Erin's Journals

Just a thought… To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter. [P.T. Barnum]

Hey! I apologize if you had trouble getting into my journal on Monday. I’ve no idea how or why that happened but it could be a matter of volume. Anyway, on we go.

Here we are, almost a full week into our new lives, and it’s still just setting in that this is reality. A little family is here with us: there’s laughter and joyful noise, toys on the floor, a high chair at the table and dishes added to our usual ware. (These were made by my cousin Jocelyn in Calgary who has a company called Polka Dot Penny and her work is amazing – these plates are dishwasher and microwave safe, and are BPA-free etc..)

Here’s the link, and Jocelyn and her two teenage daughters do amazing work – plus there’s a 20% discount for Canadian buyers. The plates are here, but there’s so much more. And yes, there are some happy banana dishes in our future. Of course there are!

So, tomorrow Phil and Brooke get the keys to their house (new to them, but just two years old) only a six-minute drive from us. They’ll be here in our home until the moving truck arrives from Ottawa sometime in the next week or two.

It’s an adjustment having four people (okay, maybe three and-a-half) living with us full-time, but not a difficult one. After a busy day both inside and outside of the house, Rob and I call it a night at around 9:00 and let Phil and Brooke have their quiet time together.

It all seems to be working out well: our daily schedule consists of various shopping stops and some DIY projects to get pieces ready for their new place, baseball and/or hockey on the TV, toys on the floor and lots of cuddling going on.

Oh, there’s a bit of business too, but with a twist: the other day Rob and I were on a Zoom call for a new podcast we’re going to be doing starting in the fall. As we talked with three people in Ontario, Colin tip-toed into the bedroom, interrupting the meeting in the best possible way: he pulled from behind his back two bananas as “awards” to us for being “best grama and grandad.” The awards were inspired, no doubt, by the trophy we gave him for bowling 212 on Wii the other day (he’s leaving the rest of us in the dust).

But we ALL had a huge laugh when he brought in the real bananas. And yes, we are only two of his grandparents – not the best, just the ones right here. I’d hate for Phil or Brooke’s folks to take offense – and I’m sure none was taken in this sweet gesture. No doubt they’re going to be getting their own awards one day!

We’re having a wonderful time getting to make little Jane – who turns ten months old today – smile and laugh. She’s not making strange in the least and she’s a lovely, happy little girl. This picture was taken of the two of them out on the deck the other night. The devotion between the children is a lovely thing to see and we’re just so lucky to be a part of this sweet family picture at last.

As we get set to move into August in just a few days, I’ll leave you with that picture. Please stay safe and try to have a lovely weekend. My journal will return after the holiday on Tuesday. Sound good? Talk to you then!

Just a thought… If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. [Tom Stoppard]

Holy! I’d forgotten I could get this tired. Mind you, it’s a great sort of exhaustion: the kind you get from playing in the sun, running, throwing a Frisbee (badly, mind you), waking earlier and having to shake my head repeatedly to make sure I’m not dreaming. I’d better take you back to Friday.

All day Friday Rob and I were trying to pace ourselves before the arrival of our son-in-law Phil and grandson Colin, Phil’s wife, our daughter-in-law Brooke, and our new granddaughter Jane with a gentle mixture of busy and idle. Cleaning and texting Brooke every step of the way. And yes, going a little crazy wondering if this was actually happening.

As the hours ticked to touchdown of their 10 pm scheduled landing, things started to go a little sideways: the flight from Ottawa to Calgary turned out to be challenging (to say the least) for first-time flyers Brooke and Jane.

Then, I listened to the tension and upset in Brooke’s voice from Calgary and realized that with the time difference, and a 45-minute delay, they’d be landing at nearly 2 am on their body clocks. So I dropped one little surprise we had giddily planned: banana costumes. Yes, Rob and I had these and were ready to greet our company at YYJ in them.

But I thought: Read the room. Waiting, jumping out of our skin (peels?) dressed as Grama and Grandad Banana for a tired little troupe would only be memorable if it was well received. So we decided not to.

Turns out it was a good call, but the other surprise we had planned did land just right. July 24th felt like the replacement for all of the December 24ths we hadn’t marked since 2015, so we decided to lean into it. How? With a tree and lights, how else?

