She is sixteen years old now, verging on adulthood.  When she was born we were verging on age 60.  When she was nine months old her mother returned to work, and our daughter gave our granddaughter over to us to provide the infant with day care and lots of love.  We had her in our through-the-working-day care until she was nine years old, when her mother moved an hour's drive from our home.  When she was four we placed her in a half-day pre-school setting where we also did volunteer work.

It wasn't easy for us, looking after a vibrant, energetic little girl with a vast curiosity and a stubborn streak, but we managed.  When she was really young I would put her in a backpack child carrier when our daughter brought her over before seven in the morning and we would embark on an hour's ravine walk, then return home for breakfast.  In the winter, we would pull her through the snowpack in a deep-sided sled.

In the summer months we would take her daily to any of the many parks that helpfully dot our neighbourhood, with all the play equipment any child of imagination would enjoy playing with.  There we would see daycare givers with several children in their care, and often enough one woman would have five infants she would be looking after, and we wondered how on Earth she managed.

Imagine, we found it a challenge to look to the needs and affections of one single little girl, and there were caregivers who were looking after four times that number and more.  There is an inquest being conducted in our city at this time, in its second week of enquiry and listening to witnesses.  Last summer one daycare giver of an unlicensed daycare called some of her friends for a daycare get-together at her place.  Other daycare givers arrived with their charges.  And there were thirty children of all ages, in the company of five adults.

One woman who had five very young children in her care, along with her own children, making for seven, lost sight of a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy for a few minutes.  And, needless to say, that's how long it took for little Jeremie Audette to find his way up the stairs of an above-ground pool.  As it happened the daycare giver's nine year old daughter heard another girl exclaim, and rushed over to see what was occurring.  She recognized little Jeremie at the bottom of the pool and, a good swimmer herself, decided to "save him".  Her mother beat her to it, but even after administering CPR, and experiencing the child throwing up, nothing could save him.

The children, the distraught daycare giver testified at the enquiry, were always under "constant supervision", she was always checking on where they were.  She could not recall whether the gate to the enclosed pool had been locked or unlocked.

It doesn't take much, a moment of distraction, a busy mind looking elsewhere, intrinsic trust that all would go well.  Take the mix of five women gathering in one place, the spacious backyard of a friend and colleague, and there is much to talk about, while keeping a wary eye on the playful antics of curious, adventurous children.  In that kind of setting there is much to explore, in the mind of a child.

And then there are other types of accidents.  A prosecutor in Pittsburgh has decided not to bring criminal charges against the mother of a two-year-old little boy.  Whom she had lifted atop the railing of the Pittsburgh Zoo enclosing a cell of wild dogs so he could better see the animals below.  The child stretched himself forward and the mother lost her grip on his waist and he slipped from her grasp, falling into the pit of wild dogs below, the African painted dogs that comprised a part of the display of the zoo.

This was another "tragic accident", where instead of drowning, a child was mauled and killed by a pack of wild dogs, eleven of the animals in the pack.  Accidents happen.  People are not always alert to dangers even when the danger is a conspicuous one; their imaginations somehow fail to inform them that they are required to be particularly attentive and careful. 

The care, and the security of young children is a grave undertaking.

A few months ago I was delighted, while cleaning out the clay pots that had hosted a mini-garden of begonias throughout the summer, to prepare them for storage, to suddenly come across the spectacle of a tiny tree frog sitting on the lip of one of the pots.  Our son, a biologist, visiting with us at the time, gently lifted it off the pot and deposited it in a moist earthy place in front of the porch, well hidden by shrubs, with the hope the tiny creature would find winter haven there.

Amphibian species are in decline, and have been for years.  There are concerns that some mysterious force is leading them to mass extinction.  Scientists in many parts of the world are working to find the reason they are threatened and to somehow mitigate the threat from whatever its source.  The source may be the liberal use of artificial chemical fertilizers spread on farm fields washing eventually down into water sources, imperilling the existence of these creatures.  Each time a species is threatened or endangered it poses a risk to the overall ecosystem, since nature has designed everything she has created to be interrelated; what threatens one will eventually pose a threat to others.

 A Canadian biologist has designed a hormone mixture used successfully to breed frogs in captivity.  His protocol tricks the animals' pituitary gland to release an ovulation hormone common to all vertebrates.  He has helped the Nashville zoo to breed Eastern hellbenders, a species of salamanders cousin to Japanese and Chinese giant salamanders with a direct descent from the time dinosaurs were on Earth 65 million years ago.  The scientist, University of Ottawa biology professor Vance Trudeau, is also working with the Smithsonian in an effort to induce male Panamanian giant toads to release sperm to be frozen and used in vitro fertilization. 

And here's one way in which science discovers ways in which the study of the evolution of and the qualities endemic to certain species may be of potential benefit to humankind, quite aside from their value in the overall preservation need of all existing life on Earth.  A Mexican salamander, familiarly called a 'water monster', more scientifically known as an axolotl, has the amazing capacity to regenerate limbs.  The creature is also immune to cancer.  And the scientific community studying these qualities may yet discover some of nature's survival secrets that may be of benefit in the future to humanity.

Salk research shows that in the axolotl, a Mexican salamander, jumping genes have to be shackled or they might move around in the genomes of cells in the tissue destined to become a new limb, and disrupt the process of regeneration.
Image: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Isn't ours a wonderful world of biological diversity, one well worth being concerned about and involved in preserving...?

The Japanese used to call the winter season "cherry blossom" time due not to the emergence of spring and the celebrated blossoming of cherry trees, but the winter appearance of wood-framed, paper-screened houses heated by small kerosene burners going up in flames.  There still remains a problem in Tokyo and beyond of houses built to insecure standards creating household infernos. 

But domestic fires are not unique to any one country.  I am always amazed during the summer season when there are fires that destroy homes and sometimes kill the inhabitants through smoke inhalation if not direct contact to the fire itself as they sleep.  Homes throughout North America are directed by law to be equipped with fire and smoke alarms, but people often carelessly do not replace smoke alarm batteries or they may turn them off as nuisance noise-makers. 

And then there is the issue of pyromaniacs, people deliberately setting fires, fascinated by their deadly beauty and power.

There have regularly been many fires deliberately set in rural areas in the Ottawa Valley where barns are set afire and the animals within them sacrificed to some demented fire-absorbed moron's fascination with fire.  Yesterday, in Ottawa, a 30-year-old man who is said to have suffered from mental issues was arrested for setting fire to his wheel-chair-bound 56-year-old mother's bedroom, killing her, and imperilling the lives of many other people living in that apartment complex.

Earlier this week a fire of unknown origin consumed a three-floor building complex of modern construction in the Black Forest region of Germany, killing fourteen people.  This was a complex operated by the Catholic charity Caritas, serving people with disabilities, teaching them a trade, giving them employment.

And a few days before that, 112 people died in impoverished Bangladesh in the conflagration that overtook an eight-storey building housing a garment-producing factory whose clothing is sold throughout the wealthy West through name-brand purveyors of both inexpensive and quality wear, produced by cheap labour. 

