Morbid curiosity

I did an odd thing the other day. It had strange repercussions. 

Having navigated the treacherous waters of adolescence before the advent of social media, most of my misdeeds, failed experiments, and plain awkwardness went blessedly unrecorded, except for those things that I foolishly put in my journals at the time.  This is probably the reason I don't go back to read those entries, so I don't recall if I wrote much about Dale.

Dale was my first kiss.

Oh, there was little that was romantic about it, apart from the thrill of its being my first kiss.  I barely knew Dale, who was a grade ahead of me.  We were both in band; he was in the brass section, and I was in the woodwinds.  I have no idea why he singled me out on a school bus returning from a band performance at a civic function on a distant New Year's Eve.  It was a French kiss, and wildly un-erotic, but I was thrilled at the concept, which seemed to bode well for the new year.

This proved to be the case -- kind of.  I was the girl Dale necked with at parties, although he barely spoke to me at school. On rare occasions, he'd hold my hand or put his arm around my shoulder while walking home.  He'd point out the make and year of every car that passed, something that didn't interest me in the slightest, but I was thrilled at the attention.  He changed schools at the end of the term, and I never saw him again.

Years later, at the annual pre-Christmas Holiday presentation at younger daughter's school, a young man did a rather peculiar presentation on biblical themes.  (It was not a religious institution.) I didn't recognise him, because he was a few grades ahead of younger daughter, but I recognised his unusual surname, and asked him afterwards if he had a relative named Dale.  He said vaguely that there might be someone in the family named Dale, but he had died "a long time ago".

I went home, did a search, but could only find the obituary for Dale's father.  It said that Dale had predeceased him.  The list of living relatives revealed that the vague young man was, in fact, Dale's nephew, so I guessed that Dale had died before he was born.

Family history research has taught me to return to searches after time has passed.  For some reason, it occurred to me to search for Dale this week.  Once again, I ran up against his father's obituary, but tried a few more times, using different keywords.

And there Dale was, in an obit published in The Ottawa Citizen. He died there in an unnamed hospital, some years before we moved to Hades.  One of the few things I knew about him, when we were teenagers, was that he had some sort of heart condition, which would turn his lips blue.  I remember a parent staying with him, when he became faint during a bikeathon to raise money for a band trip, so although I felt sadness, it was hardly a shock.

I did have a shock earlier this year, but the greater trauma of Demeter's death pushed it from my mind.  I have just remembered it while thinking of Dale.

About a week before my mother's final fall, the Resident Fan Boy and I had a couple of friends to dinner, one of whom had attended last year's high school reunion, which I had been delighted to skip.

"Don't blame you," laughed my friend, easily.  "It was great being able to chat with some people, of course, but it was a bit rough seeing that big memorial poster with the names of everyone who's died, particularly Dylan. He committed suicide, you know."

Thunk.  

I knew Dylan way better than Dale.  We were in the same grade, and often the same classes, between Grades Six and Twelve.  I've written about him in this blog before.  We were not friends. Nevertheless, I was shocked, and found myself wrestling with unpleasant memories, and imagining the impact on his children, his wife, and his siblings -- until my mother died less than a fortnight later, and I had a whole new raft of unpleasant memories with which to wrestle.

Four months on, after examining what little I knew of Dale's death, I looked into that of Dylan, wondering if by "suicide", the high school alumni meant "MAID".

I somehow doubt it.  There are three or four obituaries online for Dylan, who was  reasonably prominent.  They are circumspect about the cause of death:  "sudden".  Generally, when MAID has been used, as it increasingly is, the wording is usually something like "on his own terms" or "at the time of her choosing".  The pictures accompanying Dylan's notice show a man with pale skin laced with fine lines, and eyes rather large for his face, little resemblance to the preteen and the adolescent I remember. The obituaries are, of course, glowing testaments to his work. Again, no traces of the calculated cruelty I, and others, experienced in school.

Some years ago, at a gathering of university pals who had also attended our high school, a good friend mentioned Dylan, because he briefly lived in her community. I couldn't help myself, and blurted:  "Is he a nice person yet?"  One of the women bellowed in laughter, but my friend knew the question was genuine, and paused thoughtfully before musing: "I'm not sure..."

Dale and Dylan are both gone, and, for the time being, I'm still here, and I'm not sure I'm a nice person yet.  Letting them both go is probably the kinder thing.

