I'm in one of my moods. I apologize. The world is good to me. I sit in my own little house in the garden, well fed - Gillian and Brendan made dinner. I am sipping scotch and reading poetry. Sounds kind of fancy to me. I opened Nye's book "Words under the Words" to the "World in Translation." Am I allowed to quote another on this public journal? I don't know. So I will - nobody has stopped me yet. This poem reminds me of living in Northern Ireland, standing in the post office where one old person greeted another, "What about you?" And the other replied, "I'm still above the soil."

"It was a long climb out of the soil.
She counted off whole continents
as she lifted each foot,
imagined her dark years falling away like husks.
Soon she could feel objects come to life
in her hand, the peel of a banana,
a lightly waxed pepper,
she accepted these into her home,
placed them in bowls where they could be watched.
There was nothing obscure about melons,
nothing involved about yams.
If she where to have anything to do with the world,
these would be her translators,
through these she would learn secrets of dying,
how to do it gracefully as the peach,
softening in silence,
or the mango, finely tuned to its own skin."

Simplicity. That's what I yearn for. Not a world of complexes and projections.

How can we know ourselves
or defend ourselves
or help an other know her or him self
unless we talk openly
and listen without feeling defensive?

How do we know what is projection and what is insight?

How are we to know if no one loves us enough to talk to us and not to another?

I sent a story to a newspaper on Saturday. I went to hear Vaughan and her poetry group read last night. Vaughan surprised me. She spoke so well, so clearly, so loudly as if she didn't have a fear in the world. She told me afterwards that this was not the case. She fooled me. My projection. I'm glad she told me the truth.

Today I worked. Tonight my parents arrive from Toronto. I will visit them tomorrow.

I seem to be incapable of writing a blog these days, incapable of writing at all. Not good. My head is full of travel arrangements for Gill - to Northern Ireland, then Paris, then Toulouse, back to Vancouver at the end of August, and
then Toronto - and Rob and I - to Paris, Toulouse, Paris, London, Vancouver.

I have already booked my flight to Los Angeles for the 10th of June and am in the process of making plans for Seattle market. If it weren't me, I'd feel that my person is leading an exciting life.

Gill is excited about starting university but unhappy that she has had to disappoint the friend that she was going to live with in Paris. Why isn't life easier? Why can't something, one thing, be pure joy? If I could organize the world for my children, I would.

On Sunday evening, we sat and read poetry together - Erica Jong and Sinead Morrisey. We did this in Northern Ireland a number of times. We also discussed a new poem, Gill is working on. I feel this ache. She has been an almost constant companion for over seventeen years.

I asked the heavens for a daughter. No, I did more than that. Rob and I decided all three times that we wanted a baby and we were lucky, we had one. (Rob says, "the pleasure was all mine." Not true.) After Mike was born, we thought that two was enough but as I approached my 36th birthday, I realized that I wanted another shot at having a daughter before it was too late. If I had another son, fine. Three boys would be a delight too. But time was running out and I didn't want to regret not having tried for a baby of my own sex. So I went to my doctor and asked about sex preselection and he, good man, went to UBC and gave me all the latest literature. Whether it was the few novel and hilarious techniques or the heavens, I'm not sure but I knew before Gill was born - amniocentesis - that I was having a daughter. I jumped up and down on the bed, the day the woman called me from Grace Hospital with the results.

I just realized that I asked above why can't something, one thing, be pure joy. Well - and this is not sentiment - my children are this - yeah, I know that I've wanted to banish them at times, especially when they were younger and wanted me when I needed time alone - but oh what riches they've given me. They've also taught me lots about myself - some things that I like and others that I don't but I believe in being conscious.

So as Gill starts a new chapter, so will I.

It still isn't seven in the morning and I had to drink coffee without milk. I think I'll throw my bag lady clothes on and go down to the water and then stop at the store on the way back. Today is a free day. I'd like to do some writing - or some more writing. I feel good when I take the time to write - even if it's just for myself.

Yesterday Gill's world changed which means my world changed. She received her acceptance to Ryerson University's journalism program. This acceptance was not only based on her marks but on several articles she wrote for the Admitting Committee. She is ecstatic.

I asked if she was living my dream. (I worry about what I am unwittingly passing on to her - not the love but the negative things.) She said "no, this is my dream."

And so she will return from France before Rob and me, at the end of August, and move to Toronto. I feel a loss. I would have liked to go with her and help her find a place to settle.

I can't believe this tall slim beauty is leaving home and somehow the ache is more pronounced than the one I felt when she received her acceptance to University of Victoria.

Rob and I met at Ryerson in the Radio and Television Arts faculty. I left after a year when York University opened their theatre and dance program. I just calculated that we were there thirty-five years ago. I was one of two women in a class of 34. I do have some sweet memories and most aren't academic. I wonder how Gill will fare in "Toronto the Good." I am glad that she will have several of my sisters, my brother, and my parents close at hand if she should need help.

Funny how I felt so mature when I left home and although I know Gill is more sophisticated than I was, still she is my baby. (Oh cut out the maudlin stuff, Yvonne.)

This morning I had a plum meeting. Shirley is still in England becoming more worldly, so only three of us read and wrote, while listening to some young fellow, with a toque, play the piano and somehow music became entwined with the writing - predominantly in one of Wenda's pieces. We know we are fortunate to have each other to admire our work - even the truly shitty stuff (I'm talking of mine, naturally) - and to catch the mistakes in p.o.v. or time sequence or such - all the things that one misses when one has edited a story ten million times.

After the meeting, I had an hour with our accountant. Grrr... The government want still more money. Why can't we be taxed like the people of Hong Kong where whoever you are and no matter what you make, you pay 15% of your income - no play of favouritism. I think all the talk of dollars and sense left me uninspired. I'll close here.

Okay, gotta blog. It's way overdue but what can I say? I've been busy doing important stuff like having my hair cut and streaked - doesn't look that different - a little shorter and more natural. That's what I like or that's what I'm like - short and natural. Oh, who cares? My conservative parsimonious side says ouch. "How many days did you work for this non-transformation? You're never going to turn heads, honey." (I say this with my cow-woman voice.) My sensible (yes I do have that side) says "You're not trying to turn heads. How ridiculous a thought at your age?"

Rob gave me a compliment the other night. Or is that "complement" Shirley? (I hope you're enjoying your time in good old England.) I'm not goin' tell what he said 'cause it would embarrass me but he's a good fellow, that man of mine - although don't think I'm getting presumptuous, calling him mine. He's his own person. There's no question of that in my mind.

Have I lost my mind? Maybe. Am I avoiding (I was goin' say voiding but that sounds rude) telling what I've really been up to? Yup. There's too little privacy in this world. I have my secrets but doesn't everyone?

I have been thinking a lot of water and fish symbols. I did a little research on the internet. Okay, everyone knows that Christ is often represented by a fish. But how many know that the fish symbol represented the pagan Great Mother Goddess. "It is the outline of her vulva." (Yes, I found this information online.) In China, Great Mother Kwan-yin is represented by a fish. In India, the Goddess Kali was called "fish-eyed one." In Egypt, Isis was called "The Great Fish of the Abyss." The fish symbol was so honoured in the Roman Empire that the Christians stole it and denied any reference to female genitalia.

I think of water as fluid, life-sustaining, liberating, and sensuous. I need to swim naked but our public pool doesn't allow it. Oh to be rich and have a private pool. I have little respect for money but if I were suddenly rich - a lottery win would do it - I would have a pool with water the temperature of bath water and I would swim in the morning and evening. How delicious a pipe-dream is that?

When I woke this morning, thinking of water, I remembered Antonio Machado's poem "Last Night, As I Was Sleeping" and the first stanza is about water! (Oh I know writers shouldn't use exclamation marks but I want to!)

"Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt--marvellous error!-- [I can't believe it!]
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?"

I worked last night from 7 to 11. This morning I found out that the French workshop, both sessions, are a go. I'm excited.

Amid all my secret activities, I've been reading Singer's "Boundaries of the Soul". She writes of life being divided into two halves. The first part "is directed toward emergence as an individual, earning a living, rearing a family, establishing a home" and the second part is "directed toward achieving harmony with the totality of being."

One passage that really resonates for me at the moment reads:

"[T]he ancient Hebrews were told to rejoice when death comes to a friend, and to mourn at a birth - for it is a fearsome thing to send a ship forth on a voyage to an unknown destination, but a glad welcome is due when the ship returns at last to its home port."

My mother once told me, with a straight face, that life is not supposed to be fun. I think it is supposed to be fun. I will tell my daughter and sons that life is not supposed to be easy but, now that I think of it, I think they all know this already.

Oh dear, it's scary outside. The rain is pounding on my roof and it's starting to thunder. I'm afraid of thunder and lightening.

Time to go inside to the big house.

Yesterday was lovely. A radiant sunny day.

I wrote like crazy early morning down by the water. So many thoughts roaming my brain but I don't have time to write at length now. Clare arrives in half an hour and we need to talk. She leaves for France on Thursday.

I had a massage after my writing binge and then Gill and I meandered through the streets of West Van until we reached Park Royal where I bought underwear. Red.


But what I really want to tell is that I just heard from my sister Gael. They removed all the cancer in the orange. It has not spread to the lymph nodes. I am so relieved that tears are running down my face.

