Last night

We had Norm Nelson, our financial advisor, over last night so we could buy RRSP's. ORdinarily the 28th is the deadline. This year is leap year so we were actually a day early. He reminded us that he had come over exactly one year ago. I wonder what I will be doing the day before I die. Last minuting is such a pattern.

I am doing this bibliography - 150 annotations of things that I have read. I of course are including anything that I have every read since there is no way that I can read that many books and articles and write about them between now and June and still live my life. Anyhow, when it has been 8 years since I read this article, I couldn't exactly remember what is said. Its kind of funny to see what I have underlined. It was the right stuff but I know that it just wasn't as meaningful then as it is now. I read it, thought it was great but only now am I seeing the usefulness of the application. I am reading 2 Nephi - the Isaiah stuff. Its still not sinking in but there is no underlines either.

Missing Cleo

Today I couldn't go running - the hill is covered in fluffy snow. Yesterday I cried as I was running, thinking of Cleo. I am missing her again today. I am in my office supposed to be doing my annotated bibliography for the fourth day in a row. This is truly deadly for an extrovert. I have the space heater on so I don't waste heating the whole house. I wish that Cleo was here sharing the time with me. Her company was comforting. There is a part of me that is just non-verbal and kinaesthetic. A need to express feelings without words. Animals have always been a part of and an answer to that need. Cleo was especially good about that. I also shared that closeness with Misty, my pony. She was an amazing personality. So impatient - always in a hurry to get where we were going. She had no ideas of her limitations - her size. She would race anyone and usually win. If I fell off she would stop immediately and give me a dirty look - get on board and lets finish this! I read in one of my endless articles on organizational learning that what sets us apart from animals is our ability to reflect. Don't get me wrong - I think reflecting is great but sometimes I think it gets in the way. Cleo just caught squirrels, birds whatever. Misty raced and won even though she was only 12 hands high. Red, our Arab stallion, opened gates and doors. Thunderhead rounded up cows on his own just for fun. No constraints - just did it - just for fun. Maybe I need to do more of that.

Thanks Mary et al

Wow! Isn't Mary making me look good. The new redesigned look a result of her artistic and techno genius. Its wonderful to be saved by grownup children. Gillian saved me last week. We were working on a tedious and potentially time consuming project - developing assessment questions for job profiles in a succession planning process. I know I have a tendency for theoretical perfection rather than pragmatic realism. I started to get absolutely buried in detail. Jill looked at what I had done and cut right to the chase and we developed a really workable format that fit perfectly within the time frame we were being paid for. Sam's company has created beautiful business cards for my company Capability Connections and is in the process of redesigning the website. If it weren't for the terribly slow client (me) that would have been done. As I enjoy my ipod running and all the cool music on it, I have Greg to thank. Erin is my inspiration as a runner - thanks again for the cool running shirt. Anne is now my model for skiing. She is learning to swoosh turns. Maybe I can too.

Concept redesign

It has been a long time since I have posted. The original purpose of my blog was to do my personal history and connect it with my thoughts. It seemed like an easy thing to do but in the end I never really got to it. I decided when I was running this morning that I need to a way to connect with people and just let people know what is happening to me. I joined Facebook today - got invited by Kathleen Nelson. I did the profile thing and then got stumped on how to post - have a page, all that stuff. The same thing happened with Linked In. I replied to Tagged another networking site when I was requested to be a friend of Vilma Roderigez. Same problem I have no idea how to use these things. So I guess a blog is perfect for my technology disabled self - one way communication.

So what has been happening - running through my head. Well the election in Alberta is one thing. We (andy, anne and I ) actually went to a meet the candidate session - the liberal in our riding. He was really great! Andy is doing some volunteering and I am going to vote liberal instead of my usual ND. Even the conservatives are saying they could lose 10 seats in Calgary and others are saying as many as 18. That would be unbelievable. Its amazing how much like sheep Albertans are - unhappy but still voting the same way. Its like this province really likes dictatorships.

On the personal front. I vacillate back and forth between loving taking this doctorate and being stressed and sick about it. The former happens when I actually get to do some reading and research which was yesterday. The latter feelings happen when I don't. It really is a matter of faith as the spirit told me when I started. Blessings come when I need them. Two of my morman consultant friends just out of the blue gave me things that will be so much help it is unbelievable - one a reference to a software program to manage references/ bibliographies and the other a key book that will be huge in terms of what I want to learn. I just have to keep going and praying and doing what I can do.

