from happyrobot - updated 5/22/2013 4:49:05 PM http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp en-us http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10474 1) Don't know how stuff works? Ask questions. No one will think you are stupid for asking obvious questions. They might, however, judge you if you don't know those answers one year into the gig. Ask questions. Ask them now.

2) This might sound obvious, but take some time to think about what you want to do and who you want to be. Don't just follow your bliss or the people you dig. Plan a little and really think about whether you'll be comfortable with the values and challenges tied to the area you're working in. Indulge your imagination in big words like "legacy". 

3) If you are pretty sure you're in the right field for you, imagine the future of your industry 5 years from now, and point your efforts in that direction.

4) Think about how you will age in your field. Are there any 50 or 60-something women there? Why not? Do you want to change that?

5) Don't bitch with your colleagues about your co-workers if at all possible. It's a slow-seeping poison that feels good at first, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth and keeps you frozen in a point of conflict. If you need to vent, save the bitching for someone who does not work with you, like your boyfriend.

6) No matter how much smarter you think you are than your boss, you arrogant sop, it's still your job to make them look good.

7) Sometimes you need to manage your manager. Manage their expectations, teach them how to manage you. Let them know what you are up to each week. Give them honest and clear feedback when possible. Acknowledge when honest dialogue is not possible and quietly look for other work.

8) Take criticism. Ask for it. Learn from it. Don't get defensive, even when you think it's way off. Ask yourself if your indignation is your ego. Then wait 24 hours and ask yourself again.

9) You won't always share the values of the people you work with, but it's really important to find reasons you respect them. Because it makes works so much better. And because people can always sniff out your contempt.

10) Have a rich social life outside of work, with people you don't work with every day. Because some friendships dry up when you leave a workplace.

11) Bring your lunch, but take a break.

12) Do your job, but spend some extra time getting good at the thing you are interested in.  You know how they tell politicians to answer the questions you wish you'd been asked? Sometimes, you have to do the job you wish you'd been given. You'll be surprised at the kinds of opportunities to learn stuff outside of your specific job description. This will serve you well in your next job.

13) You can have all the smarts and creativity in the world, but without a method in place, you won't get to put those great ideas into action. Establish systems and processes for each job that help you manage your time and map your projects. Take  the ones that worked from that job into your next one.

14) Once a quarter, try something new that hasn't been done before in your position. This could be social facilitation (organize a pub night/book club) or a new project.

15) Be kind. You spend most of your waking hours in this place. Spread a little love. Don't dominate with your moods.

16) Don't get frozen and stuck in one position, just because it's comfortable. Movement is always a good thing, and it's also expected. Be open and curious about job change (this does not mean you have to be scheming).

17) Sometimes everything comes together in a workplace. Great gig, great people, good pay. Celebrate this moment while it lasts.

18) Sometimes everything is just a few degrees off, and isn't the right fit for you. Give it a reasonable chance, but don't stick around trying to fix it, thinking it will get better. Like anything in life, some things are just not the right fit, even though they have some good parts.

19) Work hard. And this sounds lame, but there's this thing called optics. You need to also be perceived as working hard, but not sweating it. On some level, everywhere you work, people get competitive over who on the team is the hardest worker. Don't play that game but be able to quantify your progress in a meaningful way and remember the first part - work hard, demonstrate you are working hard, but don't look like you are sweating it.

20) You are not your job. But there is always some pride to be had in doing your job well, even if the job is 'not your thing'. Be gracious.

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10454 I love riding my bike and doing tricks. I could do it really fast.
Some of my tricks are going in circles.

Yesterday or the day before I rode my bike at Dufferin Grove. I really liked going to the skateboard place to ride my bike. I was with my mom and dad. We made a new friend. it was a girl. She was 5. Her name is Mia. I told her that she rides her bike really well.



]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10439 I had 10 whole days without going to an office, and after this sweet taste, every fibre of my being struggled with clipping on my security badge and walking in my cloppy heels into the office.

I want to stay outside from sunrise to bed time. I want to feel my skin smooth from sand, I want my hair to smell like lake, my skin to feel browned. I want to get tired from being outside. I want to bask under thick stars and massive moon. Summer, I love you.

We went camping at Sharbot Lake with the lovely Dave, Abi and Iris. You can see some pics of it here. I want G to be able to be naked all summer long and learn to swim underwater. I want him to catch more fireflies.

I went to yoga class in the daytime. Apparently there is a whole world of people who can go to yoga class in the daytime. Who knew? The class was packed. If I were rich and unemployed, I would go to yoga every day and eat big salads at concept restaurants.

Chris and I biked to the Toronto islands one day. The ferry, the slower pace, the fresh air. The urban horizon on one side, the utterly serene great lake vista from Gibraltar point from the other. Take a day off work. Lie in the sand. Bike from Ward's to Hanlan's Point and back again. Stop in the middle to ride a ferris wheel.

I went to a memorial for an old friend who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in his sleep. There were people from high school who knew him way back when. There were his new friends from his anarchist communal household who were part of his day-to-day life. It was so good to hear how much he was loved. He was wonderfully odd, I always worried the world wouldn't have a place from someone wired like him, but it did.

I read - I picked up A Visit From the Goon Squad and sat myself down for lunch in an oasis-like patio in the middle of the market.

I swam in 2 public pools. Oh, the humanity. Why do change rooms smell like feet? Why do large bald tattooed men need to spit in pools?

I talked to G about all the flags on Canada day, which was also the Eurocup final and Gay Pride. So many flags! I found myself trying to explain LGBT rights to my 5-year old and wondering how much he could grasp. I wrote this of the Facebook, but as a parent you don't want to preach your beliefs, you want your kid to use intellect and compassion to arrive at their own truths. So our first stab at it was "People should be able to love who they love, and be who they want to be without other people making laws about it" and he blew us away with this response: "You don't know how other people feel, cuz you're not in their bodies".

