Come be my Friend…
08 Jan 2011 1 Comment
I have to admit that I love Facebook.
I was not an early adopter and it took me some time to get going, but once in, well, it’s been hard not to participate.
Blenheim. I've been to Blenheim. It's a working sheep farm.
A visit to Facebook (fb) is like dropping into a great house in the country, you know the kind. It sits at the end of a long, tree-lined drive and there’s no one around for miles. It’s surrounded by acres of grounds with diversions aplenty.
It’s a long weekend and guests are assembled. People are lounging around in the great room, and it is a great big room with a tall ceiling. There are groups of people gathered in clusters here and there. People are moving back and forth between the groups, perhaps stopping to say a word or two to the group as a whole. Others are playing games; could be Texas Hold’em, could be Farmville.
The Great Hall at Blenheim
Over by the fire, people are reading or commenting on a blog; and across the room, another group is perusing and sharing news. People are rocking over by the piano. In the centre of the room, people are sitting on sofas engaged in bantering conversation. There are side conversations, IM conversations, maybe a note or two is passed between lovers. The overall tone is friendly, but from time to time disagreements break out. But unlike the Hotel California, you can just leave if things get too hot.
I’m fascinated by how people find friends.
Some of my friends have thousands of friends. The first I saw numbers in the thousands, I was amazed. How could they know so many people and be so young? I was perplexed. But, of course, the word “friend” in fb lingo is understood in its most broad sense
I was raised to believe that you just didn’t walk up to someone and say, be my friend. Introductions had to be made. There was a process to follow. After I made friends with my family and friends, some of whom I haven’t talked to in years, I felt perplexed. How was I to make more friends?
I was initially suspicious of strangers who extended friendship. Why would they want to be my friend, I’d think, they don’t even know me? But I took the plunge and hit “accept.”
My Qabbala friend took a more deliberate approach. He found friends who listed the Zohar, a seminal text, in their profile and quickly racked up hundreds of friends in what seemed like no time. I was still at 100 friends and family and he had over 600 complete strangers that he engaged with in spirited conversation. I was envious.
I poked around, here and there, never really getting up the courage to ask people to be my friend. It was such a bold act, to send out a friend request. I continued to post interesting articles I found to share with my friends, but unless people comment, who knows who’s paying attention and I was looking for conversation.
One day I was friended by a new friend, D. I didn’t know her, but adopting a new credo, I happily accepted her friend request. Ooooh, a new friend, I crowed. D had over a 1000 friends then, she has almost 1500 now, and she is a bona fide fb rockstar, her page says so. D is often irreverent in her comments, provocative in her posts, she has an active wall. Again, I was envious.
She shared her strategy one day in a post: she friended people who liked her comments, who made comments she liked, admitting, of course, dahling, I don’t know any of them. She made a point of gathering guests to her wall. I thought, of course, how logical. I found out how easy it was when I gave it a try.
So – if you get a friend request from me and you don’t know why, well, I like how you think, that’s why. And if you’re reading this and we’re not yet friends…. why not?
Come…. be my friend..:)
A New Year of Fresh Possibilities
02 Jan 2011 1 Comment
A fresh new year lies before me, like a magnet pulling me along to a destination of which I have only a faint idea, that I can see a vague outline of, off in the distance.
At this time of year reflection is in the air. Reflection and resolution, we reflect on the past in order to resolve to change the future.
This past year, 2010, has been a good year. As I look back and reflect on my own challenges and triumphs, I think I come out on the plus side.
The first few months of 2010 were challenging. Determined to finish my diploma in public relations, I enrolled in three courses for the first term of 2010, beginning in January. The winter months were long, dark and cold. When spring came, we opened the windows to fresh air that blew through the house like a tornado, taking with it the cobwebs and dust bunnies that gathered in rooms closed to conserve warmth.
The result of all my hard work at school was the completion of my diploma, a year and half from when I first started. It took effort, mostly to attend classes after a busy day at work, but I often found class energizing, my classmates engaging and intelligent. I miss them now that I’m no longer in them. We try to keep in touch through social media, but nothing beats a weekly face-to-face.
