Tag Archives: family

You’ve made good time

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It wasn’t a a question, but rather a statement, “You’ve made good time.”

We were on our way to holiday in Kelowna and our youngest daughter was spying on us. Well, not really spying, that suggests something clandestine and this was fully consensual. We share our locations with each other on our phones.

I think my daughter uses it on my wife and I more routinely than we do on her, and that’s perfectly ok with me. I tend to use it when I’m headed to bed and she’s not home yet, and sometimes when I’m the first one home from work and wondering where everyone else is?

I’ll sometime get texts from my daughter that say, “You’re still at work?”, and I know that again is more of a statement than a question… she checked my location before asking. Then the conversation moves to dinner plans or evening plans, and maybe even a request for a drive so that she doesn’t have to take her car somewhere that she may have drinks. Again this is perfectly fine with me.

I can see how this tool can be weaponized by a controlling parent or spouse, but in the hands of mutually respectful people it is really handy. It allows us to connect and feel connected, even when we are headed on holidays. And it changes the conversation from ‘Where are you?’ to the follow up questions that matter more.

Open house

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This weekend my oldest daughter and four of her friends came to stay with us from Vancouver Island. It was a full house. This reminded me of my childhood house in Toronto.

We always had people over. I can remember, on several occasions, bringing an entire waterpolo team to stay at our place. Sleeping bags laid out side-by-side covered most most of the basement floor space. My mom would buy 3 or 4 dozen buns, cold cut meats, and drinking boxes for everyone.

After I left for university, I lost my bedroom to my youngest sister. So summers at home meant sleeping in the basement. By then we had two beds down there and often my sister’s boyfriend would sleep down there in the other bed. There were nights I’d come home after midnight and attempt to go in one bed and someone, one of my sister’s friends, would be in the bed. Then I’d see someone in the other bed, and head up to sleep on the couch. I’d leave the next morning early, not even knowing who used the beds the night before? This seemed normal. We took in house guests like strays… giving them shelter, and feeding them.

Before that, when I was still in elementary and junior high school, I’d come home some days and my friends were already over eating cookies and milk or watching tv in our basement. They would get ‘home’ before me, and make themselves at home. In fact, my mom would leave the front door unlocked and friends wouldn’t even knock. They knew it was an open house, and they would come in and declare their presence, saying ‘hi’ to my mom in the kitchen, our shouting towards the stairs that they were visiting, to let my mom know they were there. Sometimes my mom would just yell back to them to help themselves to a snack, not even coming down the stairs to greet them.

Our house was open, our fridge was open, even the dinner table was open. We were a family of 5 then 6 after my 3rd sister was born when I was 14, but my mom routinely cooked for more… not knowing if one or two of our friends were staying for dinner. We were not wealthy and this was definitely a strain on my parents, but as kids we didn’t have a clue about this, and neither did my or my sister’s friends.

We just knew that the doors were open and our friends are always welcome. While my wife and I certainly weren’t as open as that, it’s also a different time. Still, with our girls now both in their 20’s, they both know our house is their house, and friends are always welcome. I really like that.

Work ethic

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I sent my daughters a meme recently on instagram. It’s a guy buckled into the driver’s seat of a parked car and he’s hitting the passenger seat headrest with a side-fist. The caption reads:

“When your parents gave you work ethic instead of generational wealth.”

Both my kids have it. They are praised at work for doing an excellent job. They have always been that kid who gets asked to train someone coming up even though others have been at the job longer than them. And they take pride in doing an excellent job. It’s great to see them excel both at work and in the things they love to do.

With respect to my own job, education certainly is one of those fields where many people come into the profession with a solid work ethic. I see it time and again. My team really has some dedicated educators and support staff who show what a good work ethic looks like, and that has an incredible impact on the work and learning environment. It shines through in the pride people take in their work, and the praise they get for what they do.

I don’t think a good work ethic is innate. I think it is fostered and developed. I think it can be learned. I also think it can be contagious. Equally so, laziness can also be contagious. Years ago I worked on a factory floor for a soft drink company. My job was to feed a conveyor belt with crates of 12 used 750ml glass bottles to be washed and refilled. (You need to be a certain age to remember these bottles that out-date the plastic 2-litre ones.) This was a labour intensive job, with a fork lift driver bringing pallets of crates for two of us to unload.

