The little wooden chest

Right after I told my mother over the phone, that day in March 1998, that I was pregnant,  she started shopping. It wasn't long afterward that she excitedly told me about the bargain she'd found and snapped up from an an end-of-season clearance rack -- an adorable little furry white bunting bag. She mentioned other things she'd found too -- a cute little outfit, a Beatrix Potter/Peter Rabbit cup, a book.  She mentioned gifts from friends and neighbours, including handknit or crocheted items. 

After we lost Katie, I remember her wiping away tears at my kitchen table one day and whispering, "Someday I'll show you all the little things I bought."  

One of the next times we visited there, there was a new addition to the bedroom where we usually slept:  a small wooden chest with a nature scene painted on top that my dad had won in a charity raffle.

I knew immediately what was inside. 

Over the years, I did open the lid and take a peek a couple of times, but didn't have the heart to start pulling things out or rummaging through them.  

Almost 28 years passed -- and we never did go through the contents of that little chest together. 

And then my mom died in January.  

My sister asked me if we were going to take the little chest home with us, and offered to keep it for us if we wanted it.  I knew getting it home would be a problem -- obviously, it wouldn't fit into a suitcase! -- and where would we put it here?  I told her I would go through the chest myself and decide what to do with it and its contents.  

I did it one day when we were there last month, during the week she was at work in the city and I was by myself upstairs in the house, going through boxes and boxes of stuff. It was now sitting in the adjacent empty bedroom next door, as the usual room was now empty of furniture and being used as our work/sorting area.  I pulled the chest into the middle of the room, sat down on the floor, took a deep breath, and started taking things out and taking photos of each item.  

Dh found me sitting there a while later, tears rolling down my face. 

The chest was not as full as I'd remembered. I suspect Mom had quietly given a few of the items away over the years. (I knew that a little sweater and cap set, knit by a kind neighbour, now dead, went to Little Princess #3, as I wrote here at the time, almost three years ago now. Her mom, Parents Neighbours' Daughter, sent me a photo of her wearing it.)  

The bunting bag was there, a little jacket in bright primary colours, a (very few) little outfits. The Peter Rabbit mug.  (I thought there had once been a matching bowl that went with it, but it was not there.)  A book.  A program from the All Saints Day service at our church, where Katie's name was among the loved ones who had died during the year (dh & I attended, and I sent a program to Mom). Mother's and Father's Day cards sent during my pregnancy, with excited notes from me inside and, in one, a photocopy of my ultrasound scan photo.  (I found a couple of similar cards that my grandmother had saved, which I'd completely forgotten about, and broke my heart to read.)  An invitation to the baby shower that was never held, from the hostess (dh's Cousin/Neighbour's Wife, who enclosed a warm personal note expressing how excited she and her two little girls were about the prospect of having a baby in the family nearby). 

Separately, we also found a still-wrapped package in a drawer (that I think had once been in the chest?) from one of Mom's friends, wrapped in baby-appropriate paper with a small card "For Baby from L."  I brought it home with me too. I still haven't opened it. (It feels like a baby book.)   

I kept the wrapped package, one of the little outfits, the book, the Peter Rabbit mug (which now sits in my china cabinet), and the cards, and brought them home with me in my suitcase.  I bagged the rest of the clothes and told my sister she could donate the bag somewhere, as well the now-empty chest.  

Here are photos of some of the things I found:  

The little wooden chest. (It looks huge here, but it wasn't.) 

The painted top. 

With the lid open. 

A colourful little springtime jacket. 

The bunting bag/snowsuit. :( 

The tag inside read, "Little Miracles."   :(  

Some lovely friend or neighbour knit this beautiful little hat/cowl. 

The Peter Rabbit mug. 

This is the outfit that I kept. 

Outfit #2. 

Outfit/ensemble #3. 

A book. 

In two weeks of letting a lot of treasured things go, this was one of the very hardest. 

(SOME of the) Things I found while helping to empty out my parents' house

My parents were married for more than 65 years, and lived in the house that just sold (and is closing at the end of this month) for 42 years. During that time, they also helped clear a couple of other people's houses (and accumulated some stuff from those places) -- most notably the house my mom grew up in, which was built by her grandparents/my great-grandparents after their marriage in 1904, and bulldozed in early 1998. (My grandparents had moved in the early 1980s, to an apartment and later to the care home in town, but there was still a lot of stuff left in the house until just a few years before it was torn down.). 

