sisters – As Far As The Eye Can See

Sister Time

I am sitting on an airplane flying over the rocky mountains enrtoute to Regina. I have just spent about four days with my sister Jan, they were action packed days that created moments that I hope to remember.

Part of the purpose of my trip was to attend a concert that Jan invited me to. It was a Christmas concert featuring a handbell choir she has been conducting for the last year. Making her vision for the concert happen involves so much. I saw Jan juggling a huge number of human dynamics and also logistics. I have a fun anecdote to tell from the pre concert hours. Setting the stage for this story means telling you that Jan and her husband Ray and dog Belle live on the 24^th floor of a condominium in Port Moody. Elevators are a part of their everyday life. So it was that on concert day Jan and I worked as a team to get everything she needed for the unfolding of the concert out of their home, to the elevator, down 25 floors and into her car in the underground parkade. With some strategy we managed it in one trip. A cool experience began when the elevator doors opened to let us in. From what I could see I could not imagine that we would fit on, there was already 3 people and a dog on the elevator. However Jan and the other occupants didn’t hesitate to make the adjustments so that we could all fit on. I followed Jan as she pulled her wheeled cart on, and as I followed her I turned the electric piano I was carrying on its end, it was tight quarters but we were all on. I was fairly stunned when we stopped at another floor and a woman with her dog was waiting to get on. I totally expected someone would say, “oh no there is already a dog on and hardly room for another, you catch the next one.” There was none of that. We all just shifted and in she came with the dog, the dogs reacted to each other but were well contained by their owners and there wasn’t a sniff of trouble. I stood there enjoying the whole darn thing. By the time we got to the ground level six adults, two dogs, a wheeled cart full of Jan’s concert supplies (bags and bags of homemade treats for her ringers among the load), and a big gear bag holding a piano turned on its side had traveled about sixteen floors together. Among the adults I sensed there was a lot of diversity, for example one of the people was wearing a hoodie that said, “Hungover and Horny”. As Jan and I headed to her car I said, “well I think I might have just had my favorite moment of the trip.” She had some funny words to reply with, noting my favorite moment had nothing to do with what she had prepared for me, but letting me off the hook for my wacky statement. The thing is, my sense of my world is that people are pretty cautious about other people being in their space, fearful of conflicts, and on edge. Those moments reflected the opposite and they were a bit of a balm for my soul. Humans were accepting each other, compromising their space, managing their loads in order to make space even when none seemed to exist. I simply loved it.

But that was before the concert and so my favorite moment was soon superseded by other moments. I was so incredibly proud of Jan as I witnessed the various pieces of her planning coming together, I can’t get into the details of it here but its super complicated to make a handbell concert happen as there are so many moving pieces. Jan is committed to make the experience as good as possible for her 20 or so ringers, she is deeply concerned about the experience of the audience and passionate about musicality. So when each number ended and she turned to acknowledge her ringers to the audience, she had a mega watt smile that radiated her deep joy at what they had just done together. To see your sister so enlivened and joyful and to see her giving so much to other people so that they have opportunities is a really big deal, makes for really memorable moments. With my sentimental lenses on there is also the reality that our parents planted the seeds of this action in Jan and would be so unbelievably proud of what she is doing and how she is doing it.

Another thing about my trip is that it created some chances for some deep thinking. The concert itself gave me pretty good fodder for a decent sermon about teamwork. However, one new thing I was prompted to think about came from a facebook post Jan made the evening I arrived. It included a video snippet of her surprising me at the baggage carousel at the airport. I had thought we were meeting outside. She snuck up on me. It was really fun to experience her mischeviousness. Comments on her reel included feedback that Jan has a really awesome family. She does and the comment got me thinking. For the sake of honesty I find myself wanting to say, it was not and is not always like that. We don’t struggle as much as we used to but we still have to work at being mature about our needs, communicating well and giving each other grace and its not just always sunshine and roses. As I was sitting having a think I found myself wondering, what has made it possible to get past the tough times? One thing that came to me, and I am not sure if this is true but it struck me that it is, is that we have all been working on ourselves. We have all had to say, “I do not have my act together like I would like to, I can shift this, I will let myself grow, I will let myself be touched and changed by wisdom, people and processes I trust.” When you sense people you love trying to grow more whole it is not too hard to cut them some slack and take steps towards each other instead of building a wall. That’s all I have to say about that.

