Waving Not Drowning

It's almost time. Unless of course he's late. She's too tired to fight him anymore and really, traffic is insane these days. That's why she picks Aaron up after school and spends an hour and fifteen minutes at The Second Cup waiting for Chris to show up. The hand off. The passover. Wednesday afternoon to Thursday night, every second weekend, alternating high holidays. It used to be a hassle but they've settled into a quiet, comfortable groove. Surprising themselves at how much better they are as co parents than partners. Better friends than lovers. Taking the long way around. The same table every week, tucked into the corner on the club chairs with the noisy fabric. She smuggles in a juice box and over ripe banana but makes sure to fork out for a medium sized hot chocolate with extra whip to justify their monopolizing of real estate. It's prime time, this 4 to 5:15 pm slot. The same faces every week. She wonders where their passovers take place. ...

Three glasses in a week. One on the floor, smashed to bits on the cracked grey tiles. Chunks of grout rolling like pebbles, lodging between her toes. The second in the sink, a slip of her hand and down it goes, shards sinking in a sea of sudsy water. The third glass, her favourite tumbler, the one with the faded Police Technology logo, all the way from from her alma mater three provinces over, 20 years ago. Caught the edge of the counter and just like that... It mysteriously appeared one day in the cupboard above the fridge, hidden behind a set of twelve black and pink flower china coffee mugs. Garish eighties decor unearthed. A heavy beer stein, good for half a pint of cheap draft- Laurentide or Labbatt 50, maybe Maudite if they were feeling flush. Probably picked up at a Goodwill or Value Village by one of the myriad exchange students who frequented the house before she set down roots 4 years ago. Digging up bones. She sits at the kitchen table, crumbs from this morning'...

Oh come on, really? You can't be serious- I mean, I heard her. She said it was 5, not 6. Why do you think she said 6? Cause that's stupid, it's completely idiotic and if it's true then we're completely screwed, ok? Like totally shit outta luck. So why don't you call her or text her or bloody well send up the bat signal and see if you can get her to confirm your story because I am not going to take the heat on this one if we miss the plane. Can you do that? Can you make that happen or do I have to do it for you, like every other single thing in your life. Really. You are unbelievable. A fully grown man and you can't get your shit in order- why are we even having this conversation? Just do it, do something, do anything. DO IT! Grant studies the phone in his hand, too tired to respond. Every year it's the same thing. Home for the horror-days. He stayed away last year, took extra shifts at the bar and made hand over fist in pity tips from the barflys who h...

Four more stops, a quick 2 block jaunt. Two hours to spare. Traveling light. Passport in hand.  Hopefully she'll be on time. Every year she swears she'll go. The best intentions. Plans her vacation around it, organizes her calendar, even commits to other people. No fail, something comes up. The flu. An out of town conference. An overrun on scheduled conference calls. But she knows the truth. If it's really important she can find a way, make the time, prioritize. It's once a year, for crying out loud. The same time, same day, same hour every single year. Her father would be disappointed, she knows this. She made a promise and broke it. It's almost like a phobia now. She sees the poppies pinned to every lapel, the veterans standing sentinel on corners, in subway stations, with their little boxes of fake plastic stickpin totems and she freezes up. She feels like a truant, skipping her duty, the daughter of a celebrated vet, granddaughter of a decorated soldier. It star...

Thirty two years old and he's burying his dad. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Charlie's three months today and he will never know his grandfather, the one man Evan looked to for guidance. On everything. From how to tie his shoes, what clothes to wear, how to change the oil, rotate tires, shoot a puck, assemble a bouquet, memorize a sonnet, and to note the difference between single malt and a blend. Some say there's a balance; with every birth, a death, but Evan feels ripped off. He finally feels like he's growing up, becoming his own man and suddenly he's orphaned. A father himself. He never envisioned life with a woman, a house, a dog and a kid. Well, ok, there's no house or dog (yet) but he's got a good rental, a reliable beater, and the most incredible woman in Jenna. Talk about punching above his weight. How he landed her he'll never figure out. She met Dad and he fell in love with her before Evan did. They spent ten minutes discussing the l...

