Linda Hoye's Blog, page 59

Don’t Let All Of This Make You Hard

Sometime during the night Gerry opens the door leading from our bedroom to the deck. Thanks to the cedars he removed a few weeks ago it opens on to an unobstructed view of mountain, valley, and big sky. This morning, a few clouds add interest. Pinks and blues step lightly around one another as the

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What You Need to Know

A news source puts out a summary in the morning: What you need to know. Below the headline it lists bullet points and links to more detail about each of the “must know” stories. I glance at the headlines with a critical eye. Nope. Don’t need to know any of those things. I need to

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Summer. At last.

What a beautiful week it has turned out to be. Summer finally arrived bringing with her reasonably warm temperatures and sunshine and we’ve soaked it up with Daughter and Granddaughter who are visiting. Our backyard project leaped ahead with the installation of privacy barriers where the tall cedars once stood. Now we’re moving on to

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Art

My granddaughter and I dabble with watercolor in my woman cave. It’s her first experience with the medium and, as a creative, she enjoys every new step. Mixing paint. Washing it onto wet paper and watching it bleed. Pulling tape off the edges of a finished painting. All deemed, in her words, “satisfying.” She hands

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Early Summer

It’s been a week where every day has felt like Friday so I’m relieved this morning that it’s finally arrived. It’s been a week of slow and steady, weary and wonder, doing things and letting other things go. I wish it was warmer but I remember smoky summers when forest fires ravaged our province and

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Better Work

There’s a dog sitting on my head when I wake. Maya must have been scared by the wind in the night but it’s calm outside our window now. It’s about 4:30 and starting to get light. There’s light cloud cover and not the oppressive gray we’ve been under for days. We haven’t had summer yet—or not

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This Ordinary Morning

I wake from a disturbing dream, bringing some of the burden with me, and feel the need to orient myself. It’s Thursday (though it feels like Monday after yesterday’s Canada Day holiday). The person in my dream hasn’t been in my life for decades. I have to go for blood work today. I listen to

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A Conversation About Being Busy, Broken, and Beloved

“My copy of Linda Hoye’s The Presence of Absence is studded with bookmarks so I can return to some of my favourite passages in her wonderful new book. I had to smile when she buys a new Moleskin notebook—then decides she needs a new desk to go with it! (87) I recognize myself both in

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A Day

Gerry brings home two flats of plump, sweet raspberries. I wash and crush some; cook and stir and sweeten them; fill jars with jam and set them in the water bath canner to process. It’s ridiculously cool outside for late June but in the kitchen where I work you’d never know it. While the jam

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Lean in. Lean hard.

“Do you think you’re falling into a depression around this COVID thing?” he asks. ”Yes,” I respond. But the weight is about so much more than the pandemic, and depression doesn’t fully describe what’s happening in and around me. When things get loud I tend toward quiet; these days I lean in even more to

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