Rose's Cantina

One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting outside my Granny's farmhouse and squishing a bag of orange and white liquid together to make "margarine". It didn't occur to me at the time that I was making an edible oil product for the family to use to slather on sandwiches and toast. To me, it felt like some miraculous operation to make something out of nothing. I also loved sitting with my Grandpa Loyal and cleaning smelly old smelt that we had caught in the local crick. Or shelling peas on a sweltering July afternoon, and sucking up the tiny jewels with my extended tongue and feeling the burst as they popped in my mouth. I loved my grandparents, and my Uncle Vern, with whom we lived until they left this Earth over a six year period, exactly two years apart. Vern was a 50ish man-child whose dad had died in the Great War and was adopted by my grandfather, a widower who lost his first wife and one twin in childbirth. In the 20s and 30s, that was how blended ...

Two years ago, her parents entrusted me with her care. Next week, I will hand her back to them, and she will enter the big, bad world of daycare. I'm sad. I can't lie. But it's time. Alas, she remains untoilet-trained, and continues to speak a combination of Russian and French with a hint of Hindi -- unless she wants peaches or supe. Then, her English is just fine. Oh yes, and she drinks more juice than water most days. I make no apologies. I am her grandmother, not her mother. And I've never been a particularly focused caregiver. When I need a nap I take one. So for a time every day, the iPad has been the nanny. Which might explain the Russian and the Hindi. And her fixation on ghosts. In my own defence, I kept her out of the hospital, though we did have a few close calls. Like the time she brought the occasional table down on her neck. Or the other time she tumbled down the stairs because a certain grandpa couldn't remember to close the...

When I told the gang at the Press Club I was pregnant, they just looked at me like I had two heads. "You're having a baby?" Ok, I guess I didn't measure up back then as motherhood material. In fact, if I am to be perfectly honest, I didn't ever think I'd be a mother. I didn't really like kids that much. So me being pregnant came as much a surprise to me as anybody else. The pregnancy was a bi-product of a relationship I was having with Mr. Big. I actually wanted to have Mr. Big's baby, and so there I was, nearing 30, unemployed thanks to Brian Mulroney's trashing of all us good Liberals, drifting. A baby seemed like an ok thing to do until I found something else. And so it was I began the three decade journey to where I am today. Startlingly, I am a mother of three and grandmother to one and a half children. (The second one, the Baby Flo will be hatched sometime in April.) Tomorrow marks the birth date of my first spawn, Nichola...

Granny Crown broke her hip sneaking down to the basement trying to retrieve a beer, a fact she vehemently denied, but everyone knew to be true. Every night, it was her ritual to hobble down the rickety steps with her cane. None of us ever understood why a 74-year-old woman would take her life into her hands that way, especially considering any of us kids would have gladly helped her out. But she was kind of a mystery, an old dame who kept a lot of secrets, such as why my Uncle Vern was a 10-year-old living in a 52-year-old body. "He just never grew up," she shrugged, slurping the last bit of cold tea from the stove. Pointe finale. We were simply expected to accept anything she said at face value. I felt bad for Granny when she broke her hip and was carted away to the hospital for a lengthy stay, but I soon got over my sadness. That's because Granny always saved me her piece of hospital cake, my reward for visiting her every single night for eight months. ...

I get up at least four mornings a week to bust a gut at The Athletic Club. Exercise has become an important part of my life, along with juicing and the baking of strange manifestations that resemble bread but are, in fact, almond and garbanzo laden nutbars. I'm still over-weight -- I don't think it's even possible for me to win the battle of the bulges -- but I consider myself in good physical shape. I am strong, I am invisible, I am middle aged woman. Unfortunately, I am no match for a toddler. Yesterday, Nick was going for a job interview so I agreed to take his 15-month-old daughter for a few hours, and that meant a trip to Pleasant Park, a sprawling little bit of heaven in the middle of the city. How hard could it be? Compared to the other grannies, I'm ripped. I envisioned a good half hour pushing her on the little swing, talking to the other mums and grannies while our little charges played together in the sand. The reality didn't exactly resembl...

This year will be a very different Mother's Day for me and a few of my friends. In 2012, we officially became grandmothers for the first time. We watched, in awe, as our children took up the challenge of the first diaper and swaddling. We agonized over whether they were ready for parenthood, remembering every misstep we took ourselves in keeping these new bundles alive and out of trouble. We heard the echo of our own mothers' voices as we offered reassurance about a cough or a wound. And if we were to be totally honest with ourselves, we felt pangs of longing for our own youth, for the bodies that once turned a man's head, for the creaseless corners of our eyes and mouths, for the smooth surface of a virgin neck. I wasn't quite ready to be a grandmother, I realize that now. I was angry at the prospect, disappointed that my young son did not have a plan, a car, or a good job that would offer his new daughter a secure life of endless possibilities. Then I reali...