Water Damage

What I didn't need, shortly before going away for three weeks, was a flood in our living room. But that is what we got last week when we woke up and found a little lake at the foot of our stairs and a giant water bubble on the adjacent living room ceiling.
At first I thought we'd had a leak in our bathroom but it turns out to have been a valve inside a closet which controls the water to the roof garden. Being in a closet, we never noticed that it had sprung a leak and that the water was working its way down between the walls.
What a mess! Although it was pointed out to me that it was lucky to have happened while we were still here, and not a week after our departure. So true.
We called our insurance company who sent someone that same day to have a look. The man very emphatically said that the entire ceiling (which was then still dripping into a bucket) would have to come down as mold would grow and possibly spread beyond the immediate area, one rippled wall would have to be replaced and the floor, where it had gotten wet, would also have to be replaced, re-sanded and varnished to match the colour. I explained that we were about to leave for an extended trip....not a problem, said he, we will do the work while you're gone and we will move all your furniture out!
The thought of having strangers in our house during our absence and more to the point, having them moving our personal things about, did not seem like a good idea to me. But before we could even object to that, the man told us that since we live in a condo, their insurance would also have to be involved. We waited three days for that representative to come and assess.
His evaluation was that repairing the floor would not be enough, the entire living and dining room floors would have to be pulled up and replaced, sanded and varnished....because there might be moisture underneath.
By now we were less than a week away from our departure and we still did not have a final decision on who was going to pay for what. And if we didn't want the work done while we were gone we would have to face living with the turmoil and plaster dust when we get back which made the idea of an extended holiday rather pointless.
With the weekend upon us we decided to take matters into our own hands. We called our own contractor. His assessment of the work is less dramatic than that of the insurance men. Because we know him and trust him, we feel confident in his opinion and in letting him work while we're gone.
Interestingly, with all the time that has elapsed since this first happened, our floor has had a chance to dry out nicely and now looks the same as before. Time really does bring counsel if one only has the patience to ride things out....
We have only made an insurance claim once in all the years we've been married and as I recall, we did not get the full value of our loss at that time. In our present predicament and with a hefty deductible, we have decided that it is in our best interest to repair the damages and pay for them out of our own pocket, during a time that suits us, than it is to wait for two insurance companies to come to an agreement. No doubt they will still be at it on the day of our departure.

Spring

I always feel energized after my early morning walk with my dog. On today's walk we saw several robins hopping around and a magnificent red-winged black bird singing his little heart out. Birds are chirping and rustling in the trees and shrubs along the canal where I live and the dog is busy sniffing exciting new scents. Nature is coming back to life all around us.

So it is with sadness that we received news last week of a death in the family. A much-loved uncle has passed after a long, interesting life. He was 93 and had been in frail health the last few years. In photos that his son sent us just days before his passing, we could see that he was tired of living. His eyes had that look that comes with a pre-eminent departure, a look that seems to say….I no longer have the vitality to be here….In that sense, it wasn’t a tragic death at all, yet for us who loved him, the turning of that page leaves a hole.

My husband used to tell me about his uncle long before I ever met him. He was a Naval Officer, a devoted son to his widowed mother, a supportive older brother to my mother-in-law. To my husband, who lost his father at a young age, he was a surrogate father. When I first went to the family home where my husband was brought up, I saw a framed photo of his uncle in his naval uniform and I saw for myself that his handsome face showed the humour, determination and kindness hubby was always telling me about. When I finally met him he did not disappoint. His face was open and smiling and full of curiosity and I could see that he had influenced my husband greatly because they had many of the same traits.

In subsequent years, after he had retired, he made it a point to come and see us when we would visit my mother-in-law and we even managed to make a few day trips together, once, to the delight of our son, to visit a war ship, another time to explore the walled-in city of Carcasonne.

In spite of the fact that in his later years he had to look after his wife who suffered from dementia, he was always in a cheerful mood, always interested in what others had to say. He never bemoaned his fate, never complained. He wasn’t a very tall man but he made up for that by always carrying himself with great dignity. He was an excellent tennis player and a graceful dancer. He was, above all else, a loving father to his children.

