If wishes were words (out of time).

Little variations on my page
Little doors open on my cage
Little time has come and gone so far
Little by little who you are

I can see the patterns on your face
I can see the miracles I trace
Symmetry in shadows I can't hide
I just want to be right by your side

(For those who want to split hairs, I did NOT leave a word out of the title quote borrowed yesterday. The original Barrie book did not feature the word star. It was added in the movie much much later.)

I have Canadian political election, hockey and boy-drama fatigue today, so pardon me if I am cranky.

And this is the second time in my sketchy memory that something I wrote here actually made a difference. This is not where I plead my case, this is simply where I sort out the leftovers in my brain. So sometimes it's weird or painful or really freaking hard to read. Sometimes it's not safe for work. Sometimes it's just dumb. Whatever is in my head is dumped out on the floor and rearranged into something palatable, and you can just leave the gristle on the side of your plate, alright?

The first time it made a difference was when the full force of Cole's death hit me. I know the week I spent locked in his study after we came home from the hospital seemed...healthy? but that wasn't really it and several months afterword I fell apart on the inside without giving much of an outside warning at all and Jacob read my words and became incredibly concerned, to put it mildly. Everything blew up at once and I don't think he would have been able to act so quickly had I not begun to write very oddly. The medication wasn't right and I was being poisoned. Luckily it was fixed and after that things were better so I'm grateful sometimes for this strange little place.

The second time it mattered was last night, when PJ read what I wrote about how he fights and he came to see me. I have since edited yesterday's post slightly, and PJ has promised to work on his discussion skills. I am to work on thickening my skin. We both plan to work on boundaries.

Today Corey picked me up on his vintage motorcycle and took me out for a quick lunch. So quick that I blinked and we were finished. Corey never says much, he just steps in and takes someone out for a meal or a walk and then he disappears again. I don't need to write about him all that much, most of the time I forget what he looks like (though that could be the significant image changes over the past eight years.)

Oh gee, I hope he reads this and sticks around for a bit, talks more, and maybe keeps the new facial hair. He didn't have any for a long time and now it just won't go away.

I could wonder if this were some sort of wishing blog, and everything I write might come true. Maybe tomorrow I will win the lottery, and maybe on Sunday I can sleep until noon. Maybe the front garden will magically begin to grow something other than moss and maybe the boys can coexist peacefully, like they were prior to PJ deciding that Ben had crossed a line, prior to Lochlan deciding he didn't a big enough percentage of me, prior to Caleb calling and extending his flaming, deadly olive branch because my absence in his life has settled in around him like a cold chill he cannot shake and he does not like how that feels.

Speaking of feelings, I do need to address some things about Caleb and what happened in Newfoundland, but not right now. Tomorrow. Right now I have lunches to pack and homework to check and dinner to start. The light is getting thin and the boys will be home soon.

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.

Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without

(Sometimes living for adventure can be tough. Sometimes I'm not even the one with the drama and I become a sticking-plaster to the boys, the ferociously affectionate soft spot where they land. The comfort-girl who will soothe their cares away. They are the lost boys, and I am their Wendy.)

Sam is going down Jacob's road of currently feeling quite out of love with his church. Railing against the hierarchy for putting administration before one's ability to be efficient in the role of a minister when one has personal needs. And yet I can see both sides here. Sam is new to this church, having been a part of it for a single year. Others can manage their midlife or existential crises without needing time off, they simply implode in and around their scheduled tasks. The church does not allow for personal reflection unless it is work-related, and what most people never fully realize is that ministers are often given a plate so full that they simply collapse under the weight and learn to operate at sixty percent of themselves and sometimes they simply walk away.

You know, like Jacob did.

Sam was gifted with a wedding invitation this week. We all were. We don't burn too many bridges. Most of the people I despise I greet quite professionally (Satan, Sophie, etc. etc.) and the boys are even better at it. But this wedding invitation came from Sam's wife. Elisabeth. Since he steadfastly refuses to call her his 'ex'. Hope springs eternal, but when their divorce went through after magnificent efforts to try and salvage their relationship, she promptly became engaged to someone else.

Sam has not reacted well. He's crushed but realistic. He's called in sick and shown up drunk and done everything people do when confronted with the concept of moving on. I hope he weathers it better this week than he did last week. He is still waiting to see if he can have a little vacation time, now that he has a year in. The problem is, he probably will not get it. And the drunk part sort of surprised me because Sam has the better part of a decade of wonderful recovery that he always managed well and spoke candidly about, besides. He was a good role model for Benjamin, and the surprise and disappointment rings loudly through my house right now.

*****

PJ has had a crisis as well this week, only his snuck up on us slowly over the weekend to the point where last time I saw him, Lochlan had him in a headlock and was forcing him to promise to go home and NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD until he was out of my hearing range. Which I suspect is around four feet, but only if you are facing me.