Workers in the factory, desperate to escape the flames and the suffocating smoke found emergency doors locked, fire extinguishers inoperable, no way of escape other than by leaping to their deaths through multi-storey-high windows. 

Only now do I fully understand what those elderly women who never failed to approach me meant, when Button was young and vigorous, telling me how they enjoyed seeing her, for she reminded them of their own cherished relationship with a small, black dog that had entered their lives and changed them forever.  Their companion was long gone, but the memory of what they shared with that four-legged creature will never leave them.

And now, I am among them.

We have with us still, our toy poodle, an Apricot male, while our older miniature poodle has been absent from our lives for seven months.  Seven months of missing her presence in our lives.

Seven months in which we recall her in her younger days, as an energetic, curious little sprite who wanted to investigate everything she came across.  Seven months to remember how bold she was, how fleet of foot, how eager to please, how infused with her own personality that sometimes dictated she would not please.

We remember how in an excess of happiness with life she would race through wooded trails in an excitement of energy released, then take a running leap and end up nestled in my arms.  We remember how, as a tender puppy she trusted that the roach-back German Shepherd whose head was as large as her entire body, would gently nuzzle her, as she did him.

We remember the joy she gave us, the laughter that pealed through this house at her antics.  We remember the nineteen years and four months that she gave us, of her treasured presence.

By the calender year we've yet close to a month to go before official winter arrives.  Unofficially, although we are yet in fall, winter has arrived here.  We will not see one daytime high above the freezing mark for quite some time to come.  The wind that blows now is a wickedly icy one.  The landscape is bare of green life.

And although we've been treated to the occasional spectacle of powdery snow sifting through the air, that was just a preliminary, a dress rehearsal so to speak, for the real event.  The 'real event', as in a monstrous snowstorm of enduring quality and survival-challenge is yet on the horizon - the far one, we can hope.  But last night, when I awoke and my eyes travelled in the dark toward the window I saw that telltale symptom of snow in the pink glow that seeped into the darkness of our bedroom.

And this morning, there it was.  Roofs, gardens, the entire streetscape and everything beyond it suffused with that white blanket heralding the arrival of  nature's seasonal exterior design.  Not an absolute abundance by any means, just enough to give that general impression of what is yet to come.  A mere inch or so of snow, but it will remain in place, and it will soon enough be covered by heaps of snow advancing on the landscape in a steady progression of snow events.

It is beautiful, yes it most certainly is that.  But also it can be hazardous, even while enticing us to make of it what we will, tramping through the woods shod in cold-resistant boots, admiring the frosted overlay on coniferous trees, and driving over highways where the winter wind picks up the ambient snow and tosses it over sheer ice covering the paving creating a challenge to our memories of winter survival.

I have never been able to write longhand as fast as my mind is able to create sentences from my thoughts.  Ever since I can recall I've relied on typing - now called keyboarding with the advent of computer-driven word-processing - to capture my sequential thoughts and creative conclusions, whether writing a letter or a poem.  While my mind races through a muse-generated thought sequence, my fingers race to propel lettered keys to post my message, without hesitation.

So I was amazed to discover that someone near and dear to me and far, far younger than I am, writes all her thoughts, her school assignments, her attempts at literary conventions longhand, laboriously.  For to me that is a labour whereas keyboarding is not.  It flows as swiftly and as readily as my thoughts; almost as though my brain and my mind are creating hard copy of whatever I think.  And, in fact, that's what is happening; my brain sending synoptic messages to my fingers to interpret whatever it is my mind is creating.

I've talked about this to my granddaughter, fully sixty years younger than me.  She, like her coevals, has grown up with computers, knows them intimately, is aware how to handle programs almost instinctively, in a way I will never have comfort and complete mastery over. 

Yet she takes her thoughts and scribes them by hand, on paper.  In composing an essay it will take her hours to bit by bit assemble her thoughts - even when they're flowing as a result of much almost automatic brainwork as she has previously considered and brought to fruition her assembled thoughts - geting them all down on paper until she is finally satisfied she has concluded the process.  And then the editing.

And finally, the ultimate commitment; transcribing what she has written on say, a dozen neatly written pages, onto a word-processing document.  At the conclusion of which she will electronically transmit the finished product directly to the appropriate teacher's online site for him to consider and to grade her efforts.

Why not, I ask her, go directly to word processing?  It is more efficient; faster, by-passing the middle-passage of writing everything down by hand.  Corrections and additions and deletions are a zip.  Finalizing the product is made ever so much easier through electronics. 

But no, despite her comfort with, self-assurance and familiarity with the process, she finds it more relevant to her style to write everything out beforehand, get it all together, and then transcribe.

Confronting me with the mystery of the human mind; habit and resistance to change.

 
Tradition has its lovers.  And people love nothing quite so much as the traditions of celebration and glitter, particularly during a season of darkness, cold and gloom.  It is why, during this period, pagan pre-Christians had ceremonies to woo the gods, so human need would not be forgotten, treating themselves and those above to spectacles of bright colour and musical treats and words of grace.

Our neighbours take advantage of the days now growing increasingly scarce of weather mild enough to encourage them to go out and loop strings of lights around their homes in preparation for the celebration of the Christmas season.  Many of these displays are tastefully done and add the splendour of their bright, vibrant colour to the dark night hours, presenting a scene of human resistance against all the coping difficulties in ice, freezing rain, icefog, snow events and chill winds that nature exposes us to during the winter months leading up to the new year.

Each year enticing new products come on the market to elevate peoples' fancies to brief fantasy as a break from reality, hoping to make their displays the envy of their neighbours.  And the greater number of those items represent awkward kitsch that, unaccountably, appeals to the child in us all, invoking memories of the past, real or imagined, of happy times and good days and nights.

We can admire peoples' efforts, some worthy of admiration, without ourselves becoming involved, for these displays do not entice us; we are well outside the religion that emphasizes this period of commemoration and celebration.  We watch while our closest neighbours set up displays in their front lawn, draping lights over their large beautiful spruce tree, trailing them over the outline of the house roof, and setting up creches, plastic deer, lighted Disney-inspired forms, and more Christmas decorations than we could imagine might be crammed within a modest outdoor space.

They give themselves over wholly to this enterprise.  For them any holiday recognized as a widespread, public one is a reason to celebrate, to decorate, to busy themselves outdoing their efforts from the year before.  And every year, as winter approaches we watch as they frantically rush outdoors to set to rights the displays that the cold Arctic wind makes a shambles of, rudely disinterested in the futile attempts of humankind to impress its aesthetic values upon nature's landscape.

When we were raising our children as a very young family fifty years ago we did so in a state of genteel poverty.  We knew that our finances were stretched very tightly because that was our reality.  In a way we were in very good shape, for we owned a small bungalow, sufficient to our needs.  We found it difficult to pay the mortgages - two, a first and a second - along with taxes, utilities, food and other necessities.  Because money was scarce we lived very frugally.  In a manner that most present-day families would view as social deprivation.

