My sister reviews movies.

At some point, my immediate family went from being totally in the same boat on movies, to everyone abandoning ship to the life rafts and setting off in cardinally opposite directions.

My siblings and I can now comfortably acknowledge this with each other, and the shorthand is usually a reference to our father’s increasingly appalling taste in movies. Movie suggestions are often caveated by a reference to one of my dad’s later-day favourites: “Well, you might like it, but … My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.

But even when we don’t agree, I still enjoy hearing what my big brother and little sister (LS) are watching and liking.

And, unsurprisingly, the little sister who works in the jungle really just watches movies for the creatures… Plot, shmot.

Little Sister: “For 1st night of new year: popcorn, pjs and pelicula.”

Me: “Whatcha going to watch?”

LS: “It is looking like Planet Earth or Life of Pi. Might be Life of Pi, because David makes me sleepy and being alone with tigers in boats less so…”

Me: “I don’t understand Life of Pi. Is it good? Everything I’ve read about it makes me feel a little stabby, but that may be because the furry tiger inside me who is supposed to teach me lessons about life and love and spirituality died long ago because I only fed him the bitter fish of pessimism and hypercriticality. Then I made a coat out of his skin because practical.”

LS: “I have no idea. We spent like 200 days at sea and I passed out. [My girlfriend] won’t tell me the ending, but apparantly the irritating Canadian now believes in god because I saw that part. Visually it was quite well done. It is hard to win me on content. I liked Avatar when I saw it last week. Though it was also over the top. I like the animals.”

My sister’s movie reviews are my favouritest movie reviews. Though they, and maybe large chunks of her life, could probably be summed up as “I like the animals“.

ABRAZOS HERMANITA! May your animal movies be plentiful. 🙂

My (great) aunt, Kim Herbener

My aunt Kim Herbener passed away early last Thursday morning. She was 57.

She lived only a few blocks away from me, and was the first of my mum’s siblings that I had a separate adult relationship with. Meeting for lunch or coffee or brunch just to get together and talk about… all the things. There is already a dull ache of missing her. A Kim-sized hole beside my dad-sized one.

In November 2011, over a bowl of oatmeal at my dining room table, she told me that her cancer was back, and had metastasized to her liver. We knew it was terminal. As much as you never know exactly how much time you have left, we knew there was not much of it.

Kim Herbener

Kim, in China after high school graduation

This past year were trips to the hospital for a port and for chemo, the healthiest lunches I could find, and many cups of tea. Early on we had a few really interesting discussions about life and death. Closer to the end, when she was finding comfort in religion and spirituality, I lost the thread a bit. But we still made the time to be together. And just about everyone likes getting flowers, whether you pray or not.

This is the speech I gave at the Monday evening visitation — just one of three speeches from the 11 nieces and nephews who are left behind, and will miss her.

::::Auntie Kim::::

Now I say this with a tonne of love. And also respect: Kim was weird. I say and mean it with love and respect because it’s Kim’s weirdness that made her a cool aunt and person.

For the Hayday nieces and nephew, Kim was the one who — at Christmas and birthdays — could be counted on to never give you the “straight” gift. (And as our proudly out aunt we were proud of for being out, that was just not her purview anyways.) As kids, we’d often receive ROM gift shop replicas and… things. Things that would need explanation. So you’d open your present, and then you’d open the accompanying note that talked you through it. Replica scarab beetles from an Egyptian tomb (on every 7 year old’s wish list). Music makers (if in doubt, assume whatever gift you’ve opened is something that makes music). But we also always kept them, for years and years, surviving many toy purges — because nothing fascinates little kids like the totally unknown. Well played Auntie Kim.

But the gifts always had a story that connected you to it in her mind. Always thought out and thoughtful. There was a reason behind whatever she chose. And they were gifts that were intended to encourage you, to show you that she sees you or some part of you. That she thinks you’re musical, artistic, insightful, thoughtful or kind and she thinks that’s great.

I think of gifts because she was always giving. Not only things. But support and love and an ear and hugs. Hug first, talk second. There and ready with the love and support when her niece and her nephew were coming out themselves. Or leaving the last bloom off her tree on my patio for me when my dad died.

She was and went ahead of her time. She was biking everywhere when Toronto had even fewer bike lanes than today. Doing yoga well before every twenty year old was an “instructor”. She was an unselfconscious off to the side trailblazer — because she was open and interested in life.  And game to give just about anything a try.

