cases, the extremity of time’s perceived dimensions, either expanding or diminishing, sharpens perception of the present, tipped, as it is, on the lip of either a long future, or a long past.
And I realize that I am beginning to regain a clarity of vision, made necessary both by the incontrovertible facts of my condition, and a sense of time’s value.
• • •
We make a small campfire next to the driveway, beneath the snowbank left by the plow. We’re the Gypsy family again. I’m Zingarella, Maeve is Marshmallow, Bridget is Fire, and Peter is the Pretend Gypsy Dada.
We have some firewood, matches, newspaper, a snowbank, five stale (hard as wood) marshmallows, a tobogganwith missing slats. We have sunshine that makes the snow glitter. We have time, all afternoon. Raggedy Ann is wearing a paper diaper that is falling off.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marshmallow says dismissively. “She’s outside, she can poop on the ground.”
Fire falls asleep in the Gypsy Dada’s arms while I’m pulling Marshmallow on the toboggan and so we wrap Fire in a sleeping bag and lower her into a cradle we’ve pummelled into the snowbank.
Marshmallow feeds her doll with an invisible spoon. Thin blue smoke rises. A raven, flying overhead, wavers, tips a wing downward, and cocks its eye at us.
Children, old people and birds, I think, know how to make not much into a great deal.
• • •
I’m three years into menopause, and it’s still happening. Every day, struggling out of a sweater, mopping sweat from the back of my neck, I wonder when it’s going to end. But I, too, persist and insist, enjoying life with a different kind of delight—it’s heavier, richer, like afternoon light. I sense how my patience has grown, like any skill. I see that I’ve learned how to make do with things as they are.
Sometimes, now, when I’m boiling hot, I slide out of bed with my pillow and lie on the floor. It’s lovely: hard and icy cold. Walls and furniture loom, misshapen, like elephant flanks. This, I think, calmly observing the shadow-warped, gigantic bureau, is a new perspective. Or, rather, a deeply familiar one. It’s how Maeve and Bridget must see the world.
If this strategy doesn’t work to cool me off, I go downstairs in my polypropolene, sweat-wicking, long-winter undershirt. I slide open the sunroom’s glass door, go outsideand stand barefoot in the snow. I spread my arms, not from ecstasy but to expose every possible bit of skin. The stars glitter, silver, blue-green, smoky red. I feel a bittersweet yearning as I behold the solemn vastness, so seemingly close, so alien. This, I think, is how my mother, sleepless at eighty-one, sees the stars.
There I am
, captured in a black-and-white photograph, posing in my very first formal. But I colour it in with memory—a lush emerald green dress. No dress has ever seemed quite so perfect. Daringly strapless, it was all the rage with its chiffon “balloon skirt.” Tucked in snugly at the waist, it fell lightly, then puffed out at the calf-length hemline. I can feel, once again, that anticipatory excitement, though I could not have known then that the High River High School Banquet would be the beginning of something special.
It was 1959, and I was fifteen. I had just been asked to the banquet by Orm Mitchell, whose mother had manoeuvred the matchmaking. My mother, who was the English teacher at my school and knew the backgrounds of all the boys I might date, was always wary. “I don’t think you should go out with Doug—his father drinks like a fish.” Or “I wouldn’t like you to get in a car with Jimmy—he might have a seizure.” I never objected to this; I was not rebellious and, critical as my mother was, she was often right. So, when Orm asked me out, I waited apprehensively for the assessment. Nothing. That was hopeful.
As I cast back over this evening, my parents are not in the scene. Did they say, “You look beautiful,” or “I
And I realize that I am beginning to regain a clarity of vision, made necessary both by the incontrovertible facts of my condition, and a sense of time’s value.
• • •
We make a small campfire next to the driveway, beneath the snowbank left by the plow. We’re the Gypsy family again. I’m Zingarella, Maeve is Marshmallow, Bridget is Fire, and Peter is the Pretend Gypsy Dada.
We have some firewood, matches, newspaper, a snowbank, five stale (hard as wood) marshmallows, a tobogganwith missing slats. We have sunshine that makes the snow glitter. We have time, all afternoon. Raggedy Ann is wearing a paper diaper that is falling off.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marshmallow says dismissively. “She’s outside, she can poop on the ground.”
Fire falls asleep in the Gypsy Dada’s arms while I’m pulling Marshmallow on the toboggan and so we wrap Fire in a sleeping bag and lower her into a cradle we’ve pummelled into the snowbank.
Marshmallow feeds her doll with an invisible spoon. Thin blue smoke rises. A raven, flying overhead, wavers, tips a wing downward, and cocks its eye at us.
Children, old people and birds, I think, know how to make not much into a great deal.
• • •
I’m three years into menopause, and it’s still happening. Every day, struggling out of a sweater, mopping sweat from the back of my neck, I wonder when it’s going to end. But I, too, persist and insist, enjoying life with a different kind of delight—it’s heavier, richer, like afternoon light. I sense how my patience has grown, like any skill. I see that I’ve learned how to make do with things as they are.
Sometimes, now, when I’m boiling hot, I slide out of bed with my pillow and lie on the floor. It’s lovely: hard and icy cold. Walls and furniture loom, misshapen, like elephant flanks. This, I think, calmly observing the shadow-warped, gigantic bureau, is a new perspective. Or, rather, a deeply familiar one. It’s how Maeve and Bridget must see the world.
If this strategy doesn’t work to cool me off, I go downstairs in my polypropolene, sweat-wicking, long-winter undershirt. I slide open the sunroom’s glass door, go outsideand stand barefoot in the snow. I spread my arms, not from ecstasy but to expose every possible bit of skin. The stars glitter, silver, blue-green, smoky red. I feel a bittersweet yearning as I behold the solemn vastness, so seemingly close, so alien. This, I think, is how my mother, sleepless at eighty-one, sees the stars.
There I am
, captured in a black-and-white photograph, posing in my very first formal. But I colour it in with memory—a lush emerald green dress. No dress has ever seemed quite so perfect. Daringly strapless, it was all the rage with its chiffon “balloon skirt.” Tucked in snugly at the waist, it fell lightly, then puffed out at the calf-length hemline. I can feel, once again, that anticipatory excitement, though I could not have known then that the High River High School Banquet would be the beginning of something special.
It was 1959, and I was fifteen. I had just been asked to the banquet by Orm Mitchell, whose mother had manoeuvred the matchmaking. My mother, who was the English teacher at my school and knew the backgrounds of all the boys I might date, was always wary. “I don’t think you should go out with Doug—his father drinks like a fish.” Or “I wouldn’t like you to get in a car with Jimmy—he might have a seizure.” I never objected to this; I was not rebellious and, critical as my mother was, she was often right. So, when Orm asked me out, I waited apprehensively for the assessment. Nothing. That was hopeful.
As I cast back over this evening, my parents are not in the scene. Did they say, “You look beautiful,” or “I
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