It was just one of those things that happen that you've got to shrug off and carry on. Everything carries risks, all the more so when conditions change and you go about doing what you've become accustomed to, while knowing that additional care must be exercised. We know those trails well, the flat portions that nonetheless offer little traps like exposed and raised tree roots that can easily trip up those who are inexperienced in walking in such terrain. But it's the slopes, some of them elongated, some steep in the process, all somewhat different in geology and the terrain they offer, whose differences lodge in your mind to be retrieved with an additional caution when conditions warrant.

Like yesterday, for example, when heavy, constant rainfall the day before combined with freeze-and-thaw situations made for a forest floor that had changed from firm traction to slithery, muck absent traction but for the foliage that had gathered on them, fallen from trees no longer in summer mode. That foliage itself had been pleasant to walk on in dry conditions but with that combination now in play it masked the clay-mud beneath which the slightest wrong move served to shove the drenched foliage aside, revealing a rank, movable trail.

Not only was the inundated clay and sand now itself agreeable to moving if encouraged by boots to do so, but it was more than prepared to move the boots as well so slithering and sliding became inevitable on certain gradients. Even those slopes where at other times when the forest floor was wet, but not so drenched that its composition turned it semi-liquid in character, where tree roots were a help, stopping slides from occurring, acting as brakes. This time the brakes failed.

You know the feeling when it instantly dawns on you that you're no longer in control of your body, that some agency detrimental to your normal progress has suddenly assumed control and your body is being propelled swiftly -- although it seems to be happening in slow motion in your mind as you desperately attempt remedial responses that just don't work -- downward and there's little you can do to stop your trajectory. You can hope to be flexible enough to just suffer the fall and there will be no injuries accompanying it. Physical injuries, that is.

One guaranteed outcome is that everything you're wearing will be smothered in thick layers of muck that adheres in great gobs to anything it touches, and it certainly touches your backside, back, legs, arms below the elbows. In the cold of autumn and the prevailing winds the wet clay becomes a burden and through your garments you can feel its clammy presence, a most uncomfortable compromise of your state of well being.

We're fortunate in Canada that food is abundant, readily available and relatively inexpensive to acquire. By food I mean whole foods, grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, along with fish and meat and of course dairy products. In season all of these items are there in wide array for the consumer; out of season imported fruits and vegetables find centre stage. In any season, more exotic fruits and vegetables are available, particularly for the large numbers of immigrants that have migrated to Canada over the years from all corners of the world, with their own customary cuisines that often make their way in stages introduced into the general roster of food choices and preparation of ethnic-type dishes.

We found, while living in Tokyo, a bit of bias that we acquired in the belief that the Japanese are most particular about the quality and freshness of the food they eat, and quality control seems a mainstay of everyone's preoccupation from growers to middlemen, the seller on the street and the perusing purchaser. This fixation on quality and freshness needless to say affects expectation and taste, and we were of the opinion throughout the year we were privileged to live there, that our diet was comprised of the freshest whole foods we had ever been exposed to. There was one issue that did concern me, though, that it was my impression that the flour available in Japan lacked the baking quality of Canadian wheat.

Every day represented an adventure in food shopping as I would venture out beyond the compound where our house was located to the nearby streets comprising our neighbourhood to visit familiar open-air stalls focusing on fruit or on vegetables, and little shops selling rice or tea. Nearby there was a florist which had installed a commercial-grade coffee grinder where we could buy roasted beans and have them fresh-ground. In Tokyo it was notable that stands or store-fronts selling fish, before closing down for the day, would hose down their premises; one never passed such a stand or store to find it reeking with the odour of fish.

There were also a sprinkling of Western-style supermarkets which we would occasionally venture into to poke about to find foods more familiar to us, certainly cheeses, some imported from Australia and New Zealand. Where Bavarian-type breads were also a specialty to be acquired there, though there were stand-alone baked-good shops specializing in French or in German baked products.

Apart from my daily shopping forays, there was the week-end when we took buses and the subway down to the wonderful shopping markets of the Ueno district, where we would wander, dazed and happy, stuffing our shopping bags with all manner of foodstuffs we found unique and appealing from the open-air stalls lined neatly along the thoroughfare. Nearby was Ueno park with its national museum, and Tokyo's zoo housing among other animal species the beloved pandas.

