Post-winter survivor guilt

They say that survivors experience a level of guilt in the wake of a tragedy; knowing that they made it through what so many others did not.

I kind of have this feeling about the winter that is now behind us. Or is behind me, anyway. Seems it's still going on in other parts of the country.

For most of the country, 'snow' became another of those nasty four-letter words this year. Each day, folks would wake up, knowing they'd have a foot of the white stuff to take off their driveways and cars, and do it in -20 temperatures.

Granville island at False Creek

Unless, of course, you live on the Pacific west coast.

*awkward silence*

To the rest of the country--continent, almost--I'm sorry.

I'm sorry it's been Spring for weeks now, but parts of the country keep getting some snow, or freezing weather.

I'm sorry that we had mere inches of snow for a week or less.

I'm sorry that we only dipped into the negative "extreme" temperatures (-10, max) for that same week, somewhere way back in November, or December or something. Maybe January. Whatever. it was so fleeting I've already forgotten it.

I'm sorry that we've been doing yard landscaping for weeks now and cleaning up for Spring.

The walkway project in our yard is coming along! 

I'm sorry that half the photos on my twitter account have been of cherry blossoms in Vancouver... for more than the past month.

This photo was taken on March 13th. Enough said.

I'm sorry my local friends are starting to visit the beaches on the weekends.

We've experienced bike riding, no-jacket weather, eating on the patio in the sunshine and wearing shorts on Saturdays. Yeah, there's rain here and there, no denying it. but at 10 degrees and above--20+ for a few days there--who cares? We have nothing, NOTHING to complain about.

Yeah, this was taken on March 13th as well.
But look, boots. There was a touch of mud. Pity us. 

So to...pretty much everyone outside the south Coast and Pacific Northwest... really, really sorry.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go ride my bike under a canopy of fresh spring blossoms.

No, I'm not kidding. I shot this on my way to work a few weeks back.

OK, that's enough gloating. I've been off the blogging wagon for a bit--more of a catch-up in the next edition!

One year ago

One year today. Wow.

There are moments that I forget you are gone.

Like when I seek to phone my brother, but dial six of the seven digits of your phone number instead, so strong is that muscle memory of dialing the house line for decades.

There are moments when I forget you are gone.

Like when your granddaughter sticks her tongue into her cheek in a moment of intense concentration, and I think, ‘I must remember to tell mum how much Heidi looks like her when she does that’.

There are moments when I forget you are gone.

Like when the kids hit a milestone and I wonder about when I hit that milestone myself as a child, and I have an impulse to email you about it, or call, or get on Skype.

But in all those moments, I do snap to the realization that you are not here. I know it’s true: last year on this day, I held your hand as you confirmed your departure.

But in all those moments of remembering that you are not here,  I realize, that in fact, you are still here.

In the ends of my fingertips, in the face of my kids, in my deeply ingrained memories, you are still here.

And always will be.

I—we—miss you, mum. Love you.  

What does Gorilla meat taste like, anyway?

“Do we eat puffins?”

In our house, we believe in trying to know where our food comes from, and teaching our kids about such things. It’s why we love growing our own veggies in our backyard. It is a tangible thing, to be able to reach down to the earth, pull out a carrot, a parsnip, or snap a bean off a stalk or pluck a zucchini from the vine… we’re lucky to be able to do it because we have the space, and we’re glad to be able to show our kids ‘this is where produce comes from’.

Meat is a tougher issue, save our friends with their backyard chickens and our ability to show our little ones how eggs can be collected. Often, as far as our kids are concerned, meat comes from a shelf in a store. We have explained to our kids that other animals are killed so that we can eat their meat and if we choose to eat meat, we should be considerate of our choices because of this. Yet somehow, it’s all a bit abstract for them. We’ve never gone fishing (#fail), so they’ve never seen us catch a living thing, kill it, and cook it. But meat ends up on our table. We don’t eat much in the way of big, red meat, so steak and ground beef and the like don’t happen much in our house. Chicken, turkey, pork… these are the meats we know the most of.

