Reading-Obsessed

Our world has been transformed. It won't do a bit of good for the readers of the world to unite and protest the Internet taking over the world of literature. Google has already done it, and intends to continue doing it; encouraging the posting of all the great literature of the world so it can be accessed on line. It really is a new, information-accessible world out there.

You have to know how, but it's easy enough; user-friendly as they say. Even for cranky old dodderers. Those are the ones who've been long accustomed to hefting a publication in their wrinkled old hands, and viewing the offerings page by page with their age-impacted, failing eyesight. What do the elderly know anyway?

They think they know what they like, but they're delusional.

Libraries will never be the same again. Unless they're personal libraries, set up in the homes of those fortunate enough to have the space and the wherewithal to collect enough books to present as a personal library. We're one of them. Since we're just one elderly couple living in a house much too large for merely two people, a bedroom has been transformed into a library.

We've got books that we've had in our possession, following us from house to house, since we were kids, both of us. There was a time, when we were, let's see, about eighteen, both of us, and we joined the Book-of-the-Month Club. We also used to visit our local library branch often as well, but it was thrilling to be able to have a collection of our very own, personal books.

We're older now, and somewhat wiser. What's the difference, really, between borrowing books from a library, and buying second-hand books? A diligent searcher will discover books of every variety, from popular mysteries and novels to award-winning non-fiction books. Classics and the most recent publications, they're all to be had for a veritable song.

We buy new books only for our granddaughter. For us, it's used books all the way. Some of them downright venerable, some of them gently used, and some of them appear previously untouched by human hands. Our library shelves (my husband built bookshelves all over that bedroom transformed to a library) bulge with books.

We haven't read them all, but plan to. We're obsessed by books, want to read as much as we can, of all genres, all ages. We have those aspirations, to continue educating and entertaining ourselves as long as possible. Failing eyesight on my part merely means increased-visual-strength prescriptions, a right royal pain in the arse, but a necessary one.

Storms

We woke to teeming rain yesterday morning. It had rained all night, beginning with freezing rain. Overnight the temperature steadily rose and the freezing rain turned to ordinary rain, and plenty of it. While still in bed we heard the peculiar sound of a toilet gurgling. Then rose to discover that on our street were two huge trucks. The municipality was obviously attempting to forestall the potential for sewer back-ups and was draining the sewers. When we checked our toilets we found them to have been drained of standing water.

The rain continued, heavily, until mid-afternoon, when it finally relented. At which point, since it was relatively mild and the footing fairly good, we took ourselves off to the ravine for our daily walk. The packed snow on the trails had succumbed somewhat to the pounding rain, but they were fairly intact; our boots sunk slightly into the softened snowpack. Before we got halfway down the first long hill reaching into the ravine we could hear the creek raging below.

The creek had assumed proportions seen only with spring thaw; it was wide, and deep, and muddy and smelled strongly of marsh gas. Our jaunt in the ravine yesterday was fairly unremarkable, but for the fact that, on approaching our egress point to our street, after the hour or so we were out, we happened to spot, sitting on a bare branch halfway up the length of a tall old poplar, a great barred owl.

Water was still falling from the overhead tree canopy. And it was clear that the owl was continuing to be drenched, likely from the water dripping now off the conifers surrounding the poplar. He looked huge and bedraggled-miserable, his large wings hanging in a downward position as though trying to get them to shed water faster. And then he ruffled himself vigorously and positioned himself alertly, as one might anticipate a raptor would.

In the late afternoon there was the usual telephone call from our granddaughter. For reasons of her own she calls regularly on arriving home after school, even though her mother is usually at home. We speak for various lengths of time discussing matters of interest to her. Yesterday she was, she said, sad and depressed, and we spoke at length about that. Her best girlfriend, whom she had known for years, was behaving, she said, awfully toward her.

Nothing all that new in that news; on occasion this occurs. Her girlfriend will speak rudely to her, tattle about her to mutual friends, treat her unkindly. And she is not inclined to return the favour. She takes exception when I suggest to her that a solution exists; behave to her friend precisely the way she does her, and the message will get across. The message, she informed me, was given directly and there was no interest on the part of the receiver.

When she telephoned today things were no better. But more of the story began to reveal itself. The girls are in grade 8, they are thirteen years old, they live semi-rurally, and enjoy a circle of friends at the school they attend. This particular girl was the first one to greet and be friendly with my granddaughter when she attended the school for the first time, and felt herself to be an outsider simply because she was meant to feel that way, by her reception.

We had another ravine walk this morning, of course. It was still relatively mild for late January, but then this is anticipated, our annual January thaw. The creek in the ravine was still running wild and high. Today we saw chickadees, crows, nuthatches, and woodpeckers through the length of our ravine walk. No owl anywhere in sight. We'd had a short spate of overnight snow; huge clumps of soft crystals that glued themselves to everything, looking magnificent.

I heard, today, more of the same. How awful her friend is behaving toward her, when all she wants is to be her friend, to enjoy being with her, to ... help her. Help her? She's cutting herself, I was told. Cutting herself? What on earth might that mean? You know! she responded angrily, you know what it means, she said. I did, but could not connect the dots. Why would she? I asked. Because she's crazy, responded my granddaughter.

Crazy! She's not, she's just socially awkward at times, I said. Well, there's something else... What? I asked. I don't want to tell you, she said. Well, you should, and I'd like you to, I told her. I certainly asked for it, but better to know, after all. She was raped, said my thirteen-year-old granddaughter. What! Her brother, my grandchild said. I can't believe it, this innocent grandmother said, lying through her teeth.

She had, after all, occasionally given way to wonder. Her friend's parents are ardent church-goers, confirmed in their fundamentalist faith. They had 'adopted' a troubled young man whom the church had itself brought into the tender fold of their concern. They had taken this young man into their home, to live alongside their natural children, two young men slightly younger than he, and the girl, a dozen years younger.

Is there a moral to this story? Heaven only knows. I know now that our granddaughter is growing up faster than I might have thought possible, but then what do I know, after all? She is aggrieved that her friend has placed a distance between them. I told her, she said to me, that she shouldn't feel guilty about it all, it wasn't her fault, after all, she was just a kid.

Just a kid that was repeatedly and regularly taken advantage of, her trust violated. Now in her teens she has a better sense of what occurred between herself and her 'brother', and she is deeply ashamed and doubtless dreadfully guilty, feeling worthless and soiled. She is undergoing psychiatric treatment, while still attending school. She finally spoke out, informed her mother. She spoke of it to her teacher. She told her classmates.

She has been living, my grandchild tells me, at the home of a friend of her mother's, on the week-ends. Her brother has been banished from the family home. Charges, she tells me, have been laid; he may go to prison. I am confused. She is not. She is calm, collected, and angry with her friend for not letting her lead her to a place of comfort.

We take comfort in our daily ravine walks. Take little comfort in our granddaughter learning what a mad world we inhabit. That would have been inevitable, in any event. We can only hope that she meets with enough sanity to balance the psychopathy with which we seem to be surrounded.

Britain's Misguided Child Policies

So many democratic, post-liberal countries have turned their anguished glances on their past. Generations upon generations past. Looking into the not-quite dim background of actions taken by predecessor-governments and finding them sadly wanting from their current, modern perspective of human rights.

The Government of Canada saw it as fit and proper to apologize to its First Nations communities for the decision taken jointly by government and churches to sequester aboriginal children away from their homes and their communities, for the noble purpose of westernizing and integrating them into the values and mores of the general society. Depriving the children of parental support in their growing years, and leaving a legacy of painful memories.

Now, the Government of Britain has solemnly announced its intention to apologize to the families who, beginning a century ago, had their children taken from them under the pretext that a caring government would look after the offspring of the impoverished. Look after them they did, in a peculiarly heartless manner, by shipping thousands upon thousands of children off to what was then deemed, in Great Britain, the hinterlands. Between the years 1869 and 1946, one hundred thousand British children were shipped to Canada.

