Dedication to Michael Jackson

Hold meLike the river jordan
And I will then say to theeYou are my friend
Carry meLike you are my brother
Love me like a mother
Will you be there?

Weary
Tell me will you hold me
When wrong, will you skold me
When lost will you find me?

But they told me
A man should be faithful
And walk when not able
And fight till the end
But Im only human

Everyones taking control of me
Seems that the world's
Got a role for me
Im so confused
Will you show to me
Youll be there for me
And care enough to bear me(lead me)
(lay your head lowly)
(softly then boldly)
(carry me there)
(hold me)
(love me and feed me)
(kiss me and free me)
(I will feel blessed)
(carry)(carry me boldly)
(lift me up slowly)
(carry me there)(save me)
(heal me and bathe me)
(softly you say to me)(I will be there)
(lift me)(lift me up slowly)
(carry me boldly)
(show me you care)
(hold me)(lay your head lowly)
(softly then boldly)(carry me there)
(need me)(love me and feed me)
(kiss me and free me)(I will feel blessed)
(spoken)
In our darkest hour
In my deepest despair
Will you still care?
Will you be there?
In my trials
And my tripulations
Through our doubts
And frustrations
In my violence
In my turbulence
Through my fear
And my confessions
In my anguish and my pain
Through my joy and my sorrow
In the promise of another tomorrow
Ill never let you part
For youre always in my heart.

Reflections

I have often wondered about homelessness and last week it assumed a new meaning for me. Before you start wondering where all this is leading to, I would ask what image comes to your mind when you hear some one is homeless (without a home).
Well, from July 9 to August 7 this year, my family and I will technically be without a home of our own- i.e. homeless. Please don’t panic! The reason is that we would be closing the sale of our current home on July 8 and the house we are buying will only be available for us to take possession of no earlier than August 7.
So are we going to be sleeping in our nap sacks on the streets in a cold strange city and neighbourhood? Not quite. Are we going to be having our shower in the open? That would have been very eco-friendly even though it would be aesthetically offensive and distasteful. Before your mind starts going on a creative excursion,none of the above is about to happen. While we would be without our own home, we would be hosing down a suite in a luxury furnished apartment for the period of our ‘homelessness’ until the current owners our new home ship out East (they are a military family- protectors of our country) and the head of the family having done two tours in Afghanistan, the least we can do at this point is be patient. Yes we will.
The sermon (what really is the difference between a sermon and a homily?) at Mass on Sunday centred on Corpus Christi; and at some point, the reverend father reminded us that the child is a father to the man. Does this sound confusing and somewhat convoluted? He went on to say the teenager you see today is a product of the the child you invested in during his young formative years. So when you are wondering ( as many adults are wont to do) about certain behaviours of the modern day teenager, the answer is not too far off. It is the yield of the investment made years ago when he was a kid.
That then brings me to the ‘trend’ I see increasingly as we all chase after financial empowerment ; that of absentee parenting. We all seem caught up with capitalist pursuits (please don’t get me wrong, capitalism is not bad in itself) that we under perform in the other and equally important arena of parenting and child mentoring. The risk I see here is that like a friend of mine in Nigeria remarked, we become only sources of financial comfort to our children and a lot less of emotional and physical support and relevance. It is little wonder therefore why when our children no longer look up to us for financial succour, we pale in our importance in their lives.
I am continuing to reflect on this. Perhaps you are too. All in all, family /work balance is tough to achieve in an increasingly capitalist world.
I would like to end on a high. I promised to report on Papa’s track meet at the Regional finals of Thursday last week.
He ran to instruction - exploding right off the blocks and with high knee actions and aerodynamic arm swings, led the pack right to the end. I thought he had pulled it off but it was adjudged a photo finish and he was given a silver medal. His timing was an improvement on the Monday city race so we are OK. Even more worthy of note was that the night before the race, we had to ice his ankle and had him wearing his ankle brace during the race. For all those who were rooting for him, I say thanks a lot. We love you.

Tomorrow, Danju has his school’s soccer tournament and it will be four soccer games in one day starting at 8am. Holy cow! How could one fit in four soccer games between 8am and 4pm on the same day and expect optimal output. Oh I forgot, we are a hockey nation and soccer is more like an after thought. Oh Canada…

Good night friends of the Diary of a Loving Daddy. We shall meet again.

