September 13, 2010 · 2:31 am

Conversations with my Mother: Saying “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” like she means it

Defeat of Jessie James Days

Image by GSankary via Flickr

Ever since my mom has gotten sick she says hello (and goodbye for that matter) much differently. She used to say “hello” by doing this “Hoi Hoi Hoi Hoi” until I told her to stop or until I repeated it after her. Or sometimes she would say things like “Geboodle, Geboidle, My Mutha is a Toitle” which really cracked her up. More recently she has started saying “HUUUULLooooo” which requires a sound clip to get the full effect.

But these days she answers the phone in a raspy voice that she’s had since her surgery and she answers it this way…”Hiiiiiiiiiii” just like that, real long with a tinkle, like little alarms are going off, like she wants to wake up the world, as if  she’s saying “hi” like she really means it. And I think she does. And I like it. I really, really like it.

Note: the above image is not, I repeat, is not my mother. But it easily could have been.

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September 8, 2010 · 6:31 pm

Sarah’s Key a novel by Tatiana De Rosnay: Book Review

I’ve read enough books to know that I enjoy ‘war books’ particularly books that deal with the Second World War. While Dave is busy lapping up the more hard coreThe Third Reich at War by Richard R. Evans, I have just finished reading Sarah’s Key, the story of Sarah Strazinsky, whose family along with 13,000 other Jews, is rounded up by French police on July 16th, 1942 and sent to  Vel D’hiv where they were eventually transported to Auschwitz for extermination.

In the opening pages of the novel when the knock comes at the door and Sarah hears French voices she’s confused by her mother’s fear. Surely, Sarah thinks, it’s only Germans they needed to be afraid of.

So begins the story of Sarah’s life as she and her mother and father are marched through the streets to the Vel D’hiv along with 13,000 others. Sarah locks her younger brother in their secret hiding place but takes the key to the cupboard with her, knowing that she will somehow go back to save him.

The story of Sarah’s life is told both by Sarah herself but also by Julia Jarmond a journalist who is asked to write a 60th anniversary commemorative piece on the Vel D’hiv round-up. While few people, including her own husband’s family talk about or even seem to know much about this period of French history, Julia’s research and soon to be obsession, bring her directly to the story of Sarah Starzinski.

Much like the movie Julie and Julia I quite enjoyed the story of Julia Child and not so much the story of Julie (which let’s face it was boring). In this case the structure works well initially when De Rosnay goes back and forth between the two stories. But halfway through the book, Sarah’s story as told through her eyes, is abandoned and we are left with the much less interesting story of Julia and her crummy husband, as she searches for what happened to Sarah and her family.

All in all I think this is a good read. The book is fast-paced and the early sections, particularly as told by Sarah herself are riveting accounts of fictionalized history. The story telling for the most part is good and is weakened only in the latter half of the book when the story focusses more on Julia’s journey. While this isn’t a great literary read, it’s an amazing story of a little known period of French history.

Other books I’ve read on related themes:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Saffran Foer
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovksy
Things They Carried by Tim O’brien

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September 3, 2010 · 4:19 pm

Calling All Cracker Lovers: Mary’s Is the Bomb!

I discovered Mary’s Organic Crackers a few months ago. Having lived on a steady diet of rice crackers for the last 5 years I was ready for something new. These crackers are fabulous trust me and I’m not saying this because I’ve been living in a cracker desert all this time. They have a delicious nutty flavour and are made with brown rice, quinoa and seeds. They come in four different flavours, original, caraway, black pepper, herb and onion. I don’t want to sound like an advertisement but you don’t have to be on a gluten free diet to enjoy these fabulous GF crackers. My brother even loves them.

The only drawback is the price. In Canada they sell for about $5.99. Some highway robbers sell them for over that but that’s ridiculous. I have seen them at Costco (I don’t remember the price) and on sale at London Drugs for $4.69. Go git ’em. They’re delish.

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September 2, 2010 · 5:03 pm

Worst Possible Moments: Reflections on Death and Other Stuff

Well that’s a pretty dreary title but I’ve had a lot of time to think about things due to forced relaxation (errrr ahem read unemployment). The worst possible moments, you know the things you fear your whole life, have a way of landing on everyone’s doorstep at some point or another.

At first I thought unemployment was going to be the zinger. Then on the same day I found out our unit was cut, I also learned that an acquaintance of mine had suddenly lost his 19 year old daughter. Somehow it made me feel embarrassed that a healthy, able bodied person like me could feel badly about something so mundane as being unemployed.

