Weekly Stories

Little Red

My daughter stumbled back from horse camp so tired she keeps bumping into walls. She’s had a wonderful time, three nights overnight with no parents around. Her whole class went. She rode a horse called Hershey, I’m guessing chocolate brown. She was one of the few city kids who had ridden a horse without the help of a big person before – thanks to Uncle Ed. She was very proud of that. We walked home. We’ve been holding hands since just after three when we passed a significant police blockade at the park up our street. I overheard an eyewitness…

a little note about the children

Dear Readers, I have decided to remove any specifics about Fellow’s child at one of the parent’s request. I have only briefly mentioned this child five times anyway and have never given away any names. I have kept it minimal, not because this child isn’t a beautiful and important part of my life, but because I care deeply about this child’s feelings. I want to honour this child’s privacy and the wishes of both parents. In the past, I have revealed the gender and shared a few precious moments because they were so touching and celebratory of this child. But…

the man with a folder full of poems

As I wait for Nora to come back with a straw I peer over the soft checkered shoulder of the elderly man sitting in front of me in the bakery. He is fingering a well worn piece of paper. I recognize it immediately. This is a poem he wrote. Only one other person has seen it. The person he asked to type it out on the computer for him. He doesn’t know how to use a computer and he doesn’t know how to type with more than two fingers. He may as well have stumps for hands, he feels, in…

a proposal

Today Fellow and I took possession of our house on Bowen. We drove over on an early morning ferry with one of our children and our general contractor friend, Pete, our vehicles filled with paint samples, tools, tiles, a portable garage and the like. The house was left littered with bad art, old furniture, cobwebs, chipped crockery and black pots, thin linens and a macrame owl. While the men unloaded flooring and I painted possible colours on the wall. One of our kids grabbed a garbage bag and collected everything ugly. We worked all morning and then had our first…

I am allergic to the American white male narrative

I woke up one day allergic to the American white male narrative. You know, like lactose. I have been fed too much of it all my life and now I have built up an intolerance. This worries me because this means I am allergic to many of the plays being produced in Canada. I am looking at a season right now: 100% male playwrights, 80% AWM playwrights, only 12% of the leads roles on stage are for women. It is so easy for the AWM voice to dominate a season with no complaints. I only just realized the numbers here…

romas

Nonna is in my dreams doing her curlers. Those pink and beige small prickly ones that every grandmother owns. The hair net. The Spanish soaps dubbed into Italian on the TV, blaring declarations of love and hate…over what? Jealousy? Revenge? Swarthy men with full heads of hair. White horses. Heaving bosoms. Passionate kisses. My dream is a Nonna re-run. Then suddenly I am out on her front porch, without a key. Sitting on the pavement. There are no red geraniums in the flower boxes. That’s what gets me. I wake up. Why? Because Anita has texted me a picture of…

Cinzella

One of the last of the old ones folds herself into the earth today, a deep bow, a great exhale, she inhales a new impossibly lightsome life. Zia Cinzella, run your tiny feet and your nimble knees through the cool stream that separates this life from the next. Run to the ones you love. I will miss you. I loved you. Your kind brown eyes and your little kittenish way of tossing off the sorrows of life with a simple, “Ma-“. The great ladies of my family are gone, save one, the youngest, Ninetta, burying far too many dear ones….

Easter and the Ass

We tend to skip over the part that despair plays in the passion. My ponderings started with a donkey. A donkey meandered into town, carrying a man on her sturdy wide back. I imagine she would stop and bray and sniff the air for food. She was not pretentious. She didn’t mind accepting the generosity of others. She was an ass after all. But nobody, not anybody, could tell her what to do. She would walk at her own pace. Today, she didn’t mind sashaying into town. She swayed her hips comfortably, carrying such a lightweight of a dude. This…

painting the walls light blue

I cycle along the seawall between Cambie and Granville island, past the tiny woman taking a photo of her tiny dog with her tiny camera. Past the poodle peeing on the jelly bean (art installation). Past a grizzled cart pusher who has turned his face upwards to the sky with a kind of rapture that makes me put my brakes on. I fly under a wedding of cherry blossoms and upturn all the pink skirts. I gaze at fancy boats bobbing in the bay like fat businessmen in black and white suits chuckling over their drinks. Clinkity clink clink. “aren’t…

Up on the Blocks – kind of a rambly story, more of a catch up

A tale of two cities runs through my head as my car refuses to turn over on Main and fifteenth tonight. Anita is visiting and I am so delighted to see her! But poor little Mini the Blue. I hope there isn’t much wrong with her, for her sake and for mine. I won’t be able to keep her if she costs me too much to fix. I would have a hard time justifying to my family that I wish to repair my eleven year old Mini Cooper simply because she pleases me aesthetically and I am in love with…

Lucia Frangione