THE THOUSANDAIRE

When I was a kid, a millionaire was a rare and special thing to be. The only millionaire I remember did things like send us gift boxes of cellophane tape at Christmas. I confess I’ve always thought of tape as a luxury item, to be used sparingly, and not as a mere convenience for attaching sheets of paper to other sheets of paper.  The gentleman in question was a Detroit-based millionaire named Charles E. Feinberg, who, my father said, was a shareholder in  3M, the company that manufactured all kinds of tape. I’m guessing that every Christmas he received a large gift box from 3M, comprising all their products for domestic use, and then had to figure out who among his acquaintances would be the beneficiary of his largesse. We knew he didn’t care about Christmas, being Jewish, and we sure weren’t going to tell him we had a common ancestor. This was easy. Dad took pains to disguise that unhappy accident of birth, even sending us to a Baptist Sunday School for tips on how best to assimilate. We suspected the real reason was Free Babysitting on Sundays.

At first we were neutral about it. Later it became a burden when it was impressed upon us by fellow churchgoers that we couldn’t get into heaven because we were not baptized. Finally, neighbour women were sent to convey to our mother that it was frowned upon to send their unbaptized children to Sunday School with our paltry collection coins in our sweaty palms. Our mother imperiously conveyed a message in return: that she could understand their need for a church to attend because they were weak people, while she herself was strong and did not need a guiding hand to raise her children.  I could have added that she had a pretty good hand and applied it regularly to her children, but even I was embarrassed and ashamed when she once invoked the little-known fact that our neighbour had a child who lived in an institution, and this might be the reason she was in need of spiritual guidance. That was a low blow, and I knew it. I started going to the park on Sunday mornings, and despite the subterfuge, no one ratted me out. Eventually I dropped the pretence, and stopped going outside altogether. For some reason, I never connected the slightly diminished Baptist collection plate with our frugal mother’s equanimity at my disobedience. 

But back to our millionaire. I imagined all millionaires did was count their money and invest in Honeywell, a company that manufactured thermostats, but which I imagined provided vats of honey to millionaires. I didn’t even like honey, but this seemed like a reasonably luxurious thing to have on hand if one were very rich. And honey, like cellophane tape, was sticky.

It’s no longer 1961, and probably Charles E. Feinberg of Detroit, Michigan  managed to increase his earthly fortune before shuffling off this mortal coil. He was elderly at the time, which only added to his mystique. I guess that I am now about the age of Charles E. Feinberg and I, too, am a millionaire. At least, I reason, if I can purchase a house for a million dollars cash, and have some left over, I must be a foreign member of that Detroit Jewish élite who keep a vat of honey in their cupboard. I haven’t quite risen to the level of owning shares in 3M, so I’d better exercise caution and refer to myself as a thousandaire. 

There’s no point in attracting undue attention to oneself, after all.

WORKING HANDS

 Some people have hands that look like they’ve never done a day’s work in their lives. Their fingers are long and slim, their nails are manicured, and they probably could not pick up a five-pound bag of potatoes if they tried. I am not one of those people.  I lost the habit of using nail polish when I opened Atelier Ivaan, and I never picked it up again. Polishing jewellery is filthy work. If you survive a session on the polishing machine without black grime under your nails, you’re not polishing hard enough. 

Jewellery polishing compound comes in various grades.  The rough grade is called Tripoli. The finer grade is called Rouge.  To complicate matters, there’s red Rouge and green Rouge: red for polishing yellow gold and green Rouge for polishing white gold, and for silver. There are other colours, for polishing Platinum and other metals, but let’s leave it there, because all you need to know is that it turns black, and that which doesn’t embed itself in your fingers ends up inside your nose. This will horrify you, the first time you realize it. After that, you accept that this is just a part of life.

I used to have thin, pliable fingernails.  By contrast, Ivaan had nails that resembled a coal miner’s. But once I took over the business, my nails grew thicker and less flexible. My fingers changed too. They’ve always been strong and substantial, but nowadays they are even more so.

I marvelled at the slender fingers of women who were shopping for an engagement ring. Honestly, sometimes I felt like saying, “Come back when you’ve put a few miles on those fingers”.  And I steered them toward rings that had some negative space on the reverse that I could use to enlarge the ring in a couple of years (or babies).

