ahhhhhh...

We are here. Now. Finally. What a relief.

This is the view from our balcony. We are in a suite (they upgraded us because we are holding the wedding here as well) out at the farthest end of the farthest wing of the hotel. Which is perfect for us – we don’t mind the trek and we love the private feeling.

The last day before leaving for three weeks was the longest day in a long string of long days. And that’s okay, because we are here now.

Here.

The island has welcomed us with soft breeze, birdsong, warmth, fragrant air, strong surf, and the hospitality of the people – this feels like home. Each time we come here, we are one step closer to finding a way to live here for a while.

For now, we are thrilled to be here. Yes, that’s a theme.

Now.

For so long, this time was in the future. It has finally arrived, this fullness of embracing each other and our love, and sharing this with our circle of friends and family.

It’s likely to be quiet on the blog until after our honeymoon. We’ll share stories and pictures when we return in August.

Until then, we will be continuing our romance…

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

— e.e. cummings

unfolding

Nine more days until the wedding... Ed picked up our rings on Friday evening (they arrived a week early – yay!) I picked up my dress on Saturday, and yesterday I shipped it off to be sure it arrives at the hotel before we leave the Northwest. (I trust UPS more than I trust United.) Last night, we made our final picks for ceremony and reception music.

When we were in Batavia for Aaron and Jessie’s wedding, we were surprised to see them choosing music the night before. Surely, that wouldn’t be us. And yet, there we were – just four days before we fly out of here – listening to piece after piece of beautifully composed classical music, searching for the one that we most want to hear after the minister pronounces us husband and wife – a piece that would express the celebration we know we’ll feel. We found it.

Out of all the ideas we’ve had, the details we’ve managed, and the choices we’ve made, choosing music hasn’t taken priority until now. Something else about the wedding, or something else in life (such as sleep), seemed to take precedence on any given day. Now it’s one more thing crossed off the list. From the beginning, our list was much smaller than most, because we’re not doing many of the “traditional” things.

Still, for even a relatively simple wedding such as we are having, the details involved to put it on are significant. More than I realized. Some of that is the nature of a destination wedding – planning from a distance; some has to do with coordinating travel and lodging for most of 30 people. We have spent an enormous amount of the last year talking about, planning, and preparing for this one day.

This one day.

It will be a big day to be sure. An important day. One (of several) that we will share with our family and friends on Kauai. One (of many) that marks a transition point in our lives.

And we are mindful that it is a beginning day. We have lived as a family for over a year now, yet this day represents a transformation beyond the piece of paper. Our wedding day starts our marriage, continues our partnership, and provides a new frame for our romance.

We intend to laugh that day, maybe cry, embrace each other and each of you, enjoy a feast of celebration and be grateful. We will toast our great good fortune to have found each other, seen our potential together, and made our dreams come true. We will know our blessings and humbly share them with you.

…

People have asked how I can make time for the blog with all that has to be done. I am running around a bit this week (okay, a lot – cluck, cluck) and it is a little crazy getting ready to be gone for three weeks. But if I didn’t write I might explode – the writing grounds me, provides focus, and brings me back to why we are doing all of this. I thank all of you who have let me know that you are enjoying these posts. I’d write anyway, but it’s nice to know there is an appreciative audience.

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage.
~ Lao Tzu

time apart

The first Christmas we spent together we actually spent apart. Ed and I already had plans to visit other people during that time. We exchanged gifts and kisses and wishes for safe travel and speedy return.

Before Ed left, I had something else to share with him. I started with, “This is not a gift.” The two hearts in the picture above are made of blue glass, from the same pour. They are part of each other in a sense.

The idea was for Ed to take a blue heart with him, as he carried my heart with him… and bring it back when we could be together in the way we wanted to be. The other heart stayed with me.

We have given our hearts into each other’s keeping so long ago, yet each of us must also keep and know our own heart for the relationship to stay strong and true.

Ed is a man’s man to be sure. He’s also a romantic. He kept that heart in his pocket every day for several years, pretty much until we moved into our house together. The heart lived in the same pocket as his cell phone (a tiny egg-shaped Samsung model). The heart was unchanged – the phone looked like it had been to war. I wish I had a picture of the poor beat-up phone to share here.

