scrooge is the new green, part two: the good grinch

Please consider this a preface, a very important preface, that is, a salient point that you need to remember. We cannot buy parmesan.

$23 for a measly triangle, half of which is rind, and I'm standing on Spring Garden Road wearing a sandwich board that says WILL SMOOCH FOR CHEESE. The same scene plays out repeatedly: I pause in front of the dairy case marked RICH PEOPLE ONLY, PLEASE and sigh eleven times in a row, and then I push my cart over to anything on sale for $1.09. Dented lentils. Week-old iceberg lettuce. Antisocial tuna.

Every Christmas Justin and have that moment. We look at each other and shrug and I say bright green socks from the irregular bin and he says an InStyle magazine from 1998 that I'll swipe from the dentist. And lo! Our gift-swapping expectations are set. So that when I chuck a pair of boxers into his lap on Christmas morning, he's thrilled and touched. And likewise, he surprises me with that combo pack of multi-coloured post-it notes I've been eyeing.

Every Christmas I say the following, with gusto, regarding our children: I really mean it this year. It's going to be small and quiet and Cratchitty. We will make crumbcake. We will braid toilet paper garlands. We will give the children two ice cubes and a flat of corrugated cardboard each.

Every Christmas this gusto softens to I couldn't help it and Justin raises his eyebrows and says Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles Shaving Set With Squirtable Neon Cream Soap? and I hang my head and say I also was held at gunpoint in the dollar store in front of a display of Transformer knockoffs and last week I went to Wal-Mart on my way home and all those smiling yellow faces confounded me and I came home with five bags and I don't know how it happened but I'm deeply ashamed not only because of the Third World and corporate America's pillage of the proletariat but also because I am a snob.

How much did you spend? he says.

Only $12.99 per toy, give or take. It'll be good. There will be a mountain. They'll freak.

How many toys?

I calculate. Thirteen battery-operated pieces of shit. One imitation NERF foam rocket set that Ben will probably eat. Two cheap books that I can't stand already. Plastic pretend food that smells like arsenic and comes stamped WHO NEEDS A HEALTHY LIVER WHEN YOU HAVE FRIENDS?

He sighs, anticipating his annual February 12th circuit to the donation bin, the recycling depot, and the dump. So what you're saying is you spent $250 on cheap pieces of shit for the sheer illusion of quantity so that you'll feel like a better parent on the morning of a religious holiday we don't recognize in any other way other than to call it CANDY CANE TIME?

...

...

I stare at Mount Plastmore, enshrouded in crinkled white with red letters that spell VALU.

Right.

+++

We saw our quiet little boy, especially amidst the holiday kerfuffle,
actually forget how to play. He would sit, staring about him
at the massive plastic extravagance,
and not even know where to begin.

Where DOES one begin in the midst of a small toy army that plays FOR you?

Well, from my experience from years of working with children—
they either smash it,
or look at it boredly, and watch it do its thing.
The dilemma of the modern child in a nutshell.

~ Tout est des roses

I'd like to say it was a Waldorfian Awakening that inspired this year's righteous grinchness. It wasn't.

More so than any other Christmas, the dawn of das spielzimmer made it impossible to contemplate shoving a whole new generation of never-played-with, shrieking, singing, flashing junk into our brand new Grand Central Station Of Fun.

So. Despite being utterly starved of Italian bliss, our Christmas mantra became this: more is less.

There will be no Wal-Mart this year. No aimless wandering through toy departments. No impulse buys. Zero. It's one trip to a good, local toy store for ONE major present for each child, plus stocking stuffers and a book. That's it. All chosen from the kind of high-quality, ethical toys that would usually have me muttering What the f*ck is this, Beverly Hills? and send me beelining for the happy yellow faces.

(The happy yellow faces, and all their ilk, you see, are a trick. You see lower prices, you disregard the film of chemicals and crap and commercialism that clings to everything in there. You want to give your kids a mountain. You binge. Then you purge.)

Not this year. It was NOT EASY.

No mothereffin way. $73 for A TRUCK? Unbefuckinglievable. I circled the shop nine times wringing my hands before buying it, telling the cashier to hurry up before a Scotiabank clerk arrived to put me in chains.

