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A strange thing happens when you say the word “culture.” It is like a confession, the telling of a deep dark secret. The minute I defend my culture as a culture, I have already taken a step back from it. I say “my culture teaches that…,” and it can be a whole range of teachings: my culture teaches that my accomplishments do honor to my ancestors. My culture teaches that God is a father who watches over us. My culture teaches that learning is the highest value. The confession implicit in all of these statements is that my culture is just that: a culture. It is not the divinely ordained order of things. It is not the unquestionable product of nature. It is a culture, something that has been made by people over a period of time. And just as human work turns out new forms and ideals, so culture will always change and adapt.

When we are safely ensconced in a culture we pay little attention to it as a culture. There are times and places where the clash of cultures is kept to a minimum. My mother, for example, who grew up in a uniformly Scots-Irish Protestant part of New Brunswick in the 1930s, never faced serious issues of culture until she came to Montreal (and lived on the fringes of the Montreal jazz world in the late 40s, a fact that never ceases to delight me). When the tension between our culture and the outside world is at its weakest, we barely perceive our own culture as anything but the basic background of everydayness. We spend little time worrying about the rightness and wrongness of our way of life. We even, to some extent, feel a certain ironic distance toward it (perhaps the attitude of those who attended Catholic school towards nuns is a model of this experience). We might call this attitude “ironic culturalism.” When I live in the ironic mode I may claim that I don’t believe a certain thing (say, that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden), but I comport myself as if I do because others believe it, and so I believe for their benefit. For example, parents don’t believe in Santa Clause but they behave as if they do in order not to disappoint the children. The irony is that when the children stop believing, it is the parents who feel the loss most acutely. In the same way, less literalist Christians will claim not to believe that the entire human race was corrupted by a bad choice of fruits or that a man literally returned from the dead, but they will still participate in rituals based on these imagined events, and may even admire Christians of an earlier generation for their simpler beliefs. The paradox is that the admiration for those who “really believed” is itself a powerful form of belief. So distance from a culture is not the death knell of that culture, but its life blood.

In contrast to ironic culturalism, we see these days what we can call “aggressive culturalism.” This is the stridently proclaimed dogma that my culture is not a culture like others, but the only correct way to live, the only true way in relation to which all other cultures are perversions. Such a stance is, of course, what we have come to expect from fundamentalists, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim. So we have two possible reactions to modernity’s inevitable collision of cultures: aggression or ironic distance. But at this point something counter-intuitive happens. Although it seems like the aggressive defender of culture is the true traditionalist, the true protector of the past “as it really was,” and that the ironic culturalist (and at this point you may have guessed that I mean “multiculturalist”) is the representative of the corrupt modern world, the opposite is in fact true. The one who angrily proclaims his culture as the true and only way to live, who identifies himself completely as a member of that culture, leaving no room for distance, is the quintessentially modern subject. He falls victim to distinctively modern problems: the undermining of a single set of beliefs by the multiplicity of belief systems, the paranoia that comes from the sense of being invaded by “foreigners,” the vertigo brought on by new sources of criticism and new possibilities of self-criticism. The angry fundamentalist who wants to preserve his culture untainted and unchanged at all costs can, in fact, only exist in the modern world.

The multiculturalist, on the other hand, is forced to live in the ironic mode. He knows that his culture is not the only one in the world. He sees others behaving in reasonable and moral ways — ways as reasonable and moral as his own — without the benefit of his particular culture. He will continue to follow his own cultural rituals, beliefs and practices, but with a kind of minimal distance from them. He can live his culture, in other words, without the need for militant belief. And this is exactly what makes the multiculturalist a traditionalist. The sign that a culture — any culture — is alive and thriving is that its members do not fear that it is fragile and threatened. They understand it simply as the way they live, but they also understand (with the benefit of irony) the unspoken rules of their own culture, the rules that tell them when rules can be broken, where the limits of authority are, and how to live with the unbelief of others. We truly live a culture, in other words, not when we hold it in a death grip, but when we conduct ourselves with a certain flexibility, critical distance and affectionate cynicism. This is the stance of the true traditionalist, the one who knows that his culture will only thrive by evolving, by not desperately grasping at outmoded forms of living. The multiculturalist, therefore, is the real traditionalist, the one who can embrace his culture without being swallowed whole by it, the one who understands that his tradition is most alive when it is most energetically reaching into the unknown future. He understands what may be the most important lesson of modern culture: that to believe truly we must never believe excessively.

