You can learn a lot about people on a train. We’re used to seeing strangers battle it out in the comments section online so it’s easy to forget there is immense kindness and friendliness among strangers when you have a chance to observe their behaviours IRL. There can be, anyway. If you look for it. And it just so happens, train travel is a microcosm for many things that make humanity beautiful.

Here’s what I learned:

1 - People play a lot of card games on trains and while waiting around in train stations. Yahtzee, Go Fish, Uno. The train was delayed by two hours as we were leaving Quebec and in those two hours, a group of passengers - all strangers from what I could tell - sat around a low wooden table to play a rowdy game. I’m not sure what they were playing exactly but I could hear cheering and friendly competitive sounds coming from their direction. I also overheard a woman in the other corner of the station give a compelling tutorial on how to play Sushi Go to a complete stranger. She sold it so hard that the teen asked her if he could play a round with her. (‘I thought you’d never ask’)

2 - One of the most comical things about train travel is getting up to find the washroom in the middle of the night.

As you are walking through the dimly lit cars, you get to see people at their most vulnerable - when they’re completely unconscious. People are zonked everywhere, stretched out in their seats or hunched over tray tables in front of them, they’re cuddled up together, or just sitting up straight with their heads leaning back against the seat. It’s a tapestry of neck pillows, blankets, hoodies, headphones, tablets, and eye masks. Not unlike an overnight flight except with better pillows and blankets. And a lot more room to sprawl.

But the best part is seeing how many people sleep with their mouths wide open, chins hanging low like they’re made of heavy metal. This is not a nocturnal characteristic reserved for a specific age group either. Seniors, young kids, fathers in their 40s, girls in their 20s, it’s a sea of mouths all agape. Hilarious and also oddly intimate to see so many strangers like this. It’s almost post-apocalyptic in a way, the army of closed eyes and black holes for mouths.

3 - Public breastfeeding is an act of supreme courage. Traveling solo with two mostly grown kids on a train is not for the faint of heart, but traveling with a baby and a toddler is downright formidable. I’m talking about the mom in my train car who was traveling overnight with her six month old baby and her three year old daughter. I could never. I had a hard enough time getting ready for a trip to the grocery store with both of my kids when they were young, I could not imagine an overnight train trip. I stopped to ask her if she needed anything as I was on my way to the food car just after 6am. She was nursing at the time and as her baby unlatched and then re-latched, she said that the women who were sitting across from her had just asked her the same thing and were already on their way to get her a cup of coffee.

As I was chatting with her and praising her for bravery to travel with children so young on a train, there were at least two other people who walked by and asked her if she needed anything.

[Not to get too far off-topic but to all the women of the world who have the courage to nurse their babies without covering up, you are true feminist crusaders. Please continue to normalize having a conversation with a total stranger in public while your baby is joyfully having their breakfast without feeling like you have to drape a cover over your chest.]

Speaking of superhero moms…

5 - In the four seater next to us, a mom and her two young children boarded the train about two hours into our journey. A girl about 6, a boy probably 8ish. Mom was prepared with everything you could think of: blankets, pillows, gaming systems, stuffies (to which the youngest insisted on propping up so they could have a turn looking out the window). But when the young girl started to feel motion sick, I overheard the mom saying she forgot to pack Gravol. I had just finished popping a Gravol myself because I thought it would help me sleep better (sleeping on a train feels how I imagine spare change feels rattling around in a tin can) so I offered her one of mine. ‘Are you sure?’ Oh thank you so much, I can’t believe I forgot to pack Gravol’. About two hours later, I woke up to hear the little girl coughing into a paper bag. Poor thing.

6 - You overhear the most interesting fragments of conversation. Whether it’s between folks who are traveling together, like the four older ladies I heard gossiping away behind us, or strangers answering the typical ‘so where are you headed?’ kind of small talk. A few I overheard:

‘Don’t say anything but I heard they were having an affair..’

‘My daughter died when she was 40, I’ve lived there ever since…’

‘Did you know the first Krispy Kreme originated in North Carolina where I’m from…’

And another one from a guy wearing a Winnipeg Folk Festival t-shirt who was traveling solo and talked a blue streak to anyone within earshot proclaimed ‘I don’t have a smartphone, just this pouch I brought with me with only a deck of cards, five dice, and a Gameboy.’

7 - I have never observed these things on an airplane. The travel is too fast, too solo. Or maybe it’s because train travel is inherently slower by nature and more conducive to finding ways to pass the time, I don’t know. There just isn’t enough lingering in air travel. Yes, there are delays in airports but I’ve only ever really seen people wait in a solitary kind of way, lost inside headphones and smartphones. Strangers appear to exert considerable effort to avoid conversation with strangers, they certainly don’t pull tables up to start rowdy games of cards together.

8 - In the midst of a nap haze on our way back, about 16 hours into what would be the 20 hour trip home, I had a small epiphany and concluded that noticing these small details in our surroundings is what it means to squeeze the most out of this life and why having our faces buried in phones as the default way of passing time is so tragic. No, I’m not turning this into a phone-trashing manifesto or getting set to walk off into the sunset with Winnipeg Folk Festival guy anytime soon, just publicly documenting a sleep-induced train of thought. (thought of train?)

We miss all the good stuff of what it means to be here when we don’t look up and observe the micro-moments. What makes us different and what makes us the same - the juicy details of our fellow travelers. Afterall, wasn’t it Ram Dass who said ‘we’re all just walking each other home’?

**

After several hours of delay, the trip ended and we finally pulled into the train station back home. As we were waiting for our luggage to make its way into the baggage claim area, I had a lot of time to reflect on my chosen mode of transportation and how it stacked up against my expectations. Was the sleeping shitty? Yes. Did my kids hate it? Pretty sure. Was I often questioning my decision-making skills as a parent? Probably. Would I change a single thing about the experience? Not a chance.

I’m going through a separation and the sale of a house that I loved deeply with every cell in my body. I have been off work for a while due to all of *gestures at everything and nothing* this, with a return to work date still an undefined, wavy mirage on the horizon. All of that combined with summer and kids who are home much of the time means that my schedule has been hurled into a shredder and each day is entirely unpredictable.

I could write about all of it. Dry heave it all onto the page, but to do that feels reckless, not to mention a violation of the emotional privacy of everyone I care about within radius.

So what’s a writer to do when she wants to write about ‘something’ but feels she can’t really write about ‘anything’?

I’ll tell you - she can journal. And journal she does, like it’s a religion.

So what follows are excerpts from my journal that don’t require heavy redaction. I will eventually turn this natural disaster of my own making into something more substantial - maybe even something book length, who knows. But for now, all I’ve got are the raw ingredients and the ramblings of a lady who is clearly going through it.

****

Our house was listed on the market a handful of days ago. To say my heart is broken would be a vast understatement. I am grieving the loss of my house like the loss of a loved one, a member of my family. A safe someone I entrusted my whole soul to. The birds, the skies, the dirt roads, the salt water and how the air smelled - everything I experienced emotionally and physically over the last seven years. I poured myself into every bit of it and it absorbed it all. I didn’t fully realize just how impactful it had become until it was time to hoist a For Sale sign on the front lawn.

I expected to feel sadness at selling the house I had lived in for seven years - the longest I had ever lived anywhere - but I did not expect it to feel like having to attend a funeral every day. To put off looking at the MLS listing like it was an obituary because reading it would make everything real and I would no longer be able to pretend that I’m not going to have to hand over my house keys to a complete stranger soon.

****

I drove into Shediac the other day and I saw sandbars for the first time this summer and it’s mid-July. That’s unheard of for me. The shifting tides have been a daily staple for the past seven summers and this is the first time in recent memory that my daily view is a cityscape instead of a seascape. So as I drove by and saw seagulls and tourists dotting the dark brown ribs of sand, I felt slammed against a wall of sadness.

I got out of the car in the parking lot already off-kilter and took another hit when I completely forgot that it would smell like salty ocean air. I expect my yard at the house to smell like the salt air - I can prepare myself for that. Gird my insides against it so that it doesn’t shock me when I get out of the car and the familiar smell rushes up my nostrils. But I was unprepared in the Sobeys parking lot and it felt like a sneak attack. One of my favourite things about living in a seaside town was in fact that I could smell the salt air from not just my house but from the local grocery store parking lot.

That’s the hard part about grief, I learned this after my mom died. It’s not the things you think that will stab you the hardest, it’s the unexpected details that will take you out at the knees. You can prepare yourself for the grip of sadness and it still hurts but not like the things that come at you sideways from the shadows.

Like seeing sandbars on the way to what used to be your regular grocery store.

****

My massage therapist who is also an energy worker (and an incredible healer) described my grief as ‘gory and jagged’ when I saw her this week. She worked to soften the edges of it and by the time our session was done, I had soaked the entire neckline of my shirt in tears.

Since then, things have felt less raw and while I know there are probably many more tears on the horizon, at least now I can think of my house without my eyes filling. When I try to pinpoint my grief, it all comes back to the land itself. It doesn’t begin and end with the house, but lives in the yard, the trees, the flowers, the birds, the vast sky and the way the moonlight would flood my windows and fill my room at night. Which, when I think about it, I’m comforted by the thought that I might be able to find my way back to similar landscapes again.

****

Some uplifting news: my brain MRI results were clear. It had been seven months since my last scan - the longest I have ever gone between scans, and my first one since my separation in the spring. I was terrified of what a new cancer diagnosis would do to my current life but thankfully I don’t have to worry about that for now. Nothing like a cancer recurrence to ruin a perfectly good separation and house sale, amirite.

****

Both my kids seem, to my enormous relief, to be thriving in the rubble that is my recently blown up life. I get to hear them laughing and arguing together without them having to fear upsetting the homeostasis of the household atmosphere. There are way less tears now. Less stomping and slamming doors and me having to clean up emotional spills like a human mop.

****

I am surrounded by furniture that is not my own in this rental house and it will all be disappearing in a month. All of the furniture I do own is in a house that is currently listed for sale. But when that sale will happen, I don’t know. How the furniture will be divided up post-sale, I also don’t know. How long will I be ‘between furniture’? I don’t know.

One thing I do know is that I have been approved to rent the current house I’m staying in on a month-to-month lease basis. At least I know that I will have a roof over my head, even if I might be sitting on a bare floor inside of it for a little while.

****

Someone once told me to ‘write from the scar, not the wound’. Meaning, you shouldn’t write from your messy middle until you’ve had ample time to emotionally and artistically process. But this is me writing from my wound because not enough time has passed for a scar to form. A scar will most certainly form though, of that I have full confidence. But for now, I write from this wounded place.

****

Earlier this summer, I had been tuning in daily to Kelsey Pfendler, the first American woman to row solo from California to Hawaii. For weeks, I opened Instagram daily to check on her progress and tune into her live updates to see how she was doing. She has made it, it took her just under 44 days, breaking both the women’s and men’s speed records.

Her advice was to ‘..think about trying to find your own big hard scary thing. You might not think you’re strong enough to finish it right now but you’re strong enough to start it. And you’ll find everything else along the way.’

I can only imagine what she was feeling out there all alone, at night with the black water lapping against her boat and a galaxy of stars above her head, both shores vast distances away from her. Every day and night, challenging her to extremes, knowing her job was not to row the whole ocean in a day, or to try to control the weather that sometimes helped her progress and sometimes hindered it, but to just row. She had to plot her course, pivot with the elements, keep her boat pointed in the right direction and not stop moving her arms. At sunset, at sunrise, and through the dark nights. Just row. That’s all she had control over.

Kelsey doesn’t know this but for 44 days she helped me realize that my job isn’t to have everything all figured out. I may not know where I am going to live, or work, or when my house is going to sell or what furniture I will take with me and when. My job is to just stay afloat and control what I can control. And row.

Row like my fucking life depends on it.

If I had a superpower it would be to stop time. Hit the pause button on the VCR of life and just absorb every Technicolor frame. Soak the moments in the way a warm piece of focaccia bread does when it sponges up the last of the marinara from my dinner plate.

‘That’s a lot of pressure you’re putting on yourself,’ her eyes are concerned and I’m not sure if she is empathizing or hiding judgment behind her cornflower blue eyes.

‘I suppose it is,’ I readjust my foot under my shin - I’m sitting criss-cross applesauce on the futon in her sundrenched fourth floor corner office. ‘But I know this season, this day, this time of my life is temporary. I’m worried things are going to fall to pieces and if they do, I want to make sure I didn’t squander these moments. I want to make sure that I’ve done such a good job of memorizing them that I can access them easily if I need to.’

The weather is improving, summer is a micro season in my corner of the globe, my kids are healthy, I’m healthy, I have an army of friends, and I can still pick up the phone and hear my father’s voice on the other end of the line. I’ve got life by the short ‘n curlies.

For the moment. I know it can’t last forever. Nothing does.

‘Not only that,’ I continued, ‘but I want to have enough time to experience all the things I can before my health declines. ‘I wanna get my kicks, while I’m still young enough to get ‘em, as Rizzo from Grease says.’

‘Have you read the book about time management…oh what’s it called. Ten Thousand Bananas?’

Odd title I think. What do bananas have to do with time management, let alone ten thousand of them?

She picks up on whatever skeptical look is painted on my face and then says ‘Hang on, I’ll look it up.’

She turns her phone towards me and there are four bananas in various stages of ripeness stacked on the cover. The title of the book is ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ by Oliver Burkeman.

This makes much more sense, she laughs. I’m laughing too.

After a decade of wrestling with cancer treatment (twice), parenting two young (neurodivergent) children through primary and middle school, and oodles of dollars in therapy (still racking up those charges), the waters are sort of calm-ish. Can you blame me for wanting to enjoy the lull for as long as possible? Surely the winds will pick up soon enough, the water will get choppy again, and the skies will darken. I want to remember all of *gestures indiscriminately* this. I’ve sat in enough waiting rooms to know that time and choices most of us take for granted, can get ripped away in literal minutes.

If I can’t stop time, surely I can insulate myself against future catastrophe by squeezing the juice out of it as hard as I can?

After I gave my therapist a hug goodbye and waited for the elevator to take me back down to the first floor, I thought about how time feels like a funhouse mirror now, warped and distorted, like someone is holding down the 2x speed button on the controls, and I don’t know how to reconcile that feeling. It’s disorienting to be at the mercy of an invisible hourglass that is hemorrhaging sand - of which I have no idea how many grains there are left inside.

I’m 48 but the last decade has been so fuzzy. Truth be told, I don’t really remember much after 31 when I had my first child. The years kinda just got dumped into a chasm after that.

Everything feels divided into two distinct chunks: the years before 31 and then there is today - with a bunch of indistinguishable years in between. A big ol’ pot of watery memory soup.

The road to 31 was solid and knowable. Minutes felt like minutes. Days like full days. The clock was kind and benevolent, not something to fight furiously against like it is now.

My shoes click-clacked on the tile as I made my way through the lobby. Reaching the office building door, I had to push hard to get it to open. Stumbling out onto the sidewalk dotted with cigarette butts and pigeon feathers, I pulled out my phone and had the audiobook downloaded before I even found my parked car on the street and reached for the door handle. The ignition turned over and the credits began playing out of my speakers within seconds.

