Back when Haley was 11, we had some stand-by plane tickets fall into our lap. Kendell and I discussed and debated where to go; we wanted to do something together, just him and me, but Kaleb was still just a baby, barely one, and our options for leaving him with someone else were pretty limited. Instead, we decided that Haley and I would take a trip together, and thus the idea for the 11-year-old trip was born. Each kid, we decided, would get to take a trip with just me sometime during the year they were eleven. Haley got to go to Niagara Falls. This summer, Jake is eleven, and his 11-year-old trip sort of fell into our lap, too.

Only: Haley, who is perhaps part mermaid or siren or fish—she loves the beach so much she must be part sea-creature—would have never forgiven me for Jake getting nine days on the beach. And Jake didn't even hesitate, but agreed that she could come along on the trip. He wasn't getting me all to himself anyway; we went with my mom and my sister, plus her four daughters, one son-in-law, two granddaughters and her brother- and sister-in-law, their children and one son-in-law. It was a big group, not too conducive for only one-on-one time, but we couldn't have done something so fabulous as a week on a beach in Mexico any other way.

I'm still pondering how to write about the way our trip benefited my relationship with Jake. As that thread of narrative works its way out in my head, another one is more clear. Of the 19 people in our group, seven were between the ages of 11 and 20. Being around so many adolescent types brought back quite a few memories of things I'd forgotten from when I was an adolescent type. Well, that and my mom, who brought up the time my friend Jennifer and I stole her credit card and headed off to Lake Powell for Spring Break. I had to correct her on one point: it wasn't a credit card but a gas card I stole, and the punishment was that we had to live on convenience store food for five days. (I still feel a little twinge of relief mixed with annoyance—"I can eat! Doritos again!"—at the sight of a Phillips 66 gas station.) She also brought up the fact that I once stole an entire book of checks, no doubt to fund nefarious projects. (Probably quite a few, but I know I used the majority of them to buy music.)

Obviously my horrible teenage years have not yet been forgotten by my mother. And who could blame her? I'm just glad that things like fruity drinks and walks on the beach were able to distract her from telling all the stories. And that, thankfully, she doesn't have a clue about the truly terrible tales I could tell.

I wasn't really crazy about Haley and Jake hearing my wilder stories, especially since I'd forgotten the details and so would've never brought them up on my own. My nieces listened, a little wide-eyed, to the tales of Amy's Dark Years (seriously what my mom calls them) and my children looked astounded. Almost as shocked as when they first saw me walk out of the bathroom with curly hair. I used to wear my hair scrunched and curly, but I changed to straight after I got married. I realized, seeing the look on their faces, that they'd never seen me go curly, but in the heat and humidity, not to mention my general vacation laziness, straightening was just not going to happen.

(A blurry shot of me + curly hair + Jake at dinner.) Plus, I was vacationing with my mom and sister, without my husband, and with no work or laundry or yard or really any responsibilities. I felt a little bit more connected to the Amy I used to be, the braver one, the freer one. The one with curly hair. And it wasn't only the curly hair and the crazy stories showing my kids a side of me they've not seen. It was my devil-may-care attitude. You want another pinata or mango smoothy? It's happy hour, get one for me too! You want to see the ocean at night? Let's go right now! Want to try to speak in Spanish to the jewelery-store vendors? Well, even if you won't, I will! I tried mole (ehhhh), went body surfing in my swimsuit bottoms and sports bra (best-ever way to cool off from a long, hot, humid run, even if I did finish with a compact lining of sand between my skin and my dubious outfit), succumbed to a free foot massage from a complete stranger. And, you know: I laughed. I talked to my mom like I haven't in years. I forgot all about cell phones and kitchen anxiety. I relaxed into my vacation as if it were a hammock between shady trees, dropping everything that makes my stomach hurt next to my shoes and belt and work clothes.

