This last post is dedicated to my mom, who is the bravest person I know.

On Friday, she started chemotherapy for a mass on her spleen; she’d been in remission for eight years. You’d think she’d be pissed off at the world, the universe, all the Gods, the next-door neighbour, the postman, everything and everyone. You’d think she’d be depressed and feeling sorry for herself (I know I would). But she wasn’t angry and she wasn’t sad. Instead, she went in there like a boss, prepared with a bag of yarn for crocheting and a Sudoku book, some lunch and little snacks as if she were going on a trip abroad and needed something to occupy her time on the plane.

And even though she had several bad reactions to the serum and her first treatment lasted 9 hours, even though the yarn and Sudoku book never made it out of the bag, even though her lunch went untouched and she was in complete agony all night, my sisters and I received this little ray of sunshine in our inboxes on Sunday morning:

“This morning I got dressed nice and warm and fed my little birds. They were pretty happy. And then I went for a marvelous walk out back and up the hill. Not the  hill to the house but the one to the right which leads to the fields. Oh it was so wonderful to be out in the fresh dry air. I wandered around the field noting all the new growth from whenever it was I last walked up there and it always gives me such hope to see that life really does find a way.'”

When I became a mother, I realised just how many sacrifices my own mom had to make over the years for my sisters and I. There isn’t a mother’s day card on the planet that fully encompasses the selflessness, the unconditional love, the lengths mothers will go to keep their children safe and happy, even if that means blowing sunshine out of their arses while having chemotherapy, just so that their kids don’t have to worry.

Thank you, mom, for inspiring me to be a better mother (and person) every day. I only hope I can be as strong a role model for Wren someday. 

Also, here’s to kicking that cancer’s ass!

***

Well, that’s it folks. I survived 30 days (minus 2? 3? posts) of blogging.

And now, it’s time to switch gears, slow down, catch up on some sleep, decorate the Christmas tree, bake a pumpkin pie, light a fire, read my brother-in-law’s manuscript, turn the damned computer off. I might be back in December, I might not. But one thing is for certain, I won’t wait for another Nablopomo to roll around before putting pen to paper again. No matter how challenging it was, it still felt great to write again and reconnect with long-lost friends.

So grateful to Xanthe, Andrea, Karen, Pen and Elizabeth for lighting a fire under my ass this past month. I couldn’t have done it without them. And thanks to each and every one of you for stopping by and commenting. Really means the world to me.

Sundays are made for endless cups of tea and hours spent lounging on the sofa with a good book. Or, at the very least, hiding in the nearest French bakery for a few hours while your husband looks after the baby.

I’ve been so busy writing for Nablopomo that I’ve hardly read any of my fellow bloggers’ posts — the very friends that inspired me to take part in the first place. Shame on me.

So today, in those stolen hours, I finally caught up and am here to share some of my favourites posts. These five awe-inspiring women had me feeling all the emotions.

• Loved Xanthe’s posts about hoovering being her zen and the days of analogue.
• I might have to copy Karen’s Thanksgiving tradition next year and this post about her naughty dog had me laughing out loud.
• Andrea’s nostalgic post struck a chord and how she finds inspiration in the homes of her friends makes me want to be friends with her friends.
• Pen’s post about her mother made me cry, as did this letter to Frank.
• Pretty much everything Elizabeth writes is pure gold but I especially enjoyed taking this trip down memory lane with her. And this epic post, especially the part about her mother, well… just read it.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. See you tomorrow for the last Nablopomo post. Well done, ladies, for making it this far!

I feel like we’ve been stuck in the car for 15 hours and we’ve driven hundreds of miles and there are empty coffee cups rolling around in the footwell and dirty sandwich wrappers on the passenger seat and we’ve heard the same hit on the radio at least a dozen times and we are stuck in traffic again and we will NEVER make it to the Kingdom of Far Far Away. That’s what Nablopomo feels like today. 28 days down, two to go.

*This post was written on my phone while nursing Wren from the back seat of a car parked at  Heathrow’s departures because it was the only bloody place we could find to stop and feed her after she had a monumental meltdown on the highway, which only happened because we got a freaking puncture in the countryside and were stuck driving 50 miles an hour on the spare tyre, pushing us waaaaay past her bedtime. Oh! The joys of parenthood.

FYI – THIS POST IS A FIRST DRAFT, COMPLETELY UNEDITED DUE TO MONUMENTAL BABY MELTDOWN

Seeing as most of my readers are American and that I was born in Detroit, seems fitting that I should not only acknowledge Thanksgiving (Happy Day of Thanks, y’all) but also take a moment to give thanks.

Remember this post, when I vowed to make a point of pointing out the nice things in life? I’m happy to say that I kept my promise. From the day following that post onwards, here are some of the things I’ve been grateful for:

1. The British Museum
2. Thank you Elizabeth Gilbert for writing this book.
3. Having a husband that gets up in the middle of the night to help settle our girl (sounds like a given but there are so many husbands that don’t).
4. That I’m going to be in Canada with my family for Christmas. Also, family.
5. My first night out with good friends since giving birth, and unexpected poutine joy!
6. Full. Body. Massages.
7. Brunch.
8. Colourful doors make me happy. Lucky for me, colourful doors abound in London.
9. Wren, Wren, Wren. That face! That smile! That laugh.
10. Mahonia. Just as the last leaves fall to the ground and everything starts to look a little bleak, this fragrant shrub, which smells like lily of the valley, blooms.
11. Flower deliveries with notes thanking me for being such a good mother.
12. Two words: Indian takeaway.
13. SNOW!
14. Melt-in-your-mouth salmon, smoked for hours by my husband.
15. The girl sleeps for three consecutive hours. It’s a bloody miracle.
16. Having a couple of hours to myself.
17. This.
18. There’s something in the air today that felt like the first time I landed in London. I’m not sure what it was, but I spent a good hour walking around in that giddy state as if I were seeing the city for the first time.

It’s so easy to forget how lucky we are and it’s so important to remember. What are you grateful for today?

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all,
over and over, how it is that we live forever.
— Mary Oliver