alternative living – Jezebel’s Table

Creation Story

Creation Stories

*Creation Stories make up one of the largest segments in the pantheon of mythology. We tell them to help make sense of the world.

Everything about August 23rd, 2018, the birthday of our son, Callan Douglas Rickman, was fast.
One moment there’s a baby inside you, the next he’s part of this world.
Life changes that quickly.

I went to the doctor at 8 a.m. expecting to have a checkup and return to our hotel to continue waiting. We were staying in a hotel in Cancun. Living on an island makes natural births a bit tricky. If he came during the day while the ferry was running, fine. If he came at night and we had to contact friends with a boat for our emergency ride to the hospital, things were a bit trickier. We opted for less error room, and stayed in Cancun.
Callan was already two days overdue, but that’s not uncommon for first pregnancies and I’d decided I didn’t want to induce yet. I was calm, sure of the appointment’s outcome.
I was going to have a natural birth. I’d read my chosen material about natural childbirths and I was prepared. I’d researched yoga to help natural birth, and it became my weekly routine. I made my birth playlist on Spotify, carefully choosing songs I might want for moments of calm and moments of pain and moments in between. I bought a beautiful bathrobe and I imagined myself walking the hospital halls in, because I’d read how much walking helps the birth process, and I was going to walk.
Our friend Amber was scheduled to participate as my doula. Her youngest son was born at home on Isla, and I knew her “no-nonsense but chill and calm” presence would be helpful to Ryan and I.
I was determined to gently but firmly tell the doctors “No” if they told me I needed a c-section. I’d done the research on the rising prevalence of c-sections in both the U.S. and Mexico and I wasn’t going to be one of those statistics. I’d heard story after story of women on Isla and Cancun who were told tales of the cord being around the baby’s neck, etc. in order to coerce a c-section. Many doctors here and in the states like c-sections better than natural births and the rising rates reflect that (a whopping 80% in parts of Mexico) because they can charge more and, medicinally, c-sections are far less unpredictable. A natural birth has so many unknowns, and they take a long time, utilizing more hospital staff and utilities.
I knew the statistics and wasn’t going to let that happen to me.
After my sonogram, we reconvened with our doctor, who calmly explained that a c-section was necessary because my amniotic fluid levels had dropped to a 5.8, and 8 was the lowest, safest level. In addition, I wasn’t in labor yet, and inducing could further the risk of harming baby Callan.
Our doctor was speaking through an interpreter, at the same time I was struggling to understand her Spanish. It took a moment for what she’d said to reach me.
I couldn’t, wouldn’t have a c-section. That wasn’t what was going to happen. It hadn’t even entered my mind. I’d prepared myself for other potential medical interventions and had planned for how I would accept them, or not. I hadn’t done any research on c-sections because I just wasn’t going to let that happen. I knew nothing about the procedure, recovery, etc. Nothing.
When I heard the word “c-section” I conjured ideas of this birth method being somehow easier than labor. You schedule a c-section like you schedule a haircut, I imagined, while labor was labor, and therefore a sacred, ancient struggle I was absolutely going to experience.
As the news sunk into my whirling brain I stuttered protests, looking back and forth between Ryan, the doctor, and the interpreter.
Everything kicked into overdrive as I processed the idea that my need for a natural labor might harm our child. This fear was mixed with the feeling things were moving out of my control and exactly the kind of manipulation I’d so feared was taking place.
Fear for the safety of our baby boy won out, and before I could take a breath I’d been whisked behind an emergency room curtain and was being processed with countless forms, dressed in scrubs from head to toe, and asked to remove my body jewelry, some of which hadn’t been taken off in over a decade.
I couldn’t stop crying, and was furious at being rushed. Ryan was caught between my emotion and the staff peering around the curtains, trying to accomplish what they’d been tasked to do.
“I haven’t called my mom yet,” I sobbed. “It’s too fast. Please. Tell them I need time to process.” I said to Ryan and anyone else in the room at the moment.
The IV tech looked at me with mixed sympathy and incomprehension at my tear-garbled English.
The pressure to move forward became too much, and after a calming call to my mother, I succumbed to various pre-surgery procedures.
An epidural is a uniquely deep and sickening pain. The needle to my spine made me slump forward in agony as blue scrubbed staff hummed around the room, preparing for surgery.
I didn’t know an epidural was necessary.
I didn’t know what an epidural really was.
My legs went numb, and I was trapped in my body, knowing nothing of what was to come.
The medications were setting in and I became frantic just as Ryan appeared in the doorway, dressed in blue scrubs from head to to.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to go home this morning. Thumped through my head as the anesthesia settled in.
Everyone spoke Spanish, and mine isn’t good enough yet to understand, so whatever was about to occur remained a terrifying mystery. Ryan’s hand on my head was an anchor.
I remember the cutting. I remember crying out that I could feel it, but Ryan says that didn’t happen, so it must’ve been the medication.
I bobbed in and out of consciousness, bits of Spanish and strange sensations in the numbed place that was my womb.
Our baby’s cry pierced the haze and I was alert instantly. They placed him by my head and his cries ceased for a moment.
It took everything I had to whisper, “Baby.”

And then he was gone, and Ryan was gone with him, and I was alone with strangers in the operating room, feeling stitches pulling in and out, in and out deep in my center.
I focused on breathing and finding a place of calm. I conjured my childhood home in Michigan. Out of body, I could see us gathered around the dining room table—place of a million remembered meals with loved ones here and gone. Momma, dad, Laurel, Ryan, and this new baby I’d met for only a moment were there.
I grabbed that place and held onto it. It was real, and it was joy, and I was going to get there.
When the blue sheet lifted, I was wheeled into the recovery room—a purgatory I have difficulty describing. Two hours without my baby. Two hours alone, unable to move from the waist down, in a bed behind a curtain somewhere in a Cancun hospital, bobbing in and out of consciousness.
In moments of clarity I asked the nurse on duty for the time. Over and over.
When finally wheeled into my hospital room, it was empty. Anger, fear, frustration, anxiety, sadness, surged through me.
“Where’s my baby and husband?” I gasped as the nurses lifted my inert, numb body from gurney to hospital bed.
“Una Momenta,” they said, and I tried to steel myself for another wait.
My friend Amber appeared, and her welcome presence was a distraction from the anxiety, waiting, and reality of my physical body and all that had just occurred. She was also a reminder of my failed attempt at a natural birth. We’d talked over the details so many times, for nothing.
My body hurt in a way reminiscent of appendix surgery, but far, far worse. Nausea surged through me. I fought it down, but knew the battle would be short lived. Soon I was vomiting into a plastic bag, tears streaming down my face as I tried without success not to strain layer upon layer of new stitches.

