William's Gift

by Helen Douglas

  Anne and I gradually recovered and resolved to have a foal one way or another.

  We could accept that nature makes choices we cannot always influence. We purchased a lovely weanling that fall, a bay thoroughbred colt that was healthy and vigorous. We had great success showing him at local hunter shows on the line, and then he won as best junior colt at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. There is no way that anyone — other than another horse breeder — watching us receive that ribbon could fully understand the blood, sweat, and tears that preceded it. Many highs and lows and so much work and money spent all contribute to that rare moment of winning for any animal breeder.

  I was doing more and more horse work at Brentwood and, although it was rewarding, I was starting to feel the frustration of being under-equipped and without an equine mentor. One case that brought it home was a longstanding lameness problem in a race horse’s hind leg that I was trying my best to diagnose properly. I had done some diagnostic nerve blocking, a process where parts of the leg are frozen with lidocaine so that the area of pain can be identified. When the horse’s lameness disappears, one knows that the area of pain has been found and eradicated, as he’ll trot sound. I tried hard to freeze the three joints of the young horse’s hock. I had never been shown how to do this and I wondered, as he moved around and threatened to kick at me, if I was getting the lidocaine into the joints at all. But his lameness diminished, so I must have succeeded in getting some in after all and I was able to identify the problem joint.

  I set up my outdated x-ray machine, with some of the knobs taped and dials missing, and took several views of the joint. The x-ray cassettes that held the film were of the same vintage as the machine. I suspected there was early arthritis in the joint, but to be thorough, I sent the x-rays to my radiology professor at vet school to get an expert’s opinion. I hoped he would pronounce a clear-cut diagnosis and treatment.

  “The x-rays simply aren’t good enough to get a diagnosis,” he said. “They are far too blurry and underexposed. What kind of equipment do you have?”

  What a disappointment it was to have spent so much time, put the horse through so much, and have charged the owners for an involved lameness study that resulted in no answer. I was forced to refer the lameness to a neighbouring horse vet with more experience and top-notch equipment and to cancel the bill. Again, I found myself frustrated and vowing to do better. Should I try to talk Jim into getting newer equipment for me or should I go spend time with other equine veterinarians just to find out what I needed and how to improve my techniques? I desperately wanted to move up a level in my horse work.

  I was preoccupied that summer with building my house. First, the house had to be emptied of the previous owner’s garbage and then plaster and lathe removed from the walls and ceilings, a filthy job. One weekend, ten of us took to the walls with crowbars and masks and eventually filled two great bins with debris. Finally, the house was stripped down to log walls and pine floors, officially “gutted.” We were ready to sandblast it all. My friends were intrigued with the project and amazingly, generously, helpful. They all came, on and off, to lend a hand and watch the progress as the little house was put back together. My vision of what it would look like when it was done kept me going at an ungodly pace. I worked every day before work, at lunchtime, and after work late into the evening, as well as every weekend.

  One regular visitor to my building site was Keith, a married man from the Hunt Club who had taken a great interest in my project and in me. He was known to be flirt and had a loose arrangement with his wife; he was obviously interested in more than just the house. He first brought food and drink, then started showing up with lumber and building supplies. I had never anticipated having such help with the house and it was hard to turn off his attention or his generosity. I endured lots of teasing about my unsolicited “Sugar Daddy.” The weekly visits increased to almost daily. Keith was starting to advise me and take over parts of the project. I now had to balance all this with work and was getting lots of counsel from worried friends.

  One day, Mary and I were riding to the Hunt along a path that would take us right in front of the log cabin. Workmen were sitting on the roof putting on the shiny new tin, probably wondering how I could take time off to do something as extravagant as ride to hounds. They raised their hammers as I yelled “hello,” and Mary and I picked up a canter to cross the field in front of them. We were late; however, it must have seemed like we were showing off. My mare was fresh, and I wasn’t paying enough attention when she suddenly saw demons and spooked sharply sideways out from under me. I was deposited on my behind right in the middle of a juniper bush in front of the three guffawing carpenters. It seemed unspeakably embarrassing at the time, and although I forgot about it, they apparently didn’t. Years later, I hired a carpenter for another house, and he started with, “Do you remember the day when … ?” He had been sitting on the roof that day.

  I was dying to get into the house by snowfall, and the exhausting schedule I had set myself was telling on me. I was short-tempered at times and barely able to concentrate at work. Things were already going way over budget, and now I was faced with a big expense I hadn’t bargained on. The entire septic system had to be built above ground on the unforgiving bedrock, and a septic pump installed to pump the effluent up from the basement. Eight or ten thousand dollars’ worth of fill was needed to cover all this up and blend the house and foundation into the new “mountain” it created.

  The solution came in an unexpected way. As I was driving over to work on the house one day at lunchtime, I saw a truck full of dirt fill leaving the Hunt Farm kennels nearby. I stopped the driver, whom I knew.

  “Where’s this fill going?” I asked.