What a privilege it was to live there, to pass by temples and shrines and venture into their beautiful gardens, mesmerized by the koi ponds, by the exotic plants, by the centuries-old treasured temple bonsai, sitting out in display in the the summer weather. Tokyo was a cornucopia of sights,  sounds, smells and life whose display was fascinating, the culture both ancient and current absorbing, the people both reserved and ebullient in interacting with foreigners, with always someone passing on the street who would accost a foreigner to practise their English phrases. In turn we learned Japanese phrases of comment and enquiry to enable us to communicate with others during our sojourn there.

On our brief trips outside Tokyo to take part in day-long hikes in the forests and mountains surrounding the city we were exposed to the rich natural settings on this island of Honshu, the largest of the four that comprise Japan. It was a time of exploration and familiarity, when in passing another group of hikers, the familiar "konitchiwa" would ring out in acknowledgement of shared humanity and appreciation of nature.

There were countless times during their puppyhood when we weren't certain we would survive the experience of sharing our home with two uninhibited, raucous, entitled little black scamps whom our disapproval of their destructive antics seemed not to perturb the least little bit. Poodles, by reputation and through our own experience, are intelligent and capable of picking up clues fairly quickly. These two seemed immune to the lessons we attempted scrupulously to teach them, in hopes of retaining our sanity.

For one thing, it took forever to house-train them. We had no such problems with their predecessors, our miniature poodle Button and our toy poodle Riley, both whose passing as a result of old age and all the chronic ills that accompany it all too soon took them from us, devastating us utterly. We miss them terribly. And we sought to plug that vacuum in our lives by adopting another little fellow. Our plan went astray when we were confronted by the fact that the litter we looked at was comprised of two puppies, a male and female. How to choose and leave one devastated and alone?

So we chose instead to bring them both into our home. And the effect was immediate and mind-boggling. As puppies they were unrestrained in their natural inclination to do anything that appealed to them. And they drove us to distraction. The issue was that whatever one puppy could achieve, two could double. Even while their uninhibited joy of life and inclination to run berserk with one another entertained us and endeared them to us, it also complicated our lives immeasurably through an additional work load.

Now that they're two years old, their behaviour has modified as it should toward adulthood and the more sober actions that maturity inspires, along with the understanding that some consideration had to be given to those living with them, to restrain their impulses which in any event maturity itself would have dampened. Jackie retains some habits that are problematical; one that he chooses to pursue and that is the will to chew just about anything. That can be a nuisance problem.

Another is one not of his making, that he suffers from a chronic condition leading him to have gastrointestinal upsets during which bouts he will not eat because he feels so awful. Mind, those bouts are most often triggered by his having chewed on something he should not. At the present time, the issue is the wild apples in the ravine which at this time of year can be infected by nasty moulds. Last year at this time we had to rush him to the veterinary hospital for immediate treatment to offset the frightening effect on his neurological system of having ingested that mould; his stomach was pumped free of apples and medication used to reverse the effect of the mould.

When I catch him in the act, I scold him and order him to desist, and he does. But obviously there are times when he manages to get in a bite or two during our walk before I realize what he's about, and this happened again a few days ago leading to another bout of illness and refusal to eat. We were immensely relieved this morning when he managed to eat some bits of honeydew and egg yolk after refusing his own kibble, so after going without any food all day yesterday, today's consent to eat a bit of fruit and egg relieves us greatly.

Feeling under the weather doesn't stop Jackie from enjoying his daily walks in the woods, he still rushes off fleet as the wind after squirrels and challenges Jillie to vigorously joyful chases, delighted to be out and about. For her part, Jillie is stolid and unperturbed by anything, never becomes ill as Jackie does, and eats relentlessly, which is why she weighs so much more than slight Jackie.

Surely you jest! we enquire, confronting Nature. Her response, none at all. After all, she asks permission of no one, oblivious to how her moods and inclinations will affect her creatures. In this instance, it's a bit of stunned surprise. Nothing we cannot accept and rise above, since, of course, we have no other options. And it isn't actually anything intolerable, just kind of surprising.

That's how we reacted when at about half-past four yesterday afternoon, after a day of biting winds, dark, raggedy clouds and nippy cold, we looked out to see a rapid snow accumulation, with snow replacing rain, slanting down over the landscape, to join the snow that had already fallen which we hadn't until then noticed. Very wet snow, completely covering and drenching everything.

