Welcome to MotherLand

Katherine, the warrior, and the witch.

Previously… Katherine has a disheartening conversation with her oncologist. She can’t help but thinking that the fate of her puny human life is inextricably connected with the fate of the planet.

It takes two hands to hoist myself into Major's vehicle. I settle into the mini climate she set up for me. I can see her temperature control is set at 17.5 degrees celcius, and mine is at 23. Almost six degrees in difference between the two of us, less than two feet apart. I imagine the little molecules trying to dance within their confines, constantly crossing the line and becoming cooled or heated. Still, there is an undeniable luxury to having your preferences catered to. A luxury to being known by another person, someone who loves you. How many years I spent screaming into a void that I just wanted to be known, to be understood – only to have it come so late. Still, it means everything to me and I try to see the ephemerality as heightening the enjoyment.

Major pulls onto the road and we drive as we used to, chatting about funny things her dog gets up to, and I go on about Penelope the cat, who is as dorky as she is regal. We hover atop the issues of the world, dying to be expressed – we've decided to pretend to be normal, just for a moment.

“So where are we going?” I ask about twenty minutes into the drive.

“We're nearly there,” she says, glancing at me behind opaque sunglasses. Major drives with her seat back and both hands on the steering wheel, elbows straight. She demonstrated why for me once, on a quiet road with no other drivers. After an ominous warning to prepare myself, she swerved the vehicle hard, left and right, almost violently, as if to avoid land mines or other fatal barricades. She'd learned to drive like that in the army, and then her role evolved to teaching others to do the same. With her arms extended, she had more control as well as precision. Major taught me a lot of things I'd always hoped I wouldn't need to know.

“Not really an answer,” I say, to which she says nothing else.

The first side road we pull onto, I recognize. Maybe I'd gone trick-or-treating here one year, as a kid. Most people thinking trick-or-treating is best in upper-class neighbourhoods where the houses are fairly close together. Jenna, my sister, had taught us that actually, neighbourhoods like this, where the houses are spread far apart but the owners cared deeply about their properties – large swaths of land mowed, gravel driveways levelled with care, DIY playgrounds built around huge trees. People in these homes don't get a lot of kids at Halloween, but they stock up on candy nonetheless, so they are way more likely to give you a handful of goodies, or encourage you to grab a few yourself to stuff into your pillowcase. If you're lucky, your mom will be waiting in her van at the end of the long driveway, so you in your horde of kids scream your thanks and take off, flying into the van and driving to the next house. Some houses even made up little sandwich bags full of different treats, and they'd give you one of those plus a pop. We always unloaded the pop into the van so our pillow cases didn't get too heavy, the cans rolling around in the backseats with us.

My memories of Halloween are so sacred, and I can keep them that way if I just don't think about Jenna, if I don't think about how not knowing where your sibling is can make you lose your mind. Just remember her as a little girl, her costumes always hot-glued to the heavens, ribbons and tinsel and artificial leaves falling off her onto the driveways, she did love to leave a piece of herself wherever she went. Maybe that was the problem – she did too much, went to too many places and now there's nothing left of her. Yet, she's everywhere. Impossible to forget.

At the end of the good trick-or-treating street, the road continues around a curve, but we take a bumpy dirt road to the right. The road climbs and dips, and what few houses there are shrink, while property sizes become unknowable, all forested with no clear lines to indicate whose land is whose.

I pull my long sleeves down over my hands and hold onto the cuffs the way I used to when I was younger. I have a soft toque on my head, despite the warm temperature, knowing if I got a mosquito bite on my sensitive scalp, with the thin hair slowly growing back after chemo, it would ache and drive me mad with itching.

“I'm glad I could get you to come,” Major says, glancing at me through her sunglasses. “I would understand if you just wanted... if you just felt like rest was the best thing for you at this point.”

“I do kind of want that,” I admit. “But... I know this is going to sound fucked up, but I really want to be around for this part, you know? The thing about living in interesting times is that, well, it's really hard to look away. I want to know what's coming. I want to be here for this part. No matter how bad it gets.”

“I get it. That's part of what drove me in my career, eventually anyway. I didn't want to be told what was happening, I didn't want to know someone else's spin on events when I could see them for myself. And once you see things for yourself, experience them yourself, and then see what the media says about them, that disconnect. You realize the only way you can actually know what's going on is if you see it face-to-face. But then the problem becomes... how can you ever explain it to anyone else?”

“Words fail,” I say, nodding myself. The vehicle ploughs through a puddle that takes up the entire road, splashing into the backed-up ditch on my right.

We drive in silence after that, both considering the insufficiency of language. The road gets increasingly violent; washouts have sluiced the dirt and smaller rocks from the road, leaving behind trenches of larger rocks, smooth and round from their journeys beneath glaciers.

