Senior's Day at Shopper's

Grey, gloomy drizzle out there - mild, though. In a bit, I'll put on something sparkly and, carrying champagne and chocolates, walk over to Bill's Lobsters on Gerrard, to pick up some live lobsters. Then I'll cab to Louise Binder's who will cook them for herself and friends. I'm such a hypocrite - I hate carting these creatures to their deaths so am telling myself that their lives aren't worth living in that crowded little tank. Being eaten by an appreciative crowd is better? I guess I could take them to Lake Ontario and set them free, but that wouldn't make me very popular with Louise.

Watched the annual Kennedy Center Honors the other night, which gave recognition and a medal for lifetime artistic achievement to Dave Brubeck, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, Robert deNiro and Grace Bumbry. I haven't watched the event for years because it meant having to look at George Bush, who wouldn't understand an artistic achievement if it bit him in the butt. But the beautiful new couple - they understand. What joy to see them there, elegant and appreciative, Michelle sitting next to Springsteen, nodding and clapping, Obama moving his head to the music.

It made me proud, for the first time in decades, to carry an American passport as well as a Canadian. All of those great artists are uniquely American, could not be from any other country. What other country could produce the broad and goofy Jewish comedy of Mel Brooks or, especially, the downhome honesty and ache of Bruce Springsteen, working class rocker hero?

The speech honouring Springsteen was given with meaning and grace by another uniquely American artist, our beloved Jon Stewart. Springsteen is a man, he said, who in every performance "empties the tank" - for his family, his audience, his country. And I thought, even praising an artist for emptying the tank is particularly American. Springsteen's handsome, weathered face, with his earrings, soul patch and jutting lower jaw, was so beautiful, shone with such empathy and gravitas as he listened to Stewart and then to musicians like Sting perform his music, that it was hard to look at him. Michelle Obama didn't have any trouble looking at him, though.

And below, in the audience, a relaxed Meryl Streep, Donald Sutherland, Alan Alda, Philip Seymour Hoffman and many others - artists who must feel they've crossed an endless desert to the Promised Land. A troubled Promised Land, but my God, so much better than the desert. The best event of 2009, for me and IMHO for the planet - the election of President Barack Obama - and his wife and children and mother-in-law, and the dog too.

Last night on PBS, I watched another mundane, flat little trifle - Tosca, from the Met.

Today, you will be happy to know, is Senior's Day at Shopper's Drug Mart. What a way to bring in the New Year - shopping with my elderly neighbours, even though I'm much, much too young to get the 20% off. They gave it to me anyway, for French anti-ageing moisturisers and a heating pad. It makes me feel 100 years old just thinking about it. But there's a racy new lipstick, too, for tonight's lobster.

It was a good year for me, with short trips to Halifax, New York, Florida and Ottawa, and my spectacular journey through Europe. Not so good for my children, especially my son. I hope his star is in the ascendant, and his sister's too. Am I allowed to hope, selfishly, that mine continues its steady upward course? And that yours does too, my dear readers? One of you sent me this very nice message the other day, as a welcome New Year's gift:

I take a drink daily from your blog, and enjoy the words you choose to share with people like me who you don't even know. I have had more fun reading your blog than I can say. Thanks for all you share ... I count myself lucky to be included.

And another wrote, "I'm really enjoying your recent instalments and wonder whether you could turn your blog into a book. Could be the makings of one anyway. You just need a central dramatic event or spiritual awakening around which it could revolve."

I thank you, Pamela and Ellen. Thank you all for reading. As my beloved Wayson likes, often, to say: ONWARD! Onward into 2010. Happy New Year. Even to the crabby cat lying curled up beside me, who has barely moved a whisker for all of 2009. Happy New Year to us all.

Hell

Sometimes, in years past, my mother and aunt have flown in for Christmas. How grateful I am that they didn't this year, because, thanks to the new terrorist bomber, their way back would have been excruciating. The reports from the airport speak of eight hour line-ups, infuriated passengers weeping on the counters, exhausted children falling asleep on their suitcases in the lines.

But it is terrifying to think that in this day and age, someone could have entered a plane carrying enough explosives, apparently, to knock it out of the air. There's a picture of Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab in the paper this morning, a cheerfully smiling, handsome, bright-eyed young man. And a fiend. There's another article in the paper about anti-Muslim prejudice in Canada, how hard it is for immigrants from Muslim countries to get jobs. It will be even harder now, with this fresh wound.

Read a review of a new book called Hell, by Robert Olen Butler, in which a reporter goes undercover to Hell, to interview the people there. He is chauffeured around by Richard Nixon in a 1948 Cadillac. Satan himself, wearing Armani jeans and packing heat, speaks to him. "Everybody down here has father issues," he says. One day, Umar Farouk will join them.