Neither my mom, nor my grandmother, were very good about throwing things away (to put it mildly...). In a nutshell, there was (and still is) a LOT of STUFF to go through!  My sister & I started going through closets while I was still there in December/January, and she has continued the work over the past few months (mostly on weekends, because she's still working and lives about an hour away). By the time I got there a few weeks ago, the pile of boxes in the closet assigned to me to go through had grown quite a bit since my sister sent me the photo I used in this post) -- and of course there were still other closets and cupboards to empty too. 

Some of the stuff was mine. (I'm a bit of a packrat too -- although moving to and living in a condo has forced me to do better...! And suffice to say, I would not want to leave a similar amount of stuff behind for the nephews to go through, after I've gone...!)  My sister & I have done two or three weed-outs of our stuff at Mom & Dad's in the past, but there was still a LOT there that needed to be sorted through and disposed of. Somewhat miraculously, I managed to pare down what was there enough to fit into one box (after filling a suitcase to take home with me -- also miraculously, it did NOT exceed the airline's weight limit!!).  My sister and her partner have agreed to keep the box for me for one year. I figure I'll be heading back in July and likely again at Christmastime, and should be able to bring what's left home with me over the next two or three visits.    

It was physically tiring work, but emotionally exhausting too. (Kleenex was required.)  All these things, saved and treasured by my mom & grandmother (and great-grandmother) for all these years... and now it was up to my sister & me (both childless -- the buck stopped with us) to decide what the heck to do with it all.  

We sorted things into several different piles:  

• keep (for Dad's apartment, my sister or me, or possibly PND), 
• ask our cousins if they want it (not likely, as they just finished emptying out THEIR parents' & other grandparents' houses!), 
• recycle, 
• take to the local thrift store,
• take to the local library (books),
• possibly sell? (PND's dad sells vintage stuff through his eBay store -- he got some jaw-dropping prices for our old Barbie dolls and their clothes!). 
• I also set aside a few things I thought should be offered to the museum in the Minnesotan county where my mom's family is from.  (Not sure how or when we can get things to them, since neither my sister nor I are anxious to cross the border anytime soon...)
• Sadly, many of the things we found had to be tossed -- but I did take a lot of photos of some of the more interesting or memorable items. 

Among the things we found:  

