Spring had never been Eloise's favourite season. It was too wishy-washy. Never absolute. The weather got better or worse, but was never really good or bad. The naked raspberry canes and muddy grass left her feeling like a kid in the back seat, asking “Are we there yet?” except she couldn't see who she was asking.
But every now and then there was a day like this one, warm enough to sit outside, she and Artie in their Muskoka chairs, he with his homemade root beer, she with a cup of herbal tea from last summer's garden, each with a dog or two curled up beside them, and usually a lap cat each.
Artie called it “sitting on the porch” in spite of the fact that they couldn't even see the house from here. The shrubs were just tall enough when you were sitting down to make it invisible. All they could see was the woods to the right and the garden to the left. It was too early in the year to get seriously busy, but they'd started planning. The tomatoes were just coming up in their pots in the shed. Little skinny sprouts that looked like nothing, now, but just wait.
She'd been gardening long enough not to be fooled by what looked like a wobbly start.
Nearly 30 years they'd been living here. On their 10 acres west of town. When they'd bought it the house had been sound, but boring - a woodframe farm house. Since then Artie had added a studio onto the back with huge sunny windows, and he'd painted the house.
Oh, had he painted it.
He'd go to the hardware store and come home with a half price gallon of some paint that wasn't quite what someone else wanted – pink, blue, yellow, black. And he'd turned the house into some kind of abstract masterpiece. Over the years she'd come to think that he might actually have a plan. Sometimes she'd see him standing out in front frowning at something. Then, sure enough, he'd rattle around in the garage, come out with a bucket of paint and a couple of brushes and he'd be up on the ladder, dabbing at something that wasn't quite right until it was.
She sipped her tea and looked at him. Looked like he'd fallen asleep in his chair, his hand cradling the bottle of root beer.
They hadn't had kids, but over the years they'd adopted so many cats and dogs and rabbits and ferrets that she'd stopped counting. Some from shelters, some from neighbours, some they'd found in the ditch near home. They'd arrive skinny and sick or hurt and scared, or just unwanted and slowly they'd realize that Artie and Eloise were safe people and almost all of them would come to love them back. There had been a few heartbreaks over the years – too hurt to recover, to ever trust again, or to be trusted. Those they could only help by giving them a gentle sleep. Which was inexpressibly sad.
Shortly after they'd moved here, Artie had bought an old trailer, and parked it in a cluster of trees out of sight of the road. It was small, but he fixed it up with electric heat and ran wires from the house across the lot. He'd built an outhouse and an outdoor shower next to it and let it be known that it was available for anyone in need. And every few weeks, Eloise would look out the kitchen window and see the lights were on in the trailer. Sometimes the guests would come and go unseen, but sometimes they'd come over to say hi. Some would offer to chop wood or pull weeds to pay the rent, some would leave a gift on the front steps when they left. A few came back year after year. But nobody left a mess and nobody did any damage. She wondered sometimes where they all came from and how they'd heard about Artie's little hotel. But it was so perfectly him.
People couldn't believe it when she'd married Artie, the hippie. She'd always been a good girl, obeying her parents, respecting her teachers, loving Jesus. But then it was the 70s, and she started thinking. Thinking that maybe there was more to loving Jesus and loving people than just being good.
She'd been 18 when she'd heard about a protest being organized. A poor neighbourhood was being bulldozed for a new shopping mall. People were turned out, with only a month's notice to find new homes and some just said no. The sheriff would be going in to serve eviction notices and some people around town had decided that they had to at least do something. So Eloise was one of about 30 people who met in a church basement to make signs, to get some training in non-violent protest, to pile into cars and pick up trucks and head over there.
It was her first sit-in. Arm in arm with strangers, saying no to something that shouldn't be.
Of course they'd been arrested. She and Artie had met in the paddy wagon.
She'd called her parents and they came to bail her out. Eloise was confident that Jesus wouldn't mind her getting arrested, but her parents were not impressed.
In the end the organizers had to pay a fine, so the group took up a collection to help them out.
She and Artie had met up again a few times at meetings and protests and the soup kitchen, then he started picking her up at home. Her parents weren't entirely thrilled with the long hair, the John Lennon shades and the tattoos, but at least he always came to the door and knocked, and he was polite and (for them) surprisingly intelligent.
He was ridiculously creative, and he had a hard time sitting still for long which meant they didn't go to church very often. Eloise had been raised in church and it was important to her, so he tried.
Church, for Eloise, was part of the fabric of her childhood. She'd been happy there.
She knew how lucky she was to have been raised by good parents, to have gotten to know Jesus young, to have had a few really good friends. She'd been given a rare gift – to have always known that she was loved. She'd seen enough to know that most people weren't that blessed.
Artie hadn't grown up with that. His road to being loved was hard and rough. When they'd met, he'd had a deep vein of cynicism, of mistrust. He suspected everyone, trusted no one. People were only nice to you if they wanted something. But he'd gotten there eventually. In time, it had sunk in for him that Eloise loved him.
And, even better, that Jesus loved him.
And sharing that love, they'd got married. At sunrise on the beach. Barefoot. And instead of rings, they'd got matching heart shaped tattoos on the third finger of their left hands. Artie said that rings were symbolic of chains and he wasn't having that. Besides, he said, you can always take off a ring. Tattoos are for life. Eloise liked that. And, after they'd had time to think about it, so did her parents.
35 years ago. It hadn't all been easy. Not all daisies and peace. Neither of them were perfect. They both had flaws and weaknesses and fears. They'd hurt each other, disappointed each other, disagreed. But together, they'd worked on it and made it work.
It was tough sometimes. There was never much money. Artie worked at odd jobs, sometimes at odd hours.
Eloise worked breakfast and lunch at a diner. Sometimes Artie would get fired, or he'd quit because it was too stupid or the boss was too stupid. Or because he was bored. But he always found something else quickly, and he'd sell his art on Sunday afternoons at the farmers' market. Every Saturday they volunteered together at the animal shelter, and every other Sunday they went to church.
Little by little they'd built a life together. Little by little they'd become better people. Little by little they'd learned what Jesus wanted from them. Who he'd made them to be.
Artie said once that it was like gardening. It took a lot of work to turn a field into a garden, and even more to make it a good garden. Stuff had to be added, stuff had to be taken away. And that was what Jesus did for them. He didn't just let them be. He made them better. Each, and together.
Eloise worried sometimes about the future. Neither of them was young anymore. Not old, yet, but getting there. They had no kids and no savings and she didn't think they could count on the cats to look after them in their old age. The idea of selling the 10 acres and the customized house made her tremble. Waking up somewhere else everyday, with no garden and no woods and no studio. Or with no Artie.
They never talked about it, but she worried.
But it wasn't going to happen for a while. And there wasn't much she could do about it.
She looked over at her snoozing husband again and smiled. Such a good life they'd had so far, and had right now. And she was terribly terribly thankful.
Thankful for having been loved, for sun, and tomato sprouts, raspberry canes and fiddleheads, for a lapful of cat, and a waiting dog, for someone to fall asleep beside, for home made root beer and herbal tea from last year's garden and a heart shaped tattoo.
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