The Newest Addition to the Community

Labor is a tricky thing - unless you've scheduled a c-section, you have no idea how long it's going to take. Jordan took forever and a day, the only thing that kept Sawyer longer than two hours was the tricky positioning he switched to midway through. So I had no idea how long I had to get to Seattle. My heart was already there from the moment she called. Luckily labor wasn't rolling but excitement was keeping her awake and she hit the internet to find me a flight - miracle of miracles the cheapest and fastest was just down the road, leaving from the Eureka Airport in two hours. Only, the Eureka Airport isn't in Eureka, travelers: be warned. Although the ticket and the website say Eureka, the airport you want is the one you passed twenty minutes earlier in Arcata, not down here on this desolate strip of bare earth that sports one dirt landing strip on a desolate military base. And there are no online reservations if it's less than six hours 'til your plane leaves. 

Finally arriving at the airport with pajama clad children and a trailer and smelling of campfire, I leapt from the truck and found disappointment - the flight to Oakland was available, but nothing was available any longer from Oakland to Seattle. Oh, and getting just to Oakland was $600 instead of to Seattle for $170. Luckily, the airport had a good internet connection. This being spring break, you could literally watch seats on flights disappear off internet reservation sites, so I booked a Sac to Seattle flight leaving in seven hours. The Trinity alps and I5 ahead of us, it was going to be tight: a turtle carrying it's shell moves slowly, and carrying our little home away from home slowed us down as well. 

Thanks to a portable DVD player, wonderful children, a fantastic driver of a husband, free coffee at the gas station an hour into the mountains, and pb&j's made on my lap, we made it exactly an hour before departure. I ran the kids up and down the escalators five times each way and they headed for home. It was so hard to say goodbye having already robbed them of their last day of the road trip, but since TOm makes every day a vacation for them, I didn't feel too bad. 

My mother had arrived before me and my brother Matt in Seattle was acting as birthing partner for Allison. Her doula Lindsay was there. Matt's partner Scott picked me up at the airport and we headed straight for the hospital. Allison looked like a million bucks - her contractions began in earnest a few hours after her acupuncture appointment at 12. She was her usual, graceful, calm, smiling self, giving herself totally to the contractions and laughing between them. Things started to pick up and the doctor checked her after a half an hour of particularly strong ones. "Five", she said and although Allison looked somewhat disappointed, five to me sounded right on. Things were happening. She laid on the bed and gave in to the contractions and some rest while one person massaged each of her hands and feet. After a while she got up to go to the bathroom.  And then things really happened. I'm pretty sure it was right around then that the little one decided on a major position shift and all of a sudden Allison had tunnel vision. Ah, back labor. Not recognized by the doctor until she was an hour into pushing, the entire experience had shifted. 

My mother hadn't particularly enjoyed watching me give birth (nor had she planned on it - the long labor lasting through the eighteen hour drive and full night's sleep somewhere on the AZ/CA border), and here she was again. And thirty nine years to the day after giving birth to both of us in the hospital. And this time I understood, having a daughter I didn't like to see in pain and witnessing my sister in so much pain as well. But there we all were. Midnight as the day slipped into our birthday, that amazingly thin veil between life and death that can only ever be felt at a birth. 

It's completely wrong to have to go through labor, two hours of pushing AND a c-section. Honestly, one or the other should suffice, thank you very much. But no, Allison got the double whammy. And knocked out totally to boot thanks to the one in 20,000 insufficient spinal. But at 2:41 I was an aunt to one of my own siblings' children - finally! The nurses brought him out and there he was, evidence of his failed attempt at a sideways entrance into the world evidenced by the jaunty angle of his typical newborn's conehead.

Being knocked out, my mom took Allison duty while my brother left for a shower and change of clothes, and I got to hold my perfect little nephew for two hours while she woke up. Thank goodness we're identical twins - he looked straight up into a face identical to his mom's, and full of love. Those two hours were incredibly special and I sang to him, told him about his journey, his dad, all the amazing things that had finally brought him here to this place. At a quarter to five they wheeled a groggy Allison into the room and she got to hold and nurse her son. I have no idea how she made it on the hour of sleep we got between 6 and 7, but that was the hour that the first nurse came happily charging into the room to inspect and measure and test and poke and prod. It's a bit vague, what happened over the next 24 hours although I know I got to hold the little one when Allison was sleeping and I left for a shower and a change of clothes, shocked at how powerfully I still smelled of campfire smoke as it rolled off of me in waves of  soap and water. And I know we looked a bit like zombies, my mother and I, as we ate a delicious dinner that night.

