Meryl Streep

Today's minor obsession procrastination distraction is Meryl Streep, an interest rekindled last night after I caught the last 2/3 of Out Of Africa on television. I love that movie, so much so that I cry basically all the way through it. Fabulous.

And I loved finding this quote by Meryl Streep, in a Q&A somewhere online:

Get a good education,
know as much as you can about everything,
and listen - and look at the world - you know - feelingly.

And this, even moreso:

Integrate what you believe into every single area of your life.
Take your heart to work, and ask the most and best of everybody else too.
Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth
-- don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

Beautiful!

Categories: Olden Days

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The Wizard Of Oz

Brucio gave Sloane The Wizard of Oz on dvd for xmas, and in the last two weeks we have watched it many times.

We have had many plot clarification-type discussions, including the "Howcome that lady wants to take Toto away from her?" conundrum. And the "...Who... who's those boys Mama?" That's the Lollypop Guild, dear. "Oh. Howcome they give Dorothy that big sucker, Mama?" puzzler. And of course never forget the ever-popular, "Howcome the Wizard left her there Mama?" Well lovie, the balloon got away and he couldn't steer it back to pick her up. "Oh no. Now she'll NEVER get home!"

While you might think the Wicked Witch of the West would be the scariest part of the movie, the scene that gets to Sloane is the one where the apple trees scold Dorothy for picking their fruit. I think it's scary because the tree actually slaps Dorothy's hand besides looking mean and frightening. As in, the tree actually enters the physical space of and interferes directly with Dorothy, striking her. If you think about it, the Wicked Witch of the West never actually even touches Dorothy, just comes in real close and points her green finger and makes threats and cackles. When she's got Dorothy trapped in her castle, she never even says that she'll kill her. The scene involves the Witch turning over the famous hourglass, and she points and says, "See that? That's how long you've got left to live!" Just enough mental distance from the concept of actually killing Dorothy to render it unjumpable (and therefore palatable) to Sloane. Brucio reports that he saw Oz in the theatre at about 6 years old, and at that age the Witch's threats and whatnot were sufficiently graspable to the 8-year-old mind for the character to embody capital-S "scary" for years to come.

In the end she's melted anyway, an incredibly satisfying revenge in toddlers' opinions (among those we've sampled).

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s of course I only saw The Wizard of Oz once a year at most, usually sometime around Christmas when it would come on television. I remember very clearly seeing it in Thunder Bay, in the basement of our house on Parkway Drive. I might have been four years old. I'd seen it before, because I remember the excitement and anticipation as we watched the sepia Kansas scenes at the beginning. Sloane's going to grow up knowing it backwards. Strange to only be in my thirties and already be thinking, for the thousandth time as a parent, "Wow... well, back in MY day it wasn't like this at all..."

Current favourite lyrics, from the Lion's song "Courage", in the corridor outside the Wizard's chambers:
What makes the Hottentot so hot? Who put the ape in apricot? What've they got that I ain't got? ...Courage.

Who put the "ape" in apricot. That kills me.

Categories: Olden Days | Sloane

Comments [1]

Intrepid Al

Saturday night. Sloane's asleep. Not yet time to go to bed.

For the record, I have pretty much every letter I ever received, downstairs in "the archive" (more accurately described perhaps as "the shitpile of stuff"). Went down there tonight, pulled out a box at random. Brucio's just back from Victoria, where Grandma, at age 94 or so, has decided to stop eating, enough is enough and so on. As a result, and obviously, I have been thinking in the last few days about mortality, grandparents, last words, fatal decisions, and legacies.

In the boxes I came quickly upon letters from Nanny, who died last year. My epitaph for her is here. She wrote me lots of letters when she could still see. She was, basically, a storyteller, and a good one. She never wrote her stories down. Except for one. For me. "Intrepid Al", about she and Grampa knocking a wasps' nest out of their backyard tree. Because I asked for it, because it was a hilarious oral story. In her later years, after she was blind, I really begged her to memorize this one (as she had for "The Cremation of Sam McGee" to tell at xmas 2000) so I could record her doing it, for posterity/a freelance CBC piece. She just felt like her time had come and gone and wouldn't do it for me.

So I'm down in the boxes tonight, and I see Nanny's handwriting. She hasn't gone completely blind at this point, I can tell by the script. I pull open the first envelope and there it is: Intrepid Al. Since Grampa's in a home in Nelson and can't object, and since it's a great story anyway, here it is.

Intrepid Al, by Gloria Horbow

We had a beautiful warm spring and our crabapple tree bloomed in great profusion. Then came a heavy frost and winter returned for a brief but deadly visit. Clouds hung low and threatening, and when the snow came it mingled with the beautiful blossoms... and both drifted sadly to the ground. Of course, no fruit grew that year and the leaves were sparse.

One noon hour towards the end of July, as I mixed batter for a pancake brunch, my husaband stood at the kitchen window and while lamenting the lack of apples, something in the tree caught his attention. He asked me if I thought it was a large bird or a smal animal. I couldn't tell, so my golden age gladiator went out to have a closer look. He was amazed to find a wasps' nest, about the size of a football, hanging from one fo the lower limbs.

The wasps were busy doing whatever it is that wasps do, and my mate decided then and there that the nest must go, and right now.

In a previous incident, a long pole was the instrument used to rescue his spectacles from a nearby lake and Al decided it was exactly what was needed to dislodge the quonset hut from its perch. As such he drove quickly to our son-in-law's home and returned carrying the 14 foot pole alongside the car with his left hand out the window, whilst he drove, steering with his right hand.

"Now," he said to me, "you're going to old a garbage bag under the nest while I knock it off the branch and into the bag."
   
I looked at him in amazement, but being the dutiful wife I occasionally am, I promptly swathed myself in cap, gloves, and scarves for the occasion. I tightened my pants at the ankles and was ready to go forth with my man to do battle against the enemy wasp encampment.

