Category Archives: Coronavirus

About A Strong Sense of Place

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In Japan, there are more than 300 versions of the Kit Kat bar…including a soy sauce version, a European cheese version and a wasabi version.

There is an 60-room hotel in Sweden that is built every year just 200 kilometers away from the Arctic Circle and, despite being made of frozen water, is required to have fire alarms.

When it comes to cities housing billionaires, Moscow is second only to New York City.

These statements all seem like something fun and obscure you would read in a quirky travel brochure or on a website devoted to interesting trivia about international destinations. And though they sound hyperbolic, they are all true.

Of course, it would be lovely to go investigate these things for myself – maybe some Russian billionaire could front me the $400 per night for a room in the ice hotel (plus the fare for a twelve hour train ride to get there from Stockholm) where I could eat some imported wasabi Kit Kat bars. Except, generous Russian billionaire friend or not, we are still not going anywhere anytime soon. Because: Covid.

Well, then gosh darn it, thank goodness for books. And podcasts. And the Interweb. And armchair travelers like Mel Joulwan and Dave Humphries who have made it their business to read books that boast a Strong Sense of Place and then talk about them on their aptly-named podcast. Although they transplanted themselves from mainland U.S.A. to Prague in the Czech Republic a few years ago with the aim of wandering more, they too are experiencing a travel hiatus. But that hasn’t stopped them from exploring the world through books.

They talk about travel books? Sounds boring, you say.

Oh, trust me – Mel and Dave aren’t a couple of stuffy professor-types discussing only books they found in the Travel Book Co. of Notting Hill – although if the shoe fit, they would. These podcasters are fun and funny and happy to regale their audience about fiction and nonfiction, new books and old, about books written for adults or for children – there are no holds barred. The determining factor is that the book has to have a Strong Sense of Place.

When I was homeschooling my boys a few eons ago, my favorite teaching tool that I hit upon over and over was the idea of unit studies, where everything we learned about revolved around a theme. Indeed, in Mortimer J. Adler’s classic How to Read a Book, he calls this the highest level of reading: syntopical – the reading of multiple books on the same subject. Maybe our reading of multiple picture books and chapter books about dinosaurs or pioneers or famous artists wasn’t exactly the highest level, but it sure did the trick of painting a fuller picture.

Oh! And pictures! This podcast has an affiliated website just bursting with the best photography – all curated for your easy exploring pleasure. Sometimes, because Mel is a Cooker, the photos are of beautiful food that she gives her tried and true recipes for. (She started out with another website Well Fed and some cookbooks of the same name and she never makes you read an 10-page essay before she gives you the recipe.) Dave is a artist who’s website design skills I covet. And – they have a cat named Smudge.

One of my very favorite things I have ever read about reading, I found on their website. Sometimes, even I think: I read too much and I ask myself: What good does it do anyway, this insatiable desire I have to read, read, read? Dave and Mel’s answer: Empathy.

Copyright: Strong Sense of Place

Well, okay then. And now, back to my pile of books.

About The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

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Christmas pageants and plays, populated with preschoolers and preteens, have perennially caused problems for pastors and play-directors. Well, maybe we can be a little more generous and just call them “memorable experiences”.

Unfortunately, this year, a.k.a. The Year That Covid Killed Christmas, there won’t be any opportunities to watch your kids have a live meltdown on stage at school or at church or at a recital or ANYWHERE. Thankfully, we still have plenty of ways to recreate moments like your preschool daughter flashing her underpants (repeatedly) at the entire church congregation (because fancy skirts can be so much fun to flip up and down). Or like when your usually sunny son stands front and center on stage with his arms crossed, scowling at the crowd and refusing to sing in spite of every other rehearsal going as smoothly as possible.

Remember Kevin McAllister’s rotten brother Buzz? He expertly (and blatantly) antagonizes his little brother during an angelic solo and then absolves himself of all of the blame after the entire show’s scenery comes crashing down around Kevin’s lit-up ears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT7-T-pqCCs

And there was story I reviewed last Christmas on this blog, The Shepherd, The Angel and Walter the Christmas Dog, where (spoiler alert) the entire choir loft ceiling came crashing down. There’s just too many variables in a live performance with unpaid and underage amateurs amid poorly anchored scenery for Christmas plays to go exactly as planned.

