Stan

May 10, 2022
by Kathy Larson

Chapter 5

“You ain’t worth the powder it’d take to blow you to hell,” his mother hollered as he angrily spun the beat up pick-up in the dry dirt, sending a cloud of ugly brown dirt into the air. Choke, you bitch, he muttered, bitter tears stinging his eyes. The truck fish-tailed and he drove down hard on the brake sending even more dirt and dust into the air. For a moment it felt like the truck was going to skid, he felt it slew beneath him, the tires grabbing for purchase in the loose, chalky dirt of the driveway. Panic hit him hard in the chest, he would not, would not, WOULD NOT, have her make fun of him for losing control. Worse, he could not let his father see what she had done to him. Again.

The second his father had left to go into town she’d been on him.

‘I’m so lonely,” she’d cooed as she slipped into his bed. She had started running her hands across his shoulders, down his back. Instantly, he had felt himself grow cold and he’d stopped breathing, hoping she’d just go away. Sometimes, when he was younger, that had worked. She’d come into his room, always when his father was sound asleep, exhausted from working in the fields for 10 – 12 hours, having had to come in and fix himself something to eat because his wife was passed out cold on the couch.

No matter how tired he was, or hungry, Stan’s father would always come in and fix something for them to eat. Sometimes it was just fried eggs, canned beans and toast, but at least it was a meal. He’d walk over to where his wife lay sprawled out and cover her with a blanket, then say in a quiet, sad voice to Stan that she was the most beautiful thing in the house. Stan would say nothing, though he wanted to tell his father everything. He loved his father. More than anything. That’s how she kept him silent.

He had turned nineteen a week ago. The truck was a gift from his father. It wasn’t new, but it was sound. His father had had his friend Mel give it a good going-over, and aside from some rust it was in good shape. Perfect for a young fella to get around in, he’d said as he handed Stan the keys. The look of love and pride in his father’s eyes was something he’d never forget. Then his mother had stepped out of the front door, a tall rye-coke in one hand, a cigarette trailing from the fingers of the other. “He’s just gonna get some slut knocked up, now he’s got wheels,” she said from behind his father. She fixed Stan with a cold stare then smiled and winked. Stan felt sick with guilt and dread. He gave his father a long hug, said thank you, then jumped in and drove into town.

He had been spending as much time away from home as he could from the time he was about fourteen. He played whatever sport was in season, slept over at his friends’ places as much as he could manage, and in the summer would spend his nights camped out by himself down in the coulees that ran behind his father’s land. When he could he’d steal some of his mother’s booze and he’d spend those nights getting drunk and trying to forget the things she made him do.

He’d been gone for most of the past week, sleeping in the truck when he had no place else to go. There were no girls, he couldn’t bring himself to even imagine being with one. What girl would ever want anything to do with him? He imagined they’d be able to see straight through him, see what he was, and it terrified him. It also made him angry. Angry at his mother, angry at himself, and, worse, angry at his father. Why didn’t his father see what she was? Why did he make excuses for her, protect her, forgive her for all her nasty, evil, lazy, disgusting ways? When he thought that way about his father it made him feel even worse; what kind of son was he?

He had thought often of telling his father about what she was doing with him, but shame, and the fear of what it might do to him stopped him. “It’d kill him, you know,” she’d whispered in his ear one time, “if he ever found out.” Then she had chuckled and said, “Maybe, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.” He knew he could never tell. So, he did his best to stay out of her reach.

He’d come in late last night, hoping that she’d be passed out and he was right. He’d slipped into his room and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. When she slithered in behind him and he felt her dry hands upon his skin he nearly screamed. Instead, he lay there not breathing and hoped she’d get bored or mad and just go away. She got mad. She grabbed his hair and tried to pull him towards her. He wrenched his head away from her and she yelled out in pain. He was trying to get himself out of the tangle of sheets but she was trying to pin him down onto the bed and get herself on top of him. He saw red. “No!” he hollered and pushed hard backwards sending her sprawling. He was out of the bed and grabbing for his clothes and keys, intent on getting away and never coming back. His mother stared at him in surprise and then she threw herself at him trying to slap and punch him like she had when he was young and had tried to avoid her. One of her hands raked across his face and he felt her jagged nails open a gash across his cheek. He reached out and grabbed her by both wrists. He wanted to hit her so badly, wanted to hurt her and make her feel the way he did.

She went limp in his grasp and her head rocked back on her long, thin neck. He held her that way for a endless moment, then let her fall backwards on to the bed. ‘I hate you.” he said. “I never want to fucking see you ever again.” She lay there, half naked, hair spread out like a tattered crown against the dirty sheets. Then she opened her eyes and stared at him. “No you don’t, you love your momma,” she said, and laughed.

Stan dressed as quickly as he could and ran down the stairs. He wanted badly to see his father, to say goodbye, to tell him that he was leaving and that he wasn’t coming back. His father had left for the city, early, for an appointment at the bank. Farming hadn’t been going so well these past five or six years, the drought never seemed to end, and when rain did come it came in such torrents that it washed away anything that had managed to eke into existence in the dry, barren soil.