I'm glad my children got to see me like that. Two of them, at least. I wish I could know how to be my vacationing self all the time, wish I could be the relaxed, confident, courageous person I used to be. Because, despite the obviously stupid motivations and methods, I didn't used to let anyone stop me. When I wanted things, I strode out, found a way, and got them. But now—now that what I want is much larger and more important than spring breaks at Powell or the latest music release—I let myself get stopped. All the time, I let myself get stopped. Fear of shaking the boat, of failing, of my own weakness stops me.

Maybe, though, the cat is out of the bag. Maybe by reconnecting with my curly-haired self, I've reconnected with some of the courage I used to have. Maybe I'll stop being stopped. Maybe I'll start.

Maybe tomorrow I'll scrunch my hair.

about this trip, and then I'll try to stop writing about it:

Right now, sitting on the balcony, writing in my journal, listening to the waves crash in the dark. Out on the beach there's a jazz band playing 1920's tunes and laughing. My skin is sticky from the humid air; the trumpet speaks, the waves breathe. Just this one moment.

Is reading people's vacation posts like looking at their vacation photos? I think the impulse to share "here's what I did on my trip" images (whether words or pictures) comes from the desire to bring everyone you know along with you, to not have anyone miss out. But photos and even words don't get it completely right, because it's not the same as being here. I always bring along a journal when I travel, because I want to write down the things I might forget or can't photograph. Like the music that was playing in the garden restaurant we ate at on Thursday night. A sort of big-band, jazzy sound, the woman's voice rich and strong; it took me more than a few numbers to notice that the lyrics she was singing were old alternative songs. I've never heard a weirder version of "Personal Jesus." Or how, at the place where we're staying, every day on the ash tray near the elevator, there's a red hibiscus flower draped very carefully across the sand---but only on the fourth-floor ash tray. The guy at the beach yesterday who was selling silver jewelery; he would not believe me when I told him that I only had forty pesos with me and so couldn't buy the beautiful little bangle he was trying to sell me. Finally I stood up from my towel and said "Listen. I forgot to bring my money with me. I only have forty pesos. I'm not trying to bargain or to waste your time. You can take my forty pesos or not." Crazy!

Still, as I write this (the morning surf huge off our balcony, and there's someone swimming in the water just behind the waves, which is crazy to me), I'm acutely aware that writing about your vacation is not usually beneficial for anyone but yourself, unless you can find something that has a point beyond describing what you did. That thing that good travel writers manage to do. I'm hoping I can achieve that here, but if not, feel free to click away to a better blog!

On Thursday, my mom and sister, Haley, Jake and I went snorkeling. We went to Cabo Pulmo, which is a national marine park. We went via van right across the desert, through the mountains and the little towns where people really live. The difference between the tourist part of Baja and the residential part is stark. People live in these tiny square homes, coated with brightly-colored adobe, with a big water tank on the top. The water is heated by the sun, and that's their hot water. Those with ranches have their cows in their front yard. It's hot here, and dry (rains about four times a year); no air conditioning, obviously, or any of the comforts of how Americans live.  The landscape is sere, grey and brown and white with occasional flashes of green or yellow, yet beautiful, but I think you have to love the desert to see the beauty in it. 

Our guide, Claire, was from France. She’d lived in the Bahamas with her boyfriend, taking tourists out on scuba and snorkeling tours, until they were asked to run the tours at Cabo Pulmo. She and her boyfriend live in this tiny town—population 80, not counting the twenty-five or so tourists that come each day—snorkeling and scuba-ing and telling people about the environment. Suzette asked me if I could live like Claire, and I decided that yes, if I didn’t have kids, I would love to live like her for a year or two. Suzette asked her if she liked the Bahamas or Cabo Pulmo better, and she said that definitely Pulmo, because it is wilder and less developed. There are no big hotels there, no one trying to sell you trinkets on the beach, no spas or chlorinated pools. Just the barest form of survival, and wind and waves and water.

