Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 97

student success story

What joy to receive this from a former student. She ran a parish in Hamilton and invited me to lead a writing workshop there. Wonderful to be a positive voice in someone's head!
Hi Beth, I'm happy to report that my first spiritual memoir, Even the Sparrow, has gone to print! It's being released mid Oct in North America and the UK and we're presently working towards a German translation as well. I'm not going to win any Booker prizes, but it's not bad for a first book. It's got some 'teachy' bits, which I know you won't like (sorry!), but hopefully some courageous storytelling as well.

I would love to send you a copy once I get it - is there an address I can send it to?
I'm presently writing the next, and spending time before writing each day reading True to Life. I like having your voice in my head as I write. Thanks for sharing your gift with the world, and helping us to find our voices.
With thanks and affection,
Jill Weber

celebrating Canada once again

I should have known not to encourage you lot - my friend Carol today sent me a poem, set to the music of "We love you, Beatles," about chatting with her vagina. LOL. So then, for the edification of my FB friends, I shared this wonderful picture of a time when men were men.
They just don't make 'em like they used to. Just look at those beefy thighs and FINE ties. (Incidentally, these luscious dudes with rad fashion sense are from Australia.)

A gorgeous day here, perfect. The good news is - after testing at Mt. Sinai this morning - I do not so far have glaucoma. My father and grandmother did, so I need to be tested regularly; thank you Tommy Douglas. The back on the other hand is still crapola. I had to take two extra-strength Tylenol to get to sleep last night. Pain is tiring, draining, tedious, and I just cannot understand why it's there. But this too shall pass.

A lovely thing: this evening my old friend Angus, who lived on the top floor for two years before the fire, 2003-2005, is visiting from Vancouver and came for dinner. After, we went for a walk in the 'hood, and I took him down to Regent Park, which he had not seen in its renovated state. It turned out to be a big night on the common - they show movies Wednesdays at dusk, so there was a big portable screen and many gathered on blankets in front, but also people were roasting corn to sell, selling other kinds of food, music playing, people eating, talking in big crowds and small groups, children running everywhere, the playground jammed - the whole big green space was packed. And of course need I say, almost every one of those celebrants was a new immigrant to Canada, most of the women swathed in many layers of colourful cloth. There was a gang of boys, 16-year old Somalis, just the kind of young men who are getting into gun trouble in the nether reaches of the city. But here, they were in a clump with their parents, grandparents, and siblings nearby, surrounded by community.

It was a glorious scene, a tribute to what's best about our fine nation.

I also had the best news about a young friend with cystic fibrosis who is on an experimental drug trial which has had a miraculous effect - his lung capacity improved hugely almost overnight. It's fantastic news. Science! Making miracles.

the vagina painting party and other wonders

An article in the Star today is entitled "Five easy ways to a happier, healthier vagina." It begins, "We often ask ourselves, 'Am I happy?' But when was the last time you asked your vagina the same thing?"

The millenial writer describes going to a "vagina painting party," where women gathered to evoke their own vaginas in paint, papier maché, and other media. She kindly offers a colour photograph of her own fine effort, looking like a gash on canvas displayed in her living room between two potted plants. When visitors comment, she replies,"Yes, that's my vagina. Isn't she beautiful?" She suggests we host our own party and that we get an app that helps with kegel exercises. "All you do is insert the sleek device and connect the app on your phone. Anytime you squeeze your pelvic muscles, a little gem on your screen moves up and down."

Okay, so there are times when I feel REALLY OLD, and this is one of them. An app for when you squeeze your pelvic muscles? And can you imagine a "penis painting party"? Men gathered to celebrate their penises? One on display in the living room, with the man saying, "Yes, that's my penis, isn't he handsome?"

Ye gods. Of course, we could say that the entire planet is built on our admiration for penises, one way or another. Or for the region's by-product, testosterone.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, where the owner of his particular vagina has not spoken to her nether regions in many a moon - sorry, girl - it was a difficult 24 hours. Anna was in Nova Scotia, so Eli spent much of Sunday and today here. But I was not feeling well, with both back pain and a nascent cold or flu, aching limbs and scratchy throat. Dealing with his phenomenal energy is hard at the best of times, but when not up to the task - really hard. And he had a blister on one hand which made playground time, which wears him out, painful.