When the door opened I leaned toward them, my boy and my man.
They brought him to me and all the oxytocin in the world seemed to surge through me as I held Callan’s tiny self against my chest. I reeled with the reality that this tiny being had just been inside me and was now here in my arms. He’d grown in me, and now was here.
He cried and I exposed my breast, ready to feed him. I was determined to master breast feeding, especially as labor had been denied me, and due to a combination of luck and determination, he latched right away.
I heard the door click shut and it was just us three. A universe.

In the days and weeks that followed I made a slow, halting recovery. I was still in deep shock at how quickly things happened and the toll the operation had taken on my body. The pain was like nothing I’d ever experienced, and I fought it day and night. At first I needed help showering, dressing, and many other day to day activities, but gradually movement returned.

I’ve spoken with many women who had both c-sections and natural births and the conclusions I’ve drawn are that no birth is easy and every single one is different. I set my expectations too high and didn’t allow myself room for all the myriad factors involved in childbirth. Best to be prepared for everything, although that’s a good thought in theory, but harder in practise.
Some part of me is, and always will mourn the experience I didn’t get to have, but I’m healing and my son is healthy and was from the moment he was born, and for that I am deeply thankful.

I didn’t appreciate them before I had a child, but I now love stories of pregnancy and motherhood and wish I’d paid more attention before my own experience. Each woman, child, and story is its own, but there’s an ancient symbiosis running through them all that reveals the strength and sacrifices of Women; what our minds and bodies can endure; and the incredible-strange-terrifying-wonder of making a human, and bringing them into the world.

The female body is truly miraculous. These photos were taken within a week of each other.

***

I don’t consider what follows to be poems, necessarily, but short lyric essays based on my remembrances.
I also want to note that many women have c-sections and do not have the negative experience I went through. Many women I’ve talked to who had a natural birth experienced similar traumas. Each woman’s experience and story are her own. I think it’s important, necessary, and sacred to share birth stories. Not just with mothers either. By sharing these stories we dispel many of the negative myths surrounding childbirth that have steadfastly held on for hundreds of years.

Creation Story

Split open and the world came out.
Not my thighs.
Not the pushing-sweet-agony I’d prepared for. The stretching, yoga breath, reading, meditating, labor playlist.
Instead, a confusion of tears and IV pokes.
Half explanations in Spanish and broken English.
Panicked calls to momma in Michigan.
My husband’s worried blue eyes.
Hospital cap, gown, and blue booties.
Remove nose ring, earrings, rings, toe ring.
Wheeled gurney rides through confusing corridors and no time to prepare.
Not the spiritual push-shared-pain moments of women across time.
Instead, bone-deep-agony epidural spinal tap.
Blue curtain across neck.
Husband’s hand on my forehead the only calm.
Pain medication blurred fade in and out.
Baby cries and I’m awake, a need so internal pulling my numbed and open-wound body to the sound.
They put him by my head and the world narrows to his face. His cries quiet.
A moment, and he’s gone, husband with him, and I’m alone in a room with strangers speaking a language I don’t understand, sewing my womb back together.
Consciousness is an elusive doorway I pass back and forth through.
I’m frantic for my baby, lying in recovery, numb from waist down.
I pinch my thigh and feel nothing.
The longest two hours of my life slump by.
I exhaust the nurse with requests for the time.
An eternity of seconds, and I’m wheeled to my room.
More waiting, aching, IVed, stitched together.
Anything, for an opening door.
Then he’s in my arms and there is no room, no world, only my family; a tiny universe in this hot Cancun city.
He’s perfect.
We trace every detail. Again and again.
Put him to my breast and he nurses like we’ve done this forever.
Stitches ache and burn.
The medicine makes me sick, and I throw up again and again—searing pain makes me moan and retch.
My shrinking uterus makes me bleed.
Unknown and painful revelations, beginning recovery, for a c-section that was never supposed to happen.
It blends—the pain and ecstasy.
I gaze at him with the eyes of all mothers before—in wonder and awe at this being my body housed; my Body created.

Fleeting Repetition

How many times do you lean over the crib to make sure he’s breathing?
Touch his chest, gently lift a hand, run your fingers over his tiny head?
How many times do you cup your palm behind him to steady a neck not yet strong enough without you?
How many times do you tickle his cheek, hoping for the elusive “new baby” smile?
How many times do you pace the floor, arms leaden, back aching, searching his face for signs of sleep?
How many times do you hum and sing that song?
How many times do you remember these moments are temporary, no matter how many times repeated?

Sacrifice

The beautiful bits of life are steeped in sacrifice.
The ancients knew this—sacrifice motifs woven into mythology from the ancient Greeks, to the Bible, to Australian Aboriginal tales.

A friend recently send me photos of my former cabin and the family that lives there now. The lovely work they’ve done. Changes. The pictures are beautiful and make me both sad and joyful. They show what I would’ve done, if I could’ve, would’ve, stayed.

I look down at my son and think about the life I sacrificed to have this life with him. A life in a cabin in rural Upper Michigan—a home I know so well.
It’s sad, and true, and beautiful, and necessary.
All other incarnations of Rachel sacrificed when I became a mother.
Lives unlived for the sake of this wondrous new life for my son, his father, and myself.
There’s a reason Frost’s poem of roads not taken has remained a favorite of people from all walks of life. It resonates deep in our bones as we peer down the tunnel of “what might have been.”
I’m learning that to be at peace, I have to let those other Rachels go. The independence I once wore like a second skin making room for the love and need of a husband and son. My joy in being alone set aside for a while as I nurture this new little life.
My body now a shared entity and food source for our baby boy.
Some nights, half asleep in my nursing chair, Callan at my breast, I close my eyes and wander down other roads, conjuring Rachels of the past. I linger and reminisce there for a while.
Baby’s soft sigh and smile tug my heart home.
Ryan lifts his head from the pillow and smiles at us—his wife and son. And once again there is only this room, this moment, and this road.

