Witty and Vibrant

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Category: Thoughts

  • Learning to Buy

    Learning to Buy

    A scarcity mindset is hard to shake. It scratches a groove into your psyche that’s hard to haul yourself out of, and it’s never accidental. Mine began as the child of parents who grew up in the shadow of WW II. My sisters and I still remember tales of ration coupons and making do with less — my favourite example was war cake, a miraculous confection somehow made without eggs, milk or butter.

    Poverty was never far from my parents upbringing in mid-century industrial Cape Breton. Mom recalled that in 1940s Sydney you knew which families didn’t have much money, because when their kids bent over, “you could see Robin Hood.” That meant their mothers had sewn clothes out of flour sacks, exposing the logo when they leaned over. Or so she claimed.

    Thanks to hard work and education, my folks gave our family a solidly middle-class lifestyle, but a scarcity mindset was a constant background. Nothing was willingly thrown out, whether it was old containers, clothes, power cords — you might be able to use them later, and God forbid you’d buy something twice in a lifetime.

    Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

    When we wanted a table for the backyard, a giant cast-off cable spool from a construction site magically appeared. Dad was always there to hammer the lesson home, asking where I was going to find the money to get the things I wanted. How was I going to make ends meet on my own? What was I going to do if such-and-such happened? There might have been genuine concern underneath the questions, but instead of preparing me for life, they instilled a fear that it would chew me up and spit me out. When I went out into the world, the mindset tagged along.

    I don’t blame mom and dad for how I think — they were wonderful parents, but growing up with those messages had an effect.

    The thought of getting new clothes instead of repairing the current ones never occurred to me. Looking back, I wonder how many people actually darned socks in the 21st century instead of simply buying new ones. On trips I stayed in hostels unless it was on the company dime, because why pay for a hotel room when you can get a bed and toilet privileges for a fraction of the price? Why buy lunch or coffee at work when you can bring them from home and save money? Why take an Uber or the subway when you can walk and save a few bucks? Who cares if it’s pouring rain?

    Destitute and on the Street

    Underneath all that penny-pinching was the irrational belief that if I didn’t scrimp and save, I was going to end up penniless and destitute in my old age. It didn’t matter who pointed out how tremendously unlikely that scenario was, because the worry was too deeply ingrained. It would have been like telling an arachnophobe that tarantulas are actually soft and harmless: the truth is irrelevant when illogical beliefs are running the show.

    So I earned and scrimped and saved, investing as much as possible, knowing that each paycheque meant just a little more cushioning between me and my self-inflicted spectre of poverty.

    But one day, something changed. It snuck up on me: I realized I was actually likely to retire in the foreseeable future. That was no longer some far-flung horizon: it was years — not decades — away. I looked at my bank account and wondered, “How am I going to spend this money?” That wouldn’t be a challenge for most people: I’m not talking about millions of dollars. But for someone who treated money like a scarce resource to be conserved at all costs, it’s harder than you think.

    Embracing your Inner Spend

    I decided I needed to be ok with the idea of spending, even if I couldn’t fully embrace it. I feel a little guilty saying that, because we live in a world where the evils of conspicuous consumption and consumer culture are so thoroughly condemned. But I don’t have kids, so unless I want to leave it all to charity, I feel I should learn to enjoy the fruits of my labour while I can. I earned them, after all.

    But that might be the hardest part: telling myself I’m worth spending money on, after so many years of denial.

    I’m starting small. Once a week it’s now ok to buy lunch, and not pack the 3,000th salad of my career. Buying a latte now and then isn’t going to break the bank. Spending $30 on a tin of luxury tea would have seemed like an irrational indulgence a year ago. Now it feels like a challenge: can I treat myself? Can I actually enjoy spending money on me?

    In Search of the Big Ticket

    There are bigger-ticket items I’d like: my bike is 25 years old and held together with hockey tape and hope. I’ve kept it going for a quarter century, but its best days are behind it, and I’d like a ride from the current millennium.

    So in March I’ll make the rounds of bike shops to see if I can embrace my hard-earned cash as something to be enjoyed, not accumulated for its own sake. After that, who knows? A new laptop? A trip? We’ll see.

    I’m trying to accept the idea that I have enough, and I can’t take it with me, so I had better start enjoying it. That means learning to buy.

  • A Piece of Cake

    A Piece of Cake

    View this post at the Globe and Mail.
    Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie.

    He said it as if he were a little boy, not an 86-year-old man.

