April 5, 2016
On Putting Politics Aside
On Friday I was listening to CBC Rewind, and heard then-Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard on the radio in 1979 telling journalist Barbara Frum to shut up and that females didn’t belong on the radio. And hearing that helped me articulate why I had been taking the heroic eulogizing of disgraced Toronto mayor Rob Ford so personally, why I hadn’t been able to respectfully stay silent while Ford was memorialized (even if he was memorialized with such statements as, “He was a profoundly human guy.” Indeed).
Now, I knew about Harold Ballard. From childhood, I have known he was an asshole, and though I didn’t know why he was thought to be so, and I suppose any reason anybody would have told me about wouldn’t have been concerned with his views toward women. Another important point is that I’ve been extremely fortunate in my life to be surrounded by men (my dad, my friends, my husband) who make the idea that some men think women are literally garbage (or objects to be knocked over, or raped, or joked about raping, or silenced—I could go on for paragraphs about the ways Ford was disrespectful and hateful towards women) completely baffling and foreign to me. But these men exist, and they end up in positions of power, and because it’s not 1979 anymore it’s not all right to go on the radio and say as much, but there are certain men who aren’t containable and so everybody knows.
And everybody lets it go too. It’s harmless. He’s just a character.
I was dismayed when Toronto’s current mayor came into power and his first motion was to thank Ford for his service. Really? Ford was ill, but regardless, here was an opportunity for a new beginning, a chance to do better than an ineffectual, decisive council that fuelled resentment and anger across the city. A chance, perhaps, to say nothing, and in that silence to tell this city, “We are better than that. We will no longer stand for this. This is not who we are.” To honour the women of this city, the people of colour and gay community, all of whom were derogated by Ford throughout his term in council. That was when saying nothing would have been a respectful gesture.
But not now. Not when Ford was able to milk his whiny victim narrative right into the grave and beyond, and everybody played along with him. History whitewashed: that this was a man who loved his city, the best mayor Toronto ever had, a man of the people. None of it remotely the truth, and the truth matters. And if “putting politics aside” means overlooking abusive, offensive comments about women uttered by people in power, I really don’t think I’m capable of doing it. Basically my politics are that women are people worthy of respect, an idea so elementary, basic and foundational that I can’t imagine putting it aside ever.
I hope that in 40 years the story of Rob Ford ends up on an episode of CBC Rewind, and a young woman listening won’t be able to believe that there was ever such a person like that, instead of seeing such an anachronism reflected in the world all around her.
April 3, 2016
The M Word: Kerry Ryan on Wishing and Washing
This is the first in a series of posts catching up writers from The M Word, and finding out what they’re up to now. (Find out more about The M Word and read its rave reviews right here.)
Kerry Ryan’s “Confessions of a Dilly-Dallying Shilly-Shallier” was a will-she/won’t-she essay exploring the question of whether or not to take the great leap into motherhood, which makes the prospect of catching up with her more than two years later—it’s actually been even longer since the piece was written—most enticing.
*****
Motherhood: More Wishing and Washing
Confession: by the time I’d finished writing my essay for The M Word, about deciding whether or not I should have a child, I was already pregnant.
Which seems pretty damn decisive for someone who wrote about flip-flopping on the “should we/shouldn’t we?” question.
Writing the essay didn’t exactly help me find an answer, but it did help me understand I had to make a decision. In the end, the decision I made (and ok, my husband was part of it too), was kind of a lame one. I decided we would try.
I was 36 and knew the fertility odds were against me. Plus, my periods were irregular and I figured that didn’t bode well. So, believing it wasn’t likely to work, I decided we’d try for a year and that would be that. We’d have tried, and our life of quiet activities, sleeping until 9:00am on weekends, and taking vacations would continue as usual.
Looking back, I wouldn’t have made it through a year of trying; I’d have chickened out, probably after the first month. Luckily for all of us, my daughter is brave, decisive and seizes the day. I was pregnant after the first try.
At the time, I thought didn’t think: I have made this decision. It was: the decision has been made. (And sometimes: the baby has decided.) But, no matter how, the deciding was complete. What I didn’t realize was this decision was a monster from mythology – decide to have a child and you face 5,000 new decisions. Name. Brand of car seat. Helicopter or free-range parenting. Cloth or disposable. Gender neutral or gender specific.
When you don’t have a newborn, deciding the exact minute a baby should fall asleep or be woken, the position to hold her when she’s nursing, seem inconsequential. When you’re a new mother, every decision is dire. Choose incorrectly and your child will never again sleep in her own bed, will have trust issues, or be otherwise stunted and screwed for life. Even now, whenever I google ideas for trying to get my three-year-old to eat her veggies, I learn that my decision (no dessert until you eat your green beans), guarantees she’ll have an eating disorder when she’s twelve.
