childhood memory

Size

January 24, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

Size

my mother

cut my food

until she figured

I had the ability

to cut it myself

like learning to tie my shoes

I don’t remember

when that transition

to independence

happened

I do realize

that somethings can’t

be cut down to size

they have to be taken

in bites or licks

like ice cream

melt in the mouth goodness

but not all goodness melts

not everything needs to be bitten

to enjoy

though sometime

it enjoys being bitten

even if it is too big

to fit into the mouth

its worth trying

to get as much of it as one can

sometimes

as a kid

I would stuff

so many small pieces

in my mouth

I couldn’t chew them properly

I couldn’t swallow

at least now

I know much is manageable

I have a big coffee mug. It holds 2 cups of fluid – 16 oz. – half-a-litre. I have a travel mug that holds a litre – usually coffee. The big mug is for my morning coffee, which I drink while reading in my study, which is upstairs. I would fill the mug nearly to the rim & carry it upstairs. The problem was that the motion would start a wave momentum in the mug so that no matter how carefully I carried it it would spill. I tried different ways of holding it, walking slowly one-step-at-a-time, pausing to calm the waves.

I started pouring it into a travel mug so the lid would contain the spill. But I’d end up with two mugs to clean. One day the solution came to me: stop filling it to the max! Oh my, having less isn’t easy for someone who feels ‘enough’ is a good place to start. Why not settle for 15.5 oz? Less was worth it just to remove the stress (& stains) of carrying it upstairs without spilling it. The question of size was settled with a simple action.

This is another piece about the nature of more, of the size of things. When I cut my food I still cut it the sizes my mother would cut it, though there are some foods that really don’t need to be cut much – a pizza into slices, maybe, but I’m not one of those who then cuts those slices into small pieces to eat dainty with a fork – a hand-to-mouth experience.

In some cases even if the food can’t be eaten in one piece, it doesn’t have to be cut by hand but by biting – apples, bananas, a box of chocolates (lol).

It’s also a bit about memory – those things we do today that we learned as children some of which were practical – tying shoes, brushing teeth – some of which weren’t that practical: racism, sexism – which perhaps our parents weren’t aware of teaching us. Lessons that are now hard to un-digest.

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Halloween 2022

October 17, 2022 topoet3 Comments

Walking the side streets in east end Toronto I see that Halloween decor is getting as popular as Christmas decorating. Houses with strings or orange lights, some with illuminated spiders, ghosts or skulls , plus the growing variations of inflatables. Giant grinning cats with heads that rotate back-and-forth. Shelves of candy – now mostly little chocolate bars – at Shoppers, WalMart & supermarkets.

As a youngster in Sydney, Cape Breton the only decoration one might see was carved pumpkins with candles inside. We used pillowcases to go door-to-door for trick-or-treating. The candy was usually those toffy/taffy kisses, apples or oranges, & if you were lucky small bags of chips. Sometimes a small bag of unshelled peanuts. Those little chocolate bars hadn’t been invented then lol. Now one has to provide bars that have no nuts! I guess soon we’ll have to find some sort of sugar-free chocolate bar too, or ones with no trans fats. Sorry, but I’ll leave the sorting of treats to parents.

Store bought costumes – cowboys, pirates etc. Or something homemade – old sheets reprised as ghosts, your Dad’s oversized sports coat sort of things. Rarely a superhero & nothing that lit up with led’s. Costumes to school if Halloween fell on a school night. It was an innocent time. At that age I had no awareness of the pagan roots of event. I later discovered it was one of the few ‘old religion’ holidays that the Church couldn’t erase turn into their own – they did try with All Saints Day but well, we don’t see illuminated Saints on peoples front lawns. A giant inflatable St. Teresa hovering in the air would be fun though.

In the past decade, here in Toronto, the decorating for the event has gotten bigger & more macabre – severed hands, feet, heads suspended from trees, skeletons hanging on front porches, zombi arms digging themselves out of the ground. Bats, spiders, plastic skeletons of dogs, owls, dinosaurs even spiders (which have no skeletons). It is easy to guess which house has children by the number of doll limbs dangling in the trees.

