Vacation Snapshots

We got home Sunday from a week in the White Mountains with my family. It was chaotic and fun, exhausting and wonderful. I laughed a lot, cried a little.


As I packed the car, I couldn't help remembering our vacation last summer. It was just Brian and me and a baby in my belly. There was no car seat, no stopping to give the baby a bottle, no need for diapers or stroller or Pack & Play. Last year in the car on the way to Maine, the empty backseat made me cry. This year, I kept peeking back, reaching back, making sure Kathleen was breathing okay in her new car seat even as her head lolled forward in sleep.
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Seven adults + 5 kids five and under + one condo = utter chaos
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I stayed up too late every night of vacation. My sisters and I, and some nights my mom, would play games: cribbage, Pictionary, 100,000 Pyramid, Farkle, Taboo . . . and we laughed. We tend to get incredibly silly when we are all together and at some point somebody says, "Stop, I'm gonna wet my pants." I remembered how a few weeks after Henry died, I visited with my family. We played games, and we laughed until we almost peed our pants. For me then, the laughter was simply a release of the stress and the sorrow. I was all cried out. The next day my back and belly hurt from the exertion. I didn't feel guilty for laughing, but I didn't feel happy either. This vacation, I laughed a lot. I laughed hard. And I felt it.
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My family took Kathleen for a day so that Brian and I could go for a hike together. The mountain we chose, Mount Tremont, wasn't particularly challenging, but Brian was fighting off a summer cold, we're both out of shape, and it was convenient. And we had tried to climb it before. The last time was on snowshoes, about a month after Henry died. We lost the trail somewhere along the way and decided to turn back. I remember the mountain being cold and bleak and beautiful. I remember me being cold and numb and worn out. (There are no pictures from that winter climb. The first pictures on my camera for 2008 are from March.)
This time all was green and wet. Mushrooms flourished. We saw frogs and snakes. It was sweaty hot. We summited. While we ate lunch, I watched a flock of dragonflies, huge ones as big as my had flitting and drooping about. And I thought of Henry and the other babies I know who have left too soon.


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Homecoming
We got home in the early afternoon, so I didn't mind that Henry's lamp was dark. It was after the bustle of unpacking and getting Kathleen to bed, when the house was still, that I sat an missed Henry a little more. Somehow he always feels a little more missing, a little more gone when I come back from being away.
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Despite the thread of grieving and Henry throughout these memories, it was not a sad time, mostly. The missing was always there, but not always insistent on being recognized. I enjoyed my baby girl. I loved watching her with her cousins and look forward to the fun she will have with them as she gets a little bigger.










Our first family vacation