I blame my cousin Michelle for starting me down this path. She gave me the Tolkein trilogy during a summer vacation on Vancouver Island with my Grandparents. The book caught my imagination and gave me such a sense of urgency in devouring every page that I was nearly hospitalized with constipation. I locked myself away within the camper without food or water and only came out when they threatened to take the books away. What was it that resonated so deeply within? I don't know if it was the rich, luminous purity of the elves or the wholesome simplicity of Shire living..... maybe the two combined that created such a yearning for a life away from the stink, noise and jaded growl of city life. I lived with my Mom in Surrey B.C when I read the trilogy. She was a realtor who was absent more than present. I'd only been back with her a couple years, returning from up north in B.C.with my Dad, when I made the trip to the Island. I'd believed that coming back to her meant my childish dream of a home maker mother and closely bonded siblings would fill in my missing pieces. It was beyond the opposite of my imagined family life and I retreated into fantasy to cope with my emotional isolation. What I discovered in reading the Lord of the Rings was that I still fervently believed that such loyalty, camaraderie and beauty within existed regardless of the reality I lived. I wanted it badly. It made sense to me where my current truth didn't. Please understand, I don't blame my Mom or Dad. They were a product of their experiences and loved me the best way they knew how. The books gave me a taste or an image that endured like a template for how I wanted to exist some day, somehow.
I have to pause here and giggle a bit on behalf of my husband who is that loyal, gentle honourable soul standing beside me as I plot how to attain middle earth in Saskatchewan. Really, poor sweet guy.... God bless his patient heart. He is my Sam in so many ways.
Anyhow, how does this feed to the present? I have become consumed with living small, sustainable, frugal and simplified (with 6 pugs). Yes I want the round doors and impressive hobbit like pantry but that is whimsy and not integral to my future happiness. No. Time and how we spend it has become my burning focal point. My husband is 61 and I am 47. The days of my life feel like fine sand slipping through my fingers and I want MORE. I want more time with my husband, my daughters, my comical pugs....more time pursuing what I love to do rather than what I have to do to make those frayed financial ends meet every month. Days go by where I don't even look at the sky or remember seeing the stars. As a child my eyes were always looking up, so awed by the beauty of the sky and the vastness of nights panorama. Now I trudge around from task to task, my eyes on the ground in front of me. The hours of the day feel heavy and relief is brief, just a few hours of rambling attempts to entertain myself before I give over to the need to sleep.The cycle is like a well worn rut my feet fall into easily holding me without any conscious thought to my path.
So what do I want then? To give a concrete definitive answer... well, I'm not there yet. I know I want to live consciously and intentionally. I want to get to know my husband so much better than I do and have the time to enjoy a mind rousing conversation or quiet companionship with no pressing time table. I want to create and learn and somehow provide a living that is enough to meet our needs, from what we can produce at home if possible. Since discovering the tiny house movement that same sense of hunger and urgent need to devour anything that has to do with furthering my knowledge about it tells me it's part of the same animal, the same organic holistic approach to living that feels like truth to me. We did the accumulation phase. I'm a master at buying "stuff" to fill our spaces. New techno-crap held a prominent place of honour in my priorities. Every Christmas my loved ones got new lap tops, ipads, touch screen gizmos and games to simulate real life. The more I gave them the less time we spent together ....the more segregated and totally out of touch we became. I'm ashamed to say I wasted two years of my life on Sims 3 games and can remember the characters I developed but have little recollection of my daughters school year or major events during that time. I never want to lose touch with what's real and truly important like that again. Living in the prestigious home or having a newer vehicle didn't make me happy, just frustrated with the financial responsibilities each new hallmark purchase brought with it. You know, the happiest we ever were together, Garry and I , was in a little 2 room cabin in the Yukon. It couldn't have been more than 300 sq. ft. maximum. We grew a garden in our little patch of sunlit yard, experimented with dyeing our clothes to renew them, and then our sheets, pillows, long-johns and socks.... anything we could find to dye. I sewed him pants and a vest for work. Our tiny home was warmed by an ancient drip oil heater that kept us cozy for cheap in -47 degrees that winter. We didn't have any debts and spent our money on great food and getting out around town together. We made love and dreamed, drank home made wine and and listened to great music all winter and the next spring/summer. We met for coffee almost every lunch hour to talk and share time together. I can't express adequately how I grieve the passing of those carefree days. We lost something so joyous when we traded away our freedom for house titles and all the other "things" we are led to believe we need. I just want to trim the fat down to what's necessary and live planted in here and now with the people I wouldn't want to live without. This is my blog about getting there, the journey to my inner hobbit lass and creating a shire of our own here on the Canadian prairies.
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