This lesson came home to me a few years ago when I was showing a friend of mine from Japan around Montreal. I have come to the terms with the fact that I am constitutionally incapable of showing people this city without beaming with enthusiasm and pride every moment. We had just visited Notre-Dame Basilica and were walking east toward Place Jacques Cartier. I was pointing out the architectural highlights along the way and telling her that she was in for a treat when we got to the old port. She looked at me curiously, and with a teasing smile said “You act like it was you who built all of this!” I admit that, just for a moment, it slipped my mind that I hadn’t. Reflecting on her good-natured jab, it struck me as odd that this city, whose shape and mood reflects the work and plans and aspirations of thousands of people, many of whose bones are now dust, seems to me to be particularly mine, seems to belong to me in a way so undeniable that somewhere in my dream world I think that am magnanimously sharing this city with all of you who do me the compliment of living here. I think this is what Jacques Lacan meant when he said that our desire is always the desire of the other. We claim others’ desires as our own. The world that others built to suit their particular vision is the world that we know we would have built if the job had fallen to us. We desire and dream as we do because others desire and dream as they do. This insight offers, I think, an important perspective on immigration and what it can mean to say that we live “together.”

On the last day of the Olympics I sat anxiously with my brother, his girlfriend Maru, and her two sons Jorge and Juan Carlos as we waited for the Canada-USA hockey game to begin. Maru, her two sons and her daughter (also named Maru) are from Mexico and have lived in Canada for more than five years. They have availed themselves of all the educational opportunities that have been offered. They have learned French and English well enough to work with the public, and they continue to plan for better things. Maru is taking training under Canada’s Action Plan to return to the job market after a layoff, she is practicing her graphic arts, and Carlos is planning to study philosophy at Concordia. During the game, Maru was often too nervous to watch, so she sat in front of her computer screen finding the latest tally of Canadian Olympic medals. More than anyone in the room, she was intensely excited that Canada was one gold medal away from setting an Olympic record. She reminded me at least twice that this summer she would be eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship, and her children soon after. She and her children were staking their claim to Canada. Carlos said “In Mexico we like to beat the Americans in soccer, but they usually beat us. So now, we are Canadian and we will definitely beat them in hockey!” All afternoon as the game unfolded, the talk kept coming back to Canada, the medal count, how well we had done, and it became clear to me that Maru and Jorge and Carlos talked about Canada in a way that I never would. It was a pride unmixed with cynicism. Their anticipation of citizenship was the anticipation of a great gift, a transformative gift. As they spoke I could almost see my internal image of Canada changing, from a place where I live to a place where others dream of living. And when Crosby scored the goal that will take its place alongside those of Paul Henderson and Mario Lemieux I don’t know whose whoops of delight were the loudest. But we all settled back together into that happy exhaustion of relief that follows a brush with overtime terror. They had just undergone a truly “Canadian” initiation.

Perhaps it was the momentousness of the Olympics, the feeling that our experience of ourselves as Canadians was being transformed by the gaze of the world. Perhaps it is just the joy of a hockey victory, something never to be underestimated in Canada. But I had the sense that day of how much our own lives are entwined with others. It is as if my experience of being Canadian — dulled and washed out from overuse — is renewed and refreshed by listening to those for whom the word “Canada” is the promise of a future. And, apart from all the practical economic and social arguments for why immigration is a boon to a country that invites new citizens, this one resonates most powerfully for me: our country is more our own when its meanings are not just for us, but for others. It is more our own when, viewing it through the eyes of new citizens, we see unguessed dimensions that have always been there, but invisible to us. It is more our own when it is our gift to others, and their joyful acceptance of it their gift to us.

Shortly after I was brought to Montreal from Calgary by a social worker named Grace and introduced to my new adoptive parents , the Doctor and L, the subject of my new name came up.

Carrying a little red suitcase, like some kind of precocious Dickensian moppet, I approached my father and mother, waiting anxiously outside their apartment door. I stuck out my hand in greeting and said something to the effect of, ‘Is you the new parents then is it? Me name’s Christopher, wot’s yers?’

‘Dyess Christopher, pleased to meet you. Zis is mine wife L. und I am called Endre. Doktor Endre. Please to come in.’

It was a real meeting of the minds it was.

They dragged me off into the kitchen and started trying to indoctrinate me immediately as to my new identity. All three of them, the social worker, the new father and the new mother. I was no longer Christopher L. Silzer, forthwith I was to be called baby boy Doe until the new name was decided upon. This needed to be expedited for governmental reasons.

They first threw out at me the name Michael - in true Jewish tradition, I was to be given the name of my father’s father. I rejected this because it sounded gay to me. At the age of three I was already a homophobe. Little did I know that Michael derived from Hebrew means ‘He who is like God’. What a dumb little shit I was!