It was a very hot day and sweat poured out of my from heat, fear, and excitement. My knight stood with his jousting pole at the ready while I squinted up through scarves and persperation at the huge nest just a short three feet above my head.

"All set," I squeaked. Alex barely touched the nest with the end of the pole when out the little buzzers swarmed, blood in their eyes and their stingers in strike position.

Somehow, by instinct I guess, they seemed to know the villain of the piece and most flew straight for Al. Our hero dropped the pole and dashed for the back door, leaving me literally holding the bag. I was terrified, disgusted, and fearing for my life. I threw down the sack and stormed for the back door myself.

"To heck with that job, get yourself another method or another sucker!" As you can guess, I get quite waspish myself at times.

It was then that our adventurer decided to place the garbage bag over the metal frame which usually holds it. Now isn't that brilliant? Next, he placed it carefully in position under the nest, where the wasps had retreated to regroup. I stood at the kitchen window peeling off layers of clothing but still a keen observer of the activities outside.

This time intrepid Al was filled with determination and he gave the nest an almighty whack. It flew off the limb, missed the bag completely, sailed through the air and landed with an ominous thump about four feet from the home wrecker himself.

Now a truth, of which you are unaware, is that this man was a sports champion at his high school in 1937, with medals and trophies to prove it. He won the 220 dash, the 44 sprint, the high hurdles, the low hurdles, and all other field day activities. But I'm writing to tell you here that an unofficial world record in the standing broad jump was set on that 1992 summer day right there in my back yard.

Al cleared the 12 feet between the tree and the door in one gigantic leap. Panting inside, he congratulated himself for remaining unscathed and unstung while the hoardes outside the back door swarmed and rioted in anger, frustration and bewilderment.

But. One of the wily creatures, swifter than his buddies, and with the scent of the enemy filling his being, had managed to get through the door with our Al, and was now circling for an opening to strike. Not without reason, this wasp had recently been elevated to drill sergeant. He knew his job and was determined to repay this villain for the humiliation suffered by his comrades.

Suddenly realizing his peril, the agility of a youth returned to this aging athlete in the back hallway. His arms flailed wildly but his legs moved like well-greased pistons. They propelled him up the stairs, across the kitchen, around through the living and dining rooms, and down the hall into the bedroom. With only one place to escape, Sir Al threw back the comforter and prepared to dive under it. All this activity had loosened the lower section of his baggy armour and a goodly stretch of flesh was now exposed.

I arrived at this point, with a skillet in hand, in time to see the wasp drill into my beloved with all the venom he could command. In the next moment I smacked down with all the strength I could muster. A great howl of pain and outrage nearly lifted the roof off our bungalow. While Al clutched a this posterior I beamed triumphantly while the wasp died the death of a hero on the bedside rug.

Meanwhile, back in the yard, unaware they had been somewhat avenged, the wasps again returned to their poor and broken nest for a council of war. They sensed the breaker of their home would be returning with a stinger longer than theirs. A strategy must be devised for a counter-attack.

While this conference was in progress, my husband, disregarding his wound, decided to strike while the weapon was hot. "Now, I'm going back out there, and you're coming too. I'm going to pick up the nest on the end of the pole and plop it into the bag. You be ready with a twist tie to close the top." Now there's a brave fellow for you! I wasn't about to argue. Knowing his tender condition and consequent frame of mind, I geared up again and meekly followed to do his bidding.

And believe it or not, it worked out exactly according to plan. And not one more sting to show for it! (Of course, the one he did get couldn't be shown, either!)

With the nest safely tucked away, my lord of the wasps decided he would give the yellow jackets a few days to expire completely and then present the trophy nest to the young lads next door. They would take it to show-and-tell when school recommenced in September.

The victor is jubilant and, omitting all personal indignities, tells anyone even remotely interested how he slew the dragon wasps.

In the background, I smile knowingly.

Categories: Ash | Canadiana | Family | Olden Days

Comments [2]

This One's Mainly To Panic The Grandparents

I got weak in the legs, watching Sloane traverse over these 3m-high loops at the local playground (on the occasion of our Ramsay Safe Walk evening, post to follow). Turner called me over to see the feat, reportedly sick to his stomach watching her the first time, himself.


Sloane, Dada, and Mia Ho.

In my day, I was also a great climber, me. For which I give my mom & dad HUGE props for being completely cool with letting us climb all over everything, including up onto counters and tables, and for providing us with swing sets and jungle gyms in the backyard throughout our youth. John and Ainsley and I all grew up with no fear of heights, and amazing core abs strength as a result of all that monkeying around.

But I very clearly remember visiting Nanny and Grampa at 206 South Hill Street in Thunder Bay, and climbing up onto the kitchen counter to fetch this ceramic bird from a shelf beside the sink - it was one of those things you fill with water and then blow through, producing a very passable bird tweedly-tweet-tweedly-tweet! So I'm scrambling up onto the counter with basically no trouble, and standing there picking up the bird, and Grampa comes in and yells, "GET DOWN FROM THERE! YOU'LL HURT YOURSELF!" And me: ...Really? I will? How?

This exact scene was to be repeated many, many, many times with my grandparents over the years, well into my twenties. And every time, the whole idea that I might possibly fall and hurt myself always struck me as absolutely ludicrous. Frankly, I had excellent balance and had the gymnastics balance beam medals to prove it. On a two-foot-wide counter I knew exactly what I was doing. Their fear of my inability to keep myself safe while climbing truly made me question my grandparents' judgement. I never fell. None of us did. And I wondered how grown-ups got things from the high cupboards.

