Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 18

If it’s Wednesday, this must be Amsterdam

After all the fuss, so far I’ve been lucky with rain. It rained this morning in Paris, but by the time I left the hotel, it had stopped. It was supposed to rain all day in Amsterdam, but by the time I arrived, it stopped. Keep your fingers crossed that luck continues. It’s been so chilly, so far I’ve worn the only wool turtleneck sweater I brought and my fleece vest nonstop. Must change at some point.

This morning I packed my backpack with essentials, stored my suitcase at the hotel – for 5 euros a day, nothing is free anymore – and took the metro to the Gare du Nord for the train to Amsterdam, easy peasy, just over three hours sailing through farmland. I’m spending two nights with Pam, whom I met only recently. She’s a scientist, was a post-graduate student of my father’s in the seventies; he thought the world of her and she of him, so much so that my paranoid mother suspected they were having an affair. They were not. I connected with her through another of Dad’s students, to ask her, in fact, the truth about the past, and we became friends. She has family in Canada but lived all over the world and loves Amsterdam. And I can see why.

Why? Bicycles! Thousands, hundreds of thousands of them, giant piles of them chained up everywhere. A whole city set up for bikes, separated paths, everyone riding, all ages, many heavy cargo bikes or covered ones for children, almost no helmets, even for kids, because riding is so safe. Love is! And these are glorious Dutch bikes, so expensive back home, very sturdy with upright handles, comfortable and easy to ride. I am so jealous. There’s lots else in this civilized city, like organized recycling and great transit. Transit in Paris is phenomenal. We are so far behind in Ontario, and will be further behind when our dinosaur car-loving premier is done. It makes me sad and angry.

Pam met the train and we got the tram to her flat (she had a guest transit pass for me – another convenience we do not have) where she, a widow, has lived for 30 years. Talked and talked, and then, when the sun came out briefly, went out for a walk. What a beautiful city, with its canals and houseboats and rows of pretty, extremely narrow houses, making mine – 16 feet wide – look bloated. We saw the Anne Frank house from across the canal, very much changed since I visited in 1979, when the visit was simple. Now you need to book months in advance and there are huge crowds. That’s good, I’m glad people are honouring her, but I’m also glad I was nearly alone when there, in that sacred place.

I took Pam for dinner at a nearby restaurant, a very casual friendly student-y place, good Middle Eastern food. Much more talk. And then home, to sit at our computers in silence, the way old friends, or new friends who feel like old friends, can comfortably do. For tomorrow, I found out the Van Gogh museum is sold out, should have booked, am sorry about that, but I’m going to the Rijksmuseum, where I fell in love with Johannes Vermeer in 1979, as detailed in Loose Woman. What an interesting world.

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More Paris, with umbrellas

Pictures: The magnificent Arc de Triomphe.

The magnificent Grand Palais (they’re cleaning and fixing up everything in Paris prior to the Olympics) and the Petit Palais. A new definition of ‘petit’.

A nice bum on the way to the Louvre, with a crow on his head

The humble little Louvre, and a view of the Louvre behind a bouquiniste on the Seine. So little changes in Paris. My father took me to visit the bouquinistes in 1965, when I was 14. I bought a used Penguin Jane Eyre. Good for you, girl.

The umbrella store, a throwback to another time, and Madame Simon with her assistant. She told me there are only five umbrella specialists left in all Europe. If you need an umbrella – and who doesn’t? – this is the place.

It’s pouring. Tomorrow, Amsterdam. Rain predicted. C’est la vie. 

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honouring Mark Rothko

It’s 5 o’clock, or what I call Wine Time, so I’m in bed with a half bottle of good rouge, recuperating from a great deal of walking on my first day. Will get dressed and find dinner at some point, but otherwise, I’m done, just as it starts to rain. The weather went in and out again today – sun, then grey with a chill wind, but only a sprinkle of rain until now.

I managed to stay up till 8.30 last night, took a sleeping pill and – miracle! – slept till 7.45 this morning, so jet lag is done. Had breakfast in the hotel – ten euros, or $15, for a cup of coffee, a bowl of granola, and a croissant … hmmm. Tried to bring it up to my room to have in bed, but it’s interdit. Set off for a remarkably easy trajet to the Champs Elysees to find the bus to the Fondation Vuitton. Lineup for the bus, lineup to get in, and then there he is — Mark Rothko.

