JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

The girls had a great time hanging out at Northern Voice. Thanks to everyone for being kind and understanding with our kids. For example, Darren Barefoot and his blog widow amused them with pictures of Cuba. I was glad that my daughters didn’t poke out Chris Pirillo’s eyes with chopsticks over lunch, or that they didn’t make him spout soda through his nose, as he described. Robert Scoble was sweet to his youngest fan club members and the rest of our lunch companions, including Maryam and Ponzi were thoughtful too. At dinner the kids were excited to discover that Roland Tanglao and Boris Mann also sprechen Deutsch…and Marc demonstrated how to sing in German, Mozart, I believe. At one point Ted and I thought Boris was about to jumpstart his family with some of our own; he seemed comfortable with kids. Our daughters are still talking about their dim sum playdate time with Mimi and Lucy, Lisa and Marc Canter’s daughters. I let our girls run around with a camera and take pictures. The girls posted some of their photos to their blog and I added a few to the Northern Voice flickr feed to share…In the future, I’d expect to see more and more younger attendees at blogging conferences. Thanks to the Northern Voice crew for letting our kids share it with us.

After we came home, the girls began interviewing each other, using a Dalmatian dog tail (think big black pom pom) as a microphone. They’ve also started writing stories, including a description of our trip to Canada. I don’t know if my own creativity has inspired them but perhaps seeing examples has given them ideas of their own to try…

This week has been intense for me emotionally. First the adrenaline roller coaster ride of participating in a conference, giving it all I’ve got, and receiving other’s responses to what I had shared from my family’s life. Then I came home Sunday night and read of writer Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide. More sorrow came to me in private emails, stories I can’t share here. I’ve found comfort in sunshine and crocuses during a winter week.

Tuesday night after I read Lenn Pryor’s post describing his sister’s death, I sat staring at the screen for a while without words but with tears. I feel sad for Lenn. He’s is a friend I’ve met through the connections of blogging. Our family has spent time with him. Lenn’s transparency and his love of life flow deep and true in his writing. His loss of a sibling, some of the details in his story, and the way he held a funeral for her on his blog, also reminded me of the loss of my brother and the blogposts I’d written for him, described in my talk on Saturday.

Yesterday morning Mitch Ratcliffe’s post helped me make sense of my emotions. Responding to Lenn, he wrote [excerpt]

I’m very sorry, Lenn, to hear about your sister. But I know the birth you’re about to have will be just the end of a beginning of something you will treasure, too.

I’ve been thinking about how to write about the way we are friends and family for a few days.

His last line: Life is a wonder, even if it can all be explained.

Often a life will leave our lives just as a new one is entering. Katherine and her family have had a similiar experience. When my brother died, my first child was 18 months old, and I became pregnant with our second one, despite medical improbability, only a few weeks after his passing.

We live with loss. Yesterday I sorted through boxes marked “Baby”: someone I met is suddenly adopting from a Third World country and needs clothes. Digging through the piles of outfits, examining tiny pairs of pants and shirts, pale pink dresses and small bundled socks, woke memories. The red dress Abigail wore when we propped her up in the sofa corner to take her picture on a summer day in San Jose. Her purple fleece suit that made her look like B—–, or so Ted and I joked to each other. I can still see her infant face and the way she would wiggle in it. The pale green spring outfit Michaela wore posed in the photo with her big sister, her smile in her coat of many colors given to us by a neighbor (who moved away and then returned into our lives), and the gray fleece suit I bought Elisabeth for our Europe trip. All these are moments lost. My girls won’t be babies again. Moments come and go, ephemeral, many of them disappearing without making an explicit mark on our memory. Yet as I note the end of babies in our home and pack the clothes into bags, someone else is beginning a new life with a new little one.

Our lives are circles intersecting, some overlapping more than others. This week I’ve been thinking of those I once knew who are gone, of the slivers of life we shared. We flow in and out of each other’s lives, like water, like dancers, like air in lungs. Yet I am still here, alive for now, and they exist in some sense inside me, in my memories, in the ways we interacted and intersected with each other. To draw a diagram and shade the pieces of life we shared, the now dead and the still living, would create colorful but strange geometry.

