Merry Christmas 2009 Happy Holidays

As most of you will know, this is a first! I can’t recall the last time I managed to get this note out BEFORE Christmas; before children perhaps? Regardless, maybe it’s the start of something new….but don’t count on it! I just have so many things that I want to make sure that I get done over the next two weeks, like having fun with the kids, going to movies, skating at Market Square, redecorating the office, writing a business plan, getting rid of the piles of paper…that I wanted to get this in while life at work has slowed.

Twice recently, I have heard criticism of these ‘newsletter’ type letters that some of us send over the holiday season. On the talk show, The View, Whoopi was criticizing them for their lack of personal touch, and a friend once said that they were ‘brag letters’ because no one ever tells you anything bad in them. Both fair criticisms however I would add four things to their cynical views: 1. It’s better than nothing at all, which is what you’d get if I had to write you each even a paragraph 2. It’s much more rewarding for me, as I only write things once, hopefully well, versus over and over dozens of times, in a scribbled hand writing 3. You get a few pictures and get to share in our life a little, in an era of poor communication among friends across the miles and 4. I get to reflect on the past year with gratitude for being alive and to tell you that if you get this letter, you are important to me in one way or another, for which I am also grateful.

Since I’ve thought for days about how I’d phrase the ‘bad’ news in our life this year, I might just as well tell those of you who do not know yet, that Scott and I separated this past winter. Given that this is never an easy transition for anyone involved, all of us have had many moments of sadness and loneliness over the past 10 months. It has been a huge transition, and we all seem to be on the downhill slope at this stage. We’ve never been “normal” in many ways, starting with the obvious, and as such, our lives apart have been unusually amicable, as we tread the winding road of being friends but not lovers, with the boys as our compass. Sadly perhaps, in being apart, we will learn the mutual respect that we had trouble rediscovering in marriage.

This Christmas, the four of us will be with my mother, as well as my best friend and her son, in the country, for a fairly non-traditional festive meal of cabbage rolls, perogies, baked beans and ham. My father will travel to Rhode Island to be with sister and family, who welcomed a new baby into their lives on December 16th. Matthew weighed 9 lbs and didn’t take long to enter this world! At some point, in a window of good weather through Syracuse, I will head down for the New Year, to visit with him and Rachel for a few days.
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As for holidays, we managed to get a few in together at the beginning of the year, firstly to Orlando via New York City (of which I spoke in last year’s note), and then skiing in Maine. In May, I was invited to travel to Ireland, to meet up with a friend who was adjudicating at the Cork International Choral Festival and spent my time there, as well as in a cottage in Waterville and in Dublin. The weather, outside of my time in Dublin, was miserable! The Irish don’t believe in heat the way we do in Canada, and much of the time, I had that ‘chilled to the bone’ feeling, regardless of whether I was outside or inside the cottage. Then there’s the driving! By the time I returned to Dublin, I’d eaten most of my stomach and was a bundle of nerves. Go, drive around the Ring of Kerry or across the Conor Pass, you’ll understand! On the bright side, the music in Cork was the sort that ‘blows your mind’. Although our children sing in one of the best choral music education programs in the country, I was astounded at the calibre of youth singing on the international stage. No matter what we do in life, there is always more to aspire towards. Dublin is a beautiful city, with a thriving Arts community, and talented musicians at every corner. And then there’s the people….if you’ve ever been, you will also understand. They’re like our Newfies, friendly beyond belief, hilarious and just so down-to-earth that they make you feel instantly comfortable in a bar or in a taxi or at the gallery.

By far, the most interesting part of the trip for me was the people. And in fact, not just the Irish people, but tourists as well. Over the months, I’ve reflected on the conversations and interactions that I had, in so many places, with much fondness. I have a few new Facebook friends from around the world, all of whom I have much in common with. I’ve also decided that they definitely have THE FRIENDLIEST cab drivers ever! I heard stories about their children, the Christian Brothers, a man who’s wife died of a brain aneurism and left him to raise the children, one just an infant, friends travelling to Canada to teach who got pregnant and are now living at home again, and the ever-popular topics of weather and politics. Wow, don’t get them started on politics! If you love classical music, tune into RTE lyricfm, if you want to hear lots of people arguing over the waves, tune into RTE Radio 1! At least that’s the way it was at Pete’s Café where we drank tea, ate scones, and shivered while surfing the net, chatting on messenger, and trying, in vain, to download our pictures!

