Stories/Memoir – Birth of Adventure

Searching for Smiths

Several years ago, before launching Birth of Adventure, I started a blog called “Searching for Smiths,” chronicling my attempts to search for my biological family. I was originally named Alison Smith, and my father, Wayne Smith, died in a tragic drowning accident when I was six months old. I wrote in my first blog post that “searching for Smiths in North America is like searching for a needle in a haystack,” and it really seemed that daunting. I wrote the blog hoping that one of my relatives would see it online and it would lead them to me.

Although I had no memory of my birth father, I had known that I was originally a Smith my whole life. My mom remarried when I was eighteen months old, I was adopted by my new Dad, and I became Alison Wilcox. My older sister Abbie and I knew that we had a different birth dad than the rest of our siblings, but we also knew we were our new Dad’s kids too. I had a crop of Wilcox cousins on one side, and Bing cousins on the other, with eight sets of aunts and uncles. I didn’t think much about the fact that the Smiths were not in my life – I had a huge family and didn’t really think anything was missing. There were pictures of Wayne in our family photo album, and his picture hung on our living room wall and I knew what he looked like, even if I didn’t remember him.

My connection to my birth father became much more important to me after I became a mom. David and I had our wedding when Ben was four months old, and at our rehearsal dinner, our family went around the room sharing well wishes for our wedding. When it was my turn, I spoke from my heart, without really knowing what I was going to say, and I got choked up. I was present to the love I had for everyone in the room, and my birth father’s absence felt particularly strong. As I spoke, I shared that having a four month old made me realize how long six months really was. I realized that all of the love I felt for Ben, how amazed I was by him, by his face, by his little toes, his tiny, kissable feet, I realized that my dad probably felt that love and amazement for me too. Although I was surrounded by loving family members, I felt the loss of my dad keenly right then, and saddened that I didn’t really know anything about him. I imagined what it would be like if something happened to me and Ben never got to know me, and I wished I could know more about Wayne.

It was a complicated feeling. If I wished that things were different, that my birth father hadn’t died, what would that mean for my family? If my father hadn’t died, then my mom wouldn’t have remarried. I wouldn’t have the dad who raised me, who I loved, and who loved me. If my birth father hadn’t died, then my three younger siblings – Ayron, Craig and Neil wouldn’t even exist. Wishing for another reality would diminish the other.

Three years after our wedding, my mom passed away. On top of missing her, I lost the main connection that I had to Wayne. I hadn’t asked her enough questions about him. I knew he was a nice man. He had red hair and freckles like me. He was a photographer. I had some of his photos. Whole contact sheets he had taken of his daughters that when David saw them, he related to Wayne as a father and said, “he was fascinated by your faces”. Pictures he had taken of our mom. A professional published portfolio he had taken of images in Toronto in the 70’s. Beyond that, I didn’t really know anything at all about him.

Wayne’s photos of his daughter Alison and wife Jackie

That’s when I started googling Wayne Smith, and the only other name I knew, my uncle, Wayne’s younger brother. I remembered meeting my uncle and his two daughters, my cousins, but the last time I’d seen them was when I was about ten years old. Over the next few years I tried searching online for any clue I had, and didn’t find any leads at all.

Eleven years after my mom passed away, in 2017, I started worrying that my uncle and any other relatives were getting older and I could be running out of time. I didn’t know if my grandparents were still alive. I started the Searching for Smiths blog, and after a few fruitless posts, David gave me an Ancestry DNA kit for my birthday, hoping to give me the gift of family. A few of our friends had found biological parents or other relatives that way, and we thought it was worth a try. I opened up the box, took the DNA sample, mailed it in, and about six weeks later the results popped up in my online account. I took a deep breath when I checked the matches, and saw my uncle’s name.

After staring at the computer for a few minutes, I texted David frantically, “I found my uncle!” I clicked on his profile, and wrote him a message saying I was his niece Alison. Within a few days, I got a message back. It was a weird sensation, like using a matching website, but instead of for dating, it was for reuniting long lost relatives. We messaged back and forth, and set up a phone call on the weekend. When the call came, I was outside walking our new dog Louie around the block on a blustery, snowy winter day. I had a mixed up nervous-excited feeling, wanting to talk to my uncle, but also afraid, carrying the weight of expectations.

We talked for a while, about where we lived, about our families, he asked about Abbie, and about my mom. He sounded sad when I let him know Mom had passed away. After a long time talking and catching up on over 30 years of life, he asked me if I knew what had happened to my father.

I knew the story. It was a tragedy, for many reasons. From what I knew, Wayne had just gotten a new job, which was something he and my mom were excited about, because they were broke and this job would pay the bills. He was driving near my Grandma and Grandpa Bing’s house, and he stopped in to visit his mother and father in law. My grandpa was an avid boater and fisher, and he took my dad out with him on his boat. My dad couldn’t swim and he didn’t put on a life jacket. At some point, my dad fell out of the boat and drowned. This was what I knew about the story. I also knew that this accident caused a giant rift between our families, with my mom in the middle – losing her husband, and father of her two children, when he was 30 and she was 25. Seeing the effect this had on her dad. Seeing how it affected her in-laws – her husband’s and children’s family.

When my uncle asked me if I knew the story, it was clear that the trauma of his brother’s death was still palpable. He said he would like to meet me and I said I would too. We decided to work out the details over email. I got another message through Ancestry from a distant cousin who ended up connecting me to more relatives – two aunts and another uncle. I had found multiple Smiths!

David, Ben and I planned a road trip to meet my uncle in Toronto, and then on our way home to Buffalo, we would meet one of my aunts in Hamilton. I had been searching for Smiths for over a decade and here were two, living within a few hours of me.

