an update with photos

I had a post written that I was going to post on Monday, but it seems somehow obsolete now. Instead, I'll just show you a bunch of photos and insert commentary.


Dan and I don't usually do anything special on Valentine's Day. We figure we have so much love in our life every day that to devote only one day to it seemed silly. We don't need commercial excuses to go out for dinner or do nice things for each other. So what ended up happening is that Dan picked me up and brought me back to the tap room while he did some stuff. I hung out, knitting (an easy project) while Sean the tap room manager poured me beer.  Oatmeal Porter, in particular. It was good. I had great conversations with a number of people about knitting, gardening, food, and pouring concrete.

Later Dan took me to one of Kinston's three Mexican restaurants for dinner. I am still not accustomed to the volume of food they give you in restaurants here.



Earlier in the day I had decided to make a little Valentine's decoration. I happened to have some love-colored card stock from when I was sending out heart butterflies last year, strung the hearts together with some yarn, and voila! A romantic gesture. Dan thought it was sweet.

 Dan recently acquired a musical saw. Did you know that there was such a thing? As in a saw made by Stradivarius and other makers of fine instruments? Well, Dan is one of those people who can just pick up an instrument and figure it out. He can play any sort of wind instrument (he played low brass in high school and university), and has been earnestly playing his banjo since he's been in North Carolina. He even built a canjo (banjo made from a can) and put up a YouTube video (flounderguts). Back to the saw, Dan was finding it a bit hard to handle at the end so, you know, he just whipped one up. He had a bit of mahogany laying around, zip zip on the bandsaw, a turn of the lathe, then attach it to the saw. As he was doing this, I tweeted it. It got noticed by Natalia Paruz, The Saw Lady. (Seriously, go check out her story, it's so inspirational!) 

(I am still trying to convince Dan that we should go to New York in June. I think that would be awesome. I have never been to New York).


In other news, I mentioned previously that we'll be having a St. Patrick's Day party. Dan's plan for the event is to make Corned Beef and Cabbage, one of the meals he prepares that are my favorite. On Saturday, we drove out to New Bern to meet a new friend and to do a bit of exploring. We had lunch at Spunky McDoogle's. 

 Yeah it was a bit kitschy but who doesn't love kitsch? It was on our way back that it started snowing, as I mentioned in my last post, so we headed back to Kinston.

The next day, since Dan couldn't go outside and work on the Dodge (cold, wet), we decided to take a trip to Goldsboro, about 35 miles from here. Since we had been expecting to move into our house by now (I mean come on, what is taking so long?), we hadn't unpacked our boxes of books from the truck. Dan wrapped each box in saran wrap before we left Canada. Dan covered the truck with a tarp the night it snowed but even with that, some of the boxes were wet. WE PANICKED.

 We brought all the books to the storage area at the brewery and unpacked/checked for damage. It wasn't as bad as we thought. It would really have sucked to have been carrying these books around all these years and then 3,600 miles only to lose them to a night of water damage. A few of the paperbacks were wrinkled but it was mostly the boxes that took the hit.

  I should add too that it was late Saturday night/Sunday morning that I got the message that my mum's aunt Mid passed away. She was 86 I think, had lost her husband (Unc) of 63 years in 2010 and immediately fell into dementia when he passed. She had a fall last year sometime and was put into a care home, but the stubborn old gal hung on I guess, until these last few weeks when she decided to leave. Mid and Unc were surrogate grandparents for me and my sister, since my mum's mom died when I was in grade 5 (1984?) and Grandpa died in 1992. Mid was the record keeper of the family, the one who kept in touch with everyone and always remembered every birthday. Her passing was not a sad one, but one of joy, since she can finally be together with her beloved. I can't help but think she was waiting for me to move to the US and get settled here so I wouldn't feel obliged to attend her funeral, as I have no doubt that the family shit will start flying soon. What better time to open old wounds and fling accusations than when a family matriarch has died? Yup, I'll be happy to avoid all that. My mum and sister will go to the funeral this Saturday in Kelowna, BC. I'll wait for news.

Right. On to happier things. Below is a photo of a chandelier that Dan built for the distillery. I don't think it is rigged up with lights just yet, but I believe it will have LEDs in it. The ceiling is made of recycled barrel staves and the wall made of recycled pallets.





This is the entrance/exit to Dan's office. Up by steep ladder/stair, down via slide.




Now that Dan and I are back together, we can eat meals together again. He's a great cook, did I tell you? Dan makes the best salads.

