It’s Thanksgiving weekend and I am quite sick, which may be a good thing since this is the first time in twenty years that I’ve had to navigate this holiday entirely on my own. 

Historically this was always such a lovely weekend because, as a childless couple, my ex husband and I were serially adopted each year by friends with lovely and convivial dinner tables who opened their homes and hearts not only to us, but to a vibrant coterie of other friends. The feasts were always Lucullan, the conversation sparkled and the spirit of friendship shone more brightly than the candles that graced the holiday table. In an odd way, this became my Thanksgiving definition of “home.”

This year, my ex lives with his girlfriend and my usual hosts are out of province working in theatre and film. I am far too ill to leave my bed and my novel. I have no appetite, I look like hell and yet I am oddly content. It is just over a year from the official date of my separation, divorce papers have been filed and at long last a chapter of my life that lingers only as a very sad memory is coming to a close. Feeling punky notwithstanding, I am eager to go forward and excited by the possibilities that lie ahead. Being in bed with a stack of books is a luxury right now and not at all a bad place to be.

Tomorrow, in honour of the holiday, I will drag my sorry carcass out of bed to pick apples from the old tree under which, in another time, we were married - a tree whose production this year has been abundant and still hangs heavy on the bough. I will bring these apples to the animals in the field and sit with them in the sunshine to watch them savour their own Thanksgiving feast. 

It is a simple thing, but this year it will be enough. 

It would seem that a new life can come at a person from any direction, even from an old one. With the gentle rain falling outside my window, I am looking forward to an indulgent day of reading, curled up on one of my pretty new love seats, with an old cat purring on my lap.

When I moved away from the farm last fall, it was only partly because the addictions experts advised me to do so. The theory was that by leaving my husband with the house and the wealth of responsibility that went with it, I could help him appreciate the consequences of his alcoholism and addictions and encourage him to get help. With my love and support, they told me, he was more likely to come to grips with his multiple problems and be able to lead a clean, sober, happier life. In the end, by his own choice, what has transpired with him had almost nothing to do with me. 

My own private reason for moving out was that I’d seen it all before and didn’t want to become a statistic. When a marriage ends or is in trouble, it is somehow always the wife who gets left with the detritus, seemingly destined  to rattle around in the matrimonial home, with the kids (in our case many animals), the old furniture, the wedding gifts and all those memories of things past. It is almost a given that the husband will move on pretty effortlessly to a brand new and uncomplicated life with someone else.

So it was that I wanted to break the mould; and I was fortunate enough to have friends who made it possible for that new and uncomplicated life to belong to me. Although there was no someone else on the scene, everything was different from the existence I'd had here on the farm.

With my ex in residence on the homestead, I lived nearer town, on a river, in a modern cottage with all the amenities. I sipped wine with friends in the evenings on a deck and I slept in a beautiful loft. Although I missed them terribly, I had no farm animals to feed, almost no lawns to mow, no cares whatsoever except to heal and try somehow to find a path of my own. I indulged myself in long bubble baths in the whirlpool tub, with a book and a glass of chilled white wine in my hand. For the first time in years I had soft, uncallused feet. I lunched, did volunteer work, walked by the water, took up my camera again. I spent most weekends entertaining house guests, dining out, or visiting friends in lovely parts of the province I hadn’t seen in years. Slowly, with time,  I felt my single spirit coming back to life.

So it’s funny now to be back here in the country, especially on my own. True to every one of the cliches, my ex husband lost no time in establishing that proverbial new life anyway. Blithely, without a backward glance, he eschewed the important first year of solo recovery to replace me with a woman younger than I am and nowhere near as well educated or as bright. Because she is living near Chester, that’s the only place on earth he wants to be. By the late spring, like our marriage, the farm and everything on it had faded easily into his "then" while, in the ensuing chain of events, inching its way gradually back into my "now." I am so grateful that it did.

In the end I have come to be the one in residence here, returning at first temporarily to care for my critters, and then of my own volition, to the place I once so fervently intended to leave behind - to the unkempt acreage and the aging animals and the dear, decrepit old farmhouse whose charm I fell in love with all those many years ago.

Thanks to the long months I spent on my own elsewhere, I have learned that our happiness lies not in our geography but in our selves; and that just because the standard scenario usually plays out, doesn’t mean it is always a bad one or that it won't be fulfilling for me.

I am sitting in my bedroom back at the farm, a place I’d resolved never again to be. It is really only from this place that I can write this blog, because it’s hard to seek a life of the mind while living a practical life on the farm if you aren’t actually living on a farm.

Until last month, when to my great surprise I returned here for good, I lived on the LaHave River in an exquisite small cottage owned by two of my dearest friends. How and why I came back here is a story for another time. 