It’s a superb exhibition, surely the most exhaustive possible, from his earliest days to his last, with film and other archival materials along the way. A friend of his said he made “paragraphs of form, of shape.” Once he said of his canvasses, ‘They weigh a ton and suddenly they’re very light.” He made the huge “luminous, magisterial” canvasses for the viewer to achieve intimacy – to be absorbed in colour and shape. At first you see only two or three colours, but when you look more closely, they’re layered with many colours – nine, ten, more. You feel the artist working, can see his brush strokes, the rough edges of the squares and rectangles, his decisions and thoughts. He loved Mozart, Matisse, Turner.

Rothko was so very Jewish, preoccupied by death and ethics, once pulling out of a huge commission, as did Diego Rivera, because it would be for rich diners and didn’t meet his standards. He spoke of the emotion in the work, and sure enough, at one point, overwhelmed, I did cry. “He gave everything and was left with nothing,” said a friend of his, meaning the pared-down work of the end. I thought of Morandi – the preoccupation with the same shapes over and over, the courage of utter simplicity. But with Rothko there’s an enormity of vision. Powerful and very moving.

He did not have an easy life and committed suicide in 1970. Many of his last works are black and grey, very dark. But there were bright ones too.

Finally, went up to the terraces with their view of the vast green Bois de Boulogne and then down to have a sandwich in the café, beside an atrium where people were encouraged to lie down and enjoy contemplative music. It’s an incredible museum.

The bus back to the Champs, walked all the way down it with all the tourists as far as the Louvre, then across the Seine and up through the winding streets of the 6th to the Boul. St. Germain, over to the Boul. St. Michel which used to be my favourite place in 1964 and is still, it seems, of teenagers today. Stopped at a marvellous store, Simon Parapluies, where I bought the best umbrella many years ago. The stem gets a bit stuck now so I stopped to ask them about it, and they said to bring it in. The owner was there; her grandfather founded the store, and she’s in her eighties and still working there. I will definitely bring in my umbrella and buy a new one.

Finally, the bus back to the hotel, smuggling the wine into my room. My legs hurt, in the best way. I have observations about this city I’ll write some time. But all of it – wonderful. Merveilleux. Joyeux. So grateful to be here. Pictures:

It was market day on Boul. Port Royal, and there’s the travelling cheesemonger with his endless selection. Be still my beating heart.

The lineup outside the museum, with its luminous sail-like panels

Early Rothko, still discovering blocks of colour

Later Rothko

The resting room. More in the next post.

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nighttime in Paris, et tout va bien

A quick note to let you know – yes, I made it and am as happy as can be. Yes yes yes! How I love this city! How lucky I am to be here. All the misery of packing and preparing to leave is forgotten. Right now, I’m in a tiny hotel room in my old neighbourhood, the 5th arrondissement, le Quartier Latin, swooning with jet-lag after the long sleepless flight, so will mostly post pictures today. And sorry – the paragraphing is weird again, for some reason.

We landed half an hour late, at 10. A long line up to get my Navigo card and the metro into the city – we stopped for 20 minutes for a medical emergency but then were off, and I walked down the Boul. Port Royal to the hotel just as it started to drizzle, was in my room by 2. It was the strangest day here – chilly rain and hot sun alternating for five minutes at a time. First I had a delicious croque monsieur and café crème sitting outside on the Rue Mouffetard, one of my favourite streets in all Paris, and then went, on a sunny break, to visit the nearby Jardin des Plantes, a botanical masterpiece of a park with Paris’s natural history museum and a magnificent cherry tree. I scattered some of my father’s ashes beneath this tree years ago, so when I come to Paris, I visit him and thank him again for making sure I speak French and so feel comfortable in this glorious city. Anna who works with Indigenous elders approved of this, my first stop in Paris. “Paying your respects first is the preferred way to honour one’s ancestors,” she texted. Though it’s hard to imagine my vibrant father as an ancestor.