• Tchotchkes upon tchotchkes... decorations for all seasons! (My sister is keeping some of the Christmas decorations for now, since Dad has expressed an interest in having a small tree in his apartment.)  
• At least four or five (mostly) complete sets of dishes, some of which my dad & sister took. The rest went to the thrift store.  
• Drinking glasses (some of them chipped and cracked -- we gleefully tossed those -- we'd been trying to get our mom to throw them out for years!!).  And lots of coffee mugs.  We took the ones that get used the most over to Dad's apartment.  
• We found an entire set of vintage early 1960s highball glasses that I dimly remember from my childhood, wrapped in newspaper and packed away in a box in the garage. I don't think it had been opened since Mom & Dad moved in, 42 years ago. When we realized what was in the box, we closed it up again and set it aside to go straight to the local thrift store.  
• An entire box (plus an entire drawer) filled with vintage recipe books that belonged to both our Mom and Grandma, as well as their boxes of recipe cards and piles of recipes written on random pieces of paper. My sister set most of these aside to go through later. 
• (There was also a stack of recipes in our great-grandmother's handwriting -- most of them in pencil and barely readable. Sadly, most of these got tossed.)  
• More empty plastic margarine tubs and casserole dishes than anyone will ever have use for.   
• Piles of towels and sheets, worn threadbare -- as well as some that were like new and barely or never used?? 
• What seemed to be every single greeting card my grandmother ever received, dating back to at least the 1940s. (Grandma, I love you, but seriously??)  
• Umpteen vintage postcards, some of them signed (some by family members), but many of them blank. (These may ultimately get tossed, but my sister is going to look into whether they're worth anything.) 
• Boxes & boxes and piles & piles of old photos (both our family's and Grandma's), dating back to the late 1800s. Some identified or identifiable, but many sadly not. (My sister is going to arrange to have them scanned, or as many as possible, but says she can't keep all the originals, which makes me cringe.)  
• Tax receipts and receipts from local businesses in my mom's/grandmother's hometown, dating back to the early 1900s, including some for my great-great grandmother's house.  (Those got tossed.) 
• My grandmother's report cards from school. (She wasn't a particularly good student!) 
• All of MY report cards from school! (I took these home with me.)  
• Letters and paperwork related to my medical history as a child, including a couple of vaccination records. (Ditto above.)  
• A box containing my childhood/teenaged/young adult diaries & journals and assorted other writing. This was a huge relief, as I'd been looking for these on previous visits home and they were not where I thought they should be. There were a lot more notebooks than I'd remembered, and they made a HEAVY pile!  I took some of the earliest (and likely funniest) ones home with me and will bring the rest on future visits. 
• I didn't have time to go through them, but I did glance into a couple (and shook my head -- "He's not worth all the angst, teenage Loribeth!"). 
• I may toss some or all of them eventually, but I would like the chance to look through them more closely first, and I didn't have time to do that then. 
• I did immediately toss one notebook filled with really bad, cringeworthy teenage poetry. Yikes!!  lol  
• I'd tossed most of my school notebooks, etc., during previous clearouts -- but I'd still kept several scrapbooks, projects, etc., plus programs from high school band concerts, drama productions, etc. and many of the essays I'd written.  I think I kept every university essay too.  I tossed almost all of them, but took photos of some of the grades and teacher/prof comments. 
• I had to chuckle/shake my head when I looked at the titles/topics of some of the papers (which sounded strangely familiar/current...!):  Quebec separatism, western Canadian alienation, the rise of the Moral Majority and evangelical churches' influence in U.S. politics, Trudeau's record as prime minister (Pierre, obviously -- Justin was a child at the time!)...  Plus ca change...! 
• On a Grade 12 essay on Shakespeare's Hamlet, my teacher dryly observed, "So much story here to get to the point you wish to make."  I took a photo of that comment -- touchez, Mr. P!  (Dh will tell you things haven't improved over the past 45+ years...!  lol and ouch!) 
• A stack of vintage 1970s Osmonds bubble gum cards. 
• A stack of all the 1970s-era 45s my sister & I owned (separately & jointly, pooling our allowances). 
• LPs: I already had most of mine (and gave them to Older Nephew when we moved into our condo), but there were still plenty owned by my sister, ones we owned jointly (lots of Archies, Partridge Family, Osmonds, Bay City Rollers, K-Tel compilations), Christmas albums (many of them gifts from our grandparents), and ones that were my mom's. 
• Beautiful church certificates from my great-grandparents' 1904 marriage, as well as similar baptism certificates for several of their children, including my grandmother. 
• Guest books for both my grandparents' funerals, my great-uncle's funeral and my parents' 40th wedding anniversary party.  
• Stacks of letters/notes that my grandparents wrote to each other in the years between when they started going out together (late 1920s) until their marriage in 1937. This floored me, because they lived in the SAME SMALL TOWN during almost all of that time!!  Many of them didn't even seem to have been mailed (no envelopes, just names written on the back of carefully folder pages.  I'm guessing they passed notes to each other in the hallways at school, or had them delivered by friends?  
• Another (smaller) pile of letters.... from other girls to my grandfather (!!).  Flirtatious ones too, from what I gathered at a glance. (No time to sit and read all this stuff, even if I wanted to!)  
• This also floored me for two reasons:  (1) My understanding was my grandparents only ever had eyes for each other... apparently not!  (2)  My grandmother actually KEPT these letters from her rivals in her house??!  
• A vintage 1899 single-page "love letter" in beautiful handwriting, from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother (!), apparently in the early days of their courtship. She was leaving on a trip west:  he laments that their acquaintance to date has been too brief, and ends by asking her to "Please do not forget your [name]."  Awww..... 
• A pile of letters and V-mails from my great-uncle (my grandmother's younger brother) from when he served in Italy during World War II, as well as his induction notice, discharge papers and other related paperwork. He never married or had children... lived a quiet, unassuming life with my grandparents after he returned from the war, and worked on a local honey farm as a beekeeper, until his untimely death at age 58.
• Also:  my grandfather's induction notice, and his medical board rejection notice (!). 
• Also:  a stack of my great-grandmother's wartime ration books (!) -- WITH coupons still inside them!!  
• I insisted to my sister that these need to be donated to the county museum. I think I've convinced her.  (I hope.)  I took photos of one of the letters, but I wish I'd had time to read more of them.  
• An entire box filled with letters my mom wrote to my dad (!) and her pre-dad boyfriend/fiance from nursing school (she was there one year before getting married), as well as a diary. Yes, I was curious!  But -- my sister & I decided there are some things you probably shouldn't know about your parents (especially when one of them is still around), and agreed these needed to go, unread. 
• My mother's 1960 wedding dress (short, pale blue) and several vintage 1950s prom/bridesmaid dresses.  The wedding dress sadly had long-established mildew stains on it and had to go, but my sister is going to see if any vintage stores or charities that outfit girls for prom would be interested in the others.  
• MY 1979 graduation dress. (I took a photo of it and put in the pile for the thrift store.) 
• Several adorable children's dresses that my sister and I wore back in the 1960s.
• An adorable little red sweater with white trim and little buttons that look like owl faces, hand-knit for me when I was a toddler/pre-schooler by one of my mom's high school friends. We showed it to PND and she took it home to wash and see if it would fit Little Princess #3.    
• A large box filled with smaller boxes, ALL containing Mom's jewelry (and some of Grandma's too, I think). The vast majority of it was cheap costume stuff.  We didn't have time to go through it, but my sister said she will and she'll set aside anything she thinks I'd be interested in. 
• And... a little wooden chest, that I'm going to post about separately.  