Also, that day was my mom's yartzeit. I am, according to tradition, no longer officially a mourner. I am not religious, but I went to synagogue for the 11th of Tammuz, her date of death last year according to the Hebrew calendar. And to borrow from Mourner's Kaddish, that speaks of healing, redemption and forgiveness: "May there be abundant peace from heaven, and good life".


]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10432 We like to reward our Hollywood starlets for 'going ugly' and for taking their limited tenure of firm body and uncrevassed faces and slapping on prosthetics to transform into monsters. How brave. How modest. How bold.

Last night I was re-watching "I am Love" a gorgeous Italian movie starring that wonderfully odd bird, Tilda Swinton, known for her angular androgyny and distaste for make-up.

In this movie she plays a matriarch in a wealthy old-money Milanese family. And she is a luminous, fragile beauty, decked out in Jill Sanders. I was blown away by her performance and the fact that she learned to speak Italian (with a Russian accent!) for the film. But what was most radical - more radical than any acknowledged beauty dressing down - was her decision to 'go beautiful'.  It's shocking. And so lovely. Take a look at the trailer.
]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10423 Hey, remember this? About 10 years ago, I showed my new boyfriend off to the internets.
He took me out to try fish for the first time. It was unusual for me to post pics of myself or others, as it was pre-facebook and I was keen on this archaic notion of privacy. But I was dating a super-fox. And I kind of wanted to let the world know.

10 years later, I still think he's a superfox silverfox. Biking home from work today, I came across Harbord Fish and Chips. I called him up and we were soon swept up in nostalgic reverie. "Let's eat there tonight!" Spot the little monkey behind him....



]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10410 When was a kid, I didn't have the best penmanship, but it was my own.But I lost my own style when I began forging notes in my mom's handwriting style in order to skip school. 

I skipped school a lot, but not in the way that makes for exciting stories. Mostly I liked to spend time by myself, to take a break from the intensity of teenage-dom. I would spend afternoons watching movies, in used book stores and - this is something I have always loved but never do anymore - eating in restaurants alone. With a book. Pre-cellphone, no distractions, leaning over bowls of noodles in chinatown and splattering a paperback novels.

But back to the notes and the forged script. I got so good at faking my mom's handwriting that I kind of forgot how to do my own. After hours of practice, and long after I got caught, her shaky illegible scrawl consumed my own evolving, passable cursive. I still write like my mom, all these years later. Although you might argue that I should just own it, already.

There's a lesson in this somewhere. I think about anything you try on in order to pass yourself on as someone else. Eventually even that fake stuff gets absorbed, sometimes it overtakes you, and you forget how you used to do it - what was authentic to you.

But there's hope in here. You can rewire parts of yourself to be good things, too, right? More patient, generous, attentive. Try it on for size. Practice the looping I's and the disjointed K's. Soon you'll have a whole new hand.]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10387 The thing about traveling is you remember to look at the sky.

Tonight, the last day of 38, I remember the nights of February 6th when I was not home. When I was in another hemisphere, even, staying up late to greet the sun.

I remember the poetry that brought me to those places, those times.

In Spain, a Jaques Prevert poem brought me to Alicante for my birthday:
Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans ma lit

Doux present du present
Fraicheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie

Christy and I watched the sun rise on the beach after a long train ride. Then we went to sleep and woke up to hundreds of doves cooing in the church across the courtyard. She had gone out and bought an orange. And put it on my bedside table.

In Jerusalem the next year, I met a French boy. He actually turned out to be a bit of bad news, but he taught me a poem fragment by Paul Eluard: La terre est bleu comme une orange. You’ve probably heard this one before. I hadn't. I thought it was beautiful and told him so.

In an effort to...er...court me (despite his undisclosed girlfriend) he left a lump of modeling clay and an orange on a table beside my bed.

For my 20th birthday eve that year, it was the Jewish Holiday of the trees, a beautiful if obscure holiday called Tu Bishvat, where (and this is a Kabbalistic interpretation) you celebrate trees as an intersection of the earthly (roots) and spiritual (branches stretching to the sky) and eat special foods mentioned in the bible.

We walked all night to the old city, our backpacks filled with dried fruits, oranges, nuts. And ate it on a rooftop overlooking the Western Wall as the sun rose and prayers rang out. It was sublime. The sky was so beautiful. Everything gold.

This year, I am in my Toronto home. I have been here for many years. I don’t travel much these days. I shuffle back and forth from work with headphones on. My office faces another building. I shrug off the cold and look at the ground.

But this year, once again, my birthday coincides with the holiday of the trees. And it being a lunar calendar, you can count on a fat, full moon in the sky tomorrow night. In fact, it was looking pretty close to bursting when I walked home on this evening, and lifted my head up to see it beaming through the bare branches.

My mother often told me about the day I was born that morning in ’73 after 26 hours of labour, how my great-grandmother Rose came to the hospital, held me in her arms and pronounced “a little ray of sunshine”. I made her tell that story to me every year. No matter how complicated our relationship was, I knew her love was full, beaming.

Back to Spain. I saw Christy the other day. The first time in ages. She surprised me with tickets to a play, out of the blue. She asked about my mom, and out of nowhere the big teary lump came up and I had to bite my lip and force it down again. “Remember when we traveled together?” said Christy. “She was right there with us. The whole time. She loved our adventure. She was so excited for us."

Back to the French boy. One day I was riding the bus in Jerusalem, some weeks after our sunrise on the rooftop. I hadn’t seen him since. I was looking out the window, daydreaming and wondering when we’d see the last rain of the season. And he came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you are looking at ze sky! So important.”

“Of course I am looking at the sky.” I said to him impatiently. He was so prescriptive and pretentious with his French poetry and inappropriate courtships. “I always look at the sky.”