September is the schoolest month

 The light is misleading these mornings.  

Through most of the summer, I can tell if it's a sunny morning when I rise at my usual time, between 6:30 and 7.  Now the light is pre-dawn grey; the summer is slipping away.

Today, I get out of bed, and for the first time in weeks, reach for my cozy robe against the chill.

First day of school in most of Canada; it was yesterday in the UK, where they don't observe the Labour Day holiday.  My social media feed is full of children and adolescents, offspring of younger relatives, friends and acquaintances, lined up in their front halls, or in front of their houses.  The English students are in school uniforms; the Canadian ones in brand-new ensembles.

My former neighbour in Hades posts a photo of her boy, born after our retreat from Ottawa. With a shock, I recognize the school in the background.  It's my daughters' elementary school, towards which I made the daily climb, about a kilometre up the hill, twice a day for the better part of eight years:  the four years elder daughter attended it, and the four years younger daughter haunted it.

Well, I knew my neighbour's son would wind up there eventually.  It's just that in the pre-dawn shadows three time zones away, I find myself re-living memories - most of which I don't treasure.  The years of volunteerism scoured away any rosy notions about school days that had survived my own less-than-stellar experiences. I briskly remind myself that I don't have to do that, nor go there.

The sun is bright and high, when I emerge, on the way to setting up Demeter's breakfast.  A phantom appears at the corner of the block which separates my home from Demeter's.  It's a mother, escorting a young pupil, while pushing younger sibling in a stroller.  They're bound for elder daughter's former elementary here in Victoria.

 I spent three years on that trek, twice a day, with another young scholar and sibling in a stroller. The confronting vision and the accompanying memories are poignant, but palatable.

I cast a brief thought to the excited little boy pictured by his mum outside of that other school in Hades.  It's all I can afford, but I do wish him well.

Hey? (Nay!)

 I went to the drug store, as is my custom, on October 31st, to cut down on the possibility that I might consume all the Hallowe'en candy before the little goblins show up.

This year, however, it's unlikely. Across the country, provincial premiers and health officers are declaring a moratorium on trick-or-treating.  Even our prime minister, an avid Hallowe'en dresser-upper (sometimes with disastrous results) has declared to the children of Canada that the pandemic "sucks".

We've carved our jack o' lanterns, nevertheless, and, with three or four families with young children in our building, we're prepared to shell out.  Perhaps in baggies.  Delivered by reacher/grabber.

To fully understand the joke behind this rather wonderful "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" parody, it helps to have: a) been in French Core or French Immersion in the primary grades at a Canadian elementary school within the past forty or so years; or: b) had children in French Core or French Immersion in the primary grades at a Canadian elementary school within the past forty or so years.

Here's the original:

Music for Hades

I was carefully stretching this morning, in order to stroll down to the coffee shop as smoothly as possible. I was a little late, because Tempo, the morning classical music programme on CBC Radio, was on, and my goal is to be out the door before it starts. (This would involve rising before 8 am.)

As I gently pulled my leg past 90 degrees, an unnamed Offenbach composition began, and as it played, and I stretched, a band arrangement, performed slightly off-key and a bit slow, ran through my head.

The piece was the Overture to La Belle Hélène, one of the 96 (96!!) operettas that Jaques Offenbach composed, but I'm pretty sure that our junior high band selection was entitled "Offenbach in Hades", and featured three or four well-known tunes, including, of course, the "Can-Can" from Orpheus in Hades.

I hadn't thought of this in years, but knew, as I listened, which musical phrase would follow, because I had played it (badly) when I was fourteen or fifteen.

When I was fifteen, I met a young man who played cello in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. I haven't thought of him in years either.

The tune that summoned back memories this morning begins at the 1 minute, 20 seconds mark.

Quite early one morning

From our apartment, we can see the middle school which our daughters would have attended had we stayed in Victoria, rather then heading to Hades.

It's been upgraded in the intervening years and is now a rather handsome off-white building with Mondrian-like squares amid stencils of trees and sea landscapes.

I've learned to close the door of the en suite bathroom before using it.  All manner of people bring all sorts of dogs to the schoolyard outside of hours - something unheard of in Rockcliffe Park, where dogs were banned from school property.

