sistering

Older homes often have floor or ceiling joists that have been damaged during the life of the structure. Sistering is nailing a new joist of the same size and length to the old one, or sandwiching with strengthening material on both sides.

Eve reminds me again. She always does. It's like one of those pop-up circus trailers and the small man with the hoofed legs did tricks with a ball like a seal and when you stepped through the backstage curtain Voldemort was waiting with a rat and somebody else's wand. Buddha whatever. Go build something and send me pictures.

We talk about body parts and heavy cream and blindness and how when you leave stuff in the car it turns homogeneously into something that smells like something that's been left in the car no matter what it was to begin with. We assign each other homework: reading and wines, gods and shoes. The phone bleeps. We are 5,043 kilometres apart. There is nothing like fresh sawdust. We are sistering.

+++

On the north shore the sea, stirred up through Fundy mud, is chocolate milk. The dunes are precious. STAY OFF says the note tacked up by the cabin's front door. Little lights mark worn paths. I pick up razor clams and lay them down again in a tidy messy pile. I drag my boot underwater over perfectly unending ripples of sand bar, rare in the rocky south. We park cars on sopping grass and blow inside with a wet gust to a chorus of hellos and hugs. We bring tinned olives; hard cider; sleeping bags; tempeh; cherries; garbage bags; slippers; fishermans' slicks; a pack of tarot.

"I'm still getting the hang of this," says Bon. She shuffles the cards. "It's the worst when everything lands upside-down and you can see right away it's a tough spread but you have to say something. Like You are going to be... learning some... lessons. Yeah! Lessons."

She tells me to think of a question. I do. She tells me to be careful how I word it because the universe is a hoof-legged trickster. I reword and reassert. I shuffle the cards—not well, but all I need to do is touch them, infusing them with doubt and guacamole. She arranges them on the table. Every card lands upside-down. We laugh for a while. Then we talk about the upside-down.

"You are blocked," she says, not so much with earnestness but because she knows, and the cards line it up. "That's all."

Like the Ghost of Christmas Future and Princess Buttercup's dream with the witch and Rufus telling Bill and Ted to pass the history exam and Marty McFly jumping on the hoverboard and grabbing the tailgate of a Jeep because in 2015, they still have Jeeps.

She is getting the hang of this.

+++

Fixing on stacks of 3/8-inch plywood and caulking and battens and deadlines. Friday, the night that Liam died, will be packed lunches and the schoolbus, exterior installation, a party supper for kids, an early night. Saturday morning (he was gone by then) will be three-to-a-bed. Kisses loves wishes, elbows to my head. Then buttermilk crepes with banana jam. Then the belt sander.

It takes a while to straighten without the aid of distraction or tantrum or close-at-hand metaphorical drug. I want to do it myself. I try different angles, buttressing fresh true wood against structural sag. I will whisper Grandma Joe's cheerio to the wind with a hammer in one hand and something blindingly creamy in the other. Breeze feels good. So does sweat. The creek rushes by and the grass is up to my knees in the forest, except for the new path worn through. The phone bleeps.

The hair-pulling of a necessary photo setup for the book, finally happening, almost ready to be drawn. Left it late. Wanted to keep either editing or sanding. Both are about the same. It takes a lot to stop and let go. You have to have an idea then move out of the way, into the right spot, and not mind the sight of all those mistakes.

Show me what you're up to. Your weekend, plain stuff, your face, or your three worst and three best things right this moment, like you're sardined onto that old couch on the Pictou shore and it's your turn.

spirits in the material world

Mommy.

(we are in the dark)

The kids at school say I have an imaginary friend. I tell them Liam is in all the leaves on all the trees and the sunshine and the grass and the fish. I tell them that if he was here he would be in my class and I would sit next to him and he would sit next to me.

You know what, Ben? Imaginary friends are just as important as real friends. If that's what they think Liam is, it's really alright. Even if you feel like he's more.

(he smiles) You know what else mommy?

Yes love.

I think we should thank Liam.

For what, sweetness?

(his whisper gets whisperier) For giving his birth to us.

... ... ... Oh yes, baby. We are lucky that we had him with us for a little while. It was sad too, because we all wanted him to be okay, but you know what he is, right now?

What?

He's okay. He's just not here.

I wish he was here.

Me too, love.

(we are quiet for a while)

Mommy?

Yes love.

When me and Liam came out of your belly, what were we wearing?

