There is a learning process you go through in order to find that connection with the Divine, and it is a lifelong learning process. It will only stall if you stop trying.

One of my prayers had been, ‘Please make the lessons obvious because subtlety is sometimes lost on me and I need obvious lessons!’ Ever hear the old adage ‘Be careful what you ask for…’. Yeah. I got lessons but I didn’t see them as such until much later. I let myself get discouraged and beaten down. At least twice a year I could, without fail, expect all shit to hit the fan, whether it was a job loss or vehicle breakdown. I expected it to happen. I didn’t know then, that my own mindset was part of why it happened. Unfailingly, once in spring and once in the autumn, either one major crisis or a plethora of them would come crashing into my world totally throwing every sense of security out the window.

It’s taken me until now to realize that the voice of the Creator speaks in the events of our lives as well as the quiet of our hearts.

I have been going through a lot of life changes recently, for the better. There are things I am feeling very positive and excited about. There are also daunting tasks (winter is coming, how’s the wood supply?), frustrations (will my house ever get cleaned and will my children ever quit baiting one another?) and setbacks (living on a mountain with 50 plus junk cars, shouldn’t the odds of us having one that DIDN’T need work be better?).

I have plugged into a wonderful group of people near me that I am learning a lot from. I still feel like I need direction and part of me still feels lost, while another part feels like I am on the right path. I know confronting those fears is tantamount to success. To truly believing I am able to pull my family up out of poverty, that nothing will stop me.

It came home to me about three weeks ago when I heard a very wise and honest young man named William Gamble speak. He said, in his presentation, “When the student is ready, the teachers will appear.”

I feel I am a ready and willing student. But there is no hall pass labeled Easy in this school of life. We overcome hardship and are stronger for it. That way, we can overcome the next and become stronger still. Until our spirits burn so brightly we truly shine.

The path I have been on from last year to this, from then to now has been a journey. Self discovery. Forgiveness. Facing your fears. Letting go of things I can’t control. Knowing and really bringing home the lesson that the only person I can truly have a say in being is me. Not my husband. He makes his choices. Not my children. It is my job to teach them right and live by example. That seems to be the bottom line.

Living by example. This means living on faith. Belief. This does not mean discouragement won’t come. As I am writing this I am ending a week that has been very discouraging. I have a lot of questions even yet about the paths I have chosen to take. Keeping the belief in my heart and keeping the faith that life is looking up can be a hard image to hold on to. But it’s not all about me anymore. Not with the passel of kids I have depending on me.

When the student is ready, the teachers will appear.We cannot say who, or what, those teachers will be. When we are receptive to Divine guidance, we must learn to hold faith, believe and receive. When we are ready to receive, the changes come fast. It blows me away. Such are the nature of miracles.

There is an amazing video out there that was recommended to me. It was produced in 2006 and it is called The Secret. You can also access information on it at www.thesecret.tv. It will make all the difference.

We have one life to live. We will make mistakes on our journey. We always have choices. If we choose to stay passive and do nothing, that is still a choice and our life will reflect it. However, should we choose to light a fire under our…hearts…we have the power to make changes in our lives that are amazing. We will then be the living example we should be, and the light of the Divine will shine from us on our walk. What a wonderful way to live!

I asked myself repeatedly why I had volunteered to do a job I knew nearly nothing about.  I kept asking that question.  I prayed about that question.  And through the long, arduous, pain in the ass process answers came to me in bits and pieces.

There is no doubt in my mind that the woman renting from Norby is in a domestic situation.  She spoke grateful words, but underneath there was this intense level of hostility that I did not like.  Not because it may not have been justified, but because it triggered in me something I didn’t like.  My own past came to the forefront and I really, really, REALLY wanted to haul off and smack this woman on more than one occasion.  Dealing with her in her hostility triggered that smash-it-down abuser quality I learned from my father, that aspect of myself I despise and struggle with.  My struggles with it now usually happen when I am very tired or extremely stressed.  Yet it is still there.  Strike out in anger.  Smack her upside her rude, ungrateful head.  I was ashamed of myself for having those thoughts.

I had tried to make friendly overtures to her.  The place was so Spartan, unwelcoming.  Empty beer boxes stacked by the front door.  When she once walked into the kitchen and I saw her face in the light I saw evidence in her face of long term alcohol use or abuse.  Her skin was pasty and mottled; her face bearing that swelling from kidneys that had processed so many toxins flushing the system of water was a chore.

I had taken time away from my family and schoolwork to fix something for this person.  She hadn’t even attempted to fix it on her own, which baffled me.  I’m a Montana girl, born and bred and I don’t know how they do things in Michigan, but here, if you have a problem you either fix it yourself or ask one of your friends or neighbors who might be able to help.  I was confused, and so was Norby, as to why she didn’t contact him about fixing it.  There was supposed to be a roommate that was fixing it, and he was doing nothing about it.

I wanted Norby to have peace of mind.  With that tumor taking up room and pressing on his memory circuits, he needs all the peace of mind he can get.  He has no family, and so far as I can tell, no one looks in on him.  This really bothers me because he is a really cool man.  He was crazy to trust me with his plumbing, but he did it anyway.  Now, that man either has a lot of faith or a lot of hope and I like being around people like that.  They are good teachers.

So, GM and I went home Tuesday night.  Wednesday came when we were supposed to return, at nine o’clock that night, but we had another family crisis when S had to put GM’s father B in the hospital.  He has pneumonia.  And a mass on his lung.  Needs and MRI.  Knows his time is coming.  It has been almost a year since B’s brother K died.  Will be a year the 29^th of this month.  B told me today that he wants to cremated and scattered on our land.  He told me he wouldn’t hurt the kids or nothing, just watch them play.

So I had called Kelly and told her we wouldn’t be there.  Told her I would come in the evening after class Thursday.  Norby met me there and I had the parts and thank God for Teflon tape.  Finally, I got the fittings on.  Just about that time, the roommate made and appearance with his girlfriend Sparky.  I don’t know if that was her real name and I don’t care.  Judging from her mouth and attitude, she had earned it.

The roommate’s name was Ken and he was shitface drunk.  Wow.  Put me on my Big Surprised face.  He proceeded to inquire how it was going and expound at length as to why he had decided he wasn’t going to fix anything under there because it would have been such a pain in the ass, blah, blah, fuck you, blah blah.

I needed another wrench and a breather and asked Norby to take me to his shop a block away to get it.  He had commented on my lack of communication once Ken and Sparky arrived. I told Norby that I had a low tolerance for drunken assholes so I was going to keep my mouth shut if I could.  He laughed and told me that was sometimes the best recourse.

We got back and I got everything attached, turned the water supply on under the house, turned it off again very quickly to fiddle some more.  I was running into some problems.  Like the fact the house and plumbing were old enough the ONLY water shut off valve was under the house, coming up out of city water.  And it leaked when you shut it off because it had been run in the early part of the township construction.  Not even close to being up to code.  The plastic drain fitting I had purchased was bumping into the metal pipe and I had cross threaded it.  So, when I loosened it to fix it, the pliable plastic threads had stripped.  I almost started bawling.  The faucet we had purchased fit in the sink, but the old pipes were too tall so it sits up above the sink leaving a ridiculous looking gap.  I really didn’t care as long as it worked.  Then the drunken expert came in and started messing with it, trying to push the faucet down.  I tried to explain but it didn’t penetrate the fog.  So I had to get a lot more firm.  He kind of got the hint, coupled with Sparky screaming at him to “Leave her the fuck alone, she knows what she’s doing!” (Ha! I though. Shows what you know!).

Finally all was hooked up.  There were no noticeable leaks.  I turned the kitchen faucet on.

Nothing. NOTHING. No water.  Just a tiny drip.

Every other faucet in the house worked, just not that one.  I was floored.  There were no other valves so it wasn’t a water shut off.  We all agreed there was a blockage somewhere.  Where?  I was dumbfounded.  So was Norby.  Then the drunken guy went it, unscrewed the faucet end and turned the water faucet on.  It worked! There was some sand or tiny rocks that had blocked the faucet.  The guy started going on and on about how there was a ‘Piece of shit” stuck in there and he pulled it out and yes sir now it worked and if he hadn’t pulled that piece of shit out there would have never been water.  I told him he did a good job trying that since no one else had thought about it.  I noticed it was still leaking through the drain pipes and he went on and on about the piece of shit in the faucet.  As I was under the sink cleaning up he started talking about how he fixed the sink.  I just shook my head.  The one drain pipe was still not stable.  The threads had been stripped too far.  But I’ll be damned it I was going to bend over backwards on this project anymore.  I was done.  I Tef taped the hell out of it and called it good.  There was still a small drip but I told her to just keep the ice-cream bucket under there and keep an eye on it.  I didn’t volunteer to come back and fix it if it all blew apart.  In fact, I told her that this was the only time I would work on it.  A man I like and respect very much needed a hand with his income property.  These tenants may very well screw him over.  Kelly’s stuff isn’t in storage; she sold it all to move over here.  Her ‘boyfriend’ works in asbestos cleanup, which would be a pretty damned high paying job around here.  She lives in a shithole shack and keeps all her receipts.  But she is not a woman who is looking for a way out.  If she was, I would have been all over it.  But she is not.

