Archives / 13 post/s found
Peter
His direct gaze no nonsense, full of grace and care and love for me, for life itself - for every moment of life lived. Even in the black and white you can sense the aquamarine of his blue eyes. That countenance so sure, so confident, so self assured, raw and true proud and in pain at losing life but seeing life for the fullness of its 62 years. No regrets, only graceful acknowledgment.
Mar-velous Monday: Episode 2 – Air India, 1985: The Sari of Sorrow
The cloth is pure silk; a deep turquoise - diaphanous and mysterious. The sublime undulating shadows capture both light and dark. Every sari tells a story; and that story has a theme. The story here is the one solid gold continuous thread along the border. It both testifies and belies tragedy and senseless loss of hundreds of lives.
Mar-velous Monday: Episode 1 – Burstall, Saskatchewan, 1995
June 22, 2021 The Story: “You don’t know how many hearts you touched all these decades with that story we did together, “said Shane just two weeks ago. Pastor-Doctor Shane Andrus is a man I met producing a story over twenty-five years ago that changed my life, his and – apparently – the three-hundred people of Burstall, Saskatchewan in l995. I had called him out of the blue this past week because my 90 year-old mother had gone from being in hospital Emergency to ICU to Palliative care — all in the span of three weeks, and I was seeking […]
A Spanish Banks Photo 32 Years Later
That sunny day at Spanish Banks before we found out about the cancer was joyous, sublime and our step across the threshold of before and after.
Vassiliky and Her Donkey
When I lived in Greece with Peter in the l980s, his neighbour Vassiliky was wary of me. She was in her 80s, I was in my 30s, and Peter was in his 50s. As she looked me up and down she was definitely skeptical: dyspistos.
Verity Bell-Irving : Memoria
Revised, March 12 2010. Second Revision: April 29, 2021 Anton Dolin, who began his career with the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, asked Verity to join his new company – The American Ballet Theatre in l941. ABT in 2021 is still going strong despite the global Covid-19 pandemic. His partner, Dame Alicia Markova, whose real name was Alice Marks, saw Verity dance in Seattle around the same time and told her, ‘you are coming with us’ when invitations of that calibre were rare as hen’s teeth. In l947 Verity took dance lessons from Nico Charisse in Hollywood. He was the […]
The Jets and Sharks in Their Mid-80s
There is always some amusing situation when I go to see my mother at Haro Park Center.
I know. They are now called Campus of Care Facilities, but it seem to me that title tries too hard.
Dementia Mama Wisdom
I’ve never confided in my mother about any of the things girls children, teenage girls, or pregnant out of wedlock women girls have been known to share with their mothers. So, it may be obvious why I navigated the rest of my life sans motherly advice, but now exactly sixty years later, I do want my mother’s advice.
The New Purse
When I arrived at the nurses station to pick up my mother to take her for
her smoke, I noticed her coming up the long hall to greet me carrying a
white purse I had never seen before. Crooked over her left arm like the
Kelly bag she had in the l950s I puzzled as to this new white one’s origin.
Virgo Mama
Easter weekend, 2021 meant we could finally give our mother, Trudy, a
hug for the first time in l3 months. As a professional writer, sometimes
events are so emotional it can’t quite be verbalized. But this story I wrote
about Trudy from over a year ago, at least tells me she hasn’t changed one
iota. She’s still firecracker full of life at 90-years old: she’s survived
Covid-19 and has happily smoked for 75 straight years.