CLOTHES MAKE THE WOMAN

 I had an entirely discretionary day today.  I slept in until embarrassingly late in the morning and my only thought on waking was:  when I go out, do I take the lovely Bertha with me or not?  I opted to take her (okay, that's my car's name, and it's pronounced in the German manner, Bear-ta, but when I'm making a U  turn in her, I call her the Queen Mary because, like the luxury ocean liner,  she has such a wide turning radius).  I wanted to get the most out of my day.  

First stop was the Manulife Centre, to pick up a book chosen by my book club: The Tennis Partner, by Abraham Verghese.  They didn't have it in stock.  All right, I'll figure that out later, I told myself.  Next stop:  the Art Gallery of Ontario, to see the Pacita Abad exhibit.  She was a textile artist who lived in the Philippines during the Ferdinand Marcos regime and her artworks are huge, handsewn, colourful pieces, very brave politically.  One depicted Marcos and his henchmen eating plastic dolls, representing the ruthless corruption for which he was eventually deposed in, I think, 1976.  Another was a series of pennants sewn of fabrics, newer and older,  which she collected from all over the Philippines, sewn in a seemingly haphazard patchwork style.  Barriers were placed around the pieces, to prevent viewers getting too close and touching the pieces.  They were almost irresistible.

I never let myself view too many exhibits at one time.  It's really disorienting.  Oh!  I should mention that I wore my AGO shoes,  As Portuguesas brand. They were bought for the purpose of  going to galleries with unyielding floors.  They are red, boiled wool, and look a bit like hobbit shoes. 

 I wasn't the least bit tired after all that walking, but I was hungry and took myself down to the Members' Lounge in The Grange for a pot  of tea and a bowl of soup.

Refreshed, I went out and retrieved Bertha from her convenient parking spot on the west side of McCaul Street, headed east on Dundas, past Parliament, to my friend and former neighbour Sanghun Oh's dress shop on Queen Street East.   Having already visited GravityPope on Queen Street West for  a few pairs of shoes last week, I thought I'd be brave enough to try on clothes.  Sanghun's shop is called 290 Ion, but it's at 380 Queen Street East.  Every time I go there, I think I will never find anything, but Sang is just the right sort of shopkeeper for me:  not at all pushy.  I've found some brilliant things there, including the black wool coat dress by Icelandic designer Matthildur that I happened to be wearing today.  While we gabbed about mutual friends, I pawed through her racks, finally shedding my coat dress and standing there in my skivvies (okay, black leggings and t shirt) and tried on a few knit pieces.

Here's what I bought: a knit wool top with a print that suggests I was unsuccessfully feeding a baby an avocado…

…a blue wool cowlneck sweater and a generous light wool scarf…

…and a midnight blue silk-and-cotton knit jacket which (gazing modestly at herself in the mirror) looks fantastic on me.

Now, you may think that’s quite enough of a good day for anyone, but there’s more: when I got home, there was a package waiting outside my door with a brand new book inside, called The Tennis Partner, by Abraham Verghese. I have *no clue* who sent it to me, but a very big thank you to whichever nice person it was. 

This is about all the fall colour I can cope with, but it was my first time clothes shopping in about six years and it was time.

80

Not a long post today, nor a funny one.  Just wishing Ivaan many happy returns of the day on his 80th birthday and hoping all is well in his new life.  I woke up to supportive messages from good friends, and I have a busy day ahead, which will include going to the cemetery with some birthday cake for the birds and squirrels.

The earth would have been a lot different, Ivaan, without your bright light shining on it, illuminating all the beauty and casting shadows at times, just for contrast.

Thank you, Ivaan.  You illuminated my life and encouraged me to make it gorgeous.

Vichnaya Pam'yat.

THE STORY OF SOPHIE & BEA

It must have been close to 20 years ago when Sophie first came to our house.  She was tiny and shy, and she soon retreated to the safest place she could find to hide:  underneath my little grand piano.  The details are a little fuzzy, but I remember I couldn't lure her out, so eventually I took a plate of berries - raspberries?  strawberries?  No clue - and a little dish of sugar to dip them in, and I joined her there, while her parents negotiated the purchase of a gold ring with Ivaan.

The next time I saw Sophie was 2008, and we'd sold the house and moved to an open concept condo. Sophie remembered the piano, and was soon under it again, but at age four she was a bit taller and more sure of herself. This time she brought just dad along for a visit, as her mum was busy at home with a new baby, a sister named Beatrice.

