Today’s journal: a surprise for you (and my whole family) as we add a new love bug to our lives! Enjoy…Dot Calm. Dottie? Dolly? Oh, I don’t know…! I DO know you have to watch this one today – because there are too many pictures to be missed.
You can find it on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Just a thought… People with dementia may have a great deal to teach the rest of humankind. If we make the venture one of genuine and open engagement, we will learn a great deal about ourselves. [Professor Tom Kitwood]
You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
First off, happy Vernal Equinox! It’s the first day of spring and may it arrive for you, not just in name, sooner than later.
It’s been almost three months now since my trip to Kelowna in the BC interior, an hour’s flight from here on Vancouver Island, to move my soon-to-be 90-year-old dad from his longtime independent living seniors’ residence to one with more assistance. He stayed there all of two nights and we all found that he was just not mentally or physically equipped to live there without my sister sleeping on a nearby cot. So, despite their warmest welcome, we had to move Dad out again.
But this is where things got better: he moved into that same sister Leslie’s busy household, has his own room, thanks to Veterans’ Affairs is in the midst of getting everything he needs to live there and, of course, Leslie’s entire family – busy husband, equally busy teens, three dogs and, yes, even the cat – have all made him a part of the family. He’s gained weight and strength, and just having a Blue Jays game on repeat on the TV keeps him happy. Plus, it keeps Leslie from losing her mind when that all-too-tiny CTV News wheel re-peat-peat-peat-peat-peats.
To Dad, you see, every time he sees the game, it’s new to him. His short- and mid-term memory is almost completely gone. Although he remembers family, I had not even gotten off the plane coming home from that last trip when one sister told me he didn’t know I’d visited or helped him move. Leslie takes him to see his girlfriend and by the time he’s home he says she wasn’t there. By the end of the day, as well as being physically spent, Leslie is mentally exhausted from going along with his questions and stories.
And this former pilot is getting out of bed about three times nightly, asking what time he’s up in the morning for his flight, where his kit bag is, and so on. He asks for mom, who passed away 11 years ago. If we thought about it, it would break our hearts, but we’re pretty much ready for whatever comes.
At this point, thanks to the sisters, Dad is getting all the assistance the system allows. That’s almost half the job: the paperwork, the phone calls, the persistence and, of course, above all, the patience. He knows he’s surrounded by love, gets lots of his favourite food, frequent naps and, of course, the Blue Jays.
So today in my dad’s honour and for everyone who is or loves a senior, I’d like to share this wonderful sweet and funny story, author unknown. It goes like this:
The pilot of an Airbus A380 is on his way across the Atlantic. He’s flying consistently at 800 km/h at 30,000 feet when suddenly a Eurofighter with a Tempo Mach 2 appears.
The pilot of the fighter jet slows down, flies alongside the Airbus and greets the pilot of the passenger plane by radio: “Airbus! Boring flight, isn’t it? Now have a look here!”
With that he rolls his jet on its back, accelerates, breaks through the sound barrier, rises rapidly to a dizzying height, and then swoops down almost to sea level in a breathtaking dive. He loops back next to the Airbus and asks: “Well, how was that?”
The Airbus pilot answers: “Very impressive. But watch this.”
The jet pilot watches the Airbus…but…nothing happens. It continues to fly straight at the same speed. After 15 minutes, the Airbus pilot radios, “Well, how was that?”
Confused, the jet pilot responds, “What did you do?”
The Airbus pilot laughs and says, “I got up, stretched my legs, walked to the back of the aircraft to use the lavatory, then got a cup of coffee and a chocolate pastry.”
The moral of the story is this: When you’re young, speed and adrenalin seem to be great. But as you get older and wiser, you learn that comfort and peace are more important. This is called S.O.S.: Slower, Older and Smarter.
I love that. Sit back, relax and don’t forget to stretch your legs, enjoy the sweetness of life and be sure to take in that view.
Have a lovely week. Please let me bring peace to your nighttime with Drift Sleep stories, available for free wherever you download podcasts, and I’ll have a new Episode 12 podcast with Lisa Brandt on Gracefully and Frankly this week. We’re hearing it’s a new Thursday MUST for thousands of listeners. And we’re grateful to all.
