Finding fresh ways to write timeless truth.
Well, we slogged our way through another week (That’s how if feels. Just keeping it real.). Friday arrives fat with promise and intention to spend a day puttering at home. Seems like another good opportunity to look back at the week that was, because despite the weight that feels so heavy it was rich with
It’s hot. Kamloops summer hot. Oh, how we love it! I head to the garden early to harvest beautiful tri-colour beans. Back home I wash, snap, blanch, and tuck them in freezer bags. I sit on the deck and read what was once my favourite book (The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder). I lost
We take a walk in my favourite park—the one where ghosts of boys playing baseball and girls wrapped in pink toddle in and out of a building that’s no longer there. Gerry’s been sick and to combat cabin fever we drive across town to the park rather than down the hill to church. Worship looks
A buzzing sound—what is that buzz, anyway?—is the only distraction in the den where I sit cozy under a Sherpa blanket sipping coffee in the company of words. It’s there every morning, that sound. I’m used to it by now and tune it out most of the time. It’s the light, or the cable box—something
This summer’s fits and starts sputter into motion again this morning. We are home after a weekend away in which we watched our granddaughter perform in a play (and witnessed the pure joy on her face during the curtain call), enjoyed an afternoon rock hunting on a remote beach with our daughter and granddaughter (something
The week does not unfold as expected, but it falls in a pleasant way, nonetheless. I spend mornings writing, and after lunch and a chess game, we go out and do something together. One afternoon we pack our camera gear and go on a quest to photograph the Arrowleaf Balsamroot—a bright harbinger of spring in
I spend a silent and solitary day at home: writing, reading, potting flowers, staking tomatoes, and watering plants. But it is that moment when I’m standing barefoot on the grass in the backyard watering the tea garden and breathing in the gentle scent of lilacs that is, perhaps, the sweetest. I drop the hose, walk
The sun is shining and birds are singing. It’s early, but wise ones have already come to walk in this park. Some are in pairs, many more walk in solitude. They are taking good care of both their physical and mental selves. Me, I sit in my car. I’m waiting to pick Maya up from
We enjoy a light lunch at home after church, and a game of chess. Two games actually. I protest that carrots have distracted me and kept me from concentrating adequately on the game: Maya asking for more, and Gerry chewing on them. I coerce him into a second game and lose that one too. Then
Yes, it’s beautiful here. I don’t know why we perceive white sands, palm trees, and teal water as especially serene, but we do. Little wonder . . . it is. But is it any more awe-inspiring than snow falling from the sky like feathers dancing? Or the dry, desert-like heat of summer where we live?
We are in Mexico. We are staying at a resort we have been to a few times in the past. It’s beautiful, and large, and it can be a challenge to find stillness even here. In the morning I sit on the beach, digging my toes in the sand, and offer prayer. In the afternoon