Tag Archives: literary pretentions

What It’s Like To Write

27 Sep

Writing here is sometimes like standing in the middle of a crowded auditorium, peeling off layer after layer of clothing, asking, Do you like me yet? How about now? Or now?

It’s sitting in a confessional and whispering my secrets into the gloom, inhaling the church fug of old incense, furniture polish and a thousand rainy days and exhaling all of my sins.

It’s feeling like a grubby-faced kid writing a note to their crush, trying desperately to play it cool but ending  up with a barely articulate mess of feelings.

It’s sometimes like being pregnant and giving birth to a kitten, while all along I thought I was carrying a baby. And it’s not that I don’t like, maybe even love, the kitten, it’s just not what I set out to make in the first place.

It’s slogging through the morass of possible words, digging in the muck to find the perfect turn of phrase.

It’s realizing that nothing I write will ever be perfect, no matter how obsessively I revise and revise and then revise some more.

It’s hearing Audra say, Perfect is the enemy of good.

It’s wondering if anything I write will ever be good, or even good enough.

***

My friend Meredith posted this poem on Facebook and it’s so exactly right. Every word is like a knife straight through me.

My party piece:
I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick
conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves
beyond its means, and dies, I say the story
of my life

dates and places, torches I carried,
a cast of names and faces, those
who showed me love, or came close,
the changes I made, the lessons I learnt

then somehow still find time to stall and blush
before I’m bitten by the flame, and burnt.

A warning, though, to anyone nursing
an ounce of sadness, anyone alone:
don’t try this on your own; it’s dangerous,
madness.

Simon Armitage, 1993

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20 books that I hope Theo reads when he’s older, part II

17 Sep

If you liked the first post in this series, maybe you will like this one! Then again, maybe not. There are no guarantees in this life.

So, welcome to part two! Let’s check out the next five books. And again, keep in mind that these are books that I haven’t read in 20+ years, so what I’m giving you is the dominant impression they’ve left on me after all this time.

6. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, 1934

First of all, the Mary Poppins books (this one is actually the first in a series) are pretty different from the movie. For one thing, there are FOUR kids in the family, not two, and the book is set in the 1930s, not the early 1900s.

Another thing: Mary is a total badass bitch in the books. She isn’t kind or loving, or, you know, nannyish. She’s actually totally domineering and strict, and she’s, like, really, really full of herself. Like, she can’t pass a shop window without looking at her reflection and thinking about how great she is.

Needless to say, the kids adore her.

Of course, Mary Poppins has the same magical abilities in the books as she did in the movie. Unlike in the movie, she totally pretends that she doesn’t take the kids out on awesome adventures. Whenever the kids are all like, hey remember that time we did that cool thing, she’s all, I’M SURE I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. She’s ballsy, is what I’m trying to get at here.

There is one line in the book that basically sums Mary up perfectly:

“There was something strange and extraordinary about her – something that was frightening and at the same time most exciting.”

And she is kind of scary in the books, which I love. I’m a firm believer in the idea that kids need to encounter frightening things (within safe contexts) in order to learn how to deal with fear. So high five, Scary Mary!

7. The Giver, by Lois Lowry

So! This is the first dystopian book that I ever read. I like to think that encountering this book in my younger and more impressionable years helped set me up for a lifetime of loving this genre.

This book is so creepy, you guys. So creepy. Okay, so it’s the future and the world is totally devoid of anything that might make life tricky, including but not limited to: religion, culture, war, colour, climate, socioeconomic circumstances, and any and all choice, including who your life partner is and what you do for a living.

Oh, and also there is no sex. Nobody has sex in the future. They take pills to repress their sexual urges, and babies are born from women who are assigned the role of “birth mothers”. I’m assuming that these women are artificially inseminated, but what do I know? Maybe there are some crazy, behind-the-scenes orgies happening.

Anyway, the interesting thing about this book is that there were a lot of things about the dystopian world that appealed to me. I mean, everybody seemed pretty happy, right? Pretty content with their lives. And, possibly because so much is provided by the state (food, clothing, etc.) and there is no socioeconomic gap, there doesn’t seem to be any bullying or cruelty between people. I mean, sure, we find out later that part of the reason for this is that if you’re too different, you get released (i.e. euthanized), but still.

Then there’s the whole being assigned your career at the age of 11. Okay, kind of crazy, but also kind of cool? I mean, who hasn’t felt overwhelmed by the fact of having to decide what you are going to do for the rest of your life? I know that when I was in my teens and trying to figure out what I wanted to take at university, and what high school courses I would need to get myself there, the choice seemed incredibly daunting. And in The Giver, it’s not like the career assignments are totally random – the kids are carefully observed by a committee for years before they’re assigned their job. Plus, free education and training!

But then, of course, you start realizing what these people have given up in order to have their safe, happy society. They’ve given up on everything that makes life really good. They’ve given up anything that gives life meaning. And they’ve totally, totally given up feelings, which, while that concept occasionally seems appealing to me, is basically what makes us human. Oh yeah, and there’s also that whole euthanizing-anyone-who-doesn’t-fit-in-and-also-old-people thing. I mean, that part also sucks.

Writing this whole thing out has made me realize that The Giver is kind of a Brave New World junior, which is amazing. It’s a great book to get kids thinking critically, and a good way to introduce them to the whole dystopian genre. What I really hope that Theo takes away from this is that being different is a good thing, feelings are scary but awesome, and the fact that getting rid of all the bad things in the world would likely mean giving up a lot of the good things, too.

Oh, and that killing people just because they’re old is a bad idea. I also hope he learns that.

8. The Little House Books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

These books are the best. The best. I re-read them around the time that Theo was born, and they are just as compelling and entertaining as I remember them being when I was a kid. Possibly even more so now that I understand more about their historical and political context.

There is so much to love in these books. First of all, there’s Laura herself, a smart, adventurous, resourceful girl who often chafes at society’s narrow definition of what women should and shouldn’t do. She spends a lot of time in her younger years being compared unfavourably to her older sister Mary (Mary was blond-haired, blue-eyed and well-behaved, whereas Laura was something of a hellion and, in her own words, “dumpy as a French horse” – whatever that means), but Laura is clearly the cooler of the two.

Then there’s her family, and the description of their daily life from their early days of living in a cabin in the Wisconsin woods, to their eventual permanent home on the South Dakota prairies. I used to daydream about what it would be like to live like that, because when I was seven or eight it seemed super lovely and romantic.

In reality, it was a really fucking hard life. Imagine being stuck on the bleak prairies and seeing only your immediate family for months at a time. Imagine moving there with only a few supplies, having to build your own house and then trying to live off the land for long enough that the government will give it to you for free. Somehow, it doesn’t really hold the same appeal for me that it once did. I guess the Ingalls family liked, it though – they kept at it, and in the end they persevered.

And, somehow, Laura made a lot of it sound like fun.

Finally, there’s all kinds of neat, historical stuff in here. Some of it is totally random and weird – like, in the first book, when they butcher the pig (which is basically like Christmas for them), Pa Ingalls blows up the pig’s bladder like a balloon and gives it to Laura to play with. Some of it offers a historical perspective that I’d never considered before, like when Laura is terrified  to ride on a train because they’re so dangerous. Most of the stuff about their daily life is just downright fascinating.

