A writer hoping to be published who writes stories, poems and thoughts of my years as a homeless child and the years since then. Many of my stories are true, however I do enjoy some fun in a quick tale! I also love to take photos.
Walking a riverbank with my husband we came across this site of a tree base stripped of bark, graffiti painted and litter strew about. At first I felt insulted for these acts against Mother Nature, until I gave it a closer inspection.
I realized this was a homeless person’s campsite. I saw the towel, a small luxury, used to dry after bathing in the murky river. There lay a painters frock, a toothbrush and the remnants of a toothpaste tube. This was the home of a person attempting to remain civilized in primitive conditions.
I no longer saw graffiti, with a new perspective I studied a work of art on a single wooden wall. A laid bare a canvas, to voice through brush a life of agony and despair.
Immediately, spotting the single tine flipping the bird after a fellow camper, I made the connection. Be it person, place or thing, some can never accept being used once and then discarded.
My husband snapped this photo when he went portaging with his son in Algonquin Park. They rested on a small island in Happy Isle Lake for 4 days. It was on the first night, the skies were clear of rain and the sunset was astonishing. Paint by Spirit, God’s landscape altered daily to gratify our eyes.
“You are not seriously considering wearing those tacky shoes, are you?” I asked Samantha as she walked out of her bedroom. “Oh yes I am!” Samantha haughtily answered. “Wow, you do realize tonight is the night you make your first impression with this man?” I said sternly, then added, “He is a professional and I worry what he might think of you.”
Samantha laughed and said, “If he’s a man who cannot have some fun away from work, then I wouldn’t want him anyway.” I said, “You are a stubborn girl, as always, but this time I have to agree with you.” Samantha smiled and I continued, “For a girl of 20 years you have some wisdom there. What good would a man be who is all business and no fun.”
As Samantha flounced out the door, sashaying as only Samantha can, I hear her sing a song I heard not long ago: If Our Love Was An Outhouse. That doctor she was going on a date with tonight was going to love her or lose her. As the door closed behind her I knew either way, Samantha would not give up until she found a man who would love her, idiosyncrasies and all.
I married in 2008, August 6 to be exact. Today is my wedding anniversary! Throughout these eight years I’ve had time to muse on relationships and trust building. I’ve had a lot of bad relationships, and, I’ve had wonderful relationships that rotted at the hands of medlars. I learned not to trust, not to have faith in the reality of love, but then Barry caught my eye and his mine.
I remember the first time he’d taken me camping. We’d been dating for 6 months yet I still felt fear as he drove the van into the darkened campground. I had to work late so the choice was to go that night or lose most of the next day. I’d chosen that night.
He drove the car slowly and my fears heightened with each turn. It turned out I’d feared for nothing and when I felt guilty and told him of my concerns he smiled a gentle smile and pulled me close to wrap me in a warm embrace. Barry said, “I’m not hurt, I know you’ve been through a lot and it all takes time. I have all the time you need to come to the realization you can trust me.” I’d snuggled closer to him and cried some silent tears of joy, relief and hope. Hope of love, true, honest, decent and timeless love.
Today I gave Barry a Happy Anniversary card and he said to me, in sadness, “I feel so bad, I forgot our anniversary.” I smiled love his way and told him, “Don’t feel bad, I didn’t remember either until I walked by an ‘Anniversary Cards’ sign in the drugstore!” He smiled then and we kissed a little kiss, since we weren’t alone at that moment.
Today, I celebrate my love for you Barry, and like the sand in an hourglass, before the last grain can fall we’ll flip it and renew our love again, and again, and again.
“I have to prove this is real, even if nobody else believes me, I have to know.” That thought in mind, I’d cupped my hands around the item the moment I felt my being begin to separate from the other dimension, the place I’ve named the Fifth. With my treasure in hands I emerged into my bedroom.
Staring at it, I sat it down on my bed and placed the clock alongside the battery operated quartz clock that woke me every usual morning. In this dimension my clock is clear cased and the hands move in the normal clockwise fashion. The clock I’d stolen from my other self is black cased, and, as in the Fifth, the hands move counterclockwise.
Before taking the clock I’d wondered if the hands would shift to clockwise and I was elated to see the clock continue to count the time, as in the dimension of it’s creation. I knew my other self would puzzle over the disappearing clock but she’d get over the loss quickly. I think she is starting to figure out I am at times living her life.
We haven’t met, I’m afraid to go that far. I don’t know what will happen, how she will react, or how I will react for that matter. I do know from how everyone responds to me, thinking I am her, she’s exactly like me, other than the circumstances in her life are different than in mine.
She is married to a man who, in my dimension, was my love many years ago. My husband, in the Fifth, is married to another woman. It was a shaky ride for a time, especially when they locked me up in the psychiatric hospital for delusions another woman was stealing my husband from me! I still feel sad for my other self. It must have been hell to find herself locked up and medicated, but she was smart enough to figure out a way to convince the doctors and her husband she had merely been suffering from heat stroke.
Still, my heart ached seeing him when he’d come to the hospital, finding me strapped down to a gurney. That must have hurt his pride. He is a discrete man, fighting always to keep his public life separate from his private life. I’d been hurt to see him loving another until, in a flash of brilliance I’d realized he wasn’t he at all, but another.
Smoothing that wrinkle out had given me the peace of mind I needed to continue. I don’t choose to go to the Fifth, I’m am drawn there and returned to my own reality, by what or who I do not know. I have caught on to some rather strange things and I will go into detail about them at a later time, but I’ll tell you a bit now. In this dimension we are people in evolution, while in the Fifth it is a place awaiting devolution!
This last time I’d stood outside my favourite shopping centre, stopping long enough to listen to excited voices talking about the upcoming end of automobiles and the joys of animal driven carriages of varying sizes to transport people and goods. In our dimension the push is still on to automate everything. I’d smiled to hear an elderly lady say, “It might be in my time we see an end to the environmental decay!”
Entering the revolving door I recalled the words my love had said to me earlier that day, “It will come as a shock to some when they enter their physical devolution.” I hadn’t know what to say in response and I’ll have to wait for my next journey to learn more on that topic.
“Do you see it?” I ask the man who has finished unloading groceries from the trunk of his car. His was delivering gifts of food for our Street Help Homeless Centre of Windsor. He said, “I don’t understand.”
“The tree branches look like they want to reach down further to hug me. There is no-one else in sight, especially none that would want to hurt me. There is an unattended garbage can that might hold clothes for me to wear, or food for me to eat. I see peace and there is nobody to judge me.” I said.
He looked at me, I think with new eyes, and said, “That is what you meant when you told our church you had felt safe in the alleys when you were a homeless girl.”
“Yes, exactly!” I said excitedly, “Even when I was homeless God loaned to me bits of Eden to rest my weary bones. The alleyways gave my soul refreshment. I understand well the expression ‘God can be found in the unlikeliest of places’, He can be found even in a narrow alleyway.”
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