And then I went to the river to check – yes, there she is in the distance, Our Lady, with a new spire. I’ll visit her soon. I was here when she burned, went next morning to bear witness and mourn with the crowds. I wept twice on my first walk today, once for Dad, and once for Notre Dame.Wandered back, poking about, and was so woozy, I had to lie down for a bit. But it was lovely out, so I walked up the rue Claude Bernard, where I used to rent a friend’s little pied à terre when I visited, to the magnificent Panthéon and then to the Jardins du Luxembourg, packed with people, especially children, on this holiday Monday. And then got the #21 bus back, stopped to get some take-out Vietnamese soup to eat in my room, and got myself organized. And now to bed.Photos: plane trees for Ruth! Dad’s cherry tree. Notre Dame in the distance from the Pont d’Austerlitz. Every tree in the city has a little garden planted around it; the greenery everywhere is extraordinary. A very small, ordinary grocery store and its liquor for sale, including Veuve Clicquot. How they honour their national heroes in this country, with a humble little monument – the Panthéon. The Rue Soufflot with the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Luxembourg – these people know how to do parks; thousands strolling and sitting in the sun. Loved the little boy – surrounded by beauty, he played for 20 minutes dropping pebbles down the drain. As my grandboys loved to do.Bonne nuit!

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the joy of travel (?)

You’d think, by the time a person turns 73, they know a lot about how to live. At least, I think so. And yet, I’ve made a few monumental mistakes in the past few years.

I recently received the teacher assessments back from U of T. They’re anonymous, so students can feel free to say whatever they want. Happily, most were positive, some very much so. But of course it’s the negatives that sting. One student was so offended by a question I asked her that she says she dreaded coming to class. I was floored to read that, since in that class, no one missed a day and there was no discomfort visible. Someone else complained that I told too many stories. Too many stories? This is a class about stories, and at 73, I’m drowning in them.

Sigh. I confess, I was feeling a bit arrogant about my teaching skills. It’s my job to push students to go deeper, out of their comfort zone, and also to make the classes relevant and interesting. Many have said they appreciate just that. But it’s clear my style is not for everyone.

And last year I made a truly dreadful mistake, which I will write about one day — something that hurts deeply but about which I can do nothing. Except move on. So I’ll move on, to Paris, tonight.

Of course, though, this being me — thinking I was SOOO organized, mostly packed a week ago — there was a last minute panic. Rain predicted in Paris every day next week, and Penny wrote from England to say there’s been so much rain, there’s mud everywhere, hope you have mud-proof shoes. I do not. I have bulky waterproof hiking boots, but — not for Paris, no. So yesterday morning, a mad dash to the Eaton’s Centre, my least favourite place on earth, to see if I could find waterproof walking shoes.

I could not. I knew that. Size 10 1/2 is difficult to find at the best of times, and certainly not during a frantic last minute search. Every pair that fitted me was hideous — the Ecco pair looked like it was equipped with tractor tires for soles — and the nice ones didn’t fit. I found a perfect pair at Walk on a Cloud, but my size was at the Eglinton Town Centre, “only a 20 minute subway ride away!” said the saleswoman brightly. Not happening, thanks. Idiot that I am, I should have found and bought these shoes months ago. But then, on my travels, I’ve never had such a dire weather prediction.

I also had to buy special connecting cords for phone and computer, because of course each upgrade requires a completely differently sized end bit. Following Patrick’s instructions (“lightning to aux”), I bought the wrong ones and had to go back. Back to the Eaton Centre.

So, no shoes but the right cords — what are they for again? I forget — I collapsed at home, then got out the silicone spray and sprayed the sneakers I was already bringing and an old pair of walking shoes that are now going in. They smell of silicone, but perhaps will keep off the rain, a bit.

Across town, to take all the food in my fridge to Anna and Sam, and to read the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to the boys. And then we watched the movie. They noticed how much of the book was left out of the film, marvellous though it was, with incredible special effects -—the Hippogriff! Dinnertime at Hogwarts, with candles dancing in the air — gorgeous, all of it. But the book is so much better.

In the evening, was invited by Toronto Lynn to join other friends at a celebration of the Beatles. I’d been looking forward to it, but instead cancelled, went home, put on pyjamas, and got into bed. You know how drained I was, to cancel the Beatles!

Now, all the last minute things — preparing for the tenant who arrives tonight, to be greeted by Sam — cleaning the fridge, making his bed, watering the plants, running the dishwasher, taking out garbage and recycling, laundry, tidying, lists. This is when I feel acutely the lack of another person. I need more cat food and there’s no one to say, I’ll get it honey, you finish the kitchen. No one to say, stop fretting, Bethie, it’ll be fine.