I’ve been taking some marketing courses in the time since I finished the program. I have a background in the arts, history, specifically, not in business or marketing, so I find this fills a gap in my knowledge. I could just buy a book, I suppose, but the interaction of the students with both the teacher and each other is where much of the learning takes place. I find it quicker, more expedient to learn with others.
Life-long learning is essential if you want to stay afloat in the modern world of changing technology and global relationships. Knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate. Research is gaining ground on the unknown, only to open up new areas for discovery. I learned from reading history that the poor and working classes, especially women without men, had to work, at something and very often at many somethings in order to scrape together enough to live lives of less want.
Growing up in the 1960s and 70′s, prosperity, it seemed was all around us. Education was a right demanded of all children up to the age of 16. I went to university right after high school but I was more interested in a weekly paycheck and partying with my friends. As I entered the workforce at the end of the 70s, the job market was tight and it was who you knew not what you knew that got you that first job, the one so desperately needed for experience. I’ve learned since from labour disputes and corporate takeovers that a job for life is a pipe-dream, one brought on by smoking too much of that wacky-tabacky, I guess.
But although I “dropped out” of university when I was 18, I went back, part-time, by the time I was 20, attending night classes in medieval history. I didn’t go back with determination until years later, after my children were born, to finish what I started. I wanted to be doing something different than I was and I saw education as a means to get there.
And it’s been that way ever since.
In the course of my hopefully long life, I will need to re-invent myself several times. I already have. And thank goodness for that. I’ve discovered that I thrive in a change environment. There is nothing more deadly to my performance than to have to do the same thing day-in, day-out on a regular basis.
That’s good news for me, actually. Research has shown that actively exercising your brain through learning new skills and knowledge helps in the battle against dementia. That’s the health benefit of keeping abreast of the news and logging online to new technologies.
The decline in manufacturing has created a labour situation that demands a shift in our labour force. People who have worked on an assembly line for 20 years suddenly find themselves out of work at an age where starting at the beginning is a daunting barrier to finding a new occupation, never mind a job.
In order to meet the needs of our new economy, we need to inculcate a commitment to life-long learning in our children. Education needs to be funded to the maximum we can possibly afford. Our children are our future. You don’t see that until you’re an adult, usually an elderly adult.
Adult education needs to be revised and expanded to attract people looking to change careers either willingly through choice, or not through layoffs. Retraining, learning new skills, upgrading skills, our governments should be encouraging citizens to continue their education. Tuition fees are tax-deductible, and tax credits come with hours in the classroom.
The greatest challenge to furthering education is the cost. In the time that I’ve been attending university, the cost of tuition has tripled. I don’t know how kids can find the money these days to attend school at all, never mind on a full-time basis. And for the working poor? Forget about it. Tax credits are great at the end of the day, but if you can’t afford the cost of the course it’s a benefit that lies just out of reach.
In the year ahead, I resolve to continue taking courses, I will continue to seek out ways to enhance my skill set and keep abreast of changes in technology.
How do you keep your grey matter lit?
Time to Take a Breath…
18 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: networks connections
These past few weeks have been hectic in my world.
My coursework in two courses came to and end this past week so I’ve been busy getting assignments done and exams written. I try to take a relaxed attitude to learning. I believe that tension and stress create blocks to brain function and emotional and intellectual expression. I nurture this attitude because I’ve seen too clearly the damage done when we place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, especially in the learning process, and which we all do, all the time.
And besides, I have a life to live. It’s not called self-directed, life-long learning for nothing. You get what you need.
To grow we need to reach, we need to encounter the unfamiliar and challenge our current state with something different. That’s why I continue to take courses, in preparation for my next gowth spurt. That’s the best lesson I learned in school.