Of the many lovely memories I have of this uncle, the most enduring one is surely his arrival at our niece’s wedding a few years back. He was in his late eighties, recently widowed and had survived a serious back operation, yet he walked as erect as ever, in a pin-striped summer suit, white shoes and a a killer pair of sunglasses. He smiled at everyone but saved his brightest for the bride. And afterwards, in the evening when the music started he could be seen asking all the ladies at the reception to dance.  And dance they did; The paso doble, foxtrot, cha cha. He knew them all and he executed his steps beautifully on that dance floor while the rest of us watched in awe and clapped.

On our next visit we could see he had diminished slightly. His hearing had gone and he walked a little slower, with a bit of a bend in his spine. He was still interested in everything but without being able to hear properly, the strain of following a conversation sometimes proved too much. He ate less and napped more. On the morning of our departure, hubby tiptoed into his room to say his good-bye. He kissed his uncle on the forehead and told him how much he loved him which is a wonderful thing to have done because it turned out to be the last time we would see him.

 Although this spring has brought our family heartache, it has also brought great joy, for we have recently found out that we will become grandparents in the fall. One life gone, another well on its way.

Let's Start Talking

“As abuse often begins in teenage relationships, preventive programs are essential to ending the cycle of domestic violence. Everyone has the responsibility to step up and end violence against women.”

Ulester Douglas, Director, Training for Men Stopping Violence, Atlanta, GA

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I thought of this quote when I watched singer/dancer Chris Brown give an electrifying performance during the recent Grammy Awards. I wondered, as the audience cheered and clapped, if he had really repented for having been physically abusive towards the singer, Rihanna with whom he was living at the time, or if he was still the same insecure young man who had allowed his anger to morph into rage, turning the woman he supposedly loved into his punching bag back in 2009.

Only time will tell if he has learned to take responsibility for those actions and managed to turn his thinking about women and violence around.

In the meantime, we all have a collective responsibility, to do our part to end violence against women whether it’s taking place in Hollywood or in the house next door.

The overall annual cost of domestic violence here in Canada is in excess of $6.9 billion. That’s to cover lost wages plus a range of services victims of violence need, from police intervention, employment insurance, medical costs, counseling and legal costs, child-protection agencies, food banks and temporary shelters.

In the city where I live, which is not even the largest in the country, police receive 15,000 conjugal violence calls annually.

Of those, an average of 22 a year, end up being homicides.

The assumption that things automatically improve once a woman walks away from violence to re-start her life, is to grossly simplify the facts. Women who have been abused have a higher need to visit emergency rooms, rely more on food banks, require longer employment insurance payments and use legal aid even years after their ordeal. Recent research out of the University of British Columbia cites females who end relationships because of violence, continue to be plagued by health issues, legal troubles and economic hardships long after the event, translating into a cost of $13,162 annually per woman.

Here are four things we could do that could make a difference:

·         Find out what the stats are for your city/town.

·         Talk about them to start a dialogue and brings awareness to your community.

·         Donate time, money and/or clothing to organizations that work to protect abused women and children.

·         Make sure to teach your sons/nephews/students to express anger constructively and to treat females respectfully.

Because the real cost of domestic violence is a society full of emotionally wounded children, some of whom will grow up to be bullies, while others will become their victims.

Meryl does Maggie

The film “The Iron Lady” is surely one of Meryl Streep’s greatest acting achievements. Her interpretation of Margaret Thatcher at the height of her power is nothing short of brilliant; her depiction of the ailing, elderly, demented Maggie, sublime.

Some critics have a different view of the film. It has been expressed by some, including Mrs. Thatcher’s children that the release of this film while the lady is still alive is insensitive, and that portraying her dementia so graphically, is intrusive. I beg to differ.

Whether you liked her politics or not, Margaret Thatcher was a public figure by her own volition and as such she remains a person of interest. She is, therefore, fair game for writers and movie makers, the same way Princess Diana was and still is. That Mrs. Thatcher’s power has diminished as she has aged and become confused, is as much a part of her story as were her years as Prime Minister.

That point aside, a high caliber film like this could do much to get us sensitized to the plight of people who grow old and then suffer the indignity of losing their memory. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to us as a society. Dementia, and Alzheimer's in particular, seem to have become the leprosy of our generation. Yet our population is aging quickly now and many of us will personally know the despair of losing some cognitive abilities or the plight of watching a loved one go through that. Should we not stop treating the elderly as though they are invisible or already dead? Should we not applaud a film that tackles the subject head-on and with great sensitivity?

