Years ago I shopped regularly at one of the big-name supermarkets that kept a large receptacle out in its capacious waiting area out front for the collection of foodstuffs destined for the local area Food Bank.  I felt good about regularly depositing staples that people in need could rely upon as a nutritious source of protein, carbohydrates.  That didn't stop us from sending cheques to the local agency operating food banks; it simply represented another opportunity to aid those needing assistance, and we could afford it.

When we began shopping for our food at the-then-new supermarket that had a focus on food staples at prices far better than mainstream supermarkets it was located in a tight-fit-space.  Although I had approached the manager, asking him to consider placing a receptacle at the front for the collection of food bank staples he was disinterested in following through.  Citing lack of space primarily.  I continued to shop there, and usually the store took part in large food drives or a special drive leading up to Christmas, but nothing more regular.  I had written an email to the main operation but these were franchises, making their own decisions, I assumed.

Last week I was amazed to see in the very large foyer of the same supermarket, now relocated to a far more spacious purpose-built building, that old familiar receptacle inviting supermarket shoppers to deposit food items for Food Bank distribution.  Sometimes in-store personnel are hard to catch, but I stopped a young man whom I've often seen around and had become accustomed to acknowledging, to ask him whether this would be a permanent installation.  He reacted as though he hadn't noticed the receptacle out front, but said he fully approved of it, which was not my query.  He said he had once been in the situation where he needed handouts from that venue, and as a devout Christian he supported it.

His response took me rather aback, both for his casual overlooking of its presence and his assumption that only those with religious persuasions - of whom I am not one - would be devoted to, and involved with aiding the unfortunate within society. 

When, later, I did see the manager (one other than the original I had approached) he himself didn't know whether the presence of the food collector would remain in place beyond the winter month leading up to Christmas.  Leaving me rather perplexed; as a franchise operation who makes those decisions?  I informed him that as a loyal long-time shopper at this particular store (which he was very well aware of, having seen me regularly, weekly shopping) I would very much value the permanent installation of a food-bank collector.

He would convey that information, he said, upward...

Driving along the National Capital Region's Eastern Parkway is always fascinating, the scenery beautiful, from sightlines along the Ottawa River to the installations along the way; the RCMP horse paddocks, the areonatucal museum, the parked small private aircraft sometimes lofted above and close to the roadway as they lift lightly in and out of the grounds, and the beautiful specimen trees; sweeping grassed areas leading down to the river.

As we passed the paddocks there were no horses out yesterday, a cold and blustery day with large wet clusters of snow clumping up the environment and becoming thicker and more insistent under a lowering sky.  The paddocks were crammed with Canada geese squatted there busily pecking away at, one imagines, the grains in the equine scat, among other delectables. 

All the birds assumed the same concentrated stance and were numerous enough and close enough as we passed to present quite the panoramic scene of peculiar-seeming oblivion to the weather.

The Ottawa River is not yet frozen, the water was dark and oddly turgid in appearance, though later, before the snow thickened and socked right in there were so many black wavelets on the water they resembled a grater with the regularity of the waves, looking rigid and concentrated, responding to the atmosphere and the conditions.

A thickening white mist began to float over the water like ectoplasm, finally encompassing it to such a degree that, meeting the thick clusters of snow falling from the lowering sky, visibility was so limited that the river itself disappeared from view.

He is simply unable to contain himself.  In the sense that would enable him to put something away for presentation at a future, suitable, appropriate date.  Say, for example, assiduously shopping around to find a gift that would represent his unequivocal sense of informing the giftee how appreciated they are. 

It's a difficult thing to do, since emotional closeness is demonstrated in other ways.  Love is not bought, nor are symbols of love or symptoms of that state; they are aptly given life by gestures, touches, whispers, and obvious intimate manifestations of dedication to the loved one.

Of those my life has been amply rewarded over the years. 

And now that we are both approaching our 76th year of life, he was faced with yet another dilemma; wanting to gift me with something special, a thoughtful item that might convey to me how much he values our having shared our lives and our love.  He always gets restless this time of year as the date of my birth draws near. 

