Shout-out

I received a surprise gift recently from my friend and former Ryerson student (and fellow former Massey-ite), the freelance writer (and now Ryerson teacher) Bruce Gillespie -- two books by Cynthia Kaplan, which Bruce assures me will make me laugh. I have received so many gifts and kindnesses from friends old and new, colleagues and acquaintances, neighbours and relatives, and there's so little I can give in return. So the least I can do is mention a recently published book that Bruce co-edited with western Canadian creative non-fiction writer and teacher Lynne Van Luven.

It's called Nobody's Father: Life Without Kids, and it's described as a collection of personal essays by men who don't have children, whether by choice or by circumstance. It features a foreword by playwright and author Tomson Highway. I haven't read it yet, but it's on order. Kudos to Bruce and Lynne!

My own writing about being single has evoked some interesting and occasionally hostile responses. All the more reason I'm pleased to see more writing by those who've ended up not taking the "normal" route. (Nobody's Father is a sequel to Nobody's Mother: Life Without Kids, also edited by Van Luven [2006]. I have days when I would kill to have some grown children, though I'm reasonably certain that if I had been a mom, my offspring would probably have stopped speaking to me by now. I do know that, with cancer, I am grateful that I don't have small kids. Leaving little ones behind must be the worst.)

You would think I'd have time to read both of those books now that I am not working, but my to-read pile has hardly dropped a millimetre. For my book club, I am now working on Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 by Lynne Olson. My next project: putting together the documents for my income taxes, which, since I freelanced last year, will be a bit of a slog.

Today I walked the length of my street without too much pain. Does this mean the effects of the arm surgery, which made my back so much worse, may fade? I'm trying to exercise daily and do anything I can do around the house in two-minute chunks. The one thing that's been consistent about my back pain is its inconsistency -- it has changed from week to week.

I had an e-mail from a friend who described someone she knew who has pancreatic cancer along with four collapsed vertebrae that he was told were bone cancer. It turned out that he had severe osteoporosis caused by the local GP treating a rash with high long-term doses of prednisone. Sounds familiar.