And the seasons, they go round and round

It’s been a while since my last post. I was in a slump for a bit. Before I retired, what I loved most about my job was digging for answers. Solving puzzles. Searching for the needle in the haystack. I’ve learned that I need that in retirement too, whether that comes from researching a vacation, lesson planning, or genealogy research.

I felt quite blah through April and May, which can only partly be blamed on the weather (but weather was definitely a contributing factor – cool, wet and grey). The main factor, though, was that I had nothing to sink my teeth into, so I was feeling a bit adrift. Eventually, I signed on to volunteer tutor one of my grade 2 students over the summer, so I went into full lesson planning mode: how can I be most effective while keeping the student engaged? So then I wasn’t writing blog posts because I was too busy ‘digging for gold’.

Speaking of gold…Brighton took home gold at the Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival. More than 70 teams participated, raising over $300,000 for breast cancer treatment. Both our teams – women’s and mixed – won gold. The mixed team, which I was on, won the finals by two-tenths of a second. It was essentially a tie, but we got all the glory, while the other team suffered the agony of defeat.

The following day, Nick and Ray went for a 60k Father’s Day cycle, which Nick followed up with a 5k trail run. My tenure as the athlete in the family was remarkably short-lived.

We attended a celebratory event for the 25th anniversary of the residence where Ray’s mom lives in Georgetown. They had live music, food and games. Ray and his mom visited the ‘tattoo parlour’.

We spent a nostalgic weekend at Rob & Sue’s cottage with the Ottawa gang, nostalgic because the cottage is up for sale so it was our last gathering there. We talked about our favourite memories from 17 years of cottage time. Two stood out above the rest for me.

In 2011, we moved back to Canada after living in the UK for four years. Nick had spent a third of his life in England and left behind a very close-knit group of friends, so it was a big adjustment. Soon after we landed in Canada, my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and given weeks to live. It was a huge shock. I was flying back and forth between Ottawa and Toronto, while Ray dealt with the logistics of moving countries – health card applications, Internet hook-up, car purchase, furniture shipment, etc.

Amidst all that chaos, Rob and Sue offered to take Nick up to the cottage with their three boys. He hadn’t had a ‘real’ summer in four years (the kind where the sun comes out and it gets hot – no offence England). He learned to waterski, tried tubing and had an amazing time. We joined him there a few days later and it was a much-needed break for me too. I’ll forever be grateful for the sanctuary it provided during a very challenging time.

The second memory that I’ll carry with me forever is Canada Day weekend 2018, just after we learned Nick’s cancer was in remission. There were 21 of us and it was a weekend filled with love, laughter and joy.

We’ll have more gatherings in a new location, but this weekend we raised our glasses to memories that will last a lifetime.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

~ Joanie Mitchell