Phd in the U of Life: Major: Sense of Humour Minor: Resilience

By Gisèle Lamontagne

This is a book about various events in the author's life and how they helped shape her being. Above all, the author feels that having a sense of humour and facing difficulties enhances one's resilience. Life is truly a lot harder than the regular university; however, it can be very fulfilling and a wonderful growth experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514468616

Gisèle Lamontagne

Gisèle Lamontagne is a therapist working with children and their families. She specialized in trauma and grief, moving into more generalized work. Before becoming a counsellor, she taught languages and was a freelance translator. She continues to write, translate, and run workshops. She renews herself from her high-energy schedule by going into nature and listening to the silence. She lives in Gatineau, Québec.

Book preview

Lesson 1

Learning to Walk

So big deal—you learned to walk. Didn’t we all? Plus, you don’t remember, so again, what’s the big deal?

I think the big deal is that even before we remember what we’re learning, we’re learning. So it is. I learned to walk with braces on my legs from the age of 9 months until I was about 14 months, to straighten a congenital dislocation of the left hip. My mother explained that two metal bars ran down each side of each leg and that these were attached to special shoes. Then a bar tied my feet together in a wide split position. She told me she knew I was going to be determined because I set forth to learn to walk at 1 year of age. She added that she and father would put their hands over the edges of furniture to prevent me from banging my head.

I was a determined kid. When you think about it, aren’t all kids? They get up, try out their balance, teeter-totter, fall, get up and try again. No one yells, You fool! You just failed. Just give up already!

So why do we tend to be that way later in life? If we all remember that the very first things we learned were done by trial and error, not failure, can’t we just risk not achieving the end result the first time out without thinking of it as a failure? And to think some toddlers will fall up to 2,000 times before they learn to walk! At least, that’s what the research on child development says!

That’s the first lesson, short and sweet—as are all toddlers. Did you ever think a toddler would teach you a lesson in how to live your life? It just happened!

Lesson 2

Learning to Talk

Talking. Now, this may come as a surprise to those who know me, but I was in no hurry to communicate verbally. According to my mother, by age 3 I only said Mommy and Daddy. So they took me to every specialist in town to get me talking. A specialist finally asked if I had older sisters who interpreted for me. My parents said yes and were instructed to tell my sisters to stop this practice. It seems that within a few weeks I was speaking full sentences. My poor parents had taken me to every specialist in town so I could learn to walk; then they had taken me to various specialists so I could learn to talk; and, for the next 15 years they would constantly tell me to sit down and shut up. Well, not quite that way, but I was talkative (still am) and never could sit still.

I have such clear memories of this period of my life. I shocked one older sister one time when I related images I had of our cottage on Lake of Two Mountains.

She responded very quickly, But you turned 3 the summer we were there.

What does that teach us? Just because we don’t express our thoughts or ideas doesn’t mean we’re not absorbing. We often forget this with very young children; they do absorb so much way before they can express what they’re experiencing. We also forget this when dealing with older people who have lost the ability to talk. Have they also lost the ability to notice?

What do you want your kids to learn before they can express themselves? Perhaps we adults need to practice what we teach kids diagnosed with ADHD: stop, think and act.

Children learn 10 percent from what we say and 90 percent from what we do. So which choice will you make—talk or show?

Lesson 3

Secrets

Oh, the secrets families keep. People are alcoholics, and no one must know. Children are told to always tell the truth and are punished if they lie, but they notice the lies adults tell, the secrets they cover up and the lengths they will go to in order to keep those family secrets.

Even at a very young age, children notice the inconsistency between what they are told to do and how adults behave. Don’t smoke, parents say as they puff away.

Sometimes children must keep very grave secrets, and they are called liars when they dare speak up. So whom are we to believe?

Children lose trust, trust being the one thing they are meant to learn at an early age, and this leaves them fragile and unsure when moving forward in life.

So why don’t we learn from our children and be honest with them? When we make a mistake, we should own up to it; they will respect us for it. Certainly I remember times when I apologized to my daughter (gosh, I seemed to have done that a lot). It’s okay to make mistakes, especially if we apologize. It’s not okay, however, to force children to keep secrets, and it’s good to teach them which secrets should be shared—such as if a person is abusing them.

