Family

Graduation day!

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Taking a two-year-old and a four-year-old to a university convocation might not seem like the best idea in the world but that’s what we did today. Seven and a half years, one husband and two children after she started working toward her degree, our daughter Melaina graduated from the University of Calgary today! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more well earned degree and the children were so much a part of the process that it was only fitting that they be there for Mommy’s big moment.

All dressed up and ready to go!

Melaina graduated from high school in 2001 and headed off to college to begin a two year legal assistant program. By early in her second year, she was already fairly certain that she didn’t want to spend her entire life at that career but Melaina isn’t a quitter. She finishes what she starts so finish she did. After graduation she went to work for the Merchant Law Group. At nineteen years of age with little life experience behind her, she found herself handling difficult immigration and residential school cases that she didn’t feel ready to deal with. In January 2005, after a year and a half on the job, she chose to cut back to 30 hours a week at the office and entered university part time.

That fall she became a full time student again. In December of 2006, during her Christmas break from school, she and Aaron were married. Full time studies came to an end when Drew was born in the spring of 2008. In fact, she had to have her final exams deferred when he arrived a little earlier than expected! She wrote them when he was just a week old.

Melaina had planned on graduating that spring but exhaustion brought on by her pregnancy and what was later determined to be an enzyme deficiency had made it impossible for her to carry a full course load that year. When Drew was born she was still a few courses short. Four years later, by taking a night course here and an online course there, she finally completed all the requirements for her degree and today was a day to celebrate!

Melaina’s graduation comes 37 years, almost to the day, since my own. When the graduating class rose to recite their pledge today, all past UofC graduates in attendance were invited to stand and recite it with them. As I did, I thought of the many papers I’d edited for her along the way. Though hers is a Bachelor of Arts and mine a Bachelor of Education, we both majored in English.

Watching one’s child graduate is always a moment of pride but today I was proud of Melaina for more than hanging in there and completing her degree while raising her children. I was also incredibly proud of her for the job that she’s doing with those children. Though today’s program lasted almost two and a half hours, their behaviour was fantastic!

Melaina has no immediate plans for the degree that she’s finally completed. She works as a part time administrative assistant for her church, a job that allows her to work from home. Though she’s a gifted administrator, being Mom is her first priority these days.

  

This morning when Melaina was telling Drew about what we’d be doing today, he told her that someday Mommy, Daddy, Gram and Grandpa would come to his graduation too. I hope so Drew, I really hope so!

Chrissy, child of my heart

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I gave birth to three of our children, one we adopted at birth and one is the child of my heart. It was a spring day in 2002, when Christina came to Richard at school and asked if she could come live with us. We talked about it, prayed about it and decided that it was a perfect fit. Our youngest, Nathan, was about to finish high school and head off to college but I wasn’t ready for an empty nest. Ours was a home that needed a child and Christina was a child who needed a home.

Chrissy hadn’t seen or heard from her father since she was a preschooler. With her mother and younger brother, she’d spent her childhood moving from place to place as her mother moved in and out of one relationship after another. When it became obvious that that was about to happen again, Chrissy decided that this time she simply couldn’t go. She had recently become a Christian, had made a new circle of supportive friends that included our daughter, was involved in a youth group and wanted to finish high school in one place.

Though we reminded her that in spite of the fact that their relationship was in tatters at the time, she had only one mother who’s place we would never be able to fill, we welcomed her into our home and took on the role of surrogate parents. Like any parent/teen relationship, ours had its ups and downs, its good times and its bad but we bonded and became family.

There were funny moments, of course, but one stands out as being the most hilarious. Shortly after moving in with us, Christina accompanied Richard and I on a trip to Vancouver to meet my parents and our oldest son, Matt. My parents immediately accepted her as another grandchild. Rather than buying gifts at Christmastime, it was their habit to send each of their grandchildren a cheque. When December rolled around and it was time to write the cheques, my father realized that he didn’t know Chrissy’s last name. He asked Matt who couldn’t remember either. He, in turn, volunteered to phone our daugher, Melaina, at college to ask her. When Melaina got off the phone, her roommate (now her sister-in-law) asked who she’d been talking to. “That was my brother,” she replied. “He needed to know my sister’s last name.” It wasn’t until she realized that her roommate was looking at her quite oddly that she realized how strange that sounded! She had to go on to explain that our family really wasn’t as dysfunctional as that made us sound!

