My little Jadeane’s favourite. I can’t get enough of this episode.

Six years ago you were resting your weary limbs between my legs as we watched Robert Downey Jr. pretend to be somebody else in Only You. There was something about an actor pretending to be somebody else while pretending to be somebody else that fascinated me; all you cared about was the happy ending.

I knew then that it wasn’t me who could give you one, and in some morbid way, you did too. It was never my intention to abandon you the way your father did. I never meant for you to grow jaded.

You should know that I still remember how it felt waking up to the sight of you. I still remember the shirts you slept in and the colour of your walls. I even remember your clenched fists and defeated sighs. I want to thank you for helping me learn, for helping me realize that I am capable of bending a body until it breaks.

In a town full of people, you are still the only home I know how to find my way back to.

Field trip to the Tech Museum with my crazy kids!

I might never catch a mouse
and present it in my mouth,
To make you feel you’re with someone who deserves to be with you.
But there’s one thing we’ve got going
and it’s the only thing worth knowing,
It’s got lots to do with magnets and the pull of the moon.

Infinity works both ways.

“A new relationship can develop. But the cicatrix of the old one remains. And nothing grows on a cicatrix. Nothing grows through it.”
- from Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George



It wasn’t long ago when we were kids, running around with dirt in our hands and quarters for the ice cream man in our pockets. I remember the walkie-talkies we had, the ones we used to talk to one another on our way to school. You would talk about your mum’s driving while I stayed quiet and let you hear my dad sing his lungs out to Yesterday by The Beatles. I also remember the first question you’d ask after saying good morning – how’s the weather over there? I’m not sure why I never found it strange, since we lived on opposite ends of the same school.

Believe it or not, I heard my voice develop in those silly conversations with you.

I’m fifty-seven years old now, slowly walking around with nine different keys and a touchscreen telephone. I sit in a customized chair every day and listen to people complain about life. Most of them refuse to take their meds and regret having children. They stay with their spouses because anywhere else would be just as cold. I can’t help but think how depressing it is to see two people starve in each others’ arms. And then I think about you – how you once told me that you were scared (of dying, falling in love, drowning) but that it was okay because you had me.

I’ve thought about flipping through the white pages to find you, giving myself twelve chances to call the right number. But then I remember the last time we spoke. You had called from London, first complaining about the shitty calling card and then ending with the usual question – how’s the weather over there? I waited for a stroke of bravery to clutch my bones. I wanted to tell you – the weather? It’s like the end of the world. Instead, I remained silent. I couldn’t tell you then that while you were away, I laid in a hospice for four days only to be told that I had pericarditis. Your pseudo sympathy would have made the analgesics useless.



*writer’s note: cicatrix - derived from the Latin word meaning “scar.” It is the new tissue that forms over a wound.