To All The Dogs I’ve Loved Before

I’ve heard all the remarkable love stories of polar opposites finding soul mates. The Croatian and the Serbian. The devout Catholic and the atheist. Online lovers that defy geography. Ex-girlfriends who now have boyfriends. Even the story of the fate-filled collision in a Vancouver dog park where two individuals met over the laughter of calling for two different dogs who shared the same name. They got married. And what a great love story—I can just imagine the curious expression of other dog-parkers when they talk with the now-married couple with two dogs of the same name. 

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I wanted to address the most transcendent type of love. And that would be the love of a dog. This is a tribute to all the dogs I’ve loved before.

Last Saturday I cut through Allan Gardens on my way to work. A golden retriever galloped after a tennis ball and cantered towards me with the prized ball. His face and swagger was so similar to Bently’s, but when he looked up at me, there was no acknowledgement. He carried on towards his owner. In that instant I realized how lovely it is to have a dog’s acknowledgement. There is no greater feeling than when you have been separated from your dog (even for the length of a work day) and you get that knowing look that a dog gives his owner that says, “Hey, there you are! My person! Where have you been? What took you so long? I’ve been patiently waiting for you all day!”

Josh Grogan’s Marley & Me captured this divine relationship in words. A man and his dog can share an incredible intimacy that is unmatched. And if you don’t love dogs? I don’t think I want to know you because there is something obviously wrong with your human wiring.

Enter Xanadu. He was a drop-off. We lived on a country road where apparently it was acceptable for people to drop off unwanted pets that would hopefully have the persistence to find a new, forever home by themselves.  I remember getting off the school bus (age 6?), about to charge down the driveway to secure my place in front of the TV to watch The Flintstones, but instead, found myself on my knees in the grass, mauling my very own dog. Dreams did come true!

I had wanted an English sheepdog in a terrible way. My mother said, “You can barely comb your own hair, how will you ever take care of a sheepdog?” I didn’t care about my own hair, but I promised and swore on everyone’s grave that I would brush my sheepdog until it was fluffier than candy floss.

Xanadu was my sheepdog alternate. He was a Benji knock-off, very vocal, but extremely dedicated. He slept at my side, woke when I did and was always game for my expeditions to the pond, corn field or train tracks. Because that’s how I spent my days. I would eat Froot Loops as required by my parents, and then disappear with my dog until the sun went down.

My grandparents and uncles who lived at the end of Arthur Road had a motley crew of dogs over the years. There was a dopey St. Bernard, a politically incorrectly named black lab (“Spook”), a Great Pyreneese,  a few Rotties (that kept my dad in the car—honking until my Aunt Freda would come to the rescue)…but we all gelled. Those dogs could run like greyhounds and followed my cousins and I when we hopped on my grandfather’s tractor to wherever the tractor stopped. They swam with us in the murky irrigation ponds full of leeches and duckweed. They braved the ferocious February temperatures, just to hang out with us.

Xanadu

Xanadu’s short and furry stature meant he accumulated a lot of snowballs on his legs though—sometimes making him completely immobile. On one cross-country sojourn I had to leave my ski poles behind, pick him up, and awkwardly ski home with his shivering, snowballed body in my arms.

There was a Christmas when Xanadu disappeared. For hours. I cried and cried on my bunk bed at the loss of my very best friend. I was so inconsolable I moved to the floor, which would allow for more dramatic crying. My dad was still out in the storm with a flashlight, desperately trying to find our dear dog. As I pounded my fists into the shag carpet, I heard a sound. I held my breath. I looked under my bunk bed and found Xanadu! He was curled up on the stupid Sears bomber jacket that I received for Christmas—the one that I had hidden under my bed because it was so awful. I never wanted to wear it. My rational mind thought that my parents would forget about it if it were tucked away until spring. Naturally I had to confess when everyone crowded into my bedroom and fell to their bellies to welcome Xanadu back (even though he had been warm and comfortable and sleeping on my unwanted bomber jacket all night).

He lived to be 17. Plus all the years he lived before us in a world that we would never know of. One day he just walked away, nearly blind, nearly furless, and found a safe place to move on to the next world. My dad never stopped looking for him. Every night after work he would walk until dusk, calling Xanadu’s name. We never found him.

Certainly, no dog could replace Xanadu, because he was the first. But I have been charmed by many since.

Ripley was a black lab-shepherd cross that belonged to a transient roommate in Vancouver when I was 18. Ripley (or “Re-play” as my French roomie referred to her) was an embarrassment to walk. She practically walked on her hind legs. I do believe she competed in the Iditarod in another life time, because the click of her collar around her neck set her off. Oh, how the neighbour’s would look and point at the spectacle that we were. I often walked Ripley, due to my incurable love of dogs. She would choke herself to death on the leash and drag me to the park in three minutes flat. I have a scar on my index finger as a testament to her wild ways. Ripley loved to chase the tennis ball, but only once. Then it was a tug-of-war to get the ball back. Or, bloodshed, in my case. But she didn’t meant to bite my finger nearly in two, I’m sure of it.

I lived vicariously through my friends’ dogs for many years. I even found kinship with Toughie, my Croatian neighbour’s pit bull. Toughie terrorized my partner on a daily basis and Ziggy kindly offered this sage advice:  “If Toughie attacks, pull his front legs apart and it will break his ribcage. Game over.”

Yeah, right. He was telling this to a person who picked worms off the sidewalk so they wouldn’t get stepped on. The person who would throw washed-up starfish back to the sea. I saved spiders from being squashed in the house and rescued sunbathing snapping turtles and snakes from careless drivers on the back roads. Even if I was being attacked by Toughie, I’d never break his ribcage.

Scrappy's lion impersonation

In Uganda, I was elated to learn that the Jane Goodall office had three dogs. When I arrived, there were actually five. Beevis and Buster were temporary additions, who immediately failed the guard dog test. Levi, the biggest and beefiest of the lot, proved to be the suck of the bunch. When a thunderstorm rolled in across Lake Victoria, Levi was the first one pawing to get under my mosquito net. I would hurry downstairs to get the Rescue Remedy for him (a homeopathic anti-anxiety treatment for humans, but dog-friendly). Levi would immediately sit and gladly swallow the Remedy, then assume his position with me in the single bed, beside the two other scaredy cats–Scrappy and Tinker.

Scrappy stole my heart, he was like a little deer. His life was a charmed one—chasing cocky Vervet monkeys who dared step foot on his turf. Tinker, the darling black lab was more concerned with fetching. He wasn’t picky about the fetch item either. In fact, Tinker would find pieces of wood the size of matchsticks to fetch. He would drop a dead cockroach at your feet as a fetch offering. Most of the time the sticks he found were so small that they would remain stuck to his tongue. He would be  convinced that he had dropped the matchstick at your feet already and take off running in anticipation of the throw.

I recently learned that Scrappy, Tinker and Levi have moved from their African digs. Due to staff changes at the Uganda office, no one was going to be at the office on weekends anymore to care for the dogs. So, they have found a new home in—wait for it—Amsterdam! I can`t imagine how awestruck (and shivery!) the dogs are in their new climes. As humans we are well-equipped for digesting new locations, but dogs? From Africa to Amsterdam? At least Tinker had a life in England before, and was hopefully able to give Scrappy and Levi a primer of what to expect in their new Dutch territory.

Tinker's "Fetch Face"

When I think of all the dogs I’ve met over the years (shout-out to Maple who ate an entire block of Swiss cheese at a barbeque in Michigan, and Toblerone who I’ve known since a blue-eyed pup to a grey-faced senior gal)– their personalities and quirks shine brighter than some people I have known.

Of course, Bently and Mila carved out a giant place in my heart. I’m surprised Bently trusted me at all after I accidentally ran him through a just-poured sidewalk. The poor guy was in wet cement up to his elbows and I was too busy thinking all the construction crew were giving me cat calls. Meanwhile, they were giving me dog calls—i.e.-Get your dog out of our just-poured sidewalk! I was so in tune with Laura Branigan on my iPod, dodging yummy mummies in minivans carting their kids to school and road repair trucks that I missed the WET CEMENT signs. Whoops. Luckily we were close to McKee creek, otherwise Bently would have had cinder blocks as feet by the time we reached home again.

The mention of Mila still makes me weepy though. I miss her giraffe tongue licking my legs after a run like a popsicle. I miss her howling at the cookie jar several times a day (how could I resist?). I long for her thundering feet down the hallway folllowed by the flying leap  into bed with me in the morning. With closed eyes, I can see her in the backyard, whipping her Mad Butcher cow bone six feet in the air. Bones made her crazy, but pig ears were her cocaine. We once thought that we’d been robbed and ransacked. Flowerpots were tipped over, soil was tracked across the hardwood and area rug. Books were toppled from the shelves. It took a while to realize that Mila had snuck a pig’s ear into the house and was anxious to bury it while we were at work.

Mila

I miss Mila in the way that a sad song can make you instantly ache (cue up Jann Arden’s All the Days here). But I can’t turn the song off. When I see a lab retriever, Mila visits me every time. I see her vitality, her fierce protection of us from the coyote at Hayward. I laugh through tears to think of the time she came out of the Cultus woods dragging a rack of deer ribs behind her.

Agnes Sligh Turnball was bang-on when he said, “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.”

I know there will be more dogs, and that makes me happy. I miss fur on my socks. I miss having a running partner who is willing to go out in the sloppiest of weather (the sloppier the better). Bently waited by the front door (so he wouldn’t miss an opportunity) and never asked how long we’d be gone or where we’d be going. He was simply happy to be in my company.

Gilda Radner once said, “I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.”

To all the dogs I’ve loved before, thank you for letting me be your person.

Boston

 Special thanks to these pals: Boston, Prince (who rode in the back of the pick-up truck with me on my Aunt`s dill farm), Spook (who rode shotgun in my grandfather`s pick-up while I rode in the back), Brutus, Lucy (of Brantford), Lucy (in Jinja, Uganda), Sally (the whitest dog on the pig farm), Heidi (seen most often with a lampshade on her head), Cruise (despite general annoying behaviour that I will blame on the owner), Ali, Junior, Maverick, Reggie, Smoogles, Vanille, Maple, Toby, Nakina, Kennisis, Max & Chloe (American dog pals), Marlon Brando, Chester, Morgan, Abby, Molly, the 17 farm dogs that chased me on a daily basis on my bike commute down River Road and Doodlebug. And to those I haven`t met but have strong affection for—Kuluk (RIP), Extra in Nunavut, Mr. Wilson, Maddie, Midgie and Midi the wonder dog. And I know I’ve forgotten ten dear others, forgive me.

“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” –Roger Caras

Up in the Air, Elephants and Entebbe

By now all the rabid George Clooney fans have oooh-ed and ahhhh-ed over his schmoozy Ryan Bingham persona in Up In the Air. The Golden Globes are always a convincing force, pushing everyone else into the theatres to see the greedy award-grabbers like Avatar, The Hangover and Up in the Air for themselves.

So I went, because I like to be pop-culturally informed. If you are holding out for the rental so you don’t have to pay $12 for popcorn, there’s no spoiler here. Ryan Bingham’s life revolves around flying. In fact, being grounded leaves him unbalanced and twitchy. However, when love tempts him, he begins to reconsider his whole life. Maybe everyone else has it right. Maybe love, permanency and a home with a full fridge and drawers is attractive and natural. Bingham’s solace had long been the routine and simplicity of airline travel.  He had no baggage other than what he checked in at the airport. Or did he?

His motivational speeches on the absurd weight of the physical and emotional baggage that we carry turns as flat as an open Coke left on the counter overnight. His sister’s impending marriage reveals his estranged relationship with his entire family. When he meets his match in Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), Bingham re-evaluates his life spent in the sky, travelling 320 days of the year.