He rushed down the stairs and out through the front door. I’ll call him later, he thought, and tell him that I’ve gone looking for a job. As he pushed through the door panic made him stop. Where was he going? What could he do? He stopped, the door open before him, and hung his head. This was all so wrong. Maybe he could tell his father. Maybe he would understand. Maybe he would forgive him. Then he remembered the adoring, love-blind way his father would look at her and he knew it was hopeless.

He heard his mother stumbling down the stairs and he knew this was his one and only chance to be free of her. She screamed his name. Swore at him, begged, pleaded with him to not leave her there alone. “He makes me sick,” she screeched, “you’re the only thing that’s kept me alive all these years.” He turned to look at her and for a second felt a shred of pity for the lost thing that she was, then he remembered all that she had put him through, remembered his father’s love for her and forced himself to let the door slam closed behind him.

He threw himself behind the wheel of the truck and turned the ignition. “I’ll tell him.” she screamed. “I’ll tell him that you tried to rape me. Your own mother!” Stan felt himself go still, felt all the air sucked out of him and as he turned to look at her he felt as though it were all happening in slow motion. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly he thought his fingers might break. Then he drew in a deep breath and got out of the truck. He walked towards her, stopped at the bottom step and stared up at her. “If you do,” he said in an eerily calm voice, “I’ll kill you.” He looked straight into her eyes and could see that she understood. He turned away for the last time and got back into his truck.

It was a month before he found the courage to call and speak to his father. All he heard in his father’s voice when he did was love and sorrow. Your mother is sleeping, he said, we won’t disturb her. When the call was over Stan sobbed with relief.

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June

Chapter 4

Mar. 21, 2022
Kathy Larson

She got pregnant. They’d been married nearly five years when it happened, and it surprised them both.

Sadie could not understand how she had gotten pregnant. She took her birth control pills religiously — Stan watched her every morning at breakfast — but more confusing was the fact that they rarely had sex. When they did it was always when Stan was extremely drunk. It was a rough, sloppy and often painful ordeal that left her feeling bruised both physically and emotionally.

As a young girl Sadie had often imagined herself as a mother. She modeled herself after her own mother, who had been, despite the horror of being married to a brutal alcoholic, a kind and caring mother, devoted to making sure that Sadie was cared for and loved. Of course, in Sadie’s imagination, the father of her child was nothing at all like her father — he was a conglomeration of all the shining knights, brave princes and beautiful, yet smart heroes of the story books she read. When she’d first set eyes on Stan she believed that she’d found the very embodiment of all her girl-hood fantasies.

When her doctor told her she was pregnant she broke down and cried. She had fled the doctor’s office in a panic, unable to explain why she had to leave so suddenly. She had taken the bus to the clinic, but chose to walk the 45 minutes it would take her to get home. Along the way she stumbled into a park and sat crying into the bunched folds of the sweater she’d worn to her appointment. A woman who had watched Sadie crying for nearly half an hour finally approached and asked if she was okay, was there anything she could do to help. Sadie had looked at her through swollen eyes, her face blotchy and red and said no, there was nothing anyone could do. She thanked the woman and said she’d be fine, could she please just leave? The woman smiled sadly then reached into her bag and produced a travel pack of Kleenex which she placed gently on the bench beside Sadie. That simple, kind act brought about a new avalanche of tears and Sadie had felt for a moment that she might go mad.

Eventually her tears abated, but not the sense of overwhelming sadness that had permeated every fibre of her being. How was she going to tell Stan this news? How would he react? The thought of a child growing up in their home, being loved by only one parent, having to suffer through Stan’s miserableness, his drinking, his anger and his tight-fistedness nearly brought the tears on again, but she stole a look at her watch and was shocked to see that she’d been in the park the whole afternoon. It was going on 5 o’clock. Stan would be home before her and he’d be furious that she wasn’t there. She got to her feet and hurried home.

She walked fast, but it still took her nearly half an hour to get there, and in that time she felt a seed of hope begin to grow inside. Maybe, confronted with the reality of a child, Stan would change. Maybe he would actually be happy, would be thrilled to know that he had fathered an heir. What if it was a boy? The thought made Sadie suddenly smile. A boy! Isn’t that what all men wanted? A boy child, someone to carry on their legacy, someone to share their skills and knowledge with? By the time she stepped into their driveway she was convinced that Stan would be as happy about the child as she was beginning to feel.

That fantasy lasted as long as it took her to get the words out.

He had been sitting in the faded recliner he’d picked up one day on his way home from work drinking a beer and scowling at the blank screen of the television. When she came into the room he turned and fixed her with a cold, empty look. Where the fuck you been? he said quietly. Sadie tried to erase the look of fear that must have been on her face, tried to smile, but the blackness she saw in his eyes was killing any sense of happiness she’d begun to feel. I was at the doctor’s, she said. That was this morning, he growled, and stood up out of the chair. It’s five-fucking-o’clock. Who you been seeing behind my back, while I’m killing myself at that fucking job that I fucking hate just so’s I can keep you in this fucking house? His voice had grown steadily louder and as he spoke he had walked across to her until he was towering over her, his hot breath, smelling of the corned beef sandwich he’d had for lunch and the beer he’d been drinking, blasting into her face, making her feel sick. Sadie stood her ground. Turned her head slightly to draw in a fresh breath of air, then turned to look at him with as much calmness as she could muster and told him they were going to have a child.

