Be It Ever So Humble

Tags

British Columbia, friends, home, moving, Nova Scotia, travel

I had a new experience this year, while “home” for Christmas in Nova Scotia.

…I missed home.

West Coast home.

…Things have changed.

While I spent my early childhood in Ontario and the Caribbean before settling in Nova Scotia, the Maritimes were always “home” to me.

I loved my home town and my university fiercely, and I have made many, many, many posts about how much I miss it, and how much I love the close-knit culture of the East Coast. Perfect Husband, who grew up on the South Shore, feels the same.

It used to be that whenever we traveled back to Nova Scotia, we would be hyper-vigilant to change: That store moved to a different location! That other store is gone! Someone repainted that house! They put in a STOP SIGN!

Things change all the time, slowly, but when you’re only home once every year or two you see them all at once, and it feels like you have entered some sort of strange parallel universe where everything looks slightly wrong.

Perfect Husband especially would get indignant about changes made to his neighbourhood back home (which is the sort of neighbourhood where people look out the windows and wonder “who is that?” when they see an unfamiliar car).  It hurt him to see developers come in and destroy his old stomping grounds and built large vacation homes on top. It hurt more when one of the wealthy retirees who moved into those houses called the home where he and his four siblings grew up a “quaint little cottage”.

That was his home, and it has been largely plowed over and rebuilt, and he resents it.

But we have come to accept over the years that Nova Scotia is not our personal museum, and now it has gotten to the point where I am surprised by what hasn’t changed after all this time: The local convenience store is still there, with the same sign. My favourite Pita Place, still going strong. The neighbourhood houses which seem to have used the exact same Christmas lights for the past twenty years.

The changes no longer faze me. I have accepted that life goes on. I’m just delighted by what stays the same.

Nova Scotia has also emptied itself. Most of my friends have evacuated in search of jobs that suit their education level. Of the remaining old friends and relatives, I only saw a couple. Traveling was challenging for us with two kids in tow, and they didn’t have the time or inclination to travel to see us. They were all busy with their own lives and kids during the holidays and I am just not relevant to those lives any longer.

It isn’t their fault, it’s mine – I’m the one who left. Besides, with Facebook I can still chat with them and see pictures of them and their families, so maybe the need to see each other in person is less urgent because of that.

Really, I was touched by the couple of people who did take time out of their day to meet up with me when I was passing through their region. The holidays are a busy time, and the weather was not always great. So it meant a lot to me when they did.

Nova Scotia just… doesn’t belong to me any more, and it doesn’t miss me or need me. I felt strangely superfluous on this visit, except among immediate family.

Meanwhile, BC has been growing on me slowly for a long time. It took me years to start putting down real roots, and up to a few years ago I desperately missed Nova Scotia and wanted to go home.

But I finally built a strong support network of friends. Besides, the mountains and the cherry blossoms get to you over time, and I have started to take pride in the beauty.

I loved the look on my Mother In Law’s face on her first week staying with us last year, when she saw crocuses coming up. Just small trips around town had her amazed.

“I went to the grocery store and they had FLOWERS on display outside!”

“…isn’t that normal?”

“Carol, it’s JANUARY!”

“Wait until you see the fruit and vegetable market. It doesn’t have walls.”

And when my parents came out, they kept taking pictures of daffodils while their friends back home sent them photos of snow piles up past their shoulders.

It made me proud, because BC is starting to feel like it is mine.

 

 

I love the early spring, and the long, dry, but not-too-hot summers. I love the snow on the mountains, and the mix of skin colours, languages, cultures and cuisines all around us.

So, while I cherished every day of our time with the family, and I ate a lot of pitas, it also felt really good to come home. I missed our bed, our bathroom, and even our cluttered, toy-laden living room and minuscule kitchen.

It’s not perfect, but it’s ours.

And I kept getting texts from my friends here, asking when they could see me, now that I was finally back… back home.

