Rambo's Easter Tulips

This year, for the first time since becoming a parent, I didn't buy my children Easter outfits.  At first it was freeing not to have to think about finding 'fancy' clothes that both kids agreed to wear and shoes to match and I looked forward to a calm Easter morning in which we all picked out an outfit that was already in our closet before walking to church.  But as Easter inched closer it just felt strange.  While I know Easter isn't about the clothes, there's something about tradition and the grandeur of its celebration that I've known my life that makes that day as special as it really is.  And there's the bustle of that Sunday morning and the flurry that goes along with Easter baskets, candy, eggs, fancy clothes, looking forward to the return of flowers, major key music and an empty cross in the Sanctuary that is alive.  After all - it's about life - the whole lot of it; while we've been figuring out what it looks like to squeeze every ounce of living into our short time in Vancouver, I 'get' this sense of new life in a different way this year.  And our look toward Easter Sunday officially began on Good Friday, but that too looked different this year. 

Maybe it was my quest to fill my need for bright colors and springtime bursting all over that led to our Good Friday 'adventure', but I'm pretty sure the facebook popup ad had more to do with it than anything.  There's a blog here the Miss604 (www.miss604.com) - and it details events throughout the greater Vancouver area.  I was intrigued when the headline 'Vancouver Tulip Festival 2014' came across my news feed and went about looking at our options for a weekend jaunt.  The weather for our four day weekend looked abysmal at first, but when we woke on Friday it was sunny and clear and beautiful.  We knew that Friday was the day to head for the flowers.  After Philip and Lydia made breakfast, I packed a picnic and we were off.  Thanks to Philip's navigational skills I learned that we had about a 1.5 hour drive to the tulips ("Greater" Vancouver is pretty big); we plugged the address into our GPS and headed East.  Having never really explored in this direction I looked forward to our trek through places like Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Harrison.  We followed the computerized voice exactly.  I mean exactly.  She announced we had arrived at our destination just as we came across a wide spot in the road next to what I originally thought was a path.  I thought nothing of it as the website had forewarned that the parking area was 1 km from the tulip fields and we were prepared for a bit of a walk.  Just to be sure this was the place, we drove past it and wound up a little mountain, turned around and came back down to the same wide spot in the road.  There were several cars there as well, so in my head it made sense.  At this point, however, I must reiterate my absolute lack of navigation abilities - I blindly trust the GPS when it comes to trips like this - and today I'm deeply grateful that Philip is infinitely better than I when it comes to directions.

Philip pulled over, got out of the car, walked to a small stand of metal mailboxes (apartment style mailboxes) that were cemented into the ground and found a note: "If you are looking for the tulips, this is not the place.  Here are the directions..."  Well hell's bells.  Sure enough, I plugged the SAME ADDRESS into Google Maps and we were led to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT place.  Not to worry - we had our bearings now and we were on our way.  We saw a jam of traffic on a street parallel to ours and thought nothing of it.  It appeared we had about 6 km further before our turnoff and we were doing fine.  However, that parallel road veered right and we had to merge with that traffic jam.  At this point, we're past our typical lunchtime, there are no places to get something to drink in sight, we are down to half of one of our bottles of water and there are no bathrooms in sight.  The kids had begun to get antsy and pick at each other and Philip and I were beginning to get testy.  And we found ourselves stuck.  Words became short, tempers flared a bit and we weren't moving.  At all.  We were so still that I got out of the car, walked calmly and slowly to the trunk, pulled out the picnic, walked back to the car and doled out lunch before we moved an inch.  Then we saw some folks turning left as if they knew a secret passage to the 'valley of the tulips' (that's really what it's called) and we decided to give it a go.  We traveled briefly down the road on which we turned left, then turned right and found ourselves stuck smack in another traffic jam - parallel to the first.  And were still 4 km from our turnoff to the elusive valley of the tulips.  So we bagged it; yep - turned around and decided to ride up into the mountains that were close.  On the way we found a gas station, got our sodas (sort of a victory celebration) and never saw a single tulip - not even one.

