What a pleasure to fire up the seat warmers in your car on a Fall morning. You’ve had your coffee and breakfast, put your sweater or coat on and gasp slightly as the crisp, damp Autumn air makes your face tingle. Not cold enough to hurt, like in winter – but just enough to make …
Continue reading “Life-Love #4: Seat warmers on a crisp Autumn morning”
I just got in from fencing practice and I feel heavy with exhaustion. It’s a settled feeling – my muscles are sore, my body’s vibrating at a low, steady frequency. I feel alive and settled and satisfied all at the same time. My mind is heavy and fuzzy, and the world seems a little gauzy …
Continue reading “Life-Love #3: Exhausted and happy after practice”
This morning I woke up very early and made myself a green tea. I stepped outside and sat on a wooden garden bench that I keep on my little porch facing a wooded ravine conservation area. The world was quiet except for the odd passing early-morning commuter rumbling by. I could hear nature awakening around …
There is nothing quite like the quiet pleasure of a pint of Guinness and a BLT at the Phoenix Grad Pub at McMaster University. I particularly like going there, after a long evening of work, deliciously exhausted, and settle into an hour of the fragrant caramels of the Dublin brew accompanied by the tasty crunch …
Continue reading “Life-Love #1: Guinness and a BLT at the Phoenix”
Alicia was having the most interesting morning. It was late August, and the days were already starting to have that slight hint of a chill in the morning that reminded her that the school year was just around the corner. She’d woken up in the little hotel room she was occupying for a week at the …
Continue reading “Chapter 6: Alicia flings a watermelon wedge and finds a friend”
Today had started peculiarly for Dr. Chang – he had arisen from his bed at the usual time, about 5:45 – a time he liked because it often allowed him to stand on the porch and sip his steaming tea as he caught the glimmering lights of dawn as it rose over the ravine lot …
Simona Manelli was running down Locke St., one of the prettier streets in Hamilton, her arms full of pickle jars. She was running to the Manelli’s Fine Foods, a little green grocer’s that her great grandfather had started, after scrimping and saving for years. He had worked in the steel mills in the East End …
Dr. Joseph Chang had spent the morning working in the garden. He had dug up the flower beds, turned the soil and pulled the weeds and clumps of grass that had encroached on the green wooden boxes surrounding his townhouse and then dumped bag after bag of magical plant fertilizer in little heaps. But somehow …
After kissing her father lightly on both cheeks, Alli entered the foyer of Chatham train station. Her family had always lived, at least during all of her 17 years, in the small Southern Ontario town of Chatham. Her father was born in Windsor and her mother in Picton, but they had met at the University …
Alicia had hugged her mother a little awkwardly that morning. She felt that being too intimate felt a little odd, just before she started an important journey into a new part of her life. Now they stood in front of one another, on the stoop of their white, gabled home surrounded by evergreens. It was …
