Wendi Stewart - Wendi with an 'eye'

I don’t like to travel. There, I’ve said it. That’s a load off my chest.

I also stole a piece of bubble gum from Perlette’s grocery store when I was five. It’s been weighing on my soul all these years, and I almost blurted out the truth on more than one occasion when people were kind to me.

If they only knew, I thought, they undoubtedly would reconsider their kindness.

It’s November. And where I am (which is not where you are, I realize), it is warm and quiet outside.

The leaves, for the most part, have fallen from the trees and are resting on the forest floor while transforming themselves into something else.

The leaves in October have a crunch to them and they fly up when you walk through them. They still have energy and life, it seems, as though the leaves don’t need the trees to carry on living.

I’m not a city person. There is no part of me that could pull off being a city-dweller.

Still, I think it’s good for our global understanding that we rural and small-town folk are able to glimpse the reality that most of the world’s population experiences living in cities.

Observing city life for the past three weeks in Vancouver has helped me understand why it is so incredibly difficult to effect change in our collective thinking.

I’m not a fan of crowds; not a fan of large gatherings of any kind.

The noisy chatter is like litter on a windy day, blowing up in my face and making me wince. What happened to sitting quietly and waiting, for whatever we are waiting for, to begin?

I recently was at a book launch for a local author whom I didn’t know, but her book sounds rather fun (Wanda Campbell–Hat Girl–check it out).

November is Diabetes Awareness Month.

I’ve been “Diabetes Aware” since Thea, my youngest daughter, was six. And thanks to the dedicated efforts of Sir Frederick Banting and his colleague, Dr. Charles Best, Thea is alive at age 21.

I don’t suppose many of us can recall the day we took our first steps, the letting go of the coffee table, with our arms raised for balance, our legs slightly stiff, undoubtedly a look of surprise on our face and a feeling of being almost superhuman.

It must have been an incredible delight to look at those who already knew how to walk and feel a part of the happening crowd, as if we recognized we had arrived at a new place.

My mother is gone. As a dear friend’s grandmother used to say: she is away.

I like that better than gone because my mother will never truly be gone. She was away on Oct. 14 at 5:35 a.m. Thirty-nine years and two days after my father and two days before my new grandson arrived to fill the hole left by death.

I lost my mother 12 years ago, when Alzheimer’s claimed her memory, took her ability to communicate, and left her living in a state that seemed nightmarish to me—cruel even.

I walk early in the morning, and I walk with “Gracie.”

I head out the lane and turn up the neighbour’s hayfield, heading away from the rising sun.

I look forward to this particular morning responsibility. I contemplate a lot of ideas, worries, and hopes on my morning walks; letting my brain waken as I strive to keep the pace at 130 steps for minute.

Some rules do apply.

On Monday of this past week, as I headed out, the grass and plants were laden with autumn dew—heavy even as the taller plants were bent over with the accumulated condensation.

My father died on Oct. 12, 1974. It was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend.

The day was cold, a light skiff of snow lay on the ground, and my heart seemed to stop beating with his.

I’m not sure when my heart started beating again; I can’t remember. Didn’t notice when my breath returned to being automatic, and I didn’t have to concentrate on emptying and filling my lungs; or when my feet moved one ahead of the other on their own.

I like to iron. I like how the task takes all the creases and lumps and bumps and makes them smooth—a metaphor for life.

I like the bursts of steam—the warmth and the pssst; a bit of music to my ears.

Men used hankies when I was a kid, big square white ones, and it was my job to press my dad’s hankies; to make them perfectly flat, the corners lined up evenly. And if there was embroidery on the hankie, such as an initial or some emblem, that embroidery was to end up in the bottom right-hand corner (the rules very precise).