Crayola

Hugo hands me a new Crayola, green.  The tip is dulled by small teeth marks and its wrapping is damp.  His lips reflect displeasure and his tongue explores the end of the crayon still his mouth.

"Out," my palm waits under his chin.  "Yucky, Hugo.  Spit it out."  Hugo deposits a trail of saliva and green waxy shards in my hand and turns to leave the room.  "Hugo?"  His body forms a half-turn, his eyes search my face.  "No more eating crayons, OK?  Yuck."

"Oh, okay, mammy."

I keep Hugo's name-brand crayons in a hinged tin - the same crayon tin from my childhood.  Outside, the tin is patterned with a vintaged, royal blue floral motif and the inside, a matte silver, is the backdrop to a multitude of sticky rainbow markings.  As a little girl, once I discovered that the ends of crayons left small dots of colour just by being in the tin, I figured I could make a few embellishments of my own.

When I open the tight-fitting, hinged lid the scent is comprised of these new crayons of my son's, barely out of their pristine cardboard boxes, freshly minted and still sharply tipped (unless recently masticated) mixed somehow with the ghostly smell of my crayons from the 80s.  The fragrance of my own collection, now long gone, has been embalmed and is a deeper, mustier one.  Their generic, quatrefoil designed paper wrappings were stained and peeled by my hands, their ends blunted by "filling in" large areas of newsprint colouring pages, many of them halved, or thirded, into smaller, unwrapped pieces that would slip through my grip by the heat of my fingers.

The summer of The Incident began with that tin.  I was colouring in the backyard of my parents' first home, a butter yellow, vinyl-sided semi in Newmarket, one afternoon.  My favourite crayon had always been a silver-coloured one: it was the first to loose its paper casing, since I wanted to more closely admire the sheen of metallic specks which sparkled when I held it up to the light.  The hinged lid of my tin provided a perch for crayons to rest between uses, and there sat the naked, silver crayon, awaiting duty. Sadly, the sun's rays claimed it that hot, summer afternoon and the next time I looked up from my artistic endeavour all that was left was a shimmering dollop of putty.

All instantly available at the opening of a tin box, such is the power of scent.  I wonder if, when he opens the tin for himself in years from now, Hugo will feel the soft fragments of green, non-toxic wax, stuck between his teeth.

foto friday: hot time, summer in the city

Here are a few shots snapped over the past three months.  Hand-picked, rinsed and presented for your viewing pleasure!

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Back when the weather was at record-breaking heights and I was scheduling my life by moving my pregnant bulk from one air-conditioned environment to another, my friend Jessica and I spotted this charming employee of The Good Neighbour on a break.

Yes, he wanted to see if it was hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.

The third wedding of the season.

I know, right?  I almost passed out from an overdose of cute.

Solomon, beating the heat in our backyard.

Apartment-viewing with Sarah, my sister-in-law.  This apartment, on Roncesvalles, was posted for just under three days and inspired a parade of hipsters to stand in the rain and wait for a viewing.  Just another day on Ronceez.

The first peek at Baby Gaz's nursery!  I doubt if this drawer will ever be as tidy as it is now (have you ever tried to fold a newborn-sized onesie?) but it was so fun to organize.

The fifth wedding of the season. 

Andrew at childbirth class, learning how to properly change, clothe, and swaddle a fake newborn.  He's a champ.

Fake newborn changed, clothed, and swaddled!  The proud papa displays his accomplishment full of confidence and poise.

auntie gloria

Since I was away last week (oh, by the way: I was away last week) at our senior high camp I was regretfully unable to post a Wifercize Wednesday or Friday Foto. My condolences. To (more than) make it up to you, here follows the comedic highlight of the week.

Every year we ask a registered nurse or two to volunteer for a week of camp. This year, the two nurses we had slotted canceled at the last minute. Through word of mouth we heard that the mother of campus intern was a nurse and happened to be free the week of camp.

To protect the innocent, I'll call her Gloria.

Gloria was no ordinary nurse. We offered to refer to her as "Nurse Gloria", as was the custom in previous years, but she preferred "Auntie Gloria". Auntie Gloria is a five-foot, Filipino grandmother with the sweetest face, the best sense of humour, the most matching outfits, the biggest hugs, the most intimate friendship with God, and the best smelling perfume.

She had spoken to God ("the Lahd", she calls him) about going away for the week, since it was her vacation week from nursing, before we asked her to nurse at camp. Her desire was to spend the week at a monastery in Hamilton where the solitude and environment would give her a chance to rejuvenate and spend time with the Lahd. She also had contemplated taking a train to the east coast to spend the week by the sea, for the same reason.

She agreed to nursing at camp because she knew we were in a pinch and has a heart of gold. "But it's the strangest thing," she told me one day, "I am in nature, I hab time to relax, I can pray for the chillren, and the Lahd wakes me up ebery morning to hab intimate time with him. It is a bacation!"

On Thursday, she declared her interest in going water tubing. On the lake, like.

I had her repeat her request three times before I believed her. She insisted. So we strapped her into a life-jacket and the two of us plopped into the seats of a tube about to be dragged over the lake by a speedboat. The driver turned to holler, "You guys want to go fast?" Auntie Gloria gave two enthusiastic thumbs up.

What happened next was a blur since I could only half see, I was hanging on for my own life, praying that Auntie Gloria wouldn't fall out, and simultaneously convulsing with laughter at the sight of her face. The spray of the wake soaked her, she could barely open her eyes from the sun reflected on the lake, her wavy black hair streaked straight behind her head, and her mouth was wide open in a constant belly laugh.

Then: "OK, that's enup. That's enup. THAT'S ENUP. IT'S ENUP." It took me and the driver a while to realize that she had had enough. The driver cut our pace to a comfortable putter and pulled us back to the dock.

I asked Auntie Gloria if she was OK or if she had hurt herself? She turned, still beaming, and said, "Oh no. It was so much pun. But it was so past and bumpy. I could feel my uterus - here - going PAH, PAH, PAH. And my anals. My anals were going PAH, PAH, PAH. So, I thought, that's enup."

And so Auntie Gloria had her first taste of water tubing until she had enup.