Just a thought… You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. [Marcus Aurelius]
You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Welcome in, my bleary-eyed friend. Two things people are talking about today: the Oscars, which I will have watched after writing this (and we’ll cover a few aspects of the show later this week in the Gracefully and Frankly podcast) and, of course, the second thing is the time.
I used to hate the Monday after we put our clocks ahead with the heat of a thousand suns. When you get up in the middle of the night, that hour makes a lot of difference, and my body clock would take a week to adjust. That being said, I’m not going to complain about it, because no one has asked me if we should move our clocks or not. And there are enough opinions out there on changing the time that you don’t need mine.
But I do want to talk about the concept of time. On Facebook Saturday I posted this picture.
It is about NOW, obviously, and how it is the only time we have.
I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately, especially the time spent away and the time I wasted, worrying about whether my friends were having a good time. And in the days since Lisa Brandt and I discussed this very thing, how ensuring everyone in the room or even, say, the lineup at the grocery store is not being bothered by anything, especially anything related to what I might be doing, is NOT my responsibility, not my superpower… I can’t stop thinking about it.
It’s a really eye-opening concept, and shakes up what those of us who grew up in either volatile or uncertain surroundings have ingrained in our DNA. Am I doing enough to make sure my mom isn’t upset? What was that sigh about? Is she mad I’m reading while she’s vacuuming? If I take too long finding my store discount app on my phone, is the guy behind me going to be angry? Is everyone at the dinner party okay with the music, the presentation, the meal?
See, this is why some people are easy, gracious hosts who regularly have guests over. I am not that person and I think it’s cost me some possible friendships here on the island. One couple inadvertently intimidated me so much with their high-end coffee maker (and I’m talking really high-end, like new-car-price high-end) and their particular wine tastes that I couldn’t bear to have them over to reciprocate their two invitations and risk not measuring up.
I know how ridiculous that sounds. So I ask myself, and you: at what age do we decide that it just doesn’t matter? It’s not our responsibility? To shake off the fear of not fitting in, meeting a certain standard or keeping the peace in uncertain surroundings?
I don’t know. It’s exhausting. But that’s been my journey this past week, with pieces of wisdom driving home that message almost daily in my inbox.
Mistakenly thinking I have that superpower of making everyone happy all the time has cost me precious time, and the chance to really make memories.
Now, on the other hand, my job as emcee, hosting a day-long event as I did last Thursday for a large corporate group in Victoria, BC, is exactly the thing I’m saying I should let go of: I am hired to make sure that everyone is having a good time. But it’s the difference between me taking responsibility if the buffet isn’t good (and it was) and just handling my own job: what I say, how I deal with screw-ups big and small in the moment.
Have I spent the last three or four days thinking of things I could have done better at the event? Of course. If you don’t, you don’t improve. You welcome feedback, which I’m happy to say has been 100% positive. You use it as fuel to be better. But unlike a recorded show where you can go back and edit, and believe me, occasionally Lisa or I will say, “Uh, yeah, that may have been over the line; let’s take it out,” it was live and in the moment, and nothing that happened can be changed.
It’s why all we have is NOW. We move forward, knowing it’s never too late to change for the better. We can alter our opinions, growing as compassionate and intelligent humans, and learning from our mistakes. And, most of all, we can remember the words of the stoic Marcus Aurelius: “When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love….”
Sure beats hating that the clocks went ahead, doesn’t it?
Have a good week – and there’s a brand new Drift story for you tomorrow. It’s Raggedy Ann Learns a Lesson and I think you’ll like it. And Episode 11 of Gracefully and Frankly drops on Thursday. Grab a cuppa and we’ll talk to you then.
Just a thought… No matter how hard you plan and prepare, things can still go wrong. [Lewis Howe]
You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
And, I’m home again. Nearly four weeks to the day since flying out of Victoria to Vancouver and then on to Maui, I’ve come to the conclusion that in the 21st century, when everything was supposed to be easier, travel is just getting more difficult.
Of course, there will always be challenges like the weather: that Toronto storm last weekend meant my friend Allan, who came with me from Hawaii for a few days together in Vancouver, did not leave at 4 pm Saturday to go home, but at 4 am Sunday, poor soul. Here he is in a much more awake state!
And truly, with his huge heart, having been there for us in good times and bad – helping plan a wedding and a funeral within two years, for starters – Allan IS the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow.
