Nourishment 101

"Her eyes were quivering." I am a voracious reader so I no doubt have read this description more than once in my life. Until this past Friday night I hadn't witnessed it first hand without emotions overwhelming me simultaneously so the trite description didn't immediately spring to mind in real time.


I have a certain type of face.  The type of face that strangers regularly approach for directions.  And the type of face that says:  You can confide in me; I am all ears and empathy.  I can thank genetics for this - it runs in the family.  At times it can be uncomfortable but it is always a moment of real communion with a fellow human.


I had such a moment on Friday night.  I attended the approximately bi-monthly, and for now, roving St. Jamestown Community Café.  I learned about this endeavour at the monthly (intentionally roving) Foodie Drinks.  The organizers I met (Nancy Slamet and Lucas Lu) certainly captivated my interest and I attended not only to support their efforts but also as a detective.  I was sussing out the vibe in order to bring back info to my upcoming community association meeting.  The St. Jamestown Community Café is hoping to eventually create an incubator model for other cafés and since Nancy herself interned at the long time successful Queen Street Commons café in Kitchener, I have tremendous faith in the likelihood of the success of the St. Jamestown Community Café.

St. Jamestown community café Friday November 18th, 2011.

I spent most of the evening parked in the same chair munching down on delicious and healthy food that attendees purchase using a pay-what-you-can system so that anyone, with any means, can come participate in the café.  The pay-what-you-can model has been utilized in a few well known establishments and I foresee a huge increase in it's use due to changing worldwide economic circumstances and the increasing popularity and acceptability of social enterprises.

While I stayed stationary at the same table, the cast of characters surrounding me completely turned over three times.  I first enjoyed an amusing rapport with three long term residents (30+years!) from the community.  These three women have raised children and buried husbands together.  The only one with a walker departed by getting up and dancing her way to the front of the room (where the musicians were providing an excellent foot tapping show) before returning to collect her walker and go home.  I was still giggling when a much older woman with a walker came through the door.

The elder woman's paid caretaker saw my now empty table and got the woman seated and her walker stashed away before going to collect her a plate of food.  The woman settled quite close to me and I asked her her name.  She told me and was quite delighted to find out that I knew it was italian since one of my own neighbours that is about the same age (91) has the very same unusual italian name that has fallen out of favour since the earlier part of the 20th century.

This woman was as sharp as a tack and her immediate familiarity with me was a little daunting but quite enjoyable.  We meandered our way through the niceties and I found out that she too is a long time resident of St. Jamestown and in fact moved to the area after her mother died in Kapuskasing, ON.  She was 20 years old so that means that she has lived there for over 70 years!  A veritable walking history book!

In the course of the conversation I thought to ask her if she had any children.  That is when her eyes started quivering and I simultaneously thought of the trite phrase whilst panicking at what I was to find out.  "Yes, my daughter.  But she left me.  Five years ago.  I buried her.  She had taken a job since she was broke.  She hit her head.  Her work didn't phone a doctor, and so she just went to bed that night.  AND DIED."  I capitalize since by the end of this halting speech the tiny frail woman was wailing.  And I was bawling.  And during the course of her delivery I had instinctively reached out and grabbed the tiny arm and felt the life force of this woman humming along, albeit in vast amounts of pain.   I could not choke back my sobs.  So we sat there and cried a bit with me holding on to her arm with both hands now - an awkward but universal type of embrace that is instinctive to humans sharing pain.  After a few minutes I said that I applauded her courage to get up every day and go out and that no mother should ever have to bury a child.  After a few more weepy minutes we gravitated away from the subject and she entertained me with stories of her life as a cleaning woman in Toronto and her cat and the bedbugs that her nursing home is fighting.  She left after eating a healthy sized meal for a 91 year old and I hope to see her again.

The last cast of characters at my table were also fascinating and engaging people.  Two of them were the musicians finally enjoying their repast after entertaining us so wonderfully.  In fact we were all so engrossed in conversing with one another we were literally kicked out (laughingly)!  I had not realized that the tables were being packed up around us and ours was the very last table to be dismantled and put away.

Kudos to the St. Jamestown Community Café.  If my experience can be considered representative of other attendees, I have no doubt that your community development efforts will be successful.  I left the event nourished completely in both body and spirit and I can't imagine any other measure of success that such an effort would desire.

Brand Spankin'

Marleeville November 15, 2011

I've seen both of them, but rarely together. Actually I've seen the three of them but only once altogether. I've seen them many times in the last few weeks. They are always walking down the middle or on the side of my uptown suburbanish wide street. They never walk down the sidewalk.  I've seen them in the sun, wind and rain. And at all times of the day.

The thing about not keeping a regular schedule is that it is a little like stepping up onto the desk à la Dead Poet's Society: You get to see the world and it's happenings through a sort of prism rather than just a plain clear glass. A neighbourhood is a dynamic place and not just full of people getting up and regularly stuffing themselves into a cubicle. And my neighbourhood is no exception but due to the inflation of housing prices in this city there are fewer and fewer young families about. The last baby born on my street was whisked away to a bigger house this past summer. It seems that the post war bungalows on this street no longer suit the families of today. It is troubling that these same bungalows were entirely suitable for the large contingent of italian and portugese immigrant families in the 1950s thru 1970s.  Many of the dwindling stock of bungalows (developers are slowly gentrifying my 'hood), have aging matriarchs and patriarchs still canning tomatoes and making wine every fall.  Most of the remaining non-gentrified bungalows have single or coupled folk living with no children.  Infants are few and far to be seen in this area.