Last night I dreamt.
I’m going home from somewhere near the Van Horne shopping center. I am three years of age. The first thing that I notice is the park across from the mall is nearly impassable. Not the way I know it to be in reality. I decide to cross it despite the very steep downveering hills and all the old railyard junk (sharp, pointy and jagged). I go down with some difficulty and pass through a hole in the fence which guards the rusted out tracks. On the other side two smaller, yet tougher looking children, going in the opposite direction, pass me without a word. They have nothing to say to one still so innocent. I pause. Do I really want to forge ahead into this unknown territory?
Someone grabs me from behind. He is older, red-haired and very menacing. He threatens me in vague ways. He is very angry. I knock him down and scurry up the steep hill on this, the other side of the park. Reaching the top I think to run but stop myself and sit, legs dangling over the hill. I see the redhead climbing up with great difficulty, gasping for breath and livid with anger. As his nose reaches the point where my feet idly hang, I shoe him as hard as I can in the nostrils. After watching his downfall I get up and dash home.
As I run, I experience no shortness of breath. I can run forever and the redhead can never catch me. This I know and during the realization I grow older, and gradually turn into my current self. And as I grow I become increasingly nostalgic. Although I am now at my real-life age, the suburban Montreal that I run through is the one of my youth. The Montreal of my earliest memories. Each structure passed is quickly reassessed as the as the structure that it has evolved into in my fortieth year. A great depression consumes me as I near my parent’s home. I slow down now, hunched over and panting. The shortness of breath does not bother me nearly as much as does the loss of the old sixties styled A&W restaurant. This A&W was knocked down and rebuilt as a pizza joint. The pizza joint burned down but was rebuilt bigger but not better and eventually went bankrupt. Now it’s a kosher falafel place with a hall for rent on the top floor. This place, this area, this plot of land has a definite identity crisis. This place reminds me of myself. I cry a bit about that.
The redheaded kid cuts me off just as I’m about to enter my parent’s new abode. He grabs my arm and threatens me with a fist. I’m no longer frightened by him. Although I somehow sense that he still perceives me as a three year old runt, I no longer see him as a bully. I put my arm around his shoulders. I explain to him the nature of change, point out each and every edifice within sight and tell him how and what they will come to be in the too near future. He begins to cry during the telling. He has relied on these things to remain the same everyday that he rises from an unsure sleep and I am telling him they won’t. Shaken, he runs home to his mother.
I enter my parent’s home to be. It’s subterranean. The workmen about are laying more white paint on the walls. There is no furniture, no color. No nothing. It is one large room and very Mediterranean in feeling. My parents greet me as if I’m here to observe. They know me, but not as their son. He is elsewhere at the moment they inform me. But then he emerges through a doorway which I had not noticed. My parents introduce us. They actually introduce me to myself at the age of three. He is quite thin-haired as am I. I quickly note this and remember his parents cajoling him into digesting certain vitamin laden pills lest his hair never grow in properly. His eyes are much wider and happier than mine. He takes me by the hand and pulls me towards a passageway.
We come out into what I slowly understand to be an empty Olympic-sized pool. I look down at him and myself what should happen if they ever decide to refill it. Surely it would flood and wash away our parent’s newly renovated flat. He walks over to some workmen seated at the shallow end and precociously relates my fears to them. They laugh and tell him not to worry, it’s to become a museum and anyway, the passageway will be blocked off. My parents will have no direct link with the museum. I go back through the passage and into the flat. The kid follows me.
I study his parents, my younger parents. I listen to them making plans for the new place, discussing things with workmen. Making plans for their new life; they are refugees. The kid emerges again through the passage that leads onto the pool. He too is a refugee of a kind. He was recently adopted. I know this even through his large smile. I remember this.
His mother asks me if I like the place.  I look at myself looking up at her and I begin inwardly to weep. I answer yes with difficulty, as that feeling long since gone and short-lived is rekindled for me in his eyes; that I must love her. His eyes turn to his father who is grinning proudly and he smiles in unison.
Now I cry openly, more so than I had for the old dead structures of yesteryear, seeing his father’s early vigor and transposing it against the aged and death-waiting father that I now know. The father who has already paid for his spot in the ground beside his long dead wife.
Then I look up at myself and I stop smiling. I watch my older self leave the building while wiping away his tears and I wonder why I look so sad.

—–

An ex-girlfriend once told me she could spot an adoptee from a mile away. When I asked her what gave us away she said, ‘It’s not just that you’re all fucked up, it’s that you’re all fucked up in the same way.’
I’m 41 years old and my name is Christopher L. Silzer but I only found out about that a few weeks ago. This series, this voyage, is about identity, what leads up to it and how. But it’s also about other things. Things historical, philosophical and psychological. Other things too, and although less academic, still important.  Things like love, spirituality, travelling, comedy and drinking. A lot of drinking. This is a trip that is going to go back a hundred years. More if you’re sober.

I never met my grandparents, not any of them, eight in all. That’s twice as many as you, my dear reader, probably have. That’s because I have two sets. That’s because I’m adopted. And the reason I never met them was a little trifling thing known as World War Two. Kind of got in the way. I was lucky to even meet my parents. All four of them. Hell, I was lucky even to be born. That is if you consider life a precious thing, something to be sought after lustily by unborn souls. I’m not of that persuasion.

But still, life, once given, must be preserved. For better or for worse, and as long as it bloody takes. I know this because my adoptive father was a doctor. He took an oath, Hippocratic, and he held to it. Not all doctors do. Take Josef Mengele M.D. (Mentally Deficient) for example. I also know it, genetically perhaps, through my actual father who was a tree-hugging hippie peacenik back in the 60’s. Between them I know that if you try and take a life, you’re probably an asshole. Make that a fucking asshole. If you didn’t know that then why don’t you come on over and take your beating like a man.
There’s something else strange to tell about my two fathers. They are a generation apart. The hippie, my actual father, is young enough to be the doctor’s son. And me, I’m old enough, soul-wise, to be both of their grandparents. What a family we make, ages all reversed.
When your parents reach a certain age, and anyone that is in the know will tell you, you do go through a kind of reversal. You need to take care of them just as you would a newborn. But it doesn’t work the same way, it merely resembles it. The difference being that you disassemble their lives and prepare them for the grave rather than try and prepare them for the life still ahead to be lived.
That’s what happened between me and the Doctor a few months back. He was forcibly retired at the age of 84. The people working around him - secretaries, nurses, orderlies and other doctors, began to notice his mental decline. I myself had noticed it years before, not long after my mother died. But there were people that hadn’t remarked it - his patients. They always remained faithful and even though he is no longer officially a doctor, they still call him for advice.
I moved my father, the doctor into an assisted living residence not long after he was diagnosed with a cognitive disorder at the Montreal Neurological Institute - the very same place in which my mother died.
He has trouble saying the words that he’s thinking and often reverts to his mother tongue, Hungarian. He is also, being Hungarian, very stubborn. The effect on him is that he loses his train of thought and once, regaining it and then losing it again, he regains it again. Basically, what you get is a series of false starts and the effect on the listener is sheer and utter madness.
It was during this move, rummaging through his infinite papers that I uncovered the document that revealed the past to me. That told me of an alternate self.

Up until around seven, everything had gone swimmingly. I hadn’t spilt a drop of my pre-dinner gimlet, I hadn’t tripped over a single foot in the crowded foyer, and, miracles of miracles, my nylons had not shredded into a million tired strands (even after an unfortunate run in with an especially rapacious bit of shrubbery.) I was on top of my game, blending seamlessly into the occasion, mingling openly with strangers, deftly sidestepping dangerous subject matter, like religion and James Cameron. Bully for me! I could finally count myself an adult, practiced, poised, and completely undaunted. This was, of course, until I saw the setting.

My Waterloo.