I studied history in university not because I love the stories and the writing, although I do. I believe that we can learn from our past, from all of our pasts, the way to move forward. A good reading of history will contain the perspectives of mutiple stakeholders and participants, those taken at the time and those comments provided by historians who tell the story later. We find that motives and methods differ little from age to age, like we foget that we already tried that and it didn’t work. Yet we hold the same beliefs and repeat the same actions time and time again. Dictators continue to oppress their people, who rise up in revolution to instate yet another dictatorship. Power corrupts, etc…
Sitting in British history class one day, I was caught by the need for individual ingenuity among the poor and working classes, of the need to be open to opportunity to ensure independence, even way back when, where our vision is of a more simpler time, secure and tied to the land.
Growing up in the economically prosperous 60s, I entered the workforce during the 70′s when a job was found more often through connections than with want ads. I learned through watching plant closures and listening to labour speaches that job security is up to the worker not the company.
You better be good at your job, keep up with the latest in technology development or theoretical discourse, and be ready to reinvent youself, once, twice, maybe three times or more, because we’re not dying at 45 any more and retirement is getting pushed further and further ahead the life line.
And if you’re a young woman, or any woman, you’d best not look to anyone else but yourself to take care of you. That’s the right we won when we fought for education, the vote and access to the workplace, to be beholden to the same obligations of independence that men carry. It’s an interesting twist of developments when we consider the mancession spreading though the economy. How generous will women be with their independence in the face of men’s sudden dependence, on them, on the state, on anything other than a steady job.
I’m looking forward to my next set of courses when they start in the new year. In the meantime, I hope to indulge my other passions; reading, and writing about what I read.
On Communicating Comments…
27 Nov 2010 3 Comments
Now that I have a column, I’ve have people commenting on what I have to say. I knew that going in, yet I was surprised when I found comments posted the first time I read it online, which I thought was pretty early in the morning. And they weren’t that supportive, either. I’m not sure why or what I said to elicit such responses, all I said was that I was going to talk about change. But then, people resist change.
And people have their opinions, some long held; certainly some of mine are. Like the importance of safe, reliable public transit. Like the protection of local food production and green space. Like the revitalization of the urban core. Like the well-being of some of our more vulnerable citizens; the young, old, sick, and the poor. Like the importance of dialogue, debate, and discussion to the effective functioning of a democracy.
I also believe that we can do anything we want; that there is no limit to the brilliance that can shine from the depths of the darkness that we sometimes find ourselves in. But we’re not going to find that brilliance if we don’t cultivate some space for it to shine in. If we shoot down the thoughts and opinions of others because they don’t fit with either our worldview or our sense of self, we’ll never grow beyond ourselves. And none of us are finished growing yet. We have to open ourselves up to the thoughts of others, to their experiences, to understand their place under the sun, to see how we fit with them.
Isn’t it beautiful that we all have the right to speak our opinions under our freedom of speech laws?
As a writer, I always wonder if anyone reads what I write, whether anyone agrees, and if they don’t, where they think I’m wrong. Letters sent to the Editor are not sent to me (I don’t think) but the online comments are posted directly for all to see. Comments appear almost as instantly as they are contrived. Often people are driven by emotion to respond quickly and the internet is happy to provide a complicit companion. The anonymity of it all only adds fuel to the fire.
I don’t mind, I can take it. I don’t believe there is anything anyone can say to me that someone hasn’t already said. My roots are in the immigrant east end of Hamilton, just down the street from the steel mills and I was teased as a child (who wasn’t?). I’m well read; there aren’t many words I don’t know. Some call me argumentative, sometimes I’m just the devil’s advocate (or the poor, the downtrodden, the mentally ill…). I don’t hold my opinions lightly, but I like to think I have an inquiring mind, one that is open to explore all perspectives of my opinion. I’m a reasonable person, I can be talked to.
I just wonder what message people think they’re trying to relay when their language is dismissive or insulting, trying to bully people to their perspective?
I’ve long been interested in what people leave in the comments section of online news sites. For a time, I collected the comments on news articles that dealt with gender or women. I noticed that articles that dealt with those issues pulled in sometimes hundreds of comments, many of them downright abusive, although the sites themselves are listed as moderated.
