Life’s Great Mysteries Department: I came in tonight from teaching, poured a glass of wine, sat at my computer table to check email – and saw something sparkle next to my computer. It was an earring. A diamond earring. My diamond earring, that went missing on Sunday. It had been on the bookshelf with its mate, and when I saw it was gone, assumed it had been knocked off during my cleaning frenzy and sucked into the eternal darkness of the vacuum cleaner.

But there it was, twinkling at me from the computer table. Which is in the vicinity of the bookshelf, but still, there’s no way, unless it took a balletic leap, that the earring could have ended up there. Plus I’ve been using the table for the last few days, with nothing on it but notes and a computer.

Yet there it was, beaming at me.

Any explanations out there?

Tonight, the first class of the Ryerson term – students from, or whose parents were from, Laos, Japan, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Iraq, the USSR, Pakistan … and two from little ol’ Canada. My U of T class, the same. The wonderful changing face of this country.

And … today’s health report – my mother’s companion and caregiver Nancy emailed that she is out of the ICU and back in the regular nursing unit, looking and feeling much better. Nancy wrote: Sylvia gave me a wonderful complement this evening after I had fixed her up, she told me I took care of her the way her Mum did when she was sick as a child which was often.


My English grandmother, Marion Edith Alice Leadbeater, was a very busy woman – a supply teacher who bicycled from village to village, as needed, and had an enormous amount of work in the thatched cottage where she was raising her family. She was not cuddly or affectionate. But when her 3 daughters were ill, she was a tender, attentive nursemaid. How happy I am that for Mum, Nancy now represents that care.

It’s 10.50 and we’re all waiting for Jon Stewart – just me, the crabby cat, and these bright, magical sparks in my ears.