blessings on a July morning

9.10 a.m., Thursday July 24 2014: reporting in. Sitting in the kitchen looking at the garden, where I've just staked up a few toppling plants and cleaned up and filled the bird feeder. It's a fresh sunny morning, amazingly fresh considering this is Toronto in July.

And I am thinking, This is the best moment of my entire life. Right here, right now - appreciate it, girl, because life moves on. The garden is blooming, my belly is full, I am healthy, my loved ones are healthy. The bills are paid. No, there's a big one I need to pay and will do so today. My new book will probably be delivered today. The memoir, I hear via email and FB, is giving people pleasure.

Yes, on every level the world is burning, and it makes me profoundly sad. But here, in this tiny corner of the planet, there is a blessed moment of peace.

Right now.

Because I know, nothing stays the same. For now, grateful for the sun, the wind, the soil. The white butterfly settling on the lavender at this moment, the crows cawing - and, yes, the whine of Power Tool Man's saw. There he is, alive and well and as busy as ever. He's not a fly in the ointment - he IS the ointment. My 'hood.

Could I ask for more? Beside world peace and an end to hunger, cruelty and disease? Well, okay - a good review of the memoir in some very public place, that is my selfish wish. But otherwise, no, I could not ask for more. Well, okay - lifelong fulfilment and health for my children. But otherwise ...

2.30. Didn't get that posted so am finishing it now. In the mail today came a copy of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald with that great article about the memoir. So - "a good review in some very public place" - done. And as for my kids - they're grownups, and their fulfillment and health are up to them. So I can just sit here in tranquillity and watch the butterflies.

And wait impatiently for Purolator.

P.S. Just read in the Star that one of my favourite places in all Toronto, La Maison de la Presse Internationale on Yorkville, has just closed. It was heaven - a huge store full of books and magazines, especially francophone ones - where I got Paris Elle when I was dying for a fix, and literary mags too. Everyone reads online now, it says. But some of us old fogies like to hold an actual object and savour its pages. Too bad.