When it was break time, another worker would relieve us one at a time, but this one guy, whose name I no longer remember, would send us both on break at the same time. It was a 15 minute break and he’d say, “take 20”, then he’d do the job of two people. I did this a couple times for my partner to take a quick washroom break, but I’d be huffing and puffing if I had to do it for 20.

This guy relieved us like this for almost a week, then our boss saw him and told him to stop. Not because he was going to hurt himself, but rather because he didn’t want the higher-ups to see that one person could do the job. The whole culture in the factory was ‘do the minimum’, ‘don’t show off’, ‘don’t do anything extra’. It wasn’t an environment I would have wanted to stay in any longer than the summer between school semesters. In fact, I didn’t go back the next year.

A good work ethic is often overlooked. It’s only when you come up against a bad work ethic in comparison that you begin to value what a good work ethic means to the culture of an organization. Remember to show value and appreciation to those around you with a good work ethic.

Reflections of the past

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I noticed it just as I was hitting ‘send’. My daughter had sent a Snapchat from a cottage she was leaving, a quick note to her family to say that she enjoyed her little getaway. I sent a response photo, a quick selfie as a replay with a comment like, ‘Hope you had fun’ written over the image. I didn’t pose. I didn’t concern myself with how I looked. It was only a quick picture going to my family, and so I just clicked the photo, wrote the text, and sent the image off to the group chat… knowing that it would disappear just after my family saw it. That’s the thing about Snapchat, unless one of my family saved the image in the chat, it would be gone after they look at it.

Except, for a split second before I hit the send button I saw something I didn’t expect. I saw a reflection of my grandfather in the image of myself. This was unusual, because I don’t really look like him. Sure, I often see reflections of my dad in my own reflection, we have similar traits and they seem to converge as I age, but I don’t have a lot of similar features to my grandfather, my mother’s dad.

I’d only seen this once before, years ago, and again on Snapchat. I used the aging filter and for the first time ever I saw a resemblance to my grandfather when I added about 25 years to my current age. But this time there was no filter, no gimmick, just a quick, unposed image of myself and a peek of my grandfather looking back at me.

It has been almost a quarter of a century since my grandfather passed away. Just over 38 years since the other one passed. That amazes me, because some of the memories of them still feel close. A friend recently shared this about aging, “The days seem longer, and the years seem shorter.” This resonates with me. A day seems to last about a day long, it doesn’t fly by, but the years have. My reflection in the mirror is somehow older than it should be. The man looking back has seen more years than I expect him to see.

It was just a quick glimpse of my own reflection, but one that has me reflecting on how quickly time passes. One that has me appreciating those who have been part of my life, and are gone, as well as those who are here with me now. The years are short, but they are lengthened by the memories we form, the moments that are not just ordinary. If we don’t make efforts to connect with others and create special moments, then those moments are nothing more than Snapchat memories… gone moments after we look at them.

Generation bump

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It’s the first one in our family. My niece, my sister-in-law’s daughter, is getting married today. This is the start of a new chapter for our family. I haven’t been to a wedding in many years, but they will become more frequent in the coming years.

It’s a little surreal to realize that we are now the parent generation. We are the sandwich generation often thinking (and sometimes worrying) about both our parents and our kids. We are the adults. That sounds silly to say, but I’m probably not the only one that questions how I got to this phase of life, how I’m not the kid still trying to figure things out?

New life adventures lay ahead, new firsts in a new chapter of our lives.

Time in cars and with friends

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Yesterday I drove 40 minutes each way to spend just over an hour and a half with friends. They were visiting from Ontario and I saw them Saturday, but it was a short visit and so I wanted to connect again.

I ended up chatting with a cousin the whole drive there, and I listened to a book on the way back. Time well spent in the car.

But more importantly, I got to chat with my friends. We had a coffee, went for a walk, bought some pastries… and we talked. We spent time some wonderful, albeit short together. I spent about 15 more minutes with them than I did in the car. It couldn’t be longer because they had to pack up, check out of the Airbnb and catch a plane. But it was long enough. It was a wonderful reconnection.

