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A day to remember!

/ edebock / 8 Comments

On December 1, 1923 my mother’s baby sister, Norma Pearl Raby, was born. On Friday, we had the privilege of celebrating her 100th birthday! What an amazing milestone!

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Auntie Norma and I have always been close. In fact, she often told people that I was the daughter she never had! For several years I’d been telling her that I planned to be at her 100th birthday party and I was only half joking as I knew that she’d had an aunt who lived to almost 103.

Auntie Norma has lived in Jasper, Alberta since 1953 and is now the town’s oldest living resident. Always active in the community, she lived in her own home until the age of 97 when she moved into the Alpine Summit Seniors Lodge. On Friday, the lodge staff went above and beyond as they prepared for her very special day. They set up and decorated a table in the common area for our family celebration and served us a lovely lunch. The table decor included photos from throughout Norma’s life and the pièce de résistance of the meal was the amazing cake baked and decorated by a member of the lodge’s kitchen staff!

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For most of her life, Auntie Norma was robust and physically active. In fact, we went hiking with her when she was 87 years old! Over the past year, however, she has become very frail. Now virtually blind and confined to bed or wheelchair, her once sharp memory has started to fail. She has good days and bad, but Friday was a very good day! Although she sometimes goes for days without eating, she had absolutely no problem polishing off two pieces of that delicious chocolate cake!

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She was alert and attentive as numerous residents of the lodge and visitors from the community came by after lunch to wish her a happy birthday. Her body may be failing but her sweet spirit and her sense of humour are definitely intact! It was such a privilege for Richard and I to share her special day with my cousins (or perhaps I should say my brother’s from another mother), Norma’s two sons and their partners.

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Now back home, my heart is full as I look back on such a wonderful day and consider how fortunate I am to have had this special lady in my life for such a long time!

Not a fashion post

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I don’t have a Fashion Friday post for you today. Hubby and I spent a few days this week camping, hiking, and kayaking in one of our favourite locations, Big Knife Provincial Park. Though less than an hour from home, we had no internet or cell phone service. It was a total and wonderful disconnect from technology and from the cares of the world.

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People enjoy camping for many different reasons. For me, I love the solitude; the opportunity to get away from the busyness of day to day life and reconnect with nature. Sitting in camp reading a book, I heard nothing but the whisper of the breeze in the trees, the buzzing of insects, and the music of birdsong.  Occasionally the chatter of a squirrel or, in the evening, a distant chorus of coyotes, interrupted the quiet. From time to time, I enjoyed looking up from my book and watching a pair of small woodpeckers (yellow-bellied sapsuckers) industriously pecking away at a nearby tree. Working from morning til night, they’ll eventually kill the tree, but others will grow up to take its place. That’s the way of nature.

We spent part of each day hiking, exploring every trail in the park. I was thankful for the 60+ km that we walked last month, a good start toward accomplishing my goal of 350 km by the end of October. Our legs were more than ready to tackle the trails even in the extreme heat that our province has been experiencing recently.

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In places, stands of wolf willow (more commonly referred to as silver willow here because of the silvery colour of its leaves) were in bloom giving off the strong musky-sweet scent that is such a an unmistakable characteristic of the prairie at this time of year.

Because we were in bear country, we carried bear spray and kept the bear bell dangling from our backpack jingling. Unfortunately, that meant that we were less likely to see other wildlife, but we did see one deer and we were almost back to camp on one of our hikes when a beaver slipped soundlessly across the path right in front of us! If we’d been any closer, we probably would have tripped over it! In both cases, the animals moved too quickly for me to get a photo.

We saved our shortest, but most strenuous hike for our final morning. Leaving the marked paths, we followed a narrow trail that we first found several years ago. Though you can’t see the upper part of the trail in this photo, it follows the edge of the tree line all the way to the top of the hill then continues for some distance along the top of a ridge. In the second photo, I’m looking back.

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The trail led us to the hoodoos, a geological formation found throughout the Canadian badlands. Formed by erosion, a hoodoo is a pillar of soft sandstone with a capstone of harder, denser rock. This area is also accessible from one of the easier marked trails.

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Not a fashion photo! 😄

From the bluff above the hoodoos we had an amazing view of the meandering river below. Looking at the photo, it’s easy to see why we can paddle for a long time and not go very far as the crow flies! Our first time out on the water this trip, which was also the first time we had the kayak out this year, we paddled for over two hours. By the last half hour, I could feel the burn of muscles not used enough over the long winter months and started making promises to myself about dusting off the hand weights in the basement and starting to use them again!