But we didn't feel deprived, we felt fortunate, although a veneer of worried concern about meeting our obligations overlaid all of our day-to-day management.  At that time milk deliveries door-to-door were common, and our house had a little box at the side of the house where the milkman could leave butter, milk, eggs, bread if they were pre-ordered on time through the medium of a hastily written note left the day before in that little box.  Payment would be left within the box.  If the children ever received little gifts, a quarter-of-a-dollar, from a visiting family member for example, that would go into the milk-box.

We took the children to a family dentist.  At that time my husband's annual salary was just over $2,500; we thought if he ever hit the ceiling of $5,000 annual income we would be in really fine shape.  At that time too universal medicare was a social benefit feature of Canada; when our children were born, it was not yet a reality and we struggled to pay for the health fees.  Even though we did receive some benefits through a workplace group health plan.  A lot of time has passed from then to now.  We managed to afford somehow paying those dental fees on installments.  Our family of five got by.

Now, of course, we are in excellent financial shape.  At a time in life when we don't really need to be financially secure, as much as back then when we had three small children and the expenses involved in raising them and operating a home with all that requires, to be juggled and balanced on a very limited income.  But we did manage, somehow.  Needless to say, I stayed at home to raise our children; we had one income source.

My husband's semi-annual visit to our family dentist to get his teeth cleaned last week revealed that he had a few chipped teeth, and an old filling that needed to be renewed.  Admittedly this was the first real dental work on his teeth in years, other than regular cleaning.  The cost for a three-sided filling renewal, smoothing out the chips, and an X-ray came to over $750. 

This whopping professional fee for an hour of admittedly expert professional labour is amazing to us.  We wonder: how can families without dental insurance - which we now also have, which pays 90% of most dental procedures - pay for this needed professional service?

Traditions, conventions, habits - and marketing.  How the retail industry loves to target potential consumers, reminding them of the critical importance of buying things, consuming products that are for the most part, non-essential to their existence, but important to their inner cravings to possess. 

Acquiring things assumes great importance within human society.  It is a measure, or it has become one, of how we view ourselves.  To be current with trends, to demonstrate that we have the means with which to purchase objects of universal desire.

These cravings are played upon by the commercialization of success, measured by the ability to acquire endlessly.  It has become habitual in most societies, but it is also a deeply-seated eagerness within human beings to surround themselves with objects of beauty, objects that reflect the most recent technological advances, high-style garments and accessories, late-model vehicles, upscale houses, and everything in between.

Over a month ago Thanksgiving was celebrated in Canada.  A month later Thanksgiving is being celebrated in the United States.  It has become a peculiar tradition in the United States for Americans to rush out the day following their Thanksgiving celebrations to begin the seasonal rush to acquire gifts for Christmas-giving. 

That day, oddly enough, is labelled 'Black Friday'.  An occasion celebrated by retailers as the start of a buying season that would take them out of the red and into the fabled black of profit.




The shopping hysteria that follows started as a trend and has become an occasion.  And, like so many things emanating from the United States, it has begun to creep northward into Canada.  With all manner of retailers from big box enterprises to franchises to independent retailers blaring their advertisements for 'Black Friday'.

Ridiculous, like so much of human nature and its preoccupation with the sadly mundane.

Sometimes it becomes a challenge for the mind to take in the prospect that not everyone's conscience recognizes the same type of human emotions.  Raw humanity not far removed from their tribal bare-existence roots is capable of demonstrating a marked lack of conscience and humanity.  And the salving balm that religion is capable of providing to the faithful turns against their well-being when it is being exploited by the powerful among them.

Because human nature is so flawed in its dark swamp of emotional excesses that can be called into play through disruptions to normalcy or whatever passes for it, eclipsing the ability of the human mind to think rationally, it becomes difficult to predict how people will react.  And when people are inextricably mired in an emotional-political-religious conflict of deep tradition and gut-level  antipathies what we think of as civility and humanity is revealed as a very thin veneer.

We ask ourselves: how can people behave like that?  What kind of reaction does that reflect as far as human compassion is concerned?  When a human tragedy occurs why does it elicit such a triumphal glow within those who view those who suffer as their enemy whom a higher power has allowed them to strike down?  All religions exhort their followers to behave humanely, responsibly; to 'do unto others as they would have done to themselves'.

Israeli police officers examine a destroyed bus at the site of a bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012. A bomb ripped through an Israeli bus near the nation's military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, wounding several people, Israeli officials said. The blast came amid a weeklong Israeli offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza.

(AP Photo/Dan Balilty) (Dan Balilty)

It is explicable that people feel a rush of immediate visceral satisfaction upon hearing that some malevolent individual responsible for planning and executing mass atrocities has met his timely end.  It is infinitely less explicable that people should take it as an occasion to exult on hearing that innocent people having nothing whatever to do with the unfortunate condition that others find themselves in, are targeted for mass slaughter.

Of course this is a matter of very personal perspective sometimes.  A perspective that leads one to the opinion that people suffering under an unjust rule that brings misery to them are partially responsible for their plight, having 'elected' to rule those who run amok over their civil needs in their haste to inflict injury over a neighbour, bringing calamity down upon those they purport to represent, by using them as human shields.

He's been a neighbour and a warmly casual friend for over twenty years.  Much has changed in his life during those years.  He went from a family man with two pre-teen boys and a beautiful young wife to a lonely bachelor in the later years, older but not much wiser when it came to women.  He always had a roving eye; behind that twinkle was an irrepressible Lothario.

His only company now in his large home is a little stray cat he adopted.  He'd never had much interest in a companion pet throughout his life, but he is now devoted to the little cat.  When he embarks on one of this twice-yearly adventures he invites his sister, who lives in Montreal, to stay over at his house to look after the little cat.

On his return from this trip, a month-long trip to Israel and Jordan, areas of the world he has visited on previous occasions, particularly Egypt, he enthused about the number of photographs he had taken, close to two thousand.  He loved this trip.  Of course, he enjoys all the trips he takes, everywhere he goes around the world.  He has the means to indulge himself, and feels to do otherwise would be a waste of opportunity.  He's not yet 70, in fairly good physical shape, because he's always been actively involved in life's opportunities.

And he keeps urging us to make a date with him, to go over to his place so he can give us a slideshow of his latest trip.  Petra was fascinating, he tells us, but Jordan seemed like a great, empty desert with relatively little human habitation compared to Israel which, everywhere he went, in every corner of that tiny country, teemed with life, enthusiasm, colour, culture and history.  He enjoyed the people he met there, thought them to be friendly and outgoing, like himself, and he plans to return.

In the several weeks since his return from the dramatic theatre in the cradle of world religion, great turmoil has broken out.  Just as well he returned when he did.

Act in haste, repent at leisure.  And nowhere is that axiom as true as when we betray the trust of those who love us.  In the most elemental of ways, the struggle and emotional thrusts and compacts we forge among the genders.  It is as though despite our best intentions and confounding our deep-seated values we are irresistibly drawn to the siren call of illicit sex.

There seem to be no boundaries that cannot be breached because of human frailties, our inabilities to control and discipline our impulses to satisfy the demands of sexual cravings.  Not that everyone is afflicted and assailed by this primeval-survival mechanism to ensure the human race continues. 

But few appear to be immune to submitting to that urge, from a world-famous surgeon who seeks out prostitutes, to a housebound woman who goes out of her way to attract attention from the casual serviceman who calls at her door.

