has been a challenge ~
keeping everything straight
so that growth springs lush
prepares the way
for a giant step!
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and
I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
Eyeing the possibilities around me this last two years has challenged me. Returning to Regina after living away for over thirty years has taxed my heart, brain and body. The prairies of Saskatchewan, my home for longer than I was away, never left my soul. When I left, I drove my own car, had a nursing career and several goals. Encountering life’s unexpected twists and turns along the way, I was away far longer than my original idea. And that’s all it was ~ an idea ~ without much of a plan at all.
Returning to the prairies without a car and retired, my goal was to be closer to family. Rebuilding those relationships stretched by time and distance is an ongoing and very precious challenge. This brings me to possibility. There have been bleak days - kind of like the winter we just passed through! But there have been more days with tiny hints of possibility. Like two brand new great granddaughters! Like learning to snowshoe at 74! Bus passes and taxis. Learning independence in this broad, spread out city. Enjoying life as it arrives each morning when I awaken.
All the while, I have wanted and needed more, but didn’t know what or how to get it ~ whatever ‘it’ has been. Possibilities as scattered as clouds across the broad blue prairie sky. Asking the question ‘What if?’, wondering if it made good sense, taking a lot of deep breaths and many steps forward, I have eyed each possibility and chosen one………to be continued……
“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing,
we would literally astound ourselves.”
~ Thomas A. Edison
Survival
Searching for the old book was useless. Dez was puzzled. It was just an old ledger, but she’d been using it for a notebook, keeping track of the orchard and the apiary plans, expenses and income. There wasn’t much income to speak of……at all. Expenses were mounting. But where was that old thing?
Several months before, Dez’s sister Emelina had rented Martha Digby’s duplex for her. She hadn’t let go of her apartment in Hartley, only spending time at the duplex very occasionally. Martha’s duplex was - is - a lovely little home. She started bringing some of her furniture out to the Estate. A comfortable chair/futon that she could make out into a bed, some dishes and a table that she could use as a table, a desk or stacking things on. She really thought that the old ledger was on the table. Shuffling through the paper, clean clothes, last night’s plate from supper she thought she had found it. But, no, it was just more papers.
Dez poured herself a glass of water and sat in her chair. All she had to do was get a new notebook and start from scratch. If it turned up or if it didn’t the trees would produce apples and the bees would buzz. But there was history in that book, not just about the orchard or bees, but some ideas she had before even finding her sister again. Trips up island with lists of camping supplies, old phone numbers, an old photo of her on a pier somewhere holding up a quite ordinary fish ~ photo cracked and yellowed ~ taped in the inside cover and random grocery lists. Plans to go to art school ~ the phone numbers and locations ~ with even a time line ~ ten years ago. Inside the back cover, she had sketched a vision of a walking path for workshops. Emelina didn’t know about it because it was on the Estate jogging track. After all, it was only passing idea.
~~~~~
Dez heard the front door close quietly. Turning over, she opened one eye to the sunbeam that escaped the curtains. She could have stayed at Martha’s duplex, but she and her sister had sat up too late. It wasn’t the dark she was concerned about, it was the rain. And it was easier, and warmer, to just take Em up on her invitation to stay the night.
She turned over, pulling the covers up to her chin. Should she tell Em about that walking path/workshop thing? It might cover some of the expenses for the orchard. No, she was too sleepy and cosy to be making something new out of an old idea.With that, she dozed off again.
~~~~~
"Dez? You still asleep?" Dez rolled over. "Not now, Em. You were up early. Do I smell coffee?" She sat up, clutching the covers around her, not ready for the cool of the morning outside of her nest. "Yes, and I have your's here. But you'll have to let go of the covers to take it from me. Cook is making breakfast for us, so it's time to get up." Dez held the mug warming her hands. "In a minute, Em."
"Here's a housecoat for you. Give me your coffee and get up, shower and let's get some food." Dez pulled back from her sister's offer to hold her coffee. "Don't worry, I'll give it back when you're in the bathroom. I've told Cook we'll be down in about twenty minute so help me out here, Dez."
~~~~~
After a big breakfast of 'Cook's Own Omelet', toast, orange juice and coffee, the two sisters were back upstairs. Before retiring upstairs, they had cleared away the breakfast dishes while Cook finished her tea. Ignoring Cook's grumbling, they just carried on with their tidying. Upstairs, cautiously, Dez said "Em, I want to talk to you about something. It's just an old idea, a pretty old one, before I even knew where you were." She stopped. "It would bring paying people onto the estate that would support the orchard........."
