balance

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025

How do we keep our balance? Tradition.

How do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in a word….Tradition

Okay, maybe I’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof a few too many times (it’s a great book, play and movie. Suddenly I’m having flashbacks of playing Tzeitel as a teenager!). But it’s the key word, tradition, that I have been thinking about a lot lately. Maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe it’s the state of the world we live in.

As Tevye says in his opening monologue, “because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years.” Whether it’s a man speaking from his small village at the turn of the 20^th century, or me, living in Toronto in 2025, this statement is accurate. I think we all try to find balance in our lives, and embracing our traditions is important.

There are particular times of the year when many of the world’s religions celebrate holidays around the same time. In 2025, within a few weeks Muslims observed Ramadan, Christians will participate in Easter this coming weekend, and right now it is Passover for Jews. These are more than just religious events where people follow specific rituals. They are all steeped in tradition.

For me, over the past week, as I prepared for, then celebrated Passover, with my family and friends, so many memories flashed before my eyes. These memories gave me comfort, a lot of joy, and yes, even a bit of sadness.

Why do I turn my kitchen upside down? Did I really need to scrub that corner, of that drawer? What was I thinking when I decided to have a Passover set of everything from plates to cutlery to pots and pans? Does schlepping boxes up and down the stairs, over and over, count towards my daily fitness goals?

My Passover Seder table, set by my daughter and her friends this year, was covered in stories of our family and its history. There were papier mâché Seder plates, strangely constructed cups, matzo covers, placemats, something one could call art, plastic animals and more, scattered across the table.

The food was an eclectic mix of old and new. We had everything from my famous “mother-in-law” chicken soup, that my mother-in-law taught me how to make when I got married years ago, to a lemon roast chicken recipe I found using a Google search to sumptuous meatballs, from an Italian recipe! We dipped parsley in salt water, ate bitter herbs (I used endives this year!), and some people made a valiant effort to drink four cups of wine.

We went around the table and read, we hastily flew through some songs as we hungrily approached dinner, and we belted out, with assigned characters and silliness, the final song of the night.

Why did we do this? I can tell you in one word….

Tradition.

Okay, so that’s one very specific example. Holidays bring out some of our closest, and sometimes, craziest traditions. I’m not sure if singing about a goat who was eaten by a cat who was hit by a dog…. Or consuming inordinate amounts of “unleavened” bread helps us keep our balance, but I do believe that the essence of them does.

Whether it’s a tradition associated with a holiday, like Passover, Ramadan or Easter, or anything else in your life, it keeps you centered. It reminds you that there is more to life than getting ready for the big presentation at work, or maybe getting that job promotion.

Most of us lead very busy lives, in our modern and very demanding world. We rush from one task to another. We have welcomed tools like AI or automation to enable us. But our traditions – they make us slow down a bit. They help us reflect on where we came from, the people who have helped us along the way, and the memories of those we miss most.

Some of our best traditions don’t have to be connected to a religion or culture. They may exist amongst friends, family or even colleagues. For example, at a previous job, I built up a tradition with a colleague (who is now a very good friend!) of taking regular walking breaks and specifically circling the garbage cans to get extra steps.

After we had established our walking pattern, we just had to say, “are you ready for a garbage can break,” to know that one of us was stressed and needed the other person to come walking. I could call her right now and mention the garbage can break, and she will smile – and she will join me for a walk.

Maybe it’s a summer camp tradition, or a family vacation, or certain words you use that have a special meaning to specific people (my mother knows what Kogel is and my husband’s extended family will smile when someone mentions a fake-o sunset). Our traditions make us pause and think of the people with whom we are connected.

So, the next time you see a friend from university and sing the song you made up when you studied for that nasty physics final exam, or you are cooking the dish your grandmother taught you years ago, smile. Take a pause. Remember that your traditions have helped bring you balance.

February 10, 2025February 10, 2025

Bagels, Balance and Baseball

Who am I? What are my interests? How do I define myself? These are questions we’ve all asked ourselves – or we’ve been asked in interviews or conferences or team meetings. Using a bit of alliteration, and maybe a bit of creativity, I thought about this recently and came up with: I’m all about bagels, balance and baseball. I hope I made you giggle a bit, or maybe you are thinking of a letter of the alphabet that you can choose to find words that describe you. Let me explain.

Sometimes, late at night, or I admit, even in the middle of the night, I have a sudden idea of a topic I want to write about. I have a notes folder in my phone where I jot down blog ideas, so that if something comes upon me I can note it before the idea fizzles away by the morning. When I read some of the notes the next day, some make perfect sense and others are pure nonsense.

Bagels, balance and baseball sits somewhere in between. I don’t know why these words came into my head late at night recently, but I jotted them down. Maybe I was listening to the news, or I read it on social media, or maybe my husband mentioned something to me. I jotted other notes after the three words, and those made no sense.

But I can’t get these three words out of my head. While I am not defined by bagels, balance or baseball, they do help tell my story. They are key words that help me share a bit about me as a person, beyond my professional persona.

Bagels

This single word says a lot about me. First of all, I love bagels – Montreal bagels to be exact. My parents and grandparents were all born and raised in Montreal, where the humble bagel is a staple of the diet. The bagel dates back, in many forms, to Poland, and it was brought to North America by Jewish immigrants – first to New York, but then beyond, to places like Montreal.

