Tag Archives: family

Fast and slow

We are having a renovation done and it’s about to move a lot faster. When electrical and plumbing are happening, the changes are incrementally slow, but this week they will start the drywall, and then things will start to move really quickly, adding walls, cabinets, and flooring. Soon we won’t remember what things look like now.

Kids are the same. Day to day you don’t notice them growing up, then suddenly they are adults. Day to day they are just your kids, but blink and suddenly they are their own people, with their own relationships, and work. The transition was slow, but looking back it seems so fast.

When you are building a home, things move both fast and slow.

Puzzled

Today my family went to an Escape/Breakout room. A fun place where you work in small groups to solve puzzles and escape the room(s) before time runs out. Along the way, you can ask for help a couple times.

We asked for help, we didn’t break out, we ran out of time.

I find that I enjoy puzzles, but I’m not good with time limits. I slip down rabbit holes and spend a long time on cold trails, hoping they’ll get hot. I will spend way too long looking for clues where they are none, while oblivious to the clues right in front of my face.

Sometimes I can solve complex puzzles and sometimes I miss the simple solutions to easier puzzles. Sometimes I can get stumped again and again and persevere without success. Other times my perseverance is rewarded. I’ve learned that there are certain puzzles that captivate me, and some I have no patience for. But I do love to be puzzled, and I get a lot of joy out of solving complex puzzles, or at least trying.

Time keeps ticking

It’s wonderful when you get to spend a weekend with family. I enjoy my work, but I have to say that I’d love a 4-day week with 3-day weekends. Time seems to be going by so quickly.

As I get older, I seem to be more and more fascinated by time… and the time we have with our family of different generations.

Here is a video to help you really think about this.

Family updates

My wife and I are on holidays. This morning I opened my phone and there were two messages on Snapchat. My oldest finished her summer course yesterday and sent us one at 1:30am telling us about a late night visit with a friend, and commenting on our sunset Snapchat that we sent the previous day. My youngest sent one of our cat giving her early morning cuddles before her 5:30am shift.

It’s funny how social media gets a bad wrap, but people don’t spend a lot of time talking about how good it is for connecting family. My sisters and I have never been as connected as we have been since covid started. We began a ‘Sibs’ chat on WhatsApp that we use all the time, and we regularly connect on a group video chat. That never happened before lockdowns.

It takes a few seconds to share a photo and write a quick blurb, or to make a video and share a little slice of life. My daughters are better than my wife and I for also saving the pics and videos before sending them and so we also get ‘1 year ago’ (or longer) memories sent to us as well.

Sharing a little slice of life… that’s exactly what it is. Moments that aren’t focused on projecting an image for social media… not about sharing just the highlights you mostly see on Facebook and Instagram. Instead, just sharing honest moments with the people you love. Messy hair, tiny frustrations, funny or embarrassing incidents, meals, and just average moments when you think of your kids or they think of you.

Without these apps, we would probably not connect as much. They act as easy-to-share tools that invite updates and make us feel closer… Connected, when we can’t physically be together.

When I’m gone

I’m away visiting my parents and had a little getaway planned to meet a buddy and go fishing. Unfortunately one of my uncles passed away from cancer (we knew it was coming), and that changed the plans.

The friend I was meeting replied to my cancellation news saying, “No problem family comes before fishing. Hope we can do it next year if you come down. Talk soon, take care.”

He’s a good enough friend that nothing more needed to be said.

My uncles service, outdoors, at the graveyard, was quaint, and a wonderful tribute to a kind, caring, and unassuming man, who put family above all else. He was given a year and a half to live 3 years ago, and I think it was a relief to both him and the people who cared for him that the suffering that was particularly bad for the last month had ended.

The burial confirmed in my mind that I want to be cremated after I die. I have no desire to hold onto any real estate after I am gone. It sounds crass but I would rather be flushed down the toilet than buried in a plot that takes up space on this planet, when I have no practical use for that space.

I heard once that one of the reasons Disney Land and Disney World check your bag when you enter their theme parks is to check for ashes. People want to have their ashes spread on ‘The happiest place on earth” so frequently that it is an actual concern for them.

We see dead animals all the time. Parts of them are in our freezers, they show up as roadkill, our pets die. When they are gone, it is just their meat and bones that remain, the animal that was ‘is’ no longer around. The same applies to us. It’s funny, I used to think, “Spread my ashes in the ocean… but make sure it’s a warm ocean because I hate the cold.” Now I realize how silly that is. When I’m gone, I’m gone, and what happens to my powdery remains is something I don’t care about.

What I do care about is the life that I have, and people I love, and the things I hope to do before I’m gone.

You can’t change the people around you, but…

I heard this brilliant quote yesterday:

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”

It reminds me of:

“You are the average of the 5 people you hang around the most.”

Finding the right people to be around is a secret to life seldom discussed. We are blessed when those people are our family, and we don’t have to seek them out elsewhere. Being surrounded by people who make you a better person is a sure way to be a better person.

Choose your friends wisely.

Family visit

Tomorrow will be the first time in years that I will be seeing my parents and all 3 sisters together.

It has been very long since we grew up under one roof, and opportunities like this don’t happen often. I wish my wife and kids were here with me. I can remember being a kid and rolling my eyes because we had to go to yet another family gathering, now I wish we had these opportunities more often.

We’ve bantered before about everyone going on a big family vacation, but it’s never easy trying to coordinate everyone, and I am not sure if it will happen. So for now, I’ll just have to appreciate that we will have a rare opportunity to be together tomorrow, and make the most of the time we have.

First guests

Yesterday my wife and I went to a family member’s house for lunch. The family has immunocompromised members and have taken the lockdowns and social distancing very seriously. We were the first guests in their house in almost a year and a half. At one point, one of them said, “I’m having a moment, this is the most normal thing I’ve done in a long time!”

Although we are double vaccinated, we still wear masks in public places, and practice social distancing, and when we had friends over a couple weekends ago, we still held the gathering in our back yard. We are being thoughtful about how we move forward. But yesterday that quote kind of struck me. Yes, it was also our first time invited into someone’s house for lunch in quite some time, as well as their first time receiving guests… It was a first step towards normal.

Sharing meals is a special thing that brings us together, and being freer to do so now is wonderful. While caution is still needed, and being double vaccinated does not give us 100% immunity, we are on a path to ‘normal’. I fear that large pockets of unvaccinated people will prolong the need for caution, and we are not moving fully towards pre-covid normal any time soon, but this moment of being first guests was pretty special.

I’m not sure what the new normal will be, but at least we are moving in the right direction, and I think we will have a few more ‘firsts’ in the coming months.

Sharing again

Revisiting my uncle, I was reminded of this story, and my post, forgotten dream:

From my earliest memories I can remember our house containing numerous bookshelves with books double stacked, one in front of the other, with whole sections having books stacked horizontally, so that 6 or 8 horizontal books could take the place of 4 or 5 vertical books.

And I read almost none of them.

The dream was a dream of lost opportunity. Of being blind to the ocean of information that sat before me metaphorically unseen, and literally unread.

Adding to this we need to spend quality time with people we care about… and not take them for granted. It’s easy to think the people closest to us will always be there and forget to treat them the way they deserve to be treated.

Inversely it’s a good thing when we remove people from our lives if they are not worthy of our time. I love this quote by Isaiah Frizzelle about creating boundaries for people that don’t deserve access to your life, “Time does not allow reentry and an apology does not always allow access.”

To the fish, water is invisible. It’s fine for us to ignore the oxygen around us, but we need to pay attention to, and show love and respect to, the people we care about.