Eventually, Chrissy went off to college too and there she met a fine young man. We were delighted when she and Buck married and lived for a time in Sedgewick. They even moved into our house and took care of it for us for the year that we lived in Japan. Now they live in Winnipeg and have a darling 21-month-old daughter who calls us Gram and Grandpa.

Ten years have passed since Chrissy visited Richard’s classroom in search of a stable Christian home. How fitting that I should spend this Mother’s Day here in her home!

Chrissy, child of my heart

 

The job jar

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I’ve taken on the daunting task of cleaning and reorganizing our basement storage room this week. It doesn’t happen very often and when it does, I’m always reminded how abundantly blessed we are. There are so many families in this world who live in less space than that 180 square foot storage room and who, even in their wildest dreams, couldn’t imagine owning enough stuff to fill it!

While I was down there this evening sorting through everything from gift wrap to sleeping bags and luggage, I was thinking that it was time to write another blog post and wondering what it should be about. Suddenly, there it was… the job jar! Why in the world had I ever kept that thing? Obviously, it must have been so that I could blog about it! My kids are definitely going to roll their eyes when they see this one!

The job jar came into existence in 1992. That spring, Matthew was 12, Melaina 8 and Nathan 7. Though being a mom was always my first priority, I’d been back in the classroom teaching approximately half time for the three years since Nathan had entered kindergarten. As plans were being made for the following school year, I was offered a significant increase in teaching time. If I accepted, I’d be working almost full time. When I thought about all the lesson planning, marking and reporting that would be involved, I wasn’t sure how I’d balance that with the demands of a busy family. Richard and I talked it over, decided that I should accept the position and then called a family meeting.

Family meetings weren’t part of our normal routine so the kids knew that something big was up. We gave them a choice. Since I wasn’t going to have time to do everything that I’d been doing around the house, we could either spend some of the extra money that I’d be earning to hire a housekeeper or we could all chip in and do the housework together, save the money and spend it on a trip to Disneyland the following summer. The vote was unanimous; Disneyland, of course!

We decided that we’d clean house every Saturday morning. The next question was how to divide the labour to ensure that everything got done reasonably well and that no one got stuck doing the same mundane tasks week after week. The job jar was Nathan’s idea. Even at seven, he was a creative thinker and a problem solver. Put the jobs you want us to do in a jar, he suggested, and we’ll do whichever ones we pull out.

That’s exactly what we did. Since there were five of us, ten jobs went into the jar; five easier ones and five more challenging ones. Every Saturday morning, everyone pulled one from each category out of the jar and got to work. The only rule was that the chores had to be completed by noon. Of course there were times when we had to make exceptions because someone had hockey or another activity that morning.

For the system to work, Richard and I also had to be willing to adjust our standards. We didn’t put up with sloppy work but obviously we couldn’t expect a 7 or 8 year old to do the same job we might do. If the bathroom didn’t get cleaned quite as thoroughly when it was a child’s turn, that was okay. The next time one of us might pull that job. An added benefit was the fact that all three of our children learned how to keep house at an early age!

So what were the jobs that went into the old Mason jar? The easier jobs included

  • Dust the livingroom
  • Clean the small bathroom (actually a half bathroom)
  • Tidy the basement playroom and empty the garbage cans
  • Wipe the walls in the porch, kitchen, livingroom, hall and bathrooms (just fingerprints and scuff marks)
  • Wash the breakfast dishes
The more difficult tasks were
  • Vacuum the livingroom, hall and bedrooms
  • Clean the main bathroom
  • Tidy the porch and sweep the kitchen, porch and stairs
  • Wash the kitchen floor, the porch and the stairs
  • Sweep and wash the bathroom floors

Things went smoothly and there were very few complaints until one point when we all began to notice that Melaina, an early riser, was doing the same jobs every Saturday. At first, we were proud of her for getting up and getting starting on her chores while the rest of us were still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes but we weren’t quite so happy when we realized that she was going through the job jar and picking out the chores she liked best!  All in all, though, the venture was a huge success.