At first he was silent. He stared at her like he didn’t know who she was. The colour had drained from his face and he seemed to lose his balance, she thought for a moment he might actually faint. Then he had gone into the kitchen, grabbed his keys from the hook by the door and walked out without a word. He did not come back until the next night.

All through the night that he was gone Sadie sat at the kitchen table, starting each time she heard the loud engine of a half-ton cruise by out on the street. When he hadn’t returned by morning she went and lay down on the bed, not bothering to undress. Any feelings of hope or joy or happiness she’d had on her short walk home from the park were gone. In her heart she knew that Stan would never accept a child. When she thought of the unbearable unhappiness and loneliness her child would have to live with it broke her heart. She wept softly and silently until she finally fell asleep.

When he came through the door the next night he walked past her without a word. She set the table and laid out their supper. It was while he was stuffing a forkful of the shepherd’s pie she’d made into his mouth that he said, I told you I didn’t want no kids. He didn’t look at her, only reached for the beer that sat beside his plate. I know, she said quietly, it just happened. They sat in silence then, the only sound their chewing and the occasional clearing of their throats. When he was done, he looked at her and the last thing he said before pushing himself away from the table was, It probably ain’t even mine, anyway.

She cried the whole time doing the dishes, her tears splashing silently into the soapy water, and by the time she was finished she knew what she had to do.

They told her that it was a girl. Sadie named her June. Stan never knew that she carried the tiny body home or that she had buried their daughter beneath the protective, sheltering branches of the elm tree in the back corner of the yard. She placed a chair next to the spot where she buried June, and every day when Stan was at work she would sit and read aloud to her, her voice, filled with longing, filled with regret, but mostly filled with love floating softly up through the branches into the free and open sky.

The Farm

Chapter 3

by Kathy Larson
March 4, 2022

The first time, and there was only one other time, that Stan took Sadie to the farm, was for his father’s funeral.

She had asked him a few times before they were married when she would meet his parents, but he had said each time that they were so busy working that there just wasn’t a good time to make the trip. They’d have to stay overnight, because it was a five-hour drive and he wasn’t about to do ten hours of driving for barely a day of visiting. They’d go when he had holidays and they’d stay at least a week; give his folks a chance to really get to know her. It sounded good to her — she’d never been far out of the city, had never been on a farm — the prospect of spending time in the country excited her. In her mind she pictured green fields, lush gardens, and animals, lots of animals.

When Stan got the call that his father had died they had been married nearly 18 months. By that time she was sure he never meant to take her to meet his parents, and he wouldn’t listen to any talk of having them come to stay. Also, by that time, she knew not to push him when he’d said how things were going to be. Not that he ever laid a hand on her, God no, that was something Stan said he would never do and he was very proud of himself for that. It would be her own damned fault if he ever did, though — there was only so much a man could be expected to take, after all. If he had only known just what a useless, lazy, stupid waste of breath she’d become after she got that ring on her finger. . .

For the first few months after they were married she tried everything she could to restore things to how they’d been before. She ignored his moods, took on fixing up the house on her own when he protested that he was too worn out from slaving for her every day, put on a dress and fixed her makeup and hair for when he got home because he’d gone from telling her how sweet and pretty she was to how plain and disgusting she’d become. Nothing worked. Did she think he wanted people to think he’d married a whore? he’d spit at her. Is that what she did all day while he busted his ass to put this roof over her head and the food on her table — sat around playing dress-up and painting her face so that he’d forget what she really was? His mother had tried to warn him, he told her, but he hadn’t listened, and now look what it had got him.

Sadie never thought to fight back — she’d seen what had happened to her mother. She knew that Stan’s anger wasn’t really with her, just as her father’s hadn’t been with her or her mother. Sometimes, she wished Stan would hit her, then she’d have an actual reason to leave him, but to leave because he called her names, or thought she had tricked him into marrying her? That was insane. Who would believe that? Besides, where could she go if she did leave? She had nothing of her own anymore. He’d made her quit the waitressing job — only sluts worked as waitresses, he’d said, and seeing as how she’d got what she wanted with him, he wouldn’t have her embarrass him by throwing herself at other men. She reminded him of how she’d been when they met. That was all an act, he said, she’d played the poor little victim and he’d fallen for it.

He’d even stopped her from refinishing and fixing up furniture. One day he went out to the garage where her supplies were and started throwing them all in the back of his pick-up. What are you doing? she cried, why are you doing this? Because, he’d answered, you have a house to take care of now, you don’t have time for this two-bit hobby anymore. She’d tried to stop him, saying that she could make money doing the furniture, help them save more for fixing up the house and for the acreage they planned to buy, but he had shoved her roughly aside and said he wouldn’t have her wasting her time and his money on such crap. Then he had looked at her with a cold smile and said, there ain’t going to be no acreage. You think I’m stupid enough to let you tie me down with a mortgage I’d never get out from under just so you can play the grand lady? Not gonna happen. After that she simply gave in. The man she had fallen in love with didn’t exist — he had been the one that had fooled her, and sadly she was the only one who knew it.

