When God waves

 

Last week I went for my 20 week ultrasound. I call it, "The big ultrasound." Days and weeks leading up to this appointment I was a wreck. A wreck because you see just two years ago - this was the ultrasound that revealed to my husband and I that our little girl would not make it to term. She made it to 24 weeks and rested in the arms of Jesus. You see our precious one developed a rare genetic abnormality right in the midst of the pandemic. I wrote about our journey here. 

I walked into the appointment and was so glad to be met by a friendly ultrasound tech. She could immediately see the fear in my eyes and asked, "Everything okay?" I muttered under my breath, "Sure, all is well." We spoke about a wide range of things - from her children to me changing my major in college 4 times to food in Kenya. All the while I kept glancing at the screen but not wanting to ask too much. Under batted breath I gently asked, "Am I able to hear the heartbeat?" She immediately turned the volume on and there it was - the glorious sounds of a beating heart in-utero. She then went on to show me the legs, the lungs and then right at that moment the baby moved their arm right to their mouth and then back again which I am sure was a mini wave. I smiled. I knew this was God's way of reminding me that He is a restorer. He had breathed life into my lungs again even after experiencing pregnancy loss.

Rest in His promises for your life that are Yes and amen. He does not sleep nor slumber on those He loves. He will restore what the enemy has taken. 

xoxox 

Penny 

The Dishes will still be there, mama

 

Today after school my beautiful 6 year old boy kept walking up and down the kitchen where he would peep and ask, "Are you almost done mummy?" "Are you able to play with me basketball?" "Ten more minutes." I replied.  This became another ten more minutes when it was at that point I heard him downstairs bouncing the ball and shooting hoops alone. I stopped. I looked up from the dishes. I looked around at the dinner sizzling. Dried my hands and walked downstairs. "You ready to get beat?" His beautiful eyes lit up in between his missing front-teeth smile. "Lets gooo" he shouted. It was then that I knew the dishes will still be there. 

The dishes will still be there when our precious babes will have long left the nest. 

The dishes will still be there when all we have left is memories of mismatched socks lining the hall, incessant calls of, "look at this trick," or "can I help?"

The dishes will still be there the night we return from dinner out celebrating their high school and university graduations. 

The dishes will still be there when all I have to wash are the dishes my husband and I have used for dinner 

So dust if you must mama, but these precious moments?  will be gone even faster than the dishes will dry. 

Sending you love and warmth even amidst the chaos, the mess and the long days of these early years. 

xoxox Penny

Why I have started serving my family using the fine china

 

Many homes growing up had a cabinet full of dishes, utensils and all paraphernalia of "fine china." In our home we called it the "wall unit." Most of the items in the wall unit were reserved for when guests were coming etc - basically a big deal type of meal. I have however over the past couple of weeks decided I will not wait. I will not wait for "the guests" to show up. I will not wait for the special holiday to whip out the fine china. I will not wait for the china to gather dust in the cabinet and the glasses to sit pretty in the shelf. I will not wait to enjoy filling up the glass pitcher with ice cold water. I will not wait another day to enjoy the fine china. No I will not wait. Are the precious souls in front of us not more worthy than the visitors we are expecting? Time is fleeting, life is too short to wait for Thanksgiving to use the plates. Often times we wait for permission to live our lives out loud. To love our people hard. To go deep to try new things. So accept this as your permission slip to not wait any longer. Life is for the living. 

 

Home - Based education : "The Underground Railroad" that kids desperately need

 I just finished reading Instead of Education -  a book by author John Holt. He is a person who many have called the "Father of the homeschool / unschool movement."  Mind blown cannot even begin to describe what I am experiencing right now. You see for a while I have been toying with the idea of offering our kids a home-based education. Well actually since before we had kids I remember saying loudly once to a friend, "I think I want to homeschool when I get children." Over the years of course, life has a way of talking you out of your dreams but through the last year or so this desire begun knocking and it is now pounding down my door. I told hubby - let us give public school one year and see how things go. Our son joined first grade and our daughter kindergarten. So we said sure lets see what a year feels like and we can re-visit in a year. Well the verdict is in. Within weeks of school starting this past Fall I already begun to feel pressured every morning. On multiple occasions I remember telling my husband, "I cannot do this." The unfinished breakfast, the rush rush out the door in the dark and cold of a Canadian Winter wearing oversized snow suits that caused tears to be put on etc. More clarity came this past Christmas holiday season - the past two weeks we had with the kids at home - just taking naps, relaxing slowing things down - meeting them where they are. We have seen the spark return to their eyes again. They are excited about life, there has been less tears in the morning to wolf down breakfast, less sibling squabbles, less bed wetting, less tears at bedtime. It has just been a time when our children have returned back to us. 

