Like many parents of older children, I have regrets.

I haven’t totally ruined my kids or anything like that. They were always clothed, fed and sheltered. They even had music/arts lessons over the years, and physical activities.

But they didn’t always have ME!
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I was not a “natural” when it came to parenting newborn twins. I struggled a lot with the various minute to minute  challenges of parenting two babies, and while I made it my business to learn and know, by the time I became an “expert”, Alex and Simon where already well through school. 

I heard a parent once comment that “the days are long and the years are short”.

​So true!

Especially with multiples, the early years can be overwhelming, and for me, I didn’t even take the full year of parental leave, choosing instead to run back to the refuge of full time work, and leaving my 4 month old babies with their father for the remainder of that first year. I was a very successful instructional coach at the time, with a large urban school board, and the fulfillment I felt from my expertise in that role compared with the relative incompetence I felt parenting two screaming newborns with little/no consistent help was quite jarring!

Even once the boys were sleeping through the night and using “big boy toilets” rather than diapers, and we started to get our life back a little, I regret to admit that I spent summers facilitating and attending professional development for teachers rather than camping or hanging out at the beach with my littles. Our “summers in PEI” consisted of maybe two weeks at most.
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And suddenly they were 17 and it was COVID and we were all locked up in a tiny apartment together.

After about two years of that, I decided I’d had enough. Throughout the pandemic, I’d been working overtime (by then I worked in a provincial leadership position in education, and was involved with teams that were working on COVID-related education policy with the government); many long hours at the dining room table, even in the evening, while my babies and my temporarily unemployed pilot wife lived their lives, neglected, in their respective bedrooms of our small Toronto apartment.
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When they came out of their rooms and we shared a meal together, I marveled at how my little babies were growing into big, tall men. We even threw them a covid-themed 6-foot-party (which wasn’t much of a party, since we weren’t allowed to interact with anyone outside our circle at the time, resulting in a LOT of leftover six-foot-sub meals for us within two days!!!) 

It frightened me that the opportunity to connect with these not-so-tiny tenants was quickly waning.
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I decided right then and there to make some significant changes in my life.

With the support of my partner, I quit my job, and over the next several years, with her support, have transitioned from full time work to semi-retired “housewife” and “Stay-at-home-mom”. (I put these in parenthesis because for our particular family and life arrangement, the terms look a little different than the main stream, largely because we don’t all live full time in one place together.)

It was the best decision I ever made.

While it’s not the same of course as being there for your baby’s first steps or Kindergarten graduation or school field trips to the museum, there is something quite satisfying about being able to fully support your teen while they learn to drive, or meet them on/near campus for lunch during the week, or even sit in on one of their university classes and ride the subway home together afterwards! There’s a special satisfaction in googling mental health and academic supports during the day while your 19-year-old is in class, making a suggestion to them later on, and getting a phone call a few weeks later thanking you for that suggestion because IT WORKED!! Or reading a draft of an assignment they’ve written for a course and offering descriptive feedback, or hearing about something they are learning about at college that excites them, or having breakfast out together on a weekday because they don’t have class and you don’t have to “work” that morning.

And with time to manage groceries, laundry and other household chores during the “workday”, my weekends are more flexible as well: We still don’t camp, but there are lots of beach visits and walks in the park, both individually with each “child” and together.

I’d had the opportunity to experience a taste of stay at home motherhood for a few months when the boys were ten, and we’d spent the school year in Argentina ... But parenting teenagers/young adults is different.

I get to be fully present when one of them calls to tell me he and his girlfriend broke up, or when one of them wanders into the living room and wants to talk about finances and investing. I can say “yes” when one of them decides university is not for him and wants to come live with me full time on PEI for several months while he decides what to do next (college with a possible career as a PI, it turns out, after a summer of chainsawing and sheet metal roofing!!) And I can support the other when he wants to do a full time placement but needs a ride because the bus is not convenient to our home and he doesn’t have his drivers license yet.