Saying Goodbye To Old Times

Tags

Alzheimer's, Christmas, family, home, Nova Scotia, time, traditions

Our Christmas home in Nova Scotia felt sort of… final, to me, this year.

We plan to spend next Christmas here in BC because it is expensive to travel during the holidays, and it makes a stressful time just that much more stressful. Our next trip to Nova Scotia will probably be during the summer when more people will be free to get together with us, and travel is safer and cheaper.

Although the snow was certainly a thrilling novelty to Owl.

My father’s Alzheimer’s is slowly progressing. He still knows who everyone is, and what is going on, but he is frail, and quiet, and easily confused. My mother has to help him shower, get dressed, and she puts him down to bed for naps and at bed time like a child.

But he’s still Dad.

If and when we spend another Christmas in Nova Scotia, the person that I know as my father may have faded away entirely.

Christmas was always a big deal in our house. Both my parents love Christmas, and we used to have all sorts of traditions built up around it. The annual tree decorating was so idyllic that my high school friends used to attend it too, because it was just such a Christmassy THING.

But many of the traditions have fallen by the wayside one by one what with my commitments to Perfect Husband’s family, and my father’s illness, and the fact simply that time is moving on and things change.

We did still decorate the tree this year. Mum needed PH to help bring the tree in and get it set up. The last time we were home, Dad could still do that. He still sat and watched us decorate while he sipped egg nog, but once upon a time he would have been the one pouring the drinks and sloshing too much rum into everyone’s nog.

The decorators this year were mostly Mum and Owl, with me alternately helping, taking photos, and watching the baby. It was the same, but not the same, at the same time.

If that makes sense.

Meanwhile, the Christmas Eve traditions on PH’s side of the family are going to be changing soon, too. Their Christmas Eve family gathering had the same food, the same schedule, but less exuberance. My nieces and nephews are older now. The next youngest to Owl is already ten years old, and most of them are young adults in university and beyond.

Our kids were definitely the hit of the show.

We got a family photo of all of the “kids”, including Fritter, on the front steps. We don’t know when another group photo will be able to be taken as the grown “kids” start moving away and living their own lives.

I’m really glad we made it home this Christmas, because I felt like I was getting a chance to say goodbye to these old traditions and accept that things are changing.

Owl got to experience and explore these “old times”, and I got to make my peace with their passing.

And these changes don’t have to feel bad. But they will be different.

Maybe that is okay. Maybe it is time for us to build our own traditions, here, at home.

The Gift of a Magi

Tags

betta fish, Christmas, pets, presents

This was the second Christmas we have spent at home, away from family. The first time was really difficult for me. This time was easier. We had done it before and we’re slowly working out our own traditions. For example, we had to have a big discussion about how Santa would deliver his presents.

As I’m sure you know, Santa doesn’t have a set technique. He tailors his deliver methods (and even delivery dates) according to the traditions of the local country and microtraditions of the family. In PH’s family, stocking stuffers were just… extras. The REAL presents, the big ones that had been requested in letters, were wrapped by Santa’s elves and put under the tree. In my family, on the other hand, everything was unwrapped, assembled, and sitting in or around the stocking.

After much discussion and some compromise, we asked Santa to wrap anything particularly asked for that was too big to fit inside the stocking. That was made easy by the fact that Owl only asked for two things this year – a crokinole board and a bow and arrow set.

So Owl got his gifts from Santa, as well as many gifts from doting relations, and it was a nice Christmas.

I wasn’t all that excited for Christmas this year, because there wasn’t much I wanted or expected. The only thing I really wanted (other than a book that was sold out) was something that PH had long vetoed – another pet.

I’m an animal lover. If I had my way we would own two dogs, the cat, a bird, a rodent of some kind, a tropical saltwater tank complete with coral, and a couple of farm animals. Unfortunately, time, money, space, and PH interfere with that.

PH is not a fan of buying pets that are going to die on you within a year or two of purchase. Nor is he a fan of taking up space in our already-cluttered 1000 square foot townhouse. I get all of that, but I haven’t had a new pet in eight years and I was itching for someone new.

