The Greenhorn Chronicles 58: Lynne Denison Foster on Loneliness and Thunderbird Show Park (5)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/22
The Greenhorn Chronicles 58: Lynne Denison Foster on Loneliness and Thunderbird Show Park (5)
Lynne Denison Foster: So, questions?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Last question.
Foster: Did you get what you needed?
Jacobsen: Oh yeah. You mentioned about a half hour ago. It is more challenging to be a parent of adult children now than of children.
Foster: I was 50 when my husband and I split up. I was married at 25, ten of which I had no children, and 15 with the kids. I was working in a high profile job and involved in several activities. I am not a solitary person. You probably gather that.
Jacobsen: Yes!
Foster: I had my husband. Like I said, I was a good mother to him – maybe not a good wife. As a mother, I was occupied. I had a lot of things happen at the same time. I grew up in my career because I was 19 when I started working, almost 20, in the airlines. I always had a goal or something to work for, etc. Then, when my husband and I split, Air Canada gobbled up the airline I grew up in. I left my community where I had my society with the church and the performing and all of that kind of stuff. I left that and all of my friends. I came out here for my kids. Then, I was able to take on this new role for Dianne.
I also took on launching two new diploma programs and teaching for BCIT Aerospace Campus. I was busy. I was needed. Then, I wasn’t thinking of myself in terms of what I needed. Somebody to support me or to be there for me. I was busy being there for them. My daughters went their separate ways. Then, I had another tragic incident that happened. I was able to support the affected family through that. I was needed. So, I was okay doing that. My daughters left me. I had the other girls in the house. I had people with me. Then, I moved back to North Vancouver, and Rebecca was going to UBC so she lived with me for the semester. Then she said, “I am 22-years-old. A 22-year-old should not live with her mom.” So, she moved out. But, I still had my students at BCIT until I retired in 2017.
Suddenly, I am by myself. My daughters had moved on. There is some other stuff, a dynamic, which was hard for me when I went to Florida. That’s when I was lonely. I was done at BCIT. My daughters were doing their own thing. I tried to explain to them how I was feeling. They didn’t want to hear it. Eventually, I called a meeting with them. It was a meeting with expected desired outcomes because I felt I needed to express how I felt. I felt I was being left out of their lives. Do you know what Tiffany said to me? She said, “You are the reason why. You raised us to be independent, freethinking, good thinking, capable, confident women who can now solve their own problems.” She didn’t say it in this way, but I got the message: We don’t need you anymore.
Jacobsen: You gave us the principles.
Foster: I was used to being the one who gave everything. Then they didn’t want anything. That was hard for me. Then, Debbie, you didn’t meet her. She is cleaning the bedroom over at the house right now. She and her sister have been a part of my family. My husband and I would borrow these kids before we had ours whenever we wanted a ‘kid-fix’.. Their mother…we had been friends since we were 11 years old. Sorry, I like to make long stories longer. Anyway, their mother died at age 35, a week after Debbie turned 13. Her sister, Becky was 11. It was three weeks before Tiffany was born. Those girls helped me with my new baby because it was summertime. Becky has always been very close to me. She is now grown up and she is my sounding board, but she lives in Ottawa..
I was feeling so lonely and hurt because my daughters weren’t integrating me into their adult lives. They were moving on, etc. That kind of stuff. I kind of vented how I felt with Becky. She said – and there is more to it, “Okay, all right, I want you to answer this question. If I asked Tiffany and Rebecca who they would choose for a mother, would they choose your sister? someone else? or you?” I didn’t hesitate.. I knew they would choose me. I was just lonely. I had no partner, you see. If I had a partner or somebody I could talk to and feel like he cared for me, my state-of-mind would be different. I didn’t have that with Glenn because I cared for him. I do not mean to make it sound like it was one way. He was devoted to me as long as I was devoted to him. You know what I am saying? But when I had children, I focused more on the kids than on him. He was used to 10 years of just him.
Jacobsen: It was probably a blow for him.
Foster: He couldn’t handle the responsibility of parenthood. So, he had an affair with a woman for two years. The girls were the ones who found out. Anyway, that is another story. I felt like I wasn’t needed in their lives anymore. So, that was hard for me. I think if I had a partner and if I had somebody, it wouldn’t… you know. I think there were some other causes, but they were resolved. I had my students. I retired in 2017. What do I have? I have Thunderbird and I drive around and wave at everybody; then everybody waves at me. That makes me feel good. [Laughing].
