The China Cabinet

After the funeral, he settled into a solitary routine. When the funeral platters were finished, he ate a microwaved Swanson every night at the table where they’d shared their meals. Afterwards he’d linger there, staring into the China cabinet. She’d collected decorative plates, the souvenir kind, kitschy mementos of Disneyland, Mount Rushmore, Nashville. One day he boxed them all up and hauled them to the car, drove to the Niagara Escarpment, carried them to the cliff edge, and spun them like frisbees out into the void. He missed her desperately, but she should never have thrown out his Dylan records.

Inspired by My Late Mother's Collections. Photo by Jane Stotesbery.

My late mother's collections

Stamps, mint and postmarked, including a shoebox full of stamps still glued to bits of envelopes;
Postcards, carefully pasted into scrapbooks in the early days, later in giant bundles;
Love letters she received, only one set is from my father;
Her school report cards;
Dolls sporting national costumes;
Shoes (all uncomfortable);
T-shirts, all oversized and hand embroidered by her;

Part of the lace trim collection.

Souvenir beer mugs;
Lace trim and scraps of material;
Christmas decorations and ornaments;
House plants;
Decorative plates;
Bird houses;
Costume jewelry;
Miniature porcelain tea sets;
Perfume bottles;
Fridge magnets;
Beads;
Bottle caps;
Dress-up clothes;
Colouring books and markers;
Dust and memories.

Inspired by all the stamp collecting stories.  Photo by Nancy.

Perforations

Was a time Canada Post took a much more conservative approach to their commemoratives, when a person needed to be at least ten years dead before the post office would even consider putting their face on a stamp. There were exceptions, of course, for Prime Ministers and Governors General, but perhaps the first and best exception they made was on April 13, 1982 when the post office released a stamp commemorating Terry Fox, who had died less than one year before. A fitting tribute to a national hero . . . and yet, going forward, it was clear now that all bets were off. 

Was a time when the only living person Canada Post would put on a stamp was the reigning monarch, that is until August 15, 2005, when they commemorated Oscar Peterson. Another good choice, I suppose, except that now, almost two decades after lifting that restriction, you don’t need to be dead; you don’t need to be Canadian; hell, you don’t even need to be human!

Yeah, that’s right, Mr. Spock got his in 2016—with, at best, a tenuous connection to his Canadian co-stars—and yet they still haven’t honoured Keanu Reeves . . . which is why I had to fake one up.

Inspired by Time Stamp. Terry Fox’s stamp by Friedrich Peter, Spock’s by Kosta Tsetsekas.

Time Stamp

Recently, Astrid and Dave sent Rich a birthday card. The envelope had the new king’s head on the stamp. One of the first signs of succession. But like many of us who only knew Elizabeth, it just looked weird. Anachronistic, like the ones of George VI in my collection. It reminded me of those commemorative plates, bought at Shanfields by dutiful Windsorites, safe-kept in that cupboard above the fridge, mired in decades-old kitchen grease and cigarette smoke. And never, ever used for anything. But really, what would you serve on a Charles and Camilla platter, anyway? Something eggy and crustless?

Inspired by I’ll Get to It Eventually. Image courtesy of Laurie’s fridge.

I’ll Get to It Eventually

Monarchs and presidents. Exotic, sometimes defunct countries. Historical figures and events. Stamps fascinated me as a kid. I became a collector, but my meager allowance necessitated frugality. I couldn’t afford to buy stamps, even cancelled ones. If a keeper arrived on a letter, I tore it off, pealed it from its backing, and pasted it into a notebook. Eventually I fell far behind with everything except the tearing part. The stamps went into a box till I got to them. I never did, and the boxes accumulated. I’ll get around to them, eventually, a life-roughened kid with his well-travelled stamps.

Inspired by Stamp Collecting. Image from Mail Adventures.

