Canada, Crying, Coincidence

I. Canada
We used our shiny new passports for the first time yesterday to cross the border into Canada and visit some college friends in Hamilton. As far as James is concerned, Canada is a magical land where we should live forever. His experience of Canada is that you get to watch Curious George, play with a bunch of new toys, eat chocolate covered granola bars, and play at a huge bounce house with incredibly polite Canadian people. Oh, and everyone is interested in hockey there too.
It was a lovely trip, and we made it through the border each way without having to wait any longer than to exchange pleasantries with the customs officials while they waved at the boys in the backseat. It's remarkable how close we live to Toronto, and yet I haven't been there in nearly 20 years!
It wasn't a great day for seeing much beauty in the Canadian landscape. The QEW was open and clean, but the wet, dirty road was the same color as the wet, dirty sky, which was the same color as the lake.
Didn't bother James, though. He says we need to go back soon.

II. Crying
James was withdrawn and quiet. I found him curled up on a chair and asked him what was wrong. He whispered his answers and wasn't making eye contact. I managed to get him up out of his seat and into a game of Trouble, and then when I was packing the game up I found out why.
Near the bookshelf where James always tries to "park" his toy cars (to keep them out of Owen's reach there was a picture frame that had tipped over and shattered. There was glass everywhere.
While I cleaned it up J came over and took him through the follow up.
"James, did you see this picture frame break?"
"Yes."
"Was it because you were trying to put your cars up on top of the cube, even though Mommy told you not to?"
"Yes."
"Are you allowed to do that."
<tears welling up>
"No."
"We're going to clean this up now and if you try to put your cars up on the cube again we're going to take them away. And if you ever see broken glass you need to come and get Mommy and Daddy right away, because if Owen got into this he could have been hurt very badly. Do you understand?"
<nods, tears welling in eyes>
We finished cleaning up the glass and James went over to his spot at the kitchen table. He sat in his chair and set down his toy cars on the table so that they were looking back at him. He was still red in the face and the eyes, and he put his face in his hands while he looked at his cars. I stepped towards him, but J held me back.
Then the tears started.
"Poor Mater! POOR Mater!"
He covered his head with his hands and looked at the goofy tow truck grinning back at him.
"Poor Mater. POOR MATER!"
The tears and sobs were coming thick now, and he wailed out his call.
"Poor Lightning...poor Mater...poor Mater!"

I don't know if we were witnessing the germination of higher-level guilt or shame or sadness or what, but the poor little boy was having some sort of trouble processing this new emotion that couldn't be placed on his normal spectrum of HUNGRY--ASLEEP.

"POOR MATER!"

This went on for about 10 minutes.
He was pretty quiet the rest of the morning.

III. Coincidence
My Valentine's Day present to J this year came out of an old, dead laptop buried in the basement. I managed to find a power supply that would give me access to the machine (which hadn't been turned on in years) and copied out of J's old inbox the entire archive of emails that we'd sent to each other when I was in grad school in Chicago. Most of the emails are simple retellings of how our days went. Sometimes, when I was working a long shift at the library, things got a little more interesting. There was a whole series of emails I wrote in 2006 (at this point I hadn't yet proposed, but J and I both knew it was going to happen soon) when I was dropping thick and barely concealed hints about how this was going to happen, alternating between legitimate teases and deliberate misinformation. One of the emails was set eight years in the future and took the form of a conversation between a married J and myself with two little children sitting up with us before bedtime, a little girl and her baby brother. The little daughter was my foil for my retelling of how my day went "Daddy, what were you doing EXACTLY eight years ago this very night?" and she also made for convenient commentary about how my pool audition went that day. "You played the Bach Christmas Oratorio on a D trumpet? You're the best Daddy EVER!" There were plenty of references to how the family story involved some surprising and well-known but never revealed marriage proposal.
The coincidence? The day in question was October 30th, 2006. The day eight years in the future where the email was set was October 30th, 2014.