The Pits and Pieces

  “Every day’s a good day when you paint.”  —Bob Ross (1942–1995) Yesterday while searching around on You-Tube for painting tutorials, I stumbled across Bob Ross. I knew about him, vaguely, as an American painter who taught painting on PBS for years. I’d never watched the show (The Joy of Painting), as I had no interest in painting then. But now, as I watched one You-Tube tutorial after another, I was mesmerized by his soft voice and gentle encouragement, as if he was speaking directly to you, telling you that no matter how much of a beginner you were, you could do it, make something beautiful.  I was so curious about this man that I googled him, discovering that he has a huge following, even today. His paintings are mostly about nature (mountains, lakes, forests, Northern Lights) and he never claimed to be a fine museum-worthy artist. He simply painted for the joy of it. In his military career, tired of being barked at, he vowed never to raise his voice. If you watch his...

Well, another Covid Christmas has come and gone. And let’s hope that’s the last of them. Just when we thought there was a light glimmering at the end of the tunnel, turns out it was a freight train coming at us, full of a cargo of Omicron. Yes, I know that cargo is for ships and I’m spewing out clichés and mixed metaphors here. But that’s the thing with this pandemic: it twists and turns and mixes up your thoughts and emotions.  One minute you’re dreaming of a White Christmas at a big family gathering, the next you’re shaking your fist up at the skies. More clichés. Just when you thought: but most of us did everything right. In the early days of the pandemic, we grocery shopped just once a week to prevent putting a burden on grocery store clerks and healthcare workers. We got double-vaxxed. We kept our distance and changed our routines. We masked and double-masked. But the truth is – this virus finds the weakest link, the population where the majority are not vaxxed or don’t have a...

I am thinking of Christmases Past; very far in the past, in that two-bedroom apartment in Bahrain where I grew up. I am thinking of that tiny artificial Christmas tree that was hauled out each year. It was no more than three feet tall (if that) and stood in a small wooden block, but oh the grand festivities of decorating it. We lived in a desert; there were no real Christmas trees. Several weeks before Christmas, the sweet-making began. My mother made traditional Goan Christmas sweets and there was some friendly but unspoken rivalry amongst all the Goan households in our Arabian part of the world as to whose Goan Christmas sweets were the best. Christmas meant visiting the families of friends and tasting all the sweets. My siblings and I helped in this creation of Christmas goodies; sometimes the neighbors showed up to assist as well, or we went to their houses to pitch in and observe (and mostly taste) and maybe go home and tell my mother what they did differently. This is what my mot...

The other day I was wondering about struggle and conflict, be it internal or external.  Struggle is pivotal to books and movies, drawing us in, keeping us reading or watching. And yet, when struggle or conflict happens in real life, we want it gone. Immediately. But it’s not that easy, to simply wave a magic wand and, within the hour, like in a movie, everything is resolved. It sits with us, hour after hour, day after day, asking to be included with everything else that may be going on in  our lives. But those were yesterday’s thoughts. Today I’m wondering about easy and how much simpler it is to sometimes take the easier route. Which doesn’t mean you don’t care, but simply that you save your efforts for things that matter more, things that align with how you want to live your life, and let go of what you think is expected of you or the need to ‘accomplish’. It’s been several years since I let go of Christmas must-do’s or must-haves. I take the easy route now, with minimal dec...

  A little bit of sriracha makes everything taste better. I bought some hand-crafted (what exactly does that mean?) Bourbon Pecan popcorn. It was too sugary, but a few dashes of sriracha transformed it, giving it that unexpected hit of spicy lurking beneath the sweet. And then that got me thinking about people, and how some come across so treacly sweet and perfect. But then, just when your eyes start to glaze over, you get a glimpse of something so much more interesting when, in an unguarded moment, they reveal a streak of imperfection; a sarcastic tone; a morose countenance; a ‘fuck-it-all-I’m-outta-here’ attitude.  I prefer my people to be down-to-earth, insightful, a bit quirky, outspoken and unafraid to make mincemeat of their words. There’s one woman in my writing group just like that. In fact, they’re ALL something like that! How lucky am I to have these zany, genuine women to share my writing with, to read their stories. Friendship has been on my mind a lot lately....

Lately I’ve been wanting to read more memoir (I’m in the process of writing one myself), as well as more Canadian authors. Alison Wearing’s "Moments of Glad Grace " delivered on both. The story unfolds during a week in Ireland, where Alison and her aging, gay father, Joe, go to search for their genealogical roots. Well, the search is significant to Joe . Alison herself is not that interested in looking through dry, dusty tomes in libraries and archives.  She questions the reasons for wanting to find out about our ancestors. Does it matter whether they were farmers or bakers? How does that knowledge benefit us today? And – what if one discovers that their gr-gr-gr-grandfather was a murderer or a thief or someone unkind? What then? Throughout the story, a witty and well-crafted memoir, the reader can feel the strength, love  and playfulness between adult daughter and aging father, even when they disagree or have  philosophical conversations about transcendenc...