Stamp Collecting

My parents were both fifteen, shy, awkward. If he wasn’t playing baseball, and she wasn’t watching him play baseball, he’d visit on a Saturday afternoon. They would sit on her front porch, sipping lemonade, maybe, or coke directly from bottles he brought over from his mother’s depanneur. And they’d work on their collections, swapping stamps, two French for one Australian, dreaming of visiting those places. Did they draw their chairs close? Whisper to each other stuff they didn’t want the adults to hear? And under a light summer rain, pitter-pattering on the porch’s roof, did they lean in to kiss?

Inspired by the image for Six Degrees of Peameal Bacon. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark.

Six Degrees of Peameal Bacon

When Gordon Lightfoot died this week, my friend Peter posted a photo he’d taken of the two of them together—not just some selfie he was lucky to catch outside a concert: Peter and Gordon were friends. In a similar vein, my sister hung around with Keanu Reeves’s sister—all of us together at Jesse Ketchum P.S. In high school, I was friends with two of Margaret Atwood’s nephews and—decades later—my daughter attended the same daycare as her grandchildren. Toronto likes to fancy itself a bustling world-class city, but I swear we’re really just a small town, overblown.

Inspired by Pussywillows, Cat-tails, Soft Winds and Roses. The photo collage was created by the author. The Lightfoot stamp he found was part of series, designed in 2007, by Circle Design Incorporated. The Atwood stamp was designed in 2021 by Steven Slipp. The photo of a young Keanu Reeves is from the Michael Ochs Archives; the older Keanu was photographed by Anna Hanks; and the fake stamp, itself, is based on a 2014 definitive designed by Entro. And by this point, one has to wonder if the acknowledgments for a 100-word story should be as long as the story itself.

Pussywillows, Cat-tails, Soft Winds and Roses

The Wreck of the Edmund FitzGerald was mine. Its Asus-Em-G-D chord progression was easy to play, and its words ahoy’d my inner pirate. I knew where the Mariner’s Church in DE-troy-AT was, and I knew the song before I knew the singer.

It was Madeleine, my uncle’s girlfriend, who introduced me to his music. Since then, there’s a weird anomic sadness when I think of Madeleine and Gordon Lightfoot. She led a charmed life in The Time Before Ed: cocktails, good furniture, youth, beauty, Sundown on the HiFi. Something must have happened to make her shack up with a Leclair.

Inspired by Madeleine (1942-2008) and GL (1937-2023). Image of Madeline‘s fancy chest, as I remember it, by Quality is Key.

Ships in the Night

“Do you like it?” she asked. 

     He contemplated his plate. Lentils, barley, an obscure Andean grain, stirred with tofu. It tasted like the vacuum of space. “Mmmm-mmm,” he replied. It might have been a moan. 

     “It promotes a balance between the fungi and yeast in the human gut and bowel.” 

     His own gut roiled dangerously. 

     “Everything in it is hand-raised, low-volume organic. You can tell by the taste. Mass-produced food is completely tasteless.” 

     Truly, it was mouth mush, but he agreed, thinking, oh, for a saltshaker. He took another forkful and admired her chest through the corner of his eye.

Inspired by A Work in Progress for the botany, and Films versus Movies for the relationship. Photo by Commercial Eye.

A Work in Progress

In the garden, after the April rains, Marty bent her head to whisper encouragement to her one drooping trout lily. She apologized to her struggling tea roses for planting them in the wrong place. She lamented how few trilliums she had left and tried to make her daffodils stand up straighter. She swore at the lily-of-the-valleys now spiking out of the earth, volunteers she had been warring with for years. And she greeted the crocuses like long lost friends. It was not a neat garden—more slap dash than thoughtful aesthetic—but it was all hers.

Inspired by Spring—at last! Photo of trilliums by Nancy Kay Clark.

