May Your Christmas be Bright ...

I love Christmas, always have.  Doesn't matter what else is going on in my life, everything always stops for Christmas.

I've spent 42 so very different Christmases.  So many experiences.  Christmas as a child in Canada with my brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, parents and cousins.  Opening gifts under a fake silver Christmas tree that was all the rage in the seventies.  Christmas in Venezuela with a Palm Christmas tree, alone with my mom and dad.  Christmas with a proper pine tree in New Brunswick alone with my Mom when my parents got separated. Christmas with a house full of amazing friends and family when I was a young newlywed.  Christmas spent alone (by choice) the year I got divorced, eating KFC direct from the bucket and separating kodak doubles to give to my ex before heading over to my cousin's in my pj's and a Santa hat to give my little god daughters some Christmas hugs.  Christmas 2-months pregnant in stilettos and a LBD with my soldier.  Christmas in the desert with security guards, hairdressers, compound maintenance staff, local maids and nannies and other drifters partaking in a feast with no family but us to invite them to their table.  Christmas back in Canada with my whole family gathered once again; mom, dad, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews.  And Christmas this year, just Smilin' Vic, Kiddo and me.  For the first time ever.  Just the three of us.

So many experiences.  All of them Christmas perfect.

It's Christmas Eve, and we've come back from drinks at some friends in the compound.  We came home, baked cookies for Santa and decorated them.  We tracked Santa on NORAD.  Smilin' Vic did the Christmas Eve reading of the Night Before Christmas to Kiddo, as she lay all snuggled up in her bed with her kitty cat, visions of sugarplums dancing in her head (make that visions of 'sugar').

"Santa" has taken an obligatory bite out of twelve cookies to prove he was here.  A milk box lies discarded haphazardly by the cookie plate.  The gifts are about to be deposited under the tree.

I spoke to my mom.  She's in better spirits than I've heard in a long time.  Christmas is usually her undoing.  I spoke to my dad; his spirits always seem to lift mine.  I feel so incredibly blessed.

I'm drinking red wine, wearing a red sweater, looking over quite contentedly at our Christmas tree.

I'm happy. Really, really happy.  It's Christmas.  How could I not be?

I could tell you that my parents often fought at Christmas, that I raged the year my mom told me we had to make Xmas decorations out of tin foil and popcorn for our Venezuelan Palm "Christmas" tree.  I could tell you how my teenage heart broke when I found out my father wouldn't be home for the holidays, and how my ex-husband passed out cold one year knocking over the Christmas tree and setting the lights on fire.  I could tell you how I cried when I sifted through that stack of kodak memories, thinking that at age 33 my chances of being a mom, a wife, a family were over.  I could tell you how I yearn for snow at Christmas as I face another Christmas in the sand.  I could tell you that my heart was breaking tonight, knowing that as I spoke to my dad the Alzheimer's had already erased the oncologist's voice yesterday telling him that the cancer had spread to his liver.

But that would be missing the point. Because those memories don't carry me forward.  They don't give me life or hope. The dark memories do absolutely nothing for me, other than provide a contrast to the very brightest moments of my life.  

I got a call today from some former Qatari employees.  They were calling to wish me a Merry Christmas.  Even though the celebration means nothing to them personally, they knew it meant something to me.  And again I was overwhelmed with gratitude; that they would care enough to reach out to me.  I could tell you I live in a country that does not recognize Christmas.  But that would simply be letting the darkness overshadow the truth.

Those calls reminded me once again of everything that shines bright.  

May your Christmas shine bright, readers. 

Special wishes go out to Katie, MM, C2C and HX Report, who have been a continuous source of blogging inspiration and support in 2013.  Merry Christmas!!!!

Warm glow ...

Warm glow ...

Santa's treat ....

Santa's treat ....

Celebrate A Year With Me ...

What a lot can happen in a year!

Take 'Me' for example (because it is ALL about 'Me' after all!) ...

One year ago, I was miserable in my job.

I was being paid big bucks to sit in a chair in a job I DESPISED.

One year ago, I was thinking that it was the last Christmas my dad would be alive; and that I'd never feel the warmth of his bear hug again.

One year ago, I was still convinced that having a pet in the ME was a really bad idea.

One year ago, I didn't own an i-Pad and couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about.

One year ago, I hadn't even heard about Mac TV.

