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When medical conditions affect children or the people in their lives, one of the most daunting aspects of their situation is how to cope. The management of a disease or disability is one thing, the understanding why they have it and why others react the way they do is another. Picture books are marvellous non-invasive […]

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Great Aunt Lola is about to die. At least ten year-old Stephen thinks she could because she’s that old, and grumpy. And Stephen, labouring under a self and parent imposed ‘shy label’, is more than a little scared of her. He simply wants to flee, but is stuck in Aunt Lola’s house for the next three weeks until she turns eighty, or dies.

They say the simple things in life are the best, but could friendship with his elderly aunt be that easy and straightforward? Award-winning author Bill Condon convinces me it can.

Condon’s latest ‘tween’ novel, The Simple Things is for bridging the generation gap, what styling gel is for rampant adolescent hair-dos; maybe not 100% essential but essentially 100% worth the effort.

Actually, it was no effort at all to immerse myself into this heart-warming tale about letting go, facing personal doubts and overcoming uncomfortable situations. It’s a story about an only child who does what his parents tell him to do, is scared of climbing trees and doesn’t seem surrounded by an ocean of friends.

Blue, Stephen’s dog back home, is the one he misses most during his enforced exile at Aunt Lola’s place. However, he soon meets Lola’s neighbour and past flame, Norm, and Norm’s granddaughter, Allie. With their help, Stephen is able to confront a few of his short comings. He also embarks on a small sojourn of self-discovery as he learns about the simple things in life – like fishing, cricket, climbing trees and death. All this explicably pulls him closer to Aunt Lola. They form a prickly alliance, each benefitting from the other until finally they are forced to admit a deep and special friendship.

The Simple Things is ‘smiley face perfect’ (re; the wet cement moment page 127). Condon writes with unaffected adroitness, delivering this story with equal measures of gentle humour and poignancy, and just enough secrecy to entice readers to want to find out what really lurks behind Aunt Lola’s tough-guy bravado.

Condon’s characters are bright, sharply drawn individuals with enough depth to make us laugh and cry, minus the melancholy. I found Stephen’s charismatic, larrikin father and sarcasm-welding Allie most endearing along with our hesitant hero’s comical boyish charm.

The Simple Things is one of those easy to read, easy to enjoy books, so I suspect it was not that simple to write. But I for one am grateful Condon persevered as Stephen did with his aunt, for it simplifies the complexities of a young person’s relationship with themselves and their aging relative with composite grace and humour, allowing young male and female readers to value and cherish their own relatives all the better.

See why here.

Allen & Unwin February 2014

 

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Let’s see. Federal public servant by day (blech!), and by night, online magazine founder and editor, writer, jewelry designer, spiritual advisor, home renovator, gardener, singer, guitar & piano player. Mom to 3 twenty-somethings (I started young!) and step-mom to a twelve year old. Oh, and primary caregiver of 2 cats, 2 rats, 3 Koi fish, and 1 frog. And might I boldly add Wife Extraordinaire.

I am 47, looking forward to 48, and 49, and 50, and …well, you get the idea.

You've started a new online magazine, please tell us all about it

I have been blogging on Silver & Grace for over a year, and in that year have met many talented writers who are as passionate about promoting aging gracefully as I am. I’m all about building community, so it was a natural progression for me to bring together all these writers into a single community.

We officially launch on October 4th – I am so excited! Each Monday, I will post an editorial on the week’s articles. Tuesday through Friday will feature articles of interest to women over 40.

What made you decide to start Silver & Grace?

One word - perimenopause! I was blogging under the pen name of the Urban Panther, and I found I was spending more and more time exploring the changes going on in my body, mind and spirit.

I wanted to face all these changes with informed grace. This meant reading everything in sight, and conversing with my ‘sisters’. Next thing I knew, Silver & Grace was born, and a community of like-minded women evolved.

Do you take freelance writing? How does one go about submitting?

I most certainly do! Just drop me a line at [email protected] and I will send you all the details.

What are you particularily interested in seeing?

First and foremost the articles must be targeted to the needs of women over 40. Beyond that the articles fall under the following categories: Relationships; Health & Wellness; Finance; Fashion & Style; Technology; Career & Business.

Are you a paying market?

As in, do I pay for submitted articles? Oh my, as an unpaid wr

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In the early years of this blog, when I was writing and posting poems, I posted this one.  It has become, over the years, one of the most visited posts on my blog; the vast majority of those who seek the page hail from the Philippines.  Because "Figures of Speech," about the young man now headed off for his senior year of college, is still essentially true, I revisit it this afternoon. 

Sometimes just a few white saucers will float down from the sky
and I want to wake you. Snow, I might say. Open your eyes.
Or somebody funny standing on a corner will, apropos of nothing,
throw a jigsaw dance, and I want to instruct, Now there’s a scene
for your next story, as if you were not already
looking through windows.

That’s the hardest part, for me, of getting old — remembering
your independence, asking your opinion before lamenting mine,
understanding that the way I happen to chase hawks at dawn
is something you’ve already made excuses for.

There were years of being your mother when your childhood
was the first childhood, when time was you trailing balloons,
the hat you wore, the afternoon we climbed the rocks in Maine
and squinted at the sun, and that was how I learned love and why
I could not foresee not waking you to snow,
to the first factor in a suburban metaphor.

Time isn’t then anymore. You leave when you want to,
you sing behind your door, you paper the table
with the morning’s news, and in the spaces in between
the instances you spend with me, I am assaulted by the memories
of my own first childhood. I calculate figures of speech at dawn.
I write until I bless us both with losses.

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