A C-section really is just a brutal experience, especially when for the next few weeks you have to sit up every couple of hours to nurse. It was easy for me to get up to help the next two nights in the hospital, to prop pillows and fill water glasses and to sleep with my nephew when I got the chance. So sweet to sleep next to him in the huge bed he shared with his mama and smell his sweet milky breath and lift his small body into his mama's arms. And it felt cruel of me to leave, except that I left them with the lady that had managed to get us to adulthood. I am amazed by the entire journey Allison took in getting Hayes Ryan Brooks into this world. From the years of putting off conception in order to care for her husband and her final leap into doing it instead of waiting, to losing her husband just when the tiniest bit of a bump was beginning to show at ten weeks, to going through all the mourning, the therapy, the months of working and working and working while growing this being inside of her.

And she amazed me with the birth, how perfectly she progressed, how strong she was through all of it, and how she clearly processed and made peace with the c-section and the struggle with it all in the days afterward. She is so truly the embodiment of grace, and her joy in her son is so radiant and apparent. 

Welcome little miracle. Your aunt loves you.

Spring Broke - Part Two

It must be the hugeness of the trees that the waves and beaches of Humboldt County feel they have to meet in size and scope. It's a breathtaking place to be - look out one window of the car and you're staring at the powerful vastness of the Pacific, then turn your head the other direction and it's the redwood forests, rolling green hillsides, endless lagoons that roll past your living video screen. Turn your head a little further and there are the kids in the backseat: Sawyer just about to hurl and Jordan halfway through her eleventh chapter book of the trip.

After breakfast we headed a little ways North into the Redwood National Forest and Humboldt State Forests for a peek around. We came first to a perfect mile long loop at the Ladybird Johnson Memorial Grove. Turns out Nixon actually did some good in his time as president, responding to the new environmental awareness of his constituents and delegating protected areas of wilderness. This lovely grove dedicated to Ladybird Johnson's environmental work was a perfect path for our two sprites with plenty of huge trees to walk into, hiding places, wildflowers, and twists and turns. It was also a morning of sibling rivalry and dueling, but with plenty of distractions to keep the parents sane.

It is a stunning sight, those trees, and confounding to think how they were possibly logged before there were cars - or helicopters or cranes or logging trucks. Human resourcefulness is an amazing thing, and somewhat staggering as well: how quickly we could remove a forest that took centuries to grow. Jordan and now Sawyer are still deeply engrossed in games of "pretend" and here they were little bears we were adopting. Occasionally JOrdan will want to play "family" (which is kind of hilarious - like what are we doing when we're NOT playing family?), the great part of which is that we get to pick not only our own names but also our own ages. TOm's and my profound enthusiasm for this element of the game has caused Jordan to instill a new rule: that we chose a number as the parents that is greater than twenty. Which still gives Tom a bit too great of a twinkle in his eye when he hears me say "My name is Julianna and I am 23." He's got a great knack for coming up with names that crack me up. Magellan and Ferdinand and Butch and the like.  

Renamed, we left our little grove of fantasy and headed to Redwood Creek at the park entrance that boasted a trail and a lovely picnic spot. While the three of them had lunch I ran the trail that led to the "Creek" - this time of year a gorgeous steel colored river we hear is a perfect two day Class II family trip. The trail continued across the river, but the seasonal bridge had not yet been erected and so I ran up the rocky beach and dreamed of another family trip within a family trip: just me and Butch and Posey and Diamond, a pair of twenty-something parents on an idyllic float trip in spring down a gorgeous river. 

Tom ran the trail after I returned and after accidentally swatting each other in the head with the plastic baseball bats still loaded in the truck bed, we decided to head toward the beaches once again, having promised the kids another look at the Camel Rock caves. We took a detour down another park road and wound through dense wet forest and past signs informing us when we were entering and exiting tsunami safety zones. We wound up at more serene and endless beaches - gorgeous waves patiently waiting to crash to shore, surferless. Going back (and hitting every puddle we could find along the way), we stopped and marveled at the elk - deer aren't quite big enough for Humboldt, it's gotta be elk. The weather on our trip was completely idyllic - the kind of year-round weather I'd choose to live in, if it existed - sunny and warm, but not hot, just enough to keep the plants green instead of brown - throw in a weekly rainstorm and I'd be thrilled. 