However, stories, tons of salmon, rice, and avocado, and ice cream, and pancakes, and the movie "Detective Pikachu" with a trillion special effects which is really about how much we miss our fathers, especially when that dad turns out to be (spoiler alert) Ryan Reynolds, and best of all, a Lego firetruck I'd bought at Doubletake and stashed away - it took us both a concentrated hour or more, following the chart and putting on little bits and pieces, he methodical and quick, like his dad - saved the day.
Mama is back now, pining for the fresh air of Nova Scotia; the boys are safely back at home, and I wonder if my back pain is going to go away. Was it related to anxiety about my daughter's absence or Eli's stay? Or the fact that my ex-husband is coming to stay here for five nights later this week? Or my ongoing debt from the reno? I have no idea where it came from and why it lingers, only that it can't depart soon enough. My poor neglected vagina needs a good talking-to.

the sanity of the garden

Bill Maher was particularly dark last night. It does look sometimes like right now is the end of the world - the unleashing of angry violent men, the triumph of moronic far right political leaders - Trump's approval rating at 42%!! - the melting of the glaciers. Possible war with Iran. One of his guests (EXTREMELY HANDSOME American journalist Richard Engel) pointed out that we often see viral photos or videos of racist events on FB and Twitter - a video, say, of a white woman shrieking at a black child who has set up a lemonade stand - that lead us to fulminate in rage. After they're posted, these are guaranteed to go viral thanks to algorhithms designed by the Russians, who are doing everything possible to divide western society and make us hate each other. With ease and great success.
(Here's Richard Engel. See what I mean? Very smart, lefty, nice on the eyes. Sigh.)
See how shallow I am? Simultaneously horrified about current events and admiring cute men. Yum.
My back still hurts a lot, sharp burning shooting down my right leg. Yesterday, several friends in another kind of pain came over, separately, for comfort, one who's been diagnosed with a dreadful auto-immune disease, another who's a recent widow. So we were all in pain.
However - the weather could not be better, mild with a breeze. And this, also nice on the eyes, is what awaits me and my guests when we go outside. So I try not to despair. There's great beauty out there. And there are grandchildren. We have to hope for sanity, for their sake.
One more - Richard Engel with his 3-year old son, who has a rare neurological disorder. What the world needs now is MORE GOOD MEN.

taking a break

Chatted with a woman today at the Y - one of the great joys of the Y, these conversations between semi-naked women becoming friends. She and I change in the same locker area but don't know each other well. She told me she has just turned 90, and I exclaimed that she looks wonderful. "For 90, you mean," she laughed. I knew her husband of many decades had been ill for a long time. "He died, " she said. "I'm not grieving, because he wanted to die. But now I have to learn, for the first time in my life, to be one."

She told me she'd shared her childhood bedroom with her sister, left home to get married, had six children. She has never, ever, lived alone. And now, at 90, she has to learn how. I told her I'd be happy to give lessons. She's fiercely independent and strong, but, she said, "When your spouse dies, the part of yourself you shared with him is gone. Part of me is just gone."

She nearly made me cry, as we stood wrapped in towels. I told her I would be 70 next year. "70 is nothing!" she exclaimed, which cheered me immeasurably. I suggested we get together soon for a glass of wine. "I'd love that," she said. And so would I.

I was feeling old today, despite her kind words, with sharp pain - back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain. I don't know why. But I always associate back pain with stress, so I'm wondering what is causing me so much. Nothing much that I can see, except life. Went for a therapeutic massage today, which helped - "It's very tight, not like you," she said, as she hammered those muscles.

Maybe it's the world. I've decided to take a week-long break from FB and Twitter, see if that helps. Leave the poison behind. Well, not completely, as I'll still read the paper and listen to CBC's The World at Six. But in truth, leaving FB for a week will be hard. I enjoy sitting in my comfy chair travelling around the world, catching up with friends and family (my brother, today, posting pictures from Tel Aviv, my daughter, who's in Nova Scotia, exclaiming about buying oysters at the local Sobeys), hearing from people I respect, blocking out those I don't. Not YOU, though.

Last night, on the news, they interviewed a young man who became a Beatlemaniac at 17, ten years ago, and this week, he travelled to London to be there at Abbey Road on the anniversary of the day the iconic photo was taken. I was so charmed by what he said - speaking of how the Beatles had always been there for him, their message of peace and love and hope - that I got in touch, told him how moved I was by what he said, and offered to send him my memoir. "Your message almost made me cry," he wrote back. A kindred spirit; a fellow weeper.

My boss at U of T wrote; my class there already has nine registered. Nine, with eight weeks to go! Last term, there were five. Who can understand these things? No complaints from me.

The garden, oh, the garden. Made a sublime watermelon gazpacho with THREE cucumbers. A gorgeous week ahead - cool and windy and fresh.