Comments are welcome and encouraged. Dialogue is part of discussion. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of my readers, I’m not just interested in spouting my own. But believe that I’m not speaking out of a hole in my head; I do try to give consideration to my argument so as not to inflame or incite. I can only ask that you do the same.
Last time, I promise…. For now.
09 Oct 2010 1 Comment
Busy week, fuzzy brain.
The sun is shining this bright and beautiful Saturday morning. I’m sitting in the porch with Ray, each of us playing with our own little gadgets, sharing stories of interest that we find. We’re catching up on the current events of the last week.
I have to go on just a little bit more about my reactions to my iPad. I woke up this morning to the news of Apple’s record breaking sales achievement (4.5 million units in 6 mos) which is apparently pretty impressive, beating out both the DVD player and the Sony Walkman as innovative, and in fact, game-changing, technologies.
And I have to agree. So far, so good.
I finally figured out where all the keyboard characters are on the three keyboards I get to choose from. The fact that it is so easy to use only makes learning it fun. There have been some frustrations, like getting used to the touchiness of the keyboard, typing with my Peter Pointers, but I find it quicker than typing with my thumbs.
Now, I wouldn’t consider myself a techie, although I’ve been working with computers my entire working life. That’s over 30 years. I remember lugging home one of the first generation Compaq computers in the 80s on the Go bus when I was working in Toronto. It was heavy, but worked at what it was needed for, which was processing data. I’ve been waiting for this little baby, it seems, forever.
I started out working as a computer operator, where I learned a little bit of programming that taught me a lot about process systems. But I’m not that good at complex math, so I moved into the applied side, if you will, in terms of information management.
It was my information that I was most interested in managing: bibliographies, documents of various types; I’m a bit of a junkie, and I tried to incorporate technology in any of the roles I had in the business sector. When I became editor of a women’s health newsletter, I moved into using technology to create documents with text and pictures.
I do love little organizing gadgets. From my first hot-pink vinyl organizer that I got at 13, to, well, my iPad, ways to capture and contain who I am (that sounds so existential) have long captured my attention: wallets, organizers, notebooks, address books, briefcases, book bags, backpacks, purses. Always searching for the one thing that would help me lead a more productive life. That has always been my goal, enhanced personal productivity. And there’s nothing like a new organizer to spur productivity. Except maybe a new pen, but that’s another obsession…
My iPad is my new organizer.
It is my newsreader, my book reader, my diary, my blogs, my notebooks, my internet, my library… All my communication and information needs, so far, are met. Document creation is limited, but all I need are the words. I don’t have the Pages app yet, or some of the other pieces I think would be useful to fully appreciate it’s full functionality.
The price of apps can be a barrier, as can sloppy apps. Sadly, I can’t get the wordpress app to work and the Twitter app sucks. Some apps work like they were made for iphones, but with a magnification button in the corner to enlarge the feature. Not very nice. Free and cheap.
The laptop sits on the desk, which is where it gets used. Sometimes it moves to the kitchen island, but it rarely goes anywhere else. It never really did. It’s still to big and heavy for practical portability and since I try to walk everywhere, it’s a drag on my shoulders. It can do a lot; it carries some pretty heavy files and I find it functions best as a portable, but heavy-duty, processing appliance for documents, and images manipulation device that can get folded up and put away when I decide to do some sewing.
Done now. I won’t say another word… For now.
I was part of a week-long anti-poverty awareness raising and political action initiative that I wrote about over at ihearthamilton.wordpress.com. I have yet to file my final reflection, which I’ll do tonight after we finish our getting out for the day.
It’s a gorgeous day outside today, this first day of the Thanksgiving weekend. I have lots to be thankful for. I going out to take pictures of a few.
Let’s see yours….
Birds in the Backyard
02 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
I spent the morning in the porch playing with the iPad, using it to capture my thoughts this time rather than distract my attention with it’s numerous bells and whistles.