At recess, the yard fills with kids ranging in ages eleven to fourteen.  Small knots of them make their way to the fence where the grass slopes down rather suddenly to two or three ancient trees.  This puts them out of sight of the school, but I'm not sure it occurs to them that they're in full view: of the quiet street, where people park their cars to walk to the shops on the busier thoroughfares, and me, sitting on the bed, while I put on my make-up.

This morning, I open the curtains to see the distant figures loping up to the school entrance, some clutching instrument cases, all wearing packsacks and clad in variations of jeans.

The young couple are obscured from their classmates and teachers by the slope of the grounds and by the tall tree by the chainlink fence, but I can see them clearly.  I doubt they'd care.  She's blond and bespectacled; he's her height, dark-haired in baggy jacket and light trousers.

How old are they?  Certainly no older than fourteen, possibly as young as twelve. Feeling self-conscious, I step away from the window, but they're oblivious to everything but each other.

I sit down on the other side of the bed, back to the window, to put on my shoes, wondering if they'll have any memory of this morning years from now: the chill of February, the half-light, the swish of the morning buses and cars.  The smell and taste of each other.

Shoes on, I stand, turn, and they've vanished; I can't even see anyone crossing the long field back to the school, where final stragglers are melting into the doors, some running, some plodding.  It's past 8:30.

Closure without closure

July was one strange month.  Trump took the Republican party in a hail of warped reasonings.  ISIS types murdered a twelve-year-old boy and, of course, posted the video.  There were other horrors, but I won't catalogue them.  Surely you've been following the news.

After some glitches in the journey (younger daughter's horoscope predicted as much - no, really), the Resident Fan Boy left me at a last-minute house-sit, and, in the company of younger daughter, arrived back in Ottawa to discover that her school, the one she's been attending since 2009, has closed.  Younger daughter has completed her provincial requirements, but the plan was to send her part-time for work experience which had been deferred, due to last year's anxiety crisis.

This leaves us hanging.  We're not devastated, exactly. I've had some doubts as to what daughter was getting out of school recently, but this is a closure -- without closure. The road ahead has suddenly developed a fork.

I'm not in despair.  Despair is a luxury.  I'm more baffled with dull surprise.

Given what was going on in this brutal July, it would be churlish to feel sorry for ourselves.  We have resources, even if accessing them seems a bit daunting.  Younger daughter, battling anxiety, is sometimes belligerent, but never violent.  We will look for a way forward.

Odd.  When the RFB and I met with the teachers three months ago to plan younger daughter's coming year, I never dreamt I was seeing the school for the last time.

Seven years of younger daughter's life and . . . gone.

No goodbye.

Iron lady

It seems that every time I come out to Victoria for my summer visit to Demeter, I am confronted by another ghost in the obituaries.

They called Margaret Thatcher "The Iron Lady".  They never met Mrs Dupree.

She was our iron-willed, iron-tongued, and iron-lunged PE teacher. She also taught Social Studies (now there's irony), but I escaped getting her for "Soash", instead spending my English classes trying not to listen to her bellowing at the Grade Eights next door.  The other teachers, no doubt inured by years of this, ignored the enraged yells emanating through the wall.

Having Mrs Dupree for PE was terrifying enough, especially as I possessed no abilities in sports apart from, to her utter mystification, endurance running.  I rode my bike to school and played clarinet, resulting in increased lung capacity, I guess.

When I was in Grade Nine, she came up with the idea of rotating volley-ball skill exams.  The "spiking" test took place on the gymnasium stage.  Cowed, and with little hope of passing, I blindly spiked the volleyball straight up -- and it descended with the entire metal-encased florescent ceiling lamp, missing Mrs Dupree and me by inches.

As the glass tubes shattered and scattered, the stage was plunged into semi-darkness.

That wasn't the scary part.

Frozen in horror, I gazed as Mrs Dupree shook like a volcano about to explode.  She finally let forth a howl of laughter.

"You should see your face!"  she roared.

Whew.

I've been wondering if all the things I've seen were ever real

My day-to-day life has always been a tad on the surreal side -- not particularly fascinating, just surreal.  Bits of last week were just odd.

We were heading out to yet another parent/teacher conference in Nepean.  Younger daughter's teachers have proposed a part-time arrangement for next year which would involve some counselling, life skills practice, and  job experience.

I've been a bit worried of late about ambushing younger daughter with plans for her future -  English being her second language (we've never been quite sure what her first language is), it has never been easy to gauge just how much she has understood and, trickier still, just how she has understood it.

