Some news events are like amber; what we were doing on a particular day is trapped and preserved by the golden sticky resin of a catastrophe.
I'm hardly the first person to make this comparison, but when the setting sun of late August/early September throws amber light, divided by lengthening shadows, it comes to mind.
I was thinking about it this evening, although the particular memories stalking me through the streets in our neighbourhood are actually from August 30th, not August 31st, 1997, because here in Victoria, we're nine hours behind Paris, and eight hours behind London.
It was a particularly early Labour Day long weekend, because September 1st fell on a Monday that year, and elder daughter, then aged five, would be going to school for the first time on the Tuesday.
After dinner, I made my way down to the local shops, on an evening much like this one, albeit slightly warmer. I can't remember why. Perhaps to pick up ice cream for dessert? We were forever running out of things, with two young daughters. The news reports about an accident in a tunnel in Paris were just starting to filter through. They were vague, suggesting that Diana, Princess of Wales, had broken her leg.
As I walked through the alternating light and shadows, I mused that this had been a close call: Just imagine how awkward it would be for the Royal Family if the difficult Diana actually died.
By my daughters' bedtime, the reports were becoming grimmer. I was braiding elder daughter's hair when the confirming newsflash came through.
And yes, it was a shock. She was so damn famous, so omnipresent. As the United Kingdom awoke to the bulletin, we went wondering to bed. I arose the next morning, thinking I might have dreamt it and slipped downstairs, so as not disturb my sleeping family, turning on CBC, and seeing the coffin being unloaded off a private plane, draped in the royal standard.
During the surreal week that followed, we settled into the brand-new rhythm of a school year, watching in snatches scenes that were sometimes touching, sometimes maudlin, and often way over the top.
I found the sardonic words of the opening song of Evita playing, unbidden, in my mind: "Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right . . . quite a sunset, and good for the country in a roundabout way/We've made the front pages of all the world's papers today . . . . why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What kind of goddess has lived amongst us? How will we ever get by without her?"
I wasn't unmoved by the tragedy, you must understand. However, four people had been in that car, and the one person who had survived had also been the one person wearing a seatbelt, and he'd been in the front passenger seat, apparently the worst place to be.
Yet, the questions kept repeating: "How could this have happened? What will we do in honour of her?"
I don't think it's facetious to suggest a suitable gesture would be to wear your seatbelt. It would be fitting, in every sense.
Moving through the amber, I find myself returning, not to the old house on the street with no west exit, but to our condo. I pass chalk drawings on the sidewalks. The neighbourhood children have been busy this summer. And because I'm feeling 1997 so keenly, each rainbow stroke drags on my heart.
It's been twenty-five years. So much has gone.
But I have still have loved ones, so I check before crossing the street.
(Wear your seatbelt.)
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