She's so Leeenda!

Talking about the DR and my vacation there (and my return visit six months later 'cause that's how awesome it is!), reminded me of one part that drove me nuts.

You all probably know how "Linda" means beautiful in Spanish. Yes, it does, and I was reminded every fecking day that I was there. The men in the DR are very forthcoming. Even stepping off the plane and herding to the bus to take us to our home away from home for a week, we were bombarded with cat calls, whistles and offers of help to carry our luggage (Step away from the bags, boys, and I'm not meaning my suitcase!).

"Oh Mamacita, you so linda. You want a Dominican boyfriend? I want to marry you."

Yes, we weren't there for more than 20 minutes and we were getting marriage proposals. It was a little overwhelming, flattering but overwhelming. And, when you consider that 20 minutes does not a relationship make, you then feel a little ridiculous for even being flattered for that second.

Sure, I'm beautiful. I am Linda, am I not? But, coming from a country where single women in their 30s are still looked on as "spinsters," you tend to be a little cautious, okay maybe jaded when you hear how beautiful, how linda you are after stepping off of a cramped airplane.

(My brother was referred to me as his "spinster sister with the whole house of cats --- I had two. He got a swift kick up the A-to-the-butthole.)

And, so it happened. Every time someone asked me my name (and it happened in the resort, in the stores, in the street - they wanted to get to know you because Canadian girls are apparently the bomb in the DR), I heard "Oh Leeenda (insert Spanish accent here), do you know what Leeenda means in Spanish?" Yes, yes, sir I do and no, I don't want to marry you. I will not bear your children. I will not see your one-eyed trouser snake. And no, I don't want to be your Canadian girlfriend, flattering or not, since you're 15 years my junior.

I have nothing against May-December romances. I think everyone deserves love, at any age. But when the I love you comes after 15 minutes of talking, or even an afternoon on a catamaran with a ton of Santo Libres, then I think you have lots of thinking to do.

I looked up my name on Urban Dictionary, as was the trend a few weeks ago. This is what I found (and yes, beautiful was in there):

Linda: meaning beautiful or cute in spanish..would usually fun,caring and effin awesome in bed! is described mostly to be crazy and not care what others think if her.

I preferred this one:
spanish name meaning cute.

a common name used in the fifties.
meaning caring, helpful, energetic, organized,spiritual,compassionate, thoughtful and hard working.

Nowhere in there did I see Linda: a girl who gets marriage proposals only 15 minutes after stepping off of a plane. Maybe I should suggest it.

In a time of hope and love

New Year's is about all light and revelation. And hope. I found this while visiting Tia at Clever Girl Goes Blog tonight. I'm suffering from insomnia and as such, was glad for once because I discovered this gem.

I'm reposting another blog. I don't know Brandy but knows where she's coming from. She's looking for hope, for prayers and for a little certainty in an uncertain time. Please take the time to read and to pray. I'm not religious by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe in the power of hope. Without it, this world would be a small and lonely place. I'll be sending all the positive vibes I can, not just for Brandy and her most wonderful partner but for everyone dealing with a seemingly impossible situation. I am hoping for strength in numbers.

Please give this a read. It counts as one more blog of 2009, but it's also a pay it forward kind of situation.

My name is brandy. And I have a blog.



And a plea.


I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.

He's a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He's the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He's the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He's a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He's made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He's listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.


The holidays have hit us hard. He's recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He's the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I'm overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.


As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren't sure what's happening. He'll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what's going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as 'brandy's hot awesome dude'). If you don't pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.


I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven't seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Brandy.

Much love for 2010 and beyond,
Scribe

Rememories...

When I was little I constantly mixed up memory and remember. Easy to do, isn't it? I thought so, and my parents thought it was ever-so cute that they still tell the story. "Remember when you used to say 'I have a really good rememory'?" And then they'd laugh, at their cleverness, at me, at my cuteness.

I no longer mix up the words but sometimes bring it out at opportune times to get a giggle from my dad. He'd then launch into another memory - about me, at 18 months old - wearing really, really big, pink sunglasses. I mean really big. Really. Or about my very first black eye. Okay, I've had only one, but the story is cute so he insists on telling it.

I had decided in my wise five-year-old brain that it was a brilliant idea to fashion a train out of two bikes joined together by a long skipping rope. What I hadn't taken into account was the physics of the task, with my oversized tryke and my friend's oh-so-cool but much squatter two-wheeler with training wheels. All was well until we went around the corner . She went one way, I went the other and landed face first on the pavement. And from high on my perch, it was quite a tumble.

But, I didn't cry, and I think that's what my dad was most proud of. Not one tear. Instead, I calmly walked back to my house, went inside to where my dad was reading in his bathroom library (I actually gave him a sign that read "This is a bathroom not a library," until he reminded me that I was afflicted with the same bathroom reading disease). I calmly asked if he could come out and look at something. He opened the door and I said in my five-year-old voice: "Daddy, is this black?" I explained what had happened and he handed me a cold face cloth and said "Don't tell your mother or you'll never be allowed back on that bike." I wondered then how he could be so intuitive. Well, I wondered how he could be so smart as I had yet to learn what "intuitive" meant.

