Glenn Kubish

Here’s my unsolicited list of three little things from my little corner of the world that left behind some happiness and gratitude.                                             1. Crisis communications   Babysitting. What a misnomer. There’s a baby, alright, but there’s not much sitting. Instead, there’s a lot of swaying, rocking, bouncing, strolling, pacing, hoisting, pointing, lunging, bending, kneeling, climbing, carrying and dancing—lots of dancing. Shelagh and I pulled a long weekend shift caring for Little Buddy while his parents were away. It was a remarkable and moving 60 hours on the front lines of grandson care. I had forgotten many things. Forgotten how satisfying it is to have a four-month-old chew my finger with all his might, and no teeth. How to unlock from its base a car seat in which a back-facing, belted-in child sat outside OTTO on 95 Street, forgot that. Forgot how much little ones love the water, like they still remember the sea. And forgot what lungs in the tiny ch

Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are three things from that past week that for now have left behind some tracks of happiness and gratitude.                                         1. Big smiles   We filled up on beers and bar food at Towers, and, then, Shelagh and I brought down the average age at the MacEwan University pub by paying our tab and leaving. We walked up a few blocks, took the bridge over 109 Street to Allard Hall and got seats at a fundraising concert for Ukraine. It felt quite downtown-y and undergraduate-y. The pianist John Stetch was the draw. He banged out variations on J.S. Bach, F. Chopin, N. Diamond, T. Swift and S. Twain during the concert, which also featured a jazz take on Beer Barrel Polka, I think.  Stetch, who grew up in these parts, used the word “tentacles” to describe the connections re-experienced being back in his Edmonton roots. My tentacle to him is slender. Our future mothers were friends in nursing school. His father had a dental practice in Norwoo

This week’s collection of three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude goes like this:                          1. Skateboard   There’s a vintage Budweiser skateboard on eBay the description of which—”heavily used with lots of signs of wear, but no signs of damage”—applies, on good days, to me, too. I came back with that same model of skateboard after a family trip to southern California in 1976. The board was the closest I would get to the Beach Boys surf scene. The old skateboard resurfaced in my consciousness last week on a patch of pavement at Avonmore School. That’s where skater-daughter-in-law-teacher Aleasha gave me remedial lesson on how to ride. I felt very shaky. I made my first mistake immediately.   You might actually find it better to get going a bit and not just stand still on the board, she said, better for your balance, she said.   Aleasha did something else quite remarkable: she broke down that seemingly simple act of pushing off and rolling on a ska

On the hunch that remembering once a week to make note of the things that make me happy and grateful will make it easier to notice more of what is waiting to be noticed... Three Things, episode 90:                                1. That delicious moon   It’s hard to make a nutritional case for the perogy as the one food I would take to a desert island, but chekay, chekay, as my grandparents would say, wait, wait just a second, there’s more in a perogy than potato and cheese. For one thing, a chunk of my childhood is in those dumplings. Both my grandmothers made perogies. My Winnipeg grandma made exotic blueberry perogies. My parents have kept the tradition alive, although my dad devotes as much time and care to the butter, onions and pepper in which the perogies swim as to the doughy packets themselves. I have, so far, not kept up what’s expected of me in the family perogy-making chain.   We order them in fundraisers. We head to Taste of Ukraine in St. Albert to help the cause.    When