Sometimes it goes well

Today, as on many other days, George R.R. Martin made me sigh a little.

No, I wasn't re-reading the Red Wedding scene in A Storm of Swords for the fourteenth time. No, I wasn't watching good ol' Jon Snow get sliced and diced on TV. I was reading George's livejournal entry from January 1st, 2016, where he explains to legions of salivating fans why his long-awaited Winds of Winter won't be published anytime soon, despite repeated assurances that it would be.

"Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and... whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't."

Word, George. I feel you, you big, bearded, suspender-wearing genius.

That's part of the reason I haven't written anything in this blog for years, why I haven't even put pen to paper to scribble any just-dropping-off-to-sleep-when-a-brilliant-idea-pops-into-my-brain stuff, or snippets of conversations I've pulled from shameless eavesdropping in restaurants and waiting rooms. Because sometimes the writing goes well, and sometimes it doesn't.

I can even pinpoint the exact moment my muse fled screaming: that day back in April 2015 when D and I learned our son Dylan is on the autism spectrum, which flipped typical parental expectations and hopes on their asses. The urge to write, to create, to dream on paper...well, all that energy drowned in a huge wave of grief and worry and WTF.

D and I have a strong foundation of love and respect in our home, and the unwavering support of our immediate family. We're damned lucky that way. Anytime a child in your life faces a health challenge, though, I think it irrevocably alters a family's dynamics. It alters your priorities, your marriage, your relationship with friends and extended family members who either don't get it, or don't know how to support you. Shit, I don't even know how to support me sometimes. You learn quickly who you can lean on, and who you want to punch in the throat.

Dylan is a beautiful boy. If anything, he's become even more precious to me simply because I treasure all that he is, now that I have learned to let go of my expectations of what he should be. Autism is not a disease that needs to be wrung out of someone. Autism isn't always fun, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. As I've tried to explain to our daughter Jade, who is a year older than Dyl, autism makes her brother's brain work differently than hers, and that's okay. We work with his strengths to overcome his weaknesses. We practice compassion and patience and humour. And isn't that how it should work with everyone, anyway?

So I'm back. My inner Mama Bear has become a little more badass, and I've come to a place of acceptance and determined optimism where my boy is concerned. Oh, there are still days where I cry in the bathroom because my little dude - in the most overused euphemism ever - is "being difficult." There are days when people, even those closest to me, just don't get it and I have to pace the cornfield for an hour and rant my frustrations to the crows and barn swallows. And there are days where Dylan's brilliance lights up my world and reminds me to open my heart to the times when it goes well so I can have the strength to power through the days when it doesn't.

Here's to more days where the writing goes well, for both me and Big George.

A walk in the woods

Today I walk by myself.

The cold is glorious; the sun is bright. The woods beckon, and I am so happy to be on the trails for an hour of solitude that I want to shout and dance. The labyrinth is covered in a duvet of snow and I feel like a giant when I notice that the packed snow on the trail has lifted me up to the level of the aspen branches.

Cardinals whistle and chickadees swoop, sure signs of the new season ahead. The river has cracked open and sings a joyful song before it dives beneath the crusty ice. I run my hand over the rough bark of an elm, scrunch fragrant cedar between my fingers. Strange dogs stop to nuzzle me as red-cheeked owners nod or smile before they whistle their companions back to obedience.

The snow sparkles and dances, drifts down from tree branches in puffs and clouds that twirl lazily in the sunlight. My boots plunge steady and sure into ankle deep powder. I take the looping trail past the gnarled oak with the face of a praying mantis and head for the second bridge.

Just around the curve before the darkness of cedars swallows up the trail, I see a young couple. They have stopped to adjust their young son's scarf and hat. We exchange hellos and as I pass, I am hit by a wave of sadness. I meet the brown-haired mother's eyes for a moment and it's as though I've been pricked in the heart with something sharp and cold. I cover my surprise with a nod and keep walking.

I am not psychic; I'm not even all that intuitive. I don't know what has pierced my soul in that moment. Maybe nothing. Maybe imagination.

But maybe not.