Over the summer, Scott went camping and boating with the boys, from Kingston to Ottawa, on the newly anointed World Heritage Site, The Rideau Canal. They all connected with nature, and then the boys did a road trip with me to Mystic, Connecticut for a little getaway and a family reunion in Newport, Rhode Island during the Jazz Festival. Both are beautiful communities, but the boats in Newport will blow your mind, even if, like me normally, you couldn’t care less. Before the summer was over, we’d spent two weeks with a Spanish exchange student, and had lots of fun on the knee board.

In particular, this fall has gone by very quickly, in large part because I have been really busy between the boys, work, and travelling for business (Banff, Toronto, Ottawa) and volunteering. My commitment as Chair at church is mostly over. I found this role to be less than meaningful, to say the very least. It was an experience, and I will learn and grow from it; sometimes, when you are at the top, it can be very lonely. On the other hand, my commitment to Cantabile is always rewarding, so Hey, I won’t despair just yet. I will however, need someone…..or two or three…….to wrap my knuckles if I get myself overloaded like that again. Problem is that I can’t help myself: I already know what the next commitment is going to be, and Ben and I have begun to discuss a trip to Africa at Christmas next year to work in an orphanage and school, in a country where the life expectancy is 29 due to AIDS! With that one though, we go, we give our time, and we leave, forever changed. So on all fronts, it should be meaningful. (I suspect that next year, you’ll be getting the New Year letter again!)

The boys are both doing very well. Graham is in grade 8, and active in the Drama Club, as well as basketball, volleyball and soccer teams. He continues to sing in Scott’s choir weekly at church. Following on the heels of winning the Drama Award last June, for his personal project this year, he has decided to write, direct and star in his own play. This will take him the full academic year to accomplish and forms a very important part of the curriculum at his school. He will be taking the odd lesson from our friend Rob, at the Canadian Stage Company, and if he twists my arm just a little, we may have to go see a play in NYC again this year. (Oh ya, I snuck in two trips there this year too!)

Ben is in grade 10 and has graduated into the new Sound Man at KCVI. He gets to run the mics and play DJ at the semi-formals and coffee houses. After 11 years studying violin, he decided that guitar is his new love. We trust that the years of musical training will serve him well in his musical life. His artistic side has him excelling in graphic design and marketing courses, and putting up with math and history! After a highly successful winter last year, he plans to ski for the varsity team in January and row in the spring. Last spring, he had an amazing opportunity to work with the sound company that participated in the launch of The Tragically Hip’s new album in Cineplexes across the country, and with our man George Snufalufagus from CBCs The Hour! (Sorry, that’s just what I call him!)

Because this is a letter about being honest, and not just mentioning the good stuff: I could wring their necks some days! They get mouthy, fart, burp, swear, sneak laptops into their room to get on Facebook at bed times, have parties when you’re away, lie, roll their eyes at you and look at you like you’re Medusa, and have that ‘what the hell do you know anyhow’ or ‘you’re so lame’ look on their face. So things are pretty normal in our house, I figure! Some days can be pretty frustrating, no doubt. But I know, because I’m their mom, and I can see into their souls by way of their eyes, that they will be good citizens of the world, who will love their parents and be good parents themselves, who will appreciate all the wonderful opportunities that they’ve been given, and who will treat others with dignity and respect and will find what makes them happy. (At least, I’m pretty sure.)

All of us wish you and your clan the very best in 2010. May you seek meaning and purpose always, and ensure that you spend your days doing what you love to do, as long as it puts food on the table, clothes on your back and keeps the hearth warm and toasty!

Hugs and Namaste,

Steph

Reflections on the past three weeks

This evening, I am alone, the kids are with their father; choral music is playing in the background, I've had soup and a bagel for supper....that's why I keep losing weight. You don't cook for yourself like you do for a family and you only eat when you're hungry, not when someone else is hungry! It's much more healthy, really. Just wait, I have to listen to this piece...too beautiful to be distracted.....

