Five Years a Writer

Relationships are as fascinating as they can be fragile and fraught. Between the mere mortals that we humans are, the fine art of communication and commitment can challenge even the most skilled and careful among us. For this reason, I love the stories Joanna Trollope weaves in her books. They are always and inevitably about the trials and triumphs or failures of connections among and between people. Trollope, a fifth-generation niece of Anthony Trollope , writes about the English, a culture and a people that are my heritage. I like being immersed in families for whom a cup of tea and cold-buttered toast with marmalade can be breakfast. The characters tend to be ordinary contemporary individuals, living their lives while trying to navigate a change of some kind, sometimes introduced by a new person in the village or in the family, and sometimes by a change in circumstance — illness, aging, birth or death of a pivotal person relative to the protagonist(s). Put like that, it sounds so m...

I've run a 5-km race, so now I'll train for a half-marathon, and then a full one.  I've learned to ride a bike, so now I'll take on deep-sea diving.  I can draw, so next I'll learn to paint.  Sheesh!  Always more, always better, always bigger.  Why?  Why not be content with what we have in hand? With what we can do with ease and joy and satisfaction. Why not simply stay the course and do more of the same.  That's my plan, anyway.  A month of daily posts to this blog in May was exhilarating, challenging, fun. But daily posts are not sustainable for me at the moment and publishing something bigger than a blog overwhelms me at the moment, so I'm going to return to what I've done successfully in the past: weekly posts.  Because, sometimes (often?) doing more of what we have been doing, rather than forcing ourselves "to the next level", is, actually, what success looks like.  Look for me at the finish line, because, with weekly posts, I...

A Post a Day in May: Bonus post/June 1 #Determined: Amanda, about age 4 In April, I had wondered if I had it in me to take on the challenge of posting something to my blog every day in May. But then I realized that there was no way I could not take it on, because this year, for the first time, I would have all the time in the world to do the daily writing. There was neither rhyme nor reason for not doing A Post a Day in May this year. So I did it. Like many challenges, this one feels good for being finished, but it also felt good while being done. I enjoyed the daily deadlines, wondering who might read the piece and who might send a comment. I found my writing rhythm after just a few days and, while I did experience the panic of a day or two of ideas-drought, I slogged my way through it and discovered that, precisely because the blog needed something posted to it every day, I became adept at translating my daily living, observing and reflecting into short personal essays worthy of bein...

A Post a Day in May 31/31 My father was an early adopter of all things technology — radios, cameras, computers, iPads, gizmos of any kind, really, but he didn’t make it to smartphones. Though he was thoroughly intrigued by my iPhone — “It’s a computer in your pocket!”— he stuck with his flip phone, which he used as a phone. My smartphone, on the other hand, I use mostly as a mini computer and only occasionally as a ‘telephone’. And, it seems, I am not the only one. A recent CBC radio piece tells the tale: Younger people have a smartphone in their pocket, but they rarely, if ever, use it as a telephone. In fact, speaking on the phone makes them nervous, gives them anxiety. They prefer to text, instead. That way, they can avoid the ‘live’ nature of a real-time conversation — or, they can text the person to ask (in writing) when it might be convenient to chat on the phone. That way, there is no risk of interrupting something more important going on on the other end and, I suppose, being ...

A Post a Day in May 30/31 If you think English grammar is hard, you should try German!   My home-room teacher in my German middle school was shocked when I arrived in her class: a little Canadian German-speaking child whose name was Amanda. It turned out that, in Germany at that time, the name Amanda was very old-fashioned and only great-aunts and grand-mothers had it. But there I was, in the flesh, with that name, not a ‘great’ or a ‘grand’ anything, just a lively little girl. That teacher taught us grammar and, to make it fun, had created a character who populated the language exercises we completed under her tutelage. That character was named … Amanda. While learning grammar can be dull and bleak, our grammar classes were great fun, because the antics the teacher’s Amanda was getting up to in the sentences we parsed were all the funnier for having me share the name. I don’t remember the specifics of those antics, but I do give full credit for my appreciation of grammar to that h...

A Post a Day in May 29/31 “Live in the moment” — simple, elemental advice, yet deeply challenging to embody. Whose moment am I living in? Not the woman’s in Ukraine, where every moment has been stolen from her by an evil force across the border. If I live in my moment, on the sunny shore of the lake where all is peace, how can that be just, be justified, in this wicked world? To live in my moment, without my mind reaching out into others’, feels blinkered not enlightened. To live in this moment, here, now, and not to leak into tomorrow’s moments, there, not yet, means what? That tomorrow will take care of itself without my force to make it so? The Uvalde children and their teachers have had every moment stolen from them. They no longer live in any moment. Yet I have moments. May I live in them wisely. ——— The world is aflame And all I have is words. Not true, I have a body. Sticks and stones (and guns) will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Not true: Words matter Wor...

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...