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A Grandfather’s Things

I narrowly avoided permanent bachelorhood, finding my better half midway through my 40s. I have no children. Before the big day, my wife and I had a conversation: “Do we really want to be chasing toddlers around in middle age?” The answer on both sides was no. For me, parenthood was probably never in the cards. On a good day I can take care of myself; being able to take care of other human beings for 20 or so years would be wildly optimistic.

Still, I sometimes wonder if I disappointed dad by not having a son to inherit his name. It’s a good name, a solid name. “Farmer.” It’s a name that’s earned through constant teasing in grade school and having to spell it out when someone simply can’t believe it’s actually someone’s last name.

If I’m being totally honest, dad was floored to hear I was finally getting married at all. I think he had resigned me to permanent bachelorhood years ago, so marriage was probably more than enough to hope for. Grandkids to carry on the name might have been the icing on the cake, but he already has six of them to carry on his genes, if not his name. Yet the thought of what will happen to his memory, and to the memory of my grandfathers, occurs to me whenever I rummage through my box of memories. That’s literally what it says on the box, “Memories,” scrawled in black marker on a tin kept safe in storage. Inside sleeps the bric-a-brac of my life and the lives of those who have gone before me.

A shoeshine kit, from an age when the world went to work in suits and ties, before we started Zooming in sweatpants.

I don’t remember my grandfathers; one died before I was born and the other when I was too young to have any memory of him. Ironically, even though I knew my grandmothers, I have almost no keepsakes of theirs, only ones from their husbands. I’m confident dad’s mementos will find a home with his grandchildren, but what will happen to those of my grandfathers?

A Kodak Jiffy camera in its original leather case, with bellows that look like something Ansel Adams might have used.

I can bequeath these things to my nieces and nephews if they’re interested. But how much will the echoes of their great-grandfathers captivate them? Would these things have any meaning to them, or would they be discovered after my nieces and nephews pass away, hidden in a shoe box in a closet? Would their children wonder what they were, before adding them to the rack in an estate sale, to be picked up by some trinket-hunter, enchanted by the mint condition? Or would they go unloved and end up in a landfill? Will my nieces and nephews even have children to ponder these questions?

An engineering class ring from St. Francis Xavier University, 1958, as shiny as the day it was bought.

Unlike my grandfathers, my dad was a part of his grandchildren’s lives, and his mementos will hopefully have meaning for them. I think my nieces and nephew will hold onto such things because of the memories they evoke. But one day, these things will find themselves on a table at a sale, once those to whom their memories are entrusted have passed away.

A lighter sporting the badge of HMCS Uganda, our sole memento of Grandfather Ed’s WW II service.

The world can’t hold onto every token of the past; every shelf and box would fill with things gradually losing their meaning. At a certain point we have to let go of the past and its artifacts, and embrace the truth that the world is for the living; everyone in it will one day be forgotten.

Decorative pewter shot glasses, a gift from a German businessman who used to visit our house.

Sometimes I dig into the box of memories and flick Ed’s lighter, trying to coax a spark from the flint. Grandfather George’s shoeshine kit still smells of polish. I think of the stories told to me about these men, from Ed’s shenanigans to the cottage George built with my father in Cape Breton.

A fishing knife, with an edge honed endless times for trout hauled out of brooks across Nova Scotia.

Sometimes I poke through my own keepsakes, and wonder what will become of them, a former bachelor’s things.

A brown felt fedora, faded to a tobacco colour on top from the relentless sun in Alberta’s badlands.

Playbills from the amateur theatre I’ve acted in, from the Fringe to community shows and beyond.

Copies of newspapers from Sept 11, 2001, my generation’s Pearl Harbor.