I know. I know. But this is Ben's IT. There is nothing else. He won't notice the lack of mountain. He'll be so thrilled. And you know what? It feels good. Really good.

Until now, lego has gone under the cedar daybed to spawn on its own. This is first time we've ever bought any lego kit for more than $12.99. I stood there staring at the jaunty little price tag on the shelf for a solid three minutes. $69.99. Blink. $69.99. Blink. Still $69.99. Seventy bucks for compromise lego, the actual 'Rock Monster Cave Crusher' rig he wanted sending my wallet into epileptic fits at almost $100 a box.

I know. I know. But this is Evan's IT. There is nothing else. He won't notice the lack of mountain. He'll be so thrilled. And you know what? It feels good. Really good.

Plus pretty much the coolest, very special book ever. I was so captivated, it had to be had. Canadian, my Woozles-veteran mother later informed me. And that's pretty much it. Almost. A copy of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Day Out, found in a bargain bin for $6.99. And a colouring book based on the stories of Oliver Jeffers, all of which we have and love, because I've heard he's, like, totally hot.

Plus some of that candy that explodes in your mouth. That's it.

Plus British marshmallow sticks. Chocolate coins. That's it.

Plus two durable, kid-sized snow shovels, because snow shovelling puts hair on your chest. That's it.

Swear.

+++

More per toy, but less overall. By a long shot. This house is officially declared a Crap Mountain-Free Zone.

More is less.

Except in the case of British marshmallows.

scrooge is the new green, part one: das spielzimmer

Last month Justin and I transformed our life. We are awakened. We are enlivened. We are buoyant. We hold hands more. He's taken up whistling. My festering sore miraculously healed.

We did not find Jesus.

We did not buy a George Forman Grill. Well. We did buy a slow-cooker, which I'm told will result in a similar awakening/enlivening/delicious effortless buoyancy, but it's still in the box. Every time I walk past it, it gurbles under muffled breath and cardboard ME WANT BEANS and I shudder a little, daunted.

I'll tell you what we did.

We went to a post-Halloween party at a German household, which naturally involved sausages and fireworks, and marshmallows roasted in an outdoor fire pit, which I burnt to a carcinogenic crisp, which I think is less about traditional festspiel and more about typical Inglis buffoonenschtien. So I go inside to scrape the coagulated burnt off my hands and I follow childrens' voices upstairs and I see what the Germans have been keeping from me, from you, indeed from the entire world, those sly schutzengels.

In Germany, apparently, they create spaces called SPIELZIMMER. All the toys go into these spaces. And they stay there. And the children go into these spaces. And they stay there, playing, being cool, with names like Gustav and Felix. And the adults sit wearing black turtlenecks with legs crossed in contemporary recliners, sipping Weihenstephaner and conversing animatedly about architecture to the accompaniment of Wagner and synth-pop. IN ANOTHER ROOM.

Did you know this? Mmhmm. Yeah. Me neither. Say it with me (air-quotes): PLAYROOM.

Until our Deutsch awakening, our kids pretty much played wherever they wanted. Overlooking the toilet. At the teetering lip of vats of boiling acid. On top of my head. And so, thus, there were disembodied lego people and talking *@$&#%^!! Iggle Piggle dolls and dinkies underfoot everywhere. Great heaps of toys that would go untouched for months until the day Ben would upend the whole basket with a crash, lie down in the middle of it, and make like a snow angel in order to ensure the maximum blast radius of Chinese plastic. The kids had no space that was theirs. We had no space that was ours.

Then we discovered the SECRET OF DEUTSCHLAND.

The next day, we set to work dismantling beds and heaving dressers and vaccuming up surprised squirrel colonies and dustbunnies the size of medicine balls and three fossilized banana peels. We commandeered the guest room, which, until this point, was a guest room in which the guest was Ben. Seriously. This soulless, sparsely decorated void otherwise known as The Room Nobody Else Wants featured one small bed shoved into the corner, atop which Ben was unceremoniously plunked.

We made this guest room into a Little Boy Dormitory: two matching hand-me-down beds, a bookshelf. Still minimalist, still ripe for unceremonious plunking. But still. Theirs for sleeping, boys and brothers and now midnight conspirators.