The movie should have convinced the audience that baggage is good. It represents a life well-lived, friends and partners well-loved, dogs, cats, the whole sloppy and gorgeous mess. 

So, why did I find myself in the travel section of Indigo Books minutes after the movie ended? Up in the Air reminded me of the anticipation that pulsates in airports. I wondered where I would/should go next. I pulled a guide book from the shelf on volunteer opportunities abroad and decided to play a game with myself. I let the book fall open to a random page, and decided that would be my next destination. I averted my gaze (to avoid cheating myself). I looked at the page that fate had opened to:  Thailand’s Elephant Sanctuary.

Because I’m a Switzerland when it comes to making decisions, I’ve decided this will be my new tactic. The 100-acre sanctuary is located 50km from Chiang Mai in the Mai Taman Valley. Many of the elephants are rescued in an injured state from poaching activity, as seen with one individual who arrived with only one tusk. Once rehabilitated the elephants are released into “Elephant Haven,” a 2,000-acre natural forest where they can live safely with the herd of 25 that has already found a forever home in the Haven.

Volunteers stay in bamboo chalets, collect fodder with machetes during the dry season and can accompany a vet on the “Jumbo Express.” Working elephants kept by remote hill tribes receive veterinary care during such missions. Mornings begin with car-washing the elephants in the river. Because they are prone to parasites and other skin conditions, they require a daily squeegee job. At noon, when the pick-up truck rolls in with papayas, pineapples and bananas, “you are covered in fruit pulp and elephant snot” in minutes. Awesome!

J.A.C.K. Lubumbashi, Congo

I walked home from Indigo in the spitting rain, inspired and imagining elephant snot. I went online and read more. I checked out the Tennessee elephant sanctuary again and made notes in my not-so-official Five Year Plan book. Then I saw a Facebook posting from PASA Primates in need of volunteers at the Drill Ranch in Nigeria, working with orphaned chimps and mandrills. I jetted off an email immediately for more details.  Then I received news that the J.A.C.K. sanctuary in the Congo (where I volunteered in July) has three more chimps arriving after being found at an abandoned captive facility in DR Congo. That made me want to fly back to Lubumbashi tomorrow.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I will probably volunteer more than I will work in my life.

It was just over a year ago that I watched Entebbe, Uganda disappear below me. The tears in my eyes made the few lights of the ‘city’ double. Landing at Schipol and taking the train into Amsterdam was a rude slap. Winter! That hospitable African sun no longer warmed my skin. I immediately forgot about the nuisance red dust that came with that lovely sunshine.

I rented Out of Africa the very next day. I looked at all 800 of my pictures on a regular basis and cried for the dogs and pals that I left behind. I missed the frenetic pace of the Tuesday night market. Having a warm Nile beer with a bowl of salty grasshoppers as the sun dropped into Lake Victoria. I wanted a Stoney Tangawizi (fiery ginger beer) and a rolex (an omelette with chopped cabbage and tomoato rolled into a greasy chapatti) from a shifty street vendor. As I ran in the sopping BC rain along McKee creek, I wanted to feel that stupid dust in my eyes and ears. I was sad to not be dodging scrawny goats and fleet-footed chickens and ‘boda-bodas’ (mopeds) with 400-pound Nile perch flapping on the back.  I missed Africa in an almost pathetic way. Like a heart-broken lover.

And then my friend Heidi reminded me of all the things I had casually forgotten about when living in Africa. Travelling as a videographer with World Vision, she spent the last two weeks in Entebbe, Gulu and Kampala. I was thrilled to tell her about each place—what she had to eat (pizza at Anderita Beach, Nee’s green curry at the Gately) and how the sunsets would catch the sky on fire. My only warning was about the darling vervet monkeys who were prone to stealing bananas from your hand, or anything else that they assumed was edible.

Taxi??

And I think I mentioned that Kampala was a zoo, but I didn’t want to be like a movie reviewer with a spoiler in the first sentence. I did send a photo of the Kampala taxi park as a subtle warning though. It’s a football field of ‘matatus’ (mini-van taxis), each with a horn which is blared in response to other blaring horns. Just like barking dogs, one starts, and the rest join in. But Heidi had been to Zambia, she knew the drill.

The flight to Entebbe alone is enough to cause exasperation in any sane person. Sitting upright for what seems like 108 hours is the first hurdle. Sleepless and rattled by disappearing time zones, you arrive in the vacuum cylinder that is Entebbe. It smells like one big armpit. The skeletal dogs you pass by are like a non-stop Humane Society commercial with some achy Sarah McLachlan song cooing in the background.

The dust begins to blow, the sweat begins to drip until you feel like you’ve taken a dip and are stuck wearing your wet swimsuit for the rest of the five hour car ride.

Heidi’s first post mentioned her exhilaration in finally arriving in Uganda, despite the cold shower (yeah, I forgot about the frequency of those too). She was looking forward to sleeping on her single bed with the lumpy foam mattress. I nearly spit wine all over my laptop screen. I remembered the foam mattresses well. They make you sweat so much that when you wake up, you think you’ve pissed the bed. And then there’s the mosquito net to wrangle with.  If they are hung from the ceiling on a hoop, there is a fantastic chance that by morning, there is a huge gap somewhere in the netting and 500 malaria-carrying mosquitoes are trapped inside the net with you.

Heidi’s Twitter-ed dinner reports were the most dramatic (and realistic). I think after being in Entebbe for four months, I had become used to the starch intake. A typical lunch or dinner would include: matoke (steamed green plantain), potatoes, yams and rice. Served with, as Heidi eloquently described it, “chicken parts.”

Yes, there were always mystery parts. I think I had part of a goat’s stomach in some broth once. But I conveniently forgot about the stench of fish for sale on the sidewalk in Kampala. The body odour that permeates all air molecules. There were several matatu rides where I had to do a lot of self-talk in tandem with my iPod and The Killers at a deafening level.

And then there was the internet and electricity issue. The patchy communications home made my mother routinely WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. In Entebbe, the power went off in the airport as soon as I arrived. The luggage carousel was halted, but speech was not! The airport was alive with the raised voices of wilting missionaries and UN workers and Tilly-hatted tourists in safari suits fanning themselves as they complained to anyone who made eye contact.

I forgot about the crappy internet connection. I forgot about the stretches of three or four days without electricity. And the hurried cold showers that accompanied them.

When Heidi returned to Nashville, I relived my return home. Clean sheets, clean surfaces, meat without flies on it, ice cubes, soap! Deodorized people! No one yelling “Mizungo! Mizungo! Give me money! Mizungo, buy this!”

And I had space. I have probably only yelled twice in my life, and not even at a dog the other time. However, when I was flying out of Lubumbashi in July I had to yell against my will. Maybe it was more of a really loud voice than a yell, but, the man behind me had his passport pressed into my back. His jacket was practically slung over my shoulder and I could feel his hot, stale breath on my neck. I could feel myself cracking my own molars, trying to resist an eruption. “STANDING CLOSER TO ME DOES NOT MAKE THE LINE GO FASTER.” I erupted. It happens to the best of us when travelling.

And this is another blessing of North America (besides meat without flies and reliable wi-fi). We give each other personal space. It’s an unspoken rule that doesn’t exist everywhere in the world.

But, if we don’t travel and put ourselves in unfamiliar landscapes, how do we ever appreciate laundry detergent, $5 coffees and toilet seats? Or being served chicken instead of chicken parts? Distance from comfort, family and friends refines gratitude.

Public washroom in Kampala, Uganda

Even though I was reminded of all the nerve-fraying aspects of African travel, I am still halfway there in my head. I can always come home to a toilet seat and pocket-coil mattress again. It might be time to rent Out of Africa again. Apparently I miss corruption, using 500 Q-tips a month, parasites, starch and riding in matatus with 19 people, 6 chickens, blaring gospel music and an oily car-engine half on my lap.

Doesn’t everyone?

“Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” –Pat Conroy

Heidi’s World Vision Zambia footage featuring “All the Days” by Jann Arden:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYidUQIY0r4

Elephant Sanctuary in Thailand: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/

Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee: http://www.elephants.com/

The Drill Ranch in Nigeria: http://www.pandrillus.org/projects/drill-ranch/

J.A.C.K. in Lubumbashi: http://jack.wildlifedirect.org/

Under My Skin: An Itching Memoir

I know I have an enviably high pain threshold. Getting a tattoo is more of an irritation than a breath-holding, white-knuckle, beet-red face challenge for me. Been there, done that—eight times now.  I learned of my threshold early on, which was heightened with every tree top that I scaled, and subsequently slid down. A summer’s day wasn’t complete unless I had a poison oak encounter, rusty barbwire lacerations, burrs in my hair and bark burn up and down my inner thigh.

Every Hide n’ Go Seek game provided a minor concussion or severe scrape of some sort from the farm machinery or barn rafters that I found spectacular hiding spots in. But the day I ran barefoot across the gravel driveway after Kiley and stepped directly on the flame-orange charcoal briquette heater, I knew I was near invincible. The electric coil was used to kick-start the briquettes in the hibachi, and most often set ‘safely’ on the driveway to cool. The sizzle and stick of that thousand degree cheater-heater on the sole of my foot nearly sent me to the moon. Certainly, it called off the chase after my sister, but I had to shake it off. Running across the gravel elicited enough yelps as is, and the short, picky, sun-bleached grass offered no reprieve. My solution (always in clever avoidance of a trip to the doctor or emergency room)? I filled up my cowboy boot with ice cubes and acted calm, cool and collected while I ate my steakette and gherkins with one foot threatening to catch on fire.

I can handle throbbing pain. I’ve had some spectacular bike wipe-outs that have left me with “boy scabs” as my sister calls them. You know the ones—girls playing with skipping ropes could never get a scab as big as their kneecap. The ones that fester and can be picked at all summer long until the skin below reappears as a shiny Pepto Bismol pink, are boy scabs by no other name. AKA:  the forever reminder of the sidewalk and the BMX dump that made me see silver stars falling out of the sky like snow.

When I commuted by bike to my massage clinic in Dunnville, I was routinely chased by farm dogs looking for cheap thrills. They’d pop out of the grassy ditch, all teeth and growl and lunge for my shoelaces. Fudge dumped me once. Blackie bit through my spandex with the reflective tape and sunk into my calf muscle, and another trio sent me over my handlebars. When I found myself flat-out on the country road, the dogs sat at the road’s edge to observe my slow recovery. I assessed each part for sensation and potential bone ruptures through skin. My elbow had no skin left on it, and my handlebars were rotated in a position that would be great for making permanent left turns. My elbow joint seized up, and the gravel-pocked gouge out of my knee had already seeped enough blood down to my ankle to turn my white sock raspberry. But, I cranked my handlebars back into place, apologized to the dogs in case I hurt any of them in my colossal fall, and rode to work, crying every bit of the way. I massaged five people that day with an elbow that looked like ground beef, in need of a super-absorbent maxi-pad to soak up the carnage.

So, I can take it. I can even laugh at such moments. Like the time I walked an hour home from the Royal York Hotel on a sidewalk that more closely resembled a skating rink. The snow was coming at my face like sewing needles. I stopped at the Wine Rack for a bottle of Ontario merlot, picked up an arty movie and had sugary visions of a rejuvenating night stretched out on the couch. I thought I should throw a load of laundry in, but living in a brownstone, there were only two washers and two dryers shared by fourteen units. Proactively, I decided to check to see if the machines were being used before hauling my laundry downstairs.  I took the first step to the lower level and flew down the next seven steps to the very bottom. I landed on my same elbow that never really recovered from the above-mentioned dog chase wipe-out. AND, I pissed my pants. Once again, I couldn’t unhinge my elbow as it took the initial impact in my quest to save the just-purchased wine. The second critical blow was apparently sustained by my bladder. I was wearing my tan cargo pants and I had pissed myself right down to my knees. Now I really had to do laundry, whether I wanted to or not.  I suffered greatly, and could hardly hear the movie for the heartbeat in my elbow, but, the laundry was done, neatly folded, and I carried on.