Ebb and Flow

By the time I get out the door for work at 8:30 a.m., it’s already so hot and humid condensation forms on my forehead in the few steps I take to the four wheeler.
I settle the black helmet on my head, shift to reverse, and start the machine with a roar and purr. I back out of the gravel drive, pull down the dirt alley, and onto the paved street. Motoring down the road creates a breeze that feels like the only thing keeping me from spontaneously combusting from a combination of sun-heat, humidity, and pregnancy.
I love the quad. Not only is it a new kind of freedom to have my own wheels here on the island, but I love how it feels to drive. Surprisingly enough, I never drove one while living in the Upper Peninsula, as many of my peers did, but here on Isla it’s my everyday ride.
My eight month, pregnant belly is a curved-moon shape waxing toward full.

Nine months pregnant and still driving the quad :) — Nine months pregnant and still driving the quad 🙂

I take the speed bumps more slowly now.
My rides to work, as they were in Michigan, are time for myself. Time for deep breaths; a moment alone to reflect, or not; time to notice my surroundings; taste the day; take note of interesting things: the bursting forth of my favorite peach-colored hibiscus tree across the street from the nighttime milkshake place, a fluffy black street dog marking its territory, the bright pile of dragon fruit on a vendor’s table.
A pregnant woman on a four wheeler elicits interesting looks from tourists and locals alike. I just smile and wiggle my fingers in a little wave.
I turn down the familiar street maze, always taking the slightly longer way so that I can drive along the Caribbean. The shimmer and movement of water calms me—it always has. Whether it’s Lake Superior, the Laughing Whitefish River, Big Manistique Lake, or the Caribbean Sea, moving water stills and calms unease and anxiety trapped like a caged bird in my chest.
Local dogs trot purposefully down cobbled streets, their pace and upright tails denoting important missions not to be interrupted.
I pass fruit and vegetable stands with little pyramids of zucchini, carrots, and bright red radishes that rode the ferry over from the mainland early this morning.
Pigeons scuttle and take flight as I round a corner, heat making them slow.
A flash of bright plumeria aroma wafts over me and is immediately replaced by the stench of an overflowing garbage can.
I catalogue and collect each detail, holding them up for inspection like pieces of beach glass—comparisons to other commutes to work: snowstorms; deer dodging, changing season’s leaf budding, unfurling, and falling.
Sometimes I can’t help but laugh aloud at the changes, differences, absurdities from one incarnation of my life to another.
In Michigan, when I lived alone in my cabin, I used to love cutting a hard right part way home on my commute—trading blacktop and yellow lines for winding gravel roads and the thrill of dodging puddles and potholes.
When I was safely off the main road I’d crack a roadie, turn the radio up, take a couple puffs off my onie, and press foot to accelerator.
The gravel road, four wheel drive vehicle and me became one entity—curves and bumps no longer obstacles but part of a terrain that four wheels and me were an extension of.

Windows down, music up, it was some of the most free I’ve ever felt.
It was a high I craved. The moment the car stopped, the realities of bills, loneliness, and work in the morning caught up and slipped clammy hands over my shoulders.
I needed those highs to balance the lows—driving fast; tiptoeing naked through the yard and down to the river for a breathless swim; showing up alone, head high to the bar.
These glorious moments were often followed all too quickly by moments of sadness and loneliness so acute it was almost a physical blow.
Staring out rain-streaked cabin windows, worry about house needs weighed heavy on my head: firewood, would there be enough to pay the bills, that leak in the roof, and on and on. Loneliness and pain from the recent past pressing against my eyelids.
In the midst of it, there’s almost a deliciousness in the pain. It reminded me I was alive as much as those moments of exhilaration. Intense, exquisite loneliness and independence the balance beam I walked day to day.
Up and down. High and low. Ebb and flow.
Two years later some part of me sometimes, almost, misses those peaks and troughs.
The rest of me is thankful for the steady day to day joys that are my life now.

When I first moved to Isla, every little detail thrilled and interested me. I was fascinated by each nuance and felt like my smile would never unstretch.
Day to day sneaks up before I even realize. Imperceptibly the transition occurs—what was at first so exciting and unfamiliar becomes commonplace and normal.
My walks down the dusty alley to and from what was, at first, my boyfriend’s apartment, then our apartment, and now the apartment I share with my husband, went from a thrilling stroll down a Mexican island alley, to my daily walk to and from home.
The foods that were, at first, exotic, unfamiliar, new, have become day to day fare: tacos pastor shaved succulent and glistening from its grilled meat cone; fresh mango, dragon fruit, and Guyana from the corner fruit stand; street tacos of every carne topped with pico, salsa picante, and crema de ajo.
Riding across the island on a moto, arms around my handsome man’s waist, I poke and pinch myself—reminders of how blessed I am to live on this magical island—inhabit this space with my sexy husband, our hilarious dogs, amazing friends, and all the individuals who also call Isla home.

It’s so easy to become complacent—to take for granted the space we inhabit, people we love, small moments of joy.
I’m learning yet another way of happiness—day to day joys simple, small, and often tucked away in little pockets of gratitude: bedside picnics, watching a lightning storm from the roof, swimming with Ryan in turquoise waters.
The intensity of my days at the cabin—highs so high and lows so low, have calmed to steady swells carrying me forward.
A strong, lonely, independent laughing girl running alone and barefoot through apple orchards and over wild violets adapting in two years to a happy pregnant wife on a Caribbean island and a son soon-to-be born.
It’s happiness ebbing and flowing on a whole new tide.

I listen for the four wheeler’s engine purr and press my thumb harder on the accelerator.
Ryan wouldn’t approve of me driving so fast, but the road in front of me is clear, and to my left, the Caribbean sparkles. The hot wind against my face smells of salt and promise.

