ford the river

I have just returned from a completely enchanting but unbearably sad evening at Children’s Hospital where I sat in Mikaela’s bed reading her pop up stories of the Nutcracker and Stella and the Sea. I peel off layer after layer, like a little onion. My mother overdresses me she grins. She loves you. I know. Bike shorts, ballet tights and socks that look like the ones the geishas wear in Japan.

Then she is Stella in the Tub (albeit with an myriad of tubes and other paraphernalia I was terrified would pop out at any moment). We washed her hair with raspberry shampoo and used a tiny sand bucket to send rivulets of water over her head which has been through entirely too much for a five year old. Soft cotton pyjamas, robin egg blue and ask the nurse to remove the hospital anklet that has cut into her leg. Massage her feet.

Stick on earrings, a different shape for every day I grin. She smiles at last and chooses the diamond heart shape. Perhaps we should stick one on your nose, I smirk and when your father comes tomorrow he will think you have had your nose pierced. She says ew. She doesn’t seem tired. Maybe getting your newly growing brain radiated makes one more alert. More stories.

Medicine time. As I help her rinse out her mouth, she shows me the wiggling front tooth. I tell her that the tooth fairy brings Toys r Us gift certificates in large denominations so you can shop like crazy, knowing that this will make her mother crazy. She laughs and wiggles her eyebrows up and down. What would you buy? A make-up kit she says and we plan our spa day for Sunday. Suddenly, her brow furrows and tears fill her eyes and she yells at me. You think everything is funny, that everything is happy and it is not.

I know, dolly.

The signal of exhaustion. Can I kiss you, Mikaela. You may. On the hand.
I cover her up and whisper ‘two more sleeps’. A tiny smile .She is surrounded by stuffed animals. I crawl out of the bed, turn out her light and say the schma.

In the next room, Katherine, nurse extraordinaire, is tending to a small native boy who has eyes like pools and is hooked up to everything, even the television. I wave goodnight to Katherine and the little boy looks at me and asks if I could stay. I say, sure, and pull up the visitor’s chair. I thought at first I may have looked somewhat like a convict, orange pants, black sweater, leather biker jacket and a black wool hat. Braids. I flash him a huge smile to let him know I am not really a gang member. He doesn’t care anyway. Who are you. I’m Colette. Who are you? I am Quin. Can you stay here tonight? Hmmm, I’m afraid I can’t, Quin, my own little girl is waiting for me at home and I

haven’t. seen. her. all. day.

His breathing is laboured and croupy, and his teeth are swathed in silver caps. His face is perfection; dark and deep with a dimpled smile that hasn’t arrived yet. He is looking right into my eyes. The tears pool and run down his cheeks. One after the other after the other. He says nothing.

My eyes blur as I try to keep my composure and then give up. Hey Quin. Tell me the best thing that ever happened to you. He throws his head back and launches into a story about his father taking him to the fire station, and as he chatters and takes these deep wet breaths, his eyes shine and I keep wiping the water that runs from them.

It’s scary being here all by yourself, huh? He nods and bows his head. He keeps asking my name. I keep telling him.

I’m Colette, and you, are Quin the fire fighter.

my name is mommy

pascale is four and is cheating on valentin, the parisian boy, son of pascal, her namesake. we have had an arranged marriage plan that is crumbling before my eyes. she professes to be in love with alexander who reports they are going to have a son named moses and a daughter named oceana.

pascale thinks she is from egypt. obsessed with pharoahs and is constantly putting dolls in baskets and setting them adrift. she is funny, hilarious in fact, with a temper that could burn a house down. she has transformed all of her barbies into egyptians by putting black permanent marker on their eyes. she draws gold bracelets on her arms with crayola lemon markers.

her pre-school class picture was taken today. pascale showed up to school with kohl eyeliner and a large green circle between her eyes. an emerald she said and gave me a withering look. did you know that it’s your class photo today honey? of course, she replies. she is the eygptian queen. sigh. however, this is more palatable than the moses phase where she shrieked out the front window, let my people go, much to the chagrin of both dog walkers and neighbours alike. i briefly question my decision of enrolling her in a jewish school simply because the thought of not seeing her throughout the day was unbearable. she’ll likely grow up and write a book about it, torturing me in my old age.

