It's okay to miss who you were pic.twitter.com/gSP6PpghDb

— The Sad Ghost Club (@thesadghostclub) July 4, 2020

If you live in North America, you can't deny the brand assault of Christmas. There is no opt-out for this holiday. From the steady stream of shortbread cookies at the office, to chipmunk carols out of every speaker, to day-glo light displays on neighbours' houses, to fragrant themed coffee blends at your local coffee chain – it’s a holiday that tackles every sense the moment you walk out the door. And I don't buy that it's a non-denominational holiday. Even with its Roman timing, pagan symbols, Coca-Cola Santa, Jewish-scribed caroles and Dickens turkey, it's still Christian.

And for the most part I like the festive moods and generosity of the season. But the traditional tree - often the most attractive of all Christmas tropes - I never thought it would be in MY house. Christmas Trees. More than bacon (which most Jews I know consume with impunity), more than mayo with deli meat on white bread, more than retail shopping. The Christmas Tree in the home is widely considered the last line of Jewish defence and the final step to full assimilation.

Full disclosure: I have sung in TWO Christmas choirs. I went to Anglican all-girls’ school. I have strung popcorn and cranberries before a roaring fire. In other people's homes. But even if I was going to intermarry, I promised myself I would never DO Christmas at home. And NEVER a tree, no matter how beautiful they looked, how great they smelled, and how perfectly they fed into my love of pageantry.

And then one year I changed my mind. On the short dark days of the year, it makes sense that nearly every culture summons up a festival with lights to beat back the winter gloom. Couldn't I just make room in my house for a tree that I've always secretly wanted? My sister and her family had done it. And her kids still went to Hebrew school. And the children took so much delight in the tree. Do it for the children!

My husband sent me into the Ikea lot on a cold night to pick a tree and I came back to the car empty-handed. “They all look the same!” I complained. Subtext: “Please let me be passive in this experience.” I had thought it would be a cheerful outing among fragrant conifers, but I ended up feeling kind of anxious and nauseated.

Last year, we didn’t put up the tree until after our Chanukah party. And when we did, I circled it apprehensively. I didn’t want anyone to DO anything with it yet until I had figured out a way to make it completely our own. My guy tried to be patient, but ultimately was a bit exasperated by my angst.

“I don’t know, honey – when you said you wanted to do a tree, I thought we’d get a big, full one. I’ve had real trees and fake trees. I’ve had punk rock trees. And Charlie Brown broken-down trees. I’ve had them most of my life. What do YOU want to do with our tree?”

I think every Jew I know has ideas of what they would do if FORCED to bring the Christmas home. I mean, if they had to, they would go with “x” types of ornaments and “y” types of lights. Not that anyone asks our opinion.

As kids, my oldest sister and I and I used to have earnest discussions about what we would do if we HAD to have Christmas. “I would have classic egg nog in a punch bowl and a tree with just white lights,” she announced at 16.  

I seem to have tapped into something, because as soon as we got a tree, suddenly my Jewish friends were popping by with ornaments (very tasteful ones at that, from the MOMA and the AGO) as if they were busting for the opportunity to vicariously trim a tree. Meanwhile, I've discovered that the tree is the perfect place to hang all the dust-gathering sentimental tzachkes from our travels, a couple of ornaments from my sons' craft endeavours and, naturally, the robots, lego spaceships,monkeys and dinosaurs strung up to keep them company.

It's a mish-mash of stuff, our tree. It's a collection of symbols and memories and a fair dose of Jewish guilt. But each year it casts a beautiful glow. And of course, now I have to make latkes and light the menorah. And then with full bellies, we can all sit back and enjoy the pretty lights.

When you lose your mom, holidays are the hardest. You know that big family-oriented ones will be rough, but Mother’s Day and birthdays? They knock the wind right out of you.

My when my mother got sick with a late-stage cancer at 66, we would have 18 months to say a long and imperfect goodbye. For most of my life, we’d spoken every day, communicating through food (let’s go for Indian!), guilt (you really should call to see how they’re doing), shopping (I picked up this coat for you, 60 per cent off!), and gossip (you won’t believe who I met at an open house).

She still tried to tell me how to dress, how to live my life. I tried to get her to let go of old grudges, of work stresses. We surprised and disappointed and delighted each other many times over those months after her diagnosis. But when she died, I still felt like we hadn’t said a meaningful goodbye.

You get told that two years is the magic number for processing the jagged parts of grief. I went to a therapist who said much the same thing. But he recommended an extra boost to push through it.

“Find a ritual,” he said. If you don’t practice religious traditions, find something that is material and meaningful to you to help process and ritualize grieving. I procrastinated. What kind of ritual? A shrine? Light candles? The two-year anniversary of her death passed and I still had no closure. Most days I was fine, but then some trigger would put me back in that place of grief again.

A few days before what would have been her 70^th birthday, I decided to create a ritual that would celebrate her spirit. And that’s how “Judy Day” was born. I made this announcement on Facebook:

Planning Judy Day this Saturday, in honour of what would have been my mother's 70th birthday. You are welcome to join us Saturday night at her favourite Indian restaurant for supper, but if you can't make it, you can celebrate by doing one of her favourite things.

• Buy lottery tickets.
• Bake a chocolate cake (I can send you the recipe).
• Get a nice haircut. At a good place. In a fancy neighbourhood.
• Get your kids haircuts too, already. Do you want them to look neglected?
• Splurge on a nice outfit for the Jewish New Year. Also? Something fancy for the kids. I don't care if they'll only wear it twice.
• Look up new and exciting takes on Rosh Hashana recipes. Decide to go with your old ones, because they work.
• Drive someone somewhere they need to go (if you have a car).
• Take a walk or drive through your favourite neighbourhood and fantasize about what houses you would have liked to buy.
• Start a conversation with a stranger. Give them too much personal information.
• Go to Kensington Market. Buy some fresh veg from the Israeli.
• Call up everyone you love. Tell them you love them.

 
I began my day with a mission, posting each update on Facebook. And I was thrilled to see my community joining in.

The night before I had I sent around the recipe for dark chocolate cake (use only high quality cocoa, my mother would have piped in) to those who asked and had my cake ready to ice in the morning.
 
And then we went for a trim. Haircuts for my mom were not just about maintenance, they were about homecoming. On return from camp, travel and even university, I would come home to find a haircut had been booked for me at an upscale salon. I would lamely protest I liked my hair long and shaggy. But I always relented.