There it was, gleaming softly, smug in its position on top of the linen, chock-a-block with forks upon forks, several spoons, and a strange, frighteningly fanged knife that I had never encountered in all my years of cutting food. It was going to be my undoing, for you see:

I don’t know how to eat in public.

There. I’ve said it. Now you know. Or, perhaps, if you have dined with me in the past, you’ve known this for a long time. And were too polite to say anything. Well, fine then. Now you know that I know….that you know. Yes.

Now, this fear, this angst, this crippling anxiety might well be a national blight, and I am just too self-absorbed (self-conscious? No, no - self-absorbed…) to notice. Maybe there are others of my generation who grew up not knowing how to hold a fork and knife, not recognizing a desert spoon from a soupspoon. I have a vague memory of my grandmother trying to teach me how to set a proper table, but I also recall being quite young at the time, around seven or eight, and not so concerned about the complexities of “being a good wife.”  She also tried to teach me how to knit during these years, but gave up, mainly due to a lack of dexterity on my part, and the sudden onset of a dreadful wool allergy. Bumps and rashes. And lots of mucous. Not a good look for a potential homemaker. No indeed.

My mother and father, on the other hand, seemed rather nonplussed when it came to my status as the future Mrs. Mackenzie Astin (oh, how I adored him as the rascally Andy on TV’s The Facts of Life…sigh…we going to be something, Mackenzie, you and me…) In fact, my parents’ love of all “Free With Purchase” kitchenware from the gas station made dinner time quite the guessing game. Steak knives with pasta? Plastic travel mugs for juice? Commemorative Olympic serving spoons for reaaaallly big ice cream sundaes? Sure! Why the hell not! We just completed the set with last fill-up!

When it came to the actual maneuvering of utensils, I truly don’t recall being the recipient of any discernable wisdom, save for, “don’t stab at that!” and “Hey! We use those for eating, not digging for bait!”  I knew it wasn’t nice to use your knife to make a point (I learned that the hard way), and instinctively understood one doesn’t hold one’s fork like a winching handle. Other than that, I was pretty much on my own. Growing up in the country doesn’t provide a gal with much fine dining experience. I went through most of my childhood thinking corncob holders were the height of gustatory refinement.

Upon reflection, though, I suppose there were clues to the contrary. Which generally began popping up as soon as I began to edge my way towards womanhood (a “hood” that still seems somewhat out of reach.) Like, when I was a teenager on vacation, and my older, city mouse cousin introduced me to the joys of sushi. Never mind that there were chopsticks to handle (oy vey), and tiny sake cups to delicately sip (not gulp down in one foul swoop like a shot of Jäger - be a lady, be a lady), but there were subtleties in protocol that demanded rapt attention and scholarly precision. Such as:

-       Miso shiro should be consumed from the bowl, and not spooned up to one’s mouth like common beef barley (hah! Screw you, soup spoon!)

-       to immerse your wasabi paste in your soy sauce is considered an insult to the chef’s choice of soy (and his prissy-poo creations - though he apparently won’t care one whit if you do so while eating your sashimi)

-       you may use your fingers (oh yeah!) to convey certain forms of sushi to your mouth

-       never dip your nigirizushi into the soy sauce rice first - you will insult the chef on his rice-making abilities (sushi chefs are as sensitive as 14 year old girls, one can assume.) Flip over, and lightly touch the fish to the soy.

There was also the time that I, as a freewheeling undergrad in Ottawa, dined with my Moroccan friend and her likewise Moroccan family. They took me to a lovely restaurant that screamed, “EXOTIC!!!”, but only to me, only because I was choosing to “other” another culture. Which I knew was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Given the 1990’s proclivity for all things PC and inclusive.

Right.

So I contained my excitement, over vibrant swathes of embroidered fabric and fabulously tasseled cushions (eeeee!), and followed my friend to our knee-high table. How cute! And ornate! AND HOW COMPLETELY NORMAL (nothing to see here.)  We sat, I, next to my friend’s father, as the guest of honour, and my friend to my other side. “Use your right hand for everything, your left hand only for wiping,” whispered my helpful pal. “Wiping what?” I whispered back, momentarily distracted (and secretly mesmerized) by the thin stream of water being poured into my glass from on high. But Ari didn’t have time to explain, as her parents began ordering an endless litany of dishes from the increasingly gleeful waitstaff that slowed only slightly when it came time to ask the honoured guest about her interest in wine.

Eep. See, I knew enough at the time that A) Ari’s family was Muslim and B) some (most?) practicing Muslims did not drink. But Ari was pretty moderate in her leanings, so did this mean her family was too? On the flipside, if I said no to a splash of vino, was that denying her parents a welcome respite from the endless rhetoric of two wide-eyed, change-the-world, “WOMEN, UNITE! TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!” intellectual-sophisticates? Oh, heavy hung the head that held the Guest of Honour crown.

“Um, gee, well, I dunno, I mean, if you…uh, this water is pretty spectacular, and…”

My country bumpkin was showing. Two years in the big city had done nothing to lift the pilling polyester pall of my (ill) breeding. A true urbane urbanite would know exactly what to do. They wouldn’t dare insult their meal ticket by flippantly commanding a tipple, especially if said tipple flew in the face of thousands of years of cultural sobriety. Even if that culture placed a high premium on hospitality and amenability. But then again…

“We’ll start off with a bottle of white - what do you recommend?”

And with that, Ari’s dad (and the obliging waiter) relieved me of my honourific duties. Phew. Thank Allah. Please pass the Chardonnay.

Things went great during the soup course. Ari and I were charmingly entertaining, if only slightly bombastic through salads. Once the couscous and shared mains came (complete with a ver y memorable Cab-Sauv), I was thoroughly feeling my oats (if not a shade tipsy.) This was totally my scene, digging ’round with fingers and bits of bread, dipping here, scooping there. Why couldn’t every cuisine be eaten this way? Fettuccine Alfredo could only benefit from the addition of hands (and hands could only benefit from the curative lashings of cream sauce.) You could easily pick the best bits out of paella (and flick offending, excess grains of rice at your competing diners.) Why, even a porterhouse…

Wait. Why was everyone staring at me?

“I told you to eat with your right hand!!!” hissed a now propriety-bent Ari.

“I was!!”

“Not your right AND your left! Just your right!”