Of course, I am not the only decision-maker in the family. My husband and I have equal parenting roles. But in the case of one for and one against, who breaks the tie? The one who is most/least tired/frustrated. The one who is sitting closest. The one who is blaming the other because our toddler is being irrational. So, we’re not always consistent. I’ve read that this will cause our daughter to become a gambling addict, but sometimes we all just need to get back to bed.
As a mother, the decision I have to make most often is laugh or cry? (And, truthfully, sometimes it’s cry or weep uncontrollably?) But, all those little questions have helped me answer the next big one: should we have another? On that, I am resolved.
Kerry Ryan has published two books of poetry, The Sleeping Life (The Muses’ Company, 2008) and Vs. (Anvil, 2010), a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and she has a poem forthcoming this month in All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood (Sage Hill Press).
April 3, 2016
Nothing particularly exciting about a round world
It has been weeks and weeks since I’d had a night’s sleep uninterrupted, which is part of the reason I was feeling awful last night, nursing the sore throat that seems to have been my companion forever. We’d had a busy day yesterday going to see Alligator Pie at the Toronto Symphony (having won tickets in the silent auction at Harriet’s school last June), which was brilliant fun, but I was ready for bed not long after the children were. (So tired. Yesterday I read Sarah’s Instagram post about sleeping for nine hours, and I really could have cried.)
And then…she slept. Seriously. The disturber of sleep actually slept, which doesn’t mean she didn’t wake briefly at 12:13 and again at 6:30 (asking for a tissue?), but otherwise…and we were none of us roused until 8:00. Which, seeing as I went to bed at 11pm means that I (mostly) slept for nine hours too.
And so began the greatest day, because how could such a thing not follow the miracle of nine hours sleep? Although all that sleep had left me fuzzy and totally stupid, so I was foreseeing a day of naps. Until, I left the house at 9am to take Harriet to swimming lessons, and was as invigorated by the horrible cold as I was made furious by it. (Winter in April sucks balls, it does.) But then I was awake, and there was that, and Harriet actually passed her swimming course for the first time in a million years, which was another miracle. And then there we were at 10:15 and we had no plans, not a one. Iris has stopped napping, which made the day open even wider. Plus I’d already read most of the paper (behind which I sometimes hide from my children for entire weekend mornings), so the possibilities seemed endless. And naturally, those possibilities included scones.
Many hands… making scones.
Blueberry scones, which we baked, and ate after lunch while we played Clue. And then I spent an hour or so doing work, putting up the new 49th Shelf page for this week (and its beautiful!). Then because we have to leave the house at some point because if we don’t, everybody goes bananas and also because our library books were due, we braved the cold and trekked to Lillian H. Smith down on College. At which we found the very best books, and (another miracle!) Harriet even got an Avengers comic she hadn’t read yet. (My best books of this library haul so far are The Cats of Mrs. Calamari and What Pete Ate, by Maira Kalman, which is so so good.)
The miracles didn’t stop there though. For dinner, I made black bean corn fritters from our Anna Jones cookbook, which were guaranteed to make the children cry, I thought (because once I’d even made them cry with tuna casserole), and while Iris just ate spoonfuls of ketchup, Harriet ate three fritters and proclaimed them quite tasty even though they contained spinach. I nearly died.
And then we were finished dinner, and dessert was pears that were delectable and perfect, and Stuart’s day suffered a blip in loveliness because he had to give Iris a bath and she wouldn’t stop screaming, but Harriet and I read library books, and then Iris was calmed down and clean, and we brushed teeth, and sat down to read stories—I picked the terrifically gruesome The Juniper Tree from the Grimms books, and we had to trust it would all work out like in the last fairy tale we read where somebody got decapitated (and it did). Then we read poems from Alligator Pie and another chapter from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and that was the last we heard of our kids.
Miracles continued: I drew a bath and it was perfect temperature, and I stayed in for ages and ages and it never got cold, and I managed to finish reading Escape Plans, by Teri Vlassopoulos, which I thought was wonderful and can’t wait to tell you all about. And now I here I am and I should have been sensible again and gone to bed, but I wanted to write all this down, to add to my collection (“Albert collected good days the way other people collected coins, or sets of postcards.”– Behind the Scenes at the Museum). Remarkable, really, none of it at all, but that’s just the point, I think, of small miracles.
It’s like Edmund said in Voyage of the Dawn Treader tonight: “There’s nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you’re there.” But sometimes it’s nice to stop and take notice.
