20 years ago my ankles were starting to swell, just like my belly. It was a joyous time. I was a novelty in the Newsroom: the first news anchor to have a baby!
Viewers followed my pregnancy on-air. Off-air, fellow newsie George Szostak rolled me around the news department in my desk chair (to save my ankles). The late great Tom Cherington made sure I had a nap every afternoon. Tom and Dan McLean watched in amazement as I'd experience "kicks", while reading the news. (I swear my son was using my bladder as a trampolene!) Field crews at Ivor Wynne Stadium fetched a deck chair to "take the load off" during a live broadcast, launching the new season for the Hamilton Tiger Cats under a new owner. Even on-air guests got into the act. Comics Tom Posten and Tim Conway stared at my stomach during our interview as they "watched the flowers grow on my dress!" I laughed so hard I almost went into labour right then and there!
In those months and weeks before his birth, I loved spending time in his room, decorating, arranging, imagining. His room had soft green carpet, and little bunnies in a wallpaper border. The rocking chair was an antique I had bought years before I ever contemplated becoming a Mom.
Today that baby is moving into a new room, in his own house...well, sort of. He is becoming a superintendent at a little bungalow we bought as an investment/hand-up for my son but not a hand-out! It was my husband's idea. I love him for it. Cal will pay rent and collect the rent from two room mates, pay utilities and make sure the grass is cut, snow is shovelled and garbage put out.
The memories flood back, of carrying him home from hospital, up the stairs and into his little crib, of that intoxicating "baby smell" that he brought into the house (the good kind that is!), the wondrous hours we spent alone in the middle of the night in that rocking chair. So tired, I remember now, reminding myself that these moments were precious and I must cherish them forever.
And so the moving truck loads up his computer, clothes, drum set and other odds and ends still in tact after an experimental year in a "student house", the typical kind you hear about with six bedrooms squeezed into a 60 plus year-old two-storey box. But the "party house"' atmosphere wears thin. Valuables, even money goes missing, some roommates fade away, others drift in.
We've bought him an early birthday present: a new bed, pillows, comforter, sheets, even new towels. I want to make sure his new room is cosy, comfortable and perfect just like I did 20 years ago. There will be pizza and beer after we unload. Does he have groceries,soap,toilet paper? Will he make sure he washes the floors and does his laundry? I will hold back. It's his turn now. "It's okay Mom, I can look after all that", he gently says. But I'm here if you need me. Another milestone. Sleep well my son and make sure you lock the door...
Friday, April 24, 2009
Lunch with Mom and Dad
Everytime I turn on to their (my old) street, I marvel at how big the trees have become. When the house was the newest in the subdivision, little "twigs" lined the street in an attempt to add some maturity to the brand spanking new neighbourhood.
The street that leads to theirs used to be a veritable "outpost" in east Burlington. The barely-paved road slanted to one side so badly, we used to think the car would roll right over. The neighbour behind us had a horse. Pete the Pony would be hooked up to a sleigh and pull all the kids around in the snow. Come spring the adjacent woods, complete with "tarzan vines" transformed into jungles and hideouts.
The house has changed a little over those forty-odd years; a few new walls and French doors, paint and wallpaper. The above-ground swimming pool that offered icy-cold refreshment on a hot summer night and invited great parties in later teen years is gone, replaced by a perennial garden and patio. My Dad should NOT be cutting the grass or shovelling snow. He insists the neighbours help him. My Mom tells me otherwise. She'd love to move to a nice new condo or townhouse, as long as they'd take their two little dogs, but not my Dad! "They'll have to carry me out in a pine box!", he's been heard to say. So Mom just finds "projects!" Re-paint a bedroom, a new floor here, a new counter there... My Dad reluctantly gives in to avoid the "M" word.
Pete the Pony is long gone and the jungle gave way to more new homes decades ago. The little twigs out front are tall, majestic shade trees, even the one that broke when I backed up into to it to get my confirmation photo taken on the front lawn.