I have noticed that I have only felt like writing over the years when I've been away, and almost always at night. There's something to this; I think it must be that your head goes somewhere when there's silence surrounding you. Sometimes the silence bothers me, but mostly it keeps me sane. Gives me a chance to think things through, make decisions, have clarity, I guess. Clarity, so you can write! I guess that's why I always came home from business and vacation trips having made some big decision: to hire, to fire, to move, to leave. I just never connected that it was possible here, in my own home, in my own city. Really, it's more about silence than getting away anywhere. Completely uninterrupted time to think things through....

Closing remarks on my trip to Ireland:

8 out of 10---the weather was a -1 and missing my family was another -1.

Dublin City was immaculate. Since being home, I have seen nothing like it here....been to Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto. The street sweepers were out every night, and in all my pics, I cannot find ANY litter. I recently watched a movie called Once that was set in Dublin. Same thing...clean, clean, clean.

I would like to go back to spend several days in Dingle and to see Belfast and the northern parts of the country. But, I have other places that I want to go first.

The chocolate bars that I bought with small bits of toffee in them were the best!! Hershey's just doesn't cut it!

The meat is out of this world; so fresh.

The weather REALLY sucked!

Pete had money problems!

I miss RTElyric FM.

I don't miss the arguing on the radio shows.

Time goes by very quickly, so much so that I feel my breath taken away sometimes. Three packed weeks have gone by and all I can think about is my next vacation. Dreaming about going on vacation keeps me motivated. Seriously! I have to find someone with money, who likes to travel, and has lots of flexibility in their work, so we can take off and see the world. Give me a postage sized yard, and a smaller house, and see ya later. I think I signed my last post off with something about my over-committed life....well, I can tell you that it won't be as over-committeed in January! It's someone else's turn to take the reigns in a few departments.

Yesterday, I went to a rowing seminar at the Kingston Rowing Club. I was motivated by a new friend to try it out again, after many years. To be blunt, it was a bloody disaster.....

Both 8-person crews ended up getting stranded on the lake. The first problem was the weeds, and then, as the minutes flew by, the wind became a huge issue! If I'd heard that coxswain say "balance" or "let it run" one more f-ing time, I was gonna smack him, and I was #8 in the crew, so I could have too! A 40-minute row turned into three hrs of futility! Even the coach boat's motor got all locked up in the weeds and broke down, so they had to try to row to shore, which they couldn't do either, so 2 huge rowing boats, and a small aluminum coach boat all were towed to land. It's a miracle that nobody ended up in the water and dead of hypothermia. It really could have been a very sad story to tell today. I should have been home at 1230, instead it was 430pm! My nose and ears were hot until midday today! (the sun, not because I stay mad that long) Thankfully, nothing terrible happened and the weather was gorgeous, to be sure. Today I have a sore butt and the muscles in my hands hurt too!!

I've spent quite a while editting things and writing today, so will sign off for now, and listen to some more music.

Blessings, Steph

May 11 and 12th, 2009

It's the 15th of May, nearly the 16th, and I am finally motivated to talk about the last two days of my trip. I'm beginning to fear that if I don't do it now, I never will, and that I won't remember everything that I wanted to say. So here goes nothing:

I don’t even remember where I left off in the last note, so will say that I took the train from Cork to Dublin. Enough Ryanair for me! It was among the best decisions I made all week; I thoroughly enjoyed the pace of it all, and no one weighed by bags; bags filled with way too many clothes…I’m so female when it comes to packing! I caught the right train, got off at the right station, talked to another very nice taxi driver. (So different from NYC, where they make you feel like the dentist if you ask them a question most of the time.) He told me about his daughter who’d been to Canada all last summer with her girlfriend, and the girlfriend came back pregnant!!! Can you imagine coming home with that one!? He said that he doesn’t get updates anymore because he basically said: “How could you be so stupid?”, when he heard. We had a good laugh about that. (She was 27 and is due any day, and seems happy about the whole thing, even though it’s less than ideal. I’m not judging, just sure as hell happy it wasn’t me who had to tell my mom….oh hi mom….my news was quite enough, I’m sure.)