So, I think I qualify as a tough broad with titanium willpower to ignore slips and bites that would normally send the average person to triage. But, this itch issue that I have? I can’t stand it.

I’ve been itching since September, unable to pinpoint the source. My hands have been a constant, but sometimes I get a full-blown episode where the only parts that don’t itch are my eyeballs.

I’ve had chicken pox and poison ivy. I greedily ate some mystery orange in Costa Rica and karma smacked me with an open hand for not sharing with my fellow jungle volunteers. My whole face felt like it was flammable, and after an hour of unbearable itchiness, I lost complete feeling in my lips and tongue for about another hour. Apparently they’re called Fire Oranges, and they are not edible. Duh.

All natural itch remedy

On another visit to Costa Rica, my then-partner and I arrived late into a small town that had one bar and one ‘hotel.’ The room was a steal at $15 US, but with it came a bed full of bugs. Kate insisted that they weren’t bed-bed bugs, they were merely bugs that happened to be in a bed. She swept them away with her hand and insisted that after a few margaritas, I wouldn’t even care or remember. She was right. The tequila acted like an anaesthetic and became a wonderful coping mechanism for something that would have otherwise had me cocooned on the balcony in a mosquito net in a standing position.

When I begrudgingly went to my doctor, there was initial heavy-suspicion that I had simply become intolerant to massage oil. Ten plus years of having my hands immersed in coconut, grape seed, sunflower seed, jojoba and other essential oils was bound to have some recourse.

I was shipped off to see a dermatologist who kindly told me that as long as I continued to massage, I would continue to itch. She wrote out a hasty prescription for a steroid cream that might cause glaucoma. Great. I’d stop itching, but I might go blind. I consoled myself with thoughts of the massage college in Shanghai that teaches the blind how to massage. I could always find gainful employment there.

The dermatologist was naturally my last resort. I will always try every home remedy that someone’s  mother’s sister’s aunt swears by (this is why I ended up with a hot dog bun soaked in skim milk hockey-taped to my ass when I had parasites, and licked 9-volt batteries for good measure).  I bought some tar soap that was recommended for occupational eczema. It was black, kinda sleek-looking, but I smelled like a miner. All day long all I could smell was pennies, and it was me. Bleh.

Like a good hypochondriac, I consulted Google and Wiki. Someone’s mother’s sister’s aunt suggested soaking my hands in oatmeal because the colloidal properties of it would leach out the itch. I already felt like I was covered in leeches, so, I was game. I opened a pack of microwaveable maple-brown sugar oatmeal with walnuts, stirred in two cups of tepid water and soaked my hands for five minutes.  No I didn’t. An oatmeal soak? That’s just too messy.  I tried eating oatmeal cookies instead, but felt nothing.

I tried nettle tea, because someone’s mother’s sister’s aunt said it changed her life. Nothing. It just tasted like gerbil shit with a spoonful of honey. As a second-to-last resort I went to the Ten Ren tea shop in Chinatown. Surely I would find a magical cure there.

I told my story of woe to the tea shop owner who immediately plied me with a free sample of ginger tea and a candied hibiscus flower. I explained how I wished to have my skin removed from my body. How I was embarrassed to be seen in public because everyone was probably stereotyping me as a crystal meth user. I showed her my raw hands and claw marks. She eyed me suspiciously, like I was trying to cover up kinky sex with the claw marks that I had on my back.

“No tea for itch.” She suggested my liver might need a cleanse and pushed some rose petal tea on to me. She scared the itch right out of me when she told me that diabetics itched. That night, drinking gewurtztraminer instead of the grandma’s bath water rose tea, I phoned my help line (my mother), who reassured me that diabetics itch all over and have dry skin like a shedding snake. I couldn’t possibly just have diabetic hands. Because that’s where it started, my hands. And, after a week of massaging, my body and nerve ending s go haywire, as does the itch.

Les (who does NOT have worms in her eye)

“Do you think it might be some of your African friends? Or your jungle friends?” This is my dad’s polite way of asking if maybe I have parasites again. I relay the story to my brother Dax, who tells me of the latest lab horror story he heard about an individual who went to Africa and came back with a 10-inch worm in their eye. “Worse,” he told me, “it was a blood-borne parasite, so the guy had them not just in his eye, but probably in his organs too. Worms love to go to the heart and lungs.”

So, now I was diabetic with heart worm and possibly lung worms as well. Surely I would never be kissed again. Exasperated, I had to take my dermatologist’s advice and not work for a week to see if things improved (or if I developed glaucoma from the steroid cream). The itch diminished, but how would I ever be able to pinpoint the cause? If it was shrimp or cashews, life would be over.

I kept thinking of our childhood dog, Xanadu. He had such a severe case of fleas one summer that he actually ate all the fur off his back and tail.

Xanadu before the anteater stage

He looked like an anteater by September. If I close my eyes, I can still hear his teeth going in the wee hours of night, like distant machine guns. Biting, chewing, pulling every last bit of fur out of his back.

I needed oven mitts. I was waking up itching myself like a crazed person. I heard more horror stories– about people allergic to their own sweat (thanks Kathleen). About rashes induced from exercise (thanks Karen).

Was it my detergent? I stopped washing my clothes altogether. Nothing. It wasn’t my coconut shampoo—otherwise I would have pulled a Xanadu and removed all the hair from my head. I stopped splashing on my Burberry. No reprieve.  It wasn’t my deodorant. Was it my winter gloves and scarf? Was it a message from the universe that I should move to Bora Bora?

Exasperated, I went to the holiday party that the Body Blitz spa owners held at the Drake Hotel. I confided in one of the owners, saying that obviously I was allergic to meatballs, martinis and people with hair. The other owner came up to me moments later, quite concerned after hearing about my terrible allergy. Was it true? Meatballs and martinis? How random!

I’ve even narrowed my product use to Aveeno. Boring. I’ve moved on from smelling like a jar of pennies to a bowl of oatmeal. And I only use the Replenishing Light Massage Oil by Biotone at work, but it seems to just replenish my itch.

I continue to drink the stupid rose petal tea, which gives me greenhouse breath—but because it’s part of a liver cleanse, I’m still not sure if I am supposed to drink it before or after my bottle of wine.

Maybe it is my “African friends.” As I fall to sleep with oven mitts on my hands tonight, I can’t wait to dream about the 10 inch worm crawling out of my eye (the one with glaucoma).

If anyone has any brilliant ideas for the massage therapist apparently allergic to her career, please share. I am already eyeing a salve made from butter, cloves and juniper berries.

I’ve read that lemon juice works too. Which means tequila might be the cure-all. No need for the salt-shaker, I’ll just do shots and suck on my arm until I pass out.

Ten home remedies for itching: http://health.howstuffworks.com/home-remedies-for-itching.htm

The hot dog bun/parasite home remedy post: http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/dont-let-the-bed-bugs-bite/

City Survivor Spin-off

I was in love with a ghost. For the three years that I lived in B.C., I continued to renew my subscription to Toronto Life.  The magazine was the beacon of my month, my je ne sais quoi, my cotton candy on a July day. When I left Toronto I immediately sent a subscription to my brother, so he could keep a finger on the pulse of the city in my absence.

The page I turn to first is the City Survivor List which features a celeb and the ten things they can’t live without. The lists are eclectic and read like Margaret Atwood characters at times. Seamus O’Regan (The O’Regan Files and Canada AM host) finds solace in Redbreast whiskey at the Dora Keogh and in British newspapers like The Guardian. He gushes over the hot and sour soup at Nota Bene on Queen West, Diana Krall, his Tintin wall art (“I’m a horrible romantic about him: it was inspiring to see a messy-haired blond kid become a journalist and adventurer”). His darling labradoodle, Rhys, lands the top spot on his coveted list while his personal trainer scores a #4. He’s a “braniac instead of the guy who used to beat me up in high school.”

Carole Pope, depicted by Toronto Life writer Amy Verner as “the post-punk queen of raunch” names  her Schwinn faux-mountain bike, her library cards from L.A., New York and Toronto, a vintage Vivienne Westwood raincoat , a Fender Mustang guitar, breakfast at The Senator on Victoria Street and her late mother’s art deco ring.

Comedian Scott Thompson of Kids In the Hall fame exposes can’t–live-without pre-performance rituals like pissing in the sink backstage with Kevin McDonald before every show and hot turkey sandwiches with peas. He offers glowing words for ketchup, one-piece long johns with a trap door in the back, the Kindle, his cat Uday (named after one of Suddam Hussein’s son’s) and a turtle lamp. “Fourteen years ago, my younger brother Dean died. During the funeral, the entire procession was stopped by a family of turtles walking across the path. We decided that one of them was my brother, so now the rest of my brothers and I collect turtle stuff.”

The City Survivor lists are voyeuristic. It’s like picking through someone’s garbage, medicine cabinet, junk drawer and fridge shelves. Even when I’m not familiar with the featured ‘celeb,’ I am still magnetically interested in what makes that individual hum. Ten things you can’t live without reveals an encyclopaedic amount about a person.

I love making lists, almost in A Beautiful Mind kind of way. My roommate Kelly laughs at me because I continue to write “RUN” on my daily list. “For crying out loud, Jules, you run every day of your life. Do you really need to write it down as a reminder?”

Probably not. But I’m not going to stop. And as I ran in the spitting snow and bitch-slap cold today I thought about my own City Survivor list. Number one became obvious.

1. My daily run through Cabbagetown. I run the same route six days a week. I know every house, dog, letter carrier, sidewalk crack and stroller along the way. I know the smell of Mr. Jerk fried chicken, the sweet waft of the Indian bakery, the rising dough of PizzaPizza and the muddy Don River. Once I tried running my route in the opposite direction and I felt like I was running on my hands—I was completely turned around. This is the same 5 km course I did when I first moved to Toronto in 2001. As adventurous as I am, I have my routines (none of them gymnastic) and actually love consistency. See number 2.

2. Bagels. When I was in Uganda I endured stale white toast for about a week before I sniffed out a bagel shop in the capital city, Kampala. The New York-style bagels were discovered in an underground parking lot storefront. They were as heavy as Chihuahuas and when my co-workers at the Jane Goodall Institute discovered the joy of 400 calories of carb-intake in one sitting, I had to start hiding my precious cargo! I like the Montreal-style (tough exterior, chewy innards), Seigel’s rosemary & sea salt bagels and Stonemill muesli dotted with enough seeds to feed 50 sparrows and 13 pigeons. Unless it’s a cinnamon-raisin bagel, the others get the same treatment: almond butter and a thin spread of raspberry or blueberry jam. I have yet to try Kelly’s standby bagel preference: Nutella and peanut butter slathered on so thickly that it has to be eaten with a knife and fork. I’ve also seen her sprinkle M&M’s on top while eating handfuls with her free hand (and she remains a stable 112 pounds). I’ve eaten bagels basically every day for 15 years. If all those bagels were lined up, they would definitely circle Saturn.

3. Bookstores. These are like my smelling salts. I am instantly revived when I step into one. I love Nicholas Hoare for the creaky floors, Glad Day bookshop just because they are gay and still thriving and Eliot’s on Yonge. Eliot’s usually makes me sneeze and seems like a grand visit to a grandparent’s attic with over 60,000 used titles. I love the verbal vacation of a meaty book that transcends, inspires and captivates. I need books, NOW, newspapers, restaurant reviews–even microwave instructions will do in a pinch. Give me something to read!

4. Matinees and the smuggled-in snacks that accompany them. I was a rabid fan of the Carlton Theatre which sadly closed its blood red velvet curtains in December 2009. I’m no theatre snob in a silk ascot, but I liked the tired old seats pock-marked with gum, the sticky floors, the audible whir of the projectors and grainy screen at The Carlton.