[Side note: When I was a youngster, I went with my mom to a Christmas concert at Derwent School and watched while my big brother was “operated on” with a carpenter’s saw behind a backlit curtain after a scene where he ate too much pie. I bawled my eyes out thinking that something had gone horribly amiss. But no, the play went exactly as planned and it did look like they killed him. And that’s why you shouldn’t eat too much pie at Christmas, especially if someone wants to try out some new tools.]

The title of Barbara Robinson’s classic book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever appears, at first blush, to be ironic. The Herdman kids, notorious for wrecking everything in their path, bully their way into all the lead parts for the church’s nativity play which were (in this story) traditionally held by the milder and meek of the Sunday School crowd. The initial attraction for the un-herded Herdmans, whose mother works double-shifts and has essentially given-up, is a rumored abundance of food at the church. Much to the chagrin of the kids who previously enjoyed a Herdman-Free-Zone at their Sunday School classes, the hungry Herdmans decide their omnipresence is called for, even here in the church where the oldest Herdman, Imogene, mutters unhappily that apparently “everything” is about Jesus. You can imagine how it all plays out: near disaster, followed by unforgettable redemption. That’s my kind of Christmas story. You can download it to your Kindle or listen to it on Audible or even watch the movie on YouTube featuring Loretta “Hotlips Houlihan” Swit of M.A.S.H. fame. You’re welcome.

And finally, for who those of you who agree with me that this is the best Christmas play ending ever (even if it is animated, Charlie Brown and Snoopy will always be real people to me), heeeeeeeeere’s Linus!

About Flu Season

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Hey, guess what? It’s flu season.

(Ducks to avoid rotten tomatoes, paper airplanes made from cancelled flight tickets, and cardboard boxes now empty of disposable masks.)

Yeah, I know. Remember the good ole days, those days of auld lang syne, when one would get the flu and puke your guts out and moan for a few days and have to learn how to walk all over again just to get on the scale and find out that you lost 7 pounds in addition to maybe three days of your life?

Yeah, coronavirus is not that kind of flu.

I have my share of vivid memories of having the flu. Me, nine months pregnant with Timmy, huddled over a basin on the floor trying to manage dry-heaving and Braxton-Hicks contractions at the same time. Me, again, last Christmas when I was deathly ill from a flu I caught from my husband that we then shared with EVERYONE else in our vicinity. (And that we secretly wonder if it was some sort of pandemic-prequel.)

I have another flu-tinged memory: me, again, back before I got pregnant with Tim. My dear friend Lynn took care of Gil until his daddy got home from work, leaving me alone to my symptoms. Too weak (maybe?) to climb the stairs to my bed, I opted for the floor in front of the television. This was back when we had Super Channel – the premier movie subscription channel of the time. The movie playing was The English Patient. I wasn’t English and I wasn’t wrapped up in bandages, but at that moment in time, Ralph Fiennes and I had our supine positions in common.

And I will forever hate that movie.

Was it the flu that colored my dislike so much? Or did I somehow peer into the future and see Lord Voldemort? I’ll never know because I WILL NOT RE-WATCH THAT MOVIE OR READ THAT BOOK. Just the thought of it makes me nauseated.

It makes me wonder what about this whole world-wide virus epidemic will leave us with bad associations. Presidential races? (Well, the virus can’t be completely to blame for that.) The smell of tequila-tinged hand sanitizer? The feel of a giant Q-tip up your nose assessing your positive or negative status because you sneezed a couple times at your place of employ?

Yes, there will be bad memories when we think of 2020. Just the idea of another holiday coming up and wondering how to navigate it makes us wonder about the whole notion of Thanksgiving. (Let’s not even start thinking ahead to Christmas.)

I had a chance encounter this week with an old friend at the Coop where we were buying our Thanksgiving turkeys. I bemoaned the idea of another ambiguous get-together: I miss the freedom of hugging with abandon, of open door policies for the boys’ friends, of not having to THINK about dos and don’ts so much when it comes to just celebrating with family. And my friend reminded me that, on the flip side, many people are more thankful for their families than they were before coronavirus.

