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I have been dating for the past six months, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I can say that I’m enjoying the process.

To be sure: there have been some highs and lows in those short six months.

I’ve used World War II analogies to describe the beaches of men I’ve seen.

But I’ve also had some wonderfully sweet, tender moments, great orgasms, lips on the ankles with fingers in mouths moments. I’ve been lavished with the attention that I deserve and crave in real earnest.

As Christmas and New Year’s approached, I met and started to feel differently about one of them almost immediately, and it startled me. I became incredibly anxious overnight. I felt the rumble of insecurity from deep within me, like an irregular heartbeat. Raised, steeped in it as I was, I have done so much work to rise out of that headspace and find myself as a person, yet there is ever more work to be done; it’s no surprise that it reared up and I didn’t recognize the signs as they were happening, I could only observe and articulate them aloud. I expressed my surprise to several friends, using the term “dicknotized” far more frequently than I care to remember now.

I knew it was happening, but I didn’t have a toolkit built to keep myself from spiralling when a man I was way too thirsty for came my way. It’s too bad – he was cute. But I forgive myself for not having one of those. I didn’t really know I needed one, but I do.

Regardless, I do find I’m honing in on something. He might drive a truck.

Strong. Masculine. Clever. Hardworking. A problem-solver. Ambitious. A good kisser.

There – get through those hedges, boys, and you can take me out of the castle.

I asked Bing to create an image of the Huntsman from Red Riding Hood. This is the prompt I gave:

Of the four images she produced, this Huntsman is my favourite. Maybe it’s silly for me to use Bing like a magic mirror to draw men, but I actually think it’s fun, and smart. What I seek is much more than an avatar, and he could look entirely different from what Bing created, but the essence must still be there.

I’m looking for a Huntsman. Nothing short of this will suffice. Why? I think the character embodies all of those qualities I listed above. He slays murderous, rapacious wolves. I want a partner that offers a sense of security to me that says no harm will come to you now. I’m here to protect you. Your days of wandering the woods alone are over. If he can’t offer that to me, I don’t want it.

I got spooked because I met someone who had those qualities. He even ordered a drink called the Huntsman on our first date. But it’s a tenuous thing, new relationships. Most of them fizzle before they really get going anyway, so I shouldn’t be surprised he’s ghosted me after three dates. No one is perfect, not even Huntsmen.

I’ll keep pursuing men in the meantime. You never know when the next potential hunter comes out of the ether. He’s not the first, nor will he be the last. I’ve grown comfortable with the process of moving on past the rejection. Although it hurts in the short term, it does fade, and I like sifting through the experience to pull the lessons out. This one was particularly illuminating and fun. He was really into 🍍 and now I can’t look at them the same way again. At least for a little while.

Returning Mom to Westport / Sharbot Lake

The last time I was in Sharbot Lake, properly, I was moving my mom out of town. I’m sure there was some last minute fishing to be had in the days before we had to say goodbye to Maberly, Perth, and the surrounding Lanark County / Rideau area.

This was the area in which my parents spent their retirement. Mama had a few more years after Tata, but the most important chunk was probably that first couple of years out in the middle of nowhere, living for themselves alone again. They watched deer congregate in the clearing of their backyard in the winter and spring. They fed them “deer apples” they would buy at the grocers. They took in Trotsky, my beloved, exiled cat. They had a pond. They had a veggie patch the bunnies and deer decimated. Mama cooked. Tata ran the grounds at a scout camp – Opemikon.

I was in Toronto, Sister Friend in Burlington. We were living our lives pretty independently. I worked for an opera company of some distinction, my sister as a nurse. The grandkids were getting a bit older.

Mama and Tata were able to buy themselves a bit of land.

It was surrounded by trees that had swallowed up a good chunk of the land, including an old jalopy I found moldering in the forest. It sat on a spit of granite overlooking the highway, and it had a big front deck on it that you could sit on in the summer, eat dinner, then watch the stars come up as the frogs and grasshoppers provide a chorus to the night.

