Hummingbird Dreams

What happens when we stop taking risks?  Having adventures?  I believe we start to get old, at least in our minds.  We start to become fearful of change, we become afraid to live.  Maybe we start to feel like we don’t have much to offer anymore.  Whatever it is, Marco and I are not ready financially or emotionally to settle into retirement in our mid-fifties.  Some are, and I am not judging.  It’s just not for us.

Life has thrown us a few curves this past couple of years.  I guess that is true of most of us.  Marco lost his job as a Scientist with the National Research Council  in March of 2014, with a year and a half ‘leave without pay’ granted so that he could retire without penalty at age 55.  He wasn’t ready, but as the Harper Government ravaged Canada, he was just one of many to experience the fallout.   A couple of weeks ago, Marco turned 55 and so began his forced retirement from a career that he loved and excelled at.  Luckily, I have a good job that I’m content with, so we managed our year and a half without his income with minimal trouble. Last week, Marco became a Canadian citizen and we celebrated our 25th anniversary.  We have two great kids, now adults, who are adventurous and creative, Casimir is a musician, Marieke an art historian.  Life is good.  But is this it?  Do we just settle in, enjoy camping and read some good books for the next 30 years?  Travel if we can save some money?  Some day…just not yet.

Change is about to happen and I’ve decided to blog about it.  Yes, blog.  That’s a new thing for me, I didn’t grow up with this vehicle of expression – I’ve embraced Facebook, but I don’t want to bombard everyone on my ‘friend’ list with my deepest thoughts about the adventure we are embarking on.    So, I decided on this format – read it if you like, when you like.  No pressure.  For me, it will be a way to get through the next 24 months and put my thoughts to words with the distance that comes from telling a story.  I’m afraid that if I don’t write about things, my thoughts will run lonely and unchecked through my mind making all sorts of wild things up, as they have a tendency to do.  Writing will keep me honest I think, and I hope will keep my perspective as well.

In two weeks, Marco is going for a site visit to the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.  He’s been tentatively offered a 2-year Research Associate position, assuming all goes well with the visit.  If things go as planned, he’ll be heading off sometime in October for 2 years,  without me, without our kids, away from our cats (that, I believe, he’s really struggling with).  At first I was terrified.  I panicked.  This isn’t normal, I thought.  It’s too long.  How will our relationship handle it?  I hate being alone at night. If we really loved each other, we wouldn’t be doing this.  I should have paid attention when he explained how the air exchanger worked. Who will play Beethoven over and over and over again?  How will I shovel all that snow myself? Who will greet me with a glass of wine when I come home? Who will support me when I have a tough day?  What if I kill all the plants?  And on and on and on.  Then…

My best friend Natasha and I were sitting outside a couple of weeks ago having our usual Friday night glass of wine when we saw a hummingbird in the bee balm.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a hummingbird.  It was beautiful.  That night I had a dream.  Marco and I, along with our friends Tim and Vicki, were in the backyard.  It was dark, but there was this hummingbird – it was shimmering and blue.  It landed on my finger, then flew off and landed on Marco’s finger, then back to me and so on.  In this dream (I never have beautiful dreams, they’re usually either disturbing or boring)…I felt an incredible sense of peace come over me.  It was hard to describe.  I woke up in the morning and that feeling stayed with me all day.  That calm ‘everything is going to be okay’ feeling faded, but didn’t really leave me.  It’s stayed with me this past two weeks and as silly as it may seem, all my fears, my anxiety, my sadness about Marco leaving for two years, dissipated.  I’ve been puzzling over this and trying to understand what changed.  I am a fairly anxious person.  I worry, I catastrophize (I know, that’s not a word, but I do it anyway).  What changed?

I think so much of my panic came from the fear that we wouldn’t ever change, we wouldn’t take risks anymore. That this was it, this was what we had to look forward to. That my fear would forever get in the way of living. That made me feel sad and claustrophobic.  Suddenly, we were living again – we would have adventures, we would do something that most couples wouldn’t dream of doing.  We would live apart for two years, and we would make this an adventure.  I felt alive and I realized that we would be okay.  I plan to try some new things over the next two years, keep myself busy, do some creative things again.  Also, I will have the opportunity to travel with Marco a couple times a year.  I’m starting to feel excited instead of panicked.  And so begins my blog…