Jeremy at Discovering Dads (who was awesome enough to make this banner for his new website just for me)

is asking people to tell the stories of their greatest adventures (and giving away killer prizes. Just saying.)  I have no delusions of winning said contest, but since I have never read One. Single. Harry. Potter. Book. Ever., I thought I’d try my hand at entering.

My gut instinct was to write about my stumbles through parenthood, or my marriage, but then I asked myself, “really, self?  Have you done NOTHING of interest?  Think, dammit, think!”  And so I thought.  And came up with nothing.

I am the most boring human alive.  Really, besides that one border-hop into some very suspect town in Mexico to buy cheap cigarettes and Valium a guitar for my kid, I’ve never actually left America.  I did move to Canada, however, and our first two months here were actually quite adventurous and exploratory, but in a very family-friendly, corporate-sponsored hotel suite sort of way.  Not a hell of a lot of grit there.

Just as I was ready to drown my sorrows in a glass of White Zinfandel*, I remembered that Hey!  Once I did that thing, and it was totally awesome!  Who knows if it will translate on paper, but for the entire Harry Potter collection, I’ll give almost anything a whirl.

Way back in the day, when I drove a fast car that I paid too much money for, and wore a size Barbie, and worked at a gas station because I look hot in polyester brown pants, my best friend from high school and I decided that we could not go one minute more without a cheesesteak.  FROM PHILADELPHIA.  I asked my boss for a week off, and she told me to shove it up my ass, and I returned the sentiment, and off we went.

We had about 30 hours to prepare for our trip, but since we were both suddenly sans employment, that was no problem.  A quick oil change, a rocking mixtape, a trip to the store for Saltines, spray cheese and some of those Arizona teas with Ginseng and honey, and we were set.

Snafu One; I bet you can squeal like a pig:  We hit the road in the early hours of the morning from Denver and made it to Nebraska by that evening.  We crashed at a friend of her family’s house, and the next morning made the push from Nebraska to Pennsylvania.  We got stopped at 4:30 in the morning on a pass in Nebraska for going 75 in a 60, just like EVERY OTHER CAR ON THE ROAD THAT DIDN’T HAVE OUT-OF-STATE PLATES, and officer Deliverance who pulled us over, possibly to rape us and hack our city-dwelling asses into tiny little bits in the Nebraskan darkness, asked where exactly we were going so fast.  “My grandfather died last night,” Eva squeaked out through the most awesome, Oscar worthy fake tears I’ve ever seen on a human.  “Grrr” was all Officer Deliverance said.  And then that fucker searched my car.  SEARCHED it.  He found cans in the trunk and said, and I quote, “Ah-ha!  Beer!  I knew it!” to which Eva replied, “Um, dude, apple juice.  I’m Mormon.”  To which officer Deliverance said, “Grrr.  Well, if you hit a duur going 75 miles PER hour, it’ll go clear thrugh your WUNDSHUD.”  To which I replied, “Not too likely on a main street in the middle of morning rushhour, homes.”  To which he replied, “Grrr.  Here’s your ticket.  GET OUT OF NEBRASKA.”

(I hate that asshole aside: That’s the one and ONLY ticket I’ve ever got.  Better not be on my permanent record.)

Snafu Two; We like the cars, the cars that go boom: We did indeed get out of Nebraska, and fast (suck on THAT, bitch) and Megadeth and caffeine kept us hopping until the PA border.  We spent the night on Eva’s uncle’s ranch, in farm country, and early the next morning we set out for Philly.  At which point, I hear a boom.  We drove a little more and saw some smoke coming from my exhaust.  We drove a little more and heard a grind.  I did what any savvy, totally able to take care of herself in the real world girl would do; I stopped and called my daddy.  His solution?  “Throw a quart of oil in it; you’ll be fine.”

I threw a quart of oil in it, and then another when we got to the best steak shop in the history of the world, and then another at my friend’s house in Delaware, and then another once we hit Maryland, and then another once we passed DC, and then when we got to Eva’s still very much so alive Grandfather’s house on Cobb Island in Maryland, the little car that could, couldn’t.

I somehow managed to get the car back up to DC and into the Mitsubishi dealership, and they gave me an estimate of 2 days to have it checked out.  Funny, I was supposed to head home that night.  OOOPS.  So, there we were, Eva, me, her brother who met us there, and her grandfather, stranded on an island on the Potomac.  Poor.  Abused.  Us.

Turns out, I found a way to get the turbo in my car to explode.  Like, there was almost nothing left of it.  And I had a MONTH left on my warranty.  So, an overnight stay at grandpa’s turned into a week long stay, complete with fishing, crabbing, eating fish and crabs, driving around in little golf carts, learning to love cole slaw, sleeping on piers, writing, reading, baking apple pies, and so much laughter, I don’t even know how to tell you.

