The Après Life

March reminds me of spring skiing—though I could skip the slopes altogether. I’ve never graduated from the bunny runs and usually spend the whole time worrying about how to exit the chair lift without falling. So maybe it’s spring snowshoeing.

Anyway, what’s important is the “après” part. Imagine: skis or snowshoes off, sighing into a Muskoka chair. On its wide arm rest, a hot toddy. Unbuttoned parka. Tuque off. Fingers running through sweaty hair. Body content after a day spent outdoors. Limbs pleasantly tired. Now close your eyes, lift your face to the sun and disappear into the moment.

Inspired by the arrival of March. Image by Dinga.

Disengagement

I’ve always been ambivalent about social media and these days that ambivalence is tending towards the negative so I’m going to disengage for a while. Creating free content for Meta while Zuck and his oligarch bro squad are competing to become the first trillionaire at the cost of community and global disintegration is becoming onerous. Sure, social media can result in good stuff getting done as well but for me, for now, it feels like it’s tipping in the wrong direction so I’m stepping back from it.

“For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.”
—Audrey Lorde

Inspired by A Pleasant Pause. Illustration by the TV Sign-off Test Pattern.

Journal Entry #2

Dear Miss Pube,

You arrived unexpectedly much to the horror of my sister who announced it to the family. Our single father rushed to the pharmacy and returned with a book on menstruation left silently for me like a surprise gift.

I expected you would have come up during sex-ed class, but instead, there were only unrecognizable diagrams of penises and vaginas narrated by old people. You grew into a beautiful bush, and then with the trends you were stripped away into a silky sand dune on an island oasis. Today you are a Mrs. Pube; wiley, wielding and wise.

Inspired by Tom, Photo from Pngtree.

Tom

Flipping, last night, through our grade-school memories, Tony told me a story I don’t think I’d heard, about a kid in our class whom I barely remembered, but who it turns out had lost both his parents when we were all together in Mrs. Applebaum’s Grade 7 class. And you’d think I’d remember something like that, but the only thing I remembered about Tom was from the first time we’d showered together after gym, and that he was the guy who had clued me into the fact that people with red hair would of course have red pubes.

     Sorry Tom.

But wait, it gets worse, because Tony could barely believe it himself, and so I decided to show off a little and see what I could find online, because sometimes I think I’m pretty good at that stuff, and then other times I just wish I could stop, like when I found out that Tom’s mom had died on April 20th while visiting her family in Montreal, and his dad had died just nine days later, like when I discovered that Tom—their “chosen son”—had been adopted as a baby . . . and then that poor Tom had died in 2019.

Inspired by Dying. Photo by Walker School Photo.

Nutcracker

Bless UAW’s Local 444 because all of us Chrysler kids ended up with good teeth and mine is probably the last generation to have relatives with false ones. Not today’s veneers or implants but entire mouths quarried and replaced with full sets of uppers and lowers. How many of us had our childhoods mildly traumatized by Old Timers taking out their clackers and enacting some sort of Clem Kadiddlehopper kitchen gag? And they rarely fit. My own poor mom suffered through several versions, so on any given day her smile could range from Meg Ryan Chiclets to Trilogy of Terror.

Inspired by Baby Teeth. Photo by THEPALMER.

Baby Teeth

Tiptoeing in, I reached beneath her pillow to exchange her carefully-wrapped tooth with a shiny coin. The transaction would please her (Oh, the candy she could buy now!), but I had a quandary. Those little gnashers, like first steps, were momentous. It seemed callous to toss them out. So I secretly saved them all, till I realized that was kind of icky. What was I going to do, make a necklace for her Sweet Sixteen? That would cement her cool in the eyes of her friends. And so, I dumped them, un-commemorated and uncelebrated. Better callous, I decided, than icky. 

Inspired by Gap Kid. Image by Oxana Zaytseva.

A Pleasant Pause

Let’s shift from orange through tangerine and peach to bubble-gum pink and the deep crimson of valentine cards. Just a reminder, I prefer dark chocolate with no nuts. But don’t bother with the roses; cut flowers never last. And if you can’t get a reservation at that overpriced restaurant, no matter.

Turn off the news and come sit with me.
Let’s laugh and talk, even though after thirty years I know all your stories and you know mine. 

Let’s hold hands on the couch.

Let’s snuggle and soothe our chronically jangled nerves, and whisper to each other,

“I’ve got you.”

A reply to Orange Pizza Shit and inspired by a desire to change channels just for awhile, please! Image designed in Canva by Nancy.