The Wolds

It was such a heavy grey day yesterday. We went for a walk in the Wolds, which were milder and less dramatic than the Dales. Everything was shrouded in curtains of decay; all the leaves were disintegrating underfoot and the grass was yellowish and close-cropped. There was a wind with a knife edge in it, and all at once it felt like December, rather than a mild drawn out Autumn. 

At one point we walked through a small village, and saw not a single sign of life, though there was a giant wooden spoon outside someones house, and a shrub that had been clipped into a bear shape, and someone had poken two googly eyes into its head. 

The smell of coal smoke was strong. I like the smell. It smells old, and warm, and slightly sweet in a way. It carried far into the woods with us, and crossed the streams and ponds and stiles that we did. 

I have such mixed emotions about leaving in 3 weeks. I feel like I tried hard here, and it will all be to waste when I leave. 3 months is just enough time to start to feel settled, and to make some friends, and to have vague regrets when the time comes to move on. 

Moving on though is something I do best. You really just suck it up and be uncomfortable. It's all about being uncomfortable, and making a fool of yourself, and learning to live with loneliness. It certainly gives you time to think about your life, and the decisions you've made, and decide what you want. 

 12th century church in the village.

 Modern-day stained glass set in to one of the windows.

 Sometimes it's hard to figure out where to go.

 The best part of all the hikes we do- a Sunday pub lunch with beer and all the fixings.

Dad being all like "Did I get this photobomb thing right?"

Dear Friends

Well. Here we are now. I can relax, start to evaluate, reflect on my life that whizzed by in the last 6 months. There was something kind of awful about the spring and summer. I guess I learnt how hard I can push myself, but it was to the detriment of my friends. Every week was a blur of work, eat, sleep- and my only social interactions happened with my coworkers and sometimes those I lived with. Don't get me wrong- I grew to love the people I worked with so much more, and to appreciate the inestimable value of next-door friends (you know, the kind who you can yell at across the yard and they'll amble over for a back yard fire, or if you've got a rare evening free you can knock on their door with a bottle of wine and drink and talk until the wee hours), but my other friends, my old friends, who lived farther away, or who were busy themselves, or unwilling to drop by spontaneously, those friendships suffered.

It's not that I grew to love them less. Not in the slightest. It wasn't that I wanted the friendships to end, or was subconsciously pushing them away- no. If anything, I knew exactly why my unavailability was causing them frustration. I knew that by disappearing I was asking too much of some. By being a terrible friend, I knew that I could ask nothing in return.

Yet. And yet, I continued this existence willingly. I tried- I really did. It may not have looked like much, but every phone call I made not work-related was a struggle for me. Every coffee date squeezed in between shifts meant a loss of an hour or two of precious stillness. I was at the point of exhaustion in my life where even to make a meal for myself was too much. I had nothing left to give, having given so much already to other areas. I was a shell. A broken body. A weary soul.

 You may ask, why? Why did I throw away so much, work so hard? What on earth could be worth it? And this is where I can now clearly see my hierarchy of values appear. What is the most important thing on this planet to me? My family. More than travel, more than friends, more than boyfriends. If I want to be close to my family, I need to move. And I am in the unfortunate/fortunate position of supporting myself. I have too much pride to ask my parents for help. Which means working. For money. Filthy lucre. More than just enough to support my life. I needed money for plane tickets, for visas, for rent, for food, for trains.

And so I ask- can you blame me? Can you really throw guilt on my shoulders that the reason I disappeared this summer was to make money to be able to be with my family? That I called less than usual, that I never had time to hang out, that I wasn't there for big events, for weddings, birthdays, hospital appointments- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
But if I had to do it again, I would. And I'm sorry that that's the way it is. I wish it wasn't so.

Maybe I am a terrible friend, and this summer was just the breaking point. I have many, many faults, I know. I know that in a few months I will actually be leaving my family, to move to Australia (but that's just the hierarchy establishing itself again- once I have my family, the next most important thing to me is travel. And so off I go). And I would just like to say this. There are as many different kinds of friendship as there are people. It's natural for evolution to occur. People leave, and people come back, but that doesn't mean they care any less. I pick my friends carefully, and love them deeply. If you called and asked for help, I would be there in a flash. If you texted and said to come over, it's important- I would. I would get my shift covered if you wanted me to hold your hand at the doctor. No matter how much time has gone by.

So please, forgive me my shortcomings. Forgive the fact that I needed to pursue my dream of leaving a frozen city for somewhere warm. Forgive me for not having the free time to just chill on a sunny afternoon. Forgive me for not having the money handed to me year after year that would have enabled me to slow down. Forgive me for still caring and counting you all as friends, even when you felt otherwise. Forgive me for not wanting to give up or give in, even when things have changed. Forgive me.

So It's Begun...

