THE FIRST MONTHS...
Early January, 2005
So, needless to say, we kind of muscled through last winter, never quite catching our breath, but keeping the family together through what was the penultimate test of the strength of my relationship with my husband. Kind of walking into walls with the amount of change, arranging for electricians to rewire the house, contractors to renovate the 2nd floor, plumbers to replumb the house.
For two weeks, on the sale of our first house we had a significant profit and actually held a cheque for the total. I think we took a picture of this wonderful but short lived financial situation, and then it was gone-to electricians, plumbers, and contractors and we were using up our line of credit fast. They say moving is near the top of the list for stressors, but its exponential when you are going from city to country with little kids and a somewhat shaky marriage. There is no frame of reference and no sense of comparison. You are on your own and although we had friends that admired the guts it took to do this and some that seemed to think we had achieved nirvana, there were moments of true fear where we so wished we had not done this. But we kind of shut down the thinking parts of our brains and just did life. Got up, dressed the kids, went outside and played in the snow, found where to get groceries and even organics, where the gas stations were, managing the strangers fast becoming part of the family that were the contractors transforming our top floor.
THEY were wonderful. Good hardworking folk that invested more than just their time to make our top floor a place we love to be. An open concept haven with timbers above us and a closet built so kids could run from one small entrance around the back to a cave on the other side. The place began to feel like ours. We did not freeze. We got a second car which liberated me and the kids, a wonderful volvo 240 wagon that seemed that it would never fail us, and we were mapping our new territory. We were exiting the worst part of the transition and beginning to see that this might work and it might be really, really good.
Perhaps my finest sense of this was standing in our field one bright moonlit night holding a hose on a patch of ground I had designated for an ice rink. This is what you do in the country. I stood there with breath hanging in the air, mits freezing as the water hit them, so light there were shadows on the ground, when one of the many trains that border our property crossed the overpass and came towards me in the field. He blew his horn to acknowledge me. Pure Canadiana and so impossibly unToronto. Life was good that night.
So, needless to say, we kind of muscled through last winter, never quite catching our breath, but keeping the family together through what was the penultimate test of the strength of my relationship with my husband. Kind of walking into walls with the amount of change, arranging for electricians to rewire the house, contractors to renovate the 2nd floor, plumbers to replumb the house.
For two weeks, on the sale of our first house we had a significant profit and actually held a cheque for the total. I think we took a picture of this wonderful but short lived financial situation, and then it was gone-to electricians, plumbers, and contractors and we were using up our line of credit fast. They say moving is near the top of the list for stressors, but its exponential when you are going from city to country with little kids and a somewhat shaky marriage. There is no frame of reference and no sense of comparison. You are on your own and although we had friends that admired the guts it took to do this and some that seemed to think we had achieved nirvana, there were moments of true fear where we so wished we had not done this. But we kind of shut down the thinking parts of our brains and just did life. Got up, dressed the kids, went outside and played in the snow, found where to get groceries and even organics, where the gas stations were, managing the strangers fast becoming part of the family that were the contractors transforming our top floor.
THEY were wonderful. Good hardworking folk that invested more than just their time to make our top floor a place we love to be. An open concept haven with timbers above us and a closet built so kids could run from one small entrance around the back to a cave on the other side. The place began to feel like ours. We did not freeze. We got a second car which liberated me and the kids, a wonderful volvo 240 wagon that seemed that it would never fail us, and we were mapping our new territory. We were exiting the worst part of the transition and beginning to see that this might work and it might be really, really good.
Perhaps my finest sense of this was standing in our field one bright moonlit night holding a hose on a patch of ground I had designated for an ice rink. This is what you do in the country. I stood there with breath hanging in the air, mits freezing as the water hit them, so light there were shadows on the ground, when one of the many trains that border our property crossed the overpass and came towards me in the field. He blew his horn to acknowledge me. Pure Canadiana and so impossibly unToronto. Life was good that night.
posted by gardengirl63 | Wednesday, November 09, 2005
1 Comments:
Spooky and evocative.
You don't know me, Carrie, but a friend of yours told me you write like you speak, which is a subject close to our hearts.
And she's an editor, so I expect she knows.
She is proud of you, and from the resonant sentiments I just read, she should be.
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