Across the yard a single leaf trembles and the palsy passes on from tender limb to limb. There is no corresponding tempo in the adjoining greenery. The steps of this dance are performed alone. The white wreathed faces of Shasta daisies blush a mustard yellow but the heat of that complexion does not turn their heads. The amethyst beards of moneyed irises are soldered in burnished karats to emerald stems, rising, yet static upon the burnt umber earth. The distant leaves stir and sway in a still air. A closer inspection shows no insect or avian influence. There is no illusion or magician’s trick to be exposed under the bright light of day. This singular isolated rhythm, this pas de une, seems a syncopated mystery in the heat hazed yard.

     The long days of summer, sun filled and as yet evening cool, stretch out in front and behind.  The sleepy afternoons are filled with new ideas and combinations of lovely, lovely words. Books are an old friend, my first love really. Saviour or scapegoat, friend or enemy, whatever else they have been, books remain doors that open up the world both around and within myself.

     We all have a love for the things that strike the note that vibrates to our individual pitch. For some it sings a smoky diesel tune that hums along interlocking cogs while pistons clef the staff and determine the tempo. For others the sharp tang of the holy trinity…onions, celery and bell pepper…is the savory altar they worship at.  For many the hymn is the song itself. It is not necessary to understand the notes played but it is a certainty that there are as many true loves as there are hearts. For me the perfect note has always been and will always be the written word.

     As the years have passed this old love of mine has been continually packaged up in bright new boxes with a pretty new ribbons. The gift inside, in all its variations, has never changed. There is no single heart that beats beneath the breast of my revisited love. As always, there are a thousand hearts that beat out the inky tattoo. I am never discouraged when I bite a bad one and find half a worm in the white flesh of the pages. I simply spit it out and dig another indulgence out of the bushel. It is a hunger that never totally fades and so I feed at the trough of literature until I’m bloated with narrative.

     June afternoons redolent with the sweet scents of ripening wheat have ebbed into the upsweep of July’s race to the longest day. The dog days of summer, hunch ruffled and teeth bared, wait just past that apex crouching on the slope only a score of tomorrows away. Looking up from the last page of a chapter my eyes are caught by the movement of a single bush dancing by itself, perhaps in a breeze I don’t feel or to a note I don’t hear. Who can say? I turn the page to begin the next chapter of my book.  My foot taps out a rhythm as I move deeper into the story and then I’m dancing alone, to the harmony of my own note.

     The memories that form the foundation of this place are old. Old as the world really perhaps older as things seem to exist here half in and half out of the dark and the light. Souls walked this land, marked the sky and tilled the soil as the Aztecs spilled blood and the Mayans measured the span of the heavens. My lineage heart first felt the gravity of this continent in 1912 so in this ocean I could be said to be a novice in the interpretation of the windings of the earthen tide. But all the earth is joined under the water, under the sky, and there is a memory living in blood that runs through the enatic line. A curse or a gift, superstition or sight, forgotten tales are embroidered red on crisp white linen.

     High above the cemetery stark against the cornflower blue sky there is a brilliant white shade flowing, billowing with the wind. It is gone when I breast the hill. At the end of the yard, under the century spruce, a small body huddles in pain. A broken leg…or perhaps it is missing…tilts the course and direction is lost careening through the trees. A numbing blackness empties beaded eyes as jaws unhinge to advance on the frozen rictus of a garden toad. These signs number three, supposedly a mystical number. But nature and the layers of ritual that shape it are never subtle. Multiple auguries chime in the wind of change.

     Change is the little death as we move from the old to the new. Change is the great death, an unknown dark abyss that brackets breath and the cessation of all hearts. Even then its course is not stayed. Change is the ticking of the clock, the undulation of the wheat, the bird in the air and the cold bite of snow. Change is the slow spreading smile, the tear that falls and the blooming rose above the granite of the tomb. A wind that rises under the light of day echoes the steps of an invisible multitude. The same wind that rises under the canopy of night is crowned in a tiara of stars and the dark that holds the key to the wild mysteries of the universe. It never ends, it follows all, it is all. Interlocking, life and death feed upon each other. The ground that we stand on does not exist without the sacrifice and renewal of the substance that weaves our reality. The act of creation is change and death is inherent in the first gasp of existence.

     Purification…I burned canvases tonight. I was tired of looking at them and I think they were tired of looking at me. An overly dramatic device for any painter and not entirely original. I called the Prodigal to take the dog out, as a witness I think. We artistic types always need a witness to the completion of our acts…not only the act of creation but the act of destruction as well; a polar opposite twinned in power and absolution. They were becoming nothing, existing in a state of flux, waiting for a fulfillment; a purpose that I felt would never come and so onto the burn pile they went.

     The best of all was the oil canvas that sweated and then bled linseed. The oil beaded on the dark blue surface liquid in the glow of the flames and then poured in runnels feeding the heat until the final burst of energy and light released the potential in a blaze of orange and azure. The fire pushed through the canvas tearing away at painted rock and the velvet of the horn and the blended green of two dimensional leaves. The fire burned brighter as it fed upon my labour, devouring it, changing it and freeing it to the star crowned mysterious night.

     The signs called for change.

A protagonist is defined as the main character in a drama or other literary work. The tone of the story, the moral to be expressed, determines the nature of a main character, that being good or evil. To follow the narrative from the perspective of the protagonist is an opportunity to gain an understanding of the rhythm of the times that are presented to us in the telling of the tale, fictional or real. Some synonyms often cited are champion, adventurer, paladin, exemplar, star…in a nutshell, for better or worse, the hero.

The shrill screech of the telephone woke me from a deep and empty sleep.

“Hey…”

“Hey.”

“Have you read the obits today?”

“No why?”

“Someone from Dinosaur Club died.”

I sat up in bed, “What happened?”

“Don't know yet, he was only 17. He had the same type of MD as the boys.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“No I 'm okay, thanks any way.”

“Okay… I'll talk to you later?”

“Alright, love you.”

“Love you too”

     My sister broke the connection and I sat with the phone in my hand processing the information before the buzz of the empty line brought me around to the here and now. I dropped the receiver into the cradle and lay back down. The birds were singing outside and the heat of the day was trying to make its way into the room through the slats of the wooden blinds but it was still cool away from the window. It was harsh news for Sunday morning especially when my Sunday morning was Sunday afternoon due to a late night Saturday. I didn’t know if I said the right thing. Maybe I should have insisted on going down there. I knew she wasn’t okay but I also knew that I couldn’t take it away or make it any better.

     Both of my nephews have Duschennes Muscular Dystrophy and are confined to wheelchairs. There is no cure for Duschennes. There is no treatment. In the rare circumstance when it comes up in conversation whomever I'm talking to will invariable say something like, “Both of her kids...wow ...that must be pretty rare both having it.” and I answer as always “No it's not rare at all for siblings to experience the same genetic disease.” But I know why they say it. To them it must seem a greater injustice, insult to injury really, that not just one great tragedy should strike a family but two or even three. But it is a great fallacy to think that the birth of a child unafflicted by the circumstances of the sibling would lessen the suffering of a parent of a disabled child. There is no joy or leavening of that particular pain.

     My sister and her husband do what they can, what anyone would in their circumstances. They love their boys. They try to do right by them and be good parents. It’s hard in ways that someone who doesn’t have to live it can’t even imagine. They aren’t alone. They are one family in a largely invisible community of parents and children who struggle through, taking joy in small victories and refusing to allow the set backs to drown them for very long. They support each other when they can, walking intersecting paths on a winding and steep road. Dinosaur Club is one of the places where the families can connect. 

    It’s a warm spring day and my sister and I are killing time after watching my son’s track meet. We’re in a drug store and after we finished an aroma critique of the perfume aisle we decide to browse the book section. Her attention is caught by the bright picture of a Robert Munsch book that she picks up and exclaims over. To me it seems much too young for the boys and I tell her so. She counters by showing me the cover emblazoned with a young girl roaring away on a souped up wheelchair. She tells me that it’s really difficult to find stories featuring kids with disabilities so she’ll consider it even though the age group isn’t the best. No one seems to want to tell tales that have wheels or crutches, braces or harnesses.

     I cast my mind back over the years and the pages looking for heroes that roll or limp through story lines real or fictional. Raymond Burr comes to mind, his hard eyes staring back at me from 3am reruns, fascinating in black and white. The boys are way too young to know about him. If I didn’t have an addiction to late night television I probably wouldn’t know about him either. There is Rick Hansen with his Man in Motion Tour but that’s before their time as well. They’d be more likely to know about Terry Fox as his run to raise money for cancer research is still commemorated each year at most levels of education. Even though Terry died young he would seem like a full grown man to boys my nephews’ ages. It would seem that pages recounting the adventures of the Hardy Boys on wheels or those meddling kids with walkers who break the Case of Evil Zombie Island et al are a rare find.

     Later into the week the after dinner clean up was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. It was my sister. She and my mother had gone to the funeral earlier that day. I knew that it would be difficult for her with the parallels she could not help but draw to her own life nevertheless those were also the reasons it was important to her to be there. I asked her how it was and to my surprise she said that it was okay. She had thought that the mother would be a mess but she said she was holding her own so far. As odd as it sounds my sister said that the 17 year old boy had brought comfort to his mother and eased her suffering in the last hours of his life.

     A flu had run its course through his family and he had died from respiratory failure. The mother told my sister that she had been afraid that her son would fight the end but he hadn’t. He had turned to his mother and told her he wouldn’t need the oxygen anymore and that he just wanted her to hold him. After awhile he slipped away, peacefully. His bravery and dignity, the love that he showed in the last moments of his life, brought her a great comfort.

     These aren’t the sort of things that you usually read about in books. The protagonist is usually made up of more media savvy or lionized epic traits. Children dying of horrible diseases don’t make good light reading. Regardless, this particular story, by the best definition, this narration of a brief life, would define this 17 year old boy as the exemplar, the mainstay, the standard-bearer, the warrior…the protagonist, the hero.

