best kind of injury

I shaved a boxer's face this morning. Or maybe a rugby player's. I am used to myself looking scruffy, puffy, bloated and blotched -- but not actually injured. This morning my left eyepitt is scratched, and the surrounding area is dark with blood pooling beneath the skin -- a serious bruise. From a distance, or with my glasses off, it looks like I am wearing an eye patch. Yes, dear reader, I am the proud possessor of a black eye. I'd say it takes me back but it doesn't. I don't think I've ever had one before.
I do recall a softball straight from the bat to my nose when I was seven. (I bled and bled. The batsman looked horrified and proud at the same time.) And I remember a right fist straight from the other boy's shoulder to my face when I was nine. (That was a very embarrassing moment -- he was so much smaller than I.) But no black eyes. I've spent most of my life staying out of fights. Those I couldn't avoid, I lost quickly.
And now this. Black eyes are good for attention, I find. If you feel underappreciated and unnoticed in your life, try walking into the room with a black eye. People stare and stare. A number of strangers have come up to ask how I got it or how I was doing, in concerned tones of voice. I don't mind the attention at all but because of my lack of experience I am unsure of the protocol. I can't pretend that it's a serious imjury. A jocular Ach, you should see the other guy! gets a laugh most of the time (where, Ach, you should see her does not. As a society, we seem to cling to sexist notions).
My daughter Imo is openly envious. Her aim all through her senior rugby season has been to get a black eye. The best players on the team have them, and she wants to join this elite. When she found out how I got mine (squash) she wanted to take up the sport. How long before I can get a black eye at squash? she asked.
This one took me twenty years, I told her.
She sighed. Well, it looks sweet, she said.
I can't remember the last time she has complimented my appearance. I'm going to enjoy the next few days.

wiki-madness

All right, it's happened. No, not that. I still have my hair. I mean the other thing guys worry about. No, not that either, thank goodness. Well, apart from that one time, and really it wasn't my fault .... Maybe I'd better just tell the story.

About a year ago a former mento of mine expressed shock at there not being a Wikipedia article about me. How can you claim to be a prominent author without a Wikipedia article? she said. I replied that I made no claim to prominence, and had never been approached by anyone wishing to write a Wikipedia article.

Why don't you write the article, I told my mento. Then I can claim to be a prominent author, and my only trouble will be getting people to believe me.

And I promptly forgot about it. But she did not. She got back to me a month ago with a long list of specific personal questions about me. Age (yes) hair (yes) tonsils (no) any history of (no, I tell you! Apart from that one time, and like I say ... ) And that was just for starters.

And so now there is an article. I takes some finding but it's out there. Apparently the wiki-monitors are worried because there aren't enough citations. I don't know what to tell them. It's all true, as far as I remember. (Well, except for the Orange Prize. That's not really me in the picture up there. It's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.)

eleventh commandment

It's tough to be a parent at Hallowe'en. I used to make costumes for the kids. Ah, stressful times. As any parent of young ones knows, Hallowe'en is a key day and your whole identity is on the line. You are not what you eat, or what you drive, or what you wear. You are what your kid goes out as for Hallowe'en. The cooler the costume, the cooler the parent.

I tried. God knows I tried. How could I not try, staring down at their earnest eager faces. Help us, Daddy! they cried. Help us to fit in to the school and community! Help us to find validation and acceptance from our peers! Help us to become fully actualized as children!

So I worried, and thought, and planned. I bought and borrowed, cut and pasted and duct-taped my way through a dozen or more anxious years. Witches, ninjas, pirates, ghosts, M&Ms (don't ask), scuba divers .... I tried everything. And yet somehow there was always something a bit off about my work. The other costumes always looked more convincing than mine. I tried to work out what it was. Did other parents use better boxes (for the robots -- check out the picture!) than I did? Whiter sheets (for the ghosts)? Blacker sheets (for the ninjas -- though there was one black satin ninja in kindergarten who made me look at his mom differently). I never found out.

Last night brought me back. Imo and Ed had to come up with costumes for school today. And it was tough going. Every suggestion was ridiculed. Too hard. Too lame. Too boring. Too easy. Too popular. Too stripey. (I was surprised at this one.) The Hallowe'en stakes are high as ever, but the rules are more complex as you get older. Cool is more than simply how you look -- it is how the look is achieved. (Keen moralists, teenagers. Intent is key, as it is in a crime or a sin.) In order to actualize and validate your coolness in high school you must never appear to be working at it.

I'm glad I'm not a parent of young children any more. But I'm extra glad I'm not in high school. Thou shalt not appear to be trying too hard is a tough commandment to live up to.

when things go wrong

Another driving story -- this one with Imo. She and I were in Quebec this weekend, checking out colleges she may be going to next year. I was driving and drinking coffee, she was map-reading and telling me how she got the bruises on her arm and cheek (I got kicked and then stepped on, she said, with a kind of sigh. I nodded sympathetically. Men, I said. Who needs them, eh? She gave me her rugby player's laugh and told me to take the next left.)

And then things got dicey. Montreal streets are being repaired right now. All of them. Imo had one eye on the map and another on the orange signs that said that roads were barré. She barked instructions; I leapfrogged across lanes of traffic and deked down alleyways that turned out to be one-way-the-wrong-way. Other drivers honked and gestured angrily. I got very good at a sad smile and half-wave. We finally got to Pont Champlain, only to find that access was barré from this direction, which meant more circling round.

When we did get to the other side of the river Imo turned to me. That was fun, she said. It's kind of cool when things go wrong.

My smile was too big for my face. What a great attitude to life.

Yes it is, I said.