It’s good spiritual chiropractic, to have your thinking adjusted like that. There’s a lot that’s wrong with the world right now. But, as always, there’s a lot that is right.

Happy Thanksgiving.

About FOMO and JOMO

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I don’t know about you but I’m not sure that I want to be a part of this global pandemic thingy anymore.

Okay, I know I don’t really have an option. But after nearly six months of this, some serious FOMO is starting to set in. Even though some of the things I’m missing aren’t even there anymore. Like outdoor festivals (which I usually don’t go to) or sports (which I usually don’t watch). So it’s not so much FOMO as just MO.

Plus, I’m starting to miss weird things.

Like the ridiculous amounts of Back-To-School fliers that inundated my recycle box in all the previous years that didn’t begin with the numbers 202… Or the over-zealous same TV commercials that showed off tiny children wearing clothing way more fashionable than mine. Instead, there’s just Apple and Amazon commercials telling me that It’s going to be okay. (Because they’re the two companies making the most moneys right now. So I guess it’s nice of them to share…sentiment?)

I also find I’m missing crowds. Normally I can do without shouldering my way through people in shopping malls. But a visit to West Edmonton Mall this week was just eerie. I mean, WHERE DID ALL THE PEOPLE GO? Answer: At home on their iPhones placing another Amazon order.

I’m also missing playing chicken on the sidewalks. I mean, in a normal non-COVID season, one would walk towards someone on the sidewalk and play that little psychological game with them of “You-move-I’m-not-moving.” You might even (gasp!) TOUCH THEM as you swerve by. But now oncomers move differentially to each other, creating cow-paths on peoples’ lawns and preferring oncoming traffic to touching an actual human being with a six-foot pole. It makes me want reflexively check my deodorant levels, but then I remember – Oh right, it’s just an epidemic.

A solution, perhaps, would be to embrace JOMO – the joy of missing out. I mean, there is a certain simplicity in less: less people, less (physical) shopping, less decisions – because they’re just not there to make. But I feel like I’m completely glossing over all the really-real problems. After all, not-shopping is not technically a hardship, at least not-shopping for new clothes and school supplies at the malls when most of last year’s will do just fine.

Maybe there were aspects of the world as we knew it that weren’t particularly healthy – I mean, if people aren’t at the malls and in the restaurants and swerving on the sidewalks, that’s not really essential anyway, is it? But as I miss things as they were, I need to ask myself what exactly am I struggling with?

I am struggling with change. I kind of liked the world – with all its craziness – just the way it was. I’m sad for businesses and sports and churches that have had to shut down and are figuring out how to survive – or realizing they can’t.

I am struggling with uncertainty. I was told this week that THIS might last for two, maybe even three years. I don’t even want to say that out loud, but there it is. Buckle up and settle in – COVID appears to be the new tenant in the building previously occupied by HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, EMPLOYED and UNPHASED-BY-COMMON-COLD-SYMPTOMS. And we don’t know how long of a lease Mr. Epidemic took out.

And I’m struggling with plain old selfishness. I want things to be the way they used to be. I want to not wear a mask, not worry about visiting people outside of my bubble and not give a second thought to touching them. I want to travel again and not shake my head at Americans (over this). I also want kids to go to school and for teachers not to have to worry about disinfecting every surface, every second of every day. I want health-care workers to be able to relax a little and for people who are immunocompromised not consider everything a life-threatening decision.

Maybe it’s not even about shopping, not even a little bit. Maybe I want my party not just with cake, but with people, too, the way it used to be. I’m not sure I even want to think about Christmas and how different that will be.

But maybe realizing what I miss is actually making me more thankful for what was, what is. And let’s hope, for what will someday be, even if it looks a little different.

About Weddings

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/regina-couple-pandemic-wedding-plans-1.5579744

Weddings are looking a lot different this year, aren’t they?

We have two friends who are planning their weddings for the same date in August, one here in Vermilion, Alberta and one in Regina, Saskatchewan. It has been interesting to hear about the moment-by-moment changes that have been made since we went into COVID lockdown in March. The anticipated numbers of attendees first plummeted, then rose back up a little. Dresses have been held up from being shipped from the U.S.A. And the venues have been changed. All in all, it seems like some things have gotten a little simpler.