When we moved to Calgary I was sent to Sam Livingston elementary in Lake Bonavista. In the schoolyard, there were these peanut-league soccer goalposts that had an extra, lower, set of bars within their frame. Me and the other gymnastically-inclined girls would play up there all recess and on lunchours, doing half-kips and baby drops, great fun. And then in grade five, along comes Lindsay Schooley. She was new, having moved to Calgary from somewhere else. She wanted to play on the bars with us. She didn't know what she was doing, and she fell, and broke her arm. We all got to sign her cast. But after that no one was allowed to play on those bars. And I remember, even as a 10-year-old, feeling so indignantly gipped by the whole situation. Pissed off: I most certainly wasn't going to fall and break my arm. Lindsay didn't know what she was doing and had tried a baby drop and missed it and now suddenly all of us were banned from the best part of the playground equipment. (I'm sure Lindsay Schooley is now a very capable adult leading a productive life. I'm sure she's a very intelligent and nice person. Let me not imply that Lindsay did anything wrong or bad by breaking her arm on those bars at Sam Livingston elementary way back in the early 1980s. I'm just noting here that she ruined it for the rest of us.) Even as a young person I had my suspicions that Lindsay's parents didn't let her climb around on the counters at home.

But! now! as a parent, I can really understand the concern for the first time. It's an actual physical feeling. It's as though you, yourself, are in danger. The blood sugar crash, the rush of sound in your head. Danger! Watching Sloane climbing these loops, my legs went tingly and strange. I really really really wanted to grab her and pull her down. You know, to keep her "safe".

So I now doubly, triply, quadruply appreciate my own parents' restraint when it came to this stuff. I'm sure they went through the same thing, that same gut fear. But they squelched it. (Or just didn't care. ...Just kidding! Kidding, kidding.) And I grew up strong and able and athletic, with excellent balance and no physical fear. Turner and I have talked about this - the climbing - a lot. He absolutely didn't do stuff like this when he was a kid. Turner wasn't allowed to stand in chairs or climb along the backs of couches, and of course the famous example in his family is that he wasn't really allowed to look down into the Grand Canyon when they visited it. ... And Margo, I know you're reading this! I want you to know that I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND where you were coming from. That fear - it just doesn't go away, does it? I think it never really does.

At this point, I can completely believe getting emails from Sloane at university, with photo attachments of boat races and cheerleading pyramids, and still getting that crazy parent vertigo.

For now, however, we're biting our tongues and fighting the nausea. And hoping she ends up with an "Excellence" in the Canada Fitness Test (when they re-institute it, of course), and never falls off a counter. Because then, of course, my grandparents will roll over in their graves and yell "I TOLD YOU SO!"

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Olden Days | Sloane

Comments [1]

Yip Yips Meet The Telephone

Found via a Metafilter thread, I haven't seen this clip for, oh, probably 25 years. I'm amazed at how much of my adult sense of humour was shaped by the Yip Yips!




Book... Earth book... book book...

(Thanks to both Sean Monkman & JJ for teaching me how to put the You Tube thing right into my entry!)

Categories: Olden Days

Comments [3]

Now That I'm Big And I've Been To Barrie

[Version of an email sent today to Sheila & Cherry, Tara & Rob, and Sean & Pepe]

Hi all youses Nazeralis & related,

Growing up I was a great fan of the very Canadian poetry of Dennis Lee, in particular the books "Alligator Pie" and "Nicholas Knock". You might (?) remember that when we were setting up the hall for Tara & Rob's wedding in July of 1997 I was asked to test the microphone and to do so I started in on a rhyming poem -

When they bring me a plate
Full of stuff that I hate
Like spinach and turnips and guck,
I sit very straight
And I look at the plate,
And I quietly say to it: Yuck!

Etcetera**. I mention this mainly because I think I made people laugh with a poem they'd never heard, this one being "Tricking" from Alligator Pie, my favourite.

Lots of Dennis Lee's kids' poems mention places all over Canada (In Kamloops I'll eat your boots; in the Gatineaus I'll eat your toes... etc.), and street names & places in Toronto (Bloor, Yonge, Casa Loma, etc.). Growing up in Winnipeg and Calgary, I didn't know most of these places. But I had family all over the country, so it was within the realm of possibility for my 7-year-old self to believe that I might someday visit these places, particularly the ones with the really evocative names - Moose Jaw, Napanee, and so on that stuck in my mind - and I have.

So now I'm 33 years old and I really hadn't picked up Alligator Pie for about twenty years. My copy is very elderly now, with a broken spine and a stained cover and fading illustrations (& complete with the grade-three-version of my signature inside the cover), but I've moved it around the country with my things for a long time. About a month ago I decided Sloane was probably old enough to understand some of the stories (I'd been reciting "Tricking" to her in the car and she loved it), so I pulled it out. As a kid I had my favourites, and I usually stuck to those. But with Sloane I just started reading the poems in any order, and eventually came to this one... I'm sure you can guess that if I didn't know where it was set when I was growing up, I do now:

The Fishes of Kempenfelt Bay, by Dennis Lee

Under the bubbles
Of Kempenfelt Bay,
The slippery fishes
Dawdle all day.

They park in the shallows
And wiggle and stray,
The slippery fishes
Of Kempenfelt Bay.

I ride on a bike.
I swing in the gym.
But I'd leave them behind
If I knew how to swim

With the slippery fishes
That dawdle all day,
Under the bubbles
Of Kempenfelt Bay.



Thinking of you all, today. Best to you, love Ash


**(Since I did a google search and can't find anywhere to link so you can see the full text of this poem, here it is:

Tricking, by Dennis Lee

When they bring me a plate
Full of stuff that I hate
Like spinach and turnips and guck,
I sit very straight
And I look at the plate,
And I quietly say to it: Yuck!

Little kids bawl
Cause I used to be small,
And I threw it all over the tray.
But now I am three
And I'm much more like me -
I yuck till they take it away.

But sometimes my dad
Gets terriffickly mad,
And he says, "Don't you drink from that cup!"
But he can't say it right
Cause he's not very bright -
So I trick him and drink it all up!

Then he gets up and roars;
He stomps on the floor
And he hollers, "I warn you, don't eat!!"
He counts up to ten
And I trick him again:
I practically finish the meat.