We met my uncle at a restaurant for dinner. He looked a lot like how I remembered him, and he resembled Wayne too. He brought some photos of him and my dad when they were younger. He told me that both of my grandparents had passed away. I was sad that I would never get a chance to meet them. I let him know that I was going to see his sister on our way home, and he said he wasn’t in touch with his other siblings anymore. Towards the end of our conversation, he talked about the day that my dad died. He was 29 when his brother passed away, and he had driven up to identify his body. He was visibly shaken as he described what happened. My mom had told me that my dad’s family blamed Grandpa, and I knew that was a big part of why they weren’t in my life. My uncle shared details that I hadn’t heard, that he said he had been told by witnesses, including how two boats collided which threw my dad out of the boat, and about what happened in the early moments after. Just like mom had said, my uncle still felt angry about the accident, and at least partly, if not fully, blamed Grandpa for it.

His account troubled me. We visited with my aunt next, and she was lovely – she was warm and welcoming to us, and also showed us some pictures. I asked her what my dad was like. Both she and my uncle said similar things – they loved him, he sounded like a good brother. He liked the water but didn’t swim. When they went to the beach, he sat under a tree with a book. I felt warm recognition – although I love to swim, I’m most happy on vacation sitting in the shade with a good book too.

When I got home, the story my uncle told kept niggling at me, and I couldn’t let it lie. I searched online with the details I had about Wayne’s accident, and ordered a copy of the police report from 1975. The next day, there was an email in my inbox from the police department with the report attached. Reading the cold hard facts, I started to cry. Without any memory of my dad, his whole story throughout my life felt hazy, not quite real. Reading the police report, it became real. He was a real man. He had lived, he was lost, and his death affected so many people. But besides the boat collision, the police report did not include the details my uncle had said he’d heard from witnesses. It was deemed an accident; it didn’t have any details that would have suggested anyone could have done anything differently to prevent it, besides the obvious – if my dad had worn a life jacket that day.

It all felt so sad to me. Not just my father’s accident and death which were tragic on their own, but the unraveling of the family too. The Smiths blaming my grandpa. My grandpa feeling guilt for what happened. My mom hurt and angry at how the Smiths treated her and Grandpa. Abbie and I growing up without our Smith grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

When I first started searching for the Smiths, I knew that not everyone in my family was happy about it, either from trying to protect me, or from loyalty to my mom, my grandpa, or the Wilcox side of the family. I was conflicted too – I was searching for Smiths, but it didn’t seem that they were searching for me. I was driven to find them for many reasons – primarily to find out who my dad was, but also to close the hole that losing an entire branch of my family tree had caused. In meeting the Smiths, and learning more about Wayne’s story, I learned that no matter what happened, everyone involved was a person who was hurt. The people impacted lost a son, a husband, a brother, a son-in-law, and a dad. There was no point blaming anyone for it – it was a terrible situation.

This whole experience was a profound one for me. I had set out to learn more about my dad, and I instead found peace knowing I had finally found his family. I think he would have wanted us to know each other. I meet three of my aunts and uncles and some of my cousins. They know Wayne’s daughters are doing well, and that Wayne has four grandchildren. They now know where we are, and we know where they are, if we ever want to connect further.

I didn’t find out a lot about my dad from the Smiths or from others I asked, but everyone told me the same thing, which I think is the most important thing. He was kind, he was loving, and he was loved.

In my mom’s early 50’s, she started writing a book about her life which was left unfinished when she passed away. I read through the chapters she had completed, including her description of her life with Wayne. She wrote:

“Wayne’s artistic endeavors helped me more than I at first realized. I began to become reacquainted with all the beauty around me. In a wild flower by a fencerow, the setting and rising sun, or a simple smile on a stranger’s face. I began to open up more and more and realize how wonderful my life was.”

This was a beautiful description of how he had affected her, and about his way of looking at the world. In her words she described how Wayne had a dream to get his photography published, and they would take walks together and visit the sites that he was capturing on film. They were excited when his first portfolio was published and sold in Toronto area bookstores. He hosted a cable show on photography and my parents were hopeful about what lay ahead. Wayne was a man living his dream. He was a man who saw beauty in the world.

A few weeks ago, my nephew Kodie, Abbie’s son, texted me to say he was getting into film photography, inspired by his grandfather Wayne, and wondering if he might discover he had inherited some natural talent. We talked on the phone, and Kodie told me his apartment in British Columbia is decorated with the published photos from Wayne’s portfolio. It reminded me that in my college years, my rooms were decorated with Wayne’s photos, and I took his 35mm Canon on my backpacking trip around Europe, also hoping to tap into an innate photographer’s gene. I smiled thinking of Wayne’s legacy living on, through his two daughters, through his grandchildren, through his love of photography, and accomplishing his dream to publish his photos that the next generations could enjoy.

In a stroke of serendipity, a few days ago my dad (Brad Wilcox) reached out to me asking if I wanted Wayne’s 35mm camera. I think of this camera belonging to both my fathers as Dad often used Wayne’s camera throughout our childhood to take a plethora of family photos. I had brought this camera on my travels overseas but given it back to Dad because I thought he would use it more than me. I reached out to Kodie, offering it to him as the next photographer in line and he said he would be honored to have it. I look forward to seeing the world through Kodie’s eyes.

This story is connected to my inspiration to write this blog. As I wrote in my first post – The Birth of the Birth of Adventure: “A main theme of this blog, a lesson learned from losing my parents and brothers and others too young, is that life is short. Too short to leave passions and dreams dormant. Too short to be looking back with regrets.”

Write your book. Publish your photos. Love boldly.

