Golden Brown

Fall smelled like new Woolco clothes, a PVC school bag with yesterday’s banana. Fresh Crayolas. Then Avon perfumes (samples) and lined-paper diaries (with lock and key). And on Mondays, a freshly-scrubbed Mike, the boy who sat ahead of me.  Later, cafeterias and university course catalogues off gassing cheap acidy papers, promising much but delivering little. Fast forward ten years to the first (perfectly burnt) toast before kindergarten. Fifteen more years to Canadian Tire and dorm smells and sad/happy Tim Horton’s. Ten more years to slower coffees and Saturday’s Globe dampened by a window left open to let September in. 

Inspired by The End of August. Image—Cat’s paws and pencils—by the Author.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Everyone but me is retiring. I had no plans to until I met Joanne from Kingsville. Joanne takes daily walks around the subdivision—the one behind the Zehrs—and returns deliciously scrappy.
     One day, she fired up her Facebook and posted that she counted seven—SEVEN—recycle bins that had been incorrectly placed, barcodes facing in, handles facing out, some left teetering, most lawlessly crooked.
     “Folks!” she PSA’d, “the barcodes should FACE the street!”
     She is my C.A.R.P. lodestar. She completes me. I want to hold hands and walk about, our feet pale as chicken meat in low-profile Mephistos.

Inspired by Weird Sudden Changes. Image from the Kingsville Ontario Recycling Schedule.

Tainted Love

Perhaps it would be a stretch to call it a modern reiteration of Gift of the Magi, but a few Christmases ago, Jim bought Leslie a TUSHY. Unbeknownst, Leslie bought one for her beloved, causing an embarrassment of selfless exchange and bidet attachments. When it came to installation, Jim, handy but procrastinating, didn’t get around to it. Until last week.

     The next day over coffee he recounted in discrete detail his tactile and hygienic awakenings, his metamorphic revelation of mysteries exotic yet familiar.

     He may not have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon, but it was still a moving experience.

Inspired by Potentially Useful Stuff. Photo of Agamemnon from Wikipedia, modifications by ChatGPT.

Existential Home Improvement

Bee sat on my couch, looked up at our staircase and said, “Ah, geez, when you replacing that carpet?”
     I thought I just did, but that was 25 years ago. It owes us nothing, having survived five cats, three dogs and their pals, countless sploshed coffees and kid effluvia. It’s professionally cleaned twice a year, but there’s just so much you can do. So, we’re going to replace it. And much like our planned new water heater and furnace, once it’s done, we probably won’t have to do it again.

     Because we’ll be dead.

     Best to go with a neutral.

Inspired by Proof of Life. Photo by Laurie of the carpet that owes us nothing, soon to be replaced by the Stairway to Heaven.

Routine

Body dysmorphic clothes buying (63–6*=57 years)

Three species daily pill-taking (38 years)

Vegetarianism (40–1.5†=38.5 years)

Friday meals in the living room (32 years)

Over planting then bored by August (27 years)

ELE but still buying wool‡ (20 years)

Bringing Donna pecan buns 

              at exactly 11:00 A.M, December 25th (18 years)

Pirates at Hallowe’en (10 years)

Misko barks at bottle lady (3 years)

Pip finishes Rich’s cereal milk (2 years)

A clean, decluttered home (2 hours, 15 minutes)

─────────
* The year mom took me to Weight Watchers
† Regular visits to Nipissing First Nation
‡ Knit Café, 1350 Dundas Street West

Inspired by Pasquale Fuoco. Image, Pip sous la vitre, by Laurie.

The Rule of Turds

Our neighbourhood is beautiful. And Judgey. For flavour, have a look at the Roncy/Parkdale Friendly Neighbours Facebook page which boasts a toxicity rate of three. Feeling spicy? Write something about dogs . . . or kids . . . or kids interacting with dogs. Here’s how it works:

(1) The Micro-aggressive Opener: “Hi gentle neighbours, just a PSA to pick up after your floofs!”

(2) The Axe-grinding Second: “My toddler stepped in dog shit yesterday at Sorauren Park . . .”

(3) The Closer: “Dogs should be banned from public spaces!” (Followed by an AI-generated image of a Rottweiler chasing a terrified child). 

Grab your cortado, and watch the fur fly.

Inspired by Judge Not. Photo—Placement—by Laurie.

The Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries

After Auntie Annemarie dressed up like a sozzled Santa in 1966, the mysteries of Christmas were revealed to me. My parents never really “did” kid-centric holidays. And the way that adulthood was served up in the Cayer-Leclair household, I wasn't going to Nancy-Drew that future anytime soon. For me, magical mysteries were found in other people’s homes: baskets filled with shiny green grass and chocolate eggs at Carolyn’s; individually wrapped Twinings teabags at Christine’s; store-bought clothing FROM DETROIT; family trips to warm places.
     So when Dan was born, thirty-one years ago today, I hocus-pocus’d it all back. Especially Easter.

Inspired by Birds, Bees, Viruses. Photo—Birthday Boy—by Laurie.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I recently joined a Facebook page dedicated to my grade school. I did a deep dive until I landed on a group picture, circa 1975, of some of my teachers, including the biggest bully to ever ruin math. So, I typed ill of the dead. This led to some private side conversations among fellow classmates. We shared anecdotes of thrown brushes, physical abuse, hiding under desks, and residual mental blocks over the eight times table.

     “He always smelled like cigarettes!” said Sue.

     Yeah, he did have a particular, Tenderflaked stink: A mix of pedological dereliction, low self-esteem, and warm polyester.

Inspired by Anniversary Trip. Image from Amazon.

He Shoots, He Snores!

Apart from Hockey Night in Canada, CKLW news, and the occasional late night soft porn, Gerry didn't watch television, he slept by it. I can still see him stretched out on the couch and wrapped in one of mom’s afghans. His empty tea mug and glass eye resting on the coffee table. And when that long Phentex burrito started snoring, the cat and I would make our respective moves. Slowly reducing the volume, I’d click over to Love American Style. After a few tentative swats, Hobo’d stickhandle dad’s falsie, bouncing it off the broadloom and straight into the heating vent.

Inspired by The Thirty Second Pitch. Image by Meta.

Cursive

In grade four, Cathy Maxwell got caught chewing gum and told to put her name on the blackboard. She wrote in a fast hand, piqued at being culled from a field of ruminants. What a beautifully scripted x. An r really, but with a perditious 45˚ slash to the upper right corner. With my own wad pancaked like Sunday's Eucharist against the roof of my mouth, I meditated on that perfect signature: The mark of a confident, privileged, sign-up-for-curling-lessons white girl. With no x to cross, I Hilroy'd luxurious Ls, taking up space that wasn’t a poor girl’s to take.

Inspired by Scrabble Drabble. Image based on a photo by Selim Aksan.

Microneedled

Skiz and I were having pedicures when we were invaded.  By one of those trendy sleeping-bag/bedspread tarps. It wore a lady. A Mini Her alongside, fresh nails a-sparkling.
     “Excuse me . . .” she said, “. . . but you two are sooooooo cute! Would you like me to take your picture?”
     Now, usually my intrepid bestie can immediately sniff out an ageist remark, but she just chirped, “Yes!! We’ve been friends for 45 years!”
     I recovered and managed, “can we take your picture?” Phones exchanged and dispatched, the pair lumbered out onto Roncesvalles, stuffed with Yuletide rapture and Oeko-Tex certified, 100% Post-consumer Recycled Polyester.

Inspired by Subway Encounter. Photo by Some Rando in a Sittingsuit.

I was born with a plastic tree in my house

Pip the Cat came from a hoarding situation in North Bay. That’s all we knew until this week, when a pal told me that in a six-degrees-of-separation way, she may have a personal connection to that very house. When I volunteered for a dog rescue, I did a home visit to a hoarder. The adoption failed, but I still can’t unsee her situation. Yet addictions come in many forms. I personally fight my Bowerbird tendencies: Artisanal pottery, vintage Christmas bulbs, festive garlands, quarter-sawn oak.  It stems from my trailer park roots and a longing for a pedigree that isn’t mine.

Inspired by Sunday Morning and Substitute by The Who. Photo by the author.

Leda and the Pelican

Some women have good legs. Others have nice hair. I have a beautiful décolletage. Despite a decade of sunny seasons as an archaeologist. Not a line nor wrinkle. I slather sunscreen and cosset it in silk scarves, serum it, and gua sha it. But here’s something: I've just been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. So now I take a pill every morning for the rest of my life. Because if my dead thyroid was left to moulder, it would be replaced by a goitre. A FUCKING GOITRE. I’m sure there’s a Greek or German cautionary tale about vanity in this somewhere.

Inspired by Let’s Not Talk. Image of my 63-year-old neck. No filter, no goitre.

