Colin Dullaghan

Back before the holidays, Mom and Katie and Penny and Veda and I all went to Cancun for a week.

Awesome, right? Mom pushed for it to happen, since she had so much fun on our beach vacation *last* year, and of course we were all happy to spend some time together now that we don’t live so close anymore.

There are so many stories to tell from that trip. But rather than go through all of them here, I thought I’d let you pick.

So here you go: Browse through these couple dozen photos and tell me which one you’d like to hear the story behind. I promise I’ll tell it.

Deal?

I feel so bad for my mom and sister when they come to visit. For all the things they get to do while they’re here – like getting to see their granddaughter/niece, catch up with us, and pet Vince and the cats, there are so many things they *have* to do. Like flying down here in the first place.

For instance, after getting up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a flight out on Friday, Mom had to go pick up Katie, in the dark, deal with a layover somewhere and ultimately arrive to a son who was gone to work all day. I trust that Penny and Veda entertained them both in the meantime.

While they were here they had to get woken up early, kept up late, fed weird vegetarian meals and subjected to annoying music and long, rambling conversations about advertising and antique cameras. My beard makes my mother just shake her head slowly, muttering under her breath about Yosemite Sam. I took unflattering pictures of them both with old, unforgiving lenses, on grainy, black-and-white film that I mis-developed myself in the upstairs bathroom. I consistently cut Katie out of Polaroids until Mom showed me how to pull the dang film in the right order.

They had to deal with two-year-old temper tantrums, dog-triggered allergies, back-seat carsickness and sleeping in a nightlight-less room with no drapes. Katie nearly electrocuted herself trying to turn out a light I’ve got rigged to a remote control on top of the stereo cabinet. And we endured about five minutes of the movie Horrible Bosses before returning it to Redbox for something else. *Anything* else.

Our coffee was unfamiliar, our shower ill equipped. We rushed them to get out the door whenever we were going somewhere. The memory was probably fresh in my mom’s mind about the last time she came to visit, during which she had to sit for more than an hour and listen to an elderly Tibetan man clear his throat. Sorry about that, Mom.

But.

There are some things you get to do here that you just can’t do anywhere else. And I like to think they enjoyed those things enough to make up for all the things they “had” to do. Like going on a sunny morning walk with Veda, who rode her bike about 23 feet and talked us into carrying it the rest of the way. Then carrying *her*. And walking alongside a gorgeous, sun-streaked stream that dribbles over the rocks here in the neighborhood and makes everybody happy.

They got to dine on a fantastic veggie grilled cheese at the local cafe, along with fried green tomatoes and fingerling sweet potato fries and other deliciousness I can’t even rightly describe to you.

They got to check out the Handmade Market here in Raleigh, which is likely the best place around to spot vintage-looking jewelry, home-built pinhole cameras and woven yarn jellyfish that have soft, fuzzy tentacles. And a two-pound dog outside that lets you pet ‘im.

They got to sample local draft beer, Carolina tomatoes and a fun run on local trails. They got to hear Veda play her new “piano,” a mini-Yamaha keyboard I got at Goodwill for four bucks. They got to see Vince run through leaves chasing squirrels, a fine Fall sight if ever there was one. They got to find out firsthand just how good Veda is at stalling during the bedtime routine. (Asking the detailed back story of every character and object in the final pages of the second book is a classic and effective ruse.)

They got to do hot yoga in a local studio and nearly pass out on the floor, repeatedly. (*I* didn’t get to do that personally, having had the good sense to skip it.) They got to come with me to Southeastern Camera and see me dork out over a bin of expired film, hunting for the hidden gems. They got to go to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science and hang out with big-eyed butterflies, who flapped their giant wings in slow-motion and landed on damp leaves right in front of their faces. Oh, and a turtle with a mustache.

And they got to have big, crowded meals with us in folding chairs at our ridiculous kitchen table, which still has white paint threatening to flake or peel off the top and into your ziti at any moment. They got to face off against me in smartphone Scrabble, losing pretty consistently I might add.

By the time I drove them back to the airport on Monday morning, they’d had and gotten to do a lot of things. But I hope the main thing they did on the way home was a “got to,” rather than a “had to.” And that’s to think back on all the fun we had.

So last time I made a short video at the end of the year, providing a little musical compendium of our adventures in 2010. (See below for a reminder.)

