Come at me wild, November

No more whispering seas

Or soft silent kisses

Do not reason with me

Or rant of a rationale

For the siege of winter

Which bites at your heels

*

Come at me like an infinite ocean

I want to feel your sturm and drang

Be torn by your tumultuous tides

Feel the sting of your swollen waves

Lash against my seasoned skin

To know I’m still alive

And dancing on the edge

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This post is dedicated to my mother, who was a very special person on this earth. She died a few months after this photograph was taken at her 75th birthday party at her favourite outdoor restaurant on the shores of Lake Huron, pictured here with four of her six grandchildren.

She wanted everyone she knew from far and wide to attend her 75th birthday, but as it was on December 11, she was afraid a lot of people wouldn’t be able to travel in the winter to northern Ontario. So she planned a big celebration in July. The event was crowded, and it was one of her happiest days. She died at the end of October, about six weeks before reaching the three quarters of a century mark.

I wrote this poem about her several years later:

My Mother Was Big

My mother was big

so big, she was more than twice as big as me

the day I gave birth to twins

My mother was as big as a house

and the hearth within it and the warmth

and the love she had for all her grandchildren

My mother was so big

she could fit the entire world inside her head

the highest mountains of the Himalayas

and the vastness of the Arabian deserts

and all the nooks and crannies of the Yorkshire moors

My mother’s heart was so big and beat so loudly

I could hear it even when the loudest trains

passed by my window in the wee hours of sleepless nights

My mother’s laughter was so big and so loud

it sounded like the peal of bells

and even strangers flocked to hear

and all my friends

My mother’s feet were so big they trod meaningfully

into the lives of those she loved

My mother was big enough to fit into all the corners of my life.

But when my mother died, she was so small

There was nothing left.

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I’ll wait no more for you like a daughter,
That part of our life together is over
But I will wait for you, forever
Like a river…

— from Carly Simon’s “Like a River”

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I hear your whispers

Across the century

When I walk at night

Under the foggy autumn moon

With the burning scent of frosted leaves

In the air

*

Your ancient voice

Tumbles over

The soft rumble of tires

On dark pavement

And quiets the call

Of the night birds

*

I see your shadow

Cross the black velvet sky

It dulls the stars

And the careless ghosts

Who hide their dark secrets

Under the canopy of old trees

*

I walk at night

To hear the threads of your voice

Whisper like fog

And windswept leaves

Under the autumn moon

Beneath my soft footfall

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Fifteen days after my mother died, I started to write a book about her life.

In truth, I began to write it long before that, but only in my head. Sometimes I would go so far as to write down snippets of memory, but the book proper was born in the wake of my mother’s passing. Many of the people who attended my mother’s memorial service, and listened to my brother read an excerpt from a book she wrote for us, later told my sister they longed to hear more about my mother’s life. Most of them had only known Mum in the last two decades of her life and were blissfully unaware of the tragedies that had preceded her coming to settle on the north shore of the Great Lake Huron in northern Ontario.

Now there’s a bit of guilt involved here, because my mother died twenty-eight years ago. And while I made that initial stab at the book a couple of weeks after her death, it has since sat untouched and neglected for nearly three decades.

I could come up with all sorts of excuses. Like, I was raising three young children at the time, on my own, and working full time and part time, with nary a second of time for such indulgences as writing stories about my mother.

She left behind two complete manuscripts: the first, Joy Forever, tells the tales of her early life; and the second, Nothing is Forever, goes into detail about the second half of her life after immigrating to Canada. I first read those manuscripts, oh, I don’t know, maybe 40 years ago. My then-husband and I had been visiting, and she gave me both manuscripts to read on the car ride home to Ottawa from where she lived just outside the small village of Little Rapids in northern Ontario, a fairly lengthy drive of seven or eight hours. I sat in the passenger seat, enthralled with the story of misfortune after misfortune, which she attempted to write with a sense of humour, and sobbed my heart out all the way home.

And then, last week, for some unknown reason, I decided to list for sale a silver-plated coffee and tea set that had belonged to my parents since the 1960s. It had been handed down to my little sister, and then, because my sister didn’t want it, she had shipped it to me along with a bunch of other belongings.

“But it’s so nice,” my daughter said as I worked on the listing, “Why don’t you keep it?”

Whatever the opposite of nostalgia is, that’s what I feel for this tea service. It reminds me of the first childhood home we had in Canada, the house my twin sister calls “the house of horrors,” and when I look at this gleaming silver tea set, I remember that house and where it sat on the carved oak corner cupboard in the dining room.

It simply has to go.

Before I could list the set for sale, however, I needed to find out more about its history, which led me to sift through old boxes of photographs and leaf through a book my brother wrote. Maybe there would be mention of the tea set, how it came into my parents’ possession and when.

But I couldn’t find anything definitive.

As I got lost in the memories, and unearthed forgotten moments of my past, it became clear to me I needed to dust off Mum’s book and start writing it properly. I have her manuscripts, tons of old photographs and vague memories that twist in and out of my brain. All of this is a book in the making.