  “We have to take the entire kennels three feet down. They have to redo the runs because of hookworm infection in the hounds, I think,” he said. “We are just dumping it.”

  “Could I have it?”

  “Sure, but there’ll likely be ten or twelve trucks full,” he replied. “Do you want it all?”

  “Do I!” I replied, scarcely able to believe my luck.

  By nightfall, I had enough fill dumped around my house and weeping bed to solve my problem, and in a half-day later that week, a small bulldozer made the whole area and house look as if it had always been there. Things had a way of working themselves out. With the new landscaping, tin roof, and windows installed, the vision was becoming a reality. All we had to do was chink all the spaces between the logs and we’d be weathertight and could start to work inside.

  I had another regular visitor to my building site that summer. Angela had been a client at Brentwood for some time, and we had met when I looked after her dogs. After her first visit, when she dropped by just to see what I was doing, she became another contributor of everything from sandwiches to ideas, obviously intrigued by what a woman and ten friends were accomplishing. She seemed to have a lot of time on her hands.

  Angela was a bit wild and crazy, obviously more than a little bored, and in quite an unhappy marriage. She would show up at odd times, convertible top down and music blaring, bearing always-welcome food and drink. Angela was used to being the life of the party, but there was always a hint of sadness or loneliness if you looked closely enough. Sometimes she would come to laugh and take part in whatever was happening. Other times she would be upset, agitated, and preoccupied with problems at home. I would always stop what I was doing and listen. Both the happy times and the times I was a sounding board were important to me — a distraction from what was becoming an overwhelming obsession for me — my house.

  Winter came, and life was an ongoing series of projects. Now indoors, I was learning about framing, wiring, and plumbing as I worked alongside the contractors cutting, soldering, gluing, insulating. Winter was a quiet time at the vet clinic, so I could stay at the house, working on it and learning. I was eagerly looking forward to moving in. My friends were hangin
g in there, but obviously had less time and interest for the project than they had started off with, and the jobsite seemed lonely and cold. Time was punctuated by visits from Keith and Angela, although I never knew when they would appear.

  Somehow, without my knowing how or when, my personal life started to preoccupy me and take more and more of my energy as my house neared completion. Angela was descending into a worsening private crisis, not just because of her marriage, but also because of family demons not dealt with and money problems — the accumulation of all of it threatening to overwhelm her. Sometimes her visits would be full of laughter, but more often they were full of tears, a person in distress still trying to be a funny girl. I was becoming more and more emotional about her situation and determined to be her one safe haven.

  One night, Keith appeared at my door late, in a snowstorm. He’d had a few drinks and was over the moon. The team he coached had won the hockey championship. He had no sooner gotten his coat and boots off, grinning while I put the coffeepot on, than the phone rang. It was Angela, sounding stricken and in some sort of trouble.

  “Can you come get me? We had a terrible fight at home and I left. I put my car in the ditch. I have no one else to call. I’m at a telephone booth,” she said.

  “I’ll be right there. Where are you?” I said.

  I started putting on my coat and boots without explaining.

  “Where are you going right now? I can’t believe this … I just got here, I want to celebrate,” said Keith.

  “Angela is in trouble. I have to go.”

  “I’ll always be second to her,” he said bitterly. “You seem to forget about me whenever she calls or comes by.”

  I didn’t reply, but I wondered if he wanted to add, “after everything I have done for you.” He didn’t wait for me to get back.

  Angela had become the emotional touchstone of my life. I rode the roller coaster of her highs and lows from joy to despondency with her. I became focused on helping her. Always a people pleaser, I was turning into a people saver. It took me years to figure out what was happening to me back then. Without my knowing how or when it occurred, my interest in one person and all the drama had surpassed my interest in my house and work. I worried about her far more than I should have and missed her when she didn’t come.

  One night, Keith and Angela both showed up together, a rare event, as he was coming less and less often. We decided to go to supper at a nearby restaurant. It turned out to be one of the oddest evenings of my life. I sat and listened to them debate, grandstanding over who was more important to me, who had contributed more to my life and my project. I sat quietly, painfully aware of the small role I played in their larger lives and that neither could, nor would, change anything for me, really. I was important, but only in my own time slot, like entertainment or diversion. As their riotous claims were put forward, somewhat tongue in cheek, I felt flashes of anger and confusion. I knew that in their humour was a lot of truth. I felt terribly lonely. What was I really to them?

  “People are starting to talk,” Jim said one day. “It’s a small town.”

  He was as concerned about me as I was about him. Both of us looked worn and tired and seemed to be struggling just to get through each day. “We both have problems, don’t we?” I said.

  We sat, not knowing what to say next.

  “I’m not feeling too good these days,” I volunteered, not sure how far to go.

  “Neither am I,” he said. “Are you getting the help you need? I am and I think I’m finally coming out the other side.”

  Angela actually changed the course of it all. Perhaps she had scared herself one too many times, had come to me for help one too many times, or was just plain getting too attached to me … scared about where it was all going.

