it's just bad timing that's all

the camping trip didn't go as well as i hoped it would. as i was packing the car on friday i had a nagging feeling that we shouldn't go, maybe it was the thick clouds rolling in over the mountains, or the terrible forecast for the weekend, or maybe it was just that everything felt a little off. whatever the reason, i should have listened to that voice, but instead, as we are all apt to do, i went ahead with the plan.

the things i am remembering most right now:
1. the rain. the torrential rain that began to pelt on the roof of the tent sometime in the wee hours of friday night and continued almost without reprieve until our departure on sunday.
2. cohen's lack of happiness and nearly constant state of distress. this would be the main umbrella where i would put his fever, his crankiness and his lack of appetite and my worry about all of the above (we now think all of this was a direct result of new teeth).
3. complaining, so much complaining.


things i am not remembering most right now but that i hope will be the true memory that stands the test of time.
1. that satisfied feeling of setting up camp. the careful planning and executing of tarps and tents into a configuration that makes the space feel like home despite the weather. knowing that when it rains it is ok, we are ok, there will be no leaking.
2. finally in a fit of frustration (i am not going to have the only memory of his first birthday be of him miserable and upset!) packing up cohen and marko and our swimming gear (which i foolishly brought thinking that the weather might turn around and a lake swim might happen) and heading to the squamish aquatic centre where we splashed and laughed and forgot for a moment that the weekend wasn't turning out so fantastic. cohen didn't have as much energy for the pool as he normally would, but we got some smiles and there weren't any tears!
3. sitting in front of the fire, dry and warm under the tarp as the rain pelted above us, sick and needy cohen nestled snuggly into my chest, fast asleep, dreaming of trees.
4. the bbq'ed steak and chicken dinner enjoyed with a bottle of red wine and some pretty fantastic friends, oh and the chocolate cake with raspberries and whipped cream for dessert (mmm steak and cake).

so the weekend wasn't great. the expectation wasn't met. there were no fantastic back to nature photos taken, no whipped cream on noses or splashes in lakes, but there was family, my family and that is always something to celebrate. i feel very lucky for all that i have, even when it is raining outside, and have lost enough in life to know how important it is to cherish everything that you have. i do. still, i hope that next time we get some sun!

i plan on one more birthday post, a retrospective of sorts, so look for that in the next couple of days.

this last photo was taken in the aquatic centre parking lot. we had left our campsite and driven down the highway to squamish with this poor slug on our car. we only realized once we got there and saw him clinging to the side, likely very confused. by the look on cohen's face he wasn't the only one!

your's is the first face that i saw

birthday week is upon us! i say birthday week as it is important to milk these things for all they are worth. cohen's birthday week kicked off last sunday with a little gathering at our house in his honour. the cake was blueberry banana with cream cheese icing, which to my great disappointment is a very stable and clean eating cake. cohen not only got the whole thing into his tummy, but licked all of his fingers with little to no mess on his face. very disappointing indeed. still, there was singing and balloon poking and attention, so much attention, that there was no way cohen couldn't have a great time.

today cohen continued his week long celebration by hanging out at grandma's. apparently he spent a portion of today basking in the lush backyard in nothing but the skin he came in, which is pretty much the best day ever for him, and then grandma let him suck on the juicy middle of a mango. tomorrow i am off work for the day and plan to take him to the park in the morning and swimming in the afternoon. we haven't been swimming in almost a month and i have missed it immensely. i can't wait!

his actual birthday, as some of you know, is on saturday. we will be spending that day contemplating life under a canopy of trees as we are headed into the woods for a little back to nature weekend. it will be our first annual camp cohen (as dubbed by this years attendee nicole). the weather looks like it might be warm and sunny, which could mean a dip in the lake and some more naked playing for the pooper, and some much needed relaxation for mom. oh, and of course there will be another cake for the actual day, this time though it won't be so clean. whip cream should be sufficiently messy enough!

so wish us luck with the weather and we will see you back here on monday with some photos of our adventure.

it doesn't always turn out like it should, but i do it anyway

let me start by saying thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. your words meant a lot to me and were nice to come home and find. i appreciate that it isn't always easy to find the words for a thing like that, thank you for them.

