Don’t you treasure time with your loved ones?

For a few days, it’s just my son, Samsun, and me. His wife Amanda is at Bread Loaf, enjoying the fellowship of other talented writers. Nothing going on, here at the lake. Time to hang out.

Samsun and I can launch a discussion. Later come back to it. Circle around. Move on.

I was talking to my next door neighbor here on the lake. David’s son was visiting from Austin, Texas. (Samsun traveled from Toronto). David labeled the time with his children: “heart reset”. Beautiful, I thought.

In between time when we are together, Samsun is working on many many projects: he is a economics professor at University of Toronto. I’m working on re-doing my website. For a number of years, my focus was doing installations for gallery shows: creating 30 foot silk wall hangings.

But on my own, over the years, I played: I played with words.

I played with images of nature.

I played with embroidery.

And, when I fell ice skating in the winter of 2020 and shattered my right wrist, I took out my crayon-d’ache : Swiss water-based crayons (see the art piece above). I could only use my left hand. I couldn’t prepare cloth for dyeing, or dye it, or create with silk. So I played with crayons and paper.

I drew an image of together time. The best. Quiet …

with company.