Weekly Stories

grammar nightmare

In my head, my broken Italian is utterly charming as I string together the very few verbs and nouns I know with all the wrong tenses and pronouns, combined with some deliciously fun charades and sound effects. I fantasize restauranteurs give us complimentary prosecco, hotel managers give us the ocean view, tour guides show us the secret grave of Marc Antony and extended family members tear up with joy that I have made the effort to learn my father’s tongue. But the reality is: I am way way way behind on my Rosetta stone and I leave for Italy in…

three pilgrimages

The holy road trip. And it is holy, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the modern pilgrimage. And when we can’t go on that pilgrimage ourselves, we watch film after film after film of two people in a car on a quest who end up having some sort of massive revelation in Utah before either dying or crossing over into an Utopian Mexico with no border. Modern forms of prayer, parable and pilgrimage fascinate me. We find ways of doing them, even if we never walk the Camino to Santiago, take the road to Mecca or wander in the wilderness…

wonder loss

Imagine. There was a time before free porn. If I took off my clothes it may actually cause a little wonder. Imagine the time when even a real Cassanova might only see dozens, maybe hundreds of paper or real women, not thousands by the time he’s old enough to get an erection. What is it like to have your innocence robbed in one second? In the click of a thumb? To have your eyes raped? Little boys. And little girls. Imagine there was a time when you didn’t have to see hard porn if you didn’t choose to. If someone…

Rebecca’s blog

Today I am going to refer you over to Rebecca Coleman’s excellent blog where she asks me a few questions about writing and I tell a few stories I haven’t told before. Partly I am sharing these stories because International Woman’s Day is coming up and we must never forget what the women before us have striven so hard to achieve and what we still have to protect: http://www.rebeccacoleman.ca/2014/03/07/writers-on-writing/writersonwriting-4-lucia-frangione/

good company

Tonight the Flame felt like a family reunion. (for those of you who don’t know the Flame, it’s a night of storytelling at the Cottage Bistro first Wed of every month – the story has to be you, true, and a few minutes only) It was jam packed this rainy evening. I was one of the speakers, came early, and still couldn’t get a seat. The story tellers ranged from school teachers to a Doctors Beyond Borders to an actor just out of school who came out to his Iranian parents to Anton Lipovetsky singing about never having kissed a…

making magic do

The phone rings today. I see an unfamiliar Alberta number. “You’re not gonna get me you telemarketer, sorry sucker” I say. I get an email shortly after. Turns out it is an artistic director! He makes me an offer for a three month acting role! It’s a real gem of a situation that I’m delighted about. Wonderful artists involved. I’ll give more details when all is confirmed. I am so surprised! I do a little jig all day while I finish cleaning up the wicked dirty apartment I’ve been griping about this week. I wipe glass. Grateful. Two hours more…

to Disney and back

Wow. It just dawned on me that I am coming up for five years single this spring. I remember hearing five years ago that it takes five years before one is fully ready to get back on the horse again if they wish to. I have to concur, that feels about right. I am planning two massive road trips, inadvertently, to celebrate the dawn of a new era. I am going to Italy with one of my best friends for three weeks and before that I am driving to San Francisco and then Disneyland with my daughter Nora. When I…

anonymous crank

I return to the apartment I was cleaning yesterday and I am starting to feel sheepish about being so judgmental. I tackle the kitchen today and it is four hard hours of scrubbing and fumes and I’m only half way done. If. A migraine starts to brew. I hope I am wrong. I am waiting for it to pop. I just can’t do those heavy cleaners. As I mop up the huge spills in the fridge, the mould, the muck…I start to become very concerned about this client’s health. I think of how little she is and how devastating botulism…

a Suzuki day

I have to clean a new apartment today…and it is disgusting. How can people live like this? So oblivious to what they’re doing to their environment? Everything is caked in grime and dust. The tub is black with hair dye and exfoliation gunk is clogging up the pipes. The kitchen is so covered in grease it takes me two hours to scrub the stove top alone and I still can’t get some of it out despite my elbow grease. My boss tells me to use heavier cleaners. They give me a headache and a cough. No sign of recycling. She…

small acts of compassion

I see Ed pushing his grocery cart through the lumps of icy snow left along the sidewalk just outside my house. He looks wet and chilled and his face is understandably bunched up into a dirty laundry knot of miserable. I call out – “Ed! How you doing?” – happy to see him after so many months (he was the fellow who helped me move in and then shared with me one of his beers) He stops, looks at me, startled, then nothing registers except annoyance. He keeps going, slightly shielding his cart from me as though I might steal…

Lucia Frangione