The summer of 1993 became much more than just a trip to Disneyland. We started by driving out to Vancouver for my brother’s wedding on the 3rd of July. Following that, a six week road trip with the tent trailer in tow took us down the Pacific coast all the way to San Diego where we made a day trip across the Mexican border to Tijuana, then across the desert to Pheonix, Arizona, north to the Grand Canyon, and eventually all the way back to Alberta. In addition to Disneyland, we toured Universal Studios and the San Diego zoo, walked the streets of Hollywood and the beaches of the Oregon Coast, hiked the red rock canyons of Utah and experienced so much more!

And what happened to the job jar when the journey was done? By that time, it had become such a part of our family routine that regardless of how many hours I taught it continued in use until the kids left home! Only then did it find it’s way to the storage room shelf!

Nate’s date

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Tonight will be our final performance of The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon but unless something very unusual happens, last night’s will be the most memorable one for me. That’s because of who was in the audience.

Because this is small town theatre, we always know many of the people who come to watch but for Richard and I, rarely are they family. Last night was different. Our youngest son drove home from the city, two hours each way, to see us onstage. That would be memorable in itself but it was who he chose to take as his date that made the evening special.

For several summers back when he was still in school, Nate did mowing and other yard work for one of our local seniors. Mary would always have a cold can of pop waiting for him when he finished working and they would sit and chat. Out of that grew an unusual friendship that has stood the test of time. Now well into her nineties and still living alone in her own home, Mary always asks about “her boy” when she sees me. Though Nathan doesn’t get home very often any more, when he does he usually stops by to see her and once in awhile he phones her just to chat. Imagine her delight when he got in touch to see if she’d be his date for last night’s dinner theatre! Like any good date would, he took flowers when he went to pick her up and when I stopped by their table after the performance, she was glowing!

Can you blame me for being a proud mom?

Sometimes I need an ocean

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When life gets stressful, as it sometimes does, what I really want to do is walk by the ocean and be soothed by the sound of the surf. That’s probably because, as a child, I could hear the rhythm of the waves from my bed as I drifted off to sleep.

The past week has been a stressful one; a week of worrying about my parents. Dad hasn’t been well. That resulted in both parents literally sleeping through one entire day… no food, no water, no medication! If my sister hadn’t phoned that evening, who knows what might have happened?

Recognizing the need for a better emergency plan, my sis and I have spent the week making phone calls, gathering information, asking questions we’d rather not have to ask. Dad is Mom‘s primary caregiver and we’re a province away. What do we do if something happens to him? Is it any wonder that I feel like I need an ocean to walk by?

Alas, there are no oceans here on the Alberta prairie but as I mentioned in my last post, whenever I have the opportunity to walk by the sea I bring home all sorts of bits and pieces… shells, driftwood, sea glass. Many favourite pieces have found their way into our main bathroom. There’s a giant pink conch shell bought for $1 on a beach road in the Bahamas in 1977. We had just found out that I was pregnant with our first child. There’s a beautiful abalone shell, given to my husband by a ranger at a campground on the California coast in 1993. Then there are all the pieces that I’ve picked up over the years. Some are quite ordinary… oyster, clam and mussel shells. Others are special… moon snails treasured since childhood, a razor clam from the PEI beach where my grandfather probably played as a child, a tiny shell from our first visit to Japan, beautiful pieces of sea glass from Saipan and most recently, a shell from Costa Rica.

   


I may not be able to walk by the ocean and let the sound of the surf wash away my troubles but at least I can retreat to the bathroom and relax in a warm tub surrounded by my seaside treasures. Occasionally, a glass of wine even goes with me!

What a difference a year can make!

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In January of last year, our two-year-old grandson, Drew, was diagnosed with a severe phonological disorder. His speech was virtually unintelligible. Over the past year, Drew and his Mommy, our daughter Melaina, have worked very hard and Drew has had some speech therapy. The results have been astounding! By summertime, he had been upgraded from “severe” to “moderate” and at his latest speech assessment in late January, he was deemed to be within the normal range of speech development for a child of his age! Wow! What a difference a year can make!