I told Kelly to keep the cupboard door open so her nearby heater could help dry it out under there.  They were all happy it was working.

“Bathroom faucet’s broke too!” spouted Ken, “You coming back to fix that too?”

“Absolutely not!” I replied.

Ken started ogling the patchwork pipes and saying that he could ‘straighten out and brace up’ a section of pipe down there, it needed to be done, etc.  I told him politely that it would hold.  Alcohol seems to fog hearing as well.  So I interrupted him to speak in a louder, more firm voice in a language he could comprehend.

“Dude, if you lay a hand on those pipes I will kick you in the balls so hard your fucking head will fly off!  Everything under there is being held together by Tef tape and a prayer and if you touch them I will probably have to kill you.”

Norby’s cute when he chuckles.

I gathered his tools I had borrowed and walked him home. 

“I’m curious,” he said in his velvet smooth, gentle and well articulated voice, “What the motivation in all this was.  You are doing this for nothing.  You’ve paid for the parts.  What is this?”

Damned good question, I thought.  I mulled it over for a minute.

“About thirteen years ago I prayed really hard for teachers.  I had a lot of questions in my life.” I told him

“I got ‘em too.  Some of them are pretty hard teachers.  Things seem to go wrong and get all screwed up.  But the lesson is in learning to deal with the hardships and see what you learned from them.  To be a stronger and better person.  And to try and give some of that to other people, if that makes sense.”

“Perfect sense.” Norby told me.

The lesson here is in learning priorities.  Learning when to take on other peoples burdens and when to put them down.  Lessons of friendship.  Lessons of teamwork. Learning from those who you may not think could teach you.  Praying for healing to come to the lives of those you want to smack upside the head.  Trying to find that spark in a person that does a good job seeing something you couldn’t and giving that spark a boost of good mojo by blowing some gratitude its way.

Most of all maybe, of letting someone who may not have anyone know that he isn’t alone in the world.

GM and I will check on Norby.  There are more things going on with him that don’t involve plumbing and won’t suck the life out of me that we could help him on.  I would love to see my husband work with him more.  My husband needs role models like this gentle man.

As I had wiped up the last of that water underneath that disaster of a sink I said a prayer of thanks.

Lesson learned.

I have really out done myself lately.  I told my husband I must be suffering from some sort of displaced hero syndrome or something equally bazaar.

Rewind to last Friday evening.  GM had the kids at home so I could finishing up laundry in town.  This is also my time to get away and do something solitary, or not, as it strikes me.  I decided, after briefly visiting a friend, to go on a walk around the town.

We have had a very long Indian summer, up until today when we have had rain and snow showers.  Nothing to stick yet, just Mother Nature’s early warning system of the season to come.

As I wandered town I was struck by the memories of this once small area grown larger.  I kept running into bits and pieces of myself on different streets.  Here, behind Duval’s, an empty lot where a very nice old Italian man had once lived.  I was very, very small.  I was with Mother. I have no idea who he was or what we were visiting him for.  He was very old and I loved the lyric music of his Old World accent.  I think he died long ago back then.  I remember he was lonely.  He had no family here.  Perhaps he was going back somewhere.  It was too long ago.

Just around the corner from Duval’s was our town’s original main street.  What had once been the post office, Krueger Drug, the Christian Bookstore and a lawyer’s office was now a few office buildings interspersed with vacancies.  My childhood best friend, Maria, and I used to pick my Mother’s flowers and sell them as bouquets by the fistful for a few coins to go buy candy.  We even got away with it a couple times before Mom yelled at us for picking her flowers, not realizing we were actually capitalizing on our destruction.

I wandered past the fire hall, down the street near the place GM lived during our separation, in the little shack that had memories for me dating back to high school.

I noticed a garden on the street and next to these beautiful sunflowers was this gorgeous plant about five feet tall and dripping with foot long magenta clusters of flowers.  I thought I knew what it was, and being the plant freak I am, I had to go over and look.  There were some young men sitting on the steps of the house and I asked if it was their garden then asked for permission to come over an openly gawk.  A handsome young man who introduced himself as Sky confirmed my suspicions.  It was the grain amaranth, also known, Sky informed me, as Love Lies Bleeding.  I didn’t know it would grow here in Montana, much less be so beautiful.  I have an open invitation to come back when the grain is ripe if it doesn’t freeze first.

I soon noticed a person walking over.  I have a big mouth and a loud laugh and the laughter must have drawn him.   It was Norby, GM’s old landlord.  I bid Sky good evening and proceeded to speak to Norby.  Turns out the rumor GM and I had heard about his having brain cancer is true.  Norby has a tumor in his brain.  He hasn’t been to see a doctor in a long time.  He probably couldn’t remember if her had.  It was soon evident when he told me he couldn’t remember me or GM, who had rented from him for over two years.

Norby is the owner of a couple rentals.  To say they are falling down pieces of crap would be not only accurate, but generous.  He has always rented out his places as ‘fixer-uppers’, encouraging tenants to do their own repairs in exchange for rock bottom rent prices.  Needless to say this has not always worked to his advantage, since the tenants who can usually afford rock bottom rent aren’t usually the kind of tenants that are highly skilled in the areas of things like, say, plumbing issues.  It doesn’t serve the tenants really, either, to rent these places.  They should all be bulldozed really, but we have a mentality here in Montana sometimes of mending up those broken down things.  And we’re just plain cracked at times as well.

Norby is an older guy, served his time over in Vietnam.  Apparently I have some sort of magnet.  There is also a connection between Vietnam vets and hoarding, at least in the two instances I am familiar with.  Only Norby doesn’t hoard dogs, just ‘useful’ stuff.  Beautiful stuff to mess around with, he called it.

So here is me, hearing his story, his frustration, especially his frustration with his current and only tenant in the largest of these three rentals.  The couple had some guy rooming with them.  Said guy kept telling Norby he’d fix the leak under the sink but instead was off fixing someone else’s house.  meanwhile water was leaking and no doubt doing more damage to the already damaged space under the sink.  The man has major problems.  This is near to his only income other than whatever he may get for disability or VA stuff.  It just didn’t seem right to not help.

I thought, ‘Leak under the sink?  How hard is that? I’ve done that for Mom before!  Some new pipe and tef tape, no prob!”

Isn’t the road to hell supposed to be paved with good intentions or something?

Norby was on his was over to talk to this woman about the leaks.  I volunteered to put on my Good Samaritan cape and tag along.

Her name is Kelly.  When we got there and Norby asked to speak to her, she wouldn’t let us in the house because, she told us, her boyfriend was sleeping.  Odd, I thought.  It was chilly and drizzling out.

When I began to ask when I could come over to check out the pipes, she told me Tuesdays were her day off which is my field work day at the college.  I inquired about her weekend schedule.

“Oh, no.” she said in her east coast just-moved-from-Michigan drawl. “My boyfriend’s home on the weekends and all my time is taken up by him.  You can’t come here on the weekend.”

Huh.  Red flag #1.

I was completely sympathetic.  So I asked her, if I was really quiet if I could come in and take a quick glance under the kitchen sink.  She agreed, somewhat reluctantly.  There was a comment made in passing about the leaky faucet and me, being the kind of person who will actually sometimes only be able to focus on one thing at a time, sort of let that wash over me.  Besides, I was on a stealth mission and silence plus rapid assessment were my goals.

Walking in to that house though, was more than a bit like walking into a minefield.  The place was very neat.  It was the air that held the charges.  Deep, tightly held, with an almost palpable viscosity to it.  I kept my voice low and quiet, but on one point, in peering under the sink at plumbing from when my parents were married in the 50s, I chuckled a little too loud, my voice grew above a whisper and Kelly shushed me, her “SH!” falling like a dagger between my shoulders.

So that’s the way it is here, is it? I thought.

I discussed a plan of action with Norby and the tension at my back grew until she curtly asked us, “Are you done here?” and we got up to go outside.  We hadn’t even been in three whole minutes.

I told them I would come back Tuesday.  Kelly said that was her day off and her boyfriend of twenty years was only home on weekends.  I spoke a bit more with her.  Just moved over from Michigan.  No friends or family here.  Doesn’t know anyone.  Works within walking distance.

I was aware of a whole other level of communication going on.  I don’t know if Kelly was aware of it, I know Norby wasn’t.  This is what I got that wasn’t being said;

This is my place.  You have to be careful here.  No one comes around when my boyfriend is here.  It’s not safe then.  You come when I tell you.  When it’s safe.  When it’s ok.  Only if you come to fix stuff.

At least that’s what I got out of it.

Tuesday rolled around and all hell broke loose for us.  My second Monday, having missed my Resources Calculations class on Monday.  Our explorer’s tire had gone flat Monday night so we decided to drive the Bronco in Tuesday.  Until its transmission started to majorly screw up.  I ended up thumbing a ride with a nice lady who lives up our way.  She gave me an my older school kids a ride into town and cell phone service, then dropped me off at my mom’s while she took my daughter to the junior high.  I owe her one, I tell you, and I love living here for the kindness of strangers.

