small changes.

Around this time of year, the Earth is about 94 million miles from the Sun, give or take.

Our planet is moving through space at around 66,000 miles per hour, and it is rotating at a little over 1,000 miles per hour.

I am but a man, all of 5 feet 9 inches tall.

This is a really nice time of year where I live, and tonight I was standing outside, enjoying the sunset with a nice glass of red wine.

As I watched my shadow lengthen, I could feel the warmth of Sol’s rays on my back, and it was good.

And then, I felt cold.

The Sun had dropped below the treeline, far away on the horizon.

I took a couple of steps forward, and I was warm again.

We may feel insignificant, we may feel that we are powerless to effect great changes.

And we are wrong.

By making small changes, we can have almost infinite effects on our lives.

the rocking chair.

It seemed like an ordinary rocking chair.

My mother brought it over one day in the fall of 2004.  She had bought it as a gift for my wife, so that she would have a place to sit while feeding and caring for our newborn triplets.

The rocking chair was made out of solid maple, with a very nice finish, and it was very sturdy.  It has not squeaked to this day, and it does not wobble.

I grew to like the rocking chair very much, because it seemed like no one else wanted to sit in it, unless it was very late at night and one of the babies wouldn’t sleep.

So in many ways, it became my thinking chair.

The rocking chair led a rather ordinary life, until one Saturday night in October of 2005.

It started out like any other Saturday night at our house.  We had spent the day together as a family, laughing and playing and eating and talking.

The triplets were now almost 18 months old, and they could all walk very well.  They liked to play with their big brother Cameron, and teased him constantly.

Cameron was sitting in the rocking chair, in his pyjamas, and Aimee was teasing him, rocking him back and forth.

We had given the children a bath, and we were relaxing with them prior to putting them to bed.

Unfortunately, we did not notice that Cameron had slipped his arm between the rungs of the chair back as he played with Aimee.

I went to the kitchen to fetch a cup of coffee, and as I was returning, I heard Cameron cry out.

“Mommy mommy mommy my arm my arm!!!”

He was laying on the floor, clutching at his right arm, his face twisted in pain.  Aimee looked very upset, as she had not meant to hurt her brother.

I looked down at his elbow, at the impossible angle, and almost dropped my coffee.

I blurted out some random expletive, as people tend to do in those situations, and Cathryn scooped him up off the floor.

We asked Cameron if he could move his arm, and between the tears, he said that he could not.  As we examined his elbow, the purple colour made it clear that this could not be fixed with love and an icepack.

Just then, we heard Aimee cry out from the kitchen.  I jumped up, and when I rounded the corner, I saw that her mouth was full of blood.

It appeared to me that she had pushed one of the kitchen chairs over to the medicine cupboard, and in trying to retrieve some medicine for her brother, she had slipped from the chair and hit her mouth.

(She loves him very much, even though at times now you would not know it!  She was just trying to help.)

Another expletive… and then I cleaned her up, and hugged her.

In the mean time, my wife had prepared Cameron for a trip to the emergency room at our local hospital.

The triplets and I waved goodbye through the front window and sat down to wait until they returned.

About twenty minutes later, Aimee came over to me and said, “Look daddy”, and pulled out her front tooth.

I just about had a heart attack.  Then I had a shot of scotch.

She would not let me put the tooth back in, as it was too painful, so I put it in a cup of milk in the refrigerator, and contacted the hospital.  They said that (of course) there was nothing they could do.  As it was Saturday night and there was no emergency dental service available until Monday, I knew that she would lose the tooth.

Not long after that, the telephone rang – it was Cathryn.

She said that the doctors could not do anything for Cameron’s arm here, and they suggested that we *drive* him to the Children’s Hospital in the city.

Two hours away.

No ambulance.

As soon as I was off the phone, I called my parents, and asked my mother if she could come and look after the triplets while we took Cameron to the hospital in the city.  Luckily for us, my parents live about ten minutes away, and they were able to help.

