My first child didn’t sleep. Neither did my second. Between the two of them it was four years of my brain slowly unraveling. It wasn’t postpartum… as far as I understand it, it was more like the slow eroding of the rock by the sea. Two hours a night, three and a half, some times four. Never more than four.
My second child was one month old when my husband left to attend RCMP training in Regina, Saskatchewan. I wanted him to go. His current job made him miserable. I told him he was the right man for the job, and I was the right woman to support him.
Because I am strong and my well is deep.
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Don’t worry about money. We can do it, I tell him. I’ll host international college students. I’ll cook and clean and teach them our culture. I can drive them around town. The money will be good. The children will be safe.
I’m talking with an agent as he prepares to go. My dream agent. She’s from New York, from my favourite agency. She loves my book and wants to represent me. But… it’s too short. 10,000 more words? 15? 20? Deepen the characters please. Strengthen sense of place.
He leaves. I start to have nightmares, and anxiety attacks. I fall asleep while bathing the baby to jolt awake in a panic. I ache with the loss of my love, my partner as he trains. My toddler screams with raging night terrors, screaming for her daddy.
Just 10,000 more words. It might as well be 100,000.
He comes home to visit, twice. For a day. then flies back. He won’t come again. It hurts too much to say goodbye. He cries every day. He nearly fails his midterm. But somehow, he passes the second time.
Now it’s time to think about placement. Where will this new job take us? What will we do with the home where I birthed my children? Who will tend the garden with the wild cherry tomatoes that eat the yard? Anywhere, we say to the RCMP (and thank you for asking) anywhere far and wild. By the forest or sea. Somewhere where we can build a home. Anywhere but there.
There. Where the future dies. Busy people, small parking spaces. The houses are too big. Too close, built of cardboard and greed.
Big houses, with lidless soulless eyes and gaping high ceilings like the gaping trachea of a wide hungry beast.
Houses that consume the land they squat on to raise the prices.
Houses that grin with toothy jewelled teeth. Boats and quads and a place for hockey equipment and a truck and a car.
Costco has toolboxes now. Big shiny red ones. And little electric cars with music. Hummers and sports cars. For boys to drive around the cul-de-sac.
We will go. Anywhere but There. Where the soul dies. Where the moles are murdered and dandelions are poisoned. Where the wild coyote shudders and dies. Shedding his dignity in clumps of mange and starvation. Choking on plastic coated Christmas lights next to the inflatable reindeer.
Where there are different words for murder. “Targeted shooting” “gang related” “isolated incidents” make empty people in empty houses feel better.
Where it is never ever ever fucking quiet.
The birds are the only thing that grow still. Voices lost in the hum of traffic. Beasts of tin belching poison into our air.
We must go
There.
Where dragons of a different nature begin to raise their humped concrete backs up into the sky. Stealing the sky as they squat across the land. “Guaranteed vista. Magnificent views,” they roar.
Fuck you. I think.
The shadow they cast is icy cold. There is no sky. They have eaten the mountains. And what do they see? A parking lot? An expanse of smaller cages at their feet? :Where us lesser beings scrabble to make a home.
I don’t write. I don’t sleep. We came Here. My lover returned from training and we were ripped from our home in four days, like a babe ripped early from the womb.
Instead I must fight. I must destroy. I must forget compassion and chill my heart. So my children can have the best. I must take, hoard, deny. Be better, be stronger, be faster.
I win.
I have it all. My husband has his career. My children are in the best schools. My writing is published.
My mind is as empty as the router box plugged in behind the couch. At last. The good life.
I lose.
Because this well only draws polluted earth.
My husband breaks and crumples inside. The job beats him about the head.
My children can't hear the call of earth. They don’t know the song of sea.
I write meaningless articles without sustenance. Easy to chew and swallow, cheap to consume.
I am eaten to bone.
I die.
I stand outside in the wind and the rain. Barefoot on a shorn strip of grass. I scream to the sky and let my tears water the earth. Weep and apologize for whitewashed sins. For the sins of our ancestors. I am sorry. We am sorry. Here. Take my blood, my toil.
I tend the garden. The roses grow, the vines bear fruit. Then another kills them because they are too big, too wild.
I weep.
I begin again. The roses return.
I plant for the bees, I sing to the trees. Each one will grow as a friend.
The sky burns. We hide indoors and tremble.
I weep in fear and loss. My chest tightens and I can’t breathe.
I wait. I pray. I begin again.
I can no longer fight, I can no longer win. I do not belong here. I cannot be this city. It is full of monsters.
But I can grow a new one. Plant a seed.
A city that honours origins. That expresses thought like the many blooms that fill a garden. A city that stirs and remembers green, that remembers the sky, the trees and the sea. And joins it’s soul with the gifts of nature. A city that connects like the mycorrhizal network of shrubs, trees and seedlings. Old, new, and strange.
Breathe.
Love your roots. Share your pain, show your need. Be strange. Digg deep. Use less plastic.
Vote.
Sleep.
Know the humanity of all living things.
There’s no must, there’s no should, there’s no “have to”. When it doesn’t work, change the rules and move the goal post.
I breathe. I begin again.