GM called to tell me he had the Bronco running enough to limp it to town.  So, early in the afternoon I went over to Kelly’s after calling.  She and Norby were waiting.  It was then they showed me the faucet and how I missed it, well, I missed it.  It wasn’t just leaky, it was broken.  The pipes underneath were out of alignment and a mix of plastic, copper brass, and maybe even lead.  When I looked at the faucet the corrosion on the fixtures was something a stalagmite cave would envy.  I called GM.

This is where I am kicking myself for not seeing if I could have maybe just replaced the handles and washers in the faucet.  I probably couldn’t have but after last night I would have tried it had I known.

I arrived at Kelly’s at 3:30 yesterday afternoon.  By 11:30 yesterday evening, GM and I were taking a couple huge water containers over to Mom’s to fill up until we could get the parts we need to maybe, hopefully, with direct Divine intervention and a plain old miracle, fix that piece of shit sink enough it doesn’t spray water every time the main is turned on.  The whole house out to the city water needs to be renovated.

Here’s a lesson from this: You volunteer to help someone do something then there will be a liability and responsibility to make it right if there is a screw up.

Here’s another lesson: When you volunteer to help someone, make sure it is not a soul sucking venture, especially on the day your cars crap out and it being the eve of a big test you haven’t studied for.

Kelly wasn’t too happy with us.  For one, we were there way longer than it felt safe for us to be there, even with her boyfriend out of town.  She has two beautiful husky mix dogs.  The one, Chevelle, with her floppy bobbed over ears and blue eyes was most intrigued by the hole in the floor leading under the house.  Cloe, the shy sheltie/husky cross of one blue eye and one brown warmed up after the first few hours enough to come ask for pets.  When GM came in the house, Chevelle tucked her tail and barked.  For a while.  She hadn’t done that to me or Norby for that matter.  Just the younger man in the baseball cap.  Huh.  Dog’s afraid of men.

What red flag am I on here?

House neat but Spartan.  A couple candles.  Knick Knacks to a bare minimum.  Could be everything’s in storage….could be my imagination?

My gut doesn’t think so.

Finally, after GM working for HOURS on that faucet, we were leaving.  I knew she wasn’t happy, but she thanked me.  Thanked me for all my hard work.  Just me.  My husband had worked more hours on it than I had.  Why wasn’t she allowed to see him?

Really, I am afraid to know the answer to that.  I am afraid I already do.

It sits above my brows like a low level drift, thick, impenetrable, sometimes with a low level buzz that keeps me on the edge of irritation at all times and is most likely caused but an overabundance of caffeine sizzling through my bloodstream.  This is the fog in my head. I have been asking myself lately, “What the fuck were you thinking, going back to school in the fall semester instead of waiting for spring?”

I do this to myself periodically. I have some diabolical insane part of me that decides that life isn’t stressful enough trying to live the life of a modern pioneer, with children,  but I must further complicate it by going beyond the bounds of even my own oft times questioned sanity.

Sometimes I think I have two crazy people sharing my brain that are in a constant competition of one-upsmanship.

Then I reflect in a more relaxing moment that I went back to school after a lot of thought and prayer and after truly feeling as if that were the direction I were being guided in.  The challenge is to try and keep on top of it all.

Keeping on top of it is something I aspire to like a crack addict hoping for the next fix.  Problem is I have no supplier and me and organization is not something that goes together.  ‘Keeping on top of it’ implies that I should have (sh)it all together in a tidy pile to be able to surmount it.  Reality shows in fact, that it is in a constant state of cave-in and I am more like an ant scrambling madly up the perpetually sliding sand hill.

My husband has accused me of being a hummingbird, flitting from one thing to another and never finishing.  I do finish things….just not all together or all in the same day.  He doesn’t realize that I have many personality aspects vying for control in my head.  They don’t always agree on what should come first.  So I end up sabotaging myself in quite a few areas and productive turnout is pathetic.

Take my kitchen for example.  My hearth.  The center of health, communion and sustenance for my family.  The place that, traditionally, as a mother, should be warm and peaceful, a place of nourishment for mind, body and spirit.

What I have for a kitchen is a 15 foot camp trailer.  It has two bunks that are used as storage spots.   The regular table broke and I tried having a small coffee table in there.  It serves as a place to pile stuff.  Some useful, some not so.  The same can be said for the seats.  In fact, the seat by the door is piled with boxes from our storage unit and cases of canned goods from the case lot sale at B & B last month.  I have a small propane cookstove barely large enough for a cake pan and not tall enough to brave baking an actual loaf of bread.  I only have an icebox style fridge, so in the summer months there are things I just don’t buy.  Like mayonnaise, butter or milk.  They spoil too quickly.  We get either enriched rice or almond milk, which keeps longer, or powdered milk, which tastes disgusting but works for cooking.  We can’t keep ice long enough in the coolers.  If we buy fresh produce it needs to be eaten within one or two days max to prevent spoilage.  This does not always happen so I always have a gallon of white vinegar on hand to kill off the science experiment that grows inside dark moist coolers when vegetables or dairy products cross over to the other side.

It’s not like I don’t know what I should be doing.  I know there are things I could or should do.  Sometimes I even make lists.  Where I consistently fail is in the practical application.  Often I feel as if I am facing this maelstrom of ‘stuff that needs to be done’ and it hits me in the face as soon as I open my eyes.  I don’t know where to begin.  Or, if I begin, I am easily drawn into the next ‘important thing to do’.

Looking at those pictures of F’s filthy kitchen made me realize the only difference between our housekeeping styles at first glance is that I put all my food cans in a huge laundry hamper outside to take to recycling, and I have mouse poison under the trailer bed to discourage any would be tenant vermin.  Ok, probably there is a lot less animal filth too, though the level of food spillage my children and I seem to generate is horrifying.  Bunny, my now five year old daughter also has a penchant for conducting cupboard recon for the sole purpose of commandeering cereal.  There is now an amazing amount of Count Chocula in the potato and onion bucket from our meager garden harvest.

I have NO PLACE to store anything.  So things get piled on the bunks, on the table, on the counters.  Then it avalanches and I cuss and shuffle it around and try to form new stacks.  I swear I am cleaning the place up, but then I have kids who are hungry RIGHT NOW and will DIE OF STARVATION if they are not fed within ten minutes.  But now I need a cooking pot because we got home too late the previous night to heat the water and do the previous nights dishes and they are all sitting, dirty, in the huge purple wash bin outside.  An I can’t find my frying pan because there is still a bag of canned goods sitting on it from the groceries we bought two or three days ago that I have been meaning to get into the cupboard if only I could reach it because there are two coolers, a shallow pan of hand washing water and half a case of Coca-Cola sitting between me and the teeny tiny little cupboards I have to cram everything to feed six people in for two weeks.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola and curse the company for ever taking the coca out of it, because, having gotten to actually try chewing some coca a former employer brought back from her trip to Peru, I could sure use that kind of caffeine-without-the-jitters-or-irritability energy boost to get this shithole cleaned and I don’t think I am getting to South America anytime soon to lay in my own supply.

This is usually when I leave the trailer, step outside, right into the face of the entire full length trailer house GM used to live in that has completely collapsed, exposing its guts of moldering books, bed frames, clothes, car parts, tufts of hairy insulation, mouse shit, furniture and some appliances mixed with God only knows what else in a musty smelling carnage.  My only bright spot in that view is that there is a boreal toad that lives somewhere in it, possibly under that bed frame pedestal and he croaks briefly throughout the day.  Trailer trash habitat.  Adaptive species amaze me.

Then I go hide in my outhouse.

This is pathetically, one of the only places where I can invoke the “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE” rights to privacy laws so scarce in a parent’s life.

Back when I lived in a house in civilization with actual running water I would lock myself in for either a library period or a hot bath.  I don’t have the bath luxury now, and the length of library period depends on the weather temperature and whether or not my enzymes are doing their job at odor control.  But for a time, it is a place where I can hide and they can’t come in.  Oh, I do take off up the mountain sometimes, and Boo, my foster dog turned family member will sniff me out every time.  But I can’t just leave the kids like they used to do in the olden days to go out and get wood or work the distant fields.  Not only is this frowned on now days, but modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with things on their own.  In fact, you can bet that as soon as I am out of the house Bunny gets it into her head that all former house rules about safety, respect of others property, and general rules of proper conduct have left on my heels and there will soon emanate from our humble domain such a shrieking, caterwauling, thumping, or worse, ominous and pregnant silence you have ever encountered.  Most times I will return to find my baby, Nunkee, with new war paint either in the medium of marker or biggest sister’s pillaged makeup, objects once high upon the shelves stomped into the floor, every toy box, jewelry box, container, or suitcase upended and scattered, and a five year old Bunny proclaiming in prim report, “Nunkee did it, I saw her!”

Which is usually where my voice maxes out at the sound barrier, children attempt to flee in terror or pick up as quickly as humanly possible, and I stomp back up to rail in vain at the general disarray of my life and kitchen space.

Then I kick that Coca-cola box again.

I know one thing that will help me maintain my sanity.  I can keep writing.  I will be making time every week, possibly more than once (baby steps!) to come into the college library and maintain my thread of communication with myself through this outlet.  That way GM won’t be trying to sneak peeks over my shoulder to read what horrible family secrets I may be spilling and I won’t have to minimize the damned screen every two minutes, breaking my thread of concentration.  That thread is the only way I have of finding my way through the fog.

