Fiction Friday Five. Finally.

I stood up, metaphorical fists up and ready to fight for answers if I needed to.
“That’s alright, ma’am, no need to get up”. Ma’am? Really? At least it moved me from hot anger and confusion to cold anger and sarcasm. “Whatever you say,
Cowboy: have a seat”. Yeah, he picked up on my not being thrilled with being called ma’am by some out-of-place stranger who’d just thrown me for a loop or ten.

I remember him apologizing, something about respect for the lineage. I’d no idea what that meant, but I had more things on my mind at the time. He tilted the hat back a bit and looked down at me with dark brown eyes. Like dark hot chocolate with a hint of cinnamon. Seriously, what movie did he just walk out of? I was surprised he wasn’t chewing on a piece of straw. Maybe I should have told him to light a shuck. Instead I just moved over and made a space for him on the bench.

“So…how much do you know about what’s going on?” How much did I know? Dick all, dickhead. Not that I said that. I just looked at him. And he sighed. Guess he’d worked out the nothing part on his own. Which meant he’d have to start at the beginning.

I learned quite a bit that afternoon. Not everything, not what I wanted to hear the most and certainly not enough. But something, at least.

In the beginning, the gatekeepers were more like guides, or sages. People who could help you navigate your dream, if needed, or interpret your dream if that’s what you wanted. Over time, people stopped keeping track of their dreams, and those that interpreted were no longer being sought out and started to be seen not so much as sages as charlatans. Eventually, although they continued to exist, they stopped doing – publicly - what they were doing and it truly was only charlatans that talked about dream interpretation. Not everywhere – there were cultures that understood and revered the dreamscape, and travelled between that world and this with ease. Some of those peoples are still with us and their wise ones and elders are regarded with respect.

As a reader, I was not surprised to discover that some of our greatest works of literature are actually retellings of events that true dreamers had experienced in their dreams, and that some great writers created worlds and stories so vivid and fantastical that when people read them, their dream lives were inspired and the dreamscape grew in response.

I may not have been surprised, but I’m still undecided about whether I wanted to know that. It’s changed how I look at certain books. And movies, songs and poetry. All art, really. Which came first? When are you imagining something and when are you just remembering a dream-event?


I sat on the bench thinking about this for a bit. I guess more than a bit because the cowboy gave me a nudge, eyebrow raised. “Still with me?” I nodded. Philosophical discussion of creativity could wait.

“Bien. So, in 391 AD something from the dreamscape made it to this world. Whatever it was had been running, so to speak, the dreams of a Coptic Pope. The end result of that was an actually influencing of the actions of the man, to irreparable harm to the world. It’s possible, likely even, that something similar had happened before, but this was the first time that we know for certain it happened”.

We? What, was he there? Is this some clumsy time-travel con? So help me if he was some psychic hoping to pull money out of a grieving family I’d shoot him where he stood, gorgeous specimen of manhood not withstanding.

Some of my uncertainty must have shown in my face, because he smiled and tucked a strand of wayward hair behind my ear. “No, T’evi, I am not that old. Not quite. But that event was what brought the remaining true dreamers together to prevent it from happening again. That is when guides became gatekeepers and the dreamscape became well-watched again. We all know that date, and we all feel it a little bit, no matter when we were born. You’ll feel it too, when you become a gate-keeper”.

In case you’re wondering: I already knew my cowboy was from Louisiana. My family is Acadian on one side (Celtic on the other), so I have plenty of relatives in the state and I know that look and accent inside out. Calling me Petite Evina, or the more colloquial T’evi was not surprising. My friends sometimes called me L’il Bit when they were in a teasing mood. I am five one – if I am feeling boastful- and sometimes I swear my hair is the heaviest thing about me. I know being overweight can be a nightmare in school, but let me tell you being referred to as “that little boy” when you’re seventeen – in shorts and a t-shirt no less! – is no picnic either. People really don’t like different. And boy howdy I was different in more than just size. A tiny ginger who confused dreams with real life, an optimist who named her fourth grade go-cart “the happy mobile”, a book worm with a book or two a day habit: I was not spared. Fortunately I had a firm group of friends, and that made all the difference. Yes, sounds like glurge, but one good friend can make the difference between a life worth living and suicidal despair. And I had enough good friends that my life – death, oddness and all – was a sunny one. But you probably guessed that with the happy mobile.



