Weekly Stories

racist cookies

After doing at least a dozen pale faced cookies I look over at my chocolate icing and decide to diversify my choir of angels. My daughter peers down at what I’m doing and gasps, “Mommy! That is SO RACIST” I am surprised by her statement. I look over to Fellow and the Boy for support and they both nod towards Nora in agreement, “Wellll….”. Sigh. They look like white angels in black face. I see what Nora means. But I insist my intentions are pure and I continue to paint in their singy songy O mouths with glee. Nora jams…

Royal

Oh my field boy who smells like wheat and kite string. Freckles on your shoulders. I love the way your finger bends and the way your hair turns up on the ends. You have ended up in so many plays and so many songs, my first steady. I can’t speak of you without inside stories. One of my dearest and longest standing friends. The river of many roses is flooding all my thoughts. She’s an earth bound beauty with her hair tied up in knots. You are there, in that valley of home, sitting quiet and dumbstruck. Shadows on your…

Creepiest Canadian Tire ever

Canadian Tire on Cambie Street is where I would hang out if I actually did drugs. It is the most psychedelic place I’ve ever been, save the Winnie the Pooh ride and its’ “nightmare” sequence in Disneyland. I climb the long ramp up to the parking on the top floor to find about five spaces all taken up by mini vans. There is a tiny space that a “Sienna” has occupied a quarter of…but I have a mini Cooper and decide to squeeze in beside Sienna’s wideness. I won’t be long. When I get out of my coop’, I realize…

citizens and unicorns

I know there are a great number of progressive churches in Vancouver: over twenty of them specifically welcoming of the LGBTQ community. (can we not find a clever acronym? That always sounds like a complicated sandwich) My Fellow happens to attend one: St Andrews Wesley United: the huge grey church beside St Paul’s hospital. This is the outfit that does the candlelight services and the jazz vespers. The first thing I notice about the church are the cherubim sculptures behind the altar. They look EXACTLY like my Fellow, give or take some wings and flowing blonde hair. It cracks me…

am I an ass for being late?

“I am not going to be late for Kugler, he is always so punctual”, I say to myself, as I tuck my change back into my purse and wave JJ Bean good-bye. The line up is too long for a small coffee and I still have to go up to the third floor to his office at SFU. I scale the steps, I punch 3rd floor on the elevator, the girl next to me has punched 4. Elevator up, door opens, I pass a young man and there’s the sign outside that says the Djavad Mowafaghian cinema: good. I am…

friending history

The entire community of Bowen island trundles out in their puff jackets and hand knit toques for the Remembrance Day service in Snug Cove. Various organizations gather around the cenotaph, laying wreathes against the stone in solemn respect for those who fought for our freedom. Babies whimper impatiently, children peer around their parent’s knees and a smart collie next to me sits at attention for a treat. At the end of the service, the announcer woman is interrupted by a whisper – she has forgotten Ms. Periwinkle from such and such church who hobbles over in her smart jacket and…

broth

Saying good-bye to my sister and family is bittersweet. I am very ready to get home, my longest stint away, but I have really come to love hanging out with my family. I got a chance to know them all over again. I bow for the last matinee, tear off my clothes in the dressing room, yank on my jeans and fly past the director and playwright with slapdash hugs and a bag full of hot rollers. I literally run to my car and drive seven hours straight to Anita’s. “Look at you, you still have your show hair!” she…

fantasizing about growing old

I am going to be home in less than forty four hours. My niece Hunter said, “Oh, it is so sad that you will be leaving us, Auntie Cia.” And little Scarlette said, “Yes. Sad but also happy. I get my room back.” I am distracted. I have many papers to mark and plays to dramaturge and drafts to rewrite and all I can do is think of my Nora’s birthday party coming up, pickling the beets in the garden, what meal I am going to cook first for my Fellow and his boy. The art of life is downstage,…

please don’t call me goddess

I know it’s mostly meant as harmless flattery, but I am not a goddess. Where and when did we shift from the goddess movement and the acknowledgment of the Feminine Sacred to acknowledging ourselves as goddesses in some pop culture approved form of self grandiosity? A goddess is a female deity with supernatural powers. Wouldn’t it be strange if a man walked around declaring he was a god? Yeah. Are we Gaia, the white Tara, the female Christ, Mazu, Mami wata, Brigantia, Isis or Aphrodite? Why would we want to pretend to be? Sure we toss around the term goddess…

Giovanni’s disco shoes

“The first time I introduced Gio to your Nonna Lucia…” says Louisa in her kitchen, handing out cognac with the pumpkin pie I brought, “Gio was wearing these high heeled disco shoes, what do you call them-” her daughter, Nita, interjects, “Platform shoes, Ma, everyone wore platform shoes in the seventies.” Louisa continues, Giovanni grins sheepishly in the background, “He was wearing the platform shoes I made him wear because I didn’t want him shorter than me when we went dancing. Anyway, typical Italian family, everyone is downstairs. So, we go through the living room and head down the stairs…

Lucia Frangione