Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. ~Dalai Lama

After exiting the Arctic , where we lived for three years, give or take, I applied for a job from an ad in the Globe & Mail Newspaper.  A recruiting firm was looking to hire a House Manager for a wealthy family; let’s call them The Roses in Toronto’s Rosedale.  Eagerly, I applied for the position thinking that I had the attributes mentioned in the ad.

I made the cut.

At the end of the first interview with Braun the hiring manager, I asked him why they picked me out of the three hundred applicants.  He said they liked both my creative leaf-art at the bottom of my resume as well as my military experience.  Both sides of the brain.

Braun had spent the better part of a dozen years working for the Eaten Family and he knew the kind of person that would do well in this job.  Detail-oriented, strong work ethic, well-spoken, able to foresee disasters and their solutions, appreciative of wealth but not themselves wealthy and, let’s not forget, approval-seeking.  Yep.  I had all of those qualities.

After the second interview with the agency, I was told I would next be going to the offices of Mr Rose to be interviewed by him.  I made sure to have a sturdy note pad, and a good pen.  I donned my navy blazer, blouse and skirt.  For the first time I was missing my military uniform which made wardrobe decisions so easy.  In my mind, I was a Captain heading to a meeting with a General.  Just putting it into perspective.

It went well.  I could tell Mr Rose was happy with my confident eye-contact, my note-taking and my questions.  My seriousness but also my quick smile.  I even managed to negotiate my salary up to the next notch, which I could tell both amused and impressed him.

He told me that the next step would be to visit with his family.  Meet them, tour the houses and property.  Get an idea of the scope of the job.

I had been told they were a Jewish family.  Knowing nothing about the Jewish faith, I sought the opinion of a Jewish acquaintance.  He said my visit would be during one of the Jewish holidays – Rosh Hashanah.  I was nervous about being the House Manager for a family with a completely unfamiliar faith to the one I had known growing up.  I was bound to make mistakes, even subtle ones, just because I had no idea.

At the time, I was reading a book by Deepak Chopra.  In this book, he advised to always show up with a small gift when going to someone’s house.  Wise advise, I thought.  I picked up a small box of chocolates and made sure they were kosher.  I donned my conservative attire and grabbed my sturdy note pad and reliable pen.

I drove into their estate in my 3-cylinder shit box I called ‘Puny’.  The same one I had bought before driving the six days from Comox, British Colombia to Borden, Ontario in 1988 almost all the way across our huge beautiful, empty country of Canada.

The house was modern and grand.  I knocked on the door and smiled gently as I was met by Mrs Rose.  I passed her the little box of chocolates and made nicey-nice while she showed me the huge kitchen and writing nook where she wrote her cookbooks.  Then Mr Rose took me to the other house which backed onto theirs. His 4000 square foot Man Cave.

The door opened to a dining room with a chandelier bigger than me and a table which sat twenty-two.  Enough said. The place was perfect.  A lot of brown, gold and beige tones with the odd hint of deep burgundy.  Very mannish.  He told me, and this was important, ‘I want this place to always be absolutely sublime‘. K, I didn’t even know what sublime meant back then. The first thing I did upon getting back to Scarberia (North Beaches really but, whatever) was look it up.

Sublime: Perfect, without blemish.

I was sweating. I knew I could do this job, but, did I WANT to?  It sounded like a lot of bullshit to me.  My mind imagined my days on that property.  Worried about every little thing.  I was completely stressed just thinking about it.  When Dean and I had traveled to Australia, we had seen the movie: The Remains of The Day.  Was I meant to be a glorified Butler / House Keeper; a combination of both Anthony Hopkins’ and Emma Thompson’s characters? Was I to walk around with a feather duster and white gloves?

Then, the call came.  Braun the Hiring Manager was dressing me down for bringing a box of chocolates to the interview at their home.  He told me it was inappropriate.  Mr Rose had mentioned it and said it was like I was trying to ‘butter’ them up to hire me.  Geez.  This guy was a freak.  I wasn’t even hired and he was already disappointed in me.

phone boothI remained silent when Braun stopped speaking.  I was in a phone booth in the village of Magnetawan on Ahmic Lake, near The Camp in Cottage Country of Ontario.  It was a gorgeous early summer day.  I looked at the shiny water near the locks.  I looked at the nodding heads of the wild flowers growing in every possible crack or fissure.

Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish.

flower

I took a deep breath and told Braun that I was no longer interested in the position.  I said, ‘If Mr Rose is that worried about a proffered tiny box of chocolates, I don’t think I can work for him.  I don’t want to work for people like that. Sorry.’

Braun was speechless.  He had invested a lot of time in me.  He would have to start over. ‘You mean, you don’t want to work for The Rose Family?  At that salary?  Maybe I can get you more money, M.’

‘Sorry, Braun.  I can’t do it.  It’s not for me.’

I walked away from that phone booth feeling a massive weight lift off my shoulders.  I felt like I had dodged a bullet. Next, I went for a swim in the shiny waters Lake Cecebe.

Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish.

clip

(All but the first picture comes from Google Images.  Thank you! The dock and chair was taken by my fabulously talented sister, Eva. xo)

A Buttertart and a Kiss

A hastily eaten homemade buttertart leads to an unexpected ‘meeting’ 👄

It was 1997 and we were living just North of the North Beaches of Toronto.  Yes, okay, we were actually in Scarberia, but, whatEVER.  We were there because hubby was attending a school called iti: Information Technology Institute, downtown Toronto.  (We had just spent three years above the Arctic Circle.)