Alright, let’s see what you’ve got, banana book. (Sorry Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks).

I’m only a few chapters in as I type this but so far, listening to his words on time and limitations and why you can’t have it all is part comforting - because I’m learning that I have no control over time and trying to control it will only result in more frustration - and part anxiety-inducing - because I’m learning that I have no control over time and trying to control it will only result in more frustration. Funny how that works.

Last night I had plans to go out with a couple of friends for a post-dinner drink somewhere downtown. One of them popped by while I was still doing my makeup in front of the bathroom mirror so she stood inside the doorframe and we chatted while I finished up.

Friend: Do you ever worry about how much longer we can hang onto our youth?

Me: I am literally applying spackle to my face to hide sizable crevices and pores so deep I could use them to store spare change in…so yeah.

Friend: In ten years, we could be the Golden Girls.

Me: Nevermind in ten years, did you know when the Golden Girls first aired, Rue McClanahan was only 51? I feel like I have literal months of looking young-ish left and I want to take full advantage before it all disappears.

I know, I know - prioritizing youth only caters to a patriarchy obsessed with sexualizing young women and adhering to super fucked up beauty standards. Now more than ever we should be obsessed with placing value on wisdom and experience and celebrating grey hair, wrinkles, and doughy midsections. I know. I’m a good feminist, I understand all of that.

But holding on to my ‘youth’ is not about vanity for me (ok maybe it’s a little about vanity) it’s more about how much life I have left to live. And being able to move my body with the ease and flexibility that a body full of collagen allows. My bones, joints, and skin are quite literally breaking down as I age - those are just the cold facts of nature, baby. Sue me for wanting to hold onto muscle mass and firm-ish looking skin while time is titrating it all away from me at a dizzying speed.

Whether it’s making the most of every single moment of my day, trying to slow the effects of time on my body, not feeling like I’m ever on top of my to-do list, it all gets lumped into the same broad sentiment for me: Time is a motherfucker.

Painfully finite, only goes in one direction - unstoppable in its mission forward, and only moves faster as we age. We can only do so much in the small amount of time we actually do have while we’re here, which means it also comes with grief for the zillion things we won’t get to experience in our lifetime, no matter how much we want them. Things are going to get left off the life to-do list and there is no way around that.

Clearly, there’s still a lot to absorb from Mr. Burkeman’s book. And I’ll get to it, all in good time. But I must say, the whole thing is all enough to drive a girl thoroughly and utterly bananas.

A month ago, I took several carloads of my things (along with some of the kids’ things) and drove them thirty minutes away from our home by the water and then unloaded and carried them one by one into a brand new house in the city. I didn’t haul everything I owned (or even 50% of what I owned) to the new house but just what I would need with me for the next few months. The space I’m renting now is already fully furnished so I only really needed to bring my clothes and a few other essentials but not much else for now.

In the days leading up to the move, I pondered what it would be like to be surrounded by someone else’s things for a few months - whether or not I would ever feel like the space was truly mine. If it would ever feel like my home.

What constitutes feeling ‘at home’? Can it simply exist as a feeling within your body? Or is it the sum of your belongings plus a feeling? Does it require a minimum amount of time inside the same four walls?

So far, I’ve been here for a month. Which is plenty of time to wade around inside my head and make a few observations about how I’m feeling inside my new life. Because while I didn’t have to bring many boxes with me, there was still much to unpack about moving and living the first few days and weeks in a new space. Excitement and grief being the two heftiest emotions I keep uncovering - and sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

You would think that unpacking the jewelry box that contained my wedding ring would elicit a flood of feelings, so I mentally braced myself as I reached into the tote bin to pull it out and put it on my dresser. But it didn’t deliver the punch I was expecting. Phew, that wasn’t so bad. But then the next day, after I made pizza for supper, I reached for the pizza cutter and went to make the same inside joke that has been a familiar family favourite for the last seven years and suddenly I couldn’t see to cut the pizza anymore because little pools had formed in my eyes, blurring my vision.

Conversely, there’s excitement about being in town close to everything. Stores, restaurants, gas stations. One night shortly after I moved in, I ran out of something and only noticed at about 9pm. If that happened at the other house, I would have to wait until the next day to go out and get it because a trip to the nearest store and back was at least a thirty minute round trip. And most things closed early. And/or had extremely limited selection. Definitely not worth the effort.

But here in town? I can be in the Walmart parking lot within five minutes of walking out onto my doorstep and locking my front door.

It’s amazing what constitutes as exhilarating to a 48 year old.

Things I never would have done before are now more accessible. A weeknight movie, trivia night, an evening yoga class. I’m delirious with all the possibilities. And the cherry on the possibilities sundae - I don’t have to dump hundreds of dollars of gas into my car every week.

But as quickly as I can get excited about the novelty of relatively mundane things, I also experience just as many moments of grief for the life and the home I lived inside for the last seven years.

It’s just a big ol’ feelings salad up in here.

I have to remind myself to embrace the ‘and’. I can feel excited about something ‘and’ grief. I don’t know why I so often feel like my feelings need to be cut and dry for a decision to be made. Or to orient myself on how I ‘should’ feel. My somatic therapist likes to remind me of how much time I spend in my head.

She will ask me how I’m feeling and I answer by describing situational facts and how I’m mentally processing each scenario. She lets me finish and then says ‘all of that is great and very logical but how are you feeling?’

My brain doesn’t like the feelings salad. It likes clarity. It likes black and white things. Clear delineation. I’m often reminded to check in with my body. This was a foreign concept to me when I first started therapy. What do you mean where do I feel that in my body. I feel nothing in my body. I discovered that I lived my entire life from the shoulders up. Like a cockroach who can live for two weeks without its head, they seemed like two separate entities. Body is a tool for digesting food and converting it into energy. Feelings have no business in there. Up until now, my body had been a place of betrayal. Of sickness and anxiety. Why would I trust it?

I spent many (so many) sessions with my therapist learning how to recognize and translate the messages it was sending me. And part of that is learning to embrace the ‘and’. So grief and excitement can coexist, and I don’t need to chase either one away. They can both stay and I am free to explore both emotions as they simultaneously occupy both my brain and my body.

Making space for whatever emotion that decides to bubble up in any given moment is part of how I’m learning to navigate my new life. And when something comes up that’s unexpected, I am able to sit with it. Crawl inside it with a flashlight to get a better look at all the nooks and crannies of it.

Earlier this week, after having been moved out for about a month, I had to go back to the other house to cat sit for a couple of days. Most of my things are still right where I left them. The dining room table, the art on the walls, the sofa, plants, much of it hasn’t changed.

Walking through the front door of the other house was a dizzying combination of the foreign and the familiar. Over the next few hours, my body moved through the rooms with as much ease and familiarity as I had every day for the last seven years. Feeding the cats, making coffee, watering the plants. A choreographed routine I know by heart, executed flawlessly.

Not everything was the same though. Some of my things have been packed away in boxes and there are a few new pictures hanging on the walls. And when I walked in, I noticed it didn’t have the same familiar scent it always had. A few small differences completely altered the feeling of the space.

But did it still feel like home?

I woke up the next morning with the cats in bed with me and one of them, Eddie, was laying directly across my torso. I had missed this feeling so much. Leaving the cats behind, even if only for a few months is one of the most painful parts of this new (don’t say chapter, don’t say chapter) phase. I pushed getting coffee for as long as I could because I knew the second I moved, the cat would also move and I wanted to soak up every furry drop of his little body stretched out across mine. After another ten or so minutes, and I could wait no longer, I had to get up and brew a pot. Eddie jumped down off the bed, just as I predicted, and once we were downstairs I let him outside to roam in the sunshine.

With fresh coffee in hand, I came back up and crawled into bed with my laptop and Dave Grohl, our other cat who has minimal interest in going outside. This is yet another familiar routine. One of my favourites. Over the years, I have spent hours sitting in this room propped up in bed with my laptop first thing in the morning. The windows that line the walls give me a vast view of the sky and treetops and the light in here is just perfection. The only thing missing was the sound of the birds chirping. It was cooler out this morning and I guessed I would have been able to hear them had I been up a few hours ago, closer to the sunrise. Which, I did happen to sneak a peek of as I was rolling over earlier and the sky was lit up in shades of pink and yellow. I miss this room the most, with all its windows that let the sky in, no matter what time of day, or night, it happens to be.

That first night, I saw the moon for the first time in a month. As I was locking the garden doors off the dining room before bed, I spotted her shining over the trees. Bright and almost full. Upstairs, she poured in through the glass, drenching the room in silver light. From where I was laying in bed, I could see the moon pinned in the top right corner of the window just above my dresser.

Living in the city is amazing in its own way - the way the houses huddle together on the tree-lined street, looking like a picturesque scene plucked right out of a storybook, the closeness of everything, the time I save because I’m not spending so much time driving everywhere. And yes, there are birds there too. Starlings and blue jays and black capped chickadees that flit from branch to branch in the trees just outside my living room window. And fat grey squirrels that run up and down the tree trunks in search of food. Their choruses just get drowned out by city noise is all.

There is much less open sky in town so the moon has more opportunities to hide. At the other house, the moon felt like a guardian, always hovering. I knew if I wanted to find her, all I had to do was look out one of the many windows and I would spot her easily. Hi beautiful, I would whisper. Thank you for your light, you look glorious this evening. And she glowed back like a steadfast guardian in her reassuring omnipresence.

I keep thinking I see her at my new house. Every time I go to shut the blinds in my dining room. A sharp little inhale and I think ‘oh there she is!’ but disappointment quickly eclipses my excitement when I realize it’s just a streetlight glowing white behind the tree branches.

No matter. I know she’s up there somewhere. Just as steadfast and maternal in her presence as she ever was.

After a couple of days of visiting with the cats, it was time to get my overnight bag packed up and drive back into the city. Before I got in the car, I took one last walk around the neighbourhood and down to the water’s edge to look for seaglass. Almost right away I found a thick frosted brown piece propped up on an oyster shell. I picked it up and wiped off the wet sand before putting it in my pocket to take home with me.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in town and pulling into the driveway.

I unlocked the front door and carried my things across the threshold. Plunking my keys down in the dish on the table in the entryway, I looked around at the furniture that isn’t mine, took the deepest breath, and felt completely at home.

I was driving home and Say Hello to Heaven started playing on the radio and I cranked up the volume because of course that’s what you do when a 90s rarity graces you with its presence while you’re alone in the car cruising at a steady 120km/hr down the highway. My inner monologue switched over from whatever it had been focused on pre-Temple of the Dog and shifted into something like ‘damn this song still hits. Two of the best voices in 90s grunge coming together in the same song, I forgot how utterly tectonic they were together, how lucky we were to have had Eddie Vedder and …….’

‘Eddie Vedder and……’

What the fuck.

Luscious wavy locks, piercing eyes, Soundgarden, Audioslave…forgetting this man’s name is akin to me forgetting something as deeply knowable and familiar as the street name I grew up on or the dog I had as a teenager that never left my side.

‘Is it Chris something….or maybe Andrew?’

I refuse to look it up. No Googling. I know this. It helps that I’m driving and can’t reach for my phone anyway, forcing me to rawdog my way out of this one. My brain is betraying me in the most unforgivable way, how fucking dare you brain, what’s next? Forget the colour blue? Or what chocolate chip cookies taste like?

I search my brain, the monkeys dance on. I curse them and resume berating myself.

A shame-filled three whole minutes ticks by before it finally comes to me, bringing the self-flagellation to an abrupt halt. Cornell! Phew! FINALLY. I exhale, spent from all the mental effort I had just exerted and more than a little afraid of early onset dementia.

Memory is truly a fucked up thing. That’s wildly reductive but specifically, have you ever noticed that recalling a distant memory feels indiscernible from a dream?

If I think of the last dream I had and then I think of something that happened five years ago, they feel mostly the same. I mean, certainly one actually happened and the other happened inside my mind while I was unconscious, but all these years later, the memory feels no different than a dream. It doesn’t help that most of my memories possess the same Swiss cheese like qualities of a dream. A flash here. A glimmer there. Bits and pieces that have lost context and are now just watery images. Some that show up as static photos, others like short movie clips. But nothing more. Many of them long-buried and inaccessible until something in your current life happens to trigger them awake.

Recently, I was visiting my oldest friend and her family. Her sister recently adopted a baby and it was the first time I was meeting him.

He is six-ish months old. Picking him up and holding him was marvelous. It was both foreign and familiar. Ah yes, a wobbly baby, the young mother version of me comes alive in the moment. It felt like running into an old friend, except the old friend is a past version of yourself. I perched him on my hip, bounced and swayed, sniffed his little peach fuzz head and inhaled his powdery baby scent.

I sat on the couch with him in my lap. Before long, I could tell he wanted to stand. So I held him steady under his arms and his legs supported his own weight while he wobbled around on my lap. His legs were so strong. He wiggled and sat and stood and kicked and I held him in the air with his feet touching my thighs until my arms burned and I remembered what it was like to balance my own babies on my lap until my arms burned in the same places.

A sadness takes over when I try to recall the moments within the first year or two of motherhood. I spent so much of them in a haze of sleep deprivation, frustration, depression, hormonal peaks and valleys, that I ended up wishing the time away. I wanted to stab anyone that told me ‘the days are long but the years are short’. Of course they were right but back then, in that state, it just made me cry tears of exhaustion.

And then one day, you just stop holding your babies in your arms and propping them up on your hip. Your arms notice the relief, your body is thankful for the increased time to yourself to be able to reclaim some minutes of your life back. Babies turn into toddlers and then into preschoolers and each stage brings with it something new to navigate and you think you will always remember the sound of your baby laughing or crying. You start to be thankful they have found words to tell you what it is they want and you no longer have to decode their cries and sounds. I always shed each stage my children went through like a snake shedding its skin. I was happy to leave the worn and scaly fragments of what I thought were the most grueling stages of motherhood behind.

You don’t ever think the memories will evaporate like steam. Of course I will always remember this, you think. How could I possibly forget the way their baby teeth poked through their gums one by one (teething was always such a tumultuous time and carved deep lines into my memory filled with repeat Tylenol doses and wet bibs and sleepless nights), or the way their arms and legs would bend and shake when they were excited about anything. Or the way their little fuzzy hairs tickled your nose when you were laying beside them in bed during morning naps.

But you do forget.

And then you remember all over again when you go to a friend’s house and muscle memory takes over as you unlatch the buckles on his bucket seat, just like how you used to, and then you lift him up and his body is warm and his back is just a little bit damp from being in the car seat and then you raise him up to eye level and his look at his wide baby eyes and peaches and cream skin and place him on your hip, like a reflex. One hand on his back and the other around his bottom. And then you remember. Because it feels like time has collapsed and you are right back where you used to be. Only now your body isn’t in an exhausted fog and you can enjoy what it feels like to hold a baby in your arms until they burn. And then you are full of joy and grief all at once. Because there was a time when you couldn’t imagine moving through life without a baby tethered to your body. And like you might drown from a tsunami of exhaustion or oxytocin on any given day. You know it was real.

