Fork McMurray

Before I could properly say "Fort", it was Fork McMurray.
This is the same way my three year old says it now.

I wasn't born in Fort McMurray.
We moved there when I was four months old.
It's the only hometown I've ever known, and in my lifetime I've seen it change from a virtually unknown city of 35,000 to a bustling and easily recognizable metropolis of more than 80,000.

I left to go to University, and aside from a couple of boomerang stays of no more than a few months at a time, I haven't had a permanent residence there since I was 18.
Even still, I've never felt more like I'm "home" than when I'm rounding the corner from Highway 63 onto Beacon Hill Drive.

We moved into the house on Beaverglen Close when I was barely 6.  It was the summer before I started in Miss Cox's grade one class.
My first night, I remember looking at the pink patterned wall paper and seeing Laura scribbled on a bit of wall where the wallpaper had been peeled up.
Laura Tees, who lived there with her family before us.
I remember my brother and I exploring the neighborhood  and finding a park with a tire castle and zip line and some immediate friends.
It was a large neighborhood.  One of the largest in the community of Beacon Hill.

When I was a little older, I wanted to paint my room white.  We put hand prints in different colours of pastel paint all over the bottom half.  Any time a friend came to play, they were to provide a semi-permanent mark of themselves on the wall.
We renovated that house many times over, making it more and more our own.
Added a deck, then later removed it, and built a new deck.
Dad and I built the entire garage one summer, with only a little bit of help.
It is still one of my greatest accomplishments.

We discovered our lifelong passion for running, and ran around Beacon Hill countless times.
Garth, Dad and I would occasionally go out together, but more often than not it was just Dad and I, and maybe the big yellow dog, Belle.

I discovered I had been accepted to my chosen University program, standing in the kitchen one morning.

I felt the most intense heartbreak of my life in the house.
Went through some very difficult years of bullying and mean girl bullsh*t.

I remember having my shoulder accidentally dislocated by Andrew in the basement, when I was in grade school.
Dad shook a bottle of salsa one day and it went all over the roof because the lid hadn't been put back on quite right.

It's still very fresh and raw, and it's not even "my" house anymore.
I'm not even the one dealing with this unimaginable loss.

I can't even begin to think that I have any idea how my parents, my brother and sister-in-law and 1600 other families, feel right now.
I don't know how you all feel, but I do know that everyone will grieve this loss differently and I will, without question, support you in whichever way you need.

The house is gone.
Reduced to a pile of ash and rubble.
The memories of that house, I will put to paper, so that they will never die, and so that my children and their children can read about the wonderful things that happened in Beacon Hill, and not just the enormous tragedy of May 3,2016.
I'm posting this so that's it's current, but like many of my blog, or journal entries, I plan to return and add memories and thoughts.

Four people grew up in that house.
My parents were just 25 when we moved in, so they themselves were coming of age, and I'm sure have their own memories, separate from mine.
I know my brother would have his own set to think on and smile about.
I'm not sure how I'll feel when I go to see the place where our neighborhood once was, and I'm not sure I even want to go see it.
What I'm certain of, is that the fire didn't take away any of the important stuff.

I love you guys all so very much and I'm so, so sorry that this happened to you and to all the people of Beacon Hill, and the other communities in Fort McMurray that were devastated by the fire.

The Time of Our Life

My littlest guy needs clothes.
He's growing like a bad weed.
The heel of his socks hits midfoot, so therefore they tend to come off half way through the day.

I don't like shopping at the best of times, so while I was at Costco the other day, I decided to zip into the clothing tables to look for some jammies for him.

Then I started crying.
The table that holds sleepers for 3m-24m is no longer a table I will ever shop at for my kids again.
Ever.

Not sobbing, just a few tears.
Enough that my middle said, "Why you cryin', mama?"
*Exhale
Exhale to stop from falling into an ugly cry because there are no more babies at your house and your daughter is the sweetest damn thing on the planet right now.

Post-shopping, I decided to take my littles to an indoor playground called Café O Play.
Super fun for the under 5 crowd, and jam friggin' packed with pregnant ladies.

I don't really hover when my kids are at an indoor playground, because, well, I brought them there to run rampant so I could read my book.
I know what their cries sound like and I go make sure they aren't flushing toys down the toilet or hitting some else's kid periodically, but for the most part I'm what some might call, a "free-range" parent.
(Please don't call Social Services.  They aren't actually feral children, and they always wear pants when we leave the house.)

While I was sitting back watching some of the chaos playing, I realized that many of the conversations around me were between pregnant Mom's.
No lie, I bet 50% of the women there were knocked up!

And when you're pregnant, your world revolves around your pregnancy.  (Guilty!)
It's kind of a big deal.

Now that I'm a veteran Mom, though my experience can be applied only to my own littles, I realize that the act of being pregnant is so, so brief.

It feels like a huge life event, and at the time it is, but you grow your babies for not even a year.  Then, they're born in another seemingly huge life event, again, only fleeting, for them to begin growing at an alarming rate.

So alarming, that six years later, your oldest is reading chapter books and two more have joined the herd.

They say that the nights are long but the years are short.
Or something like that.

The nights are long.
They're STILL long, six years later, but I get it now.
They grow up so fast.
So.  Fast.

My husband and I disagree sometimes.
(Shocking, I know!)
We tend to chock it up to little sleep and the fact that we're just trying to get through these trying years when the kids are so needy and dependent and we're not sleeping.

But this is it.
This is the time we will look back on as the best years of our lives, and I don't want to remember that we clung to our helmets, headed into the battle day, and hoped for the best.

I want to remember the memories we're making, and not the fact that creating the memories was stressful.
I don't want to say to my husband, "Phew!  Glad we survived that!"
I hope that one day, when all the kids have left home, we can high five each other, because, we nailed it.

And also, by then, we'll be alone again.
And I don't want to wish for the kids to move out and for us to be alone, but it will be nice to have the guy all to myself again!