For reasons I will explain in a minute, I had to find my copy of "Leaving My Father's House" by Marion Woodman. I must have lent it. I went to the library and the one copy was in. I quote from Woodman's conclusion:

"Mothers and grandmothers for generations have despised their female bodies, their sexuality, "the curse" of menstruation. They were born in a female body; nothing can change that. No matter how hard they try, they feel they have failed from the start. Their contempt for their own matter is in their cells and that contempt is in the cells of their daughters. "I don't deserve to live" is blurted out as the bottom line of self-rejection."

Several paragraphs later:

"They [women] feel so betrayed by their body that they try to take up residence in their mind.... Numbness makes life bearable. To obliterate matter, however, is also to obliterate soul.... Life cannot be fully lived without embodiment, nor can death be faced creatively. No wonder death is denied in a culture that rejects the beauty of its own humanity.
As the psyche individuates so does the body, and the physical illnesses we encounter in the process make quite clear that our body cells do have their own wisdom, which they want to transform into light (consciousness)."

Strange how some writer's ideas stay with me. Stranger still that when I want the words I know almost the exact page of the book where I read them.

I realized a few years ago that the women in my family - specifically my mother and sisters including myself are masters of self-rejection and most likely come from a long line of females who do not value themselves. My father proudly says that his mother would rather have starved herself than see her children go out in public poorly dressed. This poor woman, twenty-five years younger than her husband, died of colon cancer in her fifties. One of her daughters died of the same disease.

I never knew either of them. Cancer, I thought, is passed maternally.

I found out last night that my sister Gael had a lump the size of an orange removed from one breast last week. The doctors think it may have moved into her lymph nodes. She will know in a few days.

I telephoned Gael this morning. Until the call, I felt bad for her but since the call I feel this ache - it's hard to describe - a hopelessness. She said that she didn't tell anyone because she didn't want them to worry and then, she paused. "The real reason is I thought no one would care and then make light of it - especially mum and dad.

She was surprised that they cried. This is so sad, beyond sad. She said she does too much, carries too much tension, too much angst. (She is a politician and is always running somewhere, helping someone.) She believes she brought the cancer on herself.

Leslie thought the same thing.

The trouble is that I know how horrible this disease is. I drove Les to numerous chemo and radiation treatments. I sat through doctors and specialists' appointments with her. I saw her hair fall out by the handful. But the worst times were when she could say nothing, when she would rock back and forth in pain.

Isn't it sad that the least painful part - losing one's hair - is the most difficult to bear?

Gael is scared. She has already had her hair cut short.

She is my parents' fourth daughter, the "pretty one", and the one who felt she had to prove she has a brain in her head. She worked as a correctional officer in prisons before becoming a municipal councillor. She has been more successful than any of her sisters in earning her own living. She has two daughters in their twenties. She paid for their university educations.

She hasn't been able to work this past week. She says there is no excuse. She feels fine. Instead, she keeps cleaning her house.

People from work keep calling, asking why she isn't at this or that committee meeting. So she told them why. She says that over 500 people know what she is going through. (For this reason, I feel I can write about her dis-ease.) She is surprised by all the telephone calls she is receiving, expressing concern.

She didn't know that so many cared. This breaks my heart.

We five Wetherall sisters are all so different and yet so similar. Rob's sister once said that it is difficult to be in a room with us when we are together. We are so powerful. Strange. I don't think any of us feel powerful.

But perhaps we are in ways I am just beginning to see.

We do not want to be victims. Should I say "I do not want to be a victim? No. I doubt anyone wants to be a victim. Alden Nowlan's poem comes to mind:

It's want we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss).

Yes, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

Another passage in "Leaving My Father's House" resonated with me: "Crucial to the breaking of incestuous bonds to the parents is the recognition that we do not belong to them and they do not belong to us. Individuation begins with the painful recognition that we are all orphans. And the liberating recognition that the whole of the world is our orphanage."

Brendan asked me about my blog last night, said that I had left me depressed in the last one. Guilt sweet guilt. Sometimes I have the energy to expose myself in all my unsavouriness and at other times, I don't.

Why am I writing this public journal anyway? Am I writing to one particular person? No. But from time to time, I am thinking of an individual, telling what I can not to that person because he or she is not near.

A good example is Rob. We see each other for around five minutes a day during the week and the past weekend days and nights, I have been out at work or meetings. Besides it's impossible to catch up after so much time apart. Rob called me a day after my last entry and said that I sounded down. (An understatement.) I was surprised and pleased that he called and I admit a little ticked that he wouldn't have seen that I was low and not myself - or maybe I was myself - even though I knew this thought was unfair. He's working too long hours and hardly catches enough sleep.

Usually I don't dare contemplate my readers or I would edit myself. I believe myself, in person, to be miserly. I give whole-heartedly to those who are open and forthright with me but not to others who keep to themselves. This journal allows me to be forthright with everyone who cares to know how I am and doesn't hope for a "fine, thankyou" - the acceptable response of my childhood.

At times last week I felt like a confused, bereaved child. There was too much pain to bare and bear. Firstly, the death of a beautiful young man and the grief of his mother, father, and friends. And then the world news - so horrendous, I couldn't think about the heinous mutilation and other inhuman acts. How can such things happen in the so-called civilized world? Someone said that they have always gone on. Is it any wonder that one falls into inconsolable grief with all the monsters from within and without?

And then I hear from one or more people via email or in person and I am overwhelmed by their generosity of spirit and kindness. I become lighter.

Yesterday morning, I received an email from Vaughan. One of her poems has been accepted by "A Room of Her Own" - a particularly fine literary magazine. I know she's an amazing writer, even tell her so, but it's wonderful when someone in the publishing world recognizes her talent.

In the afternoon, Gill called me at work to tell me that she's been accepted at University of Victoria and better still, she can start in January. Now she can weave her plans to go to Europe, live in Paris for some months, and then return to find an apartment in Victoria and go to university. She's excited. So am I.

After a festive nicoise salad that Gill prepared for dinner to celebrate, I went outside to continue trimming the ivy that runs the length of the fence outside our front door, at the request of our neighbour. It was blocking her light. I had just started clipping when Bren came out and took over. I was surprised at the help and pleased. Where did this tall, thoughtful young man come from? I feel as if he's a gift, returning home at exactly the right time.

Later, he drove me over to Helen's to celebrate Double Dave's 41st birthday. This big booming sweetheart of a man is content with his life, his cottage, that is owned and cared for by the nursery next door. The back garden is enchanted with its huge magnolia tree and many varieties of flowering bushes and plants. Dave wants to have a party in June for all his friends and their friends.

Before beginning this blog, I read a chapter in "Looking for Gold: A Year in Jungian Analysis." The author, Susan Tiberghien is a writer and begins each chapter with a dream. The one I've just finished is about a cat who walks in the door - this happens in the dream and a few days later, in reality. I'm learning that there are universal symbols. "the cat refers to the close relationship between - the anima and man's capacity to create art and to enter into the world of imagination." Tiberghien comes to the conclusion that she can not force her creativity. She "can only let it open the door on its own, like the cat... " She also mentions Brenda Ueland, who I quoted lately and even uses the same quote: "imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

I think I'm being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

I am miserable beyond reason today and so I decided that I would not write my blog. And then I began reading Susan Tiberghein's "Looking for Gold" and I read the following passage: "Is this peculiar to the woman writer? How many of us conceal, consciously or unconsciously, our pain, our suffering, our despair?"

The idea that I have not a reason in the world to be unhappy, that I am so privileged, makes me despair more. I've been writing on and off in my journal all day. I began this morning with "I am so forlorn. I can't think or feel. I want to cry but can't. I feel so small, so self-centred (and even though I remembered Marlene's words - something to the effect that where else can we be centred but in ourselves, I wasn't consoled.)"

I continued: "I am a stupid writer. Oh I'm a writer that's what I do with myself most of the time but I'm selfish and I'm small and I don't know what to do with all these damn words."

I keep thinking of betrayal in writing and it's wearing me down. What if by not betraying another, one betrays oneself?

Betrayal is a writer's nightmare. What if she or he describes an intimate moment with another because it may help someone else not feel so alone or for some such reason (if the writer is arrogant enough to allow her or him self such a grandiose thought) and in so doing, hurts another? Should she or he keep her/his big mouth shut? Or should one pretend the intimate moment is fiction, that it was created by a vivid imagination, or an idea grasped from the collective unconscious and not personal experience? I so admire Nancy Mairs and her family who give her permission to describe such intimate moments and publish them as non-fiction.

Early this morning, I threw on a dress and trousers and then an old sweater - looked like a bag lady - and went down to the water and sat with a coffee. I wrote: "I am so damn lonely. I sit down at the beach because I need the sound of the water to calm me. I have so much to say that I'm afraid to share. And the image of a young man, dead in a car crash, keeps invading my thoughts. I didn't know the young man. I have only heard of him through the concerned words of his mother. I am so distressed. It hits close to home. I keep thinking of the night my car crashed. What if my son and I hadn't been able to walk away? What if he had been hurt worse? I can't bear the thought. How does one heal such a wound?