Now, in the golden light and warmth of summer, that winter night seems very far away. The tenderness we shared then is with us still, as are the blue hearts. The heart doesn’t live in Ed’s pocket so much anymore, but it hardly needs to, now that we get to start each day with good morning kisses and end each day holding hands.

…

If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
Upon this winter night with you

~from a song written by Gordon Lightfoot,
(recently recorded by Sarah McLachlan)

moon honey

So where is this honeymoon? Well, you had to know we didn’t take a straight line to get there, so here is the story. Almost every place we talked about involved an island or at least, a lot of water.

We considered Italy, but we thought we might want a relaxing vacation rather than an active, exploring vacation. And Ed didn’t want to pack up every few days to go to a new place.

We considered Australia or New Zealand, but it’s winter there. And I wanted a honeymoon in gloriously hot weather, where getting dressed would mean a swimsuit and a sarong most days.

We considered Ireland, but even in summer that wouldn’t be a warm-weather honeymoon, and we would want to explore a lot there too. Just not on this trip.

Then the Mountain Travel Sobek catalogue arrived – now there’s timing! The catalogue is a lush, heavy-paper tribute to world travel with adventure in mind, and features full-colour, gorgeous, inspiring photographs on every page. We found our spot. We’d go to the Galapagos and tour the islands aboard a tall ship. The dates lined up exactly with our plans.

Yes.

No. I mean, it could have been. We contacted them, and they had room for us. Late last November when we first talked with them about it, they had no reservations for that trip. We were getting ready to go on our December trip to Kauai, and decided to wait until we returned to finalize the details – first trip first and all that.

We returned to chaos in the Northwest – the storms that ripped through Puget Sound left our neighbourhood without power for a full week and many of our neighbours with trees in their houses. Power was restored just before Christmas, and it wasn’t until after the holidays that we thought about our honeymoon.

Uh oh, you’re saying. And you’d be right. Because MT Sobek had nobody booked for the trip, a private charter bought out the whole boat for that time slot. And as we are committed to having our honeymoon right after our wedding, it was time to come up with a new destination.

Then we figured that if we were going to be in Hawaii already, how about continuing west? We thought about Japan, Bali, Indonesia, and Thailand. All were vetoed.

How about the South Pacific – Bora Bora, Moorea, Huahine, and more? We could spend a week on each of two islands, or maybe spend a week on one, and a week on the Big Island of Hawaii on our way back, to break up our travel. Hmmm… there’s an idea.

But it turns out that the flights don’t go through Hawaii to get to the South Pacific any more. There is only one flight there from Honolulu each week on Saturday night, and one flight back on Sunday night. To fit our timing, we would have had to fly from Kauai back to LA in order to take a 14-hour flight to Tahiti and then an inter-island flight to our island of choice. Add that hotels on Bora Bora range from $800 to $3,000 a night, and it wasn’t looking like such a great spot to us. (Said Ed, “For $3,000 a night, I should bathe in gold, and I don’t even want to bathe in gold.”)

Okay, now where? Spin the globe? Back to MT Sobek. Well, there was an Arctic explorer trip that looked pretty exciting, and the dates fit, but that wasn’t going to be a comfortable trip in a bikini. Hmmm…

When Ed and I were planning our first holiday together, he sent me some links to look at. One he said wasn’t really the right place for that trip, but it looked cool, and he wanted me to check it out. It was for a place called Ladera, on St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The rooms are built into the side of a forested cliff, with only three walls each – the fourth wall is open to the mountain. The beds are draped with netting, and each room has a private stone walkway, a plunge pool and waterfall. I remember thinking at the time that this place had honeymoon written all over it.

So I asked Ed about it. He was excited – it was a place he’d always wanted to go, and it fit all the criteria we had: warm, exotic, relaxing, special, and more. I checked flights, and while they were long to go the Caribbean, no more so than our South Pacific trip would have been. He said, “Go ahead and book it.”

