40 Years of Bliss
Next week Lucille and I will celebrate the first 40 years of our family, now all in North America. A family still, despite being challenged by geography, one that has stayed together through deep love, mutual respect and working hard at staying close.
It is with tremendous pride that I look back on this family of immigrants and am amazed by what they have accomplished.
Lucille, a mere girl when I married her, has had two careers in addition to raising a family. Having won the art prize at school, she was not encouraged by her parents who felt typing skills were more important than art. She worked in a drawing office which was partially artistic. But not until after her responsibilities to her children were complete did she pursue her first love, painting figures.
4 hard years at the Ontario College of Art later, she launched her artistic career which a few weeks ago hit another highlight with the third accepted entry in the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York.
She has many other accolades and is overly modest about all of them.
As a benefit to living in a near New York, Lucille has been fortunate enough to study and paint with some of the best watercolor artists in the world. For a South African Artist, this would be as distant a dream me playing for the Yankees.
She now runs her own art sessions at her studio in Connecticut. Once just a dream.
Cindy, the second most amazing woman I know, runs the Marketing Department for Canada's third largest and most award winning winery in Ontario.
While I would like to think this was at least inspired my my lifelong passion for drinking the stuff, the job was acquired because of Cindy's unique talent. A cross between an artist business acumen, Cindy is able to see the holistic strategy for her company as well as using her keen eye and design skills in a category constantly in need of graphic interpretation of strategy. Perhaps a cross between me and her mother.
She does all this while bringing up two budding hockey players and renovating houses. And doing it with a wicked sense of humor that she has encouraged in her children who can sing dirty rugby sons with the best of them.
She is also my friend an business confidante. One can not ask for more than that from a daughter. In South Africa, who knows what may have been. But based on my then peers children now, she would have lived a privileged life without a career and a real sense of worth or accomplishment. Plus her children would not have had a clean slate. Judging by the abdication of any political responsibility of whites in South Africa expressed to Cindy and me by my sister's youngest son who still lives there, this would have been most unfortunate.
David, my other friend, is the most geographically challenged to maintain close ties. He works away from home weekdays and spends weekends with his girls, Abby the skater and Emily the dancer. All have a sense of humor that would make my father proud.
He has lived and been educated in three countries and has worked in four. He now holds a job that takes him into the bowels of the biggest brand names in the world and provides advice.
Left with me and to my own devices in Cape Town, he would likely be a beach bum now.
Rather than having attended universities with more astronauts and Nobel prizewinners than anywhere in the world.
I have seen him hold his own with Fortune CEOs and be at home drinking beer with Canadian mechanics.
He is is a good trencherman and we often hang out in New York.
WHO GETS THE MAJOR CREDIT?
Lucille. She was the one who secretly met with my boss in Cape Town when I wanted to take a domestic job instead of accept a transfer with an international company. Naive as she was about world affairs, she knew that life in South Africa was wrong. That success there was meaningless as it was at the expense of an exploited society.
They are all the source of my pride, but Lucille is the inspiration for the immigrant success. Like the we garden together. She is the inspiration, I dig the holes.
I am proud of my role as a garden laborer, because look at what the holes have sprung.
I am most proud that we are friends and that relationship is not purely based on the obligations that loosely bind most families and create friction. We have travelled together, vacationed together, eaten every imaginable ethnic food, done courses together and been diving together. We have had enormous fun together.
Has it all been blissful, of course not and that is the point. Immigration is damned hard but the immigrant dream is worthwhile is that one's family can enjoy the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
That was my gift to them. The rest was up to them. And they all rose to the challenge.
And I love them and admire them for it.
It is with tremendous pride that I look back on this family of immigrants and am amazed by what they have accomplished.
Lucille, a mere girl when I married her, has had two careers in addition to raising a family. Having won the art prize at school, she was not encouraged by her parents who felt typing skills were more important than art. She worked in a drawing office which was partially artistic. But not until after her responsibilities to her children were complete did she pursue her first love, painting figures.
4 hard years at the Ontario College of Art later, she launched her artistic career which a few weeks ago hit another highlight with the third accepted entry in the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York.
She has many other accolades and is overly modest about all of them.
As a benefit to living in a near New York, Lucille has been fortunate enough to study and paint with some of the best watercolor artists in the world. For a South African Artist, this would be as distant a dream me playing for the Yankees.
She now runs her own art sessions at her studio in Connecticut. Once just a dream.
Cindy, the second most amazing woman I know, runs the Marketing Department for Canada's third largest and most award winning winery in Ontario.
While I would like to think this was at least inspired my my lifelong passion for drinking the stuff, the job was acquired because of Cindy's unique talent. A cross between an artist business acumen, Cindy is able to see the holistic strategy for her company as well as using her keen eye and design skills in a category constantly in need of graphic interpretation of strategy. Perhaps a cross between me and her mother.
She does all this while bringing up two budding hockey players and renovating houses. And doing it with a wicked sense of humor that she has encouraged in her children who can sing dirty rugby sons with the best of them.
She is also my friend an business confidante. One can not ask for more than that from a daughter. In South Africa, who knows what may have been. But based on my then peers children now, she would have lived a privileged life without a career and a real sense of worth or accomplishment. Plus her children would not have had a clean slate. Judging by the abdication of any political responsibility of whites in South Africa expressed to Cindy and me by my sister's youngest son who still lives there, this would have been most unfortunate.
David, my other friend, is the most geographically challenged to maintain close ties. He works away from home weekdays and spends weekends with his girls, Abby the skater and Emily the dancer. All have a sense of humor that would make my father proud.
He has lived and been educated in three countries and has worked in four. He now holds a job that takes him into the bowels of the biggest brand names in the world and provides advice.
Left with me and to my own devices in Cape Town, he would likely be a beach bum now.
Rather than having attended universities with more astronauts and Nobel prizewinners than anywhere in the world.
I have seen him hold his own with Fortune CEOs and be at home drinking beer with Canadian mechanics.
He is is a good trencherman and we often hang out in New York.
WHO GETS THE MAJOR CREDIT?
Lucille. She was the one who secretly met with my boss in Cape Town when I wanted to take a domestic job instead of accept a transfer with an international company. Naive as she was about world affairs, she knew that life in South Africa was wrong. That success there was meaningless as it was at the expense of an exploited society.
They are all the source of my pride, but Lucille is the inspiration for the immigrant success. Like the we garden together. She is the inspiration, I dig the holes.
I am proud of my role as a garden laborer, because look at what the holes have sprung.
I am most proud that we are friends and that relationship is not purely based on the obligations that loosely bind most families and create friction. We have travelled together, vacationed together, eaten every imaginable ethnic food, done courses together and been diving together. We have had enormous fun together.
Has it all been blissful, of course not and that is the point. Immigration is damned hard but the immigrant dream is worthwhile is that one's family can enjoy the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
That was my gift to them. The rest was up to them. And they all rose to the challenge.
And I love them and admire them for it.
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I look forward to spending time enjoying the garden this weekend. A glass of wine in hand, with the youngest members running around the flowers. Toasting the gardeners.