Additional thousands were sent off to the less-accessible and more costly-to-deliver Australia. To begin new lives. Some of the children were informed that they were orphans, their parents had died. They were all assured, however, as were their parents, that they were headed for infinitely better lives.

For most of these children the better lives they were assured of were very long in coming. Most of those children worked as indentured farm labourers, virtual slaves. Many were not treated as family members of the farm families they were introduced to, but slept with the livestock. That they were emotionally needy children was overlooked for the practical purpose of making utilitarian use of their energies.

The story of these children is a sad one, reflecting a rather sordid phase in British history. There were children sent abroad to the Empire's colonies during the Second World War when parts of Britain were being bombed by the Luftwaffe, to keep them out of harm's way. Those children returned to their parents' loving arms at the conclusion of the war, grateful to the Canadian families who had given them safe haven. But that's another story altogether.

Another story altogether is other children who were swooped up and sent on to Canada. Coming from other parts of Europe, and arriving in Canada for the same purpose: to work on Canadian farms. Not all such children, needless to say, were treated as slaves. Many lived among and worked for decent, caring people who did their best for the children whose lives were temporarily entrusted with them.

My father was one such child. And he truly was an orphan. Both his parents had died in the little town of Mezrich, Poland. They were indigent, and there was no inheritance. The town did the best they could, and the 12-year-old orphan was placed in the Poor House, where his immediate needs - a place to sleep, slops to eat - were taken care of. He fled to Warsaw, where he was convinced his older brother lived. Unable to find his brother, he lived on the streets of the city.

And there were many other children doing the same; runaways, roustabouts, orphaned children with nowhere else to go. In my father's case, a philanthropic society determined to do something about the plight of the street children, and they raised the wherewithal to ship them out to Canada. Where the children were sent, on arrival, to work on farms, until their passage had been paid in full, and they were finally free to depart the farms and construct a life for themselves.

Tribulations on a Minor Key

There, the ordeal over. And ordeal it was. Our imaginations do dreadful things to us. You feel ill, there seems no reason for it, and you decide to tough it out. Weeks later with no relief in sight, you finally decide to see your family doctor. Your family doctor of four decades. Placing you both in roughly a like age category. You've been retired for over a decade, past time for him to retire too and he plans to, come next summer.

Your family doctor scolds you that he so seldom sees you. But there are seldom reasons related to ill health for you to make appointments. When you do, however, it is because you're stumped, don't know what next to do.

He cannot make an instant diagnosis, reasons elude him as they did you. Although he ventures the opinion that a really tough-to-shake intestinal bacterium has been making the rounds, making people miserable. Despite which, as though to make up for lost opportunities, he scribbles a number of prescriptions for you. Prescribing, that is, a number of tests; blood tests, fecal occult tests, scans of one kind and another - and ogawd, a colonoscopy.

But before all of that, to ameliorate your symptoms, a drug protocol. One type of prescribed pill to be taken once a day, the second four times a day. Nicely enough, your symptoms abate. Although of course there are always some kinds of complications, aren't there, and the pharmaceuticals cause drowsiness and frequent urination. Frequent urination as in every hour on the hour, day and night.

What a predicament - exacerbating your already-enlarged prostate.

The day of the colonoscopy appointment draws near. How ominous is this: it's for Friday the 13th, but you're not superstitious, are you? Are You? You've had to fast a few days, no solid foods, only liquids, so apple juice, tea and chicken soup save the day; several days, in fact. Along with several purgative applications. So, along with the frequent urination is added frequent evacuations. Day.and.night.

At the appointed hour of the appointed day, you fill out a medical questionnaire at the endoscopy clinic in a downtown office tower. "No" to all questions; you have no medical conditions, you do not take any medication, although you do take a daily vitamin D capsule. Your wife tells you that your colon will turn out to be the clearest, cleanest the doctor will ever have seen in his career. And, as things turn out, she was absolutely right.

No obstructions, no polyps, no growths of any kind. That slightly low haemoglobin count that had disturbed your GP is explained away by this doctor as common enough for older people; the slightly elevated iron, nothing of concern. The diverticulitis (sans symptoms) he discovers is to be shrugged off as yet another physical symptom of the ageing process. You are 72 years of age, after all.

The literature recommends a good brisk walk to aid in eliminating all that air that was pumped into your system prior to the insertion of the light-bundled camera. That fits very nicely into your agenda, and that rigorous, vigorous, healthful, sunnily beautiful walk is replete with a musical accompaniment.

Life In Brief

We've become more appreciative of - everything that surrounds us. When we feel comfortable, we are comforted. When we feel the emergence of a new phase of our elderly lives it is discomfiting.

Tacitly recognizing our mortality, everything that surrounds us shines with a new meaning. The transcendence of being. Of being a part of the living harmony of the sphere we inhabit. Moving about in the natural landscape, everything our eyes light upon looks brighter, more beautiful than we had formerly perceived.

We clutch our living selves in a dimly realized poignancy of the transitory nature of being.

Here one moment - even if that moment is expressed in the years from infancy to adulthood, a lifetime of memories, shared and cherished - and then, suddenly we are aged, though not yet infirm.

When I speak with my sister, four years younger than me, and so not yet aged beyond 70, she sounds cynical, tired, morose, and spent. I chide her, knowing as I do, that I have no right to do so. Life has not been as kind to her as it has been, to me.

She, after all, has not been the recipient of a love as deep and encompassing as that I share with my life-twin. We live for one another, find expression in each other, discover value in life through our shared communion. That is our great comfort, our yearning to be together forever.

Forever does not exist in the lexicon of human vocabulary expressed by the life-cycle of human beings. We are motes of stardust, temporarily transformed into living, breathing, animate and mind-full beings.

This is not the kind of introspection I choose. This is not a comforting line of thought. This sad reality is, however, truth. Accepting it makes it no more palatable.

The Pleasurely Craft

Writing is a sweet and gentle consolation, just as reading is; it has the ability to gladden the heart, and challenge the mind, and in the final analysis, it provides boundless personal satisfaction. Even when one does not need to be consoled, one does require a challenge for the mind, lest it grow creaky from disuse.

Writing, almost as much as reading, is, for people that way inclined, as necessary as breathing. Without it we are unfulfilled. Bereft of a certain potential. Those bitten by that writing bug have a need to express themselves, to relay, in the language of choice, a narrative of their experiences, whether in real-time language, or as creative fiction.

And so it is with me. And I can identify the initial spark in my granddaughter. In her love for the written word, and the inexhaustible resource that reading represents. Knowledge and entertainment, along with her own need to express her personal perceptions from the mind of a growing child, with a growing realization of the world around her, and the individuals who people that world.

I take huge pleasure in writing, and it makes my heart skip to see hers. It is so wonderfully redolent of an awakening, intelligent mind eager to know more. In her I see myself. The search for meaningful intelligence, for an understanding of everything that surrounds us, the nature of the universe and our place in it; the nature of humankind in all its puzzling manifestations.

Pictures, it is said, are worth a thousand words, and that may very well be so. I write, often, of gardening, of the escape to the garden, to work with nature and assemble a palette and shapes that landscape my world. I have written, set down my thoughts, absorbed myself in the written expression since I was a child.

And always, uppermost in mind was the thought how wonderful it would be to be a writer; not a casual writer, but one dedicated to the craft. It is in the human spirit to wish for validation, recognition of one's effort. There are few who attain that height of recognition for the creativeness of one's mind's efforts in expressing ideas that others take delight in, or respect for their originality.

