They are not there.

Back in the summer, I returned to the neighbourhood where I spent a big part of my growing up years to discover that our neighbour's house was no longer there. The foundation was there and the front door, complete with the numbers, and the front steps were still entact, but the rest of it was simply not there anymore. The chunk of front step evoked the essence of what had been and, as always happens when I come across an empty space where a structure once stood, I had that feeling of air sweeping through in a way that it hasn't for about 100 years. The air circulated through that space in a certain pattern before the walls, for ages and ages, and then it did not and now it does again.

I picture the fights that were had within those walls , the groceries that were put away, and then cooked and eaten and discarded , the floors that were scrubbed, and the roof that was fretted over. The tea that was sloshed onto a table, the phone calls that were missed, the mirrors that were smudged, all the things that occurred within those impermanent walls that likely had once felt like they would never go away. It wasn't even a question. They just were. Perhaps the inhabitants secretly wished they would disappear or maybe they begged that they never would. Either way, those walls, between which doors were slammed and tentatively creaked open, they are not there anymore.

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I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

Growing Versions

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