Withdrawal

Hi.

Posting will be light/nonexistent for the weekend, due to the fact that I am currently downtown, waiting for the car to take us to the plane to fly to beautiful California for the night and then tomorrow we will get back on the plane and fly home.

I will call it a micro-mini vacation, even though everyone else calls it 'business'.

(This trip will only feature Caleb, Ben and myself. Sadly the logical one is staying behind. To hang out in Lochlan's Dream Camper, as Ben not-so-lovingly called the camper van this morning on the way out the door. Talk about going to bed angry. I guess they can make up tomorrow.)

Sometimes I really think Caleb is the devil, because it's almost like he manages to pick the Most Vulnerable Times to spring things like this on us. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

Oh, the places you'll go.

That is all.

(PJ thinks it would be prudent of me to point out that I have spent time in person with more than one of these men. PJ, please tell me why I had to include that information and I'll make you some supper.)

Snort.

Poison deliveries.

Caleb sent over a get-well basket since he doesn't dare set foot in this house when I'm sick (so he doesn't get sick, apparently it makes Hell run very unsmoothly and frankly because I'm a very cranky person when I don't feel well) and I have pretty much worked my way through it. Pretty flowers. Cookies that Christian and Dalt pretty much divided and ate before I could unwrap my tea, complaining loudly that they could put down their fucking cookies and help me get the tea out of the package but the crunching pretty much overpowered my pointless whispers and then I started coughing and Dalton tells me hey Bridget why don't you make some tea?

I resisted the urge to wrestle him into the kitchen sink. fill him with hot water and place him on the piping hot burner but not by much.

Included was a handwritten note on Caleb's very neutral white paper (the color of SURRENDER, I might add) that he hopes I am feeling better quickly and we'll talk soon, probably on Saturday when he has his next round of sanctioned fatherhood. Also, enjoy the tea, since he is thrilled that everyone has given up sour mash and hops and distilled things in favor of steeped tea leaves.

As if he can talk.

Well he can't because I'm still presently suspicious and not speaking to him and every now and then something comes to me and I forget an answer to a question and so I dash off an email to the lawyers and my lawyers call his lawyers and his lawyers call him and usually within the hour I have the answers and half the time I TOTALLY remember what it was anyway and wow, if only I could get paid so much to do so little.

Oh, wait a minute.

But I don't CARE about that right now. I'm sick and I care about the fact that every time I swallow I want to punch a brick wall just to make something besides my throat hurt and my eyes are burning, my head is pounding but really, why aren't we travelling more and how in the HELL did we amass so much stuff after I swear I didn't pack all this stuff when we moved here and suddenly all my fucking shirts have tiny HOLES in them again and how is that happening and what the FUCK will make everyone happy for dinner even though I won't get home until 5:30 and that's only if I remember how to get home from the high school! which! is too close to the mountains! I have the water side of the highway down pat (but not at all) and maybe we'll just skip it and my fucking HAIR is driving me nuts because it's at the in-between stage just below my shoulders but never long enough now and my forehead is so hot I am burning from the inside and I wish Ben could stay home but he really can't anymore and I can look after myself but I miss him terribly and really who's bright fucking idea was it to make him the genius now when I think I liked him simpler and then this tea, this pretentious Tazo whatever stuff in Vanilla Rooibos (which I call ROOB-EE-OSE every single time) is far too sweet but decent quality and is this day over with so I can just go to sleep?

Keep the cookies, the sweet tea, the fever and the crankies. Just let me close my eyes.

Hey BEN (busy bee, let me distract him, just for a minute).

When I feel (a lot) better soon, the lap dance song for this year is going to be this.

Because it's awesome.

Just like me.

I am burning up, literally on fire with a fever from the inside out which means I am once again quarantined to the house and I am not happy about it at all but too sick to care, honestly. I have resorted to listening to the chickadees outside the window and Army of Anyone on the stereo, and reading Self-immolations through Time.

I reheated some chicken noodle soup of a questionable vintage that I found in the back of the fridge and I'm poking myself with watercolor pencils every fifteen minutes to stay awake.

Worst day ever.

Loco (motive).

Hey everyone,
I got nowhere to go
The grave is lazy
He takes our bodies slowly

And I said please
Don't talk about the end
Don't talk about how every little thing goes away

She said, friend, all along
Thought I was learning how to take
How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die

One of the biggest positive changes since the move has been the daily dog-walks.

You'll remember the old walks. Every day I contemplated the incredible proximity and danger provided by the train yard at the end of my street. I could reach out and touch the trains as they roared past. I flattened millions of pennies on the tracks. I could have stepped in front of every last one of those trains. I jumped out of my skin dozens of times a day as they sounded their whistles. I lamented the location of the castle in the dark winter mornings when the night train would screech through the west end of the city at a walking pace.

It was possibly the loneliest place in the world and I hated it though I went every single day, sometimes twice.

