The basement was kind of spooky to me. It had these wood-paneled walls that I can still smell when I think of the thick layers of varnish on them. There were these two hidden rooms. The doors matched the wood paneling, so when they were closed, the doors blended seamlessly into the walls. One room was a very small and cold concrete pantry, where my mom kept her canned goods. I was convinced E.T. lived there and could never go in with my eyes open. The second door led to a room we called the “Gun Room”.  It was a really dark room with one dingy exposed light bulb that you'd have to turn on by pulling a string, and even with the light on, the room remained pretty dim. There were two wooden work tables that outlined the room, with these manual machines on them to make shotgun bullets for when my dad would go hunting. He'd reach into a box to pull out a red or green cartridge, then would place the cartridge in its slot, he'd fill the bottom with some kind of powder, topping it off with little lead pellets. He would then push down the red and black lever to tightly seal the opening. I'd observe the crimped bullet and think about how the indentations in the seal resembled a perfectly portioned pie. When he wasn’t looking, I'd fill my pocket with pellets and stick a few pellets in my mouth, sucking on them throughout the day. They tasted funny. I’m surprised I didn’t get lead poisoning from how often I would do this. And when my dad wasn’t home, we’d sneak into the “Gun Room” and fool around with his shotguns and remote-controlled race cars. Doing all the things we were told not to do.

The basement had one more room that was long and narrow, maybe 6 feet wide by about 30 feet long. The concrete floors were painted gray and when you turned on the lights, they flickered for a few seconds before illuminating the room with a cold, white light that made a consistent buzzing sound. It was a full-blown cat mill. My dad bred and sold exotic cats, and there were maybe a hundred of them stuffed in there. These cats weren’t in the greatest shape and had all kinds of problems. They were always sneezing, their eyes glued shut from infections, they’d constantly have putrid smelling diarrhea, that would be matted into their fur, and some days we’d go in and they would be dead in their cages. Some of the cats were vicious, and I'd often have all kinds of super itchy scratches all over my arms and legs. My dad used to force us to go in daily to feed them and clean the litter. We would hold our breath running in and out of the room for fresh air, or we’d tie shirts around our faces to mask the smell, pre-plan how we were going to do this, and then run in to tackle our mission as quickly as possible. At the same time, we’d have so much fun making up these games, where we’d put all the cats on one side of the room and then race them across. (Fun for us, not the cats) We’d often get the opportunity to watch them give birth, which was this exhilarating experience. Each time a kitten popped out, we’d run upstairs to tell my mom, “Another one, there’s four now!”  I think eventually most of the cats died and some were sold.

My mom had asthma and was allergic to them, she struggled a lot, but that didn't stop my dad. After the cats, we had hamsters and rats. After that, we had hundreds of birds, which my mom was also allergic to. Oh yeah, and at some point there was this one time where my dad told my little sister to choose between a pet opossum, or an African monitor lizard that was the size of an alligator. It would watch us sleep at night, sizing us up to probably eat one of us. Later on in my life, my dad decided to stop with the animals and moved on to collecting junk. We had multiple thirty-foot cargo trailers full of antiques and garbage. I think you can get an idea of what was happening here. We constantly lived in a hoarding type situation that was not normal to the average person. 

My sisters and I would spend a lot of time playing in and around the house, making up all kinds of other worldly, adventurous stories that we’d fully immerse ourselves in, as kids usually do. But to say we were sheltered, may be an understatement. I always thought it was "normal", but as I got older, we all started to realize that we weren’t really exposed to other children or the outside world all that much. This ultimately resulted in us being pretty antisocial and only hanging out and being able to communicate with one another. It would upset my dad that we didn't need to use fully formed sentences to communicate with one another. It frustrated him that we had this unspoken connection that often made him feel left out.

"in a nutshell: papa & mama."

My father was a complicated man. He was born in Lebanon and immigrated to Canada when he was a teenager. He was the oldest boy out of ten children. His mom was only fourteen years old when she was married off and had him. My dad only had an elementary school education, before he had to start working to support the family. He was basically illiterate for most of his life. I remember having to often read things to him, or formulate emails for him, but eventually he slowly learned enough to get by. I think the kind of Arabic he grew up speaking in Lebanon was a very old, song-like, poetic version, similar to Khalil Gibran. So often, when he would give advice in English, it came out in parables and analogies that left us scratching our heads, trying to decipher. But his lack of education didn't stop him from being one of the most knowledgeable "street smart" individuals that I have ever met.

My mom is this mysterious, complex, wise but simple and beautiful woman. Like a creature from Greek mythology, she's this resilient warrior. (She's probably laughing and rolling her eyes as she reads this.) She grew up in a small farming village in Low Quebec with two brothers and a sister. She has an education, and is really intelligent, but very humble. She was always there helping us with our school work, staying up all night trying to learn, so she could then teach us the next day.

Once our nanny left us, that was when we were put to work. My parents were entrepreneurs, and throughout my early years they owned a few different restaurants. However, my only real memories are at the pizza shop and the chip truck. My dad used to send one of his pizza drivers to pick us up from school every day, and we'd spend the afternoons and evenings there. I was maybe six or seven years old, and we'd be put to work. Nothing crazy, only small tasks to start, like building hundreds of pizza boxes, setting the tables or cleaning and peeling potatoes by hand. We'd sit on buckets in the back parking lot, hand peeling one by one, then tossing them into a bucket of cold water, so they wouldn't start to bruise. My dad would often instruct us to stay out of the way, so we tiptoed around trying to be helpful - but also trying to remain invisible. "Sorry Papa," We'd whisper over and over, if he ever caught a glimpse of us. "Sorry."