Wasn’t observant enough, or knew enough, or maybe they just didn’t grow those years I was up there, but I didn’t find any mushrooms. My interest in mycophilia came later.

But before it did, I would have to move my mother from the Trans Canada Highway down to a one bedroom condo in the west end of Hamilton. Mama very kindly sprung for a plane ticket to Ottawa so I wouldn’t have to spend 6-8 hours getting there first to pick up the closest uHaul truck I could rent 3 weeks before she had to move.

It was a good move. I mean, it was a hard move, but it was a good move. Mama came home to Hamilton, Kathy was close by – and a couple years later I found my way back, too. That was a hard move, too. A story for another day.

I’m not expecting my next move to be so hard. It’s literally upstairs – maybe 20 paces to the right of my current residence. Who knows, I could be wrong. But I can hire movers – I have a budget for it; perhaps I could even ask some friends, but I worry about the rejection. I have had to ask for moving help before; no one likes to help people move!

Before moving myself later this month, before I even knew I would be moving, my sister and I planned this trip to Sharbot Lake. We finally made it happen. COVID threw us for a loop last year, and she was still alive the year before, so I think given the circumstances, we did alright making sure that we returned Mama in 2021.

Pilgrimage is important. It reminds you of the steps you have taken away from a place in time. The woman that was schlepping Mama’s stuff in the middle of a hot July is not the woman who returned Mama to her favourite fishing spot. For one thing, she’s got more gray hairs. And secondly, she’s just in a better place overall.

Funny how a little time and distance can change perspective for you.

I’ll tell you this – the few things I know about death and grief. It works in mysterious ways, man. There are parts that are so profoundly sad, yet there are also moments of pure bliss, joyful mirth, sublime envy, and more. We made inappropriate jokes. We ate really well. We accomplished our mission in the only window of opportunity we had before the clouds opened up and started to pour. We watched way too much of Scott McGillivray fixing up old vacation houses. We also took pics and laughed and took it easy and made no solid plans until we had to finally vacate the Airbnb.

Thank you, Mamuś i Tatuś. You gave us roots in this country, however transplanted they may have been. I never told either of you enough while you were alive that this was the greatest gift you could have given me. I will do my best to continue honouring your move to Canada with my life. It’s a complicated legacy, but it’s one that I do not resent.

The Great Resignation

So what kind of work can I do now that the pandemic is over, or more or less, over? Are a lot of people quitting their jobs? Am I seeing that already in my own life? Do I need to keep writing in questions?

Recently I went on a job search to gauge my prospects on the open market. Haven’t you heard? It’s the Great Resignation, and apparently it’s being led by Millennials (go us!) They seem promising. My prospects, and the Millennials. If I continue to pursue the goals I’ve self-identified as being important for me right now, I may land some of them. Sure, not all of them will land. And I have some experience in not landing things. But, I think, enough of them will that perhaps my life will be okay in ten years.

That’s all one can hope for really. Just okay. Perhaps a depressing thought, but, nevertheless a pragmatic one, I think. And perhaps it’s fitting that that sentiment is also the two letters of my initials.

I’m okay. I hope my life will still be okay in ten years.

Presently I am waiting to find out if I can move into the bigger apartment in my building, a lovely nineteen-twenties walkup attached to a pre-confederation townhouse in downtown Hamilton. The one bedroom is in the pre-confederation section, and it’s been lived in for some time, so it needs a bit of repair, but it’s a lovely space. Big windows, big rooms, a little fire escape patio. What’s not to love?

I guess you can say I am trying to regress a little; see a bit of that century. I purchased a bed recently – in stupid anticipation – from the era in which the building was born in, if not a little after.

Won’t I look cute on this in my white cotton nightgown?