So much has changed....but so much hasn't. Newspaper clippings that highlight their first born's 32-year-career in television cover the refrigerator as we share sandwiches, tea and my Mom's ever-present chocolate cake. At 50-something, a chat with Mom and Dad around the kitchen table, talking about my day, and some new job opportunities, is still good medicine.
The street that leads to theirs used to be a veritable "outpost" in east Burlington. The barely-paved road slanted to one side so badly, we used to think the car would roll right over. The neighbour behind us had a horse. Pete the Pony would be hooked up to a sleigh and pull all the kids around in the snow. Come spring the adjacent woods, complete with "tarzan vines" transformed into jungles and hideouts.
The house has changed a little over those forty-odd years; a few new walls and French doors, paint and wallpaper. The above-ground swimming pool that offered icy-cold refreshment on a hot summer night and invited great parties in later teen years is gone, replaced by a perennial garden and patio. My Dad should NOT be cutting the grass or shovelling snow. He insists the neighbours help him. My Mom tells me otherwise. She'd love to move to a nice new condo or townhouse, as long as they'd take their two little dogs, but not my Dad! "They'll have to carry me out in a pine box!", he's been heard to say. So Mom just finds "projects!" Re-paint a bedroom, a new floor here, a new counter there... My Dad reluctantly gives in to avoid the "M" word.
Pete the Pony is long gone and the jungle gave way to more new homes decades ago. The little twigs out front are tall, majestic shade trees, even the one that broke when I backed up into to it to get my confirmation photo taken on the front lawn.
So much has changed....but so much hasn't. Newspaper clippings that highlight their first born's 32-year-career in television cover the refrigerator as we share sandwiches, tea and my Mom's ever-present chocolate cake. At 50-something, a chat with Mom and Dad around the kitchen table, talking about my day, and some new job opportunities, is still good medicine.
False Summer in Southern Ontario
What a day....get out the shorts! Hurry! This won't last! Where are they! Buried under a pile of squished sweaters...and a T-shirt...wrinkled...doesn't matter. We're just going to be playing in the dirt anyway. Ah-h-h-h dirt ! ...the smell, the feel of earth, under the nails, in between the toes and yes even up the nose somehow, sometimes! That distinctively Canadian irresistable urge to plant strikes. We're not talking annuals, of course. That's after May 2-4. But evergreens, perennials, just any spot that yearns to bring forth new life, colour, a cause for celebration. Oh and pansies are OK too but what about those overgrowing specimens that came in a "Good Luck" planter during my "transition" from the workforce? They're now re-potted and sitting outside waiting for a new start just like me. The rains come, the temperature drops again, in typical southern Ontario spring fashion. It shouldn't be a surprise but it is a disappointment. We bring them inside to some artificial safety and put the shorts and T-shirts away. Maybe another day soon....
Breaking News!
The Service to Mankind Award is being returned today! A good samaritan, Pier Martin scooped it up where it had fallen out of its box a week ago in a parking lot at King and Hess. See past blog for details.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Art of Dog Walking
I promised her today. When I joined the Free World a few months ago, dog walks were supposed to be a daily event. They are most of the time...all through the long cold winter, EXCEPT when it was blowing snow or icy. And all through this spring EXCEPT when it's raining....or...more and more now...except when I ve filled up my daily calendar with events!
Yoga twice a week, a good thing I decide, having tea with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters or lunch with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters and or friends. There are weekly, often many times weekly charity and community functions and the occasional promising business meeting a.k.a dipping of the toe in the work force, albeit ever so gingerly and fleetingly...at this point.
My point is, like moving into a house with bigger closets, I am filling up by social space and the worst culprit, which I still maintain is keeping in "the loop", and "up to speed" is the square box on my new home office desk. I "go to work" every day around 9:30. My hours are usually 9:30 to 12:30, then, perhaps an hour or so in the afternoon, depending on the weather. Today it's sunny and warming up and my new boss is very open to cutting me some well-deserved slack.