]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10381


Dear Gabriel,

More than five years ago, I wrote in a post: "Not too long form now, I will have a boy who is five.” And here we are.

Five years ago exactly, we were home form the hospital, lying in bed, trying to figure each other out. There was nothing else in the world more beautiful than being with you, right there, in that bed, surrounded by people we love.

How are you at 5? You love to build. The first thing you do when you get to daycare is run to the carpet and start building ‘ships’ with your friends with those plastic modular connectors.

And I don’t want to project, but I think you might be having your first crushes. Remind me to tell you about the little girl at your birthday party you tried to impress with your skating pratfalls. Should the time come when you are really interested in girls, let’s hope you’ve debunked the “little girls don’t poop” idea you got in your head this year.

You are lucky to have your dad’s effortless sporto gene. You leap right in there with the big kids with any sport.. The best part? You really like to play hard, and you love it if you win, but you shrug it off with a smile if you lose. I love that. It’s so hard to be a good sport at 5.

Suddenly, this month you are reading - sounding out words with a mixture of skill and guesswork. Where did that come from? You’re not even in Senior Kindergarten yet. Is this supposed to be happening now?

Your vocabulary is massive - you just genuinely like to play with language, testing new words and phrasing out where no other words will fit (you also have a fake language that sounds distinctly like Elvish from Lord of the Rings. But I digress).

You remember song lyrics, poetry. We can sit in the car for half an hour going over a really pretty poem, and you will repeat it back to me perfectly and I try not to get too excited about that because I don’t want to ruin the fun (and be that obnoxious parent who teaches pre-schooler Shakespeare sonnets). You love the Bone comic books and Roald Dahl novels. I can’t wait to curl up with you on the sofa, each of us reading our own book. Is that a weird fantasy? The whole family in one room reading together?

You are an awesome artist with an eccentric style – you often start drawing feet first, and connect everything later. It’s wild. And beautiful.

You want to know magic tricks that will astound people. You keep saying “close your eyes” so that you can pull off some “magic trick” when our eyes are finally open. Usually you don’t even know what that trick will be before you begin. Truthfully, it’s getting tedious. There, I said it. By the time you read this, I hope you’ll have a sense of humour about it. Enough with asking us to close our eyes all the time!

You climbed into the bath with me the other morning. “This is nice” you said, as you stretched out beside me and we listened to music. I still wrap you in a towel after your bath and sing you a song. It’s less your special song, these days, but more “Aeoroplane Over the Sea” or “Buckets of Rain”..

Little Red Wagon
Little Red Bike
I ain’t no monkey, but I know what I like.

When grandma was sick last year everything changed in our home. It must have been really hard for you to know what to do, how to feel. I ask you about it sometimes, but despite all your amazing words, it’s hard to find the right ones to assign to feelings.That doesn't change as you get older. It's still hard to describe feelings.

At grandma’s funeral, you wordlessly came up to me and covered me with kisses after I gave the eulogy. And the other day, on the chalkboard, “I drew you these beautiful flowers so that you could look at them when you feel sad about grandma”.

There are not words to describe what it is to have you in my life, how much easier, real-er, and happier everything is. The other day you were playing with the ‘I love you up to the sky’ game and you said, “I love you so much that it’s nothing.”

I worry, sometimes, that in painting this portrait of near-perfection both here and in real life, that maybe there is too much praise, too much love. That you will get the dreaded only child syndrome, and never be able to take criticism. But for now, I’m hedging my bets on the idea that knowing you are smart, fun, and so ridiculously cherished and loved will make you feel secure, confident, generous and filled with love.

 1 - 2– 3 - 4



]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10362 Comic Books

Asterios Polyp - David Mazzucchelli
My old co-worker Mark recommended this for Chris, and when he was done, I snagged it. Visually, it is stunning, with a style unlike anything I've ever seen in a graphic novel. The story itself explores the ideas of duality in both art and life, often concept vs. sentiment. But forget the ponce talk. It's just beautiful. A love story. A journey. Read it.

Paying For it - Chester Brown
Man decides to eschew traditional romantic intimacy in favour of paying for sex with prostitutes. From his first encounter to his final, more lasting relationship, he maintains a detached attention to detail and pedantic approach that reminds me of certain hackers I've known. But this cerebral documentation surprisingly contains (not sure whether it's always intentional) emotional information (despite the fact that he obscures all the faces of the sex workers).

Sweet Tooth
I got totally sucked into Jeff Lemire's dystopian serial about children born as animal-human hybrids, (the only people immune to a deadly plague that has decimated the human population) and the former hockey enforcer who tries to save them from the mad scientists. I don't know if you will like this, but I do.

Books

The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Cory recommended this on  BoingBoing a little while ago as a wizard school story for grown ups. I have a soft spot for books where people do magic, I do. It contains homages to Harry Potter and Narnia and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  It's not a perfect book by any means, but I snatched up the sequel this boxing day and can't wait to return to the messed up, dark world of Fillory.

Blue Nights - Joan Didion
Even talking about the loss of a child is like touching hot coals for me; I have to pull away before I make contact. But when I saw Joan Didion's latest novel - in which she chronicles the loss of her daughter - knew I had to push through that narrative.  And it didn't kill me. It was poetry.

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Sarah leant this to me when I needed a light read. And it was so. much. fun. Mostly I loved it for the 12 year old in me and I wish I had found it at that age. Find yourself a young teen girl and gift this book to her! (Or really, just read it yourself).

The Believers - Zoe Heller
I had never read anything by Zoe Heller before this. But it was savagely funny, smart, and totally compelling. When the patriarch of a famous family of New York Lefties is struck down by a stroke, his wife and kids have to figure out what they still stand for, what they believe in. The caustic, destructive mother, the dogma-addicted daughter who turns to religion, and the self-loathing daughter who sublimates with danishes - they have stuck around my head since I read this, and I can still hear their banter.

