Busy Nothings

Unknown prairie flower (ideas, anyone?) Murals cover buildings all over Moose Jaw So many buildings have these amazing old signs Grain elevator in rural Coderre "The cheapest cash store in the new province" (dating this sign around 1905) The river, looking towards the railyards and grain elevator The magpies and geese sing their songs, the train whistle echoes across the riverbank, and the grain elevator towers over all. Oh yes, and the Snowbirds zip overhead regularly, making aerial acrobatics seem like an everyday occurrence. Just a few things that make our life in Saskatchewan SO different from the Maritimes: A couple of weeks ago, we had a blizzard. Then three days later it was 28 degrees Celsius. You just never know when to put the mittens away. Our garden is not in our backyard. We have a patch in the community garden, a big green space along the banks of Thunder Creek and the Moose Jaw River, overlooking the Canadian Pacific raily...

I never thought of myself as mom material. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really like kids much, even when I was one myself. That might have explained why I wasn't terribly popular. I didn't have the "right stuff" for parenting, like patience, selflessness, moral fortitude, or a strong stomach. I was all about "me," but I guess that is the job of kids, teenagers and twenty-somethings everywhere, to be totally about self. And yet, there are women like my mother or my sister-in-law who had their children young and did a fantastically good job of raising them despite their extreme youth. Being "all about me" was never an option for them in their twenties, as they already had little humans depending on them for life. I waited a long time to change my mind about the baby concept, but once I did I jumped onboard the train with all engines firing. And what have I learned in the past eight years of Mother's Days? Because when you've got s...