Archives For author
« Older Entries

Sorry for the silence – we’ve been busy! (An update from Carol Anne)

September 30, 2025 //
0

Well, here we are and as per usual, our life is moving at 1000 miles per hour. With some pretty big news across the board:

Kathleen and Matthew –

have celebrated their first wedding anniversary and are still happily married.  Kathleen has just begun her second year of technology education training at BCIT and has taken apart and reassembled two motors – a 2-stroke and a 4-stroke motor in September alone, along with learning more advanced electronics, metalwork, and computer drafting.  Matthew continues to work on independent game coding for Peglin, while continuing his longer-term planning for his own foray into independent gaming.  Kathleen has one more year of school of her degree next September where she will be at UBC doing the more formal teacher training part of her adventure.

Martin and Zamira –

Following their trip to Nathan and Zoey’s wedding in Ottawa in May – they have decided that it is time to move out and they are both moving to Ottawa on October 19th.  We will miss them, but we wish them the very best as they launch into the world on their own wings.  I will truly have an empty nest! The city seems ready and anxious to receive them, with Martin already having the promise of work when they get there!

Morgan –

Monday August 25th, Morgan received an invitation to interview with SD 62 – Sooke School district to teach their adult graduation program. After receiving an invitation to an interview on Wednesday of that week for a full time position as program instructor and leader of the newly relaunched Fast Forward to Graduation Program  FF2Grad program – a 4 month, cross-curricular program where he would be teaching 5 courses worth 24 credits to a small group of adult students looking to earn their high school graduation diploma – they admitted in the interview that they were looking for a Unicorn. After interviewing a few other people, he was offered the job late morning on August 29th with his first day of work being September 2nd and his first day with students being September 8th. Of course, he accepted. He’s been told that the commitment of his principals, the staff, and the program is to prioritize health first, then family, and then teaching.  Having never worked for a public school board in his entire career, he has had to learn a new set of ropes.  He is working out in Langford at the new John Horgan Campus of Royal Roads university which is a collaborative Westshore location with programming offered by Royal Roads University, Camosun College, UVic, and the Justice Institute of BC, along with the Sooke School district.  He is biking 31 kms round trip daily, mostly on trails which gives him time to prep his courses and debrief his day as well as providing him with regular exercise.  It is really wonderful to see him so happily engaged professionally.  His class is made up of 18 students ranging in age from 17 to 55 and it only took 3 school days for him to gain the buy-in from the students – many of whom have commented that the second week of classes was the only time in their lives they made it to school the full five days.  The program is tailored to  parents and the classes run from 9 a.m. to 2:30 Mon-Thurs and 9 to noon on Fridays so he is putting in an extra half hour at each end of the day and is balancing work and life quite nicely – I have known that since he stopped teaching he has felt as if a piece of himself was amputated – I can’t even begin to describe how lovely it is to see him whole again!

Carol Anne –

I am pretending to be a good housewife, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry – but really I am bored!  I am now the (metaphorical) amputee. So, I am initiating a gradual return to work! We are trying to make it successful, so we are not rushing it and it is my intention to do work differently – with less stress and to take it less personally. I hope this will be easier without a 13 cm tumour pushing my buttons in my head.    Yesterday, I met with my vocational occupational therapist who is helping me get the right accommodations for success.  I perhaps misspoke on Facebook a couple of weeks ago – I am not cancer-free – no one ever is and brain cancer has no cure.  The correct phraseology is that my cancer is not progressing – they won’t even say in remission for brain cancer.  I have my next MRI in early November and we are hopeful that the necrosis is diminishing.  I am really enjoying having three (almost four!) months between MRIs.  Nevertheless, I have not had a seizure since July 15th and I recovered from that one much faster.  My memory is starting to come back to a place where I recognize it and I am looking forward to returning to work to continue the cognitive healing process – it is only through using my brain that it will develop new neuro networks which will hopefully overcome the impacts of the radio necrosis by training my brain to move all those things that the right frontal lobe does to another “undamaged location.” It turns out that although the New York Times puzzles and jigsaw puzzles help with this – they are not quite enough to fully engage my mind and properly “re-program” it.

Across the board –

We are still looking to sell this lovely home sometime this coming spring/summer and we are slowly working on cleaning up 17 years of stuff and living! We’re getting around to home projects which we never got to. The upstairs wall-to-wall carpeting is being replaced once Martin and Zamira’s belongings are loaded onto a truck.  We are dropping things at thrift stores and throwing out as much as we can.  We hope to have one more MaxSold auction (but it is taking longer to build the lots as we are trying not to miss anything.) This also has us soaking up the memories of the home and our lives together and trying to figure out what comes next.  It is possible that my very young husband can get 20 years into a pension before anyone tries to get him to retire! For the first time since early May, I am not upset that he has only just turned 50.   This is where the 7 year age difference pays off for me!  All in all – things are not any more quiet than usual around here which is part of the reason this update is so long in coming!