It’s too bad that this series has been relegated to the land of “girls books”, because, other than the fact that the protagonist is a girl, there’s nothing especially girl-specific about them. I really hope that doesn’t stop Theo from reading and enjoying them.

9. The Bruno and Boots books by Gordon Korman

This is a series about a bunch of boys at a private boarding school in southern Ontario. Specifically, it’s about Bruno Walton, his roommate Melvin “Boots” O’Neal and their many, many shenanigans.

I’m a sucker for boarding school stories, possibly because I spent several of my formative years reading any and all boarding school books by Enid Blyton. Except that while all of Blyton’s protagonists were boring and moral, the boys at McDonald Hall (and the girls Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies across the highway) are hilarious, awesome and always up to something.

Also, one of the books features a girl playing football on the boys’ team. So, you know, FEMINISM.

10. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Let’s be honest: Mary Lennox is a spoiled, privileged bitch who doesn’t even know how to dress herself. But also she’s kind of awesome?

Mary has kind of a shitty childhood in India before her parents die. Sure, she gets just about anything she asks for, but she spends basically zero time with her parents, whose main goal in life is to pretend that they don’t have a kid. Anyway, then there’s a cholera epidemic (leading to a nightmare-inspiring scene in which Mary is the only person left alive in a house where people have become ill/left town so quickly that they’ve literally left their dinner on the table), Mary is orphaned and sent to live with her uncle in England.

Things are kind of terrible in England at first, but then Mary learns how to put her own damn clothes on, starts exploring the great outdoors and befriends her maid Martha’s brother Dickon. Mary discovers the so-called Secret Garden, which has been locked up since her aunt died, and discovers the magic of Growing Things. Oh and her bitchiness totally fixes her hypochondriac cousin and her depressed uncle. Score one for bitchy girls!

I dunno, you guys. This book is just so lovely. Like, check this out:

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.”

Ugh. You guys. My heart. I am such a sucker for Victorian prose about nature.

This is another book that’s usually considered a girlish book, but you know what? For one thing, I don’t care about that stuff, and for another, TWO of the damn protagonists are boys. I hope Theo reads and loves this one as well.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Stay tuned for part 3 of 4! I’m sure I’ll get to it. Someday.

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Shit My 16 Year Old Self Says

14 Sep

Like many (most?) people , I had a shitty time as a teenager. I felt like a lonely, isolated weirdo. I guess I kind of was a lonely, isolated weirdo?

My parents split up when I was 13, and my mother, sisters, and I moved into low income housing. Our neighbours there did things like getting their 10 year old son drunk on Christmas and then laughing as he vomited all over the front lawn. Behind our row of townhouses was an old landfill covered with sod, which everyone called Mount Trashmore. On some nights we heard gunshots, although, to the best of my knowledge, no one there ever died. Once I saw a man, naked and high on something, beaten by the police in broad daylight.

We didn’t have any money, which meant I didn’t have the right clothes. Scratch that, I didn’t even know what the right clothes were. For some reason, I didn’t get the memo sent out to all the girls sometime during the summer before 7th grade. This memo apparently told everyone that, going forward, we would be dressing in cute little t-shirts and tight jeans. I showed up for the first day of school wearing baggy track pants and a pink sweatshirt with kittens on it.

On top of all that, I was socially awkward (no surprises there). Adolescent conversations contained a layer of subtext that I couldn’t detect and didn’t understand. I wanted desperately to know how to act around my peers, but I couldn’t seem to get my shit together and figure out the right way to be.

Oh and also, I had really, really bad skin. Like, really bad.

Anyway, I found my diary from when I was 15 and 16 today. It was weird reading something that I wrote literally half a lifetime ago. Some of the stuff in it is super pretentious, some of it’s strange, but some of it’s downright lovely.

I thought I would share a few snippets with you:

“I dreamed of you again last night. It was a pleasant interlude from the harsh reality I am trying to cope with. I wish you would come back.” [oh the big emotions and big words of a 15 year old!]

“Last night I dreamed that A called me; I was very happy.”

“Here I go on & on about how I hate society, but we have made society & we are society, so I suppose that what I really hate is people.” [a revelation!]

“I pretend that I am Margaret Atwood as I walk to school, making up long monologues in my head. This usually happens after I finish a book of hers. I spend days in Atwood-esque contemplation. I tell myself that I should write things down, but I never do.”

“P does not really hate me, he says. He was just in a bad mood. He hugs me with that half-bemused, half-sarcastic smile on his face and pats my back. He hates scenes of any kind. I know, of course, that eventually he will hate me, but I can pretend for now that everything is the same.” [relationships and hormones – rarely a good mix]

“Houses that have been steeped in the living of people have a certain character. More on this later.”

“Everybody wants to be a writer.” [hah, how true]

“Find out what’s wrong with my skull.” [this is scrawled across the bottom of a page and I have no idea what it means]

“Does everyone feel with the same intensity that I do?” [Oh, honey. Probably.]

“Shakespeare was a hypocrite.”

“I like the smell of wood burning. It reminds me of birthdays and camping trips and maybe something deeper than that.”

“I need this book so that I can remember me and know that what I have become is better than who I was. Or happier, anyway.”

My first instinct is to laugh at the stuff I wrote, the babyish attempts at prose and the juvenile idea that being “literary” means using multisyllabic words. I won’t laugh, though, because that girl? The one who wrote all that stuff? That girl lived in terror of being laughed at.

I’ve been thinking about that girl a lot. I’ve been thinking about what I would say to her if I could.

I would tell her that even when it seems like no one loves her, plenty of people still do.

I would tell her that, even though moving to Halifax is a good idea, she’ll never be able to outrun herself.

I would tell her that she has so many awesome people that she’s going to meet.

I would tell her that she has good taste in books and movies.

I would tell her not to to be too hard on herself.

I would tell her to brush her teeth more often.

I would tell her that there are no easy answers, and that at 30 I still have self-esteem problems, but in spite of that things are good.

I would tell her that the people who are making her feel bad right at that moment won’t matter to her in a few years, but that her good friends will only become better over time.

I would tell her that some (thought not all) of the things she’s found excruciatingly embarrassing will someday be funny.

I would tell her to do her damn homework.

I would thank her for writing all these things down, because she’s right – I’m grateful to have this record of who I was at that time.

When I bought this book I thought it was the prettiest thing ever.

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Everything is perfect (or, everything can be improved)

6 Sep

Full disclosure: I am pretty tipsy right now. Please proceed with caution as the following may not make grammatical/syntactical/any kind of sense.

NaBloPoMo Day 3

Prompt:

Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Bob Marley asked: “Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?”  How would you answer him?

I woke up yesterday to an overcast sky. I should have checked the weather, but it was Theo’s first day of daycare, and we were in a rush to get out the door. I knew that it had rained overnight, and my foolish, optimistic self assumed that the sky would clear sometime during the morning.

It didn’t.