Little purple suits and bright red socks.

(he giggles) Did we match?

Of course!

Mommy?

Yes love.

What's an Eggo waffle?

Frozen.

What is moose poop called?

Moose poop.

(we are quiet for a while)

+++

He has everything he needs, already tapped into a memory and mysticism lost to grown-ups. He is my teacher. I'd never dare presume to train it out of him, this story, or take it upon myself to shape it, though it happens to fit. How is that? Does it steep, like a tea? Is is inherited, bred, overheard? Is it just as much in his air as shakti or holy ghosts or 99 names of god are in the air of others? His gospel is mine, but I'd like to think of it as conjured rather than coached. But who knows? I suppose I am coaching, if only to nudge him away from prescribed values and towards imagination.

That said, if he decided that Jesus Christ took his brother, I wouldn't mind. I'd ask him if Jesus Christ likes slowly toasted marshmallows or quick-blown burnt ones. Because lord knows I can't abide a deity hanging out with my kid who does that whole 'This Will Take Twenty Minutes Because It Is Ungodly To Light Food On Fire' thing.

+++

There are a hundred gods, a thousand. One for caterpillars crossing sidewalks; one for the daddy longlegs trapped in a bathtub puddle; one for every empty belly, tightrope walker, contracting uterus; one for every yellowfin tuna's gaping mouth; one for every screaming mackerel; one for every tin can.

From one angle, the gods fail every day. From another, the baby swallow's god tumbles alongside her from nest to ground and curls around her in the grass, dying with her, fulfilling everything.

+++

I only recently realized the thread that connects everything I have done since Liam and I don't mean to make it profound, because it was just a small insight, but I appreciated it. It was on the radio. Not so much in what I said but it ran through my head then, the suggestion: that I have needed there to be beauty in every horror, in every bad deed, in every nightmare, in every villain, in every unbearable failure. Writing pulls it out. The protein in a slug jam sandwich. The boy in the incubator, his brain swelling beyond repair. He'd just had his first bath, clean for the first and last time in his life. The inside of me washed away along with adhesive, morphine, old blood, sweat, antiseptic. He was fresh and soft and he slept, and he was doomed, and so was I, and it was beautiful.

Perhaps I've written this before, or bits of it, but it's here again like this, so I write it down. Ben is old enough now to want to put Liam in a proper place, and he's actively carrying him, wondering, talking—to kids at school, to teachers and parents, in the middle of a hot dog, on the trampoline. I watch him story-tell.

Has something ever seemed that way for you—perfect in peril? Little gifts when you were afraid, respites in the middle of a trial? It doesn't have to be death. Just any shock and change, and then something small and warm and clean. Can you tell me about it?

the world on a string

Like everything else, hair grows faster in the spring. From the nape down it's clumps of knotted clumpishness but it still pushes out, roots oblivious to ends, blindly longer, longer, gnarlier. The untended laundry does the same. A patch of shearling has been hanging off the edge of that rocking chair for a month or two. It's a thing now. It wants to be noticed like a teddy bear left upside-down, all the blood running to its head, poor thing, but I haven't been straightening anything. I am the barest minimum, clean clothes picked out of a clean-enough pile, supper at 9, bedtime when the sun comes up. Last week, when it was time to finish—really finish—I wrote from 10 AM until 4:30 AM. The final edit of 60,000 words in 18 hours, start to finish, without a blink. I lay there smiling in the dark when it was done. I couldn't sleep. When you're that happy, you can't possibly. Gnarly and happy. So much.

All kinds of things try to catch up with me. Chronic and self-inflicted lack of rest, water, movement. The taxes and the cream cheese. The standard-issue irony and self-doubt that comes with owning the emotional, mental, physical, ethical, nutritional, and imaginational development of two human beings, so much a given that it's not even worth exploring. It just is.

But I finished. I finished!

The manuscript for the sequel will be on its way to Sydney. He will read and start sketching. We will meet somewhere downtown to talk about the ship, the pipelines, the swede. Missy is fourteen now. The bone in her wrist juts out from where it got crunched, tangled, and Eric finds himself looking at it. He wonders if she'll be okay. Missy, god, Missy. She has waited so long.

I can't tell you about what happens when Sydney takes over. He gives everything real-live edges. I don't have words for it other than to say Christmas morning, top of the stairs.

+++

Ben had his sixth birthday. Tickle-hands.

