Marion Agnew

August held lots of weather. Hot and humid days worthy of June in Oklahoma, cool rainy days hearkening back to April (perhaps? March?) in Oklahoma, and a share of those cool night/bright and sunny days that are so typical of Augusts of my memory. And now it's September, with its "back to school" or even "the other new year" vibe. Certainly my holiday is over--my sister has gone back home to her regular life, the weather is changing further, events are beginning again in town.  AND! Some of those events on the horizon include me! First, on September 17, I'll be doing a joint signing with David Giuliano at Thunder Bay's Indigo location from 11 to 1. We'll share short readings, discuss our books, and sign whatever you like!  David is a fellow Latitude 46 Publishing author. His award-winning novel, THE UNDERTAKING OF BILLY BUFFONE, is set in Marathon and is a satisfying, layered who- and why-dunnit. A former Moderator of the United Church of Canada, he...

As a dual citizen of the US and Canada, with a Canadian mother and an American father, I've crossed that border often.* I've had decades to think about borders. (I even blogged about them for a while.) And boundaries--both the geographical kind and the personal kind. Artsy vacation shot :) . I recently made a cross-border trip, my first extended visit since pandemic lockdowns, and wondered again about the people in an office somewhere drawing lines on a map. I also thought about the ways I expected my life to unfold, and how different my experience has been. Performing onstage has never appealed to me--I managed it as a musician because of all the others up there with me. Safety in numbers and all that. So as I turned from professional and technical writing to creative work, the thought of reading my own work aloud in front of others, and trying to say something coherent in interviews, was daunting. Imagine my surprise to learn that I enjoy talking about my work, both my essay ...

As someone who lives in a rural home with another writer, with a great deal of choice over my workday, one might wonder why I would attend a writing retreat. What would I possibly need that I can't get at home? Why would I pay someone a fee to go somewhere else to do what I can already do? For many years, for those reasons, I didn't go. A local informal gathering of writers has been meeting for long, intensive self-directed weekends for years. I never understood the appeal. Yet now, I'm just back from a writing retreat.   The drive out. The view over Lake Marie Louise, toward my home, which lies beyond more land and a bay of Lake Superior. Why did I go? What happened to change my mind? Well, life, mostly.  I first went in 2020. My first book, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER'S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER'S, had just come out.  The experience of focusing intently on that one manuscript--short essays--had been extremely productive for me. I'd benefitted greatly from exchan...

My first book, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER'S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER'S , collected personal essays about my mother's dementia and how our family responded to it. Click here to download AlzAuthors's special guide to its resources about caring for mothers. Dementia (in all its forms, including Alzheimer's) can be a lonely illness. The person who has it can find socializing difficult. Their family members are likely not specialists in dementia and may need help figuring out basic skills for caring for adults.  Sometimes, people in the dementia community just need companionship. Not professional intervention, necessarily--just proof that others have experienced or are currently experiencing what you're going through. Feeling seen and heard somehow makes it easier to return to life with a fresh perspective and new energy. And often, you gain a few insights or learn a few techniques that can help everyone. Organizations like AlzAuthors help new caregivers find compani...

September brings the equinox and autumn. It's also World Alzheimer's Month.   By accident (or a grand design of which I'm unaware), two of my Alzheimer's-related publications have come out this month. Here, read my review at Minola Review of Four Umbrellas: A Couple's Journey Into Young-Onset Alzheimer's.  It's an exceptional book by June Hutton & Tony Wanless, in which Tony shares insights into his experience of dementia. Here's an excerpt from my review: We all have a near-inexhaustible capacity to fool ourselves. No one wants to acknowledge their own mental confusion. No one wants to see dementia in the face that is resting on the pillow next to theirs. It took great courage to write this book. We should all read it. Statistics suggest that if you don't know someone with dementia now, you will soon.  Luckily, people -- generous, motivated, creative people -- with lived experience, people who love someone with dementia, and perhaps have cared f...

June is a full month. It's Pride Month, with its celebration of rebellion and joy and love. It's Indigenous History Month, with its celebration of endurance and generosity as Indigenous people share stories we should have learned but haven't yet.  It's also Alzheimer (in Canada) and Alzheimer's (US) and Brain Awareness Month, with its calls to raise awareness of dementia and related diseases, and its ever-hopeful hashtag, #EndAlz. Growing in the wild around here, forget-me-nots. Pff, as if I could. As you may know, I wrote a book about Alzheimer's. It's also about my mother, and my father. It's about our family, inertia, denial. Mistakes and regrets.  And, to be fair, it's about joy, and dogs. Glass on a beach and a set of sheets. Home. It's also about sounds and love, and how they both reverberate through time. I'm glad I wrote it, and I'm so honoured that it has touched many people. You can read more about it here.   Years ago -- nearl...