Jacobsen: [Laughing]
Hans De Ceuster: So, you’re part of Pasture Prime.
Jacobsen: Yeah, ahhh!
Foster: I should be put out to pasture now. [Laughing] So, that’s what I mean. Does that make sense to you? It was a big part. My kids were devoted to me, and then they were gone. Like Tiffany said, “You were the one who helped us be who we are today.”
Ceuster: Sometimes, my mother feels that way. She is in Europe.
Foster: So, you understand.
Ceuster: My mother was part of the European Parliament and started an NGO.
Jacobsen: She was! God, your whole family.
Ceuster: She started an NGO to combat human trafficking. My youth was with the children victims of human trafficking in the house the whole time.
Foster: Is that why you chose the path you’ve chosen for your life?
Ceuster: I first ran away, not physically. I ran from Antwerp and went to Brussels for school.
Jacobsen: Another runaway.
Ceuster: Antwerp was too scary and dangerous. My mother was being protected by security. All the while, she was fighting mobsters and human trafficking.
Foster: Mobsters, woah.
Ceuster: Albanian.
Foster: Where is your mother now?
Ceuster: In Belgium.
Jacobsen: So, Albanian mobsters were after your mother.
Ceuster: She is still there. She can come to Vancouver to teach at the university. We have students from Vancouver coming to Belgium for our NGO.
Jacobsen: Did she ever go to Albania?
Ceuster: Many times, all over. So, now, she is taking care of my father.
Foster: How old is your mother?
Ceuster: 71
Foster: Oh, she is younger than I am.
Ceuster: I can understand if you’re always with or helping people.
Jacobsen: Any more questions? Any final feelings or thoughts based on the conversation today?
Foster: I think I would ask you that question.
Jacobsen: [Pause] I asked first.
Foster: [Laughing] I talk a lot. I tell a lot of stories. I was raised to trust people. Unless they prove untrustworthy, I would trust that the information or the stories I have given you will be treated with integrity. Does that make any sense?
Jacobsen: Accurately represented in the text. They would be veracious. They would have veracity. They would have truth value in presenting tone, context, and word choice. My thoughts: Your personality resembles the one you noted about Berne. “I am okay. You’re okay.” Hence, the concluding statement about raised to be trusting. To me, that seems more like temperament than how you were raised because I think many of our temperaments and proclivities are inborn. It seems. We seem to be an incomplete package. But a snowflake will form if it is frozen water or freezing water. How that snowflake will form? We don’t know.
Similarly, I think our character, temperament, and talents are largely heritable. The form in which it takes will also be dependent on culture. We find this in linguistics, as Noam Chomsky told us or taught us. There is something like generative grammar, where we see these differences in languages, representations of languages, symbols, and symbolic structures. Yet, those differences in symbolic structures have a standard grammar and structure. So, you can draw all of those surface differences rather than differences to an underlying core structure. It is similar to our character.
What I notice with you, I see, “I am okay. You’re okay.” We all have encountered people who are, “I am not, you’re okay. You’re not okay.” We typically say those people are depressed [Laughing]. Other things that come to mind.
You use practical examples to convey principles. Those principles are taught as per your self-identified role as a mother. Both of your children are very successful in their chosen passions. One recognized nationally for her food prep is in the restauranteur world. The other is recognized internationally in terms of current Longines rankings as the best Canadian rider, just behind Laura Kraut as the #2 woman rider in the world. It’s very tight, like 25, 29. Last year, in July, she was number one. Erynn Ballard, the first half of the year, was number one. The reason for Canada creating such great women riders is from Mac Cone; in my interview with him, he put it down to a focus on equitation and hunters. That’s probably a reasonable thing to think. Your parenting is devoting your entire life to your kids. So then, it has been a thought to me. Less as a journalistic point, if you look at the top riders, typically, they will be European, Western European men.
Foster: Yes.
Jacobsen: I think if there was an effort to have more gender balance for show jumping in that way, maybe that area of the world – The western European region – could consider Mac Cone’s statement to me. If the focus is on equitation and hunters to have so many great women in the industry in Canada, maybe, if they had more focus on equitation and hunters in Europe, you could get a little more talent development and interest from girls for a little bit of a better balance.
Foster: It is quite puzzling when you look at the younger kids who come to the show, mostly female. I don’t know if that is what it is like in Europe. But it is primarily females who are coming.
Jacobsen: Everywhere has said this.
Foster: Yet, when you get to the professional level, Tiffany was the leading lady rider in the world but was number 33 in the standings.
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