     It’s not a story that anyone should have to live, but of course they do. When my sister talked about books for her children with characters they could relate to I know this isn’t what she meant but maybe it is a story that everyone else should know about. That boy wasn’t a noted athlete, a famous detective or a great romancer. He was a boy that life had dealt a really, really unfair hand to and he played it as best he could.

     That is not the story of a secondary character. That is not the life of a marginal individual. That grace and dignity in the face of the almost incomprehensible contemplation of ones own end is something we should venerate. In the end we are nothing more than ourselves. That can be base or in the case of this boy, a glorious shooting star, the light of which is brief and intense but more beautiful in its brave blaze.

     When we moved from our old townhouse to our country home to say we were a little short in the department of yard care tools would be a vast understatement. The expansion of our yard from a 6 foot by 10 foot plot to an actual acre, complete with hundred year old garden plots, vintage plants and grandfather trees, left us a little shell shocked. Our finances were a bit bumpy the first year with the demands of our lifestyle change so yard maintenance was a bit pitch in and/or patch. We borrowed what we could and were thankful for any donations.

     The grass was a big job and needed a big machine but the expense of a lawn tractor was out of the question. Tommy Twin Tower, one of “D”'s work friends, gave us an old push mower he wasn’t using anymore. It was a nasty beast that belched black smoke while oil leaked through the crumpled shop rag that had replaced the lost oil cap but it was free and it did the job. It got us through the first half of the summer when we purchased what we hoped would be at least a small improvement. We still could not afford a lawn tractor (“D” did not want to buy used as he always says it's just buying someone elses' problems) so we bought another push mower from, of all places, Canadian “Where Do You Go for Maintenance” Crappy Tire. It proved totally unsuitable for the job and would overheat after an hour and refuse to start up again for another three. It takes a healthy 15 year old around 5 to 6 hours to cut an acre of lawn with a push mower (it took me 3 days when I gave it a go) so there was a LOT of pitching in and patching.

     This year we were determined that there would be no repeat of the Lawn Mower Indy 500. When tax return time came around, we shuffled off to the Sears Warehouse to have a look at last year’s discounted models. Now I must mention here that “D” had his heart set on the bright green and yellow of a John Deere. He had been ogling the advertising flyers that came in the Pennysaver for months drooling over additional mulch kits and all the other things that make a masculine heart bleed. Common sense decided that we would buy something "reasonable" for now and in 2 or 3 years time, he could straddle the sweet green tractor of his dreams.

     We were able to find a Craftsman lawn tractor in our price range, paid the cash and brought it home. Having bought last year’s model, we didn’t expect it to be perfect but none the less we were a little disconcerted when we got it home to discover there were no keys for the ignition. Luckily, the keys from our neighbour’s John Deere were a perfect fit so we didn’t have to wait for the store to mail us out a pair. To “D”'s further delight he discover that the engine in his Craftsman was the exact same one that was in the neighbour's John Deere...NOT just the same size but THE SAME ENGINE (something that will no longer be happening as John Deere has recently retained an exclusive contract for those engines). This little bon mot was able to shut up “D”'s coworkers at the factory who were ribbing him about not buying a John Deere.

     Last summer the Prodigal Son had several incidents with the push mowers involving tree stumps. He did not manage to bend a shaft but I am sure he came close no matter what he says. There was also an unfortunate occurrence with the new push mower and an oil tank but as I was flying co pilot on that one the only thing I will say is that engine compression cannot occur on a full stomach. Over the winter, there had been a great deal of discussion about past mishaps and the care and concern that was to be taken with our spring purchase and the Prodigal Son had endured all the infamy as he hovered about in the neighbour’s garage hoping to scam a beer. There were threats that all the stumps were to be marked out with bright spray paint so they might be avoided. Since the job had been such a monumental one, over the past summer a nominal fee had been paid for services rendered. The Prodigal was assured that no such salary would be forthcoming with the arrival of the new tool as it would be an embarrassment to accept money for such an easy task (the Prodigal responded with the assertion that he could never be that proud). He was informed that he could not take the girlfriend out on a date with it and that they had better not see him touring around downtown and that if he damaged it he would be paying for it out of his ass (whatever that means). The Prodigal bore it all, if not stoically, with the good grace of a boy allowed to hang with the men. Perhaps he had some knowledge of the way it all would be in the end.

     The Saturday dawned and it was time to put the lawn tractor to work. The Stepson was visiting for the weekend and he and the Prodigal set about cleaning up the winter ravaged yard. It proved a boring task and the boys decided to spice it up by taking turns riding in our neighbour’s trailer (we had borrowed it for the day). The Prodigal was driving and the Stepson was balanced on the side of the trailer when his weight tipped the whole thing up gouging a hole in the lawn and popping the spring that holds the trailer in place.

     “D” and the neighbour had been replacing a coolant pipe on the Sunfire and they were practically prostrate with laughter as 240lbs of teenage boy rolled on the ground cradling his bruised knees and the Prodigal struggled to put the trailer to rights. It took a woman's touch to fix the spring and the boys took off again towing at lawn tractor lightspeed. Finally it was time to mow the yard and “D” wanted to try the tractor before the boys “wrecked it”.

     He pushed the throttle all the way up to "bunny rabbit" and careened off, slowing down only for the grass over the septic tank, as anyone who has seen it can tell you, that stuff really grows. Just “trying it” turned into him cutting the front lawn and then the back as well. The boys got tired of waiting for him to finish his "turn" and went in to play Xbox. I watched “D” whip across the lawn, squeeze through the garden paths and just about get his block knocked off as he raced under the branches of the pines at the back without ducking down far enough. That was a month and a half ago, the lawn has been cut four times, and the boys have yet to have used the lawn tractor for its original purpose.

     Even though we still have to use the push mower to mow the driveway (it's not paved) and cut in around the garden beds and trees the yard now takes around 1 ½ hours to do instead of 5. If a back gets sore it is not from pushing but from sitting for too long. “D” loves his tractor ...if they get a chance, maybe someday the Prodigal and the Stepson will too.

     The day before was warm, the earth waking and stretching, languid in the bright sunlight. Lying on the grass, I could hear things growing, pushing up towards the sun. Dog by my side, just in the shade of the crabapple tree, and the pages of my abandoned book slowly turning in the breeze I halfheartedly promised myself I would go in and start supper, in just a minute. I was also going to look up the term nematologist and search for a picture so I could see if there really was a type of woodpecker practically extinct in the woods of Georgia (neither was really central to the book’s story line but I like to know what there is to know), in just a minute. That minute hung indefinitely in the spring air like the smell of apple blossoms and the golden pine pollen floating on that lazy breeze.

     I watched Kera turn her fuzzy head back and forth following the dive pattern of the birds as they swooped across the yard. Graceful and precise they did not seem like birds at all but more like bird shaped projectiles sliding along invisible guylines. The sky was an impossible blue that only belongs to the spring and the whole world seemed optimistic and full of possibilities. The tomorrow that was to follow was anything but.

     I live in a farming community and I understand that the bottom line of farming is business so there really is no blame to be assigned. When my neighbours sold their acreage to an absentee farmer I knew there was a chance that things might change. That change came just past the dawn that followed that perfect spring afternoon, heralded by the sound of diesel and gasoline. It was time to say good-bye to the apple trees in the old orchard behind my house.

     The orchard was years too old to be productive but it was a place of strange beauty. There were odd unexplained lights there at night. The soft soil would often be marked with the comings and goings of deer, fox and raccoon. The gnarled trees were aged like the hands of old men, grace embodied and made beautiful by the skill and toil of a full life. Even on the stillest day, the trees would shiver as if in memory of all the winds, bitter or sweet, they had known in seasons past. It is no crime but a shame none that less as the world now finds itself just a bit less beautiful in the ever powerful name of commerce.

     The morning was just as bright as the day before but instead of the accompanying chorus of birdsong, the morning, that mourning, was heralded by the sound of chainsaws and bulldozers. It is incongruous really, and almost obscene, to hear the sound of those falling limbs while the smell of apple blossoms fill the air. In winter, it might have been bearable. The trees would have been oblivious, dormant in the cold. They would have fallen asleep in the fall and simply never awakened…a kinder fate I think than this spring massacre.

     The limbs of my apple trees are alive with birds and bumblebees. The voices of the birds mix with the murmur of nonsense that all bees whisper as they go about their business.  Masses of delicate blooms, pearly through the day with the sheen of early morning dew, breathe out the ether of heaven. The blackcap and wild raspberry canes that grace my acre are gloved in bright green shoots while just a glance away the orchard canes lie crushed and broken, salting the ground that gave them root and nourishment.  Garlands of spring blossoms lie scattered and broken on the empty field. Where the orchard once was there is only the scar of broken soil, a spring mourning, glaring black and bare amidst the liquid waves of wind caressed winter wheat.

      I grew up in a predominately female household. My mother, my sister and I lived on one side of the gender fence while my brother resided on the other. Even with a ratio of three to one, I don't remember the household being particular frilly but it must have been somewhat feminine through the interests of the majority. My mother was married a number of times but none of them really took for one reason or another and through default my brother almost always sat in the King of the Castle’s empty throne. As titular male head of the household, though, he had no actual parental permission or political power which my sister and I were sure to remind him of on a regular basis.

     In the house of my childhood, growing up a boy meant that it was your job to cut the lawn, take out the garbage, do any heavy lifting and make sure you didn’t knock your head on the kitchen cupboard doors regularly left open by the shorter females you lived with. It did not release you from the regular girly stuff like doing dishes, covering your bed or cooking meals which we all took a crack at while our mother was at work. The one thing my brother didn't have to help with was canning. He came with us to pick the apples, strawberries, cherries and whatever else. He would get as sick as the rest of us as (at our mother's urging) we filled up in the field because whatever we took home was going into jars. But by the time he was old enough to be any real use in the kitchen his man hands were much too large to pack cucumbers for pickles and he could never get the hang of jam making. He was excused from the steaming hot kitchen to do what ever he wanted while we sweated it out over sterilized jars, pitted gallons of cherries using bobby pins and peeled and blanched enough peaches and tomatoes to build a skyscraper.