Thoughts on Love, no solid conclusions

After closing out my post yesterday, I got to thinking about the possible reasons why it is so hard for me to tell my loved ones I love them. At least in words. I can easily I say I love you in a hand knitted item, a batch of cookies, or some other symbolic gesture. Why do the words get stuck in my throat?

My mind reeled back to a memory of late June 1991. My mum had just left my dad (my sister and I knew it was coming, she had told us, but she didn't inform him until the day she left) the day before hand his life came crashing down. I had just finished grade 10, my best friend Jeremy had been in the hospital for a week having died from an asthma attack and then been revived, airlifted to the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton from where we lived in Wetaskiwin (roughly 50km away), and Jeremy was not likely to survive. A large group of friends was grieving the loss of our friend who would die at the age of 15, and we were all deeply traumatized.

When my mum left, my sister, then 12, opted to go with her. They took two of our three cats and my sister's dog, leaving me and the oldest cat with Dad. I was 16. My dad came home from work and just fell apart emotionally, something I had never seen before. He cried and told me he loved me - something I had never heard him say before. In that moment I gave the expected response, which was "I love you too" but the instant it came out of my mouth I knew it was not true. I regretted saying it. I never told my father I loved him again, and more or less vowed to myself that I would not say those words to anyone I did not actually love.

This is sort of along the same line of when I was 12, and my mother told me "don't get pregnant, it will ruin your life!" when what she meant was don't get pregnant until you are actually ready to be a mother, I must have subconsiously taken her literally because I knew even in my mid-20s that I didn't want to ever be pregnant or have children.

My family of origin was not affectionate. I always felt strange around my mother and ambivalent around my father. My sister was naturally an adversary, I being the big sister and we are three and a half years apart. After our parents split up we were more or less only children.

After a few months of being away from her friends, my sister decided to return to Wetaskiwin and live with Dad and after I finished grade 11 I moved in with Mum. I know I have told this story here before but I believe this time it is in a different context. I think the last time I wrote it, it was on the topic of being able to relate to men.

Back to the topic I meant to write about, which is my difficulty saying the words, I don't know if it will ever be possible, or if saying it out loud will make me cry, or if I'll just feel like a phoney even if I do say it out loud and mean it. I have tons of wonderful people in my life, many of them I am related to by marriage (I really won the in-laws lottery, I'm telling you), and... yet... I don't know.  Luckily all my loved ones love me and know I love them, and I bet they even know it's something I'm awkward about. Life goes on.

It only takes a moment

I witnessed a tall man in his 70s crash into the road as he fell off his bike, having underestimated his speed down the hill and the angle at which he needed to turn. I just happened to be looking out my window at that moment. He fell to the right and over his bars, doing a face plant (albeit the side of his face) on the pavement. No helmet.

I raced down the stairs and out the door in my bare feet to see if he was alright and what was needed. There was a woman that was driving a car that, had she not been there, he might have made the turn okay, but she was on her side of the road as he slid under her vehicle. Blood was streaming from his face, I raced back into the house to grab a blanket and paper towel. He had hit the ground hard and I knew he would be going into shock.

I took first aid a long time ago, and one of the few things I actually remember is that when someone has a shock like this, they are likely to lose body heat quickly so it's best to wrap them up. It was a warm sunny morning in Victoria, so there was no need for covering, but we did manage to get him sitting down on the grass. By the time he was sitting down, the ambulance was already on its way. I handed the roll of paper towel to one of the passersby and asked him to tear off a number of sheets to stop the bleeding, our man was bleeding in a number of places, most notably his eyebrow and out his nose.

The man was on his way to play tennis, and one of his tennis buddies happened upon the scene. He said he would relay the message to their tennis people that our friend would not be able to make it.

I offered to keep his bike here until he or someone could retrieve it.

The paramedics were here in no time, and of course the first thing they did was ask him questions, checking for concussion. He did seem a bit confused, he wasn't sure if he had been wearing a helmet or really what had even happened. Then they checked for spinal or shoulder injury, thankfully there was none. They managed to get him up walking to the ambulance, away they went, and I went back inside.

This scene has been playing itself out in my mind all day. When this kind of thing happens, we often tend to ask ourselves the "what if"s or consider that if the car had been at this point or if he had been wearing a helmet or if only... It's moments like these that (to me, at least) serve as reminders that we are on this planet for a short time and it could be our time to leave at any unplanned moment.