Because when PJ runs out of patience, I am always his target. I have been positively crushed under the weight of his feelings, bottled up and poured out quietly, after the kids are asleep or at the very least out of earshot. Even though when we moved here I specifically made him take the boathouse so that he could have his own separate life, privacy, whatever he needed. Sometimes (as I point out quite regularly), it isn't enough.

But no worries. We have a major argument roughly every twelve to fourteen months and then we settle back into step together and this particular one seems to be waning so call it a Monday and let's get on with it.

Picking up Hemingway.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
~Ernest Hemingway.

Last night, Ben again went for the big coat, but I was ready for him this time, dressed differently, prepared to plead for warmth in leaving everything on this time, dreading the cold but certainly not the thrill.

Only once again, he chose surprise.

When we got down to the beach Ben encouraged me to sit against the logs and then he walked to the water's edge, turning to face me, his back to the sea. He pulled out a book and began to read from it, watching me somewhat nervously. I knew the style before I knew the name of the book.

Hemingway.

To Have and Have Not.

Across the River and into the Trees and The Snows of Kilimanjaro were the two other tattered, dog-eared books found among Jacob's belongings in the hotel room that were returned to me in a Fedex global shipping box. The remainder of our Hemingway collection is on the bookshelf in my bedroom. It's been a really long time since I looked at any of it. Years, which in Ben-terms is a very long time indeed.

I suppose there are people who have never seen the archives here. I took them away. Jacob used to read to me. Out loud, every night on the porch after the children were asleep. I loved it so, and now Ben is doing it.

Ben.

Ben who has positively zero desire to walk in anyone else's footsteps because he is busy walking through broken glass and lightning strikes for fun. Ben does not require conventionalities, he defies logic. He throws up his middle fingers and flips off rationality and he rips the head off predictable romance and flushes it. He'll do things his way, he tells me and I believe him. He's weird and wonderful like that.

He's going to take up this torch because he knows I won't scream in agony, twisting out of his arms when the words sink in but the voice is different. He knows I will sit and strain to hear over the roar of the midnight surf while the wind follows the labyrinth of ruin into my ears until it can cool my brain into a satisfied stasis, until I have absorbed enough of the story for one night, told in such a way that eclipses a night spent rocking on a porch swing with a hot of cup of tea listening to the crickets in the tall Prairie grass in spades. Ben lives viscerally and everything will be loud and dark and violent and felt until you just can't feel it anymore and then, and only then are you living, thank you very fucking much.

Only Ben could make a Hemingway novel into a full-on metal experience, with the waves crashing and the moon blazing on through the night. Only Ben would dare to bring this particular pastime back to life. Had anyone else done it I would still be screaming. Instead I feel like I have a little more of myself back.

Jacob can listen in, probably reciting the passages word for word. Probably impressed with the delivery and maybe even our progress too.

Yeah, that guy. (Hi Mom, you can skip today.)

Last evening after the hockey game ended Ben shrugged into his big coat, the winter one that kept him warm in the Prairies. The children were long asleep, the boys drifting off to their favorite corners of the house to listen to music or watch movies or work late into the night. Ben and I don't often get time alone, it is a gift that we look for and take with gratitude.

He took my hand in his and led me outside, across the yard and down the treacherous cliff path in the dark. It's borderline dangerous but at least the skies were clear enough to have the moon and a few stars to provide some ambient light, and the rocks were dry. Once safely on the beach we walked until we reached the bigger rocks at the end of the property line. The boys have laid out huge logs facing the beach and it's become a good place to sit and draw or just to watch the waves, on finer days.

He took off the coat and sat down on the sand, leaning back against the waterlogged wood. I was about to protest when he pulled me down onto his lap, wrapping the coat around me, hitching up my dress up, pulling my tights down. Fighting everything I had on until the only thing left was his coat pulled tight around my shoulders and held against my knees by his arms. He pulled himself free and bit into my lip as he grasped my hips and guided himself in. I didn't know it was possible to be so cold and so warm at the same time. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held on as he rocked against me violently, unending. Numb took me over and I put my head down against his ear, begging him not to stop. I cried out when he did and he brought his hand up to press my head against his shoulder and pulled me hard against his flesh with his other arm wrapped around my hips.

We remained like that until the blood in our veins took on a fresh painful chill, and he managed to pull the coat away long enough to slip me back into my dress, stuffing my tights into one of his coat pockets, rescuing my boots from high tide. He took my hand once again, kissing it firmly, pulling me back up the path and into the house where we let the heat wash over us like waves, sending our nerves endings screaming with effort.

He smiled at me but he never ever said a single word.

This made my day.

Actual post to follow whenever my brain decides to join me. It's still off watching the sunrise, I believe. Or the aftermath of the Royal wedding.

