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Tag Archives: Toronto

These are the Times

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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change, Changes, Endings, Gap Year, Growing Up, Growth, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, New Beginnings, Nostalgia, Reality, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, Relationships, Talk, Toronto

Sometimes I get lost in nostalgia. Today is one of those days.

I lived in Toronto for 11 years in two different time periods. There was pre-New Zealand and post-New Zealand and the experiences are vastly different from one another.

This morning I find myself in deep reflection, once again, on my time there pre-New Zealand. This was an intense time full of deep relationships, friendships, emotions, highs, lows, struggles and heart aches.

During this time I led a reflection activity for a group of young people using Billy Joel’s song “This is the Time,” encouraging them to make the most of their young days because they would not last forever. I didn’t realize how true these lyrics would become for me. I truly thought that this was a time that would last forever; at least for me.

Watch on YouTube: This is the Time

As I sit here writing this, listening to these lyrics again, I am almost surprised by how much things have changed. I was certain that my life was going to continue-on in the same manner, that I would be surrounded by the same people, doing the same things, for the rest of my days.

But, everything has changed.

There are beliefs, lifestyles, locations and people long-gone that I thought I would never leave, or leave behind.

Despite the fact that I was encouraging a group of young people to be mindful of their current situation, that it would not last forever, I did not seem to grasp this reality for myself.

There is one truth I know in life – things will change. I miss my friends, I miss the city and sometimes I even miss some of the experiences. I never thought I would be sitting here, miles away, having not spoken to most of these friends for many years, worlds apart from one another, living completely different lives.

In-between us now sits the large ocean called “Life,” and it seems impossible to cross.

“Sometimes it’s so easy
To let a day slip on by…”

 

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The Decision to Move

22 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Cancer, change, Changes, Choices, Courage, Family, Fear, Home, Hopes, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Loss, Love, Mourning, Moving, Pain, Reality, Reflections, Sepsis, Toronto, Truth

When my Mom phoned to let me know she had called an ambulance to bring my stepdad to the hospital, it was as if the world around me grew still, despite the fact that I was standing in the middle of a bustling Nathan Phillip’s Square in downtown Toronto at the very first Winter Festival being held there.

My husband, child and in-laws kept walking and I could see them pointing towards the ice skaters and, more excitedly, towards the Zamboni. But, my heart had sunk to my shoes and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to spoil their moment, but I was feeling desperate. I just wanted to get away and be somewhere I could have a good cry. But, I didn’t want to scare my son.

I hung-up with my Mother and eventually rejoined my family. I explained what was going on to my husband while his parents entertained the kid. My gut instinct was to get in a plane and go be with my parents. However, this was very much complicated by the fact that our in-laws had flown all the way from New Zealand to be with us, we didn’t have any other vacation days (so I’d have to take a pay-loss), we were broke so I would have to borrow the money to go as it was, I and I have a 3-year old that I had to consider.

My husband calmed me and told me to just wait to hear some more news about what was going-on before I panicked too much.

It wasn’t until recently, when we moved-back to be with my parents, that I learned just how dire the situation was and just how terrified my parents had been. These are difficult things to convey over text or phone calls, I suppose.

When talking to my Mom in that week and a half, I was trying to discern from what she said and how she sounded whether, or not, they really needed me there.

After getting off the phone with her one evening I broke-down. When my husband came to see what was happening I sobbed “I hate feeling like I am waiting to get that nightmare call that we had better come now or it will be too late…”

My Stepdad had gone through 11 rounds of chemo for colon cancer, and this was the year after he had been flown to Ottawa for a triple bypass. Now, he was in hospital with sepsis and my Mother had said that they were struggling to keep his organs functioning.

I knew it was serious, but did not know how serious or how scared both of my parents were going-through this. I guess that’s a compliment to how well they handled it together. Still, I hate thinking that they had to go through it alone.

Once my Stepdad was out of the hospital, I said to my husband, through more sobbing one night: “I NEVER want to be in that position again. Having to ask my Mom to let me know when it got to the ‘you need to come now because he’s dying’ stage.”