On the family front, take a look at this. Two Alenes - 54 years apart

Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and it seems that the older I get, the more I miss my mother. My children did not have the opportunity to really know her since she died when my oldest daughter was nine and she had been very sick and not herself, for more than a decade. She was very different in temperament and personality from me, but her influence on me was profound.

Esther Johnson was the 12th child of John Peter Johnson and Solrun (Lula) Gudmundsson on November 13, 1913. Her Mother had just turned 48 years old. I was born four months before she turned 40. My Father said that it had taken him 6 months to convince her to have another baby.

She was a wonderful balance to my father. Dad said that she made him feel calm and peaceful. Quiet and gentle, she brought a feeling of safety and security to him and others. She was shy and put little or no pressure on others to be different than they were. I never felt "not okay" in her presence. There was never a negative judgment. She had the great ability to just accept people as they were. This was not overt but just the way she was. I doubt that there was ever anyone who was hurt or offended in any way by my mother.

She was sensitive and it was hard for me to see her be hurt by things that my Father would sometimes say or by her children's bad choices. Her, "Oh Esther" when I had done something I shouldn't, would cut me to the quick. When events/actions of some of my older siblings caused her to cry, I made a covenant with myself to never do those things and never be responsible for causing her that kind of pain.

She was also a great teacher to me. Again it was not in a didactic way. In a very quiet, humble and obedient way she was able to nurture my testimony. In our small rural branch of the church (in Rainier), we would have primary opening exercises on Sunday and then our mothers would teach us the lessons at home. I don't think I every missed a lesson. She would come to my bedroom - a very small attic room and sit on the end of my bed and we would have the lesson. She helped me learn all of my scriptures (12 a year) and complete all of my requirements for my bandlo. This included teaching me how to cross stitch and crochet - things that were very hard for her. This demonstrated to me the importance of consistency and obedience in attending and participating in church. From time to time we would have little Primary activities and there was never a question about whether we would make the effort and go. It was just what we did. It is important to note that all the time I was growing up, my Father was inactive. It was my mother that taught me the gospel.

She was always responsible and dedicated to the Church and always accepted the church callings she was given. She always did her visiting teaching and loved Relief Society. She read the Relief Society magazine and supported all Relief Society activities and projects - working hard, talking, laughing and showing me by her behaviour that the best, most important friends were sisters in the gospel. It showed me how to develop deep roots, not just in the gospel but in the community of the church. This has never wavered. Even when I was in times or places when I didn't feel like I was "Molly Mormon" enough and didn't really fit, I never left. I always have known that what I share with my Relief Society sisters is a bond that goes way beyond, day to day interests or external appearances. It is deeper, spiritual and eternal.


I was a difficult and challenging child for her - so different in many ways than herself. She was so patient - never came close to yelling or even raising her voice. Never any tone of voice that would compromise how I felt about myself. If I didn't do something that I was supposed to do, she would not ask me, she would just do it herself. Whatever I wanted to do, she supported and encouraged me.

She was dedicated to giving service to her family. Cooking, cleaning and caring for us. Life in relation to these things was much different in the 60s - wringer washers, clotheslines, no microwaves or dishwashers, paste wax for the linoleum floors that could only put on by hand. Everything was more work. We had wonderful, wholesome food. Nothing but homemade bread - everything made from scratch. Sunday dinner was an event every week with homemade buns, apple pie, garden grown vegetables and of course roast beef we had raised.

My mother showed perfect loyalty and love to her husband. Her advice to me when I got married was to never say anything negative about my husband. That certainly had been her example and my father was not always easy to live with. She supported him in whatever he needed - her time, her love and affection, and doing work with animals. She was pretty timid around animals. I never saw her ride a horse. She had fallen off one and had another run away with her. On round-up, she was always in the pick-up truck or walking. One big rangy yearling Holstein steer who we had fed on the bucket the year before recognized her and started to try to follow her. I can remember her trying to get away and telling "Ferdinand" (the name we had given him) to get away. As far as he was concerned, she was his mother.

When I was little, she read me stories, provided me with a wealth of dress-up clothes and books to read and catered to my many opinions - fluorescent socks, purple dresses, and bright red lipstick and ear rings. She saved whole milk for just me - I hated skim. She cooked other meals for me when we had liver or pea soup. She made me bowls of sugar and butter to eat and did her best to get me where I needed to be when the roads and weather were bad.