By the time I arrived at the daycare to pick him up, the rain was pelting down. Even with an umbrella, I was soaked up to my waist. As soon as he saw me, Theo pointed at me and said, Mama, water!

It was pretty bad, and it was about to get worse.

See, the thing is, it’s basically impossible to hold an umbrella and push a stroller. I’ve been talking about buying a good raincoat with a hood (or a sou’wester!) since last summer, but I haven’t actually done it yet, because I am the queen of procrastinators. So I ended up having to walk home, in the rain, without any kind of protection.

There’s a funny thing that happens when you walk in the rain. At first you hunch your shoulders up and keep your head down, as if that will stop you from getting wet. Then you realize, shit, I’m already as wet as I’m going to get. You start loosen up, you relax your muscles, and look up. And, maybe, you start to enjoy it.

Yesterday, the water on the sidewalks of Forest Hill was ankle-deep in places. I was wearing ballet flats, which quickly became totally saturated, squelching uncomfortably with every step. It didn’t take me long to realize that I would be happier without any shoes on. Which is how I ended up walking barefoot in the rain through the mean streets of Toronto, my white tank top rendered nearly transparent, hair plastered to my scalp and dripping in my eyes. And you know what? It was great. Realizing that I had no control over how wet I got, and giving myself permission to get soaked made a world of difference in how I viewed the rain.

Now, how does this relate to the prompt?

Asking me if I’m satisfied with the life I’m living is a loaded question.

Is this where I thought I would be at 30? No, probably not. I had so many things that were supposed to have happened by now that haven’t, for one reason or another. Do I have regrets for the things that have led me here, to this place in my life? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I am the master of regrets. Give me any scenario that I’ve been involved in, and I’ll find something to regret about it.

But I also think that the happiest moments in my life have been those that I’ve thought about the least. Walking barefoot through the rain, for example. Running, not because I have a bus to catch or I’m training for a marathon, but because I like to feel the wind in my hair and my feet pounding the pavement. Kissing someone because I want them and need my body to be close to theirs in that moment, without thinking of what might come after.

I like to plan. I like to think ahead. Not only do I like to have all of my ducks in a row, I also like to arrange them by size and shade of yellow. Sometimes that works out really well for me; often it leaves me frustrated and angry when things don’t go my way. Yes, I want to have agency over my own life and control my own destiny, but sometimes it’s exhausting and demoralizing. Sometimes I just want to let go and see where that takes me. Sometimes I would really like to be able to switch my brain off and stop thinking. Sometimes I just want to do something because it feels good, and not wonder what it will mean for me in the bigger picture.

I feel like I spend a lot of time fighting myself, and fighting my desires, because I don’t think they’re beneficial to me.

What I want is to realize that no matter how hard I try to stay dry, I’m going to get wet. I want to accept that I am getting wet and maybe even enjoy it.

So what am I supposed to answer?

Yes, I am satisfied with my life? Does that mean I’m stagnant and boring?

No, I’m not satisfied with my life and I want to continue to try to work harder to improve my lot? Does that mean that I’m impossible to please and will never be happy?

Let’s leave it at this: I am satisfied that I am here, on this earth, in this particular time in history. I am satisfied to have this particular man in my life and have given birth to this particular child. But I think there is a lot of room for change and forward movement.

Or, as one of my yoga teachers said:

“Everything is perfect. Everything can be improved.”

I hope that’s enough of an answer.

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15 literary characters I am in love with (or have been in love with at some point in my life)

30 Aug

I have this bad habit of falling hard for fictional characters. Like, to the point where, when I get to the end of a book, I feel like we’ve broken up or something. Does everybody do this? Or am I just a weirdo?

Anyway, I made you a list of my top 15 literary loves of all time! Oh God I love lists so much.

1. Theodore Laurence from Little Women 

First of all, please note that this dude and my son have the same first name. It is not really a coincidence. If Theo had been a girl, one of the names we were considering was Josephine. Don’t laugh.

Laurie is everything younger me wanted in a boyfriend: he was cute, funny, smart, mischievous and totally in need of a mother figure (okay, kidding on that last part – I mean, it’s true, it’s just not really on my list of potential mates). Even now when I read Little Women I get SO PISSED OFF that Jo won’t marry Laurie. How can she resist him when says stuff like:

If you loved me, Jo, I should be a perfect saint, for you could make me anything you like.

That’s clearly total lies, but still. Romance!

The bitterest pill to swallow is when Laurie goes and marries THE WORST MARCH SISTER (aka Amy). Ugh. Whatever, I hope he’s happy being married to the vain, obnoxious “artist” (hint: she is actually not very talented) of the family. I’m sure she’s thrilled she finally bagged a rich dude, since that was her plan all along.

My love for Laurie was probably aided by the fact that Christian Bale played him in the 1994 movie. Swoon. Double swoon.

2. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye

I think that we can all agree that Holden would definitely be in the running for Worst Boyfriend Ever. He’s whiny, he’s pretentious, he has a victim complex a mile long – and yet, there was so much that teenage me identified with in him. As an adolescent trying to define myself against the storm of media-generated ideas of what I should look like, how I should act, what I should wear, his anti-phony policy had serious appeal for me. Also, I could totally identify with how awkward and isolated he felt around his peers. So even though reading Catcher these days makes me roll my eyes so hard I practically sprain them, he’ll always have a special place in my heart.

3. Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

True, he’s a rude, egotistical, incredibly impulsive drug-addict who hates women, but let’s face it: Sherlock Holmes is awesome. He doesn’t take shit from anybody, he’s super smart, and he’s a snappy dresser. Plus he would be really fun to hang around with (even if he would totally make you feel like an idiot all of the time). I know he is probably totally asexual, but what woman doesn’t love a challenge like that? (Hint: most of them)

4. Duncan, The Edible Woman

Another contender for Worst Boyfriend Ever. I’m sensing a theme here.

Duncan lies, and screws around with Marian’s feelings, and is generally terrible and manipulative. But somehow he is still lovable? It helps that he’s pretty honest about being a rotten person. He’s funny and quirky and is the perfect counterbalance to her bizarre, overly structured relationship with Peter. Plus, he’s tall and skinny, which is totally my type. I wouldn’t want to date him, but I think he’d be fun as a friend with benefits.

5. David Staunton, The Manticore

Okay, so David Staunton is totally weird about women and hasn’t had sex since he was 16. Oh, and that one time David did sleep with someone, it was with his father’s former mistress, in a bizarre arrangement set up by his father. I still love him, though. I love how he tries to quietly defy his overbearing father at every turn, and how he’s able to build a life for himself that’s at least partly outside of his father’s (extensive) shadow. Plus, his sister Caroline is awesome. I would totally marry him and then hang out with Caroline every day.

6. Christopher Heron, The Perilous Gard

Christopher is another love dating from my teenage days. I guess The Perilous Gard is technically YA, but if you like historical fiction, you will probably love it. Anyway, Christopher spends the entire book being moody and rude to Kate (with somewhat good reason), but then totally redeems himself with an awesome speech at the end:

I never thought of you like that. How could I? If you were any other woman, I could tell you I loved you, easily enough, but not you – because you’ve always seemed to me like a part of myself, and it would be like saying I loved my own eyes or my own mind. But have you ever though of what it would be to have to live without your mind or your eyes, Kate? To be mad? Or blind? I can’t talk about it. That’s the way I feel.