I hated being in that position. I didn’t wan to wait until it was too late. I wanted to spend time with him while there was still time to spend. I wanted my son to be able to build memories of his grandparents of playing games, laughing over dinner, sharing ice cream treats and going for car rides and not just sitting in a hospital saying ‘goodbye’.

So, we made the decision to uproot our lives, and move home.

It was a decision that required a lot of sacrifice, and there are times I still can burst into tears when something I miss about our old home strikes or when my Son asks something like: “Can we go to the tick-tock park?” (A park we used to frequent behind city hall, where the large clock on old city hall, would chime on the hour).

But, the pain and the loss we experience over leaving the city that we all dearly loved pales in comparison to the pain and the loss we would feel if we had decided to stay and, instead, forfeited the time we now get to spend with family.

You just cannot put a price on that.

People say it all the time, but until you are staring it in the face it can be tough to comprehend;

life is short.

You have to look at what really matters to you and be prepared to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

It may be very difficult at times when we are missing our beloved city, but that is grief, not regret. I will never regret choosing time with my family over our life in the city.

We never know how much more time we have together. I’m determined to make the most of it.

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Art is what happens to you…

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Tags

AGO, Art, Awareness, Embrace, Experience, life, Live, Memory, Micah Lexier, Motherhood, Reflections, Toronto

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Art- it’s exciting when a piece of art surprises you by impacting you in a way you never thought it would.

My husband and I took a half vacation day to explore the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). We had wanted to do this on Leap Day (Feb. 29, 2016) but it fell on a Monday and the Gallery is not open on Mondays.

So, we decided to do it yesterday.

We took the elevator to the top floor and found a volunteer leading a tour who invited us to join. Usually, I would want to just explore these things on my own, but today I was feeling like I could use a little extra input into what it was we were going to be seeing, so we joined in.

I’m so glad we did.

The very first installation we saw was one created by Micah Lexier. It was “a work of art in the form of a quantity of coins equal to the number of months of the statistical life expectancy of a child born January 6, 1995.”

Normally, I would look at something like this and think: “Huh…ok. Kind of interesting, I guess.” And not give it very much thought beyond that.

But, as we looked at it our volunteer tour guide said:

“Notice how the coins in the first box are neatly ordered and purposefully placed. This is the expectation of what life will bring-the hopes. This is how we all start out. Now look at the coins in the second box. It always reminds me of a line of a famous John Lennon song: ‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’.”

And then the tears came.

First of all, the installation reflected things I’ve been having about my own life for some time. For years now I have been trying to teach myself how to be present in the moment and realize that this is life.

There was a period of time when I felt I was constantly waiting for my life to begin. And then, all of a sudden, I looked and I saw a box, much like this chaotic box of coins, and I realized that this was my life. Life was here in all this mess, disorganisation and the many unplanned events and bends in the road.

I had been expecting to look at my life and see it as the first box: Ordered, dreams fulfilled, everything in its place, looking exactly as I had imagined it would. But, I have recently come to realize and accept my life as being beautiful, despite the fact that it looks so different to what I had originally envisioned.

Just as the neatly organized coins have their beauty, so do the scattered. And, as I looked at the 2 boxes the one thing remained the same, despite how the coins were placed, they were all in “my box”. And, that’s really what is important. Whether the coins are neat, or scattered, they are mine. They are my memories, experiences, struggles, victories, joys, sorrow – my life. And that’s beautiful.

Secondly, I sing that song to my son all the time. And, as I looked at these coins, I saw my neatly organized hopes and dreams for what his life will be in the first box and the reality of what it will actually be in the 2nd. I realized that his life, just like mine, is going to be what it’s going to be. I can’t control it and I won’t be able to keep it neatly organized for him. He’s going to experience pain, sorrow, frustration, disappointment, confusion and chaos. But, there will also be joy, love, freedom, hope, comfort and adventure.

