Spending time in the great outdoors

School is almost out. You can hear it in the extra-loud screams of the kids from our street, the slowness with which their feet get onto the bus, and the number of marked and completed assignments and displayed work that appears in backpacks each day. This time of year we celebrate school’s end by meeting up with friends and going camping.

There’s something about camping that seems wholesome and character-building. We organize and tidy our space,  set up a cooking area and a line to hang our bathing suits, shake out our clothes and virtuously wipe sand off our feet. We build a fire, teaching our kids the way we learned in Scouts (or Brownies, or CGIT depending on which adult’s in charge). We have terrible sleeps and make excellent perk coffee, lazing around in our sloppiest clothes. We’re even happy when it rains and someone has brought a huge tarp to make a cozy shelter. Camping provides us with the opportunity to be competent, inventive and useful – no matter how disorganized and scattered we might feel every other day.

In my experience, camping can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. A case in point: last year, our friends accidentally brought a tiny tent and ended up sleeping practically on top of each other. They managed very well with little space and even less stuff. On the other hand, we camp in a pretty kitted-out fashion. We get some ribbing about our big, beautiful tent – known as “the condo” – and our fancy lanterns and gear.

One of my favorite things about camping has to be the food. Even if it’s a little charred, anything tastes better cooked in the fire in a foil packet.

Although we’ve had times when kids are terrified of glowing raccoon eyes and midnight trips to the less-than-tidy bathroom, camping has been a great activity for our family. After all, our kids are happiest dirty – and “the condo” has an air mattress!

40 years and still lovin’

Almost every week there’s an announcement in this paper about a 50th wedding anniversary. Sometimes there’s a party; sometimes there’s a picture of the happy couple, looking so young and fresh on the day they celebrated their marriage.

Having been married for close to ten years myself, the idea of 50 years together boggles the mind. It’s no wonder people throw parties for such a grand accomplishment; being married for that long takes a lot of work, patience and commitment. I have no doubt that, at the moment we take our vows, every married couple pictures themselves together 50 years later.

Today, my own parents are celebrating their 40th anniversary. I have been thinking about all of the major events of their lives: they’ve seen each other through the death of all of their parents, both early and late in their marriage; they’ve raised two kids, watched us get educations and careers, get married and have children ourselves; they have been with each other through various health problems and other difficult times.

It takes a strong marriage to get through the kinds of things that 40 years throws at you, but what I find inspiring about my own parents are the ways that they love each other every day. The small kindnesses and gestures, sincere words and loving looks are the glue that holds them together; it’s obvious to all of us that they are a team for the long haul. I consider myself lucky to have grown up with such a great example of what marriage can be.

Congratulations, Mum and Dad!

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote, and frankly it’s because I could not find the time. I seem to be in the middle of one of those periods of life when everthing happens at the same time, and the fact that you keep a handle on any of it is a small miracle.

It came to a head today, however, when I realized that I forgot my good friend’s birthday.

It’s not like it was yesterday, and I can get one of those silly cards that refer to our advancing age; no, her birthday was a whole month ago. I completely and totally forgot all about it. There’s no excuse for that at all.

I guess what happened is that I dropped the proverbial ball. I can only juggle so many things at once, and apparently I reached my max.

Some would argue that forgetting a birthday isn’t the end of the world, and I’m sure my friend would agree. However, I always try to make an effort to remember important events in others’  lives. When I ask my neighbor about his latest sermon, I’m acknowledging that   a) I’m listening to him          b) I recognize it’s an important part of his life and          c) I care how he does with that particular task.

When you remember someone’s birthday, you are acknowledging that they are important to you and that you want to recognize the changes in their lives. She is important to me. I’ve known her well for over 20 years. She’s my oldest friend. I’m sorry that I let her down.

Well, John Lennon said it best: life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. Sometimes, the best thing to do is forgive yourself for screwing up and pick up that ball you dropped.

Your heart means nothing til you give it away

An acquaintance from my university days passed away last weekend, at the young age of 40. His name was Derek Weiler, and he was best known as the editor of the publishing magazine, Quill and Quire. Derek was many other things: he was an excellent writer, and literary critic, a music fan, a baseball fan, and a very nice person. I remember sitting in our university pub with him discussing all nature of things. He was a patient listener  – and I was often a flighty, unfocused talker. Given the fact that he was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, the fact that he listened so well says a lot about him.