I read Shirley's and Kate's live journals to catch up on their lives and Kate mentioned my "good energy." I nearly cried.

When I am negative about myself, some of my friends think I am asking for bolstering. This is not the case. I simply want to describe my life.

I still can't figure how why I feel so forlorn. Can someone hit me on the head with a baseball bat?

My quiet neighbourhood is noisy today. Two huge monster houses are being constructed across the street. (Rob says good. It can only raise the price of ours.) And a couple of doors down, a huge tree is being removed. I think of Vaughan and the loss of trees near her home.

I returned last night from my writing retreat at Whistler. Alas, Shirley didn't make it. Her cold lingered but she will next time. Wenda, Vaughan, and I settled Sunday evening into my sister's luxurious duplex and wrote morning and night - alone and together - and ate. Oh mon dieu, how we ate - quiche, cheese scones, salad, chicken in wine sauce, brown rice, asparagus, strawberries, yogurt - oops, cheese and crackers, popcorn, bananas, apples - I feel as if I never stopped. Such abundance. At times like this I feel so privileged.

The drive home was not only glorious - sky bright, sun hot - but fun. We stopped at Britannia Beach for lattes and spoke once again about betrayal in writing. It is impossible not to add fact to fiction when writing (including those we love in our stories) or there would be little depth so we had a hilarious time dreaming up pseudonyms and then decided to take Gill's lead and shop at Value Village for a wardrobe to match our undercover names.

Home sweet home. But when I checked my emails, I found one from Maureen, a cheery bubbly generous soul who attended the workshop in France. Her son was killed in an auto crash last week. I can't begin to imagine her pain. It also reminded me how lucky Mike and I were to walk away when my car was totaled at the end of January.

Today is too busy - store meeting, doctor and dentist appointments are only the beginning but there will be a half hour here and there to write. My life would be so lonely without a pen and paper.

It's Mother's Day and all my children (Mike for the night) are back at home, sleeping soundly. and will take me out for breakfast. Brendan and Mike presented me with a glorious bouquet of tulips last night - mostly white with a splattering of orange flame.

I tried, by phone, to reach my mother this morning. Strange when Vaughan called me a "mom" yesterday, I noted that my mother always signs herself "mum", the Northern Irish way, and my writer's brain thought "mummies". The women in my mother's family have always been mum. I looked up the definition on my online dictionary:
Entry: dumb
Function: adjective
Definition: voiceless
Synonym: impaired, inarticulate, incoherent, mousy, mum, mute, quiet, silent, soundless, speechless, tongue-tied, uncommunicative, wordless

I see that, through my writing, I have broken the chain.

After breakfast, I will work and then leave for Whistler early evening for a writing retreat. My Plum group will join me although Shirley is sniffling and may not be able to come. Damn it. We don't often have the luxury of time to write and read so I'm hoping for a miracle recovery.

Yesterday, I left the house early - before 7:30 a.m. - to meet my friend, Lynn for coffee and then to work until four when Marlene picked me up at the store with Ursula who has just arrived for a quick visit from Toronto. She will assist Marlene with the movement part of the body/soul writing in France this summer. She is lovely. I liked her immediately. We drove down to Horseshoe Bay, met Bett, and had dinner at Trolls and discussed France. The only problem is that UBC mailed the flyers late and we still don't know if there will be sufficient registration to run both sessions. It's difficult to book air travel, let alone arrange housing for the participants until we have an exact number.

I just realized that in approximately two months, Rob, Gill, and I will be flying to France. Time escapes me. I have to start planning.

As I will be away for a few days, without internet connection, I will return to this blog Tuesday night or Wednesday.

I'm down at the water after a rich day.

This morning I spoke to Kate in Germany who recently had her first ever cover story printed - see Kate's story on seal hunting. She's living in a foreign country, speaking a new language, teaching school, writing fast and furious, raising a toddler, living with a Bulgarian; and thinks she isn't doing enough. She is beautiful, sexy, compassionate, more than generous with friends and family and I know, without doubt, that she will be famous some day. Perhaps, she'd prefer rich. (Kate, if you read this, see yourself through another's eyes.)

After speaking with Kate, I received a phone call from Helene in France - another amazing woman - who assured me that she can accommodate several writers during the workshop this summer.

After this call, I drove to Coquitlam for an easy lunch at a small cafe with Clare who has just recovered from breast cancer. After lunch, we drove to Lake Como and read our latest work to each other. Clare is a fine poet who doesn't know her worth. She has written me into a poem as "a friend who dances on tables." Why does this please me?

Now I sit scribbling down by the water thinking of last night and the last Jungian meeting of the session at Marlene's - yet another amazing woman. (Sometimes, when I allow myself, I think that I must be doing something right to have such friends.)

We listened to Marion Woodman's raspy voice for half an hour and then Marlene lead us through the last chapter of "Addiction to Perfection". Woodman has called this chapter "The Ravished Bride" and Marlene explained, in reponse to a question, that when a woman is in touch with her sexuality, her animal body, the whole world is erotic. I love eroticism - even worked my way through Georges Bataille's treatise on the subject.

I adore Woodman but she isn't easy to digest. Now I don't worry about understanding every word and passage, and following her thread: I simply read and then underline what resonates for me. For instance?

"Science attempts to understand nature but too often its methods are rape and exploitation. The feminine way is very different. Through the opening of the feminine, love can enter, thereby bringing with it awareness of what von Franz calls "the star" - the uniqueness of the individual in eternity. Only through the feminine can creation complete itself in consciousness."

"The addiction to perfection is an addiction to unreality which leaves little room for the feminine."

And I loved this passage: "If the woman waits, stops trying, and in response to the masculine allows the feminine energy to come in, then the mystery happens to her. Then having experienced masculinity, she redirects that into action. Sexual intercourse is like conversation. [yes] The feminine listens and responds; the masculine translates what is heard. The process requires the full recognition of one by the other."

And as one woman said, the whole book can be summed up by one sentence in this chapter: "To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognize humanity."

During the writing session, I responded to the question "What is the treasure that I want to bring back after the reading of this book?"

I want to remember, in my simple words, that "imperfection is the richest state, the most human - facing the negative mother in myself, the stern Irish matriarch, and saying 'yup, you're right. I don't make your grade. It doesn't matter any more.'"

I have been madly cleaning up paper clutter since 5 a.m. because yesterday I couldn't find the receipts I need for ICBC. I still haven't found them but I have yet to attack office and I'm feeling more organized in my writing house. And the kitchen is literally clear of paper.

My meeting with the corporation's adjustor yesterday went well. Although I did become emotional at times, I was able to ask sensible questions and received, what I believe, were honest answers. I told her at the beginning of the meeting that I wanted a few days to digest what was said. She said she pushed as hard as she could for a 25/75 liability decision in my favour - even presented similar case studies - but she couldn't do it. The thing is that I should have waited until the light turned red to start my turn unless there was a sign from the other driver that he was going to stop. They know he was speeding from the condition of the vehicles. They know the light was amber as there was a witness but this witness said that he was surprised that I made the turn given the speed of the other vehicle. I am surprised that he said this as I believe myself to be an over cautious driver. I have never caused an accident and have never received a speeding ticket in my over thirty years of driving so what happened that night? An amber light lasts 3.5 seconds, according to the adjustor.

What the fifty/fifty split means is that I lose completely my safe driving category and this accident will cost me $2500 over the next three years. Because I was injured and had numerous doctor's appointments after the accident, ICBC will give me $2500 (which is half of what I would receive if I was not at fault.)

The young man, who I insist, caused the accident is contesting the 50/50 split. He says that the light was green. He could not have been watching the light nor could he have been watching my jetta start to turn.

So what do I do? I'm going to talk this through with a lawyer friend and then decide.

I woke up fragmented after sleeping nine hours, remembering bits and pieces of a bizarre dream with flying carpets and a huge fish bowl, full of tropical fish.

Today I go to view some sweaters with Sherry for the store and then to meet my ICBC adjustor. I still can't decide whether to fight their decision or not. I know that I am not responsible for the accident but I don't know if I can prove it and, more to the point, whether I want to spend my psyche energy on the battle. I intend to try and keep my calm, ask questions - sensible ones - that will help me decide.

Last night we received notice of the graduation ceremony and banquet. The "girls and boys" are told what to wear. "Jeans are not acceptable under gowns."
At the banquet dinner, priced at $85 a head for a buffet, there will be a "mocktail hour" where one can drink soft drinks and chatter and photograph the children. At the door to the banquet, there will be a security check and once inside one cannot leave and return. Grad families are not allowed to rent a room in the hotel. No wine will be served with the meal.

I'm ticked off, not because of the security and lack of a civilized glass of wine at dinner but because I should have joined the grad committee and protested such hypocrisies and restraints. This rite of passage event was celebrated in the same way when our sons graduated. The highlight of both evenings was watching the young men and women arrive in their limos looking gloriously grown up and beautiful and having the first dance with Brendan in his black tuxedo and with Mike in his gold-sequined one. This year Rob will dance with Gill, in her sweeping black ballgown. I almost get weepy thinking about it.

I must shower and start my day. Wish me courage. Situations where I must stand up for myself and fight are more than difficult.

Oh dear, I've been procrastinating about writing this blog. My days have been spent with thoughts not ready for public consumption. I've also been fixated on a story that refuses every ending I give it.

