Horsing and Haying

Air, made visible by the smoky haze of forest fires, burning 800 kilometers away and scented heavy with the smell of horses, raps a mystical curtain over the fifty-acre farm.

She leans her chest and arms against the fence and as her fingers flirt across the weathered wood, she feels the sharpness of a rusty nail that has worked itself loose. A lone strand of long, wiry, horsetail hair held captive by the nail, tickles her arm. Already in a reflective mood, she does not resist the obvious analogy. Her family is like the fence, each member the nails along the rail, some still safe and buried deep in the flesh of the wood, some worked loose, and some exposed by lost splinters of wood, dangerous enough to scratch.

From the opposite side of the fence, she watches her three children, a boy, a girl and another boy, three in four years, each grown taller than her, all teenagers, 18, 16 and 14, tanned and strong, as they visit every horse.

She chokes back tears and her throat tightens with the same maddening pain she always gets when she does not want anyone to witness her emotions. She is remembering. She remembers all the hundreds of times she watched her babies race toward swing sets and wading pools, their blond curls bouncing, their thin arms and legs flailing, muscles stretching. Everything about today was different. Today they were walking. They were no longer children. They had learned a lot. The past two years had taught them that life is short. Each knew their innocent, carefree childhoods had already been spent. Today there was no hurry, only the relaxed feeling of belonging to each other, to the animals and to the hay they had come to bring in.

The girl, their tour guide, leads her two brothers through the paddock and between each horse, introducing them to all eleven reasons for her continuing recovery, eleven reasons for her getting up every morning and struggling through a school day made harder by a learning disability, and to eleven reasons why she no longer fantasizes about slitting her wrists; Kally, Gen, Daphane, Esprit, Michael, Hartley, Ruphert, Copy, Pasaz, Tory, Tipper.

She and her younger brother are becoming okay together. That had not always been the case. She had not been happy when her parents brought him home from the hospital and she remembered her horror when she realized he would be staying. He had watched helplessly, on the sidelines, and had been devastated for her, and for his family, when thing had gone so horribly wrong for his big sister. They were physically the more alike, more like their mother than their father, a little more emotional perhaps and a lot more demanding.

The relationship between the girl and her older brother, was not okay. Few were convinced that it ever would be. Until today, he had refused any and all attempts to repair their damaged sibling bond. Today the hay had finally brought him to his sister’s vision of heaven. Their mother understood why it was so hard for her eldest son to trust his sister. She understood, and she was grateful for whatever had got him here today.

Breathe catches sharp and painful in the mother’s lungs. Intuition whispers, in a voice familiar to her, that today, as her children give back to the farm; they will finally give back to each other. Today, the final piece of the puzzle, set aside when they were much smaller, will go back on the board and with luck and prayer, may find its way back into its rightful place. Today the horses, and the hay, will help them fix what they do not know how to fix.

Two years earlier their happy family fell apart. In horror, the mother watched as her only girl collapsed under the weight of severe depression, as her husband’s emotional grasp slipped away from one child in a misguided attempt to protect two others, as her sons experienced fear that quickly turned to anger. A year into their hell, the grief stricken parents were left with no option but to have their child, their sweet, crystal blue-eyed, fifteen year old daughter, admitted in a residential treatment program.

Drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex had become coping tools for her daughter to temporarily block out her demons and to block out all attempts to reach her. Frustration quickly turned to panic as months passed. No one could get close to her and she had failed to get any better. When asked what she thought would help the team of professionals reach her, her mother’s answer had been automatic, animals, especially horses. From a time before she was old enough to speak sentences, all had been amazed to see that the little girl seemed to be able to speak Cat and Dog and Hamster and Bird and Horse. When she could not read a word, or could not recognize a single letter within that word, she could read an animal. When her teachers labeled her learning disabled and her friends called her stupid, her animal friends did not say she was dyslexic, or too tall, or Special. They did not judge her. They accepted all that she was and all that she offered. Animals could be trusted and in their honesty she could be honest.

Feelers went out, a name was advanced, an introductory phone call made, and the journey back had begun.