Changing Tides

Changing Tides

The sun’s in my eyes as I write. The evening’s first mosquitoes, which will soon chase me indoors from my porch bench, begin to whine.
Guaya leaves rustle, branches weighed heavy with ripening, round green fruits I love to eat by the handful. I call them “road fruit” because I like to take them on the moto with me. Their orange, juicy insides taste like a sweet tart. We called them genips when we were kids eating them on vacation in The Bahamas.
Our son kicks in my belly as I sip tea from a brown ceramic mug.
Momma sent me a photo of trillium blooming in a white-petaled carpet that I know blankets much of Upper Michigan right now.

I ache for Michigan, but first have to get this Michigan/California/Mexico boy baby born before I can return.
Then, I will swim in fresh water—cold tears from a glacier long melted.
I will forage for asparagus by the roadside and precious morels hiding beneath last fall’s leaves.
I will bury my fingers in garden dirt, the same that dirtied my childhood knees.

I never thought I’d have a child away from Michigan. For that matter, I really wasn’t sure I was ever going to have a child.
After my marriage ended, I focused on things like how we have a serious over-population problem I didn’t want to contribute to. I told myself that, as a teacher, I had opportunities to help shape and influence many humans, as opposed to focusing my energy on just one. I searched myself and while I like babies and children, I didn’t feel the pull to be a mother that so many feel. I didn’t feel any genetic imperative to create another little human.

When Ryan and I first started dating he said to me, “This might be too much too fast, but I’m 32 years old and I want a family before I get much older. I think if we’re going to date we should have these things out in the open right away…and I think you’d look so beautiful pregnant.”
I laughed, a bit uncomfortable at his honest revelations, but also flattered and intrigued. His candidness was refreshing. But I was glorying in my independence, had just moved to Mexico after 31 years in Michigan, and wasn’t sure yet that I was ready to commit my heart, let alone my life, to anyone but myself.
We carried on like semi-responsible adults living on an island in the Caribbean: working hard, playing hard, drinking tequila and laughing with friends late into the night.
It was a life I couldn’t have imagined for myself on lonely nights in my Michigan cabin with only a fuzzy cat and Bea puppy for company.
There were nights in the cabin where I gloried in my independence, and many others when I stared at the phone, door, window, computer screen, and longed for the company and distractions of a world “out there.” Nights when all the freedom and space of 40 acres and the surrounding wilderness pressed in on me and made me ache for something more.
Life in the cabin was everything I wanted. And everything I wanted to escape from.
Those nights, if you’d whispered in my ear that two years later I’d be living on Isla with my handsome musician, soon-to-be husband, six months pregnant, I wouldn’t have believed a word.

Because of many aspects of our life, I’ve had several people ask in hushed voices, “Was this planned, or…” their voices trailing off in insinuation. Smart blond professor leaves her job at the university, seduced into living an alternative lifestyle on an island in Mexico and then carelessly gets pregnant.
Makes me giggle every time, considering I’m 33 years old and have managed to avoid getting pregnant thus far.
Week by week, one conversation after another, this future that I’m living coalesced. Flights to visit family in California and Michigan. Walking hand in hand down a familiar gravel lane and feeding Ryan his first wild blackberry. Slowly, out of whatever ether they’re born, a shared dream coalesced.

A future I’d never fathomed for myself formed from salty turquoise waters, two people’s hard work, shared ideas, and a love I’d once convinced myself didn’t exist for me.
“Yes.” I said with my throat and lips; my head and heart; every inch of my body.
Yes to a life and future with this good man. Yes to leaving behind the known, loved, and familiar for new loves and new adventures. Yes to making life, a human, a little man. All those thoughts not caring about carrying on my genes shifted, and I learned what it is to want to make a person with someone I love.

Baby Callan kicks once, and then again. It makes me smile every time.

The community on Isla is supportive beyond anything I could’ve hoped for, and eagerly awaits his birth almost as much as we do.
My sister and I were raised in a community of “Aunts and Uncles,” “Grandparents,” and dear family friends who loved us fiercely, and valued us as people. In a world where adults and children are too often separated, Laurel and I grew up surrounded in a diverse group of people from all ages, who taught, nurtured, and mentored us. It’s what I want for my own child, and I’ve found it here.

A group of my amazing Isla friends. So thankful.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, always going on about how much I miss Michigan. I think we often mythologize a place once we’re not living there anymore. I try to remind myself of the loneliness, bugs, cold, limitations. Those are there too, in the mix of golden evenings on clear lake shores, waiting for the moon to rise so we could dive, naked and free—swimming for hours beneath a night sky broken open with stars, planets, and spinning satellites.
I miss fresh field-grass aromas—green swathes dotted with purple Lupine and Queen Anne’s Lace. It’s like each of these details is inside a kaleidoscope I hold to my eye, and if I’m not careful, could lose myself to. I give it a turn and the images and colors shift: my father’s garden, corn tassels flutter in an August breeze; the flavor of a fresh, ripe wild blueberry, losing myself in a bonfire’s dancing flames.
Dream and reality waver like a mirage on my horizon. Thank

Being pregnant on Isla has many dynamics, many of them more difficult than if I were back in Michigan. It’s a Caribbean Island where people vacation and most people drink like they are. You don’t realize how much a part of life and culture the consumption of alcohol is until you can’t do it anymore.
Overnight not only did I have to quit something I genuinely enjoy, but also became separate from the people around me. Of course I can still participate in social activities with friends, but not being able to have a drink sets me apart and in a different mindset from the people around me. I understand why it’s difficult for former alcoholics to be in public and around people drinking—it’s not just wanting a drink yourself, it’s also feeling like you’re in a bubble, separate from everyone around.
On the other hand, the community here are genuinely delighted by children. I love watching the joy of local men when they see my protruding belly bump—a warm, soft smile spreads across their faces, beneath it memories of tiny siblings, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. No matter the circumstances for better or worse, children are a blessing here.