It's not often that I manage to make my sister completely crack up
with laughter, but this photo did the trick!!  🤣
It's from a Grade 1 (1966-67) scrapbook project, titled "Ways Plants Help Us."
The page on the right is captioned "Beauty and shade" 
and apparently is illustrated with a vintage ad for bras and girdles!  
🤣🤣🤣

Right now

Right now...* 

*(A (mostly) monthly series/meme.  Explanation of how this started & my inspirations in my first "Right now" post, here. Also my first (similar) "The Current" post, here.)

May was yet another (very!) busy month. (How is it possible that we're almost halfway through the year already?) 

Some of the things I/we did this month include: 

• Went to the bank for some cash, and the drugstore to pick up a prescription for dh. (May 1st) 
• Shopped for groceries at the supermarket and picked up some takeout soup or pizza slices there for lunch. (May 4th & 25th.) 
• Walked and shopped at the local mall with dh. (May 5th)  
• Dropped off some dead batteries in the recycle bin at Canadian Tire, and had a browse at the bookstore. (May 8th) 
• Visited my dad in Manitoba (May 9th-24th). I'm hoping to write more about this trip in a separate post(s) soon, but in summary:  While there, we worked with my sister & her partner to continue to clear out the house (which has been sold -- closing date July 2nd) and move Dad over to his new apartment and get him settled in there (same town). Sorted through decades and decades of STUFF, not only mine and my parents' but my grandparents', great-grandparents and even a few things from my great-great grandmother, dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s!  Yikes!  
• We also took my dad to a hospital in a (larger) nearby town for a CT scan (mostly positive results), and also drove with him (through a dust storm!!) about an hour away to do some banking in the town where we'd lived, 1976-80, and where my sister and I graduated from high school. I hadn't been back there in DECADES, and it was quite a blast from the past to drive past our old house, the schools I attended and other familiar landmarks...!  Lots of changes, but also a lot that was recognizable!  
• Picked up prescriptions at the drugstore (May 26th). 
• Indulged in a manicure/pedicure, and then went to the supermarket to pick up some supplies for the weekend (May 28th).
• Headed up to dh's cousin's cottage for the weekend (May 29th-31st), where we've spent a weekend each September/October for the past several years with the cousin, his wife, BIL & SIL.  
• This time, however, the party included ALL of the cousins from that side of the family (those living in Canada, anyway) and their partners (!! -- total:  16 people!). (Dh & I were the oldest people there -- he's 69, the youngest cousin there was 45! We were also the only couple there without children.)  
• I was hoping that since all of these cousins' offspring are now teenagers or young adults, the kid conversation would be minimal. Unfortunately, no such luck. :p  Would you believe one night all the women started recounting (parts of) their kids' birth stories??  (Even though their kids were born something like 15 to 42 years ago??).  And debating whether or not you'd want your mother-in-law to attend the birth (another strikeout topic for me -- even if I'd succeeded in having a child, my MIL died before I ever met her).  I quietly left the table, went to my room and busied myself with straightening up our clothes, etc., until I could hear the conversation take a different turn.  
• These cousins tend to be a rather, ummm, boisterous lot. I was already pretty exhausted from the emotional and physical demands of being at my dad's for two weeks... needless to say, this weekend wasn't entirely restful either...!  
• These caveats aside, the hosts were gracious (as always -- we got there early with BIL & SIL and had a nice few hours with them before the others descended...!), the property is gorgeous, the food was great, and overall, we did enjoy ourselves some..!   

