friends, goodbyes and a pair of jeans

when i was a kid, i had a favorite pair of jeans. they were just normal blue jeans, nothing fancy with any kind of designer label. first of all i was only 5. second of all, my mom didn't believe in buying designer labels for a tomboy who would only put a hole in them within the first 30 days. so, though these were just your ordinary, run of the mill blue jeans, i loved them fiercely.

mom, on the other hand, hated them. they were looking their age. they were fraying on the ends. they had holes in the knees. while folding them after retrieving them from the dryer, she would look at me, shake her head and state yet again how i needed to just throw them away. the thought of putting my favorite jeans in the trash made my stomach churn.

one morning i woke up and went in search of my favorite jeans. they were nowhere to be found. i looked under my bed. i looked in the back of my closet. i looked in the dirty clothes. gone. missing. finally i asked my mom if she had seen them. she looked at me and without any kind of sympathy explained that my very favorite jeans where in the trash can.

i bolted to the trash and immediately began to dig. luckily i didn't have to look very hard. there at the bottom of the can were my jeans. with tears in my eyes, i rescued said jeans from their terrible fate and told my mom never to do that again.

you see i think i actually thought that those jeans had feelings, that they were in some way living and would never forgive me for just tossing them aside.

i am a sentimental person. i don't let go easily. granted i could care less about jeans now. i still have my favorites. i still hold onto my skinny jeans, hoping someday to once again fit within their slender walls. but normally, when the jeans begin to fray, i give them away. i don't feel sad. i don't cry. i just do what needs to be done.

not so with other things in my life.

my vagabond lifestyle insists that i travel lightly. we talked about this before in this post. i don't mind not having a mortgage or trinkets or closet space. what i mind, what wrenches my heart in two is the constant revolving door of friendships in my life. people come and go, here for a few months, maybe a couple of years and then gone. i move or they move. they finish their term with our company and off they go to do something else. granted everyone deals with this to some extent but for me it is a daily reality. i have said more goodbyes in the last 10 years than i care to count. it is emotionally exhausting.

today as i reflect on the goodbyes i have yet to say, i feel flooded with sadness. i am invested here. i used to wonder if i could ever be as close to a french friend as i could to an american one. the answer is yes. i used to wonder if friends i had only known for a couple of years could mean as much to me as ones i had known for a lifetime. the answer is yes. i used to wonder if this country would ever feel like home. the answer is yes.

and here i am, the girl who couldn't even let go of a pair of pants.

wyatt celebrates early

you can never celebrate a birthday too early. well, at least that is the motto in my family. and when i say family, i mean me. basically, i think you can never celebrate a birthday too early, too late or for too long.

that being said, we decided to celebrate wyatt's birthday early this year. his real birthday, july 10, falls just after we land in the good ole usa. we wanted wyatt to get to have a party with his friends before he left, so last saturday, we all headed out to the OK Corral.

ahh, there is nothing like a western theme park à la francaise. cowboys speaking french. indians talking about keeping the peace and living in harmony with the white man. and everywhere you look, little frenchie kids dressed up in western attire. it was a bit twilight zonish to say the least with only the country music blaring throughout the park to make it feel a little like home.

here is the story in pics....

wyatt's birthday posse

wyatt and will spend a bit of time in the pokey.

charlotte, claire and juliette

will's first time behind the wheel.

some of the kids got out of hand....

it just looks like i lost!

wyatt blows out his candles. 4 years old. wow.

wyatt insisted on chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. that's my boy!

we spent about 15 min. at the water park portion of the amusement park. the water was so cold that the kids didn't last long.

this is about as close to the water as my boys got.

we rode many a horse.

i saddle up behind Will.

Dad hitches a ride with Wyatt.

at first we couldn't get wyatt to go on any "big" kid rides. finally he succumbed and loved every minute of it. good to know i will eventually have some roller coaster buddies.

the bobbing bears were a favorite.

Gildas is always sneaking up on someone!