Her acquisition of a cell phone last year has opened a whole new world of communication.  It turns out she's boffo at texting.  In addition, during the past few months, we've turned to typing up letters on Word, leaving a sheet of paper on her bed.  She tends to respond by Word as well, attaching it to a blank email with titles such as "My Answer to Mom".

She started initiating notes - pretty well always because she was mad as hell about something:  "My Cross Letter to Dad", for example.  It can be painful being at the receiving end of her fury, but there's the mitigating aspect of relief that she has an outlet after years of what must have been bewildered rage and frustration.  Now, finally, she can indicate to us why she's so angry.

I swallow back the injustice of her accusations, and respond with every bit of compassion I can muster.  Missives buy you the time to do that, and I must say that after all those years of collecting books in the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series by the late Suzette Haden Elgin, I now have opportunities to practise looking for the bait, ignoring it, and responding to the feeling instead.

Anyway, this week I wrote a letter to leave on younger daughter's bed, briefly outlining what her teachers are suggesting for next year -- translating from the edu-speak that teacher use with parents and older students.

On the bus out to the school, the road wound by the Ottawa River on a brilliantly sunny and cold day.  I've said this before, but I've seen the surface of the river in so many shades of colour:  black, brown, khaki, silver, white, pewter, and any blue hue you can imagine.  I couldn't place the colour this time, it was a strange misty kind of light brown laced with blue.

I realized it was the shade of my mother's eyes:  hazel.



This song was recorded in 1996, the year younger daughter was born. A few days ago, I learned that Sheryl Crow wrote it about Paul Hester, the drummer of one of my favourite bands, Crowded House. Sheryl Crow used to open for Crowded House, and knew and liked Hester, who suddenly quit Crowded House mid-tour, telling lead singer Neil Finn: "Every day is a winding road, mate." (It's Neil Finn singing back-up vocals in "Every Day is a Winding Road".)

Hester didn't have a daughter named Easter; her name was Sunday. Sadly, Hester committed suicide in 2005.

I've always been lifted by the hopeful, driving chorus, and haunted by the lines:  "I just wonder why I feel so old; why I'm a stranger in my own life"; and "I've been wondering if all the things I've seen were ever real -- were ever really happening…"

Chalk shock

When I was in Grade Five, we had a Welshman called Mr Jones for Math. When you raised your hand, he would query, "What is it, vach?" If your answer was wrong, he would scoff, "No, that's not it, you silly girl!"  Somehow, this was not wounding, couched in his Welsh accent.

In fact, his aura was a happy combination of gentleness and sternness; I don't recall anyone acting out in his classroom.  If you weren't paying attention, he'd pelt you with a piece of chalk, a bit of a shock to his Canadian students.

He also clearly loved math, and a teacher who loves his/her subject has won half the battle. My mother enjoyed hearing tales of Mr Jones.  Growing up in British schools, she'd been pelted with her share of chalk, and she passed along a multiplication trick from my grandfather (another Welshman): If you're stymied when the 11x sequence gets past 9, simply add the two digits of the number to be multiplied and put it in the centre. So, for example, 11x23: 2+3=5, put it between the digits of 2 and 3 that make up "23", and you get 253. Try it with a double digit number times eleven.

Mr Jones was incredulous when I told him, then openly delighted when he found it worked.  It takes a Welshman to astonish another Welshman.

The school year rolled around to spring, and some bright spark came up for the perfect April Fool's trick to play on Mr Jones.  His class was after morning recess, which afforded the opportunity for every one of the thirty students in his class to locate and pocket a piece of chalk. The ringleaders set up a lookout at each door at the end of the cloakroom, then ran to take their places.

The instant Mr Jones appeared, he had to duck out under a hail of chalk.  When he came back in, he was laughing, saying it was the best trick ever played on him.

Our principal, an ex-military man who had us march in PE and addressed us by our last names, was not so pleased.  The next day, two students were appointed to make a public apology at the beginning of math class.  Mr Jones listened politely, in some bewilderment:  "It was a splendid joke," he protested.

My math progress varied widely with the teachers I encountered over the years.  If I had had a teacher like Mr Jones every year, I do think I would have made steady, if unspectacular, progress.

The last September

Five years ago, I wrote a post for every day of September.  It was the first September younger daughter began attending her current school  and I was struggling with the adjustment of the long hours of transit.  I started composing the Writes of Passage, because I was obsessed with buses and so damn tired of riding them.

