I had my heart broken this week.  Ben and I were making cookies together, he in his stand-up chair, waiting to stir, and me hustling to gather the ingredients and supervise the proceedings, when the tragedy struck.

I have a go to measuring cup I always use for baking, especially for my chocolate chip cookies.  It’s perfect.  It’s an old, plastic, one-cup measure, and estimating conservatively, it’s hosted the ingredients for at least 2500 batches of chocolate chip cookies.  If I were a betting human, I’d put my money on many more than that, but I’m safe with 2500.  Batches.  That number says nothing of the other things, the birthday cakes, the Christmas treats, the squares, and other kinds of cookies.  But still, 2500 batches of chocolate chips cookies.

This cup has a history.

The year Jim and I were married, several bridal showers were thrown in our honour.  One of those was hosted by Jim’s aunts at St. Alban’s Church in Beamsville, ON, where Jim’s mom attended church and where ten years later, having been ordained an Anglican priest, she served as associate pastor.  Not being from the area, and truth be told, not having known Jim all that long, I knew very few of the fifty or so people at the shower.  I had met Jim’s mom, and his aunts, and his one sister-in-law, but otherwise I was a fish out of water in that community.  Luckily for me, several of my sisters joined us and I was able to find a few familiar faces in the crowd.  I recall being grateful and overwhelmed all at once.  I did not want to disappoint Jim’s mom or give anyone any fodder for conversation over coffee once the shower was done.
I opened gift after gift.   I think it was my sister, Margaret, at my side, recording the gifts and the name of the gift-giver so I could send thank you notes in a timely fashion, as was the expectation of the time.

It was at that shower I received my beloved measuring cup.  At the time, it was just a nice little gift.  It was ordinary and practical and not particularly special at all.  I had no idea it would become beloved.  But the chocolate chip cookies it makes are magic and I’ve used it for every batch I’ve made at home for over forty years.

Over those years, my little cup has aged along with me.  In fact, it’s been the brunt of a few jokes.  A few years back, I was horrified when the bottom of it cracked.  Time for a new measuring cup, was the suggestion from more than one family member.  Newer versions showed up in my Christmas stocking, and others appeared in my baking drawer.  But my little cup had never failed me, and I was not about to discard it so easily.  I determined that as long as I did not use it for liquids, it could continue to do its job.  And so, I continued to carefully use it to make my magic cookies.

This week, as Ben and I started our baking together, I measured margarine into the cup.  As I was using a spatula to scrape the margarine into the bowl, a small piece of the bottom of the cup, about a square centimetre in size, broke right off into the margarine.  There was now a little hole in the bottom of the cup.  Ben, knowing nothing of the 2500 batches of cookies that had come before the one he was making, could see by my face that this was not good.  I told him I was sad, because this was my favourite measuring cup, and it made such good cookies.

“Don’t worry Gramma”, he assured me, “For your birthday I will get you one just like it”.  I didn’t have the heart to let him know this one is so old, it’s not sold anymore.

So silly it is, to be heartbroken by a little old measuring cup, especially one having the measurements worn right off it from so much use.  But this little cup has been a steadfast companion for me.  It’s never let me down.  In many ways, it’s been co-writer in the story of my life.  Both my children learned to bake using this cup.  Almost every single day they were in school, from first grade to twelfth, they had two chocolate chip cookies made with this measuring cup packed in their lunch.  When Greg was in grade five, he asked if I could add a couple extra cookies for a boy in his class who loved the cookies and whose mother did not bake.  I said of course and added two more.  A week or so went by and Greg asked for a couple more.  Intuition on high alert I asked why.  It turned out Greg was creating a little business out of my cookies. One dollar for two cookies.   We stopped the business but continued packing the cookies.