The Family Fang - By Kevin Wilson
You know this is going to be a hit movie. You should read it now so that you can be blase when Wes Anderson puts it in theatres. Two kids raised by performance artists (who incorporated their children into their controversial public performances from birth), try to strike out on their own. With mixed results. Quirky. Funny. And not obnoxious (thought the movie is certain to be).

Cookbooks

Although I do eat meat, I get obsessed with vegetarian cookbooks. Last year, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian had me fixated - and this year it has been the two Ottolenghi books - the eponymous volume (which has meat recipes) and Plenty, which has a collection of sweet vegetable and grain dishes. If you have not seen them, you live in a cave.

10 years ago, every veg-centric cookbook had you stocking your larder with sun-dried tomatoes, chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce, quick-cooking polenta and balsamic reduction. In 2011, cookbooks demand you keep your fridge stocked with a fresh selection of herbs, greek yogurt, buttermilk, pomegranate (fresh and molasses) and maldon sea salt. 

Kid's Books

I have loved reading with Gabriel this year. We devoured "James and the Giant Peach" together, and he seemed to get it, and love it,  so now we're on to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". We're also reading the BONE comic series, which is a bit old for him, but he keeps demanding more.
When my mom was in palliative care this summer I was looking for a book that talked about death, but was for children. That dealt with the spiritual plane but didn't have religious homilies. I put the question out there on Facebook, and was surprised to find that a friend, Sheila,  had just received copies of her first children's book, the beautiful "We Need a Horse". She brought it over to my home that day. Wise, dreamy, beautifully illustrated. It was perfect.

What have your favourite reads been this year?


]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10351 Any rock and roll band worth their salt knows that Little Drummer Boy is the only song they can get away with singing on that Christmas compilation. Everything else has too much icing.

I was doing a little holiday shopping when the song "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time - Paul McCartney's shockingly unironic attempt at thrusting one of his compositions into the Christmas music pantheon - came over the sound system.

And it occurred to me. This song needs to have a skewering punk rock makeover. In fact, it demands it.

But when you look a little closer, every carol has a snarling, satirical alter-ego. And I can't NOT hear "White Christmas" as something that ought to be sung tongue-and-cheek by someone of colour.

And of course 12-year-old in me takes great mirth in "Santa Claus is Coming" (which gets funnier each time it's repeated) and FORGET ABOUT "Backdoor Santa" - which needs no makeover. Oh, Clarence Carter.

So yeah, I will take Fairytale in New York any Christmas. It's my favourite seasonal song of all time, I tell you. All time.
]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10309 Tonight I did a lecture for Trampoline Hall. I was pretty fricking nervous, but there ya go. Here is the text of my lecture:

I have a friend named Dan. When were in our early 20’s in Montreal, he spoke and moved exactly like an old Jewish man – it helped that he had a bit of a limp from a ski injury. I remember him sidling up to the counter at Wilensky’s – a landmark of old Jewish Montreal - ordering an egg cream and a special, and dropping Yiddish expressions with a raised finger for emphasis, like a real zayde.

When I started collecting Yiddish proverbs for this lecture, I came across this expression:

Vi ainer iz tsu Ziben, azoi iz er tsu zibetsik. As a man is at 7 so is he at 70.

And I immediately thought to call Dan, who according to Facebook, had just had his third child. After we caught up, I asked him about his fixation with yiddishkeit that had gripped him so young, and here’s what he had to say:

When he was a kid, he was surrounded by Yiddish speakers – his parents spoke in Yiddish with his grandparents, who were holocaust survivors. It wasn’t until he was near bar-mitzvah age that he truly grasped that Yiddish was no longer a vibrant culture, but the ghost of one. And this shook him to the core.

He began to immerse himself in remembering. He lived in a neighbourhood affectionately called “Cote Saint Jew” and he says he would shadow old people at the local Cavendish Mall - just to hear them speak Yiddish. This became a full-blown obsession when, at 15, he went on a trip called March of the Living, where high school kids visit concentration camps in Poland and learn of the vanished communities and how they met their ends. Oy.

Years later, Dan was at a wedding in Paris for an old friend he’d served with in the Israeli army. He’d taken time that trip to visit le Marais, which had been the heart of the Jewish community pre-world-war II. And that night he went to the wedding with a heavy heart.

After the ceremony, the band played the obligatory hora, and then played another Yiddish chestnut called “Sha, Shtil.”

And nobody got up to dance. Because nobody recognized the tune. And Dan turned to the father of the groom, with tears in his eyes and said: “How can you stand it? All the rich Jewish culture that once thrived here has vanished. And now, no one even remembers the songs!”

The Father of the groom was a gentle man who also happened to be a therapist with a specialty. He asked him if he had ever heard of transgenerational trauma. It’s when the trauma of one generation – it can be as sprawling as the holocaust, as contained as a car accident - is infused wordlessly into the next.

And it can last generations. Suddenly a lightbulb went on in Dan’s head.

He noticed that certain friends in what he calls his “Yiddish circles” also shared the same symptoms. Guilt, anger, anxiety, a profound sense of loss, and an overwhelming sentimentality for Yiddish culture. And he not only talked to them about it, but he went to a therapist because he was worried about passing it on to his own children.

The therapist calmed him, telling him that he was celebrating his culture in a healthy way, but to treat the language as something living, not a resurrection of ghosts.

These days, He speaks to all three of his children in Yiddish, and meets regularly with a Yiddish singing group he helped found. And he subscribes to the Forward, the last Yiddish language paper. Although he still talks and moves like a zayde.


