Testing the lipstick camera

I decided I had to take my camera out of its box and test it before I took it across the ocean, make sure I could get pictures off of it and onto my computer. Out in the back yard I took a shot of a bird (isn't that what photographers do?) and then down by the river I took a shot of some white clouds (which seemed appropriate). Yeah, I think it'll do. 

 

good bye trees

I live in a small house in a small town with a small back yard. When they were first built sixty years ago all the houses on our street were identical and now, despite the various additions many have, they are still not special at all. Stretching out behind our lot and those of our neighbours, however, is a patch of undeveloped forest, perhaps 200 m in each direction, full of mature red and white pines. My bedroom faces the back, so this, which I call the ‘back woods’ as if we lived on a farm or something, is what I see each morning when I first wake up.

It is marvelous.

For many years when I was under-employed and my marriage was on the rocks and my best friend had moved 3000 miles away my kids were seemingly stuck permanently in the neediest stages of childhood, lying in bed for five minutes in the morning and looking out the window at the countless soaring red pine tree trunks, the lush feathery branches of the white pines, and the glimpses of sky beyond, was a quasi-spiritual experience that gave me the inner peace I needed to face the day. The red pines, having been reaching straight for the sky for at least a century, are impossibly tall and skinny, as majestic and awe inspiring as the pillars in any European cathedral, and the white pines, oh, I do not speak English well enough to describe appropriately their grandeur.

It is simply beautiful.

Today is no exception. The sun is out, shining brilliantly, giving the needle covered branches a peculiar yellow green colour and the tall trunks a camouflage of light and dark that almost obscures them. The small patches of sky that are visible behind are blue blue blue. It will be another perfect day here in paradise. In July it tends to be too hot during the afternoon but by this time of year there are many hints that fall is already on its way and it is beautiful outside 24/7. I listen to the incessant squawking of a flock of grackles that have descended nearby and the annoyed chattering response of a squirrel. In the distance a couple crows can be heard conversing back and forth.

I love it.

I remember the first time I walked into this room; seeing nothing but trees through the window gave the feeling of being separate, away, as if in an isolated cottage on a lake far from anywhere, and, to this day, the view creates an illusion that I am somewhere, somewhere else.

For years if I was unhappy I often lay here looking out at the trees and it was as if I were alone in the universe. I could forget for a few minutes that I was here, in this house, in this town, in this life. The trees, so sure of their purpose, apparently unperturbed by the town that had sprung up around them, emanated a patience and peacefulness that inspired in me a calmness and encouraged me to emulate their stoic nature. I could lie here and gaze with wonder at the beauty of nature sure in the knowledge that if I were a photographer I could take a hundred pictures from here, each different yet beautiful, and fill a whole coffee table book with them.

A gentle breeze starts to whisper and the fluttering of some poplar leaves catches my attention and brings me back to the present. Why am I going exactly? Why am I leaving behind these lovely trees of mine? In past the trees have always represented an escape of sorts, a secret and unspoken whisper of desire for separation from the here and now, but today they are just the opposite, they are the continuity of everything that is safe and secure and familiar about my life. Today if I listen hard enough I can hear, in the oh so very soft movements of the branches, a personal reassurance from them that they will still be here when I return.

I am not a photographer. I never have been. I bought a camera to take on my trip, the first one I have ever bought (is that possible, did I bring up three kids without ever having bought a camera? I guess I did. Weird.) but it is still in the box. (And it is not a ‘real’ camera, it is, as the salesman pointed out, red, which apparently says everything, effectively equates it to lipstick.) I don’t want to open it. I fear I will only be disappointed by the difference, the vast difference, between what I can see with my eyes - and my heart - and what I can get the camera to capture. How could I possibly take a picture that shows that the trees and I converse with each other, even if my camera were black? (I like the fact that my camera is just a toy, it gives me an excuse, already, for not succeeding in taking the photos I would want to. I plan to practise with it for now and buy myself a proper one, for my next significant birthday, make a more serious effort then. I believe in baby steps.) I consider going to get my camera and trying to take a photo with it but instead snap a shot with my phone. I make a note to self – find a photo course to take when you get home.