There was another girl, Jasper, on our boat who was also traveling with her boyfriend. They were going up and down the coastline, camping on beaches and getting up early to find the best surfing waves. They’d been living out of their tent and the occasional bed and breakfast for six weeks, since they’d graduated from college, but they were cutting the trip short because she had a job interview next week.

As the day progressed, and we snorkeled with sea lions (seriously! I snorkeled with sea lions!), gazed at coral reefs, reached out casual hands to tropical fish who were wary enough not  to let us touch them; as I watched Haley’s hair grow wilder and wilder in the wind until she looked like a surfer girl; as I tried to keep Jake, who strikes out fearlessly in nearly any environment, constantly in my eyesight so he wouldn’t drown or be beaten against the rocks the sea lions dove from; as I breathed in my snorkeling mask trying to keep my underwater claustrophobia at bay, a line from a poem by Mary Oliver kept coming into my mind: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

Of course, what I will do with my life is mostly decided, and I didn’t do anything amazing. I took the traditional route: marriage and children. I don’t regret any of that, of course, but I can say that I regret not doing anything wild before settling down. At least, not wild in the sense of Claire and Jasper. I didn’t ever have an adventure. Of course, that’s no one’s fault but mine and the choices I made, but I couldn’t help, watching my two oldest swimming, sleek in their wetsuits and brimming with possibility, that they will have adventures. I hope they get to experience something of the world, live on their own, live in other ways than just our staid existence.

There are so many lives a person could chose to live. I’m grateful I don’t live like the people do in the villages we saw, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never live the opulent opposite we see in the tourist side, either. I’m just right in the middle, boring and predictable. I can’t do much to change that, but I am filled with a renewed desire to encourage my kids to seek out adventure.

The first day of a vacation is always something strange. Orienting yourself to your new environment, figuring out how to cope with the absence of whatever it was you forgot to bring, figuring out the roads. After a long day of travel (two flights on two airlines and two freaked-out kids who were worried that the rest of our party wouldn't make it, and they did miss the first flight but met up with us on the second) and the barrage of people at the airport in Mexico (half a million of them asked us if we needed a taxi or a shuttle to our hotel), we figured out where the nearest Costco was. A Costco in Cabo San Lucas? Who knew! We loaded up on necessities and headed to the condo (my sister's time share, lest ye think that *I* could actually afford something as nice as this!). Here's the view we were greeted with, walking into our room:

Gorgeous, yes? That is the Sea of Cortez, which looks like other oceans but, somehow, feels different. More untouched by people, somehow. I went for a run this morning along the beach while Haley and Jake played in the waves with their cousin Madi. I found a gorgeous shell, saw a gigantic dead fish, dodged dog poop, and didn't even need my usual running tunes, since the music of the ocean was so entertaining.

Now we're off to sunscreen up and hit the pool. I never managed to get much of a suntan at home (because it's been raining pretty much non stop since the first of June), so hopefully I won't get sunburned. (I brought SPF 50!)

wanting to blog but feeling completely slammed by getting ready for our trip. So, this idea from Rilke will have to suffice:

"The greatest portion of fleetingness, frailty, and instability is a consequence of the not-having-been of so many people. It is not enough to have been born in order to be. One must splice oneself into some great circuit; but one must also insulate oneself, in order not to mischannel,  not to use up, not to lose the current that one carries."

Sometimes what he doesn't understand is that I don't fail at doing something because of laziness or because I forgot or because I was reading instead. Sometimes I don't get it done because I don't want to do it. And mostly I don't want to do it because of what it means. It didn't take me a year to finally get the stroller posted on ksl.com (Utah's version of Craig's List) because of laziness or forgetfulness or readerly-ness but because I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to get rid of the stroller because getting rid of the stroller meant I didn't need a stroller. It was the Last Thing. It was still in my garage. I had to move it out of the way to get the scooters out this spring. I saw it when I walked outside to get the paper. It was still a little tiny part of my life, even if it was in the periphery. A person with a stroller in her garage must have a baby in her life, right?

