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Esta Doutrich

Esta Doutrich

Category Archives: laughter

Get in the car! Get in the car NOW!

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by Esta in friends, laughter, Scary experiences, the wilderness

≈ 6 Comments

It was on the last drive back from a weekend road trip.

There were three of us and for a girl who drives thousands of miles alone, I was soaking it in.

It was late and there had been only miles Canadian bush for the last long while as we talked, and the darkness pushed in on the headlights. Suddenly the temperature gauge shot up to red and we pulled up along the narrow shoulder, me inwardly groaning at yet another car problem.

Because of previous vehicle issues that trip, I knew that we needed to wait until the car cooled down enough that I could add coolant to the radiator, since for various reasons too complicated for here, it was disappearing rather unnaturally.

So we waited in the dark, Teresa, Paula and I, with our red emergency lights flashing slow across the empty road. We talked and talked and it wasn’t anything about the newest trend in skirts. I know I’ll always remember sitting in the inky darkness, feeling my eyes mist, realizing how deep our stories run.

One semi roared past and that was all, besides the empty asphalt and inky pines.

After about 30 minutes I though the engine was probably cool enough and grabbed my jug of antifreeze. The weeds were high alongside the ditch and everything was silence and very black.

“I’m going to get out. I’m going to face my fear” Paula said, opening the door and coming out with me. Her voice was as determined as it was brave and I was so thankful for someone standing beside me.

I leaned under the hood, fiddling with the radiator cap, folding up a sweater around it so it wouldn’t scald me if the pressure was still high. My back was turned from the road, as I pulled this and wiggled that.

Paula stood in the headlights, watching me.

The breeze was cool on my hands and softly rustled the brush in the ditch below. I was just about to open the cap, leaning far to one side in case it shot hot liquid, when Paula’s voice shouted fear.

“Get in the car! Get in the CAR! GET IN THE CAR NOW!”

I didn’t turn around. Her voice sounded like coagulated terror and I lunged for the door. My skirt got caught in the weeks and my mind raced, wondering when I would feel something grab me from the darkness. I fell into the car and slammed the door, heart leaping against my rib cage.“What is it?”

She pointed through the slit bellow the raised hood.

There, on the road, behind where we had just been standing, were three wolves.

They had slipped up without a sound and stood there, eyes glinting in the darkness.

I’ve never seen wolves in the wild. I never care to see them that close again. Even now, I get shivers just writing it.

Finally, after staring us down, they slunk off and we, still shaken, tried to decide what to do. The car was still out of coolant, the hood was still up, and the jug of antifreeze was still sitting where I left it.

 

It was very very very scary.

I for one, was very glad Paula warrior-faced the darkness and saved my rear end from getting chomped on.

The End.

Photo credit

180 hours in 50 days

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by Esta in canoeing, friends, laughter, nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 7 Comments

“Take care, kid”, he says. Worry wrinkles crease between his eyes.

“I’ll try”, I answer and walk out of the gas bar.

It makes me feel little.

I’m the girl covered in grease, pulled up at the rest station with the car hood up, clothes sticking to her back, and yes, that is a tattooed biker helping her diagnose that strange noise under the front axle.

He had a nice tattooed wife, although at that point I wouldn’t have cared if he was alone, wore an eye patch, and carried a 44 mag, as long as he offered to help.

In the last 50 days I’ve driven over 180 hours—70 of those hours alone.

In reality, I only suffered two significant breakdowns, at least car related, which is almost a lifetime record.

I guess God isn’t really calling me to be a mechanic, or marry one, like I had begun to suspect.

50 days ago I was leaving Slate Falls, while the rain filled the potholes, and I prayed to make it out without getting stuck.

Since then I managed to graduate, feel the Mississippi heat, sip sweet tea in Virginia, canoe the Ontario wilds, stick my toes in the pacific, and hike the Idaho Mountains.

Possibly I’ve been home a total of 14 days. I’m not exactly sure.

Now, 50 days later, I am packing again for Slate Falls. (yes, indeed)

This time for at least 6 months.