Walking on, posting trots, sitting trots, jumps, trotting polls, quiet hands, discipline, surrender, patience, and harmony, all combined to teach their child that she would only be whole when she had accepted the struggles life had sent her and when she had embraced the support offered. The horses reminded her what trust felt like.

The family learned to hear, not the words the young girl said, but rather what she did not say. They learned to read her the way she had known how to read a horse. Their mother watches as her children meander through the dusty paddock and she hears what her daughter is saying to her brothers.

“Big brother, come and meet the horses. First friend, come meet my new friends. Childhood hero, feel the love they have for me, the same love you use to have for me. Schoolyard protector, see how they will not hurt me. Little brother, see how my friends will let us let down our guard around them. We are free here. We are free to trust again. Can you hear what they are saying to us? Can you hear the lessons they bring for us. Don’t lag behind. We have wasted enough time in the vast emptiness of our pain and our anger.”

The melodic rattle of a baling tractor, the crunch of hay underfoot, the weighty grunt as each bale as it is lifted up onto the truck, and the relaxed laughter of siblings who have forgotten they HATE each other, reaches across the paddock to the fence. A warm hand touches the mother’s arm. With the riding instructor beside her, the mother again feels her heart swells and she is awed as they stand witness to a miracle.

"This is big.”

“It is. It truly is.”

Rotary Park

They had come to the lake many times this past summer. She wanted to see the ducks, and he wanted to see how far it would be to cross the lake, to cross into another country, to disappear.

He felt safe letting her run ahead. He knew she would not get too close to the water. It took her half an hour to wade in on even the warmest days of summer. It was late October, a clear, sunny day but not a swimming day. He called out to her anyway.

“Be careful Chloe. Don’t go near the water.”

Tom paused within the long shadows of the tree line bordering the beach. His arms prickled with the October chill, and the lack of sun within the thicket, but he stayed where he had stopped. His photographer’s eye framed the image before him; an eight year old little girl, in a purple windbreaker and red jean pants; one of the Great Lakes spread before her, sunlight sparkling off gentle waves, a wide beach beneath the child and a cloudless sky above her, the wind snapping her brunette hair taunt, she crouching forward, hands on knees, and although he could not see it from where he stood, he knew the deep frown of concentration that stretched across her brow as she studied something within the sand. The naked branches of a maple tree, generations old, and the yellow leaves of a young birch tree framed the water, the beach, the child; the branch cradled her and the leaves cuddled beside her.

“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God we are free at last. Our sweet, little daughter, all 15 Barbies and 397 Barbie outfits, have been safely delivered to Sarah. My duty done, I will now pour myself a coffee and read the sports section. Would you like another cup, my lovely bride?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

It was back. Not that it ever went far. He wished he could have some peace, a chance to just enjoy the now without that conversation ruining every hour, of every day, for the last four months.

“ I think it would be best if we separated.”

Go away. Leave us alone. Let me enjoy this beautiful afternoon with my daughter. Leave me alone.

“It would make more sense if you found a place, then for me to uproot Chloe.”

But this is our matrimonial home. We bought this house when Chloe was still a baby. We agreed even though it was a fixer-upper, that it was the perfect starter home. It was our home. It was Chloe’s home.

He had promised he would fix it up. He had promised he would make a beautiful home for her and Chloe. He had kept his promise. He had kept his word. They had worked on it together. Each week they had spent $20.00, or $40.00, or whatever they had left after groceries, and mortgage, and utility bills, on building supplies. Every Saturday morning, they had bundled Chloe in her car seat, picked up a coffee from the drive-through, and walked the aisles of the home improvement store, dreaming of the day when they could afford a new kitchen, or a new, whatever was falling apart that week?

“But I just put in the new front door you asked for.” Gone was the solid, seventies style, door she had always hated, and in went a new, colonial door. He had made the trip to the home improvement store alone.

“This isn’t about something you have done, or not done. I guess it’s about me. I guess it’s been coming on for a long time. I guess I thought it would get better, or maybe morph into something I could live with. I thought it was a stage of marriage we just had to get through, but it’s not.”

How many times did he have to relive this June morning? A hundred, a thousand, a million times? It never changed. It never ended differently.

