In January and February I was happily planning a reading at the University Women’s Club in February with Donna Langevin, March gigs at Portobello Saturdays and the opener at the Toronto Irving Layton Centenary Celebration with John Rammelll when I fell on my way out to dinner on Feb. 21st –and spent the next five weeks at Toronto East General Hospital recuperating from surgery on a broken hip. I was well looked after, but the dinners? Not so much.
Hilary provided delicious food, Meg helped space visiting friends who brought flowers, mail and cheer and I even had 2 birthday parties, with family, and with friends in the sunroom of the rehab centre. Came home with various “adaptive devices”, like a gizmo to put my socks on, another to lever my foot into a shoe, canes, walker, grab bars, chairs for bath and etc. Getting around on a cane inside quite briskly now, but a walker outside as signal to, and protection from, children on skateboards and adults texting, heads down and oblivious of the world around them. “Doing as well as can be expected” according to the Docs. But I’m still waiting to retrieve the cognitive processes and memory I left on the operating table and to drive more than a dozen blocks. Patience was never my best subject!
Life is beginning to get interesting again: Norma Lundberg’s lovely review of the Risks of Remembrance in CWS/cf lifted my spirits. Linda Stitt’s invitation to read “a welcome back poem” in June at Portobello, to be guest poet in December and featured in February ‘13 makes me feel part of the poetry world again. I was surprised and delighted to be awarded an honourable mention in the Living Our Lakes poetry contest, “Shore Reeds” to be published in an anthology by Your Scrivener Press in the fall. The poets at The Toronto Writer’s Co-operative chauffeured me to the Reference Library so I could keep my poet critic date with them on May 13 – and we had a lively and interesting conversation.
Time once more to sort files and pack for the summer on Manitoulin Island – Sudbury’s Shopper’s Drugs will deliver duplicate AD’s to the cottage. I’m still working on how to get down the slope to the dock for a swim, and hoping that the bats will be too busy eating mosquitos to bother me in the middle of the night. Don’t think I’m quite up to the chase.
And I need someone to water the garden while I’m away—anyone like a small haven-in-the-city gig? Three half hours a week should do it.