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Esta Doutrich

Esta Doutrich

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Glorious irresponsibility

28 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by Esta in books, nursing

≈ 3 Comments

5:30 am and I have just decided to let the six o’clock bus go by without me. I haven’t missed a day of classes in the semester yet, so I’m due for a skip day.

The decision was made by mentally listing five reasons. 1.) My brother Jon is leaving for two months tomorrow and I would like to spend as much time around him before he does. 2.) I have a headache. 3.) I don’t have any papers due or tests to write. 4.) The weather is nasty. 5.) I have a large paper due tomorrow that still needs to be finished.

All of these excuses wouldn’t count for much if I was an obsessive student.—but I’m not. So there you have it.

Going back to bed would only prove I’m lazy and completely lame. In protest to this I’m about to go make myself a cup of tea and grab my journal. Sometime before dawn I will also start polishing up my paper.

Insert————-> I now have a whole pot of tea—jasmine green tea, which is my favorite. And a large bowel of apple crisp. This slight rebellion seems to be quite comfortable.

As long as I don’t spill tea all over myself all should be well. That happened to me yesterday morning. I was sitting at the table, soaking in the last quiet moments before clinical, when, for no apparent reason, my cup slightly tilled and a large slash of hot tea ended up on my lap. It didn’t seem fair that on the day I was good and responsible I would get burned.

So far this morning, my tea seems to be behaving rather well.

Now I shall go light my new red candle, fluff my two red pillows, and refill my mug.

From my soft bedroom chair, spoken with a cup of steaming tea in hand, I encourage you all to be irresponsible and take time to sit back and take a deep breath.

When you want to run into the wild

20 Wednesday Oct 2010

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, books, canoeing, life dirt, realized dreams, the wilderness, unreasonable hope

≈ 1 Comment

Of my Top Four Passions—

Christ,

People,

Travel,

and Wilderness

—the first and second always trump the third and fourth.

I feel the tension deeper sometimes, like now, when fall blazes and swirls yellow leaves around cattail skeletons.

The best of all seasons never lasts long enough, at least here in Canada. It’s the texture in the drying out and dying of everything that makes it so haunting. I’ve never been able to fully absorb fall before it disappears underneath the snow and ice of northern winters.

It has become even harder since moving south into the city.

Life is ironic. Ironic in a funny, aching way.

I have talked to so many girls who just love the city. Girls who think living in the city would be a dream come true. They love the people, the bustle, the color, and the millions of adorable shops and stores hidden everywhere. And, truly, I have become more like those girls the last four years. I do love my city. I do love the people. And there is something to be said about being able to ride the street car to your favorite used bookstore, tucked beside a convenient little coffee shop. Yet, if it wouldn’t be for The Call, I would not be here.

No way.

It is worth it, yes. A million times over.

But it still aches.

Because my “dream” life, if only orchestrated by me, is very different.

I cannot, and never have, describe to you the feeling of  coming alive that happens when I paddle a canoe or sit by a camp fire. Its as close as I ever get to what C.S. Lewis describes as what he thinks heaven will be like. A sudden, clear,  “Ahhh, so this is where I have always belonged. Now everything makes sense”  kind of emotion.

It is moss and tall white birches and blankets of tangy pine needles. It’s fierce red leaves and silence and the call of a whippoorwill. Its bare rock and paddles and a cedar strip canoe. It’s the smell of wood smoke and the sound of a snow machine, and the way the snow squeaks when its cold.

I love it. I have always loved it. I have never grown bored of paddling, or hiking a ridge, or sitting quietly by a lake.

I mean, what I would absolutely love, would be one of these.

 

 Pretty much like this on the inside

 With these

 

And my dream—a cedar strip canoe

 

Crazy, eh?

I choose to belive though, that by Grace and a Greater Plan I can be more than content while still carrying my longings honestly.

———————————————————————————-

And if you love the wilds too, here are three great reads to take you there.

   Nahanni Trailhead: A year in the northern wilderness

 

 

 

 

   Wilderness Wife 

 

 

 

  The Spell of the Yukon. (Poetry)

Homesick for sarcasm

11 Saturday Sep 2010

Posted by Esta in books, family, laughter

≈ 5 Comments

Most of the time they do stuff like stand on logs and then hit each other with big sticks. I missed that.

 

And I missed their sarcasm.

I’ve heard people say that sarcasm is an unhealthy form of humor—hurtful, they say. That is purely a case of  situational ethics. Because sarcasm, its like a love language around my house. And I missed it more than anything this summer. So much so that I went back and read  journal entries just to be reminded that it still existed somewhere, in the after supper conversations of my strangely wonderful brothers.

One evening I read this entry, written before I left…..

This. This is what I missed when I thought of my brothers.

