Busy Nothings

Let me tell you about superwoman. Once there was a very smart-looking, dark-haired young woman, dressed fashionably in skirt, boots, and a fur-collared jacket, posing for a picture in the metropolitan downtown of Montreal, circa late 1930s-early '40s. Maybe that is just the way I remember this photo, since I don't actually HAVE it but anyhow it struck me how worldly and sophisticated she looked. Just a few years later, that vibrant woman was back home on the east coast, married to an older man and settled on his family farm in rural Prince Edward Island. She was about to deliver the first of 11 children, nine boys and two girls. She was now committed to a life of faith, family, love, making do and working harder than we can imagine. That strong character is my grandmother, Edith. Edith and Wilfred on their wedding day I was luckier than many children, having two living sets of grandparents close by when I was growing up. Edith and Wilfred Campbell, my grandparents on ...

Eight years ago our world was turned on its ear with the arrival of our first child. I know, it's not momentous in the grand scheme of the universe, where babies are born every second in wildly varying ways (well, generally it follows a certain scheme) and in vastly different cultures and corners of the world and family configurations. But for two childless mostly clueless people in their thirties, neither of whom had ever wiped a baby's bum let alone been solely responsible for its very survival and wellbeing, it was pretty huge. The result of that earth-shaking delivery turns eight today, and what about her? To put it mildly, we shake our heads in wonder, confusion, consternation and hilarity even more often than I could have imagined eight years ago. She is all long legs and arms, flying hair and leaping imagination. She makes us crazy, she amazes us, she makes us laugh. She is smart and sassy, perhaps sometimes a bit too sassy but some would say that is only what ...

If you ask me about my first love, I would probably tell you I first felt that deep, passionate longing for...a book. Yup, it is true. From the first moment I realized all those jumbled letters and marks actually made up sentences, pages, stories, even, I have been a passionate and not-at-all secret admirer of books. When I'm feeling blue, I retreat to books. When I'm ill, you can find me tucked up in a quilt with my nose stuck in a book. A book is the last thing I see before I go to sleep (okay, I DO see my husband as well although probably not as clearly as he would like). In university I majored in English because I thought that would be the best way to feed my habit of reading by creating a purpose for all that book-lovin'. And we all know how terrifically valuable an arts degree is in the real world. Ahem. But, hey, it let me read through a four-year degree, well actually I stretched it out to 5.5 years just because I LOVED to read so much, among all the other thin...