But now, it feels no different than a dream.

Up until a few months ago, I never looked for books at these stores. After all, how good could a mish-mash of books be in a store that’s not strictly dedicated to pre-owned books? I always assumed they were largely just piles of old musty Bibles and dictionaries from the 80s.

Also, your Frenchys, your Value Villages, your Salvation Armys, these stores are meant for clothing, or at least that’s how I’ve always approached them. Thrift stores First for clothing, Second for vintage glassware and Never for everything else, including books.

But there’s gold in them hills.

It all started with Thriftmas - my resolution to buy only thrifted gifts for my friends at Christmas. I began scanning the book bins to see if I could find any vintage cookbooks or gardening books to tuck into curated gift baskets. But then I tripped over a title or two that had been on my personal wishlist for months, which prompted me to look more seriously at the book sections and thus a new obsession was unlocked.

Not too long ago, I was at a Frenchy’s in Bouctouche and found books on writing creative nonfiction (Tell it Slant and Writing Down the Bones). If you’re unfamiliar with Frenchy’s, let me just say it’s the most unlikely place to find niche books on the craft of writing. I have also found other titles I’ve had on my wishlist from Lisa Moore, Miriam Toews, and Sue Monk Kidd.

This is going to sound coo-coo bananas but I secretly believe the books find me and not the other way around. How else do I explain being able to check off so many niche titles from so many obscure places. CNF books at Frenchy’s in the tiny rural Francophone community of Bouctouche? I mean come on. Clearly they were meant for me. And the feeling when you find a good one? Like finding a crisp tenner on the sidewalk. Or a broken open bag of Starburst on the shelf at the grocery store. Or the person ahead of you paying for your coffee order in the drive thru. In other words, hella satisfying.

Bold claim: I’ve had more luck at finding great titles at thrift shops recently than I have at dedicated secondhand bookstores. The one (obvious) caveat is that they are always older titles. I can’t find the latest bestsellers in secondhand shops which means I still buy a few brand new books on occasion*.

Each time I walk out with an armload of books I tell myself this is the last book haul until I make a dent in my TBR pile at home.

And then I laugh and laugh and laugh.

As a writer, I read for pleasure, but I also read to study story structure, pacing, sensory detail, language - how other writers take the same topics that have been written about since the dawn of printing and still find a way to make them feel new.

Reading, therefore, is an act of writing. For me at least. This makes it somehow easier to justify dumping heaps of books into my cart. The one deterrent is the cost of buying new books, which is why I only set foot in a Chapters-Indigo if I know my wallet can handle it.

Thrift books on the other hand….those are way justifiable. Especially because they tend to be even cheaper than books at secondhand bookstores. I can usually walk out with half a dozen books for under twenty bucks - which is really saying something in today’s world. *shakes old lady fist at the sky and starts every story with Back in My Day*

Maybe that’s why I keep coming home with stacks. It’s not shopping. It’s research. Not to mention it’s wildly satisfying. The thrill of going into a store and finding a dust-jacketless copy of The Goldfinch buried under Company’s Coming cookbooks and cross-stitching how-tos? I’m high just thinking about it.

Some people do hard drugs, I thrift books.

At this rate though, I’m gonna need a bigger bookshelf.

---------

*Most recently: Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age, and Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes To Me and The God of Small Things.

I blame Ann Patchett for the latter two. Several weeks back, I saw a Parnassus Books TikTok where she talked about how Roy’s latest release was the memoir version of the bestselling novel from 1997. She said if you’re interested in studying how to novelize a memoir, this was a master class. Say less, Ann.

If anyone’s curious about my thoughts on any of the above, let me know. Let’s talk thrifting! Let’s talk books! Reach out and say hi. I’m here for it all.

Xo Christie

Despite already being late leaving the house, I pause to watch the oversized snowflakes zig and zag in playful pursuit of one another in a long game of tag, each flake taking elaborate detours through the sky as they float towards the sugar white ground. Snowglobe snow. My favourite.

I don’t ever intend to be late but I have yet to master the art of estimating time with any degree of accuracy. Tasks always take much longer than I expect and I am always rushing. Time possesses ninja-like stealth and I, a hefty case of time blindness.

My daughter is already way ahead of me kicking up snow as she skips down the path that leads from the house to the driveway.

I shout ahead towards her just as she disappears around the corner of the garage, be careful, there is a sheet of ice under the snow. She doesn’t hear me. Or if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge. Or if she does acknowledge, I don’t hear it. There is a good chance her response was lost in the spaces between the thick snowflakes.

Down the path, I quickly forget my own words of warning and skid briefly on the ice. I recover before spilling a single drop of coffee from the travel cup in my right hand. I clear the snow away from the car door handle with a gloved hand and climb inside.

The car whirrs to life and the radio cuts into a rebroadcast of an old Casey Kasem Top 40 countdown from the 80s on the classic rock station. Total Eclipse of The Heart is up three spots from last week and comes in at number 10 on the countdown, Casey says.

My breath puffs silver clouds of air inside the car as the wipers outside swipe rhythmically back and forth to clear the layer of snow and frost off my windshield.

I know how things turn out for you, Casey. You and a feeding tube and a family raging war over your dying body.

It feels wrong to have this knowledge while the Casey that’s been preserved in time, the one inside my radio, knows nothing. His voice chipper, enthusiastic, and oblivious.

A memory surfaces and I’m eighteen years old, picking up the phone just before my shift ends at the department store where I work behind the cash register. It’s my father. He tells me that my grandmother has just passed away. It happened just after my mother left the hospital to pick me up and she doesn’t know yet.

I walk to the food court where she always meets me. She smiles. Her eyes are happy. Unknowing. Something dark and heavy lands inside my ribcage and I know I will never see her smile the same way again - the smile of a daughter who hadn’t yet lost her mother.

I am in possession of a grenade. One with the power to carve a deep swath through her life - marking a definitive before and after. I say nothing. We ride the short distance to the hospital with the radio on low and the quiet hum of the tires filling the air between us.

The trees pass by my window in a blur, and I sit still in my seat, the strap of the seat belt cutting into my neck, but I don’t move it.

I hated having that knowledge before she did. I didn’t want it.

A shiver works its way through my body bringing my attention back into the car. The wipers are still swooshing. My daughter asks me to turn up the heat and I oblige, even though the engine is not yet warm enough to generate any hot air.

On the road, the snow is too light and fluffy to stick to the ground so the 25-minute drive to town is not slowed by the road conditions, which is fortunate because I can’t afford to slow my pace.

We’re headed to my daughter’s weekly theatre class. She’s got a flair for the dramatic and has always shown an interest in music and the stage, so I’d hoped to put some rigor behind some of her extraness and turn it into an artistic endeavour.

She asked me the other day if I thought she could be Taylor Swift someday. I considered what she meant by her question and whether she was referencing Taylor Swift’s career as a singer/songwriter or if she was asking me if she could one day be the biggest pop star in the world.

You mean sing and write music for a living?

Yes.

Yes, I think you could absolutely make a living that way.

A look of wonder swept across her face as though I had just told her it was possible to make a living eating nothing but chocolate cake with pink icing.

I often think about where time will take my children, and if I will be around to witness the pages of their life stories unfurl. Eight years ago, after my last chemotherapy treatment, I begged the universe to keep me here at least until my kids grew up.

But will I be here long enough to see my daughter behind a microphone? To watch my son’s hair turn grey at the temples?

There is no way of knowing.

I park across the street from the small theatre building. Class is just about to get underway as we swing the heavy glass door open and a gust of wind pushes us inside. A kiss on top of the head for my daughter, I confirm the time I need to pick her back up and then I slip back outside and bolt across the street to where I’m parked way too close to a stop sign.

I now have an hour to spend any way I want. I put the car into drive and make my way to the parking garage down the street so I can walk to a nearby cafe where I’ll order a mid-morning snack and set up my laptop to do some writing.

Reaching for the cafe door, I can already hear piano playing inside. A young man in his twenties is sitting at the bench. A woman is at the table next to the piano. His coat is hanging on the back of the empty chair across from her. She is watching him and the corners of her berry-coloured mouth are turned up in a smile.

I recognize Beethoven. But the young piano player is so rusty it’s almost painful. His bravado to be so terrible in a public venue is charming in a way. I order an Americano and a breakfast sandwich on a croissant and find a table.

Looking around at the local art on the yellow and peach walls, I try to remember what business occupied this building before the cafe was here. It was an office, I’m sure of it. A temp agency maybe? I recall being in here once just out of school and talking to someone behind a desk hoping to secure a job. I had very little life experience and it was a challenge to even fill my resume. The carpets were thin and grey and the walls were painted a watery light blue.

Twenty odd years later, computer monitors have been swapped for local art and the clickety clack of keyboards has been replaced by the hiss of an espresso machine and the clinking of spoons swirling inside coffee mugs.

It’s possible I once stood in the exact spot I am currently in now, an entire lifetime ago, hoping to trade a nearly blank resume for work experience.

I bet there was very little music in this building back then. Just practical conversations, ties and high heels, and Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

But now it’s peach-coloured walls and original art. Conversations over hot beverages and homemade desserts.

And clunky Beethoven.

I was just a young girl back then. Unknowing. Oblivious to the shrinking walls of time and the version of herself that would be standing here all these years later, having just dropped her spirited daughter off at theatre class just up the street.

An older couple walks through the front door. The woman flashes me a warm smile on her way by. Her grey hair is in long braids and she’s wearing mukluks on her feet. The couple orders coffee and sit at a table near the front window, appearing fully engaged in conversation. I can see curls of steam rising from the ceramic mugs their hands are wrapped around.

I stand up from my seat where I’ve been writing and snap a photo of the otherwise empty cafe and I end up capturing the couple, frozen in a moment.

The hour has disappeared and it’s time to make my way up to the next block to pick up my daughter from class. I walk out into the street, and the snowflakes are still swirling through the air on invisible updrafts.

I’m halfway up the block and then softly, they begin to land.

One by one, on my toque and the soft pink of my cheeks and on the shoulders of my winter coat. They’re just beginning to melt as I disappear into the theatre building where my daughter waits for me to pick her up and take her home.

As I started sifting through some of the things that had an impact on me as part of my 2025 review (it’s a hodge podge list that includes various media as well as events, tools, etc), I wanted to cherry pick a few of my faves to share with you.

*in no particular order*

TV - Dying for Sex

A series about a woman diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer who decides to leave her buzzkill husband in pursuit of the most sex she can have during what’s left of her life. This, by the by, would not be my reaction in the slightest. Nay, nay, my vagina would cease to exist and I would be 43 layers deep into a panic spiral if placed in her shoes. But this woman (based on a true story so I know it’s not a fictionalized / eroticized version of what it’s like to be handed a death sentence at a young age) did just that. Michelle Williams plays the main character, Jenny Slate co-stars as her best friend and soul mate.

The scene with Heart and Soul by T’Pau still gives me chills. Watch it, you’ll know what I mean.

Book - Demon Copperhead

Every time I recommend this book to someone they think I’m suggesting they read a book about the occult. Don’t let the ‘demon’ title fool you, this book written by Barbara Kingsolver is the story of a boy turned young adult as he navigates trauma and addiction in Virginia throughout the 90s. Part opioid origin story, part hero’s journey against systemic odds, it’s a stunning heartbreaker of a novel.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it’s the most engaging book I have read in a long time let alone this year. I’m still searching for my next ‘Demon Copperhead’. One of those books that you will stop and re-read whole paragraphs because the words are arranged in such a way that you want to papier mâché them to the walls of your mind so you can recall them later.

Movie - All of Us Strangers

This movie stuck to me like a shadow and followed me around for months. It had all the elements that make up an unforgettable movie for me: chemistry so palpable between the film’s two stars (Andrew Scott + Paul Mezcal) that it somehow turns the air around me into static electricity, screenshot-worthy cinematography, and stitched together with throughlines of grief and longing. Call Me By Your Name was probably the last film I watched that had a similar effect on me and as I write this I’m starting to notice a pattern.

Podcast - Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown

It’s THE podcast to ingest if you’re looking for something that lands dead center in the crosshairs of science and spirituality. Topics like NDE’s, collective consciousness, principles of quantum physics, and the very nature of what we call ‘reality’, all have me completely fascinated. It’s hosted by Mayim Bialik (From TV’s Blossom and later, Sheldon’s GF on The Big Bang Theory) and Johnathan Cohen. Mayim has a PhD in neuroscience and provides the science lens, her co-host brings the woo and together they explore fascinating mind-expanding topics with highly accredited guests.

AI

Don’t come for me, I know AI is a hot potato. But AI tools like ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini are invaluable steps in my editing process, helping to point out inconsistencies in my writing, making sure I’m staying true to my voice, suggesting areas to expand upon, etc.

Nicole Breit

I did some 1:1 work for a handful of weeks with a writing coach this year and it was the best investment of time and money that I could have made in myself. I have had some of my work accepted to four different literary journals so far and I’m only just getting started. She is an excellent teacher and working with her was easily one of my best decisions in 2025.

Subtitles

Holy shit I missed so much plot and dialogue in TV and movies before I started turning subs on.

I was at a friend’s house watching a movie a few months back and about a third of the way in, I mustered up the courage to ask her (in my most tentative voice), ‘soooo, do you ever by chance turn the subtitles on?’ I watched her reaction carefully, ready to quickly spit out a ‘pffft yeah me neither, subtitles are for geriatric losers’ in a hurry if I needed to. But she turned to me like she had just found the only other smoker at a wedding reception and exhaled ‘omg YES I didn’t put them on just now because I was worried you would judge me but I can’t watch anything without them’ and I was like ‘omg SAME’.

And we are now bonded for life.

Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy has changed not only the way I show up for therapy sessions but the way I experience life in general. My mind and body are learning to communicate for the first time in a very long time. As an intellectualizer, I want to rationalize and logic my way through emotional issues. You just can’t. Trust me, I’ve tried.

I’m learning to listen to physical cues. To sit with things in my body before my brain railroads past things at 100 miles an hour. I’m learning that my body possesses so much wisdom and instinct and healing can’t happen without feeling.

I have shelled out a small fortune over the last year or so for that little bombshell of truth. But I’m giving it to you for free. You’re welcome :) Now go get yourself a somatic therapist.

Outdoor Walks

If I don’t make time for walking outside, I can tell because I start to feel like an irritable and hungry badger. Boots to the ground, trees all around, blue blanket of sky or white cloud comforter above, no matter. I need it all to feel whole. Fresh air. Bonus if there’s water nearby (which for me there usually is).

Vitamins

Here’s the list of things I never, ever, ever leave my house without: something to read, something to write on, something to play music on, and a sack of vitamins. Magnesium and vitamin D are non-negotiables. Followed by an antihistamine and B12.

I never said this list was glamorous.

Female relationships

Fact: I would be dead without my girls. Or doing my best Artax impersonation in the swamp of sadness. They are my lifeline, the red of the blood in my veins.

My female friendships keep my soul fed and my heart beating. You know who you are and I love you so freaking much.