The search for Smiths helped me to find some peace and connection about my birth father, and in solving this mystery through Ancestry DNA, I found something else; Scottish ancestry that leads back to generations of ancestors who lived on the small island of Coll. David and I will be spending a week on this island in April 2022, and I’ll make sure to stop and sit and tune into the world around me. And do my best to write about it, and to tap into my innate photographer to capture its beauty. I look forward to sharing the stories with you soon.

Pick up the Glove-Reflections, Completions and Intentions for the New Year

Pick up the Glove – Reflections, Completions and Intentions for the New Year

Twenty years ago on December 30, I was sweating and slightly panicky about my first date with my now husband David. He asked me out for New Year’s Eve, and as I lived in Toronto and he lived just outside of Buffalo, NY, it was a bit complicated. He offered to cook me dinner at his place, and because I didn’t drive he also offered to pick me up at my parent’s house in rural Ontario where I was staying for the holidays. Lest this sound like I was a teenager, I had just celebrated my 27th birthday.

I was surprisingly nervous. Nervous to find out if the feelings we had while talking remotely would still be there when we were together, nervous about navigating a weekend long date, and mostly nervous about my loud chaotic family being part of it.

It was too late to wish I’d gone to my place in Toronto first – he was already on his way to meet me. My brothers and sisters teased me about all the things they could say and do to embarrass me. I grabbed a glass of wine and practiced breathing.

The snow was coming down hard and David was stuck in a snowstorm – he did finally make it safely but it was a tough drive. When he arrived he gave me a book – “West with the Night”, a memoir by Beryl Markham, a woman adventurer and aviator who was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. David said he thought I would like it when he heard I was flying in a small craft airplane with some other students in our course. I loved it.

After a few of my siblings did their best shenanigans, we headed out. A pleasant conversation was cut short when David’s car broke down, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a snowstorm. My sister Abbie kindly drove out to pick us up, and after a few more Wilcox family shenanigans, David spent the night in my brother’s bedroom at my parent’s house. We laughed about it, but this date was definitely not going as planned.

The next day, New Year’s Eve, we spent several freezing hours in a Canadian Tire parking lot while David fixed his car. I kept him company and kept him supplied with hot drinks and snacks.

I can’t remember why I wasn’t wearing my gloves in that weather, but for some reason I was holding them – either squished between my arm and side, or in my hands. What I do remember is that I kept dropping them. Each time I dropped a glove I became more self-conscious.

Recently a friend had told me he thought I was “sloppy”, ie., the type of person whose shoelaces would always come untied, and he encouraged me to become more polished. It didn’t help that I was also considered “Awkward Ally” a lot. After about the third time I dropped a glove I made a self-deprecating comment, and tried to laugh it off.

David turned to me and said “Just pick up the glove. That’s all there is.”

I laughed. It seemed simple. The glove was on the ground and no matter how I felt about it, all there was to do was to pick it up. Beating myself up about dropping it wouldn’t change anything.

I picked it up. And when I stopped worrying about what David thought, and stopped being caught up in an existential crisis about my perceived sloppiness, something else happened.

I stopped dropping the gloves. It seemed easier to pay attention to them when my mind wasn’t focused on worrying so much.

That was one of the first traditions that lived on after this date – for several years, whenever one of us would get dramatic or make a lot of meaning about something, we would remind each other to just “Pick up the glove”.

David managed to get his car running, and we made it to his place in Hamburg, NY in time for our New Year’s Eve date. He made me a delicious pasta dinner, and was excited to serve me a dessert of fresh espresso and delectable chocolate truffles his brother had gotten in New York City. David handed me the chocolate, and told me to put it in my mouth and then take a sip of the espresso. The hot coffee melted the chocolate and the taste combination was incredible.

To cap off the evening, we decided to reflect on our past year, and set an intention for the next year. We each wrote a list of what we wanted to highlight from the past year – things we were proud of, things we wanted to complete and leave behind, lessons we had learned. Then we wrote a list of what we wanted to create for the next year – what we wanted to do, who we wanted to become. We shared these lists with each other.

That first date led to another date, and then another, and I don’t take for granted after our own histories, that we just celebrated our 20th anniversary of our first New Year’s date together.

Each New Year’s Eve since then, give or take a few days, David and I set aside an evening to enjoy a lovely dinner, and share our reflections and completions from the past year, and our intentions and creations for the next year. Sometimes we are joined by our kids, sometimes joined by friends, and most times just the two of us.

For the sake of keeping this blog post to a reasonable length, I won’t share everything from my list, and instead share a few personal reflections and completions from 2021:

2021 Reflections and Completions:

Family:

We said goodbye to my wonderful grandpa Lloyd Wilcox who passed away in May. Because of the pandemic and border closure, I joined his funeral and celebration of his life on zoom. I am leaving behind the sadness at not being able to be together in person during that time, and bringing with me the joy I felt when I was reunited with many of my family members in July when the border finally reopened. I think of my grandpa often as someone who lived life fully and loved generously.

We celebrated Ben turning 18, graduating from high school and looking forward to his next adventure.

We welcomed two new babies to the family and two new sets of parents were formed. Sweet baby Bernie was born in February, my youngest brother and sister-in-law’s first child and my niece. And sweet baby Gemma – my stepdaughter Sarah and son-in-law Liam’s first baby was born in October, making David and I proud new grandparents. We haven’t hugged and cuddled these babies enough due to the pandemic, but I’m so glad for each moment that we got and look forward to more to come.

Rediscovering Writing and Adventure:

In March I declared an intention to write, to start a blog and to plan an adventure to Scotland in 2022. I attribute the supportive words from friends and family at this time as the boon that gave me the guts to make it happen.