April 1, 2016
You Are One, by Sara O’Leary and Karen Klaassen
If you’re a friend of mine with a baby turning one this year, do NOT buy your wee one You Are One, by Sara O’Leary and Karen Klassen. Do not buy a copy of this delicious new book, because I’m going to be buying it for you. It’s the latest from O’Leary, who we fell in love with via the Henry books (When You Were Small) and last year’s This Is Sadie.
It’s the most perfect celebration of the milestones that mark that mind-blowing phenomenon that is a baby’s first year. A year in which a person starts out like a “pickled piglet” (in the words of Lorrie Moore) and is transformed into an actual human being with a personality, likes and dislikes, a sense of humour and sense of fun.
O’Leary has zeroed in on perfect details: babies liking to put things in things (and hiding the keys); the appeal of an empty box, not to mention that baby in the mirror; and talking in sentences (but not necessarily with words).
Klassen’s illustrations are stylish. interestedly textured, and feature a variety of images guaranteed to delight babies and the people who love them (i.e. check out the pudgy hands up above—and I love the racial diversity too). This book really will make the perfect for one-year-olds and their parents, and here’s the best thing: it’s the first in a series. Watch for You Are Two and You Are Three in the months ahead.
March 31, 2016
Catching up with The M Word
This month marks two years since The M Word was published, and now we’re counting down to Mother’s Day, so it’s kind of The M Word‘s season. And I’m so excited to let you know that over the next month, we’ll be catching up with contributors with short essays that give a sense of where these women are now. The amazing thing about the book (and about motherhood in general) is how the experiences are so fluid, ever-changing, so that each of these essays ended up standing for nothing more than a moment in time. And while there is nothing insignificant about a moment in time, it’s part of what most motherhood conversations get so wrong, everything meant to be emblematic of something bigger instead of standing for itself. By which I mean that it’s hard to get a sense of the big picture when the picture is ever-changing. So it’s that change that we’ll be looking at over the next month, as well as what stays the same, and what we got wrong in our essays, and what we got right, and how the experience of articulating our stories changed the stories themselves. It all kicks off on Monday with Kerry Ryan, who makes a startling confession about her essay (which was about her decision whether or not to get pregnant and have a baby at all). It’s SO GOOD and you’re going to love it.
And do you want to buy The M Word? I’ve heard tell that it’s the perfect book club selection, makes a great gift for new moms, and would make a great Mother’s Day present for anybody with a uterus. Or even anybody without one. Order it from your favourite bookseller online or in the real world. And also, I’ll be at Book City Danforth for Authors for Indies on April 30. Hope to see you there!
March 29, 2016
Someone put a photo of a craft I did on Pinterest
I suppose I was expecting something more transformative. You know, that I’d turn into Gwyneth Paltrow, or be a mermaid, and have organized spice jars at the very least, but there was none of that. At the end of it all, I was still only me, and I still had to empty potties and make lunches and try to stuff my weird three-years-post-c-section stomach inside a humble pair of pants every morning. My kids didn’t care what had happened—to them, I was still their mom. My husband was happy for me, but it didn’t exactly reframe his perception of my place in the world (i.e. put me behind the frame of a recycled vintage window from a farmhouse or something made out of birch twigs). And all of that was kind of a blessing, really, even if it didn’t seem so at the time, because these are the things that kept me real.
It’s easy to lose touch of what really matters when you live much of your life online, to be duped into aspiring to LIKES and followers above all things. It’s not hard to become the sort of person who screams at small children for knocking the table and upsetting the oh-so-carefully placed scattering sea salt over avocado toast, interrupting the flow of twitter threads, or casting a shadow over a teacup just as you’re about to Instagram it. It’s terribly frustrating to have your five year old go into hysterics because you’re adamant about refusing to Instagram their artwork, which is actually a toilet paper roll tube scotched taped to the phone bill. “Do it, Mommy! Instagram it,” they insist, no matter how patiently you explain that aesthetically it’s just not consistent with your brand, even if the paper phone bills suggests a vintage vibe that you’ve been trying to cultivate. You tell them, “Honey, you don’t even know what an Instagram is. It’s a noun, not a verb, and it comes with a whole lot of impedimenta, with ramifications you’ve not even begun to glimpse at your age.” Serious adult matters. You start to explain about the new algorithm, and requiring followers to turn on notifications, and by the time you’ve stopped speaking, the child has put himself to bed. So there is that. It’s easy to get thrown off course.
