Jubilada!

Tell people that you are having a baby, starting a new career, getting married, taking up ice climbing, running a marathon, studying to be an iguana trainer and they will all say ‘How fantastic – congratulations!’

But tell people that you are getting off the hamster wheel, selling everything and moving to Mexico and the collective response seems to be…

“But what will you do?!?”

I happen to think that regaining my sanity, my health, my sense of humour and my joie de vivre is ‘doing’ something in spades, but I now realize it’s all a bit ‘nothing’ in our fast-paced, accomplishment-driven society. Which is why I’m doing it. Nothing I mean. And moving to Mexico.

I like Mexico because they like to do things a bit differently down there. For one, they move more slowly. Partly because it’s hot. But mostly because they get distracted by the little things in life – like stopping to chat to an old friend on the street, then going for a coca cola instead of the meeting they were headed to. Or popping in to see if the old abuela across the street needs anything from the market. It’s frustrating at times, when you are the one at the other end of the meeting agenda, but after awhile you find you are doing the same. And no one thinks lesser of you.

What I have noticed about this culture is that they spend their time doing the things that give them joy. I suppose that is why they refer to retirement as ‘jubilado’, or ‘jubilant’ in English, which needs no explanation although ‘exultingly joyful ‘ comes to mind. In our own less passionate language, ‘retired’ is defined as 1. Having left one's job and ceased to work or 2. Quiet and secluded; not seen or frequented by many people. Think I’d rather be jubilado. Or in my case – jubilada. Which brings me back to that pesky, puzzling and self-esteem denting question…“But what will you do?!?”

Although I am not sure what I will be doing down the road, I can tell you what I won’t do.

I won’t get out of bed until I’m damn well ready.

I won’t put my personal health and well being behind everything else.

I won’t forget to kiss my husband in the morning.

I won’t say “I don’t have time’.

I won’t say no to a game of golf.

I won’t rush through lunch with a friend because I have something else to do.

I won’t neglect to brush my dog and clean his ears.

I won’t wait 2 weeks to phone my mom.

I won’t wake up 5 times a night worried about work.

I won’t leave the lentils cooking on the stove for 2 hours because I’m writing a proposal and I’ve been procrastinating - again.

I won’t say no when I can say yes.

I won’t get out of the tub when the water gets cold – I’ll add more hot water.

I won’t work til 7 pm every night.

I won’t work on the weekends.

I won’t worry about staying up late because I have to get up early.

I won’t do anything I don’t want to do.

I won’t worry about money, even though I should.

I won’t worry about it being a ‘school night’.

I won’t care if I don’t make the bed.

I won’t wait til 10 pm to read my book.

And most important of all.

I won’t feel bad because I’m not ‘doing’ anything.

I know I am going to be my own worst enemy when it comes to this doing nothing stuff. I’ve already started to get a bit twitchy and wonder at what rate my brain cells will start to dissolve, now that I am not multitasking like a demon or working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. So I am trying to get into a new rhythm, a new mindset. One that is less about what I did today and more about…did I do today what I enjoy most in life.

Right now that means leisurely coffee in the mornings, reading the paper, maybe breakfast at the local diner, a great hot yoga class, lunch with someone interesting or fun, walking my dog, writing, working around the house to get it ready to sell, looking at garden books and dreaming about my royal palms, studying some Spanish, making plans with friends, talking to moving companies, planning and cooking a great dinner, hanging out with my husband and best friend in life.

And being jubilada.

Vivir el sueño!

Alicia y Ricardo en Merida

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he’s moving to Merida, Mexico where he can get away from the elves, enjoy the sunshine, swim in his new pool, do a little yoga, make some art, learn a new language, spend some quality time with the missus, and re-fill his proverbial well.

Metaphors aside, sounds pretty great doesn’t it?

So Ric and I are following suit and making plans to head south on a semi-permanent basis. Many of you have heard us talk about our dream to make Mexico a partial place of residence and we are now ready to make our move. We will be listing our Bridgeland home this spring so spread the word.

La casa en Manzanillo

As for my company, Foundry Communications, I am now ‘jubilada’! I have passed full ownership to my former business partner and am looking forward to my next career as a Spanish language student, art curator and landscape designer (with help from mi hermana hermosa Diane, who is a real landscape designer). I may consult a little and/or do some volunteer work until the fall, but mostly I’ll be focusing on the logistics around selling our house and making the move to Mexico.

The main zocalo in Merida

For those a bit more out of the loop, here’s the back story.

Ric and I have been spending time each year in Manzanillo, where we own a beach house (casaelgrupo.com) with some family, It’s been a lovely retreat for us over the last 7 years and we hope to continue to make trips there, especially when things get too hot and sticky in Merida.

