Five Years a Writer

No matter your world view or belief system, Christmas Day 2020 will be unlike any other December 25th we've experienced. I'm going to try to remember my friend Dee's advice from many years ago when my old relationship was in the final stages of ending.  Dee counselled me, "This Christmas will be different. It won't be the best you've had. And it will pass. Just go with it as it comes."  It was good advice. That Christmas came and went, and I carried on and moved into a new relationship that thrives to this day.  COVID-19 has knocked us all for six and kept us isolated for months now. The new normal is really just normal, at this stage. Whatever makes sense to you on this day, do it. Mark it or don't. Eat, read, watch, connect at a distance. Get dressed or don't. Go out or don't. If ever we've had licence to 'just be', this year's Christmas Day is it.  The day will pass. Boxing Day will dawn and we can get on with counting down t...

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.  That is the model for how to tell a story in just six words. Ostensibly, Ernest Hemingway invented the form; he, the master of lean writing. The point is that the few words written belie the depth of the story told.  My local newspaper recently asked for 6-word submissions on the topic of the pandemic. Mine was published on Friday, September 18th: Separation unmasks our need for touch. Later that day, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.  In her honour and because no number of words can give her the credit due, I offer this: Woman diminutive. Robes supreme. Justice notorious.   May she rest in peace and in power, and may her memory be a blessing and a revolution.  #RBG #MFGP  Photo credit: Blogtrepreneur / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) 

Val and I have been together for 27 years, and today is our seventh wedding anniversary. Wedding day : Amanda, Randa (friend and marriage commissioner), Val  VOICE RAISED Tension had been building in me all day, though I wasn't aware of it until conversation at the supper table took a turn from which I could not reverse. My voice got louder. My comments more cutting. My delivery more animated. Finally, I crashed the container onto the counter and left the kitchen, saying over my shoulder that I'd be back in an hour.   I went for a bike ride, releasing emotional steam as my legs pumped the peddles and the miles disappeared beneath the wheels. I reached the local baseball diamond and stopped. I turned my attention to the innocent though fierce competition between the two teams and, within not very many minutes, recognized that I had overreacted, that my behaviour was unbecoming an intelligent woman, and that, having realized this, I was able to return home.  I practised ...

If a genie were to grant me three wishes, I would be satisfied with having only one, my first wish: To be safe, to be always safe. If I knew that life would neither bring me harm nor put me in danger’s path, I would happily walk down any street, talk to any stranger, accept any offer. What I fantasize about is the safety characterized by Cat Deerbon’s farmhouse kitchen, warm from the Aga and cozy with Mephisto the cat, sleeping on the sofa; by Jill Crewe’s cottage kitchen with potatoes cooked over the fire and the ponies settled outside in their snug stable; by the unhurried Sunday lunches in a Joanna Trollope novel, where time is made for good food and conversation.*  I read fiction only marginally for the plot; it is the characters I really care about and it is their development that keeps me engaged. Write me a character who is smart and sensible, kind and generous, brave and capable — write me that character, and I am your reader for life.  In my own real life, however, ...

Missing. Lost. Gone. Found is better, of course, but often GONE is the result. When people go missing in the wilderness and stay missing, it’s called a ‘cold vanish’. The stories of some of these people have captivated me in recent days as I read my way through the accounts of men and women, younger and older, who ventured into the North American wilds — sometimes on beaten trails through the bush, sometimes on paved trails within sight of the park’s visitor centre. Written by academic, journalist and outdoorsman Jon Billman, The Cold Vanish weaves stories of loss of human life underpinned by the call of the wild and matched by the fantasy of a mere person being able to survive in it. Billman’s writing moves us through some of North America’s most beautiful, most rugged, most dangerous national parks and forests, and pulls us into the hearts of those who hike and bike it — but not into their minds: When the missing become the lost, the gone, their minds and what was in them as they cl...

The other day, I was at the top end of a stepladder and it was only when I was trying to come down that same ladder that I realized how much more challenging it is to descend than it is to ascend . This gave me pause.  On my own, I had been able to get the ladder, place it and climb it quite easily. Being on the roof and completing my task of securing a few loose shingles was also straightforward, but getting back down was a different story and that’s where it all fell apart.  The ladder was positioned such that I could have, in theory, just climbed down. After all, I had climbed up easily enough. However, stepping off the roof and onto the ladder was too scary for me. The risk of falling seemed enormous. Even though the height between me on the roof and safety on the ground was not more than 12 feet, it may as well have been 100: The ladder was standing on the deck and the deck stands about 20 or so feet above the lake (hence Clifftop Cottage). It was my imagination that...

Today marks 100 days of living in COVID-19 lockdown for me. It is a new normal, and I am getting used to it. The changes in routines and habits no longer seem strange, but I remember how it used to be — and that is reason to pause and reflect. My fingers are crossed that we are in some sort of mid-point in our COVID-19 living experience, so I’m using this 100-day mark to take stock.  When teaching, I do an informal mid-term course evaluation with the students and then close the course with a formal evaluation. The data I gather from the mid-term check-in tends to be more useful: We are still in throes of the learning plan; no one is checking out yet; and we all know there is a further distance to travel before our destination is reached.  I use a simple format to get input from the students: I ask, What should I keep doing? What should I stop doing? What should I start doing? So, I’m asking myself the same questions about living under COVID lockdown:  KEEP being creative ...