A spoonful of dusk helps the medicine go down

For various reasons, my heart and soul have been pretty weary lately. Last night I was listlessly doing dishes, my hands busy while my head was mired in melancholy. A breeze blew in the kitchen window and ruffled my hair, a gentle hand telling me to stop what I was doing and go outside. So I did.

I snatched one of the kids' blankets off the floor, wrapped it around myself and plunked down in my favourite green lawn chair. It was dusk. The sun had barely set, and the sky painted itself in purple and navy above the treeline. Stars winked at me. Bats swooped down like burnt falling stars, crickets sang, leaves whispered. Somewhere below the hill, a dog barked as a motobike buzzed down the road. Somewhere beyond the cornfield, near the river, coyotes began to yip and whine their night song; somewhere in the falling darkness, every bitter thought floated out of my head.

Dusk had the power to do what exercise, wine, talking, writing, crying and sulking could not: it made me remember that I was part of a greater world, a small cog in a vast universe. My disappointment and hurt wouldn't break me, just as they wouldn't make more than a tiny ripple in the overall stream of my life. That's all this was: a ripple, a few circles made by a stone that would soon drift away. I would survive, and I would smile, and I would be happy again.

A spoonful of dusk helped me swallow a bitter pill.

Starry, starry night...

Sunday, 8:45p.m. Someday Farm.

The kids are finally in bed. D is passed out on Jade's futon. The dishes loom, laundry lurks, the kitchen floor looks like it's been noodle-bombed. But I quietly open the creaky closet, slide on my coat and sneak out the back door.

I take a deep breath. A winter night, and it's all mine.

There's a big ring round the moon and the snow glitters with diamond sparkles. No wind tonight, for once, so I can hear the river rushing along behind the treeline, and owls hooting hellos to each other in the sentinel pines. Their chuckles echo off the barn wall. I can even hear Ms. Red Squirrel tossing in her sleep inside the hollow of our chestnut tree. I'm alone, and not alone.

Then I hear a snort. I turn to see ten deer in the south field, maybe six car lengths away from me. One is meandering along the edge of our lawn, snuffling the ground in search of old apples. Then she spies me and stands perfectly still. I stand perfectly still. I hold my breath.

Our screen door, which I've neglected to close tightly behind me, makes a terrible clang as it slams shut, scaring the hell out of me, the deer and the owls. The deer flicks her tail and gallops off with her sisters, fast, then faster, until they're just blurry bounding specks heading for the safety of the trees.

After a pause, the owls begin to chat again. The snow is still full of diamonds. The river keeps rushing.

I take another deep breath, and smile.

Boo

Facebook has many ridiculous questionnaire-type apps (Who would be your celebrity boyfriend?! What colour is your Aura?! What alcoholic beverage are you?!) which, for reasons that I haven't thought about too closely, I seem to keep trying. I think they're mostly harmless little time wasters that you forget about moments after you publish your results (Ben Affleck! Aqua! Beer!)...but one did make an impression on me last week.

"Which ghost sleeps in your room?" popped up on my feed page. And I have a thing about ghosts, so I took it. And the result? Well, here it is, in all its grammatically grating glory:

this dog grew up on a farm in the 1800's but drowned in a lake. this dog doesnt only sleep at the end of your bed every night but he follows you everywhere you go and keeps you away from more danger than you realize. all of your lucky escapes from trouble are thanks to him.

Hmmm.

I did have a bull terrier named Henry who choked to death in a tragic apple incident about 12 years ago. He would have cheerfully chewed apart anyone who tried to harm me, so he'd make a pretty sweet ghost doggie. Except I don't believe in ghosts. Which is problematic, because I'm writing a novel about them. Yeah. Go figure.

I shouldn't say I don't believe in ghosts at all; the fact is that I'm kinda scared to believe in them. I don't want to meet one, not now, not ever. But I have felt, at different times throughout my life, that I wasn't alone in a place, even though technically I was the only person there. Especially in our old house in New Hamburg and here, at Someday. Both places are 100 years old and are bound to have some sort of history kicking around them.

But does that mean there are ghosts? Dunno. My friend R is convinced that our blue room must be haunted because her daughter acts weird whenever they sleep over there. It was supposed to be Rose's room, so who knows? Maybe Rose comes out to play with R's daughter. Gah! I just gave myself a shiver.

The thing I struggle with is not knowing whether ghosts are friendly or mean, good or evil, interested in humans or unobtrusive. If they exist, why are they here? How come they're not living it up in the afterlife? And what do they want from us? These are the questions I have been wrestling with for ages, and the elusive answers are holding up my novel's progress. I can't write about ghosts until I can figure out what exactly they want from my character. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears.

Or maybe I should just ask ghostie Fido tonight.