“Sushi? Are you sure?” I ask again.
My fourteen-year-old son looks determined, maybe even excited.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he says. His tone has a tint of finality. He does not want to be asked again.
“What about something easy?” I say. “Like pasta, or pizza, maybe soup with grill cheese sandwiches?”
“No, I want to make sushi,” he says.
“Okay,” I say doubtfully.
Continue readingMy younger sister runs up to the refrigerator when she is around two or three years old.
She feels overheated. Her scalp and neck are damp and warm and her feet are sweaty and dirty from running around outside in a pair of sneakers with no socks. She opens the fridge looking for a source of relief.
She sees a bowl of water with fresh sticks of celery floating in it. The celery looks cool and refreshing. Carefully, she uses two hands to set the bowl down on the floor.
Cool air from the open fridge caresses the crown of her head as she sits in front of the bowl. She plunges a foot into the cold, refrigerated water. A satisfying and cooling wave moves from her foot to the rest of her body. She sticks the other foot in and scoops water over both of her feet, watching the dirt drip off of her skin.
When her feet are clean and her body temperature more comfortable, she puts the bowl of celery back in the fridge and closes the door.
The first band I saw in concert was the Moody Blues when I was six or seven. We saw them at Canada’s Wonderland in Toronto. Our day was spent going on the rides and walking back to the parking lot to eat sandwiches and salads from our cooler.
When the sun was getting ready to finally give us some space, my parents spread a blanket out on the grass where we could see the stage. We relaxed on the blanket and enjoyed the music.
“I want to see a show this summer,” my husband tells me many years later. I do a quick search in our vicinity, and I find one: a Sam Roberts concert in Mont-Tremblant.
“Do I know that band?” Phil asks. I list off some songs I think he knows. We listen to some on YouTube. Phil agrees that it could be a good choice.
“It’s nice up there,” I say. “We could find somewhere to stay and have a mini-vacation.”
“Can I come?” my son asks. It seems like a good setting for his first concert, so I say yes.
A couple days later, my son and I are having a video chat with my sister.
“Tell her what we’re doing this summer,” I say.
My son’s eyes light up. “We’re going to a David Bowie concert!” he says.
It is Thanksgiving, but my son and I aren’t celebrating. I recently started a new job, and he recently started kindergarten. We are both just happy to have a long weekend to relax.
I’m not going to make a turkey dinner for the two of us, but it is a long weekend, so maybe I’ll get something a little festive. As we walk up and down the grocery store aisles, I see the frozen tourtières. A tourtière is sort of festive, I guess. I put one in my cart.
It is easy to make. All I have to do is put the frozen meat pie in the oven and wait. My son and I enjoy our slightly festive dinner.
A week goes by. Temperatures are getting lower and the air is more refreshing. The trees look like they’re going to a festival with all of their bright leaves on display.
My son brings home an assignment that he had at school. The top of the sheet says, “Draw a picture of what you ate for Thanksgiving.”
My son has carefully drawn a brown circle. At the bottom, his teacher has written, “A little more detail next time, please.”
You can read the vignette presented in this video here.
The video includes my artwork, and also some footage from our more recent whale watching tour last week. This time we were armed with Gravol and we didn’t get sick.
Here is a gallery with some pictures from the tour and with the artwork from the video.
The boat jumps up and down on the waves like a volleyball leaping over a net. Even without the connection to my least favourite sport, I’m not feeling super amazing. I try to concentrate on the tour guide’s fun whale facts and the soft weight of my son’s head on my shoulder and not on my stomach.
“I don’t feel good,” my son says. I look down at him. His arms are hugging his stomach and he is staring at the bottom of the boat.
“I’ll go get a barf bag,” I tell him. I give him a gentle pat on his shoulder and walk up to the tour guide to ask her for one the bags that she waved around in the air and stuffed into the pocket of her fleece jacket at the start of the tour.
She is still reciting her whale facts, and she puts a finger up, indicating that I should wait. When she finishes her sentence, I ask her for one of the bags, but when I have it in my hand and I turn around, it is already too late.
My son’s vomit is all over the bottom of the boat. Another mom is sitting next to him and rubbing his back with concern. As I watch the scene with the empty barf bag in my hand, I feel that I have failed him.
I clean my son up with tiny, brown, ineffective paper towels. The smell and the rocking boat make my stomach want to empty itself as well, but I manage to hold it together.
When we get home from our trip a few days later, my son tells me that his favourite part was the whale watching tour.
It’s 2016, my son is seven years old, and we are boarding an airplane. We arrive at our row and the young man in the window seat greets us politely.
My son is angry that this guy has the window seat.
I am surprised by this reaction because my son hates flying. The last time he had a window seat on a plane , he cried out, “Oh no, we’re all going to die!” while we were landing at the airport. He wasn’t trying to scare the other passengers to be mean, he just thought that what he was saying was accurate.
When you’re not afraid of flying, it is difficult to know what will help someone who is afraid to feel better. Apparently, specifically choosing non-window seats while booking the flight is not helpful.
My son is telling me that he wants the window seat and asking me why he can’t sit in the window seat. I explain to him that I chose to not have window seats and I explain why. He is not satisfied with my answer, so I explain that the passenger in the window seat probably also specifically chose his seat, and he chose the window, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to switch seats when he specifically chose a window seat and we specifically chose non-window seats. I also explain that we should probably just leave the guy alone because we don’t want to be rude jerks.
“Okay, fine,” my son grumbles. I give him a comic book and he settles down, but his face still looks slightly sulky.
The plane turns on. The engines make all of the voices of all of the passengers sound muffled and hushed. The flight attendants do their safety pantomime in the aisles as the plane crawls slowly around the airport.
Finally, it’s time for the airplane to shoot up into the sky in a diagonal line. My son tries to look out of our neighbour’s window. He stretches his neck back and forth before saying, “Ugh, his head’s in the way!” and collapsing back into his seat in frustration.
We run into the guy from the airplane the next day when we’re returning from a tour. His face brightens when he sees us.
“Oh, hey!” he says, waving and smiling.
“Ugh, it’s him again,” my son says in disgust.
Raccoon Brontosaurus 