Inspiring Peeps: Zoe

A semi-regular series about – the name says it all – the people in my life who inspire me. Me and Zoe on my wedding day (she was one of my bridesmaids).

Zoe is absolutely one of my most favourite people in the whole world. She and I met in February 2005 through an awesome Vancouver School Board program called Mentorship: Making Contact, where adult mentors and gifted elementary students come together to work on subjects like astronomy, French cooking, or in my and Zoe’s case, art and creative writing.

From the moment I met her at our initial “get to know you” program meeting, I knew we were meant for each other. She was 12 at the time, and was wearing a funky get-up with pink tights and a vintage purse. She was more fashionable than most adults I know (and continues to be!). I love the wacky, offbeat kids the best, and there she was, in all her glory. The classroom we met in had a mobile in it, I remember, and one of the things hanging off it was a sparkly Christmas ornament shaped like a fish, with bright red lady lips. Zoe and I were very taken by this fish (the mentorship facilitator even said that we could take it home with us). We decided to name the fish Edwina, and we made up an elaborate backstory on her – I can’t really remember what it was, but I think it involved Edwina selling Avon. As it turned out, Zoe and her mum (the fabulous Kimberly, who took our wedding photos) lived only a block away from us in the West End, and so we all rode the bus home together, plotting and scheming our fabulous mentorship.

And what a fabulous mentorship it was, indeed, a mentorship that quickly – if not immediately, became a friendship. Here Zoe and I were, in those early days:

Our mentorship meetings usually involved fun things related to our topic of art and creative writing, such as doing each others’ make-up and hair, and making extremely creative mocktails involving grenadine, lime cordial and food colouring. Lots of movie-watching, too, usually while doing said activities. Oh, and we liked to play dress-up, talk about our dreams and plan out short films we wanted to make (we never actually made them, but we had some great ideas).

We talked about Tim Burton’s aesthetic, and art deco. We put on costumes and played 17th century card games (lessons courtesy of my friend Laura, another inspiring peep), and we prank-called Sears and tried to order something from their 1934 catalogue (spats, I think it was).

During this time I was probably the busiest I’ve ever been in my life – working full-time, doing my Master’s degree part-time, with a busy social life. Zoe and I hung out about once a week or so, but I wish it could have been more often. One night while we were walking back to Zoe’s house, Zoe said, “You’re my best adult friend.” Quick pause. “No, actually, you’re my best friend, period.” Well, did my heart almost burst with joy, or what!

Zoe has the magical ability to make me forget all my grown-up woes – a conversation with her makes me feel light, carefree and gleeful. She’s brilliant, and affectionate, and all-around wonderful, with a creative mind unlike anyone else I’ve ever met.

Zoe’s almost all grown up now, in Grade 12 and graduating in a couple of months. She’s planning to move to London and be an artist. Or maybe to New York. (You know how it is at that age. I love it.) She came over for a visit last month, from her current home on the Sunshine Coast. I hope I’ll always be a part of her life and her adventures, in some way.

I get a little lump in my throat thinking about all this. I’d better stop before I get way too sentimental (oh wait, too late!).

I love you, Zoe!

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My Jewish Years

Chicken soup with matzo balls and grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup and mustard – an unorthodox yet delicious combination. Soup and sandwiches is one of my favourite meals, ever.

At age fifteen I became obsessed with everything Jewish. It was around the same time that I started watching – and loving – Woody Allen movies. All his references to his Jewish faith, family and background really got me started. This was also the time when I had a crush on my cute Jewish boy triumvirate: Woody, Paul Simon and Dr. Joel Fleischman from the TV show Northern Exposure. The episode where Joel’s Uncle Manny dies and then he dons his yarmulke and prayer shawl to say the kaddish? Don’t even get me started – I’m getting all verklempt! I dreamed of going to New York City to Max’s Delicatessen. I listened to tapes of people speaking Yiddish and Hebrew. I read Jewish folk tales and treasuries of Jewish humour. One day my younger sister Tara and I even snuck out and went to Vancouver by ourselves to – get this – go to a Jewish Film Festival. I started writing a screenplay about a nun and an orthodox Jewish man who somehow meet and fall in love (oh, the whole “forbidden love” thing – so appealing to teenage girls!). In grade ten I even pretended that I was Jewish around some people I didn’t know very well, and told them that I celebrated hanukkah. Yep.

My teenage Jewish obsession culminated in a special fancy dinner that Tara and I put on for our family, with orthodox/kosher Jewish dishes (ie. no milk and meat combined). I can’t remember what they were exactly, but we researched the recipes forever. (And this was in the days before the internet – many trips to the library.) Matzo meal was next-to-impossible to find in Maple Ridge in 1990, let me tell you. Tara and I even went so far as to make ourselves some little yarmulkes and beards, and then to curl side tendrils of our hair, sidelock style. Yes, instead of donning wigs and a great deal of make-up like good orthodox women, we had apparently decided it would be more fun to dress up like orthodox Jewish men. Gad, I wish I could dig up the pictures from that dinner party. On second thought, maybe not.

So, what about the Jewish faith and culture could fascinate a good little gentile girl from the suburbs to such an extent? Well, a big part of it is of course the whole “The Other” fascination – the Jewish culture seemed so exotic, so different from my Christian church-going, perogie-eating, hymn-singing Mennonite background. To my teenage self the Jewish culture seemed so much more witty, so much more edgy than the freshly-scrubbed, wholesome types that I was surrounded by. Growing up in Maple Ridge, B.C., I had never met anyone even remotely Jewish, but I had read about them in Judy Blume books.

