Another year gone by

Where are you today?
Hanging out with a new crowd?
Or just sitting contentedly in
The quiet of your own company?
 
Did you take over
The spirit of an old Arab
Whose wisdom and kindness
Weaves deeply into the hearts
Of a large, chaotic family
Who are scattered everywhere
Across the globe, yet…
When anyone thinks of family
They are sitting right next to you
With smiles painted
Broadly across their faces
And a tenderness of mind.
 
Or, did you quickly manage
To return as that bright
And brilliant Hollywood star,
Standing on a stage
At an awards ceremony
Talking of your greatness
And half believing
This is absolutely true.
And half believing
It is only a bad joke,
And wondering why
Everyone is upset about
Your audacity to speak out loud
What they covet so dearly.
 
Could you be spending
The eternity since your leaving
Recklessly riding the tops of waves,
Breaking across the decks
Of massive vessels whose
Crews bow to you in wonder
And fright, knowing
How precarious their lives are.

Yet, also knowing so well
The bliss of surrender.
 
I know you are here, but
Still do not know where here is.
Even after all this time,
Sometimes, talking to you
In my thoughts, does nothing
But mask the loss, the absence
You cleaved out of our lives
With the passing of yours.

Reincarnation of a rugby player

Look at that idiot traipsing around. What a wimp. The old me would have ploughed him down with one shift of my shoulder. I could have stomped him into the ground and left him to be scraped up by his sissy friends. I could have taken them all on without flinching.

Bloody hell, this coat itches. Who puts a coat on a dog? God, if they only knew me back then. They’d be bloody terrified.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Timeless play in paradise

Well over half a century ago, three little girls played on Grand Anse Beach. There were no tourists then on the beach, only the occasional passerby who would inevitably wander over and tease them in one manner or another.

They dug a hole to China. Built a castle until a wave came and tore the walls down. Chattered excitedly about fanciful sea monsters crawling up and grabbing their legs. Bickered when the cloak of boredom smothered their imaginations.

They ran from all that fun when their stomachs cried out in hunger, and with the sudden realisation struck them that they were alone. They scattered up the beach, soft sand breaking between their toes, towards the shaded terrace where their mother and other women were luxuriating in amiable conversation, seemingly oblivious to the charge of the cavalry racing their way.

(Photo: Lia, Karen, and Kim, 1958, Venezuela)

Trusting my intuition

Wandering around lost
New city, old problems
Confusion with all its wrath
Starts to make
My explorer’s heart
Shrink and cringe
At every corner taken.
 
My map turns into a maze
My confidence begins to fade
Should I stick to the
Purgatory of hotel lobbies
The blandness of franchises
The strained smiles of boredom
And deep disillusionment by
All those who serve me plates of
Soulless food that they once
Thought would let them travel
To exotic places.
 
Suddenly, across the road
Next to the scaffolding
With its dull green
Plastic covering
That snaps and flutters
In the scary winds
A neon sign
In a language I do not know
Calls me into its warmth
With hot, comforting food
From farfar away
Somewhere they call home.

 
Photo by Angel Maldonado on Unsplash

Never book the middle seat

Okay. Maybe the size of the middle seat on an airplane is the same as the window or aisle seat when you look at the spec sheets. In reality, the moment you ask the passenger in the aisle seat to let you in, it starts to shrink.

There is the smirk on the face of the person by the window. The tripping over the suitcase of the man on the aisle, which does not really fit under the seat in front of him. And finally, the plopping down into the middle seat, landing on a spiderweb of seatbelts belonging to everyone, trying to work out which one is yours and which are theirs, all the while groping under your own bum without touching theirs.

By then, the seat has shrunk, along with your ego, to the size of a pin.

Photo by szm 4 on Unsplash 

Monitoring the delay

Sharp pellets of snow
Chug, chug, scrunch, crunch, I’m waiting
With numbed frozen toes.

Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash

Morning yoga

My feet glide my sleep-filled bones towards my mat. I bow quietly, tentatively start a series of yoga poses. Lotus. Butterfly. Hero. Thunderbolt. Supine spinal twist. Pigeon. Supine pigeon. Revolved hand-to-big-toe pose. On and on, I slowly move my limbs where they should be, stretching my tendons, muscles, and my faith that the pain is manageable. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe again, until there is a shift in my willingness to move one more inch away from old aches.