She was in love with the world. Even or especially the most mundane details. All the “hows” and the “whys” — that’s where Kim lived. She thought things over, considered the angles and gave you space to do the same. Every young little niece or nephew black and white mind can use a bit more grey in it, and an aunt who gives you a replica scarab beetle sure is bringing the grey.

She was the aunt with the whale bones. “Benedict” the giant scary painting of a head (who will live on forever in my brother Matt’s nightmares). The “Watch your head!” sign in her basement. The gypsy kings. The jangley bracelets. The somewhat unnerving colour shifting transitions lenses. A mug with a duck figure baked into the bottom. Sprouts. Pack lunches. A particularly angular way of writing the letter K. The ROM. The street she lived on.

It is sad to live on past someone you love. When they go and you are now in a world where they are not. They leave, and you love them even more. I will never walk past her street without thinking of Kim. True when she was alive, and truer now that she’s gone. Only now I won’t send her a quick message to see how she’s doing, or try to arrange for last minute cup of tea. Though I will raise a glass of tea to her in mind. And living only a couple of blocks over from her place, I’m going to burn through a lot of mental tea.

There were so many ways that we were nothing like each other. (How I tried to explain just what exactly I don’t see in interpretative … anything). But what was fantastic and a big cosmic score for all of her many nieces and nephews was that she made space for each of us to be us, and to know that whatever that was, she wanted to be a part of it. For each of us to have a different relationship with her (Erica, for instance, to cover the arty things that sail right past my analytic brain. Sarah to go shoot pool in the village.). She loved hearing when you were doing something new, and always wanted to hear updates on the things that were old.

When you die, there are beautiful things in the world that you have to leave. And sometimes some of the beautiful things leave before you do. Kim was a tall beautiful passionate enthusiastic darkly funny woman with a usually calm demeanor but also a fire in her belly, a sharp mind, kind words, and an open door.

But by the end, Kim was ready. She was calm and felt peace and she had a denser richer life than many people who get twice as many years to work with.

What would Kim have wanted for her nieces and nephews? I think, probably, something like what Maurice Sendak said before he died: “I wish you all good things. Live your life live your life live your life.”

Kim Herbener

Kim Herbener

Things I do not get tired of doing to my husband, Part III

Just a quick installment this time, since I have a work deadline that’s not going anywhere (stupid lazy deadline, why won’t you move?!).

15. Dramabush (that sounds a lot dirtier than I mean it to)
A dramabush is drama + ambush. It’s when you take a completely mundane moment, and respond with over-the-top melodrama action.

Example: We’re folding socks.
Me: *humming
Him: “What are you humming baby?”
Me: “Oh, I don’t know… nothing. Is it bothering you?”
Him: “No of course not…”
Me: “Well if it is, WHY DON’T YOU JUST IGNORE ME?! THAT SHOULD COME NATURALLY ENOUGH TO YOU!!”*
(* It’s best to round this out with some sobbing and running from the room.)

Counter-attack: He usually just waits quietly for me to come back, when my return is greeted with an “idiot” and grin + headshake.

16. “Don’t say it!”
The husband is… persistent. If it’s something he’s noticed, something he wants to say, something he wants to do. Persistent. Known in some circles as “stubborn”. Sometimes (read: often) I know exactly what he’s going to say. After 10 years, you can see through someone else’s eyes pretty accurately. You have only to follow their gaze, and you know, with absolute certainty, what’s going on in their little brain.

Like say, if you see them notice you’ve left your bag on the dining room table (again). Or that the pots and pans aren’t washed yet. Or that the letter hasn’t been mailed. You can feel the heat of their gaze and read the thought bubble that goes with it.

The thing is, I know. I know. I know the letter needs to be mailed. I know my bag doesn’t belong there. I know that it’s my turn to wash the pots. I. know. And having grown up in a family that turned nagging into a bleeding art form, I can’t bear to be reminded.

But the husband is, as mentioned, persistent. If he notices, he wants, nay, he needs, to get it out. He has noticed, and he must speak.

And I must stop him.

Sometimes it is sufficient for me to just lock eyes with him and say “I know”. But sometimes that’s not enough for him. So as I see his mouth begin to form the words, I chase it with another “I know”. And as the words start to come out, as I increase the volume on a third “I know” and add in a “don’t say it!”. And if he insists on “reminding” me of something we both know I know, it is possible that we end up in an impromptu grapple — as I try desperately to keep my hands over his mouth, and as he tries to get the words “bag” and “belongs” and “in your office” out of it.

