Sample Journal Entries - Hayden Christensen
My mom called to tell me the groundhogs got into the garden. Well, she called to tell me Hejsa’s new phone number, but what she told me was, there’s an entire family of rodents destroying my handiwork. Dad put out traps for them, but they dug half of her bulbs up, the first day. They turned a good yard of the walkway up, and it isn’t just my parents’ house – it’s the whole neighbourhood.

We had an infestation like that before, when I was a kid. It was around my birthday, so they were everywhere outside. I don’t remember if I was turning five or six, but I was young enough not to know you don’t go near them, and I used to throw things down in their burrows, and chase them around. I thought they were like fat dogs or something. Then, the day before my birthday party, I got too rowdy with one of them, and it bit me.

I don’t remember it actually happening at all. Kids get hurt all the time, but not usually by groundhogs. They fall out of trees, or piss off the neighbour’s dog, or hit another kid with a rock, and the other kid picks it up and hits back. I did all that stuff, too, and I remember it. If I concentrate, I still have a distinct, sensory memory of falling off my parents’ bed once, and smacking the back of my head on their dresser. I can still hear the noise, in the back of my head. It’s a really clear crack that’s less like a real sound, and more like the memory of a transference of pressure. All I remember about the groundhog is that I was scared to tell my mom. I didn’t cry. I just stood there, dreading my mom finding out, while it ran away. I thought she’d be pissed at me for getting hurt right before my family came over.

She must have seen me standing there, from the kitchen window. When she came outside and asked me what happened, brilliant kid that I was, I tried to tell her I bit myself. Brilliant mother that she was, she played along. She said, “Well, hurry up and get in the car, so we can finish shopping for your party.” It wasn’t until we were in the hospital parking lot that I realized that was where she was taking me. At the time, I thought, woah, what a mean trick. You can’t pretend to believe someone, so they’ll go and get a rabies shot without kicking and screaming. But in retrospect, she had the right idea. Making a big deal out of it would have scared me. I felt pretty dumb, when she was telling the nurses at the triage station what I did, but I was never scared. Even when they took me out of the waiting room, and brought the needle in, my pride hurt way worse than the shot.

I say all this because, when I was talking to her today, I heard all that in her voice. She wasn’t half as upset about the garden, as she was about having to tell me all the work I did for her was ruined. I told her, Mom, it’s ok, I can fix it no problem. The water damage last year was worse than anything an animal could do. Before I could think about fixing the yard, my dad had crews over there to dry out the basement and fix all this structural damage they had. They’re still having mould problems, a year later. There were a couple families in the neighbourhood who sold their houses as soon as they got all the repairs finished, like last year was the final straw, as far as living in a flood area goes. I’m glad my parents didn’t. When I go home, I want to be able to go home. No amount of work is too much for that.

So I told her not to call anyone, or worry about it. She and the houses on either side of ours are pooling together to get a pest control guy to come out there and take a look around and see if they can get rid of these groundhogs before the weather gets warm. Since we’re talking about Toronto, they have all the time in the world. But I’m going to fix the yard again, this summer. I said the rain wasn’t going to stop me. I can’t let animals do better than the rain.

Then again, there’s some universal force trying to stop me from ever getting that yard back to the way it was. Two years ago, there was a drought that killed the grass. My dad and I barely finished putting the new turf in, before the snow came and froze everything. Then the rain, now the animals. I can’t win. I don’t want to try to guess what it’ll be next. But I’ll get past it. I said it before: I will.

When I say, “I will,” it’s exactly what I mean. I will it to happen. There isn’t a lot to be said for trying, or even doing. To say I’m “going to do” something, there’s a margin of error, there. I can’t say, “I’m doing it,” until I’m right in the middle. When I will, it happens, whatever it is. Another thing my mom used to tell me is that I never accept anything as it is. When I’m told something is impossible, or improbable, I do it anyway. I decide the odds are in my favour, even when they aren’t. I wouldn’t have gone to half the places I’ve been in my life, without that sort of stubbornness.

But it isn’t that I don’t doubt myself. I do, I do. I don’t think you can ever be really good at something, without doubting first. There are people, though, who can’t get past it. Sometimes I’m surprised at how many, because it’s never been hard for me to make the distinction between doubt as a step ladder, and doubt as a wall. It’s hard to put things I’ve known my whole life into perspective, into the terms of what they mean for other people. Maybe acting will help me with that, one day, but it hasn’t yet. I haven’t completely grown out of being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. But I’m better than I used to be, and there’s never going to be a shortage of walls and gardens.