Archives for posts with tag: life

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

September 30, 2025 //
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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!

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9131 days (including leap years)

June 10, 2025 //
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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.

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