Capacity to Process the Vastness of it All
Next Thursday will 6 months since the tornado hit us.
Half a year!
I was speaking with someone last week who put it beautifully. He said, "For all of us life goes on, but for you, you're still living it."
Exactly. Even though work is progressing, it's almost like being in a life warp more than a time warp.
Sometimes, when I see someone in the neighbourhood where we're currently living, they're surprised we're shopping so far away from our home and when I tell them we're in temporary housing due to the tornado, they're taken aback because it's so long ago and how could we possibly still be out of our home? Others immediately remark at how horrible contractors are and how they "take their sweet time". Well ours does not fit that category. They are working diligently to get us back in. The outside work will happen once the snow is gone but at least at a point where we can move in and live there. I've been watching the tile man Remi scrutinize every single tile and if it doesn't pass muster, redo it. The carpenter Jean and the rest of the team take care in every square inch they work on so it's done with care and expertise. It's not their fault that floors turn out to be broken and have to be replaced and, as it's an older home, they no longer make some of the materials to replace them which cause issues as well.
We plow through it all. Trying to expedite the work, and choose materials that might work and blend with what we have. It is so much easier to build a new home than restore a broken one. There are decisions to be made, sometimes daily...no...often daily.
On the train coming back from out of town, having time to process it all, I realized that we have limited capacity to deal with ongoing stressors without becoming numb to it all or, the other side of the coin, super emotional. It's a roller coaster. When we feel as if we're almost there, something happens to stall our moving back. The bottom line is, I'm waiting for it to feel like our home again.
This morning it occurred to me that we moved there because of the trees and it doesn't feel like home because they're gone. I wrote about that a few times years ago in Scent Triggered Memories. A few days ago in this never ending winter, as I watched the snow pelting the train on the way to Montreal, it also hit me that the smells weren't there this year. The scent of the pines in the snow; the muffled sounds and how the trees protected the area around the house from huge snow piles which we have now. It will only feel like home again once we plant some trees. Where we had a cocoon of green and quiet, the property is bared for all to see. My new mantra isn't one day at a time, it's one tree at a time.
"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. ” ― Kahlil Gebran
It's time for winter to be gone and for us to start 'writing'.
Half a year!
I was speaking with someone last week who put it beautifully. He said, "For all of us life goes on, but for you, you're still living it."
Exactly. Even though work is progressing, it's almost like being in a life warp more than a time warp.
Sometimes, when I see someone in the neighbourhood where we're currently living, they're surprised we're shopping so far away from our home and when I tell them we're in temporary housing due to the tornado, they're taken aback because it's so long ago and how could we possibly still be out of our home? Others immediately remark at how horrible contractors are and how they "take their sweet time". Well ours does not fit that category. They are working diligently to get us back in. The outside work will happen once the snow is gone but at least at a point where we can move in and live there. I've been watching the tile man Remi scrutinize every single tile and if it doesn't pass muster, redo it. The carpenter Jean and the rest of the team take care in every square inch they work on so it's done with care and expertise. It's not their fault that floors turn out to be broken and have to be replaced and, as it's an older home, they no longer make some of the materials to replace them which cause issues as well.
We plow through it all. Trying to expedite the work, and choose materials that might work and blend with what we have. It is so much easier to build a new home than restore a broken one. There are decisions to be made, sometimes daily...no...often daily.
On the train coming back from out of town, having time to process it all, I realized that we have limited capacity to deal with ongoing stressors without becoming numb to it all or, the other side of the coin, super emotional. It's a roller coaster. When we feel as if we're almost there, something happens to stall our moving back. The bottom line is, I'm waiting for it to feel like our home again.
This morning it occurred to me that we moved there because of the trees and it doesn't feel like home because they're gone. I wrote about that a few times years ago in Scent Triggered Memories. A few days ago in this never ending winter, as I watched the snow pelting the train on the way to Montreal, it also hit me that the smells weren't there this year. The scent of the pines in the snow; the muffled sounds and how the trees protected the area around the house from huge snow piles which we have now. It will only feel like home again once we plant some trees. Where we had a cocoon of green and quiet, the property is bared for all to see. My new mantra isn't one day at a time, it's one tree at a time.
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| Back property before the tornado |
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| Exact view after the tornado |
"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. ” ― Kahlil Gebran
It's time for winter to be gone and for us to start 'writing'.
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