I never saw my mother perform but as a young girl she was skilled and talented at "elocution" something I greatly enjoy. She played basketball and was athletic. She told me not to stop using my talents because she regretted letting some of her talents go, disappear she thought. This had happened because of her focus on her husband and family. When I left home she had cared for children for 35 years. Her comment is about balance - a constant challenge for all women. How much do we give to others? How much to ourselves? When does giving to others have us lose ourselves? How long do we postpone our own talent development? These are still questions I struggle with.

Tomorrow, I wish I could sit down with my mother and talk to her and tell her how much I love her. I would tell her how much I appreciate the loving example she lived and the path she set me on. I have a happy family, a close and intimate relationship with my husband, deep and close relationships with other wonderful and spiritual women, confidence in myself and my abilities, career success, many rewarding talents and most important of all things, a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have these many blessings, very much because of what I learned from my mother. The older I become, the more I realize this and have come to appreciate how very much she sacrificed for me and how very, very fortunate I am.

Transitions

I like to run in the morning when the world is just turning from night to day. On a day not too long ago, I was having such a run and there was also the feeling of misting just before a rain. The air was fresh and clean and it had the wonderful feeling of spring – the first day of spring. Ah March – a time a wonderful transition. It made me reflect on the many important transitions that had occurred for me in March and caused me to think about the nature of transitions.

Some are wonderful, some not so wonderful. Some are planned and predictable – changes that you invite, marriage for example. Others are not. They come as a surprise or as a part of circumstances that you can’t control, like a move or an illness. Some like a child going on a mission are predictable in the event but unpredictable in our response to it. When some are happening, you know something is happening and it is important but it is not until after – sometimes years after, that you recognize how whatever it was that changed, changed your life. It is about these that I will focus on.

My first big March transition happened when I was eight. My family moved from living in Lethbridge to living in Scandia. I had adjusted well to Lethbridge. I was taking ballet and piano lessons. I was good at both and had won an award for the most promising dancer. I went swimming in the outdoor pool and skated in the indoor arena or on Henderson lake. I had learned how to ride an adult sized bicycle and could ride by myself to Gordies Grocery and buy 1cent bubble dubble bubble gum. I could go to movies Saturday afternoon, riding the city bus and could enjoy the only building that had air conditioning.

I had lots of Mormon friends and I loved going to Primary. The chapel was new and spacious. I got an award for being the best student in Sunday School class. I was baptized with about 20 other kids. It was the baby boom and I was in Mormon southern Alberta. My school was a brand new school where the desks matched the floor tiles (pink and green or yellow and grey). My teacher, Mrs Leonard, was young and beautiful and I felt that she liked me especially. The most important thing was that I felt like my friends really liked me and that I was kind of the centre of any threesome that happened.

When we moved to Scandia everything changed. The first day of school made that clear. Jenny Lind School had four rooms with grades from 1-12. I was in the 1-3 grade class. My teacher, Mrs Narum was old and her first comment to me that I remember was about my report card. With my classmates standing around she said how terrible it was to give a child so many high marks on a report card. Three students were my age. I don’t remember very much except being surrounded by them on the Monday of the second week and challenged about the fact that I didn’t go to church. I said I did and they said I didn’t. You see they went to three different churches – Lutheran, United and Catholic and I wasn’t at any of them. I told them I was Mormon and I had gone to church. It was clear to me that I was different and I had to figure out how to fit in.

There was no roads to ride bikes on, no easy circle of friends, no swimming pool and church was in the school in Rainier. Luckily there was one other girl at church – Merle Caldwell. The following year three communities amalgamated their schools and Merle and I went to school together. Years later when my manager at Alberta found out that I was Mormon, he thought that it must have been good training for being a consultant because I must be used to being on the outside of every group. He was pretty much right. Our family was pretty much on the outside because of being Mormon.

The next big March transition happened when I was 16. It was the month that my mother had her first and very serious heart attack. It was classic – 5 years after menopause. She was 55 years of age. I was going to High School in Brooks and was very very busy. I was on student’s council, on the Social Committee. We were responsible for planning dances and the fashion show. I was on the Intramural Council and intramurals were big – some kind of activity every day and often on week ends. I was the Stoney house league leader and we won the participation award at the end of the year for the most people participating. I had learned really well how to drag people out to things. I was in drama, on the volley ball, badminton and track teams and had one boyfriend after another. I had figured out flirting. I stayed in town frequently with all of my activities including once a week for Young Women’s (MIA or Mutual). I didn’t do much homework but I pretty much only took what was easy for me anyway.