Damn it all. I hate fighting myself - reminds me of some lines by Rainer Maria Rilke (for some time I thought him a woman).

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great...
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us."

I'm frustrated also by ICBC. I had a call Friday from my adjuster. The final decision is that I am fifty percent responsible for the car accident. The gist of their argument is that even though the young man was doing 9 km over the speed limit (as much as they can be certain), and ran an amber light, I should have waited - even though he was breaking the law that states one must stop for an amber light unless it is unsafe to do so - because most people break this law.

The question I ask myself is it worth my time and energy to fight the decision and, more to the point, do I have a chance of winning when it's taken them three months to come to this decision?

I will sleep on it.

I've had a lazy day, trying to work Psyche into a story that might not want her. What fool would want to write while the dust and laundry pile up around her? What fool would pour her heart and soul into a story and then, after weeks, months maybe, not know what to do with her manuscript? Make that plural.

This morning, Gill told me that she was proud of herself. She made a teacher angry because she questioned her mark on an English test. She interpreted the mood of a poem differently than the teacher and Gill told her that she would like another teacher's opinion. The second teacher agreed with the first (could it be that she had little choice? - and Gill wasn't asked by either teacher why she felt so strongly) but still she is proud that she had the courage to stand up to an authority figure. I wouldn't have had the nerve in high school. Although I love poetry, I hated the way we had to dissect poems. And I feel, like Gill, that there is more than one way to read a poem.

I have no idea where the day has disappeared. I was still in my night gown well after noon and finally threw on some clothes to mail tax forms. But my story wouldn't leave me alone and I took myself down to the water and wrote some more.

This evening I'm going out with my sisters and Gill to see "Maggie's Getting Married" at Presentation House. Should be fun as my sister Donna/Maggie is getting married. I'm wondering what message, if any, the play will have.

Home again and out in my little house. How I miss it when I'm away. This is the one place that I know I can be alone and think and write. It was impossible when away to do any creative writing as I was in a room with Gill and Helen but no matter; I love these two women and there was always chatter and laughter. Felt like being in a women's dorm.

The first day of market Gill went with Walter and Helen and I and became our model. It's really difficult to buy without seeing a garment on a body. The only problem was that everything looked good on Gill. The second and third day, Gill remained at the hotel and shopped when the stores were open for her grad dress. She bought two. One short little floral number and one long elegant black Audrey Hepburn-like gown. When she tried the latter on for Helen and I, and then left to change after receiving our approval, Helen cried. I mean she literally cried. Tears were running down her cheeks. "She looks so beautiful." She did with her long lithe body. Where did this elegant young woman come from? I tried on a dress too but looked so old and dowdy, I didn't leave the change room. I read once, when I was doing my research on mothers and daughters, that mothers are often envious of their daughters. I'm not. I love my daughter's beauty but what makes me sad is that I didn't recognize my own when I was Gill's age. I was always so critical. And now, as I age and see the lines and lumps of time, I am still critical. This makes me angry because I know at a gut level that loveliness is a state of mind. I need to find my way to that state.

Although there were a few disappointments at the show - lines that we depend upon that didn't measure up - there was enough, I hope, to fill the store with colour and style. Now I have to settle down and sort through all that we thought would work and place the orders. This is the hardest part. I'm given a budget for each department (tops, bottoms, dresses, coats, accessories) for each month and must make sure that I spend what must be spent to guarantee projected sales and that all will work together and is coming in at a good time. This is scary business because I don't know if it will be a warm or cool fall and what people will want or need.

On the ride home, I read my latest story to Helen and Walter to see if they could help me find a way to close it. They didn't but it did help to read it aloud. I'm hoping that some creative genie inside me will offer up a more conclusive conclusion.

When we arrived home, Brendan was there. He has moved back for a few months to give himself time to find a new apartment. I'm happy that he's there. Already, he has cleared one room and is painting it. Although I consider myself a minimalist, Bren is even more so. He needs simplicity and order and I'm hoping he'll inspire Rob, Gill, and I to clear up the clutter. (When he and Gill took off for a walk after dinner, Rob said "He's a man now." Oh I know it is obvious but it's hard for parents to see their children as adults.)

Interestingly, I attended a seminar at 7:45 in the morning on the last day of market. One of our reps was giving a talk on Feng Shui. The emphasis was on removing clutter from one's business but I could see its ramfications at home, in my writing house, and even in my writing. The Oxford dictionary defines "clutter" as " a crowded and untidy collection of things." Melanie described it as "stuck energy." And she noted that saving something because you might need it some day keeps you in a place of lack. "Instead, affirm that you will have the resources to create what it is you need as you need it" by clearing and clarifying. Good advice.

Must shower and go to store and start clearing and clarifying orders.

I've been having crazy days and nights and I don't have time to explain as in 20 minutes, I'm on my way to Seattle for a buying trip with Gill (for the first time) and Helen and Walter. The females share a room. Walter gets a closet. Oh we shall have fun.
And we will work hard.

All day, as I've been running I've been thinking about the demon lover (the topic for discussion at the Jungian meeting last night.) When I think of demon, I think of devil; and when I think of demon lover, I think of the devil in the film, Rosemary's Baby. This is not quite what Marion Woodman had in mind but I found my mind last night too dense to decipher her meaning. This chapter was - agreed by most present - the most difficult one so far. I have some ideas about how to approach Woodman's material - always rich and dense and disturbing - and hopefully someone of them will find their way into my journal and I'll be able to discuss this subject more lucidly when I return late Sunday or Monday.

I'm taking five books with me, fool that I am. I always do this and Rob always laughs at me because I hardly ever get beyond one. But how am I to know what I will feel like reading?

Hope the sun keeps shining. Write my writing friends. Good luck with your move Bren.

yy

Last night I went out with Marlene and Bett to celebrate my birthday. It's three weeks past but this is the first time we've been able to come together. I like these birthdays that go on and on.

I caught a bus across town - something I haven't done in a long time, I realized, as I didn't know how to insert the transfer ticket. I don't mind bus travel but half way through the journey, a blind woman climbed on board with her dog, sat beside me, pulled out her cell phone, called several friends, and told them loudly how tired she was, how she had worked since eleven, how she didn't want to go out in the evening. Usually I hate cell phones and I wasn't especially keen on hers but I was happy to see and hear that she was able, without the use of her eyes, to get around, work, and play. What surprised me was her rudeness. Without apology, she pushed her way past several people, demanded a particular seat and, after her phone calls, yelled at the driver to tell her where she was and to notify her when he reached a particular stop. I keep thinking about her, wondering if her gruff manner, is a way to avoid sympathy from strangers.

Every writer should take a bus now and again.

I met those two wild women friends at a new bright Greek restaurant on 4th near Alma. We shared a Greek platter and a chocolate "eruption" dessert, and although I wanted to discuss Euripides and Pisidia (in view of the Greek kouros with blue eyes waiting on us - yes, he was nude), they preferred to speak of dark-skinned men in the southern States. I simply had to come down to their level.

The evening was lovely and we did speak a little of the French Workshop where the three of us will be room-mates. I'm getting excited - over the workshop that is.

Bett returned home with me to spend the night. I waved her off this morning, and have been working in my house ever since. Oh dear, I just noticed the time. I have to be at the store in ten minutes.

Must run.

Sunday morning and I've been out in my little house since before five. Gill is in the big house preparing for the Sun Run - 10K around the city of Vancouver.

This week has been too crazy but I did resolve several issues at the store. On Thursday night I met Lisa there who arrived with a bottle of wine - "for inspiration." We worked steadily for over two hours and transformed the place. I acted as her assistant. She's fast and good. Now I can hand over this part of my job to her. On Friday, I worked the entire day and taught Carol how to price merchandise. Although it'll take a few more lessons, I'm well on my way to more freedom. I will simply do the buying. This will give me enough hours - especially during market times - enough satisfaction (I'm seeing that I have an eye for style and colour) - and leave me more time for writing.

On Friday night, I went to a lecture by Christine Mulvey, a Jungian analyst from County Wicklow, Ireland. She was lovely, with a lilting voice and soft smile. Her intent was to take "a gentle look at childhood and how it can shape and influence our adult lives." Before becoming a Jungian analyst, she worked as a psychologist with abused children. She said she wasn't ignorant of the perils of childhood but wanted to balance the scale and tell of the good side, noting that even the most abused child has some source of light. She accompanied her talk with pictures of children and written quotes by Jung.

"To remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But if we return to the "children's land" we succumb to the fear of becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality."

Mulvey did not succumb to the fear of being childish (not that she was childish but childlike in her simple, straightforward manner.) She said she was nervous, smiled, played part of her CD - a piece of traditional Irish music, followed by a male voice reading one of her poems - showed a photo of her niece playing with a stuffed animal, and asked the crowd, "Do you remember a time when you felt this must joy?"

She spoke of Jungian analysis and said that when a new analysand arrived, she often wondered what he or she was like as a child.

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves."