And it’s coming time for me to start thinking about what to do for this year’s mini-movie. Now, you already know what little redhead is going to be featuring prominently throughout the presentation, but I also thought I’d try something I haven’t done before: Taking requests. Are there any scenes you’d like to see included in the 2011 edition? Any features I left out of last time that you’d rather not live without?

I can’t promise I’ll accommodate every request, but I’m interested to know what those of you who were in the last one – or who weren’t, but should have been – would like.

(You see, I just started looking through the iPhoto library for videos taken in 2011, and it comes to 1,108. So far. If you happen to remember something we did together this year and can kindly remind me, I can hop right to that event and see if I have any good clips from it!)

Thanks.

Okay. At the brilliant and otherworldly Squam Art Workshops in the Rockywold-Deephaven Camp on Squam Lake near Holderness, New Hampshire, I did not actually attend a class. Neither did my daughter Veda.

We were there instead in a support capacity, and a tagging-along capacity, as our brilliant and otherworldly Lope was teaching classes on Earth Art and hand lettering. But we were really lucky to get to go this time, and we still learned a lot.

In fact, even before arriving, I learned that Google’s estimate of 15 hours to drive there from Raleigh, North Carolina is wildly optimistic, and also does not mention the $40 in tolls you will incur en route. (But some other folks came in from places like Sweden and, um, Japan, so I’m not going to grumble too much.)

And as soon as we got there on the first day, I learned that the sun coming in off the lake at 6 pm or so tends to flit up off the water and filter through the trees and fill the old wooden cabins with the most golden, gorgeous light you’ve ever seen. The many smiling faces and welcoming greetings we received may have had something to do with it too.

I learned that Penny has some pretty awesome friends, including our dining-and-hiking pals Shari and Austen, who also taught me that there is always something more to see, that knitting is kind of badass in its own way, that transplanting yourself starts working when you stop trying to make the new place fit into the old mold and that a napkin ring makes for an instant telescope.

I learned from Penny’s fellow teacher Susy that my friendly hellos and hugs still have a lot of room for improvement, that the cylinder of paper stuff on the counter by the sink is actually a “kitchen roll,” and that I was waaay underestimating the possibilities of a garden-variety cigar box.

I learned from the workshop’s organizer, Elizabeth, that boundless energy can be manifested out of sheer nothingness, somehow, for days on end, that a bohemian art chick can still look totally natural with a walkie talkie, and that it’s possible to find what you’ve been looking for in an empty field drawn with white labyrinth lines. I saw her do it.

I learned from her friend Jen that light bulbs and fixtures and lanterns and windows are actually extraneous. You can light up *everything* with a big enough smile.

In addition to informing us that the mid-September water in Squam Lake is “really pretty nice, once you get used to it,” the fearless and damp Pixie shared the knowledge with Veda and me that the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, right down the road, is quite amazing. She was right as rain. And *there* we found out, on our first morning to run around together while Lope was teaching, that Barred Owls will stare holes right through you, that the Bobcat, or lynx rufus, can walk so gracefully over rocks and logs that it looks like water flowing, and that, um, the slide leading down from the river otter exhibit is definitely too steep and fast for a two-year-old. Sorry about that, Veda.

From our cabin-mate Sarah we learned that we’re not the only family to make up ridiculous names for kids’ toys (Veda’s pig goes by Pokey, which I thought was silly but can’t hold a candle to little Ada’s pig “Pigliacci”) and that the cabin’s electrical circuits aren’t quite up to the task of running two space heaters at once. The morning after that first 30-degree night, I found out that a woman can sleep fairly uninterrupted in a coat and hat. Sorry about that, Sarah.

And when Sarah’s husband Jesse came along on Friday, I learned all kinds of interesting stuff – like the theory that the character of an area’s people can be loosely correlated to its bedrock. Soft, gentle marble and limestone beneath the rolling hills of Vermont make for friendly, easygoing farmers and ice-cream purveyors, for example, while the hard, acidic granite underlying New Hampshire makes for flinty individualists who would rather die than live un-free. I don’t think Jesse would want to stand by this principle for a thesis dissertation or anything, but it sure made for some illuminating fireside conversation. And then on Saturday, we all went for a hike around the lake and he taught us how to spot non-poisonous, totally edible and actually delicious huckleberries to snack on. Veda probably liked that lesson best.

