The kids need to know we’re all right. Tell them

The snow is at the dirty stage. I seem to only appreciate nature in its fullest: when a blizzard leaves behind a blanket that covers a multitude of human eyesores, when spring leaves are popping forth in violent sunshine, when thunder is howling outside an open bedroom window, when cicadas are playing a soaring symphony in the weight of an August heat. Gritty snowbanks meeting a soggy yard are less romantic.

And yet. Much like our fabulous Canadian seasons changing, the tumult and uncertainty delivered by the rapacious bullies who live beneath us will also evolve. Every change brings challenge; every change brings innovation; every change brings anxiety but every change also brings opportunity.



“Has it ever been this bad?” a younger friend asked me recently. I’m officially at the age where people assume I’ve seen it all, lived through it all and therefore have access to some official wisdom. I scroll through historical cycles of recessions, industry shutdowns, stock market crashes, natural disasters as well as man-made ones.

One thing stands out to me. At the time they were all happening, I was going through the stages of my life — graduating university, entering the work world, having children, changing careers, launching grown kids — and I kept doing all of that. I didn’t get to select the background music, but I certainly had to learn the steps to each new dance.

Anything I’ve experienced pales in comparison to what my parents endured. Dad, as a child on the prairies during the Depression, Mom in England with bombs falling around her as she and her siblings played in air raid shelters. We didn’t dwell on these stories, but we absolutely learned them and understood: life can get hard, but humans live on hope.

Life can seem impossible, but humans still live on hope. I’m going to a baby shower tomorrow for someone very close to me; another child just turned a year old, and the engagements and weddings are stacking up. I can waste a lot of energy wondering how I might have acted under these current terrible times.

How I could have found the hope to celebrate milestones and welcome new babies. But then I look back and realize they are all doing what I did: living. I’m reminded of the words I’ve whispered into more desperate ears than I care to remember: something changes every day, I tell them.

It could be big, it could be small, it could be good, it could be unwelcome. But what I can guarantee you is that something changes every day, and that something just might be the key that restores your hope. Always give it one more day.

I remember learning how old this planet is and all the eras that have come before. It was shocking to my elementary school self to be told we were less than a blink in the greater scheme of things, a grain of sand in an endless desert. We won’t matter in any cosmic sense, so we must make sure we matter to each other.

I cried that night for a young woman I didn’t know We had friends over for dinner recently, and they’d attended a funeral for a young woman the same age as my kids. Breast cancer. I was devastated.

All around me are graduations and babies and weddings and exciting new chapters, but I cried that night for a young woman I didn’t know, because I realized I did know her. She was all of my kids, all of our futures, all of our hearts. This tragic loss put much in perspective.

If we are still here each morning, our job is to remind younger generations of how we move forward, regardless of the threat. The snowbanks are receding as I write this. By the time you read it, they will be gone.

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