Ben is working late tonight and so I am hanging out in the overly-bright kitchen waiting for him (who keeps leaving all the damn lights on anyway?) with Lochlan and Dalton. Lochlan has been showing me how to use his new tablet. It's an Asus e-slate or something. A whole bunch of the boys got them but so far I haven't had a lot of chance to play on them so tonight was my chance. The topic was suggested by you-know-who. 1984. So I drew 1984. When I was thirteen* and Loch was just about twenty.
He is mad because I didn't draw us happy. I'm not sure why he's taking cartoons literally, you'll have to ask him yourself.

Tomorrow maybe I'll draw Ben.

Oh lord. Hahaha.

*(Note: Clearly I am standing on a box in the picture. The top of my head falls just under Lochlan's chin, and for some reason I always draw myself tall. Wishful thinking.)

What are you doing, princess?

Holding my own. Just don't judge me.

I'm not judging, I am asking questions.

Evaluating your own reactions, Jake.

Maybe. To be honest, this surprises me.

Like those ex -cons. 'They do what they know', you said.

You are so far from what I meant.

I'm doing what I know.

You are playing with fire and you're going to get burned again. He doesn't love you. He wants to win.

Oh but that's where you're wrong. No one keeps a game going this long if they don't really want the prize.

It becomes something else after a while. It has taken on a life of its own and you're not being careful.

He won't hurt me.

But he does. They all do in their own ways.

I didn't come here to talk about this.

What did you come for then, princess?

It's Easter. It's spring.

And?

I just needed to see you. It's been a while.

The synergist.

(Oh, look. I'm going to add to what I started with this post. Don't say I never finish anything.)

When Lochlan returned, it was dark. He walked through the door of his apartment, letting it crash against the wall. He threw his keys on the table and walked straight to the couch where he sat down with a loud sigh and took another drink from the open bottle in his hand.

When is it?

He knew I would still be right where he left me. Spinning in the dark in his desk chair.

This summer. Labour day weekend.

Christ, my birthday? Come on, Bridge.

Everyone will be home.

He stared at me for a moment and then realized, glassy-eyed, that I was right.

Don't do this, peanut.

I'm not your problem anymore.

I only needed a break. Three years is long enough. You're going to be related to that monster.

Cole won't let anything bad happen to me.

Come back to me. We'll get it right.

It's too late to be right, Loch. I stand up, turning on the lamp and begin to walk slow laps around the room. He finally gets up and pushes me back down into the chair. He hates it when I pace. I hate trying to have a battle of wits with a twenty-five year old with freshly impaired judgment.

It's not. We start over. Just you and me.

It's too late, I repeat. What are you going to do with your life, Lochlan?

I don't know. He says it quietly and looks away. I know I'll be watching him.

I'm not going to report to you.

I didn't ask you to. Everyone else will. He smiled. He's halfway to drunk.

Lochlan-

Just hear me out okay? I'm going to win you back, even if it takes the rest of my life.

It might.

I have nothing better to do, peanut. His head is pressed against mine. I am pinned in the chair, he has his hands on the arm rests, and short of slithering out underneath his arms, I'm trapped.

So I kissed him.

I'd like to say I was young and stupid, or that I didn't know what I was doing, or hell, maybe it just happened, but I did it on purpose, because I wanted to know if it would still feel like it used to before we broke up. (Lochlan, against all odds, is the most affection person, after me that is, on the planet. He doesn't seem like he would be but he is and he keeps it all for me so maybe that means he isn't. I don't know. Let's just keep going, shall we?)

He kissed me back and turned the light off again. I had orange polka dots dancing in front of my eyes and the taste of secondhand whiskey on my tongue. I took the bottle from him and swallowed a long drink, the burning fire spreading down into my fingertips and toes. Yep. Still feels the same. Really, really good.

I have to go. Cole's going to be off soon. Cole worked nights at the same restaurant as Lochlan to pay for film. He said he was going to be a chef because he could afford a good knife but not a good camera. It was a travesty no one planned to put up with for very long.

Lochlan backed off and I got up and walked to the door, grabbing my bag off the table.

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

Gee, thanks.

No, he's about to marry someone who doesn't love him. And I'm sure he knows.

I walked back over and slapped him. Hard.

You don't get to tell me how I feel!

But I'm right, aren't I? He picked up the bottle and took another drink in the darkness. I didn't stay around to answer. I heard the bottle hit the door and smash to bits after I closed it as I walked down the hallway. An uncharacteristic response from him. He doesn't usually allow himself to lose control.

I should have put more stock in that realization but I didn't. I was too busy trying to figure out how I was going to marry Cole without getting any closer to Caleb, of whom I was deathly afraid by this point.

I had waited for Lochlan long enough. I couldn't wait anymore.

Cancelled noise.

One long experiment is over, and I have gracefully disengaged myself from the weight of conventional expectations to keep to my own path. Not a popular choice, sometimes not a pleasant one, but you have not walked in these shoes, and you do not know what it's like.

