The Big Dipper is up there among the stars.

Someone once asked me if I’ve ever seen things that go bump in the night. They knew I spent time in the dark. I told them about the time one November it dropped down to minus 30 and the birch and spruce started going off like gunshots. That wasn’t what they were looking for.

I look for ghosts all over. Usually they show up in the rivers and streams. They don’t say much. I listen to the babble of the creek, but I can’t make heads or tails out of it. Still I know they are trying to tell me something. I appreciate the effort but I don’t get it.

Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.

My good dog Willow would bark if something was threatening. That’s why I like dark nights down by the water. The only sound she makes is snorting through the long grass.

***

It was my Mother’s birthday yesterday. I visited her early this morning. I wonder about her everyday. How hard she had to work. She was born into a world where women were subservient. Yet she became a respected women that didn’t back down from men who tried to bully. She didn’t even blame them for it. She considered them pitiful.

She accomplished it after growing up poor and hard, without education. There wasn’t a book she hadn’t read or couldn’t discuss. She saw a lot. She kept the hardship to herself.

Isabelle and Wynanne.

My Mother was a smart beautiful women. I wonder sometimes if she ever looked at the bearded man across from her who seemed happy with the long hours and not much, the broken washing machine and the ragged kids scooting about, and thought, cripes what did I do to deserve this?

She would laugh at that. She used to laugh at everything.