Finally February

I met a friend for coffee last week, on a frigid February Friday, and the first thing he said was, “What are you doing here?” “Um….meeting you for coffee?” “No, I mean why are you still in Canada?” That’s a very reasonable question. For the past few years, I’ve been counting down how many more winters I had to spend in Canada. Whenever Ray balked at the idea of wintering somewhere warm, I’d say, “well, I’ll see you in the spring then.” And I was totally serious. Travelling was my #1 retirement priority. This quote captures one of my life philosophies:

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives. ~ Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein

I still want to travel and we’re looking forward to our two months in France this spring, but, outside of my family, the most meaningful and rewarding thing I’ve done in my life has been my volunteer work. I became Sarah’s Big Sister when she was 11. Now she’s in her mid-30s with a beautiful one-year old daughter for me to spoil. I started tutoring Isaiah when he was 9. He’s 16 now and last month he thanked me for the impact I had on his life, saying he wouldn’t be the person he is today without me. Doesn’t get much better than that. The highlight of my week these days is reading with the kids in school. When I’m with them, I’m totally in the moment and they never fail to make me laugh, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

Me (reading): Lions are mammals and…
7-year old: That’s silly. That’s not a mammal.
Me (preparing to explain why lions are mammals):  . . .
7-year old: Mammals have a bump on their backs!
Me: Camels. Those are camels.

8-year old, reading: “Thank you” said Victoria. “You’re watermelon” said Grandma.
Me: Um…you’re watermelon?
8-year old, chuckling: Oops. I mean, you’re welcome.
(starts with a W, so must be…watermelon!)

I read Who Would Win: Tarantula or Scorpion to one of the boys and it includes the fun fact that people in China eat millions of scorpions every year. He was, of course, grossed out by this bit of information. About 10 minutes into my next session with one of the girls, the first little guy ran down the hall, burst back into the reading room, and asked, “How can they eat scorpions without getting poisoned?” I just love watching their little brains working. (I had to google it when I got home.)

My point being, kids go to school in the winter…so until I open up a summer school program for struggling readers, I’ll probably be spending a good chunk of my winters in Canada (but with a few weeks south worked in there somewhere).

Ray has been keeping himself occupied with kitchen renovations, so he’s in ‘the zone’. Our conversations go like this:

Me: What are you thinking about?
Ray: I’m trying to figure out how to yadda yadda 2×6 yadda yadda drywall yadda yadda support beam yadda yadda…
Me: hmm, I see (even though I don’t see).

Outside of that, we went to a documentary film festival with friends in Wakefield, and attended a 92nd birthday dinner for Loris, known to many of you as the baker of Maplefest beans. It wasn’t a late night as she was heading to the airport bright and early the next morning for a southern holiday with three of her daughters. She’s a remarkable woman, who sees the good in everyone and spent many years volunteering with the homeless on the streets of Ottawa. Her age and stature are an asset for her activist work with the Ottawa Raging Grannies, because it’s very hard to detain a little old lady without looking bad on camera (though it didn’t stop them from banning her from Parliament Hill last year). She’s raised six wonderful daughters and is “Mama J” to nine grandchildren and two…or three, I’ve lost count…great-grandchildren (she’s also Nick’s surrogate Ottawa grandma). We’re very fortunate to have had Loris and her family in our lives over the past couple of decades.

Nick News

When Nick was home for his check-up, he and Ray were talking about cooking and I heard him say, “I usually alternate between kale and spinach.” When I was a student, I alternated between ramen noodles and Kraft Dinner. He grocery shops and does meal prep on Tuesdays. His housemates are all super-healthy eaters too, so no stacks of empty pizza boxes in that house. (That’s grilled tofu in the first pic.)

Not that he never treats himself. He made this ‘cake’ in his microwave, but had to improvise because he had “no flour, eggs, sugar or whatever else is in normal cakes”. Not sure what exactly he did include, but he said it tasted pretty good.

On the school front, linear algebra is his least favourite thing (to clarify, not just his least favourite subject, his least favourite thing), but he gets excited about the more visual stuff, like math applied to the 3-D space.

He sends pics of his lecture notes, presumably to share just how fascinating it is (this is the interesting stuff apparently). Or maybe it’s more along the lines of, “Just so you know, mom, you can no longer help me with my math homework.” Either way, I’m impressed.