Of Fort Langley, Family and Remembrance

We arrived in Fort Langley, BC on Wednesday afternoon. This is the small, quaint village in the midst of Fraser Valley urban sprawl where our daughter, Hannah, lives with her husband and gorgeous two-year-old, Hazel. 

We used to live near here for about a year and a half in 1991-1992 when I was practicing law in downtown Vancouver. We had moved out to Langley to try to find a more affordable place to live with our little family of two children while I finished articling with a downtown law firm and got started in my legal career. Before arriving at Hannah's, I had driven by our old house to show Mark and Nathan.

It was while we were living at this house that Hannah was conceived. Though we moved back to North Vancouver before she was born, Hannah was blessed in an LDS chapel a few miles from here, just down the street from where the LDS temple now stands. Now she lives here. Life is funny.

Holly tree at the edge of Fort Langley Cemetery. 

I've always had a thing about cemeteries.

Nathan and Hazel immediately hit it off with one another.

War memorial, still decorated from the recent Remembrance Day. Nathan found a discarded poppy and put it in his lapel. It brought back memories of when I used to work in downtown Vancouver. As Remembrance Day approached, veterans' organizations would sell artificial poppies for people to wear on their lapel or dress or whatever. These little poppies were a quiet, dignified way people could express their appreciation and remembrance for those had sacrificed. 

Fort Langley Community Hall

We browsed through shops. I resisted purchasing a Christmas ornament because we are going to the Vancouver Christmas Market on Saturday night. :))

Hazel with her two soothers ;).

Our beautiful daughter, Hannah.

Waiting for lunch to arrive

My incredibly gorgeous husband. 

Our amazing son, Nathan.

We are heading into Vancouver today (Friday). It is going to be interesting as I continue to see and share with Mark. Where I attended law school. Where I/we lived here. Where I worked. Where I road the bus to work every day. Where we took the children for walks or to play. Where my children's grandparents are buried. Where so many, many memories lay scattered about, waiting to be gathered and made whole.

Through the Lens: Home and Family

We have our four younger children this weekend. I got out my new camera again and tried using the different effects and settings in taking pictures of our house, the kids and Mark. Our home. Our family. Through the lens.

Nathan and Mark's nascent bonsai and bamboo collection

Annie and Esther

I love this picture. Sisters. Esther the athlete. Annie the tablet queen.

Working in the back patio

Levi

Aaron

Ajax and Aaron

Levi

Autumn Reverie: My Husband's Childhood

I had a beautiful experience yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely fall day. As I sat down at our dining room table with some of Mark's childhood photo albums, the sun's gentle rays shown through the window behind me and over my shoulder, casting light and shadows on the pictures and table in front of me. Outside, I could hear the junior high kids walking home from school past our place, laughing and talking

I suddenly realized I was fully in this beautiful moment. That moment was all there was. How comfortable, cozy and lovely it felt. From somewhere in the depths of my memory came an image and a feeling of working a jigsaw puzzle on a card table set up by the living room window on a snowy Saturday afternoon, or of laying on the couch in front of the fireplace after having played in the snow for hours. It was that same feeling of contentment, experienced more frequently as a child but elusive once one becomes an adult.

Then, as I was looking at the pictures of Mark, something else came. As I focused on various ones, I noticed more things in the pictures and - surprisingly - a feeling came that I was somehow there. A witness, yet not a witness. Present, but not present.

It was a strange yet wonderful feeling. Mark and I have always felt, since the moment we met, that we have - in an undefinable way - known each other all our lives. I don't want to overthink this, but as I looked at those pictures, I thought about how coming out later in life and meeting the love of one's life somehow imbues the images of childhood with special meaning. "Each photograph," I wrote in my journal, "makes me love Mark all the more."

That's when I decided to get out my new camera and take it's very first pictures. How appropriate they were images of Mark. Looking through the lens presented new insights as I noticed details that I might not have otherwise seen. The patches on Mark's jeans with the plaid cuffs, for example. I think every kid in our generation wore jeans with those big huge patches on the knees and didn't think a thing of it.

Mark holding a string. The Japanese girl with a camera hanging from her neck. Mark's sister Deb playing with the dog. But most of all, that shy look on Mark's face; or, as in the one above, that faraway look that evidences a sensitive soul.

Deb and Mark older, playful. Notice the Japanese sandals.

There is more I could write ... When I look at these photographs, I don't so much see a cute kid in Japan in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. What I see is a beautiful child who grew into the man I love.