So, the children’s mother and I bought a house.
“Let’s not tell the children,” she said.
“Okay,” I replied.
So we didn’t.
Now before I share why, let me say that we all have a relationship with our houses, and in my family I’m the one with a sort of longsuffering in this union.
This is the story.
Don’t tell the kids, but we bought a new house Read More »
Today we’re going to talk about the boy. Child #2. My son.
You may have a boy also. And if he hasn’t yet put his head inside the open mouth of an alligator, then, well, congratulations.
My boy announced recently that he’s going to jump from a plane.
There’s bound to be some blood along the way Read More »
I’m a white Canadian. But I easily imagine myself as a dark Arabian. A Muslim.
There, on the streets with a kufiya on my head. Or there, I’m a Muslim woman with a beautiful, but hidden, face, walking along the beach.
I’m just telling you.
I mean, what if I was born in, say, Yemen.
Wherever we are, we all need grace in our lives Read More »
She’s the Ugandan girl who we left behind in a part of the world where, this weekend, there is no Father’s Day. And even if there was, this girl, our friend, has no father to honour on it.
So while it’s only suitable that so many fathers and children
For Gloria, the fatherless girl we left behind Read More »
He’s a friend. A doctor. His name is Stuart. I stood at the front door of his home, my son beside me.
Stuart is the keeper of the children’s bicycles while we’re abroad. We swung by to make arrangements to get them. That’s all it was, an ordinary May evening. But the world was somehow different. Its axis had shifted. At least for Stuart.
He’d just returned from Queen’s Park, he informed me, with other doctors lobbying for a
Many Ontario doctors caught in euthanasia dilemma Read More »
In sub-Saharan Africa they call childbirth “war.”
If you’re a woman about to deliver a child in that part of the world, this is your fate. Imagine it. You’re young. (Younger than most Canadians can imagine.) You’re poor. You’re alone.
Saving mothers, one modest step at a time Read More »
It was Shabbat, the Sabbath, Friday evening, and after a mad frenzy to close the markets and clean the strewn and tossed streets by 6 pm, everything got quiet.
This is when I saw them, an Orthodox Jewish father and his boy walking …
Israel: a small nation with a very large history Read More »
I will miss the light of Africa as much as I will miss anything. I will miss the water too.
This, even as I’ll miss Africa itself, the birthplace of our youngest daughter, the place where the light shines so beautifully on her skin.
Returning to Hamilton, Ugandan treasure beside us Read More »