I posted a photo of our fancy haircuts:

And even more people joined in! “My daughter’s hair is cut, lottery tickets purchased”
“We got ours all cut for Judy day too!”

My mother loved to shop for clothing, but when her grandkids came along, she took it to a whole new level, and was soon on first name basis with the salespeople at Baby Gap Hey, Judy, did you hear about our sale? We bought her grandson this sharp cardigan for Rosh Hashana.

I called loved ones. To my delight, so did my friends:
“Today, in Judy's honour, I will call the people I love and tell them I love them,” promised an old friend who had lost his own mom the same year.
“Don’t forget to call you sister and tell her you love her,” chimed in my sis (I did).

One of my mom's favourite neighbourhoods was Toronto's Kensington Market. The smells, the blasting music from storefronts, the bustling streetlife.... She had her favourite vendors, but she usually knew their nationality ("The Romanian", "The Portugese Brothers") before their names. I got produce from “the Israeli” and purchased fresh mangoes and pears for breakfast.

Down the street, we bought a bunch of lottery tickets at the place she said was lucky (she never won, so I am not sure where this "lucky" impression originated). There were three stores across the city she visited weekly. I used to chide her for wasting money, and she'd always say, "Oh, let an old lady have her dreams."

Judy Day rocks! With the exception of lotto, we do all the things I love," was a friend's response to this pic.
“I love that you've created a wonderful tradition of remembrance, all your own,“ wrote an old co-worker.

I am used to public sharing, and I like to say that I come by the whole “revealing too much personal information to strangers” bit honestly. I got this message from a friend who had met my mom when she was agent at an open house:

“Your post reminded of a time a little more than six years ago: I struck up a conversation at an open house with a stranger who seemed like a friend. Immediately shared intimate details of my life to my partner's embarrassment. She, in return, proudly told me about her daughter-the-world-famous-blogger-about-to-have-a-baby-really-any-second and-so-on.”

I read this to my husband and we both got weepy.

Our day ended at her favourite Indian restaurant, a South Indian vegetarian place in Toronto’s East end (we drove our car-less friends from the West end). It's a schlep across town to eat dosas in a basement, but it's so consistently good, the owners so friendly -- in fact, I think that's the key. For my mom, her life outside of family was all about a network of loosely-connected people and their stories. Nothing gave her more pleasure than to revisit these bonds over the years, to share a laugh, eat a meal, brag about her children.

And as my network of of close and loose connections chimed in throughout the day, I increasingly felt that I'd tapped into the essence of what had made my mother happy. And that day her memory felt so alive and for the first time in ages, connected to joy.

We ended the day with her famous devil's chocolate cake from an out-of-print cookbook from the '80s. She made it for every dinner party. For my son's birthdays. It's really, really good. But use the fancy cocoa. Extra Brute.

Since Judy Day, the jagged parts of grieving started to smooth over, and I have felt lighter. Holidays and anniversaries are still very hard. But this year, I know what I will be doing. I will wake my son up -- he was four when he lost his grandma -- and I will say “Happy Judy Day! Let’s go celebrate the way your grandma would have loved.”
 

Back in the day, all my music was on cassette. All through high school, I proudly toted around an army surplus backpack filled with a dozen tapes, their plastic cases dully clicking against each other as I ran for the subway. My Walkman was high-end, water-resistant and bright yellow. It automatically flipped sides, so you could listen to your favourite album on a loop until the batteries ran out.

This is what it looked like.

Wikimedia Commons

The viral video "Kids React to Walkmans" featuring children trying to make sense of the portable personal cassette player? It's cute. And yes, we get that when compared to the tiny, weightless touch screens boasting thousands of songs at your fingertips, the older technology is absurd. But these kids? They're missing the romance.

Now sit back and let mama tell you a story about music on cassette tapes. They were a pain in the ass. But we liked them.

Cassettes made you understand time. If the DJ on the radio station was about to play your favourite song, you would scramble for a blank tape, slide it in, press record and sit by the ghetto blaster until it was over. Yes, the audio was horrible. Really — it warbled and hissed.  Whenever you hit fast forward or rewind you had to GUESS when the song was going to start/end based on your perception of its length.This required intuition and skill. You had to work for your music.

And then there was the art of the mixtape. The greatest mixes were educational/aspirational playlists you'd borrow from a cool older sibling -- samplings on which you'd base a whole new musical journey. Once you had a good collection of your own tunes, it was a music nerd's delight to craft the perfect mix for a party, a road trip, or as an introduction to new friend.   

The mixed tape was your totem, your cultural signal. It was also the perfect way to tell your high school crush you liked him. My friend Cory is firm in the belief that without mixed tapes, he never would have lost his virginity.

Of course there were bad concept mixes. Like the time I tried to create a mix of all the songs I knew that mentioned the colour blue. Not strong. Or the time I created a mix with angry hardcore punk on Side A (labelled HELL) and blissed-out folk on Side B (labelled HEAVEN). It was jarring. And silly.

Often there was a heart-stopping the moment when you pulled the tape out of its player and a cassette ribbon would unravel with it. And  you knew you had to perform delicate surgery with a ballpoint pen, clear tape, and an exacto-knife. But when you popped it in, pressed play, and heard that affirmative robotic 'loo-loo-LOO' you'd get excited all over again. You still had your tape, thankfully. It was the only copy you had.

From summer 2014, originally pub on iVillage.ca

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10612 From July 2012, iVillage.caThursday in Toronto, Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday made headlines by announcing that downtown Toronto was an unsuitable place to raise children.  “As far as raising your children downtown, maybe some people wish to do that. I think most people wouldn’t,” he told council. Many councillors were stunned by this statment.  “Are – are you serious?” asked midtown councillor, Josh Matlow.

The debate on whether the suburbs or the city is a better place to raise a kid has been raging for ages, but for me, it’s kind of a fake issue – a matter of taste and personality. But it's still absurdly polarizing, like the decision whether to determine the sex of your child in utero. We strain to justify our convictions, but really, we usually just like what we like. And usually, what we like is what we already know.

Many of my friends who grew up in suburbs or small towns (including my spouse!) had  what they consider an idyllic childhood of riding their bikes down deserted roads, running through fields and a night sky bursting with stars. They want to give their kids a taste of the magic that they had. For some of us it's hard to imagine a childhood divergent from our own.