My therapist, my massage therapist, my writing coach, my family doctor - these are the team of professional women with whom I entrust my physical, therapeutic, and professional wellbeing to.

Divine feminine energy is oxygen.

Yule Intentions

Brand new to the roster this year but one practice I will continue for years to come. It goes like this: you write out 13 intentions, each one on a slip of paper. Beginning on winter solstice, you burn one piece of paper each night until the new year. You’re left with one piece of paper left over. That is for you to take care of and focus on in the upcoming year. It’s the universe’s job to take care of the ones you’ve turned to ash.

Weekend Roadtrips

I may not get to travel to exotic locations very often (ok, hardly ever) but a weekend road trip here and there is almost always in the budget. As the saying goes, ‘a change is as good as a rest’ and you don’t need to spend big bucks to take a little detour away from your regular routine. Highly recommend taking yourself on a mini weekend (or mid-week if you can swing it) adventure.

Some of my faves

(a list within a list!)

Halifax adventure (and Peggy’s Cove) with my teenager. Our first solo mom/son road trip since he was a preschooler. We spent a lot of time listening to music, chatting, and exploring our way around. Spending 1:1 time together outside of our home environment (and far away from a screen) allowed for plenty of opportunity to see him in an entirely different light.

Winter chalet near Poley Mountain for a mini writing retreat with a friend and fellow New Brunswick writer. We gabbed, cooked, did some writing, went for a snowy hike on the Bluff, and hot tubbed under the stars surrounded by evergreens.

Photography/sea glass/fishing village trip to Grand Manan with my cousin/BFF. Grand Manan is dazzling. With my camera slung over my shoulder and no timeline or schedule to follow, we just allowed the Island scenery and our instincts to take the lead. We chased the sunset all the way to the Whistle, seaglassed for hours along the beaches, hiked the Hole-in-the-Wall, and of course, took too many fishing boat photos for me to count.

A concert road trip to Saint John for Area506 and a trip to The Shore Club in Hubbards, NS both with my bestie. Road trips to see live music are the best road trips.

Woodsy river Airbnb getaway in charming Canaan Forks, NB. One of my girlfriends owns a sweet little Airbnb just a short drive away from the city and it just happened to have a midweek vacancy so a few of us decided to take advantage. We cooked yummy dinner, went on a short hike down to a lush stream, drank wine and pulled tarot cards. I can’t decide if the most charming part was spying on all the hummingbirds from the screened-in porch or the picture perfect view from the back deck overlooking the treetops.

Journaling practice + Martha Beck’s ‘A Perfect Day’ exercise.

I am an almost daily journaler. It’s very low pressure, all stream-of-consciousness writing and I recommend it to anyone and everyone any chance I get. I have zero chill when it comes to extolling the virtues of journaling. If there is even a hint of a crack in a conversation where I can talk about the benefits of journaling, I do. Relationship issues? Hung up on something emotional and don’t understand fully what’s going on? Angry about something? Bad dream? My answer is always: write about it. The answers are there, you just need to stream-of-consciousness write about whatever is plaguing you and the answers will pour out onto the page letter by letter. No planning, no thought, just set a ten minute timer and go. It’s fucking magic.

I came across Martha Beck’s exercise when I listened to a Huberman Lab podcast. She explained in detail how to do it but the idea is that you write out, in granular detail, your idea of an ordinary day in your perfect life. The ordinary day is key.

You walk yourself through elements like:

• Morning: When do you wake up? What’s the setting? What’s your routine?

• Work/Activities: What do you do? How do you feel? Who are you with?

• Meals: What do you eat/drink? Where?

• Relationships: Who do you interact with?

• Evening: How do you relax? What’s your bedtime routine?

The idea is that by visualizing a day in your perfectly designed life, detail by detail, you can usher yourself through the feelings of an ideal (or future) life state and it provides a bit of a map/guidebook for you. It helps you get clear on what it is that lights you up and what you can work towards.

Burnout

Not a ‘thing’ per se but an event. I spent most of this past year on leave from work. I burned out and I burned out hard. This reset has allowed me to take an inventory of what is crucial to my quality of life in the day to day and it’s afforded me the ability to take some much needed rest. I’ve had the luxury of being able to take the time and I know so many others who are burned out just as badly but can’t afford to take time to heal and who are hanging on by a loose thread. My privilege is not lost on me.

Ok, I’m done yammering for now.

Take good care of yourselves in 2026, dear friends. Also, feel free to share some of the things that made your 2025 better. I would love to hear them.

Until the next one,

Xo

Christie

Teen Translation

My son is outgrowing me like last year’s favourite t-shirt. He used to want me to tuck him in every night and now, seemingly overnight, he doesn’t even tell me that he is going to bed.

He was Velcro’d to me just a blink ago. Now it’s like he forgets I exist most of the time. Which is why it always feels like such a parenting win when he chooses to hang out with me over doing anything else.

Earlier this week, he and I were the only ones here. He was free to play video games with his friends all evening if he wanted to. Instead, he chose to help me fold laundry. While we folded, we listened to music from the iPod dock in my room. I marveled at how iPods used to be cutting edge technology and now they’re vintage and I don’t know how all of that happened so quickly.

He translated some GenZ language and told me what the word ‘clanker’ meant. He asked me what the word ‘disparaging’ meant. I helped him clean the kitchen. He showed me a funny TikTok. Then showed me something he just ordered off Temu. I listened to a dissertation on why Fortnite ‘sucks now’ and isn’t worth playing anymore because since recent updates, skill is no longer required. Apparently, it has something to do with the guns they use now? I don’t really know. Knowing isn’t the point anyway.

The next morning, he texted me and told me to go outside and look at the moon. I did. It was a perfectly round beach ball, glowing white, and hanging low just above the tree line in the pink and blue morning sky.

I am far from a perfect parent, and I have made countless mistakes, this much I know to be true. Like any mother, I constantly question whether I’ve done a good enough job as I feel him slowly letting go of me as time trudges on.

But he doesn’t have to tell me with words that I didn’t totally screw up this motherhood thing. He shows me in a hundred different ways.

On Childhood Friendships and the People Who Make Us

Last week, we went trick or treating for Halloween with my daughter, her best friend, and her family. This has been our ritual each Halloween for years and it’s one of my very favourite traditions.

The girls have known each other since they were babies, and they are stereotypical besties.

A duo for the ages - each other’s Thelma and Louise, Troy and Abed, and, as was the case on Halloween night, Lydia and Beetlejuice.

It got me thinking, what is it about childhood friendships that leave such a lasting impact? Often, even more so than many adult friendships. Do youth, novelty, and lack of responsibility allow the bonds to grow tighter? Forged with stronger material?

There are a few people I was close with throughout childhood and teen years that I haven’t shared a physical space with in ages but with whom I can connect and still feel the close bond despite all the time and space apart. The connection has lasted decades. Like the floorboards of an old farmhouse, they are dusty and worn but they are still solid.

To be friends with someone you’ve known since childhood is to have a tiny part of you exist in the world completely separate from yourself, in carved out spaces within, like tiny pockets of stardust.

Entire galaxies of giggles, made up dances and handshakes, secret rituals and inside jokes live somewhere in each of us permanently connecting us to the people who made us who we are today.

Watching my daughter and her best friend together is to watch those galaxies being formed in real time. I’m able to re-live my own childhood as I watch them put their heads together and conspire to take on their own inner worlds.

It gives me great comfort to know that each of them will look at the stars differently for the rest of their lives because of their friendship together in these moments. Regardless of whether their paths will keep them close together as parallel lines or if they will wind in and out, perhaps coming together and then veering apart and then coming together again in wave patterns.

In and out,

away and apart,

woven together, like fabric.

Kindness Over Kale

I was in the produce department at the grocery store the other day in search of romaine lettuce. But standing directly between me and my throughline to the leafy greens was an elderly lady in a bright pink coat on a quest to find ‘the perfect’ head of iceberg lettuce. She kept picking heads up, turning them over in her hands, and then placing them back on the shelf. None of them quite right for her.

Normally I would have no patience for this kind of grocery store fuckery but I had nowhere to be so I was ok to wait. And also, if we are going to dig deep into our inner wells in search of patience, there is no greater reason than for our elders, in my opinion.

While I stood there, another grey-haired lady pushing a cart was heading towards us. She looked at Lettuce Lady and then at me, at a standstill. Our eyes met, we exchanged a knowing grin, and then she pivoted her cart in the other direction, opting for an alternate route.

Later (romaine lettuce successfully secured in my basket), at the other end of the store, I was walking down the frozen food section, and once again, found myself behind Lettuce Lady ambling in front of me in her quilted pink coat. And again, I spotted Detour Lady coming down the aisle towards us. As she passed by, she said something but I couldn’t hear what she said. Then I heard Lettuce Lady say, ‘Pardon me?’

Detour Lady stopped said more loudly, slowing down to emphasize her words, ‘That. Coat. Is. A. Lovely. Colour. On. You.’

‘Oh, thank you so much.’ Lettuce lady smiled, looking surprised as she continued to push her cart down the aisle.

The moment was so wholesome my heart could barely handle it.

I wondered when the last time she might have gotten a compliment was, let alone one from a stranger. I bet that exchange made her whole day.

As for me, just a lone bystander amongst the frozen vegetables, it served as a timely reminder that we can always choose patience and kindness. Even in the grocery store.

What am I saying, maybe even especially in the grocery store.

A Haunting We Will Go

At therapy the other day, I was lamenting that I never used to be so afraid. I moved halfway across the country to the city of Winnipeg when I was 22, had a relationship fall apart, moved in with my best friend, then moved a province over to a small town in Ontario at 24, traveled the country, took huge risks and all the while, wrapped myself in a ‘let’s fucking go’ attitude. Now? Terrified. Of everything.

My therapist peered at me with her cornflower blue eyes and said, ‘And what would the Christie from back then say to you now about that?’ I thought about it for a second and replied ‘I don’t even know who she is anymore’. And cried.

Later that afternoon, I stopped into see my father for a quick visit.

Being at Dad’s always connects me to the trace remnants of myself that I feel are long gone. I am able to stand on the same cushion floors and carpets I used to when I was a braver version of myself and I can feel the ghost of me haunting those walls. Barely a vapour.

With my mom now gone, and no siblings to tie me to the teenage or young adult version of myself, I only have my father.

*

Speaking of Mom, he told me that he dreams of her at least once a week. They have a life together. They live in the same dream house and their lives pick up every week where they left off. It looks like the house we used to live in when you were a teenager, he says.

How old is she in your dreams, I ask.

Sometimes she is young, like when we first met, but sometimes she is old like me. Sometimes we argue but most of the time we are just living a life together.

I love that, I tell him.

Tears that I had caught early and dabbed at the corners of my eyes with tissue are intensifying and I need another tissue to catch the flow on my cheeks.

*

I cry every time I see my father now, I can’t help it. I don’t know if it’s because he reminds me so much of my old self, my childhood, and of a sacred time that I can never get back. Or if his fragility tugs on my emotional pant leg and reminds me ever so subtly that one day, hopefully many years from now but still much sooner than I would like, I won’t be able to hear him tell stories of his past, of Mom’s past, and of mine. Honouring the natural order of things, I’ll be an adult orphan. And then what? I will have nothing to anchor me to the beginning, no one to corroborate the details of my own personal history.

Why do these facts of aging have to be so cruel?

A Neverending (Midlife) Story

I want to try mushrooms. Am I allowed to say that? Is someone going to bust through my front door like the Kool-Aid man and arrest me for wanting to try an illicit drug and then writing about it?

[Reminds me of the Mitch Hedburg comedy bit: I used to do drugs. I still do. But I used to do them too.]

I have never been one to take big risks with drugs. I have far too many control issues to allow myself to let go and let chemicals completely take over. And anyhow, I prefer the warm fuzzy glow of a glass of red wine to the electric buzzy energy and hallucinogens of substances.

But shrooms are gaining so much credibility for their mental health benefits. Data backed and everything. I want to take something that will obliterate the concrete walls of fear. The thing that shackles my creativity, keeps me stuck, and hinders possibility.

Fear feels like the wolf creature in The Neverending Story. What was his name again?

The Nothing.

I used to move through the world without trepidation and now, I can feel how small I’ve allowed my life to become. Could mushrooms help me find the version of myself that used to exist? Could they be the key to unlocking possibility and adventure in midlife?

If only Falkor were real and I had my own personal luck dragon to swoop in and rescue me from The Nothing.

Alas, midlife is a different kind of Neverending Story. And in the absence of luck dragons, mushrooms might just have to do. Not because I think they’ll actually be ‘magic’, but because I’m tired of spinning my wheels among the safe.

But also, maybe they will be a little magic?

I mean, it’s right there in the name and everything.

You don’t know the life of a show cancer girl, babe

and you’re never gonna wanna

I’ve got some time to knock out a bit of writing in between my injection and the scan itself (for the next 24 hours I’m considered radioactive, fun!) which means I can finish a writing prompt I started earlier.

Bless Natalie Goldberg and her writing prompts, they have shaken the rocks loose in my brain more than once and I’m grateful for her ability to get my fingers moving across the keyboard.

So as I wait for my insides to glow...

Today’s writing prompt #50 ‘You need to know this’ -

(part stream of consciousness ramble, part sappy sermon)

You need to know that it’s not personal. I get all swirled up in my own shit and sometimes forget to turn my eyes away from my own inner world to focus on the people around me. So if I forget to ask how your mother is doing or if I forget to follow up on that bonfire you had last night and ask you if you ever did make that smores recipe you were talking about, it’s not because I don’t care. I care a lot. Actually.

The other day you said I made something all about me and that you needed to take some time before you could respond to me and I couldn’t sleep that night. I sorted through every instance every way that I might be selfish in my life. All the ways I have made things about me and shouldn’t have. I awoke feeling beat up. It was me. I beat myself up.

You need to know that when I die, if it’s possible for me to visit you, I will. I will be there when you are driving to work in the morning and I will be there to put feathers on the ground in your path, I will play our song on the radio. You will know it’s me. I’ll make sure of it.

You need to know that my biggest fear is regret. Not heights, not small spaces, not even cancer. None of those. It’s the gut-turning feeling of knowing that it’s too late to do something or that I missed my shot.

So many things are course-correctable but you can’t turn back the clock. You can’t go back and wrestle yourself into making different choices. Take words out of the air or decide to do a thing or not do a thing any differently than you did.

The biggest regret of all? The king kahuna? Not making enough of an impact in this life. Not squeezing every second of richness out of this runaway train. Thinking that our days here are infinite. To get to the end of my life and carry with me in my right hand a long list of ‘I should haves’.

For me, there are no uglier monsters to dread.

You need to know that right now it’s an early October morning and I’m all by myself except for a sleeping cat to my left. I’m sitting up in bed, my laptop on the lap desk that I got from my kids for Christmas several years ago. My windows are cracked open and the sky outside is the colour of smoke, the clouds heavy with water and just biding their time until they’re good and ready to do their thing. I can hear a few birds chirping in the tree canopies but not as many as I would if it were sunny. Maybe they’re all sitting in meditation, waiting patiently for their shower.