PRETTY ROMANTIC, RIGHT? It seemed that way when I was a teenager, anyway.

7. Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall

Thomas Cromwell kind of gets a bum rap when it comes to English History. He was unpopular in his own time, and unpopular after his death (by beheading!). What this book supposes is: maybe he was actually a pretty nice and awesome dude? Well, nicer than he’s painted in the history books, anyway.

What’s especially awesome about Cromwell (in Wolf Hall, at least) is that he is super unpretentious. He was born a commoner, and even as he rose through the courtly ranks, he still maintains his commoner sensibilities (and sense of humour). He had a shitty childhood, and then his wife and daughters both died of the English sweat (DID YOU KNOW THAT IS THE ACTUAL NAME OF AN ACTUAL DISEASE? sorry, I got a little excited there – up until I read this book, I assumed that it was a made up thing, like “brain fever”). Anyway, in spite of all this, he plods away at his work and is a nice, funny dude, and, I dunno, I kind of love him. He’s definitely marriage material, even if he does have some emotional baggage.

8. Konstantin “Kostya” Dmitrievich Levin, Anna Karenina

First of all, props to Levin for having such a long, awesome name. I love Russian names. Love them. I wish I had a Russian name, complete with awesome nickname.

Levin is kind of a sad sack, and spends a large chunk of the novel either mooning over Kitty or pondering the meaning of life. He’s still pretty great though – especially when he gets all up on worker’s rights. And he’s definitely a devoted and loving dude, which puts him way ahead of most of the people on this list so far. That being said, he does have the potential to be a super annoying partner, though.

8. Calvin O’Keefe, A Wrinkle In Time

Calvin is possibly my favourite on this list. He is a super popular smart athletic dude who loves Meg for exactly who she is. He doesn’t want her to be prettier, or less socially awkward, or more able to control her temper. He loves how smart she is, and is totally cool with the fact that she’s more intelligent than he is. He is just so lovely. My 12 year old self was totally head-over-heels for him.

I think Matt is basically my Calvin O’Keefe, even if I’m not actually smarter than Matt is (although one time I did score slightly higher than him on a fake online MENSA test).

9. Morpheus, The Sandman

Another dude who is worst boyfriend material. Why is he even on this list? He spends his days moping around, he’s always in a bad mood, he treats everyone pretty badly, but, I dunno. He’s the master of dreams, and that’s pretty awesome. I really want to live in his castle. And I think under all of his weirdness he has a good heart. Yeah, these excuses sound feeble, even to me.

Let’s just accept that I have terrible taste in fictional men and move on.

10. Claudine, Claudine at School

Claudine is rude, outspoken, hilarious and totally badass. Oh, and she’s also into girls, specifically her teacher. What’s not to love? When I was in my teens I didn’t know if I wanted to sleep with Claudine or be her. Or maybe I just really wanted to live in the late 19th century French countryside.

11. Frances Piper, Fall On Your Knees

Oh, Frances. One of my favourite characters ever. I think that Kathleen Piper is supposed to be the real lesbian ingénue of this book, but Frances was always the one who did it for me. Even though she has a pretty shitty life, she never pities herself. She’s totally funny, crass and irrepressible. Also she’s the kind of person who Gets Shit Done. She doesn’t sit around and wonder what she should do – she plans carefully, then goes out and does crazy things like trying to replace her younger sister’s dead twin by sleeping with someone she’s only met a handful of times.

Frances is someone I would want to have on hand in any emergency. Also, she’s a really great cook, specifically of Lebanese food. Yum.

12. Touchstone, Sabriel

Touchstone is this sort of semi-helpless character who has amnesia for most of the book and is also prone to berserker rages. But other than that, he’s totally lovely. And he’s totally willing to let Sabriel boss him around, which is awesome. Plus it sounds like he has really great hair.

13. Millat Iqbal, White Teeth

Another emotionally damaged asshole who also happens to be totally charming and funny and attractive. And apparently really good in bed! After we both read this book, my friend Annie confessed that she had a sudden impulse to go up to all the brown boys she met and whisper, are you some kind of Indian sex god?

He has good taste in movies, too, if I recall correctly.

14. Almanzo Wilder, Little Town On The Prairie

Almanzo is another one of my favourite characters, even if he’s not strictly fictional. Laura constantly describes herself as being as “dumpy as a French horse”, and, of course, Almanzo is a total hottie. All the other girls in town want him, but he chooses Laura because she’s smart and nice and a SUPER HARDCORE PIONEER. Seriously, Laura was the best. She could totally have out-pioneered all the other girls in that town.

So yeah, Almanzo is another dude who gets huge props for loving Laura for who she is, and not what she looks like. And from later books, it’s pretty clear that he and Laura work as a team in their marriage, rather than him trying to dominate her. Another one who’s total marriage material. High five!

Sergeant X, For Esmé – With Love and Squalor

First of all, this is a guy who knows how to talk to kids, which is rare. And he is just so charming and lovely with Esmé, who is clearly heartbroken and lonely (and a little bossy). This is one of my favourite Salinger stories of all time. I’m so glad that he was able to make it through with his F-A-C-U-L-T-I-E-S mostly intact.

Man, who would have thought there would be two Salinger dudes on this list? That’s kind of a shocker.

So spill, internet. Who are your embarrassing fictional crushes? And what do you think they say about your personality? (I think it’s pretty clear from this list that I want a smart, funny, attractive yet douchey and self-obsessed dude who is able to talk to children and loves me for who I am. And is the master of the dream world.)

Okay, but seriously – HOW COULD SHE SAY NO? I hope she enjoys her eventual marriage to the smelly old professor.

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Home, or something like it

27 Aug

I am writing this in the car on the way back to Toronto (science! technology! the future! etc.), on our way home from a long weekend in Quebec. We were there for my cousin’s baby shower, and also to visit my grandmother and other assorted extended family.

My grandparents moved to Saint-Bruno in the early 50s, shortly after they married. Back then it was a tiny hamlet south of Montreal just beginning to experience post-war boom. Although the town itself has been around since the mid 1700s, most of the houses there fall squarely into the mid-century bungalow category. My grandmother says that when they first moved to Saint-Bruno, it was still remote enough from the bustle of big-city Montreal that the selection of furniture and appliances that they could order for delivery was seriously limited. She and her neighbours all had exactly the same couch from Sears, which was available in only three staid, somber colours.

My grandmother has lived in the same house for nearly sixty years. What I love the most about her house is that change happens there at a glacier’s pace; although rooms are occasionally rearranged, with furniture sometimes drifting from one room to another, and the downstairs bathroom has been refitted to accommodate my now-wheelchair-bound grandmother, so much else is exactly as I remember it from my childhood.

So many versions of me exist in this house – as a squalling infant, pushed up the rocky drive in an old metal pram by my mother; as a rambunctious toddler, staying with my grandparents for a few weeks while my parents prepare to move to Ontario. There’s me throughout my primary school years, all skinny tanned legs and long blond hair, my clear skin and self-confidence both shining with pre-pubescence.