Infidelity infiltrates society to a level we don't quite fathom, although we tacitly acknowledge its influence. 

In the years of living on this street where our home is located I have observed without really noting its amazing prevalence; one marriage after another collapsing under the weight of grief caused by marital infidelity.  Marriages that include families of very young children, high-school-age children, and childless unions alike.

My mind just happened to take a trip up and down this street and I was incredulous when I recalled what had occurred to one stable relationship after another. 

The sheer number on an ordinary middle-class street where lust, emotional dysfunction, overheated hormones, curiosity, defiance of social convention - whatever - caused one partner to go astray and in the process destroy the trust of the other through a repeated act of infidelity.

It is a personal emotional convulsion from which many people never truly recover.  It is an affliction of the human psyche.  It is a tragedy that has far-reaching consequences in the trauma it causes to the minds of those involved, particularly the children of such broken marriages.

When I was filling up the bag I carry along with us when we have our ravine walks, I peered into the large tin container that houses them to see a few tiny white larvae in among the peanuts.  These were the peanuts that were at the bottom of the last fifty-pound bag we had bought.  These were second-rate peanuts.  They were industrial-grade in the sense that they were not inspected for human consumption nor meant for that purpose.  They were meant to feed wildlife, and that's what we used them for.

But never before had we come away with tiny, stunted peanuts which had been infested with moths.  We'd had to take that large bag out into one of our backyard garden sheds for storage, and fill up that tin container from there, to ensure we would get no moth infestation in the house, in the kitchen cupboards particuolarly. 

We decided we would go elsewhere in future to stock up on peanuts.  A few places my husband called admitted they too had a problem with moths.  We'd paid a premium price for that last bag; 15% higher than the last, excellent bag we'd procured from the same dealer.

This time we went in a different geographic direction; south-west of the city, to another small rural town where on enquiry we were informed there was one intact 50-lb bag left in their inventory and we could come along and pick it up.  It was priced 15% lower than what we last paid, and the peanuts were a far more generous size.  Moreover, they were packed in a polypropylene tight-weave fabric, unlike the wide-mesh plastic that the infested peanuts were packed into.

It was a lovely drive to get there, the sky a mix of sun and cloud.  Beside the highway in a relatively short stretch we saw some distance apart from one another no fewer than three red-tailed hawks sitting in trees.  There were frequent bursts of Canada geese rising from plowed fields, heading over toward the Ottawa River.  And we had achieved our mission to re-stock with peanuts to offer to our grey, black and red squirrel population in the ravine.

We'd feel stricken with guilt if we entered there without ample peanut offerings for the many who search out the usual cache-spots daily, and even more so because of the number of truly bold and trusting ones that rush over when they see us, eagerly dancing before us in their anxiety to fulfill their fall mission of acquiring a store of over-wintering sustenance.

The bottom crust of the cheesecake was baking in the convection oven; comprised of graham cracker crumbs, Becel margarine, cinnamon and a dollop of brown sugar.  I was prepared, when I withdrew it from the oven, to sprinkle the crust lightly with white chocolate chips I had at the ready.

In the interim, I mixed the cream cheese, eggs, sour cream until it was all smooth and fluffy, adding granulated sugar, and, I thought, why not something a little different this time.  Instead of vanilla or grated lemon rind, how about lime juice to give it a bit of an exotic pick-up?

I had a small bottle of lime juice in the refrigerator.  It had been there an awfully long time for I hadn't much call to use it often.  As I squirted the first bit of lime juice and integrated it into the cream-cheese mixture, I thought, just a little more.  I shook up the bottle and released an additional amount.  And as I did, I noted a small bit of brown fall from the lip of the bottle into the cheese mixture, as I was still mixing it.

Uh-oh, I thought.  I removed the cap of the lime juice bottle and spilled the contents into the kitchen sink and sure enough there were brown clusters populating the lime juice.  Obviously, the product, too long in the tooth as it were, was compromised, colonized by mould, at the very least.  I struggled with that knowledge; should I, to be careful, junk this project?  I tentatively tasted what remained of the clear liquid and it seemed fine.

Withdrawing the pie crust from the oven I poured over it the chips, then the river of thick, white, aromatic cream cheese mixture and set it to bake in a low-heat oven, while I combined sugar, cornstarch, cranberry juice and frozen raspberries to prepare a glazed fruit topping to be applied once the cheesecake had been removed, fully baked.

I thought later; was I being reckless, might the lime juice have been so corrupted as to present a health challenge?  Later that evening, as we ate the cheesecake for dessert after our meal, I marvelled at its delectable mixture of flavours - smooth texture, moderately sweet and yet naughtily piquant - a perfect cheesecake.

These are very cold nights with the temperature dipping well below the freezing mark.  When we wake in the morning, the roofs are covered with hoar frost.  And though the day warms up as the hours progress, it does not become significantly warmer; ice crystals remain intact wherever there is standing water.  Despite which, our toy poodle Riley is still anxious to be allowed outside to loll about soaking up the sun.  As long as he wears a coat and can lie on a dry surface he will remain there, enjoying the sun for hours at a stretch. 

He is a little dog that has always felt the cold.  As soon as September turns the corner following summer, he begins to shiver, and as a result a succession of little coats of varying degrees of warmth begin to comfort him from fall into winter and finally spring.  Our backyard enjoys quite a bit of sun, and the micro-climate there is amazingly different from the surrounding area, say at the front of the house.  If there's no wind and it's a sunny day it's a comfortable place in the cold months, but a sizzling hot-box in the warm months.

Yesterday, because it was both sunny and lacking wind I took the opportunity to finally cap off the closing up of the garden in expectation of snow and ice soon covering everything.  There wasn't much left to be done; taking down and discarding the vines, clematis and more exotic ones that will or will not renew themselves in the spring.  And finally cutting back the roses (not the climbing roses or the winter-resilient Explorer series roses) and capping them with snow cones.  Tidying up a bit more, and sheltering some garden ornaments in the garden shed.

And the work is finally done.  When we went out soon afterward for our daily ravine ramble we found the trails exceedingly muddy; the freeze-and-thaw of temperature changes always results in those conditions, we've found, over the years.  Although we could feel underfoot in many places that the incremental issue of the ground freezing has begun, and is quite obviously irreversible, until its release in spring.

Our granddaughter is furious at the practical uselessness of her otherwise-excellent high school's two resident guidance counsellors.  While posing as authoritative and putatively informative career mentors, she claims, they never listen but seem to do their best to ignore students' own choices. 

She has informed her guidance counsellor on numerous occasions that she plans to study law in university.  She has informed him consistently of her personal choice in universities. He sets this all aside, as though with a concerted effort on his part to guide her away from what has been her years of aspiration, to have her accept the values that inspired him personally. 

And that seems to be summed up in his insistence that small, regional colleges can confer greater opportunities to students than those she has chosen for their reputations as first-rate academic institutions to study law, and that with a degree from one of these rural, regional colleges, she can then return to the small town in which her high school is located, to pursue her career.