Ryan and I walk Bea and OG to a tiny beach near our house. It’s a cove, so Bea can run and frolic without danger of her chasing an iguana into the road. The four of us laugh and run into the surf. OG hits it with his giant Labrador chest, then turns and body surfs the wave into shore. Bea darts into the churning water and out again, up and down the shoreline. The sun’s hot, but the waves breaking across my body and growing belly are cool and salty. I lick my lips once, and then again, loving the briny taste. When I was little and swam in the ocean, I remember air-drying on the beach and taking a tentative tongue lick off my own shoulder, intrigued and delighted by this foreign flavor on my skin. Fresh water didn’t do that.
Ryan comes up behind me and I brace my body against his as the waves churn in. His arms encircle my waist, palms flat against my stomach where our growing son kicks and bumps, as if responding to his father’s touch. I lean into him and turn my face to the sun, tasting salt, and this new way of joy.

Thank you Kate Bessette of Kate Bee Photography for the beautiful photos!

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

The future: photo credit Kate Bee Photos

A Journal Excerpt from 2014

I recently came upon this excerpt in a journal I’d had packed away and pulled out to bring back on one of my trips between Mexico and Michigan. At the time of the writing, I was recently divorced and about halfway through what I would discover was a frightening and emotionally abusive relationship.

The photos and writings that follow show a young woman in transition. My steadily growing smile evidence of the hard work in moving forward from hard times.

A Metamorphosis.

It’s the day after Christmas. I’m sitting on the couch, trying to calm the anxiety I hoped would dissipate after the holidays were over. Instead, my heart still beats too fast, the worry line at the side of my mouth keeps deepening—am I frowning in my sleep?
I feel like I’m caught in a dance I don’t know—always moving out of sync with the rest of my world; my family, my friends.
They say they aren’t mad at me for my divorce and new boyfriend, but I sense it wafting through the room, encircling my neck like a noose. Looking each other in the eyes isn’t easy anymore.
Wedding pictures are gone from shelves and fridge, their absence as palpable as their presence.
I brought this upon them. Brought their pain. Caused their discomfort. Brought a stranger into their midst and took away what was familiar.
I straighten my neck and shoulders, aching with the weight of guilt and pain.

August 12, 2016 Excerpted from the essay “The Mechanics”

I mow approximately an acre. With a push-mower. I understand the lawn isn’t, technically, necessary. However, it helps keep the bugs down, or so I tell myself. In Deerton, bugs are a constant battle. I will also argue the lawn was mowed this way before, and it’s easy to follow the yard line. I also love how it looks. Untamed wilderness at the lawn’s edges makes a startling contrast to thick, impenetrable brush and trees forming a border around the yard line.

I learned how to use both a push and riding lawnmower when I lived with my husband. I liked the rider, as I could have a beer or glass of wine and enjoy my yard one, ever-smaller, concentric circle at a time.

My cabin didn’t come with a mower, so I went down to a dealer in Skandia and looked for something used, aka in my teensy-tiny budget. When I walked into the show-room a gentleman was in the process of buying the only used one available, but changed his mind at the last minute, and for $150 the mower was mine.

I arrived home, unloaded the mower, and surveyed the waving grass blades and bobbing daisy heads. I had just purchased my first lawnmower. Before me were hundreds of laps around the rocky yard, a lot of bug bites, and moments of deep satisfaction, sipping wine and surveying the results of my efforts.

The work is hard–the yard dips and plunges. It’s full of rocks, and unexpected tree stumps popping out of tall grass to quickly stop a mower blade. The bugs are horrendous: black flies, mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies. I’ve often eaten as many as five mosquitoes in a couple hours just opening my mouth for a deep breath.

But somehow, I don’t mind that much. Perhaps it’s doing it myself; a sense of accomplishment; stubborn pride; single-woman-goal-achievement; forced exercise.
A chance to touch each inch of the land I own and inhabit.

The lawnmower wasn’t my first triumphant act, and it certainly won’t be the last.

I learned how to use a weed wacker, switch the propane tank for the two-burner stove, change the water filter, build stone walkways, swap my brakes (with assistance), and carpentry work will soon be an addition to the list.

My education came out of necessity–I don’t have money to hire someone to do these things, and I’m perfectly capable of learning. But the honest truth is: I probably wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t have to.

My mother asks: “How can you stay alone there, night after night?”

Because I have to. Because it’s my home. Necessity.

I lost my fear of the dark. I lost my fear of being alone. Because I had to–either that or leave my home. Give it up to fear.

June 26, 2017–Excerpted from the essay “A Difference of Seasons”

I’ve shaken with anxiety, awoken from nightmares screaming, pounded stone walls with fragile fists, frustration gasps choking me.
The divorce from my kind ex-husband hurt deeply.
Leaving behind the abusive relationship that came after my divorce, however, takes everything I have.
I stretch my fingers. Stare down at the tattoos, ink and meaning embedded in my ring and middle fingers.

Reminders.
Remembrances of how easy it is to lose yourself. How love can become a slowly tightening noose.
He was always sorry, later.
Every day fading, a living ghost, shrouded in layers of self-hatred, sadness, confusion, fear, exhaustion, anxiety. Always trying to get back to that place when things were good. Until days went by looking in a mirror reflecting, nothing.
I’m one of the lucky ones–a woman who remembered. A woman who pulled apart the veils and shrouds and found her voice again.

Found it living alone.
100 year old, one-room cabin.
40 acres in rural Upper Michigan’s wilderness.
¼ mile Laughing Whitefish River tangling itself through the property.
Found myself in warm summer nights standing barefoot in cricket-symphony darkness watching fireflies wink and float like tiny lanterns.
Found myself in lazy afternoons alone on the river watching iridescent damselflies dance above eddying currents.
Found myself in back-breaking wood hauling and stacking. Hauling and stacking. Hauling and stacking.
Found myself in nights so cold the split log walls popped and shifted and if I didn’t feed the stove every four hours I’d awake shivering, breath hanging in smoky puffs.

Found myself walking wooded paths, Bea-pup by my side–each mossy rock, knobby tree-trunk, and curled leaf edge familiar. Known.
Found myself in long nights half-slept, a loaded gun at my feet, a knife at my head. Stretched between the two stone pillars of fear and determination.

Found myself in a solo July trip to my beloved Isla isle, when the familiar voice of past and future called out together and my answer was laughter and a one-way ticket to Mexico.

