Author Archives: anhaga1

Jan23

History note

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I am moving into history. When my aunt passed away recently it dawned on me that I’m now the oldest member of this particular branch of my family. This morning I consider what this really means and know the inexorable tide of history shall bear me away as it has taken all the others who went before. Where do we go, we scraps of flotsam drifting in and out on the tides of life? For a lifetime I’ve been asking the questions, who am I, why am I here, what’s it all about? And perhaps, like Wordsworth, am further away from answers than when I was a child. Time, now, to think about returning to the well from which I sprang.

Oct26

Autumn Leaves

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I was struck the other day by the number of different kinds of maple leaves I saw in all their magnificent fall colours blowing along the roadside.  I picked a few up, I’m a bit of scavenger when it comes to Nature’s prettier droppings, thinking that I would identify them when I got home.  But then I remembered I’ve packed my books, including Trees of Canada.  I must have found six different kinds including Japanese maple which doesn’t really count, and the ubiquitous, prolific, invasive Norway maple.  The others, which I don’t know the names of, the native species, are all different shapes, including one which is just like the one on the Canadian flag so I think it may be sugar maple.

The book of trees is just one of the hundreds I’ve packed in boxes scrounged from the liquor store in preparation for our eventual move.  Already I’ve found it inconvenient, so I suppose that’s a good sign.  My collection of books is a living, useful one.

Aug30

Home is where the heart is? Or maybe not.

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What is home?  Is it the house we’ve lived in much of our life?  Is it our town or city or country?  Is it things, old familiar things, books you can find on your shelf, familiar kitchen tools, the way the light changes through the day, through the seasons?  Is it the view from the kitchen window, or the neighbours passing by on their regular walks?  Is it something we can take with us no matter where we go?

Is home in my heart?

Aug22

Tempus fugit

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The little girl, walking slowly up the hill to school in the snow, observing meltwater running down the ditch.  A fairyland, a miniature river with space for fairies.  She tells herself stories all the way, imagining the lives of little people.

The old woman, walking briskly under a summer sun, observing flowers and grasses, hearing birds, seeing insects, trying to name and classify everything in this burgeoning natural world so full of wonder and mystery.

What is the difference between seven and seventy, except for decades of life, decades which seem to have leaked unnoticed through careless fingers, hours and days, months and years running down the drain of time, flowing eventually into the ocean of infinity from which they once emerged?