Last week he explained forthrightly that he was going out to poke around local jewellery shops to see what he might see.  I expostulated as I have in the later years of our lives that I need nothing, want nothing, have more than ample of everything that anyone could wish to own.  A waste of time, anxiety, money to go out and conquer his need to provide me with yet another gift of his timeless esteem for me.

I knew when he returned that he had been successful in his quest.  I said to him that he had that Cheshire grin of satisfaction.  To which he responded that he had every intention of transferring what he had bought from his possession to mine at the earliest possible moment, and he had decided that moment would be last evening, after dinner.

Handing the bag to me, I withdrew the gift-wrapped package as he insisted I unwrap it.  Watching carefully for my reaction as I slowly unwrapped the box, withdrawing a jewellery case, opening it to discover another of the very same item he had chosen for me last year.  Now that was a surprise, and my facial expression surely gratified his choice. 

There will be another gift for me on the very day itself of my birthday, weeks hence.  It will be a birthday card of unusual dimensions and design that he will have undertaken himself to skilfully produce, to provide me with yet another in a long line of such idiosyncratic manifestations of my place in his heart.

There are so many physical and habitual idiosyncracies that identify us as individuals.  Familiarity aids in identifying people at a distance by the way they walk, their carriage and the manner in which they propel themselves.  I can often identify people at a distance whom I have become familiar with, neighbours, for example in this way, even while my eyesight has been compromised to the extent that I cannot distinguish their physical features at that distance, their faces a blur to me.

I have never been very good at recalling peoples' names and have had to employ little memory tics; they work often enough, I would prompt myself when facing one person to mutter into my inner ear: "Mutt and Jeff" to recall that his name was Jeff.  I cannot often correctly identify even faces when they're seen out of context; people we might come across in the ravine and where it's perfectly normal to see them and feel an acquaintanceship, and then when we meet them in another setting, say a shop, I'm perplexed until my husband comes to my rescue.  He remembers details; names, places, faces.

We also have an aural signature; we respond to the voices we know from being close to them.  I remember the first time I heard my own voice in a recording and I could hardly believe it was me.  My voice sounded unlike what I thought it did; it had a twang, a whining quality I had always associated with my ethnic/cultural group.  I cringe inwardly at the very thought that this is what my voice sounds like.  But it is my voice, nonetheless.

My husband's voice, evidently, is so distinct, not only to me, someone who loves him and has been by his side for 62 years, but to others with whom we have a passing acquaintanceship.  Whenever he telephones the veterinarian clinic where we have taken our little dogs for the past 20 years, for their annual health check-ups, the receptionist there knows to whom she is speaking, not only recognizing his name and associating it with our dogs but enquiring after them also by name.

Yesterday he called our local Canadian Tire outlet to enquire whether a sale of leather slippers might be acknowledged that day, though the flyer said the sale would begin today.  The voice at the other end knew to whom she was speaking and enquired after his well-being.  She confirmed the sale price would only apply today, but she said he would only be able to have a choice in size if he bought them yesterday.  Some people do that, she assured him, and they return the following day when the sale is in order, to receive a credit for having paid the full price the day before.

In fact, she said, if he hesitated to go that route he could go along to the store and hand her his choice, and she would set it aside for him, then surrender his slippers to him the following day, and ring them up as a cash sale at that time.  He thanked her, went along to the store, chose two pair of slippers in his size (they would be on half-price sale the following day), paid for them, and retained the invoice, planning to return for his rebate today. 

While there, he sought out the cashier so familiar with his voice and thanked her for her advice.  The fact was there were scant few of the slippers available, despite the advertised sale, and had he not chosen them the day before the sale, it wasn't likely his size would be left after others had gone through them. 

His visits to that store are sporadic and as-needed; they are not a regular routine, as it were.  Yet that woman, who in her line of service work comes across thousands of people during the course of a week was able to retain in her memory bank the sound of a specific voice - and likely many others as well.  Astonishing.

In societally advanced countries of the world - liberal democracies - the will of the people does prevail to a degree.  In North America and Europe as an example, where populations exercise their legally-mandated franchises, the democratic process is alive and well.  Other segments, like the economy may suffer, but people are free to express their opinions about however their society has progressed through freedom of expression.  And, when practical and possible and reasonable, their governments listen.