My Father had spent a couple of weeks in the hospital in Lethbridge getting the tendon in his thumb reattached. It had been severed while castrating a calf the summer before. Herb was at home but Mom did a lot of the chores that Dad had done. She lifted bales and carried 12 , 5 gallon buckets of grain to feed the animals. I have no memory of what happened about her actual attack. Either I have blocked it out or it was not something that anyone talked about and I was wasn’t home. In fact I have no memory of her hospital stay.

When she came home of course, she was to do nothing but rest. That was so hard on my mother – work had been what she did and who she was. She had taken care of us all. No one asked me, but I could see that the house was up to me now. Week-ends were hard work – washing the clothes in a wringer washer and hanging them on a line. Cleaning the whole house including the stove and washing and waxing the floor on hands and knees. There was ironing on Sunday and making Sunday dinner. I wanted to take care of everything I could so that Mom wouldn’t feel so bad. She was so sick and getting up to eat often made her cry. I didn’t know what else to do but do the work to show her I loved her. Now I wish I would have taken some time to talk to her or read to her but then I didn’t know about doing those kinds of things.

It was a hard time and things never really went back to how they had been. She was always sick – always did too much and got sicker. Her quality of life just continued to deteriorate until her final heart attack 12 years later. She never did adjust to a limited capacity and all I could do was try to work faster and harder so she would have less to do. I saw how sick she would be after my sisters and their families came to visit. After I was married, I would try so hard to make our visits as easy as possible on her – making the meals, cleaning the house etc.

The next March transition that I want to talk about was the move to Calgary from Edmonton. Financially we were in serious trouble. My consulting business was flat after two fairly abundant years. Andy had moved to a job in the non profit sector that he enjoyed but pay was not covering the mortgage. We had marriages, missions and university to help pay for. In short there was a lot more money going out than was coming in and we needed out.

A job sort of fell from heaven but it meant moving from Edmonton. We had to leave our beautiful big wonderful house on the park. I had to leave my very very good and close friends – Ruth, Laura, Brenda and Sue. As painful as this all was, the worst part was we had to leave family. Sam and Gillian had already left home, on missions. Gillian was married. It was leaving Greg that was almost unbearably difficult. He was my baby boy and was still in High School. He had been the one who had taken care of me when I was sick with Anne. The bond with him was different and emotional and he wasn’t ready to leave. He wasn’t moving on to begin his life as an adult at school or on a mission. It just wasn’t the right time but there was nothing to be done. We had to go and it is impossible to describe how hard this was. And Calgary.... Well everything was different. That is what change is about. Of course it is different.

When I compare the three stories there is much to reflect on. I have learned a lot from all three situations. I think I am a stronger and more sensitive person because I experienced the injustice of discrimination as a child. I had responsibilities in our branch of the church at a very early age that strengthened by testimony and my understanding of consecration. I experienced the freedom of rural life and the simple pleasures that are a part of that.

I certainly was under no delusion of what it meant to be a wife and mother when I got married, as a result of my mother’s illness. I grew up at a young age in relation to that learning. I can’t say that all of my learning about taking so much responsibility has been an entirely good thing however, for myself or others. The process of unlearning some of this has been hard and will likely last the rest of my life.

The last transition feels like the hardest. I could reason that so much was lost – family, house, traditions, and even identity. I think there is more to it than that, though. The older we get, the more we get locked into expectations and build a comfortable world for ourselves. Change brings crisis and the requirement for new ways of seeing things, new ways of being. When we have worked hard to build the best life possible, this seems so unnecessary and unfair.

The very nature of transition is that we are in a “neutral zone” as William Bridges says. We don’t really know what will be different and how it will all turn out in the end. The simple directive is to walk by faith. That is very difficult when so much of our experience as adults is that it is up to us. How do we balance faith with our own responsibility? How do we keep our selves open to change at the same time we are trying to get some stability. Perhaps that is just all about the paradox - like the more I know the less I know or the "last shall be first and the first shall be last". There are no easy answers just always more questions and with the speed of change there will be more and more opportunities to test hypotheses.

Work at Play or Play at Work

Holidays are very important to me. Being able to have lots of them is one of the main reasons I have my own business. I have been employed by an organization full time, just twice. Both times, just about the worst thing was having to ask permission to take days off. Its the one thing that I think I share with GenXers - the notion that holidays are a right.