At the end of Hell, the reporter concludes that life is "Hell for everyone. We are all utterly alone, but we are alone together."

Bitterly cold out there, with a layer of new snow. I was alone with much togetherness yesterday. Friend Anne-Marie came over to bring me the first CD from Flashlight Radio, Nancy White's daughter Suzie's band. Now that's a thrill, if another indication of our age - our friend's children becoming rock stars. Sam came over for another Xmas dinner and to take away his container of leftovers, mostly mashed potatoes; Anna came over ditto, her container mostly stuffing. She helped me - hooray! - take down the tree and sweep up needles. Put away the stuffed Rudolph and the little carved Ark, the Xmas books piled on the coffee table, the Messiah CD, the Noels hanging in the windows, the pine cone wreath at the centre of the dining table, the rows of cards on the sideboard. It's over. I've left the wreath on the front door and the lights on the eavestroughs, so I don't seem like a total Grinch; most of my neighbours leave their decorations up until Valentine's Day. But I am moving briskly along.

My usual television dilemma last night, two very good programs on simultaneously, and because I didn't get the handyperson for Christmas, I've no idea how to save programs on my DVD player. (Sorry, Bruce. I know you set it all up for me, but you're not here to show me again.) So I flipped back and forth between the classic Arsenic and Old Lace, which I'd somehow never seen, with Cary Grant doing a delightful comic turn - George Clooney really is the Cary Grant of our age, it's startling to see these incredibly handsome men eager to make fools of themselves and do so skilfully - and a documentary on Little Women's Louisa May Alcott on PBS. Loved the movie but luckily, when it ended, got a full half hour just of Louisa's amazing story. She was far more successful financially than the renowned male novelists of her time like Henry James and Herman Melville. She lived all her life at home. And she died within a day of her adored father.

Maybe souls in heaven have father issues, too.

and now, a few words from our entertaining readers

Bruce emailed indignantly to complain about my Xmas day blog, in which I described our "Vancouver Christmas here in Toronto - pouring with rain, chilly and sodden." Apparently their day was actually cold and very sunny. I wrote back that we Easterners need to think that it's always raining in Lotusland, because otherwise, why aren't we living there?

Penny wrote from England about her Xmas, driving around England to visit family, on ...

The M6. Worst motorway in Britain. It took nine hours to do a journey that should have been no longer than three. There were so many cars. They said on the radio that half of the population was on the move at once. They were all on the M6. I know. I was there too.

But it was worse for those stranded under the channel when six consecutive Eurostar trains stalled and broke down in the tunnel because of the abrupt change in temperature, and for those people marooned at airports, stuck on icy hills with no grit or snowed in at shopping centres. The excuse this time was that our climate is normally so "benign" that it is not worth the investment to prepare for bad weather.

You'd think we were the tropics, not the land where Charles Dickens invented Christmas.

Penny and I rode the M6 during our summer trip together. I read an entire history of England out loud to her while we sat.

Mr. Choy wrote from Vancouver, where he is working and visiting family, including his aunt Mary who is suffering from Alzheimer's and in a home:

We share a dining table with a new friend of hers - a gentle and loving soul like Mary, also ravaged by Alzheimer's but who is less chatty and much more sensitive (a cantakerous elderly lady with a twisted hawkish face had scorned her at another dinner table, "I don't like you" - and Doreen left and could not stop her own tears.)

Family visitors to this place look sympathetically towards each other, as if we belonged to some kind of secret society. Thank heavens, almost every one of the staff here are carefully trained and behave professionally towards their charges. As for me, at odd times it feels like the Chinese Water Torture, each endlessly repeated question, one drop at a time, or it seems with great hilarity that Mary, Doreen and I take part in an animated conversation, a brilliant rerun of "Who's on third?!"

I keep sane each time I recall what Karl said to me when I was short with my father (at 85), "Wayson, you're going to be worse!"

I don't think so. Not a wonderfully vibrant mind like that.

A quiet, solitary Sunday for moi, though the day was so mild, I could not resist riding my bike to Laywine's, one of my favourite stores, to see if their pens, papers, notepads, organisers and calendars were on sale. They weren't, but I bought a new notebook anyway. Not that I don't have a stack of notebooks, but this was a new kind, with dun-coloured pages and WHITE LINES. Very different. Perhaps different writing will emerge upon it.

