Was out and about yesterday Mom walking the blond bombshell, and so I decide its high time I made my way back to Soho – or so they call the area now around the Old Vic – short for South Of Huron. Its all posh now, least in spirit.

My objective was not to admire the bespoke chicness evolving, but rather to revisit the spot where so many of this decades memories lay. It was time to go back.

Leaving the area where we feared you would die.

Past the spot where Tim and I spent those February days of radiation adventures.

Past the Honey-Bee Ham Shop where we shared the most delicious thing either of us had ate in weeks, that afternoon we escaped…and half of it got thrown out, but we didn’t care.

Past the spot where rodger.the.dodger said, in reply to something Genevieve had said about my eyes…”her eyes are always that blue when she’s upset”. The grassy knoll he had spotted from his 7th floor psych ward view, and there I once again stood dumbfounded, but yesterday at how beautiful it had become, even on this soggy winter day…so many years later.

Tears, washed away by the wet snow that fell upon us, wiped from the corners of my eyes with soggy dog hair covered mitts.

With Tim’s spirit ringing in my ears, I ventured forth off the beaten path; I couldn’t resist. Which took me to a part of the city I’d never been, and therefore had never seen the beautiful river flats that exist east of Adelaide.

Twas a good slushy walk, and fresh, and difficult… on many levels.

We meandered, down and around the curve in the river, along the trail that swings through Chelsea Park, I would stop for a picture, Irish would stop for a sniff, I for a picture, she for longer sniff…and on we strode, with wet faces and hair, etched with smiles, just the two of us, with no sign of humans to be found.

I was so absorbed in it all, I walked right into a giant foot deep puddle of melted snow, and so the last jaunt was spent in soggy leather hikers. Even that didn’t diminish my joy… not even for a minute. By the time we got home, I ached from head to foot, with a chill that ran through to my bones, but shivering with happiness.

Washed afresh of all the oozy crud of the midden pile of rubbish from those by-gone days I’ve been plying, we plowed our way through that slushy white world, I brushed away the last bits and pieces.

Always,