     For a while he had an old Chevelle that he worked on out in the driveway and he liked to lift weights down in the basement. After my mother had given up drinking for good he’d moved all his stuff down there and made it into a bedroom. There were mirrors on the wall behind the old bar that she’d never taken out and he used to watch himself as he ran through his routine lifting the bars and counting out the reps. My sister and I would laugh at him thinking that he was stuck on himself with his mirrors and his Charles Atlas and Arnold Schwarzenegger books but of course he wasn’t. He had an old pair of Tacks skates (when they used to be brown) and I think he could skate okay. There wasn’t any money for hockey but he went to Boy Scouts for years and he had an old canteen and a pair of snow goggles he’d made out of two spoons, some felt and an old piece of elastic binding. There was no hockey night in Canada at my house, no male banter, no baseball bats by the door and as our family went their separate ways comparatively early there were no whisker filled sinks and no clouds of Old Spice to fill the air.

     Today my household couldn’t be more different. For one thing the ratio has changed and I find myself for the most part in the minority. I’m not a weak woman and I get my way somewhat about the larger decorating choices but I do have to make small concessions to the sports enthusiasts in my life. Laminated newspaper headings of the Blue Jays World Series wins share space with pen and ink drawings of various garden blooms. The Boston Bruins logo is prominently displayed in my bedroom but it is picked out in a counter cross stitch that sits on a miniature easel atop the wardrobe beside china plates commemorating the Huddersfield Town AFC (1908-1998) and the Miami Dolphins Dan Marino. An autographed picture of the captain of Canada’s 2000 Gold Cup winning soccer team is margined by acrylic folk art sketches in the west bedroom and the themes of fishing and hockey fight it out on the walls of the east bedroom. The bookshelves are liberally sprinkled with books bearing the names of such sports greats as Muhammad Ali and Wayne Gretzky while decades old Sports Illustrateds sit stored in cardboard boxes slowly inching their way toward antique status. Those aren’t the biggest changes though.

     Along with the dominant presence of males in my life have come the trappings of their male activity. Any time of the year, day or night, my mudroom and the backdoor of my house play host to any number of objects meant to be used in physical and decidedly sweaty ways. There are golf balls, golf clubs, Frisbees, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, baseball bats, softballs, soccer balls and footballs… ad nauseum. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg for these are only the tools of each particular trade. The meat of the matter, of all the matters, resides a little further below ground in the back room of the basement. It is here in this subterranean grotto that the flotsam of the years of masculine existence has come to rest. The hopes and fears, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (to quote the old ABCs Wide World of Sports) or just the smell of de’ feet, de’ soccer shoes, de’ hockey bag and de’ athletic supporters.

     It’s a strange sort of alchemy, a laboratory filled with mysteries and formulas. It is a territory that I’ve come to somewhat late in my life and though I’ve purchased, washed, repaired and even used a number of the objects shelved in this room they still speak a foreign language. It’s the language of boys and men. It is a language that rolls out in terms of competition, not just first place or second place, win or lose but the value of a person rated through skill and agility, bravado and blood, endurance and the downright stubborn stupidity that makes old men smile.

     The baseball gloves must be stored wrapped around balls so they don’t lose their shape. Skates must be totally dried, the blades wrapped in old hockey socks or laid on wood to protect the edges. There’s toe black on the shelves along with 4 different kinds of tape and paraffin to wax blades. There are helmets and air pumps and buckets of pucks, weighted and regular. There are balls of all shapes and sizes, shin pads, cleats, nets and gloves. All of it is different but all of it is the same. The shape and the heft, the stink and the sweat sheened stiffness, the dirt and the tears speak the language of boys and men.

     The shelves are turned out regularly with the seasons and often I’m the one left to gather it all together before the cat decides that the stinky pile of general mess and mayhem is his new litter box. I complain a bit but it always falls short to ears deafened by the sounds of TSNs Top 10 Plays of The Day or the discussion concerning Maggie the Macaque monkey and her bottom scratching ways. I have seen all these things in use by more then one of the “men” in my family but separated from their users they take on a life of their own. I’m a stranger here amongst all the testosterone memories.

    It really is a mystery to me how anyone would want to wear an item of padding that was so sweat and dirt entrenched that it had taken on a permanent “corn chip” aroma. Yet I’ve seen these same items bring smiles of delight and hours of enjoyment to the masculine members of my family. It is the mechanics of their essence, lessons learned on the field, the ice, the floor that they’ve taken into themselves to become the very breath they breathe. Like a knight with his armor these bits of plastic and padding embody and strengthen these men. They create a world of black and white, of good and evil, of us and them and like the Paladins of old these men, these boys, have found a wholeness and a clarity, a nobility that is otherwise lacking in an everyday life.

     So these are the things of men and boys, the things that I don’t remember from my childhood. But perhaps they were there and I did not know enough to recognize them back then. It is a wonder to me how a ball or a stick, a helmet or a pair of gloves, a poster or a jersey can alter the nature of a person making them more or less then their everyday self. There is no use questioning it, one must simply accept the reality of it. To me these are the things of men that add to the attraction and mystery of them.

     Now there are whiskers in my sink, Old Spice in the air and dirty socks on my living room coffee table and I find myself bemused by the state of things but not totally displeased. I could do without the Blue Jays and soccer posters but it’s a small price to pay. I may not understand the language of men but I like to sit and let it wash over me. Like a tourist in a new place I’m drawn by the arguably bizarre, the unknown and the beauty of a foreign land.

     There you are staring back at me from black and white and old faded colour. You are a mystery really; A figure not only relegated to the background but virtually forgotten over the years. No lingering scent of cologne or the sensation of a scratchy 5 o'clock shadow kiss as the blankets on the bed settle the sun and bring on the night. But there you are none-the-less staring back at me from white framed memories, moments caught in time. I’m there as well, suspended in some of those backgrounds. Not the “me” I am now, but the “me” I was then.

     That person still resides inside here but those roly-poly limbs and wisps of white blond fuzz are buried under the layers of experience, dirt and grime that time and life heaps on all of us. That must be where your memory is as well, stuck under there with the old me somewhere in the foundation. I don’t think that there’s enough of you to constitute a load bearing wall. If I “guesstimate” correctly you had less then three years in and then you were gone like an errant wind never seen and only heard about once in a decade or so.

     I wonder if I loved you. I wonder if you loved me. Did you even ever want me? I suppose that must sound bitter and hurtful but really I’m just curious. I can’t hate you. I don’t know you. The idea of hating someone I don’t know, even a little, seems like a waste of time. What could I hate you for? I don’t remember if there were arguments before you left. I don’t even remember when I first knew you existed or the first time I saw a picture of you. You are so much not a part of my experience that you should be a total stranger to me except that I am there, with you, in those pictures. And there are the both of you. There’s my mother, auburn beautiful in a borrowed wedding dress against a pink painted wall in someone’s apartment and there is you.

     My mother says, “That was your father.” like you are dead or something. There’s big history there, I can tell by the tone of her voice. “I don’t know where he is now,” she continues, “still in Welland I suppose.” It really doesn’t tell me anything. I do have a memory about you. But you aren’t in it.

     Years before my brother was bloodied in a fist fight at a wedding. I don’t have to really say drunken fist fight but I will because it says a bit about my family. He must have been 17 at the time fighting with one of my uncles over a slight to the father he’d never met. His pride was stung as if it was a reference to him when they said his father spent all his time drinking in strip clubs. Now I think, well who cares if he did? Lots of men do. Nowadays it’s a big first date thing to do, take your date to a strip club. Supposedly it’s empowering to the women and well… what it always is to men. Though I’ve known a number of strippers and as odd as it sounds there is nothing less about sex to a stripper than stripping (the wallets who walk in the door don’t know it but that’s life really). Regardless, 17 saw a stain and tainted by the sins of the father he fought for a man he had no memory of. They did meet years later but it did not go well. Funny that, my brother spent much of his childhood blaming all his life’s ills on an absentee father and then turned around to walk away from two of his own.

     He left behind a beautiful brown eyed girl and a blue eyed fair haired boy who now walks in his father’s footsteps of blame and anger. He left behind the rest of us as well to lead a tidier life with a younger more pliant wife who spoke a new language and lived an old world culture behind a white picket fence along with two more girls that she would raise because that’s what is expected from the women in her world. Now his face too can only be found in the matte and shiny squares marked with the dates of days too far past to reclaim.

     Black and white photographs, old Kodak coloured edged with white frames and the month and year printed at the bottom are heaped and spread out on the table. Each are connected back to me by the threads of time, memories and the common occurrence of what passes for humanity beating in the cavernous expanse beneath our ribs. These could be pictures of anyone's family.

     Many of the people in the photographs are nameless to me. Though these are my mother's pictures some subjects are also unfamiliar to her as the pictures reach back through her childhood and beyond. Regardless each and every image is an intimate portrait in code, out of context. The faces of fathers, mothers, daughters and sons are all paintings that fade in meaning with the passing years becoming half remembered stories and vaguely familiar features. Just like your face and the face of my brother.

     Both are now a mystery to me, the images overlapping in my mind’s eye.  I know that someday the faces will be a mystery to someone else. It might be that another’s scrutiny will coat it all in a patina of nostalgia. Not knowing any better they will paint us all as one in a family; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, joined together in black and white, matte or faded gloss, surrounded by the empty white frame of distance and time.

     Autumn is the time for ghosts as the green summer languishes having fed its youth to the dog days of summer. It is the job of winter, with its frozen winds and grey skies, to sweep away those ghosts and lose them in the blind swirls of chill blizzard and time. With tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow, mercy decrees that only the treacherous heart can find those ghosts in descending frequency under the soft white blanket of memory. Spring is a time of renewal on the plane of the planet and in the cycle of the life. If winter has done its job and buried the ghosts, hope can be sought in the signs of the earth’s perpetual and eternal motion.