Halloween 2021:

Bones and Body Parts

Blowing Up Halloween

Spiders and Their Fiends

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when it goes on sale November 1 🙂 paypal.me/TOpoet

Buried Moons Drums and Caramel

July 26, 2022 topoet4 Comments

Over the past year of so I’ve rediscovered some of my childhood treats at a local supermarket – things that Shopper’s never has on their shelves. I can’t say that I longed for them but trying them again after decades did bring back some sweet memories of growing up in Sydney.

I can remember buying the individual Half-Moon’s at Flubs (I think that’s what it was called) a family run corner store (St. Peters Rd at Ashby). Cellophane wrapped & merely a sugary cloud with nearly no texture or much flavour. There was also a chocolate version but Preferred the bland vanilla. The current version is smaller, has less cream filling & remains relatively flavourless.

I was allowed one a week & would usually buy it on my way home from school. It took less than a minute to eat but was totally satisfying. For some reason there has never been a 100% whole wheat version lol. Flubs also had home-made molasses candies I loved & super moist molasses cookies.

Another one is Ah Caramel – the name of which I forgot until I saw a package on the shelf – these are smallish squares of cake with a ring of cream filled with caramel on top & all dipped in chocolate. They came in cello packs of two, so you could share one. Like the half-moons these are smaller than I recalled. Thanks to the chocolate & caramel they actually have flavour & though the chocolate shell is too thin to give it much of a texture.

Then there is the Drumstick – ice cream filled sugar cone dipped in chocolate & the top rolled in peanuts. In my day there was only one vanilla kind – now there is a range with chocolate, crushed oreo cookie, fillings but still dipped in chocolate & rolled in peanuts. I’ve tried them all but I prefer the traditional. Sadly another one that has been sized down but still large enough to satisfy.

Finally, one that I haven’t found is Buried Treasure – orange sherbet & vanilla ice cream on a plastic stick. As you ate the ice cream, a figure, your buried treasure, would appear on the stick. As I remember it actually tasted like orange! I wish I still had some of my treasures – I loved the circus lion. Buried Treasure is no longer available 😦 I guess it is not the sort of hand-held device to keep children amused.

What were your favorite childhood treats.

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Did anyone every send away for these gifts?

(Buried Treasure/Popcicle images sourced from internet)

Burned At The Stake

January 26, 2021 topoet1 Comment

Burned At The Stake

this is not

what I started

not what I expected

I didn’t ask for it

I don’t know how to stop it

no one does

yet I get blamed

from so many sides

that push me to be

responsible

for being born male

for being born white

for being gay queer nonconforming

if I don’t use

what ever entitlement I have

to advance the agendas

of those who fault me

I remain an enemy

but that is fate

my lot in life

it doesn’t matter

who burns me at the stake

they all have legitimate reasons

who am I to complain

I’m getting what I deserve

not what I asked for

I’m not sure at what age I realized I wasn’t good at fitting in. Perhaps it was when I was 8 or 9 when my Dad began his move from Manitoba east across Canada, finally settling in Cape Breton. We hopped, skipped & jumped from place to place, including a few months in Wales with my mother & her family, for a year or so – staying in some places long enough for me to go to school for awhile. I was a frequently dislocated child.

Even when we settled in Sydney there were moves from one neighbourhood to another, one school to another. It was an adventure at the time but I really had no choice, I couldn’t stop it. I meet kids with stable living conditions – some living in the houses one of their parents were born in. I arrived there with no history & only the family I had was in a house new to us.

I did try at times to fit in, finding playmates to hang out with, joining in laneway baseball games – I even had my own baseball glove, joined cubs, boy scouts, went to the YMCA – none of which turned me into a butch boy. I wasn’t a great joiner – which really hasn’t changed.

I was, without realizing it, resistant to the insistent heteronormative inculcating that was the agenda of these things. This is what boys do, this is what girls do. I was mocked by gym teachers, parents of the kids I hung out with, even my own Dad, for not fulfilling these agendas. Blamed for not cooperating – for not living up to my potential – for not eagerly participating in things that were for my own good, things I didn’t start but didn’t know how to stop.