I know there are few certainties I can count on in this life.  I am certain hanging on for dear life to this thread is my necessity.  My emotional sustenance and survival.  My way of seeing it through and maybe, just maybe having it make sense in the end.  It is my one, unbreakable link to sanity in the chaos.

Or so the voices tell me.

Editor’s note:  I have been trying for THREE DAYS to get these pictures on here.  True to my style of organization, they are on here bass-ackwards, so you get to see the pictures ‘after’ and ‘before’ instead of the other way around.  To those of you who actually keep a clean house, it may not seem like the miracle it is.  When you see the ‘before’ pictures, you may have a better understanding.

I wanted to see if I could get the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of F’s cabin on here.  I am sort of a techno-idiot for simple things like uploading pictures.  But I feel like it is an important part of the story for people to be able to see what happens when you can stand up for doing the right thing by letting go of anger and animosity and holding peace in your heart.  Even when dealing with someone who is mentally ill.

F is a hoarder.  I really saw the reality of this, not only with the cabin, but when S got his metal filing box out of storage.  He had canceled checks in with his military papers.  Which wouldn’t be odd except the canceled checks were from 1968 on up. Why he felt the need to keep them shall remain a mystery to me.

The ‘cabin’ is a slope roofed one room shack my father-in-law and husband built over fifteen years ago.  It is slowly falling apart and F never tried to keep it up.  S was the one who put new tarpaper on the roof last year to keep it from leaking.

Yet it is real.  I don’t know if you can understand how miraculous this was.  This man, who has never batted and eye at letting not only dogs, but livestock, and I am talking sheep and goats, geese and pigs, in the house to live, eat and shit without ever cleaning it up.  He did this.  He cleaned his house!

This is the same man who would sit in the living room of S’s house over east in a living room that’s rug was soaked so thoroughly with dog urine it squelched with every step, and watch television as the dogs shit on the rug in front of him.

To me, this is evidence that Divinity is at work.  There is a spirit at work here that is stronger than the shit.  This is the miracle that turns shit into black gold.  This is the proof.

S and my father-in-law B seemed a little stunned at F’s  abrupt departure.  I don’t think my mother-in-law quite knew how to deal with the reality. F has been a fixture in her life for over twenty years now.  She never wanted to deal with him, but never made a move to cut him loose either.  This shall forever be a puzzle to me. 

The night GM called to tell her F had gone with his brother, I could hear her voice on the other end of the line.  When she said “Oh.” it sounded higher than her usual speaking voice.  Tremulous.  I wondered.  Did this mean there was a part of her that was actually sorry to see him gone?  Even though this was the man who had told her the mountain wasn’t big enough for the both of them and she should go live with her daughter.  Yet, what was I supposed to do?  I will gladly take on burdens for my family when the cause is just, when the need is real, but I will not  enable someone to use and abuse my family.  I will not allow someone to latch on to us as a drowning victim dragging their savior to the depths.

When I told S he had cleaned to the cabin up,  that he had even used a cleaner (probably even on that one white floor patch!) her mouth actually dropped open.  She was honest to goodness stunned when I told her that.  Said he had never lifted a finger EVER in the twenty-some-odd years they had been together to help her clean.  Not even the animal pens.

I couldn’t explain to her the how or why.  We don’t see things the same way.  I couldn’t explain to her that you can kick someone in the ass and do it with love.  I just don’t think that is the language that they have ever known.  I don’t know if S will ever understand that showing someone you love them doesn’t mean doing everything for them until they are crippled with the inability to do for themselves.  That is not love.  That is something else entirely and it has dark origins, no matter the intent behind it.

After F had left, and in the middle of the night when the large drink of water before bed finally ran its course and woke me, I went outside.  I heard something that I didn’t know I would ever here.  A bull elk bugling.  Our mountain, years and years ago used to have a lot of elk.  GM said he hadn’t seen any for over fifteen years.  I heard it another night, then again last night, just about dusk.  His bugling set the dogs off up at F’s old place where they still stay.  Excited, I went in to tell GM.  He told me he had been watching one of the home movies he recently made with he and our big white dog Fen on it.  He said Fen was howling on the movie.  This annoyed me.  I can tell the difference between and elk bugle and a dog howl for shit’s sake!  I snapped at him a bit.  He got a little mad back and told me angrily that he hadn’t seen elk up here in twenty years.

As we are learning to do now, we went our own ways for a few minutes.  We are trying (slowly) to pick our battles.  When we passed each other again on the trail down to our outhouse I stopped and looked at him.  I knew what I needed to say.

“When you pray for healing to come to a place, when you pray for good things to come back, they do.”

I continued down the path, and he watched me in silence.

I have captured a rare moment. I have sent my youngest child to an evening nap and the rest to the school playground. I am here at my Mother’s house stealing some coveted moments alone with my thoughts.

I have run out an amazing amount of outdoor extension cord to plug in my husband’s laptop so I can write outside. Autumn is my time. I was born in the September cusp, and have always felt most energized in this season of the Sleeping Time To Come.

The leaves of the elm tree across the alley are beginning to yellow at the top, that first concession to the long sleep. The shorter peach trees, those compost heap volunteers my Mother takes such pride in, stand firm and green. Their leaves are puckered at the top, and sides because they really do hate the climate here. My Mother, however, sprays them in the spring with copper sulfate to stave off whatever botanical horrors await them and keep them clinging to the life. They did not bloom or try to bear fruit this year because of late spring frost. Personally, I hope they learn to tough it up an acclimatize, if for no other reason than my mother is proud to grow peaches in a Montana town so close to the Canadian border.

House finches hang off the feeders she has on the clotheslines to the left of me. Various shades of gray they are, with a rosy blush to their breasts. Not as fearful as some birds. There is free food of the black oil sunflower variety available, after all! The chickadees are more leery, using the cover of the peach trees to hide. One loan pigeon takes up residence on the poser line across the alley. After determining I am of little threat it flies to eat the sunflower seeds of the ground under the squirrel feeder. Pigeons always have such a startled look on their faces. As if they are quite astounded to see anyone nearby who doesn’t have feather and just don’t know what to make of it.

I am waiting for my husband to come home after his class at the college. I have found a few precious moments to find some inner peace. I just started college myself. I finally found out what I want to do when I grow up! I have entered the Natural Resources Conservation and Management AAS program. I initially only wanted to finish what I started ten years ago, six or so credits short of my AS degree. Yet when the advisor I saw told me of the AAS program, I began to feel a fire in my belly I haven’t felt in years.

After all, I live it, right? Living in the great outdoors, pioneer style. What I don’t tell a lot of people is that I also talk to trees, plants and bugs. Okay, my husband is finally catching on, after nine years. My kids see it. They’ve learned it from me, even. I have always talked to them. Ever since I was very small. Not expecting an answer, mind you. (At least not NOW as a grown up!) Though sometimes, if I listen hard enough, I think I can feel some song of communication between the wind and branches…

When I was a child, I had imaginary friends. I can remember their names even now. I guess it was motivation by loneliness that caused me to seek them out. I learned to talk to bugs when I was small. I learned to talk to trees after I learned to smoke pot. Sitting here now in this yard, the back yard I grew up in, I can see my past more clearly than anywhere else. The once large gardens, now merely a small portion of what they were when my father was alive. Memories of the peace he and I had when I was small, before I grew up enough to have my own mind and test my own will. Sitting on his lap under the summer sky in a reclining lawn chair as he ran a blade of grass over my face, trailing tickle tingles over my cheeks then around one nostril until I absolutely couldn’t stand it and had to rub the tickle off.

I came to learn most of what I know about the beauty, grace and magic of the natural world from my Father. It hasn’t been until my Father went to walk in the spirit world that I came to understand that most of what I also know about abusiveness and how I have chosen my relationships stems from my Father as well.

I have wondered where my Hard Look series would take me. At this point I am just trying to open myself to Divine Guidance in whatever form it comes. I have been told for years I have a gift of writing. I have begun to pray that I can use that writing to help others. Because of the paths my life has taken, because of the pains and triumphs I have faced in my own life, I know but a few things. Peace, forgiveness and faith. I know we are not alone. I know Something, Somewhere, hears our silent pleas and while we may not always understand the ways in which It answers, It is there. Call it what you like.

I know now that this time, the time we have now, is what is most important. What this nation this world, needs now is warriors. Warriors of belief and faith. Not indoctrinated, brainwashed sheep, but warriors who have earned their armor from the suffering they have endured and sacrifices they have made. Those of us who have swum the Dark River and lived to tell the tales. Stronger, wiser, perhaps a bit more cynical from our endeavors, but bettered for it. Those of us willing to stand up for what we believe in, in our personal lives and no matter how big or small. Those of us willing to stand up and assist those who may not be able, at first, to stand on their own.

After all, that is the sacred gift of a Mother, isn’t it? To nurture those who cannot at first nurture themselves? We set by example. I know now, after a lot of fuck ups, that my children will live as the see me live. They will do as they see me do. What is it I want to see my children doing?