I’m there as a sullen  teenager, resentful that I’ve been forced to leave my friends behind just so that I can visit my dull grandparents. I’m there as a self-absorbed early-twentysomething, convinced that a few years of university mean that I know more than everyone. I’m there in my rebellious phase, shocking (or so I think) in my low-cut tops and short skirts, bragging about boys and booze. I’m there with my first serious boyfriend, who then became my husband. I’m there pregnant. I’m there as a new mother.

I’m in the cool, dark basement playing school with my cousins; it’s the late 80s, and one of my imaginary classmates is named Charlie Sheen. I’m tearing around on a Christmas sugar high, unable to sit still long enough for holiday pictures. I’m sitting at the kids table during a family dinner, happy that I don’t have to endure adult conversation.

I’m eating breakfast with my grandfather at the oil-cloth covered kitchen table. I’m 19 years old and midway through my first year of university. He tells me that he has lung cancer. I don’t have the right words to say to him, so I just tell him that my mother already told me. We sit in silence for the rest of the meal.

I’m back four months later for his funeral.

I can’t turn a single corner in this house, can’t enter a room or pick up an object without encountering one or several shades of myself. It helps that this place has a sort of fairy tale quality to it; the hedge surrounding the backyard is easily ten feet high, giving off a sort of sleeping-beauty-enchanted-forest vibe, and the interior of the house is neatly preserved as if by magic in another era. Stepping through the door sometimes feels like traveling through time, although I don’t know whether I’m going back to my own childhood in the 80s and early 90s, or my mother’s, several decades earlier.

It’s not just the house either, it’s the town itself. Out for a walk with Theo, I pass the lake where we watched Saint-Jean-Baptiste day fireworks, the same lake where my sister once cut open her foot on a stray piece of glass. We pass Mount Bruno United Church, where my grandfather laid the cornerstone back in the 1960s. I am inside that church, simultaneously in the midst of being baptized, crying at my grandfather’s funeral, and singing in my cousin’s wedding.

Maybe it’s because I’ve lived a fairly uprooted life (by my calculations, I’d moved 13 times by the time I was 25), but having a house like this that has been there at every stage of my life seems positively extraordinary. Maybe if you’re someone whose parents still live in the same place where they grew up, this whole post seems bizarre and pointless, but bear with me here, there is a message in here somewhere.

I guess the thing is that I don’t really feel like I have a hometown. People ask me where I’m from, and I hesitate. Do they mean, where was I born? The answer to that would be Montreal, but since we only lived there for a few years, I can’t really think of it as my hometown, can I? If they mean where did you live the longest? or where did you grow up?, then the answer is Kitchener, but since I have no family left there, and since I spent so much time actively planning how I was going to escape southwestern Ontario, that doesn’t seem like the right answer either. Do they mean where do you live now? That would be Toronto, but I don’t really consider myself a Torontonian, for many reasons.

So maybe the answer is Saint-Bruno. Maybe that’s the place that I have the strongest ties to, or at least the most emotional ones.

We had such a lovely weekend. We played in the creek at the Parc du Ruisseau:

We ate tomatoes fresh from my grandfather’s garden

We discovered the WORLD’S MOST EXCITING SHOPPING CART:

Basically, everyone, especially Theo, had a total blast.

I hope that we can make it back there soon. I hope that we can visit often enough that Theo starts to understand why I feel the way I do about Saint-Bruno. And most of all, I hope that he has someplace, any place, in his life that is as secure and familiar and unchanging as my grandmother’s house is for me.

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Postpartum depression (or, hey, let’s do some oversharing!)

22 Aug

I wanted to start this post off with something very dramatic like, when Theo was six weeks old, I was contemplating suicide. That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Edgy, yet thoughtful. The problem is, it would be a lie – by the time Theo was six weeks old, I’d gone way past contemplation and was firmly into planning territory. It’s just that “planning” doesn’t have quite the same literary panache as “contemplating”, you know?

It would be pills, I decided: the percocets I had left over after my c-section, and some sleeping pills that’d been sitting around since before my pregnancy. I would have to do it while Matt was at work, but close enough to the end of the day that Theo wouldn’t have to be alone with his dead mother for too long. I would get some formula, I decided, and sterilize some bottles – that way Matt could feed him immediately, because Theo would likely be hungry by the time I was found. I would write a note, a good one.

Planning things out step by step like this made me feel better; it made it seem as if I had some kind of control over my life.

I didn’t want to die because I hated Theo. In fact, I loved him ferociously. I wanted to die because I knew that I was totally and utterly incapable as a mother. I wanted to die because I knew that if I lived, if I had to continue to be Theo’s primary caregiver, then I would continue to fuck things up horribly. I wanted to die because if I did, someone else would have to step in as his mother, and whoever it was would surely be more competent than me.

At that moment I sincerely believed that even random people I passed on the street were more qualified to raise my son than I was.

I tried to tell people how I felt, tried to convince them that I was an unfit parent, but no one seemed to believe me. They dismissed my worries as normal, and told me that every first-time mother felt the same way. I knew that what I was feeling was far from normal, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought about running away, packing a suitcase full of warm weather clothes and boarding a plane, but that seemed crazy. Suicide, however, seemed totally logical.

Although I’m referring to what I went through as postpartum depression, my anxiety and fear had been around for most of my pregnancy. Here I’d gone 27 years only having to take care of myself (and often doing a pretty poor job of it), and now suddenly I was 100% responsible for this tiny life inside of me. It seemed like that should be enough to drive anyone around the bend.

Was I eating enough, I wondered? Was I eating the right things? Did I need more iron? Was I getting enough omega 3 to ensure healthy brain development? I started carrying around a list of fish, rated from highest mercury content to lowest. I would whip this list out at restaurants and do a few quick calculations in my head – had I already ingested any potentially mercury-laced fish this week? How big of a portion could I have? It didn’t seem fair that Matt didn’t have to change his life at all while his son gestated, but I had to watch every bite that went into my mouth.

And then there was the alcohol. See, I hadn’t known I was pregnant for the first few weeks, and I’d had maybe two or three glasses of wine, total, in that time. Midway through my pregnancy I became convinced that my child was going to have fetal alcohol syndrome. I hadn’t even given birth yet, and I’d already ruined my child’s life. How could I be such a selfish, terrible person?

By the end of my pregnancy I’d become incredibly paranoid about everything, so it was almost with a sense of relief that I greeted the news that, at 34 weeks, I had to be hospitalized and put on bed rest. Here I would be in a place where I was eating a doctor-approved diet, where I would be hooked up to a big, clunky machine twice a day in order to monitor my son’s heart rate, and nurses were only the press of a button away. After months of fretting over taking care of myself and the baby, suddenly I could put myself in someone else’s hands.

And then Theo was born, at 36 weeks, via c-section. I’d thought that once he was out of me, once I could hold him in my arms and know for certain at any given moment that he was alive and well, things would be better. It wasn’t like that, though. I held him briefly in the operating room while they stitched me back up, but then they whisked him away, concerned about the grunting he was doing (a sign of laboured breathing, they said). Matt went with him, and my mother went off to call my grandmothers and aunts and uncles. I sat alone in the recovery room and waited, wanting only to hold my son.