She knows all this. Tilly knows that if I don't put on shoes right after breakfast, she has to wait until "after work". There is the look of anticipation in her eyes as I peruse the morning paper but... no shoes...no walk...not yet. It's 10:42 and she's given up on me, lying on the living room floor trying to lose her doggie disappointment in a late morning nap. But I do love my dog walks. It's one of the few times I really breathe, outside of yoga class. I think as we go, about what I have to do in the next few hours, days, weeks. I think of how wonderful it is just to walk and breathe and think ...and smile! Okay Tilly, let's go!!!
Yoga twice a week, a good thing I decide, having tea with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters or lunch with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters and or friends. There are weekly, often many times weekly charity and community functions and the occasional promising business meeting a.k.a dipping of the toe in the work force, albeit ever so gingerly and fleetingly...at this point.
My point is, like moving into a house with bigger closets, I am filling up by social space and the worst culprit, which I still maintain is keeping in "the loop", and "up to speed" is the square box on my new home office desk. I "go to work" every day around 9:30. My hours are usually 9:30 to 12:30, then, perhaps an hour or so in the afternoon, depending on the weather. Today it's sunny and warming up and my new boss is very open to cutting me some well-deserved slack.
She knows all this. Tilly knows that if I don't put on shoes right after breakfast, she has to wait until "after work". There is the look of anticipation in her eyes as I peruse the morning paper but... no shoes...no walk...not yet. It's 10:42 and she's given up on me, lying on the living room floor trying to lose her doggie disappointment in a late morning nap. But I do love my dog walks. It's one of the few times I really breathe, outside of yoga class. I think as we go, about what I have to do in the next few hours, days, weeks. I think of how wonderful it is just to walk and breathe and think ...and smile! Okay Tilly, let's go!!!
The Circle of Life in the Labour Force
I find myself in the interesting yet confounding position of looking for work and mentoring younger women in the broadcasting industry looking for advice about looking for work. Would I listen to myself considering I'm out of work? It makes one question one's decisions throughout a career; decisions that have inevitably led to my place in middle age life today.
While unemployed, I'm happy. Maybe I shouldn't be happy? I'm not happy about being unemployed but content and confident that my choices throughout my career were the right ones for me at the time, choices that forced me to stop and "smell the roses" now.
I had breakfast today with a bubbly, enthusiastic young reporter who has chalked up incredible experience in a relatively short time, slugging it out and proving herself in difficult circumstances. She recently walked away from a job situation and tells me some of her colleagues say she's crazy. I tell her she's crazy to stay if you're not happy. It's a case of "Do what I say" though, not "Do what I do or did.."
I advise her not to do what I did...stay somewhere too long! Trust your gut feeling, I say, even if it means you might be out of work for a while. As long as you can get by and especially if you have no ties or obligations, take control of your career early before it controls you! It took me way too long to realize that. While I loved my job, I didn't love what was happening to me but didn't see or acknowledge how the quality of work life was so negatively affecting me. I needed a nudge and boy did I get it. Decades of hard work, and loyalty don't always earn loyalty back...a tough lesson.
Learning does last a lifetime. I've also in my mature years learned another lesson: there are certain times, certain milestone moments in life when careers must take a back seat. Burn-out is becoming rampant in today's workforce and family/life balancel must be brought back into the equation. In my rush to get back into the workforce, after giving birth to my son, I gave up precious months and years with him. In my desperation to hang on to a media-made "identity" in a growing negative landscape, I lost my own sense of value. I have it back again. I also have time to focus on the things I'm passionate about: my family, my home, my community and MY future. And yes that includes a pay check down the road but not at the price of my sense of self and well being.
While unemployed, I'm happy. Maybe I shouldn't be happy? I'm not happy about being unemployed but content and confident that my choices throughout my career were the right ones for me at the time, choices that forced me to stop and "smell the roses" now.