There will come a time when the 2 coins that are currently in his box will be at the bottom of this heap of messy coins, almost forgotten. Except, the image of how they are now in their near perfection, will always remain in my heart. At some point, there will have to be a letting-go.

As I stood there contemplating all of this I made a promise to myself to help teach my son how to not miss life because he’s trying to keep his coins in order. I want to teach him to embrace the chaos that is life and to see the beauty in it while it is happening.

Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we’ll bot just have to be patient
‘Cause it’s a long way to go
A hard row to hoe
Yes, it’s a long way to go
But in the meantime

-John Lennon-

 

IMG_20160429_100311

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The Word Became Flesh

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Brave, change, Christian, Church, City, Courage, Dreams, God, life, Minister, Mission, Missionary, Naive, Toronto, Word

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When I was in my early 20’s I moved to Toronto.

For years I had been working towards becoming a minister in a non-denominational church. I had received acceptance into the school that would last 2 years and see me ordained as a minister upon completion of the training.

I had packed all my boxes and my current job contract was going to be finished in a couple of weeks when I received a letter from the school stating that they had decided to defer my acceptance for one year.

There had been a few young, single, women that had recently gone-through the training, found it all too much once they had been ordained, and crashed and burned within a few years of graduating. They were nervous the same thing would happen to me.

And so, I found myself sitting there, staring at the wall, wondering what I was going to do next.

I pulled-out my journal and pen, prepared to write my frustration, fear, anger, doubt and confusion when a pamphlet fell-out and fluttered to the floor.

The pamphlet talked about a rough area in Toronto where ‘real Christians’ were supposed to be. “Give a year-get a Life” it judged that what I was currently doing was not good enough. “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood” – words from John 1:14 called to me promising the opportunity to become the living, breathing, word of God in a community that desperately needed it.

Within an hour I was dialing the 416 number, butterflies exploding within my stomach and my head spinning with nerves.

I spoke to a guy who sounded very cool and expressed interest in having me come and join the team. I was told that I would have a place to live and that they would help me find a job when I arrived. By the time the conversation was done, it was pretty much decided. I would be moving to Toronto.

With $500 in my bank account and a world of dreams in my heart, I headed for the city.

I was extremely young and naïve and it became painfully obvious within my first few days there that I was in way over my head.

I remember sitting in a meeting with the guy I had spoken with on the phone, the local minister of the organisation and the office administrator, barely being able to understand anything they were saying. They seemed to speak their own language, using words and expressions I had never heard before.

I sat there observing like a National Geographic photographer crouched in the grass, watching a pride of lions creeping upon a herd of gazelles.

I could barely get my head wrapped around it all.

Here I was. Young, inexperienced, uneducated, unprepared and ready to save the world.

The Word become flesh.

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There are Good People in the City

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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City, Friendly, Kind, Streetcar, Subway, Toronto, Torontonians, TTC

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One thing I hear all the time, especially from people in my hometown, is that people in the city are rude and unfriendly.

This is a belief that I have never understood because I have lived here for 10 years and I just don’t see it.

I meet extremely friendly Torontonians every day. I meet strangers and share little funny moments of life with them every single day (well, as long as I’ve left my house…come on, everyone has those ‘stay in my pj’s’ kind of days!). I am constantly receiving offers of help with T’s stroller, or holding doors, offering me seats on TTC, etc.

A co-worker had an experience this week that has really struck a chord with me and I have been wanting to share this with as many people as possible in hopes of dispelling this idea that Torontonians are rude, stuck-up and narcissistic.

There was a morning this week where there were several subway and streetcar lines not operating. In a city of 2.86 million people, you can imagine the chaos that this caused as people were attempting to get to work for the day.

My friend was standing at a streetcar stop with a large crowd of people waiting for the substitute buses that were being dispatched to deal with the problem. A man in a vehicle pulled up, unrolled his window and said: “Ok, guys. I have room for 4 people.”
My co-worker and 3 others accepted the offer and were dropped-off near their work places.

There are good people in the city.

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