Gradually my Jewish obsession faded, only to be replaced by some other new obsession (I think it was Star Trek: The Next Generation and my huge crush on Data. I’m certainly prone to my obsessions, ask anyone who knows me well). On Friday night, in a little nod to my Jewish-lovin’ past, I cooked up some chicken soup with matzo balls, which my best friend Heather so kindly procured for me from Solly’s Bagels (matzo meal is still hard to find, it appears). Oy vey! Delicious.

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Notes from the Basement

Class photos. Old journals. (Many, many old journals.) Notes from my junior high best friend. Play scripts that my sisters and I wrote. Tooth fairy pillows. High school I.D. cards. Au Coton and Colors of Benetton catalogues. Childhood combs. My favourite My Little Pony. Boys’ phone numbers. Old zines. E.T. stickers. My prom dress, even.

I dug up all this childhood/teenage memorabilia and more from my mum’s basement recently. My mum and stepdad are selling the family home, and my sisters and I have spent the last couple of months going out to our hometown of Maple Ridge to sort through tons (and I mean tons) of our old crap in the basement. I guess when we all moved out we just hucked our old stuff down in the depths of the basement, thinking, “Oh, I’ll deal with that later.” Well, now is later, and the sifting through has been incredibly embarrassing, hilarious, mortifying, touching, and enlightening. For a nostalgic sap like me, it’s been really hard parting with some of this stuff. For example, check out my childhood collection of stuffed animals:

Like, are you kidding me? Oh, the memories! Muppet Baby Miss Piggy, a Gremlin fuzzy guy, a Yawny dog puppet, Piglet, Pooh and Eeyore (albeit the Disney versions, so maybe not too hard to part with), my Care Bears, my two Snorks (anyone who grew up in the 80s will remember the Saturday morning cartoon, aptly named The Snorks). Then there’s the Chef doll that my mum lovingly handcrafted out of pantyhose – does anyone remember the 1980s trend of making doll faces and bodies out of pantyhose? I remember my mum buying packages of pantyhose, stuffing them with batting, and then hand sewing them to make these crazy scrunched-up-type pruney faces. But anyway. I don’t know what to do with these guys. Do thrift stores even take stuffed animals? Some of these ones are stained and damaged, so I wouldn’t want to donate those ones, anyway. So what to do? You see, I wrote my MA in Children’s Literature thesis about toy fantasy – books and stories for children in which the toys come alive. All my old stuffies have feelings, I believe. I can’t imagine them languishing in the dusty metal bins of a thrift store or worse, in a landfill. I read The Mouse and His Child, for chrissakes. And maybe it’s also because my toys were such a huge part of my childhood, and I want to hang onto my childhood things a little longer. But as my husband so gently reminds me, we just don’t have the room for all of them. So there they sit, in a pile in Keaton’s toy bin, waiting for me to decide their fate. Waaahh!

Some of the stuff that I unearthed in the basement is just way too awesome (and often awesomely embarrassing) not to share. So, welcome to my new, semi-regular feature, “Notes from the Basement,” featuring tidbits from my past. And now, to get my scanner working…

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Teenage Craft Night

I read once – maybe it was in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – that we tend to draw at the same age level at which we stopped drawing regularly. Which probably explains why I still draw like I’m ten. If that is true, then do we still craft at the same age level at which we stopped crafting (if we did stop at one point?). Well, I still craft like I’m about fifteen, so maybe that’s saying something. Last night after Keaton went to bed, Joshua and I watched Adventureland, which I really enjoyed – it gave me that wonderful feeling of sparkly promise that I really remember from my late teens/early 20s (amongst all the angst, of course). I found myself inspired to do some late-night crafting after the movie, and stayed up until about 3am having myself a little Teenage Craft Night filled with safety pins, glue and cut-up pictures (it was also a chance to use up some supplies and do some projects I’ve been meaning to do for a long, long time). I also ate quite a few Twizzelators in the process. As you’ll see in these photos, here’s what I did:

– glued a cut-out patch from my “Reading is Sexy” t-shirt onto a pillowcase (the dyes bled all over each other when I washed it – I’ve been meaning to do something with this for about seven years). I’m going to ad some decorative cross-stitching around the border of the patch.

– framed a cut-out picture from an old “Fabulous Fifties” calendar in an Ikea frame I’ve had kicking around for a while (not really a craft, but I’ve been meaning to do it forever)

– sewed the Heidi Headband project from Bend-the-Rules Sewing, using some linen scraps, black elastic and some cute French poodle ribbon that I got at Dressew a long time ago. I actually made two (I’m going to give the other one to my sister Chay), since they’re good practice in terms of trying different seams, stitches, etc. Also, I got the almost-instant gratification of finishing not one, but two things in a night, since they’re so small and quite easy to make! They’re a little crooked, and the seams aren’t exactly straight, but I was still pretty pleased with myself.

– And for the piece de resistance, and the Ultimate in Teenage Crafting, I put another old t-shirt patch – this one cut from a waaaayyyy-too-tight t-shirt that I got in Camden Market, London about nine years ago… it has Darth Vader spinning and says “May the Funk Be With You” on the bottom (I know, effin’ awesome, right?) – onto my jean jacket with the artful use of safety pins. I even used a black Sharpie to colour over the shiny metal of the safety pins showing through on the patch. Classic move.

Gad, what fun. Totally took me back in time. Maybe next Teenage Craft Night (because I really should make this a regular thing) I’ll listen to the Cure and the Smiths while bedazzling a pair of jeans or deconstructing a t-shirt and really make a night of it. Come to think of it, I did just pick up a copy of Generation T from the library….

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