We’re in the van on a long drive and we’re talking about being loved and just what on earth this means. Liz is only 11, but she’s there, she can talk about it and engage and we get on the topic of Mom, who we both love and who is also, if you didn’t know, […]
On being loved widely. And deeply. (And, oh yeah, receiving the Order of Canada.) Read More »
It’s a nutty world, nutty when it comes to fear, which is why I just had to look at eight pages of permission forms so my son, Jon, could go on a class trip to a local pool. His Grade 3 class goes once or twice a year. So, eight pages. Five (5!) of my
It’s a nutty world. Now giddy up, horsey. Read More »
The country knows when a mother loses one child for a short while during an outrageous hospital abduction. And the entire world knows when an airliner leaves Malaysia and then vanishes mysteriously. But what about when mother upon mother lose their newborns? Or an airliner full of mothers goes down? It happened yesterday. Did you hear? And today.
A boy can love many things – pizza, pulling his sister’s hair, climbing trees – but my boy loves few things more than putting on his hockey skates. He’d wear them to bed if allowed and has already asked, wanting to follow, apparently, what Guy Lafleur did as a boy – he wore his skates
“Dad, can I wear my skates to bed?” Read More »
The two neighbour boys are 8 and 5 and it looks like their father is about to die. It’s this morning. My kids and I walk to school with them and the boys’ mother. The 8-year-old is in Hannah’s class. What can you say? + It’s yesterday evening and we, Mother and I, that is Jean
The valley of the shadow of death Read More »
There was a time when a neighbourhood school was more than a place you simply went for classes and drudgery, when it was more than a place of fear. My own boyhood experience was that we kids would go to school after hours and on weekends to – imagine – play, say, baseball on a
Hey, let’s lock the fun out of school! Read More »
‘This is how you do it, she said, and she put some water in the sink and got some soap and took it all in her hands and showed me how to wash my shirt in the sink. The shirt was short-sleeved and striped blue and white, horizontally, and the sink was in the attic
Cousins and gifts and a different sort of beauty Read More »
She’s a scholar of the Old Testament and her reading glasses sit on her nose, and then she takes them off, and then they’re on again, and she’s talking about hope and my son Jonathan is here in the group of adults because he has asked if can stay. The rest of the seven-year-olds, known
Children and hope at one crossroads or another Read More »