Some busy years followed.  Their mum and I stayed in touch, as I moved around from place to place, and as the girls got older and developed interests of their own.  Both girls were active in team sports, and weekends must have been a blur for their family, shuttling them to and from hockey tournaments and other competitive events.  One place, however, was free from competition, and that was their home.  Sophie was unendingly supportive of her younger sister, and Bea looked up to, and emulated Sophie.

There's a magic number of years that siblings should be separated in age, and I think it must be four.  These girls liked and respected one another.  They shared a quick and easy repartee.  I remember an occasion where Bea and her mum visited Atelier Ivaan just before I closed the shop for good.  Bea selected a handful of silver rings for herself while her mum and I chatted about my plans for the future.

I'd mentioned I wanted to take a real risk, and not do something safe or timid for the next phase of my life.

So when Sophie inquired, that evening, what I was planning to do with my newfound freedom, Bea replied, "She wants to have something to regret".  Sophie quipped, "Well, then, why doesn't she just come here for dinner?"  I still laugh about that.

Some of Sophie's stash of Ivaan rings accompanied her to McGill University a few years ago, and the three rings she wears daily went with her on an exchange to the University of Edinburgh last January, then accompanied her on her travels to Norway, Portugal, Spain and Greece.  On returning home, she rediscovered Ivaan's more flamboyant rings and fell in love with them all over again.

That did it.  I sent their mum a photo of the Traffic Stopper ring, which I still had in two adjacent sizes, and both Sophie and Bea loved it.  Luckily, hockey gives you big fingers, so Bea got the larger ring and Dr. Sophie got the slightly smaller one.  And they both lived happily ever after.

                                                                        The End

WHERE I HANG MY HATS

When I made a decision to put rural life in the rearview mirror, one of my first considerations was what to do with my hats. They weren't the kind of possession you can consign to a moving van but, as they're all in individual boxes, they take up a fair amount of space.  My friend Sonia immediately came to mind, as she would understand the significance of the hats, and she had a house to store them in.  Each hatbox has a hand-drawn sketch of the hat on the outside, for easy reference, in case I can't be bothered to read the accompanying label.

There aren't dozens of hats, by any means. but I'd estimate there are ten of them, felt and straw, some custom made to my own design, others ready made, and all cared for with the same attention I give my shoes. 

Ivaan understood the significance of a hat.  He had just purchased a new navy fedora in December 2002, before he fell off his bicycle and embedded his face in the asphalt on Queen Street West.  Next morning he had to go to the funeral of a longtime friend.  He really should not have gone anywhere, but he wore the fedora to the funeral, to disguise his black eyes and swollen face.  Me?  I didn't attend, because I was pretty sure when people saw him they would bury the wrong person.

The day after the funeral, he suffered a massive stroke brought on by the collision of his face and the road, and I finally won the argument about whether he should ride his bike or not.  That's when the wheelchair entered our lives.

Twenty-two years later, I marvel that over the next six years he never developed a single pressure sore from sitting in that wheelchair, and I attribute that to the superb skin care routine I established for him early on: full-body massages with lotion, weekly pedicures that had staff in the rehabilitation hospital marvelling at his well-cared-for feet, and an over-all attention to detail that he normally reserved for his jewellery.  He always screamed when I approached with a basin of warm, soapy water, claiming that I was going to torture him again, but he proudly shared with me the compliments he received about his pampered state.

Back to Sonia:  I'm kind of amazed that Sonia, who is a marketing wizard, did not put my hatboxes up for sale in the time that she stored them in a corner of her living room.  She sold practically everything else I owned, and she was ruthless about it, too, because she knew I'd never again have 3000 square feet of space to squander on material possessions.  If you ever want to break up with your furniture, guilt-free, get yourself a Sonia.

Now that I'm no longer in my bucolic paradise, it's true: I'm living in a tiny space that I can renovate to my wallet's content.  As a matter of fact, much of that renovation is already complete.  New oak floors throughout, new 8 inch baseboards, new white paint, new through-the-wall air conditioner, new kitchen appliances, except that they're sitting in my dining room, uninstalled, as we're awaiting the arrival of a beautiful, huge white fireclay apron sink with a bowed front.  It'll be the pièce de résistance in the world's smallest kitchen.

I'm slowly getting out of the habit of wearing jeans, mismatched socks and boots, year-round.  The other day, I was spotted wearing a leopard-print silk skirt with a crinoline, black stockings, and Thierry Rabotin shoes with heels.  And I have an appointment with my hairdresser next week. One day soon, I'll break out one of my excellent hats and the transformation will be complete.

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.