parade of pleasure

A friend just emailed from Istanbul.  We hadn't been in touch for awhile, he decided to check my blog quickly before writing and ended up reading all the posts.  "It took me almost three hours," he wrote, "and now I'm too tired to write to you."

I am nauseatingly cheerful these days, in the May sunshine - is there anything better? Yesterday, one wonderful event after another, first the local Forsthia Festival with a parade of local children and Riverdale Farm bursting with tulips.  The Don Valley Parkway was closed for the day so I took a long bike ride along the DV trail, almost like being in the country when there are no cars roaring by, especially yesterday, the one day a year when canoes and kayaks go floating past on the Humber River - all this ten minutes from the heart of downtown.  

And then to my student Margaret Norquay's book launch.  Margaret is now 87 and has lost her short term memory, so her memoir "Broad is the Way" is even more a miracle and a treasure, beautifully written with humour and clarity.  I met the editor, Lisa Quinn of Wilfred Laurier Press, and introduced her to the others in Margaret's writing group, with the hopes that each will eventually have a book launch too.  

And then Wayson brought over a book and DVD that he'd just bought at a writer's conference, about the work of writing teacher Pat Sinclair.  The book is called "Writing Alone and With Others," and both Wayson and I took notes as we watched the DVD, though we teach along exactly the same lines.  "Tell me something I can't forget," she tells her students.  Here is something I will never forget: seeing Margaret's smile as she signed book after book.