TWO OLD WHITE CATS: I'm the one wearing glasses |
Rob: "Mine?"
TWO OLD WHITE CATS: I'm the one wearing glasses |
TEAM MARDI GRAS: Gerard (Jed) Delahoussaye; Marie-Therese (Maite) Costisella; Helena (my wife) Szybalski; and Marie-Jose(Marie-Jo) Delahoussaye. |
CSI NEW ORLEANS: Helena raising cane, showing the local constabulary where we were when we found the wallet was lost. |
IRIS WATCHERWOMAN: Fur the love of Pete, she doesn't abide anybody dogging it. |
I'm not complaining. I love my job and the fact that I can do it from home makes it all the more enviable. Also, if you know me you know I don't use the word love unless I mean it.
Here's why I love my work.
All day long, I deal with some of the smartest and most well-intentioned people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting; people who want to make the world a better place and who believe that telling stories is a good way to do that.
Most days I exchange emails, texts and conversations with these extraordinarily articulate folks often about big ideas like right and wrong but also about what's funny; what's not and what our families are up to.
My friend Baxter Naday once put it this way "You do the same sorts of things when you're not at work as you do on the job."
I mostly do my job from the comfort of my living room couch, with Iris the cat near at hand. Plus I listen to music while I work. All day.
The vast majority of the people I work with are in Canada but I also regularly deal with colleagues in South Africa, Italy, The Philippines and Zimbabwe.
And get this: Somebody pays me to do it. Every two weeks! Real folding money.
And it's always the right amount. They never pay me less than they say they're going to; and the money arrives on time!
Who in the history of humankind has had a more luxurious lifestyle? With clean clothes, deodorant? A furnace that works and all the food I can possibly ever want a few steps away?
I was going to write a column about how I miss commuting to work because last week, one of the really interesting people I work with; an Ottawa-area lawyer named Juliana Saxberg (I love that elegant name) asked if I miss going into the office.
I wrote:
"I love going to the office. I think I'm a better person for the experience. Smarter, funnier, wiser, fitter, I hear more jokes and juicier gossip, and in fact I dress up prettier because I go out in public. It keeps my driving skills honed and I get to see the changing city landscape and the everchanging variety of motor vehicles that occupy our roadways. PLUS I listen to radio in the car and NEVER listen to radio at home. Morning show deejays are the hippest people on the planet. Plus the diner downstairs at 111 Gordon Baker Road is owned and operated by a European trained chef and nothing that comes out of that place bland. He makes the best hamburgers in Toronto. There's dozens of varieties of free coffee at work and stuff--copiers, toilets, power sources--works! But mostly it's the people. Every individual is like a beautiful blossoming flower and I am a social bumblebee. Yesterday, one of our colleagues at Gordon Baker, a relatively new Canadian named Roland who emigrated from Cameroon a few years ago, said to me in his deep voice and that great African accent "people with a positive attitude like you live a long time, Peter." I never heard that before. And I wouldn't have heard it yesterday had I not gone into work. Yeah, you might say I miss the office."
And that is the kind of email I spend my days writing.
See what I mean about not having anything to complain about?
I heard a gerontologist last week say that there are more than 10,000 Canadians over 100 years old. Ten thousand! Imagine. When my grandmother Carter turned 90, she got a letter from the queen.
I sure hope Roland's right.
I forget what it was I started writing about.
My cousin Glenda MacIsaac, who lives in a village called Lively on the outskirts of my hometown of Sudbury, nailed this morning's Wordle puzzle on her first guess.
It took me four.
Also--and this happens a lot--by the time Glenda'd sent me her result, I'd already forgotten what the winning word was.
Anyway, I'm super proud of Glenda for a whole bunch of reasons, the least of which is her Wordle-iness.
She's going to kill me when she reads the following but Glenda's one of those beautiful inside and out people who go through life quietly doing good work, helping others, making people laugh, challenging herself and being humbly brilliant. (After she showed us that she won with the word "stole," this morning, she added, "I meant to write store but hit l instead of r.")
Among the many cool things you should know about Glenda is she was named after a jeep.
True fact! Glenda was the only girl born to one of my favourite uncles, Alex MacIsaac, and his wife Marie. Her brothers were given proud traditional handles: Donald, James, Andrew and the eldest everybody called Sandy but who was in fact baptized Alexander after his dad.
