The Importance of Being Idle

A few weeks ago at a Cuban Revolution themed party my good friend excitedly presented me with a book stating excitedly “that it would change my life”. Now i have known this boy for close to ten years and we have probably made this statement to each other no less than a 1000 times. There is always a record, a book, a song, a show, a trip, a sandwich which will change your life. Regardless of the amount of times this promise has been made each time we take it seriously, you could say that we are ridiculous people that way.

It was a second hand copy of “How to be Idle” by Tom Hodgkinson arguing against the guilt that we are made to feel if we aren’t productive every moment of our lives and celebrating things like sleeping in, drinking, going to long walks, taking long lunches, sitting in pubs, basically all the enjoyable things that for some reason we limit ourselves to enjoy only a few times a year on vacation. Being off work right now I have been struggling with my natural impulse to be busy and productive every moment, not to jump out of bed every morning at 6:30 and consult a colour coded to-do list.  

I decided to start small by sleeping in on the weekends instead of running around the house while the boys slept.  I have to say it quite enjoyable. I woke up, went back to sleep. The baby woke up, we cuddled and went back to sleep. The baby woke up again and we chatted to each other in bed. Mehernosh who obviously has been following the whole idle movement for years woke up hours later.  We contemplated what to do with our day, talked about the small moments during our week we have forgotten to recount to the other while Kayan lay between us squealing  obviously proud at himself at having found his way to our bed. It was lovely. My life may not allow me to drink a lot or of spend hours in pubs but there is something to be said for the quieter moments when there is no rush from point A to B, when where you are is your final destination.

                                  

The Best Thing I Ever Ate

Does distance make the heart grow fonder? It may with some of these items. Their sheer unavailability combined with nostalgia makes them all the more irresistible. While I may restrict myself at home, when one is on vacation the house rules no longer apply. Traveling is a time to divulge and explore foods you would never even consider at home. I hope to pass this on Kayan, refusing to eat the local food is right up there with wanting everyone to speak English in my big book of travel faux pas.

Tikka Masala Mumbai, India

We are leaving for India in less than a month and all I can think about is the Paneer Tikka Masala at Leopold’s cafe in Bombay. I stay up at night thinking of this dish. There are times when I think I only mentioned going back to India so I can eat this again. I make this dish at home a couple times a month but it’s missing something, I need that Bombay sweat and grim to make a truly fantastic Tikka Masala .It is best accompanied with either garlic or butter naan and a super sized Kingfisher. We used to go to Leopold’s after a long day of shooting, faces still caked with Bollywood style make up, order our Tikka Masala and a tower of Kingfisher. When the Kingfisher came out we would cheer like the greedy and needy foreigners we were. These were much simpler times.

Fried Chicken and Plantains, Blue Fields, Nicaragua 

First off I am a vegetarian (well pescatarian) but when you have the opportunity to eat fried chicken and plantains for a street merchant at 3 am in some back street behind a country bar in Blue Fields Nicaragua with a friend you haven’t seen in 3 years that you only found by wandering the streets of said town by asking strangers “do you know Wilmer Hall” after making the whole trip on a whim, you simply do.

Egg Sandwich, Leogane Haiti

Man cannot live on bread alone. Man cannot also not live on rice and beans alone especially when that man or woman is working 9 plus hours a day in the heat. Beans and rice, rice and beans, sometimes twice a day but guaranteed at least once a day during the two weeks we spent digging through the rubble in Haiti. While I commend the cooks for their challenging position of having to feed a 100 + people on a limited budget sometimes rice and beans will  not cut it (particularly when 3 months pregnant) I had heard whispers between the bunks late at night before I had ever seen her. It seemed that every time I went to find her she had just left, until one magical day when she was there “Egg Sandwich Lady” at side of the road making her infamous egg sandwiches for a line of weary, sunburnt North Americans. Now this is one of those times where you need to throw words like “hygiene” and “sanitary” out the window and just enjoy the moment, a perfectly prepared egg sandwich on a dirty, dusty, forgotten road in Haiti.

