The Seated View

I long for what I call “proper water.”   I grew up near in Denmark where you’re never far from the ocean. And that kind water — at least in northern climes — is the greyish greenish blue of cold water with big waves and freedom for the eye to see to the far horizon. It is a very restful. There isn’t a lot of that in Toronto. We do have a big body of water, one I love very much, and occasionally it has big-issue waves. But it is always a set of islands in the way of my view. And even though I do love them, as well, there is nothing like water as far as the eye can see. Which is one of the reasons I love going to the Islands, because in the on the south side, there is nothing but Lake Ontario. Which brings me to The Spit. Also place where your eyes can get the long-range exercise. Last year, we missed the annual visit to The Ptui (as we call it, because: spit, but officially called Tommy Thompson Park). It took a while to build up stre...

I used to live out by the Toronto Zoo — well, not around the corner, but a fairly short drive away. We’d go a fair bit and I was even a member for a few years. Then I moved downtown and my focus changed. It would be a long drive out there, anyway, and there were so many interesting things to discover in the urban part of the city. As I’ve started to get stronger again after last year’s hospitalization, we’ve been looking to range further afield. And I started having a hankering to explore the Zoo again. So we went. This was fully knowing that it would flatten me for several days, but it’s probably not a surprise if I say that it was absolutely worth it. Toronto’s had pandas for a visit for the last few years and they had cubs. By now indistinguishable from the adults, but four pandas is quite something. They moved to Calgary next year, and then I assume back to China. What I need to know is that as the cubs were born in Canada, doesn’t that make them Canadian citizens?...

“You sound really chipper,” The Boy said. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard you like this.” He was right. I hadn’t felt that good about life and myself for a long time. And all it took was a long walk.   Well, to be fair it was a bit more complicated than that.   A brief recap of 2017 It feels as if I`ve been sick for the entire year. First there was croup , then recovering from croup. This was followed by a few months of feeling a bit better, then I got walloped by a crash/sinus infection that turned into three months of chronic sinus infection. Recovery took a long time and just as I was getting better, I was flattened by the mother of all summer colds. To be fair, that was only the past seven months. Ha! “Only”! When I look back on the time that’s passed since about Christmas, it seems like it’s been a fog of feeling too awful to participate in my life. Sure, there were periods where I extremely temporarily rebounded, only to lose g...