Month: September 2015

Working man on the sky train with a face like Spencer Tracy in Boom Town, forty years later. His hands are my Dad’s: short, wide, and strong as muscly octopi, a few digits short. Purple marks on the nails. Cuts. Splinters. Construction pants have drywall mud splattered on them. Still working this hard with a full head of white? Taking transit home? Lunch kit protected between steel toed boots. He doesn’t look like a drinker. So why is he not retired? I run through a myriad of possibilities in my head: a son he invested with who ran him dry,…

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The ferry ride to Bowen Island is a meditation. Twenty minutes: too short to do anything, really, except just “be”. I get out of my car and head to the front of the deck to stand in the rain: a shivering mid-sized  woman in a thin sweater beside her compact car, bobbing on a boat between the rolling clouds and the inky sea. These little moments when I stop – and listen – and see – and feel – and taste the salt in the wind – and touch a sense of Wonder – these moments add hours to my day. My…

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Tonight my old man dog snoozes with his ears poking up. I wonder if he’s dreaming of when he was a pup.  This long suffering hound has seen me through so many bad boyfriends. They’re gone, but he’s still around. Farting. Snoring. Inexplicably licking the carpet. Still wagging his tail, half mast, as he wobbles on arthritic legs, still pulls the leash a little at the sight of a squirrel. He was the cutest puppy – honestly – little carmel coloured puff ball with blue eyes. He was a lovely middle aged mutt – despite his penchant for a constant…

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Little boy in a red sweater, dead, face down on a beach. A girl of two and her father murdered in the mountains by a shy quiet man in a shy quiet town in the shadow of the Rockies. It’s not a bright week; the news reel reeks. I post something on Facebook about Syrian refugees and Christ and the call to compassion. I get a hateful rant from a well meaning man who is angry about the senseless pain in the world and decides to blame all form of religion. Tells me to “grow some balls” which I find…odd….

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