Alex the dad, meantime, was in the forces and saw a jeep called Glenda. Alex was so taken by the name when his and Marie's second youngest child arrived, they called her after an all terrain-vehicle. Which sorta suits her.
ROSE AND ME: Note: This photo was taken before Wordle |
My daughter Ria introduced me to Wordle in 2021. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this simple diversion, which is now owned by the New York Times, has made my life immeasurably richer.
But not for the reason you might think.
(Yeah, yeah, I know. With every punch of a Wordle key I'm ceding over my entire life's data to some big organization to do who knows what with. I say, have at it.)
Since I started doing these things, the five-letter-word puzzle in the morning has replaced a first cup of coffee. Wordle kickstarts my brain.
And something that's way more important?
Shortly after getting out of bed, every morning for the past I'm embarrassed to admit how many months, Glenda, I and one of our other cousins, Roseanne Rice in Halifax, swap Wordle results.
(Rose Rice. I know. Sounds like a car. Except a Rolls Royce doesn't make sound. I just thought of that.)
Pre-Wordle, I was in touch with Glenda and Rose maybe when an aunt died or a nephew won something, or every Boxing Day, which is when Halifax always seems to lose its power so we have to check in to see if the family's okay.
Mostly though, contact was a few times a year at best.
Since Wordle?
Every single day. Invariably, when we share results, we trade family gossip, condolences, or whatever the opposite of condolences are, or sarcastic notes. I'm absolutely sure that these simple daily messages are good for our spiritual, mental, physical and social health.
If my math's not wrong, I'm talking about more than a thousand individual hi-have-a-nice-day-I-love-you messages.
For me, Wordle means daily connection with people I love deeply and who, I'm hoping, feel the same.
I don't care who you are. Being reminded you're loved is the absolute best way to start your day.
In early December, a University of Metropolitan Toronto (nee Ryerson) journalism student pointed me toward a website that -- surprise surprise--held a lot of material published before the whole world went online.
One of my favourite finds: This story I wrote for Chatelaine, about Kiran Pal and Geoff Pross, who travelled the world and got married in eight different cultural traditions.
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The taxi ride between my house and Lester B. Pearson
International Airport is about 15 minutes on a good day and on this particular
Friday morning, traffic was light and the sky clear. So, for a quarter of an
hour - and because I asked - I was treated to the story of a marriage as lived
by one chatty Ethiopian cabbie.
He had arrived in Canada a dozen years ago. Here, he met and
fell in love with a woman, but his parents wanted him to follow his two older
brothers and have a traditional arranged marriage. He ignored them, listened to
his heart and married for love. Now, he and his wife have one little boy who
needs extra help at school and Dad drives a cab about 60 hours a week to make
ends meet. Life, he said as I was exiting his taxi, is hard. "You
know," he said, "after all these years, I realize something. My
father was right. I should have gone for the arranged marriage." It seems
that no matter where you go, marriage is complicated.
If I'd told the
driver why I was catching a plane, he probably would have wanted to join me. I
was flying to Whistler, B.C., to meet Kiran Pal and Geoff Pross, two
self-styled marriage experts. Their claim to fame: Kiran, 30, and Geoff, 31,
had been married eight times in traditional ceremonies around the world. Eight
times. To each other.
By the time you read this, they will have had a ninth
wedding, scheduled for mid-July, in British Columbia Kiran and Geoff had been a
couple for eight years since graduating from university. Then, in the fall of
2000, they decided to get married - but not until they thoroughly researched
the roots of the institution. In the hope of learning as much about weddings -
and each other - as they could, they took all their savings, left their
Vancouver home and and pursued this eccentric year-long project.
The pair moved to eight different countries - sometimes for
a few days, sometimes for a few months - made friends and shared their plans
with the locals. They would ask about traditional wedding ceremonies, find
someone to perform the rituals and then hire people to throw the parties. The
price tag on this elaborate 12-month wedding? "The price of a new
SUV," Geoff told me. "A really fancy SUV," Kiran added.
Their first ceremony was an Aboriginal affair in South
Australia. There, they became honorary members of a tribe, adopted honorary godparents
and sat around a fire while an elder wielded a flaming stick and told the
newlyweds about their obligations.
The sixth wedding was a Celtic celebration in County
Leitrim, Ireland. For that one, Kiran and Geoff got bound to each other at the
wrist. It's called a handfasting, and the couple is supposed to consummate the
marriage tied up. (Each ceremony holds its unique appeal.)