March 20th, 2018

I see myself walking across the yard—tall, strong, surefooted, tangled blond hair tumbling down my back.
Apple and wild cherry trees tilt green-leafed branches in a soft summer breeze.
The river chuckles.

The Laughing Whitefish River--Home River — The Laughing Whitefish River–Home River

I walk, head high, eyes forward, through the gateway between two balsams—straight into Isla’s waiting arms.
Changing apple and cherry blossoms for palms and bougainvillea flowers.
Leaving behind lonely independence for the loving heat of a good man, and a baby in my belly.
The river, cabin, bouldered 40 acres, years of growth and perspective a snow globe in my chest, next to my heart, I shake sometimes. And it makes me smile.

Happy Rachel and Ryan, 2017 Photo Credit Tanya Canam Photography — Happy Rachel and Ryan, 2017
Photo Cred. Tanya Canam Photography

A Good Life

We limit ourselves in so many ways by the stories we tell about our own lives. The narratives we imagine for our futures due to pressures from society, family, loved ones, etc.

What if we imagined something different.
Created a new narrative—a new story.
A story where we’re not afraid of change. The pressures of what our family/society imagines is a good future. The myths of “happily ever after” “prince/princess charming” “The American Dream.” Let ourselves envision what a good life looks like.

Simple Gifts: Fresh fruit from the market

That doesn’t necessarily mean a life on a Caribbean island, but could mean many little or big things. I recently heard a story of a chef friend who “followed his dream” to run a fast-paced, well-renowned restaurant. The pressures of chef-life which involved a high stress environment and days and nights away from his wife made him an unhappy alcoholic. What he really wanted, he confessed, was to work a nine to five job for the postal service and come home to his wife every night. Finally, after the stress became too much and alcohol took its toll, he left the restaurant and took a job with the postal service. He now happily works a nine to five, doesn’t drink, and goes home to his wife every night. From the outside, it looked like he was living his ideal life, but the reality was much different, and it took real bravery to make that change.
We too often look into other people’s windows for an idea of what happiness and fulfillment look like, rather than searching our own souls.
Throughout my northern life, when a rare south wind blew through our Michigan fields and forests I felt like I was the violin, and the wind was the bow. It pulled me up from wherever I was to stand with my face to that rare breath conjured from warmer waters, and deep somewhere around the bottom of my heart, I ached. It was like a siren song pulling every fiber of my being, but my head shook itself at the impracticality of such longing.
Why is it so improbable that I have both a northern and southern soul?

A limitation I set upon myself.
I met my ex husband when I was nineteen years old. We married when I was 24, and divorced when I was 28. I loved him. He’s a good man and will always be a good man. But my life with him was made up of expectations from society and my parents of what makes a good life.
I come from a family of teachers—a path I dutifully followed. I love teaching. It’s truly a fulfilling passion for me, but I never questioned whether it was the only way to be fulfilled and create change in the world.
My ex husband loved to hunt, fish, and wanted to live in a cabin in the woods. These are also things my father loves. I love and value them too. Those were things I never questioned, and I followed that path without a second thought.
I got degree after degree, taught, made a home for me and my husband.
Built gardens.
Held dinner parties.
Worked hard.
All the things I’d been taught made a good life.
I cried almost every day—a bottomless well made all the more deep because I couldn’t figure out why I was so sad. I had everything I should’ve wanted. It truly was a good life.
Yet…
I was still unsatisfied.
When that south wind blew, my heart ached so hard it felt bruised.
It took a lot of fumbling. A lot of mistakes. A lot of struggle, hardship, and boatloads of pain to find my way to the place where south winds originate.
I don’t regret any of the fumbling; mistakes; struggle; hardship; pain. They were lessons that will make up my life-long arsenal.
We’re so afraid.
Afraid of change. Of what other people think. Of mistakes, struggle, hardship, and pain.
My life today still has pain, struggle, and hardship.

Daily I fumble, happily, towards what a good life looks like for me.

Now, if I cry, I know the origins of my tears. And that, is worth it all.

Days Like This & First World Problems

Days Like This & First World Problems

There are many days living in this old cabin where I question what the hell I’m doing with my life. Am I really capable of living in/sustaining a structure this high maintenance? Do I have what it takes—financially and otherwise?

Days like today, when, in the middle of my second load of laundry, the water stopped working. My finances are stretched to the max, dishes aren’t done, and after a late-long-night all I wanted was a hot shower.

I’ve lived without water before: when my ex-husband was renovating the bathroom himself I alternated between showering in the utility sink if it was available, standing in a rubber made and pouring hot water over myself when it was not, and if it was a nice day, utilizing the forest-facing back porch for my ablutions. My tent-dwelling days acclimated me to catching a wash where I could: lakes, streams, waterfalls, etc.

My current situation feels different. It’s up to me to figure out how to fix this and I feel woefully inadequate. Days spent scratching my head in good moments and near tears in bad leave me wondering why we don’t teach more practical, day-to-day things in schools. The U.S. educational system is woefully inadequate anyway (don’t get me started on modern education and the “teach-to-the-test” system that’s pumping out millions of uneducated students unable to think critically), but why don’t we teach skills people use regularly?:

Finances, basic auto mechanics, cooking, basic electricity, plumbing, carpentry, etc.

These are skills that most everyone needs a rudimentary understanding of at some point in their lives.

I need one now. I flipped the switches on the fuse box, tried to get the water pump going manually, called neighbors, solicited advice but I’ve run out of fixes to try on my own. I have to wait for help, which is grating.

The experience has led me to reflect and empathize with former inhabitants of my home who lived without running water. Children were raised here, families utilizing both river and old-fashioned stone well to obtain this necessary day-to-day resource. Hauling water up from the river makes me appreciate the simplicity of a small silver handle turning and almost-instantaneous clean, hot water at my fingertips.

It’s been the warmest early-November that I can remember. I debate washing-up in the bathtub and opt for a chillier but more adventurous frolic in the river.

Just as the sun’s rays dip below the tree-line I make my way down to the river, naked but for towel and rubber boots.

With a shiver, I drop the towel and wade into the pushing current. Leaves still clinging to reaching tree limbs flicker yellow, filtering evening light into golden shadows.

