When lunch is a feast

I served a meat dish, a carb dish, a vegetable/salad dish and dessert when I had them over.  What did she serve when she had us over?  The works!

We had been invited to lunch at our Nigerian friends yesterday and the groaning board was definitely groaning!  In their culture, it's not just one chicken dish, it's three.  It's not just one beef dish, it's two.  It's not just one salad, it's three.  It's not just one rice and shrimp dish, it's two.  She also served delicious plantains, goat soup (had never eaten goat before) and spring rolls and on and on and on......The dessert?  Went on forever!

"When I cook, I cook," said our hostess.   No kidding.  I realized my puritan protestant upbringing was no match for this!  And my glass?  Filled every minute. 

We have met some wonderful people at our Parish -- especially our Nigerian friends, who have been the best hosts and hostesses ever.  When I next have them over, I will have to pull a few rabbits out of the culinary hat!        

And there he was

Up at 5:30 this morning with grandson and after pancakes and playing, it was time for a little "screen time" while I caught my breath.  What did I tap into?  Mr. Rogers. 1982.  Can't believe it's still on in re-runs, but thankfully is.  Watching it, grandson became quiet and serene because that's how Mr. Rogers spoke, slowly and quietly.  I was mesmerized. 

Googling him, I learned he had died in 2003 at 74 of stomach cancer.  Seems so young, now that I am 66 and B is 72.  One feels one's mortality mightily. 

Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian Minister and an educator.  He was also a professional puppeteer.  His sweater is in the Smithsonian Institute.  He was awarded 40 Honorary Degrees.  The guy was superb. 

I hope they continue to run his wonderful shows.  Keeps us all calm.       

Well, of course

Albertans don't want a sales tax...."because the government will just misspend more money". Well of course it will.  That's what governments do, silly.  Nevermind that a sales tax would wipe out this province's deficit in 10 minutes, THERE WILL NOT BE A SALES TAX IN ALBERTA!  PERIOD!

Thank you Ralph Klein.  He was the guy who gave away money like a carney barker.  What a dumb move.  Albertans now expect to free-load with gay abandon. 

I remember sitting beside a Russian immigrant at a dinner a while ago who complained about the same thing, governments just misspend.  "Listen, buddy," I said.  "There's a whole bunch of tax money that goes to political payoffs and appalling cronyism.  But there's also a lot that goes to roads, schools, law enforcement, the armed forces, health care..........the stuff for which you came to Canada.  The money that politicians waste is just collateral damage and can't be prevented."

That's what Albertans don't get.  Alberta is the only province in Canada and the only developed jurisdiction in the entire world without a sales tax.  If Alison Redford had any guts, she'd implement one.

But she doesn't.      

I don't need English accents

CBC has blown it.  My ears grate when I hear "Dan McGarvey"(or should I say "McGawvie) reading the news and "Pete Morey" doing the CBC II radio show.  They both have English accents and I don't get it??!!  Were there no Canadians that could have been hired? 

I also can't abide "Cl-air Mawtin" doing the weather on The National.  Do we not have young Canadians who could have filled these jobs?  You don't hear radio and TV personalities on the BBC with "Canadian" accents, so why do we have them?  Sorry, it's just not "Canadian" when Brits are on the very, very Canadian CBC.    

A shocker

"Eight-and-a-half," she replied, when I asked if she had any grandchildren yet.  Whaaaaaaat!!!!  I was blown away.  This is a woman I see every morning at the Y -- she getting ready for work, I schlepping in for my swim. 

I have seen her almost every day for two years and although we chit-chat, I didn't really know much about her.  Having met grandson, she asked me if I had had him this week.  "No, just Sunday," I replied.  That's when she dropped the "eight-and-a-half" on me.  And do you have any yet?  Yeah, a few.........quite a few. 

Much younger than I, she revealed she had started her family early and had had four kids.  Assuming she could not possibly be, I indelicately asked if she were with the same husband?  Yep, same guy.  I was very impressed.  There she was, about 51 years old, four kids, almost nine grandchildren, still working and still married to the same guy. 

As I said, admirable.   

Polygamy doesn't work.  If everyone is so "happy" in "plural marriage", why is everyone -- except the man who roams from wife to wife -- so unhappy??  'Cause it doesn't work.  Have to admit that against my better judgement, I watched another episode of 'Sister Wives' and had it confirmed. 

Here they were in therapy, each wife crying while at the same time proclaiming her love for the other wives.  Please.  The jealousy is rampant.  And why not?  Human animals need to bond with a mate and here's dumb-lucky Kody, "bonding" with four.  You can't share your mate with someone because it goes against the natural order of things.  Stupid Meri, the first wife, kept adding another and another so she could continue to be "in charge" as soon as he had the hots for the most recent wife.  Trouble is, instead of being in charge, Meri is now left out. 

The other wives had a bunch of children; she could only have one.  And by the way, except for the latest wife, the others are all fat slobs, so of course he is still on a honeymoon with the only thin one left! 

The whole thing is sickening.  As for the kids, it's just so, so sad.          

 

Shackles and bondage

Back in the late sixties, I fancied myself "liberated".  No housewife life for me, no siree, I was going to be a liberated career woman.  Afterall, I was in the vanguard of the movement, the age of the pill, the age of the university-educated woman, the holder of a job the equal of any man's.  Women in my cohort were going to change the world. 

All that went out the window when I got married and had kids.  Problem was, the men we married had been raised by stay-at-home mothers who did everything for them.  How we thought our husbands were suddenly going to wield a vacuum and grab a toilet brush is beyond me?!  Of course, they didn't.  I coped....sort of........until I had children.  Then the workload doubled and tripled.  But was I going to give up my career and stay at home?  Not on your life because, as I have blogged many times, society does not value child care -- witness the below-the-cost-of-living wages daycare workers are paid.  "I'm staying home and caring for my children," was not a response I would ever give anyone who inquired about what I did for a living at a cocktail party.  I'd seen it too many times.  The guest who asks the question sneers and walks away.  (The only time I ever heard a good retort to that question was when a woman replied, "I'm a leisure expert, ask me anything."  That was a good one.)