Magret de canard...French for Delicious Local Duck :) 

Recently, we started taking delivery of meat from a local urban farm called Urban Digs that sustainably raises cows, pigs, rabbits, ducks and chickens (for those of you in the lower mainland, check 'em out! They do veg as well). Each week, we are getting a ‘Beasty Box’ full of all sorts of good things, some of which we’ve not had in the house before. One week, a rabbit stew. More recently, some duck dishes, just as a few examples. When we got our rabbit stew, my son was most surprised to hear that we would be eating a flopsy-eared bunny wabbit.

“Did someone kill a rabbit for us?” he asked at the time. Well, yes, they must’ve, as I have a bag full of it in my hand... and we had a little conversation about local, sustainable meats. Yay for teachable moments.

*********************

Now to the point of my story... last week, as my wife and I read a bed time story to the kids, our daughter stopped us mid-sentence to ask a question. We were reading a book featuring northern animals, and we were on a page showing puffins.

“Do we eat puffins?” our three year-old asked, quizzically. My wife and I looked at each other. 

“Puffins? No, sweetie, we don’t. We eat chickens and turkeys, but not puffins.” Seemed like a fair question, given our interest in telling our kids to be aware of what we eat. But then:
“Why not?,” our son chimed in. “We eat gorillas, right?”

Puffins? Gorrilas? Okay, what was going on here?!

It dawned on me fairly quickly.

yummy! Nothing so delicious as protected species! 

“Are you thinking about our breakfast cereals? Like our gorilla crunch, panda puffs and the puffin squares?”

“Yeah! Those are gorillas!”

Images of any number of international wildlife protection mandates, statutes and sanctions flashed through my head. Mmmm. Love those gorilla puffs. Little gamey, but nice crunch. I could see the headlines now: Cereal killers found poaching endangered species in Vancouver (pause for applause over delicious pun).

Aligned with our values about other food sources, we also tend to buy some organic grain cereals, and the more ‘kid marketed’ products sport the names of various species that some of our purchase price goes to protect. Let me repeat that: we are protecting gorillas and puffins with our cereal purchase. Not eating them.

The kids get a few of these types of cereals sprinkled on top of their fibre flakes or whatever healthy option we’re trying to mask.

Never, in a million years, could I have guessed that in the mind of my children, the ideas were brewing that we eat gorillas. From the mouths of babes. Clearly, we haven't talked quite enough with them about where our grains come from... I guess that's next! 

Ultimately, though, this has reaffirmed to me that we are doing right with our kids to force them to consider where their food comes from. They are being considerate, at a very young age—if not a wee bit misguided, but then, the world is all new to them—as to how we fill our pantry. If they get older and decide they want to go the vegetarian route, we'd support that. But for now, I love the protein punch delivered to my kids in relatively small amounts of meat. Ever met a 'hangry' three year old? It's terrifying. Terr-i-fying... but I digress... 

Yes, we could simply raise our kids as vegetarians, perhaps negating the need for this whole conversation, but holy man, have you ever had magret de canard? I hadn’t until the other day, and, like, wow. I was glad that the duck I ate was raised non-GMO local, manic organic. That’s a sustainability I can sink my teeth into. 

Hopefully, this is passing on a decent message to my kids, too, about consideration for the world we share with other living creatures, about the food chain, and about the impact of our personal choices…

one conversation about puffins and gorillas at a time. 

Here comes the silly season!

“I wish Nana was still safe and comfortable and alive”

--My three year-old, crying at bed time

I have been caught in a cycle lately of ‘what was I doing this time last year?’, as mum’s time was growing shorter, and we were living our lives revolving around that event. Indeed, I think I have spent some minutes recently living in 2012 instead of 2013.  

Last year on the first weekend of December, I accompanied mum to Ontario, where she was making her last-ever trip to her brother’s house. Her other siblings were gathering there, too.

That weekend, I missed the kids’ Christmas party that is put on annually by my company; I missed the first time my kids got to meet Santa and sit upon his knee. But what I lost in that opportunity I gained in being able to sit around my Uncle’s table, watching as he and my mum and my other aunt and uncle looked through old photos, chatted about their upbringing in England and reminiscing about some of their youthful shenanigans. By the time I returned home, though I was sad to have missed the party, I felt a sense of privilege, to have been able to witness a piece of that last visit, to see my mum come alive again for a few days as she recalled old memories and family histories with her sister and her brothers, and to know I had helped get her there. My kids will encounter Santa again. This was a one-shot deal. 

