on not watching the big game

It's dusk; I was just outside checking the garden when I heard neighbours on all sides shrieking and groaning. Ah yes - it's the big game tonight between the Leafs and the Habs. It matters deeply, apparently. I wonder what character flaw has allowed me to escape any interest in any team, except, at one point, the Blue Jays when they were winning the World Series. For some reason it was 1 a.m. when they won; the kids and I were huddled in my bed with the TV, and we cheered and listened to the whole city erupt - honking for hours. It was wonderful. My daughter follows favourite teams and cares, which is a good thing, because her sons do too. My own son, however, does not. 

I do not understand why these sports events matter so much but they do, if not to me. Now, Alice Munro winning the Nobel Prize - there should have been thousands dancing in the streets and a ticker tape parade. 

I guess they don't have ticker tape parades any more. I'm dating myself. Again.

Today was sunny but with a chill undertone - tonight down to 5, tomorrow up to 19. Bizarre, as the weather has been for months. Tomorrow, three of my oldest friends are coming for a get-together. Long ago, Nancy White pointed out that someone - Nietzsche? - once said that women go through 3 stages: virgin, mother, and crone. Since at that point none of us were either virgins or mothers, we must be crones. Thus, Crone Power was born. Tomorrow, three Crones will be here. Nancy I've known since childhood in Nova Scotia, Terry and Annie since the early seventies when we all worked at the Canadian Conference of the Arts. We are all a tiny bit older now, and much much wiser. 

I doubt they're watching the game either, have to say. I'm reading "A swim in a pond in the rain." What a thrilling book. George Saunders for the win. He shoots, he scores!

And it's possible Anna also isn't watching. She is in deep mourning, consumed with grief and rage, with the announcement of the bodies of over 200 children found near a residential school in B.C. It's hard to countenance the extent of the murderous injustice done to Indigenous children in this country. How do we atone?