It's a long rock and cut earth staircase down to Camel Rock beach, giving you a feeling of entering another world. We spread our blanket (kind of a token move since no one ever sits in this family) twenty feet from the incoming waves and as Tom stared at the surfers, the kids quickly stripped off their clothes and hit the tide pools. We brought sand toys, but I am always amazed at how quickly a game or another reality is created by the kids - they work so hard, so faithfully on whatever it is they are creating or building and take no notice of us or anyone else around. Their abandonment of our world and escape into their own reality is so complete, and clearly so freeing.

I walked up the beach to check a cache of rocks rolled in on a high surf and discovered the rotting carcass of a whale along the way. As we were edging toward five o'clock the kids wanted to check it out and were non-plussed by the discovery. Jordan is definitely creating a clear internal scorecard of things that are gross vs. things that are not. We got back to our blanket just in time for a local woman dashing past to let us know an incoming wave was a doozy and we'd best relocate before it hit - sure enough, we lifted our belongings just in time to be ankle deep in the rising surf.

Up top, Tom decided to bike back up to our campground. The kids and I drove and went straight into one of those delicious campground showers where the quarters may as well be gold pieces for the perfect warmth and cleanliness the shower provides. I think we spent $.75 for a blissful ten minutes of decadent warmth and cleanliness and were amazed when we emerged to find Tom already back and making dinner. 

Since it was late, we decided to put off the dutch oven cake for one more night. Tom put the kiddos to bed without their latest installment of the story and I headed to the beach for a walk with Austin. It was a gorgeous night, such a beautiful place and I was wary of the quick rising surf from earlier in the day, so the single rogue wave that came up and stole the clothes and shoes of the teenagers also at the beach didn't get me - the lack of light did. I couldn't find my shoes when I was ready to walk back to the campground and I had two routes available: the trail by the lagoon which involved a bit of climbing through and over tangled tree roots and branches, or on the road. I chose the road and a third of the way there was wrapping my feet in my t-shirts. The teenagers ahead of me were pretty verbal with their exclamations of pain due to thorns on the side of the road and rough pavement on the road itself. Pretty weak feet for a girl who was known for going shoeless in highschool. We were debating whether to stay at the campground for one more night or to start to head back and spend a night somewhere between where we were and Lotus - such a bewilderingly free feeling to have time and ability and no internal compass - I wanted to go everywhere and not just for a night, but we were also in a pretty heavenly place and so why leave? These are the good dilemmas, the standing in a train station with an open ticket and a board full of available destinations. My version of a candy store. 

The next morning the kids started wiggling early and just when I'd convinced them to try to sleep a bit longer, my phone rang at 6:30 and I knew immediately: Allison's baby was on it's way! Before I'd even finished the conversation, Tom was out the door and packing up camp. Allison's water had broken at 2:30 am and although contractions hadn't really started, we knew her doc would want the baby out within 24 hours. So now, we had a new train station dilemma: which airport? By 7:30, the kiddos (still in their jammies) were in their car seats and we were headed down the highway once again. 

Spring Broke - Part One

Our original plan for Spring Break had been this: drive the Northern CA and Oregon coast to get up to Seattle, ideally corresponding with the birth of my sister's child. If our dates didn't work, a quick trip to get me to the closest airport was plan B. 

And then March happened, as it always does: a dangerous drop in the bank account and lots of expenses on the horizon including taxes and rafting season start-up costs. Living on a massage therapist's part time recession salary wasn't going to get us to where we needed to be, so we had to cancel. But break for the kids wasn't cancelled. When this began to be glaringly obvious on Sawyer's last Thursday of school, we began to talk about maybe going somewhere, just for a few days. 

I had already poutingly put my name back on the work schedule and was suffering with low grade depression: I love our life in Lotus and all the time it means we have with the kids and each other. But I also like some of my creature comforts: the gym being a particularly large expense (not that chocolate doesn't sing sweetly to me in my darkest hours). And the lifestyle we've chosen doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room in the finances for big wants like landscaping and my gardening and Tom's surfing and kayaking  loves. Not accruing debt is hugely important to us, as is making deposits into our retirement plans and the kids' college plans. And having a safety net. So April vacations are first on the scratch list. And it made me sad. Every March I question the choices I've made to not become a doctor, lawyer, marketing executive or Wall Street banker. And the poppies and lupin come out and salute me from the hillsides, the emerald of the spring grasses more tantalizing than the cold green of cash, and I am conflicted.

