This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school not waiting in this long, horrible lineup! This is not a Honeycomb Lavender Frappuccino! It is a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino! It is an abomination! Yet in spite of your laziness and incompetence, you come to me for hope, hope that this is the right order? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your flat, uninspired service. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m young. I have energy. But people are suffering under your ineptitude. They are exhausted. They need their caffeine, and without it entire PowerPoint presentations are collapsing. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of good coffee and prompt service. How dare you!
And look! You have written Scoldilocks on my coffee container! You think this is funny? There is no time for funny business! Funny business shall be our death! You disgust me with your jokes while we suffer!
But no matter how sad and angry I am, I want you to know that I will never give up, I will have my Honeycomb Lavender Frappuccino, even as you betray me! The eyes of all future coffee drinkers are upon you, and if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. We will never forgive you and you will burn in your own damnation!
]]>The parents line-up by a chain link fence behind a big, flowering bush.
The teacher lets us into the school one by one or in pairs. When it’s my turn I step into the hallway and can see into the classroom. All the children are sitting in front of their cubbies, knapsacks on their backs, waiting to be picked up. Oh, they’re perfect. They truly are. Let them always remember this perfection that lives in their core.
And there’s Jones, talking with his friends. And when he looks up and sees me it is like something inside of him is switched on. The smile begins in his eyes and moves throughout his body like a current of light. He shouts, “Daddy!” and runs toward me. His uncalculated joy a living thing. He throws his little body into mine. And this is the moment I did not know I had been waiting for my entire life. It hits me like lightning, like religion.
We head home, stopping to get an ice cream cone. Cabbage white butterflies, reflecting sunlight off their wings, appear like sparks around us before vanishing into foliage, and Jones’ tiny hand reaching up for the ice cream cone. Everything so beautiful.
This golden stretch of day.
This privilege of blue skies.
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Rachelle: You’re still mad about losing at Ms. Monopoly, aren’t you?
Rachelle: A resignation is a loss.
Rachelle: Yes, it is.
Rachelle: I know.
Rachelle: It was clear you were thrown off your game when you weren’t allowed to use your special dice or your customized Hat marker.
Rachelle: You didn’t quit because it was unfair.
Rachelle: You quit because you knew you had no hope of winning.
Rachelle: Yes. Times change.
Rachelle: That was the POINT of the game.
Rachelle: It was designed as a twist on the original, inverting the societal hierarchy we labour under, giving women $240 every time they pass Go, while men only get $200.
Rachelle: I have no idea what Jordan Peterson would say about that.
Rachelle: Who is he, anyway?
Rachelle: Boy, that’s an awful lot of links to YouTube videos.
Rachelle: Okay, okay, okay.
Rachelle: I’ve heard enough.
Rachelle: Fine. Equal opportunity and equity are different things.
Rachelle: So that’s the reason you quit Ms. Monopoly just when you were about to lose?
Rachelle: Okay. Resigned.
Rachelle: Principles.
Rachelle: Oh yes, we certainly do need more community leaders like you, Pickle!
Rachelle: Quitting a board game with friends and running off to “catalogue your comics” was indeed a brave and principled stance!
Rachelle: You bring honour into our home with your actions!
Rachelle: No, that’s not right.
Rachelle: You do not support our family by scavenging the garbage cans of Toronto for comics and then never bothering to resell the soggy, disgusting ones you retrieve.
Rachelle: You know it makes the neighbours very uncomfortable to see you doing that, don’t you?
Rachelle: Pickle, they have no idea what you’re looking for.
Rachelle: They’ve started to leave their empty wine bottles in front of our apartment.
Rachelle: I can’t believe you didn’t notice.
Rachelle: On Monday there must have 30 of them!
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: That bottle increase had nothing to do with the film festival, and everything to do with the neighbours trying to charitably address your disturbing, garbage-picking ways.
Rachelle: Yes, it is nice of them.
Rachelle: Most people are nice, Pickle, it’s true.
Rachelle: I honestly don’t know if Cate Blanchett is nice.
Rachelle: I can’t imagine you having dinner with her.