A few years ago, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, I  consulted a hand surgeon who diagnosed trigger finger on the middle and fourth fingers of my right hand. Those fingers would no longer open and close without encountering an obstacle. The surgeon offered the operating room for an immediate procedure if I was willing. “You’ll have some scars on your palm afterwards”, he warned, but added that I was very unlikely to get a job as a hand model anyway. Point taken! He operated, bandaged me up, and injected enough painkillers that I was able to drive my manual transmission car home without feeling a thing.

Then Covid hit.  I was not able to attend the hospital for hand therapy due to the lockdown. Slowly my hand healed. Once the bandages came off, I noticed my fingers could no longer open completely. But the hand functioned quite well, and I got used to joking that I had one hand and one claw: quite useful for dredging the ponds. Dr. A didn’t think that was quite as funny as I did. I have no idea why. After all, he and I had bought our rural properties at the same time, and we were regularly exchanging funny stories about being newly-minted farmers.  

I was crushed in the spring of 2023 to receive a letter from Dr. A, saying due to the effects of Long Covid, he was retiring from his surgery practice. It was particularly hard because I’d been his patient for 20 years, since he was injecting my thumb joints with steroids, to undo the damage done by pushing Ivaan’s wheelchair.

It’s been a long time since I pushed a wheelchair, and I’m thinking of going back to the hospital for hand therapy to straighten out my claw.  It’ll be hard, returning to the “scene of the crime”, but at least I can feel grateful that my fingernails are finally clean. 

MASTERING LA BELLA LINGUA

 I guess it’s the season. Being stuck in the house for months has that effect on me.  I’m not a cold weather outdoor sort of person, which sort of begs the question “Then why do you live in the country? In Canada? In winter?” Well, in my defence, I moved here in April, and I’m impulsive by nature. I was not thinking that far ahead.  In summer, I always remind myself that I’ll want to remember these beautiful hot days during the long winters ahead.  Then winter comes, and  I spend my days fixing things around the interior of the house. It’s a big house, admittedly, so until last winter there was a fair amount to fix. I’d always imagined I would do all the work myself, but that idea dissolved last January when I started putting in new windows. The windows here are massive. Michael, whose company installed them, is extremely tall. I’m guessing 6 foot 8.   I don’t think he’s as tall as the windows.  They’re a real showstopper, no doubt about it.

Once I’d painted the exterior (indigo),  painted the interior (white), and installed new kitchen counters (blue) and sink (white), there was precious little to do. I didn’t want to get caught up in that endless cycle of demolition and renewal that keeps home improvement magazines afloat, so I’ve been strict about what I’ll do and not do.

In 2023/24,  I reached Peak Reno.  Yes, there are things I’d like to replace, like light fixtures, but none so urgently that the anodyne ones that came with the house are in any danger of disposal.  I am really happy with the house.  It’s like me:  seasoned, but responding enthusiastically to even amateur efforts at remediation. This leaves me with at least 100 days of fallow time till I can get outside and have fun. Last year, I studied Scots Gaelic to while away the winter.  I always do better at languages that bear no resemblance to any I have a passing acquaintance with.  So now I can amuse myself by saying aloud “Madainn mhath, a caraid. Ciamar a tha thu?” and respond, shaking my head sadly, “Tha fuar. Chan eil snog”.  My Scots relatives are dubious.  They’re from the eastern side  of Scotland and speak Doric, which is what you often hear when people are imitating Scotsmen. It’s based loosely on English and has a great many native speakers. Gaidhlig (Gaelic) has probably … 12? 13? I imagine that all of them will be on hand to welcome me if ever I go to the Isle of Skye.

But to return to  the subject of this blog post,  and my 100 fallow days.  I’m feeling very energetic, despite having suffered memory loss due to Covid. So I decided that I’d like to do my Masters in Italian. When  I came here, Italian dripped off my tongue like I was a native speaker. Either due to Covid or old age, even English doesn’t do that any more. So I called up the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Toronto and sought their help. I would need it badly, it seemed.  Fortunately, they indicated they would lighten my wallet by only $320 in return for an intermediate review course over Zoom. Sold!

A dear friend who is a former Musicology prof expressed concern. Grad school was much more intense than Undergrad.  Had I thought about all the changes that had occurred at the University? I wouldn’t have my regular crew of well-meaning profs to encourage me. They have all retired…or died. Another Musicology friend feared I’d be that much older, with a crew of age 20-something classmates to support me and compete with me. A third Musicology friend, equally well-informed, said, “The hell with it! Just go. What’s the worst that can happen?”

So a plan is forming.  Next week I start my Istituto course. Now all I need is un po' di coraggio ed un sacco di bella fortuna.