“What’s the difference?!”

“Your right hand is for eating. Your left is for…dirty things.”

Dirty things? What could be…oh crap! It took me ¾ of the meal, but I got it; I was eating with the hand consigned to the tail end of things. I was eating with my ass-hand.

“Ah, shit. Sorry.”

Sadly, I was never asked to accompany Ari to anything family-related again. But I’d like to think it had more to do with me questioning her father’s stance on female imams, than eating with my ass-hand.

I’d like to think that, anyway.

But the fact is, even I have stood in judgment over the eating habits of others. Like, when this date of mine asked for chopsticks in a Thai restaurant. God, how gauche. Everybody knows Thai food has to be eaten with a fork and a spoon. Or at least that’s what this other guy told me over a shared plate of Phat khi mao.  He and I didn’t last very long. I hate culture bullies.

It works the other way too, when admiration, nay, envy come into play. A particular turning point in personal etiquette came after an evening of watching a comely steakhouse diner sing for her supper. She was very obviously on a date, laughing at the slightest provocation, tossing her hair, lightly touching her dining companion on the arm - you know, the usual shtick.  What got me, though, was her expertise with silverware; this lady understood the power of good table manners.  Holding her fork in her left paw and her knife in her right, she began (almost) imperceptibly sawing away at her filet and veg. Keeping eye contact with her man, she slowly (though not too slowly, as to make a whole production out of the thing) brought the fork up to her mouth. With tines turned in, she slid the meat between her lips, smiled, and…OK. This is starting to sound weird. What I am trying to get at is A) she didn’t so much seduce in order to eat well, as use eating as a form of seduction and B) I became aware, for the first time, of the “continental” style of dining.

Who knew they did it differently on the continent? And here I was, juggling my gear like a chump. Making sure I had enough stuff sliced on my plate so that I could free up a hand (knives may not be used for emphasis, but fingers are perfect for proving your point.) All this time, I should’ve been holding on to my utensils for dear life (or at least for the duration of the meal.)

This woman made the act of chowing down look so effortless, so sexy, so refined. I won’t even begin to get into what she did with her napkin. I wanted, nay, needed to learn her ways. So I gave it a shot - I palmed the fork and kept my hold on the knife. I cut, I lifted, and gazed knowingly at the man across from me.

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! ARE YOU HAVING A STROKE?” squawked my Uncle Ernie. “Harriett, go tell your mother you’re not feeling well. I told you not to order the fish here, but did you listen? No. No you did not.”

Sigh. He never got my name right.

So fine. Family dinners were obviously not the place to test out new and exciting ways of conducting one’s self. But if not there, then where? Things only got worse when I moved to Montreal. Though I managed to get through grad school relatively unscathed (drunken, late night bagel runs didn’t require anything but a steady hand with which to pay the counter lady) it was when I started working that my shortcomings became glaring apparent. Yet again. They always find ways of showing up, don’t they?

After a particularly long and arduous day, my colleagues and I decided that a nice dinner was just what the doctor ordered. Since it was going to be on the company’s tab, it was just what my accountant ordered too. We breezed into the resto, the Maitre d’  snapping to attention with the appearance of eight young hotshots (with cash to blow) at the door. He sat us in prime real estate, and swiftly brought a round of complementary aperitifs (as a general rule, it is good to get hotshots drinking early.) We all took a cursory glance at the menu, zeroing in on the items we’d rarely order when left to our own line of credit. The wine came fast and furious, and the stress of the last ten hours began evaporating like so much good sense after a long stretch of working under the hot, unrelenting sun.

The bisque appeared and disappeared without much ado (”Bisque? That requires a….spoon. Yes. Good. Scoop away from myself and everything will be allllllriiiigh…ah, phooey. I hope this comes out of silk…”) Then the roasted endive, which caused only slight prickles of sweat (”The sections are cut lengthwise, like spears of crudités, so, technically, I could eat them with my fingers. Sure. I’ll own it, make it look cool.”)  A bit of bread was nibbled (”which plate is mine? Ah, who cares-I’ll just share this one…”) and then, the entrées.

Those prickles of sweat? Yeah - they joined forces to become a veritable Niagara Falls.

All of my other tablemates began tucking into their elk or bass or

lobster roll-ups with shaved white truffles bedded on a saffron cream reduction, nimbly wielding their utensils without the slightest deliberation on their (very continental) technique. I, on the other hand, sat frozen with dread.

“What’s wrong? Did they mix up your order?”

“Um, no….”

“Did you find a hair?”

“No, no.”

“Madame ? Y a-t-il un problème ??”

“Non, non. Tout est parfait. Merci.”

I had to start eating. Mainly because everybody was staring. But also because the bisque and endive were doing nothing to sop up the tanker spill of alcohol now flooding my system. So, I reached for my knife and fork. And then promptly let them clatter to the floor.

“Whoopsy!”

Smart thinking, huh? That gave me a few more minutes to…

“Aucun problème, Madame. Voici un autre ensemble d’ustensiles,” murmured the waiter, hovering over our table like a well-manicured vulture.

Yes. OK. Back in the saddle, then. What did it matter how I ate? So what if those who dine with refinement get further ahead in life? Who cares if I look like one of those sign language apes out on a day pass? Bet they’ll think it’s cute if I eat “mash-up style”, starting out on the continent, and ending up lost somewhere in the Ozarks. It will be refreshing, to see someone breaking the mould.

That was, of course, what I kept telling myself throughout the meal. I tried not to notice, as my co-workers glanced questioningly at my plate. I blinded myself to what they saw-the mess, the massacre, the bits of braised matter spattered Jackson Pollock-like around my place mat. “They’re soused,” I mantra-ed, “they won’t remember this tomorrow.”

But I did. I remembered. And I still do.

Because unlike an unfortunate memory that softens in perspective over time, this inability to dine kept rearing it’s uncouth head anew. It turned up in all of my other business lunches, on-the-job dinners, and heinous pre-work breakfasts (it takes a special kind of crazy to stomach job talk while hammering back runny eggs and cardboard toast.) Practice at home did nothing to stem the burgeoning tide of my paralyzing angst. I’d prick my lip with salad tines. I’d send potatoes skittering across the table with a single cut. I’d get heart palpitations after the fourth failed attempt at conveying more than three peas to my mouth. That sign language ape? I bet she’d have mastered this by now…

Which brings me back to the beginning. Of my story. Remember? That egregious setting. That immaculate sheen. My Waterl….oh, OK. You remember. Good.

