No matter how locked up we are, no matter how screen-confined we’ve become, no matter that we have nowhere to dress for, a motto for my consumer generation could be: “Have internet, and credit card, will shop.” I’m not a big clothes horse or shopper anymore. I was young enough once, and poor enough once, … More Pandemic Clothes Shopping
Many army brats of my generation can remember the base curfews growing up in within barbed-wire-fenced camp borders in our PMQs (Married Quarters – I’m not going down that rabbit hole again about what the ‘P’ stands for. Personal? Private? Permanent? Doesn’t matter anyway – we just called our houses ‘PMQs’.) Curfews for the younger … More Curfew! (Part of never-ending January 2021)
It’s only the 8th day of January, and already it feels like it will never end. Running slo-mo through molasses. A nightmare where I’m trying to wake up. Covid numbers, hospital overflows. Stricter shutdowns, rules, higher fines. My curling ice bookings are cancelled, again. Swim times no longer permitted. Of course, you say. Those 1 … More Pandemic January
I must write this story before my mood is poisoned by any bitterness of reality. I’m 14, I live on the military base of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, a tiny radar station 10 kilometers from the city of Yorkton proper. In grade 9 now, I bus that 10 kilometers into town to the civilian junior high school, … More December 2020. Finally.
As with my first book, “Camp Follower One Army Brat’s Story“, I submitted my new release “First We Eat. Food, Life, and More Stories” for the prestigious Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, 28th Annual edition. Because of 2020, I actually had forgotten that I submitted it back in April, until the email came in October … More First We Eat: Writer’s Digest Review
August 2020 is over, already. Finally. What a month of highs and lows. The weather was fantastic, full on summer, heat and rain, gardens and fields heavy with harvest here in “la belle province”. The leaves still only tinged with a shy blush of promise for brilliant autumn raiment to come. And now fall is … More August 2020. Light and Dark.
July went by fast. Sometimes I hope the whole year, this year of the pandemic, would just be over with already. Then I remember, and tell myself, “You’re not getting any younger! Don’t wish your life away. Live and Adapt.” So I try, as well as possible, what with all the “new normal” ways to … More July 2020. Normal, Outside.
Where are you from? Where is “home”? Is home where you grew up as a child? Is it where you graduated high school? Where you got married? Is home where you live now? Well, for me and many military brats, yes, to all of the above. We’ve had many homes and even a few hometowns. … More Home. Again and Again.
I’m lucky to still have my Dad around. His health isn’t the best anymore, and I live far enough away that I only get one, maybe two visits a year. But yes, lucky, and even luckier that he’s started to share more of his military stories with me now, more than I ever knew growing … More Father’s Day 2020. My Military Dad
This is a confusing time for me. I’ve been watching documentaries all week about the space race and missions, and especially the moon landing of 50 years ago. What an exciting, inspiring era I grew up in! But today, July 15, marks an unhappy family anniversary. It was on this day 20 years ago that … More My Mother; The Moon Landing: July 1969; July 1999