Later in the day our man phoned to say his daughter would be by this evening to retrieve his bicycle. She came, and said her dad had a broken arm and would require a pin, they were doing surgery this evening.

This incident wasn't exactly traumatic for me, but I do feel a bit rattled by it. Not in a sobbing emotional premenstrual sense, but it felt like a sort of reminder to be careful, stay safe, and tell your people you love them. That last one is a hard one for me. I can say it to my cat and my husband until I'm blue in the face but saying "I love you" to anyone else, including family, feels just so darned awkward. Anyway, I didn't mean for this post to head down the lane way of mush, so I'll wrap up here.

But before I go, I should give you a brief update: I'm in Victoria now back with my in-laws and things have been great. Sam has settled in comfortably and I really like the room I'm in. It's nice not driving anywhere. Still no word on my documents, but on Monday the 17th it will have been two months, so I'm checking for voice mail and email every two hours to see if they have tried to contact me.

a handmade wedding

Yesterday I went to a wedding with Toni and the Skipper. I had met the bride once before and the groom not at all, but at that one meeting the bride said "If you're still here on July 28th then please come to my wedding!" So I did.

It was lovely. My wedding was a handmade wedding so I could appreciate all the thought and preparation that went into this one. The couple lives on a 20 acre farm near Nanaimo and grow fruits, vegetables, chickens and ducks. (WHY didn't I take any pictures of the chickens and ducks? *kicks self*) It's a lovely farm and you can tell right away that a lot of work goes into its maintenance.

There were about 50 people there (I didn't count). We parked in a field, put our potluck offerings in the recently completed barn, and poked around the farm until we were summoned to the tent where the ceremony was to be held. The officiant was a relative of the groom but had legal authority, and it was a lovely ceremony. The bride had made her own outfit and the groom in his Scots attire.

The ceremony referred to passages and stories of the Bible without being too churchy. The bride and groom had written their own vows, which were each put in frames from which they read to each other. The groom's vows were very moving, the brides were decidedly earthy. Yup. The whole darn thing made me cry - not just from all the love present but for missing My Sweety. We got married almost four years ago and I know well that moment of marrying your best friend.

I will admit that I did fall into a bit of sadness after that, so when the ceremony was over I wandered around the property by myself, found the washroom (in the farm house), leered at the bride's three spinning wheels, snooped in the knitting basket, admired the strings of hanging herbs, counted five guitars, pet the sleeping cat, then headed back outside to say hello to the ducks and chickens before making my way to the WINE. After a bit of food, I suddenly felt human again (food is amazing for that, what with having calories and all) and able to socialize. I tried to convey my story (I have been apart from my husband for 14 months, haven't seen him for nearly six months) without seeking pity. People were delighted to hear that I have been volunteering at Providence Farm. I showed photos of my recently completed Indian Runner duck Bodum cosy (for a later blog post).

The dessert table will win me every time. The cheesecake was amazing. The carrot cake was good. Lots of cookies and squares and other sweet things. The wedding cake was a fruit cake, made and decorated by the bride.

Other items of interest: there was maple sap wine! (I'm sorry, the secret is out). Did you know you could make wine from maple sap? They also had blackberry wine as well as a number of other wines. The wedding favors were little jars of homemade jam and a bar of handmade soap. It was a lovely wedding and picnic, and it served as a good reminder to me of just how much I love parties. I'm not the most outgoing of people in a crowd of strangers, but you just never know what kinds of interesting conversations you might get into. I had a good time.

update on the rest of my life

In other news, I am now volunteering at Providence Farm three days a week. I help with seniors on Tuesdays, I'm in the greenhouse on Thursdays, and as of last week I am in the Loom Room on Fridays. O my word I must take a picture of the Loom Room, there are at least a dozen looms between table and floor looms. There are spinning wheels and sewing machines and patterns and books and yarn and more yarn and ribbons and buttons and a crafter's paradise! I learned how to weave on a floor loom last Friday and I was absolutely enchanted. Now I want one. Dan promised to build me one.

I love Providence Farm. I wrote about my experiences early on but each time I go my feeling of love for and from the place deepens. I am learning so much about myself and others. I am learning even more patience (who knew that was even possible?), I am learning how volunteers and caregivers dance around people with dementia, I am learning about plants (I discovered Korean Mint!), and that weaving is way faster than knitting. I spend my days around all kinds of people and the love just flows, it is so wonderful. I really hope there are other places like this in the world.

