Tag Archives: memories

Merry Christmas

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I grew up in a small Jewish community in Barbados. It seems like an odd place for Ashkenazi Jews to be located, but there is a Jewish cemetery on the island dating back to the 1400’s.

However we weren’t Jewish, we were Jew-ish. I shared this previously,

And as for being a Jew, I think most Jews would say that I am not Jewish. You see, Judiasim is a matriarchal religion and my Grandmother, my Mother’s Mother, is to this day a Catholic. She was happily married, a role model marriage like few I’ve seen, to my Jewish Grandfather until he died.

So my mom grew up with a Christmas tree and told my dad that having a Christmas tree was something she and her kids had to have. My dad, esoteric rather than religious, was fully on board. In my childhood there were a lot of jokes about our Hanukkah bush (Christmas tree), and my dad’s favourite joke, telling the more Jewish members of the family that they could eat the Christmas ham because the pig was circumcised.

No matter how I look at it, Christmas, Hanukkah, Pass-over, and Easter were no more religious than Thanksgiving. They were opportunities for family to gather and to celebrate each other’s company.

So no matter what your faith, or what holiday you celebrate this time of the year, have a wonderful time with family and friends.

Cheers to you!

Family recipes

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Today was a good food prep day. We are hosting my mom as well as my sister and brother-in-law and their kids for dinner tomorrow, and the making of the feast started today. I haven’t cooked a turkey since some time before we moved to China back in 2009, and with the guidance of one of my secretaries, I decided to try a brine.

That’s what I started my day with, then went on to make two family recipes I’ve never done before. First was our baked stuffing, and then my mom’s baked peas & rice. Working side-by-side with my mom, we spent most of the day in the kitchen.

The stuffing is ready for the fridge until tomorrow, and the rice is coming out of the oven before I finish writing this.

There is something special about traditional family recipes that make them a treasure to eat. I remember the first time I had Christmas at a girlfriend and her parent’s house, and being totally disappointed that I didn’t have ‘our’ stuffing, ‘our’ corn pie, and ‘our’ rice (there wasn’t even rice, just mashed potatoes). I was so disappointed!

Since then I’ve lived provinces away from my family for 30 years, and I’ve gotten used to new foods and new traditions. But tomorrow… Tomorrow I get to feast on some family favourites, and maybe even start a new tradition with brined turkey.

Happy holidays and happy feasting! I hope everyone gathering over the holidays will get a little taste of home. 💜

Remembering No Office Day

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I forgot all about this until a Facebook Memory came up a few days ago.

“My ‘No Office Day’ Post , (December 11th, 2010) was inspired by a busy schedule whereby I promised my staff I’d see more of them and then promptly got stuck in an almost all-day meeting. The following day, I didn’t bring my laptop to school and spent the entire day in classrooms. I chronicled my day by taking some photos on my phone and uploading them to twitter with the hashtag #noofficeday.”

That quote was taken from my ‘International No Office Day’ post, at the end of August 2011. I feel like I wrote these blog posts a full lifetime ago. It’s kind of neat that this one No Office Day that I had in Dalian, China became an international event. It was fun to read blog posts, news clips, and even watch YouTube videos about other principals spending the full day in classrooms and not their office.

I just dug this up with a Google search. Beyond the Open-Door Policy, and I chuckle at the reporting which stated I had only done ‘scheduled walkthroughs’ for nearly a month. I tried to visit every classroom every day, and said that visit could be a simple walkthrough, but I didn’t have a formal schedule. I also remember this day getting a bit of criticism too, but I don’t remember the specifics.

Still the experience I shared was a wonderful event, and I love looking back at the pictures I took in classrooms. The fact that it became an event and was shared by many others makes me smile. I think some day early next year I might hold another one of these days. I might only do a morning because my one school is so small, I can hit all 4 grades in 4 blocks… and my online school doesn’t have classes I can join.

It will be fun to revive this day and spend a bit more time in classes with kids.

Embarrassment is the cost of entry

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I love this quote,

“Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.” ~ Ed Latimore

How many times have I not tried because in trying I might look bad? How many times have I hesitated to learn, because I would look foolish in my attempt? How many times have I let the fear of embarrassment get in the way of beginning something new?

Probably more often than I’d like to admit.

This was especially true as a kid. This is especially true of many kids today.

How about you?

