It was the perfect project for me and the kids: take a huge stack of discarded pallets and turn them into a writing studio for me up on the wild part of our land. I’d scored a couple of bay windows from the local recycle/reuse store. We took sanders, planers, and power saws up there along with hand tools and jumped into couple of months of on again off again work. It was Nirvana.
If you’ve ever worked with palates you’ll know they’re mostly made up of uneven, knotty cuts of wood with a few odd gems thrown in. The stack we’d gathered over a few weeks was loaded with white oak. After framing our platform we carefully assembled a floor using a sawsall to hack out the good wood, lining it up like a game of tetris, cutting and muscling things into place when we needed to. Truly was there with her hammer, slamming away at anything that looked like a nail. At 4 years old bashing nails was always on the menu, especially for her - she’s more “Bam-Bam” than “Pebbles” (thats a Flintstones reference for our young readers).
Tadg worked with great precision and dedication. We had to plane almost every board after we got it into place. The floor sander we rented wouldn't work because our power cords had to travel more than a few hundred feet from the outlet at the well. After a week or two of hand sanders we went ahead and sealed it with an outdoor deck selant, not knowing how long it would take us to get walls and a roof up. Then Terry got sick and everything was put on hold. The skeleton you see in the picture is pretty much how we left it until we finally sold the place and moved up north.
No matter where I've lived, I never seem to be able to get the studio together I want.
A writing teacher friend of mine shared her need for a quiet place to write, how essential that is in practicing her craft and just for sanity's sake. Me and the kids lost so much when we left our homestead, but somehow this stands out the most to me. To have something that just me and the kids built would have been a lifelong treasure. I had already designed secret compartments in the walls for each of them to hide keepsakes. Also a great excuse to interrupt Dad while he's working ... got to retrieve that treasure I hid there last week. It was perfect.
I came across an old post from when we were getting ready to leave our land titled "Just Me & Us". Its filled with feelings of warmth and togetherness from that time. We'd made a cocoon to heal in, a warm pocket hidden somewhere in the woods we'd stowed away in for a year after her passing. I wish it could have lasted forever.
I knew I would have to let go of our land. I'd been watching everything fall apart as I devoted all of my time to Terry, the kids and my day job. It would only get worse over time. I've learned that one sure path to suffering is to hold onto something or someone that isn’t yours anymore. I had to let go of the place we'd built together in favor of a new beginning for me and the kids.
From July 21, 2019:
"I linger in bed with the kids now. Before, when I’d wake up at 4 or 5 I might head down to the house to go to the bathroom and stay up, writing or reading, sleep again, alone – feeling like I needed the space. Now I roll to my right or left and pull one of them in, breathing deep, invoking the magic of a second group sleep. She digs her toes into my legs, he will grab my arm and make it entwine him in some new way.
Lets rest again,
woven into each other,
hemp and straw,
hands and dreams,
our breath making one."
Those moments, strung together like beads across that year, were conjured out of the harshness of death and grief. They appeared spontaneously on the playground of wonderment we'd built over a decade. Writing is just like that, it's about conjuring, alchemy - making something transcendent appear almost out of thin air. A writing studio is the alchemist's workshop. It doesn't matter where it is, if its designated properly, with authenticity and devotion, it will come into being as a threshold place, something that occupies the terrain between what is and what can be.
Maybe I just can't let go of caring for the people I love long enough to make a studio come into being for me.
My life has included taking care of others one way or another for almost thirty years now. The closest thing I have to a studio is an overstuffed chair and ottoman just off the kitchen. Low walls are made of books, our new dog Dandelion has a bed just to my right. I cook, I care, I make money to feed many mouths. It has been my way for a long time. I'm not complaining, just wishing I could measure out a little more for that sacred space off in the woods for this work that has become so central to me.
The early hours of each day are still the closest thing to a sanctuary I have. No more queen sized beds pushed together with a kid on either side. Instead Dandelion and I move from the cutting board to that chair and back, feeding all the animals, making lunches and getting a little day-job work in. The pre-dawn air is crisp just out the back door. Winter has finally brought snow after weeks of freezing nights.
After she's been fed and the lunches are made, Dandelion waits patiently for her sacred peanut butter offering. It started with her cleaning the used butter knife but now involves her own blessed dip into the jar. Her long ears fold back as her eyes fill with pleasure and love. For a moment I am her parent and she is a puppy again, made to feel like the center of all that is. She doesn't know what a gift it is to me, to see her receiving her treat so deeply and effortlessly. She stares directly into my eyes with no embarrassment or resistence. We start the day with this affirmation that love permeates life.
There's still a little more time to write before I have to get the kids up and the day takes off like Dandelion chasing a ball down a hill. I conjure the invisible walls of my studio around us both as I lean into all the tender moments we've shared together. These beings, our animals and the kids, are my forest now. My thoughts post themselves around me like seasoned pallet boards. The walls are still permeable, I'll hear the kids stir, but there is enough of a barrier now to open up, caving out a path for the unknown to make its way here.
Our palate board studio may well have been torn down by the new owners of our place, but it' really doesn't matter. It's still there, I can feel it, in the woods. The three of us are laying back on the floor staring up at the rafters and branches that poke in from the surrounding trees. We're tired from the work of conjuring, but it feels so good. We'll keep coming back to that place in ourselves no matter where we are. Even when we're apart, when they're grown and making their own way in the world, we'll all carry the secret space of alchemy inside us.
Blessings to you and yours during this time of great change. May the alchemists fire burn bright in you.
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