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Fashion Friday could be a little hit and miss over the summer months as we hope to spend more time on similar excursions, but I’ll try to post something at least once a week, fashion or otherwise.

Hiking again!

/ edebock / 4 Comments

We’ve tried to go for a walk almost every day since hubby’s prostate surgery. The first was a very slow shuffle to the end of our short block and back, but it wasn’t long before he was able to handle a couple of kilometres. Last week, when we saw the surgeon for his six week check-up, we got the good news that he is cancer-free and that with the exception of very heavy lifting, he could resume his normal activities. Today, exactly seven weeks post surgery, we did a fairly strenuous 6.5 km hike!

About an hour from home, the Willow Canyon Trail at Donalda, Alberta has become one of our favourite hiking spots. The tiny village of Donalda is perched on the rim of picturesque Meeting Creek Coulee, the northernmost point of the Canadian badlands. It is best known for the 42 foot high replica of an oil lamp that lights up at dusk each day and and sheds its light over the coulee.

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The trailhead is located just north of the lamp and the old restored train station located nearby.

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The hike begins as a woodland trail that passes through private land to access 120 acres of fenced Donalda Ag Society property where visitors are free to leave the marked trails and explore to their hearts content.

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The established trails, which have been enhanced with signage and maps since our last visit, are generally quite easy and stay for the most part along the upper edge of the coulee. We, however, like to leave the beaten track and drop down into the valley wandering up, down, and around the bluffs that form its walls.

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We climbed to the top of that little knoll because… well, just because we could!

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I was delighted to discover that we were early enough in the season to find a few prairie crocuses still in bloom. It was a windy day, but these two were in a slightly sheltered spot where I could get a reasonably good photo.

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Eventually, after a couple of hours of wandering and eating the picnic lunch that we brought with us, we made our way up out of the canyon and back to town where we enjoyed a treat at the recently reopened Coulee Tea House. Under new management, it’s a delightful little restaurant serving a wide variety of teas as well as other beverages, sandwiches, soup, salads, and wonderful desserts. Since we often pass by Donalda on the highway, we’ll definitely plan to stop in for lunch another day even if we aren’t there to hike!

Golden years?

/ edebock / 13 Comments

Have you ever wondered why they call our retirement years, the years from 65 to 80 and beyond, the golden years? The phrase was actually coined in 1959 as part of an advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the world’s first large-scale retirement community for active seniors. The goal, of course, was to portray retirement as a life of leisure; a time to travel, play golf, and pursue hobbies, but is it true?

For Christmas, I gave hubby a sweatshirt with one of his favourite sayings on the front. Retired: The ability to do what I want when I want. Lately whenever he wears it, he hastens to point out that it isn’t entirely true. These days, our lives seem to revolve around countless trips to the city for tests, scans, specialist appointments, and most recently, his prostate surgery. Maybe these should actually be called our rusty years because parts are continually breaking down and our bodies aren’t running as smoothly as they once did!

We certainly aren’t alone in this. At our recent senior bowling windup I looked around the table at our team and realized that all five of us either have or have had cancer. Many of our peers have had hip or knee replacements. Another has recently had a stroke and still others are waiting for biopsy results and/or surgery. No, retirement isn’t all traveling and playing!

I’m not really complaining… well, maybe just a little! I love the fact that we no longer have to rush off to work every day and that the government pays us for simply waking up every morning. I also realize that I’m fortunate to be alive. When I glance at the obituaries these days, many of the deceased are younger than me!

Some people claim that our true golden years are between 40 and 60 when we’re still physically and mentally fit and have probably reached some level of financial security. That led me to wonder, when were my golden years? When were yours? The first decade of my life, living in a waterfront house on the coast of British Columbia with the beach as my playground and the sound of the surf as my lullaby at night, was definitely golden. I look back on the years when my children were at home as golden. I loved that time of my life. There was a dark interval during the fourteen months that our oldest daughter fought her losing battle with leukemia, but even during that time, there were golden moments. When we were in our fifties, the year that we spent teaching English in Japan was golden.

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2 Corinthians 4:16b says, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” In spite of the limitations of physical aging, I have no intention of passively resigning myself to coasting along and waiting for my name to show up in the obituaries! It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” So what can we do to make these years count, whether they are golden or rusty?

