Tag Archives: memories

Parent influence

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In my early years of teaching I had a student, Caitlyn, who seemed to have everything ‘together’ which is not something you usually say about a Grade 8 kid. (I think it’s ok to use her real name, she would be around 40 years old now.) She was bright, a good student, polite, kind, and helpful, with a good sense of humour and just the right dose of confidence.

Caitlyn came to me one day to tell me she didn’t have her homework because she did it the night before at her dad’s house, forgot it there, and then slept at her mom’s last night. Up to that point, I didn’t even know her parents were divorced. A while later we had student led conferences and both parents came. The way they interacted with Caitlyn and each other, I would never have guessed they were divorced. I remember thinking that there is no way Caitlyn could have been so ‘together’ if her parents were angry and bickering and making a battle out of the divorce.

Kids are incredibly influenced by their parents. I’ve seen this time and again. A parent is quick to blame others for something their kid did, so is the kid. But it’s not just kids mirroring their parents. A parent puts up hard, unrealistic expectations, a student rebels and refuses to play along. The point being, parents have incredible power to influence their kids and that influence cannot be understated.

How do we as parents treat others? Respond to stress? How do we value community, physical fitness, diet, diversity? It’s not a perfect match, but I’ve seen over and over again just how much parents influence their kids.

I was reminded of this again when I met another Caitlyn-like kid. It was an interview situation for our school and in the interview I watched the way her mom supported her, encouraged her, and gave her space to be her own person. The kid was an absolute gem, and I could tell this was fostered and nurtured at home.

It’s not a perfect correlation, and I even know families where you’d swear the siblings had different parents because their personalities and dispositions were so different. But time and again, I’ve seen the difference good parents make. Kids can be awesome despite their parents, but good parenting goes a long way to fostering great kids.

Blast from the past

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Tonight I’m going to watch a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon laser show. I think I was between 16 and 18 the last time I saw a show like this, so it has been at least 40 years.

I find it amusing that it can be that long between experiences and yet I still know exactly what to expect. I saw Pink Floyd’s inflatable flying pigs concert back in the 90’s, and I’ve always enjoyed their music, although I’m more of a fan of their Another Brick in the Wall album. That album took me places in my mind that I didn’t know I could go to. I’d lay on the couch and listen to it for hours, especially the side with Mother and Comfortably Numb.

Tonight I’ll get a little taste of that experience again. A little trip down memory lane.

Waves, ripples, and echoes

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The thing about grief that is most challenging is how different it is for everyone. For some it hits them like crashing waves on a rocky, unswimable shoreline, for others it feels like rogue waves hitting unexpectedly. For others it hits like ripples from a rock thrown into water, with a pattern of lulls and peaks. For still others it is like echoes of the past reminding us that the person was just here, while simultaneously reminding us of the emptiness to come without the loved one in our lives anymore.

For many, these feelings are intertwined with different emotions: Feelings of love, heart ache, loss, emptiness, guilt, shock, disbelief, and even anger. These emotions don’t always match with others who are grieving. For some people sharing their personal connection feels necessary, for others it’s private. From tears to laughter and everything in between mismatched emotions splash us like unexpectedly cold water, feeling that much colder when the people around us don’t necessarily respond the same way.

Like I said a few days ago, “I don’t have the words,” is sometimes the only words you are able to share… and yet they feel brutally insufficient. And so it is that the waves, ripples, and echoes hit us unevenly as we grieve. Each of us finding ways to make sense of loss, and finding ways forward… Finding ways to strengthen the echoes of fond memories while weakening the ripples of grief and loss.

The Last Time Theory

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I love this trend that’s going around. Parents are getting their grown kids to do things like jump into their arms, and wrap their feet around them, like they used to do as a little kid, to give a big hug for one last time. The theory is that you don’t remember the last time your kid did this, so do it one last time so that you will remember.

Back on Christmas Day 2024 I wrote ‘Firsts and Lasts’ about this same idea. The post, written to my daughters, starts like this:

“I remember. 