5. Body Blitz. Yes, the place where I work is also something that I can’t live without. The therapeutic waters create a euphoria and gentle exhaustion that could only be rivalled by 12 hours of sleep. The spa (touted as Canada’s first authentic water spa for women) is a one-two punch of ambience and camaraderie.  Owner Laura Polley, who also kick-started a financing company for independent films, pulled and perfected the bathhouse concept from her pampering in Italy, Germany, France, Los Angeles and New York.

The 11,000-square-foot spa (a stunning warehouse conversion) boasts a 38-foot sea salt pool, hot green tea pool, cold plunging pool, eucalyptus-infused steam room, infrared sauna and 20 treatment rooms where you can be rubbed and scrubbed within an inch of your waking life. “Relax, Detoxify, Replenish, Live Well,” is the Body Blitz mantra that seduces every woman that steps into the spa. The juice bar offers rejuvenating options like the Vitamin D shake loaded with cocoa, nutmeg, soya milk and banana. The antioxidant shake is so purple and purifying you feel like you have eaten nothing but oatmeal, grapefruit and kale for a week. And there’s dark chocolate on the menu to boot.

After a weekend shift, I give my body over to the waters and the magic is silently performed without my participation.

6. Bodywork. Perhaps this is the greatest hazard of being a massage therapist for a decade. I can’t let a week go by without indulging in some form of near-selfish treatment. Most often I throw myself at Lisa or Ray at the Oriental Health and Beauty Centre in Chinatown. The reflexology session and rose petal soak offers a tangible sense of renewal in less than an hour. Sometimes I take a deep breath and hand myself over to a punishing shiatsu session that often leaves me seeing stars. If Rodney Osinga isn’t booked six months in advance, I take my body to him for a session that leaves me purring like a cat. I’ve tried Anma Do (an Eastern massage that involves being walked all over by a 90-pound masochist), Thai massage (human body origami would be a more appropriate designation) and Rolfing (full-on submission to having your appendages pulled off like a rag doll). I am a sucker for anything that involves lying down and being pulverized.

7.  New sips and quirky eats. Once I eat my daily bagel, I am free range after that. I see mystery sticky bun balls for $1.65 and I want one.  If there is anything unusual on the menu, I’m game. Deep fried quail, red bean paste and lotus pancakes, hemp beer, sticky toffee cheese, bacon with warm chocolate sauce, grasshoppers, termites, goat testicles, tea-soaked eggs, Moon cakes (with whole hard-boiled eggs and red bean paste), chili chocolate that could cause third degree burns all the way down your esophagus, brownies made out of kidney beans, shrimp chips, fried cactus, guinea pig, cheese that tastes like armpits, goat tripe soup, conch fritters, green apple beer floats, wasabi gelato, grilled tilapia that comes to the table with eyes still intact, absinthe, octopus, deep-fried Thanksgiving turkeys, bacon and cheese stuffed pancakes, garlic chocolate—you get the point.  If it’s high on the Ick and Ew scale, I want some.

8.  Dear Diary…The entertainment value of re-reading my life as a 13-year-old is comedy at its best. I should have been writing scripts for the Young & The Restless with all the turbulent emotions and love affairs that transpired that year. I also have a treasured glimpse of my 8-year-old self (my epic autobiography that mostly chronicles what I ate and wore to school), my thoughts at age 20 written from my jungle hut outpost in Costa Rica, travelogues from Ireland, Amsterdam, the Galapagos Islands and nearly two journals full of Uganda and Kenya. And if I can’t have my writing? I want my camera as a reasonable facsimile. 

9. Vicarious pets. I don’t have any animals under my charge at the moment, due to the fact that I’m still considered a flight risk. But, I love the presence and inconquerable love of dogs. I miss their slobber and fur on my socks, their snoring bodies and leg-twitching dreams and unbridled excitement for walks and pig’s ears. Soon.

10. A lot. My time in Africa, especially the Congo, demonstrated my ability and patience to actually live without a lot of things. Mainly: electricity, running water, water in general, hot showers, cold showers, refrigerated meat, safety, French language skills, manicures, bagels, a wardrobe, a reliable internet connection, seatbelts and a schedule.

That’s my list. Tell me what’s on the top of yours! What can’t you live without?

All you need to know about Body Blitz–http://www.bodyblitzspa.com/

Toronto Life magazine–http://www.torontolife.com/

The closing of the Carlton Theatre–http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/735541

Seigel’s Bagels–http://www.siegelsbagels.com/

It’s Not That Complicated

It’s not that complicated at all, actually.

I could guess with a 97% accuracy rate that the woman who was openly sobbing behind me in the dark theatre midway through It’s Complicated was/is clearly heartbroken. Probably teetering on a divorce, or longing for yesteryear and the ex that used to be the oh! But she was crying so hard (the kind where you can’t catch your breath without a gasp, like you’ve dove into a pool, skimmed the bottom and can’t make it to the surface fast enough). I was worried about her vulnerable state until I realized that we all came to see the movie for the same reason. To feel. Whatever the feeling might be, this is our universal connectedness.

I realized that the Sobbing Woman may have come to the movie seeking hope. Maybe she came to let herself cry in an acceptable place (even though she was crying in unacceptable parts of the movie).  We are conditioned to pull ourselves together and be pillars of the Earth, but perhaps Sobbing Woman has it right. Just cry your bloody eyes out so hard that eating popcorn feels like you’re swallowing gravel.

Yesterday, musician Staci Frenes posted this statement on Facebook: “Frost said poems start with a lump in the throat. I think songs do to—the ones worth writing, anyway.”

And bless the musicians that make the music allows us to feel and wallow in a swamp of satisfyingly depressing lyrics, guaranteed to pull out every tear.  And it’s so much easier to cry digitally now. Before, like in the 80s, you had to rewind that stupid Wham!  song and put your tears on hold as you fidgeted with the cassette player that would always rewind too far into the last song. And that last song would be an uppity Bananarama tune, which would totally kill the sad buzz.

When you think about it though, Frost and Frenes are both bang-on. The best memories of your life?  I bet they induce a lump in your throat. Poems, songs, pancake batter—they all need lumps to be memorable.  When I look back at 2009, it’s the lumps that dictate the best stories for me. And by best, I mean the moments that truly engaged my senses. The sensations, feelings, tastes, sounds and sights of 2009 that I remember with the most clarity are largely the lump-makers. Not because of sadness, but because they slammed my senses in an electrical way that can’t be rewired. And here they are, in no particular order:

The Best Feeling of 2009

When you meet a chimp for the first time, they are skeptical. It’s not like picking up a Cabbage Patch Kid. The chimps are sizing you up, and they have to warm to you before they reach a tentative hand in your direction. Even with the lure of warm milk and honey, whole bananas and strawberry yogurt—there’s a courting process to endure. Mikai was already latched to Chantal like Velcro, and the morning Chantal said I could go wake Mikai up, I was unsure if she would allow me to hold her. I folded the blanket back from her cage and as the sunlight filtered in, Mikai stirred. Her bright eyes opened, and as I unlocked the cage, she stood and reached for me. Her arms were outstretched and she pulled herself close to me, her arms tight around my neck. She yawned and inspected me (mostly my nostrils). When I smiled she ran her finger along my teeth and sighed. I had been accepted. I smoothed her upright hair and tugged her tiny t-shirt down as the mornings were so cold below the equator.  Mikai shivered a little and snuggled in closer. I stood there, stunned. I was in the Congo and holding an orphaned chimpanzee in my arms. Her diaper was full and wet and running down my clean t-shirt but I couldn’t care less. It was the best feeling of 2009, and possibly my life.

Best Sensation of 2009

I had always wondered about reflexology and thought the concept of all the body’s organs being mapped out on the bottom of our feet intriguing.  And so, I wandered along Dundas west, to Chinatown, sucking on a taro root bubble tea (because they’re good for the senses too). A client of mine had recommended a nameless place that was close to a bakery and a dim sum place. Which describes about three full blocks of Dundas west. I was to look for flourescent green footprints on the stairs, on the south side, east of Spadina. I found it almost immediately and bounded up the footprinted stairs.  I was served boiling hot tea that tasted like hamster shavings and told to place my feet in the wooden barrel with floating rose petals. I soaked, unaware of the pulverization that awaited me. Lisa had fingers like knives that perforated my bladder and gonads. But, despite the bouts of sheer agony, an overwhelming feeling of euphoria came with each pressure point. I let my copy of Toronto Life slide to the floor and examined the reflexology map on the wall. She pinpointed my sinuses and I could actually feel a nasal drip. When she touched on my right hip via my foot, I went to the moon. My bladder hot-spot made me think that I needed to schedule a tuck, the very next day. And then I fell asleep. I could feel Lisa’s hands and pressure points, but I was knocked out in a very bizarre reflexology coma. She shook me at the end of the treatment and asked if I had trouble sleeping. No, apparently I didn’t. Or maybe I wasn’t really sleeping when I thought I was. I walked out with new feet. They hummed and vibrated and my calves felt oxygenated. Definitely the best sensation of 2009.

Best Feeling of Elation of 2009

I’ve run seven or nine half-marathons. Maybe more. I lost track. I run six days a week, even when the cold threatens to crack my femurs, and the rain feels like needles against my exposed skin. I run against the wind chill that bites at my face, when there are heat advisories in effect, when there are smog alerts and when I have a head full of leftover champagne still bubbling inside. Like the Melissa Etheridge song (I Run For Life)—“I run for hope, I run to feel, I run for the truth, for all that is real.” (And also to keep myself from getting fat from my late-night steak and eggs habit.) Regardless of how many races I’ve run, I can easily intimidate myself into thinking that I will cramp up and collapse after the first mile. I register for a half-marathon and fret from that moment until the race is over.  This year I entered the Run For Water in Abbotsford, BC, just to see if I could still wing it. I do have intentions of running a full marathon (maybe that Great Wall of China one), and I have to periodically confirm that I still have the guts, gumption and cartilage to pull off 13 miles.

It was the hottest May 31^st that Abbotsford had ever seen. I was saturated by the third mile, my iPod earphones were squeaking in my ears that were full of sweat. My shorts were already chafing my low back and I wondered why the hell I had subjected myself to such torture, again.  The route was scenic, but I had chills and probably should have been hooked up to an intravenous, but I carried on, buoyed by the likes of Pink, Jann Arden, Carole Pope, Anne Murray, The Killers and even Willie Nelson.

Elation comes in the last mile, when sweat is stinging your eyes like lemon juice and your lungs feel like they’re bleeding. When the heat off the pavement makes you want to throw up and your muscles are so spent they cramp as soon as you stop the running motion.  I reminded myself not to be so selfish, because I was running in support of a project that would provide clean drinking water to a village in Ethiopia. Surely I could run 13 miles for such a noble cause. I had just dumped 10  gallons of clean drinking water over my head—and there were humans who had never seen or tasted something so simple as clean water.

Elation. Finishing the race in 1:45:47. About 10 minutes off my personal best, set when I was much more svelte and regimented, but it wasn’t a race. It was for a greater cause than a personal best.

Greatest Heartbreaks of 2009

I watched a chimp die in the Congo. Ikia became the victim of a corrupt government that sloppily handled the extreme emergency of her situation. Officials hesitated on signing release documents and let critical decisions wait until Monday morning in hopes of finishing early on a Friday. Ikia arrived at the Lumbumbashi Airport, already in dire condition, dehydrated and malnourished, with no fight left in her. Poached from the wild jungles of Kalemi, she was sold for $200 US. She died less than 12 hours later at the J.A.C.K. sanctuary, unresponsive to the medical care she was given.

