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~ Stories of MacDonald Family Adventures

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Tag Archives: family

My Father

17 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by jrwmacdonald in family, Living, People, Uncategorized

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Tags

Dad, family, Father's Day

Ronald G. MacDonald

Ron MacDonald Circa 1969

It seems to me that fathers are less easily forgiven than mothers. Carrying, birthing, feeding, and nurturing a child covers a multitude of sins, and rightfully so. My experience tells me there is a natural bond between a father and his biological children but that bond is much looser and requires, possibly, a greater degree of maintenance. Some of the very first memories I have of my father are of him secreted away in the basement of our home fashioning Christmas treasures for his children. I still remember the wooden castles I received from him along with the workable miniature catapult and the buckets of plastic warrior figurines.

I also remember camping trips where my dad would roll out his bedroll in the back of our station wagon while I slept in a tent, sometimes alone, but often with a sister or two. I have a memory of playing something like Trivial Pursuit around a campfire with him and my sisters (Robyn and Alison). He’d ask a question and we’d guess the answer and I wanted so badly to get those answers right. I think he sensed this in me and so for Christmas one year I received the full 15 volume set of thin Charlie Brown’s Cyclopedia. I read them all. Also on that camping trip I recall the battery died in our station wagon. We were stuck, in my child’s mind, in the middle of absolutely nowhere on a lake with no other people along a dirt road very seldom travelled. To me we were doomed. My dad, it seemed, was not much bothered and we just waited to hail, eventually, a passing pickup that could give us a jump.

My dad was brave, and smart, and kind except when he was not. Once I was fighting with a younger sibling and my dad intervened. Those interventions were always loud and scary and painful. I was getting older though, my early teens or preteens, and I left the house in a rage. I was never coming back. I wandered the neighbourhood for a time before I realized the futility of that activity and returned home determined to have it out with my dad. I was becoming a young man that could nearly look my father in the eye and naively believed this made me something of an equal. We stood toe to toe in the living room and exchanged a few heated words. I said to him “what will you do dad, hit me!” He might have but what I recall was far more powerful than that. He escorted me to his bedroom and sat me down on the edge of his bed and then lowered himself to my level. He spoke for a while. I can’t say I recall all the words he said but I do recall these words “Son, I love you.” That was enough for me and we embraced. I think that day was the day I left my childhood behind.

Some future reader may think to judge my father but I caution you. Today we tend not to strike our children and we think that enlightened. Maybe it is. My father came from a different time. He was raised by grandparents that fought in the first world war and by a mother who would not have the support of his father at at time when society was not very accepting of that. He would have the benefit of a step-father from about 6 to 16 before an untimely death. So, my father learned to work hard and to do hard things. He was and is a brave man, indeed, he was endowed with a bravery I think seldom seen today. He saw something good in the two missionaries that came to his door when he was 16 and he pursued that goodness. It took him to Idaho and Utah and away from everything he knew at a time when that separation was severe. Our modern electronics have gratefully robbed us of that type of sacrifice.

The first time I recall seeing the ocean it was in Prince Rupert, British Columbia with my dad. The summer I turned fifteen my dad loaded me into the car for a week and we drove out to Prince Rupert together. We stopped at every creek and lake we could find to do some fly fishing. We took our time there and back and we caught one lousy fish. He’d want me to be sure to say that he was the fisherman that landed it. I’m sure he was. It turns out we are terrible fishermen. I’m okay with that. We only ever saw the ocean from a distance. My father is a brave man but also wise. He hates the ocean, and heights, and anything fast. For all that, I’ve no doubt, he’d dive in, or climb high, or hold on if it were ever necessary.

A few short years later we made a similar trip. This time we drove north to Fort Nelson, British Columbia where we would spend some time visiting my sister Robyn and her growing little family. On our way home we were camped for the night and were chatting at a picnic table. This would be our last trip for some time. I’d received a mission call to Southern California. Our trip was winding down and we could both sense that this would be the end of an era. I would be gone for 2 years and accessible only by letter. I recall with clarity his words to me. “Son, you don’t have to go. You know that you can stay here and that would be okay.” It was a tender moment. There was no way, truly, that I could stay and be happy with myself. He knew that and so did I but what he communicated to me was that he loved me no matter where my choices would take me. I did not need to earn his love.