I survived nicely & happily – occasionally got burned at the stake of public opinion but that is the lot of us abominations unto the face of the Lord & those who turn that righteous face in the directions of their choosing. In the end I’m not sure what I was asking for then – some sort of emotional guidance which never came. What I did get is the self-acceptance I deserved, which is better than being burned at the stake.

Nine

January 5, 2021 topoetLeave a comment

Nine

O when I was nine

I was still a child

there was no instant communication

news travelled slow

on the radio TV newspapers

that provided an innocence

I knew about war

because my Dad had fought in one

he was a man

my mother was a woman

I was a boy child

who only knew what the culture

of the time

expected of my gender

O when I was nine

I did know I wasn’t like other boys

I played backlot baseball

I played with dolls

I wasn’t the boy my dad expected

I didn’t like to fight

like other boys

I never understood

why physical violence was required

to be accepted

O when I was nine

I learned to swim

looking at the differences

between boys and girls

anatomy I didn’t understand

the boys where more interesting

I knew shame

when we were caught

I had fear

but no closet

sex was dirty regardless

of the gender of the object

O when I was nine

I don’t that I was making waves

as I waded from nine to nineteen

by the time I left nineteen

I knew

these were dangerous waters

at nine there was only

the fear of getting caught

not the fear

of my culture drowning me

like an unwanted litter of kittens

I heard on a TV documentary about children that our sense of self was basically formed by the time we are ten years old. By then we have absorbed the ‘teachings’ of TV behaviours that inform our subconscious. So, back in the day, I was aware of what the culture of the time expected of my gender. I was also aware that it wasn’t the right fit but I hadn’t developed the language for that beyond feeling it was the wrong fit. Today thanks to instant communication children have a greater knowledge of gender variations. I doubt that at the age of five I would have understood what a faggot was, children today do know what it means.

Where was I when I was nine? We had just settled in Sydney, Cape Breton after moving across Canada for a couple years. My mother & I had spent some time with her family in Wales during this time as well. I remember ‘living’ in Moncton, Stellerton or was it Truro for short periods of time & going to schools there, briefly. Finally in Sydney, were we lived in three different neighbourhoods before my dad bought a house in Ashby.

One result was that I spent those formative years as a displaced person – someone who was different. My Dad prodded me into things that could show me how to ‘fit in’: cub scouts, YMCA. I did the best I could but felt like an outsider &, as I recall, was fine with that. I did get these weird mixed messages ‘why can’t you be like other kids’ then when I wanted some fad item ‘why can’t you think for yourself.’

I survived partially by hiding in booze & partially by writing & painting as I gradually found language for what I was. Though then that language was loaded – an abomination unto the Lord – sort of stuff. Today I know the tragic flaw wasn’t my sexuality but the way culture regarded not only lgbtq but sexuality itself.

Remembering Me

April 20, 2020 topoetLeave a comment

My sister found a cache of old photos during her isolation house cleaning & sent a jpeg of this one of me as a very wee lad in Wales. I have very vague memories of the several months I spent there but it was pre-kindergarten years. I was an only child, we were living in Winnipeg – where I was born. We were visiting my mother’s huge family in Merthyr Tydfil. By huge I mean at least 10 bothers & sisters. I had lots of aunts, uncles & even some cousins.

How did we get there? I vaguely remember spending time on a liner – The Franconia II (?). We did have a photo of the boat for many years & my sister may yet find that 🙂 as she digs though decades of papers.

It must have been a cool day in Cardiff as I’m wearing top coat & well wrapped in a scarf. Anyway the most telling thing about the photo is the rather wide belt. I was a hyper child & the only way my mother could keep me from climbing light poles was to keep me tethered. I’ve marked the actual tether & its shadow in one of the pictures. I remember the tethering but have no memory of the cause 🙂

The other pictures are of a more mature me – all unearth by my sister several years ago. On the beach at Broad Cove along the Cabot Trail. I loved that hat & stuck feathers in it. The shirt had blue stripes. I also love what we called ‘pit socks’ thick wooled, not exactly summer wear. The child I’m dragging might be one of my sisters but looking closely at it I doubt think so.

