View From a Kite by Maureen Hull Page B

mile down the road in a trailer in her in-laws’ backyard.
    â€œShe’s having a baby already?” I know for a fact she got married in June.
    â€œWell, you know, first babies come anytime. The rest take nine months.”
    Country attitudes, I think, are so sensible, so civilized. So unlike my mother and her friend Mae, over tea, scandalized because Cathy—two streets over and barely eighteen—had had a huge wedding, wearing a long white gown with a sheaf of wheat and daisies resting unabashedly on her ballooning belly. They thought Cathy should have got married in a dark hole somewhere, dressed in a navy blue suit, with a dour judge to preside, and a small corsage of ditch weeds pinned to her lapel. What bullshit, I’d thought.
    â€œTeach me how to knit,” I say. “So I can make something for the baby too.”
    By the end of the week, I’ve managed one bootie—such a bitty thing, and such a struggle. Personally I think it would make more sense to grease their little feet with baby oil, dip them in a box of unspun wool, and shake the excess off. Same effect and much easier. I’ve had to rip the miserable thing out three times. Knitting is far more difficult than I’d realized. Anyone can learn the stitches—but try and make them all the same size without developing a migraine and crippling your fingers. I’ve packed the instructions and the needles and yarn into my suitcase to go to the Alex. I’ll finish the other bootie if it kills me. I want to welcome Donna’s baby into the world. If it’s a girl, I’ll be the cousin it can stay with when it comes to the city, New York or Montreal. Elizabeth has completed an entire layette in the time it’s taken me to do one bootie and has moved on to an afghan. It’s for me, something colourful to put on my hospital bed when I have to go to the Alex.
    In The Magic Mountain , which I flip though when I’m trying to make myself fall asleep in the afternoons, and in the old instruction books from the Adirondack Mountains I’ve liberated from the San library, there are pages and pages devoted to explaining the correct way to fold oneself into one’s blankets.
    For starters, you have to have a sleeping porch, or veranda, with a view of the mountains—or something equally uplifting. Next, you have to have the right sort of lounging chair. According to one book the Adirondack Chair originated from the design of these loungers. Then you’ve got to have the right sort of wool blankets, of a particular number, and a particular weight, and you have to have a carefully trained attendant to properly wrap you. God forbid if he/she laps the left side over the right instead of the right over the left, or folds the ends up over your feet before the sides are properly tucked under. Incorrect wrapping could compromise the whole cure. You’ve got to have the right sort of hat, and the right sort of muffler, and earmuffs, and fleece-lined gloves with silk liners, and—if you’re in the Alps—some sort of fur-of-a-beast to nail down the whole wad o’ wool. In the Adirondacks they seemed to have preferred a topping of waterproof, oiled canvas. Obviously you pee before you settle down because, once wrapped, you’re there for the duration.
    You lie there and haul in great lungfuls of fresh air, try to nap, or think calming thoughts if you can’t nap, and try not to cough blood on the fur. If it snows, you breath in as much of that as you can, too. Lie passively and let the snow pile in great drifts on top of you—the trick is to freeze the germs without freezing yourself.
    After a couple of hours, the attendant comes back and shovels you out, peels you like an artichoke, puts you back to bed indoors, and gives you something nourishing—asses’ milk, wolf liver, or the like.
    If you can’t get to the mountains you’re supposed to head for a desert. Lie out on