And then, and then, and then- Heather stops to catch her breath. She starts choking on her own saliva pooling in the back of her throat. She stops and coughs violently, wheezes an intake of breath and tries to calm herself down.Whenever she gets worked up she loses the ability to speak in full sentences. Her hands start to shake and her feet get ice cold. She has a series of exercises she's supposed to do to quiet the noise and slow her brain down. Cognitive reprogramming, it's called. Her mom's obsessed with neuroplasticity, retraining the brain, so she makes Heather practice and practice and practice patterns and reactions so she can control her outbursts. She's a raw nerve; cries on a dime, becomes righteously indignant when the neighbour scolds her dog. It's too much. Heather's worn out, run down, depleted by the sheer effort required to exist. She feels everything full on, her dial goes up to 11 and then into overdrive. The other kids at school are freaked ...

It's been 3 months and she's slowly getting better. Rae comes in every day, checks in with the ICU nurses and spends about an hour, maybe 2 if she's got the strength of will. She rolls the reclining sleep chair over and sits next to her mom's bed, surrounded by a ventilator, all kinds of monitors and machines, flashing, beeping, keeping score. Today's a good day. Her levels are high, whatever that means. This seems to be progress. The nurses are exceptional. Patient, kind, and above all, frank. No bull, no patronizing, just the facts with a wry sense of humour and a seemingly endless supply of answers. Whether they're the ones Rae wants to hear or not is a moot point; at least they're communicative. The doctors on the other hand are elusive, cryptic. Disinterested and halfway out the door. It makes Rae crazy. She doesn't speak their language so she stumbles and sputters. On a bad day Rae weeps openly, embarrassed by her complete inability to articulate w...

"Courtney, hurry up- just ring the bell and hold up the box. Come on, honey, we have half the street left to do and Daddy's going to be home any minute expecting dinner to be ready. Don't be shy, the Martins bought 3 boxes last year. They're home, honey-see the light on in the living room?" Susan gestures by jerking her head repeatedly to the left. She looks like she's having a small seizure or suffers from a spastic tic. The pressure. The picture window has the drapes halfway drawn. She knows everyone's ignoring the bell. Becky Lo and her Tiger Mom did a wide sweep of the neighbourhood last night and early this morning. Who pimps out Thin Mints before work? Su's just pissed she didn't think of it. Damn Girl Guide cookies. They're going to be the ruin of her. Last year she was on the hook for 15 boxes. They're like crack; she can't keep them in the house and there was a quota Courtney wasn't meeting. Not good. Courtney is not a peop...

In the middle of their conversation, Ray leans across the table and injects himself into the story. Kerri stops short, caught off guard. She takes a moment to assess the situation, read Ray's tone, decipher his intent and decides against a defensive response, which is generally a wise choice. Lara'a oblivious to Kerri's sudden freeze out and gives Ray the floor. Kerri's new here; these people are not yet her people. A sprawling mass of  tables jammed together in a long row to celebrate a birthday of a new mutual friend where everyone seems to know each other intimately. She gets a sense of long term relationships, private jokes, battles fought and won and histories stamped in the ground. Boisterous, loud, rambling conversations and anecdotes overlap, cancelling each other out. Kerri's private conversation with Lara about her peripatetic childhood and father's journey in the service prompts an invasive and unsolicited query from Ray. He peppers her about her fath...

It's his father's face staring back at him from the fogged up mirror over the bathroom sink. Same high forehead, receding hairline, same soft chin, long ears. Hence the permanent three day growth. The bald spot on the back of the top of his skull is out of sight but every now and then he catches it peripherally in a window or in a candid shot or video. He's aging. Halfway through or thereabouts. This is who he's become, a mirror image of his younger father with an inkling of his mother around the edges. But it's his pop's demeanour- cool, calm, laid back- that he's spent a life time cultivating. A me-so-happy, why worry aloofness. Detachment to handle the anxiety. The insomnia. The busy, unquiet mind that keeps him humming and buzzing at all hours. The years of self abuse, of negative self talk, willful destructive habits and behaviours. Relationships are no fun so he just dabbles, always sits in reactive, playing willingly but disengaging at any sign of exp...

