Grey to blue: a year in review

Across the tropical shores of the world, boats lie dormant. Bobbing, listing, withering, moulding. Birds gather, disrespectfully gossiping up on the spreaders, shitting on the abandoned dreams of the deck below. Some boats are bound in shrink wrap, as if to protect them from the inevitable decay. In the court of nature’s wrath, the all powerful sun, wind and rain beat them down for months, years. Voiceless, no creaking of footsteps, no parting of waves below their keels. Once majestic sails lie torn and shredded, threadbare. Deep inside, ecosystems thrive. The mould and insects that sense death, take over the coffin. The ugly, grey process of decomposition takes hold.

Each one has a story. It’s a story of family or of finance. One phone call, one diagnosis. A mother or a child. The anchor of land cannot be ignored. Sailors are recalled. Life on the water, with it’s fantastic highs and extreme lows, falls away.

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A year ago today, my grey clammy skin recoiling from the harshness of mirror and light, I brushed my teeth. I gulped down coffee coloured liquid. I dressed in borrowed clothes, pulled on a thrift store pair of boots and faced the bitter cold, the slush, the highways. 

On autopilot we drove to and from suburbia to the city. Between the traffic, blurry hallways of hospitals welcomed us, inspid, assaulting all senses with the smell of bleach and urine and promising a set of heartwrenching hours ahead. It consumed me literally; entered my bones and my soul. 

It could have been any day.  Every one as grey as the last. My stomach cramped, echoing the hopelessness, the ache, the circles under my eyes. It wasn’t about me at all. But life’s knocks are blows. They wipe out families and communities and leave us all bruised and whimpering in a cold wet puddle.

My mother’s illness brought me ‘home’, only to discover that she was my home. That I am only from a place, but not OF that place.  Twenty something years away are lifetimes and lessons that add up to a stranger. A stranger in her mother’s house, weeping over the piles of things that will never be used again. Buried. 

Filling, carrying, handing over endless boxes of things in the back alleys of bleak parking lots. Wasted hot tears, spilling, heaving despair for a life that is over, despite the living breathing, suffering woman in a hospital bed some miles away.

A stranger in thrift clothing was I, living a year in turmoil, displaced and heartbroken.

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A month ago today I woke to the gentle lapping of the dinghy and the cool breeze of a Bahama spring morning. I peered into the mirror at the brown Sunkist face, wiser for the extra lines. Drenched in sunlight through the hatch above, washed the sleep from the corners of my eyes in the cramped little ‘head’, excited to step up into the day.

Turquoise bombarded my senses – swimming-pool-blue ocean waters and periwinkle skies met my gaze as I devoured each indulgent sip of rich dark coffee. The warmth entering my bones, embracing my soul. 

It could have been any day. Every one as blue as the last. I don’t keep track in terms of day names. They are all blissfully soul nurturing. There are fluffy clouds and random storms and the hugs from friends. This is all about me. It’s the tear that slips down past my sunburnt cheeks, into the ocean. Heartache blows. It’s what you carry over the sea and share it’s burden with the sky above. 

My mother’s death taught me what I always suspected. That things are useless and pointless and that it's the choices we make and the perspective we embrace that lead to exactly where we find ourselves. We can’t control the wind or whether our mother will be waiting on the other end of the phone when we need to share. It’s life’s bitter twist. It’s inevitable. Life challenges us to find the beauty.

I am not a stranger here. You can’t be a stranger in your own life. If you are living your life. 

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Shiloh had a story. She sat patiently if reluctantly bobbing between pilings, tied up and tugged by ropes, abandoned for a year. It took effort to bring her back from the brink. But there is life within her hulls again. The people who call her home know that everything is a fragile balance. There are a billion colours and smells and tastes to find and touch and taste and explore. Lemon sharks may be swimming below you, tropic birds chirping above. 

The stars shine most brightly when they are not obscured by the false lights of a city.

Happy birthday from another world

My bum is numb. Most of my outer layers of skin have lost feeling, but for the random involuntary shivers. This hockey rink is freezing. Despite my efforts to stay warm – donning a full body sleeping bag/coat, thick stodgy Uggs, and matching teddy bear hat and mittens, complete with bulbous knitted nose and ears. Very chic.

I sip at my flask of pretend coffee, wiping the deep red wine stains from my lips after each little swig. I’m trying to fit in here and hoping my teeth aren’t noticeably purple/grey.

The parents in the stands jump and shout after each play. “Noah! Rebound control buddy!!!” It’s all very aggressive and serious. The players out there are 7 and 8 years old. The smallest one is my nephew.

It is our last day in Canada – unless the winter storm warning in effect delays us by a day. We’ve been here, visiting the house I grew up in, for over two months. At once I am sucked back into the rhythm of suburban winter life, and also repelled and alienated by the contrast to the life I’ve led for the past 21 years away.

My captain – so far out of his ocean realm, sits beside me on the stands, enthralled by the fast paced game on the ice below. His new cozy winter toque, pulled down over his ears, he blows into his bright red, dry and freezing hands in the futile attempt to warm them. I’ve dragged him here, into my family, my past, my people. And despite hockey’s foreign rules and cultural intricacies, he has fit right in.

Hot chocolate, egg nog, minus 21 temps. He’s shoveled snow, used the snow blower, poured warm water on our frozen car doors to get them open. Welcome to Canada baby!