We waited until we saw the lights of their plane coming over the Haro Strait and that’s when we leapt into two cars and went to meet them.

The few people who had greeted travellers in the arrivals area had long since left. The last non-crewmembers off the plane, our sweet foursome arrived sleepy, frazzled and deeply relieved to have gotten to the end of, not only an anxious and long day of travel, but the days and weeks of tension and stress of packing up and leaving their house and home city in a swamp of formidable heat and humidity.

Soon we were all home, and passing through a door decked with a small red velvet bow, they walked into a house with Christmas music playing. First thing they saw was the puffy tree and white star lights dangling in the window, the fireplace channel blazing on the TV.

As Brooke said, “Christmas in July…” I turned to her and said, “This is for you.” And later when I asked Colin what the best part of his day was, he lay his head on his pillow in his Toy Story-decorated bedroom and said, “Christmas.”

Our family sextet, all in various levels of an exhausted haze, opened presents over warm cinnamon buns on Saturday morning. The banana costumes finally came out, but of course, Colin wore it best.

I’ve lots more to tell you but I won’t make this one too long.

So in short:

– Our (formerly) Ottawa family is here safely after a long, grueling and tear-filled journey. They’re starting to unwind and settle into their new western life.

– Banana costumes at Arrivals out – but a big hit the next day!

– Turkey dinners are meant for colder months. The heat of the cooking (and the weather) curbs appetites but makes for leftovers when we’re too pooped to prep.

And finally: from here on in, nothing for the rest of our lives will come close to the joy we’ve felt this past weekend. As we start believing this is happening, we can only be grateful for dreams that have emerged from the ashes of despair. And that have taken this girl, for one, to new heights, swingset, or not.

I’ll be back here with you on Thursday. Thank you so much for your messages of excitement, support and love over the past week. They’ve meant more to us all than I can put into words.

Just a thought… The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. [Ivy Baker Priest]

Yes, I’ve used this quote before and I’ll probably use it again. It’s one of my all-time favourites and it fits, perfectly.

First of all, thank you for those beautiful sentiments in response to my thoughts on guilty joy. It’s morphed into full-on excitement and I have some surprises planned for the fatigued foursome arriving at YYJ tomorrow night that I don’t dare write about here until Monday! Don’t worry, I won’t overwhelm them or have them rushing for the gate to get back on the plane!

Meantime, this is me today. And tomorrow.

In case you don’t watch SNL, this is a Kristen Wiig character from a few years back. She’s the woman who can’t contain herself when she learns a secret. Her joy and excitement are impossible to keep inside and, yes, that’s me these days.

We are keeping busy: there’s a thorough cleaning on the way tomorrow, and for the first time, we’ll use that new Bissell thing that we bought. We’re painting a table for their new home that we picked up at our local ReStore (the Habitat for Humanity retailer). We’re stocking the fridge with important things like chocolate milk and Mr. Freezes. There are meals to plan, decals to put on a little boy’s (temporary) bedroom wall and so many other tasks to keep us just busy enough to stop from counting hours instead of sleeps.

This is all the culmination of a dream we didn’t dare have. I’d look at little splash pads and think, Oh, Colin would love this. I’d hear of things my friend Nancy and her two island grandsons or my Aunt Laura and her two grandchildren were doing and wonder what it would be like to take Colin on similar outings. I wasn’t envious, just as I wouldn’t be jealous of you for living just a few doors away from your kids or grand kids, as many have told me that you are. I’d think, Oh, that’s so wonderful for them, and go on with our lives. But here we are.

Always keep one foot in the reality around you, but let your other foot step towards the horizon, because just beyond it, you never know. There could always be a miracle.

So many things – some of them awful, like Brooke’s health scare – had to happen for tomorrow’s dream to take flight. But it has taken a whole lot of bravery on this young woman’s part, too. Just two years ago today, she and Phil went to Ottawa City Hall and tied the knot. And tomorrow, despite never having been on an airplane before in her life, she and their two children – one of them a nine-month-old baby (!) – are getting on that flight, transferring in Calgary, and making their way here. Our hearts travel with them every step of the way.

