Oh, it’s TOUGH to write short!

How can I evoke “magical week” in short? I’ll try.

Snapshots:

small town libraries that feel to be so much a “hub” of their community;

teens thinking—seriously—about careers in arts (oh, can’t put the sound of buzzing bursting minds in a photograph!);

pre-schooler in jammies and train slippers, out for an evening in the library;

round, round, wondering eyes, and dozens of hand-made, wrought with thought, Thank you cards;

bank employees, leaving their stations, sitting on the floor like schoolchildren gathered for a story;

pot-luck lunch and rattly taxi disguised as a family mini-van;

gathering of young people faces together with my cousin and my grand-great-aunt, listening;

VIA rail, passing towns, passing lolloping cows, and a lone chicken walking through a wood, passing children with grandpas waiting to wave at the train–yes, three children     with grandpas (they still do that!);

You CAN fit a big old chunk of this country into a snapshot—don’t ever think you can’t.

What does it mean now, now that I’m home? I pack up a box of books and send it to a school in Kapuskasing, and feel a Connection. I sit at my lone, early morning writing time, and feel a Purpose. Readers have faces and hands and hearts.

Humbly: Thank you for the reminders, all of you, for each reminder.

St. Mary’s water tower…

Bearskin airlines plane from Timmins to Kapuskasing–no arguing about who gets the aisle and who gets the window seat!