Nothing lasts forever, but maybe someone will go through a box that contains something from Uncle Mark or Poppa Fred and take a moment to wonder what we were like. Ultimately, I know the fate of everyone’s material memories, because I lived next to one of Toronto’s biggest antique markets. On a given Saturday, I could be found wandering through the aisles, careful not to seem too interested, lest I get pulled into a sales pitch. I saw the same porcelain figurines mom collected, camera models dad probably used, copies of vinyl records I listened to as a kid. Sometimes I’d pause and handle things just to relive those memories.

And then I would move on, to browse a collection of other peoples’ memories, occasionally imagining the lives behind them. At the end of the day, the vendors would pack up everything that wasn’t sold, and try again the next weekend to pique someone else’s nostalgia or imagination of lives they never knew.

United by Weather

“How’s the weather down there?” It’s how a significant number of conversations between father and son begin with us. Weather is a safe topic, a place we can meet, even though we’re 800 miles apart.

“Not bad. It was stinking hot today. How is it up there?” Gruffness is a mask. It establishes that we are both busy men with lots of important things to occupy us, but that we’re willing to give each other a few minutes of our time to check in and make sure everything’s OK, before rushing off to deal with pressing matters.

“Very nice. Going to be that way till those hurricanes disappear.” In a nation obsessed with weather, meteorological small talk comes as naturally to us as breathing. This makes sense when you consider how miserable a simple change in barometric pressure or snowfall amounts can make us. People in more temperate climes would probably be amused to discover weather-watching is Canada’s national sport. Unless they spend a winter here.

“It won’t be anything like hurricane Juan. People still talk about that, you know?” My dad is so interested in the weather, he will put the Weather Network on as background noise during the day. He lives alone now. I think it makes things less lonely.

“Well, the leaves haven’t changed here yet. Still waiting for that to happen. It’s been a good year for the maples, I think.” He once bought me a Weather Network calendar for Christmas. It featured weather trivia each day of the year. That, more than anything, speaks to Canada’s obsession with meteorology: we actually have calendars of weather minutiae to amuse ourselves with.

“If you’re lucky, the leaves will be starting to change when you come down. Depends on how cold it gets in the next few weeks.” I come down once a year with my wife, and once a year on my own. It’s important to make sure dad’s OK, and to visit my mother. She’s in a long-term care facility. Dad isn’t.

“Won’t be long now. The days are getting shorter.” It amazes me that each year around September, Canadians marvel at how the days get shorter, as if it were some entirely new and unexpected phenomenon, not something that has been happening every year since our solar system formed. The quality of small talk like that doesn’t really matter, though. I phone to hear dad’s voice, not to have deep conversations. I call to try to establish how he’s doing, and to see if he needs anything. Weather’s a tool. If dad’s got something on his mind, he’ll get around to it, but talking about the weather provides an entree, a way to warm ourselves up for the main event: tough conversations about mom’s state of care, and how dad’s handling it.

“Are you driving down here or flying?” Dad always asks if I’m driving down. I have never driven to Halifax, and never will. It’s a two-day affair vs. a two-hour flight: life’s too short. Dad’s frame of reference is sometime in the ’70s, before cheap airfare became the norm. I remember annual summer trips to Cape Breton to visit my grandmother and her cottage on the Mira river. With stops, it was a six-hour affair for a family with a couple of kids in the trunk of a station wagon without seatbelts, barrelling down the highway at 65 mph. Awareness of personal safety and responsibility wasn’t as developed in 1978 as it is today.

I actually don’t mind dad asking twice a year whether I’m planning to drive down: it’s one of many features that recur dependably in our conversations. Those features have become like a familiar handshake, and the older my parents get – and the more care they need – the more comforting that kind of routine becomes. On some level, I appreciate that he’s still interested whether we’re going to drive down the St. Lawrence River and through New Brunswick twice a year to see him.

“If it’s not raining too hard, I’ll probably drive over to see your mom.” He still drives over to see her almost every day. He still feels the need to check in regularly to make sure she’s OK. She’s still the centre of his life, even though they’re apart.