Then I start on the guck
And my daddy goes "Yuck!"
And he scrunches his eyes till they hurt.
So I shovel it in
And he grins a big grin
And then we have dessert.

Categories: Olden Days | Ontario

Comments [2]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review

I'll say this about Queen's: they love us alumni. And I'll say this about Clark Hall Pub: they haven't changed, still the centre of the universe. No one batted an eye as Jana, Alexis and I waltzed through the Alumni lineup for Ritual on Friday, toting one baby named Sloaner. And when we entered the pub, a buncha random arms rose out the crowd, bearing cameras and phones to capture the image of a 96' alumna and her class of '25 girl enjoying Ritual with all its rights and privileges.

In the lineup for upstairs-at-Clark.

We snuck in our own hooch for Sloane.

Shown here with Mike Corcoran and her Mama, Sloane is a bit pooped & sweaty after moshing to "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe".

It was Alexis' first Ritual, but Jana's an old hand, having cut her teeth back in '94. A fine time was had by all.

Categories: Olden Days | Queen's | Sloane

Comments [0]

The Oilthigh

So Sloane didn't get into the playschool. We're looking into "other options" right now. I spent two days so upset and mad that I was no kind of good company up in Howdenvale. I finally shook it off and sucked it up. Self pity and despair are so unbecoming, no?

We said goodbye to Thab and Phet and Ji and Seung Yi a few days ago. Zoomed south to Toronto, did a whirlwind turnaround at the Connacher Coach House - threw in the ol' Dance Along Sesame Street dvd to keep Sloane amused and set about folding the laundry I'd put in before heading north last week, wiping up the grimy Sloane hand marks on all the surfaces, and packing the stuff I'd left behind. Glancing feverishly at the clock, needing to depart in time to miss rushhour. Then finally, ZOOM, through the early afternoon streets of Toronto and up the DVP in blessedly minimal traffic. ZOOM! down the 401 at 130km/h (attention grandparents: I never drive like this. But Sloane has only a limited tolerance for the car and we'd been on the road for three hours already) and made it to Kingston in record time. ZOOM! up the Westport road to Jana & Jay's house on Buck Lake. Sloane only screamed for the last 30km or so. The only thing that would shut her up was repeated renditions of the Oilthigh.

What is the Oilthigh? It's the school song of Queen's University. It's in Gaelic. I have no idea what the lyrics mean and I'm among 95% of Queen's graduates in this regard. But it's to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Quite rousing. Etcetera. It's used at sports games and during orientation week, part of the whole 1984-esque indoctrination process. The Peter Lougheed, the new rector of Queen's at the time of my graduation, even started one at the convocation ceremony. You do a kind of modified can-can while singing the Oilthigh, holding on to your fellow revellers.

Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!

Queen's College colours we are wearing once again,
Soiled as they are by the battle and the rain,
Yet another victory to wipe away the stain!
So, Gaels, go in and win!

[The next part is yelled]
What´s the sport of Kings?
Queen´s! Queen´s! Queen´s!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil, Cha Gheil!
Yay Queen´s!

(A quick bit of internet research indicates that there are three more verses, none of which I've ever heard in real life; you can peruse them here.) And by the way, most of the lyrics above are pronounced roughly how they look, but the last bit, "Cha Gheil", comes out as "Kay - ah!". Gaelic is weird that way, ask anyone.

I thought it would be cute to get Sloane familiar with this song in the week leading up to Homecoming in Kingston, so when she heard it at the football game on Saturday she'd laugh and clap. So I sang it here and there in the car along with the other standards (You Are My Sunshine, My Sloaner Lies Over The Ocean, Colder Than You, and Blackbird among them).

What you'll know if you're a Queen's graduate is that the Oilthigh is fun, but once or twice is enough. It's repetitive. And can get pretty grating pretty fast. As the former Queen Bee of Orientation at Queen's, I can tell you that I've done approximately 6 squillion Oilthighs in my day, and I unpack them only under specific circumstances. Like at Homecoming. I've heard that many Queen's grads end up with Oilthighs at their weddings due to the critical mass of alumni on the guest list. Our wedding was not one of those weddings. Turner's not a joiner and like I say, I've done enough Oilthighs in my time.

So it was with no small measure of "oh no..." when it started to become clear that Sloane would only be satisfied with repeated Oilthighs in the car. That last 30 km to Jana's was hell. Every time I stopped singing (and often even between verses), Sloane would start to whine, and yell, and sign "Again", and scream, "MORE!" I'll tell you that my daughter is not only now familiar with the Oilthigh, it may live on in her noggin for the rest of her life. To keep myself sane I sang it in every conceivable voice, octave, and tone. Even the "underwater" version where you bibble your lips with a finger so as to sound like a mermaid or something. If only the shits from SOARB circa 1994 could have seen me. I think they'd have thought I was getting my comeuppance.

Categories: Olden Days | Ontario  | Queen's | Sloane

Comments [3]

Dance! Dance! Dance!

Our Mother's Day topic is, "The decided lack of opportunity to publicly dance in today's Canada, particularly for mothers."  

When I was at university, I danced at least twice a week, if not five times. (It really depended on how close we were to exams...) Even in high school here in Calgary, I had a friend who would sleep with the bouncers (how sporking - I mean sporting! - of her, don't you think?), so we were in to the Taz and the Underground, at least, both nights on the weekend.

I was there to dance, me. My contribution to getting entrance to bars was focused on an expertise with replicating the hand stamps; one person (usually the tart – friend! - who boinked the door guys) would go in, and then come out a different exit and meet us in the parking lot. Thereupon it was my job to study the stamp design and draw it, backwards in black or blue or red ink (in those days, nightclub stamps came in only three colours), onto the hands of all our underage cronies. Blot with paper towel, lick & smear it a bit, and bob's yer uncle. My fake-o stamps worked every time. And then we danced!