Often, as an American society, we focus so much on the downside of ourselves. What if we instead, focused on the possibilities? What if we, instead, focused our babies on the possibilities? I have not been the worlds best parent. I have carried my father’s rage and my mothers selfishness into my parenting. But I do not want to continue this. I do not want my children to live and feel about themselves as I have. I want more for these amazing people I have given birth to and welcomed into my life. They own the tomorrows, and, barring some huge cataclysmic disaster, they own the future. What is it I can do to make this bridge a strong one for them? What do I have to do?

This is an answer that we can only find in our own hearts, as individuals. I have recently re-discovered my faith in the Divine. I do this periodically over the years. Actually, I think I am on a ten year cycle. This one took me thirteen years and I hope I have finally found my way home.

Sometimes I think I may come off as a crackpot and I feel afraid. I fear that someone may judge me in ignorance or sheer stupid cruelty. I have seen it happen to my favorite blogger, Crystal from www.mcknob.com on her Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper blog. Yet from her I have also learned that sometimes you just have to say “Damn the consequences!” and post what you need to anyway. I am praying for her family and tragic personal loss they are going through right now.

I wonder if this will pan out, or if someone that knows me personally may find it and be offended. I wonder if I share too much or not enough.

Then I think, Ah, what the hell! and continue on anyway. I am stubborn like that.

I can only put out here the lessons I have learned. My own experience be it good or bad. I can only hope it will help someone somewhere see a little humor or find a little hope. Mostly what I hope for is that it helps to make a connection. A connection between states, across boundaries. That is gives a voice to the wide and invisible world out here. That it lets someone out there know they are not alone.

The Lakota have a saying; mitakuye oyasin. We are all related. I believe in finding common ground.

It has been thirteen years now. My lucky thirteen I guess. There is a lot to tell about what has happened in those intervening years, but what is going on in my present life is what takes priority. The past will come as I need it to, but the present cannot be ignored.

Suffice it to say thirteen years has taught me a lot. I have been a shitty, sometimes neglectful and sometimes abusive parent. I have learned and am still learning not to be. Some of what I did was done in ignorance. Some was done in inexperience. Some was just plain stubborn selfishness. It has been along road.

One of the toughest lessons I have learned is that when and if you pray to the Creator to send you teachers, most likely mystical wise old men and women are not going to come knocking on your door. You will find that your life will end up in circumstances that will test every ounce of character, strength and patience you have. Sometimes it will chew you up and spit you out. This will teach you to get up and dust your ass off. Sometimes you will be down a long time before you get up.

When we came out to the mountain last year…when all the conflict began, I once again began to say my prayers. I had been slacking along time. I prayed for healing to come to the mountain. I prayed that the negativity that had found a home there be uprooted and leave. I had no idea at the time that it would be up to me to help it leave. To help it heal. Because, when you pray for Divine help, when you ask for sacred ground to be born anew, you had damned well better make sure you are ready to be the hands, feet, eyes, voice and heart of Divine direction. Most importantly, when you pray for healing, it must come first to your own heart.

This summer has been a hard, amazing and eye opening experience for me. I have had to face a lot of fears and learn to put those fears to rest. I have had to learn that I cannot influence other peoples choices, even the choices of those people I love the most, unless I live by example. All I can do is hope I set a positive enough example that they can see they can do it as well. I am a person who has been very quick to anger….that is what I was taught about parenting growing up. My ongoing lesson as a parent with my own children is in learning how to transform snap anger into good parenting. Some days it feels as if it would be easier to gouge my own eyeball out with a spoon. But it isn’t for me that I must do this, it is for the lifelong success of my precious children. Those souls whose charge I keep. This is a very hard lesson to learn and I am far from an expert. I fuck up constantly. Yet people tell me I am a good Mom. This gives me hope because the negative voice in my head does not want to agree. Does not even want to credit me with it.

As anyone who has read this blog from beginning to end will gather, I have a drive in me to see fairness and justice done. My husband, in some argument long ago accused me of always turning the critical eye upon his family and never me or mine. Perhaps he is right in part. After all, it is much easier to see the flaws in others than it is to see our own. Ironically however, we are also our own worst critics. There is a crucial balance that must be reached. In order to be able, emotionally, to have that balance, there also must exist in our everyday lives, a balance in our day to day activities. Our external lives must support our internal lives and vise versa. Above all, in my own life anyway, I have learned there are two very important words I need to focus on; Peace and Forgiveness. These words have taught me no only to find forgiveness with myself, in my own heart, and with the negative influences from both past and present, but to find it in my interactions with other people. This can be a very, very hard thing to do, especially with a sometimes foul tempered wench such as myself. Going on the warpath is not the only option. Standing up with peace and love in my heart for what is right is the only option for me.

People who have read this blog know of my past conflicts with my mother-in-law, S. They know about the out of control dog situation and S’s ‘boyfriend’ F.

To throw some complete confusion into the mix, according to S, she and F haven’t actually been ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ in over twelve years. Yet still she supported a man who treated her terribly. Se hasn’t lived with him but for maybe a month or two when they first moved over here almost six years ago. Living in that one room shack that was once my father-in-laws cabin, F told S that the mountain wasn’t big enough for the both of them, so she left those years ago to go live with her daughter N and her three grandkids. But still she supported him as his only source of food and he ‘took care of the dogs’. It is one of the most bazaar symbiotic relationships I will never understand.

Last winter we ran out of wood. We may have had it last longer if we hadn’t given a few of our loads to F. He would come down, offering to ‘help’ my husband get a load. Of course the payment would be either half or all of the load. My husband wouldn’t have him ‘help’ without giving him some. My husband is not me and also would not tell him to fuck off.

I didn’t want to see the crazy old bastard freeze, but I resented the hell out of having to ’share’ our wood for his ‘help’, which was no real help at all and didn’t include him buying and gas or oil, or sharpening the damned chainsaw either. We never got him enough wood to make it through the winter last winter. So if he ran low he would come steal ours when we weren’t home. Stealing, after all, was easier than scavenging it out in the woods, which could have been done. Last winter as well, he got some sort of croupy chough that wouldn’t go away, which was no surprise. Last winter, with my husband working, we just didn’t HAVE time to go out and get more wood. It was all we could do to get ours. This winter, we will both be going to school.

It has floored me time and again that, though S has moved off the mountain, established herself with her ex’s roommate and wanted nothing to do with her dogs that she would continue to support a man who was not nice to her, didn’t seem to want to even be with her and definitely didn’t want to live with her. To me, this just illustrates the horrific situation of a woman who has grown up with the belief that abuse is a way of life, continuing the victim cycle. I will never EVER understand this. I have been through some abusive stuff and NOTHING made me want to stay beyond a certain point. Perhaps, for some, there is a point where the will to fight with flight is crushed down to submission to survive. Yet S would always argue back and tell F off. I just don’t get it. I never will.

Already this fall, F has started to get a croupy hack. We have had a very wet summer. It was in early August that he got it. The cabin he has lived in is filthy. He hasn’t thrown a food can out since he moved over here. The dogs have had puppies and shit and pissed on the floor. Mice, no doubt, try to dodge the dogs to get to the cans. Yet he always makes his bed. Military training and all.

I brought my concerns up time and again to GM and S. S said she may call his brother. His brother that lives in the valley but hasn’t ever come to visit. I let her know if F threatened me or the kids again or even threatened to ‘burn the place down’, I would have the cops out there to haul him off and slap a restraining order on his ass. S told me to ‘do whatever I felt I had to, to be safe’. GM has never learned to stand up for himself or anyone else, especially in the face of his birth family.

To me, this seemed to say S was completely content allowing me to handle it. It was becoming a crises, after all.

To explain a bit about the relationship I have developed with F, I have to say we have a sort of tentative friendship and mutual grudging respect. I respect his loyalty and sense of duty. There was a lot of that in dealing with his living situation and those dogs. It was complete insanity, but in this mental illness he really was honor bound to protect and care for those dogs as well as his situation and twisted sense would allow. This is why I did not have his ass hauled off first thing when he threatened me. One, I didn’t want to scare that easily, and I don’t think, at this phase of his mental decline that he would actually harm me or my kids. Vietnam pretty much cured him for the desire to actually kill. The unknown part, the part I could NOT risk, was that, if his mental decline became bad enough that he actually might attempt to harm my children. That is a risk I was not wiling to take because if he actually did try to harm my children, as their mother I would protect them, and as their father, so would GM, even if that meant we had to kill another human being. I did not want my children to ever be put in a position to witness that.

Oddly enough, a few weeks ago, F started to ‘clean out some stuff’ and move some of his things around. I knew then that my prayers had been answered. I felt he was ready to go.

After S said a few times that she would calls F’s brother and nothing came of it, I had enough. I looked up his brother in the phone book and made the call. That was August 28th.

I wasn’t sure it was the right man until he answered the phone. It sounded like I was talking to F. I cut to the chase immediately after introducing myself. I told him I was concerned about his brother’s health not only physically, but mentally. I told him I respected his Veteran status and wanted to do this peacefully. I told him his brother needed to leave our mountain. He agreed. Said his brother needed to start taking care of himself. It wasn’t S’s job, he said, to support him.