So when I first saw the woman walking down the middle of my road pushing a covered stroller I recognized immediately the confluence of spring in her step and weariness on her brow. Such a dichotomy can only make an appearance during a unique phase in one's life. The Brand Spanking New Parent phase. This phase is so brief and so infectious that I swear just a small vicarious dose of it during one's reproductive years instills the desire, nay carnal urge, to reproduce and live through this phase first hand. And having lived it myself I have to confess that seeing it again, albeit quite vicariously as a voyeur neighbour, gives me a sense of communion with this world that I don't know if I could also feel if I had not.

Before the biological clock turned off for me, a mere few years ago, I might have viewed this quite differently. My womb would feel barren and I would intellectualize the impracticality of more children. Now my heart sings with delight. The difference is marvelous and like all new experiences I am nearly raw with emotion after seeing Brand Spanking New Dad walking down my street today.

It seems that this Brand New Child is rather difficult. I suspected this right from my first sighting of Brand New Mom going down my street on an early fall evening.  I noticed immediately that she was gingerly directing the stroller away from any noise making opportunities (crunchy leaves). I was walking my dog and she gave me a winning smile (Brand New Mom hormones emanating!). I wouldn't have dreamed to talk to her after seeing the way she was avoiding the leaves. I had a Brand New Child like that. A child that didn't sleep and then once asleep was easily woken. So the Brand New Mom and I have merely exchanged smiles when I see her out on the street.  I see Brand New Dad less frequently and he also emanates a winning smile.  I think I've them together only once. I try to force as much empathy into my smile as possible because I remember the desperation that comes with all the other wonderful new experiences as a Brand New Parent. The desperation for sleep. A solid night. Oh jaysus what I wouldn't have done for a solid 6 hour night in that first year.

And this morning, from my front window, I see Brand New Dad go down the mostly leafless side (on the road, not the sidewalk) of my recently paved and beautifully smooth street. There is a very slight downward grade on my street. Both Brand New Parents walk the length of this downward grade and turn around rather than pushing the baby carriage up the steeper incline that follows. So I watch and wait for him to turn around (I'm near the end of this sloping grade). I have not seen Brand New Dad as often as Brand New Mom so I was watching openly from my front window. He was distracted by trying to sneak a peak at Brand New Child while still pushing at the same fairly brisk pace that some Brand New Children demand. My own Brand New Child liked to be rocked at a definite upbeat tempo and this rocking had to be done with an upright adult, in their arms, in a particular position. This became more and more difficult for me as the desperation for a decent nights sleep kicked into high gear about 2 months into Brand New Parenting.

The penny dropped as I was musing about my own experiences while watching Brand New Dad this morning from my front window. Brand New Mom has probably hit that desperation for sleep point so on a Tuesday morning Brand New Dad possibly took a morning off work in order to get Brand New Baby to sleep after a very difficult night.  Lately I have been having difficulty sleeping and the gratitude that I no longer face Brand New Child sleep deprived insanity overwhelmed me.

And oh yes, the above picture is Brand New Dad at the end of my street.  The Brand New Parents don't live on my street but since my street is the widest and smoothest one in the area I suspect it's worth travelling to.  I wonder what other adventures Brand New Child will introduce to Brand New Parents during his/her lifetime.  I hope they are joyous and more restful than this first one!

No longer just passing by.

I am one of the fortunate people that has managed to arrive to middle age and I have personally witnessed very little death.

In the natural order of things I know this will change but other than giving my heart a little squeeze when thinking of my parents passing on I don't put too much time or energy into thinking about it.  One never knows what can happen or when and worrying about it will do nothing to prevent it.

So when I found out last night that one of my neighbours passed away I was shocked.  This is not someone I know beyond passing an occasional fresh cut peony too and exchanging weather pleasantries but he was a fixture during my time in this house which is now almost eight and a half years.   I don't even know his name but since his daughter lived in their basement I always thought of him as C's dad.  His daughter is of my age and we have chatted a lot over the time I've lived here.  Her mother, the new widow, has limited english and my chats with her are also limited to pleasantries.

I first became aware of this man when the ambulance and fire trucks showed up in the middle of the night within the first couple of years of me living here.  When I asked the daughter what had happened in the days following I found out that this man had had a heart attack.  I found out about his expected convalescence period and his intent to return to work as soon as possible.

Sure enough, in the proceeding months, I saw him shuffling off to work each morning and returning at night.  The man worked long hours and the only thing that seemed to have changed was that he had acquired a cane and he had lost a fair bit of weight on his already slight frame.

Within a short period of this heart attack, he had another.  Ambulances and firetrucks again.  Discussions with C. told me that there was a longer hospital convalescence this time yet he was again planning on returning to work even though this time she didn't seem so eager about this plan.  At that time I was shocked he had survived another one since he no longer looked as strong as he had when I first moved to this house.

As far as I was aware, this was his last heart attack and until last Friday night I saw him shuffle back and forth to work and we would exchange the usual pleasantries.  A few months ago I saw him on his way home near the main intersection from our street and he was smoking.  I was shocked, since I know he had quit years earlier, but immediately my ex-smoker empathy kicked in.  I've joked with friends that I just might pick up the smokes again in my senior years.

I admired this man and his strength.  It turns out that his fatal heart attack this past Saturday night was his fourth.  He was 75 years of age and worked until the day before he died.

I will miss seeing him shuffling up and down the road and sitting out on his front porch with his wife and daughter.  I hope that as I age I might manifest some of the strength and courage he portrayed.  I also selfishly hope that my own death and the death of my loved ones goes as quickly as this man.