happy and sad

I think I've written about this before.  The idea of holding both happiness and sadness in our hearts all the time.  How now there is never one without the other.  I know we remember our life before that was true. A life where when we felt happy it was simple, nothing clouded it, happy could be in every cell of our bodies.  Now that's not possible.  Now there is always sad with happy.  Always sad tugging away at the corners of happy, lonliness throwing it's shadow over contentment, grief cuddled up next to joy.  It's a strange and confusing feeling and we are recognizing it in our lives over and over. We talk about it, because we know it's here to stay.

We recently returned from a beautiful trip to Northern California.  We stayed for 3 days with dear friends who took us surfing and out to dinner and played twister with us until bedtime.  There was much laughter, much wind and salt and surf in our hair, many moments of awe along the rocky coast.  And there was a giant Andy-sized hole in the middle of it all.  So obvious was it that we were there without him.  That this is a trip he would have loved, that he wanted to take, that would have been even richer were he there with us to share it.   Happy and sad.

After spending days with our friends they gifted us with their van and up the winding and gorgous Highway 1 we went, just the three of us.  I felt strong and independent and capable.  As we blasted music with the windows down and watched the green and verdent coastline slip by I remembered a trip I took solo up this very same coast in this very same month 19 years ago.  Just me and my dog in a big truck with the promise of Andy on the other side.  We were new to eachother then, and while I felt strongly his pull, I was still stretching my wings.  Reveling in my freedom, desperately missing him.  Happy and sad.

We traveled 4 days on our own.  North to the Lost Coast and to the Redwoods.  We hiked and ate icecream and tucked rocks in our pockets and laughed til our bellies hurt.  We also bickered and needed space we didn't have and got colds and said things we regretted.  I realized again and again how hard it is to parent alone, his voice still ringing in my ears with the graceful ways he would co-parent with me. The vivid memory of his reassuring hand on my leg, a glance of solidarity when the going got tough.  And yet I was still doing it.  I was there in this van with these spunky girls heading north along a gorgeous coastline blasting Bruno Mars and showing them that we can.  Happy and sad.

The girls have a new vocabulary word now. Paradox. "A situation, person, or thing that contains contradictory features or qualities."  Happy and sad at the same time.  Always.  Our life as a paradox.