Pizza Man

For decades,  he made his living making pizza. Selling it by the slice at outdoor fairs and exhibitions across the country. He travelled the summer circuit with his portable pizza parlour. It wasn't unusual for him to sell 600 pizzas a day at the big fairs, like the CNE in Toronto.

When the grounds closed each night, he fed
 the carnies their fill of his pies. That way, these midway gypsies who travelled the country alongside him, would look out for him, keep watch over his pizza wagon after hours. They lived in trailers onsite; he and his family stayed outside the gates during their downtime.

I met him at the take-out counter in a local pizzeria. He was buying, not selling. He no longer sells pies on the circuit. But he still loves pizza.

The Hairdresser

When my hairdresser arrived in Canada in
1990, she spoke Polish, Russian and Italian. Not a word of English. She was 20 and had just fled her native Poland with her mother and younger brother. Their departure hadn't officially been an escape. After all, The Wall had come down a year earlier. "But we weren't exactly free to leave," she said.

When the trio arrived in Toronto, her mother immediately got a no-English-required job working in the kitchen of a friend's Italian restaurant. But the restaurateur didn't have a second vacancy for the younger woman. What else might she do? "I am a trained hairdresser," she announced to him in Italian. He happened to know the owner of an upscale salon in the city. After an interview – in Italian – the salon-owner gave her a chance. Her clients didn't realize she couldn't speak English.They just thought she was shy. She didn't take ESL lessons because the classes conflicted with her work schedule. She learned the language by watching TV.

Many things in Canada baffled her. Supermarkets in particular.

"I couldn't believe it. People weren't fighting over food." In her homeland, the shops never stocked enough, so neighbours would turn against each other over something as small as a stick of butter. She and her brother took shifts outside the store, lining up for three days to make sure their family was at the front of the line on the day the shelves were stocked. One day, she mysteriously arrived home with two packages of butter in her grocery bag. She still doesn't know how it happened – but she knows her family celebrated.

Today, her English is perfect. She is the most stylish stylist in the rural Ontario salon where she works. Her husband doesn't understand why she still hoards food.

The Walker

Every day, she shuffles along the sidewalk from her house to my driveway. She stops chez moi and executes a creaky about-face turn before beginning her return trek. Her house is just around the corner, a two-minute walk for most of us. For her, though, it's a good 45-minute outing, an exercise in navigation and stabilization as she pilots her walker the 200 meters between our homes.

The first time I smiled and waved to her through my front window, she looked a bit baffled, but she eventually waved back. Now we smile and wave whenever she stops in front of my house and I happen to be in the window.

Photo: http://yearofthepigstudio.wordpress.com/

Sometimes, if I'm out and about, I'll happen to pass her as she's hobbling along the street. I smile and wave. She always looks a bit baffled to begin with. Then she smiles and waves. We've started saying "hello" – her in her language, me in mine. Early in December, with a lot of pantomiming and a few chuckles, she advised me which bough would be best for the final Christmas bauble I was hanging on my Mountain Ash tree.

She is about four-and-a-half feet tall. She always wears bedroom slippers that are too big for her. Sometimes she talks to (or puts a curse on ... I can't tell) the bushes along her route. I don't know her name or anything about her ... other than she is part of my neighbourhood.