The incessant conversation continued on inside his head, but he was no longer listening. He did not have to. He knew it by heart. It was no one’s fault. It had just happened. No there was no one else, absolutely, no one else. Yes she promised. She was sorry, truly, truly sorry. She hoped one day he would forgive her.

He hated her. He loved her. He hated what she was doing to him, to Chloe, to their family. He hated her. He hated the secret lover he knew she must have. He did not believe her. She must have a lover. He loved her. She was a woman every man wanted but she was his. She was his wife. He hated her. She was sexy, kind, patient and his own. He would never forgive her. He hated her. He loved her. What about Chloe? When she was a baby in her crib, he used to wiggle her mobile to make her smile. What about Chloe?

“I think the sooner you find a place, the better it will be for Chloe.”

How did she figure that? How did she figure seeing her father every other weekend would be better for Chloe?

“I think we should tell Chloe together, when she gets home from Sarah’s.”

Sue did all the talking. Chloe pressed her dimpled palms against her ears, stuck her elbows high in the air, and stared straight at him.

“You promised Daddy. You promised you would never leave. You lied. I hate you. You lied.” He had promised. She had needed reassurance after two of her friends had watched their families fall apart. He had promised because he never imaged he would ever have to break his promise.

Now he saw her every other weekend and one night a week. He lived in a basement apartment. On weekends he took her places like the beach, fast food restaurants, parks. Everywhere they went they saw other fathers alone with their children, single dads, no wives, out of their homes, part time parents. He knew them, just as he knew, they knew him. They looked like him. He wanted to hug each of them, to tell them he understood what they were feeling but he could not do that. Only men in support groups hugged, their pain and torments shared and understood. Even though he knew what these men were going through, they, the fathers of the park, had not declared themselves a support group. They did not meet once a week, to cry over bad coffee, or to whine about their sad, pathetic lives. The men Tom knew did not hug strange men in the park.

Tom pulled his ball cap further down his forehead, and blinked several times before stepping out from the shadows, and joining Chloe on the bright, open span of beach. The wind charged unobstructed across the Great Lake and slapped against his faces. He swallowed deep gulps of the cool air; grateful the hot, dry, relentless summer was finally over. Four months of miserable, sweltering days, and pungent nights, were over.

Needles and pins pricked at his shoulders. This was his weekend with her, he could not afford for her to see into the fog of anger that clung around him. He could not afford to upset himself. That would come later, when he had to bring her home. After her inevitable squeeze and “do you have to go”, he would carry her backpack and walk her up the interlocking brick pathway, he had lain, and knock on the Hunter Green Colonial door. He would bite down hard on his back teeth.

He knew his routine once he arrived back at his basement apartment. He had four months of practice. He would clean the apartment. He would strip the bed, clean the bathtub and toilet, wash up all the dishes, wipe down the countertop and sink; he would clean away all traces of Chloe because finding a ‘scrunchy’, when he least expected it, might be the one thing that would unravel his fragile sanity. Cleaning also prolonged the dreaded bedtime. He knew that once the long, thin, layers of moonlight reached down into his window, and across his sofa bed, there would be no escape from old conversations, and fragmented memories. There would be no peace, no rest. His thoughts during the day were always of Chloe. During the night they were always of Sue, the sound of her whisper in the dark, the sweet perspiration as she pressed against his chest, of her getting up all to quickly after lovemaking. When sleep did come it was with incoherent dreams, filled with warning signs that read DANGER, STOP, WINDING ROAD AHEAD. When his alarm clock rang, unsettled feelings enveloped him, never leaving the entire next day.

“Look Daddy.” Chloe’s call, over the melodic sound of the waves and the screech of sea gulls, returned him to the present. Children have a way of doing that.

“What have you found baby?” He stopped beside her, and thrust his fists deep inside the pockets of his track pants. She was growing up, but now there were holes. Some weeks, when he picked her up, he would notice a tooth missing that he had not known was loose, or that her ankles had suddenly appeared at the bottom of pants that had fit two weeks earlier. She was growing up, but not right before his eyes. Stolen time he could never get back.