Unlike Dan, my own experience was far more assimilated. I grew up in Vancouver, and if you know your Canadian Jewish communities at all well, you’ll know that the Vancouver tribe probably boasts the worst bagels in all of North America, sub-par pastrami, and little to no Yiddish culture. Reading Moredecai Richler novels with the shoulder-shrugging schelppers and mouthy immigrant inflections was enticing but foreign. We’re kind of the WASPY Jews of Canada.

We lived in Oakridge, which is right on the fringes of a real WASPy enclave, Shaughnessy with its grand old homes. When my mom would pick me and my sisters up from school, she would drive slowly past these mansions and peer through the windows. She’d be transported to a fantasy plane, muttering to herself about what she’d do differently if that were her home, wondering what kind of people lived in those places.

Which brings me to our next proverb: Ask about your neighbors, then buy the house. – I lost the Yiddish version to this one, hope you don’t mind.

When we moved to Toronto in ’86, she got her real estate license and finally got a chance to see inside those grand homes. For 25 years, she schlepped real estate signs, buzzed with pagers and cell phones, walked up and down countless flights of stairs and saying to people things like: “Not much charm right now, but good bones.” And before people made an offer, she’d recommend: “Just drive over this evening, park your car, and walk around the neighbourhood and look in windows of other houses and see what kind of people live in there. Get a feel for the street.”

She did really well as an agent, but didn’t have much financial SECHEL – that’s Yiddish for common sense. By 60 she had no security, no home. A couple of years ago, she started to hint heavily about all the lovely Chinese and Italian families that lived 3 generations in one household. “It works so well because the grandparents take care of the grandkids!” I tried to laugh it off, but Chris, my guy pointed out that one day we would have figure out a way to have her live with us.

This one IS a Yiddish proverb, but it’s been so widely co-opted that I know you will recognize it: Mann tracht, Got lakht. Man plans, God laughs.

Before we could plan for it, the “one day” happened. In February 2010, my mother was diagnosed with a rare cancer that had metastasized. They call these kinds of cancer the “whisper cancer” because they sneak up on you and then BAM they show themselves in all their malignant glory. And by then it is too late. You can kind of buy time with chemo. Months? Maybe years? We didn’t know. But what we did know was that she couldn’t sustain her rent if she was going to be really sick. And she needed to be with family. She needed a home. She needed to live with us.

There is a Yiddish Proverb that sounds a bit Yoda-ish:
Az me muz, ken men.
When one must, one can.

And this is the spirit with which we embraced our decision. It was so emotional, so hard to know what we were getting into, but as we sat for the 25th hour in emergency, my awesome partner Chris looked at me bravely and said “this is what need to do.”

And so she moved in with us. It was so Old World. And everyone who was from a traditional family seemed to think this was a GREAT idea. My butcher started to treat me with more respect when he found out we'd taken my mom in, and he stopped staring at my chest. Even people from non-traditional homes would squeeze me on the shoulder and say: “you’re doing the Right Thing.” For a while we felt illuminated by a nimbus of tender and compassionate light. And for a while, being seen as that person felt, selfishly, wonderful.

I like this old proverb, and it’s one that a rabbi I spoke with pointed out as one of his favourites: Tsedokeh zol kain gelt nisht kosten, volten geven di velt fil tsadikim
If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.

Not that this was charity, but this ‘good thing’ we were doing came at a price. When we lived with my mom, our house no longer felt like home. We stopped having friends over, stopped playing our music, and - this is kind of egotistical to admit - but we thought our happiness and values would rub off on her! But instead we all succumbed to this bottomless gloom.

One day, where we were rocking out in the living room, dancing up a storm with our 3-year-old, we looked up and saw my mom smiling tensely in the doorway, unsure how to engage. Come on and join us! She sat on the sofa and watched with us dancing with such a sad expression, that soon we couldn’t dance anymore.

There was so much intimacy through the proximity of shared space - we shared a bathroom where her dainties hung from the shower rod, her wig sat on a stand in the kitchen - but our ability to be intimate with each other was failing. All the moments I had imagined lying in bed with her, talking about life and joys and regrets - they never materialized.

BUT if ever a proverb rang more true to this day, it would be this:
Oib di velt vet verren oislaytst, eez es nor in schus fun kinder. – if the world will ever be redeemed, it will be through the merit of children

Thank God for children, because our little boy seemed relatively unaffected by all the subtext and illness, and he would climb into bed with her every morning, and it brought her so much joy. And when we sat for dinner together, struggling to be cheerful, he would burst into happy song or whine about the food. It didn’t matter. He brought everyone back into the present, and gave us something joyful to focus on.

This not a Yiddish proverb, but it should be one: If grandchildren knew how much the comfort of others rested on their shoulders, surely they’d crumble under the pressure.


When we talk about Yiddish proverbs, we also talk about loss and a longing for home.

My friend Mia spent this summer in Vilnius, Lithuania, studying Yiddish language. Vilnius – once called Vilna to the Jews who lived there - was the heart of the Jewish enlightenment and modern Yiddish culture before World War II.
The city had been 40 per cent Jewish. The local cafes once burst with Yiddish culture, writers were composing edgy modernist poetry and manifestos. At a certain café, you could buy one of 30 Yiddish magazines from across Europe.

Everyone she studied with was trying to reconcile ideas of this rich past with a somewhat muted present. A place that was once housed a vibrant Jewish community, no longer felt like a home. Some were trying to outrun those ghosts by infusing life into this language.

She told me about a Yiddish term, "benkshaft" a word that encapsulates longing and nostalgia. It’s a ‘hurts so good’ kind of concept, where you tell the story of your loss, but there is also laughter in that loss, a beautiful universality to the sentiment.

Yiddish was a hybrid language – it took a little bit of Hebrew, a lot of old German, a smattering of Slavic tongues and occasionally a bit of French and became its own language that described the here and now for each generation …. And often with an undercurrent of Benkshaft – nostagia and longing for the way we wish things had turned out.

