Life, the Universe and All My Things

This is one of my finds

 

There's a big used book sale I try to visit every year.  I've been going since I was a kid, when my mother used to take me.  It's held by the local "federation of university women" (whatever that means), and I think the proceeds go to create scholarships.  They hold it in a church, uptown, loading the gym with piles and piles and tables and tables of books, books and more books.  There's also a room designated for kids' books. 

For me, it's the ultimate in treasure-hunting.

I'm not looking for books to curl up with -- though I've found a few of those in the past.  I'm looking for ... oh man, I don't even know what to call them.

I guess I collect books.  For their covers, mostly.  I'm partial to books from the 1950s through the 1970s, but I'll pick up others too, if they catch my eye.

Without really intending to, I seem to have a great collection of teen lit.  It started when I came across a pile of Donna Parker and Trixie Beldon books in my grandparents' basement, and continued when my mother found me some used Rosamond deJardin books.  And my school library had a great collection of Beverly Cleary books (Fifteen ... Jean and Johnny ...) 

I found this book at last year's sale, and I'm so in love with it.  Absolutely in love.  And I haven't even read it yet!  I just love that picture.  It's so ... well, 1964.  And I love her dress.  And I love that it's a story about "being different". 

From the back cover:

        Being 'different' can hurt! Alan Carlisle is the first boy Jenny has ever dated. 'You're different from             American girls,' he tells her. 'So gentle and calm.'  But Jenny Kimura Smith -- half Japanese, half             American -- soon discovers that not everyone feels that way. Alan's mother has forbidden him to see         her again!

I'll feature some of my other favourites from time to time.

This is my mother's suitcase.

I don't know why I say it's hers.  It's been mine since I was little.  I used to pack my pajamas in it when I went to sleepovers.  

I keep closed, it on the floor in front of my full-length mirror.

And that's a lie.

It sits on my desk (my little desk - the one where mother used to do homework), wide open, surrounded by bottles and tubes and loose powder.  And I yell at Bee when she grabs something and empties it on the floor.  Or smears it on her face. 

That's the truth.

The other day, my dad told me that she (my mother) bought it when she went to a Dude Ranch with her friend, before they were married.  In the late sixties. Yup, a Dude Ranch.  A Dude Ranch! 

Now I want to go to a Dude Ranch.  The kind that Donna Parker or Trixie Beldon would've gone to.  The kind where the housekeeper's pies keep disappearing and everyone suspects the new handyman with broody eyebrows.  I'd skulk around at night with a flashlight and discover that it was really the dog, and I'd end up hanging out at a campfire singalong with the handyman.

I have to fill in the gaps of my mother's story with everything I learned from mid-century mystery-romance novels. 

This is the first thing I'm going to eat, now that Bee is asleep.

Slim (not so) says:  Those are ... things-- they taste horrible -- and sometimes you ... you ... have to eat them because-- for your throat.  You eat one-- or sometimes you have to eat more than one! Nobody likes them.

This is my memory of this morning.

Bee is set to push the "on" button and I'm trying to pull her bluff, waiting to see if she's testing me or if I really have to tell her off.  I'm also laughing at myself because it's not even plugged in but she doesn't know that I'm totally just trying to imprint it on her brain - that "NO" and "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" are non-negotiable. I don't want her to know that the rules change. Not yet. Too confusing.

She never has barrettes in her hair. Never. She asks me to put them in. I put them in. She takes them out within five minutes. Done.  Only this morning I put my own hair in pigtail buns (Which I never do. Never, never, ever. But I did. And I didn't have a shower. And I kept my pajamas on until at least 2:30), so she wanted them too.  All of them. That's three, and another three at least are on the other side.

That is my 10 a.m. haven't-showered-or-even-washed-my-face look. It might even be a look that says "I'm about to forget entirely to brush my teeth until late afternoon".

The cupboards are less yellow than they look. The colour's supposed to be a mushroomy grey. The third-darkest one on the Moores paint combo chip:  Navajo White in the middle (on the kitchen walls), Flurry (in Bee's room and probably the rest of the house when we get around to it) and ... Stone House? Something like that.

We were going to tile over the backsplash, but then we realized that we want to knock a whole wall down and replace the cupboards and the floor and add french (French?) doors and maybe even move the sink over to a window. And we can't afford that. So ... the backsplash.

The jars were in our house when we moved in.  Mostly in the basement (up in the rafters) and some in the attic (not the kind of attic that you hang around in -- the kind where you poke your head up a hole in the ceiling and try not to breathe mouse droppings while you scope around for any hidden treasures the previous owners might have left behind).  There's spices in them.  Korean hot pepper flakes, turmeric, garam masala, star anise and dried hot peppers from our garden.  Just for show because I like the colours. I keep my real spices in that cupboard.  The same ones, and also coriander, cumin (of course), paprika, mango powder and a bunch of other ones I've only used once or twice, like Herbes de Province (a dip, last year) or that I plan to use (shwarma mix).

It took me years to settle on those earrings. I wear them all the time.  They're little copper ones that I've convinced myself blend in and have become one with my body and that therefore I can wear them all the time. I don't take them out.  Like gold studs or sleepers. But not.  I found them two summers ago, in a little town outside of Ottawa on my way to my cousin's wedding. We drove up with my parents -- the five of us. Six hours in the car, and the canals, and it totally rained after we ate home-made sandwiches, and Slim was the only one who even got out of the car to look at the canals in the pouring rain with no umbrella.