So I asked for a fish for Christmas, and was told “absolutely not.” Not only does PH fail to see the charm of fish, but he didn’t think we have space, and no matter how much I pointed out that a 5 gallon fish tank would take up no more room than one of the MANY boxes of collectables he has sitting around awaiting sale, he held firm.

It got to the point that a friend of mine, who also loves animals, was starting to threaten to buy me a fish no matter what, and I worried that if she did, that PH would be mad.

But then guess what I pulled out from under the tree on Christmas morning, not from Santa but from PH himself?

A fish tank. And a heater. And a filter. And gravel. And decorations.

So on Boxing Day I dragged my family out to get a fish, and live plants. I spent nearly half an hour hanging over betta fish, trying to pick just the right one. PH preferred the blue ones, so I focused on those. I was torn between two – a pale blue one who was definitely the perkiest of the lot, and another one with a beautiful aqua glimmer that I loved. But this lovely one, whose scales had a gleam that reminded me of the Caribbean sea, spent most of his time at the bottom of his tiny cup, coming up to the surface only to breathe.

PH agreed with me that he was prettier, if more listless.

“I think he’s still healthy,” I said, scrutinizing him. “His colors are bright, and there’s no spots on him… and he DOES move around…”

“Take him then. If he’s not very active, oh well,” said PH.

So I bought him, and the live plants, and then I happily spent several hours setting up his tank on my book shelf. Then I floated his cup for a night, slowly adding more tank water to his sad little cup and measuring the pH occasionally. His tiny cup water was so full of ammonia that it was really acidic.

“Can’t you just put him in?” PH asked, “look at him, poor guy.”

The fish was showing much more animation than at the store, bonking his head on the side of the cup, trying to get to the watery paradise he could see around him. Even Perfect Husband, who doesn’t see the appeal of fish, could practically hear him yelling “LET ME OUT!”

But I was afraid to let him out. The pH of the two waters was so different, and a sudden pH change can kill a fish, even a hardy betta fish.

So I added some more tank water to his cup and by the next morning the pH was better. So I put him in the tank.

Oh, man, you never saw a fish so happy. Our previously listless fish is listless no more.

He spent the whole day zipping around like a mad thing, obviously revelling in his freedom. It was adorable.

We’ve named him Melchior, after one of the three wise men. My Christmas gift.

He was a great gift, and it was a good Christmas.

In Which A Mysterious Disease Eats Months of My Life

Tags

illness, jaundice, liver, mysterious disease, new brunswick, Nova Scotia, rash, reunion, toenails falling off, vacation, virus

No, I’m not dead.

I’ve been touched by the comments and tweets that I’ve gotten, asking after me. You’re right, my blog has been very silent.

You see, I contracted a mysterious disease.

…Let me backtrack a bit.

So, in April I was extremely overworked. On top of the 35 hours I pull at the vet clinic, my dog training business was going through one of its booms again and I was out training almost every night during the week, and for 3-6 hours each weekend day as well. So I was working around 50 hours a week spread over all 7 days of the week.

But I had something to look forward to – vacation!

My 10 year Mount Allison University reunion was going to be in early May and a bunch of old friends from residence were attending. PH and I had planned a full 10 days home in the Maritimes, and the highlight was going to be the reunion. PH would drive me up to Sackville, New Brunswick and have dinner with my old friends, some of whom he knew from his own days at Mount Allison. Then he would go visit with his family and leave me to stay in residence with the girls, reminiscing and eating and dancing, for two whole days.

I don’t know when I’ve been so excited. I loved my university days. I loved the town. I loved the school. I loved the people. And I was going back, and it was going to be AWESOME.

So I dragged myself through day after exhausting day, counting the sleeps until vacation.

Then, the day before we were due to leave, I collapsed at work.

Like, literally collapsed.

You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Tags

Christmas, depression, grinch

No, I’m not referring to a particular person.

The Grinch is a state of mind.

