Not the compilation album put out by the Rolling Stones in 1967, but the kind of flowers you give your mother on Mothers Day. As I write, that was three weeks, and the flowers I gave my mother on Mothers Day (a very attractive, I must admit, bouquet of red, white, and yellow roses) are still in their vast on the dining room table. A bit worse for wear, yes, but still there, and will be, my mother has told me, until the petals start falling off the stems. That’s how much she loves them. She always cries on Mothers Day, but the verse in the card which I gave her (along with a gift card for the place where she gets her hair done) was more heartfelt, I think, than other years. “Cherish” is the word that comes to mind. She wants to cherish the fact that she is my mother and I am her son for as long as she can, for as long as we can.

It’s very hot here today. I was up at five a.m., not because of the heat, but because I’ve been getting out of bed an hour or so earlier than I usually do in an attempt to push on with the manuscript of a short story collection I’m putting together. It’s called “The Thud a Body Makes.” This morning, before sitting down to write this, I completed putting the first corrections into my computer from a printed copy of the manuscript. It’s amazing how many errors you discover when working from the printed page. I’m all fine with computers, but the mind can get lazy when working solely from what appears on the screen. The printed page offers a fresh view of what you’re already familiar with.

This thing about writing has been my saviour. It’s what gets me up in the morning. It’s what I look forward to in the evening while I’m doing the dishes or watching TV with my mum. I showed her the manuscript after I had printed it out to show her what I had been working on. She is very proud of me, and immediately sat down to read the first story with the kind of absolute attention any writer wants a reader to apply. She has for the most part forgotten all about it now, but her devotion lingers and I am happy to serve it the best I can.

Much work, of course, needs to be done before I go looking for a publisher, but correcting the printed manuscript is a few steps along from the beginning of any such project.

Speaking of flowers (or the album”Flowers”), The Rolling Stones seem to have been on my mind because I had a dream recently which involved Mick Jagger. In the dream, I was hanging around with a bunch of people I sort of knew but whom I admired very much. We roamed the streets talking about all sorts of things. I remember feeling depressed and left out, until I realized one of the people in our group was Mick Jagger. Weird, I know. Where did that come from? He came over to me and started talking, trying to make me feel better, telling me my prospects were better than I realized, I was doing the right thing, all that sort of stuff. And when I woke up I felt better in an odd way. Thanks, Mick, wherever you are.

Later this morning, I’m going to visit my best friend. We met in grade two, if you can believe it. He’s in hospital with all sorts of problems. The underlying issue, however, is colon cancer, but since he started chemo treatments as an outpatient he’s ended up back in hospital. He’s had a stroke which has left his left side very weak, and just a few days ago the nurse came in during the middle of the night to check on him and found him lying in a pool of his own blood. It was touch-and-go for a while, but the doctors were able to stop the internal bleeding, and four units of blood later, he was back up to his usual cheerful self. Amazing.

I had to leave my desk for a few minutes when my mother woke up, but now I’m back.

I brought my mother her tea, fibre gummies to keep her bowels working, painted her big toes with a toe fungal treatment, and we talked about the movie we saw last evening, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” about Tina Turner’s struggle to break free of Ike Turner and make a musical career free from his abusive behaviour, before we went on to sing the first few line of the title song until I turned my attention to set up the air-conditioner so we don’t suffocate.

And the flowers remain, despite the heat.

I’m now going to get ready to go to the hospital, with the words of The Rolling Stones ringing in my head: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you might just get what you need.”

Thanks, Mick.