Odd, I thought. You and the rest of the family have had no problem with her supporting him for the last twenty-eight years! I kept my mouth shut of course, seeing as how this was a diplomatic mission and all.

I told his brother it wasn’t ours either. I also went over again my concerns for his physical health. F’s brother said he wanted me to call back on Wednesday and he would have to go and see him.

I got busy and didn’t call until Thursday. I had to leave a message. I didn’t hear from him and called him again on Friday. He was irate. He had talked to S and she was supposed to either call him back herself or have one of us call him to drive caravan out to our house with him to show him where we lived. He had been waiting all week for a call from either S or us. I was pissed! S had talked to me two days previous and told me she had talked to F’s brother but had never mentioned we were supposed to set up a meeting! When I mentioned it to GM he told me she had told him that and he forgot to tell me.

Honestly! The way this family communicates may as well be in a foreign fucking language!

We met him the following Monday and GM showed him how to get out there. Tuesday we went up to give him his snuff S bought him. F came out like a nasty tempered cur.

“What are you two doing up here, what do you want?”

“Came up here to give you the snoose mom bought!” GM told him.

“Oh yeah? ” He sidestepped to the car and snatched the can. “Thanks for the stab in the back!” he shot at my husband.

My husband really does get blamed for a lot of shit he doesn’t do.

“I didn’t stab you in the fucking back!” GM yelled.

“Yes you did! YES YOU DID!” F yelled back.

“I DID NOT, GODAMMIT!” GM bellowed in return. Knowing this was going nowhere and not liking my husband getting blamed for shit he didn’t do, I leaned across my husband to lock eyes with F.

“No,” I said, “HE didn’t!” Then I just held his gaze.

F sputtered as if he would keep ranting, shook and angry all encompassing finger at me and my husband and turned away. I think he got my message. GM stomped the accelerator hard enough to throw rocks as we left. I tried to tell him not to let it get to him, but my husband has a paper thin pride and it is easily torn into.

We didn’t go up there again. F’s brother told us to just steer clear of him. He bought him a bunch of groceries. Then the weekend came and F’s brother called me to tell me they were going to Great Falls for the weekend and I would need to feed the dogs. F got on the phone. Told me there was half a bag of dog food and they were due to be fed again the next day and I was to feed them the rest of the bag. F only feeds the dogs every other day. I assured him I would, knowing I would go home and feed them that night. He tried to tell me I was a back stabber and I started to laugh at him. I laughed and told him I was not and that he needed to get his shit taken care of and his brother was gonna help him do it. I asked if he had gotten the apartment they were hoping for. He told me to mind my own business and that no, they hadn’t. It may or may not have been the truth. Having been in covert ops in Vietnam he is even now really paranoid about sharing accurate info.

That weekend while he was gone, S came out and got a bunch of her stuff. He was supposed to be back on Monday but we didn’t see him. The dogs were acting more their normal paranoid selves so I assumed he was. Thursday, September 4th he came down the hill. I knew he was in a good mood because he asked us if we wanted a watermelon for the kids. I could usually predict his mood. If he wanted something, he was an asshole. Having a conversation with him would lead to threatening, unpredictable verbal assault. I had not spoken to him for months really. When he came down with an offering, it was his white flag. Negotiations could be had and palaver was sought.

He offered eggs as well and I knew he wanted to talk. He was also grungier than usual which is actually saying a lot for a man who may or may not have taken a bath in the pond in the past five years. Said he was cleaning out the place. He was gonna be leaving.

My kids were down there, and he tried his ‘backstabber’ crap, telling my kids his parents were backstabbers. I refused to get angry and just rolled my eyes and told my kids to tell F he was full of shit. F started to smile. When he looked at me I looked back and told him,

“If I was gonna stab you in the back you wouldn’t have seen me coming. But I am standing here now, telling you it was me. You have health issues and I didn’t want to see you go through another winter not knowing if S would feel like sending food out to you, or you not having enough wood because we didn’t have the time to get it. Your brother’s gonna help you get that stuff.”

F then launched into detail about all the paperwork. I walked up the hill to get the watermelon and eggs. I talked to him for two hours. Some of what he told me was probably true, though he lied about the locations of things as was his habit. Not that it mattered. I could tell, he was actually happy. As happy as someone like him, someone carrying his demons, could get. He shared with me that they wanted to test him for PTSD. I told him that after two tours of duty in ‘Nam that he sure as shit probably had it.

He said he’d be back in a couple weeks to get more stuff.

The next night, I went up as soon as we came home to see if he had gone. The dogs went into baying alarm as I came up and the one dog that is terrified of me took off. The cabin door stood open. I stepped in and was amazed at the difference. (sometime soon I will post the before and after photos.) I could see linoleum through the dirt. All clothes were gone and so were all cans. His remaining belongings were gathered in bins and stacked on the tables. As always, is bed was made. There was the faint tang of Pine-sol in the air.

F was gone and he had cleaned out his bunker.

He had left in peace.

Now, about those remaining dogs……

Cain, Carter and I lived at my parents about three months. It was not easy. My parents, Mom in particular, constantly criticized and parented my parenting. I blew up at her a few times. Told her she had already had her chance to fuck it up and it was now mine. My father and I avoided each other like two surly junkyard curs ready to scrap at the drop of a hat. Cain was arrogant and constantly told me how much my mother irritated him. They are a lot alike in many ways. Finally, we found a small one bedroom upstairs apartment back in Kalispell. He go a job at a convenience store again and I found greenhouse work. Carter began daycare.

Our apartment was too small for three people, it was barely more than a studio. We found a house around the corner, ironically, from the one we had moved out of. It was a two bedroom. A huge kitchen/dining area, full bath and mid-sized living room PLUS a fenced yard.

I had always been the more social of the two of us. I like having a variety or group of friends to hang out with when I am not feeling like being an introvert. Cain always held himself so in check and so tightly in control that I never felt he allowed himself to just have open and spontaneous fun. Even his laughter is restrained and controlled. We had friends over every week for game night. I wanted to go out to have a drink and go dancing once in a while but Cain didn’t drink or dance so I was out of luck there. I was left to seek outside companionship if I wanted to just go out and have uninhibited fun.

We could never come to an agreement on doing household chores when we were both working. When it was in the off season and I was laid off I did it all, but I missed having friends. We were still marginally involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA, which is a medieval reenactment group. It bored me to tears, really. Before we had left we used to go over to our friend Molly’s house to play cards, but after we came back we didn’t do that very often. My friendship with Molly had cooled since I became a mother and she was only interested in maintaining a friendship with Cain.

I didn’t know what the hell was going on in Cain’s head as far as our relationship went. He didn’t initiate sex with me at all anymore. I probably over initiated it with him just to get some affection out of him. I hadn’t smoked pot in Denver, but now, especially in the winter time, I found myself using it more and more just to give myself altered eyes to look at my gray and changeless days with. When Cain asked me if I though I was using it to much, like any addict that wanted to use avoidance I lied and told him I was fine. The fact that I felt I needed to use it at all is an indicator I have learned, of underlying unhappiness with things.

I sat at my dining room table one rainy spring day. I would be going back to work as soon as transplanting time came to the greenhouse. The boss was a chauvinistic asshole but I loved the work. I had gotten some clay from somewhere and was working on a face sculpture. It was supposed to be an elf, but more and more, Cain’s face stared back at me from this lump of once river mud.

What happened? My own heart was cooling to the point of not even caring anymore. I told him I thought we should think about separating and I wanted to see other people. I had a friend that was interested in Cain. She made it no secret. She was married to an abusive asshole. Cain was distant. I felt tremendous guilt over opening our relationship the first time, now, here it was again. I think some part of me hoped that it would spur him into some sort of valiant effort to once again gain and keep my affections. Honestly, I think he was as over it as I was, but refusing to take an active route. That was something that drove me nuts. He sort of just went on in his own little world, traveling in this little box, only talking of new and high adventure yet never acting on it. Perhaps it was because ideas don’t disappoint.

Perhaps he was hiding his grief deep inside. Remembering and years later, reading over some of his letters, I think he was. Yet he chose to guard his pride above all else. At all costs, even the cost of his partner and family, his dignity and cool demeanor must prevail. It was how he kept himself safe in the microcosm that is his universe.

I had encouraged him to start Aikido classes. He wanted to for a long time. Aikido is a Japanese defensive martial art. Cain is tall and very graceful and was soon accelerating in his class. It was soon apparent that his Aikido class meant more to him than Carter and I did. He showed more love, loyalty and adoration to his Aikido instructor than he ever showed us. He never encouraged me in any pursuit. I was lucky to get a hello from him when I came home from work. He was always in his own head, thinking about his issues.

I told him about my friends interest in him. I told him to go for it. I had started seeing someone on the weekends. In my fucked up brain I though that I could maybe find husband material out there or something. I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Memories of those times are at once crystal clear with large blurry passages in between. I told Cain I didn’t care what he did with Leslie. But we made an agreement that we wouldn’t bring it to our home. I didn’t want Carter, now three, to come upon one of us with someone who wasn’t his parent. Carter had a good memory even then. I was hiding my head in the sand. I didn’t want to feel my own guilt, so I pushed this situation off on Cain, who quickly took me up on it.