Tags
Categories #Updates

9131 days (including leap years)

June 10, 2025 //
0

25 years.  Two and a half decades, 300 months, 9131 days (including the six leap years between 2000 and 2025). And I still want more.

On this day, 25 years ago, I married my wife, and my wife married me.  We got married to each other, and it was the best and smartest thing I (we!) have ever done. And, despite the crazy, overwhelming, and overly-stressful experience that getting married can be, I would do it again.  (But I am so very happy I don’t have to. Seriously, getting married is a lot of work. Easiest if you only have to do it once.)

Being married, when you are married to your forever person, is worth everything.  It’s worth the years of learning each others habits, and the noises we make both awake and asleep.  It’s worth the middle of the night wake ups because one of you isn’t well; it’s worth the inconsolable tears because the baby won’t stop screaming; it’s worth never having the house to ourselves because we made a home for so many people. It’s worth the having to deal with so many more bodily fluids than anyone ever prepared us for – the spit-ups and the puke, the feces and urine, the blood and the tears and the sweat and the never ending cycle of laundry that goes with it.

It has been 25 years of some of the hardest work I have ever done, and it was easy because it was us, every day. 25 years, with children and parents and friends and family and food and drink and laughter and tears. 25 years of people coming into our lives and people leaving our lives; of people helping us and needing our help; of knowing what’s next and having no idea what’s even happening right now.

And all of it, all of it, has been so better, so much more fun, because we did it all together (even when we’re apart.)

Some notable highlights from our marriage:

  • We have two grown children, one of whom is married, and both of whom have amazing partners.  It is a special kind of satisfaction to see your kids with partners who make each other happy and fulfilled.
  • We have a home that others call home.  Our home has been a centre of life for so many people over the decades, sometimes just for meals, sometimes just for brief chapters of life, but always with an open door, plenty of food and drink, and a welcoming haven for however short or long it’s needed
  • We have an unusual and remarkable extended family.  We have been attached to the African branch of the family (hello all you Samas!) since our daughter was born, adding more than half a dozen people to our immediate circle of family.  They have enriched both our lives and children’s lives, and our children count them among their siblings. My eldest child has introduced our kids to their extended siblings, expanding our family even further.  We have been host to individuals in need of a home and a family, sometimes just for hours, sometimes for months. Every one of you has been important to us, and every relationship has left its impression on our marriage.
  • We’ve had a few pets over the years: Mason the wonder dog, Teillard the anxious, Granny Chai, Bruce the Cat, The Lady Jessicat, Paddington Murphington, Mocha (the house major-domo), and now The Twins: Mr. Hobbes and Cuddly Casey.
  • We bought a house, and we have lived in it now for 18 of our 25 years, which marks the longest either of us has lived in one place.
  • E-bikes. (Amazing.)
  • We have been through the births of two children, the deaths of two parents, a gall bladder removal, decades of depression, more than a decade of chronic migraine, anxiety, ADHD, numerous degrees and graduations, funerals, weddings, our house full to bursting with dinner parties and brunches, D&D campaigns, birthday parties, and sleepovers.
  • Cancer. (Sucks.)
  • Sometimes, very rarely (although a little more often these days) a quiet, empty house with just the two of us.

When we got married (25 years ago you guys! 25!) Father Rolf blessed/cursed us on the alter with his recognition that our relationship, and consequently our marriage, was about being a host family to the people in the world who needed it.  We laugh about it often, and cry about it sometimes, but it truly has been the central focus of our marriage.  Our home is and always has been open to anyone, especially those in need, whether that need is a bed, a meal, or just a conversation.  It hasn’t always been easy, and we have often craved just a little more room for ‘just us.’ But that craving has never been so strong that we have closed our doors.

The people who have been in and moved through our home and our lives have enriched the experience of our lives and contributed so much meaning to our marriage that it is impossible to think back our life together without including all of you.

Not that there hasn’t been plenty that has been private to Carol Anne and I (although ‘private’ has never really been all that important to either of us.)  But in those quiet, private times, we often reflect on how much we love each other, still. Perhaps, if it’s possible, even more than when we started.  We recognize how fortunate we are to have found each other, and how happy we are to have said yes to each other.  We are blessed to know that everything we do together, even the hard stuff (especially the hard stuff) is better and more fun because we are doing it together, and because we get to do it together.

Many, many years ago, a couple of years even before we were married, Carol Anne and I shared a kiss.  Some of you have heard this story in detail, some of you have not.  I will not go into details here, but it is important to know that we kissed.

Oh what a kiss.

I got butterflies in stomach during that kiss.  So did Carol Anne.

