Stephen Sands

Stephen is the son of Alfred and Gail Sands Of Sunbury Ontario – I believe that Alfred would be a second cousin of my grandmother, Mabel Elizabeth Moreland. He is my cousin and I like him. I like him very well, and I am proud of my relation to him.

Stephen is not the only child in his family. His oldest brother Rickey who has special needs – he was oxygen deprived at birth, as I heard it. Stephen has a way with Rickey, who in many ways is a child in a man’s body but gentle and funny. I suppose he is so comical and cute because he has always been treated with patience. Stephen always got Rickey, understands him and is good to him. Stephen always has a charming story to tell me about Rickey and his latest imaginary accomplishment when I see him, which is not often enough! Stephen loves Rickey and unlike many men, can say so without ever thinking it funny, like many men would. Stephen always stood out like that!
Stephen has always been sensitive, but not in a girly way, the kind of guy that looks you in the eye, and who is so well liked that he could hang around with his mentally handicapped brother and expect never to face any ridicule for it, might have even fought to protect his brother. Probably did, from time to time. He is a man’s man but also the sort that women enjoy being around too.
Stephen is very close to his family. He and his wife Heather (Harris) have a place and have lived next door to his parents on the stagecoach road (Montreal Street) towards Kingston, past the Washburn Road on the left, when you come from my home-farm. Stephen is a mechanic who runs his very successful business at home. He has three children. Two of them are really young and cute as buttons and an older son from an earlier marriage who is about 25 but living at home still. He looks a lot like Steve and is well liked too, just like his dad. They are all nice kids I have heard. I guess it would be expected, since they always had a great dad and Heather is a good mom too, so overall they have been lucky!
People who moved to town would make the drive to Sunbury to have their car looked at, because they knew Stephen tells the truth about what is going on. Yes, you can trust Stephen with your car, and your money too! An honest, family man, is how one would best describe Stephen.
Stephen has a brother named Brian who I don’t really know. He was that much older than me and probably away from home by the time that my memories come in. Our cousin Tracey Sands (Miller) reminded me about him, but I still, sadly can’t put a face to his name and I feel sad about that, because I understand that they have been very close as adults, like best friends! The Sands family is like that! Tight! Wonderful! Really good people.
Stephen’s sister Kathy, I think would be about ten years older than me… she was, and still is, as as nice as hell, and a very pretty girl too. She looks just like the actress who played Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard – and I think that this propelled Stephen into the career of mechanics – when he was a young teen his brother Robin bought, restored and detailed a car so that it was exactly like the car that the Duke boys drove… “The General Lee”… If you saw this car driving around Sunbury in the 1980’s you will remember Stephen’s smiling face – a slight, young, man with silky blond hair always hanging in his sparkling blue eyes. He is always smiling, always friendly, laughing, always honest and always a good person for as long as I recall him… which is about as far back as my memories go.

He also has a brother Robin who was very close to him – the two were virtually inseparable as youth – Robin, more from the Sands side of the family was courser in feature, coloring and hair but the two were obviously great fans of the other. I don’t know who is the older, and who is the younger, of the two boys – they were so much together, it is hard to recall them as separate. Both of them drove old General Lee around interchangeably. Both of the boys always had a pretty girl on their arm and both of them well liked, good ball players, hockey players, people. Nice kids who grew up to be nice men.

Stephen’s last sibling is my girlfriend/cousin Patricia – who everyone still refers to as “Poo” to this day – after Pebbly-poo on the Flintstones. She, the baby by a few years, was, and still remains the cute little one who was coddled and protected by the family… but like the remainder of her family Poo remains like the rest of the family a beautiful person who is so much a part of the home community that they are virtually inseparable from my memories of home. She is the family member who most resembles Stephen in appearance.