The Grinch is when you’re standing with your feet wet in the snow, looking at the other people having fun and enjoying Christmas, and wonder why you’re all by yourself in a cave.

I am a Chrismassy person.

Every year since I was a teenager I have adorned my room with Christmas lights, re-read A Christmas Carol, played Christmas songs in the evenings, and generally revelled in the season.

But the last couple of years, I’ve had trouble getting into the act.

Last year was understandable. We couldn’t go home for Christmas, and were left making our own traditions. Things felt strange. My concept of “Christmas” was upheaved.

But if I thought that the Christmas Spirit was a little lacking last year, it was a Christmas WONDERLAND compared to this year.

I haven’t send any Christmas Cards.

I haven’t BOUGHT any Christmas Cards.

There are lights up in the kitchen, but not in the living room.

We don’t have a tree.

The sad thing is, we’re trying.

We got Owl to write a letter to Santa, but we haven’t talked about taking him to sit on Santa’s lap.

I went out and bought new ornaments for the tree, but we haven’t actually made any plans to actually GET a tree.

PH put Christmas music on for me one night.

And I nearly cried.

We just aren’t feeling it, this year.

Not only was I expecting to be holding a tiny baby by now, but Christmas has always been deeply associated with babies and motherhood for me.

So while I love Christmas, whenever I start to feel too Christmassy, I also start to feel more deprived, more aware of my loss.

PH, on the other hand, is beginning to panic because he’s watching his wife crack up and he’s too depressed to handle it. He insisted that I go back on my Welbutrin (even though I think my depression is far more situational than seasonal) and then recklessly went OFF of his, thinking that maybe his meds were to blame for the fact that I have not yet conceived.

I thought that was a bad idea, and I’m convinced the problem is with me – I’m getting older, I had that D&C…

But PH wanted to try, so he went off his meds, and it is not going well.

It’s hard to feel Christmassy when you’re feeling stressed, and grieving, and your husband is in such deep pain that he radiates anguish, for all he tries so hard to hide it.

At least Owl is too young to know what he’s missing. But he’s had trouble getting into the spirit too.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m decorating for Christmas, honey.”

“It’s not Christmas.”

“It’s Christmastime, honey.”

“No. Dere’s no SNOW out!”

I thought snow would help the Christmas Spirit a lot for all of us. But when it came this week, I enjoyed the prettiness, but Christmas still didn’t touch my heart.

My hope is that when I’m sitting on my parents’ couch, looking at the tree and listening to Karen Carpenter, that the Spirit will find me, and that Christmas will come to me like it did to the Whos down in Whoville.

And I won’t cry “booo hoooo.”

F*@# The Might-Have-Beens

Tags

depression, family, introversion, miscarriage, parenting, vacations

I want to talk about the awesome week I just spent in Ontario with my mother’s side of the family. I want to talk about potato canons, and drunken mistakes with chinese lanterns, and 1000 piece puzzles, and the weirdness of hanging out with a bunch of cousins who share many of my nerdy ways.

But I can’t get up the enthusiasm because I’m too exhausted.

That week WIPED me. And I clearly didn’t have a lot of energy going into the vacation.

Oddly, the exhaustion is not directly due to the fact that I spent a week in a cottage with 20 relatives.

A significant portion of my mother’s siblings and their children are introverts. So while they enjoyed each other immensely, no one was surprised or disapproving if you wanted to disappear to your bedroom for a while, or take a book down to read at the beach (I walked down to the beach with Owl one sunny morning and found SIX relations reading on lounge chairs and no one in the water).

But I was trying to do several things at once:

In Which I Attempt To Introduce My Son To His Celtic Heritage… In Vancouver.

Tags

celtic, celtic festival, celtic music, children, colcannon, culture, east coast, fiddle music, Fiddling, heritage, irish, music, rankin, Vancouver

If you read me on World Moms Blog, you’ll know that I have been fretting over Owl’s Canadian heritage of late.

Owl has… questionable musical taste.

He gets kudos for liking Forget You and Gangnam Style. However, he loses points for constantly requesting LMFAO and Bruno Mars songs.

