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“She loosed her hair and let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil…”

Lenny Kravitz tells a story about how a year after his mom died, he took an entire year off and went to Barbados with his daughter and father to grieve and heal and just be. The first order of business when he got back, he said, was to cut off his dread locks. He said that the last ten years of his life—good and bad—were invested in his hair. The moment his friend began cutting, he started to hyperventilate with the palpable loss of a part of his past, most of which was okay with him, he was done with it.

I did the same thing today. I did it quite unceremoniously and if anything, it is the lack of ceremony about it that is bothering me now.

I never thought I’d be a girl who would cry over a haircut. And on the surface of it I am not. After all, I have had short hair most of my life. I only started growing it after mom died. It became a freedom thing, and then it became a writing thing. When I began writing my book about my dead sister I vowed to never cut my hair (trims not included) until it was written. Why? I’m not sure, but if I had to approximate my best guess to my own motivation it would be that when my hair is long, I can kinda see the resemblance everyone loves to talk about. Especially when braided, though I have no living memory of her with woven hair. And I guess I figured the more I conjure her to life, the truer the writing will be. Or something.

Today, I cut three inches off my hair, a substantial amount. Enough to feel like I broke the vow since the book is nowhere near finished. My hair was half way down my back, completely covered my breasts in the front (a visual I was becoming fond of), and it was longer than I ever knew I could grow it. My last trim was in April, so my hair had the energy of a long, hard spring / summer of sadness, loneliness, fear, joy and forward movement inside its strands.

Ever since I wrote in these pages about being the blond baby my mother spent years praying for, the undue and misdirected attention I garnered because of that accidental infamy, the problems it has unnecessarily caused in my family, and the way it dictated the me I became instead of the me I am—ever since then, I have been itching to do something with my hair. A clean break. I thought about cutting it completely off, or becoming brunette, or cutting it completely off and becoming brunette. Something, anything to signify a shift out of the past, a change of focus. An initiation of sorts some new, uncharted pathways. Also, suddenly all former boyfriends, paramours, lovers and crushes were interested in or carrying on with brunettes. The hair dilemma was started to talk on mythic proportions. And maybe I was looking for a quick fix.

So, on a whim, and not wanting to spend a lot of money, I took myself off to Great Clips hair cutters over on Davie Street, sat in the chair and said, "a trim please." Well, if you know my hair, you know it is so thick that it needs to be completely saturated to be wet enough to cut, and having no prior discounted haircut experience, I did not know that they do not even shampoo your hair for $14, just sprits it with a spray bottle. So the hair ended up being cut, not trimmed due to the fact that some was wet, some was dry, further complicated by the fact that I had worn it in braids the day before so it was kinkier than usual and the very nice lady had to keep cutting to get any semblance of evenness. 

(I might add at this point that my mother was once a hairdresser and I felt slightly like I was sitting for her while the very nice lady sprayed strands of hair and cut them, knowing that later I would look at the wonky cut and say, why didn’t I spend some money on my hair??)

Sure enough, I walked out with too short, semi-wet hair and came home to wash and style and cry.

In actual fact, it is still quite long, but for purposes of my unprecedented hair trauma I might just as well have shaved my head bald! In the end, it’s as Marcel Proust says, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." And I guess this applies to hair too. I’ll have to find another way of launching myself into newness, ‘cause obviously I still have way too much invested in my mane of golden locks!

November 2001

What a difference a year makes. Last September I, like so many others, sat glued to my television set watching blow-by-blow coverage of Princess Diana’s death. I watched Diana’s funeral, not once, but many times. I listened to Charles Spencer’s eulogy over and over, and cried every time, as if repetition could somehow make it all true. Why did I do this? What was I waiting to see, to hear? What emotion locked deep inside was this spectacle tapping into? Flipping back and forth between channels for coverage and critical comment, I told myself that my interest was media deconstruction and trying to attach some meaning to the phenomenon of millions upon millions of mourners displaying emotions that they’d perhaps bottled up for months, even years. Feelings maybe not even their loved ones knew they possessed.

When I spoke to my mother about it all her attitude struck me as somewhat cynical and I was bothered by that. She was critical of Diana’s public persona, her courting and shunning of the media. And although she also watched, she seemed unaffected and unimpressed. But then my mom was no stranger to grief. As a young child she had lost her mother, then later, her oldest daughter before her youngest were grown, and two siblings far too early. All too often she’d been attending funeral after funeral as family members and friends succumbed to age or illness. Of course, she knew then what I know now. Something that my multiple viewing of Diana’s funeral was in some strange way foreshadowing. Once you’ve lived through the real thing, you have little or no appetite for voyeuristic viewing of death via “breaking news” broadcast venues.

