Moving #5 - Feeling Sad

 I went up to Sudbury this past week for my grandson's birthday, to watch him at a basketball practice and then two days later at a game as well as a whole day of watching my granddaughter play in a volleyball tournament. While most of my trips are not as busy as that, I have gladly made the five hour drive at least four or five times a year for the past seven or so years. One of the joys of the trip (quite frankly there are relatively few on the drive up and back) is looking at the various rock cuts that have been carved out of the pre-Cambrian Shield to create the highway. There are a few sections where the thin white or pink granite lines buried in the darker rock are almost vertical suggesting massive geological upheavals in the past. As I was driving by the rock cuts on Friday, I reminded myself that the next time I drove south and it was a sunny day, I should stop and take a picture of these remarkable reminders of the earth's long distant and turbulent history. Then I remembered that I in all likelihood will never drive that highway again. I will go up one more time on my way west, but never again drive south.

While, especially because the state of my apartment, I am constantly reminded that I am moving - I sometimes forget that moving means that I won't be coming back here again. That every time I drive down a street, it might be the last time that I do so. Every time I think about that, I grieve a little bit. Every time I realize that there are so many people or places that I will never see again, I want to cry. I have lived almost my entire adult life in the counties of Haliburton, Victoria or Peterborough. There are literally hundreds of highways, streets and back roads that I have travelled on. There are almost secret waterfalls, meadows in the middle of nowhere and dark cold lakes and rivers that I can see so clearly in my mind but that I will never see again in reality. I think of getting a good car and going for a four or five day drive to re-visit those places one more time, But I suspect some of those places such as the Eddy on Coleman Lake Road or the Fur Farm where my son and I spent so many hours fishing are probably over built and almost disappeared. Perhaps it is better that I remember it the way I want to, rather than the way it is now. But I will miss those spots and a hundred others. I will never drive by or at least think about driving by all of the homes that I built, all of the places where I worked or any of the places where I hung out and made friends while arguing about politics, values or the way the world could be.

A week ago I needed to contact someone in a local organization. I had tried but it felt as if my e-mail had probably gotten lost in the over-whelming number of emails that flood most of our mail servers. So I contacted a friend who works part time for that organization and asked who I should contact. Within a few hours I had a response to my question. When I emailed my friend to thank her for her help I said "...... one of the harder things about thinking about moving is the realization that I am moving to a place where I sort of know some people, but I am going to have to make new relationships with people who know how things work." That quite frankly scares the living crap out of me. I am not a particularly social person. Quite often the social niceties that are required to make those connections are beyond me.

I am moving to a place that while I know the geography a little bit and I know a few people - I am starting over. I have no history in the place, I (outside of my son and his family) only know a few people and I perhaps will never understand how the social system works. I am going from someone who knows a lot of people, including some who make the system work, and as someone who has in a few small sectors created part of that system to someone who will always be someone who just moved in later in life.

I am not too sure if I am looking forward to

Grandsons and Giving

As we go through life, it is always difficult to know whether or not we have made a difference in how the people close to us think or react to the chaos that is our world. Certainly as parents or grandparents I suspect that most of us are never really sure as to the impact that we have on our children or grandchildren. There is, of course, the long standing "nature or  nurture" argument that at its core is really about whether or not parents are useful. As a someone trained to think as a sociologist, I am committed to the  belief that we are shaped by our experiences, including those our parents give us. But at times it is difficult to ignore the other reality that sometimes kids act and think in profoundly different ways than do their parents.

When one reads of the newly hatched terrorists who appear to have come from reasonably stable homes; who were raised by families and in communities where radicalism was neither preached nor tolerate and who almost overnight (relatively speaking) become people who believe that the only solution is to kill as many people as they can while killing themselves, one has to wonder what role families or communities have in shaping anyone. It can be almost disheartening. It would seem to me that while the world in the short term needs to deal with methods of apprehension, incarceration and prevention of terrorism, in the long term we need to apply the best brains available in considering what we as a world society are dong that shapes young people into terrorists.

Then there are the goods days. Those days when it is clear that what you have done has had a least a little bit of an impact upon a child or grandchild. Because of the amount of time that I spend in my grandchildren's homes, I suspect I am more fortunate than most in being able to observe this at least minimal impact. Both of my children, in their unique ways, demonstrate an honesty about what is important and a passionate commitment to their children that at least in part is related to their upbringing.  It is a joy to watch. However this past week, my eldest grandson passed any bar that I could have ever imagined.

I, for the past few years, have not bought my two older grandchildren Christmas presents. They have so much stuff - it has always been difficult to imagine what I could buy that they would both need and treasure. Instead I have donated money in their name to various organizations. We initially chose through World Vision what kind of animal their money would buy for a family in the developing world. For the past two years they have donated money directly to an individual through an organization called Kiva. They have always participated in this process with grace and thoughtful consideration as to what they wanted to donate money to. Not once did I have the smallest hint that they would have preferred to get something tangible for themselves. But as they  never talked about it very much outside of Christmas, I had no sense of whether or not the decision not to buy Christmas presents had an impact on their lives. At least not until this past week.

My grandson, whose birthday is approaching soon,  sent me an e-mail asking if I would consider donating his birthday money to the school's food bank drive. One could argue that as I have generally given the grandchildren a gift card from Chapters so that they can chose their own books and he does not like reading, that it was not a big deal. But it is. One ten year old kid giving his birthday money to help others who are struggling is not going to change the world - unless other kids do it too, Perhaps his act will be a model for a couple of other kids in his school, and then a few more students will learn from those and then who knows how far it could go.

My grandson goes to a great school that actively encourages raising money for various worthwhile charities, he has a mom that works full time at being an active member of both of her children's schools and he lives in a neighbourhood where people talk to their neighbours. All of these experiences have shaped who my grandson is becoming. I cannot take much if any of the credit for his generosity or of his awareness that others both around the world and in his home town need his help. But on those darks days where I despair of where the world may be headed - it is good to know that there are a whole bunch of young folks out there who have learnt something positive from the adults around them.

It is good to know that I might have been part of that learning experience.