Counter-attack: He licks my palms. Bleargh.

Counter-counter-attack: I wipe my palms off on him. Touche.

17. Suffokissing
It starts off as a nice affectionate kiss. Then whatcha do is sort of press into it. Maybe get a hand hold. As you press in, start talking. With your mouth closed. As if you’re really trying to tell the other person something, but you can’t, because they’re kissing you. You can ramp up the tone of your incoherent mumbling into sounding either irritated or insistent. If only he would stop kissing you so you could say this very important thing! Maintain liplock for full effect, especially if he tries to pull away.

Counter-attack: I believe he once got free by slipping me the tongue. Wiley bastard.

Now hiring: Halloween Greeter

Growing up, I would never have imagined it. But we are… that house.

We are the Halloween dark house. With the lights off and the blinds drawn. There is no pumpkin on the porch, and no ghosts hanging from the railings. From the street, all signs point to “no candy here, just move along”.

Does this make me feel good? No. Do I feel like a monster? Yes. And not one of those cool monsters.

The first year we lived here, I had excuses. We had just moved in. We barely had our couch uncovered, and carving a pumpkin was just not in the cards. This year, I got nuthin. I am just That Mean Lady.

It’s not that I begrudge the kids their candy. Especially given my own Halloween candy deprivation history. Long (childhood trauma) story short: our parents were health food hippies, and Halloween equaled collecting for Unicef and (where available) small boxes of Sunmaid raisins. My poor brother was left with a lifelong addiction to chocolate-covered almonds — a Sisyphean attempt to fill the sugar-shaped hole.

It’s just that I don’t want to be the one to give the kids candy. If I could leave a feeding trough of chocolate goodies at the foot of the stairs, I would. But the idea of doing the whole “oh aren’t you a cute little… whatever” makes my eye twitch and my throat close over. I was the greeter for my childhood home for years. And as a barely social creature, I guess that was my limit. I’m out. I don’t especially like kids when they’re not loitering all over my doorstep. Door-to-door solicitors in dress-up.

(As a barely social somewhat-mean creature, the idea of opening the door on an oversized teenager and saying “you’re kidding me, right?” is almost tempting enough to bring me back. Almost.)

Next year, I will try again. And by “try”, I mean try to recruit someone else to “work the door” (payment: all the tiny candy bars you can eat). Then like a patron of the arts (where by “arts” I mean “miniature KitKats”), I will buy the candy, decorate the house with Day of the Dead skeletons, then lie back on my couch watching Buffy Halloween episodes while someone-not-me makes happy sugar-filled memories for small children. Next year.

Really putting the “stainless” claim to the test.

My mum’s been doing a sort’n’purge of her basement the last couple of weeks.  So we’ve been getting questions about what we’d like to adopt, and what we are happy to see go.

I say no to just about everything, but it has me thinking about the artefacts of my childhood.  Objects that I remember, either for no particular reason, or for very specific ones.

Like, for instance, my parents’ large stainless steel mixing bowl.  Not unlike the one pictured below.

Stainless steel bowl

Now, there’s nothing remarkable about a large stainless steel mixing bowl.  They’re handy.  Good all-purpose objects.

However.  And this is a note sent back in time to my parents.  Are you ready past-parents?  Are you ready for this pile of wisdom I am about to bestow on you? Okay, here it comes:

ALL-PURPOSE IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.

Y’see, in our house, this large stainless steel mixing bowl had exactly two functions.  Two radically different functions which should, by all rights, have been mutually exclusive.  Those two functions are as follows:

1)  As a serving bowl for Cesar salad.

2)  As a bedside back-up vomit bowl for sick children.

The truth is out.

Oh, that’s right, friends, family, and friends & family who might have come to a dinner-party at my childhood home.  That bowl that you served yourself that delicious Cesar salad out of?  Oh yeah. That was also the puke bowl.  Before and after you were over.

That feeling running down your spine?  That cold chill?  I’ve had that feeling every time I’ve so much as looked at Cesar salad, my whole life.

Needless to say, if that bowl ever comes up for grabs, I’ll probably give it a pass.  There isn’t enough Palmolive in the world.