Hello dear Friends,

I feel so blessed to know you all a little and I want to wish you the very best over the holiday season.

***

First, though, I need to say how much I’ve missed writing over the past two months. Two months! Never since I was a small child have I not written. It’s how I stay in touch with my world. This is my feelers.

What on earth happened?

Right after my eightieth birthday, with its wonderful celebrations with family and friends, I became weirdly sick for three weeks with what turned out to be a Covid variant. I’m happy to say I did bounce back, and was greatly looking forward to all my usual joyful pursuits. Only, immediately afterwards, the side of my face froze. This meant my eating turned to slurping, my smile was unmistakeably wonky, and my eye became red, swollen and unhelpfully blurry. Probably, like half of Westport, you have an easy diagnosis, “Aha, that’s got to be Bell’s Palsy”. And you’d be right.

Thanks to thoughtful help from my son Morgan, I learned to do all the right things: compresses, viscous eye drops, and not forcing the nerve to try to heal. (The not forcing, that’s the really tough one). But thanks to this protocol, at a month and a half in I’m pleased to say that I’m 65 per cent improved, and on my way to what my doctor thinks will be a complete recovery.

But one of the hardest parts to be patient with is vision. Right now, I can’t see to drive in a whirling snowstorm. Far trickier is that I have to avoid bright lights and looking up from under my droopy eyelid. Until this week I’ve had to avoid my computer completely. “Give it time!” That is not advice an 80-year-old wants to hear.

But, as we reach the turning of the light, I’ve got every reason to be hopeful for a full recovery.

***

Only, there’s another thing. (Did someone say Growing Old is Not for Sissies?) All year I had anticipated meeting my surgeon about my long-awaited hip replacement, provisionally scheduled for last October. Not being able to roam my valley and hills, or even go for a saunter with friends, had made for a wretched summer.

Now, though, for reasons I don’t understand, this all-important surgical meeting has been postponed until first the end of April 2026, and then until late May.

The only reason I’m telling you this is that the impact for an elder who lives alone in the country is serious. (Most of you likely have your own experiences of our shamefully inadequate Ontario healthcare.) Winter, with a seriously crippled hip, navigating ice and snow is dangerous. I have adapted every way I can think of. But this disability impacts most of my life. I have wonderful loving help from my neighbours and friends, but I can’t help knowing that everything I do is at least distracting and tiring, but worse, probably risky. I work hard to avoid a crippled old lady mentality, but this winter it stalks me. My dreams of visiting a few special places abroad next summer, or even going to seeing Nova Scotian friends, are fading fast.

Don’t get me wrong. My life is still wonderfully rich, far better than many others’. Just hearing the wind travel through the sheltering forest is a glory, but it’s hard not to feel that I am losing a lot of the last best years of my precious life.

I still delight in friendships and reading and making, and raising my face to the winter-pale sun. The birds who circle me are dearer than ever. I’m learning to speak better raven.  

My writing is coming back. I know it will. There is so much I want to share, just as I look forward to hearing your perspectives on my adventures when I rejoin you early in the new year.

With love, as always.