Dear Grumps,

I stopped by your old house the other day. To me, 67 Elvaston still belongs to you and BG, even though I know some stranger now owns it. I didn't care that it was private property. I wouldn't call it trespassing, exactly; I just poked about the front yard and checked things out a bit. No one has rented it yet.

You would have been 92 today.

Whenever April arrives, I automatically think of you. It saddens me that you never got to meet the two great loves of my life, but in a funny way, they help keep you alive for me.

You see, your great-granddaughter is a car fanatic, just like you were. She enjoys nothing more than lining her toy cars up on the table and playing games with them. They often accompany her while she eats her cereal or picks over her lunch. Every now and then, my husband and her will get down on the living room room and joyfully smash them into each other.

Eve's favourite is the white Morris Minor with the burgundy roof. Michael's fond of the light blue '57 Chevy. He calls it "Smooth Ride" because it glides so effortlessly across the floor. If my daughter's feeling particularly generous, she'll present Morris Minor to me as if it was a great gift.

You used to keep your toy cars lined up on your bookshelf. They shared space with BG's Nancy Regan bio and a well-loved edition of The Thorn Birds. I don't remember us ever playing with them when we visited as kids. They were simply on display, just like your various war medals.

Sometimes I'll notice a dent or a piece missing from one of your classic cars, and I'll cringe, imagining your displeasure at the sight of your cars being beaten up by play. But then I put the thought out of my mind. The fact is, they're being used, and enjoyed.

They're being loved. And through them, so are you. By two people you've never even met.

I remember seeing your red Mustang sitting in my parents' garage after BG died last year, when it officially became an orphan. I knew it wasn't practical to keep it in the family, but I still felt a pang that such a powerful reminder of you would soon be gone.

I can't imagine how my dad felt when he took down all the licence plates you carefully nailed up in your garage. I didn't realize that in the old days, you needed to get a new one every single year.

I remember soon after you died, my sister and I saw the word GRUMPS on a licence plate while driving on the highway. Then we both smelled cigarette smoke late at night, in separate rooms, even though no one around was smoking. We took it as a sign you were still with us. For me, your spirit's about whenever my daughter takes your vintage toy cars out.

I suppose they belong to her now. Or maybe they're just on loan. Either way, they live in a cheap plastic wagon these days. They mingle with Hot Wheels and mini modern automobiles. Sometimes when she goes to bed, I'll take them out and line them up on the fireplace.

I like for her to be surprised when she comes down in the morning, as if they magically drove themselves and are about to race. They're a constant in her life, you see, something she always comes back to no matter what new-fangled toy comes along.

​They don't make them like they used to—toy cars or grandfathers. But don't worry, Grumps: we're taking good care of them for you. We're driving them and playing with them all over the house; it's our tribute to you.

"Mama, that's the chair from BG's house."

It's 7.30 in the morning when I'm jolted out my new-day daze and transplanted into the past. I look at the little white wicker chair in our den. It used to sit in front of a stone fireplace in my grandmother's house, near her rocking chair.

She would rotate her teddy bear collection every week, so her favourites all got a chance to sit on the throne for a spell. It never seemed odd to me as a child; we just knew that every year we got BG a teddy bear calendar for Christmas.

It wasn't until I grew up and out of my own stuffed animal attachments that I wondered at her enduring fascination. Why did she keep so many around the house? They seemed to live in every room in some form—on shelves in her bedroom, or scattered around the living room.

Maybe it had something to do with loss, and trying to fill the hole of grief. My grandmother knew what it was to lose her mother at the age of nine.

When we visited her a couple of years ago, she admitted that she'd never had any teddy bears growing up. Even though she went on to get married and have children, these inanimate objects continued to fill a mysterious space in her heart. They were such a comfort to her, especially when my grandfather died and she wandered the halls of her beloved home alone.

I remember when she died last year, it was so hard to part with any of them. It felt like we were getting rid of pieces of her heart. So my sister and I, sentimental souls that we are, took plastic bags of them home, just to keep them from being thrown out in the trash.

