peace, at last - for now

I just talked to my mother, who has finished her first day of a 4-day trial run at an upscale Ottawa retirement residence. She slept extremely well last night, has had several terrific meals, all hot and ready, has already made two friends ... it couldn't be better, so far. Ask some probing questions of the other residents, I told her. Find out what doesn't work. But for now, she is seeing the upside I hoped she would - new friends and interesting people to talk to, no worries about food buying and preparation, and nursing staff nearby 24/7.

On Monday she goes home for a week, where she'll see how she feels about being back in her 3 bedrooms and kitchen, which she'd have to forego if she moves. Then she'll try out one other place, and then - decision time. Whatever she decides, we have explored the options.

For one brief shining moment, friends, my familial worries are at rest. My children are both housed in places they like and can afford, and both have jobs they love. So already, we're ahead of the game. My mother is safe, well-fed, and chatting away to a nice German man about WW2, in which he was on one side and she was on the other and now here they are, in their eighties, in Ottawa, making friends.

Oh no. There's the black and white stray in the garden, hunting the birds. And Rob Ford is still top of the polls. My dear friend with a mass in her body is seeing a surgeon in a few weeks. And the Republican lunatics are on the rise. It's not as if there aren't a million things to worry about. But for one brief little moment, thank you O world of wonders, all of my closest loved ones are just fine. And that means I am too.

P.S. Just finished reading an excellent article on the Tea Party in this week's "Rolling Stone;" (Obama is on the cover, and I'm looking forward to reading that interview.) Journalist Matt Taibbi writes in a hilarious snappy way. "Tea Partiers aren't racists," he says. "They're just earth-shatteringly stupid, willing to believe the fantasy that white people are some sort of oppressed minority."

"At times," he writes, "their desire to withdraw from the brutally complex global economic system that is an irrevocable fact of our modern life and get back to a simpler world that no longer exists is so intense, it breaks your heart."

He marvels that the Republican Party, obliterated in 2008, has revived so quickly. They "managed to get back in the game by plucking an assortment of nativist freaks, village idiots and Internet Hitlers out of thin air and training them into a giant ball of incoherent resentment just in time for the 2010 midterms."

Yes, hilarious. But horrible, too. A giant ball of incoherent resentment is about to sink my city.