I can’t believe how fast and how much of life gets away from me, how long it takes before I am able to sit down and write a blog entry. It is all such a swirl it makes me sick sometimes.

One of my cousins sent me an email message the other day, a cousin I didn’t expect would ever email me. I was pleasantly surprised to hear from her, then annoyed when I received one bad, corny, unsolicited joke after another. Not one personal message, no matter how many questions I asked. Don’t you hate that?

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness and compassion and families. I watched a fascinating documentary called My Mother’s Garden about a woman with a hoarding compulsion. Her children, who as far as I could tell were grossly neglected by their mother due to her mental illness, were so loving in spite of everything. I was forced to reassess the rationalizations I had made regarding my own mother. I had moved as far away from her as I possibly could for most of my young adulthood, though I see that that is what these *children* did too. The director Cynthia Lester was forced out of the house and into a life of prostitution at a very young age. There was no place for her to sleep! Compared to these adult children, my sisters and I were downright vindictive, though I did the best I could, going to stay with her for a month at one point while she endured surgery to amputate her right hand. Cynthia and her brothers came to their mother’s rescue. She was about to be shut down by the insurance company or the city, evicted or whatever it is they can do and her kids intervened to clean up her house and yard, renovate and rent it out-a monumental task- to pay her nursing home, all the while coping with her infuriating behaviours. Who knows what would have happened to her if they hadn’t.

I will be working at my son’s school all day tomorrow and then off to North Vancouver to read at 32 Books and a launch for Rocksalt, the anthology of BC poetry which includes my poem Whore In The Eddy. Hmm, I wonder the odds are I will get writing done? Driving me a little nuts actually, the dearth of time, but I am booking off for a week, going to go away and do nothing but write. I will lose my mind otherwise, I’m sure.