And so it has begun, the goodbyes. I hadn't even realized that some would happen so soon. I guess it is August now, and with my decision to not come back to Edmonton after the road trip, the end of the month is creeping up.
It blindsided me. We went to a movie and then got Denny's dessert at midnight, and when we parted he said, Well, I guess this is goodbye for a few years.
I hadn't even been thinking that. But he was going to Germany later that week, and wouldn't be back before I left. Oh, I guess you're right, I said. We hugged, and I said It was nice to have met you.
And he laughed, and told me You're going to have to get used to this.
And I thought to myself, Oh dear, oh no. If this is hard, imagine saying goodbye to your closest friends. I am predicting August to be a weepy month.

Have fun in Germany, I said.
You'll have so much fun, he told me. You are just like a movie character. Like a character from a book. You will have lots of adventures.
He got out of the car.
I'll send you a postcard! I shouted after him.
And he smiled, and said Goodbye, Andrea.
Then shut the door.

I drove home, jittery from sugary pie and being up too late and a maelstrom of emotions. I didn't cry (enough tears have been shed over more important things), but I felt numb. I know that when I actually leave I will feel sad, but I will also feel overwhelming relief of having escaped, and excitement for the future. I also have come to understand over the years that there is very few growing experiences that aren't painful, and through the biggest and hardest and most difficult situations you come out the other side that much more refined.

March, 2003

There was this one time, when I was 13 or 14, and my grandparents on my mothers side came to visit us while we were living in Perth, Australia. They arrived on what turned out to be one of the hottest weekends of the year- it was 40 degrees plus for 5 days straight- and while it was a shock for them coming from a crisp Vancouver March, it was hard on us too. Luckily, we had a swimming pool in our backyard, a big unheated blue rectangle, surrounded by palm trees and green bushes and a hammock on two sides, and a view of our neighbours backyard on the other side. There was also a tin-roofed shelter type thing, with a large table and chairs under it, and it was there that we often ate lunch or snacks after being in the water.
Because being in the water was the only relief we could get. The house didn't have air-conditioning or heating (quite common in older houses in Australia), and so the heat made being inside unbearable. One memory I have is of my mother hanging bed sheets outside the back of the house to dry (because who needs a clothes dryer when you have the sun, I guess), and running in between the sheets just to feel the cool whisper of the damp cloth on my hot bare skin. It was on the same side of the house as the drying rack that I finally caught one of the small black lizards that I had been trying to capture since arriving. They were tiny, cute, and oh so fast. After showing it to every member of my family, I finally let it go, because I didn't know what to feed it, and we all liked having lizards in and around the house because they ate the spiders.

Once, in the winter when it was cooler, I woke up to hear a splashing in the pool, my bedroom window looking directly out to it. I went out my sliding glass door, and saw a rat that had fallen in and couldn't get out. I got my mother, and she called my father, and he said to push it under with the net skimmer and drown it. I think I started crying, and my mom told my dad not to be so callous, and if he wanted to drown it he would have to do it himself because she refused. All this time the rat was swimming, and getting slower and slower, and I finally grabbed the net and scooped it out. Then I dumped it over the neighbours fence, where it lay still, not moving. I ran to the kitchen and cut a chunk of cheese, and dropped it beside the small wet form. I spent maybe 1/2 hour watching over it, willing it to live and run away, before the sun got too hot and I had to go inside. Later that afternoon I checked again and the rat was gone, though the piece of cheese remained, covered in ants.

After that hottest weekend, we took my grandparents out to the country for a weekend. We stayed in a converted school house in the middle of a dry and dusty farm, with a few old eucalyptus trees for shade. Red dirt got into everything. I can't remember what we did, except for once us kids were loaded onto the back of a "ute" (basically a pick-up truck) in the morning, and we drove around with the farmer feeding his sheep. On one of our stops we saw the skeleton of a sheep that had died, and when no one was looking I grabbed the jaw bone (with teeth) and brought it with me. When we got back to the schoolhouse I showed it to my mom, and asked if I could keep it if I cleaned it. She said yes, so I put the bone in a pot and poured boiling water over it to "sterilize" it. I don't think it did the trick, and besides, after a while of sitting in the hot water a smell started to arise that smelt like cooking meat. That's when I dumped out the water and left the bone outside in the sun to dry. I ended up keeping it anyway, and I still have it today sitting on my bookshelf.

One morning in the schoolhouse, I got up early and went into the common area to read a book. I took a seat in the comfiest old armchair, and to my shock and surprise a giant hairy spider the size of my outspread hand ran out from under my bum and disappeared under the chair. I was too sleepy to scream, but instead I jumped up and called for my grandfather, who was making coffee. He and my mother came over, and when I told them about the size of the spider, we all started looking for it- in the chair cushions, under the chair, around the chair. We thought that it would have been impossible for something that size to hide for long, and after a while of not finding it I think we all started to think that maybe I had seen something else, or been confused, or exaggerating. I started to think that maybe I had still been dreaming.
However, eventually my grandfather tipped the chair over and on to its side. And there it was- clinging upside down to the chair springs, front legs waving at us menacingly, was the spider- bigger and hairier than any of us had ever seen before. It wasn't fat like a tarantula; rather, it's legs were thinner and longer and more "muscular" looking. My grandfather killed it with a broom, and when we showed the body to our host out of curiosity, he said that it was a wolf spider, and poisonous, though not deadly so.