Tag Archives: memories

No matter where you go…

More than half a life ago I had a girlfriend that was a fair bit older than me. She was very well travelled, including a solo trip to Africa in the early 80’s. While I haven’t seen her in almost 30 years, I still remember one of her favourite sayings, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

That saying is said by a lot of people, but I finally understood it when she said it. There is no escaping yourself. If you are kind in life, you’ll be kind in a sunny destination spot. If you’re a jerk, you’ll be a jerk at a touristy landmark. If you feel lost, you won’t find yourself on the peak of a mountain. You take whomever you are, wherever you go.

So whether you seek adventure, excitement, relaxation, or rest, it’s your own expectations and hopes that will determine what kind of trip you have. Disappointment because the room wasn’t quite what you expected, or although the room wasn’t what you expected the view was spectacular and made up for it? The food was more expensive than expected, or the food was pricey but you would have paid double for that red snapper last night? Are you looking for disappointment or are you looking for opportunities to see, hear, and feel positive experiences in a foreign land?

No matter where you go, there you are. Sometimes it takes travel experiences to truly understand what that means. As the world opens up, I hope people find exactly what they are looking for when they travel… just make sure you are looking for the right things.

The cry of the bird

I wrote this in my Grade 13 year in Art class (‘Early 1986). It wasn’t an assignment, just something I chose to write near some doodles of a loon.

—

The cry of the bird

The beauty of the bird disguises the pain

But it’s call is not heard anymore

Unless you go north where it is slowly but surely disappearing there too

The pain is not that of the individual bird but that of the species

It cries out but nobody listens

The beauty is lost

Who can find beauty in a world of pain

Goodbye beauty

Goodbye bird

Goodbye pain

There is nothing left to feel the pain

Its life is over

The bird will not sing for our grandchildren

There will be nothing but a flying animal that they may some day read about in a book

An illusion on paper

That sings no songs

Feels no pain

Perhaps it may have beauty

But it is not the same

It is not the same.

_____
*Update: A friend sent this to me. I forgot that this poem was printed in our school yearbook.

Different memories

One really interesting thing about getting together with my sisters is hearing their versions of past events. Sometimes they’d share something that I did, and I have no memory of the event. Sometimes I’d remember it but there would be differences in both circumstances and significance. For me, this is fascinating.

Most of the events we shared were minor. Small instances where we said or did something silly, or times when things didn’t necessarily go as planned. We shared a lot of laughs at who we used to be. Old photos helped us recall some of these memories.

We are shaped by the memories we have. Some of these memories are monumental in building our character, our relationships, and our identity. Some memories hold power over us and hold us back… but they are not what happened, they are what we remembered, and how we add meaning to them.

I believe that we can change our past, we can alter our thoughts on how much a memory means to us and what it means to us. We can find silver linings in memories that are dark clouds. We can allow angry moments to fade to black and white. We can tuck memories away where they feel more distant and have less of a hold on us.

The fact that every person remembers things differently tells us that memories are pliable… and so why not use that to make memories work for us? After spending time with my sisters, I like a few of their versions of shared memories more than my own… and I think I’ll keep their versions.

The waterfall experience

In March of 2017 I was in Costa Rica and we visited a beautiful waterfall. This was my description on Facebook.

Take 43 seconds out of your day and watch this waterfall in slow motion.

Nature is amazing. There is a reason why we are drawn to the outdoors, and why natural formations like peaks, vistas, and waterfalls become beacons that draw us to them.

But what made this a truly incredible experience was that it was felt as well as seen. It was a full body experience.

Cone of silence

When I was a kid I used to watch Get Smart, a ridiculous comedy about a bumbling secret agent who seemed to always accidentally solved his case. Whenever his boss was going to tell him something top secret, Max, agent 99, would insist on using the cone of silence… a device that succeeded in preventing them from hearing each other, and could always be heard from the audience’s perspective, outside of the cone.

I sometimes try to put myself in a cone of silence, not watching the news, not paying attention to social media posts related to news events, not discussing anything related to the news. I try to block things out for a couple days and just live in blissful ignorance of the world beyond my daily life.

Does it work? Not always. But every now and then it’s fun to try.

