The snapdragons and lilies are about to open. The lilacs are fully resplendent and Ben and I take long walks around the property sticking our face into everything that doesn't currently contain a bee. There's a giant house spider living in my little stable studio and we have an agreement-he goes away while I clean and then later while I work and I let him live. I'm not a fan but after almost two decades here on the coast I'm not super afraid like I once was. It's like I tell the kids growing up-once you've been through worse, or have a little perspective, the scary things don't seem so scary after all. Insects are just doing what we're all doing-just trying to live.
Ben and I have a long history with lilacs and I will never pass one without stopping to breathe deeply. I did attempt to bring in some big bouquets for the tables but they were quickly re-relegated to the patio due to the overwhelming perfume they brought into the house. So my love for them is contingent on an equal does of petrichor and I just realized that now.
Today is a day off. A respite day, a plan booked going into the long weekend in order to facilitate rest after a very long and tense winter.
I don't much like change in place or change in routine and I found solace in the smallest of things over the darkest of months. The boys remain vigilant and understanding as always as I fling myself wildly about my own life, bumping into once-sharp corners now rounded smooth from years of blunt connection. I listen to Drag Path play through my head like a piper's lament only for modern times and it never fails to strike me how my brain will cling to a melody until it loses its white-knuckle grip at last, falling back into the void below.
I gained weight again, the inevitable result of eating on the run. Airports and convenience shops have little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables and everything is too much too big too costly for what you're getting. I once asked for a plate of seasonal fruit at Reign in Toronto and it was $15. Now I go to the grocery store (not the creepy one, the big one further out) and pay that much for a bag of apples. Not a berry to be seen for that price but I don't complain. I wonder how we would have done it back in the day when Cole and I couldn't pay the electric bill without parking the car for the month because we had to pick heat and lights over gasoline. We lived up the hill from our grocery store back then and walked. I budgeted eight dollars a month for food back then and he stole from the restaurant he worked in to fill in the gaps when we got too hungry.
We lived like spiders in the dark, skittering out when it seemed safe to get done what we needed to do before retreating back into the shadows in order not to scare people with our present-day ferity.
You think I was feral. You never got to meet Cole.
He did grow out of it, eventually but not enough to change his fate and that's okay. I watched from my shadows and decided never to take the chance and so I remain here hiding in the lilacs and negotiating with big spiders for real estate. Paying a kings ransom for some tree fruit and remembering every time I get a hint of it that rain is the most beautiful smell on earth. I thought it was flowers. I didn't know I was wrong.