No leaves yet and the wind is cold, but daffodils bravely sway and rhubarb rustles as we make our way outdoors. Mother, 90 in June, after a winter of illness, leans on my arm. I carry a kitchen chair with my other hand as we cross the yard. She sits as I snip stems and flowers for a friend. "Strawberry rhubarb is the sweetest and makes the best pies," she says. "The daffodils are small, now. The bulbs are old, that's why. Listen! Was that a bird?" A kindly jay flew overhead, singing of spring loudly enough for old ears. The daffodils, the fresh earth smell and occasional sunbeams calm me, but the trees are still bare and in the bush lie bits of snow. Spring is fragile and could vanish in the twinkling of an eye like the sun disappearing behind heaven's clouds.

Don't tell me of Eliot's coffee spoons. Earl Grey measures out my day. Half-empty teacups dot the rooms where I pause but do not stay. There's a cup on the upstairs bookcase, crowding the volumes for space, and a mug on the dining room table making rings on the plastic lace. Downstairs there are manuscripts everywhere and only tea to drink. There's another cup in the laundry room teetering on the sink. At the keyboard I hunch and write stories both strange and sane and often a page of perfect prose bears a circular brown tea stain.

Glory be to God for dappled friends whose hands show age spots like a Holstein cow. Praise wrinkled faces, salt-and-pepper hair, their shaky voices saying, "It depends," their words of insight that can show me how to face life's challenges without despair. Fragmented memories, half-forgotten dreams -- these bits of information aid me now. Among the jumbled paste I find a gem. Like autumn leaves, friends fall so fast, it seems. Praise them

I wrote a condolence letter to the author of a poem about a father's death. Morris, the father, showed great enthusiasm for my manuscript on the 1930s, but we'd never met. Tom's reply -- warm, well-worded -- included a poem on a par with Dylan's "Do not go gentle." At one time I would have been star-struck over a personal letter from a famous poet who reads at Harbourfront and who appears in literary magazines beyond my reach. Looking out at the three feet of grit-encrusted snow I picture him in the towering trees and mountain valleys of the rainforest, and am pleased that our fingertips touched across the miles if only for a moment. The connection is tenuous, for what do we have in common but a love for poetry and those who tried to change the world, and too much experience of death? We're like two middle-aged war correspondents reeling on a slippery battlefield, mourning the many fallen, enshrining them in words for unknown readers. I have put Tom's letter in my scrapbook.

We'll talk and smile and keep our spirits high Our days are just a twinkling -- that we know. We'll drink to life beneath the August sky. We both hate aging and we wonder why Time flies when once it used to be so slow We'll talk and smile and keep our spirits high. I couldn't let this special day slip by We'll marvel at the things we two now know. We'll drink to life beneath the August sky And though we sometimes steal away and cry For olden days and those who loved us so We'll talk and smile and keep our spirits high. And though some preachers say the end is nigh Your candles in the dark will blaze and glow We'll drink to life beneath the August sky. We'll talk of young folk growing wings to fly Of childhood birthdays of so long ago We'll talk and smile and keep our spirits high. We'll drink to life beneath the August sky.

Now when I was just a rug rat under the poplar leaves above the Leghorn house, complacent as the sky was blue, the life we led was simple - very: nourished on Blossom's milk, veggies from the garden at the front; school lunches in wax-paper; we'd no plastic in those sad days -- the groceries cardboard box a-rattling in the pick-up truck or in paper bags -- brownest, no nice plastic in those awful days. You're so right my dear to stockpile wonderful plastic bags. Oh, save a plastic bag, for wasting is a sin, so wrong! Why, 'twas within my lifetime only God gave these bags to us, unruined and unleaking in the rain. So pure and dazzing, for the book store and food store, you know they are so fine, no boxes or brown bags so handy-like, and they rustle so sweetly in unbiodegradable joy.