Reflecting on Change

Big change is coming. 

LK's parents are about to embark on the step of downsizing from house to apartment.  LK's dad just started his retirement.  So they have a great big adjustment to make in the coming months.  We have been thinking about them lots in the past few weeks. 

The idea of retirement seems infinitely far away.  We both feel that we are still actively building our careers.  We have yet to set down permanent roots, having lived in an apartment in Toronto for ten years and then being guests here in a First Nations community for the past four years.  LK completely changed professions when we moved up here, from church musician to classroom teacher.  I never feel that I have 'made it' to mastering teaching (I suppose that is lifelong learning at work).  So we both feel that we are still working towards the peak of our professional lives.

Every once in a while we get the itch to find that little place in Ontario that will be our picket fence.  A community with a church that nourishes us deeply, a school system that will inspire our kids to grow into their gifts, and a little home that belongs to us.  We wonder where that place could be.  Will it bring us close to family in the south?  Will it keep us here, serving a community that we have grown to love deeply?

As we see, from a great distance, LK's parents move from the home that we have such wonderful summertime memories in to an apartment, we are reflecting on where we may be at that point in our own lives. 

Where will our adventure take us?

No Dynasty Here

As we pulled out of the Walmart parking lot in town.

LK:  Hey isn't that guy from that show on tv?

EK (searching for a celebrity):  Which guy?

LK (gesturing to a beat up minivan):  That one in the van.

The man in questions has long greying hair, a bushy streaked beard, and is wearing plaid lumberclothes. 

EK:  Do you mean Duck Dynasty?

LK: Yeah.

EK (looking carefully):  No, I think he's just Canadian.

'Jibway

Jo: Do you want to play 'Jibway?

Fi:  You can't play Ojibway!  You speak it.

Jo:  Oh, what do you want to play?

Ojibway is a descriptive language, with words often being poly-syllabic to include enough detail.  I find them very challenging to spell, pronounce and remember.  I have only a handful of phrases, mostly slang that I know.  My Ojibway vocabulary is pretty much like my Dutch vocabulary.

However, the Sprouts are regularly exposed to it in their second language class.  Jo was spoken to in Ojibway at the daycare before he came to school.  And to them it is natural.  Plus they have the advantage of young elastic brains that acquire new language far faster the my old inflexible brain can anymore.

At the dinner table, the Sprouts share what they have learned in Ojibway class.  Jo tells me the names of the months and what they mean in English.  October is "the leaves falling" and November is "time when the water freezes".  Fiona corrects him in getting the phrasing just right.  She is able to share complete sentences.  The words roll off both their tongues like water.  I have no idea how their exposure to this language will be a blessing in the future.  But it is awesome to hear my kids learn something that is completely beyond my skills.