But some of it matters, it does, so you really can’t blame me for carrying myself differently after the fact: holding my head a bit higher, swinging my hair from side to side. People started commenting on my glow, and that wasn’t all due to goddess bowls and kale smoothies. I started thinking a whole lot more than usual about doing handstands on beaches and antique birdcages. About wicker. I wanted to install a chair that hung from the ceiling, fill the floor with throw cushions, and wear glasses in order to look serious. My hair in a bun secured with two pencils. Or chopsticks. Wooden floors with well-worn paint. Creative ideas for nail art.
It’s different now, from when I used to pursue these things for leisure. The stakes are higher and I claim it on my taxes. I’ve published an e-book, twelve pages long but who’s counting? I’ve got a social media strategies e-course available on my blog, and the testimonials are amazing. And for a long time I’ve been grappling with an advanced case of Imposter Syndrome (in both lungs, no less), carrying on as best I could, but nonetheless afflicted. But no more. I once was blind, but now I see. And what exactly do I see?
Only that somebody went and put a photo of a goddamn craft I did on mother-rucking Pinterest.
A craft. On Pinterest. Me! Me, who tried to glue a cotton ball to a pinecone on Sunday in order to make an Easter Bunny on my mother’s porch, but the glue wouldn’t stick so I turned the whole thing into a game of, “Can You Throw A Sticky Pinecone Into Traffic?” (and I could, in case you were wondering). Me who invented the party game, “Disappointing Pass the Parcel,” the parcel packed with citrus fruit (and the one at the end received a lemon). At every birthday party my children have ever had, we’ve tied pipe cleaners stuck with styrofoam balls to cheap plastic headbands, which has suited every party theme that I can think of (Aliens! Insects! DIY Radio Transmitters!). I honestly thought I’d gone as far in my life as I was meant to go.
But this. Saved to a page called Library Craft Ideas 3. I once made a dollhouse out of a shoebox and now it’s up there for the whole world to see, alongside peg dolls, repurposed lightbulb air balloons, and a rocket made from a paper towel roll. Egg cartons spiders, FTW.
I’ve published a book, created actual humans inside my body, and wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in 1988 imploring him to save the pandas, but none of that means anything in light of my latest achievement unlocked. Somebody put a photo of a goddamn craft I did on Pinterest, which makes me officially the person I always wanted to be.
March 28, 2016
Ice Diaries, by Jean McNeil
To me a paradox is a comforting thing, with its suggestion of the unknowability of universe and therefore possibilities well beyond our narrow expectations of experience, ideas surpassing our rigid understanding of black and white, hot and cold, fire and ice. To me it’s comforting too that a single thing can be two things at once, that all the easy answers are the wrong ones, because any of us who bother to think already know that this is the case. And if you’re the kind of person who also has these proclivities, than you too will probably be fascinated to spend a while lost inside Ice Diaries, the Antarctic memoir by the Governor General’s Award-nominated author Jean McNeil.
It’s a memoir freely acknowledged by its author to be a creation, about a continent without terra firma, a huge expanse of space in which there is nowhere to go, where everything is white but so much of the year is darkness. The Antarctic is a place where few people ever go, but those who do are compelled to return. A place of toughness and fragility. Inhabited by scientists, except that McNeil is a writer send along on their expedition. A Canadian, who has lived in Britain for more than twenty years. In this 400+ page book, the paradoxes abound.
For me this was a slow read, structured similarly to McNeil’s journey to the Antarctic by sea, an experience she says she was grateful for, because the Antarctic is not to be simply arrived at, but instead acclimatized to, otherwise the effect is much too jarring. We also find ourselves in the opening chapter in the Falkland Islands, a stepping-off point to the Antarctic, and this is two years after her Antarctic journey. Because while it’s the fashion to begin a story in the beginning, most of us don’t realize we’re there until the middle—time is not so tidy. Which is also the reason that a narrative strand of Ice Diaries is concerned with McNeil’s violent childhood in the Maritimes, as well as a summer during her teen years during which women were being stalked and murdered in her small town and McNeil met her father for the first time, experiences that become conflated. And while these passages seem a bit extraneous to the Antarctic chapters, it is interesting to consider the ways in which they’re linked. And so too how McNeil’s early life may contribute to the claustrophobia and dread she feels at the end of her Arctic sojourn when the sun begins to disappear and McNeil fears she may never get away from there.
McNeil is a tremendous writer who brings the Antarctic landscape to life (! another paradox for a place with so little life) with the deftness of her prose, and her memoir is rich with fascinating details—such as that one must remember to apply sunscreen under one’s chin as the reflection of sun off the snow can cause third degree burns. This journey through the topography of the continent at the bottom of the world is one through the topography of her consciousness, and both emerge from the story known and still unknown at once.