But she was older than I and had obviously missed the whole "women's lib" thing to which I had attached myself at the time -- you know, the "before-kids" time.  Debora L. Spar has just written a book about it, 'Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection'.  Been there, done that.  It's really about the shackles borne by the liberated woman.  With a hyphenated last name, people always assumed "Marley" was my maiden name.  "No, I'm not liberated," I would reply.  "I am in bondage like every other woman with a job and kids."  Spar writes, “My generation made a mistake. We took the struggles and the victories of feminism and interpreted them somehow as a pathway to personal perfection. We privatized feminism and focused only on our dreams and our own inevitable frustrations.” 
 
Proving it, Spar outlines the many conflicting and impossible ideas of what women living and working in supposedly post-feminist environments are expected to be: well-dressed, fit, beautiful and sexy, but not self-interested, self-regarding, threateningly beautiful, or overly sexual; successful and ambitious but always likeable and accommodating; fertile and maternal but never distracted from their work; corporate citizens, earth mothers and ever-available wives, and also vegan, gluten-free chefs and on-trend decorators and active social directors and rigorous personal organizers. 

Give me a break.  Nevertheless, it's all true.  Although super-busy women already know their lives would be easier if they stopped going to parent-teacher association meetings, like Spar did, or cut way down on the number of lessons and practices their kids attend, upped the kids’ responsibilities around the house, or had groceries delivered and stopped throwing dinner parties, we don't do it.  We do it all -- or at least I did.  

"Why are you always in a bad mood," B would ask while I was frantically preparing dinner for six people after slogging it out in a hostile office all day.  Why he had no clue I have no clue!

But bottom line: would I have traded in my lifestyle to be a stay-at-home?  Never in a million years.      

There is no solution

Reading 'A Suitable Boy' a number of years ago at our cottage one summer, I kept expecting something to happen.  But no, nothing did.  It was 1,347 pages of detail which, ultimately, led to....nothing.  I was so pissed off because the reviews had been over-the-moon.  Vikram Seth had misled us.

Except for the chapters on the character of Saeed Bai.  Her story was credible.  She was from the "prostitute caste", sort of like the Geishas.  All young girls in this caste are trained from before puberty to be "companions and entertainers".  Who trains them?  Their mothers and grandmothers who have been in the profession for generations.  Prostitution is rampant in India, but it is not now practiced in the cultured way it was by Saeed Bai.  It is now seedy and ugly.  Saeed Bai was a very well-educated and accomplished singer and dancer.  As I said, like a geisha.  Today young girls from hundreds of villages in India are groomed to be prostitutes and the age has now dropped for beginners to nine. 

It's sickening.  Sex-trafficking in India is a $4-billion industry, with three million sex workers -- 1.2 million of whom are under 18.  "A single bare bulb exudes dim light in Suchitra's room, just enough to see the black water stains on the peeling, faded pastel-green walls.  Used condoms lie on the floor.  The stench of urine, sweat and cheap perfume hangs in the air.  Rats gnaw at piles of garbage in the corridors outside," reads an article in The Globe and Mail. 

"Suchitra said she has sex with as many as a dozen men a day for as little as 100 rupees ($1.60).  A concrete slab that takes up most of her room serves as a bed, where she sleeps and does her work."

Prostitutes make 200% more than women in other paying jobs, so how do you stop it -- especially when the police are in on it?  The only promising note in the article is the bit about the increase in the reporting of rape in India, up about 16% in the last five years. 

Not much, but a start.  Overall, however, there is no solution.             

You know you're old when...........

......someone calls you "feisty".  That's definitely code for you're energetic, but old.  That's what one of the young(er) teachers I always meet in the locker room called me today, as I was regaling her with tales of people I can't stand in the pool -- the ones with no lane etiquette.  And believe me, there are plenty.  But she did add I had "attitude", which I took as a compliment.   

"Hey Nancy, hi!" called one of the young lifeguards when I walked onto the deck this morning.  This was young "M", someone I hadn't seen all summer.  Hi, I waved back as he ran over.  "Where have you been?"  He told me he had secured a better-paying job at City Hall for the summer and was now back at school, but that he had "really missed" me.  I guess he meant my mouth, which I never censor with these cute kids who could be my grandchildren.  I say all the things they are thinking, but can't say........things like:

"I don't get how these heifers get to take up a whole lane when there are only four of them in the aqua-jog class.  And what kills me is they never lose any weight.  They just get bigger and bigger!  And by the way, if I wanted to look like the instructor (about 12 and the size of a hippo) I'd take her class," I added just for thorough meanness.  Thought M was going to fall in, he was laughing so hard.  After talking my ear off, he finally went back to work and I got to my laps.

Earlier, the teacher had asked me if I took one of the classes?  "Are you kidding?" I raved.  If you ever see me in one of those classes with those broads, shoot me," I clarified.  What are people thinking?  The problem with an aqua class is that no one ever puts his or her head underwater, so they don't get a really good cardio-vascular lung and heart workout.  They work their limbs, but they don't have to "breathe" underwater, so don't expand their lung capacity sufficiently to increase it.  One thing I know, I will not die of a heart attack.  I will die of "heart failure", as everyone eventually does, but not an acute attack. 

There is a wonderful camaraderie at the pool.          

Another

So, another "mass shooting" in the US.  This time 13 people killed by someone who was...............whatever?!  And the "talking heads" on TV still defend the anyone-can-get-a-gun policy south of the border. 

It's sickening.

The NRA says, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."  How dumb is that.  How many times have any of us been so incensed at some ridiculous moment that, had a gun been handy, we would have used it?  I can think of a few myself.  Quite a few. 

Guns kill people.   

 

I can still see her face

It may be 57 years, but I can still clearly see the face of the girl who nearly drowned me.  I was nine, she 14; I a good swimmer, she not.  A bunch of us were swimming from the beach to the raft at our cottage and she got into trouble.  I was the nearest to her and knew I was in serious danger the minute I saw her face contort.

She lunged.  I tried to swim away, but she caught me.  Once in her grasp, I could not escape her death grip as she pushed me under water to hold herself up.  She was screaming "help, help", but my mother and uncles on the beach apparently didn't notice right away.  I didn't know what was going on, struggling for my life as I was.  Time and time again I fought to the surface, only to be pushed back down by this monster.  I was clawing at her shoulders, kicking her, punching her, but that death grip could not be broken.