As time went on, the staff at school began to love the days when my cookies would appear.  I sent them with Jim for his staff.  I made them for bake sales.  I made them for friends.  I made them when the kids came home from university.  I made them for Jim’s mom, in recent years making the batter and rolling it into little balls and freezing them so she could serve fresh cookies when company came to visit.  During the pandemic I made them for the nurses at the hospital.  I sometimes take them on hikes.  When I was teaching, knowing how stressful midterms and final exams were, I made little packages for each of my students writing their exam.  Part way through the test, I’d roll my little audio visual cart up and down the aisles, whispering to each student, ‘Can I offer you a cookie? They are magic. They’ll help with the exam.’  Without fail, I’d get a shy, ‘Yes, please’, then a smile and a ‘Thank you’.  I’m sure they helped.

There are so many ways we measure love in our lives, sometimes with our words, sometimes with our actions, sometimes with our smiles.  I know it’s not the cup that put the love into my chocolate chip cookies, but I certainly felt like I was measuring out love every time I used it.  I am so lucky to have opened that little gift so many years ago.

I can’t yet throw away my little broken cup.  I’d like to figure out how to preserve it long enough to use it for little Andy to make at least one batch of cookies with me.  Even with the hole in the bottom, I know the love hasn't run out.

Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how measure love.
 
 

When Jim was seventeen years old, he was accepted into Junior Forest Rangers of Ontario.  To be a Junior Forest Ranger, you had to be seventeen.  Not sixteen, and not eighteen.  This was a special program for this single age group; a program where boys from around the province could apply to work for the summer for the princely sum of five dollars per day, plus room and board. 

For Jim, this was like being accepted to West Point.  He was, and continues to be incredibly proud of being a part of it.  Jim was stationed at Sibley Provincial Park, near Thunder Bay.  In 1988 Sibley was renamed to be Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.  Jim took the train, alone, from Niagara, to Thunder Bay, with a transfer at Union Station in Toronto.  A twenty-four-hour train trip, alone as a seventeen year old, heading to a job where he had only a name to meet at the other end, was an accomplishment in itself. But as a Junior Forest Ranger, many other accomplishments were awaiting to be achieved by him and the other young men in his group.  Jim and the others learned to do everything from clearing forest to create campgrounds, emptying trash, trail maintenance and animal surveys,  to learning to fight forest fires.  The forest fire training was most memorable for Jim.

Each summer, each provincial park hosting the Junior Forest Ranger program, selected five Junior Forest Rangers from their group, to make up a team to compete in the annual forest fighting competition.  Jim was part of Sibley’s team.  Teams came from all across the province to compete in the challenge.  Although Jim has explained the job of each member of his team in detail, and explained the format of the competition in detail, all I really know are two things.  First, Jim was appointed to be in position number four on his team, a job involving hauling a heavy part of hose among other things.  Second, his team won the competition. 

It isn’t hard for me to imagine how much this would have meant to five, seventeen year old boys.  In Jim’s case this was the summer after the passing of his father.  I’m sure he was trying to figure out his place in the world.  Knowing for certain he was team member number four, and knowing exactly what was expected of him, made his place very clear, if only for a summer.

I can picture these boys, feeling much more like grown men, as they tried out for, and then made, the team, trained for the competition, and then won.  There was no such thing as social media in those days, in fact, I’ve never even seen a picture of that summer.  Clearly, the competition was not about fame, or being liked or admired.  They were competing in the woods.  No parent made the trip to spectate.  It was simply a matter of pride.  Pride in being selected, pride in competing, and pride in winning. 

When the competition was complete, and the course cleaned up, Jim’s team’s supervisor, on the way back to camp, stopped off with them at Silver Islet General Store.  This was  a little camping store, serving the then Sibley Provincial Park campground.  Jim recalls the supervisor buying them each an ice cream to celebrate.  The owner of the store was there when the boys went in.  He clearly understood that something special had just happened and he asked them where they had been. When they explained what they had accomplished he looked toward the ceiling.  On it were signatures of people who had accomplished a variety of feats.  He said to the boys, ‘There is a spot up there for you’.  He gave them a marker and instructed them to climb upon a table and sign their names.  They were bursting with pride, signing their individual names under their title, “The Fire Fightin’ Five”.

