Money Grows on Palm Trees

We just returned to St. Louis, after spending our first American Thanksgiving weekend visiting friends in Los Angeles. Yes, don’t worry ... even in California, they eat turkey with gravy and cranberries. My new friends here in St. Louis fretted that their fellow countrymen would ruin it for us by serving some new age or healthy vegetarian dish at the most anticipated meal of the year. But, we were visiting aliens – other Canadians – who recently landed in the City of Angels, so we ate a wonderful, traditional Thanksgiving dinner!

There are lots of aliens in La La Land. By aliens, you know I always mean transplants from another part of the world but out there, I think there are real aliens. In any case, there are people who don’t resemble the human beings that I know. They are impossibly young and beautiful. They are real but fake. They saunter and strut and stroll with confidence and insouciance, all the while checking oncoming faces for a sign of fame or, at least, usefulness. They wear designer shirts over pyjama bottoms to buy coffee at Starbucks. They wear ski hats with khaki shorts and purple socks at dinner parties. They go to bed at sunrise. They work three jobs or none at all.

Then again, the whole city didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. We were staying west of Hollywood, in an area where you don’t even need to be a pop-culture junkie to recognise the names of neighbourhoods, streets, nightclubs and hotels that have found their way into urban legends and gossip columns. This part of the city is plastic but beautiful. It’s like a film set; nearly real and strangely clean. I saw a man in shades and a pricey three-piece suit scoop up and throw out a piece of garbage on Rodeo Drive before ducking into a glamorous boutique. Later, far from Rodeo, I saw a homeless lady surrounded by her garbage bags on a bus bench holding up an old-fashioned plastic mirror by its large handle as she combed and then carefully sprayed her unkempt hair.

Hollywood is the kind of place that little girls in kindergarten draw: an oversized sun with impossibly long rays, one tall tree full of chirping birds, a girl with long hair looking out the window, and unicorns in the yard. Okay, I didn’t see unicorns, but there were horses and a couple of old goats at the top of a sweat-breaking, breath-stealing hike up Canyon Road in Runyon Canyon Park just before sunset one afternoon. The Los Angeles area is hillier than I had expected and the view from up there was magnificent. How on earth was this improbable mound saved from development while every other one of its siblings to the east and west is covered with a network of tiny, twisted streets and glamorous houses stacked cleverly one after the other?

Here, west of downtown, long, wide boulevards lined with towering palm trees, lush green hedges, and stucco walls overcome with vigorous bougainvillea carry you from one splendid area to another. Shady trees cleverly hide mansions and villas where famous actors seek refuge from nosy tourists with Star Maps and ruthless paparazzi desperate for a million-dollar shot. On one hot, sunny day, we let Santa Monica Boulevard pull us to its namesake, where we rented bicycles and pedaled through crowds of hippy, happy folks in flip flops who could have been on vacation but for the ever-present i-Phones and Blackberries buzzing news of upcoming auditions and house parties.

Los Angeles is young and vibrant, even in its worst areas, along which we skirted as we drove down to the Staples Arena for a hockey game on Saturday night. Here, there are also long, wide boulevards but they are lined with tiny shops in mismatched shapes, sizes and colours with signs announcing food or merchandise in a myriad of languages. Hand-painted signs compete with newer, neon ones that rhythmically light up the faces of passers-by who duck silently into doorways and up dark alleyways, hands jammed deeply into pants pockets.

As we trudged toward the baggage carrousels in St. Louis, I observed to my daughter that I didn’t feel as if I was returning “home”, which tends to be my litmus test for whether or not I feel settled after a move. She, on the other hand, felt very much like she was returning home. She had a spring in her step. She had new jeans from Abercrombie in her bag and a little cotton scarf from The Grove’s market around her neck. She is young and beautiful. She loves heat and music and movies. I’m quite sure that the City of Angels has just caught another Angel.

Ugh!

I just spent two hundred bucks on a pair of boots for Grace. Ugh! They don’t look like boots; they look like a cross between ski socks and woolly slippers. Guess what? These boots are made of sheepskin and cannot be worn in the rain. Ugh! As a Canadian, I gotta tell you that I’m not sure how long they’d last on the salty winter roads of my hometown, Toronto!

