The Pattinson Times, Farewell to 2020...

 I am happily wrapping up 2020 in the hopes that 2021 brings us a little closer to the good old days when we were afraid of romaine lettuce and Donald Trump was a source of entertainment.  

We began our year with Tony recovering from surgery.  There were many teaching moments for us during his hospitalization including abandoning old fashioned notions that nursing care (other than that provided by the wife) would be available, and that anything in the hospital would be cleaned with something other than a swifter (including the patient).  We made our escape on his second post op day to avoid him getting something worse than what he arrived with.  Our comment at the time was that if we really encountered a super bug, our health care system would be in serious trouble.  😔

We enjoyed a quiet family Christmas with the kids, Mandy and Robin who visited from Vancouver.  Puzzles and board games, along with too much food, an excess of Christmas cheer and green jello for Tony was the focus of the seasonal festivities.  We did our best to convince Mandy and Robin to move to Windsor but so far, no movement on that although there is always hope!

My introduction to becoming a senior citizen was celebrated with a surprise party organized by Tony and the girls.  Over the years, we've had a number of surprise parties for Tony - and he has always been taken off guard but this event was a shocker!  My hubby is a lot of greatness, but social organizer not so much.  The icing on the gluten free birthday cake was my sister Annie arriving for the celebration and we had a wonderful weekend of catching up and eating too much (seems to be a common theme, hmm).  If I had known that my 65th year would be met with so much chaos in the world,  I might have foregone my CPP pension and dug in at 64!

Before the big C arrived, Lily managed to take another swimming gold at OFSSA and Grace began dive training in Toronto and Montreal with the Junior Development arm of Team Canada.  As COVID closed the pools in our area, athletics was on pause for the first time in our kids lives.  On line learning became the norm and we used the Furbo dog monitor to keep an eye on the girls during our workday!  While most physicians were able to limit their practice to on line access, OB is still pretty hands-on, so we donned our PPE and kept rolling with the punches.  I think it was possibly more stressful for our kids to watch their senior citizen health care working parents go to work all day while they "retire" at home, but to their credit they have hot meals ready for us when we get home.  To date there have not been any sibling brawls or bloodshed and the dogs have never been so spoiled.

Despite the pandemic we had a wonderful gardening year and the best tomato crop ever (I think I say that every year).  I felt so fortunate to have the beautiful outdoor space that we share with nature and Tony and I spent a lot of time in the yard, working the garden and putting a new roof on the garden shed.  We discovered that he is afraid of heights and I, despite having inner ear disease and a distinct lack of balance loved my new roofing hobby!  Grace who lives to "fly" climbed the trees to keep me company on the roof.  Our definition of success this year has been downgraded to being alive at the end of the day.

The kids and I maintained a little neglected garden at the office as well and we called ourselves the "garden genies".  Dad's addition to the gardening efforts renamed our team the "garden gynes"  We certainly made our own fun this summer and its been a silver lining.

Grace combined her love of art, schnauzer and tomatoes into this great little display.  The green bits are cucamelons - our first try at growing these little delicasies.

Lily began every morning watering the garden and generally taking care of the birds and squirrels.  Nature was a real show off in our yard this year as the butterfly garden that we started in 2019 began to attract bees and a wide variety of butterflies.  While I did my fair share of garden upkeep, we spent more time sitting, having a glass of wine, and enjoying the beauty of nature in our yard this year.

Lily's life transitioned quite a bit this year in her final year of high school.  When she was laid off from her job at the local Chinese restaurant, she picked up some extra courses and has begun the process of figuring out where she is headed after High School.  She has applied to a number of programs from Human Kinetics through to landscape architecture, paramedicine and biomedical technologies.  Her goals shifted with the pandemic as she observed that employment opportunities seemed to focus on essential services and so she is working hard on keeping the marks up.  Without the opportunity for high school athletics, she joined the local swim team and did some triathlon training with her boyfriends family this summer.  (Yes the friend-boy in now a boyfriend) Some of that training earned her some road rash, scrapes and bruises but she's developed pretty good grit and persistence around her sport.  

She's also completing drivers ed in the hopes of getting a drivers license by 2021.  She assumed that driving would be easy since she has spent her young life observing Mom's driving habits (not all stellar) but once she was behind the wheel of the Mom van, we quickly decided that drivers ed was the way to go.  Her instructor has nerves of steel and Lil seems to have a pretty good grasp of navigating a vehicle now, and Mom hasn't needed to be defibrillated recently. 

This summer provided an opportunity for Grace to compete in diving remotely, without water, and from the confines of our home.  Through the magic of zoom she was able to maintain her training, and spent a significant amount of time leaping around the house, practicing her board moves.  By the end of this summer she had earned a national gold and international gold and had a lot of fun doing it.  The pool reopened in September and her persistence and practice seems to have paid off.  

Work has been pretty interesting and fun despite the COVID.  The IVF unit in our practice with Dr. Victory opened this week and we've enjoyed participating in the effort and success of this exciting development for Windsor patients.  Tony was invited to work as an assessor for the Ontario College and we've been quite involved in teaching the medical students who attend Windsor's med school program.  We've flirted with the idea of retiring but are not sure of the health benefits of staying home with the teenagers, despite the fine humans that they are becoming.  So we keep working, not really feeling that bowing out during a pandemic is our style, and for the most part feeling like we still have something to offer...

Keeping ourselves fit has been a little more of a challenge this year as our gym closed in March and we were left trying to reproduce a weight lifting routine with what we had on hand.  Gym equipment was difficult to find and we had to improvise on occasion, tying bands to trees to produce some resistance.  By the time our gym reopened, we had developed a pretty sweet little gym complete with weights and a functional trainer in our basement.  We've been going back to the gym for the social aspects and a more complete workout but continue to enjoy a little isolated workout in the basement on occasion.

As Christmas approaches this year we prepare ourselves for a different experience from earlier years.  With Windsor settling firmly in into lockdown, we've simplified our expectations.  We will certainly miss the excitement of seeing friends and making dinner for the masses, but with this brings a certain calm and less pressure to make everything perfect.  Perfection in 2021 will come in the form of a successful vaccine, and a lot less drama from our friends south of the border.  There is no travel to the sun planned in our future, so we take our vitamin D, sit in the yard with a glass of wine, have a hot flash and imagine....

So as we reflect on 2020, and do our best to hope we never have another year like this, we are also thankful to be healthy, to enjoy our family, pups and friends, to have work that we love and live in a country as wonderful as Canada.  We are also grateful for all of the patients and members of the community who have supported health care workers and all the business owners who have worked so hard to keep Canadians safe.

Merry Christmas, with Love, Tony, Mary, Lil, Grace, Sophie and Ollie