Making Christmas

One of the things I appreciate about Christmas is how it opens up the possibility of creating new things. I love watching the kids drop everything and use their presents on the spot. This Christmas morning my son was enchanted with and used every last lick of paint, within an hour, that came with a spin art maker he was given by a friend.

My daughter stopped what she was doing and cranked out 8 markers which she proceeded to name "sad orphan blue", "good grey" and "pumper pink".

As we put away all the decorations and tuck away the bits of this Christmas for the next, I keep in mind what I love to find when the Christmas stuff comes out.

I relish opening the box with all the little bits of ribbon, salvaged cards and scraps of foil that will be reconstituted into new ways next year that I cannot imagine yet.

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I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...

Shake your Bummy

In recent weeks, two things have come to my attention, this article by Mary Beth Williams, T he real key to good health and the viral hit created by Dr. Mike Evans, 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? Both coincided with when I was turning my attention to new years resolutions and reflecting on the year that was. Thanks to both, a reckoning came to be. Mary Beth Williams' candid advice was to get your heart stronger because you never know when you are going to need it. She herself has been receiving treatment for lung cancer. Dr Mike Evans' way of putting the exact same thing? "Try to limit your sitting time to 23 1/2 hours a day". In my day job, I sit a lot. I occasionally rise to retrieve something from the photocopier or to make a coffee, but an awful lot of the time, I'm on my bum. This is in steep contrast to my night job. At the end of the work day, occasionally in the middle, I h...

Growing Versions

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