*kendraspondence*

…who came…took a turn around the party, and then decided to bounce…..

Nantasket Beach, Labor Day 2010

There were moments when I could see it, feel it on her face.  Moments of recognition that, This is Love.  Love is here. I am known, loved, counted among the special.

I saw my daughter fall in love with her family, her extendeds, people whom she has only known through quarterly visits and digital images.  I could see her melting into their hugs and finding the arc in their laughter where trust and vulnerability live.

7 days in Ohio, in the home where I got busted multiple times for getting nail polish on cherry oak furniture, where I played endless games of Uno, where I learned how to read and read my mother’s angry face and fell asleep under lit Christmas trees in a California Raisins sleeping bag.

Now my daughter sleeps on that floor, in the same California Raisins sleeping bag, and wakes up to a different hum in the morning than I remember, but one no less sweet.

Oh how it pained me to leave, but double the torment of pulling my baby girl away from this fanclub of fandamily.  Little Man will come to know the club soon and well enough in time.  But this last visit was monumental for Baby Girl.  She has inside jokes with her Uncle Mikie.  She has special songs with her grandparents and there are toys retained in their basements only for her.

I have believed for the last couple of years that this wide geographic divide between our families was overrated.  And after this last visit home, I am convinced that it is downright cruel.  But I’m trying to be content in the present and hopeful for the future and keeping a look-out for opportunities….lots of opportunities…..

The land of Cleve, on the shores of Erie

Go Buckeyes

Do the grandmothers in your family enjoy giving children baths as much as mine seem to?

Auntie TP

Baby Girl was so stoked to have cousins. She had prior to this told me about imaginary cousins that had given her presents…

Chillin’ with Uncle Mikie

My wonderful in-laws came to have lunch on sabbath at my mama’s. I made quinoa. It wasn’t terrible.

My mama. My baby.

Swimming at my old man’s

5 years
2 addresses
2 offspringlets
1 name change
3 new pairs of glasses
3 international trips
6 new jobs
1 highway breakdown
2 new in-law members
0 broken bones
0 root canals
0 cases of leprosy…

5 years blessed with 1 wonderful Loverpants!

***
Celebratory trip to Newport, RI

Loverpants made me snap this pic. The quintessence of Newport.

Gelateria

My fave flavor in the gelateria: baldy

My little hambone, post ice cream

Practicing stroller safety first

Seeing how the other half lives

Pit stop to ponder the Cliff Walk: Baby Girl loves to mock me by saying, “Let’s sit down and talk about it.” I say this roughly 8 times a day.

I was watching Anthony Bourdain “No Reservations: Liberia” last night. I kept rewinding because the history lesson on this quasi-neo-America was totally blowing my skull, and also because Baby Girl kept reenacting when Sister Bear goes to the dentist and DR. BEARSON SHOWS HER THE BIG YANKERS, DID YOU SEE THE BIG YANKERS, MAMA? I kept replaying the summary of Liberia’s founding by freed American slaves. I had no idea. I knew about the seemingly endless civil war there as I’ve read a lot of accounts of those who have adopted from Liberia, and how heartwrenchingly dreadful the situation has gotten for young people in the country. But I didn’t know much about Liberia’s black female president, and I still don’t, because of course Bourdain had to get back to talking about the food and palm oil and surfing. Who knew there was surfing in Liberia? That wily Bourdain! Part histographer, part surfer dude!

Whenever I watch one of these programs, I get the antsypants about going overseas for the long-term. Like, for longer than an Anthony Bourdain program.

The prospect of long-term mission work overseas so so tremendously excites me. Serving the third world, being immersed in another culture, depending on daily providences, and possibly getting the chance to live a life that is not hooked up to a computer like it is an intravenous feed?

Do you think long-term mission work excites me because:

a.) I have never done it, ergo, I am just naive about what it entails ~ OR ~
b.) I have never done it, ergo, I have no idea that my life has not yet really begun

Perhaps the answer is a little bit of both. Either way, I’m a huge weenie about bugs and rodents and I hear they have a few of them in the third world, so…yeah.

Anthony Bourdain, if you are reading this, I am an aspiring missionary to the third world with remedial Spanish skills, a fear of creepy crawlers, and a cute little family. Do you think there is a place for me somewhere you have traveled? If so, please write me back and please know that I think you have great hair. Yours, Kendra

Sometimes, the theme song to “Cheers” is not your theme song.  Because sometimes you need to go where no one knows your name, where everybody is not the same.  You need to make that 2.5 hour drive to North Conway, New Hampshire, to the nice albeit cheesy resort place to do things you wouldn’t normally do, but that you need to do, just because you can.

Sometimes you need to spend a few hard-earned quarters in the game room…

…and humor your enormous mother in Dance Dance Revolution…

Sometimes you need to hug a penguin…

Sometimes you need to wake up to the White Mountains, to the sound of gutters dripping instead of horns and buses and construction zones.

Sometimes you need to try on your first life jacket, even though you’ll pitch it the second you get inside the indoor waterpark.

Sometimes you need to hear your kid say, “I had fun with you, Mommy!” and know she means it.