In May I became a co-author for “The Rising Sisterhood Book Two“, spent the summer writing and revising my chapter, and was proud to be a published author when the book came out in October. I’ll share more about the wonderful experience that being part of this collective was, but in short, it was a supportive community of women who helped me get through the anxiety of telling my story publicly, in writing and on video, and all that was entailed. Because of this experience and sisterhood, I gained the confidence to push through those feelings and realize I could do it.

In October I procrastinated launching the blog by dusting off the middle grade novel I started a few years ago and taking a Highlights Foundation writing class in my spare time to breathe life back into it. I’m nearly 10,000 words in and still going.

In November with the tech and design expertise of my talented niece Molly, I launched the Birth of Adventure blog, and I was beyond gratified by the comments and feedback from family and friends. Thank you for reading – I appreciate you and it means a lot.

For 2022, I’ll share a few simple intentions:

I will keep writing. I’ll share stories in the Birth of Adventure blog, and finish the first draft of my novel which has characters and a story I love and dreamed of telling

I will plan and take a great adventure in Scotland with David this spring

I will keep exercising and build my strength so that I can actively hike and climb hills in Scotland

I will hug and cuddle the babies whenever I can

I will be open to being a yes to adventure

I will lead with empathy and courage and help grow leaders around me

And last but not least, when I inevitably stumble, I will pick up the glove

If you haven’t spent some time reflecting on the past year and setting an intention for the next year, I invite you to consider doing this in a way that best works for you. If you have done this, are you excited about what you created for yourself? If not, consider revisiting if it’s something that pulls at you, that you are yearning for, or if it’s something that you think you “should do”.

For 2021, what are you proud of? What lessons did you learn? What are you completing and leaving behind?

For 2022, what are you yearning to do or become? What is your next adventure? What scares you in a good way?

I look forward to hearing what you are excited about (and scared in a good way about) so that I can cheer you on and support you. Please share in the comments or in the facebook group.

Cheers to new adventures in 2022, and remember, when you stumble, all there is to do is pick up the glove.

Twinkling lights and empty chairs: navigating all of the feelings during the holidays

Twinkling lights and empty chairs: navigating all of the feelings during the holidays

The holiday season, once a simple and magical time for me in childhood, now holds the widest range of emotions. The roller coaster of feelings I experience at this time of year can be illustrated by this story:

A few years ago, our dad gave us a thoughtful and sentimental gift for Christmas. Dad was on a roll with his presents – handmade decorations, photo albums of our childhoods, and that year he gave us a DVD of a home movie of Wilcox Christmas, about 20 years old, filmed in 1997.

We watched the video together, and it perfectly captured the magic and chaos of our family’s Christmas traditions. We smiled and laughed watching younger versions of ourselves; my nephew Kodie and brother Walter performing funny skits, my brother in law Duncan doing hilarious antics that made us crack up and roll over laughing, my dad reading “The Night Before Christmas” as he did every year, our childhood dogs, and the big log house filled with warmth and a cozy fire.

Our laughter turned into silence and then some tears.

My little nephew turned to his mom and asked “Why are you crying?”

My sister said, “There are people in that video who aren’t here anymore”.

There were four people in the video no longer with us:

Our brother Walter, who passed away in his early 20’s in 2000
My sister’s husband, Duncan, who passed away in his 20’s in 2003
Our mom, Jackie, who passed away at 56 in 2006
Our brother Bob, who passed away at 40 in 2008

The impact of their loss was staggering, and there were so many others in our extended family we had lost before and since that time too. It wasn’t just the people missing. So much had changed since that simple video. I missed the people the most and missed each one in a different way. I missed the childhood traditions we used to have, I missed the dogs. I missed the log house with its space to accommodate our giant family, the wood stove with its warm fires, hot apple cider bubbling with the scents of cinnamon and nutmeg, and Mom’s pies being kept warm above.

And I laughed and smiled through tears at the memories of seeing us all together enjoying the holiday. The joys and the sadness – that’s what the holiday season brings up for me as I know it does for so many, and in different ways.

As a child the whole month of December felt magical to me, and how my parents pulled it off every year is a mystery. My mom had 10 kids, and my mom and dad raised 8 together – with so many children, they were either geniuses or wizards or both. I love recreating that magic with our kids, and still feel the magic myself, but it is not as simple now that I’m an adult. Navigating times of financial stress (especially the years David and I were both out of work), travel, mingling families and different priorities, unfulfilled expectations, and the loss of loved ones which I feel most keenly, chips away at what once was simple joy.

The tagline I created for the blog Birth of Adventure is living fully, intentionally and courageously, and I learned the importance of that from losing people I love, especially those whose lives were cut short.

Believing we have this one life, I practice setting an intention for myself. I think about who I am and who I want to be, about who I want to be for others, the mark I’d like to make in the world, the experiences and dreams I want to chase, the difference I want to make. That intention gives me a roadmap, and at the very least, guardrails, for navigating in times when my feelings are spiraling all over the place.

When I say that life is short, I don’t mean that I think I need to feel happy every second. But I do my best to stay in tune with how I am feeling, and then make space for it. Sometimes I retreat into a cozy nook with comforting books and movies, or movies that I know will make me cry on purpose like “Christmas Shoes”. Sometimes I do something to help others, sometimes I choose to do nothing. Sometimes I choose to do something new.

One of my intentions with this blog is to write and share stories. Storytelling is powerful in how it can help to make sense of what we’re feeling, help to bring someone back to life, if even for just a moment, and by sharing stories we can feel less alone.

Story #2 – my brother Walter, two goldfish and a rock

A story central to this theme is about my brother Walter. Telling the full story about Walter, and how he came to be in our family is a story for another day, but loving and losing Walter had a profound impact on my life, and he also has a connection to my trip to Scotland in 1999 and how I ended up moving from the UK back to Canada in 2002.

