Don't just live in the world
My kid celebrated their birthday today and my mind for some reason drifted back not to the day I gave birth – though I did mention some of the pieces of that puzzle as I always do, because it is a very impressive feat, giving birth. My mind drifted back to several months before that …
I love finding the old newspaper clippings that relate to the family as I search through Ancestry. I know the flowers each of my grandmothers had in her wedding bouquet, I know which of my Granny Scanlon’s friends threw her engagement party, I know that my great-grandfather was an esteemed citizen mourned by the town …
Dear Dad, You would be 89 today. You should be. I was sure you would live into your 90s. I was sure we would have more time. You’re missing this whole Covid thing – a worldwide pandemic with massive communication failures. You must be devastated, there is so much you could study. So much time …
That was a whole year. So much happened and didn’t happen that I find it hard to believe some of them happened less than six months ago. Like moving – we moved houses in May. That seems unbelievable. Changeover at work. A federal election. All in the last six months. Ridiculous. At the beginning of …
This weekend I decided to put all Beatles albums into one playlist on Spotify – which was probably an unnecessary thing for me to do since Spotify probably already has that sort of thing ready and waiting, but I did it anyway. Yesterday I dropped the kid at a thing and I went off to …
The election is over, but I had a series of thoughts to keep for posterity: 1/ On September 25, The Globe and Mail published an oped by Shachi Kurl, the moderator for the English debate. In it she defends herself, which is absolutely a fair thing to want to do. But she says she wasn’t …
The Governor of Florida is threatening to withhold pay from school superintendents who defy his ban on mask mandates. Meanwhile, 6,000 children in Louisiana have Covid, cases have doubled in just four days. Alberta is being called Canada’s Florida because it is the only place in the Western world that has removed all safeguards. “Learning …
Ever since we moved to our new little town I have felt this need to justify myself as a local. Yes, I grew up right in the middle of the city, but this was always a place of mine. I’m not just some city person trying to get away from the hectic life. The fact …
Grief ebbs and flows and the further you get away from it the more unexpectedly it strikes. My Gramps died three years ago this month. One of the biggest influences in my life, on me. One of the biggest holes in my life. I have his picture in my office and I keep his pipe …
All through January I was taking part in the #MakeDontBreak challenge that got me doing a little bit of something every day – sketching and water colour, some painting with acrylics, knitting, and the piecing of my first ever quilt top. There were days when I knit a couple of rows just to get it …