Granny in the sun

I’m going to see my grandmother this week. I can picture her now. In a sunhat, wearing her pearls. I haven’t seen her in a bathing suit since I was three. The photos are in an album – we’re building sandcastles at a summer cottage in Canada.

This time I’ll see her in the Bahamas. Although I can picture pearls and sunhats, I can’t really imagine what she’ll be like in the tropics. I haven’t seen her out of her English flat in years. Stirring her G & T’s just before noon. Complaining that I make weak drinks. “Don’t let Janey make your drink,” she’ll tell visitors. “It’s all tonic and no gin!”

I am very excited to see her. She’s funny as hell. She has class. And she delivers an insult better than anyone I’ve ever seen. You can’t help but laugh, even if it’s directed at you.

I’m sure she’ll tell me I’ve gained more weight. That she hates my hair. The last time we were there she said to my sister: “Has Janey gone to get a comb?” When my sister said she didn’t know, my grandmother said, “Well I hope so. She looks like the wild woman of Borneo.”

When I speak to my sister in Canada from her living room my grandmother will contribute. “Oh God. Canadians have such inane conversations.” I guess she’s used to paying by the minute.

But she can be sweet too. She loves penguins. She’s a sucker for dogs. She cries when someone is hurt or distressed. She visits her sick friends in the hospital every week. She waves from her window every time we go out and lurks around it when we’re due to come home. She makes the best scrambled eggs in the world after a seven hour flight. And she has the best collection of stuffed animals a 90-year-old has ever owned.

She likes the ones with long, dangly legs. The last time I bought her a pink flamingo to add to her shelf. She said, “We have to name him something hideous.”

“What about Rupert?” I said.
“No, that’s the name of that sweet bear.”
“OK, what about Fred?”
“Yes, we’ll call him Fred.”

Guess what my cousin decided to call her first born son? That’s right, Fred.

“Oh God she's named him Fred,” she moaned. “It’s like something you’d name the milk man.”

I have a feeling she’ll outlive me, like she’s outlived everything else. Her secret to life? “Have a drink and get on with it.” God, she’s good.

A conversation with a cabbie

One of the perks of working nights at my company is the cab chit. At the end of the day, there's nothing like a free cab ride home.

It's Valentine's Day. It's 11:30 at night. I'm ready for the back seat of el caberero. I'm single this year and shocked I'm not sad that it's Valentine's Day.

I slam the cab door shut and shuffle across the silicone seating.

"Hello!" my cabbie says smiling. "Happy Valentines Day."
"Happy Valentine's Day to you," I say.
"Oh, you had to work this year," he drones apologetically.
"That's OK."
"Your boyfriend must be disappointed not to have seen you tonight."
"I don't have a boyfriend."
"You don't?"
"No."
"Oh. That is very sad for you. Very sad."
"No, not really. I don't feel sad about it this year for some reason. I'm really surprised."
"When was the last time you had a boyfriend?" he asks.
"Ummm... almost two years ago," I say. "Our anniversary would have been today."
"Oh, really? How many years would you have been together?"
"13."
"13? That is very sad. I'm sure he won't find another girlfriend like you."
"He already has a girlfriend."
"He does? Oh."
"Well, I'm sure she's not the same as you."
"Yeah, I guess so," I say, staring out the window.
"No. Not the same," he says, searching for words.
"Just up here, behind this car please," I ask.

He pulls over infront of a snowbank. But I still manage to laugh as I pull my snow soaked shoe from the pile.

And then I eat half a tub of Haagen Dazs.

"Makes you go hmmm"

The first time I came back from Ghana, I learned that some of the people I considered close confidents weren't exactly my cup of tea anymore. I met a friend for coffee. She spent most of the time complaining about Toronto - that we don't have decent cappuccinos. That our tomatoes aren't ripe enough.

I wanted to strangle her.

The tomatoes were ripe in Ghana. Sometimes so ripe that you didn't realize they were rotten until after you made your sauce.

Most people in Tamale only got running water for a couple of hours on Sundays. We'd fill big plastic buckets from the communal tap and ration for the rest of the week. We didn't have a sink. Our dirty dishwater flushed the toilet. The rainy season was a treat because we'd collect a couple buckets from falling drips off the roof.

The dry season left little food. The open sewage system stunk. Many people wore the same clothes every day. And some didn't own one pair of shoes.

The hospitals reaked of rotting flesh. The corpes piled on top of each other in the refridgerators without frost. The lines were long. The malaria was rampant. And many suffering from HIV couldn't afford medication or the travel expenses to even reach a hospital, let alone a doctor.

Ghana gave me a lot of lessons to bring home with me. Most of them I didn't fully realize until I came back to endure sureal stories about how there's not enough frothy milk these days. Listening to those complaints made me want to drop my dear friend on a dirty Ghanaian street and leave her there to learn.

After meeting her that afternoon, I decided that many people in my social class choose to suffer over frivolous things because we have little to actually worry about. And I mean really worry about. We have beds and baths. We have gas, hot water or electric heat to radiate our homes. And brisk breezes to cool us down in the summer. So what is there to worry about? Cappuccinos!?!

