This man, this home, this life: it has been a year of unprecedented blessings, both large and small. Here is the daily breakdown, as per my annual Thanksgiving tradition.
A few weeks ago I was surprised with an eight-hour “proposal tour,” in which my partner took me to eight places in the city that have been significant at some point in our two-year relationship. The event included a treasure map and eight scrolls, each detailing a task for us to complete together before our wedding next summer. Here’s a glimpse of how the day unfolded.
Joe Kool’s and a candle, for the night the fire was lit.
The Runt Club and a candle holder, for quesadillas and a renaissance concert.
Victoria Park and a drawing in Quebec City, for the first time our hands touched.
Metropolitan United Church, and the Montreal Bach Festival, for our first symphony.
The Grand Theatre and a trip to Stratford, for Romeo and Juliet.
St. James Westminster and an empty box, for our common call to faith.
The Robert Q and jewelry by the lake, for our wanderlust.
The Olde South Village Pub, chocolates, and the sweetest question I have ever been asked: Will you marry me?
And now I gaze with gratitude and wonder at this ring on my finger and think, how is it that I have come to know such happiness? How is it that this man can love me as he does? I swell with joy, I glitter like diamonds on gold.
Today in my primary music classes we talked about music as a force for peace. In broad, simplified strokes we talked about The Singing Revolution in Estonia and the Prayer of the Mothers associated with the Women Wage Peace movement in the Middle East. We talked about how war is sometimes a function of greed, where one country wants what another country has. And I saw before me a sea of confused and inquisitive faces, posing the most innocent, most poignant questions:
Here it is… another year of big and small happinesses, collected in a little book each evening and displayed on Thanksgiving Day in an act of public self-reflection. It is a testimony that life’s sweetest and most precious moments are to be savoured and preserved, and that even the most difficult days harbour cause for hope. Read on.
Honesty
It is a bedrock
Baseball in the back yard
Ten hits in a row
And the most encouraging coach
Sleepovers
When kids say funny things
Hallowe’en thrifting
Naan wraps
Anniversaries
Back to the gym
Meetings that aren’t disasters
Perfect days
Perfect evenings
Band practice in the basement
Progress on the siding
A minor injury
Short waits at ER
Sleeping in his arms
Success stories
Summer weather in October
Open windows
When I get a ride home from band
Those hamburgers are so good
Rapini
Normal blood sugar levels
Pillow talk
Work buddies
When I don’t think I’ll make the light, but then I do
Good therapists
When little ones learn to listen
When my purse doesn’t get stolen at the gym
When students play their first melodies, and it’s magical
There is something fragile about the first days of school. There are butterflies everywhere. Butterflies in backpacks, butterflies in lunch boxes, butterflies in the feet of displaced newcomers, butterflies in the eyes of those scanning the schoolyard for familiar faces on that very first fresh morning in the uncharted terrain of new teachers, new classrooms, and new aspirations.
We consider ourselves superior to our neighbours because we did not elect the madman to the south, but we are no better. We have our own Trump Lite here in Ontario, and he just “cruised” to his third straight majority government. He has decimated the school system and the health care system, choosing instead to fund expensive projects that put money in the hands of his cronies. He says that he will defend Ontario from the threat of tariffs, but the reality is that not too long ago he was extolling the virtues of the man he now claims to be a danger to us. He takes from the poor to give to the rich, and the poor and rich alike have chimed in, saying, “Give us more Doug Ford!”
Here’s a little gem from the archives: 2010 to be exact, when I was supply teaching in Peterborough and getting to know my neighbours on Charlotte Street. Happy Hallowe’en!
Today I scored huge points with my skinhead neighbour’s children.
Every year at the end of October I start to think about how I’m going to evade Hallowe’en. I hate the skeletons, gravestones, witches and, yes, even the spiders. I don’t get why the entire continent gets such a charge out of thinking about icky, dark, evil things for a month every fall. Fall is icky enough without the ghosts and the orange and black. Why make it colder, scarier, crueller?
This is the tenth Gratitude List that you’ll find on Cosmic Prose, signalling ten years of daily journaling, in which I choose a few bright moments from each day to crystalize in print. Somehow I never run out of entries, and somehow each year’s list has its own special flavour.
This has been an epic year of social and professional blossoming, punctuated by meaningful moments both at home and abroad. Here’s to happiness!
A job that makes my days feel good
My car is home!
5/5 days
When Thursday is a second Wednesday
The breast clinic is looking after me
The circus is getting a new ringleader
At least the underground parking lot is always there for me
A full day
Not doing schoolwork on weekends
Double naps
Getting the chores done
Soon I will be writing again
Chauffeurs
Competent supply teachers
When I think I’m in tune
Good health
A writing group
A third friend
Finishing assessments
Improvements
Less pain today
Finishing progress reports
Kale and bacon pizza
One day without fruits or vegetables is not a big deal
My first impressions of Rome were not so favourable. It seemed to be a city made of garbage and graffiti. I saw it on the bus from the airport to the train station, and then again on the walk from the train station to the apartment. Garbage and graffiti everywhere.
“You’re going to love Europe,” I told my niece. “Everything here is so pretty. The ornate buildings. The immaculate gardens. The cobblestone streets. Everything.
No, not everything. Definitely not the trajectory from the Termini train station to our humble abode. Rome, I thought, is a dirty, unpalatable city. I’m not so sure I like it here.
I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day. It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.
But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.
Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem. Rows of crosses, row on row. Thousands and thousands of them. Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks. Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage. Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks. Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial. Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.
