The first crush I ever had was on Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. My brother told me I wasn’t allowed to have crushes on girls. The second crush I had was on a boy in my kindergarten class named Philip. He also had red hair, and a cleft in his chin.
Coming Up For Air
This is how I first heard the word melodramatic: I was eight and I wrote a story – illustrated, thank you – about a girl falling in love with a basketball player, or some guy like that, and there was a scene where he carried her down the stairs because she broke her ankle. I showed it to my mom and she said, “it’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
A guy called Sebastian Bierk, who was the son of my mother’s best friend, boarded in our basement in Toronto in the 80s so he could make it big as a heavy-metal singer. He used to let me sit on his bed, amongst his posters of Twisted Sister and Judas Priest, while he practised his voice scales. He was babysitting me one night, I was about ten, and he took me downtown for something, had to meet a guy in a bar. I was mortified to be on the subway with him because his hair was spiked up like the tail of a peacock. He went on to be the lead singer of a band called Skid Row and changed his name to Sebastian Bach.
I agonise over the naming of fictional characters. This has been trickier for me than naming my own children. Two characters in Coming Up for Air, Anouk and Camille, are both named after the daughters of dear friends.
I’ve never done anything that would be classed as scandalous, but sometimes wonder if maybe I should.
I sometimes fantasise that I will be interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. I haven’t yet settled on my full list of seven discs, but I do know that it will include Night Swimming by REM, You Had Time by Ani DiFranco and Old Man Song by The Artsy Fartsy No Ones (a band that no longer exists but was comprised of two, extraordinarily talented, old friends). For my luxury item, I will bring knitting needles and wool.
I installed a Little Free Library in front of my house about two years ago. I commissioned the guy who was painting my sons’ bedroom to build it. It’s a cute little A-frame house, blue with red trim. I live in the city and cynics warned that the library would be trashed, but nothing like that has happened. My community has embraced it; there’s a steady turn-over of shared books. Whenever I’m in my living room and I see people stop to browse, I hide behind my rubber plant and spy, urging them to take a book. I donated a signed copy of Coming Up for Air to the library and checked every hour until it was gone.
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I am grateful for leaf blowers. Not in spite of, but precisely because of the annoying noise they make. On a recent cool morning I was lucky enough to be sitting on a deep porch overlooking the Old River on Perdido Key in Florida. My coffee in hand I settled into a chair in a half lotus position watching pelicans flying low over the water in their focused hunt for fish. It was a perfect place to meditate listening to the lap of the water below and the call of the birds above... to read more click HERE
