The Girl and Her Friend Who’s Moving To England

In days of yore, a friend moving away was a definite and demarcated end to things. Back in 1976, when I was in Grade one, I had a friend called Cameron who I played with regularly at recess, and a few times after school. But, then he moved away, and that was that. I just didn’t see him anymore. It was as if the very earth swallowed him up.

As it was so long ago, I can’t remember his last name. So, even finding him on Facebook isn’t really feasible. Too much time has passed. At the time, I remember not wanting to see him go, and anticipating the void his absence would create. But, what could I do? I just had to accept it. And I had to accept that it could happen again, to any one of the people I knew. And it certainly did. Pretty soon, such as thing came to be expected. There are friends and other classmates I had growing up that just dropped off somewhere; one year they were there, and the next they weren’t. In many cases, I can’t even remember exactly when they were out of my life. I myself moved schools after grade 9, leaving people behind me that I’d known since kindergarten, and many of whom I’ve never seen since. It was like moving to another planet.

But, that was then.

One of the Girl’s playmates is moving to England – the Isle of Wight to be exact. To maximize their time together, “playdates” have been arranged, so that they can squeeze out the last of their facetime together. They will miss each other of course. Children operate best when there is a routine to count on. And a part of the routine is seeing people every day, not to mention the love that grows between friends at any age. That much has not changed.

But, this is the 21st century.

One of the first things she and I did recently was to go to Google maps to find the Isle of Wight. When I was seven, if I’d had the presence of mind to ask Cameron where he was moving to, I could have consulted an atlas, or a road map, to find out where he was going to be living in relation to me. But I couldn’t virtually explore the street he was going to live on, or find out what colour his front door was going to be. Also, we didn’t have “playdates” arranged in 1976, unless it was us who arranged them (it was called “calling on” someone, which was just another way of saying we’d walk or ride our bikes to their house and knock on their door). Also, our parents didn’t really get involved in our personal relationships in the way that happens today. So, his parents and mine never really collaborated on helping us stay in touch. It was a different time.

But yesterday, the Girl and I explored the Isle of Wight together using Google Street Maps. She now has a pretty good idea of where her friend is going to live, and what his surroundings will be. She also has a basic idea of how far away the Isle of Wight is from where she lives. Further, she and her friend will have Skype, and (eventually) email and social media platforms at their disposal. There are channels to connection which they can use, with the help (initially) of their parents. It is possible that the changes that will occur over the years in each of their lives can in fact still be shared between them, despite a continent and an ocean that stands in their way. Whether this will actually happen is entirely another matter. But, the possibility remains to be a far more accessible one than ever before.

To the seven year old in me (he’s still there!), this is amazing.

It’s hard to say how far ahead the Girl’s generation on the whole will be on this score compared to how things have been for mine. Maybe with greater availability of connections, maybe geographical shifts aren’t going to be a barrier as they once were. Or maybe it will be easier for people of the Girl’s generation to take their connections for granted and let them go, since the stakes at a friend moving away aren’t as high. Who knows?

But, however things unfold she’ll have a few forces to draw upon. One will be her parents who will help her to stay connected as long as she wants to be, until she can manage it on her own. And another will be channels that just weren’t around when her parents were her age.

This is how it should be of course. Because a parent’s dream is mostly about helping to open up the possibilities for their children. To help her stay in touch with her friend, and not having the earth swallow him up is just another form of that in the end.

The Girl and Anger

Recently, the Girl and I spent an evening with her Gramm, her Grandpa G, her Auntie, and two of her cousins. In addition to getting together with them, one of the features of the evening was the promise of even more cousins, another Auntie, and an Uncle from the Island, expected to arrive that evening.

BC Ferries, in their dubious wisdom, decided to cancel the sailing on which the much-beloved Island cousins, Uncle, and other Auntie were waiting. This put the schedule totally out of whack. The result was that by the time the second infusion of familial goodness arrived, it was time for The Girl and I to go; school the next day, bath, and bedtime beckoned. And it was very disappointing not to get to see everyone she’d hoped to see that evening. They were only in town for three days, and booked up to see other people during those days.

Sometimes, life mucks it up for you. It ruins your plans, and makes you feel like you was robbed. It’s a hard lesson at any age, and it never gets easier, even as it becomes less surprising as you get older.

