A day at the beach

This weekend was our lab retreat, which was a camping trip on the Sonoma Coast, which I was really excited about because it was going to be Jack's first camping trip and my mom had even gotten me a new (3-person) tent (because we are 3 people!) for my birthday, and oh how exciting it was going to be. But then at the last minute, Danny asked me, "So, your labmates are going to be chill with getting woken up several times during the night by a screaming baby, right?" I looked at him like I didn't understand what he was talking about even though I did, I was just annoyed that I hadn't thought of it first, and he continued, "Because, you know, nylon doesn't block sound all that well." He was right and I knew it, and we agreed that we should go camping another time (SOON!) by ourselves, and that we should just go up for the day for the retreat. Everyone acted disappointed when I told them, but when I explained why I think they were trying to mask their relief. The irony of this whole thing is that starting with what would've been his first night camping and through to now when I'm actually writing this, five days later, Jack has slept through the night. Even better than he used to sleep through the night, before he started teething and regressing back to his waking up every few hours habit. This week he's been sleeping from 8 or 9 to 5 or 6. But we couldn't have known that for the lab retreat. Or maybe Jack overheard us talking and decided to prove his old man wrong, again. He's really good at that, it turns out. Whenever Danny makes a proclamation about The State of Jack's Being, he switches it up again. Anyway, we left relatively early - one of the great things about having a baby that gets you up at 5 or 6 is that you can get an early start fairly painlessly because you were already up anyway - and were up to the park by 9. So Jack didn't get to have his first camp-out, but he did have his first campfire, and his first experience of sand between his toes and his first feel of the ocean-- on just a toe or two. And he got to have lunch perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the rocky coastline that is almost as nice as Big Sur and only about half as far away, so I don't know why we don't go there more often. Maybe we will have to start. We keep saying we need to go exploring more, but somehow when we're left to our own devices we don't seem to make it out of Oakland.

It was a beautiful day for a hike, and unfathomably, since I was well aware it would be a beautiful day for a hike, I forgot my camera. (I was promised photos by someone who remembered their camera, but I can never get people to actually deliver on those promises.) While it was somewhat heartwrenching to not get to take those breathtaking vistas home with me, it was also somehow freeing. Danny's always telling me that the photo will never do justice to the real scene, but that's never stopped me from trying. I don't expect it to do justice, but it does do better than my memory, for the most part. Have you ever taken a picture and been thoroughly disappointed, only to return home and be blown away by how beautiful it turned out? I don't think it's just seeing it on the computer screen instead of through your viewfinder. I think it's that you've already forgotten how beautiful it really was and the photo has already surpassed what you've been able to record in your head. For that reason, I take pictures. (And for similar reasons, I journal.) But it was kind of a neat vacation from my regularly scheduled photo obsession. I could gaze out over the glittering ocean and just take it all in, not worry about how to frame it or or if the light was right or whether I should get Jack in it. It was a special gift to appreciate this beauty without trying capture it and take it home with me.

I am pretty sure some adorable photos of Jack were taken by others, though. And hopefully I will see them someday. But if not, it was still an amazing day, that I will remember through the fuzzy filter of fondness, abstractly perhaps but happily nonetheless.