On this note, I wanted to share with you an experience I had there two weeks ago. There is a man who comes every few weeks with leftover bread from a local bakery, given free to St. Ann's Garden Centre (the program I volunteer for on Tuesdays). He is good friends with one of the older volunteers, and that particular day he had some friends with him, members of their church. They sat off at the far end of the room while I was in the kitchen extracting muffins from tins. The man led them through a prayer for one of their fellow congregates who, it sounded like, had recently been the victim of some legal injustice. I didn't hear the whole story, but I felt absolutely compelled to stop what I was doing with the muffins and join them in their prayer. It wasn't the words, because I couldn't really hear them, but the powerful feeling of love I felt coming from 40 feet away. I was filled with awe. I don't know how else to describe it. I was absolutely moved.

There was a time when I would have been irritated by someone praying in my presence. Irritated that they would bring their stupid Bible crap within my earshot. Nothing inspires ire in me more than JW's coming to the door and ambushing you with their cookie-cutter arguments for whatever objections you might have. I abhorred any kind of righteousness and assumed that all those of the Christian persuasion were out to convert the rest of us.

So, some of you know that I identified as Wiccan for ten years. I had no formal religious affiliation before that, though I was baptized Catholic (ha!) and I had been loosely studying Buddhism before I discovered Wicca and Paganism. When I walked away from Wicca, I walked away from religion entirely because, as a scientist (I have a piece of paper that declares me so), I did not believe in a god so religion just made no sense to me. That was in 2009. In the time since then I have had all kinds of realizations and reflections about where I'm at with my spirituality and religion. I stopped any practices or rituals I had previously done and I didn't miss it. I guess it was a time of secular reflection for me while my life was busy with other things.

I know I have mentioned here before, perhaps only in passing, about my experiences in the last six month with a friend who has recently blossomed into her psychic medium skills, about my introduction to A Course in Miracles, about my experiencing meditation as an actual discipline. I have had all kinds of interesting thoughts and conversations about this new-to-me material I have been engaging with and have been processing a lot of emotional baggage. My views about many things have changed, I have become way more forgiving and more patient (though I am not immune to emotional flare-ups from time to time!). I communicate with my cat telepathically and she responds. I visit the chickens when I'm sad and they heal me. I have experienced so many major shifts within in these last six months that even Toni is surprised at how much I have changed, and we spent a LOT of time together! So when I witnessed that prayer for a stranger two weeks ago, I knew that I had arrived at a new level with my spirituality.

I had dinner with some friends in Victoria last week. One of the friends asked me where I was at with my spirituality and religion, as she knew about my walking away from faith a few years ago. In all this transformation I have been going through these past months, I haven't really taken the time to articulate it, at least not in public. I journal about it all the time. Here is what I told her: "I went from having spent most of my life not believing in a God to having a nightly conversation with Him".

 
Just let that settle in for a minute.


So what does that mean? No, I'm not a Born Again anything. I'm not suddenly going to accept or take on a religion because I have (to use a cliche) found God. In fact I was (naturally) loathe to tell anyone about it because I don't want people to think I'm a new age freak. Instead, I will attempt to articulate this further (and I haven't even journaled about this yet, you are getting raw and uncut Stacey!): I think I had better start with my assumptions so you know where I am going.

I believe in reincarnation.
I believe in spirit guides, that we can communicate with our beloved dead, and we can communicate telepathically.
As of recently, I believe in angels.
I accept the teachings of A Course in Miracles which says that time and space are not real things, that what we are perceiving as our experience is not in fact real (I don't feel qualified to expand on that point to do it justice, at least not yet). The Course also teaches that there is only fear and love, and that fear is the absence of love, so when you are experiencing fear what you really need is love. (There are many good teachers who simplify the labyrinthine material of the Course, should you care to dabble).
I even believe in Jesus.
And now, I also believe in God.

So to fill in that frame a bit, if love is what we strive for, then every thing we do must be in pursuit of love. Love of self, love of others, love of all. In this view, we are all One, not separate, and that you are a reflection of a part of me that I need to engage with right now. I realize I am getting metaphysical here, but honestly this is where my mind has been in these last months. It has been amazing to turn a number of experiences in my life that I had formerly perceived as negative and see them now as gifts or opportunities for growth. If I believe that I have chosen this life for myself (and I do believe that), then I can blame no one for my suffering, and that I chose to experience suffering in order to learn... what? Well, each experience has something different to teach us. Just like we'll keep dating the same type of jerk until we learn to respect ourselves, at which point the Right Man will come along (it happened to me!)(Gosh I hope none of my ex-'s are reading this). I digress.

