Whatever He Says

One recent Saturday, I drove to St. Mary's to celebrate the Heritage Day festivities with my daughter. By then I was well into another journey, the search for a peaceful heart. I had started the two and a half hour drive, early, choosing a route that avoided highways and had just driven through Beeton when the crossing lights up ahead signalled that a train was coming. I slowed to a stop and watched the hypnotic stream of boxcars, a seemingly endless graffiti gallery, gently swaying by on their way. A random surprise art exhibit. As I drove through the village of Hockley, listening to CBC Radio, the bluesy voice of Canadian jazz artist, Laila Biali kept me company and set me bopping in my seat with her song,  Queen of Hearts .   Along one of the back roads after leaving the town of Orangeville, a big white tent stood in a field with a sign at the gate saying, "Gospel Meeting. All Welcome." The word "gospel," comes from an old English word with two ...

My father called me Twinkle Toes as a child, but I was not the light-footed fairy that nick-name might conjure up. I dropped, broke, or tripped over, whatever was in my path. As I grew up, I resisted this part of my identity, not wanting it to define me. I thought I had succeeded but didn't realise that if an inner state doesn't change, its symptoms can present differently, but they don't go away--they are red flags, waiting for someone to pay attention. When they were younger, two of our granddaughters lived with their parents in our basement apartment. Tori told me one day that she always knew who was walking around upstairs by our footsteps, "Your steps are fast, Omie. Grandad's steps are slow and loud." I laughed and agreed with her. I walked everywhere fast and even broke into a run for no good reason besides getting to my destination more quickly. Walking with someone who walked at a stroll was hard for me. I had to will myself to slow down and curb...

As dusk fell gently over the green and gold patchwork of fields ripening for harvest, I counted down the kilometres to my destination, the farm in Norfolk County, where the mother of a friend lived. I had seen Lois once or twice from a distance at functions and talked to her over the phone a few times. Although she lives quite distant from me, our relationship is one of a shared affection for her daughter.  On this July Saturday, I had been visiting my daughter who lives just an hour from her farm and realised that being so relatively close to Lois's home was an opportunity too excellent to miss. I drove with a sense of adventure, following the disembodied voice of a GPS app to a place I'd never been before. I called the day before to make plans with Lois, saying that I would get there in the evening, on my way home from the town of St. Mary's and she graciously consented to my dropping by with the latest news of the person that connected us. My secret motivation was...