The notepad feature I find is quite useful for my needs, which are minimal when I’m simply taking notes. I haven’t tried to email a note to myself, which is how I get it off the iPad and onto my computer. There’s lots I haven’t tried yet and it’s already sucked up a considerable amount of my time. I have laundry to do.
But, I sat in the porch, which is part of my usual morning routine, and read the news and did some writing, not off the newspaper or in book, respectively, but off this little device.
I created drafts of several potential posts and saved for work later on. I can’t manage to navigate the screen-within-the-screen which is WordPress, so once the text is out of the box I can’t get back to it. I have to read the manual is what I have to do. Or access it through the WordPress app, which is how I edited this post before I sent it.
It’s the keyboard which is the revolutionary feature. For me. And the sizing-resizing screen feature. I can make the screen bigger for easier reading as well as to enlarge the action buttons so my finger hits only one button and not those adjacent. It’s the perfect size to hold in one hand or balance on my knee while I type away.
And as I said before, I can really fly on this keyboard. And when the music’s playing, I’m typing in tune. It makes the whole process of creation so much easier to capture, more pleasant, less isolating, despite the fact that I haven’t looked up since I got out of bed.
I took pictures of dogs and birds this morning. The dogs were guarding the birds while they pecked at their seed under the tree. I think they’re looking up at a squirrel that sits just above their heads. I’ll post them from my laptop; photos have to be downloaded through an external device, sold separately (of course). I decided it wasn’t needed.
Did I mention my laundry?
I’m running low on power (hmmmm…no percent sign on the keyboard but a British pound sign? That’s not helpful) so I’m about to lose it and get the laundry done.
And now it’s raining so there go the laundry plans. No fear, I have real books to read or a house to clean. Tough choice.
What would you do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?
Apple pulls out in the lead with the iPad
27 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: ipad, technology
This blog post has been created on the newest member of my technology family, the iPad. And I have to tell you, my first reactions are quite positive, in fact, I’d say they are glowing. I L O V E this little thing.
It’s the perfect size, thin and easy to hold. I covered it with a Gela skin of van Gogh’s Almond Trees which not only protects the casing, but also matches some stationery that I already have. Serendipity. So it is, quite literarily, a thing of beauty.
I’m still finding my way around the options. I come from the generation that needs clear instructions, or so it would seem. I have a difficult time with software I have to explore to make work. Well, that’s not entirely true, although at times it does seem that my intuitive readings differ substantially from those who design software, or supermarkets, for that matter. I need some guidance.
I downloaded 2 iPad guides from the iTunes store. I quickly flipped through one the other day and it answered some questions I had from the day before, but I have more. I’ll discover the answers to them as needed, I’m sure. Not everything is as easy as it could be, but I am suitably awed by what it can do to want to share at least that much with you. I may come to regret my words. Time will tell.
The touch pad is touchy but it suits my delicate fingers. I do like typing on the screen keyboard. It needs just a light tap for the hit to register and the action to unfold. Most of the time. Sometimes I have to press with some persistence. I surprise myself at how fast I can get going on the keyboard considering both its touchiness and the fact that I’m typing with my two index fingers, along with the odd other finger that can get in motion faster. Practice makes perfect, or better as the Instructor for my Communications course stressed the other night.
I didn’t get the 3G option. I don’t need more ways to spend money I don’t have, but if I did have disposable income I’d have gotten one with both Wi Fi and 3G. I don’t know how good the wireless access is in places around Hamilton, but we’ll soon find out.
As I type this, I’m sitting in the health sciences library at McMaster University, students all around me. The woman sitting next to me has two very large textbooks. I myself picked up a humongous hardcover textbook for Marketing that must have weighed ten pounds. I really don’t like big textbooks; I would much prefer it on this tiny little thing. I wonder if it would be cheaper? Something, maybe experience, leads me to believe that if publishers are involved, they will want their cut. A year-long license would probably come in at the same cost as a the current textbook. The advantage to the publishers is the elimination of the whole buy-back market in textbooks, which must certainly represent to them lost revenue. As long as publishers are involved, access to information can be controlled. That’s another post. Rant? Hmmmmm.