Walnuts Two

Ask a kid why there are letters on his iPhone’s keypad, and you’ll get to tell the hoary tale of how they were originally conceived to make telephone numbers easier to remember: first to identify your neighbourhood—like our first number in the WAlnut exchange—later as a marketing gimmick, like 1-800-FLOWERS . . . an appealing idea to a nerd like me. Except 922-1469 gave me nothing, nor 487-7557, not even 925-7719 (back when you got a new number every time you moved). The fourth, finally, gave up two: LEVI-COP, which made little sense; and JET-YAMS which made no sense at all.

I’d have never even heard of the Walnut exchange, if it weren’t for a history teacher of mine who was working on a side-hustle he called Memory Power, a way of making up memorable images to remember less memorable things. In class, I offered up my phone number as a test, and he came up with a scenario involving Charles I, who was executed in 1649, laying his neck on the chopping block with two walnuts on his head. All well and good, I suppose, if it weren’t for all the history stuff you had to remember to get there.

Inspired by Perpetuating the Obsolete. Image by Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator.

My Funny Valentine

Back when I was young and churchy, I used to sing in the Ste-Anne’s choir. Occasionally, our choir mistress Theresa would give me a tiny solo. One time it was a hymn dedicated to Psalms 113:9. I warbled, “Once the barren wife, now abides in her home as the happy mother of sons! Hallelujah!” I’m mortified about my role in promulgating that woman’s-fault-boys-are-best garbage-speak. And it makes me think about the catchy but toxic tunes I sang as a young guitarzan: Summerbreeze. That’s Alright Mama. Delilah. It Must be Him. My Sharona. Don’t even get me started on Mungo Jerry.

Inspired by Deadline Comeuppance. Photo of Debbie Reynolds as Sister Ann, from The Singing Nun (1966).

Deadline Comeuppance

The word “deadline” has its origins in the US Civil War. At the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Georgia, commandant Henry Wirz declared a do-not-cross line around the prison. He ordered guards to shoot any Union soldier who crossed, touched, or even fell upon this “dead line.” By the 1920s, the term had been adopted by writers to refer to a time limit, although few editors enforced it with the sick panache of Wirz--who was tried and executed as a war criminal after the Confederate surrender. His brutal comeuppance puts deadlines, and pushy editors, right where they belong.

Inspired by Deadline.

Deadline

I was at a writers’ workshop years ago, led by Canadian writer/filmmaker David Bezmozgis, when during the Q&A, a woman in her thirties (with presumably youngsters underfoot) asked him how he keeps his writing on track without looming deadlines. Obviously, she didn’t have a “wife” to take the kids off her hands. As a hungry-to-be-published writer with wavering self-discipline, I was interested in hearing his answer. Bezmozgis replied with a slow eastern-European fatalistic shrug: “You do have a deadline. It’s called death.” I burst out laughing, and have remembered that reply every time I find myself procrastinating.

Inspired by A Tragedy Subverted. Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya.

A Tragedy Subverted

How do you follow a story like that?—so tragic and so sweet. And it’s not like this is the first time I’ve been stuck. Nancy once wrote of a snowmobile accident, which I decided to follow up with a similar winter tragedy on Grenadier Pond. Toronto’s mythology practically begins with the tale of the soldiers who fell through its ice on their way to defend Fort York, and searching the Toronto Star archives, I’d found my own tragic tale of two boys who’d told their friends they were skipping school to go skating, and who had never come home.

Wanting to give it a twist, though, I took on the voice of the kid who had snitched to their principal, and so made it into such a jaunty thing that I actually felt some shame for what I had done. What if these two boys missing had actually died? What if they’d never even found the bodies? I felt the boys’ joy as it turned into fear. I felt the anxiety of their families, waiting to hear from the authorities, waiting for someone downtown to find them, or the even longer wait until spring when the pond ice cleared.

Inspired by La Petite Princesse. Image based on this one by Dawn Hudson.