“I’ll tell her you said hello.” Dad has only known responsibility his entire life. The oldest of seven siblings, he became his mom’s right-hand son early on, helping take care of the younger ones. Then, as a husband, bread-winner and father of four, he was responsible for a mortgage, putting food on the table, payments for two cars, paying for his children’s education, and a million smaller responsibilities, from teaching us to drive to fixing the lawn mower. Then he was responsible for taking care of mom, until it all became more than could be expected of anyone his age.

Everything changed when mom went into care. When your whole life has been about being responsible, what happens when those responsibilities get removed? A leopard can’t change its spots: dad still needs to feel responsible, and mom needs someone to check on her and look after her, even if she can’t understand anymore why that’s important.

Dad won’t always have mom. Or maybe it’ll be the other way around. But for now, between naps and the Jays game and naps during the Jays game, we’ll have the weather to bring us together.

Love Letter to the Danforth

I touched down in Toronto on December 30, 2000, thinking I would be here just one year. Almost 18 years later I’m still here, thanks partly to a neighbourhood named “the Danforth.”

I came to Toronto from Calgary for a one-year program at Humber College. Aside from an arboretum, Humber’s Rexdale Campus doesn’t boast much charm, unless industrial parks are your thing. In Calgary I lived near downtown on a street lined with restaurants, cafes and shops. Rexdale was a bit of a shock, but I knew nothing about Toronto, so it seemed easiest to stay in residence at Humber until I got my bearings. After six months I needed out. I asked for recommendations, and the same neighbourhood kept popping up: the Danforth. I answered a newspaper ad for a room (this was 2001, when advertisements were printed on dead trees) and found one just off Danforth Avenue.

It was a rooming house, with an odd assortment of characters: a Greyhound driver going through a divorce, a short order cook who disappeared in the middle of the night on his bicycle, and Ed, a busking classical guitarist and vegetarian, who despised vegetables: he survived on soy products, constant coffee during the day and NeoCitran to help him get to sleep. I worried Ed would get scurvy, but said nothing.

The Danforth was everything I needed: an eclectic people street, rough around the edges in parts, chi-chi in others. It still had a strong Hellenic presence from its time as the centre of the Greek community, even though most of the Greeks had bugged out long go for suburbia. I taught myself the Greek alphabet so I could read the signs in shop windows, including everything from the octopod in the fish store to the galaktoboureko in dessert shops.

The Danforth became home, from the hippie shop selling patchouli and wispy dresses, to the organic food market, to the pub with the sign outside that shouted “Put tzatziki on it!” Roaming the back streets lined with old brick houses and their neat little gardens was positively therapeutic. Walking and discovering all its hidden gems was like a full-time hobby.

I moved out of the Danforth after a year and a half. Past a certain point, you need an apartment of your own, not a rotating cast of eccentrics you share a bathroom with, but the Danforth will always be Toronto for me. Whether it’s a visit to my doctor and dentist, stocking up on remainders at my favourite bookstore or just seeing what’s changed, it’s the heart of my Toronto.

That’s why I know it’ll bounce back from the shootings that happened in July. These things leave a scar. I know that. I also know the Danforth is the place that showed me it’s possible to have a community in a big, sometimes cold, often indifferent city of six million. That’s why it has the capacity to recover in a way that other places don’t. Communities have an identity, a cohesion that comes with being more than just a name on a map. They’re more than a place to sleep and pick up your mail: they’re places you’re a part of, which become a part of you.

I’m going to the Danforth’s annual street festival, like I do each year. My wife doesn’t get it: she tells me I can get the same stuff without being jostled by a million people, but that’s actually why I go. It’s not like I can’t get ortiki, little grilled quails, at a bunch of places along the strip 364 days a year. There’s a bunch of pastry shops where you can find galaktoboureko and baklava done a dozen different ways, and you don’t have to wait for the one weekend each year when half the city floods the street to get some.