As I pass out of earshot, I close my eyes for a second, mutter a quick prayer to the trees and the snow and the sun and the birds, asking for healing, for a lightening of the burden of hurt the family seems to carry like boulders on their backs. Because we all carry our own invisible stones of sadness; sometimes in our pockets where they weigh us down, or in our shoes where they punish us with each step, or inside our heads where they rattle around for only us to hear.

I think we can drop the stones one at a time on the paths we walk; I think the best way to relieve our burdens is get outside, and keep walking.

The morning poke

This morning, after shuffling Jade down the lane and onto the bus for the first time in three weeks, I did something sneaky. Once Dylan was absorbed in his BBC kids' show, I tiptoed outside and sat on the back stoop with a hot cup of coffee, flavoured with the last of the eggnog. The air smelled fresh and melty, instead of frigid and manure-y like it did last night. Breathing it in gave me more satisfaction than even that first sip of coffee. I watched a cloud of finches burst into the air and settle with a chorus of chirrups in the naked branches of our red maple. An irate blue jay soon scattered them, but they whooshed their way onto the black walnut tree instead in a cheerful, fluttering rush. I could hear a distant snow plow scraping its way along our road, but other than that and the chatter of finches, there was delicious stillness. Then faintly, I could hear a voice through the open kitchen window hollering the one word with the power to shatter any zen moment: "MUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!?"

It was five minutes of solitude at the most, in weather that's finally warm enough to pause in without six layers of protective clothing, but it was all I needed to give me the poke in the brain I've been waiting for: it's time to write again.

We've been housebound since Sunday, thanks to the "arctic vortex" that descended on most of our area over the past week, bringing nose-hair-freezing, bone-cracking temperatures and wind that slices through you like a samurai sword. You know it's bloody cold when a winter lovin' gal like me starts to shiver in her snow pants. And before the deep freeze, we had my sister and nephew's arrival from Australia to celebrate, the my other sister's arrival from balmy Bali, then a wave of sickness at Someday which postponed Christmas to Boxing Day. Throw in a few Lowry Christmas celebrations, travelling to and from my Dad's cabin, New Year's, one sister's departure and enough laundry to choke an industrial washing machine, and life was full to the brim of…well, life.

Not that I'm complaining, or making excuses. I just decided that it was time for a sabbatical from writing. After all the edits and drafts and proofreads and reorgs of my book, I'd had enough. When I played Candy Crush or pretended to be a kitty for sale for my daughter's enjoyment or sat on the couch and read a pile of books under D's disapproving eye, I was conscious of my blog and my notebook and my new purple pen staring at me balefully. "Yeah, you can wait," I told them, and refused to feel any guilt whatsoever. Instead of writing, I cooked soups and stews and baked biscotti and smartie cookies. The kids and I decorated the house to within an inch of its life. I hung out with my sisters and nephew, hurt my knee tobogganing, played "Coffee Monster" and tractors and Sneaky Snacky Squirrel with the kids, re-read three of my favourite Game of Thrones volumes and uploaded a squillion photos onto Facebook. I didn't read any blogs, I didn't write any blogs, and I didn't care. The nice thing about being a writer (to me, anyway) is that even when you're not physically putting stuff down on paper, you can write stories in your head until finally there's no room left and they have to burst out onto the page.

This morning's five minutes of gorgeous, snowy peace reminded me that it's probably time to end the sabbatical and get back on the ol' writing horse again. I'm ready now. I've had a good rest, a very full winter of joys and irritations and the ideas are starting to leak out of my ears. Hopefully you're all still interested in hanging out with me at the Someday Diaries again.

5 Things ... about Spring at Someday

I haven't done the ol' "5 Things" blog posting in a while, and I've got what must be the most wretched sinus infection in all of Bruce County at the moment, so I think now is a perfect time to revive the 5 Things medium. It's quick and dirty, and still gets the point across. Plus a few readers wanted to read some springy stuff. And really, with April throwing snow at us and laughing, who doesn't want to read about spring?