Then we made Evan's old room into their spielzimmer.

AND MOVED ALL THE TOYS INTO IT. ALL OF THEM.

After the boys' heads stopped spinning at the sight of it, they went into it and we haven't seen them since.

THE WORLD'S WORST TRIPTYCH, ACTUALLY A FOURTYCH, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS A PHOTOGRAPHIC DOG'S BREAKFAST. BUT STILL. BEHOLD DAS SPIELZIMMER.

When we bought this house, it was 982 square feet. The day my belly exploded and we landed in the NICU with twins in dire straits, an excavator dug a hole for an addition. (Indeed, nothing amplifies the fun of prematurity and loss quite like an ongoing renovation that you can't afford. I recommend both experiences highly, and even more so, simultaneously. Only stampeding elephants and uncontrolled wildfires could have made those two months more enjoyable.)

What with our infestation of self-spawning hundred dollar bills, we splurged and made the addition ridiculously small, bringing the grand total of our living space to 1367 square feet or so, the calculation of which includes the four pallets that hold our woodpile, the grass space taken up by the canoe, two adirondack chairs and a hammock.

Which is to say we live in a leetle, leetle house. With leetle, leetle rooms. And a kitchen that is actually a hallway, but I'll save that foaming-at-the-mouth rant for another day.

Which is to say that having a playroom does not require you to have a Bavarian villa. As long as you don't mind stacking your children like lego.

Which is to say that the reign of the Chinese plastic is over, friends. Victory is ours.

When we gave the toys a home—and organized them so brilliantly that the children now LOVE TO CLEAN UP—we culled the herd. Trashed and donated anything that would burst into spontaneous renditions of "WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT! YAY!" at 3 AM for no apparent reason. And, like that filthy hooligan Panic Room Ryan, we noted that they failed to note the absence of a whole damn lot. Which gets a newly liberated parent to thinking, as we stare down the relentless march of Christmas...

Tune in next time for Part Two of 'Scrooge Is The New Green', in which I will save the planet; ensure the continued health of our economy; ease the pain, itching and embarrassment of your financial pustules; and espouse the true meaning of Christmas. All in one fell swoop.

SPIELZIMMER DECOR IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST, EVAN: Look. Aliens and robots. The robots are just being robots. The aliens are at their water pumping station. They are getting water. One of them is mad. Look. There is grass.

blessed, beached

Three weeks post-launch, I chirp that writing The Dread Crew was EASY! and A JOY WITH EVERY PAGE! and NOT REMOTELY AN ACTIVITY THAT HAD ME WISHING MY BRAIN WERE MADE OF SQUEAKY RUBBER SO IT COULD GET CHEWED ON BY A PACK OF FERAL DOGS!

Such is my current declaration of what it is to write a novel. Anything but hermitude and word-wrestling agony. Fish in a barrel, in fact. Ironic. For now, aspiring to the second one, I am that squinty-eyed crone who never showers and shoos her kids away and lusts for seclusion and rarely eats anything in one sitting other than nine triscuits or a bowl of brussels sprouts or crusts off the playroom floor. My husband calls the laptop 'The Camilla Parker Bowles Of Our Marriage'. Which means he gets to be Princess Diana. Our neighbours are starting to wonder if I am somebody's figment. I’ve never seen her. Have you ever seen her? I know someone who said they saw her once. They said she was really… white.

It's true that writing the Dread Crew was flowy and natural. And it’s not until now—having begun the continuation of the story a couple of weeks ago—that I realize why.

I was playing. I had no idea I was writing a book.

+++

Yesterday I sat in a most hallowed studio overlooking Citadel Hill for an interview on CBC’s Mainstreet, the public radio show that pretty much every Nova Scotian listens to while making supper or driving home. I talked about pirates and publishing and Liam and the path from the NICU to rosy cheeks to bound pages. I stumbled through the ten-cent tour of what led to incubation. I read an excerpt. I explained why I ran away and landed on the front porch of Grampa Joe's woodland cabin. I trash-talked philosophers and priests. Listen to the whole interview here.

Sitting at that round table as the 'live' light went red, I hardly breathed, convinced that I’d be the first person in Maritime history to have my head swallowed whole by a microphone.