One year ago, my Kiddo still had a little bit of the 'baby' in her.

One year ago, I could run.

One year ago, I had a fully functional iMac, whose drive had not crashed.

One year ago, I would have never believed that one lone young gunman, armed with a Bushmaster rifle, would ever conceive of entering a school in Newton, Connecticut, and killing 20 innocent school children and six heroic adults.

One year ago, overwhelmed by what I was seeing on TV and in the world around me, I turned to the internet for distraction.

I clicked on a blog post written by a lady living in Saudi Arabia.  It's a shame I can't remember the blog, because she changed my life.  But I remember her blog was written on "Squarespace", and beyond the content, I loved the look and feel of her site.

And so it is, that one year ago, I decided to escape the insanity by giving blogging another chance.  I made a conscious decision to step away from the sadness and the madness for at least a couple of hours a week.  A conscious decision to take those few hours to focus on whatever silly thing meant something to me.  A conscious decision to work it through in my head and then put those thoughts to page (in this case to screen).

Over the past year, I worked up the courage to step away from one career, become a stay-at-home mom, step into a new career.  I got an I-pad.  I bought Smilin' Vic a Mac TV dongle thingy for his birthday.  

I spent weeks with my dad, listened to him sing to me, sang with him, started Skyping with him.

I bought Kiddo a kitten, the bestest Christmas gift this family's ever gotten!

A few weeks ago, I had "the talk" with Kiddo.  Though she's not yet a teen, she's no longer a baby.  

Last week, I brought my iMac in to the repair shop, hoping they may somehow salvage a year's worth of photos  from the crashed hard drive ... And I come to you tonight from my iPad :-)

I endured three months of physio and ultrasound therapy that resulted in worse pain than I started off with.  After eight months and a recent replacement of a running routine with a walking regimen, I can finally say my piriformis syndrome (aka runner's butt) seems to be on the mend.

I admit I haven't managed to work over horror and disbelief at some of the acts that I see perpetrated the world over.  Mass shootings, random killings, targeted attacks, wars, child abuse, murder, honor killings, bullying, rape, neglect ... No amount of rumination, writing, blogging, crying or screaming will ever manage to bring meaning.  

But for the rest ... The silly stuff.  Well, the last year, the blogging:  it's been my salvation.

If you've been reading as I've been writing, thank you.  It really, really helped.

Thank you.

When Nations Collide ...

This week was International Week at Kiddo's school.

Every year when International Week rolls around, it strikes me as slightly odd. We're talking about a school in which over 2,000 kids from more than 80 nations come together on a daily basis. Seriously, every day is international day for them!

My Canadian Kiddo's best friends are South African, Indonesian, British and Qatari. She has a silent crush on a little Scottsman, a little Dutch boy has a crush on her, and her other BFF from Ireland moved State-side at the end of the last school year.

But then I stop and look back on my own expat childhood, and I realize that I didn't actually learn THAT much about my Indian, American, British, Venezuelan, or Lebanese friends' cultures. We were far too busy playing and just being kids to actually learn about the meaning behind Ramadan, or Diwali, or Chinese New Year.

Moving back to Small-town Canada in my teens, I was confronted with a completely different reality: you were a phenomenon if you'd just moved there from the nearest town 60 kilometers down the wooded highway. Coming as I was from South America, it's fair to say everything about me was perceived as odd. Even though my blue eyes, skin tone and fair hair blended in seamlessly, my neutral accent and trilingualism were often a topic of great interest. It's fair to say I never quite fit in. In fact, for the first time in my life, people focused on what made me different, rather than what made me the same.

I tried really hard to fit in. I adopted the same speech patterns as my new friends (speech emulation is apparently quite common in third culture kids), I cut my long hair to channel Canadiana via an eighties feathered mullet style, I tried to avoid anything that would make me stand out. I lost any desire to be the lead in the school play, contenting myself with the blessed anonymity that came from playing the part of the tree at the back of the stage, simply swaying in the wind.

But I was never really happy being what I was expected to be. I never necessarily wanted the lead; I think I simply wanted to get off the stage. I wanted to stop pretending and get back to being that girl who could hang out with others so different than her, yet so very much the same. I wanted to go back to a place where diversity and differences were the norm. Oddly enough, as much as I yearned for a return to those differences, I never really figured out what those differences were.

