Dear Bibble,
You have done very well to keep your English in such good condition since 1992! Ben and I will have to look at the map to see your city tomorrow. He's already fast asleep and I'm going soon.
I am much older than you are by about twenty years. I'm the grandmother of eight and I don't really like to tell my age as most women here don't. What can I tell you? I married at nearly 20, and within 9 months had our first child, a son. Two more followed very quickly, they were both girls, and the youngest daughter came ten years later when we decided it was time to have one more little darling.
Health has been a problem for me all of my life. It seems to have begun in very early childhood caused by wartime steel mill air pollution which caused extra great sensitivities, and allergies and asthma. This was the result for all the children who lived in that area from birth to ten years old. I lived there from birth to ten years. My brothers don't have the troubles because they got out of the area before they were three. Also the war was over. These allergies I have are the really difficult part and new ones pop up as old ones are brought under control. These have caused me much time since early childhood being ill in bed with lung infections and very many antibiotics. Twice I got allergic to infections in my chest and had to be desensitized and take antibiotics for a couple of years every second day to get rid of those allergies and the infection.
Through much of the time of our marriage my dear husband had to take care of me when he came home from work. I don't like to talk about health too much so I'd rather stop now, but it made it difficult to keep the house and raise the children, but we managed, and they are all good and have excellent characters and good marriages. They each know how to work, and also have developed creatively. Ben and I didn't have much money right from the beginning. It gradually has gotten better through the years. Now we are comfortable enough to take a little cruise in winter when it does me the most good, and we have everything we could need. Tonight we looked at our income tax statements from ten and twenty and thirty years ago and the income was shockingly low when you think that we needed to feed, clothe and raise all our children.
My original training was bookkeeping and secretarial. I worked at that for two years before my marriage and sporadically after when I could leave the children to go out to some paid work. Mostly I stayed home for many years with my health difficulties and raised the children. I was often the secretary of whatever Baha'i community I lived in which sharpened consultation skills and many others. I was a delegate to national conventions, and for years was assistant to another person whose job was to help Baha'is to understand their Faith and live by it.This position meant that I travelled one night every week to a different community where I helped their assembly with any difficulties they were having.
I went to university as a mature student, studied English, and excelled, and gained confidence to go back to university some years later and after quite a few years of part time work I graduated with a diploma in Fine Arts, with distinction. I've shown my work a few times, but I don't sell. I have always sold anything I was willing to let go and one year was chosen from hundreds in BC as one of the six best in a certain big show. Since my health was not up to shipping big works around or doing all the rest it takes I don't bother to show any more.
Ben worked for a big abrasives company in the daytime and developed a side line business when the children were young, doing income taxes. He worked for a smaller steel company. He sold that business of 300 clients before we came out here 3,500 miles away, to BC. Here he got a job as operations manager of a very large and new shopping centre. When he decided to quit after many years they offered him the managership of another huge new shopping centre in a neighbouring city, but we didn't want to live there for reasons to do with my health, so he didn't take the job. At one time he sold houses for a builder. He later became a building contractor and built houses. We designed and built our own house that we now live in, and have lived in for 30 years or more. Once we bought a small take-out food place where all our children were able to work to learn how to work well, and get experience. This place also helped us to feed our family during the hungry teen years with three teenagers. They all learned a lot from their experiences there. Even the little one worked there and learned. Today she and her husband have their own restaurant. Finally we sold that business and Ben went back into real estate sales.
For ten years he sold houses and properties. He was very good at it, and his manager said he was the best in the city and only wishes he could figure out what would make Ben run harder and harder to sell more. Ben was always too much interested in the people and in helping them, rather than to cut things short and get on to selling the next. He is too kind and too service oriented. Then there was a very severe recession so I took the real estate course of six months and became a realtor to work together with him as partner, so we could earn more money and assist each other. I was a realtor for five years. It was a very interesting experience and I learned a lot of self confidence with strangers and many things about others' lives, and about law, and all the ways people live. At five years you get a medal if you stay, since most people drop out long before that. I stopped one month short of getting the medal, and Ben quit on the same day. I had an inheritance from an aunt and we bought a tax business. It was a good move. Ben had told the owner some years before that if he ever wanted to sell to be sure to tell him. So Ben recovered the kind of business he sold in Ontario and developed this one into more areas of service as well as doing the taxes. For instance, he became the office building manager. Then he took on some houses to manage for absentee landlords. He does some financial advising, and some other related things.
Now we are buying another little business that he has prepared the books and taxes for over ten years for, so we know what to expect. He is very entrepreneurial, and does better working for himself than working for some one else.
So, I still have to manage my health. I write a lot on this forum. Read a lot, do gardening, manage our home, help out as needed with the business, help to keep our whole (separated by distances) family connected, and soon will work three hours a day on the new business.
My family were all democratic socialists. I was very active as a youth. I read about Dr. Norman Bethune at least 45 years ago. I have found the Chinese people I have met to be interesting, thoughtful, dignified, diplomatic, good people. I've read some things about China, and about its ancient civilization. My brother David went to teach English in China, and eventually founded this Canuck's Comments forum for Hongen.
His experience was that he liked the people in China, that he was more comfortable with the people he met in China than he was with the ones he had been with in Canada all his life. He was much more at ease with the type of people you are. I find the same on the forum. David invited Ben and I to visit the forum and set us up with names and codes. That's why Ben is named "Uncle Ben" and I am "Maryk". That's David's doing. Once I came here and began to read and write I began to feel very motherly and grandmotherly to many here, and I began to write as though talking to my own children and family. You know, Bibble, you are younger than our eldest son. :-)
So, that's quite a lot about the story of me. Some about my dear Ben. I hope I didn't tire you out with all the reading. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. I think David doesn't want to write about his life because he has had, and still has, more pain in his than I have had. I consider myself to be very lucky. Except for the health problems, (and they made me thoughtful and a great reader,) I have been very fortunate in life. I wouldn't change a thing right now.
I hope that this story about entrepreneurship may have some inspiration for you.I'm sorry to know that you have temporary work, and your wife has been laid off. Chinese people tend to have a talent for business. Perhaps you can find something that you can do as a sideline. I see that the government is allowing more private property and things are changing in various ways there. You are very wise to bring your English training back. I'm glad you got that certificate to sell in English. I think you will find it even more useful in the future. I fully believe that China is another coming world giant. The thing to do is to stay clear of wars. We all need to do whatever we can to ease tensions in the world. Even though we only do it in the little ways open to us, such as when we meet someone from another country, being a good representative of our country.
I love my dear country of Canada. It is a very good country, too. I would like to be a good represenative of it here so that you will feel friendly when you hear the name of my country, or meet one of my fellow Canadians. I hope to meet some of you one day. Maybe some time Ben will be able to visit David in China, but I probably will never be able to come unless it would be a short visit from a ship passing by some place in China. I need a fresh air environment with control over some foods as well, you see. We are also Baha'is, and I hope that if any of you meet another Baha'i some day you will understand that we are not fanatics, that we work to eliminate prejudices and wars, and to bring understanding and love among people and to teach consultation practises. These are some of the most important parts of our belief. -- That this is the time to do it, because in this era, peace is actually possible, so we should each do whatever we can to forward understanding and fellowship among all people.
So, you see, I have many reasons for loving to be here with all of you. I find it all very interesting and educational. In fact once we get talking about something and I start to write my ideas here I have to clarify them to make them understandable, and I read up a bit more, and learn more things. I also find the appreciation and love here very, very pleasant. Who doesn't?
What more can I say, Bibble? I think that's about it.
Warm good wishes to both you and your wife. Mary
