Harvesting Love

The risk it takes to remain tight inside the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom. —Anais Nin.

Do you do the post-holiday boozin'?

This evening I served a friendly, but wiped-looking couple. After a couple of drinks and some appetizers, with me, they shared the source of their worn eyes. They'd hosted Thanksgiving dinner for their grown children, and their grandchildren, earlier in the evening. They showed up in my section ready for 'Us Time'.

Half an hour later another couple came through the front door looking equally exhausted.

"Wow, you guys look tired," I greeted them.
"Yah, Thanksgiving dinner," Mr. Customer responded with a grin.
"Ah, belly-tired, or done-with-the-family-we're-ready-for-a-drink tired?"
"Done with the family," his sleepy grin widened.

'Tis the season - Canadian Thanksgiving that is. Canadians apparently celebrate a successful harvest, whereas American Thanksgiving is acknowledged to remember the Pilgrims and the 'settlement' of the 'New World'.

The most memorable Thanksgiving feast that I shared was the autumn that I had roommates. I gave thanks to my friends; we gave thanks for each other.

I've only once in my life shared my living space with roommates. At the time I was working in a wee coffee shop earning server's wage, which was a whopping $5.95/hr. (if I remember correctly), and pulling in a monster $15-$30/shift in tips. Rental of a one bedroom apartment, plus hydro, was beyond my means.

Sitting at Pogo's one evening bemoaning my situation over drinks, which I really couldn't afford, I ran into a friend that I've known since high-school. He, as well, was burying his woes in the bottom of a pint (I think alcohol is like oil; it settles on top and funks up your belly). He was about to loose the waterside duplex he'd been renting for three years because his roommates were moving out; I was about to loose my pricey shoe-box of an apartment. He needed a roommate; I needed somewhere to live. Ta-Da.

A month and a half later I moved into that sweet duplex on Riverside Drive. Eventually, to me,

my roommates became Fish One and Fish Two (an amalgamation Dr. Suess'
Thing One & Thing Two, and One Fish, Two Fish; Red fish, Blue fish).

Both Fish worked multiple service sector jobs; Fish Two was also studying at Windsor. Other than passing in and out on our way to various commitments, we didn't see much of each other.

Until...

My Fish, Myself, and Orangina (a best friend on her way to Nelson, B.C. two days from our Thanksgiving) celebrated Thanksgiving three weeks after the fact because it was the first opportunity we had to spend all together; all at once. About 8:30pm Fish Two pulled his Tofurky feast, complete with tempeh drumsticks, out of the freezer and got down to it. Three hours later, a bit gleeful on some red wine, we loaded our vegetarian-friendly plates and settled in to watch
"A Life Less Ordinary."
[Disclaimer: If you've not seen the movie, link may be a scene/finale spoiler]
Dang super movie; if you've not seen it you should. I think so at least.

When I say "loaded," I mean loaded. Brown sugar, buttered yams; green beans, with almond slivers; stuffing; scones made from scratch, and baked fresh; tempeh (so good); tofurkey, and cranberry sauce; mashed potatoes with garlic, and gravy. Loaded. I probably cannot do justice to the contentment that filled our living room (Candlelight was involved, if that helps).

I love my family so much. My family loves me. A lot. But they've never quite understood my decision to become vegetarian, and they certainly don't know how the hell to feed me at gatherings. My mom has been making a greater and greater effort over the years; I adore her all the more for it, but broccoli and potatoes a meal does not make.

The Riverside feast was the first time, post-veg-head, that I shared a holiday meal in which I could partake in everything on the menu. And, I love my friends. It was the perfect giving of thanks.

My point? Do not succumb to superficial, socially prescribed 'rules'. Do not exhaust yourself over a holiday. Love 'em up. Love 'em by how YOU define love.

Whether you celebrate on Monday, or a month from Monday, give thanks to the people that you share your meal with.

Happy Thanksgiving (and Happy Birthday, to me - that's kinda self-absorbed, but whatever, it's my birthday).

Harvest some love however you may see fit.

Last of September

I've been attempting to utilize my experience within the service industry as a conversational catalyst. Sharing anecdotes as a vehicle by which I may delve into a wide array of personal concerns and interests. Although still in my blogging stages of infancy, I feel that I have achieved a degree of thematic consistency throughout my entries. Today however, I am struggling with how to express myself, while still maintaining integrity to this blog.

Today is the anniversary of my father's death. I wish to pay him homage in some small way, even if to an unknown audience, so I've chosen to share a story I wrote shortly after he died. Perhaps my catharsis may be yours as well.

Douglas Christopher Towers ~ April 11, 1953 - Oct. 1, 2004

A simplistic man may not necessarily be one synonymous with a man of simplicity. My Dad was a man of simplicity. Intelligent, articulate, ridiculous, silly, and charming. Soft spoken, yet stubborn. Patient, yet competitive. His name is Doug.

Last of September, I did not write because of my experiences within the industry (i.e., service), but my experiences certainly shaped how I wrote it. I am not 'Alice', but Alice is a whole lot of me.

Last of September

She was born into a family with bad teeth and bad eyes. Alice was, on both accounts however, the exception. No dental debt owed to anyone, nor accruing optometrist fees. Her ivories had miraculously sprouted row-evenly-upon-row. As for those peepers, nature had been generous in that only the green had been passed through the genes. Hers, greenest once evoked. Whether it be melancholy or mischief, when passion struck the flint within her, it was her eyes that sparked something surreal.