I want to go when that craziness is happening, now more than ever. I actually like that part. The place has changed since I lived there: it’s less Greek than ever, I see more “for lease” signs than 17 years ago, and the old movie theatre has become a concert venue. But its core hasn’t changed: it’s a community, one I still want to be a part of, even for just a few days a year. And now – more than ever – I feel like I want to support it as it bounces back from tragedy, even though I’ll only be a small drop in an ocean of humanity. That’s important to me on some silly, sentimental level, because I still have a connection with that place. I always will.

It’s why I love the Danforth.

Subway Meditations

From the vaults: I no longer suffer from a 90-minute commute, but I look fondly back on my TTC Zen. Relive it with me.

People stare. I’m sure of it. How can they not? I’m just sitting there, eyes closed, clearly not asleep but clearly not part of the hermetical little world hurtling down the subway tracks. My head isn’t drooping incrementally the way it does with those suffering from insufficient sleep, jerking spasmodically up when their chins hit their chests. No, I’m sitting there as quiet and motionless as a dresser’s mannequin. My eyes are shut for what must seem like no good reason to the casual observer. Little do they know I’m secretly meditating.

I have no choice. Most mornings for the last 17 years it’s been my practice to meditate for 20 minutes before heading out the door. It started after a particularly long, dark night of the soul in ‘99 as a kind of new year’s resolution. I was introduced to the fundamentals in karate class as a seven-year-old, and picked up the rest of what I needed to know from books. In the intervening years it’s become an essential start to my day, a check-in and a chance to focus, to inventory how I’m feeling, to balance my mind before the day starts, and to bring my awareness wherever it feels it needs to go.

Unfortunately, my 90-minute commute means I get up far earlier than any night owl should have to. That means economizing time, which means an extra 20 minutes to meditate at home each morning is a luxury I can rarely squeeze in. What does that leave me? A focused 15 minutes on the shaky, rattling, noisy tin can rocketing northward through The Big Smoke each morning.

How it’s possible to meditate with all those distractions is a paradox: the distractions actually help maintain focus. Without the swaying and clickety-clacking, snatches of conversation, acceleration, deceleration and station announcements, it’s easy to get distracted by “monkey mind,” as people far more zen than I refer to it: that propensity for your brain to become aware that you’re trying to focus and chill out, and thus start thinking about what you’re doing, making associations, leaps, observations and worse. Before you know it you’re remembering to pick up Drano on the way home, worrying about your 9:15 presentation, reliving how good the strawberries were at breakfast and hey – how did I end up mental miles away all of a sudden?

The stimuli provided by the Toronto Transit Commission mean the gears in my brain suffering from a deficit of attention have something to chew on besides themselves. That makes it possible to focus, to remember what I’m doing and then to let it go. Simply being able to manage those distractions is a useful practice in and of itself.

So there I sit, eyes shut, looking sightlessly across the car, bag on my lap, hands crossed over top just in case anyone decides to try lifting something (it hasn’t happened yet). I’ve only got so many minutes before St. Clair station, when the train will likely make a short turn back downtown, forcing everyone off. So I have to make the most of the time I have, which provides an extra incentive to focus. And so I begin.

10 – 9 – 8 (“The next station is St. Andrew – St. Andrew station.”) 7 – 6 – 5 (Someone sits down next to me) 4 – 3 – 2 (Is that garlic? Who has garlic for breakfast?). 1. Repeat.

On a bad day I’m too frazzled to really calm that monkey mind and prepare for the day. Maybe a kid sits down next to me with some exceptionally bad death metal bleeding out of his earbuds. Maybe this is the one train in ten where the P.A. is exceedingly loud (“THE NEXT STATIONS IS ST. ANDREW – ST. ANDREW STATION!”). Maybe the guy who just sat down next to me really should have taken that shower he skipped this morning.

Or maybe the distractions are just right, and I can tune out the monkey mind and wipe the slate clean for another day.

Relax. Focus. Reset. Commute.

