Sunday, September 7, 2014
Sunday Morning On The Squamish Chief
Location: First Peak, Squamish Chief, 9:37am
After watching my youngest son’s first soccer game of the season (of which he was the first of his team to score a goal!), and after returning home to dinner that had to be made, celebratory Brownies that had to be made, and a kitchen that had to be cleaned, I vowed to take myself for a hike the following morning.
So, here I am: At First Peak on the Squamish Chief.
There are three peaks. I have yet, after 20 years of living here, hike to the other two!
After gazing out over Howe Sound, I have moved to the far northern edge of the peak, and now look out over the Squamish Valley. A sheer vertical drop is about 10 feet away. I have found a spot in the shade, am leaning back against a piece of granite, watching a Red Tree Squirrel and a Chipmunk scamper about.
The inflow wind has not yet begun. The morning sun is glorious. Audio and visual cues of other hikers are scattered throughout the landscape. All is well on this fine September, Sunday morning.
I have now completed three days at my new job. Realization has struck that my role as Financial Services Officer is much more than simply taking loan applications and trying to sell insurance! With confidence, my bosses have been slowly and steadily displaying signs of great confidence in my ability to analyze, manage, and be more than just a front line salesperson. It intimidates the heck out of me! I have never analyzed any kind of business report. I have never put together any kind of business report! I used to talk to people and convince them to join our rafting trips!
But, I say to myself confidently, I AM SMART. I CAN DO THIS. Everyone else seems to think I am capable of this position. I choose to believe not only them, but myself as well.
The rest of today, once I get back home, will be spent on the computer working through various programs and websites that I will be working with. I am signed up for courses, require certification and must be ready to perform. Not merely perform, but SUCCEED!
I had a bit of an unexpected meltdown the other day driving home from work. Earlier I was told that I might be attending a seminar on the 17th. No problem, I said. I even asked what day of the week the 17th will be. It was only after I was alone, that my heart started racing and the tears began to fall: September 17th is (was?) my Wedding Anniversary. This year, it was to be our 20th Anniversary.
I know that my marriage is over. It is upon my initiation that it is over. But being married was such a huge, critical part of who I was for 20 years that, yes, it does catch me up short at times that I no longer am married.
Ha! A chipmunk just scampered up beside me and ran under my legs. Lovely flashbacks of the chipmunks at the cottage as a kid!
And my oldest son is now at University. We did the Family of Four road trip last Sunday and got him settled into residence. I will forever have etched in my mind the image of him, after the farewells next to the car, walking away into his Future. My strong, brave, kind, intelligent First Born. Striding with complete confidence into his life away from his parents. I have always been incredibly proud of the person he is (the people all three of my children are), but at that specific moment / second in time, it became entrenched in me that my baby boy is now a man.
I love all my children to bits. THey have made me so happy, so proud, and to sound corny, so complete. I do love being a mum. And I will do whatever I can for my children. Even do the dishes after I have asked them to do the dishes!
Thoughts of my husband are farther and farther away with each day. As I put photographs together to decorate our walls, I made a point of creating a collage of the children and their father. Happy faces of all, throughout their childhood, showing the love between them. I have no desire to mar the impression their father has made on them. There is only good there. And lots of love. That is to be present and not to be forgotten.
I look at those pictures though and, for myself, there is no emotional tug. I feel a warmth inside for the event itself in the photograph, or the love and/or experience intrinsic in the image. I feel genuine gratitude for having had such experiences and such a life offered to me and shared with me. But as for the man himself, the individual, I find it extremely difficult to bridge the gap of that man in the pictures to the man beyond the images. The personal stuff, the other experiences, the reasons why I left him. I have no hatred, only the sense of loss of something that was once amazingly grand. I find that thinking of him, from my perspective alone, as being deceased allows me to remember the best of him for the children. I know he is not dead. He still has a lifetime to live. And I have no doubt that he will live it to the fullest. But for me and me alone, that is the best way for me to break it down.
As more people tell me how much “lighter” I look since July 18th, I continue to realize on all sorts of different levels just how far-reaching this has all been.
Again, I have definitely done the best thing I could have done.
Well, tie to walk back down.
Thank you, Squamish Chief.
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