Settling into Summer

First of all, a very happy 93rd birthday to my mother-in-law today! We took her out for a birthday lunch on a recent visit (well, technically she took us out for lunch, but that wasn’t the intent). I’d meant to get a mother-son photo while we were there, but unfortunately I forgot. We also visited our former neighbours in Georgetown and had dinner with Karen & Tom on the way home, all do-able on a day trip now that we live closer.

Canada Day weekend has taken on new meaning for us since the year Nick received the news that he was cancer-free. It’s now been four years since that celebratory weekend. Year 4 was a bit bumpy with unexplained symptoms that had to be checked out, and then those tests turned up something unrelated that looked ‘odd’ so that needed to be followed up with more tests and specialist visits, and so on. Everything turned out fine and Nick is hale and hearty, but that’s the nature of the beast. Most of us have felt lethargic or had a scratchy throat in the past couple of years and questioned whether it might be covid. It’s like that for Nick except that every symptoms brings with it the question of whether it might be the return of his cancer.

Nick is thoroughly enjoying life these days making up for the social time stolen by covid. He’s packing his weekends full of trips and adventures with friends. He’s still with Parks Canada in Kingston for another few weeks, then he has a month off before heading into his final year at Queen’s.

Ray and I spent Canada Day weekend at Rob & Sue’s cottage being grateful for our health, our friends and this wonderful country we live in.

We broke up our drive to the cottage with a brunch visit at Tim and Pamela’s in Osgoode on the way there, and an overnight stay with Anne and Omar in Wakefield on the way home. It was a lot of people-ing, but it’s great to be able to stay in contact with our Ottawa-area friends now that we no longer live there.

Our Brighton friends, Bill & Lorrie, have headed off for a summer travel adventure in their new RV, taking Juno’s best bud Daisy with them. We had a farewell picnic for them at the beach.

One very special moment this week was finding out that my friend Isaiah, who I tutored from grades four through eight, received his high school diploma and has been accepted into a computer science program at college for this September. When he was struggling with grade 12 math, I suggested he contact our friend Russ – a volunteer tutor in high school math & physics. The two of them have been working hard for the past few months and it must have worked because Isaiah got an A in math! I’m so, so proud of how hard he’s worked and his perseverance in the face of many challenges. He’s such an awesome kid (okay, another one who’s not a ‘kid’ anymore…).