As my eldest son Gil has relayed to me via the numerous twenty-somethings he knows that planned their weddings for this year, in the end, all that really matters is the getting married part. If the fluff and the gifts and the mega-decoration and all your millions of friends in attendance are what you REALLY want out of a wedding, well then maybe you need to postpone it to next year. (Or, never. Just sayin.)

Well, okay. Just because I’m not huge Party Girl now, doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the fact that I had a pretty big wedding myself some (gasp!) twenty-eight years ago. In a lot of ways, growing up in the middle of the Borscht belt, in the town I affectionately nicknamed The Ukrainian Wedding Capital of Canada, my wedding was pre-planned. I knew where I would get married (the little RC church in Derwent), where the reception would be (the Derwent and District Recreation Centre), who would be invited (all my friends, all manner of relatives both shirt-tale and front-collar and the twenty people my non-Ukrainian fiance’s family got to invite) and what we would eat. (Hello! Ukrainian food!)

We grew up going to weddings so we knew exactly what to expect. We learned how to dance at weddings, got drunk for the first time at a wedding and got our first kiss there – and second, third and fourth if there were a lot of groomsmen or bridesmaids in the reception line. In a close-knit community like Derwent, back in the day, not inviting all the neighbors to your child’s wedding was… well, it was just not done.

Case in point: this year, as the quarantine had just begun, my mother’s birthday fell on March 22. She would have been 92 this year and I try to do something each year to commemorate the day. Since it was #stayhome, I decided to go through the box of wedding invitations that had come from her house. And then, because it’s me, I decided to “organize” them by date.

These are the stats. From the 1950s, my mom had saved 15 invitations. From the sixties, there were 62. From the eighties, 85, and the nineties, there were 38, one of which was mine.

Oh, and the seventies? From the seventies, my mom had ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN WEDDING INVITATIONS. I mean seriously, I had to go take a nap afterwards. Simon took pictures of the stacks and posted them on Instagram because: 1) He’s a Gen Z; 2) He had never seen a wedding invitation before – him of the age of internet invites; and 3) He (rightfully) couldn’t believe Baba had been invited to well over 300 weddings in her life.

All told, even though I had lived through that golden age of weddings, it was hard for me to wrap my head around. Sure, Mom and Dad didn’t go to every wedding they were invited to – sometimes two (or even, three) weddings fell on the same date. But I do remember when I was growing up that a summer weekend without a wedding to attend seemed a little, well, boring. And if an invitation specified “No Children, Please”, we were horrified to be deprived of a meal equivalent to “eating out”, of stacking up plastic drink cups as high as we could make them and of tooling all around Main Street Derwent with a crowd of other kids, pretending we were the Lords of Flatbush.

The marriage is the most important thing. But there’s a whole lot of other fun stuff that can make a wedding memorable. And right now, COVID-19 is making the weddings super memorable as intentions and guest lists get more concentrated. Going through with happy plans in the middle of a pandemic is always going to be something to remember.

You won’t beat my Mom’s record for wedding invitations this year, or this decade, because it’s just not a thing anymore. But the main thing? It’s still the main thing.

About Halfway

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July 1 marks the halfway point of the year. And this year in particular, The Year the Virus Stole My Job/Graduation/Sanity/Fill-In-The-Blank, is one that many of us just wish we could Do Over.

But the toothpaste is already squeezed out of the tube and there ain’t no way to get it back in, short of toothpaste tube surgery. That sounds messy, sticky and without guaranteed results. Might as well regroup and figure out a new container or use for the toothpaste.

I am a person who likes to make resolutions at the beginning of the year (yes, I’m one of THOSE people), but I also know that without periodic review and re-engagement, I can lose focus. An auspicious date like July 1 – not just Canada Day (yay!), but 6 months from and to January 1 – is a perfect time to re-resolute.

I have kept a journal for many years now and I noticed a pattern a few years back – I often return to the same resolutions year after year. Most resolutions for me are not One-and-Done or else they wouldn’t be a recurring phenomenon. Maybe it would be better to call them Intentions. Or even Reminders. Re-Minding is all about getting your mind right again.