The purpose of this trip is not to look outwards and produce a fantastic photo essay, it is much more to look inwards and find a more permanent peace, to become, if you will, more like my trees themselves. If, however, I am successful on this trip, then, maybe, on the next one, I will set out with that very different goal. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Bye trees. I will miss you.

Longing to meet The Boat

I decided to go sailing, to crew on someone else’s boat, to take a trip both free and freeing, so I went online and found a website for crew and boats and chose a boat and sent out a wave. 

Suddenly I was down in the city meeting HS, the captain of my chosen boat. Our plan was to do lunch and then go for a walk. Could it really be this easy?

Apparently so.

It was an amazing day in very much the way that first dates are amazing, you know, the sun shining and the birds singing in the trees... I had just arrived at the agreed upon meeting spot when he swooped by in his BMW convertible and waved at me. (How did he recognize me?) (He is quite overweight.) (Wow, what a car.) Jump in he said and we will look for a parking spot. Finding a spot was not an easy task downtown at lunchtime but find one we did, and then, before I knew it, we were meandering up the street talking as we went, chatting easily about all manner of things, laughing companionably. We arrived effortlessly in a courtyard that held several little European-looking restaurants with patio furniture and large umbrellas and a few trees scattered about and picked a table in dappled sunlight. The waitress brought us menus and water and later came back to take our order but we had been too busy talking to each other. I told him of my limited sailing experiences and he was genuinely interested in where I had been and of the boats. He told me of storms he had been in and disasters his friends had met at sea. (There is a space between two of his teeth and his hair is too long but he is not as old as I had feared he would be.) I ask about his upcoming itinerary and am slightly disappointed to learn that he would be at sea over Christmas. (It had not occurred to me that I would not be home to spend Christmas with my kids. Could I even contemplate such a thing?) Our restaurant, when we looked at the menus, turned out to be Italian, all pastas and pizzas and such. I ordered a Mediterranean dish that arrived filled with artichoke and eggplant and olives and goat cheese. It was heavenly. His tortellini was plain and bland and not at all what he had been expecting. I hoped our respective meals were not representative of our relative first impressions of each other. We ate, we talked, an hour passed and we were late for his parking meter so we paid the bill and rushed back to avoid a ticket.

Let’s go somewhere else, he said, to walk and talk, and we got in his car and drove about the city looking for the perfect place zooming out to the lake and then back towards the city and then on to the small marina where he had first got on his boat with his wife. I am not looking for a date, he said, my wife was the woman of my dreams, has been dead several years, but is still the woman of my dreams. I am married, I said, though on a break, my life plan is to sail for as long as I like and then go home and put my marriage back together. I don’t even know if I will actually like to sail, I add, I have been dreaming of it for so long I fear my expectations are more myth than reality. We talk of our kids (we both have boys in their 20’s), of how the river here is different from those in Europe, of parks we have visited, of the pros and cons of books and kindles. He makes me laugh, I make him laugh, the sun is shining and it is lovely out. (If it were a first date we would be holding hands by now, stopping in the shady spots to hug each other.) And I am suddenly so happy that it is not a first date. There is no stress, there will be no romantic entanglement to mess things up, I would be, if he chose to take me on, merely crew. It will be open, and safe, and easy. All I will have to do is clean and cook and stand watch beneath the stars, marvelling at the dolphins and the flying fish, drinking in the beauty of the sunrise, and looking forward to a glass of wine at the next port. I will be crew, just crew, and I will be SO happy in that role.

He told me that he was a bit gun shy, had had three disastrous crew in a row, one who was a vegetarian and one who wanted to wear make-up and one who just didn’t have any opinions on anything. I think, I told him, I might fit into that last category, might just not know enough. And it is a real fear, that I am simply too ignorant to converse intelligently about anything. I don’t know if I could do it. I worry I might not be suitable companionship. He can sail by himself. What good am I to him?