Yeah, I love to dance. I was very, very pleased to become "legal" and avoid the hassle of finagling my way into the bar. Legal drinking age is 18 in Alberta and Quebec, and 19 in most of the rest of Canada, a fact I failed to consider when I chose a university in Ontario. So back to the (literal) drawing board: I had to doctor my driver's license to get my dancing fix. It was a simple process to falsify an Alberta driver's license in those days - peel open the lamination, scrape off the last number in the birth year, and glue it back together. Put a piece of transparent tape overtop, and carefully, gently draw in the necessary year. And voila. Worked so well that I was able to sell my fake ID after I turned 19 - to a moron to went to the same bar where I was celebrating my birthday and the bouncer, who knew me, recognized the name and confiscated the ID. Worst 20 bucks she ever spent, I bet. But anyway, I feel sad for the kids these days who have to get all mixed up with colour photocopiers and computer software and all that shit. In the old days all you needed was a bit of moxy and some skill with a razor.

So, fake ID (and later, my legal one) in hand, I danced and danced in university, honing my patented 'air violin' to Istanbul Not Constantinople, and generally stomped and sang along and jumped up and down and dragged people onto the dance floor and overall had a grand time.

After undergrad, the actual chances for dancing waned. I hadn't expected it, and at first I didn’t really realize it - I hadn't even thought about the fact that dancing might not be part of my life forever. But Sean Monkman and I held the torch on Thursdays in Guelph and held that night sacred for time at the Albion and Jimmy Jazz, at least for drinking - and not just a little dancing. And Thab and I got out to shake our asses every so often, but not nearly enough. There was just so much schoolwork, and too few dancey-dance bars, and uncooperative DJs. But moreso than anything, dancing just wasn't part of adult life, it seemed.

I'm not sure what I figgered, actually. That somehow my adulthood would involve a quota of late night dancing after the non-existent post-school homework and readings? …I dunno. In any case, I longtime-dated and then eventually married a non-dancing man. For the period we were broken up I was enrolled in salsa lessons with a Calgary dance company and went to salsa nights around the city, and the joy of finding a way of putting dance back into my life helped keep me sane that year. But Turner came out west to win me back, and we did a few salsa lessons together, but then it just sort of fell off the schedule. And despite the dancing-less-ness of our union, I married him anyway.

Now, I'm not saying I'm particularly good. I'm just saying that I enjoy the act of dancing. I am, you might say, a fan of getting my groove on. And now I dance a bit for Sloane, particularly in the kitchen when I'm getting her smorgasbord meals prepared, and she’s waiting, watching me from the high chair. But being a mom isn't really conducive to going out at some ungodly hour - 11pm? Midnight? What’s the magic number these days? - and dancing with strangers in a smoky bar into the wee hours. Frankly it seems cruel, to me, that mothers are supposed to be satisfied with dancing with their kids at home to Anne Murray’s 'Hippo In The Bathtub' and that kind of stuff.

I remember hearing, years ago, about moms in Toronto who organized a regular daytime rave for themselves at the El Mocambo or Jungle or somewhere on Queen West - from what I understand they hired a dj, and the chill-out room had diapers and wipes and a fridge for bottles. And the moms came once a month to dance and dance and dance to real, dancey, rave and techno, carrying their kids around the dancefloor and having a truly fantastic time. I wonder if this still happens.

I wonder if something like that could fly in Calgary.

Categories: Mom-ness | Olden Days

Comments [1]

Ah, The Quote Board

When visiting Cousin Jenna in Lennoxville I was re-acquainted with the staple of student decorating: The Quote Board.

How true. How very, very true.

When I was in undergrad at Queen's in the early-mid 90s, we had a similar ongoing group project at our house, the Rules Learned Through Experience, (Vol. 1 - approx. 20), a compendium of knowledge accumulated by the rotating cast of seven-or-so paying tenants and various honourary housemates who wandered through our house over the years. We were young, barely out of our teens, and loose on the world. We learned some stuff.  

"Beer left too long in the freezer explodes."

"When cooking pancakes, do NOT touch the pan with your hand."

"If you squee-gee the mop toooooo hard, the rod is liable to suffer a fracture, and thus become two seperate pieces."

...Like every other set of random Canadian undergrads, we didn't know shit about shit. I dunno what the hell our parents were teaching us at home during high school, but it obviously didn't involve any cooking, cleaning, financial management, or common sense.

"When preparing Kraft Dinner, it is a good idea to remove the noodles from the strainer before adding the milk."

"Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."

"When walking in the ghetto during a thaw, avoid all puddles - due to the irregularity of the level of the sidewalks, a puddle that looks like only surface water may well teach you that things are not always as they seem."

We had to learn it all from the beginning. So looking back on these lists now, I see so much that is now, of course, SO OBVIOUS. But the Rules, as a collection, serve as a (valuable!) reminder that we all have to learn these stupid things once, and more often than not, as a result of our own stupid behaviour - sometimes (gasp!) even drunkenness.

"There are no pasties like wine pasties."

"If you have to get up the next morning at 6am and drive 9 hours, don't go to Pub Nite and get really drunk the night before."

"If you are at the SkyDome watching the Vanier Cup, and you fall and crack your head open, and you don't notice the pint of blood that has gushed all over the front of your white shirt, the First Aid people are likely to strap your ass to a stretcher, accuse you of having a spinal cord injury even if you can prove you can wiggle your toes, and then toss you in an ambulance. Then the medical community may, depending on the amount of sadistic glee they get from watching you struggle, belt your chin and arms to the bed, ask you stupid questions like, 'What's your surname?', and finally try to coerce you into peeing in a bedpan before finally, 4 hours later, releasing you into the free world armed only with a photocopied page of Head Injury Instructions."

Overall, the idea was that any Rule had to be true, and thus any Lessons we learned were - natch - begot Through Experience. And some of us were... not so bright.

"Spaghetti sauce that has been opened and is left in the cupboard goes moldy."

"Don't set hot frying pans on linoleum."

"Styrofoam melts in the microwave."