It never occurred to me last September as I watched and participated in the Diana display, that two short months later I’d be sitting panic-stricken at my own mother’s funeral mass. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for standing in a room full of caskets choosing one for my mother’s dead body. Or, greeting every single family member and friend at her visitation, their presence creating a domino effect of memory of her life and my own. Nothing could ever be further from my mind than the few torturous minutes it took me, on rubbery legs, to walk up the church aisle behind her coffin. The fact that my private feelings would be publicly seen felt overwhelming and I remember trying to hide my face even from the familiar and also grieving gathering of people who knew and loved my mother.

Watching anniversary commentary and coverage of Diana now is excruciating to me. Suddenly my tolerance for anything funereal is drastically diminished. Reality, after all, is not at all entertaining. It’s painful in a way that only becomes obvious in the many months that follow – even almost a whole year later when I no longer expect to still remember the details so acutely. When what has forever changed my life is a faint memory to those around me. When nothing and no-one can relieve the emptiness of not hearing her voice for so many days in a row. After weeks and months of the processing and reprocessing that it takes to fully understand that the kind of comfort her voice provided is no longer available to me. The refuge of my mother’s love—custodian of my memories, champion of my successes, holder of my tears, my own personal spin-doctor—will sadly never be enough as a mere memory.

Remembering how much courage I had to muster for my brief walk makes it impossible to think of what it took for Diana’s young sons to walk through the streets of London behind their mother. In order to purge a collective grief that probably had nothing whatever to do with the woman in that box, we forced two terribly impressionable boys to experience an extremely private moment right in front of far too many hungry eyes. Who can ever forget the picture of the word “mummy” peaking out among the flowers atop Diana’s coffin? Not at all lost on me then, it has since taken on a much more poignant significance, and beauty.

For me, the death of my mother means the loss of my main relationship, my closest friend and my strongest connection to my personal history. But by this time, this is not outwardly noticeable. Inside myself, however, everything has shifted so that even the tiniest occurrence takes much longer to process, leaving me with a block of confusion in my brain. I still need time and space to adjust to profound and unalterable loss. This fact is difficult to articulate in the real world of grief, where people need to see that you’re “coping” well. Sometimes I think we have more empathy for the loved one’s of dead public figures because we can measure their loss without asking questions whose answers make us afraid for ourselves. It’s less messy with the protection of a television screen.

Ironically, I would have shared these observations with my mother first—a person whose point of view was both familiar and surprising, my daily breath of fresh air. Had I more experience with the extremely personal after-affects of the loss of a loved one, I would have agreed with her about Diana. So, now when I reflect back on our differing opinions on the subject, I just know my mom is up there somewhere beyond the ether hearing me say: “Hey Mom - how come you’re always right?”

September 1998

Growing up Italian and Catholic there was never a doubt that church-going would be a regular part of my life. My mother was devout, me and my sisters were in the choir, my brother did his stint as an alter boy. My oldest sister and her husband’s entire courtship (age 13 on) happened in and around St. Francis of Assisi church in Toronto. My father drove us to church every Sunday and waited in the car for the duration. He had a private spirituality, I guess.

As a terribly fidgety child, easily bored, my mother used to give me her rosary to play with. My sister Frances and I (always partners in childhood crimes) would sit on the kneelers and invent games using the beaded circle with the dangling string. Even though we watched our grandmother pray with her rosary every night in her downstairs apartment in our house, it never occurred to us that the beads all meant something different and that praying with the rosary was an intensified form of devotional prayer. On the church pews while the monotone of the mass droned on, Frances and I were oblivious to the stares of disdain from strangers directed toward my mother and us. We played and giggled and fought over who got to hold the rosary.

Years later, after turning away from Catholicism, and completely out of practice about the mechanics of the mass, I began going to church as a way of remembering and feeling close to my mother after her death. Often, at lunch hour, I would attend the mass at St. Patrick’s church, close to my work place, listen to the familiar poetry of the mass, and cry. Afterwards, I’d stay to listen to the old Filipino ladies pray the Rosary in barely audible tones in a foreign language. Kneeling at the pew, I’d look around at the stain glass windows, the elaborate depictions of Jesus at various stages of torture on the cross and then rest my eyes on the women, bowed in deep prayer to Mother Mary and the Holy Trinity.