     This past winter was an impotent soldier, a deserter of the faith, and now it lingers overlong. The first buds of spring, the snowdrops and blue scilla are covered in a late season snow. Within this final weak volley lurks lost moments freed by the faltering ministrations of the milquetoast pretender. Shorn of any power, it could not bury the spirits of last year and they call to the brethren vanished years ago. Melancholy waits for the sun to melt the ice and loose the new life impatiently waiting in the wings. It will come. There is no denying it but first the ghosts will have their way.

     A visual image, a trigger, even though we carry a dictionary of cultural symbols, for each person the trigger can be something different. In my mind’s eye I see that particular shade of purple, not the royal blue purple but a crimson tide of bloodied maroon on the dark side of red. At the time I wouldn't have described it in that way. At ten I didn't have those words and her raw voice screaming his name as she tore open the white door would have drowned them if I did.

     I don't remember the colour of the door handle. The house I live in now is old and the doors are painted white but they aren't hollow core like I know that door must have been in that house. The door knobs here are black and old, older than that house even though it was my home decades ago. I think the door knob must have been one of those cheap brass coloured ones. It would have matched the cheap hollow core door. In that moment, before she tore out into the hallway, I must have seen the door knob turn. It had to turn for the door to open but I don't remember it. I only remember her pullover in blood red maroon velour and her voice, her panic.

     I see her white face. The image is frozen in my mind. Dark, above her porcelain features, a black chiffon scarf covered her curlers. They were the old kind with the really sharp bristles inside that make it hard to sleep because they stab into your head. The metal wire wrapped around the outside was to help keep the round shape of the curl but it didn't stop the bristles from sticking out through the netting that covered it. She'd set her hair in curlers the night before and covered the whole thing with a black chiffon scarf. I didn't know she'd been to the hospital with it up. I didn't think about that either or why my grandmother was there to pull her back into the bedroom. But I heard her scream his name and I knew then that something was very wrong.

     I never saw her wear that pullover again. Actually I don't remember her ever wearing it before that morning but I think that might be one of those tricks that the mind plays on us for reason or sanity's sake. And then things were different for a long time. It was the last time I remember ever having to go to bed at a regular time. The house was filled with people, at first family and then friends and then finally new people that came in late at night and mostly left before we were awake in the morning.

     We weren't allowed to go to the funeral. It probably would have been better. Maybe then we would have known what we were dealing with, this dying, this death. We could have seen it and then we might have understood what was happening and what would happen. Or maybe not, our childhood unknowingly behind us we were still only slightly broken adrift in a new grown up world.

     I asked her about him years later. She had created a shrine to him in her heart, in her mind and I wondered about the reality of the man. Was he deserving of her decades of devotion? I can tell you, with no slight certainty, that it is true that the dead can do no more wrong. They are dead after all. I thought that the years had lionized him for her. Lord knows that he was her great love or at least death had made him so. No man could stand against his memory and one by one they fell. The damage caused by his departure would last a number of years and all of us would carry it to some extent for the rest of our lives. She has a lover now who I think might make a go of staying the distance. He has set himself to live in a ménage a mort accepting the minor deity of a perfect memory enshrined in the pantheon of her life.

     I have very few memories of the man himself only the chaos that his leave taking set into motion. I knew there was a world that ran beneath the light of our every day but it still lurked in the corners of our youth. That death, his death was the death of our childhood.

     Years later I asked her how she knew that she loved him. Her answered surprised me as the memory of their love, bolstered by her grief and annealed by her suffering, was an absolute. She said that she hadn't known the conviction of her heart until she saw him standing at the end of the church aisle waiting for her. Her, with her checkered past and a soul that felt battered and unworthy. There he was waiting for her and her three children (what kind of man would want a woman with three children she asked herself and answered- a good man). She thought she was marrying for security and then she saw him standing there in his baby blue tuxedo, waiting for her, for their life together and it was then that she knew that she loved him for sure, right then.

     I wondered, but I didn't ask. I wondered, if she’d known then that 6 months later she would wake up in the middle of the night and feel the wet stain beneath her, if she’d known that she would wake up and realize in the slow spreading dampness that he was gone, if she would wish it away, never done? She had told me that was how she knew he was really gone because his body had let go of what it held. I wondered if she regretted anything. I wondered and I wanted to ask her but I didn't.

     How could I when the winter lingers over long and ghosts come to call, walking old halls and opening up doors better left closed? In my mind I see myself in my white flannel night gown, the one with the small peaches printed on the material (I still love flannel, so soft and warm, so comforting), my hair bed head rumpled and my eyes gummy with sleep standing in the upstairs hallway outside my bedroom door right next to her bedroom door. I see myself watching my grandmother drag my mother back into her bedroom. My mother was screaming his name, clawing at the door frame. Where was she trying to go? Was she running away from him or to him? Her eyes were black in her white face, stark above the blood maroon of her velour sweater and crowned with the thorny bristles of her curlers.

     This ungraceful thrust of winter rapes the green of spring and brings old ghosts with it. The sharp thorns of the still naked branches are black against the ashen blanket of late, late snow. I can see the new maroon shoots bleeding up through the cold white. I don’t want to dream tonight. I hope that tomorrow the snow and its ghosts are gone.

     I am wading through the end of a March tamed to the hand as gentle as a lamb. The sunny days and balmy weather have finally shown a tantalizing glimpse of spring green though it is still overshadowed by the morning frost. Early shoots show the ravages of an icy morning’s bite in the white that lays heavy on the lawn at dawn mimicking the snow of less than a week ago. The season of Lent, a time of sacrifice and penance, heralds the rebirth of faith and everlasting life. But until that resurrection the year is breached and the world is caught. We wade through the thick purgatory of a breath before the change. Like all anticipations, the minutes are drawn out in excruciating increments.

     I am reading to pass the time, averaging a book every day and a half depending on the author and the length. Though the hour hand pushes through January molasses I refuse to waste even a gingerbread bite on banal, trite and overly dramatic volumes. Two Gregory Maguire’s are devoured, quickly washed down by a beautiful light touch. For the next hour or so I will be immersed in Gabriel Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores. It is the perfect story for this time of year, this span of days coloured by the fasting that marks an end and an everlasting beginning. An old man finds love at the end of his life. A young girl steps into the beginning of who she will be. Winter embraces the spring and releases the months into summer or so the synopsis promises. I’ll have to wait and see.

     I am watching for my seeds to sprout. Any day now the small green tendrils will break the uneven covering of potting soil packed into the old raisin containers that I’ve saved over the winter dreaming my floral perfumed dreams. Planted indoors, weeks before the last frost they wait to find a place under the summer blue skies. It’s time to gather up the host of pine cones that litter the ground underneath the spruce and white pines. The wood pile, a carrion collection of limbs bark covered and white bone broken torn in the rage of winter, challenges the height of the shed.  That heap only awaits a windless night, a spirit warmed company and a match to lay it to rest.

    I almost waited too long to bring in my wreath from the front door. Last year we had two birds build and raise families in the shelter of our front porch. The babies were adorable but it was stressful for the mother when company came to ring the bell and the bird shit was hell on the stoop. I brought the wreath in yesterday with just the foundation of a nest built. I hate to destroy anyone’s hard work but it is for the best in the long run.

     The lilac bushes are budding and the snowdrops are giving way to crocuses. The out flung arms of daffodils and tulips stretch overhead to break the soil after a long winter’s rest. The winter wheat shows green and crisp against the furrowed acres of umber fields. The grass still sleeps in golden dreams showing no faith in the promise of an approaching sun. I sit, hip deep in books and a mild impatience. I am waiting for the smell of fresh grass and the feel of wet dirt crusting under my nails. I am waiting for the limning of the lines of my heart and life in stark contrast to the white of my palms. I am waiting for one life to end and another to begin here at the end of bittersweet March…marking the transition in words, memories and time.

     The air is filled with smell of diesel fuel and the bitter stench of stick welders. Even the stark rays of the fluorescent lights aren’t strong enough to clear the haze and the factory air is greasy and thick. Matching cadmium yellow lines, crumbling round the edges and crusty from paint layered over the years, mark the aisles and the designated working areas. The high bay is enormous. It comes by its size designation with being the tallest building on the lot at three stories high. It’s longer than several football fields. If you’re going to build locomotives you can’t go anywhere but big.

     The screech of metal grinders and the buzz of compression tools is regularly punctuated by the warning siren as the cranes move up and down the huge bay carrying the under frames of locomotives. Those frames are heavy enough to leave a foot deep trench in the concrete floor if dropped. The cranes are enormous and though they run on wheels they are anchored to the building by weighty steel girders that follow the length of the walls. The factory works three shifts and with the exception of summer shut down and Christmas holidays it is a 24 hour world of production, metallic stench and the noises of progress and machinery. It’s not exactly the place one would expect to find wildlife. But as often is the case where you find people and their workings, there too you will find the animal world living off the avails.

     There is a pond out behind the factory lying amidst the testing track for the light armored vehicles made next door. Each year it becomes the home of nesting ducks and Canadian geese that don’t seem to mind the LAVs racing round the track. Raccoons regularly visit the outdoor luncheon area where the workers save them the trouble of pawing through the garbage by tossing bits of sandwiches and cookies. The raccoons sit back on their haunches and catch the bread in their paws like trained circus performers. Many of the locomotive parts travel from south of the border and an eye must be kept out for black widows and other nasty crawlies.

     All through the summer and part way through the fall the corrugated steel walls lock in the heat of the day. Even with giant fans positioned strategically the plant is like an oven, drawing a breath can make you break a sweat. As soon as the sun goes down the large doors that access the yard are opened up to let the heat out. They’re left open until the morning comes and the sun bakes the building again.