Next, they shot Peter at me. I thought about that for awhile before giving them the nod. Peter it was to be - the rock, the stone. Here it was, I could have been a God but reduced myself to a mere pebble.

So that done with, I was no longer Christopher L. Silzer, not even baby boy Doe - now I was Peter M. Gonda. But it don’t end there. Next came the add-on Hebrew moniker, just to make sure you’re a Jew, because we don’t want to have any doubt about that, especially when the Nazi’s come out of hiding to lay claims on your measly hide. That just won’t do.

And so they called me, again, after gramps, Eliyahu. For the goyim amongst you, that would be the alcoholic prophet that comes by every Passover night and drinks all the left over wine. Hey, it could be worse. A friend of mine got saddled with the name ‘Shmeriyoohoo’. Sounds like a fucking chocolate Jew drink for Christ’s sake. As if things weren’t bad enough.

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.

And he hopes his new film, “Moloch Tropical,” which just screened at the Berlin Film Festival, will help change that.

Director Raoul Peck, who was also once the country’s culture minister, says he knows the world is watching — and thinking — about his native country now, following the January 12 earthquake that killed thousands and left the capital city of Port-au-Prince in ruins.

Even though he’s taking advantage of the world’s attention, he wishes there could be a deeper understanding of his country, a more nuanced view of the Caribbean nation.

“It’s very uncomfortable to be in a place of a victim in the eyes of the rest of the world,” Peck told CNN in Berlin. “Showing ‘Moloch Tropical’ shows another side of Haiti.”

He said that it was important for him to be in Berlin to “give a different view of what people might think of Haiti.”

That’s especially true when the only information being spread about Haiti is from news snippets in the wake of catastrophe, he said.

It’s very difficult “for anyone else to understand that this is a normal country — with its problems, with its moments of happiness. It’s a mixture of all of these,” Peck said.

Catastrophes trigger the world’s emotion and solidarity, but “when [they're] not in the news anymore, things don’t get the same support,” he told CNN.

“My fear is that when the lights go out that nobody will still be at their side.”

Relief funds were raised for the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, at the recent screening of the film.

Shot on location in northern Haiti, “Moloch Tropical” is a “political marker” about power in Haiti over the last half-century, he said.

It chronicles a despotic president’s final day in office. Peck called it a fable about what happens to democratically-elected leaders after they assume power.

He said he hopes the film will shine a light “on the struggles for democracy that have been burning” in Haiti for the past three and a half decades.

Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier declared himself president for life in 1964 and ruled Haiti as a dictator until his death. Since then, successive governments have been marred by instability, overthrown and deposed by military coups a number of times.

In the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake, everybody is trying to do whatever they can to help, Peck said.

“I’m active as a filmmaker. I’m active as a person of culture, but I’m active as well as a citizen,” said Peck, who returned to Haiti a few days after the earthquake struck.

Peck has put Haiti on the international film map. His 1993 movie “The Man by the Shore” was the first Haitian movie to be released in U.S. theaters and was the first film from the Caribbean to compete for the top award at the Cannes Film Festival.

He’s lived around the world, including in France, Germany, Zaire and the United States, but served as Haiti’s minister of culture for a brief period in the late 1990s.

His decision to enter politics was part of a collective effort in 1996 among a group of like-minded individuals who wanted to institute much-needed reforms in the country, Peck told CNN.

That government experience is one he hopes will aid in the rebuilding effort.

Peck said he wants to bring together the many individuals he’s been involved with in politics and civil society over the years to “improve communication, coordination.”

“What I know I can do is to bring those wheels together and to try to build something stronger,” said Peck.

Like for many others, the devastating earthquake took a personal toll on the filmmaker. He lost friends as well as an uncle and a cousin.

There is a long road ahead for Haitians, he said, and it will take a united effort to rebuild the ravaged country.

“I hope that we will be able to forge a united Haiti to be able to speak with one voice and that our voices are heard in this huge reconstruction that we will have to face.”

But he also expressed optimism that film would help bring people together and play an important role in Haiti’s future.

Haiti has a very “vivid” cultural life and there are many cinematic projects going on, he said.

“Haiti is not a world aside, a world apart,” Peck said. “Culture and imaginations have always been part of our rebirth.”

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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.

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.

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.

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?

Police say about 100 protesters, many dressed in black balaclavas and masks, broke away from a larger group and started smashing shop windows and vandalizing cars along West Georgia Street.

At a news conference in Vancouver on Sunday, the Vancouver Police Department described the group as a “criminal element” among the legitimate protesters.

Many activists who have been working for years on things like affordable housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside expressed dismay at the actions of those over the weekend.

“I was really disappointed. We’ve done a lot of work around protecting free speech,” said David Eby with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

“If the feedback I’ve been getting from activists is any indication, they’ve not only turned off the public, but a large segment of the activist community with their tactics.”