To Ella, on being a Ballerina

You seem to step lightly where ever you go. It does not seem to have anything to do with your height and frame...it has to do with your graceful little movements..the careful footwork. The walking and skipping and twirling on tippy-toes. Even when you're running through the water at the wading pool. When you were still in-utero there was something magical, and mysterious about you. Something fairylike. Now here you are, determined, strong-willed and lovable. You love to dance. You love music. You love to pretend you are the prima ballerina. You are Odette in Swan Lake. You are wonderfully imaginative, graceful, whimsical. You are definitely the queen of fairies.

To Ross, on becoming a Poet

Ross, you are becoming a poet, my dear. Rather, you are a poet. You sit at the round kitchen table and write a poem. I don't remember writing poems when I was 8, I think I was 10 or older. I am amazed by you. I am amazed that your first poem got published this year, and that you sit there, and write these poems so easily, and with so much skill. You are simply amazing. You know how to use language and give it meaning and form. I am so proud of the person you are becoming and the poet that is emerging.

Night

The air is cool. It is cool for August..it feels more like late September or October. The leaves have started to fall, their colour just beginning to fade. I hacked away at the plants today in the front beds. It took all my energy to hack the sturdy gray branches down, and uncover the mulched earth. It felt good for the first while..I had an almost manic energy..leaving my kids to their own self-management so I could separate plants that had taken over their space and had already begun the journery toward destruction by choking the plants around them including our helpless blue spruce. After awhile, I felt drained and I hardly looked forward to hauling the twigs and branches into pails and bins. I feel somewhat guity thinking back at the holly I managed to attack and dislimb. I chopped it down to its exposed roots. It seemed to make sense then..it had grown wild and taken over everything else..but there was something nice in the way that it laced everything in its corner and ..beyond. But I managed to strip it bare of any life..I don't really know what I was thinking. It was green and ornamental and now I sadly miss it. --Ella is sleeping soundly next to me. Ross has gone upstairs and is getting ready to retire for the night. I'm sleepy but I can't sleep. The cars seem to punctuate the silence in the air. I liked it when we first moved to this neighbourhood. Now I dream of Thornbury. Of its nightime silence..its curtain of stars, the bay out back..melting into a sea of sky. They cove bringing refuge to its sleepy swans. But I'm here..and this is still a good place to be. I don't live in the shadowy, depressing blue house anymore. I live here with the pine trees, and the japanese maple, and the other maples and the cedars and locust tree. With the flowers that come back to greet me each year, the birds that move back to make families and build homes for their families. The backyard bunny that likes to hide among the hostas..the chipmunk that likes to sit under out picnic table. The flowering hostas that smell like heaven at this time of year. And all the windows in our house that let us look out onto the gardens.

Dad's Anniversary

I can feel you here as I look out the window and I see a tree branch moving with weight of the wind. It is so hard not being able to see you but then again when a cool draft moves across my shoulder I can almost see you. Your warm smooth hands, carressing my shoulder, my hair, my face. I am waiting to smell your Old English Cologne in the air. Hanging like music, suspended in the air. I would like to hear your footsteps, see your worn-in slippers in the corner of the room. Here you whistle a cheerful tune as you spin your clay pot in your hands, carefully, dreamily. Good night Dad, but never, good-bye.

Ella and Ross

I'm watching Ella print her name at our picnic table. Ross is running with a broken tree branch in hand, re-enacting the battle of Stoney Creek. The plants and flowers that surround me are welcoming. The lilies of the valley have stopped blooming but their faintly intoxicating scent fill the air. The alliums are past their prime, just a slight flurry of purple standing on top of long, erect stems. I love the hostas..they are growing large, casting leafy shadows across the garden. We are being watched by chicks and robins. Somewhere within these tall trees, nests are tucked away, loved and protected.

The ferns are getting to be tall and enormous. A baby dogwood is growing in between. Our vines are beginning to leaf, as well as our climbing roses. My favourite of all is an unnamed rose climber that is growing along my children's swing set. It doesn't have thorns, and produces clusters of soft white petals in the summer.

This is the place where I feel the most peaceful. Rabbit statueary peeking from behind hostas and lilies. Statueary of children overlooking the garden. And the sound of my children running and playing, and colouring on Dave's slate picnic table.

Tori Missing

It felt like the longs weeks had blended into one, and there was that feeling in the air of hope mingled with fear. There was the possibility of her returning home, or so I thought. Then the unimaginable happened. Murder printed in dark ink, embedding its painful mark behind and sending shocks of terror into once-hopeful citizens.

First, it is a feeling of terror that takes over someone when they first hear the news. Then rage, for the loss of life, and for the agony of her family.

Lowville Park

I waited desperately for spring and now its here. The heavy fragrance of lilac evokes memories of my father once more and his love of their perfume. It was his birthday on May 14 and in some ways I felt him around me, around my children and around the things that mattered to him.

Today we visited Lowville Park. The same place where my father brought us when we were children and what sweet memories they were. I remember a time before his passing when I was not well and we visited this place together..this place of healing.

It was amazing to be here today with my husband and my children, visiting streams and well-travelled paths. I'd forgotten how much space there was to wander, to become easily lost in one's thoughts. My daughter looked for fish in the cool stream and my son moved through the grass looking for sticks to throw into the water.

The big hill, the streams, the sunlit paths, and the barn nearby with grazing horses had not changed at all. It was as if I were revisiting pictures of my childhood except I was looking at precious childhood moments being lived through by my children.