100 year old log cabin on the Laughing Whitefish

I’m tired, frustrated, and anxious about how much the water-fix will cost.

Dipping my hands into the cold water is unpleasant at first, but after a few curses, exclamations, and inarticulate noises of exasperation, I begin to enjoy my splashings, pondering how lucky I am: the water pump died on a warm evening; my neighbors can provide me with clean drinking water; I have a community offering advice, support, and fixes; I live on a stunning river that provides for all but my drinking water needs; I have electricity, propane, firewood, and food to eat—not to mention Wi-Fi. By so many people’s standards, this is living in luxury.

I’m also discovering new strength reserves. Several times I wanted to sit my vexed ass down on the wood floor and give myself up to the hot tears threatening to slide down my cheeks. However, I’ve done that before and it only delayed fixing the problem, so I sniff once or twice and square my shoulders.

You chose this life whispers through my mind in my father’s voice. Sell the house and move closer to town. Make things easier on yourself. Blinking away the tears, I reach for the five-gallon bucket and head for the river so I can at least flush the toilet.

Hell, at least I have an indoor toilet that flushes.

The water is ice-cream-headache cold as I dunk my hair into the current, turning fine strands from blond to red, swirling like seaweed.

My whimpers turn to yips of exhilaration. Unable to help myself, I laugh out loud.

If the water hadn’t gone out, I wouldn’t have had this moment in the river. And there it is—the shift in mood—the choice to spin my situation and find joy beneath the hardship.

It won’t always be this easy. The sun slips lower. I step from the river, grateful. So exhilarated from icy water’s tumble I no longer feel cold, just a matching rush of blood in my veins a broken water pump enabled.

Laughing Whitefish Cabin Observations:

Fear

I walk the property in deep dusk, with Bea a tiggered, bouncing shadow at my side. Mist hangs, ethereal—a gauzy veil—over apple orchard and south lawn. We enter the tree line—mostly cedar, scrubby pine, and the occasional towering old growth. The world goes from dim to black. The familiar trail becomes a new entity—roots and dips to discover. Trees are twisted silhouettes. Bea disappears, but I can hear the faint “ching” of her collar rise and fall against the river’s chuckling backdrop. Other than that, it’s silent.

I stand still, contemplating the old me that wouldn’t have stepped away from yard-light-safety-halo, let alone out of the yard entirely and into the dark woods. I’m aware, my senses heightened, but I’m not afraid. The absence of fear so recent I search it like tongue to pulled tooth. There’s a freedom here—freedom tickling against my breastbone like moth wings.

“Aren’t you afraid to be all the way out there, on that big property, in that old house, all by yourself?” Friends, family, students, ask me.

The lack of fear was hard earned. Born bloody, out of pain, anxiety, and fear of a different kind. These experiences teach us the real things to fear, rather than the imaginary that so captivate us and keep us out of the woods at night.

Cycles

I’ve never seen so many mushrooms.

Humans continually speculate as to the reasons reactions occur in nature. For better or worse, we’re a meddling species, always poking and prodding; always postulating. I’ve heard many speculations about everything from the winter ahead: “It’s going to be an average winter.” To the prevalence of mice indoors this fall: “They’re cyclical.” To the sudden and varied explosion of mushrooms across the region. “Perfect ratio of heat to rainfall.” I like these hypothesis, empirically science and observation based—as much as I like the mythological explanations for such events: Poseidon’s wrath at fault for stormy seas. Coyote’s trickery for things going awry. Pele for erupting volcanoes.

Humans are meaning-makers. We seek answers. This aspect of our nature has led to both positives and negatives for both our species, other species, and the planet as a whole. Watching the Trump ascendency and listening to the rhetoric of his supporters, I cannot help but wish for more of this questioning nature across our population, and while I’m at it, the world. Perhaps we’ve become so inundated by our advertising/media/capitalist centered society, we’ve forgotten the importance of questioning, observation, careful analysis before reaching conclusions. On the other hand—and I’m debating with myself at this point—studying mythology shows that, despite scientific advances across thousands of years, humans haven’t changed at all. We still love, lust, grieve. We’re jealous, angry, and start wars. We’re fascinated with one another’s drama. We don’t know what exists before we’re born, and we don’t know where we go when we die. We still don’t know our purpose any more than did the ancient Greeks, Aborigines, Mayans staring up at the stars and making meaning out of constellations.

I don’t know why the mushrooms have appeared in such vast quantities this year, but I’m captivated by their shapes, sizes, colors, and prolific-stemmed-capped-cragged-horned-tilting presence. I’ve seen purple mushrooms, six-inch-tall table-topped Aminitas, brown and white puffballs like blown-bubbles on the lawn, and various eye-popping orange and red fungi that screams “poisonous” in all their fluorescent vibrancy.

They’re delightful, turning the woods and lawn into a there-and-gone fairy world overnight.

The Ancient Britons believed that stumbling into a fairy ring of mushrooms, one risked being taken to the land of faery, where you might never emerge, or, worse yet, emerge after only “one night” to find you’d been gone 200 years in real time. Many cultures have and continue to use certain mushrooms for their hallucinogenic qualities and ability to alter consciousness. Proponents across the centuries believe these characteristics reveal deeper meanings and truths than humans are able to see on a day to day basis.

I suggest a healthy dose for most modern politicians.

Cold Weather’s Coming

The change in season happens so gradually, I hardly notice. Subtle shifts in day-to-day routine are always the first clues.

Less skirts, dresses, shorts and more leggings and jeans.

The windows, always open at night, get lowered bit by bit until cracked just enough to hear the river as I fall asleep.

I’m hungrier than I was, as though, bear-like, my body’s preparing for cold.

Birds fly in chittering flocks, foraging together in preparation for a flight south I’m eager to imitate in December.

Fields turn green to gold, catching late-day sunlight in haloed reflections.

Days get shorter.

I hauled and stacked three face cords of wood yesterday. It felt like a lot, but I’ll need much more. “Wood warms you twice.” I hear my father’s voice as I bend, lift, stack, repeat. Sweat trickles between my breasts. Thunder rumbles and wind whips errant blond hairs into my eyes and across my lips.

