Today, my oldest son Zach – mister rock star himself – turns twenty-two. In honour of this special occasion, I would like to list twenty-two reasons why I think he’s awesome. I could come up with so many more, but these are just the first ones I can list off the top of my head…
First and foremost, he looks like a lion. And I love cats, so there you go. I meant to do that when I gave birth to him.
He has great hair, kind of like if Bob Marley and Lenny Kravitz had a baby.
He can do an impressive Australian accent.
And a Jamaican accent.
And a not-bad, but possibly not completely convincing, English accent.
He owns a pair of “these look like they belong to the Devil” boots, and he wears them well.
“What exactly does that mean?” I ask. I figure that since WE are Canadian, we might fall into that category as well.
“Really nice. Too nice. Family and community-oriented. Not hard-core enough. Pathetic at times.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” I’m wondering. It seems like a reasonable question to ask.
“That’s another thing – Canadians care.” It’s my daughter talking. “They want to know how people ‘feel’ about things. And you’ve just proven my point. Sometimes, you just shouldn’t give a shit. See, when I said, ‘Canadians can be kind of pathetic,’ you should’ve just shrugged your shoulders and gone and watched five episodes of Strike Back, picking food out of your teeth with a knife, and farting loudly every now and again.”
“Your father DOES watch that dumb show, and he farts loudly sometimes, but who would be stupid enough to pick food out of their teeth with a knife? If the fact that I care about things, makes me ‘super’ Canadian, than I guess I am. You are too, except when it comes to cleaning up after yourself,” I laugh.
“Ha, ha, ha. You’re funny – not.” My daughter walks out of the room, leaving a banana peel on the counter.
“Hey, I’m not your maid,” I say, picking it up and putting it in the compost bin. Things like that don’t go in the garbage. What? I’m trying to save the planet in every small way I can.
One things for sure, up here in the “Great White North”, we are nothing like Rihanna in her music video “Pour It Up”. I don’t even think Drake or Justin Bieber would go that far. Robin Thicke might, but he’s an anomaly.
Truly Canadian piece of advice: money will never be that important.
In the very early years of my marriage – when I was young and naive, and just barely old enough to vote – I believed that having a perfect life meant having everything and everyone in its place. I thought it meant never arguing with my husband, and having clean and well-behaved children.
I thought it meant having back-to-back good hair days, and flowers on the table, and finding the right pair of jeans, and making a supper that everyone loved, and getting an A+ on an essay that I’d written, and birthing a ten-and-a-half pound baby without getting any stretch marks (like that was ever going to happen), and having a totally blemish-free complexion, and, and, and…
Kevin is my neighbour. He lives three doors down from us. So do his cats – two of them.
When I go for walks with MY cats – yes, they DO walk on leashes, too bad it’s like walking with two schizophrenic and very disobedient dogs – I often see “Kevin’s cats” sitting quietly, calmly, on his porch. They look at us like we are very strange – “lock these weirdos up” crazy almost. So does Kevin. So do all of my neighbours, in fact. I could cat less. I just want my cats to experience life without getting run over by a truck.
I try not to let “things” control my life. I want to live simply, staying as healthy as possible, laughing lots and experiencing all the joy the world has to offer. I don’t need a Gucci watch or a Northland 72″ side-by-side custom refrigerator to be happy. Having said that, I also don’t want to live in a cardboard box. (And I wouldn’t turn down that refrigerator if someone just left it on my doorstep.)
Sometimes, I want nice things – nice pieces of furniture, and nice articles of clothing. Besides, nice things – or things that are made well – generally last longer than not-nice, cheap things. Can you say that stupid IKEA desk and those even stupider IKEA lamps?
Anyway, I’ve been doing a little shopping lately. We have a basement that is sitting pretty much empty, and we needed a new couch at least, and some chairs, and an end table or two, and possibly a coffee table, and there was this pair of jeans that I saw…
He can do an impressive Australian accent.