Guess what?

The emotions in the last 50 days are even more varied. (no, duh)

Guess what else?

I think that is okay.

This month has been insane with learning to love all the ups and downs and “yes, Lords”.

 More than anything I want to be dramatic in my determination to grow, even if it means loosing all the answers and the things I protect myself with.

And if God takes that to mean leaving me stranded on the road by myself or calling me to work in the far, cold north for a while, than so be it.

If that didn’t make any sense, just leave it.

I tried to quit coffee cold turkey yesterday and this morning woke up to realize the great stupidity of such a thing, translated into subtitles by a throbbing headache.

So much for all my haughty snides about coffee addicts.

Next thing you know I’ll have to wean myself down to one energy drink a day, sipped while laying in a tanning bed and reading Karen Kingsbury.

All’s fair in Love and Loud Opinions.

A little humor

04 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by Esta in laughter, life dirt, nursing, slate falls

≈ 2 Comments

Life is not a polaroid of one moment, etched by the emotions and events in that single instant, that tells all and settles everything into the way it is.

Thank, God.

Me with the crooked nose in the pillow wondering why I always have to feel everything like wet cement, where even a ladybug crossing makes a footprint.

Fix this relationships, deal with this anger/loneliness/drama now, become more godly, more feminine. Now. Now. Now.

Gasp. Sputter.

Because we were never meant to live like the drama is a cold wave to our lungs, but sometimes I forget.

 

Sleep on it.

Sleep on it, relax, and stop taking yourself so seriously.

For petes sake, stop. And laugh.

I’ve chanted those lines to myself over and over last week.

 And the theory stretched tight and drug across my mind like an threadbare area rug.

Someone wanted to take death in their own hands, last week, and came seconds away from success, and it shook me, I’ll admit.

 And of course I was there earlier that morning and so wonder if I should have been sweeter, or kinder, or if I said something wrong that made him make the choice.

There have been moments when I would have paid over a royal wedding to be able to lock myself in a quiet world and hold silence just for the beauty of it, blocking out that day.

But.

Which is the word that you never follow “I’m sorry” with, but that keeps me madly in love with my life.

But, there is always the choice to fit laughter snug up against the tragedy that time seems to create.

Not laughing at the pain or making light of the mess of earth, but letting go of our control of it, and finding gentle humor in the little things. And when you laugh at time, it gets disgruntled.

The nurses and I laughed last week, her holding the papers on a car hood, while he tried to call air ambulance on the satellite phone and the wind blew dust around the young officer, all of us eating up the dry humor.

As the head nurse said, “A little humor goes a long way”

Time may seem to create crisis.

I know that reality, since it holds the cards in healthcare especially. I know what split seconds can do to life. I know.

Yes, run like life depends on it, grab that stretcher, make split second decisions, get the assignment done on time, apologize quickly, witness before its too late.

But in the end, you know, time doesn’t have the last say, God does.

And, frankly, he doesn’t need your  control to help him handle it.

You just look like a blundering idiot taking the universe’s drama on your toothpick shoulders.

So fill the panic of time with high laughter, even if it comes hard.

A little humor goes a long way,

preaches Esta to herself.

(for photo credit of first two pictures click on picture)

It’s been good

11 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by Esta in laughter, nursing, slate falls

≈ 3 Comments

 Thursday we had a nice little blizzard in the morning just so winter could scare us before leaving, as it seems to be doing this weekend.

 

Not like we still don’t have three feet of snow and a lake of solid ice to melt before then, but at least the road is muddy and my car starts in the mornings without a heat lamp under the oil pan.

 I came from spring into winter, which is usually the opposite choice at this time of year. I was afraid I would find the switch depressing. Not so. 

 The cold up here is cleaner than down south and less damp.

The real difference though, I have decided, is the attitude surrounding it. Winter is not endured like it seems to be down south. Winter is just winter. You live and you play and you walk to school and feed your dog just like any other day.

