Roughly three years ago I trekked back to Canada in order to get my immigration and paperwork for marrying Shawn, settled. When I was there my mother brought out a little leather bound jewelry box that had seen the years. When she opened it, two delicate bands were within–one a wedding band with chains, and one an engagement ring with matching chains. She told me that they were the original rings my father proposed to her with and...

I have become stretched thin. It did not happen quickly. This was a slow thing. Life and growing old are things which–like children giggling behind oak trees in full summer–play hide n’ seek with your heart. In one moment, you see the slip of a shadow behind the trunk of the tree but you believe you have all the time in the world to go hide. In the next moment you take off to your perfect hiding spot but you’ve been...

I have a clock work heart. In the morning when I wake up, all the gears tick, spin and whirr. They turn without protest as I swing my feet out of bed and go about my morning routine. Slow and steady, spokes touch spokes, turning the great machine that is my body and brain into a slide-show of normality. I wash my face. (That looks like my mother’s if she were fat.) I brush my teeth. (That are crooked like hers but not like hers.) I...

My mother. What do I say about my mother? What can I say about her? “She was beautiful.” Of course she was. She was my  mother after all. What child who does not love their mother think their mother is anything but? Even when crows feet begin their slow, inevitable climb at the corners of their eyes. Even when their hair starts to go a little grey at the temples. “She was strong.” Any woman who gives birth to a...

I read the other day a post about crazy people making the best bloggers. And I thought they so do. And then I thought but I’m not crazy, in my head in one of those tones.  I heard myself say it in my head (I did, yes, stop staring at me like that) sort of self-assured. Like the notes you would hear from ladies with silver-blue in their hair, bent over afternoon tea on their front porch on a sunny summer day. The two of them politely...

Today I had a mammogram. A lot different from my first mammogram at 13 in Canada, where I had lumpy boobs and the Doctor just wanted to make sure it was natural breast development and nothing else. I had to go to a hospital then–down white hallways and across pale chilled floors. I distinctly remember the glaring white of a large hospital room; florescent lights and five or six people–one or two men– in light colored...