The days slid by, unremarked, and she busied herself with keeping the house the way he wanted it. She did the best she could to fix it up though he would give her no money for anything he considered frivolous. If she needed anything — there was no such thing as ‘wanting’ anything — he would take her to the local thrift store. In all the years he’d been alive she had never once bought a brand new pair of shoes or piece of clothing. Their dishes, pots and pans, all their linens, and most of their furniture had all come from second-hand stores. He gave her an allowance for groceries and she had to hand him receipts for every penny she spent. Over time she accepted that this was her life, and if it was not the life she had imagined it would be, well, that was, after all, just life.

When they arrived at his parent’s farm for the funeral Sadie was in shock. It was nothing like she had imagined; it did not match the descriptions Stan had detailed for her. The house was small and weather-beaten and badly in need of repairs and paint. Old vehicles and broken-down farm machinery littered the surrounding yard. Though summer was over, it was only the second week of October, and though nothing would be lush and green, everything that should still be living, wasn’t. The garden was an overgrown mass of dying weeds, the trees were nothing more than skeletal outlines against the lead-grey sky, and looking over a barely standing fence was a dusty brown cow that looked to Sadie to be starving. She looked over at Stan and saw that he was not phased at all by anything they were seeing. So, this had been another lie. She closed her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together.

Nothing could have prepared her for Stan’s mother. She had entered the house expecting to find an elderly woman bereft over the loss of her husband. Gloria was not bereft. Sadie knew that Stan’s parents were in their 70s, but Gloria could have been in her 50s. She was in the kitchen when they entered the house talking loudly on the phone. She had a cigarette in one hand and was absentmindedly tapping ashes into a juice glass sitting on the edge of the counter as she talked. She looked up and registered surprise at seeing Stan, looked over at Sadie and gave her a sour frown. Gotta go, she said, the prodigal just came in with his new wife.

Gloria was wearing a dark, bordering-on-the-colour-of-blood, red dress and black, patent leather high heels. Her poorly dyed blonde hair, done up in a loose knot, straggled down around her shoulders. She was heavily made up and the bright red lipstick she wore had bled into the lines around her mouth, making her look haggard and worn. Well, she said, if it isn’t Stanny-boy and the little lady. Sadie understood everything then, and in that moment of understanding felt such an overwhelming sense of pity for Stan that she reached out and took his hand. He startled at her touch, but did not pull away.

The funeral was a small, sad affair. The men in attendance came up to Stan, his mother and Sadie, and offered muted words of condolence. Most of the men avoided touching Gloria by keeping their hats in their hands, but when they got to Stan, they would loose one to shake his. He was a good man, they said. Hard worker. Really tried. Gave it his best. They looked at Sadie with curious expressions and congratulated her on marrying Stan. None of their wives came with them. When it was over Stan drove them back to the farmhouse, but not before stopping at the small hotel on the main street of town to pick up a case of beer and bottle of whiskey.

That night, after he and his mother had gotten into a loud, drunken screaming match he had clawed his way into bed where he forced himself roughly on her. Sadie cried silently throughout the ordeal and when he had finally finished and rolled off her and passed out, she got up and spent the rest of the night sleeping in a lumpy, overstuffed and dusty-smelling chair in one corner of the room. He seemed not to recall anything the next morning, and when he asked why she had slept in the chair she told him it was because she couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake him, knowing he had to drive them back to the city. A look of relief, or was it shame, she asked herself, passed over his face; he accepted her lie and within an hour they were on the road. Gloria did not get up to see them off.

They barely spoke on the trip home, Stan was lost in concentration and Sadie spent the time processing all she’d seen and overheard. Armed with the knowledge that everthing Stan had told her about life on the ‘farm’ was all lies, and that he had very good reasons for those lies, Sadie resolved to do the best she could to prove to him that she was not like Gloria. She could win him back, she could help him become that happy, life-loving guy she’d met once again. Without looking at him, she said softly into the space between them, I love you.

He kept his eyes on the road, but she heard him sigh.

Getting Ready

Chapter 2

Kathy Larson
Feb. 22, 2022

Sadie stood at the sink, her right hip leaning against the edge of the counter. She was looking out the window into the backyard, but wasn’t really seeing anything. Her mind was stuck in a memory from four decades previous; the day she and Stan had moved into this house.

The apple trees in the back west corner were waving gently in the breeze, their new leaves and newly-formed buds seemed to glow almost incandescently in the bright light of this fresh spring morning. If there wasn’t a late frost, there’d be a bumper crop of apples this year. Sadie sighed. They had bought the trees at that little nursery where they had ordered the topsoil for the garden. Stan wanted a big vegetable garden, better and cheaper to grow your own food, he’d told her. She had looked at him in wonder, and with true adoration; this man she was about to marry was such a surprise.

He had grown up on a farm where everything you needed was either raised, harvested or made. Sadie had grown up in the city and the only garden she’d ever tended was the small flower bed her mother had kept. Her mother’s flowers had been the only bit of joy and colour in her world, and when she had died the flowers died too. Sadie had just turned 17 the week before her father finally put an end to her mother. He went to prison and she went into care. She’d never been back to the little house with the peeling blue paint and the sad patch of earth nestled beneath the front window.

