She said: ‘She Shed!’

International Women's Day 2023: Finding gratitude in life’s changes.

BY TRACEY BELLMANE

Sometimes you get married knowing you’re going to build something together. A family – a life together. Sometimes you build a she-shed – together.

Picture a tiny Cranberry bungalow, filled with loud, rowdy, messy boys and a husband who had come from Down Under who was much like a child too. A party of five. A party? More like a rave.

Try to sew and write and craft in the chaos that is your family home with little curious boys with quick, sticky, touchy hands, asking constantly for snacks, drinks, can they sew on that machine too? That gas pedal looks like they could drive it really, really fast…

Something had to give before my nerves did. I dreamed a little dream.

That something was a shed. A shed I could escape to and sew and craft and write and read and do my thing. Since, as my husband was always happy to quip that I wear the pants in the family, the project was declared a go! A plethora of YouTube videos and a lumber delivery later and we were ready to get to work.

Shed plans

I gathered windows from Shop n Swap on Facebook. I recycled the old back door. Not the door the bear ruined breaking into my home, a different door with a window. I started a Pinterest collection of things I liked, of shed plans and a million other projects. Small “discussions” ensued. As always, I won.

I didn’t realize just how much work building a shed was going to be. I was impatient and cranky but, as we got into the workflow, I would calm down. Go with the rhythm of the build, and sometimes actually listen to my husband.

Bless him, he put up with me, and the tiny building slowly came to life. I learned to use the nail gun and the dreaded chop saw. I never did take to the table saw, and that’s an understatement. Learned to hook up the compressor, to put things away, nicely – everything in its place so you could get it all out again the next day.

Building a shed is a lot like building a relationship. It needs a good foundation, plenty of patience and an understanding that everything is going to work out okay. It would take as much time as it needed to get built.

Eagle Walz, master of the trail build and the hut build too, began to come and help. Angels come in all shapes and sizes. Underneath, Eagle determined, the shed needed more support, do you know you’re a quarter inch out here? Let’s fix that. And Eagle up on the shed roof putting down roofing shingles because I cry if I have to go up a ladder. The ugly cry. You know the one with all the snot and wetness and sobbing breaths you can’t quite catch. Eagle was sent to save us from our over, or is that under-building ambitions.

Hut builder extraordinare (and “angel”) Eagle Walz (left) helped Tristan Bellmane (right) complete the shed in summer 2022

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in life is that it’s okay to say yes to offers of help. Yes, thank you Eagle.

The COVID pandemic raged on around us as we built our way through the cool, wet spring and then hot summer days, glad for the shade the newly built shed gave us in my desert of a back yard. We worked in 15 or 20 minute increments, then sat in lawn chairs and talked and drank iced tea and ate fruit.

We worked at Tristan’s speed, because he went into liver failure in 2017 and tired easily, even after he recovered. There was talk of a liver transplant, but he was deemed too healthy for that and we basked in the surprise of him still being alive, being in Canada, being with me. Such a love story I could write…

Tracey Bellmane relaxes in her backyard she-shed – a retreat from the demands of parenting a trio of young boys

The interior of the shed was whitewashed. I’m a reluctant painter, but wiping watered down wet paint onto the walls was more my thing. Cherry hardwood for the floors and now decor that I could really call ‘me.’ Curtains from tea towels. My Schleich horse collection because I’m still that little girl that was so madly in love with horses but who now realizes how impractical it would be to have a pony at 55 years old/young/you know what I mean. Bits and pieces of me filled the she-shed. Sewing in peace ensued. Bliss.

We had dreams to put a deck on the shed too, but we ran out of summer, out of good weather, out of time.

The shed’s exterior, crafted from recycled building materials

Ten days before my husband died of liver cancer he told me he had a dream; a dream that he was transforming into a raven.

Two days after he died, I decided to take the boys swimming. I had to decide between Inland Lake and Hammill Lake – I chose Inland. A beautiful sunny day with a light breeze on the lake tipping the chop with diamonds from the sun. As we walked out to the end of the dock, I could hear the mournful sound of a didgeridoo playing in the campground somewhere. What are the odds? Was Tristan sending me a message?

I watched it until it was almost out of sight. I watched it until a query from one of the boys drew my attention back to the here and the new now. “Are you coming in, mum?”

A loud call from above and I looked up to see a huge raven in an aspen tree. I watched it there until the didgeridoo music faded. The raven gave a last cheeky call before it lifted from the tree branches and flew off up the lake, its wings making that whumping sound that only large birds can make under flight.

I nodded, turned, and dove head-first off the dock into the dark blue depths of the lake.