Brian had come back around now and then. As an acquaintance only. I had no physical interest in him. He wasn’t someone I would ever chose to be with again in any way shape or form. He was a loser, user, and chronic dirt bag. But he could score weed now and then.

He had been married for a time and had a child, a son. His actions had caused his wife to file for divorce and throw his ass out. I liked his wife and she trusted me, so when she allowed Brian a supervised visit with their son she called to ask me to be the one to supervise it. I told her I would. So Brian and I drove down to Missoula, picked up a French hitchhiker on the way and carted him around with us the whole day.

We met his ex and son in a park and the Frenchman, whose name was Pierre (I kid you not) and I sat in the park and talked American versus French societies and politics while Brian visited with his little boy. I pause to marvel at how he could stand to be away from the child, who was the same age as Carter.

Afterward we took a side trip to a natural hot spring to swim and explore and underwater volcanic cave. It was pretty awesome.

After dropping Pierre off at a local youth hostel and wishing him a safe journey we headed home. It was after midnight when I got home.

Leslies car was in the driveway. My hackles went up. When I tried the door and it was locked and Cain came to the door of my own house, hunched over so I couldn’t see he was completely naked, to hold up a finger for me to ‘give them a minute’, I went through the fucking roof.

“YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!” I screamed as I pounded my fists in the door. I knew our son was in the house. I was in a blind fury.

I ran back out to the car. It was a borrowed car, one of our gamer buddies had loaned it to me so I could get to work at my new job. It was a good thing it was a borrowed car because I would have rammed Leslies car full speed. Instead I took off. I drove blindly. Very fast. I ended up on some back road out by Foys Lake. I was alternately crying and screaming myself hoarse. I don’t remember EVER having been so furious. Furious at myself, whose bright idea it had been, furious at him for breaking our agreement, at her for coming in to the house my SON’S house, to be with him and again at myself for completely losing my shit over it. My voice of irony kicked in and taunted me. Not liking it, staring it in the face, are you? See what you get for being an irresponsible slut? It’s all your doing. Can’t hack it. Can dish it out but you can’t face it…. on and on and round and round.

I don’t know how long I was gone. I was still livid when I came back. Leslie was wise, and had a strong sense of survival. I would have beat the shit out of her if she had stayed. I laid into Cain as soon as I got home.

“How dare you! We had an agreement! How DARE you bring her into our home! What if Carter had WOKEN UP and come to see where you were?”

The last stopped him. He was all apologies. He hadn’t thought of that. I could tell from the look on his face that he honestly hadn’t even considered that possibility. He was, as usual, so tuned in to ’doing his own thing’, thinking about the consequences if our son had woken up, or even of me coming back hadn’t crossed his self centered mind.

Our son woke up frequently at night. Sometimes from dreams, sometimes when he had to go potty. I don’t know how many times I had been up late and he had wandered into the living room where they had been to come see me. What if? I screamed at him time and again.

After that we decided splitting up was what we needed to do. This couldn’t go on. Neither one of us was finding happiness and we weren’t trying to heal this relationship. It was just a question of finding places, giving notice. Explaining it to Carter.

Cain and I started to have blow ups that were getting more domestic. Honestly, I started that part. He continued it. The first time I threw an empty plant pot at him. Then he used his Aikido skills to throw me to the floor repeatedly. I took a few handfuls of hair from him when I went down. One time he did it in front of a friend of ours. We weren’t even arguing then. We were rough housing, playing. He decided to show off I guess and threw me into the floor hard enough to really hurt. This pissed me off and while he was bent over I grabbed and yanked his hair hard enough to pop his neck. I began to harbor a really strong dislike for him and it was mutual. The last and final time was three days before we were completely moved out of the house.

We were bickering about something. I felt that old rage rising to the surface but Carter was standing right there. It was bad enough we were yelling at each other. In frustration, I turned away from Cain, walked across the room and proceeded to kick the headboard bookshelf of mine that was there to be loaded in the car a few times. Cain walked over to me, grabbed me, spun me around slammed me off the wall and into the floor where he dropped his knee and full weight on my chest, pining me to the floor. Carter was screaming, “Leave my Mommy alone! YOU’RE HURTING MY MOMMY!” . Cain looked like he was about to palm strike me in the face. Rage overtook reason, as usual with me.

“Go ahead! Great example you’re setting for our son!” I spat. It worked like a slap never would have. Cain got up and left me to console our son.

My sister owned a house in our hometown of Columbia Falls. She was living in the top apartment, renting the bottom and the large two bedroom middle was vacant. She only charged $350 a month so I took Carter and moved in. I had just started college courses. Cain moved across town.

I restricted my marijuana use to weekends. After the previous summer I had pretty much quit seeing anyone, even friends, and just decided to go the school route for awhile. I didn’t know how Carter would deal with the breakup and I was not at all prepared for what was in store. I couldn’t get a handle on my anger. I was strict with him, and I spanked him for everything. I had been raised being spanked. I didn’t know what else to do. When I felt angry, I spanked him. Sometimes I would slap his face if he was mouthing off. He was three. I was becoming the kind of parent I never wanted to be.

I was carrying a full course load at college, Cain wasn’t yet paying child support, and I was working weekends. My only unwind time was on Friday night, after class and before I had to work Saturday evening. My way of unwinding was to put on my workout clothes, make herbal tea, light incense and candles, put on my favorite Loreena McKennit cd The Mask and The Mirror, smoke a few bowls and do a few hours of dance/yoga/prayer and ask the Creator to send me teachers.

There is an old adage, be ye pagan, Christian or otherwise:

Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.

You never know how those prayers will be answered. I know the Creator listens to prayers whether you send them up with smoke or not. But I was about to find out. For the next thirteen years I would have more teachers than a body could ever hope for. They have been the hardest teachers I would ever hate and learn to love.

I have asked myself how long I will write these, The Looks, as I think of them. As long as it takes is what the answer is, yet I want it to be beneficial.

There is mostly a negative connotation with someone who chooses to use marijuana. I believe it is very easy to get sucked into the negative aspect of what I consider to be a very powerful and potentially beneficial medicinal herb. I also believe consistent, daily use, unless the user is in a chronic pain condition, is counterproductive an not helpful in the long run.

While my choice to use this plant was beneficial in that it helped me learn to bond with my baby, I was using it to try and numb the emotional pain and desolate feeling of being abandoned by my partner. I was angry. Cain had always, emotionally, been like Spock off Star Trek. Detached and unemotional. He wrote me letters that said he missed me, even held vivid detail of his love for me, yet he had never really used the words, face to face to tell me these things often enough to make me believe them. Most of the time, there seemed to be room in his mind and heart for only one person; him. It seemed to me he wanted to be adored and worshiped without ever returning any. The months of his out of state work turned into a year. I felt like I was dying inside. I wanted attention and affection. I wanted to be held and loved. I was still too young and naïve then to know, even at 22 how empty physical affection can be.

There came a time in our relationship that I told Cain I wanted to be able to see other people while he was out of state. I wanted him to see other people as well. It was a completely selfish maneuver on my part in so many ways. But I didn’t know what else to do. There was a guy that I was interested in. I didn’t want to have a relationship, I WANTED Cain, but he wasn’t available. It wasn’t even really about the sex so much as it was about being physically close to someone. I was so lonely, and not strong enough in myself to go out and find healthy alternatives and this is the negative route I chose. I am ashamed of it because I believe I cheapened myself, no to mentioned hurt Cain. I wanted to be Cain’s wife, yet he would never propose. Because I did not have those vows, the long time apart, the fact that Cain seemed content to have and leave it this way, were all contributing factors. What blew me away though, in the end, wasn’t that Cain was jealous or upset about me being with anyone else, what he told me was that he felt jealous because I DID find someone else to be with and he DIDN’T.

It wasn’t that I found other men to be with. It was that he didn’t find other women. That put a spear in my heart that would fester.

I felt I wasn’t worth enough for him to worry about. He was only concerned for himself. By this time, I had learned a bit of that from him as well. My anger grew.

In September of ‘94 my landlord, Chuck informed me that Joan and her husband were going to buy my house for their daughter. The bitch finally got her revenge. Chuck had, at one point, told me he would sell me the house for the cost it took him to move it onto the property. I was stupid and naïve enough I didn’t take him completely seriously and because Cain and I weren’t married I didn’t want to risk losing it if I did go that route. Hindsight, being 20/20 and all…

I didn’t take him up on it and Joan did. They gave us thirty days notice to move out. Then Joan tried all her old bullshit with me, such as telling me I had to get rid of my dog because they didn’t allow pets! AFTER they gave us the thirty day notice. I told her too bad. After all, what were they going to do, kick us out?!! Fucking idiots. Then I was subject to even more indignities. They claimed they wanted to come through and ‘get some video’ of the house for their daughter. I let them, thinking they would just do the upstairs. Everything was a mess. Stacks of boxes, mounds of clothes needing to be washed. The basement was completely trashed from the combination of having too much crap and me not being able to give a damn about a completely clean house. I felt so violated and would never again allow a landlord to do that.