Granted they are made of “the highest quality” of sheepskin, but that just meant an extra twenty bucks for the deluxe cleaning kit, which includes a special brush, a spot cleaner and waterproofing spray. Ugh! So, why would I spend 200 big ones on useless footwear? Because they’re UGGS and apparently ... EVERYONE in middle school has them...!

Up until about a month ago, I’d never heard of UGGS. We were at a late season high school football game and I noticed that many of the teen girls seemed to be wearing dirty slippers with their otherwise hip jeans and tops. What happened to ballerina shoes, which seemed to be all the rage not too long ago? What about boots? Hey here’s an idea, how about shoes? I pointed out the slippers to my 11-year old daughter, who blushed and pretended she wasn’t looking at the cool girls. “They’re UGGS”, she whispered.

Ugh is right, I thought. Who would wear dirty slippers to a football game? But my daughter told me that “everyone” at her school has them. They’re worn like shoes. They’re so cool. They’re so warm. Blah blah blah....

Oh well, when I was my daughter’s age, I remember that it was cool to wear these lace–up Cougar brand boots with the laces only half-tied and the tongue hanging out. I remember one summer when everyone wore Dr. Scholl’s brand clogs. Do you remember that? They were supposed to condition your legs while you walked – ha!

Well, I don’t know what UGGS do, except keep your feet warm, I guess. This is no passing fad either. I checked the web-site when we got home (to see if I could buy stock in this scam...) and it turns out that the company is 25 years old! Some Aussie surfer dude imported the woollies from Down Under.

Well, I’m sure my daughter has no clue about the history of the company or its various line extensions. She just wanted them because they’re in style. I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten that feeling. I remember my sister and I desperately wanted Road Runner jeans when we were about 13. They would go on sale occasionally at the local BiWay store for 17.99. They were the coolest jeans (“everyone at school has them...”) but my mother, a single woman who wasn’t keen on denim anyway, said no. I think they were one of the first purchases I made with the earnings from my new part-time job a year later.

We’ve been pretty sheltered from popular culture for a few years now. At an international school that was host to kids from 72 different countries, you don’t see the kind of conformity in style that you do here in the USA. Once last year, I remember my daughter telling me, with a certain degree of envy, that a girl in her class owned three Abercrombie t-shirts. I’m such a style flunkie that I didn’t know what she was talking about.

But, my daughter is not a style flunkie. She is a style junkie. She sketches outfits, she studies ads, she loves colours. She dresses well and often wraps a scarf effortlessly around in her neck in that je-ne-sais-quoi way that so many women work so hard to achieve. She knew perfectly well what UGGS were and she wanted a pair very badly.

Ugh! *SIGH* Groan!

A Rose By Any Other Name

When people talk about the stress of moving they usually focus on the physical aspects of it, such as the box packing and the final cleaning. That’s measurable. You gauge that stress by the number of hours to load a truck, or the cost of the cleaning service, or the handful of painkillers for your lower back!

What you can’t measure is the feelings. How do you calculate the sensation of walking one last time through empty rooms where dust hangs in unfiltered sunbeams and footsteps echo gloomily throughout the house? How do you explain how difficult it is to breathe as you exchange one more hug goodbye? How do you measure the mixed senses of anticipation and disorientation? How do you measure the hope that your kids will make friends at school or that the neighbours will invite you in for a drink? How do you calculate the confusion of meeting every parent in your child’s grade level on the same night and trying to sort out their names and which kids go with them?

I will never learn people’s names! As it is, I’m not great at remembering names when I first meet people. That’s because, as I’m reaching out to shake hands, I say “nice to meet you” but I’m usually thinking, “oh, I like her hair” or “he doesn’t look anything like his son” or “that’s a nice jacket” or some ridiculous thing that serves only to cloud my memory and cause a complete blank on the important detail: the name!

In St. Louis, you have to learn A LOT MORE names than anywhere else. That’s because you have to learn the nicknames. No-one here uses their real names. It’s true! As I go through the school directory, where families are listed alphabetically and then by grade, I find hundreds of perfectly plain names like Robert and Catherine, which are twinned cheerfully with other monikers. I have spotted (“Kitty”), (“Katie”), (“DeeDee”), (“Mimi”), (“LuLu”), (“Fifi”), (“Tripp”), (“Chip”), (“Chase), (“Mac”), (“Tad”), and (“Cricket”).