La Petite Princesse

Mary received her cancer diagnosis in the spring. She said she’d never forget, because the drug store she worked at had the “April is Cancer Awareness Month” daffodil poster. My kindest, sweetest cousin by far. Her world ended one afternoon when it was raining outside.
     “What is the weather like, Pauline?” she asked. Then she decided that this was the day she would die. It all made sense because, really, she was not of this earth. If de Saint-Exupéry had picked a girl, it would have been her—crash landing on a planet and staying for fewer than nineteen years.

Inspired by The State of the World. Image from Picture Box Blue.

The State of the World

“Losses and damages are part of our future,” the IPCC chair declared, before asserting that “. . . effective and equitable climate action now can lead to a more sustainable, resilient and just world.” 

     Oh gentle dreamer! All is love and kindness at the principle level, but humanity can’t agree on bupkis when money’s involved. Still, naiveté is preferable to the BS of the deniers and the Koch brothers. Then there are the survivalists, planning to retreat to a Pacific island (really? An island?); or into a walled compound with private security (private contractors, with guns? And families outside?). That can’t end well.

Inspired by Sorry, not today. Image by Sepp Photography. See the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report here.

Sorry, not today.

What? My turn again? Crap, that was fast. I’m feeling very uninspired right now. Does it have to be exactly 100 words? And I have to find an image? Oh, that’s just too much. What with the state of the world right now, I feel a headache coming on. Does anybody read this stuff anyway? Can I call myself a writer, if I have no readers? And why do we want to archive every single moment of our lives anyway? Why do we take selfies? I feel this has taken a dark turn. Sorry, I have to lie down now.

Inspired by absolutely nothing. Selfie by Nancy.

Toddle’s Wake

Mom’s favourite Christmas was the one where all I’d wanted in the world was a turtle . . . then a second bargain for my birthday. The first—Tiny—was great fun to play with; but the second—Toddle—did little but loll around under his plastic palm. Still, he held on, until the week we were moving back to Canada and decided it’d be best to set them free in the pond off the highway. Poor Tiny, paddling in small anxious circles staring up at me; while Toddle, possessed with a strange new energy, straight off, leaving us far behind in his wake.

Inspired by Not Kool. Photo—Christmas 1968—by Barbara Schulze.

Not Kool

Mom bought me a turtle because she felt bad. Jonesing for change to buy cigarettes she soon discovered my cherished collection of 50-cent pieces. Money is money, and back then those coin-operated laundromat vending machines didn’t discriminate between two or four bits. When did the remorse set it? When the pull-grind-plop-slide of the dispenser coughed out her ill-gotten Rothmans? After her first drag? As soon as I returned from school? It was a little painted turtle from Woolco. One morning, it died; its dried-out carapace stuck to the ersatz rock in its tiny fake pond. Under the plastic palm tree.

Inspired by The Power of Instinct. Image by WillYouAddToTheStory on Etsy.

The Power of Instinct

She’d crossed thousands of miles of sea to return to the beach of her birth. She was sick and ailing, already dying as she left the water one last time to crawl ashore and nest, trying to give her brood—and her species—a chance at survival. She didn't make it. But the evidence on the beach, the crisscrossing tracks of flipper marks like tire treads, the deep pits in the sand, proved that others of her kind had laid their eggs and returned to the sea. She remained behind. Ashes to ashes: a scavenger had pecked out her eyes.

Photo by the author, taken in Bahia Conejos, Mexico. Inspired by Watching and the rest of our recent eyes + animals stories.

Watching

Procrastinating in my upstairs home office, out the window, I see a rat. Then, in a flurry, the wide wings of a red-tailed hawk enter the frame. Diving low, the hawk throws its talons underneath our back gate, catching the rat in mid scurry. I see only the back of the bird, settling its wings. Then the bird turns, and I have a front row seat as it bends to tear flesh off with its hooked beak and swallow the bloody bits whole. My work forgotten, I have this sudden urge to start narrating in my best David Attenborough voice. 