The mountains were lovely - we hoped to glimpse some tulips from the highway but saw nothing.  We travelled a ways and then headed back west, down the mountain.  Philip and I were bummed about not seeing the tulips - I had built up this idyllic scene in my head in which this would become our new Easter 'thing' - we had packed the good camera and the tripod even.  I had visions of photos of our children frolicking through fields of tulips and a lovely picnic surrounded by the colors and flowers that Spring brings to the lifeless winter landscape.  Hopes dashed.  Our picnic was partially silent in the car with dry throats and taillights creating our ambiance.  Lovely.  The only tulips we saw that day were the ones our lovely neighbor delivered to our door the previous night, the ones outside our building, the ones near on a corner near a Wal-Mart and later, the ones on the way to school.  Harrumph. 

Tulips from our neighbor

Tulips on the way to school

All, however, was not lost.  As luck would have it, nature called just before the exit to Hope, British Columbia.  We stopped at the Visitors' Center and as we walked toward the front door, there was a wooden painted scene with the face cut out so you could take your own photo and 'be' Rambo.  Having never seen that movie it seemed weird to me, but Philip remembered that Rambo had been filmed right here in Hope!  Now to this former church worker the irony of this entire situation was thick.  Here we were in Hope on Good Friday having not seen any flowers - it made me wish I was responsible for sharing a children's story at Fort Hill Presbyterian Church again.  And here I was taking photos of my children posing as Rambo when I had planned to capture their carefree spirits in the tulips.  We dutifully took their photos and drove around the quaint little town planning to return and explore their old railway tunnels once weather permitted that we do so.  We got home, and thanks to Netflix, showed the kids the first little part of the movie so they could see the town on film and Philip and I finished the movie after they went to sleep that night. 

We hunted eggs on Saturday and I remembered fondly last year's egg hunts at Fort Hill - glow sticks in the youth room for older kids on Friday and eggs ALL OVER the Sanctuary for preschoolers on Saturday.  And I thought about the new life that Sanctuary saw with kids running all over it and under pews looking for eggs to trade in for goodie bags.  We went to Central Presbyterian Church on Easter Sunday and sang traditional Easter hymns in our not-brand-new-Easter-ensembles and we came home for lunch.  And I was grateful for this piece of familiarity in this new land; grateful for friends who host such fun events; grateful that my children were able to race with plastic eggs in spoons and marvel at the surprise of finding a quarter in an egg; grateful for bright spaces with springtime flowers hanging on the wall that almost made the rainy day seem sunny.  But I also missed my SC Easter - with its smocked dresses, bowties, seersucker and permission to wear white pants.  I missed my family and the meal we shared after church while the kids got their fancy new church duds grass stained hunting eggs in my parents' backyard.  And I realized how different I feel from Rambo right now - with his survival instincts and strength to conquer any obstacle in front of him.  I realized that right now I don't feel all that strong and that's OK because we've found in each other and in people around us a sense of buoyance and I've been reminded of how great a partner I have in Philip and that neither of us can be or have to be strong all the time.  And that's life-giving.

Egg Relay - thanks Jeff & Sara for hosting! :)

"I FOUND A MONEY!!!!!"

This Easter, I came to understand that while I have much to learn from this new place and new life that I also have something to share - even if it's as simple as a good Southern meal and a good party.  So next year that's what we'll do; we'll cram folks into our little home and there will be ham, green beans, macaroni and cheese (like my grandma's), rolls and maybe even a bunny coconut cake.  And we'll celebrate life - and between now and then this Marcum family will continue to squeeze every ounce of living into our time here so that when we move on from this place we'll take pieces with us that will make our living somewhere else richer still.

The Birds and the Bees - oh my!

This weekend reminded me that this business of raising children is messy.  It's messy for a lot of reasons, but most especially because we don't bring up our children in a vacuum.  And we don't have the power to control every aspect of their life - especially as they grow older.  Our children are now 6 & 9 years old and if you'd asked me 10 years ago how their rearing would play out, my imagining of it would be wildly different than the reality so far.  They are growing into independent, strong, creative, sensitive children who are already into checking their facts - I'm so grateful they don't just take information at face value - even when it makes me nuts that they question me and my assertions.  Alas, we continue on our adventure - them learning how to grow into productive adults and we parents learning how to help foster them into that life.  This weekend, however, served as a reality check for me.  I hesitated to write this post, but this happened.  And it will happen in one way or another for any family no matter the makeup.  So I decided to share this post - for all of us parents are in the same boat as we navigate the uncharted waters of raising children - Lord knows each of them is different and there's no real, set formula that applies to all of them.  What is set is the fact that the little people entrusted to us are gifts and we have to do the best we can to help them grow into the adults they are meant to be.  And so I begin...

