Chapter 18
I miss him. But I don’t. He took up so much space. Now I have the space back. I know what I need to do with it but I’m not sure where to start.
He said he would come back around to check on us. I admitted that I wouldn’t object to it but I’m wondering if I should have. Am I encouraging something that isn’t there? Should I even want something to be there? God help me but I can’t stand the idea of being a tease. I also can’t stand the idea that I might be jumping from the frying pan into the fire so to speak and all because I’m lonely. Good Lord, I sound pathetic.
If this was before I would never be in this situation. There would be too many safeguards in place. Robert would probably be in my face as well … or at least other people would keep Robert in my face. I should have Robert in my face instead of just moving on like nothing happened. Maybe now with Don gone I’ll start to accept what is going on and feel the hurt and betrayal that I should have been experiencing. Not that I want to hurt. But I don’t want to feel this … this void where my feelings used to be either. I am not some Needy Nelly. I think I’ve proven that. I’ve made my own way since they all left me. But there’s other types of needs. Do I allow myself to feel them? Do I go about trying to fill them if I do start feeling them?
I spent months trying to hold the hurt and betrayal at bay, to try and hold things together thinking that Robert would come back and we’d have to figure out how to move on. And now on one man’s word I’ve just tossed Robert over, done my grieving, and have left him behind. What kind of woman does that make me?! I know it sounds insane to trust Don, but he’s never proven himself untrustworthy and he has certainly had the opportunity.
Oh for Heaven’s sake, put the brakes on it Ettie. Put the brakes on hard. This isn’t the pioneer days where widows had to bury a husband one day and on the next get remarried because they needed a protector. I don’t need a protector. I am the protector … for Evie, for the farm and all its denizens.
Maybe it is just libido. I like (liked?) being married … really, really enjoyed it as a matter of fact. Maybe I’m scared I’ll never have that again. God knows I can never trust Robert again even if he were to walk up the road and come home full of repentance. This isn’t his home, and it hasn’t been for nearly seven months. He made his choice. I didn’t realize he had made a choice but then again, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised … but I am. I still am. I suppose I need to focus on working through that confusion and surprise before I try to work up to anything else.
But right now, what I need to focus on is planning the spring garden and seeing what I can get in via forage until the garden starts producing. Hopefully things won’t be too bad. If current weather is any indication, we are going back to normal weather patterns. It is almost warm during the day as it is getting into the mid-50s. Still too cool at night to plant however as it gets cold enough that I could risk a frost and kill the seeds before they even germinate. But I’m already seeing green.
Onion grass. It is popping up all over the place. It is only big enough to snip the tops from but soon enough there will be bulbs and I’ll have wild onion to cook with … and I plan on seeing if I can preserve them as well. There’s other things as well. In sunny places in the front lawn I see miniature bittercress greens. Not big enough to do anything with but they will be soon.
I’ve already seen two common mushrooms despite how cold it was just a couple of weeks back. I think it was all the dampness we had. The first is turkey tail mushroom. Gran Gran used to make a brown dye from it but one time she used them to make a medicinal tincture for a friend that was suffering from cancer. I have no memory of whether it helped or not, but I remember Daddy giving me a firm lecture on not helping myself to any of my grandmother’s home remedies.
The other mushroom is one Momma called “chaga.” You talk about something that looks nasty. And it doesn’t even look like a mushroom if you want to know the truth … just like fungus, a gross fungus. It is supposed to be some kind of superfood or whatever. It was popular in the all-natural realm that our clinic sometimes ran into when trying to find out what prescriptions a patient was on. Some people just didn’t think to tell us they were on herbal or natural supplements; they didn’t view them as real medicines. And sometimes bad things resulted. So I’m not doing anything with either fungus because I don’t know enough about them and frankly I don’t need them. It will be April before I see any other edible mushrooms starting with the morel and by then I’m sure I will be more than ready for them to pop up.
I suppose I’ll go back to using work to get myself through the day. Or maybe all I’ll have time for is chasing Evie. Now that she is completely mobile she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the sling. At least as it rides across my back. I have to fool her a bit and turn the sling so that she is riding my hip. Not the easiest position for me to get any work done but I can’t leave her in the house alone and I can’t let her run loose in the forest. I tried to let her walk on her own but that was a mistake and a half as she kept falling or getting distracted, both of which slowed me down to the point of not accomplishing a single thing. Hunting is going to be fun … not. But I’m not going to worry about that right now as we are really stocked up and you don’t want to do much hunting in the Spring time to begin with or you will kill off the breeding stock. The animals aren’t in the best condition either … scrawny after using all their winter fat.
The other major task I need to keep working on daily is wood. Gathering it and chopping it because it goes out faster than I can bring it in. I’ve barely got a cord of fully seasoned wood left. Not good. I took a walk around the property today after Don left and I was right, a bunch of branches and limbs are down. A few trees came down as well but they are on the Carmichael property, not mine. It will mean a longer distance to haul the wood back but that is still better than denuding my land. I wonder how they did it in the old days? Did they simply clear cut the land to feed their stoves and fireplaces? Daddy would have known the answer to that question, I wonder why I never asked him.
I should write the questions down so that when I have the time I can try and look the answers up. Mr. Mason might know about the wood question but I’m not hiking all that way just for that. I wonder how they are doing and whether Kevie got over his cold before the bad weather set it. I wonder if they are going to have swap meets again and if so how on earth I would find out. I wonder if there have been any new developments with the war. I wonder a lot of things but don’t really have any way to find the answers, at least not right now.
I guess I am just delaying the inevitable. I need to check the house one more time and then go to bed. It feels strange sleeping in the big bed, maybe I will just stick with the trundle. I haven’t been able to do the sheets yet anyway. Clean sheets, clean start, clean mind. Last thing I need is more reason to dream.