(Tragically karmic Aside: Grandpa died shortly after our visit.  Yes, I totally blame us.  And Officer Deliverance.  Asshole.)

Snafu Three; Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine: We left Cobb Island early in the morning and since two were now three, and we had a really zoomzoom new turbo, we decided to drive straight from the bottom of Maryland to the middle of Colorado, through Tennessee.  Because I-70 is for pussies.  With nothing but spray cheese, saltines and Arizona green tea with Ginseng and honey.  The idea was one drove, 2 slept.  Except, yeah, we had They Might Be Giants and Megedeth.  And were wired like crack whores.  Somewhere in the middle of Memphis, we all had a dehydration and sleep deprived moment of divine illumination.  In other words, we all saw god.  Maybe it was just Elvis, who knows?  Either way, the rest of the trip home is a blur.  I do remember the New Mexico deserty area, where I won’t even get into what I thought I saw in the haze.

We made it home, but by the grace of Elvis, and I’ve never slept quite that soundly in my whole life.  Every muscle hurt, I had no vitamins left in my body, and both my front cars speakers never worked properly again.

But, a few months after that, I met a boy named Josh and had a litter of children with him, and now the most exciting thing I do every day is watch a new episode of Wonder Pets.  The next time I will be childless enough to try something like that, I’ll be way to sensible to even think about it.  But once, at least once in my whole life, I did something totally reckless.  Something downright stupid, something that had no point at all, that cost me more money than I had, that was a complete waste of everyone’s time.  And it was GLORIOUS.  I wouldn’t trade those two weeks for anything in the whole world.

(In retrospect aside: My car insurance was totally lapsed the whole time.  Stop looking at me like that.)

*Kidding.  No matter how suburban sell out I get, I will never drink fake wine.

So yeah; gardens, boat, sunshine.  Take two.  (To save your poor browsers, I went with thumbnails for this.  Hover for descriptions, click to enlarge)

Ever drag 3 kids out on an hour long car ride, a two hour boat ride, and then expect them to be even close to interested in walking around some bee-infested garden?  You can guess how well that panned out for the lot of us.  Fortunately, I am a creative woman with a decade of parenting under her belt, and I know a trick or two for getting kids interested in something.

Besides that. Everyone knows that. It worked pretty well for me, too, truth be told.

No, no, I was talking about every kid’s kryptonite: The Gift Shop.  PS: Whoever decided to put the gift shop at the entrance of everything, making it the Very First Thing every kid sees?  Can suck it.  Moving on.  I set a challenge for my boys that day; find and photograph ten shockingly, unexpected, secret things of beauty.  No small feat in the Garden of Eden, eh?  Each kid who found 10 got to go to the gift shop.

Of course, when 2of3 started pointing out bamboo fences in Japanese gardens *shock* and flowers growing in flower beds *gasp*, I had to clarify that I meant things that probably shouldn’t be where they were, things that made them want to stop breathing for the sheer beauty of them.

Game. On.

2of3 did really well in the end.  My favorite find was the old pulley system for the limestone he found tucked in a corner, and my favorite picture of him, maybe ever, is that one with the blue flower.

1of3 is a little more conservative, and so it took him a LOT longer to get his pictures, but he was truly dazzled by the ones he did. Especially the totem poles and that water fountain, which just weren’t there one second, and so totally massively there the next.

(Edit: Linds was kind enough to play editor and remind me that I forget to mention that yes, they all got some piece of crap that probably sitting in a landfill by now at the gift shop, even though no one actually got to 10.  We have the combined attention span of one cheese stick.) I found a few really beautiful things, too. We must have showed 20 kids that spider, which doesn’t look in pictures nearly as big as it was.

But all through my day, at the gardens, on the boat, in Victoria, I found that I am surrounded every minute of the day by the most beautiful things I could ever hope to see.

Yes, even my mother in law. God, I’m getting soft in my old age.

Do you know who Owen Meany is?  If you don’t, bring your forehead really close to your monitor.  Ready?

*wap*

Go read it.  Now.  Come back when you’re done.  I’ll wait…

If you do, imagine if The Cure wrote a song about him  You’d have this:

Those are the Sunken Gardens at Buchart Gardens on Vancouver Island.  Mr Buchart and family established a limestone quarry on Vancouver Island in 1904, and when that quarry was exhausted, his wife began the huge undertaking of turning that spent quarry into the garden you see there.  And here.  Because why not?

She and her husband traveled the globe, collecting artifacts and animals and plants from around the world, and they eventually expanded their garden into the Japanese Gardens.

And then they grew their gardens larger, and created the Italian Gardens where their tennis courts once stood.

And then they took their kitchen garden patch and turning into the biggest freaking rose garden you could ever hope to see.  Like, an Alice In Wonderland Queen of Hearts rose garden.  Like, even someone like me who almost hates roses was left slightly speechless.  She did all of this…for fun.