Oh, university. Oh, youth. Oh, I'm so glad it's over and I only have stupid tax-and-parenthood-related Rules Learned Through Experience (Adulthood Edition) to look forward to in my 30s.

...Some of my other favourites included:

"Always remove the layer of foil from the neck of a wine bottle before using a corkscrew, or you may discover that that 'sticky cork' was not a cork, and you've just successfully drilled a perfect hole through the bottle's screw-top."

"The wrapping chicken comes in to stay fresh in the fridge? It need not remain on to keep the chicken fresh while cooking."

and of course,

"If you happen to be stirring two pots on the stove (at the same time)  you will be treated to a 240-volt surprise as you complete the circuit with your upper torso."

Categories: Ash | Friends | Olden Days | Ontario

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Brucio The Valiant, Part II

So, another time?  Like? The time I left Turner? We broke up? And I moved all my crap back to Calgary? Well, I was driving home across Canada in the Ashmobile, and had to ship my half of the furniture and belongings out west with a shady moving company I found out in Scarborough who would do it for me cheap.

I was not in a good way, y'all. And my family were superstars about the whole thing, very reverent and quiet and supportive about it. Even my parents, who both knew that there was a 50-50 chance their oldest child (me), aged 28 and suddenly unemployed, would end up in their basement (it was one or the other, those were the choices). Even under that kind of pressure, they were excellent about everything.

The moving company had Angela Pacini's cel phone as the contact number, because she was kind enough to accompany me to the mover to arrange the shipment and everything. About three days after I left Toronto, the guy at the shady Scarborough warehouse started calling her. Something had gone wrong. The truck was stuck in northern Michigan or something. A few days later he called to say they'd lost the laiding bill and didn't know where the stuff was going once they got to Alberta. On and on. Angela is tearing her hair out, waiting and waiting and praying I'll call from somewhere on my drive across the country so she can convey all this terrible news about my stuff. But I didn't call, all embroiled in my own breakup tragedy and feeling sorry for myself and so on, so I didn't know any of this. Which was good, because it was all apparently bullshit, we never really found out why the guy in Scarborough was calling her and leaving these messages, because my pile of stuff appeared very suddenly one day, at the end of my father's driveway.

Now. Let's backtrack. The people at the Scarborough end of things had taken all my stuff - a couch, a bookshelf, chairs, boxes, etcetera - and then stacked it in a big pile at their warehouse (I didn't see this - the guy told me this is what they'd do). Then they wrapped everything in giant sheets of bubble wrap, and then wrapped the giant bubble-wrapped bundle with giant sheets of saran wrap. Then they wrapped that bubble- and saran-wrapped pile of my stuff with giant sheets of sticky black tarpaulin. ...I dunno why. To protect it during its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere from orbit, obviously. When the guy was explaining this to me I was on my third straight day of crying and I just nodded and left the rest to fate.

Well, fate decided that it didn't need a signature on its clipboard, so the moving truck driver just found my dad's address and unloaded my stuff onto the driveway in front of the garage. Then I presume he put a checkmark beside my name and just drove away, whistling "I Gotta Be Me".

Now. You need to know that it was April. And April is spring in most parts of Canada, but in Calgary we see snow in every month of the year. (It's the tradeoff for the chinooks.) As I recall, it was also a Friday. So this Friday in April - it was snowing. Hard. But it was warm, so everything was turning to slush as it fell on the ground. My stuff was unceremoniously dumped sometime at midday, so by the evening there was a good layer of slush building up all around and on top of it.   

Aside from being a doctor, my father is what you might call a lobbyist. For years he's been on the front line of the fight between the Alberta government and doctors, wherein the former is constantly utilizing cost-benefit models and the advice of policy wonks to set priorities and budgets that, in the end, cost the system millions and generally harrass and bedevil the doctors. In the years following my parents' divorce, Dad threw himself into the political arena and worked his ass off night and day. Fought battles, flew up and down to Edmonton approximately 225 times in four years, kissed major ass, and played a lot of strategic golf games. Plus his regular day job, as, you know, a doctor. An interventional radiologist, to be specific, so it's not like he was busy or anything. At one point he was even awarded a customized trophy by his professional organization, "The Energizer Bunny Award" for his unfailing ability to keep going and going and going when everyone else had been beaten down and had packed it in.

Every time we'd call home Dad would be going on and on about The Bastards. About how Ralph Klein was going to blow up the Calgary General Hospital. About how they were going to download all diagnostics from Emerg to Radiology and the massive crisis this would cause in the hospital system. And about how private mammogram screenings were going to put his business in the shitter. And how the underfunding of support staff was putting such stress into the system that the whole spirit of goodwill and mutual assistance throughout medicine was being killed away bit by bit. ...To listen to him go on and on, year after year, you'd think the Canadian health care system was in a protracted crisis or something.

In any case, bear in mind that my Dad put his all into saving health care and keeping his partnership afloat: more than a full time job. He'd come home pretty fricken bagged at night..

So on this particular Friday in April, it turns out it's even worse than usual: Dad's driving home from a partnership meeting. He's worked a full day, after a full week, and he'd also been On Call (my father takes a truly obscene amount of Call, but in return he gets about six months off a year). Partnership meetings are long and hard and everyone is feeling the strain of the massive changes underway in the new parcelled-up Alberta health regions. And they'd ordered in some weird chinese thing that nobody could eat. So he's hungry, he's tired, he's had it. He's on his way home, thank christ.

And the LAST fricken thing on Dad's mind this night is me and my woes, I'm fairly certain. As far as he's concerned, I'm staying wtih friends somewhere in Manitoba, on my way across the country but taking my time. I won't get to Calgary for another week at least.

He makes all the twists and turns and complex navigational tricks through the dark and slushy streets of Douglasdale. He gets to his cul-de-sac - his house is the last one down on the right. Almost there. And then, as he's turning the wheel to pull into the driveway, out of the gloom he sees it, in the middle of the drive and blocking the garage door: what the hell is that...? We know that it's The Monolith Of Ashley's Stuff. An edge of the black tarpaulin has pulled away and is flapping in the wind.

