Fungus

The other day, when I was using a broom on a 12ft handle to brush four inches of snow off our solar panels, I was thinking it’s funny how life turns out.

The solar panels are at the top of a pole which is at the top of a hill, reached by climbing through two feet of snow, then down and over a ditch into a clearing littered with felled trees.

When I brush the snow and the wind is in the wrong direction, the powder comes avalanching down on my head.

In case you were wondering, I’m not complaining about this. I’m telling you simply because it’s funny – it’s odd – what you end up doing.

This was not in my book of predictions when I was growing up in England. I didn’t see it coming.

When three years ago, at 9.30 on a July night, I drove into a moose… well, I didn’t see that coming either. There were legs, then I hit the brakes – then I thought I was going to die.

I didn’t but the car did. And so, sadly, did the moose.

My father was a teacher, my mother a dancer. Dad was the first child in our family to go to university; mum traveled the world with ballet and opera. They met when mum’s digs fell though and gran had space at home.

I met my partner when I applied for a job in the Netherlands I’d just happened to see on an email list.

None of this has any pattern to me. There’s no trajectory. It’s like the zig-zagged deer tracks in the snow outside my window.

We might plan things, but then we end up at the Opera House or Amsterdam or driving into a moose.

It’s like the giant fungus that pops up in the middle of the lawn one night.

It’s stuff that happens and it’s all OK because – well – it’s what happens. Maybe better to just let go and enjoy the ride.