RISKS

1996 won for the biggest

In a recent writing workshop, I offered a prompt to write about risk. I borrowed the idea from Suzanne Roberts Substack, 52 Writing Prompts

We began by listing risks that either we or our character had taken. Then we chose the one with the most energy and wrote to that in the present tense. Personally, I had a long list, but I chose the one that had the most at stake.

Here goes:

I’m pregnant. I’m forty-one and dealing with a slow-moving (sometimes stalled) cancer, supporting an unemployed husband and his two children, aged seven and nine. It’s early spring, and the Toronto house I rent has no room for a crib.

For several years, I’ve been living in the city, but have always been a country girl at heart. Whenever I make a suggestion, my husband invariably says, “Sure.” He’s very agreeable. So when I say, “Let’s buy a house,” that’s exactly what he says. He’s from a reserve two hours north of the city, so logically, I think (we think), he should find work in his home reserve.

We begin our search, driving for hours to look at houses. He drives so I can put my swollen feet up on the dash. We stop often, whenever there’s a promise of a toilet, and sometimes when there’s a ditch with flora. Our agent shows us a house within our imaginary budget (imaginary, since I will soon be caring for an infant, carrying a mortgage, and all my massage clients will be hours away) that our children adore because it features a tree house. Inside, massive fish tanks with fish the size of my arm line the living room walls. Upstairs, the two bedrooms have been created by putting a piece of plywood through the centre of the attic. Downstairs, I open the door to the basement to find a river flowing through it. Literally. The water comes halfway up the stairs, and the water is indeed moving. We put an offer on another house, close to the lake. It is fully furnished, save for the master bedroom. The wife took that, apparently. He doesn’t accept our lowball offer and removes his house from the market.

I see an ad in a real estate flyer for a house on a river, less than half an hour from the reserve, and about half an hour to the closest town. I will give birth in two months. The river on this property flows by the house. Each time we view it, the sun shimmers on its lush green grasses. A beaver slides by, a welcome in its shiny dark eye.

I borrow the down payment from a close friend, and she writes a letter to the bank saying the money is repayment of a loan. Because any money I might have saved in the last three years has gone to caring for my new family and all the various alternative cancer treatments.

I am eight months pregnant when we pack up and move with the help of ten wonderful humans and a U-Haul truck. We are ecstatic with our new home. It’s August, and the children swim in the cool green waters that mirror the lush willow, maples, and clouds.

August 20, 1996. I turn forty-two, and a week later, my son arrives after forty-eight hours of labour.

We have no income. None. For three years, my husband and I made crafts - medicine wheels, chokers, hair ties, etc. and travelled to pow wows every weekend where we had a booth. Once the baby arrived, these trips were no longer viable. He doesn’t get a position at his home reserve. There’s lots of room on the credit cards, so don’t worry, he says while rolling cigarettes and languishing by the river. The baby cries and cries and never sleeps. And the house, we discover, has been put together with finishing nails. Knobs come off in my hands.

When my baby is two months old, I pump my breasts and bring him to Toronto, where I leave him in a daycare. While I have my hands on clients, releasing their muscles, soothing their bodies, my vision is filled only with him, my baby, and I ache.

I just ache.

It’s 1998. My husband’s brother gives us an 18-foot teepee. One of the things I admire most about my husband is the way he gives traditional teachings. When we were on the pow wow trail, he’d hold up one of his medicine wheels and share wisdom from the four directions. He knows legends and drum teachings, so I think, why not host retreats here on our beautiful land? That would give you a “job.” Sure, he says.

I take out an ad in Vitality Magazine, and my brother helps me create a website. The phone begins to ring, and my husband listens carefully as I outline our program to potential guests.

Our day-long program expands into weekend retreats, featuring a meditative drum journey, medicine wheel teachings, and a sweat lodge ceremony. We host guests from as far away as Wisconsin. I purchase more teepees – three 18-foot ones for three guests each to sleep, and one 32-foot community teepee for the teachings and evening social time.

I book guests, buy futons and blankets, order wood, make menu plans, shop for food, and cook for as many as twelve guests at a time. That’s when I’m not giving massage sessions in Orillia, Barrie, and Toronto.

Our guests stand by the river to marvel at the beauty of our home. “You must love it here,” they say. I’m sure I do, but I’m a little busy peeling potatoes.

It’s only in June of 2002, when I’ve finally (after 11 years) relented and agreed to a hysterectomy, that I can stand by the river and drink in the absolute loveliness of this place. For six weeks, I’m not allowed to work, so after almost six years, I am finally at home.

It all turned out, as they say. Nothing in the way my cock-eyed vision imagined. But nearly thirty years later, through major bumps and stumbles, minor triumphs and major losses, I can say my regrets are few.

My father would say that I tend to go off half-cocked, and he might have been right, but by some miracles of fate, whatever I shoot seems to land relatively close to the mark.

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I would love to read about some risks you’ve taken and their results and/or consequences.