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 the Christmas Walk Home

It’s the Christmas season.

Over the years, the whole Christmas deal has taken on a sort of dual nature for me. On the one hand, I still love Christmas. I am reminded of times when I was a child, filled with the wonder and mystery of the season, and the anticipation of decorations, trees, and presents. I am reminded of spending time with my cousins, and grandparents around this time of year, which was always a Christmas highlight for me.

Even now, I love Christmas music. I particularly love the weirder, darker Christmas carols like “Conventry Carol” and “Carol of the Bells”. I like my Christmas to be sort of Gothic, and Victorian.

But, these days, and with those other positives aside, Christmas is largely a drag.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love spending time with people, and enjoying meals together. But, the logistics and expense of the season tend to weigh me down. And it always catches me out, creeps up on me, until I realize how ill-prepared I am for the whole thing. As I get older, I am realizing how solitary a person I am, or am becoming. Being social, and being organized around it is hard work for me. Christmas magnifies this, sometimes unpleasantly. It doesn’t help that our cultural baggage as a nation is getting heavier, and heavier.

Here in the early 21st century, Christmas has become a terribly crass thing all around. It’s become even more commercial than ever, of course. We’ve all heard that song before, and singing it doesn’t seem to change anything anyway. But in this particular era in which I’m writing this, it’s also become terribly, and tiresomely political.

So-called “War On Christmas” rhetoric cropping up every year mostly by reactionary right-wing broadcasters and Facebook trolls only vaguely covers its culturally entitled origins. Not to be outdone, a special brand of hand-wringing, bed-wetting political correctness around the subject of holidays and holiday greetings by the liberal left are becoming equally irritating to me. It’s as if you have to choose one side over the other like a civil war, and with no space for dialogue in between.

What kind of celebration are we meant to have with all of that racket going on?

To me, Christmas has become the noisiest time of the year when it’s meant to be a season of reflection. It hands the cultural and social divisions between us a great big bullhorn at a time of the year when we should really be thinking about connection and community. Christmas has become a time when our spirits of giving are discoloured by a sense of cultural obligation. It is a complicated thing, rather than being a time that should allow us the space to enjoy the simple, priceless things that make life worth living in the first place; serenity, belonging, and togetherness.

“Awright, Jones. Where is the Girl in all of this? We don’t come here to hear you rant. More Girl!”

Alright, then.

The Girl is my ballast through out this.

Really, it’s her point of view that saves me at this time of year. It’s she who guides me back into the mindset that first made me fall in love with Christmas in the first place. In some ways, even if it is my turn to sprinkle some magic on the season which is what was done for me when I was a child, she doesn’t really need too much of my help anyway.

She is still a native to the version of the world where Santa Claus and his North Pole-based forces of good quietly watch over the children of the world. She perfectly envisions and holds to her heart a guy who traverses the night skies on Christmas Eve, eating cookies, drinking milk, and delivering treasures, without asking for anything in return except for the joy it puts into the world; no profits, no political agendas. For her, the stories still have immutable impact. So, when I say “it’s my turn” to inject the magic into the season, it really turns out more so like a return when I join The Girl in contemplating the joys of it.

We were walking home a week or so ago, back from a movie. We saw a 3:20 PM show which let out around 5:00 PM. In this part of the world and at this time of year, that means darkness. It usually means rain, too. But, it was a clear, cold night. As we walked up the hill near my apartment, I had a Christmas moment.

I live in an historic part of town complete with post-Victorian homes that are intermingled with newer condos and rental flats. The street was lit up with Christmas lights. The Girl and I held hands. She always has warm hands. The Christmas lights adorned the old houses, and the trees and shrubs out front. And suddenly, a great quiet wrapped itself around us like a great, comfy quilt.

Our chatter ceased. Our pace slowed. And we looked at the lights in that silent street. If we spoke, it was in whispers, with our exchanges mostly having to do with how wonderful the lights looked, how otherworldly they seemed. They floated there in the dark like gentle, multicoloured spirits. Something of the quiet that I so treasure at this time of year was mine in that string of fleeting moments.

That feeling of childhood wonder returned. And The Girl was with me. I’m sure that I will have other memories of this Christmas season. But, they’ll have to be pretty good to beat that moment.

