We had a good visit at home over Christmas and enjoyed ourselves doing the low key things that we had taken for granted over the years and yet turned out to be what what Christmas is all about. A visit with old friends, a dinner with an old business partner, touring the Christmas trees in the Empress Hotel and the Gingerbread  Houses at the Laurel Point Hotel.

Christmas tree at Snowdrop Ave

It seems one spends as much time getting ready to go to China each time even if one just came back. There always seems to be small (and not so small) things that one misses in another country. Things that one is used to or things that have taken years to find — almonds, cashew nuts, peanut butter and large bags of unpopped popcorn.

Then there are the things that one always has a hard time appreciating because we are too close to them. I am thinking here especially about my daughter, Victoria. We have been away from her for 6 months now and a year while she was away at college and she has matured, grown up become her own person. She stands on her own deciding her future, suffering her own battle with illness and the vicissitudes of fortune.