dream

a dream: a group of men, older and middle aged, winter time, blue collar workers, recruited for fulltime sex work. They seemed resigned but congenial and not fussed. I was in some sort of admin position for them and was trying to bargain for shorter days saying that 8 straight hours would be too exhausting. Then there was Matt, but his cheerful busyness was hamish, and I was lounging in his truck waiting for a kiss, while he unpacked it. I got the kiss and it was perfectly firm but lush. I wanted more. I was open and trusting. His energy was a blue collar working man. Then we were in a modular home (definite matt, prince george, ayla's formative years vibe) and I was on the toilet and removing a menstrual cup but something more was coming out, and I had instant dread at having to pull something out of me and I was already calling out for that man as I looked down and saw that it was a dead fetus' blue hand and arm, up to the elbow, and I was calling Papa! over and over as loud as I could (reminiscent of instances of stomal prolapse with felix in the early years). I woke up after that to morning. I had woken to blood earlier in the night. I wake once a night with a dripping wet sternum.

a bumpy return

Kamloops in the fall, Spallumcheen at harvest time. The Ranch, fuzzy horses, buckets of windfall apples, garbage burning day, coyotes and the moon, yellow leafed aspens. I helped feed out fields which I haven't done in a decade, but did plenty of about fifteen years ago. I'd like all our Thompson Okanagan visits to happen in the fall now, two weeks next time. I couldn't get enough of the colours, and breathable air was a bonus. Finally got Felix out to Tranquille, learned that that name was what the early fur traders called the local chief, a chill dude. Learned that under the old sanatorium out there is a native village that dates back 7,000 years, on a gravel benchland by the river, Mara Mountain behind, where young men would go on vision quests. Learned that it is one of the richest archaeological areas in canada outside of the great lakes. An investment company wants to make an agriculture resort out of the old farm. Felix and I walked down a trail a little, and I've wanted to show Felix this area since ever, places where I spent so much time exploring with John, where I learned to scramble on shitty volcanic rock no less. We found agates, we found bighorn sheep pellets, found a pink plaster buddha sitting at the base of some sagebrush, overlooking a memorial plaque in the ground, Felix learned about descending trails in cowboy boots, the loose rock like ball bearings over hardpacked clay. As we were leaving the coast, I was constipated, nauseous, my ears full and pulsing and slowly within a couple days, my symptoms fell away, each day I felt better and better. Within 24 hours of being back in this little creekside cedar forest cabin, I feel alarmingly unwell. Nauseous almost to the point of vomiting, itchy ears, dizzy standing, dizzy laying down, walking like I'm drunk, my right eye draining all night so I couldn't even open it in the morning, palpitations, headaches after eating, anxiety attack. Right now I feel drunk or delerious, still, after eating ricecakes with sesame in them 14 hours ago. Going from dry interior sagebrush to mountain summit to river delta farmlands to coastal temperate rainforest, travelling much too fast for all of me to keep up, walked into my cabin late at night after being gone, and had a moment of not being in it, of having some clarity and distance and onjectivity. Thought, huh, this is where I live now? Is this who I am? Does this still fit? What is keeping me here? The place felt cute, but small. It IS small, it's basically a tiny home, but also small as in, I have outgrown it maybe. It was a hidy hole for some tough years with Felix's health. I am turning 40 and my clothes storage is still cardboard boxes. The renovations haven't been completely done, I look around and see slapped together 2x4 and woodslab furniture and make do curtains and I am bursting at the seams of this place, it feels immature somehow, it seems obvious suddenly that this is not a long term home. It's literally a caretaker's cottage. I was in the home of a new friend on Sunday, and it was like walking through a portal into my Pinterest saved images. It was a dream. A heritage home, dusty pink walls, mustard green wooden doors, sparse rooms, kids watercolours hanging from a single tack on the wall, a few old tasteful wooden tables on a kilim rug in an otherwise bare room. A woman who declared she feels great with life! She didn't complain or sigh or roll her eyes or state anything negative. I had the anxiety attack after that visit. I feel incredibly frumpy around her, she's effortless and graceful and I have deep fluid bags under my red eyes, I am under the gun each day trying to get through my lists, I complain as a form of conversation, I am reactive, my body tissues are reactive. I feel threatened always, my body echoes this, I'm living off steamed greens and millet, because I have a huge inflammatory response to anything else, except a few days ago, im Kamloops, and in the summer. I also saw my eroded boundaries with hamish. I see that I am in charge of those and I am scared of enforcing them. I feel my body tense whenever he knocks on the door, I am filled with sour and bitter inside like I'm a human sized green vessel and immediately all this toxic fluid rises up and chokes me out, blocks all sound and thought and breath, my skin prickles whenever he walks by and my words, my tone, my language, it's painted that bitter that toxic that scared and angry colour. Felix looks at me, puts a hand on my arm, a reminder to come back and regroup when my tone rises and I'm immediately triggered by hamish. I don't know which form of healer to see, western, eastern, osteopathic, talk, movement, psychic. I was awake at midnight reading through diets, antihistamine, autoimmune, paleo, low fodmap, they overlap. I was reading about mast cell activation in response to black mold, something I've always been susceptible to, which I think is what's going on in my bedroom. Thought of moving the bed, radically rearranging, but I don't have the imagination for it and find it hard to work with hamish right now, though he DOES have the imagination for it. It's a weird shaped room up here, all slanted ceilings with a chimney through the middle, and the creekside wall, perfect for the bed and clothes, is certainly the mold side. I can't be afraid of change. I am fairly calm through all this, anxiety attack aside, I'm reading Dr Shu; soul of my immune system, please heal me, I love you. Thank you thank you thank you. I'm heartened by the fact that my body bounces back each summer, and even after a few days away. Bodies always strive towards health and balance. I've pulled Felix out of school. I won't get those hours and days alone after 6 years of attached at the hip. Another sacrifice for the journey of mother. It sounded too extravagant to be true anyway, and also didn't feel right. Too much time apart. I'd dearly love two times three hours a week though. That doesn't sound like too much to ask, and I'll keep my intentions for it clear. For now, I wake at 6, in the dark, and get going on chores for an hour, stain treating the laundry, stripping the whole summer worth of herbs laid out on window screens, month end accounting. I relish supporting felix with tricky zippers and knots in his shoelaces now, after seeing how public school educators do not. He is still my focus, he is the point.