I sat down at my assigned table, ready to disappoint all who had, in the making of my acquaintance, mistaken me for a fully functioning human. I nodded hello to the lawyer to my left, the politico to my right, and hoped to God that the much renowned (and quite revered) TV journalist seated kitty-corner wasn’t hiding a spy-cam in his tie clip.

“Your soup. Bon appetit!” the (bastard) cater waiter cheerfully sang out.

The horror. The horror.

I waited for everyone to be served. I stared blankly at the four spoons, their spindly stems pointing menacingly at me, all silently screaming, “J’accuse!!” I contemplated asking the politico for a Xanax (those kids  - they’re always on something.) And then…

Like a ray of light, like a beacon of hope, like a happy, long lost memory from another lifetime, I remembered something.

There is a rule of etiquette that supersedes all other dining traditions. You want to know it? This could be of help to you. All right. Here it is:

When in doubt, follow suit. Pick you mark, and watch what piece of cutlery they choose. Then see how they use it. Then, do the same. Sound simple? It is. However, there is a caveat. Should that person commence eating with the wrong utensil intended for the course, you must also do the same.

That’s right; if the first guest to start eating screws up, just go along with it. Eat that radicchio with your seafood fork. Butter your roll with a switchblade. Or, in my case, start sipping your soup with a desert spoon.

I had to. It would have been impolite, otherwise.

Guess they don’t teach table manners in journalism school.

When my friend Karen adopted her daughter Jessica from Haiti she knew that she would face challenges. The problems adjusting to a new life, to a school where she was one of the only black children were to be expected. Jessica’s terrible insomnia made for many anxious nights for her mother, and a divorce tested the limits of Karen’s resilience. But through the years it was apparent that Jessica was growing up into an interesting person with a ribald sense of humor, and a sharp intuitive sense of people. However, it is one of the most intractable problems that Karen faces that has made me think about the difficulties of raising a child from Haiti in an almost all white environment and neighborhood: the problem of language. And I am not referring to what we Quebecers usually mean by “the problem of language” but rather something much closer to a universal human concern: how to give children the language to speak their experience. In any family this is a delicate issue. How do we speak to our children? How do we model for them the right words to make sense of their own lives? And how, as in the case of my friend, do we do so when the child’s experience is so much different from our own, where we may inhabit the same household, but where we live in very different worlds.

Over the years, Karen had noticed that her daughter resisted any talk of Haiti. She did not seem interested in knowing more about her origins and would say “I don’t want to talk about it” when Karen pressed her. The recent tragedy in Haiti brought this issue to a head because Karen honestly didn’t know how to speak to Jessica about her feelings. When she tried, she encountered the resistance she had grown so accustomed to. Finding common ground was always difficult because Jessica was acutely aware of the difference between her and her mother. “We’re not the same. We’re so different. We don’t even have the same last name,” she would tell her.

But, being a modern mother, she had been “friended” on Facebook by her daughter.  Two things on Jessica’s Facebook page caught Karen’s eye. One was that she had, like many people, posted a request on her status that people send funds to Haiti. A common enough request, but perhaps one that held more meaning than meets the eye. She had also posted a link to a YouTube video, part of an Oprah Winfrey show in which a mixed race girl discusses her inability to fit in to either the white or the black peer groups in her school. In the video, the girl talks about her loneliness; and Oprah, true to form, comforts her by offering inspirational messages of support from mixed race celebrities. Jessica seemed very moved by the video, and it quickly became apparent why. Of course she didn’t identify with the black students in the video because, for her, the most important link was not with the students of the same race, the ones who looked like her. They were not facing the same struggle as Jessica because they had a group to call their own. The mixed race girl, like Jessica, found herself between worlds.

Jessica’s identification was not racial but emotional. Soon after seeing the video Karen was able to take a step in communicating with her daughter when she said “When you don’t want to talk to me, it makes me feel lonely like the girl in the video.” It was a small breakthrough, but Karen could see that Jessica had understood. Hearing this story makes me think of what challenges the adoptive parents of international children face. The child can’t simply model her language on the parent’s language. The words — “family,” “home,” “different,”  “friends,” “black,” “white”– don’t mean the same things. But I think that children in these cases try to forge their own language with what is available to them. They will join the chorus asking help for Haiti, even when there may be far more at stake for them than they can say. They will insist “We are different” when a parent’s love wants to say “We are the same.” They will look for mirrors, even if what is being mirrored is not their face but their heart. My friend’s experience has opened up far more questions than I can answer. I would like to hear from those parents who have adopted children from around the world. How do you give them the language that they will use to shape their experience? How do you learn to read their sometimes enigmatic codes? How do you find, or create, a language between you?

I knew it wasn’t my imagination. For too long I lived away from Montreal, but since 2001 I have spent summers here, sitting on terrasses and drinking in life on the street. Over the years I could swear I’ve been hearing more English spoken downtown, on the Plateau, even in Outremont. Recently I stumbled on a Gazette article from last November (http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/anglo+revival/2204478/story.html) claiming a 5% increase in the Anglophone population in Quebec since 2001. The article features a young couple from New Zealand who were charmed enough by Montreal to make it their permanent home. Now what I am about to say is sheer speculation, but I am willing to wager that a significant number of Anglos coming to Quebec are part of a kind of reverse diaspora of those who could not finally overcome their longing for Montreal. My girlfriend and I are two of those who returned after finding life elsewhere wanting.