At the Thai marriage, a pair of elders - spry ones, I might
suppose - did the traditional job of warming up the marriage bed before the
newlyweds hopped into it. (If experience is any teacher - I've got 16 years of
matrimony under my belt - I bet the older married folks just read a bit, gave
each other a peck on the cheek and nodded off.)
Kiran and Geoff exchanged vows in a Shinto ceremony in
Japan, watched a pig get slaughtered in Borneo and drank litre after litre of
some horrid drink called Kill Me Quick in Africa. I went to meet them not so
much to hear details of their trips (I can wait until the book that they're
writing comes out) but because I hoped they might answer a couple of simple
questions.
First, what is up with marriage? Statistics show that most
North American couples live together before they tie the knot, and even though
some figures indicate a 42 per cent divorce rate in this country, we never seem
to give up. The wedding business is hotter than ever. Is it like this in the rest of the world, too?
I once heard that the phrase "Till death do us part" was invented
when a person's lifespan averaged 34 years.
My question: are all cultures into this long-term business
or are people who shill for the deathdo-us-part thing out of their minds? Some
days, you have to wonder.
The second question I had was about wedding ceremonies
themselves. Are they worth it? Anybody who's been involved in planning a
wedding knows how stressful it can be, that you sometimes have to tread the
steps from engagement announcement to marriage vows as gingerly as if they were
littered with landmines.
One group of relatives wants a big to-do, the other kind of
hopes the couple elopes. The groom would like to invite his university pals,
but the bride knows they're nothing but a bunch of hard-drinking all-night-partying
boors. I remember more about planning my wedding than I do about planning my
career. I recall debating what kind of cutlery we would use at our reception
but I don't ever remember talking about whether we'd raise the kids Catholic.
It strikes me as
pretty weird. When you think about it, weddings are but one small part of
marriage. Just like giving birth is one of the tiniest parts of raising a
child. So, there's really no point knotting ourselves up over the details,
right? Wrong. There must be something to this long-term marriage thing because
everybody's into it. Kiran and Geoff discovered people everywhere have similar
attitudes toward getting hitched.
For example, here's what they were told when they got
married in Australia: "With the Adnyamathanha people, if you break up you
have to come back to where the marriage took place, find the burning sticks and
throw them in opposite directions. And then you're not to see each other ever
again and you cannot enter the community as a couple."
Only the Celtic handfasting ceremony offered any chance of
dissolution. The others were for life. And that answered my first question.
As for No. 2, I realized, after meeting Kiran and Geoff,
that the wedding and everything that leads up to it is a preview - or a trailer
as it's known in the movie biz - for the epic thriller called Married Life.
"The funny thing is," Kiran says, "we went on
this journey because we wanted to get away from people fussing over little
things, like brides freaking out when their bouquets don't arrive on time. But
what we found were people interfering and fussing wherever we went."
And let's face it: the way you handle the interfering and
fussing prepares you for life together. "They say travelling is living
life in a hurry," says Geoff. "And we had all these experiences in a
short period of time - and we had our differences. Kiran would want to do it
one way, I'd want to do it another. We had to shelve our differences, so we
learned how to get past hurdles together."
Case in point: what's the most important word in the married
person's lexicon? Compromise. A couple who gives in to each other once in a
while stays together. And what teaches this better than hosting a wedding where
you have to entertain 150 guests who include, for example, the bride's
estranged stepfather, the groom's salacious brother-inlaw and a few people both
families deny even knowing?
If a couple doesn't compromise when it comes time to getting
married, they're doomed. Did Kiran and Geoff compromise? You're darn right they
did.
At their very first wedding, among the Australian
Adnyamathanha, they had to eat kangaroo meat. Kiran and Geoff are both
vegetarians. "Yeah, we agreed," says Kiran. "But at least it
hadn't been domesticated." A pretty tiny compromise, you might think. But
eating things you hadn't planned on - especially your words - is a huge part of
staying married.
What about the generations-old marriage-saver called living
in denial? Of course, marriage is based on love, acceptance, trust and
forbearance, but sometimes indifference and ignoring things that just don't
make sense go a long way to getting you through the day. Weddings are perfect
practice for this.
Everywhere. When Kiran and Geoff were getting married in the
Iban tradition in Borneo, they had to pick little candies off a banana tree.
Only after they did this were they informed that the bananas symbolize shrunken
enemy heads. "An Iban warrior," Geoff says, "had to take at
least one head before being allowed to marry."