Melaina delights in sharing some of Drew’s cutest conversations. Here’s a recent one she overheard between him and his 21-month-old sister as they headed downstairs to their bedroom:

Best Friends

Drew: Come on, Jami. We play soccer ours room.
Jami: Ok!
Drew: We best friends! Right, Jami?
Jami: Uh huh!

Doesn’t that just bless your heart? Here’s another one that tickled my funny bone:

Mommy: Drew, did you colour on your sister?
Drew: Yes.
Mommy: Why?!
Drew: Because! Her get in way of paper I colouring!

And here’s one more from yesterday:

Drew: Mommy, we go buy some new toys?
Mommy: No, we’re not going to buy new toys today.
Drew: Yes! Mine’s are old and strange!

While it warms our heart to be able to carry on a conversation with Drew and life is so much easier for him now that he can make his thoughts and feelings known, his challenges are not over yet. He still struggles with the sounds that are typically difficult for three-year-olds but, unlike his peers, these mispronunciations won’t simply correct themselves over time. Melaina and Aaron will have to continue working with him, carefully teaching him how to make each sound correctly.

They’ve also been warned that children with speech delays like Drew’s typically have difficulty learning to read. That was difficult news to digest for parents who are avid readers but Melaina isn’t one to take something like that lying down. In fact, she was already doing things that would give him a head start toward learning to read before she was even given this news; taking the children to an early literacy program at their local library and reading to them daily. She’d also started teaching Drew to recognize and print the capital letters. Now, three months short of his fourth birthday, he knows all the upper and lower case letters and is beginning to learn the sounds that each one makes. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s reading before he goes to school!

Ta da!

Photos by Melaina Graham

Alzheimer’s is robbing me of my mother

/ edebock / 16 Comments

I originally started this blog to chronicle our travels when we moved to Japan to teach English for a year. For the past several years, our family has also been on a journey of a very different kind as we’ve watched my mother gradually spiral downward and disappear into the depths of Alzheimer’s disease but I haven’t felt at liberty to blog about it until now. Until recently, my father, who is a very private person and also Mom’s primary caregiver, has been one of my most faithful readers. Out of respect for him, I didn’t share our journey publicly but now that his very old computer has died and he’s discontinued his internet service, I feel free to write about it.

I still remember the summer visit several years ago when I first had an inkling that something was wrong. I mentioned one of Mom’s grandchildren and she had no idea who I was talking about. Her question, “Who’s Jessica?” was for me one of those life changing moments when my entire world seemed to shift on its axis. I lay awake at night wondering what the future would hold and experiencing for the first time a deep sense of anxiety that has become more and more familiar to me.

Over the ensuing years, the mother that I grew up with has disappeared and parent has gradually become child. It has been a fairly slow decline. Many times, Mom would seem to slip very noticeably and then plateau for a time giving us a chance to get used to the changes before more drastic ones surfaced. Unfortunately, Dad seemed to be in denial for the longest time making it impossible for us to discuss the situation with him or to be of much help. It’s only in the last year that Mom’s condition has been clearly identified as Alzheimer’s disease and that we’ve been able to talk about it openly. The situation is made worse by the fact that my sister, my younger brother and I live in Alberta while Mom and Dad are here in Vancouver. Only our older brother, mentally handicapped and himself living in care, and our oldest son Matthew are here at the coast. We really can’t saddle Matthew, in his second year of a law career, renovating a house and parenting two very young children with the responsibility of watching out for his elderly grandparents. He and Robin visit as often as they can and do their best to keep us informed of any changes or problems that they notice.

The blessing in all of this, if there is such a thing, is the fact that Mom’s decline didn’t begin until she was over 80. Dad retired at 59 and they spent the next two decades following their dreams and travelling the world. They visited over 60 countries spending more than a year in Europe and 9 months in Australia. (I come by my gypsy blood honestly!) They took their last big trip 8 years ago when they flew to the Dominican Republic to celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary.