And as we bind the fragments of the old with the new – the dead with the living - we have to resist sentimentalizing an ideal or rending our garments over a tragedy. To keep these fragments alive, we can't ossify the past as what was - we must keep feeding the old to the new.

Which brings me to our final proverb of the night:
Tsu itlechen nayem leed, ken men tsu passen ahn alten niggen
In a new verse, you can always fit in an old tune.
]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10300 Last night, Chris and G and I were walking past Jack Layton’s house on Huron Street and I said, “I wonder how Jack is doing”.  This morning we found out he’d died later that night, in that home, surrounded by family.

When we’d seen his press conference announcing his cancer had returned, he looked translucent. He had that breathy voice that my mother had had during her last few weeks. Fuck cancer.

Even today, as I biked through Nathan Phillips Square at City Hall, I saw people gathering, writing messages in chalk, and trying to find a moment of respect. A few people started to sing O Canada. I bristled - I am not sure why. I don't like sing-alongs, I guess, I don't like being muscled into sentiment that starts on someone else's note. Do you know what I mean? I wanted a moment to miss Jack.

I had the good fortune to meet him years ago, both socially and professionally at his home with is wife, for whom he had such visible love and shared passion. They opened their Chinatown home to any number of co-workers, volunteers, youth as a place to organize, celebrate, and brainstorm. They were part of the community, never afraid to be goofy, game for anything. Whether the solstice parade or gay pride, they’d be out there boogying in costume, kicking it with the band.

There is so much I would like to say about this man. He was never cynical, always positive. In an era when politics are fuelled by fear and evil characterizations, he stayed above the fray with his message that we can take better care of each other.

If you know me at all well, you’ll know that I loathe attending protests or demonstrations. There is something about them that is so cringeworthy. The big ones get hijacked by the big voices and droning slogans, the small ones seem dispiritingly lame.

But I saw Layton at both kinds of demonstrations (that I willed myself to attend), and he never cringed or lost his message of optimism. Today my friend Dwight wrote this on his FB wall:

“Earth Hour in Toronto, March 2011. Thirty people showed up at city hall. Layton was one of them. He said although our number was small, we should not be discouraged. And I thought about all the tiny demonstrations he must have attended in his life, all the time spent with idealistic strangers, facing down their disappointment. There was no reward, no office that could account for his commitment.”

There is so much we can learn from this man. But today, I say this to myself. Cynicism sounds so wise and world-weary, but it’s just fear faking a brave face. Defy your fear of being characterized as naive. Take up something you care about and organize and demonstrate in a way that is meaningful to you. Get over that ego driven-fear of something being lame, because it will be filled with plenty of odd and awkward moments. It’s part of the process. And while you do so, remember that even for the leader of the Federal opposition, there were moments where only a handful of people showed up. And he pushed on.

Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. Let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic and we'll change the world.

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10287  
A classic conversation opener from my mom:
“I met the most fabulous couple at an open house today. He’s a tenured professor, she’s a classical pianist and composer. They both came here from Bosnia 15 years ago with nothing to their names. And their daughters are amazing. One daughter is getting her PHD, and the other graduated top of her class in medicine, but they are both classically trained violinists. And they are SUCH LOVELY PEOPLE. “

For my mom, her greatest joy was meeting people, celebrating their accomplishments, hearing their stories and recounting them with enthusiasm. The day she died, one of her favourite nurses came in to check on her. As she left, mom chirped: “Such a life story, that one!” The incredible nurses at Princess Margaret Hospital made a point to tell us how much they loved Judy. “We love all our patients, but your mom is really special,” they said. One of the nurses, Allison, shared, how much they wanted Judy stay at the hospital, even though their ward was as short-term care facility. “Can’t we keep her?” she said. They spoke glowingly of her generous spirit.

Generosity is a big word that comes up when people speak of Judy. And I don’t say this lightly. She would have given you her last dime if she thought you needed it more. If I mentioned I was going to a dinner party, she would ask: “Can I make you a chocolate cake to bring over? Take a bottle of wine from my closet. Let me drive you there.” If any of us hinted that there was something we needed, she would move hell and high water to make sure it was within our reach.

I am trying to find a good anecdote to describe her unhesitating generosity and kindness, and for some reason this one comes to mind. One day, she got home extremely late from work late and called me. I asked her where she had been. A client - one she didn’t know well - called her, in distress. She needed to put her cat down, and confessed she didn’t have a car to take it to the vet. Mom didn't miss a beat. She got in her car and drove across town to pick her up and took her and her ailing cat to the animal hospital, waited with the woman and drove her home again.

So many of my friends have said how much they will miss eating at her table. Judy’s cooking was the stuff of legend. When I’d invite a friend for Rosh Hashana or Pesach seders, their eyes would light up. They’d arrive and announce that they had skipped lunch so they could gorge themselves on Judy’s food.

She liked to tell the story of how, as a young mother in Vancouver – before the days she was tethered to a blackberry – her domestic achievements were the stuff of legend. She baked bread from scratch, ran a daycare, and whipped up fresh shabbat meals for the whole extended family every Friday night.

****
I met the most fabulous woman the other day. She left everything she knew in Vancouver to move to Toronto at 43 years old. With little education or workplace experience, she reinvented herself - made a new city her home, got her real estate license and became a hard-working, successful agent. She taught us that it was always possible to reinvent yourself, and to start over. She encouraged us to have adventures, educate ourselves, and bring back good stories.

And here, I am going to quote from an email from our cousin Helen: “Although she felt that her life was incredibly stressful (and she was right in many ways) in actual fact, her life was full of love. She loved to cook, she loved to bake, she loved Toronto, she loved to walk the downtown streets in the cool of a summer evening or even in the coldest winter wrapped in her down-filled coat, she loved closing a deal and basking in the gratitude of her many clients and most of all she loved her three wonderful daughters and her incredible grandchildren.”