Perhaps this is what I need to build for him to come. * A new home, in a new part of my life. A new dawning, if you will. I called it on my birthday, when I got to have my photo portrait taken by a lovely friend and talented photographer, Laura Toito. Perhaps I called it into existence? Perhaps I was patient and waited for the right moment? Perhaps the universe works in mysterious ways.

And, if not, it will still provide me with tremendous pleasure over the time that I get to spend in it, however short or long. One never knows with a rental. But, then again, these days it feels like the same with purchasing a house, a pivotal “dream” that continues to evade me. That and the husband and children, but those are not as prevalent as home ownership. Perhaps this is my colonialist mentality coming out? Asset ownership as a right, when really we only “own” it for however long we have on this beautiful, delicate planet, then it goes elsewhere (but never really moves, unless it crumbles.) You can no more own the Earth than you can stop the moon from wobbling in its orbit causing an increase in floods over the next ten years. I still have to remind myself that I identify with colonial thoughts, solely through the nature of my upbringing. The process of undoing them has and continues to take years.

Home ownership also feels like something that I could control but, so far, have not been able to harness. The husband and children are not entirely in my scope of full control, but a modestly priced condo could be.

Yes, I hope we are all just okay in ten years, cause I don’t honestly know where any of us will be in that time. So why not have fun with the choices you get right now? It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom! Commission a portrait of yourself, move into the bigger apartment, hand out a couple of resumes… Enjoy it while you can!

* Trust me, he’ll come. But he might not expect it – whoever he is! 😉 Oh and, since that post from November 29, I have found a therapist and I am working through some big emotions with her. A true blessing from God!

International Women’s Day 2021

How do you behave as a woman in 2021? Do you speak softly, smile frequently and use excessive amounts of emojis when you’re trying to get a pleasant point across?

Do you send alluring pictures to men because you haven’t slept with one for a long time?

Do you take care of yourself and your family and make sure you’re doing a good job at everything because that’s the expectation everyone has come to have of you?

Do you build a house, then a home, then rebuild it because the first time around you built it with someone who wanted to take it away from you?

How do you woman in 2021?

Woman is a noun, not a verb. To be a woman in 2021 is to be very cautious with your heart. You only give it away when you know it’s the right place to put it. And even then, you don’t give the whole strawberry away. You keep a part for yourself. That part you hide away in your secret treasure box and you guard it like a dog with a bone.

Or do you toss the whole thing in the fire and let the pain and pleasure consume you?

A few years ago, an indigenous group set a vigil in front of Hamilton’s city hall over the weekend, to remind the community of the missing and murdered indigenous women that disappear or are killed every day.

I was curious to know what their vigil looked like, and I was also terribly moved by the fact that they were there, so I walked down from my apartment and stood on the edge of the forecourt. There were a few tents on the grassy areas and someone had built a beautiful fire.

I approached cautiously, not wanting to startle anyone by my presence. When I got close enough to the fire, I said hello to the men and women standing in its warm glowing light. They said hello back.

I could see that the fire was more than just a fire. It was beautifully built and being maintained all evening by the men who were there to keep vigil. The fire was encircled by a path that led around the whole fire. In front of it, there were several bowls. Some held tobacco, some held sage, some held strawberries.

I asked what the significance of the bowls was, and the gentleman who stayed with me after the others had wandered off, told me that they were offerings for the fire. Each one signified a different offering.

I asked what the strawberries meant.

He said they represented a woman’s heart.

He also told me how the ceremony works: you walk around the fire with your intentions and your prayers, then you choose an offering, and put it into the flames.

I asked if I could do it, and he said yes.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment and thought about the grief and pain of a missing or murdered woman. I thought about my own grief at the hands of cruel and careless men. I started to walk around the fire, with my grief held tightly in my chest.

When I was back at the front of the fire, I looked down at the bowls. In the strawberry bowl, a bright, red, juicy strawberry sat – the largest of the bunch.