Illustration of a red-tailed hawk by Marta Lynne Scythes. Inspired by the “eye” stories: A Touching Story and The Dog Ate my Retina.

A Touching Story

One small thing she’d taught him was that it’s okay to touch your eyeball. Be careful, but don’t be squeamish.

     His first girlfriend and her first contacts, constantly stopping along the street, a small mirror from her purse, and a moment to fish out the grit—a useful skill for when they broke up, and he took in a cat to comfort him, a long-haired thing that shared his bed and shed on his pillow. And all that time in front of his bathroom mirror, he thought of her, searching for whatever it was that was making his eyes water.

Inspired by The Dog Ate My Retina. Image by DALL·E.

The Dog Ate My Retina

“Just do the Senior Social Dog bit,” Roy, our editor, suggested, referencing the time I took Nimoosh to an older-dogs-only play session. After I just texted, “Okay, you win”, the white flashes in my left eye intensified. So, it wasn’t because something sparkly was on my eyelash—like salty crud or unicorn tears—after all. Now, back from my emergency eye appointment, I can report that it is all about drying jelly and eyeballs and age. But there’s some serendipity in Roy’s suggestion: I’m getting old like Nimmy, and I prefer the company and activities of bitches my own age.

Inspired by Forward Bound. Image of my retina, courtesy of the University Eye Clinic, Toronto.

Forward Bound

We snowshoe up the ridge, our host leading the way, and in front of him his two Australian shepherds. Frankie, at the tail-end of his puppyhood, gambols ahead then circles back—already obedient to his master’s call, and to the electronic collar that zaps him when he wanders out of bounds. Willow, older, pudgier and with shorter legs, sinks too deep into the snow and tires quickly. Often, like a toddler on a hike, she refuses to move, and plops herself at our feet. Her master nudges her on and, heaving with the effort, we all take another step forward.

Willow on Doug’s feet, photo by Doug Bennet. Inspired by Printemps.

Printemps

Winter navel-gazing has led me to wonder if, at the tender age of 60, my best days are behind me. Have I used up all the good times allotted to me leaving only diminishing returns of mildly-amusing events until the day I cark it? My mood has spread to everyone else in the house, in osmosisy-patches, like whiffs of burning hope. Rich’s stomach hurts. Dan hasn’t picked up his guitar since October. Nim mopes. But this Tuesday we started adoption proceedings for a new pup to take up Siko’s Mantle of Happiness. That was the day the sun came out.

Photo of Nim by Laurie Leclair, styling by Roy. Inspired by Claws Out at the Corpse.

Claws Out at the Corpse

Exquisite Corpse’s drabbleers reached deadlock this week over a proposal to convert their site into a dedicated cat blog. Ron’s threat to quit and start his own non-feline site was dismissed by Roy as “creative differences.” (He was later seen smiling enigmatically and humming “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” to himself.) “Give peace a chance,” Nancy said, urging mediation. Laurie, lighting a stick of incense, suggested relaxing the all-cat mandate to include dogs. Ron stormed out of their meeting. Observers wondered whether the group’s best days were Yesterday. Perhaps their intractable differences will tip the Drab Four into the litter-box of history.

Inspired by our recent cat madness and the sundry bugs, ants and beatles circling Left Overs. Image by Alfra Martini; compare it to the real Let It Be cover here.

Left Overs

The rented house my mother moved us into after the divorce had been empty of humans for years. In this absence others had laid claim to it—scurrying feet and squeaks inside the walls and above our heads in the attic; tiny beetles up through the drains in the bathroom—sharp black against the chipped white porcelain; and in the kitchen sink among the dirty dishes, left there sometimes for hours until my sister and I finished arguing about whose turn it was to wash them, a hoard of minuscule ants feasting on crumbs, living on left overs like us.

Inspired by just wanting to get off the cat track. Image by DALL-E.