Except I couldn’t. They were full for all of our dates. Now what? Our friends Kirk and Heidi live on their sailboat, and have several times chartered boats to sail around the Caribbean. After their most recent trip, Heidi came back raving about their new favourite place. This had potential.

Heidi said she didn’t think the place would be right for our honeymoon – they like it because it’s very casual and relaxed (sounds good) and very yachty and filled with boaters having a good time (maybe not the right place after all).

Not to lose hope – Heidi and Kirk and their families have cruised around the islands and visited many places that would be great honeymoon spots. She put together a list complete with names of places, URL links, and mini-reviews saying why they liked each place. Wow! We had our own personal travel agent who had actually been to the islands and hotels, someone with taste we can trust.

So research-girl (yours truly) checked all of them – one stood out. We looked for flights – they lined up. We asked about availability – we had our choice of suites. So we pressed the GO button. Not quite like the EASY button, because this wasn’t quite that, but it’s good all the same.

We have a honeymoon!

After our wedding we’ll be heading to the Caribbean island of Mustique. Mustique is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, at the south end of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Yes, we’ll be there during hurricane season; however, the island is so far south that they rarely see any effect from tropical storms. It’s basically just a stone’s throw from Venezuela. Okay, a large boulder. Thrown by Atlas.

We’ll be staying at the Cotton House “resort”. It’s made up of only 20 suites and rooms in several buildings on what was a cotton plantation in another era. We have the upper floor of a building at the furthest edge of the property from the main building, with our own veranda opening out to the Caribbean and a private plunge pool.

There are three restaurants on the island, two hotels (Firefly has just four rooms), and a small boutique or two. We are told that Mick Jagger has a house there, as do Elton John and several other notables. LeAnn Rimes has been known to show up to play piano at Firefly’s bar.

We hope they’ll leave us alone. It’s our honeymoon after all.

no news is good news

Except when it’s about your passport.

Things have been very quiet on the blog lately. That’s not for lack of things to say or to add. It’s more for lack of time and energy. In the last two weeks we’ve had 8th grade leaving ceremony, state championships for lacrosse, end-of-year parties for what seems like every possible reason, a 40th birthday, two trips to Canada, and now Kristina is off for a week of lacrosse camp at the U.

Oh, and we’re getting married in 11 days.

Back story: My passport expired in February. Passport Canada treats every passport as an entirely new passport application – there are no renewals per se. They actually prefer folks to let them expire and issue new ones – that’s not a rule, just their preference.

The application process includes sending originals of all proof of citizenship documents, including the birth certificate and any current passport. The government website indicated that passport processing time was 20 working days, so I was confident that my passport would arrive in plenty of time.

Current story: Ed usually calls me when he leaves work to let me know he’s on his way home as it’s not a regular or consistent time each day. We usually chat about our days while he drives home. On one of those days, I wanted to talk about potential honeymoon destinations.

Ed was concerned about potential passport delays, and um… encouraged me to get the application sent.

“Have you filed for your passport yet?”

“Uh… no.”

“Then we’re not talking about the honeymoon.” (I can tell he’s grinning as he says this.)

“Are you serious?!?!?” (I’m not grinning.)

Talk about motivation.

(This was before all the media attention to passport processing delays here and in Canada, but Ed is well ahead of the curve in his thinking.)

So, I filed for the passport in March – they signed for receipt of the application 28 March. Count 20 working days, I should have it by the end of April. And with everything else happening in life, I didn’t think much more about it, having done my part. However, by the end of May I was getting a bit antsy.

I went to the website for Passport Canada and the new “Service Delay” was reporting 50 working days to complete passport applications for Canadians living in the US. I thought this applied to new applications submitted at that point. Silly me.

If passports are still not received after the expected delivery time (for me, 20 working days), one can file a status request online (including in the request the tracking number for delivery).

I did that. Twice. Finally I received this response:

“Although we could have received your application, it has not been processed yet nor has a file been opened in your name. Passport Canada is experiencing a sharp volume increase in passport applications and therefore this step could now take up to 50 working days.

