Fast forward...
February, 2005
So, if you could only fast forward when you are in a bad patch. But what would really be the result, probably not the bliss one might suppose. Of course, you'd never properly appreciate the good times if you didn't have the comparison. You would be as weak as jelly on a hot day, without being toughened by the tests of life, and you wouldn't have much to say cause people'd just walk away if all you rambled on about was the new car you had, the pot of money you sat on and the next vacation you were heading on. I mean, really, your friends and family have to feel their lives are at least in the running, yes?
But to be looking back on time I do have the rare opportunity to skip over some of the monotonous bits and cut to the spring. Key the lovely classical music that brings forth ideas of birds chirping and leaves growing so fast you can hear them, almost over the music. We did get through the winter and it was not as horrible as I may have led some to believe. We got taken to Florida for Christmas by my parents. Thank heavens for parents, even as we are parents ourselves they still keep rising to the occasion and giving us chances to regress to the carefree children we once were, every once in awhile. So the almost surrealistic world of Sanibel Island with inflatable Santas and pastel palaces, crocodiles and pelicans, was an antidote we needed more than we knew.
Then by the beginning of February, the contractors started to pack up, head out the doors and not come back. The main contractors had totally transformed our top floor to a place we could call home, and did. We felt lonely for awhile as we had come to like having them tromp inside every morning, complaining of the cold, complaining about my coffee and telling silly funny jokes. But there was no space to adopt them and they were in high demand so we sent them on their way and got used to having a second floor.
My husband and I both love shovelling snow and we got our share of that, nice white pristine snow unlike Toronto's brown sugar slush variety. The kids, well one of them, frolicked in the field of snow while I got fitter than I have ever been in my life, carrying the other one to try and keep up with the older one. Owen, the older one, queried one of the first nights of our life in Newcastle, when he was looking at the night sky – What are all those bright lights? Night skies in Toronto are not in the same ball park as the almost piercing beauty of a clear winter night in the country.
We had made some friends, primarily Tracey, Randy, Harper and Abbey. A calm, sweet family we migrated to them as soon as we met them at the Learning Center and we soon were hanging at each others homes, the kids learning to play together. So what do they do as soon as we had bonded – move to the beaches in Toronto, the very area we had left the fall before. We considered this very AWOL of them and pondered giving them a cold shoulder, but spring was coming and we kind of liked them so we let them have this transgression and so we switched lives.
My husband, brave lad that he is, had stoically made the transition from biking (even in the winter) 20 minutes to work when we lived in Toronto, to joining the throngs at the GO station in Oshawa. He was up and gone before we even woke and I literally do not know how he did it every day without much complaint. Some Norwegian Viking blood kicking in for sure. He was the sole breadwinner as I had taken an addition 6 months off after a maternity leave to acclimatize us to the country and arrange childcare for when I returned to work. So money was tight and my linkage in marriage, who was the one that really wanted to be in the country, rarely was as work was still in Toronto. He woke in the dark and came home in the dark. We told him what it looked like here but the weekends were his only opportunity to see it for himself.
Spring WAS coming. This meant more than the sum of its parts. We started to see signs of life and breathed deeply of all these seasonal waxings, shedding some of the heaviness of the waning winter.
So, if you could only fast forward when you are in a bad patch. But what would really be the result, probably not the bliss one might suppose. Of course, you'd never properly appreciate the good times if you didn't have the comparison. You would be as weak as jelly on a hot day, without being toughened by the tests of life, and you wouldn't have much to say cause people'd just walk away if all you rambled on about was the new car you had, the pot of money you sat on and the next vacation you were heading on. I mean, really, your friends and family have to feel their lives are at least in the running, yes?
But to be looking back on time I do have the rare opportunity to skip over some of the monotonous bits and cut to the spring. Key the lovely classical music that brings forth ideas of birds chirping and leaves growing so fast you can hear them, almost over the music. We did get through the winter and it was not as horrible as I may have led some to believe. We got taken to Florida for Christmas by my parents. Thank heavens for parents, even as we are parents ourselves they still keep rising to the occasion and giving us chances to regress to the carefree children we once were, every once in awhile. So the almost surrealistic world of Sanibel Island with inflatable Santas and pastel palaces, crocodiles and pelicans, was an antidote we needed more than we knew.
Then by the beginning of February, the contractors started to pack up, head out the doors and not come back. The main contractors had totally transformed our top floor to a place we could call home, and did. We felt lonely for awhile as we had come to like having them tromp inside every morning, complaining of the cold, complaining about my coffee and telling silly funny jokes. But there was no space to adopt them and they were in high demand so we sent them on their way and got used to having a second floor.
My husband and I both love shovelling snow and we got our share of that, nice white pristine snow unlike Toronto's brown sugar slush variety. The kids, well one of them, frolicked in the field of snow while I got fitter than I have ever been in my life, carrying the other one to try and keep up with the older one. Owen, the older one, queried one of the first nights of our life in Newcastle, when he was looking at the night sky – What are all those bright lights? Night skies in Toronto are not in the same ball park as the almost piercing beauty of a clear winter night in the country.
We had made some friends, primarily Tracey, Randy, Harper and Abbey. A calm, sweet family we migrated to them as soon as we met them at the Learning Center and we soon were hanging at each others homes, the kids learning to play together. So what do they do as soon as we had bonded – move to the beaches in Toronto, the very area we had left the fall before. We considered this very AWOL of them and pondered giving them a cold shoulder, but spring was coming and we kind of liked them so we let them have this transgression and so we switched lives.
My husband, brave lad that he is, had stoically made the transition from biking (even in the winter) 20 minutes to work when we lived in Toronto, to joining the throngs at the GO station in Oshawa. He was up and gone before we even woke and I literally do not know how he did it every day without much complaint. Some Norwegian Viking blood kicking in for sure. He was the sole breadwinner as I had taken an addition 6 months off after a maternity leave to acclimatize us to the country and arrange childcare for when I returned to work. So money was tight and my linkage in marriage, who was the one that really wanted to be in the country, rarely was as work was still in Toronto. He woke in the dark and came home in the dark. We told him what it looked like here but the weekends were his only opportunity to see it for himself.
Spring WAS coming. This meant more than the sum of its parts. We started to see signs of life and breathed deeply of all these seasonal waxings, shedding some of the heaviness of the waning winter.
posted by gardengirl63 | Saturday, November 12, 2005
1 Comments:
Can't wait for the next chapter! It is like being there.
Post a Comment
<< Home