Certified

I spent a lot of time today thinking about the experiences that Jer and I had SCUBA diving before we had kids and hoping we can get back to that lifestyle.

I'd always wanted to dive, but didn't know where to start. This inspired Jer to find out, and he gifted me certification classes. We completed our open water dives by the time we were on our honeymoon in 2010. We dove reefs and cenotes, and loved every minute of it.

The two of us carried on with work, fun, travel, and adventure for another year. Near the end of 2011, at a routine visit, my doctor asked if we planned on having kids. "I dunno, someday!" I said flippantly. She read me the riot act: "Look, you are getting old. You're already 34! Your chances of conceiving will go down. The chances of complications will go up."

I returned home with this harsh new reality of my "advanced maternal age" and decided to set a one-year plan. My focus on work drifted, and we ramped up our 'bucket list' goals. In 2012, we did as much diving as we could - local lakes an mines, wreck diving in Lake Superior - and got a stack of certifications on the way: Buoyancy, Ice diving, Rescue and Advanced open water. We also traveled to Cozumel for the first time and spent a week diving 3 times per day as part of a special meetup with ScubaBoard.

In August of 2012, we made it to Iceland to dive Silfra - a crystal clear dive site in the rift between the North American and European tectonic plates. This was our 'bucket list' trip before we started a family. By December, I was pregnant with Mackenzie.

It was a good plan, because we hardly ever went diving again. When our girl was 4 months old, we dreamed of relocating to Mexico, and spent a month working and diving at Airbnbs in Akumal and Cozumel. But the realities of raising a young family set in, and we only took one more trip in 2018. We set aside this part of our lives and mostly forgot about it.

Until now! Mackenzie completed her certification less than a week ago. Oscar will go next year. I am optimistic that this will be the start of a new set of family adventures.

I am beyond grateful that Jer and I had the foresight to develop our skills and experience early on. Diving is inherently risky, and inherently scary. It's good that we have learned to manage the risk and have enough situational awareness to help us keep track of our girl - and that we've been successful in conveying both the seriousness of her training and the benefits it offers.

Today, I spent a lot of time with my dive logs. Getting my data management in order by updating the dive-tracking software we use, and ensuring that all of my dives are correctly imported from my dive computer. I'm kicking myself for not doing a better job of keeping records and useful notes, but it looks like I'll have a second chance to get things right.