March 24, 2016
The Night Gardener and If I Had a Gryphon
I wasn’t supposed to get a book at all, but then I ended up with two. These are the kinds of things that happen when one is me. The plan was to buy a book at Bakka Phoenix Books for Harriet’s friend who was moving away, but then I saw The Night Gardener by The Fan Brothers and also If I Had a Gryphon, by Vikki VanSickle and Cale Atkinson, and I had to have both of them.
I have a weakness for books featuring Toronto-style houses (like Sidewalk Flowers, and another recent one I’ve seen is A Boy Asked the Wind), which is what drew me to The Night Gardener. Although I will admit to being confused to the story’s individual components: that the boy in the books lives in an orphanage, that the story exists outside of time that’s part Dickens, part contemporary; and there is something slightly sinister about the boy receiving a gift of a pair of secateurs. A lot of these concerns can be written off to magic, but it doesn’t seem entirely realized. What are realized, however, are the illustrations, ordinary trees reborn as creatures of all kinds, thanks to the work of a secret gardener who comes and goes in the night.
Anyway, the dragon in the above illustration brings me to If I Had a Gryphon, in which a small girl laments the mundanity of having a hamster for a pet. The book is written in rhyming verse featuring fun and playful illustrations, and we were immediately hooked.
If I Had a Gryphon is a primer for future nerds, featuring allusions to a wide range of fictional creatures from myth and legend. Obviously, the little girl at its centre is a bookish one, and when she imagines alternatives to the hamster life, she’s not thinking ponies or cuddly kittens, but instead hippogriffs, sasquatches, or manticores.
Thinking through her supposings, however, she realizes that mythical pets would actually be a lot of trouble (and that caring for them would probably cut into her time for reading).
Clearly I’m not well read enough because many of the creatures in the book weren’t familiar to me: what is a kraken, after all, or a kiran, or a basilisk? Although such questions are the point I think, and this book serves as the perfect jumping off point for further exploration (as well as imaginary brand new, never-before-thought-of creatures). I don’t say this very often, but I think Gryphon might have benefited from a glossary to bring some of us up to mythical speed, although the internet will certainly suffice.
This book reminded of Julia’s House for Lost Creatures, by Ben Hatke, another picture book in which a tenacious girl has to contend with managing fictional beasts of all kinds. We love If I Had a Gryphon just as much, and every time we’ve read it, our delight in its final image has been absolutely. Just wait for it, and you’ll see what I mean.
March 22, 2016
Blogs to Watch
Since writing about blogs and blogrolls last fall, I’ve returned to being avid about blog reading, using my Protopage reader to keep track of blogs I love and ever looking forward to updates. And happily, I’ve been adding new blogs to it, revelling in the writing and inspiration, in the serendipity of experience and connections made. Here are three to watch out for:
- Homeward Odyssey, by Christine Nielsen: Christine was a student in my blogging course last fall, and I’m so pleased that she’s continued blogging into the new year. After years of travelling the world via her career in journalism, Christine is becoming preoccupied with notions of home. Her writing is wonderful, and each of her posts is its own journey, rich with twists and turns and unexpected astonishments.
- Creative Critique, by Margrit Talpalaru: I know Margrit from Twitter and her blog is brand new, and while usually I’d wait a bit to make sure a blog has legs before jumping on the bandwagon (for do you know how many abandoned blogs litter our internet?), I want to spread the word about this one in the hopes that an audience will inspire her to keep going. Posts so far are about hair and running, and they’re terrific.
- The Huron Playschool Blog: Our playschool has started a blog to increase the visibility of our website and our programs, and I am excited to be tasked with keeping it because our school has a really great history (nearly 50 years long) well linked with our city and amazing neighbourhood, as well as a great community and excellent programs, and it will be nothing short of fun to write about it all. Hope you’ll check in once in a while!
March 21, 2016
Malaika’s Costume and Maya
I recently had the pleasure of reviewing two absolutely beautiful picture books for Quill and Quire. Malaika’s Costume, by Nadia L. Holm and Irene Luxbacher, and Maya, by Mahakj Jain and Elly MacKay, are each exceptional books in their own right in terms of story and artwork, but when viewed together, all kinds of amazing connections occur, deepening the texture of both of them.
*****
From my review:
“It takes considerable talent for an illustrator to do justice to the peacock, to come even close to matching nature in rendering its most exquisite bird. With their textured and evocative illustrations in Malaika’s Costume and Maya, Irene Luxbacher and Elly MacKay, respectively, give nature a run for its money. Their images are the perfect backdrop for these deep and engaging stories about characters grappling with a parent’s absence…”
I hope you’ll read the whole thing here. This piece was such a joy to write.