They brought Theo back to me and let me try to nurse him, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. He started grunting again, so they took him away again, this time across the street to Sick Kids for an x-ray of his lungs. You need to prepare yourself for the fact that he might end up in the NICU, the nurse told me. I knew that wasn’t the end of the world, but still, it was scary. On top of that I’d read so many things about how the first few hours of a baby’s life are critical for bonding and creating a breastfeeding relationship – would missing this time with him have an effect on the bond we had?

The thing was, I was already having doubts about our mother-son bond, even that early in the game. When I’d been pregnant, I’d felt like Theo and I had intuitively understood each other. He would kick, and I would ascribe meaning to those kicks. I would rub his feet as they poked my ribs, and I felt like he just knew that my actions meant, baby, I love you. But once Theo was born, I realized that he was a total stranger. I didn’t know what he thought or wanted at all, and he didn’t give a shit about my feelings.

That first week things went from bad to worse. I couldn’t get Theo to latch, and every attempted nursing session was a nightmare. His weight dropped down to 4 lb 12 oz, which, while still within the range of normal, seemed frighteningly low. I felt like I’d failed at having the birth I wanted, had failed at properly bonding with my son, and was now failing at providing him with even the most basic necessities, like food. I couldn’t believe that they actually trusted me enough to let me take my kid home a few days after his birth.

There was something else, too. During my c-section, I heard my doctor say to his intern, look at this, here’s why he was breech. I asked him what he’d found, and he told me that I have a bicornuate uterus (like a cat! he said brightly). This means that instead of having one large chamber, my uterus has two smaller ones. Theo’s head had been stuck in one of the chambers and he’d been unable to flip into the proper position.

Of course, as soon as I could, I googled bicornuate uterus. Wikipedia had the following to say:

Pregnancies in a bicornuate uterus are usually considered high-risk and require extra monitoring because of association with poor reproduction potential.

A bicornuate uterus is associated with increased adverse reproductive outcomes like:

  • Recurrent pregnancy loss: the reproductive potential of a bicornuate uterus is usually measured by live birth rate (also called fetal survival rate).
  • Preterm birth: with a 15 to 25% rate of preterm delivery. The reason that a pregnancy may not reach full-term in a bicornuate uterus often happens when the baby begins to grow in either of the protrusions at the top. A short cervical length seems to be a good predicter of preterm delivery in women with a bicornuate uterus.
  • Malpresentation (breech birth or transverse presentation): a breech presentation occurs in 40-50% pregnancies with a partial bicornuate uterus and not at all (0%) in a complete bicornuate uterus.
  • Deformity: Offspring of mothers with a bicornuate uterus are at high risk for “deformities and disruptions” and “malformations.”

So here I’d been worrying about stupid things like omega 3 and iron while, deep in the dark recesses of my body, my own uterus was secretly working against me. This whole time I’d been afraid of the wrong thing – I was like France, setting up the Maginot Line, while all along the Germans were planning to attack from the opposite direction.

I was clearly (biologically, even) not meant to be anybody’s mother.

The first few weeks of Theo’s life were awful. I’d always been a bad sleeper, and now it was worse. Theo wriggled and grunted in his sleep, and it kept me awake. Every little sound that came out of him made all of my muscles tense up, making rest nearly impossible. Whenever I complained about how tired I was, people would say, sleep when the baby sleeps, as if that was some great revelation. As if it was something that I couldn’t come up with on my own. Breastfeeding continued to suck, and I began to dread feeding time. I would push it back by 5, 10 or 15 minutes, as if that made any difference. My days were lonely, boring and frustrating.

It was the carrier that finally pushed me over the edge. See, we live on the third floor and our building doesn’t have an elevator. I’m not strong enough to drag our stroller up and down the stairs. So, whenever we went out, I used a carrier for Theo. And whenever he fell asleep in the carrier, he grunted with every breath.

I asked everyone about the grunting – my mother, my sister-in-law, friends with kids. Everyone assured me that it seemed totally normal. Then, while obsessively googling “grunting” “breathing” and “baby carrier”, I found one lone site that said that grunting was a sign of laboured breathing (which I already knew), and prolonged grunting could mean that the baby’s blood oxygen level was low. Which could lead to many health complications, including brain damage.

The thing is, I’d known something was wrong. I’d known. I’d asked everyone and yes, they’d reassured me, but why hadn’t I trusted my own instincts? Because I stupidly and selfishly wanted to be able to leave the house, that’s why. If I was any kind of good mother, I would have stopped using the carrier as soon as he started grunting. I would have stayed home until Theo was old enough for the grunting to fix itself. But I wasn’t a good mother. I was a terrible mother. Not only that, but I was a clear danger to my child.

When I read that part about the brain damage, I handed my sleeping son to my visiting mother-in-law, went into the bedroom and cried for three hours. How could I ever undo this? How could it ever be fixed? It wasn’t as if I could just have a new kid and start fresh, having learned from my mistakes. A baby wasn’t like a paper that you could crumple up and toss in the garbage. I was stuck with my sad, damaged kid, and would be stuck with him for the rest of my life. He would be a constant reminder of what a terrible person I was.

If I’d been home alone at that moment, I likely would have killed myself then and there. But I wasn’t alone, so instead I confessed everything to my mother-in-law, hoping she would call the CAS and have Theo taken into protective custody (or, at the very least, have me arrested). Instead, she convinced me to go to the doctor.

And I did go to the doctor, and joined a program at Women’s College Hospital specifically for women with PPD, and I went on medication, and saw a therapist. All of that helped, but I think what helped the most was seeing Theo grow up and realize that no, in fact, he wassn’t brain damaged. He’s a totally normal, lovely, happy kid. And these days I’m mostly a totally normal, lovely, happy mom. And we have a pretty decent bond, I would say.

I still have my moments of fear and paranoia. I still occasionally freak out over little things (just ask Matt – I make him do all my baby-related googling now). I will probably always be a somewhat high-strung parent, but I can live with that.

What makes me sad is that I will never get those first few weeks of Theo’s life back. They will always exist for me in this cold, dark haze. I will never be able to think of Theo as a newborn without associating his early babyhood with that terrible time in my life. And that sucks. It sucks big time.

What also sucks is that I feel like I can’t talk about my experience with PPD. I often dance around the issue, saying “I had a tough time at the beginning,” or, “things were really hard for me”. I’ve never said, “being a new mother made me suicidal”. Well, not until now.

But I want to talk about it. I want to share my experience so that maybe someone else will think, hmmm, maybe I’m not bonkers and/or a terrible mother, maybe it’s my hormones. I want to feel like I’m not the only one who went through this, and I also want other women to feel like they’re not alone. I want them to know that things will get better, that they should talk to their doctor, or call a suicide hotline.

Most of all I want them to know that they are, in all likelihood, fantastic mothers.

