Primal Landscape

It feels as if the key is about to break off in the lock. I struggle to turn it. Is it to the left, or the right? I can’t remember. The lock gives way suddenly and the door swings open. Inside, the cottage smells like a birch-bark box. And the air is snappy. Cold. Locked inside for the entire winter it stirs around me, slipping past, through the screen door, a small sigh, a held breath, a secret.

The porch furniture is crammed into the living room. We will pull it outside later. Every year we vow to power-wash the white wicker and give it a fresh coat of paint, but every year it remains on the porch, chipping and greying, the crevices filling with the grime of living.

I walk down the cavernous hallway. Aunt Madge’s oriental runner under my shoes feels like millennia, a familiar wrinkle, a soft crush.

At the utility panel in the corner of the bathroom, I throw the electricity switch up and push in the lever that will start the hot water tank twitching and creaking.

My bedroom is a vault, dim, even in the morning light, the pine tree outside the window shades the light. Leaving the overhead light off, I set my suitcase on the bed.

In contrast with the cool grey of the rest of the cottage, the kitchen glows with a soft golden light. Natalie is emptying a grocery bag of vital supplies, an enormous box of Yorkshire Gold tea and a bag of milk. “There!” she says as if she’s accomplished an enormous task.

I feel unhinged and restless. I don’t know how I’m going to live with my sisters, if I’ll be able to hold my own, or stay in one piece. I don’t know how to make this place my home, though I’ve been coming here all my life.

Unpacking, I take out the crystals. I’m going to hang the angel over the front door—she’s stained glass, made by a friend, she’ll welcome in the good spirits—and a heart prism, given to me by another friend on my fiftieth birthday, is going over the back door.  When the lake is rough and roaring, this hallway is a wind tunnel. In the morning, there’s often a biting little breeze from the east, from the sunrise, which sneaks in the back door and thwarts the chill from lifting inside the cottage even on a summer day. This yawning hallway worries me. It feels as if the air between the two doors runs unimpeded and all the blessings I’m trying to lay down will be swept out in a draft. At least the crystals will catch the spirits and give them a swirl before allowing them to pass through the doors.

I’m placing shrines in all the rooms—some element of earth, air, fire, and water in each. My grandmother’s cowry shell is going in the living room because I want to tell our kids how we used to play a game with it called Huckle Buckle. The kids are grown now—all in their twenties and thirties—but still I have this desire to impart a piece of our collective past. My sisters and I grew past our teenage years, and for a short period, we’d bonded. I want to tell them about that uproarious time—a time of hilarity and revelry. The years before we fell to one form or another of the family curse and disintegrated.

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Family Curses

“Primal Landscape” is from my collection An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories, which is available for free in E-book by clicking here and available in paperback on Amazon here. Read it for more info on family curses, bad weather, and rodents.

I’d love to know about your family curses! Please hit reply, or leaving a comment. I promise I’ll keep it secret.

Review Time

The reviews for Odd Mom Out are continuing to come in. Reactions from readers are crucial for me and so far, I’m thrilled that most people seem to like the book! The following is a review written by author, MJ Porter on her blog.

Our main character, Trudy, is quite frankly a mess. Recently divorced, massively unhappy, all but estranged from her daughter and forced to live with an overbearing mother, she’s also deeply unhappy with her weight and general well-being, not helped by the fact she runs and bakes for the local bakery…. Her battles are very relatable, and while the reader might be a little frustrated with the lack of information concerning her daughter’s upcoming wedding, Trudy presses on with her plans to be the best Mother of the Bride she can be. Along the way, she makes some new friends, and reconnects with some old ones, and even her relationship with her mother improves, as does her business…. The story has some unexpected twists and turns, which all build into it being a relatable story, and I powered through the last 50%, keen to know how everything would work for our main character. A really engaging story.

Ratings and Reviews help authors like me sell books! If you have read Odd Mom Out and would like to leave a review, I greatly appreciated it. In Canada click here, and in the US click here. The E-book is $0.99 this weekend so if you haven’t bought a copy, now is the time!

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Thanks for reading, see you next weekend!