But we knew from spending time there that Manzanillo would not be a place we could live on a more permanent basis. We are urban explorers, culture vultures, free spirits. We needed to find a place that gave us an environment we could dig into – culturally, emotionally and spiritually.

Merida is a city we have been familiar with over the last few years. Ric spent time there many years ago, and my sister Diane and her husband Bob have now moved there permanently. We visited Merida in October, found a place we knew we could call home, closed the deal at Christmas and will be making our move south this fall.

One of our gardens

Merida is in the Yucatan, 4 hrs west of Cancun on the Gulf of Mexico, and ½ hr from the port town of Progresso. An old colonial city, it is called the "white city", La Ciudad Blanca, because it's so clean and white, sparkling in Merida's brilliant and perpetual sunshine. Merida is genteel and laid-back, with a population of 1 million and equally as many mosquitos, from what we could tell. We’re bringing down a “mega-catch’ mosquito trapper so no fears about contracting Denge fever at our house! For those of you concerned about safety in Mexico, and ours in particular, rest assured that Merida is a gem. The media sensationalizes the violence in Mexico so we encourage you to check out the statistics for yourself. I’ve included a few links below if you’d like to read more about Merida (although I can confirm that you can no longer get a refurbished colonial for $100K!).

http://www.therealmexico.com/merida1.htm

http://www.travelyucatan.com/merida_mexico.php

http://www.calgaryherald.com/travel/Canadian+makes+Mexico+home/6209334/story.html

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/meridas-moment/3

The poem below, by Sandra Spencer, speaks volumes about what lies ahead, and we’re hoping with some language under our belt, and a place we can call home, we’ll start to experience life a little differently and perhaps have the chance to share it with some of you. Our door will always be open. Hasta luego mi amigos!

Mexico: A Cautionary Tale 

I was warned.
Repeatedly.
Warned.
So many times it lost its potency.
Warned.
By well-meaning friends
living in "safe" gated communities with armed guards
By acquaintances
who have never been here
By media reports
glamorizing and spreading alarm
Who have a different definition of danger. And of what constitutes safety.

Stupid me!
I didn't listen
to any of it.

Adventurous, perhaps with a death wish,
I didn't look.
Worse. I wasn't careful.

And…
In "dangerous" Mexico,
I was robbed.
Stupid, stupid me!

Yes, Mexico…
stole from me…
A smile.
At first.

And then,
they got bolder
and took…
A laugh.

and bolder still, they ran off with…
my poor self-image.

Which turned into a larger felony: They took …
time
to fill me with compliments!
Telling me
repeatedly
how wonderful it is…
to be a woman
of experience.
Who smiles.
Who laughs.
Repeatedly.

Time after time. Again and again.
Until finally, I believed them.

As I was smiling and laughing, and actually trusting myself,
They had the nerve to go and pick-pocket my lingering self-doubts,
my well-nurtured insecurities including
my belief that "real beauty" was limited to youth…

While I was still reeling in shock,
from having been robbed, and pick-pocketed
Mexicans took
the opportunity to kill my previous ideas of what constituted
"hospitality" ,
replacing it with a generosity
that is frightening
to even try to emulate,
yet so, so fortunate to know.

See how really dangerous Mexico is?
And it got even worse!

I hadn't recovered from such brutal behavior, when
they committed another truly horrible,
almost unspeakable crime.

They gave me hope and optimism.
Repeatedly.
About who I was.
About who I could be.
About who we could be together.

Amongst wrapping me in love and force-feeding me laughter and
compliments and smothering me in generosity
and unfathomably fabulous hospitality,
I was rendered helpless.
Utterly
helpless.

Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

I did not cry for help – or run away.
Mexico took complete advantage of my situation and committed the
biggest atrocity of all. Once again, they stole …
my heart – and my soul.

Now I'm so scared -
deeply, utterly terrified -
that I cannot return the favor.

Never happier, I steal away…
to wish
this kind of "danger" on everyone.

A father like mine

Four years ago I knocked my dad off his pedestal. As painful as that sounds, it was actually pretty cathartic. I had just finished 6 months of chemo and was in need of some serious soul searching, so after checking my fear and loathing of baring my aforementioned soul at the door, I headed off to boot camp for the emotionally stunted.

It was a lovely drive up to the retreat and I actually hummed along the way, thinking ‘this isn’t going to be so bad’….a little RnR, some fresh air, some healthy living, trapped in an enclave for a week with 24 other mildly dysfunctional people….it wasn’t too late to turn back.