When there were no trains, the fields were desolate and spartan, deserted and dangerous. What used to be the perfect place for Jacob to let Butterfield off his leash to run circles around us was no place for a small blonde girl alone with her laughable fifteen-pound puppy.

There are no freight trains here.

We walk on a lovingly swept and power-washed sidewalk when we are not on a landscaped evergreen path into the woods. We pass big beautiful new houses, admiring the gardens and outdoor decorations. The expansive front porches and custom-built fences, the slate walkways. The neighbors are mostly around, and they say hello. Other people walking their dogs say hello. Children smile. Sometimes people come out and begin conversations. I almost feel as if I'm in a pageant every time I leave the house. Smile and wave. In the prairies I could shrug into my big heavy but not warm jacket and my not-quite-warm-enough boots and wouldn't see another person for miles in the minus thirty degree average winter day. The trains were my company and they never had anything to say.

This is much better. The boys are so happy there are no trains. And I kept one very flat smooth penny, for luck. Or maybe so I don't forget how lucky I am.

The hand went up, his thumb smoothing my bangs across my forehead, revealing my eyes, smoothing my hair back behind one ear and then leaving his hand there while I fell asleep, my cheek against his warm palm. One of the few ways I could ever fall asleep in the camper, with the strange noises that seemed as if they were right on the other side of the wall and the way it would bounce gently in the wind, no shocks left, bald wheels and a rusty hitch lending it all the credibility it was ever going to have.

Cole called it the have-not years. Bridget's hedonism. Ironic because Cole and I never had two nickels to rub together until Batman saw one of Cole's photographs of me and introduced him to people who made a sport out of art, and Cole was exposed to enough high-profile, wealthy people that suddenly his work was in such demand he couldn't keep up and he became an overnight success in such an incredibly strange and esoteric niche that life flew by in an instant and suddenly we were moving and then we were drowning in Cole's madness and the pressure was too much for him and for every dollar they gave him he broke off a piece of his soul and handed it, crumbling, back to them.

Batman had opened the floodgates but he had no idea that blessings are curses too. He was too busy, anyway. When he wasn't flying in and out of town, he was pretending he didn't need to check up on me more than once a year by having Caleb do it on his behalf, only Caleb fed him a steady stream of lies and Batman finally cut him out of the picture and they became adversaries, both siding with Cole, both jockeying for credit for Cole's success.

Cole's success belonged to Cole and Cole alone because whatever Cole saw through his viewfinder he could transfer to print and it stunned me to a fault. It's why I laugh when I look at the Ferris wheel picture Lochlan took and cry when I see the candids that Sam took of me at the first Mother's Day brunch that Jacob held at the church. They can't do with a camera what Cole could do and that's okay because they have other equally significant gifts.

My hedonism was an invention. I was simply a girl afraid of the dark and I knew where to go to feel safer.

Feet on the ground.

An awareness of standing on concrete. Pavement. Grass. Mud. Hard-packed well-traveled dirt even. I would become consciously aware that I was standing. That I was living. It always seems to hit out of the blue in the two seconds of silence before the next song begins.

Maybe that was how I decided I hated snow. I wanted to be on the ground.

In any case, the feverish disdain for blacker days here that I was warned of a thousand times over has not hit, and I am still cautiously inclined to point out it's the snow and the cold that I can't stand, and really having grown up on a rainy damp coast I'm well-suited to life as a duckling. My feet might be webbed. Water might bead on my hair. I imprint easily, if you have a beard and a smile for me.

My fingers have not split. My hair has not dried out to hay-status. My body has not degenerated into a battleground of hives and eczema and extreme crackled dryness. My mind has not shut down in the cold, bereft for lack of music on the worst days because my phone (any phone) ceases to operate at those temperatures. Instead I can pick out pretty shirts that will show (AKA without sweaters!) and run around the house and porch in bare feet for the entire day if I want and I won't feel a chill. The heat in this house has not made it over 57 and we haven't noticed if it's even on, half the time.

When the dark closes in I light candles and reading lamps and sometimes have a fire in the fireplace. When the rain pours I make sure we have a few backup umbrellas and the other day I laughed out loud when I went to shrug into my winter coat only to realize how warm it was and I went out in jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie instead. The hoodie wasn't even zipped up. Everyone I met was treated to a whole enthusiastic depiction of the fact that It's January! We don't need coats! Can you believe it! And they shrug and laugh at my excitement and tell me I will get used to it. I practically skip down the road now. You would laugh.

I have mastered driving in night-rain. I have solved most of the problems with wet feet. Instead of extra gloves and sweaters, the children carry extra socks in their daypacks and we buy very good rain boots and umbrellas to keep the rain an arm's length away. I have all but dimissed worries involving freezing to death and I'm almost grateful for the damp air to breath when we aren't well, because dry air has a tendency to bring the colds and keep them in our lungs.