Information will become more scarce, more valuable, when you need more than just your eyes to look at it.
Which brings us to the downside to any electronic technology. Power. We’ve all lived with the limitations imposed on us, involuntarily I might add, by power service interruptions. The 2003 Blackout should serve as a warning to us all about putting our eggs in one basket, whether that refers to power sources or to what we want to hold permanent. People with barbeques could still cook, people with books, magazines, newspapers, could still read, although it might be old news. So we’d do best not to burn those textbooks yet. We need them to build our own solar panels.
I read a quick quote by Stephen King, and I have to be careful because I can’t put it in context, but what he asked was something like, what matters more, the story or the way you hear it? with a clear implication that the former is the case. From an author, who created the story, his position should come as no surprise.
And as a writer I agree. But as a reader I am no longer dismayed at the demise of the book, I’m excited at the possibilities that it can become. The iPad is just the beginning….
ps… After I finished writing this I flipped through my tech app and discovered that Blackberry is to launch their version in early 2011. It will be smaller and lighter and sync with my Blackberry. I’ll eventually want that one too. But I’m happy right now.
pps… It could take some time to figure out how to post this…. can’t intuit it…
Reflections on the takeover…
07 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
I’ve been boning up on social media tools these past few weeks. As you know because you’re reading this on one of them, I have a few blogs, and I use Facebook and Twitter. I’m also connected to a number of other networks through various platforms: Plaxo, LinkedIn, Ning. I use these networks for specific reasons and I suppose they satisfy the multiple personalities that feed my Gemini nature, but there they are, calling out to me to communicate with their members in interesting and informative ways.
Now, I’ve spent my entire working life working with computers, that’s some 30+ years by last reckon, and I’ve been fortunate to find myself often working in environments eager to adopt cutting edge communications technologies. Working in an academic environment, itself one of the earliest adopters of web technologies (next to government and military), I have been truly privileged to have a front row seat watching the evolution of communication technologies for the past 20 years.
I’ve witnessed major changes in the way things used to be and how they are now and I continue to be both amazed and dismayed at what I see happening to communication culture. Yet despite my misgivings, I am overall hopeful of the potential that social media, which is increasing in size, complexity and utility, has in making this great big world just a little bit smaller.
What I think is most dangerous, however, is the assumption that “everyone” is connected, online and ready to engage, or even that they want to be.
I grew up in a family with no car; my father refused to learn to drive, refused to have a car. We were a real oddity amongst our friends and extended family in the 1960s and 70s. I think it was the best decision my father made and most certainly the best lesson I learned in my life; it continues to teach me more and more each day, both about myself and society around me.
What that’s taught me in relation to social media, and with most everything else, is that despite the steamroller effect of social media technologies, or car culture, or whatever the next big thing will be, not everyone chooses to play with the same toys, and some people aren’t even interested in playing the game at all.
I like books. I like the physical feel of the book in hand, the compact, page-bound portability of a book. I have an e-book reader, not a very sophisticated one, but I got it for the sole purpose of accessing e-books. It seemed all of a sudden-like, but it probably took a couple of years, that the majority of books I wanted to access through the library, and most certainly the more recent books, were all e-books. This is a newly erected barrier to information sharing and one I think dangerous to adopt for libraries, but that’s another post.
I can still buy print books at the bookstore, if I want to pay the price. And I do. I have a room in my house dedicated to books and the wisdom they contain. I support the print publishing industry with my dollars and I decry the demise of the printed page, the one you can hold in your hand, carry with you, pass on. You can do all these things with social media, but it’s cold comfort compared with the warm welcome I find in a printed page.
So it was with much irony that I found myself boning up on social media not through help screens, blog posts or Wikipedia pieces, but from books, with paper pages between cardboard covers that I carried with me from the porch to the backyard and back again, with maybe a pitstop or two on the sofa.