In 1999 I graduated from the University of Toronto with my teaching degree and in September of that year I moved to London, UK for two years to teach there. Walter’s birthday was in September and he missed me so much that when he received two goldfish for his birthday, he named them Howie and Alison; one after me, and one after our dog who had recently passed away.

On my first week-long school break that October, I traveled to Scotland on a bus tour with my new flatmates. On a hill-walking tour, our guide told us to take a small rock and put it on a cairn at the top. He suggested that we name the rock, possibly for someone we loved and missed back home. I named my rock Walter, placed it on the cairn and took a picture to share with him.

I flew home for Christmas, and Walter was so excited to see me. When I flew back to London in January I said goodbye to everyone, and when I gave Walter a hug I didn’t know it would be the last one. A week later I got one of the worst phone calls of my life, my mom sobbing on the phone telling me Walter had passed away. It was a shock, made harder by being across the ocean, and the days it took to make it home to be with my family. Inspired by the Walter rock in Scotland, my dad built Walter a memorial cairn in the back field. Walter had loved living at the log house, roaming the forest and fields, and it was a peaceful and beautiful place to imagine him resting. After Walter’s memorial, I flew back to London, but the darkness of grief followed me there.

At the end of my two year work visa in England, I had the option to stay longer, or to set off on a new adventure. I could finally take the job in Japan that I’d been offered twice before, or travel to one of the many countries which allow Canadians to work. Intentionality came to me as I remembered what it felt like to be across the ocean when Walter had passed. I had a choice, and I decided to move back to Toronto, and find a job that allowed me to travel, but where I could be settled reasonably near my family.

Of course, I had no idea at that time that I would end up marrying an American and move to Buffalo, NY. It seemed like a small thing at the time, especially as we now live five minutes from the US/Canada border and we took for granted that we could cross anytime we wanted to.

It wasn’t until 2020 when the border closed that I realized how significant living in a different country really was. Christmas 2020 was the first Wilcox Christmas I ever missed, and it felt strange being able to look across the river and see Canada but not able to cross the bridge, and strange to be within a two to four hour drive of most of my immediate family but not able to see them for 18 months. When my dear grandfather passed away earlier this year, one of the hardest parts was not being with my family to grieve him together and to share our stories of the good times we had with him.

My intentional decision in 2002 to move near my family, to not be separated from my family in hard times, like when Walter passed, didn’t end up working as I planned, and I know this is a situation that so many people have shared.

Story #3 – Christmas pjs, a stomach bug and the Farmer’s Almanac

A lighter story involving holidays that don’t go the way you plan them is the first Christmas I spent away from the Wilcox’s in 2002, involving a stomach flu and the start of new traditions.

I was seven months pregnant with Baby Adventure (Ben), and was planning to celebrate Christmas with David and his daughters in Hamburg, NY. My mom was faced with the prospect of her kids growing up, and making new families of their own, and she didn’t want to ever miss out on celebrating Christmas with us. So she intentionally moved our family celebration to the weekend before, so that we would never have to choose who to celebrate with, and we could all be together. It was a big sacrifice for my mom who LOVED Christmas, but she made it so much easier. It wasn’t easy to keep it going without her after she passed in 2006, but except for 2020, I’m grateful that our family has come together every year right before or after Christmas, and all of those who can make it, do.

That first year, David and his daughters joined us for the Wilcox Family Christmas weekend, and my mom surprised us by revisiting an old tradition of making a pair of matching pajamas to give to everyone. She made a pair for each of us, 15 people, including David and his daughters, as she cemented in the family that the girls were her grandchildren too. My pajamas were even maternity size (with a very flexible waistband) so I could join in.

Celebrating Christmas in America that year, I was a bit out of my comfort zone, being away from my family, and being with the Lanfears who I knew a little, but not very well yet. At the time I was still living in Toronto until the baby arrived. On Christmas Eve, David went out shopping for the rest of his family and I sat happily at his apartment wrapping presents that we were giving the girls.

David came home groaning and ran upstairs. The details will be spared, but he had come down with the stomach flu, and had run from the store, the items abandoned on the conveyor belt, not yet purchased.

He handed me cash and asked me to get gifts for his family. I didn’t have a driver’s licence, and there were no regular buses in Hamburg, and so I went out, 7 months pregnant, and walked to the village plaza where there was a pharmacy, a Dollar store, Paper Factory and a Thursday Morning (discount home goods store). I managed to find what I hoped were decent gifts for his mom, brother and sister-in-law, niece and nephew, but the load was too big for me to carry. A kind taxi driver gave me a 5 minute ride back to David’s place with the whole stash.

David was too sick to go to the family Christmas Eve dinner and I had to decide if I would stay home with him or go on my own. It would have been really easy to stay back. But, this was my first Christmas with the girls, and with his family, and David assured me he was okay on his own, so I ventured out – my mother-in-law drove over to give me a ride. It was a fun night, they all made me feel comfortable, and my sister-in-law still tells me she gave me a lot of credit for coming.

The next morning David felt a bit better stomach flu-wise, but he was feeling bad that he had left items for me at the store too. He knew Christmas stockings are one of the most important Wilcox traditions for me, and he was empty handed. When we opened presents I was surprised to see a full stocking with my name on it. I laughed as I pulled out the items inside. A Farmer’s Almanac, one of the cat toys, a small statue from the bookcase, a kitchen utensil, and some candy and notebooks, among other things. He’d run to the convenience store that morning and grabbed anything he could find, and then filled the rest with household items. That sparked a new family tradition where our stockings always contain a few familiar surprises from around the house. And yes, Farmer’s Almanac always make an appearance.

That Christmas helped me to start letting go of some old traditions, make new ones and have grace when things don’t go as planned. (And admittedly, this is always a work in progress!)

