Merry Christmas 2021 - from our house to yours

 

 

Dear friends and family:

This time last year most of us thought that by now we'd be reminiscing about Covid-19 ("Wow, wasn't that an incredible time?"), not talking about it as a real and present threat. But here we are. It's affected and dictated so much of our lives these past two years. We can take comfort, I suppose, in the fact that (despite experiencing it differently depending on our circumstances) we really are all in it together.

I wanted to share a little bit about what's been going on in our lives this past year. 

Jonathan turned 19 in September. He has coped amazingly well with the changes and disruptions Covid has caused. He's actually been fortunate because when schools closed in January and April, he was able to keep attending because the province made provision for special needs students to go in-person. His School-to-Community class was the only class in the brand-new Kingston Secondary School for a lot of the time this past winter. Jonathan loved going to school and being with his crew of friends. He was also able to attend Extend-a-Family day camp for six weeks this summer, giving some normalcy to his summer break. Jonathan is a tall, busy guy who loves watching garbage truck videos on his iPad, sorting the recycling, and adjusting neighbours' shovels and brooms on their porches.

The last six months have been a time of concern for us with Jonathan's seizures. They've been fairly well contained with meds for the past few years; normally he'd have maybe 2 or 3 seizures a year. But since June he has had about 17. One involved a trip to the Emergency Department after he fell during a seizure at school and hit his head hard on the floor. He was fine, but it's meant a lot of time working with his doctor to adjust his medications and try to get the right combination. He's now been seizure-free for four weeks, so we're hopeful. In January he will transition from pediatric neurology to adult neurology; this means meeting a new doctor who will take over his care. The pediatric neurologist has been very helpful, but he really needs adult services now and we've been waiting quite a while for this transfer to take place.

Allison is 23 now and well into her Queen's degree work in Linguistics. She has really found her niche with this area of study. Last winter she took three online linguistics courses; this fall she took two online language courses and an on-campus course. Queen's is going online for at least the first half of the Winter 2022 term because of Covid, so she'll be back to all-online again. Allison has adjusted well to all the disruptions and has worked diligently on her courses. In her free time she's enjoyed outings with her social club, reading, playing games, and going for walks.

 

Richard continues to work as a nurse at Kingston General Hospital, although for two months this spring he was redeployed to Hotel Dieu Hospital while KGH was making changes to accommodate Covid patients from out-of-area. He enjoyed this temporary change but is now back to his regular position in Orthopedics. Most of Rich's sports and volunteer opportunities have been put on hold due to Covid, but this fall he enjoyed running and volunteering on Saturday mornings with Parkrun, an organization that holds non-competitive 5k runs on Saturdays all over the world. He's also made a point of getting together regularly with a fellow from church for a little informal baseball. (Jonathan enjoys these outings as well, especially picking up all the balls that have been hit into the outfield.)

 

I (Jeannie) have continued working as an online instructor at Queen's, although I'll be phasing that out next spring; I'm feeling it's time to dial back my university work and do something different. I recently started working as a copyeditor for a local news organization and while that's been sporadic so far, I really enjoy it.

I was glad to be able to go to PEI this summer and see Dad. I had not seen him since August 2019 (at which time he was in the hospital and hadn't even moved yet to the nursing home where he lives now). Though we didn't go to the Island as a family, my brother Errol and I went down in July for a week; I was grateful for this opportunity to see Dad and my brother Lincoln and other relatives. Dad is not well, but he is holding his own, always calm and stoic and accepting of what life brings.

Other big news for me was that I had a second eye surgery earlier this month to improve my double vision. I'd had one surgery (on my inner eye muscles) in Sept. 2019, and there was some improvement but it didn't last. This time the surgeon tightened my outer eye muscles (I know: ewww, right?). It's only been a couple of weeks but it seems to have made a really significant improvement so far. So I'm grateful to have been able to get that done.

I had three publications this year:  

• My short story "End of October" was published at Reckon Review
• My poem "Mary" was published at Voidspace (it's based on Mary's Magnificat and was a response to the journal's challenge to write a poem using only the letters in "Merry Christmas")
• My poem "Gazing upward at night, with Chesterton" was posted on the local library's Poetry Blackboard as part of our Poet Laureate's "Joy Journal" series. 

It has not been the most creatively productive time for me during Covid, but I have done some good reading (see my end-of-year book post HERE) and have watched some excellent TV series including Poldark, Victoria, Sanditon, Cranford, Wives & Daughters, Schitts' Creek, and Belgravia. I've found it so relaxing just to just sit down in the evening, enter into the lives of fictional characters, and forget about Covid for an hour. 

 As it stands now, Kingston is not doing great with Covid. After having an amazingly low case count for a year and a half, our city's seen a big rise in numbers in the last few weeks as a result of the Omicron variant. Richard and I have already had our booster shots; the kids will get theirs on Boxing Day. We just continue trying to live as wisely and safely as possible, staying home when we can, and following the protocols. But I can't deny that there's kind of an ominous pall over everything right now that makes it hard to get into "the Christmas spirit."

Still, I was thinking about these lines from How The Grinch Stole Christmas:

He couldn't stop Christmas from coming: it came!
Somehow or other, it came just the same.

Despite the uncertainty and tragedy in our world right now -- and really, when has there ever been a time in history that there was no uncertainty and tragedy? --  Christmas comes. Christmas comes because Jesus comes. As the carol says, "He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found." 

No matter what your religious celebrations and observances may be -- or if you have none at all -- may we experience peace, friendship, and hope this season and in 2022, and may we do all in our power to ensure that others experience them too. 

Thank you for being a part of our lives.

Jeannie, Richard, Allison, and Jonathan