My feelings about Halloween, as a bereaved childless parent, have been complicated. Unlike some bereaved parents/childless-not-by-choicers, I have never wanted to opt out of Halloween completely -- turn the lights out & hide, or spend the night at the movies. I've always enjoyed carving a pumpkin and setting it out on our doorstep on Halloween night, and handing out candy to adorable little trick-or-treaters.
(Which is not to say I haven't felt some pangs or closed the door with tears in my eyes over the past 18 years.)
At the same time, while I did set out the pumpkin & put up a Halloween-themed wreath on the door & cut-outs in the windows facing the street, we never went all out with the decorations, as some of our neighbours did. I just didn't have the energy (or the desire, to be honest). Which only added to my guilt -- clearly, I was not cut out to be a suburban mom, right? (Although I am sure that, had we had children, I would have made more of an effort to be more festive for their sakes.) And while I loved dressing up as a kid, and during my student days for our annual Halloween parties, as an adult, it's always seemed like more of a chore than anything else to think up, shop for and put together a costume. I haven't done it in years.
Halloween was very different for us this year. As I said, I've never wanted to avoid Halloween -- but living in a condo makes it an entirely different experience than we had at our house. Security doors, plus bylaws against solicitation and holiday decorations on doors and balconies, plus the absence of all but a very few children living in our building, meant no decorations, no trick-or-treaters knocking at our doors. (By now at the house, most of our trick-or-treaters would have come & gone, so I think I can feel safe in typing that, lol.) We did buy a box of treats to have on hand, just in case, but it looks like we're going to be eating it all ourselves. (Oh, the horror!! Right?? lol )
I suppose we could have carved a pumpkin this year, if only for our own enjoyment. But dh has never been keen on the whole pumpkin thing -- he only went along with it to humour me -- and I insisted on it because, tradition!! & how else could we signal to the trick-or-treaters that we were open for business?? This year, even I had to agree it was pretty pointless. I do have a fake pumpkin that lights up inside, but I lacked the energy & motivation to dig through our storage locker in the parking garage to find it. :p
It was a very strange day.
In past years, at least, we had a bit of a presence on the periphery of all the Halloween hoopla. This year, I felt totally apart/shut out from everything -- nose pressed against the glass, watching from a distance as life went merrily on without me, oblivious to my presence, while Facebook & Instagram paraded an endless stream of fun photos & reports from my friends & relatives. What was once a special occasion, a date to be circled on the calendar & to be planned and prepared for (candy & pumpkin to buy, decorations to haul up from the basement) -- a link to my own childhood, a fingerhold in the life that might have been mine as a parent, something I could participate in along with the rest of the world -- has now become just another day. It's harder, in a way, to be watching completely from the sidelines, at a distance, than it was to be handing out candy to little trick-or-treaters and seeing in them and their proud parents the life that might have been mine with our daughter.
My hope is that, in a few years' time, we'll have some great-nieces and nephews, and that their parents will bring them over so we can ooh & ahhh over their costumes and shower them with treats. :) (Or invite us over to see them before they head out for trick-or-treating.)
Until then, I'll be the one watching from the sidelines, stuffing my face with chocolate, and living vicariously through other people's social media posts.
Monday, October 31, 2016
#MicroblogMondays: 9
As I said at this time last year, "I'm not always sure how I keep coming up with things to write about, but hey, I'm still here...!"
Here are a few updated stats to ponder:
Number of years blogging: 9
Published posts (including this one): 1,115
Average # of posts per year: 124
Average # of posts per month: 10
Published comments: more than 8,090
Page views (tracked since May 2008): 471,000+
Followers (on Blogger): 143
As always -- thank you all for reading/listening, commenting and just being here.
Blogoversary #8 (2015)
Blogoversary #7 (2014)
Blogoversary #6 (2013)
Blogoversary #5 (2012)
Blogoversary #4 (2011)
Blogoversary #3 (2010)
Blogoversary #2 (2009)
Blogoversary #1 (2008)
First post
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
"Inferno" by Dan Brown
Brown's usual hero, Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of art history and symbology, wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy, with no memory of how he got there. Before long, and he and his pretty young doctor, Sienna Brooks, are on the run, trying to solve a series of puzzles. Dante's Inferno is the key to finding and stopping a maniacal billionaire from unleashing destruction upon the world.
