Letters from Rona / On my mind / Sort by date

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]

I was steering my cart through Toronto's most twee greengrocer when a stranger looked up from the organic broccoli and exclaimed in a booming voice, "Hey, I know! You're the gal who used to live with that writer!" He meant J.D. Salinger, no ex-lover of mine but in the past much taken with girls of tender years, one of whom was my sister Joyce. [more]

My body, two weeks shy of 60, has been acting like a cranky preschooler. It's forever whining, "I don't wanna!" Or "You can't make me!" If I dare to press the point, my body lets loose with "I hate you!" All because I've asked it nicely to do what other well fed, lovingly tended, meticulously exercised bodies (including, until recently, my own) are doing without protest. [more]

Last night I dreamed I was about to ride a bike. Like a living thing, it quivered as I slipped first my right foot, then my left into the pedals and felt the steadying weight of my intention. I had the sense of a journey about to unfold, but then imagination failed me. I woke up wondering what it meant that I'd just dreamed of a motion I never chose to master, even though it's second nature to everyone over age six. [more]

Admit it: sometimes you just want more. There's so much stuff out there for the craving, and so many other people have more of it than you. I've been there. Last week, in a want-more moment, I became transfixed by a young woman's death on the seething streets of Tehran. And I thought about what it means to want the most important thing of all, with such urgency and passion that you'll put your life on the line. [more]

Last summer, with much yawning and complaining, I reduced my coffee intake from five cups daily to two. A doctor had warned that if I didn't ease up on the caffeine, I'd have to put up with chronic insomnia. Now a study of 1400 people shows that drinking three to five cups of coffee a day can dramatically reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease, which has ravaged my family. What to do? [more]

Twenty years ago today, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square and crushed a peaceful protest with harrowing force, I was too caught up in my own pain to give more than a fleeting glance to reports from the scene. My mother was dying of brain cancer. In the fog of impending bereavement, I couldn't mourn the students whose mangled bikes were their only memorial. Now, just back from China, I can't get them off my mind. [more]

On my way to a friend's memorial service, I passed a newsstand. A headline caught my eye: "The case for optimism." Why should I be hopeful? Well, according to Maclean's, the economy just might be picking up. Hmmm. Only yesterday Maclean's was crying doom. I've learned not stake my mood on the swings of the market or pronouncements in the press. What gives me hope is people who are not afraid to say, in any circumstances at all, "This matters." [more]

I refuse to spend the next year or five "waiting for the bottom" like a kid on an interminable road trip, pleading to mom and dad, "Are we there yet?" At least mom and dad knew the route to Grandma's house. No one's got a clue when we'll get to the bottom of this economic mess---let alone what it will take to climb out. And meanwhile the prophets of doom keep blowing hot air on the flames of panic, setting the blogosphere ablaze. [more]