This month, I'm once again trying to write a post every day.  It's the last September younger daughter will be attending this school.  She gets a lift most mornings and over the years, I've found ways to make the long round trip to bring her home bearable.

This evening was the annual barbecue, one of thousands of similar events held across the country in schools everywhere, the first parent-teacher meeting of the school year.  I figure it's the twentieth of such first-month-of-school events I've attended, given the overlap of two daughters.  I've had it up to here with them. (The events, not the daughters.) But it's the last one, I told myself consolingly as the bus came to a halt, far away from home late in the afternoon.

As I clambered down, I remembered how much more difficult it is to alight (with a heavy thud, in my case) when the sidewalk is icy, especially when the bus hasn't quite pulled in to the curb.  Then I thought of the coming winter and the required circumnavigation of the school building, gingerly penguin-stepping the slick parking lot, because the surrounding park is shin-deep in snow, and because the upstairs daycare no longer permits us to use the main entrance due to so-called "safety requirements".  (Evidently, teenagers and their parents entering by the front door put the toddlers at risk.  We're obliged to be buzzed in at the side entrance by the other daycare which is in the basement.)   My heart sank, but I reminded myself that this is the last winter I'll have to do this.

The barbecue was set up outside, but we ate inside because the temperature had dropped from a humidex of 30 in the morning to 14 degrees Celsius by five o' clock.  Then the teachers called us into another room for a presentation, something that hasn't happened before.

It turns out the school is moving in early October.  To Bell's Corners.  Bell's Corners is five miles further west.  The school will have a building to itself.  It's a four-minute walk from the bus stop where we can catch a Transitway bus.  Unlike the old building shared with two daycares, the new building is close to coffee shops and stores, and has air conditioning and two bathrooms.  (The daycare will no longer let us use the bathrooms in the far hall, even though it's technically shared space.)

 But it's in bloody Kanata.

We were lucky with the buses home this evening, and I watched the sun set into the Ottawa River and considered that I would have the pleasure of riding beside the river every day until next June.  When I got home, I checked the bus times between our house in New Edinburgh and bloody Kanata, and, given that most of the route is on the Transitway, the bus trip shouldn't take much longer than it currently does.  And we'll not be picking our way around a flash-frozen parking lot, nor along a sidewalk that has flooded, frozen and half-thawed.

At the end of another long winter, we'll know how it's going to be.  But it also will be the last time.

Blonds have more stun (a final Google Map stroll through my Edmontonian childhood)

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The last time I did NaBloPoMo, it was August and I took the suggestion from John Reid's family-history-themed blog Anglo-Celtic Connections to do a "Google walk" through a childhood neighbourhood. I was pleased to get five posts out of this: my house, the route to the downtown bus, the way to church, the trip to the candy store and ice rink, and the journey to the playground. I didn't get around to the most important pilgrimage of all: the daily trek to school. However, it was August and I was pushing school from my mind. Deep in November, so deep it's almost December, it's time to brace myself and remember my first years of formal education.

When I wait with younger daughter for the first of the three buses that will eventually get us home, children scuff by in their snow-gear, en route from the local neighbourhood school. There's a pair of little girls who stroll by us every day, one with dark hair, the other with white-blond hair spilling perfectly brushed over her shoulders, even at the end of a school day. I shudder inwardly. This little blond girl might be a perfectly pleasant person, but she's a dead ringer for Bianca Richardson.

Every class had a Bianca Richardson. I'm sure yours did too. She was the little girl whom substitute teachers and class visitors always called on, because she was very pretty and very blond. (The regular class teachers seemed a wee bit less enchanted, but in my experience, seasoned teachers are not as easy to con.) Bianca was also, as I recall, unusually articulate for an eight-year-old, with a withering command of the situation if lesser mortals dared express an opinion. Not unusually bright, at least not in the academic sense, but alas, that has never been high on the list for social success.

In those days, I still hadn't quite learned that I had none of the attributes of a popular kid, and was blissfully unaware of just how far down the food chain I was. I only knew that I rather disliked Bianca Richardson. I think most of the girls felt the same way. She was not a very kind person, although she had a very high sense of moral indignation when crossed. The boys, of course, adored her.