She met Stan while she was working as a waitress at a little restaurant in a strip mall close to where she lived. By that time she had moved out on her own and had a small basement apartment in a three story walk-up. The apartment was cold in winter but lovely in summer. She had furnished it almost completely with things she’d found in thrift stores and on the side of the street. If something was at the curb and it looked serviceable she’d drag it home. The library provided her with all the how-to she needed in order to fix things up, and she soon discovered that she had a love and a talent for painting and refinishing furniture. Her little home was bright and airy, filled with colour, and, best of all, peaceful and safe.

The day Stan walked into her life everything changed. He was big, loud and had a laugh that carried her along with it. He’d been coming to the restaurant for a little over a week before he stopped her on his way out after lunch one day and asked if she’d be interested in going out sometime. Until that moment she’d thought she was invisible to him, just the mousy little waitress who brought him his club sandwich with extra fries, large water and a slice of apple pie every day at 11:45. Him, and the crew he was with had established a standing reservation with Gino, the owner of the restaurant, and everyday they trooped in and headed to the large table at the back where it was Sadie’s job to take care of them.

She was a good waitress; attentive, quick and anticipatory of their needs. This came, she knew, from living in an environment of terror. Her mother had taught her early how to read her father’s moods and silences and how to appease them when possible. This also meant, though, that she was constantly on alert for any signs of anger or discontent; she made herself as small and unobtrusive as possible trying as best she could to do her job and get out of their way. Most of them had given up trying to make small talk with her after the first couple of days, but not Stan. He always had a big smile for her, called her darlin’, and left her a decent tip each day. She found herself watching out for him and made sure that it was him she always served first when the orders were ready.

If only she had known, she thought now.

Their courtship had been fast and they were married within six months. During that time he had only ever been patient, kind and indulgent with her. The few times he had stayed at her apartment he had praised her on her ability to make something worn and destined for the garbage look new and usable again, but he wasn’t crazy about her ‘wild’ use of colour. Things were better painted neutral, everyday colours, he said, that way they didn’t stand out, they could fit in anywhere. She saw the wisdom in this and soon began painting things in shades of white, beige and pale grey only. They were still lovely, she thought, but they lacked a sense of life, of vibrancy, but if it meant pleasing him then it was a small thing.

They found the house a month before they were married. It was in an older part of the city, a real fixer-upper — completely neglected, the real estate agent had said — but it had a huge back yard and the price was right. Secretly, she was disappointed that they weren’t going to buy a new house in one of the new neighbourhoods that had sprung up on the outskirts of town, but Stan was adamant about not throwing his money away on crappy construction just to line the pockets of shyster councilmen and their crony business partners. He convinced her that they could make the house look new again with his carpentry skills and her knack for painting and decorating. It would be a solid investment, one they could make a good profit on, and someday they’d build their own new home in the country on an acreage. It was such a convincing argument and she could see how excited he was at the prospect of redeeming this shoddy, worn little house that she couldn’t help getting swept along by his enthusiasm.

The got married by a justice of the peace. There was no honeymoon. He got drunk that night and she cried herself to sleep. In the morning he went and picked up the rented moving truck and they piled her few belongings into it and they moved into the house. They had taken possession two weeks previous and had spent that time cleaning and painting walls, removing old, stained carpet, replacing broken fixtures and, as her mother had once told her, simply nesting. It had been fun working alongside him and he had been full of smiles and laughs and had grabbed her up in big bear hugs whenever they completed one of the projects they’d set themselves. What happened, she wondered. Did I do something wrong? Was he disappointed because their wedding night hadn’t been more special?

When he came back from returning the truck he had a bottle of whiskey and a two-four of beer. She had never seen him buy booze before and seeing this made her think of her father. An involuntary shudder ran through her.

Sadie had told Stan very little about her background, but she had told him her father was an alcoholic and that he had beat her mother to death. He had held her while she told him this and stroked her hair and kissed her gently and promised that he would never let anyone hurt her ever again.

Unable to stop herself from shaking she approached him carefully. “Stan?,” she said in as small a voice as she could, “why are you so angry?”

The look he have her was so cold and filled with contempt it stilled her breath. “I ain’t angry,” he said. “I’m tired. You’ve had me working like a goddamned dog and now I need a break.” He stalked to the refrigerator and put the beer inside. “You got what you wanted — a hardworking husband, a nice house — but this ain’t no free ride, sweetie. You got to earn your keep.” He pulled a glass out of a box, filled it half full with whiskey, added a splash of water from the tap. “I’m hungry. Make something to eat. I don’t care what it is.”

It hit her then. The inevitability of it. Everything, her childhood, her mother’s death, the group home, all of it had all been preparation for this day. She turned inward into the dull and dingy kitchen and began preparing his meal. He stayed outside and waited until she called to tell him it was ready.

A steady, loud beeping interrupted Sadie’s thoughts. Startled, she sloshed coffee over her hand and was mildly surprised to find that it was cold. With a rueful smile she placed the mug into the sink. The tree removal company she’d hired was here. She slipped into the new, bulky, bright yellow sweater she’d bought last week and stepped out into the sunshine, waving at the young man backing his truck into the driveway. Her smile broadened as she walked past all of the colourful plants and flowers spread out across the patio. She’d canned her last damned jar of applesauce.