Jim has often recalled this special time and has wondered how long those signatures lasted.

A friend of ours, Vanessa, moved to Thunder Bay about ten years ago.  Jim told her about his time there as a teenager, and about his name on the ceiling.  She thought it would be fun to go and try to find it sometime.  She and her family took a little trip over to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park to see it.  The first time they went, the store was closed.  Same with the second time.  And the third.  The only thing that could be reported was that the little store had clearly undergone change in ownership, and with that, a major renovation. 

Jim knew that any decent renovation would have included a change to the wood ceiling.  Even though he had not been there since the summer of 1972, when Jim heard about the renovation to the store, he felt a little nostalgic about having his tiny piece of small-town history erased.

Last summer, when Vanessa and her family were on a day trip to Sleeping Giant, they decided to check in on the new store.  She sent Jim a message later that same day.  Jim had been right. When the store underwent the new ownership, the ceiling, along with everything else had been replaced.  However, what Jim had not expected was that the new owners, seeing the names on the ceiling, did some research into the history of how they came to be there. 

It is my humble opinion, never having met these owners, and knowing nothing about them, that they are the perfect new owners for this establishment.  Not only did they have some sense that these names must have, at one time, held some importance, they also made the decision to carry the history of the area into the new store.   For on a plaque, hanging on the wall, were engraved the names of the “Fire Fightin’ Five”.

I know how important this time of life was to Jim.  And how important the event was.  And most of all, how important it was for him to have been recognized by virtue of climbing on the table and signing his name.  What impresses me even more is the insight the original store owner had to recognize how important this event was to these kids.  He thought it was important enough that he invited them to be signed witnesses of their own lives.   He gave them the chance to pause, and to witness what they themselves had done.  And even if it was important only in their own eyes, he gave these young men the space to allow the feeling of being seen, and to inform how they would show up in the world, confident, competent, and self-assured, for the rest of their lives. 

I of course, wish that each of us could have a fire fightin’ competition moment.  But more than that, I wish that we would pause, and become signed witnesses to our own lives when we accomplish things meaningful to ourselves.  And I wish we each would recognize such moments when they occur for others, and that we might have the insight and courage to act on our intuition and make space to celebrate these tiny, monumental, life-creating moments for ourselves and others in our lives. 

And I am so grateful that the new owners, had the grace to understand the importance of keeping that firefighting competition of 1972 alive, and Vanessa for reporting back, to revive such a wonderful memory!.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Where is there space for a signature on the ceiling in your life?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to sign the ceiling.

Having seen some impressive photos, I’ve long wanted to visit the Natural Bridge, just inside the boundary of Yoho National Park.  It’s an impressive rock formation, spanning the full flow of the Kicking Horse River.  In the winter, the water flowing beneath the bridge freezes, allowing visitors to view the bridge from all angles.

Jim and I decided to make the trip to see it this week.  It’s just over a two-hour drive from our home.  We’re fortunate.  Right from the outset, the drive is spectacular, heading us west toward our majestic Rockies.  As we drove past Banff, we drove under the first of several animal corridors.  From a driver’s vantage point, these are nothing more than concrete bridges, shaped like semi-circles.  From the top, however, what the animals see are wide grass, plant and tree covered paths; bridges, allowing the safe passage of all kinds of animals from one side of the Trans Canada highway to the other.

These animal corridors were first imagined, and built, over twenty-five years ago.  At the time, I remember wondering if they would be successful.  How, I pondered, would the animals figure out this was a more desirable way to cross the highway?  They, of course, didn’t read, and couldn’t know the statistics about how many animals had been killed or injured while trying to cross. 

It didn’t take long.  Bear, elk, moose, deer, fox, wolves, coyotes and cougars, soon all found their way.  It turns out, if you build it, they will come.  And as predicted, the loss of life to both animals and humans has been drastically reduced. 