    “Are we having chocolate cake?”

    My first instinct was to blurt out, “I bought you lunch, set it out nicely, and that’s not enough?!”

    I bit my tongue. I’m young enough to lose my cool but old enough to know better. It was the kind of question a little boy or an old man like my father might ask if they don’t understand the subtleties of a situation. The little boy will learn, but the old man has forgotten. The world is opening up for one of them, and they’re picking up on things like social niceties and expressing gratitude. The world is becoming smaller for the other as it coalesces around them, and they’re less able to think and see beyond their immediate circumstances.

    I was angry, and it showed, but it had nothing to do with Dad. I had just received a text from my wife about an unexpected $6,000 tax bill. I was frantically trying to think of what had gone wrong, how I managed to miss it, and how I was going to explain all that to my wife. It pushed every other thought out of my head as I walked to pick up lunch. The last thing on my mind was dessert.

    Getting takeout was one of the few things I could do for him since I lived so far away. One of my sisters who still lives in town was our family’s boots on the ground, shouldering the weekly slog of dad’s doctor appointments, medical consultations, finances and other responsibilities. Picking up chicken and chips a few times was the least I could do when I was around.

    Visits often centred on me fixing his computer problems until dementia stole his ability to operate one. Then our time together focused on watching Blue Jays reruns, until he lost the ability to operate a remote control. At that point, he would get hopelessly mired in on-screen menus until he started falling asleep and I would steal the remote before it slipped to the floor.

    In May I got “the call,” the one everyone dreads but can’t avoid. The first call was that he had fallen, broken his hip and was in hospital. The second was about a cancer that had been detected, and that he was considered too frail for surgery. I flew to Halifax two days later.

    Funny things go through your head when loved ones are dying. There’s regret, anger, bargaining and all kinds of crazy emotions.

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    All I could think of was chocolate cake.

    I made a little ask to the universe on the flight, to allow me to arrive in time to share a bite of chocolate cake with him. I believed I could atone for being angry if I could just get there in time to do that. That’s how the human mind operates at times like these: irrationally. The cake was irrelevant, but the importance I attached to the gesture – the chance to repair a moment before it was too late – meant everything.

    That plan went out the window when I arrived at the hospital. Between the medications and his frailty, he couldn’t manage more than a few bites of pudding or mashed potatoes a day. Still, I clung doggedly to the idea. I needed to believe I could redeem that moment of anger and what it represented to me if I could just share a piece of cake with him.

    We all make deals with God or the universe or whatever we believe in when we’re in tough situations. We blow little things out of proportion in the moment. I know full well that a stupid little piece of cake means nothing in the bigger picture, and the time spent visiting him twice a year outweighed being flustered on my penultimate visit. But little things loom large because we’re irrational animals. It’s just part of our makeup.

    Dad died a few days after my return to Toronto. He wanted his ashes scattered near the Mira River in Cape Breton, where the family had a cottage he built with his dad. It’s God’s country, and I understand why he loved it.

    I flew back for his service, and at some point in the coming months I’ll return to make the drive up to Cape Breton with some of my sisters, and scatter his remains. I’ll do two other things: pour out a tot of the Jamaican rum he so enjoyed, and leave a piece of chocolate cake, minus a bite from me. I don’t believe things we leave for loved ones appear in any afterlife, but I know that life is made of gestures, actions and intent. I know the crows, not Dad, will feast on it. But I choose to believe that simple gestures we make in this world somehow resonate in the next.

    Like sharing a piece of chocolate cake.

  • Accidentally Torontonian

    Accidentally Torontonian

    It was only supposed to be a year: move to Toronto, get the certificate, move back to Calgary and continue with life.

    23 years later, the move back to Calgary hasn’t happened. I have become, accidentally, Torontonian.

    That was never the plan. I never had any desire to move to the Big Smoke.
    Growing up on the east coast, Toronto seemed incredibly distant, a mysterious chunk of population somewhere past Montreal where folks moved later in life, and from where repairmen ordered parts for your fridge.

    Later, it gained an unfortunate reputation as a breeding ground for snobbery. I remember the handful of kids transplanted from Toronto. Young and naive, many of them assumed us yokels would be awed by their big city pedigree, and flaunted it accordingly. That was a bad idea that backfired consistently, leading to ostracism and the conclusion that TO was a jerk factory.