 Today though, water is making little rivers down the roads and filling up the potholes to the brim. I wore a sweater to church and didn’t sit on the bench behind the wood stove like I usually do to keep my feet warm.

A good thing too, that changing benches act.

 Last Sunday night, while wiggling along the pew in an attempt to avoid little tickling fingers, I rubbed my shoulder up against the back of the bench and a 1 ½ in wooden splinter promptly slid into my back. That never happened to me before.

Which makes sense, since a lot of things in the last four weeks have never happened to me before.

 I never won third place in a jigging contest until last week, despite my love of dancing around and falling over my own feet. (And don’t tattle. It wasn’t real dancing really)

One night I spent the late hours staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I really would’ve hated to be Johny Cash’s first wife, even if he could sing all deep and romantic.

I’ve listened to Brittany Spears while partridge hunting which, I must say, lends a certain aura to the sport I’ve never experienced.

 

In fact, a lot of music that I tend to mock has been pumped into my ears the last while and you might catch me singing Katy Perry by accident, since the kids put certain songs on repeat and repeat and repeat and it’s not my fault that they get stuck in my head.

(Brothers, don’t go into cardiac arrest)

 I’ve also played x-box.

 ( Mom, help them off the floor)

See world, I’m mellowing out a bit.

I’ve helped bandage wounds where the cause was different from the usual pressure ulcer or knee surgery, which was eye-opening in many ways.

It’s been good.

Good like head thrown back laughing, and she looks up from wrapping her arms around your waist and touches your cheeks. “You have lots and lots of lines in your face when you laugh” And you just laugh some more.

I am full, full.

 Up to the brim full of emotion and laughter and struggle.

 I feel very, very alive right now.

 

Ice, needles, and bannock

01 Friday Apr 2011

Posted by Esta in laughter, nursing, realized dreams, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 8 Comments

Is it possible to change so much in three weeks? Because, you know, if my heart had a mirror I don’t know if I would recognize it.

And it seems strange, because this is not new to me—this cold, this bannock, this sound of a bush plane, these BP cuffs and insulin needles.

I arrived it Slate Falls, Ontario on March 15th, with 2000km and three hours of icy logging roads behind me.

Hours after I got here the community lost power and that night I threw up all over a strangers maroon carpet. By morning my stomach had been turned inside out. The next day, lying weak under the covers, I felt very alone and knew there was no going back, and cried and then laughed.

I’m glad there was no going back, even though the chicken in me whimpered, curled up there in the chilly bedroom.

This just feels so right.

I can’t even tell you why.

Except that when I stand in the dawn light, and see the lake stretching white, white, and the wood smoke laying across the pines, held low by the icy air, I can breathe deep.

And everyone laughs—the kids when they wiggle my crooked nose and the adults when I trip over things and spill tea all over the floor and try to speak Ojibway or take their blood pressure.  And I can join them.

Working at the clinic has been like discovering a part of me I lost. Through the urban healthcare education I had begun to wonder how my earthy soul was going to survive the 0800 meds, the white walls, and the schedule, schedule, schedule of unit life.

This, this is what I wanted when I started my first semester.

 When treating patients is more than following a Doctors order and a Kardex and you chat with them about their fish nets, and your assessment skills are suddenly your lifeline.

I love treating a child for an ear infection one day, giving him a ride to school the next, and drinking tea with his grandma two days later.

 I love having a tiny gravel airstrip be the focus of planning your day. When is the plane coming? Who is on it? Who is leaving? What blood work/mail/packages do we need to send out?  I love meeting it, standing in the cold with my moose hide mitts, waiting for the red mail bag.

 Most of my friends ask about loneliness and the isolation.
 
 Yes, there are moments when I would love to talk or hang out with my friends in the south. I get horrible late hours of feeling like I dropped off the face of the earth and no one cares.

 

 But I am surrounded by people. People who make me laugh as well as want to cry.
 
 I think one of my biggest struggles is actually being able to just get away and be alone–which is why I haven’t had the time to blog or tell all my stories.
 
There has been no time for writing—because there has been too much living.
 
