Maybe I try to hard to connect the dots, but most of the time I feel that things happen for a reason. Sometimes I even try to understand what the reason is! Coinciding with the beginning of Lent this week, there are happenings at work and in my home life that are forcing me to understand myself more.

At work I’m dealing with a difficult integration phase with a sister team somewhere else in the world. Someone at my office noted a few things that made me see this integration from a different perspective. A clash of cultures. I’m fighting hard to not just dwell on the bad vibes, so I absolutely need a way for this situation to help me improve myself. I think I’m finding a way … but we’ll see.

At home, we’re getting ready to visit our families in the old worlds of Ireland and England. There is a lot to catch up on, a lot to wish for and hopefully a lot of joy to behold in seeing our children with their grandparents and cousins. And for me there are the swirl of emotions and questions about leaving the old world for the new – here in Canada ( where it is -30 with wind chill today ).

There are certainly dots to connect – maybe their distribution is supposed to be scattered – maybe I’m not supposed to force a connection from them – but what’s the harm if I can see something clearly and positively out of the scattered ingredients that I’m given. Do you ever get the feeling that someone or something is trying to tell you something?

Jake provided a soundtrack for my mood at his piano recital on Sunday. He played the second movement from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, sometimes called ‘Coming Home’. It was tricky for him because it is his first piece in 6/8 time and took him out of his comfort zone. He’d only been playing it for a few days before, and at first thought he couldn’t do it. But he overcame the trouble-spots. I think the different feel of the keys on the gorgeous baby grand piano at his recital also caused him a few problems – which is why he told me that he wanted to keep working on it, when he sat down after his performance.

I think I’ll follow his lead.

PS – there’s a clip of his recital in our YouTube movies collection.