Back to the bench with hot cowboy. I might have called him Bayou Boy, but boy he most certainly wasn’t. His name, as I eventually found out was Remy LeBeau. Très beau, but I’ve got a story to tell here, time to move on. And we did, but remember what I said about not learning enough? I wasn’t lying.

Be free, little nestlings.

Ok, yes, I missed a Fiction Friday.
And now here we are on Thursday and I am in a bit of a panic. I guess we’ll see what happens tomorrow, yes? And dad – this may end up being part romance despite being mainly fantasy so you may want to skip the “Fiction Friday” entries!

Today I want to write about kids. Now to be clear…I am NOT talking about the two I’ve had or the two I’ve just gained via marriage. So no comments on how I’m being too hard on my Mr.’s kids, ‘k?

I just found myself wondering – after reading various blogs, and listening to various co-workers and friends talk about parenting – when we started going to such great lengths to cater to our children? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people decide to not move to a new house/neighbourhood/province that would be best for the parents and the family in general because it would upset the children: "They have friends in the neighbourhood, how can we make them move"?

When did that happen? I know the high rate of divorce has changed a number of things. For the first ten years of single motherhood I worried away at various methods by which I could move to British Columbia to be closer to my family. And then one day I finally woke up and realized that while I was not responsible for making sure my ex had a good relationship with his kids, it behoved me to at least not make it well-nigh impossible. Neither of us had money for travel, so if I’d moved that would have been just about the end of him getting to see them. So I stopped planning. Yes, it might have been good for me to move, but I would not take my kids away from their father nor would I advise anyone to take their child away from a parent.

I even know one woman who passed up what would have been just about the sweetest job (for her, at least) in the world because it would take her five year old out of Regina. To move to Saskatoon. Really? At five one has a social circle so important that it leave it would be the end of all things sweet and good?

I am not trying to downplay how difficult it can be – especially if your child is an introvert – to move to a new city. In fact, we’re doing some crazy driving so the youngest can finish elementary school at the same place she’s always been. It’s not that big a deal, and this is her last year. Might be different if she were in grade one, though.

But back to my original question: why all the extra accommodation? And does this not teach our children that the world will bend to fit them? I know single parents that won’t date because their pre-teen (and some post-teen) kids don’t “approve”. I’d like to know if those kids plan on keeping that parent company for the rest of their lives. Or do they “allow” their parents to move on…once THEY’VE moved on?

And food – don’t even get me started on food. Too late. A woman I used to work with made FOUR different suppers. Sometimes just three, but basically, a granddaughter who lived with them was very fussy. Daughter, moderately fussy and quasi-vegetarian. Husband was a “serve me meat and potatoes, period” type of guy. And instead of making supper for herself and leaving them hungry with a “fix your own damn meals then” she made different things for each of them. Macaroni or pizza for the little one, salad and perhaps some of the macaroni for the daughter, salad and perhaps something for herself and steak and potatoes for the hubby. Variations of this, night after night after night.

Me, I had a doctor that said no little kid will starve if you have food available. So I made us all a supper. I made sure there was a side they were likely to enjoy, but what I made for supper is what we had for supper. And once I cottoned on to The Boy not eating supper but having multiple sandwiches at nine, late night snack became whatever we’d had for supper re-heated in the microwave. And guess what? Neither of them starved (although skinny boy did occasionally cause me ill-founded concern) and they are both fairly adventurous eaters. They even like things I don't, like calamari. And I made a point* of getting them involved in the making of supper. So even if they eat horrible meals when they are on their own, I know they are both capable of cooking well.

*I’d like to pretend that’s because I was a brilliant mom. Actually, it’s because I was a single mom. There is only so much one can do at one time, so if potatoes needed peeling whilst I was chopping something up, then someone got potato duty. Or Shrimp peeling duty, or beef browning duty. Whatever it took to get things done.

Recently (wish it had been decades ago) I was listening to a woman on CBC talk about parenting. She said that the whole family should be able to do things for the good of the family. There is nothing stopping a four year old from opening a dryer and pulling the clothes in it into a basket in front of the dryer. A five year old can set a table. Kids can do laundry. And mow lawns. And clean house and make meals. But it seems to me (this is now me speaking again, not the CBC person) that this is happening less and less.

I think being a single mom was, in a way, a good thing. I think if I’d been married to someone with money and been able to stay home I would have done everything. Instead I had to get help where I could, which meant the kids. They may not appreciate it, but it helped make them the independent young adults they are today. Not perfect, but capable.