We may not be able to travel as often or for as long as we once could, but I’ll cherish the relationships that we have with people both near and far and when I can’t be together with them in person, I’ll remind myself how fortunate we are to have the internet, something that we didn’t have in our younger years. When I can’t explore far away places, I’ll seek out and appreciate ones that are closer to home. I’ll continue to offer the best of myself through volunteer work. I’ll read and learn and stay as physically active as I can for as long as I can. Always, I’ll remember to be thankful!

And finally, a message for those of you who are younger, don’t waste what might be the best years of your life yearning for the golden years. After all, they might turn out to be a little bit rusty!

International Women’s Day and Kiva

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Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day, a day set aside to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It also serves as a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done to empower women and achieve gender equality, especially in developing countries where they are at greater risk of prejudice and gender-based violence. Women’s rights have come a long way since the first International Women’s Day in 1911 but we still have a long way to go!

Although different countries and different organizations have chosen differing themes for International Women’s Day 2023, they all revolve around the idea of equality and equity for women. Equality means giving all people equal access to rights and opportunities while equity refers to allocating resources based on the needs of individuals without bias or discrimination. That’s where Kiva comes in and why I’m choosing to focus on this non-profit micro-lending organization on International Women’s Day this year.

It’s all well and good to talk about the rights of women and the need for gender equality, but unless we’re willing to actually do something, that’s all it is. Talk doesn’t change anything! Change requires action, so what can you do? How can you make a difference?

graphic-gender-equity-1-billion-women-unbanked_2xLet’s begin by looking at some startling facts. Research shows that women typically invest a higher proportion of their earnings in their families and communities than men do, but in order to do so they need access to the full range of credit, banking and financial services. 740 million women worldwide, however, have little or no access to financial services. Because so many women are excluded from accessing financial assistance, it’s difficult for them to start businesses, pursue higher education, or improve their livelihood. Kiva aims to change that! Since 2017, the number of unbanked women has dropped by 24%. If this trend were to continue, the number of women without access to financial services could reach zero in less than 20 years!

More than 80% of Kiva loans go to women, women who have historically been denied access to traditional banking services. Kivagraphic-kiva-8-percent-loans-go-to-women-1_2x loans enable them to become financially stable, resilient, and self-reliant, allowing them to better support and protect themselves and their families from abuse, violence, and financial dependence.

So, why not celebrate International Women’s Day 2023 by making a loan to a woman in one of the 70+ countries on 5 continents served by Kiva? It’s easy, it costs as little as $25, and it makes a difference! 

If you’re not familiar with Kiva, here’s how it works. Click here to choose a woman or group of women to support. Lend $25 or more to help crowdfund the full loan amount. As the borrower earns an income and begins to repay her loan, you and the other lenders who helped fund her loan are repaid. These funds go directly into your Kiva account. When your account reaches $25 again, you can relend those same dollars to support another borrower! It’s truly the gift that keeps on giving!

Since I made my first two loans in March of 2010, I’ve helped fund 83 loans in 31 countries. Though Kiva provides loans to both men and women, I choose to lend to women who are borrowing money to purchase specific items that they will use to generate income to help them support their families and educate their children. Over the years, I’ve invested in a variety of livestock, seeds and fertilizer, numerous sewing machines, fishing equipment, hairdressing tools, restaurant stoves and refrigerators, a mill for grinding corn, heavy duty washing machines, a portable food stall, and probably a few other items. I also helped renovate some rental properties earlier this year.

To mark International Women’s Day, I decided to make another loan this week. Since my Kiva account was standing at less than $2 (I always relend as soon as it reaches $25) that involved topping it up, but I was more than happy to put my money where my mouth is as the old saying goes. Just think of the difference that we could make for women worldwide if we each invested just $25!

After reading through several loan descriptions, I found the one I wanted to help fund this time. Shamsiya is a 28-year-old mother of 5 children living in Tajikistan. She recently learned to sew women’s clothing and was seeking a loan to buy a sewing machine and supplies to start her own business.

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What are you doing to make a difference this International Women’s Day? Please let us know in the comment section below.

On being authentic

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After publishing Friday’s fashion post, I started to think about what it means to be authentic. After all, it’s so much more than just a style adjective. Authentic can be defined as “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character” as well as “real” or “genuine“. An authentic person then is someone who is comfortable in their own skin, someone who doesn’t need the approval of others, who isn’t afraid to stand up for their own beliefs and values.

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An authentic person is first and foremost not a people pleaser. If you’ve ever spent your life trying to be something that you’re not in order to please someone else, you know how damaging that is and how it robs you of peace and contentment. Part of being authentic is learning to establish boundaries and being able to say no.