With my two older sisters and Mom just a couple of hours drive away, and me without a job, I would travel down there each week or so to visit them and their families as well as to go see Mom. Mom was in a nursing home suffering with Pick’s Disease (basically, the same symptoms as Alzheimer’s) and was almost completely non-verbal by that time. She was, however, in fine physical condition, a fact that played with our minds. She could walk for ten miles, no problem, yet, she didn’t know us and she couldn’t speak.  It was hard.

Mom loved chocolate milkshakes. I would pick one up and while she worked away on it silently, I would drive to a park so we could go for a walk. Those times were very sweet but heart-breaking at the same time.

Deepak

In those days, we were all reading Deepak Chopra: QUANTUM HEALING; THE SEVEN
SPIRITUAL LAWS OF SUCCESS; AGELESS BODY, TIMELESS MIND; and PERFECT HEALTH. Eva, Amy and I would discuss the concepts at length and do our very best to incorporate the thinking into our lives.  So, when it became known that Deepak Chopra would be speaking at a nearby venue, we were overjoyed and quite excited about the idea of attending his talk.  We got tickets and eagerly awaited the big day.

(Now a days, good ole Deepak is friends with OPRAH and ergo, thus, therefore quite famous.)

On the day of the Deepak talk, I drove the couple of hours to Eva’s house and arrived at her door to find her in the middle of finishing off a second batch of her world famous (okay, not WORLD famous, but potentially…) home-made buttertarts.  They were little individual pastry cups filled with a gooey mixture of butter, raisins and brown sugar. Mom had taught Eva how to bake when Eva was a girl.  Mom had been an amazing baker and could whip up a pie or a fruit crumble, a cake or a batch of cookies pretty quickly, from scratch. Let’s not forget Mom’s sugar pie. Neighbours would lean in and whisper to each other about it, their knees weakening as they spoke. It was mouthwatering and the stuff of dreams. Never under estimate the power of a French-Canadian’s sweet tooth!

I asked Eva why she wasn’t ready and she explained that there was a death in the family of a friend.  She needed to drop off some buttertarts to the grieving family after the talk. Could I take a tray in my car and she would pick up our other sister Amy and meet at the venue. Okay, sure, I said.  I took the tray of precious buttertarts.  That was my first mistake.  I laid them on the passenger seat.  That was my second mistake. Backing out of her driveway, I headed down to the talk.  It was about half an hour away. The buttery sweet smell in my car was overwhelmingly mouthwatering.  My stomach began to grumble.  I salivated a little as I looked at the tray of buttertarts.  Oh my, they were beautiful little items. The aroma of the fresh baked, still warm buttertarts was torture. Breakfast had been hours ago.

Playing the radio, I tried to distract myself by singing loud and off key to all the radio songs like Tanya Tucker’s remembering our family sing-songs featuring this very song:

Delta Dawn what’s that flower you have on?
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?
And did I hear you say he was ameetin’ you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky
She’s forty one and her daddy still calls her baby
All the folks around Brownsville say she’s crazy
‘Cause she walks downtown with a suitcase in her hand
Lookin’ for a mysterious dark-haired man….

It wasn’t helping.  Now there was drool spilling out of the corner of my mouth.  I pulled up to the parking lot attendant window and was permitted into the lot.  I then reached over and grabbed a buttertart, and,

put

the

whole

thing

into

my

mouth

Oh my god. It was incredible!!!  My eyes rolled back into my head.  The pastry was flaking all over my lips and down my chin.  But wait, was that Deepak CHOPRA getting out of his car right there???!!!  Holy shit.  It WAS Deepak.  I swiped at my mouth.  I stopped the car, and while chewing furiously, rolled down the window. Deepak Chopra was walking over to me because I was waving at him with both arms like an idiot.  He probably thought I was choking and that he would have to save me.  He is an M.D. after all. My mouth bulged with buttertart.  My lips could barely contain the delicious crumbs. The dark and mysterious Deepak was at my car door but I still could not speak due to the god-damned delicious buttertart that I was still masticating furiously.

I did the only thing I could do.

I opened my car door.

Climbed out and threw my arms around Deepak Chopra, getting a whiff of his spicey, exotic cologne.  Then…moving slightly back from him, I looked into his deep, piercing, intelligent yet peacefully dark eyes as my crumb-coated lips somehow met his.

He was obviously accustomed to women throwing themselves at him.  He wasn’t the least bit flustered.

At this point, the remainder of the buttertart was in my cheek and I was able to say something completely asinine:

Oh my god, I LOVE your work, Deepak!!  You are an amazing writer!!  You are doing wonderful things! You have helped me so much!  If I wasn’t happily married…

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

His response:

Okay, okay.  Calm yourself.

His hands motioned me into relaxation and I nodded and smiled at him with crumbs falling out of my mouth.  (Attractive?  Most definitely Not!) I moved my car to a spot and berated myself for making such a fool of myself.

His talk was riveting.  He stood at the edge of the stage and for two hours spoke about his books and his theories on life and health.  I was really glad, by then, that I had eaten a second buttertart after pecking Deepak Chopra on the lips.

tabby tongue
Yum!