Apparently, my father sends my daughter pictures he doesn’t send me.

This is a picture of my great-grandparents (paternal-maternal side), who my daughter only knows from stories. This happens to be the only picture I have ever seen with the two of them sitting nicely together. Their battles are the stuff of family legends…is it still called a ‘legend’ if I actually survived the witnessing? Everyone thinks their family unique but my has a certain flavour which truly is different.

I can never remember a time when my great-grandmother did not wear a hat. Mention my great-grandmother’s name to my mother, and 34 years after the woman’s death, my mother still gets enraged just someone saying her name. Personally, I always got on well with her but then I never did try to cross her.

My great-grandfather left Eastern Europe in 1917 and worked his way around the world as a merchant sailor. He made his living but gambling, and in fact, he won my grand-mother in a poker game – when her father ran out of cash so he put her in the pot. We won’t mention her age…This happened in a seaport in Eastern Canada. He wasn’t sure what to do with her so he married her and eventually they made their way to Montreal.

They lived in the first floor and basement of a bordello where he ran the gaming tables and my grandmother cooked…or so I was told. Things were pretty prosperous for them until one night when my great-grandfather’s partner decided my six year old grandmother was too great a temptation to resist. My grandfather killed him when he caught Andre in the act. This necessitated the children being put on the last evening train to Toronto where arrangements were made to live with a Russian Jewish childless couple by the name of Cooper.

My grandmother told me stay with the Cooper’s was the the greatest year of her childhood. She had a clean bed with sheets and blankets all to herself which beat sharing a pile of rages in the basement with my uncle Richard and auntie Bernice. Not only was she feed three times a day but she got to go to school and had special school clothes. After six months, my great-grandparents turned up to claimed the children – much to the horror of the couple who had taken them in. The Coopers begged them to leave the children with them but my great-grandparents refused. My great-grandmother decided to honour them instead by taking their last name which is how they became known as the ‘Coopers’.

I woke up being profoundly grateful for what I have rather than worrying about what will come or what I lack. It’s not that I lack for things to be fearful of. My most beloved daughter has a neurological disorder of some kind and all the obvious potential explanations of what it could be are gut wretchedly horrendous. Although, I get through each day by praying it all ends up being one of those mysterious medical one-offs that no one understands or even can begin to explain. After all, the human brain is still a deep uncharted country. She looks fine, she moves fine, she thinks fine, she sees fine; therefore, for this moment she is fine and that is as far as I need to know today. Tomorrow will look after itself.

Sure there was one moment in the last month when I gave into the dark tea time of my mind and let my fears overcome my heart. I started down the path asking why her? Why my daughter, my only daughter, a daughter who hasn’t yet had a chance to fall in love, marry, have a family or even a career . But it wouldn’t really matter if I had 100 daughters, as I would only have one Kiki Tzipporah, only one Amazon. My daughter, who has spent most the last 19 years of her life helping others get through theirs. And if not my daughter, whose daughter would I pick to change places with mine? This is not something I can wish on someone else’s child, so this is our lot, our portion, and whatever the outcome, she is alive and what she needs from me is to show her how to live with the time she has been graced with rather than to die a little every day. I can do this. I was made to do this. It’s a talent of mine and I do it well.

And the future, the future is unknown but I will all face it when it comes, until then, there is simply today and that is really all that is knowable or important. No matter the outcome, we live and we live in today. So I woke up and discovered the house cleaning faeries visited my home and left everything shiny and gleaming. The magical house cleaning faeries even programmed the coffee pot to automatically turn on so all I had to do was pour, sip and survey my kingdom… and count my blessing.

So instead I want to mark a personal milestone. I’m a reader, my daughter is a reader, and my oldest son is a reader. We might even be called a family of readers except my youngest son rarely reads. It’s not that he can’t read, he just finds it boring beyond belief which quite frankly an attitude that completely baffles me is. I’ve tried just about every kind of book to engage him with to no avail…until two days ago when

I caught him reading for pleasure. And it was all purely by accident. I bought an English translation of a book by Israeli writer Etgar Keret called, ‘The Bus Driver who thought he was God & Other stories’. I am not a fan of short stories and avoid them much like one does to avoid swine flu. An acquaintance begged me to give him a chance and suggested I needed to read him to get a better grasp on Israeli pop culture.

I finally found one of his books at a used bookstore I regularly patronize. Let me say this, it wasn’t cheap even for a ‘used’ book. I bought it, brought it home, and read it in one sitting while I laughed and alternately squirmed under Keret’s prose. I knew my older son would appreciate how far Keret is willing to go to expose the thoughts of ordinary people doing often bizarre or irrations things for the most absurd reasons. Actually, reading Keret is kind of like sitting in G-d’s confessional booth. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover Keret has already written a story about G-d’s confessional booth.

Montana liked it and left it lying around the bathroom which is where Isaiah Sender found it. It was Isaiah Sender’s turn to clean the bathroom and he only gave it a quick read because he mistakenly thought it was a Captain Underpants novella he missed reading as child owing to the graphics on the cover. Or at least that’s his excuse when I found him reading it instead of cleaning. Apparently, the first story sucked him in and he’s stayed with it until it’s done. Now he wants more. Baruch HaShem, but did he have to pick an author whose books seem only to be published here at upscale prices? Anyhow, between Keret’s stories I thought I might try sneaking in a little Vonnegut.