03-04-10

Daniel was bored tonight. It is a rare thing for him, really. All evening the six foot, 150 pound teen boy slouched around the house, his arms dragging behind him like those apes you see at the zoo. A long trail of mumbled sarcastic comments flowed from his mouth as he stalked up and down. Finally, finding the monotony overpowering, he came to the dinning room to seek help. 

I walked in about five minutes after he got there. Just in time to hear the tail end of his sob story.

It was something along the lines of, “There nothing to do in this house. I want to do something. Isn’t there anything I can do? I’m sick of not doing anything. I need something do!”

Naturally, loving him and all, every family member present jumped to his aid.

Dad, eyes alight: “ You want something to do with   your evening?”

Daniel, catching on to his excitement: “Yes!”

Dad: “What about changing the print cartridges in all the printers?!!!”

Daniel: “Why don’t I just go jump off a cliff?”

This conversation is followed by Dad imitating, in a high squeaky voice, us children calling for his help every time the printers break down.

Which sparked a debate as to why he is grumbling when he was the one to choose to get married and have so many kids anyways. This little rabbit trail continues for a few heated moments, but soon Daniel once again starts up his wail of wanting to “do something”

Esta: “ I know! You could start a blog!”

Daniel, rolling eyes: “What would I do with a blog? I hardly even go on Facebook.”

Esta: “ A blog is different. You write about stuff.”

Daniel: “Stuff? Like girls…..”

The conversation ended there. And we turn to Mom, who always has something to say, hoping she will offer sage advice.

“Why don’t you just take that thing and put it on your ear and see how long you can stand the pain?”

The “thing”, which was in Daniels hand, happened to be a large spring-loaded clamp/tool thing used to pinch wood together while glue is drying. We all laugh of course, but Daniel seems to think that was the best idea yet, even though he doesn’t actually try it.

“Well whatever you do, Daniel”, I say, putting a hand on his shoulder, “don’t play computer games.”

“Oh, but that’s what I want to do!”, he wails

Ah! This sparks a debate all its own that revolves around the hypothesis that video games destroy a child’s creativity. So went the next few minutes of conversation.

Still Daniel remained unoccupied. Mom remembers he hadn’t done his seven minutes of kitchen chores and reminds him.

“Make me”, replies the sarcastic teenager.

To which Mom reminds him, gentle like, that she already did, about sixteen years ago. Daniel blinks stupidly for a few seconds while he untangles the joke and then, smirking, admits defeat.While he is washing dishes, suggestions on how to occupy his time are thrown around the room like darts.

What about  Dad turns the stairs into a giant treadmill so he can “just run and run”?!!

 Or a punching bag. That would be cool. No?

What about weights? Snap.

Reading? Apparently he had already read every book in the whole house. 

Mom, despairing: “Have you read The Harvester? The one about the guy that has the dream about the woman?”

Daniel: “Excuse me?!?!?!”

Mom: “You know, he has a dream about this lady and then he meets her in real life”

Daniel: “Wow, I should try that…. ‘ Hey, you, I dreamed about you….sooooooo…’”

No luck with the book suggestion. Ranting continues.

Mom suggests taking a glass jar outside and dropping it on the cement just to see it shatter.

“You did that once when you were small.”

Daniel reminds her he was punished for that small incident.

Mom states he must feel trapped.

“Well I live with a bunch of lunatics”. 

He then starts a little chant/round song about going crazy, which has the potential to drive us all insane in seconds.

I race upstairs and rack my bookshelf for something, anything to help him. Lugging a stack of books I reentered the dining room and plopped them in front of him. He flipped through them, commenting on each.

“Read that one.”

” Wait, this I borrowed from so and so like five years ago.”

” Eww, this looks mushy.”

” Any good fights in this one?”

Finally, picking up a paperback, “Oh, I’ve never read this one. It looks cool”

Just like that, would you believe it, he sits down on the coach without another word and starts reading. Boom. No more complaining or wining. Amazing.

I rest my case, if I had one. That being that there is nothing like a good book to feed the mind.Later, as I was walking out of the dining room, I commented to someone how our past can always be redeemed.

Daniel looked up just long enough to take one last sarcastic stab. 

“Well, Esta, may my past, wasted by playing horrible, brain killing video games somehow, somehow be someday redeemed.”

I do hope so Daniel, I really do.

 

And now I’m back!

 Back, smack dab in the middle of crazy supper table converstaions and sarcastic brothers, who get it genetically from both sides. 

These days will not last forever and so I savor  one more winter of being a part of it all, and laughing.

I'm Esta

/Canadian nurse living in Oregon/ Occasionally I write about depression, womanhood, faith, and other super abstract ideas, while trying not to take myself too seriously.

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