Fresh Start

Its snowing quite steadily here, just now. I'm filled completely with the sound of stillness falling all around the city. There's a soft cry in the wind that hits me in the chest, even here inside, from my picture window; snow blowing this way and that, in all directions.

Snow is the freshest start one could hope for. The snow means so much more than the single connotation it gets from absolutely everyone; cold. I wish those comments would get a fresh start themselves and find a new adjective; as well as a decent perspective on this gift we receive, most graciously, from the sky.

I dust off the old skates and skis i've had since 1992. Good sports equipment is the only good investment if you can't afford to travel; which I definitely can't. While my friends, with high falutin jobs, buy trips to and fro or were studying in university; I started a family. It didn't quite work out the way I imagined in the beginning but it works out, anyways, in the end.

Sometimes my old classmates come back to visit and they ask to go for coffee. I shy away from those rendezvous' if I'm able to do so politely enough . I can see the pity mixed with boredom in their faces and feigned interest in the wallet sized photo I carry of two sons. Nobody really finds photos of other people's children interesting, do they? That's why I rarely sent around photos of my own. They end up at the bottom of a box and in 60 years when everyone dies, nobody knows whose children they are and they get sorted into the trash pile. The stories I have to share with my old friends are ordinary tales of housewifery. They'd be privy to that having grown up here in a similar fashion, and it's why they left in the first place. I'm proud of myself, but they don't see it like that. They haven't started a family yet and they are smugly and happily seated in that brain you have when you haven't yet had to compromise, share, give up or lose anything yet. I call it the B.C period for them and the A.D. period for myself. That person you are before, dies, and replaced; somehow you feel motherly to everyone in some capacity and also slightly annoyed.

For a spell I would join in the odd group or with the odd girlfriend, but nearly everyone is married here and they spend the whole time wondering what I could do to secure a man. I can't tell them I'm in love with a married man. I can't even tell the man himself that I love him, for obvious reasons. That aside, I don't mind being alone and if you listen to someone's uninvited suggestions long enough, you start to believe them. You start looking aimlessly for whatever deficit it is that they've singled out in you instead of going on they path you were actually meant for; which usually had very little to do with finding a man, in their case.

The snow doesn't mind that I raised the boys alone; or that I pine for something else on the off days. It just comes as it pleases. She also comes alone. Everyone treats her like an imposition as well, but she takes no notice of that either. I'm ever more fond of the snow. It's a promise of maple syrup in the spring.

When the ground thaws. Instead of collecting foil wrapped, waxy chocolate from department stores in loosely woven baskets; we will tap cans into the trees and the sap will drip, drip, drip. The cans are first washed and lined with beef fat to protect them. Each tree is tapped with a spile where the sap makes her exit, and each spile is hung with a can, where the sap can be heard all day long. Tap, tap, tap. Hopefully the taps are quick and steady.

Each sap can will be collected and dumped into a large drum pulled by the tractor. Same old drum for at least 50 years. Same old tractor for at least a hundred. I wonder what we'll do when my uncle is no longer here to weld this mess back together along side the hundreds of other patches and piece work that holds everything together; everything holding on just so and just barely. I wonder what my uncle will do without my dad telling him he's doing it all wrong. I try and push that thought away. It always then brings me to wondering what I will do when it's me that will have to lead the pack and I'm not ready. I fill with growing sentiment towards them at this moment.

The silent reverence felt by all of this, standing alone in the thick of a very old maple grove listening to those taps, clears away any doubt for the time being. There is a moment to be had in the present and it's no use pondering a future that can only be planned for and loosely at that.

Things are different now. I live in a small city; hardly a city by modern standards, but too much city for me to be sure. I'm only a drive away from the expanding city limits that creep closer to my childhood home. City people cannot be pleased, appeased, eased or even teased! I apply for jobs and people don't laugh much or find anything amusing. The older people aren't so bad, but the younger people have stared so long and hard at books and gadgets that they are almost entirely expressionless. They use memes and LOL's to express emotion but if you genuinely express a notion to them, they just stare. It's a whole other language that I am not privy to. I'm not sure that I'd want to learn. I'm loud by comparison in every sense of the word and I try so hard to tone that down because I already stick out like a sore thumb without saying a word. Or that's how I feel. On a good day, I feel like a force not to be reckoned with. On a bad day I just feel like I'm in the way.