I have loved nothing more than having children. I made a big mistake years ago in not starting sooner so I could have had at least six children. Of course, it might have happened; if I could have a husband who’d lived could have at least managed to live out a decade being married to me. C’est la vie.

My children have been the source of my greatest joys but indubitably there is a full set of matching luggage which comes from having children. While my children have given me my greatest joy they have also been the well-springs of my greatest fears, largest worries and most desperate waking nightmares, and from where I sit and can observe; I have had it rather easy compared to some. This doesn’t mean my children are angels even if they are perfect. They still stay out break curfew, argue, talk back, break my rules and most prized possessions, torment their teachers and give me a fast race every day of my life. Most days, I feel like the Law Society of Upper Canada is meeting permanently at my kitchen table. I get no days off – not even for the Sabbath.

For all of that, I wouldn’t trade one single moment of the last 19 years for my childless days. I had a good life while I was single. I traveled, danced and music has filled my days. There was no angst worrying where the next date would come from and pining away home alone on any given night – unless I felt the need to pine. All I had to do was go out my door and I was bound to meet some man who was eager to pick up the social slack. Of course, I had friends, and my greatest trouble was finding the time to be ALONE to do the things I wanted to do…odd how that has yet to change.

I have friends’, who have never had children, when and if, they start to fret that they are missing something, they come to visit and take a seat in the back benches of my kitchen table. A couple hours and a few stiff drinks later the angst and urge usually passes. If we lucky, we live lives which give us choices, and if we are sensible, we are always grateful for what we have.

I went to see her Majesty. The Last Amazon and I were late to the party as we only walked over to Church and King Streets an hour before her Majesty’s arrival and found out we weren’t the only ones going to welcome the Queen. Then the Last Amazon and her friends met up to attend the Gay Pride parade…as the word went out to go out and make a stand against the hatemongers…apparently, Yisrael was out in full force.

As a result this blog is going dark and the most I will be reading is my Tehillim until this situation is resolved.

I expect the experience will be somewhat surreal for her as she meets family who knows her but whose faces and names she cannot recall, but a family, who knows her, and claimed her from the first. A family, who has celebrated and held parties in the hills to mark her triumphs in sports or academics and cheered her passage through this thing we call life.

I am envious in a way but not for the going. Jamaica is too bitter-sweet place for me and I have many ghosts to haunt me on roads both rough and smooth there. That chapter of my life is closed and gone forever but what I remain envious of is – is the experience of seeing Jamaica unfold fresh and new. It’s like a return to the garden of Eden.

In fact, the hot weather is predicted to last for the next few days and my brains are officially fried. Why? Because I have a landlord who is a complete asshole who insists on following the letter of the law so my heat will not be shut off until June 1st. Apparently, he once got sued for turning the heat off to early and now he refuses to see reason or budge. It is not only that my heat is on but the furnace is at a temperature which heats my apartment as if its -20C outside rather +30C. When I got up this morning the temperature in the kitchen read 44C.

I can’t cook, fix my hair or apply eyeliner. This weekend the only time my hair wasn’t soaking wet was when we were holed up in my bedroom (the only place with air conditioning) or outside. We have been living on bread, fruit and raw vegetables which is okay and all – but there is a limit to how much raw broccoli and salad I want to eat. The tribe hates pasta so forget the more interesting salads. Besides, anything which takes more than 5 minutes to prepare – well, let’s just say I am so unmotivated to make anything which requires extended visits in my kitchen inferno.

Of course, all my computers are located in the heart of the inferno. I have argued, I have begged and pleaded. I have tried appeals to common sense, reason, and logic – all to no avail. He won’t budge and oddly enough, his particular form of assholery is also shared by such publicly funded institutions like Toronto Community Housing for refusing to turn off the heat in all the units under their control and the Toronto District School Board for refusing to turn on the air-conditioning in schools which have no windows that open in their classrooms – it’s the law – the municipal code etc.,

This has made me think about the whole concept of ‘reasonableness’ on both a practical and legal level. So much of any given law weighs or turns on a course of action based on what a ‘reasonable’ individual would do under any said circumstances. All of which brings me to the Crown’s dismissal of Michael Bryant’s charges.

I never thought there was a reasonable chance of conviction as long as the Bryant maintained one simple statement; I was afraid for my life. Nor was I surprised by the police laying the charges against Bryant for Sheppard’s death. Standard procedure, law and all that. What did surprise me was the Crown’s decision not even to bring the matter to trial suggesting there was no ‘reasonable’ measure of conviction. I have seen criminal matters proceed with the filmiest circumstantial evidence possible, and still, the Crown has still elected to roll the dice. I once asked a Crown why he elected to try a defendant under ‘questionable’ circumstances. He replied he believed a trial wasn’t only the defendant’s day in court but an opportunity for the victim of a crime to seek justice – and who was he to deny the victim his day?

Was Bryant’s actions reasonable? Or was there another course of action he could have chosen to take? What would a reasonable individual due under the circumstances? And what of the Darcy Sheppard and his rights?

It is like some people are born under such a dark cloud that reasonableness, much like justice, remains just as elusive in life as it is in death.