Throughout Africa and the Middle East, societally-impairing vestiges of ancient tribal mentalities persist, and there the rule of law is overlaid with corruption, vengeance, hatred and war, both internally through polarized determining agents of tribal-inspired suspicion and greed, and externally, with the very same human needs and emotions at the very basest, primeval level, motivating people and moving events along to their savage conclusions.

One African country after another has succumbed to rulers raping natural resources, funding their personal lifestyles, advancing those of their cronies, and oppressing the vast majority of those living under their fist in poverty, disease and social disorder.  The Middle East, always the nest of viperous, scheming tyrants, has undergone a transformation from the moderation of benevolent tyrants to the belligerent fanaticism of imperial theocracy.

Iran, which brought in the Islamist revolution, overturning years of steady progress toward human rights while still mired in the bonds of tyranny, paved the way for political, militant Islamism to raise its fist of domination with schemes to herald in a new international submission to Islam whether by steadily advancing infiltration on a tide of migrants abroad, or by virtue of establishing state and non-state militias known as mujahadeen, jihadists, those bidden to and overwhelmingly willing to view themselves as martyrs for a global cause.

Opposition to the ruling Ayatollahs in Iran came from among the secular-minded, and the Ayatollahs were swift to demonstrate that the incidental cruelties of the royal reign that preceded their own was by comparison to theirs, moderate.  The vicious malignancy with which the newly-established Islamic Republic of Iran responded to the challenges to its legitimacy through the auspices of the Almighty to rule by decree and by force, was sufficient unto the day, cementing their reign through their campaign of theistic-dominating terror.

Iran's arming, training and support of jihadist groups was second only to the oil-wealth-generated ability of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist kingdom to spread the rigidly authoritarian and jihadist-inspired training of future martyrs to a cause they shared, despite their abhorrence of each other's Islamist reflections of the divine; one Shi'ite, the other Sunni, deadly enemies by heritage and inheritance. Oil wealth established religious training schools around the world absorbing Islamic youth and spitting them out as future jihadis.

And then came the Arab Spring - a tentative springboard to change - touching down by turn in one Arab/Muslim country after the other, with ordinary citizens with moderate attachments to Islam, and yearning to see freedoms arrive in their societies reflective of what they observed through the advent of communication and education through social media.  People chafing at their social constraints, at their poverty, at their lack of opportunities to advance materially, socially, educationally. 

The responses by the ruling elite to these appeals for change to their political-societal standards were not viewed beneficently by their oppressors.  Yet the aggregate of the people who were persuaded by the tides of history and human advancement were inspired to continue their protests and their supporters grew and gradually embraced those initially not involved, until their protests became a swell of humanity demanding their human rights, with the collective power to destroy the governments that had so long oppressed them - or perish in the attempt.

These demonstrations dominated the international news as people looked on with fascination, wondering what the final outcome would bring to a long-suffocated society held in thrall to the whims and desires of dictators.  Violence begat more of the same, and thousands died in their zeal to oppose their oppressors as they gathered in tribal-based militias to fight against their regime's militias.  Some of those battles are still ongoing, with the secular-liberal-minority groups left behind, their war for liberation taken up by Islamist forces that had been suppressed by the ruling elite.

People exulted in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt in the belief that they had prevailed, when the despised old order was brought down and the new installed.  And they they awoke to the realization that the society they had envisioned would still elude them.  They had exchanged one tyranny for another, a reflection of what Iran had achieved a generation earlier.  In Syria one tyrant battling for his regime's enduring presence, is slaughtering his people.  In Egypt, a democratically elected Islamist government has turned its back on democracy.

Yesterday we experienced a true weather anomaly.  It turned out to be, in fact the warmest December day in this city's history of weather-record temperatures, beating the previous record attained on December 3, 1982 of 16.3C. by one degree and that of the following day in 1982 of 13.9C.  Perhaps I should, but I don't recall those previous occasions of Nature hesitating on her way to winter, resorting to mystifying us by leaping forward to spring.

As we made our way through the ravine on our usual ramble, mist rose steadily from the lower depths of the ravine, and it felt humid, and wonderfully balmy, though when we set out the temperature was at 6-degrees and had gone as high as 8-degrees by the time, an hour and more later when we returned to our front door.