Having read previous Brown/Langdon adventures "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" (as well as seeing the movie versions), I knew what to expect, and I wasn't disappointed -- although the endless twist after twist after twist had me rolling my eyes & muttering "Seriously??!" You don't need to have read any of Brown's previous books to understand or enjoy this one. They aren't great literature, but they're generally fun, and you learn a bit about history and art and religion (and, in this case, science) along the way.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot but (mild spoiler alert!) there are several infertility angles that pop up in its pages.
This was book #20 that I've read so far in 2016.
*** *** ***
Having ploughed through the book, I was ready to see the movie this afternoon. There were some changes from the book -- it was Hollywood-ized in some respects, not all of them good, although the twists remain (with a few more added). (I won't go into details, so as not to spoil things for those of you who haven't read the book or seen the movie.)
Still, I enjoyed it. (Dh hadn't read the book yet, and probably enjoyed it as much or more than I did.) The thing I really like about the movie versions of Brown's books (besides the always-affable Tom Hanks as Langdon) is we get to see the actual places and the artworks that he writes about, instead of trying to imagine them. What's not to like about a trek around Florence, Venice & Istanbul, through secret passages & hallways lined with priceless paintings??
It won't win any Oscars, but it's a fun way to spend the afternoon -- with a big bag of popcorn in hand, of course. ;) Two thumbs up.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Call me scentsitive
Living in a condo means living with the occasional sounds & smells coming from your neighbours' unit. Being a largely Italian community, the smell of tomato sauce, onions & garlic is everywhere at lunchtime on Sunday, lol. That doesn't bother me much, aside from making me hungry, lol. We can smell the lemony scent of ammonia when the caretaker is mopping the ceramic tile floor outside the elevators, and the occasional smell of dryer sheets when we have the balcony doors open. We've also smelled the odd skunk outside, even though we're four floors up!
I never used to think of myself as particularly scent-sensitive. I used to love wearing perfume, and only gave it up when I started running into too many "fragrance-free" zone signs at work. I have pump bottles of Softsoap Vanilla Brown Sugar in all of our bathrooms.
On the other hand, my mother was never one for wearing perfume. She was an early adopter of fragrance-free laundry products (I use them too -- I had to run several cleaning cycles to remove the sickly sweet floral fragrance from our washer here -- clearly the previous owner used scented detergent). Mom has walked out of hotels where she's had reservations because the cleaning staff clearly used a scented spray in the rooms. She claims it bothers her sinuses.
I remember the day I realized I was turning into my mother. I was sitting at my desk at work when a very strong floral smell started wafting into my cubicle. My eyes actually started watering & I got a tickle in my throat. I started coughing. "Does anyone else smell flowers?" I called out. I heard footsteps and a door close. The scent died away shortly after that. I later realized it was one of our young interns who sat near me; she must have heard me and gone to wash off whatever lotion or perfume she was wearing. I felt badly if I embarrassed her, but it really was affecting me.
Since then, I've noticed my increasing intolerance of strong fragrances more & more. I rarely wear perfume these days, even though I'm no longer at work. I've had to roll down the window when we've been in BIL's car, because he has one of those air fresheners in it. Lots of my friends rave about Bath & Body Works; I can only spend so long in one of those stores. I do like some of their products (the White Citrus shampoo & lotion in particular), but I find the mixture of smells overpowering.
The other night, a strong, fruity/flowery smell started wafting into our unit. I was starting to get a headache. Dh finally opened the door & had a look outside. Someone -- we suspect the caretaker -- had installed one of those plug-in air freshener things into the outlet in the corner just outside our door. Dh noticed another one plugged in at the other end of the hallway, near the garbage disposal room (so it wasn't personal, lol). We have noticed they use these things in the main foyer & in the elevator space in the parking garage, but this was the first time we'd noticed one so close to our own unit.
Dh unplugged it & moved it further down the hall from our door. It's not as strong now, but we can still smell it. I'm thinking of emailing the property manager about it. I can't believe that in a building of 120+ units, I'm the only one who's bothered by this. I'm a little surprised, actually, given the increasing awareness of scent-sensitivities and fragrance-free zones.