I wonder about faith, what it really is, how to have it and keep it in my life. I think about the overriding quality my mother’s life encompassed, which was grace. And somehow in my mind, I attach it to her devotion first to God and the church and then to everything she loved and believed in.

When I moved halfway across the country my sister sent my grandmother’s glow in the dark rosary, handed down. I keep it in a box by my bed and take it out to look at it sometimes. I still don’t know how to pray it. But holding it gives me comfort and reminds me that grace, above all else, is one of the truest qualities to possess, and probably the easiest to attain -- once you understand its effect on your life.

September 2004

Trust is a huge problem for me. In that mixed up way where you trust everyone because it’s in your natural, original heart to do so. But you also trust noone. So you give and take back all at the same time and leave your friends and lovers wondering if their coming or going. And you feel enormous love and pain all at once. Joy becomes too intermingled with terror and wariness and it’s hard to live in this one moment of your life for fear of what the next one holds. And you wear yourself right to the bone with the knowledge that you are so fragile inside when outside you seem so strong, so impenetrable. When people tell you you’re hard to reach you think how impossibly untrue that is. Only it’s true to them. And you still can’t get to the deep down place of truth where it’s okay to say, listen, you’ve got it all wrong. I am not that hard. Inside the shell is jelly--soft, malleable, gooey and it’ll cling to you if you’re not careful, if I’m not. And also inside are some big huge hollow holes of wanting. And fear of everything that I want.  So I tell people, I’m afraid to get on an airplane but I’m not afraid to give you my heart. But that's not entirely true. Because I’m not really giving it. I’m offering it up broken, and asking them to heal it. And that’s no gift.

November 2001

Is it possible to suffer a broken heart because of a failed relationship with the city of your dreams?

Moving back to Toronto from Vancouver was like saying goodbye to a lover I didn't want to leave, but with whom I knew there'd only ever be heartache. Hard as I tried for five years to make it my home it simply never felt like it. It’s now one full year post break-up and I’m still not sure if it was me rejecting the beautiful city or it jilting me. All I know is I’ve spent my first extraordinarily long winter filled with a kind of longing usually reserved for the all too perfect man that somehow got away.

I know, I know, it was a bad West Coast winter. But that did not stop me from idealizing it. That’s just the nature of love.

This whole year has been a re-learning of sorts, how to live in the old city after enough years away to change it and myself, how to appreciate the vibrancy of here without the beauty of there. Most of all, how to just be where I am without wanting to go back to the place that, when all is said and done, I very deliberately chose to leave behind.

* * *

“I miss the mountains,” I lamented to a Toronto friend, a simple statement that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of my yearning but which is something I thought was universally understandable. Her far too practical answer was, “you live here now.” She’s right, me and the mountains broke up and I had to moved away from them. If you haven't lived in a place that doesn't get ridiculously cold and, worse, barren for 6 months of the year, then it's hard to understand what you're missing, or even that there are livable, viable places in the world to conduct your life (that aren't resorts, I mean). Lots of people I know in Toronto haven’t, so they just don’t get my desperation to see a green leaf or even a tiny bud sometime before May!

Sweet, well-meaning people tell me that it's been a decent winter in good ol’ T.O., not too many cold snaps or snow, but that's entirely beside the point for me. In October when the leaves started changing colour (admittedly pretty), and then falling off (oh dear!), I knew I was in for a long lush-less period of browning grass and cold, dark concrete, dirty, slushy snow that hangs around for eons. But I never would have anticipated the impact of it on my psyche - I guess I thought, well I was born here and survived 39 winters in a kind of desolation I never named, because I didn't know any damn different! So, what's the problem?

Well, I only learned to appreciate nature by waking up to its unrelenting beauty every day. Imagine my surprise to find out it really does change your whole perspective! Being smitten with Vancouver meant I became a convert to all its interests and concerns, the weather being its number one virtue.

Lovely D, my friend in Vancouver, said the other day, "well, it's raining here." Another helpful friend commented, "We have our own weather issues, it's cloudy.” Again, not the point. The rain actually makes me feel better. In Toronto it signifies spring and prepares the soil for blooms. But, my umbrella has been sitting under my desk at work for months now, and I would kill to be able to use it over dragging on coat, scarf, hat and boots for the 5th month in a row!!!