It is, people who write so often moan, a lonely avocation, or a profession in whose interests of achievement, the writer struggles and meets the adversity of a reluctant muse, unwilling to be awakened from her comfortable nap, simply to satisfy the longings of a writer-born. There was indeed a time that I thought of writing as isolating, but isolation is a requisite for assembling thoughts to convey through the written word.

That kind of isolation, temporary as it is, enables the writer, through gentle concentration to evoke memories, to recall visions, to bring together experience and observation to create another kind of reality. There is nothing spare about my mode of expression; I tend toward verbosity. Why express oneself pithily, when an extravagant gush of words can accomplish the same thing?

Tedious and tiresome to the reader, perhaps, but sheer joy of expression to me. As a writer, one known only to myself, uncelebrated in the world of scribes, unknown to the public, I satisfy my self, my inner urge to craft, create and express myself. Writer's block? What is that? There has never been a time when I have been at a loss for words, unable to call up expressions, viewpoints, perceptions.

Scribacious am I.

All In A Day

I've taken to wetting Button's breakfast kibble. It makes it much easier for her to eat it. She was always a lazy eater; when she was young I'd had to break up large pieces of kibble before she would deign to eat it. Now, we're using kibble for elderly dogs, (since she's 16 years old), infused with glucosamine, for her joints. Riley eats the same food, though he's 8. He's never been fussy about his food. Put it in front of him and it's gone in an instant, and then he hangs around Button's dish, waiting for her to finish so he can get at the leftovers.

When that happens I have to tarry, to ensure he doesn't persuade her to move away from her dish before she's ready to. It's also why I'm anxious when I give them their summer-monthly Heartworm pills in their food, to make certain that she's eaten everything, including the medication. He'd eat the pills just as they are, but for her I've got to disguise them temptingly in something she really likes and that generally is supplemental to her own food.

Once they're done eating, preparation for our own breakfast gets underway. They tend to hie themselves off close to a window where the morning sun warms one of their many beds placed here and there around the house. Post-breakfast I baked a blueberry pie with an ordinary pastry bottom crust, but with a crumble topping of whole-wheat flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and margarine, and plenty of walnuts. And started a chicken soup.

My husband had gone down early in the morning to let Button out at half-past six, and while downstairs decided to put on a bread for himself, having baked one earlier in the week for me. He enjoys white-type breads like French or Sourdough, while I prefer dark breads infused with all manner of seeds. On our ravine walk later in the morning, it felt beautifully cool at first, once we dipped into the ravine, and had the benefit of the shade.

We saw a lovely little garter snake, seemingly unperturbed at our presence, taking his time slithering from the side of the trail deeper into the underbrush. It never fails to amaze us that neither of our two little dogs have ever indicated that they've noticed a snake on those rare occasions when we see them there. They are quite aware of the squirrels and taking note of their presence are wont to give chase, but lackadaisically.

After our ravine jaunt we left Button and Riley securely at home and set off to fulfill a number of small errands, after which we did our weekly food shopping. Turned into quite the expedition, going from one place to another; a detestable waste of perfectly good time. But we had to go to the bank, had to pick up our elderly multivitamins, had to drop by a (big box store that shall go unnamed) to take advantage of a sale on underwear.

Mind, I sat in the car, while my husband went into the store for the underwear, even though half of the search was for underwear for me. He's perfectly capable of selecting them, as well as those for himself. And then it was on to the supermarket, where we paced one another, conferred, selected and tarried far too long. I'm the one who does the packing at the check-out counter; we've got three largish plastic boxes for that purpose.

He's the one with the money, and he jokes with the cashier, and doles out the cash. And then hauls the plastic carriers into the house from the car, on arrival home. There was a message from our grandchild. When I returned her call a momentous bit of information was conveyed to me. She had, she solemnly said, finished her latest novel, "My Sister's Keeper". She'd kept me abreast of the story line as she read the book, and now, sigh, finito.

A grave and impressive accomplishment. Not really, she's an omnivorous reader, and I'm glad she's read a book like that; enough with all those vampire novels. She's had a copy of "To Kill a Mocking Bird" for far too long, without yet reading it. It was her choice, yet she keeps selecting other books to read. She has developed an interesting trait, from her grandfather. Like him, she takes great pains to communicate to me the details of the characters and the plot of any book she's involved with.

She likes to discuss the meaning of things, to offer her opinion and how she was affected, for example, by the testimonials of one character or another. And she draws meaning from what she perceives, and seeks my opinion, as well. So it’s quite the intellectual/emotional operation. She has decided not to take up another book to read right away, to give herself a little bit of space before she embarks on another journey of the imagination.

At least until the following day. She has another book by the same author, but she has resisted the temptation to begin it, just yet. Reasoning that she was still invested with the narrative of the one she’s just completed, and that would be distracting to getting her mind wrapped into a new adventure of the mind. Reasonable enough.

Work Proceeds Apace

Finally, it appears that the dog days of summer have decided to make their tardy appearance. We hadn't missed those too-hot days of burning sun and high humidity, not one bit. We had learned to appreciate the cooler weather, the incessant downpours. Really, we did. Those days of partial sun, partly ongoing rain did not inconvenience us one little bit. Rather, those conditions greatly benefited us. Given, one supposes, our age. And the fact that one of us has been inordinately busy, building a garden shed.

Previous to which he had been busy doing other things, happily aware that the weather was 'with him' in the sense that his physical efforts were not compounded by extreme heat. In the cooler weather, and the rain events, he was able to take down our old worn deck, and rebuild the deck entirely. He was able also to empty the underside of the deck of its acquired burden of detritus and clay-soil left over from the excavation that occurred at the front of the house years ago, when he installed the stone and brick garden retaining walls and patios.

And fill a rented dumpster that stood in our driveway for weeks, with tons of that clay and building detritus, along with more, much more. Leftovers from projects undertaken over the course of many years. From old doors to left-over stained glass shards. Everything was hauled out and into the trailer, and we were anxious to see the last of it all. Far more difficult to accomplish if summer heat and constant sun beating down on hard-working heads had to be contended with.

And the current project, clearing away a garden plot, levelling the area, and installing a sub-floor to welcome a larger new garden shed was well underway before the advent of high summer. Which just knocked, as it were, on our summer, this very day. So hot that I've had to finally begin watering the garden pots lest the plants shrivel in the heat and lose their beauty. The garden has absolutely thrived in all the rain we've had; no need had there been to water, to entice it to grow.

I picked the first of our lovely ripe plum tomatoes today. Noted that the Japanese anemones are beginning to bloom, and that the turtleheads have set their buds nicely. That the purple coneflowers are crowding out the delicate pale pink beauty of a nearby rose, and so be it for the time being. The begonias that had overwintered in our basement and which I'd planted out in the spring are glorious, their colours vibrant, the flowers huge.

I revel in capturing the essence of their beauty, in photograph after photograph. Noticed?

There Are Limits

So, it's finally come to this. Not the end of the world, granted, and no big deal. It's just that like anyone else, I'm accustomed to doing things in a certain way. We get in a rut, sometimes, I know. The thing is, I detest large supermarkets. All the more because they market items that are durable, things that have no business being in a market specializing in edibles. I always hated those aisles of clothing, kitchenware, electronics, even cosmetics. When I go shopping for food, it's food I want to see.

And then there was the thing that this was a small independent grocer, as it were. A franchise operation. I thought the big corporations didn't need my food dollar. So when that Food Basics store opened almost twenty years ago, I began patronizing it. The sound of it was in line with the way I thought; basic foods. It was a relatively small operation, the building was really too small and the result was cramped aisles, which was certainly no plus.

But there was far less of an emphasis on convenience and pre-packaged foods, and more on - what else? - the basics I wanted. And the prices were really competitive. I liked the cashiers; older women whom I quickly became familiar with. They had good specials, and if I began to think they weren't paying adequate attention to procuring really fresh fruits and vegetables, I just had to look harder to ensure I bypassed those.