I'm going to leave my hearing aids in the drawer. Maybe I will pull them out again when I'm very old and frail and tiny, testing to see if I can still discern the chickadees from the general wind, maybe I will hear the train whistle too. But for now, they're going to go back into their case and become neglected, on purpose.

I don't want to flinch away from your voice. I don't want to be so distracted by a muffler or a passerby that I miss the horse braying softly from the fence. I don't want to catch the inflections in your voice when you censure my longings and I don't need to hear snow falling so quietly, ominously.

I don't know what an echo sounds like. I don't think I have ever heard a real one. Only in a movie, I suppose, and that's okay too. Really.

Take me to the ocean, standing right beside the tide and I can hear the waves crash into the planet with a ferocious comfort that engulfs me in bright and utter darkness. Send me for a walk in the early hours of the morning and I will hear the robins waking up their neighbors obnoxiously, efficiently. Leave me be with the big headphones and I will hear Ben breathe as he sings. I will hear nails on the strings and I will finally, once and for all, hear the rhythm guitar in any of the songs at all, because that is the most difficult part.

I will persist with my whimsical, apocryphal stories for when the children press upon me new epic tales while facing the other direction. I parrot back what I think I hear, to their utter delight and boundless frustration. We will take these new stories and expound on them until we are breathless, in fits of laughter, because I missed another somber bit of information, thrown haphazardly over their shoulders for me to catch.

I missed. Maybe I'll get it right the next time.

I can hear the rain. It's so heavy and lush, it pours all around me and I know it well, like the roar of a waterfall but so much deeper. Give me a voice and I will catch all of the emotion within it when it speaks. Give me a note and I will recite the lyrics from beginning to end. Audible gold. A richness beyond mere treasure.

Keep the sounds selective, and don't dilute them with the pedestrian bedlam of every day. I don't commit to hear what everyone else does. I am saving my sound allowance for the extraordinary now.

We are out in the orchard, dressed in our Sunday best.

The children are playing bunny-tag with some of the boys. It's a game we invented when they were very small. They're given baskets and they must find and collect all the eggs before the bunny catches them. The bunny is one of the boys, wearing a suit and a giant creepy bunny-head from an old video shoot. He runs in a nightmarish gait, almost in slow-motion, otherwise the kids don't have a chance. I know that this must look like a dream from the water side, a scene muted in pastel colors and nervous glee, soft-focused with lots of noise added for grain. I'm not really paying attention. My eyes are closed.

Ben has my hand, held tightly in his. We are standing closer to the water, so I can hear the surf crashing upon the names of the dead, so I can enjoy one of my favorite places in the reality safety of his hold. I am not allowed here otherwise. This is such a gift this morning in the hazy sunlight before the rainclouds rolls down the mountain again to soak us in sin.

I open my eyes and look at him.

He looks at the ground, considering his words and then he looks out to sea, squinting in the brightness. I am struck by the unforeseen congruities with which I focus on their gestures in order to soften their impending words. We agreed on honesty, and boy, is it ever painful.

Lochlan is where your head is, but I know where your heart is. That's all that matters, and it's something that little red-headed fucker likes to forget. I'm not worried. Besides, what's he going to do to win you over? Stick you in the middle of the tightrope and expect you to make back his investment? Fuck that, fuck him. I can't fix anything, I can just keep on doing what I know is right. And that includes building you up while they take turns trying to tear you down.

I'm nodding. Tears are now dripping off my chin, staining my dress with dark spots.

See, everyone thinks I'm the one who is fucked up and indecisive and destructive but that's all just part of my plan, Bridget.

Uncontrollable laughter begins to squeeze off my tears and my whole body is shaking now. He takes off his suit-jacket and wraps me in it and then puts his arms around me.

You don't belong to him. He's a habit, that's all. You don't need to define your loyalties to me. If he needs that then he is insecure and afraid and that's his problem, not yours. I won't do that. I've drawn my lines and I keep things clear. I wish he would do the same instead of pulling himself up on your memories.

Our conversation is interrupted by the children, who run over to show us their baskets, overflowing with tiny foil-wrapped eggs. Ben scoops a handful from each and eats them without unwrapping them, making the children scream with delight and disgust. They run back into the gardens laughing and Ben watches them go with such a huge grin on his face.

Ben is regularly dismissed for being so impulsive and unreliable, based on his behavior in his own circus of a past. A mistake for sure, for he should not be underestimated.

A blur of white fills my vision and the anonymous bunny-man tackles Ben to the ground and then jumps back up, pelting him with eggs, running off again. Everyone is laughing. Ben sits up, collects the eggs from the ground and eats another handful of foil, this time mixed with a bit of moss.

When the bunny reaches the other side of the yard, he removes the head, his red curls reflecting the retreating sun.