The Power of Appreciation

We all love to be appreciated... but some of us forget to take the next step and show appreciation for the people and events that fill our lives, enriching us day by day. I know I tend to focus on the empty half of the glass half-FULL. (That's why I'm THANKFUL for a husband who reminds me to BE THANKFUL!)

There is power in appreciation - given, received or shared. Appreciation lifts our spirits - which is probably why a blog written by a 29-year-old Toronto man has become so popular. I first read about it in the Ottawa Citizen, after it had won a Webby Award. Called 1000 Awesome Things, this blog attracts hundreds (if not thousands) of readers daily because it talks about the pleasure of ordinary things we often overlook. Yesterday's blog, for example, focused on the smell of Play-Doh!

Appreciation changes us - and has the power to change relationships. I know an older couple whose struggling marriage was totally turned around after they were challenged (by a Readers' Digest article!) to replace criticism with compliments. Before long, they were both living in the joy of being loved and appreciated by the person closest to them.

For me (their daughter) it was hard to comprehend the change I could see and feel whenever I visited them. Their love for each other, previously hidden by a litany of complaints, was now shining through.

Appreciation has the power to do that - and make the world a happier place!

Highway of Heroes

On a recent trip to Toronto, on Highway 401, we experienced the meaning of the highway's other name: the Highway of Heroes.

Whenever a Canadian soldier is killed overseas in conflict, an army entourage - together with family and friends - brings the body from the military airport in Trenton, Ontario to Toronto.














As we passed through Trenton, we realized that we must be behind one such cavalcade. Supporters waving flags were standing on all the bridges, paying their respects.














Police were blocking highway entry ramps until the procession had passed.














As we approached Toronto, we f0und ourselves closer and closer to the back of the cavalcade. Finally, as we drove down the Don Valley Parkway in the rain, we found ourselves directly behind the police escort.














It was a moving experience - remembering a family's tremendous loss, and seeing this public sign of respect - as inadequate as any public display of support can ever be to grieving family and friends.

More Tea?!!

One of the risks of posting my plans online is that sometimes people remember what I've said!

So, when I told my daughter that I had discovered the best green tea I've had in a long time, she said: More tea?! I thought you posted on your blog that you weren't going to buy any more tea until you used up what you had.

Well, yes, I had said that. But then - while looking through the ethnic aisle for imported tea in a neighborhood supermarket - I saw this interesting green LEMON tea (green tea with lemon zest) from Austria.

I bought a box - and liked it so much that I went back to get a few more boxes. (I had never seen it before and didn't know if I'd ever see it again.)














I discovered that a number of other teas packaged by this Austrian company were all on sale for 99 cents each! So I bought one of each, plus 5 boxes of the Lemon Green Tea...

I haven't tried the others yet... but I highly recommend the GREEN TEA LEMON.

(So that's why I have so many packages of tea in my cupboard: When I find something I really like, ... I fear running out!!)

Of all the things I've ever lost, I miss ... the most.

Of all the things I've ever lost, I miss my mind the most. I was thinking of this line - a Mark Twain original, later quoted and made famous by Ozzy Osborne - as I lay down for a nap today at noon. Only what flashed through my mind was - Of all the things I've ever lost, I miss my youthful energy the most!

When I look back on what I managed to accomplish in my younger days, I really wonder how I did it. As a university student, I usually had a part-time job. Then, while teaching full-time (in my 20s), I regularly took university courses as well. At one time, I had a part-time job in addition to my full-time teaching. And I don't remember being tired (sleepy, maybe) or feeling I was doing too much.

In my 30s, parenting began - an ever-increasing responsibility as three children claimed more of my time and energy. THAT was the beginning of my tiredness as I know it today. It eased off for a while when they were all in school, but after I resumed my full-time teaching, bringing home marking and lesson prep every evening, tiredness began to creep back into my bones.

I have read that fatigue is the first sign of type 2 diabetes, so it may have been my rising blood sugar levels that increased my sense of exhaustion. I was eventually told that I did have diabetes, and was taught the importance of watching what I eat and of exercising more.

I have managed to hold the diabetes at bay through exercise and diet for several years now, but have never reclaimed my youthful energy. (Could it be because I'm quite a few years away from youthful?!)

So I'm hoping to find the secret - not of youth, but of YOUTHFUL ENERGY... because that is what I really miss the most!

I've got a cold...

I've been fighting off a cold for the past week or so, and it finally got the best of me. So I have succumbed and am slowing down and letting my body mend.