Westglen School, the beginning of my downward social spiral, was a bit of an anomaly. It was called Westglen Junior High, yet went from Grades One to Nine. (Ages 6 to 15.) The Grade Nines looked down upon us pipsqueaks with great contempt -- when they bothered to look down at all. I have a brief but dazzling memory fragment of catching a tantalizing glimpse of an after-school dance from a side hall before being shooed away.

We weren't allowed to cross the busy street at the corner closest to my house even though it was cater-corner to the school and would have saved about five minutes' walking time. Instead, we made our way down the sidewalk across the street from the school, usually playing "Step on the crack and break the devil's back". If someone changed the back in question from the devil's to your mother's mid-step, you had to catch your foot in time. We crossed the street at the far corner, where older students were the crossing guards.

If there was time, we'd play in the field at the end where the high metal goal net, which wasn't rusty when I was a girl, doubled as my spider's web. I was the spider at every recess, capturing screaming playmates and hauling them back to my lair. (My mum made me a remarkable spider costume for Hallowe'en in Grade Two, but I was sick and had to be content showing it --at a safe distance -- to the trick-or-treaters who came to our door.)

However, if I arrived later, it was a heady rush for the locker room when the bell rang. For some reason, I had a terror of "The Bell", which was in fact a buzzer, even when I arrived in plenty of time. It seemed paramount to get inside once it rang.
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School ended with those of us in Grade One being escorted in two assigned groups across 127 Street, supervised by monitors. We lived in dread of getting Miranda, an officious Grade Six with pierced ears, who insisted on her charges walking in pairs. We always got stuck with her, of course, while the other lucky group cheered and dashed across the field in an unruly mass around the other more lenient monitor.

My humiliation was shortlived, though. Miranda's route took her west up 109 Avenue and being a resident of 109A Avenue,I was free from her jurisdiction once we were safely across. If it was winter, I'd pick my way home up 127 Street along the top of the block-long wall of snow left by the snowploughs which grew steadily during the long Edmontonian winter. By January, there would be a brown worn path left by many small boots. It seemed very high up above the sidewalk on one side and the busy street on the other. But I was a lot smaller then.

I moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Nanaimo, BC, during the last quarter of Grade Three. I never saw Bianca Richardson again and didn't particularly mourn over this fact. In a sense, I meet her daily, one of those ambitious mums from Oak Bay in Victoria, or Sandy Hill in Ottawa, working for the government, fund-raising for the school, and ferrying her pretty blond insufferable children to music lessons and soccer practice in the minivan.

I've now NaBloPoMo-ed five different months. Seven to go. December? Not two months in a row! January? I'm taking another online course and I've learned the hard way that genealogy assignments and NaBloPoMo don't mix. I've done February and March, so, barring some unforeseen circumstance, I'll plan to NaBloPoMo April. In the meantime, I hope I'll have the discipline to blog more than once a month. On the other hand, is that Christmas coming at me like a freight train?

Write of Passage Number Eleven

This happened in a bygone March of my student days:

This morning, two young girls got on the bus accompanied by a very short little boy with glasses. He was in a boisterous mood and the girls had their hands full trying to keep him in line:
"Be quiet!"
"Yeah, be quiet, or we'll make you kiss Tanya!"
A very tall girl with dark eyes and a strange hair-do boarded the bus, and the pipsqueak couldn't contain his excitement.
"Woo-hoo!" he sang out.
"Shhhhhh!" said the girls.
"I can't help it! She's sexy!"
"Hush! She's older than you are!"
The trio got out at Hampton School and the little boy lingered near the doe-eyed beauty.
"Bye," he said. "Boy, do you look good!"
One of his sisters (?) cousins (?) yanked him down the exit stairs. The pretty girl shook her well-coiffed head, extracted a textbook from her back-pack and set to reading, ignoring the smothered grins around her.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean...

Well, as joyous as the shenanigans of yesterday morning were, reality plopped down like a sandbag in the evening. I think it all started when I was trying to explain to younger daughter what will be happening this Thursday as her father and I attempt to attend this semester's "mini-time-table" at elder daughter's high school, an opportunity to meet elder daughter's teachers and get a feel for her day. Since the MTT starts at 4, this means I will need to rendezvous with elder daughter downtown, so I can pass younger daughter over for the home lap as we bus in from distant Nepean.

Apparently, this shook younger daughter's already shaky sense of security and she stomped upstairs and shut her bedroom door firmly. The Resident Fan Boy went up to check on her and was informed that she doesn't want to go to school, the work is too hard, the teacher won't help her, and everybody is mean to her.