From South to the North and back

It was a busy weekend for the ‘old ranger’. I was airborne aboard the Air Canada big bird on Thursday for a four-hour flight to the ‘Wild Rose Country’. It was as if the weather had my name written on it. I stepped out of the airplane and was hit by the cold whiff. The driver of the shuttle van , a recent immigrant from Dubai wondered why I was relocating from the near tropical weather of Oakville to the extreme cold winter of the North. My Siya meanwhile had called to find out how the flight was and soon was welcoming me and introducing me to colleagues at NorQuest College. A quick lunch later at an East Indian restaurant – nice buffet, and it was time to go see all the homes that had been scheduled for my viewing. See I did and Siya’s selection, I ratified. I was also shown the proposed schools for Sampi, Danju and Papa.
The next day I was largely home alone and working the phones negotiating mortgage terms with lenders- do I port my existing mortgage with all the attendant benefits or should we leverage our awesome credit score get a fresh clean mortgage. Meanwhile the weather refused to let up and the sun seemed to be in conspiracy with the cold to do me in. When life gives you lemons, you should not sit and brood, you get up and make lemonade. There is after all an upside to cold weather. Thanks be to God for duvets, comforters, fireplaces and …
Saturday was a nice mix of cold and sunshine. It’s in Canada that the sun can be shinning brightest and yet the cold will be tugging at your every fabric at the same time. You need to experience this to believe it. I did not fly 4 hours from Ontario to come and stay in indoors all through my visit here so I braved it and went with Omodu (an old buddy of mine dating back to when men were boys) and Siya to West Ed. Mall. I will be doing the readers of this Diary a disservice if I fail to mention that the West Edmonton mall is the biggest mall in the whole of North America. It covers 48 city blocks i.e. the size of 115 football fields. Now that is some humongous mall by any stretch of the imagination. It has over 50 entrances.
My flight back on Sunday arrived Toronto at about midnight and my angels were in ‘snooze land’ when I let myself into our home. I kissed each of them ( not that they would know but more for me as I’d missed them since Thursday).
If you remember, I had mentioned that Papa had his track meet scheduled for Monday which was why I had to be back by Sunday. The meet did hold and it was good to see my little guy ( he would kill me if he reads this because he hates to be called little guy) decked in his school track jersey and the lovely spike shoes with the spikes removed. His relay team was a bit weak and they came in third but; when it came to his specialty – 100 meters, he was in his elements. He literally burnt the tracks in the qualifying heats. The city finals was a close race and he was beaten at the tape by Christian -the contestant from St Bernadette.
The Regional Finals is on Thursday and he will race Christian and the other top two sprinters from the other cities. We will continue to ice his ankle which is yet to fully heal from the football game of last week and wish him the best on Thursday. Old ranger will be there and will bring you reports after the race.
Meanwhile, tomorrow is another football practice and his team needs him, so he will be on duty in his other role as a running back.
Stay ‘tuned’ in. Good night.

Mixed Grill

Sometime last week I got a heart wrenching piece of information from an old high school mate back in Nigeria and the mother of an 11 year old girl – Morenike. Her young daughter had died of what has been termed cerebral malaria just a couple of months into her first year in secondary school with boarding facilities. According to the distraught mother, her daughter had tall dreams and had been sent to this private christian school in an attempt by doting parents to give a child the best. She feels very bitter that those in whose care she she had entrusted her daughter failed the poor kid. For young Morenike, the sun had set at dawn. I strongly feel(albeit with a bias because I love my children to smithereens) that no parent should have to live with the unending pain of losing a child especially out of negligence. My deepest sympathies go the family of young Morenike.

By the time you read this, I may be some four to six hours away on a home search in one of the Canadian provinces famed for her 9 months of winter. God help me. Having lived a greater part of my life so far in the tropics, what have I got myself into. I have been told that this move is strategic and wise and would position the family for huge potential benefits. It had better be.
I will be gone for a couple of days and would be back in time for Papa’s track meet on Monday where he is scheduled to run the 100m and also the anchor leg for his school’s relay team. To ensure that he gives it his all, I took him out last week to the venue of the track meet so he could get a feel of the tracks in his new spike shoes. The regulations say no spikes are allowed so as not to mess up the tartan tracks. We have therefore taken off all the spikes so he would wear the shoes because they are light weight and if I must say colourful too. For a kid his age, he’s got ‘wheels for legs’ and I am hoping his ankle which is hurting at the moment is okay by Monday when the race is due. He had hurt his ankle at Sunday’s football game in Port Credit against a tough Mississauga Nerd team that virtually blew the Renegades away. The Renegades defensive line just could not stop the runs by the offense of the opponents. The Oakville team huddled together at the end bruised and battered but unbowed and promised pay back when both teams meet again in the season.