By the time we set off for the city, it was about 9:30 at night, pitch black.  The trip that normally takes about two hours took us 90 minutes that night.

But it would be a long night, as the emergency room at the Children’s Hospital was backed up.

The reception nurse was horrified that the doctors at our shade-tree hospital had not immobilized Cameron’s arm at all, not even a simple sling.  I had not bothered to look under his blanket, as he was strapped into his car seat and covered up when Cathryn picked me up.

The city hospital ultimately filed a complaint with our local hospital.

After we were processed, we were sent to a waiting area, where we waited – and waited – and waited.

Around 1:00 am, a specialist came to see us, and told us that Cameron would be going into surgery to repair his elbow that night, as it was badly broken in several places.  Luckily for him, he was left-handed, as he would be wearing a cast from his wrist to his bicep for some time.

The doctor explained to Cameron that he would fix his arm, that it would not hurt at all, and that once the cast came off, there would be a small scar on his elbow, but that was okay because “chicks dig scars”.  Cameron thought that was very funny!

Our son went into surgery shortly after 2:00 am, and by 4:00 am he was in recovery.  Cathryn and I slept beside him in chairs, if you could call what we had that night sleep.

We telephoned my mother around 8:00 am to let her know that we would be on the way shortly, and we checked out of the hospital.

Cameron did not trust the rocking chair for a long, long time after that.

seemingly random thoughts on a rainy tuesday evening.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Music (with video).

Lyrics (for above video).

No excuses (in case the first one wasn’t enough).

Good luck.

a tale of two bridges.

Of course, there were some great people where I worked, just as there are in all organizations.  One man in particular helped me out, more than he will ever know perhaps.  In addition to being there for us in a time of great need, he had said to me many times that I was a good writer.

We may not have always seen eye-to-eye professionally, as he is a self-admitted workaholic, and I was not happy at the company, but on a personal level we understood one another.

I first met him early in 2000, about two and a half months after I started with the company.  He was working on a very high profile project and I was loaned out to his group because I had experience in power electronics.  Apparently someone thought that my experience translated over to nuclear grade cable penetrations, when there was absolutely no commonality between the two!

In any case, I was a quick study.  I was handed a very raw database and after several months work, I turned it into a useful tool and produced the required documentation to allow that part of the project to proceed.

I received a commendation on my performance appraisal that year, indicating that I had performed work that would have challenged a senior professional, even though I was still a junior engineer.

When the project wrapped up 18 months later, I moved on to other work, but still not satisfied, I ended up applying for a position under the same man late in 2002.  He had taken the reins at what was arguably the most important group in the company, and the work sounded interesting.

Things being slow as they are at large companies, I did not start my new assignment until the spring of 2003, and as they say, when it rains, it pours.  I had been simultaneously looking for work in larger centers for some time, as we wanted to move closer to our fertility specialist, and I received a very lucrative offer not long after I started my new assignment with my old boss.

I spent about two weeks wrestling with the decision, as I did not want to let my boss down, but having already been burned a couple of times at the same company for being loyal, in the end, I decided to resign my position and take a chance somewhere else.

I was not sure what my boss would say when I broke the news, as I had only been on the new assignment for about three months.  To my surprise, he said, “I knew that one day you would move back to the city”, and he proceeded to tell me the story of when he and his family uprooted to follow a dream.

They too had taken a chance, though they went much further away – California – and in the end, they returned, as he had maintained good relations with the company.  He had not burned the bridge, and neither did I.

That was the first bridge.

Unfortunately for us, the lucrative offer we pursued turned out to be the one which led to many missed paycheques and a rather lean Christmas.

The thing about bridges, though, is that you can sometimes go back across if you don’t like what’s on the other side.

I had maintained a dialogue with my former boss through the summer and fall of 2003, even trying to help his son’s girlfriend find employment where we were, and as I sat in my office in late December, trying to think my way out of the mess we were in, I sent him an email to wish him Merry Christmas.

I figured that even though things did not look good for us, I could at least spread some cheer to people I knew.  Not long after I sent the message to him, I received a reply, and at the very end of the email, he said if I ever wanted to return and work for him, that he had a spot.