You need to know this is my favourite thing right here. Quiet mornings save for the tap of keys spilling words out onto a white screen. The blinking cursor, a beacon begging to be followed.

You need to know that you are perfect in your imperfectness. That your best quality is being willing to learn and improve. That’s our one job - to just be willing to iterate on ourselves. It’s what makes us better partners, friends, and coworkers. That, and having as much grace with ourselves as we do with others.

You need to know that perfection is a wolf dressed in wooly white. It will rob you of so much that is yours if you listen to it and force you to hand over parts of yourself in its name.

You need to know the truest virtues are humility and bravery. Humility to realize that you are always a work in progress and bravery to just keep showing up. Saddle up with those two at your side and you are now invincible.

You need to know that you are nature. It’s such an obvious statement that I’m almost embarrassed to point it out. But sometimes I forget that I’m really no different than anything else my eyes gaze upon throughout the day. Trees, chipmunks, the ocean. Same - same. And in the end, none of us really knows what we’re looking at anyway. This could all be a very elaborate game of virtual reality. And if that’s the case, how seriously do we really need to take *gestures wildly at nothing and everything* any of this?

So let’s just fuck around a bit and find out, shall we? That sounds way more fun.

Last thing.

You need to know that I appreciate you. For real.

And because sometimes I forget to ask,

How are you? How is your mom?

Xo,

Christie

I certainly hope not.

The literary world was pretty rough on her last week - her newest book All The Way To The River was the subject of many a barbed-wire review. First, I read one from the New York Times, then The New Yorker, and then The Guardian and The Washington Post dogpiled on. I couldn’t take any more after that.

How does any artist handle such brutal critique?

I hope that as we speak she is peering down at all of us through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her Manhattan penthouse (I don’t know if she has a penthouse) while she takes a long, delicious drag from a cigarette (I don’t think she smokes) before double checking the fat stacks of her ever-rising bank account balance. Say what you want about my book bitches, the only sound I hear is ca-ching.

Last week I opened my daily email from the New York Times and saw they had reviewed her latest book. Wonderful, I’ve been waiting for this one. I got comfy on the sofa, put my feet up, took a sip of my freshly poured cup of dark roast and dove in.

Only to be horrified.

I wasn’t even past the subhead and already I was wincing. ‘Saccharine self-indulgence’? Say it isn’t so.

I continued to read but the review was so scathing that my toes curled in cringey little foot fists the whole time in sympathy shame. The reviewer seemed unnecessarily stabby with her words. This book isn't fiction - it's Elizabeth Gilbert at her most vulnerable. The blood and guts of her relationship with her partner who died in her arms. The book she promised her dying partner she would 'write the shit out of'.

And this isn't just any review - this is the New York Times. The Big Cheese. The entity that possesses massive influence over book sales, the Mack Daddy from which many other critics will take their cues from.

Scattered throughout the prose are handwritten excerpts from Liz's journal entries - it doesn’t get more personal than that, folks. Someone had the job of reviewing it for sure, but damn, didja have to cut that deep? Do you have something to prove, dear NYT reviewer? Or a personal vendetta against achingly honest women with salt and pepper peach fuzz hair and sparkling blue eyes?

The rest of the reviews began to pour in and they were all regurgitations of the NYT review and just as disparaging. Things got savage. Reading them felt oddly like standing in a semicircle while your school’s toughest bully wailed on another kid underneath the basketball net in the middle of the playground.

I put my phone down and decided right there and then in my plaid pajama pants that I am A-OK with staying the mediocre writer that I am. Goddam if I don’t ever want to subject myself to that level of tear-down. No thank you.

Once upon a time I used to have grand writing aspirations. But I’ve since learned I’m not built for rejection. Or harsh criticism. I’m a fragile banana that bruises at the slightest brush with negative critique.

But here's the thing I can't quite reconcile: even as I say I'm content with mediocrity, I keep hitting submit on piece after piece, chasing that elusive validation.

For the last year or so, I have been submitting a smattering of short nonfiction and personal essay pieces to literary magazines for publication and at this point I could paper my walls in rejections. They get a bit easier to handle as time goes on, the more they pile up. Now when I get the ‘Thank you for your interest….’ notifications, they roll off my slumped shoulders a little more swiftly than they once did.

My Submittable account is a digital graveyard of ‘declined’ statuses. Why do you even bother? My inner critic sneers. You are clearly a terrible writer. The evidence is right there in front of you. Stop wasting your energy. Ever try ant farming? Maybe give that a go instead.

Easy, I reply to my inner critic, because I’m an approval junkie with an unquenchable thirst for acceptance.

I can’t stop until someone(s) from the literary community agrees to publish an essay I wrote and I can therefore get the ‘You’re a Good Writer’ stamp of approval from a group of my writing peers.

Flawed, so flawed. Cognitively I know this. Tragically, my fragile tender heart does not.

For as long as people have been making art, we’ve been criticizing it.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke says "And if out of this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it."

I hope Liz embodies Rilke’s words much better than I have. I’m still a brittle work in progress.

Thankfully my writing will never cross the desk of anyone from the NYT.

To have words like ‘excruciating’, ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘corny’ describe my most profound and deeply personal experiences by a total stranger?

Non, merci. Not for this banana.

It goes without saying but I’m gonna say it anyway, existing in the world is an act of bravery. Putting any creative part of yourself on display is an act of supreme courage.

If I had gotten even a whiff of rejection when I first decided to publish any of my writing on a public platform, I would have folded back in on myself and never dared to show myself creatively again. But I didn’t, I was encouraged, my effort praised, and it all served to coax me out of hiding. My skin has thickened over time (though it’s still crepe-paper thin) and it’s only now that I feel slightly better equipped to handle repeat rejections.

Liz is a veteran in the industry so I’m sure she handles criticism with the artful grace of a seasoned dancer, moving through the blows like part of the performance.

As Rilke said, "Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism."

As for me, I will happily continue to swim in a pool of mediocrity. Do the backstroke in work that is unvalidated by a group of my peers. It’s much safer here.

And Liz, you will never read this but please know that you, and your work, are appreciated by many. What a commendable act of vulnerability to have put such intimate parts of yourself and your love into the world.

I look forward to reading your book, and will not be dissuaded by critics. Thank you for ‘writing the shit out of your story’. For serving your heart and your humanity on a silver platter for all of us to tear pieces from and gnash between our collective, unmerciful jaws.

You are so brave. And we are not worthy.

Open the box and take a whiff. Breathe deep into your lungs the scent of wood, yellow-orange paint, press the sharp lead tips into the pad of your index finger. Inspiration won't be far behind.

It’s in that spirit that I’m turning a page, fresh and blank - a new year’s resolution of sorts, for a sort-of new year.

I went back to re-read my journal entries from this time last year (because why not) and I was surprised at the words I’d written. They were just stream-of-consciousness ramblings but there was a fluidity to them that I didn’t initially recognize.

I’m a consistent writer in practice but the things I document so rarely ever see daylight. Looking back now, I wish I had hit publish on them. Maybe they weren’t perfect (certainly not) but they were timely.

I’m disappointed that I censored myself into silence. And for what? Fear of judgment, fear of my words not being captivating enough.

Not anymore. I’m going to write quickly, edit lightly, and push publish on words that are flawed and rough. Starting now. The name of the game from now on will be quick n’ dirty.

Just like your mother.

Here’s what’s been on my mind lately.

*****

‘Tis the season

to lament summer’s end

Yes, I know summer is technically here for a few more weeks but summer summer is over.

Last night I went out in a hoodie to pick my son up from work and almost turned the heat on in the car. Almost.

We’re on the cool, crisp outer margins of summer now and the end of the peak season is especially felt in small coastal communities like mine. Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach, as the lyrics go. The ‘key-yah’ of the sea gulls sounds hollow and trimmed with grief - each one already mournful for the smell of beachgoers coated in coconut sunscreen and the taste of discarded salty chips in the sand.

Now in the evenings when I drive by the big lobster statue in our town, it sits alone in the dark looking somber, like it’s deep in the throes of an existential crisis.

Just a couple of weeks ago, it was still light out when I would drive by and watch throngs of people crawling over the massive lobster claws while their families and friends snapped photos.

The World’s Largest Lobster is now The World’s Loneliest Lobster.

I’m always sad to see summer slam its screen door on another season. I love fall and will welcome the golden colours and crunchy leaves, but only when the sting of letting go of my favourite season has faded.

Much like embracing a new lover after having just lost one, I’m in that liminal space where you have to trust that there will be someone just as exciting to grasp onto when you finally let yourself let go. I’m still between seasons - between lovers. Still not ready to let go yet. But I will be. Soon.

*****

Making a List

of what I’ve been Googling

Earlier this summer I came across a recurring column in (the now defunct) Astra Magazine called Search History whereby writers give people a peek into their Google search histories.

No one needs access to the full and unhinged list that is my complete search history but here’s a brief and curated smattering of mine as of late.

🔍 Why does my heart feel effervescent?

Not in the joyful figurative way but literally. Pins and needles in the centre of my chest, just below my breastbone. It feels the way that staring at the top of a glass filled to the brim with carbonated liquid looks. Small bubbles popping and exploding in the air. Is this the feeling of my heart weakening?

I’m reminded of my grandmother and her weak heart that eventually was the cause of her death and the several heart attacks she had leading up to it. Did her heart issues skip a generation? Leap frog over my mother and pounce directly into the four beating chambers at my epicenter?

🔍 Is Colin Farrell really The Penguin?

It’s just so hard to believe the handsome actor from Ireland is behind the prosthetics of the limping, spherical shaped man with the pointy nose and long angular eyebrows in the show I’ve just started watching. The gritty New York/Gotham mob accent sounds so genuine, you would never know it’s covering up a thick Irish brogue.

Give the man all the awards. Just throw them all in his general direction. Standing ovation. No notes.

🔍 Halifax Fatal Crash (News)

Last weekend we were in Halifax. On the day we left, we decided to take an alternate route (a more scenic one) on our way out of the city. It likely put us about fifteen minutes behind what our normal timing would be. Had we been on time, had we decided to take our usual route out of town, it might have been our car that got hit by the truck that had crossed the median and flipped into oncoming traffic resulting in the death of the driver of a CRV and injuring passengers.

Instead we sat in a line of backed up traffic next to the highway exit, waiting our turn to take the off ramp and detour around the crash and the helicopter that had flown in to evacuate passengers.

I didn’t realize how close we had come, how the timing would have been just right until I read the article the day after we had gotten safely home.

🔍 Moon Phase Calculator

My son and I learned recently that the moon on the day he was born and the moon on the day I was born, together make up a full moon. For his 16th birthday, he said the only thing he wanted was to get matching tattoos of our moons.

*scoops melted heart off the floor*

I never need an excuse to get a new tattoo but if I did, this was a damn fine one. I looked up a moon phase calculator just to double check our exact moons and then consulted Pinterest for some designs. The tattoos were small, didn’t take much time, and I got to be part of his first (maybe only, who knows) tattoo experience.

🔍 Nose Piercing Places Near Me

Not one to be excluded from an experience, my daughter started asking me for a nose piercing. To be fair, she started asking months ago but in light of her brother’s recent tattoo, she has really put her foot on the gas. I am checking spots in town to see if they have minimum age requirements and am still waiting to hear back from a few places.

A nose piercing?! At ten?! I can hear you yelling at me. But think about it - how different is it really from ear piercings? It’s just that one is more socially acceptable. So acceptable in fact that we cart wee babies off to our local ear piercer to get them done - without their consent.

Regardless I can’t help but wonder (she says in her best Carrie Bradshaw voice), if this will spark a wave of her classmates wanting to get their noses done too. And if I will then be the target of parental ire as a result.

Stay tuned to find out if I become a pariah among my parenting peers.

🔍 Pain In The Back Of Upper Thigh, Down Leg

Living with a cancer history means constantly looking to Google to tell me if my cancer is back. Ridiculous, I know but anxiety doesn’t claim to be rational. So far, it’s looking like something called piriformis syndrome. My mind is somewhat satisfied with this search result but I will continue to monitor symptoms and possibly consult ChatGPT to further assess when Google fails to keep my health anxiety at an acceptable level.

🔍 Why Do Birds Sing?

The bird obsession grows. I downloaded the Merlin app earlier this summer and it’s been a source of consistent joy. I listen for birds now just so I can whip out my phone and record their calls. I’ve identified birds in my own backyard that I had never even heard of before. (Heyyy new besties, Cedar Waxing and Red Eyed Vireo 👋)

How is this a sound that just normally blends into the background?

How sad to have not noticed such gifts before!

Not with any notable deep appreciation, anyway.

I took them all for granted, not realizing that while none of their songs are critical to the function of our day, they are accents to it - there for us to enjoy. Like little accessories.

A goldfinch, a ring.

A robin, a necklace.

A sparrow, a bracelet.

A chickadee, a brooch.

Tiny chirping symphonies. Feathered jewels of gold, ruby, and sapphire.

I highly encourage you to download the app for yourself, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Unless of course you hate things that fill your heart with joy and befriending cute little creatures with beaks.

*****

Thank you for reading, dear friend. I’ll be back soon with something just as rough and tumble. I appreciate you being here and for staying ‘til the end.

Xo

Christie

___________________________________________________________________________

For now, I’m popping in to say that I’ve been journaling my little writer’s heart out every single day and as part of that practice, I’ve also been pulling a card from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones prompt deck. Let me tell you, the absence of pressure to write something ‘Literary Journal’ submission worthy or even something ‘Good’ has proven to be a boon for my creativity.

Creating something polished and contest-worthy? Yikes. Creating something mediocre and unremarkable? Heck yah. That I can do.

So in the spirit of a no-pressure-summer-themed-journal-style post , I offer you this.

This one’s for my elder millennials/gen Xers.

Writing prompt # 47 - Don’t ever forget

Don’t ever forget the way shag carpeting feels under your feet. The sound of the buttons being pushed on a stereo with a tape deck, the way a pen feels between your fingers as you write the song names in between the lines on the card inside the cassette.

Don’t ever forget Saturday morning countdowns on the radio - especially how they sounded from the back seat of your mom’s car with the windows wide open.

Don’t ever forget what it feels like to run through the freezing cold water of the hose and jump on a slip n slide in the back yard while pieces of grass stick to your legs and palms.

Don’t ever forget how the tinkle of bells from down the street gets louder as the ice cream cooler on wheels turns onto your street. Or the way you would run for your stash of loose change and hope you could find enough for a rocket pop.

Don’t ever forget how it felt to wear a wet bathing suit all day and not caring if it was damp because it never fully had a chance to dry out. It was always a little bit uncomfortable but you’d be back in the pool or the sprinkler soon enough anyway.

Don’t ever forget the feeling of closing the front door behind you and setting out for a walk with a friend and not knowing where you’re going before you leave. Of wandering the back roads, exploring the woods and parks and finding nearby streams as you go.

Don’t ever forget movie nights in the basement with popcorn you made in the microwave and the penny candy you bought earlier that day when you took a walk to the corner store. You took the long way because you could. No shortcuts.