I was 13 when my family moved to the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto from what was then a very suburban-feeling city of Vancouver. At first, I longed to live in the cozy 'burbs, but then something changed. I noticed that my suburban friends were drinking more, spending weekends shuffling aimlessly through the mall, having sex earlier and for the most part behaving like bored, reckless teens.

But my city friends were going to festivals, plays, cafes – we had so much to do, we could barely fit it in (we were also unbearably pretentious, but teens, as a rule, are hard to take). But this access to so many discoveries within walking distance was magical. Even at that age, I knew that when I had a kid, I would raise him downtown. In fact, I couldn’t wait to see what it would be like for him to grow up feeling like he was part of the fabric of his urban community.*

I love that we visit museums, that he knows the shopkeepers in Kensington Market by name, that he looks forward to the annual festivals, that he asks for Chinese dumplings or sag paneer for supper some nights, that we can walk to amazing parks and markets and museums and friends' homes and that until last year, we didn’t even need to own a car. (Full disclosure: I never got my license).

But I do lament his limited exposure to nature. This fall, we announced we would visit an apple orchard.

“Oh, is the apple exhibit still open?” Um.

No choice is perfect. But to those of you wonder what it’s like to raise a kid (0-5) in downtown Toronto, I have put together a tumblr account of my favourite pics. Enjoy!

Where do you think is the ideal place to raise a kid?

*Please do remember that this was my *subjective* experience, not meant as a generalisation. There were both fabulous kids and terrors from every type of neighbourhood.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10611 Since becoming a mom, yoga class has been my solace. For nearly two blissful hours, I am no one’s parent, wife or employee. Everything goes quiet as I breathe, stretch, and focus inward. Na-ma-ste.

The other day, my guy exclaims: “I love how glowy you look after yoga. You’re transformed and limber.” Then, with a twinkle in his eye: “Wanna show me some moves?”


“You should totally come with me next time!” I offer.


“To your yoga class?” he asks.

Oops.

He goes silent. After a long, thoughtful, visualizing pause he asks: “Are you sure? Will there be other men?”


“Tons,” I lie. “How about Friday? We’ll have a yoga date. I’ll call the sitter.”

A few days later we're in stretchy clothes, spread out on mats at the local yoga studio, staring at ceiling fans. I discreetly peek around. Phew: Three other dudes. “Have a good stretch!” I whisper to him, and close my eyes.

When choosing a yoga class for your guy, it’s important to gauge his level of comfort with the spiritual stuff, first. If he’s the type to take walkabouts or quote Eckhart Tolle, he’ll likely get the vibe of most urban yoga classes. But if too much talk of chakras and chanting could turn him off, it’s worth it to scout studios beforehand and find the right instructor for the best fit.

“Now breathe in deeply through the nose for a count of five and try to clear your mind of all the things you have done today, and all the things you need to do. Just focus on the breath,” says the melodic voice of the yogi at the front of the room.

See? That’s what I’m talking about. With life punctuated by endless kid-oriented tasks, when finishing a sentence seems like a superhuman accomplishment, time with your partner inevitably feels fragmented. When do you ever get a chance to just be together, but not on task?

Yoga is something I’ve always done alone. Once I’d extended the invite, I felt twinges of buyer’s remorse. What was I doing bringing my guy to my fortress of solitude? We all remember how complicated this got for Superman.

To calm myself, I make a mental list of my concerns.

1) I’ll be too stressed out about his experience to enjoy my own practice.

2) He'll dislocate a hip. Seriously. What’s with men and their stiff hips?

3) He'll get stuck lying next to one of those people who loudly moan through their practice and will start to giggle. And then I'll giggle too.We'll be ejected out of yoga class for being irredeemably unenlightened!

But somewhere into the second downward dog, my anxieties leave the room. We stretch, we breathe. And by the time we reached the final savasana (the corpse-like relaxation posture), everything goes quiet. Bliss.

“That was awesome,” my guy whispers as we roll up our mats. “And kind of difficult. But in a good way.”

“I am so glad you liked it! You know, we should do this more often. When we go on regular dates, we’re either super-tired from our day or we talk about the kid all night, but right now, I feel totally connected to you, like we have the same energy.”

“What’s the name of that posture, you know the one where you’re in table position, and you curl your back up and then arch it and look up?”

“You mean the cat and cow tilt? It’s a really good lower back release.”

“Yeah. Also, it makes your butt look superfine!”



Namaste.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10610 It's about time I got this off my chest: I don't want to get married. And neither does my husband. But this morning I read a blog post by relationship expert Debra Macleod, advising women not to live with men if they hope to settle down, "(b)ecause it removes much of a man's motivation to make the formal commitment of marriage within a reasonable time," leaving women "stuck in a cycle of hope and disappointment."

In the "does this milk smell bad to you?" vein, I was compelled to share it with my circles, generating waves of indignation.

And while this article was hopelessly dated at best and anti-feminist at its worst (she actually compared women to bovines: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" [italics mine]), you'd be surprised how many people share her point of view.

Listen: I loved your wedding. The food, the eloquent speeches, the sweet sentiment. Even your embarrassing uncle Morty who got “tight” and tried to start a conga line. Actually, especially uncle Morty.

But I have no desire to get hitched. And that does not mean I think my choice is better than yours. I love the love -- I've been with my guy for almost 12 years -- but the certificate and ceremony are just not important to me.

Then the other day, sitting with a family friend, I was stunned by the question, “When are you two finally getting married?”

My jaw dropped. Did she think I had been waiting for him to ask? (We propose to each other regularly, for what it's worth). Did she think it was a reflection of a wavering commitment?

So I began with reasons people seem to want to get married (I am sure there are many I've left out):

To Be Bride and Groom: “It's Your Day!” I have never wanted to be a bride. Say Yes to The Dress baffles me. You'd spend THAT much on something to wear for one day?

To Be Each Other's First: Well I don't like to kiss and tell, but when we met I was 29, he was 34. By the time we hooked up, we'd given away a not-insignificant amount of our milk for free.

Religious Tradition: We don't need a church or synagogue to bless our union: We also come from different religious backgrounds but have no religious conviction to speak of.

The State: Currently our country doesn't require us to get married to enjoy the privileges of a shared life. And if it did, I would be pretty incensed.