My mother had always warned me never to go near anyone who was drowning.  "Grown men can be drowned by a young child," she said.  "The will to live is very strong."  Later, when I was taking swimming and lifesaving courses, that's exactly what they said.  Never go near a drowning victim, stay well back until they stop coming up.  Then retrieve them.  That day I couldn't.  She was on me before I could escape. 

"I can't do it anymore," I remember thinking, absolutely exhausted by my fight to live.  Just as I was about to inhale, a hand grabbed me by the hair and yanked me up.  It was my Uncle Elgin in a row boat, my saviour.  He hauled me into the boat, where I lay on the bottom crying hysterically and shaking hard.  The other girl was fine, having been able to breathe air the whole time. 

I was taken to the cottage, where I stayed in bed for two days.  Obviously in shock, I don't remember much about the recuperation part.  But I will never, never forget the drowning part.  The girl came around to see how I was; I refused to talk to her. 

That I got right back into swimming and became very proficient is a credit to my parents, who understood the old adage that when you fall off a horse, you have to get right back on.  But that incident may be the reason I had a bit of a panic attack when facing my open-water swim on Lake Windermere a couple of weeks ago.  That near-death experience came back so clearly the morning of that swim.  But I overcame it and finished. 

Drowning is a terrifying way to die.         

Hard to take

Every time I turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper there it is:  bad grammar.  "Syria Conflict" was the headline on the BBC this evening.  So was "Mexico Weather".  Why can't they get it right?!  It's "Syrian" and "Mexican".  You can say, "Weather in Mexico", or "Conflict in Syria", but you can't say..."Syria Conflict" or "Mexico Weather".  

Hard to believe the BBC gets it wrong.  Another mess I always see is "education system".  Hello, it's "educational".  The other grammatical component no one gets correctly is the "future past".  This is when you talk about something that was to "have happened", but didn't.  The CBC consistently says, "was to happen".  No.  How can something "was to happen" in the present when it didn't in the future, which would have been the past. 

Get it? 

I know I bang on about grammar, but I love it and am driven crazy when English-speakers have no clue.  Heard a guy today going on about "would have went".  Please and please again.  What else is a mess?  The conditional tense.  People always get that wrong.  They say, "If I would've went, I would've......"  No, it's "If I had gone, I would have.........."  You don't have two "would've-s".  Just incorrect and appalling.

"How are you"?, must be responded to as, "Fine", or "Well" -- never "Good", which is all I hear out here. 

I remain a 'Grammar Nazi' and will until the day I die.         

Nevermind 'So you think you can dance'

The sexiest dance scene I have ever seen on screen was in 'Picnic', that great movie starring William Holden and Kim Novak.  Just watched it again for the umpteenth time and it is always perfect. 

Apparently, Holden initially refused to do the dance scene on the dock and had to be paid $10,000 extra to agree.  "You dance beautifully," says Madge.  "Some men, when you dance with them, make you feel so uncomfortable," she adds.  She's right.  The way the two of them dance in slow motion to 'It Had to be Moonglow' is riveting. 

But who steals the show?  Rosalind Russell.  She is magnificent as the spinster school teacher trying to get Howard to marry her.  She succeeds.  It's a wonderful movie and I never tire of watching it. 

Sadly, Holden died drunk at 63, after falling in his lonely apartment.  But Kim is still going strong.  Saw an interview with her the other night and she is still beautiful at 80.  Let's hope some of us make it that far and still retain a bit of class.    

A bloody good story

I took a short-story on-line course a couple of years ago (could have given it, frankly) and wrote a few really good pieces.  The one that follows I hardly remember writing, but I think it is pretty good.  Didn't even have a title, here it is:

"Coming back from the funeral, Gwen felt all-embracing relief.  It was over and she could finally get away from all those who “meant well”.  In the final months she had really wished Jack dead a thousand times.  Hell, when he was alive and healthy she had wished him dead 10 times a day.  But that was different.  She knew he wasn’t going to actually die on a Tuesday afternoon because she had wished it.  She knew he would still be coming through the door at dinner, stuck in his own world, raving about something that had happened that shouldn’t have, or something that should have happened but hadn’t. 

"Before he got sick she used to wonder if she loved him?  She had once, but now their marriage was an act of will – like all long marriages really.  She got a kick out of reading those ridiculous articles about couples in old-age homes who had been married for 60 years.  “What is the secret of your great marriage?” some feckless reporter would ask.  “Well, we never went to bed angry…we always talked things through…he always bought me roses on my birthday…he was a good provider.”  What garbage.  Any marriage that lasts 60 years – heck, even 10 – is purely an act of will, or ignorance, or the lack of opportunity or the dominance of one partner over the other.  God, she used to think, I have become cynical over the years. But when she looked at the marriages of the women in her volunteer group, she came to the same conclusion.  How could anyone have married that jerk?  Even trying to imagine him at 25 was impossible.  He must have been a jerk then. Jack had been gorgeous.  That had attracted her attention, but his brain and gallantry sealed the deal.

"The phone rang.  'Mum, are you OK?'  Barbara, not her favourite child, calling to be sure she could get out of town with a clear conscience.  'Gunther and I are just heading out to the airport and I wanted to be sure you were OK before we left.'  What does she think?  I’m OK an hour after burying my husband of 43 years – her father?  She had always been a little thick.  Could never make any connections in her head.  This was this and that was that.  My Dad has just died, sad, and I am going to the airport.  Gotta call Mum.  Did I remember my good shoes?  If I left them in the upstairs closet I’ll be so pissed off.  Gotta get back because we’re giving a dinner tomorrow night for Gunther’s office.  'Mum, everything’ll be OK, you looked great.  Aren’t you glad I used that caterer for the reception?  Their desserts were fabulous.  They’re always better than that caterer you usually use.  Weren’t the kids perfect!  Annie looked adorable in her little funeral dress, didn’t you think?  The mourning outfits they have these days for kids are just amazing!'

"She felt like telling her to fuck off, but Barbara would never get it.  She wouldn’t be able to get that connecting the caterer’s desserts with her father’s life and death were just the wrong connections.  Barbara felt everything, or nothing, on the same level.  Where had that come from?  Probably not enough protein when I was pregnant with her, thought Gwen.  She obviously didn’t get enough to make the extra brain cells required to have a brain that functioned above the basic stem level that regulated shopping and planning parties.  My fault, it was summer and I ate a lot of salads.  Or maybe she had been switched at birth? 