Before I begin, may I just interject that I feel SO FREAKING MUCH BETTER than I did a month ago? I go around muttering prayers of thanks every thirty minutes to the powers that be. They're usually scattered thoughts having to do with the smell of coffee, the ability to wrestle and giggle with my feral children, feeling strength return to my legs as I hike the trails, watching my fingers slowly inch back to the keyboard and pen. I'm feeling the gratitude, big time.

As my kissin' cuz S mentioned the other day, there is a hum of eternal hope in the air this time of year. Sometimes you have to stop and listen for it; pause in the middle of crazy life to sniff the air, feel the sun on your face, realize the ground is squishy instead of frozen. I have dear friends whose cups are full of sorrow and pain right now, and spring isn't the usual mess of happy beginnings it should be for them. My wish is that they'll find flickers of hope returning as the snow melts and the flowers bloom.

So here's to spring, to healing, and to those inevitable 5 Things.

1. The Birds Are Gonna Getcha
All that early morning cawing and chirping and squabbling outside my bedroom window can mean only one thing: nature's answer to the Kardashians has returned to Someday. First to arrive are the delightfully cliquy redpolls, who flutter around en masse looking adorable in their little red hats and can gobble an entire bird-feeder's worth of seed in three hours. Apparently redpolls hang out in Alaska, so when this bird comes to your doorstep when it's minus 5 because it's looking to warm up, you know spring isn't far behind. The doofuses of the bird world, those confused looking robins who always seem to show up just in time for a nice shower of freezing rain, are here too. I see them shivering in the tree branches and looking aimlessly for worms that are too smart to be moving in the earth yet. Best of all, I've seen flocks of swans flying overhead like graceful ghosts, and covering bare fields in a white that's brighter than snow. Those hardy darlings are all the proof I need that winter is on its way out of town.

2. Muddy Muddy Mudskipper
I don’t remember doing battle with mud in the city during springtime the way I do up here. Apart from a few messy walks in the park with Neko, my car and floors remained relatively goop free. Then again, there were a lot of concrete alternatives to squishy lawns in Waterloo, and I didn’t have two small children who liked to dance in every brown puddle they saw.

With the return of sunshine and warm air to Someday comes the melting of previously frosted lawns and fields and gravel lanes, which morph into pools of brown, sticky sludge. You get coated in the stuff up to your ankles when you step out of the car or off the safety of the front walk. Even our paved driveway has been sliced open along its sides (courtesy of well-meaning snowploughs and delivery trucks) to reveal giant troughs of muddy water that lure my son like a siren does a sailor. And don’t get me started on the state of the barnyard and my in-law’s long, potholed, mud-soaked lane way. It reminds me of the roads in Russia: not fun.

The state of my car, not to mention my pant legs, mittens, boots and shoes, is equally unfun. Hiking the trails means risking multiple slides into muddy pitfalls and going to the park with the kids is a load of laundry waiting to happen.

Still, if mud = spring, then hooray for mud! Pretty soon the sun will dry everything up and I'll be praying for rain.

3) Walk toward the light...
We don’t have curtains in our bedroom, which most people find strange. It’s just that D and I spent so many hours sanding, staining and varnishing the wooden trim around the windows that when the house was finished, we couldn’t bear to have our beautiful trim hidden behind swaths of material. My side of the bed faces East, which, in the winter, isn’t a problem. I wake up to see birdies flitting around the ash tree and the dull, grey dawn crawling over the horizon. Spring forward into daylight savings time, though, and the dull grey dawn becomes a rosy glow, which quickly transforms into a laser beam that pierces my closed eyelids at 6 a.m. D, of course, loves it.

Then there are the indignant cries of my children at night when bedtime rolls around. “It’s not bedtime yet! It’s not darkie time yet! There’s still sun! WAHHHH!” goes the pathetic refrain. Unfortunately, their bedroom window faces West, which means they get every last gleam of sunshine across their faces as I attempt to convince them it's night time. Blackout curtains may be in their future.