But my baby turned four last week. And I finally posted the stroller. And tonight a nice older woman came to buy it from me, just so she could have a stroller at her house for her new grandson. Just in case. And while I felt like it was going to a good home (which is something I desperately wanted for all my baby things), I still had to do that out-of-body thing to convince myself to let it go. I showed her how to fold it down and pop it back open again, how the seat cushion came off so she could wash it if she wanted. Then I pushed it down the driveway to her car. My last walk with my stroller.

And I know it's silly. I know it's dumb to be holding back tears (and bawling now) over a stroller. But being behind the stroller wheels again brought back so much: taking the three Bigs out for walks when they were all still little, Nathan in the stroller, Haley and Jake each holding onto a side; the time I took Nathan to Las Vegas with my mom and I discovered that a blue-eyed, white-haired baby in a stroller is a magnet for all grandmotherly Vegas types, who'd tear themselves away from their Keno games or their slot machines, just to goo; how even when Nathan was too old for the stroller, it became a sort of grocery cart for the library (you can fit a ton of books into an empty stroller; way easier than carrying them); then, later, pushing Kaleb in the same stroller, for hours in the summer evenings because he'd stop crying in the stroller; the time we had K. at Lagoon when he was barely two months old and he'd cry so hard, trying to pull himself up because he wanted to see what was happening around him; Kaleb sleeping in the stroller at Disneyland. And, more than anything, just exactly how it felt the first time I put him in the stroller and pushed it up and down the street, the mere fact of his physical existence---just that he existed and I got to push my own baby in the stroller again---nearly took my breath away.

It's a lot of baggage for one little stroller. A lot of memory to cram into one walk down the driveway. But it's gone, along with all the other baby things—the high chair, the infant car seat, the bath, the bouncy chair, the toys and boppy pillow and basket of toys. Along with little pieces of myself, too. The baby paraphernalia was part of how I mothered my babies, part of my identity as a mother. I don't need any of it anymore, just like I don't need nursing bras or that ability to function on two hours of sleep. I didn't need the stroller, either. Except for: it was still there, tangible proof that I really was once the mother of small human beings. As each baby thing leaves my home, the physical realities of babies goes with it.

After the nice older lady took the stroller home, I stood in my closet and cried a little bit. "It'll be nice to have that extra space in the garage," Kendell said, not noticing. "But I," I responded, succeeding valiantly at not letting my voice quiver, "but I want a baby. I still want a baby even though I know we can't have another, even though I'm too old and there's no room and it would be incredibly too complicated. I still want one." His response was a shudder and a head shake and a sigh. And I do know: my days of being a young mom really are gone. Maybe my baby desire isn't really for a different, new baby but more a nostalgia for the babies I already had. I know that one day I'll be a grandma and that will be holding my own flesh-and-blood again. I know that won't be the same as being a mom. And I know, I know: it wouldn't matter if I had 15 babies, I'd always want one more.

I know I wish I could hold each of them as babies, just one more time.

And I don't know if I will ever stop wishing that.

while I am working on a longer post.

The Bigs and I were playing Uno tonight. Kaleb was playing with his toys at the table with us. Haley put down a card and said "Uno!"

"Dos!" said Kaleb, not even looking up from his Rescue Heroes.

"Tres!" said Jacob, giggling.

"Costco!" said Kaleb.

Apparently the counting-in-Spanish thing from preschool got lost in translation...