For the Family: This one makes the most sense to me. If you have a big family, it's a beautiful gift to them to bring them all together, to create a joyful milestone so that people can say “last time I saw you was your wedding!” We don't come from big families, and with apologies to those reading this, there is way too much drama post divorces to make the gathering of families anything less than gothic.

So That Your Kids Will Feel Secure: You'll have to take my word on this one, but I'm pretty sure our marital status is not a source of insecurity for our kid (whose only complaint could be excessive snuggling).

It's Harder to Split Up Once You're Married: If things go south to the point where we want to separate, I hope there's more than the spectre of a pricey divorce proceeding to make us seek counselling.

But here's one thing that drives me bonkers: Sometimes on the news -- and usually when something tragic has happened -- someone's lifelong partner is dismissed as 'only' common-law or 'not actually married'. And that makes me livid. Because with all due respect for people in possession of a certificate, that's not what marriage is.

We are in a lifelong, monogamous, committed relationship. It's the everyday stuff punctuated by big life moments that binds you:

• When we became the first person the other called with significant news


• When we became each other's 'in case of emergency'


• Each time we've moved, packed up our belongings and set them up in a new home


• When he held my hand during the 12-week ultrasound


• When he got teary after touching my belly and feeling the first kick


• When we held our new baby in the hospital bed after he was born


• When he just let me cry when my mother got an awful diagnosis


• When he stood by my side at her funeral


• When he was never impatient as he waited for me to feel happy again


• When he made birthday cupcakes from scratch for our son's entire Grade 1 class this week

So do I call him my husband? Sometimes. Other times partner, S/O. Occasionally -- and cheekily -- I call him my 'babydaddy'. Sometimes it feels romantic that every time we describe each other, we are refining the term, remembering our commitment.

We share our lives, we bring each other joy and we occasionally drive each other crazy. But we are, well, married in all the ways that matter. And we choose each other every day.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10474 1) Don't know how stuff works? Ask questions. No one will think you are stupid for asking obvious questions. They might, however, judge you if you don't know those answers one year into the gig. Ask questions. Ask them now.

2) This might sound obvious, but take some time to think about what you want to do and who you want to be. Don't just follow your bliss or the people you dig. Plan a little and really think about whether you'll be comfortable with the values and challenges tied to the area you're working in. Indulge your imagination in big words like "legacy". 

3) If you are pretty sure you're in the right field for you, imagine the future of your industry 5 years from now, and point your efforts in that direction.

4) Think about how you will age in your field. Are there any 50 or 60-something women there? Why not? Do you want to change that?

5) Don't bitch with your colleagues about your co-workers if at all possible. It's a slow-seeping poison that feels good at first, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth and keeps you frozen in a point of conflict. If you need to vent, save the bitching for someone who does not work with you, like your boyfriend.

6) No matter how much smarter you think you are than your boss, you arrogant sop, it's still your job to make them look good.

7) Sometimes you need to manage your manager. Manage their expectations, teach them how to manage you. Let them know what you are up to each week. Give them honest and clear feedback when possible. Acknowledge when honest dialogue is not possible and quietly look for other work.

8) Take criticism. Ask for it. Learn from it. Don't get defensive, even when you think it's way off. Ask yourself if your indignation is your ego. Then wait 24 hours and ask yourself again.

9) You won't always share the values of the people you work with, but it's really important to find reasons you respect them. Because it makes works so much better. And because people can always sniff out your contempt.

10) Have a rich social life outside of work, with people you don't work with every day. Because some friendships dry up when you leave a workplace.

11) Bring your lunch, but take a break.

12) Do your job, but spend some extra time getting good at the thing you are interested in.  You know how they tell politicians to answer the questions you wish you'd been asked? Sometimes, you have to do the job you wish you'd been given. You'll be surprised at the kinds of opportunities to learn stuff outside of your specific job description. This will serve you well in your next job.

13) You can have all the smarts and creativity in the world, but without a method in place, you won't get to put those great ideas into action. Establish systems and processes for each job that help you manage your time and map your projects. Take  the ones that worked from that job into your next one.

14) Once a quarter, try something new that hasn't been done before in your position. This could be social facilitation (organize a pub night/book club) or a new project.

15) Be kind. You spend most of your waking hours in this place. Spread a little love. Don't dominate with your moods.

16) Don't get frozen and stuck in one position, just because it's comfortable. Movement is always a good thing, and it's also expected. Be open and curious about job change (this does not mean you have to be scheming).

17) Sometimes everything comes together in a workplace. Great gig, great people, good pay. Celebrate this moment while it lasts.

18) Sometimes everything is just a few degrees off, and isn't the right fit for you. Give it a reasonable chance, but don't stick around trying to fix it, thinking it will get better. Like anything in life, some things are just not the right fit, even though they have some good parts.

19) Work hard. And this sounds lame, but there's this thing called optics. You need to also be perceived as working hard, but not sweating it. On some level, everywhere you work, people get competitive over who on the team is the hardest worker. Don't play that game but be able to quantify your progress in a meaningful way and remember the first part - work hard, demonstrate you are working hard, but don't look like you are sweating it.

20) You are not your job. But there is always some pride to be had in doing your job well, even if the job is 'not your thing'. Be gracious.

]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10454 I love riding my bike and doing tricks. I could do it really fast.
Some of my tricks are going in circles.

Yesterday or the day before I rode my bike at Dufferin Grove. I really liked going to the skateboard place to ride my bike. I was with my mom and dad. We made a new friend. it was a girl. She was 5. Her name is Mia. I told her that she rides her bike really well.



]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10439 I had 10 whole days without going to an office, and after this sweet taste, every fibre of my being struggled with clipping on my security badge and walking in my cloppy heels into the office.

I want to stay outside from sunrise to bed time. I want to feel my skin smooth from sand, I want my hair to smell like lake, my skin to feel browned. I want to get tired from being outside. I want to bask under thick stars and massive moon. Summer, I love you.

We went camping at Sharbot Lake with the lovely Dave, Abi and Iris. You can see some pics of it here. I want G to be able to be naked all summer long and learn to swim underwater. I want him to catch more fireflies.

I went to yoga class in the daytime. Apparently there is a whole world of people who can go to yoga class in the daytime. Who knew? The class was packed. If I were rich and unemployed, I would go to yoga every day and eat big salads at concept restaurants.

