Tis the Season

Heading down for lunch, the elevator stopped on the 29th floor. Cal walked in. He had just come back from a Christmas fête.

We made awkward small chat about the weather, his kids, the busy-ness. It was a long ride down. I was holding my breath the entire time and trying to carry on a conversation, almost fainting. I wondered what he was thinking, was he holding his breath too?

     His bowels had aired a turkey-cranberry combo that followed him into the lift joining us. He didn’t look embarrassed, so in the holiday spirit I looked embarrassed for him.

Inspired by ASA. Image by Shutterstock.

ASA

Even after all this time, I can still spoil my Christmas a little remembering the years where I had to spend every moment leading up to the holidays studying for exams and worrying myself sick about how I would do. Throughout high school, I’d invariably be suffering through the latest flu, laughing along with my fellow consumptives as the tissues piled up under our desks, ending an essay question on acetylsalicylic acid with the line: “. . . and boy could I use a couple right now!”
     In university the fear eventually moved to my bowels, and the chemistry was far more complex.

Inspired by Olive, the Other Reindeer. Photo from the collection of the National Museum of American History.

Olive, the Other Reindeer

On our evening dog walk Richard looked at a window decorated for Christmas. A frosty stencil of a sleigh pulled by reindeer sailing through the night sky.
     “How many reindeer are there?” he asks.
     So, I break out in song and finger-count, “You know Dasher and Dancer and Comet and Cu—”
     “Not the Rudolph song,” he interrupts me, “Rudolph is made up!”
     Who knew? A myth of a myth separated by about 100 years.  Next thing he'll tell me is that Hermey the Elf didn’t become a dentist. Some people just have to suck the joy out of the holidays.

Inspired by Global Logistics for Carefree Consumption. Illustrations by Celesse.

Global Logistics for Carefree Consumption

It was produced in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, and on April 26 it began its journey towards its end-user, travelling 215 kilometres to CNE Express’s East China Sorting Facility in Pinghu. There, it underwent various sorting processes and re-scans until April 28, when it was trucked to Shanghai's Pudong Airport, a distance of 123 km. Overnight it was loaded on a plane. In the morning it began its 11,407 km air voyage to me, arriving at YYZ, via an intermediate airport, three days later. It travelled with methodical precision, like a moonshot, and today I can’t even remember what “it” was.

Inspired by Tussöy and a shipment routing summary received from CNE. Distances cited are derived from Google Maps. Image from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Memory Tree

Eliza looks at our tree crowded with ornaments, many chipped and broken, and comments: “Some people curate their trees.”

     But how can I pitch the ornaments from my childhood? The ones Mom made with my kids? Nathan’s birds he drew on cardboard when he was four? The crumbling baked-dough fish? Every ornament my kids made at school and brought home to me so proudly? Or the hanging card inscribed by my mother-in-law: “Xmas 2001, love from Nanny & Grandpa”? She would die of a heart attack just after New Year’s.

     I tell Eliza: “It's not about art. It's about memories.”

Inspired by the season. Photo by Nancy.

Bona fide

The word boner came up over dinner with friends recently.
     It conjures up unique childhood, teenage and young adult memories. Grade 8 awkward slow dances to Stairway to Heaven. A variety of flasher encounters—men in cars with no pants, men streaking through parking lots and nude men in apartment windows. Countless TTC boners. Against arms, butts, close to the face while sitting on the old crowded streetcars.
    Maybe I’m depraved, repressed or suppressed, psychologically maladjusted, to find this hilariously entertaining. Or maybe it’s just the comfort laughter that women share of city life in the ’70s and ’80s.

Inspired by Keep it in Your Pants, Sailor. Photo of the Beury Building in North Philadelphia, PA by Dunning∿Kruger FX.

Tussöy

Mary just wanted it out of the house, but I thought it might fetch $80.00 online, except I’d first need to sew the seam that had popped, but after a year of putting that off, I was ready to give it away, because at least then I could make them come and get it as-is, except the first person was housebound, and the second had no car, so I offered to squeeze it down to a more luggable size, but then his kids got sick, and I ended up delivering it anyway.
     Just to get it out of the house.

Inspired by Keep it in Your Pants, Sailor. Photo by the author.

Keep it in your pants, sailor

I found a FedEx bag stolen by a porch pirate, ripped open then dumped under the viaduct by No Frills. UNIQLO. Leggings and a sweater.  As it wasn't an oversize cashmere sweater in a nice green, I'd locate the house and deliver it back. Enroute, I noticed a smell, not that plastic off-gassing, but an unearthly fermentation of dirty gotch and Stinking Bishop. Where on his person had Jack Rackham stashed this bag? Had this package met his and canoodled into a brief but unholy alliance, an olfactory abomination that sat somewhere between a rotting whale and post-November 5th democracy?

Inspired by Reality 24/7 and UNIQLO’s corporate policy regarding porch pirates. iPhone template by Ivan Effendi.