Caipirinha, Brasil

Technically this isn’t a food. And I didn’t eat it as much as drink many of them. Many, many, many of them during my two weeks in Brasil. And sure they led me to say things I may not have normally said, or dance when I normally would not have danced, or cause me to claim me that I am 23 when I am clearly not 23, or break out into Spanish when I really don’t know much Spanish (this is probably very annoying when you are Brazilian and you speak Portuguese) However, I hold this drink at least partially responsible for the most fun, craziest, ridiculous, fuzzily recollected two weeks that I ever had.

Plan B

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A few weeks ago I was at a friends’ house and we were discussing plan Bs. What happens if you lose your job or something big happens and you have to start over? Going over my plan B in painstaking details is one of my favourite hobbies, but the conversation got me thinking, now that baby makes three did I have to review my plan Bs?

1.       The Revolution

A few years ago I read a book called The Americano about an ordinary, slightly boring American man that moved to Cuba during the revolution and fought along side Che and Castro. In his American life, he was unremarkable, unsuccessful and unremembered but in Cuba he rose through the ranks and became admired and respected. Despite the fact that he met a less than ideal end (firing quad) I am undeterred, going into the jungle and fighting along side “the people” in some Spanish speaking country seemed right up my alley. I am fairly confident that Kayan would transition nicely from our apartment in the Westend to the heat and humidity of South America. He likes the outdoors and prefers to spend all day in his carrier which of course would be a required as we outrun and outwit the government. My bigger problem with this fantasy is that currently there are no revolutions going on in countries I am keen on visiting. I require sun, a beach, cheap rum and preferably singsong Spanish to entice me into combat.

2.       Into the Wild

I spent my early years in a house that my Dad built with no indoor plumbing or electricity so I always view this plan B as a return to my roots. Sure there are inconveniences eg no Starbucks or sushi places but am sure that the satisfaction that I would have from crafting everything myself and living off the land would eventually  squash my need for the term "venti".  Kayan would be homeschooled which would be slightly problematic for him as he would gain a good understanding of what led to the break up of the Beattles but never learn algebra. However I think there is a good argument for why one is more relevant than the other.

3.     

S  Swiss Family Robinson

Ok, so maybe I don’t really want to be ship wrecked but I would love to move down to South America and run a little B & B. This has been a daydream of mine for years and on a weekly basis i scan the real estate section for plots of land or little houses for sale. Investigating the political situation in different countries and reading up on their foreign ownership laws is a daily ritual for me. Occasionally I wonder how I would find the time to cook and clean for my guests when right now I sometimes struggle to do that just for the three of us  but am sure it would come in time. Kayan would make friends with the local children, and maybe he would be like the kids I saw in Brasil who knew how to surf by the time they were three or four. This is the one that makes me the most excited for him because whenever i see kids in South America they always seem so free. It feels more like how I grew up without the constant wave of scheduled activities, car pools and obsessive toy collecting that seem to fill most children’s days now. 

It is possible that if any of these plan Bs came to fruition  that i would be daydreaming of my current life while  hiding in the jungle or while making me own butter in candle light. I would think about taking Kayan for walks around the seawall, or the way just steps from my door I can experience a variety of world cuisine. I would think about the night runs over the Burrard street bridge when the city seems so peaceful or the Friday nights when it seems less so.  Everything I have now would seem like a pretty great plan B .

St. Patrick's Day Makes Me Feel Old

I love St. Patrick’s Day but it always makes me feel old. It reminds me of when I moved to Ireland at the age of 18 to be an au pair and lets face 18 is a long time ago now.   Anyone who says they still feel 18 need only to spend the afternoon with an actual 18 year old to realize just how not 18 they really are.

Moving to Ireland was my first real adult decision and probably the one that has shaped me the most. In the months leading up to the move my bestfriend and I had been planning an extensive post high school trip throughout Europe. We talked about it endlessly in class and I swear I told everyone I knew. My parents were surprisingly ok with me taking a year off before starting university, providing as my father put it “I did something interesting” .The plan was to work that summer and then leave in the fall. September, October and November came and went and we were still there. My friend backed out and I was facing an ultimatum from my parents either i get the heck out of town or I was going to school at the local community college in January. This was before the expression FML was in fashion but if it was am sure i would have woke up every day and said FML. Everywhere i went i ran into people who wanted to know what i was still doing in town.  I desperately wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave alone. I was the type of person that had all the same friends from elementary school,  we played on the same sports teams, got cast in the same plays and worked at the same jobs.  To be honest I wasn’t quite sure who I was if it wasn’t in relation somehow to one of them. One night in December i was online late at night and found a family in a village an hour outside of Dublin looking for a nanny. I had found my way out. I booked my ticket two days later and was gone just after the New Year.