When I woke up the next morning, I still had those same butterflies.  So did Carol Anne.

When I think back to that kiss, in the foyer of a townhouse in Ottawa during the sunset years of the 20th century, I get those butterflies all over again.  So does Carol Anne.

‘For better or for worse’ say those marriage vows, famously.  Really, it’s for better and for worse.  And when we are together, even the worse is better.

June 10th, 2000 to June 10th, 2025.  25 years and counting.  Life is tricky.  Everything about his point in history, both personally and collectively, is hard and challenging and uncertain.  We don’t really know how many more days, months, and years are allotted to us, not how these times will unfold.

But, we’ll take whatever days are given to us, however it is we have to take them.  And as many of them as we can share with all of you, we’ll do that too!

We have a party coming up to celebrate just that!  Many of you we will see there! Many we will not (because of distance and time.  If we failed to send you an invite, please forgive us – our memories are not what they used to be! Feel free to show up!) And at this party yes, we will be celebrating Carol Anne and I, but we will also be celebrating all of you who have been a part of our marriage and our lives. We never wanted to do this without you, and we are thrilled to be able to celebrate with you.

So here’s to 25 years of marriage, and as many more as the universe will grant us.

Our love to you all, Carol Anne and Morgan.

Tags , , , ,
Categories Uncategorized

An Update from Carol Anne

June 9, 2025 //
0

Hi, this is Carol Anne. It’s time for a long overdue update! There is a bunch of news here, so take your time.

The good news is: I am now done chemotherapy treatments and they seem to have successfully kept the tumor from progressing!

Back in March I was experiencing neuropathy in my right foot. At that point we dropped the Vincristine part of my chemo treatment (the ‘V’ in the PVC treatment) but continued with the P-C pill-based drugs. April 22nd I met in person with my medical oncologist who was surprised at how well I looked and how well I was doing. I was in really good shape, so we decided to continue with round five of chemo. Three rounds is what most of the studies are based on; four is the desired standard; and five was a bonus! However, six has been cancelled.

Ten days later, during round five of chemo, I had a seizure. It took me three days to ‘recover,’ but it has all but grounded me. Thanks to Diane and Saanich recreation I am back in my twice a week exercise class. I am keeping my core strong and I continue to build torso strength and maintain my balance. But I am no longer riding my bike and I am not allowed to drive, so I am dependent on others for rides everywhere. This lack of independence sucks.

The Provincial Tumor Board met on Friday where my case was discussed. Aside from the pathologist being all excited about my pathology report, the result has not changed: it’s still an oligodendroglioma, so we’ve picked the right treatment and for the most part it’s been working.

MRI Updates: I had my first post radiation MRI in December. It showed two areas of new intracranial mass. The next MRI in February showed the same. We repeated the MRI in May, but had a fancy perfusion MRI which can differentiate between radiation necrosis and new growth. The May 4th MRI was taken to the provincial tumour board for review. (We just got an update this week which is why this update is so delayed as we wanted more information.)

The tumor board has confirmed, and everyone around it was an agreement, that the two new masses are radiation necrosis, not tumour growth. To the chemo people this is good news because it means their treatment worked and the problem is with radiation, so the radiation folks have to fix it. I have an appointment with my radiation oncologist this coming Thursday June 12th.

The challenge of radiation necrosis is that it is two masses in my right temporal lobe which are causing all sorts of symptoms. These masses are probably what triggered the seizure, and all the symptoms I had before my surgery are back and worse. I’m losing my sense of balance. My energy levels are exceptionally low. My memory and thought processing is compromised. The depression is back, and my ability to plan and make rational decisions is compromised. I have a pronounced tremor. At this point I am on steroids in the hopes that this will reduce the swelling of these masses and improve my symptoms. In the meantime, I am very dependent on the kindness of others in my family to feed myself get myself around and make all decisions.

Tags , , ,
Categories Uncategorized

Progress progress progress

March 21, 2025 //
0

Hello family and friends!  We have been overdue for a public update on all things Sargent, so I thought I’d stop and write something out.  Some of you will already have some (or all) of this news, but others of you we haven’t had a chance to catch up with yet.

Carol Anne is in the midst of her fourth cycle of chemotherapy.  This cycle is a little bit different for her, as she is no longer starting and finishing the cycle with Vincristine. Her oncologist, after reviewing her progress, identified that she is experiencing more side effects (largely neuropathy?) that benefits from that drug; the literature suggests that the treatment is not significantly less effective without it, so it has been dropped for the remainder of her treatments, much to Carol Anne’s delight.