Next is me in a nice white shirt, possibly one of my Dad’s. The car was Prefect that my dad bought me to teach me how to drive. We’re at Memorial Gardens so I could drive around the road there. Despite the nerd look I never did learn to drive 🙂

The final ‘remember me’ is early 70’s in my almost hippy days 🙂 US draft dodgers had bought & started a farm in vape Breton. We became friends & I visited them a few times. I had a crush on a couple of the guys but didn’t know how to go from thought to action. Other than hair (& weight) I haven’t really changed much, have I?

Odds

these days if I don’t know

I’m willing to step up and say so

I no longer waste time

with bluffing and postulating

on what I thought it might be

wasting time

on half right information

that gets no one anywhere

except back to blame

blame an easy place to get trapped

it means not going forward

but is the ideal excuse

to look for what went wrong

that might have been avoided

if i had been willing at one point

to say

I don’t really know

my guess

isn’t going to be close enough

let’s get the right info

then see where that leads us

because sometimes

even knowing isn’t the solution

I have the right fact for the wrong situation

I may have no idea

what the fuck is going on

so it is better

to make that clear from the start

let someone else

with half right information

take the lead

so we have someone to blame

though sometimes

there is no right or wrong way to go

it’s just important to go

to not stay stuck

waiting for a clear sign

for verifiable facts

to present themselves

but waiting can be

such comforting thing to do

a great place to be

in which nothing gets done

and no one is to blame

we may not get ahead of the game

but at least were still in it aren’t we

I don’t know

there see I’ve admitted it

I don’t know

if we’re in the game or not

I don’t know

how to find out either

does it matter

is it all really a game

or is that an allegorical handle

used to make things

seem more manageable

one that does really work

because rules shift so fast

it’s impossible to keep up with them

impossible to repeat

them make them work

we have to keep plugging

away on available information

be prepared for change

take another step

in some direction

think we get the clear sign

step up

and get flatten

by an on coming car

I hear that can happen

that’s why I’m afraid

of winning the lottery

42 million dollars at last

& a piano falls on me

as I go to the bank to cash the cheque

no I’m not a fatalist

a pigeon could shit me

on the way to the bank

but that’s the worse

regardless of how big the cheque is

or is it a cheque

an automatic bank transfer

a few click of keys

it’s in my account

I don’t know

I’d love to find out

I’m willing to learn

I am open to suggestion

to new information

but this is postulating

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Prize Wise

December 26, 2019 topoetLeave a comment

Prize Wise

I knew

just knew in my bones

Karen was getting the prize

that should be mine

because the teacher

didn’t like me

just because Karen’s mother was sick

the whole class had voted

to give her the prize

not because she deserved it

but they felt sorry for her

I was eight or nine at the time

and decades later

I still feel that resentment

that became the message

‘no matter how well you do

someone else always deserves

the prize more

so why bother’

this message resonates

when I think

only the damaged

write with an authentic voice

only the disenfranchised

have a right to attention

only the six-pack seniors

have a right to sex

I should feel lucky

grateful for what I get

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Safe From Me

December 5, 2019 topoetLeave a comment

Working through the 227 Rules For Monks.

Who knew the simple life could be so complex.