The next sign looked ambiguous. Neither of us could tell if we were in the right lane to go to Sherbrooke. Imo shrugged.

At this point I almost hope we end up in Vermont, she said.

first time

Don't you just love it when your kid's face lights up? Birthday ... summer holidays ... dinner -- ah, these were all great moments in my childhood. But as a kid, is there a moment you look forward to more than your first time behind the wheel of a car?

I took Ed driving last night. I haven't had so much fun in a parking lot since ... well, since I took Imo driving a couple of years ago. Climbing over me into the driver's seat, adjusting it and checking the mirrors, Ed wore an expression of solemn joy -- not the gut-laugh of belly-flops and farts, but the serious high happiness of achievement.

For the next twenty minutes we went back and forth, and left and right, and forward and reverse and forward again. My smile got wider and wider as Ed got closer and closer to a mystical oneness with self and machine. I'm surprised that there isn't a car called the Nirvana. Maybe the idea would be too peaceful, conjuring up a sense of immobility behind the wheel. (Mind you, there's a car called the Armada, which to me conjures up the idea of an immense body of ships crashing. )

They seem so mature, teenagers, but they aren't. Their souls are still fresh and sensitive. They are vulnerable to pain, and also to joy. That's why they make so many reckless decisions, fall in love so completely and so distastrously. They can be possessed by feeling in a way that we, with our old leather-skinned souls, can remember only vaguely.

Yeah, leather-skinned sounds about right. We have lived long enough to be kicked around by life, punted up and down the field by chance and choice, will and time. We know so much more than teenagers -- but we have paid dearly for our wisdom. The closest we can come is to experience vulnerability through them. Which can mean bailing them out or rushing them to the hospital; or taking them for the first drive around a parking lot.

generation why

The next night Thea called at 8:00 pm -- not in triumph. I was trying to follow the plot of the movie In Bruges (the two incompetent hitmen in the picture here hole up in the medieval town, and receive baffling instructions from their crazy employer. Charming but not for the squeamish. The ending is like Titus Andronicus, only bloody) so Imo took the call. She's a pretty good cook, Imo. Her end of the conversation was quick questions.

What's wrong with the turkey? she asked.

Well, what temperature did you set the oven at? she asked.

How long has it been? she asked.

Then a pause.

Oh, she said, and handed me the phone, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.

Thea, it turned out, had read the first line of the cooking instructions (preheat oven to 500 degrees farenheit) and skipped to the ending where the bird comes out brown and perfect. The middle bit (reduce heat to 350, cover the centre, baste frequently) was glossed over. She came back from a party two hours later to find that the bird was black on top and raw underneath. And she was hungry.

I did what I could to limit the disaster, and find some spin to put on the project. (Cats enjoy charred turkey flesh, don't they, and the sweet potato stuffing would probably not be affected by the extreme cooking methods. And there was some peanut butter left in the jar, wasn't there?)

Seems like I'm making fun of my daughter -- because I am. But I have to say in her defence that she did survive, and the turkey was ultimately cooked. And she attempted her first bird at a much younger age than I did. When I was at university I came home for turkey, or did without.

Which brings me to Sam, who seems to be starving to death. Almost impossible, you'd think, since Kingston has 24-hour grocery stores and Sam has access to money. But his voice on the phone is weak. I haven't eaten in a day and a half, he says. (It may be a trick of the line but I hear a hint of French accent, as if he has turned into Jean Valjean, forced to steal a loaf of bread.)

I fight my anxiety. For heaven's sake! I say. Funny, though. As he describes his very busy schedule I can see how hard it is for him to get to the store. Never the right combination of available cash, transport, time, and will. I try to work out what he wants from me.

Do you want me to drive up and shop for you? I ask. It'd only take me three or four hours, after all.

No no, he says, with a gentle tubercular cough.

Then why are you telling me all this?

But the answer is simple: like the famous Fat Boy in Pickwick (only Sam would be the Thin Boy) he wants to make my flesh creep. A very natural instinct. My own instinctive guilt and worry are likewise normal. And so the comedy of the generations plays itself out, as it has for thousands of years. My cave self might have taken the opportunity to clunk my cave son over the head for being an idiot, but I am too civilized for that. Alas.

first thanksgiving away from home

Thea spent Thanksgiving in the city instead of coming home. My little girl is growing up. Her decision was perhaps made for her -- two shifts at work, an essay due, and her roommate coming home with a turkey and a stuffing recipe from his mom. Is it ok if we call for help with the turkey? she asked, somewhat plaintively. Of course, I replied in my deepest Daddy knows voice.

I got a call at five on Sunday afternoon. So, how's the turkey coming? I asked.

I'm about to start it, she said.

Thea has been known to put things off, so I was not surprised. Planning a midnight supper? I asked.

What do you mean, Daddy? For I have been known to make jokes.

Turkeys take a long time to cook, I said.

How long?

Depends on how big it is, I said.

A pause. The tag says 4-8 kilos, she told me.

That's a bit vague, I said. Try to find a specific number on the tag.

There was a loud thud, and scramble on her end of the line.

Sorry Daddy. I dropped the turkey, and it skidded all the way across the kitchen floor.

She laughed heartily. I love hearing my children laugh.

Skidded, eh? I said. Then a thought struck me. Thea, is the turkey frozen?

Well, of course. I don't want to get salmonella.

My turn to pause now. The bird would take a day to thaw and somewhere between three and six hours to cook. Thea, honey, what else do you have to eat in the house? Apart from turkey stuff.

What are you saying, Daddy? I've got some cheese and crackers. Some cereal. Peanut butter. You know the kind of thing.

Indeed I do. Ah, student living. Happy Thanksgiving, honey, I said.