This is a path for the future that makes her shudder.  It's her intention to put as much distance as she can possibly manage between herself, her career and that town.  Her aspirations lie elsewhere.  She is not fundamentally attracted to small town life, and that's not surprising, since her earlier life experiences were within the far-flung suburbs of a large city.

Her guidance counsellor rates universities by the accessibility of their websites; the simpler the better; the more sophisticated they are, the more out to sea he is with them, incapable of accessing information required to fully inform the students who are assigned to him.  Our granddaughter spent a good deal of her time on her last appointment with him guiding him through the technical process of accessing data at the universities she is interested in.

She pressed him to assist her in accessing information on scholarships and applications thereto, reasoning that in his professional capacity he would be well endowed with such knowledge to pass on to his students.  But he turned out to be a wealth of disinterest and had no such data to impart to her. 

She is now resigned to the fact that her busy homework schedule must of necessity include the need to do her own sleuthing on these fronts.

Her mid-term grade 11 marks which she worked so hard to achieve and which puts her in the top percentile of her class were to him "acceptable", an oblique statement with little meaning to her, and a true deflator of expectations.

Surely it was just strangely coincidental, but then on the other hand, perhaps there exists a real reason why people view the conjunction of date and time with such dread when it comes to Friday the thirteenth.  For us, the thirteenth of Friday, in April of the year 2012 represented a very nasty occasion.  It was that evening when our little black miniature poodle experienced a series of dreadful seizures, the force of which twisted her body into impossible shapes, repeatedly thrusting her into the air with electrifying contortions under my husband's horrified eyes.

Later, when I held her trying to comfort her a strange, low-pitched sound of confused pain emanated from her.  She seemed dazed, as though she didn't know what had happened to her.  People undergoing epileptic or other neurological seizures have no memory afterward of what they had experienced.  We have no reason to believe that Button's mind held any memory of her body's explosive convulsions.  But she was clearly experiencing the aftershock, and there was fear there, too.  I held her, spoke quietly to her and eventually she calmed down and became slackly comfortable in my arms.

I did this while my husband was frantically calling around to the 24-hour-emergency medical centre downtown to explain what had occurred.  They, of course, invited us to bring her right over.  It was close to midnight.  At the emergency centre we sat restively concerned while the single veterinarian on duty administered to a cat whom the owner was not certain would ever emerge from the examination, preparing herself mentally to leave the premises with an empty cat box.  I sympathized wholly with her and gave her what little comfort one stranger can render to another.  Little realizing that we would ourselves be placed in the very same situation.

In the end, the cat emerged, and its happy owner was able to return home with her beloved pet.  Under instructions to monitor her condition carefully.

We were puzzled when the veterinarian sent word back with one of her assistants that she could administer some drug to prevent any further immediate convulsions, not fully understanding the purport of the message, and declined.  We waited there for an hour or so, and by that time it was the following day, April 14. 

And we left the premises, on April 14 with one little dog, not the two that we had arrived with.  The little companion that had been by our side for nineteen years and four months was left behind; that was the last day of her life.

It has been seven months since that time, and we continue to find it difficult to cope with her absence.  During our scheduled appointment with our own veterinarian for our toy poodle Riley's annual check-up my husband, who was finding it even more difficult than I did to manage that empty place in our lives, spoke to him about his guilt and sorrow.  He had done everything conceivably possible to extend her life, from administering monthly an oral antibiotic regimen to avoid the recurrence of a dreadfully painful infection that had threatened her life two years previously, to blind-proofing our house to accommodate the still-energetic rambles of a blind nineteen-year-old dog with most of her faculties intact.

The veterinarian knew and recognized the symptoms that he said were serious and needed to be dealt with; an unwillingness to let go of a situation that no power could prevent.  In his twenty years of practise, he could count on the fingers of one hand any dogs that had lived to Button's age.  It was time for her; her heart was giving out, and neurological symptoms of the body winding down its functions impossible to ignore.

His clinching argument was to describe the pain and fear that Button would be certain to experience with another attack such as the one my husband had witnessed, and the fear and anxiety that would assail us as we frantically tried to reach the emergency clinic again, unable this time to comfort a dog whose time had come. 

It helped.  Immeasurably.

Six months ago I made an appointment with my dentist's office to return again in six months' time for another cleaning.  The dental technicians always complain that I'm waiting too long between cleanings; while I have always felt that once during the course of the year is more than sufficient.  Their argument is that a year allows plaque to build up to a state where it's difficult for them to remove it.

Dental hygiene has always been important to us.  And we've flossed our teeth and brushed them faithfully for a lifetime.  At our age, the dentist tells us, we want to save our teeth by careful maintenance, for as long as we can, for trouble-free use into our old age.  Of course, we have moved into our old age, though it's difficult to believe.  Sometimes we feel we're still young, other times not-so-much.

Like today, and yesterday, for example.  Yesterday I did my usual whirlwind caper through our house with its three floors of living space, to do the once-a-week cleaning routine.  The protocol is: kitchen clean-up from breakfast, then quick attention to the bathrooms and from there the infinitely more lengthy process of dusting furniture and all the things we treasure set atop that furniture.  Then dry-mopping the hardwood floors, and from there vaccuuming the rugs, until finally the concluding process of washing the kitchen, the breakfast room, the foyer, the laundry room and the main bathroom floors has been done.  The latter is a breeze; dusting furniture is a drag.

And from there - why, freedom to go out to the ravine for an afternoon walk.  Usually a few minutes after three sees us in there.  And yesterday's walk was interesting for its weather; our area broke its previous record of warmth for this time of year, topping out at 18-degrees Celsius.  This morning, while having our breakfast, we watched ruefully as a snow-and-ice-pellet shower blanketed the deck with white.  But soon the sun came out under 3-degree skies, and melted it all.

The thing of it is, it was a difficult walk.  I felt devoid of energy, extremely tired, sneezed incessantly, and just as frequently blew my nose.  I was in full-throttle cold-mode.  Rare for me, since I don't often get colds.  All of my muscles ached and I felt inordinately tired.  Although I feel slightly better today, no chills and fever, I didn't think the dental technician would appreciate peering into a mouth harbouring cold germs.

So my husband will be off this afternoon to take my place for that appointment.  And my own will be re-set for several weeks' hence.

Several weeks ago when we were at the stained glass shop, they were in the process of moving back to their old refurbished storefront in the same mall where they were temporarily installed in the aftermath of an unfortunate fire on the premises.  Part of their celebration of a trial completed was to have a draw for their customers and they insisted that my husband take part in it.  He was reluctant to do so, saying he didn't want to deprive anyone else of possibly winning something.  The owners, however, insisted, and my husband duly filled out the requisite form and deposited it in the box.

When we arrived home after the fairly long drive from the glass shop to our home, there was a telephone message awaiting us.  To the effect that my husband had 'won' the major prize, a glass-cutting device.  A device my husband has long owned, and treasured. Although his has ample life left in it, his is becoming worn, and he thought that was an amazing thing to happen, winning a new one. 

This week-end he drove back to the glass shop to pick up his prize.  An exact copy, though spanking new, of the device he has used for many years.  And he brought with him a little gift for those working at the shop, a large box of chocolates.  They were as surprised to be gifted with the chocolates as my husband had been to receive that telephone message informing him he had won that draw prize.