The Girl says: Don’t  keep your feelings on ice, sonny-jim.

One thing about the Girl is that she is often very stoic when it comes to being angry, or disappointed, or sad. Sometimes, she keeps a lot to herself. She holds it in. It might be the British heritage she shares through my side of the family. It’s kind of an impediment.

But on the way home, she was pissed off. Like really pissed off. She made no bones about it.

Now, I’ve inherited that British stoicism in my own way, too. When I was a kid, I too kept a lot inside so as not to cause a fuss. I don’t know where I learned it. I know that it’s healthier to be pissed off, and show that you are when it counts, and manage maturely it when it doesn’t. But, I have to swim upstream myself with this stuff, even today.

Getting back to the Girl being very pissed off in the backseat of the car, the only reasonable thing to do in this case was to agree with her. She’s been waiting all day to see her Island cousins, telling her friends  at school about it before she came. And then, a ferry doesn’t sail when it should, which has nothing to do with her, and she has to go home as soon as they arrive – and I’m talking literally leaving as soon as they got there.

That sucks! Of course it does!

So, she cried and railed all the way home – understandably. Of course, as I mentioned, there are two sides to the “mustn’t grumble” impulse that comes with British heritage. After trying to explain what happened (that’s what a lot of guys do in the face of raw emotion …), and apologizing to her for having to stick to the schedule anyway while knowing how disappointed she was, I heard myself say: “OK, love. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s just making you upset.” Well, “heard myself say”; I said it.

When we arrived at her mum’s, we explained the situation, with The Girl’s anger and disappointment coming through pretty clearly. After a hug, her mum took immediate action, got on the phone, and organized an alternate arrangement, finding a window in a very narrow span of time. While the Girl took her bath, her mum said to me: “I’m glad that she’s showing us how angry she is.”

And I thought to myself: “Of course. This is something to be glad about. She’s being honest, and she’s showing us what’s happening to her on the inside by expressing it outwardly. That’s exactly what we want her to do.” Sure, she took a hard lesson about how life doesn’t always go according to how we want it to go, blah, blah, blah, snore. But I was reminded that it’s also important to say how much that sucks.

It’s a funny thing to say you’re glad to see your kid pissed off, maybe. Or maybe it isn’t, or shouldn’t be. I mean It would be nice if life didn’t ever give her a reason to be angry or disappointed. But, that’s not realistic, is it?

So, when it happens, it’s best to give her room to be pissed off. It’s best to let her say whatever she wants about it, without telling her “I don’t want to talk about it”, or that she’s just “making herself more upset”, when really (perhaps) it’s me that doesn’t want to deal with upset, or seeing it in someone I care about.

Expressing anger and disappointment is healthy, and so is allowing for it in the ones we love without judgement. It’s an embrace of what’s really happening, and it allows everyone involved to develop a broader and more limber emotional vocabulary for more complex emotions, and for other relationships in the present and later on. This is the way our kids learn to manage their own emotions, whatever they are, without someone having to tell them to calm down, or some other disconnected thing that very often has nothing to do with their states of being at all.

This parenting lark isn’t just about teaching, it seems. The whole thing is a mobius strip of getting it right, screwing up, getting new perspectives, and starting again.

Me, The Girl, and Memories

One thing about authoring this blog is that it needs to be understood that this is the Girl’s life as seen through my eyes, as her dad. I’ve mapped all of that out in the about section, of course.

Ever since she was born, I have been aware that even if I record a memory in some way that I find particularly striking or important  into a blog post or photo, or video, there is obviously going to be a gap between that importance, and the importance where she is concerned. There will be recollections and memory stills in her life that only she will really be able to hold onto. She is the one  that will have really lived it, so those are the ones that will really count for her. They will mean more to her to than anything I, or anyone else, will be able to gather up for her.

I have memories of my own like that. Some of those memories very obviously memorable, like getting ready for my first day at school, or scoring my first goal in league soccer, or seeing my Dad’s electric guitar and hearing him play it for the first time.

But, I remember other things too. Some of those memories, when written down, have no business actually being memorable. Yet, those little moments are equally precious to me.