I know there's more suffering in our society than that. People close to us die. We get sick. We lose the loves of our lives. We're forced to flush our floating fish down the toilet. And those losses are just as legitimate as any loss overseas.

But the day to day. We've got it easy. And sometimes it's difficult to remind ourselves just how much we have and how grateful we should be.

"As Western society gained the ability to limit the suffering caused by harsh living conditions, it seems to have lost the ability to cope with the suffering that remains. Studies by social scientists have emphasized that most people in modern Western society tend to go through life believing that the world is basically a nice place in which to live, that life is mostly fair, and that they are good people who deserve to have good things happen to them. These beliefs can play an important role in leading a happier and healthier life. But the inevitable arising of suffering undermines these beliefs and can make it difficult to go on living happily and effectively. In this context, a relatively minor trauma can have a massive psychological impact as one loses faith in one's basic beliefs about the world as fair and benevolent. As a result, suffering is intensified."

The Art of Happiness
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and
Howard C. Cutler, M.D.

And we think we're so lucky. But are we?

Above I listed everything that was unfair about Ghana. But here's what was right. You'd walk down the street and everyone said hello. Your groceries would break through your bicycle basket and at least five people would stop and try to help you get it back together again. You're sick one day and everyone from the office comes to visit you. Your friend is bleeding from a motorbike accident and everyone piles into a taxi to wait outside the operating room so he can see you when he comes out. He can't afford a bed but gives you a painting to bring home with you so you can remember him.

Here, we live in seperation and isolation from one another. Each of us can get so individually lonely, when we don't have to be. We compete with one another to get ahead. More toys, more comfort. And for what? To complain that the leather in the latest Mercedez just isn't the same anymore?

I guess an ideal world would combine the compassion of Ghana with the comfort of Toronto. But is it possible to have both? Or is there a reason that one is exclusive from the other?

Organized chaos

"Attention all passengers, attention all passengers. A subway car has fallen off the tracks between Warden and Kennedy station. For your convenience, a shuttle bus will travel between stations. Platform 9."

"How convenient," I think. But I say nothing. And nobody else does either. I'm going to be late for work now. I'm training. I'm supposed to be in a meeting and I'll miss it because of the bleeping subway.

The thing about Torontonians is: we're wimps. Nobody yells, "This is bullshit!" or pounds the side of the car with their fists like they do in Manhattan. Nobody sighs, spits or shrugs.

Ding. The car doors glide open like mechanical curtains. And then. Madness. A sea of black haired heads float towards platform number 9. Of course nobody really knows where that is. We scatter up and down stairs like rats. Destination: somewhere up there.

I'm wearing really stupid shoes for this. All my weight balancing on heals sporting the surface area of a Sharpie. There are about 40 parents flowing in the flock with strollers. And one is right beside me. Right in front of us is another steep set of stairs sinking straight down. Shit.

Nobody looks like they're going to help the lady with the load. I stop on the first stair and turn to a stranger by my side.

"Excuse me, do you mind helping her down the stairs? I'm wearing really stupid shoes," I say, showing him the back of my heal, now balancing on one foot, on half a foot of stair.

"Yeah sure, ask the white man."

I thought he was trying to be funny since he was white, afterall. I laugh.

But when we get down to platform number 9, I'm all smiles and he's not having any of it. At the bottom of the stairs he stares. And it's not a friendly one.

So maybe Torontonians aren't so wimpy afterall.

Mary-go-round

I've never gone this long without writing a post. I think it's been at least a few months. I haven't missed a month since 2005. So what happened? Life happened, that's what.

Dear my four readers: are you still there? Do you even try anymore? This is my petition to you to restore faith - in me. Do you hear the chariots of fire soundtrack? Cos it's playing.

So... this is what I've been up to.

I have no life. Yes, it's true. None. And all this time, you thought I was galavanting around Europe, sipping espressos infront of unbelievably hot, sculpted men. Nope.

I work weekends. And not only weekends. I work from midnight until 8am on weekends. Some would say that sucks. And some would be right. It does.

But, my four readers, I love the job. OK, love may be pushing it. I really like the job. I'm an assignment editor at CTV. I'm also training to do tech lineup - which means I get to chose what shots will be in stories, their order, etc.

And the weekdays, oh the weekdays! I work from 3:30PM until 11:30PM - giving me one day off. That day off is a rare, and wonderful thing my four. So rare and wonderful, that by the time I get there, I just want to sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep like a motherless baby. And that's usually what I do.

I still go out before work on weekends. I just can't drink. More than two drinks.

Everything else is gravy. Literally. I eat a lot of it. Infact I had it for dinner and for lunch.

In times like these, I wonder why I left Ghana. I came home because I wanted to reconnect with friends and family. I missed that. A lot. I wanted roots.

But my roots aren't digging deep. My job doesn't let me give any time to the things and people I want to give it to most.

So why do I do it?

Because my four. It's steps. Steps leading to somewhere. Steps leading to the freedom to make documentaries and travel the world for the rest of my life. Steps up.

But sometimes I feel like I'm in an Eckler sketch - where the stairs all end up going to the same place anyway.