Kitchen "Think"......

I am sitting here at my kitchen table and thinking that I really need to do a blog post in the next 12 hours and what should I write about, that isn't a video - I've done a lot of those lately - but is still "significant" so as not to waste a reader's time, unless it's April Fool's or the equivalent.

I live in the city and although I have a long backyard, I look onto apartments, not huge high rise condominiums, but 7-8 floor multiple residences which are homes to many, many people. We are in an area that helps with the re-location refugees. When my kids were in school, I always knew when the next scene of unrest was about to erupt, because one of my kids would come home and say that there was a new student in their class and they were from - Yugoslavia, or Romania, or Somalia....the list went on and then you would read about the struggles in those countries and think that maybe these new Canadians were the lucky ones, they "got out" before the "war."

Apartments at night

I always remember a friend of my daughter. She lived with her family for about 7 or 8 years in a one bedroom apartment. The parents' bedroom was the living room. The children - brother and sister shared the one bedroom. The father had a full time job, but fixed computers in the evening, so what might have been their eating area was actually his computer work space.

Her mother, a former ballerina, was working on her English. She also grew vegetables on their small balcony, which got the morning sun. In spite of space restrictions, they were an "involved" family. There were always home made cookies for the kids and interesting conversations for me, when I went to pick up my daughter.

Then one day they moved.  They had saved enough money to buy a house. The father still worked two jobs and the mother now had her Real Estate licence. Their son went off to university and Nina moved to a new high school.

It's the old story of how people come to North America with very little and prosper.  If I go back a few generations, I remember that my parents and grandparents lived in "compromised" space. They saved enough money to "move on." We have a full house at the moment, helping our kids get enough together to move on.

I still struggle with the concept of huge unproductive space, monster houses. I wonder how many families could live there and how many people could get a leg up in life with just that small bit of extra space. Huge shows of wealth leave me cold. It's the people from the smallest spaces, who set out to make a big difference, that always amaze me!!

Have a wonderful day!!