We all adhere to traditions we ignore the meaning of.
According to statistics, 96 per cent of Canadian brides get married in a
virginal white or ivory gown. As if.
Weddings also groom you for the little surprises that life
never stops springing on you. Back in Borneo, Kiran and Geoff were dressed up -
he in a loin-cloth and she in a beaded shimmering dress - and they put on a
feast for more than 100 people. And just like at my wedding, one trusted guest
was responsible for videotaping the affair. At my wedding, my brother Alex was
in charge of the camera and it became clear that he enjoyed our Polish dance
band because during our ensemble's version of "I Just Called to Say I Love
You," the camera starts polka-ing.
That scene adds a grace note to the cherished video record
of our special day. "In Borneo," Geoff says, "the camera guy
should have been zooming in on Kiran's sparkling new headdress - a silver
tinkling thing with beads on it - and then you hear the squealing of the pig
being slaughtered. So, guess what got videotaped? You guessed it - the pig
intestines." In life, as in wedding ceremonies, sometimes you get the
tiara and sometimes you get the intestines.
Weddings also make a couple say "I do" several
times. That can't be a bad thing. Kiran maintains that their yearlong journey
from wedding to wedding forced them to reiterate and demonstrate their love for
each other on innumerable occasions. At least eight times they professed their
undying devotion. "There's never too much reassuring the other person how
much you love them," she says.
Their various weddings shared other characteristics. In
Australia, the couple not only marries each other; in the Aboriginal tradition,
once they marry into another family, they are responsible for the members of
that other family. I, as well as anyone who's had a brother-in-law move in with
them "until he gets a place," will agree that there isn't one society
on the planet where you don't marry all the members of a family. It goes on.
During the Iban ceremony in Borneo, Geoff had to do a warrior dance.
He recalls it this way: "I did my best, and the shrieks
of laughter started up immediately." Like I said, I've been married 16
years. I have three children. I know from getting laughed at.
Finally, every ceremony that Kiran and Geoff found
themselves involved in invoked unseen forces. Wherever they went, weddings were
spiritual events. Kiran again: "We had to believe we were spiritually
connected to the land in the Aboriginal ceremony. In the Shinto ceremony, God was
called to witness the event. It was like that wherever we went."
I recently read that almost 75 per cent of Canadians who
have traditional weddings include religion as part of the ceremony. And if
nothing else preps you for life, that
does. Because God knows, sometimes it's pure faith that gets married people
through their daily lives.
Still, with all of Kiran and Geoff's experiences and
rituals, I thought there was something missing. So, I'd like to add one detail
- maybe a moment of silence or a boring rest period during which nothing
happens - to every wedding reception, wherever it takes place. Because you
might as well rehearse for marriage's best part, too.
En route to Whistler, I spent a night in an inexpensive
hotel near the airport. This place had walls so thin I could hear exactly what
was going on in the next room. I'm not exaggerating. My neighbours were named
John and, from what I could gather through the wall, Emmy.
I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but no sooner had I flopped down
on my bed than I heard laughter coming through the flowery wall-paper. And I'm
not talking faint giggles, either. I could make out each tee and every hee as
well as everything in-between. Their mattress squeaked. While I don't know for
certain that John and Emmy were a married couple, it sure sounded like it.
Because from what I could tell, Emmy was in bed reading the
paper and eating chips and John was in bed beside her watching the game. He was
also having a few beers.
Which, apparently, he didn't do very often, because Emmy
sweetly chided him. It was OK, though, because "This," she reasured
him, "is a special occasion." Then after a half-hour or so, I heard
the newspaper rustle. She said, "I'm going to sleep. G'nite, dear. Don't forget
to turn out the light." "G'nite," said John. Then there was
silence, except for the sounds of two people getting comfy enough to nod off in
peace.
Ask any longtime married person, including my Ethiopian taxi
driver - the one who works 60 hours a week and really needs a break. I'm sure
he'd agree with me. It just doesn't get any better than that.
MEMORIES AS MATTERS OF FACT: From left, Kerrene Tilson, Rick McCutcheon, Sue Smith, me, Patsy Holder |
Forty one years ago, lunchtime at the Anchor Inn in Little Current, Ont., found me sitting adjacent to one Sue Smith, who had just moved to town to work at the Manitoulin Expositor newspaper for a spell. (That's how we editors measure time. Spells. An editor's blood type? O. I wrote both of those great editor jokes myself.)