Additionally, she has now had two MRIs since finishing radiation treatments.  The scans still aren’t pretty, and we do not yet have definitive evidence of tumor regression <sigh> so there is another MRI planned for the near future.  What it has been showing is what the oncologists and surgeon are pretty sure is “pseudo-progression.” Carol Anne’s research suggests that this would be a good sign, as it is evidence that the brain is responding to the treatment the way it is supposed to, so we are holding on to that optimism until we have a reason not to.

Other than that, Carol Anne is continuing to handle the chemo treatments pretty well, fatigue notwithstanding.  However, she is getting bored and she misses people.  Please feel free to come visit!

As spring promises that it will make its presence known, our small pride of cats is getting more and more anxious to be outside!  To this end, we have procured and assembled a kitten coop for the front yard!  It is still very sparse, but we have plans to fill it with various levels and obstacles for them to play on while they watch birds and insects in the garden.  If you have ideas, or if you’d like to contribute some materials, please let me know! The Twins will very much appreciate it.

Speaking of the Twins, they are much larger than they used to be!

(Chai wants you to admire her new haircut)

I am stepping back into the world of paid work!  I have sent out a number of applications to teaching jobs in the past month, and I have also started talking with some folks about various bits of teaching work (some of which I am already doing!) I am very happy to be teaching again, even if it is still just in small amounts. I have missed (almost) everything about it a great deal (not the report card bit, though.  Happy to not be doing that!)

I am also sending my novel around to various readers for feedback!  Yes, I completed a novel at the beginning of the year – just a simple little mystery-style novel.  It is the first of a series of novels that I have planned out.  Over the course of writing and developing it I decided that I wanted this book to be very accessible. By this I mean that I have set out to write and lay out the novel to make it more accessible for readers who have challenges with text that aren’t traditionally recognized or accommodated. Specifically, I am trying to make the book more accessible for ADHD, dyslexic, and autistic readers, as well as readers who have difficulty reading for long periods of time at a sitting. .

To this end, I have employed fonts that are designed to be more easily read by those who have challenges with traditional fonts.  I have also taken the detective-noir convention of the ‘overly-self-aware’ narrator and leaned into it so that questions of intent, sub-text, and meaning are more clear and explicit. And finally, I have used extensive dialogue and frequent paragraph and chapter breaks to make the layout easier, to make it easier to take breaks, and to make it easier to keep track of characters and story points.  

I am hoping to be able to compile the feedback, make any last edits necessary, and send it out to agents and publishers before my birthday this year – a little 50th birthday present to myself.

If you are interested in being an early reader and providing me with feedback, please let me know and I will share a copy of the book (digitally) and a list of questions I’m looking for feedback on!

Finally – Weddings!  There are two weddings in the family coming up quickly. 

My second-born child Nathan and his fiancee Zoe are getting married at the end of May in Ottawa.  Myself, Martin and Zamira, and Kathleen and Matthew will all be there. (The schedule for the week doesn’t work for Carol Anne, who will still be finishing chemo treatments at that point so she’ll spend some time in Toronto with her sister instead.)

And – our niece Sarah and her fiance Ben are also getting married this summer, and we will all be traveling to the interior for that as well!  Lots of travel and family coming up and we are looking forward to all of it.

Phew! Okay, that’s the quick and dirty update! 

 We love you all and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Uncategorized

Better late than…

December 4, 2024 //
0

Hello everyone! It’s late, almost midnight, and I would like to go to sleep now. Sam has put this first case to bed, and both he and I are hoping you’ll read it and let us know what you think, good, bad, or otherwise.

I am trying to decide if this story is ultimately a trilogy, with each part of this story becoming it’s own, shorter book, or if this will read better as a longer, three-part novel. Let me know your thoughts, please!

In the meantime, please enjoy this very rough draft! I will be editing in the coming days and weeks – things might change! I’ll try to post about the changes as they happen.

Without further ado:

Sam Shovel and the Question of Choice

Chapter 1…food, drink, shelter, sleep

Chapter 2…essentials, plans, perspectives, hope

Chapter 3…being , belonging, beginning, adjusting

Chapter 4…answers, offers, arrangements, agreements

Thanks for reading!

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Sam Shovel

First part or first novel in a trilogy?

December 4, 2024 //
0
A cartoon penguin on a window pain look over the edge of a laptop screen that contains some writing

I fell behind schedule. After pushing out chapter 2, I thought I’d take a couple of days off to rest up for the climax and denouement of the first arc. And I did. And then I took two more. Oops.

But the last two days have been (too?) productive. I managed to get out more than 17 000 words over those two days, as I finished the draft of Chapter 3. I have just started in on Chapter 4, which promises to be much shorter, so I’m hoping i can get it out in another day or two.

One of the things that I have never heard established writers talk about, or at least very seldom, are the physical demands of writing. Sitting for hours at at time pushing words out of your fingertips is hard work, physically. My body is as tired as my brain right now!