This is how I was able to go from "O no! I will be terribly inconvenienced by having to go to Montreal for my visa appointment" to "I have always wanted to go to Montreal and this will be a great opportunity! Maybe I will have some interesting experiences while I'm there!" In a way, it's re-framing or re-perceiving my experience in a positive way that has gotten me through this year of being without my husband. There have clearly been a bundle of things I needed to learn in this time that we've been apart that I probably would not have had the chance to if we were together.

WHEW. That was a lot to get out, a lot to tell you, dear reader, but I figured it was time I came out of the (what do you call it when you out yourself spiritually?) cave? (Ha - I accidentally typed 'cafe' instead of 'cave', which also makes an interesting metaphor ;-)) This is how I view my world now.

Oh! I just remembered the other big thing that has been occupying my brain for the last couple of weeks but it's getting late and I want to wrap up this blog post. Toni and I have been talking a lot about climate change, peak oil, permaculture, and the collapse of oil-based society as we know it. I have had my mind clamped on developing post-apocalyptic survival skills. I'm not going to get into it here but it sure has had me thinking lately. I embrace learning new skills and I am now really motivated to learn how to make a fire without matches or a lighter. I'll probably have a few posts about this, possibly several on the weekend (I'll have the house to myself!), so maybe we can start some interesting conversations about disaster preparedness.

One last thing: I will direct you to Toni's most recent post for an update about what's been happening around here. As of today Hen has hatched out five more chicks with a few more eggs to go. The flock is changing and CHICKS ARE SO CUTE OMG.

transplanting basil at Providence Farm

On any given day there are probably at least a hundred people there. There are no name tags, there is no clear distinction between who is staff, who are the volunteers, and who are the program participants. Today I learned that that some of the participants come to Providence Farm as a part of their rehab from alcohol or drugs. Others have developmental or mental disabilities. Some are seniors.

When we all join together for morning coffee or for lunch, you never know who you'll sit at the table with. Hello, my name is so-and-so. New faces are immediately identified. "What brings you to Providence Farm?" "How long have you been coming here?" It is so welcoming and loving and non-judgmental. Today I was joined by a young couple with their four-month old baby who were just doing a tour of the Farm. I was finished my lunch first, so I offered to hold baby Henry so his dad could eat his burger with two hands. I could not have predicted I would hold a baby today.

It's an interesting thing, being in an environment where you encounter people from different walks of life. It is a great teaching of radical acceptance, and when we are all on this same level ground, there is only room for love. I think I mentioned before that I have felt like I was 'hugged' by the Farm. Today, while I was transplanting basil for the greenhouse, I felt overwhelmed by the feeling of love that the Farm exudes, and I was mindful of what an awesome (and I mean 'awesome' not in the contemporary diluted sense, but the former meaning of feeling awe) feeling that was. There have not been many places in this world where I have felt that.

That's one of the things I like about Providence Farm, you check your prejudices at the door, everyone is accepted, everyone is respected. We all have gifts to offer and roles to play. I spent most of my time today transplanting baby basil plants into bigger pots, but really I was there engaging with community. Sometimes simply being present is all that is required.

Everyone we meet has something to teach us. The baby I held today taught me that it's okay to spend ten minutes bouncing for the sheer delight of someone else. The recovering addict taught me that we can always improve ourselves no matter what is going on in our lives. The First Nations lady I spoke to today taught me that family is important. The silent man with Downs Syndrome who followed me around for four hours today taught me that - what? I don't know. It was mildly flattering. He did not say a word today, and maybe that was the lesson. It's okay to be silent. In the space that that silence takes up, my own healing happens.

Where Home Is

I often get asked where home is. Since I met my husband five years ago, home has been wherever we are together. He and I have both moved a lot in our life, during childhood as adults, we have now lived in three different places together, soon to be a fourth.

So when I get asked this question lately, I often don't know how to answer. I feel the same way when asked "where are you from?" because I am from a lot of places. Where I am from in the conventional sense did not fit me so I left it (several times). I grew up in Alberta, and even though I stayed there for five months after I got back from living in Asia, and three months last summer, it sure never felt like home as most people mean it. My family is still there, but it's their home, not mine.

