Joy and Gratitude

Our happy news has mostly sunk in now and we’ve had plenty of opportunity to celebrate. We’d already planned to spend Canada Day weekend at our friends’ cottage, an annual-ish tradition, but we’d anticipated that Nick would be sitting on the sidelines, unable to go in the water because of his PICC line. Fortunately we were able to have the PICC line removed Friday morning. I left for the cottage later that day, and for the first time I didn’t tell Nick, “hey, no wild parties tonight”. Party hardy kiddo!  He had a group of friends over but got up early enough the next day to clean everything up and hitch a ride to the cottage with one of the other families.

At the cottage he SUP’d, skied, swam, sketched, tubed, kayaked, hiked, yoga’d, boated, watched World Cup shoot outs, played board games, mandala’d, beer pong’d and slept in a tent. If there was a thing being done, he was in.

Just as grief comes in waves, so too does joy, and it was a very wavy weekend. I’d wake up in the morning and have that brief moment of half wakefulness before remembering, and then I’d be flooded with joy all over again.

And what better way to celebrate than a long summer weekend at the lake, full of music, food, wine and laughter, and spent with wonderful friends. There were 20 of us gathered for the weekend, half of us under 21 and half of us….a bit older. We had a belated 60th birthday celebration for Ray, our village elder, with champagne on the boat.

Murray, who always treats us to fireworks for Canada Day, went way above and beyond this year with what was by far the most impressive private fireworks display I’ve seen (with the possible exception of Lily Allen’s wedding night fireworks in Cranham…they formed a heart and everything). He said these were special ‘remission’ fireworks. A cause well worth celebrating.

It was a record-setting weekend with temperatures in the high 30s (40s with the humidity factored in). I love the heat but normally don’t go in the water because it’s rarely hot enough for me to want to cool off. This weekend was an exception.

When we got home there were a bunch of mini cups of jello in the fridge. I suggested to Nick we offer them to the kids across the street, but he seemed adamantly opposed to that idea. Nick got a student summer membership at Movati fitness centre and he’s been finalizing his Japan itinerary. He has the rest of his summer pretty much mapped out. He and Ray are also finishing up the deck they’ve been working on for a neighbour and catching bits of the World Cup games when they can (we have a family pool going to make it more interesting).

We went to see friends of ours play at a new Ottawa venue called Tavern on the Falls. It’s a lovely outdoor patio overlooking the Ottawa River with live entertainment on Wednesday and Friday evenings.