I cross over the boundaries of decades long gone and suddenly feel myself young. My body memory rewinds the clock of time and rediscovers those precious, impossible poses of an aspiring ballet dancer. Flexible. Free to twist my body into pretzels of silliness. And so, I finish my session by sitting on the ground and bringing my big toe up to my nose in an ‘aha you thought I couldn’t do it’ pose. Et voilà.

Cold Sunday morning

Pigeons fly over 
Taking in all the wonders
Street below's empty.

Proud to be Grenadian

Listening to this speech by Jumaane Williams, who comes from the Williams family of St. Andrew, made me think of Pat and how proud she would have been to be Grenadian, listening to his moving words.

She only became Grenadian at the end of her nearly forty years there. She did so as a symbol of her gratitude for the country and the deep love she felt for the people who held her hands all those years. 

Beautiful sounds: quiet resignation

The crunch-squish of my boots stomping through the slushy snow all over town. 

Now the year begins

Our children have left 

Alone, no decorations 

The tree stands bravely.

A house, remembered

This piece is about the Buckley grandparents' home. It differs considerably from the piece I wrote about the Hadley grandparents' house. It is easy to see the difference in the home's atmosphere through the lens of my childhood memories.

It could be that the main difference is that Pat, John, and Peter were raised in this house, whereas the house where the Grandparents lived was bought after Dave, Barbara, and Gordon had already left home. The stories Pat and Peter told me about their childhood and the strictness or tyranny of their father have also seeped into my memories.

What remains

I’ve been revisiting a place that no longer exists in the way it once did: my grandparents’ house, set back from a quiet road in rural Ontario, with a river at the edge of the garden and a rhythm that belonged to another time. (Link to document.)

Writing these memories wasn’t about reconstructing the past accurately, or even chronologically. It was about noticing what has endured. Not the large events, but the smaller ones: how light moved through rooms, how time stretched in childhood, how care was expressed through routine rather than words.

I’ve come to believe that memory doesn’t preserve everything evenly. It keeps what mattered, often without explaining why. What remains are fragments: sounds, gestures, objects shaped by hand, and the feeling of being held within an ordered, attentive world.

This piece is a gathering of those fragments. It’s written for family, but also for anyone who carries a place within them that continues to inform how they see, move, and care.

Some houses disappear. Others remain, quietly, in the way we remember how to be.

Beautiful sounds: joyful anticipation

The flutter of butterflies in my stomach, knowing our children will soon be here for Christmas.

Waiting for Christmas to begin

Waking this morning

Wonderful smells of Christmas
Pine sap and coffee. 

Photo by Tony Litvyak on Unsplash

Leaving before arriving

Ice crystals melting
Populating tree branches
Sunrays on snowdrops. 

As I walk home

A stunning full moon 
Lost soul sleeping on the street
Juxtaposition.

A season of stillness

She gazes out the window at the thick grey skies. These dark, short, cold days weigh upon her. She, who once danced through the summer nights with her dearest friends in mind and spirit. The DJ and bar owners had pushed them out the door with a wink and a nod. Sweating and breathless, they’d wandered the early morning streets before dawn, before lights went on in the bedrooms of the homes they passed. All the while, they hummed together the last song of the night.

For weeks now, the dark winter evenings, impenetrable to any inner light, have thrown a thick blanket of slumber and dullness over her. She feels no lightness of being. It is as if all her summer zest has flown south, somewhere along the coast of Africa.

When she meets her friends, she wonders how she ever thought their company companionable. Now she can barely tolerate their chatter, irritated by their forced gaiety. Their evening plans scrape like sandpaper against the thin surface of her civility. Were they always so superficially jovial? Was she?

Winter darkness feels like a rewiring of her brain. Somber, serious, melancholic, these grey days let other thoughts rise to the surface. Somehow, this feels more real than the wild and reckless summer sprite she once flew beside. The question is: if she digs deeper into this current state, will she discover a treasure of profound recognition, or fall into a dark abyss?

A horn blaring on the street below shakes her from her reverie. She touches her cup of tea. It’s cold. Time to cook dinner.

Beautiful sounds: reef at Westerhall

The steady, bounding drumbeat of waves breaking on the reef, far below the cliff at Dave and Pat’s place. 

What's the world coming to

A truffle grater

Tiny gift that's ludicrous
Sadly shake my head.