apple pressing

the annual apple pressing party, this year not on my wedding anniversary. I'll be out of town for it this year, which is a blessing. Such an awkward day. About a half hour before everyone arrived, Hamish built a long table out of sawhorses and planks, felix countersank the screw holes his brace, patched pants and red gumboots, straight blonde hair, gap toothed smile. The usual friends showed up, the little boys disappeared for most of the day, making random appearances, carrying either buckets, trowels, pruners, toy tractors, a muffin, rocks. Towards the end of the day, they started wheeling each other around with the dolly. Hamish put on a great playlist to keep us motivated as we spent half a day chopping apples, the wheelbarrows filling with cores and rotten bits, to be brought to the bears in the bush. After the pressing was done, the women kept going, immediately starting to prep dinner for seven and canning the first round of jars of juice, clean up after the hard labour was done and the men played with tractors and fire. Felix's tooth, bottom row, front left, had been holding on by the slimmest of margins all day, flopping around in his mouth. When we were resting around the fire at the end of evening, Felix shimmied under the garden gate, pulled up half a dozen carrots and brought them back to us, proud, chest puffed up. That's when we realized, in the light of the fire, that the tooth had finally left him. We're going back to the thompson okanagan at the end of this week. I am more than happy to pull F out of school for a few days, it's stressful for me when he's there in attendance. It doesn't sit well with me and it was a rough first week. There's a spot in the base of my spine that squirms when I leave him there. Institution. Institutionalized. I knew what to expect but it still knocked the wind out of me. And how did I know realize that suddenly he'd be spending more time at school, away, than at home? He's gone all the time now. Except for the last two days of this past week, when he immediately got sick after a few days of school and I gleefully kept him home. He loves school though, so far. I showed up at his lunch break on the first full day, a little worried, only to see him from half the playground away, in loud and full command of a small gang, yelling directions in a game they made up, strutting like a rooster. We're going to the ranch again, in fall this time. Blue skies and yellow fields, cold nights. We'll stroll through kamloops this time. It's usually too hot when we visit in the summer. I'll meet with an old mentor, now she's a tibetan buddhist. I've reached out to an estranged friend, offered an olive branch after six years of nothing. I'm in a blur of processing the garden harvest before I go, an avalanche of tomatoes on the windowsill, baskets of beans and chard and kale and basil. The time away will give me time to think of what to do about my kid's schooling. There's been some major soul searching happening. I need the time alone and I so looked forward to it, but I can't ignore the institutionalizing that's happening to my beautiful son, can't ignore the warning signs and yellow flags, my and my mother's gut feelings.