And more to come, for the rest of the afternoon, evening and on into the night. Mostly melting, but enough of it remaining on the ground to make for a moist, plush covering. Our puppies weren't confused like us, they are far more accepting, and they were delighted to romp about in the snow and snuffle out the differences between rain and frozen rain.

By morning there remained mushy snow on the ground, and rooftops were well covered, though it was no longer snowing, the wind had abated and it was marginally less frigid; still plenty of steel-grey clouds, though.

I thought surely there would be far more snow underfoot in the ravine, but when we were out there it was clear most of the snow had melted; there was more out on the street level than within the forest. Where the snow remained in there was on wood; fallen tree trunks, bridge platforms, the odd bit of forest floor, otherwise, all absorbed.

I cannot recall another October in my memory when snow fell this early. Is this an omen for the coming winter? At one point, as we approach the creek in the final tranche of our circular ramble, we come across a child's toque that had been thoughtfully placed at eye level, on a broken sapling trunk. As regulars in the ravine, one occasionally comes across items that people have lost, from mittens to bits of bicycle parts to sunglasses, doggy booties and occasionally cleats that have fallen off boots.

It has become a simple courtesy to re-position the lost object in a way that makes it more conspicuous, in the hope that whoever lost it will discover where it went astray and reclaim it. It's been a week since that toque has been there, its bright colour failing to attract the attention of whoever had brought a child through the ravine. Atop it, this morning, sat a bit of fall decoration.

It has now become seriously, pre-winter cold in our environment. A few days ago while we were walking our additional new-but-temporary on-the-street circuit, we were introduced to the first brief flurries of the season. Little wonder, with the bellowing winds we've been treated to, alongside the cold.

We have now experienced a series of hard frosts, whiting out rooftops and informing foliage that they'd better get a little more serious about dropping from their host trees.

Our own mulberries have received the message, their foliage is now steadily falling and for some reason Jack and Jill appear to find them irresistible to nibble at. Guess their daily vegetable salads don't fully satisfy their peculiar appetites.

So now that it has become so cold it's time to recognize it by finally putting protective sweaters on our two puppies. They seemed dimly to recall wearing them through last winter, helpfully lifting their paws to get them through the leg-holes of their sweaters. And they don't seem to mind wearing the sweaters, interim garments until it gets relentlessly icy-cold and we switch to winter jackets for them and for us.

Despite the sweaters they run about as freely enthusiastic as they always do, determined to enjoy their ravine walks to the absolute fullest. We're seeing fewer people and their dogs in the ravine lately, perhaps responding to the plunging temperatures and fierce winds. Those who hesitate to continue their woodland walks are missing spectacular scenes of the forest in its final colour stages before all the deciduous trees are free of their foliage.

There are all those glorious shades of the colour spectrum to see and admire, both above on the trees and fallen below, on the forest floor, a feast for the eyes.

For the past year we have been living with the results of diagnostic tests interpreted by the Blood Pressure Clinic and the Heart Institute at the Ottawa Hospital as unmistakable indications that my husband's heart was not operating as it should. Despite which he never at any time manifested signs that this was the case.

He has always been a man of high energy and resolute activity. From the time he was a teen to the present, several months from his eightieth birthday, he has never lacked for inspiration to build or create ambitious things always carried through to fruition, and to lead a vibrantly active lifestyle. Not for him a surrender to age limitations; he recognized none.

But at some unknown time in what we surmise must have been the recent past he had suffered a heart attack whose occurrence we obviously knew nothing about.

How that is possible is beyond our understanding, but this is the diagnosis and conclusion we were given by the diagnostic team of specialists at one of Canada's premiere heart institutions. That event had led to his mitral valve becoming corrupted, so it no longer was capable of performing its primary functions to the heart. For one thing, there wasn't enough oxygen making its way to his heart.

For another two of his main arteries were almost completely blocked due to atherosclerosis. A tertiary, minor artery had taken over some of the work normally performed by the major ones, while still another, perhaps the third of those required to perform the task of moving blood to and away from the heart was only partially blocked.

So a double-heart-bypass was needed, along with mitral valve replacement. Because my husband is in such otherwise excellent shape for a man his age, the cardiologists who examined him felt his age to be no obstacle to his undergoing open heart surgery and anticipating a full recovery. But because he was symptom-free of pain or stress or lack of energy, and we were able to go along with our normal lifestyle, remaining active, this was not seen as an emergency.