Don’t ever forget when the days felt long and endless, stretched out before you like one big possibility. No to-do list, no intentions to set, no expectations or obligations to fulfill.

Don’t ever forget what it’s like to have to wait for things. For your favorite song to play on the radio so you can hit the record button on your stereo. Or for that new music video you’ve been dying to see to play on TV.

Don’t ever forget the feeling of a chunky metal chain in your hands and the hot rubber of the sunbaked park swing hugging your hips. Or being suspended in the air high on a teeter-totter, helpless, legs swinging in the air while your friend sits on the ground laughing knowing that she has your fate in her hands. She will leave you up there all day if she wants.

Don’t ever forget biking at dusk. The way the sun turns the sky from pink to orange to blue and then grey. Once the light turns grey it’s time to go home.

Don’t ever forget the sound of the bell as you open the door to the video rental store and the anticipation of combing the aisles for new releases. Don’t ever forget the feeling of disappointment when the movie you’ve been dying to see has already been rented and you need to find something else to rent instead. Maybe not your first choice but a solid second choice. Or your third. Surrounded by the smell of popcorn, the ding of a cash register, the hum of coolers stocked with root beer and orange crush in glass bottles.

Somewhere there is a child within you who remembers these things, it’s the adult in us that so easily forgets. This isn’t about longing for ‘the way things were’ or a diss on the digital age, it’s about calling up pieces of yourself, long dormant - fragments of our lives from a place that is so often forgotten.

It’s about finding that old box in the back of the closet, dusting it off and spending some time with its contents that you thought were long gone but have been there all along, waiting for you to unearth them again. To take them out and hold them up to the light and turn them over in your hands to feel their shape.

These things are part of you, they’re details that have lost their sharp edges over the years but can be rediscovered, if you choose.

And you should.

They’re small beauties. Internal beauties. Like diamonds, worth mining from hard coal.

I only ever hear a clip of the song on social media and to my total annoyance, it has managed to make a cozy little bed for itself in my temporal lobe and refuses to vacate, so the other day, I asked Alexa to play the full song. My theory was that if I played the song in its entirety, the 10 second fragment(s) that keep ticker-taping between my ears would somehow be lured out of my head like a magnet towards the larger version of the song and I would finally be free from it. (I don’t know how these things work.) Not that I don’t love the song, I do. It’s just time for an eviction.

As the notes floated from the speaker and the full song had a chance to play out, Madge’s voice resurrected something dormant but not entirely forgotten in the catacombs of my mind, likely shoved in my mental filing cabinet somewhere between reruns of Magnum PI and the name of my old Cabbage Patch Kid (Scott. It was Scott.) Is there a word for the longing and nostalgia you feel for a specific era of your past? Whatever that word is, that’s what vibrated up through my bones and sent a wave of goosebumps across my scalp.

How was it four decades ago that I owned this cassette and bopped around (without a trace of irony or shame - the hallmark of a tween cliché) in my tiny room with my hairbrush microphone in hand belting out the words to every track²?

Four. Decades. Ago.

Back when everyone wanted their MTV. When Brian Mulroney dominated Canadian politics. When Bryan Adams sang about his first real six-string. When The Twilight Zone was just a sci-fi show on TV, and would never, ever be confused with, let’s say, real world events on the evening news.

Oh how things have gone off—the—rails since then.

The world feels especially fragile and ‘end of days-y’ but I can’t be sure if maybe this is just how everyone is supposed to feel when they reach midlife? A side effect of aging maybe, like having to buy reading glasses or getting up in the middle of the night to pee. Perhaps this is all just a perimenopausal fever dream (at best) or simply a deeply depressing rite of passage (at worst).

As I enter different stages of adult/parenthood, it occurs to me that my parents likely went through the same stages and had the same feelings and frustrations, challenges, hurdles and emotional dead ends that I’m now experiencing. So when it comes to the external world, I questioned whether or not I was just viewing the world’s chaotic state through the same lens that my parents would have viewed the world back in the 80s and 90s or whether these were truly (forgive me) ‘unprecedented times’.

The very not good conclusion that my slapdash investigative reporting has confirmed is that no, this is not just midlife, it’s not a rite of passage, indeed the world has gone Utterly Batshit.

Turns out previous generations weren’t wondering if the banking systems would collapse overnight or if their groceries would triple in price before they got to the checkout, or if eventually, they would have to choose between being fed or being housed. Their thoughts were occupied with mortgage rates and how to prevent their only daughter from becoming a scourge on society. Cute lil worries, Mom and Dad.

This was not exactly the outcome I was hoping for. I was really and truly hoping that my parents for realzies wondered what they would do if they were cut off from food sources. Or primary modes of communication. Or their money. Because you can bet your last can of emergency bunker baked beans that I sure do.

And let me just state the obvious here, I would not do well if any or all of the above scenarios came to pass. I know this. I’m a perfectly chill girl as long as I’ve got a dark roast coffee in one hand, a sparkling water in the other, a refrigerator stocked with cheese, and the air set to a comfy 22.5 degrees celsius. Otherwise, look the fuck out—she ain’t pretty, she just looks that way³.

So, what’s the answer? What do we do?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Learn how to grow your own food? Become BFFs with someone who is particularly skilled wielding a sword? Reconnect with that friend you went to high school with who now works in herbal medicine and knows which plants can be used to heal stab wounds and fight scurvy? Invite pro anglers and hunters into your inner circle?

Because I’ve already started gathering a mental list of skilled people with whom I could commune in the event of total world collapse.

Never the mooching type, I am fully aware that I will have to contribute something to my apocalyptic brethren lest I risk being tossed out of the group. And what do I have to offer my imaginary tribe of survivalists in return? Best I can do is provide mild entertainment in the form of mediocre art. Need your real-life version of The Book of Revelation tableau documented for prosperity? Don’t worry, I gotchu. Although on second thought, without access to a DSLR camera and a laptop (bye bye electricity), I’ll have to resort to a more primitive medium. Maybe something in the realm of cave drawings? Though if I’m being forthright, I’m not much of a sketch artist, either.

I'm getting dangerously low on options here.

Hold on. Hold. ON. How’s about poorly-sung versions of classic 80s pop tunes? Just put a hairbrush in my hand, any old hairbrush will do, and I’m all set. I'll take as many requests as you can throw at me.

As luck would have it, I’ve been prepping for this for decades.

¹At least it was trending a few days ago which is the social media equivalent of a few months ago which means by the time you read this, no one will even remember that it was a thing.

²Shout out to Papa Don’t Preach. She still slays.

³Fellow Canuks will get that Northern Pikes reference. ELBOWS UP.

My husband threw a surprise party for me on my 40th. In the end, I was grateful - it’s now a cherished core memory. But in the moment? I made an Olympic-sized effort to run away. I remember my hand in his as he was leading me towards a set of double doors. Upon hearing the muffled sounds of shushing coming from the other side, I clocked exactly what was about to unfold and proceeded to perform a record-breaking 180 so I could bolt back to the car. I wanted nothing to do with the legion of eyeballs that would soon all be focused on me. No thank you. Is there a window nearby that I can catapult myself through? I will take that option please.

When I think about childhood birthdays growing up, there were always parties. Going through pictures in old albums, I can see they were all well documented.

There’s a photo of me, my friends, and my mother all holding hands ring-around-the-rosy style in the kitchen. Behind us, pin the tail on the donkey is taped to the wall. In another photo from the same party, it looks like we were using a green Tupperware bowl as a game prop. I’m not sure what the game was but I think there were clothespins involved. The wood paneling on the walls and grainy texture of the photos all contribute to the early 80s aesthetic.

Even more photos can be found of parties that took place in fast food restaurants - McDonald’s and Burger King being popular destinations over the years. Paper crowns, party balloons, and toothy smiles all frozen in time tucked behind the album’s cellophane pages.

As I grew older, the number of balloons and party hats slowly dwindled until birthdays were just about being with family, having cake and opening a few presents at home. There is another photo in the album from my 16th birthday. I’m sitting at our kitchen table with a mess of wrapping paper beside me as Mom stands in front of me holding a cake with lit candles, the expression on her face tells me she was mid ‘Happy Birthday’ serenade. Even as a full-grown adult, I could always count on picking up the phone on my birthday and hearing the same serenade, Mom always choosing to skip ‘hello’ altogether in favour of launching straight into song.

One of my most loved traditions.

She always made a bigger deal out of my birthday than she did her own. Our birthdays are only nine days apart, hers being first. But it was always my day that she seemed far more concerned about celebrating.

Now that she’s gone, her birthday has taken on new significance for me. Every year my father sends me a message to let me know that he is thinking of me and says he knows that these milestone days always carry extra weight.

They certainly do.

It was her birthday earlier this week and because I can no longer give her gifts, pick up the phone to wish her a happy birthday, or take her to lunch at her favourite restaurant, I wrote to her instead. The only useful conduit for my grief is the keyboard and writing is the only thing that seems to shift the grief around. Like switching a heavy grocery bag from one arm to the other, the weight isn’t any less but it serves to provide some temporary relief.

**

A few days later, I took the kids to McDonald’s for lunch. We were on our way to visit my father so we only had time to stop for a quick bite and McDonald’s won the popular vote. It was March Break here all week which meant having to find creative ways to keep both kids off screens, while also searching for things to do that wouldn’t significantly deplete my retirement fund. Both extremely challenging tasks in today’s landscape.

To kill some time as we stood in the long line at the counter, I handed my phone to my 15-year-old to show him the poem I wrote in honour of Mom’s birthday. He took the phone from my hands and began to scroll through, presumably to see how lengthy the entry was before committing to reading it in its entirety. When he saw that it couldn’t be read in under 140 characters, he looked up at me as if to say Really, Mom?

I surmised that he was not interested in investing the time it would take to read it, and certainly not when it might be the only thing standing between him and his 10 pack of chicken McNuggets.

I took mercy on him. “It’s ok, you don’t have to read it,” I said with an understanding smile and added, “but one day, you’ll want to read the things I write. When you’re older, you’ll be glad I documented things.”

I thought of the stack of cards and letters my own mother wrote to me over the years and how grateful I am to have them.

I come from a family that was big on writing things down.

Mom always took time to write long letters and cards and Dad spent a lot of time songwriting. We were big fans of communicating via the written word. We had a small notebook that lived permanently on the kitchen table that was used as a central hub for writing notes back and forth to one another. This was in the mid 90s when things were still entirely analog and pen and paper were the primary instruments for text communication. Back then, we were wholly reliant upon handwritten notes to inform of whereabouts, pass along phone messages (from landlines!), along with any other critical daily info that needed to be relayed.

Hey Mom, I’m going over to Angie’s after school, won’t be home for supper, love you!

Hi Dear, I’m working late tonight, there are leftovers in the fridge for supper. Tell your father when he gets home that Moe called and he needs to call him back, have a great day, love you!

These messages filled page after page. Often written in between phone numbers, grocery lists, and bits of song lyrics Dad would jot down on the fly.

Thankfully, once these notebooks were filled up, they were spared from the garbage. A sentimental trio we were and by some miracle, many of the notebooks survived from move to move over the decades and I am fortunate enough to have a few of them tucked away for safekeeping.

I’m not sure when it started but we also began to leave surprise messages for each other on blank pages in those same notebooks for someone to stumble upon later. Not wanting to limit ourselves, we would also turn to calendars, or agendas. Anything with a writable surface and a pencil nearby was subject to these secret notes.

Something as simple as ‘love you! xo’ with a hand drawn heart was a familiar go-to. What the message said wasn’t the point. The point was knowing that the note would be found at random time in the future. A tiny greeting to make the reader smile.

This is a well-worn tradition that I still carry on with my father when I visit. Old habits cling like barnacles on a ship’s hull and he still keeps a notebook on his countertop that he uses to scribble lists and things in. I always flip to a blank page and quickly scrawl a message for him to find later on. He sometimes does the same when he comes over to my house. I have never seen him write the notes, I just find a word or two, days and sometimes weeks later whenever I least expect it.

This is a practice that has been handed down to my children, though I’m not entirely sure how it was handed down. It just ‘is’. Often I will find notes from them in the margins of one of my workbooks or on sticky notes stuck in between the pages of a novel. My phone has a stylus that can be popped out and the phone screen written on - a popular medium that my kids employ often.

Beyond utilitarian notes, Mom was particularly great at writing letters and cards. She was not a fan of purchasing a standard greeting card and simply signing it ‘Love, Mom’. Refusing to be outdone by Hallmark, she always included her own personal messages and sentimentalities, blue ink covering every bit of white space with the familiar loops and scrolls of her handwriting.

All of these notebooks, letters, and cards are valuable artifacts from my youth that serve as wayfinders back to long gone places I can’t physically travel to anymore. To reread them is to come home again. I visit whenever I need to re-center and reunite with the ghost that is my childhood.

Back in the McDonald’s line, our order number is called and my son hands me back my phone. I slip it back into my pocket and pick up the tray from the counter. I’m not the least bit offended at his disinterest in reading the poem. I know that one day he will likely want to read everything I’ve ever written. But today all that matters to him is that we’re having lunch together in a crowded fast food restaurant. And that’s ok.

After all, I would give anything to be doing the same if my mother were here.

**

To Mom on what would have been your 77th birthday

I wonder if
you would be proud of me.
You always were,
never shy to say so as often as you could.

But still I wonder,
without you here to share

the details of my days, 
the decisions I am making, 
the way I’m raising my children, 

would you still be?

I wonder if
I'm doing your memory justice,
if I’m painting the picture of you vividly enough
for my children to see

I wonder if 
you can hear me 
on days when I speak into the emptiness, 
when ‘I miss you so much’
echoes off the walls.

You can talk to me, even after I’m gone,
you used to say.

I wonder if 
you can see your grandchildren, 
growing, becoming. 

Your granddaughter, all theatrics and
her dramatic fashion flair, 
you would have loved spending time with her. 

Two peas in a pod,
she would fill you with a thousand stories
to tell your friends. 

And your grandson - he is so tall now, 
tall enough to lean down and 
fold himself into your arms
around your small frame
If you were here.

You’ll be taller than me someday, 
you would whisper to him when he was just a baby. 

And now he is.

Seven of your birthdays have gone by without you here. 

Seven years of 
walking in your memory
of wishing I could bend time 
just to see you 
just to hear your voice,

Seven years of 
birdsong in the trees, 
of herons on the beach,

of wondering

if they are messengers - 
carriers of soft greetings 
to be placed along my path.

Seven years I have been talking to the moon, 
our silver mother in the black sky
watching over,
her gaze leaving nothing unseen.

From the ruby red shoes my daughter adores,
to the notes my children leave for me in hidden corners
like diamonds 
waiting to be discovered,

just as you and I once did.

These are the echoes of you 
that live on.

This is your legacy.

Do you see? 
I hope you do. 

But still,
I wonder.

‐-----

Does wherever this is feel open? Freeing? Do I feel lighter inside these walls? Or out of them? When and where and with whom does my body feel drawn to? Who can I wrap my arms around and let go a deep sigh of relaxation into? When and where does my chest feel tight? Where am I when the walls feel oppressive? 

