My Mother, My Father, My Pen

By Sacha Bissonnette

I’m one of those writers who needs to nail down a title before moving forward with a piece. I know that there are many better writers out there who have left their masterpieces untitled until they’ve penned the last sentence. It’s a mental thing, a hang up thing, but without a title, without those few words, I feel like I have no direction. So I called my mother. We came up with this title together. Some of the first poetry I ever picked up was her own; from time to time, I find myself drifting back to the images of Memories of Sunflowers.[i]

My dad left when I was twelve. He was leaving for Thailand. Canada wasn’t doing it for him anymore, not Ottawa, not Montreal. He blames capitalism. Capitalism was my Trini mother to him. She didn’t have a capitalist bone in her body, but he blamed her. Still does. I miss him from time to time, but I also miss his VHS collection. That was my first love. Before writing, before girls, it was the boxset worlds of Mad Max, Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones.

My dad had always traveled, prided himself on the places he’s been, notches on a belt. He regaled me with grand tales, hanging off Mont Blanc, sleeping in garages in former Yugoslavia in ’89. Discovering this, being first to be there. And until I was eighteen I ate that shit up. And to this day I still have that travel bug. That travel gene.

He settled in Hanoi. I took my first trip there at thirteen. Alone, flying as an unaccompanied minor on Cathay Pacific. I was nervous for many reasons. I had something like an eight hour layover in Hong Kong and met a cute Polish girl that was way more mature than me (15 years old) and asked me how far I’d gone. I took a picture of her and cherished it for way too long.

When I got to Vietnam, my dad was busy most days. He had to work and in all honesty I don’t know if he knew exactly what to do with me. He did know that I loved film. That I had started committing every movie I’d seen to memory, naming actors and directors, like extended family members. He introduced me to a new type of video store, where the pirated DVDs of the last twenty years made up entire shops and cost one or two bucks. My dad had about 300 of them. Half of them were shit and skipped. He’d leave for work and I’d watch DeNiro films for like eight hours straight. I’m thirty three now. I calculated that I’ve seen over 4000 films. That must be some sort of education right? Right!?

I went back to Hanoi at eighteen and then again at twenty seven. Before I started writing fiction ‘more seriously’ I decided to blog a bit. Throw up some creative pieces on Instagram. I wrote this about Hanoi. I was testing the waters. Seeing what my pen could do:

‘About 1 km from my apartment on Nguyễn Đình Thi street there is a place I have unoriginally named “lover’s lane”. I pass this lane about twice during the day and twice throughout the evening. Next to the Cuban Embassy, this palm adorned street/spot faces a wide opening of west lake and the buildings on the horizon. On this particularly cloudy day I came out to snap a few pics before the dusk rush. On nicer days when the sun goes down, this is one of the many spots where late teenage and young adult couples come to cuddle up, two by two, comfortably using their parked motorbikes as seats. Sometimes they snack, sometimes they talk or just chill in silence. When families live together and there are certain taboos regarding relationship and love before marriage, places like lover’s lane and Long Bien Bridge (designed by the same architect as the Eiffel Tower) provide a cheap alternative for a little romantic escapism and privacy which unfortunately is a privilege here and often comes at some cost. Maybe it’s culturally tantamount to the drive-in cinema I’ve never experienced, a screen being replaced by cellphone streaming. Whatever it truly is, it’s unforgivingly romantic.’

During COVID I started building fictional stories out of the places that had inspired me. Trinidad, Hanoi, the Family Cottage in Quebec, The American South. I also fixated on scenes from films I loved like Moonlight. I’d build flash fiction out of an image then build out from there. My first story “Leeches” got accepted at Litro and my next one “The Thick Of It” at SmokeLong. Haven’t stopped since.

I’m about to jump on the train to the Toronto International Film Fest. I like the window seat, I can zone out and build stories set in forested areas and small Ontario towns. I saw an old dilapidated building near the railroad tracks last time. I thought of the man living there, collecting little bits of food and whatever sustenance. Every night he’d have to battle a rat or some other gang of rodents that would come for his food. He would plead with them, talk to them, learn about them. These are the strange stories, from the depths of my imaginarium. These are the same grounds of Munro, Atwood and Andre Alexis, the latter, an Ottawa Trini like myself.

I’m looking forward to entering the beautiful theaters, grabbing popcorn and rye and ginger. Cameron Bailey might introduce the films, the directors, the actors. Right before the curtains I’ll think of the VHS collection. Then my shutters can go up and the world outside that theater can, if not disappear, diminish.

On the train back, I’ll call my mom tell her about what films were good and run some new crazy ass ideas by her.

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[i] Memories of Sunflowers by Joanne John

In the front yard she planted sunflowers
whose nodding brown faces and outstretched arms I ignore
each time I take the steps two by two
I thought of rooting them out last summer
Leaving them crooked and helpless in the dirt
Then for a moment I saw her crouched in the sun
muddy hands shielding her eyes
squinting against the brilliance
smiling hope, and promise to stay alive

There is a corner in the kitchen where I grow tentative herbs
in clay pots,
for seasoning in recipes I create to dazzle and disarm
to sate the longing in my stomach
to quell my furious heart 
Sometimes in desperate moments 
I lie clothed in the bathtub and look
at what she might have seen as she waited
feeling the thin streams of her life run pale red
around her

In this house full of cracks
Where the wind sneaks in whistling
I wait for winter
when snow spreads over and tucks in under moist ground
when memories of summer and sunflowers sleep

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