My arrival in Ireland was a bit more bumpy than i imagined it would be. I didn’t have a work visa (this seems very obvious to me now but at the time was somehow very easy to overlook and to be fair the rule around needing a work visa had just changed on January 1^st) The immigration officer grilled me and threatened to send me back or to prison (i thought the Irish were supposed to be friendly?) In the end I told him he could send me back to Amsterdam where I had connect through– to which he replied “that Amsterdam is a horrible, horrible place” and reluctantly let me in. 

I could write so much about Ireland and everything i experienced there. I was one half house wife looking after two little girls during the day, gossiping with the other au pairs, watching bad irish daytime tv, ironing non stop (my family required that their underwear be ironed – underwear!) one half normal 18 year  old girl drinking (a lot) falling in “love” every 2^nd weekend with a new Irish boy (that accent stills kills me) and causing minor scandals in our  little village. The other au pairs and I took full advantages of the few weekends we had off to visit other towns to drink in new bars, meet new irish boys and cause scandal there. It was more than just fun though I made some life long friends there, two summers ago i travelled back to Finland to go to see a fellow au pair marry her Irish sweetheart.

Ireland taught me that if I really wanted something I couldn’t wait for someone else to give me the ok or to hold my hand, I had to just do it.  I learned that the first week and sometimes the second week was going to suck but eventually you meet people, settle in and soon you can’t imagine not having come.  If I hadn’t gone to Ireland, I may not have moved to Vancouver on my own the following year to go to University, may not have gone to work on the cruise ship where I met my husband. And of course just as importantly had I never gone to Ireland I may have never learned to drink.

Things like that

When you are growing up there are certain stories you hear over and over again about your parents courtship. As a little girl I used to ask for tales of their life before me and my brothers as my bedtime story. My dad was my mom’s baseball coach, she hated him because he changed her from catcher to third base, their first date was a concert which my father asked my mom to two months in advance. Another story I heard less but as I grew older seemed meatier was  that initially when my father proposed my mother said no or rather not yet since she was still just 19. Am not sure how the rest of the conversation or likely conversations went but i know there was some talk about my grandfathers ailing health and family pressures, the end result was my father told my mom that either they get married or he was going to Australia. Ultimately  my mom ended up proposing to him awhile later and she was married at the age of 20.  While the exact retelling of the story varies depending on the parent one thing they agree on, is that she should have told him to go. Maybe he would have left and return weeks later after wandering Sydney love sick and lonely. Things like that happen all the time. Or maybe he would have gone and they would have kept in touch for awhile before drifting apart and meeting other people. Things like that happen all the time.
 

My own story involves leaving instead of staying. When I was 26 I quit my job and left my apartment, friends and family to move to Bombay to be with Mehernosh. It sounds like a great sacrifice but if i am truthful my job was a mindless administrative position and I lived in a basement suite.  Besides I was sort of crazy about the guy and figured if I didn’t go I would always have that doubt in the back of my head, the constant “what if”.

It was basically a disaster from the time I arrive. We couldn’t get a place because we weren’t married, the one we did find flooded. We ended up living in a run down hotel, with a shared bathroom down the hall. The job I lined up before leaving ended up being horrible and I worked a series of bizarre jobs to make ends meet and to keep busy (those jobs are another post altogether). I got very sick. Mehernosh had unexpected surgery and had to move home while I stayed alone. There were bombings within days of my arrival and every conversation with my parents ended with my mother begging me to come home.  While the city was in turmoil, so were we. We loved each other but  . . . . suddenly my boring job and basement suite seemed very appealing.  There were financial and family pressures not to mention visa restrictions and long conversations about what we should do that lasted for days. Finally months later I decided to go home and Mehernosh decided to let me. When we said goodbye at the airport I don’t think I have ever felt so exhausted.   