I remember picking and eating sun-warmed raspberries in Aunt Marge’s backyard. I remember staring out of the window and looking down into King Street in Toronto when I went to work with my Dad one weekend, smelling the bus fumes rising up to meet my nose, and falling in love with the city anyway. I remember sunbathing with my cousin Phil on the dock at the cottage while an Andy Gibb song was playing on the A.M Radio, and I remember getting an almighty sunburn on the back of my legs afterwards.

No one captured these for posterity, other than my own mind. That’s just the nature of memory, I think. You never know which ones are going to stick. They are the mysterious threads that make up the fabric of our lives.

Source: flickr.com via Darlene on Pinterest

In the Girl’s case, I often wonder which memories will take hold for her. Will it be the time I carried her on my shoulders through the streets of Vancouver during the winter Olympics, with crowds of jubilant people in the streets and zip-liners streaking by over our heads? That would be a good one, right? What about her first karate grading, her first ballet performance, or her memories of the first day of kindergarten, or grade one?

But, it may be none of those. Perhaps it will be all of them. Nothing can contain what life means to us, years later as we look back on it. And no one can tell what the shape of it will be in either direction. That’s a part of what makes it exciting, and terrifying.

She too will have tiny, and on paper seemingly insignificant memories that will leap to her mind, that she will recall with fondness, embarrassment, humour, or melancholy, for the rest of her life. They are the real treasures of life, the things that make us who we are, even as situations, points of view, and physical appearances change.

One thing I hope to be able to do when she gets older is to tell her is that I understand how much some silly little memory of hers might mean to her, no matter what it is. Because there are times when I think that the recollections we have of our past choose us, and not the other way around. They define us, and they ignite our imaginations. Perhaps too, they remind us that life is more than schedules, curricula, socially accepted milestones, and obligations.

Sometimes, life is  just wonderfully random as much as it is fearfully so.

The Girl Rides A Bike!

In the recent past, the Girl has attended what’s called ‘bike camp’, a program that teaches children how to ride bicycles safely.  And somewhere along the line she has done away with her training wheels.

She rides!

When she comes to my house, she’s never brought her bike. We tend to walk everywhere. So, I only found out about her skills this weekend. That’s a by-product of the two-home arrangement, I guess; finding out about milestones after the fact. I feel vaguely sad about that, not seeing her “getting it” as she learns to ride. I wish I’d been there to help her with it.

But, it’s not really about me. It’s about her, and how proud she feels about being able to do something fun on her own.

Anyway, here’s the reason you’re tuning in here – the pictures.

Dig that crazy polka-dot helmet!

Off to the park.

A sunny day on two wheels.

My Girl grows up, every day.

The Girl and Anti-Bullying Day

Today, February 29th 2012, is Anti-bullying day, an event observed at the Girl’s school. She, along with the rest of the school, was encouraged to wear a pink shirt to show support. It was an official school event, during an age when we’ve seen the effects of bullying carried out to their logical conclusion – in pain, agony, and death.

When I was growing up, bullies were meant to be “ignored”. That would, we were told, discourage the bully. Many of us found that idea to be pure bullshit, in a time when bullying was very much thought of as some Darwinian rite of passage by many parents, teachers, and school administrators. It was something that was a part of childhood, to be expected.

But these days, we know what a crock that is.

And where our generation of parents are often pretty uptight about a lot of things (myself very much included), at least we’ve got that right – bullying isn’t a rite of passage. It’s the road to heartache, and loss.  I am glad the Girl is growing up during a time when this is the received wisdom by those in charge.

On the drive home tonight, The Girl asked about bullying. She asked what it really meant. So, I tried my best to explain that bullying must be stopped because it keeps going unless people say that it shouldn’t. That bullies are, very often, bullied themselves. If a parent bullies their child, then it’s only natural that the child will in turn be a bully, first at school, and then maybe when they become parents.

What I didn’t get into is the tendency for whole nations to become bullies. It is possible for one set of people to seek to destroy another because they had once been downtrodden themselves, crushed (just as a for-instance) by a long, expensive war that it was penalized for losing. Looking for a way to gain strength, it is possible for that nation to push that group of people, and others who disagreed with their actions, to the brink of extinction through systematic persecution, and eventually mass murder.