Chris and I biked to the Toronto islands one day. The ferry, the slower pace, the fresh air. The urban horizon on one side, the utterly serene great lake vista from Gibraltar point from the other. Take a day off work. Lie in the sand. Bike from Ward's to Hanlan's Point and back again. Stop in the middle to ride a ferris wheel.

I went to a memorial for an old friend who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in his sleep. There were people from high school who knew him way back when. There were his new friends from his anarchist communal household who were part of his day-to-day life. It was so good to hear how much he was loved. He was wonderfully odd, I always worried the world wouldn't have a place from someone wired like him, but it did.

I read - I picked up A Visit From the Goon Squad and sat myself down for lunch in an oasis-like patio in the middle of the market.

I swam in 2 public pools. Oh, the humanity. Why do change rooms smell like feet? Why do large bald tattooed men need to spit in pools?

I talked to G about all the flags on Canada day, which was also the Eurocup final and Gay Pride. So many flags! I found myself trying to explain LGBT rights to my 5-year old and wondering how much he could grasp. I wrote this of the Facebook, but as a parent you don't want to preach your beliefs, you want your kid to use intellect and compassion to arrive at their own truths. So our first stab at it was "People should be able to love who they love, and be who they want to be without other people making laws about it" and he blew us away with this response: "You don't know how other people feel, cuz you're not in their bodies".

Also, that day was my mom's yartzeit. I am, according to tradition, no longer officially a mourner. I am not religious, but I went to synagogue for the 11th of Tammuz, her date of death last year according to the Hebrew calendar. And to borrow from Mourner's Kaddish, that speaks of healing, redemption and forgiveness: "May there be abundant peace from heaven, and good life".


]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10432 We like to reward our Hollywood starlets for 'going ugly' and for taking their limited tenure of firm body and uncrevassed faces and slapping on prosthetics to transform into monsters. How brave. How modest. How bold.

Last night I was re-watching "I am Love" a gorgeous Italian movie starring that wonderfully odd bird, Tilda Swinton, known for her angular androgyny and distaste for make-up.

In this movie she plays a matriarch in a wealthy old-money Milanese family. And she is a luminous, fragile beauty, decked out in Jill Sanders. I was blown away by her performance and the fact that she learned to speak Italian (with a Russian accent!) for the film. But what was most radical - more radical than any acknowledged beauty dressing down - was her decision to 'go beautiful'.  It's shocking. And so lovely. Take a look at the trailer.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10423 Hey, remember this? About 10 years ago, I showed my new boyfriend off to the internets.
He took me out to try fish for the first time. It was unusual for me to post pics of myself or others, as it was pre-facebook and I was keen on this archaic notion of privacy. But I was dating a super-fox. And I kind of wanted to let the world know.

10 years later, I still think he's a superfox silverfox. Biking home from work today, I came across Harbord Fish and Chips. I called him up and we were soon swept up in nostalgic reverie. "Let's eat there tonight!" Spot the little monkey behind him....



]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10410 When was a kid, I didn't have the best penmanship, but it was my own.But I lost my own style when I began forging notes in my mom's handwriting style in order to skip school. 

I skipped school a lot, but not in the way that makes for exciting stories. Mostly I liked to spend time by myself, to take a break from the intensity of teenage-dom. I would spend afternoons watching movies, in used book stores and - this is something I have always loved but never do anymore - eating in restaurants alone. With a book. Pre-cellphone, no distractions, leaning over bowls of noodles in chinatown and splattering a paperback novels.

But back to the notes and the forged script. I got so good at faking my mom's handwriting that I kind of forgot how to do my own. After hours of practice, and long after I got caught, her shaky illegible scrawl consumed my own evolving, passable cursive. I still write like my mom, all these years later. Although you might argue that I should just own it, already.

There's a lesson in this somewhere. I think about anything you try on in order to pass yourself on as someone else. Eventually even that fake stuff gets absorbed, sometimes it overtakes you, and you forget how you used to do it - what was authentic to you.

But there's hope in here. You can rewire parts of yourself to be good things, too, right? More patient, generous, attentive. Try it on for size. Practice the looping I's and the disjointed K's. Soon you'll have a whole new hand.]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10387 The thing about traveling is you remember to look at the sky.

Tonight, the last day of 38, I remember the nights of February 6th when I was not home. When I was in another hemisphere, even, staying up late to greet the sun.

I remember the poetry that brought me to those places, those times.

In Spain, a Jaques Prevert poem brought me to Alicante for my birthday:
Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans ma lit

Doux present du present
Fraicheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie

Christy and I watched the sun rise on the beach after a long train ride. Then we went to sleep and woke up to hundreds of doves cooing in the church across the courtyard. She had gone out and bought an orange. And put it on my bedside table.

In Jerusalem the next year, I met a French boy. He actually turned out to be a bit of bad news, but he taught me a poem fragment by Paul Eluard: La terre est bleu comme une orange. You’ve probably heard this one before. I hadn't. I thought it was beautiful and told him so.

In an effort to...er...court me (despite his undisclosed girlfriend) he left a lump of modeling clay and an orange on a table beside my bed.

For my 20th birthday eve that year, it was the Jewish Holiday of the trees, a beautiful if obscure holiday called Tu Bishvat, where (and this is a Kabbalistic interpretation) you celebrate trees as an intersection of the earthly (roots) and spiritual (branches stretching to the sky) and eat special foods mentioned in the bible.

We walked all night to the old city, our backpacks filled with dried fruits, oranges, nuts. And ate it on a rooftop overlooking the Western Wall as the sun rose and prayers rang out. It was sublime. The sky was so beautiful. Everything gold.

This year, I am in my Toronto home. I have been here for many years. I don’t travel much these days. I shuffle back and forth from work with headphones on. My office faces another building. I shrug off the cold and look at the ground.

But this year, once again, my birthday coincides with the holiday of the trees. And it being a lunar calendar, you can count on a fat, full moon in the sky tomorrow night. In fact, it was looking pretty close to bursting when I walked home on this evening, and lifted my head up to see it beaming through the bare branches.

My mother often told me about the day I was born that morning in ’73 after 26 hours of labour, how my great-grandmother Rose came to the hospital, held me in her arms and pronounced “a little ray of sunshine”. I made her tell that story to me every year. No matter how complicated our relationship was, I knew her love was full, beaming.

