Musings
About retirement… and random other things!
These blogs first appear as weekly columns in the Red Deer Advocate
The gift of a warm hug
There was a time when everyone was giving me scarves for Christmas. It was a strange phase, but they were all lovely and some were even handmade which made them even more special. I figured maybe I had reached that time in my life when I had become difficult to buy for. A senior living in a small condo doesn’t need knickknacks, after all, so the...
Christmas cheer throughout the year
Do you keep all the Christmas cards you receive - when there's not a postal strike and you're actually receiving them? I keep mine! It’s so that I can bring them out again in the heat of a summer’s day and let a totally different feeling wash over me than the one I felt when I received them in the scurry of the holiday season. In fact, I enjoy...
Where do your Christmas traditions come from?
Nothing shines a light on our family traditions much like Everything Christmas. When you stop to think about it some of them are pretty strange, and yet we hold onto all of them because that’s what everyone who gathers expects year after year. For instance, a bowl of cottage cheese presented with a sprinkle of pepper lines up with the rest of the...
A poignant loss on November 5th
November 5 will go down in history as a very sad day. It’s the day we learned of the passing of Chief Justice Murray Sinclair, this country’s exquisite example of the best in humanity. So many accomplishments in his lifetime, but for me it was his role as Chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was most impactful. I had the...
Do you read differently than you once did?
Someone recently mentioned to me that they are feeling less confident about their writing and they figure it’s because of what they have come to read. This thought was shared by an incredibly successful entrepreneur who has a number of degrees and interacts with corporations and governments as part of his work. Now in his 60s, he mentioned his...
Not everything has to be orderly
You know when you enter a coffeeshop early in the morning and you can float restfully through the ordering, waiting and obtaining lines pretty mindlessly? One morning I arrived to my neighbourhood spot, laptop in hand and ready to find a quiet table and a coffee to kickstart my ambition, when I discovered a smattering of people all...
A beacon for every season
The geese are honking their way through another autumn in droves. A whole swack of them flew right over me while I was walking the other night and, even though none of them uttered a sound, there was still such huge volume with their wings flapping and the air stirring around them in their perfect V formation. There is such strength when you...
Soliloquy for the Saddledome
One of the final hockey seasons is underway in the Saddledome and it’s making me think of all the great memories from that notorious building. I remember when it was first built and we all thought it looked like a maxi-pad. Be that as it may, it was built for the Olympics and Calgarians hold that time close to their hearts. My first time inside...
The days of our lives
(Me with the toque on The Great Wall in 1984) As of today, I have been on this earth for 32,014.5 days. The half is because I was born midway through my first day. I know this because my dad dropped my mom off in the morning at The Calgary General Hospital, where he worked, before he headed to the office. He checked on her in the maternity ward...