Theo and I a few hours after his birth

For anyone who is in a state of mental health crisis, here is a link to the Mental Health Crisis line. You can also call Telehealth, if you’re in Ontario. If you are experiencing any kind of depression or are having suicidal thoughts, please, please call one of the numbers above, or else contact your doctor or local mental health crisis line.

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20 books that I hope Theo reads when he’s older, part I

20 Aug

It’s not exactly a big secret that I love reading (also – that would be a pretty weird thing for me to keep secret). I’m 30 and I still get crushes on fictional characters, although maybe I have better taste now than I did as a moony teenager in love with Holden Caulfield. One of my greatest hopes for Theo is that he will grow up to love books even a fraction as much as I do. In light of that fact, I’ve created a list of 20 books that I loved when I was a kid as a sort of starting point for Theo’s future reading career. Because it’s never too early for this sort of thing, right?

Keep in mind that I haven’t read some of these books in, like, 20 years, so my reviews/descriptions might not be entirely accurate. However, what I can offer you is the dominant impression these books leave me with so many years after the fact:

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1. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, 1959

This is a book about a 12-year-old boy, Sam, who gets sick of living in his parents’ crowded New York City apartment with his 10,000 8 brothers and sisters. His solution to this problem is to take off for the Catskill Mountains and find this piece of property his family abandoned years before (they used to have a house or something there, like, three generations ago, but then they moved to the city I guess).

Sam tells his parents that he’s going to run away to the mountains and basically says that he will go whether they’re cool with it or not, so they totally let him go. Um, amazing! How come my parents weren’t that cool when I was 12? Anyway, he apparently learns some wilderness skills or whatever at the public library (TAKE THAT, ROB FORD), and then is all, see ya, giant family and tiny apartment.

My main memory of this book is that this kid was fucking SERIOUS BUSINESS. He finds a peregrine falcon that he trains to hunt for him. He lives in a tree. He almost dies, like, fifty times. At one point he is skinning a rabbit and is like, hmmm, I really want to eat his liver. So he does, and then he’s like, welp, I guess I was vitamin D deficient. I don’t know why, but that scene struck me as especially hardcore. HE ATE A LIVER, YOU GUYS. A LIVER. I guess liver really grossed me out when I was young?

Another big impression that this book left on me was that I was a huge wuss. I would never, ever go off and live in the mountains by myself in a house that I had to dig with my own hands. I could never be that self-sufficient. Also, I could never go that long without seeing another human face (even if occasionally I fantasize about it). In spite of my wussiness, though, I still managed to identify with Sam because, hey, who doesn’t want to run off and leave everything behind sometimes? Who doesn’t want to push themselves to the limit to discover how much they can endure, and how much they’re really capable of?

And I guess that’s the main message I got from this book: if you really want something, and you really prepare for it, you can achieve it. And also maybe you will get a sweet pet falcon out of the deal.

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2. Warrior Scarlet, Rosemary Suttcliff, 1958

This one takes place in Britain, during the Bronze Age. It tells the story of Drem, a kid with only one functioning arm. The thing is, Drem really, really wants to be a warrior (in case you were wondering, this is kind of a Big Deal in his tribe). At first everyone is all, no way can you be a warrior, your arm doesn’t even work! You’ll have to go live with the sheep-herders. Have fun with the sheep, Drem! And then they’re like, well, I guess you can train with the other youth. Maybe.

So of course Drem goes to train with the other boys his age, seems to prove that he’s able to keep up with them, and totally starts to get over the fact that he’s different. He even starts to bond with his peers! BUT (you totally knew there was a but coming here), in order to become a warrior he has to kill a wolf. And of course the killing gets all fucked up (the wolf injures him really badly, so his friend steps in to help, which is TOTALLY NOT ALLOWED according to the tribe), and it looks like Drem will be spending the rest of his life with the sheep people. Of course, some other stuff happens, Drem ends up somehow killing the exact same wolf he failed to kill years before, and there’s a happy ending where he completes the super seekrit initiation ceremony and becomes a full-fledged warrior. Yay! Everybody wins! Except the wolf, I guess.

My main memory of this book is how insanely fascinating, beautiful and bad-ass it made Bronze Age Britain sound. I remember poring, practically drooling, over passages about midnight bonfires and sacred rituals and ancient magic, and whoa, did I ever want to live in that world. I remember this being a book that I daydreamed about a lot, and that’s something that I want for Theo. I want him to have books that he loves so much he ends up spending hours and hours imagining what it would be like to exist within the confines of that story.

Plus, you know, super seekrit initiation. SO AWESOME.

3. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, 1962

First, can we all just agree that Meg Murry is awesome? She’s not conventionally attractive, she has self-esteem issues, she’s socially awkward, she beats other kids up, and she’s super smart. I mean, sure, she’s not as smart as Charles Wallace, but then who is? Anyway, she’s someone that a lot of people can identify with. And she ends up kicking major ass.

The book takes place in small town America (I want to say somewhere in New England, but I’m not sure) during the cold war. The Murrys are a family that includes two super-smart parents, their super-smart daughter Meg, their super-super-smart son Charles Wallace and their totally boring and average twins, Sandy and Dennys. Mr. Murry disappeared during some kind of secret science mission, and now everyone in their village thinks that he just ran off and abandoned his family. Oh and everyone also thinks that Charles Wallace is developmentally delayed, even though he’s a genius like whoa.

Anyway, Meg and Charles Wallace end up teaming up with some extraterrestrial-type ladies, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, and Meg’s hot schoolmate Calvin O’Keefe (who is super popular but ALSO has issues) in order to go rescue Mr. Murry. They travel through space and time in a sort of “wrinkle” called a tesseract (SCIENCE!!!!) and have some adventures before finally arriving at the planet where the force of ultimate evil darkness is keeping Meg’s dad prisoner. Even though you would think that it would be Charles Wallace who ends up saving the day (because he’s so frigging precocious), it’s actually Meg’s badass contrariness that gets everyone out of there alive. HIGH FIVE FOR SMART, CONTRARY WOMEN.

My main impressions from this book were: a) whoooaaaa I think I like science fiction and/or fantasy (it was probably the first sci-fi/fantasy book I read) b) I wish I could be part of the Murry family and c) I triple wish that Calvin O’Keefe was my boyfriend (he is seriously so nice, you guys don’t even know). It’s a book about a smart, resourceful young woman who realizes that she’s strong and awesome and ALSO she gets a hot, nice boyfriend without even changing anything about her looks. He even tells her he likes her in glasses! Aw, you guys, I love this book so hard.

 

4. The Great Brain, John Dennis Fitzgerald, 1967

This is actually the first of a series of books about Tom Fitzgerald, the titular Great Brain. The books, which are set in late 19th century Utah, are narrated by Tom’s long-suffering younger brother, John. See, Tom is a genius, but he only wants to use his powers for evil, i.e. “swindling” people out of their possessions and thinking up get-rich-quick schemes. He also does things like trying to frame the schoolteacher for being “a drunk”. You guys, these were THE BEST BOOKS EVER, basically.

No, but seriously, even though Tom occasionally receives his comeuppance, he still gets away with a lot of stuff. When I was a kid, I mostly wanted to hang out with him and stir up shit and learn how to swindle people out of their possessions because, hey, it sounded like a lot of fun! Plus, they had so many whacky adventures. If these books are anything to go by, Utah is way more fun than any place I’ve ever lived.

