dear family

Quiet

"How you live your days, is how you live your life." Annie Dillard

It's been two years today since we departed on our RTW adventure, a fact that's truly hard to believe. The planning, experiencing, and reflecting on the trip has occupied a cozy corner of our brains for awhile now. Life is dynamic and constantly morphs and changes though. Our little ones aren't so little anymore: Grant is driving, Claire is a teenager, Paige will be in first grade. Our travels have been closer to home.

My altar sits in a quiet corner of our bedroom, where it can fight back a stack of books or pile of laundry. It's a reminder to breathe deeply, dream, be creative, imagine places I'd like to go and remember places I've been. This blog has been a place for me to visit too, but at the moment it is our family's ultimate scrapbook and record of this important time in our life. My plans are to return to the blog and post just periodically. It will still exist quietly, and should come back to life and bustle with activity when we start planning our move to Bali someday (afterall, we're still dreamers).

Until then, I'll keep the Annie Dillard quote close to heart, "How you live your days is how you live your life." May your days, and lives, be filled with adventure!

 

Self-Portraits

Tolovana Beach, Oregon.

"Billion +1" at Billions and Billions of People project. Portland, Oregon.

 

"The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart." ~Julien Green (writer, 1900-1998)

 

Our travels haven't been far this year, but they can always go deep. As part of this journey of life, we should all accept the challenge of a self-portrait somewhere along the way.

On this occasion of my birthday, I've taken a good look and had to face the fact that I'm not a twenty/or thirty year old any more (dang it!). It was a bit of a shock to see the woman in front of me...until I started looking deeper. My self-portraits are starting to look at the edges of myself, and my reflections, both in the mirror and within my head. Inner excavation can be the most difficult pursuit, yet the most rewarding. What I hope to find as I look deeper is a gift to myself: to be young at heart.

Daily Rhythms

January 17, 2012

January 19, 2012

January 20, 2012

 

“Life isn't a matter of milestones but of moments” —Rose F. Kennedy 

 

One resolution of 2012 is to be more present and in the moment, so with the nudge from Catherine Just in her Soul*Full workshop, I've started documenting the passing of time. Her challenge was to begin a project of daily photographs at roughly the same time of day. Our moment is simply trying to get to school. It was a fun week to begin: we had a snow storm and buckets of rain. Time is going by quickly and I'm trying to remind myself that the best moments aren't always the grandest ones.

Paris Perfection

Jardin des Tuileries, Paris.

Hotel Le Meurice

Jardin du Luxembourg

Le Rostand

The thing is, Paris just seems like a dream. Walking around, you feel like you're just a pin prick away from the bubble being burst....

Paris Near Miss

 

 

Tuileries Garden, Paris.

After pulling off our RTW adventure with a family of five, I felt secure that a quick trip to Paris would be no problem at all. Afterall, packing for one would be a piece of cake. What a mistake: Just three days before departure I grabbed my passport to see it was expired! A whirlwind of activity, booked (then cancelled) trips to the nearest State Department office in Seattle to get a new passport, sleepless nights and stress-filled days, it was Travel Visa Pro that got my passport FAST. However FedEx lost it enroute back to me and I missed my flight. Making lemonades from lemons, I at least got to stay with my family and celebrate a special young woman's bat mitzvah before catching a flight two days later. Paris had to wait, but that's the beautiful thing about Paris....it will be there for you.

Road Trip through the Clay

Bryce Canyon Rim      

"Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning."

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "Wind, Sand and Stars"

The otherworldy hoodoos and arches of these national parks in Utah were so inspiring. It was as if the landscape could shake and rattle you to your core and awaken an artist within. The shapes that miraculously were created over thousands of years were a reminder that perhaps the clay I am made of may have "dried and hardened" as I settle firmly into middle age, but travel still never fails to shake me up and remind me there's still time to become the person I was meant to be.

One last summer road trip via Las Vegas to Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Moab and Arches National Park gave us 1,200 miles to marvel, laugh, and celebrate Grant's 15th birthday along the way. All those hours on the road, plus glorious natural wonders put life into perspective and set us all up for September and some new beginnings—kindergarten, high school and doing our best to be our truest selves. 

Arches National Park, Utah.     

Photography has "inhabited" Paige early.   

Summertime

"Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun."

                                                                            —Kahlil Gibran

As always, summer approaches and I imagine lazy days on the river with afternoons on the porch sipping lemonade or moroccan mint tea. Our summer was less of the lazy, more of an adventure. It was the feeling of brisk waters off of Oregon's coast, the taste of sunshine-infused strawberries picked straight from the field, paddleboards, inflatable rafts down the river, kites, and classic all-american road trips. It was a summer full of friends, and one of the best connections was 14-year-old Grant meeting up with a buddy he had last seen when they were little boys "ruling" the campground. It was a joy to see how they didn't skip a beat—a foot taller, with voices a few decibels lower, boys will still be boys. And summertime brought out the kid in all of us.

 

 

 

 

 

Age: 14 (almost 15)            

Mono...log

Beach of Floras Lake, southern Oregon

On calm days along the Oregon Coast, you can't imagine the force the sea needs to throw logs like matchsticks upon the beach. How long had this stump been floating along before finding its resting spot here on the hot sand? Blanched by the sun and softened by salt water, it only has a matter of days before this tranquil scene will be transformed into one far different. Thirty mile-per-hour winds and shorebreaking waves will soon snatch it, and cast it back out to the Pacific where it will travel and land (perplexing beachcombers like me) on another shore.

 

Fourth of July

One thing that scared me

Ed at sunset, South Padre Island, Texas.

Cheryl, South Padre Island, Texas.

 

"Do one thing every day that scares you." —Eleanor Roosevelt

This quote is a reason that foreign travel is so wonderful. The opportunity to be educated, mesmerized, exhausted, and yes, scared, is outside your door each and every day. Our family adventure gave us many more opportunities for amazement than fear, but back in the routine of daily life I had wondered, "Where will the next challenge await?"

For me, the answer was kiteboarding. Over the last couple of years, I had some success on the water, but this week on South Padre Island was the place I faced the music. It was time to seal the deal or to go back to enjoying the sport from the beach.

I focused in the water trying to steady the board on my feet as 30 mph winds whipped my 5.5 meter kite. I was scared and angry at myself for putting myself in this position. Afterall, I'm not twenty anymore. Then, my mind flashed to five-year-old Paige trying to learn the backstroke. She sank beneath the water with her eyes wide and fearful, then the self-professed mermaid-girl sat at on the side of the pool declaring, "I don't like swimming, I don't want to swim again."

When was the last time I was faced with that kind of challenge? Here I felt the fear of failure, and for me it was bigger than kiting. It was the separation between being young, ambitious, and athletic versus a person who would be a spectator from now on.

I thought of my little girl, and how she went back to the water. I thought of how it has been a lifetime since I learned to swim, read, and ride a bike.  She has those challenges ahead of her, and while not as clear, there are still challenges ahead for me. She dove in, and I dove in. We both skimmed on the water. She on her back and smiling, and me on a board sailing across the Laguna Madre Bay.