Many moons ago, while serving a church near Charleston, SC, I helped teach a class for parents titled "How to Talk with your Kids about the Birds & the Bees" - the irony was that I was not a parent at the time.  But, what I learned in preparing for that class is that it's imperative for us parents to make sure we're the primary sex educators of our children.  After all, the playground, school bus or a buddy's older sibling usually won't have the facts completely straight, so it's up to us to be sure the facts are right and that they're framed within our family's values.  Philip and I take this responsibility very seriously - especially having both a son and a daughter.  We've talked about how we'll handle this sensitive subject making sure that our messages are consistent and that he and I are on the same page before we say anything to the kids.  The other thing that class taught me was that, as parents, we need only answer the questions our kids ask - no need to volunteer extra information - if they want more info, they'll ask.  In that vein, we've told both our children that we'll always answer their questions truthfully and that they are welcome to always ask us anything.  The only qualifier is that sometimes we have to wait until we're home or away from others to have sensitive conversations out of respect for ourselves and other people.  Lastly - what I learned from that class is that children's questions often don't fit our timeline; instead, they fly at us out of left field without us having any sort of preparation and we've got to seize the opportunity for communication, put on our big kid pants, dig in our heels and answer the best we can when they ask.

Preamble finished.

Last year, while Philip was in Port Hardy I was putting a tired Henry to bed and I, too, was worn out and ready to turn off my brain for the night when he piped up, "So mom, what exactly do you do when you have sex?"  Seriously???  Brain back on - and quick.  "Well, Henry, what makes you ask that question?" I asked.  He replied, "Somebody was talking about it on the bus and I want to know what it is."  Hmmmm, "Henry, do you really want to know?"  And he said the one word I didn't want him to say, "Yep."  So I put on my clinical hat, explained the mechanics and closed with the fact that sex is something intended for people who are married and that it's very complex and not to be seen as casual or simple.  Then I started singing our regular bedtime songs, very quickly, so I could catch my breath and stop the talking for a little while.  After all, in my head this scenario would have happened over ice cream with Philip and they would bond and go play golf or something.  Alas - here we were - smack in the middle of 'out of the blue' and when we finished singing he said, "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard in my life."  And I assured him that it was totally OK to think that.

Fast forward to this Saturday.  We'd spent the day on the mountain - the kids and Philip skiing, me spying on them skiing, hiking in snow and reading.  We got home tired, cold and wet.  Kids immediately got showered and into jammies and Philip was on the phone.  While he was catching up about politics, sports and whatever, Lydia sidles up to me and asks, "So mom, have you ever had sex?"  SHUT THE FRONT DOOR - ARE YOU SERIOUS????  YOU'RE SIX!!!!!  But what I said was, "What exactly does that mean?" to which she responded, "I need to tell you in your ear."  Ummm - OK.  She whispered away and she was dead on and I affirmed her understanding followed, naturally, by asking where she'd learned this information.  She told me movies - which I let slide but I knew it was complete hogwash because we watch movies WITH her and knew we hadn't gone there.  Philip and I have super-hero-lightning-quick reflexes even flipping through channels so that we, I can confidently say, have NOT exposed her to these images.  Later she told Philip that she had learned from a friend on the playground...so here we go...  She wouldn't drop it, and asked again [emphatically this time], "But have you done it?"  Well, folks, we have two children... She cackled with laughter and declared that she just had  to tell her brother - which prompted my next speech.  I told her sex was designed for people in married relationships and she wanted to know about the whole baby part so we got into the clinical explanation of how babies are made and that this is a conversation that needs to stay in our family because it's up to families to decide when they have this talk and it's not a school conversation, blah, blah, blah.  All this went down before Philip was finished on the phone.  But - we'd promised our kids to answer their questions truthfully.  Aren't I a lucky girl...just not as lucky as Philip.  He followed up gently on the conversation - it's important to us that our children know we share important information with each other - and that's when we learned about the playground conversation that spawned her initial question.

