My Hut

A backyard sanctuary promised solitude-until I realized that I didn't want to be alone

- Cathrin Bradbury

MY FIRST REACTION when my son told me last summer I was going to be a grandmother, and that the baby and his parents would live with me, was unbounded joy. My second reaction was to build a 10x10 wooden hut in my backyard. It comes with a silver key that is mine alone.

My son, Kelly, and his partner, Vonnie, moved in a few months later, in between relocating to Toronto from Guatemala and saving up for their dream bachelor apartment. Meanwhile, we all fit in the white stucco two-storey family home in midtown Toronto, eat mostly healthy meals sometimes together, sometimes, no pressure, and share a copacetic, early-to-bed-and-rise schedule.

With a full house, however, I now work where I sleep. The surprise baby news was when my gaze turned to the potential of the old tool shed at the back of our haphazard yard. Where others saw a teardown, I saw a magical portal to another world. A place, after a modest fix-up with a few nails and a hammer, to write and explore an unabashedly interior life, just a few footsteps away.