     Despite the presence of people and the constant noise of production, the high bay is an attractive shelter to all sorts of avian travelers. Some even take the opportunity to make it their regular home, roosting high in the rafters and finding their meals in the garbage cans that regularly dot the factory floor. The bird population ebbs and flows with the seasons. For the most part the workers try to ignore the inside wild life. There are a variety of bird species that inhabit the factory but the most disruptive have to be the current flock of pigeons that are wintering in the rafters. At the top of the building, if not the food chain, the pigeons seem to be doing their best to make life miserable for those flightless creatures that go about their business below. The floor and anything that is anchored or moves over it have become fair game in the toilet bowl fiesta. Heated words rise up as welders, electricians and pipe fitters alike dance through a game with unknown rules and standards. Not only do you have to watch where you place your hands and feet, messes drop randomly from above to splatter on heads, shirts, tool boxes and blueprints… anything below the flight path.  Complaints to the foremen and upper management have produced absolutely zero results.

     The builders of locomotives aren’t your regular production line workers. Men of experience, they are the practical application of engineers’ plans and blueprints. The white collars look down on those grease covered grunts thinking that anyone can do the job. Upper management is confused as to the reason that production has slowed lately, never making a connection to the loss of the old timers that they’re slowly replacing with junior and therefore less expensive workers. Locomotives aren’t built on an assembly line like cars and on time delivery will never work for these mammoth constructs. These senior workers are the guys that make the blueprint theory a reality. Each carries their own notebook, some decades old, which hold the keys to the knowledge that actually makes those fancy blueprints work. If you tell these men that something has to be done, they’ll do it, whatever it takes. Given no logical instruction or recourse they will create a solution of their own.

     Gus used to be a farmer. His whole family farmed. His ancestry is Dutch and Belgian and his family immigrated here years ago to work the land. Gus grew up working hard, knowing the satisfaction of a job well done and the rhythm of the labourer’s day. He could have retired already. He could have taken the buy-out a couple of years ago. Rumor has it, the buy-out was over $70,000 but Gus isn’t made that way. He’s a spare man, not built big but strong in the way the day is strong, built to last, built to endure. He does his job and then he goes home. Gus doesn’t know how not to work. His generation is a working generation and to not work would be like not breathing to him.

     Gus used to farm but that was a long time ago. If you look around you right now chances are you won’t see one thing that doesn’t owe something to some type of farmer but still it’s hard to make a living farming anymore. Farmers are a hardy lot, used to making something from nothing more than the dirt beneath their feet. Gus may have left the farm behind to walk the factory floor but it didn’t change who he is. To say Gus is a handy man is to underestimate Gus. He has offered to cut down the 150 foot of dead pine that shadows the back of our yard. He wants to cart it away, saw it into planks and build a shed out of it. He could, as this is a man who has his environment well in hand.

      In the high bay the pigeon population has reached a number than makes it not only difficult to work but dangerous as well. Unsanitary globs of bird droppings mark the floor and the underframes. It’s dirty and slippery underfoot and underhand. Complaints have been made and there’s some talk of sweeping piles of it up (there is that much) and depositing it on one of the desks in the administrative offices to see how they like working in bird shit. Gus isn’t much on talking about getting something done. Necessity is the mother of invention and Gus has always been a member of that family.

     Like most large factories the tools in the high bay are powered by compressed air. Using compressed air, an adapter, a valve and a copper tube Gus made his own solution. It was a simple concept; the adapter attaching the valve to the air hose and in turn the valve controlling the force of air running through the copper tubing. All that remained then was to find ammunition. Nuts and bolts abound in a place that creates the machineries of transportation. Using a selection of sizes Gus has began to invade the rafters above. The compressed air, normally used to power the tools of a massive industry provide more than enough power to send the nuts and bolt racing up to hit the ceiling. So far he hasn’t hit anything but he’s been able to create quite a stir up in steel firmament. There’s been some squawking and feathers flying and a bit of general unrest in the feathered ranks above. It’s not a long term solution but it is a start. Perhaps the birds will look for more peaceful pastures. Perhaps someone higher up the factory food chain will take a little more notice. Perhaps someone else will get beaned by one of the nuts and bolts falling from the ceiling. Either way things are on the move in the high bay; that’s just the way it is there.

     The greasy air fills up with the sound of grinders and the stench of the welders and the business of building giants. The locomotives continue to roll past the high bay doors and out into the world. Last week there was a fork lift collision further down the bay. Management keeps reorganizing the workers. Someone forgot to remove the cardboard from the inside of a cab and something, a welding spark most likely, set the whole thing on fire. One of the junior workers forgot to drain the air from a tank after an air test, a possibly fatal mistake that’s happened more than once lately. Gossip abounds, faces change and the job gets done. The pigeons fly, maybe a little more cautiously. Engineers design and the blue collars make it work; filling in the gaps, smoothing out the creases and rewriting the plans. The siren wails, the crane rolls and the high bay rises up shadowing the lot and the buildings all around.   

     The light shines through the front window in the upstairs hallway, flushed saffron with the first spark of day. Muntin bars mark the window pane and divide the rays into patterned squares. The lace curtain stencils each space to paint a granny square quilt, a faint blush of virgin sun on the cream door. The grey grizzled beard of old man winter lingers on into March. Even after a sleepless night the slow thawing of metallic blue, bleeding over the precipice until it tumbles into the full golden nectarine of the new day, is a welcome sight.

     The mornings are still cold. Even though no one is out of bed yet the hum of the furnace makes the house seem busy and full. I always love the sound of the furnace kicking on. When the house was first built there was no furnace. There were only fireplaces to heat each floor. The old yellow brick chimney still remains but now it is plastered in behind the walls. A gas furnace was added years ago but the lath and plaster walls weren’t built to accommodate duct work so the house is heated by gravity. The high efficiency furnace pushes the heat up to the first level of the house. The warm air makes its way to the second level by rising through large round grates that open the first floor to the second above. The warm air pushes the cold air down the front and back stairs and the cycle (like the days) is repeated again.

     There is no grate in the floor of the front bedroom. That room is my room. Without the grate to let the heat rise up from downstairs I’m occasionally cold, even in the summer. It’s not the largest room but I chose it so I could have a bit of privacy. Sometimes, if there’s an accident on the highway, the traffic picks up a little but other than that the road is quiet and local traveled for the most part. In the winter, at night, I can hear the roar of the plow from miles away. The bed shakes as it passes the house. The winter winds howl and the snow and rain fall, all to no avail. Tucked into bed under the mound of quilts and afghans, with the hum of the furnace singing through the house, I snuggle down deeper satisfied we’re safe from the storms that swirl around us.    

     The day’s arrival puts an end to a second sleepless night. I had lain awake through the hours listening for his breath. His room is just down the hall. I had listened to his teeth grinding, the bed creaking as he tossed and turned and the sound of air passing in and out in sighs and whispers. He said he felt better before he went to bed but every hour or so I’d gotten up to check on him. Feeling for a fever, first with my hand and then gently brushing his hair back to press my lips to his forehead in the hopes of balancing out the ice in my palms. At one point he seemed to wake. Disorientated from within his dream he told me he couldn’t go first and I laughed and told him not to worry about it. His head dropped and he drifted back to where he’d never really left.

     I could tell he was better but I still listened, lying awake until dawn. The night before there had been no sleep for either of us. It had been a long time since he’d been really sick. When he was younger and he’d spend weekends away he’d often come home too tired (he would say too sick) to go to school Monday morning. There had been a string of four day weeks until I’d told him he would just have to tough it out. It was difficult but he’d pushed hard, for me and for himself. He’d gotten tougher or smarter, I wasn’t really sure which but the Monday absences had slowly petered out. 

     He was tired this Monday morning, but not unusually so. He’d made it to school and came home to roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes for dinner and homemade brownies with a side serving of Cookies and Cream ice cream for desert. Right up to supper time he’d been fine, he was going to hockey, he was looking forward to one of his favourite meals. Then, just before the dinner bell sounded, he was violently ill and would continue to be all night.

     He hadn’t been this sick since he was very small. Strep throat had wrapped him in its own particular misery and we’d sat together in the doctor’s office while he vomited over his fifth outfit of that day. I hadn’t brought an extra one. I’d been so concerned I’d rushed out of the house and Lord knows it was hard to believe that there could have been anything left to still spew out from such a small body. The nurse didn’t try to hide her disapproval. I had just wanted to get him there to find out what was wrong. Later when were back at home and I was bathing him in tepid water, trying to bring his temperature down, I did my best to put it aside but it was too late. I knew I’d never be able to totally bury that fear, now that I’d felt it. I had thought I was going to lose him. He had been so sick and it had happened so quickly and I had felt that I was so helpless really to do anything.

     It was hard to reconcile the image of that roly-poly baby with the ashen faced teenager who stood in the kitchen apologizing. He hadn’t quite made it to the toilet and he’d forgotten, in his rush, to lift the seat. I soaked a face cloth in soap and warm water and washed his face and hands, reaching up to wipe his hair off of his face. After I settled him on the couch with a bucket I set about cleaning up the bathroom. My mind went back again to another night when he’d been unwell.

     At four he’d still been round and sweet faced. When I’d picked him up I must have squeezed a little because as his head reached my shoulder he leaned over and threw up in my waist length hair. He began to cry and I told him not to worry, everyone gets sick sometimes. Then both of us got into the shower, clothes and all. It must have been my imagination but I thought I could smell it for days afterwards every time I brushed my hair.     

     It was still the same, I thought, as I cleaned up the larger puddles with toilet paper. You’d think it would change. He swore as he was sick, man curses. I could hear him through the bathroom door. His new man’s voice was hoarse and surprised at the violence of his own body. I hovered outside the door wanting to help but trying not to embarrass him, this angular stranger gulping and retching in my bathroom. And then he opened the door and he was still my child, the bitter smell of sick and pale face, still mine, even though he towered above me. All that night I sat up with him, bringing him water, emptying his bucket and wiping his forehead. Worrying and watching and in the morning, when he’d weathered the worst of it, I allowed myself to rest but only for a bit.

