It’s August 24th. The first day of school for FWA (7th grade) and RJP (4th grade). The last time I wrote about their first day, FWA was entering 4th grade and I was beginning my first fall since I was 5 not being in school, either as a student or a teacher. Wow. A lot has changed. Just check out how much older FWA and RJP look in these pictures:
Here’s a short video story that I made about their first day in 2012:
Last week, after deliberating for months, I decided to sign up for the Superior Man Triathlon in Duluth. In the first leg of the race, you swim in Lake Superior. Yes! I love Lake Superior. I was born on it and spent the first four years of my life swimming in it, or yearning to swim in it. We moved away when I was four.
Before she died, my mom had several legendary stories that she liked to tell about me as a kid. One of those stories involved Lake Superior and how much I loved swimming in it. It didn’t matter how cold it was, I was ready to jump in. Every time we went back to the UP for summer visits, she would recount my crazy love for that freezing water. Since she died in 2009, I like to tell her story to my kids when we visit the Lake in the UP or on the North Shore of Minnesota, bragging to them about how I, as a little kid, would happily swim in the icy water at Gay Beach or Lac La Belle.
That legendary story was only about Sara, age 4. Since moving away from Lake Superior, I frequently, almost annually, return to it, but I don’t swim in it. I hike its shores, climbing on the rocks at Hunter’s Point in UP Michigan and Two Harbors on the North Shore of Minnesota. I dip my toes in its beautiful water at Silver City near the Porcupine Mountains. And I walk and run on the paved paths on its waterfronts in Duluth and Houghton. But, in the over 36 years since moving away, I haven’t been as brave (or crazy) as I was as a kid, when I’d eagerly jump in whenever the air (not water) temperature rose above 70 degrees.
But now I’m 41 and I’ve signed up for a crazy triathlon in which you jump out of a boat in the bay at Canal Park and then swim a half of mile in Lake Superior. According to the race guide, the water temperature could be in the 50s. Wetsuits aren’t optional, they’re required. I’m nervous, but I’m also excited. I can’t wait to add onto the legendary story of Sara, the fearless little girl who loved swimming in Lake Superior.
Yesterday morning, STA and I ran in a 10K race. I’ve been wanting to run in this particular race, which is right by our house and follows our regular training route, for three years now. But, because it’s early in the spring, we usually aren’t trained up enough to run the 6.2 miles. This year, partly due to the mild winter and partly due to our refusal to stop training over the winter, we finally ran it! This small victory has inspired me to think about my running and how it has transformed me over the past (almost) 4 years.
I started running on June 2nd, 2011. To mark the occasion of my first runniversary, I crafted a digital story:
My 4th running anniversary is coming up in about 6 weeks. It’s time to create another story that reflects my ever-evolving relationship to running. What should this story look like? What kind of footage do I want/need to get? Should I make it into a mini-doc (probably too much) or just a digital video?
A few years ago, while looking through old video footage, I found this:
I love this clip of my son Fletcher, shot by Scott. Fletcher is three and a half in this video and he’s just learning to use the phone. I can’t decide what I like best. Is it his hair? Fletch has very thick hair. When he was little, and it was just starting to grow, it would stand up in the back, like this:
Maybe it’s the giggle? As he’s grown older, Fletcher is a lot more solemn and reluctant to express enthusiasm for anything…except Clash of Clans. It’s rare that I hear him laugh, much less giggle. It’s not that he isn’t having fun, he just doesn’t want others to know it.
As I prepare to move from the home that I’ve lived in for the past 10 years (the longest that I’ve ever lived in one place), I’m inspired to create some stories documenting the house. Over the next few weeks, I’m looking through old footage and collecting stories from family members.
A lot has happened in this house, including the birth of my daughter Rosie, in 2006. She is now 8 and a half. I don’t have that much footage of her over the years, but I do have some of her taking bath when she was 8 months old. So, I created a brief digital story/video from it. I want to put it beside a bath story that I created from footage of Rosie’s older brother Fletcher taking a bath when he was 15 months at another important home space, the Farm:
It’s fascinating to put these two stories together and think about my choices as a storyteller. The Fletcher story is much more reverent and nostalgic–both for the farm and for baby Fletcher. While the Rosie story is playful and celebratory (?). Why? I want to think about that question some more.