"Barbara had always been a prig. Conventional, not traditional.  Tradition was tossed out the window with gay abandon whenever she met a “new best friend”; convention protected her from reality.  Even as she smoked (continually) and drank (occasionally) through three pregnancies, she could not connect the fetus with the nicotine and other addictions she forced on her offspring.  When they start smoking at 11, thought Gwen, Barbara will be the first to be totally shocked!  She bragged as she described every detail of each prenatal visit, about how the baby was perfect at every stage.  'And the doctor has refused to allow me to go on the patch while I’m pregnant because it would be just too hard on the baby.'  Incredibly, smoking actually became “doctor’s orders”.  Another missed connection.  Gwen remembered pretending she didn’t know her own daughter when a fellow restaurant patron looked on slack-jawed at a very-pregnant Barbara smoking on the sidewalk.  She looks like a hooker, thought Gwen, as she hurried to the car.  As president of the local ‘Mothers’ Club’, Barbara enthusiastically neglected to reveal her furtive smokes behind the garage.  One of her disgruntled brothers spilled those beans.  Funny how you love your children, but step back in amazement when they grow up and reveal themselves.  Especially when they choose a husband.  That, of course, is the real kicker. 

"Gwen intensely disliked her German son-in-law.  Gunther was right out of a foreign movie.  Smug, ignorant, one-dimensional, yet completely unaware that he suffered from any of these traits.  After 11 years, he had still not asked the mother of his wife one, single question about herself – or anyone else in Gwen’s circle.  Every time he opened his mouth he gave her another distressing clue about his character.  His parents, of course, must be the root cause of all this.  They were always overly-influenced by their own impressions of themselves. She tried to ignore all of it when they were forced to gather.  For all they knew, Gwen could have beaten terminal cancer, swum the English Channel, performed daily open-heart surgery, or flown in space.  Their world was entirely self-centred.  Come to think of it, Gunther and Barbara were a perfect match.  But they had produced grandchildren and so were conventionally elevated at weddings, birthdays, Christmas and funerals. 

"Gwen assured Barbara everything was fine and hung up.  She poured herself a scotch and sat in her perfect living room.  Her thoughts drifted to the baby she had lost in a miscarriage a thousand years ago, just before Barbara.  Would it have been a girl?  Yes, she had decided many years ago.  This was her favourite “daughter”, the one she conjured.  With her two sons such disappointments, Gwen sank into a reverie about the daughter she might have borne.  This daughter would have been strong, smart, athletic and independent – exactly as Gwen imagined herself.  She didn’t often permit herself the luxury of wondering too long or too often about her lost child; pain prevented it.  But Jack’s death offered a moment of indulgence to enjoy their imagined daughter.  With two granddaughters, maybe one would fulfill her aspirations, the way Barbara had not. 

"She and Jack had both been remarkable athletes as teenagers, but social convention had cut her sport career short, while his flourished.  Gwen’s mother thought sports unbecoming in a girl, so Gwen was relegated to swimming and cheerleading.  God, give me one granddaughter with a little athletic talent and I promise I will rise to the challenge.  But she knew the obstacles she faced.  That was why she humoured Barbara’s sense of maternal superiority, single-mindedly to get access to one of the baby girls.  Her sons’ failures had made her long since abandon any attempts to influence the grandson.  That she would leave to the Germans.  Good luck to them, she thought as she drained her glass.  Rigid self-discipline prevented her from re-filling it, much as she wanted to.  She went to bed.

"Over the next few days, she disposed of all of Jack’s clothes.  She adopted her mother’s unsentimental mien as she stuffed everything into garbage bags and took it all to the Salvation Army.  His scent permeated the chore and she drank it in.  She had dumped all his toiletries a month earlier and scoured his bathroom when she knew he would not be coming home.  It was actually pleasant to have the ensuite to herself and not have to use the guest bathroom.  Early in their marriage, she had vowed never to share a bathroom and she had kept to it.  Now her home was her own.  She could use any bathroom she wished.  Still, she missed his mess.  Jack had always been an impeccable dresser, but his personal space was constant clutter.  Gwen used to refer to his favourite chair and ottoman as “the hamster cage”, filled and surrounded as it always was with cups, mugs, coasters, pens, papers, letters, letter-openers, newspapers, magazines, books, paperclips, shoes and other intimate objects.  She even kept the space covered in an old sheet so he wouldn’t literally transfer himself onto the upholstery. 

"Just when her new life was settling down it suddenly took off in a bizarre direction.  The phone rang about two months after Jack’s death.  His son was on the line.  Not one of their sons, his son.  Slowly things he had said over the years crept back into her consciousness.  Now and then he let slip a casual remark about a girl he might have made pregnant when he was at graduate school in London.  That was the London of the swinging sixties – Carnaby street and the like.  The pill had just been invented and free sex was everywhere – especially in London.  So it was entirely possible that this man was Jack’s son.  She would know when she saw him.  There would have to be some resemblance. 

"They met in a coffee shop a few days after the phone call.  As she sat waiting for him to arrive, she realized she was more nervous than she had been in years.  When she had told him on the phone that Jack had died, she could hear his voice break.  Two months was all he had missed his father by and the regret he felt for not trying earlier got the better of him.  Of course she would be a disappointment to him because she was not his father.  But she had determined that she would share Jack with his eldest son as fully as she could.  The minute he walked in, she knew who it was.  He was more like Jack than either of her own sons.  It was like seeing Jack.  She was overcome with joy, but immediately felt selfish for her good fortune and his defeat.  As she stood up to greet him, she blushed hard.  His name was Nigel Cameron.  He was 45 years old and very handsome.  She didn’t know whether to embrace him or shake his hand.  Was this stranger a relative?  She decided he was and gave him a tentative hug. He returned it and they sat down.