I remember the moment in the hospital when I first laid eyes on you; the first time I held you, and kissed your cheek. I remember your first smile, (that wasn’t just passing gas), your first laugh, and the first time you said, ‘Da-da’. I remember your first steps. There were so many firsts in those early days and, although they slowed, they still kept coming. From your first tooth to your first tooth falling out. From your first day at daycare to your first day at school. And from your first birthday to your last one as a teenager.

And so it is that I remember many firsts, but unfortunately I don’t remember too many lasts. 

I don’t remember the last time you fell asleep on my chest or came running towards me and jumped unabashedly into my arms for a big hug. I don’t remember the last time we were walking together and you reached up to hold my hand. I don’t remember the last time I did a push up with you on my back, or the last time you danced on my feet, or the last time I gave you a piggyback.

And such is life that as we grow up together, parent and child, we carry with us these moments, momentous ‘first’ occasions, but we never know what other forgotten moments disappear as we get older. We remember the firsts, not the lasts. We savour the memories of so many special occasions, and we lament those things that we take for granted only after they no longer happen.”

There are a lot of silly trends that go viral, and send ripples across the internet. This one isn’t silly, it’s heartwarming and wonderful. Parents trying to recapture a special moment with their child long after they’ve done something for the last time. I hope this trends lasts a while and impacts a lot of people.

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((Cover image source))

Almost free

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I remember being a young kid when a door-to-door salesman came to our house and sold my dad a Junior Encyclopedia set. I was amazed at all the information in there. I could just think of any topic and it seemed that there was an entry for it.

In Grade 10 or 11 I took a programming course in high school. I don’t remember much other than having to punch little dots out of cards and handing them in. My teacher would bring them back to us the next class with a printout of the instructions we created with these punch cards.

At the time, I owned a Commodore Vic 20 which had 20k of memory. I remember buying the 16k adapter cartridge so that I could have 36k of memory, but I can’t remember why I wanted the extra data. I think I was writing a book on bass fishing with my buddy on the Commodore and we were using up too much space.

Now our fridges can do more than my Vic 20, and our phones give us access to quite literally any information we desire. Computers have wafer thin chips in them, the size of my finger nail, that can store entire libraries of information. We have no shortage of information or storage… as long as we aren’t trying to store 20,000 photos on our phones.

Information used to be power. Now it seems that information is free. Well, almost free, because we actually pay for information with our attention. The website is free but you’ve got to see the advertising. The podcast is free but you have to listen to commercials. Social media content is free but influencers push products your way, and sell you programs. And you end up not scrolling past an ad because it is designed like the content you normally consume.

We don’t have to buy encyclopedias anymore, information is almost free… The price we pay is our attention.

Dressing up

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I’m missing Halloween at school this year. I’ll be out of town for a meeting and so it will be the first Halloween in years that I won’t be dressing up. It’s funny, I feel both disappointed and relieved about this.

Disappointed more for the opportunity to see my students letting loose with their imaginative costumes. Relieved because while I take the time to really dress up, I’m not a huge fan of it. In fact, I’m going to a fancy birthday party this weekend and I don’t even like dressing up for that.

To me, dressing up is a major effort, and when I’m not wearing clothes for comfort, when I’m putting on a costume of any kind, be it Halloween, formal wear, or even a tie, I feel like I’m putting on a persona that doesn’t belong to me.

I know some people love it. I know people seek out opportunities to ‘put on’ another outfit and it excites them. Not me. I feel fake. I’ve never enjoyed using clothing to somehow change how I’m presenting myself.

I recently found an old photo of me at my uncle and aunts wedding. I was probably 4 or 5 years old, and the moment I saw the photo I remembered hating my outfit. In the photo I look miserable, and you can’t see my bow tie because I’m pulling on it when the photo was taken. I don’t remember anything about the wedding itself other than it was in Trinidad and I had never seen large hills (growing up in Barbados) and so I was amazed by the ‘mountains’. Besides mountains, the only other childhood memory from that trip is hating to be dressed up. So even in some of my youngest memories, dressing up wasn’t something I enjoyed.