our weekend was great. it wasn't perfect camping but it is april, so it comes with the territory. it only rained as we slept and the tent didn't leak, so i think that means it was a success. we sat in front of the fire under a canopy of trees and ate smokies roasted on the flame and two bite brownies (opting for the simple non-gourmet meal to make our last minute prep effortless), cohen safely nestled in our arms fast asleep. as we slept closely together in the tent he would alternate between us, nuzzling into that space between our arm and torso, his head lying heavy for the warmth. in the morning it was wet but the showers had stopped so we packed up as the sun came out from the clouds.

our afternoon was spent at home napping together. when we awoke, sometime after 6, the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant shade of blue, so we decided to take the car out one last time, and off to the beach we went. despite living in vancouver, so close to so many beaches, we don't get to one very often. cohen loved being at the waters edge and standing in the sand, and i loved feeling the warmth of the late afternoon sun on my face.

our day ended with fresh pasta from granville island and some birthday cake, this year we chose a decadent chocolate cake from the granville island bakery, it wasn't a mistake.

i feel a little hazy tonight. i am not sure if it is just post camping fatigue or the start of a cold, but i will hope for the former and crawl into bed now with a book. tomorrow we will talk about parks and baths and other fun things.

here are some of the pictures from the weekend.

and if you look, you look through me

this sunday is maia’s birthday. i say it matter of fact like that because i am not sure how else to say it. i wish i knew the words large enough to convey the breadth of emotion that this time of year brings, but i am not sure they exist.

her first birthday was a tough one, the pain still incredibly real and sadness only a stones throw away. i spent it alone that year, outside in the sun. marko didn’t want to go out, staying in bed was his wish, and so it was. then last year we decided last minute to rent a car and spend the day in steveston with our new camera. cohen was there in my belly kicking at the sun that afternoon and the knowledge of him made the day brighter, easier somehow. this year he is here and he is healthy, and he has brought back a joy into our lives that we had forgotten. the pain isn’t as deep anymore. cohen didn’t replace her, he didn’t make us forget, he just reminded us that it is possible to be happy, that it is possible to have things work out in the end.

i don’t often talk about maia here or my experience with grief, opting instead to keep most of that time locked away in a private place. i sometimes wonder if it is because I am afraid of what others will think, that they might trivialize it or judge me for needing to speak, and sometimes i think it is because i don’t want to make others uncomfortable. truthfully though, i suspect it is just too private a thing to put into words, too close to the heart to make sense to anyone other than me.

i wrote the following journal entry in december of 2004, eight months after maia was born. it was the beginning of what turned out to be the hardest month of my life. i found it while looking through the past tonight and i thought i would share it, i don’t know why, maybe just as a way of saying what i feel without having to find new words.

"i don't know if it is the wet west coast weather we are having, but i am sure singing the blues tonight. i was trying to figure out just what it is, to pinpoint the exact problem so as to work out some sort of solution and i have to tell you it's tough. i have said it before but it's worth repeating, i used to believe that grief was a thing that came to you in a tangible form. like when my grandma died i was sad that she died and it was a very palpable sadness, i was aware of it's origins and most of the time i could continue on, it was only in the moments that i thought of her in which i felt sad. she was old, i knew that she would die one day. but when someone really close to you dies tragically, the grief is nothing like the grandma grief. this other grief becomes you, without you even acknowledging it.

do i think about maia every five minutes? no i guess i don't, or maybe i do and don't realize it, but my life has become this enormous void. this emptiness is all pervasive. i can be sitting reading a funny book and just start crying, and when marko says why? i sputter out; i don't know i am just so sad. i am so sad i don't even remember what it was like to not be sad. i am so sad that even in the happy moments it is lurking behind the smile. i have become one of those people who are constantly asked, are you alright, because this hole inside me is visible to others. it prevents me from moving ahead. some days i think the only thing that will fill the hole is another baby. to have an outcome that contradicts the first. but what if, like so many other things, it turns out i am wrong? don't get me wrong, it has gotten better. i guess the difference is that before, months ago when this was all still new, i thought when people said it gets better, they meant it would go away, well not go away but that somehow i could salvage a piece of my old life out of the rubble. but the truth is it gets better because you grow accustomed to the idea of the loss, you absorb it, digest it and continue. but it sits inside of you and affects everything you do.