I often wonder about the kinds of experiences that will stay with The Girl as she gets to be an adult.  But, whichever ones do, I hereby wish her those things at Christmas time, and at all times of the year, which we greatly treasure, and seem so elusive to us as we pass from childhood to maturity; serenity, belonging, and togetherness, yes.

But, everlasting childhood wonder, too.

Joyeaux Noel!

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, Her Dad, Levon Helm, and His ‘Girl’

As some readers out there may or may not know, I’ve spent a few years writing a music blog, The Delete Bin, which among other things shows my geekdom surrounding all kinds of musical genres, ranging from pop music to jazz. This post here on MatGtGaM can be looked upon as something of a cross-over, maybe. But, this is ultimately about fathers and daughters, and their journey together. So, it fits.

Anyway, on April 19 of this year, one of my musical heroes passed away at the age of 71 after a long battle with cancer; Levon Helm. For those of you who don’t recognize the name, he was the drummer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist of the incredibly influential rock group The Band. Over the course of their life as a group, they’d backed Bob Dylan when he played his first “electric” concerts in the mid 1960s. They’d also created critically acclaimed, even game-changing albums, had played the Woodstock festival, and were featured in Martin Scorcese’s film about their last show – The Last Waltz.

But, all the while, Levon was also the father of a daughter, Amy. Here’s a cool picture of them, which recently appeared on Amy Helm’s Facebook page in memoriam of her late dad.

Source: plochmann.blogspot.com via Jamie on Pinterest

In this shot, it looks like Amy is about three or four years old. Her dad was in the heyday of the Band by this time, with this picture probably taken just before Levon and the rest of the group hit the road with Bob Dylan again for one of the biggest tours of the 1970s. Yet, he was a devoted father, with a daughter clearly devoted right back. Look at Amy’s little hand as it curls around the back of his neck. That’s love.

Later, when Amy grew up, the two of them would collaborate as fellow musicians, recording and touring, even here to Vancouver where I saw them play in 2010. They’d become close as adults. They’d become friends. This was inspiring to me at the time, when I saw them perform together.

But, in seeing this picture, it struck me that they had a relationship that must have developed over time to get things to the point where they could develop a healthy adult relationship. Even in the middle of his success as a touring musician in a major act, he still found the time for Amy, who when she became an adult herself took to friendship and artistic collaboration with her father as a matter of course.

I imagine that the story isn’t quite as simple as that.  I imagine there were struggles and strains between them like there are in every relationship. But, what I’m reminded of when I look at this picture is that I too have a goal that’s pretty clear where the Girl is concerned; see to it that I function as best I can as her father now, as she needs me to be for her during this period of her childhood, so that later on, she and I can also become good friends as adults.

I think ultimately this is what every parent wants. It certainly looks as though Levon and Amy had it. In her grief, I imagine this is one of the treasures that Amy can take as her own, and is something from her dad that is stronger and more enduring than his death.

For more information about Amy Helm, and her relationship with her dad (among other things), read this interview with Amy Helm.

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 Grade 1

Even though the ritual of walking the Girl to school isn’t exactly new to me, given that we performed that ritual with her Mum when she first went to Kindergarten, Grade 1 seemed to be a whole new thing. Well, it was for me, anyway.

Last Friday, I took the morning and walked her to school. She stayed with me the night before, and when I gave her a bath, we got to talking about Grade 1. I’ve got some feedback from other parents that indicated that going into full-time school is kind of stressful. Some kids pick up on the subtle differences between kindergarten and The Big Show of the numbered grades. I can’t remember thinking that myself at that age, but maybe I did. I can certainly understand it.

So, when I asked the Girl about the thing she liked best about Grade 1 so far, she answered “Math”.

I was astounded. And pleased. Math was my personal bugbear in school. And I was glad to hear that she wasn’t as cowed as I had been.

OK, so no fear of the actual work seems to be a problem. Her second best thing of course was seeing her friends, many of whom she’d not seen since school let out in June.

September is a pretty magical time that way, it always seemed to me. It is in many ways a better month to me for the idea of a New Year than January would ever be. Even now, it remains so. And I’m certainly seeing something of a transformation in the Girl. There is more confidence there somehow. She is coming to terms with the idea that things are moving, and that they change, and doing so with a great deal of wisdom. She’s taking the best of it, and enjoying it.