eve of school

harvest time, overload, abundance. the kitchen window sill is full of tomatoes, left to right, two layers deep. there are baskets and boxes of apples and plums on and under the counters and the dehydrater and slowcooker are both working around the clock. We've had a week of rain, a taste of what's to come, but no cold mornings yet. The freezer was found dripping and wet one day, having been unplugged somehow. It was a chance to make decisions about some long term residents in back corners, and I came face to face with the plastic bag full of snappis of my milk. I ended up, ironically, with a surplus a couple years ago, having found that my kid didn't like the taste of the lipase that is a result of freezing milk, and also because he weaned. It was sacred stuff though, and I didn't know what rite or ceremony was fitting for it's disposal. And then the freezer thawed and there it was and that night, it came to me that it needed to go in the creek. Down the creek and to the ocean. And so it did. I sent it on it's way, without telling anyone else, and cried a little, remembering the blood and sweat and fevers and medications and begging and sleep deprivation and tears that milk cost me. Loving that my body had made it, that I had made it through that time. Thinking of how often spilled milk actually IS cried over. I was saddened by the slowly peeling strips of painters tape alongside the milk containers, where I recorded the time and amount, in mills, of how much I had squeezed out of me with each hand pump session. There were some containers that were two thirds cream, thick and whitish yellow, superfood for developing brains. Off it went, down this little rainforest creek, among cedar roots and banks of moss, salmon berries and elders, off to join the next creek and then half a kilometer down, the Salish Sea, the Pacific Ocean. It's a fitting time to say goodbye to those last physical remnants of that time, of the first handful of years of my child's life, as he starts kindergarten this week. I am not more ready for or enthusiastic about public school than I ever have been but this is happening and as my dear neighbour mom friend reminds me, don't fret (it's what I do) and take it a day at a time. There are other options. For me and many others, that option would ideally be village life. Those that are apt, teach those that are young, a mixed age group. Outside, inside, math and skills through the work. Or, if not that, an option where felix's passions are supported, built upon, the restoration, the archaeology, the watches, the fine motor control. Where seasonality and natural rhythms are followed and natural products are used and music and mythology and storytelling are central and art is a big deal and tradition. Oh, right, that's waldorf. Will a gaggle of waldorf enthusiasts and teachers just move up here already?! I could be, 'should' be providing those things, but I am barely holding it all down as it is. My career, the garden, the property maintenance, the domestic work, the childcare, and trying to pursue some of my own passions. A horse ride, a fiddle jam, yoga in the mornings. If I had a real partner, if only, the things I could accomplish. If there were two adults here, both bursting with energy and motivation...; this is a frequent thought, the sky would be the limit. The potential is incredible. But my coparent shows up sometimes, somedays, sometimes all of him, sometimes just some parts are present. And sometimes just for a while before suddenly he's in the grip of something and speeds off, gravel flying, in truck or on motorbike. Felix says, papa shatters our peace. He says I can't let papa see me crying! He says, Papa is like the Earth, and the feelings he can control are like the thin Earth crust and the rest of him is hot molten magma and there are diggers on the crust and they're excavating sometimes and then lava explodes out.

