Canada is celebrating her 152nd birthday today. Save for seven years, she has been my home and native land. I’ve always been proud to call myself Canadian. We’re honoured to fly our flag today. We’ll skip the crowds in the park though. Chances are good we’ll miss the fireworks display tonight too. Summer has returned
The sky this morning is gray, and rain fell during the night. It’s still raining, I suspect, judging by the sweet scent coming in through the open door in our bedroom. It looks much like most of last month looked out there, but it is decidedly different. This particular gray morning comes on the heels
I pull a bag of fish fins and assorted parts from the freezer. I’ve been saving them since last summer when Gerry returned from his annual salmon fishing trip. We work together when my (not so) old man returns from the sea to fillet fish, tuck little packages in the freezer, and stuff some in
I have empathy for the quiet and awkward woman who carried and birthed me. It wasn’t always that way, but I understand more now. Forty weeks wasn’t enough, but it was all that we had. In losing her I learned to grieve in guilty silence the loss of something I never had. I’m an expert now. Twenty-five
It feels like summer. Gerry’s going hiking and I’m tempted to sit in the lawn swing all day with a book in my hand, a glass of iced tea by my side, and one foot on the ground to maintain a gentle sway. I did that once. I spent an entire Saturday in the yard,
We’re almost a third of the way through this year. I’ve slogged my way through most of it, lifting one heavy, mud-caked foot after the other, in a fugue-like state. I can’t say why. This is life. It’s not always mountain top and it’s not always valley, sometimes it’s mile after mile of flat nothing-to-see
If you are creating something real, structure will reveal itself to you eventually. Look—there’s the vista. You lay the bricks. Moments connect. History and heritage ripple through the present. A voice emerges like a strain of music. And then—through the fog—a shape. It may not be what you expected. It may not even be what