However, Sam and his new associates are not satisfied to let me rest yet. Even after finishing yesterday’s marathon 13 hour writing spree, the characters inhabited my dreams, making sure I was that there was still more to the story, and wouldn’t I feel better if I just got up and finished it?

They’re right. I will.

Nevertheless I took this morning off to look up form my keyboard, do some laundry, and spend a little time on a new puzzle.

But now it’s back to writing. I’ll be posting the final two chapter soon soon soon! And I’m excited to have you all read them!

Given how long this first section has become, I am started to think about presenting this as a trilogy of books, rather than one book in three parts.

This first part is likely to come in around the 55 000 to 700 000 word range. This puts it nicely in the same range as many pulp detective paperbacks of the 20th century – a nice, pocket-sized paperback!

Also, I am now starting to get anxious to start the editing process – to make sure I’ve got the details right, to add some textural elements I rushed through to get the main plot down, and to make sure that the consistency and development I think I’ve written is actually there and not just in my own head.

So, when you read them, let me know what you think…will it stand on its own? Will you still want Books 2 and 3?

Stay posted! Let me know if you’ve read the first two chapters or if you’re waiting for more before starting! If you’re enjoying it, let me know what it is you’re enjoying!

And finally, the picture at the top of this post is of Parker Penguin, my constant writing companion. He always reminds me that I need to be writing more. I have also included a picture of his cousin Pat Penguin, who sits to my left.

Happy reading, all!

A cartoon penguin with his eyes closed is on a window pane. A garden can be seen through the window
Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories #Updates, Sam Shovel

Hey! New Chapter! Hi! New Followers!

November 22, 2024 //
0

Well, it’s a week later than I wanted it to be, but I have now finished the rough (rough!) draft of chapter 2, adding an additional 18k words to the novel so far. Work on Chapter 3 has already started and, again, the goal is to pump it out in a week. It didn’t work out last time, but I am getting in better shape daily for just getting the words out of my head and onto the page.

Thank you to all of you who have been, are, or will be reading this story. It means a lot to me.

Some of you have heard about Sam’s origins from me directly, but many of you have not, so here is a brief backgrounder.

Sam Shovel came into existence during keyboarding (ie typing) class in grade 9. Almost every class we were expected to type without stopping for a period of time. We could bring in text to recopy or we could just make something up – the content didn’t really matter because the point was to be typing.

So, inspired by the Bullet Tracer character in Calvin and Hobbes as well as so much of the hard boiled/film noir detective genre, and playing off of the name of Sam Spade from the Maltese Falcon (a shovel being related to a spade,) I started writing weird little detective short stories with him. He was not, at the time, a serious character in any traditional way. The stories were deliberately mundane and silly, driven by over-dramatics and puns, but sticking to the hard boiled detective conventions – lots of self-aware narration, a sense of grit, larger than life supporting cast, etc.. I had a lot of fun writing Sam.

Over the years I lost the original stories I had written with him, and this still makes me a little sad. I remember them being pretty good! Nonetheless, they were gone and my life took a very different route than grade 9 me could ever have imagined. So, Sam started fading into the back rooms of my awareness over the years, but he was never forgotten. As story ideas inevitably wandered through my brain, Sam was always the first character I turned to, wondering if ti was time to bring him to the foreground of my life again. For years, the answer to that was ‘no.’

But he wasn’t being idle, it turns out. Even if I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to Sam, he was paying attention to me. And in doing so, Sam was slowly and quietly evolving in my unconscious, waiting for his momentous return.

During the turbulent changes that have marked the past 10+ years, Sam has been demanding more and more attention, insisting he has something to say and cases to tackle that are relevant to our times. I was less certain, but he was insistent, so we started talking again.

The news and events of the last decade have challenged our public perception of police and their relationship to communities. I found myself with very mixed feelings about many of the procedural dramas my wife and I enjoy watching. I became more aware of the idyllic and romantic portrayal of police and police departments as essential social heroes. I didn’t like it. But, I was still in love with detective fiction and procedural stories! What to do?

That’s when Sam and I started asking the question: Can you do detective fiction without police? Can it be done without crime? What would that look like?

Some of my favourite detective fiction of the 20th century doesn’t involve cops, or at least doesn’t romanticize them. Travis McGee is a salvage operator living on a houseboat in Florida. Nero Wolf is a New York detective with an open disdain for the skills of the police. Parker, of course, of Donald E. Westlake fame (writing as Richard Stark) is not in any way a good guy. Robert Parker’s Spencer is an ex-cop who operates as much inside the criminal sphere as out. But all of these characters ultimately deal with crimes if not always the police. So, although they all offered me hints and pieces, I still didn’t know how an investigation without a crime would proceed!