The play theme appears to want recognition in my psyche. It is coming at me from many directions in many forms. Earlier, I was playing on the internet and found this quote by Brenda Ueland: "[I]magination needs moodling - long, efficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

The plums yesterday, amongst other things, workshopped a story I'm working on. Vaughan apologized but said that it wasn't complete. I had to somehow bring it back to the opening. So while Rob watched the hockey game, I went out to my writing house (with a glass of wine, I admit - "for inspiration") and through dawdling and daydreaming, puttering too, it's almost finished.

I am pleased. Now if I could only remember my dreams. I'm making a concentrated effort to write them down, notebook and pen beside the bed, but they're damn and determined that I will not have my way. I'm going to have to become devious.

"You come to love not by finding the perfect person,
but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly." (Sam Keen)

Sweet Gill just brought a breakfast sandwich to me.

I've been reading about love, heart, and soul this morning.

I listen to my heart. It is racing.

Last night Marlene read a passage from Paula Reeves' book "Heart Sense: Discovering the Intelligence and Memories Stored in Your Heart." The heart holds the life and knowledge of its owner in its tight little fist. I only listen to mine when it makes its presence known - like now. What is its quickened pace trying to tell me? I wrote about this last night. It wants me "To slow down, to stop performing."

This is not my imagination. My blood pressure has been high for several years. After the accident, it rose more. I'm still waiting for a report from my doctor after wearing that cumbersome monitor for twenty-four hours.

I appear to be running, always running. Out to my house in the garden to write. Into the big house to grab a bite. Out to write in my journal. On to work. Back to house in the garden to write again, answer correspondence, read, write, and then back to store to work, work. And so I live my life.

I'm not liking this life at the moment. Heart racing. Shoulders aching. I'm carrying too much of a load. I have to stop being Leslie. She's dead. I want a few more years. I have a lot to sort out but I know, in my heart of hearts, that I have to extricate from the store or, at the very least, relinguish many of my responsibilities. Surprisingly, I requested that a good display person meet me at the store this evening to rearrange all. I think she's good. If she can do this, I will hand the job over to her.

And I must leave soon to take my mother to airport. I thought about telling her to take a cab. Simple solution. A few hours more for me. But she would feel lonely and I think, how many more years, will I be able to extend myself for her? So I will put all else aside and drive her.

Another day and I'm delighted as I woke at 3:30 a.m. Since I went to bed at 7:30, I feel refreshed and have managed to accomplish a lot of writing and soul work. I even caught a dream.

In the early hours, I called Susan and Bedding in France. Sue Standing, the poet, is visiting Castelnau at the moment. I am envious but not too much so as I have much too much to do here.

I have two stories to send out. More really. So I began researching places to send them. This drives me crazy. So time consuming and I feel defeated. There are two many good writers in the world. But come to think of it, I don't think this feeling defeated is especially negative. It allows me to fling out my stories without feeling hopeful or disappointed. I tell myself I'm collecting rejection notices.

Meanwhile I continue to write "shitty" concentrating on the motto "quantity not quality". I actually feel that I'm making some progress.

My reading is also informing my writing. Vaughan recommended "The Deep" by Mary Swan and I finished it this weekend. It tells the story of twin sisters who move to France during World War 11 to help in the war zone. The author is parsimonious in the telling. Short chapters from a number of points of view. What excites me about this novella is, not only the tale itself - the story of twins who act like one, their dysfunctional family, and the inhumanity of war, but its unconventional format.

It reminds me that a writer can break all the rules in constructing a book, that I specifically can allow my material to take its own shape. In a sense, it gives me permission to play - a theme I've been hearing from a number of directions lately.

I often say that I play the fool. Talking to Susan this morning must have reminded me of a note she sent me over a dozen years ago and that I read from time to time.

"I wish I had the courage to be a fool. At least you have taught me with all this clamour to see clearly that is what I want. It's also what I respect in other people, really respect. Being happy and having the courage to be fools is very much the same thing. Let's be happy."

It's a beautiful Easter Sunday. The turkey in the oven, there since 9:30 this morning, has the whole house smelling delicious. Last year at this time, Gill and I were wandering around Dublin and she remembered Easter and gave me a chocolate egg. This year she has given me two Godiva chocolates.

Easter used to be a grand affair in this house with an elaborate egg hunt and a feast for the entire family and friends. This year it is quiet.

Mike, who has to work all weekend, save today, is not coming for dinner. He wants some quiet time. Bren is content reading and may also decide not to make the trek across town.

My children are teaching me that all doesn't have to be traditional.

I am content. Last night, Rob and I went to visit a woman who I worked with in Toronto many years ago and her spouse. When the guys were upstairs enjoying the view of Vancouver, that was truly magnificent - a sweeping vista of the city, North Shore, water, and mountains - Patsy and I talked in the kitchen. She said that she has never heard a man speak of his wife with such pride as Rob did, when they last met. I felt so good.

"You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used
looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.

You look a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears,
they already know."
(Naomi Shihab Nye)

This morning I drove my sister and niece to the airport and arrived back home around one and edited some stories. At four, I took a break, and went out for dunch or, should that be, linner - lunch and dinner - with Gill. We shopped a little and I returned to my writing. I am wearing a halo this evening.

At the Jungian meeting last night, Marlene spoke of her trip to Atlanta, Georgia that sounded like a woman's dream world, and then on to discuss the fifth chapter of "Addiction to Perfection." How does Woodman reach so many different women (men?) with her writing? At break, Marlene told my blog address. I felt strange. Isn't this what I want? Readers? Yes, yes, but I am so self-indulgent here. Strange... one woman wrote about "indulging", how she saw it as negative and would like to change her thinking. I love the word. Indulge the senses. Indulge the self. Indulge, indulgence, three hundred days of indulgence - a gift of time to explore self. (This is the title of my book in progress.)

Am I indulging myself these days? At Double Dave's the other night, my sisters and I sat in his sun room that looks over his garden, with its great magnolia tree, and spoke of making love and sex. Rob and Brendan sat deep in conversation at the other side of the room.

Donna, or rather Maggie, sat with her beau, touching and fondling, and we discussed the difference between fucking and making love. I became the devil's advocate (where does this expression originate?) and said that if there was a difference, fucking was better, earthier, sexier than the more ephemeral "making love." This love business keeps confusing me. It's not that I don't believe in love or that I don't feel it - that vast sweep of emotion that makes me tender and kind to another - but I've never found a definition that encompasses the word. At one time, I thought "rapt attention" was better than most but I'm not so sure now.

So there we sat - the Wetherall women - in Dave's sun room, me cross-legged on his day-bed, saying anything that came into my head - more I think to sort out my own thoughts than to be contradictory. (Marion Milner said that she used to think that thinking brought clarity but then realized conversation with others was the truest way to know one's self.)

Several weeks ago, I wrote a story about Sophia - the blunt speaking old woman. I took on her personality with my sisters. Damn it. Sometimes I sound so sure of myself. I'm not at all. Rob looked over, heard me pontificating, and said I was holding court.

I was thinking today about my bluntness, my unwillingness to add frills to experience and how I often despise myself for this and then the sudden thought came, that perhaps this is not a bad quality. I love people who are no-nonsense, who tell it how it is. IT. Speaking about it, what is the difference between making love and fucking? Nancy Friday says that naturally it's nicer to have sexual intercourse with one's love but it is important to know the difference between sex and being "swept away" in some romantic haze. Women have to admit, she says, that they are sexual beings, that they need and want to fuck, before they can truly enjoy themselves and feel their own power. It's much more fun than letting another second-guess our needs or us ministering only to their needs.

It is important to play. My mother once said that life is not about play. It's about responsibility. But my mother lies.

This is what I wrote about last night. Gulp. It is so difficult to tell on one's first love. I wrote to the quote: "'The unlived life of the parents may manifest in the daughter some kind of eating disorder.' What have I been trying to swallow that is not really mine to eat?"

And I wrote about my mother's lies, about all the times she lied to her children and how she asked us, time and time again, to lie for her, and how I crossed her on occasion. I hated lying. My mother is a strong woman who made a name for herself in politics but still, she admitted to me that she is insecure, that she was always trying to prove she was worth something (a familiar theme in my family.) But how, I questioned in my writing, can one who has lied all her life, like herself? And how does this relate to me?

I didn't swallow her lies but I found it difficult to trust her. And if one can't trust one's mother, who can one trust? I need too much reassurance. Is everyone like this? I find it so difficult to read my writing to strangers. I think that I act, that I write, in reaction to lies. Still it is difficult.

Enough. I need a glass of wine. And where did that damn halo go?

I have been sitting in my little house over an hour, trying to recall a dream, searching on Amazon for books I want to read, and daydreaming; knowing I have a lot to accomplish today, namely editing several of my stories, writing orders for store, sending last of accounts to our accountant.

My trip to Los Angeles to buy fall lines was strange. It's the first time that I've done this alone. I borrowed Rob's digital camera and took my computer to record what I thought would work for store and made copious notes but still I felt out of my element as if I were an imposter, not a buyer for a small boutique that some say is unique in Vancouver where several television personalities and film wardrobe people shop. I am not that interested in what people wear. Leslie loved clothes and no matter how ill she was, no matter what size she wore, she always looked expensive and elegant. It took her at least an hour in the morning to dress and do her makeup while I have a hard time stretching my morning ablution to fifteen minutes.

