Adventure Mom

Swimming The guy with the light-brown hair. It's his fault. From a distance, I catch a half-second glimpse of Sean. Fancy meeting my late husband in New Zealand at his ten-year-old's school swimming day. Not-Sean clambers up the steep bleacher seats at the Mount Maunganui College pool, just feet from where I sit. I steal a glance, and of course, he looks nothing like Sean. Only the color of his hair and maybe the outline of his nose is faintly reminiscent. It's enough to send my fingers digging into my purse like a dog scratching for lost treasure - only I'm looking for a tissue to dab my watery eyes and blow my nose. Sunglasses help. So it happened, on this sixth year after Sean's death that I'm crying at the pool. It's a little more than a month after the anniversary of his death. For the first time, I forgot about January 23rd, oblivious to its significance as I enjoyed the waning days of the grandparents' visit with us and the end of ...

Nearly Dry January was wet, wet, wet... It’s the first of March. This means I can let myself drink alcohol again. I spent the month of February dry. That’s not entirely true – I did, after all, give myself a hall pass Waitangi weekend (Feb 6-8), indulging in a glass of sparkling wine after a 24-kilometer (15 mile) relay run and two glasses of white wine on our wedding anniversary the following night. My big, boozy weekend.  Over summer, a pattern had crept in – I’d have a drink almost every day. Granted, that drink was often light (2.5% alcohol) beer or a small glass of wine. But I was consistent, and Iooked forward to that drink. While I like to think I'm a Midwestern-born moderate, if I had to categorize my relationship to alcohol on Facebook, I’d say, “It’s complicated.” It’s fun to feel the effects of a couple drinks. It sucks to see the effects of chronic use in people I love– lost dollars, increased weight, accidents, illnesses, break-ups, hours of lost sleep and squan...