I had my nose a little out of joint at first when I asked the manager if he would consider putting a bin somewhere out front in the store where shoppers could deposit foodstuffs for the local food bank and he rebuffed the idea. No room, he said, and anyway, it was too 'political'. He did find room for non-edible products eventually. I did like that they charged for plastic bags and bought three of their large plastic bins that have served me well over the years.

I hated it when they seemed to forget to re-stock the shelves properly, someone in charge not ordering replacements in time. Or stopped carrying an item I particularly liked. Or didn't give adequate attention to 'best before' dates. I'd bring these irritations to their attention. It helped for a while, and then it would start all over again. I rationalized that the price was right, and as long as I exercised care I'd get the freshness we needed.

Several years ago the franchisee who had, in the interim, proven that the business hadn't disappointed his expectations by driving a 75-series BMW, sold out. Mostly because he hadn't much choice; it had gone from a franchise operation to a corporate-led one. Under this new management a lot of interior renovation was undertaken and shelving changed, and miraculously the aisles widened through better-designed use of existing space.

Things improved noticeably. I no longer saw the store trying to sneak non-food products onto the shelves as the old owner-manager had been doing. Fruits and vegetables were in far better condition. And there was a marked increase in convenience and pre-cooked and pre-prepared foods. More choice in the meat counter. And the fruit juices and yogurts. And then the quality of the fresh foods began to deteriorate.

On again, off again; they'd be in good shape, then dismal. Not everything, but disparate and discrete fresh items and various products, and I figured I could deal with that. Then last week everything changed. I had of late been having to discard bagged baby carrots, despite a long best-before date. Poor handling, I guessed. Milk, despite a similar best-before date wasn't keeping.

There was a special last week on soft berries. I looked carefully through the plastic to evaluate freshness, and found the raspberries stuck together with mould, the strawberries similar, and the blackberries as well. Bought none of them. Cherries too were on sale and those I carefully selected, but they were disgustingly bad, we discovered later. The hard little red seedless grapes were terrific, but that's some bad score, isn't it?

The red bell peppers were so awful I just had to bypass them. The green beans were stringy and dessicated. The snow peas and the snap sugar peas were imported from China, although the signage above them boasted they were 'product of Guatemala'. There were none of the Campari tomatoes to be had, only those tasteless ones that I bought instead. The grape tomatoes were in such bad shape I had to discard one-third of the box.

The fresh red grapefruit juice I always bought was not available. They were out of Biobest yogurt, unflavoured with live bacillus. Well, bloody hell. I could have spoken with the manager, and had on previous occasions, never having felt that I was being taken seriously. The kind of unprocessed fish that I prefer to buy is usually unavailable, all these little irritations were exasperatingly unnecessary.

I decided to write an email to the provincial head office detailing all the miserable offerings on hand at last week's shopping. Next morning there was a telephone call from the store manager to whom the email had been forwarded. Not their fault, he said, they changed warehouses and this was the result. Their fresh produce suppliers were unreliable. Not the consumer's problem, I told him. He wanted to know when I was in the store and I told him the time.

He would, he said, speak to the person on duty. Not the fault of the personnel, I retorted, they're exemplary staff. Not so, he responded, otherwise they would be picking the rotted food off the shelves. I restrained myself from outright braying in his ear. What alternative do they have when the entire shipment is anything but fresh, but to put it all out, given the specials advertised? And I'd rarely seen the overworked staff picking out rotted fruit.

He urged me, next time I discover things amiss, to go directly to him. Right. Well, there won't be a next time. My husband chafes at having produce from China put on our plates. He's disgusted with all the produce we had to discard because of inedibility. When he saw me washing the blueberries preparatory to baking a pie, he peered more closely than I did and saw plenty to be discarded.

Remarkably, he offered to accompany me shopping at his favourite supermarket, the one he occasionally shops at, on his own. The first time in years we've done the food shopping together. It was amazing, the quality of the fresh fruits and vegetables on offer. I almost shouted for joy. We make a great team, shopping together or anything else we do together. He hated going into the Food Basics store, and never accompanied me there.

The times they are a-changing...

So Goeth The Day

Decided to bake a blueberry pie with a little bit of difference. Sugar, cornstarch and cranberry juice set to thicken on the stove top, then the washed blueberries added, and when the filling was done, added a tiny bit of almond flavouring. Just a bottom crust this time, because I prepared a crumb-top for the pie, a combination of whole-wheat flour, cinnamon, dark brown sugar and walnuts, crumbled with Becel margarine.

I put on a chicken soup to cook away, and prepared a bread dough for tomorrow night's pizza. Cleaned up from breakfast, and made the bed, wiped up the bathroom, did a quick vacuuming. Went outside to determine the status of my husband's work, and our schedules matched perfectly. He had only to put away his tools for the day. The sun was hot and so was he, perspiring with the effort of his work in the backyard.

We went off with our little dogs to the ravine for our daily round in there. Mosquitoes have been particularly pesky of late. We watched, fascinated, two sets of robins, unwilling to move from where they stood, on the trail. Two of the robins were huge, really immense; the other two slender, not nearly as rosy-hued. Our guess: parents and fledglings. The parents exhausted, the adolescent birds extremely well-nurtured.

A cardinal sang lustily from on high, one serenade after another. We noted the proliferation of ripening raspberries inviting the alert they are ready to be picked and eaten. The lilies are still blooming, right on target. The wildflower meadow of daisies, fleabane, cinquefoil, clover and cowvetch present as a living embroidery over the landscape, the forest behind, their well-chosen backdrop.

Afterward, attended to the weekly chore of shopping for food. Some disappointments, unfortunately, as there are no campari tomatoes to be had. The raspberries and strawberries which are on sale are miserable specimens, too long off the vine, and on the cusp of spoilage. The local strawberries sold alternately which I had bought last week have no taste, no sweetness; too much rain, too little sun.

The red bell peppers are in an advanced state of decay, and the same for the green beans. There are alternatives; packages of mixed bell peppers, and bok choy instead of beans. Now that I need to buy a large 10kg bag of flour, there is no unbleached flour on the shelves. The red grapefruit juice that I usually buy is absent also from the cooling units. When I ask the shelf-stockers they check for me, but none are to be had.

The snow peas and the snap peas that I always buy come from China and that bothers me. The signage above their shelf-storage space reads 'product of Guatemala', which they decidedly are not. In perusing my cash-register receipt later, I see that the cashier has put both through as snap peas and that's unfortunate since there is a 70-cent difference between the two packages.

Later, when speaking with my thirteen-year-old granddaughter, she tells me, excitedly, that she has made a macaroni-and-cheese casserole. This would not be at all remarkable had she used a pre-prepared product, as she has often done, but she has not on this occasion. She has, for the first time, made her own choux, melting butter, adding flour and milk, onion flakes and cheese. She is learning.

That Industrious Chipmunk

At breakfast this morning, looking out the patio doors at the sky, we watched a Great Blue Heron wing its way somewhere, but likely not the ravine close by, although we've seen them there on occasion. It was obviously by-passing the ravine given its trajectory, but it was exciting to see the bird in flight.

Monday is the day I clean the house and I was busy doing just that, when my husband called me to come outside, to the backyard. There, under the deck, where my husband had laid a thick layer of fine-crushed stone after he had excavated all the clay and building detritus that had lain there for years, was the little resident chipmunk.

We had noticed weeks ago that a hole had suddenly appeared where there had been none before and hypothesized that it was his handiwork. We felt convinced the little chipmunk lived under the garden shed, actually, and that is where my husband tosses shelled peanuts every day by the handful; one for the chipmunk, another on the pathway for the red and black squirrels, the cardinals, the chickadees. They're usually gone within a matter of minutes; sometimes we see them being picked up, sometimes we don't, but they're popular.