Generation X humour

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There’s a funny series of video stitches (responses) that started on TikTok and has moved to all the different social networks. It’s a young man asking, “Who let Gen X off the hook?” Followed by stitches basically saying ‘No, you got it wrong, nobody wants to mess with them/us’… here are a group of them all put into a single video:

https://www.tiktok.com/@heatherlynntx/video/7307708356125412650

It was such a different time. There are more like this about why did we drink from the garden hose?

@kellymanno

No sir, sinks were not an option 🤦🏽‍♀️ #80skid #90skid #genx #millennial #xennial #oldermillennial

♬ original sound – Kelly Manno😎

I love the reference to lawn darts, Google them if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t only a different time it was a lot more dangerous. Seatbelts were a suggestion, and as a kid you took yours off in the back seat to play or lie down, and you also got used to being out all day with parents not having a clue where you were or what you were doing.

Here’s one more funny video asking how, before social media, did Gen X parents end up all being so alike and using the same phrases?

@therealslimsherri

GenX, the Mysterious Connection! 🧩✨ Have you ever wondered how we GenXers lived such eerily similar lives? From shared punishments to feral adventures, we all lived parallel lives without even knowing it! How did our parents all do the same thing? From ass-whoopin’ weapons to phrases like “rub some dirt on it,” it’s like we were part of a secret social experiment of upbringing! #GenX #genxkids #feral #boomers #SharedExperiences #unsolvedmysteries #Latchkeykids #genxthoughtoftheday #brainteaser

♬ original sound – Slim Sherri

There are some common threads that Gen X seem to have around dealing with life challenges. Sure this generation has their share of ‘Karens’, but for the most part this is a generation that is tough, tolerant, and resilient. Resilience is something I see a lot of younger generations struggling with. I in no way am nostalgic and think things should be the way they used to be, but I wonder how we can build more of a Gen X resiliency into younger generations?

Not to get too serious on this light topic, here is a funny way that we just had to be more resilient… before technology was so ubiquitous:

@jeffledell

Go wait for the bus without a cell phone if tou love the 90s so much. #90s #kids

♬ original sound – Jeff.mov

Remember what boredom felt like before you carried the internet around with you on a phone? Are you old enough to understand how hard that was? 🤣

Ice, fog. and snow

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Before moving to Canada, I had no idea what winter was. Sure, I’d seen it on TV, and I was told snow was cold, but I had no concept of what it was really like. The biggest block of ice I’d ever seen was a block you put in your cooler to make your drinks cold.

I still vividly remember the first time I saw fog, I was 9, and had only been in Toronto a couple months. A dense fog rolled in overnight and on my walk to school I couldn’t see more than 15-18 feet in front of me. Everything was draped in a grey-white void that kept me connected only to the grass field underneath my feet. It was eerie, almost frightening. I couldn’t understand how clouds could take over the world.

Shortly after that I saw my first real snowfall. It was a mind blowing experience to see white puffy snowflakes for the first time.That snowfall was the start of a close friendship with a kid who I threw snow at in the snowball area of our school. It’s funny how some friendships can begin.

Shortly after that, an outdoor hockey rink was put up on the school field less than 1/2 a block from my front door. I went from only ever seeing ice that made drinks cold to borrowing friends skates and having a hockey stick put in my hand. I went home that night with a bruise from my knee to hip… every time I took a shot, I’d topple over and whack my right leg on the ice, with no protection since my arms were fully committed to holding the hockey stick and swinging it.

It’s amazing that I remember this all from 47 years ago. But that’s the way memories work. These were novel first experiences that were at the edge of what I found comprehensible. Whether I was standing in the field of fog, or surrounded by slow-moving snowflakes falling from the sky, or wearing metal blades on my feet to travel across ice, I was in awe of the experience I was having. How did this little kid from a tropical island end up experiencing these things?

Small moments that left a lifetime of memories.

It became a tradition

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When my wife and I got married, one thing that became clear is that I’m the gift wrapper out of the two of us. It’s not that my wife can’t do it, she just has little patience for it, and I’m somewhat OCD about tight corners and even folds.

A little over 20 years ago, I was wrapping stocking stuffers for my two small daughters and I was using this cheap roll of tape that we had. It was awful, I would have been better off using Post-its than this useless roll of tape that wouldn’t tear on the perforated edge, and wouldn’t stick to anything but itself.

I complained incessantly to my wife about this crappy tape as I wrapped gifts. “If this is going to be my job, we need to have good tape, either we have Scotch Tape or I’m not doing this job!” Yes it was hyperbole, but this tape we had was driving me nuts and it made a fun job into a chore.