Rachelle: You’d lose all composure, drop your cutlery, knock over glasses. That sort of thing.
Rachelle: My guess is Jennifer Lawrence is nicer.
Rachelle: I suppose you’re going on another celebrity watch today?
Rachelle: Okay. Just don’t be creepy, and remember to pick-up some coconut water! Must get back to work! xo
]]>We are standing in front of our apartment on a hot and humid morning, and it is the first time in over a week I have been well enough to take him to daycare. We welcome this return, although we do not speak it. It lives in our eyes, in the way we look at one another. Everything once again in the right place. A bird chirps brightly from above and I ask Jones what it said.
“First he said hello to me then he said hello to you.”
We wave back, and as we walk up the street Jones tells me his dream from the night.
“I was a baby and I lived in Mommy’s hair.”
It is a beautiful image, and I feel like a light has just entered into my body. Jones happy and striking poses on the sidewalk, and then a crack of thunder above and around us, big drops of rain falling slow then fast. We hurry for shelter, finding some on the porch of a large, old house. The house with the raspberry bush. The house where the owners used to invite us in and give us things from their garden, before they moved away and the property became so mysteriously and beautifully overgrown.
Sheltered, we feel like we’re in a turret or a cave. All is brick and stone and dark cement. The rain is harder now and it’s exciting, cathartic. Everybody on the street soaking wet, everybody feeling vulnerable, yet freer than they’ve felt in a long time–all relieved to have the order and artifice of their day washed from them. And Jones begins to sing and dance. A scene from Singing in the Rain. His smile is big and silly and true, and the rain pours off the sloped roof above us like a waterfall– the fortune, the miracle to be alive within this baptismal moment.
It’s an honour to become a part of this esteemed franchise, and although I may be a little bit older than some of my teammates, Magic Mike expects to make an impact with his hustle, grit and smarts. And if I need to be a father figure to some of the team’s emerging, young organizational depth, so be it. Magic Mike is a born leader. I know where all the good steak houses are. I know where to get a safe tattoo at 4:00 am. And, goddam it, I know what a fair price for a prostitute– regardless of where the sex worker might be on the gender spectrum– is. Magic Mike can help this team grow up, and Magic Mike can help this team win. I will be making no further statements today so that I can best concentrate on preparing myself, Magic Mike, for the big game tonight. Oh, and please visit my website to purchase merchandise:
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Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: Well, I didn’t realize you felt that way about Keto Pizza Night.
Rachelle: Just a 5 out of 10, eh?
Rachelle: Oh. More like a high 4 out of 10. I see.
Rachelle: It’s been so brave of you to stoically endure like that, especially when you’re not even on the Keto diet!
Rachelle: It would be awful to have a homemade pizza created for you each week.
Rachelle: I can’t even imagine.
Rachelle: Yes, it’s true.
Rachelle: You really would do anything for your family.
Rachelle: Such courage.
Rachelle: You know what else you could do for you family?
Rachelle: No, this isn’t about getting a job.
Rachelle: I know how debilitating your allergies can be.
Rachelle: Yes, it must be like having Face Fibromyalgia!
Rachelle: Poor Pickle and his FF.
Rachelle: You should make a Facebook meme about this condition! Spread the word! Complain!
Rachelle: I’m sorry, I meant share information, not complain.
Rachelle: But look, what I’m preposing is this: Instead of me doing Keto Pizza Night for everybody each Tuesday night, maybe you could make something instead?
Rachelle: What do you mean you have to think about it?
Rachelle: No, I think you should get back to me now.
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: No ketchup based soups.
Rachelle: Because it’s disgusting.
Rachelle: Look, all you have to do is BBQ a steak and pour some salad from a bag onto a plate.
Rachelle: I believe in you, Pickle.
Rachelle: I believe you have what it takes to become Master of Fire.
Rachelle: That’s why I married you. I knew you would one day become Master of Fire.
Rachelle: Sure, I guess it was like a prophecy.
Rachelle: Oh! I found your glasses, by the way!
Rachelle: Jones had put them, very delicately, in the middle of a stack of towels in the linen closet.
