Do you wonder what Christmas is all about sometimes? Other than a pile of self-indulgent gifts, high-caloric intake and a credit card bill to choke on in January, I mean? I’m about to tell you.
I am by no means a professional artist, but in the last eight years or so I have taken great pleasure in painting. I love to fill my free time with it and even though my hands can’t do what I see in my mind’s eyes, it doesn’t really matter. That’s a big thing for a perfectionist to say.
Last Saturday, I attended a couple of workshops in Woodstock presented by the Writers Federation of New Brunswick during their annual WordsFall festival. Not that it matters, but I had to venture out from Moncton in the rainy darkness at 6:30 am to get there on time. Details.
Trailing, draping, curling, twisting tendrils of flowering or fruiting vines—I love them, running riot over fences, arbours or trellises. Just a few streets over from my place is a brick house covered in wisteria. In springtime, the vine fairly explodes with dangling purple blooms.
Trea (pronounced Tree-a) was 11 years old when we put her to sleep this morning. She was a purebred Cairn terrier complete with an award-winning lineage and papers.
Tonight, as my oldest daughter graduates from high school, I realize my most significant period of influence in her life is over. The thought strikes me with force. If I failed to live in the moment in all the years prior, now I must live in the past.
I was not embarrassed by my mother often. Most of the time, her existence didn’t collide with mine at all. But with each rare incident, I remember feeling that her words or actions somehow reflected poorly on me, that she lacked decorum or diplomacy on some level.
Do you have at least one special Christmas memory? Was it a gift you really wanted, or a memorable activity, or a visit by someone special? The year you got stuck in the snow on the way to visit relatives, the year you got a pair of skates or took a hayride, or received tickets to a rock concert?
I was sitting on my bedroom sofa this morning, as is my daily writing ritual: pad and paper in hand, coffee mug perched on the windowsill.
A young guy, dressed all in black (with a piercing in an unusual place), walked up to my book signing table at a local store tonight to say hello. He picked up my book and turned it over.
