sunday sunday

Our usual Sunday feast with the grandparents was followed with a trip to the Junction for a stroll and a poke around Pandemonium, a favourite used book store. I like the Junction. My parents hung out at the movie theatre that was there in the 1950s, which I think was the area's heyday. We looked at houses there not long after Stella was born, but we despite the rooming houses, abandoned storefronts and generally high grit factor we were still outbid on even the humblest semi. Ah Toronto. It's been a forgotten pocket of the city ever since, likely because of a wacky no-alcohol bylaw from a hundred years ago that no one thought to change until recently. But businesses are finally moving in - there are now two solid Indian restos, a Thai food place and an organic burger joint in half a block - and it feels like Queen West in its pre-Gap days. You know, before the chain stores move in and the old buildings are renovated beyond recognition.

Anyway, there we are at the book store and I'm finding gold I tell ya, gold: An original Mother Goose, a Velveteen Rabbit, an oddball collection of children's letters to God ("My name is Sharon. I am in third grade. I live in Seattle. One thing I would like to know. Do you like what you do now?). I also picked up this Mr. Rogers Golden Book because even though I never watched Mr. Rogers as a kid, I was teaching Stella and Henry the won't you be my neighbour song earlier in the morning, and as a believer in fate not coincidence I couldn't pass it up. Turns out to be a pretty good tale: Henrietta gets bent out of shape at the idea of someone new moving into the neighbourhood. She feels threatened by the arrival of flashy Colette from Paris and ends up in a self-defeating spiral of negativity. It all ends a little too conveniently, if you ask me, but I applaud Mr. Rogers for approaching the subject - the possibility that people might like someone else more than they like us - in a way that feels real and honest - even if Henrietta is a cat walking on her hind legs and wearing a dress.