valeriesbookofme

I participate in an online group with a young British journalist who asks a question a week (shades of Storyworth!) This past week she wrote about the joys of being self reliant, making your own bread, sewing your own clothes, etc., etc…. I thought about her article and this is my response. Whew, your articles are always thought-provoking! They arrive in my inbox at about 6:00 am my time, just as I am awakening to another day of quiet in this sleepy Arizona town—what shall I do today, nothing really happening, it never does…. (The lyrics to an old song called “Moody Manitoba Morning” by The Bells are running through my head.) There are a lot of things I am capable of and some that I choose to be incapable of because, well, I’m not interested. I did learn to sew when I was young, it was mandatory in my parochial school. But I never enjoyed it, it stressed me out trying to sew the perfect line or cut the perfect pattern. And nothing ever turned out well, unlike your curtains. A memory of

It's once again Father's Day and once again I think about my dad, how although my mother was the BIG presence in my life when I was young, it was my dad that really formed (through disagreeing and agreeing) how I think and act. I miss him on Sundays, when he would call every week from Ottawa to Hamilton or Toronto to find out how I was doing. How he wrote to me when I lived in the UK (sadly I didn't keep that correspondence). I cringe now that I sometimes avoided those calls, didn't appreciate how hard he was trying to show that he loved me. We can't always find the words so we try by our actions but then those actions get misinterpreted.  Anyway, today is a day of reflection and, in that vein, I am responding to what is, I think, my last question on Storyworth. It's been a year since I started answering the Storyworth questions, my "book" has been published, around 196 pages. I didn't realize I had a few more questions still to answer before I pub