But I didn’t, and this is where the pedestal comes in. Like 99% of all the women I know, I worshipped the ground my father walked on. He was 20 when he had me, was devastatingly handsome and charming and his rare appearances around the domestic scene left me craving his attention. All the more tricky given that I had 5 siblings with the same agenda. We used to fight over the ‘honour’ to pull off dads Paul Smith equivalent ankle boots because what the heck, attention was attention.

As the second eldest, I used to beg my dad to drive me to school so I could have him to myself for 5 minutes while the ‘little kids’ stayed at home. It also didn’t hurt that he had the hottest car of any dad I’d ever met, and a single appearance at the school would make me instantly popular with the boys and girls in my class. I used to think that the straight A’s I got all through school were due to my hard work and brown-nosing but now I wonder if having a look alike Sean Connery for a dad didn’t have a little to do with it.

Born cool

Being a teenager with a dad like mine was even trickier. The popular cool girls wanted to be my BFFs and hang out at my house in case my dad might be home, and the boys who professed their undying love really just hoped they’d get a ride in his Beemer. But I wasn’t picky – I basked in the glory, however short-lived, of awesome popularness, and checked my pride at the door.

My dad was smart and strategic (before ‘strategic’ became THE business buzzword), retiring at 38 and moving the family to England so he could do some soul searching of his own. As a successful business woman with my own inherent need to succeed, I am still in awe of this achievement and continue to ask myself where I went wrong that I am only peripherally contemplating selling everything and moving to Mexico.

After retiring at 38, my dad was not one to rest on his laurels. He shifted gears and decided to study theology and become a more contemplative and outwardly compassionate and generous human being. The pedestal was pretty high before, but now it was down right daunting. On top of being successful, funny, handsome and charming, he was now hell bent on being a ‘good person’. How was any guy ever going to compete with that? And therein lies the rub of being a daughter with a father like mine. No guy ever quite measures up.

My first serious boyfriend was 21 to my 16. He was dangerous and distracting in that young Mickey Rourke kind of way, and had me convinced that intimacy and true love meant sex 24/7. After following him to Ft. St. John for a year I realized the dead end I was in and packed my U-Haul to go in search of my self-respect.

My first husband (there was only officially one as the others would go under the category of ‘living in sin’) was a sweet man who worshipped the ground I walked on, something I obviously needed at the tender age of 21. Five years later it became apparent that adoration was not enough to keep the home fires burning and I moved on to #2 (or #3 if you count the cradle robber).

Now here was a guy who had my dad in spades. Wildly handsome, massively charming, fun-loving, successful in business, in love with his two small children even though he only had them every other weekend, and in love with me! Worked pretty well for 17 years until he decided he actually wasn’t in love with me anymore and would I mind if he just packed a suitcase and moved to Texas. There seemed to be a pattern developing here.

Meantime, my parents had amicably agreed to divorce; there were no drama queens or histrionics in THIS family, which apparently is an issue because a healthy expression of anger is a good thing – apparently. My father lost a good chunk of his fortune in an ill-timed business deal, remarried a woman who breathed some life back into him, and came out the other side a wiser, simpler, more emotionally available man. Oh, and he got a dog. And started to phone me on a pretty regular basis to tell me he loved me. This pedestal was now a monument.

So here we are, back at the ‘camp’ and I, along with my 23 other walking wounded, have been handed a large plastic bat with which to bash our symbolic fathers off their pedestals. Earlier in the week we had respectfully honoured our parents and tucked them away in a safe place so we could continue on with our much-needed therapy, so as to bash away guilt-free.

I had woken to this day with a great feeling of dread and wondered how I was ever going to commit this act of treason. But these were smart folks. They knew exactly how to get us to tap into the hidden feelings and tucked away hurts, and I beat down that pedestal (okay it was a pillow) until there was nothing but tears and feathers flying around the room.

What a release! What a sense of personal power! What a strange and peaceful feeling I now had! It wasn’t my dad in that pile of feathers, it was my unattainable, perfect, non-human image of my dad. And in that safe little room I was left with an overwhelming sense of the love my dad had for me and came to understand how perfectly flawed he was.

Fast forward to 2011 and I am now 5 years cancer free – having sent it packing with the bat – in love with a man who is handsome, creative, charming, compassionate, loving and wise, and also perfectly flawed – just like me. My dad and I are more friends now than we are father/daughter, whatever that means. To me, it means he has a huge respect for the decisions I make, even if they don’t always align with his own choices. He asks me for advice which is pretty cool and he gives it only when asked. He phones just to chat, is a great golf partner and continues to inspire me every day with his ability to take life as it comes and enjoy every minute of it.