A first draft:

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Nothing is Forever

PROLOGUE : Broken Hearts

I am very small when it happens. Not yet five, my hair is wispy and pale and I’m entranced by the geometric pattern on the maroon-coloured wallpaper in my older brother’s bedroom. There’s an eerie cry and a thump. An otherworldly noise emanates from the bathroom. I think of the toothpaste in the little flat tin on the side of the sink. I hear it tinkle as it falls onto the white floor tiles. I know it’s not about me, but I sense something changing and I don’t know what it is.

That morning, not too long after Christmas, I had gone into my brother’s room because he always had interesting things in there, like Rupert annuals and comic books.

And then that crashing sound.

My brother, my sister and I are staring down the hallway towards the bathroom where my father has been shaving. He’s on the floor.

This is my earliest memory. I know that, because I have no recollection of life with my father. My sister says she remembers him, but I can look at a photograph of him and all I see is a stranger.

“I can’t breathe,” I tell my brother, who is standing perfectly still in his doorway. He doesn’t hear me. I feel myself fading into a whisper. I’m not sure who I am or that I’m safe. No one speaks.

It is several years before I know that my father dies on that day, at the age of 45, leaving me rudderless and unable to breathe in rhythm for the rest of my life.

He has simply disappeared with no explanation from anyone. I have no memories of the couple of years that follow that day.

Forty-three years later, my mother dies of a broken heart. A quick death, just like my father’s, that follows years of tragedy. Although she is only 74, she is ancient when she dies and has turned a dusty grey. The richness and vibrancy that was once hers has settled into the folds of her long and tragic life and faded into a dull crumbling colour.

But to understand why my mother’s broken heart finally fails her, I must go back to a windswept day in late October 1915, the day my maternal grandmother Mary stands on a London pier waiting to board the SS Kaisir-i-Hind, a P&O Steamship Navigation Co. vessel destined for India. Her father William, a highly successful businessman in northern England, has followed her there in his Rolls Royce and threatens to disinherit her if she boards. With a golden fox fur wrap around her shoulders to show off her lush black hair, and a thick cosy muff wrapped around her palms, Mary is dreaming of her lover on the other side of the world. She boldly defies her father, and steps confidently onto the ship that will take eighteen days to reach Bombay.

Within a year, Mary’s first son is born. Over the next several years, now living in Calcutta, Mary has miscarriage after miscarriage until she becomes pregnant with my mother. She is advised to return to England to have the baby.

My mother, who is born in Hull, Yorkshire in the north of England two weeks before Christmas in 1923, tells me many years later she felt cheated out of being born somewhere exotic, but made up for it by travelling all over the world, much like her mother had. This book is her story.

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In a land far far away and long long ago, my maternal grandmother Mary Bingham, in cahoots with my maternal grandfather Sydney Pedersen, made a decision that would change the life of their descendants forever.

It was a cool and gusty day in October 1915 when Mary stood on London’s eastern pier in Tilbury waiting to board the newish SS Kaisir-i-Hind steamship bound for Bombay. Her father, a highly successful businessman in the north of England, followed her there in his Rolls Royce, and threatened to disinherit his only daughter if she stepped foot on the ship.

My grandmother, a bold courageous woman who had grown up with eight brothers, knew her mind and left her father standing at the dock with barely a backward glance. In her late 20s at the time, her heart had been captured by the tall dashing Norwegian she’d met at a party. A master sergeant in the British Indian Army and a qualified engineer, Sydney had a chiselled jaw, a baby face, and blond hair and blue eyes. During a leave in England, he asked Mary to come out to India and marry him. Her father did not approve. Mary had her mind made up.

The Kaisir-i-Hind, designed for service in hot climates, would carry Mary away from England’s blustery eastern shores across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and reach the west coast of India in 18 days, fast for an ocean liner in those days. Within five months, it would survive the first of five torpedo attacks east of Malta.

See next week’s post of how I came to begin writing my book, Nothing Is Forever, that tells this story and the story of Mary and Sydney’s second and last born child, my mother Joy.

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October comes lapping at my feet

Like the front runner of a cold Atlantic tide

*

Enter softly twilight month

Without dragging in dark wintry sentiments

Do not forsake your summer rose

Would you kiss me harsh with frost

Or whisper coolly through my petals

To give fair warning of wild November

*

If I walk your rain-soaked paths

And drink the dew from your golden leaves

Will you remember my fear of falling

And keep your foggy moons bright

And your rumbling thunder soft

*

I want to love you

Wrap my blanket arms around you

Breathe in your mottled dusks

Bask in your late rising sun

Move quietly through your ghostly shadows

*

So tread gently dear October

Let your colours fall with no secrets

That we can walk in step

Before the cold season

Would bid us both adieu

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How do you feel about the end of summer? The coming of the “ber” months? Are you ready for another winter (or summer for those Down Under)? Do you have a special relationship with October?

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I grew up by the ocean. And on boats. I hung out all day at the beach. Or down at the docks. But I didn’t learn to swim until I was in my early 30s. It was nothing for me to row across the bay to a deserted island in a leaky rowboat without a lifejacket, because somehow I felt at one with the water. And yet, if I’d fallen in . . . but I never did.

The year our gym class at school took swimming lessons, I had rheumatic fever and was banned from all sports for my entire high school years, including swimming.

And then, one day at a party in my brother’s backyard, everyone was thrown into the pool. Except me. Because I hid out in the bathroom, terrified that I would be found out. That I didn’t know how to swim. It was too embarrassing to contemplate. Fun party for me that’s for sure! Not.