When I returned from the Congo, I was faced with an even greater heartbreak. Mila, my darling lab retriever was rapidly declining in health. She had been diagnosed with a cancer so invasive that it had enveloped her organs to the extent that surgery couldn’t be performed. Thoughts of lying with Mila in the grass, her stomach shaved and full of staples, still makes me ache. She was disoriented from painkillers, panting and anxious. The dog that I knew and loved, so full of life and puppy-like ways, was dying. I stroked her velvety ears and hoped she would just go quietly in her sleep.

I had already flown back to Toronto and learned through an email that Mila had to be put down. She had stopped eating. I had tears running down my neck. I still do when I think of her. But she comes to visit me in my dreams, and that reassures me that she is in a better place, full of ocean waves, pig’s ears and fat squirrels to chase.

Best Sounds of 2009

It will come as no surprise when I say Jann Arden’s Free was my repeat CD of 2009. When I moved back to Toronto, feeling like I was all bones, sinew and raw nerves, her songs did for me what It’s Complicated did for the Sobbing Woman.  I was feeling so much that I actually ran my Riverdale route one day with my earphones in and didn’t realize until I stopped running that I hadn’t turned my iPod on. That’s when you know your head is busy with white noise.

Sass Jordan released Dusk ‘til Dawn and “Awake” became my national anthem for October. And I’ll plug Carole Pope here too, even though Transcend was released in 2007, because her CD found a lot of airtime in 2009 too. “Edible Flower” is seductive, dangerous and makes me want to smoke cigarettes in bed.

The other best sound? The ferocious thunderstorms in Uganda that shook all of Entebbe in a frightening way. Lightning split Lake Victoria in such violent spikes in January. The thunder that followed made me feel like I was six all over again. But I had three dogs to shiver with—all of them piled on my single bed under the mosquito net.

The Best Things I Ate/Drank in 2009

Frog legs. Meatloaf sandwiches at Ted’s BBQ in Nashville. Heidi’s old-fashioned whiskey potion with Maker’s Mark, muddled cherries, oranges and brown sugar. Dolfin pink peppercorn dark chocolate. Le Gourmand chocolate chip walnut cookies every Saturday morning, chips still melted and gooey as I walk to the spa. Body Blitz Vitamin D shakes with banana and a bang of nutmeg. Bacon and cheese pancakes in Amsterdam after a month in the Congo.  Moules Frites at Spinnakers. Lamb burgers with Roquefort at the Rectory on Toronto Island. My mom’s Chex Mix. Ted Reader’s pulled pork and slaw cones. Mill Street Coffee Porter.  You know this list has no end, so I’ll stop here.

There are a lot of best feelings for 2009. And I didn’t even get to the books that moved me (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — Jonathan Foer, Still Alice– Lisa Genova, Holding Still For As Long As Possible—Zoe Whittall, The Glass Castle—Jeannette Walls, Then We Came to the End—Joshua Ferris). Or the movies (The Strength of Water, Hannah Free, Snowcake, 500 Days of Summer).

As 2010 opens before us like a broad wingspan, the best we can do is feel. Every day, feel something.  Expose your senses to something wonderful. “Let life happen to you. Life is in the right, always.” –Rilke

To read Ikia’s story–http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/lessons-in-dying/

My tribute to Mila–http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/for-mila-the-very-best-dog-in-the-world/

Review of Jann Arden’s Free–http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/jann-arden-attacks-the-architecture-of-the-human-heart/

Running Halfway–http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/running-half-way/

Why the Congo? http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/what-i-did-on-my-summer-vacation/

On the Verge

Yesterday in New York, Times Square was plugged with tourists and locals eager to put their bad memories of 2009 through the shredder at the third annual “Good Riddance Day.” There was a $250 windfall to the person with the most creative item to be shredded. Twelve-year-old Alissa Yankelevits of Los Angeles shredded the memory of her school counsellor who was featured on America’s Most Wanted and pocketed the prize money.

Age 13? Thinking I am so hip it hurts with this hair.

It will come as no surprise that I’m not the shredder-type. Those who have followed my blog have read uncensored excerpts from my pathetic teenage diary entries. Facebook friends have seen an array of very poor haircut and colour decisions, all proudly displayed in albums of self-mockery. I have all my love letters, valentines, syrupy hand-printed song lyrics and haikus since Robert LeBovic swept me off my Sperry Topsider-feet in grade seven.

For those who have seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the idea of housekeeping love-gone-sour memories for Clementine (Kate Winslet), was the perfect solution for erasing any glimmer of Joel (Jim Carrey). Clementine hired a New York firm, Lacuna Inc., to remove all memories of Jim and their relationship from her brain. When Joel learned what Clementine had done, he decided that this would be his salvation too. Until he realized in his unconscious state, that he wanted to hold on to the memories of her after all.

(Though the concept of “targeted memory erasure” in the film is fictitious, scientists have recently successfully erased selective memories in lab mice.)

I don’t want to shred any bit of my life. Even the sloppy barstool kisses, heartache, dying dogs, crappy haircuts and appalling fashions of yesteryear.  And on the verge of 2010, another year becomes condensed into the film footage of my life’s pivotal memories.

They say those who fail to plan, plan to fail. (Who said that anyway? Do we even know what that person’s plans were?) Well, I never planned on being in Jinja, Uganda for New Year’s 2009, sipping Amarula under a mosquito net. And I didn’t exactly plan on spending a month in the Congo with chimps swinging around my neck, but that happened too. I also wrote a book in 29 days, but that wasn’t planned either. I went to a one-day workshop with my writerly friend Johanne on “How To Write a Book in 40 Days,” and decided to test-drive the instructor’s theory. It wasn’t a plan, it was a challenge, and I started it that very night with no outline, no character sketches and absolutely no plot. And it worked—even faster than the bargained 40 days!

I didn’t plan on being back in Toronto, or quitting the best job that I ever had. But I have given up the notion of climbing the corporate ladder.  Most people have an extensible ladder. Mine seems to be collapsible. Just when I am about to take firm hold of the top step, the ladder is collapsed again. I laugh to think that I continue to make less and less money each year, despite being in the same career. Every move, I take another pay cut, but you know what? My contentedness meter seems to compensate. I spend more time volunteering than actually working, but regardless of my income, I still find myself in remarkable places, and in a niche that makes me feel alive and inspired.

But sometimes we need to hear someone else say the things we are thinking, out loud. Spoken words gain weight. A few weeks ago I was walking up to my friend Blaise’s coffee shop at Yonge and Eglinton. I poked in and out of shops along the way and bought some enormous blackberries just because I love that we can buy Peruvian fruit in December.  I ate them with gloved hands because of the biting cold and stopped in my tracks. There was a clapboard sign advertising a Psychic with an open palm and a crystal ball. I had to do it. There was no plan for that either.

I knocked on the dodgy door and stared into the house off Yonge with carpeted steps the colour of oatmeal. A woman appeared with a long braid, a gold ring on every finger, and a mystical look. I asked her how much it would cost to have my palm read. She informed me that I needed my Tarot cards and crystal ball done too—otherwise I wouldn’t know my lucky number or colour.

“How much for all that?”

“For you? Today? Right now? Eighty.”

I scrunched up my nose and asked how much for just the palm.

“You can’t do just the palm. But for you? Today? All three for forty dollars.”

I went for it.

That very morning I had seen my dermatologist who kindly told me, that as long as I continued to massage, I would always itch. Somehow I had become allergic to my profession, intolerant due to overexposure to massage oil . It now makes me feel like I am full of poison ivy. Part of me wondered if the psychic lady would know what was next for me.

I pulled off my winter layers and joined her at the kitchen table with her stack of cards and crystal ball. She asked me to make a fist and hold it tight, then release. She examined my palms and asked why I didn’t have a dog, because I loved dogs. She asked me why I was no longer painting, because I loved that too. (Had she been talking to my mother?) “All your talent is in your hands. You work with them a lot. And you write, don’t you? You will soon be doing this more.”

She told me to close my eyes and ask a question. I didn’t know if the question was supposed to be out repeated out loud or not, so I asked her, hoping it wouldn’t interfere with my crystal ball or karma. “Yes, ask it out loud.”  Then I was to wish for something, but not say it out loud. Lastly, I could ask her anything I wanted. “Everyone asks about Love, honey, you can too.”

With a furrowed brow, she told me that I would win a prize, not of monetary value, but of something related to my writing. I would travel overseas. I would go to Montreal. I would have another short trip. I would win a small amount of money (I checked a lotto ticket my client tipped me with after my visit with her and won $20).

“I see you in your current career for maybe six more months, but no longer.” And I’m supposed to surround myself with red. When I pressed her for more information on my career direction she asked if I would like her to meditate for me that night.

“For $40 I will meditate for you each night of this week. You will sleep better.” I informed her that I slept like a dead pig and she sighed. “You need this. Let me meditate for you. You worry a lot.” When I refused, the marketer in her overpowered the mystical and her earlier friendliness turned curt.

But I left with a busy head. There’s a sanctuary in Montreal for HIV-positive chimpanzees. I thought of overseas locations. Why didn’t she see Africa? Why in the world did she see one to two children in my future? I actually asked her for clarification to make sure they weren’t dogs. “No children. And you won’t marry. You’re very independent. VERY independent. But, your soul mate is in your world right now. You have met. It will unfold.”

Murchison Falls, Uganda

At Christmas my aunt Jackie started reading me too, while we ate pistachios and thumbprint shortbread. She saw me with a copper-skinned woman who I knew from another life. Somebody with zest who sees the texture in everything. She saw me painting again too. But I needed to surround myself with royal blue. And this copper-skinned woman had a pet elephant in her previous life. Jackie was surprised that she kept seeing elephants, which led me to believe that 2010 will find me at the elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee.

A month ago a massage client told me my answers were in Peru and Guatemala. I was thinking more along the lines of Portugal and Venezuela, maybe Zambia, but– I would certainly be willing to go in search of these answers.

Mila--World's Greatest Dog, died August 2009

What I do know for sure is that all our memories and changing directions are vital shape-shifters to our very being. And when I remember 2009, Mila will be there wagging her tail. I will see fragile Ikia, the chimp we couldn’t save due to governmental red tape in the Congo. It will be the uncertainty of another move across the country and readjusting to a new skin. I’ll revisit a random road trip to Nashville, time in the mountains with my sister, a lapsed love, a new army of friends and the familiarity of change.

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” –Anatole France

I’m excited for 2010. I hope you are exactly where you want to be—or on your journey there.

Trailer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34oYgz6bGs&feature=related

The Elephant sanctuary: http://www.elephants.com/

For Mila, The Very Best Dog in the World post: http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/for-mila-the-very-best-dog-in-the-world/

Wish You Were Here

Last Christmas I was poolside with a gin and tonic in hand, writing about all that I had seen on safari that day in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. Our morning had begun in the dark with a slip of a moon, bleary-eyed over 6 am coffees. We left the Myewa Hotel as the last of the stars bled into dawn. There were kob en masse, picking their way through the long grass, two lions and a cub at a distance, long-tailed mousebirds spinning in lazy circles and dozens of startled bushbuck running in a whisper.

The infinity pool at the hotel perched over Lake Edward and Lake George. The sky that day was a violent purple, growling thunder edged closer with the frequent spikes of lightning. Elephants at the water’s edge dragged their trunks along the surface of the lake, spitting and spraying their torsos in a seemingly choreographed dance, oblivious to the storm that would throw down rain in angry torrents in less than an hour.

I wasn’t feeling Christmas at all. No glitter, tinsel, nutcrackers, wet snow, buttery shortbread or carols on repeat. But I was lying by a pool, sweat trickling down into my navel, my mouth raw from eating so many wedges of fresh pineapple at breakfast. I was watching elephants by the lake. My mind was still reeling from the prickly thrill of seeing the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park just days before.

I thought of how lovely the Canadian landscape would be with marshmallow snow topping fence posts, pristine aprons of snow in the branches of weeping cedars and pines. But, I was in Uganda, and marvelling at the verdant tea plantations and flat expanse of savannah, dotted with the exotic animals that I had completed so many elementary school projects on.