The idea of a wave of Anglo Quebecers returning to the roost pleases me, not just because it is always nice to be part of a movement, but because I think the reverse diaspora illustrates a previously unseen affinity between French and English speaking Quebecers. The philosopher Eric Santner has observed that we do not truly share in a way of life when we agree with its values and codes of conduct, “but, rather, when we are, as it were, haunted by its spirits.” Since I can remember, the constant undertone (and frequent keynote) of the language debate in Quebec is the sense of hauntedness by the possibility of a loss. French Quebecers experience their language — the great cultural treasure — as something threatened, something that always seems about to disappear. Another group of people who have experienced an equivalent loss are Quebec Anglophones who have left Montreal. A quick poll of ex-Montrealers in Toronto or Calgary would quickly reveal that the loss we suffer when we leave Quebec is obviously not a linguistic loss (since we end up in English-speaking provinces or in the United States) but a cultural loss, a loss of Quebec culture, in all its glorious impurity. When French Quebec feels haunted by an impending loss of their language, they are not anticipating a loss of a vocabulary and a set of grammatical rules, but of a way of life, a very specific way of being in the world. It has to do with how one finds happiness, the role that beauty plays in urban space, the way relationships supersede profit, the understanding that an ungraspable quality of elegance makes life worthwhile.

For Francophones, the French language stands in for all of these values. For Anglophones, Montreal stands in for the very same values. Francophone Quebecers fear the loss of this quality. Anglophone Quebecers who have fled west have actually experienced the loss of this quality. When we return — and my intuition is that we are returning — it will not be as a political threat to French Quebec, but as people who have lost the same treasure that Francophones fear losing. Having lost it, and found it again here waiting for us, we want to preserve it, protect it in partnership with Francophones, the only other people in Canada with whom we share this great cultural hauntedness.

I am about to offer a jaundiced vision of James Cameron’s Avatar, and I feel a bit like the guest who kicks the magician at a children’s party. I will certainly see Avatar again, if only to revel in the hallucinatory flora and fauna, the waterfalls tumbling from mid-air mountains, the leonine beauty of the Na’vi’s faces. I am more than excited by the possibilities of the technology that had to be invented to make this movie, technology so dazzling that had it been used to make a movie about talking squirrels colonizing Neptune I would have been equally impressed. In a strange way, the breathtaking CGI of Avatar serves the same purpose as the use of black and white in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List: it is an index of the film’s moral seriousness. After all, if we are to narrate the moral fairy tale of how an edenic world is protected from evil, it is desirable that the audience be drawn as deeply into that world as possible, and it is the job of technology to draw the viewer in. It is the particular mode of this drawing-in that gives me a moment of hesitation. Like the film to which it is often compared — Dances with Wolves — Avatar is a film that stands and falls on its moral message about our relationship with the cultural “other,” the fellow being who irresistibly demands a kind of moral responsibility of me. In the case of Avatar, this moral responsibility extends beyond the Na’vi to mother nature herself, as threatened by the incursion of the human mechanisms of death and destruction as the beings who dwell in her embrace. Avatar, in short, offers a moral message about what is owed in way of respect, protection, even love to the racial and cultural other. The problem is that in order to present this racial and natural other as worthy of our love it must be eroticized to the nth degree. Nature in Avatar is a bright and irresistible candy store of desires. It is nature that you want to run your tongue over. Much the same can be said for the blue temptresses of the Na’vi. Outside of pornography I don’t remember ever having seen camera work that took such delight in the spectacle of perfect bodies. What Marlene Dietrich’s face was for Sternberg, Na’vi buttocks are for James Cameron. Don’t misunderstand me: I am in favor of eroticizing anything from sunsets to iphones to pudding. It becomes a problem when the imperatives of moral duty become entangled with the libidinal pleasures of erotic fantasy, because then the cultural and racial other (the immigrant, the aboriginal, the stranger) becomes worthy of my care and concern only insofar as he awakens my fantasy. The nature we want to save in Avatar is not the nature of viruses, dirt, and predation but a creamy, fruit-flavored, perfectly consumable product. In the same way, there is nothing of the Na’vi that might make us uncomfortable, that might challenge us to see beyond ourselves because the Na’vi are pure reflections of our own unattainable desires: taller, stronger, healthier, more beautiful. It is as if Cameron could not trust our ethics to awaken unless it was prodded by our lust. And is this not the challenge of any multiculturalism that aspires to ethical seriousness? It is not to the degree that the other dazzles me, makes my pulse beat faster, awakens in me desire and longing, that I should attempt to build a peaceable world with him, just as it is not only a tarted-up version of nature that deserves protection. The other whose presence disturbs my equilibrium, the stranger, the sojourner, calls for an ethical response that is decidedly not titillating. It is made up of small accommodations, legal debates, everyday decisions to thwart one’s own fearful hostility. This work is hard enough without also demanding of the other that he arouse my desires. As I said, I will certainly see Avatar again. However questionable, a thing of beauty is a thing of beauty quite apart from its truth value. Besides, with the pace of technological evolution, I’m sure by this summer Avatar will be old hat and we will all be dazzled by the adventures of the talking squirrels colonizing Neptune.

I returned to Montreal in 2008 after fifteen years away and my homecoming has made me think about the idea of having a place that I call home. I admire those modern day nomads who seem to be able to pull up roots and live anywhere, but I until recently I haven’t fully understood them because it seems that they have either learned to live without holding some true home in their heart — and I can’t believe such a thing — or they have learned to carry the possibility of home with them. And by this I do not mean that they carry bits and pieces of their home with them — the idea of the business man travelling with a picture of his children to put on his hotel night table — but that we carry with us the power of turning where we are into a kind of outpost of the home we love.

When I left Montreal in 1992 the first thing I did after landing in Tennessee and going to my hotel was to sit and weep at what I had lost. Later in 2001, when I went to Fredericton, I spent my first full night there sitting and smoking outside the closed up bus station downtown because it somehow felt like the closest place I could find to Montreal. But eventually I found a way to call Nashville and Fredericton home. And now that I have returned to my true place in the world I understand how.  My memories, my images of what was beautiful and what made me happy had been created and fixed in me long before I left Montreal, and so I went to find the spirit of Montreal wherever I could, even if that spirit were only a fleeting moment. The farmer’s market in Fredericton is no Atwater Market, but the sense of community was there, the happy overproximity of people, the crowd from which a friendly face could always emerge. In Nashville there would be concerts in Riverfront Park, and on certain warm summer nights filled with music the turn-of-the century warehouse buildings along First Avenue would make me think of walking down Rue de la Commune in Old Montreal. I found myself recasting the world in the colours and shapes of Montreal: the way a streetlight illuminated a doorway, a storefront that reminded me of a depanneur in Outremont, a dash of architectural brio in a Nashville highrise at night. And sometimes, even in this city to which I longed to return, I find myself remembering my adopted cities and those moments of happiness. And now I understand those brave souls who leave their homes to start afresh. They too find the unexpected flashes of their old home in their new one. They find those moments, give them space, and in the end, give themselves, or give themselves back, a world.