That was the day I vowed I would take real swimming lessons. Lessons for adults who didn’t know how to swim. The instructor was so patient, including with those who wouldn’t even get IN the pool. I fell somewhere between terrified of water and brave enough to dive into the pool. By the end of the lessons, I was jumping into the deep end. But only feet first. And I never got the breathing right. That’s the best I could do.

This poem, which I wrote in a writing workshop, led by an avid swimmer, really has nothing to do with swimming. It’s about getting old.

Somehow I think the two are linked. What do you think?

How to Swim More Than One Lap

Aging is the cruelest joke of all

But don’t despair

*

If you can still move your arms

The water will move under your body

No matter how old it is

*

It’s best to breathe slowly

And rhythmically

But holding your breath works too

*

Moments of your life can disappear a metre at a time

Whole drawers of memory can come undone with every flap of your foot

*

If you swallow water

You might drown

But usually

A wild angel will wrap its wings around your waist

And keep you floating

*

When you reach the end of the pool

Don’t forget to turn

Many people keep right on going

This is usually a mistake

And they tend to find out when it’s too late

*

Oh, and one last thing:

When you take that last gasp

You’ll notice you’ve swum many laps

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When the winds blow in unannounced from the north, a primal urge emerges. As the air becomes crisper, the leaves begin to loosen from branches and fall in dried heaps on the ground, and days become shorter and darker, we pull out warmer sweaters from our closets, wrap our hands around hot drinks, make large batches of comforting soup and start to think of cosy things.

Geese, on the other hand, are on the move. Which brings us to the unmistakable iconic Canada goose, with its distinctive black and white head and tail and cocoa-coloured plumage.

If you live anywhere near fresh water, including the Great Lakes (I love you, Lake Ontario), you’re going to see great flocks of these magnificent birds rise into the air in impressive formation, honking loudly and flapping their giant wings for all they’re worth.

They’re not afraid of humans, so you’ll see them bravely gathered in busy parks. And best keep your distance because these very large animals can be very aggressive! They’re easily a metre long with a wingspan twice that.

Now that we’re in September, Canada geese are gathering in great numbers to prepare for migration, which will take place for the next two months as they head south to the lower states of America.

Oh, it feels so Canadian to hear that loud honking emerging from above and to see the awesome V shape these enormous birds form in the bright blue sky, with the lead goose breaking air resistance for its fellow travellers, which then use the updraft to their advantage. When leader bird tires, it falls back and is replaced by another from the flock. Talk about communication, coordination and compassion for one’s companions!

The special flight pattern of the geese allows them to save energy and fly efficiently non-stop for at least 1600 kilometres (1000 miles). And, of course, there is safety in numbers.

My body isn’t shaped for jeans

Unlike my daughter’s slim bones

That swim easily in denim

Khaki is more my style

Which reminds me

Of my army jacket

That was stolen by a roommate

Who argued with me over a television show

She wanted to watch

On a night I had planned

To watch Blockbuster movies with my children

That army jacket

That was left in my hands

By a lover

Who was a deserter from the Filipino army

Hiding out in a small hotel room

In Madrid

With wispy curtains that fluttered

In the warm summer breeze

The jacket he thoughtfully placed on my shoulders

When I shivered in the rain

As we walked through

El Retiro Park near the Salamanca neighbourhood

At two in the morning

Under the watchful eyes of the Guardia Civil

And the night watchmen serenos

Often old ex-soldiers

Who roamed the streets of Madrid

In Francoist Spain

The jacket Edi the deserter wore

When we met

At Le Duc de Wellington Pub

Maybe nearby but I can’t quite remember

Where I played guitar and sang

Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now

And Donovan’s Catch the Wind

And Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair

Passing the hat for pesetas or céntimos

Pockets particularly plentiful

When Oliver Reed showed up

With his band of bodyguards

And invited me after my set

To sit at his table

Laden with more food than anyone could possibly eat

While he made a fool of himself

Singing drunken ditties at the piano

And told tales of his antics

While filming The Three Musketeers

With Raquel Welch (who never showed at Le Duc)

And the next day

Oliver would be there again

But would have forgotten who I was

“Who is that girl?”

And Edi’s jacket (but not Edi)

Found its way across the Atlantic

By boat with me

And hung on a hook

In my Canadian hallway

Until an angry young woman decided she wanted it

Not knowing its history

Or what it was she walked away with

So khaki it is

There are no metaphors here

Just poetry of a sort

That fell from the sky into my lap

While driving through traffic

Written for those who want to read plain words

A jumble of loose memories

That wandered unhindered temporarily

In my brain

A stream of consciousness

That simply landed on the page

With a splat

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I was there

When the moon fell into the ocean

I saw it in a dream

It hollowed out my heart

And you said

I deserved it

*
I waded into the ripples

The sand scurried over my toes

Like worried crabs

I loved them

And they said

Thank you

*

My breath exhaled

Through the soles of my feet

And my lungs

Filled with the tears of waves

And I said

You saved me

*

I fell asleep

On a hammock of stars

There was no before or after

Only a moment

And we whispered

To one another

*

I gathered all the hushed voices

Turned them into words

That fell to earth

Like shadows

And they said

We are a mystery

We shall all be changed

In the twinkling of an eye

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[Best accompanied to Anthem Lights’ Doo-Wop Medley: In the Still of the Night / Earth Angel: ]

Doo-Wop

Yesterday I meant to go shopping. For just a few things. Bread and cheese. But after stopping at the drug store for some antibacterial ointment, I got back in my car and said to myself, I can live another day without bread and cheese. What I really want to do is sit at an outdoor café with a hot drink and catch those last rays of daylight.

