One could say that the opposite of failure is success. What can possibly be wrong with success? Excess! Take zucchini for example. Okay, I hear the gardeners out there chuckling knowingly.
We were amateur gardeners to begin with. We planted twelve zucchini vines. They produced enough to feed Toronto. Sell it? We couldn't give it all away! (We know now that one healthy vine will provide all we need!) As it turned out, Mary had a terrific recipe for zucchini cake. It tasted like spice cake and was extremely moist and delicious. Plus - the cake was full of little green bits, which would make it fun to serve to city visitors! Yes, we were really impressed with that cake.
So impressed, we started grinding up the excess zucchini and putting it into plastic containers in the freezer. Each container was enough for one cake. I'm sure I said, "Joe, we'll never eat that much cake!"
Joe is positive he said, "Bill, we'll never eat that much cake!"
We froze fifty-two containers, enough for a cake every week for a year. The following year we threw out roughly forty-five containers of zucchini. Nobody eats that much cake! There's no success like excess!
While we're in the kitchen, so to speak, talking about cake - let's look at another issue: who does the cooking? Who does the dishes? Who dusts? Who runs the vacuum? Who sews on missing buttons? Or - as one reader of this series light-heartedly put it: "If this were a gay Green Acres, which one would have the Hungarian accent?" And presumeably, swan about the place like Eva Gabor in a fabulous gown. Well, the answer is - neither of us. The fact that two guys are together does not mean that one does the 'masculine' jobs and one does the 'feminine' jobs. With some couples that's true, but with many others, it is not. It's just two guys being guys. What that meant for us in our early years, was that dishes piled up in the sink, dust was part of our natural environment, the floor was decorated with Dawg hair most of the time, and the bathtub came with that brown ring didn't it?
Our casual living started caving in on us when Molly, Mary and Sarah again came down without notice (slow learners!). It was in early summer, so I guess they thought they'd have no problems. (We had chosen that very day to drive to our friends' store, and were staying for lunch.) Well, they had no difficulty getting in the laneway, but what greeted them inside the house was another matter entirely.
The kitchen was piled high. Ashtrays overflowed everywhere. The dining room table was shrouded with dirty laundry waiting to be washed. The floors were no doubt thick with dust and dog hair. The bathroom hadn't been scrubbed since their Christmas visit - you get the picture. Need I even say the bed wasn't made?
We arrived home mid-afternoon and were not happy campers to see Molly's car out front of the house, knowing full well what a state we'd left that house in. We cringed at the thought of their seeing how we really lived when we were alone.
As you've probably guessed, we walked into a spotless, almost unrecognizable place. (It took us weeks to find all the stuff they'd 'tidied up'.) The really annoying part was - they lectured us! They actually had the temerity to rake us over the coals in no uncertain terms. They told us we had to get our act together or we'd become disgusting old hermits. Imagine!! "No one should have to live in such filth. Somebody has to clean up!" Blah blah blah.
We looked at each other. We remembered we had some urgent chores to do in the barn. With heads high, and chests out......... well....... okay, maybe not......... we skulked out of there like little schoolboys who'd just had their backsides warmed. But in time, we did learn, and it was easier in the end, than having to stay up half the night trying to clean up when someone phoned to say they were coming. With the passing of the years we gradually worked out a routine that ensured the place stayed reasonably liveable.
And in time, we realized something else - we were running out of new projects. Sure, there was always that damn culvert to fix, but somehow we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. That brief period of flooding was also a harbinger of Spring, almost as much as seeing the first robin, or the first purple crocus in the lawn. Somehow, without our realizing it, we had passed from restoring this old farm to...... what? Becoming farmers. Rather than always having new challenges, we were repeating exactly what we did the year before. Was this what our goal had always been? Or had someone moved the goal post on us?
When I began this series, I wasn't entirely confident I could come up with enough memories to fairly call it a 'series'. And now..... it's hard to stop. However, I think it's time to remember a particular morning.......
Joe and I were sitting on the porch having our coffee. It was cozy and warm that bright March morning as the sun shone in through the windows. Joe was acting strange. I mean strange even for him. He'd clear his throat. He'd glance at me. Look out the window. Clear his throat. Finally he spoke.
"Do you see us staying here forever?"
I was looking at the sun shining on the of roof our our barn 'complex' as I had come to think of it. And at the neat cedar rail fences lining the lane, and the shrubs along our tidy white fence. They would soon be blooming again. I thought about what he was asking and replied.
"Huh?"
"Well, do you?"
"No Joe. I see us moving to Ottawa and I'll be Prime Minister and you'll be Deputy Prime Minister."
He sighed. Well - I was seriously pissed. Not at what he said, but at the fact that, yes, I had been thinking about it. I just hadn't said anything. And now I find he was thinking about it? And hadn't said anything? Clearly I hadn't said anything because I was considerate of his feelings, but he hadn't said anything because he wasn't thinking about my feelings. See the difference? Oh well, never mind. I'm sure I'm right.
"So....." I said profoundly. He remained silent. I continued, "You want another coffee?"
"Sure."
"Okay, get me one too, and we'll talk about it."
"Do I look like your servant?"
"No, but you do look like someone who's going to get me a coffee."
He snorted, but headed into the house. When he came back, he'd obviously formulated what he wanted to say, which is exactly what I hoped that brief time apart would allow him.
"It just seems like we're spinning our wheels now," he said thoughtfully. "I never really saw this far ahead. Guess I never thought we'd get to a point like this. Everything that really needed to be done is done, you know?"
"Yes. Except you never fixed that basement step like you said you would."
"Shut up about the basement step, that's a five minute job, it's not going to fill up the rest of our lives."
"Do you have a suggestion to make then, or should I play Twenty Questions?"
"I suggest you not get irrational," he said. "Let's just discuss this calmly."
"Okay. I'll start. Are you out of your frigging mind? Give all this up? For what?"
"That's exactly the point..... for what? Don't you ever get the urge to try something new, to do something else, to find another challenge?"
Well, yes, actually, I did. I just wasn't ready to admit it. I had to clear something important up first......... "This 'new challenge'. Does it involve both of us?"
He looked at me like I'd just said something incredibly stupid. So, okay, I had.
Finally, we talked. What each of us had been thinking, and feeling was as so often happened with us, a mirror image of the other's thoughts. Life was good. Indeed, life was beautiful. We just didn't feel like it was enough, anymore. It would be hard to leave this place we'd poured our hearts and souls into. But if we didn't...... If we stayed and grew old here. It wouldn't be so bad, in fact it would be a pretty good life. But..... always that 'but'. We would always wonder about what else we might have done, could have done, should have done.
Joe told me he wanted to experience building and living in a brand new house some day, after all our years in this old one. I told him I was dreaming of living on the banks of a river - not a lake, but a river, like the one we often swam in after a hot day of work, several miles away.
"We could build the new house by a river."
Of course we could. Why the hell not?
And that my friends, was the beginning of the end. But also of course, the beginning of a new beginning. In the time it takes to drink a cup of coffe we agreed to change the entire course of our lives. You've made decisions like that. The kind which, until you look back many years later, you can't know for sure if you did right........ or wrong.
Just before we rose to begin our day, I had a thought.
"Joe! What about Dawg? We can't leave him!"
"Of course we can't leave him, we'll bring him with us!"
"How? You know he won't get in the car."
"We'll drug him if we have to. We'll get something from the vet. We can work on him. Of course, you realize we will have to sell the goats."
"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."
In other words, 'over my dead body', but I decided to leave that for another day.