These are a few of the things I see as good things to remind myself.

Drink more water. Such an inane resolution really, but for me, I need to remind myself to not just drink my black water (a.k.a. My Beloved Coffee) but to intersperse my cups of java with cups of the clear stuff.

Quit eating crap. Well, not so much of it anyway. I don’t subscribe to an austere diet – although a reset like The Whole 30 once in a while doesn’t hurt. But coming through COVID-19, a.k.a. The Great Global Baking Challenge, it’s good to get back to soups and salads for lunch. And thankfully, fresh garden produce is just around the corner for extra incentive and general yumminess.

Move. Everyday. The older I get, the more thankful I am for the ability to move my body. Some days I do hard stuff like my boot camp class. Some days I just go for a walk or vacuum the house. I set timers to make myself get up from my desk and stretch, look out the window, refocus my eyes, get a glass of water. And I try everyday to go outside, which seems to require and inspire movement in and of itself. For an Indoorsy Girl, this is a miracle and a revelation that I can enjoy being outside (almost) everyday.

Keep in Touch. Along with Indoorsy Girl, I am also Introvert Girl. However, introversion is not the same as Doesn’t Need People. The pandemic introduced me to the Walk-And-Talk – talking to a friend on my cell while we both walked in our respective locations. Normally, I don’t like talking on the phone, but since this was the best option available, it became Okay. And even though I had some of my family around me 24-7 for the intense six weeks of quarantine, I was reminded how much I miss actually seeing people, talking to them in person, hugging them. Most of the hugging is still on hold but I do make sure that I break up my working-at-home-weekdays with at least one In-Person-Friend-Date. It’s always good.

Start Something. Keep Going. Finish Something. I always have some project I’m working on. In the past it has been more hobby-related like scrapbooking or organizing (anything, I like organizing ANYTHING). These days, I’m trying to focus on writing. I have one project I want to finish by the end of the year, one I want to keep going on and one I want to launch. Deadlines (as my husband reminds me) are a good thing. They keep you honest and help you GET STUFF DONE. If it’s important, you need to set aside the time to do it. And for me, my writing projects, are IMPORTANT. And if I keep doing the small and simple stuff above, it will give me the energy and the sanity to stick to my bigger intentions.

What’s on your Redeem-the-Rest-of-2020 list?

About The Big Wave

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Before I ever understood anything about Pulitzers or Nobel Prizes, I read the slim book The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck, who incidentally clocked in with both of those honors. So, it is no small thing when a writer of such caliber chooses to write for children, which, despite the heavy content, this book is written for. That being said, I think adults can always benefit from reading good children’s stories.

Kino, the son of a farmer, lives near a Japanese fishing village where his best friend Jiya works with his fisherman father. Tragedy visits when a tsunami wipes out the village even though The Old Gentleman who lives in a castle up the mountain offers refuge at the first signs of danger. Jiya alone, sent by his father, manages to get up the mountain in time and then watches with Kino as the terrible ocean wipes the beach clean.

Years later, Jiya decides to return to the beach, to help rebuild the village and to become a fisherman like his father. Kino is baffled with Jiya’s decision and The Old Gentleman derides those who have started the rebuilding. He warns them that he will never again offer refuge in his castle, what he claims is the only safe place.

Jiya answers him:

“Your castle is not safe either…If the earth shakes hard enough, your castle will crumble, too. There is no refuge for us who live on these islands. We are brave because we must be.”

In some ways, this pandemic has felt like The Big Wave – sweeping, arbitrary and devastating. Many people have died and our way of life has changed in somewhat drastic ways. It’s easy to feel like it will never be the same again. It’s easy to be afraid of The Big Wave, of The Next Wave.

In a podcast I recently listened to, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) talks with Jen Hatmaker about this feeling of shock that people have – like they’re suddenly out of control, when in fact they were never in control. As Liz puts it, “The world is doing what our world does. The world is just being itself…and it’s doing it perfectly. Because what the world does is change every second…And that’s what it’s always done.”

I take great comfort in those words, which to me paradoxically echo those in Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” The world does what the world does – as it always has. We were never in control. But we can be brave because we must be.

