Hillery Occasionally

I am so righteously tired. It is because I’ve worked my ass off all day that I can say this.

Okay, wait, I must interrupt myself. It is snowing. Correction: It’s FUCKING snowing! It happened a couple of times after the thaw and, now, every day for the last week. It doesn’t stick and more and more of the snow actually on the ground disappears daily, but it is fucking snowing on a daily basis when I need to be transplanting seedlings because, hello, April is tomorrow. April is tomorrow and it’s, “April showers bring May flowers,” not April fucking snow.

I’m definitely getting drunk tonight.

This is not my usual post, as you can tell, dear reader. All I can tell you is I am not my usual me. You knew me. I was this pensive, passionate New Yorker who worked nights in a restaurant and spent my days jogging and pursuing my literary, well, pursuits. I made damned good short ribs and pasta primavera.

No longer.

As David Sedaris so clearly put it, quoting his infamous and fabulous mother, "You meet a guy, relinquish a tiny bit of control, and the next thing you know, you’re eating a different part of the pig." I finally met The Man, put almost everything else aside, and ended up in the middle of fucking nowhere. I thought I’d have more time to write. I harbored a lot of naïve delusions about country life. I was wrong.

This is not to say I’ve been unhappy here or with him. As Mary J. says, it ain’t all roses. But, I’m hooked. Not just on The Man, but the place…the no place.

Today is, incidentally, a good example of what I do here. He wakes up first. He makes a fire and then coffee and quietly answers his emails downstairs (he got high-speed just before I arrived…do you even remember dial-up?!). I arise and consult him on our intentions for the day. I have finally trained him to give me things to do that overwhelm him rather than huffing about them until his need for assistance becomes untenable. He gives me three rather tedious chores that, while they’ve been floating around in his head for days, now must be taken care of immediately. Contrary to my conditioning, I say, “I just wonder what you did with yourself before I got here.” (Honestly, he used to go to a computer guru the next town over every time he wanted to download pictures from the internet.) He, good-naturedly, says, “I was fuckered.”

Usually I make breakfast, but I’m feeling peckish and wait him out. He poaches eggs served on toast with grated Parmesan and wilted spinach. No one is starving here. I unload the dishwasher and reload it, scrub down the kitchen countertops, load in firewood,
and sweep the floor. I must constantly check the fire lest he unintentionally let it go out. The coffee is weak and I remind myself to send loads of WholeFoods coffee beans when we get back to New York. I spend my morning sending emails to gallery people and art writers that would take seconds to send at home, but his wacky internet set up requires me to send all emails through webmail and that limits the size of pictures of paintings and…oh let’s just kill ourselves and get it over with!

We go out around lunchtime to visit the post office, the local gardening retailer, and to get lunch at one of two area eateries; not the Cedar Creek Café but Sleep is for Sissies (open ‘till 8 PM). The joint is, unexpectedly to us both, jumpin’. We spy Sophia, the local real estate legend whose saucy headshot graces so many for sale signs on our back road. She has a passable streaky blond dye-job and a matching set of four or five pink pens. Not being in any position to judge as I did not even apply eyebrows this morning and mostly for the sake of alliteration, I call her the slut. As in, “Look, it’s the slut. For real!” The Man is less amused than I am. He is greeted by locals on our way out. They fall into two categories, those I am introduced to and those near whom I linger hopefully…I’m sorry, I mean, those whose names he remembers and those whose names he cannot place, even remotely.

He was painting in the morning and, this afternoon, while things dry in the studio he helps me get started with my gardening work. I think I mentioned, a few weeks ago, I was starting an herb garden. Think exponentially.

I’ve had a hard time getting down to business in the wilderness. My previous lifestyle simply will not translate to this setting and, in such a case, what can you do but reinvent yourself from top to bottom? That is to say, it’s been hard for me to write here because I’m not completely at home in the place and I realize I’m not exactly visiting either. The Man and I, we’re carefully and quietly working on making a life together. And while that is simultaneously my dream come true and the scariest thing to happen to me ever, it is not the tranquil background of that which I know well and can tune out when I need and want to concentrate on…my pursuits.

So, I’ve been working on not only making myself feel more at home here, but also bringing something to the table in our partnership. I’ve given up my income to live here with him, so I’m doing my best to fill the gaps in other ways. Hence helping The Man with his business and…my putative garden.

It all started when the local greenmarket, with the ironic subtitle Whole Foods, didn’t have fresh thyme. I remembered planting a windowsill herb garden in Brooklyn and wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh herbs whenever we needed them? Spring was just around the corner, after all. I started a mini-greenhouse, pod-type seedbed. You saw a picture of the starter set of seeds.  All good!

The escalating enthusiasm that followed absolutely mystified The Man, bless him. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upstairs writing in the sunroom rather than planting scads and scads more seeds. It’s a full on obsession now and with four days to go before we depart for civilization, I need to fill my planters!

And the snow will NOT stop.

I had to remind myself the other day that I haven’t lived with a man in over ten years. 

He asked me last night if it was okay for him to take off for the evening to go play music with his friends, a loosely assembled group of multi-instrumentalists who mostly like to smoke and drink while they make noise.  It’s nothing I’d be yearning to participate in, but that’s beside the point.  He asked me…did I mind?  I’m so used to being completely independent of others in my actions and to having others be independent of me, it took me by surprise.  But in the sweetest possible way.  And I didn’t mind at all.

In my third week here in the wilderness, I’m definitely settling in.  I’ve gotten the kitchen in shape and while I see chaos that requires my attention nearly everywhere,
I have enough of a foothold now that I’m able to keep it at bay and give myself a couple hours at my desk in the mornings while he’s painting in his studio space.  Then I can tackle the ebb and flow of him all around me with the true sense that my identity remains in tact amidst so much foreign matter.

All the snow is melting here and we got running shoes when we were in town earlier in the week.  We’ll go for a walk/jog when he’s done painting.  After lunch I’ll help him with the business of his art—mailing catalogs and compiling high-res images, etc.  I’ll fuss over my little herb garden, do the laundry or some such housework, and then start flipping through cookbooks to see what I might whip up for dinner.

It sounds a little dull, I know, but we always have lists of things to get done that somehow never get fully crossed off.  We have to get new mattresses so his parents have a place to sleep when they visit at the end of the month, the stove has to be fixed, and we need the kitchen knives sharpened.  His paintings must be photographed for invitations and catalogs for his upcoming shows and crates have to be made to ship them all.  The doing of these things, together, is somehow so satisfying…much better than the annoyance of having to accomplish them on one’s own.

We go to the nearest small town about once a week to run errands and eat dinner out, maybe catch a movie.  He’s very good about taking me on little adventures too.  Last weekend we went to a natural hot springs in the mountains about an hour and a half north.  When we got there all the trees were green with only a few snowcaps remaining on some of the highest branches.  When we woke up in our little chalet about eight inches of snow had dumped and the choppers were running helli-skiers up the mountain right over our heads.  We were in a whiteout winter wonderland and we went right back in the water to enjoy it in transformed surroundings.  Of course, I forgot my camera.

Today I remind myself that I’ve never lived with anyone who’s taken such good care of me or cared for me so much.