It was 6:30, a mid-August evening. The rest of the day—the best part of the day—stretched out ahead of me, beckoning me to stop and take it in. I was also tired from a short, interrupted sleep the night before. And those hours of twilight were more inviting than walking through the aisles of a grocery store.

Twilight truly is the perfect time of the day. The light hits just right. Not harsh, but soft and enticing, spent from the swirling energy of the day, a welcome unravelling before nightfall.

And as I sat at the shaded outdoor table drinking my perfect café, revelling in the wonder of the softening sky, the wispy pink and rimmed golden underbellies of the clouds, the calmness and nourishment of the caressing breeze, I wondered if there was a difference between twilight and dusk. As a writer, and an editor, I ought to know this, but I was uncertain.

So I looked it up.

Want to know the true meaning of twilight?

I didn’t realize that twilight refers to the soft glowing light periods at both ends of the day: before sunrise and after sunset, as light bounces off the upper atmosphere. I also didn’t know that twilight technically has three stages: civil twilight when the sun is a few degrees below the horizon, it’s still bright outside and the sky is a bright blue; nautical twilight when the sun slips lower, the horizon dims, the sky turns a deep royal, and stars begin to appear (possibly my favourite time); and astronomical twilight when the sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon and the sky is charcoal, nearly black.

True dusk happens at the end of all these phases. If twilight is the journey, then dusk is the destination.

Depending on where you are on Earth, twilight time can be quick or slow. The more north you are, the longer it lasts. Here in Ottawa, Canada, at 45 degrees north latitude, from the moment the sun disappears below the horizon until total darkness is more than two hours in summer and about an hour and a half in winter. So it’s a substantial time to enjoy those last vestiges of the day.

Morning twilight is the opposite: astronomical, nautical, civil, then the dawn of the sunrise.

End of science lesson.

I’m just a fool

In the still of the night

Shoo be do

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I’m looking for diamonds

In amongst the rust

The refuse

The detritus

The dust

*

I’m looking for fresh air

Through the abandoned lots

The city scapes

The unkempt parks

The flower pots

*

I’m looking for the moon

In between the streetlights

The high rises

Over the lost horizon

And late midnights

*

I’m looking for the ocean

Under the high steel bridge

In the parking lot

On the river bank

On top of the nearby ridge

*

Hope cannot die

Even in the darkest abyss

It is an active verb

That seeks the smallest sliver

Of light

*

If I fell into the moment

Still clutching

My moonlight shadows

Those twisted sandy shells

From forgotten oceans

I would still have my

Nugget of hope

*

My shield against

All those tendrils

Of dark intent

Of negligence

Of cruelty

That couldn’t or wouldn’t

Let in the light

Or see the humanity

The love

The meaning of life

Crippled by their own importance

Now curled up in failure

*

Because diamonds are hard

Air is free

The moon always rises

The ocean is forever

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THE LOST WEEKEND: somehow I feel a smidgen of guilt for missing my weekend post for the first time in nearly two years! Sorry to anyone who was waiting with bated breath to read my words of wisdom. As if. But it’s Monday, and I feel refreshed from sleeping all weekend.

The following is PART THREE of a revised excerpt from my book-in-progress Behind Other Doors about my twenty-seven months of homelessness. After nearly two-and-a-half years without somewhere to live, I finally moved into an old apartment I had been renting to tenants. They moved out at the end of September 2010. My initial plan was to move in, repaint, fix it up a little and sell in October. From the moment I arrived at the condo, everything you can think of that could go wrong, went wrong. It ended up taking me three years to get it into a sellable condition. You can read Part One here: The Plan Vs. Reality, and Part Two here: Settling In

It’s the other side of midnight on the last day of July, months after I planned to put my apartment on the market. Frank and I are coming to the end of a hot, sweaty stint of hammering and chiselling at the old parquet floor in my bedroom. The bedroom I’d unintentionally settled into and whose furniture has now been pushed into the hallway.

Frank is lying on the floor because his back hurts, but the hammer is still valiantly tapping away at the end of the screwdriver he grips tightly in his other hand. Wood flies everywhere. I’m chipping away in my corner, stopping periodically to bag the mouldy chunks of floor and carry them off to the disposal room.

This is my apartment I’ve settled into after twenty-seven months on the road. Home sweaty home. Home mouldy home. And my heart is no longer in it.

I thought my rambling days were over, at least for a while, when I moved into my condo ten months ago. They say that home is where the heart is, but more accurately I think, home is where you feel free and where you feel in touch with your true self. Here, as I chisel away at my damaged floor, I am not free.

Centuries and centuries ago, my family were wandering yeomen farmers, always in search of greener pastures. And they were immigrants, leaving their homelands of Germany and Norway and marrying into other unsettled families. More recently, on the eve of the First World War, my grandmother fled from her strict British upbringing to the exotic lands of India and, later, to the banks of the Amazon in South America. Her son marched with the British Army in Palestine and died there. My mother brought me to Canada when I was still a young child.

