Merry Christmas from our home to yours - 2022

 

Christmas 2022

As 2022 winds down, I thought I'd take a few minutes to reflect on our family's year and share a little of what's been going on in the Prinsen household.

Richard and Jonathan - photo by Jeannie, August 2022

 Jonathan turned 20 in September and is now in his last year of school. It is hard to see this phase of his life coming to an end because school has been such a happy place for him ever since he was a little kindergartener at Rideau Public School. But I'm sure he will adjust to the changes just as he always has -- and I guess we will too. Organizations like Extend-a-Family, whose camps and Saturday programs Jonathan has attended for many years, offer adult day programming, so we'll consider whether a setting like that is appropriate for him come September of 2023. There is still time to work some of these things out. Jonathan had another bout of more frequent seizures this summer and had to have some more medication dose adjustments; at the moment he is four months seizure-free. His neurologist sees him every six months, so with her direction we just stay the course when things are going well and adjust medications as needed. Jonathan continues his unwavering interest in all things related to garbage and recycling, brooms, shovels, dustpans, windmills, and seagulls -- and he shouts "Good job!" encouragingly to people when he sees them walking their dogs or shoveling their driveways.

 Allison and Jeannie - photo by Naomi De Jonge, June 2022

Allison is 24 and is continuing her studies in Linguistics at Queen's. This past semester was the first one in which she attended all of her classes in person on campus, and it went very well. She made the Dean's Honours List with Distinction (GPA 3.9 or above), so we are pretty proud of her for that achievement. She is still living at home, which is a good arrangement while she's at university.

Richard's year started off in a way he didn't intend and wouldn't have planned: in January he fell on ice while out for a run and broke his fibula (the thinner bone in the lower leg). He required surgery and spent the winter convalescing and healing. By April he was able to weight-bear and go back to work; then over the spring and summer he eventually got back to running and even a little soccer. This fall he started back as a volunteer at the Run & Read program at Molly Brant Public School; this program had not run in person since pre-Covid.

I (Jeannie) retired from my online course work at Queen's at the end of the winter 2022 semester, and that's been a good change. I always enjoyed connecting with the students, but I was ready for a break from the constant marking and putting-out of fires. I'm working a few hours a week as a copy editor for Kingstonist News, a local online news site; the people are great to work with, and I enjoy working away behind the scenes, tidying up punctuation and grammar and checking details. As for my writing, I've had three publications this year, all poems: if interested, you can read those at the top of the "My Writing" page of this blog.

All four of us succumbed to Covid-19 in August after avoiding it for 2-1/2 years. Jonathan probably picked it up at summer camp, though we can't be sure of that. The kids recovered pretty quickly, but Richard and I were knocked out with fatigue for nearly two weeks.

 The biggest and hardest piece of news from this past year is that my dad died in April. (See his obituary here: Arnold MacEachern. It will appear as a pop-up; just wait for it.) He had lived in Whisperwood Villa, a Charlottetown nursing home, since the fall of 2019, and I had only seen him once since Covid began. In March of this year the nursing home had a Covid outbreak, and Dad got it; though he was not all that sick with it, it may simply have been too hard for him to bounce back, especially when he was already quite weak with advanced kidney failure. My brother Alan was with him when he died, and he just slipped away peacefully. We had a funeral for him in late April; I and my brothers Lincoln, Alan, and Errol were all able to be there (my brother Scott, who lives and works in China, could not make it). The four of us spoke and/or sang at the service and tried to honour Dad as best we could -- which honestly was not difficult. Dad was such a wonderful person: patient, hard-working, faithful, interested in people, true salt of the earth. The world doesn't seem the same without him, particularly with Mom also gone. At the funeral my brother Lincoln sang Rodney Crowell's song "Love Is All I Need," and this is the final verse:

I had a dream last night: I saw my mom and dad
They were happy now, and I was glad.
They had a brand new house; they'd just moved in
And when I awoke, they were gone again...

I know love is all I need
I know love is all I need
I know love is all I need
That's all I know

Drawing of Dad and Mom by my niece, Meredith Mac Eachern

Those seem like fitting words with which to draw this letter to a close. As 2022 nears its end we have extended family members with health concerns, and these things have a way of distilling life down to what really matters: love, family, and friendship. The small acts of caring and kindness often turn out to be the most significant; as my favourite quote from The Fellowship of the Ring puts it, "Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."

This describes the story of Christmas as well: how the greatest event, the Incarnation, was embodied in the smallest package -- a tiny baby, weak and vulnerable, born while the eyes of the world looked elsewhere. 

This Christmas, may your celebrations and observances -- religious or otherwise -- be filled with love, and may the New Year bring you peace and joy. 

Jeannie, Richard, Allison, and Jonathan