We often are witness to those painful aspects of life, those which bring hurt and damage to both the victim and the inflictor. The former, intertwined in a web with the latter, woven around injury, only to be confounded by an inevitable tangle of lines and curves. It can be hard at times to see …
I am cross-country skiing across a field of sparkling white snow. The sky is a wash of blue watercolour, dotted with clouds and drenched in sunlight. The evergreen trees provide a canopy overhead as I push along down the trail. It is a glorious day. I want to soak this all in, this seeming quiet …
This is what Valentine’s Day looks like after 18 years of being together. Let me paint for you a motion picture. First of all, there is a wife who wakes up on her side of the bed, because you get to own a side when you’ve been together this long. That wife tries to disengage …
I write about love, because I want to understand love, what it really is. Love is…romance? It is Valentine’s Day soon, hearts turn toward the romantic side of love as we near the day. It is just the way we women are hardwired. We love a good romance. I am, earlier on this Saturday, sitting …
Little girls should never have to worry when they fall asleep at night. Mine is sweetly sleeping, her hair a cascade of gold fanning her pillow. Moments like this one are precious. Cherished. Minutes ago, she came padding down the stairs, wearing those fuzzy jammies with the puppies on them that are so cuddly after …
Supper menu: spare-ribs slow roasted in the oven, turnip and potato with brown sugar and butter, cabbage casserole with tomato sauce and carrots. As an after-thought, I throw in the left-over fish sticks and oven fries from lunch, just in case. I am home alone, and the house is so unnaturally quiet. I stand at …
I am home after a busy day of work and running after-school errands, and I find my husband in the kitchen with his earphones plugged into his ears, speaking into his Smart phone in tones you would expect from a senior on Bingo day. This is what he is yelling, “Twilight Zone, play Twilight Zone.” …
It has been a quite a day, quite a week. Quite a month. I wonder how I made it this far, and yet what gives me the right to think that life is any more than this, or any less. For the past two months, I put myself in work-a-holic mode. I have put in …
I peek in the room, and she is propped up on pillows, reading by light of lamp left on from the evening before. She likes light through the night, to chase away boogie men and other creatures of the dark. Content with her books, now with the light of day coming through a crack in …
Irene hit us yesterday morning. For all the hurricane predictions, she was not as wild a woman as we all expected, reduced merely to a tropical storm by the time she reached us. However, she unleashed a bit of fury in her passing by, knocking over trees, throwing debris all across our lawn, tossing flowerpots …
I was cleaning up after supper, when he suggested that we sit out on the veranda for coffee. I turned around and saw the box of chocolate truffles waiting as an invitation for something more, a date with my husband on the porch swing. I could feel the excuses surfacing…remnants from supper lay hardening on …
Emotion bubbling over into anger, spewing words reeking of bitterness. Blood pulsing, heat rising, heart racing. Hands fluttering over countertops, wiping at invisible stains. I scrub the same spot distractedly, then pace the kitchen, a million things to do and I cannot think of a single one of them right now. Frustration is the feeling, …