Lives are often in a state of crisis, large and small.  A snapshot of just a sampling of our friends at this very moment has one baby passing his 90^th day in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, having been born three months ahead of schedule this Fall. We recently had a friend rush back to the UK, hoping to catch his father’s last hours. He did not make it. There are also three more cancer cases in my midst to speak of recently, one brain, one blood and one breast.  A close family friend’s is watching her aged mother’s dementia rule her life. Closer to home and last but CERTAINLY not least, my grandma has just passed away (I will have more to say on this, but I need to collect some thoughts first). And the list goes on.

Everyone lives this way, I guess, with their personal struggles and back stories hiding behind their eyes. It’s not always health, of course. Sometimes it’s money, or relationships, or work. In some you can see it, in others not. Year over year, though, these things feel like they are on the increase. 

The closer I get to Christmas this year, I know that I will probably think about all those things even more. I hope that all our friends and family facing a different sort of Christmas coming their way this year, for all sorts of reasons, can find some time and some calm as the holiday season whirls around them, to reflect on some of the better things happening in their world.

I am ever thankful for the here-and-now: my happy, usually-healthy kids, my own health and that of my wife’s, our cozy house, the great work I get to do, and the list can go on.

This morning, just hours after my grandma passed away, I went  to my company’s 2013 kids Christmas party, the one I missed last year. I watched a ballroom full of kids in party dresses and holiday outfits eat ice cream and gingerbread, make crafts and meet Santa. 

And I was present. Really present. It's all I could have asked for today, I think.

Fall has fallen!

Ah, Autumn, that most beautiful of all disappointments, that twist ending in a love story that ends in death and misery. You know what I'm talking about.

A sunset glow lights a brilliant fire of light on the already colourful
Fall leaves,with storm clouds gathering in the background.

It is hard to deny that the coppers, golds, yellows, oranges and reds make the Fall among the most stunning of the seasons. But the crisp air belies the truth in it's beauty. Like a lover scorned, the attraction of the season always ends the same way: in angry cold, in rain, in snow... in Winter. In Fall, as my breath hangs in the air, the late afternoon sun filtering through tree-lined streets on my way home... I'm almost willing to say my 'I do's', so capitvated I am with the splendor of a Japanese maple or cherry tree in full Fall brillance. In the end, though, I get cold feet and run out of the church.

If Fall fell, say, after spring and before summer somehow, hands down this would be my favourite season. But thoughts of Winter ruin it for me every time.

Kicking at the (unusually) crisp fallen leaves.

For the past few weeks, we've been in the phase of new romance. The Vancouver area has enjoyed an unusal spate of sunny weather, where normally we're treated to seemingly endless days of rain by now. Not so in 2013. Crisp leaves are falling gently to the ground of their own accord, rather than being ripped and beaten from the branches by a cruel wind or sudden downpour. It was sweet for a few weeks. You'll note in the attached video, which chronicles a recent Canadian Thanksgiving spent with family--partly on my brother's boat and partly on Bowen Island--that Vitamin D has been in plentiful supply:

How awesome would it be to have this fog on Halloween night, though? 

But this past week, the fog has socked in around us, barely allowing the sun a moment's appearance on most days, especially down by the water's edge. The chill is in the air. It's as though the sun can't be bothered to get out of bed in the morning, even though the rest of us have to get up in the dim grey. The trees all of a sudden appear around me as skeletons, and with exception of our own cherry tree which refuses to change colour and drop leaves until December, there is nothing but raking left to look forward to in the yard. Damn you, Fall. Damn you, you did it again. Every year, the same! Just get it over with already! Rip off the bandaid! Bring the rain! See if I care!

Enjoying the playground while the sun still shines,
before rainpants and coats become mandatory

OK, it's not all so bad. Seems an unthankful attittude to have so close on the heels of thanksgiving itself, and  especially as amazing a thanksgiving as it was!  So by no means should this little rant be considered as representative of my view on life these days. Really, this is Winter's fault. I like to ski and all, but really. Snow is useless. Okay, this is turning into another blog post...

Now... where is my rake...