So I’m sitting in my car in a Save On grocery store parking lot in Nanaimo, a small city on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I’m on the phone, talking business to a friend of mine who is in Kelowna. She tells me that she’s outside, ax in hand just finishing chopping up a cord of wood for winter. Her words feel brisk and crisp, like the air she’s breathing.

I love my life.

I’m at one of my favourite hangs in Nanaimo, the Departure Bay Dog Park. My friend Mo and I are talking about the usual stuff, sore knees, bad backs, trouble with computers and Ron who has just had a knee replaced.

“Hello” we both say in unison to the newcomer, approaching us with her overly frisky young poodle ‘Georgia’.

Within the next seven minutes I had learned that Marilyn was visiting Nanaimo. Her husband had died three years ago. She had worked all over the world in oil and gas. She had taught English in Vietnam. Her fiance was a former US Army Ranger and had killed people all over the world. He had just been robbed of $100,000 and had hired ‘some people’ to ‘sort it out’ and his lungs were a mess because he’d been dropped into a burning building on his last mission. Literally, his last mission. She was great and generous of spirit, rewarding us both with her infectious laugh.

That little word ‘hello’ can be so powerful and so much fun.

I love my life.

My friend Mo fascinates me. I doubt we would have been friends earlier in our lives. We’re very different. Now though, we’re fast Departure Bay Dog Park friends. He is a profane, foul mouthed old bugger. In fact when I introduced him to Marilyn I gave her fair warning.

“Hello, I’m Tony. This is Mo. He swears. A lot.”

“Fuckin’ right I do” Mo spoke up, on cue delivering his salutation on the back of a big, hearty laugh. It was perfect and we all laughed. Ten minutes later our new friend announced she had to go.

“Fuck, we’re just getting started. Do you have to fuckin’ go so soon.”

I’ll give you one guess.

I love my life.

“Get the phone honey.” It was my wife Mac and my phone was ringing.

I was back home after my visit to the dog park, being Facetimed by Rowe, my granddaughter. She’s eighteen months old!

“Sweet Baby Rowe … how are you baby girl?”

“Grgggle … phlrff … mhhuuur…. fllllluuuuppp” she replied in her impeccable phonetic interpretation of “I’m great grandpa, I just wanted to talk to you.“

“Hey Mac, Rowe can say ‘Grandpa’” I exclaimed, trying to stake my claim to Rowe’s First Word. If that is a competition and of course it’s not, then I want to win it. It’s one of those Unspoken Things that goes on between a grandmother and grandfather, never acknowledged, always present.

No, it isn’t. I’m just having fun with it.

I love my life.

Frivilous right?! Yep. Silly even. So silly. Unimportant. Definitely. It’s all of that and more. Fill your plate, call it what you will. But there is something to all this. It’s light hearted and spirited and fun and free and elevating and I’m struck by it. And it’s new to me. For me at least, this kind of easy access to living my life on the simplest of levels is new. In one sense I’m a wee bit disappointed it’s taken me seventy-three years to finally ‘get it’, on the other hand I think it may have arrived right on schedule. When I was finally ready for it. I wouldn’t have seen this for what it is, even if it had announced itself earlier in my life. It’s always been hiding in plain view. I just wasn’t ready to see it.

This feels like the bonus stage of my life. I didn’t quite know what to expect quite frankly. The not working part is easy to wrap your head around. It’s not a complicated concept but the ‘what to do with all that time’ part, now that had some challenges. Or at least I thought it would. But into that space like water across a table has flooded all manner of satisfaction. I write, a lot. I talk, a lot. I make friendships because I can now. I have what friendship needs to thrive. I have time and I’m generous with it. I have children and grandchildren and they add to our lives. I’m getting really good at making train tracks with Freddy, my three year old grandson, running wooden track throughout our townhouse. I taught him how to suck jello off the plate with his hands behind his back at Christmas dinner last year. I have lots to give. He just told me he wants to ask Grandma Mac to make a Jello Tree this Christmas, whatever that is. I think Rowe will be old enough to learn how to suck jello off the table this Christmas. And then the year after Clementine, our youngest granddaughter will be ready. That alone gets me through to 2025.

I love my life.

Now don’t get all up in my face. I am painfully aware that our world is in terrible turmoil, perhaps on the precipice of catastrophic conflict. I am seventy-three which means I have experienced profound sadness and tragic loss, the real life stuff that simply comes with the passage of time. I know that life can be a grinding affair, relentless and seemingly cruel at times. It takes a run at all of us. Duck and weave as we may no one escapes it. I am keenly aware as well that I am old, in good health but soon enough I will be navigating the Quality of Life Minefield that is the last furlong of my ‘race’. In the meantime and until that reality really hits I’m going with as much silly and unimportant and frivilous as I can lay my hands on. Perhaps it’s just my way of spitting at the inevitability of it all. While I still can.

My wife and I are the greatest of friends. I drive her nuts from time to time. Well, truth be told I drive her nuts all the time. She has her peccadilloes as well, of course. That’s my way of saying she drives me nuts as well, from time to time. Although let me be clear, she drives me nuts far less than I drive her nuts. By a country mile. Or is that a country kilometre? (it’s a nod to my US readers)

Good Lord, I can be painful. I can’t imagine what it’s like to read this rambling nonsense.

Where was I. Ah yes, I love my wife. And she loves me. We are the best of friends and have shared four decades together. It is for me today, what it has always been, a life changing love story. I have four children and five grand children. i have some runway left. I am a lucky man.

I love my life.

“Fuckin’ eh!”