In collecting the prize, he selected a few more pieces of glass to supplement the materials he's currently working on in producing yet more stained glass windows for our home.  And, as he thanked the owners of the shop for his prize, he wryly said that he no longer intends to buy his yearly Lottery ticket; this win would more than suffice.

There were the dignitaries, the politicians, the representatives of the executive branch, the veterans with their sad, rheumy eyes and thousands of spectators come to pay their respects on this Remembrance Day, 11/11/12 under overcast skies after a night of full-throng rain.  It was cold, that much was evident by the manner in which everyone was bundled against the chill wind and the dank November day.  Another hour and the proceedings would have taken place in sunshine.

There was the traditional 21-gun salute, as the cannon went off behind and above the ceremony before the war memorial, and there were fly-bys, the sound of the planes' ascent and by-pass roaring into the atmosphere above the solemn crowd below.  The prime minister was not present this day; in his place stood the Senate's majority leader.  He attended a like ceremony on a visit abroad, in Hong Kong before a memorial to the hundreds of Canadians who fell in that theatre of war. 

And the governor general, wearing his naval uniform of younger days and war disposition was there to render his regal presence to the occasion, representing the British monarchy, with Canada part of the Commonwealth nations where such ceremonies would be repeated through geographies far from this one.

It was a colourful spectacle, as it always is, nuanced with the children's choir singing hymns to the fallen and the human condition under an omniscient presence.  A lone bagpiper, furiously blowing that beast of an instrument, morosely, sadly that sound that many detest and many others honour.  The last post was heard, and the laying of the wreaths in memory of the military war dead commemorated for theirs was the ultimate sacrifice.

In marching to war to defend the values of liberty and freedom from an oppressive tyranny that sought to impose its own values on the greater world community this is the expression of appreciation of ordinary citizens and former military, and the body politic.

The gravity of this memorializing should never take away from the reality of the deaths of countless millions of civilians who died throughout the course of those wars that we remember.  The men, women and children, the elderly and the young, the able-bodied and the chronically disabled, for whom the destructive path of war spelled misery and death in their forced sacrifice to the flawed condition of human nature.

That hoary old memory was just one of many we shared, of our childhood.  It was one that my husband on the rare occasion brought up in reference to working experiences, not the most fond of memories since both of us were dispatched at a very young age by parents whose own experience was that of going out to work when most young people in the West still were happily mired in childhood.  We had both experienced factory work from the age of 13 upward.

But this memory of my husband's, as a young boy who had spent winter months playing ice hockey on the streets of inner-city Toronto, was a different one, in a sense.  He had applied during the summer holidays, for temporary work at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, for a well-known smoked meat entrepreneur who had a few busy stands there during exhibition time. 

And he was starry-eyed with exuberant disbelief to be working under the management of one of his youthful heroes, a player with the Toronto Maple Leafs.  And then reality struck; long hours, a busy work schedule, little relief from nose to the grindstone and the appealing opportunities to sneak a slice of meat or a pickle, anything to satisfy the cravings of a growing young body viewing others making off with smoked-meat-stuffed sandwiches while he felt he was starving to death.

All the young boys were adequately forewarned - no freebies allowed - and they all took care to ensure that no one saw them appropriate a slice here or there.  Perhaps he was incapable of really surreptitiously helping himself.  He can recall momentarily slipping beneath the booth counters to stuff a pickle in his mouth, and feeling a heavy hand smack his back, move to his shoulder and drag him out from under the counter.

His supervisor, who had somehow transmogrified from a heroic celebrity to a hard taskmaster, eyed him grimly, warning him yet again that this would be the last time; next time he dared sneak so much as a piece of pickle, a slice of smoked meat - would be his absolute last. 

And, then, over 60 years later while waiting for his car to be winterized at a local shop, he picked up a copy of a tabloid newspaper and read an article, lauding the background of the oldest living Toronto Maple Leaf player, still holding his own at age 92. 

Looking back at him was the photograph of an aged man within whose wasted grey countenance he could make out the features of the robust young man who had once terrified him.

By happenstance, though we see him regularly but not often, we came across the large, bluff young man whose mother before him used to walk in the ravine with her black poodle.  His two young terrier-blend dogs whose good nature and inquisitiveness and focus on stalking the squirrel population in the ravine never fails to entertain were busy ahead of him, he approaching at a human pace, with his great strides.

My husband mentioned yesterday's incident with the fire set on a hillside of the ravine, and he knew instantly of what we were speaking.  It was his detachment that had responded, though he had been assigned another unit, security.  Word gets around, however.  And though we had the perspective of having been there, and been a part of the little drama that ensued, he had the inside story of what the responding firemen and subsequent police presence discovered.

The young man who had hidden himself in a copse of woods alongside the fire and who had jumped out at my husband, taken him aback at his presence, mostly because he was not a youth but a full-grown man obviously having set the fire in a vulnerable area, had been fully inebriated by the time the firemen investigated where I directed them to.  It was, as I had guessed, they who had called in the police who took the young man into custody.

It's doubtful he will be charged with anything but mischief.  He lives locally, they determined, and his crisis stemmed from the fact that his parents had ordered him out of the house, where he lived with them.  At age 25 it is not uncommon for young people to be expected to stride out usefully in the world, fully independent of their parents.  Particularly at an age when their social values likely diverge hugely from their parents'.

He was feeling pretty sorry for himself.  No one will ever really know - until and unless he has a desire to divulge the incident and his subsequent emotions - exactly what propelled this family crisis, but as our young friend commented, everyone goes through them in their lifetime, whether it's an intimate partnership breakup or an illness or a familial estrangement. 

He was taken into custody as much for his own safety, as for that of the community following on his stupid act that could have threatened a local impact on our near environment.

As we descended the long hill into the ravine from the top of our street I thought vaguely there was an odour of wood burning, but thought little of it.  It was a very cold day, bright on the street above in the sun, but exceedingly chill within the embrace of the forested ravine.  The chill wind zipped through the unleafed trees, offering little shelter from its icy fingers.

A woman with a frisky young boxer whom we'd seen before occasionally spoke to my husband, telling him that it seemed from what she could discern that a boy somewhere behind us in the ravine and across the creek had made a bonfire.  We weren't too concerned; due to quite a lot of rain the woods were fairly wet still and the ground covered with desiccated, wet leaves. 

On our return over an hour later, as we prepared this time to ascend that same hill to our street, we crossed over the last bridge leading to the hill and saw from its vantage point smoke rising high in a pocket of trees on the hillside.  We bypassed the ascent temporarily and continued along a part of the trail we usually avoid because it tends to be a short muddy passage where people have slipped and slid off the bank into the creek.  From there we could see where the smoke was emanating from, and as we looked at what appeared to be a smudge fire, a sudden fat flame leaped about four feet into the air, then settled back again.