I had breakfast today with a bubbly, enthusiastic young reporter who has chalked up incredible experience in a relatively short time, slugging it out and proving herself in difficult circumstances. She recently walked away from a job situation and tells me some of her colleagues say she's crazy. I tell her she's crazy to stay if you're not happy. It's a case of "Do what I say" though, not "Do what I do or did.."
I advise her not to do what I did...stay somewhere too long! Trust your gut feeling, I say, even if it means you might be out of work for a while. As long as you can get by and especially if you have no ties or obligations, take control of your career early before it controls you! It took me way too long to realize that. While I loved my job, I didn't love what was happening to me but didn't see or acknowledge how the quality of work life was so negatively affecting me. I needed a nudge and boy did I get it. Decades of hard work, and loyalty don't always earn loyalty back...a tough lesson.
Learning does last a lifetime. I've also in my mature years learned another lesson: there are certain times, certain milestone moments in life when careers must take a back seat. Burn-out is becoming rampant in today's workforce and family/life balancel must be brought back into the equation. In my rush to get back into the workforce, after giving birth to my son, I gave up precious months and years with him. In my desperation to hang on to a media-made "identity" in a growing negative landscape, I lost my own sense of value. I have it back again. I also have time to focus on the things I'm passionate about: my family, my home, my community and MY future. And yes that includes a pay check down the road but not at the price of my sense of self and well being.
Monday, April 20, 2009
2 hours with Aunt Beab
I am Beab to my family. That's B-E-A-B. My sister Claudia didn't know how to 1. say baby or 2. spell baby when she named me this when she was learning to talk. With just two years between us, she considered me to be a baby too! The name stuck so that it sosunds really strange to be in a situation with my family where someone calls me Connie...they even kind of stumble around it!
Needless to say the next generation is carrying on the tradition. Since my temporary (I hope) transition into unemployment (terminated as a new anchor at CHCH-TV Hamilton after 32 years), I am know enjoying babysitting my youngest sister's three little ones: Aiden, 10, Jordan, 7 and Sierre, 5. I love it. I have a "shift" today at 3:30. I meet my sister Barbi in the parking lot to switch the carseat for the youngest. She takes off to teach a yoga class, Aunt Beab takes off with my 3 "starving" charges to Tim Horton's. Hot chocolate? Sure! A donut with sprinkles? Why not! Can we eat in? Of course! After about a half an hour of decompressing after a tough day in school, home we go to...cartoons! Boy have they changed and were those whiney cartoon voices always that annoying? They don't seem to mind and neither do I really. Sometimes I even get a little snuggle on the couch. Today Aunt Beab could be up to bat at Wii...and I can't wait!
Needless to say the next generation is carrying on the tradition. Since my temporary (I hope) transition into unemployment (terminated as a new anchor at CHCH-TV Hamilton after 32 years), I am know enjoying babysitting my youngest sister's three little ones: Aiden, 10, Jordan, 7 and Sierre, 5. I love it. I have a "shift" today at 3:30. I meet my sister Barbi in the parking lot to switch the carseat for the youngest. She takes off to teach a yoga class, Aunt Beab takes off with my 3 "starving" charges to Tim Horton's. Hot chocolate? Sure! A donut with sprinkles? Why not! Can we eat in? Of course! After about a half an hour of decompressing after a tough day in school, home we go to...cartoons! Boy have they changed and were those whiney cartoon voices always that annoying? They don't seem to mind and neither do I really. Sometimes I even get a little snuggle on the couch. Today Aunt Beab could be up to bat at Wii...and I can't wait!