And today, the whole thing is a stunning display of some of the most exquisite, stunning naturally beauty you could ever hope to see that I had no fucking clue I lived anywhere near until 3 weeks ago.

When my mother in law (can we just call her Sarah?  Her name is Sarah) got here, she said the only things she wanted to do were snuggle my kids and see those gardens.  We said, “Huh?  Gardens?  There are GARDENS?”  Thank god for google, man.  We cancelled 3of3’s birthday party last Sunday (for a number of reasons) and took advantage of the sunshine to head on over.  Her treat.  Thank GOD.

Except, it’s a 2 hour trip away from here.  BY SEA.  So, we rented a mini-van, piled everyone in the car, and hopped on the ferry.  Which, truth be told, was totally awesome in its own right and we could have turned right back around and came home after and been totally satisfied with our outing.

Did you know I’m a boat person? I’m a boat person. I could live a long, happy, fulfilled life on the deck of a boat.  I was In Heaven.

I’ve I ever go missing, you know where to look.  We sailed through the Gulf Islands and saw seals in the water, but no whales.  I guess you can see whales if you go on the right day.  Sucks to be us.  Anyway, no one got sea sick and we all got a big reminder of the fact that we live in a really rad place.

And in the interest of keeping this slightly shorter than On The Road, I’ll continue tomorrow…

Dear Philadelphia,

I was born into you on the day winter gave way to spring in 1975. I was pulled from my mother, screaming and closer to death than one should be on their day of birth, and spent my first few days with you, in the NICU of one of the top heart hospitals around, which was lucky for me, having a few more holes in my heart than anyone was comfortable with.

I have never had an address with your name on it, or a phone number that started in 215, but you have always felt like home to me. I lived in a small town, in a small state, in a small house that was so close to you I could almost touch you. In five short minutes, I could stand in a foreign land, your land, one with something I’d never heard of….sales tax.

When people fly into your airport from the mid-west, they fly over the hospital I was born at, just across from the Port of Philadelphia. They fly over Trainer, where my grandmother lives to this day. They fly over Chi, and Chi is were my brother lives. My cousins live there, too. At least I think they do.

Every time I make that flight from Denver to Philly, I lose my breath as I come over your port. Amidst the filth and the poverty that has enveloped that little part of the world, trapped in the middle of it, is beauty the likes of which I’ve never seen.

There’s something about you. Maybe it’s the way your air is so thick you can feel it, maybe it’s the way the sun bounces off the green water into the green trees. Maybe it’s the way that something so broken, so ruined and abandoned by man, by time, by industry, can fight so hard to live and thrive. Whatever it is, I never forgot it.

My love for you comes not from the people I knew there, or the times I spent there. It comes from the trees. It comes from the flowers. It comes from the earth. You are beautiful when you’re not busy trying to show off for Sylvester Stallone. I never forgot that.

When I was a girl, and my mother couldn’t stand me anymore, she’d send me to stay with my friend and her mother, and they lived near the heart of you, in Bucks County. Sometimes I’d stay for a day, sometimes for a month or more. I spent a lot of my time walking in your creeks, sitting in the shade of your trees, and I was always safe. This is where I was safe, with you. I never forgot that.

When I got to be a bit older, I got to spend more time in the darker parts of you, the parts where white girls really shouldn’t be, but I always could go. I got to see your seedier side, your underbelly, the part of you that people didn’t talk about or care about. That was my favorite part. That was were I learned to love real, good rap, where I learned to braid. And I was never afraid. I never forgot that.

When summer comes to you, the air is full and heavy and wet, the way we northerners imagine it to be down south, the way you don’t think it could ever be up north, but it is anyway. I remember being a little girl, laying in front of every fan I could get ahold of late at night, trying not to sweat to absolute death, and I remember being thankful that at least, there with you, far away from those things I was hiding from, swaddled in humidity and dust, I could feel something at all. I will never forget that.

You smell like something I will never be able to describe, and so I won’t even try, but sometimes when the seasons are changing and there is a storm coming, sometimes in Denver I can catch the scent of you on the breeze; the scent of leaves and pollen and just a hint of industry and sweat. I hope I don’t ever forget that.

I left you for good too many years ago, and I honestly don’t think I will ever see you again. I would like for my children to see my home someday, but you never really were my home, were you? You were an illusion, a temporary asylum for me, and I don’t have a claim to you. But that doesn’t change the fact that I miss you indescribably sometimes. I miss your gardens and your orchards and your forests. I miss your bridges and your culture and Zipperhead and South Street and the Vet and all of you. You were where I came when it all had to stop, and it all did. You gave me flowers and water ice and lightening bugs and shelter from the storm; but most importantly, I got to be a child with you. And I won’t ever forget it.