Even now I am holding a squirming baby, watching moose dumplings bubble, drinking Red Rose, and typing with two fingers.
 
 From where winter still is,
 
I thank you friends for caring.
 
 I need to run. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Freak out sessions

05 Saturday Mar 2011

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, laughter, life dirt, ranting

≈ 3 Comments

 I come home and God and I have freak out sessions late in the night.

Or, I guess I should say, I freak out and God lets me.

Last weekend we sat in leather couches and told of what life means for us now, and how we need prayer.

So in the sunlight I write down the prayer requests and mostly there are words like surrender and unknown, and loss of focus and inside, where they can’t see, I know my selfishness. 

I don’t want to hear about surrender and focus and giving up self.

I don’t want to hear about it because I know all about it in my head, but that hasn’t seemed to make any difference.

Letting go. Opening the hands. Surrender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It has been a life-long, gory battle, and, frankly I just wanted off.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was just one of those spiritual ideas that you can mull over and nothing in the real life of messy rooms and baloney for lunch would be effected.

 But you can’t laugh at yourself when you are making fists and if you can’t laugh at yourself you are toast. Or at least I am.

So here I am freaking out and trying to pry open fists while packing for three months and taking final exams

and finding one of my best friends is getting married

and I am too opinionated with my family

and don’t mind me, but I think I’ll just go join a convent and sell hippy buses for a living and wear dragon fly anklets.

Agh.

Would someone please tell me a good joke

or kiss me

or throw a glass of cold water on my head.

 

p.s my dear friend Kristin is hosting a lovely giveaway over here!

*photo credit*

It’s this time

09 Wednesday Feb 2011

Posted by Esta in friends, laughter, life dirt

≈ 18 Comments

It never used to be like this. Not when we were sixteen and overused exclamation points in everything.

We never used to have these stories, never used to be in the middle of them, or on the edge of them, but now we are. Us who are between seedling twenty and who-knows- what.

And I realize it’s not because I’ve become more sensitive that I can’t go through the names of my twenty closest friends without catching my breath on almost every one and breathing prayers.

It’s this time. It’s the age of me–the age of my friends.

It’s us, still little, still young, in the middle of being tested, bent by real life though we still feel sixteen inside.

We have barely touched adulthood, but still cling to our tarnished adolescent idealism, disillusioned, but our fingers tighten, reluctant to let it go.

I guess we don’t grow into adulthood. I guess we crack, we splinter, and we fall all over our own two feet to get there.

 

And we plough through relationships that people spend years writing self help books on and try to do it right. Oh, we try hard.  And just as hard, we wrestle though life wide decisions and, blast it all, we are going to follow God’s will. And this is the age when we start to wonder if we even know how.

We now realize that answers cannot be neatly printed in the blanks spaces of Sunday school worksheets, with our favorite red crayon. And no matter how close we follow what those respected for-youth books said to do, we don’t end up where they said we would be.

Our hearts still feel little, but we are in the middle of big stories now. And we are blinking.

It’s the time–the age–when petty faith shatters on the marble of real life and what we never doubted we do. In the light streaming in from the window we start sifting though the pieces to find the shards that are real glass and to throw away the scotch tape for good.

And stretching, stretching, our stories pull us bigger.

 

This is the age when the littleness inside us starts leaving. But gracious, how it breaks the bones! And we hold each other up and say “In 10 years or forever…”

But this is the age of rejoicing too because life is hope and we can just hang out and be confused together. And we tell each other that our stories are not unknown to the Greater Story and we are part of it and are meant to be part of it, which is the biggest miracle of all. So we laugh at each other.

And as Joshua Radin sings,

“We are grown but cannot see.

Lost our world of make believe….

But we are okay, we are alright

We sing very loud.

Ya, we’re singing.

We are okay, we are alright…”

And this is where we sing very loud, and eat popcorn, and sit in coffee shops, and talk, and find our faith for real—and walk ahead whether we see the path or not, altogether.

This is the age of blind ones walking and all we see yet is trees where our stories lie.