So we waited month after month for an assigned date for the surgery to occur. First we were told, back in March it would be July, then it shifted to September. We were finally given the date of 22 September for the surgery, and the name of the surgeon who would be providing his expertise to repairing my husband's full heart function.

Then came an intensification of the dread that overtook us at the imminent prospect of that dauntingly frightening surgery. Now, just over a month later we can look back at the difficulties the first weeks post-surgery presented, the feeling of hopelessness that recovery would ever begin to kick in, to the present time where we are marvelling at the swift progress in recovery that has suddenly taken hold over the past week.

And we feel fortunate, grateful, overjoyed.

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of my husband's dreaded mitral valve replacement and double-bypass heart surgery. We returned to the scene of the crime for a scheduled appointment with the cherubic-looking heart surgeon who surely is but a few years older than our grandchild but whose mastery of these heart-saving techniques have earned him top billing as a specialist of renown at the Ottawa Heart Institute.

Bursting with his usual enthusiasm, he queried us, then proudly presented the image of the X-ray taken of my husband's chest a scant half-hour earlier at the hospital, the very picture of perfection, he beamed at us. Indeed, to me, it did present as perfect; the outline of a young-in-appearance body, sleek and muscular, not an ounce of unneeded fat, the interior appearing perfectly and frighteningly as it should. But as laymen and patients we are hardly fit to interpret what we see, though to the surgeon the X-ray represented proof-positive of his outstanding skills, extending the life of an 80-year-old man whom he described as 'fit and healthy' despite the heart condition that led to the open-heart surgery.

To my husband the X-ray meant little of practical, interpretive value, but the surgeon's pleased exhalation of satisfaction and his beaming smile, along with the words "just perfect!", put to rest his concern that something might be discovered to have gone awry, and the potential of re-visiting the surgery haunted his nightmares.

The atmosphere of the day yesterday may have been broodingly nasty with overcast skies, frigid temperatures and a wretchedly icy wind, but the atmosphere in our minds couldn't have been more joyful. Even the 30-minute walk we took down our street, along the main street, up a neighbouring street that links eventually to our own, was that of being protected in a cocoon of comfortable reassurance, making this walk memorable for the vigour expressed by my husband as he strode confidently along beside me, chatting our impressions of the day with no need to stop to rest as we proceeded back to our home

.

We are in serious fall mode now. Each walk in the ravine is a reminder, a pleasant one for the most part, since the shades of gold seem to intensify day by day. The three days of rain that kept us out of the ravine have been followed by hugely brisk winds blowing the newly-frigid air about in this sudden change from the somewhat balmy weather we had been enjoying before the onset of that petulant rain event. The leaf mass in the forest is enormous since it is, after all, a forest, a mixed woodland of conifers and deciduous.

And with the influence of that high wind harassing the tree canopy, each time we venture out into the ravine for a daily walk, we can see the evidence of its work, in the diminution of the foliage on all the trees, the colourful leaves being tossed through the air even as we gad about in there, and the colossal heaps that have accumulated on the forest floor and the trails, cushioning our boots, and sending little Jackie and Jillie into throes of exuberant delight.

Treat? We know what that means!

Both of those little black imps, but in particular Jackie, seemed possessed with the spirit of perpetual motion, speedier than a hawk swooping down on its prey, they were here, there and everywhere. One chasing the other at high speed passing me in the blink of an eye, and then turning about and speeding off in the opposite direction. They would stop only for a moment, and only when I might shrill at them "treat!" experimentally, to determine whether that might be sufficient to give them pause. It did. Momentarily. Before they spun off again.

And they're off!

Watching them is ample entertainment in and of itself, marvelling at their spirit, their enthusiasm, their expressions of sheer unadulterated joy.

Jackie, challenging me for a run-about

After three non-stop days of absolute drenching rain, with no pauses in between to make a mad dash for the outside to sneak in a little walk, today has brought us wide, blue skies and a beaming sun. Our twin puppies though they detest being wet (odd, for poodles) and will do just about anything to avoid placing their tender little paws on wet grass became strangely accustomed to my inviting them outside to the backyard to do their business, despite the teeming rain.  They succumbed to becoming inured to the unfairness of it.

