Hi There

Hi there.

Unlike most people in Winnipeg, I actually enjoy this time of year.  There is a particular sense of doom that grips the psyche in the late fall, especially after the clocks go back and it’s dark here at 5 in the afternoon.  Soon there will be bitter, driving winds, shoulder-high snow drifts, plummeting temperatures.  Bring them on I say.  Rarely does it bother me, at least until after Christmas.  And then winter seems like a journey through an endless black tunnel, your only companions being despair and frostbite.

But I dig this time of year.  Now is the time of year to catch up on reading.  To sip hard liquor, watch old movies, sit in pubs until the wee hours imbibing with old friends and play board games or watch ‘the game’ on TV, or snuggling with a girlfriend and watch Britcoms.  Even with Christmas rapidly approaching, I don’t (refuse) to feel the pinch.  Even in amongst the last few shopping days, I Am Calm.

Back in my late teens and early twenties, when I judged the quality of life by how much I drank and how many embarrassing stories I could rack up in a weekend, my absolute favourite memories were of this time of year, walking home from a party or a club or someone’s place and being enveloped in the darkness and crisp air and the deadening silence of a layer of fresh-fallen snow.  I was in the weird netherspace of inebriation and sobriety, after the high but before the hangover.  It literally felt like I had stepped from the boring work-a-day world into an enchanted fairly tale land.  I was always alone.  I didn’t want to share this with anyone.  I still feel like this today and I’m 35.

For me, this is the time of year to both take stock of things and to go forward.  To both reminisce and make plans for the future. 

I look back on the past year, and I can honestly say it is both the best and worst year of my life.  I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it is accurate.  I’ve rediscovered my true self after years of suppressing it for the sake of a dead marriage.  But that exacted a terrible toll, one that my sons, especially the older one, has had to pay.  He did not take me leaving well. One can never expect a six year old to take daddy leaving well, but he took it particularly hard.  He blamed me, his mom and himself in equal measure.  I wish I could tell him the truth about what happened, but he'd be too young to understand.  Actually, I do think he knows what happened, but is too young to process.  He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and makes himself responsible for so much.  He's six.  But he's a good kid and smart and made of a steel that isn't present in either myself and especially not his mother.  He's going to need a lot of help on his way to adulthood, but I will help him on his way.  There will be times that he'll hate me.  That's okay.  All kids need to hate and resent their parents from time to time.  But I will always be there.




It is snowing outside.  Slowly, all traces of grass are disappearing.  Soon, if not now, there will be no green for five months.  It is time to hunker down, keep warm and stay sane.  Welcome all!