There are choices to be made. DD has offered me a job in Rwanda for the summer. Eight weeks with her counselling agency. And BB has invited me home to work with his band. I have literally almost no talent so it is an honour to be invited to help them launch their album. The other possibility is that I will stay right here and do absolutely nothing. I wonder which I will do.
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It was when I was seventeen that I first left home. I spent that summer in Invermere, British Columbia, living in a tent on the property of a friend's parents who owned a cabin on the lake. That summer I worked on a construction site building summer cottages.
From there I moved to Prince George where I took up tree planting to earn a living. I went back to my parents' home when school started in September each year because I had no idea where else to go. But in the summers I found other places to be. I planted trees, I lived in Red's summer home, I ate bratwurst and I mowed golf courses.
Here, where I live now, I smell the summer blow in on the ocean. It's salty and sweet and this year it is very, very late. But now it has come and I want to camp outside even though I no longer need to, because I want to lie down beside the ocean and remember who I used to be. Because I feel sure I have not changed very much, and because I would like very much to have time to remember.
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And sometimes, sometimes when summer comes late, it occurs to me late that I do not have to go anywhere if I do not want to. But the burn on my shoulders says I'm supposed to go, the smell of fire smoke says it's time to go, and the smell of the sea. And I think I am meant to sleep on tent floors on the beach, I think my hands automatically make the shape of a trowel, I think I am meant to eat camp food; I think this ten-year tan line on my back means I am always going to plant conifers to make my living in this world.
And I think I am damaged by these summers beyond repair in ways I would never want to be fixed. Jesus god, I love summer.
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4 comments:
I think you are acknowledging who you are and realizing that you are rich with experience. And now the question is whether or not to add to the repertoire.
British Columbia -- I want to be there.
(Sorry, I have canceled my Facebook account. I have little faith in how they operate.)
Oh, me, too. I want to live in a world of summers.
It's wonderful to have options,although some things are lost in the process of claiming them. I know they say that youth is wasted on the young, but I am now old enough to agree, at least in part. I miss the endless childhood summers and the ones a bit later, before I really knew what responsibility was, the feeling of living on the edge.
Please tell us what you're going to do the minute you know.
Jerry: British Columbia, yes, come be here. I'll show you around.
Secret Agent: I like all seasons here. I never used to because I lived in a place that really only had two. But summer is about freedom from responsibilities and I like that very much.
Susan: I understand that expression better than I used to, but I think I would make a lousy teenager now if I had the opportunity to be one again. We can still live on different edges later on...
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