Leaves swirl in colored tornadoes.

The cherry tree, first to acquiesce to coming cold, stands, a leafless profile against a gathering-storm-sky.

Tastes Like Fall

As the seasons change, my culinary fantasies shift from blueberry bursts, sweet corn and BLT bliss, and sugar snap pea sweetness to daydreams of bacon-wrapped-duck breast, apples melted with honey and cinnamon, and buttery-orange mounds of butternut squash.

Ideas and Recent Recipe Concept-Photos to Follow:

*Email rachelmills906@gmail.com for Recipes and Ideas

Mustard Greens, lettuce, shaved pecorino romano cheese, carrot, purple cabbage

Gazpacho, sauteed salmon, roasted potatoes

Butternut Squash, Leeks, Fresh/Sundried Tomatoes, Coconut Milk, Wild Rice

Brat with beet sauerkraut, turmeric/garlic roast potatoes, Asian cucumber salad with peanuts

The Mechanics

The Mechanics

But somehow, I don’t mind that much. Perhaps it’s doing it myself; a sense of accomplishment; stubborn pride; single woman goal achievement; forced exercise; a chance to touch each inch of the land I own and inhabit.

The lawnmower wasn’t my first triumphant act, and it certainly won’t be the last.

I learned how to use a weed wacker, switch the propane tank for the two-burner stove, change the water filter, build stone walk-ways, swap my brakes (with assistance), and carpentry work will soon be an addition to the list.

My mother asks: “How can you stay alone there, night after night?”

Because I have to. Because it’s my home. Necessity.

New brake pads and a cautionary brake image.

I lost my fear of the dark. I lost my fear of being alone. Because I had to–either that or leave my home–give it up to fear.

Many times, I’ve thought of my dear friend Dorothy who lived alone in a cabin in the Canadian woods after her husband passed away. Children grown, she stuck it out there for several years before moving closer to town. She lived rustic, created a garden, hauled water, and enjoyed her space–her solitude.

It becomes something you wrap around yourself. Something you own. Out of what is, sometimes, the agony of necessity, comes strength to walk across the pitch-dark yard without a flashlight, and never consider needing one.

What are You Hungry For?

What are You Hungry For?

Pear Galette, made by my beautiful and talented sister, Laurel.

When you trace the days back, skip over calendar squares like spaces on a game board, reversing: events, choices, moments, does it overwhelm you? Do you look back to a month, three months, seven, a year ago and pause for a moment, wondering what the hell happened?

It’s a dizzying spiral that can, too often, lead down a rabbit hole, rehashing events we can’t do anything to change, but somehow find the need to comb through endlessly.

Lying in bed, mowing the giant lawn, working around the house, my thoughts slip easily into this well-worn groove, like tires into a rut. The past whispers, and soon I feel the tight, familiar ache in my jaw, as I begin to clench. Sadness, anxiety, twist in my chest.

Re-set.

I take a deep breath. Work to close the lid over my Pandora’s Box of worries I can’t change right now, or ever.

I’m used to cooking for another human every day. I find inspiration in their tastes, the mood, and what we’re craving.

“What are you hungry for?” Is, it seems, a much more interesting question to ask other people, but not so much yourself. These days, my answer to myself is usually, “rice pudding.” I go to the container in the fridge, dump on some nutmeg and cinnamon and plop/lean, eating wherever I am in the house. When I’m sufficiently shocked at how much rice pudding I’ve consumed, again, in one sitting, I return container to fridge.

I’ve analyzed my reliance on the side-food group “Pudding” and I think it hearkens back to comfort food of my childhood.

Grandma Betty Harkness made my sister and me the most delicious rice/vanilla puddings. We got to eat them from her company-special, cut green glass goblets. Our spoons clinked against emerald glass, creamy pudding swirled along fluted edges, and the morsel lingering in stemmed bottom had to be reached with our pinky fingers when no one was looking. The sweet, velvety pudding was both a treat and a comfort. Special glasses, cream and sugar, Grandma’s cozy kitchen.

While the pudding from the food co-op is delicious, it imparts little of the comfort I crave.

Impulsively, I invite various friends and groups of friends for dinner. Before confirmations, I begin planning and cooking. The energy focused on holding down the box lid on my trunk of worries, I divide, to focus on meal planning. In the morning, as I finish the lawn, instead of running the hamster wheel of apprehensions, I categorize ingredients in cupboards, shelves, fridge, and freezer. My mind adds and subtracts ingredients—grouping, arranging, rearranging.

Venison: the protein. Simple buttery polenta: the base. Fresh herbs: the green note. Frozen cauliflower from my father’s garden: the creamy, garlicky sauce. Roses are blooming on the cabin’s south-side, and a long-ago gardener’s rhubarb legacy peeks elephantine-ear leaves through tall grass. Roses, Honey, and Rhubarb: the sweet.

Wild Strawberries and Rhubarb from the yard.

The sun moves through its longest days’ orbit and apologetic cancellations and rain checks for “dinner next time” trickle in.

It doesn’t matter. The meal’s underway in my mind. I have something else to focus on, and I leap from hamster wheel to kitchen counter with desperate relief.

The meal comes together throughout the day. I give myself up to familiar rhythms: chopping, mixing, spicing, stirring, seasoning—decisions weighty enough to satisfy and calm my anxious mind.

One person to cook for would be enough, and dear friend Ryan arrives. He doesn’t simply arrive, but walks through the door bearing a bag of fresh clams, mussels, and conch from Maine.

We steam the seafood, filling the cabin with a briny, tide pool aroma unfamiliar to Laughing Whitefish River shores.

We eat shelled delicacies in the screen tent, near the river. Maple leaf shadows stipple the tabletop. River water chuckles over stones, nearby. Finches, robins, and meadowlarks fill the insect-humming air with melody.

Maine seafood by the Laughing Whitefish River

I can’t help myself, and chuckle aloud, as garlic-herb butter drips down my fingers.

It’s all still here—the worries, fears, anxieties—but distant now. Like the far-away whine of a mosquito you know you’ll have to deal with eventually, but for the moment, you’re safe.