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Unlike those who hide behind perfect-looking Facebook or Instagram faces, an authentic person accepts who they are and has the courage and self-confidence to share that with the world. Being authentic isn’t about being perfect, it’s about acknowledging mistakes and learning from them. It’s about being honest with yourself and others. It means accepting and embracing your uniqueness.

So how do we learn to live authentically in a world where there will always be pressure to conform to other people’s expectations? Define your core values, then live in alignment with them. Identify your strengths, the things that you are good at and passionate about, then do those things. Determine your own goals, then work toward achieving them. Express your genuine thoughts and feelings (in kind and respectful ways). Make sure your actions match your words.

As a Christian, being authentic means living according to God’s design; living out my true identity as one created in His image. It means living my faith 24/7, not just on Sunday mornings and not just when I’m in the public eye. There should be no room in my life for hypocrisy, pretension, or deceit of any kind. In other words, I’m called to be genuine, honest, real.

“To be authentic, we must cultivate the courage to be imperfect – and vulnerable. We have to believe that we are fundamentally worthy of love and acceptance, just as we are. I’ve learned that there is no better way to invite more grace, gratitude and joy into our lives than by mindfully practicing authenticity.”  Brené Brown

Bursts of beauty

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I’ve never been a big fan of winter, but once in awhile it gives us bursts of amazing beauty that help make it more tolerable. This is my 48th winter on the Canadian prairie and never have I seen hoar frost like we were blessed with this week! After a long series of grey and foggy days, most unusual in our part of the world, the sun broke through and the results were breathtaking. With little or no wind to shake it loose, the frost had been building for days.

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Hubby and I have been cleaning out our storage room recently, something that needs to be done from time to time. A trip to the dump turned into a sightseeing and photo taking excursion!

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Looking at the photos, it’s easy to see why we call the topping that we put on cakes frosting or icing!

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Power lines, heavy with frost, became thick ropes of white. Little wonder that power has been flickering and in some cases, going out.

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Even the surface of the snow was powdered with frost crystals. Though I didn’t see the big animal itself, those were clearly moose tracks leading in and out of the clearing above.

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Closer to town, the frost clinging to the cemetery sign gave it a whole new look. Across the road, the entrance to the park where we often go snowshoeing was even more beautiful than usual.

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Sadly, once the sun hits it, the frost doesn’t last long, but its fleeting beauty is a reminder that even winter has moments of magnificence.

One word for 2023

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For each of the past six years I’ve chosen one word to inspire or guide me in the new year as well as a scripture verse to go along with it. My past words have been Still, Grace, Inspire, Bold, Truth, and Freedom.

Little did I know when I chose Freedom as my word for 2022 what a contentious topic it would soon become here in Canada. At the beginning of January, I couldn’t possibly have imagined that less than two months later hordes of protesting truckers would close Canada/US border crossings and take control of the streets surrounding our capital buildings in Ottawa, all in the name of freedom. As I wrote at this time last year, there are really two kinds of freedom, freedom to and freedom from. The so-called Freedom Convoy was fighting for freedom from Covid-19 vaccination mandates. There is no doubt that the pandemic did, at least temporarily, curtail our freedom to travel, to gather in large groups, to celebrate special moments with those we love, and to enjoy many of the activities that we once took for granted, but in my opinion, the protesters were forgetting that with freedom comes responsibility. When I chose Freedom as my one word for 2022, it wasn’t Covid that I had in mind. I was thinking on a very personal level of freedom from trauma induced bitterness that had taken hold in my life.

When it came to choosing a new word for 2023, I considered several possibilities. When I first started thinking about this in late November, I was suffering from scanxiety. As I worried about whether or not my neuroendocrine cancer was spreading throughout my body and thought ahead to hubby’s upcoming prostate cancer surgery, I thought that perhaps Courage was the word I wanted. Once I learned the results of my most recent CT scans, however, that didn’t feel like the right word anymore. For several years I’ve considered choosing Intentional as my one word, but as I thought about that one I realized that I already live quite intentionally. I wanted a word that would give me something more to aspire to in the coming year. But what would that word be?

I thought about how good I feel at the end of a productive day, a day that has gone really well, and tried to come up with a word to describe that feeling. Surely that would be a good word for the coming year. Accomplish came to mind and I almost settled on it, but then I decided that it was too work or task oriented. I do feel great at the end of the day if I’ve accomplished a lot, but I also feel that way when we’ve spent the day hiking or paddling the kayak.