"She immediately noticed his hands – delicate and graceful like Jack’s.  And he had a cowlick right where Jack’s had been.  He ordered tea – another thing Jack always did.  Tea, never coffee.  She had come prepared with photos from their life together.  She had even thrown in baby and childhood photos of Jack so he could try and relate.  Where to start?  She let him begin and out tumbled his life story – his mother, her family, his school years, his love of sports.  Everything was followed with a question about whether Jack had done such and so, or whether he had liked this or that.  It was like re-discovering her husband all over again through the eyes of this man who was so strange, yet so familiar.  His English accent threw her and was the only thing glaringly out of place. 

"Suddenly her life popped into perspective.  While she had been living with Jack and raising his only three children, this child was growing up in a parallel universe on the other side of the world.  But he was as much Jack’s as their own.  The fact that she wasn’t his mother didn’t make him any less Jack’s son.  Suddenly, she began to feel as if she were part of a harem, or part of a polygamous marriage.  Nigel’s mother loomed large at the table in the coffee shop and she wanted to know more about her.  But that would come later.  This was his moment to meet his father through her and Gwen was determined to live up to the expectation.  Next it was time for Nigel to meet his brothers and sister.  

"Gwen hadn’t told her other children about Nigel; she wanted to meet him first and she didn’t really have a valid reason for allowing herself this somewhat impudent privilege.  Afterall, she wasn’t his mother, but they were his siblings regardless of what he turned out to be like.  But Gwen often took advantage of her priority in the family.  She liked to assert her matriarchic position.  That was one of her faults and she was pulling rank again.  But he was charming and now she could tell the rest of her family.  She was planning a party in his honour.  He couldn’t wait to meet his kin.  Having been raised an only child, the thought of meeting two brothers and a sister – plus two nieces and a nephew – overwhelmed him and Gwen was proud she could at least present him with these genetic realities.  When she had phoned all her children and told them, only Barbara had been disturbed.  Her sons were thrilled about the prospect of meeting another brother, but for Barbara this intruder skewed her sense of order and perfection.  How could her father have been so wild in England!?  To think he had fathered a child!  The prig in her took over.  Gwen didn’t care and as the morning of the party dawned she was as excited as a little girl planning her birthday.  Everything had to be perfect and it was.

"As Nigel’s taxi drove up, everyone hurried to the window to get a glimpse of this brother.  Only Barbara stayed in the kitchen, putting the last-minute touches to the food Gwen had prepared so she could take credit for the entire dinner.  When he rang the bell, the boys rushed to meet him.  Gwen was proud of how they handled the whole thing.  They shook hands warmly and immediately fell into an easy rapport.  Nigel was visibly excited, but at the same time quite shaken to be meeting his brothers in the house his father inhabited.  Seeing where Jack had actually lived and breathed seemed to move him with a sense of longing for the father he never knew.  Later he told Gwen it was all he could do not to burst into tears – especially when he went out to the back garden and saw Jack’s roses.  She had not yet disposed of Jack’s gardening paraphernalia and his gloves and hat were hanging on a hook in the shed when they went it.  The way he handled them was eerie – almost reverential and when he asked if he could have them she was glad she hadn’t yet thrown them out. 

"As the party went on, everyone relaxed and by the time it was over it seemed to Gwen that Nigel had always been a part of the family.  Jack had somehow crept back into everyone’s life through this long-lost son.  The miracle of it all was that he had a wife and three children back in England and so Jack lived on through them in an ever-more expanding universe. 

"Over the years Gwen visited him in England and adopted a whole new family.  Her own two sons remained very close to their brother and even Barbara adapted her life to include him.  The fact that he had three children supplanted her position as the only bearer of the family lineage, but she carried on – aided by the fact that since they were in England, “they didn’t really count”.  The one who gained the most was Gwen, who finally had the daughter she had always dreamed of in Jack’s granddaughter.  Nigel’s own mother graciously shared her treasure and the summers Celia spent visiting Gwen in Canada were the happiest she had ever known.  How perfectly it had all turned out."

So that's my story. 

 

                          

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

                      

 

    

What's new?

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente wrote a piece called 'Rape on Campus -- is it an epidemic?'  She argues it's not.  Of course it's not because it is nothing new.  Rape on university campuses has been going on forever. 

But Wente and I disagree about why it's not an "epidemic" -- she because she argues the stats are wrong, I because I believe they are under-reported.  She cites statistics which claim "no fewer than one in five women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape by graduation".  That would mean that at UBC, 5,400 women out of 27,000 would be victims in four years on campus.

Sounds about right to me, but she disagrees, thinks the stats are wrong.  Having been the victim of sexual assault myself on campus, I agree with the stats.  Would I have reported it?  Never.  I was also the victim of sexual assault by my orthodontist when I was 12.  Would I have told anyone?  Never.  Heck, my mother was sitting in the waiting room while it was happening! 

The point is sexual assault is routinely not reported.    

"Never get into a car with a strange man," my mother drilled and drilled into me as a child.  What she didn't tell me was what the doctor and date would do to me.  The doctor?  Still practicing in Ottawa.  The date?  The last time I saw him was at a parent/teacher meeting at Rockcliffe Park Public School.  He was the president of the parents' association.  "That's the guy who raped me," I said to B.  Over we went to chat.  "Remember me?" I said.  "Remember that weekend at your parents' cottage?"  He smiled and actually thought we'd had a great time, until I dropped the rape-bomb.  Couldn't get away from me fast enough.  A pillar of the community had been outed. 

In my life I have decided one can either rise above sexual assault or drown in it.  I have chosen to rise above.          

No Coincidences

"Don't tell me you drive a five-speed too," I said to D, my swimming buddy when we were in the parking lot after a "Pho" lunch (Faye, I thought of you).  No wonder we liked each other when we started swimming together at the Y.

A better swimmer than I, D's daughter and mine actually share the same first name and we both drive black Honda Civics.  On top of that, I now know she is a gear-shift gal.  She is also adopted, just found that out today too.  Wow!  Many life events in common. 

She is also a completely no-bull-shit woman who puts up with nothing.  As I said, my kind of woman.  We like and hate the same people at the Y, fewer in the former category than the latter, by the way.  "You, L and I have to do the Lake Windermere open-water swim next year and make a weekend of it in Invermere," I suggested.  "We will be the oldest broads, but not the slowest," I predicted. 

"Can't wait," she replied.  Neither can I!  