Despite the exhaustion arising from the concert day Jan made an offer to me, to get on a ferry on Sunday after church and go to Nanaimo to visit our nephew and his family. I jumped at that chance. It was a great decision. I loved being on the ferry. Loved it. I loved seeing Brock, he is my first born nephew and I am one of his godparents. He is quite a delight and it is a gift to see him. Tamara his wife and Ryker his seven month old son were the other shining stars in this visit. Brock and Tam are some of the most nature oriented people that I know. It should not have been a surprise to Jan and I that they would want to go out for a walk once we got there, we in our church clothes. Jan and I figured we were up for a walk, picturing the stroller, the city streets and walking four abreast down some quiet streets. When we got out the front door, wearing Brock’s footwear and rain jackets, we didn’t load Ryker into a stroller we got in the car. I figured we were heading to a park. We were heading up the mountain. With Ryker on Brock’s back, and Tam bringing up the rear, we did a hike, to a really special spot for them. It was raining quite hard at times, Brock said we had 45 minutes of daylight left, we made the most of it. Like Jan brought me into her world of music and leadership, Brock and Tam swept us up into their deep joy with the forest and the hills. Jan and I decided afterwards that we should feel really proud of ourselves, not because we survived the hike in the midst of weariness, but because our nephew looked at his two aunties and didn’t question our ability to do it, he looked at us and said, “lets go!” I have to say, that feels great to ponder.

I am now sitting in a library at the U of R. Jill is in a study carrel behind me prepping for an exam. I am waiting til winds gusting to 90km/hr settle down before hitting the road back to the ranch. I am content and I am smiling as I think about the people that Jan introduced me to over these last few days. She has some really nice friends with a mixture of traits, ages, backgrounds and passions. It makes the world more human and fun to remember the moments I was invited into their worlds. In the course of my brief trip I was offered food and or drink in five different living rooms. One of them was a birthday party for one of Ray’s friends from the early days. Held in a home shaped by devout Catholic faith and Italian culture, I had the best cocktail and the best lasagna I have ever eaten. I felt loved and welcomed. My world is a bit bigger because of all the characters Jan introduced me to and I received a refresher in the wisdom I have been shown over and over in life, “just be yourself, let your unique self out, don’t be afraid of the “normal” world criticizing you, life is better when we let people see us.”

So that was my December 2025 trip to Vancouver, I would like to be a groupie and be at Jan’s next Fusion Handbells concert in May, but we will be deep in calving season. Russ could and did handle the ranch without me this time, in the midst of horrible cold weather and with extra duties placed on his shoulders in my absence. I am grateful he takes on the extra and gives me his blessing when trips like this are possible. It won’t be the same in May when those babies are coming. I will want to be near.

Here are some pictures to give a glimpse of some of the action..

Arrival at Vancouver airport after an easy direct flight from Regina.

The video Jan posted of her hi-jinks.

We took in some beautiful Christmas lights, this was part of a display placed around a small lake. I felt like I was in the middle of a Hallmark movie.

Jan, Ray and I just before the concert. Ray was the M.C. I got to see the many varied ways he did behind the scenes work to make the concert and our sister time possible on the same weekend.c

I love what the wind is doing to my hair in this ferry moment.

Brock and his son, we are about to get on the trail.

The two aunties, finding their strength.

At the U of R having lunch with Jill after our morning in the library. I love being on a campus.

Methods

While in Toronto a few weeks ago I had a chance for some writing time and I was inspired by learning that the International Women’s Day theme for this year was “Empower, Inspire and Elevate.” That got me thinking about my Dad. I wrote a lot. I forgot about it once life at home got rolling until last night when we were with friends, the conversation reminded me I had this almost finished blog waiting for some attention. Here goes……

When I was about 7 my family had the chance to buy some untouched lakefront property. It was140 miles from our house and available for $500. That land changed our families life. We worked together and with friends to clear, shape and build that acre and make for ourself a summer haven. Roads and power became available over time. 99% of my summer memories happened there. When we were teenagers my Dad started something. I don’t know where he got the idea. He was an educator so maybe he just thought like this. However, it seems to me he assessed that he had two issues in front of him. The first is that at the end of the day our waterfront needed to be secure for whatever a night on a big lake might bring. He also had his youngest three daughters around all the time and he had hopes for us. So he created a “position” with a title, and the three of us took turns assuming the role. My memory is that for some days at a time one of us was designated, “water front supervisor.” It was our duty to ensure that as night fell all was well at the lake front, that the canoe was far enough removed from the waters edge, that the boat was up on the trailer. The waterfront supervisor made sure the skis and lifejackets were properly put away, that there were no towels or clothing waiting to be caught by a wind or wave. The supervisor position did not mean that we had to do it all, but we had to enlist help if things needed to be done and ensure that all was ship shape for the night. This role encouraged responsibility and skills in assessment, delegating and leadership. There was a subtle pride in being entrusted with a role that held an important title. We all lived up to it. As an adult I look back at this and think, “my Dad was empowering me.”