That’s really what we’re up against, and the reason that I feel that it is important to understand, and be able to communicate, the concept of empathy – the true antidote to bullying, or the impulse to bully.

I’m glad the Girl’s generation will not grow up ignoring it.

The Girl and New Year 2012

Happy New Year everyone!

In thinking about the passage of time, I thought I’d post this pic, taken in June of 2007, when the Girl was a year and a half old. It’s one of my favourite pictures of the two of us.

It really doesn’t seem that long ago. And yet, it feels like an eternity. That is the nature of time, I guess. And I suppose too it underscores the point that we need to take hold of, and cherish, each era in the lives of our children. By extension of course, we grasp hold of our own eras, too. It’s one of the perks of parenthood.

From the Girl and I – well, mostly me – Have a Happy 2012!

The Girl and Future Plans

The great thing about where the Girl is at right now is that she often speaks her mind in the moment that things occur to her. She’s been thinking a lot lately about what it might be like to be a grown-up.

I have outlined a bit about her nurturing instincts, and her belief that one day, she’d like to be a Mum. That has evolved, it seems.  She also wants to be a veterinarian, which totally makes sense given her love of all animals. And she’s chosen her life partner as well.

I had this exchange with her in the car yesterday:

Girl: I have a brave family.

Me: I suppose we are kind of brave. We’re certainly ready to look out for you.

Girl: Even when I have a baby?

Me: Yes, even then.

Girl: Well, I’m going to marry Christopher (her best friend).

Me: Really. Does he know this?

Girl: Yes. I told him. Then, I’m going to have a baby.

(Nice of the Girl to keep Christopher in the loop.)

Me: And where are you going to live?

Girl: In a house near a pet store. I want to be a veterinarian. I want to be the boss.

So, a working Mum it is! And one who’s in charge. That’s my Girl. Meanwhile, her Dad is savouring these current years when she climbs into his lap without thinking about it, and when her hand still curls around his ear when she’s tired.

The Girl and Halloween’s Past

Seeing as Halloween just passed us by, and the Girl and I enjoyed our night out, I remembered I shot this video an eternity ago, Halloween night 2008. She’d just turned three!

A lot has changed since then, including how much less The Girl looks like a baby, and how much more she looks like a little girl.

Time marches on.

The Girl and Her Uncle Pete

My brother Pete is nine years younger than me. It might embarrass him to know that he is the first baby I ever came in contact with.

When he was born, I was in Grade three. It was 1978. When they brought him home, it was in a bassinet. Commander Tom was on TV as I sat next to it. Elvis Costello was touring My Aim Is True, and there was a commercial on about him being the future of rock n’ roll.

And my brother was the first baby I ever held.  I remember it vividly.

Flashforward to 2005. My brother is 27. He holds his niece for the first time, a little awkwardly, but not very. She is the first baby he’s ever held.

The Girl and I don’t see Pete that much. This is partially because he works nights, and has conflicting hours in general. But, when we’ve got together with him, especially recently, I’ve noticed that she is in love with her Uncle Pete.

I think this is true for a few reasons. First, it has to do with her. She has a fascination with her family, with who she’s connected to, those with whom she shares something of a history. Second, it has to do with him. He knows how to talk to her. And I don’t mean this in the sense that he has some stunning insight into the mind of a kid. He may well have that. But, that’s not the reason.

The real reason is this. He doesn’t talk down to her. He doesn’t ignore her questions. He’s willing to go along.

That’s more than most grown-ups allow themselves in the life of a child.

The Girl Bowls!

The Girl had her 6th birthday on the 23rd of September. Among the festivities that weekend, including a visit to her Nana for a birthday lunch, the Girl, her cousins, and a group of her little friends went bowling.

The music pumped under black light as they bowled. Some were tunes of the day – your Justin Bieber, your Selena Gomez. But, they also played classic videos (“Hey everyone! It’s time to DAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNCCCE!”), including “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, “YMCA”, from the far away world of the early ’80s, when we didn’t know camp for what it was, but somehow had just as much fun. And of course, the theme song of rhythmically-impaired white people everywhere – “The Chicken Dance”.

But, it really was fun – really!

Here’s a picture! It’s a bit grainy and crap, but it’s arty.