If she's not, I'm not

Lowering myself into the pool this morning after a month was ridiculous.  "Oh my G-d!" I shrieked.  "It's freezing!"  Felt the jets, ice-cold water rushing in.  What the f....?!  "They installed the heaters wrong," said one of the lifeguards unhelpfully after I yelped.  "Someone is on the way to fix them." 

But there was D swimming away.  "If she's not getting out, I'm not," I said to myself, as I finally worked up the courage to immerse my upper body into a lane.  L was also pounding away, but she's the one who does 100 every day, so she doesn't count.  The water temperature took me back to my childhood, when our entire clan would hit the coast of Maine for a week or so.  The water was so cold you'd start to ache until you became numb.  That's what today was like at the Y.  Achingly numbing. 

This was the first time I had been there since my open-water Windermere swim and apparently, everyone knew about it.  Oh yeah, that's right, I had been bragging about it for weeks in advance.  Imagine if my early morning panic attack had ruled and I had backed out!  But it didn't and I didn't, so it was high-fives and hugs all 'round for one old broad's victory over that big glacial lake.  Heck, I stood that lake, so what's a little chill at the Y?! 

With fear, loathing and trepidation, I stepped onto my enemy, the scales.  Four.  That's the number of pounds I have gained not swimming.  That four is the other reason I completed my set.  Have to get the weight off. 

Have to.

         

Click, click, thunk

"Oh no, what the hell is that?" I said to B, as we were trying to leave St. Luke's parking lot after Mass this morning.  No matter how often he cranked the key, all we got was click, click, thunk. 

The battery was dead.  But why?  Trying to get to the bottom line, I struck out for 'Fountain Tire' across the street to see if they had a tow truck.  Closed.  Coming back, I noticed that B had re-entered the church to see what he could drum up.  Stupid, I thought.  But I was wrong.  Out came a young man who ran to his car and drove up to ours with jumper cables. 

Halleluiah.  He boosted us and we were off.  Instead of a disaster, we managed to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.  But sitting in that dead car, I realized I had no idea what taxi company to call, which tow truck company to summon.  I didn't even know how to take the C-Train!?  Living in Calgary for more than two years, I have no clue about how to get anywhere without a car? 

Dumb.  Thankfully, higher power sent that young man to us or we'd have been sunk. 

Haven't been in the pool for about a month.  That's a lot of laps I have not swum.  It shows around my gut, I have gained weight.  I dread stepping on the scales tomorrow, when it re-opens, having been closed for repairs for weeks.  Some of my swim friends have gone elsewhere; I opted to do nothing, eat bread and be a slob.  Oh well, I know I will get back into it and drop the weight in a few weeks.  And by the way, eating bread and butter has been fun after two years of deprivation!  Why do I bother trying to keep the weight off?  Vanity.

Tomorrow I hit the pool.  The party's over. 





      

Makeup Tricks

I know Susan Sarandon uses at least one of the makeup tricks I swear by.  She must have learned it from Lauren Hutton, the beautiful 70s model who launched the "Face Disc" a few years ago, when she returned to modelling and found none of the current makeup techniques worked for her. 

Having watched a commercial for her makeup disc a number of years ago, I ordered one.  Hutton, now 69, uses many slight-of-hand techniques I have adopted.  The movie I am watching, starring Sarandon, highlights one of the best, i.e., the brown brush along the underside of the jaw-line to define the end of the face and the beginning of the neck.  The result is that your jaw appears to be in shadow, thanks to the dark liner underneath.  Absolutely brilliant, but you must use a very thick brush so it all blends.  If she hadn't used this "trick", Sarandon's skin would have appeared less taught, her face droopy and her neck still attached to her face.  I have been "re-defining" my jawline for a few years with considerable success because, ladies, we do not want our faces to morph into our jaws and necks!

If you look at my blog  picture, you will see the defining jaw-line this technique creates.  

Another trick I use is a pencil for my going-grey brows.  Warning, never use a liquid liner, just a pencil where needed.  For the lips?  Buy yourself Elizabeth Arden's Lip-Fix Cream, a wax that seals the lines around the mouth into which lipstick tends to seep, making one look like an old Parisian whore.  Very expensive, but never mind because it lasts for at least two years.  Worth every penny. Use a lip-liner after the sealer has set, then apply the lipstick.  Incidentally, I do not use an official "lip-liner".  Instead I use an eyebrow pencil because it is not as harsh.   

You know that dark part, where your inside eye sockets meet the bridge of your nose?  That's because the skin shrinks and your skin is black in that area.  Solution?  Dab a little bit of heavy concealer and pat it in, don't rub it in because that diffuses the effect.  You want it to stay there.  Then apply a lighter concealer under the eyes.  Full-on eye make comes after that.  I still have not mastered false eyelashes, but happily my own are long and full enough that several applications of L'Oreal black mascara -- top and bottom of the uppers -- does the trick.  You have to wait a minute or so for the mascara to slightly dry before applying another coat.  That way is sticks and builds up better.  

Well ladies, that's what I have learned over the years, now that I am "of a certain age".  Have fun with makeup!

    

Thanks to the "smarty-pants" approach, Canadian students suffer

"Our high schools are graduating kids who have failed to grasp the fundamentals and our universities are full of students who are struggling to master material they should have learned in high school."

Taken from yesterday's column in The Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente, it contains some pretty dreadful data.  I would have said it was material they should have learned in elementary school, but never mind.  The point is, at every level today's Canadian Student is doing very poorly.

Wente states the obvious, that it isn't the students who are the problem, it's the system.  "They have discarded 'rote' learning in favour of 'discovery' a process by which students are supposed to come up with their own solutions to the mysteries of arithmetic."  Whaaaaaaaaat!!!!  How can you "discover and come up with" the fact that six times seven is 42?  Multiplication tables have to be memorized.  Period, the end.  Apparently the fact this approach has, and is being, abandoned by countries all over the world hasn't deterred legions of dumb Canadian educators from determinedly pressing on.

"The curriculum has downgraded arithmetic to near-invisibility," Wente writes.  "The 'progressive (as in 'non')' approach guarantees that many students will not master basic skills, will not understand fractions and will not learn to multiply or divide two-digit numbers on the own.  After all, that's what calculators are for!"

So depressing.  On the bright side, Manitoba -- where parents and university math professors have been up-in-arms -- they've hit on a brilliant plan:  they're bringing back arithmetic! 

