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I flew home from Winnipeg recently, and sat beside an older gentleman who was making careful notes in a red spiral notebook. It’s the same kind of notebook I had in my knapsack at that very moment, where I keep notes for the MFA chapter I’m working on.

I have friends who are older, but I don’t have a friend I have held so close to my heart for so long.  Crackly home movie footage shows me, six months older, trying to give Janet a good swat from my carriage, parked next to hers.

If you’re going to ask me about all we’ve got going on this week and next, speak to me like you are Barry White. This week, I’ve had to ask loved ones to stop talking to me like this: “OH NO!! ARE YOU OKAY???” and “HOW ARE YOU GETTING THROUGH THIS??I’D BE FREAKING OUT!! I’D DIE! I COULDN’T HANDLE IT!!!”

My Mom and my Dad, who turns 80 today, met a couple of young(ish) RCMP officers on Parliament Hill a few years ago, who were astounded to learn that Dad’s regimental number was 19229.

This weekend I sat at my dining room table and consumed a pie recipe. It was almost a poem. Especially when I reached this line: Tumble in the cranberries. That is what cranberries do, as anyone who made sauce this weekend knows. They tumble.