+++

Anniversary bookends: his twin. Born May 5, died June 15. My mom and her friends make quilts for the NICU and drop them off in stacks of dozens. I contemplate going again to canoes and overhanging leaves. Or there's an ashram in Quebec that does yoga camps where you go and you're just silent, and you spend days breathing. Or there's always work and the need to hustle for it. I wonder if sticking to that hustle is the thing to do. Or write something. Burn something. Make something. Put something into the creek. Bake a tiny cake and chuck it as far as I can into the bay after I say something. It gets increasingly affected. A hallmark card with a bunch of puppies in a basket? A little prayer written in gold sharpie? God. I know. But what to do? How to mother an invisible child, when it comes down to it, long after all the animates and inanimates have stopped smoldering whenever I close my eyes? I love him like he lives. If I don't paddle to the place where we left his ashes, am I standing him up?

The teenaged phantom just rolled his eyes. Ugh, mom.

It's what a mother does. We worry. Phantom kiss.

+++ 

There's an ashram in my backyard where you go and you're just silent, and you spend days breathing. I'm turning the crooked old shed into a studio. I gutted it and fell in love with crowbars. The sound a four-inch nail makes when I force it out, the way the wood exhales and stretches. A hammer might be the best tribute when you're not much for talking. Sweat and headphones and big bangs. Sawdust over ashes. I could try. I could line up all the wood, see if my dad's free to show me how to glaze old windowpanes. Imagine what else I could finish, smiling in the dark.

Maybe, like his brother, he can help.

education

Mommy, how does the baby get into the mommy's belly?

You know how you plant a seed and then you put fertilizer onto it to make the soil nice and happy so the seed will grow?

No.

Well that's what you do.

...

...

But how does a baby get into the mommy's belly?

The mommy has the seed and the daddy has the fertilizer.

...

...

...and the daddy puts fertilizer...

...into the mommy's dirt?

Yes! And then—who makes magic?

MOTHER NATURE!

Yes! Mother Nature does her little zippity zap—the seed only grows sometimes—only if she does her magic—and if she does, then a baby grows in the mommy's dirt! And then the mommy gets big—(I mime)—and BIGGER—(arms outstretched)—and BIGGER!—and then she goes UUUUNNGH!—(I squat)—and UUUURRRRGGGH!—(he giggles)—and OOOWWWWW—(he giggles again)—and the baby goes POP! and squiggles out of the mommy's yoni!—(he claps)—and then the baby says WAAAAAAGGGGH! and he drinks the mommy's boobie milk!—(he claps again)—and then he DRIVES HER CRAZY WHEN HE LEAVES A TOASTED MARSHMALLOW ON THE COUCH AND HIS MOMMY SITS ON IT AND GETS A STICKY BUTT!—(he giggles)

I was in a incu-beeter.

That's right. Sometimes mommies and babies need help. The doctors put me to sleep and they cut right into my belly quick-quick and I didn't feel a thing! And they lifted you out! And you were so little! You were the littlest! So they put you in the incubator and they baked you like a cookie until you were big enough to come home and eat toasted marshmallows.

I was in your belly with Liam.

Yes sweetness, you were. You told him all your secrets and he told you all his secrets.

Did we hold hands?

You did. You used to suck on each others' fingers! Mmmm mmm. Fingers!

(he giggles) He sucked on my fingers! Silly Lee-am! (he giggles again)

He did! And you squished your hands all over his face and put your nose right up to his nose and you were all whispery and sleepy together like mother nature's magic.

I am a big boy now.

Yes, baby, you are.

Lee-am isn't a big boy.

No, love, he's not.

What is Lee-am?

He is magic. And so are you.

(he smiles)

It's almost May, that's all. Thoughtful, grateful, scars that don't vanish. Scars I wouldn't want to vanish. Taxes and debt and building and austerity measures. Less wine. More frozen peas. My father, helping. My mother dropping off yet another load of preemie quilts to the NICU for the baking, rising, sweetening babies. My family taking shape, overlapping circles, and the boys, always the boys. We lie around after the alarm, one on either side because mommy's bed is the fleshiest when feet are cold, and we make jokes about how they have to go to school so they can make a million trillion dollars and then give me all their money when I'm an old lady, and they howl, and I squeeze their butts, and they laugh and call me THE WORST MOMMY EVER and Evan's learned how to give hickeys on cheeks and I love them so much.