Last week, the kids were all on spring vacation, and my husband took the week off also. Because all the kids were home, my internet time was severely curtailed. It was a much needed week of respite from scanning lists of houses for rent and school websites. But stepping away from the anxiety-inducing list-scanning was simply the first movement toward a greater sense of peace about our impending relocation; my restless heart was calmed also by the liturgies of Holy Week and the opportunity to reconnect with the kids and nature.
Holy Week is always a gift. The long evening liturgies of Holy Thursday and the Easter Vigil require an investment of time and attention that every year draws my self absorbed heart out of itself and into the communal reenactment. And the Good Friday service, followed by the teenagers' heartfelt Living Stations, all intensified by the physical hunger of fasting, just served to clarify how focused I have been lately on my own unhappiness about moving.
Moving isn't easy, especially when it is not by choice, but neither is it really so difficult as I have been making it. I want all the choices - house, school, neighborhood, church, etc - to be perfect. But when have they ever been? And when have we ever been miserable? During the Vigil, I looked around at the crowded church and thought about how many people we have come to know and felt an overwhelming sense of love and gratitude for them all, even the ones I only know from seeing them here at church. This church community has made our family welcome. The school has provided the boys with friends and mentors and opportunities, and the military community has offered friendship and support and encouragement for our whole crowd. I do hate to leave this, but we have yet to leave a place happily. Everywhere we have gone, good people have greeted us with offers of friendship, and our next duty station will be no different.
At each of our past addresses, as we have become familiar with our new homes, we have grown to appreciate the beauties of each place. Certainly, I will always think that springtime in the midwest, with the glorious bursting into bloom of the woodland wildflowers and scattered bulbs and flowering fruit trees, is the most beautiful time and place in the whole world, but the dusty rounded hills of the Los Padres, the graceful flight of the awkward pelican, the clarity of the southern California sky after a rare rain, are all beautiful in their own right, and as they become more familiar, their beauty becomes more poignant. My appreciation for each view is heightened by the constant reminder that our experience of all of this - the hills, the wildflowers, the ocean, the baby's smile, the teenagers' awkward hugs - all of this is temporary, fleeting, never meant to be possessed forever.
I try to capture these memories on film to hold on to them a little longer, but the pictures are a dim reflection of the reality, primarily because I am not a gifted photographer.
After Holy Week, we spent a day with friends water-skiing on an inland lake:
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| Happy to be in a boat |
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| Watching from shore - this "beach" should be underwater but years of drought have left it exposed. |
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| Can you see the happy skier skimming the surface? |
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| The brown hills of Valencia |
Then we spent a night camping at Santa Cruz National Park, accessed by ferry boat. This camping trip required some planning because you have to pack all your food and gear to carry to the campsite about a half mile from the ferry landing. We spent a good chunk of a day getting packed and ready. Then we heard rain was forecast. Camping in the rain is never much fun. We considered cancelling, but our opportunities to take advantage of this National Park are limited, so we pressed ahead. A light drizzle fell during the first afternoon while we were hiking, but it wasn't enough to soak the ground or our skin. It was enough to scare off a healthy number of other campers, so we had the campground almost to ourselves, except for an interesting lady and her son, who told us extensively about their travels to almost all of the national parks.
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| Every once in awhile, I get the lighting right. My two older girls. |
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| The boys and baby. |
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| Pelicans following us out the harbor. The grey clouds held minimal rain - enough to scare away other campers, not enough to refresh the earth. |
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| Sea lions resting |
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| Another ferry leaving the island |
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| The bold island fox |
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| Cliff over Potato Harbor, Santa Cruz Island |
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| That's me in the red with my oldest and with baby in the backpack covered in a rain coat as she sleeps. |
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| A peregrine falcon roosting on the hillside |
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| Island fox haunting the grounds of the visitor's center/old ranch |
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| Succulents in bloom |
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| Day 2 - clear skies for crossing the island |
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| California wild poppy |
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| Wild mustard, an attractive invasive |
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| Chalk in the hills |
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| This is scary! |
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| A plumeria cake for a sweet one year old |
And finally a day trip to Santa Barbara. Primarily went to see the art museum there that had a Titian exhibit, which was wonderful, but we followed the rules and took no photos of the art.
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| A stroll through the park |
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| I am not Grandma, as someone asked... |
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| Creating in the SBMA children's gallery |
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| New Saturday Pants |
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| And a flashback I shared on Facebook in honor of my husband's birthday: my love and I, young and in love, at a college football game, in 1993, as you can see by the handy date stamp. |
