RETURN TO THE GULAG... OR DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

From This....

I had the strangest dream.  I dreamt Husband and I were living in a village in Somerset in a pink cottage.  Sheep roamed the field next to us, and in the spring lambs bounced across it like puffy ping pong balls.  Peacocks called at the backdoor for mealworms before bedtime.  The countryside was surreally green.  We knew lovely people and went to parties lit with fairy lights.  We walked for miles, learning the landscape.  But then I woke up somewhere else entirely. 

... And This

This new place is grey and bleak and in the throes of a mostly snowless winter.  The landscape is brown and the trees barren.  

To This....

And I am in a house, a very familiar house, where I had an unpleasant childhood.  And lo and behold the architect of that unpleasantness, Cranky Pensioner, is in a room in the house, wizened and ancient, and while not entirely his old self, there are definite glimmers of his irritable stubborness.  Welcome to this new reality.  While it is a temporary reality, I must still remind myself, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important.  I think I smell a life lesson.  

... And This.

Sister has been here for great chunks of time since our mother died, and now Husband and I are performing our tour of duty.  Returning to your childhood home for a length of time is a fraught situation... on many levels, and apparently a very popular past-time. Just Google 'dysfunctional family films' and watch as relations return to the fold, and explode.

Anyway, rather than dwell on the fraughtness, better to dwell on the absurdity. Husband and I went from lurid greenness to bleak grey; from the countryside to a suburban sprawl, from BBC I-Player to TV-Ontario, from available and affordable organic everything... to the opposite of that, from peacocks to feral cats, from umbrellas to mittens, from living on a country road busy with tractor traffic where we had some wonderful neighbours, to living on a suburban street full of commuters where we know virtually no one. Quite an adjustment. 

Farewell

The Whitaker grass-
hopper
Says Farewell to the
Pink Cottage

Cranky Pensioner remains Cranky, even as he lurches towards ninety-two.  You can take the boy out of the war, but you cannot take the war out of the boy, especially when the boy was fifteen when Nazis occupied his home town, and so you end up with someone whose world view is dictated by fears from the past; a life defined by war.  When Russia recently nibbled away at the Ukraine CP was beside himself with joy at the prospect of military conflict.  War is his comfort food.  It's how he lives every day of his life... how he always lived every day of his life.  Each new twenty-four hour period lies before him like a minefield to be navigated.  Every fluffy cloud has a black lining, but much to his surprise our arrival has revealed a silver lining to CP, something entirely unexpected.

The Whitaker Grass-
hopper meets snow.

Cranky Pensioner has fallen in love... with Husband.  Husband is the son he never had, another male presence in the household where formerly he was the sole man among three women.  CP has a buddy.  Someone he can watch soccer games with.  As a dyed in the wool misogynist he now has someone whose advice he can actually seek and take, though this is rare since CP will be the first one to tell you he knows everything.... EVERYTHING.  

CP has turned into Stanley Kowalkski bellowing for Stella.  He wanders around the house shouting Husband's name; wanting to share things like his inexplicable hatred for Lionel Messi, his utter contempt for men with beards, (even when he himself has not shaved for a week and is sporting one), his undying devotion to Roger Federer, his love for kittens, his belief that raccoons are pointless, and his befuddlement on learning through commercials that women shave their legs and underarms, though I am certain he was in possession of this information as a younger man.

Patient Chilled
Husband

Patient Husband has heard the same war and work stories so many times that I can see his lips moving while CP tells them.  Since Husband is tall, and CP has shrunk, they make an unlikely duo.  The Goliath and the Gnome.  Still, it makes CP happy to have Husband around.  Just the other day they were out together shoveling the dusting of snow that graced the ground for mere moments. Husband plows the snow like a madman leaving the edges for CP to clean up.  

Coping Mechanism
One

Husband is trying to finish something he's working on, but CP follows him like a persistent puppy, making work difficult.  Now Husband has to hide to work... which isn't too difficult with CP's flagging vision. The other day Husband lay motionless on the bed and CP mistook him for discarded clothes.  In order to complete his project Husband may have to remove himself from the house entirely, perhaps take himself to the local library.  Such are the pitfalls of popularity.

Coping MechanismTwo
Back to School 

Husband and I are staying within walking distance of our old high school... we went to the same high school at the same time, but never knew one another.  We go to the same library we went to as kids.  I haven't lived in this city for thirty years and it is weird to be here.  Husband and I are two Alices fallen down the rabbit hole, here to care for the Mad Hatter.  We miss the Pink Cottage, and we will return to Somerset.  

 

The Silver Lining;
a Relatively
Snowless Winter.

As I see it, the best way to deal with this new strange chapter is to embrace it as yet another interesting and educational left turn on the peculiar road that is life. Wish us luck.