I feel I can no longer rely solely on my mind to guide me anymore. It's too riddled with logic and reasoning to make out what is true. Parsing through the oughts and shoulds to uncover the right way forward or decipher a reliable message is overwhelming and I can’t hear clearly through the static of it all. My body therefore should be the guide. The lantern in the darkness. My way through the thick woods and the brambles tangled around my ankles.

—-----------------------

I’m wearing a heart monitor this week. Just for two days - the next 48 hours to be exact. One of the principal medications I’m on can cause cardiotoxicity so I need to be followed by a cardiologist and that means routine tests to make sure my heart is functioning properly. 

Normally an echocardiogram is all that’s needed to examine the strength of my heart, but the doctor has ordered a Holter monitor because I have been experiencing palpitations. Flutters and skips that take my breath away for a fraction of a second. They’ve gotten so frequent that I wonder if there is a small bird trapped inside the very center of my chest. I imagine that the flutters are just its tiny wings thumping against the bars of my rib cage. 

Are the flutters caused by anxiety? Is it my medication? Is my heart broken? 

The machine might be able to tell us. 

For the entire time I’m hooked up to the monitor, it will keep a detailed record of my heart’s activity. When I drop the device back off at the hospital two days from now, it will have recorded each beat. Each flutter. The rhythm that keeps me alive and breathing. They will plug the monitor into a computer to reveal the pattern of the recorded beats and examine the peaks and valleys like sheet music. 

What will the tune of my life be over the next 48 hours? 

—-------------------------

The following two days unfold in a near identical replica of the previous two days before and the previous two days before that. But this time, there is a small square box tucked into my jeans pocket. A web of wires extends out from the box and is threaded under my shirt where a series of tiny electrodes are carefully glued to various pulse points around my chest and ribs. 

Logically I know the monitor is not reading feelings, only electrical activity produced by heartbeats. But still, I wonder what the lines will reveal about my day and if my emotions will somehow embed themselves into the waves like code. 

The day after I receive the monitor, I have an appointment to meet my father and his lawyer’s office to review his will. Afterwards, in the parking lot, I give him a hug and watch as he slowly eases himself into the driver’s seat of his car and places his cane on the passenger seat. I continue to watch as he drives out of the parking lot and down the street, my eyes unmoving from his taillights until they disappear around a corner. A profound longing for my childhood drapes itself over me like a weighted blanket.

What do the lines of nostalgia look like? 

That evening, I am out for a walk with my 15-year-old son. He’s on his bike, slowly peddling and I’m walking beside him. We’re chatting about his day and he’s telling me about his plans for a virtual meet-up later with his online friend to play VR. We get to the end of a long stretch of road and the gravel turns into dirt which turns into a sandbar. I pull my phone out of my pocket, open the camera and point it upwards, framing the pink sky and cotton candy clouds that hover over the water in my camera’s viewfinder. I hit the shutter button and I hear him say “A bouquet for the lady.”

I turn my head in his direction and see a miniature bouquet of wildflowers clustered in his outstretched fist. 

What do the lines of enchantment look like? 

The next day there are just a few more hours left until I can disconnect the electrodes and peel the sticky squares from off my skin and I can’t wait. The glue has begun to itch and the box and wires are starting to interfere with my daily tasks. I’m sitting at my computer and receive an email from a writing contest I entered a while back. The longlist has been published, anyone who has made the list has already been notified. Thank you for your submission. Some of you who submitted stories may be disappointed not to find your names there. Please be assured this is not an indication of what you are capable of as a writer….. 

The air deflates from my lungs. I close my email tab. 

What do the lines of disappointment look like?

As I am returning to the hospital, I hand the small box and ball of wires over to the person behind the desk in the cardiology department and wonder how these moments will be transmuted into lines on a page. The spikes and sags. The tips and troughs. Will they be closer together or further apart depending on the circumstance. Will they look like jagged spikes, or soft rolling hills.

—-------------------

The cardiologist calls me with the results of my test.

“What we’re seeing is that you have an extra beat,” she says. 

“An extra beat? What does that mean? Is that dangerous?”

“It can be a sign that something is putting stress on your heart or that it’s irritated.”

I wonder what my heart doesn’t like. Why it’s so unhappy that it’s forcing an extra beat. 

Knock. Knock. 

Who’s there?

Your heart. And it has a message. 

“How can we fix it?” I ask.

“I can prescribe you some medication that will block the adrenaline that is causing the extra stress on your heart and therefore the extra beat. Beta blockers they’re called.”

“Oh ok.”

I picture a wall made of brick built around my heart, shielding it from stress and sadness - preventing anything trying to cause it harm from getting through. 

“And that will stop the extra beats? Calm the bird inside my rib cage?”

She replies, “It should help, yes.”

—-----------------------------------------------

I filled the prescription a few days ago and have already begun to notice a difference. It’s quieter inside my body now. I can no longer feel the bird’s wings. Nothing is trying to leap from the center of my chest. 

I wonder if my heart is happier. Less irritated. 

Though, I question my decision to block out the physical mechanisms that were causing the palpitations. What if the bird - the flutter - was a warning? What will happen now that I have silenced it? 

Shouldn’t I be listening? Turn my full attention to it, crouch down to its level, look it in the eyes and say I’m here - what message do you have for me?

Here is your lantern, it would say. Your way out of the dark. All you have to do is listen. 

My alarm on my phone goes off. I’m still not used to taking a pill in the evening so I’ve set a daily alarm as a reminder that will help me establish a new habit. 

Walking to the cupboard I find the new bottle of medication, twist the child-proof top from the bottle and swallow the small orange pill down with cool liquid. I place the bottle of medication back on the shelf where it will wait until the same hour tomorrow when it’s time to take the pill again.

Quieting the bird for another day. 

Does a prayer have to be spoken in order to work? Do I have to kneel for greater effectiveness? Or can I type out a prayer on a keyboard while sitting in my favourite corner of the couch, covered in a blanket with a laptop resting on my lap? Can a prayer be heard if it’s only a thought? 

These are only questions. 

------------------------------------------

Dwarfed by flickering fire in the sky, the show has just begun. Aurora. A rarity here and never this vibrant. Violet, green flames lick the night above in an unexpected treat. Trees are dipped in ink and my back rests against the corner of the outdoor tub. The cool air flutters and draws goosebumps from exposed flesh. Below, I float in a warm womb, my eyes turned upward. 

Be still and know that I am god, Aurora says. The performance continues until the clouds begin to roll in. Curtains close, signaling an end to the show. But not the wonder. 

------------------------------------------

June

You don’t go through grief; it goes with you. Once it finds you (it will), and attaches itself to you, it’s now a lifelong passenger. It never goes away (it won’t) you can’t tell it to leave (you’ll try). They will tell you it’s something you get over (it’s not). 

Grief is a behemoth of a thing. It arrives, heavy and enormous, a most unwanted sidekick. Grief insists on riding shotgun. Belligerent. Overbearing. You will wonder how you will ever manage to function normally again with something so egregious interrupting your every thought. 

But fear not. 

While at first grief is obnoxious and bellowing, it eventually grows quieter until one day you notice that it has moved to the backseat and only occasionally leans forward to whisper in your ear, ‘remember me?’ Grief never leaves. It’s now a constant fixture. An invisible and haunting receipt. Proof of life. And of love. 

------------------------------------------

The hoya is decades old and belonged to my mother but I have only had it for a handful of years. 

A week or two after my mother died, one of her longtime friends came by my house and with her, she brought a small plant that sat in a bowl of water. She told me that my mother had given her a small slip from a plant about thirty years prior, but she had never gotten around to putting it in soil. She kept the small slip in the same glass bowl that my mother had given her, and she continued to fill the bowl with water over the years until she brought the plant to me.

I planted the small wet ball of roots in soil. I hesitated to plant it right away because I was worried I would somehow upset the balance of the small plant and kill it. But instead it grew, doubling and then tripling in size in a short period of time. 

One afternoon when I entered my room, I noticed a distinct flowery smell, one that I had never experienced before. I couldn’t figure out what it was but then finally located the small pink balls of waxy blooms on the plant. This was the source of the scent that softly filled my room. My hoya plant - my mother’s friend’s hoya, and my mother’s before that - was blooming for the first time. 

It blooms every year, usually only a few times, and I always look forward to the unmistakable powdery scent that greets me when I walk into my bedroom. 

Blooming now, I walk over to it and pick up a stem of flowers, study the colours carefully, pull out my phone and snap a photo. 

Undeniably, a most feeble attempt at preserving the bloom - trying to suspend it in time with the click of a shutter button. But it’s the only tool at my disposal. And the only way I know how to preserve something so beautiful and so fleeting. 

------------------------------------------

My grade three house is for sale. 158 Bonaccord Street. I know it was my house during my year in grade three because we moved almost yearly when I was growing up, so I have had a house for just about every grade throughout my childhood. That means I have a grade one house and another for grade two. There is yet a different house for grade three (Bonaccord St.), and a grade four house. A grade five and six house, a grade seven house, and so on. 

My grade three house was easily my most beloved because it was the oldest and had the most character. I revisit it in my imagination often. 

It had not one but two sets of stairs - a fascinating feature to a child - one large set in the front and one utility set in the back of the house. And I remember being so fond of all the textures. Elaborate crown moldings, an impressive dark wood banister in the foyer, and original hardwood floors mixed with newer carpet that was so prolific in the 80s. Fluffy pink covered the living room, and my bedroom boasted the thickest carpet in the whole house in a delicious shade of chocolate brown. 

A most gorgeous house indeed. 

I hadn’t seen the interior since I was nine years old so when I drove by and spotted the for sale sign, I was eager to look up the photos in the online listing. 

The interior has been updated but the bones were well-preserved. The soft pink carpet no longer covers the living room floor and the brown trim on the walls has been washed in white. But largely, the rooms are the same as the rooms in my memory. 

The kitchen remains the most unchanged from my childhood. As I scroll through the listing photos, I can easily picture the baking sheets of Christmas cookies lining the countertops, with the red and green maraschino cherries dotting the center of each cookie. There are still hooks by the back door where I hung my coat in the afternoons when I got home from the bus stop. And the utility staircase is still there - just off the kitchen, leading up to my bedroom on the second floor. The chocolate brown carpet now long since gone. But not forgotten. 

------------------------------------------

July

When did I become so fragile? Why does the thought of any resistance or challenge make me want to cower and say ‘no thank you’. 

When and why and how did I become this? Why am I a shell, a skeleton of snapping twigs, a ramshackle house of frailty haunted by the ghost of someone who was once much braver. When did this happen? When did the stronger version of me die? How was she killed? Did I do it to myself? Did someone else? Was it a joint conspiracy between complacency and self-sacrifice? 

Is it too late to summon the ghost of my past self? Is she reachable by seance? Or is she too far gone to be summoned now? Do I need to build a new version of myself? What will she be built of? What will she have that I don’t? What battles will she have the strength to fight that I don’t? And how will I accomplish such an incredible feat?

These are only questions. 

------------------------------------------

2:45am. Earlier than I thought. Quick math means that my doctor will be calling me in just under four hours with my test results. I knew sleep would be fitful at best tonight, but I was hoping to see a number closer to 4 or 5 on the clock, not 2. 

Flip. 

It’s warm. Even with the oscillating fan at my bedside blowing air across the exposed skin of my arms and legs, the air is heavy. It’s mid-July and the air is so humid inside and out that it leaves a thin layer of dew across the surfaces inside the house. The floor and even my bed sheets feel damp. 

Flip.

How did the assistant word it? The doctor would like to call you tomorrow at 9:30. Did she say ‘call you’ or ‘talk to you’? It doesn’t really matter, I guess. But I sift through every word she spoke on the phone as though it would give me a clue as to what news the doctor had to share with me. Did she sound upbeat? Was there a tinge of somberness to her voice as she spoke to me that would indicate she knew she was making an appointment with someone on the other end of the line that would change the course of her day and life significantly? 

Flip.

Maybe I’ll scroll on my phone for a while. If I can take my mind off the ‘what ifs’, I might just relax enough to find sleep. 

Flip.

What if it’s bad news? How will that impact the rest of my day? The rest of my summer? Will I still work? Will I have to go on medication again? Will my hair fall out again? What if it’s good news? If I can just buy myself a few more months of good health, what will I do with it? More exercise. Less of the unhealthy food and lifestyle choices. 

Flip.

325am. I should try to sleep. Should I take something to help me sleep? It’s certainly early enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about being too tired or oversleeping in the morning. Yes, I should take something. I need to put an end to the anxious toss and turn. 

Flip. 

Take a pill. Scroll some more. Patter to the bathroom to empty my bladder. Patter back. Climb in. Settle. Breathe. And finally, sleep.

------------------------------------------

Unremarkable. 

That’s the word the radiologists use when writing their reports if they don’t see anything worth noting or nefarious in nature on a scan. 

Unremarkable. 

The only time in the entire world I want someone to look at any part of me and use that word in their description.

Needless to say, I am elated.

I ask the doctor to check again to be sure. 

Unremarkable, he says. 

Excellent, I think. My good fortune continues.

How remarkable. 

“What time is it?” I asked groggily. 

“Seven-eighteen,” they said and followed it with a chorus of, “Happy Mother’s Day!”

In my head I sighed and thought ‘Mother’s Day at 7:18? How about the first gift you give to me is the ability to sleep in please and thank you.’ But of course I didn’t say that. I just smiled and took my eye mask all the way off, setting it next to me so I could get a better look at what they were holding.

My daughter gripped a breakfast tray precariously in her hands, on it, cream and coffee in cups filled with liquid that threatened to spill over at any moment. There was also toast, vitamins, sugar packs (‘we know you are fussy about how you take your coffee’), two eggs, and a Hershey chocolate almond bar rounded out the tray’s food contents. (Because to a child, what breakfast isn’t truly complete without a chocolate bar?)

There was also a homemade bracelet, a notebook from the dollar store, a handmade card and another handmade craft involving glue and a mash of beads stuck together (‘it’s a penguin!’). The gifts were all courtesy of my 8 year old but the cooked food - and the fact that he was awake before 11am - were the contributions of my soon-to-be 15 year old son. 

They stood back proudly, pleased with their celebratory gesture. 

I’m not a big ‘occasions’ person. I’m more of a believer that thoughtful actions and considerations should be sprinkled in throughout the year. I don’t need fanfare, just pick up after yourselves the rest of the year and I’m a happy gal. Or go out of your way to do something to show me you love me on a random Tuesday in July and that will go miles further than a bouquet of flowers on the second Sunday in May.

Not that I don’t love flowers. On the contrary, my love of receiving flowers actually makes marking any occasion criminally easy for my husband and kids. They all know that flowers are all I ever really want which means gifts for me require zero forethought and planning. Birthday? Last minute flowers on the way home from work, check. Mother’s Day? No problem, just a quick pit stop at the grocery store and it’s fait accompli. Occasion = celebrated. After that, it’s back to throwing dirty clothes on the bathroom floor (why always just beside the laundry hamper, never in it??) and leaving food wrappers all over the house. 