My father is not perfect but he is the perfect father for me. He taught me by example to give freely and love openly. At odds with the generation that raised him he learned to be vulnerable and has passed that vulnerability on to his children. There is no love without vulnerability. If you asked for my father’s help he would be there, to those that would borrow of him he’d freely give. To me he gave time and his ear. To his children, his grand children and his great grand children he’ll be a patriarch worthy of emulation.

I love you too, dad.

IMG_1822.JPG

Dad and Me. Venice Italy, November 2, 2015.

Family Economy

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by lcmacdonald in Dubai, Living, Sharjah

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Tags

budget, chores, economy, entitlement, Entitlement Trap, Eyres, family, Family Economy, Linda Eyre, parenting, responsibility, Richard Eyre, YNAB, You Need A Budget

So back in mid-November, James and I attended a fireside on Parenting.  The guest speakers were staying next door with our neighbours (who happen to be the Stake President and his wife).  I ran into them on campus while walking home from lunch with James.  “Hello, we’re the Eyres we’ve heard so much about you.”  “Oh no” I thought, and then I said something witty – I don’t recall what.  I smiled, and we all laughed and went our separate ways.  I didn’t think another moment about it, except that they seemed nice.

Richard and Linda Eyre gave an amazing fireside meeting on Parenting.  They shared their teaching experiences and stories from their time raising their 9 children.

@Cold Stone Creamery with the Eyres

It was entertaining, informative, and enlightening.  I didn’t feel weighed down by a thousand tons of guilt, and though the intended 90 min fireside went over an hour I was hungry for more.  I felt truly edified by the end of the night.  Imagine my excitement when we decided to stop for Cold Stone Creamery Icecream before heading home.  It was close to midnight before we finally settled in for the night.
Dubai evening skyline from the car.

Excited to share the new friendships we had made I updated my Facebook status.  Boy was I confused with the responses.  Something like, “So, jealous you actually got to meet them!”.  Wow!  My friends back in Canada know the Eyres, small world.  So I did what any other librarians wife would do, I googled them.  What did I find out?  They’re famous!  What!  I hung out with famous people.  Check out this link.  I can laugh now because after the fireside I actually said to Linda, “Oh hey I have one of your books!” and at the time I still hadn’t realized it wasn’t the only one.

The-Entitlement-TrapThe fireside was based on their book, “The Entitlement Trap” in which they discuss the concept of a “Family Economy” and how parents can use it as a tool to teach important values to our children.  I’m not going to discuss it in detail but instead tell you that it is an interesting topic worth whatever price the book is going for.  What I want to share with you here is how we have interpreted and implemented the idea of the “Family Economy” into our family.

Jaron's made bed.We have struggled with keeping the kids motivated to do chores, and participate in keeping the house tidy.  So we broke the house down into 3 zones, so that each of our children would be responsible for a zone for the length of one week.  Each zone is broken down further into 5 parts.  At the end of the day they earn a point for each part of their zone that they have completed the chores for.

At the end of the week, the amount of points they earned coordinates to how much they will get paid.  No chores, no pay – just like a real job.  The real hard lesson comes when the one person who slacked off all week and didn’t do their chores gets to watch the others spend the money they worked hard to earn.   Click here for our Family Economy example.

The kids have learned quickly that they can’t have what they don’t have money for, as well as what it is they are willing to spend their hard earned cash on.  As a parent it is hard to let go of some of that control, and let them decipher for themselves what objects are worth their …dirhams.  Without sales tax this has been an incredibly easy transition for them.  They don’t have to figure out the percentage of extra money they have to pay, they can just take the number right off the item and add it up next to all the rest, then fork out their dough.  Easy peasy.

YNABWhat the family economy has inspired us to do is to actually start a budget.  I like my apps.  So I was looking for something I could use along side my phone.  I came across a desktop app called “You Need A Budget“.  It’s laid out really nicely and even comes with some great tutorials to build you up and guide you to taking control of your money.  We have tried to start a budget in the past but it always turned into more of a confessional, guilt session where we would point out to each other who spent more.  Setting this up was not like that at all.  We planned ahead where each dollar … dirham was going to go.  It also syncs with an app on my phone so I can input debits immediately before I forget, and check on the fly whether we can afford to do something spontaneously.  We only have 10 days left on our 30 day trial, but I was in love with this program from the get go and we’ll likely bite the $60 bullet, we even  worked it into our budget.  Click here for a discount, I know you’ll love it too!

I hope you will take the time to check out the links in this post.  I promise they are all worthwhile!

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