You know the kind. When, after two weeks of waking up feeling just a little bit chubbier courtesy of the **#$&*(@[email protected]*+ progesterone your doctor insisted your body, you know, needs, you realize that it's not just in your head and you ARE gaining weight. And you hate that this freaks you out because in theory you aren't the person who's obsessed over skinny but in reality you don't want to start wearing your Big Clothes, the ones you kept just in case because you never really believe that anything good will stick around. But it freaks you out anyway. The chubby makes you cry and then missing your daughter, even though she's just still asleep in her room, makes you cry harder because once she's awake she'll be here but not really here, not talking to you very much, not letting you into her life and you think to yourself I thought junior high was hard but it's harder having a junior-high-aged daughter because then the rejection is way more personal than I can stand. And then you cry because your house is messy and you're supposed to care but you don't, and does that make you a failure as a woman? I mean, if you're failing at woman what else is left? You consider why your mom didn't teach you to be a woman who cares about a cluttered house but instead of going down the mother/daughter blame path you think about your dad, which makes you cry more. And then you've got every single mistake and wrong choice and disappointment and missed chance and things-you-wanted-desperately-but-the-answer-was-always-no you've ever experienced in your life spiraling around in your consciousness, taunting you with the idea that nothing good ever happens to you and you're the lamest and most unworthy person in the world.

Yeah. One of those days. I'm drowning my sorrows in Lucky Charms and feeling like work is probably a good thing. The fact that I have to shower and do my hair and put on clothes (not that anything will fit anymore) because I have to go to work is a blessing. Otherwise I'd just wallow in bed all day, bawling and feeling sorry for my (going-to-be-chubby-again) self. And I'm wondering if I'm insane to post this, but hello? The five people who read my blog already know I'm weird, right? 

Lately I am in love with the NY Times. Not so much the front-page news, because most of that, in any paper, is more than I can deal with, so I read it only in snips. No, what I'm loving about the NY Times is the articles about books, reading, philosophy, art, thought, ideas. It's something I've discovered at work; every so often someone will forward a link to an article we all must read right now, and after a few of those emails I've taken to perusing all by myself.

But ever since I started writing book notes on my blog, it's harder for me to read something, even a newspaper, without also writing about it. And wishing I could just hang out and talk about what I've read with a big group of like-minded people. The columns I like most in the Times are the ones I'd discuss with that imaginary group, but since it doesn't exist I decided I'm just going to write about them here. Sort of like my own little letter-to-the-editor, except I hope that you'll read the article too, and join in on the dialogue.

So! That said, here's my first Read This! entry:

Happy Like God by Simon Crichtley

The process of finding happiness is, I think, one of our fundamental processes as human beings. Once our basic food-and-shelter needs are met, happiness might even be the thing we live for. I mean, why else falling love? having children? taking vacations? painting your bedroom the perfect shade of green? When you trace it back to its source, each thing we do in life is for happiness, either our own or someone else's. Yet it's also hard to pin down. "What makes you happy?" we might ask each other, but maybe the "what" isn't the point. Maybe nothing makes us happy. Maybe happiness just exists, and sometimes we manage to discover it. Critchley suggests that happiness is discovered in moments of contemplation, times when we are surrounded by a beloved landscape and can simply just exist, experiencing that exact moment. When we're in that moment, time loses meaning. Maybe yesterday you were unhappy, or tomorrow will be the happiest day of your life, but it doesn't matter because in that moment you are experiencing happiness. This, he suggests, is the happiness God feels, independent of time.

I don't necessarily agree that this is the only happiness, but I do think it is a kind. A valuable kind. I can remember feeling that type of happiness as a child. Behind our house was an enormous cornfield, and my greatest pleasure was wandering up and down the rows of corn, watching the sunlight and shadow move around each other, or watching the progress of the purple morning glories as they changed from tight, spiral twists to open, exotic blossoms. I didn't know (and wouldn't have cared, I think) that they were weeds that probably drove Farmer Nelson crazy, nor that I drove him crazy, wandering around his cornfield. I felt it, still as a child, at Lake Powell, where entire hours could be spent scratching my name in the wet sandstone, the water a lulling presence all around me. And the possibility of feeling it is why I love hiking. I don't often achieve it anymore, though; it's hard to let worry vanish enough to manage the "state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there" when you're hiking with your kids or even, sometimes, with your husband. But I know it could be found in the mountains, and that is what brings me back to them, over and over.

So, tell me (or blog about it too!): what do you think? Is that how God is happy? Are there other ways to experience happiness? Have you ever experienced the happiness he writes about? Where?