I find myself opening like a tulip in the springtime lately! I don't know what it is! Could it be that the burden of all the worries our old house held in store has been eradicated in a stroke? Could it be that, suddenly having found myself no longer isolated in The Valley of Pointy Republicans and holding myself in constant check, I am perforce and by the grace of Dog reborn in mid-flight, like a magnificent fois gras spreading its wings for the first time in decades? What could this strange euphoria mean?
Well, I've been drinking, so that could be a factor.
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I thought I'd be in deep mourning by now.
I'm not.
Instead, I'm shedding old possessions and saying a cheerful 'Fuck off and die!" to the life I had in Sumas.
A lot of unhappiness took place in that house. The worst years of being a mother and a wife happened in that house. The last few years I've lived in constant dread of the horrible winters. I could go into a hundred other worries and negative vibe sources associated with that house and the property and the town and the region.
Y'all are saying 'but what about your garden?'
Kids, I was at the end of my ability to keep up with the garden. I still love plants and I've been thinking of ways to finagle my way into someone's yard. The urge hasn't left me. I already have one person nearby seduced with promises of David Austin roses and rampageous clumps of Japanese irises. Nice small yard. Tools supplied. Yeaaaaaah.
All of next Spring and Summer I get to go back to Sumas to keep the joint from looking like it's abandoned, at least from the outside. It has to sell and it will sell, believe it or not. It's going on the market. That's written in stone. The regional infrastructure in place is so obsolete, the area so imperiled, so many lies were told over the years, and the local governments so in denial that it would be idiocy to hang onto the property any longer. For me, this coming summer will be like a weaning process. A prolonged farewell to horticulture. I'll distribute a few things locally to old friends, put stuff out next to the road with a "Free ( fill in the name of a plant)! Bucket and All!" sign. I'll talk to all my Canadian tourists, say goodbye and thank you; and maybe unload some stuff that way too.
It's time for that to happen. I won't miss the backbreaking labor that tending a mature garden takes. It's 20% enjoyment and 80% culling, trimming, cutting back and reiving out when it gets to this point, and I am no longer up to climbing trees with a chainsaw, hauling around 100lb. clumps of overgrown hosta crowns and turning a compost heap that is half as tall as my house. OR sifting the motherfucker; I mean Jesus in a bouncy castle already.
For the past five years my life went like this:
I got three months - March, April and May, to keep June, July, and August from looking like shit. Full eight-hour days. In and out of the house, drinking water like a fish, slathered in sunscreen, always tired, always in pain, always tripping over shit or stuck full of thorns or falling on my ass.
During June, July, and August I sat trapped in the house and sweated while the heat and humidity rendered everything a nightmare, only sneaking out in the early morning or after the sun had gone down to do some necessary stuff. Early in the morning, starting in September I'd be able to grab a few more hours each day to go out and speed-garden. October was all labor all the time, until it got too cold and rained too much, and all for the sake of November, December, January, and February not looking like shit.
So there's that. Now I'm two Bloody Mary's in (four, the way I pour 'em) and I'm gonna go full bore now.
If this flood had not happened, we would have spent the rest of our days pouring money down a shithole. Hiring repairmen, hiring contractors, hiring garden help (the poor bastards cringing under threat of the lash... me and my riding crop, all dressed out in latex and spikes in of those funky mask thingies with a zipper where the mouth should be, prowling constantly, looking over their shoulders, making inhuman sounds, drinking from the hearts of the weak etc.) having the house put up on cribs, putting in new sill plates, new window frames, having the old block foundation demolished and hauled away, getting new foundations poured, building a new bathroom from the ground up, connecting to the city sewer... increased insurance costs, literally trying to stay above water and losing ground all the time as every single winter hence gnawed away at the house, the outbuildings and the garage.
OK. There's that picture painted.
I would have been miserable, and my husband would have felt even worse.
He goes out there now, most times. I can't. There's too much mold growing. The dust that kicks up is toxic and my lungs are weak.
He's out there mourning. Brings back a few things. We clean them off in the bathtub and let them dry on the back porch and then have to clean them again because whatever was dissolved during the flood clings like paint to everything it's touched. The longer any of our belongings stay there, the more they smell like anaerobic rot, diesel and sewage.
Biden finally declared Sumas and Everson federal disaster zones. We've applied for FIMA assistance, and we'll be meeting the inspector this coming Monday. If we don't fall outside income and savings restrictions (if any are in place) we should get a little something to put in the bank. At some point in the future. I think.
Back to the present moment.
The only bitch I have to pick now is the sheer amount of plastic in our daily lives. It's the difference in the market region. Twenty miles down the road, North toward the border, people still make their own lye soap and live off the grid. They still buy things like Lydia Pinkhams - no shit - and alum. They want to be able to handle their groceries and won't buy if they don't have that kind of assurance. Here, you have all the Eighties and Nineties babies. They think nothing of having to unwrap one clementine from three separate layers of plastic packaging. It's how they were brought up (unless one happened to be in the small minority, whose parents were hippies and belonged to the Co-Op.) Just the ridiculous band-aid idea of reducing plastic waste by outlawing plastic bags? That's just a fart in a hurricane! I trip on the sheer amount of plastic waste I have now.
And that's it. That's my only complaint.
I've been here before - back in the 1980's and '90's, Portland and Seattle. All those old habits; never leave your purse unattended, always keep that strap across your body, money in your front pockets, doors locked, windows locked, don't make eye contact with the nutty people, don't advertise your belongings, always size things up going in or out, that's all coming back to me. Sumas was already in the beginning stages of social decline. Here it's just back to the damn future with shorter buildings.
I'm safer. I'm warmer. I have reasonable people in my daily life and they aren't all Dutch ffs. I get out more and see more things. I said 'SHIT!' out loud in WinCo yesterday - twice! and nobody infarcted. Folks know what my 'Weyland Yutani' shirt means. I'm surrounded by the world again.
Fuck Sumas. That life is over.
