Sometimes I can’t sleep

 

Menopause is an unexpected turmoil that spends a long time on the stage. My period  sputtered to an end, and as always, I felt clueless. I’m not sure what’s going on I tell my doctor, he’s a man. It’s probably gone for good, he says.

Born to be Brave

I took this picture at Toronto’s Pride Parade – of a man dressed as a princess, and a young boy in a bountiful skirt. I’ts a moment of rapture, captured on every face in the crowd. Not to see it is to be blind to love. Which, when it beckons, we must follow even if the path is hard or steep.

As I reflected on love and fear and freedom and policies, my thoughts followed their inexorable path to my South African upbringing and how it had tarnished me.

Be Kind.

I have a fight with my boyfriend. When my glass is full, I’m always the last to know it’s up to the brim, waiting for one last drop to send me over the edge. Although some might say I go looking for it.

In this particular case, being out of work has left me predisposed. Add to that a summer cold that’s been dragging on for days. Then my son, lying prostrate on my bed, pronounces he’s overwhelmed with summer school; that math is hard. As I move to berate him, I spot tears in his eyes. He does not cry easily and now I hate that he’s hurting.

Getting in the Gap

Becoming more Zen-like is daunting. All those people with great karma and the art of ‘letting go’, and I don’t even have the patience to stand in line. We’re at the campsite office in Georgian Bay and Jessy pulls a red flag right out of his pocket.

“Jeez, we’ve been standing here for 20 minutes!” he says, his comment pretending to be innocuous. I grab the ball and run with it, straight through the gates of hell.

1. The Issue
“This is bullshit!” I hiss through clenched teeth. I know he’s going to try and calm me down which only enrages me further because now, on top of being furious, I am also apparently embarrassing.

“Go, go . .  sit in the car,” he urges, like a bomb expert with a containment solution, hoping to protect the people and facilities from primary fragmentation.

The Grasshopper or the Ant?

1. Applause for Ant.

Mr. Ant scurries back and forth like one of those parent council do-gooders wearing prim clothes and anxious looks, whispering disapproval in ways meant for me to see. It makes me want to take my clothes off, triggering a confused notion that getting naked is getting real. In my drinking days, whenever I felt sensitive or upset (most of the time), I’d act outrageously then render myself too drunk to care. Or was it the other way around?
Anyway . .  let’s not assume Monsieur Grasshopper is an alcoholic simply because he has a fiddle. I’m fighting to maintain my impartiality, standing here, beer in hand, offended. The industrious Mr. Ant is just so competent, and sober, as he shuffles past to his grey office with his grey overcoat on . . .