Teaching in an inquiry environment (thank you PSII) provided me with the final clue. Everything we do in inquiry teaching and learning is a kind of procedural mystery: there are questions that need detective work to form the answers; things can take wild, unexpected turns; there can be multiple perspectives on the same information; answering the question is always a process.

Sam got very excited, and I couldn’t help but be excited with him. This is it! Sam Shovel, Private Inquirer! Well, maybe not, but the idea was enough. So Sam went from a semi-traditional, hard-boiled detective to an academic drop-out. The world is filled with people who have problems, and they aren’t always criminal but they all need answers.

Pulling his fedora and trench coat out of his bag and putting them back on, Sam declared himself ready to return to the light of day. We got busy planning his new origin and the first of the stories that would allow him to hang his shingle one more. I am now pouring that story out of my head and onto the page as fast as I can, which is still not fast enough for Sam. He is keeping me up nights talking through upcoming scenes, checking on details, prodding me to type for just another ten minutes. He’s really hoping you’ll enjoy his stories.

There is much more to say about Sam, his origins, and his influences, but there is still a lot of book to be written, so that’s enough for now.

Please enjoy this rough draft of the second chapter! As always, comments, questions and observations as welcome and encouraged! And please share with your friends and family!

A final note: I am preparing to leave the Metaverse (Instagram and Facebook) by the new year. All my personal content will be coming down and I will be using it as minimally as possible. I have recently started using Mastadon (@sarge75@mastadon.social) and Bluesky (@sarge75.bsky.social) so there will be a lot of repeated posts as I sort out their workflow. Hello to all my new followers from those sites! Please subscribe for direct notification of updates.

Okay, with a bit of luck, I’ll talk to you all again in a week!

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Sam Shovel

Progress, but slowly

November 20, 2024 //
0

Hi everyone,

My goal was to have the draft of Chapter 2 roughly done and posted three days ago, but taht did not happen. BUT, the chapter is progressing well, and I am now aiming to post it by the end of day Friday.

As you can see from the picture, some of the delays are unavoidable, as Hobbes as need of my lap regularly, and he cannot get comfortable if I’m typing. Please forward any complaints to him.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to mention that I will be largely exiting the Metaverse by the new year. Most of my content will be taken down, and I’ll really only be using it to direct people here. I’m giving Mastadon and Bluesky a try – we’ll see what happens there.

Keep watching this space! Chapter 2 coming soon.

Categories Uncategorized

Navigating Contradiction, Embracing Paradox

November 1, 2024 //
1

Among the many things that I am finding challenging these days (and there is no shortage of options) is reconciling all the apparent and emerging contradictions that have become so much of the texture of our lives. 

It has been barely four months since the discovery of Carol Anne’s brain tumor, and yet it feels like years have passed since that day.  Between the end of June and the beginning of November, our family has experienced the following:

  • Carol Anne’s brain tumor discovery
    • And brain surgery!
  • A wedding
    • That included family getting together for the first time in years, or for the first time ever!
    • And also included time in a different hospital for Carol Anne’s mom, Jane
  • Kathleen moved to a new city, with a new husband, to start a new program
    • Marking also the first time for both Kathleen and Matthew moving in with a roommate! 
  • Carol Anne’s very involved brain cancer diagnosis
    • Which also precipitated the start of cancer treatment
    • So we (I say “we”, but really it was just Carol Anne) went through 33 radiation treatments
  • Zamira starting a new program
  • Squeezed in a flying trip by the whole family to Toronto for Jane’s funeral between radiation treatments
  • The addition of two new kittens to the household!
  • The loss of three cats to the household: two who moved away with Kathleen and Martin, and one who sadly and unexpectedly died.
  • Martin starting a new job
  • Carol Anne starting the first of 6 courses of chemotherapy

…and this list is not exhaustive!  

Because, of course, there are also all those trivial things that make up the details of everyday life: laundry, shopping, vacuuming, yard maintenance, cleaning of kitchens and bathrooms, home maintenance and improvements (did I mention we are about to have solar panels installed?,) homework and exams, visiting and staying connected with friends and family, learning new patterns of eating and living, and so many more details that they all start to blur into that mosaic background that makes up all of our lives.

Through it all, I have been struck, as if with snowballs in the back of my head thrown by some perversely comic and cosmic angel, with the contradictions of our life right now. 

The first, biggest, and most overarching  contradiction is this: we are in the midst of some of the hardest times in our family’s life, and yet these are some of the best and closest times we have had as a family. We are more grateful for each other and our time together than at any other point, too.  As a family that has worked hard to be there for others, to be available and ready with advice or, a meal, or even just space to listen, we have suddenly found ourselves in need of help.  And the outpouring of love and support from our community, from all of you, has filled us with love and strength at a time when we have been at our weakest and most vulnerable.