Perhaps he knew something was out of sorts with me, or perhaps he just needed someone to help out, as things were rather hectic in his organization and my old position had still not been filled.

I went home that night and talked with Cathryn about it, and we decided to take him up on his offer.

About two and a half weeks into January of 2004, we had a tentative offer to return to my old company, which was good, as I had still not received any pay from my new company.

I had not received a paycheque since mid-October, and it was mid-January.  Since I had not received any compensation, I was not really in the mood to do much work.  My new boss called me into a meeting Friday, January 23rd, and asked me what was going on.  I knew something was up, because the meeting was at 7 am, before anyone else was at work.

He very bluntly questioned my loyalty to the company – after all, I had been coming to work late, and leaving early.  He said to me that if he were in my shoes, he’d be working as hard as he could so that he would be in good standing when the money finally started flowing again.  He suggested that I go home that weekend and write a memo explaining why I felt I should be allowed to continue to work there!

I listened to him speak for about an hour, and at the end of it all, I told him that he had a lot of nerve questioning my loyalty, when the company owed me almost three months back pay – not a single penny of which I have ever seen.

It was all I could do not to laugh in his face.

I resigned Monday morning, and left at noon.

I started back at my old position the first week of March 2004.

That first bridge had come in handy, but what about the second bridge?

Well, the other thing about bridges is that sometimes you just have to burn them.

Ten minutes before I walked out of my office, I remembered that my employment agreement stated that I was “to return computer equipment in the state in which it had been received”.

As the computer had been given to me with no data on it, I did the only logical thing.

I formatted the hard drive.

turning point.

I only took one week’s leave after Hailey passed away.  Although we received flowers and a sympathy card from my co-workers, no one else in the company suggested that I do anything other than return to work.

No grief counselling.

No suggestion to ease myself back into work.

Not much of anything at all, other than, “When can we expect this project to be completed?”

I returned to work, while Cathryn spent her days largely alone, meaning that as much as we were together, we grieved alone in many ways.

I honestly did not know any better.  I thought that this was what people did, that they remained dedicated to the company, and the company would look after them.

In retrospect, I should have seen a doctor, and asked for medical leave, but I wanted to do what I could for the company.  After all, they had given me a week off, and some flowers and a card.

Of course, I was making progress on my work, but it was slow.  I was distracted at work, and my thoughts drifted.  I spent time searching for help online, though we were not really supposed to do that.  The internet was really only for “work-related purposes”.

One supposes that the sanity of an employee is work-related, right?

About two months after we lost Hailey, I received an email from IT security, and it was cc’d to my supervisor.  I opened it, read it, and waited for my supervisor to come to my office, as I knew he would.  You see, IT security had recently implemented a new policy on internet usage.

Anyone who used a WHOPPING 90 minutes a month would receive a detailed breakdown of what, where, when and for how long, and his supervisor would also receive a copy.  It was then up to the supervisor to determine if the surfing was “work-related”.

I believe that my first report stated that I had used the internet for more than 90 minutes A DAY – mostly at lunch time, but also in the morning and in mid-afternoon – during coffee breaks.

I laughed out loud at the breakdown because it claimed I had visited Dell’s website hundreds if not thousands of times.

Banner ads.  Great software, guys, it couldn’t distinguish between web sites and banner ads.

Anyway, about half an hour after I received the email, my supervisor came into my office and sat down.  He said, “I believe you know why I am here”, and I said, “Yes.”

He went on to say that I “could be FIRED for ABUSING the INTRANET”.

(Get it right, Einstein, there is a difference between internet and intranet, but I suppose that nuance is lost on many PHB’s.)

So, of course I agreed to stop surfing at work that instant, but somehow the “trust was broken”.  It did not matter that I was in there for 10 hours a day working on his projects, I had “broken the policy on internet usage” and that was a bad thing.

I could be FIRED, after all.