70 is nothing, so 69 is just a kid.  As the poet Sara Teasdale says:
When I can look Life in the eyes, / Grown calm and very coldly wise, / Life will have given me the Truth, / And taken in exchange -- my youth.

musical storytellers and sharks

A mild, murky day, and I have nothing scheduled except Carole's class, writing work, and dealing with the five cucumbers in my fridge. So - lots to do.

First, and most importantly, as soon as I wrote in the last post that I was stuck in my writing, it began to flow. A voice came, a starting place, and I was off. No idea if it works, but it's there. Before, for weeks, I was discouraged, wondering why I bother when there are so many interesting, fun ways to spend time that are not sitting at a desk poking myself in the gut. Why put myself through it, when 17-year old "influencers" have hundreds of thousands of readers, and only a handful of people read what I write?

But some do. And even if they don't, I need to write things down, have needed to write things down since childhood. So here we are on a lovely morning, not working in the garden or doing the laundry or making gazpacho, things which need to be done, or exploring the city, fun things - no, sitting at the desk working out how to tell a story. Taking a break to talk to you.

Speaking of telling stories, last night I went to the folk club Hugh's Room to hear Shari Ulrich in concert. I do not usually head clear across town at night and had some trepidation about being there alone. Immediately, people at the table where I was placed as one of Shari's guests invited me to join them, and we chatted for the whole night, interesting, nice people and great fans of Shari's. I thought, as she sang, how wonderful it is that story and music combine in this glorious way unique to humans. I guess birds as they trill and call are telling stories, and whales, and other musical creatures. But we write and sing songs. As I wrote to Shari afterwards, I am jealous of how disgustingly talented she is, playing many instruments, writing the pieces, singing them beautifully with two fabulous women accompanying her. Thrilling.

Yesterday morning, I took Ben to the aquarium for his birthday present. It's a gift to see the world through the eyes of a 4-year old. The aquarium is too crowded and noisy, but still, it's very well set up for kids, with an amazing passageway where fish, sharks, and manta rays swim not just beside you but over your head. It was feeding time - men in wetsuits fed shrimp to anemones (!) and in another pond, to rays, which circled around like huge grey underwater birds. Ben and I were very lucky with the weather - it poured while we were inside, stopped as we left to go to lunch, started again as we ordered our burgers, and stopped just as we finished. Ben likes meat. He doesn't even bother with the bun.

In the meantime, my daughter was dyeing half of her long hair bright red. She is off for a well-deserved vacation, to visit her best friend in Nova Scotia and go to the Stanfields' annual weekend-long bash The Blacktop Ball. The Stanfields are a Nova Scotia rock band and dear friends of hers - when they toured to Toronto, in past years, they all crashed with Anna, all five of them. So off she goes, for four days. There will be music. There will be stories.

Shari Ulrich Back to Shore

This is the place to be during the August long weekend - right where I am. There is no sound coming from the empty city, hardly any traffic, no sirens, nothing. Silence. Even Monique's noisy A.C. she just turned off for me. Just birds, sweet air, flowers. And, of course, cucumbers. How good to be alive.
Today's crop. They're big.

Yesterday, I took the streetcar across town with my bike, got Eli, and rode back with him along the lake. It's a long ride for me, let alone for someone much smaller, and yet when we got here, he was raring to go to the basketball nets and the playground. So we did. It was hot, though, so we did play a number of games of Go Fish and read some stories. And then his mama came with Ben and we had dinner - for Eli, the usual, 3 helpings of the only things he'll eat, salmon, avocado and rice, and for Ben, meat, just meat.

My old friend Shari Ulrich is staying at the house, in Toronto to launch her new CD on Tuesday at Hugh's Room. We met in the mid-70s and have been friends ever since, she pursuing her music, singing with various bands big and small, then and now, though increasingly with a solo career. She and I, almost the same age, talk a lot about where we are in life with our careers and our families. I just sent her this quote from Abigail Thomas, that kind of sums up what we were saying about being single:
I’m okay alone. I don’t always want to answer a question about why I’m coughing if I’m coughing. I like falling into a book without being asked what I am reading. I appreciate not being interrupted in the middle of thinking about nothing. Nobody shoos my dogs off the sofa or objects to the three of them with sardine breath farting under the covers in bed at night. I like moving furniture around without anyone wishing I wouldn’t or not noticing that I have. I like cooking or not, making the bed or not, weeding or not. Watching movies until 3 a.m. and no one the wiser. Watching movies on a spring day and no one the wiser. To say nothing of the naps.

Us too.

Shari's new CD is gorgeous. And so is she.

For me, however — I'm stuck in my work. Perhaps it's discouragement - if no one wants to publish the memoir I've spent 3 years writing, why write something else? Perhaps laziness - there are always more fun things to do. I know what I want to get down, just have to start, find the way into the story, unpack. One two three go.

