AND LAST YEAR...

My foster grandmother handed me the gift when I was 8 years old. I can remember how I cherished that little hard covered book with all its white pages, the tiny key hanging by a ribbon from the top.
“It’s a diary,” she told me. ‘You write whatever you want to in there.”

It was the first of many, unfortunately most of which were lost when a careless friend moved out in the middle of the night, leaving all my stuff behind her. I still have some of the later books though. Bird and I spent some time going through a couple of them, recalling events that had happened years before.

Most of the recording is done by blogging now; not a bad thing when compared to my awful handwriting. It serves nearly the same purpose; I can tell you that last year on this day I was boarding an airplane to go to Japan, and the year before that I was packing my suitcase to leave for Mexico, and the year before that we were dealing with Bird’s cancer diagnosis and the stroke he had a couple of days before.....

And April this year? Well, from having a house well peopled, I expect to soon find myself alone here again. Helen and her husband are back together (so cute, this young old love!) and have purchased a small house where they will be moving on or before May 1st. Helen’s son, who has spent the winter here with us, is returning to his construction job in the Ottawa area next week, so he’s out of here tomorrow. That leaves me and the doggies and the cat, and they will have to adapt to my being away to work – something Smooch has never experienced. It worries me some, with him being so sick, but hopefully he’ll be in better shape by the time Helen leaves.

Note that I said I ‘expect’ to find myself alone. If there is one thing I’ve learned it is that each day has its own surprises – it takes but a moment to send our life barrelling away in a completely different direction than what is ‘expected’!

There you go – the reason to jump out of bed in the morning, looking forward to a new adventure, be it good or bad, large or small; our own personal storybook. How can it not make one SMILE?

Sending mine out to y’all....

Luv from the Bush in Quebec.