Cat Story

On the rebound, the newly single man takes on a cat. Then a kitten. Then a new girlfriend. She moves in, they move out, start a home, have a kid—and each step along the way, the cat expresses a displeasure that grows until they simply can’t bear to have her around anymore. This, says the lady running the shelter, is a story she’s heard many times before, to the point she’s reluctant to adopt her cats to single men, but can’t take his in because she’s all full up, and besides the poor old thing would miss him terribly.

A prequel to Tomorrow, I guess. Image by Craiyon.

Quean

Willow is a 19-year-old tabby. That’s 92 in people years. She is still kittenish. Her brother Badger looks like someone made a pelt out of Gordon Lightfoot. How can it be that this eight-pound bundle of claws and micturition stays so young? I think I’ve figured out her secrets:

1. Ask for what you want.
2. Don’t overeat. If you do, throw it up.
3. Don’t hide your light under a bushel: Get involved, stay involved.
4. Don’t hold your pee. Go when you need to, where you need to.

I’ll be following Willow’s life lessons. Apart from the bulimia.

Image by Angelika Betzold. Inspired by Noah Was Not a Cat Person.

Noah Was Not a Cat Person

“Berth the aardvarks on Deck C,” Noah told his son Shem. “They won’t cause trouble with the turtles.”
     He looked up at the sky. Thirty-nine days now, without let-up.
     Japheth rushed up. “Father, you still haven’t boarded the cats!”
     Irritated, Noah looked down at his manifest. Cats again.
     “They’ll make excellent mousers on the voyage,” Japheth wheedled.
     Noah sighed. No one else understood God’s plan, not even his cat-loving son.
     “Alright,” he said, suddenly inspired. “Have them board tomorrow. Later in the day . . . 11 p.m. Let’s see . . . hmmm. Yes. Put them on Deck E, between the jackals and the wolves.”

Inspired by Cat Woman. Image by James Edwin McConnell.

Cat Woman

Her falling-down house has lots of rooms with lots of doors to slam. High perches, sunny corners, and low hiding spots for the cats to explore abound—a feline playground stocked well with scurrying mice. His and her raised voices rattling old skeletons caused the tabbies to disappear for days, and now that all the closets are empty and his stuff thrown out, the cats have even more space to wander. But instead they slink back to her in the too-quiet night, two warm vibrating hearts on the couch—their paws stretched out to touch—to reassure their frail human.

Inspired by Tomorrow, I guess (which slightly appalled Nancy). Drawing by Nancy.

Tomorrow, I guess.

A fine project to tackle between Christmas and New Year’s, with the family out of town, and far too much time to fret over my approach: “I’d like to . . . I want to . . . I need to have my cat put down”
     She’s not all that old. She’s probably not sick. It’s mostly she’s driving us crazy and ruining our home. But here I’m still stuck on the fact she’ll be killed on my say-so. “An overdose of narcotics,” the receptionist tells me rather matter-of-factly, directly into the vein, by appointment only.
     “Tomorrow, I guess. But not too early.”
     “Noon?”
     “That’s fine.”

Inspired by Auld Lang Sigh. Image by Craiyon.

Auld Lang Sigh

Apparently we begin our New Year with Intentions rather than Resolutions. Intentions are lovely, cuddly wishes, and whisper aims and goals softly, “I’m going to be gentler with myself” or “I will set boundaries on my energy-bank.” Whereas NYE Resolutions of yore, with their penitential proclamations like “NO MORE BOOZE UNTIL MARCH” or “YOGA EVERY DAY!” come across as too harsh, almost judgy. So, in an attempt to be current, I’ll swipe tentatively from today’s more palatable butter board zeitgeist. Here are my 2023 Intentions: Be Kinder, Live Lighter, Work Smarter. See? Flabby and nebulous. Kinda like my post-Christmas chin.

Inspired by The New Year’s Pre-Party. Image by Valio84sl on Dreamstime.