  One of the effects of the pandemic lockdowns is that many women have decided to allow their hair to go grey.  I arrived at that decision myself earlier this year, tired of being a slave to my roots every six weeks. Going grey is fashionable now, even with celebrities like Andie Macdowell, who played the bipolar mother in the Netflix series, Maid. Andie’s mass of wild, untamed silvery grey curls are magnificent.   And look at Jane Fonda . Sure, she’s had a bit of help with nips and tucks, but the woman is 83, she can do anything she wants to do. She looks marvelous, and not ‘just for her age.’ My mother was a beautiful woman (my dad often said she resembled Queen Elizabeth).  My mother at her 93rd birthday party. Two months later she died, unexpectedly but peacefully She coloured her hair right into her seventies, when she then decided to go grey. At first I was against it. Selfishly, I suppose. I liked having a youthful looking mother. But the silvery grey suited h...

I have a tolerate/hate relationship with Amazon. In the past 20 months, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ordered something from the retail monster.  It’s been mainly art supplies, when stores carrying non-essential items were closed. Something about the guarantee of next day delivery bothers me. Who desperately needs or wants something from Amazon the very next day? I know I don’t. And what’s the human and environmental cost of all this frantic handling and packaging and dispatching? This week I received a parcel I had ordered from the GAP: a new sweater and sweatpants in a soft greyish-black.  This was unusual for me (I never order clothes online). In-person clothes shopping is also at the very bottom of my list of fun things to do. I’m one of those women who detests shopping. And the endless choices available often paralyze any decision-making. During the pandemic, I can’t think of anything new that I bought for myself or my home, apart from consumables: groc...

  My friend, Catherine A., she of the croissant-making in my Buttery Bliss post, wrote an essay recently for our writing group. I persuaded her to allow me to publish it as a guest post. So, with her permission, here it is. She is an artist, writer and musician but has neither a website nor an Instagram account (she should, her work is lovely) so I cannot provide you with any links to find out more about her. Enjoy. It certainly made me think.   A neurologist wrote that an emotion takes 90 seconds to work its way through the body. If we hook into it, it may keep on running, spoiling our day and likely someone else’s. If we stop, breathe, and let it finish, “the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood, and my automatic response is over”.   These are the thoughts of Jill Bolte-Taylor, whose massive stroke at age 36, led to devastating damage to the left side of her brain. Ironically, she was working in post-doctoral brain research at the ...

  I’m reading Shashi Bhat’s book, The Most Precious Substance on Earth. I would say more about the novel, but I haven’t finished it yet. And anyway, Kerry Clare gives it a review here that is much better than anything I could write. But these two sentences in the book stopped me: “ I thought you were a proud coconut.” Coconut: brown on the outside and white on the inside. I know that word Coconut well. I’ve been called it myself. It might have been because of the need and desire to assimilate, or because we were raised with the widespread but unspoken message that white western culture was the superior one. For whatever reason, even though Canada is a mosaic and not a melting pot, there are many, many East Indian, Goan and Pakistani coconuts here.  The coconut word triggered a few memories of instances when I felt misjudged or slightly vulnerable because of my skin colour. When I was a new mother, I took my daughter for a walk around the neighbourhood. It was the middle of th...

What is this? This moment of buttery bliss? Not long ago, Cathy from my writing group, wrote about making homemade croissants with her granddaughter. Prior to the actual creation of the lovely little crescents, they went on an investigative mission: searching out good croissants in Oakville. My ears immediately perked up.  A search for the perfect croissant in Oakville ? I was in! Cathy’s essay was delightful and descriptive, with information on French pastry making that I never knew (the Détrempe, the Beurrage – these were terms unfamiliar to me). With her wry humour, the piece was incredibly funny, resisting the obvious approach of turning it into a sentimental grandmother-granddaughter cooking story. But long after our writing session ended, what lingered in the back of my mind was:  I need to go get myself some croissants. Today was the day. I decided I would go to three places. My first stop: The Danish Pastry House. This business, founded on authentic Danish recipes and...

  Hygge: a Danish word for a quality of coziness i.e. feeling warm, comfortable, and safe, that comes from doing simple things such as lighting candles, baking, or spending time at home with your family. The word became increasingly popular a couple of years ago. (Maybe more, I’m slow to adapt to trends. I’m not yet on Facebook or Tik Tok and will likely never be). As we slide deeper into the fall season, the word ‘hygge’ keeps cropping up, inviting me to get cozy. I’m not talking about baking or lighting candles (although I do love lighting incense in the early morning). But I’m thinking about snuggling up on the couch with my soft blanket, a book, a glass of wine, my electric fire on. The fire has no crackle or pop or warmth as with a wood fire, but the visual is what matters. Or maybe I’m doing hygge wrong? I n the past few decades, home has become so much more than the place you stash your stuff or lay your head. Today a home must reflect...