I was most excited about the cake. From what I heard, the big finale was all about the cake. “It’s normally large and white and there’s a plastic baby in a compromising position on it,” said my friend. Wow. How could you beat that? Pre-all-of-this-activity, I had seen cakes of this description in a few Montreal bakeries, and had wondered, in my sanctimonious ignorance, what the hell they were for-the birth of an infant? I thought it quite cruel, as a baby straight out of the womb couldn’t really eat anything solid. He’d be forced to stare on, in terrifying black and white, while his beast of a mother (unfairly equipped with teeth and a mature digestive track) greedily stuffed a piece of this layered heart attack into her maw. “This is what all the late night crying is for,” I thought. Revenge.

I had also seen a few of these window-wanton, girthy temptresses blessed with a large, blue frosting cross. “For fans of Christianity,” I surmised, just as a child in love with Spiderman would ask for a birthday cake festooned with cobwebs.

Upon learning the gospel truth, I must say that I was a bit confused. I mean, really-you’d order a cake to commemorate the washing away of original sin? Kind of a dour use for all that sugar and lard, no? A lentil stew, maybe, or something dignified, like three fingers of scotch-now those had the gravitas to mark God’s first disappointment in man (and man’s subsequent attempts to get out of the perennial dog house).

I managed to come to terms with things quite quickly however, as I didn’t think it fair to judge other, perhaps, less-advanced cultures on their unique ways of relating to the world. Furthermore, I did not want my disdain of irrational, antiquated traditions getting in the way of any potential, diabetes-inducing fun.

***

“What does a gal wear to these things?” I asked my boyfriend, Monsieur T., the would-be godfather of the proceedings. “I dunno-whatever a woman normally wears to church, I guess.” Looking up from the pants he was pressing, he could see by my expression that his glibness wasn’t going to cut it. “Well, nowadays in Quebec’s churches, you’ll see everything from jeans to miniskirts to sweater vests. Nobody really dresses up for Sunday services anymore.” Noticing that my face was still screwed up like a constipated toddler’s, he continued on:

“After the Quiet Revolution, the people here just stopped going to church. They stopped getting married, they stopped going to their priests for advice, they stopped taking part in the traditions that conventionally bound family and community together. They found other ways bond, to connect, to do things and get things done. The respect and fear and wonder that held them in check for so long just ceased to be.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, always ready to engage in debate, even with the scantiest knowledge of the issue at hand, “I see people going to church all the time in your neighbourhood.” Did Petite Patrie escape the Quiet Revolution? Judging by some of the fashion found around the area, it wasn’t crazy to think that this place had all but dug in their heels at the advent of 1962.

“Well, firstly, we’re close to Montreal’s Little Italy, and a lot of the older generation of Italian-Canadians still centre their lives around the Church. Secondly,” and at this, Monsieur T. had to wave his hand in front of my face to snap me back to attention, as my mind had already wandered off into the ricotta-filled realm of mini cannolis.

“As I was saying,” Monsieur T. pressed on, “this particular neighbourhood, which was once considered very ‘working-class’ Quebecois, is now populated with a lot of Latin Americans, Dominicans, Cubans and Portuguese. They have their own history with Catholicism, and their own ties to the Church.”

I couldn’t fight him on that. With all the new taquerias, cevicherias, and busy, late-night barbershops sprouting up (with requisite spill-over of young, preening, sidewalk lotharios), I had jokingly begun referring to his part of town as “Spanish Harlem.”  It made me giddy to think I could easily get a hit on every corner (and before you start accusing me of being a racist bastard, understand that I am only referring to the extraordinarily strong, tiny sweet treat of Cuban coffee-let’s keep it clean, people).

With thoughts of churros and cannolis and thimble-sized caffeine bombs sashaying around my head, I went to sleep, gleefully anticipating the big sugar payoff to come.

***

The next morning, we dressed (having both escaped the lure of the miniskirt), and made our way along Beaubien Street to church. There was signage here and there on the lawn, advertising youth programs, basement bazaars, and concern for the state of my soul. “How nice of them,” I thought (but really, they needn’t worry). We were some of the first attendees to arrive, only “out-earlied” by the man of the hour, Lil’ C, and his super chill posse of two (otherwise known as his parents).

The kid was looking cool and collected in a pair of ivory cotton pants, a crisp white dress shirt, and a matching, v-neck sweater vest. He was perfectly kitted out for a swank beach wedding, or prepped to step in should a spontaneous cricket match erupt.

It turned out that Lil’ C was not the only one egging for some holy attention that day; he up against three other baptism contenders, primped and set to get their worship on. There was “Disgruntled Chef Baby,” with his white silk tunic and puffy, toque-like hat (I don’t think he dug the hat), “Baby Liberace,” in his gleaming, all-white, all-satin suit, and “Cater Waiter Baby,” whose parents, I suppose, had already concluded that their child was going to grow up to be an unsuccessful actor.

After a few preliminary greetings and hand-shakings, Monsieur T. and I scooted into a pew, close up to where the action would happen. We had Lil’ C (and crew) in front of us, and his beaming grandparents to the back. “Padded foot rests-neato!” I whisper-shouted, raising my tired heels up from the marble floor.  “Um, no-those are for kneeling and genuflecting,” corrected Monsieur T., already questioning his decision to invite me along.

“Tout le monde, en arrière, s’il vous plaît !”

And with that, we followed the priest-a young, Mexican padre with an obvious pasión for electric blue robes–and his flunky to the back of the church (which I thought was odd, since we had just secured our seats and gotten comfy).

While we all were busy elbowing for a good place to stand, the priest rallied the fathers around to ask what they required from the Church. “Bapstism,” responded every dad-every dad that is, save for Lil’ C’s. Lil’ C’s pop came back with, “Bonheur,” or happiness, which was pretty shrewd, if you ask me; ride the coattails of the other christenings, and then get in a little something extra for your own kid. Now that’s a dad who’s thinking.

