Leaves and Petals

There’s nothing more disconcerting than to be flipping through a glossy print magazine while riding the streetcar across town and to come across your own name mentioned in an article where you’d never expect to see yourself included.

In this month’s Toronto Life, writer Katrina Onstad looks at the issue of hipsters with babies. About halfway through the article, I come across this…

Sheryl Kirby, the editor of foodie web site Taste T.O., has kids herself, but even she’s posted about “self-involved” parents in restaurants. “I was at a brunch place recently where a toddler made it out the door and onto the front sidewalk because his parents and their dining companions were too busy comparing tattoos to keep an eye on him.”

Nevermind that that’s NOT the exact quote, which, best as I can tell was lifted and rearranged from a brunch review I did of a place in my neighbourhood. But the writer never bothered to contact me. Not to get a quote, and not to confirm whether or not I had kids.

Dear Toronto Life,

It’s a good thing my mother doesn’t read your magazine, otherwise I would be inundated with phone calls as she demanded to see her non-existant grandchildren.

While I found Katrina Onstad’s article on hipsters with babies to be informative, interesting and well-balanced, I must admit to wondering where she got her information.

While I greatly appreciate the mention of my website Taste T.O. in her article, and recognize the quote she uses as part of a review I did recently on Parkdale restaurant Mitzi’s Sister, she is incorrect in stating that I have children of my own. I am, in fact, QUITE adamantly child-free.

What I don’t understand is why Onstad or a Toronto Life fact-checker didn’t contact me personally to confirm the information included in the article. It’s not as if it’s difficult to contact me online.

If my relatives track down a copy of your magazine and start sending me booties, onesies, and Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls, it’s on all of your heads.

Regards,
Sheryl Kirby
Editor, TasteTO.com

Dunno if that will do any good, at best it will get published in the letters section or garner a retraction. But sheesh – people complain about bloggers not checking facts – how about the high-profile, high-paid journalists?

UPDATE – Apparently the fact-checker at Toronto Life misread some comments on a post to TasteTO and blended my comment with that of a previous poster who mentioned having 4 kids. Apologies were offered, but both Greg and I are now getting emails from friends and acquaintances who “never knew you guys had kids”. I suspect this will go on long past the point of being funny. In the meantime, we plan to enjoy our status as new parents and have named the four invisible children Larry, Curly, Mo and Shemp. We are excitedly looking forward to the birth of their little brother Joe.

When my Grandfather died, way back in the early 80s, my Grandmother spent the better part of a year continuing to make his tea every day, laying out his work uniform, and even calling to him from another room. We thought for a time that she was losing it, or just wasn’t coming to terms with the fact that he was gone, but in reality, she was just having trouble changing her routine. She knew he wouldn’t be sitting in his chair when she walked into the room, that the tea would go cold, that the fireman’s shirt and pants would get placed back in the closet when she went to bed. But she couldn’t stop herself from doing all the things she had always done, or of expecting to see him in his usual spots.

A few years ago, we had to put down one of the cats Greg had brought with him when he moved in many years before. She had been very sick for a long time, and it was a decision for the best. Despite my not being especially close to this particular cat, I continued to “see” her as I went about my day, especially in one spot on the stairs where she would sit and look at us in the living room, but was able to get away from the dogs if they gave chase. I continued to see her there in that spot until the day we moved out, where she appeared, round-eyed and bewildered as I was leaving with the remaining two cats in carriers, as if to say, “Hey, you’re not leaving me here, are you?” I’ve been tempted to drop by and ask the current tenants of that place if they ever happen to see a grey cat, sitting on the stairs.

Routines and favourite cat spots have been on my mind a great deal these past days, as the recent loss of Spook, one of our other cats, now has me expecting to see her in all of her usual haunts. The spot on my bed where she curled up with the teddy bears, now is home only to the bears, no pink-nosed calico is buried underneath. The bedroom window, where she would wedge herself between the two sets of glass and do a crazy circus-performance backflip to get out, is empty, with only a collection of soft white hairs left behind on the frame to reveal that she was ever there. The spot on the bureau that caught the mid-morning sun, the dog blanket that was folded and left at the foot of the bed after vacuuming – she’s not there, or there, or there.

There is no little white paw, tap-tap-tapping my shoulder as I sit in the reading chair in the living room. No soft brush of flank and flip of mottled tail in my face as I do sit-ups on the bedroom floor. The distinctive two-syllable meow she used to say hello to me (as opposed to the one-syllable meow she had for Greg) will never be heard again. The one thing that broke my heart during the far-too-quick week when we watched her health go rapidly downhill, knowing that the cancer had taken up residence in her lungs and that nothing could be done, was that I’d never hear her meow at me again.

Eventually I’ll stop looking. I’ll stop filling two dishes of wet cat food, I’ll stop walking through the apartment making that trilling noise meant to lure her out for treats. I’ll stop expecting her to be at the front door when we open it, I’ll stop looking up from the breakfast table expecting to see her waiting for a chunk of her beloved smoked salmon. Like my Grandmother, I will get on with life.

Despite the fact that I can’t stop looking for my sweet white cat, that I come upon the places she loved and realize she’s not there and won’t be again, she hasn’t felt the need to appear as the old grey cat used to. Maybe I’m looking too hard, missing her too much. Maybe she doesn’t need to remind us that we should continue to miss her.