So we have this pond in our back yard at the north end of our pergola. We keep trying to figure out when we put it in using the dates of various weddings that have been held here as a timeline, but haven’t been able to puzzle it out. I had stocked the pond with koi that I had found through a newspaper ad (and that I found these fish through an ad in the paper is probably telling enough). This little pond has brought countless hours of burbling pleasure to events we’ve had here, but even more so to our times of morning tea or summer suppers. Our grandies like to feed the fish or try and catch the frogs that have settled there. Hollyhocks have self-seeded around the edge, and the Rose of Sharon that was teeny tiny when I planted it to the side of the pond has now grown to a grand height.
A pond that is “working” is a thing of pleasure. A pond that is losing inches of water overnight is a pain in the keister. Last summer we noticed that the water level was dropping too quickly to be explained away by evaporation, dogs drinking from it, or any other normal possibility. I kept topping up the water level and by late August of this past summer was needing to add water morning and night. Something was definitely wrong.
Pondside teas and suppers lost a lot of their pleasure and became diagnostic discussions. Occasionally we would hear the pump for the pond sucking air in the middle of the night and need to go out to unplug it. Other than needing to be wrapped for mowing, the hose was a permanent lawn fixture where it stretched from the shop tap to the pond. There was feeble-hearted talk of just fillin’ the thing in (which had me clutching my pearls).
I heard someone remark recently that we like to romanticize nature. It’s true. I want my pint-sized version of a northern lake and waterfall in my backyard, but I don’t like to deal with the challenges that might come with it – falling leaves and debris that needs to be removed in the spring, gross slime that grows on the rocks, rodents, and thinning out the invasive bulrushes that I want to grow but not take over. When the Great Blue Heron flies overhead, I’m using mental telepathy to encourage it on to the Grand River nearby.
My brother offered to help me try to find the source of the leak, so he and my SIL came out one Saturday, and we muscled out all the bulrushes and moved rocks around the rim trying to find any wet areas under the lining. Our sleuthing led to a large hole around the perimeter, so we laboured and toiled and down-sized that area to not need that portion of the liner. At the day’s end, we refilled the pond, plugged in the pump, and crossed our fingers, hoping that at the very least, we had bought ourselves some time before needing to do a complete overhaul.
I was greeted with the sound of the pump sucking air the next morning when I went out to the pond. It was enough to make a grown woman cry.
There was going to be no short-cuts. We needed to do a complete overhaul. Crisis had forced our hand.
Some time ago, I was sitting with my doctor for a routine visit of some sort or other, and as we chatted, I ended up puddling right then and there. After some further conversation, she recommended that I see a counsellor there at the clinic (my doctor thinks everyone would benefit from talking to a counsellor on a yearly basis). And I was in the frame of mind that said, “What the heck? What have I got to lose?”. The prospect of needing to find a counsellor that was a fit would have been daunting and may have shut me down before ever getting started, but since that step was eliminated, I threw caution to the wind and made an appointment. And, as luck or providence would have it, the counsellor was a good fit. After years of topping up the leaky water level, it was time for a gentle but persistent overhaul.
I have good and trustworthy people in my life with whom to process and talk, but sitting with a professional who had absolutely no connections to any of my circles and who was trained to listen and respond, created a new kind of safe place for me. We talked about all the things I imagine most talk about when they’re with a counsellor – families of origin, childhood, marriage, our family, triggers, etc. – but in the end, it always wound back to me and my emotional and mental health and well-being. There was no Great Blue Heron that had come and stripped me of my defenseless fish, but there were the little rodent holes, the eroding away that happens with time and outgrown life patterns, narratives that had seen a better day, that needed attention. Boulders that were too heavy for me to move alone needed to be lifted out from where they were embedded into the lining of my soul to shed light on where I may have sprung a leak. I got soakers in my boots from wading into the deep water. And somewhere in all that, I found permission to come out of hiding and be kind to mySelf.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” (The Message)
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world – you mind and heart- put right. then you can see God in the outside world.” (The Message)
This kind of work can seem self-focused and resemble naval-gazing, and frankly, maybe it is for a period of time. You try to minimize everything and tell yourself to just get over it, get over yourself. That holding to a faith of a sort is or should be enough. You do a lot of “shoulding” on yourself (author Brennan Manning uses this term and talks about “…not shoulding on myself today”). While I think there is a place to take oneself in hand, pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps, stoically do what needs to be done, doing so feels much more authentic and honest when it comes from a place of giving freely and when I’m not tripping over obstacles in my own interior landscape.
On one of the hottest Saturdays in September, my husband and I tackled the big job of pond deconstruction. We moved the fish to a water trough, and I set the water lilies in it too, so they would feel less displaced (I’m oddly attached to these creatures). And then we man-and-woman-handled every last rock – from the tiniest pebble to the largest boulder – out and off the liner. We scooped out the fish sludge and then used our littlest John Deere to drag the liner from the pond hole and out into the farm yard. And we were left with nothing but the shell of the pond lined with landscape fabric. There was nothing wrong with the shell – it was what had gone awry with the layers that had been added that caused the leak.
After purchasing a new pond liner and laying it, we began reconstruction. Using the same rocks, we placed them back in the hole, sometimes this way, sometimes that way until we had function and visual appeal somewhat satisfied. We were left with gaps here and there and needed to search our farm for more stone to fill them in. I rebuilt the waterfall, filled the pond, and we started the pump.
And the next morning, the pump was burbling happily, and the water level held. Oh happy day.
For now…