Later, my wife and I went to wish her sister a happy birthday. That was about 45 minutes in the car for an hour and a half visit. Again, well worth the drive.

Ive got a full tank, when are we meeting next? 😜

In living and loving memory

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My dad died a year ago today. In all honesty I haven’t thought that much about it today other than seeing a chat in WhatsApp from my sisters this morning and then I just got off the phone with my mom.

The thing is, I don’t want this to be a day that I hold as special in my memory. I was in agonizing pain with a herniated disk, and I didn’t get back in time to say good bye when he took a turn for the worse. February 26th is his birthday, and that’s a living, loving day to remember my dad. The day of his death had no other significance before his death, and frankly I will only track it to ensure I chat with my mom.

It’s holidays, family dinners, and adventures together that I want to remember. I want the moments I hold dear to be ones that keep his memory alive, and the anniversary of his death doesn’t make that cut. In the coming years I’ll write more about my dad, but this is probably the last time that I mention him here on this day. I’ll choose more meaningful days and/or more meaningful memories.

Family pack

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My mom and sister flew in a couple days ago. Today my nephew joined us and 7 of us went out for sushi… a small group but it brought back memories. I forget sometimes how crazy my childhood was. We’d go over to my grandparents house for a typical dinner and there would be 25+ family members there. A family picnic was a convoy. A surprise birthday party would be 60+ people.

I wish my kids spent more of their childhood surrounded by cousins and in the chaos of always being around them and their aunts and uncles, like me and my sisters had. It was such an amazing way to be brought up. I was blessed to have such an amazing extended family experience growing up!

Surprise gathering

I’m on a ferry heading to Nanaimo to surprise my father-in-law for his 91st birthday. My wife is already there but he has no idea that his two other children and 7 more family members are also joining him today.

Moments like this are golden. We can get lost in the bustle of day to day things and opportunities to come together can be rare. Today my father-in-law is going to be delighted, and so will the rest of us.

Call someone you love and don’t see often today, and maybe plan the next get-together… or better yet, pay them a surprise visit! 💜

Seizing Moments

Yesterday I had the opportunity to have lunch with my admin team. Now when I say that I’m talking about 3 ‘teammates’ that do not work in the same building as me. So when we can get together and enjoy a meal it’s a special moment. The moment was made that much more special because two of the three people I met are moving on… one to a new position, and the other one retiring. Then, after work, I connected with some other administrators for a wellness gathering. It was wonderful to spend that time connecting with colleagues that I don’t always see during my typical work week. And when I came home, my wife and I had a wonderful evening together. We both seem to have a little more energy than we usually do on a Friday night. It was a fun night of laughter and conversation.

This morning I did the Coquitlam crunch with my buddy, and while it was cold and early, and we were the only ones in the parking lot, it was a ‘seize the moment kind’ of opportunity. This was our 120th Crunch since we started 3 years ago in January 2020. My buddy suggested that the title of this post should be “Just Do It”, and that was the initial plan, but my thoughts go a little beyond that this afternoon.

After our walk and coffee shop social, I went home and said bye to my wife and helped her pack the car to head over to the island to visit her parents. Then my daughter called and asked for a ride because she spent an anniversary night out with her boyfriend and they were heading home from downtown. After dropping her boyfriend at his house, my daughter and I decided to go and enjoy a sushi lunch at a wonderful restaurant. I can’t express how wonderful it is to have grown-up kids who still look forward to a meal with their father (and yes, especially when he’s paying).

Now I am sitting in my hot tub, penning my ideas using voice to text, and even enjoying a little visit for my cat.

Visits with colleagues, chats with my wife, walks with friends, meals with family, and hot tubs on a cold winter day, these are all small little moments individually… But weave them together, and they make for an absolutely wonderful life.

We sometimes go headlong into work, and bury ourselves in busyness, not realizing that we don’t have to put everything on hold until our next vacation, or gathering with family or friends. Tiny moments, planned, and unplanned, are the moments we need to seek and enjoy.