It takes about a day to travel from Bombay to Vancouver and I don’t think there was a minute that I didn’t think about it. The moment I arrived in Vancouver I knew I could never leave him again and in Bombay he was thinking the same thing. We were married five months later in Costa Rica and will be married for four years this Saturday. The time that i spent in Bombay was probably some of the hardest of our relationship but I think it was also the best thing that could have ever happen to us, we know now what it feels like to let go of each other and we never want to do that again.  Things like “this” don’t happen all the time.

I Sometimes I Say Horrible Things

A friend of mine recently brought back some gifts for Kayan from Mexico. After presenting them he went on to say i should be cautious and use my judgement because he had bought them in Mexican markets and it was not as though the government of Canada had tested them for safety. To which i replied “well what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” I admit that i have a problem with saying horrible things but this is quite possibly the most horrible thing i have said in recent memory. Fortunately there was apparently no one from Children and Family services and my friend has a high tolerance for horrible things.

The thing is that may well have been my life outlook in regard to my own self  but really doesn’t reflect how i think about my sons well being. My response was i guess just sort of a reflex after years and years of having the motto of interesting things first and safety last life.  I am not an adrenaline junkie or anything it just sincerely never occurred to me to be scared or concern. It is probably because of this i am now having a hard time discerning just what i should care and not care about. Where exactly does danger lie?  Just a short time ago i was riding on the roof of old trucks down Haitian highways  still split apart from the earth quake and now i refuse to carry my son while wearing high heeled shoes in case i trip.  Following this logic i apparently believe that it is far more likely that something serious happen from tripping than from flying off the roof of truck on the highway.

We are going to India in May and i am obsessed with countless things about the trip. The car seat, the weather, the water, the cleanliness or lack and that everyone that touch him first submit to a full body scan to detect any diseases. Mehernosh is at a loss because this is not my first trip there and on the first three i never had a worry. I rode on motorcycles, took the public train days after bombings, regularly gave my hand to street people (i have no idea how i don’t have leprosy) and took great pleasure in seeing the real Bombay by eating at some of the most “rustic” restaurants. Now I want to bring our own bottle water because i don’t trust the ones processed in India.

Of course the greatest irony is that I do hope that Kayan grows up to be unafraid. I hope he gets to experience even more than I have and that he lets his intuition guide him. Some of my best memories are of walking through the Favelas in Rio or getting lost in a less than desirable town on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. I hope Kayan has great adventures but he better not tell me about them.

A Monday Night on The Drive

When you are about to have a child, or have just had one it seems that peoples favourite thing to do is tell you all the things that are about to change. I won’t go into detail here the list of changes that i had been warned about because to be honest it is annoying. Even the if teller is well intentioned and accurate any statement about what to expect is irritating. Or maybe it was that everyone was telling me about all the practical things that would change and i am at my core a highly impractical person

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Tonight I went to a birthday of a good friend of mine. She is smart, charming and sweet the type of person that you sincerely want to celebrate with. Without fail celebrating her birthday usually means doing something interesting. This year’s celebration was at Cafe Deux Soleil for the youth poetry slam. Immediately upon entering i am made painfully aware that i must be 100 years old and wonder how all these 12 year olds are allowed to order alcohol. The poetry starts however and i quickly forget just how prepubescent all these rounded young faces look because their poetry is good. It is very good. It is funny it is sad, it is tragic. Like every teenager ever it is perfectly self conscious, self obsessed and self righteous.

As I am watching a funny thing happens. When i was young of course i wrote poetry. It was awful, seeing these kids tonight makes me realize how awful. In the past seeing these kids would unhinge waves of nostalgia and i would spend the night remembering my teenage years. I may even wake up mehernosh when i got home just so i would have someone to share my memories with. But tonight things are different, instead of thinking about myself and my past all i can think of is Kayan. Would he come to something like this?  Nervously read a love poem obviously written about the curly haired girl at his table? Or would he be like the boy at the front table and practically explode on stage with his confidence like some sort of frat boy. Would he like the strange punk girl or would he prefer the petit girl who wrote a poem about her guitar and made me blush with the unexpected use of the f word.  Suddenly for the first time i am seeing things not as some reflection of my life and experiences but as possibilities of his might be. For the first time it is not about me. It is these types of impractical unexpected things that everyone forgets to mention.