Yesterday, Stephen was on a snowmobiling trip to Calabogie with his oldest son Corey and a group of boys from home. Terry Orr, Dave Tolles, and there were more, but I have not heard who else was there. They had been across the lake already a few times, but then as suddenly as a coin drops, the ice let go from under them and down the boys went – sleds and all under the frozen water. The cold hit them. The shock! But miraculously they made it up onto the frozen surface again. At the top, Stephen did not see Corey, screaming wild he couldn’t hear or see his child and thus he dove into the water to look for his beloved son – just as any family man would.
Hypothermia they call it, life support they say. But a fact remains, today, now, Stephen is dead.
It is a terrible thing, such a good man! A man who will be missed… by his wife Heather, by his children, his parents, his brother’s and sisters, his friends, his community.
Who will fix the cars in Sunbury now? Who will fill the big shoes that have been left by this small man, with a big heart?
It strikes me today, that Stephen has always been a very well liked and well respected person. I struggle to remember, but I don’t recall, anyone ever saying one bad thing, not one, EVER about this man. It is a small community, so this speaks volumes about who Stephen is, who he aspired to be and what he accomplished. To be one among the members of really, really good people. He will be mourned, missed and a part of our long hopes for his children, that they will remember and do their best to be the sort of person that Stephen strived to be and was right up to his last breath.

I struggle to understand why a man like him is taken so early, so sadly, when there are so many bad people who may not even be missed.

Stephen Sands will be missed by every single person who knew him.

God bless him and his family in their loss.

The flood on the lower moor

The flood on the lower moor

Originally uploaded by loobiesmith

When I arrived at the moor on Thursday, I was expecting to see some extra water on the river, but when I pulled up to the bridge I saw that the secondary forest was actually, now a part of the river. Our little six foot wide river had totally swelled past its banks and was now about 80 feet wide and had a flow across at least half of that! The ice sheets from one to three feet in depth and some as large as a hay wagon were spread across the land, into the forest and the noise from the flow was simply smashing! The next morning when I woke, I was drawn out to see where the banks were and was astonished to see that the river had again gone back to its normal place and was only faster than normal now. Amazing! The power of nature! The ice sheets left in place of the flood are totally astonishing!

25 things you don’t know about me

1. I appear to be confident and secure, even snobby, but really I am a marshmallow who is easily wounded and often insecure.

2. I was born an artist, but due to my strange upbringing I find that I am stifled by my own practicality.

3. I admire sustainable lifestyles, kindness and honesty in other people as well as in myself, and if people waste and pollute, lie or are mean, I judge them harshly – BUT this is the only time I allow myself to judge others.

4. About once a year, I see/meet someone whom I think is really interesting and I decide that I MUST get to know them and I will basically move the world to “accidentally” meet them or to try and get them invested in me too!

5. I love to cook, but ONLY if I cook for people who like food and enjoy eating. This said, fussy people (who don’t eat this and that for no real reason) make me crazy and I will NOT cook for them even if they are my house-guest!

6. I have a four regrets: that there were two people I was mean to when I was young: that I wore and wrecked my yellow boots in the 80’s with Blondie on a water tower adventure: that I did not always understand everything that was going on with the people who I love: that I am quite sexually backward.

7. I could most happily live in a commune if it was about working sustainably together, and I had a little place with two rooms and a bathroom of my own.

8. I am very open and enjoy the experience of participating in new things, be it new cultures, new places, new ideas, new concepts, new technology.

9. I learned to hate being a farm kid when I was one, but these days I can’t wait to farm on my own terms, as an independent, intellectual, self-sufficient woman and build a new life with responsible forethought to the planet.

10. I have a lot of difficulty eating meat, but I do it anyway, because I find vegetarianism sort of weird.

11. I blog and I am writing a book which has strong existential undertones and is based on the life of the people in rural Eastern Ontario.

12. I love strongly and let go selfishly. I have been in love with five men and each man who I was in love with stays in my heart, the good parts anyway. I miss parts of four of them and am married to my latest love for nearly 10 years.

13. I like being a mom and I think I am pretty patient, but I blame myself when things go wrong with the children that I have had a hand in raising. I did not find it easy to be a mom. I took this job seriously – maybe too seriously?

14. I miss my babies (who died) every single day since I lost them. I often imagine their appearances and what they might have been like and think about how old they would be now if they only would have lived.

15. I have four dogs, who I consider to be my children, and would have significantly more if I had a dependable dog sitter who would cover for me (without charging an arm and a leg) by staying with them while I holiday once or twice a year.

16. I consider myself a Queen’s woman and I am proud that I graduated from there. I am most proud that I won the Barbara Paul Prize which at the time was considered the top prize for adult females in their graduate year.