Are you scent-sensitive? Do strong smells bother you?
I never used to think of myself as particularly scent-sensitive. I used to love wearing perfume, and only gave it up when I started running into too many "fragrance-free" zone signs at work. I have pump bottles of Softsoap Vanilla Brown Sugar in all of our bathrooms.
On the other hand, my mother was never one for wearing perfume. She was an early adopter of fragrance-free laundry products (I use them too -- I had to run several cleaning cycles to remove the sickly sweet floral fragrance from our washer here -- clearly the previous owner used scented detergent). Mom has walked out of hotels where she's had reservations because the cleaning staff clearly used a scented spray in the rooms. She claims it bothers her sinuses.
I remember the day I realized I was turning into my mother. I was sitting at my desk at work when a very strong floral smell started wafting into my cubicle. My eyes actually started watering & I got a tickle in my throat. I started coughing. "Does anyone else smell flowers?" I called out. I heard footsteps and a door close. The scent died away shortly after that. I later realized it was one of our young interns who sat near me; she must have heard me and gone to wash off whatever lotion or perfume she was wearing. I felt badly if I embarrassed her, but it really was affecting me.
Since then, I've noticed my increasing intolerance of strong fragrances more & more. I rarely wear perfume these days, even though I'm no longer at work. I've had to roll down the window when we've been in BIL's car, because he has one of those air fresheners in it. Lots of my friends rave about Bath & Body Works; I can only spend so long in one of those stores. I do like some of their products (the White Citrus shampoo & lotion in particular), but I find the mixture of smells overpowering.
The other night, a strong, fruity/flowery smell started wafting into our unit. I was starting to get a headache. Dh finally opened the door & had a look outside. Someone -- we suspect the caretaker -- had installed one of those plug-in air freshener things into the outlet in the corner just outside our door. Dh noticed another one plugged in at the other end of the hallway, near the garbage disposal room (so it wasn't personal, lol). We have noticed they use these things in the main foyer & in the elevator space in the parking garage, but this was the first time we'd noticed one so close to our own unit.
Dh unplugged it & moved it further down the hall from our door. It's not as strong now, but we can still smell it. I'm thinking of emailing the property manager about it. I can't believe that in a building of 120+ units, I'm the only one who's bothered by this. I'm a little surprised, actually, given the increasing awareness of scent-sensitivities and fragrance-free zones.
Are you scent-sensitive? Do strong smells bother you?
Monday, October 24, 2016
#MicroblogMondays: Rude awakenings
"What the hell..." dh grumbled. "It's either next door or outside," I muttered. He went into the living room & opened the balcony door, and as he did, the music got louder. "Some $%^&*$! sitting in his car by the gate (to the construction site behind our building) with his car stereo blasting," dh reported as he returned to bed.
As I may have written before, they are building townhouses on the vacant lot behind our condo building. Work isn't supposed to start until 7 a.m. (and THAT frequently wakes us up too -- the rattle, hum and squeak of loud machinery, etc.) so this guy was arriving extra-early for whatever reason. He did turn it down after a few minutes, but we were NOT impressed.
Of course, after that, we couldn't get back to sleep, so we both got up and had our breakfast. Dh is now snoozing on the couch, but I'm wide awake (albeit tired), reading Facebook, sipping my tea and watching CNN.
I'd also woken up at 3 a.m. but was able to go back to sleep after a trip to the bathroom. It's hit & miss for me. I probably wake up at least once during the night -- sometimes I manage to settle back down and fall asleep again, sometimes (more frequently) not. I didn't get to bed until after 11, and probably didn't fall asleep until some time after midnight.
Thank goodness for retirement. I used to hate when this happened & I still had to get up at 5 (so I could get on the train at 6:40 to get to work by 8).
How about you? Do you find you can go back to sleep easily after being woken up in the middle of the night?
