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, …
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.
A large rabbit bumped its way across the street ahead of me as I walked the dog the other morning. Cash and I watched it make its funny zig-zag path in and out of front yards, then back onto the road, grey ears flapping, powerful hind legs pumping. I thought …
Most mothers have memories of Mother’s Day. But I have only one friend with this one: It happened two decades before COVID-19, when some stores (particularly florists) ran out of Mother’s Day merchandise long before the day itself. Families could take mothers out for dinner (if they were willing either …
Whenever I see a coin tossed on the ground or the floor, I pick it up. Among other things, coins remind me of childhood days. We weren’t as well-situated as the neighbours, but our family had wealth nonetheless. At around ten, I ran a flourishing counterfeiting scheme from our kitchen …
Anything can happen on a porch. Connection. Refreshment. Reflection. Rejection, sometimes. Even buying and selling. As a child in the sixties, I had the chore of sweeping our small front porch clear of its weekly accumulation of dirt and spiders. Rarely do I remember anyone but company using that porch …
Glenda and I have been best friends almost 30 years. I don’t need to explain the close friendships of women to the ladies reading this. How you can laugh together so loud and long that your eyes get all squinty and your nose and eyes and makeup run and you’re …
He’s ninety-six now, living in a residential care facility in B.C. I can’t call him on the phone anymore. He hears very little and struggles with dementia. My sister tells me that until she mentions me, he doesn’t speak of me. Then our father remembers the daughter two provinces away. …
Christmas carries on at our home, as we consider the gift of still-fresh memories of the past year and the promises of the next. “Hon, if you had to wrap 2019 up in a few words or a sentence, how would you do that?” I asked on Christmas Day. …
An unexpected wave of nostalgia hits as I scrape the early frost off the windshield of my burgundy Impala. The fifteen-year old car will no longer be mine tomorrow. One or two signatures, a pat on the hood, a last drive up the road and it will officially belong to …