As I sat up and sipped my coffee, I mentally flipped back through the slideshow of memories to see how many past Mother’s Days I could recall off the top of my head. 

I tried to remember how I chose to celebrate my own mother as a child and I’m certain there were plenty of homemade cards and trinkets and maybe even breakfasts in bed but I can’t recall any. The only Mother’s Day memory from way back that floated to the top of my mind was one where I didn’t do anything for her and she was upset about it. I was 24 years old, living several provinces away, and very self-absorbed in my own life. I was also at the beginning stages of processing some uncomfortable feelings about my own upbringing and was really just learning how to be an adult living on my own halfway across the country. Anyway, I didn’t send flowers or a card and I think I even waited until almost the end of the day before I made the obligatory phone call to my mother. She was not happy. I felt guilty in that moment but chose to react to the situation with a healthy dose of defensiveness instead of atoning for my thoughtlessness. 

I remembered the Mother’s Day when I was eight months pregnant with my first baby. I recall my head swimming with daydreams and anticipation of what motherhood would bring. Then there was the Mother’s Day a few years later when I was in the process of a separation while also going through an extremely ill-timed pregnancy. 

I have even spent two fairly recent Mother's Days in different countries without my children - a couple of years ago in the UK, and then last year in Vegas. I returned home from the Vegas trip on Mother’s Day around midnight and discovered the house decorated with streamers and balloons to welcome me home. 

I remembered one Mother’s Day just after I had my daughter where my husband and I were going through a particularly rough patch and he didn’t even acknowledge Mother’s Day until the very end of the day. There were no flowers that year at all. He has long since redeemed himself from that one. 

Six years ago was my mother’s last Mother’s Day. She was in the hospital and aggressive cancer was rapidly consuming her body. I knew it would be our last Mother’s Day together. I sat on her bed and held her hand as she looked at me and said “Happy Mother’s Day, dear,” and added, “always, always.” That memory is still fresh and continues to break me open. 

Motherhood is exhausting, all-consuming, and requires daily acts of courage. It’s an exercise in restraint and demands monumental levels of patience and challenges every cell in your body. Motherhood is guilt. So much guilt. It’s poring over every word and action and picking things apart and reconstructing them in your head so you can imagine them playing out the way you wish you would have done things. Because you could have done them better. Said them better. Had more patience. 

It’s going through each stage and age of your children and seeing things finally through the eyes of your own mother and continuing to appreciate her on levels you never thought possible. 

I have learned that we don’t just walk through motherhood alone, we traverse each stage of it in the long shadows of our own mothers. Judgments I had previously passed upon my mother prior to having my own children now soften and melt away as I now appreciate what it was truly like for her from her perspective as a parent. Realizing that she was a person full of trauma and flaws and scars of her own - just trying to the best she could. As a child and then a young adult, I lacked this insight and judged her harshly and often.

I am still getting to know my mother to this day through my own relationship with motherhood. Each new stage I enter is an unturned stone that she left behind, I come across each one, pick it up, turn it over, and see it differently. See her differently. And then I put the stone back down for my own children to one day discover if they ever decide to walk the path of parenthood. 

I hope my children will have the same realizations and grace for me if they choose to raise children of their own one day. I hope I am still around to watch them enter that stage of their lives. 

When she was alive, my mother always liked to say she wished she could go back and spend one day with me at each of my ages. One day as a baby, one day as a two year old, and so on. 

I remember her expressing this desire often and I never understood the sentiment. But now that I have children of my own and one of them is nearing fifteen - I get it. Because when I search my mind for a younger version of his face, I can't access a clear picture. I have only the photos I have captured over the years to rely on. And when I look at those pictures, my heart squeezes tight and pangs dart across my chest because I can't go back in time. He is almost as tall as me now and his honey brown eyes are level with mine - his child-like features have all been replaced by those of a young adult. Only now can I appreciate the sentiment of wanting to go back to spend time with him as a baby and at each age that followed. Just so I could kiss his tiny baby forehead and cup his little boy cheeks in my hands. Just one more time. 

I suppose that is the beauty and the tragedy of motherhood. You bleed for your children and do your best to hide the evidence. And they only truly see behind the curtain decades later when it’s their turn, if they choose to take on parenthood themselves. 

But currently, I am staring into a plate of what is now cold toast and eggs. I pick up my fork, take my first bite - the kids are still standing in front of me watching me in anticipation of my reaction to the breakfast they made for me. 

I take a bite, tentatively chewing the unsalted egg in my mouth before swallowing. I smile widely at them. Genuinely and with so much emotion I don’t know what to do with it all, I say, “Yum, it’s wonderful! Thank you so much, you are both so thoughtful. This is the BEST Mother’s Day ever.” 

And it really is.

I had been in Jamaica for a few days already and was accustomed to seeing the beach peddlers on their kayaks and paddle boards, each one loaded down with hundreds of handmade necklaces, bracelets, wooden signs, and various other local wares for sale. They stayed in the water just a few feet off shore and aside from occasionally calling out to try to get the attention of nearby tourists, they were not bothersome. 

We spent afternoons here on this particular beach and I had been fully immersed in a book as I sat stretched out on my lounge chair under a palm. Pausing to grab something out of my bag, I took the opportunity to scan my surroundings. I noticed that one of the local peddlers had gotten off their paddle board and now stood bent over in front of a lady in a bikini just at the shoreline on the beach. That’s when I noticed the person with the long dreadlocks was a woman. She was wearing a dress and I hadn’t noticed it before. It was blue, printed with a paisley pattern and it hung off her thin frame fluttering in the breeze like a sheet drying on a line. 

She was hunched all the way over, bent in half, and was running something along the bikini woman’s calves. Up and down, front and back in long strokes. I spotted something green in her hand but I couldn’t make out what it was. 

Her hand then moved from the woman’s legs up to her back and shoulders. Carefully, she wiped the green thing all over the pink skin of the woman’s arms and back. What is she doing, I wondered, perplexed. Finally, it occurred to me. Aloe. The green thing in the Jamaican lady’s hand is a large chunk from an aloe vera plant and she is running it over the burned skin of the woman on the beach, soothing her sun-scorched limbs. 

I forgot all about the book in my lap and began to study this curious woman with the aloe vera. Her face was a dark shade of brown and very thin. Any trace of femininity long gone and weathered by the Jamaican sun. A bandanna covered the top of her head but kept sliding off so her hands kept moving up to her head to readjust it. If I had to guess her age, I would have said at least sixty but not more than seventy-five. 

She finished coating the tourist with aloe vera and returned to her paddle board. I didn’t see any money immediately exchange hands but a few minutes later, a man who had been sitting with the bikini woman walked towards the beat up paddle board and handed the Jamaican woman some money and a cold bottle of Coca-Cola. 

Around me, I could hear the other peddlers in the water. Three or four others dotted the shoreline and called to the tourists ‘hey beautiful lady - come see what we got’. They were bold and forward in their approach. But this woman in the blue paisley dress on the paddle board was different. 

First, and most notably, she was the only woman among her male peers. Second, her paddle board was old and beat up and had a chunk missing out of the front. On top sat a lone milk crate. She didn’t have the elaborate wares or the newer paddle boards or kayaks that the other peddlers had. Lastly, she wasn’t calling out to the tourists around her. I saw her speak to a few as they walked by her but she wasn’t heckling the way the men were. 

I was fascinated by this lone woman among men floating on a paddle board. The woman with aloe, who just minutes before had carefully soothed the burned skin of another. 

She twisted the cap off her fresh bottle of Coca-Cola and took a sip. She reached into her crate and pulled out some food and began to eat. 

Does she do this every day? How long must she spend sitting out here on her paddle board floating in the Jamaican sun, her leathery skin a deep shade of chocolate. 

She glances in my general direction. Can she sense me watching her? I try not to stare but I’m captivated by her. I wonder what her life has been like. Whether or not she is a mother. What her home looks like. Do we have anything in common, this woman and I? 

Music begins to play nearby. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed Sealed Delivered’ floats across the breeze and the woman begins to move to the music as she sits on her board. She raises her arms and sways. She’s heard this one before. There is a smile on her face and her eyes are closed. She is lost in her own world caught up in the music. 

I am inexplicably moved by what I’m witnessing - by watching this stranger get swept up in a moment of joy. This song and this very moment may be the only things this mysterious lady and I have in common. 

I am overcome with the desire to talk to her. To ask her if I can take her portrait and ask her about her life and her family and where she lives. But I never muster the courage to approach her - this healer with the aloe who sips Coca-Cola and floats on a paddle board. 

The sun is getting lower in the sky. No one has come by in a while and she decides to move along. Maybe to another beach. Maybe to her home. I’ll never know. 

She takes another sip from her bottle and then replaces the cap. She nestles the bottle back into her milk crate before picking up her paddle. 

Slowly she begins to turn her board around. Her back is to me now and her thin, strong arms begin to paddle away. I know I’ve lost my chance to talk to her and I feel a brief pang of regret knowing that I will never get to learn more about who she is. 

Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed my time with her here on this beach just the same. 

What’s my age again?
-Blink 182

Today, I forgot how old I was. You might be thinking it was one of those moments that happens to everyone where we temporarily forget for just a half a second how old we are before the static in our brain clears and our age snaps into sharp focus and we recall our exact age with relative ease. But that wasn’t it. I didn’t just have a moment where I had to think about it before I remembered. I actually forgot. 

That day also happened to be Mom’s birthday. Well, it would have been her birthday if she were still here. And of course, that’s what was on my mind when I sat down first thing that morning to journal. I opened my laptop and began to type ‘today would have been Mom’s 7_th birthday’ and paused to calculate how old she would have been turning. Figuring out Mom’s age was always easy because she was exactly 30 years older than me. 

Mental math before coffee isn’t usually my strong suit (LOL who am I kidding, mental math any time of day isn’t my strong suit) but I got this. I didn’t think for a second I would have any trouble figuring it out but here’s a peek at how it went down. 

So thirty plus…..wait - how old am I? My son asked me last week how old I was and I replied with a very quick ‘46’. So I’m 46. But, hold on. If I’m 46 now, that means that next week on my birthday, I’ll be turning 47. No, no, that’s not right. I can’t be turning 47. Am I 45? What in the fuck, how come I don’t know how old I am? 

Now, I am abominably afraid to admit this next part in writing but to hell with it - we’ve come this far and I’m already mortified so let’s go all in. Wanna know how I finally figured it out? 

*gets ready to die of deep shame*

I. Had. To. Open. My. Calculator. 

[The only thing more heinous than my Google search history is my calculator app history FYI.] 

Anyway, off I go and type 2024 - 1978 = 46. GREAT, that means next week on my birthday I’ll be 46. Which means that for the purposes of my journal entry, Mom would be celebrating her 76th birthday. 

I am highly alarmed that I am no longer able to keep tabs on any sense of time. 

Last week, I nearly missed a regular appointment at the hospital that I go to every three weeks because I thought only two weeks had gone by since my last visit. An entire week just lapped me and left me spinning like a top in its wake. 

Measurable time feels as surreal as the clocks in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. It’s as soft and malleable as overripe cheese. ‘The camembert of time’ as Dali put it. It feels elastic - contracting and expanding without logical rhyme or reason. 

I no longer know how to measure time with any degree of accuracy. I can’t go by feel anymore and clearly, I can’t rely on memory either. 

Oh, well, a touch of grey
kind of suits you anyway
-The Grateful Dead

On the topic of age - I got ID’d buying wine last week. The man at the cash rang up my bottle while he made small talk. Blip - the machine beeped as the bar code passed over the scanner. He glanced up at me in what I presumed was the mandatory age check. “Do you have your ID?” he says. I chuckled. Yeah right. I thought he was making a joke. “Good one.” 

I looked back at him and waited for him to tell me how much I owed him. 

“Oh, you’re serious?!” 

“Yes,” he says and he points to a sign next to the cash. On the sign, there is a young man smiling and above the man’s head it reads ‘18 or 29? It’s tough to tell. If you look under 30 you will be asked for ID’. 

I laugh. And laugh. And laugh. 

“Really? I am much older than 30”, I say. 

“Yes, really.”

I am of course flattered that he thinks there’s an ice cube’s chance in hell I’m under 30, but also, it’s pouring rain outside and I am parked on the opposite end of the parking lot. My purse which contains my ID is in my car and I really don’t want to go all the way out there. 

What the man who is ringing me through the cash also doesn’t know is that, like him, I work for the same provincially-run company that he works for. I am part of their marketing team out of head office and the sign that he is pointing out to me? I actually wrote it. Every word on it. It was part of an in-store ID check campaign we executed less than a year ago.  

Oh the comedy of it all. There is no point explaining this to him - he will only think I am crazy. Or lying. And meanwhile, a line is beginning to form behind me. 

I make one last attempt at trying to convince him that I’m older than 30. 

“Look at my neck - see the wrinkles? My face might look under 30 in dim light if you squint really hard but everyone knows the neck doesn’t lie when it comes to age.” I point to an especially crepe-y neck section. “Now do you believe me?” 

He shakes his head. He tells me he will hold onto the wine until I come back with my ID. 

I run out to the car, grab my ID and walk back in the store with my glasses covered in rain spots. 

He smiles. I show him my ID. 

His eyes narrow as examines the fine print on my license. He looks at me, then back at the ID and then back at me again. He appears to be experiencing some moderate confusion. His eyes widen until they are the approximate size of teacup saucers and he says loudly, “NO WAY!”

I laugh awkwardly and say thank you. I scan my debit card, he hands over the bottle of wine and before I walk out, I give him a smile. “Told you the neck wrinkles were legit.” 

Let’s do the time warp again
-Rocky Horror Picture Show

It’s Monday morning. I’m working in town today so I leave my house at 7:45am and drop my daughter off at school. After I drop her off, I make my way down the road a short distance to my work space. The building I work out of is directly across from a bread factory. On Wednesdays, the smell of baked bread wafts through the entire neighbourhood and permeates the walls of every building within a half kilometer radius. As I’m getting out of my car I think to myself ‘Oooh is it Wednesday today? If it’s Wednesday today, I’ll be able to smell the bread.’

I quickly realize the error in my internal monologue. 

No Christie, it’s Monday morning. You just opened your eyes from the weekend a very short 60 minutes ago. How can you possibly even for a second, entertain the idea that Wednesday is even a legitimate possibility? 

Because time means nothing anymore, that’s how. It’s camembert rotting in the sun and turning to liquid. Is this age related? Or circumstantial due to the overstretched and overconnected way we live our lives? Better yet, is there a remedy? A formula for slowing down the passing of time, or rather, the way we experience the passing of time? 

All questions for which I wish I had the answers. For now, I’ll just do what I can to keep track of the days as they careen past and hope that it doesn’t get any worse the older I get. Afterall, how much worse can it get? Too often as it is I struggle to remember my place in time. 

Is it Friday? Is it Monday? What month is it? Are we still in January or is it April?

Give your head a shake, crazy lady. 

It’s Monday. The month is March. The year is 2024. 

Am I 45 years old? Or am I 29? 

It really is tough to tell.