After denying any interest in clothes, I did find several lines that excited me - fanciful organzas and velvets - that I wouldn't mind draping on my body. But the important thing about buying for a store is looking beyond oneself. One buyer who I met there said that she had a difficult time ordering anything that she would not wear but she was more of a standard size than I am and Lesliejane caters to some very large women who like to dress flamboyantly. (I find it curious that these women appear to like their bodies more and are much more creative, decisive, joyful than smaller women with more classically beautiful bodies who I'd like to knock on the head. Sometimes when I am on the floor and I hear one complaining about her body, I tell her to stop, that she is beautiful. I could write an article on this topic.)

Yesterday, I worked all day in the store. Thank goodness my sister and niece dropped in and took me out for lunch. I still have problems breaking to eat when I have too much to do.

And Gilly fed me an amazing meal last night and Rob just called down and offered to make breakfast. I am so lucky.

My luck continues. Tonight, Double Dave is cooking up a feast at his place for my family. Dave loves my mother. He even has a picture of her hanging in his kitchen. For some reason, this enormously rotund gay man and my seventy-six year old conservative mother get on famously. And my sister, Gael and my niece, Emily - who requested that my boys come too as she hasn't seen her cousins for at least six years - will be there as well as my sister, Bev and doctor Bill and baby Cameron. Helen who is an adopted sister will join us. I wonder if it is alright to dance on tables in presence of family.

Rob has just called me for breakfast. Then I will begin my work.

I'm off to Los Angeles in the morning so I probably won't be writing this blog for a few days but I wanted to add a footnote to my birthday celebration. I received so many wonderful gifts and they continued into today - Shirley dropped by and gave me a collection of essays in an anthology called "Desire." - and Mahala, the beautiful brown-eyed blonde from Florida who I met in the south of France sent me a message that sounds like a poem.

"Your blog on the 29th of march blew me away, past the trees outside my window, past the ocean that I love so dearly, and transported me to you, in the south of France, as I hug you, see you sitting in the window, preparing the love in the kitchen, embracing me and all, setting out my sleeping bag and preparing the nest of love for me in the corner.
Oh, I am so happy that you were born!"

See what happiness brings. I hope I can hold onto it. THANK YOU. EVERYONE.

I have just received a loving message from Mahala. I am so blessed to have the friends and family I have. I want to tell about the end of my birthday as a way to thank those who made my day so splendid.

I returned the book from Brendan and managed to get the last copy of Alden Nowlan's "Collected Poems." In the evening, Helen came over with a French picnic of cold meats, cheeses, antipasto, bread, and fresh strawberries. We carried a bench out to the deck - the evening was so deliciously and unusually warm - put white damask napkins down, spread the feast, and Gill, Helen, and I sat and gorged. Rob returned from his first day on a film and joined us. We drank good red wine (Helen white) and I read the poems I included in my blog. Rob presented me with a short white silk kimono that reminded me of Woodman's "the ravished bride" and another poem in the book I received from Vaughan. It begins with a quote from the Zen Mater Shih Shuang:

"Forget everything, stop doing anything, and try to rest completely. Try to pass ten thousand years in one thought! Try to be the cold ashes and the worn-out tree! Try to be a length of white silk."

Heidi dropped off a bouquet of red parrot roses, a bar of French soap, a white embroidered envelope, and poems by Emily Dickinson.

Lydia dropped off a bottle of olive oil spiced from her garden.

Walter dropped off a painting of a female nude, done by Leslie in her student days.

After dining, Helen and I watched "Women in Love" with champagne, that she had brought, in our hands. Part way through, we ate a chocolate from the box Gill had given me. What an amazing day!

I'd forgotten how good the dialogue is in this movie. I think it follows Lawrence's novel quite closely. I would like my pen to flow as his did, in such a sexy provocative way. I loved Alan Bates portrayal of him. Susan told me that he could be a bastard to Frida but then turn around and write her the most beautiful poems - such as "Gloire de Dijon":

"When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
Spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and the swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses."

I can't remember how he was a bastard. I wonder if Susan, I, you, everyone expects too much from love.

I read through some more of Lawrence's poetry and find "The Deepest Sensuality". Rob noted on my birthday that I like the word "sensual." I do.

"The profoundest of all sensualities
is the sense of truth
and the next deepest sensual experience
is the sense of justice."

The day after my birthday, it rained in the morning. I went to work all day with a brief brake or break to visit my friendly dentist.

How is it, I wonder, that I am always happy on the 29th of March, that I always get what I want, that I always do what I want, that I am not afraid to state my needs, that I don't become upset when someone crosses me?

This is the day I was born. This is the way I'd like to be every day but I've tried in other years to pretend that other days are my birthday and it just doesn't work. So I will enjoy today.

Yesterday, my family made a feast. Mike made a spicey jambalaya. Rob made turkey burgers. Bren bought a Lemon Heaven, tower of a cake. Gill picked flowers and served and cleaned up.

Bren gave me Alden Nowlan's biography and another book that I already owned so I will replace it with Nowlan's collected poems (that I've bought three times and given away three times. When I was skimming through the biography, I found a poem that I read aloud last night as it was so appropriate, so me.

The Night of the Party

"Never have I seen women
wiser or more beautiful.

Never have I known men
so witty, so sensitive.

Here in my living room
are the twenty most remarkable
persons in all the world.

And me, the one fool,
who must dance
although too heavy
on his feet, sing
although his vocal cords
are out of tune.

But that is the price
I pay for such
companionship.

My friends,
I do not get drunk for myself,
I get drunk for you."

Helen gave me a cushion that reads "My other house is in France" and a card in which she wrote "To a fearless loving and passionate Feminist who continually pushes the boundaries." Damn it all anyway. She knows I'm not fearless but how I love the praise. I'll pretend today that I am.

Nancy gave me a bottle of champagne and a dozen beautiful candles. My sister Maggie gave me a bouquet of white and pink tulips - my favourite flower.

This morning I opened a dark Indian scarf with gold scrolls and flowers from Marlene that I immediately tied around my neck and wear still, and a loving message.

Gill presented me with a handmade card that reads "Yvonne, the writer, the mother, the lover, the sinner, the woman" amid other endearments. (Now where did that girl get her sassy tongue from?) She also gave me a bottle of my favourite lavender bath foam, made in the south of France, that I splurge on once a season when I'm in our French house; and a small box of Godiva chocolates because she knows that I'm not a chocolate gobbler like some of my friends but admit that one or two of the best variety pleases my palate on occasion.

And Vaughan gave me a book of poetry "Words Under The Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye that I began with my coffee. Oh mon dieu, another poet to love. This is how I feel today:

So Much Happiness

"It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change....

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known."

As it is the 29th, I looked on page 29 and found a poem that will please my Plums but especially Wenda as she has just moved and needs time to settle.

The Art of Disappearing

"When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you can tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time."

This poem is perfect for the moment. Still, I wonder about myself at times. Looking on page 29 because of the date? Am I nuts, simple, or wise to allow small coincidences to decide my course of action? Doesn't matter really. I am who I am.

Rob is saving his gift for this evening.

I love this day.

I have been writing although I have not been kind to this blog lately. Part of me wants to keep my thoughts private but another part thinks that I should continue to broadcast my mental gymnastics and doings in this public way. I'm trying for a balance and being slightly imbalanced by nature, I'm finding it difficult.

This week I worked on a story I began at the plum table. It's a story of an old woman, a successful author, who is a mentor to a younger writer who thinks she's liberated sexually until a strange happening throws her off balance.

Where do these stories come from? Will they ever find their way into print? It seems the impossible quest.

I did find the courage to read this story to the Jungian circle of women on Wednesday night. (I think that Marlene thinks that it is easy for me to read my "wayward" stories but I agonize before and after, more about the quality of the writing than the content. Is this true? Maybe not. I worry about both.) I decided to read it because the narrator of the story is a strong vocal woman who doesn't mess with words. She says what she thinks. This is the way I'd like to be but am too much of a coward. I love this aspect of writing - the part that allows me to give my thoughts and words to another so I don't have to take direct responsibility for them. Yes, it is the coward's way.

Shirley was much braver. She read aloud her vulnerable musings because, she said, she was resisting reading. I admire her writing style. She is fluent, unlike me, first draft and tells stories of the life of a single mother with three grown children, in a light-hearted manner, that doesn't take away from the poignancy of the tale - although what she read the other night was not light.

The fourth chapter of "Addiction to Perfection" goes straight for the jugular. Marlene said that she could teach an entire course on this one chapter. One young woman in the room said that the book is driving her crazy as she thinks she's doing all right and then Woodman points out her inconsistencies. Is it good, I wonder, being thrown into emotional upheaval? Yes, I answer. I don't want to be a mystery to myself.

Within the chapter, Woodman describes an analysand's dream and concludes:

"The dreamer realized she had to choose between going back to the collective, rigid world she had always known, or trusting herself to her inner spiritual guide, thus moving with her own destiny. She saw it as a choice between falling back into unconsciousness and surrendering to the Self. If she chose to go back, she feared being condemned by her own Reality. If she chose to surrender, she was terrified of losing her integrity in a world she did not understand. It is a crisis we all reach at least once in the individuation process."