Monday I sent my second-born off to college.  No, you didn't miss anything. I still don't have children. It's a metaphor, on which I can't elaborate. Yet. It was an important day. I wanted to celebrate, because this second-born has been with me for more than a decade.  And I wanted to take a quiet moment to ... "mourn"? Not quite the right word. But "celebrate" doesn't capture the full range of emotions around the experience. There's a letting-go of this entity that I've held (lightly, firmly, with despair, with hope) for so long. I wanted to recognize the moment for what it is, yet another change in this time of accelerated change.  So I clung to that mixture of feelings yesterday, in spite of political leaks, in spite of elections and pandemics and campaign promises and lies under oath.  *** I also recognized yesterday as my mother's 105th birthday. She's not alive on earth to celebrate, but I can celebrate: so I did, and I do. ...

This time of year encompasses several birthdays, including mine and my book's. Yes, two (!!) years ago, Signature Editions released my essay collection,  Reverberations: A Daughter's Meditations on Alzheimer's .   Recently, the current president of the Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop (NOWW), a regional writing organization, posted a review on the NOWW blog . Here's a quote: There’s much sadness here, yet we also see humour (the many conflicting ways to make perfect devilled eggs), the defining and deepening of the author’s love for her parents, the realization of her dream to live full-time on the big lake, the kindling of an autumn romance, and the arrival of a certain understanding …    To read the rest, go here. Many thanks to NOWW President Clayton Bye for reading and writing this review--and to NOWW for posting it, and for all the other programming it offers to writers in the region.  

I was going to say, "How is October halfway over?" but I hate reading things that start that way, so I'll spare you. It's like reading an email or, back in the Days of Yore, a letter that's mostly excuses for not having written in so long. I get it: you've been busy. Let's move on.  Here's a random photo from last summer. It's a puddle, made by rain, in our driveway. driveway puddle, 2020 Perhaps this choice of photo isn't so random. I'm still thinking a LOT about rain, and how we have less this year than in recent years, and how that makes the well really slow. I'm still monitoring its output and the other info we're learning about it. And yet: I still feel mostly prepped for winter.   Meanwhile, I'm also wondering when I'll feel that the "well revamp, September 2021" life episode is over.  And mostly, I'm (still, always) thinking about when a pandemic is over. How will I know--beyond numbers and thresholds an...

A few years back, Susan Olding ( Canadian writer; author of the essay collections  Pathologies and the recently released Big Reader ) served as my mentor. She helped me understand how to get from where I was (floundering in a manuscript morass) to where I might like to be (with a book on a shelf). Maybe even a book in the same section as some of these. Tangles , Sarah Leavitt; Trespasses , Lacy M. Johnson, Voice , Adam Pottle; Keep Moving , Maggie Smith; The Book of Delights , Ross Gay.  This Saturday, Susan and I are speaking about mentorship at the Creative Nonfiction Collective's annual conference. Info is at this link ; you register once--$100--for everything and get to learn from a bunch of interesting folks. It's held completely online. As is true in my life in general, I'm increasingly aware of the many (many!) ways in which privilege operates. Specifically, how privilege allowed me to participate in this mentorship. Obviously: money. Obviously: education. Obviously:...

April 15 is the anniversary of my father's death, fourteen years ago. My sister and I actually begin marking the Days of Anniversaries--his death, and the anniversaries of my mother's birth and death, and Mother's Day--mid-March. That's when the joint vacation my father and I were enjoying with my sister turned into his last month.  My father with his "map of the US" (except Texas) (because then-presidents) (a story to be told another time) made from rocks picked up on the beach. My book, Reverberations: A Daughter's Meditations on Alzheimer's , is about both of my parents, though only my mother had Alzheimer's, because ... well, because families, I guess. In it, I describe my father's other "last" vacation, the summer before he died, when he came up here to visit with family and to remember my mother. Before leaving for the airport on his last morning, he and I visited the older family camp, walked to the point, and sat on the beach....

Monday was the one-year anniversary of the official launch of my book, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER’S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER’S. The whole world looks a lot different today, in many respects. Pandemic, unprecedented, year of the weird, couldn’t have predicted, etc. But some things haven’t changed, and I want to talk about some of them. First: Family. Families may change in their makeup, but the concept of family—people with whom you belong—stays the same. I’m especially grateful to my family, especially my siblings.   It’s difficult to write personal essays at all. It’s especially difficult when you’re writing about family experiences, which other people may (or may not) have shared. My sister and brothers have been as kind and considerate as I could have hoped, letting me say what I believed to be true while keeping their muttering sotto voce . They’ve been kind advocates for the book, too, which I appreciate.   My launch anniversary coincides with a birthday. This...