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.
Rachelle and I took our son Jones to Ramsden Park on the weekend.
It was another very hot day and everybody there was looking forward to letting their kids loose in the splash pad, but it wasn’t quite ready when we got there. A worker dressed in a full body orange hazmat suit waded through the water carefully pouring chlorine, while the children, confined to the perimeter by their parents, twitched like racehorses, desperate to get out of the gate and into the world. When the All Clear sign was given, the children ran screaming and dancing into the fountains of water, and the goodness and fortune in that moment was a living, profound thing. The parents happy and relieved, receded into shade, and the worker in the hazmat suit stepped out of that second skin revealing her astonishing, natural beauty as if a slow-motion scene from a movie. All afternoon, all summer, perhaps, similarly aged teen boys hung about, trying to think of winning things to say.
Jones played hard for about ninety minutes. Everything urgent and happy, everything expanding. And when it was over and we started to walk up the street to the car, we came upon a home that was being renovated. A worker was operating a digger, and to Jones this was a Bigfoot sighting. Jones was born under the sign of The Digger, you see. The Digger is his spirit guide. The Digger is everything. And the man driving it saw the impossible wonder in Jones’ face and offered to let him come into the cab and sit on his lap for a minute while he worked. And Jones did, his little hands on the levers, his life now something he was dreaming as much as something he was living.
Jones, an inch away from three, glowing like a little sun. And I am thinking about memory and when it begins, and as he was smiling out at Rachelle and I, everyone so proud and happy, all I could think was, “Let it be now, please Lord, let this be the first waking memory of his life in this world.”
]]>I was suprised to be contacted by Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently.
As many of you will remember, I was an old drinking buddy of his brother Rob, who was mayor of Toronto for a controversial stretch of time back a few years ago.
Rob and I attended Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time in the 80’s and it was there that we became drinking buddies at Rooster’s, the campus pub. We were never best friends or anything, but much later, when I moved to Toronto and we re-connected on Facebook, Rob would habitually open chats with me when he was drinking and looking to revive the “good, old days.” According to his brother, Rob truly valued what I had to say and as Doug put it, “If you were good enough for Robbie, you’re damn sure good enough for me!” and with that he offered me a job as a staff writer at his office. My first job has been to write some follow-up ads promoting that fact that Doug’s new government made good on their promise to make it legal for beer companies to lower the price of a beer—if they want to—from $1.25 to $1.00.
This is the script for my first ad:
( Doug Ford speaking to camera from his basement den )
“ I haven’t had a drink in over 25 years– not because I have any sort of problem. I don’t and I never did, and I will sue the bejesus out of anybody who says different.
Just try me. ( Two second pause)
No, I stopped because I’m disciplined. Good governance and fiscal restraint require discipline, a quality I learned as a shotputter and as the no-nonsense businessman who steered Deco Labels and Tags to be voted– by the readers of Etobicoke Style magazine– as one of the top three Label and Tag operations in all of the region.
For four years running.
We’re proud of that.
But none of this means I don’t remember what it was like to have a nice cold one. I do. And I remember how powerful it can make you feel. You and your crew, cruising the streets of the city looking to blow off some steam. Not looking for trouble, but sure as hell not afraid of it, either, and The Stones are blasting, maybe Street Fighting Man, and you’re all piled into your dad’s Beemer, roof down, and it feels so good. Oh, and all the ladies in their summer clothes? (Doug–make direct eye contact with then camera and then smile, teeth showing) Ah, the stories I could tell… (Doug– chuckle to self) Well, those were different times, I guess, but we felt like rowdy, young gods, and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario thinks everybody should be able to afford to have that feeling, too, which is why we’ve now made it possible for Ontarians– both men and women– to enjoy a 25 cent reduction in the price of a beer!
Government by the people, for the people.
I’m Doug Ford, and I’m your premier.”
( This is the first ad the Doug Ford ran before I got involved:
https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2018/08/03/doug-ford-says-buck-a-beer-coming-by-labour-day/ )
]]>It was one of those beautiful summer days, one of the days you wait for, and Jones, like all the children there, was having the time of his life. Running from one attraction to the next, he would fling himself into each discovery with greedy amazement. His joy in his body, and the interaction between it and this emerging world around him, was a visible, glowing thing.
