Tag Archives: family

The stories we tell

I was taking my weekly walk with a buddy last weekend and I told him a story about the first time I watched a show we both enjoyed in our youth. He then told me that this was the third time I’ve told him that story, but he knew I enjoyed sharing it so he liked hearing it.

I’m visiting my parents and I’ve heard a few old stories from them and my sisters, and I’m sure they’ve heard a few repeats from me. It’s interesting the way our old stories define us.

Do we remember fond moments or frustrations? Do we reminisce about family gatherings or family disagreements? Is it acts of kindness or malice that we weave our stories around? Are these stories of joy, laughter, sadness, or scorn?

What do we hold on to? What shapes the memories that matter, and ultimately shapes us? If these memories don’t serve us well, can we change them? Can we redefine these memories? Can we give them less or more power over us?

I believe we can. And if we happen to hear our family or friends share happy stories more than once, hopefully we can have the same grace my buddy had to listen and enjoy (again).

Give them hugs

I don’t usually share personal things like this, but it’s the only thing on my mind.

Just a friendly reminder to call your parents, and if you are close enough, visit them and hug them. I flew in to visit my parents yesterday, in time to see my father have a medical emergency, and I have spent most of my visit so far at a hospital. He’s looking a lot better this evening but will be in the hospital a few more days. I’m so glad that I arrived when I did, and it’s wonderful to have my sisters here too.

So take this as a public service announcement: Call your parents. Visit them. Hug them. Tell them you love them. And while you’re at it, do the same for your kids too!

Off to T.O.

I’m off to Toronto tomorrow. Just me, going to visit my parents. It’s not a very long visit and so I won’t be doing any visiting other than my sister and one buddy. I’ll mostly be in Oakville, and won’t be leaving my parent’s house too often… although I hope more family will visit while I’m there.

The hardest part of going home is not getting a chance to visit with people. I’d love to sneak off to Guelph for a few days and visit friends. I’d love to catch up with a buddy just outside Kitchener. I’d like to have a reunion with ‘kids’ I played and coached water polo with. But more than that I want to spend time with my family.

I used to get home then hardly be home, but as the years go by, I just want more time with my folks. And as much as people in BC make fun of Toronto, I love the city. It’s so multicultural, with food like no other city in Canada. It is a great city, and there is a lot to do. But I’ll be a bit of a turtle this trip and my parent’s home will be my shell.

I’m not really visiting the city, I’m just visiting my family.

Optimize not Maximize

Maximize your profits, grow your busy, success is just around the corner, and when you get around that corner greater success is just around the next corner. There is always more to get, more to gain, more to achieve.

But at what cost?

What is your time worth? What happens when you grow too big to feel like a community? Where does the next dollar come from: cheaper parts, lower cost labour, a drop in quality at greater than maximum production?

And again, what about your time? How many hours do you put in? How many hours when you are not working is your brain still focused on your ‘to do’ list, or on your work in general?

Getting bigger isn’t always getting better. Sometimes it’s smarter to optimize than to grow. Sometimes your current customers are more import than your next customers. Sometimes your time with family and friends should be the most important thing you focus on.

But these two things are not mutually exclusive. Optimization can help build your business, profits, and even a positive working environment… and improve your time management. A model of optimization helps you achieve more with less, and allows you to improve in more areas besides a focus only on getting bigger.

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What is the good life?

Family gatherings

A week ago we celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday. This weekend we celebrated my father-in-law’s 90th birthday, and the engagement of my niece. It’s wonderful to gather and celebrate these milestones. Next month I will be travelling across the country to visit my parents and sisters. While we won’t be celebrating anything specific, we will have an opportunity to spend time together.

As a kid I spent almost every Friday night at my grandparents with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now every gathering is planned weeks and even months in advance. The spaces in between visits, gatherings, and special events seem wide. Nobody ‘drops by’ to say ‘Hi’, there is no “I was in the neighbourhood’ visits, no last minute invites for dinner.

Distances apart play a role in this distancing between gatherings, but so do changing norms. Maybe it’s time to rethink the way things have changed. A spontaneous dinner invite, a visit between meals that requires no extra work. A phone call to say, “what are you doing for the next couple hours’ followed by a visit.

Gathering with family and friends could be done far more often, with far less work and preparation. It just takes a little spontaneity, and an attitude that time spent together is too valuable to wait for special occasions.

Milestones

Today my youngest turns 21. It sounds so cliche to ask ‘Where does the time go?’ And yet it feels like a legitimate question.

One day you are bringing a bundle of joy home from the hospital… The next you are making sounds for them to repeat.

First steps, first time on a bicycle, first time without training wheels, first big fall from a bicycle.

First day of school, first day of middle school, high school, university.

Thousands of firsts, thousands of milestones, skipping past as fast as a skipping rock across a pond.

The firsts may come farther apart now, but they are to be cherished. Each ripple, a new moment, a new milestone, a new memory.

Culture and kids

I was visiting the Philippines back in 2010, my kids were 8 and 10. We went to the beach and immediately they wanted to build sand castles with me. I spent about 25-30 minutes playing then told them I was going to sit with their mom for a bit. I’d had enough. They wanted me to play longer.

Then a family with a mom, dad, and 3 or 4 year old kid came and sat near us. The kid had a shovel and her dad had a spoon, and they started playing in the sand. We stayed on the beach for well over an hour, probably closer to 2 hours and that dad was on his hands and knees or squatting next to his kid playing in the sand the entire time. I think they were speaking Tagalog so I didn’t understand the conversations they weee having, but this dad was engaged with his kid the entire time. During that time, I played with my kids in the sand for another 20-25 minutes.

