“How long have you been married?” a friend asked, just after a recent anniversary. “Forty-seven years,” I responded, tossing out the number uppermost in my cognitive surface. All that year, I answered that question the same way. When our next anniversary showed up on the calendar, I took time to …
Friday Five Minute Word Grab (although this one went on very long.) The dog poses a conundrum. Old and gray, arthritic, deaf and blind. Stumbly, sleepy and sweet. But so, so beloved. He came to us at eight years old. We’d never had a dog like him. He waited for …
‘Someday’ sometimes comes!
I’m sure it’s out there. Waiting for me. The single placemat on my side of the dining table. In a few minutes I’ll leave my computer and check. While I still worked outside our home, I left the house before breakfast. After a half-hour commute to the office, I …
I thought I knew everything once. Young, quick of tongue, pregnant with opinions and quietly rebellious. Having travelled around the sun a few more times since youth, I see how wrong I was about most things that fuelled my arrogant words. The mental replays make me cringe. There I am, …
I heard it as a true story, but perhaps it’s just a really great parable. A certain country had been at war with another. From a high cliff above the sea, mounted messengers watched for returning naval ships, their sharp eyes focussed below. A patchy fog blanketed the water, interrupting …
After the war ended, Jim, one of the few surviving members of his regiment, The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), had the devastating task of identifying his fallen comrade’s bodies. Fifty-seven years later, those memories haunted him.
I never expected that leaving my position as a parliamentarian’s constituency assistant, which I’ve loved for over eleven years, would feel more like severing a limb than embracing freedom.
The ward’s halls are paved with anxiety, painted with sighs and patched over with prayer. COVID and other nasty body snatchers hover. But she stands at the nursing station, pen in hand, checking charts. She’s young. Calm. Pretty. And pretty weary. Three more hours till she can leave. Her littles …
I generally don’t like animated movies. But last Boxing Day, our three eldest granddaughters introduced me to Encanto, a new movie from Disney that pleasantly surprised me. “Would you watch it again?” one asked a few weeks later. “I would. And I did! Gampa and I watched it together.” She …