Just a ramble

Kathy Larson
Feb. 20, 2022

It’s Sunday morning, it’s cold outside, and I really don’t feel like doing much of anything.

I’ve become hooked on the game Wordle. Have my sisters to thank for that. Lol. I am very happy that they introduced me to it though — it’s my early morning addiction and I can’t wait to see how I have done compared to them. What I love about Wordle is that it is a relatively quick game; solve the word of the day and you’re done. Once I’ve solved it and shared my score (usually 5/6, sometimes 4/6) I am happy to get on with the rest of my day. I don’t waste any time thinking about mistakes I made or if I can do better on the next challenge — it’s done, and that’s it until I open it up the next morning.

I also like the brief connection with my sisters first thing in the morning. Most days we only share our scores, but occasionally we add a few words of conversation. It’s a small thing, but a good thing.

This week I began writing again. For real. It has been a long, long struggle to get back to wanting to write. For so many years I just pushed writing aside, choosing to do anything else, where once upon a time I did anything I could to find any extra scrap of time that I could use to indulge my passion.

When I sat down at the keyboard for the first time this past week I was amazed at how familiar it felt, how absolutely lovely it was to see words appearing as I typed them. I don’t even care if most of them are garbage — I’m just so happy to be doing something that makes me happy. For years I’ve treated myself as a failure for not having made a successful career out of my writing; I wouldn’t write because I judged myself too harshly.

Then, I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, and I realized just how much I missed writing. Words make me happy. Stringing words together in sentences makes me ecstatic. Joining sentences together into paragraphs, into pages, into chapters and essays makes me positively starry-eyed. For too long I’ve been focused on the wrong thing — trying to impress others, to seek validation in their opinions — when, really, I only ever had to worry about myself.

This past summer I boxed up all but a few of my manuscripts, my files of story ideas, my files of weird news articles, strange phrases gleaned from conversations, images clipped from magazines, words scrawled on bits of napkins, receipts and corners of pages torn from notebooks, because I had given up on myself as a writer. It was something I tried, I told myself, something else that I had failed at.

I think when I did that a switch got stuck somewhere inside me — like a light switch that is stuck halfway between on and off. The light will flicker intermittently until someone comes along and flicks it all the way one way or the other. All the empty space in my office that had been filled for so long with pages and pages of words that I had written kept flickering in my mind’s peripheral vision, like that cluster of stars in the night sky that you only see when you’re not looking directly at them.

Thank God, thank the muses, thank the Divine, thank the guardians, guides and angels — thank the Universe — that I decided to flip the switch to on.

I like feeling happy again.

Today

Chapter 1

by Kathy Larson
Feb 17, 2022

“When I wake up tomorrow,” she said to the empty room, “I’m going to do two things that will get me closer to my goal.” Then, she looked around herself, took in the faded wallpaper, the fraying pillowcases and the dust that lined her dresser and sighed. What goal would that be, she asked silently.

The next morning, as she sat eating her usual bowl of oatmeal with trail mix, honey and a half a banana (which she hated) and a sprinkle of cinnamon, she thought about her proclamation of the night before. What exactly was the goal she had been thinking of? Truth was, she didn’t have any goals. Not a one. She spooned oatmeal into her mouth and asked herself when and why it was that she’d started eating the stuff everyday for breakfast.

Once upon a time she’d eaten other things for breakfast — eggs, Frosted Flakes, muffins, bagels and cream cheese — she’d kind of chosen her meal based on how she felt that particular day. Not anymore. It was oatmeal every day. Every single day. She put the spoon down as it was halfway to her mouth and oatmeal splattered on the placemat and on to the table. Why? She couldn’t get the ‘why?’ out of her thoughts.

With a heavy sigh she looked down at the mess she’d made then picked up the faded cloth napkin laying beside her bowl and wiped it up. I’ve had these napkins for over 40 years, she thought, and they’re still holding up. The flower pattern had dulled from the brilliant reds, blues and yellows they’d once been to a sort of uniform dull grayish-brownish taupe. She told herself that she was proud of the fact that they had lasted so long, but looking at this one, all gummed up with congealing globs of oatmeal she felt suddenly embarrassed. She gave these to guests to use! My God, what did they think? She stood up quickly, knocking her chair back hard against the wall and practically ran across the room to the drawer where she kept the rest of the napkins and grabbed them up. She hurried over to the garbage can and without stopping to consider what she was doing tossed them in.

Stan would have had a holy fit. “There’s nothing wrong with those!” he would have bellowed. “You wash’em after we use’em, don’t you? Too bloody bad if people think they’re dirty! They ain’t!” He would have fished them out of the garbage and flung them back at her telling her to not be so stupid and wasteful.