Not far from us was a young boy in a wheelchair. He seemed conspicuously alone as he sat there looking through a mesh screen at all the other children playing inside the Bouncy Castle/Obstacle Course. He was probably around 10, and although he could move his head a little bit, he couldn’t move his arms or legs at all and speech seemed difficult. Sheltered from the sun by the shade cast from the nylon castle, he sat motionless and quiet while all the other children tumbled and spun and screamed.
The Bruno Mars song “Marry You” was playing, and even if you don’t know this song you probably know this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xdyRsGOl6U
It was a hit about ten years ago, and is the sort of infectious, optimistic pop that’s nearly impossible to resist– a welcome trigger for your body and mood, an instinct to movement, really. It’s happy music and it would have been on every party mix made at the time– the song kids would hear in their heads whenever they thought about the person they had a crush on, the song that would surge through them into adventure and love.
And then there was this boy– a spectator, and it was unbearably sad. I went over and stood beside him, and there I saw his two companions, maybe brothers or friends, both lanky boys of 13 or so. They were rolling and leaping through the castle, and when they spilled-out the exit, all hair, shouts and over-sized feet, they immediately ran over and hugged the boy. Excitedly, they shared every detail.
He was so loved, and it seemed right then that there was no boundary between the three of them.
And then the they pushed him off to the next attraction, speeding him over the bumpy, uneven ground like it was some wild game they played, all of them smiling, all of them beautiful and happy beneath the day.
]]>It was a beautiful day and he was gently tugging at the leaves and flowers of the plants that ring our backyard.
His touch was so delicate, so full of wonder, and above him the tree branches formed canopies through which the sunlight streamed. He, so small, looked up to an infinity of leaves, each one like the next, all coordinated in motion by the light wind, and then through them he’d catch glimpses of a blue ocean of sky and the sun going on forever. A bird was singing, too, the sound isolated and framed, as if directed specifically toward our son, and this conversation that was being conducted was holy. Everything seemed mystical and endless, and Jones wasn’t watching it, as I was, my mind cluttered by the names and functions of things, but he was of it, living beyond time and memory in this moment of gracious, floating beauty.
A father and his two young daughters walked by on the path beside me, and the dad commented to his girls that it was great that there was a baseball game on in the park for everybody. The youngest girl, the one who might have been four, looked at him like he was crazy, “Not really, you know you can only watch them play, right Daddy?”
A skinny woman somewhere in her 50’s jumped about behind home plate encouraging the Leafs. She had spiky, blonde hair and was wearing a two-piece Lycra workout suit that she’d pulled up over her paunchy stomach to the belly button. Her thing, it seemed, which may well have been her workout, was to trot off after the foul balls and return them to the coaches. It was clear that this wasn’t an official position, but rather a chosen one.
Not far from her was a guy in a lawn chair with opinions.
He thought that the strike zone was too big.
He couldn’t believe that a hotdog stand existed without Rob Ford at it.
The second baseman couldn’t catch the flu.
When the spiky-haired woman ran off after another foul ball, he piped up, “I can’t believe they’re so cheap that they make you give the balls back!”
The woman seemed almost insulted by this and turned toward him, her hands on her hips, and in a chippy, defiant voice said, “The game’s for free, they don’t make no money and they’d go broke if they were giving away the balls!”
Lawn chair: That’s crap, you gotta think big, you gotta think marketing! If they gave the balls away this place would be packed and they’d have sponsors all over the place!”
Spiky-haired woman: You just want something for nothing.
Lawn Chair: When I was a kid they gave ‘em out for free!
Spiky-haired woman: Well, this ain’t the 60’s!
Lawn Chair: Jesus, I’m not that old! (But he looked like he was) That just shows you don’t know shit!
Spiky-haired woman: Yeah, you are too that old, and you know what? The reason you’re griping about the balls is because you ain’t got none!
And then the second baseman booted the ball and the guy in the lawn chair used this distraction and started to shout at him, “Goddamn it, can’t you guys do anything right!” and as he yelled the spiky-haired woman kept looking right at him, satisfied that she’d protected her turf.