Rob and I planned our plane trips with Lauren very carefully: her first was a charity flight from YYZ over Niagara Falls and back, so she’d have a quick and hopefully easy experience with the ups and downs of a ride. It went perfectly.

For our next adventure, we loaded up activities for a trip to Florida to visit her grandparents. A nice, short flight. Everything was easy, no car seats to wrangle and just perfect introductions to air travel.

Tomorrow, you’ll have a nervous and exhausted mom and dad, a boy who’s flown but once (but is already a seasoned traveller in his own mind) and a baby. I can only hope their fellow flyers are healthy and patient. And that all goes smoothly. My heart will be up there in whatever rows they’re in, hoping for the very best every kilometre of their journey.

If Brooke is like I was when we boarded our flight leaving Toronto to move west in 2016, there will be a few tears. Yes, emotional and physical exhaustion come into play, but the culmination of so many things that had to bring someone to that seat on that flight on that day can be overwhelming. There’s a whole lot of bravery happening on those flights tomorrow and, while it may not be visible to the people in the rows around them, all dealing with their own trepidation about flying during COVID, I can only hope that kindness prevails.

Have a lovely weekend and don’t miss Monday’s journal. I promise it will be memorable!

Just a thought… The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. [Socrates]

Four more sleeps. I’ve got so many emotions coursing through me right now as I write this; but it’s not just the excitement of the tremendous, joyous change that is coming to our lives this Friday evening. It’s a sense of, well, guilt.

Like so many of the elements of this chart (which I posted to my Facebook page in today’s journal link if you want to share it), guilt is one of the most useless there is, along with shame. If you really want to learn about shame and its toxicity – plus how to deal with it – just read anything by Brené Brown, or look for her special on Netflix.

Why guilt?

Because I know that our joy is coming at a cost to the families in Ontario shedding tears at the departure of Phil, Brooke, Colin and Jane to the westernmost part of our glorious country this Friday. While they are enjoying the emotional support of those who are happy about and understand this life-altering decision, of course, the mere thought of the geographical distance is causing heartache – something with which we are intimately familiar.

But there’s also guilt about you, dear reader. And as I pondered this, and what to do inside me to mitigate it, I had to examine where it came from.

Wayyyyyy back in the 1990s when I was fairly new at CHFI, I would write and produce 90 second spoken word vignettes that ran on the station throughout the day that were called “Focus.” A part of the station’s promise of performance to the CRTC, these pieces would be about nearly anything, but I always chose to write about things that would matter to a listener in her late twenties. Someone like me; someone the station was targetting as a listener.

One time I recorded a light piece on the health benefits of walking. And I ended it with a line about “as a new mom, nothing feels better for my heart than pushing a stroller…” or something like that. I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember their aftermath.

My boss at the time took me aside to tell me that he got a call from a woman who said that she was having difficulty conceiving and that “it broke her heart” whenever I talked on the air about having a baby.

I understood the sentiment, but also heard loud and clear what my boss was saying. By passing along the contents of a call to him, he was telling me that he agreed. Stop talking about your baby. Don’t offend someone who can’t have children. No one cares that you’re a new mom.

He didn’t say those exact words, but he didn’t have to. That was the kind of boss he was: he’d forward nasty emails that I didn’t have to see, but would read in the dark early hour before going on the air at 5 or 6 am. Why? Either to take me down several pegs in the self-esteem department, or because he felt the same things but didn’t have the cojones to say them himself.

(I did finally get to the point where, when my new boss Julie came in, in 2005, one of the first things out of my mouth was, “Please don’t forward nasty emails.” I learned that that was not her style of management. And that I shouldn’t have had to ask in the first place.)

So that’s where this comes from, and no matter how much time and money I’ve spent on therapy and vodka, the feeling is still there. If you have something wonderful going on in your life, keep it to yourself; someone else might not like it.

I’ve tried to be careful weighing what’s in my journals and on social media about nearly everything in my life. Not too much heaviness, turn it around so, if possible, it can be about you as well as, or instead of, me. Reflect what people around me are feeling. Try to make sense of things. Vent when necessary and only if you can defend your position. And always endeavour to keep things positive.