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Also right now:  

Reading: I finished 2 books in May (all reviewed on this blog, as well as Goodreads & StoryGraph, & tagged "2026 books").  Year to date, I've read 10 books,  reached 25% of my Goodreads Challenge goal, and am currently 6 books behind schedule to achieve it by year end.  

• "Regeneration" by Pat Barker. Slow readalong with Footnotes & Tangents (April 3rd – May 14th). (4 stars, my review.)  
• "The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley (the June book for my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club;  previously read and reviewed, here;  most recent review here;  rated 4.5-5 stars both times.) 

Current reads: 

• "The Hacienda" by Isabel Canas (the July book for my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club).  6% read to date. 
• "The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy. After mulling it over (see this post!), I accepted a commenter's suggestion to do a readalong together!  Currently 40% completed. 
• "Childless: A Woman and a Girl in a Man's World" by Fabiana Formica.  This one is beautifully written, but slow going, and I was reading it (or trying to...!) at Mom & Dad's last summer, where there were a lot of distractions. I've put it aside for the moment to focus on other reading priorities, but I've completed 33% to date.
• "L.M. Montgomery and Gender," an essay collection edited by E. Holly Pike & Laura Robinson. Slowly working my way through, in between the other books...! 

Coming up: Most of my book groups have their next reads plotted out for a few months in advance -- and listing them here helps me keep track of what I should be reading next. ;)  

• For my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club:  
• "In Memoriam" by Alice Winn (August).  (I previously read and reviewed this one, here;  4-5-5 stars.)  
• "Young Woman and the Sea" by Glenn Stout (September)
• "The Wedding People" by Alison Espach (October). (I previously read and reviewed this one, here;  rated 4-4.5 stars.)
• "The Women" by Kristin Hannah (November)
• For my D.E. Stevenson group: Next books to be determined;  taking a bit of a break in the meantime... 

• Footnotes & Tangents slow readalongs for 2026 include:
• "The Inheritors" by William Golding (June)
• "Treacle Walker" by Alan Garner (July)
• "The Children’s Book" by A.S. Byatt (September–December)

(Not sure I will take part in "The Inheritors" or "Treacle Walker,"  but "The Children's Book" sounds interesting!)  

A few recently purchased titles (all in digital format, mostly discounted ($5-10 or less) or purchased with points): 

• "Buckeye" by Patrick Ryan
• "Motherland" by Julia Ioffe
• "The Book of Sheen" by Charlie Sheen 
• "Strangers" by Belle Burden 
• "My Name is Barbra" by Barbra Streisand 
• "Liberty Street" by Heather Marshall 
• "One of Us" by Elizabeth Day 
• "UFO" by Garrett M. Graff 
• "The Patriarch" by David Nasaw 
• "Family of Spies" by Christine Kuehn 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** 

Watching: 

• "Finding Your Roots" (season 12, plus plenty of reruns) on PBS, Tuesday nights.
• "The Count of Monte Cristo" (on PBS, 8 episodes with the finale on May 10th).  Lost treasure, lost love and ridiculously complex revenge plots! with a huge cast of characters and subplots to keep straight (not sure I succeeded??).  But also jaw-dropping sets/locations and gorgeous costumes. I enjoyed it!  With Sam Claflin as Edmond/The Count, and Jeremy Irons as the old Abbe who tells him about the treasure.    
• My dad normally watches PVR-d episodes of his (& Mom's) soap opera ("The Young and the Restless") late at night, but we did see most of the penultimate episode of  "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," including Bruce Springsteen's appearance at the end. while we were in Manitoba. (Missed Paul McCartney the following night, but did manage to see the highlights the next day.)  

Playing:  

• Heardle Decades: (as of May 31st): I mostly abandoned Heardle while I was at my dad's, but here are the latest stats, for what it's worth....!  
• Heardle 60s: 74.1% (927/1251, 376 on first guess), unchanged since April 30th. Max streak: 21. 
• Heardle 70s: 74.7% (746/998, 417 on first guess), down 0.2% from April 30th. Max streak: 18. 
• Heardle 80s:  41.4% (352/850, 134 on first guess), down 0.1% from April 30th. Max. streak: 5.
• Heardle 90s: 33.1% (315/952, 81 on first guess), down 0.2% from March 31st. Max. streak: 9. 
• NYT Connections: 
• As of April 30th, I'd played 624 games and won 89% of them (unchanged from Dec. 31st), including 337 "perfect puzzles" with zero errors, and 18 where I got the most difficult/purple category first (unchanged from Dec. 31st). Maximum winning streak: 45 (unchanged since June 30th, 2025). Current streak: 11. 
• By May 31st, I had completed 654 games, won 89% of them (unchanged since Dec. 31st), including 352 "perfect puzzles" with zero errors, and 20 where I got the most difficult/purple category first (an increase of 2 since Dec. 31st). Maximum winning streak:  45 (unchanged since June 30th, 2025).  Current streak:4.  