As he drops me off I tell him that I have already found someone to housesit my house, that I am going to go sailing in the fall, that he is my first choice but that if he doesn’t choose me I will go with someone else. I want him to know I am serious about setting off. He tells me he will let me know in a couple of days his decision. I am in awe. I will await his answer.

Later, driving home with my son, I tell him everything, how wonderful the day was, how fantastic the man was. I was afraid he was going to be too old, I say, but instead he was too rich, too famous, too intelligent, too successful… way out of my league. So if you were to look for a different more compatible captain it would be someone poorer and less intelligent, my son queries, now how stupid is that.

(HS is way out of my league. But maybe that doesn’t matter.)

Before I hear from him I am all in a tizzy. What if he says yes? Could I go? Would I be able to do it? What about the fact that I am so very ignorant? Would I rise to the challenge? What if he says no? Well, that’s easy, actually, I look for another boat with a younger captain and a more congenial itinerary. But what if he says yes? I walk round and round town with Shelley and stop in and talk on and on to Catherine. What if he says yes? Would I go? Could I? Dare I?

I don' t hove to wait long. He says yes. I say yes. It is done. YES!!

I fear for a few days that it is HS himself who captivated me. I am so caught up in the exoticness (to me) of the trip that I try to daydream about seducing him. But it just doesn’t ring true. And then I realize what has happened here. It didn't matter, really, what he was like. I wanted to go before I met him. I longed to go long before I met him, positively ached to in fact. (It's true, I did.) No, it is something different altogether; it is The Boat who has ensnared me. I am not going for the itinerary; weeks on end at sea and not even home for Christmas. I am not going for the captain; he seems a pretty nice guy if a bit full of himself. No, it is The Boat I am going for.

The Boat. Even her name sends shivers down my spine. How much more perfect could things get than that? I dream about her (she is, literally, the boat of my dreams). I dream about meeting her for the first time and leaning over and kissing her gently, opening my arms wide and giving her a hug, whispering softly to her that I will look after her if she looks after me. I dream about lying face down on her deck, my limbs spread, fingers splayed even, maximizing our skin contact. And these dreams do ring true.

She, she is the one who has been singing to my soul, like a whale who sings to her partner across miles of open water, she has sung to me from the other side of the ocean, from the other side of time almost, and I have heard her call, and soon, soon I will be going to her, drawn there like magic.

I can't wait. I can't wait to meet her, get introduced, learn about her quirks.

I am sometimes slow and I hope HS will take the time to let me get to know her properly, that he will introduce us gently, show me three times how to flush her head and start her stove. I want to learn everything about her, so that, God forbid, something happened to him, we, she and I, just the two of us on our own, would be able to take him to safety. I am worried about the huge imbalance that there will be to start with; he will know everything and I nothing. I am worried that I will not learn fast enough, not cook well enough, not have enough to talk to about with him, and that he will kick me off.

Yes, I am looking forward to getting to know him, HS, the captain, but, I think, smiling even now to myself, not as much as I am looking forward to getting to know her.

She is the one I want to talk to.

She is the one I want to open up too.

She is the one I want to share my soul with.

I can see us already, the boat and I, talking quietly together for hours, on one of those perfect night shifts when everyone else in the world is sound asleep and the two of us are alone together in the universe sailing serenely beneath the endless stars, the world spinning slowly beneath us. I can see us already, the boat and I, having choppy and clipped conversations, throwing panicky questions back and forth to each other, trying to get things right, on those days when the wind is strong but fluky and gusts keep catching us both unawares.

I have known of her for a long time but we were not able to meet. I heard a rumour that she was up for sale once, a decade ago, and I imagined buying her, but it was not to be. The various men in my life, Andre, slowly dying, and Geoff, slowly growing away, and my kids, even more slowing growing into men, all conspired as if to keep us apart. But Andre finally died (I am sorry dear man that this happened to you) and Geoff finally left (despite the fact I fought body and soul to keep him with me) and the kids finally grew up (as the seasons inexorably turned) and so now, the men in my life dealt with, I am free to go to her.