There’s enough negativity in the world – especially in 2020 – without people coming here to get it. My job, if you will, just as it was on the radio, is to reflect the experiences of those around me, adding the prisms through which I see and feel them. So, with all of that as background, here we go:

I promise to write journals that will not sound like a family Christmas letter every time you click to come here. I’ll consider what I post so that the content is about you as well as what’s happening in our world. For the first while, it’s going to be a challenge not just to jump up and down and squeal here for a few hundred words twice a week. I know that many people who come here are desperately missing their own families: some are in grief and under tremendous stress, while almost all of us just crave a return to some sense of normalcy. I get that – truly I do.

Bear with me as I navigate the unfamiliar feelings of unfettered joy once again. After mapping out ways to look for it (in a book, even) and then finding it hidden in rabbit holes along our path, Rob and I are stepping into a whole field of joy. I’m running through those tall grasses and wild poppies and daisies now with my arms in the air and, although I may trip now and then, I’ll never lose focus of the fact that you’re there watching from the sidelines, wishing and waiting for your own joy to come, too. I’ll always stop to give you a hug along the way. My promise to you.

I’ll be back here on Thursday.

Just a thought… One day this is going to be over — can you imagine that day? How we’ll come out into the sun and laugh and hug and sing and dance and hold hands? I’m living for that day. It’ll be like nothing we’ve experienced before. [Glennon Doyle, @glennondoyle, Instagram post]

Don Jackson’s final post: “Inspirational Quotes for Lovers and Other Strangers” April 29, 2020

I’m saddened to tell you today that Don Jackson, who for years was the host of Lovers and Other Strangers on 98.1 CHFI and could be heard on Rogers stations via syndication, and later throughout the world on the internet, passed away from cancer on Sunday night. I don’t know Don’s age, but I can tell you with certainty that it was too young.

To be honest, he and I weren’t close; Don & Lydia and Rob & I only got together as couples during our Christmas Eve at Erin’s shows, when they would bring their two children, daughter Christina Rose and son Donny, to share in the broadcast. We were able to watch his children grow through the years as they stepped out of their shyness and joined in the show.

Part of the reason we weren’t able to forge a friendship was one of simple practicality: Don and I worked on opposite ends of the radio clock. While ours ended at 9 am, Don Jackson’s show began at 9 pm.

And what a show it was!

Don was one of the most talented broadcasters with whom I have had the great fortune to share the airwaves. If you never heard Lovers, you missed a nightly display of aural magic – a Northern Lights to the ear.

Don would research (largely pre-internet, remember) poems and pieces of writing that would invariably touch the heart and often the soul. He would have a theme for the evening and write and wrap his own carefully-chosen words around the songs.

Mind you, those songs were ones that CHFI would have included in its playlist of the day. So you can be sure that even if he was talking about this season in which he has left us, Percy Faith’s “Theme From a Summer Place” would not have made the cut or onto the air. So he had parameters to guide him and I think he often chafed at the limitations, but still he soared. And that transcendence makes what he was able to accomplish just that much more astounding.

Our morning show producer Ian MacArthur reminisced with me yesterday that he and Don Jackson began at CHFI within a few months of each other (some 30 years ago) and that what Ian as a producer marvelled at – as did I – was the fact that the musical (instrumental) pieces, or beds as we call them, were almost always in the exact same key as the song he was going into.

So if Don was talking about excellence, and rolling into Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better,” you could be sure that the bed he was talking over was in F Major, the same as Ms Simon’s Bond theme. That was some absolute genius. Subtle, but perfect.

Nobody worked harder on a show, nobody was more dedicated to putting a flawless product out live on the air every time, and nobody did what he did, better.

Rob and I and all of our extended CHFI family of the past send our love and warm hugs to Don’s wife Lydia and their children. You can add your comments and read Lydia’s words here. Then take a moment and look at the messages from people whose lives were touched by Don’s show and his immense talent. I can only hope that these words give his family comfort in knowing how much that voice through the radio went straight to hearts of his listeners.

I’ll be back with you here on Monday. And if you have 90 seconds, here’s a YouTube link to Don’s piece called “The Roses of Life.” It’s a perfect, poignant way to remember our friend, Don Jackson.