Monthly Archives: October 2020

Tree notes

Leave a reply

I’m looking up trees I want. I know I want some natives. (Looking here for natives: https://www2.gov.scot/Publications/2002/06/14891/5585) I am thinking hard on placement for them. I may go outside of strictly native. I should draw a diagram with the root complications mapped out. Trees I think would be suitable that have no human food benefit:

  • Willow (exactly what kind is eluding me.) I would put this over near the burn, perhaps between the pond and the burn? The pond is going to shed a lot of excess water over time. Osier looks like a good choice. I can use it to make baskets. Maybe Almond? Hm. Looks like by the pond is a bad idea because that is near the septic plumbing system. Right-o. Maybe that’ll be the one closer to the shed. I should definitely not get what I think of as a weeping willow because the suckers can spread 50′ tall and wide and the roots go even wider. Gulp.
  • I think a Rowan tree would be quite nice. Rosiness type?
  • I already have some birch on the property but more would be nice. Research is showing that a weeping birch would be the best bet for the space requirements
  • Pendula Rosea (an ornamental cherry) or Pendula Rubra
  • Hawthorn
  • Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’

Definitely or possibly food bearing:

  • cherry ‘Kiku-shidare-zakura’
  • Morello cherry
  • Stella cherry
  • Fig because I love Noah sooooooooo much. (He loves them and I hate them.)
  • Malus domestica ‘Discovery’ apple
  • Bloody Ploughman apple
  • Grenadier apple
  • Hoods supreme apple
  • Lord Lambourne apple
  • Pear Conference
  • Pear Moonglow
  • Cherry Kordia
  • Cherry  Summer Sun

I need to make a chart and figure out which are self pollinating, which need a buddy (and when!), and when they produce fruit so I don’t get a shit-ton all in one month and nothing else in other months.

But it is after 1am and I should not try to start that now. Tomorrow (or later today…) the plan is to do a bunch of yard work so sleep would be helpful.

The list

2 Replies

It occurred to me lately how news of deaths filters down through cracks in my community. I found out about so many of the deaths 3rd and 4th hand and sometimes feel stunned that it even got to me.

Not that I’m planning to off myself: I have children that I committed to. Ideation is as far as I’m allowed to get… forever. But I am going to die. That’s the most inevitable thing about my whole life. What do I want to have happen when I die? How much of that do I want to leave to be a surprise for the people I love?

I’ve read about Swedish Death Cleaning. It seems like a good idea. (Basically once you start getting pretty old you start owning less and less to make it easier to deal with your stuff when you die. It’s a gift to you and your loved ones.)

But what is it going to mean for me? Death Cleaning is not intended to be something you do in middle age (I’m almost 40, yo–I’ll be surprised if I go past 80… this is the middle of my life). But there are things I can start doing even now because death is a sudden creature. It comes when it wills instead of waiting for a precise day.

One thing that occurs to me… I should make my own damn email blast list. That way people don’t have to hear it through the grapevine.

I should make a list of all of my online accounts with procedures for deleting them because I don’t want a hanging digital presence.

I should do some research as to which company might be happy to come get the books and take them away so my family doesn’t have to (after everyone takes out the ones they want to keep, of course).

I should find a charity that is willing to come bag up my clothes and take them away.

I should write it all down in one place so that Noah doesn’t have to do any work arranging it.

He’s going to be hurting a lot and he doesn’t think very clearly when he’s in pain. This is the last gift I can give him. Make space in his life so he can move on and figure out what to do with it.

I think he will do better at moving on than me. I really hope I go first. And I don’t want that to be a huge burden on him.

For some reason this death is hitting me really hard. Michael and Seth going from cancer in their mid-30’s didn’t hit me this hard. Wendy suiciding feels like a scythe through my soul. I’m drinking too much and sleeping too little. I’m really worried about how her husband is coping and it’s bringing my own mortality so much to the forefront of my mind.

Who do I not want to have learn this news second and third and fourth hand? Hell, I want to write all but the last few lines of my own obituary. That means I need to write it and keep updating it every few years.

But I should hope that you all know by now how it will start: Krissy was a badass motherfucker.

Loss

Leave a reply 
I support your right to make this choice.
I understand that you did not have a choice.
I don't truly respect your choice.

The cessation of pain is what matters though, right?
I am so glad you are not hurting anymore.
Now I hurt more; there's nothing I will do to ease this burden.

I miss your voice.
I miss your smell.
I miss the possibility that things could change and we could love each other without hurting each other.

I miss you.
And I miss you.
And I even miss you. Though only the Gods know why.

You only caused me pain when I asked very nicely.
You never caused me pain in any single way.
I don't know what you did except hurt me. 

It doesn't seem to matter how much I love you or miss you.
Your story was really and truly never about me; I was a witness.
Even though your life could have been about me and it wasn't.