    After finishing school, I was faced with a decision: Halifax’s economy was small and sputtering, and I felt the need to move somewhere with more opportunities. Toronto’s economy was in the dumps, Vancouver was too expensive, I’d already lived in Ottawa, and I didn’t think my French was good enough for Montreal. Calgary beckoned with an oil economy firing on all cylinders, and I made the leap.

    Soon after landing, I discovered something Calgarians share with Haligonians: antipathy for Toronto. The more folks I met, the more I realized those feelings of resentment travel across our great land. In fact, the unifying force in our country isn’t the great outdoors, maple syrup, poutine or even hockey: it’s animosity for Toronto.

    Some of that has nothing to do with the town itself. It’s probably aimed at residents of every big city around the world, from Beijing to Buenos Aires. I think it stems from the inhabitants’ sense that they’re from somewhere just a little more sophisticated, important or awesome than anywhere else. I breathed that in when I landed in Hogtown in 2000.

    I loved Calgary. I had no intention of leaving, until I hit a ceiling at work and needed a diploma to keep moving up. I found a program at Humber College, packed everything in boxes and bought a one-way ticket, confident I’d return in a year.

    Toronto didn’t impress at first: it felt too big, impersonal and uncaring. It seemed less like a city with an identity or personality, and more like a sea of people crammed together on top of each other.

    That feeling started to change when I moved to a friendlier neighbourhood, and found parks and shops I liked, a favourite pub and a go-to coffee shop. I started to discover what there was to like about this big fat city. There were neighbourhoods branded everything from “Little Italy” to “Little Tibet”. There were festivals and a theatre scene I stumbled into after an acting class. There were the bucket list concerts I finally got to see, museums, restaurants and all the other things tourist bureaus stuff into ads.

    I ended up staying another year. I found a job and then a girlfriend. I got another apartment. I found another job and another girlfriend. I kept discovering more things to like about the city: bike trails, the islands, ravine hikes and more.

    Years passed with the plan to move back to Calgary quietly receding in the rear-view mirror but never overtly abandoned. And then something quite unexpected happened: I started becoming Torontonian.

    I’ve transformed, and I doubt the me from 23 years ago would recognize the current one. I’ve become that guy, the infinitely impatient one muttering under their breath at people lollygagging on the sidewalk when they’ve got places to be right now. (Could you walk any slower, buddy?) I talk about how the vibe in places like Kensington Market needs to be protected from gentrification, as if “vibe” were something that shows up on Google Maps. I read blogs and magazines about the city as often as I read ones about Canada itself. And I’ve embraced the idea that there’s something impressive about living in the biggest city in the land.

    Recently I had to confront just how Torontonian I’ve become. Part of me will always hate myself for admitting it, but one night in front of the TV — how can I really be saying this?

    I found myself cheering for the Leafs.

    You can’t spend 23 years somewhere and not have it change you. Halifax will always be home, because home is where the heart is. But home is also where you hang your hat, and that’s Toronto. It’s where my condo leers over the perennially pissed-off drivers on the Gardiner Expressway. It’s where my cats constantly fight and make up. It’s where I found my wife, and where all but a few friends live. It’s the city that needs constant reassurance, but which is somehow quietly certain it’s the Centre of the Universe.

    That’s what makes a good city great: a balance of contradictions.
    A friend had a theory that life sorts you into the city in which you truly belong, by size, temperament and so on. Calgary is young and a little conservative. Ottawa is bureaucratic, well-planned and restrained. Halifax is friendly and loves a good time.

    And Toronto? Well, Toronto is never satisfied. It obsesses about its shortcomings, even as it lands near the top of “best cities in the world” lists, a pessimism born from privilege. Toronto is the commercial, financial and cultural centre of the country even as it dreams of becoming New York City when it grows up. It’s the centre of its universe, but also the centre of self-doubt, perpetually comparing itself to everywhere around it.

    That describes me a little: a collection of contradictions. It’s what endears me to the city. Like me, Toronto doesn’t have just one identity. At a certain point a city becomes too big for that, and its identity becomes the sum of its parts. Or maybe that’s way too Zen and Toronto is just like every other big city, with its good, bad, beauty, ugliness and endless complexity.

    By my calculation, sometime in 2025 I’ll have spent more than half my life here. Assuming I last long enough, will I retire and end my days here? Will I move back “home” to Halifax? Maybe I’ll go back to Calgary. Maybe I’ll find a villa in Italy. Who knows? But this town has shaped me as surely as any other has.

    I have become, unexpectedly, Torontonian.