What else?

We learned that there’s no shortcut between Mountain Road and Mountain *Trail* Road in Holderness, not unless you’re a goat or hovercraft, so if you’re trying to get from Plymouth to Rockywold in time for dinner, don’t listen to your stupid ol’ GPS.

Oh, but we learned that the Book Mill – you know, the one in Montague Massachusetts? Which is kind of on the way to Squam? Totally rockin’. “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find” is the slogan, and I like that because if I ever get back there, checking out room after room of weird and fascinating old books in a former grist mill on a scenic waterfall, I won’t want anyone to ever find *me.*

Which reminds me of the other thing I learned: I cannot stop taking pictures of everything in sight when I’m up in that part of the country. I brought the Mamiya RB67 with me, you see, which not only kept me thoroughly entertained (and laden) but also started up a fascinating conversation with the intimidatingly accomplished but 100% nice Jen Lee. (That’s me and Veda on the dock on the left, I think, in her collage of Squam snapshots.) I promised to send her information about the camera, so I better at least get her a link to this Flickr set.

Above all, though, I learned that to be in such a beautiful place with so many beautiful people is a privilege indeed, and I really hope we get to go back next year. Next time, though, I’m thinking I ought to take a class or two.

Hey, and I also learned that my wife is just as inspiring as I always thought, but in ways I never realized. Rena and Louise, two wise ladies who’ve spent as much time in the education field as I’ve probably spent drawing breath, were also students in one of Penny’s classes. And they told me that she’s not just a good teacher, but an *excellent* one. So there you go.

I’ll sign off here with a quote from Pixie, who had it pretty much right in my opinion, when she got to sharing her own learnings from that gorgeous, special place by the water:

“Something about the woodfires and the lake ice in the old iceboxes makes me feel like I’m at camp in the twenties. Everything my eye sees is picture-perfect and timeless.”

In a couple of days I’ll pack up the pets and the paintings and head off for Raleigh. There’s not much to leave behind anymore, now that all our stuff is in boxes or given away, and the walls are bare and hole-y.

Still, this is all the home I’ve got. And there’s a decent chance that once the car pulls away Saturday morning, I’ll actually never set foot in this building again. If it sells (fingers crossed), we’ll likely mail the keys up here for our realtor to hand over at closing, and we’ll be down there, somewhere, doing something.

I shouldn’t say “somewhere.” I know our address, where we’re going, but I can’t really picture it. Besides, we’re just renting it anyway, and just for a year.

We’ve been here almost three. When you’ve spent that much time trying to make a place your own, and when so much has happened since the first time you walked in (like, for example, Veda’s entire life), it’s difficult to accept the process of putting it all back the way you found it.

But that’s the goal — wipe the slate back to clean. Let a potential future resident envision the house as theirs, not ours, and that means not only taking the pictures down but rolling up the rugs, unplugging the nightlights, taking down the dumb little “I’m hep” lapel pin that I’d poked into the ledge above my downstairs desk. And it all goes into cardboard boxes. Taped shut, so you’re never quite certain what all is in there, and your labels never quite suffice.

X ≠ Zero. That’s the equation I keep reminding myself of. Just because I know what I’m leaving behind doesn’t mean it’s better than what we’re moving toward. The future in North Carolina is an unknown, and my brain has a habit of equating that with nothing. Which it so obviously is not. There are fantastic, amazing, comforting, fulfilling and unforgettable things awaiting us there. We just don’t know what they are yet.

Things like the lilac bush at the bottom of the hill outside my door right now, which comes into bloom in the spring and smells so sweet and perfect that Veda and I both love to run out in the park and stick our faces right into all the branches. Like the sunset over the lake, coming in just right and warm on your face, and sparkling off a million dancing mountains on the surface if the wind is just right. Or like the kind, generous, open-armed friends I’ve made here — not many, but a few — who I’m still dreading going and saying goodbye to.

And, of course, the families. X really *does* equal zero, almost, if we’re talking about proximity to relatives. Here Mom and Katie (and Tom and Niki and Zoë) are just a couple hours down the road in Indy, and Grandma Lawson can pop over for coffee in five minutes or so. Britt drops in with very little notice, which I love. I’ve always wanted someone to do that, actually. And Veda’s favorite cousin Gianna is never so far that we can’t schedule a play date for today or later in the week, and we can all watch the two of them streak around the house like maniacs and dance together and shriek together and steal each other’s crackers.