Back to Spain. I saw Christy the other day. The first time in ages. She surprised me with tickets to a play, out of the blue. She asked about my mom, and out of nowhere the big teary lump came up and I had to bite my lip and force it down again. “Remember when we traveled together?” said Christy. “She was right there with us. The whole time. She loved our adventure. She was so excited for us."

Back to the French boy. One day I was riding the bus in Jerusalem, some weeks after our sunrise on the rooftop. I hadn’t seen him since. I was looking out the window, daydreaming and wondering when we’d see the last rain of the season. And he came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you are looking at ze sky! So important.”

“Of course I am looking at the sky.” I said to him impatiently. He was so prescriptive and pretentious with his French poetry and inappropriate courtships. “I always look at the sky.”






]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10381


Dear Gabriel,

More than five years ago, I wrote in a post: "Not too long form now, I will have a boy who is five.” And here we are.

Five years ago exactly, we were home form the hospital, lying in bed, trying to figure each other out. There was nothing else in the world more beautiful than being with you, right there, in that bed, surrounded by people we love.

How are you at 5? You love to build. The first thing you do when you get to daycare is run to the carpet and start building ‘ships’ with your friends with those plastic modular connectors.

And I don’t want to project, but I think you might be having your first crushes. Remind me to tell you about the little girl at your birthday party you tried to impress with your skating pratfalls. Should the time come when you are really interested in girls, let’s hope you’ve debunked the “little girls don’t poop” idea you got in your head this year.

You are lucky to have your dad’s effortless sporto gene. You leap right in there with the big kids with any sport.. The best part? You really like to play hard, and you love it if you win, but you shrug it off with a smile if you lose. I love that. It’s so hard to be a good sport at 5.

Suddenly, this month you are reading - sounding out words with a mixture of skill and guesswork. Where did that come from? You’re not even in Senior Kindergarten yet. Is this supposed to be happening now?

Your vocabulary is massive - you just genuinely like to play with language, testing new words and phrasing out where no other words will fit (you also have a fake language that sounds distinctly like Elvish from Lord of the Rings. But I digress).

You remember song lyrics, poetry. We can sit in the car for half an hour going over a really pretty poem, and you will repeat it back to me perfectly and I try not to get too excited about that because I don’t want to ruin the fun (and be that obnoxious parent who teaches pre-schooler Shakespeare sonnets). You love the Bone comic books and Roald Dahl novels. I can’t wait to curl up with you on the sofa, each of us reading our own book. Is that a weird fantasy? The whole family in one room reading together?

You are an awesome artist with an eccentric style – you often start drawing feet first, and connect everything later. It’s wild. And beautiful.

You want to know magic tricks that will astound people. You keep saying “close your eyes” so that you can pull off some “magic trick” when our eyes are finally open. Usually you don’t even know what that trick will be before you begin. Truthfully, it’s getting tedious. There, I said it. By the time you read this, I hope you’ll have a sense of humour about it. Enough with asking us to close our eyes all the time!

You climbed into the bath with me the other morning. “This is nice” you said, as you stretched out beside me and we listened to music. I still wrap you in a towel after your bath and sing you a song. It’s less your special song, these days, but more “Aeoroplane Over the Sea” or “Buckets of Rain”..

Little Red Wagon
Little Red Bike
I ain’t no monkey, but I know what I like.

When grandma was sick last year everything changed in our home. It must have been really hard for you to know what to do, how to feel. I ask you about it sometimes, but despite all your amazing words, it’s hard to find the right ones to assign to feelings.That doesn't change as you get older. It's still hard to describe feelings.

At grandma’s funeral, you wordlessly came up to me and covered me with kisses after I gave the eulogy. And the other day, on the chalkboard, “I drew you these beautiful flowers so that you could look at them when you feel sad about grandma”.

There are not words to describe what it is to have you in my life, how much easier, real-er, and happier everything is. The other day you were playing with the ‘I love you up to the sky’ game and you said, “I love you so much that it’s nothing.”

I worry, sometimes, that in painting this portrait of near-perfection both here and in real life, that maybe there is too much praise, too much love. That you will get the dreaded only child syndrome, and never be able to take criticism. But for now, I’m hedging my bets on the idea that knowing you are smart, fun, and so ridiculously cherished and loved will make you feel secure, confident, generous and filled with love.

 1 - 2– 3 - 4



]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10362 Comic Books

Asterios Polyp - David Mazzucchelli
My old co-worker Mark recommended this for Chris, and when he was done, I snagged it. Visually, it is stunning, with a style unlike anything I've ever seen in a graphic novel. The story itself explores the ideas of duality in both art and life, often concept vs. sentiment. But forget the ponce talk. It's just beautiful. A love story. A journey. Read it.

Paying For it - Chester Brown
Man decides to eschew traditional romantic intimacy in favour of paying for sex with prostitutes. From his first encounter to his final, more lasting relationship, he maintains a detached attention to detail and pedantic approach that reminds me of certain hackers I've known. But this cerebral documentation surprisingly contains (not sure whether it's always intentional) emotional information (despite the fact that he obscures all the faces of the sex workers).

Sweet Tooth
I got totally sucked into Jeff Lemire's dystopian serial about children born as animal-human hybrids, (the only people immune to a deadly plague that has decimated the human population) and the former hockey enforcer who tries to save them from the mad scientists. I don't know if you will like this, but I do.

Books

The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Cory recommended this on  BoingBoing a little while ago as a wizard school story for grown ups. I have a soft spot for books where people do magic, I do. It contains homages to Harry Potter and Narnia and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  It's not a perfect book by any means, but I snatched up the sequel this boxing day and can't wait to return to the messed up, dark world of Fillory.

Blue Nights - Joan Didion
Even talking about the loss of a child is like touching hot coals for me; I have to pull away before I make contact. But when I saw Joan Didion's latest novel - in which she chronicles the loss of her daughter - knew I had to push through that narrative.  And it didn't kill me. It was poetry.

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Sarah leant this to me when I needed a light read. And it was so. much. fun. Mostly I loved it for the 12 year old in me and I wish I had found it at that age. Find yourself a young teen girl and gift this book to her! (Or really, just read it yourself).

The Believers - Zoe Heller
I had never read anything by Zoe Heller before this. But it was savagely funny, smart, and totally compelling. When the patriarch of a famous family of New York Lefties is struck down by a stroke, his wife and kids have to figure out what they still stand for, what they believe in. The caustic, destructive mother, the dogma-addicted daughter who turns to religion, and the self-loathing daughter who sublimates with danishes - they have stuck around my head since I read this, and I can still hear their banter.