Ripples over time

Facebook reminded me that I just recently passed 14 years since moving from teaching to administration. My FB memory led me to reread this post, Ripples and Tidal Waves, which I wrote 2 weeks after my promotion. I had so many things that came together at that time, which led to me being a presenter at Alan November’s conference a couple years running. I was even toying with the idea to go and work for Alan. How different my life would be now if that was a wave I chose to ride!

Looking back to that point, I had no idea what was in store for me. Living in China for 2 years? Not even a consideration back then, but I did just that a year and a half later. Co-founding a public, inquiry based school? Not on the radar. The only thing I can say that was expected is that I’d still be blogging all these years later.

We never know how circumstances and decisions will end up rippling and leading us to different opportunities and challenges, but we are fortunate when we can look back to a point in our careers 14 years ago and think, “This has been a great journey I’ve been on!” From here, I have less than 1/2 this time until I retire, and so I’m left wondering what ripples lie before me? Retirement for me will not mean gardening or golfing, and I can’t sit still for too long, so in the next few years I need to look for the ripples that come my way… or I need to make them.

Message from the past

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.

The Great One

I went to the game for a single purpose… to prove to myself that Wayne Gretzky was the most overrated player. I left thinking he was a hockey god.

I lived in Toronto and was a fan of the Maple Leafs. I was a diehard fan, believing that one day I’d see them win the Stanley Cup, despite the fact that they haven’t won one since my birth year, 1967. But every hear I expected them to win. They didn’t.

As a huge Maple Leaf fan back then, I wasn’t a fan of Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers. And in fact, I was sure that the hype around Gretzky was just that, hype. He was surrounded by a great team and they helped him shine. I was sure of this, until I saw him play. I paid the most I’d ever paid for hockey tickets and sat 2 rows behind the Leaf bench. After years of sitting in the nosebleed level ‘Grey’ seats, I felt I was right in on the action.

If I remember the game correctly, the Oilers beat the Leafs 9-6, and Gretzky got 6 points. But the reality is that he should have gotten 12. He was amazing. Every time he was on the ice it felt like something exciting was going to happen. Here are three examples I can remember:

1. Behind the Leaf net: Before Gretzky, behind the net was where defenders took the puck, no office ever chose to intentionally take the puck back there, but Gretzky did. And when he did he controlled both teams. He froze the defence, unsure of where he was going or where he was passing next. Watching him control the game from behind the net was a sight to see.

2. The boards: Gretzky wasn’t a big guy compared to many other players, but when he went against the boards, he owned the puck. I can remember two specific times he went into the boards with other players fighting for the puck, then the puck would come flying out and land on an Oiler teammate’s stick. I was close enough to see the surprise on their faces. I watched as they shot on half empty nets, the goalie equally as shocked to see the puck shoot across to the other side of the ice. When this happened a second time I realized, if there was another Gretzky on the team, that would have been a goal… he wasn’t rising to the level of play of his team, he fully surpassed them.

3. Defence: He disrupted so many plays on defence. When the puck was dumped into the blue line he got to the puck on the boards first, knowing where to be, and then there would be a pass and the play was going the other way. In one amazing move a favourite defender of mine, Leaf’s number 9, Stuart Gavin, was taking the puck out of the Leaf’s zone and he skated towards the Leaf’s blue line. I was watching Gretzky on the other side of the ice, also near the blue line. For no apparent reason he skated in a circle, spinning tightly. Then he sped in behind Stuart, lifted his stick, and went in for a breakaway goal. I felt close enough to say, ‘look out’ but I was too surprised to do so.

It took me a while to realize what Gretzky’s little spin did. First of all, if he skated directly to Stuart without the spin, he would have been in Stuart’s line of sight and would not have surprised him from behind. Secondly, if he had paused rather than spun, he would not have had the momentum to catch him. An absolutely brilliant little move on the opposite side of the blue line away from the play, that led to a breakaway goal.

I went into the game thinking I was there to debunk an overrated player and I left with the conviction that he truly was The Great One, and I felt honoured to have watched him play live.

A hot dog and a story

“The shortest distance between two people is a story.” ~ Patti Digh

It was 1993. I had recently moved to Vancouver and I was looking for a job. I replied to this ad in the paper about selling sporting goods. The interview was a joke and I walked out on it. A group sales pitch to sell knives to your family and friends. I might share that experience another time but this is a story about meeting a Vietnam war veteran before the interview.