May was so busy, so hectic - and now, in June, the pressure is off... and instead of being energized, I get sick... Strange!

It makes me think of a conversation I once had with a student from Bosnia a few months after the civil war there had ended. He came to class to inform me that he would be away for a while. He was going back to his country for a few weeks to see his mother who'd had a heart attack.

Throughout the war she had lived alone, he said, cut off from her children who lived in the same city, but in the opposite side of town. They couldn't see each other - war was raging in the center of the city - and they couldn't pass. So she was there alone. Now that the war was over, they were re-united again, but ironically now she is sick in the hospital.

Imagine how hard it would have been if she'd had a heart attack during the fighting, I said. She would have been totally alone.

That's the strange part, he replied. During the war, people didn't seem to get sick. They were strong. But now since the fighting has ended, there have been so many heart attacks, especially among older people.

During the war, they were tough. But now that the pressure is off, the stress they lived under before is taking its toll.

Life Evolves - Careers Evolve

The goal of parenting is... to set kids free with skills that enable them to survive in the world. (Another goal might be to remain friends with them for the rest of your lives, but that's another story!)

I remember when my brother and I were finishing high school, my father was miserable. He was afraid that we would never make it on our own because - in his eyes - we hadn't struggled enough. He had seen children of rich parents squander their family's wealth as adults and end up with nothing. He, on the other hand, had lost his father at age 4 during World War I and had started working at age of 5, herding geese in Poland, to help his mother feed the family. He had never been given anything - and worried that we had been given too much.

Later in life, as a parent, I could identify with some of my father's feelings. I remember how happy I was when my own three children had all completed a reasonable amount of education, found reasonable jobs, and set out on their own .

Your job is done! My youngest son confidently assured me when he finished university. Enjoy the rest of your life and don't worry about us!

(He is all too aware of my tendency to worry - a trait I may have inherited from my father!)

And so I didn't worry - for a while. But now, after a few years, when I talk to them about work, they smile and say that everything is fine... but they're getting restless... Maybe they need a change. This isn't the job I want to do for the rest of my life, they have all told me at least once.

After my initial panic (why do I always think it's my problem?!) I try to remember that many of us who are older have struggled for many years to discover our "calling" - or at least, interesting work we feel happy doing for more than a few years.

One of my co-workers, for example, had studied to be a dietitian, working in the field for a few years before taking a job as a teacher, teaching foods courses in a college in Northern Canada. There she also started teaching English as a second language - and realized that this was the job she really loved.

I think of Terry, my husband. who studied to be a teacher, but discovered (while working as a church youth leader) that he preferred helping kids with their problems. So he went back to school to become a counsellor. And even within the field of counselling, he has felt the need to move around from time to time.

Or my brother, who started out as a sports instructor but ended up a businessman, creating a number of successful businesses...

All these people - in their 20s - were trying to figure out what they really wanted to do. They followed their instincts and tried new things - eventually finding work that satisfied them.

So sometimes I have to remind myself - as I remind my children - that life evolves and careers evolve.

Sometimes I have to step back and let them work it out (even though my natural instinct as a mother is to step in and try to help). Because, whatever they do with their lives, they will do it as themselves, with their own personalities, their own skills... and dreams - and not as ME! (Just as I will never be - in fact, never can be - them.)

My Mother's Spinning Wheel

I have recently "inherited" (for lack of a better word) my mother's spinning wheel. It is a lovely piece of wooden art, created by my grandfather, Hugo Bartz, in the 1970's, when my mother was a teacher of crafts at the Kelowna Secondary School in British Columbia. At the time, schools offered optional courses geared to creating hobbies and lifelong interests. One fitness course, for example, taught golf and tennis - sports that students could pursue throughout their lives.

At the time, there was a renewal of interest in traditional crafts - candle-making, pottery, knitting, crocheting - and also spinning and weaving. My mother loved learning some of these skills her own mother had known, but which she had never bothered to learn - skills that many thought were gone forever.

My grandfather, remembering his own mother's spinning wheel, offered to make one for my mother. My mother, in turn, used it to spin yarn - some of which she dyed by hand, teaching her students those skills as well.

My mother had a big weaving loom in the back porch of her Lawrence Avenue home in Kelowna. I recently came across a table cloth she wove on it, though I think this is made of cotton, not wool.













Her name is sewn on a label in the corner.



















I preferred knitting and crocheting to weaving - but my daughter is now interested in the art of dyeing fabric ...

So perhaps spinning will also be practiced in our family by another generation.