Fiction Friday Four

I can’t even recall which shocked me more at the time, Jims not being dead or my dreams being real. I remember the man, though. One tall drink of water with his long denim clad legs, broad shoulders under a worn blue chambray shirt, and wearing, in Montreal of all places, a cowboy hat. Which he totally carried off, as it happens. It suited him somehow.

Seventeen years old, mired in grief and overwhelmed with hormones I thought he’d walked off the cover of some Louis L’Amour novelette. Dead handsome and those legs…I would have paid good money at the time just to watch those legs. Yeah, he was too old for me - by a few hundred years, as it happens – but seventeen was a very in-between age for me: too naïve in some ways, but losing my mother as a child and now Jims, too old as well. So when Mr. Cowboy suggested meeting somewhere quiet I agreed. He said there were some things he needed to explain. Ya think? Damn straight there were.

I slipped away from my family – not hard to do, the three of us left reeling with grief – and took the back stairs out of the hospital and headed for the park that fronted the hospital along its whole length. I never could figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing. If I was confined to a hospital bed, what would a park be for me: a bit of green peace to break the monotony of grubby off-white walls or a constant reminder of what I was missing? Right now, though, it was a green oasis in the middle of a busy city, somewhere I could listen to what this stranger had to say without risking my own safety by being completely alone. Naïve, maybe: stupid not at all.



So long ago, but I remember everything so clearly. The day had some heat to it, as sometimes happens mid-September. The sun was warm on my face, with a light breeze blowing. Not hard, just enough to tease my wildly messy hair. Tea-coloured hair my dad always said. Wild curls that I never bothered about, preferring to let it float in a halo around my head or – an indication I was being serious – pulled back in a tight braid away from my face. I could hear birds in the trees, and every now and then the sound of leaves falling mingled in with the sound of the remaining leaves stirring on their branches. Traffic sounds too, but muted by the size of the park. I looked up and saw the Cowboy striding towards me (merciful heavens, those legs!): time to find out what the hell was going on. Time over for the calm before the storm.

Fiction Friday Three

So, guardians: you’re probably wondering about that. We’re to be found in every corner of the globe, in every walk of like. Keeping these two worlds as they are means we don’t talk about what we do, though, so you’re unlikely to know if you’ve met one or not. I figure your chances are fifty-fifty. I myself don’t know the exact number, and while we are aware of – and use – more doors than the one we guard we don’t even know how many of those there are, or where all of the ones we do know about are hidden.

Being a guardian isn’t something you ask to do. It isn’t an inherited position either, although there have been crews with siblings or cousins working together. I’ve even met a father and son who were on different crews but worked the same ring of doors. That’s how it works: one crew per door, several doors per ring and all the rings together is the Protective Company of Guardians. Hey, I didn’t name the thing; the company’s been around since, well, ever. No one really even knows when it got a name, story goes that there was a time when the gateways were open and well used and there was no need to keep flesh and blood humans out of their world and nightmares from there out of our world. That sure must have been something.



I became a Guardian the day my brother (also a guardian at the time, although I had no idea) decided that things were better on the other side of the gate and that guarding it wasn’t what he wanted in life. He’d guessed I might be guardian material (hey, I had to have one person I could talk to about my “true” dreams without being laughed at, and he was it, alright?) so before he went through the door for the last time he wrote one note for his crew, and a more detailed one for the ring leader. Yes, that’s where that expression comes from. There are a lot of things in this hidden life that aren’t so hidden.

Seventeen years old, grieving for a brother who had just died, a mess in more ways than one and into my life walks a total stranger who - one nine word sentence – turned my world inside-out and upside down.

“Your dreams are real, and your brother isn’t dead”.

Fiction Friday Two

I was seventeen when I was asked to be a Guardian. It wasn’t so much of an asking as an explanation of what I was and what I could do about it. My dream life had always been unusual but I didn’t know that until fourth grade, when I got into a bit of trouble about an essay I’d handed in.

Remember those back-to-school papers you always had to write? The “what I did this summer” things that – at least where I went to school – were a staple of the first week back to school. Maybe they thought a week was the longest we could remember what our summer had been like. Huh. Like every kid wasn’t spending the first month of school day-dreaming about the summer we’d just had and the remaining months wishing for the next one to arrive.

