Letters from Rona / On my mind / Sort by date

Among the unsung rewards of growing older is the confidence to voice my displeasure--emphatically, insistently and sometimes loudly enough to turn heads---when my legitimate needs go ignored by those whose job it is to serve their customers. [more]

In my only memory of Pamela Mason, we're cooking partners in Mrs. Boynton's eighth-grade Home Ec class. Pam and her girlfriend get busy with the wooden spoons while I stare out the window and wait for the bell to ring. Pam takes a dim view of my indolence. She mutters to her less assertive friend, in a tone calculated to get my attention, "All Rona knows is Shakespeare!" [more]

Do you ever visit open houses just to peer into the private lives of your fellow humans? Me too. That's how I stepped into the graciously proportioned house where Diane Keaton briefly lived with Al Pacino, just around the corner from the modest brick semi where my family was living at the time. [more]

It's been seventeen years since a piece of my prose inspired a week or so of headline-making fury. A Toronto Sun columnist accused me of "pathetic, whining, whacko, feminist claptrap." A radio host denounced my "evil, vile pamphlet dripping with slime." Irate callers lambasted the Ontario Women's Directorate for having the temerity to publish a 35-page booklet on non-sexist language, anonymously written by me. I've never felt more reviled---or less visible. I would read the morning paper in my bathrobe, wondering what new slurs were coming my way from people who had no idea I existed. [more]

There are moments in the life of every married couple when one spouse agrees to accept what the other urgently desires. To stay married is to learn both parts in this dance. But some compromises exact a devastating price. Zooey and Adam, a Canadian movie made for peanuts with a hand-held camera, pulled me inside an extreme marital dilemma and let me watch, squirming, as the anguish unspooled. [more]

When a woman of my acquaintance just happened to mention that she'd soon be boarding a plane for Argentina, I pictured her drinking malbec and learning the tango. "Lucky you!" I said. "You're going to love Buenos Aires!" Turned out she was giving it a miss. She was bound for the wilds of Patagonia, where she and three teammates would tackle a 600 km adventure race known all over the world for its rigour. [more]

There's a door to my soul that I'd prefer you didn't open. Some days I can hardly bear to open it myself. I'd rather not confront my unruly psyche. Fears, obsessions, misbegotten dreams...it's all on display, although exposing the most shameful excesses would take some serious and possibly odiferous digging. But at least I'm not alone. Do you have a fridge, dear reader? Then chances are you're harbouring a few slimy secrets of your own. [more]

I used to think that to experience a totally foreign culture, I would need a phrase book and an intercontinental flight. Turns out all it really takes is a road trip through the far southern reaches of my native land, the U.S.A. [more]

What with a baby boomlet in the family and Christmas practically upon us, I've become a reluctant expert in the latest style trends for those of us too tiny and clueless to care how grownups deck us out, provided the clothes don't itch. So I am here to tell you what I've learned from wide-eyed contemplation of eensy-weensy toddler jeans, fashionably distressed like Dad's. Guess who they're for! A boy, of course. Baby Gap and its competitors dress boys like men (or at least like college freshmen) and girls like dolls. The gender divide lives on. [more]

Soon after the Montreal Massacre, Flare magazine asked me for an essay on its meaning to women. There were many who dismissed the lethal shooting spree as the act of a madman. I saw it as the far extreme of attitudes that threaten women in their own neighbourhoods and bedrooms. Yes, even women like me. I didn't want to think about that, but I've learned that the stories I most resist are the ones I most need to tell. [more]

Perhaps I should be flattered that 680 hardware stores bear my name, but I've wearied of convincing baffled guys in trucks that this Rona can't sell them a mitre box (hey, what's a mitre box, anyway?) When it's not a frustrated hobbyist ringing me up, it's a collection agency looking for someone who used to have my number. Or the Yellow Pages trying to sell me an ad. [more]

The hardest thing I've done all year is try to learn Mandarin. I blew a bundle on books, CDs, a handy-dandy visual dictionary and private lessons with an infinitely patient woman for whom I dutifully mimicked the exacting lilt of her native tongue with its five mystifying tones. If only I knew what I was saying and whether it would get me to the subway station in Beijing! [more]