City limits, (i'll call the people here that) can't settle on building just one gym; or one grocery store. They build a hundred; each feature the exact same things but they just keep alleviating their insatiable boredom with another. The newest shade of green draws a crowd that fills the rafters. As soon as that shade of green is outdated, a new one goes up with the latest shade and the last one is abandoned. If we need 2, City Limits will build 20 until the first spot is left empty and decayed and there's no use for it at all. If it could have been fixed up at one time, it is left until blades of grass and weeds start coming up through the pavement. They leave enough rubble that nothing really useful or beautiful can make a home for itself there.

Entire homes are torn away without so much as a rafter salvaged. One time I tore some old wood corbels from the porch pillars and pried away some old brass key holes from the doors of homes set to be torn down. Somebody called the police. I am constantly mortified by City Limits. I'm trying to tread lightly because I'm not trying to insult anyone. I; well, there's definitely no patchwork going on here; or salvage, but more importantly, no syrup either.

I'm lying actually. I insult people all the time under a false name. I troll public forums and berate them for being hideous, gluttonous creatures with insatiable, deadly appetites for destruction and devoid of skills or essence. I troll science forums asking them if they learned that from a book and how their desks cannot possibly speak any truth to them. I hate them as a whole; but as individuals I find them quite lovely. They forgive quickly and have been taught to approach things more gently. They label shortcomings as deficits that can be fixed and hire people to help them understand. Either that or they notice nothing at all which is equally refreshing.

Back at my parents, a stones throw away from the maple grove, our deficits were labelled as total failures that were punishable and usually by means meant to humiliate. The result may be that you are not be able to look people in the eyes for years. You may be singled out from the pack completely, maybe forever, for what City Limits would take no notice of in the first place. If not forever, only because you decided to participate under their watchful, suspicious gaze peppered with resentment and you would tread lightly so as not to invite an insult in waiting, ever sitting at the edge of their tongues. If you actually made it back into their good graces again, there would be an undertone that was felt to the core; what you are now versus what you were and your propensity to misdemeanor was duly noted. I don't really mind. It's just their way.

The one place I gather with City Limits is the local gym. I've been wearing these gym sneakers since 2013 and my shorts are wearing at the seams on one side especially. I replaced em with a "cool" pair of under armour shorts that I found at a second hand store. I thought they would be up to code, but when I push against the weights my stomach pops the button and I'm not sure those are the look that people are going for. I pay no mind with a sigh and promptly snap it back in place again. No harm done. The last time I went to the weight room, there was a girl with a crop top turtle neck fastened with a chain that went all around her neck and trailed down across her exposed belly button; fastened to another chain at her waist. Her shorts were above her cheek line and left very little to the imagination. She stretched in front of the mirror with purpose, as do all the 20 year olds that don't actually need to work out to look that way. I wasn't really sure what to make of her.

I settled, just now, on plans with an East Indian Immigrant to go snow shoeing this evening. I thought that if he were going to spend any time in Canada, he ought to venture out in a real storm. He agreed. I'm relieved because I secretly despise people who hate the snow and I so enjoyed his company in the first place. I love that he doesn't think he understands me. That is a brand new feeling in a place as small as this.

The ski and shoe trail won't be cut but there is fresh fallen snow everywhere and it'll be powdery and smooth gliding. My valley bulldog will be tied around my waist and she will pull me down the hillier parts where i'll squeal with glee as I stammer to collect my balance. I won't bother driving up to the field. There's enough snow that the streets will be shut down and I'll just simply hop on my skis from here and go straight out onto the road.

Fresh starts come every day. For every sentiment out there, It is the most inspiring. We set rigid goals and standards for ourselves. We fall short every day of our lives, but we wake up every one of those days and get a second chance. Make hay while the sun shines. Revel in the snow. Walk barefoot in the rain. Make a mess. Breath deeply. Hold your breath and drift away.