There was the chipmunk, at the hole, busy enlarging it. But more, the chipmunk was excavating dirt and clay, and in the clods it energetically threw up were what looked like small nut pods. It must have been keenly aware of our presence, for we were not more than four feet distance from it, but it ignored our us completely, and we sat there, entranced with the little creature and its independent determination to clean house. When it appeared satisfied that it had extracted all of its cache, it broke open each of the cases, filled its cheek pouches with the interior and ran off elsewhere, until it had completed its mission.

Unperturbed at our presence, insouciant to a degree, it went about its business. I watched as it disappeared into the hole, and then a few minutes later, it ran from an opposite direction entirely; evidently from under the garden shed, back to its new tunnel, overground, to once again disappear into the interior underground. The distance between the garden shed and the tunnel outlet under the deck must be a good twenty-five feet. That's a lot of tunnelling, that's one busy chipmunk.

While I cleaned the house, he who is clearly my finer half by far, mowed the grass, and watered the gardens and the garden pots. Noticing that I had trimmed the ornamental trees, noting that the poppies are all opening, and the allium and the irises and the lilacs. The bridal wreath spirea is a veritable fount of tiny white flowers spilling over the delicate branches hardly able to contain their abundance. The peonies, pink, red and yellow, are opening their gorgeous displays of lush flower heads. The rhododendrons are splendidly ablaze.

In the ravine we came across a woman walking a pair of Bichon Frise dogs. Although we'd never seen her before we knew the dogs, as her husband always walks them. We stopped to talk awhile, then she suddenly remarked that she heard something odd. We stopped talking, and we all heard it, an odd electrical-mechanical sound, that we just were unable to place. But it became louder and then louder again, and as we looked toward where the sound appearing to be emanating from, we saw a cloud of what appeared to be hundreds of bees.

And we moved off with alacrity, in opposite directions; best to avoid any such encounter. And a most peculiar encounter it was indeed, never before experienced by us in our two decades of hiking in the ravine. We heard the sweet song of a cardinal high above, and I wondered what kind of danger such a moving cloud of angry bees might pose to birds. The birds are certainly capable of making themselves scarce far quicker than we bipedals.

Back to the 50s

Last night before midnight I took some photographs of the night sky (the moon primarily; bright and almost full) and decided also to take some photographs of the night-time garden in the backyard. Different, and interesting enough. Fun, as well. Today, perusing the gardens, there is Mountain bluet in bloom, geraniums, and columbine, lots of them. As well the poppies are springing up everywhere, not yet in bloom, along with calendula. Bee balm and bellflower are budding, and the Carpathian bellflowers are blooming. The large bleeding hearts are in full flower; quite the sight.

In the front gardens the two rhododendrons are opening their huge scarlet blossoms. The saucer magnolia is still opening its huge blooms, and the Sargentii crabs fiercely hold on to their flowers, unlike the flowering peas which have released their tiny yellow blooms, ready to grow those spiky, poisonous pea pods. The creeping phlox is a carpet of bright blue, the coral bells blooming surprisingly early. The bearded irises and the Siberian irises are both in bloom. The Japanese spurge still has some flowers left, the hens 'n chicks look about ready to begin their flower stalks.

In short, the gardens are thriving, flourishing, their architectural texture, fragrance (the fragrant lilies of the Valley, the divine azalea) send me into a tizzy of fond appreciation. This morning my husband painted the new deck floor with light stain and preservative, so we're shut out of enjoying it for a few days. Have had to create a bypass for Button and Riley, through the side door then through the garden gate into the backyard. And so we sat out on the front patio for a change in the afternoon, reading the newspapers there.

In the ravine, though we looked carefully for the blue-eyed grass we'd seen the previous two days, it was fruitless. Oh the grass itself was still there, but the delicate flowers had disappeared. The cardinal had flown onto the top of a dead old elm, and its body flashing crimson in the sun, sang lustily for us. How did that wonderful bird intuit that we were deserving of such a concert? Lots of robins in there today, and even the hawk could be heard flying about. Maple and oak seedlings have begun to take advantage of the opportunity left by the storm-caused destruction of those old pines, we noted.

In the morning I had pitted all the cherries I'd bought a few days earlier. They weren't nearly as sweet as I'd hoped they would be, and I felt they would be more appreciated in a pie, and set about baking one. And prepared as well, a bread dough for tomorrow evening's pizza, one of our culinary traditions of long standing. After dinner we listened to an hour of golden oldies on the CBC. Jerry Grey and The Travellers, no less, singing old Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs of the 30s and 40s. "If I Had a Hammer"; "This Land is Your Land"; "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", among them.

A wonderful way to celebrate our 54th wedding anniversary. How did they know? I can recall as a 13 and 14-year-old kid sitting around the Friday night campfire at Camp Naivelt, listening to The Travellers, singing along with them on the chorus. And it was when we were both 14 that we first met, became inseparable companions, and remain that to the present day, our 54th anniversary of our marriage. Although we've been together far longer than that.

My Mother

Simply having children does not make mothers: John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children: Thackeray, Vanity Fair

God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers: Unknown; a Jewish Proverb

I would leave you a song, my mother ...
Yours the tender hand upon my breast;
Yours the voice sounding ever in my ears: Madeleine Mason-Manheim, To My Mother

Who ran to help me, when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or Kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother : Ann Taylor, My Mother

I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men: George Elliot, Adam Bede

I arose a mother in Israel: Old Testament: Judges, v, 7
Her children arise and call her blessed: Old Testament, Proverbs, xxxi, 28

Do you expect, forsooth, that a mother will hand down to her children principles which differ from her own? (Scilicet expectas ut tradat mater honestos Atque alios mores quam quos habet?) : Juvenal, Satires

Every living creature had a mother, a natural source from which newness was brought into the world of the living. Genetics hand on from mother (and father) to child endowments peculiar to their source, yet universal in character, reflecting their place in the animal kingdom, or that of the plants that succour the animals living on this Earth. We are helpless beings at birth, dependent on the tender love of a mother to nurture us to infancy. With good fortune, our mothers will endow us with a memory of her emotional investment in us, as she guided us toward maturity and prepared us to take our place in the society we inhabit.

Having said which, the quality of motherhood is as diverse and unforeseeable as is the diversity of human character, behaviour and personality. There are mothers completely devoted to the welfare of their children, who understand their needs and undertake to give them the direction and support they require at each and every signpost on the journey to becoming independent members of society. Conversely there are more than enough mothers for whom motherhood is a casual matter, leaving their children to fend for themselves, void of the encouragement, stimulation and emotional investment they need to be mentally and physically healthy specimens of society.

We all have our ideas about what it takes to be a good parent. Most people are fairly clear that a child needs unfiltered love, discipline when and as required, and the firmly fixed subconscious assurance that they are loved and valued, their presence esteemed and respected, that within their family they are assured the constancy of devotion and the needed security that will enable them to be curious about the world around them, and to learn by patterning to familial experiences; by an extension exposure into the world outside the family, the opportunities to discover for themselves the place they aspire to for their futures.

My mother was born in Europe, she lived with her family in Russia, in the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were sent to populate the land, and keep them out of the way, as a nuisance population whose presence engendered resentment and ever-surging anti-Semitic responses. She had a brother and two sisters. The brother was killed when their home was bombed by the "whites" before the Russian Revolution, since he was an advocate for the "reds". Her father was seriously injured, one of her sisters had shrapnel in a leg, and my mother in an eye.