Oh, and he still looks like Sean Connery which makes me laugh when, with a pretty big twinkle in her eye, the Asian grandmother at his local corner grocery calls him Double Oh Seven. Some things never change.

Inspiring Leadership

Someone recently asked me, ‘What inspires your leadership’? To me, becoming a good leader, or striving to be a great one, is something that is never fully realized. It is constantly evolving, informed by outside influences and internal struggles; by people you know and people you wish you did; by personal achievements and the achievements of others. 

Inspired leadership, for me, has been influenced by many things. By the people I met in the ‘Leading Strategically’ workshop I attended at the Banff Centre, by my husband who is an artist and excited by something new almost every day, by the people I work with at Foundry and by a few core values, in no particular order:

1. Keep good company

Surround yourself with the brightest, most inquisitive, creative people who are driven to do good things for good people, who listen and share equally, who never accept anything that is just ‘okay’, and who push themselves harder than they would ever push anyone else.

2. Be fiercely optimistic

Growing a successful business and leading by example – with optimism, acknowledgement and appreciation – has led to great results for our clients and personal and professional rewards for me. I have found that if I am optimistic, especially in more stressful times, people will step up, work hard, and go the extra mile. Extroverts may rule the world, but optimists really enjoy the ride.

3. Stay curious

‘Learning’ truly is the fountain of youth. We can’t learn if we’re not curious and if we’re not curious, we won’t find new ways of looking at things. And if we don’t find new ways of looking at things we don’t grow, evolve, or innovate. At Foundry Creative we challenge one another, ask questions, offer ideas and insights, bring others in to enlighten us, go on ‘well refill’ trips and share those experiences with each other.

4. Be courageous

I met a woman recently who picks bottles in the alley behind my home. Jen collects bottles not because she has to, but because she needs to go on a daily ‘walkabout’, like she did in her homeland (I know this because my husband was curious and asked). In her 60s, Jen is from the Congo, fluent in French and has the biggest smile I have ever come across. I am inspired because she has the courage to be who she is without fear of being judged by others. Courage can look like just getting up in the morning, standing up for an idea, stepping up to a challenge, or just admitting you’ve made a mistake. I made a mistake thinking Jen was not someone I would want to know. She is, and I think I am a better person for knowing her and sharing her story.

5. Laugh

It really is good medicine. It can calm a storm, break the ice, warm the heart, bridge a gap, and strengthen a relationship.

6. Keep everything in perspective

When asked ‘Is the glass half empty or half full?’ I believe it was Charles Saatchi of Saatchi and Saatchi who replied…’Who the hell cares – just drink it down and fill it up again!’ Perspective is a wonderful thing. It keeps us balanced, sane and free from being ruled by events that are out of our control. Hot baths and good wine also help.

So in the end, inspired leadership for me, starts with the desire to inspire someone else. Which means leaving something behind - and that’s a whole other story.

When someone dies, make soup

I was chopping lemongrass for soup I was making for my soon to arrive dinner guests when I got the phone call. “Shirley died”, my friend said.“NO SHE DIDN’T”, I yelled a little too loudly. My inside voice was saying ‘I just saw her 4 days ago, remember? She was the one in the chair opposite us? Waxing not so poetically about a troubling work situation? She was angry, she was passionate, she was only 41!’

“NO SHE DIDN’T”, I shouted again, in case my friend had missed it the first time. “She died, Alison. On Thursday. It was sudden, it was unexpected. Her daughter found her. It remains unexplainable, but it’s the truth. I’ll call you when I know about the funeral.”

Up until now, I had only looked death in the eye when my beloved 92 year old grandmother passed away - but she was old and sick and I got to hold her hand one last time. I had looked death in the eye when my husband and I put down our beautiful old dog, on a crisp September day that seemed like any other. She was old and sick too – and I cried and cried when we lost her.

But I had never had death reach through the phone lines and grab me by the throat until I couldn’t breath. I was too shocked to feel. I was too shocked to cry. This happened to other people, left other friends grieving. I was numb. I wandered around the house looking for something that wasn’t there. I went to my massage therapist. I went to the gym. I sat in the hot bath until it got cold. I went to yoga. Because now that ache in my throat had become a knot in my back so painful I could hardly brush my teeth. My grief was lodged so firmly in between my shoulder blades that I figured only hours of downward dogs, sun salutations and savasanas could release it. It didn’t.

I was not equipped to handle this new reality, this kind of grief, so after trying unsuccessfully to reach someone who would ‘oh honey’ me (it was a Saturday night after all), I did what I do best – I made soup.