Shortly after this news, my mom went into surgery in April to remove a growth in her colon. It turned out that the growth had already spread and that there wasn’t anything she could do. Now this time, the feeling of dread was much more palpable. This was something I could truly be scared about.

So I went home to visit my mom in Toronto. For the first time I felt really unsure about seeing her. What would she look like, how would she be, how would I be, how do I stare cancer right in the face, what are we going to talk about?

It turns out she felt the same way. She said she was worried I wouldn’t recognize her. I said “Do you still have those big brown eyes?” she said “Yes”, I said “Do you still have that crazy head of curly hair?” and she said “Yes”. And I said “Then I’ll know you anywhere.” and she laughed.

When I arrived home I first saw the back of her little curly head and then she stood up to hug me. I looked into her big brown eyes and wrapped my arms around her. This is my mom and it felt so good to have her there and to be able to feel her so close.

Then we sat down, she demanded a glass of wine and we chatted about this and that. At 7:00 pm she said she was going to bed. Usually my mom and I would stay up until 1:00 in the morning with me begging her to go to bed.

Over the next three weeks we talked about everything from the ordinary to the fact that her life was ending and how she felt about it. I found it hard and I found it easy. I felt like we were covering new terrain but at the same time it felt so ordinary. That this is just what life is about and I’m grateful that we can have these kinds of conversations that seem ordinary but really are quite extraordinary. To me this is the essence of human closeness.

This summer has been full of these kinds of bittersweet moments. I feel like I am living in full techno colour both here on the coast when I’m home with Dave or when I’m back in Port Credit with my family and my mom. We laugh, we cry, we bug each other and then we come together again.

I still worry about things like getting a job but I also know that the time I have is limited. So I enjoy every single thing I have and am thankful for my family, my amazing friends and especially Dave and Reuben.

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August 31, 2010 · 7:15 pm

Dog Days of Summer: a movie featuring a dog & summer

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August 27, 2010 · 9:12 pm

Grilled Salmon with Maple Syrup, Dijon and Chipotle Glaze

Dave has been making this super fast, easy and delicious grilled salmon recipe for a zillion years and it’s still one of my favourites. This recipe calls for salmon fillets, real maple syrup, dijon mustard and chipotle pepper but we often substitute the chipotle pepper with liquid smoke. You can find liquid smoke in the same area of your grocery store where you get Worcester, BBQ sauces etc.

You can check out the video recipe right here About Food Or read Chef John Mitzewich’s recipe right here. Continue reading →

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August 25, 2010 · 5:07 pm

25 Things about Rosie

1. My mother was born in Holland.
2. She was a young girl during the war.
3. She biked to the country side to get food from farms.
4. She was very naughty.
5. She kicked her teacher (a catholic nun) and gave her a nervous breakdown.
6. She has curly hair and brown eyes.
7. She was married twice.
8. She can be very funny.
9. She has spark.
10. My mother is 84 and can talk knowledgeably about Lady Gaga, Jay-z and other cultural icons.
11. She likes Bob Dylan but says he has dirty fingernails. I didn’t know she looked so hard.
12. She is addicted to television.
13. She can be very critical.
14. She says what she thinks.
15. Sometimes she shouldn’t say what she thinks.
16. Thanks to my sister she has recently discovered Starbuck’s tall non-fat lattes.
17. Tall non-fat latte’s are motivation enough for her to get out of the house.
18. She carries dog bones in her car to win the affection of animals around the world.
19. She loves Malls.
20. She thought Kits was great but that it needed a Walmart to be perfect.
21. She was able to sing an entire Beatles song the other day that I didn’t even know that she knew.
22. When I see pictures of her when she was young she always dressed like an elegant lady.
23. She cut all the fringes off her mother’s rug which made her mother very angry.
24. She loved her sister Nell.
25. She is a Dutchwoman.
26. She plays the harmonica.
27. She gave me the space between my teeth