It’s a theme, this whole Will Somebody Go Ahead And Please Eat My Head thing. It’s about all I can muster. It’s not that I’m not calm, or grateful, or relieved, or excited. I am all that and frozen, too. I fret for every page, every eye.

My family waits. The report I’ve got due for a client waits. The next book waits. The girl with her shitkicker boots, a lost queen of whales, a skyborne pirate rebel named Rasmus. Her father found me first, urgent to frame the fatherlessness of the girl who would become Missy Bullseye. I hear him whisper to her by firelight from the bed that pulled him beaming into another world. Can you?

You are not to be lost, sweet girl. No! Whenever you get sad at your wandering mother or your all-gone father all you need do is look down. And there you’ll see not one but two strong legs, lean and braided with muscle, ready to help make you fly. You will fly, sweet girl, by all your blood and your bone and the wind in your strawberry hair. And I will be your go go go. I won’t be just your daddy anymore. I will be your joy. When your heart thumps in your chest, I will be all the stars that thump along with you and tug at their pins, wishing for to chase. I will be there forever and you’ll feel my smile through the darkest pitch black, loving you.

Illustration by Sydney Smith, the Dread Crew's own. Can you imagine seeing how he sees? Can you imagine translating it? Thank you, Sydney. Because of you, people reach for my book and are instantly bewitched. I see it when it happens. And the magic of that first beholding has very little to do with me.

in the cabin

What a day. There's a crisp breeze rustling the trees, and the sun's beaming. Justin finished the demolition on our fireplace insert to prepare for a new little woodstove in the living room (so that we don't freeze and starve during multi-day January power outages, as per usual) so there's soot in the air, a hole in the roof, and a chimney on the grass.

He's gone to pick up the new rig and I seized the chance to answer the questions submitted for the launch Q&A (there's a delay on the event video, hence the audio). Go here to my other blog for thoughts on writing, the book, and blogging. And death. And expensive jeans. You know. As per usual.

my grandfather in quotes, his beloved in parentheses

“We flew through the Alps in the pitch black. If we flew too high, there would be no air for the propellers, and planes would drop out of the sky. If we flew too low, we’d crash into rock. We were flying blind. Those were some of the longest nights of my life.”

(We all dreaded the doorbell. There was always a chance it would be the war department with a telegram saying our husbands were missing or killed. Our lives revolved around those little blue airmail letters. Once I got thirteen letters at the same time, but then nothing for weeks and weeks. I never got used to him being away. Not ever.)

“Our Hamburg effort last month was a real honey. Boy, we really gave them a pasting. We were very fortunate to get back as our kite was hit in many places by night fighters and flak. Luckily none of us were hit but those cannon shells make quite a hole! Our ‘W for Willy’ looked like a salt shaker after that do."

(Reading through his logbook, you have to think about everything Gord couldn’t say. He had to write just the basic facts – how many bombs were dropped, how far they flew and for how long, and where they were sent. But so much happened up there. So much.)

The vibration of the plane, the noise and yelling and roar. Exploding flak, the concussion as hundreds of bombs found their marks. The fumes, the smell of fuel and sweat. The biting cold of high altitude. And an urgent need to concentrate.

"As a member of the Pathfinders’ Squadron, it was my honour to be among those responsible for the canceling of Hitler’s speech at the Beer Hall on September 9, 1942.”

Caught in searchlights on the way to raid Dusseldorf, minutes become eternities. Riddled with flak, their navigator hit in the abdomen, knee, and leg, and one finger on his left hand shot off, they made a desperate push to make it back across the Channel on fumes.

One up on his mates, Grampa opted out of a routine mission the following day, staying on the ground. On that flight, the plane was shot down. All but two of his best friends were killed.

Gerry escaped a prisoner of war camp through the French Underground, smuggled from farm to farm over several months until he reached England. Jock was discovered in occupied France and taken to a camp in Germany where he spent several years until the end of the war.

(When Jock landed in Toronto he came to our house for a visit. I asked him to get something for me in the kitchen. He opened the fridge and saw steaks, eggs, butter, bacon. He broke down and cried. It was the first time in more than six years he’d seen food like that.)