Listening (not watching!):  To "Judge Judy" and the Game Show Network TV shows -- both favourites of my dad (and they were inescapable!  Arrrrggghhhhh....!).  

Following:  . 

Eating/Drinking:  

• Over the past 18 months, we've been trying to eat healthier and lower our cholesterol -- and avoid having to take (more) medication -- since some less-than-stellar bloodwork results for both of us in fall 2024 and then again (for me) last November (2025, as mentioned in November's Right Now post). 
• I ended May 1.2 pounds less than when the month started.  Overall, I'm down 16 pounds since late October 2024 -- close to my lowest weight in more than a decade -- and 28 pounds from my heaviest-ever weight  (in August 2021). 
• (Dh is down almost 18 pounds overall since fall 2024.)
• This was not the greatest month diet-wise, to put it mildly. While at my dad's, we at a lot of takeout (hamburgers, chicken, pizza). Meals at the cottage included lasagnas, chicken skewers, grilled steaks with potato salad & corn on the cob, and homemade pizza ("white" pizza for me).  While home, we indulged in takeout pizza slices or soup from the supermarket, once or twice a week, for lunch and/or dinner. 

Wearing: The weather continued to have its ups & downs -- so there were days in May when I was wearing long yoga pants/jeans, socks and sweatshirts, and others when I (finally!) put on my capris and sandals.  (The overnight low reached just 2C while we were in Manitoba, and at the cottage it was 8C, although it got up to 22C during the day.)  

Buying (besides books, lol):  Not much this month. 

Hoping: That Dad likes his new apartment and settles in well. 

Prioritizing:  Helping out Dad & my sister, when & how I can, here and there. . 

Planning:  Our next trip to Manitoba, around Dad's 87th birthday in July. (Up for debate:  whether we'll stay one week or two?) 

Trying:  To clear a few things off the to-do list here before heading west again, including having a closer look at the things I brought back with me and finding homes for them all.  

Appreciating: My sister (and her partner). Thankful that they've been there every weekend (but one) since January to support our dad and help him navigate through this tough transition -- and my sister just started a new job too!! (at age 63!!) (If I think I'm tired, I know that goes double or more for her...!) 

Noticing: All the leaves have popped out during the two weeks we were away. My eyes have also been stickier in the mornings these past few weeks (presumably a reaction to the increased pollen in the air). I've been taking daily Claritin as a precaution...! 

Anticipating:  Spending some time with Little Great-Nephew #2 soon:  his mom's maternity leave has ended and she returns to work on June 1st.  SIL will be looking after him, as she did with LGN #1 (who will be joining is brother this summer, after school lets out later in June).  

Wondering:  What we should do for our wedding anniversary in July? 

Wanting:  Some quiet downtime...!  (before we have to head back to Manitoba again...!).  

Loving:  Being able to have the balcony door open again during the day. (At least until the heat & humidity kick in...!)  

                        

Feeling: Extremely tired.  :p  

#MicroblogMondays: Homecoming mantra

I'm generally not a nervous flyer... but I do tend to tense up a bit during takeoff and landings.  (Once I'm in the air, or on the ground again, I'm generally okay.)  And for years and years, whenever I was flying "home" to visit my parents, I would repeat a silent mantra to myself, from the time the plane started to taxi down the runway until it was safely aloft in the air:  "Take me home safe to my mother... take me home safe to my mother."  

As the plane pulled away from the terminal on our recent flight west, my eyes filled with tears and I had to pull out a kleenex from my pocket, as I realized:  I can't say that any more:  I have no mother to travel "home" to any more.  And to say "Take me home safe to my dad," while accurate, seemed a bit jarring after so many years.  

"Take me home safe," I finally repeated to myself instead. (Works both going there and coming "home" to the Toronto area too.)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley (re-read)

I was tickled when my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club co-host read "The Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley -- one of my favourite books from last year -- and agreed with me that it would be a great choice for the group!  It's our June book (and I hope our fellow members agree with us!).  I recently re-read it in preparation for our discussions. 