El Padre, relatively satisfied with the answers he received, kept on with the show. Intoning what sounded like a refrain from La Isla Bonita, he doled out four quick signs of the cross. The tots did not appear impressed with his haste, and at least one (I’m looking at you, Chef Baby) threatened to start crying. That was probably the game with the highest stakes that Sunday-which baby was going to cry first. One tiny outburst would undoubtedly set off a tidal wave of wailing which no bottle, binkie or boob could ever hope to halt.

Trailing the priest back to the front (he was quite good at leading us about–perhaps in seminary they’re forced to moonlight as ushers), we pushed back into our seats. Lil’ C got a bit excited over the commotion, and started attacking his mother’s earring. Unable to let go of a good thing, he was swiftly passed off to his dad.

A Sunday school lesson on the rights and requisites of a baptismal ceremony ensued, complete with “raise your hand” questions, prolonged silences and embarrassed, clueless giggles from the peanut gallery. El Padre explained us about the sacraments, the vestments and the oil (I still don’t get the part about the oil), and then, upon sensing restlessness in the crowd (you really can only go so far with vestments), our consummate Master of Catholicism asked for a volunteer from the audience.

Being the closest contender in reach, Lil’ C was picked first to get off the bench. There was scuffle in my pew, as I had the godfather to left of me, and the godmother to the right. Mom, dad, Lil’ C, godparents, El Padre, and church flunky all rushed to gather around what appeared to be the holy washbasin. Up on stage stood a Dominican, a Thai and a Jew (just kidding-there’s always a Jew in these things…) and a Quebecoise who swooped in around a solitary microphone and started singing something about glory and maybe God. It was hard to tell. One of them was banging the crap out of a tambourine.

Lil’ C’s little head was positioned directly above the steel basin. El Padre commenced murmuring…something to the effect of a blessing, or a curse, or a passing criticism, stopping only to ask mom n’ pop (and god mom n’ pop) pertinent questions about the state of their ward’s nine month old soul. What he found out must’ve pleased him, or troubled him, because he proceeded to hold up a white scallop shell to those of us in the audience. He then used said tool of divine seafood to both scoop and pour wash bin water over Lil’ C’s head. Now, to El Padre’s credit, he performed this rite so that the water (which I really hope was clean, what with all the viruses and parasites going around these day) would drip in a thin stream off the back of Lil’ C’s noggin. And let it be noted that Lil’ C was holding his own-not exactly thrilled to be there, but, like a big boy, he wasn’t about to break. He wasn’t, that is, until Monsieur T. stepped up to the plate.

What was required of the godfather was to follow El Padre’s lead and pour a little symbolic dribble onto his godson’s head. And so–

Into the water went the empty shell.

Out of the basin came a laden scoop.

A move was made, to get closer to the child.

Then closer, and closer still, until…

SPLOOSH! gushed the water, all over Lil’ C’s face.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH,” cried our brave little soldier. “BWAAAAHHH,” answered back his compatriots. Men began exchanging dollar bills under their hymnals. Women began sighing and rolling their eyes. I burst out laughing, and Monsieur T., momentarily chagrinned, made the smart decision to smile, shrug, and get on with things.

After all, there were three more babies in line, with their own shaky-handed godfathers to deal with.

The ceremony continued, with some candle lighting, a whole bunch of standing and sitting, a quick turning ’round to shake hands pour donner de la paix (I didn’t understand what was required at first, and didn’t offer to shake with anybody-my fellow pew pals looked a bit put out), a little singing combined with a few futile attempts to block out the tambourine. This was all terribly interesting, yes, but what absolutely stole the show (and my breath away) was the man who I will describe for you in the next sentence. If you can stand to wait for a few minutes while I take this phone call. Just….one….Hi, mom? Yeah, I got the coupons in the mail…thanks…no, no, you already told me the thing about the cat….no-really, I’m not just….sigh….

…

OK. I’m back. My apologies.

So, who was this fabulous creature? I don’t know. Why was he there? You got me. What possessed him to preserve his scuba-tight shirted, balloon dress-panted, slick fade with eight-inch rattail glory for all these years? I wish I knew. Perhaps he was divinely informed. Maybe he was a huge fan of Cameo. Whatever the case, this beefy gentleman strode right out from (church) stage left, and straight into my (once aesthetically bored, now slightly less so) heart. A baptism miracle, he was. Right there, in Petit Patrie. I couldn’t have been happier…

…oh yeah. And the rest of the babies got water splashed on them too. It was all super spiritual, and stuff.  Truly…..but for real, people-that dude was amazing! He didn’t even have a function! He just stood around, occasionally drifting over to the folks with the tambourine, maybe telling them to cool it….I dunno. Bouncer of the flock? Nah-too chill. Priest understudy? Could be, but then El Padre would’ve been best advised to step aside. Not for nuthin’, but 1986 was in the house, ripe and ready to be praised. Word up! Er, I mean, Hallelujah!

***

Back at Lil’ C’s crib (which is funny, see, because he’s a baby, and “crib” is slang for…yep, well, you get it), we all gathered round to devour a bit of brunch. I have to say-have lox, have bagel, expect a stampede to the buffet table. People can’t get enough of smoked fish these days. I was holding Lil’ C, walking him around to get kissed and coddled by the feasting throng. During a lull in the cooing, I asked him how he felt, now that he was clean of Adam’s curse, with a new lease on life, accepted into the Church, etc, etc. He didn’t say much (being more of a laconic gent), but his gurgles and drooling spoke volumes. You could tell that this was a new man in my arms, well on his way to the next stage of personal development. Which would include walking. And eating strained, not pureed peas. Yes, big things were just around the corner.

As for the cake? You didn’t think I forgot, did you? Well, sorry to disappoint, but there wasn’t a plastic baby cake. There wasn’t a crucifix dolled up in blue icing either. But there were mini-cannolis. And in the final analysis, isn’t that what we’re all really looking for? Just a simple bit of pastry, to shove into an ever-expanding spiritual void?  Yes, that sounds about right.

Amen, brothers and sisters. Amen.