I don’t have to listen half-heartedly to their stories while the other half of my brain stresses about unwritten report cards or marking or lesson planning that still needs to get done… yes, it’s true there is lots to do as the primary household engineer, but without a full time paid job, I have considerable flexibility about when and how tasks are completed. And watching actively engaged as my boys turn into resilient, creative and thoughtful young men has been a great gift to me as a parent who missed out on the chance to be more fully present earlier on in their lives.

I know that not everyone has the luxury of being at home full-time. But if you haven’t had the pleasure and the privilege of parenting your children, even your semi-adult children, full time for an extended period of time, and the opportunity presents itself, I highly recommend you take advantage of it. I’m so glad I have!

Are you feeling lonely and abandoned this Christmas? You’re in good company! All over the world, culturally Christian spouses and families have been forsaken, and my kids and I are among said abandoned masses.
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You see, I am married to an airline pilot. And while that all may seem glamourous and glorious, the sad reality is that with the exception of those very few with highly coveted top seniority numbers, most commercial pilots have to work over the holidays, leaving their families and friends alone at home, turkey dinner somewhat subdued with an empty seat at the table.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my wife and am grateful for everything she does for this family. Especially bringing home the bacon, because Lord knows, I spend it as fast as she makes it! And, as a result of her chosen career, my kids and I get to travel cheap all over the world (albeit on standby). Also, the cool factor (and yes, the uniform is hot).

But holidays suck. Especially Christmas, because unlike other pilot wives who may have their own parents or siblings who can stand in for their missing spouses on this big family holiday, I’m an only child and have been an orphan since my second year of university. So there’s that.
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As a queer family, we’ve woven a pretty tight “chosen family” over the past decade or two, and so in recent years, our Christmas Eve table has been filled with the presence of the retired math professor we look after (our surrogate father) and a close family friend who has been a stand in uncle of sorts for the boys. And then when the kids head off to their dad’s the next morning, I usually make my way to the airport and join my wife for her overnight to whichever exciting destination she’s traveling to for work that day.

Alas, this year, I am truly abandoned!
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Our old man is in Mexico (his lung issues necessitate him seeking warmer climates during the cold Canadian winter months) and our Uncle Vinx is in the hospital, recovering from a heart attack and subsequent brain injury. And my dear, sweet wife is flying to Timmins of all places tonight, where she will spend the full day tomorrow and a second night (an unheard of length for a layover at her regional airline… so why now? Why?!) before flying again on the 26th and eventually arriving back home late that afternoon!
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Woe is me.

Historically, being an orphan wasn’t sooo bad… My father died when I was a baby, so I have no history with him, and therefore, nothing to “miss” per say. And the first Christmas after my mother died (she died on Dec 22, so that kind of sucked), I  was taken in by the family of my then-boyfriend, who were particularly well-equipped to do so.
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The father of my university boyfriend was kind of a big deal at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at U of T, and accordingly, Christmas itself was kind of a big deal, since it was both a personal AND a professional interest in that family. In fact, their house always had at least two Christmas trees, including one fully decorated with an assortment of small wooden creches the professor had picked up at some Christmas market during one of his many research trips to Europe.

The boyfriend also had several siblings, all older than him, and very nurturing when needed. On Christmas Eve following my mother’s death, I stumbled into their home, and a large stuffed bear was thrust into my arms by one of the sisters. This was followed by an enveloping of arms, and then I was ushered into the living room, past the first Christmas tree, and onto a chair at the dining room table in the adjoining room. I was fed, and encouraged to drink a glass of something.

I’m fifty now, not a child anymore. But the thirty-year-old memory still brings tears to my eyes. ​It was exactly what I needed during that tumultuous time.The ritual of the dinner, followed by the opening of gifts and our annual visit to midnight mass at the local high Anglican church, overstuffed with “CEOs” (Christmas and Easter only) brought some semblance of normalcy after what had been a very stilted and definitely NOT normal Christmas eve gathering in the living room at my mother’s (now my) house a few hours earlier with my poor Omi and my mother’s boyfriend, both of whom were still reeling at her untimely death!