My marriage is completely over and has been for a long time. This time, no attempt was even made to save it. Although my ex husband and I are cordial, we have not really managed to remain friends. He has no idea how to do so, and I am far less invested in this notion than I was when we separated all those months ago. It was the romantic in me, I suppose.

Sadly, right after his return from a residential treatment programme in the Valley, he began a sexual relationship with a woman in his recovery group, thereby foreclosing on his chances of becoming self-sufficient and creating an immediate new set of co-dependencies with her. He is now deeply enmeshed. Although he appears to be clean and sober, his complicated interior problems have obviously not been resolved and this makes the chances of relapse far greater in the long run. As unfortunate as this may be, it is the path he has chosen to follow. With all the challenges that lie before him, I wish him nothing but the best.

In the year that has passed, I’ve had a great deal of growing to do on my own behalf. I’ve worked with a good therapist, had the help of an incredible support group, and benefitted greatly from the emotional and practical generosity of my friends. Slowly I have found my way back to reconnecting with the woman I once was and the woman I want still to be - free spirit, idealist, adventuress, dreamer and warrior in the cause of creating a better world.

Without the constraints of the film business to circumscribe my leisure, the enormous beauty of the Nova Scotia summer has made itself once again wonderfully apparent to me. And then there is the companionship of my girlfriends - kindred spirits encountered anew and woven, this time forever, into the fabric of my life. I am a lucky woman and I know it.

So from this place that was once our home and where I’ve begun to make a life on my own, I plan to live in nature, care for the animals, work, love, dream and, in countless other ways, live out my story. To make this my own sanctuary, a cocoon of serenity and comfort, a haven for friends, I began by painting the kitchen and living room pink. May the warm glow cast by these pretty walls envelop all who come here and invest this lovely old house with renewed life.

Having an active fantasy life is a pretty amazing thing. Now that I’m doing so much armchair travelling, it seems that the weight of the world is getting lighter by the day. That said, I haven’t managed to escape reality entirely, as happened recently upon the death of one of our old sheep. 

Melpomene, or Mel as she soon came to be known, left us quietly a couple of weeks ago having lived a long and happy life. When Sasha returned from the barn chores all too early that day, I read on his face the expression that over time I’ve come to know so well - another of the old animals had died. 

He found Mel kushed in front of the little sheep house where she had fallen quietly into an eternal sleep. Still warm to the touch, a light dusting of snow on her back, she had what we’ve come to think of here as a very good death. Other than a slowing of her gait in recent months, there had been no sign whatsoever that she would be leaving us anytime soon.

I write about this now because it is snowing and Sasha is away getting better so I’m the one who’s just come in from doing the barn chores, handing out pats and peanuts to our motley crew of aging animals along the way. My new Italian fantasy life is definitely a psychic godsend during these dark days of winter and I really am committed to the project I’ve begun. 

Even so, no matter how you slice it, there are still shining moments here on this old farm when there’s nowhere else on earth I’d rather be.

When I made the decision to learn Italian this year by pairing audio lessons with some enjoyable armchair travelling, I obviously had no idea what I'd be getting myself into. Suffice it to say that things haven’t been heading in the direction I had planned. 

The truth is that all this language learning and dreaming about things Italian was really intended to be a motivational exercise, a practical scheme whereby I could both beat the winter doldrums and propel myself toward a lifelong dream - a real, in the flesh, trip to Italy to soak up the great art treasures of the Italian Renaissance while partaking of some beautiful scenery along the way. Rome, Florence and Venice, I imagined, were the three places I absolutely had to see before my time on earth ran out. With the clock ticking away, this seemed like a good time to get the job done.

However, as I’ve been flipping through the guide books and watching travel videos on You Tube, I’ve noticed how often words like “crowded” and “expensive” abound. “Expensive” pleasures can somehow always be downscaled, but “crowded” is another matter entirely. I was horrified to discover that there’s even a special word in Italian to connote bumping into someone while taking one’s passagiata or ritual evening walk. 

In Florence, we are told, there are knock-offs of Michelangelo's David on street corners everywhere you turn, yet it costs money to see the real one. I discover to my genuine horror that nowadays, due to crowding, you have to make an appointment if you have any hope at all of getting into the Uffizi. One pays extra for a reservation to avoid long hours in line and there’s no such thing as an untimed visit either, all of which makes me wonder whether the splendours of classical Italian art might not more pleasurably be experienced through an expensive coffee table book in the leisurely comfort of home. 