I was also not quite where he figured I should be on my project, even though I was writing code that no one had ever written before, and even he did not really know how to help me with it.  I was doing things that had not been done in that field before, and I knew it.  The code is still being used in the industry to this day, to my knowledge, and it is solid, well-documented stuff.

My supervisor wrote me up, and about the only thing he mentioned in the letter was that I had experienced some “family trouble”.

I guess “family trouble” is management-speak for “a child died in the employee’s arms”.

In the letter, it said that if I was able to meet my targets by the end of the year, it wouldn’t have any effect on my rating.

So as I healed, I got faster, and I actually finished my code a couple of weeks ahead of schedule, adding in a few rather elegant features that were not part of the original scope.  I went above and beyond the requirements.

I exceeded requirements.

I had my final performance appraisal for the year, and my supervisor and I both agreed that I had done a good job of pulling up my socks, but he let me know that there was still a “normalization” and that final decision on rating was made two levels higher in the organization.

When I received my final performance appraisal for that year, the document had been sanitized and there was no mention of what had happened to me and my family, but there it was in black and white, for all to see, that early on in the year I had “abused the intranet” and I was slower than expected on my projects.  It went on to say that I had met my targets, but I guess that didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that punishment was metered out and I received a grade that indicated I was not fully meeting requirements.

It followed me to my next assignment too, after I had left that group.  My new supervisor hired me on the basis of my interview and references from my old supervisor, but when she later read my old performance appraisal, she said if she had seen that, she would never have hired me.

I asked her if she wanted to know why my performance was slow in the first part of that year, and she said she was not interested.  To her, all that mattered was that I hadn’t put in my time every day, focusing on nothing but work.

That was a turning point for me.  At that moment in time, the company was dead to me.  I continued to work there for many more years, but I just viewed it as a convenient way to make money for my family.  Whenever anyone spoke positively about the company, I just laughed and said nothing.

Several years after we lost our daughter, my supervisor at the time (several supervisors and projects later) passed away suddenly.

The company offered grief counselling for us, and insisted that we attend as a group.  We were also given time off to attend his services, which was nice of the company.  Finally, we were told that we were not expected to work up to full capacity for a while because of what had happened to us.

I thought it was quite interesting that I received greater consideration for my supervisor than I did for my own child.

Also interesting was that the person who arranged for the counselling, and gave us such consideration, was that same supervisor who had not been interested to know why I had not performed as expected, the year that Hailey passed away.

This is why I will never, ever put the interests of any company before my own, or those of my family.

–

(This piece is presented to you unedited.)

genetics.

“I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal than when I was standing right beside it.”

“There’s no gene for fate.”

Just a couple of quotes from a movie I quite like – Gattaca.

The main character ultimately realizes his lifelong dream, even though by all rights he should not have been able to do so, because of his genetic predisposition.  His mind was strong enough to overcome all of the physical obstacles that were in his way.

We are all faced by physical obstacles that prevent us from achieving whatever it is that would most make us happy, yet, the greatest obstacle lies within us, inside of our minds.

Therein also lies our greatest strength.

Accepting that there is a plan for each of us, a path that will lead us to something incredible, will help us to overcome any obstacle.

Work hard, but go with it.  The strength to achieve your wildest dream lies within your mind.

Let it happen.

(Image: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

I’ll be out of the box for 10 days – unplugged, and working towards my dream.

See you on the other side.

small choices.

The small choices often make all the difference.

The day after our daughter Hailey left us, we were faced with a choice.  Cathryn was still carrying Cameron – we had named the children in utero – but the doctors were not be certain that he could be saved, in spite of all that they had already done.

The senior physician sat down with us to discuss the odds of survival, and what we might face even if he did survive – complications and so forth.  He also said to us that if we did not wish to proceed any further with the pregnancy, that we could stop it right then.

He left us alone to talk about how we wanted to proceed, and said he would be back in about an hour.

Cathryn and I talked for perhaps ten minutes.

We had already suffered a great deal of grief, and we did not know what would happen next.  We were unsure that our son would survive, and even if he did, we did not know how things would turn out.