why is life so busy? i can't believe myself when i thought i was busy in my twenties. what a joke. i stay up way too late, in an attempt to carve out some adult time for myself and then struggle through the day half asleep. it's the details that make me nuts. groceries, some weird virus that pascale has, the earthworm i am to produce for her worm day at school, the daily dinners i have to create that have no seasoning whatsoever, the constant picking up toys and tiny bits of toys...as well as the normal adult stuff, bills, insurance, car repairs and so on. it seems like a giant treadmill. I don’t remember my parents being this insane. maybe I am too old to be a parent, should have started at twenty when I instead was on a bus somewhere listening to neil young and trying to find myself.

i oscillate between thinking i want to never work again, and needing a wife, not a husband. even a roll in the hay with no chance of commitment is seeming alarmingly inviting. my last date waxed his eyebrows. (waxing is a foreign ritual that puzzles me.) additionally upsetting was the fact i couldn’t stop wondering whether acrylic or gel nails were more cost efficient whenever i was with him.

whatever, there is no sex. i am in the prime of my life, i want to hit the odd film and boink. have breakfast, boink. read the paper alone, then nap. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR????

ahem.

sorry. i’m back.

or, as my handsome eco-warrior-and-vegan friend suggested, 'to be waited on hand and foot by a well oiled man who speaks fluent magyar or one of the indigenous languages of papua new guinea and who studied tantric massage (but doesn’t even mention it, because that would be annoying). he just does it, wordlessly...o.k. maybe a few words in one of the mystic languages he speaks, and even though i don’t understand what he says, it sounds good, and he knows how to cook quick simple things that are well spiced and so on...'

then again, the benefits of being a single parent are threefold:

1) i get uninterrupted, unfettered sleep once a week while pixie is at her dad’s.
2) i am free of the emotional heaviness that accompanies relationships.
3) i was doing all of this work even when I was in a relationship so what the hell.

even so, the weeks of work and mothering and watching my own emotional bank account go into overdraft have me occasionally longing to go to sleep for a week and wake up in a forest.

my life is the living version of the william tell overture. was up last night until 3:30 trying various tricks to calm my hormone riddled body and overactive mind into sleep. tried to give myself a back rub the way david, the impossibly sweet set designer used to, with little success.

as a gift to myself i got fake-o nails put on and now am struggling to type. highly annoying but my hands look like barbra streisand’s. on the way home from the spa was happily oblivious to the fuming drivers and sat in the traffic jam smiling stupidly at my nails, admiring them from every angle.

i feel very grown up.

descent into the world of internet dating

my descent into the internet dating scene began with a carefully constructed self profile, a picture that was taken many years ago and elevated hopes that this was indeed the final frontier for future romance. where else would a single parent meet men? not through work as an art instructor to ten year olds, not at the 'mom and me' ballet lessons at the local community centre, and definitely not at my home, where i am found every night from seven o'clock onwards.

my profile read something like this:

i am an art instructor to over four hundred children, ranging in age from six to fourteen. (could you please go through puberty after my class??) i wear orange flip flops with a giant artificial flower attached to the top to work which is a source of irritation for my boss. he calls them beachwear....unprofessional....i tell him i would never wear them to the beach, they are far too fabulous. he calls me insubordinate. i thank him for the compliment. i think his goal in life is to deprive me of any rational thought.

i am a voracious reader, a computer luddite and a single parent to the Pixie, who is four. i am an exhibited artist and would like to wake up the Pixie in the middle of the night to press our hand prints in wet concrete down the street. i wish that barney hosted cnn. then i would be news literate and she would be entertained.

i was born on the canadian prairies and moved to the coast by mistake. i miss the blue blue dusks of alberta. i love my family, paris, the ocean and wheat fields. my c.d. player has nigel kennedy, jane siberry, santana and disney sing along. i live on a street that has tree tunnels. large spiders, control freaks and losing my parents frighten me.

i am surfeited by organized religion but feel an affinity for the interiors of churches. to get out of typing class in high school i told the teacher my mother died. i still feel guilty about it. after working in a jewish school i understand why jews don't eat pork, but still don't get why catholics can't masturbate.

i phoned in sick for work twice this month and read all day in my pajamas. my favorite memory is driving at warp speed around paris on the back of my friend's motorcycle. i wanted to learn how to weld, but the helmet cost too much.

i believe that the power of women is the largest untapped resource in the world.

i do not like to run marathons. if your idea of fun is running up a steep mountain, i will gladly take the gondola to the top and meet you with a glass of wine. i find lycra daunting. i love my bed. the only regret i have is never learning how to play the cello. i don't have a lot of time, but can carve out quality time for the right person. cheers.

i return to the computer the following day....you have two hundred and ten messages....i start to laugh out loud. utopia. i open the file and there is a neat row of little pictures and first sentences.