I scoured my cookbooks to find recipes I had ingredients for because I couldn’t face a trip to the grocery store. (Thank god I had just been to Costco and bought two cases of chicken stock). One thing about making soup is that it takes a lot of chopping. And when you chop you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, which means you’re not thinking about much else. Like friends dying. You get into a rhythm of chopping, grinding, sautéing, simmering, salting, spicing, tasting, pureeing, chopping, mincing…

Soup is warm and comforting and makes me feel connected to the world. Soup makes me feel cared for. It makes me feel like everything will be alright. When I was growing up we ate a lot of soup for dinner. I don’t know if it was because it was the 1960s and liberated moms had better things to do. Or if it was because there were 6 of us kids, only a year apart, and my mom was too exhausted to make anything else. Or whether she was dealing with her own silent grief about life, but had to keep going, keep being a mom, and maybe needed comforting herself. Either way, soup brought us together and became a big part of my culinary comfort zone; now it’s serving a new purpose.

For the next few days, every time one of my sisters or girlfriends called, I was making soup. I made so much soup, I filled my fridge. I filled the fridge at work. I gave it away to the neighbors. And then it happened. I cried.

I cried for the girls who would never have their mom to ‘oh honey’ them. I cried for the fiancée who’s dreams are left hollow, like an empty suitcase. I cried for the sister who wished she hadn’t been so estranged this past year. I cried for the parents who sat on opposite sides of the funeral chapel, suffering in silence. I cried for the best friend who spoke so eloquently about a friendship that was unbreakable, almost. I cried for my HOPE sisters, who face their own tenuous mortality every single day. And I cried for me. Because I never got to see her dance to those songs they played at her funeral. I never got to know my friend beyond our cancer survivor meetings every Monday night. I never got to know about her life, her loves, her favorite music. I never got to really know her until after she died. And no amount of soup can ever change that. I love you Shirley.

Swimming with Eduardo

On an eve of Christmas that seemed like any other, a beautiful human being looked out at the sea, dreamt his last dream and went gently into that good night. Not something you expect to discover when you visit your old friends at their beach house Christmas morning.

‘Donde es Eduardo’ was greeted by a silence that said more than words ever could have. Death had visited this house, perhaps randomly, perhaps not. And very very recently, we were to discover. The grieving family, upon sharing the news, were obviously saddened by their loss. But sad in a way that made us think the death had occurred quite some time ago. The Spanish/English language barrier and subsequent linguistic paralysis on our part obviously contributed to our misunderstanding. But what really caught us off guard was how accepting the family was with death in their midst. A cultural perspective? Perhaps. A spiritual belief? More likely. But as we sat down that morning over coffee, we talked about the 2 years since we had last seen this wonderful family, our own recent wedding and made plans for the day ahead of us. This death was not about loss – it was about life, and we were going to learn a valuable life lesson.

It was only when Ric and Jose, were bobbing in the ocean together that enlightenment came. ‘We’re swimming with Eduardo’, Jose said, as he proceeded to tell Ric how they had spread his brother-in-law’s ashes over the Manzanillo Bay that he loved. About the same time, I was getting a similar story from Norma, Eduardo’s sister, while we sat under the sombrilla on the beach in front of their rented casa. ‘He just fell asleep and never woke up again,’ she said. ‘And we decided to stay here because this was where he loved to be.’ In our culture we don’t talk about death like it’s an old friend we haven’t seen for awhile. We avoid it, avoid thinking about it, pretend it’s never going to happen and look the other way when it does. Even when we glimpse our own mortality, it’s from a distance, with lots of denial between us.

So the beautifully inspiring thing about this particular death was in watching the family continue on with the rhythm of their lives as if it never happened. Not in a ‘denial’ or ‘disrespectful of the dead’ sort of way. But in an accepting that ‘death is a part of life and is going to happen to all of us’ sort of way. With great gusto they cooked the food they loved, drank the wine that pleased them, making frequent and often funny toasts to the deceased. They talked of him as if he had just popped back into the house to use el bano. This family was not debilitated by their loss. They laughed. They sang. They made plans for the future. They appeared to ‘see’ their brother, their uncle, in every waking moment and were happy that he died so peacefully, in a place he loved so well.

I only knew Eduardo for a short time but his love of life was infectious. It is obvious he lives on in the people he has physically left behind. And I for one am glad to have a tiny piece of him.

 
So perhaps when Death comes a-knockin at my door, I’ll take a page out of the Sanchez/Perez family book and invite him in, mix us both a whiskey Pandita and ask him ‘where to next, big guy’. Hopefully it’ll be swimming with Eduardo.