It was five years ago, almost exactly, the last time we camped at Montano de Oro Campground. Four couples, 8 adults. Five years later, we came back–plus 6 children for the four original couples.

Five years ago we stayed up late around the fire, passing alcohol hand to hand, laughing about being too close to each other’s tents (gotta have your privacy, you know).

I could write two posts here about our camping trip this weekend. The first one would be full of fun photos and funny anecdotes. I would tell you how my husband (being the insane over-achiever that he is) actually (and I’m going to have to use italics here for emphasis) built his own smoker at the campsite and made us a smoked pork shoulder that we will be talking about for years. I would tell you about how my daughter is so amazingly excellent at this camping thing that she slept a full 13 hours both nights, rising at her leisure past 9 am both mornings. I would write of sunshine and lazy afternoons at the beach, combing through the sand to pick out the best shells and stones, about homemade limoncello and addictive chocolate brownies and giggling babies and good friends escaping from household chores and responsibilities to go hang out with each other.

But this is the other thing I would write:

Five years ago? Things were different.

I find myself feeling a little…what? Melancholy? Homesick for the past?….for something indefinable that has happened to all of us in these intervening years. It was such a different time. A carefree time. A leisure time. We were so young, it feels now! Not yet thirty! How could we imagine what the next five years would bring? Our children, our illnesses, time itself–all of it–has changed us. Sometimes we are bitter, sometimes we are sad, sometimes we are angry. A lot of the time, it feels impossible. All of us women have gone from working women to stay-at-home Mommy-dom. We have lost parts of ourselves, while we gain a whole world that fits into our two arms. We are always, always tired. We do and say things we never thought we would say (“Get that finger out of your nose!” “Do NOT put that string around your friend’s neck!!!”). We linger around the fire at night–still making inappropriate jokes and passing alcohol hand to hand–but this time it is only briefly, after the kids turn in for the night, in anticipation of night awakenings and early mornings and the energy that it will take to survive the next day. It’s….different. It’s fun, it’s great, we had a blast…but it is different.

I wouldn’t change a thing but…but…but…I miss those people from five years ago.

Being parents has rocked our worlds. Oh, Lordy, has it ever rocked our worlds.

How do I write this without sounding ungrateful? How do I explain to those without children that we aren’t blaming our children, not exactly, but that things–your life, your sanity–changes beyond any understanding from the moment you first hold their little bodies and name them as your own. That it is both the most blessed thing in the universe and also the hardest thing we’ve ever done.

I can stare back at that picture of us 8 adults at the top of the mountain on that first afternoon hike five years ago and savor the memory. I can also sit and thumb through the pictures on my iPhone from this past weekend and savor those memories. I do believe that these more recent times will become even sweeter with time, when we look back and forget about encircling raging children with our tired arms and remember only their sweet, flushed cheeks, the endearing way they made us buckets of “hot cocoa” (dirt) and passed out, exhausted, at the end of the day. We’ll forget (right?) the tussles they got into with each other, the screams and tears and tantrums. The “put down that stick” and the “eat your food” and the “it’s bedtime now, go to sleep.” We’ll only have this–the memories–in five, ten, fifteen….more…years from now–of a time that was different. The before. And then we will be in another emotional place altogether, with some other heart-heavy burden perhaps but also, dare I hope, we will still have friendships and love and campfires and s’mores and laughter, dirt and stinky pit toilets and sleeping bags and limoncello by the fading light of the last rays of sun. I’ve read the name of the park (Montana de Oro, “Mountain of Gold,”) refers to the blooming wildflowers of the spring, but I can’t help but think that the name also references the way that the sun hits the hillside in the early evening, the way it lights up in shades of gold and yellow and purple.

I love camping with friends. What a crazy, amazing time we had.

P.S. My favorite quote of the trip, courtesy of Anna (as I held her over the outhouse toilet): “No kids ever fall down in there, do they? Because I don’t want to fall in there with all that pee and poo.” (She did just fine, by the way. No falling in of any sort or even bathroom refusal).