Katie has never met a stranger...

just in case you want to know what french indians look like.

the happy kids at the end of the day.

my trip down Wisteria Lane

i love how excited my kids get about their birthdays. they talk about it for months. they tell me who they want to invite to their party. they make mental lists of the toys they want. as a lover of birthdays myself, it makes me really happy.

enter this year's birthday for oldest son.

it started off shaky. due to the fact that France is on vacation for almost the entire month of may, i was a couple of days late getting the invitations handed out. instead of giving the parents a full two weeks notice, we ended up giving them about 9 days. i was nervous about that and even thought about delaying the party a week. one look into the excited face of my son finalized that decision for me. 9 days would have to be enough.

we handmade the spiderman invitations. we chose the guest list carefully. 6 little boys from his class were to be invited. 6 guests for a 6 year old. yeah, i got that idea from a parent magazine or something.

the next day, scott handed out the invitations, well 4 of them, to the kid's parents. the following day i gave out the final 2. i was given immediate confirmation that the boys would be able to attend. whew. a big relief. i guess i hadn't waited too long after all.

then came the cancellations. one kid had a broken arm and couldn't come. another had been invited to a different party on the same day. so 4 out of 6. not so bad. and then, the day before the party, Will's best little friend's mom called to say he was going to the other party on the same day.

i had a desperate housewives moment. the OTHER party? are you kidding me? i knew the girl who was having the party. she was in Will's class too. i had taught her english. how dare she have a party on the same day as my son! and why the heck didn't i know about it? why wasn't MY son invited to that party too? in true Wisteria Lane fashion, i began to plot how i would make MY son's birthday better than HER birthday. we would have more games, more gifts and better cake. heck, we would make homemade ice cream! no frenchie could top that!

in a complete frenzy, i went to work. i baked. i bought. i looked up party games on the internet.

then it hit me. i was being a complete idiot. hidden beneath the melodramatic rage was sadness and guilt. i was afraid that i had ruined my son's by birthday by not planning early enough, by not checking to see if there were going to be conflicts on that day. i wasn't mad at HER. i was mad at myself.

the day of the party arrived and with great trepidation i made my way to the park. we set up and waited for the guests to arrive. Jean got there first. Will's eyes lit up and about a nanosecond later he was taken up into little boy birthday paradise. for the next 3 hours, he laughed, played and had a great time. he never once mentioned the 3 boys who couldn't come. i'm sure their absence never even crossed his mind.

my son knows how to appreciate what is right before him instead of wishing for what isn't. and here i thought i was the mature one, the teacher and not the learner.

the party was a great success, not because of the big bubble pool or the homemade ice cream but because Will Campbell had fun.

traveling light

when i was a kid, i would rearrange my room each year. i would pull everything off my shelves, empty my drawers and clean out my closet. for about three days my room would look like a bomb went off. but then, little by little with anti-entropy glee, i would begin to bring order to the chaos. i got rid of junk i didn't need. i gave away clothes that were too small. i organized all the momentos that my sentimental heart just couldn't get rid of yet. within a week, i had a completely new room to live in. i loved that feeling, knowing everything had its place and that i was living as lightly as possible.

i am still that way. even though my realm has increased to an entire apartment as opposed to a single room, i still rearrange yearly, if not biannually. this year, though, it wasn't by choice. this year i have to do it because i am moving.

moving. for those of you who don't know, we have to leave because of a silly french law that says each 5 years we must spend a year out of the country if we don't pay into the french social system. we don't, so out we go. we can come back in 366 days.

i haven't lived outside of france for more than 3 months in over 10 years. this next year will be quite a change for us all.

so i am sorting, throwing out, arranging, and giving stuff away. you learn what is important to you, what you value when you go through this exercise. trinkets may end up in the trash but Will's first onesy stays. i am contemplating what to do with all the crystal i never use, but i wouldn't even consider throwing away a card given to me by a friend. and my books, well, those along with my photo albums may be the only things i get a bit "particular" about.

my life has required of me a certain minimalism. i can't collect knick-knacks. i don't have room for decorative impracticalities. i can't afford the luxury of clutter. i live simply both because i have to and because of who i am.

yet. (you knew there was something else coming, didn't you?) yet, on the inside, i am anything but a light traveler. emotionally, i am an avid collector. i pack away memories. i store experiences. i covet time spent with those who were only in my life for a season. the experiences and people in life that have touched me, moved me, and inspired me, these are the things i can't live without. i guess i have to be thankful that these intangibles require no spatial resting place. my heart always has room.

so i am packing, moving, and making changes but i am not forgetting, releasing or saying goodbye. my prized possessions aren't the things that can be put in a box.

feeding the soul in florence

well i might need to start doubling up on the italy posts. are you getting bored yet?

florence...

