spring is nigh

Above zero! Mon dieu, what is this tropical planet? Neighbour Monique and I walked in the hot sun this afternoon to Allen Gardens's conservatory, full of fragrant spring flowers and even tropical ones. Heaven. There is hope.

Ottawa was wonderful - well, being with my old aunt Do was wonderful, I didn't see much of Ottawa. It was moving to sit with her and watch a DVD of Do, my mother and their oldest sister Margaret chatting and singing during a family reunion in 1996. I took Do and her 3 best friends, her Scrabble team, to dinner at our favourite restaurant, the Village Cafe:

Auntie Do is next to me, the Scrabble champion born April 19 1920.

Next day we had a major excursion, shopping for an electric kettle and various oddments, and then to see the new "Marigold Hotel" film. I might not have gone, having seen and enjoyed the first, but Do really wanted to see it - and it's a treat, thoroughly enjoyable if light, the perfect film to see on a cold afternoon with your 95-year old auntie. Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Penelope Wilton, the adorable Bill Nighy, and, yes, Richard Gere, who's aging beautifully - never better, any of them. Not to mention glorious Jaipur.

Tried to help Do sort out her massive piles of paper - but met much resistance, reminiscent of my mother, another great saver of paper. One day, a long time hence, there will be a huge job to do. But let's not think about that now. We did a lot of reminiscing, and I told her, once more, how important aunts are. Aunts are very, very important. Many thanks to mine.

And then back on Porter, to see this welcome sight from the ferry:

The ice breaking up! Summer is nigh.

One last thing: I was at an event at U of T and happened to see this - I hadn't realized the winners of the Excellence in Teaching award are forever immortalized on a PLAQUE. I am on a plaque. Does it get better than that?

Ten days until I depart. It's Sunday and there's no Downton - I'm bewildered.

PS Just heard from Ottawa - Do won at Scrabble today. Love those genes.

winning essay

Thanks to Kerry Clare and her "Pickle Me This" blog, which I just read to the left, I found out too late for my students that Chatelaine magazine had a competition encouraging readers to send essays. The winning one is a good personal essay, just the kind of thing we do in class. Next time, dear students, let's keep our eye on magazines and make sure you send in your best work.

Here's the winning entry:
Heidi Reimer’s winning essay about female friendship has been published in Chatelaine.

And now, off to the tropical delights of Ottawa.

Happy World Book Day!

It's World Book Day. So put down that phone, close that laptop, pick up that beautiful object made of paper and riffle through it. Feel the smooth slide of those pages, those former trees now at the service of literature. Absorb those words. Slip the book into your pocket or purse - no need to plug it in. It's just there, always waiting for you, shining in the dark. Magic. An invention we cannot live without.

Thank you Johannes Gutenberg - 1398-1468!

In other news ... not much. It's cold. I watched the last episode of "Call the Midwife" for the second time last night - Chummy's dreadful mother dies - and wept all over again. So good. And then, of course, Jon Stewart, aware that these are my precious last months with this beloved man.

Tomorrow I go for the weekend to Ottawa - balmy Ottawa - to visit dear Auntie Do, who will soon be 95 and is sounding pretty shaky. Tomorrow night I am taking her and her 3 best friends in the building to dinner. They play Scrabble every Sunday afternoon and are hot to trot. I on the other hand will slow down. Someone left a book by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh in my Little Free Library, and what I read suggests that when you focus on your breathing for meditation, you say the words "In" as you breathe in, and - you guessed it - "Out" as you breathe out.

I've been doing that. And it's amazing that suddenly, when you focus on your breath and think the words, speed decreases and things that seemed important don't any more. Try it now. Think "In" as you breathe in and "Out" as you breathe out. And suddenly there you are, a living being on the planet, aware that you, like countless other creatures, are alive.

I will be doing a lot of In and Out in Ottawa.

killed by a moose

My brother is in Florida, saying goodbye to our mother's condo. It is 84 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, he says. Here, a lovely fresh snowstorm that turned into freezing rain, thus large quantities of snow turning into large quantities of slush. Oh hooray. We love winter.

Not.

I am appalled at Benjamin Netanyahu. As I've written before, there was a time when its Jewish citizens were the vibrant and insistent social conscience of America - in fact, of every country where they lived. No more - the opposite. Many are now Republicans. Nothing worse. Very sad.

Here's your important political message for today:

So True triumphs and Mrs. Hughes finds love

So it's official - that was the coldest February on record. Hooray for us, heroic Canadians, shuffling through the snow coated in fleece - we survived. As always, I think about the pioneers, who had to find food and wood for warmth, who had no medical services, supermarkets, central heat. Their legacy is why we're so tough today.

Yesterday - our So True readings, a wonderful event, the best yet. Have heard from both audience members and participants:

Thank you for your part in the superbly honest presentations this afternoon....truly touching stories. 

I tossed my essence out into the universe at "So True," and felt that room full of people put out a hand to help me land on my feet. 

I appreciate you organizing this forum for creativity. My brother Matthew, a journalist now in NYC, responded to my invite to this event by saying he was proud of me and that he has come to believe that happiness lies in being creative, and I agree. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and the happiness which written expression evokes, whether it serves as a  cathartic exercise, a memory or a tribute. It unites us.

Thank you, amazing and powerful mentor. I hope YOU are proud of what you are doing through this inspired forum and through your work.

Yes, thank you, I am. Very very much.

And then - the Downton finale. We were going to drink champagne as we watched but were too tired. Thank God Julian Fellowes will stop torturing Bates and Anna from now on - won't he? Must we survive without Tom's sweet face? Wait a minute, isn't Tom just a bit too perfect? Mrs. Hughes and Carson - woo hoo, get it ON! The crabby Jew has a heart. A challenging man with a nice car for Lady Mary, a weedy one for Edith, and is Hugh Bonneville going to keel over? And, as my screen writer friend Suzette said - and by the way, Suzette won a Canadian Screen Award last week, BRAVA! - "The Dowager and Mrs. Crawley - the best couple on television right now."

How can we wait a whole year to meet them all again? Oh well, something to look forward to next January.

Saturday night, I was at Koerner Hall to hear the African musicians Vusi Mahlasela and Hugh Masekela celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid. They made jokes about the cold, about spending the day at the beach - ha - and then they rocked the roof off. There were many Africans of all colours in the audience; Vusi started off with a talk in Zulu, and a man in my row of the audience shouted greetings back to him. How grateful I was that night, I am every day, to live in a city as culturally diverse and as full of artists - and appreciative audiences - as Toronto.