Then couldn't resist popping into a store or two on Bloor, but it was just too silly. I don't need anything. Well, I'd like a spiffy new bike, that would be nice, and a new roof, and a woman can always use a new handbag and shoes. But mostly, I realised yesterday, the greatest gift I could receive would be a new handyman or handywoman. A person who understands plumbing, wiring, electrical devices, major appliances, remote controls, computers and everything else, who'd come over at a moment's notice to fix and set up and sort out. That would be a true present. Had a long talk with my daughter yesterday, and she wants one too.

However, none of those were for sale at the Gap on Bloor.

Boxing Day rain

We had a Vancouver Christmas here in Toronto - pouring with rain, chilly and sodden. Pretty miserable. A perfect day to stay home, welcome friends and prepare and eat an enormous quantity of rich food, so that's what we did.

And now, all I want to do is take down the tree and move right along. It's done, it's over, we got through another one without killing each other ... No, it's not like that any more, we all get along now. Christmas used to be a mountain I had to climb, an enormous, month-long hurdle of present finding, choosing, buying, wrapping, then cards, food, making arrangements for family members, ensuring that everyone, from young to old, was as happy as possible - no wonder my uncle thought I was distraught. I was exhausted, frantic, unable to enjoy the festivities as I worried about everything. Crazy. No more.

But still, I want to take down the tree RIGHT NOW, reclaim my living room and my life. What a sourpuss. The two of us are lying here on the kitchen divan, side by side, the sourpuss with whiskers, claws and fur, and the pink one without.

It's dark and gloomy and pouring with rain. Time for a large plate of leftovers. That will cheer me up.

It's a Wonderful Christmas Pageant

Merry Christmas! It's 9.20 a.m. There was a time when we'd be knee-deep in wrapping and ribbons by now, excited children dancing around with empty stockings and new toys, me trying vainly to calm them down and keep the house in order, to get ready for the big meal to come. In our Christmas box are little notes I wrote after each Xmas in those early days: "Greetings from Xmas 1986!," one says, describing who was there and what was happening. I wrote that my uncle Edgar, who'd flown in from New York, scolded me for being so tense. "Stand outside yourself," he said, "and ask, 'Who's that silly woman getting so distraught?'"

A silly woman with a difficult family, two small children, a house full of leaks and very little self-confidence, that's who she was. She was 36 that year and had noticed a few grey hairs. Yesterday, I needed some things at Shopper's Drugmart, and the woman at the cosmetics counter advised me to wait till next Thursday. "It's Senior's Day," she said. "You'll get 20% off."

"I'm only 59!" I wanted to shout, but didn't. I'll gladly take the 20%. Not "that silly woman" any more, not distraught, but considerably older.

Last night, the oddest thing happened - I had my own George Bailey, It's a Wonderful Life moment. As I've mentioned here repeatedly, for nine years friends and I ran the Christmas pageant at Riverdale Farm on Xmas Eve, an exhausting but very rewarding endeavour. Last year, the first year we handed it over to another group, I was sick, so yesterday was my first time going as an audience member to an event that matters deeply. It's not the birth of Jesus that's important for me, it's the community gathering, the singing of beloved hymns, and especially the moment when the barn doors open. We enter that pungent, hayseed room filled with animals, to find a family with a baby sitting in the straw, behind them angels, shepherds, wise men, the star. Last night, I was going to see another team pull it off.

Suddenly by my watch it was 6.40; the pageant starts at 7, so I pulled on many layers and rushed off. Nearing the farm, I couldn't understand where everyone was - usually, the audience is streaming in. The main farm gate, open during the pageant, was locked, so I went around to the other one. No one in the courtyard; the drive-shed, where the event begins, was also locked. Everything silent, dark and empty. My watch said 7 p.m. What had happened? Had they cancelled, for some reason? This is what the Farm looked like on Xmas Eve, I realised, before our community pageant filled it with song and neighbourhood.

Stephen appeared. No, everything was on track; I was an hour early. It was 6 p.m. I looked again at my watch, which now said 7.05. It was running perfectly, just an hour fast. How can a watch suddenly be fast? I set it back, went home, and came back an hour later to be part of the huge crowd - perhaps 500 people or more this year, from babies to the very elderly, from people in fur coats to our neighbours from Regent's Park, there to sing and celebrate together.

All kinds of things went wrong, as usual, but it didn't matter. It was a perfect night, calm and bright, everything shining with a dusting of new snow. The baby in the barn was particularly beautiful and serene. When I left, I watched two grandsons with their arms around their frail, very old grandmother, helping her up the snowy path.

My watch is working perfectly. 10 a.m., it says now. Sam is asleep upstairs; Anna landed safely and will come over before noon. The presents are waiting. Time for another cup of coffee, and then I'll stuff the bird.

Joy to the world.