For the past few years, it’s been a chore to get Mom to leave their apartment. Now, at 89 years old, she is incontinent, legally blind and confined to a wheelchair. Though these infirmities are fairly recent developments, in Mom’s mind she’s suffered from them for most of her life and she’s constantly coming up with fanciful explanations that are in no way grounded in reality. Last night she told us that people are trying to poison her with peanut butter which has always been a favourite of hers! Sometimes all we can do is laugh. It’s either that or cry. She’s clearly in the sixth of the seven clinical stages of Alzheimer’s and needs constant care and supervision.

After 63 years of marriage, Dad refuses to allow them to be separated and insists on caring for her himself. He’s clearly wearing out and we don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to keep this up but he’s of sound mind and has the right to live life the way he chooses. There are those who suggest that we, as a family, should try to force him to put Mom into care but we are firm believers in the fifth commandment and we know of no other way to honour our parents than to allow them to live out their final years the way they want to while being as supportive as we can given our own circumstances.

This, of course, means more frequent visits. This is our third trip to Vancouver this year and each of my siblings has also been here. When we’re here, we thoroughly clean the apartment, a job that Dad has a hard time keeping up with these days, and try to provide opportunities for him to get out and have a break. This week, he even went on a forest adventure with great grandson, Sam!

Having Matt, Robin, Sam and little Nate here in Vancouver is indeed a blessing at this time in our lives. Visits to Vancouver would be much more difficult if we didn’t have them to stay with some of the time and, of course, grandchildren provide such wonderful stress relief!

Mom with her youngest great grandchild, Nate, in March 2011

Focus, Confidence, Hi-Ya!

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Wikipedia defines writer’s block as a condition in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The writer may be greatly distracted and feel he or she may have something that needs to be done beforehand, it goes on to explain.

That would be exactly why I haven’t blogged much lately! Not only have I been busy with all the usual Christmas preparations… shopping, wrapping, baking, and decorating… but I took on a bit too much at the church finding myself responsible for three events in a ten day period! Individually, none of them was too much to handle but three coming in such a short period of time at an already busy time of year created a lot of stress. When I flipped the calendar page over to December, I suddenly found myself waking up at odd hours and lying in bed worrying about details that still needed to be taken care of. More than once, I was at the kitchen table writing lists at 3:30 in the morning! As is so often the case, things looked much better in the light of day. Others stepped in to help and everything went without a hitch. Now I’m free to relax and enjoy the Christmas season.

One of the best things about Christmas is time with family. That started this week with a pre Christmas trip to Calgary to visit our daughter, Melaina, her husband, Aaron, and our grandchildren, Drew and Jami-Lee. On our way home today, we stopped in Red Deer for lunch with Richard’s sister, Sue, and some of her family. As her five-year-old grandson, Kale, told us about his tae kwon do lessons and pantomimed breaking a board, he repeated the mantra Focus, Confidence, Hi-Ya!

I couldn’t help thinking that that’s how I should approach life’s challenges! I’d add one crucial element, however. So, in the coming year, instead of lying awake and worrying when life gets stressful I plan to face my challenges with

Focus, Prayer, Confidence and a mighty Hi-Ya!

Thanks, Kale!

What influences your sense of self-worth?

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This post has been brewing for awhile. In fact, I started it once, discarded it and now I’m starting it again. Richard and I are doing a weekly Bible study with two other couples using Charles F. Stanley’s How to Reach Your Full Potential for God. One of last week’s questions resulted in some serious self examination.

What influences your sense of self-worth?

The study guide offered the following list of possible responses:

  • ___  entertainment
  • ___  relationships
  • ___  education
  • ___  hobbies
  • ___  goals
  • ___  possessions
  • ___  employment
  • ___  appearance
  • ___  service
  • ___  God
  • ___  other: ______________

I don’t have a problem with low self-esteem. In fact, I feel pretty darn good about myself. Many factors on this list contribute to that: healthy, affirming relationships; hobbies like writing and drama; and of course, my relationship with God, to name just a few.

At the bottom of the list, my “other” is my children. I am so proud of the fine young adults that they’ve become and it irks me when people say “You’re so lucky that your kids turned out so well”. I have news for you, folks! It isn’t luck! Parenting well is hard work. I know that there are no guarantees and even some of the best parents have troubled kids but I believe that I (we) did a great job and yes, knowing that definitely adds to my feelings of self-worth.