Much has been written about Derek in the last week by many who knew him better than I did recently. His obituary notes that his generous gift of organs will benefit as many as 75 people. It seems like the Derek I remember to agree to organ donation.

I started to think about organ donation while following the saga of Kaylee, the baby girl whose heart was to go to another very sick baby. As I listened to commentary, I learned a startling fact: Canada has among the lowest rates of organ donation in the world.

I’m sure that, in many cases, people have a difficult time deciding to donate the organs of their sons, daughters, husbands and wives because they don’t want to admit that they are really gone. However, many people report after making the decision that it has helped them through the grieving process.

Having signed my organ donor card for many years, I’ve had the conversation with my family about why I want my organs to go to someone who needs them. My reason is simple: I don’t need them any more, and if someone else can use them, then that’s what should happen.

It’s the last donation I’ll ever make in what I hope is (and strive to make) a generous life.

You can pick your nose, but…

It’s Easter weekend, and for most of us that means some kind of family gathering. In our family, there’s always food involved; usually it means monitoring kids while trying to enjoy some adult conversation at the dining table.

But whether you love your family (like I do) or can barely stand them, family gatherings can be fraught with problems and downright exhausting.

There are the inevitable comparisons between grandchildren (or dogs, or jobs, or marks, or whatever it happens to be in each family). The “I always get up to help clear the table and she doesn’t” problem. The “who sleeps where” problem. The “we have to drive farther and it’s not fair” problem. The “you went to their house last year and it should be our turn this year” problem. The complications go on and on.

When I get together with my own family, we enjoy each other’s company and our kids get along well. It’s actually a lot of fun. Each time we see each other we wonder why we don’t do it more often.

But this past weekend, my brother and I were teasing each other about past arguments and competitions, and I realized that for many people, that conversation wouldn’t have been a joke. It took us years to come to terms with each other, there’s no question; but the point is, we have. We’ve moved on to the place where we can good-naturedly joke about our differences. We’ve grown up.

Family dynamics are so tricky. I think you become even more aware of how tricky they are when you have kids. Do your kids think you like one better than another? Think one gets all the good toys? Think one gets away with everything and the other is always getting caught? You know how hard you try to do everything right, and how you truly love your children for themselves. You get a feeling for how hard it was for your parents.

The secret to my family’s success, I think, is that we have come to accept each other. We have been able to let past hurts and failures go, and love each other for who we have become.

I wouldn’t pick anyone else.

I want a new drug

I am sitting in a hotel room right now with my kids. They are watching Karate Kid on tv, and I am surfing the web. It’s aimless surfing – checking facebook, checking my email (there was none), reading about movies, the news, Michelle Obama’s dress sense, and other pretty useless pieces of information. How ironic that during this time-wasting adventure, I run across an article describing my own behavior: Why Moms are Addicted to the Internet.

Lately I refuse to let my kids use my computer because I am using it. I’m not doing schoolwork or anything particularly useful. I always justify my time on the web; I look up my kids’ habits and symptoms, books I’d like to read, news and articles I can use in class. More often than not, I am waiting for someone to get in touch with me. According to some, using facebook and other social networking sites allows us to manage our interactions with people we “kind of” know and engage more meaningfully with the ones we know better.

My problem lies with my encapsulated life. I have my school life, my mom life, and my social life. These lives happen in compartments of time. I spend a lot of energy trying not to think about the other parts while I am engaging in each one. It’s clearly not working – if I keep retreating to the web to focus on something other than what I’m doing, I am not managing to be “present” in any one of my compartments.

I’d like to say that things will get better when I finish school, but I know that’s not true. Because once I’ve finished school, there’s the job search and then the work and then more professional development, and on and on and on. I need to practice being focused on what I am doing at every moment. Oh yeah, and make some more real-world friends.

Although it hasn’t gotten to the stage where I stay up all night in chat rooms, I think I am mildly addicted to the internet. I’ve been neglecting the dishes and laundry, and worse yet, sometimes my family in order to surf.

