Travelling Through Life

I am on the plane back to Edmonton after a
weekend in Montreal. My sister and I went to see
my grandmother for her 85th birthday.

Everyone on the plane is plugged into their
headphones, tv screens, MP3 players, or laptops.
(I’m no exception, but the woman beside me is
sleeping at the moment.) It is difficult to be
friendly with someone who is plugged in, or otherwise occupied.

On the other hand, some people just aren’t
friendly. The woman sitting beside me, for
example. She is approximately my age, possibly
younger. She is waaay more fashionable than I am,
which usually indicates to me that she has no
children. Once upon a time, I would have been
intimidated by her because she is slim and
fashionable. I might have thought that she wasn’t
being friendly because I am not cool enough or
pretty enough or important enough to talk to.
Now, I see that there are many possible reasons
why she might not talk to me. She might be really
tired or hungover. She might work at a very busy,
noisy job where she has to be friendly all the
time and she really needs the peace and quiet on
the plane. She might be on her way to a funeral
and doesn’t want to talk about it. She might be
really shy or insecure. The fashionable exterior
might be like her armour or a mask she wears to face the world.

Personally, I think it is bizarre that you could
sit right beside someone for four hours and not
even say hello, how are you, or are you traveling
for business or on vacation? I consider it
practically rude. I have realized, however, that
my opinion about what is rude or normal says more
about ME than about her. I still don’t know
anything about her, and neither do you, dear
reader, but now we all know that I think it’s
nicer to be friendly on a plane and try to
connect with people around you. We also know that
I don’t feel particularly glamorous most of the
time and that I am okay with that.

I realized again on this trip how much I like
traveling. I absolutely ADORE going to a new
place. I love almost everything about it. I like
hearing different languages spoken. I like
finding my way around. I like reading maps and
getting rental cars and realizing that I can find
my way around. I even like taking trains and
subways and busses and getting around that way.
In some places, that way is preferable. I like
reading the local newspaper and finding out how
much it costs to rent an apartment or buy a
house, what kind of jobs are available and how
much people get paid. I like to see what’s in the
grocery stores and if it’s different from what’s in my grocery stores.

The only thing that’s better than exploring a new
city on my own is to actually hang out with
people FROM that city and let them take me around
to their favourite places and show me what they
do for fun on a Friday night or for relaxation on a Sunday afternoon.

I realize that this makes me different from some
other people, like my grandmother, for instance.
As far as I can tell, she has been quietly living
her life in exactly the same way for about the
last 50 years. She is 85 years old, she lives in
an apartment with no dishwasher, no microwave, no
VCR, no DVD player, no stereo, no computer, no
internet, not even a touch tone telephone. She
takes the bus to buy her groceries and has them
delivered to her apartment. She goes out for a
walk every day, thank goodness, but she doesn’t
have much of anything on her schedule. She does
not belong to any church, social club, community
league, or seniors centre. She does not play any
games or sports or go swimming or use the
library. She does not travel. She lives directly
above her sister, and the two of them order in
Chinese food or pizza sometimes, and they watch
television together in the evenings. She goes to
bed at 11pm and gets up at 7:30 every day. She
has been following the same routine for years and years and years.

Admittedly, she did move into this apartment just
last year. Before that, she lived in the same
house that she shared with my grandfather
forever. In her old neighbourhood, she knew more
people and she would say hello to them on her
daily walks and she would have visitors over for
coffee or for dinner a little more often.