My dear West Coast friends, you probably don't know this but RAIN and cloudiness is far better. You see, it means things are perpetually green, spring comes early and it never gets all that cold. And oh, the cherry blossoms! It could be hard to underestimate, perhaps even take for granted, the affect of all that on your life. Here I was thinking I hadn't fallen into that trap. I was dead wrong.

I guess it’s all relative after all. A fact that by its very statement does nothing to alleviate my frustration, and it has to be said, sadness.

* * *

Vancouverites have a occasional habit of comparing themselves to Toronto and Montreal, feeling they always come up a bit short (of course, they deny this, but it is so true, though not at all true that they are lacking anything at all and in fact have the added value of heart soaring beauty at their fingertips) It seems like a pointless effort, since they are really apples and oranges. And here's why:

Each region of Canada has a way (and means actually) of life that is based purely on geography and climate. A road trip across the country is the best way to understand this. The things that concern us here in the so-called centre of the universe don't even register on the radar of rural Albertans, prairie folk, Islanders or west coast dwellers. This is the main reason why both sides of the country feel alienated, to one degree or another, by a centrist government and media. Who can blame 'em?

There are some differences that are so subtle it's easy to dismiss them - except that at the moment they are glaringly obvious to me. This morning, for instance, seeing the temperature was finally a balmy 1 degree above zero, I pulled out a top I haven't worn in ages, but that was a staple in my wardrobe in Vancouver - in any season. It’s not anything I have to explain to a Vancouverite but back a hundred years ago when the first frost came, I had to actually purchase winter clothes.

The thing about winter clothing is by the time you’re finished wearing it, you sure are ready to toss ‘em!

Folks in Vancouver have impeccable shoes, hair and very clean cars. Nothing is weather-beaten. It's one of the first things I noticed, with pleasure. Here at home, cars aren’t just a little dirty, they’re so covered in grit it’s hard to know what colour they are. I have perma-salt stains on my jeans and dress pants, not to mention my shoes are a mess. Plus… I’m usually in open toes by now!

But that’s only one portion of the heartbreak.

By the time I left Toronto 6 years ago, I had grown to hate winter and that fact was a big influence on the decision to live in a part of our country that pretty much skips that season.

I guess I forgot that part when I was contemplating a break up! Isn't that so typical? You never know what you have until you lose it,

The other week, I spent a day at Canada Blooms, a gardening trade exhibit. We were shooting stories for the TV show I work on and it sure felt strange to have to go inside at this time of year to see trees, waterfalls, streaming rivulets and flowers. It was so out of context for me that some of the displays looked downright funereal. At first struck by the crowd in the middle of the day, I soon realized I was one of them, desperate to see green, growing things; willing to drop any amount on whatever it takes to make my 2x4 Toronto garden look lush for as long as possible (AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE ONE).

Many Torontonians brag that their city has more “green space” than any other Canadian city. Really? It’s hard to burst their bubble by mentioning that a parkette that is dead six months of the year is hardly the same as year round green, flowers in bloom in February, and ocean and mountains a stone’s throw away.

Time heals everything, so they say.

Here's the crux of it: I never want to be a person who feels desperate for anything, least of all for want of a pretty flowering tree to gaze upon.

But there's also a deeper psychological issue at play here. I was brought up in a household full of extremes where I perfected the art of crisis management in order to feel any semblance of normal. To step out of the spiral I figured out that the extremes in weather too closely mirrored my early life. I had to find moderation in all things - the ubiquitous balance to which everyone in Toronto gives lip service, while postponing for months anything other than work. As crazy as it sounds, that included weather, maybe even started with it. I thought I had succeeded, so this winter (and the horrific heat and humidity of this past summer) have been as much a test of endurance, as a barometer of personal growth.

I'm serious!

The truth is, as beautiful as Vancouver was and is, I could never quite find a way to make it work. Otherwise, I would never have left. It was truly the biggest bout of unrequited love I've ever experienced. Geesh, you'd think I'd be happy it's over!

Spring has really never been more welcome, and having said that I will try to rest my fruitless and exhausting comparisons and just find a way to make peace with my decision to live here. Even though, for the life of me I can't find a sprout in the entire city of Toronto!

Still, part of me lives in hope that maybe one day me and Vancouver can get back together. It`s only a beautiful dream.

May 2007