Carol Anne is now on long-term disability, and I haven’t worked in almost 2 years. And so our time is a contradiction between having an abundance of available time, and being bound to an ever evolving and increasingly exhausting life of appointments, medications, exhaustion and recovery.

Which leads to the forever contradictory and centering experience of time.

Just before Carol Anne went into surgery, way back in the waning days of June, to have that pesky tumor removed, I looked at her and said: “I want 25.” We didn’t really know what was going on yet, beyond the fact that she had a brain tumor.  We barely knew enough at that point to have any good questions!  But one of the questions that kept throwing itself into my awareness was the question of time: how much of it did she have, did we have? We celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary this past June (one of the many things not included in the opening list!) just 17 days before that surgery. As she was being taken away from me to have cancer removed from her brain, I was absolutely certain that I was not ready to lose her.  I needed more time. “I want 25” was me saying that (and a lot more, but that’s for a different time) to her.

Between the surgery and the time we were finally told the specifics of the diagnosis, we lived in a kind of suspended time of not knowing: not knowing what to expect or how bad to expect it to be; not knowing, what we could safely hope for or what we could try to fight and strive for; not knowing what to research and learn about (an anti-anxiety activity for both of us.) It forced us to return to the moment, over and over, and to be grateful for that time.

But this didn’t mean we were always successful.  There were days, evenings, afternoons, when the awareness of all the time that might be taken from us was present and heavy.  Our plan was to grow old together, and now it looked like we could no longer look forward to those days, nor to so many of the others that we had planned for and imagined. It was an effort, in those moments, to let the anger and resentment and sadness and disappointment have their time – their moment – and then let them go, and return to the gratitude.

So, when we did receive the details of the diagnosis and her treatment and the prognosis, and the indicators all pointed to much more time than we had let ourselves hope for, it felt like an amazing gift. We were being given years  that we thought had been taken out of reach. And although the years may be many fewer than we had hoped for long ago in the before cancer days, from our new vantage point on time, years seemed so, so good.

(So, barring the unforeseen, it looks like we’re going to get our 25, although Carol Anne may still be going through the last of her chemo cycles at that time. In fact, we’ve set a new number as our anniversary goal, and if we make it there we will be satisfied, and we will take every year, every day, beyond that as bonus time.)

Included in this strange context of time is the contradiction in health that Carol Anne continues to experience.  At a time when Carol Anne has felt better and more herself than she has in years, if not decades, her cancer treatment is a strange game of introducing particles and chemicals into her system that make her feel worse in order to make her better. Between the enforced time away from work and taking “medicine” that makes her feel sick, she is having….well, we both are having to remind ourselves and each other that she has cancer. Brain cancer.  And the time she has to give to fighting the cancer now is so that we can have the years that we so desperately crave.

Which leads to the underlying contradiction – the contradiction between baffling surreality and sobering reality.  

My wife has brain cancer. Brain cancer!  This is not something real – this is a plot device in movies and shows to take a character or a plot in a different direction.  This is sad news that we hear about from celebrities and influencers. So discovering that it is real, and that it is residing in my wife’s brain inspires a disconnect from reality, a warping of what can and cannot be expected in life.  

And at the same time, the phrase “my wife is being treated for brain cancer” also inspires a sobering focus of energies. There is no cure, only treatment, and the prognosis is statistical, not specific. So, although there are good indicators and reasons to be hopeful, we really won’t know how effective the treatment will be until she’s gone through it.  And as she is now halfway through the first course of chemo chemicals, we are starting to learn how she reacts to the drugs. We are both figuring out what symptoms to pay attention to, what foods to prepare and how, and how to get through the tougher moments of the chemical war being waged in her body in the name of treatment.  

We are all living in contradictory times!  These are times of abandon and restraint, of acceptance and intolerance, of unshakeable certainty and baffling uncertainty, and so many other dichotomies energies in tension.  

These are the days when you hear more and more often: “Many things can be true at the same time.”

Academically, intellectually, this is easy to accept.

Psychologically, deep down in the soul, it is less easy. It takes intent, and practice.

And so I – we – practice.

As that slapstick angel continues to lob snowballs at my awareness, I call to mind that verbose practitioner of the written word, Charles Dickens, who once quipped:”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” He might have been on to something.

My father-in-law and close friend Robert Sims was on to something, too, when he taught me that the resolution to unavoidable contradictions is found in paradox.

How are we doing? We are doing paradoxically.  We are going through incredibly hard times very well. We are accepting time as it is given, and we are avariciously seeking more. We live with the gravity of the situation while we float and marvel at the strangeness of it all. And we look forward to the time we have with each other and with all of you, in all of its precious paradox.