There is no prescriptive recipe I can offer to help anyone with sadness and grief, but I’ve found that sharing stories can help us feel less alone with those feelings.

I experience a range of feelings at this time of year, and practice making space for the moments of joy, like my granddaughter Gemma’s first Christmas this year, and making space for disappointments, like we might not be able to be with Gemma in person because of COVID-19, and making space for longing, like I wish my mom was still here and could have the chance to meet her. It is amazing that over 40 years of memories and new experiences can fit, but they do. By paying attention to how I’m feeling, it’s easier for me to be aware of how my feelings can affect others, and better able to show up for them the way that I want to.

My mom made Christmas magical for me, and I get a lot of pleasure when I can do the same for others. Although I have zero interest and intention to ever make pajamas, I did channel my inner Jackie Wilcox (my mom) and bought matching pajamas for all of our now adult children this year and their partners, and a pair for little Gemma. We’ll either be cozying up together in person or on zoom, but we’ll have a photo of us in our matching pjs no matter what. And I’m sure many stories of this time will be told for years to come. I may not have gotten Mom’s love of sewing, but I did get her love of baking and giving out pans of Grandma Bing’s shortbread is one of the ways that I like to show love.

I like to tell a lot of the same stories, and have heard it advised to let people around you tell and re-tell their stories, especially as they get older, because it can help preserve memory. And for people and places and traditions we have lost, telling their stories keeps them alive if even for a moment.

What are the stories that you love to tell, or have always wanted to tell? Who made magical memories for you? Who are you missing and would love to talk about? What is something that went wrong but remains a funny story today? What is your favorite family holiday tradition?

Please share your story in the comments or at the Birth of Adventure page. I appreciate you making space for my stories and would love to do the same for you.

Birth of Adventure Part One – Discovering Adventure in New Zealand

Birth of Adventure Part One – Discovering Adventure in New Zealand

My friend Christine urged me to take a pregnancy test. We were talking on the phone, me in Wellington, New Zealand, and Christine in her London, UK flat.

My period was late.

“It’s probably the stress of your accident,” she said, “take the test and you’ll know for sure.”

I went out and bought a test and brought it back to my temporary residence. I waited, peering at the stick through the criss-cross bandages engulfing my swollen and purple face. Waiting to see if there would be one pink line meaning not pregnant, or two pink lines, meaning pregnant.

After the accident, my boss kindly put me up in her parent’s vacant home in Wellington until the doctor could sign off on me flying back home to Canada.

I had come to New Zealand for a work conference. I was 27 and had a dream job – an international recruiter based in Toronto with colleagues in London, New Zealand and Australia. My job was to recruit teachers from Canada to fill teaching positions in London during the UK teaching shortage. After teaching in London for 2 years, I loved being able to bring the wonderful experience I’d had to others, and with the job I was able to travel.

Flying all the way from Canada to New Zealand seemed like a once in a lifetime experience so I booked time off to backpack around the country after the conference.

Two weeks before, on what was supposed to be my last day in NZ, I’d popped into the Visitor Center in Queenstown, the “Adventure Capital of the World” looking for an activity to fill my time after the bus back to Wellington had been delayed.

“What is the safest activity?” I’d asked.

Within an hour I was strapped into a tandem hang glider with my instructor.

His partner shoveled snow to form a slope so we could run off the cliff at 25 miles per hour. I felt a sense of invigoration – the urge to feel the wind on my face, excitement about the sights we would see, all of which would be memorialized by the camera attached to the glider on a metal pole.

The beauty of New Zealand had dazzled me right from the beginning from the tiny plane window. The shimmering blue sky that touched the blue of the ocean, swirling white clouds, and the endless green snow-topped mountains. I felt like I was in the Lord of the Rings and would see a hobbit coming around the corner any second. I was mesmerized.

The spectacular views were what spurred me to try hang gliding. I wanted to fly like a bird over the mountains. I’d never done anything like this and I loved the sense of adventure. I also felt incredibly nervous – I was about to jump off a cliff.

The instructor told me we needed to run to get the speed that would help us take flight. I asked him what would happen if we didn’t run fast enough? “Not an option,” he said.

My heart raced as we ran. My feet lifted up. We were still too far from the edge – I tried to force my feet to the earth to gain the traction we needed.

We got to the edge and jumped, and there was a slight lift, then a plummet. White flashed by, snow flew past, then a strange feeling, like my face … crumpled.

The glider stopped. It was hard to open my eyes so I kept them closed. I was dangling in my harness. I heard the instructor swear. After a moment he said “Lie still”.

The details are fuzzy but his partner made his way to where we were, and they unfastened me from the harness, and I lay in the snow on the mountain while they called for help. I asked what happened, and he said we crashed about 50 feet down the mountain. He said my face took the force of impact from the metal camera pole.

A helicopter landed and I was lifted into it and taken to the local hospital. They then airlifted me to another hospital in Dunedin that specialized in facial reconstruction.

It felt serious, but all I could think about was I had been in one hang glider, and two helicopter rides, and I still hadn’t been able to see the view of the breathtaking New Zealand landscape. What a ripoff.

It’s strange what we worry about. I was being taxied to major surgery and I was worried about not seeing the view, and about what people would think. A kind nurse talked with me, and I asked him if he would be mad at his partner for doing something careless like hang gliding. I thought about my parents, and my boyfriend David, and worried if they’d be furious at me for doing this.

I was taken in for xrays and the radiologist asked me if I was pregnant. I shook my head and said “No”.

After looking at the images, they said my nose and left cheekbone had been crushed and would require surgery to pin and repair the bones. There was a deep laceration on my cheek that would be sutured as best as possible, but it wasn’t a clean cut, and parts of the flesh were gone. I asked if I would have a scar, and they just looked at me wordlessly.