Instead - I'm watering the garden. Which also is necessary.

Lynn sent these pictures from a lifetime ago - the two of us at my wedding party in 1981, when Anna was 3 months old, and me with Denis in Toronto maybe 15 years ago. Who's that young woman?

Happy August long weekend to you, wherever you are. May there be silence. May the birds sing in your ears and the wings of butterflies make you wonder about the existence of god.

sixty-nine

I've been 69 for hours now, and it feels fine. A bit of a slow day, but that's because of the amount of food and drink yesterday.

A fine party, very small, just family and people who are like family - Ken, Carol, Anne-Marie and Jim. Sam barbecued a vast quantity of meat and I made three cucumber-based salads which were terrific, one of which called for my son to strip two pomegranates of their seeds to put in. Delicious. There were toasts, and mostly, there were two little boys, playing badminton with a giant shuttlecock and making us laugh. Ben pretends that the kitchen screen door is a subway door and he calls out the stops. We were all mellow and fine, there was a breeze, and the guests got a door prize: a freshly-picked - you guessed it - cucumber!

This afternoon I went to the dermatologist who confirmed that the white bumps on my face were called milia and got rid of them. It cost $100 and I'm thrilled - tiny wounds on my face but soon, no bumps. Only I'm sure they will soon be replaced by others. Annals of aging #842.
Badminton with Uncle Sam
The cake Sam bought for me - peanut butter and dark chocolate. Not quite rich enough. LOL.
 A favourite spot.
The girls - Carol, Anna, the old bag, Anne-Marie. And the cheese tray.

The Americans have backed out of the nuclear treaty with Russia. Beyond appalling. Please God, give that man a heart attack. Please make the Democrats stop battling each other and get on with saving the world. Please. For my birthday. Because I'd like to make it to 70.

par-tay

Birthday report tomorrow - I'm too tired and much too full to think. But - it could not have been nicer.

This morning, though, I had a god moment. A monarch stopped on this plant - I don't know what those flowers are - and stayed for a long time, long enough for me to get my phone and take a picture. And then it stayed some more. I was mesmerized by the wings like stained glass windows. And as I stared, a bird was singing, and the scent of flowers was drifting by, and I thought - Who invented butterflies and painted them so beautifully? Who invented birdsong and lavender?

If I'd been religious, I'd have answered god. But I am not, so I guess it's just natural selection, genetic mutation, evolution etc. I can see why religion is a comfort - how much more comforting to imagine a benevolent spirit brought us these wondrous things, rather than random forces of nature.

But one fact remains, god or Darwin or neither - the wings of the butterfly are a fucking miracle.
And then it was time to get ready for the party. Here is a 69-year old woman in her apron, with her cucumber collection. More anon.

a mere 68

Tomorrow I turn 69. Hard to believe. What, lithe, youthful moi? The nice woman doing my eye tests this morning noticed the date on my chart and asked if I was excited about my birthday. Well - I'm excited to be alive. I'm excited my family is gathering tomorrow for a barbecue, plus a few beloved friends. This will be my first birthday in more than a decade without Wayson. He will be missed.

I have told the guests it will be a cucumber-based menu. Because just like last year, fat, straight, delicious cucumbers are dropping from the vine. I am definitely the cucumber-whisperer; there are five in the fridge right now. Not to mention Swiss chard, cherry tomatoes, and basil. I've got a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for "Quinoa and grilled sourdough salad," and Nigella's recipe for "Chopped salad," both with lots of cukes. Sam is going to barbecue meats. There will be corn. And - because grandsons - cake.

The rose of Sharon has started to bloom just in time for tomorrow. Chris sent a wonderful YouTube interview with the cast of Grantchester - I could watch those actors forever, even without James Norton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxbY_ngW1NI
Lani sent a hilarious card. Jean-Marc brought over the Sunday New York Times. Carole tortured us all as usual, nicely, at the Y. My second cousin, or first cousin once removed, I forget, in New York sent snippets of interviews with her mother Lola, my father's cousin who's now 97, as Dad would have been if he hadn't died 31 years ago. She told once again the story of being forced to go to her first prom with my father as her date; Ethel Merman was the entertainment. She also mentions chatting, later, with Bette Davis and Frank McCourt. An interesting life. What a great idea to tape her talking about her past.

So, dear friends, it's 5.45 p.m. so time for aperitif, a nice cold glass. My baby blue toes and I will forget for a bit about the horrors that are happening to our planet and simply celebrate being here, mid-summer, a mere 68 for the last time tonight. I will eat cucumbers and watch TV, including Samantha Bee, and read the new New Yorker. 

Gifts.