There was no alternative. Each time they returned indoors they were treated to a towelling and this appeared to mollify them; they love any kind of personal attention aimed at them, after all. When they went out first thing this morning Jackie went a trifle berserk as soon as he realized it wasn't raining, the ground wasn't drenched, it was bright and sunny out and everything smelled and looked fresh and sparkling light. At the same time yesterday morning the sky was so heavily hemmed in by dismal dark clouds I took a flashlight out with me.

Each time Jillie prepared herself to squat, she was disturbed by madcap Jackie who kept ramming her to persuade her to have a robust runabout with him. She did manifest some interest and went so far as to begin one of those mad dash-abouts with her brother, but her heart just wasn't in it, and after the initial spurt, she settled back down into an incipient squat to relieve herself. Aborted again, once Jackie relentlessly leaped at her again and again, inciting her to dash about with him. Until he finally settled down and they were both able to go about their urgent/not-so-urgent business.

Today has turned out very nippy, icy-cold, all the more so with a howling wind. But no matter, it is also bright and light and there's a lofty feel to the atmosphere. All of which more than makes up for the cold and the wind. In the ravine because it's Sunday, we came across quite a few dogs taking their humans for a ramble in the woods, and finally, Jackie and Jillie no longer see the need to be obnoxious; they've modified their behaviour to omit the frantic barking each time they see someone. They are becoming civilized. Finally.

And are enjoying the opportunity it gives them to take pleasure in the presence of other dogs, and to run and prance about with them. When opportunity knocks dogs are intelligent enough to want to take advantage of it. So, in this instance, they've learned that frisky dogs like themselves enjoy the challenge of competing against one another, rushing through the woods in a chase, and they've accepted that this challenge is useful to them as an enjoyable treat. As for treats, they took no time whatever in accustoming themselves to the occasional treat doled out generously by other dogs' humans, who take a liking to our little scamps.

Oliva Dionne, the quintuplets’ father, had this souvenir and refreshment stand at Quintland, where the public flocked to view the girls playing. Montreal Gazette files

The news media is always stuffed with sad and shocking news, some of an international character, other items closer to home, as it were. In our morning papers today there was news of the remaining two Dionne quintuplets, once viewed internationally as a sensation. The sisters born to a poor farming family in northern Ontario, represented the first time quintuplets in their entirety survived. And that was largely because the Government of Ontario at the time removed them immediately on birth from the care of their parents, building a medical facility specifically to house the babies and to confer expert medical care to ensure their survival.

At the same time, the Ontario government viewed the babies and their spectacular place in human curiosity on a world scale about their rarity, saw the quintuplets as a cash cow. They undertook to care for the babies into infancy and then childhood to give them a healthy start in life, and at the same time presented the children in their special facility as a exhibition for the public to pay a fee to be able to observe and admire them. The spin-off from ancillary products like dolls and china depicting the girls garnered further unprincipled riches to the province's treasury through marketing a coveted brand.

1940: The Dionne quintuplets starting first grade at six years old. Back row: Annette, Cecile and Yvonne; front, Emile and Marie. Instruction is conducted in French by Mille. Gaetane Vezina, appointed by the provincial board of education. Montreal Gazette files

Even the modest property of the parents with its rough log home was a place of great curiosity to the public willing to pay for the privilege of walking around the place and meeting the parents -- Elzire and Oliva Dionne -- of the famed children, enabling the girls' parents to amass a considerable fortune at the time. A fortune that their parents used to build a mansion of 19 rooms where the girls, at age 9, were housed once the parents won custody through a judicial decision. And where the girls as adults later claimed to have been sexually abused by their father and beaten by their mother.

1943: The Dionne quintuplets shortly before their 9th birthday. Montreal Gazette files

Those girls were born in 1934, and so the remaining sisters, Cecile and Annette are now 82 years old. Cecile's health is quite impaired while her sister's is more intact, enabling her to live independently in a middle-class condo in Quebec. Cecile, on the other hand, has more serious health problems requiring care, and she, living on a government pension of $1,443 monthly is a ward of the province of Quebec at an assigned privately owned seniors' residence in Montreal's north end. Cecile doesn't quite approve of the class of people living in the residence, but declared incapacitated by the Public Curator of Quebec must live where she is assigned to.