I've always loved time travel themes in books and other media, and this is a quirky mixture of genres and themes that include (yes) time travel but also romance, science fiction, history (Canadian history, at that!), social commentary and ethical dilemmas, as well as a healthy dose of comedy/humour.   

The young female narrator -- known to us only as "the bridge" -- is a civil servant who gets promoted to work on a top-secret project involving a mysterious "door" that makes time travel possible. Using the door, the Ministry of Time has extracted a small group of "expats" -- people from various eras across British history, who were on the verge of an untimely death -- and brought them into present day to observe. As a "bridge," our narrator serves as an observer as well as a live-in guide/interpreter to life in modern-day London for one of the expats -- Commander Graham Gore (a real-life person!), who died (in one version of history, anyway...!) in 1847 in the Arctic while serving on the doomed Franklin Expedition. 

Despite their vastly different backgrounds, it's no surprise when this odd couple eventually falls in love.  Midway through the book, however, the book shifts into thriller territory, and the tone becomes increasingly tense. Plot twist follows plot twist follows plot twist. The ending is slightly ambiguous, which I don't mind, but I know drives some people nuts.  ;)  

It might also irk some readers that (as I noted in my original review), "there's a lot about the whole time travel project, its purpose and its goals, and how time travel actually works, that's rather vague -- we just have to accept what we're told and go with the flow of the story --  especially in the final chapters."  T

Nevertheless, despite its flaws, I enjoyed this book immensely, as much the second time around as the first. My original review from last October rated it 4.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded up to 5 on Goodreads, and I'm keeping those ratings this time around too. 

The BBC is working on a six-part adaptation, written by Alice Birch, who also adapted Sally Rooney's novel "Normal People" (another favourite of mine -- both book and TV adaptation). Filming is scheduled to begin later this year, and I will look forward to watching it someday!  

This was Book #10 read to date in 2026 (and Book #2 finished in May), bringing me to 25% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books behind pace to meet my goal.  :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books." 

"Regeneration" by Pat Barker

I recently finished reading "Regeneration" by Pat Barker, part of another "slow readalong" with Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents. It's mostly set at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, Scotland,  in 1917, where Dr. William Rivers (a real-life historical figure) is treating traumatized soldiers, including (real-life) war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Today we'd say they were suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder);  back then, they were labelled "shell-shocked."  

It's Rivers's job to treat his patients and make them well enough to be sent back to the front to continue fighting  (!). Rivers mostly uses talk therapy, in contrast with his colleague Lewis Yealland, whose methods are detailed in a wince-inducing chapter near the end of the book that reminded me a little of the dental chair scene in the movie "Marathon Man" with Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman.  (IYKYK -- no dental equipment is involved, but be forewarned...!)  

Graphically described primitive treatment methods aside, there's a lot in this book that I liked and enjoyed.  Although the main characters are all male, I was pleasantly surprised to find women's perspectives featured, particularly through the character of Sarah Lumb, who works in a munitions factory. 

And, as usual, Simon's "footnotes and tangents," and the comments and observations of other readers, added a lot to my enjoyment and understanding of the novel.  I particularly enjoyed the YouTube clips Simon posted of well-known actors reading some of the war poetry mentioned in the book. The poetry was an unexpected highlight:  I was familiar with Owen's classic "Dulce et Decorum Est," thanks to my wonderful high school English teachers, and I'd heard of Sassoon, but hadn't read any of his work before. Still powerful stuff.  

"Regeneration" is the first book in a trilogy featuring some of the same characters. Simon says we'll probably read them both eventually on F&T, and I will look forward to that!  This was my first Pat Barker book, and I would definitely like to read some of her other work. (I did not realize at first that "Pat" was actually "Patricia" and not "Patrick!" -- give me a demerit on my feminist membership card, lol.)  

After some thought, I've given this one 4 stars on both Goodreads and StoryGraph.  

Next up at Footnotes & Tangents:  "The Inheritors" by William Golding, beginning June 5th and running through to the end of the month. (Not sure I'll be joining this one.)

This was Book #9 read to date in 2026 (and Book #1 of 2 finished to date in May -- one more to come). You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books." 

