Like a Moth to a Flame...

Back from the whispy vagaries of summer living without a blog to anchor you to reality. I suppose, if I were being entirely truthful I'd admit that it's been months upon months of whispy vagaries pre-occupying us and this blog has fallen fallow. However, all it takes are old friends and a wonderful thing that you've been doing since high school and the inspiration is back to pour my head and my heart into something...something I suppose is, well, very public. It's odd because I so often don't think of this place as such, but it most certainly is a very public thing. For me it's a more personal place, and that's how it will remain, regardless of who sees it, or who attempts to mine meaning from it. This is the place that I've watched my family grow and so it will always be special. Of course, there are people who have, on occasion, made it feel less so, I fear it will always be the kind of place that trips and stumbles and carries on...or I hope it will be.

What better way to return to form than with an outpouring of affection and appreciation...

Each year I find it more and more moving that I have found such incredible people across the span of my life...and naturally, or perhaps not, I am dumbfounded by the legions of less appreciative who so willfully disregard such blessings. Gala Days in Port Lambton, ON has become something of a hub that I feel I might always orbit around. I step from Second Street into the Donahue family's backyard, great old friends and new, and am welcome from the instant my feet feel grass. Don, whose home it is, almost invariably is the first to turn and smile and wave us on in, or his daughters Jody, or Robin...and once there we find all manner of old connections. I somehow manage to feel ten feet tall because Barb Barclay offers a hug and a blushing compliment, or Brooke Miller squeals in excitement to see our girls. Tracey Barclay, Barb's daughter finds us quickly and fills us with wonder that there can be such an amazing woman on the planet that we know, and love, and can call our own, even if it's just for a day or two. Paul Dickinson and Jody Donahue smother us in acceptance and easy friendship, like family. There are dozens of others that pull from us the very best of who we maybe have become over the years, and help us to remember that there are indeed places that define you more than others, and for some strange reason, the ball diamonds and backyards of Gala Days do just that for our family. They make us feel perfect...loved, and like we belong.

Even as we find certainty that we can't feel any more at home we stumble into a dozen more old friends...Ivy and Pete...Mary Ann...Hoop...we soak ourselves in best friends, Birdie and Kaylen...Corey and Steph...we touch the arms and slap the shoulders of smiling people whom we've missed but never forgotten, and before we know it the weekend is disappearing and fading into one more memory. It's the sweetest of summer recollections each season, and I find myself missing it before it's even gone.



It's a fine place to start back blogging, perhaps few finer when you consider the way it makes our hearts and heads swell with love and fresh perspective. There are old friends whose children I now know and have fallen into fits of wild appreciation for...Mitch, and Brendan, Cali and Jace, Soph...even a applesauce marinated Hud. I see old friends who sons and daughters are taller than their parents, and there always seems to be a baby or toddler ready to remind you that it's been a long time since high school, but not that long. It's brilliance in a backyard and I suspect the Donahues know what kind of magic they've mustered right there under those trees, beside that baseball diamond, just off of second street, just down from the river. I love it, just like all of the people it attracts like a bug light. I think sometimes that good people will always find good people, but great people pull them in like a magnet. I couldn't miss standing in that backyard each August if I tried, the pull is too strong, the people too wonderful. That's right, I said wonderful...mamby pampy maybe...true.