I don’t remember the pain at first, I might have been in shock, but after surgery it was brutal. The worst was when they took out the packs of cotton in my nose – they dropped morphine directly into my nostrils as they pulled out the packing – it was worse than anything I’d felt before.

I still hadn’t seen my face and I was afraid to look. When I could get out of bed I walked to the mirror in the bathroom. My face was criss crossed with bandages, my skin different shades of red and purple.

When they later changed the bandages I saw my face clearly for the first time. It no longer looked like the face I knew. The stitches were an angry jagged line across my left cheek from the bottom of my nose to the outside corner of my eye. My broken nose and cheek were puffy and red. The left side of my mouth drooped limply. I crookedly smiled at my reflection, only the right side lifting with the motion. I wondered if it was because of the swelling on the left side.

The nurse saw me looking mournfully at my face.

“You’re very lucky you know”, she said. “The Doctor is the best in the country. You should have seen what you looked like before.”

I probably should have felt lucky, and lucky to be alive, but I didn’t feel lucky at all. I looked like Quasimodo.

The Doctor visited me and asked how I was doing. I asked him about my mouth, why was the left side of my face drooping and would it get better soon?

He said very plainly that it might be permanent.

I stared at him shocked.

He explained that the nerves were likely cut and that it was possible they could regrow but it was also possible they might never recover.

I cried. I had kept myself together so far but imagining I could never smile properly again was too much.

I knew I should feel lucky – I was alive. I hadn’t broken or lost any limbs. The pole had missed my eye, my ear, my teeth. But I’d struggled with body image throughout my life, and finally I’d gained a level of comfort with who I was, and how I looked. My boyfriend David loved my eyes and my smile. My left eye was different now – pulled tautly from the cut. I had an angry scar across my cheek. And I was hearing that at 27 I could go the rest of my life with half of my face paralyzed.

I tried to pull myself together as the doctor watched me silently. He then told me that I was ready to leave the hospital.

I burst into tears again. I had nowhere to go. My family and friends were over 9000 miles away. My boss was in Wellington on the North Island. I was in Dunedin on the South Island over 17 hours away by bus. Weak and concussed, I couldn’t imagine making that journey by myself.

When I told him the situation, he was my hero. Accidents are covered fully by insurance in New Zealand and he arranged for me to stay in a rehab hospital for a week before going back to Wellington.

While there I started to cheer up. My boss sent me a care package with treats and books. The hang gliding company sent me a package with my belongings, my coat, my wallet with passport, and a full refund of the fees I’d paid them. The hospital had volunteers who would visit and spend time with the patients. This was before Facebook and Facetime, but I managed to talk to my family and to my boyfriend David on the phone.

When I described my face to David, he told me I was beautiful no matter what.

I was still foggy and feeling weak, but with help from a colleague in Christchurch and my boss, I made it back to Wellington and moved in temporarily to the beautiful home overlooking the water of Cook’s Strait, with rolling hills and grazing sheep in the distance. I desperately wished I could be home with my family and friends, but being stuck on the other side of the world, it is hard to imagine being given a better place to recover.

Waiting until I was cleared to fly home, I spent the days trying to work in the Wellington office, and the nights by myself, calling loved ones around the world. (And note, I had not yet considered the astronomical cell phone bill I was racking up with a 2002 Canada cell phone plan calling North America and the UK from New Zealand – yikes!).

One night watching the Bridget Jones Diary DVD for the millionth time on my laptop I started realizing my period was late.

It was mid-June. I’d had my last period before David and I had traveled to London and Wales, in late April. Had it been 6 weeks? 7?

Frantically I called Christine and she reassured me that this was to be expected with so much stress. She said I should just go and take a test so I wouldn’t worry about this on top of everything else.

There was no way I could be pregnant. When the radiologist had asked if I was pregnant, I hadn’t even stopped to consider the possibility. But there was a possibility.

I wasn’t ready to be pregnant. I’d only been dating David for six months. He lived in America, I lived in Canada. I had a fulfilling job, I traveled, I was never at home. I’d imagined that one day, maybe at 35 I would have kids, but not now. And I was literally broken, still recovering, still foggy and concussed.

Christine was right, I should get the test so I could rule it out.

And that is why I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, facing out at the bathroom door, staring intently at the pregnancy stick in my hands, swollen face and all.

And as I saw the second pink line forming I felt the dizzying feeling of running off the cliff, not knowing if the glider would catch the wind or plummet down the mountain.

I was pregnant.

Read the next part of this story in Birth of Adventure, Part Two – Choosing Adventure

Birth of Adventure Part Two – Choosing Adventure

Birth of Adventure Part Two – Choosing Adventure

I looked at the pregnancy test: two strong lines, like they were drawn by a Sharpie. I was pregnant.

I was shocked. What was I going to do? I was recovering from an accident, my face broken. I’d only been dating my boyfriend for six months and we lived in different countries. We had a good relationship but it was still early – there hadn’t been any talk of a lifelong commitment. And right now I was in New Zealand, 9,000 miles away from David and all of my family and friends.

And what about the baby? I’d had surgery, xrays, morphine… what could that have done to the baby?

I decided to call David and tell him. First I talked to my sister Abbie.

“Are you sure you want to tell him on the phone? This is a big deal – maybe you should wait until you’re back so you can tell him face to face,” she said.

I thought it over, and shook my head although she couldn’t see. “No, we are talking every day and it’s too huge – he’d know something was up. I’ll tell him tonight.”

Alison and David in Glendalough, Ireland – during April/May 2002 UK and Ireland trip

On the phone I mentally braced myself to tell him the news.

Better to just do it. I said, “I have something to tell you.”