i guess tonight i am just feeling particularly affected. i just wish more than anything i could go back to the way things were. as the year comes to a close i find myself asking...can i give it back? i would give just about anything to have you say yes, on nights like tonight i would even give back the memory of her."

i now know that i wouldn’t give back the memory. it is still one of my most prized possessions. a day that came and changed me forever, in a million different ways that could never accurately be named.

she was born on earth day and every year i have managed to celebrate her birth outside. this year, after much fence sitting (and weather forecast watching), we have decided to take cohen camping overnight to a local provincial campground. i know it sounds crazy (and cold), but i couldn’t think of a better way to remember my daughter, the first baby i ever knew, then by sitting under a tree looking up at the sky.

looking for love in all the wrong places

i have been thinking a lot lately about traditions. my family would likely attest to the fact that i quite like them, the consistency, the ownership of something that is completely unique to us as a family. growing up i didn't have very many of them, but i can forgive that in my parents, it takes forethought and a desire to do it. maybe my mom did have it, i am not sure, but when i think back on that time i can only think of a couple.

as a family we ate quite healthy and junk food was frowned upon. as a result even the slightest of junk food was considered a treat. white sesame toast with peanut butter was to die for and chocolate milk was almost unheard of. this is a preface to one of the most memorable traditions which was that every easter my brothers and i were each given a box of sugary cereal. i remember hotly anticipating this event and waking up excited and ready for the unveiling of the cereal. if my mom had been paying attention, then she got us each the right one, the one we would have chosen. when she wasn't on her game she would give aaron one i wanted, and jealousy would ensue. that didn't happen very often though. i always thought it was funny that we all had friends that ate this type of cereal almost everyday and yet for us, it was like winning the lottery. aaron would eat his right away, if memory serves me correct, sometimes in one sitting (much like his response to halloween), but i tended to savour it, stretch it out and make it last.

there were others, the opening of one gift on christmas eve (although it was always the lame duck gift, as we didn't get to chose which one), saving the wishbone from the turkey at christmas to crack for luck later, and my birthday parties which always took place on our sundeck amongst my mom's brightly coloured summer blooms. now don't get me wrong, i am glad to have had some, but really these were rather mundane in the tradition department (well except the cereal, i quite like that one), so now that i am here in cohen's first year of life i find myself wondering what traditions we will create as a family.

one of the first ones we have decided upon involves his birthday. since it is in june, a month which typically brings alright weather to this part of the world, we have decided that we will make it a tradition to go camping on the weekend closest to the day. in the early years it will be car camping probably close to home, but i would like to think that as he gets older the trips could get more adventurous, more rugged and back country, perhaps with a camping gear gift given each year, so that one day he has enough good gear to carry the tradition on himself. i love to camp, and always have, i would like to pass that on to him, and i couldn't think of a better way to start.

so my question is, what traditions do you remember fondly as a child (and be prepared, i might steal them), or better yet, what traditions are you going to create for your family?

it was a walk in the park.

today smelled like camping. does anyone else out there do this? associate a smell with something more tangible. i do it all the time. it isn't the smell of a bonfire, it is the way halloween smells, and chistmas...well don't even get me started on all the smells that bring me there. i can't really describe the way camping smells, but if you have been, it is that smell in the morning when the ground is still damp from the night and it is early (in fact camping smell is very close to paper route smell, only older i suppose), it is the smell of newness, of nature. it is fitting that i smelled it today, the day which for me officially marked the beginning of spring. oh sure it was nice yesterday too, but today it was warm, take off you jacket and sit with the sun on your face warm. no false alarms, no thinking it is warm and then being frozen out at the park. no, today was perfect, and so to celebrate cohen and i ended up spending most of it outdoors. the morning was coffee with my friend sharon and her daughters imogen and genevieve followed by a trip to the park and then in the afternoon, after our midday siesta, we were back to a different park for swings and hanging out with atticus and marita. i may have spoke too soon, but perhaps for now the rainy days are behind us (knock on wood).

here are some pictures from our day, you will notice that cohen refused to look at the camera, he also has a bit of a rash from teething on his face, i think the two might be related. vanity, a babies best friend. that is okay though as atticus was cute enough for them both.