Safe From Me

somedays it isn’t safe

for me to be seen in public

not safe for others I mean

personally I am unconcerned

but the welfare of others

has to be considered

just a glance from any male

let alone a gay male

can be triggering

sending someone spinning

into painful childhood memories

that don’t involve me directly

but my mere looking

where I am going

can set people off

I never ask how are you doing

lest that appears to be disrespect

for their boundary issues

I dress to deflect attention

I won’t compliment your appearance

never talk about my happy childhood

because by doing so

I may be diminishing

what you experienced in yours

I get tired of negotiating permission

to continue a conversation

is it okay if I talk about ….

negotiating to avoid making

others uncomfortable

it isn’t wise to presume

that just because they are a clerk

that they want to be of service

I haven’t left my house

for years now

it’s the easiest way

of keeping the world safe

from me

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Cape Breton Day 9

August 11, 2019August 11, 2019 topoetLeave a comment

A fun day of driving & dining that started with a morning walk to a great recovery meeting. Did my first Tim Horton’s stop of the trip. The coffee is no longer stronger than than Toronto’s. I like morning meetings as a way to start a day. Familiar faces are comforting. All the meetings I went to turned out to be topic-suggested-by-members meetings. I suppose there are some that discuss the literature. All started with the serenity prayer 🙂 & all ended with the Lord’s Prayer :-(. No hand holding to deal with.

Walked up to my sister’s & took the Terrace St. hills I used to walk to Sydney Academy. They seemed much steeper then. My sister had dug out some old photo albums, one that included some toddler pics of me. After a few minutes of looking though them & taking pictures of pictures we headed out on the day’s real adventures.

My Dad was fond of taking us kids for country drives and my sister has the driving bug in her blood too. our first real stop was in Sydney Mines so I could get pictures of the Municipal Region Police Station that was once a Customs House. An impressive building that dates back to the early 1900’s. It certainly stands out amidst the endless aluminium sided boxes that abound everywhere. Why does progress mean lack of architectural character?

Next we went to North Sydney. I was hoping to find out information about the German U-Boat that surfaced in the harbour – the local citizens jumped dirtier boats to defend out shores. North Sydney was a major communications hub & thus targeted by the Nazis.

Blank faces were all I got from the staff. I did get lots of pics though included some of a 1918 fire engine. We had a decent lunch at The Black Spoon. I was hoping the name referred to some naval jargon or iron smelting but Black was the last name of the owner.

Tomorrow Fort Petrie.

Colby Days 2

July 15, 2019 topoetLeave a comment

Our Cottage Road house, between Park St & Whitney Ave by a laneway, was a compact two-story home belonging to Miss Kelly who lived in the house next door. Her house was huge. She had boarders on the second & third floors & she lived alone on the first floor. Her house was the model for the boarding house in my novel Coal Dusters. She deserves a post of her own, so this is all I’ll say about her now 🙂

This was a more upperclass neighbourhood. Larger houses, doctors & lawyers & sport celebrities abounded. Larger houses too – many 3 story, single family dwellings. Colby remained within walking distance & I would trudge Cottage Rd. in the morning, home for lunch, back for the afternoon. I’d walk home along central with the guys.

I was at Colby for grades IV & V. I have a class photos of me in Grade VI at Ashby school. I don’t recall if that was another summer move though. I do remember some of my Colby teachers though. The principle Miss Greenwood, Mrs. Butterworth & Mrs. McLeod. There were others but even seeing the list of teachers on the Colby School page didn’t ring any lunch bells. https://www.facebook.com/groups/colbyschool/

I do remember the hand bell that rang to get us into the school. I was a middling student even then. I had attention issues 🙂 I was also aware that I didn’t have the same feelings about girls as the boys claimed to have. I was, in fact, a sissy who preferred hopscotch to baseball. I don’t recall having any real pals or playmates of either sex.

I did get into a couple of fist fights though & lost. It was hard to keep punching when everyone around you was encouraging the other guy to teach me a lesson. I became a coward because proving my masculinity with violence was beyond me. Shame & fear were the biggest lessons I learned at Colby School.

It was here that I had to spend a summer writing out words from a speller. I did page after page of writing each word out twenty times. Then had to retake the spelling exam at the start of the new term before I could go on. I did pass but again, the real lesson learned was shame, not how to spell.

The other thing I remember from then was the birth of my brother. Now that my Dad was settled in Sydney, his job was going well, may parents felt secure enough to raise a family. I felt I was a disappointment & now they wanted to get it right this time. My brother was about a year old when my mother was pregnant again, & we moved again, this time to the Ashby area.