1) "my name is robert, but my spiritual name is sharreef...."

delete

2) "i am a jehovah's witness looking for a submissive sister..."

delete

3) photo of man in a white, what appears to be a balaclava appears. perhaps a fencer. talks of boys and toys. has a frantic look to his eyes..

delete

4) "my cat can eat a whole watermelon"

?

internet thrills are interrupted by a trip home to edmonton to visit my family. an old boyfriend, has found me on classmates.com. i was sixteen, he was twenty. he was sweet. shy. gave me a gold chain on the high level bridge. picked me up from work at my dad's pharmacy in his white trans-am and held my hand as i fell asleep. he was my first love. i always wished i had been older when i met him so i could have had sex with him. he phones. we laugh, we decide to go for lunch, as it's my last day in edmonton, and he will drive me to the airport. he looks the same. married. two boys. he's a paramedic and i think he is still my hero.

he talks about how he disciplined his boys. if they swore or talked back to him he hit them on the mouth. he hit them a lot. they respect and love him he says, and that my precocious four year old daughter needed some discipline. i order a beer. i tell him about teaching art. that i fell in love with a man once who i could never be with, but who could see straight through to my heart, wrote me poetry, and when i became disassembled put the pieces back together again and handed them to me. wrapped in courage.

i tell him about my best friend, how different we are, that she makes my world glisten. she's jewish, beautiful,has two teenage daughters and is amazingly brilliant. i make fun of her because she had never been to the east side of the city until she met me. in fact, i think i am still one of the few, if only non-jewish friends she has. she is my soul mate in female form. (this is a whole other monologue)

he looks at me. contempt. he makes some stereotyped awful comment about jews, then he asks if i would have an affair with him. i tell him my plane is leaving and we must go now. i wish i had a cigarette. i would smoke in his car.

during the next week, he calls me, and calls, and calls. on wednesday evening the phone rings and rings. i turn the ringer off and count the messages. thirty three, thirty four...i start to get that afraid feeling, like you're trying to talk yourself out of it but the feeling is there, growing inside of you like a big bean plant curling around your insides. i tell my friend lisa to call him. she gets carried right away. he is infuriated and starts to, for an entire day and night intermittently call me, and my parents.

the problem with being so pissed off at someone, especially the kind of pissed offness that one feels when one's parents are wrongfully involved, is that with cordless phones you can't just pick up the receiver and slam it every ten seconds. it's wimpy.

beep. push. beep. push.

i got call blocking (3.95 per month and haven't heard from him since.)

5) The Epicurean. 'romantic epicurean male seeks blah blah blah'. he lists his salary. i find this peculiar but hopeful. a man with a job. this is a good start i tell myself. he is handsome. he is literate. we meet downtown for dinner and i am disarmed by his beauty. he is tall. he is big. he is stunningly handsome. and i feel very afraid. he is captivated by my 'wit' he says and we have a nice dinner. sari hates that word nice. but it describes it perfectly. he wants to meet my daughter. i find that peculiar.

the next week he wants to cook for me. lisa insists i do a criminal check on him first. he could be a jeffrey dalmer she shrieks. she does a reverse check deal on the computer and finds out that his phone is registered to mary lee something or other. i leave lisa the address and phone number and go for dinner. his house is on the river in an 'adult oriented building'. it is immaculate. impressive books. we seem to have alot in common. he has a ten year old son, who visits every august. i ask what happened between him and his wife. he mumbles a lot of reasons, the only one i hear is 'she got heavy'. i have a flashing image of my cottage cheese ass in the three way mirror at the bathing suit shop and hope, if the time comes, that his lighting is kind.

