Head torn against itchy familiar grasslands, I lie in a field of decaying cow ****. Sixty years ago, Great Uncle Adolf owned upwards of 8 large cows that would roam on the endless back green property of our cottage in the Kawartha Lakes. Hazy recollections from distant Easter's tells me at least three must have died eventually due to a heatwave in the early 90's. Their skulls sitting in the back ***** overgrown pond for a time, sweet yellow daffodils and sharp wild strawberry's framing it into place. When my brothers found the skulls, they spent an afternoon sulking and moping out of character on the rocky shoreline of Balsam Lake. They aimed their ruthless rocks at stinky dead catfish floating peacefully, throwing for every pang of 12-year-old pain they felt towards the somber history. When I found out, I must have just eaten my Lindt bunny and shrugged unimpressed, but my mom would have said I cried.
I was young back then, but now that I'm a full-fledged adult, I sympathize with the greens for enduring endless winters and **** storms that I haven't. My cottage has been taunted but never shaken by the continuous tornado warnings that curse the northern lakes, but she aged steadily in spite. Waves of modernism guiding her burgundy wood panels. Air conditioning, flat screens, and the down feather pillows my grandma collected and sewn for each sunken crisp bedframe before me, replaced by industrialized cold artificial fluff from Ikea. Now that I think about it, I didn't really mind breaking my neck. This cottage lacks truth, but gains in history, my favourite place on planet earth, all greens, blues, and natural floral arrangements that put the edible ones to shame.
There's dirt and mud here too but I always choose to be blissfully ignorant. If I ever ask my mum about the shambled green roofed tin cottage on the corner of the always pebbled School and Omega Roads, and their Jesus warning signs I get kissed lips and back glares. There's more to this old country town than they put on. There's a story waiting here.
Right now, I feel it's roots on the phone with you Jordan. Because you only remind me of my grandpa when I'm here, his tall slender frame, strong jaw and warm charm that makes old women gawk and causing shrill laughter in the presence of ripe anger. He didn't let my mom wear nail polish cause it was for ******, guess I'm from a line of ****** huh?
This one time at Christian camp they tried to teach me to meditate by picturing Jesus with me in my favourite place. It was so weird seeing Jesus sitting perched in this tall birch tree, looking at me, looking at the old broken down barn that waits for me to smile back. The sky orange, celestial, fiery. I sort of wish you were here and not my mental perception of Jesus, he sort of freaks me out. But in this open field where you could walk 8 miles in any direction and find grass and only grass. Sun and only sun. Trees and mostly trees, sometimes poison ivy too if you took the wrong turns. I am surely free.
I know all the turns with you too. But that's only because I'd done them over and over again, and still I'll face a dead end. I'm not sure we can solve each other like my Papa's Sunday morning crosswords, we're more like his raspberry jam with burnt toast. But I do know that I want to have more greens like the ones in this field. Build more pillows, farms, and people. I want more pastel pinks from the cheeks left kissed in the fresh mornings on Lake Ontario where our teen selves and adult selves get caught up in some interlope of history that isn't supposed to happen. Another Kate and Leopold situation, a timeless love analogy gone too long.
Today in this field it is peaceful, when the tall grass blows with steady patient wind, it feels like your soft lips. When the birds chirp annoyingly overhead, and I hear my brothers laughing loudly from the brown rusted dock, it feels like your aged smile.
I think Monet got it right when he said, "I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers", because without you I couldn't paint these words all day.