So, the bagel connects me with a humble food that I love, to my Jewish heritage, and my love of baking (and cooking too!). I love to explore my creativity in the kitchen. I like to take an interesting recipe and do my version of it – add an ingredient, take other ingredients away or play with the ratios. I love making challah, and lately, I’ve been experimenting with different kinds of muffins. The latest one I’m intrigued with is caramel swirl!

This one is a bit more abstract, but stay with me here – it will make sense. I have always wanted to find balance in my life – to make sure I prioritize what matters but to also find time and space to destress. Whether it was in school or my career, I was always all in. I have always taken responsibility seriously, pushing myself so hard sometimes that I either disregarded what else mattered or I tried to do too much that I was not successful.

I could lean on the clichés like “you can’t do it all” or everyone needs a “work-life balance,” but that doesn’t work for me. Right now I am focused on understanding how to honour and respect all the different parts of my life – professionally and personally. Too much of anything isn’t good for anyone. My family needs me more than ever. I need to pursue career ambitions and take some risk. There has to be time for me, to just be a person and do things I love. So, have I found balance yet? No. But I’m trying. I’m really trying.

Baseball

This one is easy. I have loved baseball since the first Blue Jays’ game I went to, at the old Exhibition stadium, when I was a kid. It’s the right pace for me, it has so many twists and turns, and as a mother, it’s one of the ways I’ve connected with my son.

I’m quite sure my love of baseball was one reason I stood up in grade 11 chemistry and announced I wanted to pursue a career in sports media. I even lived that dream for a short time in my first job in radio, when I filled in as the station’s baseball reporter.

I don’t play baseball (isn’t often said that those who can’t play… teach or write?!), but it’s a passion of mine, that connects my professional and personal life. It may, one day be the focus of my son’s professional life, and as a sport with its special twists and turns, maybe it will always be part of my life in ways I don’t even know yet.

So, maybe baseball isn’t so easy. Yes, I love this sport, but it also makes me think of my love of skiing, and now, yikes, even snowboarding (yes, I promise to write more on that journey soon!). I’ve even taken up yoga, which actually fits nicely into the “balance” area. Yoga forces me to slow down, to focus on my breathing, and sometimes on trying to stand on one foot. I highly recommend it.

Bagels, balance and baseball are not descriptive of everything about me. If you have read Kinetic Motions, you know there’s more to me than these three words. But it’s been a good exercise, to think a bit about who I am and what matters. Take a moment to do the same. I promise you, it’s worth it.

June 5, 2017

Dads Making Dinner and Moms in the Corner Office

My husband, David, knows how to cook and bake. Well kind of. He can cook eggs any way, his chicken schnitzel is crispy and juicy and he makes the best pie I have ever tasted. He also likes to eat, so when I go away and leave him alone with the children, for the evening, a couple of days or a week I know he and the children will eat.

I don’t know what they will eat, if the house will be clean or when (or if!) the children will go to bed. Somehow, he muddles his way through it all while I am away, the children always have a great time while Mommy is gone and the house is still standing when I return.

Does my husband concern himself with any of this when he goes away? Does he worry if the children will eat a balanced diet, whether or not they will bathe or if they will sleep more than a few hours each night?

I know that in my case the quick and easy answer is no. Without even doing a survey (a simple one or even one that follows the Scientific Method) I am quite sure that the answer is usually no for most families. And this irks me.

When my parents grew up, in the 1940’s and 1950’s, most fathers went out to work in the morning and most mothers stayed at home to run the house and take care of the children. One could logically conclude that the majority of fathers at that time couldn’t put a balanced meal together, didn’t know how to do a load of laundry or turn on a vacuum cleaner.

When I grew up, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, a far larger number of women went off to work in the morning, including my mother, but the responsibility to run the household and care for the children still far skewed towards the mother. My father was incapable of even making a piece of toast, cutting up vegetables or heating up leftovers. I still don’t think my father knows where the power button is on the washing machine though I will give him credit that he does know his way around a mop, broom, vacuum cleaner and bathroom sponges.

The women’s movement was strong in the 1970’s, and many women strived to have it all. They wanted to be leaders in business, entrepreneurs and executives but also have a family. They wanted the ultimate – to find that perfect work-family balance. Many of these women of the 1970’s had families and raised daughters to have the confidence to strive to have it all.

But do we? While it is quite commonplace today that most households are double income, I believe that the majority of the household duties still fall on the mother. While of course there are exceptions and there are some incredible fathers who balance a demanding job and run the household, they are in the minority.

Most women today, who have a career and family, don’t have it all. As I write this post, for example, in the early evening, I am home alone with my three children. My son is watching television, my 7-year-old daughter is playing quietly with her toys and my baby girl is crying and wants to be held and entertained. I still have to cook dinner and put a load of laundry in the machine and somehow I need to write and post my blog and do some other work as I do my best to earn a living. David is an active, caring and doting father and does his fair share around the house, but at the end of the day the children’s and the house’s well-being are my responsibility.

So the answer to the question is simple: do we, women in 2017, have it all? Absolutely not and we will never find that perfect work-family balance. We will do our best to try, as women always do. We will raise our daughters to aim high and dream big. For now, I will carry the baby in the Ergobaby while I make dinner, change the channel on the TV to keep the other two children happy and press publish on this post. It’s the best I can do.