You try and put on something tasteful like The Beatles or Barenaked Ladies and he says “No, no like it!”

It’s a problem.

So on St Patrick’s Day we decided to take him down to “CelticFest” downtown.

I was all excited for him to hear some read fiddle music and get exposed a bit to his Celtic heritage – my maiden name is Irish, after all.

But I had forgotten how terrible Vancouver is at approximating East Coast things. Even music, which you think would be fairly reproducible.

It looked good when we got there.

Of course the streets were full of people in green hats eating green popcorn, but there was a band on the stage with guitars and fiddles, and its name was “The Whiskey Dicks” which sounded promising.

But then we got close enough to hear the music.

Owl had a good time dancing, at least… in a marching stomp to the TOTALLY NOT CELTIC MUSIC.

I grew up singing Barra Macneils songs.

Our neighbour used to stand out in his backyard practising his bagpipe every afternoon.

When I was pregnant, I was obsessed with listening to Great Big Sea.

This music is important to me, and Vancouver can’t do it right EVEN IN A CELTIC FESTIVAL.

We decided to go to Tom Lee Music because there was supposed to be a sort of jam session with Mairi Rankin there. The problem was that it had started at 3, and by the time Owl woke up from his nap and we got down town, it was 4:30.

Happily, the people at front of house let us sneak in for half price, so we crept in for the last twenty minutes of the session.

Inside was a small group of people clapping and stamping their feet to real fiddle music – like a secret conclave of actual Irish/East Coasters, hiding from the Vancouver rabble in their shamrock hats while singing about colcannon and teaching each other Irish love songs.

Owl listened in fascination the whole time.

This morning, he took his two plastic hockey sticks and walked around rubbing them together telling me “I play fiddle, Mommy.”

THAT’S my boy.

You Know You Live In Vancouver When…

…you’re scraping ice off of your car on a frosty subzero morning and you get the following helpful advice from a neighbour.

“Just pour a bottle of water onto the car, that’ll melt right away.”

…

…

I tried to explain why that might not be a good idea, but she just insisted, “no, it totally works!”

Anyone who assumes Canadians know how to handle cold weather has not been to Vancouver.

New Traditions

Tags

board games, Christmas, elmo, family, gifts, ham, Jane Eyre, Munchkin quest, RC helicopter, sony, tradition, turkey

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Mine was… strange.

I mean, it was good, but it was weird. It was the first time, ever, that I celebrated Christmas without my parents and our set traditions. Instead, Perfect Husband and I had to compromise to make our own.

Perfect Husband’s family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. Santa comes early for them, while the kids are out on a drive, looking at Christmas lights. They have a big feast of ham and pot luck goodies.

My family has always done Christmas more traditionally. We go to church Christmas Eve, open presents Christmas Day, and have a turkey dinner that night.

So Perfect Husband and I had to work things out.

We agreed to open gifts from family/each other Christmas Eve, but that Santa would still come overnight so Owl could open his stocking Christmas morning. That worked out ok.

Perfect Husband got his ham, since I got turkey at Thanksgiving this year. I’m not sure how this quite works, though. He’ll get ham again at Easter (to me, ham is Easter food), so does that mean I have to do ham a third time next Thanksgiving before I get my next turkey dinner? Unsure at this point.

I did my sweet potato casserole, one of my favourite Christmas/Thanksgiving dishes, and Christmas Eve I made tortiere, my own family’s Christmas Eve meal.

So it was weird for both of us – PH because we were eating tortiere on Christmas Eve instead of ham, and me because we were eating ham on Christmas Day, instead of turkey.

We Skyped with my parents so they could watch Owl opening his stocking this morning, and that was nice.

And I got awesome gifts – Perfect Husband got me nerdy T-shirts, including an Anxiety Girl shirt, a geeky board game (Munchkin Quest, which we played this evening and is awesome), a promise of a video card once boxing day sales kick in, and I got a new video camera which I have been needing for a while (my friend and I have been toying with the idea of making dog training instructional videos, but not with my low-def 2007 model handycam!). This is a Sony PJ260V and is entirely awesome and has a PROJECTOR on it. So you’ll be getting some HD videos posted soon.