Rachelle: There is a Spiderman sticker on the left lens.
Rachelle: No, I didn’t take it off.
Rachelle: I thought it looked sweet.
Rachelle: Nothing can stop you now. You are the Master of Fire. You’ll figure out how to remove the sticker.
Rachelle: Okay, I have to go now, it’s time for my power skating/massage session with Pierre! Should be back around 7:00! xo
The day is fuel.
It could reveal anything
Everything is possible.
Outside there is wet, heavy air. Raindrops tremble like mysterious candies on the leaves all around us. Jones is in his Spiderman costume.
We head up the street toward daycare and the beeping of a truck backing up awakens Jones’s spider-sense. He tells me it is the sound of somebody being electrocuted and that he needs to protect them, and so he runs off through all that is damp and green, to a fire hydrant where furious motions take place and an electrocution is narrowly averted.
And then Spiderman and I arrive at the back playground of the daycare, and the children flock to the superhero. They surround him. They’re cheering, jumping up and down– their perfect faces now seeming even a little more perfect. The daycare worker asks Jones to take his mask off and so he does.
I’m Peter Parker now!
And then he begins to run around the yard, again and again. So alive, so happy in this opportunity to be of this world. And each time he passes he gives me a high-five, and all the other children, now a part of this running, spinning, ring of joy, too, are also giving me high-fives. And if this is not a blessing, I cannot imagine what one might be.
Everything so very light and beautiful, as if the morning itself were lifting free of the earth and floating into dream.
is now trying– for the third time– to become the Democratic candidate for President of the USA. The man must like power, I guess. At any rate, he has espoused all the political views at one time or another, and now, at 77, he must truly believe it is finally Joe time. What follows is a list of alternate jobs, other than President of the USA, that Mr. Biden might fill:
Greeter at a prestigious riverboat casino
NHL Ref
Dr. Joe, marriage counselor and TV personality
Gourmet hot dog street vendor
Permanent host of The Academy Awards
Mayor of Caramel-by-the-sea, California
Colour commentator on Monday Night Football
Private detective who lives in Hawaii
Head barber and owner of Joe’s Man Cave
Prince of Whales
The crowd outside the stadium in TO is wild! Can you hear the cheering?
I could not hear it, but I could hear the occasional whoop coming through the open window as people made their way up or down the street.
Sitting in the dark, listening, it felt like a blackout had washed the city free. Everyone was experiencing the same thing. Everyone was happily displaced, vibrant.
In the wake of the victory some of the broadcasters have been anointing the Raptors Canada’s team, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The Raptors are Toronto’s team, reflecting a sensibility in league, sport and composition that is unique to the city. The players in the NBA, much more partners than faceless subordinates, are a revolution unto themselves. And in Toronto where the culture wars seems to burn so much brighter and hotter that the ROC, the Raptors embodied not just the demographic of the city they worked in, but the aspirations of the people who lived there, too.
For awhile now, particularly amongst people younger than me, the Raptors have served as connective tissue, the casual language spoken at parties and bars. This is not your father’s corporate sports team. This is something else. It’s youth, it’s velocity, it’s progress. The Leafs and Jays were institutional legacies passed on from bygone eras, but the Raptors were not, they were the living present of the city.
And last night there was such joy and hope. People were experiencing things they would never experience again. Their lives were being written, histories formed. They were young and beautiful and united, and the world was changing not just before them, but from within them, and everything was cresting, limitless and glowing.
]]>He looks at me from beneath the big, bulging sweater he’s wearing.
Frowning.
His brow furrowed.
“I’m an evil gorilla.”
Rachelle is in the backyard. The wind blows lightly through the trees and maple keys fall in the sun. They’re spinning the light, and everything is golden green. Rachelle sweeps them into a pile which the evil gorilla hits with a plastic bat. And above us there is birdsong. Such a rich variety this morning, each song telling an important and unimaginable story. The squirrels hustle along the hydro wires like they’re on a game show or late for work, and we sip tea as our son eats from a plate of nuts, berries and cheese.
Today, my first out of the hospital, and this is the dream into which I wake.
Our lives, all so small, all so beautiful.