I have spent most of my adult life on Vancouver Island, minus a couple of years in Asia and the aforementioned eight months in Alberta. I have lived in Victoria, East Sooke, Ucluelet, and now Cowichan Bay. Until a couple of weeks ago, I would refer to my current circumstance as staying here, but now I guess I can say I am living here.

Words are interesting things. If the Universe was to take me literally, and here me say that I'm "staying" here in Cowichan Bay, on Vancouver Island, in Canada, then maybe that is what is holding up my immigration process. The Universe thinks I want to stay here, as in stay put. But really, I am living here. It's not like I stopped living when I moved in. And I may be temporary, but I live here nonetheless. I was telling Toni a few weeks ago that it felt weird to me when I would return from being out for the day and tell my cat that I'm "home"; I had been referring to myself as being "homeless". I realized, in saying that, that it was not true. I have lived in four different homes in the last year! I am rich in homes! And I don't have to pay any mortgages!

I am lucky that I have always had somewhere to go, even if I haven't been able to be with My Sweety. I had another home offered to me yesterday, although temporary (while person is in the UK for a month), and I feel like the Universe is trying to tell me something. I will always have a place to live, be it with friends or family or because of them. Perhaps I had been harbouring fears about homelessness?

This is not the whole picture, when it comes to being at home. Again, having moved around so much, I have learned that I can be comfortable in a number of places, and I have a sense of what feels like a good safe space to gravitate to. I suspect, though, that this has not only to do with a physical place, but also within myself. I am very at home within myself, and let me tell you that was a powerful thing to realize.

I spent many years trying to be someone else (who? I don't even know). I twisted myself into pretzels trying to be who I thought the boyfriend-du-jour wanted me to be. I bore the family condescension of not having a "real job" or being "settled". I tried fitting myself into groups and wore masks and costumes (figuratively as well as literally) to see if that was me. Then, about five years ago, something happened. It was so subtle I almost missed it.

It was around the time that I was applying for grad school.  I had been looking for love for so long (age 32-33), I finally decided to let Jupiter (career) influence me instead of Venus (love). I had more or less given up on finding a spouse/partner/mate in pursuit of my career. It was in that two week period of being accepted into grad school that I met my husband. This is how I know both things were right for me - they were both meant to happen.

When I met Dan, I was 'in my cups', meaning I had had a few beers, it being St. Patrick's Day and we were out with friends. I wasn't expecting to be engaging socially in the flirtation department, in fact, I didn't even realize I had been flirting until the night was over! So on that night, Dan got to see the real me with my guard down. That was the me he fell in love with.

From the beginning he has always told me I was beautiful. That was something I had always wanted in a partner but never got. My vanity needed that. He made me feel good about myself in a way that had never happened before.

Now, five years later, I am happily married to him. We have been apart for more than ten months now and we both know our marriage is rock solid. Knowing I am so "at home" in my relationship, it came time for me a few months ago to confront my vanity and shave my head, stop wearing makeup. I knew Dan would be okay with it and love me no matter what. He referred to my lack of makeup as not having a mask on. So he really did fall in love with the me underneath my coiffing (not that I was a high-maintenance Barbie doll or anything, but I did use to devote time in the morning to my appearance).

I have had really short hair before, but it when I was single and had low self-esteem. I felt very unattractive and unsexy, and therefore I was. This time it is different. I am now, very at home in myself, in fact I love myself, and I feel good in my skin.

Thus ends my discourse on home. The word has all kinds of meanings for me, and the answer I give you if you ask me will depend on how philosophical you want to get about the meaning of home.

Luckily, I'm not pregnant

Dan woke up this morning and told me about a dream he had where I was pregnant, in labour, then gave birth to twins.

EEK!

Even before the brutally difficult pregnancy & labour my sister went through with her first child, I had decided that I didn't want to have children. It's true! I'm a woman and I don't want children. Fancy that. I had many reasons:
- at the time, I was planning to go work in third world countries
- I was single
- I could barely take care of myself and my cat, let alone another human being
- I was simply not interested in producing offspring
- I didn't want to do that to my body

I had my mind made up, and I had seen a number of doctors that supported my decision. I was 32 at the time. I was in line to see a gynecologist to talk about having a tubal ligation.

A few months before my appointment with the specialist, I saw an astrologer. He said that there would be something around my reproductivity happening around July 18th (I think, I don't recall the exact date), and that was the exact date that my appointment with the gynecologist was scheduled for. Spooky, right?