Today I see that my daughter has placed one of her own teddy bears in the wicker chair at some point. For the longest time it's simply been another piece of storage, with various reusable bags sitting on it.

It looks better occupied, I decide, with a flash of guilt.

I'm startled at what my three year old remembers. She only met her great-grandmother a handful of times. They were both always slightly wary with each other, neither of them quick to warm up to new people.

But it's important to me to keep my grandmother's memory alive, to reference her in conversation, to tell stories and hang pictures that keep her with us in spirit.

This afternoon my husband and I were in her old neighbourhood in Toronto after we visited our accountant. Just like the last time we found ourselves there, I couldn't resist the temptation to drive by and say hi. To her, to her house, to the past. Technically it's no longer ours, those bricks and stain-glass windows and stone fireplaces, but it still feels like hers.

So when I saw the For Lease sign still planted on the lawn, I got out of the car while my husband scrolled on his phone. He kept the engine running as I wandered up the path and steps to the front door. I looked at the Canadian flag tangled up and twisted from the wind, and I wished I could fix it. My grandmother would have had a ladder out there at first glance. Then I touched the Eaton's security sticker on the screen door and closed my eyes. It's the closest I get to her these days.

​Last night I got a rejection from a well-respected Canadian literary journal I submitted several poems to. I had been holding out a lot of hope that they would accept my work, so the initial excitement of receiving an email from them was swiftly replaced by a crushing sense of disappointment. Since I've had some writing successes in the past few months, however, I feel like I was able to dust myself off more quickly than usual.

This morning I checked the stats on my Poetic Parenting blog and did a double-take. Over the past week, I've had over 10, 000 page views on my site (usually it's a few hundred). I know most of the traffic is coming from people who have read my article about deciding to have only one child and are now curious about the rest of my work. When I dig deeper into the numbers, I see that some of my old blog posts have been read by 900 people recently. It boggles my mind and takes the sting out of the rejection notices and deafening silence that sometimes accompany my queries.

It also lets me know what's resonating with readers, and what's not. Thank you again to everyone who supports my writing career, likes my posts and shares my articles. I never thought I'd get the opportunity to explore it and chase it the way I have in the past year. You give me the encouragement to keep going and keep striving for even more. Thanks for reading. ​

This afternoon, I finally cracked open Well-Read Women: Portraits of Fiction's Most Beloved Heroines, a book my husband got me for Christmas (which I requested, of course). The quote on this particular page made me pause. I haven't read any Ayn Rand, but her words resonated and reminded me of how interconnected we all are, especially across social media.

​Yesterday I pushed a button and sent the most vulnerable part of my heart out into the online world, a place where people often hide behind screens and cut others down with a few careless taps of their keys. I was so nervous about what strangers might say. I worried about being judged. Being called selfish.

Today, a day later, I can proudly say that I've never had such an overwhelmingly positive response to a piece I've written. As a writer, you often fear your work will fall into the cyber abyss and no one will hear it thud into the silence. We may be solitary souls, us scribblers, but we crave validation and feedback, too. We want to know we're making a difference, touching a heart, striking a chord.

I received so many beautiful comments yesterday that I actually compiled them into 15 pages of a Word doc. It was important for me to save them, to savour them, to archive my pride. There will be days ahead when I need to pull out that file full of kindnesses. I know this. And on those tough, challenging days of rejections and silence, I will read through it and remember why I do this, why I transfer my secrets into the screen and share them with all of you.

​A sincere thank you to everyone who responded to my story and let know how it made you felt. My heart is lighter for it.

Last week I also published a poem, Tabula Rasa, on the literary journal, The Sunlight Press. You can read it here. 

It was a long path to publication for this one, mainly because I never felt confident enough to submit it anywhere. I didn't consider myself a "serious" poet. I was scared of being vulnerable, of exposing too much of my personal life and past. But my writing journey over the past few years has taught me something important: the more I share stories and snapshots from an authentic and honest place, the more people respond to it and see themselves in it. I'm so happy I finally worked up the nerve to send it to a publication I respect and admire. 