Teach by example, or admit you’re wrong. Both my parents smoked, and they always said, Girls, whatever you do, don’t start to smoke; you’ll never be able to quit! Not one of us ever smoked!

As for secrets? Well, some are easy to disclose, and some are not. Choose what to tell your children and at what age. But always be honest. Allow them to tell you secrets—it may save their lives or save them from a lot of harm.

Lesson 4

Grade 1

Oh boy. I had just turned 5 in July, and here I was in Grade 1. Why? Well, it seems that in kindergarten, in the basement of this school, Mother Superior found me cute and told my parents to put me in Grade 1. Seems strange; but, that’s what I was told!

She could repeat if need be, Mother Superior said.

Yeah, sure. You think I want to do things over and over again after I’ve learned them? I’m a kid, you know. I have extreme curiosity, and I think it’s the greatest gift in the world. And you think I’m going to do something twice unless I really have to? If I want to learn to ride a bike, I will do it over and over until I get it. Same with swimming and diving, but school stuff? No, no, no. Once I know it, I move on.

Sister Agnes who, for me, was seven feet tall, was probably the meanest teacher in the world. She constantly mocked me because I couldn’t learn to read. I had bladder problems that were made worse by the fact that we could not leave to go to the washroom. So accidents occurred, and then she seemed to take pleasure in mocking and humiliating me in front of the entire class.

She asked the children, So are we going to put baby Gisèle in diapers?

Yes, Sister Agnes, the class would say.

And put her in a crib in the corner of the class?

Again—Yes, Sister Agnes.

I just wished a hole would open up in the floor and eat me up!

Plus, I simply couldn’t put all those scrawled doodads on the pages together to make any sense. There seemed to be crooked lines of figures that ran down the pages with crooked margins and various tones of ink! It was very weird and didn’t make any sense. Once again, my parents took me to every specialist in town. Turns out my left eye was crooked, so I wore glasses to straighten it, but it didn’t solve my reading problem (and the rest of that story would only come out much later, when I was 50, as explained later in this book).

Oh, but that horrible word stupid—please never use such a word with anyone, children most of all. Again, Sister Agnes would call me stupid, stupid, stupid every time she asked me to read out loud. Again, I just wanted to disappear! I eventually learned that I am not stupid, but the name stuck in my mind. I truly didn’t think I was intelligent enough to go to university. I figured I simply was stupid.

I learned to hide my difficulty reading. I learned to read but very slowly, and I often had to reread. All through Grade 2 I improved thanks to a more patient teacher who did NOT call me bad names

So please remember that there are no stupid questions. If you’ve given the idea some thought and have a question, you’re intelligent. If you ask questions, you’re curious, and that is a gift. So there can be no stupid questions.

What I did learn from this, however, is that name calling sticks.

I did learn something quite precious though: ways to cover my weaknesses, and to simply read and reread until the text made sense. I was not stupid after all!

Perhaps we should look for people’s strengths rather than always noticing their weaknesses and draw rapid conclusions. Just something I’ve tried to do more and more of—and it’s a lot more fun.

Lesson 5

Camp

Now we get to the really fun stuff. Camp offered the most extraordinary seven years of summer experiences of my youth. I loved it! Was it a challenge? Yes. But it was just filled with opportunities to learn and grow.

Camp Memphremagog was a totally natural environment where we lived in log cabins with no electricity or water—simplicity at its utmost. We had to go to the washrooms by flashlight in the middle of the night to the cabin that lodged such luxuries. We washed in cold water … unless we had reached the age where we had our periods, during which we could access hot water showers.

There were so many activities, a child could never get bored. Lots of physical activities mostly geared toward team spirit, plus, arts and crafts and nature treks.

Kolah, the camp director, was a Mi’kmaq (a Native American tribe) who taught us aboriginal values of caring for Mother Nature. She told us, when we went on our Monday picnics or left for canoe trips, What you take in, you take out. You leave nature as you find it for the next person to enjoy it’s beauty. So NO garbage left behind!