I often have thought about a strategy my Dad had when I was much younger. He taught us that if someone was bugging us and wouldn’t stop we should tell them “my Daddy says, if I say quit it, I mean QUIT IT.” As an adult looking back on this line that my Dad taught me I feel mixed. Ideally, as a girl child I would not have had to pull my Dad’s presence into the exchange to get a little respect. However, my Dad knew things about the world that we did not. I often think that maybe our Dad was trying to protect us when he couldn’t be near every second. We could invoke his name but in a way that gave authority to “when I say….I mean….” I think it worked. He taught me that my voice mattered.

Recently I was helping one of my people get cardiac testing done. At the hospital I met a nurse who knew my Dad back in his educator days. She told me that Dad played a role in her life when in her high school years she found herself pregnant. The mores of the time meant she was encouraged to drop out and have her baby. There was a meeting about this. My Dad was present. She gave me a sense that at this meeting it was my Dad’s words that helped turned the tide towards her being able to stay in school, go on to win scholar awards and become a specialized nurse. She remembers Dad saying this, “I have daughters her age and I believe she can do this.” My Dad, a white man, standing a handsome 6ft 6inches tall, with a title that included the word “superintendent”, held a lot of authority at that meeting. He used it to add power to that young woman.

That reminds me of another “I believe” moment with him. When I was in grade six I carried extra weight that was of concern to our doctor. He advised that my sister and I go see a dietician. We were a bit chubby but really mostly healthy. I remember I weighed 127 pounds. One terrible day, after a weigh in at the dietician I was found to have gained more than 4 pounds. My Dad found me in the garage crying when he got home from work. I remember the shame I I was drowning in as I pondered the peanut butter and butter in soda cracker sandwiches I had been over indulging in. That night at supper I am not sure how it came up but Dad proclaimed at the table, “I believe that Kathy is going to get this under control.” Maybe my red tear stained face was being acknowledged. I don’t know. I often wonder how Dad’s words have played into my ability to keep things within a certain range. Its been tricky. For whatever role Dad’s “I believe……” statement of confidence played I am very grateful.

I am noticing through all these anecdotes the role to be played by those who have power. The willingness to share power shows itself in different ways. Helping others to see what they are capable of is one thing. Picture an evening at the cabin and Dad saying, “who is water front supervisor tonight?” Thirteen year old Kathy replies, “I am Dad.”

Putting powerful words into each others vocabulary is another, such as “when I say quit it, I mean quit it!”

Taking public stances advocating for people to be given a chance, to prove themselves, is another way of lending our power (I notice now that when Dad gave that teenage girl his vote of confidence, the way he did it, he gave us girls a compliment too. He essentially said, “I have seen what girls this age are capable of.” )

People with power have opportunity to address shame, such a debilitating force that can be put in its place. I received that gift when my Dad didn’t say the following words but essentially said this, “Kathy loves peanut butter on crackers and don’t we all go crazy for stuff at times, pffft, that’s just one part of her story, she is so much more than that.”

My Dad was far far far from perfect. He was really a jerk at times, so am I. However he had some core wisdom that he lived from. He saw people where they were at and he used his power to build power in others (not perfectly or always consistently but it was his instinct to empower. He was better for it. It did not cost him. The world was better for it. And the world continues to be. I am thinking especially of my three sisters when I say this. They are using the power they have been vested with, from our childhood, their work and study. They are empowering children and adults in so many important ways. They each shine very bright and my Dad would be so delighted to watch it unfold.

I wonder if my Mom took this picture, if so, it subtly includes four generations of women gathered at our family table. I am in the suspenders. My great grandma, sitting in Mom’s usual chair, was born in 1893, there is alot of herstory in this picture.

My Dad at his spot at the table, here is where he sat when he delivered his message to me.

Dad with gloves on, likely working to tame the waterfront. We kept our boat trailer in the water and cranked the boat up every night after finding our boat a long ways from home one morning after a major overnight storm. Dad had naturally curly hair but not this curly. He had a perm here, something he did for his role in Summer Players musical “Oliver.”

Dad and I at my graduation from Queen’s Theological College in 1996. A proud moment. Dad had been diagnosed with frontal lobe brain disease, a form of dementia a few months before this.

With the lake behind us an impromptu family picture in about 1984. Everyday moments made for an empowering childhood. There is so much to be thankful about.

Rare Opportunity

I wrote this first part of this blog almost six days ago, on Tuesday morning.