I’m going to have to figure out a way to limit my time on the web. I’ll still need access for school, so cold turkey is out of the question.

Thank goodness I’ve avoided the insanity that is Twitter…

10 days to a brand new you

I am still recovering from my trip to Europe with 18 EDSS students. I was lucky enough to act as a chaperone with my parents-in-law. The very long trip home from Rome, jet lag, and return to my busy life has got me sleeping a couple of extra hours a night.

However, that’s not my topic for the day. I noticed something in many of the students while we were away, and it reminded me of myself at their age. That thing is the change that comes over you during an extraordinary experience.

For some of the students, flying to Paris was their first experience in an airplane. It was their first time being responsible for their own identity documents, luggage, and valuables; it was their first time encountering  a country where nothing is immediately recognizable. Many students were tentative and a little bit nervous at first, as might be expected. We lectured them about hanging on to their belongings, watching the group and being aware of pickpockets…just enough that anyone would feel a little nervous.

After a few days, the change started to come over them. You could see it in their bearing and attitude. I can do this, they thought. I can speak confidently to order food. I can understand the money and barter with vendors. I can get on and off the Metro. I can eat this food even if I’ve never heard of it before.

This same change happened to me when I was their age, and I participated in the same kind of trip to England and France. I had done a lot of traveling in my life, but always with my parents. I had a measure of freedom on my trip to Europe that I had never experienced. I gained a sense of competence and pride that I could manage things for myself.

The confidence that comes from overseas travel is accompanied by awe that so much of the world lives differently. These students worked hard to get to France and Italy. They appreciated everything that they saw. They had a lot of questions and comments, and thought a lot about what they were seeing. In short, they approached the trip with maturity.

I remember feeling slightly off-kilter when I returned from my first trip abroad, as though I had changed but everything at home was the same. It’s a kind of growing up that happens in 10 short days.

It was a real pleasure to watch it happen to such a nice group of students.

Jon Stewart, my hero

Wow, that was a public spanking if I ever saw one.

I’ll add my 2 cents to the ongoing discussion of Jon Stewart’s attack on financial networks. If you haven’t seen anything about it, check out The Daily Show’s clips on The Comedy Network. It started with a bit of a tirade against Rick Santelli and his odd idea that homeowners are to blame for the financial crisis. Stewart went on to present a reasoned (but funny and a little silly) argument that the financial networks not only missed the signs of the stock market bubble bursting, but that they were complicit with the CEOs and their misleading information. Jim Cramer became kind of a symbol of CNBC, and the feud went on all week. Last night, they hashed it out on air.

I love Jon Stewart’s brand of humour and think he’s one of the smartest guys on television. Not only is he incredibly funny, but he’s often pointed and bold in his criticism of big business and media. It’s no wonder Stephen Colbert calls him a “pinko commie commentator”. Stewart is my kind of thinker.

What was so great about Stewart and Cramer meeting on the show was that Stewart said what everyone in the US (and even here) who has lost money, their job or their house must be thinking – it’s not a game. It’s my life. Stewart told Cramer that it seems like Wall Street is playing fast and loose with our money, and look where it got us. Shouldn’t the financial news networks be warning us of the danger early?

I’ve been amazed to hear conservative (Republican) thinkers in the US slam Obama and his “socialist” agenda. While I know that the cornerstone of conservatism is to remove government from the market, don’t we have a blantant example that market forces don’t solve all problems? Can we really rely on the same market that got us here to get us out again?

Luckily, the Dow has been rallying over the week and that may mean that investors are gaining some confidence. But as Stewart pointed out on Wednesday’s show last week, the Dow is far removed from what happens in real life. It’s not the whole picture. It’s not even a sliver of the picture. We’ve seen, however, just how great the influence of the market can be and the catastrophic effect it can have when we leave our money in the hands of the greedy and power-hungry.

Jon Stewart decided to say what everyone should have been saying already, and it wouldn’t surprise me if many people who watched their savings drain away got some satisfaction as they watched.

I won’t be writing next week, as I am off to Paris and Rome (among other places) with a group of students from EDSS. I’m pretty excited about the trip, and I’ll bet I have a thing or two to say when I come back.