“As I sit writing this I can hear our Bombers going off to places unknown. The boys certainly are giving old Jerry a pasting these days. It gives on a funny feeling to hear all the aircraft in the sky. I wouldn’t like to be underneath when they lay their eggs.” ~ June 1943

After the loss of his first crew, Grampa anticipated the christening of a second tour upon his return to England. But, as was so common during the war years, he was held up due to transportation difficulties. Grampa’s newly-assigned crew, all as familiar and close in friendship as the first, waited as long as they could but went ahead without him, not knowing that he was landing in Britain that very night.

“Fraser Barron, being a very experienced Pathfinder, led a raid in which he and his Deputy Master Bomber collided over target,” he wrote. “All were killed.”

(Gord felt he should have been on that plane. He regretted that he wasn’t with his friends, if that was to be their fate. He couldn’t believe it happened a second time, losing his crew. He couldn’t understand why he survived and not them.)

With Scotch parents he'd gone to England to enlist, the fastest route at war's first outbreak, and fudged his youth in order to qualify. He stayed for dozens of missions more than he had to over three tours of duty. He had been years abroad when my grandfather went from dropping bombs on the wrecked cities of Milan, Paris, Dusseldorf, and on Hitler’s beer hall itself to bowling in pristine Toronto. To a pretty dress on his wife, cocktails, shingles to paint. And ghosts, too many, that stayed with him always.

(Gord didn’t talk much, especially right afterwards. Later on he opened up a bit, but he never slept well. You can only handle so much. They lost so many friends. But the only time he would really get down was on Remembrance Day. He would sit in the den alone, and I wouldn’t go in to him or ask him for anything. He wanted to be alone. He just wanted to think.)

Notes stray across the album page, white on black. Tailgunner, lost nerve, 1943. Pilot killed in action, 1942. Navigator hit by flak, 1941. Bombardier shot down 1943, P.O.W., whereabouts unknown.

And then simply Darling, home.

it's here.

sydney mines, vol. 1

We're too much of laundry and past-date sour cream and power bills and the broken camera and the abandoned yoga practice and the sneaking suspicion that we are, in fact, a 72-year-old recluse trapped in a 36-year-old body.

Did you know

says a friend

all the old ladies in nursing homes drink nothing but tea, because who says no to tea? and they end up dehydrated, and they're put on tea rationing.

I pause for mathematics.

Six teas in one day, each with two heaps of sugar. One bottle beer. Zero glasses water. But the house is peppered with a string of forgotten mugs, a trail of tepid Yorkshire Gold that represents nothing more than scattered sips. Adding up to one, maybe one and a half. Reasonable. No need, yet, to begin playing bridge.

Still, such a rash of mug misplacement can't factor well in the reckoning of senility.

+++

We trudge. God, how we trudge. Each of us forgets to look sidelong at the person next, the person behind, all trudging souls.

Woe!
but for more hours, more started, more finished
more of what I want
more of what I need
more of what I deserve

And there we are, caught in the snare of our own trickery. Restlessness seduces.

What is it to feel unrealized, other than strangely exquisite? It is the soul's plea to matter. It is the exhausting submersion of caring for others, sometimes at the expense of our own creative spark. It is age and mortality settling upon us like a kneading cat, prodding us to Hurry up and do something. Make something. Be something, before they start rationing my tea.

What do you see?

I see a kid whose every adventure is already written. All his loves and words and chance encounters carved into each and every bone, waiting for him to notice.

I see the force that made him, and it smiles.

You have everything you need. You have fortitude. You have stories. Be quiet, be still, until they slink out from underneath forgotten freight to sniff around your ankles like feral cats.

Never mind the trudge. Everybody trudges. Just keep going. But be sure, as you do,

to listen.

+++

Sydney is on fire. He illustrated The Dread Crew (due to arrive any day now from the printers for shipping to retailers, and then to you) and he's been uploading new stuff and I accosted him and said oh my god please let me brag about you and he replied only if you mention the private jet.

He said okay. And so every now and then I'm going to sit here with a glass of wine and stare at one of his drawings for a while, something wholly unconnected to what he did for the book, and I'm going to write a bit.

Swear to god I am not on the doobage.

It's better than doobage.

It's Sydney.