I wrote my essay based on a trip to an amusement park that I’d taken. The trip itself was very clear in my mind so I thought might as well use it. It was a bit unusual, in that I went to an amusement park that was set up on floating docks off the lakeshore road out past the village. It was night, and I didn’t go with my family, and the fair itself had some unusual things going on. I was too young to wonder how heavy things like a monstrous Ferris wheel managed to float on a series of attached floats, or why there were circus animals free to wander around. I just knew it was very exciting and I’d had an excellent time.



Turns out that I hadn’t done any such thing. I got a B on the paper, with the comment that we were supposed to write a report on something we’d actually done, not on something we wish we’d done. I was quite hurt; I was certain it had truly happened. So certain, in fact, that I took the wrong bus after school to check it out. Surely there would still be a fair, or at least the giant floating docks that had supported it all.

The bus left the school, with me so anxious I didn’t even think about how I’d get home once I got off at the end of the route, but I got on none-the-less. We reached the bottom of the hill, where the ferry to cross the river is. As the bus waiting at the stop sign I watched the line of cars waiting to get on the little barge, and admired precise piloting of the tug boat that pulls it across the river, quite relieved that it was exactly as it was supposed to be. I wasn’t losing my mind or my memory.

Driving along Lakeshore Drive I watched houses go by, houses that had been there for a hundred years or more: Glen Mary, with its stone walls which I knew hid espaliered pears and apricots, Red Rock House with its red clay tile roof, huge homes with sailboats tied up to family docks, all interspersed with long breaks of stream and forest. I was comforted by the familiar sights (in a small town there isn’t anything that isn’t familiar). My certainty that the fair had been real and my teacher’s insistence that it wasn’t had left me feeling confused and lost.



In time we came to the stop I had planned to get off at. That in itself almost blew everything. It was a farm stop, for just one student a notoriously anti-social girl that never seemed to have any friends, and parents most of us were afraid of. I was an adult before I realized the two things were connected. Point was, the driver asked me where I was going. I mumbled something about homework and went running down the lane to the farmhouse at the end before he really had a chance to question the likelihood of this being true. I waited until the bus was gone before I went back to the road. I got a glare from the girl, but no questions at all. Grieves me now to think I didn’t take the time to get to know her, but that’s a story for another day.

I walked along the road, green rolling farmland and sugar bush to my left, scrub brush and a field of horses to my right bordered at the far end by a line of trees and a fence. As I approached the end of the field I hopped the ditch to say hello to the horses. I think even then I was beginning to know what I would find when I got past the line of trees. Scrambling up the far side of the ditch and going up to the barb wire fence two horses ambled up to meet me. I stroked the soft muzzle of the little pinto who was clearly hoping for a carrot or two. When nothing was forthcoming he gave me a bit of a shove with his head and wandered away. His buddy didn’t even try and the rest stayed where they were, treats clearly not being offered. I figured it was time to move on, when even a horse was willing to give me a move-it-along shove.

So I did. Shuffling along in the dust and gravel I walked the last few yards, waiting for the lake to come into clear view past the line of trees. And the lake did indeed come into view, just…nothing else. It was a lake. A lake that I’d probably been past a million times with my family. No fair, no docks, nothing.

Why hadn’t I thought of that before I’d written my report? I should have known, even then, that fairs don’t appear and disappear overnight. Not to mention I would not have been out in the middle of the night on my own, at a fair on the water with circus animals free to roam amongst the patrons! I had to admit that I had indeed dreamt the whole thing. But it had seemed so real. Even standing there in disappointment I could hear the music from the carousel, see the lights of the Ferris wheel and remember how delicious hot dogs and cotton candy had tasted in the middle of the night; so real, and yet in the end not real at all.

That was the first and last time I talked about what I came to refer to as true dreams. Not because I thought I was the only one that had them (in fact, I assumed everyone dreamt this way until I was much older) but because I continued to have things happen in dreams that seemed real and real life events that seemed very dream-like. I was teased for months about that essay. I had no intention of having anything like that happen again.

I've Bean Day-dreaming.

I moved on from reading the acknowledgements of Bean by Bean and read the table of contents and the introduction.

Reading the table of contents was a first for me, I never do that. If it’s a recipe book and I’m looking for a recipe I’ll use the index. But I figured that anyone who can make the acknowledgements page interesting might have something to say in the table of contents.
The only thing I learned is that a lot of work will have to be done to convince me to try anything in Chapter 4, Cool Beans. For me beans are something that you eat throughout the winter; warm, filling, yummy little packets of protein. As a side, as a main course or as one small part of an overall something wonderful. Fresh green beans, Lima beans, tofu from soy not so much. But we’ll see, I am intending to try as many recipes as possible!