***

After nearly 25 years in real estate, she often complained about the pace and craziness of the business. But even if she had bought that elusive winning lottery ticket, I don’t think she would have fully retired. She would have missed the people too much. And besides, I am not sure she would have known what to wear in her retired life - a life of leisure is not really suited to her famous dark Escada wardrobe.

I asked Judy's friend and colleague D’arcy to gather some memories of my mom from people she worked with - many of whom had come to visit her in the hospital - and here's some of what they said:

"Your Mom at her desk scratching lottery tickets. Looking lovingly at her grandchildren & daughters on her computer screen, calling everyone in to take a look. Wishing that she would have more time with her grandchildren, passionate about her daughters and their accomplishments.

Her colleagues remember her humanity, warmth and integrity, with a passion for real estate and her tenacity when it came to pulling deals together. Her willingness to help new salesreps and her quiet way of helping someone in any need. Her humour, her organizationally-challenged ways, her caring and support, her desire to mother everyone.

When she got sick, we all remember her remarkable stamina for the last 17 months, her ability to pick herself up despite setbacks, concerns and fears. The office was a sad place yesterday, as she was such a presence & she will truly be missed."
---

The other day, my mom told this story. Several years ago, she and one of her dear childhood friends, Pixie, were imagining what it would be like to grow old together. Like all old Vancouver Jews, they would no doubt spend their twilight years at the Louis Brier home, they decided. “But Judy, what will we do?” lamented Pixie. “We don’t speak Yiddish!”

She didn't end up growing old in Vancouver (or mastering Yiddish, for that matter). And she didn't get those twilight years - she always promised us she would live to 90 and drive us crazy the whole time.

This is the kind of driving-crazy I will miss: Once she determined she had little time left, she started to think about the funeral plans. The other day, she said, “I want you to each have your outfit picked out for the funeral BEFOREHAND. No last minute scrambling."

And here we are at her funeral, and as she could have predicted: I still scrambled last minute to figure out what to wear, but that doesn’t mean you - or I - should start ignoring her advice:

Pick out your outfit the night before. Dress sharp. Get a good haircut already. Do nice things for people. Eat healthy food. Buy your lottery tickets. Do something extraordinary and tell someone you love about it, so they can beam with pride.


]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10275 I know someone who had a kidney transplant this winter. She was sick for ages, and now she is still fragile, but looking terrific.

"Hi, how are you?" she asked at a gathering this spring. "I remember that something really bad was happening to you."

So much had happened to people at that party. There was a recent widower and his shell-shocked young kids. And there was this woman walking up to me, who'd almost died before her friend donated a kidney.

And something bad was happening to me? ugh. I do not want to be that person.

My new friend Nadine gave me this quote: "You are not the sad story that plays in your head."
]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10272 Oh hi. It’s been a while and lots has gone on.

After her operation, my mom healed well, and was advised to undergo three more rounds of chemo, as is the prescribed treatment post-surgery. As a those of you unfortunate enough to be familiar with the disease, the cumulative effects of the chemo means that each round made her feel progressively weaker. But she was a trooper, and seemed to be recovering some strength.

In March, our 1-year sublet was coming to an end, and we needed to find a new place to live. We were apprehensive about living separately, but decided to plan for good things to happen. We’ve been holding onto so much tension for the past year, it felt good to be optimistic. I mean, fuck death. Really. Let’s plan for life.

Chris took a new job at the end of March. And then I got a new job that started at the end of April. Chris and I found a place close to Gabriel’s school, my mom found a place in her old neighbourood, which she’s always loved. And then two weeks before our moves, her ascites returned.

I wasn’t sure how we were all going to balance all the changes, but somehow we have. I am not sure what is going to happen when we stop having to spin all the plates, but you’ll know by my silence, I guess. I don’t want the plates to stop spinning. This chaos, I can handle. I think.

My sister Lisa has come to stay, and she’s picking up all my slack as I set up a new home and job. Taking mom to appointments for paracentesis and for rounds of the new, experimental drug/chemo combo, helping her out with meals. I am thankful for family.

Last year I cried so easily. This year, my new method is to compartmentalize emotion, not to try to hold it all in a big, quivering bouquet. I think I thought it was more honest to feel everything at once. I was wrong. I am trying to be present wherever I am. To love my job. My amazing family. My amazing mom.

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10233 Despite a plethora of offerings, I have yet to see a really funny mash-up of the Rebecca Black's 29-million+ viewed video "Friday". But I'm totally intrigued by the kinds of conversations we're having over its inexplicable popularity.

Former American Idol misanthrope, Simon Cowell, says Black's song is brilliant and wants to meet her. Music critics moan it's everything that's wrong in pop music today. Office workers CC-it madly with subject lines "OMGAWD, this is so bad, I can't stop watching it".

Cultural critics have said something like this before, (and undoubtedly with sassier academic vernacular), but what is interesting about this moment in web sensations is how we've exhausted the old conventions. We've stepped beyond celebrating the diamond-in-the-rough (early Bieber) or the schlump with the big talent who mocks our expectations (Susan Boyle). We're can't even confidently poke fun at what is awesomely bad, the trifecta of ego/hubris/bad taste, because it's been parodied so much, we can't tell when we're being punk'd.

We're left with a fascination with our fascination over something so banal. We are amazed by how quickly something we don't enjoy looking at is suddenly something everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) is looking at.  It's not the viral item itself, it's our behavior around it that has us yapping. It's the virtual equivalent of  "eeeyuch, does this milk smell bad to you, too?"

But there's something else about this viral item in particular that has me paying attention. None of the inevitable mash-ups or parodies of the original have managed to nail it. So I'll throw my hat into the ring, help Rebecca Black rack up a few more viewings on her YouTube page, and tell you why we are not going to get a parody that tickles us as much as the original.

