Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
It’s 7:14am in Toronto and our red eye flight from Vancouver just landed. I’m visiting my parents and I’ve still got a long day ahead. First one of my sisters is going to pick us up, she arrived last night and is renting a van to get us to my parents. Then we drive onto downtown Toronto to pick up another sister before driving 2.5 hours north to my parents.
After about 45 minutes sleep the whole night, I’m not really looking forward to more travel right now, but I’m with family and that’s the whole point of the trip. In about an hour and a half I’ll be in a van with one of my daughters, one of my nieces, and two of my sisters. The trip up north will go by quickly… and there might be a nap for part of it.
It’s wonderful to connect with my family. In no time at all I’ll feel rejuvenated, even if I didn’t sleep much on the overnight flight.
I’m heading to visit my parents during the March break. I’m looking forward to it. It will be wonderful to see them, my sisters, and other family.
But hopping on a plane in less than a week got me thinking of a planned holiday that was cancelled almost 2 years ago. We were going on a Mediterranean cruise with stops in Spain and Italy, and holiday stops in Spain and Portugal. Covid stopped that and all other holiday travel.
I thought about this trip and how much I love going to new places I’ve never been before. I love the newness of the environment, I love exploring different foods and flavours. I love the touristy sights, but also the side trips off the beaten track. I love the adventure.
There is a saying, ‘No matter where you go, there you are.’ But I want to see more of the world. I want to visit new places and see new things. And I also want to do trips where I connect with family and friends.
Travel is a luxury. It is also a gift. It’s a way to expand your horizons and have relationships grow richer. I’m looking forward to the world opening up more. Thoughts of travel help me escape the pandemic, and news about war. No big trips planned yet, but the planning is part of the fun. I have no idea where the next big holiday destination will be, but I’m hoping Spain or Portugal might be back on the radar in the next year or two… it’s probably not something we could do this summer, but it really is good to be thinking about travel again.
When we moved into our house we did a renovation upstairs, converting from 4 bedrooms to 3. The front bedrooms were 9’x9′, 8’x9′, and 10’x9′. The smallest, middle room had a tiny closet and wasn’t really functional as a bedroom, and so we created 2 larger rooms out of the three. We were also able to add more room to the master bedroom, creating a second closet and an alcove for a large chest of drawers.
In the process, we tore up the ugly carpet in the hallway. We cut the carpet at the top of the stairs, and just had the plywood floor between bedrooms. When the rooms were done, we painted upstairs, and while doing so I painted a message to my wife. Her nickname is Bean, shortened from Ann-E-Bean, and so I wrote ‘Hi Bean’ halfway out of the hall closet, knowing that we were going to carpet over it in a few days.
The only thing is, we didn’t put carpet back in for about 5 years. We had a carpet runner down the hallway, and my little message was there long enough for my oldest daughter, who Ann was pregnant with when we moved in, to be able to read on her own. There was always something we were spending our money on that kept us from spending some on this final part of the upstairs renovation.
When we moved in, we knew we couldn’t afford to renovate the kitchen as well as upstairs, but after moving into a house with purple countertops and pink tiles with a pink motif behind the stove, and pink wallpaper… we realized that the house would never feel like ours if we didn’t change this. Then we updated the back yard, replaced the hot water tank, and replaced the furnace.
Instead of replacing the carpet upstairs, we’d buy new living room furniture, bedroom furniture to replace the Ikea pieces we moved in with, replace all of our windows. There was always something we were working on, and since it’s only our family that lived upstairs, we just tolerated the plywood underfloor and runner down the hallway until finally a close friend of ours essentially told us, “Either you buy carpet for upstairs or I’ll do int for you… it’s ridiculous that you’ve been living ‘under construction’ for your kids’ entire lives.”
She was right and we finally put carpet in.
Now, as we are remodelling our main floor, another 17 years later, and we decided to extend the main floor flooring up the stairs and into the upstairs hallway. Last night we came home from work and the hallway carpet was pulled up. For me it was a complete blast from the past to see my little message to my wife painted on the plywood. It brought back some fond memories. It was something that was part of our lives for years, and it was fun to see it uncovered again. It will probably be covered up today, never to be seen by us again, but I did take a photo and it really was a treat to see it again.
I also added this to our first’s bedroom, but it was covered so we didn’t see it often.
Tomorrow is my youngest daughter’s birthday. As of tomorrow my daughters will be 20 and 22, and I will no longer be the parent of a teenager. It has been incredible to watch these young girls transform into young women. They are still two wonderful kids in my eyes, but they are so mature, and grown up too.
I still remember holding them both in my arms for the first time, watching their first steps, and reading them bedtime stories. It doesn’t seem all that long ago… not all that long ago for me, but an entire lifetime for them.
I’ve been writing a letter to them in my head ever since my first daughter went off to university. Soon I’ll have to get it written down. For now it’s just an idea about first and last experiences. Perhaps I’ll share it here, but only with their permission… I’m writing it for them, they are my audience… my two grown up girls that will forever be my babies. The teen years may be over, but they are my kids and that will never grow old.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
