I must not get caught up in this. It is a flirtation, a passing moment, and while it is good for the ego, nothing can or should come of it.

That doesn’t mean I’m not both ashamed of my weakness while also amazed at my bravery.

If only circumstances were different. Very different.

Note to self:

I’m not a princess
This ain’t a fairytale
I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet
Lead her up the stairwell

The bar, the youth, the discovery.
Drinks from a favourite book,
Science Fiction characters on the doors of bathrooms,
This is what I think of.
I think of that moment, in the darkness,
On the dance floor,
That moment of clichés,
With sparkling lights and loud bass,
And your sunlight grin.
Oh how in love I was,
With life,
With the song,
With myself,
With you.
And years later with the memory,
And the words.
A Bittersweet Symphony
Indeed.

Enjoyable, yet infuriating, Family Tree is the story of two white people, Hugh and Dana, who have a baby “with African-American features”.  Being a book that makes such an emphasis on Hugh’s family going back to the Mayflower and Dana’s not knowing her father, well obviously everyone (except Dana) freaks out.

No one is going to grant this book awards but at the same time, I couldn’t put it down. Hugh pissed me off, although a small part of me sympathized. I should have caught the outcome but didn’t. And why did we need the Earl and Corinne story lines? Unnecessary.

The discussion of what it means to be African-American was rather pathetic.  As someone who is technically mixed race (1 quarter Ojibwa), the idea that these people raised and living their entire lives as blond haired white people suddenly begin to question their very selves and go around saying “I am African-American” was aggravating.  If I was black and had read this book I would have found the whole thing patronizing and mildly offensive.

Ultimately what kept me reading was want to know the answer to the question of where Elizabeth’s dark skin came from.  The result was mediocre, but I was pleased to know.

I miss books like this.  It’s been so long since I’ve come across one. What I Was found me today at Chapters.  I can’t even tell you where.  Was it on a table (20 books to read before you’re 20?  Maybe New & Hot Teen Fiction?), or maybe just there on the shelf.  I have no idea now.  But anyway.  I picked it up and read the back and got chills up my spine.  This was a book I had to read, even if it tore my guts out (which it did, mostly).

What I Was is the story of H.  16 years old and shuffled off to his 3rd boarding school in the middle of nowhere, England. Here at St. Oswald’s, H goes through the now familiar motions of his “sterling history of mediocre achievement”.

And then he meets Finn, an “almost unbearably beautiful boy” who lives by himself in a hut on the cliffs of the seaside.

What follows is the slow deepening of their regard for each other.  Rosoff drags it out painfully slowly for a book that’s just over 200 pages.  Like H searching Finn’s facial expressions, we are left searching the pages for any hint of how the hermit boy feels for his unasked for friend.  Like all the best characters (in my humble opinion), Finn is minimal, but takes up so much space.  And while it’s the mystery of Finn that kept me reading, it’s my complete and utter connection with H that made the story for me.

It takes some magical story telling for a 30 year old woman to see herself so thoroughly in the naration of a now 100 year old man remembering his 16 year old self.  With every time H goes to see Finn, crossing the treacherous water, often soaking himself through with water and humiliation I could sense his feelings growing, while at the same time retaining an innocence that would not have existed if the two main characters were even two years older.

I read How I Was in about 2 hours, turning page after page with an urgency I haven’t experienced while reading in quite some time.  It seemed only fitting that while reading this Young Adult novel I felt 15 again, if only briefly.  Only now, instead of wolfing down my food at supper to get back to the book, I was steadfastedly ignoring the laundry in the dryer.  The wrinkles would be worth it.

Nothing is perfect however, and I admit to feeling slightly cheated and annoyed at the resolution.  While clever in it’s own way, it felt a bit too safe.  H is metaphorically pulled out of the water one more time, no deeper self examination is needed.  How convenient.

I’ll give Rosoff a bit of a break on this, though.  While the ending felt too safe, I did not feel that way about the rest of the book, which is what’s important I think.

“What I Was” was a surprise, in the best way possible.

