Spring

​Spring started peacefully.  Maybe it will be easier this year, I thought to myself.  Barely had the thought crossed my mind and it started.  First the bees, wave after wave.  Within the joy a frantic urgency to learn emerges, as nature waits for no one.

Then the birds.  A bird, a clutch, a happy little family.  Then another bird, then another.  I was good with four, my wishes answered.  Then another, and another, and another…  I was already tired with the bees…

As the hard work gets harder, I find myself wondering what the hell I am doing, why, what for?  Summer had arrived at some point, I must have missed it, but here I am working in the heat, fencing a new paddock, making new coop.  It may not accommodate them all, it occurs to me, and the deluge of spring expansion persists.

Busy, but good, I tell myself.  I’m getting what I wanted.  Where are those kids, why are they not helping?!  Summer holidays are always exhausting.  Xmas/NY were a write off.  What with the crazy busy time and the relentless storms, leaving us at intervals with no power, phone lines, and internet - with an event every so many days, it would seem, we had no time or means to make a celebration out of it.  We made it up to them eventually -we had to, of course.

And then the duck -that bloody duck!
‘No, Adam, do not bring home any Yabbies!  No more pets!’
‘But mom, I want to put it in the fish tank’.
‘NO -catch and release only!’.
Off he goes with his chorizo.  One slice after the other and he is catching many, releasing in discontent.
‘Mom, there is a duck, he is stealing all my chorizos.  He is tame, not a native.  His wings are clipped -the fox will get him if we don’t save him.  We need to bring him home!’ 
By the time we got a call back from his designated new home, three hours later, everyone fell in love with Marcus Chorizo.  A hungry, tired, lost, adorable duck.  That bloody duck!  A week or so later it turns out he is riddled with parasites.  Did we quarantine him?  Of course not!  Now all my chickens are in danger, and I have to figure out how to remove hundreds of litres of infected water from our newly fenced paddock, safely.  That bloody duck...

Eventually things do get too much.  A couple of weeks later I am still cleaning the mess, treating all my chickens for ailments they do not have ‘as a precautionary measure’.  With my allergies I was hungry before I had to slap a 10-day withholding on my eggs.

Ducky (Marcus Chorizo) ended up in his designated new home after all, he used up too much water.  He went to live in an orchard with a great big pool and the company of a group of alpacas, healthy and happy.  I was left with the parasites…  That’s one way to look at it, I thought to myself.  On the other hand, he needed to be found, he needed to be helped, and the problems we dealt with were saved from the next person.  It wasn’t for nothing.  Hmm…

Still cleaning the mess.  Still applying some medication repeats to birds who know when something tastes foul and refuse to drink their medicated water.  And the branches start falling.  Falling on the ground, falling on saplings we have planted severing stems in half.  Falling on fences -an opportunity to test what we have learned about fencing this season -someone will have to fix the damage.

A few months ago, I had started drinking.  Not much, a glass of red here, a glass there.  The occasional beer on a hot day.  Gradually I was drinking more.  Not too much, never drunk.  But more often, sometimes two.  I told Ben two/three weeks ago I am becoming the girl without a name (yeah, we’ve been watching Game of Thrones).  Day by day, event by event, I am stripped of who I think I am.  Blow by blow I get up again and again.  The last couple incidents I found myself wondering if I was being tested, or is life trying to tell me I am on the wrong path?  In this new home of ours things don’t happen in threes, when it comes, it’s a deluge of events, wave upon wave of happenings, their nature probably best defined in our own minds eye.
I woke up yesterday furious.
‘I can’t take it anymore’ -I lose my temper at my kids, who of course are not to blame. 
‘I can’t remember the last day I went without a drink.  I have no way to de-stress, and you don’t help the situation much with your bad crappy attitude and refusal to help’.
‘And Adam, you and your bloody duck!’
Yes, well…  I won’t be the first mother to blame her kids unfairly -I hope.
As I ranted and raved about my ‘no more alcohol and screw all this stress’ approach to life it occurred to me I must give up.  Give up trying.  No more keeping things together.  No more failing to do so.  I am stripped bare, I am naked, tired, alone.  I no longer care.  It doesn’t matter.  It is not for me to keep getting up again and again.  I don’t have to face any blow.  I owe no one anything, need no excuses.  I don’t have to be anything.  I don’t have to do anything.  I am.

​A few alcohol-free days later I was feeling strong.  (Don’t worry, I have had a glass since…)  At the risk of stating the obvious I realised something about addictions:
We feel as if we are too weak to go on without them.  But in truth they serve only one purpose:
They give us endurance for self-deception.  Deception in service of others.  ‘Strength’ to endure that which enslaves us.  Without them our voice will rise in defiance, rejecting that which erodes us.  Without them, if only we are willing, we emerge strong.

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