I have studied and utilized the social media scene through public relations courses, recently completed, and have joined in with a curious and eager, yet cautious, dip in the pool of online networks. And I’ve enjoyed creating my little blog empire, with specific sites that cater to my interests. But it was nice to take a break from the hands on practice of blogging and playing with other tools of social media to reflect on the current and potential future of social media for fostering positive change through bridging difference, encouraging dialogue and connecting cultures.
Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll explore the books I’ve been reading and I welcome your comments and suggestions around any of the ideas or for further reading.
Blog updates:
I haven’t posted much lately, too busy reading, but that hasn’t stopped my writing. I spent the day finishing up a few updates I was already working on. So check out what’s up at In the Sisterhood, It’s All About the Clothes and Garden by Surprise.
With the Labour Day long weekend done, and a head full of fresh ideas and new knowledge, I’m looking forward to updating my blog content as I further refine my writing to honour those who take the time to read it.
Thanks for taking the time.
The Circle of Life Spins On
14 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
The circle of life backed around on itself in my relationship circle this past week. Not my deal really, I think I mentioned that elsewhere, but nevertheless, I was taken back to two particularly painful periods in my own past that I remember with regret, sadness, anger at times, but always with thankfulness for my brother and sister and the love we have for each other.
When our mother died, it was at the hands of the health care system, one that has us all captured in the hopeful promise of a prolonged life by our own fear of death. Nobody wants to die, granted, but we all need to accept that one day we will all die. My mother did and was clear in her desire for a peaceful passing, which she was denied due to the noise of the machines that kept her alive long after she wanted to be. When our father died from Alzheimer’s, we were all fortunate be able to gather around his deathbed and pour out to him our collective love as his spirit traveled forward, or wherever. We all felt the right to be there and there was nothing but love and positive energy in the room.
Now, my brother and sister and I have had our differences over the course of our long lives together. Growing up in the 60s and 70s in a bustling city in a growing suburban environment, we had an idyllic childhood. The Niagara Escarpment, the geological formation that gives rise to Niagara Falls, was blocks from our backyard. We could see it looming in the distance from the dining room window. The area that is now King’s Forest Golf Club and the Red Hill Expressway was once open parkland with baseball diamonds and soccer fields.
We lived in a somewhat protected neighbourhood, a little cul-de-sac of a suburb, boarded by the escarpment, filled with young families and kids to play with. There were four of us then, my two brothers, my sister and myself. Our relationship as children was always fraught, fighting and fractious as families often are. As we grew into adulthood, we moved into a maturity that I, personally, am proud of. I know our parents are proud of us too, if they could be, from wherever they are looking upon us.
It wasn’t easy. There were times when jealously reared its green-eyed head and reason disappeared from the scene altogether – at least for me. My father’s wish, for every Christmas, birthday and Father’s Day gift and which he echoed in those moments of gravitas when he was sick of our constant fighting and was trying to make a point was for his children to love each other, stop fighting and get along. You only have each other, he would say.
And he was right. We are a first-generation immigrant family. I’m a transition child; the only child born outside of the country, when my mother returned to Scotland to visit her own dying father. Her roots were tightly tangled with her own brothers and sisters who have remained close, all 9 of them, throughout their lives. They set a powerful example for us to emulate, as we try to do for our children.
My father’s family either died in the war or shortly thereafter. A sister survived in Russia for a number of years, hidden behind the Iron Curtain, but we lost touch with that branch. He never returned to Poland after coming to Canada, where another sister lived with her family in Hamilton. We had a very small circle of blood relatives while we were growing up and felt an absence in the face of the large Italian families of our friends and classmates. Thankfully love and nature takes care of that; we siblings have contributed to a network of cousins that spans the country.
When we lost my younger brother to misadventure when he was only 17, things changed. The fighting, for the most part, stopped. We were entering the age of independence, my older brother and myself, my sister was still in high school and it was different for her. My brother and I could escape the pain of our broken family by moving out and moving on. She had to live in it daily.