"Dez, stop going on and just tell me what you're talking about. Would it have anything to do with this sketch?" She held up the battered old ledger Dez had been looking for, open at the back cover. "Where did you find that!?" Dez tried to grab the ledger out of her sister's hand. Em pulled it behind her. "Well?"
"Give that to me, Em! You hate it, don't you? Why didn't you tell me you had it? I've been searching all my things at the duplex and thought I'd lost it."
Emelina smiled."I think it's an idea worth looking into, Dez. But why here?" Her sister walked to the window overlooking the track. "I don't know what you're going to say but......... " Her words trailed off. "But what, Dez?"
"It's about the orchard and the bees and what it's costing the Estate." She held up her hand when she saw her sister about to say something. "If you looked through the ledger, you may have noticed the expense and income are pretty unbalanced. I know Michael left you well off, but are you...... I guess it's none of my business." She turned to face her sister. Emelina was sitting, head down and very quiet. Too quiet. She looked up. "I didn't want you to know. I haven't even talked with Digby about it. Although I'm sure he already knows and doesn't want to tell me." She got quiet again. After a pause, she said "I don't even know if we're really in trouble. I just know we've ~ I've spent a lot of money and haven't paid attention to what amount of money is coming in. When I try to go over the books with Digby, it's just all Greek to me." A tear slid down her cheek.
Dez could feel the anguish rolling off her sister. "Em, don't worry. That's silly of me to say. You've been carrying this load all on your own. Keeping everything to yourself. Just like when you were a kid. What was it mom used to say? "You don't have to be responsible for everything and everyone, Emelina. Ask me or your father for help. At school go to your teachers." Taking a breath, she continued. "My vision may not be a solution at all, just spending more of the money you're afraid is gone. But we do need to talk to Digby, and maybe even the accountant, before we do anything else. And it is the both of us, Em. I'm not clinging to you to survive, I want to help you survive.
"Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival."
~ Martha Gellhorn, Travels With Myself and Another
Searching for…….
Eyeing the possibilities……
Nailing things down…….
Setting up…….
Eagerly moving……..
“If you want sense, you’ll have to make it yourself.”
~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
**Re Situationally Theirs: I have usurped Wednesday’s story spot to introduce this month’s new theme: “Sense”.
Situationally Theirs, Chapter Two, Episode Eighty Seven will be posted tomorrow evening and will begin with Searching for……
They just sat, stolidly leaning up against the porch railings. Two twenty pound bags of potatoes ~ that I hadn’t ordered. I had only wanted two single potatoes.
Where were the rest of my groceries!? There was no obvious delivery person in sight. I didn’t know what to do. I had seen him come up to my front door, but by the time I got my mask on and opened the door, he was nowhere to be seen.
Trying to decide what to do, I breathed easier when he suddenly appeared carrying two more bags of groceries. Fortunately, he was a very nice young man. He did explain what was obviously my error. So rather than eating all things potatoes for the next month ~ breakfast, lunch and supper ~ I sent them back to the store for return or donation.
My error? I didn’t read the website closely enough!
“Mistakes aren’t mistakes; they are lessons!”
~ Israelmore Ayivor, Six Words Inspiration
It does take me back to preretirement discussions with colleagues about what we’d do, where we’d go or even how we’d manage without our careers of life times. There were lots of ideas floated, but then the telephone would ring. Ideas went in our back pockets to take home with us.
Now I think I’ll retrieve some of those ideas. What I do know for sure is that I still want to make a difference in someone’s life. There are two things that need my attention first: clearing up this most recent curve ball; and one more move that is really almost more exciting than the last. (Details to be released later.)
In the meantime, designing this part of my retirement will involve writing and researching some details. I’m really ready to involve myself in something greater than myself.
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”
~ Edward Everett Hale
All around us
C19 floats on air
invisible
tasteless
odourless
wisps of deadly nothingness
Should we be terrified
afraid to breathe
cornered?
frightened?
hesitant?
curling ourselves away from life?
Such unhappy thoughts
have crossed many minds
invisible
tasteless
odourless
just as deadly to our souls.
We need breathe in ease and joy,
grateful for our very breath
relaxed
comfortable
resilient
opening up to life and living.
“The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.”
~ J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