The snow is falling, and so is the temperature. What was slush in the daytime is slowly turning into a chunky, sharp layer of ice. Brucio looks at the monolith. It's just a giant black-wrapped ...thing, at this point. He doesn't know for sure what the hell it is: it's unmarked. There's no receipt in the mailbox. And he's tired. It's been a shitty, shitty day.

He looks again at the monolith, unbelieving. Is that my house? Did I turn down the wrong road? He looks around at the identical pink houses on all sides. Spots a fake deer lawn ornament on a neighbour's lawn and gets oriented. It's the right street. ...Who the fuck put that fucking thing on my driveway?, he's thinking. Is that the soil I ordered from the gardeners? They would have dumped it on the lawn, would'nt've they? 

But then he slowly realizes: Ohhhhh nooooo: it's the shipment of Ashley's stuff from Ontario. He says to himself: That's everything my daughter owns (besides all that shit of hers I've been storing in the basement for years). She's heartbroken out there, somewhere on the road and headed this way. Fucking hell. He knows that if he goes in the house and changes, he'll sit down for one minute and it'll all be over and that thing'll stay where it is until the next day, maybe longer. So he sez to himself he sez: ...Okay ...I can't just leave that stuff there.

I think he probably put his head down on the steering wheel for a minute or so. I bet all he wanted to do is go inside and go to fucking sleep.

But he didn't. Go inside, that is. He opens the garage door, and starts moving stuff out of the way. He makes a space, over on one side. A space for my stuff to go. And then he staggers over to get the industrial exacto-knife from the toolbox, and wearing his leather doctor shoes and wool trousers and cashmere sweater (known as "the Brucio uniform") and no jacket, he goes to work at dismantling the monolith. The neighbours look out their windows and see him, working out there in the snow and wind. Hey Melba, that doctor across the road is out on his driveway cutting up that sculpture he ordered from Ontario! they say. Nobody comes out to offer help: it's suburbia. Everyone sees, nobody acts.

Dad tears away the black tarpaulin, and the saran wrap, and the bubble wrap. And then he gets to work at moving the entirety of my worldly possessions (remember: bookshelf, couch, chairs, boxes, etcetera) out of the icy slush, off the driveway and into the garage. All by himself. Thinking: It's my daughter's stuff. She's coming home. It has to come off the driveway. It takes him 45 minutes. He leaves the car in the road. Goes inside. Next day, wakes up and realizes he's wrecked his back, and his left shoulder, and his knee is a bit gimpy for a few days, besides. And a week later, I pull up in the driveway, in a terrible temper overall and ungrateful about being alive in general. I proceed to crash land into the basement for the foreseeable future, and am a complete mess for six months, maybe more. Dad says nothing except c'mon in, your room's ready.  

He didn't tell me anything about the monolith until a year after the fact. That's love.

Categories: Calgary | Family | Olden Days

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Ohm Nama Shivaai

So as I told you in the previous posting about our daily routine, every day or so I take Sloane around the complex on a tour. And of all the places to visit, her all-time favourite is certainly the Shiva statue.

Shiva is one of the main deities of Hinduism, known as the god of destruction. However, Shiv "embodies seemingly contradictory qualities, being the destroyer and the restorer; a great ascetic and a symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger," or so say the various hinduism websites I consulted for a concise description of what Shiv's all about.

Most of my personal experience with Shiva occurred, not surprisingly, when we lived in India. Shiva's home is in the Himalayas, and since Mussoorie and Shimla are both situated in the foothills of same, there was no shortage of serious devotion to Shiva going on in the midst of our daily lives. Our friends with a better handle on things-Hindutastic can correct/clarify my take on all this in the comments - Carla and others, please feel free to speak up.

One of the first things you'll hear in traveller circles when you arrive in India is that pot is legal. I'm no kind of enthusiastic when it comes to marijuana, so this news had little interest for me. I realize I'm uncommon in this reaction however, and for decades there's been hoardes of eager imbibers heading for Hindustan to get a bit of ganga. For a reason that was never entirely clear, Shiva likes pot. Or smokes pot. Or created pot in the first place. Or something. I never asked for the details on this point. In any case, part of the reason why marijuana is quasi-legal in India is the legal argument of Shiva devotees requiring access to the herb in order to honour Shiv.

Before I go any further, I should mention that although people will tell you that pot is legal in India, this isn't entirely true from what I understand. Certainly foreigners travelling in India have been thrown in the clink for possessing hash and marijuana, and there are fines and deportations that come down on minor offenses. So I get the sense that there's a sort of fine line - if you keep it quiet, like a Shiva devotee would, and you don't, for example, smoke up huge coners in public places while blowing the smoke in the faces of stern-faced local folks (who might then be tempted to trot off and return with the cops), you'll probably be okay.

If you're a connaisseur and/or truly desperate, there's always the option of the bhang lassi, which is a sort of yogurt drink laced with slow-acting hash that packs a wallop. But some people get sick on those because you can't really guage the amount of hash you're injesting, and if you're sitting on a hot patio in the Indian sun and only sipping at your yogurt drink over a few hours' time, I don't have to spell out what might go wrong in the heat when it comes to a milk product. The bhang lassi was certainly something I heard about (usually in the context of a story about how the imbiber had one, it didn't seem to work, so they had another, and then finally gave up on the buzz and went to bed, only to awake six hours later high as a fricken kite and terrified of their own teeth, whereupon they felt it absolutely necessary to wake up the poor Norweigian backpacker in the next room and tell them the intricate details of how, this one time, their next-door-neighbour when they were little was backing up the car and stopped on the garden hose while the sprinkler was on and no one could figure out what had suddenly gone wrong... usually a story like that), but I never sought out the bhang lassi, and it wasn't on any menu I ever saw in my travels around the subcontinent. I suppose if I'd been interested I should have spent more time in Israeli backpacker hotels or perhaps in Manali. In any case, I think bhang was technically legal, but it only takes have a second to size someone up vis a vis their lifelong devotion to Shiva... if any of this described you: Tevas/Birkenstocks, MEC backpack, nalgene bottle, Lonely Planet/Rough Guide in your pocket, and a nationality other than Indian - yeah, you're not a Shiva devotee. You're just a pothead. Drink up that last bit of lassi and please move along.

