On May 7th I was officially evicted from my apartment for unpaid rent. On that same day I probably spoke to the trustee handling my bankruptcy and may also have spoken to my agent to say there was no joy in making television for me presently and that I was looking for a new career.
Now it is the last day in May and the hardest, most productive chapter of my life thus far draws to a close tomorrow morning. The next chapter opens in September with a new apartment, new career, new love, new perspective.
The 3 months in between — June, July, August — are a reset. We’ve moved — me, Older Son and Younger Son — to a sailboat on Toronto Island for the summer. I’ll be pouring pints at a bar city side, making a documentary on the history of said bar, and learning how to sail with the boys. I will also be examining the 2 1/2 years since my divorce, sifting through experiences with financial ruin, suicide, breaking 90, mental health, marijuana, running long distances, music, love, the collective failed leadership of young men, ass sex, other-place sex, parenting and co-parenting, gangsters, childhood trauma, bartending, my addicted mind, Lay Lady Lay, friends, a dead dog, changing career horses at the age of 44, and the back breaking truths of life in a boat you can’t stand up in. Island life, island rhythm will be the salve, soothing the pulpy mess accompanying a good look.
Double Clutch is not a nautical term. It’s a way of shifting a manual transmission from gear, through neutral, to gear. This summer is my neutral between gears. It’s a nautical term for now.
Our boat, a C & C 24 built in 1979, is blue and 27 feet long. Someone named her Meant To Be which bugged me and bugged Older Son too. We were discussing new names when a passing sailor told us you don’t rename a boat unless it sinks. It’s a big deal, naming boats, with a ceremony and everything.
Everything we trip over this summer will be an analogy or a learning moment. I’ll bore of myself before long.
On the day I moved from my apartment Sylvie, a sexagenarian neighbour, dropped in with a card. Our history as neighbours was a good one, the high point a fireman’s carry across Spadina Road where I transferred her and her broken ankle to a dolly on which a security guard wheeled her home to primp before the handsome, Sylvie hoped, paramedics arrived. On moving day, outside my front door, she hugged me close and whispered kind words about my boys. She then told me to drink lots of water and to get the boys to drink lots of water too.
She left me this card, with some good advice from her Granny —
It’s the right time in this case.
It is also, forgive me, the write time.
Interested in teaching your kids to sail? Read this post!
Printer-friendly version