I spent this morning reading my Christmas journal entries from last year, and 1994, when I spent three months volunteering in Costa Rica. The words pull up vivid images of the jungle and the hum that penetrates you as soon as you step into it. I was in the Monteverde Cloud Forest—and when you live in a cloud forest, you wake up in the clouds due to the elevation. The rain was pelting down on the corrugated iron roof of our cabin as we gathered around our makeshift Christmas banana tree.  We made ornaments out of tin cans (and were happy that we`d had tetanus shots before the trip). Alex had tucked away a bottle of Argentinian white wine from his dad`s village, Alice had Australian lollies to share. Phil pulled out a prized bottle of amber Quebec maple syrup and pancake mix that won us over in an instant. There were a few cans of beer as warm as bathtub water, and egg nog that came in cartons with the rum already in it.

I was the Dona in the kitchen that Christmas Day. I had prepared a marmalade-lemon juice-coconut sauce marinade for the chicken and managed to make peanut butter-banana-oatmeal no-bake cookies. The jungle kitchen was very basic—i.e. cooking was done over a fire pit that had to be constantly tended to due to the leaking roof. There was no running water (except off the roof into the fire)—we had to slog up plastic jugs from the river which we treated with iodine tablets. And Mother Hubbard`s kitchen was bare! I often felt like a contestant on Just Like Mom (a TV Ontario show where competing kids had a cookie bake-off (with one minute of prep time), and the poor mothers had to guess which sloppy cookie their kid made. Contestants were given all the same ingredients: chocolate chips, flour, eggs, garlic, wieners, Coke, mustard, relish. It was just a gong show of gross. Jungle cooking was similar considering the pantry was only stocked with cans of mackerel, stewed tomatoes, marmalade, oatmeal and five kilos of peanut butter.

Somebody suggested we sing Christmas carols to channel more of a festive feel in the heart of the rainforest. There were 12 of us—from Canada, Guyana, Costa Rica and Australia. We soon realized that collectively we didn`t know the words to one entire Christmas carol. However, everyone knew the jingle for The Flintstones and Gilligan`s Island.

Flash forward to Christmas 2009 which kind of snuck up on me like my Chad Kruger Nickelback hair that needs a desperate cut. Snow flakes are drifting by the window sideways. There are a few sparkly decorations scattered about the house to induce festiveness. Dogs are walking by in boots and jackets, often wearing more clothing than the children that are also in tow.

My sister is home for a week from Banff and is landing on my doorstep tonight. Her arrival (and too-soon departure on the 28^th) reminds me of the impact of my boomerang lifestyle. As much as I love having Christmas abroad in rainforest huts and safari lodges, there is a place where we should be for Christmas, and that`s home.

I selfishly spent one Christmas Eve in Toronto, just because I wanted to buck all tradition and watch Bridget Jones Diary and Love Actually and eat greasy Chinese food. I had friends over who had lost their sense of home, or simply weren`t invited to come home with their loved ones because it wasn`t appropriate. People would talk. Aunt so-and-so can`t handle it. Your father can`t accept it. Meanwhile my father was saying he should play the lottery more often because he had two out of three that were gay. How lucky was he!

I am still appalled by the response to Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison`s Christmas card controversy. The card is a proud photo of Brison and his civil partner, Maxime St. Pierre (married in 2007) in an autumn field by the ocean with their retriever, Simba. Newspaper websites were forced to shut down or disable comment sections on the article because of the backlash. Apparently not everyone is ready to don their gay apparel, even at a time when we are supposed to extend goodwill to men. But maybe only straight men?

As lucky as I am to have spent a Christmas in Uganda with bathing elephants, and in Costa Rica with flocks of toucans barking outside the hut as I wrote in my journal, I`m even luckier to have a home to go home to, where my loved ones are equally loved and embraced.

Kaspar

I have two parents, still married after 37 years, and a brother and sister that I genuinely like. We are as rare as a flock of toucans being spotted in downtown Toronto. Dax, Kiley and I will head home on the 24^th as a convoy. My mom will have the phyllo pastry ready for Dax to make his traditional spanokapita. There will be champagne in the freezer and Pavarotti blasting at concert levels (which will send my parents back and forth, alternately, to the stereo in a lower volume, higher volume contest). We will listen to The Cat Carol by Meryn Cadell, as we always do, and cry over the cats and dogs that we loved so much. They each have memorial ornaments on the Christmas tree with engravings that are traced over with fondness.

My dad will eat six slices of toast, waiting for the rest of us to realize that we`ve forgotten about the turkey dinner because we are slowly getting smashed on champagne bubbles. We will laugh at the classic stories that are re-told every year. The story of Dax and the unicycle and his failed attempt to ride it on Christmas morning will be heard, again. How he grabbed the mantle piece and almost took my dad out with the garland and clock that weighed as much as a piano.

We`ll make fun of Kiley and the hockey stick gift she insisted my dad would love. It was signed by all the Toronto Maple Leafs and came with an official document—it should have been The Best Christmas Present in the World. Or so she thought. My dad couldn`t identify a single signature as they were all farm team players and rookies.

Kiley wins the Brooke Shield's Brows award AND owning a shirt that looks like a couch cover prize.

The photo albums will eventually come out and Kiley and I will argue who had the bigger Brooke Shield`s eyebrows. My dad will eat more toast. We will reluctantly sit down to eat, somewhere around 9 o`clock and then decide to open presents somewhere around 11 at which point both my parents will fall asleep watching the other unwrap.

And when they finally tuck into bed, Dax, Kiley, Mark (Kiley`s non-gay partner)a and I will sit on the kitchen counter eating cold turkey and shortbread until we`re sick.

And this year I won`t have to send a postcard to my family with a sappy wish you were here because I`ll be there. Home, and that`s where we all travel back to on sleepless nights, when we are oceans away, submerged in hot baths and at Christmas.

Merry Christmas and all that rot, as my mother would say (but probably deny).

 Last year`s blog entry Egg Nog and Cat Carol Crying– http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/egg-nog-and-cat-carol-crying/

The controversial Christmas card–http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/12/21/canadian-mp-gets-widespread-support-after-christmas-card-controversy/

 Just Like Mom footage–  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFXK-bhMug

Do Something Dangerously Memorable

When you buy a purebred dog from a breeder, the puppy undergoes a battery of reactionary tests to determine its placement suitability. An umbrella is suddenly opened to see if the pup is easily startled. A shaken jar of coins simulates noisy outbursts and challenges the dog’s confidence or potential anxiety. Lastly, the pup gets its ear pinched, enough that the pinch elicits a yelp. It’s a sneaky love/trust test. Most pups will sulk for a mere moment, and then rebound with seemingly apologetic licks for their behaviour.

I’d like to try this test on women. First date, ear pinch. If they respond with affection in less than 10 seconds, they are keepers. More than 10 seconds? I would safely gather that the relationship will be based on resentment.

But then there is that love as deep as the Baltic, and there is no test for that. You are instantly submerged and it’s paralyzing, sucking any iota of previous independence out of you in a cosmic flash.

I went to see Tom Ford’s The Single Man on Saturday night. Given the title and trailers, there is no spoiler in saying that Colin Firth plays the single man, devastated by a love that no longer exists. He keeps the company of a ghost and wobbles through life with a greater memory of loss than anything else.

The human condition is rather tragic. We spend most of our time trying to forget people, places and things—only to remember them will incredible clarity. The powers of forgetting seem to lend to increasing the memory.  And then we reach an age where we are desperately clinging to any bit of nostalgia and faded memory that we can: How our grandmother’s hands looked, how the dog’s feet smelled like corn chips, how sweet cotton candy tasted on a July day with grubby fingers and grass-stained knees. That first kiss with so-and-so and the awkward, sweaty slow dance to “Stairway to Heaven.”

Earlier in the year, prompted by the strong urging of Rona Maynard (some people have personal shoppers, I like to think of her as my personal librarian), I read Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I am still uncomfortably disturbed by that book, but in a way that makes me cling to life a little closer. In Still Alice, Alice, a Harvard professor, learns that she has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Watching her life and memory unravel was like reading a verbal nightmare.

Alice tries to re-read all her favourite classics only to realize that it’s all too late.  She can’t even remember what cream cheese is called anymore and can only compare it to “white butter.” She realizes she has to urinate, but can’t find the bathroom in her own house. Finding reassurance and grounding on her daily runs, Alice soon loses her way on the route she has jogged for years. Everything that was at once familiar and comforting collapses like a house of cards. Alice becomes a ghost of herself.

Lisa Genova, author and neuroscientist, accurately traces Alice’s path to the inevitable point of her not remembering that she doesn’t remember. I found some solace in this—at least there is saving grace, the Alzheimer’s completely consumes Alice’s vulnerable mind and takes that terrifying awareness away. She was still Alice to everyone in her life, but herself.

In The Single Man the human memory is equally cruel in gripping Colin Firth so tightly to his deceased partner. He leans into the car of a stranger who has a terrier like his partner had. He inhales the scent of the dog and in that familiar “buttered toast smell,” he is taken back to the arms of his love.

Robert Frost said, “The height of happiness makes up for its length.” Does it?

As I ran down Carlton this afternoon, I saw an elderly woman slouched over her motorized scooter, bumping along the sidewalk at a fair clip. Her dog was a small, mixed breed, sodden from the rain. He had one of those ridiculous post-surgery lampshades on his head and kept his focus on his owner while he cantered along beside her.  I wondered what she was trying to remember. What did she want to forget?

I found myself in Indigo Books in the evening, as I so often do. I leafed through Wallpaper and Vanity Fair and eventually picked up Oprah’s O. The December issue is gushing about happiness and where to find it, or what products, shiny boots and pearly clutches may channel it. The back page described Oprah’s latest Aha! moment and a mini-confessional  about how she hadn’t achieved a lot of what she had hoped to this year. She failed to exercise every day. She didn’t take enough time for herself. She got sloppy, as we all do, finding comfort in avoidance, laziness and chocolate.

That is, until Oprah talked with Charla Nash about her days since the tragic accident that robbed her of life as she knew it. Charla Nash was savagely attacked by a chimpanzee in February of this year and found by paramedics who couldn’t even distinguish that they were looking at someone’s head.  Her hands looked like they had been forced through meat grinders.  Her eyes, nose and ‘face’ were essentially gone. To this day, Carla has no eyes and is so scarred that she wears a veil to protect others from seeing her “monster face.” She doesn’t know how disfigured she is, but she is painfully aware that it is awful and disturbing. A face that would haunt you forever.

Oprah was surprised at how quickly she adjusted to Charla’s appearance during the interview, realizing that there was a brave woman inside that scarred (and scared) body who was dealing with more than the guilt of eating an entire chocolate bar after midnight. Or not going to the gym at lunch and ordering in greasy pad Thai instead. Life for Charla Nash will never be parallel to the worries we consume ourselves with.

Reading that article, I was reminded of a man my siblings and I often saw in West Brant when we were young. Of course we grimaced and buried our faces into our dad’s legs when he walked by, because to us, he was a monster. He had no lower mandible and scarlet scar tissue from a severe burn marbled up his chest to his neck. My father told us each and every time that “he was in the war, he fought for our freedom,” but it did nothing to settle our naive child response. I later learned that he had stepped on a land mine and had most of his face splintered into something that could no longer be recognized as human.

But he still had the courage to walk in daylight, despite the train-wreck stares and dropped jaws that met his rheumy eyes.