The Family Fang - By Kevin Wilson
You know this is going to be a hit movie. You should read it now so that you can be blase when Wes Anderson puts it in theatres. Two kids raised by performance artists (who incorporated their children into their controversial public performances from birth), try to strike out on their own. With mixed results. Quirky. Funny. And not obnoxious (thought the movie is certain to be).

Cookbooks

Although I do eat meat, I get obsessed with vegetarian cookbooks. Last year, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian had me fixated - and this year it has been the two Ottolenghi books - the eponymous volume (which has meat recipes) and Plenty, which has a collection of sweet vegetable and grain dishes. If you have not seen them, you live in a cave.

10 years ago, every veg-centric cookbook had you stocking your larder with sun-dried tomatoes, chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce, quick-cooking polenta and balsamic reduction. In 2011, cookbooks demand you keep your fridge stocked with a fresh selection of herbs, greek yogurt, buttermilk, pomegranate (fresh and molasses) and maldon sea salt. 

Kid's Books

I have loved reading with Gabriel this year. We devoured "James and the Giant Peach" together, and he seemed to get it, and love it,  so now we're on to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". We're also reading the BONE comic series, which is a bit old for him, but he keeps demanding more.
When my mom was in palliative care this summer I was looking for a book that talked about death, but was for children. That dealt with the spiritual plane but didn't have religious homilies. I put the question out there on Facebook, and was surprised to find that a friend, Sheila,  had just received copies of her first children's book, the beautiful "We Need a Horse". She brought it over to my home that day. Wise, dreamy, beautifully illustrated. It was perfect.

What have your favourite reads been this year?


]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10351 Any rock and roll band worth their salt knows that Little Drummer Boy is the only song they can get away with singing on that Christmas compilation. Everything else has too much icing.

I was doing a little holiday shopping when the song "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time - Paul McCartney's shockingly unironic attempt at thrusting one of his compositions into the Christmas music pantheon - came over the sound system.

And it occurred to me. This song needs to have a skewering punk rock makeover. In fact, it demands it.

But when you look a little closer, every carol has a snarling, satirical alter-ego. And I can't NOT hear "White Christmas" as something that ought to be sung tongue-and-cheek by someone of colour.

And of course 12-year-old in me takes great mirth in "Santa Claus is Coming" (which gets funnier each time it's repeated) and FORGET ABOUT "Backdoor Santa" - which needs no makeover. Oh, Clarence Carter.

So yeah, I will take Fairytale in New York any Christmas. It's my favourite seasonal song of all time, I tell you. All time.
]]> https://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10309 Tonight I did a lecture for Trampoline Hall. I was pretty fricking nervous, but there ya go. Here is the text of my lecture:


I have a friend named Dan. When were in our early 20s in Montreal, he spoke and moved exactly like an old Jewish man – it helped that he had a bit of a limp from a ski injury. I remember him sidling up to the counter at Wilensky’s – a landmark of old Jewish Montreal - ordering an egg cream and a special, and dropping Yiddish expressions with a raised finger for emphasis, like a real zayde.

When I started collecting Yiddish proverbs for this lecture, I came across this expression:

Vi ainer iz tsu Ziben, azoi iz er tsu zibetsik. As a man is at 7 so is he at 70.

And I immediately thought to call Dan, who according to Facebook, had just had his third child. After we caught up, I asked him about his fixation with yiddishkeit that had gripped him so young, and here’s what he had to say:

When he was a kid, he was surrounded by Yiddish speakers – his parents spoke in Yiddish with his grandparents, who were holocaust survivors. It wasn’t until he was near bar-mitzvah age that he truly grasped that Yiddish was no longer a vibrant culture, but the ghost of one. And this shook him to the core.

He began to immerse himself in remembering. He lived in a neighbourhood affectionately called “Cote Saint Jew” and he says he would shadow old people at the local Cavendish Mall - just to hear them speak Yiddish. This became a full-blown obsession when, at 15, he went on a trip called March of the Living, where high school kids visit concentration camps in Poland and learn of the vanished communities and how they met their ends. Oy.

Years later, Dan was at a wedding in Paris for an old friend he’d served with in the Israeli army. He’d taken time that trip to visit le Marais, which had been the heart of the Jewish community pre-world-war II. And that night he went to the wedding with a heavy heart.

After the ceremony, the band played the obligatory hora, and then played another Yiddish chestnut called “Sha, Shtil.”

And nobody got up to dance. Because nobody recognized the tune. And Dan turned to the father of the groom, with tears in his eyes and said: “How can you stand it? All the rich Jewish culture that once thrived here has vanished. And now, no one even remembers the songs!”

The Father of the groom was a gentle man who also happened to be a therapist with a specialty. He asked him if he had ever heard of transgenerational trauma. It’s when the trauma of one generation — it can be as sprawling as the holocaust, as contained as a car accident — is infused wordlessly into the next.

And it can last generations. Suddenly a lightbulb went on in Dan’s head.

He noticed that certain friends in what he calls his “Yiddish circles” also shared the same symptoms. Guilt, anger, anxiety, a profound sense of loss, and an overwhelming sentimentality for Yiddish culture. And he not only talked to them about it, but he went to a therapist because he was worried about passing it on to his own children.

The therapist calmed him, telling him that he was celebrating his culture in a healthy way, but to treat the language as something living, not a resurrection of ghosts.

These days, He speaks to all three of his children in Yiddish, and meets regularly with a Yiddish singing group he helped found. And he subscribes to the Forward, the last Yiddish language paper. Although he still talks and moves like a zayde.


Unlike Dan, my own experience was far more assimilated. I grew up in Vancouver, and if you know your Canadian Jewish communities at all well, you’ll know that the Vancouver tribe probably boasts the worst bagels in all of North America, sub-par pastrami, and little to no Yiddish culture. Reading Mordecai Richler novels with the shoulder-shrugging schelppers and mouthy immigrant inflections was enticing but foreign. We’re kind of the WASPY Jews of Canada.

We lived in Oakridge, which is right on the fringes of a real WASPy enclave, Shaughnessy with its grand old homes. When my mom would pick me and my sisters up from school, she would drive slowly past these mansions and peer through the windows. She’d be transported to a fantasy plane, muttering to herself about what she’d do differently if that were her home, wondering what kind of people lived in those places.