How many of us, I wondered as we drove along, can spot the bridges, natural or human made, placed right in front of us to ease our journey, keep us safe, join us with new friends, or forward us in our pursuits?  How many of us appreciate the bridges extended to us by others?  How many of us, sometimes lack the courage to cross the bridges awaiting us?  And how many of us, already standing on the other side of the bridge, fail to call out to invite others to cross?

I’ve found myself in all these situations.  There have been times in my professional life, when I’ve had all the skills and experience needed to apply for a different, sometimes more challenging, job.  I’ve had times when I’ve been personally invited to apply for the job.  On a few occasions, when I’ve not applied, I’ve even been reached out to, to ask if my application had somehow gone missing.  In some of those instances, I made the choice to not cross the bridge, not to apply, because it was not the right bridge for my family.  But in other cases, I can clearly see now, I either didn’t recognize the bridge or I was afraid to cross it.  I could see where I was, and I could see the other side, but I did not see that I had all the skill I needed to step up on the bridge and cross it.

I’ve worked with hundreds of people, some individually, some as part of groups, some full organizations, who have done this same thing.  They have worked incredibly hard to hone skills, gather expertise, garner respect, and place themselves in a position of growth, only to either miss seeing, or being too fearful to cross the bridge right in front of them. 

Bridges are connectors.  They connect who we are now, to who we might become.  They connect us to others who might enrich our lives.  They connect us to new ideas, and interests, and passions.  When I chose not to cross bridges, I missed out on connections. 

The trouble is bridges sometimes don’t look like bridges. 

Sometimes they look like hard work.  Sometimes they look very inconvenient.  Sometimes they look overwhelming.  Sometimes they look frightening.  But sometimes they look different than that.  Like animal corridors, bridges can be disguised. They can appear as a phone call inviting us to go somewhere.  Sometimes they look like an advertisement for a new activity we might like to join.  Sometimes they look like the smile of a stranger.  Sometimes they look like a kind comment on a social media post.  Some bridges look like a comment from a friend, ‘Oh, I love the hat you made.  I wish I knew how to knit.’  Some look like an empty spot on the dance floor, waiting to be filled.  Some are filled with words and actions, others are quiet. 

The other trouble is, they can be sneaky little things; sometimes while we hum and haw, bridges disappear.

When we are invited to cross a bridge, it is most often because others want a connection with us.  When we invite others to cross a bridge, it is because we desire a connection with them.  When we ignore bridges or let our little voices of doubt stop us from crossing, we miss opportunities.

When Jim and I arrived home from our visit to the Natural Bridge, our mail was waiting for us.  In it was a late Christmas note from my friend Theresa.  Theresa and I have families at different stages.  Finding time to connect isn’t always easy, but we always love our time together.  She ended the note with, ‘When the weather warms, I’d love to join you on a Tuesday Trek’. 

I’ll cross that bridge.   

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What bridge is waiting to be crossed?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to find out how build and cross bridges.
 

“Just a moment, please.”  With Jim and I both operating businesses from home, we often pick up the phone when it rings, only to find the call was for the other person.  “Just a moment, please. I’ll check to see if he’s in his office.”, I often respond.  Jim does the same for me.

It’s not a lot to ask; to ask if someone can spare one moment of waiting while we try to help connect them to the person they want to speak with. 

Neither is it a lot when we ask those in our lives to wait just a moment.  A moment while we finish typing an email, sending a text, watching a short video, brushing our teeth, walking into another room, tending to a chore, taking off our coat, or any of the other hundreds and hundreds of things we do in a day, each of them taking just a moment. 

Each of these little moments is nothing really.  They fly by, sometimes despite our impatience.  Every day is filled with them.  Often, at the end of a day someone might ask us, ‘What did you do today?’.  And often, we are stumped for a moment.  We can’t think of anything big, or significant.  We can’t think of an adventure we had, or a funny moment we witnessed.  We didn’t go to a special place or tackle an overwhelming job.  We know we were busy, and yet, nothing jumps out at us.  We know we had a day.  Possibly even a decent day.  But we can’t think of a thing.  And yet, our day was filled with moments.