"This is ridiculous. Clearly these people don't know what they're talking about when they say this stuff is "intuitive". I can't make head's or tales out of this thing. The whole screen is jumping and sliding. It's giving me an aneurysm. Vivie!" Viv closes her eyes, drops her chin to her chest and takes a long, slow, cooling breath in through her nose, just like the yogi with the ratty dreadlocks tells her to. Why do people still wear patchouli, especially in a hot yoga room? She snickers under her breath and nods to herself. "Vivie! I can't make the screen do what I want it to do. You have to help me!" Her dad's plaintive whine pierces her momentary reverie like buckshot through a stained glass window, exploding the tempered red, purple and blues of her deep breathing ritual into pebbles of beach glass strewn all over the kitchen floor. "Ok dad, I'll take a look, just gimme a sec here to finish the dishes." Why sh...

It's called the playroom. Mike has no idea why, it's not like there's any playing going on down here nowadays. Mike's mom is burying herself in stuff. Since dad died she's flat out refused to deal with the reams of paper and magazines, decades of dad's old journals, mail order catalogues, piles of tools, stacks of books and three full sets of outdated encyclopedias. At some point, she went on a christmas decoration buying binge, so there are random rubbermaid bins spilling over with garland, plastic reindeer, wooden creches,  half cracked blown glass ornaments and fibreoptic glow in the dark mini wreaths. It's beyond Mike's scope. He knows she needs help, a professional organizer or something, he's seen some shows on tv. They bring in someone to help you get everything sorted and cleared out. Then inevitably, the poor person ends up buried alive in the same junk months later. It's all so depressing. Mike's first drumkit, which she and dad bou...

She said what? Are you kidding me? No, no way- that's just insane, I can't believe she thinks she can just SAY that to you and then walk away, nuh uh. You go after her and you TELL her, that's right, you tell her what's what and that nobody, I don't care who she thinks she is, gets to speak to my sister like that. Or better yet, you let me at her. That's right. You tell me where to find her and I will rip her a new one and make her apologize. Who does she think she is, talking like that to my sister. MY LTTLE SISTER! Does she know who you are, I mean, does she know who I am? These kids- huh, I know, right? I was young once too but you don't share the things she told to Mark and Craig and not expect there to be consequences. Fuck the higher road; mess with you and you mess with Big Sis from Hell. Just don't tell mom and dad, alright? This is between us. Sisters. We got this. Fucking Ainsley. I know she's your friend and all but she's an idiot. As ...

He packed a bag just in case. You never know, somewhere down the line he might have to make a move and he wants to be ready. Scott's biggest fear is not being prepared. Missing the moment, being left behind, lost in translation somehow. Scott's dad ran out on them when Scott was two, said he wasn't cut out to be a parent which left Scott the man of the house. That was Joan's favourite phrase: "Looks like it's up to you, Man of the House. You're gonna have to pull your weight around here if we're ever gonna get ourselves out from under." He was 6 when he started making dinner and doing laundry; 8 when he mowed the lawn and bought the groceries. It was only the two of them but it was a lot for a kid to handle, especially the burden of expectation that Scott somehow represent the masculine ideal in the household. His voice hadn't broken and he'd never been laid by the time he was driving and banking and learning how to manage a household. Joan...

Today is Trudy's favourite day of the year. The other 364 are good, if you like that sort of thing- banal, day in, day out, get up, go to work, come home, make a meal or two, go to bed, wake up and do it all over again kind of days. But today is Mother's Day. Although Trudy isn't a mother, she is an aunt and a daughter and a sister and a surrogate mom to all of her friend's kids. She's the crazy aunt everyone pours their hearts out to; the one her friend's kids turn to with stories of heartbreak or embarrassing questions about boys and bodies and the difficult truth on life and why their mom's are so harsh. A confidante, secret-keeper, truth-teller and comfort food maker. Truthfully, most weekends and statutory holidays are filled with the people in her life that love her so, but oddly enough it's on Mother's Day that Trudy beomes a bona fide star. A raucously celebrated, boy-I-wish-you-were-my-mom kind of day. The flowers and chocolates, the brunche...