Which brings me to our next proverb: Ask about your neighbours, then buy the house. – I lost the Yiddish version to this one, hope you don’t mind.

When we moved to Toronto in ’86, she got her real estate license and finally got a chance to see inside those grand homes. For 25 years, she schlepped real estate signs, buzzed with pagers and cell phones, walked up and down countless flights of stairs and saying to people things like: “Not much charm right now, but good bones.” And before people made an offer, she’d recommend: “Just drive over this evening, park your car, and walk around the neighbourhood and look in windows of other houses and see what kind of people live in there. Get a feel for the street.”



She did really well as an agent, but didn’t have much financial SECHEL – that’s Yiddish for common sense. By 60 she had no security, no home. A couple of years ago, she started to hint heavily about all the lovely Chinese and Italian families that lived 3 generations in one household. “It works so well because the grandparents take care of the grandkids!” I tried to laugh it off, but Chris, my guy pointed out that one day we would have figure out a way to have her live with us.

This one IS a Yiddish proverb, but it’s been so widely co-opted that I know you will recognize it: Mann tracht, Got lakht. Man plans, God laughs.

Before we could plan for it, the “one day” happened. In February 2010, my mother was diagnosed with a rare cancer that had metastasized. They call these kinds of cancer the “whisper cancer” because they sneak up on you and then BAM they show themselves in all their malignant glory. And by then it is too late. You can kind of buy time with chemo. Months? Maybe years? We didn’t know. But what we did know was that she couldn’t sustain her rent if she was going to be really sick. And she needed to be with family. She needed a home. She needed to live with us.


There is a Yiddish Proverb that sounds a bit Yoda-ish:

Az me muz, ken men.

When one must, one can.

And this is the spirit with which we embraced our decision. It was so emotional, so hard to know what we were getting into, but as we sat for the 25th hour in emergency, my awesome partner Chris looked at me bravely and said “this is what need to do.”

And so she moved in with us. It was so Old World. And everyone who was from a traditional family seemed to think this was a GREAT idea. My butcher started to treat me with more respect when he found out we'd taken my mom in, and he stopped staring at my chest. Even people from non-traditional homes would squeeze me on the shoulder and say: “you’re doing the Right Thing.” For a while we felt illuminated by a nimbus of tender and compassionate light. And for a while, being seen as that person felt, selfishly, wonderful.

I like this old proverb, and it’s one that a rabbi I spoke with pointed out as one of his favourites: Tsedokeh zol kain gelt nisht kosten, volten geven di velt fil tsadikim

If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.

Not that this was charity, but this ‘good thing’ we were doing came at a price. When we lived with my mom, our house no longer felt like home. We stopped having friends over, stopped playing our music, and - this is kind of egotistical to admit - but we thought our happiness and values would rub off on her! But instead we all succumbed to this bottomless gloom.

One day, where we were rocking out in the living room, dancing up a storm with our 3-year-old, we looked up and saw my mom smiling tensely in the doorway, unsure how to engage. Come on and join us! She sat on the sofa and watched with us dancing with such a sad expression, that soon we couldn’t dance anymore.

There was so much intimacy through the proximity of shared space - we shared a bathroom where her dainties hung from the shower rod, her wig sat on a stand in the kitchen - but our ability to be intimate with each other was failing. All the moments I had imagined lying in bed with her, talking about life and joys and regrets - they never materialized.

BUT if ever a proverb rang more true to this day, it would be this:

Oib di velt vet verren oislaytst, eez es nor in schus fun kinder. – if the world will ever be redeemed, it will be through the merit of children


Thank God for children, because our little boy seemed relatively unaffected by all the subtext and illness, and he would climb into bed with her every morning, and it brought her so much joy. And when we sat for dinner together, struggling to be cheerful, he would burst into happy song or whine about the food. It didn’t matter. He brought everyone back into the present, and gave us something joyful to focus on.

This not a Yiddish proverb, but it should be one: If grandchildren knew how much the comfort of others rested on their shoulders, surely they’d crumble under the pressure.

When we talk about Yiddish proverbs, we also talk about loss and a longing for home.

My friend Mia spent this summer in Vilnius, Lithuania, studying Yiddish language. Vilnius – once called Vilna to the Jews who lived there - was the heart of the Jewish enlightenment and modern Yiddish culture before World War II.

The city had been 40 per cent Jewish. The local cafes once burst with Yiddish culture, writers were composing edgy modernist poetry and manifestos. At a certain café, you could buy one of 30 Yiddish magazines from across Europe.

Everyone she studied with was trying to reconcile ideas of this rich past with a somewhat muted present. A place that was once housed a vibrant Jewish community, no longer felt like a home. Some were trying to outrun those ghosts by infusing life into this language.

She told me about a Yiddish term, "benkshaft" a word that encapsulates longing and nostalgia. It’s a ‘hurts so good’ kind of concept, where you tell the story of your loss, but there is also laughter in that loss, a beautiful universality to the sentiment.

Yiddish was a hybrid language – it took a little bit of Hebrew, a lot of old German, a smattering of Slavic tongues and occasionally a bit of French and became its own language that described the here and now for each generation …. And often with an undercurrent of Benkshaft – nostagia and longing for the way we wish things had turned out.



Which brings me to our final proverb of the night:

Tsu itlechen nayem leed, ken men tsu passen ahn alten niggen

In a new verse, you can always fit in an old tune.

I hadn't realized it before my mom got sick. It had been my habit to seek out "benkshaft" in life, to smooth out spikier episodes or to soothe heartache. It's not inaccurate to say I wallowed in sad songs — when I felt like crap, they made me feel better.

When my mother was dying, that changed. Every tune that had uplifted me or given me a frisson of sweet melancholy felt artificial and wrong.

Even nostalgia felt off. When I found myself reflexively scouring my memory for good childhood moments to retell, my mother would push them away. "Remember that time we walked down to English Bay and had souvlaki? And we sat on the bench by the water, and I put my head in your lap, and you stroked my hair, and we watched the water until it got dark?"

My mom shook her head at me. Closed her eyes and turned away, impatient and a bit pissed off, as if I'd pulled open the blinds without warning.


You know, already, how I wish things had turned out. It's all done. This place, this time. This is where we live now.


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