17. I believe in a higher power as well as in fairies and I ask both to guide and help me.

18. I think that I was a good boss even though I had to fire a number of totally incompetent people in the first week.

19. People think I am a neat freak, but I am a hoarder by nature. I am ashamed of this quality, so I do it inconspicuously. My cupboards are FULL! Food and papers. I do eventually deal with it, but I resent the job.

20. I love milk chocolate and cheesecake nearly as much as I love being alive. I can’t hoard either because I have to eat what I have immediately!

21. I worry a lot about my son, because of his heart but more particularly, since his head injury in 2007.

22. I love my son and sisters desperately.

23. I suffer from a poor body image and I wish I was super model beautiful at least ten times a day, but ironically, I also hate that I have this superficial quality!

24. I don’t believe in being unfaithful to your significant other, but I understand why this happens in marriages.

25. I dislike biting insects, extreme temperatures, people who smell bad, and despise cigarette smoke and dirty bathrooms.

The dance

Pulse.
Pulse.
Pulse.
Vibration.
Hips swaying.
I notice the edge of you.
Where you start.
Where I stop.
You are in me!
I shake with pleasure.
I hear your song in my ears.
I do a dance of desire for you.
The tube snake boogie.
Playing.
Happily.
On my iPod!

Moreland’s Moorland

Fall on the River

Originally uploaded by loobiesmith

Recently I bought land. Eight acres on the river which is beautiful rich soiled moor. This summer I will farm it. I will build a 30 x 20 log home from the woods there. It will be just one story with two loft gables for extra bedrooms. I will do this myself, with my hands and my tools. I also plan to have animals, so I must build fences and must also do some irrigation work since I have five springs on my land which I need to reroute into the river.
Moreland’s Moorland is to by my homestead, where I farm. Where I bring in my own food and get back to the land from whence I came.

I rebel: therefore we exist

I love this statement which is made and analyzed by Albert Camus. It means, that we can only really rebel, if others have set or you have internalized a set of social norms and there is something to go against.
I am a rebel without a cause by nature. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck what people think is normal, or acceptable and due to my lack of interest in the subject of normal behavior, I very often find myself outside of the social norm.
More specifically, because I am a writer, and I choose to write about the human condition, I have a tendency to notice everything about people. Recently, I learned that this careful watching and taking in, is in all probability an invasion of privacy. I had not thought of it as such, which is ironic, since I simply take these quirks and isolate them, evaluate them, put them in different situations and mash them all together with other interesting characteristics thereby stealing them from their owners for my own ends.
I don’t know why I never saw this as an invasion before now! I might steal your eyes! I might steal the way that you tilt your head, your laugh, or the particular way that you wear clothing. If you are not careful when you are with me, I could steal your intentions, your eyelashes, your thoughts on Capitol Punishment or maybe even your sexual experience, if you shared pieces of it with me.
I warn you now that a writer is a risky friend! You better look around carefully and take a good inventory when they have left you! The writer has no self control! No pride at all! You just never know what they have taken of yours and you may never know until you crack their books and find your lost self there in black and white for all the world to see!

Bojangles

Recently, I found the voice of Nina Simone and more specifically I found her rendition of the old Jerry Jeff Walker song, Mr. Bojangles. Her sweet sad melodious voice reminds how fortunate my life is.
I forget this from time to time even as I pass the beggars who sit outside the the stores where I shop.
Even though, the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when they approach me.
I know if ever I was stuck in a cell with Mr. Bojangles, I would be to terrified of him.
Terrified of not just of him but also of what he represents.
I could not see him in the way that Jerry Jeff has and certainly not in the way that Nina Simone interprets him – a sweet, sad, melodious man to which life has offered up more than he can handle.
I don’t know what I fear.
It could be that he has rejected all the social norms of food and shelter.
It could be that I am afraid that he has been a victim and that he might in turn victimize me.
But I think, what really scares me is the fear that at any moment status can be lost and I am irrationally afraid that his lack of status may very well be contagious.
I am afraid it may be my turn next.
Yes, I think what I most fear, is that, I am only so lucky – and so safe – and that indeed I am to be the next Bojangles.