Here's Sue ordering a sandwich: "Chicken, with mayo, on white."
There's Peter, thinking: "That is the safest sandwich I ever heard of. Completely neutral. Anybody could like that sandwich." Vegetarians might take issue with the chicken part, but I didn't know any back then. Vegetarians, that is.
Every time I eat a turkey or chicken sandwich, I think of me at the Anchor.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD FRIEND: Ron Temchuk |
Coffee in styrofoam cups? Welcome to Pete's Lunch, a block south of the garage where my dad worked and where we hung out as kids.
Sometimes the garage guys sent us on coffee runs to Pete's, which was operated by an always friendly Chinese man whose real name probably wasn't anywhere close to Pete, and he let us kids play the pinball machine. Pete also had a way of mincing chopped onion into his burger meat, infusing them with a taste that I've tried in vain to replicate since.
And that's what I think of every time I see coffee in a styrofoam cup.
Writing of coffee...one of the dozens of reasons I like going into our office so much--even though I don't have to these days--is because of my lifelong (so far, anyway) friend Ron Temchuk.
Thing is, at our office, we get free coffee. It's a perk. Ha-ha.
And one of the flavours this free coffee comes in is cappuccino.
FRIENDS HANGING AROUND: Beata, (as in Beatanik) lives a few houses east. |
Here in Toronto, there's an onramp that takes you from the eastbound Danforth Avenue to the Northbound Don Valley Parkway; a half-a-kilometre swooping downhill curve to the right, and every single time I head down I -- for some reason -- think about my brother in law Al MacNevin and his brother Dave. Included in that memory is an early '70s P1800 Volvo sportscar, cornering so rapidly the car was up on two left wheels. I don't know if anybody actually did that, or said it sounded like a good idea, or if it's all something I imagined.
All I know for sure is the imagery is so strong it makes driving down the ramp way more fun. The City of Toronto should rename that stretch of street the MacNevin Ramp.
As I type at this moment, on the wall over my right shoulder hangs a pair of oil paintings that we purchased 20 years ago from an artist neighbour, Beata Hasziuk.
Shortly after we got the art, I was visiting my doctor, Mark Huryn, in his downtown Toronto office and I noticed a Beata painting on his wall, too. Mark's a great doctor. I once asked him if I might have adhd because I'm so impulsive and have a hard time meeting deadlines. His response? "You're married, right? You got a house, correct? You're working? No big debts? You're probably fine."
A JARRING REVELATION: We allow cookies. |
Beata's name also reminds me of beatitudes, so here's a new one: Blessed are the artists for they shall remind people of stuff forever.
We have a ceramic Christmas cookie jar that every time I look at brings me to my aunt Kaye's kitchen. Kaye, my mom's younger sister, lived up the street from us and loved me like crazy and in her kitchen on a shelf, for as many years as I can count, she had ceramic cookie jar though I think Kaye's was a pig.
I remember thinking "That thing is always on the very same shelf, every time we visit. I wonder why she doesn't take it down and play with it. I sure would."
So now, whenever I look at our ceramic soldier, I am reminded that we should all have as much fun as we can, right now, because you never know, you might just wind up remembering this exact moment forever.
Look. You are definitely going to create memories. Might as well make them happy ones.
CONTRACTOR ZAID: Zaid was Helena's first contact with the kitchen renovators. (Photo taken in a kitchen that isn't ours.) |
Had you asked me a year ago, "Would a fixed-up kitchen make you happy, Peter?" I'd be like, "Of course not. It's just a room."
Wrong.
Entering our bright shiny kitchen is a wholly unanticipated experience. I'm reminded of the time I first stepped into the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I recall the moment as vividly as if it happened 15 minutes ago. My first thought: "Mom. You have to see this."
I won't describe our new kitchen in detail because I'm really bad at that kind of writing. Instead, I'll tell you how fun and satisfying the renovation was, from start to now.
What follows are 5 reasons the kitchen upgrade here at Pete's B&G was memorable and uplifting.
If you think I'm being sarcastic, we've never met.
JONESING FOR ARCHEOLOGY: Emil floored us. |
CURIOUS KIERAN: He wanted to know more about Stompin' Tom! |
LIFE IN THE FAST DRAIN: Eagles' fan Constantin |
READY FOR SANTA'S MILK&COOKIES: Baked here at Pete's Blog&Grille |