The lengthening of days does make me smile around six o’clock each evening. As I putter around the kitchen making supper, the gorgeous glow of the sunset spreads across the barn, the apple trees and fields, slow as melted butter, drenching everything in hues of gold and cherry. It’s such a gift to have enough light at the end of the day to go for a walk with the kidlets before bedtime, and to see my husband come home without having to turn on his headlights. I guess I can forgive the early sunrise since the late sunset affords us these little pleasures. Although I may ask for a sleep mask for my birthday...

4. A wafer-thin crack...
D and I argue about many things: the state of chaos inside my car; the number of times he does chores; the fact that I never finish a full cup of anything; the benefits of cinnamon. All relatively harmless arguments, likely destined to spiral endlessly throughout our marriage. And the argument that tops all arguments, the one that will always resurface every spring for as long as we share a roof together, is open windows.

My father keeps several windows open in his cabin year round, regardless of whether it’s minus 20 or sweltering outside. Nana was the same way: I remember she’d have the air conditioning on, the bedroom windows open and a warmed up electric blanket for me whenever I slept over in the summer. They both believe that fresh air trumps any concerns about wasting electricity, or, as D sarcastically puts it, “killing the environment by heating North America.”

I know it’s spring when I can sneakily crack our bedroom window open and leave it that way all night without watching my perpetually chilly spouse do an exaggerated body shiver at bedtime while saying, “Geez, it’s cold in here. Is there a window open somewhere?” I’ve had our bedroom window open for two weeks now, and until he gets around to reading this blog (sometime in May, probably), D won’t even notice. By then, it should be warm enough to prevent his annual “I thought you were a Greenpeacer” open window rant.

I take comfort in the recent discovery that D’s mother and father are locked in a similar battle over their own bedroom window. She cracks it open, he slams it shut. It’s nice to know that my husband’s resistance to fresh air is hereditary, rather than a fit of pure marital cussedness.

5. Dirty fingernails
In the fall, I have the urge to collect and hoard. In the spring, my urges take a different direction: digging in the dirt. I might go outside to get something from the car, then suddenly I’m tearing dead grass out of the flower gardens by the back door, clearing spaces so the tulips can breathe, plucking dead stalks off the lambs' ears. My eyes greedily scout out new places for the golden climbing roses I intend to plant, and I hunt for the first snowdrops and crocuses in the south corner of the house. Then I come to my senses and wander back into the house, where it’s difficult to explain to the kids why Mummy has filthy hands and whatever she was supposed to get from the car is still out there.

Happy spring, everyone!

Thorny Roses

It's Thursday. I'm on my third cuppa coffee, my mood tangled somewhere between exhaustion and apathy. I suppose I'll perk up after I fill the bird feeders and go for a brisk walk while the north wind tries to push me around. Or maybe I'll just creep upstairs on my lunch and hide under the covers for 45 minutes.

This time of year is always a mixed bag of emotions for me.

Spring is such a delightful season, full of little joys: violets peep from their hiding places in the grass, plump buds adorn the trees, rhubarb's wrinkly nubs appear, birdsong fills the air, chocolate cake and presents are pending. But around the corner from my birthday come sad reminders: Rose's birth, and my mother's death. And then joy hits me again with Jade's birthday, lilacs and apple blossoms, spring rain and the music of frogs and crickets.

Isn't that just life all over though? A heady mix of exhilaration and despair, small moments of beauty and ugliness, unremarkable days and thrilling nights? Never boring, this life of mine. Never a rose without a thorn, or a thorn without a rose.

Hunting and Gathering

Here's something you probably didn't know about me: I think I was a squirrel in a past life. At least, that's what I would have been if I believed in past lives.

As soon as the leaves start changing colour, I'm seized with the urge to collect things: shiny brown chestnuts, acorns with their cute little caps, bristly pine cones, feathers from under the bird feeder. I'm not sure why. I think it disturbs my husband when he starts to notice little piles of things building up on flat surfaces around the house. He puts up with my obsessive stone-collecting habit, but I think the acorns are going to drive him over the marital edge.

Gotta go. I think I just saw a bluejay lose a feather!