It is odd that there will be yet another man there, attached to us both. HS. It feels like it may be a love triangle. I hope he is not too jealous. And suddenly I realize that he loves her too, has loved her for years, has loved her passionately and deeply for the decade I have known and merely dreamed of her, and longer even than that. He met her when my kids were only babies and now they are men. He knows her, already, in ways I can only hope to. He has been inside her, not once, but a thousand times. He has lived with her, knows her intimately, and kept her with him through thick and thin. And I remember that I will just be crew, and before I have even met her I feel I don’t want to have to leave, and I realize it will be I who will likely be the jealous one. 

And yet I know I want to go. If even only for a brief visit. I do, I want to go. 

(I hope I like it.) 

Empty Room

Posted in September but written three weeks ago toward the end of August…

I wake up in the morning needing desperately to pee and roll over to look out the window just a little too fast sensing my dreams disappearing from my consciousness as I do so. The loss of them is so sudden that is distinctly physical; I can almost see/hear them swooshing away never to be recaptured again. I lie still for a few minutes but they are gone. Gone. Forever. As dreams sometimes are. As my youngest son’s childhood soon will be.

Later this week he is going off to college. I will not see him for six months.

He was cleaning out his room yesterday. He started by organizing which clothes he was going to take with him to school and ended up putting the rest into a variety of different piles; those to give to a younger family friend, those to go to the local thrift shop, those to throw out, and, having finished sorting his clothes, he started work on the stuff accumulated on his shelves. He has been living in this room since he was 4, and, being a bit of a pack rat, has many boxes of accumulated treasures. As I poked my head in to check on him he was going through a box of saved paperwork; a once purple but now faded ‘shoe’ made out of Bristol board and laced with yarn, a book of words than end in ‘an’, a version of ‘The Princess and the Pea’ laboriously hand written on primary paper, birthday cards made for him by his friends to celebrate his turning six… some of these treasures were sorted into a to-keep pile but many more, those whose significance was lost to time, were being tossed into a large garbage bag. Next he looked at his collection of ribbons and trophies collected through years of hockey and other sports. ‘No,’ I wanted to say, ‘don’t throw any of it out, keep it all, forever’, but I didn’t say anything because I knew what I really meant was, ‘No, don’t grow up, keep on being a child, forever.’ He got the smallest bedroom just because he was the youngest child but he still managed to fill it with personality. I see the full garbage bags lined up outside his door, watch him crumpling and discarding a once favourite poster of Jose Theodore, and know that when I walk into the room next week it will be as impersonal as a hotel room. ‘Leave it all,’ I want to ask, ‘I need a shrine to visit.’ But I know that would be silly. Instead I ask if there is anything I can do to help and he says he’d like my input to sort out the last few clothes and I almost trip over my feet in the rush to help him I am so desperate to spend these last few minutes with him before he goes.

Seeing him organizing and discarding the accumulated effects of so many years pulled at my heart strings in a way I hadn’t expected it to. I have been looking forward to my children growing up and leaving home, I have been a single parent for quarter of a century, I am ready to move on. And yet. It was a good quarter of a century, I was, despite the hardship and loneliness of being a single parent, thrilled to have kids, and happy to spend the years nurturing them, which is why this final goodbye will be so bittersweet. I have known for months that my youngest son would be leaving at the end of August but nonetheless I find myself startled that it is actually happening. I suggest he might like to stay an extra year and he does not realize I am only partially joking. Yes, I will keep in contact with my kids, visit them and have them visit me, I will, I hope, continue to listen to their troubles and triumphs, act as a sounding board, perhaps even give them my two cents now and again. But it will not be the same. I live in a small isolated town and it is unlikely that they will ever boomerang back. They will be gone. For good. Oddly, it is the little things I will miss as much as the big ones; for twenty five years I have checked the fridge every morning to see how much milk there is, for twenty five years I have been aware, at night, when my children go to sleep and when they wake up, for twenty five years, just being there, in the same house as my children, has been, in itself, a significant part of my self-definition. No more.