Green Olive Soup? Me?

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Esta in creating, family, laughter

≈ 5 Comments

“I can’t pucker my lips”, Benny wails, lips stretching and twitching in his attempt

“Benny!” declares Davy, “If you can’t pucker your lips you’re not going to be able to get a girlfriend!”

For the record I did not teach them that. And Benny will not have any problems getting a girlfriend, despite not being able to make kissing noises to save his life.

Because he eats anything a girl puts before him.

Even green olive soup.

And Benny hates olives.

———————————————————————-

I first tasted green olive soup on a cold, snow driven night in Minnesota, sitting across from my friend, Charissa.

 

 

 

 

 

The window let in the glow of the street lamps and we talked about how life is messy and drank tea. We also had cups filled with green olive soup and I decided to fall in love with it, since it gave me warm fuzzy feelings and tasted delicious.

I used to hate olives.

And then one day I said to myself,

 “Esta, stop this childish nonsense”

That year I forced olives into my mouth whenever I could and told myself they were good.

And finally I started to believe myself. Which is fortunate, since otherwise I would have never ordered green olive soup and would have missed falling in love.

Well today, I took a large test, which is supposed to tell me if I have any chance at passing the national nursing exam after graduation. It was mildly stressful.

Afterword, as a way to celebrate, I decided to make my own Green Olive Soup.

 Lydia helped me.

It turned out just right, creamy and olivey, and I was to tickled.

I served it for supper since the parents were gone. I found out brothers don’t like green olive soup like sisters do. But they all ate it like men, which is to say they finished their bowels with only moderate nose wiggles and gagging. Robert even said it was good.

I feel so artsy and domestic.

 I mean, I just made Green Olive Soup.

Me, the girl whose favorite food is fried potatoes over a camp fire, the more charcoal the better.

 Either I’m becoming city-fied or I’m growing up.

Exams are done and eyebrows are not bushy

16 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by Esta in laughter, nursing, sleeping, the wilderness

≈ 1 Comment

The last exam is done.

 The pencil scratched grey in the last pink bubble, which is to say that the last bit of my brain was emptied out on the cold plastic table and I walked out unencumbered by any frantic desire to know all the symptoms of Digoxin toxicity.

Suddenly I could care about stuff again. Stuff being defined as not-necessary-to pass-exams-stuff. Like, for example, showers and clean rooms and neat eyebrows. All of which were in dire need of being thought about again. I also could throw my alarm clock against the wall if I wanted to and no one would care—except me of course, who would have to buy a new cell phone.

It is, to borrow the feminine adjective, a lovely feeling.

 It was a good semester. Hard—gutty hard sometimes—but full of those quivering moments when your hands get dirty helping someone and you realize that actions are deeper than textbook answers.

Still it was time for a break.

“Brain, come down from that bookshelf. Now. I mean it.”

“Make me”

“Brain, I’m serious. We still have 1000 words to write tonight.”

“You’re not my boss”

“Brain, if you don’t come down I will never speak to you again”

“Two cups of coffee and a chocolate bar and I’ll come down”

“Fine, deal”

It was time for things to slow down. Yup.

Currently snow is fluttering around in great big swooshes outside and my red pillows are so comfy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And I am cooing over my clean room—marveling how sometimes its not the fluffly pillows and the warm house that equal joy—but rather the knowledge that healing doesn’t just happen in the summer, but all through the fierce winter too.

Now for snowmobiles and snowshoes and having the time to actually enjoy the outdoors.

Terror in a dark alley

12 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by Esta in laughter, silly fears

≈ 1 Comment

If I would not have an affinity for detective novels, walk dark alleys, and wear a jean back pack, my evening might have been quite uneventful.

But I do, and therefore I am thankful that my heart still beats and my eyes remain firmly in my skull.

But let me explain…..