I start to feel more like I'm on a rocking ocean liner than a 2025 Bronco, one hand gripping the 'oh-shit' handle above the window and the other clenching the side of the seat beneath my thigh. Chemo triggered a sort of perma-nausea in me, that hollow-stomach feeling followed by the mouth sweats always ready to rear up if the conditions are right. I swallow hard and close my eyes to give my inner ear a break.

We pull to a stop in the middle of the road, and I open my eyes to see we've ended up in a driveway.

“Are you okay?” Major asks, taking off her sunglasses and clipping them to the visor.

I can feel her concern but I just nod and lift one finger, indicating that I need a moment. Major and I sit while I gather all my flung parts back to myself.

“We're here?” I ask after a time. My eyes open now, I can see a structure that could only be described as wondrous. It's a small home with additions built around like the core like a cluster of soap bubbles, popping up without matching in size or scale. I can see additions from three distinct eras, and tyvek weather stripping transitioning to two different off-brands. It's unfinished but in that permanent kind of way, where things just become invisible and before you know it, you happily live in an unfinished project.

It's what surrounds the household that really creates the sense of playfulness. This is a garden unlike any other I've seen around here. Being autumn, most of the plants have already blossomed, leaving fluffy seeds heads behind. The inhabitant does not subscribe to the method of 'tidying' the garden by cutting back all the dead and dying growth from the previous season. Some plants are still in bloom – I recognize Goldenrod with its glowing yellow cascades of tiny flowers, a keystone species still being visited by slow moving insects, and New England Aster, a stocky plant with small purple daisy-like flowers, some transitioned to seeds but a few blooms growing from where the deer had chomped the stems at some point, accusing the stem to divide and flowers to bloom later and double in amount.

Wood chip is spread on the ground for pathways, blocked in by shorter plants on both sides. The pathway leads to the front door, but also veers off to side buildings. One arm of the trail snakes around the house into the backyard. It's the type of garden that takes exorbitant efforts if you don't have machinery or a crew, but can look rather unkempt if tidiness is what you're after.

“Someone lives here?” I ask, not because it doesn't look livable, far from it. This home is the epitome of life, life that starts in the centre with one person and then explodes out, imbuing everything around it with that magical energy that keeps us moving and thinking and loving.

A side door opens off one of the attachments and a woman walks out, short in stature but with a posture that suggests she's never looked down at where to place her feet, merely follows wherever her heart is aimed. She's barefoot and wearing layered skirts over patterned leggings, a form-fitting leather vest revealing richly warm skin, and a patchwork shawl. I realize one of her skirts is an apron, and protruding from the pockets I see scissors handles, a notepad and pen, a hori knife, sheathed, and sprigs of plants that I don't recognize, bound with twine. Her long light brown hair shines with white-greys, just as her smooth skin is made more interesting by the lines settling in the most active parts of her face. Parentheses around her mouth, dashes between her eyebrows, and an ellipsis of age marks on her right cheek in a jaunty row.

“I'm Katherine,” I say, having been swooped up by the feelings that we'd all been looking at one another for an amount of time that felt improper.

“Celeste,” the woman says. Her eyes are pale brown, almost honey, and she has the type of face that would uplift you in glory with one of her smiles, then just as easily smite you to the ground if you were found wanting. I could see storms beneath her seas and I couldn't even explain how.

Celeste hugs Major, and I'm suddenly aware that I'm the third edge of a triangle that had been unstable before me. Major and Celeste, while they appear friends, also have a sense of keeping one another at arms' reach. I could see how their worlds would clash – Major fighting in mens' wars trying to make the world safer for all, but especially women and girls, and Celeste, who's found her own way to accomplish that by retreating – entirely removing herself from the dominant patriarchal narrative altogether. A grudging respect shared between two social outlaws, but also a wariness around respective life choices. All this I observe – possibly invent – from a few moments of interaction.

“Celeste, thank you for having us over. I know this is a busy time of year for you with the harvest.”

“All is taking care of itself, as it will if you simply allow it.” Celeste takes a few steps toward me, her legs sending her bare feet out in front where she steps on the tip-toes, giving her an ethereal, halfway-to-flying appearance. Celeste puts her hands on my upper arms, and the dry heat of her touch makes me hyper aware of how chilled I am. I can feel her warmth surge through my sweater sleeves.

“Welcome to MotherLand, Katherine.” Her bright eyes meet mine, and it's uncanny but I can sense that this woman knows things I need to know. Will need to know.

“Thank you for having me,” I say. Her grasp on me remains and I am left trying to decide if it's an unawareness of social norms, or a deliberate attempt to upend then. Her quirked smile has me thinking it's the latter and I decide, while I'm here, to think less about what's supposed to happen and more about what is happening. My therapist would be proud – she's always trying to get me to identify moments in which I can just be.

“Why don't you come in. I haven't a tea to cure cancer, although there are promising studies on some local brews. But I've tea for chills and upset stomachs, anxiety and stress, visions, if you're into that sort of thing.” Celeste winks at me and I glance at Major who rolls her eyes without knowing I saw her.