The day before this appointment, I was standing at the sink, washing dishes, when I had sudden excruciating pain in my abdomen and I was on the floor, curled up in a ball, crying in agony. I thought my appendix was bursting.

I laid down to see if it would pass (I had a beach volleyball game to go to that afternoon), and when it didn't, I had the friend I was living with drive me to the hospital.

O, hospitals. Where you have to be bleeding on the floor with a dismembered limb if you want service right away... I must have waited four hours in that room. Someone brought me a sandwich and some water, because this was turning into an all-afternoon event. Eventually the (young, cute) doctor came in and asked me about an ovarian cyst. No, I said, I think it's my appendix. (Appendix? Appendics? Something doesn't look right in this spelling). He got out the wheely-ultrasound thingy and said, sure enough, I had a cyst the size of a grapefruit.

shock

Then he said "sometimes these things go away on their own. Here is some pain medicine. Come back if it happens again. We've scheduled you to see a real sonographer (ultrasound) tomorrow."

So the next morning I had a proper full-blown ultrasound (the wheely one was just to get a rough idea). She confirmed. O boy.

That afternoon, I made my way to the gynecologist, as scheduled. He said "I see you're here about getting a tubal ligation but obviously we have to deal with this first."

duh

Then there was another "sometimes these things go away by themselves, here is more medicine, go back to emerg if it happens again..."

A few hours later I was back in emerg. They put me on a gurney, I was in PAIN and it took breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably to have the Magic Nurse Dave appear with the Morphine. I loved Nurse Dave in that moment.

Ahhh.

The doctor came at some point (morphine blur kicks in) and told me I was being admitted, but the ambulance would come come and take me from the Royal Jubliee Hospital (downtown Victoria, where only cardiac and geriatrics are handled) to the Victoria General Hosptial (in Langford, just outside of Victoria, where pediatrics and gynecological issues are addressed). It's about a 20-minute drive.

The paramedics were nice, as I vaguely recall, and on the way they had a bazillion questions of me. Who knows what I told them. Did you know that morphine is great?

I'm pretty sure it was well past midnight when I was rolled into my room. The night nurse came and asked me more questions. A gynecological surgeon came and asked me some more. This is where it gets good. He said "I see you are wanting a tubal ligation..." so I told him my spiel. I have been rattling off my spiel about not wanting kids for so long, that even in my morphine-induced state, I sounded coherent, articulate. Then this lovely doctor said "well, it sounds like you're sure, so we might as well tie your tubes and remove the cyst at the same time".

Music to my ears! I loved that doctor, whoever he was.

So it was the next day I went in, they did some stuff in the OR, and I came out with a wee four inch scar just above my pubic line. I woke up with a catheter. Did you know catheters are GREAT? You don't have to do anything! You just look over and see that there is a bag of pee. I loved that.

A couple days later, I went home. Went back to work (a sweet summer job at UVic) a week later and took things easy. What I found the hardest was not so much the pain but how tired I got. Everything exhausted me. What was previously a 13-minute walk to the bus stop was now a 35-minute ordeal. I had a cane, thank the heavens, for I could not have made that walk unaided.

Over the years, before and after this surgery, I have been told countless times "When you find the right man, you'll change your mind [about wanting children]". A year after this surgery, I found the Right Man. I was worried in the months that followed the surgery, that it would be hard for me to meet men that would be willing to be with me and not have children. So when I met Dan, I got it on the table the first night. Guess what? He didn't care! He was perfectly happy either way.

Whew!

So this whole not-having-kids thing has sat with me so long, I forget sometimes that other people do want kids. Most of the couples I know, hetero and queer, are also of the not-wanting-kids variety. It's liberating, really. Not that I'm disrespecting those who choose to procreate, but it's nice to be among people who don't think less of us because we are choosing not to.

I could easily launch into a tirade now about the things breeders say about non-breeders, but I don't want to go there. This is a happy post.

When we hear from friends announcing that they are expecting, I am always a bit confused on how to respond. Is this good news? Is the couple happy about this? Was it planned? Well, after finding out this data, I can then be happy for them. Babies are fun to knit for, after all. :-)

Last night we had some friends over and the conversation turned to financial planning for the future. It had never occurred to me that, because we don't have kids, we don't have that expense - food clothing shelter school extra-curricular activities vacations university etc. We do, however, have three nieces and a nephew that have a really great Auntie Stacey and Uncle Dan.