But it's not just math that's a problem.  As I have blogged repeatedly, English grammar skills today are practically non-existent.  Many years ago, browsing a second-hand book shop on Bank St. in Ottawa, I discovered a true gem.  'Grammar is Important' was the title of the book, sub-titled "A Basic Course".  Nothing "basic" about it.  Published in 1949 as a handbook for elementary school teachers, 'Grammar is Important' contains everything you will ever need to know for the rest of your writing life.  And all in 182 pages of lessons and exercises.  Fearful that my kids weren't getting grammar in school, I used to have them complete the exercises in this wonderful book.  They didn't like it at the time, but I think they now appreciate what they learned back then.   

"A knowledge of English grammar is recognized as a prerequisite to satisfactory work in English composition and literature," writes author A.W. McGuire in the foreword.  "It's usefulness in social intercourse and in business goes without saying," he continues.  You better believe it.  "It would seem advisable for grades 7 and 8 to adhere to the order in which the material is presented.  In grade 9 the teacher will select freely for review purposes from the lessons for earlier grades."

In other words, you will have learned ALL 182 pages of grammar by grade 8; the rest is just review.  How's that for shocking?  Not to be a bore, but I had mastered grammar by grade 8 and the rest was all just review -- thanks in no small part to Mabel Anderson, my wonderful grade 8 teacher who used to drill us mercilessly.  Thank God she did.

The table of contents reads as follows:

• Analysis
• Parts of Speech
• Verbs and Completions
• Kinds of Sentences
• Review
• Nouns and Pronouns
• Verbs
• Speaking and Writing Correctly
• Nouns
• Adjectives and Adverbs
• Simple and Compound Sentences
• Complex Sentences
• Classes of Conjunctions
• Conjunctive Pronouns
• Verbals
• Direct and Indirect Objects
• Active and Passive Voice
• General Review

So, if you nail all that, you've killed it for the rest of your life. 
        

    

I don't think so

"There's a grammatical error," I said to myself as I read the essay.  "and there's an error in punctuation."  Altogether, I counted approximately six grammatical, punctuation, or syntax errors in the piece -- including the title itself.  Unreal. 

Where was this?  In a Globe and Mail essay, written by a retired high-school English teacher, in which she bragged of her intolerance for bad grammar.  Oops!  I knew the minute I read the title I would find errors.  It has become a bit of a challenge for me and I have yet to find an editorial or article without grammatical errors in the many years since I began a relentless scrutiny.   

For starters, "Grammar police, c'est moi", the title, was incorrect.  It should have been, "Grammar police?  C'est moi".  You must have the question mark because it translates as, "Who are the grammar police?  They are I".  And by the way, it is not "me" because that would be akin to saying, "me is the grammar police".  See?  It's all so simple, but evidently ungraspable.

I know I bore the hell out of everyone with my "Nazi-like" approach to English grammar, but I love the stuff.  Stop reading, if you are a member of the "bored", but here are a few more examples:

"I thought at the time.................but it turns out..........".  Incorrect.  Should be, "turned out".  The tenses must agree.  Another:  "There is some evidence that I have infected generations."  Incorrect.  Should be, "There is some evidence I have infected generations."  The sentence works better without the "that".  More:  "A former student now working in a police station in California tells me that, for years, she has been designated the incumbent "grammar" police."  Should be, "A former student, now working in a police station in California, tells me that for years she has been the designated "grammar policewoman".  The commas are in the wrong place in her sentence and you don't need "incumbent" because it is redundant.  Also, one person can't be the "grammar police".

When it comes to "commas", insert one where you would take a breath -- a very easy rule-of-thumb which works pretty well.

You get the idea.  Hard to believe The Globe and Mail would let this run as the Holy Grail to grammar. 

Kudos to all my RevCan friends

I wasn't surprised at who was ranked number two, but number one?  The United States of America!  That one caught me off guard.  The US is the largest tax-evasion country in the world.  $337.3 billion was dodged by its crooked burghers, according to the latest figures.  Brazil came in second with $280.1 billion.

Also on the top ten were Italy, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, China, the UK and Spain.  No surprises there.  Canada?  Not even on the list, that's what a great job RevCan does and has always done.  With a few exceptions, the people I worked with during my years there were absolutely first-rate:  professional , knowledgeable and dedicated.

Of course, Canada has its fair share of cheats, we're just better at ferreting them out.  During a couple of summers while I was in university, in the days before computers, I worked for RevCan in the Blackburn Building at Bank and Slater in the filing tubs.  My job was to pull files for the collections officers and was truly shocked to see so many of my friends' parents in arrears.  Lots of them had money and lived in Rockcliffe, but I never regarded the same way after I caught them in my delinquent tubs. 

Your country can't operate if you don't pay your -- much to the chagrin of the Italians and the Spaniards.  Those countries don't function.  And I guess the reason Germany still functions well is because there is so much money there.  Come to think of it, the US does have a highly-functioning business/criminal underbelly in the form of Wall Street and industrial capitalists, for example. 

We used to target ethnic groups (quietly) when hunting for evaded or avoided taxes because many represent cultures that think it's a great victory and very clever to cheat the government out of its money.  Naturally, these were the same people who filled hospital wards expecting first-class health care and bitching if they didn't get it. 

Well, that's my rant for today...........so far.   

Bullies in my life

His name was Dickie Mitchell and he was a ferocious bully.  I was about seven or eight and he used to lie in wait for us along the walk home from Crichton St. Public School in the dead of winter, a pile of ice balls at the ready.  I always made sure I was with a group of other kids, otherwise he would attack me. 

He died in a crash up deadly highway 105 when he was about 18. 

What did anyone do about Dickie Mitchell?  Absolutely nothing.  In the '50s bullying was an accepted part of life.  Mike Fisher, a columnist for The Herald, wrote a piece about it today and says the same thing.  Bullies existed and everyone knew and accepted them.  When we had to go to Lowertown in Ottawa for grades seven and eight we had to steer clear of the French girls who didn't like our crossing their territory.  One day I was beaten up on the streetcar by their ring leader in full view of the conductor, who did...absolutely nothing.  Did I tell my mother?  Of course not.