I have a lot of rememories, from as far back as I can remember. Some are as clear as day and others are a little blurry from years of trying to remember particulars. Sometimes I still feel like that little girl who was inaugurated into the world of black eyes, who would run past doors in the basement for fear of hands reaching out to grab her, or would hide behind her father's legs when she was too shy to even say hello. I've outgrown my shyness to some extent, but in new situations I still wish I could fit behind my father's legs. I wish he could still swing me into a pool and cheer when I managed to swim up to the surface.

He's older now, approaching 80, but don't tell him. He'll just deny it. But I couldn't deny it about eight years ago when he went into the hospital to repair a bulge in his aorta. My mother was a basket case, which is a normal occurence, and I was going through the start of a messy separation and subsequent divorce. And here was my father, my hero, my slayer of dragons, the man who would tell me we were going to Timbuktu when we were driving only an hour north to visit my grandmother, hooked up to intravenous tubes, oxygen and a mess of EKG wires monitoring his huge, loving heart. His damaged heart.

I fainted. I felt so weak, like I did at four years old, scared of the monsters lurking beneath the stairs. But this time the monsters were real - a potentially fatal bulge and a threat of oncoming pneumonia - it was the first time, in my 30 years, that I was faced with my own father's mortality. It was close and I wanted to hold my breath until the monster went away.

The story has a happy ending. My father and I got a reprieve. The operation was a success, and while the recovery was a tough one - pneumonia did rear its ugly head - we fought the monster together and we've had almost nine more years of memories.

I've always thought my dad was cool. While I often romanticized my mother's Scottish upbringing, it was my father who held the cool card. A third-generation Canadian in Ontario farmland, my father grew up in the time between the Depression and World War II. He not only knew what a "teddy boy" was, he was one. He had a pet crow that would land on his head on his way home from school, he knew how to rollerskate, ride a bike and a horse and he could whistle any tune. When I was 12 and entering into my pre-teen world, my father offered to drop me off at the roller skating place - SkateCountry - and I was mortified when he announced that he would skate too. Until he put the skates on and did five laps around the rink -- he could kick my butt on rollerskates, blindfolded.

At 78 (or 80 as I often add two years on for good measure), Joe is still cool. He's Joe Cool, the epitome of cool, and though we may disagree on some key points, I know that he'll always offer me refuge behind his legs. I can always count on him for a quick joke and a teasing tone and a twinkle in his eye as he says he should have got another dog instead of having me. A quick wink and I know he's got his fingers crossed behind his back. Thank goodness for reprieves.

Oh my god, what did I do!?!?!?

I had been debating for weeks on whether I should book them... the tickets across the pond to visit family and friends. Yes people, I'm going back to Scotland. Again. Perhaps that's the reason for my insomnia. I'm a bit nervous. It's a lot of money, people. It means two months of freelancing and a bit of scrimping and saving where I can. But, it's worth it in the end. I think.

The main reason is to visit family. My aunt is 89 this year. Yes, 89. Eighty-nine. Almost 90. Given that my grandmother, Bella, after whom I've named my cat, lived to 99, it's not far-fetched that dear Auntie Tibby will enjoy the same ripe age. Or, maybe not. And that is why I hit the purchase button tonight because you just never know what life will have in store - for me, for her, for Scotland.

It's also a chance to visit my sister-friend of 27 years. We often go months at a time with no communication but when we get together it's like the time has never passed. Jokes are shared, bottles of wine are opened and we catch up with two years' worth of news. Her daughter is now four, no longer doing the bum shuffle along the floor. She now grabs the phone from her mum to speak to Auntie Scribe from Canada. The conversation is mostly one-sided, but it doesn't matter.

My love affair with Scotland started when I was 18 months old during our first family vacation. My mum's aunts living in Canada kept up the love affair by playing Pipes on Parade (my favourite) and offering to pack me away in their suitcases whenever they went home for a visit. It never happened and I was mad every time they left for the airport without me tucked away. They came home with gifts from the "motherland" but it just wasn't the same. Scotland, I felt, was in my blood. It was my birthright to go and experience it for myself. Even if I was only five.

Fast forward to my 11th year, March Break, when my mum decided it was time. It was a 10-day visit but it was magical. We spent a week in Wales visiting my gran and grandad before traveling by train to Edinburgh to visit my aunts and uncles, cousins and my best friend who I didn't know was to be my best friend before we were introduced over my aunt's back garden fence. I can't count the number of times I've been back, with my parents and by myself, often doing side trips to the Highlands (where, funny enough, I was chased by a Highland cow - true story), a jaunt to Amsterdam and to the Anne Frank House, and now to visit friends in England. The last visit saw me spend 10 hours walking the Edinburgh streets, visiting St. Mary's Close and Roslin Castle. I visited the auldest pub in the U.K. and wore the heels off of my good walking shoes. I can't wait to go back, to feel the cobblestones under my feet and rest my head where my heart lives.

So why the apprehension? I really do not know. I'm always welcomed with open arms. Even the rain feels good - and even the golf ball-sized hail stones I experienced in 1999 while walking past the old Scarlet Fever Hospital-cum-0ld age home where my gran once lived. Perhaps it's because I am afraid of the love affair's end. Is this the time when I'll notice the grime, the increased crime and the bad economy? I sure hope not. Perhaps the sound of the pipes marching down the Royal Mile will drowned it all out and I'll be free to continue to love my home-away-from home.

Until then, I'll just put my credit card away, start saving my cockles and sleep knowing that in three months' time I'll be back in the land of the thistle. God help me, how I love it, but did I have to book in the prime holiday season?