We looked at each other, and decided that it was not up to us to choose the fate of our son.  It was not in our hands.

Cameron was born 14 weeks later, and is perfectly normal today.

Three years later, when we were carrying the triplets that turned out to be Cameron’s siblings, many people asked us if we had considered what is called “selective reduction”.

By terminating two of the pregnancies, we could improve the chances for the remaining child.

We knew that our lives would be forever changed if we were blessed with three more children simultaneously.  It would require a lot of hard work, and things would likely be extremely difficult financially for many years.

My answer to the question has always been to tell the story of Cameron, and how he would not be if we had taken the easy way out.

My answer to the question is to point to our four children, who sit before me as I write these words.

There are some choices that we are meant to make, and then there are other choices that are best left in someone else’s hands.

christmas promise.

We had moved to Brantford in July of 2003 to start anew, to get away from the strangeness of the small town.

I had successfully secured a new job with an engineering firm in Hamilton, and I was traveling for business to the USA almost weekly.  I had a new car, a silver VW Jetta, and we had been seeing a fertility specialist in London.

We always knew we would have at least one more child after Cameron, and the previous pregnancy had been too difficult to arrange remotely.  We would not take the chance again of complications, of loss, and so in the backs of our minds that was always the primary reason for moving.

Cathryn had become pregnant again in October of 2003, and we were ecstatic.  We could not believe that we were once again blessed with triplets.  There was some apprehension though, having lost Cameron’s siblings in 2001, but we had faith that our close proximity to the neonatal unit in Hamilton would carry us through.

The blessing of children was not the only thing that October brought us, however.  My new job, which at first had seemed the opportunity of a lifetime, soon brought terrible uncertainty into our household.

The first blip had actually come in September, with a delayed car allowance payment.  At the time, it did not seem a big deal because we were extremely busy – a good sign – and they corrected the error the following week.

But by mid-October, we began to realize that something was not right with the company.  One missed paycheque turned into two, and we were informed that we would have to carry balances on our credit cards until “a few deals came through”.

When I had joined the company in July, my supervisor and one of the other vice-presidents assured me that although it seemed unusual for us to use our personal credit for business purposes, the company had always made good on their word.  Current and future predictions of business seemed to back this up, so I felt confident in doing it.

Besides, the first three months had given me all the confidence I needed since everything was paid on time and there was no cause for alarm.  We were a small company, with great promise.

Even when one of our largest clients filed for Chapter 11 protection, the president assured us that things would be fine, but that was when the paycheques stopped.

We did have some savings, but having moved our entire household only four months earlier, the levels were not where we would have liked them to be.

October slipped into November and then December, and still no money was forthcoming.  Almost every day I spoke with my supervisor, and with the VP of Finance, but the story was always the same – “the money will start flowing again as soon as we close a few deals”.

Cathryn and I shopped for Cameron’s Christmas gift in mid-December while his grandparents watched him one afternoon.  We had stopped in for a visit, and we left him at their house in Oakville and went to IKEA.

As he did not have a toy train, we decided to buy one of the wooden train sets.  I loved it then and I still do, even though there are only a couple of pieces of it left intact today.

We had decided that we would have a lovely Christmas that year, in spite of the financial stress.

My friend Francis stopped over on Christmas Eve to say hello, but I missed his greeting that night.  Cathryn and I had been talking about how we were going to get ourselves out of the dire financial straits we were in, and talk had turned to frustration and then argument.

By that point, the company owed us over seven thousand dollars.  We have still not seen a single penny to this day.

In any case, I decided to go out and get some fresh air, and I told Cathryn I was going to the variety store down the street.

In actual fact, I got in my car and drove 35 minutes to a park in Hamilton, on the Niagara Escarpment, and walked to a spot we know very well.  There is a tree, in Sam Lawrence Park, on a short bluff near the eastern edge of the park.  In front of the bluff is a very beautiful rock garden.

We had our engagement pictures taken in that rock garden, under the shade of the tree, in 1998.