The wavering floor in my apartment is simply my roots beckoning me away, away, away from a stifling existence, into my Truth.

Which brings me back to Frank and me, lying on the old parquet floor chipping out piece by piece off the concrete. Physically, I’m breathing in the concrete dust and the mould spores, but in my mind, I’m dreaming of sweet moonlight on a river bank.

This is what out of control means, I know it. The vertiginous spin started when I pulled up that first laminate board outside my bathroom door in the spring. I’d had it installed only a few months ago and now it was heaving upwards from the concrete beneath creating a dangerous, wavy ground beneath my feet. Then the second board heaves, the third, and more. The entire entryway. The front door no longer swinging easily over the rising floor, I have to enter my apartment by climbing into my bedroom window, luckily only a foot or two off the ground. All the floor boards are neatly stacked in the hallway. Underneath where the boards have been, a monstrous mess of blackened parquet tiles jut every which way. Mostly loose. Shovelled into bags and carted away, until my entryway is stained concrete ground.

Then that first board at the end of the hallway at the lip of my bedroom pops up. I pry it up to reveal the evil blackness. Another board. And another. And then, over the next day or so, the entire bedroom.

That’s when, in my desperation and unable to reach Frank who regularly lets his cell phone bill lapse, I drive over to his apartment with a hastily written note scrawled anxiously in bright orange felt pen on an envelope.

“Please help me. I promise it will only take two hours. Call me.”

I am about to slip the plea under his door, but I can see through his basement apartment window that he is lounging rather comfortably on his couch listening to a very loud, probably B-rated movie.

I tap on the window and hold up the note, my lip beginning to pout. He comes to the window, scrunches up his nose and reads the note.

“I’ll be right out,” he says.

Now that’s what I like about Frank. If I can reach him, I know he will be a sure bet. And there we are, the two of us, pulling up the floor night after night, over the hottest, most humid days of summer. And then, with probably less than an hour or two of work left to do, we pack it in one night. Two thirty in the morning and we’re both spent.

With mould and concrete mist seeping into my bones, I am hysterically pawing at images of the thousands of dollars I have sunk into my floor, unable to envision the outcome of the big repair job ahead. Unable to sell the condo in this condition, unable to rent it out, I feel imprisoned in my own home.

Eventually, as a calm silence sets in, I realize I am not meant to have a home. Like a body that rejects a foreign transplanted organ sewn into it, my apartment whispers, “Get out, get out, get out, before I swallow you whole. Stay here and you will turn to dust.”

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Epilogue: Over the next several months, with the reason for the heaving floor unresolved, the discovery of a gaping hole and a hot spot on the concrete inside my bedroom closet, and a sky high hydro bill, I contact the original floor guy, a general contractor, a mason, the Concrete Floor Construction Association, City Hall, Hydro Ottawa, the Ontario Energy Board, Measurement Canada (to independently check my electric meter), a building inspector, a mould specialist, Ottawa Foundation Inc. and an infrared thermal imaging service. All to no avail.

Throughout, the condo corporation and board balk at any suggestion I make to resolve the issue, refuse to take any responsibility and put the blame completely on me for installing a new floor over the existing parquet.

Eventually, a Syrian engineer studying to get his Canadian certification overhears the conversation about my condo woes I’m sharing with a friend over coffee at Starbucks and he interrupts with an offer to come and investigate. He advises my hot water tank is constantly running and that I probably have a leaking hot water pipe behind the walls. As he isn’t yet certified, he can’t provide an official report and the condo corporation won’t act without one.

A full year after my new floor heaves, a plumber deduces that the problem is an illegally installed hot water tank that is draining directly into the floor, an electrician who is familiar with the building suggests there are leaking pipes under the floor and/or behind the wall and a drain firm finds blocked drainage pipes and damaged weeping tiles. It has taken me months to reach the right people.

My second new floor is finally installed more than a year after pulling up my first new floor and I end up living in the condo-from-hell for a total of six years. By the time I put it on the market, I have completely renovated it, but am able to sell only for the price I paid for it 10 years earlier.

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The following is PART TWO of a revised excerpt from my book-in-progress Behind Other Doors about my twenty-seven months of homelessness. After nearly two-and-a-half years without somewhere to live, I finally moved into an old apartment I had been renting to tenants. They moved out at the end of September 2010. My initial plan was to move in, repaint, fix it up a little and sell in October. From the moment I arrived at the condo, everything you can think of that could go wrong, went wrong. It ended up taking me three years to get it into a sellable condition. You can read Part One here: Part One House of Dust

A month after temporarily moving into my formerly rented condo to prepare it for a quick sale, I’m stuck with inadequate funds, delayed contracts, and scurrying around trying to drum up supplemental income.

I’ve landed a catsitting job for the whole month of November and I “sort of” move into the cul-de-sac town home in the west end of the city. I take only a few things, as I plan, at least at first, to go back and forth between my temporary home and my condo that I’m renovating, a good 30 kilometres each way.

The large west-facing bedroom window of the catsit overlooks a sparkling emerald rolling golf course and a wooded lot of pine and birch. My first quiet, rainy morning lulls me into a comfortable calm that reminds me of west coast British Columbia.

