Magic Beans...

Today was a good day.  I did tons of laundry, cleaned the house, and met a friend who was ridding herself of a small box freezer.  The money coming into this household has dipped.  Part of my child support is finished as my son has turned 18.  I was a bit panicked but oddly enough this all seems so cosmically timed...

It's as if $ is slowly decreasing just in time for my graduation and ability to earn more of a livable wage.  But it is not without its fear.  I have a friend who says to me "When you are worried count your cans - you will find you have more than enough."  She is Polish and her family survived depressions (they were farmers) and in the old country they lived through wars untold.  She's my bootstrap friend and we share bean recipes and marvel over the waste some folks live by.  When she says she counts cans - she means it.

I look over what's on hand in the kitchen frequently and in my little prepper closet.  I've become adept at cooking with very little and can butcher my whole purchased chickens like no ones business.  I always save scraps of veggies etc to make homemade stocks and the like.  It's almost a lost art if I talk to some people.  I swear I once made the most delicious bean soup from a chunk of frozen pork, onion shreds that I had frozen, carrot & celery shreds sauteed in bacon fat (yes I save it) and a bag of mixed beans - we ate that for a week with homemade flour biscuits.  So when the opportunity for a freezer free of charge popped up - I was on that like white on rice.

It's a little box and it works like a charm.  I've already partially packed it because a full freezer is more economical in its running they say.  I also threw in containers with frozen water which will act like batteries should we lose power with the spring storms I'm sure are coming.

So now when meat goes on sale I can put a bunch up. It just gives me peace of mind - food is like $ in the bank.  We really are ok.  I have bills, like everyone else, and it seems the second you pay one off another comes in to take it's place.  Tonight I'm dreaming of a better tomorrow.  I've learned to live on less and be ok.  But honestly it's not really that much less; when I count cans we are always ahead.

There is abundance in a bag of beans.

Namaste

4 weeks

It's mid April and my time is not my own.  It hasn't been for months now.  I'm finding it hard; this last push toward a goal made long ago.  I will graduate in 4 weeks.  I had to pick up my cap and gown the other day and that's when it hit me.  I still harbor a feeling that they are going to find some error either in their own judgement or in my paperwork that will prevent all of this from happening.  I'm chalking that up to a lifelong struggle with unworthiness.

I worked very late the last two nights - as I will tonight.  I am tired of missing things for my children, this constant business of tasks.  Although I think I'm just tired.  Period.

My house looks like it's been ransacked.  We own too many things, too many clothes.  I feel like a one woman show picking things up, hanging laundry (dryer still out) cleaning dishes that pile up in a day.

Every hour, every single hour that I am not at work is devoted to school first, house second.  I am tired and there is a touch of resentment.

But the odd thing is this, under the layers of a now numb buzz of stress, this all FEELS like it's going somewhere...like there is a cosmic destination.

I've become somewhat feral, disassociating a bit with family and friends until this hurdle is cleared.  I plan on attending my graduation solo.  All my big moments have always been alone.  It's a strange relationship I have with myself, but it's the safest one I have found.

My children will be coming to my induction ceremony for the International Honors Society for English and then we will go out for dinner.  If I can't afford dinner we will head out for ice cream.

Last night after work I had to run my sons phone charger to him.  Every Friday the boys stay with their dad in the big house in Vernon that we lived in when I was married.  The EX comes up and stays there with them, partly because the house sits pretty much empty and I think he needs to justify the fact that he still owns it.  His mother moved in as she couldn't be alone in FL any longer.  She is a shadow a shell of the person who hated me.  I forgave her long ago.  The 2 bedroom cottage that we built intending for my parents to live there (thank God they never sold their house) houses a nice older lady with a scruffy dog who loves the solitude.  The rooms in the main are huge and dark and empty - it's like one big cavern.  I once knew every inch of it, now I'm a stranger.

So anyway I had to drop off the charger and I wound my way to the driveway.  I always forget how dark Vernon can be at night. The ancient apple trees at the start of the property were barely visible at that hour.  I made it up the steep driveway and stepped outside the car.  The garden looks like a graveyard - long gone to pot.  The huge 3 car garage with the center boat bay sits like some post apocalyptic warehouse.  I don't even remember what's in there - remnants of furniture and appliances that we planned on using to make the garage an outdoor space - I think?  It was quiet on the property and I stood there looking into the darkness.  I got this overwhelming feeling that the old me was looking back at me - from behind the giant maple on the far side of the yard.  It all seems in a strange suspended state. We all have our ghosts and some of them are ourselves.

My Ex walked out to get the charger and to say hello.  He regards me always with a strange disbelief. I find that he is almost timid when he sees me - I do so much now and I was so young when we were together.  I hadn't yet 'become me.'  I didn't even know me and as I have grown to know myself, he has seen a stranger form from the girl he knew.  He has an odd sort of respect now.  I wish it could've worked.  It would be nice to have an intact family - It just wasn't the hand we were dealt.  For ten years he's held that house - why do that? who does that?

There are so many thoughts and emotions swirling around me.  I wanted my own ground zero.  I wanted to be stripped to my most basic essence, to understand what I was made of.  I got my wish.  Don't believe that bullshit of 'be careful what you wish for' - wish for all of it.  I'm still going to.  I'm tired, I'm a bit down, I'm so goddamn sleep deprived I should be hallucinating.  But my life is finally mine.  My self worth is dictated by me.  My dreams, my goals, my tears, my regrets - they are all official.  Become the you that you know is in there.  Don't bypass the reality that is you - don't die unrealized.

Be present.  Show up.

You've got this

Namaste

Feast of Trust

Another Prose Poetry Assignment...