I was deeply relieved to learn that a gift he had ominously referred to as my “Fifty Shades of Grey Gift” was actually a toy helicopter – something I have always wanted – and nothing scary for the bedroom.

He also gave me (get this, The Squeee!) an 1858 edition of Jane Eyre, which he had professionally restored. It’s beautiful. I want to run my hands over it and keep it in my pocket but I’ve been keeping it up on a high shelf instead, well away from inquisitive toddlers!

And Owl, well, he got TOO MUCH STUFF!

Puzzles, books, stuffed animals, clothes, undies, noisy electronics… I think the cake was taken by our Daycare Lady, who apparently got him (and every other boy in the daycare) one of those Let’s Rock Elmos, which is both adorable AND creepy. I need to post a video of that soon because Owl was just AGOG.

Our favourite of our own gifts to him (which were minimal and actively reduced when we saw the influx arriving from relatives) was a $10 box of plastic foods, which pretty much deserves its own post, accompanied by cute HD video so stay tuned for that.

He fell asleep clutching the shark slippers my sister in law sent him.

We also exposed Owl to The Grinch (which he loved), Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which bored him) and A Muppet Family Christmas (the unexpurgated version, which PH had transferred to DVD from a VHS tape six years ago), which held him entranced.

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I have a feeling I’ll keep forgetting that Christmas happened, since this was such a departure from all my previous Christmases. It felt like a wonderful day, but not like Christmas per se. It didn’t smell like Christmas, or taste like Christmas, because there was no turkey or gravy. It wasn’t at my parents’ house where Christmas always takes place. We opened gifts Christmas Eve instead of reflecting on the Christmas Story. It didn’t feel right.

I’m sure it felt just as weird to PH. But this is how new traditions start, I guess, with departures from the old. Maybe some day Owl will complain when things don’t match what today was like, because that will be Christmas for him.

I also haven’t been filled with that Christmas peace that I have had in the past, probably due to disruption of traditions and my work schedule interfering with my Christmas spirit. It’s hard to get in the mood when you’re working even on Christmas Eve, instead of on a mini-vacation back home, you know?

But I have no complaints. There will be many more Christmases, with turkey and grandparents, and midnight mass, and next year Owl will understand about Santa, which will be fun. We kept telling him Santa brought him his stocking stuff and he kept saying “No, Daddy did it!”

And I have a second edition of Jane Eyre, man.

No complaints at all.

In Which Vancouver Fails At Snow With Spectacular Results

Tags

bridges, coping with snow, shovelling, snow, snow driving, Vancouver, winter

Vancouver got the first snowfall of winter the other day, and since this is Vancouver we are talking about, it could very well be its last snowfall of the winter as well.

I have always liked snow. Living in the Caribbean made me appreciate it, especially at Christmas time.

I don’t like Vancouver’s rainy weather, and I get delighted when the snow hits, because on top of a winter wonderland, I get some fantastic entertainment: watching Vancouver deal with snow.

Vancouver doesn’t get snow often, so when it arrives the entire city goes into a full scale panic.

December 18, 2012 — A snowfall warning has been issued for the southern coastal region of BC as a strong frontal system arrives tonight. 

Scattered precipitation will fall over the area today and become widespread this evening as the system approaches.

“It’s all elevation dependent” says Brian Dillon, a meteorologist with The Weather Network. “Areas of Vancouver close to the harbour should receive less than 2 cm of snow but if you move 100 m above the city you could see up to 5 cm.”

That’s right. Snowfall warnings are issued for what many parts of the country would consider flurries.

And with good reason, because this city can’t handle even a few centimetres of snow. 

If snow fell in the heart of the Caribbean tomorrow, I don’t think the startled inhabitants could deal with it more poorly than Vancouverites do.