The ground, though still firm, no longer had the feel of winter-frost permeating it as it had a few days earlier when we slipped and slid on the ice and the thin snow covering, reminding us it was time to change to winter boots and possibly even ice cleats.  Yesterday there were a few remnants of ice gliding over the surface of the forest floor, but the snow had all melted and the creek, which had itself iced over, was now free again.

We often see fungi, odd-shaped and coloured mushrooms, like Indian Pipe and other types on the forest floor when it has been warmly damp and humid.  Yesterday it was most certainly that but it hadn't occurred to us to look for mushrooms there, we were too busy satisfying the greedy appetites of all the squirrels that converged upon us from every point in the forest and beyond.

It most certainly was an extraordinary weather day.  And it remained mild throughout the night, as well, though by the time we emerged from our lovely snug bed the temperature had dropped again below the freezing mark.

And this morning, after breakfast, when I looked out the window at the front garden closest to the house, where previously the soil had been well covered by a snow coverlet that I assumed was there to stay and to grow into a puffy cloud of stubborn snow-drift, there was instead a colony of white mushrooms, very inviting in appearance, looking fresher and whiter and firmer than those button mushrooms I usually buy at my neighbourhood supermarket.

Now that the port-a-potty and the bulldozers, along with all the peripheral equipment and the workmen are gone, it is suddenly quiet on the street.  I hesitated to pose the question to her, since it is rather a delicate one, so I desisted.  Instead, my husband was effusive in his praise of the work that had been done on her front lawn.  And the new driveway; never had he seen such a deep excavation and such exquisite care taken to ensure that all the gravel was pounded down properly. 

I had, in fact, seen such care and workmanship done previously; when my husband had undertaken on his own, single-handedly, to do our own front, taking his time, and using elemental, traditional stonecutter tools, not the electric stone-cutting machinery now used.  Unlike our neighbour's earlier inlaid brickwork which had shifted and cracked, become dangerously uneven and unsightly, requiring replacement - ours, since the dozen years when my husband had done his own work, has never shifted, and looks as precise as the day he finally completed the three months of hard labour he had set for himself. 

With all their equipment and the teams of workmen applying their professional efforts to our neighbour's job, it took them a full month to complete the entire project.

We wondered at the scope of the work our neighbour had done, since her brickwork now encompassed a good portion of their front lawn, and the workmen had left a large expanse of soil meant for a garden, to be completed by their firm at some time in the spring.  When the planting of the garden would be undertaken.  Who would do the garden maintenance, we wondered?  And it was that question that lingered on my tongue, unspoken.

It would not be our neighbour's husband for he is not given to such householder-driven tasks.  Nor could it be our neighbour herself for she is incapable, due to her immense girth, of even walking the short distance up the street to the group post box to retrieve their mail.  She glowed in the compliments that my husband indulged in, at the quality of the workmanship, the choice of materials, the obvious planning blueprint that had turned out so successfully.  I really appreciated that he indulged her in that manner, but he really was genuinely enthused over the quality of the professionalism he had witnessed.

Now that our gardens have been so long established, I don't myself find the tasks of looking after them, various as they are, too difficult, and our neighbours are sixteen years younger than us, at 60.  Still, she is incapable of much physical endeavour and he is unwilling.  Perhaps they mean to employ someone to do occasional gardening and yardwork as they did in previous years.  Even though he has found paying contracts for his own line of professional work few and far between these last several years.

Aside from the rush of spring planting of annuals, and the fall clean-up of perennials, the amount of work required to maintain gardens is not overwhelming for the willing and for those for whom working in a garden is a source of pleasure.  It's possible they haven't thought that far ahead; to conclude that someone will have to dedicate some time to looking after their new gardens, yet to be conceived and planted, but awaiting that event. 

Perhaps they'll manage to collaborate; they do now, in a sense.  He brings to her the garden pots she likes to have surrounding their porch, along with bags of soil, and pots of new-bought annuals, and she, seated on a garden seat, and stretching her huge arms, manages the task of tamping in the soil and popping in the plants to create small portable gardens for her enjoyment, sitting out on her porch with her three beloved cats.