The difference between her green and that of the rest of her family was that Alice looked through to the world unencumbered. Unaided, unabated. Twenty-twenty jewels nestled within her sockets; as opposed to the rest of her family, obliged to contend with perception enhanced only through the use of various filters. Be they of the thick-crafted, 'pop-bottle' variety, or the flimsy genre, saline soaked in plastic webs upon a bedside table while the eyes they served slept - the lenses were necessary for clarity to all but she. Clarity seemed not her problem, rather the fact that often she felt stung by it. Her acute, specific sense of vision, blinding at times. Perhaps one could argue, feebly, that this was the reason she appreciated liquor. Without a definable physiological requirement she had found, groping through youth, a filter of her own. A smart girl with poor strategies.

It is the last day of September. A Thursday. The film of autumn slowly descending. Trees just shy enough in their turning to awaken anticipation and curiosity. In a week from tomorrow she will be twenty-nine. The last of her decade's birthday celebrations.

She had closed the bar last night and had set neither an alarm, nor an agenda for her day off. It is sometime after two p.m. that she is awakened by the digital ring of her cell phone. Why she hasn't heard the phone from the other room may be attributable to the late-night routine she has developed over many years. Alice does not usually find Sleep a willing participant. She is beginning to disappoint herself with things which she relies upon; wishing she were strong enough for hobbies over habits. It is for this reason that Alice finds herself, in her work, not desensitized, but paying increasingly particular attention to her female clientele. The women she watches are not too unrealistic a stretch from where she may find herself, sooner than she cares to acknowledge. Alice is not concerned with a romantic vision of the tragic-once-was-beauty, lost to circumstances beyond personal control. It is women of weakness she has been watching. Women who bemoan their lives. Failing in sloppy innuendoes and pathetic attempts at retribution. Women who do not choose to live up to the choices that they have made; scuttling to hide consequences within elaborate charades of regret. Woefully adorned in self-pity; bejeweled in dull, languidly intellectual idioms. Queen fools, perched on their bar stools; lapping at the free booze, offered by the fool's fools. Lapping at the neck of false prospect. Lonely fuckers. She is lonely too, but she won't do that.

Alice fumbles for the phone on the floor. She fumbles again for the 'talk' button, all the while negotiating the civil war brewing between her brain and her eye-lids.

"Hello?" she offers in a grainy voice.

"Oh my God. Oh, Alice."

His voice pierces through the static of her cheap phone and peels through the static in her head. The tone of her name, evocative of neither endearment nor casualness, plucks at a warning chord within. Her name, perched precariously upon panic. This is no social mid-day ring. She squints at the glare of the sky and the water outside of her window. Alice, a little unsteady on one elbow, props her head within her right palm. She waits.

"God, I'm so glad I finally got you. I've been trying your phone. I've been trying your cell. Your mom called me. You need to get to the hospital. I can pick you up. When can you be ready?" The single, longest word in human history.

"Is it my dad or my grandma?" she asks, eyes wide in the instant of fear before realization. The simplicity of the question traveling through some far, hollow space; reaching her brother-in-law on the other end of the line.

"It's your dad," Thomas responds very softly.

The echo of tears spilt, audible to her now. With Tom's response, the birth and death of plump, blurry babes muddles Alice's view. Outside, the blue of the sky becomes that of the water; the gleam of the sun on the river becomes that of the sky. Pulled in strands of light through her window, the bedroom appears to be melting with everything else. Tree tops and water-sky. Her room and herself. All come barreling back toward her. Yanked through space. A vacuum fueled by adrenaline. She feels the whack, as if struck by matter, and all that has ever mattered.
"I'll be ready in twenty minutes," her voice a little more alert and less restrained than it had been fifteen seconds earlier.

"I'm on my way." Tom is sobbing now.

"Thank you."

Alice hangs up and pauses briefly. A last glance at her life, intact as she knows it. She suddenly feels frantic and begins leaping from room to room, crying and disorganized. Washing her face. Grabbing her wallet and her phone and her make-up. Stuffing the whole mess into her bag. Snatching clean pants as she darts back to the washroom. She is simultaneously brushing her teeth, taking a pee, and changing her clothes. Speaking nonsense aloud in her empty apartment to steady her breathing.

Seventeen minutes since she had hung up the phone. She has got to get downstairs. Her answering machine is flashing red. Everything about her feels as though it is flashing red. Alice scrambles with the sleeves of her jacket and hits 'play'. A robotic, vaguely female voice responds, "Thursday, 10:31 a.m.", followed by: "Alice, it's mom," her voice foreign, crisp, and sad; all mushed together. "You need to get to the hospital to say 'good-bye'."

Good-bye. Good-bye? Fucking Christ!

She hasn't spoken to her mother in ten months. It has been longer since she last heard her father's voice. Thursday. Last of September. He is dying.
She is locking the door. She is in the elevator. She is outside, stumbling toward the car idling for her. She is watching her reflection creep closer in the passenger window. She looks unfamiliar to herself; outside of her own life.

"This is not, this is not, this is not
really happening...
You bet your life it is,
you bet your life it is..."

Amos is singing and re-singing and singing, for her only. Alice reaches for the door handle. It is cold. She hears the springs of the hinges and the song in her head. The sun is out. It is a gorgeous afternoon and this strikes her as strange.

Alice's eyes have never appeared more green.

Tom pulls away from the curb.

-Thanks for allowing me to share.

m