We also buried the ashes of our daughter Hailey, Cameron’s sister, under that tree in 2001.  One of our engagement pictures clearly shows the spot where she is resting, and I look at it often.

I held on to that tree, in the cold December rain, in the dark, and I spoke to my daughter.

As the rain washed away the tears, I promised her that I would make everything better, no matter what I had to do.

–

I wrote this last night, actually, and what you have here is unedited, except for removing the real name of Splat Creek (to protect the “innocent”).  The photograph is a part of Sam Lawrence Park near the tree, but not of the actual tree I describe above.  I could not find one online, and I need a new scanner.

full circle.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega.” Revelation 1:8

Alpha

Dedicated to my wife, Cathryn, my children, Cameron, Ian, Aimee, Owen, and my two angels, Hailey Marie and Ian Joshua.

My wife’s mother always said her life could be written as a book.  I have decided to write her story as she is too busy being a good wife and an exceptional mother.  This is her story, our story, and the story of our children, through my eyes.

Omega

Thanks and acknowledgement to my wife, Cathryn, my children, Cameron, Ian, Aimee, Owen, my two angels, Hailey Marie and Ian Joshua, my friend Eyeteaguy (thanks for the kick in the butt to start writing), my friend Friar (Thursday night bitch ‘n stitch sessions, Viking humour, and bonfires), and my friends in “the cloud” who have given me encouragement at my blog, 6 Weeks.

Without all of you, these words would be nothing but whispers in the wind.

–

Image: Monogram of Christ, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican, undated.

symptom of the universe.

The man went on the vacation of a lifetime, following a gut feeling.  A feeling that he belonged somewhere else, far away from the land of his birth.

When he got there, he felt like he was at home.  The feeling was beyond these words.

Home.

Belonging.

Two weeks passed quickly, and he was back to the quiet mountain town, working at the pride of the 1950’s.  He told everyone that he knew all about his experiences, and while they listened and seemed interested, the man knew two things.

One, that they would never understand how he felt – because they would never go to the land of the long white cloud – and two, they all thought he was crazy.

Time passed, almost a year and a half.  Late winter.

The man had a dream, on a Sunday night, and when he woke to shower before heading off to the workplace that paid tribute to Frederick Winslow Taylor, he recalled the dream.

The feeling was back.

In the dream, the man was visiting a college campus.  In the dream, he was first driving and then walking around the grounds, into the buildings, and the feeling was there.  The man felt that he had either been there, or was supposed to go there for some reason.

The man spent a good part of that Monday looking at college web sites around the world.  He knew, from the feeling and from the look of the terrain, that the college was located somewhere far away from where he lived.  It was lush, green, there were hills.

He looked at the West Coast of Canada and the USA.  But it was farther away than that.

It was here.

He found a picture with buildings that looked almost exactly like those in his dream.

In the land where he belonged.

Then.

Saturday evening, at the end of that week, the man was watching some trance videos on YouTube.  The man does that when he feels disconnected from the world, because in that quiet mountain town, people listen to both kinds of music – country, and western.

The man pictures himself driving into the night, listening to the trance music, under the city lights, as he is going someplace *exciting*.

Then the man clicked on this link.

The picture that accompanied the video was immediately recognizable to him.  The feeling washed over him again.

The man had seen this landscape, from almost this exact vantage point, except he had seen it during the daytime, while on a long walk, standing on an overpass.  The man likes to walk around cities.  He can see so much more that way.

While he was watching the videos, the man’s wife was watching a movie.  She told the man afterward that the plot in many ways paralleled the life they are living now, working at mundane jobs and wanting to be somewhere else.

The man thought about all of these things, about reading the signs.

And he resolved himself to work ever harder to recapture that feeling.

The symptom of the universe.

The feeling of being home.  Where he belongs.

–

Symptom Of The Universe is a song by Black Sabbath, about a person’s journey through life.  The picture above is the B-side of the 7″ single, and the runes read, “Rokk and roll madman Ozzy Osbourne”.

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