I am wading through my first morning home after many days away, reckoning with how weird I feel, both physically and emotionally. Last Wednesday I drove the 550km that took me to Saskatoon where I got welcomed by my sister Linda and her husband Stu and we hunkered in for some days. Linda has a gift for hospitality and I was treated like a queen. My sister Jan flew in from Vancouver and stayed with my sister Margie and her family. Together the four of us, with help from my cousin Jodi tackled boxes and boxes of my Mom’s photo albums and some boxes of miscellaneous photos. I feel like what we did in wading through a lifetime of memories in their fullness is pretty rare, not something people get to do more than once in their lifetime if at all. From this rare point of view I want to report back on some of it.

The two things that I can’t stop thinking about are humor and love. Humor because it bubbled up often and allowed us to be real about what we were dealing with and yet not wallow in self pity or sadness. That meant for example that when Ella Fitzgerald came up on the playlist crooning about heaven, Janet, in split second creative humor, neatly revised the lyrics to address our situation. It meant my tears about reviewing pictures of our last happy party when my Dad was still a little bit well turned to laughter, as Linda looked over my shoulder and said, “and we weren’t even that happy.” It was true, dementia was taking its toll on all of us. There was something about the vantage point we had, more than 20 years later, that had us all laughing at her comment and pretty hard. We reviewed albums and albums from the 1980s which made it so inevitable that one of us would say something about hair, it was Margie, who with her very deep and sincere faith intact said “Why did no-one tell me that my hair was so god-awful?” It all just struck us so funny. Most of the things we laughed at are not typical knee-slappers, they might not strike you as funny, but it’s the mystery of humor, how it illumines our lives and helps us cope.

I got that far with writing then stopped. Now I am back at it, Sunday night. I have just spent much of the last hour looking at some of the pictures gleaned from our work bee. A word about process seems appropriate here. We set up in Linda’s living room, it was an invasion of sorts. Four big tables set up, the dining room table turned into a laptop and scanner station, for four days Linda’s space was pretty much turned upside down. Margie, Linda and I peeled pictures out of albums and sorted the content of the boxes, Janet received our sorted piles and using a high speed scanner we had purchased she did the painstaking work of scanning and catalogueing these pictures. Thru the wonders of modern tech we now all have access to all the pictures we handled. Can you even guess the number that Jan scanned? It was 6,700 on the nose (thats a prairie expression which means “exactly.”) Our discard pile was almost as big as our keep pile, so we looked at alot of pictures over the days.

Sitting here tonight I wonder about what makes humor possible. Definitely our stage in our healing work was part of what made us light hearted enough to laugh more than we cried. Perhaps it was the way that we had to keep a loose grip on reality because it was always changing. One minute being drawn back to 1981 and then 1939 and then 2002, all found in a combined box of pictures. Do you have one or some of these? I didn’t know my Mom had so many. I saw pictures I never saw before. Reality is a little more loose under those conditions and that loose-ness maybe encouraged humor. Maybe too it was about something kind’ve major. A kind’ve major truth, a truth that bubbled to the surface for me as we were preparing to start and discussing process. There was some anxiety rising to the surface…..what if we mishandle this and lose out on something special? We agreed we would look through the discard piles before they were garbaged in order to assure each other that we had all we wanted. It hit me then, this kind’ve major truth, I said, “girls, we have survived being orphans for a whole year now, we have lived without these photos and without our Mom and Dad for a whole year and we made it. What this represents now is the icing on the cake. We know we can make it, so everything here is bonus.” Its true. With that as our underlying truth it seemed like it was easy to live with a sense of gratitude for every one of the thousand moments our hearts smiled to see a familiar face, place, and item. With those smiles on our hearts the humor was more able to flow. In the end we never reassessed our throw aways we just let them all go.

I mentioned at the start that love and humor were on my mind. Perhaps the biggest reason that humor could flow is that each of us came to our time knowing we were loved and we are loved. Our parents loved us well, that is our most profound blessing in life. We all have taken into our hearts the faith our parents started in us, that tells us that we are beloved children of God. We all have established our own families, we have spouses, children and pets that welcome us home. That is major.

I have a few pictures to share with you. I am not going to make them orderly or chronological. It will give you a glimpse of how our minds were spinning thru these days together.

This is my Grandma Kyle. Since I wanted to write about humor I looked for pictures reflecting joy or laughter. This one was a real find. (My brother Bob in the background.)

Here is Gina and I in the summer of 2002

I saw this picture before it was scanned and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I looked for it in the files and was glad to find it. Jan catalogued well. That is Kathy Kyle feeling safe and loved in her Dad’s lap.