Unfortunately, I’m wasting a lot of time driving back and forth looking after my west-end cats and my east-end cats. And I’m pricing mirrored sliding doors and laminate flooring, and buying paint, a shower rod and new blinds. I’m also preparing reproductions of my art work for an upcoming sale when my old Starbucks employer calls me to come in and do some shifts. I need to speed up my income and work at something with a regular paycheque, so I accept.

I’ve revised my plan from a quick one-month reno to instead finishing everything by Christmas and listing the condo for sale in February or March. Makes more sense at this point.

Then, the first week of December, my daughter in Vancouver arrives unexpectedly. She’s changed her mind about going to school out west, and says she’s sad and lonely. She arrives on Day Two of the new floor installation, my biggest project and biggest expense of my renovation. You can read about my new floor installation here:

My Accidental Floor

I ask the floor guy to start in the small bedroom, so my daughter will have somewhere to sleep, and by the time she comes, it’s half done. Meanwhile, I set up my queen-sized mattress on the floor of the large bedroom, so she can have the small bedroom to herself. The second day, the contractor completes the floor in her room and she settles in.

Getting my mattress out of storage is a feat in itself. Frank helps me drag my mattress out of the storage locker the night before my daughter’s arrival. We manage to tie it to my car’s roof rails on a bitterly cold, snowy, windy evening, and it blows right off onto the highway a few kilometres from home. We have a terrible time trying to re-roof it and as I’m pulling on one of the strings, it snaps and I go flying backwards, landing hard on my butt on the frozen snowy ground. The cold steals right into my bones, prolonging my recovery from the little incident. I huddle in the car over the steering wheel, trying to deal with the painful bruises and the cold, while Frank struggles with the mattress by himself in the swirling snowstorm.

The next day, I come down with a nasty cold and suffer through the rest of the week.

And then the other “accident” happens. Never intending to stay in the condo for more than a month or so, now that my daughter has moved in, we gradually begin hauling my “things” out of storage to make it look more like home instead of camping: my glorified heater that looks like a little fireplace, a rug, my long drapey white and taupe cotton curtains. And I pick up a couple of floor lamps for $30 from Zellers and two Poang chairs on sale at Ikea for $35 each.

My old desk becomes our dining room table and a bamboo carpet my daughter gets for Christmas from her sister fits perfectly under it.

A grand $20 fir tree we pick up four days before Christmas scrapes the ceiling of our apartment and I string it with coloured lights and red and gold ribbon.

It’s all so cozy and—well—nice.

I’m stunned. We’re home. This is home. This crappy little condo I swore I’d never live in is home sweet home.

Until it isn’t:

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Coming next week, the final part of House of Dust when my new floor heaves and I grapple with the concept of home.

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The following is a revised excerpt from my book-in-progress Behind Other Doors about my twenty-seven months of homelessness. After nearly two-and-a-half years without somewhere to live, I finally moved into an old apartment I had been renting to tenants. They moved out at the end of September 2010. My initial plan was to move in, repaint, fix it up a little and sell in October. From the moment I arrived at the condo, everything you can think of that could go wrong, went wrong. It ended up taking me three years to get it into a sellable condition. I didn’t know that when I moved in that first October . . .

Nellie asks me at a Thanksgiving dinner of Cornish hens, “Is living in your condo just a blip in your gypsy life?”

Well, life is just a blip really, I’m thinking. It’s one event, one memory, one phase after another. Until it’s over. And my current phase is living in my condo. While I am no longer officially “homeless”—after all, this is the condo I actually own—this does not feel like home.

At the beginning of August, my tenants give me notice they are moving out at the end of September. They had considered buying the condo, but unforeseen events have drained their savings and they no longer qualify for a mortgage.

This means their last rent payment, which covers the cost of my condo, is in August and I will have to carry the apartment until I can sell it. This is troubling at the time of the news, as I’ve drained my bank accounts dry to help one of my daughters settle in Vancouver to attend school and to keep my other daughter in Calgary.

After considering my options, I decide to head back to Ottawa from Calgary, list the condo and try to sell it myself in October. The place will be empty and I’ll repaint and fix it up a little. I don’t know what it will sell for, but I feel certain I’ll come out with $38,000 clear. Almost enough to pay off my nearly $43,000 debt.

At first, I cringe at the whole notion of living in my own condo. I never planned to make it home. It was an investment that never paid off. I rented it to bad tenants, good tenants and carried it when it was vacant.

When I first arrive, I can’t believe how filthy it is. The stove and oven look like they haven’t been cleaned since I last put element foils on the range and sprayed the inside with oven cleaner more than two years ago. The tenant, when he returns my keys the following week, confirms that in fact he did not clean the stove for the entire two-and-a-quarter years that he lived there. I am imagining that I will have to pay someone to come and cart the appliance away. The fridge isn’t much better.

My fantasy that I will have the apartment entirely painted and freshened up over one weekend of hard slogging quickly turns to ash as I tackle the enormous cleaning project. Meanwhile, my neighbour across the hall and the building superintendent give me the bad news about current selling prices.