Any dream I might have nurtured about Rome, or the Vatican or the Sistine chapel ceiling, died on the spot when two of my dearest friends recounted their nightmare visits there. The words “crowded” and “expensive” figured so heavily in those anecdotes that, Michelangelo forgive me, I'm beginning to think I can do without. My urbane and witty friends hated Florence for the same reasons and couldn’t wait to get into the countryside. They were tired of being crushed by the tourists, and if I’m not mistaken, even found that city to have an offensive smell.

As for Venice, what can be said? Described in virtually all the travel guides as "a must see" that is both “crowded" and "expensive,” La Serenissima, we are told, is best visited off season. However, anyone who has seen the Nicholas Roeg film, Don’t Look Now, won’t be at all seduced by the dark, dank vision of the city that fall and winter seem to provide. Pair that with the news that gondola rides are only for the very foolhardy (or at least for those touristy types with serious money to burn) and a bit more of the bloom falls off the rose. Do I really want to be laughed at by the locals? Suffer pigeons dive- bombing me in Piazza San Marco? Drink cappuccino that goes for eight dollars a cup? And just how deep is my long cherished desire to sip a Bellini while perched on a stool in Harry’s Bar? The price I’d have to pay for that one, even if I could find a seat, seems pretty “expensive” too. White peaches notwithstanding, would I be missing all that much if I stayed away?

The other part of my plan, the language learning component, has also encountered some mild difficulty. It took me a few days to opt for Pimmsleur over Michel Thomas when, despite good reviews, the phlegmy intonations of the latter began to drive me insane. Who needs water on the ear? It became absolutely unbearble!

I also passed on anything whose title mentioned learning while driving a car, partly because my vehicle has no facility for docking an i-Pod and partly because I’m stuffy enough to believe that, while driving a car, people ought to be concentrating on driving a car, not daydreaming in the foreign language they're immersed in while behind the wheel.

As discouraging as some of this might sound, I'm certainly not giving up on my Italian fantasy life or on my New Year's resolution to add a new language to my skill set. As my vocabulary is expanding by the day, I am merely moving my dreams a little further off the beaten track to those places in Italy where a curious and adventurous woman might find delight in less famous things.

If that means that, thanks to Frances Mayes and her ilk, most of crowded Tuscany has to fall off the roster too, so be it. There are lots of other places left to see. The only thing that's certain right now is that the journey I’ve begun in my head has already done wonders to take me away from the dreaded winter blahs. That in itself is magnifico!

Even without a calendar I can always recognize the turning of the year by my sudden craving for salt. By New Year’s Day every year, the chocolate overdose that accompanies the Christmas holidays just somehow seems to catapult me into a totally savoury world. Lindt, of course, has tried to have it both ways with their amazing dark chocolate bars seasoned with fleur de sel, but right now I’m having none of it. From today on, when snack time rolls around, I’m back to pretzels, hummus and pita, bruschetta, crackers and cheese. Anything that doesn’t involve chocolate.

Right now I’m sitting in front of the fire on this first day of a brand new year trying to resolve what to do about resolutions. Looking backward at the mostly failed ones I put forward last year, it seems prudent this time either to forgo the ritual entirely or somehow to decrease the possibility of failure so that something truly encouraging might actually come to pass.

This year, I’ve decided, I’m only going to make one resolution. I’m going to pass on all the stuff about exercise and healthy eating and go straight out into left field with something entirely new. I have resolved in 2011 to learn to speak Italian. 

For anyone who is cringing right now, trying to push away the nascent apprehension that I’m embarking on a cloned Eat, Pray, Love kind of experience, please have no fear. I’m not working through my marital angst by planning a year of travel to Italy, India and Bali. I’m actually just staving off the inevitable winter blahs with a fantasy life that includes the language of another climate, and mental images of another place and time.

Some weeks ago, while rooting around in some of the boxes that Sasha has packed up for give-away, sale or disposal, I came upon a CD set of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun. Since this is not something we’d ever have bought, neither of us has any idea where it came from, but it did fit nicely into the CD player of the little Ford Focus I purchased this past fall. I listened to it all.

Despite the cloying southern drawl of the narrator and the total massacre of the Italian language (why do they let authors record their own works?) I fell totally in love with the descriptions of the landscape, the culture and food of Tuscany, the idea of an escape to someplace else.

So I have downloaded a good set of audio Italian language lessons to my iPod, found in my own library a number of wonderful books involving things Italian, bought a small English/Italian dictionary and a Fodors.

Now, over steaming bowls of ribollita or minestrone, I’ll be all set to fantasize at will. This winter, as I swan around in my fat pants intoning phrases like “Mi piace la pasta” or “Dove il bagno” I’ll be getting two things done really well. I’ll be dreaming the edge off reality and I’ll be learning something new. What could possibly be better than that?