Step 1: Put your iPod/iTunes on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist (or show ) the lines come from.
Step 4: Strikethrough when someone gets them right
Step 5: $Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

1. There’s a lovin’ in your eyes all the way

2. The two of us are one of a kind

3. In the desert of my dreams I saw you there

4. Johnny falls he throws his hands into the air, into these walls

5. Oh it was on this Monday morning and the day bein’ calm and fine

6. How dare you say that my behaviour’s unacceptable

7. While she lays sleeping I stay out late at night and play my songs

8. Girl don’t tell me that it’s morning

9. I got a mountain to climb before I get over this hill

10. I could stay awake just to hear you breathin’

11. Past the devil’s own temptation, beyond where angel’s sleep

12. Wish you would have told me when I was young

13. From a phone booth in Vegas Jessie calls at 5 a.m.

14. Without you, the ground thaws

15. I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping

16. When the road gets dark, and you can no longer see

17. Don’t you wake up, yeah, give me some time

18. Every day when I’m away, I’m thinkin’ of you

19. Gimme a sign, gimme a reason to hold on

20. I’ve been a wake for a while now

21. I think you know what I’m getting at

22. Love come down upon us till you flow like water

23. Still falling breathless and on again

24. Like anyone worthy, I am flattered by your fascination with me

25. It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart

26. I wanna ask you, do you ever sit and wonder

27. I’m not here as a friend, I have a job to do

28. Bright cold silver moon

29. Let’s go out walking I know where to meet

30. I’m lying alone with my head on the phone

[Disclaimer -- A lot of this is personal.  Almost none of the people mentioned within know about this blog.]

I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately.  What it is, how it defines us, how we define it.  How it affects us.

This last year or so has been so incredibly strange regarding family.

1) My siblings found their father & siblings on Facebook.  I say “their” because technically they are my half siblings (though I have never thought of them that way), so their dad is not my dad, their other siblings not mine.  It was so incredibly strange to watch them going through that, dealing with that, and have nothing to do with it.  For once all 3 of my siblings were united in something that I was not.  It was weird.  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me.  Not always in a good way.  But no ones perfect, right?  We all feel threatened.

2) My stepfather died suddenly of a heart attack.  We were not close.  But the fact of the matter is, he came into my life when I was 12, and died pretty much on my 30th birthday.  That is not a short time.  Again, we didn’t have much of a relationship, but Kenny was there.  It seems so weird to go to my mom’s place now and not see him.   To know that it’s hard for her to deal with his passing.

3) In May last year, there was an article on the front page of my hometown newspaper about my Dad.  I haven’t had a relationship with him since I was about 12.  He is, at his worst, a violent alcoholic who ended up living on the streets begging for change.  This article was a journalistic feel good piece.  Most people I told about it thought I should be thrilled that this police office helped my Dad find “a new life”.  And I did, in a way.  But a lot of parts of the article just read as such utter bullshit to me.  This man, who beat my mother, who had no problem beating pregnant dogs with a hammer, had “a kind and gentle nature”?   The article stated that my Dad’s next steps were to try and “get in touch with his daughters”.  Well, I decided to let him make that move.  Mr. Police Officer could google me and find me in a minute.  And after 35 years of drinking, I wasn’t about to celebrate for 8 months.  Not when the man had been sober for 2-3 years in my childhood and ended up on the streets.

4) My oldest sister.  The one who was given up for adoption when my mom was 17.  We found her when I was about 8 years old.  Purely and weirdly accidental.  She had a son at the time, and would have another about 7 years later.  So I’d say we had a relationship with her for about 7 or 8 years, maybe a bit longer.  Very sporadilcally.  VERY sporadically.  But I was only 8 years older than my oldest nephew.  I babysat a few times.  Then she dropped out of our lives, her sons dropped out of our lives.  This past christmas she called us all.  It’s — awkward.  She told me “If you every want to talk to your big sister, call me.” and I couldn’t help but think “You’re not that.”  I think I’m angry with her for letting us know her and her kids just enough to miss them so much when they were gone.

And I get that she was given up for adoption and has no obvious emotional ties to us.  But the boys.  Now that I have 7 other nieces and nephews that I feel very close to, I miss those boys. What we could have had.  I’m now friends with them both on Facebook, but after the initial contact, there’s nothing.  And you can’t force that.  We haven’t been a part of their lives, nor did we have any right to.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss them and love them as much as I do the 7 others.

5) My grandma is in the hospital, potentially close to death.  This is the third time in 5 years she’s been on the knife’s edge, so to speak.  I am on alert.  I am caught between wanting her to pull through, and wanting her to have peace.  To be with my grandpa. I worry that my mom can’t deal with another death this year.