Categories Uncategorized

Warning – Incoming Pity Party: An update from Carol Anne

November 1, 2024 //
1

Look, I have been very optimistic, and continue to be so throughout my entire journey, however it’s freaking November so cut me some slack! 

Well, it’s November. I have always disliked November. In every place I’ve lived in Canada, November has been an unattractive month. The leaves are mostly down, the sky is grey, and the days are short and getting shorter. You can’t start preparing for Christmas until Advent begins, so in the meantime, life feels grey and dark, and the promise of light seems far away. As someone who deals with SAD, November feels like a journey into the abyss, with February, with its longer days and promise of spring, being a much better place to be. 

This year, November 1st has dawned as grey and dismal as I have ever seen it. It is wet, grey, dark, and miserable, and it is still dark at 8:30 a.m. <Deep sigh.> Every year, November 1st is an exercise in counting days and buoying myself up with gratitude and moments of celebration throughout the month. These areas of celebration are threefold – birthdays, convocation, and Grey Cup football. 

Birthdays – My birthday falls one week into November. This year, I will be turning 56, undergoing chemotherapy, and for the first time ever, I have no parents to tell me my birth story. The day after my birthday would have been my mother’s 85th. This year, for the first time in 56 years, we are not celebrating together. For the past few years (since her 80th and a couple before), I have made the effort to travel to Toronto for our birthdays and get my sister to host a birthday party for us. I am glad that I did this. I am also feeling a bit relieved that not spending our birthday together this year is not because of my treatment, but rather because she is in a better place. My family here in Victoria is happy to have me here this year. No big plans yet, but a low-key celebration is in order. 

Convocation – Every year, UVic holds its fall convocation in November alongside the winter reading break. I always volunteer because it is such a great time of celebration in the dark season. As an administrator, seeing the happy faces of family and students as they celebrate this accomplishment reminds me why I do what I do. Of course, this year, I am not doing what I do. Instead, I am focusing entirely on being well and getting through chemotherapy for a brain tumour. Given where the cycles fall, I cannot safely volunteer at convocation this year, and that is a bit of a bummer! 

The Grey Cup – I know, I know, how old must you be to follow Canadian football! But yes, I am that old, and the Grey Cup is just a tradition I was raised with. With all other traditions falling flat this year, I am planning to make the Grey Cup matter! What is more, the Grey Cup is in Vancouver this year. In a different health environment, I would try to get tickets! I remember when I was a student in Ottawa in 1988 (I know, before many of you were born). The city absolutely came alive and celebrated. It does not matter whether the home team makes it (that year was BC/Winnipeg), a party is held! Bars were open on both sides of the river until 3 a.m. I was a student and couldn’t afford tickets, but one day, it is my dream to get to a Grey Cup game! 

Despite the gloominess of November and the challenges it brings, I’m determined to focus on what I can control and manage my PCV chemotherapy in the best way possible. PCV chemotherapy, which stands for Procarbazine, CCNU (Lomustine), and Vincristine, is a rigorous regimen, but I am finding ways to cope and maintain my spirit. 

Firstly, I’ve built a strong support system around me.  

Family – Morgan, my husband and life source is unfailingly present.  He is generally cooking for me, shopping and entering into my distractions – solar power, new bed, jigsaw puzzles, etc.  He is awake when I vomit at night, and he listens to my TMI.  I could not be luckier! Martin is solicitous and we are spending more time together than we have had the opportunity to spend together in several years.  Kathleen and I talk most days as she is walking home from school and that is fantastic to be able to catch up on her day and distract from mine. 

Friends and roommates – Andrew and Anika are around each day, keeping me and Morgan from getting too deeply into ourselves.  Martin and Zamira add to the company keeping me from getting bored. 

Kittens – OMG.  These two little creatures are a going concern!  Between moments of tearing the house apart in rapid games of chase – and sleeping hard to support their growth, Casey is known to crawl under the covers with me, or to sit on my chest (at the neck) to purr when I am up in the middle of the night. 

I am doing my best to incorporate some light exercise into my day, but I think I need to be a bit more demanding of myself on that front.  And still, when the side effects of chemotherapy hit hard, I allow myself the grace to rest and recover without guilt. I know I can get through this and I am focussing on the future as much as the present to make it happen.  

The occasional pity party is allowed; just don’t overstay your welcome! 

Lastly, I’ve found that staying mentally active and engaged is crucial. Whether it’s through listening to music, or a podcast, working on a puzzle, or writing in my journal, these activities keep my mind sharp and in shape. 

Although November is a challenging month and PCV chemotherapy a demanding treatment, I’m committed to facing each day with resilience, gratitude, and hope. It’s not an easy road, but with the support of my loved ones, a balanced lifestyle, and a positive outlook, I’m finding ways to navigate through the darkness and focus on the light ahead. 

Categories Uncategorized
« Older Entries