Pricks and Stones

We all had nicknames growing up. Mine was Peanut Head, mercifully truncated to Peanut by about grade four. Through Rich I’ve realized that nobody does nicknames like the Brits. He went to Sir Montgomery of Alamein, an all-boys school, so you can imagine. His soubriquet was Liam, a Delphic reference to a particular left-legged play-hogging footballer. There was also a kid who had a plummy voice. He’d been christened John Simpson, but Monty’d Nom Nimnom. Apparently, he did not care as he was a popular chap. He was also the fastest runner at the school. Fortissimus Quisque Tantum Superstes, dear boy.

Inspired by Such Potential. Painting—Harrow School Football Field—by Thomas M. Henry, 1887.

Wrapped Up Like a Douche

Malapropping through the Eighties, everyone sang She’s So Popular instead of Jeu Sans Frontières. But since I was a kid, I’ve excelled at getting lyrics wrong. At six, instead of sending our Queen victorious, I wished her “Fletcher’s Castoria, Happy and Gloria.” Younger still, I warbled to the Singing Nun, “Domma-nick-a-nick-a-nick, une After Eight c’est all I want . . .”

But I loved to sing, and still do. I think I sound like Carole King. Dan says I bray like a donkey. A high-school teacher once called me Joanie. I thought Joni Mitchell. He meant Joan Baez. It was probably the moustache.

Inspired by Ron’s take on Games Without Frontiers. Photo by 20th Century Fox.

In search of Sheryl Hickory, 1961-1993

Sheryl’s family was in a bad way, so Laurette looked after her. She fixed her hair, bought her school clothes and supplies and let us play together, until my bruises made it clear that her trauma was trickling down to me. I never went to her house, but I did have a nightmare that has stayed with me for fifty-eight years: I walked into the Hickory’s kitchen and saw her family seated at the table. As one, they turned and looked at me, except they had lizard heads. I woke myself up to escape these monsters. Sheryl wasn't so lucky.

Inspired by Sheryl, who was my friend for 620 days. Photo: “Underbelly” by Laurie.

This One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

She said she was a dancer. A spoken word poet and a character actor. She’s a local fixture, marked by a tall, beaky, avian strangeness that teeters on madness. The kind of conflicted late-model Boomer who bower-birds her bike basket with plastic flowers.

Chirp chirp chirp
. . . and then angry-peddles her way through a day care group.
“You little Pieces of Shit, stay out of my pollinator garden!”

Out comes her phone and the offending tiny turds are captured on video to be played over and over again, once she’s nesting and in the mood to ruffle her own feathers.

Inspired by Blurry Memories. Illustration by Tom Cooke.

The Oakville Pietà

Last Thursday, Cate and I did a suburban Value Village run. Enroute, we talked about our children. Seasoned thrifters, we arrive then separate. I head over to men’s suiting where a mother and son are shopping. He’s more young man than boy, and dark like Dan. His mother, further up the rack, wore a hijab. A hunt for a graduation suit. I culled my way to the lady.

“Mama?” Kind, sweet, slightly anxious. A voice like my son. She and I turned towards him at the same time. Twin Pavlovian responses. And right there, I cried for a thousand mothers.

Inspired by Gaza, Kyiv, San’an, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles. 

Vintage find from LimArtSculpture.

Man Door Hand Hook Car Door

I look in the mirror and see my mother. Well, I see her hands. Boney, blue veined and shadow-puppeting Groucho Marx with a tube of red lipstick held between two stiff fingers and an opposable thumb. Two broken rings and a wonkey index tell tales of a childhood knuckle-cracking habit, leash training Huskies, and that time I shut my hand in Skiz’s car door. They’re certainly not pretty and are my version of the portrait in the attic. I hear that cosmetic surgeons can take fat out of your ass and inject it into the tops of your hands. High-five.

Inspired by Tuesday’s Manicure. Knit Night photo by Laurie.

Lessons from my Dog

Nim died on Wednesday, and like every good queen she left a legacy. So much magic fell our way because of her: Friendships, music, more puppies. Early on she taught us things like the importance of communication, exercise, volunteering our precious time. As she aged, our people/dog circle got tighter, then eventually smaller as she lost her own crew. First Siko, then Jude, then Lucy. Even in her sixteenth year she gave us teachings and the gifts of intuition and patience and ultimately compassion. She showed me that grief is idiosyncratic. With Siko it was visceral. With Nim it’s existential.

Inspired by: Nimoosh, 2009-2025. Photo by YJB Images.