After those years came the family of my children’s father. Somewhat boring, but very dependable, and always welcoming without question.

​Even when I finally came crawling out of the closet several years later, they STILL insisted that there would always be a spot for me at their table. (My ex’s new girlfriend put a stop to that in short order, but still, it’s the thought that counts, and that thought still warms my heart.)

And now I am married to the pilot. Exciting and glamourous, but with a pretty much solid guarantee of never being home for the holidays.

Confession time, though: It’s not my wife’s airline that stole Christmas from me, it’s her culture!!!

​Yep, that’s right. Even if my dear wife were NOT a commercial pilot, I would still have to name this blog post as I did, because as it turns out, my assumption that “everyone” in Canada just celebrates Christmas is… well… wrong.

For the first few years, before she was snapped up by the airlines, my Russian wife just went along with our holiday celebrations, with a minimal amount of grumbling. In part because she loved me, and in part because she just wasn’t sure how to approach the idea that the whole tree, angel and pile of gifts thing was overwhelming and uncomfortable for her in a way that wouldn't hurt me. It was just such a big part of my culture, and initially, she didn’t feel “entitled” to share her discomfort in any productive manner. (Newsflash, the minimal grumbling was already hurtful, lol!)

Since my wife is not a practicing Jew, Muslim or other non-Christian adherent, and since she’d been living in a country that commercially and culturally embraces the holiday season for well over a decade when I met her, it never even occurred to me that the traditions to which I had clung since losing my mother would be a problem for her.

But they were.

And that became a problem for me.
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We eventually got past this hurdle, but not before the underlying implications of our unresolved disconnect nearly broke us up a dozen times or more. 

Now, after many tears and open ears and adoptions of emotions that are foreign to each of us respectively, we have reached a truce of sorts about Christmas.

I buy my own advent calendar (Body Shop had a nice one this year!), there is no more St Nicolas Day, she and the boys take care of getting a real tree and hauling the box of Christmas stuff up from the storage locker in the basement, and I decorate the tree and try not to complain too much if it's crooked or somewhat sparce. (To her credit, she usually picks a nice one.)

We no longer do Christmas gifts. She commits to a brief “in transit” celebration where the boys and I visit her during a short break at the airport.

And she sends me selfies of herself on the road in festive professional attire and allows me to post them on social media so that everyone knows how cool I am being married to a pilot and all... even if I've been abandoned for the holidays!

The trade-off is a love and support for one another deeper and more fulsome than I have ever experienced, even with my own mother and Omi when they were still alive. My wife knows me almost as well as I know myself in many areas… sometimes better than I know myself! She has learned to hold me accountable in ways that are loving, and is learning to hear me and accept with an increasingly open mind when I share concerns that run counter to her default. And we have developed our own Christmas traditions, like me getting getting decked out in festive gear and joining her wherever she happens to be flying on Christmas Day. (Well, unless it’s a dull day layover in Timmins, like this year. Ugh!)
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We’ve also co-created some unique holidays that are far more numerous than Christmas, special days of private celebration that are regularly acknowledged between us with delightful little secrets and traditions unique to our family or to us as a couple.

Is Christmas still lonely for me, as an orphan who lost her everything just days before the western world's most high-pressure family event?

I would say it’s more a time of inner reflection. And in those moments, after the kids leave for their dad’s on the morning of the 25th after their stockings have been emptied (Santa insisted on filling the boys’ stockings, even after my wife canceled the rest of our Christmas traditions, haha), when I am alone in the apartment with no one to share a tea with while sitting around the Christmas tree with all its twinkly lights, I do feel a little bit sorry for myself, yes. But also, I feel grateful.

A reduced Christmas in an overly consumerist world is a small price to pay for the many strange and wonderful blessings my strange and wonderful wife bestows on me and on our family throughout the year. Christmas, as I am continuing to learn, is more a frame of mind than a particular day or time of year. And giving up the obsession of the season for the woman I love, and instead adopting a more long-term mindset of grace, generosity and love is a greater gift than any!