I arrived downtown almost an hour early for the interview, and 1/2 a block from the entrance of the building that I was heading to was a hotdog vender. I love ‘street dogs’ and decided to get one with all the toppings, hot peppers, sauerkraut, fried onions, and Dijon mustard. There was a water fountain or statue nearby and I sat down on the edge about 6 feet away from an elderly gentleman who was also eating a hotdog.

Now, almost 30 years ago, I don’t remember how the conversation started, but I ended up halving the distance between us so that we could chat more easily. This man was mostly bald with white-grey wisps of short hair near his ears, very pink in complexion, and overweight with a belly that looked more square than round. He had a cane, that sat next to his legs, which were showing between his white, pulled up socks and his tan coloured shorts. His shirt was just a extra large, plain white T-shirt with without a logo.

After some small talk he told me he was a war vet, and he shared that he saw things no one should ever have to see. Then he shared one of these stories.

He was in a sandbag bunker on the outside of a government building they were guarding and a young boy with a backpack was slowly approaching them. The boy couldn’t have been older than 12. His Sargent pointed to the boy and said, ‘Shoot him’.

He looked at his Sargent, puzzled, and the Sargent repeated his command louder, “Shoot him!”

He was still fairly new to this post and Sargent and was hesitant to shoot a kid. His delay angered the Sargent, who took out his side arm and pointed it at his head, “Follow my orders and shoot him or I’ll shoot you!”

And so he shot the kid… And the kid, still about 50-60 feet away, blew up. “I couldn’t believe what I saw, it didn’t seem real.”

Apparently, kids were being used as suicide bombers in the area and the Sargent saw something that made him suspicious.

He only lasted another few months at that post then he was hit with shrapnel from a missile. He showed me the back part of his calf, with an 5-inch scar that deformed the muscle, and he said it went up the back of his leg, but he didn’t stand up to show me. Then he said, “Another big piece got me here”, and he lifted his T-shirt to show me a huge scar that dented his brick shaped belly.

“When they hit you, all you feel is the burn, and you can smell your skin burning, the metal is so hot.”

In the 25 minutes I sat with him, I just listened. He had a lot to share, and he kept the theme going of, “The things I saw there, nobody should ever have to see.”

I didn’t want to leave, but I had an interview to go to. Had I known the interview was going to be such a joke, I would have sat and listened to this war vet tell stories all day. But when I left the interview the man was gone. Like me he just sat down to eat his hotdog, and to talk to a stranger he’d never see again.

Shovelling Snow

I remember I time when I didn’t know what snow was. Sure, I’d seen it on TV, but it didn’t make any sense. I grew up on a tropical island and a party-sized block of ice was the largest concept I had for something cold that didn’t sit inside of a fridge or freezer.

My first snowfall (except for a spattering of sleet) was a cartoonishly slow snowfall of giant flakes that made me question how real the world was.

That was Grade 5. By Grade 9 I was absolutely done with snow and knew I was not going to live in Toronto the rest of my life. When I came to Vancouver as a water polo coach in ’93, I knew that I was going to move here, and leave Toronto and the snow behind.

Well, I didn’t quite leave it behind, and this morning I was shovelling my driveway (for the third day in a row) before 6am. But it was quite enjoyable. I had my headphones in, listening to a book, the only other sound being my shovel against the driveway. At one point my mind drifted to what I was actually doing:

Snow falls and gets in the way of our daily living. We take shovels and move it aside. It then melts away, with no indication that it was ever there. Snow falls…

I’m reminded of this silly gif of a man shovelling water and tossing back into the same puddle.

I’m also reminded of how we are at the whim of nature. This year in BC we’ve had forest fires and torrential rains that have completely affected our lives with road closures and damaged homes, even loss of life. The raw power of the natural forces around us is incredible.

And, in this part of the world, we have snow. White fluffy stuff that falls and gets in our way. Sometimes, like the fires and floods, it can wreak havoc, other times it is a mild inconvenience… and we scurry around moving it out of the way with shovels, then we watch it melt away.