But I digress. Back to the Shiva story.

Our servant Nazko was a Shiva devotee. She was a Pahari woman from a small village at the bottom of a valley about 30km from Shimla, and she was quiet but serious about her respect for Shiv. There was an Indian serial drama about Shiva on Wednesday nights and when it was time for the programme she'd knock quietly on our door, and with a grin move to the floor below the television and switch around the channels. The show itself was, to Canadian eyes, seriously campy and Shiv would appear with a cut-the-film-and-insert-shot-of-a-sheet-of-paper-featuring-bolt-of-lightning-and-now-back-to-our-program flash that made Harriet's Magic Hats look like a miracle of editing and technological prowess. But whenever Shiva showed up to sternly admonish the villagers or to intervene in some farming accident, Nazko would become very grave, and raise her hands in prayer to her forehead, and intone, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" We just needed to see that once to sober us up as to the camp value of the program. From then on we kept our snickers to ourselves.

Now. Our flat in Shimla was part of a larger compound owned by a joint family. It had a school and a number of seperate apartments, all constructed as cliff-clingers off the main path in Upper Kaithu. We rented a spacious (for India) flat that overlooked the whole of the Annandale Valley. When Sonia Gandhi arrived in Shimla to campaign for Congress during the 1999 election, we watched her fly in by helicopter and alight at the pad on the golf course/polo ground down in the valley below. In the evenings Turner and I would have 'libations on the porch' and watch the 4:40pm train make its choo-chooing way into town along the shoulder of the north ridge, across the valley at Summerhill. And on those rare days when the mist would lift, to the west we had a spectacular vantage point for gazing upon the whole of the craggy and incomparable Himalaya that so captured Rudyard Kipling's imagination. ...What I'm saying is that we had a million dollar view.

We also had hot water, and a telephone, and privacy, not to mention the servant - Nazko - who came attached to the flat. In short, the apartment was perfect for us, and after ten days of househunting when we first arrived in Shimla, it was certainly and by far the best available accommodations of anything we'd seen (a pool which included two adjoining hotel rooms that didn't get any sunlight, though there were mirrors affixed to the ceiling and horizonally on the wall beside the bed; the unfinished room above my Rotarian sponsor's house, an hour's drive from Shimla proper; flats that didn't have kitchens, flats that didn't have running water, and finally the terrifying Visiting Scholars Residence at Himachal Pradesh University which was a purgatory of malaise so profoundly depressing that Turner and I still talk about it today as The Worst Place On Earth, bar none). In truth, when we finally found our flat, it seemed like a true godsend. It was with giant smiles and trembling hands that we readily and gratefully agreed to pay the equivalent of $400 Cdn per month for the privelege of living at Rikhye Nivas.

We'd moved from downtown Toronto in a one-room apartment for $500/mo all the way across the world to a placed with two bedrooms and two sitting rooms, two bathrooms, a walk-in closet and a balcony, and we'd downscaled in price. We knew full well we were being ripped off by Indian standards. ...But you know what? We aren't Indian. And we had sure put every ounce of effort we had into finding an apartment. This one was the only apartment that was even marginally adequate for our needs. And furthermore, I was on scholarship, and my award could cover that rent with plenty left over to provide for our living expenses the rest of the year. So there might be a fleecing going on, but overall there was no harm done, as far as we were concerned.

At some point, Nazko asked us what we were paying in rent. We knew that the amount of our rent was more than Nazko's salary in two and a half years, but we told her, truthfully, the price of our rent. Well, Nazko was beyond appalled. She really loved us and we really loved her. And she ended up taking the overcharging-of-our-rent very personally. She was incredibly pissed off at our landlord, the nephew of her benefactor. She would mutter under her breath about how criminal was this rent. And how it was stealing. And how it was wrong. And that Shiva would eventually set things right.

Well, as the months went on, we sort of forgot about this grudge Nazko was carrying around on our behalf. And then one day we received word that Turner had won two National Magazine Awards back in Canada - one of which came with a $5000 prize, something like that, a big whop of cash. We were pretty excited, very happy for Turner. And Nazko of course wanted to know what all the ruckus was about, and we told her.

And she got this huge smile, like she's been waiting to hear this news for months. She closed her eyes and prayed, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" And BEAMED at us. Shiva is to be thanked! He has corrected the imbalance! This is your reward for the exorbitant rent!

...I think Turner and I can be forgiven if we didn't seem to immediately grasp the apparently direct connection between the $400/mo and the award Turner'd just won for a story he'd written more than a year previously. But Nazko was thrilled all day. And told everyone in the neighbourhood about how Turner had won a big writing prize in Canada that came with money. And that Shiva had fixed the extortion by rewarding us.

The more we heard the story her way, the more it seemed like it was at least as good an explanation as "coincidence" or "these events are unconnected - it's all just life's rich tapestry". So we came around. And to this day we explain to people about how Shiv helped Turner win his first National Magazine Award.

Lobby view of the shrine here at Ekkamai Soi 2.

So I guess it's appropriate that our girl has become a fan of Shiva. I ring the bell for her and bring my hands together in namaste to the statue, intoning, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" And Sloane claps.

Categories: Asia 2006 | India | Olden Days

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Lupang Hinirang

When we were making the plan to come to Asia for the book research, we knew having Sloane along with us would present certain logistical obstacles. That we wouldn't be able to balance the child care responsibilities between us like in Calgary (Turner takes mornings, I'm on in the afterno