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.