Recently on a seven-hour train ride (to Montreal, to see the magnificent Paul McCartney in concert, scream!), I took out my computer and spent hours deleting old files. But as I went through the very long list, I discovered a bunch of short pieces I’d written but never sent out. It’s always hard to know where to send pieces; it’s a job in itself to submit, and submit again. So sometimes, pieces simply get written and saved and forgotten.

I didn’t want to just delete these unpublished pieces, so I decided to share them with you.

Short pieces are now known as flash nonfiction. Google defines flash nonfiction as “a literary genre of very short, compressed narratives that are powerful, meaningful, and often revelatory. Typically under 750 words, it focuses on a single, intense moment to explore a deeper human experience, using concise language to create a significant impact.”

All good memoir should “create a significant impact,” but sometimes that’s harder to do in few words. Here are two of my attempts. They’re what I call My Smalls.

The Photograph

457 words

I look at this photograph, taken almost forty years ago, of a good-looking man in a kitchen with his two small children. There’s a dribble spot on his sweatshirt. He must have hated that. He hated mess, was the neatest man on earth, perhaps because he needed control. Since he’d not been able to control much during his childhood, he firmly controlled the neatness of his clothing and his desk. Spotless, always.

But then he had to contend with a wife and children who made messes. This was difficult.

The woman who took this picture is thirty-five-years-old, married to this man, mother to the little ones. She is struggling to do a good job. Although she has no idea what she’s doing, she’s trying her best to support her beloved young husband, who is thirty-two and a workaholic, a man who cannot give enough at the workplace and so has little left to give when he gets home.

She has a toddler son and a four-year-old daughter who is a force of nature. She could not adore these children more, goes weak with love for them, for him, for the whole setup — unimaginable, her, the outsider girl who hardly dated and then only the wrong men — here she is, married to a beautiful successful man with two beautiful children in a city where her husband is running a big local theater.

And she, former actress, has left work and friends behind, is trying to finish her writing degree, is trying to finish a thesis about her great-grandfather, is trying to figure out what has happened to her.

She is so happy, she can hardly believe it. But her voice, breathy and high, does not sound like her voice. Her friends notice, but she doesn’t. The man is annoyed with the chaos, the mess, the noise. It does not occur to her to ask him to help. He’s making the money; she’s doing all the rest. This kitchen is her domain. There is nothing better. Just look at what she has. What luck. What joy.

There are dishes in the sink, clothes to wash, groceries to buy and cook. There’s that drool spot to dab from his sweatshirt. His face is peaceful, and he is looking at his children. But he is not really there. He’s getting ready to go back to the office, the place that makes sense to him, where he’s in charge.

In the photograph, there’s a bib apron tacked to the wall behind him, a humorous gift to the wife from an old friend in France. “Bonne à tout faire,” it says. “Victime de son amour pour le patron.”

The wife has fastened it to the wall rather than wearing it.

“Maid who does everything,” it says. “Victim of her love for the boss.”

The lament of the downtown cyclist

685 words

One sunny Saturday, a friend proposed that we ride our bikes from my central Toronto neighbourhood down to the lake. I was horrified. City streets were too dangerous! I used my bike only to meander around quiet local side roads. But we went.

That was thirty years ago. That day, I discovered the pleasure and freedom, mingled with terror, of city bike riding, and have been doing so ever since. Fourteen years after that first ride, when my children finally left home, I sold my car. I couldn’t afford to keep it just for me; the family that bought it, newly arrived from Bosnia, needed it far more.

I’m now 74 and ride most days, except in the worst weather. I do still miss the car, especially in February. Every day when I get home from an excursion, I’m grateful to have made it back alive. But still I ride.

A car hit me once. I was cycling through an intersection when the light turned yellow, and an elderly driver turning left smashed into me; she hadn’t even seen me. I wasn’t wearing a helmet but luckily did not hit my head, did have contusions on legs and arms and wore a sling for a while. I’ve been more careful at lights since, and wear a helmet. I’m a defensive old lady rider now, slow and careful.

So the downside of biking is possible injury and death. Also being cold and wet in winter, hands and toes freezing, and unable to carry heavy or bulky things — big bags of birdseed or plants. I rarely get to visit friends or shops in far-flung parts of the city. That’s it.

The benefits of riding far outweigh the negatives, except if I end up being injured again, or killed. I love getting exercise in fresh air. My turquoise Norco, made in Canada, is silent and non-polluting; the only fuel it requires is muscle and breath. I can jump on at the last minute to head somewhere, knowing parking at the other end will not be a problem, or traffic either, as, passing steaming lines of cars, I sail along the bike lanes installed by the city for my safety. I use them all the time: Bloor, Danforth, Wellesley, University, Dundas, Adelaide, Richmond, sections of Gerrard. There aren’t nearly enough of them, and most are not, in fact, safe; few sport actual concrete barriers, and in any case, they’re often blocked by delivery trucks or by construction. But they’re much better than nothing.

Because of gridlock caused by the lack of reliable transit, the explosive growth of the Uber/Lyft industry, and construction taking over streets, drivers are frustrated and angry. There’s been a huge increase in speeding and other dangerous illegal behaviours, like running red lights. Riding is now far more risky, and that’s not factoring in the exponential increase in other vehicles — fast delivery motorcycles and electric bikes and scooters — that feel free, completely unregulated, to charge along in lanes supposedly reserved for bicycles.

But now our provincial government, whose first job, you’d think, is to keep their constituents alive, is going to rip out some of our bike lanes. They aim to pacify their motorist base, who, tucked safely inside their thousands of pounds of metal and glass, are willing to accept a few cyclist deaths if they can get home three minutes sooner. The issue of inadequate transit remains unaddressed. If only our premier would visit Paris, which has a phenomenally efficient transit system, but has also created an impressive network of separated bike lanes on many roads. New York, London, Vancouver, and Montreal have done the same.

Each bike, goes the thinking, is one less car. Surely fewer cars is the goal?

I want to continue to ride, because, along with the printing press, the toaster, and the remote control, I think the bicycle is among mankind’s greatest inventions. But now, I see I was wrong. The bicycle, and bike riders, are problems to be eliminated.

According to the province of Ontario, we cyclists, wobbling along on our slender two wheels, are Public Enemy #1.

I sent the bicycle piece to the Toronto Star op-ed page, to no avail. So, readers, where do you think these flash pieces could have gone, if anywhere? Any ideas?

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