The film does an excellent job of representing how those with dementia experience their losses. We cannot know, of course, if Mrs. Thatcher really sees and hears her late husband speak to her as the movie depicts, but we surely can imagine how grief over the loss of her spouse might make her faded memories come to life, perhaps as a coping mechanism to dull her crippling emotional pain. Who, watching that very human process unfold in the film could find that offensive other than someone uncomfortable with their own process of aging?

Of course, not everyone is as lucky as Mrs. T. who lives in a large house with staff to look after her. Most elders have to fend for themselves and when they are no longer capable, they are placed in institutions where they are reduced to living in a place they do not recognize and which holds no memories for them. The medical world uses a term to explain the mental decline of severely demented elders: they refer to it as social death, as opposed to biological death.  People with full-blown dementia are often deemed to be of no further use, and are, therefore, considered to be socially dead. This is perhaps what Ms. Streep portrayed best in the film; she made an elderly woman who happened to be Margaret Thatcher, seem very human and even endearing in her present frailty.

The Iron Lady is not a film about Margaret Thatcher so much as it is about the discomfort and anguish of watching an elderly woman fade away.

Christmas Memories

My childhood memories of Christmas do not centre on religion, presents or family meals. What has remained in my memory all these years is the feeling of magic, which is part of the innocence children experience when they are young and which we sadly lose when we discover that the holiday is a man-made event.

When I was a little girl, growing up in a German household, Christmas was a time of many secrets. Although I did not know it at the time, money was scarce in our household and gifts were kept small, although my mother was always very generous. In the lead-up to the big day, there was never any sign of wrapping paper, nobody ever talked about lists or having to go shopping. The only pre-Christmas excitement came from opening a window a day on my Advent calendar throughout December. Everything else just appeared as if by magic, making the possibility of angels and Santa Claus and elves seem very real.

The biggest secrecy of all was around the decorating of the Christmas tree. It was always done on Christmas Eve, behind closed doors by the grown-ups. Kids were absolutely forbidden to watch or participate. To ensure that there would be no peeking, the curtains were drawn and the door to the living room was tightly shut. All my cousin and I could do, was listen to the rustling and murmurings coming through the keyhole as we waited impatiently to see the end result.

Once it was dark, all the lights in the house were turned off and the door was slowly opened. The sight of our tree all decorated and lit up with real candles, never failed to excite us. It was, in many ways, more splendid than the gifts underneath the tree. Adding to the sense of wonder was the smell of singed pine needles, which our grandparents would snip off as they walked around the tree, bucket of water and scissors always at the ready.

Eventually, after the gifts had been distributed, the candles on the tree would be extinguished, one by one, and the lights turned back on. We would get cookies and chocolates while the adults drank mulled wine and sang German Christmas carols.

Although we have, for the most part, kept to our old traditions, there were a couple of years when hubby and I took the kids to celebrate Christmas in Florida.  Near the villa where we stayed was a pool where all the visiting kids congregated to play. It was there that our then five-year old son heard one kid declare loudly to all the others that there was no such thing as Santa. Shattered, our son turned to his older sister and said: “it’s not true, is it, there really IS a Santa!” To which our daughter, truthfully replied that, no, the kid was telling the truth, there was no such thing. Our son’s disbelief was heartbreaking to witness and I remember having to console him for the rest of the afternoon.

This year we had two little children visiting on the day hubby and I trimmed our tree. He and I were snarling at each other because the last strand of lights wouldn’t light up and I wanted that taken care of before the girls arrived. I quickly sent hubby to the hardware store around the corner before it closed to get another strand. He came back with outdoor lights. He went back. He returned with indoor lights this time only the strand was too short. Back he went again. This time he returned with some sort of weird contraption; a net with light bulbs that was meant for an outdoor bush. We should have been laughing but we were both seething by then. He finally got it right just as the store was closing. It was then that I found the spare bulbs that would have salvaged the original strand of lights, at the bottom of the box holding all the decorations….

We hurriedly put the basic decorations up, leaving the rest for the little girls who arrived shortly thereafter. They are six and four respectively so they still believe in magic and their faces, so full of wonder and awe, were the best Christmas present hubby and I could have asked for. They giggled and chatted about Father Christmas as they added some decorations wherever they could reach. I found it in my heart to not try and make the tree perfect after they had left, preferring to savour their pleasure every time I see two balls of the same colour hanging side by side, which in my childhood home would have been 'verboten.'

May you experience simplicity and see the joy of innocence on the faces of those you love this holiday season.