Well, my birthday is just over a month before Christmas and the next year when I opened my presents, there was a 3-pack of Scotch Tape poorly wrapped in wrapping paper. “Thank you,'” was my genuinely happy response. It was such a thoughtful gift, I loved it. And there were no complaints come time to do the Christmas wrapping.

20 years later I still get Scotch Tape as one of my Birthday gifts. This year I got a six-pack, my guess is that it was on sale. We won’t go through 6 rolls in one year, but it’s tradition now, and even if we have some left in the house, there are two things I can be certain about… when I open my birthday presents next year one of them is going to be at least one roll of Scotch Tape, and I will be sincerely appreciative of my gift.

Paper maps

I remember driving from Toronto Ontario to Phoenix Arizona over 3 days with only paper maps. That’s over 3,500 kilometres of travel before the era of ‘Sat Nav’ and GPS. A wrong turn wasn’t met by auditory instructions to turn around, or automatic rerouting. No, it was followed by being oblivious until you saw a highway sign that told you that you are on the wrong road, or looking for the name of an exit you saw, only to realize it’s on a different highway.

You’d drive into a city at night and then start looking for a hotel. No google searches or cell phones to call anywhere in advance. No instructions to get back on the highway unless you asked at the front desk.

But it was usually the last 5-10 kilometres that were the toughest. Highways are well labeled on maps, but side streets are a whole other story. You could spend 4 hours traveling at the maximum speed limit and make great time, only to flounder in the last few minutes and spend 20 minutes lost and frustrated.

I remember being lost in a suburban community with my wife once and we gave up, just deciding to follow another car out of the maze of houses we were in… only to be disappointed when he turned into his driveway. We were quite embarrassed after circling the cul-de-sac and the person we followed was standing outside his car wondering who we were and why we followed him?

It was a different time, and one I’m not yearning to repeat. I’m happy to have Waze or Google Maps take all the mystery out of driving somewhere I’ve never been before. I am glad my daughters don’t have to navigate with a paper map, although they will never know the joy of driving over the paper crease where you folded the map, leaving a section that you spent hours driving through. Unfortunately phones can be as big or bigger a distraction than a paper map, but make no mistake, when it came to trying to read a paper map, your attention was definitely not on the road.

We are over the fold now, never to return to the era of paper maps. There are no creases on a digital map, no more folding, unfolding, and refolding. No more getting totally lost with no clue what to do next. We can always have a little voice telling us that we are rerouting, and always have a digital line we can follow.

Here comes the rain

Living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, I miss the rainy season in Barbados. When the rainy season hits on this tropical island, it meant a morning rainstorm with water droplets the size of coins soaking you in seconds, followed by the cloud cover passing you and the rain stopping almost instantly. After that there was 20-30 minutes of uncomfortable humidity as the hot sun evaporated the rainwater. Maybe this would happen again later, but often it wasn’t until the next day.

Occasionally you’d get a cloudy, cool day that lasted the whole day with intermittent rainfall, but there might only be 5-10 days like that the whole season. Maybe I’m underplaying it, after all I was 9 when I left, but I remember a rainy season I could easily handle.

Today was a reminder that BC rain is nothing like that. I spent over an hour outside in misty rain, putting our above ground pool away. It was damp, and there was a constant drizzle or mist. It was gloomy. There was hardly a time during the day that I could tell you where the sun was due to the heavy cloud cover… And the season is just starting.

The worst two months of weather here are usually November and February. But the gloominess starts now. I’ll make the most of the grey days to come, even heading to and from work in the dark. I’ll continue to take my Vitamin D, and I’ll use my sunlight desk lamp at school. But I have to admit that I’d take the rainy season in Barbados any time over the rainy season in Vancouver.

Music memories

This evening a high school friend is meeting me and we are going to a Tangerine Dream concert. He introduced me to music like this, Mike Oldfield, Kitaro, and Jean Michel Jarre.

While I don’t often listen to this music now, it was ‘instrumental’ in my university years. I would often play a home made cassette of Tangerine Dream or Jean Michel Jarre to go to sleep. Kitaro was my study music. Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was a song I’d listen to on repeat when I wanted to memorize something or if I was writing creatively.

It’s interesting how music can define a time in your life, it can symbolize an era. This music was introduced to me in my final years in high school and sustained me for my university years. Tonight I get to revisit these years with my friend who opened my eyes, and ears, to a totally different kind of music.