I enter the barn at dawn.  Ancient light filters in beams through slats in long need of repair.  Bits of dust and hay are alive and unsettled, I breathe them, I am part of them, and they of me.  You regard me with eyes of either side.  You are the color and warmth of the sac-oats I keep by the stove.  Cold wet mornings demand such sustenance.  The larder runs short this winter, the grounds frozen over again and again.  The spring crops will be well fed however we are not, and this is why I have come. 

You bleat.  You trust.  I feed you so why should you not?  You are warm under wool laced with lanolin, I am envious.   You are immune to the gangrenous cold that patiently stretches its fingers up the rocky cliffs from the dark sea.  The wind laments in sinister dreams all night, every night, calling us out.  We cannot sleep, and winter has had its way; our fortitude raped.  My cheeks are raw. I smell you.  Your essence is visceral.  I taste your gamey sweat.  I sense your quickening like the ice that will reign over all tonight; shards of it on the black rocks below.

 You are plump.  Your fat will spit on the fire and we shall sleep tonight despite the banshee sea.

The task at hand...

So the clothes dryer finally died.  I had fixed it twice and it limped along for a good while but then came the day I loaded it up and silence.  To say we are in a money crunch would be an understatement right now.  I've got 3 more months of school left (and basically the entire language of Spanish to learn) so we are holding steady trying to keep the lights on.  I broke down and began entertaining the idea of per diem work at a hospital to bring in more money.  It's scary but it isn't impossible.  In a way I think this is what I was supposed to go through at 20.  It's a bit amped up now within the parameters of an adult life but so be it.  But I can tell you this, I wasn't throwing the (wet) towel in over a broken dryer - no frigen way.  Thoughts crammed my mind -how on earth were we going to take this hit? Because we certainly couldn't take it financially right now.  I imagined running loads back and forth to my fathers. No.  I imagined gathering coins and sitting in a laundromat from dawn to dusk. No.  Then I wandered into the basement and rigged some lines and hung some clothes...

What could've been the straw that literally broke the camels back in terms of 'Really?! Now?! Really?! AND THE LAUNDRY OF ALL THINGS IN THIS HOUSE?!  Well it turned out quite different.  It's been a bit and I haven't even picked up the paper or searched craigslist for a replacement...in fact I just spoke to my son last evening about taking the broken dryer to the dump.  His reply was "Sure mom, but do you want to just wait until we get a new one?"  "We aren't getting a new one sweet boy."  He gave me that look that we have all given our parents when we believe they have finally gone over the edge and have lost it and they aren't coming back.  I think he thought he was in for a Chevy Chase Christmas vacation psychotic humorous break - that's normally how we roll here

I read constantly.  I read stories of solo journeys across tundras and jungles.  I read books of survival in impossible conditions.  I read tales of women that say F it all, buy a boat and sail around the world. 

One story in particular stands out in my mind of Shackleton.  He and a crew went on a Trans Antarctic expedition and their ship - The Endurance - became land locked then crushed by moving ice on the Weddell Sea.  They were stranded for two years literally floating on ice in the most forbidden of terrain.  But what struck me most about this story was the adaptability and the psychological aspects of their leader Shackleton.  This man somehow, over and over, made the crew believe that each day would be the day they would be rescued, that they must carry on in spite of everything else, but above all they had their tasks - daily tasks that kept them working, kept them focused, kept them going.  One man had a job to cook (they were able to get supplies from the boat prior to it screaming whilst being torn to splinters from the pressure of the moving ice)  another had to tend to the dogs, play with them keep them well and fit, another made music at night and told stories, and yet another dried the wet socks over a fire.

Now this may seem a stretch but I've always seen my life through various metaphors and I've always been in awe of the human spirit from Shackleton to Flash Gordon - You just can't kill the human spirit.  It's a mind flip.  The sock dryer knew his job was important.  Wet socks would cause skin breakdown in such a terrain and the dreaded frost bite would set in, amputation would be risky at best and death was surely a present danger.  Every job was equally important in one way or another to their overall well being.  Never had I thought of that when I did laundry.  Ever.  It was toil, I joked about burning the clothes (I still do) but my point is I never looked at the importance until I found myself in a dimly lit furnace room in the depths of my house hanging socks from a jute line hung between wall studs.  I hadn't really given much thought to the furnace either.  And the water heater - only negatively when it began leaking last year.  So much we take for granted.  So many innovations we don't even think about or say thank you for.  We simply expect.  

A few days after the crude hangings in the furnace room I found two karate weapons - long sticks tapered at the ends.  I looked at all the lofty space in my basement prep closet which also holds the water softener.  I got a ladder and strung 4 simple lines through the drill holes already in place for pipes etc.  I wrapped the loops of jute on either end of the poles.  I can hang 4 loads of wash between the two rooms forget about it for 24 hours and return.  But there is something in the 'doing' of it the 'presence' of it in the 'thinking' while I am doing it that relaxes me, that centers me, that gently nudges me forward.  It's the task at hand that makes the fear subside.  Strange but true.

What could've been a modern day disaster has turned into Luddite like bliss.  I'll get to my farmhouse one day and my clothes will hang in the sun.  I'll collect eggs from under warm hen rumps.  I'll check the progress the beans make as the climb toward my dinner table. I understand the peace it brings.  But today I am here.  Totally here.

And as for Sir Shackleton - I was happy for the 'visit'  and the memory of taking my boys to see the film at the Museum of Natural History when they were young.  I've got my own Endurance, and I'll do just fine.  Sometimes it's the mental survival you need and will treasure most.  Maybe one day my boys will recall the tale and relate it (however ridiculous, or not) to their own lives.  Grab peace when you can - it's all connected.  Busy hands move you forward.

I'm not replacing the dryer anytime soon.

Namaste