1. Free potatoes, rice and peas to go with our falafels.
2. Text messages from all over sending happy wishes.
3. Little Lukas at the kitchen table, offering me his candy cane ice cream, over and over. ‘Julia [insert developing language here] try miiine?’ End that with a huge grin! I cross to the other side of the table to be fed a Thomas-the-Tank spoonful. I return to my side. Repeat. Each time with a grin bigger than the last.
1. Winning another battle in the paper war at home!
2. ‘Stalin's ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks for help running the country. Stalin says, ‘Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue.’ ‘Why blue?’ Putin asks. ‘Ha!’ says Stalin. ‘I knew you wouldn't ask me about the first part.’’
3. A real estate professional took the time - over an hour - to patiently listen, and to answer my questions. [I'm so glad he's not a lawyer.]
1. Holiday downtime, at last, to start reflecting on the year.
2. Christmas dinner with friends whose families are far away.
3. Beautiful gift of letterpress typography, patterns and haiku.
‘The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.’ - Albert Einstein
1. Memory! Got a photo print from last week's party.
2. Hawaiian meatballs! Served warm, delicious food.
3. Blog! Lingered at my desk all night... blogging.
1. Honouring: attending one very inspiring awards luncheon.
2. Spacing: attending a release party for Toronto's coolest mag.
3. Attending: to the maple-glazed doughnut Kevin bought me.
‘Today is the tomorrow I was terrified of yesterday.’
1. Generosity: the guy on the subway shared his newspaper.
2. Patience: the girl at the salon let me have my Mary Poppins of Pockets moment as I took forever to empty out my coat.
3. Highlight: the girl doing my hair gave me a positively brilliant idea. She is a creative, gorgeous super-babe of the universe.
‘He is a statue wrapped in a painting in a frame made of muscles.’
1. to be imparted valuable perspectives from Canada's aboriginal community,
2. to hear a speech by Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa,
3. to spend an afternoon in a sauna and spa, followed by a 90-minute nap.
December 1 is World AIDS Day.
1. Overheard.
‘I love your cane!’
‘Thanks! $23 at Shoppers Drug Mart.’
‘It is so pretty!’
‘I know. It was my lucky day!’
2. Said.
‘I'm joining a gym tomorrow!’
‘Me too!’
‘When?’
‘I don't know – but I will!’
‘How exciting!’
‘I know!’
‘Totally!’
3. Read.
‘Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.’ British novelist G.B. Stearn
1. Compassion. My former boss returned my call quickly. [I am grateful.]
2. Compliment? I thought I recognized someone on the subway. I looked at him funny, then shook my head and explained that he looked familiar. He said, ‘I wish I was.’ [I am flattered.]
3a. Conversation. Email chat with a friend in Brazil, who invited me to her wedding next summer. [I am delighted.]
3b. Conversation. Email chat with an old school mate. Shoutout to Oliver: Good luck with your thesis work! [I am proud.]
And not to be unappreciated on this most mid-November of days:
4. Currency. Unlike some at work, my pay was deposited into my bank account. [I am relieved.]
1. Cleveland? Email from Daiva, wherever she is.
2. Los Angeles? Email from Michael, wherever he is.
3. Toronto? Email from David, wherever he is.
I can keep track, though, of the email I got about being nipply.
1. Spanish teacher offered my friend and me good tutoring rates.
2. Russian colleague offered me pretty European cigarette boxes.
3. Young couple on the subway offered me Truck Mart magazine.
1. ‘companies listed on the Toronto Sock Exchange’
2. ‘terms and conditions as being in the pubic interest’
3. ‘acknowledgment regarding nun-exclusive relationship’
3. News. Ontario has a new statutory holiday in February!
2. Truce. The guy at the bike shop showed me how to use a mini-pump for my tires, then slotted me in with the mechanics to examine all the bruises on my baby folding bike.
1. Touch. In a moving experience, I sat next to a woman reading Braille. Her fingers ran over a thick white cardstock book about the size of an LP. It looked like sheet music, but with imprinted notes. Imagine reading words by touch!
‘When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s. What I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire – nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?’
Doris Lessing, 2007 Nobel Prize Winner (Literature)
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia
A. The clock tower in the Public Gardens is chiming midnight 15 minutes early. It is beautiful, yet perplexing.
1. Feeling it as I am welcomed into several extended Korean-Portuguese families.
B. Email from old friends, wireless internet connections, chlorinated pools, hair straighteners, control top nylons, Titanic marine museums.
2. Feeling it as everyone helps me get to where I need to go in a hurry.
C. The privilege of hearing ‘Sole mio’ sung in Italian - with extraordinary feeling - from a husband to a wife (‘you are my sunshine’).
3. Feeling it as the Portuguese Adam Sandler (à la Wedding Singer) plays a Christmas carol over dinner.
Drowning in boxes upon boxes today,
1. kind words from Spain,
2. kind words from Venezuela, and
3. kind words from England.
Life really does change overnight. Yesterday, here I was. Tomorrow, new circumstances, moments with my parents never to be recaptured. Four months with mom and dad. Did we find our utopia? Hell, no! Perhaps something virtuous, instead, in our time shared together.
1. Over the moon: one beautiful letter from one beautiful boy.
2. Under the moon: rain drizzling down, smiling all the way home.
3. By the glow of the fridge light: late-night leftover lasagne.
1. J emailed me a job I might be interested in.
2. A emailed me from England, newly settled.
3. G emailed me from Madrid, newly re-settled.
And I got to read all those emails in the sunshine, in my bathing suit. Don't go, Summer!
Somebody needs to catch up on her blog!
Ernest Hemingway knew. ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’