Pre-Voldemort Day thoughts, and some odds & ends

You will understand that, as a childless-not-by-choice woman (via stillbirth & infertility), That-Day-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, coming up this weekend (which I've dubbed "Voldemort Day") is not exactly my favourite on the calendar. (Check out the tag "Voldemort Day (Mother's Day)" for past posts on the subject.)  And as someone who hasn't lived within 1000 miles of her parents in 40 years, whose mother-in-law died before I ever met her, I haven't had to worry too much about family considerations on this day either.  I'd send a card, give Mom a call, maybe chip in on a gift that my (childfree by choice) sister would buy and deliver, and do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day.  

This year, I'll be spending Mother's Day AT my parents' house, for the first time in about 35 years. (I had a business trip in the early 1990s that brought me to Winnipeg just before Mother's Day, as well as my grandmother's birthday. I arranged to spend the weekend with them. I am so glad I did.)   

Except (major plot twist) Mom won't be there -- she died in January. I am now motherless, as well as childless. I was lucky enough to have my mother for almost 65 years;  my daughter never took a breath outside my body, but I miss them both, and especially on days like this one.  

My dad and sister have not mentioned MDay at all. (Yet?)  

I am not going to remind them. 

And now for some links:  

• We were at the mall one morning earlier this week.  It's not uncommon to see young moms there, out with their babies in strollers -- sometimes by themselves, sometimes in pairs. I thought I'd seen everything the day I saw four moms with four strollers. 
• Reader -- I had not. On this particular day, I encountered a group of moms with babies in strollers coming my way. TWELVE of them!!!  (I counted.)  12!!! Walking in a group, two or three abreast.  
• (A while later, I saw another group of five!  Not sure if they had broken off from the earlier group I saw, or if this was an entirely different group??)
• All I could think was that it was a good thing that I'm in a relatively good place these days. I mostly just shook my head in disbelief, texted dh (who also saw them, and thought it was hilarious) and... carried on.  Also that if this had been 20-25 years ago, it would have finished me off, sent me home immediately, and kept me away from the mall for weeks.(Progress?) 
• (I also wondered whether this en masse outing had anything to do with the fact that it was just a few days before Voldemort Day/MDay??)  
• Y.L. Wolfe absolutely nails it with her latest Substack piece at On the Outside: "Why This Childless Woman Chooses to Celebrate Mother's Day...Alone."  (Content warning:  Photo of mother & baby at the top of the page.)  A couple of excerpts:  

Don’t misunderstand - I absolutely believe mothers deserve a day of celebration and pampering. They deserve more than a day, in fact.

But that doesn’t mean it has to come at the expense of other women or exist in a space that ignores any other woman’s life circumstances...

I believe women like me need the same thing that mothers ask for: space to take up, validation, and support. In the absence of getting that from a culture indifferent and sometimes hostile to women without children, then we must give it to ourselves.

• This article also absolutely nails the childless-not-by-choice experience and why it can be so painful.  The lengthy title says it all:  "The hardest part of being childless by circumstance, not choice, often may not be the grief people expect — it may be the invisibility of living a life other people have no template for."  Excerpt:  

When women in this position describe the hardest part, they rarely lead with the absence of children. The absence is familiar by the time they’re forty-five. They’ve been around it. They have, on most days, made some sort of working peace with it.

What they describe instead is something more like a slow, ambient erasure. The conversations at dinner parties drift to school catchments and they’re not in them. Their friends speak in shorthand about a life stage they don’t share. Their own parents go quiet about future grandchildren. They are, increasingly, in rooms that aren’t built for them, and the architecture of those rooms gets repeated until it begins to feel like the architecture of the world.

• Virginia Evans, author of "The Correspondent" (which is high on my "want to read" list), is a mother, but she wrote an article for People that I can heartily agree with:  "Mothering Takes a Village. This Mother's Day, Let's Celebrate the Other Mother Figures."  (h/t to Kathleen Guthrie Woods for flagging this one on social media!). (And content warning:  there's a photo at the top of Virginia with her children.)  
• I got tears in my eyes reading this interview in the New York Times with Tracy Clark-Flory:  "My Mom Had a Secret Daughter. I Finally Found Her."  I've put her book on my wish list. (Gift link.) 
• At Afterglow, Katie Dunn welcomes a guest post from fellow Substacker Lexi Weber: "The unexpected intimacy of infertility."   
• Lexi writes at "Not (What I Was) Expecting." I've added her to my blogrolls here and on Feedly. Recent (also excellent) post: “You never know what could happen.” (and why that's not something you should say to someone going through infertility or facing permanent childlessness).