I left school just as the sun was getting to that low place in the sky when it’s not quite setting but almost. The bus was late. It came eventually and I got on with the rest of the college students heading downtown. I have about an hour and a half on public transit. Two buses and one subway. I pulled out my collection of short detective stories and spent the entirety of my journey reading about unlikely murderers, thieves, and bandits hiding in strange places and jumping out at unexpected times on unsuspecting citizens.

By the time I got on my last bus, it was dark. The bus stop is quite a distance from my house, so when I get home late I am apt call one of my brothers to meet me at the closest intersection and have them walk me home. Tonight I mocked my wimpy little self and determined to walk home alone. Time to grow up, Esta.

I felt a slight ripple of apprehension lap at my hyped courage when I saw that a sketchy looking gentleman, wearing a scruffy jacket and a scruffier beard, was also getting off at my stop.

“Goodness, Esta, don’t be a chicken liver”, I argued and got off the bus behind him.

For the first five minutes I walked fast, trying to get as much distance between myself and Mr Scruffy as possible. My mind, still in the hothouse of detectives and wild-eyed jumpers-out-of-strange-alleys, peered down every driveway with doubts as to its quiet peaceful appearance. In detective stories, quiet peaceful places always mean imminent danger.

Despite my paranoia, after a few minutes I relaxed and began to enjoy the moon and the cold breeze and the two stars that dared glitter. I turned down the final dark street and slowly made my way down the row of darkened houses, enjoying the night and the dreamy darkness.

Half way down this particular street there is a junk yard for old cars. A sagging chain-link fence, complete with the rust that is needed for a fence surrounding a car lot, makes a rather pathetic attempt at keeping people out. Just as I reached its deserted parameters, I slowed down for a long look at the glimmering moon.

 Then, very distinctly, I felt my backpack jerked backwards in one firm, determined tug.

I felt, through my shoulder straps, the vibrations of the zipper being ripped opened and heard the zinging as the little tag followed the trail of teeth from on side all the way to the other.

I screamed—a strangled yell of absolute terror.

I spun around and the contents of my backpack flew like shrapnel in a wide circle around me.

But instead of standing face to face with a large man in a ski mask, I found myself staring at an empty sidewalk.

After standing and blinking stupidly for 30 seconds I finally felt my heart start beating again.

So there I stood, on a deserted sidewalk with no felon in sight. Well, not quite deserted.

Books, pens, coins, papers, and one red stapler decorated two lawns, 10 feet of sidewalk, and an old car lot. Some had even ventured so far as to fly out into the street and settle under the wheels of several parked cars.

I turned to start collecting the delicate confetti when I saw him, standing in the old lot. He must have been locking up for the night, but there he stood, staring at me with a frozen expression of worry.

“Hey, you okay?” he yelled across the fence.

Sidewalk cracks should be made to disappear through.

“Um, uh,  I’m fine” I stammer out and hurry to gather up my deviant articles.

I know he is standing there watching as I crawl around on hands and knees, trying to stuff everything back in my backpack as fast as possible. I crawl around, snatching pens from under car fenders and bus tokens from trimmed gardens, all the time trying to understand how I got to be in this position.

Finally everything is back in and zipped up tightly and I scurry down the street. A few yards down the sidewalk I see a portly old man standing in his lawn and I know he must have also seen my exhibition of madness. Sure enough he stares as I approach and continues to stare as I walk past. I know I’m going to start laughing. I can feel it coming.

“Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t even smile. He already thinks you’re a loony”

I turn to hide a wide smile that finally bursts.

Silent laughter begins to shake my shoulders and by the time I’m a half a block away I am laughing like one who finally rolled off the pickle barrel.

Dad looks up from working on the deck to find his daughter cackling to herself as she trundles up the street in the light of the sliver moon.

And so ends a more bizarre evening stroll.

As a follow up, so you’re not worried about my sanity as well, what happened was this:  On the last bus I had noticed that my backpack was slightly opened. Not thinking to close it I had walked the seven minutes home, and since my pack is made of soft jean-like material, every footstep pushed my heavy textbooks harder and harder against the already opened zipper. Finally the whole thing just split open.

And a poor car dealer will always worry about the crazy lady who walks his street.

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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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