I read her a story (Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpant by Bill Peet), then she went right to sleep – no problem. By that time, she knew the drill I guess, the first day of school having been the Tuesday. But, for those days, it was mostly about orientation, and figuring out who’s class everyone was in. Friday was the day of getting down to it. It didn’t seem to faze her.

We woke up earliesh, just because I am driving across a bridge to get her to school. It’s the opposite direction from where the traffic from the ‘burbs and into Vancouver is going. But, I wanted to give it plenty of time, since driving over bridges in this area inexplicably complicates all matters. I parked in a little patch of green space in Sunshine Hills, where I used to take the Girl on walks to the park, well before the age school days.

We walked from there, careless. It was a glorious sunny day, which as you know reading this in the time it was written, has been all week. We made small talk, hand in hand down the hill. I’d told the Girl about my own Grade 1 teacher, Ms. Allen. I told her that Ms. Allen had been the one who had helped to teach me to read. You never forget the person who helped you learn to read.

The Girl as we walked to school, September 2011

When we got to the school, children, their parents, and lots of dogs on leashes awaited us. The Girl was shy, still confident, but a little on the introverted side when it came to meeting new people. She comes by that very honestly.

I told her another thing; that when I went to Grade 1, I walked to school with my friends, not driven by my Dad, or Mum. I told her that we always walked to school that way, and back home too (no parental chauffeur services then). Times have changed. I think many of the parents there were as nervous as some of the kids were, maybe remembering what going to school in a new year and new grade, wondering what awaited them there, had been like themselves.

She gave me a little squeeze, lined up, with her knapsack on her back, and filed into the school, aware or unaware of this ritual being something she would remember for the rest of her life being difficult to say.

But, perhaps that confidence she expressed the night before is the thing that counts most, not the minutiae. That to me is one of the missions of childhood – to gain confidence, build upon it, and maintain the momentum of that love of new experiences, new people in one’s life, and new lessons learned all around.

If one were to boil the value of school days down to a single focus, perhaps that’s it. Perhaps the same can be said of a great childhood in general. And we parents play our part, even if our kids will do most of the heavy lifting.

The Girl and Details

One thing I’ve observed about the Girl is that she loves what we adults might consider minutiae. She loves details.

In my less-than-patient moments, I call it dawdling. When it’s time to be somewhere on time, stopping to pick up a dandelion can be a bit of an irritant to an uptight Dad.

I know I need to get over stuff like that.

Because, ultimately I kind of admire it. She notices things. She sees life on a level that the rest of us often miss.

She notices things like dew drops on leaves, for instance. She sees worms twisting on sidewalks. Her eye is drawn to the intricacies of a snail’s shell, left behind after a rainstorm. She can see life happening in anything.

One day, we went to the park, ostensibly to play in the playground. But, we were sidelined by an expanse of daisies in the grass. She stooped down, and was lost in them. I myself sat down on the self-same grass, and stretched out and watched her disappear into a microworld of her own making.

There are times when I feel like as we get older, we lose one of our senses. It’s that sense that tells us the location of the heart of life itself. I often think that schedules and false obligations sidetrack us as we get older. But, if we’re lucky, we have someone in our lives to help remind us where that sense is again, and to where it can lead us.

The Girl and Ice Cream

When you’re a kid, it’s rare that you choose an ice cream flavour based on the actual flavour itself. No.

You pick it for the colour. If it tastes great, then all the better.

This was true when I was a kid, eying up the vibrant green pistachio ice cream at Laura Secord, Baskin Robbins, or pretty much any place in the shopping mall you could get ice cream.

In this 21st century of ours, the colour palette has widened, or perhaps become more lurid, depending on your point of view. I think a lot of this has to do with the acknowledgement that new cultures integrated with the standard Anglo-Franco-Celtic one here in Canada have a lot to offer, color and flavour-wise when it comes to the food we eat.

I remember once when the Girl was about three, and we were walking around Deep Cove, near where the Girl’s Nana lives. We stopped into get some ice cream. There before us was a rainbow of options. The Girl’s choice?

“I want the GREEN one.”

It was green tea ice cream, a flavour that at the time of this writing has become pretty popular with everything from lattes, to ice tea, to ginger ale, to ICE CREAM. Remember; green tea is for hipsters, not post-toddlers. But, that colour! So rich, so very GREEN. I was skeptical. I thought for sure that the promise would greatly outweigh the result.