B tells of being bullied by one of the brothers in the private catholic school he went to.  When he got the chance, B kicked him in the you-know-where's during a hockey game.  The bullying stopped.  Years later B heard the brother had become a biker with the Hell's Angels.  Much better fit.

"Your daughter is bullying my step-daughter," I said when I telephoned the mother of a bully who was picking on S in grade five.  "It better stop."  It did.  "Our boys bring out the worst in each other," was another call I made to prevent one boy I didn't like playing with my son.  It stopped temporarily, but they took up again a number of years later with predictable results.

The one good thing about bullying is that it prepares you when you run up against them in later life.  Bullying isn't restricted to children and teens.  How many of us have worked for bullies?  Most of us.  I painfully remember Helen Beauchemin, Monica Jones-Kisil and Sue Wormington.  Bullies all.  Tellingly, they were all women and didn't like me because...........fill in the blank.  The only male boss who ever bullied me was Larry Gordon at Customs and Excise -- subsequently fired from the federal government, a feat few achieve.

Politically incorrect as it now is, bullying isn't likely to stop.  It's human nature. 





   

His mother's fault

Rafael Nadal constantly pulls his pants out of his rear end before he serves.  Absolutely disgusting.  He has so many tics.  He also puts his hair behind each ear before the "rear-end" thing. 

Watching him right now, I blame his mother for not instructing him to leave his ass and pants alone when in public.  I notice the cameras no longer film him from behind.  Thank you.   

So, Roger bailed.  Sad.  He is playing to "not lose", not "to win".  Both Chrissie and Martina have pointed that out.  I think he might want  think about giving it up at this level.  With the rain delay this afternoon, they played a number of breathtaking tie-breakers from the past.  My favourites were the Jimmy Connors ones.  What a showman!  He was fabulous as he fist-pumped, finger-wagged, danced and yelled whenever he won a point.  Now, that was a guy who played to the crowd!

She did it

I swam two kilometres a couple of weeks ago, pathetic.  Diana Nyad just swam 110 miles!!!!!!!!!!!!  This amazing 64-year-old swam from Cuba to Miami!  What an accomplishment.  Google her and you will see what a heroine she is to me.  Here's the coverage: 

"KEY WEST, Fla. — Looking dazed and sunburned, U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad walked on to the shore Monday, becoming the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the help of a shark cage.

Nyad swam up to the beach just before 2 p.m. EDT, about 53 hours after she began her journey in Havana on Saturday. As she approached, spectators waded into waist-high water and surrounded her, taking pictures and cheering her on.

“I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you’re never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it is a team,” she said on the beach.

“I have to say, I’m a little bit out of it right now,” Nyad said. She gestured toward her swollen lips, and simply said “seawater.”

Her team said she had been slurring her words while she was out in the water. She was on a stretcher on the beach and received an IV before she was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

“I just wanted to get out of the sun,” she said.

It was Nyad’s fifth try to complete the approximately 110-mile swim. She tried three times in 2011 and 2012. Her first attempt was in 1978.

“It’s historic, marvelous,” said Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, the Hemingway Marina commodore who helped organize the Cuba side of Nyad’s multiple attempts.

“I always thought she could do it given her internal energy, her mental and physical strength, her will of iron,” said Diaz Escrich, whom Nyad has described as a longtime friend.

“More than the athletic feat, she wants to send a message of peace, love, friendship and happiness … between the people of the United States and Cuba,” he said.

Nyad’s journey began Saturday morning when she jumped from the seawall of the Hemingway Marina into the warm waters off Havana. She stopped from time to time for nourishment, but she never left the water.

The support team accompanying her had equipment that generated a faint electrical field around her, which was designed to keep sharks at bay. A boat also dragged a line in the water to help keep her on course.

Sumaya Haddin, of Miami, had been tracking Nyad’s swim before her family’s trip to Key West this weekend. She was surprised to see Nyad’s flotilla from a parasail off Smather’s Beach on Monday morning."
________________________________________________________

I am in complete awe of this woman!

The Great Tinkerers

"Here's something that will help you identify all the bugs around here," said Archie Pennie, dropping into the back kitchen door of our cottage when we first started going up to the Gatineau Fish & Game Club in the early '80s.  He handed me a book on "bugs", which was instrumental in helping identify the wonderful little creatures I was encountering.  Until that book, I had no idea that "daddy long legs" were not spiders? 

Archie died the other day at age 98.  He was a great guy.  Acerbic, witty and direct, he pulled no punches.  Ever.  Born in Scotland in 1916, he never seemed to age, looking exactly after 20 years as he had when we had first met.  "Too much cake," I remember him laughingly calling out at one of the infamous club dinners, as he listened to a woman blabbing a tad too loudly and who appeared to be slightly "over-refreshed".  In those days many of us were after a long day on the water and in the sun.  Archie was never "over-refreshed".

"Archie grew up to be a rocket scientist, mechanical genius, quoter of Shakespeare, writer of pithy vignettes about his time as a WW2 airman, and devoted family man.  He studied explosives at Glasgow University and learned to fly with the RAF on our Prairies with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. After the war, he served with the Defence Research Board in Quebec City, Ottawa, Fort Churchill, Manitoba and Suffield, Alberta.  He spent his forty-year retirement as a clockmaker.  He never lost his prodigious memory and was inspiringly upbeat amid the loss of his eyesight and hearing. Archie was short on patience, but had a profound interest in others, neighbourly kindness, and impish charm that won hearts wherever he went."

That is what his obituary says and it's true.  

"The Great Tinkerers" of this blog also include his dear departed shop comrade David Casgrain.  David and Archie fixed -- or wrecked -- more motors on 31-Mile Lake than anyone.  Mostly they fixed them, when no local "expert" vendor could.  It was this screw or that bolt, this propeller or that gas gauge.........no matter.  With Archie and David commiserating, they forced and tinkered every errant motor into successful humming.  I can remember the late Nanette Casgrain -- an irreverant "saint" I absolutely adored -- spending an entire afternoon perched on the top of our hill, holding an extension cord in her hand while husband David frigged around with a pesky motor down on the dock.  Wisely she balanced a martini in the other.

At the time, I didn't realize what originals these wonderful men were, so pre-occupied was I with my own offspring.  An era has passed with Archie's death.  

I will remember him very fondly.