Lucia Frangione

Wow. It just dawned on me that I am coming up for five years single this spring. I remember hearing five years ago that it takes five years before one is fully ready to get back on the horse again if they wish to. I have to concur, that feels about right. I am planning two massive road trips, inadvertently, to celebrate the dawn of a new era. I am going to Italy with one of my best friends for three weeks and before that I am driving to San Francisco and then Disneyland with my daughter Nora. When I…

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I return to the apartment I was cleaning yesterday and I am starting to feel sheepish about being so judgmental. I tackle the kitchen today and it is four hard hours of scrubbing and fumes and I’m only half way done. If. A migraine starts to brew. I hope I am wrong. I am waiting for it to pop. I just can’t do those heavy cleaners. As I mop up the huge spills in the fridge, the mould, the muck…I start to become very concerned about this client’s health. I think of how little she is and how devastating botulism…

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I have to clean a new apartment today…and it is disgusting. How can people live like this? So oblivious to what they’re doing to their environment? Everything is caked in grime and dust. The tub is black with hair dye and exfoliation gunk is clogging up the pipes. The kitchen is so covered in grease it takes me two hours to scrub the stove top alone and I still can’t get some of it out despite my elbow grease. My boss tells me to use heavier cleaners. They give me a headache and a cough. No sign of recycling. She…

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I see Ed pushing his grocery cart through the lumps of icy snow left along the sidewalk just outside my house. He looks wet and chilled and his face is understandably bunched up into a dirty laundry knot of miserable. I call out – “Ed! How you doing?” – happy to see him after so many months (he was the fellow who helped me move in and then shared with me one of his beers) He stops, looks at me, startled, then nothing registers except annoyance. He keeps going, slightly shielding his cart from me as though I might steal…

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Last night I was around music that was so overwhelming it made us all jump right out of our seats at one point. It was part of a two hour performance. The sounds were necessarily overwhelming for what they were trying to achieve and largely dissonant and disorienting. It very effectively gave me a glimpse into what it might be to have intense sensitivity to sound that some with ASD have – the whole point.  After the show I needed to go sit in a dark place alone for a while. I didn’t understand how others could mingle around and…

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Bill left us today and he’s on his way back home after opening a big complicated show and working himself into a blinky scruff dreaming of his tropical getaway. He was gentle and kind and easy as pie to be around. My old dog preferred to sleep on Bill’s rug, not mine. The cat came in for many a cuddle. Animals are a good judge of character. As he shuffled out the door with his bags, he gave Nora a high five and me – he handed me – a kettle. First of all, he has already overpaid me for…

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I crawl along the dark suburban streets of Delta, squinting to see the address and notice Alexei waving his arms all jumping jacks with a smile, his living room lit up like a stage in the dark snowy night. This must be the place. Alexei is my Russian translator and he’s originally from one of my favourite cities in the world: St Petersburg. He’s invited Nora and I over to meet his wife and to read some of his translation to me. He opens the large door and greets us. We are late, of course, but we bring cupcakes and…

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The biggest thing to report is a bubble bath wherein a ping pong match was played with paddles and a ball and much splashing. It was a squishy fit but Nora said, “Probably I will be too old to ever ask you to have a bath with me again, so…now’s your chance.” She had a bubble wand and potion in a vial and blew big glossy globes that hung in the air like late summer can linger…quite glorious…and the bubbles would make a soft landing on our slippery limbs and shiver there, waiting, just waiting to pop. I hope I…

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I forgot about “it”. “It” always comes. No use waiting for “it”, I don’t know what “it” is or when it will decide to arrive. The only way to prepare for “it” is to be healthy, have an updated resume and live life with open eyes. My history will prove that “it” always comes. I have seen this wide open year as a worrisome failure somehow on my part. I must be doing something wrong. I’ve been very unkind to me. The things I’ve said I would not say to my worst enemy. Why? Why do I get all military…

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It’s Valentines Day and a full juicy sexy moon dangles over the city of Vancouver all decked out in her diamonds tonight. The evening is so warm, I don’t even need a jacket. I am on the phone with a dear friend who has a new delicious lover and she went on and on, insisting that I should get one. He will come.  The liquor store is full of people who are either getting laid or getting drunk and a musician plays out on the sidewalk beside his skulky pit bull, “don’t worry about a thing, cuz every little thing’s…

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