     Through the day and into the second night I watched and listened though I could see that he would be alright. That moment of fear was once again lived through but it can never be conquered. The thoughts that kept me company through the night ruefully concluded, once again, that it is a terribly hard thing to take your heart out and let it walk free into the world without you.

     As the golden light of morning warms the hallway I lay listening to him breathe. The house is quiet and I inhale and exhale, matching the rhythm of my breath to his. My hands, resting on my chest under a mountain of blankets, feel a faint flutter. I know it’s only a phantom beat. My heart lays down the hall and one door away.

     I wait for his alarm to go off. I know he’ll hit snooze at least three times before he gets up. Most mornings, by the third time, I’m ready to brave the cold of my room and turn it off myself. This day I’m content to let him stay a little longer, maybe he might need me, just a little bit still. I watch the golden copper of dawn harden into the bright light of morning until I hear the sound of his yawns and sighs from the next room and then finally the bed creaking as he rises to greet another day.

     My mother had three children, one boy and two girls. I am firmly in the middle. My birth came as a great surprise to my older brother who assumed, I believe, that he would always be the one and only. Upon my arrival, though he had reached the venerable age of 18 months, he once again took to the bottle and his pram. It was not a huge inconvenience to my mother given that my brother had, at that stage, become a quiet wanderer. During nap time, which she enjoyed as well, and in the evening when he was to be fast asleep in his crib, he was often AWOL. In desperation she had taken to covering his crib with chicken wire, caging him in to stop him from wandering off. Immediately after my birth, his jealously kept him close at hand. He could be found as near as the pram or only as far away as the green eyed monster would let him wander. He eventually got over it and we settled into an uneven constantly broken and renewed truce that would last as long as convenience allowed.  

     When my sister came along several years later I reacted to the usurping of my title of Darling Baby with the same grace as my brother before me. Although I’d been allowed to name the baby, I promptly decided I hated her and set out on a mammoth campaign to make sure she knew. As she grew she learned to give as good as she got. The pitched battles in our shared room and the sharp cruelties of girls were so much more vicious and coldly dismissive than anything our brother could have thought of. His forays were all brute strength and oafish bullying. My sister and I were skilled surgeons. Our battles were built up in scalpel sharp incisions of disdain, delicate balances of power and emotional distance. Our contention was so great, our abhorrence so pure, it does not surprise me, that such strong emotion brought about a closer friendship than that uneasy truce with my brother could ever have accomplished. There were signs that we would be good friends but the seeds did take a long time to grow. As long as we did as a matter of fact but that in itself is not unusual.

     And so we are now friends, not my brother with us, but my sister and I to each other. My brother has chosen to walk apart from all of us but we two walk more and more together. Looking back over the years now the bloodiest of our skirmishes are the ones we bring out to parade around for the amusement of ourselves and others. Our greatest battles have taken on the sepia toned patina of nostalgia. I maintain that my victories were the greatest in number and the most definitive in nature. I’m sure, if asked, my sister would say the same. But I can not deny that there was one moment that must live on in infamy in the pantheon of sisterly rivalry. On that day, my sister, through luck or chance, stood supreme.

     She must have just turned 10, which would have made me 13.  There had been tragedies in our family and we were much on our own in those days. She was just starting to come into her height at 10 with maybe 8 more inches to go. She was thin with dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair, all flash and temper. At 13, almost 14, I was an inch short of as tall as I was ever going to be with stick thin arms, fair skin and strawberry blond cold disdain.

     Our white stucco house was bustled in the backyard by a raised stone patio (those being in fashion then) which in turn was sheltered by a large oak tree. The ground between the tree and the patio was rutted and bare. The dirt had been scraped and flattened by the feet of innumerable neighbourhood kids who’d taken a ride on the tire swing hanging from the lowest branch. The end of the yard was marked by an old battered metal shed. We had avoided the shed since my sister’s birthday when my mother had managed to step on a rusty nail while playing hide and seek. The nail had passed through the bottom of her foot and out the top necessitating a break in the festivities and a hospital visit. No one had gotten around to moving the offending board and nail and so the shed sat abandoned with its motley collection of bikes, croquet mallets, horseshoes and lethal metal tipped lawn darts.

     On any given afternoon any of us usually could be found throwing those deadly projectiles straight up in the air and then running like hell to avoid being impaled by the rapidly descending death spear or trying to hit each other with croquet balls or mallets if we thought we could get away with it . But given the recent threat of the rusty nail I had opted for a reclining ride on the patio swing instead while my sister turned slow circles on the tire. My sister had wearied of swinging on her rubber perch and was ready for a ride on the patio swing. I was comfortable, lying fully reclined and stretched out to my full 5 foot 4 inch length, and had no intention of accommodating her.

     Vitriol began to flow and the curses flew back fast and hard. All those arguments and we never raised a hand to each other, but this day was a day the line was almost crossed. That was something we would try on briefly years later but as children physical pain was our brother’s territory. Ours wasn’t the way of force or the fist. We fought dirty and pummeled each other with words.

     My sister’s frustration began to mount and I felt that victory was at hand. Still lying down on the swing I opened my mouth for one more cutting remark and she leaned forward and spit at me. It might have been the wind, it might have been fate taking a hand or it might have been pure luck, who knows? Whatever it was, it sharpened my sister’s aim and my cutting crow of victory became a nauseous gargle as her glob of saliva plopped into my mouth.

     Shock on her part and spit in mine silenced us both, but only for a moment. In a frozen plateau we paused while both of us absorbed the act and its consequences. If I hadn’t been lying down I would have caught her. I still don’t know what I would have done if I had. She made it into the house and up the stairs in record time. She hit the bathroom door a split second before me where she locked herself in until the coast was clear. And really even if I’d caught her what good would it have done?

     On that day, nothing could have been more perfect than that one moment. All the forces had conspired and there was no offensive I could have mounted to equal that one magnificent act. I tried. Later on that night I brushed my teeth and spit my toothpaste into the tub while she was having a bath but it was an empty gesture. She knew it and I knew it. On that day, I had to concede the field of victory to her. But I did live to fight another day, many other days as a matter of fact. I had my own victories just as complete and undeniable but those I will save for another time.

     She was to me, as I was to her, my most esteemed and beloved enemy. We are still soldiers of a sort but life and time have made us allies. As an adult I don’t know if I could love her as much as I do if I hadn’t hated her so completely as a child. I know the depth and breadth of her. We have passed through the fire and have come away tempered, annealed and strengthened in ourselves. I know some of her sins and all of her foibles as she knows a measure of mine. We have warred and like old campaigners we share a past that binds us together. Once my enemy but always and still beloved, she remains ever my sister and finally, my friend.

     The 400 series highways were introduced in Ontario during the early 1950s.The MacDonald Cartier Freeway is the longest of the 400 series highways. Although construction began in 1947 it wasn’t until 1965 that the MacDonald Cartier Freeway was dedicated to honour the memory of Sir John A MacDonald and Sir George-Etienne Cartier and their roles as Fathers of Confederation. If you were to mention the McDonald Cartier Freeway hereabouts you might have most people scratching their heads. Ask for directions to “the 401” and they’ll set you straight on your way.

     The black top ribbon of The King’s Highway 401 is born in the gritty outskirts of Windsor and stretches to the Quebec border. A peak day for the 401 can see upwards of 400,000 vehicles racing along carrying goods and people up and down one of the busiest highways in North America. More than half the population of Canada has settled along the 815 km that make up its rolling length. As I reside within a 5 minute car ride to this busy corridor I fall well within that percentile.

     I have traveled the length of the 401 and some of the other 400 series as well. It was as a passenger that I first took to the road and became familiar with the Q.E.W. (Highway 451), its giant concrete lions, its comings and goings.  Now living more than 2 hours away any trip back “home” brings pangs of nostalgia but really I’ve never driven the Queen Elizabeth Way.  The 401 is my highway. It was the one I first drove on after earning my license and it is the one I continue to travel on weekly.

     I like to drive but mostly in fair weather. I’ve done my share of winter driving and if I have to I will but I’d rather not. The weather is notorious for being fickle in this part of the country. As the saying goes, “Don’t like the forecast? Wait five minutes.”

     May is tornado weather. It’s a given here and we don’t get worked up unless there’s a reason to. I was shocked several years ago when confronted by a concerned cousin visiting from the south. Everyone knows what to do if one touches down. I couldn’t understand what she was so worried about. Actually the water spouts over the lake are quite beautiful when viewed from the shore.

     In winter snow squalls off the lake and in the snow belt can reduce visibility to zero. It’s always good to have a passenger to help navigate. Having someone lean out of the passenger window to make sure you’re not drifting off the road is sometimes a necessary evil when you’ve got to get home and the weather is keeping the plows off the roads.

     My stretch of the highway has become familiar to me over the past 15 years. It’s said that women navigate by landmark and I’ve definitely staked my out. The best ones are those that are closest to my house. Outward bound they hold the promise of the journey and on my return they herald the comfort of home. No matter how familiar the route I never fail to see something marvelous and new.

     The Monarch butterflies migrate every year flying incredible distances to rest in the southern heat of Mexico. On the way they cross the dark road. It’s only one of many that they cross but it will claim the lives of quite a few. The heat of the asphalt, the updrafts and washes of the passing trucks and cars are just one more hurdle on that monumental journey. The sides of the road are littered with just as many calico petals as the fields further on.

     The mild weather this winter has changed the migration schedule of local and northern hawks. On any given day the trees and power lines along the highway play host to a pageant of keen eyed hunters. The dark black wires and frosted branches bend under the weight of feathered predators watching for the unwary both on the roads and in the fields.

     The crest of an overpass draws the car level with the flights of other native birds. Flocks of Canadian geese (lingering further north as well) take off from stubble crowned fields. Struggling against gravity and air their wings push forward as their slender necks waver in serpentine curves fighting the winter wind.