The sisters emigrated to Canada, following in the lead of some members of their extended family; uncles and aunts. The oldest sister; a decade older than her siblings had married, and emigrated with her husband, the two younger ones following soon afterward, the passage loaned by earlier emigrant family-members. A photograph I have of the two younger sisters, standing side by side professionally photographed, is that of two physically mature and attractive young women ready to face the world, their visages open and expectantly aware of free will and opportunities awaiting them.

My father was born in Poland, orphaned as a young boy, placed in the village poor house, when he fled from the small town of Mezrich to Warsaw in search of his older brother whom he never found. He lived on the street as a homeless urchin, along with many other children in similar circumstances. A society of philanthropic benefactors swooped many of these young boys off the streets and sent them to North America, as indentured farm workers. They worked on the farms they were assigned to until their transit debt was paid, and they became free agents.

My parents, then in their early 20s, met in Toronto, where both were involved as secular Jews, in labour movements and the socialist-political movement. I was born when my mother was 24 years old. A sister followed four years later, a brother two years afterward, and a second brother with thirteen years between the oldest and the youngest. I helped my mother in practical ways to look after my baby brother. A year later, when I was 14, I met my future husband. Neither of my parents approved of the family my future husband came from; his father had an unsavoury reputation as a bit of a wastrel among Jews, a drinker, hustler, gambler.

My childhood years were not particularly happy ones. I was a lonely child. I was not very emotionally or socially nourished. My mother was never demonstrative, either physically or emotionally. I took to reading and devouring books at an early age; they provided a respite for me from the monotone of my life, delivering me to a world of exciting possibilities. I read sobering books as well, those describing the lives of Jews in Europe, a literature of a people despised and haunted by the past, the present - and a future none could quite envision in its brutal viciousness, ridding the world of a large portion of its Jewish presence.

My mother was involved as a social activist throughout her life. She was a peace-marcher, a strong advocate of socialism, of union activism, of peace and understanding between peoples. She was a principled woman who sought justice and freedoms, who felt that her activities would help to bring about a better world of kindness and compassion, defeating the scourges of racism, poverty and human rights abuse. While she was busy battling the forces of evil, she raised her four children, and maintained a traditional relationship with her husband. The family never did prosper economically, but was able to live fairly well.

My mother's personality was an oppressive one to her husband and toward her children. Maledictions fell easily from her lips. Accusations, recriminations, demands, lectures, were all rained down without end on our heads. There was never any knowing what might set off a verbal conflagration and we all cowered before her mighty anger, before the blustering, blistering heat of her aggrieved and unchallenged assaults on us. It is the memory of treading lightly, of hoping to avert anger and screaming imprecations that most reflected my life with my mother.

There were no ameliorating memories of a mother's hugs and reassurances, encouragement or appreciation. There were expectations and denunciations, loud, shrilly ear-piercing, confusing and demeaning. There are those people who are quite simply incapable of disciplining themselves, of emotional introspection, of realizing how their unbridled ire impacts on those around them. The outlet for their frustrations is to target the emotional sensibilities of others, to breach their emotional defences, and in so doing, somehow alleviate the strain of their own stresses.

As I grew older and my mother commensurately older, it was I who offered a kiss on greeting or parting, and she accepted that. The emotional attachment that children feel for their mother was a slender one between us, although I don't doubt for one moment that in her own strained and stressed way she loved her children. There was simply no communication of any kind, no touch, no spoken word that would assure her children that love was there. The obligation to respect and honour one's mother carries the day.

She died, at age 84, of frontal lobe dementia. Not Alzheimer's disease, but something quite like it. Gradually, as her dementia progressed, her bodily functions became increasingly impaired. I'm sure she had a fairly strong constitution; she had previously suffered two episodes of colon cancer, and before that, when in her 50s, a hysterectomy. The dementia captured her mind, her memory, she became docile and mildly pleasant. Finally, she could not recognize her children, her actions and reactions repetitive mechanical ones. She could no longer control her physical functions, just as once she was unable to control her emotional outbursts.

She was my mother, and for that I give thanks.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot : New Testament, Revelations, iii, 15.

Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song : Unknown, Old Ballad

This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales;
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn. Edna St.Vincent Millay, Sonnets

Amazing Strength and Endurance

Here we are, married 54 years, young in spirit, still in good physical shape. We've lived in our current home almost twenty years. And during that space of time this house has undergone an amazing array of transformative alterations. Originally a fairly open-concept home, it no longer is. A formation of glass doors form walls interrupting the open flow. Tall windows have been festooned with layers of stained glass designs, colouring and lighting our interior no matter the time of day or appearance of the sun.

Our kitchen, laundry room, powder room, upstairs bathrooms have all had complete makeovers. The basement level was long ago transformed to four discrete portions; a study and powder room, a long and large recreation room, a workshop and a utility-furnace room. One of the upstairs bedrooms, overlooking the foyer, was transformed to a library, painstakingly lined with West Coast lodge-pole pine, shelving for our groaning collection of books along the two long walls; niches for computer and television.

The long, broad curving staircase altered, with the carpeting removed to be replaced by oak treads and backs.

The rooms that had been broadloomed changed to hardwood flooring, the carpeting ripped off to allow for cherry in the dining room, an exotic dark butternut in the upstairs hallways, in the master bedroom and the library. The exterior of the house saw a giant exercise in excavation and the creation of stonework and pavers to enhance the long walkway from driveway to front door, and the two little piazzas with fancy brickwork where our gardens are shown to perfection.

All this and more accomplished by the clever mind and hands of one solitary workman. From the marble lining the walls of the bathrooms and the floors, to the ceramic tile throughout the kitchen, and breakfast room and lining those walls as well, the work was conducted, inclusive of electrical and plumbing, by my husband. In the process of which, we somehow managed to accumulate an astounding amount of detritus.

Some of which was discarded as the separate jobs were completed, and some of which was not. We have what seems like tons of tiny bits of coloured glass, waste from the many large windows that decorate this house. And from the countless woodworking jobs, there are bits and pieces of wood left over, stacked and appealing for discard. And so much detritus brought with us when we moved belonging to our three children, articles they now consider waste.

The excavated dirt from the work done in the front gardens had been deposited under the deck in our backyard. That very deck that a few weeks earlier had been taken apart, to be replaced, and once replaced by my husband with an entirely new deck, the conundrum of what to do with all this new waste faced us. Solution: rental of a huge dumpster from a company that specializes in waste management and recycling.

It has stood in our driveway for three days now. And the vast accumulation of leftover building materials and that soil deposited under the new deck is beginning to fill up that dumpster. Hard, back-breaking work that hardly seems to faze my husband, a man of 72 years, energized by the need to commit ourselves to some order in a creative but somewhat disorderly life.

A Paean of Gratitude to Robert Graves

Always intrigued by Robert Graves, I recently read his Three Oxford Lectures on Poetry. I believe I came away having learned something about the craft of expressing my subliminal thoughts concretely. I use the word 'craft' because, as Graves points out, the word 'technique' implies intellectual achievement, or a deliberate attempt by the poet to create a poem, admirable for its form, but questionable as to its conception, its ability to move the reader.

It is no mere conceit that poets have long attributed their craft to something akin to a mystic trance brought about by their Muse. The Muses themselves, according to my edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, were nine goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (who was herself not a goddess, but a Titaness. Zeus was reputed to have stayed nine nights with her, and when her time came, Mnemosyne gave birth to nine daughters, who were the Muses.) The nine Muses were thought to be the inspirers of the lively arts: epic poetry, history, lyric poetry, music, tragedy, sacred song, dancing, comedy and astronomy.

Now, although the ancients genuinely believed in gods and goddesses, and that they were the primal force behind our every thought and action, modern may believes somewhat differently. Still, as any scientist, agnostic or not, will readily admit, there is much about the human cerebral functioning that is a mystery. We're thought to have a left0hand and a right0hand brain; that one portion is responsible for practicality, the other for abstractions; that whichever portion dominates in any particular individual, will determine largely whether he or she is a doer or a thinker.