One of the Luckiest Men in the World

There’s a certain cliche you hear every time a guy gets married: “I’m the luckiest man in the world!” I hate cliches; journalism school rung them out of me. The only time I’ll use a cliche is when it’s true. That’s why – and I’ll qualify it slightly so you don’t think I’m exaggerating – I’m one of the luckiest men in the world.

Finding the right woman in your 40s is not easy. In fact, most of the time it feels damn near impossible. By the time you reach your 40s, you’ve gone through years of dating hits and misses: countless hours spent scouring online dating sites, going to parties and social events when you’d really rather just be at home chilling with Netflix, using every means at your disposal to meet people so that maybe – just maybe – you find that one girl.

The struggle is real. It’s not like being back in college where you’re swimming in a sea of potential. Every year you get older, that sea seems to get shallower and shallower. But you keep going out to those parties, professional events, social events, an occasional date with someone who looks and acts nothing like their “OkCupid” profile, and after a while, maybe you start to lose hope. After a while, maybe you start to accept the idea that you’re just meant to be alone. That might be the way it was meant to be, and maybe that’s not so bad after all: the new season of House of Cards is coming up, and home alone with the dog and a bag of Doritos seems not so bad after all. Or so you tell yourself.

But then maybe – just maybe – you get invited to another party, an ordinary birthday party for a friend. “I don’t want to go!” you tell yourself. And then you think about it a little more. “Ah, I’ll go. But I’m not dressing up; I’ve had enough of trying. I’m just going to throw on a hoodie, some jeans and sneakers.” And you go. You chat for a few hours with friends, and just as you’re getting up to leave, maybe you see someone… someone pretty. Someone who, as it turns out, has a real personality. “Oh, hey. How you doing?” (Opening lines are not everyone’s forte). After another couple of hours of unplanned interaction, you say “Hey, let’s connect on Facebook because – you know – professional networking and such. No pressure. No big deal. We’re cool. Yeah. See you later.” You don’t want to seem too eager.

You go on a few dates and get to know her. She’s smart, whip smart. She has a serious job. And she likes Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Check, check and check! You go on some more dates, things start to get a little serious, and one day you say, “I love you,” and she says “I loke you.” “Loke?” What does that mean, “I loke you?” She explains that it’s halfway between “I like you” you and “I love you.” At that point you realize that perhaps things are going more slowly than you had at first anticipated. But that’s ok; you can wait. You think, potentially, this is worth waiting for.

And then one day, many weeks later, she says “I love you” back, and we are no longer in Lokeland. But things aren’t all rose petals and unicorns. Your combined age is over 80, and thus you’re both very set in your ways. Like the way she wants you to rotate where you sit on her sofa so the wear pattern evens out over time. Or the way the spice jars in your place need to be kept in a certain order that reflects which ones are used more, because that actually makes sense and results in maximum spice efficiency. All these little things that couples have to get used to about each other are the same, but by the time you’re in your 40s they’ve had 20 years to set like concrete. Sometimes it is murder letting go of all those things you’re used to, all those things you think you need to be a certain way for you.

But here’s the important part: you make it work, because in the end being with her is more important than just about anything else you can think of, and you know she’s the best thing to happen to you in a very long time. One day, many months later, you pop the question and she says yes, and then proceeds to tell everyone how nervous and dorky you were popping the question. And eventually you find yourself in a room full of people explaining how lucky you are, because in spite of all the years of being alone and all the looking and striking out and dating blind alleys, and people looking and acting nothing like their “OkCupid” profiles, you stumbled across someone whip smart and beautiful and successful and stubborn and driven and frustrating and challenging and rewarding and the whole nine yards. Somehow, against all odds, you found her.

Which is why I’m one of the luckiest men in the world.

The Dog Days Are Over

“The dog days are over. The dog days are done. Can you hear the horses? ‘Cause here they come.” – Florence and the Machine, “Dog Days Are Over.”

It was a cool morning in early April, the kind that sees cities and towns across Canada peek out from their winter cover and ask, “Is it really over?” Nobody wants to jinx the arrival of spring, but every Canadian hopes and longs for that day – that one day – when the warmth is here to stay, and the mercury promises to not plunge for at least another six months.