“What, you’re pregnant?” he asked jokingly.

“Yes,” I said.

He erupted into laughter, snorting.

“I am really pregnant,” I said.

He laughed louder.

“I’m not joking,” I said.

His laughing stopped. Then there was silence.

“Oh”.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Ummm.. I don’t know.”

I really didn’t know.

“I want to see a doctor when I get home, check and see if any of this could cause … You know, the accident, the surgery, morphine … I just want to check if the baby would be okay.”

“Okay, well let’s talk more about it when you get home,” he said.

It was a relief to have more time to think. I spent the next few days doing my best to focus on work, although it was strange to harbor such a big secret. Only David, my sisters and Christine knew.

Flying home was exhausting and uncomfortable. It was already a long flight, over 30 hours through Australia, Hawaii, Los Angeles to Toronto but there was an 8 hour delay in LA. My face ballooned from the air travel and the summer heat- I so badly wanted to get home.

I was worried because I couldn’t reach David to tell him that the flight wasn’t going to arrive until the next morning. That was on top of worrying what he would think when he saw how I looked. The criss crossed bandages were gone, replaced by a white bandage over the gash on my cheek. My face was puffy and bruised, my mouth drooping on the left side.

When I finally arrived in Toronto and walked out of arrivals, David was standing there waiting for me. He looked tired. I wondered where he had waited, if he had slept. He grabbed me into a big hug and then kissed my broken cheek through the bandage. I relaxed for a moment in his arms. It was going to be okay.

He then pulled back and looked into my eyes.

“Where did you sleep?” I asked.

“The parking lot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, and you’re here now.”

We spent the next week together at his place in Hamburg, NY. It gave me a chance to spend more time with his daughters, Sarah, 13 and Hannah 11. Living in different cities, we usually saw each other on weekends, and sometimes he had the girls and sometimes they were with their mom. They were cute kids, smart, curious, funny, kind, and I liked them, and liked to see him with them – it was clear how much he loved them.

I did some work remotely using his computer and my cell phone, something we take for granted now in 2021. I was mostly in a blur, not yet realizing that the fatigue and exhaustion I was feeling wasn’t just from my accident and the concussion, but also was caused by the first trimester of pregnancy.

We visited his mom for the Fourth of July weekend at her home in New Jersey, my face huge from the heat. Not knowing what I was going to do about the baby and bearing this secret was driving me crazy. I had always supported the right of women to choose and knew this was my choice – but I didn’t want to still be choosing – I wanted to have chosen, I wanted to know.

I faced my worry about the possible effects of my accident and surgery on the baby. I called MotherCare at the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto. The attendant on the helpline went through the checklist with me – xray, morphine, surgery. She said not to worry – those shouldn’t have caused any harm.

My shoulders dropped from a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying. If I hadn’t wanted to choose the baby, this news might not have given me the relief that it did. I was comforted to know the baby wasn’t harmed from my accident.

I put my hand on my belly. Against all odds this baby had come into my life. I fell off a cliff and the baby was still here. I felt like this baby had chosen me, chosen us.

But what about my situation? I was living in a different city than David, not married, and with no plans to rush into marriage because of a baby. I told myself it was not the 1950’s, and I was completely fine doing this on my own if need be.

And how would I support myself if I was taking care of a newborn baby? I reminded myself that in Canada there was a year’s parental leave, and universal health care so I didn’t have to worry about the medical bills, and I had income for one year.

Where would I live? I was renting a tiny room in a condo downtown, no room for a baby. I told myself if it worked out with David, great, but if not I could probably live with my parents for a while.

I wanted the baby. I felt in my bones I could do this – with David or on my own. Either way, I was going to have this baby – I chose yes.

Telling David was almost harder than making the choice – it made it real. He admitted he felt nervous. He already had two kids. He didn’t want to be pressured to get remarried. I told him forcefully that wasn’t an option – we weren’t ready to talk about marriage yet.

After a minute he said he felt relieved – it was scary but he wanted us to have the baby too. Although I’d been prepared to do this on my own I felt lighter, stronger to be doing this together.

David drove me to my parent’s home where I was planning to tell them – he’d brought Sarah with him for the ride, and he left to take her back home to NY. She didn’t know yet.

I felt awkward – telling your parents you’re pregnant can feel awkward anyway, like announcing you’re an adult doing adult things. But I also worried they would be unhappy that I was in this situation – their girl, unmarried, having a baby.

When I told them, my mom’s eyes welled with tears. “I’m going to be a grandma?” she said.

This was going to be her second grandchild, after a 9 year wait. My mom had raised a houseful of kids and wanted more babies around. She was elated, and my parents let me know they would support me anyway I needed.

I called David to let him know how my parents had taken the news. We decided we would start telling others – his parents, our siblings and friends, but we’d wait for a while to tell the girls.

We thought about a name for our tiny little being. “Baby Adventure,” one of us suggested. This baby had been in four countries already. Likely conceived on our trip to Wales, discovered in New Zealand, and already survived a hang gliding accident in utero.

Choosing to have a baby was the scariest adventure I’d pursued yet. But I also felt that with the support of loving people around me, if I fell off the cliff again, I had a safety net to catch me this time.

I felt exhilaration tinged with trepidation like when you’re on a roller coaster and it starts with a jerk, inching slowly at first, the wheels clinking on the tracks, and you know it feels calm now but it all changes once you reach the top.

I had no idea what the future would bring. I didn’t know what would happen between David and I. I didn’t know where I would live when the baby was born. But I knew one thing. I felt a surge of love and fierce protection for this baby, for my baby. Baby Adventure had chosen us, and we were choosing Adventure.

The story continues: The Birth of Adventure Part 3 – The Mother of Adventure – coming soon