I had promised my sister and myself that I would be there for the birth of her child. Even without the loss of her husband in September this reigned a definite plan. The folks handling reservations where I work were ready for the last minute cancellations if need be. Now it looked like we'd be working a bit around the house and nursing our mild seasonal sadness while the kids complained of not having anything to do or anyone to do it with. So it was on Friday when we awoke and while making breakfast started throwing out ideas of where we could go for just a few days. And by 1 pm after three frantic hours of packing and campground searching and mapquesting we were on the road. Heading north. 

Chico has always appealed to me as a close vacation spot but no one else was hearing the call three hours in and so we continued to our northern pick: Humboldt County's beaches and redwood forests. 

I'd been once to the Redwoods, running a marathon with nothing to do for 26 miles but try to keep my sick and mildly hypothermic sister going the last 13 miles while staring at beautiful fricking tree after beautiful fricking tree. The beautiful part stuck with me, and the appeal of going further, just a little further down the road. We made it to a rest stop somewhere just before reaching the Trinity River for a dinner of cereal and a bike ride for the kids who were thrilled to be just exactly where they were while their mother tried to heave off her melancholy. We drove a kid's video length down the road and pulled in for a night of sleep at the Burnt Ranch National Forest Campground, really just a small depression in the side of the road but perfect for our needs. It's so lovely to just park and brush your teeth and tuck the children into their cozy bunkbeds and fall asleep not really knowing what you're surrounded by, just the promise of adventure readily accessible while still being cozy in your own little space.

When we woke up, the lushness of the forests this far north were a new adventure and we were quickly on the road. 

In Arcata a few hours later stopping for gas, a man approached my husband inquiring about the ARTA logo on our truck and saying he'd fought against the Stanislaus Dam decades earlier with a bunch of ARTA folks. They chatted and Tom thought to ask him for the insider's tip on camping and what to do and five minutes later we had an itinerary and a plan. The camping spot, Big Lagoon County Park, was one of the most gorgeous we've stayed at. And if the real Humboldt experience was one of the warm sunshine we were blessed with for three days, we would probably never have gone home. 

Big Lagoon is a huge, long lagoon separating our camping area from the crashing big wave pebble strewn beach lining the Oregon coast. The lagoon presented a perfect nature walk trail for children leading to the beach and an opportunity for the frigid spring splashing my kids are known for without the terrifying undertow of the ocean. The beach itself had wonderful rocks for collecting and a gorgeous view and the perfect soundtrack for sleeping. We spent a while exploring our beach and Tom went for a run, meaning to get to the ocean-side mouth of the lagoon and running for a straight half hour in one direction without seeming to make progress. The kids froze themselves in the lagoon, getting layer after layer of thier clothes soaking wet before removing them. We changed and  packed up to explore some of the beaches nearby we'd been told about. 

Camel Rock Beach was another children's paradise.  And a surfer's. And here was my husband with time, inclination, sunshine, head-high waves and no wetsuit or surfboard in access. He stood and stared at the waves, having his own Spring turmoil over toys and gear and money and lifestyle. It didn't take the kids long to soak themselves again in wonderful, warm puddles left over from the surd crashing onto the rock islands dotting the beach. When hypothermia began to threaten, we headed back, detouring through some fabulous caves in another rock island and cementing our need for camp and clothes and dinner. Tom and the kids dropped me at Agate beach and I spent the next hour running through the harder sand and walking through the soft sand, picking up gorgeous pebbles and beautiful, tiny driftwood sculptures. The angle of the sun was perfect, the roar of the waves, everything.  I stopped to ask an older couple if they knew what an agate looked like and they handed me a baggie with five or six lovely specimens to keep. When I arrived at camp, the kids were dressed and dinner was just about ready and all was well in the world.

S'mores would likely taste unbelievably terrible in your own kitchen, but something about the combination over a campfire, the most critical chef would have to adore. The kiddos rode their bikes around the campground, showing their complete and total exhaustion on the second lap, and we were off to bed. In the trailer after stories Tom or I will often tell the kids made up stories with characters they choose to join them in the adventures. Jordan has chosen one or more of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls for the last year or two, as well as one of her stuffed animals. Sawyer has had Diego come along lately. This trip I made the story a "To be Continued" every night, and sent them to sleep this night with the promise of heading to see the world's biggest trees and the supposed (in the story) birthplace of the two stuffed bears grandma had given them in real life. Tom played his guitar, I read, and we fell asleep to the wonderful sound of waves and the exhausted breathing of our children.