The thinkers often display a facility for language, for absorbing emotional and physical experience into their own personal intellectual reference libraries, that the doers do not. However, these functions are not mutually exclusive.

When we now say that our Muse nudged us, or inspired us to create, what we most likely mean is that our subconscious dredged up from our prodigious memory-banks an appeal to unload; which we then converted into something concrete, like a poem. So it takes more than a facility with language, a good memory, and the gentle conceit that we would like to share our cleverness with an admiring public. In fact, the public isn't all that admiring. Generally, it is only other poets who read the brainchildren of poets. The most essential ingredient, it would seem, for the making of good poetics, is a belief in one's own ability to translate perceptions in a non-intellectual, almost mystical manner. Mystical again, because it is not a planned achievement, but an inspired or spontaneous one.

Robert Graves was himself no slouch as a poet; his many volumes having been translated into a plethora of languages other than English. He also wore the many hats of a linguist, translator, classical scholar, novelist par excellence, and champion of women as the originally 'superior sex'. He had long moved in cerebrally exalted circles (our own Lester B. Pearson knew and admired Graves), having personally known Walter de la Mare, and that greatest of England's modern poets, Thomas Hardy.

Robert Graves explained in his lectures just why, using as poetic examples, poets as diverse as Browning, Kipling, Byron and Burns; sloppy verbiage, or poetic vulgarity as he termed it, is so injurious to the form, understanding and appreciation of a poem, no matter its author.

He went to great pains to point out how essential it was that poets avail themselves of unimpeachable authority when choosing the proper word to convey their meaning, and how careless it was to indulge in over-adjectivication for effect.

Although himself a scholar of international reputation and an impeccable poet, he pointed out that he made every effort to refer regularly to a dictionary source for the derivation of questionable words, their popular usage, change of meaning through their period of use, and the different contexts in which they could be used. He did admit that sometimes, even the Oxford English dictionary could be found wanting, relating how Thomas Hardy told him in 1924 that it ha been his practise too, to confirm doubtful words, and that when looking up one such word in the Oxford, he found it, but the only reference had been: Thomas Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd, 1874.

This craftsmanship that is the unconscious function of the poet, Graves asserted, is inherent in the being and can be self-cultivated. There is no easy way for the true poet. A long association with words is almost a prerequisite before the poet can successfully collaborate with his inner self to produce a poetic trance. Also necessary to the full flowering of this ability to produce individualistic poetry, is to have read widely other poets' offerings, good or bed, and learning to differentiate between them. Yet one's outpourings should be, he said, inimitably personal in style, never done in imitation of what may be termed a popular style, or styled after a successful poet.

Who hasn't written a poem or a prose piece, then put it away, satisfied perhaps that the general content conveyed what the author intended, but still left with a nagging doubt about some of the words employed" How often do we come back t a poem, perhaps a day later, sometimes months later, to find a more appropriate word floating up from the depths of some unconscious word bank? Robert Graves called this a poetic trance. I believe him, having personally felt entranced by the subtle interweaving of words.

Patience, loving patience, he cautioned. I don't believe I have a patient molecule in my body. But, of course, he was unerringly correct. All the best advice in the world can be handed us by someone who has been through it all himself, though it's only after we have made our own blunders, that we learn. And then, when we come to recognize what we should have done, we read with interest lectures such as Robert Graves's, feel a start of recognition and agree - yes, he's absolutely right.

originally written/published in 1979

A Birthday Tale

He says he's caught up with me. Not quite; I'll always remain a month older than him. But we are indeed now 72 years of age. A matter of fact that quietly amazes us. We've been married for 53 years, and that's a long time. Although we've been together for 57 years. We were children when we met, only fourteen, although we thought of ourselves as being so mature, so ready for the adventure of life.

We gift one another every day of our lives. No need, therefore, to present one another, at this juncture, with a gift demonstrative of appreciation of a birthday anniversary. Every day is special, and each day brings a new adventure of one kind or another. This day no different in that respect, than the many that have preceded it. Our quotidian pleasures bespeak the rhythm of our lives.

Tenderness toward one another, interspersed inevitably with the occasional burst of irritation lend texture, complexity, interest to the proceedings. Conversations there are many, and reminiscences mostly of those events that gave us great pleasure. The pain, whatever of it that surfaced in our lives together, cannot be found; we mine for comfort and ease, not misery.

Each day is endowed with its especial profit to our busy hands and minds. Today he was able to repair one of his antique clocks, using the replacement parts he had ordered through the Internet from a company specializing in such arcane products. We read the newspapers silently over a prolonged breakfast, sharing bits of news, deploring or applauding, as was appropriate.

Nature, as though in recognition of the signal anniversary this day represents, presented us with a clear blue sky; bright sun. Too cold, however, to melt any of the snow piled up outside the house. And the wind, in this cold, would make it seem even colder; a wind-chill factor of minus-23. But no fresh snow, for him to shovel, this day.

I cleaned up the kitchen, and he tea-towelled the dishes; we now use the dishwasher less and less frequently. I don't ask him to help, he insists; more time together, he says. Then I cleaned up the bathrooms, a twice-weekly necessity. Transcribed a piece of short fiction written decades earlier onto my literary blog. And we prepared for our daily ravine walk.

For us, down-filled jackets, heavy mitts, head coverings. For our little dogs, each a winter jacket and under those, warm little sweaters. Much to their dismay the cold this day requires that they also wear boots to protect their tender pads. These represent the third design I've produced, and the best yet; thick fleece leggings with leather pads and fastened with Velcro.

Our hour's foray into the wooded ravine, with its hills and valleys is needed exercise for our little dogs, and for us as well. We need the cool, clear and fresh air, the challenge for our moving parts. There are still heavy clumps of snow remaining on many of the trees, although we haven't had snow in three days. We see two red squirrels, no birds this day, although the Pileated woodpecker has left his mark.

Later, I cook rice and steam lean ground beef for dinner for our little dogs; the toy poodle is experiencing diarrhea, and this bland diet will help. As for us, his favourite winter dinner; chicken fricassee. Comprised of chicken giblets, two small drumsticks, and meatballs, done in a stew of jalapeno pepper, garlic, onion, chicken soup.

Rice, too, but the sticky Asian variety, not the long-grain prepared for the dogs. And Frenched yellow beans. For dessert, a coulis of soft frozen berries - raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, wrapped in puff pastry and baked to a nice flaky, fragrant crisp.

Our Creature Comforts

Our little Button, after the initial onset of whatever it was that ailed her, had another setback. She had been stricken by something muscular, a physical event that had somehow badly strained her back, leaving her almost helpless, unmoving, shuddering, and drained of energy.

We had immediately feared the worst, because she is, after all, fifteen years old, and although she has up until this time been the very best example of a small dog in the best of health, with energy to spare, we know her days with us are numbered.

At the same time, we're also aware that we may be fearing for her longevity prematurely. It isn't entirely unknown that small dogs can live for close to twenty years, so it's quite possible that we have another five years of emotional bonding with her left to us.

The day of her accident that had left her so drained - unable to do much of anything but rest, although she still ate well, and eliminated too, although she did leave us a gift in the dining room - we let her be. We eventually surmised that our habit of covering her with a little blanket at night might have led to an entanglement causing her to twist as she jumped down from her perch on our bedroom loveseat.

The following day, she appeared far more alert. Although still not herself, quite able to move about freely, and even venturing up the stairs on her own. So we thought we might risk a walk with her, in the ravine. And as things turned out, she did very well, so much so that halfway through our walk I had to put her harness on over her little coat, so I could use her leash, because she was hurrying along too strenuously.