With Ben still very sick it is easy for me to head out in search of juice and soup and cough drops and nyquil without him worrying about me driving on ice and I've already forgotten the description they used to use for when the snow packed down hard and glossy and they would have to bring in the big cats and dumptrucks and carve down to the road level again so that people could actually enjoy brakes when they drove instead of drifting right through stop signs, despite that top speed of five kilometres an hour. Was it gloss? No, I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that.

I believe the snow was weighing me down, frankly. It looks so innocent and beautiful. Special, individually. No two are alike. But then it forms a gang and chokes off the flowers and the life visible for miles and you wear it on your being in the form of layers of wool and silk and gortex and thinsulate and you curse your feet as they slip out from under you and you breath out fog that contains epithets of misery and everyone pretends they are all in this together when really you have been standing on the fringe trying desperately to escape into your head for so long now you can only tell the difference between the place inside your head and the one outside by the presence of snow.

I'm putting snow into its place in my life now. It dusts the tops of the majestic mountains that surround me with a pure white coat of icing sugar. It beckons to come play and then leave it behind again. It's a Bob Ross touch painted with a number five brush dipped in a swatch of titanium white, left to dry on a canvas of fantasy and that's where I'm leaving it today. The lowest low through the end of January is slated to be three degrees and I am jumping for joy.

Thrill.

He pulled the hoodie down over my head roughly, still vaguely angry that I failed to remember to bring a sweater. I was in a rush. He made no move to pull my hair out from underneath it. I never did if I knew I would be on the rides. I couldn't stand ponytails and if I braided it it just became kinked-up later and so instead I left it tucked into my shirts and jackets virtually all of the time.

Warmer?

Yes. Thank you.

Good.

Lochlan kissed my forehead and then grabbed my hand, pulling me up the ramp and then stopping and waiting for me to climb into the basket first. I did and he paused, pulling out his little camera and telling me to say cheese. He snapped the picture and then he piled in against me, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me in close to him as the bar was secured in front of us. A little thrill ran through me. This was one of my rewards at the end of every evening. The wheel was kept open an extra twenty minutes so that I could have one private ride. So I could enjoy the stars and the weightless drop without being surrounded by crowds. I always had an hour to spare before Cole picked me up.

The wheel creaked forward. Three times backwards, five times forwards and then three times backwards again. I never counted anymore so that I wouldn't have the looming disappointment of knowing it was coming to an end. I never closed my eyes until at least the third trip around the wheel and I never let go of the front of Lochlan's shirt, holding on for dear life as I had every year for five years running because the very top of the wheel never ceased to scare me just a little even though I watched them put it together. I watched the inspections every morning and I trusted these boys with my life.

It stopped when we were right at the top. I knew I had about one minute to take in the stars before it would start up again.

Make a wish, Bridget.

(silence)

Did you? In time? Want me to ask for another stop?

I got it. I'm good.

What did you wish for?

If I tell you it will never happen.

Sure it will, once the wish is loose it comes true.

I wish I could do this every night for the rest of my life.

He squeezed me. Me too.

When we got to the bottom again I asked Lochlan if I could have the picture he took. He shook his head and laughed.

Maybe I can have a copy made for you. Besides, why would you want a picture of yourself?

So I can remember this.

I'll make sure to frame it and always keep it where you can see it whenever you want.

Promise?

I promise.

Cole was waiting in the parking lot when we got off. I walked through the gates, got into his car and we drove away. Lochlan went back to the camper. I would see him tomorrow morning again, so I hardly ever said goodnight. Years later he would tell me that really bothered him, that I never said it.

It still bothers him now, if I forget.

It bothers me that I was right about my wishes.

Prince of hotness.

The bento boxes are actually real.

My plan is to learn to get very good at doing designs and critters and characters out of every day foods since three or more members of my family take lunches with them when they leave in the morning.

Yes, even the big one, who would just be so impressed to unpack his meal at lunch time and find hard-boiled egg bunnies or carrot flowers.

Right? Right? I know! The look on his face. I would pay for it. I'll have to settle for the awkward suggestion when he gets home that I stick to sandwiches cut in half and no Sanrio please, we have no sense of humor after all.

Pft.

Lunches were lacking this week anyway since he didn't work, choosing to suck in all the germs within an eleventy-zillion mile radius and come down with pneumonia and at this point he's relegated to a few delirious hours a day where he proclaims to have obsolete pop songs stuck in his head and lists wildly to the right as he walks across the room. And also? Lochlan's crown as (literally) Hottest Man Alive has been stolen, Ben smashing it down over his own skull as his fevers ranged from 102 to 105 and back again all damned week long.

I have two and a half days to make more tea and soup, fetch more juice, encourage more sleep and generally police the bottle of penicillin that sits by the sink waiting to be opened every eight hours in case Ben forgets, in his delirium. Then he goes back to work. Back to his office where he churns out projects and impresses people so jaded they arrive in shades of green and the cycle will continue again. Back to routine.

Back with tomato roses and cucumber sprigs curled into filigree!

Muhahaha.