So, here's the 2024 roundup, which literally no one is obligated to read.
Last year on this day of New Year's Eve, I had just handed in the final revisions on PRIDE, which would be published that spring. A quiet, contemplative New Year's Eve it was.
In February, I visited my friends John Foster and Linda Jones, who made me so welcome in their home on what was my very first trip to Brooklyn.
In May, we started doing press for the book, and in June I attended a special onstage event for the book, hosted by the Kingston Writer’s Festival, and PRIDE was excerpted in the GLOBE AND MAIL. I was also able to revisit my old stomping grounds in Halton Region when we did an event for it at the Burlington Public Library. Best of all, my lifelong friend Lesley Pedraza managed to stop in Toronto on her way to Halifax with her partner, Vince, and seeing her again was a highlight of that month.
In July, I returned to Necon for the first time since both the pandemic and my cancer diagnosis, and it was the site of some glorious reunions with old friends, and the making of some new, very treasured ones.
August was my friends Mike Paris and Mel Cole's wedding in Muskoka, and mine and the Hero MD™’s 39th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated at Scaramouche with our dear friends Kaley and Jane. At the end of August, I welcomed my mentee of 4 years, Dexter to Toronto, to attend film school at Toronto Metropolitan University—a proud moment for us both.
In September, I watched my beloved Jordan Sharpe marry his beautiful fiancée, Clémence in Orillia. I quietly turned 62, and Dexter, used me as a film subject for a class project, which he apparently aced in spite of my ancient, decrepit mug on camera. At the tail end of September, it was back to Kingston to attend the actual Kingston Writer’s Festival, this time to debate the future of democracy, with two historians—one of them a former U.S. congressional speech writer—onstage, at an event moderated by the legendary Carol Off.
As magnificent as that event was, the best part was the three-hour brunch with my brilliant godson, Michael, in the hotel restaurant where his great-grandmother used to take his mother and uncles for brunch when they were children. It occurred to both Michael and I that this had been our first lengthy, uninterrupted conversation ever, without anyone else from the family participating. On the train home, I considered how moving that was, and how proud of him I am.
In October, we were off to Halifax for Canadian Thanksgiving with the Nova Scotia fam, including my goddaughter, Kate, who managed to get me out on the dance floor for the first time since God knows when, at a small-town dance hall. As always, I spent Halloween with my friends Craig Davidson and Colleen Hymers and their kids. The wheel of the year turns for me in autumn.
In November it was off to Chicago for American Thanksgiving with Lauren Braun and family, and to witness the particular joy of watching Laurie’s grandson, Vincent, who is named after me, growing into a beautiful, gentle, joyful little boy as he leaves his “terrible twos.”
And I am now home from the best Christmas ever with the Palm Springs family, feeling very lucky and very loved. You’ve seen the pictures last week, so I won’t clutter them up with words, and I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about anyone's Christmas at this point, especially mine.
I’ve had two cancer scans this year come back clear, and a bad scare at the end of November turned out to be benign—the definition of a blessing, when I received the results this month in Palm Springs.
I used this group photo of a group of us on the first night of Necon deliberately, and this is why: after the years of lockdown and chemotherapy, what I’d hoped for most in my return to Necon was that the proximity to so many talented writers, and so many good people, would rekindle the fiction spark that I thought illness had snuffed out. I had only written nonfiction since my diagnosis, and I was wondering if I’d ever be able to dream those words, in that way, again. I’m delighted to share that it worked: I am sitting on some fiction news that I’m currently embargoed from sharing, but which I’ll be delighted to share as soon as I’m able.
I know it’s been a very hard year in some ways, for many people. I feel for them, truly—I’ve had more of those years than I've had of this kind.
For instance, I profoundly regret being wrong, onstage in Kingston in September, in affirming my faith in the goodness and wiseness of the majority of American voters, or their concern and compassion for the most vulnerable of their fellow citizens: women, POC, my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters, children, the poor, and more. As North Americans, we’re in for a bumpy four years, but despair is not a viable option, in my opinion, especially not for those of us who write, or film, or make any other kind of “art” that provides us with any kind of a voice. I'd hoped to launch a perkier, peppier Substack in 2025, but we can only play the cards we're dealt.
On a personal note, I have two more years of scans and tests before anyone uses the other “C-word,” cured, and indeed anything can happen in that time. But if 2024 taught me anything, it affirmed the pure joy of friendships, the blessing of health, the enduring love of my husband of 39 years, the value of hard work, and the importance of not missing the fleeting moments of pure beauty that are all around us. And mostly, as always, the necessity of both gratitude, and grace.
Shitty people will always wish you ill, and be driven to disappointment and rage by your joy. Let them be disappointed. They're not your lodestars; the good people are.
I'm a profoundly lucky, blessed, and loved person; may I never take that for granted.
Onward into 2025. I wish everyone reading this the very best in that journey.
Happy New Year, my dear friends. Let's do it together, and in joy.