Well. It's not as if we couldn't see this coming. Younger daughter's challenges will not vanish, no matter how small and willing the school is. All the same, I felt as if I'd been punched in the solar plexus. All I could do was promise her I'd tell her teacher what she'd said (with some minor editing), before another night of gremlin-wrestling. On the bus ride this morning, I gingerly checked with her:
"You told Daddy everyone is mean to you; is that how it is?"
"I don't think so..."
Sigh.

Just in front of me, a teen-aged boy plopped into a sideways seat. As he turned his head, I saw his eyes were full of tears. I just had time to give him a small, sympathetic smile before he turned away again.

Writes of Passage Number Four:

It was a summer night in Victoria, and the dark bus was crammed with university students returning to their digs near or at UVic. Being pushed into the space surrounding the rear door was a young couple, though something told me this might be a first date, if it was a date at all. She was on the short side, blond, not dazzling pretty, but attractive in a low-maintenance kind of way. He was very tall with a mop of dark curls, and certainly what I would have thought of as dishy in my own university days. The girl was being pushed into him by the press of the surrounding standers, but I rather thought she was not as crowded as she was trying to make it appear. He stood his ground, not exactly holding back, not really encouraging her either. His stop came first. I think he may have leaned down to kiss her before he vanished. It was too dark to be sure.

Mercury's in retrograde

I emerged from a dream of running through airports and having no carry-on luggage and wondering what I was going to do on the long, long flight to India and had I actually checked any luggage at all and, and, and... And it was 6 am and I had to get up because it's younger daughter's first day at the independent school that's way the hell out in Nepean. Oh, crap.

The Resident Fan Boy decided to accompany us as far as the bus stop, then agreed (after I gave him one of my looks) to accompany us to the Hurdman transitway station. The #9 arrived early, but we had left early, so I reasoned, rustling through my bag for the series of bus plans I'd printed up from the computer, that we might just make the transfer to the #118 which only has a three-minute margin for error. That's when the man in the motorized wheelchair got ready to board the bus. I knew something was out-of-whack when the bus driver had to lift the ramp out by hand, then push it back into the floor. The wheelchair guy seemed to take forever to parallel park in his assigned place by the fold-away seats, then signaled the driver that he was secure. Only then did I notice that the bus driver was unable to shut the door. The bus won't move if the door's open. So I watched the driver push his orange button. Over and over. (Oh please...please...not this morning...) Then he called on his little phone. And went back to pushing the button. The RFB, younger daughter and I abandoned bus and went to a nearby hotel to call a taxi.

So that's why younger daughter and I were sitting on the school steps waiting for the school to open and eating day-old birthday cupcakes. When we finally went inside, she told a member of the staff who greeted her by name that she was nervous, so she was introduced to her teacher (who looks about eighteen; gawd, I'm getting old...) and two of her half a dozen classmates. And I had to leave her there, making my way home through the Shinerama freshman volunteers (a sure shine of early September).

To sit here. And worry. Oh please, God, let it work this time...

The sun always shines on the ophthalmologist

The skies are never overcast when I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Almost sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it? Nope, every time I go to see the eye doctor, the sun is blazing in a cloudless blue sky. Since my appointment is always in March, this generally means that there are freezing winds screaming up Sparks Street directly from the Ottawa River which is bobbing with chunks and pans of ice this time of year. With my pupils dilated to bad-art-puppy-dog size, I have to remove my glasses (my contact lenses being out of the question), and slap on sunglasses, then grope my way up the street, squinting at street signs and traffic signals. I spend the afternoon in front of the computer wearing reading glasses over my regular glasses. Luckily, no one is home. When 2:30 arrives, I once again slap sunglasses over my leaden eyeballs and grimace in what I hope is a friendly fashion at the vague shapes that may be people greeting me.

My horoscope was a very gloomy one this morning, which is doubly disturbing since it comes from the normally witty and cheery Georgia Nichols. Today, she told me: I'm not going to kid you. This could be a challenging Monday. ("It was Monday. It was Monday all day.") Powerful forces from within you might make you feel uncomfortable about something. You might not even know what's going on. (I don't even know what's going on.) It's time to let go of something. (But what?)