Sunday morning (the morning after this little chat with Lydia) we woke up and all four of us were sitting at our dining table having breakfast.  One thing I love about our apartment is where our dining table sits - it's toward the corner of the room, nestled between two walls of floor to ceiling windows.  The sunsets are incredible and we have a view of mountains and the sea.  The coveted chair is the one that points directly at the corner of the windows - the one that provides the best view.  Living in a city, specifically in a high rise building, we're surrounded by other high rise buildings - this has never been an issue.  We were talking about our day - preparing to go to church, planning our afternoon, high fiving the kids for finishing their homework on Saturday morning so we didn't have to worry about it - then it all went south.  Henry happened to have the coveted seat this morning (we have to keep track of who's turn it is) and he said - "What's going on over there?"  I glanced and really thought someone was being hurt - there were a couple of people in the hotel next door and they were moving in an odd sort of way in front of the sliding glass door and I was about ready to pick up the phone to call for help.  And then...we all clued in at the same moment...and I raced to our windows to pull the curtains (super-hero reflexes don't apply as well to curtain closing, it seems).  Alas - the damage was done - curtains didn't get closed before the couple disappeared and Philip and I were faced with the fact that now our children had been exposed to full frontal nudity and behaviors that can go with said wardrobe.  I don't know who was more scarred - the kids or me.  But we discussed the importance of modesty and again reiterated the marriage rule and that this wasn't a conversation to have with friends and that this was something other people aren't intended to see.  We went on to church and lunch and then had a great afternoon in the city.  We saw the celebrated cherry blossoms, finished up taxes, walked all over the city and ended up at a half-price appetizer dinner at an outdoor café - yummy.  Then sweet Henry piped up, "I'm still pretty freaked out about what we saw this morning."  Um yea.  "Me too, honey," I told him.  And then the questions started again and Philip and I went with it - answering to best of our ability and praying that the message we're trying to convey is sinking in.

So there you have it folks - the birds and the bees - about as honestly as our family can make them.  God knows it's not easy but I've got to say that I'm glad to be on this side of 'the talk' - at least the first one - and am grateful for the framework our faith creates for this and lots of other difficult conversations.  And I'm grateful it's not just one talk, but that we've started a conversation and our kids feel like they can come to us about anything [regardless of how awkward it makes us feel].  I'm grateful that I don't have to anticipate what it's going to be like when they ask or when we sit them down to tell them because we've gotten past that.  Turns out, 'the talk' pairs well with chicken wings, short ribs and a big ole beer for mama and daddy.  I'm deeply grateful to have Philip as my partner, with whom I can team up for these conversations.  And we can honestly say that we've embraced the call to be our kids' primary educators - in this realm, and hopefully all other ones too.

Outtakes + Highlights Part Deux

After Philip read my last post he asked me how I could have forgotten about some other little vacation gems - they had to be documented for future use in our family and so I share them here. Oh - and I added a story about a dead bird - it has completely nothing to do with our vacation but bears recording as I'm sure it'll come up in a therapy session one day.

The forgotten stories:

One of the tricky parts about travelling from one country to another is how our banking systems talk (or don't talk) to one another.  Fortunately, despite our bank's non-conversant cards with American ATMs, they've got a partnership with Bank of America.  That means that any Bank of America ATM will do when we're in the USA and since Canadian currency isn't very helpful in the US, it was important for us to find a BOA ATM shortly after we arrived in California.  We were prepared - we had scouted out ATM locations in relation to our hotel and finding the closest one was our first order of business when we awoke on our first morning in Long Beach.  We got to the ATM after a brief search, entered our info, requested our cash, heard it dispense, BUT IT NEVER CAME OUT.  Seriously.  We heard the bills shuffling inside the machine, the receipt said we'd withdrawn a chunk of change but there was NO cash to show for the transaction.  Immediately we put our card back in, checked the balance and it showed we had completed the transaction.  Mild panic ensued as we called the number on the machine and stood around it like armed guards in the event it decided to spit out our money.  Thankfully the person on the phone said they showed there was a machine error and had fixed the accounting so our balance was correct.  Then we had to find a second machine...we hoofed it and, of all things, Hooters was our landmark by which we'd find the next ATM.  We got there, it worked fine and our balance was correct.  Order had been restored and heart function was back to normal within a couple of hours.