I remember telling my wife that this guy was making me feel like a crappy dad. I was amazed how his little girl was the center of his attention for so long. It makes me wonder about how our culture and our upbringing influences the raising of our kids?

Visiting Thailand around that same time we stayed for a few days in a resort with tree house rooms near a national forest. The first morning we went to breakfast and there was a makeshift playpen, for a kid who wasn’t quite walking age, near where we ate. When we arrived at the restaurant, the owner was sitting in the playpen with the kid. He left when another worker came to tend to the kid. Then later we saw his wife doing the same thing. We assumed it was their granddaughter. My wife asked if this was the case and we were told no. One of the cook’s mother’s was sick and couldn’t take care of her kid, and so she had to bring her baby to work… they were just all taking shifts when they could so the employee could do her job.

One of the best parts of travel is seeing how some cultures differ from our own, and appreciating that their lifestyles include little things that we can learn from. And I think you can learn a lot about people by watching how they care for their kids, and kids in their community.

They are so grown up!

When our kids were young my wife and I had our travel systems to make everything go smoothly. I managed the bags, she managed the the passports, our kids had their backpacks, and we’d wiz through security lineups and seldom had any issues. Then I was usually the one with directions but my wife would take that rôle sometimes, like in France where she speaks the language and I don’t.

This trip to Spain and France my oldest daughter took full control of this. She is fluent in French and very capable in Spanish. She organized which buses and trains to take, what routes we took following Google, and when we drove an hour and a half down the coast in France, we took her car and she drove.

It was awesome to see her in full travel guide mode and I fully enjoyed taking the back seat (figuratively and literally in taxis) and having her run the show. I made sure she was ok with the responsibility and there was one evening in Spain when she said she didn’t want the responsibility and I took over, but other than that, she was in charge.

Our kids also planned events on our trip. We went to a Flamenco show in Barcelona and a tour of the Royal place in Madrid, both organized by our girls. And we went to a fancy restaurant on Christmas Eve and they treated.

It’s awesome to see your kids grow up to young adults. We said goodbye to our oldest this morning and my wife, youngest daughter, and I are on our way home. We had to hike several terminals over when we arrived in Paris for our connecting flight and my daughter pushed the luggage cart. These are small things but they make me a proud parent to see these independent young women contributing to our family adventures.

Workout whimper, not bang

We spent almost a full two days getting to Spain, having booked our trip to Paris first, then deciding to continue on to Barcelona rather than staying in France where my oldest is living. I was up at 4am on the Saturday morning and we didn’t get to our final destination until almost 8pm Sunday. I obviously didn’t get my workout routine in, then the next two days I woke up early and did pushups and leg raises to check off my daily workouts. I wrote about this in a post, The long game, and finished that post saying:

I’m not trying to run ultra marathons or have a bodybuilder physique. I’m actually going to let myself let loose and eat a bit more gluttonous while on vacation. But I’m also going to find time to exercise, I’m going to return home and be more thoughtful about my diet after my vacation. I’m going to keep playing the long game and not worry about minor fluctuations in my schedule. Because while there will be fluctuations, I’m going to keep a schedule of writing, meditation, and exercise. I’m not looking for quick gains, I’m just working on staying on a healthy path, knowing positive results are still to come… in time. Perseverance and the long game are the path I’m on.

But here is the confession, while I’ve done a lot of walking since then, I haven’t done my fitness routine at all and have only meditated a couple times. I’ve been out late with my family, and not waking up to do my routine. I’ve maintained my daily write, but mostly on the go, and when my family shops, or when we have down time between planned activities. My lack of exercise was more than a minor fluctuation, I’ve gone 10 days without a workout, which is the longest break in my streak since I started tracking in January 2019.

I’m not beating myself up about this, I’ll be back on track when I get back home. I just wanted to share because I think it’s important to share that while I’ve been on a pretty amazing fitness journey, it can have bumps and things don’t always work out as planned. After three years of dedication 2022 is ending on a whimper, not a bang, and while I’m on the worst streak of my 3 year journey, I’ll be back to my routine in the new year.

Things don’t always go as planned, and while things haven’t been great in the short term, I’m here for the long game and this blip will be over when I get home tomorrow… well maybe the next day since with time zone changes tomorrow will be longer than 24 hours and spent mostly on airplanes. The point is, I failed to keep a workout and meditation schedule while vacationing with my family, something I won’t get to do too often anymore now that my daughters are 23 and almost 21. I know I could have done more, but I didn’t. Things didn’t go as planned and that will happen. It did happen, but it won’t define any lasting pattern and I’ll be back at it in no time.

Airports and airplanes

Today we travel from Vancouver to Toronto to Paris to Barcelona. Including an early arrival to the airport, on one of the busiest travel days of the holiday, we will be traveling for 26 hours. Add another 9 hours on the clock to that for time zones and this makes for a looong day!

But we finally get to see our daughter, who turned 23 a couple days ago, for the first time since she moved to France. And our youngest daughter is with us, and this is our first family vacation in a few years.

We are going to spend a lot of time in airports and on airplanes… but I’m finally getting excited about the trip. And I’ve got a few episodes of a show downloaded on my iPad as well as 2 audio books on my phone. I have snacks, headphones, and AirPods, and a battery power bank to keep my devices charged. I’d like to just click my heels and arrive at my destination, but if I’m going to spend a whole day traveling, I might as well keep myself entertained.

Barcelona… here I come!