We won’t have any of that where we’re going. (We *will,* however, be a heck of a lot closer to Grandma and Grandpa Kline, who will be right there just a Carolina away. Looking forward to that.)

So I guess we’ll have to find new goodness. And I trust that we’ll be able to; honestly I do. For one thing, the climate in North Carolina seems to be a lot like Northern Indiana’s if you delete the months between November and March, which is precisely what I think Lope has always wanted to do anyway. I’m looking forward to riding my motorcycle more often.

I’m looking forward to paddling some new lakes in the old canoe, which will be going down on top of the Pacifica with me this weekend. Looking forward to cajun food, oddly enough, which I always liked in Indy and have missed being able to get up here. Looking forward to visits from Mom. (The first one is already scheduled, which is just as reassuring as I thought it would be.) And I’m looking forward to getting to know the people I work with better.

It’ll be great. And you can’t say I haven’t taken plenty of pictures of the old place by now. And the memories don’t take up any space in the moving truck at all. Right over there, by where Penny is sitting with Noah in the puffy old chair that I hope survives the move, I remember Veda taking her first steps. Over on the other side of the room is the door I remember bringing her in through, the day we brought her home from the hospital. We stamped off the snow and hoped she was bundled tight enough and tried to get her cozy and warm.

Over there, by the stairs, I saw her smile for the first time, and it was like the sun coming out. And upstairs is where I saw Penny and Brooke doing breathing exercises, the night it was finally time to go over to KCH and have ourselves a baby.

But you’re probably noticing something as I indulge in this moment of nostalgia. What I really love about this place is actually going with me. And we’ll all be in the new place together.

And then that place, too, will be Home.

Amidst all the packing and selling and Freecycling and house-searching / mover estimating / priority setting / general relocation hoo-ha, last week we went camping. And it was great.

At this time seven days ago I was stretching my arms and sipping coffee around a campfire at the O’Bannon Woods State Park, near Corydon, Indiana, way down there at the very bottom center of the state. We set up four tents on our two sites: One big one for Penny, Veda and me, another just like it for Grandma Lawson, a slightly smaller version for little-bro Mason and a fairly itty-bitty orange model for the largest member of our camping party. (Tom always has the coolest, sleekest, lightest-weight outdoor gear.)

Also included in our campsite facilities, (lest you think we were totally roughing it), were  a couple of picnic tables, a pre-rigged clothesline between a couple of trees, several square feet of semi-level ground and (ahem) an electrical outlet. Call us wusses if you like, but it’s darn nice to let your kid sleep accompanied by the whirring of a fan, and just as nice to wake up to freshly brewed coffee. Oh, and there was a bathroom about 50 yards away, with showers and everything.

But still. It’s a pretty immersive experience, pretending you don’t have a house for three days, and we enjoyed it a lot. Wednesday was basically spent getting there and setting up, with a friendly stop at Mom’s house for lunch and to drop off some long-term storage items in her capacious attic. On the way I managed to snap yet another picture of my favorite building in the world. This time Vince and I even left a note inside the big barn door, offering compliments and a request for more information if possible.

Seems like we arrived at O’Bannon a little before dinner time, I’d say, and it really didn’t take too long to get everything set up. Veda had a good time playing in the tents too — almost managed to collapse Grandma’s with some over-enthusiastic cavorting. Tom and Mason went to go check out where we could launch our boats the next morning.

I was amazed that Veda managed to fall asleep in the tent. At lights-out for her, there were still a few hours of campfire talking time left for us, and we were all sitting just about a dozen feet from her little bed. Plus it’s strange surroundings and all, and kind of hot besides. That big fan we grabbed from Mom’s came in really handy. V slept right on through everything, even when Penny and I had to open and close the flap several times as we got ready for bed ourselves. Didn’t wake up until almost seven the next day. Nice!