No Halloween dress up for me this year. I’m sorry I won’t be there for the kids, but a little part of me is celebrating that I don’t have to dress up.

A Turn for the Worse

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November 12th 1985 was a cold, overcast day in Toronto. I was taking the bus home from school during my Grade 13 year. For those who do not know, Ontario had a Grade 13 for anyone planning to go on to university.

I had to take two busses home and my transfer happened a half block away from North York General Hospital. My grandfather was at that hospital after a minor heart attack and I thought maybe I’d go see him before going home. Then I got to the corner and decided that I’d just go home, I had just visited a couple days before.

I went to the bus stop and waited about 8-10 minutes for the bus before seeing it approach the traffic lights behind me. I remember at that very moment changing my mind, thinking ‘I’m right here, I should visit him’. So I walked back to the street corner as the bus approached and passed, and I made the turn to go visit Papa T.

When I got to his hospital room I could hear him having an argument with my Granny about some minor thing. He was shaving, sitting upright in his bed with an electric razor, my granny holding a small mirror for him. We had a nice visit and I felt great walking back to the bus stop afterwards.

The next morning I was at the school for a 7am swim practice and about half way through I felt awful. I couldn’t describe the feeling then but dread would be the term I’d use looking back now. I actually stopped my set and got out of the pool. What made me feel worse was that a couple other kids stopped and joined me on the bench. I was team captain and this was a bad example I was setting, but I just couldn’t get myself back into the pool.

For first class I had a spare block and so did my friend Kassim, who had a car. I had never done anything like this before but I looked at my buddy and said, “Kassim, I feel awful, can you drive me home?”

He didn’t. He convinced me to stay. It was Grad Photo Day and we both had appointments for our photos before lunch. “Stay until lunch”, he said, “Get your grad photo and if you still feel like this at lunch I’ll take you home.”

He convinced me to stay, despite how awful I felt. I couldn’t understand the feeling I was experiencing because I didn’t feel sick, and so missing photos didn’t make sense.

I made it to lunch and went to the cafeteria. I remember pulling my lunch out of the brown paper bag it was in as I sat down. I was saying to Kassim and a couple other friends we sat with, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just feel like shit.”

Then I sat down, looked up and locked eyes with my sister peering across the cafeteria. This was unusual to say the least because she went to a different high school. We locked eyes, then with no explanation I simply said, “It’s my grandfather.” Then packed my lunch back into the bag, got up and walked out with my sister.

This made no sense to my friends, but they had met my sister so knew I was going home. I don’t remember my sister saying anything to me. I don’t think I signed out. We got into my uncle’s car and drove straight to the hospital.

I wish I didn’t go. I wish my last memory of Papa T was of him shaving and talking about what he was going to do after getting out of the hospital, not him on life support with his eyes taped shut because he was leaving them open, unblinking. But I got to say good bye to his body after he was already gone.

I went home and wrote this poem. I haven’t seen it in over 25 years, but my sister is helping my mom declutter before moving, she found it, and sent me a picture of it.

For Motel (Mottle) Truss, my Papa T:

A TURN FOR THE WORSE

–

The earth did not stop moving

The wind did not stop blowing

The leaves did not stop falling

But tears filled my eyes

–

Oh how insignificant life can appear

When right before your eyes

One is being lost

But you can only sit and watch

–

He is in the best of care

He has his loved ones hoping, praying

But he has taken a turn for the worse

And we can only await his departure

–

I only hope that until his final breath

The thoughts of Family

Override the pain

And I hope that our memories

Will overide the tears

–

By David Truss, Nov. 13, 1985.

No Reason to Wait

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When I was a kid, I used to collect the caps that you fired in a cap gun. They came in a disk with 8 shots each. When we went to the store, I’d ask for another pack of them, and they were cheap so my mom often bought them for me. The thing is, I never shot them. I was saving them just for the right time.