florence beats with art. if you want to see where renaissance art was born, then you have to spend some time in this fantastic city. i knew the family wouldn't be as excited about this part of our trip as i would be so we came up with a plan. we spent our first afternoon just walking around the historic center exploring the "main" sights together. here is some of what we saw...





the next day, we went all together to see michelangelo's famous David statue and then, and then, we split up. the kids, dad, and memaw went to a kid's park while mom went all by herself to the Uffizi musuem. even though i had to stand in line for an hour and a half to get in, nothing could dampen my excitement. like a total geek, i paid for the audio guide and spent most of the afternoon wandering around the museum looking at art. sigh. oh and then there was a date with the best sandwich in the world at this hole-in-the-wall place hidden on a side street just outside the museum, but words can't even describe the yummyness of that experience.

pictures do NOT do this statue justice. it is breathtaking in person.

where i spent the afternoon

the boys favorite pastime

i think they had ice cream everyday

thank you da vinci, donatello, michelangelo and brunelleschi. like the sandwich was to my stomach, you were to my soul.

in love with pizza

before going on the big italy vacation, my husband and i debated whether or not we ought to take a cruise. when we drive places, or should i say, when scott drives places, we, uhm i mean he, can tend to get a little stressed out. granted, it is obvious why. people in this country, and those surrounding it, drive like maniacs. thus, vacations in our car can be a bit tense. when i saw that there were several cruises that hit all the cities in italy we wanted to see, i suggested that we go this route so that we, i mean he, could relax and truly be on vacation.

after much pondering, Scott decided that he would rather drive. his reason? he wanted to be able to sample the local cuisine. he said that was his favorite thing about traveling. i kind of chuckled because i have never heard my husband, in 11 years of marriage, mention such a thing. then it hit me. the reason hubbie wanted to eat local cuisine is because this particular "local cuisine" meant lots and lots of pizza.

i could tell you about how much he loves pizza, how it is all he ate before we married, how if he had his choice we would eat it 5 times a week. but i will spare you all that. just know that Scott Campbell loves pizza. and when i am being honest, i do too!

in 9 days of vacation in italy, we ate pizza 9 times. yes WE. i went toe to toe with the man. he didn't think i had it in me, but i proved him wrong. at first we kept notes on the different pizzas we ate. we wanted to compare and find the best pizza in italy. but after the 4th or 5th pizza we stopped. they were all so good. how can you rank the divine?






when we got to Naples, the town where pizza was invented, our lives changed forever. it was here, in a small hole in the wall italian pizza joint that we had the best pizza of our lives. the place was so packed the first night we came, meaning italians were hanging outside sitting on cars waiting to get in at midnight, that we had to come back the next day. we came early. we sat. we ate. we were carried away into pizza heaven.




just writing this post makes me salivate. now back to my diet...

Pompeii

in elementary school, i loved the days when we got to watch films. usually it was on a friday and usually it meant that we didn't have to listen to Mr. Rothke drone on and on about something we could care less about. yes, friday film days were the best. little did i know that one such film day would change my little 8 year old world forever. that day i didn't sleep, or pass notes or whisper to those around me. that day, with the rhythmic sound of the film clicking through the viewfinder in the background, i sat transfixed before a documentary on the ancient city of Pompeii.

an eruption. in 79 ad mount vesuvius hurdled lava, ash and poisonous gas toward a city of over 10,000 people. in less than 24 hours the once prosperous Pompeii was buried in over 4 meters of volcanic vomit. not until the 18th century would the excavations begin. no one could even imagine the wealth of history that was about to be discovered.

being a girl who carried a great capacity for wonder in her heart, i was haunted by that film, especially by the images of the casts made of the victims who died that day. men with arms raised to the sky in a vain attempt to shield themselves from that which would kill them. women clinging to their children. others slumped against walls in weary resignation of the inevitable.

Pompeii, a city frozen in time. People stopped dead in their tracks. Life put on eternal pause. Who wouldn't want to see that?

so on may 15, 4 days after i turned 39, i visited Pompeii.

Pompeii with Mt Vesuvius in the background

over 4400 acres of buildings and streets like this one have been uncovered.

i tried to put myself in their shoes.  here comes the ash boys!  

the decor of the houses is still easy to see.

i guess the sky light wasn't such a good idea....

Pompeii's graveyard

the boys loved running wild through the ruins.

oh and we can't forget, Pompeii's version of a fast food restaurant.

theater, anyone?

the town's colosseum.

the forum

the boys take a break.

some of the many items found.

and those terrifying casts of actual victims...