Laundry Therapy

It's hard to believe I lived as long as I did in the city without a proper clothesline. When I first moved in to my little house in Waterloo, I quickly got my then father-in-law to remove the scarecrowish clothes-hanging thingy that was rusting to death in the backyard. It was so ugly I didn't even stop to consider that it might be useful. Instead, I went to Crappy Tire and purchased a retractable clothesline, smugly attaching it to my deck that very evening. I would be helping the environment, saving money and electricity and generally looking very granola with my fancy new clothesline.

Sure.

I realized after the first time I tried it that I'd made a terrible mistake. The line was 20 feet long, which only provides enough room to hang a few sheets and maybe one sock; I owned a king-sized bed and a heck of a lot of socks. I had to climb up on the one rickty stool I owned to attach the line to the maple tree in the back yard every time I wanted to hang laundry, which meant enduring the amused looks of my neighbours. (They used their clothesline to exercise their cat and dried their clothes in a dryer) My line also had to be forcibly retracted once I was done, kind of like winding up a really long, tiresome yoyo.

Worse, the darned thing would never stay taut. It'd inevitably droop into the flowerbeds or a pile of doggie doo. Once I even came out to find my dog asleep in the middle of my white sheets as they dragged across the lawn.

Imagine my absolutel delight when we moved to Someday and I saw my new best friend: 60 feet of glorious double line, complete with a concrete landing from which to survey my domain while I hang my clothes out. It even came with those metal pulley things to keep the lines tight when you hang really heavy towels on them. Hallelujia!

I adore the smell of sheets that have been hung outside to dry, so I can't get enough of this clothesline stuff. Clothes just seem cleaner to me after they've been soaked in an afternoon's sunshine. Plus, you leave 'em out overnight during a heavy dew and voila! Hello extra whiteness and brightness, all thanks to Mama Nature. And yeah, I found that out through sheer laziness one night when I was too into my book to go take the clothes off the line.

A baby on board means more laundry than I'd ever envisioned, especially since we use cloth diapers. But I love the poetry of Jade's wee clothes waving at me from the line; the pinks and blues and yellows become a rainbow of pastel colours that make it worth all the trouble and time of hanging them up.

And instead of listening to the dry humping sounds of my 15 year old dryer, I hear the cedar waxwings peeping in the apple trees and crickets sing in the alfalfa. I get to feel the wind muss my hair, the sun glow on my face, and cool, damp sheets against hot arms and shoulders on those scorcher summer days. Instead of gazing at damp cement basement walls, I watch monarch butterflies flutter crazily across the lawn. It's lovely.

Sure, tossing stuff from the washer to the dryer is less time consuming. Yeah, you have to wrestle with heavy sheets, learn the art of the clothespin, search for dropped socks in the thorny roses. And since Someday is always windy, my brother in law, the UPS guy, and a visiting neighbour have all rescued clothing that's tried to escape. Sometimes it ends up in the cornfield, or on the hood of my car. Once my brother in law brought me a stray t-shirt, then pointed to a pair of my dainty underthings lying in the middle of the lawn. "You dropped something. I ain't touching it." But I think hanging laundry builds character in a way that spending too much time with a big white dryer in the depths of the basement never can.

Now the question is, what will I do when the snow flies???

Spring has Sprung...

There were four sure-fire ways to confirm that spring had arrived when I lived in Waterloo: the gradual disappearance of the giant mountain of snow (also known as Mount Hussey - thanks Muffy!) in the SunLife Financial parking lot; discovering the many “treasures” my dog deposited on my lawn throughout the winter; the reopening of the local Dairy Queen; and the appearance of shorts-clad university students on their front lawns, along with living room couches, boom boxes and coolers.

The harbingers of spring are a bit different, but no less welcome here in the Bruce. Watching saucy robins bob around the lawns and trees is always a happy sign of warmer weather in both the city and the country, but up here you get the added bonus of sighting vultures, kingbirds, herons, kingfishers and goldfinches. It's a birdy-nerdy's paradise.

Nature walks are also more of a treat in the country at this time of year. I’m fascinated by the carpet of bluebells that has appeared in my in-laws’ south pasture - the only other place I've seen that is in Ireland. Down in the private lanes of Tout’s grove (D says the snootier cottagers live there), shy periwinkle flowers and their waxy green leaves peep out at me from under piles of leaves. My brother-in-law’s backyard in Blair’s Grove is a serene ocean of white, blanketed with thousands of trilliums.