Nellie also comes by to visit and is speechless when she sees the state of the place. Feeling even more discouraged, I nevertheless drag out my little twin bed from my storage unit and set myself up in the smaller of the two bedrooms. I unpack my suitcase and, gradually over the next few days, I settle in with a radio, my bike and my tool boxes. And set to work.

Within a couple of weeks, I’m feeling right at home, even though I’m really only “camping” out in the apartment. My two cats, Spider and Moonlight, have joined me. I’m grateful for the woman who looked after them all summer. The Himalayan’s long dusty-coloured fur is sleek and fine. He’s been well looked after. The tabby, sadly, has been overfed and needs to be on a strict diet!

After more than two years of being homeless, I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that I am actually living in my own home! The large south-facing windows look out over a grassy lawn, which fills daily with the golden and russet leaves of fall. The weather is cool but sunny: a glorious end to summer. The building is very quiet, and the main expressway, merely a stone’s throw away, is surprisingly unobtrusive. I waste no time finding the local Starbucks, grocery store, dollar store and home renovation locations, more or less in that order, and start buying paint and renovating accessories.

Then I begin to fall in love with the new phase of my life. This is my home now and I’m fixing it up just the way I want. Keeping in mind, nevertheless, that I’ll be selling it and someone else might not want magenta or cobalt blue on the walls, I choose neutral paint colours with names like Shore and Moonlight and Ocean. I can already envision how beautiful this very humble place is going to look by the time I finish.

Every night when I curl up in my little bed, with the fresh Ottawa air flowing in from my bedroom window, my two cats curled up at my feet, I feel ever more content.

Nonetheless, I feel very much like Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat.

Like Alice, I do not have a clear goal. I don’t know when the apartment will be ready to list. I don’t know what it will sell for. I’m not certain how to divvy up the profits. Debt repayment? Reinvestment? Buying or renting a home of my own? Starting my own business? And I have no idea where I will live when and if it sells. But maybe the Cheshire cat’s wisdom is worth heeding and it simply doesn’t matter.

In the meantime, unable to completely let go of my nomadic life of the past couple of years, I have promised an acquaintance who lives in the far west end of the city, that I will catsit for her for the entire month of November while she’s in Europe. And I’m lining up another possibility for about a month and a half in January and February.

As I chip away at my reno project, I begin to savour the seasonal change. Ottawa’s autumn is positively splendid. Day after day of sunshine, albeit on the cool side. I have retrieved my bike from the back of Nellie’s garage and go riding right through to the middle of November. The day before Halloween, our first snowfall of the coming winter leaves a soft blanket cover over the ground. Within twenty-four hours, however, there is no sign of it and the glorious weather returns for a couple more weeks.

Speaking of repairs, I have hired a handyman to fix the drywall in the bathroom, build new kitchen drawers and repair all the apartment doors that don’t close properly. The kitchen is the second biggest job after new flooring. I tackle a lot of the work myself: I remove all the dark burgundy cupboard doors in the kitchen and the hardware, clean the old paint-covered hinges (big job!), and sand and paint the cupboard doors white. I have the contractor hang them for me and repair a couple of damaged ones.

He does some of the work at his home workshop and on his second visit to my apartment, I go into a sudden panic. It’s the first of November and I can’t pay my mortgage. I wasn’t planning to still be here this late into the year.

The original plan was to extend my line of credit at the bank, do all the renos in a month, and list it. But the bank turned me down because my debt-to-income ratio is too high.

I’ve had plenty of writing and editing work. I’ve just spent the entire weekend interviewing four graduate students and writing profiles, and between Tuesday and Friday, I’ve put in twenty-one hours editing a technical website for a client who needed it done “yesterday.” I’m in the top running for a job at Revenue Canada, boring but good pay (they end up hiring internally). And I’ve also landed a job as managing editor for a new clean technology magazine that will pilot their first publication in March and, if successful, will publish twice a year, bringing in hefty chunks of money (it folds after three publications).

Of course, I know I won’t be paid immediately for these jobs, but I leaf through all my recent invoices, sent out for work already completed—some as long ago as August—and yet unpaid. It amounts to more than $4,100. No wonder I can’t cover my mortgage.

I email two of my wayward clients begging them to pay me now, so I can cover my mortgage payment, and one of them obliges with an email transfer that is just enough to make the required payment.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at my contractor, who is setting in new tracks for the kitchen drawers and I blurt out, “You’ll have to stop working Claude. I need to pay you for the work you’ve done before you continue.”

I leave him with instructions to tally up my current debt to him and promise to call him back when I’m in a position to have him continue the work. I’ve paid him $200 so far, to cover materials, and I still owe him $500 for his work. I need at least a couple of weeks to round up my accounts receivable, I tell him. He looks dumbfounded. I’m wishing I could be so bold as to expect payment upon completion of a job! But I’m a lowly freelancer, who apparently falls at the bottom of the accounts payables chain.

This results in a bunch of half-finished projects and delays the ultimate goal of putting the apartment on the market as quickly as possible.

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Next week, I end up “settling” into my condo, and the beautiful new laminate floor I have installed in December heaves the following spring when moisture from broken weeping tiles seeps into my apartment and several broken hot water pipes deep within the walls start leaking. It all has to come up . . .