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August 24, 2010 · 10:33 pm

25 Things

1. My favourite TV shows are Modern Family and Dexter.
2. My favourite movie of all time is The Sound of Music.
3. I have a lot of brothers and sisters.
4.I have 4 nieces.
5. I am 5″4″ and something but I tell everyone that I am 5″6″.
6. I like to wear platforms whenever possible.
7. I am married to an amazing person who makes me laugh almost every single day of my life.
8. We were married on August 27th 5 years ago.
9. My mother has terminal cancer.
10. My hair colour is mousey brown but on good days I tell people it’s caramel.
11. I would like to learn to speak Spanish.
12. I have a dog called Reuben that I love almost as much as Dave.
13. I have a brother who has the same silly sense of humour as me.
14. I love to read great books.
15. I have a shoe problem.
16. My brother has 3 very handsome boys who are all some kind of version of himself.
17. My sister and I are becoming friends.
18. I have accepted things and try and enjoy every single bit of life right now as much as I can.
19. My mother Rosie cracks me up and makes me crazy all at the same time. But mainly she cracks me up.
20. I sometimes think that being an immigrant even if you immigrated a long time ago can still create isolation.
21. My mother-in-law is an amazingly generous person who frequently helps me to set the record straight.
22. I have learned generosity from other people.
23. I don’t eat meat.
24. Sometimes to avoid argument or repitition of arguments I tell people I don’t eat meat for health reasons. Well that’s a lie. I don’t eat it out of compassion for animals.
25. I love animals.
26. I worry about the world but do very little about it.
27. The best day ever is with Dave especially if we’re going bike riding or to the El Salvadoran place I love like crazy.
28. This is no longer 25 things.
29. I am the owner of a crazy head of hair.

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August 1, 2010 · 12:42 am

Let the Great World Spin: Colum McCann Book Review

What a great title. What an amazing image. And let me tell you something else, Colum McCann delivers in imagery, language, structure and sheer moments of heart wrenching beauty in telling a story that begins with the famous highwire tightrope walk that Philippe Petit did between the Twin Towers in New York City on August 6th, 1974.

Like an angel poised high above the city, the tightrope walker balances between life and death, beauty and horror, strength and frailty. And as New Yorker’s collectively held their breath below watching this fine balancing act, McCann with an almost spin of the dice begins to tell stories of people from all walks of life who were connected by the experience of either hearing or seeing the tightrope walker on that hot August day.

From the young Irish priest who offers kindness and grace to prostitutes in the Bronx, to a judge and his wife who suffer the loss of their only son in Vietnam, to two young orphans who survive the carnage of their mother’s terrible life and her untimely death, these portraits and others show a city in the aftermath of an unforgiving war and still deeply divided by race and class.

Ultimately all these stories coalesce into a single point where the dots connect. Not only does the experience of the tightrope walker connect these seemingly disparate lives but what McCann evokes in his characters is the terrible burden and the incredible beauty of their humanity. Like a prism he turns his cast into the light so we can see them more clearly.

There are so many times when I can feel something but I can’t express it. I feel that there is language in this book that has given expression to some of these very personal feelings and in doing so has grounded me in the larger human experience. Even a line as simple as “sometimes we go on existing in a place even after we left it.” uses so few words to express a mountain of feeling.

Dave is reading Shantaram right now. He loves to torture me by reading excerpts. I demand that he stop. It makes me cringe. The language is florid and the writer is in love with his word count as much as he seems to be in love with himself.

Colum McCann is precisely the opposite. He is proof that you don’t need a lot of words to make it count. He delivers the story in sometimes spare, poetic language that allows you to feel and understand the moment for what it is. His language serves up the plain, raw experience that being human can often be.

In setting the story in 1974 he is able to cast the Twin Towers as a cultural icon before their terrible destruction. It also allows him to explore the impact of war on a city as complex as New York City where race and class issues are still unevenly resolved. And yet there are moments, as in when Gloria and Claire are able to set aside their obvious life differences and simply allow love to prevail that you realize that there is a kind of moving forward. That there is hope. That life can be beautiful. Like the image of the tightrope walker, life is beautiful and terrible and fragile.

You probably didn’t have to read this far to guess that I thought this was an amazing book.

Interview with Colum McCann

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July 30, 2010 · 4:24 pm

Conversations with My Mother: On Nothing

Tessa: Hi Mom, What are you doing?
Rosie: Hi Tessie, nothing. I’m doing nothing. Why? What do you expect me to be doing? Dancing?
Tessa: Uhhh, well, I don’t really know.
Rosie: What are you doing?
Tessa: Nothing.
Rosie: Oh.
Tessa: Do you have anything to say?
Rosie: No, not really.
Tessa: Okay bye, I love you.
Rosie: Yeah me too. Bye.
Tessa: I’ll call you later, we’ll talk more about nothing.
Rosie. Okie dokie!

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