I grieve so hard for you.
Any piece of fresh grief touches the memory of you and reignites the pain afresh and the waves feel like they will swamp me.
"Have you ever lost anyone close to you?" Dripping with scorn and implication that I am not allowed to grieve for anything to do with you.

It's all tied up. 
I can't separate one grief from another today.
What I know is that there are no more chances to fix anything.

There is no way to find you more help.
There is no way to find you new treatments.
There is no way to find our way to a new way of being.

You are gone. 
You and
You and

Time has run out.

That is the deal.

1 Reply

My oldest child is off having adventures on her own. Separation is great! She loves getting to come home and tell us all about her day. Of course she’s an intense person and she isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and she’s having to deal with social friction. This is important for a lot of reasons and I have no desire to take this experience away from her. She needs to learn who she is.

The trouble is, when someone starts some shit she retaliates just a little enough to keep a slap fight going. She doesn’t want to be perceived as a coward so she feels she must respond but she also doesn’t want to be a bully so she doesn’t want to escalate. We’ve been talking constantly for weeks about how that just encourages the situation to keep going at a simmer and she’s obsessed with talking and thinking about her negative experiences all day long. She feels like when she is at school she never stops looking over her shoulder. She’s developing a lot of anxiety and her stomach hurts most of the time. It’s making it hard to eat.

She keeps telling me that she wants to be a badass like me so she has to respond, she can’t just run away from the issues or people. One of her new buddies at school is the tallest boy in her grade and his response to bullying is to run away 100% of the time. She is very conflicted about watching his response.

I told her that as long as she sits on the fence she is going to encourage the problem to keep happening. Either get in a serious fight and really hurt someone… or decide you are committed to non-violence and start running. I will support you in whatever you decide. Sitting on the fence is going to go really poorly in the long run because it will egg the situation on and it will never improve.

She told me that she feels like she is letting me down if she runs because she wants to be brave like me.

Oh baby.

I fought when I was your age because I had a dad who raped me and a mom who mostly didn’t want to talk to me and I had been in foster situations for most of my life and I had gone to 19 schools and moved like 40 times. I fought because I was a highly traumatized feral animal who was trying to not die.

It didn’t make me a badass. It made me a traumatized feral animal.

She said that sometimes it is hard that she is so exceptional that sometimes I act disappointed when she is only average. I agreed that it sounded very hard. I can’t identify with that struggle. People expected me to be shitty and worthless and were shocked when I demonstrated anything else. I cannot understand what it feels like to let down your parents by not being perfect.

I told her that I don’t ever get to be the judge of whether her life has been highly traumatizing because my perspective is so fucked up and extreme that I am not in any way qualified to decide if her life experiences have been abusive. If she needs to react to the trauma she has experienced with violence… I am going to try hard to not judge. I’ve tried hard to give her stability and love and support so she doesn’t need to but there is the real chance I have failed.

I told her she is heading for a crisis of faith because sometime very soon she is going to figure out that her parents are fucked up assholes and she is better than us and she should not be aspiring to be like us. She has every chance of being so much better than us that we can’t even imagine what it is like to be her.

Aspiring to be like me at her age…. is not #goals. It’s not an improvement over who she is right now. I was worse, and meaner, and less loving, and less caring, and less educated, and less equipped in basically every way.

I told her that I try very hard to be like her. Because I can see which direction is an improvement in this house and it’s not being more like me.

I asked her if she feels I am more brave and badass on days when I lose my temper and scream and I behave like a bully towards helpless little people? Or am I more brave and badass on days when I can redirect and help my kids move towards their own aspirations of who they want to be?

I asked her what things make me a badass at this point in my life? I gave up fistfights more than 25 years ago. She said what makes me a badass is being brave and going on adventures and making things that other people say “I can’t do that”.

I asked her what part of me being a badass is making other people hurt and feel small?

She said none of it.

I asked her if she really wants to be aspiring to be the wounded traumatized part of me that had nothing better to offer the world or if she wants to be working towards the me that had a lot of therapy and a lot of privilege and a lot of time to pick and choose who I want to be and how I want to live in the world.

We cried together and she said that I really see the worst of me and I’m a lot less of an asshole than I think.

I said maybe. I said if I am less of an asshole than I think and I have treated her better than I fear I have then maybe she doesn’t need to lash out at people who are sitting in their own trauma; people who have nothing better to offer the world.

I asked her how she wants to remember this time of her life when she looks in the rear view mirror? Do you want to take pride in hurting people who don’t have a better way of living in the world or do you want to be someone who shows other people a better way?

I will support you and love you as you stumble through either path. I love you. I accept that you are not perfect and you have to make your own mistakes.

On the day that you were born I forgave you for everything you would ever do wrong. Because that is the deal.