And though it feels like things may never be the same, we won’t go backward. We aren’t meant for that. We are meant to go back to the beach and build again. And to treasure what we have, if only for this day.

About Me and Books

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There’s a lot of talk about minimalism and tiny houses these days. Generally, I figure that most people who choose to live in a tiny house probably don’t have much stuff to begin with. Or they’re just not that materialistic. They’re outdoorsy, probably, and live in warm climates. They entertain only small parties, if any, because they only own 2 plates and 2 forks and one knife. And they seem to have a romantic idea about sleeping on plywood beds in treehouse style loft bedrooms conducive to hitting your head if you suddenly sit up.

I’ve watched a few of those shows and frankly, it just looks too much like camping to me. Tiny bathrooms where you can sit on the toilet to shower (not a high-value efficiency for me), steps that hide dog dishes (because tiny house people always have room for the largest dogs), shoe storage that doubles as art installations – all these things look nice – in theory. For reals, I’d like to see the stats on how long before these tiny house owners put their digs up for sale on Kijiji.

Maybe the only ones that pique my interest are the tiny-house-book-lovers. You know, people who basically build themselves a self-sufficient closet to hold all their best friends – er, favorite books. Books as art installations? That I understand.

However, as a bookishly nerdy person whose favorite activities all center around words, I don’t have as many books as you might think. Oh sure, I have plenty, more than the average book-bear probably. But I actually don’t have a problem with getting rid of books if – IF – they no longer serve me.

I think my purging prowess started when we moved for the fourth time in the first seven years of being married and I lifted a box heavy with university textbooks that had not been unpacked from the previous move. What purpose did it serve me to save my Microbiology textbook from my ill-fated first year of nursing school? When would I need to urgently look up how a virus evolves the life span of a paramecium? And given constant scientific research and updating, how could I ever know if my textbook would stay “right”? And finally, I never really read it in the first place. Microbiology, Biology, Zoology – all the science-y textbooks – are long gone. And I never missed them.

I started my theory of decluttering before the internet became a THING – when copious amounts of unreliable information were available on the Google – in mere seconds. Way back then, my first criterion for letting go of a book was: Can I find this at the library? Oh, sure, it’s nice to have something around sometime just because you like a subject. Case in point: I never did let go of my Art History textbook from 1988 and I still look things up in it. Because I’m interested in art, especially old art, for which there’s not a lot of new research being dug up, archaeologically speaking. And, in my opinion, an art history textbook makes a nicer coffee table book than Physics, a textbook I also never read but which additionally gives me the heebie-jeebies.

This brings up my second criterion, which was to honestly ask myself: will I ever actually read this – again or for the first time? When I first started homeschooling my boys, I supplemented our bookshelves by haunting garage sales and second-hand stores. I bought anything and everything that looked educational, classic or fun. The result was bookshelves overflowing with many, many unread books. While it served us well to have lots to choose from, I was again confronted with this problem when staging a house to sell. Rather than box up the bulk and shove it under the stairs, I purged again – this time, asking myself the hard questions like: Will I ever read The Count of Monte Cristo or Mein Kampf or HTML for Dummies? Yeah, no.

But that’s me. Physics and HTML might be your perfect bookshelf fodder. And maybe at one time, it was for me, too. On a podcast that I listened to this morning about this subject, the guest talked about letting go of the things that are “no longer you” – which is sometimes hard to do. But she also said that she trusted herself to remember what was important. The result is a lot more room in your brain to focus on what’s here and now. And maybe a lot more room on your bookshelves.

These days, I try to “preview” books before I ever buy them – meaning I use the library again, a lot. There’s nothing worse than spending $30 on a book that you open up and say, “Oh no.” Of course, COVID-19 has made using the library a little different (hurry up, Phase Two!) but in the meantime, I’m shopping my own shelves for reading material. Because I still have books I have to read. And plenty more to give away.

About What I Learned While Homeschooling

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Along with all the other inherent stresses imbued in a global pandemic, parents right now are finding themselves thrust into a scenario they never wished upon themselves or their children – schooling their kids at home. It’s not for the feint of heart, taking responsibility for the education of your kids, but then neither is parenting. Having kids is probably not what you ever thought it was gonna be: it’s way harder and way better.