Service to Mankind
It's called Sertoma...SERvice TO MAnkind. It's a wonderful service club that has helped disabled children and other needy organizations for more than 50 years in Hamilton. Sertoma saw fit to present me with their Service to Mankind Award last week but little did they know a tale of mystery and intrigue would soon follow. Sometime between receiving the plaque and gettinginto my sister's van, the solid wooden award vanished. We re-traced our steps, searched the beautiful dining room of the Scottish Rite, looking under the table, between the seat cushions in the parlour and even the ladies' room...NOTHING! Where and how could a rather hefty and very visible article like this just disappear. A phone call from my former employer solved the caper. A woman found it in the parking lot at King and Hess, leaning against a light standard. She recognized my name and called CHCH-TV. It seems it quietly slid out an unsealed end of the box it came in and quietly came to rest in a vertical position which must have made it made it difficult to see. Thank You Pierre Martin for a service to mankind about a service to mankind from a service to mankind. I will see you Friday for the "hand-over"!
Yoga in the Morning
There's nothing like "double pigeon" to loosen you up and stretch you out to start the day.
There's also the benefit of clearing the mind and clarifying thought just ahead of an important business meeting. It's great to have a yogini in the family! Transformation time: from yoga pants and poney tail to business suit and tamed tresses! Here's hoping for some good news on a rainy day... I feel myself edging closer to a microphone once again. I see such a void in the kind of broadcasting I enjoy most at a time when we need it most! Stay tuned!
There's also the benefit of clearing the mind and clarifying thought just ahead of an important business meeting. It's great to have a yogini in the family! Transformation time: from yoga pants and poney tail to business suit and tamed tresses! Here's hoping for some good news on a rainy day... I feel myself edging closer to a microphone once again. I see such a void in the kind of broadcasting I enjoy most at a time when we need it most! Stay tuned!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
A Lazy Sunday
No where to go, nothing to do...that HAS to be done that is...love it!
Just one thing on the "to do" list...a quick trip downtown to try to find my lost award,a deepening mystery! After receiving Sertoma Hamilton's Service to Mankind Award, I lost it, or rather, it disappeared, sometime between receiving it last Thursday at the Scottish Rite luncheon and the time I got into my sister's van. All I held in my arms was an empty cardboard box with one open end. Sertoma has done such wonderful things from supporting children with cerebral palsy to the famed Around the Bay Road Race. Now it struggles to embrace a new generation with a social conscience and a sense of commitment. We retraced our steps, from the parking lot to the building, looked under the immense and ancient dining room table and parlour seat cushions. Where could it be? Did someone find it? If so please contact the writer!
Just one thing on the "to do" list...a quick trip downtown to try to find my lost award,a deepening mystery! After receiving Sertoma Hamilton's Service to Mankind Award, I lost it, or rather, it disappeared, sometime between receiving it last Thursday at the Scottish Rite luncheon and the time I got into my sister's van. All I held in my arms was an empty cardboard box with one open end. Sertoma has done such wonderful things from supporting children with cerebral palsy to the famed Around the Bay Road Race. Now it struggles to embrace a new generation with a social conscience and a sense of commitment. We retraced our steps, from the parking lot to the building, looked under the immense and ancient dining room table and parlour seat cushions. Where could it be? Did someone find it? If so please contact the writer!
My date with Ronald McDonald
Tonight, accompanied by my husband Dave Wilson, I emcee the Ronald McDonald House Gala which raises funds to help "keep the lights on" at Hamilton, Ontario's home away from home for the families of little ones in hospital.
Pearl Wolfe and her team, both staff and volunteer, are a dedicated group of individuals who make such a difference to families in crisis...a hand on a shoulder, a late night chat, an understanding smile...compassion. It's a powerful force that makes our world a better place.
There is such a need and everywhere I look I see wonderful stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, such inspiration for more of us to do the same!
Pearl Wolfe and her team, both staff and volunteer, are a dedicated group of individuals who make such a difference to families in crisis...a hand on a shoulder, a late night chat, an understanding smile...compassion. It's a powerful force that makes our world a better place.
There is such a need and everywhere I look I see wonderful stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, such inspiration for more of us to do the same!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