This was just such a day. I can’t remember the exact date, but I remember the warmth and the blinding sunshine reflecting off dirty grey snow banks on the roadside, with cigarette cartons and coffee cups slowly melting from their icy tombs.

I too was waking up from a long, hard winter. I had separated from my long-time girlfriend a few months prior, and had found refuge in my sister’s century-old midtown Toronto semi-detached. Down the street was a cul de sac with Canada’s first planned neighbourhood and a pond with a warning sign for (curiously enough) quicksand. On the other side of the backyard was a former maintenance yard for streetcars, now artists’ lofts and a farmer’s market on the weekend. Down the main drag was an upscale bakery, a Mexican restaurant and the city’s best fried chicken, among other jewels. As both a member of the walking wounded club and an inveterate urban explorer, this was therapy.

Each week I would bike or wander to a new part of the neighbourhood, and discover a new gem: a hidden chocolate shop, a new restaurant I could procrastinate visiting, a nondescript Buddhist meditation retreat I never knew existed. The century-old cityscape gave me something to look forward to and explore. I wandered, coming a little further out from under the hurt and sadness of my breakup, a turtle poking his head out of his shell.

The neighbourhood was only part of the recovery process; my sister’s place and its residents were the other. The house was a random, glorious, somewhat run-down affair, featuring a neurotic niece, two cats and the world’s dumbest hound dog. The floors squeaked, the taps didn’t work very well and I needed a space heater in the unheated second-story room I occupied. In spite of that, it was exactly what I needed: an open door. Nobody asked when I was planning to leave. Nobody told me what to do or nagged or screamed or threw anything; there was just the dog, the cats, the niece, my sister and peace & quiet. This refuge was decorated with an old piano, every “Doctor Who” DVD ever made, a red currant bush in the backyard that produced edible fruit, and a hibachi that dependably leaked ash onto the back porch. It was like walking into the domestic version of an absent-minded professor’s study, and I adored it.

One day early in my tenure, the residents figured I needed cheering up post-breakup, and they threw “Mark Appreciation Week.” We went to a comedy club, dinner, a play and other things I can’t remember anymore. I couldn’t remember anyone ever being that kind to me without expectation of reward, and certainly not in the years leading up to it. That should tell you everything you need to know about the importance of that place at that point in my life.

So I spent my time being and exploring. On the early April morning in question, I had decided to walk west down the main drag to see what there was to see: a Peruvian restaurant; an Eastern Orthodox church, complete with onion dome; a Portuguese grocery; espresso bars populated exclusively by old men speaking a language that sounded like Italian but wasn’t; travel agencies with peeling signs that hadn’t been renovated in decades. It was a dog’s breakfast of sites and sounds, none of it glamorous and all of it glorious in its own idiosyncratic, rough-around-the-edges way, a perfect echo of the lovely chaos of my sister’s home.

That day, wandering in the cool sunshine without a goal, a pop song about dog days being over came into my head. I’m a firm believer in the subconscious’s ability to communicate with the higher mind, and as my feet took me in unplanned and unconscious directions, the realization dawned on me that my dog days were, in fact, over.

That was over four years ago. My sister is vacating the house, downsizing after both my niece and I moved out, and another niece and nephew took up residence for university and moved out in turn. My sister will be moving into a one-bedroom in what promises to be tidier and more up-to-date digs, but probably with less chaos and personality. I’ll miss the house and the memories of washing up there after my storm, putting the pieces of my life back together, trying to play a piano badly in need of tuning, eating messy take-out from the barbecue joint down the street, cat hairs in my cereal and a dozen other random, happy thoughts.

I remember walking down the street that day in the sunshine when the lyrics from a pop song popped into my head to let me know that after all the heartache and tribulations, Mark Appreciation Week and unconditional acceptance, the dog days were over.

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