C’est la vie. C’est ma vie.

I sit here in my dressing gown with the cat on my lap, and absolutely nothing in me, right now, wants to heave myself out of this comfortable chair and house and fly across the ocean. Nothing. But I need to do it. I need to shake myself up, after years of pandemic-induced stasis. See new things, experience another world. Good to stretch the brain, the soul.

I’ll send word from the other side.

This is from Florence, with Bruce, in 2015. A happy camper, the joy of travel. Hang onto that.

Cheers! A bientôt!

P.S. Monsieur et Madame Cardinal at the birdfeeder. Now that’s joy.

P.P.S. Just weighed my bag — under 19 pounds for almost 3 weeks in 3 major cities and the British countryside, in the rain. Plus a backpack for the computer. The bag is weighed down by all that silicone.

LOL.

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Packing, Potter, pussycats

It’s always like this the week before departure on an extended trip — frantic. The guest room bed is covered with possible clothing choices.

All is complicated because the suitcase is VERY SMALL and the weather report from Paris says rain all next week,

so suddenly I’m looking at shoes and coats differently. Should I pack a raincoat that’s heavy but will keep me relatively dry? Or the down coat that’s warm and very light but useless in the rain? And shoes, always the worst issue for my big-footed self – comfortable but stylish but waterproof – anyone?

Talk about first world problems.

I’m working through the lists – got my taxes to John, took in some jeans to be hemmed, got the key to Alanna who’s moving in mid-April, got my hair cut not my neighbour but by an actual hairdresser, Annie came for dinner yesterday to say goodbye … The audiobook will not be finished, Patrick is having computer problems, so it’ll wait.

Dear friend and neighbour Mary came over the other day for a glass or two of wine; our five children, who now have six children of their own, grew up together, so there’s always lots of catching up to do. But mostly, Mary came to pick up ten – count them, ten! – copies of Midlife Solo for her bookclub meeting in May, which I’ll attend to answer questions and chat. Heaven.

Speaking of heaven, last night, we nearly finished the Harry Potter we’re reading, #3, Ben asking intense questions about the complex plot. Again, I marvel – JK had to have it all plotted out, all seven books, before she started, and the convolutions of plot and character are mind-boggling. I am enjoying revisiting the book as much as the boys, and it gives Anna a break at bedtime. We will all miss it while I’m tramping around Europe.

I thought about my cat last night – about any pet, totally in the moment, no worrying about the future. A good way to live. British writer Muriel Spark once said, “If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp. The light from a lamp gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.”

And it is so.

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looking back, looking way back

Gifts. An envelope arrived that made my heart skip; it contained a contact sheet of resumé shots of my beloved friend Patsy, who had ALS and died by MAID a few years ago. The photographer whom I’ve never met had read my memorial to her after her death, so when he found this in his files, he sent it to me to send on to her family. How beautiful she was. She hosted my twentieth birthday party at the cabin we shared in Dead Man’s Cove outside of Halifax. How I miss you, my fierce and lovely friend.

And I received a note from Peter, my sometime piano teacher — why he puts up with someone who rarely practices, who says she has no time to practice, I don’t know, but he does. He wrote, “The other day I came across my records of piano teaching inquiries commencing in 1986. I had been profiled in the Toronto Star, and suddenly my phone was ringing off the hook with potential students. You were caller #4, sounding me out on lessons for Anna, who was turning 5 in a few months.

According to my notes: ‘Beth = very well-spoken woman, warm and refined. She says Anna is very bright, a talker. I like this mother: she only wants what is best for her daughter, didn’t want her to start too early and needs advice. Anna took eurhythmics in Ottawa with a very good teacher.’

I suggested Anna was a bit young, that we might speak again in some months, which we did, in September of 1986. My notes of that call: ‘Beth is still quite interested in piano lessons, but as much for herself now as for Anna. However, she is finishing an MA in creative writing from UBC, and can’t see her way clear for herself or Anna for maybe another year.’Wow, that was the two of us talking about music learning *28* years before I finally did meet you in 2014.”That’s when I started my very slow lessons with him, neither of us remembering our prior contact. Anna took lessons from someone else for a few years, but quit, as I, to my immense regret, had too, decades before.