The nicknames are almost always cute, you know what I mean? I’m dying to meet them to see if they match their adorable names! Do cute names get attached to cute people? What’s in a name? According to Juliet, whose famous love for Romeo is greater than their respective families’ hatred for each other, “A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet...” In other words, his name didn’t affect her feelings for him.

The pet names that are short forms of the longer given names make sense to me. I myself use the shorter 3-letter abbreviation of my given name. It’s the ones that have nothing to do with the real names that confuse me. How will I ever learn everyone’s names? It’s not just the children either. I mean, when Toff graduated back in ‘79, he didn’t ever put Christopher on his business cards and, although he and his wife Lexo have three sons called Robert, Michael and Lucas, you’ll only ever hear them called to dinner as Bobby, Cal, and Luker.

My husband and I don’t have nicknames. He is James. His mother called him James. His friends call him James. I call him James. In St. Louis, I introduce him to everyone as James and they immediately – with a warm and cheerful Mid-Western handshake and smile – call him JIM. I still can’t get used to that. It just sounds so funny to me. He’s just not a JIM.

But, nicknames or pet names are expected – even anticipated – here. Most documents and forms ask for the “legal” given and family names as well as the name you commonly use. Even the presidents all had nicknames! John F. Kennedy was Jack. Theodore Roosevelt was Teddy. Bill Clinton didn’t mind Bubba. Lyndon Johnson liked LBJ. Eisenhower was commonly called Ike.

If we’re going to fit in here, we need nicknames. James could be “J”; a cool handle that says “hip” or “random” or whatever is the right word for cool these days. But what would I be? What if I just use the name of an author I like? Call me SAYERS or AUSTEN. That’s it! AUSTEN! Doesn’t that just say mysterious but adventurous!?

Bye for now,
Austen.

Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, or “Veteran’s Day”, as it is called in the USA. All around the world, people stopped on the 11th hour of the 11th day on the 11th month to remember those who fought for our freedom in the past and to think of those who are fighting now for the freedom of others.

In Canada, where I’m from, we have a wonderful tradition of pinning a plastic poppy to our coats and jackets from the first of November until Remembrance Day. The poppy is a respectful reference to a poem called, In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, who served at the front lines during the Great War, as the first one was called.

During the Second Battle at Ypres, he wrote, “In Flanders fields the poppies grow between the crosses row on row ...” It is a famous poem that is recited on Remembrance Day every year. It’s written from the perspective of dead soldiers who beg us to take up their quarrel and to bear the torch that they throw from failing hands. It is a beautiful and sad poem, which captures the hopes of soldiers on a mission, as well as the finality and sadness of death.

I’ve been to Flanders fields. Flanders is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium that lies to the north of its capital, Brussels. War maps of the area are crammed with symbols showing battle sites, memorials and cemeteries from both world wars. On a sunny day, endless fields of grain bask in the light and sway gently in the breeze.

But, on a cold, rainy day, it is desolate and miserable. The flat land hides nothing. You can easily imagine the misery of a ground war. Rain pools in the furrows and joins quickly with groundwater to reform the ancient shallow sea that once covered the whole area. And the mud. You’ve never seen so much mud. During the Great War, tanks were mired for weeks in the muck and whole divisions were dispatched to dislodge equipment. Horses sank. Men died of exposure and exhaustion and disease.

It was a beautiful sunny day in St. Louis yesterday; the kind you dream of in the autumn with a blue sky and the last of the deep orange and crimson leaves barely clinging to nearly barren branches. At eleven o’clock, we paused and thought about our families. We thought about my father-in-law, a fighter pilot for six years in WW2, who would weep inconsolably at the local cenotaph on Remembrance Day every year. We thought of my mother-in-law, whose first husband never returned and whose brothers all signed up to fight as well. We thought about my grandfather who also served from the sky and my step grandfather who could never talk about the land campaign in Italy.

And, we said thanks. Thanks for our freedom. Thanks for your bravery.