Never once as I sent my 18-year-old monozygotic twins off to commuter orientation at the University of Toronto last August did I think I would be spending this August celebrating a set of achievements for one of them that was completely unrelated to the history degree he had begun pursuing a year ago. 

And yet here we are. August 2023, Prince Edward Island. A year later, in a completely different province.

As the summer draws to a close, I am prompted to reflect on what has been an intensely rich season for both me and the manchild through which I have been learning vicariously over the past several months!

Although both boys started strong at the Faculty of Arts and Science of my alma mater last fall, Twin B soon found himself uninspired by the various tenets of the somewhat nebulous degree he was pursuing. By midwinter, it was clear that his enthusiasm was continuing to wane, and so we were somewhat alarmed but not really surprised when — with summer just around the corner — there was no clear plan about what was to come next.

The situation seemed particularly dire framed in the stark contrast of his brother’s summer which was shaping up to be a hectic smorgasbord of various jobs. From local and international tour guiding, to running a summer camp at a board game café, to teaching chess part-time to elementary school kids across the city, to jumping on the bandwagon with my wife’s bike lesson side hustle, Twin A applied for an endless string of jobs, was offered most of them, and seemed to accept almost all of the jobs he was offered!

We therefore threatened Twin B that if he did not apply for more jobs and become gainfully employed for the summer soon, we would haul his ass to PEI (where I've been living for the past few years), register him for a multi-day chainsaw training course, and put him to work cleaning up Fiona damage on our property and those of other islanders.

The little bugger called our bluff: “OK, great”, he calmly replied. 

And boy, am I ever glad he did! Thanks for the generosity of time and spirit of several friends and others across the island who took him on, and a very generous partnership program between the federal government, a private nonprofit and the local college, the child has learned basic sheet metal roofing skills, knows how to safely fell a tree, can tie seven kinds of knots and climb up a wind turbine, and is excited about getting his first “man kit“ as he calls it, the toolbox gifted it to him by the program he is about to complete as I write this! Not only that, but he’s finally on the road to getting his driver’s license, and has even made some friends here on the island.

The personal emotional growth both individually and in our mother-son relationship is in itself something to be celebrated. And from an Education perspective, Twin B has turned from an uninspired, at-risk university dropout into an interested, optimistic and engaged young man and who is looking forward to continued learning and exploration of potential career path both related to his summer endeavours and in other areas. In addition to the possibility of applying to a follow-up course for the wind turbine training he’s completed, the boy has also sought out and registered for an Investigative Security college program to begin in January. 

As an educator, it is an important reminder of how valuable hands-on learning and multiple pathways are.

Although in theory I always supported college or other non-university post secondary pathways for my former students and my own children, I realize now there was an implicit bias on my part. Although I was first in my family to do so, I had gone to university, and in addition to my undergraduate degree, I hold two post-graduate degrees. So I guess I just sort of assumed my kids would do that as well. I see now that for at least one of my boys, having continued blindly into second year university would have robbed him of a wealth of experiences that are shaping him into the interesting an interested young man he is becoming. 

If you are a parent of a young person fretting about their future, realize that they really are a multitude of ways to move from school to under school, and all of them are valid. The exciting challenge for you as a parent (and for your child) is finding and/or designing the pathway or pathways that will best develop and engage the skill set and affinities of the young person in question. ​

After a bit of a hiatus from formal teaching life to move part time to another province and take on a job as a post-secondary curriculum and instructional consultant, I find myself preparing to return to the classroom.  It will be my second sojourn into teaching post-secondary, and my first time teaching in the college context.  It’s also my first time teaching primarily online. 

I‘m excited, and have been preparing to practise what I preach in terms of using and sharing clear learning goals and success criteria, triangulating (and diversifying!) assessment, and offering variety and choice in learning activities. My first sessional at Holland College will — I hope — be as engaging and practical for my students as it is for me to prepare for it!