At the moment, the grandchildren are not keen on music lessons. My parents were both hugely musical; my mother’s father was a village choirmaster and church organist. It makes me sad. Ah well.

I’ve been preparing for my trip to England in April by opening boxes of photos of my English relatives, and finding files online. Oh my, there’s a rich trove of material; the family tree is coming clear, and you’ll hear all about it when I’m there. School House, the thatched cottage where Mum was born, was built in the late 1600’s; she grew up with an outdoor toilet, no electricity, no hot water. Her sister Do gave me this beautiful needlepoint sampler embroidered in 1846 but wasn’t clear who Eliza Branson was. I now know: Elizabeth – Eliza – Branson was my great-great-grandmother, probably then a teenager. How thrilling is that?

I found a photo of my great-grandmother Alice’s best friend Hattie Cumberpatch, the lady in the beach chair on the left, whose little Victorian ring I wear always on my finger. Bonds with the past, with the villages of England.

Percy and Marion outside School House with Margaret, Dorothy, and on her knee my chubby mother, who weighed 10 pounds at birth and grew to be six feet tall.

All of this is so rich, so interesting. And yet I know most people have no interest at all. My children, very little. My grandsons – ha! Here are my grandsons on Saturday, on our big toboggan hill, after our biggest snowfall of the winter.

So far, not much nostalgia and contemplation there. Another world. My grandmother would have called them hellions.

I leave in a week. There are lists.

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The Nature of Love

Amazing! I did my DNA some years ago, to no surprise, well, one small one — 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, 42% British Isles, 2% Northern Germany and 6% Norwegian — that’s the surprise. Oh those rapacious Vikings! My Jewish family are from Ukraine, as most Jews from that part of the world were — had to be. But they just sent me a new breakdown, not just British Isles but exactly where. And my British ancestors all come from around … drum roll … LIVERPOOL!

Yes! The Beatles are distant relatives! No wonder I have loved them all my life. We’re family.

How do they do that? How can a bit of spit in a test-tube tell them I’m 42% from around Liverpool? Phenomenal.

The audiobook is taking shape; I’m excited about it. The stories in Midlife Solo are so personal, I think hearing them in my voice will add. There are a few places where as I read, I was close to tears. We kept those bits in.

Last night I watched The Nature of Love, an excellent Quebecois film that had a great reception at Cannes. A 40-something philosophy teacher in a longterm, fading relationship has a passionate affair with the skilled handyman fixing the couple’s country place. They seem like kindred spirits, laughing and talking and incredible, overpowering sex. On the down side, there’s the painful breakup with her ex and the tentative encounters — her with his family and he with her friends, difficult because they’re from such disparate backgrounds — before the end. The performances and script are excellent.

I’m haunted by the film today, memories of my own love obsessions, how they devoured me body and soul, as they do the protagonist. Despite the tremendous payoff in emotional and sexual gratification, I am beyond grateful that I’m past that — that flinging away of autonomy, common sense, and dignity. (I hope. I assume. I’m pretty sure. But never say never.)

We human beings are strange creatures.

Speaking of which, I just had the teacher assessment from my winter beginner’s class. Most students were satisfied, some very much so, but there was one deeply unhappy student who complained that I tell too many stories from my own life. Sigh. As I wrote about the 94-year-old memoirist I recently talked to, who had so many stories, I thought we’d be talking forever, we aged storytellers do tend to go on. What do you want — there are a lot of stories in there! But I have to say, it’s the first time in my 30 years of teaching that any student has complained about that.

Funny, all the praise through the years feels good, but the one comment that will stick in my skin forever is this one.

Can’t win ’em all. C’est la vie. Etc.

Phooey.

PS I just went to donate two Midlife Solos to the Toronto Public Library system, since they have many on order and some holds and who knows when the books will actually appear. But they cannot accept donations for the system, only for sale.

The sun is shining. It’s cold, but the sun is shining, and Canada ranks at #15 on the World Happiness Scale. How lucky are we?

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Ben and Dante and Maria Ressa

First day of spring – and it’s snowing for the first time in months! Nature is confused.

Most importantly, my younger grandson Ben. Last summer the boys were part of a free Blue Jays sports camp for inner city kids, and at the end, a few kids were chosen to attend a game and be part of an ad campaign for Jays Care. Ben of the long blonde hair was one of them. The ad campaign just came out; it’s possible he’ll be splashed on billboards and in the media. And this is a boy who detests having his picture taken. As you can plainly see. LOL. Way to go, Ben!

