MEANINGMAKER

memories

  • lift what you can

    My mother taught me  to shovel snow the way I imagine some mothers teach prayer – patient, shoulder to shoulder. She’d come home from a long day, and say: Come on, let’s go. Out into the dark we went, into… Continue reading

  • new year’s eve 1975

    She slipped the deep blue coat from the hanger. The fur collar brushed her cheek, a brief vanishing softness. I watched from my doorway, a child awake when I shouldn’t have been, drawn by the thin slice of light —… Continue reading

  • we are so lightly here

    Today, my phone’s photo app offered me a montage it called Looking Back. I usually ignore those compilations, but this morning I opened it as the downtown blurred past outside the train’s window, on my way to work. There, among… Continue reading

  • awake on the train

    I left the train this morning one stop before City Hall, where I would usually get off —something I do on the mornings when I want a short walk to clear my head before work. I’m usually a stander on… Continue reading

  • the guest book

    In the basement this afternoon, looking for a paint brush, I noticed a clear plastic bin on a low shelf. What caught my eye was a snatch of colour I immediately recognized as a beautiful throw that my dad’s mom, my… Continue reading

  • glory days

    Tomorrow night in an American stadium when I see The Boss step on stage, I’ll briefly think about the guy who bullied a couple of us on my high school bus when I was in Grade 9 and 10. A… Continue reading

  • what it will be

    Whenever life got hard, Mom would often say, “it will be what it will be.” I assumed that she meant that things would turn out as they should — good or bad — and she would deal with it either… Continue reading

  • i would have loved her

    For many, many years, there has rarely been a day that hasn’t begun with a cup of tea and the obituaries. I read them each day even before I read the daily headlines. Sometimes, I notice trends. For example, around… Continue reading

  • time goes by

    This picture was taken the day my mom turned 75. That was seven and a half years ago now. Four years ago this afternoon, we sat together – my mom and dad and sister and I – in a puke-coloured… Continue reading

  • the only one

    Tucked away in the corner of a little Italian place that, after the sun went down, was dim like a mine shaft and just as cold, we sat discussing the living we’ve done over the last 30 years. The two… Continue reading