My husband crossed the creek at a narrow point, availed himself of part of a broken branch and pulled himself up the steep bank with some difficulty, making for the area of the smoke with the intention of putting out whatever remained of the fire.  When he arrived at the fire and began whacking the embers that now and again resurrected the fierceness of the fire, he was suddenly startled when a figure raised itself from a nearby copse of woods.  There sat a young man with a thin beard and mustache swigging from a flask of alcohol.

My husband shouted at him that he was an idiot, and the young man protested that he was in the process of putting the fire out.  And it was evident he had done something; placed a large damp-looking conifer bough that had obviously lain on the forest floor for some time, over his fire.

Leaving the scene and making his way with some difficulty back to a bridge where he could re-cross over to our side, we finally went home.  And from there spoke to the fire department to alert them to a possible problem.  The receptionist to whom I spoke took all particulars.  I spoke in a manner to minimize the danger of the fire combusting given environmental circumstances, and she said she would just dispatch an individual to check things out, foregoing a fire truck.

A short time later three firemen appeared at our door, fully professionally garbed.  I described the situation (my husband no longer home, gone out for an appointment) and the location in some detail.  When my husband some time later returned from his appointment he saw two police squad cars, a fire truck with a dozen firemen at the trailhead to the ravine, along with the man whom he had encountered on the ravine hillside sprawled over the trunk of one of the police vehicles.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, taller and huskier than the police who stood beside him.  He appeared not the least bit disconcerted, with an impervious smirk plastered on his inebriated face.  My husband stopped briefly and spoke to the police; they said they had the matter under control.  Whatever that was, whatever it meant.

And we wondered, later, what might have propelled a young man decently dressed, to hive himself off on the side of a hill difficult to access, seeking privacy, drinking himself insensible, yet building a fire in a fire-vulnerable area where the fire itself would bring notice to his presence.

 Another of society's lost souls, or simply yet another cretinous idiot insulting society's values?

I was dreading yesterday's appointment for little Riley's annual health check.  There aren't any real outstanding issues with his health, but there is always the presence of those lipomas.  They grow to a considerable size on his little body.  He's a toy poodle, after all, and not a very large dog.  Once, years ago, we agreed to surgery to remove the two that were then present.  The surgeon assured us that it was his professional opinion after many years of surgery and observation that our problems were over; lipomas would not return.

We know better now.  At least with our little Riley.  For the lipomas did return and became more numerous.  As we pointed out to his veterinarian, the one he had on his upper chest which had been a considerable size, has since been re-absorbed and he can see that from the obvious 'stretch' marks on the skin there, something that quite amazes him as he says he's never heard of that happening.  I did note that a few years back those he had on his haunch and stomach had also receded significantly.  They have since returned to full size.  Sometimes the skin seems loose over them and sometimes it feels fully packed.  They concern us enormously.  We would preferably like to refrain from further surgery on the little guy.

Otherwise, he's in fine fettle, very good health for a twelve-year-old.  Heart in good condition, and lungs, and his diet is good and his exercise regimen as well.  His weight and body conformation are excellent, said the vet.  I discussed his diet, explaining the extras given him beyond his normal canine diet.  Daily vegetable salad, a teaspoon of kefir, and small bowls of clear chicken soup accompanying his two daily meals because he tends not to want to drink water.  He often gets small amounts of scrambled egg at breakfast time.

He isn't anxious to be out for our daily rambles in the ravine, but he is resigned to them, so he manages to get in an hour, hour-and-a-half exercise walk, up and down the hills of our nearby woodland ravine.  But he is absorbed, on sunny days - even days like this morning when the temperature has barely inched above freezing, to be outdoors soaking in the warmth of the sun.  We keep an eye on his comfort, dressing him in a little coat for warmth.

 

 Dark Summit

Death from hypoxic hypothermia comes slow.  In the beginning, hands and feet begin to tingle and throb, then ache as if squeezed by a slowly closing vise.  Speech slurs.  Balance slips.  As the brain starves and swells, you're gripped by persistent dementia.  During the 1933 Fourth British Expedition, Frank Smythe, a writer and photographer, imagined pulsating teapots floating in the air at 28,000 feet.  Maurice Wilson, the Brit who made an ill-fated fatal solo attempt to ascend the Northeast Ridge in 1934, described sensing a benevolent presence with him as he withered on the mountain.  In 1996, during the lethal May 10 storm, Sandy Hill Pittman, a New York socialite, thought that she was at a garden tea party listening to Beck Weathers play a flute.  In truth, they were both trapped on the South Col, desperately trying to stay alive.

As the deep cold intrudes, nerve endings go numb and the pain recedes as circulation retreats toward the core.  Often, ironically, it is around this point where freezing feels like being tossed into a furnace.  Victims tear at their clothes, throw away gloves and hats, and frantically unzip their parkas, accelerating the slide.  Flesh farthest from the heart -- toes, fingers, nose, cheeks -- freezes first, death advancing from the perimeter.  Skin turns pale with frostnip, white during the full throes of frostbite, red and purple with chilblains and blisters, and ultimately black with gangrene - cellular necrosis, doctors call it, the point at which living tissue is permanently destroyed.

In the final stages, limbs become insensate and immobile, freezing into place as your body shunts blood toward the lungs and heart, trying to preserve the vital organs.  Vision blurs and darkens.  Involuntary shivering ensues, a last-ditch attempt to generate heat through movement.  Your mind swirls deeper into the subconscious, a deep dream state.  A few who have returned from the brink of hypothermic oblivion have recounted their last conscious moments as almost pleasurable.  "You really do start feeling warmer," Weathers wrote in his memoir Left for Dead.  "I had a sense of floating.  I wondered if someone was dragging me across the ice." 

The end arrives a few hours later, quietly, in the dark waters of unconsciousness.  Your blood runs chilled; most brain activity has ceased.  The heartbeat slows, fluttering erratically, a wounded bird.  This action might continue for a while, the vessel destroyed by the encroaching cold while the heart presses courageously on.  At last the pump shuts down, and with that the limited circulation ceases.  Internally, there is perfect stillness, equilibrium returning between a delicately calibrated but dissonant energy field in the form of a man and the larger energy field around him --- the mountain, the air.  The only movement now is wind, ice crystals skittering over rock and snow, a jacket flap rustling, a clump of hair, stiff with rime, flicking across the forehead.

Dark Summit, The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season  by Nick Heil, 2008

November, the least attractive of all months in the yearly calendar.  The clock has now been turned back to Daylight Saving Time and it's a dreaded occasion.  Heaven knows why we persist; who does it now benefit to have dusk fall at half-past four in the afternoon, and dark swiftly descend, giving us much briefer days of light?  The old reasons of earlier daylight hours benefiting farming communities makes little sense at a time when we are hugely urbanized.

November, when we rake up the last of the falls of deciduous leaves off our lawn, blowing over from neighbours' trees, as ours are all conifers.  Not that conifers don't themselves shed, for pines most certainly do, continually, and pine needles along with the hardwood trees' leaves require the last raking before snow covers the ground.

November, when the car has to be rust-proofed for another season of salting icy roads to protect against numerous winter-driving accidents.  And the cars have to undergo their seasonal tire change from all-weather tires to ice tires.  And the snow throwers and snow blowers have to be brought up to mechanical snuff for imminent use.  And the shovels have to be placed in easily accessible range of quick need from unexpected snowstorms.