I didn’t think too much about it as I kneeled down and chose that strawbery to toss into the flames. But as I stood back up and watched it sizzle in the heat of the blaze, I realized I had just given my whole heart away. And it felt very much alive.

I have often given my whole heart away, even to those who don’t want it, or can’t take it, or shouldn’t even have it. My mother tried to teach me discernment, but I have been a stubborn child for most of my life. As I move into this new phase of womanhood in my life – because I feel very much like this is where I am at – a maiden on the brink of motherhood – I will remember to keep a part of the strawberry for myself, next time.

Happy international women’s day, friends.

Image credit: Image by Pezibear from Pixabay

Dry February

It’s day 8 of Dry February, nearly a year into the life that we know as post-pandemic.

Why did I decide to do a Dry February this year? Much like my social media cleanse through the first half of the pandemic, this started off as a challenge in my mind. This isn’t the first time I have thought of it. I can recall a blurry photograph I took of a Stella goblet, post shakedown shake.

2020 was also not my worst year in drinking; if anything, it’s turned it down a notch. 2019 was spent building a beautiful friendship with my MacNab Street Presbyterian Church Senior Choir; a motely crue of elderly Presbyterians, siblings, grandmothers / grandsons, students, both current and former, became my new defacto family while my own weathered one of it’s biggest storms, the illness and death of my mother. I am so grateful for that time, in that pub, drinking that beer. That was also not my worst year in drinking.

No, for that, I have to go all the way back to that blurry photograph, and the journey that it took me on to the final chapter of my father’s life.

2013

I called my parents that day. They lived in beautiful Lanark County, on a dry spit of Highway 7, near a burnt out farm that gave me the whillies when I went to explore it, and Perth, ON, one of Canada’s oldest colonial settlements. No wonder I was destined to become a Presbyterian. I fell in love with Little Scotland.

My father was already tired, weak and badly in pain from the cancer that he was battling. But he climbed into the cab of his cherry red Dodge Dakota and drove to downtown Toronto, picked me up and took me back to their place to rest for some time. My partner was touring the east coast of the US, I was already freelancing, and there was nothing keeping me in that cold, grey city in March.

We celebrated Tata’s birthday a few days later. Over breakfast, while he stood at the counter steaping his Tetley’s Orange Pekoe, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Without missing a beat, he responded: “Exotic dancers?”

My father’s melifluous Polish accent saying the term exotic dancers burst us into laughter. Even he cracked a big smile, watching us laugh. “Or you and mama can dance?” He added, and we both laughed louder.

Anyone who took the time to have a conversation with my father, learned that he was an expert elocutionist. He learned English, because he loved the way it sounded. He won first place in a recitation contest of War and Peace. He studied Russian and German. My Swiss Great-Aunt Frenele sent us letters, photos and gifts, like the year she created a calendar for my sister, with her original pen and ink drawings. My father would translate her spidery German into Polish.

I recall having excellent conversations with him. But I loved sitting in silence with him in the car, a comfortable silence stretched between us, like a friendly dog watching the world go by from the middle of the cab.

There was no friendly dog along on the car ride. Just a quiet, deeply weary silence, that I broke once when he lit up a cigarrette to confess that I too smoked.

“Dziunia,” he responded, “I thought you were a good girl?”

Yeah, well. I didn’t feel so good anymore. And I didn’t for a long time. Those were the worst years of drinking. It wasn’t a linear return to equilibrium. In the first year I downright had vertigo, but I feel like I’ve finally landed on stable ground. I aim to slowly build on top if it without going too fast, or too slow.

So why a Dry February to close out the end of Pandemic Year One? It feels like the right time. I came to it without fear. I began with research. The Globe and Mail calls alcohol “the new cigarette.” Gabrielle Glaser taught me about “13 Stepping”, the frequent but not talked about issue of sexual assualt in AA. Holly Whitaker is teaching me to Quit Like a Woman. Yes, I am a good girl. I’m good at figuring myself out.