But it just seems as if the airlines are no longer equipped to handle the loads, figuratively and literally. My sister Leslie, seen here in a picture with Allan, found that out firsthand.
When she was travelling with me, she took a few days to go to her former home on the big island of Hawaii. Rain soaked most of that sentimental journey, but her rainbow came when she switched flights to come back to Maui direct and it cost her eight dollars. Yes, eight dollars US, but she also got to bring two checked bags free on Southwest. They had an awful December with multiple problems, but how do they reward people for coming back? By earning their loyalty again.
But when Leslie flew from Maui to Vancouver on Air Canada, her flight was delayed getting off the island, so she missed her connector to get her home to Kelowna. We knew that was going to happen, so we were on the phone for two hours waiting for customer support to get her on the later connecting flight the next morning. And it was a good thing we did: the lovely guy named Max who helped us said it was the very last seat on the plane. Oh, I feel so sorry for the front line workers with these airlines.
Sounds like a great save, right? Well, until it wasn’t. Leslie arrived in Kelowna, but thanks to a borrowed Apple AirTag (those GPS gadgets you tuck into your suitcase to locate it when it goes AWOL) she knew her bags were still in Vancouver. And Air Canada knew, too. But did she get a text telling her that? Nope.
She and her husband waited for two hours at the airport while their daughter walked home in a snowstorm, their son missed an appointment, and her husband fumed about missing deliveries he was supposed to make. The reason they’d left her luggage in Vancouver was because they had exceeded their weight limits and so they flew it into Kelowna the next day, where it sat at the airport for another day while they tried to find someone to get it to her house.
I’m sorry – it’s just a lot. Take my podcast partner Lisa.
She missed her bus home to London, Ontario after a brutally long travel day, thanks to a screw-up on the part of the shuttle service (hear about it in Episode 9 of Gracefully and Frankly). Allan endured a 12-hour delay; Leslie’s luggage was purposely left behind and she wasn’t notified. I mean, travel is hard these days. Add to it the fact that almost no one on our flights was wearing a mask, and you’re risking adding illness to insult, if you will. Interestingly, our friend Anita, the most zen of us all, managed to fly home smoothly (not counting the five-hour layover in Calgary she and Lisa shared). With plenty of laughs, no doubt, despite it all.
I am not complaining, just observing. I know I’m lucky to have travelled; we all are. It’s just not a joy anymore. No matter what you pay or how you plan.
Except for a brutal performance by the hockey team we paid through the nose to see (perhaps why we ended up in the nosebleeds, Rob, Colin and I), I could not have asked for a better ending to a gentle vacation.
Yes, Saturday marked our grandson’s first NHL game and he was beyond excited; the ticket and weekend adventure were our Christmas gift to him and his tears with the humiliating 4-1 loss officially christened him a Leafs’ fan.
Rogers Arena was packed with them Saturday night and the excitement and joy of being there almost erased my fury at having an entire cup of cola dumped from the row above, soaking my purse, Colin’s “First Game” certificate and a Canucks toque given him by a local friend. I worked hard at being in the moment and getting shots like this.
After holding him as he cried softly on our way out of the row (Colin, not Rob), he was back to his beautiful cheery self that evening…
…and took away only good memories. That’s what we’re here for, after all, right?
Thanks for sharing our adventures and, yes, it is good to be home. We have a family trip booked (both our grandkids, their parents, plus Rob and me) in two weeks, so I’m not rushing to unpack just to fill the suitcase again. But this is what “reWirement” is about for me. Luckily, though, it’s just a drive this time. No airlines are involved for now – that’ll be April when I come to Ottawa for an event.
I’ll be my usual optimistic self and searching for the bright side, as in this picture Allan took NOT on a panoramic setting; it’s what the beach that has such precious memories looked like.
And I’ll try to hope for the best. I may be ready to fly again by then…or I’ll just climb back into my tree until my sanity returns. Don’t miss this Thursday’s Episode 10 of Gracefully & Frankly, where we’ll talk about what we do with our loved ones’ ashes, why other people can be the worst when you just want to have a good time, and so much more. Join us and find out why we just surpassed 10,000 downloads. It’s easy to listen and we promise you’ll be glad you spent half an hour with us over coffee, tea or whatever you enjoy with good friends.
Talk to you again on Monday!