The model of the school system is antiquated. To say that schools are preparing our kids for a world that no longer exists is barely even scratching the surface. As parents, teachers and educators, unless we can take a long hard look in the mirror and answer the question, "What is school for?" we will continue to send our children to "learning institutions" that are producing more compliant-easy to regurgitate back information-factory workers to be employed in factories that have long since shut down. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, school refusals are sky-rocketing; when will someone shout "Mayday May-day we hit an ice-berg a few hours ago - we are going down!" The most popular question in college I remember was, "will this be in the exam?" (in short if it is not, I am not going to waste my time looking at it.) Is this really producing a love for learning? 

 Enter home-based education. In his seminal work, Instead of Education, John Holt says " what most children need is an escape." He likened it to the Underground railroad that ensured the escape of slaves from their captors. The school system is not going to change in probably the next even 20 - 30 years. Where we can at least start,  is a generation of parents calling out the public school school system for what it really is - The Emperor who had no clothes - Nothing to see. Offering alternatives to regular school will have to be the way forward. There are many ills that the pandemic brought but one thing it opened our eyes was parents were able to shine a light on schoolwork and really wonder - what is going on here? Is this how you learn to read? Is this how you do your math? are you even understanding this or just regurgitating information? 

I can go on and on but I would urge you to pick up the book by John Holt - Instead of education. I am yet to get his previous book - How children Fail. I am still collecting my data points and I am guaranteed by the end of this "school year" I will have extrapolated something. But so far the image does not look pretty. 

Until next time. 

xoxox 

Penny 

Of lightboxes, sunshine, home and mental wellbeing

 I got a lightbox for Christmas. I purposefully requested my hubby to get me lightbox. I had never heard of them until I started working at the mental health agency I work. Their alias is "therapy light box." I am a lover if sunshine. Any picture my daughter (4) draws has a sun on it. She always says, "mummy I added the sun for you." In that same breath I am someone who oscillates between mild anxiety and mild low mood. I am someone who feel things deeply. I feel ALL my emotions deeply and can articulate what my body is saying / feeling at any given time. I grew up in a home where all feelings were welcome. Tears were never pushed to the side, tantrums were never wished away - and in that same token happiness and joy was deeply felt. All emotions were welcome and my parents gave us a sense that no emotion is bad - you just needed to embrace it and let it wash over you.  Enter winter in Canada. We moved to Canada about four years ago. Two of those we spent winter in Kenya as a family and one of them we were in the thick of the pandemic. Enter this winter. All I can say so far - and it is January 2nd - winter in Canada is not for the faint hearted. I also can say winter in Canada is not for those like me whose mood flactuates with the weather. 

The skies have been grey for the past couple of days. We get a pocket of sunshine for an hour or two but that is it. From the moment I pull open the drapes the sky is blanketed in grey and I sigh to myself, "another grey one."  Today for some reason was a hard one. We were indoors - I think it was a combination of coming down from the holiday high - the food, the company etc etc. It was grey. I turned on the light box. It felt like it stayed on for all of 20 minutes - between my daughter pulling at the cord and pushing all sorts of buttons it did not last before I just turned it off. 

There is just something I felt so artificial about having a therapy light box. I will give it another shot when I am alone without the kids but today my whole body was screaming, " Your heart is not home here. This cannot be it." Have you ever received clarity in a decision of some kind? Today I received clarity of which I was not even looking for. This cannot be my reality. I cannot sit in darkness for four months of the year. I felt my soul slowly disintegrating. I have no idea how the next few months will look like. But what I do know is I do not know how, I do not know when, I do not know how when but there has to be a way out for my family and I to spend these winters. 

Glad to be back to have this space where I can vent. 