Running down Gloucester, picking my way along the sidewalk and hardened ice remains, I saw Victoria for the first time today. In the gay village, she is a familiar face. Victoria looks like she is about 156 years old and is often heard before she is seen. “Doooooooooo youuuuuuuuuuu haaave a ciiiiigaaaareeeeeeeeeeettte?” The first time she asked me, about seven years ago, she was 100 feet away from me, and startled me in the darkness from her now-familiar perch on the curb. She has to start her cigarette request early, as she can drag out that sentence to a full minute. She lives in a halfway house on Gloucester, and is often in a frumpy man’s suit, clomping along in shoes that are clearly five sizes too big for her. Victoria is as wrinkled as a Shar-pei, but she is alive and is remembering and forgetting too, just like you.  And me.

And there is a common thread here, between Charla Nash, Victoria, Colin Firth and Alice. And I realized the link when I read a recent post on Owning Pink’s blog that featured Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.”

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Will you have the strength of Charla Nash to still enjoy the warmth of the sun on your shoulders? Will you love someone with all your might, to the depth that you can never resurface if you lose that love? Will you make sure you remember and share your life while you can before Alzheimer’s strips you of your stories and self?

Will you kneel in the grass, be idle and blessed and stroll through the fields and feel accomplishment in achieving that?

As for Victoria and the woman in the scooter with the lampshade dog, they’re connected in my mind too. We’ve all sat on Santa’s knee, put a squirmy worm on a hook and cried ourselves to sleep. We’ve laid on our backs and pointed out clouds that resemble charging elephants and turkey necks. Doesn’t everyone have a scar from accidentally sliding down a pine tree due to a poorly estimated reach for a higher branch? These women have stories too.

We all know the sun’s warmth, and if Charla Nash has the guts to get out of bed and feel it on her skin, there are no excuses for the rest of us. She still thinks life is precious.

And Alice, even with her fleeting mind, she always remembered love. Colin Firth held on to a love that left too soon, and this makes me think of the woman in the motorized scooter. Maybe her life has become a ghost too. But she has a dog with a lampshade to make her feel like she belongs and is still needed in this world.

Just be nice to someone today, for crying out loud. Something that you may forget by day’s end might be remembered by somebody else forever.

Do something dangerously memorable with your one wild and precious life.

Owning Pink’s blog (by OB/GYN, author and artist Lissa Rankin): http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ZBmnE/www.owningpink.com/2009/12/12/your-one-wild-and-precious-life//r:t

Charla Nash’s story on Good Morning America: http://www.mefeedia.com/video/25516591

Rona Maynard’s review on Still Alice: http://www.ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-remains-when-the-intellect-is-gone

Trailer for The Single Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tCxRO67gyk

 

 

A Tribute to Nan

I posted this tribute in November of last year, when my grandmother died. Her birthday was December 9th, and it seemed only fitting that I run this post again to honour her great, glowing spirit. She loved Christmas, and this season and golden memories of her will never be separate in my mind. Thanks Nan for illuminating our lives year round, you are terribly missed.

‘’I don’t know anyone whose grandparents are divorced, that’s just weird.’’
‘’What about yours?’’ Kelly asked, always one bright step ahead of me.
Funny, I never thought of my grandmother of ever being married, let alone being divorced. When my dad was two, she divorced Angelo and cut the Torti family tree in half, letting all those limbs crash to the ground to rot. She was just Nan to me, and besides, she had Buffer, my dad’s sister. Apparently we couldn’t pronounce Cathy as kids, it came out Buffer (maybe we had mouthfuls of marshmallows when we tried to say her name? I dunno). Anyway, Buffer and Nan were a package deal, an odd Thelma and Louise if you will. They lived together in a tiny wartime house in sleepy Eagle Place, Brantford, Ontario. We were spoiled to have a Great grandmother who lived right beside us, and my mom’s mom lived just a few farmhouses further up the road. But, our urban Nan had cable, was walking distance to Mac’s Milk convenience store AND Earl Haig Swimming Pool.

My mother always thought public pools were cesspools, and she’s right, this one had its share of floating band-aids, and the odd dark turd would bob around until an alert lifeguard evacuated everyone. Buffer swam with us like the biggest kid, terrorizing us by yelling ‘’shark’’ and pinching us underwater. Kiley always ended up in tears from shark attacks, but I think at that age if she wasn’t screaming, she was crying. Such a sensitive child. What scared me more was Buffer’s big toe which had no nail on it from some mysterious infection. She would wrap it up tightly in two plastic bags secured with elastics and wade into the pool without concern. All the other swimmers would stop mid-stroke to assess what the plastic bag could mean, and whether swallowing pool water and spitting it in someone else’s face was still okay.

We swam with Buffer and Nan everyday of the summer I think. My dad would drop us off on his way to work, bleary-eyed, and we’d park ourselves sleepily on the couch and watch cable cartoons. We loved Chili the penguin and the one with the Anteater. Nan would have chocolate milk in a carton and offer us cowboy or sailboat sandwiches. Cowboy style came open face, sailboats in fours, standing erect, exactly like peanut butter sailboats would look. By the time we walked to Earl Haig we were ravenous again, and Nan always had devilled eggs and pickled beets for us. Buffer would pack a tin of Betty Crocker vanilla frosting and we’d smother dollar store Nilla wafers with an inch of the stuff. We never waited half an hour before swimming…

Our favourite days were when a storm would be brewing, foreboding clouds smudging the sky and the deadly humidity heavy in our lungs. We’d rush home, thunder at our heels, with Buffer telling us what was happening meteorologically. She should have been a storm chaser because she knows more about F5 twisters and funnel clouds than normal. Buffer often had us taking shelter in the basement because she knew when a tornado was approaching, she could smell it. But first we’d stop at the fish n’chip shop on Erie avenue and place a family size order. The fish always came wrapped in newsprint which nearly gave way with all the grease by the time we reached Nan’s and took cover.

Nan would finally put her feet up, turn on the fan to a level equivalent to that of a jet taking off. She couldn’t stand the humidity. She rarely wore shorts, and only inside. When she did my sister would ask her if she was from outer space, because of all the green bumpy varicose veins on her legs. When Nan left the room finally, we’d take turns putting on her thick glasses, because it was like being underwater with your eyes wide open. We were always caught, and she threatened us that we’d go blind if we kept doing it.
The other big Nan threat was that the house would blow if we ran around the kitchen. She made us equally paranoid of the pilot light on the gas stove. Not a day passed where Nan would suddenly flare her nostrils and say, “do you smell gas? Buffer, go check the pilot light. This house will blow if that light’s out.’’

When my dad was in a hockey tournament, we’d go to Nan and Buffer’s for the night. They let us stay up as long as we wanted, hell, why not? They were staying up too. We’d watch Hee Haw, Benny Hill and Johnny Carson eating our way through bags of Hickory Sticks and bbq peanuts.

In the morning, Nan would convince one of us to help shove her diamond or sapphire earrings into her lobes. Kiley was the most helpful, I still get queasy at the thought. Nan would do our eyebrows so we didn’t look like Brooke Shields and ask us if we wanted our hair permed like Buffer. My mother had already vocalized her opinion: no perms, especially Toni home perms. Kiley was always keen, but, I never thought tight poodley curls would be flattering on me.

We sometimes played with the city kids, but they were a different breed. A bit snotty we thought. Instead, we made homemade wet bananas in the backyard because Nan also had water pressure, something we never had living on a well in the country. We hosed down large sheets of plastic and sprinted, bellyflopped and slid across the plastic until we came to a dead-stop on the sharp grass. When we tired of that (because our ribs hurt from slamming the ground so much) we’d make some game with horse chestnuts on a string where you had to whack your opponent’s nut off. Too often it usually ended up being Dax’s real nuts… and the game would end. We’d walk up to the store, which we were allowed to do only if we held hands crossing the street (which we never did). Nan would slip us a few bucks so we could each get some candy. Mac’s had these fantastic tiny ice cream cones filled with a maple syrupy kind of fudge that we all splurged on. Kiley would get a fudgesicle or sour cream and onion chips, ju jubes or Fun Dips for Dax, and I’d be stuck somewhere between Kraft caramels, Swedish fish or hockey stickers for my scrapbook. We all had scrapbooks that we were working on: Star Wars, NHL, E.T. –the stickers came with that god awful gum covered in so much powder. One day we went all out, because Nan gave us a little more, but said she wanted change. How much change we weren’t sure about—so we went a bit hoggy. We bought Gobstoppers, Hubba Bubba grape, red lips, green thumbs, those invisible books with the magic pens and some Bottlecaps. We hopscotched home, thrilled with our purchases, until I gave Nan the change and she started to cry. We had spent all her pension money. Surely she was getting more than $5 for her pension? We felt sick about it, candy never tasted so rotten, but she refused to let us take our stuff back. I think that was the moment I learned how to budget and Kiley learned how to spend!

Sometimes we took the city bus to the mall, which was always a roar for us. We thought city kids were so cool, being able to take a bus around town. We couldn’t even get pizza delivered! The worst bus day was when we had done a marathon shop at No Frills, and when we climbed on the full bus, one of our plastic bags broke and all the canned goods rolled to the back of the bus. Cans raced and rattled back and forth as we took sharp turns and went through the streets of Strawberry Hill. Nan found a seat and I found the cans. My face was red hot as I reached behind legs and begged my pardon.

Nan never did travel beyond Buffalo. Never really wanted to either. When Buffer got her license she started renting cars, usually Ford Tempos because she had read that they were good vehicles. We’d pack the Tempo up with a cooler and head for the border to Walden Galleria mall to go cross-border shopping. Funny, we never minded wearing two or three lace teddies back under our clothes. Not even Dax, but, then again—look how he turned out. I don’t know who wore the teddies that we smuggled back, both my Nan and Buffer I think. Most of them were purple, which was both their favourite colour, so it’s hard to know. Buffer told us to keep mum in the back when we crossed the border, and we were never caught.

Every summer we’d take a road trip to Komoka to visit Nan’s “fucking sister Ruth.” Ruth had always wronged her in some way, but we loved her. She made the best chocolate milkshakes in her Hamilton Beach mixer. Ruth lived alone on a dill farm, her husband Jack had died when we were young. There were always little kittens, a few German Shepards and a giant barn that we played in until we were beside ourselves with rashes and itches from the hay. We swung from the rafters, found old chewing tobacco tins, bullet casings, and carved our initials in secret places. Ruth and my grandmother fought the whole time, and both of them would be crying at some point. We didn’t care. However, this is where we learned how to swear. Not so much from Ruth, but from Nan. Oh, she could get on a tangent calling Violet a hussy, and so-and-so a whore.

Yeah, Nan spoke all sugary to my dad, but we saw another side. The exposure became evident when Kiley walked up our driveway at home after one such Komoka road trip clippity-clopping in her new much-longed for Dr.Scholl’s wooden sandals. She was maybe seven. “These fucking shoes hurt my feet.” Dad was in earshot. Nan was in trouble. Kiley was always after Nan, for her language, the ‘bad things’ she was doing. And, my nan was secretly afraid of Kiley and her tell-all ways. Once, in the backyard when Nan sat on the wooden lounger and it collapsed to the ground in pieces Nan told Kiley, “don’t you tell your mother.” But, Kiley had already threatened, “I’m telling my muddah on you!’’ And, she always did.

So, Nan wasn’t exactly a traditional grandmother (most of them don’t say fuck). She liked Def Leppard, Poison, Wham, Boy George, rollerskating at the roller rink (so long as we didn’t tell my father ) and frying hot dogs and hot dog buns, all in butter. One winter, Nan, probably in her 70s by then, decided she wanted to have a go at the hill, and ride down on one of our red plastic flying saucers. She urged us to give her a push and ohmygod, there went Nan, spinning in fast, tight circles, until she was going completely backwards and then, just somersaulted right over. Of course, we were no help, all of us pissing our snowsuits at her crooked glasses and cries for help. She was only mad that she had lost her diamond earring. I don’t think she went tobogganing again, but she was always game for trying something new. Like having Buffer to teach her how to drive, even though she didn’t have her glasses with her. Of course she nearly ditched the rental Tempo at the first sight of headlights coming from the other direction.