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
Sunday, October 23, 2016
"Music in the Hills" by D.E. Stevenson
James, the son of "Vittoria Cottage"'s main protagonist, Caroline, arrives at Mureth, the Scottish border country farm owned & run by his mother's sister, Mamie, and her husband, Jock, with the intention of taking up farming as a career and learning the ropes from his uncle before he buys a place of his own. He's also nursing a broken heart: in "Vittoria Cottage," we met Rhoda Ware, his childhood friend turned love interest, who is determined to pursue a career as an artist. This being early 1950s England, she turns down James's proposal, adamant that art and marriage (and most especially a family) do not mix. In Mureth, he meets Holly Douglas, the pretty niece of the local lord, as well as other new friends, including Daniel Reid, a newly hired shepherd who recently returned to the area where he grew up after years of travelling the world.
I loved this book for all the usual reasons I love Stevenson's work: the wonderful characters, the vivid descriptions, and the strong sense of morality, compassion and common sense. It's the literary equivalent of comfort food.
But this book especially touched my heart for another reason: Mamie & Jock are childless (not by choice), and there are several passages where it's clear how this has affected their lives -- most especially in Chapter Three, where Mamie is telling James stories about her parents and sisters, and how her parents were lonely in their old age:
"It seemed rather bad luck to have had four daughters and not to have one left at home -- and none of their daughters was much good to them. Caroline never could leave Arnold -- he was so awfully selfish -- and Jean was in America and Harriet was simply wrapped up in her theatrical career."
"But you were here, quite near them!"
"Yes," agreed Mamie tepidly. "Yes, but they weren't -- they're weren't very..." She paused. She was busy trying to find the exact shade of brown for the sock she was darning.
"They weren't very what?" asked James.
"Very proud of me," said Mamie. "There was nothing to be proud of was there? They had nothing in common with Jock. I don't mean there was a feud, but they just weren't interested in Jock's kind of things, and of course I had no children."
James was silent for a moment...I got tears in my eyes reading this. While I know how much my parents wanted to be grandparents, and while I've felt a great deal of guilt about that, I have never felt they weren't proud of me. But I know this has been an issue for some of you, and I felt so badly for Mamie that her parents made her feel this way about herself.
What James doesn't know is that (provided he decides the farming life is what he wants) Jock and Mamie intend to make him their heir and bequeath Mureth to him when they are gone. Their love for their nephew is clear, and "Music in the Hills" reminds me (in several places) about the important, nurturing role that childless adults can play in the lives of the children and young people around them.
The other thing I like about "Music in the Hills" from a childless perspective is that, while it's clear both Jock & Mamie wanted children and feel their absence keenly, they also have a wonderful marriage and enjoy their life together at Mureth tremendously. In our introduction to Jock in Chapter One, we learn that he
"...had been born in Mureth House -- so had his father and grandfather -- it was a pity he had no children to carry on the tradition, to run about the old place and waken it to life with noise and laughter, but in other ways he was fortunate and knew it."There is one more book in this series, which will be our group's next selection for discussion in early 2017: "Shoulder the Sky." I'm looking forward to it!
This was book #19 that I've read to date in 2016.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen
I've written before about the role Bruce played in dh's & my early relationship, but a brief recap: I was only dimly aware of who Springsteen was (although I'd heard & loved "Prove it all Night" in high school) when I met dh in October 1981 at a dorm party. His residence nickname was "Bruuuuuce," emblazoned on the back of his official floor T-shirt. I remember visiting friends on his floor & poking my head in the open door of his room to say hello (we all did that in those days).
"Who's the hunk on your wall?" I asked, indicating the poster of a good-looking guy, onstage in a dynamic guitar hero pose, tacked up over his bed. "That's Bruce Springsteen," he explained patiently. Thankfully, he didn't hold my ignorance against me ;) and before long, he was playing me all of Bruce's albums (on cassettes on his boombox)(and before long, I was buying copies for myself). (The poster is somewhere in a box in the depths of my parents' basement... if I ever retrieve it, I'm going to frame it & hang it on the wall of our office. ;) ) We've seen him twice together (although dh saw him several times in the late 1970s/early 1980s before he met me), once in August 1985 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto during, shortly after we returned from our honeymoon, and once in 1992 at the SkyDome, sans the E Street Band -- a last-minute bit of luck, when a work friend of dh's couldn't attend and sold his tickets to us at face value. I seriously considered Bruce as a middle name for a boy, should we have had a son.
Anyway -- Sept. 27 rolled around (finally!!) and off to the bookstore we went. (Fortunately for our budget, the book was instantly on sale for 40% off, lol.)