  “I want to make my life and my marriage work,” she said, more serious than I had ever seen her.

  “I thought you said you’d have to leave him … this town … start again to get healthy,” I remember saying.

  “No, I’m determined to make it work here. I will make it work here …” she said.

  “But you said — ”

  “That was then, this is now. Goodbye. Good luck. And thank you for everything. I will be okay.”

  She turned and walked away, taking the laughter, the music, the distraction, the sadness, and the need with her. I didn’t see her again for two years. I often wondered, looking back, if I would have cared so much if she hadn’t needed me. I had to go through a very difficult time before I would learn more about it all, or about myself.

  Soon after that, I descended into a period of worsening sadness and ever-present fatigue. My head, heart, and body were burned out entirely as I hammered, painted, scraped, and toiled my way through my house project. I became driven to organize and execute everything perfectly and on time. My friends came around, obviously worried about me, but they didn’t really know what to say or how to help anymore. It was late winter, and the half-built house was lonely.

  I didn’t realize then how depression can come on, get its hooks into you, and prevent you from thinking clearly. I once read an article describing depression as something hovering around you, as if you were sitting at a bonfire with wolves circling in the cold, black, darkness at your back, threatening to pull you into the dark with them, away from the warmth of the fire. I didn’t realize the sadness, the sleeplessness, the obsessive working, and the feeling that I was looking in at my life from the outside, were all signs of an impending depression. And no matter what advice was offered, I simply couldn’t snap out of it, or stop hammering. I was exhausted.

  After a year of living in my new house, I really wasn’t feeling much better. It had become an unpleasant and vicious circle, where I didn’t feel like my old self at all. Every day I felt like a hamster on a wheel, never able to finish everything I needed to do. Some days I just felt like I had a big, black, cloud over me; or I was desperately sad all day. Jim once more suggested I get some help.

  “There are counsellors out there who know far more about you than you do about yourself,” he said.

  I laughed. I definitely didn’t believe him, but decided to give it a try anyway. What I remember was what the wonderful, motherly woman I went to for help said: “You aren’t trained to help anybody. You probably weren’t helping Angela and you certainly weren’t helping yourself. In fact, I suggest when you see a person with problems you run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.”

  It hit a spark. I was going to help myself.

  One day at work, I sat down and cried. I couldn’t get up and do my work.

  “Jim, I don’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m going to have to take time off work.”

  “It’s okay; it’s a good idea for you to take some time off,” he said. “We all go through rough patches, and you have to do whatever you have to do to get better.”

  It took only a few days for me to decide what to do and where I would go to rest. The house would be easy to rent out, and I would just have to let it and a lot of other baggage go and put myself first. I needed time to think and I knew a perfect place for it.

  I set off for England to live with my friend Peggy, a wonderful older English lady whom I had met many times when she visited Canada to teach riding. She had offered her home to me anytime, for as long as I wished.

  “I’ll visit horse vets and I’ll see some of England,” I reassured my family.

  “Just don’t be too busy. We want you to get better,” they said wisely.

  And I was gone, flying into London on Guy Fawkes Day, small bonfires visible throughout the countryside as my plane approached Heathrow airport.

  Many people asked me how I could leave the little house that I had worked on so hard and lived in for such a short time. I answered that I had no choice. “It will be there when I retu
rn,” I replied.

  Others asked me if I was running away. But still I had no answer and no choice. I had to go and sort through it all somehow; after all, I had learned over and over that time heals. Through the pain of my depression, I felt a glimmer of optimism as the plane touched down in England. Just knowing Peggy would take care of me for a while helped.

  What I didn’t know was that I would never live in my little house again.

  TEN

  Away

  THE FIRST FEW WEEKS in England, I walked for many hours each day. Sometimes Peggy would drive us to the heath, or to an overgrown park with mossy, damp, walking paths, or to the seaside. Other times, I would just set out on my own and walk around the quaint little town. I had never been to England and found it to be far more different from Canada than I had imagined. The twisting country lanes lined by hedges, the ancient brick and Tudor buildings, the thatch-covered barns all were like a feast for my eyes and soul. I felt so at home, I must have been British in another life. We settled into our new routine quickly.

  Peggy and I had babysitting duties to do one weekend. Her son lived in a nearby town and needed us to stay with his young son and daughter for several days. It was a lovely country home, three hundred years old, and its heavy Tudor beams, low ceilings, and Victorian garden made it seem like I had stepped into a postcard. Everything around me was different, especially in the kitchen, where the family cooked on a unique iron stove called an Aga. The children took great delight in asking me to speak Canadian all weekend and I translated boot to trunk, bonnet to hood, petrol to gas, and jumper to sweater. I hadn’t realized how North American I was, and our differences were the source of much laughter. To the disbelief of the children, I had never heard of Marmite, and the laughter reached fever pitch as they watched me try to choke down the thick, black, salty paste spread on my bread.