Last week ended for me on a bit of a low. I had gone to see a client in Etobicoke and had my SUV’s rear driver’s side pretty much messed up. The vehicle is currently at a Honda body shop and will leave me four grand poorer by the time I get it back after 5 days. To be set back by such huge 'smakaroos' hurts. Ouch.What was I thinking? The upside is that no physical injuries were suffered. On that sombre note, let me go get some shut eye because my flight is an early one tomorrow.
We’d communicate again on my return…

Bytes, Bits and Things

For the second time in a row, I am having to play catch up. There are times when your mind says ‘green’ and yet the body says ‘red’. I have been in that kind of a funk in the recent past. Did someone say there was a panacea for that? I am all ears but not a quick fix because you end up feeling a lot more overwhelmed than when you started out. I guess that is why anything (and I mean anything) that gives you a quick 'umph' needs be viewed with some skepticism.

Well, Danju’s Ottawa trip came and went. All my anxieties came to nought. The young fellow and his classmates had fun and came back safely. It would seem however that it was a little too busy as so much activity was packed into a few days trip – a possible reason for the cold and flu symptoms that he came down with a day after the trip.

It was yet another football game for Papa’s team – the Oakville Titan Renegades two Sundays back at Iroquois Ridge High School field. Interesting game! The Renegades ran up an 18-6 lead by the half only to see a couple of fumbles allow the Mississauga team back into the game. Some said it came down to mental toughness while others violently argue that the injury to Andrew a key defensive player took the fighting spirit out of Oakville.
It was kind of a scary moment watching Andrew go down after a tackle. Initially it seemed nothing out of the ordinary ( for a physical sport as football) and perhaps it was just a little ‘kink’ in the neck. Thirty or so minutes later and he was still lying in a supine position on the field with medics around him ( the ambulance was called in) I had that sinking feeling that says “ wow this is much more than I thought”. Of course the game at that point was the last thing on anybody’s mind.
As he was being carried off on a stretcher into the ambulance with his neck in a brace, his team mates who took a knee all that while with helmets off cheered but there was no thumbs up sign from Andrew. That was not a good sign. We were later to be informed that he had what in lay terms could be close to a whiplash but had felt so much numbness in his fingers that tried as much as he did, he could not give the thumbs up sign to the crowd cheering as he was carried off. How soon he will return to the team is difficult to guess because he still wore his neck brace at last night’s game. If you are wondering what he was doing at last night’s game, wait for it. He came to cheer his team. A good young Canadian kid! That’s what camaraderie is all about.
As Andrew was carried off at the Iroquois High School field, the game was restarted. By this time, the mood on the Renegades team was sombre. Remember these are kids 10 – 12 years. When the final whistle was blown, Renegades had lost by one point. C’est la vie!

I forgot to let you know that we finally did get our home sold for a profit (in a very depressed market). To God be the glory. Those who know the business will tell you that in real estate three words matter – Location, Location Location!
Now we need to intensify our search for a home to buy in our new location. When you live in a city and are shopping for a home in another city some 4 hours away by air it gets tricky. God help us.
My daughter Sampi has not been a happy camper since the ‘For Sale’ sign went up on our lawn. I understand perfectly. In your penultimate year in high school what you don’t want is to go to another school so far out and begin to build new acquaintances. Some times you wish everything was within your control. I feel for my baby girl. How do you tell her in this situation to start tidying up for the move. Tidying up is a whole new ball game. A home is not just a building, it is your sanctuary and when you have lived in yours as long as we have in ours, putting all your stuff in boxes for the movers to take is a bit daunting. We are at that stage now and it’s yours sincerely with three children. Boy am I going gray or what?
You start sorting things out, and the more you dig the more things seem to remain the same. It is a challenge but a friend said his dad told him a s a young boy that life was not for sissies. I think it was Macbeth who was quoted as saying “… they have tied me to a stake, I cannot flee but bear-like I will fight this cause…” Yes we can!