Jamak-ak and whale rides…

April, 2005

So why had we moved from the city? We lived in a vital and changing area, close to the beaches so we had the amenities, but not the price tag. Stroller distance to the boardwalk and half a block to the Queen streetcar, lots of daily options were available to us. But we'd had the house broken into and methodically removed of specific things, the car broken into twice, and we did not even have one bedroom which we could call conventional. We did have a funky pretty house that I was particularily attached to. But our needs from our onset of being houseowners had changed from just needing a place to live together when we were a couple, to creating a bedroom out of an old kitchen and looking for another bedroom for our second child. We had also lost our backyard tree, a 150-year-old silver maple that made us both weep when we had to cut it down. It seemed we needed more space. Tim had grown up with land about him and yearned to have that sense back. We could both see the benefits for the children to have fresher air, more land to roam freely and the calmness of a small town. We thought the commute was doable so we jumped, thinking only after we had acted.

The series of events that followed shocked me as I had not quite assimilated the idea that to buy a new house meant to leave our old one. So when we got an acceptable offer I wept. Poor Ronnie, our friend first, and real estate agent second, was flumoxed.

But move we did. Now I see the children walking confidently in our little forest when we go to the "lie-down" field, named by Owen because in the summer, we would walk there and then lie down and look up or go to sleep or tussle or…
Finnie was emerging herself as the winter was still hard for her to manage with her little feet in boots. With warmer weather she loved best to run about without shoes on at all. She was getting a sense of independence and freedom Owen had never had at her age in the city.

Owen had also called a gravel pile near the barn the Whale. Timothy and I needed to negotiate with Owen whenever we needed to take some gravel. We would claim that we were just removing the barnacles and making the whale feel better but he would oversee the removals very carefully. Both Finnie and Owen, and any visiting children, usually migrated to the rocks. I guess it gave them a sense of height, they could play king of the castle, they could take the dump-trucks and excavate loads, or in later summer just sit atop it soaking in the heat from below.

Jamak-ak, also an Owen moniker, was the newly culled cedar grove that had a pile of rocks that became his "circus," where he would have performances. Finnie and Owen are very different in terms of dirt accumulation. Finnie was oblivious to the dirt that amassed on her being, while Owen would fastidiously remove or avoid any outside debris. He's more comfortable with it now but I see that as a city thing. I think Finnie developed her own intense look that was reminiscent of my scary look but I think she may have my love of dirt and growing things.

The swallows returned to the barn and they both got lifted high by Tim to see the eggs and then babies that were birthed in the mud nests attached to the ceiling of the barn. The guana was not nice and we had to use tarps to protect the tractor but we did love their elegant swirling and diving. They got into the barn by a slice of space above the barns doors measuring only a couple of inches. I think they needed to angle just as they went through to negotiate it without touching anything.

We had deer, still do, that started to appear in the back of the field. A female and two little twins. We soon realized why they are called whitetails from the flicker from the twins as they darted about, or ran for the forest as we came out. The mother was not too flighty and would hold her ground somewhat, mindful but not too concerned with us. Spring was giving us all so many reasons to be glad of our decision.