November Snow

I woke up to a white world this morning. The first snow fall is always magical and takes me back to my childhood when winter was just a pile of days and weeks in which to skate and toboggan and make snow angels, instead of being the interminably long period of time it is now. The concept of time changes drastically as you age.

When you are young you never believe that you will grow old. It is something that will happen to other people, not you.

As you grow up you begin to accept that you likely will grow old but later, much, much later. Certainly not now, in the prime of your life! You will be active! You will be positive! Aging can be delayed, postponed, put off for decades!

In your middle years you can no longer hide some of the signs that start to creep into your daily life; a bad back, crow’s feet, having to wear reading glasses. For women, the big one is grey hair, which is like a neon sign, seemingly telling the world that you are no longer in your prime. Some say that gray hair makes you invisible.

Your kids grow up, your friends start to have ailments, some of them serious. Your parents begin to need extra help with certain chores and the mirror offers you proof on a more regular basis that you are aging. The hope, at this point, is that you’ve acquired a bit of wisdom along the way, and a life philosophy to guide you, otherwise this stage can be positively frightening.

And then you arrive at what I call the invisible timeline. Once crossed, and that happens when you least expect it, you cannot ever go back. From that demarcation point onwards, you see everything in a different light.  You may feel youthful but your youth is behind you. You may be healthy but illness is no longer an abstract. You may look great for your age but energy levels have changed. At best, that knowledge  is a very sobering nanosecond, one in which you look in the mirror and see whatever is your truth; you will never become a brain surgeon , never again fit into a size 8, never recapture wasted moments….and yes, those really are your  jowls looking back at you.

Mercifully, once this sobering act is over you are free to live your life as you see fit. Mother Nature (or is Father Time??) help you settle into your new mindset, one in which you clear a lot of mental debris in order to make room for new priorities. It’s a long process, hopefully one that will take many years to complete. With all that clutter gone from your mind, you are free to enjoy small pleasures without guilt.

The snow is still coming down but I am nice and warm sitting in my living room. I think I will read my magazine, the one with Tony Bennett on the cover. At 85, he has just recorded a new album…

A State of Mind

It has certainly been a year of transition in our household. The latest twist, one that came out of left field, is that hubby has retired. A better explanation would be that he has sold his shares of the company at a time when he is still healthy enough to enjoy other activities. In an unplanned, two week period, my husband has gone from being a full-time entrepreneur, to a man of leisure.
With our adult children long gone from the nest we have often been in deep discussions about how ‘retirement’ would look for us when we got there. I had hoped that 2012 would be the year so was a little startled a few weeks ago when hubby announced the moment to leave the company had arrived. With the economy being what it is these days we knew that such an opportunity might not come again for many years, so we jumped at the chance, knowing we would work out the details as we went.

My husband has always loved what he does and he always approached work with a very positive, can-do attitude. Tenacity is his middle name. But many months of battling overseas, combined with a genuine longing to slow down and ‘smell the roses’ as they say, had worn him down and made this past year very stressful for him. You get to a point in life where you simply don’t want to live like that anymore.

These days, the word retirement brings to mind something completely different from how it was for the previous generation. It is no longer about getting a gold watch after 30 or 40 years of being loyal to one company. Retirement today brings many choices to the table and ends up being a time of great transition which might include everything from travel, going back to school, learning a new language, doing part-time work, consulting, mentoring, volunteering, exploring artistic mediums, to sports, or possibly all of the above. . With good health, longevity and the all-important good financial planning, a retiree today can hopefully enjoy these things for some 20 or even 30 years.

All those things require a sort of re-aligning of priorities and a financial plan to back it all up. Do we downsize or stay put? Should we entertain the idea of having a second home, either, a country house, a beach condo or a shack in the woods? Is this when we buy ourselves a motorcycle and take off across the continent? Or will we offer our time to work in Africa with AIDS orphans for a year?
The biggest and most immediate change, or so people tell me, will be to our daily routines. Hubby will apparently now want to ‘do’ stuff with me all the time and will, therefore, cut into my time. Luckily, we have always traveled well together and we have equally always been very respectful of one another’s space which speaks volumes now that we really need those qualities. No doubt he will continue to cycle and train for his marathons, leaving me to pick the films we will see or the art galleries and museums that are of interest. We balance each other well and that may make this whole retirement business very enjoyable.

One thing is for sure. Retirement is no longer a destination, it’s become a state of mind, and that means a constant measuring with adjustments as you go.