Jennifer lies. She lies like a rug, like a third grade student with stained purple fingers and blue tinged teeth who claims she did not eat that blueberry pie. That deep dish, warm from the oven, baked fresh for Mother's bridge night pie. Yet Jennifer's not in the third grade. She is a grown woman, married to a grown man, mother to an eight year old son, minder of one dog, three fish and a hamster. She is high functioning, relatively happy, decidedly well off and in above average health. Her hobbies include yoga and pilates, the occasional spin class, a monthly book club and improv comedy on Tuesday evenings with 11 other women. She has a BA, a Master's Degree and could have been a lawyer but she chooses to stay at home with her son instead. And she lies. As well as being an upper middle class overly educated mother, wife and social butterfly, Jennifer has a secret. She hides this from everyone. Her family, her friends. It gives her an air of mystery, untouchable-ness. She ...

"I'm drowning here, Dad, I'm going under and I can't get back to shore. I can't, I can't make it, Dad, I can't do this without you, you gotta help me, you gotta throw me a line here." Zach is pleading, eyes watery, lip quivering, hands shaking. Jake is helpless when his eldest son gets like this: frantic, desperate, anxiety ridden and manic. It's four am and Jake is struggling to stay awake, let alone stand up. "Come on, Zach, calm down. Why don't you crash in your old room and we'll talk about it in the  morning. Your mom and brothers are asleep- Arnold wakes up for practice in two hours Zach, you gotta lemme get some rest or I'll be useless to everyone."  Zach paces, like a caged animal, shaking his hands like he's trying to rid himself of imaginary water. Two months he lasted this time. A good facility, showed signs of progress even; the phone calls were more managed, the family visits controlled, civilized. Jake liked ...

She's allowed one more cookie. One more, not two or three, god forbid four- that would be the end of the world as Sharron knows it. It's a very big deal with her mom, controlling Sharron's cookie intake. Some call her big boned but really she is heavy, overweight for a young girl, what in the old days they would call husky. Sharron is completely obsessed with cookies. Peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookies to be exact, fresh from the oven, when they're almost too hot to eat without scorching off the roof of your mouth. Sharron peels one off the parchment and juggles it back and forth between her fingertips hand to hand, blowing on it until it's just the right temperature then she closes her eyes, inhales the nutty sweet chocolatey smell, and busts out in a grin from ear to ear. She tries to measure her bites- four is ideal but sometimes she gets greedy and inhales an entire cookie in two, or on a rare occasion, one and a half. She can't help it: the...

They enter through the door together. She makes her way into the crowded car. Only then does she look over her shoulder to realize he has planted himself near the first pole. A flash of betrayal obscures her face. He is immovable. Feigning intention she backtracks to him, grasps the hanging strap above her head and roots herself. Compliant only on her terms. He reeks of defiance. In no way will he accommodate her. This is where he stands, immutable, unyielding. As always, it is up to her to bend and sway, fill the spaces between, round off his sharp edges, modify at a moment's notice. She is liquid, he is stone. She flows and surrounds, seeps into every pore and crevice, enveloping his implacable self with her tidal substance. Ebb and flow, seeking balance, equilibrium. The struggle is monumental yet she can not give way. The months turn to years. He is resolute in his choices, convicted. This battle will rage on for days to come, there is no means of extrication short of abandonme...

She is breathtakingly beautiful. That's not just a saying, Marinda really does take people's breath away. Men walk into telephone poles passing her on the street. Light standards- they bounce off and grapple for a moment to find equilibrium then follow her with their gaze until she's out of sight. Longing.  It's an ease, a quiet confidence coupled with stunning beauty; a grace and elegance married in strength and sexuality. Power. Potential. Men and women want to sleep with her. Marry her. Possess her, ingest her then travel the world with her, climbing mountains and rescuing malnourished orphan children while digging wells in Eritrea with her. She inspires that depth of devotion. A fascination and dedication known only by gurus and cult leaders. Except she's neither. Never practiced yoga a day in her life. Namaste what? As for cults, her parents escaped with the family when she was 3. Her brother and sister have made a relative go of things in the outside world. Be...