i go into the bathroom, flush the toilet, run the water and my sleuth snoop alter ego insists that i go through the medicine cabinet. there are the regular things. vitamins, lined up in alphabetical order, A, B6, B12, B with C, C, Calcium...yikes. i fight the urge to move the zinc to the beginning. condoms. everywhere condoms. i think that is a good sign. a man who has mastered the art of condom use. i flush again. look at my profile.

we sit down to dinner. it's amazing and gorgeous. he eats fast. conversation is not easy. did i mention he was a hottie? i ask him about the leaking condo bit, has it been an issue in his building. he said it was before he bought it. i laugh and say, and you still bought it? he looks at me in an oddball kind of way, clears his entire plate and walks into the kitchen, leaving me to eat alone. he will later claim he has no condoms.

delete.

he's gone. when you think anything can be better, sometimes it's not. i have a card over my computer that says...barn's burnt down, now i can see the moon. well, the barn burnt and it was dark.

6)'i am a man in turkey.' leering.

delete

7)"dear colette. i am also from alberta, canada. i live on a farm in the rocky mountain foothills. (i think OH MY GOD IT"S BRAD PITT HE FINALLY FOUND ME).i am sixty seven years old, i recently lost my wife and if you need someone to take care of you and your little girl, pack your bags and get out of that city. i like square dancing, listening to the radio, and i have chickens."

the photo is kind. i have an image of this man, learning to use a computer and reaching out from the one quarter land, three quarters sky and feel introspective.

delete.

8)"i am roberto. i am from spain and i live in kerrisdale. i send you millions of kisses. millions. roberto."
save. just to read when i feel like i need a million kisses from anyone at all. cyber comfort.

9)this last one(i've skipped about one hundred and three others)was from The Professor. he was extremely funny and wrote a couple of paragraphs in answer to my request that barney host cnn. it is a clever conversation between barney aubergine and wolf blitzer. it is the first thing that has made me laugh out loud. i print it, reread it and laugh some more. his photograph is nothing that i ever would be drawn to. he is very far from The Epicurean. i hear iyanla vanzant, 'get through the packaging...' and i write him back. we meet for a drink at an entirely civilized and beautiful hotel lounge. the conversation flows, and neither of us have to act stupid and i can use words like equipoise in a sentence and he doesn't react weirdly.

the next week, he asks me if he could take me out for dinner to pastis. it is french, and expensive and beautiful. and he knows everything about wine and he's funny and has a story and we are into our fourth course, and i'm thinking, i could get past the packaging i think....and he says,'you know, i am honest to a fault and i need to let you know that while i was employed as a professor at the university, (did i mention he is a doctor of forensic psychology) he was wrongly accused, and acquitted of sexual harassment. it was a minor blip he says and says he accidentally brushed a client's, or was it student's breast and it actually has turned out o.k. because now he has been paid by the university to NOT to work there....

i hmmmm and hummmmm and nod and wonder why they put pernod in the creme brulee and try not to be an alarmist but really want to go home because just how the fuck would someone that is a psychologist accidentally get accused of harassment.

coffee. he's talking about films now. but then again, there are men wrongly accused of harassment so i really....his visa is declined. he goes up to the bar and whispers with the waiter. another card emerges.

he insists on walking me to my car. i say, oh no, really, i wish you would not....he says, i insist. he doesn’t ask to come over because because previously to the dinner date i told him that creme brulee would not be sex.

i fire up the computer. google his name ...... tried and convicted of at least four sexual assaults, served two years less a day. i find out from my neighbour (ironically completing his doctorate of psychology at the same university) that he is a sex offender. good.

i'm glad i have call whatever the fuck i paid three bucks for. he will not show up at your door, says my doctoral candidate neighbour, everyone knows who he is.

everyone that is, except me.

that night i have dreams of bats, and dwarf rabbits and mice and skunks finding their way into my home in the night, through tiny cracks and holes, and pascale is asleep on a mattress on the floor in the kitchen and i am trying to catch all of these rodents using a trap and skippy peanut butter. of course, i begin by blaming myself. i'm attracting the rodents and the skunks and the bats, because that's what my mom said when The Cowboy started to phone. she was frightened. why on earth would you go for lunch with him and get yourself into this mess? um, because i didn't know he was a racist homophobic abusive stalker type? sigh. there are funny bits to the whole thing, but suffice to say my picture is no longer on the kiss.com and my profile is deleted.

ps i can't seem to get my profile and picture off the site. i'm doomed.