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I leave crumbs behind me

They say

Marking my passage in tiny ways

No gratitude from those who

Like clean swept spaces

*

I leave footprints in the sand

I say

Marking my passage in tiny ways

No fault of those who

Followed after the wave

*

Don’t be deceived

Or dismissive

For they are more than crumbs

They are more than imprints

They are the parts of me

I shed

That couldn’t hold

And the parts

That insisted

On an empowered voice

*

If you cross my life

I will not be invisible

Even if you wish it

I will see you past midnight

When you trip over the broken bits

Scattered in my wake

*

I cannot pass over the earth

And stay in one piece

Destined to be seen

You will hear me

Even with your blinders on

I am as big as you

You cannot shove me under the rug

Without leaving folds to trip on

*

I will have my day in court

You will not silence me

And I will win

I will win

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For those who have been following my litigation

(which you can read about here: Bleak Justice),

I won the appeal!

My clients’ submissions to have my earlier judgment thrown out were completely dismissed.

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After all the noise

And the silences

And the in-betweens

Of my life

The ebbs and flows

The sharp turns

The sudden retreats

The long voyages

Around the planet

I have survived the dark waves

The starless nights

The dust storms

In the deserts of betrayal

The torn petals

From my favourite flowers

All of it has rumbled

Underneath me

Like a dream

Or a nightmare

Only to leave me

With thunder in my blood

And moonlight on my tongue

Facing the Western Sky

Which calls me quietly

To its golden-edged cumulus

Tempting me

To follow its brush strokes

Of lavender and peach

Its flashes of

Burnt vermilion and muted carmine

Over the horizon

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Do sunsets speak to you? Inspire you to write poetry?

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We danced in the fields

On a strawberry moon

Forever, I whispered

As you dipped me low

Towards the grain

*

Beasts of the air

Moved to a celestial tune

And wheeled against the flow

Of the spinning planet

As Earth lost its hold

*

We are free, you promised

In the ripeness of the moon

As hopeful as birds that fly

We found our drum beat

Written in the fertile soil

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When you find yourself

on the edge of summer

pulling petals from garden roses

as swallows perform

their aerial dances

at a height

you could never hope to reach

and the warming air

warns of days to come

when you may no longer

bear to step outside

do not shed a tear

for the ghost of spring

do not let your thoughts

wander to August days

while the sun begins

its slow decline

toward the autumnal equinox

rather

revel in the soft scents

of the late June flowers

sip slowly

the sweet breath

of the solstice

and listen to

the summer songs

of the sparrows

they have a message

of survival

for you

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I read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House when I was quite young. I don’t remember it in detail, but there is a lawsuit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, concerning the fate of an inheritance that grinds on interminably. It’s been going on so long that no one remembers what prompted the original lawsuit.

Dickens often wrote about lawsuits that outlived the issues that inspired them, and Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, though fictitious, has become an example of the futility and length of civil court cases.

Bleak House opens with an exposition of the case that has dragged on for generations. Numerous lawyers have taken home profits, fortunes have been consumed, and the original issues have lost their relevance. Characters in the novel marry, go bankrupt, grow old and die waiting for resolution.

The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. — Charles Dickens, Bleak House

In the end, the case is dismissed, and no one gets any money because the inheritance had been completely spent on legal fees.

The process itself is the winner and the litigants are the losers: of their money, their time, their peace of mind, and even their lives, while the wheel of justice turns.

The point is that a legal dispute can cease to be about the underlying wrong and become instead about who can survive the process longest.

All this is front of mind as my own appeal date approaches next week.

I wrote about my court case here: Today I Win

And the ongoing litigation here: Lost in Litigation

In my case, the litigation began nearly four years ago when my clients failed to pay me a substantial sum for work I had completed for them, not citing issues with the work itself, but rather deciding they no longer wanted to continue. If they had nothing to show for their money, then they didn’t want to part with it, regardless of how many years I had worked for them.

I took them to Small Claims Court, personally representing myself, and won. They had lawyers.

The victory, however, was short-lived, because three weeks later, they appealed.

Now it had become a different case. No longer about being compensated fairly for the work I had done, the matter had become one of who could afford to keep fighting.

It became clear to me that my clients were simply using the justice system to extend a conflict, where the costs fell differently on each side. At first, I wondered why they would spend so much on lawyers to avoid paying a fairly modest sum, and one they could easily afford.

And then I learned that their legal fees were being paid by an insurer, while my costs were coming out of my own pocket.

This is the kind of imbalance of justice Dickens criticized again and again in his writing: when one side can litigate almost indefinitely while the other must count every hour and every dollar.

I will say it deeply depressed and distressed me when I learned that their legal costs were covered by an insurance policy. How could they, then, be motivated to settle out of court? I held no leverage. They had the ability to wear me down financially because they had the resources that allowed them to use (or misuse) the justice system.

Whereas I did not.

How does this all turn out? I like to believe Justice will win in the end. But even in the winning, I only stand to gain two-thirds of what I was originally owed (as ordered by the Small Claims judge), more than half of which I have already spent on the litigation.

If I lose — meaning, I will not receive my payment and will be ordered to pay their costs, which they are claiming at an amount well beyond what they owe me — I shall be as destitute as Dickens’ most beloved characters. It will indeed be a bleak house.

The appeal date is Wednesday. The judge’s decision could be months down the road. Stay tuned.

Have you had your own battle in court that you’d like to share?

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