And that was the best day ever, because that’s when we go to go canoeing. Much like with the tents, we had four boats out there this time: A smallish one (Mason’s, for a change), two bigger ones for Tom and Grandma, and one even bigger one for me, Penny and Veda. We launched up in the northern section of the park, and followed the gorgeous Blue River almost six miles to the old iron bridge where you can haul the boats out. On the way we saw towering trees, hills taller and steeper than anything you’ll find in our usual part of the state, picturesque river bends, fluttering tadpoles and those little turtles who always like to sun themselves on the bank. Giant birds flew overhead, the shade kept us cool and comfy, and there weren’t even too many bugs to deal with. Mid-way through, we stopped and swam in the current for a while. Oh, and we saw this: Ever heard of a Hellbender before? We hadn’t either, but a group of wildlife ecologists from Purdue University was down there working on a conservation project to tag and protect this near-threatened species of giant salamander. For 65 million  years, these ugly mugs have been hanging out under rocks in swift-moving bodies of water, snacking on fish and crayfish and trying not to get eaten by turtles or snakes. “Anthropogenic” causes like damming of rivers, pollution and blocking of dispersal and migration routes have been wiping them out in increasing numbers. The Purdue guys were nice enough to show us the one they’d captured that morning, and Veda didn’t even seem too freaked out about it.

Swimming in the river current was probably the little one’s favorite part of the outing. She got braver and braver about immersing in the cool, rushing water, but I must admit that my parental bravery (and arm strength) was rapidly running out after about half an hour of gripping her little hands tightly, crossing from one side to the other and trying not to envision her swept out of my grasp, bobbing down toward the Ohio in her little pink lifejacket. She cried when we put her back in the boat to finish our journey.

That crying probably had more to do with her just needing a nap, though. Because after just a few more minutes of paddling, I noticed that the girls up front were awfully quiet… which wasn’t that unusual at first because the river’s so beautiful and everyone so unanimously agrees on that fact that after a while it’s no longer necessary to even comment on it. You just float and look around and wonder at it all. But Veda was a little too tired to wonder.

She woke up just as we were docking at the take-out point, which worked out pretty well. A really friendly gentleman was pulling out his little fishing boat, and apologized in a southern drawl that he couldn’t get the trailer in place any faster. The ride back to the campsite was short, and followed by a delicious lunch (though almost anything would have tasted fantastic at that point), which was followed by the other best part of the trip in my opinion, which was the O’Bannon Woods State Park pool.

There are two big pools, actually — one for big people and one for little ones — along with those fun squirty splash tubes that kids love to run through and hug. There was a little frog-mouth slide (Veda loved to climb up his back and come flying down his tongue, splashing into the warm water in a big giggling ruckus) and two big water-park slides, including a twisty blue one and a straight-down green one. So much fun. And I didn’t even get sunburnt. Much. The reason it was so enjoyable, though, was mainly that Niki and Zoë came to play with us for the afternoon (That’s P and N atop the straight-chute slide tower in the picture), and Zoë Kline is so cute it’s just not even within reason.

See what I mean? That night we sat around the campfire and told jokes and stories again, and Mason reclined on the hood of his truck for a little quality time with the Dakota Sport. Teenagers are funny.

Oh, and that might have been the evening we had vegetable shish kabobs on the fire, and, yeah — they were as good as they looked. Another good night’s sleep for Veda and another few rounds of uneventful flap-zipping, and we were ready the next morning for our next adventure: Squire Boone Caverns. A pretty spectacular cave, I must say, especially for not being all that big. We saw underground waterfalls, some “elephant ear” sheets of rock that were translucently thin, and even a 44-ft stream of water coming off a huge stalactite way up in the ceiling of the biggest room. (Niki’s quote: “Uh oh, we got a leak.”) Toward the end the cave guide turned off all the lights for several seconds, and neither Veda nor Zoë shrieked at all.

And outside they’ve got two goats to pet, along with a plain old cat who was nonetheless very friendly and barely tried to swat Veda for interrupting its nap. After the tour we walked over to the bakery for some snacks, and Tom and Sharon and I got to see the workings of a real grist mill on our way out. I think I managed to irritate the tour guide by asking how the two 2,000-lb stone wheels were made and put in place at the mill, since those seemed to be at the core of the operation. He gently informed me that Squire Boone’s time wasn’t *that* long ago, and metal tools to chip and shape stone were readily available. Also, we were standing in an area with some of the most readily accessible limestone and other quarry-able rock in the world. Still, I thought it was impressive. And now I know where cornmeal comes (came) from.

