One Most Awesome Day

Friday, May 15/20

I was awakened this morning at 7:18 am with a text notification from Carleton University that made me simultaneously smile and tear up.

What did the notification say?

I've got the Carleton University app on my phone as does my ex as our son has been attending the school for the last 3 years in pursuit of his Bachelor of Arts degree.

When professors post grades the app sends you a notification and you can log in and see which course posted a new grade. So far over the past week or so we've gotten four such notifications and were waiting on his last professor to post to his mark.

Today was that day as he earned his final mark as a student and became an official university graduate!!!!

To call me a proud father would be putting it mildly.

Education has always played an important part of my life and I've tried my best to pass that along to my children, successfully so far, and now it is time to turn that attention to my grandchildren :-)

Yes, I get it that my grandson is only 3 years old and my granddaughter is only 14 weeks old but you can never start too early, I started with my daughter when she was 6 and my son even younger.

I literally started to cry as I sent him and his mother a text congratulating him and telling him how proud I was of him and all the hard work he put into his studies. He ends his undergraduate degree with an A- average, not too bad for a kid who was worried he'd be able to do the work and even graduate when he headed off to his first day of university 3 years ago.

My name is Marcus and my heart feels so full of love right now. Eight weeks into the Covid-19 Pandemic and I'm still finding things that make me happy.

Happy Mother's Day

Sunday, May 10/20

I would like to wish every mother a very Happy Mother's Day.

Whether you are a mom in the traditional nuclear family with a husband or baby daddy, a single mom doing it on her own, a mom in a two-mom family, or even a dad doing both parental roles, Happy Mother's Day.

Being a parent is such a difficult role and one that doesn't come with any instruction manual.

If we are lucky we've had great role models in our own parents upon which we can base our own actions and hope to match but at the end of the day, the only single thing that really matters is the love and support we give our children.

I was fortunate enough to have a loving mother who tried her best to instill in me a love of education and the written word, loves I embraced and used to advance myself in life.

I just sent my ex a text wishing her a Happy Mother's Day and expressing how lucky my daughter and son are to have her in their lives, the love she has shown them as well as the support she has tirelessly provided them have been a blessing for each of them at different times in their lives.

While we didn't work out as partners in every sense of the word we did work out exceptionally well when it came to raising our children, having shared values around what we wanted to teach them, and the core values we provided them so they could flourish on they're own.

I had a text chat with my daughter the other day and told her that not only do I love her as my daughter but I like her as a person as well. I told her that when her own children get older and she'd been through some trying times with them that she'd understand that comment better. She sent back a smiling emoji and told me she knew she wasn't the easiest teenager but she came through it because we never gave up on her during the difficult times. Her mother was the rock upon which we leaned as a family!

Happy Mother's Day today and every day to come, you may never hear these word enough from your children but you are loved so much and appreciated far more than you think.

My name is Marcus and I'm quite sure my mom has been my guardian angel since she left us in 1998, looking down upon me, her grandchildren, and now her great-grandchildren. Thank you mom, love you and miss you every day but I know we'll see one another someday in the future.

Today's song is in honour of the song shared between my daughter and her wonderful mother, "You Are My Sunshine" I don't know the orginal artist but have included a link to a nice YouTube video for the song here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh7LJDHFaqA