We are left with pieces of people, moments of memories that can return with the sight of a sweater or the sound of a song. Life is a collection of these bits, broken and strange-shaped, remnants of intersections, colorful and vivid, love and loss. Life is like a kaleidoscope: each day, every moment, brings another spin, another way to interpret what has happened, to see a pattern or purpose, an explanation in the pile of pieces. Birth and death, beginnings and endings, new and old are juxtaposed against each other in wonderful ways, even as we breathe.

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Other posts on loss that have spoken to me recently:

Chip Gibbons lost his cat and realized the little ways he had accommodated his pet.

Beth Grigg described the grief a nursing mother can feel.

Rod Kratchowill wondered where the angels were when his wife died.

The combination of participating as a speaker and attending as a family made the experience of Northern Voice a different blogging conference for me. I took few notes and skipped a couple sessions. Usually I create detailed transcripts in blogposts and immerse myself in the talks, but this time I had other considerations.

It was fun to share it all with my family and make new friendships. While bringing the kids changed the dynamics and schedule possibilities, it also helped us connect to others too: what a place to find new playmates! The girls were able to see Mommy speak at a conference. Having Ted there with me was infinitely better than trying to describe it over the phone to him.

I was able to listen to Tim Bray and Robert Scoble’s keynote talks. I appreciated Tim’s emphasis on humility and correcting oneself, while at the same time he encouraged bloggers to flame judiciously and express themselves with color and authentic tone. His soup analogy(and picture) caught our daughters’ attention, and so did his humming method of voting. I could relate to can’t not write as a reason to blog…

Robert in his talk revealed how he is noticing and aggregating trends as he reads blogs. I think the proverb that comes to mind is ear to the ground. Listening. Although he does use PubSub for search feeds, for example to read about the phuket tsunami, he said that such feeds were purified sugar, not nutritious or sustaining. I like that he wants to read blog feeds in order to build relationships: he’s into people not just information.

My own talk was an intense and rich experience. Thanks to the Northern Voice organizers, I felt I had freedom to be creative with my time. In a previous post I described how I crafted the talk, immersing myself, and it felt as if I were throwing a pot on the wheel. Stories from my life combined with pictures from my blog and quotes from other bloggers. I also felt relaxed and comfortable as if I were speaking to friends (I was!). Getting the talk started took a little effort and nerves, but soon I felt more myself than I had when I practiced for Ted Thursday night. Perhaps this sense of casual conversation made my talk less polished and blurry than ideal. Also, like a new pair of jeans, I suspect that a presentation fits better the more times it is “worn”. This opportunity at Northern Voice was a new pair of jeans, a new outfit for me, figuratively, a gift, and I’m grateful I was chosen to be a speaker.

After I finished my slides, we began a discussion. Many hands went up in the room to participate. I enjoyed hearing stories, observations and insights: I wish we had had more time to share with each other. Again, if anyone would like to continue the conversation please link or email me.

At this point, I don’t think I will post notes from my talk. Since my presentation involved both slides and speech, it would be difficult to share it unless I made a webcast or film. There is the possibility I may give this talk again, so I would prefer to preserve some intrigue.

Most of all though, I don’t have to post notes because others have already done excellent work: thanks!. Please see posts from:

A short post tonight. As Ted has already reported, our blogs were off the air this weekend. I apologize to anyone who was trying to find this site: we should be back now.

Ted, the girls and I shared an intense and wonderful weekend in Vancouver, B.C.. At Northern Voice, I enjoyed meeting many people and especially sharing stories during my session. I was honored and excited to be there, grateful for the invitation to participate as a speaker and panelist. I owe many thank-yous and I appreciate the Northern Voice crew who created a rich conference. Thanks to everyone who came.

Sunday morning, approximately forty conference attendees and family showed up for dim sum. Yummy food and fun conversation while downing dumplings. Then we Leungs headed to the Vancouver Aquarium to admire the belugas before heading home on the highway.

Special thanks to my beloved Ted who came to provide technical assistance and child care, to use his words. Although Northern Voice was my third blogging conference, this was the first one we’ve both attended, and it was great to be there as a team. The weekend was a new experience for our whole family, busy and amazing. Now to catch up on sleep…more later…