Another passage hit home as well. Woodman speaks of tears and I think many see them as a sign of weakness. She quotes Viktor Frankl, who in a concentration camp, realized that tears were a sign of "the greatest courage, the courage to suffer" and Woodman continues "Keeping a stiff upper lip is one thing: being able to connect to our own reality in our own situation is another. The negative mother loves unconsciousness. So long as we are petrified in a static world there is no danger of us opening ourselves to weeping our own tears or singing our own song." I have difficulty doing both.

Lately I've been thinking of my old friend, Maggie, who cried a lot of tears before she died in 1990. She wrote me that tears are the wine of the gods.

"In my work, I try for truth, but also for a certain musicality of language, a certain weaving of images. Excellence in writing demands a balance of all three."

The quote is by John Updike. I wrote this down from a magazine article at the dentist's yesterday. I've been seeing a lot of this Irish man lately. He isn't gentle like my friend the female dentist. In fact, he treats my mouth as if it were an inanimate object, pulling it this way and that like a lump of clay that he's trying to add to after the fact. I put up with this treatment because I can't afford the alternative and I appreciate his attempt to make my mouth more functional.

The rest of me is up to me. I have withdrawn from the world this past week, trying to pull myself into a more accepting, appreciative human being. Sometimes I have a hard time being in this world.

I want to be able to congratulate my sister Maggie on her engagement but all I can think is "poor woman - why is she thinking of remarrying when she isn't even unmarried yet. Why marry period?" She tells me she's happy. She's found herself.

Who am I to question her? I simply have to find the route to the place where I can applaud her plans.

My family, who I rarely see, are appearing in great numbers.

My sister Bev came for dinner last night with her three wee ones. She is frazzled. Her new home is still under construction - two weeks behind schedule - and she has been living with her man and children in the basement of a friend, out of a suitcase. She tries to talk while holding baby Cameron who is screaming up a storm. She is barely holding onto her sanity, she tells me. Our mother is arriving tomorrow and she has no bed for her.

I tell her I'll take mum for two days until her place is habitable.

My sister Gael and her daughter Emilie are arriving Tuesday for a week but Gael is at a convention and has a hotel room. She'd like to have a pajama party there with all her sisters.

My longest friend, Penelope, arrives Wednesday.

I leave for Los Angeles on Thursday. Gill was going to come with me and I arranged her ticket et al but then she realized that a dance she was organizing is being held during this time and can't leave. I am disappointed. It would have been so much more fun being on a buying trip with her than alone.

Surprisingly amid all this confusion and planning, I have been writing.

This has been a strange hard week for me but last night, out for dinner with Rob, Marlene, and Steve, enjoying good Greek food, drinking retsina, laughing, talking, and then driving home through Vancouver, over the Lions Gate Bridge, with spring showing everywhere - I especially love the cherry blossoms - I felt myself grow lighter.

I had spent the morning with my plum group. I am more than thankful for their company, their input to my writing and the way that we help each other. Writing is such a lonely business and having a place to bring the beginnings of stories and those that have been finely tuned but still aren't quite there is such a gift. How long have we been together? Three years? I'm not sure but I realized yesterday how we have grown to trust each other, how we can read anything, say anything, express doubts and frustrations, give criticism and praise, and come away fortified, feeling good about our writing and wanting to continue, to better our best.

Wenda read a piece that she had written the night before. She apologized before reading saying that, after being prompted by Vaughan via email, to complete what had been started the last meeting, and feeling slightly annoyed at this reminder, she began to write. It was "shitty" she said but, if I could write in this vein, so could she. The thing is that what she wrote was not shitty at all. It was a heart-breaking tale that had happened in her youth, describing man's inhumanity to man and animals. As Vaughan said, it exposed our dark sides. I think it a brilliant piece of prose and hope she fine tunes it.

I had been having bleak thoughts about my writing and my life for several days. I went around with a poem by Dylan Thomas whirling round my brain:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

After the Jungian meeting on Wednesday night, I felt as if I was going to die. l fell into such despair that I couldn't think staight. I tackled the question "What does the dialogue between the (energies of) Great Mother and Medusa sound like in me?" As I understand it, the question asks me to simulate a conversation between the part of me that sees I'm doing the best I can and applauds my efforts - like a compassionate mother - and the part that finds me lacking in everything I do. Medusa won.

The next day in my journal, I wrote: "This is crazy what you're doing, dredging up all the pain, exposing yourself to ridicule and worse. Leave well enough alone. Write about truth and beauty."

But truth has its own beauty.

Yesterday evening, Rob and Gill returned home, tanned and grateful for their quiet week in the sun together although Gill has bruises down one leg from an ATV accident that both decided not to tell me about until they were home. She flipped the sand bike twice. Once it landed on top of her. After the accident, back at the resort, a doctor examined her and pronounced her fine. Thank goodness and the gods.

It's only at times like this when we see how fragile our bodies are that we truly value our lives. Why? We should be glad for each breath.

I worked the day away yesterday at the store and left from there for the airport. When I arrived, the notice board said that the plane from Cabo would be an hour late. I had no book or journal with me so I bought a cheap pad of paper and sat and wrote some pretty shitty stuff. I'm enjoying this approach to writing. When I start to put some thought down and groan, I give myself permission to continue. "It doesn't have to be literary. It doesn't even have to be good. Go for it."

Speaking about writing, I had a quiet writerly meeting with Marlene and Vaughan on Sunday at La Petite France, where the coffee is excellent and the pastries are works of art. You pay dearly - in dollars and calories - but such luxuries must, should, need to be experienced every once in a while. Actually I think I gain as much maybe more pleasure hearing watching M describe consume chocolate as I do from eating it myself. I feel the same way when a woman in the store is excited over a beautiful colour or fabric or design. I love sighs of appreciation and pleasure.

I've been self indulgent. Yesterday was an alone day. I didn't talk to a soul all day. I didn't even get out of my nightie till well into the afternoon and I only did so then because I wanted to go to the store for some toiletries and stockings.

I fed myself, Mahala will be glad to hear although I don't think it was every four hours. She insists that women of a certain age need food more often than when they are young. She also responded to my last blog, the line about body being mother. She suggests that we treat our bodies as our mothers once treated us. I ignore mine a lot of the time.

I went to bed early and read, fell asleep, and awoke near midnight and finished "Elizabeth Costello" by J. M.Coetzee, the story of a successful woman novelist who, late in life, questions her beliefs and the power of writing to transform a writer's readers and the writer, him or her self. "We can put ourselves at peril by what we write, or so I believe. For if what we write has the power to make us better people then surely it has the power to make us worse." In the end, Costello is at the pearly gates where she gives as her occupation "secretary to the invisible."

I did not thoroughly enjoy the book but several passages, for me, made the book worth reading. There is one about D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot who I have been thinking about and discussing in the last few days. Serendipity.

"Lawrence gripped us because he promised a form of salvation. If we worshipped the dark gods, he told us, and carried out their observances, we would be saved... What I mean to say is that in our truest reading, as students, we searched the page for guidance, guidance in perplexity. We found it in Lawrence, or we found it in Eliot, the early Eliot: a different kind of guidance, perhaps, but guidance nevertheless in how to live our lives."

Coetzee through Costello continues: "our readers - our young readers - come to us with a certain hunger, and if we cannot or will not satisfy their hunger then we must not be surprised if they turn away from us."

I am not young and yet I still look to books to give me clues about how to live my life. Or, at the very least, to affirm the way I have chosen to live.

Coetzee goes off on a slight tangent (or does he?) when he has Costello and her sister, a nun in Zululand, discuss the humanities. The nun prefers images of the suffering Christ. Costello, the art of the Renaissance. I loved the following passage:

"When Mary blessed among women smiles her remote angelic smile and tips her sweet pink nipple up before our gaze, when I, imitating her, uncover my breasts for old Mr Phillips, we perform acts of humanity... Nothing compels us to do it, Mary or me. But out of the overflow of our human hearts we do it nevertheless: drop our robes, reveal ourselves, reveal the life and beauty we are blessed with...

"... there is nothing more humanly beautiful than a woman's breasts. Nothing more humanly beautiful, nothing more humanly mysterious than why men should want to caress, over and over again, with paintbrush or chisel or hand, these oddly curved fatty sacs, and nothing more humanly endearing than our complicty. (I mean the complicty of women) in their obsession.

"The humanities teach us humanity. After the centuries-long Christian night, the humanities give us back our beauty, our human beauty."

The author is male. I like this worship of the female form but, the thing is, would I as a woman choose a breast to denote beauty and humanity? I'm not sure. More to think about.

The house is quiet. I have had a luxurious week. Time to think. Rob says that when I'm away, he too enjoys an empty house but after a time, the quietness wears thin. Mahala tells me that she is too often alone. We need to somehow create a balance. (Isn't it strange that having time to think has become a luxury?)

I just received an email from Rob. He and Gill are enjoying long lazy days in the resort and the food is good. What more could one ask for? Oh, I could name a few things but for my two away, life sounds pretty idyllic.

I'm up to some pretty innocent stuff. I went to work this morning. I spoke to my cousin Dolores in Northern Ireland in the afternoon. I shall now do some reading and writing. I am going out for dinner with my son Mike in the evening. (Brendan and I went out to a casual Thai cafe last night.)