After pondering some more, I finally settled on the right word.

Contentment

According to the Collins English Dictionary, contentment is “a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction”. Perfect!

Once I’d finally settled on my word, choosing a scripture verse to go with it was easy. I knew right away that it would be Philippians 4:12b.

“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

Whether my health continues to be stable or begins to deteriorate, whether the Covid pandemic is truly over or not, whatever my circumstances are in the coming year, I want to be able to say with the apostle Paul that I have learned to be content in any and every situation. As I plan my days, I’ll consider what I need to do to end each day with that feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction and hopefully act accordingly.

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Have you ever chosen a word to inspire or guide you in a new year? What would your one word for 2023 be?

Beyond King Tut

/ edebock / 4 Comments

Our grandchildren are growing up in an entirely different world than we did. That’s evident by the many devices, unheard of when we were growing up or even when their parents were children, that are part of their everyday lives. I was reminded again today of how vastly different their life experiences are from our own.

The tomb of Tutankhamun, boy king of Egypt some 3300 years ago, was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in November 1922. It quickly became the most famous ancient Egyptian discovery of all time. In 1964-65, the first travelling exhibition of a substantial number of Tutankhamun artifacts visited six venues across Canada including the Vancouver Art Gallery. As a seventh grade student, I toured the Tutankhamun Treasures exhibit while on a school field trip.

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We saw 31 fairly small objects that had been removed from the tomb; objects like a gold dagger and sheath and gold rings and amulets found on the mummified body of the king. We were impressed. In our wildest dreams, we couldn’t have imagined the kind of multi-sensory experience that we took two grandsons (grade 6 and 8) to today. National Geographic’s Beyond KING TUT / The Immersive Experience was our Christmas gift from the boys and their parents.

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There were no artifacts on display. Instead, we wound our way through visual galleries learning about the life and times of Tutankhamun who became king of Egypt at the age of nine and ruled until his death just ten years later. Through the power of photography, we joined the archeologists and entered his tomb.

We also learned about the mummification process and ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.

In the final room, we watched a soaring 23 minute video projection that took us back in time from modern day Egypt to King Tut’s journey to the afterworld. Beyond KING TUT definitely took us beyond the experience of my childhood!

Sometimes I just have to write

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Sometimes I just have to write. I don’t know why, but something in me tells me that I need to. My fingers hover over the keyboard wondering how to begin. Sometimes the words flow and other times, my mind is blank. What could I possibly have to say that anyone would want to read? At times like those, I usually resist the urge and try to find something else to do, but this time I decided to simply start. Where this is going, I really don’t know!

Although I love to lose myself in a good novel, I’m  not a writer of fiction. I never have been. I’ve tried dabbling in it once or twice, but it clearly wasn’t my forte. Neither am I a poet. No, though nonfiction seems somehow less exciting, it’s what I do.

Scripture tells us that we’re made in the image of a creative God. As such, I believe that we all have the innate ability to be creative. I create with words. What do you create with?

I have a friend who is an avid quilter. She creates works of art with fabric and many of her quilts bring comfort to people living with cancer. (see Victoria’s Quilts Canada or Victoria’s Quilts USA) Another friend is an artist in the kitchen creating culinary masterpieces and a cousin is a songwriter. My daughter knits and crochets everything from sweaters and slippers to teddy bears and stuffed animals. Some people are artists in the traditional sense creating drawings, paintings, or sculptures. Others design and build with wood. Still others create online games and programs.

Releasing creativity, whatever form it takes, can be therapeutic. It can help people resolve issues as well as develop and manage behaviours and feelings, reduce stress, and improve self-esteem and awareness. There are things that I can’t write about, or at least I can’t publish, because they would be hurtful to people that I care deeply about or because they’re not my stories to tell. Writing about my cancer, however, especially in the early days, helped me process and better accept and understand what was happening. Some cancer centres even offer art therapy classes to their patients.

We all have gifts and passions. I’m thankful that I found mine a long time ago. Even as a child, I enjoyed writing reports for school. As a university student, I much preferred essays to exams. By the time I graduated, I knew that even though teaching was my chosen profession, writing would also be part of my future. Of course, there was no internet back then. I did a bit of freelance writing, selling a few articles to small publications, but it was retirement and the advent of blogging that really opened the door to writing for sheer enjoyment. To date, I’ve published over 1300 posts. Together they’d equal the length of an average novel!

The only problem with not knowing where this post was going is not knowing how it should end, so I’ll simply finish with a couple of quotes from science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov.

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