The introduction was fantastic. No, truly. I know not everyone feels this way, when I read the following I was all ready to head out to the community garden and just lay down amongst the bean rows.

“Let us, too, have an eye to the bean. Hold on in the palm of the hand. Discrete, self-contained as an egg, spotted or speckled, dark or light, it’s such a small package holding so much. Inspiration for tonight’s dinner, perhaps a soup or stew? Sure, and no more and no less important than all it contains.

Soften, now, to time, as that bean, soaked in water, would soften. You’ll see more life than seems possible in something so tiny. Eye the future and there, if you allow that bean to sprout, you have the stuff of tomorrow’s salad or stir-fry. Look further: bury that bean in soil, and it sprouts. Emerging from the earth, roots growing down, shoots and leaves growing up, it becomes a bush or a vine climbing a pole, tendrils curled – tenacious, poetic. This is a miracle beans have in common with any other seed, Yet, unique among plant families, beans and their kin generously give back to the soil; they are – it almost defies belief – self-fertilizing.”

Sigh. I have to leave. Time to go walk barefoot in the grass. A demain!

Three To Get Ready.

Before we even get into the meat (ha!) of this juicing post let’s get one thing clear: the word diet here is referring to what one eats, NOT to the “I’m on a diet” definition of the word, ok? Right, let’s move on.

I find myself starting the day with a wee bit of trepidation, for two reasons.

For one, the first three days of a juice fast are supposed to be the hardest. The first two weren’t bad at all, so I’m a bit concerned that today will suddenly be the day that it all falls down.

The other reason is the large variety of opinions out there about juicing. I still think it is a good idea, considering the way (and reasons why) I’m doing it. The objectors seem to be mainly talking about long-term juicing as a quick weight-loss solution or a magic pill for all ills. I would never do this long term. I can see doing three days once a year, and one day a month of all green veggie juice but I do agree that with juice you are missing out on most fibre and all the fat. I don’t think I’m missing all the fibre; there is quite a lot of what one might call texture in the juice that we make. Still, there are things your body can’t do without long term. Your diet needs to be balanced. Your life needs to be balanced!

The people who think it is a good idea (and I’m not talking about the juice for skinny-ness Kim Kardashian’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s out there) all seem to be saying the same things:

Not a good long term weight loss plan.

I’m good there; weight loss is not the driving factor.

Certain minerals and fibre can cause problems juicing long term.

Again, I’m ok. Not doing this long term (I may even reduce it to something less than seven), and we’re being careful with things like extra water, and adding things like bananas for certain minerals etc.

I was talking to my Mister last night, and there are some things I am hoping will happen. Not assuming they will, but they are why I am giving this a try:

One of the doctor’s we read about said a short juice fast would help with “clearing out intestinal debris”. Ick. I mean, yes, that’s a good thing and one I’m somewhat counting on, but still…debris?

A lot of the well-balanced reports talk about boosting your immune system. Not making one into super woman, but boosting. I could do with some of that, three colds in nine months, after years of rare – and mild – colds.

I know from when I cut sugar out of my tea for a year that when I went back to adding sugar I used a miniscule amount compared to what I had been using. It took a pinch to add enough sweetness to make me happy as opposed to the several-spoons-per-mug that I’d become addicted to. I’m hoping that what I crave changes and that the portion size of food I need to feel full is lessened.

Here’s something interesting from my six week one juice a day experiment: when supper time came, it was easier to make healthy choices. The longer I was on the juice for breakfast plan the less I was able to enjoy sweet things, super salty things and fatty things. The few times we went out or ordered in something deep fried and salt laden I didn’t enjoy it the way I used to and had terrible indigestion afterwards. I am betting this will be the case again. My mister has warned me that the banana I get to have today (have keep myself potassium-ed up!) is going to seem unbearable sweet. I suppose, compared to broccoli juice, anything would seem like candy!

The doctors talking about juicing also go on and on about it not being a cure-all for every illness. That’s ok, I don’t have every illness. And whilst I would not complain if it got rid of migraines completely, I would be happy at least fewer and less intense migraines. In fact, hoping that this will improve the headache situation? THAT’S the driving force behind it all. My level of hatred for migraines is all that kept me from a grilled cheese sandwich late last night.

Look out day three, I’m coming at ya!