Haiku: Lilacs & Lilly of the Valley

Lilacs

Lilac blooms
fill the senses
purple shades
and smell recall
childhood joy.


Lillys of the Valley

Lillys of the valley
rise before me
faint aroma
happy days.

Lilacs

Monday Morning in the basement of the Education Building. Audrey has office space here reserved for doctoral students and I am here on her coat tail with not much to do today as she is on her computer organizing data.

I titled this lilacs becasue there are so many lilacs in bloom. I have been stopping to smell them as I make my way across campus and on the walks I take back and forth from where ever I am.

Lilacs along with lilly of the valley are two flowers, the smell of which can take me back to my childhood. In the backyard of the house on 14th street where I first lived, lilly of the valley grew along the basement wall of the house next door. The house next door was the boundry for the side and rear entrance of our house, so I could go out the door, down the steps and there in front of me was a row of lilly of the valley. Not til I was much older did I find out that this particular flower can be poisonous if eaten by a child. I used to sit on the sidewalk and play in the dirt where the flowers grew. I often picked the blooms to smell and sometimes take into my mother.

In the backy yard of the house was a workshed where my father and grandfather stored their tools. Between the shed and the yard of the house on the other side of our house grew two big, old lilac bushes, one purple and one white. The bushes were old enough and sturdy enough that I could use them to climb and get on the roof of the shed (not allowed but a great place to climb to neveertheless) there I could reach out and collect big bunches of the lilacs, thus the memories that take me back.

Sunday Morning in Calgary

We rose to another sunnny day inthe wild rose country. We hope to move from our postage stamp room to a larger one with microwave and fridge sometime later today.

Yesterday afternoon and again this morning we are at the U Cal library doing research for A's dissertation. I tote books to her little cubicle (sp??) cubbyhole, carel? she enters the endnote information on her computer and selects areas for copying. I go to the copy machine and copy and mark appropriately and file copies for further study. Now A is busy entering more info in her computer and I am free to blog. I am officially an acting research assistant so I get to go on the computer here at the U... It's so fast it scares me.

My email had your comments on my assignment to you. Only Joe didn't reply yet. Not a surprise as he manages to find other things to do and doesn't really get on line very often from what I understand. Thank you for your comments. I am happy to be seen as a positive influence in your life.

Calgary is a happening place it seems. While we were at the International Hotel in downtown I got a ring side seat on the construction of two high rise building directly behind the hotel. Four huge cranes sometimes working at the same time. worker ants swarming over the site wearing a variety of colored hard hats - bosses -white; steel workers green, blue seemed to be for gofers and red seemed to be electrical types. But who knows. IOt was fascinating to see the activity and see how the work progressed with concrete forms and wire - rebar cages for pillars being raised and lowered, concrete being hoisted from the street level to be dumped into the forms which were erected above.

First job of the day for the crane operator was to drop the porta pottys from the top level to the stree t to be pumped out. They are on a frame so he can hoist two at a time and one morning both doors swung open as he was swinging the pottys around to go over the edge and it looked like a plump couple doing a wild dance.
See what fun you miss when you love in the country.

Career Wrecker???

This morning shuffling through the Globe and Mail that we receive at our hotel room door I found the following in the Careers section.

PARENTING
Daddy dearest:
Your legacy lives on
in me at work

It is a review of yet another of the popular series of self-help books which purport to provide advice for those with a problem. A number of different "father-types" (my quote) are described in the Globe article. (I'm sure there are many more in the book.) There's the superachiever (a word?), the time bomb, passive parent, absent father, compassionate mentor.

The sad part of this and I haven't read the whole article yet, (nor do I intend to)is that it focuses on the impact on a child's career path as if this were the most important part of a childs development and life. If I were a father described by the time bomb caption, "volitile and unpredictable often because of underlying depression or addictive personalities" then my child would be a success if he or she survived much less had a career.

So what is this to me and to thee. Well, It's the first time I've read something which tried to put a father into a "category" based on character traits and then predict how the traits of the father would affect the child's work life.

It also made me wonder how what I did or did not do as a father affected your "career" choices. I remember Joan always talked about being a nurse. I don't remember Joe focusing on any particular career as a youngster, and I remember Kate saying that she wanted to be a teacher. I remember trying to steer Joe into the military or police work but he chose to work in Toronto and other places setting up offices and hotel rooms. I don't remember trying to direct the "career" choic of either Joan or Kate in any way.

So, the assignment should you choose to accept it is to think back to see if you can figure how my parenting skills or lack thereof were critical to your career choice. I would be interested in knowing and if you cite instances of things I did or did not do to direct you in you career, then I will have further fodder for future fascinating features here in blog world