Five Years a Writer

A Post a Day in May 28/31 It had been a glorious summer day and everyone had enjoyed the ponies and the fair, but all good things come to an end, and it was now the end of the happy day. Martha, the children’s favourite nanny of all time, had persuaded the cook to prepare their tea as a picnic, so the happy day was ending like a fairytale, with a luscious meal outside in the garden. They spread out several blankets and emptied the hamper of buns and butter and savoury spreads and jam and biscuits and fruit, though nobody wanted that, as it was too ordinary. The chocolate biscuits were particularly tasty and the fizzy drink was a real treat. It was all so good, but why did Clarissa have to be so annoying? She had placed herself at the centre of the group, saying, “As the eldest, I shall take charge.” She was wearing her favourite pink hairband that, she said, gave her special princess powers. As if! But they humoured her because it kept the peace. Billy and George bore the brunt of her...

A Post a Day in May 27/31 Happiness is a tough emotion. While it sounds light and easy, happiness can be elusive and challenging. Many put it on their list of things to have, to find, but I think this is the wrong approach. Happiness is not something that can be ‘got’; rather, it is a byproduct of other things. Debbie Travis states in her book, Design your Next Chapter , that “vitality begets happiness”. This is an attractive perspective, given that vitality is “the state of being strong and active”; however, not everyone has a body that ever has permitted, or that any longer permits, vitality as a standard state. To be sure, vitality is a wonderful state to be in and I have certainly experienced a feeling of happiness when I have felt strong and been active — memories of portaging my first canoe, for example, or taking my first highway ride on a small (125cc) motorbike or building the retaining wall in my front flowerbed. But now in my early 60s, not yet old but also no longer young, ...

A Post a Day in May 26/31 We like to feed the birds in our urban setting, so pretty much year-round we have feeders out for them, filled with seeds and suet and, in the spring migration, oranges for the orioles, which have been plentiful this year. The flooding in the southern regions of Manitoba has meant that the normal food sources are not available to them. We even had a hummingbird come by, so we now have a feeder for those little beauties, too. In the winter months, the woodpeckers are wonderful; we get all three kinds here: the Downy, the Hairy, and the Pileated. And, of course, the usual assortment of little birds, the Slate-coloured Juncos among them, as the season shifts towards spring. This year, it was while the Juncos were plentiful that we got some unexpected action in the front yard. I was working at the dining room table, which overlooks the front yard. It was an overcast day, with some late snow falling, when, suddenly, I saw a great motion and commotion through the wi...

A Post a Day in May 25/31 They arrive into the house, some ordinary, some exceptional, but always welcome. After all, there can never be too many, right? Cardboard boxes, folks. Not cats. Though cats are lovely, too. But I have definitely lived with too many — three, for a short period of time. I don’t advise being outnumbered by the four-legged ones in the house. Now, cardboard boxes, they’re a different story. They arrive, often delivered by the evil “A” empire, holding something we’ve bought that seemed essential; these days, it’s cat food that I can find only rarely on the store shelves. But during my closet clean-out the other day, it was a bonanza of shoeboxes I came across. They are a sweet size, with a lid, and so useful for so many different things. The furthest corner of the basement is now a towering pile of cardboard boxes, all shapes, all sizes, crowned with the latest shoeboxes. I may have a problem, I know. But I feel compelled to keep them, to keep them all because, wel...

A Post a Day in May 24/31 The interview on the radio made me sad: An international student here in Winnipeg had posted to social media that he wanted to make friends, but his post was met with hateful, racist comments rather than open invitations to connect. It reminded me of a not entirely dissimilar incident in my own life, from many years ago: It was a Sunday evening, when the phone rang. I was doing some prep for the French-language adult-ed class I was teaching at the local university, so it didn’t seem odd when, after I picked up, the man on the other end spoke to me in French. I listened and understood, but quickly said, “Non, merci" and hung up. He had told me that he was new to Winnipeg and wanted to make friends. He had looked through the phone book (that’s how long ago this was) and was calling people with French surnames to try to make a connection. However, I was not prepared to take a leap into friendship with a stranger, a man, who called me at home. I terminated a...

A Post a Day in May 23/31 If I had been paid more attention during my American lit classes back in my uni days, I might have picked up on the quote my writer-friend Coralee included in a recent comment she left on my blog: “I no longer ‘measure my life in coffee spoons’,” she wrote. When I looked it up online, I learned that it is from ' The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock ' by the American poet T. S. Eliot . Coffee spoons are small — useful, yes, but small, ordinary, quotidian, unremarkable. Not measuring one’s life in coffee spoons, then, must mean that attention is being paid to bigger, more substantial, maybe even remarkable things — such as the sky and the sun and the great outdoors. And, so, on this May 23rd — the Monday of Canada’s Victoria Day Long Weekend, I am leaving behind the coffee spoons and hitting the road for some quiet time in our little spot of beauty on Lake Winnipeg. Last year, I took you there via a virtual road trip ; this year, I’m sharing a view from t...

A Post a Day in May 22/31 Do you know who you are? Do others? My brother, Charles, has undertaken the herculean task of digitizing all our late father’s slides and then sharing them with the family. This results in periodically receiving a dump of digital photos in folders over the internet — at first a bit daunting, but then pure delight to scroll through the years represented by the photos on the screen. Seeing the very early days of our parents’ life in Canada (they immigrated from England in 1953) is fascinating (the fashion, the cars, the cigarettes, the canvas tents!), but what really catches my eye and captures my heart are the pictures of my siblings and me as very young children. OK, I’ll be honest: The pictures of me as a youngster are most interesting to me , the one illustrating this post particularly so. I look so determined with my arms crossed, but also so jolly with that impish smile. It brought to mind this description of me by my friend Jeff, from my master’s progra...