So why is it that something as superficial as appearance influences my sense of self-worth so strongly? The next question in the study guide asked “In what areas of life are you most likely to compare yourself to others?” and I had to admit to myself that for me it was appearance. I know that this is true of women in general but why? This question has led to a lot of soul searching on my part.

Donloree onstage

One of my favourite bloggers is figure competitor, Donloree Hoffman of Bikini or Bust. As I’ve followed her blog for the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I, too, am a figure competitor. Oh, I’ll never stand onstage in a spray tan and a bespangled bikini (too many stretch marks and scars from multiple abdominal surgeries make that an impossibility) but I compete with other women all the time. I’ve come to the realization that it’s not my hair, my make-up or my clothes that I look at when I’m comparing myself to others; it’s my body, my physique. I don’t look at a healthy, fit looking woman and think ‘I wish I looked like her’. In fact, I can truly appreciate and admire a well toned body. No, it’s the overweight, out of shape women that make me feel like a winner! How pathetic is that? I’m absolutely certain that this attitude doesn’t please my God, the one who created each one of us and who loves us just the way we are.

Twiggy

But why do I feel this way? I think there are many reasons. Our culture, of course, teaches young girls and women to value physical beauty above even good health. I grew up in the age of Twiggy, the emaciated looking fashion model of the 1960s. She became an instant sensation and suddenly, skinny was beautiful. In those days, my mom was overweight. She wasn’t obese but she definitely carried a few more pounds than she should have. “Just wait until you’ve had babies,” she’d tell me. “You’ll look like this too.” No, never, I vowed to myself! My father, who exercised regularly, often gave her a hard time about her weight. Is it any wonder that I grew up thinking that thin equalled beautiful? Then came marriage to a porn addict. Obviously I had to compete physically, or at least that’s what I told myself. Those are all things of the distant past now, but clearly they had a profound impact and helped shape who I am today.

So, what does all this soul searching and self-evaluation mean? Am I going to stop striving toward a better physical body? Absolutely not! There are many very good reasons to continue eating clean and exercising regularly. I believe that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). God has blessed me with a healthy body and I plan to do the best I can to keep it that way. I hope to live for another 30 years or more and I want them to be good years filled with action and adventure. Staying physically fit has so many benefits. No, that’s not something I’m about to change. I feel good and I like what I see in the mirror!  What I do hope to change is my attitude. From now on, I want to look at other women, even those who are obese and those who haven’t taken care of themselves, with compassion. I want to see the beauty that God sees in them and I don’t want my sense of self-worth to depend on them any longer.

So, now that I’ve bared my soul, let me ask what influences your sense of self-worth?

Adventures with Sam

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There are so many fun things that you can do with a two year old; things that might otherwise look quite silly for a woman of mature vintage. Sliding down playground slides, shuffling through coloured leaves, bouncing on a bouncy log across a forest path and crouching low to examine a grasshopper or a slug are just part of the fun when you’re on an adventure with Sam.

When harvest finished early this fall, we decided to make an unplanned trip to Vancouver to see the new house that Matt and Robin recently moved into. Built in the early 60’s, the house needed quite a bit of attention. Renovating with a two year old and an eight month old underfoot is an enormous challenge so entertaining the children has been one of the ways we’ve been able to help out a bit. That’s definitely not a hardship for this Gram and Grandpa!

Living on Vancouver’s North Shore, one is never far from nature. In fact, the forest is just a block and a half away from the new house so walks in the woods, along with throwing stones in the creek, have been great fun. There’s also a playground just across the street.

The weather has been much better than we expected which has made going on adventures truly enjoyable. One day was much too wet, however, so we visited an indoor playground at one of the malls.

On Saturday, the whole family went off on an adventure to the Pumpkin Patch at the local elementary school. Sam and Nate wore matching dinosaur costumes made by Mom.

We’re heading for home tomorrow so we went on our final adventure this morning; mini golf. As the son and grandson of avid golfers, Sam has been introduced to the game at a very early age. He even has his very own putter!

We’re going to miss our boys when we leave but we’ll be back and ready for more adventures at Christmas time!