About twenty years ago, Rick and I made the decision that we would willingly take on schooling our kids at home. There was no virus threatening our safety, just three little boys testing our sanity. It’s actually a little amusing to me right now that the government is telling parents they need to do this, because it wasn’t always a sanctioned choice. I never was a vigilante-homeschooling mom, insisting that everyone should do it. But I did always maintain that it was an option, like public school or private school were other schooling choices out there. And for us, at the time, it was the right one.

That’s the way you have to look at parenting in retrospect, whether giving grace to yourself or your parents: you do your best with what you know at the time.

I admit that I’m relieved that my kids are graduated and responsible for whatever the heck they want to learn now. And COVID-19, with all it’s social distancing challenges, has really put parents schooling their children at home to the test: no playgrounds at “recess”, no fraternizing in the hallways except with your enemies (oops, I mean siblings), no sports, no clubs, not a lot of anything to let off steam except screens and backyards.

It was a different time and a different place, but for what it’s worth, here’s what I learned while homeschooling my boys – with the perspective of being past it all.

One of the best things I heard at a homeschooling conference once was that educating your kids was like creating a hammock for them. You need to make sure they have the basics to support them – through the next level, through regular life – but there’s always gonna be a lot of holes. If kids only get the basics – like the original trifecta of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, that’s a pretty good hammock. It will hold up. And there’s no way you can ever fill all the holes anyways.

Secondly, what you “routinize” is what your kids will get used to and what they will also do, for better or for worse. Whether it’s schooling at home or working remotely, you get more done if you stick to a routine. Plus, more beds get made, teeth get brushed, fish get fed and books get read. It takes a lot of muscle to build a habit but then after awhile, it just becomes the new normal.

Thirdly, you can’t predict what your kids will remember. While I went off the deep end teaching my boys lots of history and reading them great stories, they don’t remember a lot of the specifics. Frankly, neither do I. It’s pretty scattershot, really. But we did give them learning “hooks”, meaning that if they encounter an idea or some history or a person that we learned about in school, they have a place to hang that knowledge and build upon it. You can’t always remember stuff from first encounters. And now that they are in their twenties with their own Google machines in their hands all the time, they can look it up. (So can I.)

Fourthly, they will remember what was fun and unusual, and mostly, that’s the stuff that families are made of, not school. There were lots of things my boys do remember because we enjoyed them: nature hikes, reading all the Harry Potter books as a family, theatre performances, road trips, music lessons (well, maybe not the lessons, but the knowing how to play afterwards), holiday traditions, sleepovers at Gramma’s house, backyard hockey rinks and road hockey in the summer, crazy youth group events, house renovations. (Oh, wait, maybe that last one was just fun for Rick and me.) And if you think about it, what you remember about school when you were a kid was probably less about what you learned and more about what you did and who you did it with and especially if you had fun.

I’m willing to bet that the COVID-19 classes of 2020 won’t remember a heck a lot of what they learned “in school” this year. Which is not to say that it’s a futile exercise: schoolwork teaches your kids how to learn and it builds their repertoire and frankly, it just keeps them a little busy. But it’s pretty much a guarantee that they will remember all the weirdness, and hopefully a little bit of the wonderfulness, that a quarantine can offer. I mean, you’re in it now: might as well make lemonade out of them lemons. And while you’re at it, your kids can learn math and experiment with taste buds and have (lemonade) drinking contests and then they can wash the damn dishes. Which is also a good skill they probably won’t learn in regular school.

Home, after all, is where they first learned to walk and talk and cut their own hair somehow with child-safe scissors. Maybe they can cut yours now until we get our hair salons back. It could be fun. Just sayin.

About Running

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Just in time for spring and peek-a-boo sandals, my toenails are about to fall off.

Not all of them. Just two. And those would be the ones on my “pointer toes” – the abnormally tall next-to-big-toes. You know, the weird looking toes. Come to think of it, toes in general are weird looking. They’re all different from each other, thoughtfully fashioned to each have their own piggy personality.