On a recent holiday I did have cause to consider an aspect of holidays that seem to be very important, that is the idea of having fun - of playing. It seems like we have holidays so that we can escape from work and do what we call play. Work is the necessary thing and play is the enjoyable thing.

Well on this particular two day holiday, my husband, 12 year old daughter and I went skiing. The first day, at Sunshine. Sunshine brags about the amount of snow that it has, guaranteeing knee deep powder. I have never really thought about why they named the mountain "Sunshine" before but since 4 days out of last 5 visits were almost total whiteouts, I think it is to create an irrational but positive view of the ski experience there. Our last day was a typical "Sunshine" experience. Wind, snow, and cold that made us shiver and cover our bodies, including our faces with as many layers as possible. We huddled on the lift, tripped in the drifts of snow, and generally felt like Arctic explorers on some of the runs.

It must be remembered that I am 54 years old, my husband is 58 and we are skiing with a highly competitive risk taker whose only desire is to whizz at great speed down every run. Stopping to rest down an arduous run, with the wind cutting my face, and watching a lot of other skiers over bundled like myself, a question occurred to me. Is this fun? It must be or at the very least we all must have an incredible sense of hope that it will be fun. You could argue that when we all bought our $60 tickets for $5.00 off in Calgary that we didn't really know what the conditions WOULD be. We did however know what they COULD be and we still made the choice to go.

The second day at Lake Louise, the weather was much better. Lake Louise has more snow this year than they have had for years. It was only cold some of the time which only meant that we skied like crazy people. Run after run after run until my legs were screaming and I again considered the question. Was this fun or was it just some kind of mild to mad torture? Was this play? If we had more money, more time - were less committed to work and church would we actually choose to do this more?

Okay change the thought. What about work? There are times when work is by far more fun than skiing. When I am with a group, teaching something, considering some difficult problem and I am on a roll..... coming up with ideas, stories, examples - making them think, laugh, feel deeply....That is fun like no other thing that I experience. It feels so much like "play". I have a book called "Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly(I defy you to pronounce the author's name)that talks about the nature of the experience rather than labelling it as play or work. It is about finding joy in what we do. Cool.

I never saw my parents have much fun. They relaxed at night watching TV but the certainly didn't play when I was growing up. I was surprised when my father played the harmonica once. I didn't know he knew how. I was amazed when he came swimming once in Radium (on the one holiday I ever remember taking) and he did a cannonball and just about emptied the pool. I was also fascinated with the idea of my mother doing elocution and playing basketball when she was young. Those pastimes were just as it says, in the past time. We played Rook a bit as a family but other than that the "fun" or "play" was pretty individual.

Most of what I considered fun or play had to do with sports. I curled in junior high. I skated on ponds and at the outdoor rink in the winter. Tobogganing on the river hills was kind of like the skiing experience - more like survival. Baseball was huge in school in both elementary and junior high. Training for the track meet was also something that I spent hours and hours doing.

Swimming in irrigation ditches was standard summer fun. My brother Herb taught me how to dog paddle when I was five and considering that only the canal was deep and the current so swift that all you had to do was float with the current pushing you until it was shallow, it was amazing that I learned to swim at all. The smaller ditches had moss covered "drop-boxes" that were like slides, whipping you down into sandy bottomed, though shallow whirlpools.

Waterton picnics brought the opportunity to swim in a heavenly pool with crystal clear, warm, water. And of course the tallest slide on the playground ever. My Dad would push me on the swings sometimes - grabbing my legs when I got really high. Those were the days of ridiculously tall swings where you could be pushed higher than children can even dream of now. The swings had boards for seats so you could stand up and pump to go really high by yourself. There were also giant merry-go-rounds and really big teeter totters.

Sometimes when I am skiing or doing some other sport that now seems to hurt more than please my body, I wonder if I should train more. Perhaps it is just that my body is not up to the challenge as it was. Maybe if I "worked" harder, I could lose myself in the fun of sport again. Perhaps it is just "play" that needs to be relearned. Maybe I have forgotten how. That relearning sounds too much like "work" again doesn't it. On the other hand maybe it is something that is just gone - a something from a past time no long a pastime. Maybe there shouldn't be the distinctions between work and play at all. Maybe it is just about joy and there are no boundaries or definitions that make any sense. In that case I can stop thinking about it and go to bed. Goodnight.