As I work to bring to life my syllabus for Communication and Technology in the Arts, the blended course I’ll be facilitating for first-year college students in the Fundamental Arts program this September, I am struck by an interesting realization:  Once again, I‘ll be teaching the same „grade“ as my own children! 

This will actually mark the third time in my career that I‘ll be working with students who are the same age as Alex and Simon. The first time I played this game was the year I taught a Grade 3 class: At the time, my own babies were in Grade 3, too (albeit at a different school), and I often compared mental notes to see how aligned my classroom was with theirs, developmentally.  The edu-stars aligned again a few years later, when I moved from a Grade 7 & 8 Math and Science gig to Grade 6 Core… the same year Simon and Alex moved into Grade 6! And once again, I followed with interest what their respective teachers were up to and compared it to my own teaching and learning journey that year. (The boys even came to visit my students one day, as their school board and mine had different PD day schedules.)

I must be getting old. Either that, or I’m suffering from low grade depression or something. When my partner invited me to join her on a layover in New York for New Year’s Eve 2019, all I could think about was how awesome it would be to instead get home from work, change into my jammies and lounge around on the couch.

If Seinfeld had the summer of George, I’m having the NYE of Vera... and so far, it’s awesome!

After a horrible week spent mostly in bed with fever and a resultant loss of appetite on account of having an awful cold/sinus infection, I found my tastebuds slowly regaining their passion this afternoon. Consequently, I elected to order in through Uber Eats, and tried out a new Indian restaurant.

With my partner away at work and my kids away at a party, I had a whole quiet evening to myself. And after getting ripped off with Christmas, being sick and all, I was looking forward to some quality downtime with myself!

Unlike George’s summer, this evening did not disappoint: In addition to devouring my tasty Indian dinner, I reviewed a little math, studied some flight stuff, and started a new music app to learn to play blues chords on the piano.

Afterwards, I spend some time prepping a handout for one of my Airbnb Experiences, “Learn German and Eat Potato Salad”, for which I have a booking tomorrow.

In an effort to add value but reduce paper, I’ve been creating and providing electronic “handouts” for some of my experiences, which I use during the experience itself. Last week I made a plane spotting “bingo card” for my “Discover the Secret World of Aviation” experience, and tonight I made a visual language reference for the “Kartoffelsalat” which we’ll be making and eating tomorrow.

Since it’s new year’s, I’m all alone, and I don’t really drink, I decided to splurge on a bubble tea, delivered directly to my door through Uber Eats. What with the delivery charge, small order surcharge and tip, it was ridiculously expensive, but kind of fun in a naughty sort of way - not the type of thing I would normally do! But, I haven’t had a bubble tea in SO. LONG. And besides, I would have spent way more had I actually hopped on the plane with my partner to New York. So I thought, hey, why not?!

The poor delivery guy got lost of course, as do all folks who trust in Google to get them to our secret, off the beaten path hideout, with with a few custom directions from the convenience of my couch, I soon had my bubble tea in hand.

If I were really on my own, I’d probably wrap up the NYE of Vera shortly, walk the dog, and then head to bed. But being a responsible parent of independent, young teenagers who are attending their first “real” party (their words, not mine), I feel somewhat compelled to stay up and ensure they actually arrive home at the appointed hour. (My colleagues with older kids warned of this stage years ago, when Alex and Simon were babies screaming all the time and wouldn’t sleep, and I was complaining of being tired - they wisely shared that the tired part wouldn’t end when the kids got older, since I would then/now be awake worrying about whether they were okay, and whether they’d get home safely. I guess we’ve finally entered that stage!)

Also I want to talk to my honey when the clock strikes 12 and she calls me in a drunken stupor from her dinner out with the crew at the hotel restaurant in Newark.

So it’s off to the next item on agenda of the Boring Old Person’s Stay-at-Home Guide to NYE: A little Netflix and dog snuggling... still in my jammies!

Good night, y’all, and in case I fall asleep on the couch before midnight, happy new year 2020!