Last night’s treat: a doc about Dante on PBS. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know his Divine Comedy was one of the greatest works of world literature. The doc animated his journey, with Virgil, into the nine circles of hell, for sins that still resonate for us today — greed, wrath, violence. The ninth circle resonated particularly — where treasonous liars are confined, those who tell deliberate untruths to advance their own causes at the expense of everyone else, who betray the trust of loved ones or their country. Not to mention the planet. I’m overjoyed to imagine Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin joining Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and other monsters in the freezing confines of the ninth circle.

One of the commentators remarked wryly that Dante assigned his actual enemies to various circles. He was a great hater, he said. I guess I can be one too. In you go, fellas, and may you rot.

Okay, that’s hating done with for today. Tonight, the last class of the U of T term, loved them all. I had a real treat the other day with a new editing client, a 94-year-old woman of great energy; I edited her memoir and when she came here to get the edits — which were typed in a binder, not online — she had so many great stories to tell, I thought we’d be there for a long time.

Once again, I have to tell you that my book is still not available at Amazon or Indigo. I’ve given up asking the publisher why that is so. Instead I am urging readers to buy a signed, dedicated copy directly from me. And soon I’m going to the library to offer to donate some copies. Nine branches have ordered the book and there are three holds already, which is thrilling, but no books have appeared. So I’ll try to get things going. One does what one can.

I’ll also go to the library to return my copy of Maria Ressa’s How to Stand Up to a Dictator, a superb and inspiring book by an extremely brave woman who has faced and is facing endless harassment and trumped-up criminal charges in her native Philippines, a country now ruled by the son of dictator Marcos, who was apparently the leader who stole the largest amount of money ever from his country — many billions. Another stellar candidate for the ninth circle.

Sorry, still hating. I’m feeling beleaguered today. The world is too much with me.

It may be a light snowfall, but it’s not looking much like spring today. Hope the flowers make it through. Hope we do too.

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The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella

Just have to rhapsodize — what an incredible day we’ve had, a sunny 20 degrees on March 13 — so very wrong, and yet what pleasure it gives. Sam came over and we worked in the garden, pruning, raking, the kind of cleanup I usually don’t do till the end of April. The birds are going mad, flowers are pushing up — we all desperately hope there won’t be a frost or a snowfall to dampen their enthusiasm. And ours.

This afternoon I spoke with my friend Penny in Liverpool, planning our jaunt together in mid-April – Penny is going to drive me around Northamptonshire, where my English relatives were all from. Research. She says it’s cold and raining and has been for months and hopes it’s over by the time I get there. Me too, Penny.

I watched a fabulous documentary the other night on PBS: Without Precedent: the supreme life of Rosalie Abella. What an extraordinary and inspiring woman — the child of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp after the war, who worked with ceaseless dedication to become a judge on the Supreme Court of Canada. She helped to bring in the legalization of gay marriage and MAID, among many other liberal measures, effectively transforming this country for the better. And all, while in a supremely happy, mutually fulfilling, longterm marriage to Irving Abella, a writer and academic.

I told this story here a few months ago — I went to the memorial event for Peter Herrndorf, a major player in the arts in this country, a man who knew everyone. Rosalie was one of the speakers, and the best, moving, honest, funny, and very warm. After, I saw her at the gathering and went to tell her I thought her eulogy was perfect. She turned pink and beamed. “Really? You think so? I’m glad to hear it, thank you.” Imagine, a Supreme Court judge, so humble.

Highly recommended.

Yesterday I rode my bike to the bank five minutes away at Dundas and Regent Street to deposit a student’s cheque. Not long after I left, gunfire erupted on that very corner; two people were killed and one injured. If I’d gone a bit later …

Yikes!

A student who gave Midlife Solo to a friend of hers just sent the friend’s comments. Thanks to them both!

I have thoroughly enjoyed the stories. Loved the fascination with the Beatles! So many of her experiences resonate as she describes her experiences as a young woman, along with the greater understanding of her parental relationships as she ages.

Thanks again for the gift of Mid Life Solo. A truly enjoyable and funny read. Should you be aware of any further readings she may be having, I’d appreciate hearing about them.

Will do!

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