Yet, down that green tea ice cream went; and it tasted like green tea, straight up. It was not sweet, or ‘kid-ready’. But, she loved it.

Of course on the other side of the spectrum, there’s BUBBLEGUM FLAVOUR!

This is very often the choice of choices went we go to Purdie’s. And the D’Artagnan ice cream moustache is pretty standard, too.

The Girl’s favourite is chocolate. That’s understood. But, when she’s got a range of choices, it always goes to the most radical, the most lurid colour she can spy out. Chocolate is still the man. But, when going out to get an ice cream, as long as it captures her eye, and interests her, she’ll choose the one out of left field rather than the one she knows.

I don’t know if this says anything about the kinds of choices she’ll make after she graduates from high school, for instance. But may the D’Artagnan ice cream moustache of her future be as bright as bubble gum.

The Girl and My Neighbourhood

I trumpeted my decision to buy a car recently, as many of you may know.  A big part of that was actually about buying more time with my daughter, without having to spend a bunch of time dragging her to stations, to buses, to bus shelters in all kinds of weather, etc.

But, even though I now don’t have to worry so much about that stuff, I am still dedicated to the idea of the walkable neighbourhood. And just as importantly, I’m dedicated to reinforcing how valuable a walkable neighbourhood actually is. Where she lives now, it’s very hard for her not to have to be driven everywhere, as I eluded to. It’s not really anyone’s fault, with the exception of city planners, maybe. But, my neighbourhood is a contrast to that.

It’s an older neighbourhood, actually the oldest city in this region – New Westminster. In days of old, there were no massive parking lots, big box stores, and highways masquerading as residential streets. No. When this city was established, the main drag, or the high street, was the heart of every community. And main drags are meant to be accessed on foot. That’s where the phrase ‘window shopping’ comes from, folks. As such, the culture of walking flourishes here to this day. There are people on the street here. There is life.

The Girl at Moody Park in New Westminster. Here, there are sports fields, climbing equipment, tennis courts, lawn bowling, a public swimming pool, within striking distance of the library. And no need to find a parking space. The 'trees' she's leaning against here are a part of the water park, currently in hibernation, but waiting to refresh the neighbourhood come summer!

Within ten minutes on foot, I have access to:

• a park
• a library
• a public swimming pool
• a coffee shop
• a book store
• at least one family restaurant
• a convenience store
• a grocery store – actually, two!
• a drug store – two again!
• a mall with a food court
• four buses that take us to two SkyTrain stations
• lots of other stuff!

For me, it’s easy to balance off the Girl’s experience as a suburban kid who is constantly bundled into cars to go pretty much everywhere. She’s still a suburban kid when she’s with me. But, I think that a neighbourhood that she can explore with me on foot is somehow more accessible to her. In some ways, I think it can feel more welcoming.

The Girl and Clouds

Comfy the Rabbit takes flight?

Clouds are nature’s plush toys.

Well, they’re not.

They’re gaseous water vapour.

But, when you’re a five year old, the science is less important than that plush toy thing is.

In the sky, there are dinosaurs crossed with pigs. There are kangaroos wearing bow ties. There are alligators that have beaks. There are puppies wearing birthday hats; the kind with little pom-poms on top, no less. There is a Triceratops. There’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

On the way back to her mum’s last night in the backseat of the car she was a commentator for all of the denizens of the sky, and in her imagination. As happens so often in this part of the world, the sun bursts through the clouds gloriously, just before it gets dark and the sun takes a smoke break behind Vancouver Island for a few hours. But, it’s during this time when the cloud shapes form most vibrantly, and the Girl’s imagination ignites their life.

Now, as imaginative as the Girl is, her imagination as sparked by the clouds isn’t exactly a new idea. It makes me wonder about how many years, decades, centuries, millennia, children have been fashioning wondrous creatures out of the gaseous water vapour.

Yet, it’s not really about that. It’s about the quality of her voice when she’s riffing on the cloud animals. It’s like stream-of-consciousness, as it happens creation.

And here’s another idea that isn’t exactly original.

I hope, in all her sophistication when she gets to be a grown-up, that she’ll still look skyward, and see the penguin wearing a trilby at a jaunty angle.