I'm a girl who likes to follow her nose. In another life, I think I could have been a perfume maker or tester; I absolutely love smelling nice things. Down by the lake right now, there's a gorgeous aroma of poplar in the air that could be bottled and sold as an anti-depressant. I love walking under those sinewy old trees as their fuzzy catkins drop down on my head like scented confetti.

Back at Someday, the Pine river has woken up; we can hear it rushing over the rocks on these still, spring nights. D and I have had several shore-side discussions about whether the groups of fish that wriggle languidly around in the shallows are edible, but we haven’t tried to find out yet. For now, we’re content to hike through the woods to the edges of the riverbank and spy on their afternoon spawning parties. They swim together near the shore, so thick you could practically walk on them. I think they're trout but D is convinced they're "suckers," whatever that is.

I used to enjoy springtime walks around my established gardens in Waterloo to note the earliest flowers: violets, sweet woodruff, crocuses. I’m still somewhat wistful for my old garden stomping grounds, but there's a certain charm to exploring Someday to see what’s coming up in all the unfamiliar soil. Did any of the bulbs I planted last fall escape the squirrel feasts? And what the heck are those droopy, freckled flowers that appeared seemingly overnight in the kitchen garden?

A blanket of snowdrops surprised me around the southwest corner of the house in April, rosy pink nubs of rhubarb have poked their heads out (I still can’t believe I’m the proud owner of four patches), and some kind soul planted lots of sweet woodruff and dozens of columbines everywhere, which makes me feel more at home. Last week I was delighted to discover wild violets springing up all over the lawn. When the sun warms them and they release their delicate fragrance, it’s like breathing in a benediction. They are my favourite flowers next to freesia.

Of course, to offset the delicious scents, there’s also the occasional whiff of manure that wafts over to Someday on the spring breezes. It took me several days before I realized I didn’t need to keep checking the bottoms of my shoes; “fresh air” is the norm up here now that the farmers are "back on the land," as they say. The unmistakable tang of run-over skunk is back, too, and if that isn’t a sure sign of spring, I don’t know what is.

But the funny thing is that where I used to wrinkle my nose at the smell of diesel fumes from the buses that roared up and down Moore Ave in Waterloo, or the sporadic smell of the dump that drifted down when the wind was west, the springtime country aromas don’t bother me. They are all a part of living in the Bruce, and are quickly becoming as homey and familiar as all the other harbingers of spring at Someday.

Man, oh man...I love spring.

Birdy Nerdy

My ex used to call me "birdy nerdy" due to my obsessive habit of bird feeding and bird watching back in Waterloo. Now that I'm up here, my habit has become even worse. I can't help it - I find birds fascinating little creatures. My sis gave me a bird watching journal when I moved to Someday Farm, and now it's almost full of my observances, questions and descriptions. Hey, at least I'm not spying on my neighbours.

I'm happy to report that the birdfeeder outside our kitchen window has become a drive-thru of sorts to all kinds of birds headed south on their migratory journey. Yesterday I spied a Ruby Crowned Kinglet, one of the smallest birds around besides the Hummingbird. It was so dainty and sweet, hovering from branch to branch on our ash tree. And for the last few days, we've had a flock (or, more properly, an "ubiquity") of White-Crowned Sparrows. They have the most incredible song and have been entertaining me with it all week.

The problem with my birdy-nerdiness is that I want to rush out and make friends with all the birds I meet. Which is disappointing, because birds are really not all that friendly. They tend to freak out and fly off in a huff when I come sneaking around the corner. In Waterloo, I managed to make friends with some chickadees and even had them eating sunflower seeds out of my hand. No such luck with Bruce County chickadees. They come close enough to check me out, but then look at me pityingly and proceed to eat bugs. Humph.

Still, I harbour some hope that eventually the birds of Someday farm will get used to having a crazy girl around who likes to get as close as possible to them. If only I could get them to like Neko, too.