The art of guilt

I have a close friend who is a Creative Memories consultant, and she organizes weekends away for 20+ ladies who sit at large tables and create scrapbooks. I’ve gone every year for ages. This time, I spent the weekend making a book for my son for his fifth birthday.

Scrapbooking is an interesting hobby.  You can make scrapbooks about anything and everything, and people do: kids, pets, events, vacations, hobbies and anything else that people take pictures of for posterity. Scrapbooks are often more than a collection of pictures and memories. Some of them are truly art.

Scrapbooking is big business. Stores, consultants and web sites sell a lot of product, and women accumulate a lot of paper, ribbon, brads, punches, scissors, cutting machines, stickers…not to mention organizers to hold all of their supplies. It’s not uncommon for people to dedicate a room in their houses to this hobby.

There is a dark side to scrapbooking, though, and that is guilt.

Many women who make scrapbooks are mothers, and their scrapbooks are about their children. When they don’t keep up with the pictures, they feel guilty. When they spend too much money on their hobbies, they feel guilty. When they have space and supplies but don’t use them, they feel guilty. When they devote an entire weekend to their pursuit, they feel guilty. It can be a no-win situation.

As I sat and cropped my photos and snipped my paper, I listened to the conversations of my fellow crafters and realized that the guilt they were feeling has many dimensions. Feeling guilty about being away from your family is a way of declaring that your family is very important to you and that you are reluctant to leave it. Feeling guilty about the money you are spending – even while you spend it – is a way of making it clear that your priorities lie somewhere more socially acceptable, like in shoes and clothing for your children. And feeling guilty about not keeping up justifies the time you are spending trying to keep up. It’s kind of like standing in front of a mirror and pointing out your flaws before anyone else has the chance (a la Mean Girls).

I’m not saying that people aren’t really feeling their guilt. I’m just saying that they should let it go. In aid of this, I’ve devised a scapbooker’s manifesto:

• If you do it because you love it, do it without apology!

• If you do it for your children, then keep that in mind and trust that you’ve left them in good hands at home!

• If you honestly feel that you are spending too much money, then come up with thrifty ways to get new supplies – like a paper exchange with friends!

• If you feel like you are getting behind, keep in mind the real reason for creating scrapbooks – to preserve memories!

It’s an age-old habit of mothers to feel guilty; don’t let that guilt ruin your hobby, too. I, for one, won’t think less of you for enjoying yourself as you let the creative juices flow.

P.S. I’m very disappointed that Woolwich didn’t win the Kraft Hockeyville contest. I know my niece, who voted 2000 times, will be disappointed too. However, that’s life and congratulations to Terrace, BC, who have the privilege of hosting a pre-season game next fall.

To see the sun again

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell one another, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn’d
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth
And let thy holy feet visit our clime!

~ William Blake “To Spring”

I know it’s only the end of February, but I’ve dedicated some of my space to the great William Blake in honour of the beautiful day we are having today. Today the sun is out and you can see some grass peaking out from under the dirty, sandy snowbanks and what little ice remains on the sidewalk.

I don’t think I actually have Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I know this for sure: when the sun starts to shine again, so do I. I go outside looking for reasons to be there – today I swept my driveway, twice, just so I could be in the sun. I am nicer, more kind, more patient, more productive, and generally easier to be around.

In the spring, my neighbours come out and we greet each other with smiles and waves. No longer content to wiggle a finger and sprint for the door, we actually stand around chatting about what we’ve been up to. We lament the long months of winter we spent inside our snug houses and look forward to spending time together on the deck, over a coffee or even a beer.

If we lived in a temperate climate, there’s no way we would be so collectively happy about the change in seasons. There’s a famous saying that without experiencing the deepest valleys, one could never appreciate the glory of the highest mountains. And spring is like that mountain after dark months in the valley.

It’s tricky, Spring; it seems like it’s here and then suddenly it’s gone, buried under flurries and hiding from the sharp wind. This teasing will go on until April or May, when we can shed our coats finally and get to the gardening. Until then, we just have to take beautiful days like today and hold on to them tightly.

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