Hillery Occasionally

So I got this email from my dad today…we’re not talking yet, but we’re emailing our way through the nearly four year silence…asking me if I’d moved to Canada permanently, among other things.  I have not.  That is to say, there is no permanence in my life at the moment.

A month or so ago I bought a one-way ticket to Spokane, Washington, rented and SUV, and drove deep into the wilderness of British Columbia to maybe break up with my boyfriend or maybe make it. 
He lives part of the time in New York and part in the Canadian mountains.  Leave it to me to find the most complicated happy ending, right?  After ten days together and a week apart I remembered what they say about long-distance love affairs—they’re for assholes—and asked him to buy me my next one-way ticket.  I told the restaurant I needed an indefinite leave of absence, left my roommate with checks written out for two months of bills, kissed my cat goodbye, and that was that.

I’ve been here a week and I haven’t finished cleaning my new kitchen.  I open cabinets, cower in awe, rally with courage, and then dismantle and scour.  He signs off on piles assigned for drop off at the dump or conversely argues, “but my grandmother gave me that…and I was her favorite, sugar.”  How do you argue with that?  I throw up my hands and resolve to learn to love the slow cooker with crawfish dancing along the rim, incomplete with an ill-fitting lid.  At the very least, I’ll unearth a safe place to hide it. 

I make lists of things for him to do or buy and, miraculously, he does them and buys things.  There are no jobs here except for loggers and horticulturists, but I make the bed, and do the laundry, and bring in firewood, and load the dishwasher.  This leaves for a lot of downtime, thank heaven.  The first thing he crossed off my list was a writing desk.  We found an antique library table in Spokane and he loaded it into the back of his pick-up truck and then unloaded an entire room of furniture to make me a comfortable place to write.  So here I am, back to you, dear reader.

I have seeds and a starter set for gardening.  I’ll be planting my herbs tomorrow and working on my book and in the afternoon sometime we’ll go for a walk. 
Those are my boldest plans for the future.  Other items on my agenda include learning not to worry about what comes next, getting used to feeling loved, and not being afraid all of the time that affection will be stolen away from me in the night…or in broad daylight, for that matter.  Wish me luck!