I have always believed in the preciousness and the power of a moment.  When I was teaching school, this concept was reflected back to me over and over.  Countless times during and after my career, a student, sometimes one long graduated, would contact me. Sometime during that conversation, they would say, ‘I’ll never forget the time you ….’  Often it would be some single thing I had said.  Sometimes it would have been something I had done.  But almost never was it something that would have been considered earthshattering.  Almost always it was something that happened in one single moment.  These conversations were always humbling, for most often I had completely forgotten what it was I had said, and I certainly had no idea of the impact of my words.

In the past month, I’ve been focussing on moments.  This isn’t brand new for me, but I’m really sharpening my lens.  Nothing in particular caused this shift, but I keep getting reminders that these little bits of time, these little moments, are what make up the absolute best parts of our lives.

It’s possible my hiking friends have helped me make a change in my perspective of moments.  When we are deciding where to hike, we use macro thinking.  We check out the weather, the conditions, the difficulty, the distance, and possibly the view from the top.  Yet once we are on our hike, those are not the things that we focus on.  And once we finish, those are never the things we remember most vividly.  Instead, it is the moments that remain with us.  It’s the moments of noticing fresh tracks in the snow, of seeing a little waterfall created from spring run off, and observing how the suns rays filter through the trees.  It’s standing in the spring sunshine on top of the last bits of snow pretending to smoke, blowing smoke rings of cold air, and laughing until we cry.  It’s walking along when suddenly one of us says ‘listen’.  And we all listen.  To the beautiful silence.  It’s the tiny moments of conversation, letting us know we have allies as we walk through life.  It’s standing at the top of a mountain and saying thank you; being grateful for the friendship, for the peace, for beauty and for the little moments we might have hurried past had any of us been on our own.

It's possible that Jim’s mom’s precarious health may have honed my desire to treasure moments.  It’s also possible the speed with which our grandjoys are growing has added to it too.  I’d love it if time could stop, so I wouldn’t have to face the inevitable changes that come with life, the growing up and growing old.  I recognize I can either play the losing game of trying to keep everyone just the age they are now, or simply breath in, and appreciate the moments. 
Last week, we offered to pick up our daughter, Kaitlyn’s, car once it had had the windshield replaced.  We had Ben and Andy with us that day.  When the car was ready, I suggested to Jim that he and Ben might like to take the bus, then the C-Train, to pick up the car. The train stop was just a couple of blocks away from the repair shop.  When I asked Ben if he would like to go with Grampa to do this, he said, “Yes!  I would LOVE to do this! Gramma, I have been waiting my whole life for this.”

Huh.

There it is.  What for us, might simply have been an exercise in logistics, of who would drive who, of what time would work so as not to interrupt Andy’s nap, of whether we had car seats in the right cars, of how to fit in a ‘job’ in a day we try to protect for fun, turned into a moment.  A moment of joy at hearing his response when he was invited to go with Grampa.  A moment of sharing the thrill of riding public transit through the eyes of a little boy who loves anything with wheels.  A moment of making a memory, when the moment could so easily have been missed.

One night this week I took care of the boys while their parents attended a meeting.  Upon tucking Ben into bed, he reminded me to set his ‘sun’ clock.  I’ve only done this once before.  Kaitlyn walked me through the process step by step. I told Ben I didn’t remember how to do it but that I’d write a note to remind his mom to do it when she got home.  He said, ‘It’s ok Gramma. Sometimes old people forget things.  And you are old. So, it’s ok that you forgot how to set the clock.’

I’ve been laughing about this ever since.  In my mind I’m not old.  Likely in the eyes of two little boys, I’m well past young.  Once upon a time I might have felt offended. Now I’m just grateful.  My memory of how to set a sun clock may not be sharp, but I have an exquisite ability to recognize magic moments.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What moment are you standing in?’.
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups and has expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to find out how create and cherish moments.