On the next day, however, although she had slept through most of the day after breakfast, and we didn't set out for our walk until mid-afternoon, she had frozen, arched her back, and begun trembling violently again, fifteen minutes into our walk. Irving had to carry her, tucked into his jacket for additional warmth, for the following 40 minutes that completed our walk, during which time her trembling ceased and she seemed comfortable in his arms.

On Tuesday she slept soundly in the new padded and rimmed mat we had bought for her, placed before the dining room windows where any errant rays of sun could be expected to warm her. We stealthily dressed little Riley in his coat and made our way out to the ravine, banking on Button's hearing loss not to give us away. Sure enough, when we returned an hour later, she was still asleep, hadn't been aware of our absence.

Later, we bundled them both up for a little trip to the Sally Ann and browsed for infant sleepwear that I could convert into a nightshirt for her, and additional, light tops we could put under her winter coat. Afterward, I did the necessary alterations, and when she went to bed that night she was wearing a white fleecy nightshirt sleeves cut short and comfortable for her.

Like us, in our old age; we seek the comfort of warmth. Where once, not that very long ago, I would go out even on snowy days hatless, now I wear a snug wool hat for warmth, and as for Irving, he layers as many as three wool hats on his balding pate when we're out for a ravine walk.

And Button, who once objected strenuously, almost outraged at the indignity of having to wear a wool sweater in cold weather, has also changed. She seemed at one time to be almost embarrassed at the un-doglike imposition we imposed upon her, and she would attempt to dislodge a coat from her back. She now is most agreeable about being dressed in a body suit that she fully understands has the purpose of keeping her warm.

She is now her old self, fully recovered, full of piss and vinegar. Has been for a number of days. She walks with alacrity, skipping on her hind legs, as Poodles are so often wont to do, looking forward as usual to our daily ravine walks. Biddable about the two layers she now wears for warmth, as we do also with Riley.

So much so that she protests when they're taken off, once we're back in the house. Quite a change in her; another symptom of encroaching age and how, in our dotage, we so much appreciate our creature comforts.

What a Fright....

Our little black-haired Button leaped down from her night-time perch - her bed nestled on the loveseat in our bedroom - as she usually does, around seven in the morning. That's the signal for Irving to get up and go downstairs with her, to let her out into the backyard first thing in the morning. He rises several times throughout the night to fulfill a like mission of necessity for himself.

Each time passing her bed on his way to our own, to cover her with one of her blankets that she often tosses off, turning in the night. She once slept at the foot of our bed, on top of the blankets, with her own little pillow and her own blanket tossed over here. This was a habit she abandoned two years ago, distancing herself physically from us at night. The comfort of our near presence in the same room seemed sufficient.

As usual, he followed her to down the hall to the top of the stairs. Where she stopped. Stopped, stiffened, arched her back and then froze. He stood, watching, wondering what was amiss. She finally moved, dropping down to the first step, the next step. Then stopped and froze again, arching her back. Something was obviously very wrong. He stooped to pick her up, cradled her in his arms, to find she was shivering uncontrollably.

Brought her back to our bedroom, sat himself on the loveseat with her in his lap, and covered her with one of her blankets, where she permitted herself to lie, limply, exhausted, still trembling. Button is our independent girl, always on the go, informing us in no uncertain terms what she expects of us and firmly reminding us of our duties toward her. She is vibrantly intelligent, and inexhaustibly active.

She is not as she was now, limp, exhausted, trembling and content to lie there, comforted in the lap of her great good friend, helpless to do anything for herself. The thought that ran amok through both of our minds was that we were, suddenly, with no prior warning, witnessing her end. Something swiftly cataclysmic was claiming our little poodle, and we shivered with dire apprehension.

An hour he sat there, her on his lap, and we quietly spoke together of our fears.

Memory nudged me faintly, as I dredged up an image of something similar having occurred many years ago. But I couldn't be certain, and he couldn't quite recall, it's been so long, and so many things have occurred in the intervening years. It was entirely possible something akin to this event had happened before.

After another half hour, I rose, dressed and took Riley downstairs, so he could go out to relieve himself.

Irving, following me with Button in his arms, sat on the sofa in the family room. Button raised her head, appraised what was happening, and evinced some interest for the first time in several hours. We sat and watched as the trembling ceased and she finally gave some dim indication that she too would like to go out.

As though the morning wasn't sufficiently miserable, it was darkly overcast, steadily raining.

She wasn't yet ready to negotiate the steps leading from the deck to the back garden, so she was taken down, and weakly she performed. Shortly afterward, because she appeared a bit more lively, although she moved with extreme sensitivity and stiffness, we decided to try her for breakfast, and I moistened her kibble with chicken soup, warmed it in the microwave. And she slowly, steadily ate.

Then slowly lapped up water, long and at her leisure, albeit awkwardly. Later, she was taken out again to the backyard and seemed slightly more sure of herself. While we had our own breakfast, she took herself to the rug in front of the dining room windows. Her usual resting place at that time of day would be the sofa or the loveseat in the family room. She was obviously in no condition to leap onto either.

By noon she had improved sufficiently to make her way up the stairs to the second floor of the house, following us as we trod upstairs. Physical mobility and ease of movement had returned. She hadn't, after all, suffered a stroke. She had, more likely, somehow twisted her spine, hurting her back, when she leaped down off the loveseat first thing in the morning.

A trifle; something she does countless times throughout the course of the day, week after week, every month, year on year. She is well. Thank our good fortune.

Author, Author!

Please stand to applause. Who, me? Well, in a sense. A really dotty sense. In that I'm the author of my own misfortunes. Misfortunes in a very small sense. Anyone who doesn't know me might assume I'm in an unfortunate relationship. A battered woman. A victim of spousal abuse. It can be embarrassing. In the summer, seldom winter.

On the other hand, sometimes even in winter. It wasn't all that long ago that, through sheer carelessness (what else?) I closed the car door impulsively, far too soon. In fact even before I was prepared to get my head out of the way. Result? One banged-up eye. Just above the eye.

You bet it hurt, and continued to, for a while. I did not, in fact, get a total black eye out of the incident. But enough of a bruise around the eye area to encourage people of a suspicious mind to look askance when they saw me, although no one ever approached to commiserate and point me to the nearest shelter for battered women.

My body is an ongoing battle zone, with bruises appearing regularly here and there. Every time my husband views another bruise, he's full of admiration for the colour scheme. It's the artist in him. Purples, noxious yellows, shades of grey with a little bit of dark red thrown in for extra appeal.

Invariably, although he should know better, he asked how I've acquired the latest. And for the most part I simply cannot recall. I'm so accustomed to bumping into things that I just shrug off the events and view the damage a day or so later. Just amazing. Our granddaughter recommends that her grandfather smother me in pillows.

I'd bounce about from protrusion to protrusion without harming myself, and look so utterly appealing to young children who love to burst out laughing at the merest comedic provocation. The very thought of it brings peals of laughter from her. Me too, actually.

She hasn't seen the latest damage, though I mentioned it to her, in passing. Two days ago, in a rush to finish feeding the dogs, brush their haircoats, set the table and get our own dinner finished, I bent down unheedingly to pick their little porcelain salad bowls off the floor and hit my right temple directly on a corner of the kitchen bookshelf.

Which wouldn't be all that bad, if I hadn't stooped in such haste, if the top of the bookshelf hadn't been covered in porcelain tiles, and if the corner weren't so square. The pain was instant, and I was really put out of a commission for a whole five minutes.

My husband sprang into action, ran cold water over a washcloth, wrapped it around a small freezer bag and slapped it onto my forehead. Slapped, no gently placed it there. I was I who slapped my forehead, in frustration over my debilitating haste. I'm a multi-tasker, always have been, and that's accomplished speedily.

Some people will go to any lengths for attention. Good thing he loves me anyway.