My grandparents lived across the street from us and I kept the caps and my cap gun at their house. They had a room with an ensuite bathroom that belonged to my great grandfather, and after he passed away, I was the only person who went into those rooms. I kept the caps and gun under the ensuite bathroom sink.

The day before we moved from Barbados to Canada I suddenly remembered that the caps were there and I gathered up my gun and my packets and packets of caps. I took them to my dad and asked him to pack them. “David, we shipped our boxes already, and we can’t take all of those on the plane,” my dad told me. So there I was, with hundreds of caps and a couple hour window to use them.

I shot every one of them off. Eight quick shots in succession, reload, repeat. I can still remember the smell of the fired caps as I recall this years later. I also remember being a bit sad that I had not spread out the use of the caps, that I lost out on many enjoyable opportunities because I was saving them up for the ‘right’ occasion. There was always going to be a better time to use them, until there was almost no time at all.

How often do we do something similar? We are waiting for the right moment. We are metaphorically hoarding an idea, or waiting to find out more before we act, or wanting the conditions to be perfect before we move forward?

James Clear said, “Use the best idea you have right now. Claiming you need to ‘learn more’ or ‘get your ducks in a row’ is just a crutch that prevents you from starting. Education is a lifelong pursuit. You will always need to learn more. It’s not a reason to wait.”

Shoot off a few caps, don’t wait.

Old School Internet

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Our students decided on ‘Old School Internet’ as the theme for this year’s school yearbook. But of course at a maximum age of 18, none of our students actually knew what it was like. So, for my principal’s message, I tried to give them a little taste of what they missed.

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It’s fun for students today to have something like ‘Old School Internet’ as a Yearbook theme, but as someone who ‘lived’ it, let me tell you that you don’t know the pain it caused. Here’s an example: A little-known fact about me is that I designed and patented a bicycle lock. To do this, I had to do a lot of research because a patent can not infringe on other previous patent designs. So back in the old internet days I would have to log onto the internet using my phone (cue the retro sound for this that brings back instant but not gratifying nostalgia)… then I’d go to the slow and clunky US Government Patent Office website and every search would take 15-30 seconds to load. Then I’d see a patent I’d be interested in and that would take 15-plus seconds to load. I’d read about a patent that seemed interesting to look at and I’d try to load the first image to see what it looks like… If I was lucky, it would load in 45 seconds and often it took over a minute. Sometimes the image wouldn’t give me enough information and so I’d have to check the next image… cue the elevator music going through my brain as I impatiently wait and wait and wait for the next image to load… Then I’d realize that I wasn’t interested in that patent and would need to start all over again… And then my wife would need the phone and I’d have to disconnect from the internet so that she could make a call.

So enjoy the nostalgic ‘Old School Internet’ pages in this yearbook, but make no mistake, you are extremely lucky that you don’t have to live in this retro era of internet access… Where you were tethered to a very, very slow phone wire, and every click tested your patience.

(Yearbook cover by Ena S.)

Hindsight is 10/20

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When we look back at things in our past, we really don’t see things 20/20. There is no perfect memory, no perfect reflection on things long past. We don’t have 20/20 hindsight vision, it’s more like 10/20.

You remember that amazing moment that you cherish? …You probably don’t remember the struggle to get you there.

You remember that infuriating exchange with someone? …You probably don’t remember the insight you gained, or how you changed your behavior for the better afterwards.

We recall special memories, (hopefully far more good ones than bad ones)… the stories we tell and retell with nostalgia, held up as if they are 100% true. Perfect reflections of what actually happened. But each of these memories are tempered with emotions that require our memories to fit the story we want to tell.

Our we making them up? Yes and no. No we aren’t fabricating them with an intent to misconstrue what actually happened. But yes, we are making them up because we are only choosing to tell the part of the story that fits the narrative.

Hindsight is far from perfect. It’s just us highlighting the parts of our lives that give us meaning and purpose. If it was 20/20 we wouldn’t hold on to the memories the way we do. We need to cloud our vision of past events to make them worth keeping.