It's a pitch-perfect portrayal of a certain kind of tween girl's fantasy life by an actual 13-year-old girl. It's the mirror dance with the curling iron. It's wholesome and direct. It's exactly what I, at 13, projected being a teenager would be like. Instead of Bat Mitzvah lessons, I would be headed for some vague (but funfunfun nonetheless) weekend adventure with my friends. In a car. With cute boys. And I would kind of be a pop star. With supershiny lip gloss. Why are we being so cynical about this? It's too honest to fit the parody mold.*, **

What's lame here is not this auto-tuned pre-teen with tedious lyrics. It's that once again, despite all the shit that's going on at this moment in history, we still can't stop talking about ourselves. ***

*Stu pointed out that she got ample funds to do this from her folks. 
** Erik points out that she didn't actually write it,  but the guys at Ark music did, which is frankly staggering.
***this blog sure took a turn for the preachy last paragraph. Bad mood.

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10212 I want you to play the amazing song, G demands.
We have listened to this song 5 times in a row, and he alternates from from dancing in his carseat to staring whistfully out the window. I would love to know what narrative is playing out in his head as he listens to this with a dreamy look in his eyes, watching the city streets pass by.

'you and me together,stars forever'. From my brain to yours, may  I present you with G's favourite song. Robyn: Stars 4ever. Hey, it could be Hannah Montana...

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10207
The two state solution in Israel/Palestine - is it really dead?

Debt forgiveness for developing countries

Genetically Modified Food

Governance in Haiti

The justificiations for rendition and torture in the war on terror

Gay Marriage

Banning the Hijab





]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10195 My mom got sick one year ago. Bodies remember anniversaries, and mine seems to be tightening up in anticipation of a blow.

Things have been hard, but not in the way I anticipated. My mom has not needed me to nurse her. She has dealt with whopping amounts of chemotherapy, major surgery, and the prospect of this cancer’s inevitable return. And she’s been a tank, pushing through this, working throughout, and marveling at how well she’s adjusting.

And me, I’ve been a lot less graceful in this than I thought I’d be. Some people are surprised to find that they are a lot better under stress than they’d ever imagined. As for me, I always pictured I’d be a selfless cheerleader with bottomless resource of strength and positivity. But my reality has been a bit messier, more petulant, less graceful.

“And you thought that was bad,” my grandmother used to say. She and her friends would go to a local waffle restaurant in Vancouver, stain their coffee cups with bright red lipstick and compare tragic tales in a morbid game of tzorres one-upsmanship.

I have that image in my mind as I write this. So here goes.

I posted about my old friend’s mom who was diagnosed in a not-so-joyful coincidence with the same kind of cancer as my mom. After a year’s struggle, and with her whole family at her side, she died. Chris and I attended her memorial last week. What a beautiful woman. What beautiful testimonials on her life. At the end of the ceremony they played The Byrds singing “Turn, Turn, Turn”. I’d never liked that song – I always found it too cheesy or something. I don’t feel that way anymore. The song was perfect. What a perfect, loving family, I thought. 'Your mom got to go into remission,' they said, not unkindly, just shell-shocked.

I have a brave friend who is the most fragile/strong person I've ever met. She was fearful of travel when she embarked on her first solo trip. Amazingly, on that journey she fell in love with a man who had little sophistication, but a wise heart and lust for life. She left her job, her friends, and everything she knew to marry and live with him. After a few blissful years together, he was diagnosed with advanced cancer and was gone within a year. And she nursed him all alone. With no support system, no air conditioning in tropical heat, and sporadic medical help. She came by to visit this weekend and told me her story, her year from hell.

And you thought that was bad, my Grandmother would say knowingly, blotting her lipstick on a napkin or a package of sweet’n’low. And I'd brace myself for another story, another blow. She told of spots of happiness marred by long stretches of tragedy. And I don't - I won't - accept that's how life is.

In this year since my mother’s diagnosis (when I’ve been whining and succumbing to the gloom of this spectre), 3 of my friends have lost a parent, one friend a spouse, and one is watching her mother die of the a rare degenerative disease (having lost her father to the very same condition one year prior). I have no wisdom today. Just hug your loved ones.

]]> http://www.happyrobot.net/words/pony.asp?id=10178 The internet is a weird and random place. One day, 11 years ago, when researching robots via Ask Jeeves (or was it dogpile?), I came across this adorable site called happyrobot. Mostly there were pictures of cats and funny quizzes and pictures of adorable people living in New York. I wanted to be friends with them. And it totally happened! Through that one chain of events, so many great things unfolded, most notably, my sister met, married, and procreated with Matt Johnson (What Would Matt Johnson Do?).

Sure, bad stuff can happen via the internets. People get their twisted rage on in the comments sections of blogs and news sites. Your personal information can get exploited for scams and other nefarious purposes. You can't live down embarassing moments the way you used to. That picture of you barfing wild turkey at the side of the road will be tagged with your name on it before you are even sober enough to tag it with a witty disclaimer. Internets: You have to be on your toes.

But what I most cherish about the internet? The sadly decreasing element of random. Which is why I was tickled when this morning, Abi emailed me a link with the subject line "Is this you?" and a link to a photo. At first I thought it was a phishing scam (popular line for twitter fishing scam was 'OMG,is this you?'). But the link looked pretty trustworthy, so I clicked, and here's what I found. 

A photo that Rannie took of me as part of his "My Toronto Includes" series was used in an educational seminar:  Food Insecurity Among Latin American Communities in Toronto. I am neither Latina nor insecure with food, but apparently someone who is lazy with photo research, dislikes serifs, has Microsoft Paint, and works are Ryerson liked my picture. Random.


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