Lost dreams and found dreams in America

The countless stories of America welcoming the downtrodden, the poor, the detritus, the fleers, all looking for freedom and the chance to make a buck, if they just put their nose to the grindstone, are the newsreel footage of the immigrant. That’s the white story at least. The black footage – well, not a lot of Statue of Liberty stories there. Continue reading →

Imagine Cinderella walking into the prince’s palace. No matter how much she liked her old digs, this place was a huge improvement – everything was more. More rooms, more space in each room, a two-car garage, a family room the size of a small restaurant, and three, count ’em, three bathrooms – it was like the Ritz. And it was ours for a pittance in rent for as long as it didn’t sell. Continue reading →

House on the hill, money in the bank, cars in the driveway, gym out the back door

It’s not every day one of my dreams gets to come true. And this was a big one. Continue reading →

Turn It Up

The show on April 14. 1990, was at my old stomping grounds – Massey Hall. Only this time I got to walk through the front doors and see the show from the start. Well, I’d see as much of it as I could – our tickets said obstructed view. As it turned out, they were really only obstructed if you wanted to see the stage. The view of the rest of the theatre was panoramic, especially up there in the balcony, which was looking to be my geographic lot in life. But I found if I listed just slightly into the person to my left, I could see one quadrant of the stage, the quadrant that included Van. But first up was Mose Allison. Continue reading →

I was playing hooky the day they handed out the mother gene. I had no idea what I was doing – or what was to be done. I spent all my time reading about being pregnant when I was pregnant, so I never got to the being a mom books till after the fact. Actually, just the one – Dr. Spock. It’s like the Betty Crocker Cookbook – as generic as it gets and indispensable. When anything went wrong, consult the index and then read the answer. Periodically I’d remember something about how some years back there had been a groundswell of antipathy for the good doctor, but I couldn’t remember if everyone had their knickers in a twist because he was too harsh or too gentle. To me, he was perfect. Well, maybe he wasn’t perfect, but the index was. If my child had an ailment, from pink toes to a spotty bum, I would look up pink toes or spotty bum in the index, and there it would be. The answers were always so simple too – whatever it called for, we either had in the cupboard already or I knew exactly what aisle to find it in at the store up the street. Just like Betty Crocker recipes – you’re bound to have all the ingredients at home, but if you don’t, she’s not going to make you drive to some little store three towns over to find fresh garam marsala. So Dr. Spock got us through the tough spots, and the rest of the time we winged it, going with whatever worked – we let our imaginations roll and went wherever they took us. Continue reading →

Did I tell you about my baby?

Mind you, I didn’t have much time for religion in those days. Van wasn’t leading me down any religious paths. Life was too busy with practical matters, like babies, for me to be doing much religioning. I’d been holding out on having babies for a long time. I had the idea that it wouldn’t be right to bring children into a world that wasn’t all that attractive a place. Very bleeding heart. I worked under that assumption for years, right up until the day I turned to Dennis and said that if we were going to do this having babies thing, we should get started. It didn’t sound like my biological clock, but at thirty-one, maybe there was a bit of ticking going on. Dennis was keen; he had always wanted children – however many I wanted, that was good for him. Having none had been cool with him; but having some was more cool. Continue reading →

If you’re keeping score, this is the fourth Van concert I’ve been to, and up after “Got to Go Back” I get to hear “Moondance” for the fourth time in a row. There are not many Van shows I’ve been to that I haven’t heard “Moondance” – he’s taken this song through the ringer and back through it again; just when you think there are no more ways to do it, out comes something completely new and different. But after a while, no matter how innovative, it is a song, ultimately, that you feel you’ve heard several hundred times too many as it is, knowing that as long as you continue to go see Van live, you’re going to hear again and again. What a marvelous night for a moondance. If somehow I could collect all the times this song has been played and multiplied that by the number of people who have heard it all those times, and could package that up, well, that would be an awful lot of moondances. I have this new rule about “Moondance.” I make it a rule to listen to it no more than one time a day. Which means that any time it comes on, say, in the car, I immediately fast forward; this on the chance that I could be in a position at some point later in the day when I can’t fast-forward and will therefore reach my quota for the day. There’s no value in peaking early with this rule … can I just have one more dance? Like if I’m at a concert. I can’t fast-forward live. Not yet, anyways. As long as there is Van, there is another chance to dance. Continue reading →

For those of you keep score, no, you didn’t miss Chapter 7. There is a Chapter 7, but, much to my surprise when I opened it up, it’s just the barest of outlines for this grand idea I had to cover the trinity of Van’s music – the physical, the emotional and the spiritual – which would mostly give me an excuse to listen to a lot of Help Me, It’s All In The Game, and Summertime In England. A huge and extremely rewarding project when I got to it, but I’d have to get back to it some other time. For right now, there’s Chapter 8 … Continue reading →

Make It Real One More Time Again

By the time I got into town and parked the car, it was well after 8 o’clock. The street was all but empty in front of Massey Hall, which was no small surprise. It was a safe bet that anyone who had a ticket for the show was comfortably inside, enjoying what they’d spent their money on. There was certainly no one around with a spare. I’m not sure I would have had the money to spend on a ticket, even if there was one to sell. Continue reading →

It was hard work changing the world. If I wasn’t running in an election I was helping out in an election or preparing for an election or cleaning up after an election. Most of the time it was at the party’s headquarters on Yonge Street. One Friday night, at one of those helping out in an election meetings, we were folding pamphlets and doing what we liked to do best, arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It was a working meeting to prepare for a by-election, the political equivalent of a pop quiz in high school. In the parliamentary system, when a seat is vacated for whatever reason, a special election is held to fill the seat and return a member to parliament. So we were all working for the one campaign. We were folding pamphlets that we were going to distribute the next day, and we were assigning ourselves teams. The fellow across the table assigned him and me to a team of two that would drop pamphlets at one of the high-rise apartment buildings in the district. As we were calling it a night and leaving, the fellow asked me if I wanted to meet up for breakfast at a restaurant the next day before we headed out on the job. After he left, I asked my girlfriend Linda what she knew about him, and her one piece of advice was, “Don’t bother getting to the restaurant early, he’s always late.” So I didn’t go early, but Dennis did, and had already finished his first cup of coffee by the time I got there. That turned out to be our first date. Our second one was dinner that night. Two years later we were married. And wouldn’t you know, he liked Van. Continue reading →