6) Having lost touch with my Dad when I was 12, I lost touch with all his family too.  And I knew them, just enough to be a tease.  He took me “up north” to visit them a few times as a child, and I can’t even describe it.  I remember being 8, running around the acres of my Aunt’s property with my cousin Venessa, thinking: “they all look like me.  They’re all indian too.”  It was nice, that warm feeling in my chest.  I wanted to be a part of it.  And for a small time, I was.  I visited a few times after that, and then when my Dad started drinking again I lost touch with them.

This past Thursday my cousin, my playmate, Venessa, found me on Facebook.  I almost cried.  I saw pictures she posted from back at my Aunt’s place, and it looks exactly the same.  They are my family too.  I hope this can be a reconnection with them.

I cannot help but wonder if they think of me the way I think of my Dad, my half sister, my nephews on Facebook.  The ones that are so close but so far.  The lost ones. Do they wonder about me?

But then I fear that they don’t.

The Vimy Ridge Memorial is a common destination for Canadian travellers in France. As previous visitors have discovered, however, it is not the easiest place to reach once you get off the train. Thankfully, there’s been help in the form of the Welcome Man (Windows Media embedded video –clip starts at 11:30). Over the last 13 years Georges Devloo has met the train at Vimy every day, where he offers free transportation to the memorial to confused and lost Canadians seeking to pay their respects. In this time, it’s been estimated that M. Devloo has given rides other assistance to over 1,200 Canadians. Today, we said au-revoir to “le grand-père de Vimy“.

This may just be the quickest turn around time I’ve had on a book in ages.  I picked up The Graveyard Book just after Christmas at Chapters.   I’ve been intending to buy it forever, not sure what spurred me on this time, but regardless…

I read almost everything Neil writes.  And this is a man who has quite an array of work.  From graphic novels (Sandman) to picture books (The Day I Sold My Dad for Two Goldfish), adult books (American Gods, Neverwhere) to youth books (Coraline).

So, despite the fact that The Graveyard Book is meant to be for the 9-12 set, I was excited to read it.  It did not disappoint. TGB is the story of Nobody “Bod” Owens, a boy raised in a graveyard by the ghosts who live there.  It’s a neat idea — the kind of idea that makes me jealous, really.

The funny thing about TGB is the fact that so very much of the focus could be on the coolness and weirdness of life in a graveyard, but it’s not.  The focus is on Bod and his relationships with the “people” who care for him. Neil writes these moments rather fantastically.  He has a was of writing these relationships that are so incredibly touching, but so incredibly subtle at the same time.  I wish I could do that.  There are so many of these moments in TGB.

TGB is a short book, a rather quick read.  So while at times it seems like the plot is moving rather quickly, I think this is a function of the book being aimed at kids.  Attention span, etc. etc.

There was one other interesting aspect of TGB was the fact that I got to “follow along” as the book was written.  Neil keeps a regular internet presence, with a blog, a Twitter account, and a Goodreads account.  While he was writing TGB he made several comments on his blog about the process, what chapter he was on, how he felt about where the story was, etc.  It was very neat to see this aspect of story writing.

I highly reccommend TGB for both adults and children.

I first heard about Jennifer Haigh’s novel in a book review magazine I subscribe to.  The Condition introduces us to the McKotch family: Workaholic science obsessed father Frank, weirdly prudish and “proper” wife Paulette, distant, private Billy, runaway, haphazard Scotty, and finally Gwen, their middle child.

At the beginning of the novel we discover that something is not quite right with Gwen.  When the McKotches discovery she has Turner Syndrome — a condition that means she will never go through puberty and will end up a woman stuck in a girl’s body — it seems to be the end of their family.

The rest of the novel takes us through the adult years of the children, and the older years of Frank and Paulette.  We watch them all struggle with various aspects of their lives, keeping their hurts from each other while at the same time managing to heap more on each other as well.

Surprisingly little is said about Gwen’s Turner Syndrome beyond the insecurities and social issues it causes her.  She struggles to fit in and find her place in a world that is not set up for her either physically or emotionally.  I can relate to that.

But ultimately, that can be said for all of the McKotches, none of them feeling quite comfortable in their own skin.

Haigh write a wonderful story about a very compelling, yet very normal, family.  The Condition was a pleasure to read.