When my first child left I hardly noticed him going, there were still two at home and the noise and commotion carried on with almost equal volume. When the second one left the occasional silences were almost deafening, the house was often full of teenagers, as usual, but, sometimes, my youngest would be elsewhere, and I almost didn’t know what to do with the unexpected stretches of solitude. Now, now, now with the last child leaving – I cannot imagine how different it will be. The phone, which rang almost incessantly for decades with my children’s friends calling, will likely go into shock, the front door, which has never been locked, and which is literally falling off its hinges from overuse, will likely suffer withdrawl symptoms, even the vacuum cleaner is likely to miss its so frequent passes. Me, I might simply disappear.

I loved being a parent of newborns, of babies, of toddlers, of children, and of teens. I loved that clean-baby smell and the ever-so-soft skin they had when they were very young and the way that merely rubbing your nose on their belly resulted in endless laughter. I loved those days at the beach when you would sit them in the sand near the water’s edge with a plastic shovel in their hand and they would play for hours digging and splashing. I loved trips to the playground, days when a walk around to yard sales with a nickel each to spend would result in new toys and games that would keep them busy for hours. I loved the years when I had a box of scrap wood on the back deck and all the children in the neighbourhood accumulated to hammer and nail and paint their ‘sculptures’. I loved canoeing and camping with the kids, downhill and cross-country skiing, visiting friends and relatives, road trips across the country, vacations to exotic destinations. I loved watching them grow - older, taller, more independent. I loved it when they got jobs and saved up for new computers, bought their own motor boats, joined the high school football team, started to go off for long weekends alone with their friends. I loved it all, even the teenage years when the front hall was full of dozens of pairs of shoes and the basement a seething mass of hot bodies and pounding music or the backyard the scene of beer-pong tournaments where laughter flowed freely till the cops came by to shut it down…

I noticed, of course, the many firsts; the first time my oldest walked downtown by himself, the first time my middle child rode his bike around the block without training wheels, the first time the youngest drove by himself into the city. But the lasts got lost somehow. When was the last time one snuggled in my bed with me in the morning, or flung himself into my arms for comfort, or sat on my lap for a story… Where did those go, those lasts? How did I not notice them too?

Yes, I loved being a parent, and though I found the journey with three children, always very different ages from each other, a significant challenge, I have no regrets whatsoever about any of it. I calculated once that I was responsible for over 27000 meals while the kids were growing up. Where have those years gone? Did I enjoy them enough? Did I ever yearn for the day when it would be over, when the youngest would be 18 and walking out the door, when I would be, finally, free, of the responsibility? Did I? If so, shame on me. Whether I did, or not, the end of my last child’s childhood is here, and, like the boxes of souvenirs and mementos dumped into garbage bags as he was cleaning out his room, those days when I was a mother with children at home will soon be gone forever, impossible to recapture, to hold onto, to keep.

Still lying in bed contemplating both the past and the future a small part of me regrets that I was not born 5000 years ago in a time when children and grandchildren were almost certain to live forever alongside you in the same cave or even 500 years ago when chances were they would farm the land beside you but a larger part of me is glad to have been born now in the day and age when this the whole world is our oyster - as least for those of us fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel – and so my dream is for my kids to fly free, to see and do and experience, learn new things and meet new people, climb mountains both real and imaginary, and then, of course, to come home and tell me how wonderful it all is, how happy they are, and let me bask in the stories of their successes. Looking out my window at the two hundred year old pines standing implacably against the sky, I realize that my dreams from last nights sleep might have fled my consciousness but my dreams for the future are solid and secure. I know what I want; to keep in contact with my sons, watch as their lives soar. It is every mother’s dream, perhaps, to see one’s children thrive, likely has been so since the dawn of time, but that does not in any way take away from it, if anything it simply validates it.