Fast forward to the evening of our first full day on the ship - if you've been on a cruise before you know that there's one or two nights during your voyage that are designated 'elegant' evenings.  Now - elegant is clearly a broad term as you see everything from knit mini dresses to prom gowns.  Not that I usually report my wardrobe choices, but it bears noting in this situation - I had taken white dress pants (forgive me for the heresy against the Southern rule about not wearing white pants before Easter - we were in the Mexican Riviera and Easter's late this year) and a deep purple shirt/pancho ensemble.  We'll come back to this picture in a moment.  Naturally - the idea of dressing up fancy (read - shirt with a collar that you tuck in and wear with khaki shorts/belt or a sun dress with leather not plastic flip flops) was of no interest to our children.  And part of why we chose a cruise was the kids' programming, so it was up to them to whether to eat in the dining room or with camp friends every night except Philip's birthday night - that would be our family dinner night.  And we had breakfast and lunch together daily so it wasn't like we weren't seeing each other.  Around 930 that evening we picked up the kids and were on our way back to our rooms.

Here's the point where I mention that we know Lydia gets airsick - found that out the hard way the first time we flew to Vancouver and we have an oh-so-lovely-bought-at-the-only-store-open-before-a-midnight-red-eye hot pink LA t-shirt to prove it.  This was our second cruise - there had been no signs of seasickness on either and she's spent time on smaller boats with no symptoms.

Our rooms were in the middle of the ship and we were at the far end of the hallway leading to them.  Lydia proclaims, "I think I'm going to throw up," just in time for me to look at her and for Philip to grab her camp art projects and then the heaving began.  And now here's the point where I remind you of my wardrobe choice...and of the fact that my motherly instinct when faced with a sick child is to reach for them to catch them - or whatever they're throwing my way.  And I caught it - and had to carry it to the middle of the ship before disposing of it - at which point Lydia proclaimed, "I feel sooooo much better!"  That was definitely a relief but my pants thought otherwise.  And I learned about the beauty of the onboard laundry facilities and thanked the good Lord above for whoever was smart enough to make that a possibility and for the fact that we had actually brought laundry detergent with us just in case.

Switching gears a bit (you're welcome) I've always wanted to see whales in the water doing their dance and by some sort of miracle, all four of us happened to be looking out the window in one of our rooms when a whale breached!  We saw the spray from its blowhole, the curve of its back and its tail as it returned to the depths of the sea.  We stayed glued to the spot and saw that same whale do its thing 4 or 5 times and it was amazing.  I told Philip we'll have to book a whale watching excursion in Vancouver during migration season because they really are amazing animals and they weren't the only wildlife we encountered.  We saw a dolphin swimming next to the ship, we saw the sea lions AND the kids held an iguana and a macaw!  We don't need to stinkin' zoo!  It was a hoot.

From one animal experience to another, however.  This isn't vacation related, but we've talked so very much about this story that I've got to record it so as never to forget it.  We were walking home from school with friends about a week or so  before we left for vacation and walked past a dead bird.  When you have a 13 year old, 9 year old, a seven year old and 6 year old with you, a dead bird incites quite a reaction.  There was no simple acknowledgement of its presence and a quite moving on from its carcass - oh no, there were screams, groans and several sets of legs running away.  We avoided this route to/from school for the next couple of days.  However, about 3 days later I needed to stop at our bank's ATM for field trip money or something and there's an ATM in 7-11 on the corner of Robson and Cardero Streets - and the bird had been seen on Cardero.  We got the money, and I had assured the kids that the bird would certainly be gone by now - confident that some eater of dead things had carted it away.  No sooner that Henry said, "Oh it is gone - it was right there," did the bone of a bird leg with the TALON STILL ATTACHED fall right in front of us.  This time, I screamed - as did the kids - and I'm pretty sure we each had a minor cardiac moment.  It was disgusting, creepy and bizarre all at the same time.  As luck would have it, though, we walked that same route home that afternoon with the same friends with whom we'd first discovered said dead bird, and that bony talon was still there and the reaction was no less disappointing than the first time we'd come across the rest of that bird's body - God rest its soul.  We walk that route still, and every so often one of the kids brings up, "Remember that time we saw that dead bird???," and we all shudder, walk a little quicker and laugh at how we were almost beaned in the head with a bloody bone...who'd a thunk?

Moving back to the land of the living...our trip ended on a lovely note - we spent our final night in Los Angeles and I like to think that Henry was dreaming of the fun he'd had because just before I fell asleep I heard him laugh his indelible, belly laugh in his sleep.  That, my friends, I pray is the soundtrack to every life experience we have as a family and every one my children have independent of Philip and me.  It was beautiful.