If you sent your passport application via courier or registered mail, we recommend that you communicate with the courier service provider in order to confirm that your passport application was delivered at Passport Canada.”

As the days ticked by (already more than 50) with no passport – and no acknowledgement from Passport Canada that they had even received the application – we became increasingly concerned about our (expensive and non-refundable) international honeymoon. Finally, after several other email, phone, and fax attempts to get information, I contacted the Ombudsman.

Every federal office in Canada has attached to it a third-party watchdog, called the Ombudsman, whose role is to look out for the ‘everyman’ and keep the little guy from getting screwed by the bureaucracy. I’m sure that’s not the exact wording of the job description, but I think it’s apt.

The Ombudsman has rules about how one has to make every good faith effort to achieve results at the first level. I did that. Initially they referred me back to the passport office for a status report. I was tearing my hair out at this point. I tried again. The second time they referred me to an actual person, with an actual name, and a direct phone line.

Hallelujah!

Only that didn’t get me a passport. At first all it got me was an argument about how they do not provide any guarantees, it doesn’t matter what the website says or doesn’t say, they don’t make any promises to get people their passports before they travel. Oh dear.

My only question was, “What can we do NOW to get me my passport before I travel?” Once she realized that my view was forward, she became very helpful and worked hard to locate my passport application. She had searchers on it – they knew it came in, and that it was pre-screened.

Then it was "sent to the 2nd floor” which apparently is government-speak for “we haven’t got a bloody clue”. It could have gone to any one of nine different files/departments/people/desks/buckets/rings of hell, and they were trying to figure out which one. We were in contact every other day, then daily, then several times a day as the calendar flew by.

Still no passport. By this time, I was starting to wonder if I should be heading up to Vancouver to do an in-person application, except that I no longer had my original birth certificate - a required document for a passport application.

At Ed’s suggestion – solution-oriented man that he is – I applied online for a replacement birth certificate. After paying for super-speedy processing and courier service, the new birth certificate (from the provincial department of vital statistics) arrived practically before I had walked out of my office. (Now why can’t the federal government work that fast??)

The woman at the passport office continued to recommend patience. Finally, a week ago Friday, she changed gears – I should head up to Vancouver to do an in-person application. At that point, the website said it would take two weeks to process a passport in person – the lady in Ottawa said they could do it faster.

Tina suggested I ask the Ottawa lady for a letter detailing my travails and the history of the case, so that the Vancouver folks would know that I had done my part already and I wasn’t a lazy slacker waiting until the last minute. Okay, Tina didn’t say I was a lazy slacker. But she had the right idea.

The Ottawa lady did one better – she emailed the Vancouver office and let them know I was coming, gave them enough information to start my file, and asked them to give me every assistance. I received a phone call from the Vancouver office the same day – the lady there was very apologetic for my troubles, and wanted to set up an appointment for me to have my application received. This was MUCH better than arriving at 5:30 am to get in line with the hope of being seen the same day (the plight most folks are resigned to).

So, two very long days of driving to Vancouver and back (about a three-hour drive each way) and four border crossings (fortunately made easier by the Nexus pass) during a week with two national holidays (Canada Day and Fourth of July) later, I now have my passport. And we can go on our international honeymoon.

And there was much rejoicing.

P.S. I had a phone message this weekend from Ottawa - they found my application, had a question for me, and if I would call their 1-800 number with the answer, they would see if they could get my passport to me before my travel date. ???

happy birthday

This is a quick post, to let you know that we celebrated Ed’s birthday today. These days, Ed is a man with precious little relaxin’ time. It seemed the right summer to give him an extra reason to kick back.

Ed went to work this morning. It’s been that kind of spring and summer. Of course, this was also the day of Kristina’s end-of-year lacrosse party, at Whirlyball. More on that, when I add to this post tomorrow.

But after the work, and after the party, Ed was formally presented with his hammock present (which we built while he was at work). He took to it like the proverbial duck to water, smiling, napping, reading, and most of all, relaxing.

It’s also Canada Day, north of the border, so we hope you all enjoy a delightful holiday weekend.