Nan was eccentric in every possible way. She loved her patent leather heels as high as Tina Turner’s, crushed velvet stirrup pants, leopard print sweaters and Christmas pins that preferably lit up and sang. She loved her gold chains, Christmas, and crossing her eyes at us. We always seemed to be laughing in her company. Our nicknames stuck for years—Chucky, Wheatman (Dax??) and Kiley was Nimmers. I was Horse, because I could run fast, but it never seemed very flattering to me.

I think of Nan’s house, and how it remained virtually the same, years after our childhood time had paled. There was still the ketchup bottle explosion on the kitchen ceiling, and the piece of pink foil behind her livingroom door that I gave her when I was two. At Christmas all the treasures would come out again, and the house would become congested with crumbling gingerbread houses that should have been demolished years ago, popcorn trees with mere kernels left on the construction paper, broken clay gifts, yellowed cards—she had kept everything we had ever made for her.

Nan loved Christmas the most. All she ever wanted was a homemade card from me, to add to her collection. I probably should have written this sooner so she could have added it to her collection too, but, I think we were collecting the same things—shiny memories of a life lived well. She spent all her pension dollars on us, and we ate like kings. Those jell-o cubes at Woolworth’s with the dab of whipped cream seemed like the finest dessert going. And we always seemed to be eating buckets of KFC in a leafy park. Nan was so adaptable that when she was told to watch her cholesterol she ordered macaroni salad to have instead…and when the cashier forgot to pack her a fork, she resorted to eating her macaroni salad with a hair pick.

Nan died two weeks ago. Before I left BC in September she sent me a Christmas card with my Christmas money so she could be sure that I received it. She told me not to go in any boats, and not to swim in any lakes and for god sakes, don’t get eaten by a lion in Africa. ‘’If God spares me I’ll see you when you come home and visit your parents.’’ She had talked about God sparing her for as long as I remembered.
The world is a different place without Nan in it. It’s a little quieter, that’s for sure. But the memories of her are just at the surface, in the smell of a pan of melting butter, in twinkling Christmas lights, pool chlorine on my skin, hair picks, fast toboggan rides and vanilla icing. She is never that far away, even when I’m in Africa.

It Began on a Biplane

At age 8 I was invited to a week-long writing workshop at the Farringdon Hill Enrichment Centre. Ostracized by my elementary classmates for already knowing the difference between pair, pear and pare, I found my people at Farringdon. The first day of the workshop we were buckled into biplanes and flown across the frozen corn fields of Brantford, Ontario and later encouraged to write about our mind-enlarging experience.

The following morning, an eccentric local chef dominated the classroom and demonstrated how to make perfect “Eggs in a Nest” (two slices buttered bread, use wide-mouth glass as a cookie cutter and create a ‘nest’ by pressing top of glass into centre of the bread. Remove buttered bread circle cut-out. Fry bread in pan with Ina Garten-amounts of butter and crack egg in centre of ‘nest.’ Allow egg to poach, salt and pepper accordingly. It’s still my dad’s favourite thing that I make).

On day three, John Lee, a loopy Brantford poet arrived with Hugh Grant –tousled hair, an ascot and Colonel Sanders eye glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He read from his latest published work–quirky poems about shitting in a farmer’s field, and his shit being the colour of black licorice. “The clouds appeared like an old woman’s sagging breasts in the sky.” Protective parents were outraged! He shouldn’t have been reciting poems about shit and breasts!

I loved it.

After that initial plane-ride-fried-eggs-poetry-about-shit stint I was selected to join the full-time enrichment program and was mentored in writing an autobiography over the course of the school year. The secretary transfered our tell-all’s to hard copy (via a typewriter of all things), and was diligent in tabbing and entering enough spaces to allow for family photos to be incorporated into the final work.

My grade 3 autobiography was far from epic, largely chronicling Friday Gigi’s pizza nights and Chinese food Sundays at Nan King (where my siblings and I were high scorers on the 2-man Pac Man arcade game in the bar area). Not surprisingly, my blog, Twitter and Facebook posts are still all about what decadent things I’ve eaten.

I’ve kept diaries since too, although not consistently. But Africa, the Galapagos and a three-month sojourn in the jungles of Costa Rica are as well-documented as my 13-year-old crush on Robert LeBovic.

In those days, I fancied myself to be a professional birdwatcher a la Roger Tory Peterson, with my very own indispensible bird guide. But writing has always been my constant.  At times I think that I should drink more scotch, or wear an ascot and have a more miserable demeanour to channel the writer’s life, but I’m content with my edginess (and gin).

At 18, when I was as gay as a peacock and strutting my gay self up and down Davie Street in Vancouver, I  actually landed my dream job—freelancing at Cockroach magazine (almost as popular as Chatelaine!). I wrote about grizzly bears being caged and exploited for their bile, about how Barbie kick-started bulimia and raw protest pieces about the deforestation of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island. My poor mother was certain I would be arrested and dragged away from some logging road. I earned $400 a month, and thought I was truly living the bohemian life. I was a freelancer! I lived on buttered garlic bagels from Seagels and skipped dinner to collect sand dollars from Jericho beach. I made arty things from bald eagle feathers and exoskeletons of crabs. I drank coffee that arrived in care packages from my parents, sweetened with melted cinnamon hearts because I refused to spend money on real sugar. 

My first real confirmation of writing being in my blood and breath was when I left Vancouver (and that not-so-high-paying dream job)and voluntarily transplanted myself in Costa Rica for three months. I volunteered with Youth Challenge International in the Monteverde Cloud Forest, mapping the trails and illustrating a flora and fauna guide. In the second phase of the project we travelled to a remote village called Alto Cuen, far from any flight path, phone booth, chocolate bars or appliances. I didn’t bother to write home about the drug runners that passed by me on a daily basis with AK-47’s and flour sacks full of marijuana from Panama. I was living in a hut with a palm frond roof, no walls and a tree bark floor.  My dreams were coming true faster than I could create them.

What I did write about Costa Rica, was the harrowing rescue at the end of our stay. Relentless February rains had flooded the area and the Cuen River was like a roaring beast. Rocks rolled along the riverbed at night, slamming into each other at such a decibel that we could hear the fury a mile away. The angry river water was the colour of chocolate milk with the skeletons of entire trees floating by. Our group of 12 had to be helicoptered out of the jungle as the footbridges had been washed away and local villages were receiving emergency food supply drop-offs. When the Panama army happened upon us, subsisting on flaccid carrots and marmalade, they promised to return at day’s end to fly us to the naval base as half the group was immobile with malaria.

Despite sitting in my cushy Victorian flat on some fancy Italian stitched-leather bar stool with a glass of merlot beside my laptop in the dead of downtown Toronto—I can still hear the thunder of the Chinook blades as the helicopter landed by the river that evening. The palm trees splayed, the children ran far from the whir and commotion, and we piled in, terrified and grateful, following the commands of the GI Joe-like crew.

In that moment I knew I was having a Reader’s Digest Drama In Real Life moment. It had to be written about. What I did write, oddly, won me a trip back to where I had come from—a return flight to Costa Rica, but the gentler side of it. It was a sparkly resort with a resident sloth in the treetop just an arm’s reach from the balcony, with hot black coffee, pastries and mango in the morning– and all the pleasures that my previous volunteer stint lacked. Like running water, electricity, dubbed Baywatch and appliances.

It’s been 15 years since that double-bladed Chinook pointed northeast and sped like a bullet along the coast of Limon, just like the opening scene of China Beach.

 But when I write, the jungle days always present themselves. I am reminded of how words provide vicarious experiences across the miles. It’s a great responsibility when you travel, in how you have to accurately convey a place for those sitting in such a radically different landscape. Like capturing the squelch of the mud as it sucks the boots off your feet, the sting of the blood oranges on chapped lips, and the awe of a dozen toucans landing just above your head in a noisy riot. And what does the jungle smell like? It’s hot and wet, salty and fermenting.

When I returned from Costa Rica I had an insatiable need to write about all that I had seen and felt. I signed up for a course through the Ottawa Writing School that promised a lucrative career and Atwood-esque fame. I thought I wanted to write whimsical children’s books about jungle adventures, but after I submitted a profile to my instructor, he asked, “so you’re gay, do you mind exploiting your sexuality?”

I didn’t mind. I was as gay as Liberace and eager to share all my innards with the world. I went from Jungle Jules Reader’s Digest Drama in Real Life to writing lesbian erotica in a snap. My first published piece was a dirty bedroom scene with Marge Simpson. She let down her tall, blue hair and slipped off her slinky, avocado dress—and I went from there like a Californian forest fire. It was printed in Karen Tulchinsky’s anthology, Hot & Bothered and earned me a huge pay-out of $50 CAD(plus two copies of the book!).When Karen toured in Ontario, she asked if I would like to do a reading with her—of course! Imagine the whole Torti family at the Hamilton Women’s Bookstop. They brought flowers in cellophane and champagne, and stood amongst a crowd of 50 hairy-armpitted dykes while I read about having sex with Marge Simpson. Yes, even my dad was there. And I said a lot of words that don’t normally constitute a father-daughter conversation.

Bravery and pig-headed confidence gets you everywhere. I was so confident with my publishing success in the erotica field, I sent jumbly work to Chatelaine and Maclean’s—the target audience my mom was hoping I would write for. I was rejected flat-out by both for very good reason, but rejection is admirable too. As long as it doesn’t happen at the bar from the foxy girl you buy a drink for.

When I lived in BC, I boldly signed up for writing courses at Douglas College, “to hone my craft.” The first day of class, my instructor, Joe Wiebe, said my verb was doing something I had never heard of. He talked about bildungsromans, and I thought it might be best if I snuck out of the classroom, unnoticed, while I could.

I was transported back to my first day at the Farringdon Enrichment Centre, before boarding the biplane that would inspire my future writing ambitions. Marg Simpson (not to be confused with the same blue-haired lady aforementioned)had  asked me to pass her the “acetate marker.” What the hell was an acetate marker? Clearly I didn’t belong. Richard Nott, the smartest person in the world, pointed to the overhead markers and my face stopped from almost catching on fire.

I’ve taken several courses since, even at George Brown in Toronto where I was positive the instructor had it in for me because I didn’t want to write about transsexual druids or zombies. I’ve had minor successes and cocktail bragging rights for book reviews in The Vancouver Sun that I secretly had near Chernobyl melt-downs over. But if you march in to the editor with the confidence of Sidney Crosby with a puck at the blue line, by god, they believe that you have what it takes!

I still don’t know what an “independent clause” is, and don’t particularly care either. That was on the Douglas College program entrance exam. I thought for sure it was a reference to Mrs. Clause on Christmas Eve. My participles probably still dangle, and I have run-on sentences of marathon proportions.

I have blog cheerleaders (thank you!) and the odd naysayer (boo).  My favourite comment though? It came from a reader who I will allow to remain anonymous. He responded to my post “Jann Arden Attacks the Architecture of the Human Heart.” In particular, he was up in arms with the sentence “It comes as no surprise that I love well-crafted stories and lyrics that are as layered as Jennifer Aniston’s hair.” Mr. Blog commenter responded: “No offence meant, but that was an awful, awful metaphor.”

Which brings me to this. The audience who (in my imagination at least), waits with unbridled anticipation for my latest blog post. Thank you for reading my ramblings and outpourings which just earned me the feel-good designation as one of the Top 100 Growing Blogs at WordPress.com (even though I come up with awful, awful metaphors. Surely the Aniston hair comment can’t be worse than clouds that look like saggy breasts and shit that resembles black licorice?)

We all have stories, and thank you for taking dedicated  interest in mine.

For more on the Robert LeBovic Affair, chronicled in my 13-year-old self’s diary: http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/dear-diary-i-was-a-13-year-old-dork/