I settled into the hotel and then took off with my pass and ubiquitous knapsack (don’t you just love that word? Mr. Dell, my high school VP said that to me one day, many years ago, as I left track practice, and I looked at him blankly, so he explained what it meant. It really was the perfect adjective to describe me and my knapsack. Go to www.dictionary.com for those of you who are lost.) I went to the Guinness Factory tour. I quite enjoyed it. At first, I was disappointed that it was self guided, but I got over it quickly and took my time reading everything. It’s an awesome building that housed the old factory. It has been renovated and turned into a tourist attraction. The best part was the pint of Guinness that you get when it’s over, and the 360 degree bar at the top. I walked around, chatted with a young couple from the US, and talked with Tania on the phone for a while, and quite honestly, wished I had someone to share the experience with. Sorry, a moment of weakness there…actually, I had several of them throughout the whole trip; they came on at the most unexpected times, and in a wave. Just being melancholy, not depressed here people. To be expected, I guess.

In the evening, I headed over to the Oliver St-John Goggarty’s Pub, where I met the couple from Utah last week, and heard some more fantastic music. Actually, this time, it was twice as good. The musicians were of much higher caliber, and they had a guest fiddler, whom I thought was outstanding. A man offered to buy me a drink, but of course, the only guy to hit on me the entire trip, was red-faced, ugly and old! What the hell!? Went to bed, had an OK sleep—too noisy for me.

May 12th, my last day. Let’s see if I can do this quickly…probably not…um…went to the Kilmainham jail tour, met a couple from Kingston, yep, I said Kingston! I couldn’t believe it either. The tour was the best touristy thing that I did, and at the end, I was hungry and needed to use the ‘toilets’, so as I approached the café; they had a photography exhibition. There was a guest/comment book, and as I went to write my name, I noticed that the couple, who signed just ahead of me, was from the same place I was. I couldn’t believe it; I did the blink your eyes thing, just like in a movie, to make sure I had seen it correctly. I was able to find them in the café, and....the story gets better...... they come to every Cantabile Concert and live just down on William St. Man, this world is way too small sometimes. We took our pic for the Kingston This Week “where have you been?” section, and I promised them I would submit it. We had a great chat, and I told them they won’t be able to miss me at the May 30th concert, since I have to introduce the guest conductor, and will be right up at the mic. Then I went to the National Museum and ran into a guy that had been at the jail tour. I asked him if he was following me. (I know, I’m nervy, but it felt like he was following me! I wasn’t rude about it…geez!) At that point, it was nearing 5pm, I was tired and very hungry. After an internet fix at the hotel restaurant, I went out for the highlight of my day….

The Literary Pub Crawl was pretty much what it sounds like, a great mix of bars and literature. Two actors recited or acted out various poems, plays etc of famous Irish authors in front of about 5 famous bars in Dublin. Little by little, the single folks in the group of 15 gravitated together, and we ended up ‘hangin’ for the evening. Once the crawl was over, we stayed at the Davy Byrne Pub, and closed the place. That sounds really amazing for someone my age, but they closed at midnight, so it wasn’t that wonderful a feat. But it does sound good, doesn’t it? Well, it does to me…3 new friends were made: Alex from Seattle, Washington, Frances from Melbourne, Australia, and Stan from Los Angeles, California. (in pic above) Not sure how old everyone is, but my guess would be between 30 and 42, interests/careers are in photography, writing, and computers/network security. All super nice, and a pleasure to be around. I didn’t want the night to end for various reasons, but I did manage to stumble off, somewhat intoxicated and yes, alone, and returned safely to my room, where I had a helluva time getting to sleep, but you’ve heard enough about my sleep issues in these notes. I went home on the 13th and clearly, I arrived safely. It was great to see the kids again, and I have since seen just about everyone in Kingston that really matters to me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these notes. I’m glad that the chore of writing them is over, but also sad, because it means that my hectic, over-committed life is about to go full-throttle by Tuesday. I know, I have to do something about that too……maybe after the next trip......hmmm....me thinks Rhode Island, NYC and Mexico for sure...then Africa? South of France? Bali and Indonesia?

Warmly, Steph