     Deer roam the fields and occasionally brave the road. Most don’t make it but some do. The Sybil like weather makes for incredible cloud breaks, sunrises and sunsets. Columns of light rend the blackened mists to strike the ground like the hand of God (Cecil B. DeMille would have been green with envy).

     The fields roll out in Grant Wood patchwork quilts. Each season’s theme is expressed in the truest values of the spectrum. Rivers, streams and great stretches of fresh water reflect the whims of the firmament. Nature and her Darwinian cycles edge and over lap the road that leads on, a different story on each page. The jeweled cities, worlds of faces, cultures and languages anchor the road that is both a slave and a master. Drop a finger on the map and find a Shakespeare play, a Dali painting, a dim sum lunch or an artery clogging poutine for dinner. Dance to Caribbean strains, sink into the depths of the blues or rise up to symphonic heights.

     Over it all is the sky, bottomless and spinning off into space. It is a cobalt, phthalo, cerulean, ultramarine, peach, harvest gold, coral, ebony, jewel encrusted, aurora borealis crowned schizophrenic beauty. The hard black top winds through the heartland joining it all together. Interchanges snake off like thin tentacles opening the way to unknown people and places. Drawing us in and sending us out. Each day is a new day and though the road is asphalt and rock bed solid it never travels the same route twice and neither do I.   

     The whole day stretches ahead. There are vague dark clouds of laundry and a dinner thawing in the sink hovering on the proverbial horizon. But that dinner is hours away and I'm sure that everyone has at least one ugly laundry day outfit to get them through the afternoon. Nirvana consists, in this one moment, of a steaming cup of coffee (1 sugar and cream), scissors, a ballpoint pen and...sighhhhh... the Saturday paper.

     I love the Saturday paper. It has a weight and a presence. Although it will be censored and bent to whatever political leaning that is particular to the paper owning conglomerate some trickle of truth always finds it way through.

     The Saturday paper has the best obituaries and the personal page is full of pictures of people celebrating their 50th wedding anniversaries, college graduations and first birthdays. The pictures I like the most are the old photos that tell a story even without the captions below. The opinion section and the editorial letters are always a topic for discussion and I clip and circle the workings of minds and philosophies that parallel or challenge mine.

     I have scrapbooks of photos I've clipped from the Saturday paper. These pictures come from all and any pages and depict everything from Mayan Temples to cenotaph ceremonies. Most people don't realize that you don't have to look very far to see artists at work. It's been in the paper that I've seen the most compelling and emotional photographs. I collect the ones that touch me the most.

     The members of my family recognize and grudgingly accept my love for the Saturday paper.  It's a get out of jail free card and I'm not required to answer the phone, curb the dog or find those elusive nail clippers that seem to run from everyone else but me (popping into view when I open the drawer instead of hiding when whoever had said they looked "really hard").

     There is a method to my pleasure. I do divide the Saturday paper into sections and read them from least favourite to the most. The sports, cars and classified are my brussel sprouts...I read them quickly. I don't enjoy them but one's "diet" needs to be well rounded. Tragedy is liver and onions...if you love liver and onions my apologies but I detest them. A steady diet of force fed liver and onions suits some as does a steady diet of tragedy but that has never been my taste. In my youth, when it was my turn to cook dinner, my mother knew better than to put liver and onions on the menu if she didn't want to find herself eating burnt shoe leather...my philosophy being if it was burnt we wouldn't be forced to eat it. Everything else falls into place. Carrots are the politics and regional events. Steak and shrimp are the last three sections I read, the colour comics (Bizarro is the best), the Editorial Viewpoint pages and finally the Entertainment section.

     The Entertainment section carries reviews of galleries, movies, CDs and books. I love the book reviews. I've always been a book person and I'll take a book over a movie any day. I love words (you may not have noticed). I suppose that's part of the reason I love the Saturday paper. I could read the paper on line but I wouldn't enjoy it as much. There's something satisfying in seeing the whole thing laid out there in front of me, the large pages full of print, pictures, events and thoughts. I love the sound of those pages turning. Sometimes I forget that the ink dirties your fingers and later on in the day I'll see a smudge where I've rubbed my nose or brushed my fingers across my cheek (hopefully it's not after I've come in from a quick trip to the store in town).

     After all the recipes, photos, opinions and events it is time for dessert, the Saturday Stumper crossword puzzle. As the week advances each day the crossword puzzle increases in difficulty until Saturday when the stumper is posted. I love a really hard one that might take you an hour or two to finish, those are the very best. The Saturday Stumper must be done in ballpoint pen, well at least when I do it. It's not that I'm arrogant about my crossword skills. I simply like the way the pen feels against the paper as I fill the squares in. It's not exactly living dangerously but since you do only live once (unless you're a Buddhist) why not do the crossword puzzle in ink?

     I'm always a little sad to see the end of the Saturday paper but not overly so. I know there will be one for me next Saturday barring my death, nuclear war or an unusually quick sell out at the store. The big adventures in life are lovely and nice to have every once in a while but big adventures can be demanding and difficult. It's the little things, how we choose to spend the time between those dramas and expeditions, which determine the timbre and quality of a life. Next Saturday, if I'm lucky enough, I'll let go of the wheel and let the household drive itself for an hour or two while I enjoy my get out of jail free card, a cup of coffee and a bit of nirvana with a ballpoint pen and a pair of scissors.

     It’s a large canvas, too tall to stand upright in the backroom of the basement. The acrylic paint has been built up over a number of years and the layers have had more than enough time to cure into a state of perpetuity. The original intent was a study of light and dark in an attempted ode to Caravaggio. No cherubic Raphaelite angels grace this plane. Like tormented saints the ravaged faces of the divine and human intermix in a supplication to the father above. Angels' wings, feathers black smoke sooted, cradle the fallen as voices tear away into unseen winds and eyes search the heavens for solace. An avenging angel, a comforting angel, a guardian angel, an angel of death; here they are all the same. Brilliant blossoms of flaming petals open to lave in heated waves that rise up to harry the stricken.

      I have carried this painting or perhaps it has carried me through some decidedly difficult periods in my life. The large canvas was a rare expense and as such I approached it with some trepidation. It doesn’t pay to be too precious with this type of thing and soon enough I found myself embroiled in the form and substance of my subject and medium. As my days became chaotic the canvas followed suit. Hours were built up in layers of tears and uncertainly, blind corridors that led nowhere, glorious moments of revelation, grueling backtracking and the light of discovering and learning.

     The play of flames upon an arched back, the tendons stretched in an angel’s out flung arm, the soft white neck vulnerable and bare and the circle of grace…all these tell a two sided story. The interpretation of art is always a personal thing, the story told will be coloured by the experiences of the viewer. Anyone seeing this particular painting might comment on its biblical theme or its period treatment of light. That is the package it wears. Only I see bones underneath. Like all my paintings, whatever the apparent topic, it is a self portrait. In the manner of Dorian Grey’s secret canvas it carries my face and the toll of a difficult period and lessons dearly bought. Despite what it seems on the surface, the bones are there for me to see.

     Bones are the problem now. The time has come to let it go. It will never be complete in the traditional sense of the word. Like a loyal dog that has overstayed its time the cold sting of the needle is the only release.  I did toy with the idea of a funeral pyre but only briefly. The canvas had been much too expensive and I am much too thrifty to waste it just for the thrill of the gesture. If performance art was still my milieu, I might, but my college days are far behind me. Sanding and a good coat of gesso seemed the best solution and now I find myself deconstructing angels.

     As each layer turns to dust under the palm sander the clock turns back. A shadow there leaked from that moment. This knot of flame and the short hard strokes of the brush burst from another. Each feather is a memory, a lesson painfully learned or a step gladly taken. Though the sander smoothes the surface and the gesso erases the pigment the bleached bones will remain. The canvas will become something new. Layer upon layer the paint will build up until a different story, which is really still the same old story with small variations, is told again. The hand will trace the patterns while the eye judges the shades of light and dark and the balance of the composition. Inside where the bones have come home to roost, familiar enough to be forgiven but too sharp to be forgotten, I will pass the time deconstructing angels.  

   Basements make excellent collectors. What you might think of as a temporary storage place can very easily become a jam packed museum of themed displays. If not kept under control these display will reproduce in an eerie mimicry of life itself.  Away from the light, in the moist warmth of the basement, random items are draw together. Like mold or fungus they multiply creating blooms of growth, objets d’art or mounds of junk ... depending on your perspective. It's necessary on occasion, if only in the name of order and self defense, to brave the dark and sweep out the cobwebs and whatever else is hiding in that midnight garden.

     Some piles are easy prey to the light but others dig their roots a little deeper. In my basement one such pile has been growing for a number of years and it is for the most part impervious to any large scale attempt to clean house. The pile as a collective has an ebb and flow as things are added and subtracted according to need, convenience and interest. Even in its state of flux the pile can be catalogued and categorized. I prefer "Snips and snails and puppy dog tails" or "Painted wings, giant rings, strings and sealing wax". There isn't a wing, a snip or tail in sight but the titles are apt none the less.

     Scholastic paperbacks abound. Bunnicula, Captain Underpants and I Am The Cheese peak out from under a jumble of Brian Jacques’ Red Wall Abbey series and RL Stine's Goosebumps. Dig a little deeper and you'll find Robert Munsch "loving you forever" even if you do travel to "where the wild things are" with nothing more to protect you than Harold's "purple crayon". Circumstances make strange bedfellows in the comic book world as Scrooge McDuck cozies up with Spiderman. A pirate's ransom in Lego kits, once lovingly constructed, lie broken and abandoned, dust encrusted and forgotten. Awkward clay creations, snow walkers held together with glue and toothpicks, space ship shaped lumps, headless power rangers and fearsome Bionicals people the pile. A shrine to the muse of art exists laden with offerings of specially designed paper airplanes, dinosaur masks and a particularly painstakingly assembled paper Egyptian sarcophagus. Boxes of school work, toilet paper rolls, paper plates and egg cartons crafted into mysterious flights of fancy (held together with enough glue to buttress a steel girder) create a solid underpinning for the growing pile.