My parents changed too. My father was a strict disciplinarian who ruled our house with the authority of the hose, a foot-long rubber sandblasting hose he brought home from his work sandblasting railcars. It hurt. I know because I got it a lot. I was a child with a will beyond my years and it drove my dad mad when I wouldn’t come home from wherever I wasn’t even supposed to be. How we were disciplined then would land our father in jail today, but I’m telling you, it didn’t hurt that much and I deserved every lickin’ I got. After Peter died his perspective on punishment changed. How he demonstrated his love for his children shifted dramatically to one that was more affectionate and loving. He cried easily.
I know I disappointed my parents from time to time. Sometimes big time, but we won’t go into that here. But they saw beyond that to the importance of our relationship, parent/child and brother/sisters. My mother would often remark how lucky we were not to have money, not to be rich, because money always brought with it trouble: sibling rivalry, parental expectation. And we saw that in some of the families around us, how they hated their brothers/sisters/fathers/mothers. What was important to my mother and father was the simple fact that their children remain connected and, in my father’s words, “love each other”. They saw treating us fairly as integral to that. No one got more or less than the other, materially, all through our life with them. Although I have to admit that my proximity privileged me with their presence more often than my siblings, who live at a distance. In that sense, I got way more.
Isn’t that, really, what we want for our children too, to know that they have each other and can count on family support in difficult times. I know I take comfort in the fact my children get along. I hope they always do even down into their dottering old age, when I’m not around to mediate between them. I would never jeopardize that. What parent would?
Those were the sentiments that guided our relationship, my brother, sister and myself, after my father died and we had to divide the estate. We were awesome. No acrimony, no jealous fighting, no hurtful accusations. No fighting over things. I have a colleague at work who hasn’t been so fortunate. She’s in the middle of two sisters who are locked in confrontation over the terms of their mother’s will even when the estate was split evenly. That was a couple of years ago and it’s still not settled. In the meantime, the house sat empty, unable to go on the market and became a home to squatters who burnt it to the ground. All because of sibling rivalry over perceived injustices. The only ones who come away happy in an estate dispute are the lawyers.
I wanted to give a public shout out to my brother and sister (you know who you are) for listening to dad tell us through all those years for us to just love each other.
I love you both, too.
Blog Updates:
I’ve updated All About the Clothes and I Heart Hamilton. Click through for more….
Has it been that long…?
23 Jul 2010 2 Comments
Wow.
It’s been some time since I’d had any. Time that is, to actually post what’s been on my mind these past weeks. This is what I do with my vacation days – update my blog.
I’ve been busy, busy, busy. Working, writing and learning how to be a good facilitator. I was at a week-long facilitation course in downtown Toronto at ICA Canada last week. I reconnected with a couple of people from past courses and met a whole bunch of new, interesting people committed to helping others achieve their goals. It was a fabulous learning opportunity and great to be in a group of people with a commitment to facilitating change. I personally haven’t done any professional facilitation, and the only experience I have is in facilitating conversations among family members (why did you borrow your sister’s top? I don’t want you to go to that party), but I’ll be looking for opportunities to practice and let you know how that works out.
I’ve been busy writing too. I’ve updated In the Sisterhood with a commentary on an article published in The Atlantic Monthly and which is getting a lot of attention by those who consider these questions. What do you think, has the time for women finally arrived?
My travels to and from Toronto inspired my I [heart] Hamilton post. I find this aspect of the trip the most infuriating. But I feel better now that I’ve gotten it off my chest.
The plants in the greenhouse probably missed my attention the most while I was busy commuting back and forth. They seem to be a bit worse for wear, but none more than those who provided dinner for the unwanted guests. I’ll be looking for organic solutions next. Find out for what at Garden by Surprise.
Sad to say that It’s All About the Clothes is suffering from inactivity, both the physical and the intellectual kind. But my time in Toronto afforded me the opportunity to go shopping along Queen St in the famous Toronto Fashion District. I didn’t buy anything but a few balls of cotton yarn, but I came away inspired with newfound creativity. I’ll be sharing that with you in the days ahead.
Take care and stay cool,
m.