“Look Daddy. It’s a butterfly. It’s dead and there’s sand all over its wings.” A motionless torso, wings of brilliant orange, black veins intersected in a stain glass pattern, crowned by a band of white polka dots, a Monarch Butterfly, lay splayed across a gritty background, a crayon drawing on beige construction paper. The wind had sprinkled fine grains of sand over its torso and wingspan. One wing was folded under itself, the other partially buried, both antennae bent downward toward its tail end. Uninhabited shells lay shattered on either side of the insect. The butterfly was dead all right.

“So it is.”

“How did it die?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it just got old.”

“Maybe something killed it.”

“I think he just got old, laid down here in the soft sand, and the warm sun, and closed his eyes. Sometimes things just die. They have done everything they were suppose to do, and now it’s time to move on.” Children needed to be protected from the truth. “Maybe we should bury him.”

Chloe held her pensive pose. He waited. He ran his fingers through his hair. When she continued her silence, he asked again. “Do you want to bury him?” He heard her breathe a heavy sigh, before she raised her right foot and brought it down hard on the dead butterfly. Sand, shells and the butterfly, crunched beneath her foot.

“Nope.” She raised herself back up to standing and looked around. “There’s a bridge over there. Can we cross over on it?”

A View From HOME

I am insanely new at this blog business. My computer geek brother has dragged me kicking and screaming to post some of my photos for other people to enjoy.
I am not sure whether to hug him or hit him. After an hour of trying to upload some pictures this morning, I am leaning toward hitting him.
In any event, here is a recent photo taken from the waterfront deck at my parents' cottage, Rush Lake, Ontario has been a constant in my life for the better part of 36 years. When as a child, your family move often, a place like Rush Lake can easily become the one place on earth where you can always be home.

Filling The Well

I began to take pictures, first of the water with the morning sun reflecting on quiet waves, then the beach floor cluttered with shells, leaves, driftwood, branches, and rocks, the ducks – skittish Mallards, bold Canadian Geese, and majestic Swans, the river with its wide mouth, the bird house posed in front of the swamp, a stand of maple, birch and cedar lining the riverbank, the bridge with horizontal, vertical and triangular shadow lines, cast from one side, clear across to the opposite, an intricate path laid over the wooden bridge floor. I reminded myself to breath. Each flip of the camera’s shutter sent charges of electricity through my nerves. After half an hour, I stopped to collect myself, my senses in grave danger of overloading.

That was when I saw it, covered with tiny grains of sand, and partially buried, protected from view, and a bold easterly wind, by a two foot rock. The flash of red screamed against the beige of the beach floor, a carnation, the bud and a short, green stem. It was breathtaking, in a day of breathtaking sights.

How had this carnation come to be on this beach? I imagined teenage lovers, sitting at a bonfire last summer, the carnation forgotten after lovemaking. Possibly, it had been left by an older couple, she, weary from all that life had thrown at her, he, anxious to say he was sorry for his part in their crazies and thankful he stayed. Maybe a child had picked it from a garden before a trip to the beach, slipped it into a pocket, only to have it fall out during an intense castle building session.

I resisted the temptation to touch the flower, to tamper with it, to move it from its place of rest. Memory of a time, long ago when someone had given me a carnation, flashed in front of my eyes, the gentle timbre of voices no longer in my life rang in my ears, a lost smile faded in the autumn air, a gallery of images. A gaping sense of loss now mingled with the awe of beauty.

I searched the shoreline. I was still alone. I pushed tears away from my eyes. I am 47 years old. I am middle aged, with my life half over. When you reach 45 years old, you have a few stories to tell, some good, some bad, some thrilling, some horrific. I have my stories. Some are wonderful, and some are not. I have not changed the world, as I had intended in my teens and twenties, but I have given the world three new citizens. For the most part, they have been good citizens. I have not written a great novel, but I do journal. I do not have scores of friends, but I have a few. I have tried to be a good wife, mother, and friend. Sometimes I have gotten it right, and other times, I have not.

I have come far, and I have had small victories. I have felt irrepressible joy, and crushing misery. Along the way I have learned a few lessons, and I have forgotten just as many. Today I saw a red carnation on an empty beach, and I am happy. The weather, the autumn colors, my camera, and a red carnation have filled my well and I feel whole again. I can face another week.