors.'  Some respondents (aka dear friends) who confess to possessing a machine-- and it does come across as a shameful weakness-- are quick to say that they resort to it only occasionally, when necessary. They lower their voices. You would think I'd been inquiring about their cocaine habits.

'Pegging out' wet washing on the line is regarded as an undertaking that requires moral as well as physical heft, and friends/respondents wax poetic about the scent of clothes dried outside in sunshine and wind compared to those flung about inside a hot metal drum. Never mind that clothes left hanging to dry acquire the texture of cardboard and require rigourous ironing to be wearable. Never mind the time it takes to hang each individual item and secure it with clothespins (no, North Americans, these funny little clips are not only for kindergarteners' wet paintings). Never mind that in England, stretches of uninterrupted dry, let alone sunny weather are few and far between. I recall numerous 'mums' day out' lunches brought to an abrupt end by approaching rain clouds: 'Oh dear, my washing is on the line! Must dash.' 

I guess I here reveal, and succumb to, my essential American-ness. To me, clothes that have been hanging about outside seem less clean than before washing. Outdoors is where knickers and linens encounter dust and muck and bird droppings. An Anglo-Canadian friend (she swings both ways) recently described to me some former neighbours of hers here in England, an American couple who kept trying to use a British contraption called the 'washer-drier', a machine that claims (falsely) to be able to dry as well as wash a load of clothing. The neighbours' dogged persistence with the appliance allowed my friend the full use of the circular clothes line in the shared back garden. Eventually, after some months, however, the Americans 'went native' and began competing for space on which to hang-dry their wet washing. Soon thereafter they gave up and fled across the Atlantic, back to laundry sanity.

It's not that I don't care about the health of the planet and environmental sustainability; I do. It's just that, in pursuit of eco-credentials, I would rather ride my bike, or walk, and eschew driving my car, than give up the tumble dryer.

Let me hasten to add that on this visit I have also been reminded of other, more essential aspects of what I love and miss about England, as well as what I appreciate about Toronto. 

What I love and miss about England:


1) The countryside 

Walking in Firle, East Sussex

2) The sea, the sea

Shingle on Hove seafront

3) The history

A window in Durham Cathedral, depicting the story of Northeast England

4) The vampire rabbit

In Newcastle-upon-Tyne

5) The Sussex coast

One of the Seven Sisters

What I appreciate about 'Toronto the Good':

1) Our home, our neighbourhood, and the friends, pets, cafes, and culture that go with it. See you soon!

2) The ubiquity of tumble dryers. 

Wet day in Brighton

And now, must dash. Laundry on the line!