November, when my husband suddenly remembered we have a dental appointment at some time during the month.  And, a few moments after that recollection as we were preparing to exit the house I pulled on a jacket I hadn't worn for months, reached inside one of the pockets and withdrew a card.  Without my glasses on I couldn't read it, so I just set it aside on the counter, and my husband, passing, realized it was a card from our dentist's office, with all the details of our forthcoming November appointment.

November.

Although we see increasing numbers of southbound flying flocks of Canada geese leaving for the winter months to find solace in climates more forgiving than ours during the coming cold, there are still ample numbers remaining, alongside the Ottawa River.  We saw them, yesterday, lifting off from the river, and sprawled in numbers on the parkland beside it, as well as at the meadows of the RCMP's horse farm on the Eastern Parkway.

It was a cold, blustery day, heavily overcast, the waters of the river dark and choppy, with plenty of whitecaps.  Not what one might describe as a particularly weather-clement day, and not one when one might necessarily choose to set one's canoe down on a lake in the area.

Only a few weeks previously, while driving along the same route trees still had their foliage in fair abundance, with white fluffed clouds sailing along a mostly clear sky, the sun warming the atmosphere unseasonably.  That has changed dramatically.

The Parliament buildings are undergoing long-term and costly renovations, badly needed, to ensure they remain useful for a long time to come.  Parts of them are shrouded in immense tarps to protect workers engaged in reconstruction.  And doubtless to prevent detritus from falling below with the potential to injure.

Despite which there are still crowds of people - albeit more modest in numbers - ambling about the Hill, enjoying the opportunity to get out and about, despite November's cold and wind.

I've no idea why the store was so crowded, I've never before seen so many people at that supermarket, nor the lengthy line-ups at the check-out counters.  I decided to line up behind a couple with a shopping cart carrying a handful of selections; obviously the express check-out was too full in their estimation.  I soon regretted that decision. 

She was a large-boned, heavy woman, in her mid-40s, with short black hair and a disagreeable expression on her face.  He, somewhat older, had his face long set in a permanent expression of disdain, and I noted a superior smirk of derision pass over it as he watched an elderly woman's indecision of which check-out aisle looked most promising. Parked with my cart directly behind the pair I represented a coeval of that elderly woman.

The young woman of the pair reached over to a nearby rack for a style magazine and began flipping through it, as her companion minded the cart with its handful of foodstuffs, a canvass bag hanging from one arm.  At last the line moved forward, as people packed their food at the conclusion of the check-out procedure, having paid the cashier.  As the man unloaded their selections on the check-out belt, his companion leaned forward on the counter, flipping the magazine pages, eyes riveted on the styles. 

This is a large supermarket, one where the staff doesn't pack for the customers who must do that on their own, and people are accustomed to each successive customer taking the initiative to speedily take charge of their own transactions, clearing the way for the next person in line.  As the open area of the moving belt widened, and the woman still leaned over the counter with the magazine I wondered what on earth she was about.

Finally, I placed a pineapple and a cauliflower past her on the clear belt and said ... "If you don't mind..."

Her voice matched my trepidatious expectations as she countered with a combative "If I don't mind...what?"

I pointed to the counter, empty but for the pineapple and cauliflower, a bag of parsnips in my hand as I prepared to add to what was there, despite that she was physically blocking the way. 

"Do you think I'm standing here for the good of my health?" she charged in a menacing voice, and then launched into a string of verbal insults, their impact and sound muffled by the surrounding aura of many people engaged in their own shopping experiences.  "I've got a bag here with my own things to check out, you ignorant old bitch."

"Sorry", I said.  "But you obviously haven't been paying attention."

"Who are you to inform me that I'm not paying attention?" she charged, lapsing again into a string of profanities.

As she went on, glaring at me, plucking a few items from the bag I hadn't noticed her holding, which her companion had obviously surrendered to her, she plunked the magazine back in its stand, and still railing at me, conducted her business at the cash.

Glad I am that my husband waits in our car in the parking lot with our little dog who becomes so distressed when he's left at home on his own.  While I said nothing more as the woman cursed and fulminated, unwilling to allow the situation to escalate, had he been there with me, it would have been an entirely different story.

We hadn't seen Max for quite a while, and that was unusual.  Though truth to tell we knew also that despite his indomitable will not to succumb to pain, his usual route through the ravine was becoming increasingly difficult for him.  The specialist had informed him almost a year ago that his knees were grating bone on bone.  He needed surgery.  His wife needed the same surgery.  They were on a waiting list.

And while Max's wife was in a condition of almost total dependence on her husband, pretty well confined full-time to a wheelchair, requiring Max to do just about everything for her, he was determined he would never allow himself to surrender his independence, his physical capability.  He was devoted to his task of caring for her, and he did receive some relief in care workers appearing a total of seven hours weekly to allow him his brief forays out for exercise but managing and balancing his needs with that of his wife was becoming increasingly fraught.

Max has such a slight build, and he's in good physical shape outwardly.  He cares as meticulously for his physical essence, as much as he is able to control it, as he does for his wife's helplessness.  He attributes her swift descent into disablement to her resignation to the pain caused by her arthritic condition, increasingly relying on a wheelchair to alleviate the pain, until she was no longer able to exert any physical presence whatever.  He wouldn't allow himself to succumb.

When we came across one another finally a day previously, we could see from the slower-than-usual, laboured way he was proceeding that he wasn't his usual self.  He was listing to one side as he approached us, but the usual wide smile was securely in place.  We were glad to see one another, and we told him we'd somehow been missing him; our schedules appeared to have gone off.

No, he said, he'd been too busy of late, had missed a good many days out enjoying and exercising in the ravine.  His wife's condition was deteriorating.  We wondered how he managed, in any event, with his slight physical presence as opposed to her growing bulk, but he grins and says he manages.  A few years back he had taken advantage of a government assistance program to help defray costs of home renovation, and he'd had the bathroom in his one-story house altered to aid in lifting and manoeuvring his wife.

I told him how good he looked.  And it was true, he looked jaunty and content, despite his new limp.  Leaning on one of his walking sticks that he always used to propel himself through the ravine at a pace we couldn't possibly match in earlier days, he grinned, said he felt pretty good.  But, he said, he and his wife were preparing to temporarily move into a 24-hr-care facility for a week.

The very next day, he said, he was scheduled for surgery to remove his gall bladder.  Which procedure required a ten-day break from doing anything physical to aid in complete recovery.  And since he'd been unable to get anyone in for that period so they could stay in the house, they'd no option but to transfer themselves to the facility.  As had happened after his heart surgery two years back when he had recovered from that and his wife stayed alongside him in the private health care facility.

They have a son who lives close by.  Their daughter-in-law is a senior nurse.  Neither evidently is able to take the time to temporarily stay with them, to look after Max's wife's needs and they don't want to burden them in any event.  Post-surgery, Max says, he can do anything he likes during recovery, with the exception of physically straining himself by heavy lifting.

Just another hurdle Max has to get himself and his wife through before resuming their normal quotidian lifestyle.