Ever since I took the Ancestry.com DNA test last year, I've been curious about what my husband might be made of. I mean, he seems 100% Italian. He supports the Azzuri, Italy's national football team. He often talks with his hands. He enjoys a good, sharp piece of Crotonese every now and then.

Both of his parents were born in Calabria, a Southern region in the boot-shaped land famous for its pizza, fashion and godfathers. But the thing is, he doesn't really care for most types of pasta. I know, blasphemous, right? Now, call me crazy, but how could an Italian thoroughbred not love spaghetti and penne and linguine? He'll make an exception for farfalle and ravioli, but still.

It boggles my mind, and breaks his mother's heart.

Sometimes, when I see his lovely olive skin tan effortlessly in the summer, I look at my "porcelain" complexion and want to punch him in the arm. But it also makes me wonder if there's something more to him than just Italia. His heavy-lidded bedroom eyes are uniquely shaped. To me, they almost appear Egyptian. There's also the fact that he's often mistaken for being Lebanese or Israeli. I often refer to him affectionately as my "Mediterranean dish," but is that even accurate?

To my mind, there was only way to find out. So, I bought him the DNA kit for Christmas.

It's not often you can say you've given someone their ethnic makeup and identity, but nothing is too good for my hubby.

We finally got the results yesterday, and they absolutely blew me away. I asked my other half afterwards what he thought they'd be, and he admitted that he thought he'd be 90% Italian, with maybe some North African thrown in (they're close geographically).

Boy, was he wrong! His ethnicity is much more interesting than either of us imagined. And the funny part? None of it overlaps with mine—at all.

He's actually only 59% Italian/Greek (they lump both countries together). It came as a shock to both of us to realize he's only just over half of what we thought he was. No wonder he can't get an Italian passport. And there's always been the fact that while he officially supports the boys in blue come World Cup time, his heart was claimed long ago by a Spanish club called FC Barcelona.

Fun fact: Did you know Greece founded colonies in Sicily and Southern Italy? Me either.

So what else is my man made of?

Well, it turns out the next biggest part of him is Middle Eastern! At 21%, this stunned me in a good way. So what countries does this include, exactly?

Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Israel.

I guess that's why people frequently think he's Lebanese or Israeli. It's cool to find out that there's actually some DNA evidence to back up random strangers' visual theories.

Fun fact: Did you know that while this region is better known for its deserts, you can actually ski at six different resorts in Lebanon?

Next up, at a respectable 12%, is the Caucasus region. This is primarily located in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

This particular result hit me emotionally, especially given our current political climate. At a time when we are singling out a certain group of people and dehumanizing them for the countries they come from, my husband's ancestry result really struck me. 

​We are all from the same places if we go back far enough. And we all have different ethnic pieces in our DNA profiles. If only we could remember that, and focus on our similarities instead of dwelling on our differences, the world would be a much more peaceful place.

Fun fact: The Caucasus region is home to some of the world's most famous empires. Cyrus the Great, who expanded his territories in Iran to create the Persian Empire, was also  known for being religiously and culturally tolerant, and freed the Jews from slavery to the Babylonians.

Speaking of the Jews...it turns out my love is part chosen people!

He's 7% European Jewish, which means some of his ancestors could have come from places like Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary or Israel. 

I actually wanted this ancestry result for myself, so I'm happy that I get to live it vicariously through him. Maybe that's why one of his favourite directors is Woody Allen?

Fun fact: Jewish populations from northern and Eastern Europe are known as "Ashkenazi."

Last, but not least, my hubby was actually right about one thing: he does have trace amounts of North African in him. This includes places like Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara and Libya. 

Fun fact: The majority of people in this region live within about 50 miles of the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts.

So there we have it. My fella is full of surprising ethnicities. It makes me see him a whole new light. It also makes me wonder:

Is it okay to keep calling him my Italian stallion?