     An object may be added to pile, thought of as no longer significant in the larger scheme of things, only to be retrieved a week later for reuse by the original owner or perhaps to be passed on to a younger cousin. I am surprised when a death row inmate receives a pardon from the governor and returns from the subterranean dungeon to the light and freedom of the world above. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the decree and I'm often left hoping the object in question didn't sprout legs and walk up three flights of stairs by itself. For the most part though the pile remains and grows at a constant rate determined by the passage of taste and time. Of all the heaps in the basement this pile stubbornly refuses to give up the ghost and die a decent death. Past experience and Murphy's Law ensure that any item disposed of will be the one most required a day or two later. Nostalgia plays a part as well.

     This messy menagerie, regardless of how motley and moldy, contains the remnants of a lifetime of laughing, learning and love. There are the stories we shared while a sleepy head nodded. The hardened clay surfaces still show in sharp detail the impression of wee hands, the whorls of fingerprints a gentle wave in the awkward grey. Lego sea world and paper towel totem poles keep the record of time used and spent better than any clock ever could. That time, our time shared together, was never wasted time as aimless as it might have seemed then. 

     This pile definitely has roots. Minute by minute, second by second those roots dig deeper gaining purchase, while new life grows above. As dusty and broken as these old relics are they bloom with a light of their own, soft pastels and bittersweet scents redolent of innocence, effort and growth engendered and represented. To a stranger this assortment of oddities and well used items might seem like garage sale fodder. Perhaps someday long, long from now the entire collection may find its way out to the front lawn but chances are I won't be the one putting it out. It can stay a little longer while I turn my efforts back to cobwebs and 20 year old editions of Sports Illustrated.

     I was lucky to the get the job. At 17 I was on my own and needed to get enough cash together to support myself and pay tuition for the college I planned to attend in the next year. I wasn't exactly the poster child for a conservative service industry. My red hair, short and spiky, Cleopatra eyeliner and safety pin accented black wardrobe worked against the traditional waitress image. The hair could be flattened out (though it clashed with the red polyester tunic of my uniform). The stovepipe black jeans and high top converse runners were allowable and so I became an employee of The House of Gene better known to all and sundry as Gene's Chinese food restaurant.

     Gene's was the po' boy cousin of the swanky Lee's restaurant blocks situated around the corner and up the block in the CBD of the artistically blessed Stratford, Ontario. Located back to front across the street from an adult club and nestled between retail establishments Gene's could always be counted on for a  hot plate of steaming rice and Moo-shu pork from 12 in the afternoon until 1 am most weekdays, or 3 am on Friday and Saturday nights.

     The restaurant itself was a long room, narrower at the front than the back, with the largest visual distinction being a set of swinging doors at the end that led to the kitchen. There was no real foyer. As you entered the restaurant there was a desk and a till where receipts and take out orders were processed. The small counter that followed housed glasses, ashtrays and cutlery. The front wall was completed by a refrigerated display case complete with see-through sliding doors so that you could pick the beer or dessert of your choice. Tables lined each side of the room.

     White clad kitchen staff would gather at the back during the slow hours to smoke and eat family style. Melodic laughter would drift up mixed with soft and mysterious Asian syllables. Dinner for the kitchen staff was not listed on the regular menu. It wasn't smothered in the MSG found in big wooden barrels in the basement storage room. The coarse crystals of chemical were ladled into buckets with laundry detergents scoops for transport to the kitchen upstairs to season the Canadian Chinese food. Steaming vegetables and bowls of meat and broth, "real" Chinese food, disappeared and reappeared as chopsticks dipped in and out drawing the contents into smaller individual bowls. The smell of whitefish would waft forward from the back of the restaurant mixing with the aroma of ginger and soy.

     The waitresses would convene at the first table on the right hand side of the restaurant just behind the dessert cabinet that was filled with tapioca puddings and cubed Jell-O in parfait glasses. The Lee family who owned the restaurant were good employers and didn't see the sense of "busy work". If the tables were clean and empty, the fridge and ketchup bottles were full we were left to our own devices which, given the company, was usually smoking and gossip.

     I suppose we were an odd looking group but it never occurred to me. Attending high school full time and working until 1 am or 3 am pretty much every night didn't leave me much time for reflection. I couldn't have told you any of my co-workers last names though I spent hours in their company. There were 4 of us who waited tables. At 17 I was the youngest. Next in line was Tracy, red headed, Rubenesque and in her early twenties. Tracy would gain the dubious distinction of briefly dating my brother after they met on one of his rare visits to town. It was a relationship that went nowhere with the added bonus of me being left to try to clean up the mess he left behind (it wouldn't be the last time).Tracy and I usually worked the bulk of the late and weekend shifts.

     The oldest of the group was painfully gaunt and ever bitter Marg. Marg was always unhappy about something. Pale,slight and grey she would have been in her sixties at the time. Marked by heavy unplucked eyebrows, her face wore a perpetual frown having settled into that expression after so many years of irritation and dissatisfaction. The bane of Marg's existence while at work, as far as I could tell, was Cynthia. Cynthia was the final member of our quartet.

     Marg swore Cynthia wasn't her real name. She said that her name was really Donna but Donna liked “Cynthia” better. It seemed to eat away at Marg and she'd always refer to Cynthia as Donna when she gossiped about her even occasionally throwing it in Donna's face, accusing her of putting on airs with her fancy name.

     Cynthia must have been in her late 30's or early forties but it was hard to tell. She was full figured. Her round face was pancake makeup made up all in pinks and corals and her full lips were often chapped and peeling. She wore cat's eye glasses that shaded unexpectedly beautiful blue-grey eyes. The whole look was topped off with a variety of mail order wigs from the Eva Gabor collection. Marg swore that Donna/Cynthia's hair was hip long under those wigs but for some reason she preferred to wear the wigs. Marg also claimed that Donna/Cynthia's wigs gained their somewhat frizzy look by being washed and dried with her clothes in the home washing machine and dryer. It never occurred to me to wonder how Marg could possible know any of this.

     They certainly weren't friends. They would sit and smoke at the front table and Marg would pester and pick at Cynthia. Cynthia was for the most part placid and would do her best to ignore the carping. When Cynthia wasn't around Marg would trot out tales of Donna's shortcomings and sins which included frequent inebriation, gambling and prostitution. I didn't set much store by it as I couldn't imagine quiet, placid Cynthia doing any of those things and if she had or still was what business was it of mine? I liked her and she was easy to work with.

     The boss was willing to spring for one complimentary meal a shift and it was usually the only thing I'd have to eat in a day. For the better part of a year and a bit I existed on the number 5 special, one egg roll, sweet and sour chicken, chicken chow mien and chicken fried rice...all the food groups as far as I was concerned. If business was good and the big boss was around once in a while he'd treat the staff to a beer after hours.

     The restaurant would be clean. The tables would be ready for the next day, set with clean ashtrays and full condiment bowls. As we sat around after the bustle of work was through we'd chat a bit and wind down before going home. I didn't much like beer but I was polite and would drink one when offered. I don’t think I ever actually finished a whole bottle. Usually it was OV (short for Old Vienna) which wasn't really very popular but you had to stock a variety just in case.

     Thursday night was one of those nights. On this particular occasion Marg had been prevailed to work an unusual late shift and we were busy right up to closing time. It was good to just sit around afterwards, sipping the tart beer and resting my feet before the walk home. It was well past two when we locked up and headed out.

     It was the start of the new week before I knew there'd been any trouble. My regular Monday shift started right after school. Cynthia came up to tell me that someone had reported Mr. Lee for serving beer to a minor (obviously that minor was me). Mr. Lee had only been given a warning but still he was very upset. Cynthia was positive that the anonymous report had come from someone in the restaurant. As Marg and I were the only fluent English speaking employees working at the time and I wasn't about to report myself she'd concluded the "rat" was Marg. I didn't really know what to say. I felt bad for Mr. Lee especially since he was just trying to be so nice and I only drank the beer to be polite.

     Cynthia was incensed. How could Marg do such a thing to Mr. Lee when he had treated her so well? He put up with all her complaining, gave her a job when no one else would. That was the first time I'd ever heard Cynthia say anything like that. I asked how she knew for sure, maybe someone was just passing by and had looked in and seen us. She just sighed and asked me who else would do something like that. The afternoon school crowd came in and we were kept busy serving fries, cokes and egg rolls (all the cheapest items on the menu). We were steady at it until after dinner.

     Cynthia and I were bussing tables after the rush. I'd already ordered my number 5 special. Marg passed by and without even turning her head she delivered some biting comment to Cynthia. I don't remember what was said but it was most likely nothing new, probably something about Cynthia's appearance or history. Whatever it was, this time it hit a nerve. It was the only time I ever saw Cynthia take on Marg.

     She stood up straight and raised her usually quiet voice. It was thick and gravelly as if out of practice and un-used to such an intense volume. She told Marg to shut up and mind her own business. There was something in her tone, contempt, knowledge…I couldn’t say what but I do know that it was hard and cold, like steel. Marg turned on her heel and headed back to the kitchen suddenly busy with a glass that she said had come out of the washer still dirty. Her grizzled hair was a grey halo around her head. Her neck seemed too slight for the weight of her head which was perched at a delicate angle as she walked away. Her shoulders were hunched like she was waiting for a blow from behind.

     Speechless and with my mouth more than just a little open I’m sure I looked somewhat comical as I stood, dirty table rag in hand. I looked at Cynthia and she turned to me and with absolute venom dripping from each word she said, "I hate her. She should just shut up and mind her own business." 

     Marg stayed in the kitchen for as long as she could. When she came out Cynthia and I were sitting at the waitress table. Cynthia smoked while I ate my dinner. The white cigarette filter kept sticking to the peeled chapped skin of her lower lip. Marg sat down beside me and lit her own smoke and the three of us waited for the drinkers to come in for a bite to eat before they headed out to the bars.