When I moved to Qatar, I found myself somewhat at peace, relishing my 'sameness' as an expat in a sea of expats. Yet life here is amazingly not that different to a small northern Canadian town. Within a short while, I was quite surprised to find myself spotting the 'differences'. Shortly thereafter, I realized that my small-mindedness could not be blamed on where I lived, it was result of what I had failed to learn.

As a young child, I could get away with ignoring the differences and continue playing; worst case scenario, I could get upset about the differences, have a small hissy fit, and stomp away until the urge to play again wiped the slate clean. But as an adult, pouting and stomping away are no longer viable solutions when confronting things I don't understand. I realize I have to TRY to understand, LOOK for happy mediums, STRIVE to find the beauty in our differences, and sometimes PRAY for enlightenment when it comes to finding commonalities.

And I realize that having celebrated International Week once a year from a very young age might well have made things much easier for me as an adult. And Kiddo's yearly school celebration starts to seem much less odd. And I start to embrace the tradition, as she proudly wears her National dress to school one day (nothing so unique as a sari, or an abaya, or a kimono for us Canucks .... It's a tuque, plaid vest and moon boots all the way), Qatari colors the following day, and a hockey jersey the next.

This morning before work, as I stood by the stove cooking what seemed like a thousand French-Canadian crepes for Kiddo to bring to the international buffet, I wondered if, despite our many differences, moms of all nationalities were at this very moment equally frazzled and behind schedule for the sole purpose of contributing to their child's international palate enlightenment.

I wondered how many of them realized like me that they were thirty minutes behind schedule, still hadn't showered, and were going to be late for that very important meeting. Were they all wondering at their brazenness for sealing still-steaming food items into plastic containers in defiance of every food packing guideline on earth?

Were they watching their child dissolve into hysterics on the kitchen floor at the mortifying thought of having to pick up a tardy pass because Maman hadn't properly scheduled her early morning baking marathon?

I pondered all these things calmly, finding comfort and solace in the thought of that shared 'one-ness'.

As I dropped Kiddo off at school just as the first bell rang, I proudly watched her line up excitedly with dozens of other kids just beyond the school gate to hand over the plastic bag filled with food containers, so like all the other plastic bags filled with food containers laid out on the receiving table. As an Indonesian volunteer mom dressed in traditional garb graciously accepted Kiddo's bag with a smile, I watched other parents scurrying with kids and plastic bags in tow, trying to make it to the gate before the final bell rang.

And I started back across the parking lot, thinking to myself, "none of us are that different".

Which is when I saw a lovely little Qatari girl alight from a G63 Mercedes SUV with her nanny. Her driver reached into the rear and pulled out a cake box (from an uber-expensive local bakery) the size of small house. I couldn't take my eyes off that golden box, and I watched the trio as they made their way across the cross walk to the gate, thinking to myself "we're NOT all the same."

Until I saw the little girl's eyes light up and her grin quickly spread as she took her place proudly in line, so excited at the prospect of her golden contribution being laid there amongst a sea of cheap plastic containers.  Her obvious joy at being a part of it all exactly mirrored my daughter's.

And I thought to myself "we're not the same, but we're really not that different after all".

What else could you expect when a thousand nations collide in a small town?

 

So Much We all Share In Common

Just Call Me a Twit ...

Well folks, I went out and did it.  

This afternoon, closing in on my 44th year in existence, I went and got myself a Twitter account.

It's a lovely account, and I've been admiring my username as it appears on my homepage for a while now.

For quite a while.

Admiring ...

For a while ...

Because ...

You see …

I don't actually know how to use Twitter.

There.  I said it.  I am a Twitter novice, a Twitter virgin, a Twit.

I have no followers; I'm not sure if I'm supposed to follow someone first, or if that's rude and perhaps I should just wait for someone to knock on my virtual Twitter door?

I can't ask anyone to follow me because I don't know how.  And if I did, I don't know how to write like a Twit.

I know there's a trick to it, a hashtag ("#") here, an "@" sign there, but which one goes where?

I feel like the new kid in class all over again.  Everybody knows everybody, and I'm hanging out just waiting for someone to come say hi, maybe ask me to sit next to them ...

Sigh ...

You'd think being the new kid on the block would get easier as the years go by.

In many ways, I think it's harder.

Back in grade school, I worried the kids would think I'm a twit.  Now that I'm certain I actually am one, I worry that the other twits won't like me.