He’d been gone now for three years and lately she’d begun to forget what his face looked like. She’d begun to feel guilty, too, because, truthfully, she wasn’t missing him anymore. At first, it had been hard. Honestly, how could it not be after 38 years together? There’d never been any children, just the two of them, always. She had wanted a child desperately in the beginning, but Stan refused, saying the cost of raising a child in North America was enough to bankrupt a small third-world country and, besides, the government had taken away all rights from parents and he wouldn’t raise no spoiled, self-entitled brat who’d never want to leave home and they’d end up in the poor house supporting it. So, that was that. He’d made sure she took her birth control pills every day so that on those rare occasions he ‘felt like it’, she wouldn’t get knocked up.

She stood over the garbage can and looked at the pile of grubby cloth the napkins made. Her right hand moved tremulously forward as though Stan was somehow guiding it down to pick them out of the trash.

“No!” Her yell startled her and she pulled her hand back, stuffing it into the ratty, thread-bare pocket of her ancient house coat. A wedding gift from Stan. She’d been wearing this same house coat for 40 years! Her face crumpled and her shoulders shook as she struggled to untie the belt that held it closed. With trembling hands she pulled it off and let it fall to the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dropped with fat plops onto the thin material of her nightgown. She looked down at herself and then around at the kitchen. Through the prism of her tears the room looked bright, looked fresh and new.

Sadie smiled. She knew what her goal was.

A few thoughts on happiness

by Kathy Larson

Feb. 16, 2022

I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This wasn’t a book I sought out on my own. It was given to me by my sister-in-law, Connie. She said it was okay; I said I’d give it a try.

From the beginning I was a little skeptical about someone writing about trying to bring more happiness into their life, or, more specifically, about them trying to determine if they were happy in their life. I thought it would just be another one of those painful self-awareness books exhorting us all to be our best selves!, or live our best life!, topics for which I have very little patience.

In hindsight I think that could have been a clue.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I didn’t have a clue about whether I was happy or not. I thought I was happy, but was I? Really?

Certainly, life had not turned out the way I had imagined it would some forty-odd years ago when I was a 21-year-old bride staring into a future that seemed to stretch on forever.

We think we know ourselves when we’re that age, think we know EVERYTHING, and think there is nothing we can’t do. Then life happens and before you know it you’re struggling to keep up, struggling to change with every new day, every new challenge. You’re learning that you don’t really know who you are, don’t really know anyone, for that matter, and it scares you. Luckily, you also learn how to grow up, to face your fears, to meet your challenges, and, even if the results are not always what you thought or hoped they’d be, you learn to accept them and ready yourself for whatever comes next.

Then, forty years go by. One day you look at yourself and wonder who you are. Wonder who the man you married is. Wonder where the people you thought you were went. You start reading a book on happiness and your mind is flooded with questions. All of them leading to one single question: Am I happy?

If I rate myself according to Rubin’s Eight Splendid Truths I would say I am semi-happy. I try to make others happy by being happy myself; like most people, though, this is tough to do ALL. THE. TIME. I try to focus on things in my life that make me happy. This one is even tougher to accomplish, because I tend to end up feeling guilty and selfish if I spend too much time focusing on things that only make me happy. Then, I don’t feel happy anymore. Catch-22 anyone?

Her Fourth Splendid Truth states that ‘you’re not happy unless you think you’re happy”. Huh? I’ve tried going about my day telling myself ‘you are happy!” over and over again, but when there is evidence to the contrary floating all around me I end up feeling silly and beleaguered and resentful. Anything but happy.

I won’t go through all the Splendid Truths, just suffice it to say that they boil down to something we all know and have heard a million times – you alone are responsible for your own happiness and no one else’s. You can make people happy by being happy, but, no one can make you happy, and you can’t make someone be happy if they choose not to be.

Generally speaking I’d say I’m a reluctant optimist. I believe that things will work out — eventually — and I accept that they may not work out exactly as I’d like. I believe that most people are good at heart — even though they may do things that would seem to prove otherwise. Though the glass is half full for me, I’m extremely careful about where and how I set it down — in case it spills and I’m left with nothing. My proven strategy to getting through life is to expect the best and prepare for the worst.

Perhaps not the best recipe for happiness, but it’s gotten me this far.

After finishing The Happiness Project I immediately began contemplating starting my own happiness project. Because it’s apparent that I could stand to be a little more happy. The problem is that thinking about getting started has made me feel very unhappy. At this particular time in my life I’m dealing with a whole lot of stress and uncertainty and though it sounds counter-intuitive, taking time to focus on my personal happiness just seems impossible.

So, I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done — take each day as it comes — and approach it every morning with a positive attitude and the belief that today will be a good day. Maybe it won’t be a particularly happy day, but it can be a good day.

I liked Rubin’s book; it gave me a lot to think about. In the end, though, I think it’s as simple as this: Happiness is a choice — you can choose to be happy or you can choose to not be happy. Maybe choosing happiness is the harder choice, but it’s also the better choice. As the Grail Knight says to Indiana Jones: Choose wisely.

Full circle — A bowl of oatmeal

by Kathy Larson

As a kid I ate a lot of oatmeal. Our family was large — eight kids, my mom and dad, usually a dog and one or two cats — and we were poor. Not destitute poor, or heartbreakingly poor, but with my dad being a Corporal in the Canadian Forces and my mom employed solely in the raising of us, well, there just wasn’t a lot of money.