This is captioned on the back as the first hour my twin sisters were home from the hospital. I turned two the next day. Look where I got to sit. On Mom’s lap. She always got it, what people needed to feel seen.

I have seen this picture many times over the years but not with a growing teen boy in my house before. Tonight I looked at it and said, holy smokes, my son looks like my brother. I had never seen it before. Bob is 23 in this picture, a university graduate.

You probably will not understand the significance of this picture unless you read a previous facebook or blog post, not sure which but here is “Gina in Buster’s highchair.”

Me working on my piles. They started to feel overwhelming after a while.

I have a picture of my Dad holding me on this day but had never seen this one before. My Grandpa Tubb was a photographer, he came over to take pictures of me the day I came home from the hospital. There were several beauties that were taken this day. It would be his last official shoot.

Great hospitality was extended to us working women by my brother in law Stuart. We really appreciated it.

Jan was what I would call “courageous”. The mental power she used to accomplish her task might have finished me off. She said she had it good because she only processed the keeper pictures. I’m not convinced. It looked hard to me.

Margie at her work station, evidence of her mischievous and playful self is in this picture. She left some lingering humor for Linda to find after we all left.

“B.A.I.T. Out!”

“BAIT Out!” Seth shouted from the car as it reached the end of the driveway, slowing to turn onto the main gravel road. “Did he just shout ‘Peace Out’?” I asked Russ and the kids. Russ said, “I think he said “BAIT Out.” Yes, that is what he said and it was a perfect conclusion to the time we had spent together.

It all started Tuesday night around 8pm when I was working in my kitchen. Russ and Morgan were sitting at the dining room table with two guests. I could hear some commotion at the garden doors off the dining room and looked up to see people at my door. There was that split second where my brain was sorting out what I was seeing and what I was hearing, was I hearing my daughters at the door? No. That was???????……….seriously!!!??!!?? I shouted out loud enough for the girls in the basement to hear “is that my sister?” They came racing up. It was my sister. What followed was alot of hugging, some tears and laughter.

Earlier in the week I had sent a message to our family chat to say that the kids and I were not going to be able to make it to our regular family time at the Kyle Family Cottage. With things being as hard as they are on the ranch I just cannot leave Russell with the work here and take his crew and be eight hours away and feel at peace. My sister decided if she was going to see us she would need to claim the time this week. She worried that I would fuss if I knew they were coming, hence, the surprise arrival. She came laden with a care package so large that I am tempted to believe it was divine intervention that I was moved to clean my fridges the evening before. That care package was the result of the baking, cooking and purchasing of all three of my sisters and my cousin. They were sending love and comfort and some ready to go meals. It was unbelievably exciting and overwhelming.

I think this visit and the family care that was a part of it is a really good illustration of the concept my blog is centred on, the power of really being seen and really seeing one another, I see you, you see me. I sent that message to the family chat and soon after heard back the concern for the ranch, for each of us, and the regret that we couldn’t be part of things this summer. What I didn’t expect is that my message, perhaps alongside the info in recent blogs, would result in such concrete action. Words go a long, long way in providing comfort, encouragement and understanding, but when the words are backed up by action there couldn’t be a more solid way of saying “I see you.” Its a short trip from that clear message “I see you” to the lived feeling that we are loved. It is unbelievable how valuable these messages of understanding and love are. I asked Russ what is behind this for him, what makes being seen so significant. He said, “because it tells me that we are not alone.” That is major. (We have good support here, we definitely know we are not alone, but I think there are times when you get so deep into the trenches that you start to forget.)

Margie and her kids Seth and Brodie arrived with great sensitivity about imposing on us (so they had a booking at the hotel), they were clear that they were here to help in whatever way they could. I knew that what I longed for was both practical and emotional. This team was well suited. Margie is a great listener, funny, wise and MY SISTER. Seth is both interested and capable with mechanical and construction stuff, Brodie has her own drone photography business. We put them to work. They helped us move some cows, Margie tackled a pile of dishes that had grown overnight it seemed, Seth fixed doorknobs and cupboard hinges, Brodie photographed our yard and hayfields, Seth mowed the lawn, Margie talked with me about losing our Mom and we all worked together on a couple of special meals. All of this is where Seth’s proclamation at the end of the driveway comes into play. On the way down from Saskatoon they had read my blog post highlighting my “bad ass” self. They got joking that they were “B.A.I.T” the bad ass intervention team. Indeed they were and as Seth offered his parting words it seemed like a celebration of their “mission accomplished!” Indeed it was. We were seen and supported, we were enabled to carry on being our bad ass ranching selves for a little while longer.

A few pictures…………