It is fascinating to compare her life to my
mother-in-law’s life. They are only 15 years
apart in age. My mother-in-law is 70. She still
lives with my father-in-law in the same house
she’s been in forever. She goes to work out at
Spa Lady every Tuesday and Thursday morning with
her friends. All winter long, she plays on a
curling team every Tuesday and Thursday
afternoon. She is a member of the church choir
and has choir practice every Thursday night, and
of course attends church on Sunday morning. I
think she is also on the “women’s committee” or
something like that. She organizes a curling
bonspiel for the church every year in January.
She golfs with friends two or three times a week
all summer long. She goes on at least two
holidays a year, usually to BC in September, and
somewhere warm in January or February. If a good
deal comes up or if some of her friends are going
on a cruise, she doesn’t hesitate to join them.
She also has dinner parties, breakfast dates,
lunch dates, and coffee dates almost every day of
the week. She gets together with her very large
family often. She still manages to make time to
visit and/or babysit her grandkids at least once
a week. Oh, and she also keeps a large vegetable
garden and a beautiful yard with flowers,
raspberry bushes, and an apple tree. She does a
lot of baking and has a freezer full of pies, jams, and squares.

Obviously, money can account for part of the
difference. My mother-in-law has far more
resources available than my grandmother, but even
if my mother-in-law was completely broke, there
would still be the church activities, the family
get-togethers, the garden, the baking, the
sewing, the dinner parties and coffee dates and so on.

It is difficult not to judge the two different
ways of life. It is easy to look at my
grandmother and say, she should really get out
more or get involved in something. On the other
hand, I have often felt critical of my
mother-in-law for spending almost all of her time
playing. Here is a woman who is strong,
intelligent, perfectly healthy, with loads of
energy and resources available to her. It seems
to me that she could USE her life to create
something or build something or contribute
something to society or help someone. Maybe she
does, in her own way. Maybe being the social
butterfly and keeping in touch with so many
people and throwing so many parties helps to
enrich the lives of those people whom she parties
with. Maybe I need to get out of my judgment throne.

I still don’t know what kind of life I will lead
in the future. Right now, I’m still busy raising
my kids. In a few years’ time, I plan to do a lot
of traveling with them. After that, I might
indulge myself by going back to university and
studying all the stuff I didn’t have time to
study before (like anthropology, sociology,
psychology, religion, philosophy, film studies,
women’s studies, history….) Maybe I’ll take up a
new career, like as a psychologist or family
therapist. Maybe I’ll start a foundation to help
people further their spiritual development, or to
help at-risk families connect to community
services, or maybe I will serve in public office
for a while. Maybe I’ll be a fundraiser for an
international agency. Maybe I’ll work for an
international agency, like World Vision or Unicef.

Half the time, I cannot believe that I am
actually an adult. I still feel like a kid who is
trying to decide what to do when I grow up. It
energizes me, though, to see my mother-in-law
leading such an active, busy life, and my
grandmother living such a long one, because it
means that I don’t have to make up my mind “once
and for all” about what to do with my life. I
have enough time here on earth to try it all. I
can be a student, a business woman, a
stay-at-home-mom, a teacher, a traveler, a
volunteer, a grandmother, an investor, an author,
a student, and a whole bunch of things that I
haven’t even thought of yet. I can reasonably
expect to live for another 50 years. That is
astonishing. I’m only 34 years old, and I spent
the first 18 years just growing up. I’ve only had
16 years of experience as an adult, and I have
already been able to try so much. I get to have
about 50 MORE years. That is fantastic.

In a couple of hours, I will be reunited with my
children, and I won’t be able to make any long,
thoughtful blog entries for quite a while. It is
interesting that Renee missed me so much. She
seems to be quite dependent on me right now,
whereas when she was younger she was not. I
wonder if I have cultivated this somewhat by
taking her out of school and having her with me
all the time. I don’t really think so. It seems
more like a stage of life that she is going through.

When children are two or three years old, they
are more firmly planted in the moment, and as
long as everything is okay in the moment, like
Nana is with them, their favourite show is on TV,
and there is macaroni and cheese for lunch, then
they are fine. Renee is older and more likely to
notice if things are different from when I’m
around. My niece, who is a few years older than
Renee, also seems to have been very clingy and
attached to her mother (my sister) for the last
few years, and still is even today. It should be
fairly amusing to see how that changes when she’s a teenager.