That afternoon was fun too; we went back to the campsite for a nap and another trip to the pool, but Friday just couldn’t match up to that awesome Thursday. Not because an above-ground river beats a subterranean one, or because I failed to cross my legs for my last trip down the giant slide and nearly ruled out any chance for Veda to have any little brothers or sisters, or even because I got some sudden stomach upset as we were leaving the cave and didn’t want to eat any lunch or really even move for a couple hours.

The big problem was that poor Veda fell down and smashed up her little face that morning, before the cave outing, and you can probably even see her little scratches and the bump on her forehead in the picture. We all felt just terrible for her. Lots of screaming when it happened, though she was pretty much okay for the rest of the day. (Managed to fall down and smack the *exact same spots* later in the afternoon, though — poor kid had a rough day!)

So on Saturday, with scabby knees, bug spray in our skin and our tents impressively packed back up in the bags they came in, we rolled back north toward Indianapolis. There were birthday festivities for me and Katie, including an outing to her favorite local Mexican place where I confirmed that it is indeed an Out Of Control great mushroom quesadilla. Before that Veda and I waded in the creek behind mom’s house, and I marveled at how the little rocks at the streambed didn’t seem to hurt her little padded feet at all, while I was ooching and ahching at several points. And on Sunday I installed the patio speakers I’d promised Katie for her birthday *last* year, then got to blow out candles as a birthday boy for the 34th time. And play in the creek with my twin nieces Emily and Elizabeth. And catch up with Aunt Lynnda, who we don’t get to see very often but who always has great stories. All my cousins on my mom’s side came in, and even Aunt Kathy came down with her son Marco, which was super cool. I just finished the last of Aunt Kathy’s birthday brownies yesterday. Still awesome.

A fun summer adventure. 500-some miles, a handful of uneventful challenges tying boats to cars, some bug bites, a leech encounter, one gorgeous full moon and lots of family togetherness. Oh, and I forgot to mention our other camp mates at O’Bannon… they visited every night and actually kind of freaked me and Sharon out on Friday, when five or six showed up all at once. That’s a lot of pairs of little glowing eyes out in the woods. Fortunately we were able to persuade them to move along.

And Veda’s boo-boos are almost totally healed by now.

Such is the restorative power of a little break from the usual.

I can’t believe what this little video does to me. It’s simple, slick, calculated and done on behalf of a company I don’t even support. But there’s something about it… especially toward the end, you’ll see. The music and the images and the little girl’s Veda-like smile… perfect. I burst out laughing-sort-of-crying the first time I watched it; I’ll admit. And the second.

At precisely 2 & 1/3 years old, she’s trying out a big-girl bed tonight. We’re happy for her, and proud of her of course, but it’s a little sad for us supposed adults. Especially as we stand in the doorway of what yesterday was a baby’s room, with a crib and a nightlight and all the cuteness of a sleepytime refuge, and know that when I open that same door tomorrow morning, as I do every morning, I’ll see my little girl — not my baby — in a regular bed (albeit tiny), which can be hopped right out of, beside a play table and toys and pillows and all the trappings of big-girlhood.

I have to put a cap on the sentimentality at least a little bit — I’m a dude, after all — but yeah. It’s hard. And she did cry a bit after I put her down tonight, which was sad. But now she’s quiet again, and I’m working again, and I’m reminded that sleep is sleep, and the places she goes in her dreams are no different than they were yesterday. For now.

Here she is playing in the field outside my cousin Ryan’s wedding reception on Saturday.

Spring is springing. Heck, summer’s simmering: The temperature here today actually topped 90 for a second there, I think. And that means it’s time for some outdoor festivities, and it also means prom season for the high-school-enrolled among us. That would include our little brother Mason, who’s of course not so little anymore. The taller-than-me teenager is off to the big dance with some lovely young maiden, and we were asked to provide some pictures of the dapper gent in his tux.

No problem. It also gave us an opportunity to make use of the “good camera” while it was out, documenting Veda and Kai playing in a bucket of hose water, and Kai tearing across the yard like a maniac, which she does so very well. Enjoy.

Veda: I wanna jump off the coffee table!
Penny’s brother Tom: Don’t do it. You’ll slip, cut your head on the corner of that glass there and bleed out.