cats and crickets

my kid fell asleep in the backseat on the drive home, long day, late bedtimes. I parked at home but left the headlights on and turned up the country station, always makes me maudlin. A single lamp on in the kitchen, and then the low headlights, there are horses in the pasture out there in the dark, the cats emerge into the light to greet me, then go back to hunting crickets and shrews and spiders under the stairs. I unload the car from a shopping trip the Island, from the dim house, through the dark, to the headlights of the car, following the country music, it makes me want to dance, drink, stay up late, climb roofs, show off my legs with boots, it gives me energy, wakes parts of me that have been shoved to the edge of extinction since before motherhood, since that previous life. But that's not the maudlin part; listening to country music, alone in the evening but honestly anywhere, anytime, brings up incredible sadness, mostly for Ham and I. It is so linked with those early days, early years and they were intense. All my bones want to two step, in the grass or a deck or a quiet kitchen, just on the edge of porchlight, headlight, kitchen lamp's glow, with crickets and cats in the dark edges and horses snorting and farting further out. I miss liking each other. We used to learn new dance moves together, practicing over and over, flips and spins, when we trusted each other, when we actually came into physical contact. We'd get compliments at fairs, rodeo dances, bars, parties. That previous life.

9pm postering telephone poles

midsummer burnout, group project burnout, is it them or is it that I am an overfunctioner? I don't see how it's a bad thing to make things happen within the time frame the group has intended, and when others keep dropping the ball, I take on the project and make it happen, grinding my teeth and feeling resentful and further burrowing myself in my endless lists and sliding deeper into a To Do hole. I can see, a little bit, that it's an addiction, a pattern of mine, I can feel the pull of the familiar anxiety of keeping it all together, the lure of self sacrifice, plus high germanic standards plus the lived experience of watching my single mother keep a beautiful household while raising a child and working. I see it's doable, I would be failing if I didn't handle this well, it's not within my capacity, in no bone of my body, to let things slide, to forget the list, to leave things where they fall. But I do overextend myself. I guess I usually justify it culturally -"it's a germanic thing," "canadians' motto is 'good enough' so there's a disconnect there," but the proof is actually in how I feel, right now, deflated like a spent balloon, shuddering at the list, wanting to nap in the hammock but not letting myself, limbs heavy, no appetite, dreading Monday. Does the self sacrificing pattern come from becoming a parent figure to my parent, as a child? I see the pattern in my strange marriage situation too. Saying 'husband' feels strange on my tongue. More and more he's 'Felix's dad'. I needle felt watermelons for our activist group while watching world cup, stay up late handsewing brooch pins on them while watching herbalist plant monographs. The weekly garage saling continues, another addiction. Making core memories for Felix though. His mother waking him early with breakfast waiting in the car, list of addresses in hand.

Disappointed

felix and I came back to the yard from pruning back the blackberry along the driveway, after hamish had peeled out, drunk and irate, when felix found his dart board impaled by a huge round file, thrown angrily. he was just so disappointed, he kept saying, it's my dartboard...what the heck? he didn't seem confused or mad, just really disappointed in his father. Welcome to the club kid, to having shit broken randomly by this man. "here you are again, spending the whole session talking about him, what you can do to change his actions, what if? This is codependent, but I get it. Women, forever, have been doing whatever it takes. We buy time to save money, to find an escape route, to gather ourselves, till the kids are a bit older, till we find a place, we do what we can to keep the peace and to create a sense of stability and keep our stuff from getting broken for another day, have a peaceful dinner, etc. I get it." The racoons have been so relentless that we havent slept with the sliding door open as we usually do on warm nights, but it's actually become unbearable, so I move the cat food dish into the bathroom and drop the heavy curtain over the open door. my mama ears woke me to a soft sound in the night, immediately I knew it wasnt one of the cats, it was the sound of two little hands groping in the dark for the cat food box. I hissed loudly and there was a wild scampering. I've got ring tans, a blood blister, flea bites, blackberry scrapes, shin bruises, and some vet wrap around my hand covering a plantain poultice over a secateur slice got while pruning the grapes. The wisteria has fallen and is hanging over the kitchen window. The mama deer gets into the garden almost regularily, day or night, despite all my attempts at fencing. The morning and evening rounds through the veggies are trepidatious, my heart in my throat, expecting to count casualties. I literally put my beans to bed each night, covering them with big sheets, though I know that's neither slug or deer proof.