The guy can write. We all knew he could write music, of course, but "Born to Run" is a wonderful book, written in a distinctive voice, chock full of glorious details, personal reflections and a wonderful, wry sense of humour. I especially loved the early parts of the book where he writes about growing up in a tight-knit but troubled family in Freehold, New Jersey, and his early days as a musician (like many others of his generation, inspired first by Elvis & then by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones). He delves into his troubled relationship with his father, famously expressed in songs like "Factory," "Adam Raised a Cain" and "Independence Day." He writes about his marriages, including his first marriage to actress Julianne Phillips (he admits he was not a good husband and regrets the way he handled things). As publicized, he writes with brutal honesty about the mental illness that plagued his father and the anxiety and depression that haunt him personally to this day. And yes, there are glimpses of Bruce the proud dad of three children, now in their 20s. (Encouraged by his wife Patti, he started getting up early -- anathema to a rock star! -- to make them breakfast, and concludes that if the rock and roll thing doesn't work out, he could find work as a breakfast chef in a diner somewhere. ;) )
If you are a Springsteen fan, this is an absolute must-read. Even if you're not, it would probably still be a worthwhile read, because it's such great writing and storytelling.
*** *** ***
ALI notes:
Having read Peter Ames Carlin's "Bruce" some time ago (reviewed here), I already knew the story of Bruce's aunt Virginia (his father's older sister), who was run over while riding her tricycle as a toddler, and the lingering effect her tragic death had on the family for generations to come.
But Bruce's book did shed new light on some characters I remembered reading about (in Dave Marsh's first book about Springsteen from the early 1980s, also called "Born to Run"): Tex Vinyard and his wife Marion, who mentored and managed Bruce's teenaged band, the Castiles, in the mid-1960s.
What I didn't realize or remember: Tex and Marion were childless. Bruce and his friends were their "kids." Writes Bruce:
They were friends of George [Theiss, also a member of the Castiles] who had decided to surrender the fifteen square feet of what was called their dining room to local teenage noisemakers. It was a very informal neighbourhood, black and white separated somewhat by the rug mill but generally hanging around the streets together, with Tex and Marion's tiny apartment seeming to be the hub on some sort of neighborhood teen club. They were in their thirties and childless, so they took in "strays," kids who either didn't have much of a home life or were just looking to get out of the house to someplace less confining and a little more welcoming. Tex was a temperamental, redheaded, comb-overed, loudmouthed, lascivious, pussy-joke-telling factory worker... He was also generous, loving, sweethearted and one of the most giving adults I'd met up to that time.
Tex and Marion seemed stranded between the teen world and adulthood, so they made a home for themselves and a surrogate parental life somewhere in the middle. They weren't your parents but they weren't your peers either. As we howled away, pushing out the walls of their little home with banging guitars and crashing drums, with the neighbours a mere two inches of drywall away (what tolerance!), they made the rules and set the agenda for what would fly and what would not.... Tex became our manager and Marion the house mother and seamstress to a team of misfit townie rock-'n-rollers.
Tex was my first surrogate father figure. He was loving in his own twisted way. More important, he was accepting. He cherished and encouraged your talents, took you for who you were and put his time, muscle, money and big black Cadillac, hauling equipment, all in the service of your dreams...
There were adults like Tex and Marion all across the United States, real unsung heroes of rock-'n-roll who made room in their homes and in their lives to cart the equipment; to buy the guitars; to let out their basements, their garages, for practice sessions; who'd found a place of understanding between the two combative worlds of teen life and adulthood. They would support and partake in the lives of their children. Without folks like these, the basements, the garages, the Elks clubs, the VFW halls would've been empty, and skinny, dreaming misfits would've had no place to go to learn how to turn into rock-'n-roll heroes. (from Chapter 13, "The Castiles," pp. 68-71)Just think -- without the support, encouragement, mentorship and management provided by this childless couple, would young Bruce Springsteen have become Bruce Springsteen, international rock superstar? Something to ponder...
(OK, the "stranded between the teen world and adulthood" line made me wince a little, but I'll forgive him... ;) )
This was book #18 that I've read so far in 2016.
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