As I clamber slowly out of bed I realize that my children’s childhoods might have come to an end, but their lives have not, and neither has mine. A page has merely been turned. I smile as I pad past the small empty bedroom on my way downstairs to the washroom. I can’t wait to see what happens next. 

Empty Nest

Dancing naked on the beach, I am trying, perhaps just a little too hard, to embrace my new status in life. I am striving to picture myself full of joy and exuberance as I leap towards the future. Studiously ignoring the little voice inside me that points out that I am almost as alone in life as I am in this, my first ever blog-post self-portrait, I take a picture that shows, if nothing else, my determination to thrive.
















Then I run full speed across the sand and dive right into the deep clear clean water of the river and swim out out out until my arms are aching and my lungs bursting. I turn over to float on my back and let the serenity of my surroundings slowly seep into my soul. I come to this place often, almost daily, it is a quick ten minute bike ride from where I live. Today the sky is almost but not quite a perfect blue and the water almost but not quite a perfect calm, the hills are just starting to take on a golden hue from the setting sun, and, as always, the sweet scent of fresh water is heavy in the air. 

I love this deserted beach, this stretch of open water, the forests on the opposite shore standing uninhabited as far as the eye can see and the sky as free as if hung for my pleasure alone. No one would call this place spectacular, yet there is, to me, a calmness and familiarity about it that brings with it a peacefulness so strong it is almost painful. I lie spread-eagled out on the water beneath the sky and positively ache with the beauty of it all. 

This is where I was born, where I grew up, where I returned both to have my children and later to raise them, and yet I am choosing, of my own free will, to leave. Stripped in too fast succession of too many of the identities that defined me - my husband moved out, my employer laid me off, and my youngest child went to college - I am left standing empty-handed. I have lost my way, my path, my direction. I have had, my whole life, a series of goals but now I cannot seem to remember what ought to be next. And so, of course, as would anyone else in my place, I have decided to dance naked on the beach, start up a blog, and go on a trip. 

I leave at the end of the month. 

I read the first ten chapters of Eat,Love,Pray once and I plan to follow suit; visit three countries, write 108 cathartic chapters, find a word to re-define myself along the way... Part of me thinks I am crazy to go; I have good friends and wonderful co-workers and acquaintances galore in the small town I live in. Even without steady work I have comfortable routines that see me through the week, even though we are on a break my ex is my tether holding me to reality, even though they have grown up and left my kids phone, e-mail, text, skype and visit me. I already live in the most beautiful place in the world. Part of me wonders why I am leaving and, more importantly, what, realistically, I expect to find. I was born in the 60`s, I know that `wherever you go there you are`. But a greater part of me feels the pull to go, the need to take a journey, literal as well as metaphorical, a hero`s quest if you will. 

I hope I like it, this trip I am heading out on, If nothing else it ought to keep me from bemoaning the empty nest I leave behind. 

Disclaimer

Dear Diary, blah, blah, blah...

This is a blog in the very traditional sense of the word. It is neither a travelogue nor an informational site nor a discussion forum nor even a form of social networking. It is a an online personal journal. Nothing more. And it is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself. 

I remember sitting with my best friend on the beach in the shade of a big rock for hours one day when we were about twelve planning our lives; deciding what professions we would have, who we would marry, what we would name our children, how our houses would be decorated... Somewhere along the way I got caught up in the moment and forgot to follow those well-laid plans, and, now, soon to turn fifty, my actual kids having grown up and left home, I look about myself and find that I am not where I had intended to be. I feel the need to sit somewhere quiet once again (I have chosen to do so on a boat this time instead of beside a rock) and consider what to do next. So I will write a blog. And that is what this is - a personal reflection of where I have been, where I am, where I would like to go, and how, perhaps, to get there. Nothing more. And it is, as mentioned above, unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself.

PS The self-portrait attached is a reflection of me looking at myself in a mirror. I am wearing jeans and my favourite green t-shirt and am somewhat lost in the photo, as I am in life. Very appropriate I think.