** Note: you can see the bottom of the shelf's shadow right under my nose. And it's next the the cupboard's shadow. My nose isn't that pointy.

This is a silly picture that's on my fridge.

(I did it on da 'puter one day, when I discovered that new fangled "draw" function in Word. In about 1999.)

It's Slim 'n' me, on the beach in Kitsilano.  It actually pretty closely matches a photo we have on our bookshelf.  See Slim's uni-brow? My short hair? And I'm wearing a sweater that Slim's mother knit for him. (Knit? Knitted. Knit. Knitted.)

It was about ... 1997. Spring of 1997, I'd say.  My baby brother was visiting. He's the one who took the picture.  Slim and I had been married less than a year. 

This is my hair, straightened.

I know this is a really un-PC thing to say (as far as curly-heads go) but holy crap, I feel like I've found my hair again.  I lost it around 1983, when I hit puberty. 

I spent years trying to make it look the way I thought it was supposed to look, but it was coarse and bumpy and didn't move the way I wanted it to.

And then I cut it off.  Short. Really short. And loved that for a few years.

When I was 28 (28!!) I realized that I have curly hair. Don't laugh. S'true.  I learned not to touch it after a wash, and I searched for stylists who understood curly hair, and I grew it long so that it wouldn't sit like a shrub on top of my head.

I always avoided The Flat Iron. I wanted to love my curly hair the way it was.

And then my mother died.  And I took her flat iron home with me and played with it. And loved the results.

This is the hair that's been hiding under my bushy curls for decades. It fits my wee face. It can be styled like rock star hair, which is fun for me these days -- while I try to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I like to touch it.

I'm not saying I won't ever let my hair curl up again.  I still love my chunky curls that are "this-close" to being dredlocks at times. I'll let my hair rest once in a while. There will be days when I can't be bothered to put the effort in.

But it's so nice to feel like a new person for now.

These are my new pajamas.

And I love them. : )

I don't know if you can tell what an intensely hot pink colour they are.  They're exactly what I need, these days.  It's grey out, and it gets dark early, and there's snow on the ground and I hate going outside because my legs get cold.  But then I put on my pajamas, which are too big even though they're extra-small, and my body swishes around inside of them, and every time I look in the mirror I smile.  

This is my grandmother's picture cube.

Circa 1971.

She had two of them, and they sat in her living room.  Both are filled with pictures of me as a baby. They're in my bedroom, these days -- buried under a pile of (clean) clothes. Hidden, because they make my dad cry.

This is my mother and me, in Ithaca, New York -- at the Cornell married student apartments.

My mother made her own dress. She also used to iron her hair. 

(The plaid pajamas underneath? Sent to me by my mother-in-law, from the boys' department at Target in Melbourne. What you can't see is that they have a big hole in the butt. Yes!  A hole! And I don't care. They're warm and I love them. And yes, I need a new pair.)

This is a book I grew up looking at.

For the longest time, I was too young to read it -- but I always wanted to.  It was on my parents' bookshelf forever, which is hilarious because I can't imagine either of them reading it. They never -- EVER -- got rid of a book. Ever.  They must've bought it used, I think.

I remember being incredibly disappointed when I finally did read it. I think it was boring or something. Not as interesting as the cover led me to believe. But then again, I was probably twelve, so who knows. : )

It's been on my shelf for years, now. Somewhere along the way I lost the last few pages but I still couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. Even if it was intact, I don't think I would've bothered re-reading it.  So I finally decided to chuck the book itself and keep the cover -- which is the part I was attached to.

I might frame it one day. Would that be weird?

This one of my favourite restaurants.

Santropol, in Montreal

See the back patio?  Cafe au lait in a bowl. A giant, triple-decker sandwich:  cream cheese, pecans and olives on pumpernickel, surrounded by sliced oranges and melons and strawberries. Santropol brand "curiosi-tea":  lemongrass, lemon verbena, anise, lemon balm, orange flowers, licorice, strawberry leaves and ginger.

See the mountain?  Hill, really. Mount Royal, which pretty much divides the city into east, west, north and south.  We - the viewers - are east, facing west. 

See how at the bottom of the mountain there's a street?  That's avenue du Parc. 

See the statue at the bottom of the mountain?  Not the cross; look down a bit.  If you're there on a Sunday, that's where the Tam Tams are: around the base of the statue. Bongo players totally in synch with one another, playing crazy, hypnotic rhythms, and women dressed like hippies shaking their hips and younger women dressed like they put their clothes on in the dark, except you know how hard they planned it -- "it" being looking like they got dressed in the dark, I mean.  And one African man who's been there for ages, probably every week, who dances with his shirt off and plays a giant garbage can -- the kind that is actually from the park -- and then spontaneously throws it onto his back and balances it there before tossing it away on the grass. 

See those buildings just south of the mountain are McGill, I think. The north end of the campus. 

See the nuns playing volleyball?  Seriously.  There's a convent right around there.  I'm sure the nuns play volleyball.

See the street cutting almost vertically down the picture? That's Duluth.  And the street perpendicular to it?  With the building on the corners?  L'esplanade.  My brother lived on that street.  About half a block up.

This picture is one of my Montreals.