The sisters launched a legal suit against the Government of Ontario on the basis of having been exploited, and they were awarded a $4-million pay-out cash settlement in 1998. Cecile claims that her son Bertrand Langlois, third of her four children, took advantage of her to abscond with her money, effectively leaving her penniless. "I have no more money. So they put me under curatorship", she explained to the Montreal Gazette. Living in circumstances she deplores, complaining about the food, the service, the other residents, she thought of escape.

"But then I told myself, it's ridiculous to think like that. I said to myself, I just have to get used to it. I got it into my head that I have to do my best to accept it and to get to know the people better. And that helps me. They're not bad people. It’s difficult, because the screening is not selective, so the people are not always easy to live with. And the food is bad. At my age, it's difficult. But I clench my fists and I keep my head high", she said.

Cécile Dionne (right), with her sister Annette (they are the two surviving Dionne quintuplets, born in Ontario in 1934), places a photo of themselves and their sisters when they were children onto a a desk at the St. Bruno home of Annette. John Kenney / MONTREAL GAZETTE

We've enjoyed a generous share of sunlit days this fall, so little use complaining that we've also been exposed to night- and day-long events of unrelenting rain. It's not that we've had a little bit of everything, exactly; more like we've had a whole lot of everything. When it's dry and sunny and pleasantly mild out it gives us the opportunity to spend more of our time in the out-of-doors even if that time is significantly consumed with fall's chores tidying up the gardens, cutting back perennials, plucking expired annuals, emptying our many garden pots and urns.

Not everyone does this; some people prefer to just let their gardens be, to go through the winter as they are, in spent disarray, and when spring arrives then pay attention to clearing away the detritus of which there is quite a bit less as decay aids in producing a diminished amount of plant matter to be gathered and composted. I prefer doing all of this in the fall in one fell swoop (one fell swoop, ha! it's an enterprise that takes weeks to accomplish) and then just relax and enjoy the emerging garden on spring's eventual, post-winter arrival.

We're grateful that the garden structure still presents itself even at this late stage in fall's cold, rainy, windy disturbance to all growing things reminding them that the seasons have their own demands, as a landscape to be admired. Although trees and shrubs are now turning various shades of colour as green foliage prepares itself to surrender to winter, they still present as lush and architectural in their various guises in the garden; each plant supporting its neighbours in an admirable orchestration of colour, texture and form.

And when we look out our house windows while incessant rain pelts out of an aquarium-look-alike sky, and view the garden still making a prodigious effort to please us, we are hugely aware of the work that we have ourselves invested in making the garden a comfortable and pleasant place to walk about in, to contemplate, to host birds and butterflies and enrich our lives in the process.

Yesterday was our oldest child's birthday. He is now 57 years of age, his younger brother whose birthday was a week-and-a-half earlier, turned 54, and their sister is right in the middle. There is a year-and-a-half in age separating all three.

It is hard for us, their parents, to believe that so much time has passed. That our children are approaching 60. Not all that much of a mystery since several months' time separates us from age 80. No one imagines when they're young that they'll experience life and all its vicissitudes of happiness, satisfaction, disappointments and grief, and that it will all seem to have passed so quickly, when in old age, they look back.

Our honeymoon photos, near Algonquin Park

 

 

You can look back, but you cannot go back. There is no revisiting what you've experienced other than in your mind, dredging up memory. Memory of how happy we were when at age 18, we married and were finally together as we so longed to be. Happiness when, at age 24 we became parents.

Honeymoon photos at Algonquin Park

Happiness surrounded us, embraced us, incited us to live to the fullest. We struggled financially but somehow managed to get by, even owning a small semi-detached one-story in the far suburbs of Toronto where our children were raised up to age nine, when we moved closer in to the city, to a house we were proud of, before in short order, moving yet again, to Ottawa where my husband took up a new position, challenging and satisfying to him.

We did the usual that most parents engage in, exposed our children to all the values we held dear, supported them in the emotional turmoil of growing maturity, introduced them to the landscape we lived in, and infused in them an enthusiasm for nature and a deep appreciation for our good fortune to be Canadians, living in a free and democratic country where we could criticize any level of government to our heart's content, and engage in volunteer activities giving us another sense of purpose to community and the public weal.

We imparted in our children a love of reading and an acquisitive streak for exploring printed matter. We had lively discussions daily around the kitchen table as we shared our evening meals. We encouraged our children to make friends, to become engaged in the community. Ours was a good life, and it still yet is.

Did I mention how taken aback we are that we are the parents of children in their mid-to-late 50s?