Bravery

 It has been said that bravery lies in every heart, and someday it will be summoned. Never has it been more true than this year. Parents left 20 year careers at the drop of a hat to homeschool their struggling child, grandmothers watched from windows as their first grandchild came into the world, seniors received their diplomas on Zoom and yet, here we are. We can stand proud, weary but proud. That as humanity we will look back at this moment in time and say we did hard things. As the sun sets on 2020, a new story awaits to be told in 2021. Stories of courage, stories of hope and stories that remind us we are much stronger than we think

Dear Parents : why in-person learning and pandemic cannot co-exist

 Today my son was supposed to start kindergarten. He was all excited - well sort of. He knew he was going to "the big school." Enter in little sister. She was to start in the pre-school at their new "school" today. However, this past weekend I noticed little sniffles and a running nose. So since it is my day off work I told my husband okay well no biggie let us keep her home today and see how she does on Tuesday etc. So off to kinder my husband and son went. My husband calls me like twenty minutes later. I thought mmh that went well. "They will not take him." he said. I was like huh? Yes, because little sister has "cold like symptoms and the policy from the ministry states siblings cannot be permitted if one is unwell." So they came back home, my son not looking too bothered with the whole thing - just glad to be back home and playing with his remote controlled police car.  After about twenty minutes the director of the program calls me and while she was courteous, she gave me the "three options" for the safe return of our little girl back to pre-school. Option one - quarantine for 14 days and be symptom free before she can be admitted. Option 2 - get a letter from a doctor stating her symptoms are non-covid related and be symptom free for at least 24 hours before her return. Option 3 - return a negative covid swab test and be symptom free. In addition the return to school of my son hinged on her passing one of the above litmus tests. I have no objection with any of all this - it all makes sense as far as respiratory transmission etc. So here we are. Scrambling to figure out our work schedules for this week. We are in early September folks - the summer clothes have barely been put away. The leaves have not yet even started changing their hues to usher in the Fall. Flu shots have not yet been offered. I am generally a glass half full kind of person. I always see the donut and not the hole. But this. This is not going to be a walk in the park. Kids catch colds. Toddlers are constantly reaching for things to put in their mouths. I do not know how or who are the policy makers are but I do know we need new rules of engagement for in person interaction of kids and pandemic to co-exist. I guess as parents we are all grateful for some childcare being better than no childcare after the 6 months rodeo we have been on. The challenge I think comes in trying to get a routine in place then boom the rug is snatched from beneath you that you are left wondering is it worth it getting my hopes up. We have never learnt how to lower our expectations more than we have in this year however if there is one thing I know now more than ever; is that as humanity we can do hard things, we can pivot, we can adjust our sails because clearly we cannot change the winds.

Life PC - Precovid and what collective grief is doing to our psyche

The other day I was telling my husband what a bummer we will miss to see our three year old graduate from pre-school this May. I brushed it off but later thought wow there is a college grad somewhere who has to keep looking at their gown and cap hanging from the closet knowing they will not walk across the podium, there is a bride who just picked up her dress from the final fitting who has had to send out cancellation cards to the wedding that was 2 years in the making. I think of the Olympian who has been training for four years to qualify for the just postpone Olympics, the cancelled family trips to Disney and having to grieve the loss of a loved one yet the closest you had to spend time with them in their final moments was through a window. The list is endless - we may not all be infected by Covid-19 but we have all been affected by her wrath. The collective sense of grief is what we are feeling as humanity; from the monarchies in Spain to the slums of Soweto. Grief and Covid are like fraternal twins - their DNA is 100% match. Grief knows no age, no color, no status, no gender. This is the sense of loss we are feeling as we grasp on to our lives PC- pre-Covid. Kubler-Ross is known worldwide as the grief guru - she classified the various stages of grief and they speak so clearly to a time such as now when we are all in different stages of managing our individual and collective losses.. In broad terms she speaks of navigating your way through Denial-Anger-Depression-Bargain and Acceptance as the final stage. I remember when the virus was still simmering in China - I had the 'NIBY - Not in my backyard" attitude. I kept telling my husband that yes whatever, its over there it is contained it is nowhere near us, all will be fine and we will have something else to distract us soon (denial). What I can say is that during this time there is a pendulum swing between different stages - the key is trying to move along the course and recognizing where you are as an individual in the continuum. Putting a name to our feelings during this time will help us manage our feelings better and ultimately get to the acceptance stage - the ultimate goal of healing in the grief process. Reaching acceptance does not happen overnight - and no one expects this to happen instantly. We just need to be a little more compassionate with each other. Everyone's resilience armor is different - some people are able to weather storms and keep paddling the boat.Others are unable to even catch a breath when the boat starts rocking as they go into full panic mode easily. So whether you are the "just keep swimming" type or the 'I cant do this type" lets all be kind to one another, bear each others burden and I promise you we will get to dry land.