hummingbears

Hello, blog. I've abandoned you for quite some time. It's therapeutic having a space to write but it can also feel like a burden. I write when I'm anxious, I realize. That's going to color my output.

At the moment the anxiety centers around my departure tomorrow from the family homestead in Los Angeles. The children and I are flying back to Toronto, our quote-mark 'home', to rejoin husband and cat. The middle child said, in a spurt of positive thinking, that Toronto already feels like home. I meanwhile woke to the BBC World Service news, on a local public radio station, and for a few moments believed I was lying in bed at home (no quotes) in Brighton, listening to Radio 4. I feel simply dislocated.

I sit at my computer, at my parents' dining table, watching hummingbirds flit around the feeders that I put up for them each time I visit, and which my parents allow to run dry when I go. Poor little avians, feast and then famine. I read that there are hummingbirds in Toronto, in the summer, but I haven't yet discovered any. False advertising or insufficient patience?

Hummingbirds in summer. What visits in winter? Polar bears? I fear February.