I cannot believe it’s been 4 months since we left Shiloh and our sailing life behind – left her to face hurricane Matthew alone while we visited potato festivals in West Virginia and sampled Moose pie in Newfoundland. We 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the colours of the Cabot trail in Cape Breton, and marvelled at the 40 ft tidal swing at the Bay of Funday. We walked the red sand beaches of Prince Edward Island and sampled the world's best scallops in digby Nova Scotia.... Luckily Shiloh and her boatyard friends all weathered the storm without a scratch.

It’s been months since I had to steer the 15 ton boat up to a fuel dock, weather a storm, navigate a port entry… All my life stresses have been replaced by GPS driving stresses, finding motels, and finally juggling all the family and friend visits over the holidays.

Everything about life is in flux. Within a few days we will evolve from our hats and scarves to capris and flip flops.

Everything has been in flux – we’ve visited over 80 cities, towns, villages, islands in 2016. We are lucky. And yet the worst tragedy to befall a mother is my reality.

There is the matter of my six year old son, who today would be eighteen.

There are things I can reconcile – weather, financial strains, family differences, friends who disappoint.

But my baby boy – the one who coveted his can of red Pringles, who cuddled all the girls and declared that food is not food without rice! My Shiloh – who loved Power Rangers and Bob the Builder and Spiderman. My little guy, with stubby brown fingers and a soft blond peach fuzz on his silky little neck…  that he was born 18 years ago today. I cannot reconcile this in my feeble mommy brain. My mommy heart has missed the years between 6 and 18 where my boy would have grown, but where instead there was a void. A void within my heart, a place where the world stopped spinning and simply sat, dumbfounded by a loss so great.

 

So today, as I watch my little nephew barreling down the ice, caught up in the spirit of the game, I decide there is no reconciling the things that happen in this life.

We simply find ourselves in places in time and we must soak them in. We must exist in the here and now – all the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘could haves’ held at bay. Life is in this moment. This right here. The smell of warm chocolate contrasted by the bitter cold air and the cry of the overbearing parent.  The sour kick of red wine with the metallic aftertaste of the flask. My boy is gone but this boy is here, and he is life – all new and hopeful. And there is love that transcends. It holds families together, it holds us all together across time and space. But all we have really is what is in front of us right now.

I have memory, and love and family and the frivolous concept of plans. Adventures await.

For now, happy birthday my angel boy and Go Adam! Our boy of the day.

Blue Ranger blues - Happy Birthday to an angel

Darth Vader stands tall on a random corner of Duval Street, strumming his banjo with the confidence you’d expect of an inter-galactic villain. A few blocks away, Spiderman sits cross-legged on the filthy sidewalk, a classic yoga pose, with his sitar on display.

Of course. The universe is at peace. This is Key West. Stray chickens dodge traffic. Hung over stag party gangs troll the streets like zombies. It’s a random Saturday in January.

But for me there is nothing random about it. In fact, for me, it’s a day like no other. 17 years ago - I can barely believe that number as my fingers stub the keys – that many years ago on January 9^th I gave birth to my baby boy Shiloh.

After a planned Caesarean, I awoke in a sick ward in a government hospital in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. Beside me, a man groaned as his elevated swollen foot oozed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to drive away the confusion, the terror. Why wasn’t I surrounded by other happy new mothers? Where were the cries of newborns?! Where was my baby boy?!!! The possibility washed over me, a cold sweat of terror. I was alone and my baby was not with me. Could he have… not…made..it?

An hour later, with the help of a pushy Canadian friend who’d rescued him from the incompetent nurses, I had my gorgeous boy against my breast, his heart beating with mine. His tiny body rising and falling gently with each of my calmed breaths. Apparently there were no beds left in the maternity ward. Sigh. What a scare!

Fast forward 17 years. I wake knowing my universe is not at peace. I wake with a deep dull pain. It washes over me. As I rub my eyes and look up at the white ceiling, there it is. No baby boy. No big boy either to call or visit. My worst fear has long ago come true.

I could be in Key West or St Lucia, Toronto or Trinidad. This birthday is full of terror. And resignation that an open wound will remain. It does not scab over. So I must protect it. Protect the pain as I would protect my boy. If only I could.

As the years go by, it gets deeper. Nestled in somewhere behind my heart. Somewhere that allows the sunshine still to enter. That lets me smile and know joy.

And there are memories. Memories that stay in another place. They rest like warm blankets all about my soul. If I’m chilly I only need to walk through them and wrap one around me. Bliss for a broken mama. 

But today on the 17^th anniversary of Shiloh’s birth, I choose to celebrate. A life force like that must not be mourned. A boy with the energy of the sun, the smile of a cherub and charm unmatched, THAT boy should be remembered and not swept away in sorrowful grief.

If Shiloh were here today is a game I like to play. It makes me smile. I know that my Blue Ranger is sky diving in heaven. My naughty little boy now an angel, the brightest star above us.

Shiloh would love Key West. All the action, the people, the madness, the life pulsing through this place. The messy along with the beautiful, the rough with the smooth.  He would stop me as we walked along, and stand by Spiderman on the dirty sidewalk with unabashed curiousity and wonder. He would stop and rub the back of a homeless person. 

I carry him in my heart all day today, like I do every day. I let him see it all through my eyes and in turn I see it all through his. Innocent but an old soul. Wise, wide eyed, Shiloh’s spirit soars. He guides me in his awesome way.

He has shaped who I am today, and through all the sadness I would rather to have known and loved him, than to have never held him or known him in all his glory.

Happy birthday my little boy, my omnipotent angel. May the universe hold you when you are sad and help you along your other-worldly path. And know that if I could just hold you again, for one brief moment, I would give anything and everything.

Your ever grateful mama.