Staple foods were a large part of our diet. Bread, potatoes, pasta, root vegetables, canned vegetables, hamburger, hotdogs, bologna, apples, oranges — these made up the base of many of our meals. And then there was oatmeal. Until I was in my teens and the financial situation got a little better in our house we had oatmeal almost every day for breakfast.

You’d think my brothers and sisters and I would hate the stuff, but there’s not one of us that does. For sure, they don’t eat it every day anymore, but in talking to them recently they all said how they love a bowl of hot oatmeal (with lots of brown sugar and milk, of course) every now and then.

The stuff my mom made was always the Quaker brand 5 minute oats — she could whip up a big pot of that in no time and we would all help ourselves from the pot as we filed downstairs each morning before heading out the door to school or play. The bag of brown sugar was on the middle of the table — a big old picnic table my dad had assembled in the kitchen — the only thing big enough to seat us all at — along with a bag of milk in its little plastic holding jug.

Bagged milk! Still sold in Ontario. Not sure about Manitoba where we grew up. It would be delivered twice a week to our door, two three packs at a time, and still we would run out in between. Eight kids — thats a lot of bones.

For a while after I left home I didn’t eat oatmeal at all. It was beneath me. Oh, the ridiculous ideas we have when we’re young. Then I got married and started a family of my own and oatmeal entered the picture again. It was the perfect food for a toddler — and I could put anything in it — bananas, strawberries, chocolate syrup — and my son would gobble it up. The only thing he wouldn’t eat in it was raisins. He would spit those at me every time.

Though I started out making the quick-cooking oats just as my mom had, one day I switched to buying the instant type oatmeal. It came in so many flavours and was so ridiculously fast to make that I couldn’t help thinking what a no-brainer it was. It was shortly after that that my son decided he didn’t like oatmeal anymore. And I had to agree with him, I no longer liked it as much, either. It didn’t taste like oatmeal should. It was gluey and salty and chemical tasting. I went back to making the stuff I had to cook myself, but the damage was done and pouring from a box was just simpler, so we switched to cold cereal. To this day I don’t think my son has ever eaten oatmeal again.

About 15 years ago my husband went through a phase of eating oatmeal. Every. Single. Day. He had read an article about what a super food it was and so once a month while watching Star Trek on television he would make up a month’s worth of little plastic bags of oatmeal mixed with raisins, craisins, nuts, dried fruit and artificial sweetener. Every morning he’d grab one of these bags, nuke his oatmeal in the microwave and eat it as he made the drive into town to work. We went through a lot of lost bowls during that phase. Eventually, he grew tired of eating the same thing every morning and those little bags of oatmeal languished in the pantry til well beyond the best-before date.

Despite not having oatmeal as a breakfast staple anymore I always kept a bag of it on hand. For cookies, to add to meatloaf, to add to bread when I baked it and for that occasional nostalgic moment when I longed for the feeling of comfort and home that nothing but a bowl of hot, brown-sugary oatmeal could supply.

Lately, I’ve returned to eating oatmeal most mornings. A couple of years ago my doctor prescribed cholesterol medication and that got me thinking about how to avoid having to take it. (Unfortunately, according to my doctor and a bunch of on-line research, avoidance isn’t good practice) so I grudgingly take it. Still, it made me take a hard look at what and how I eat and I’ve made changes. One of those changes is to include oatmeal in my morning routine.

Just about every day, after my morning glass of water and my first cup of coffee are out of the way, I make myself a bowl of oatmeal. I add a handful of seeds and nuts, some dried fruit, a teaspoon of brown sugar and splash of some form of milk alternative.

It’s not the same as mom used to make, but it sure is inspired by her.

Crockery

by Kathy Larson

I don’t mind
the crooked bowl,
the cup with a chip, or
the mismatched plates.

It’s the life I chose.

The life I love.

These small
imperfections
These minor
flaws
Are daily reminders
that though
I thought
I sought
perfection,
Perfection,
it turns out,
is just
a bunch of
crock – ery.

Van Morrison and my heart remembers

by Kathy Larson

I asked Google
to play some music.

She chose
Van Morrison.
And a memory
of you pops like a tiny
iridescent bubble.
I see you, smiling,
that Mennonite rebel
farm boy
who swept me off the dusty streets
of our small prairie town
and into the front seat of his
souped-up ’67 Dart Swinger.
Oh, I loved you.
Loved your wild hair,
your cupid-bow smile,
your dusty, brown shoes
with the platform heels.

You were trying so hard
to break free,
be different,
but your plaid shirt
and dirty jeans
your sad eyes
and the weekends spent at home
on the farm:
you knew.
We both did.

At 15 I thought
I was a woman,
At 19 you thought
you knew what it was
to be mature. To be
a man.
Oh, I smile at that.
But never laugh, no,
never laugh.

I heard,
years ago,
that you made a life for yourself
on the farm.
Beautiful Mennonite bride
beautiful Mennonite children
to carry on the legacy
you thought you could deny.
As sad as that makes me,
I’m happy for you.

But, today
when I heard that familiar, raspy voice,
the one that you introduced me to,
I couldn’t help but wonder
how you are
and if your heart
remembers.