So back to my imminent toenail departure. At the very beginning of COVID-19, just before that last memorable snowstorm swooped in, we went for our obligatory daily walk. (And by daily, I mean, four times a week if we’re not too lazy or…ahem, busy.) It was a beautiful March Sunday afternoon and we took the long way around town. We were probably a couple of miles in before I started to question the error of my footwear choice. The garage was still in a state of disarray from moving and rather than upend that Jenga tower, I had opted for a crappy pair of convenient old loafers with which to plow through the puddles.

Cue the blisters and the repeated battering of my extra-long toes. The result a couple of days later, besides the impressive sore-toe-ness, was that my two toenails had turned a royal shade of purple. And now a month later, they are loosening and threatening their exodus. Jeez.

I have heard about marathon runners losing toenails after their big race and for some reason I thought that they just peeled off along with their socks immediately after they had crossed the finish line. Duh. This makes more sense: they hurt like the dickens and they color up pretty and a month later, they take their leave.

So basically, I’m in the same boat as a marathon runner. Except I’m about 22 miles short. And I didn’t run.

I am the best of walkers, sometimes I’m even a tremendous hiker. I love pumping up and down the hills in the Provincial Park out my back door – at a reasonable pace. But running – I suck at running. I have no gumption for it at all.

Nowadays, I blame my knees, having inherited my mother’s arthritic joints. However, my mom never let a creaky knee or elbow keep her from jogging to the chicken coop or running up from the basement with a quart jar of pickles tucked under her arm, like a Heisman winner. And so, I take a page from her book and insist I will not give in either. I will jog a little on the treadmill now and then. I will do squats and lunges and take this kind of medicine to keep me strong and limber (because I don’t have chickens and I don’t make pickles.)

We’ve all heard of people who lace up and discover a whole new kind of freedom when they start to run. (Watch Brittany Runs a Marathon for a great example of this.) I listen to (and watch) these stories with envy. Because that has never been me.

Way back when I was in grade nine, I had some fancy ideas about becoming a runner. Running would keep me fit and maybe slim me down, but best of all, I could call myself: A Runner. It went totally against my nerdy, bookish persona and just like every junior-high-schooler, I desperately wanted to be something different from Who I Was. And so, when the Annual-All-Schools-in-the-County-Track-and-Field Day came along, I signed up. For the Long-Distance Event. (Oy-yoy-yoy. I’m pretty sure that’s what was in the thought bubble above my Mom’s head when I confessed this to her.)

Let me be clear: I went to a very small school. There were about fifteen of us in grade nine. And only one other girl from my school had signed up for my Event. Additionally, there was no training – not in gym class, not after school, not even a hint of a suggestion that: perhaps to avoid humiliation, one should practice a little for this Event.

Well, not that I remember.

I took it upon myself one lovely day in May to lace up my knock-off Converse runners (ahem: NOT a RUNNING shoe) and try running around my town. And if you know how big Derwent is, that’s not really saying that much. But I got about a block away from home and I was winded. Whew! I decided that that was probably good enough for one day and I walked back home. With good intentions, I thought I would go out the next day and “train” some more.

Well. Time flies when you’re in high school and I woke up one day and Surprise! It was Track and Field Day. Thankfully, my mom had sewed me a cute outfit, so I wasn’t going to look like a complete idiot. And I was sure that on that day, I would somehow be able to complete the race by sheer fortitude, a quality that I had never displayed in gym class before.

When the time came for my Event, I lined up with all the other two entrants in my race. The fake gun went off and I ran. The other girl from my school was pretty much in the same boat as me and when we saw our competition pull ahead, we unanimously decided not to deprive her of victory. So, about a block in, we both dropped out.

This is not the end of the story. Apparently, I did moderately better than my home-town compadre and for this mere effort – like the milliseconds between Olympian medalists – I was awarded a Second-Place Blue Ribbon.

Pretty great, huh? (And this was before participation medals.)

There is no moral in this story – well, not one that I want to explore, anyways. There are a couple of points however: I never was a runner and unless I get me some new knees – AND SOME FORTITUDE – I never will be one.

And: I may not be a runner, but I AM a (second-place) winner. I have the blue ribbon to prove it.