Olive and I just returned from our longest time away from what we call home. It was a six-week, road trip to St. John’s NLFD and back, a total of 14,040 kilometers of driving through five Provinces and three States. In many ways it was a walk through our past. We took a picture of every home we have lived in including our childhood homes. We visited every city at one time we called home (Peterborough On.2x, Quebec PQ. 2x, Port Cartier PQ, Kanata ON, and Winnipeg). We even revisited the nail-biting hour long ride from Port Cartier to the hospital in Sept-Isles when Olive was in labor and our daughter Laura was born.
We met with old friends and made some new friends. We traveled over some old stomping grounds and visited new places like Gros Morne National Park and of course we had to stop by the now famous town of Dildo, Nfld. We spent much time laughing and eating together with family. And when the dishes were cleared out came the games, another longstanding Holm family tradition.
In my devotional today, I was reminded that the oft cited phrase the “best is yet to come” eventually ceases to be true. Arguably for Olive and I, we might still be in reasonably good health but in retirement the “best days” are behind us. Time is ticking. In the past three years our parents have all passed away and all things being equal we are next in line. Chronos time is none to friendly and is moving so quickly we can now envision the finish line.
Sure, we have other vacation plans in mind – places we would like to visit that we have never seen before. We still look forward to time with many friends and family and we now have the added gift of seeing what the future holds through the eyes of our 6-year-old grandson whom we adore.
But this trip has afforded us the ultimate gift of Kairos time, seeing what is important, the essential things, the simpler things of grace and beauty with greater clarity. In the end it comes back to faith, family and friends.
On our first day of travel, we stopped and stayed with Robert. Lynn his wife and my cousin with whom I shared the same age, passed away a month earlier from medical conditions. Again, a reminder of our limited Chronos but the occasion became a Kairos moment with a long past due time to reminisce with other cousins and share good memories. The next day serendipitously, at a gas station in White River, two former students Jen and Travis on their motorcycle called out to me.
Since I last saw them, they got married and now have children in their twenties – not possible, “Lord have mercy.” But on day two of this journey of memories their encounter was just another gift. Our trip was filled with such encounters with the past being brought forth into the present largely in the form of people. For six weeks the world become a smaller place where there was even time to play a massive card game of Tricks with 14 people even though my sister-in-law Debbie may never forgive me for making up new rules. I have a Ph.D. and am legally allowed to do such things 😊.
While visiting Montreal, my birthplace, we took a bus from the hotel to go downtown. On the crowded bus Olive and I laughed as individuals gave up their seats for us as seniors. To be truthful, I am not embarrassed to take advantage of whatever senior “discounts”
I can get. But perhaps the greatest gift of “seniorship” has been this requirement of slowing down enough to take in as never before the abundant signs of God’s good and loving presence all around. From the kindness of strangers, to the sounds and smells of the ocean, to the iconic fjord-like Western Brook Pond
and Table Top in Grose Morne National Park, to getting screeched in as a Newfoundlander,
to seeing our daughter Laura laughing with her son,
to the appearance of wild flowers growing out of rocks, to my niece Deidre who despite her medical challenges fills a room with her irrepressible laughter and mischievousness, to the sight of Jameson our grandson scamping on the edge of the sea with his cousins,
grace and wonder abounded throughout our trip. To wit, I concur with biblical scholar N.T.
Wright who writes, “some parts of our world simply point beyond themselves and say, “look! Despite all, there is hope.”
On day 24 of our journey, we returned to the place where it all began for Olive in Gambo, Nfld. The house where she was born on the edge of the sea is now tired and rundown. Our plan was to take a picture, pass by the Salvation Army cemetery where some of her relatives lie but apparently “wonder” had additional plans. On the spur of the moment, we decided to visit Dover Faults, an important geological site where it is believed the continents, millions of years ago separated. Although it is a mere 20 some kms from Olive’s birthplace, she had never been there before.
More recently Dover’s Faults has also been made famous by the romance of Diane and Nick Marson whose plane was stranded along with 37 others in Gander during the 911 saga. Their story is told as part of the Broadway musical drama Come From Away which depicts the events around the passengers of one such plane that was forced stay in the Gander area for five days.
On arriving at at the Fault, late in the afternoon a day before our 46th wedding anniversary the view was as breathtaking as depicted in the musical. A wonder indeed. Our space, however, was shared by three other people who it turns out were cast members of the production Come From Away that was currently performing in Gander. They asked us if we had seen the musical and we said yes in Winnipeg several years ago where we cried and laughed during the performance. Then they asked if we were planning to see the new production in Gander, the epicenter behind the story, and we replied, the tickets were sold out months ago.
Finally, they asked if we would be interested in seeing it again in Gander and wonder of wonders the impossible became possible with third row seats that evening. All this to say, “spurs of the moment” with Kairos time are becoming more and more the norm not the exception.
Fittingly my last visit was with my good friend and confidant David Kennedy. Over a beer and a dip in the hot tub we candidly talked and processed how we got from “there” to “here.” We concluded we are in a better place. We wondered, however, as all eventually do why it took taken so long to get here. Today we can play golf together and not keep score. And maybe that’s the ultimate gift of ageing and moving forward, keeping score is no longer important in golf or in life. We can be present in the moment.
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