Cain took time off to come up the last few days, help me load everything into storage and pack both his car and mine to the ceiling. Take our two cats, puppy and pet rat and go. By this time the apprenticeship had moved him from Utah to Denver, Colorado. We locked the door on the house in Montana and were off.

I was excited and optimistic. Cain, Carter and I were together and could be a family again!

Our first home in Denver? The construction sight trailer the guys used as a meeting place and to have coffee in the mornings. There was a bedroom in back but that was occupied by another apprentice who spent a lot of times and most nights out on the town. We were relegated to sleeping in the living room which was where the guys would normally meet before work. This proved to be very awkward. I was invading their morning coffee spot and they were invading my temporary bedroom! After the first couple of mornings of me sitting there, hair tousled, blinking owlishly at these morning freaks who thought the world should begin before dawn, and them staring, silently back at me, I said ‘To hell with it!’ and just burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag when they came in. I may have even snored. I didn’t care.

The trailer had no running water but there was a bag ice machine out back. I melted bags of ice for bath water, dishwater and cooking. The bathing really sucked because we only had a small dishpan to use. Carter was small enough to sit in it but Cain and I took some pretty interesting baths!

To demonstrate my sad level of naïveté, one of the times that Cain and I drove downtown to look for a motel to move into that was fairly close to his job site I spotted a sign on one of the buildings. It was a bath house advertising men’s and ladies nights. What a wonderful idea! I thought, and excitedly pointed it out to Cain. The reaction I got was an odd one and I didn’t quite understand why he seemed to think I was making a joke that wasn’t very funny. The next time we drove by it I told him we should go in and check out the prices. I was getting tired of melting bags of ice and a bath sure sounded nice! He again acted like I was telling an un-funny joke and I told him I was serious. He looked at me as if I were the biggest idiot on the face of the planet and informed me it was a gay bathhouse and they weren’t selling ‘those kinds of baths’. I was stunned and felt like the world’s biggest idiot. I thought Denver was a big city with an innovative and safe way for their probably large transient population to clean up. Coming from a small town Montana community we just didn’t have those things where I grew up. I tell you though, after having to melt bags of ice to bathe in I seriously considered my odds for getting into and out of a shower quick enough not to be molested. Cain wouldn’t go for it.

It was only about a week and a half before we found a motel called the Niagara House Motel on East Colfax Avenue. We lived there for three months.

While Cain was there and we were together, it seemed my life was just on the same path with a different view. I didn’t feel comfortable driving in Denver very far on my own, so Carter and I stayed in the motel room all day, all night, day in and day out. Instead of out onto the porch to check the mail, once a week we would drive the seventeen miles to the post office. Occasionally we went out to eat a restaurant called Healthy Habits, and all-you-can-eat health food buffet. We went to visit a friend of his one time. We would go to the grocery store. The one time I did laundry at the laundry mat on my own with Carter, I got to have the company of a homeless man who kept talking about ’the Zodiac’ and ’the Zodiac says’ this and ’the Zodiac says’ that and all I could think of was the damned and nefarious Zodiac Killer until the poor guy mentioned ’Zodiac’, ’Safeway’ and ’for twenty-five cents’ all in one sentence and i figured out he was talking about the little horoscope scrolls. I bought him a cup of coffee.

I was with Cain and still felt empty. I am an emotional person who needs emotional support and looking to Cain for that was like trying to hug a brick wall. I initiated sex with him even if I didn’t want to just so I could feel like he was there with me for a time and not in his own little internal world.

I found a pamphlet for the local community college and though that perhaps I could take some classes. They had an excellent Criminology and Forensics program and I felt interest begin to stir. For my birthday Cain bought me a used cello from Celebrity Vintage and Clothing for $100.00. He arranged for me to begin taking lessons once a month. My instructors name was Mary. She told me, on my first lesson, that I would be a quick learner and would pick it up quickly. I was so excited! I loved the voice of the cello and I was really looking forward to learning the instrument.

A week after my first cello lesson Cain came home with bad news. He had been fired. Something to do with him taking the extra time off to come help us move down there or something. I don’t know for sure. I am not sure I got the whole story or whole reason. There was nothing he could do about it. He seemed relieved, though. He wasn’t comfortable working with high voltage electricity. He had a fear of it instead of a healthy respect. He shouldn’t have been in the field in the first place. If it hadn’t been for his father’s pressure as well as his need to escape fatherhood, so like his own father had done, he never would have gotten involved in the apprenticeship program.

So that was it. Three months and we were going back home to Montana. Until we got on our feet, we would have to live somewhere. I knew Cain’s dad hated me so we would be moving in with my parents for a time.

Even though we had been reunited and were moving back to Montana as an intact family, old problems were still there. Old issues were still present. The time and distance we had lived apart had served to place a distant between our hearts. Like watching an old dear friend die a slow and painful death, our life as a family together lived on numbered days.

It never fails. My husband lets me use the computer to write and as I begin, immediately begins talking to me. There is nothing productive in the talk, no, “Hey, this is what productive thing I did with my day!” it’s talk of what annoying thing which kid did and how he got to annoy them back. Or some other random crap.

I sound like a bitch who doesn’t give a shit what my husband has to say, at least that is what he would tell me I was being should we get in an argument. It’s not that I don’t like small talk, but small talk during my writing times, which are garnered and horded like dragon treasure, cuts in on that time and that time is not something I want to squander.

He is learning. He is not as bad as he used to be about it when he sees me get focused. He no longer has a bazaar jealousy complex about how I can ‘ignore his existence’ when I am writing. I have let it be known that when I am writing I am in my zone and there is only room for one in it. Me. My zone. Butt out or face Bitchzilla. I love how he has learned to be respectful of it. Baby steps. A very dear once-was-lost-but-now-is-found-friend reminded me of this. Be grateful for the baby steps. It means there is progress.

I don’t know how long to keep titling this particular thread of blog A Hard Look Within. I mean, it is kind of obvious now that I am going through a period of self examination. A Hard Look came about because, in all the arguments and fighting my husband and I have done with each other out here, if I truly want to be the forgiving, honest and fair person I so desired and claim to be, I must, in all fairness, turn my critical eye upon myself. The hard part in this uphill burden is learning to do so with kindness in my heart toward myself. This is not something I have been very good at. And I am ashamed of a lot of the things I have done in the past.

One of the things that GM has railed at me in our domestic disputes is that I can turn such a damning eye on his family but never on myself. Now, when he tells me this he is usually screaming it at me and I, never being a quiet little lamblike, am usually screaming things like “HORSESHIT!” and other wise words of debate right back.

It really pissed me off when he said that to me. I know enough now that if it is pissing me off that much there is a reason behind it and that the reason behind it usually means there is some truth in his statement. Weather I want to admit it or not. I am a stubborn bitch when it comes to wanting to be right. (ain’t we all? lol)

I don’t really like that about myself. I don’t want my desire to be right short out my desire to be just and fair. Yet, in the domestic battleground, using the tools I learned in my family that have been passed down for generations, verbal knives are drawn and I go for the throat every time.

I have never told my husband he is not the only partner I have had that has accused me of being able to push all their buttons in a fight. I argue ruthlessly because in my mind, because of how I was raised, under emotional and verbal attack from my father at a very young age, ruthless meant survival. Not letting the bastard(s) beat you down. Not letting the bastard(s) win. Throw on that armor and draw out your sword because my heart can’t take the hurt and son-of-a-bitch must pay.

I know now that, though being raised in this manner in some ways damaged me, by my own right as a growing evolving human being, it is my right to change it. Not only right, but, now that I am a parent, it is my blessed duty to change it. For myself and for the generation that I am raising. I took on a sacred duty called Mother beginning in 1993. This changed my life FOREVER in this physical realm and most likely beyond. Beyond, I say, because my children will live after my bodily work here is done. So will their children. And theirs. What I teach my children now is what they will propagate into the world. What I leave on their spirits will forever help to shape who they become, and influence who their children become. That is a big job. It is, at times, a scary and fucking overwhelming job. It is vital.

Therefore, it is vital to take that hard look within myself. My history. The parenting I have received. The parenting I have done. What I have been doing this whole year, and off and on again for over ten, is try to dissect and examine all the shit I have done, for good or ill and see where I can find enough kindness for myself to acknowledge that there are good things I have done, yet be strong enough to put to rest the generations of fucked up parenting that came before me.

By all means, not all the parenting has been fucked up, and I am so thankful it was a very mild form of fucked up compared to some of the shit that has gone on and still goes on in not just this nation, but the world. There are so many more out there who are in situations I have never seen or experienced. There are children being tortured by the adults in their life, their ‘caregivers‘. Children being starved, beaten, molested, used, thrown away and killed. The surviving children are growing up to either be repeat offenders or amazing survivors.

I am rooting for those survivors. A few of my best friends are survivors. Warrior women who overcame great difficulty with all odds stacked against them. Men who lived through abuse and trauma only to become strong, sensitive individuals, happy in who they are.

There was some good, solid stuff in my upbringing and consequent life‘s choices. There was some shit. The key to it all is balance. After all, shit, when composted and allowed to rot, becomes some of the best growing medium known to the natural world.

 So maybe that is where I am going on this blog train. Turning shit into gold. It can be done. Honest.