I'm eating I cry to the heavens and to all those who think I'm too lazy to feed myself. (I am at times but I'm not exactly wasting away.) Last night at Marlene's, we discussed the first chapter of "Addiction to Perfection." Marlene always speaks on the evening's chapter for a half hour or so and then we write. She always says that she doesn't want to speak for too long but this is my favourite part of the evening. I like how she clarifies and adds to the reading. For instance, last night she said that two sentences in later chapters sum up what the book is about.

On page 25: "Why this great hollow at our center?"

On page 61: "It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are."

She also expressed the idea that when we grow up, our bodies become the matter (the mater, the mother) we need.

I like the idea of the body as mother. My body tells me when I'm tired or when I've gone too long without eating, just like a mother would. I know implicitly when I have pleased it or displeased it by various physical symptoms. If I look to it, as I would a loving mother, I might respect it more and take better care of it.

I think that I have no issues about food but when I wrote last night, I discovered that I do but I want to write a little longer and arrive at some conclusion before I make these thoughts public.

I did hiberate yesterday or, as Vaughan says, languish. I floated from one small job to another, wrote (yes I did - two bursts on my "shitty first draft" and completed a short story that I had begun on Saturday at the Plum meeting), went to the library and took out only three novels, watched the ending to "Lost in Translation" - okay - I liked the relationship between the older man and the young woman and their common disillusionment with marriage, offset by the difficulty of language and foreignness of place in Japan but but, I wanted more. Something to chew on. Isn't that what art is supposed to be about? To raise questions or provide answers to experience unlike parallel situations in the real world.

Today, after reading the instruction booklet, I turned the oven on to self-clean and have been out in my house ever since typing out my stories.

Tonight, I will have dinner with Brendan and attend my second Jungian session at Marlene's. Oh yes, I have read the required reading a second time.

I am feeling quite virtuous.

I appear to be reticent about sharing my life these days. Been feeling a little low. Yesterday morning I drove Rob and Gill to the airport at 4:30 a.m. I received an email this morning from Rob saying that they had arrived safely in Cabo San Lucas and at dinner last night Gill said that all her troubles have melted away. Perfect. I wish them a week of sunshine, relaxation, long walks on the beach, good food and conversation.

I think Rob a miracle of a father and Gill a miracle of a daughter. As she was born by a planned Caesarean, we asked our doctor if she could be born on Rob's birthday, the 14th of October. He thought us frivolous and delivered her on the 17th making Gill a late birthday gift - the best one, Rob says, that I've ever given him. (I know Rob contributed to this gift but as he says, "the pleasure was all mine.")

My first day of being home alone was spent in the store. I was hoping it would be a short day but unfortunately, four new shipments arrived and I wasn't able to leave until 5:30. My friend Maggie arrived from Gibson's at 7:30 and we sat and ate fresh fish, sipped good Italian red wine, and talked and talked. We tried to watch "Lost in Translation" before bed but neither of us were in the mood. This is the second time I've tried to watch this film and wonder what all the fuss is about. I'll try once more.

Maggie stayed the night and both of us have appointments this morning but after - I should be finished by 9:30, I'm going to hibernate.

Tonight, the moon is full. I've always wanted to dance naked under a full moon - not sure why but it seems a liberating thing to do. I won't tonight. It's raining. (As if that would stop me, if I were truly a free spirit.)

All is well. I met up with my plum writers this morning and we discussed writing, writing, and writing. What a gift. I also did a free-flow exercise that pleases me. This is a first - the pleasing part.

Rob and I just consumed over a dozen prawns fried in butter with oodles of garlic. I'm about to cook the wild salmon.

Gill sent me an email this morning that said that I was perfect to her: I allow her to be. Another gift. Two in one day.

I am more than content.

Time is passing and I've done little writing. I am not impressed but then again, I have been busy working (making money isn't all that bad); and I attended the first in Marlene's Jungian series that focuses on Marion Woodman's "Addiction to Perfection"; and Rob and I took Mike, Bren, and Gill out to Cafe de Paris last night to celebrate Mike's 22nd birthday. We don't do much as a family these days so these get-togethers are special. Special? What do I mean by this? I don't want to utter any sentimental bullshit. So how do I say that I look at my grown-up children with amazement? All three are intelligent and creative. Rob and I were talking about them in glowing terms yesterday and I asked him what we did to create such free spirits. He said that we have never been condescending with them. Is this true? I hope so but I'm uncertain.

Jung writes in "The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature":
"Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived."

I think most often about the things that I didn't do rather than the things I did do in regards to my children. I become confused. What is a parent responsible for bringing into being in their offspring, and what is she or he not responsible for?

"Addiction to Perfection." (I have only begun re-reading the text.) I think that I would like to be perfect - especially in regards to my children and others whom I love - but I realized the other night that I don't know what perfect is. There were around fourteen of us in Marlene's livingroom and she spoke about the repression of the feminine principle and the Jungian ideal of body and soul brought together. She also read from the text and I especially liked this passage:

"Essentially I am suggesting that many of us - men and women - are addicted in one way or another because our patriarchal culture emphasizes specialization and perfection. Driven to do our best at school, on the job, in our relationships - in every corner of our lives - we try to make ourselves works of art. Working so hard to create our own perfection we forget that we are human beings."

Sometimes I hate the fact that I am human. We did a spell of writing after Marlene spoke and most of the women read - Wenda and Shirley did (this is the first time in a long time that we plums - unfortunately minus Vaughan - have been together where we originally met.) I didn't read. I am never comfortable at the beginning of a session with a group that is mostly strangers. I always feel that what I write is dribble. I want perfection. Interesting thing is that I wrote "I hate perfection - too sterile, too boring - but my head spins. I know secretly that I am addicted to it."

Shoot. Can't win either way.

This evening, Rob and I are going to Mary's 84th (I think) birthday celebration. Mary is Helen's mother, a crusty old dame whom I adore. When I invited her to my place for New Year's with my parents, she asked "Why would you want a crotchety old bag like me?" She wants to be perfect too.

Happy Birthday dear Mike. I remember the day that you were born. As Brendan arrived three weeks late - the placenta was disintegrating - and had to enter the world through a caesarean section, my doctor was worried about you. One week after my due date, he sent me to the hospital where the nurses injected some drugs to induce labour. Rob and I wandered up and down the corridors, willing you to make an appearance.

Finally, early evening, you started your descent into the light. You were tiny in comparison to your brother. He was 9 lb. 2 oz. You were 6 lb. 9 oz. (or so I remember.) You were so perfect, so easy-going right from the start. The nurses asked if you could be their model for the bath demonstration. (Women loved you from the beginning of your days.)

At around six or seven years, you told your dad about a dream you had. You were in a deep dark hole and above you, all around the edge, were screens, showing all "the bad things" you had done. Rob laughed and and said, "Oh Michael, what bad things could you have done in your short life?" You looked at him, through your coke-bottle glasses, and replied "You don't think that I'm going to tell you, do you?"

Oh, I could tell a dozen stories and embarrass you but I will only tell one more.

Do you remember when I went with you to a meeting about study methods at the high school? (Or did I drag you there?) The man giving the lecture held up a trick photo and ask the audience to tell, by a show of hands, who saw a particular image. And who saw another image. I saw what most people saw. You were one of the rare ones who saw something different.

This is the way I see you - as rare.

When you were a little older, you wrote a poem that begins "I am special/ I wonder about life/ I hear music/ I see the future/ I want to really live...." You end "I hope that I am loved/ I am special."

You are loved my middle child/man. (And I agree, you are special.)

Happy Birthday, dear Mike.

Happy March. This is an important month for me. Mike was born on the third. I was born on the 29th. My friend, Leslie, died on the third. March, on a larger scale, holds St. Patrick's Day and the Ides when Julius Caesar met his end. Yes, I like this month, unlike February, the dreariest month, with it's lack of colour.

I went to the store at 7:30 a.m. and worked until 3. Rob went to a job interview and then booked tickets for himself and Gill to visit Mexico next week - spring break. They are both smiling. They both love the sun. A few years back, Rob took Bren to San Francisco and Mike to Italy (we were in Europe at the time) and now, he says, it's Gill's turn. This endeared him to me. They both need a break. Rob recently finished a nine month stint of work and Gill has been stressed out with too much school work. This is Gill's final year of high school and the pressure is on. Come to think of it, they both deserve a break.

I am content to stay at home, after my stint of accounting and ordering. I need to have countless hours to write and I start Marlene's course on Wednesday - based on Marion Woodman's book "Addiction to Perfection" and would hate to miss a night.

I have also spent a ton of money on my teeth. I visit yet-another-time the dentist this morning and then Gill and I are going to the passport office. Both our Canadian passports have expired. I hate it when I let this happen. I always like to feel that I can leave at any moment.

So life is good. Walter put a vase full of budding magnolias in the store window. They are lovely - a promise that spring is around the corner.

When Rob and Gill return from Mexico, Rob will work on a pilot for two weeks and then, most likely (the deal is in the process of being finalized - fingers crossed) on a musical that finishes mid-June that will allow him to be in France this summer - his dream. Gill will return to a ton of work that will complete her high school days. She too will come to the south of France for the summer (she hopes to work) and then she and her friend, Miki, will move to Paris.