By 10, I was going on canoe trips with older girls since I had achieved a higher level in swimming. Such trips were bare-minimum trips. There was no room for anything that was not essential to survival. We camped on a beach that some homeowners around the lake allowed us to use. If you didn’t put your ground and top sheets properly over your sleeping bag and it rained … well, you got soaked, you quickly learned! Just as we did when we didn’t cover our wood for the breakfast fire and had to eat cold potatoes from the night before. But we learned and were certainly not miserable for the lesson.

During my seven summers at camp, the happiest of my entire youth, I learned so much about nature, about working as a team, about swimming and diving. I could have lived in the water. This was the time when I became a more proficient swimmer and diver and moved ahead quite quickly. This caused me to spend more time with older girls, however, and since this became a common pattern in my life elsewhere, it caused some problems in my developing my social skills. I was always the cute little one with the older girls, kind of not really one of them. I had a sort of privileged place but did not really feel in my place.

So many lessons were learned during this time. I discovered a sense of spiritual unity with Mother Earth. One particular clearing in the woods behind the junior camp was where I loved to go to rest and just be. I felt so strongly that God was in the rays of the sun that shined in the middle of the clearing. It was a place where I could just talk to him, be with him. One day, I dared step into the sunlight and felt embraced by the pure love of God. To this day I cannot erase the profound sense of being one with God, humbled yet feeling so strong in that presence. This feeling continues to guide my spiritual life, and I continue to find unity with God in the serenity of nature.

Later on, when people would try to convince me to put my daughter in a private kindergarten so she could move ahead more quickly, I remembered how out of place being the younger kid can be. My daughter tended to be shy, and I let her stay with her own age group. She could decide to skip a grade later on if she so desired. This proved a wise lesson.

Let children grow at their own pace.

Lesson 6

Boarding School

Most of the time I hear people say they hated boarding school. I loved it! We arrived at school on Monday morning and left on Friday afternoon.

My first year I shared a corner alcove with my sister Hélène. Ours had a window. We could walk behind all the other alcoves to get to the sinks. The dormitory got so cold, as the nuns opened the windows even on the coldest nights. In the morning my sister and I would alternate who would get up first to put our underwear on the radiator to warm them up before dressing.

I was in Grade 3 and had just turned 7 in July. I loved the way life in boarding school was organized. We could focus on our studies yet had plenty of time to go outside and play (baseball in warm weather and skating in winter). We even had music to accompany our skating! I fell in love with Émile Waldteufel’s The Skaters’ Waltz!

My second year in boarding school I had an alcove all to myself since Hélène had moved to a convent run by the Sacred Heart nuns in another part of town, where classes began with Grade 5.

I had friends in school and found plenty of time to get into mischief. I spent a lot of time calming myself in the little blue chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Amazing that 60 years ago the nuns were already using time outs, and to this day, blue is the most calming colour for me.

What really helped me was that we all studied at the same time, so there were no distractions and I could focus on my work. There was also a mother who could help us if we needed a little support in doing our work.

The school was bilingual, so we quickly learned a second language, and if we learned more quickly, we could move to a more advanced second language class, which were held at the same time, so I could be in Grade 4 but still attend Grade 6 English classes. Sure made me feel smart—at least in something …

****

Then came Grade 5, and I was to move to the other convent, where Hélène was already studying. I didn’t really want to go there as I loved my school and my friends, but my parents wanted the two sisters to be together, mostly since Mother and my oldest sister were going off to Europe for a few weeks in the fall. I nearly got my wish to stay at the City House since the administration of the convent decided to move up the starting grade to Grade 6, and I was only moving up to Grade 5.

However, the reverend mothers decided to accommodate my parents and allow me to enter the convent, doing my Grade 5 with the Grade 6s and having some private courses. So off I went to another school, and here we arrived on Sunday evening at eight and left on Saturday morning at nine.

It was an awkward year since I was already much younger than all the other students, having begun Grade 1 six weeks after my 5th birthday. Now I was with children