Guilty coffee

So yes I am so looking forward to making the trip back home to see everyone, but I must admit, I feel as though I have the weight of a thousand stones on my shoulders, because we still haven't worked out who is going to watch the kids. Initially, Henrik was going to take holidays and paternity days to stay home with them when I booked the ticket! Two weeks later he had started his own company, well I guess you could say we had, since I was very much part of the decision to do so, and now everything changes! What am I going to do? Every morning I drink my coffee while the kids eat their breakfast smiling and grining at me and it's as with each sip the guilt is rising from the pit of my stomach to the top of my eyelids, until they are almost brimming with tears.
Henrik insists that he is going to work it out between his mom and some friends our ours but I can't help it, I'm riddled with it.

Who says you can't go home!

This time it's my cousin Jenna's wedding that gave me the goods to talk Henrik into letting me go, not so much the me going part, but the me leaving him with all the kids. Did I mention the twins are mobile now!

Well maybe you can't truly go "home" but an 11 day stunt in Toronto and Ottawa with family is pretty close. I can't wait but at the same time I worry about the kids, Alfred heard that I was going to Canada without him on the plane and he started to cry immediately and then just as fast the tears stopped when I promised to buy him the buzz light year plastic wing set! His part of the conversation went like this.... " I don't want you to go.... I reply "but mummy can bring you back a present from Canada" and then he said "okay, can you get me the buzz wings mom, don't forget, write it down so you don't forget. Do you want me to get you a paper so you can write it down?"

Well to be honest I didn't offer him the present first, I told him..." I'm going to see Gammie and we are staying in a hotel and there are no other kids or toys or tv's there, it's better you stay with papa"... to which he responded... uhhhh mom you don't want to go, then all you will have to do is sit and talk, talk, talk,.... that's so boring" I digress from this topic, it's clear he is his father's son.

So fitting for the title of this blog memories of our youth, some of them I record now as they happen and others surface from the past, but really these 11 days with my family will be a true trip home not just to Canada but to the stories and memories of my youth. My grandmother Mary was the best storyteller I have ever met, and I can still see her sitting at the kitchen table telling the best stories. It didn't matter that we had heard them a thousand times, you still enjoyed them as much as you did the first time you heard it. That's what I miss, what I crave, this reconnection to where I come from, my cousin has booked us into a rejuvenation water treatment spa, it's all the rage in Toronto... anyway this trip is the rejuvenation I need for my soul.

Yes my family is loud, and louder, with lots of drama, and hamlet moments, but on the other hand they love with their whole hearts, and their hearts are the biggest on this planet. I've been the odd one out for so long now, the weird Canadian that talks to much and lives with her emotions at her fingertips, I alway say the wrong thing, especially when I'm nervous or in uncomfortable silences, and I can never hide what I'm thinking or feeling, it's written all over my face. And sometimes, when I am quiet, it's as if I am saying the most.. how about that for irony. So yes, eleven days to disappear in the beautiful chaos that I was brought up in, everyone is talking and everyone has an opinion and we never never never discuss the weather!