My Urban Chateau

My interest in chateaus tests my limitations, and tests my dreams. When I critically examine my desire to escape to Europe, I know it isn’t going to happen because I really don’t want it to happen. I love the image of faded elegance, the romance of the isolation and secrets found in attics and crevices. I love the idea of escape to the country, return to the village and baking bread in an unheated, unfitted kitchen.

I can bake my bread and eat it too.

My chateau is a 1950s bungalow. We heat with wood as long as we can in the season, and quite often I cook in candlelight, with mellow music casting a dreamy spell from my Google Mini. My sofa is circa 1930s, faded and worn, loved by cats, covered strategically by throw blankets. My furniture is old. Found in antique shops for a bargain, some made by my husband, others handed down a couple of generations.

I even have an old rocking chair that came over on the ship from England in the mid to late 19th century. I need to repair the caned back, I will. I believe that is my one link to the Old Country.

We live in our Cedar Cottage at the edge of a moderately sized city. We are neither too far West, in case of earthquakes, too far East in case of hurricanes, or too far North in case of long winters and bears. We feel fairly comfortable here with our vegetable gardens and wild flower gardens. The bees and foxes and squirrels keep us company.

When my husband asks me where I would go, I answer Portugal or Spain, or here or there. But really I don’t want to leave here to go there, I simply want to embrace myself with some essence of faded glory. I want to make rich stews on my stove with herbs from my garden. I want to curl up before a fire and realize that countless generations have been staring into the fire, just as I do.

My chateau would fit into the salon of a real chateau! But it is a work in progress. A much easier space to manage, and no grade 2 listings involved. I will continue to rescue the worn, the lovely in a time where the new trumps the old and the old ends up in the landfill. My tired sofa came close this autumn, until I gave my head a shake. The new sofa \I was considering was inferior. The foam, the filling, the fabric the structure.

I am learning to embrace the worn, the faded. The gas range that came with the house, which has the broiler on the bottom. The fridge which is too big, but was repaired by my husband with a computer fan. I am surrounded by the worn and the lined. The mirror is kind in soft light, but the screen while Facetiming my daughter is a little cruel.

The sofa and I are both elegant older beings. We have good bones. There are a few more good years left to us.

Shall I Begin Again?

I have been pondering my absent blogging world, after a three year silence. I wonder if I have words worth an audience, or whether my words should stay tucked away in my bullet journals and be recycled every year, as I have been doing.

I wouldn’t want family members to read of my middle aged angst when I die, or when I lose control over my privacy.

Since the pandemic I have been writing letters and making cards for my dear friend Randy, who I have known since I was seventeen and working my first full time job, at an art supply store in Toronto, before college. Randy was twenty-three and adopted me as a sidekick. He introduced me to falafels and I introduced him to eggnog. We have written through all the lockdowns, and I even made it to Toronto to see him last November.

I will go again soon.

So Randy has been my journal. He holds the timeline of my close-to-home day to day ramblings and worries and simple joys.

But I feel the need to express more than what I write to Randy.

I have also used Instagram as a journal. I can trail back over the years and I see our hikes, our gardens, our camps, our few gatherings and even the photos of clothes on the line give me joy. Satisfaction. See me, I am still here. I am still alive, maybe even vital.

Another old friend said that she was envious of my life, when she looked at my photos. Her life has been very taxing in recent years with parents dying, her husband is at the latter stages of MS. He is planning medical suicide this autumn. There were whispers maybe even in September.

I am thankful he has that choice.

We traveled north to see them in early August, and had a good visit. My friend is not sure if she will be disappointed if he changes his mind, because she is tired. Tired of living with MS. She is worried that she will die first – that her heart will burst, and what then will happen to him?

I have been posting less on Instagram. One post a month, and that is ok too.

My dear older sister Kathy lost her eldest granddaughter this past May, to cancer, and watching her family maneuver through all these levels of grief and anger and helplessness has been stark. I see her on Friday for a coffee visit. She carries on, they carry on. The little sister is now the only child. Her position altered.

But I am fine, we are pretty well. We keep on going to work, and laughing and finding things to feel passionate about.

Maybe I still have words.

Mid life invisibility or I feel ill.

Last September I found myself rather suddenly unemployed. After months of planning, my spouse [who I worked with] had found a new position, at a competitor, and I was promptly dismissed. Not so surprising, although ex-employer behaved poorly, and has been a bit of a prick, with threats of lawsuits and trying to lure husband into reacting, which he has not done.

This post is not about that situation, which we are still basking in the afterglow of freedom from this miserable narcissist, but about being mid life and breaking into a new type of work. After years in administration, I went for a barista position at a popular coffee establishment, and my first ever time working in the food industry.

I am the oldest there by at least 10 years, and find myself this winter, realizing how invisible I am as a middle aged person. I have always felt youthful, and am physically strong and quite fit. I do notice that I don’t multitask at the speed of sound like the younger ones in their 20s, but I don’t think I would ever have moved that quickly.

What I notice is the absence of curiosity towards me. When you meet new people, and find out what they are taking in school, or what they did on the weekend, or talk about partners or children, they are not as interested in finding out about me. Maybe I come across as too private? Not sure.

The last months of winter have worn me down, worry about daughter’s pregnancy, husband having hand surgery, my own annual cancer check in March, plus I have just come down with my third cold since February, after around 3 years not being ill. I am miserable, my house is covered in cat hair and dust, my 16 year old cat is hyper thyroid and beyond annoying. The two adult children living here are not seeing me either, and I wonder if it is something new, or did I create this cocoon eons ago?

Now that spring is here, I have a new manager at work. She is in her 40s, and the ceaseless chatter on the work WhatsApp has quieted to a degree. I have 5 shifts in a row, am I annoyed? Only because I am low energy. The trails are open, and we are eager to get back to our weekend hikes. There is good happening, I just feel worn down, and a little washed out.