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5. Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

There is some kind of law that every French-speaking person has to read this book at least once over the course of their childhood. Now, let’s be totally clear: no kid is going to understand this book. They might enjoy it, but they won’t understand it.

Plot-wise, the book is about a pilot who crashes in the Sahara and is struggling to survive. One day, a young boy, the titular Little Prince appears. Now, this Little Prince is from space (!!) where he lives on his own personal asteroid (!!!) that has three active volcanoes (!!!!) and one rose. Weirdly, the humanoid prince falls in love with the rose (to be fair, I guess he didn’t have a whole lot of options in terms of life partners), who then lies to him because she’s super vain and kind of rude. They break up for a while, but then I guess they get back together.

The Little Prince decides he needs to explore the universe, so he sets off to visit a bunch of other asteroids, each of which is populated by a single, ridiculous adult. One of these adults, a geographer, is all, hey, you should totally check out the planet Earth! And the Little Prince is like, okay cool!

On Earth, the prince meets more ridiculous adults, and discovers that his rose isn’t beautiful or unique after all. He’s pretty bummed about this until he meets a fox (who totally steals the spotlight and gets the best lines in the book) who convinces him that yeah, dude, your rose IS special because she’s the one you love. Whoa! Revelation!  The prince also meets a weird snake who tells him that he can send him back to his home asteroid, but the prince is all, no, that’s cool, I’m good for now.

Anyway, the prince tells this whole story to the pilot, and then helps him find a well so that he doesn’t die of thirst or whatever. Then the prince is like, welp, I guess I’ll go find that snake again! The pilot realizes that the Little Prince will have to let the snake kill him in order to get him back home, and tries to convince him to stay on Earth. The prince totally ignores him and lets the snake bite him. Sorry, pilot! The story ends with the pilot looking for the prince.

As a kid you read this book and you’re like, hmmm, I guess this is fine. It’s kind of funny or whatever. Then you read it as an adult and you’re like, oohhhh, I get it. Adults are boring and totally sucky, while kids are awesome (fact). Also we have to appreciate the people we have in our lives who love us, and not spend time comparing them to other people (double fact). And finally, you realize that you want to spend all day hanging out with the fox, who says things like, “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” (One sees clearly only with their heart – the essential is invisible to the eyes)

As an adult, I’ve read Saint-Exupéry’s other books, and have realized that he is this crazy amazing poetic philosopher. Wind, Sand and Stars is, in particular, my favourite. But I’m glad that I read The Little Prince when I was a kid, even if I didn’t understand it. I’m glad to have my childish impressions so that I can compare them to how I see the book now – I think that’s especially important given that it’s a book about the magical worldview children have that we lose as we age.

I’ll finish off here with a quote from Wind, Sand and Stars:

Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

Stay tuned for parts II, III and IV. And please feel free to leave book suggestions in the comments – if I get enough of them, I will do a whole post about your suggestions. I would write about books all day every day, if I could.

p.s. Can we all just agree that Holden Caulfield would be, like, the worst boyfriend in the history of ever?

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Voyeurism

14 Aug

My mother has often accused me of being a Nosey Parker. And it’s true, I am. If you are sitting next to me in a coffee shop tearfully breaking up with your girlfriend, I will totally eavesdrop. If you are standing close to me on the subway reading a book, I will try to get a look at the title – and if it’s something I’ve read, I will crane my neck to try to see what page you’re on. If you drop a torn-up, handwritten letter in the middle of the street, I will totally pick it up, read it, and then post it on the internet.

So, you know, fair warning.

Anyway, I found this today:

Front:

” … this relationship, and I sta … 

You should learn to treat women with fairness, equally and with respect, if you want respect back. Stop being ridiculous always trying to see if the grass on the other side is greener. I consider myself old for this games you should’ve think of this before you went ahead, hiding, over the phone conversation (like you didn’t want me to heard you go upstairs secretly).

I don’t need this shit in my life this … kind of stress, I am pretty sure … ”

Back:

“ … with that money you … better. With lot more space for your clothe for your things in general.

ALL I want to say is “you are right”. I have also many reason to start by saying that for better or worse this is the best for the both of us.

Lately you are in a bad mood more often and that’s because you are not happy anymore, and I understand.”

So much heartbreak in such a tiny handful of sentences. So much to wonder about – how did the author go from demanding respect for herself and calling her lover out on his or her bad behaviour to saying that their lover is right and they understand? What happened in the missing paragraphs? Who tore it up and left it in the street – the person who wrote it, perhaps thinking better of it, or the person who received it?

So many mysteries contained in one rain-dampened, ragged-edged piece of paper.

Ah, life.

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Dirty Thirty

12 Aug

A week ago it was my birthday. A week ago I turned thirty. As F. Scott Fitzgerald would say, I am standing before the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. Yes, I am pretentious enough to start out a post about my thirtieth birthday with a quote from the Great Gatsby. High five, lit nerds!

I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been thinking about this birthday. I mean, I haven’t been giving it a ton of though, and I certainly haven’t been agonizing over it or anything, but yeah. Thirty. I mean, it’s a milestone, right?

I’ve been thinking that things are good. I am mostly in a good place. And I can say with confidence that I am in a much better place than I was when I turned 20. I mean that both literally and figuratively – I spent my 20th birthday working in a cookie factory in Kitchener. I had to wear a hairnet and a mustard yellow smock. My fellow cookie workers bought me a fancy Tim Horton’s donut and stuck a candle in it.

This year I began my birthday celebrations with dinner and a movie with Matt (and sans bébé). We went out to a fancy restaurant, where I proceeded to prove myself to be the cheapest cheap drunk in the history of ever. I wore a fancy silk dress and my favourite necklace from Paris and we played bloody knuckles and laughed at penis jokes. Basically it was just the best. Then we saw Moonrise Kingdom, which was also basically the best. High five, Wes Anderson!

But anyway. I digress.

I am happier now. I am more confident. I am more comfortable in my own skin. My body is actually stronger, firmer and more flexible than it was 10 years ago. I like the way I look, which is a nice change from how I felt about my appearance a decade ago. And I have Matt. And Theo.

I might not be as naively, wondrously optimistic as I was at the beginning of my last decade. I still believe that the future is bright, although I am more cautious about it. I am better at living in the present than I have ever been, and that’s a huge relief.

There are things that I miss about the self I left behind a decade ago. I miss the sense of awe I had, the sense of wonder. I miss the sense of potential that I felt about myself. I miss the sense of potential I felt about life in general. There were so many blanks to be filled in back then. Now there are less. I am mostly happy with how I’ve filled those blanks. I think that’s the most that anyone can say.

And now there are new blanks to fill, ones I didn’t expect. There are new challenges, and new doors that have opened for me. If life is not as full of magic as I once thought, then it’s also far, far less terrible than I have believed at times.

This is good. Thirty is good. I am excited for this decade.

“So we drove on toward death in the cooling twilight.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Image
(this is what thirty looks like, in case you were wondering)

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