All perfectly true, of course. It being the first day back at school for both daughters after March Break, I was in a fit of gloom over taking younger daughter back to the mine-infested obstacle course of class projects, presentations, field trips and rituals from here until June. I was however, strangely comforted by a rare dream involving David Tennant. Nothing erotic, you understand. We were walking companionably down a crowded hallway in what I presume was a hotel, and he was clad in an adult-sized replica of younger daughter's pajamas. He kept reaching back to take my hand to guide me through the throngs of people and the combination of this gesture and the pajamas was rather endearing. He had just come back from some public event in Berlin where he'd been doused with water and become rather cross. I've mentioned before that my dreams rarely make a lick of sense. I think I prefer it that way.

The Launchcast Death Watch continues. Here's a bit of what I listened to over the weekend, with my ratings out of a hundred:
Why? 50 - Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman (1988)
What I Like About You 100 - The Romantics, The Romantics (1980) The link I've provided here is to a well-edited Doctor Who fan-vid done by some sweet young thing who thinks this is a song by The Ramones. This is the risk you take when ripping off music from Limewire...
Gyasi Went Home 68 - Bedouin Soundclash, Sounding a Mosaic (2004) (Can/Con) These guys are from Kingston which is on Lake Ontario, and is about an hour by train from Ottawa. The video I've linked to has them gabbing about the song for about a minute and a half, but the song itself is worth a listen.
My Maria 100 - Brooks and Dunn, Borderline (1996) I loved the 1973 original by B.W. Stevenson, but this is a wonderful cover, and I must confess, despite not being a huge fan of country music, I think Ronnie Dunn is one long cool drink of water...
All I Want Is You (Live) 70 - U2
Once in Love With Amy (from Where's Charley?) 100 - Ray Bolger Alas, there is no YouTube link to Ray Bolger's rendition of his signature tune. Lisa Rullsenberg suggested this weekend that I check out Last.fm, so I transferred 252 of my favourite artists to my profile there, and, on a whim, typed in Ray Bolger. And up came this song, which bodes well, although I think it will take me some time to figure the site out.
A Dream, A Dream, A Dream 47 - Bert Jansch
Symphony #6, Movement III 81 - Beethoven
Lonesome Blues 50 - Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (1926)
Goin' Out West 56 - Tom Waits, Bone Machine (1992)
I Drove All Night 70 - Cyndi Lauper, Twelve Deadly Cyns. . . . (1995)Always liked this video, also this cover of the Roy Orbison song.
Quien (Who) 50 - Tish Hinoiosa, Cada Niño/Every Child (1996)
For a Job 47 - Peggy Seeger, An Odd Collection (1996)
This Traveling Around 50 - Lyle Lovett, It's Not Big, It's Large (2007)
Laughter 50 - Jack Rouse, Home (2000)
The End of the Tour 65 - They Might Be Giants, John Henry (1994)This is just a taste of the song by the quirky band which takes its name from one of my favourite movies.

When I was a Boy 96 - Dar Williams, Out There (2001)
One of my very favourite Dar Williams songs:
I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I'm glad he didn't check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight.
I lived a whole life in one night.
We saved each other's lives out on the pirates' deck.

And I remember that night
When I'm leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe,
someone should help me.
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don't know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, "Get your shirt,"
I said "No way, it's the last time I'm not breaking any law."

And now I'm in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more.
More that's tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me.
That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat.

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees.
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they've got implants to put in,
they've got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting...that I was a boy too.

And like the woods where I would creep, it's a secret I can keep
Except when I'm tired, 'cept when I'm being caught off guard.
And I've had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I'm with about the other life I lived
And I say, "Now you're top gun, I have lost and you have won."
And he says, "Oh no, no, can't you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do.
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you."

Final NaBloPoMo post...for now

This morning, as I awoke into the half-light, I was beset by gremlins and remnants of dreams. I'd dreamt of endless bus rides, broken up by transfers in bleak corridors. As I tramped towards an overpass, I saw a man with young children who was a dead ringer for the Resident Fan Boy when he was younger and I descended to the platform to wait for the next bus, weeping for my lost youth.

Actually, very few of my dreams are so clearly about what is going on in my life. Most of them are confused, illogical, and just plain weird. Not unlike me, I suppose. I could write them down and apply Gestalt Therapy to them to determine their meaning, but that's so seventies...

This morning's dream doesn't really need any interpretation anyway. Obviously the uncertainty and worry of choosing a middle school for younger daughter is weighing on me. We've seen two private schools: one is attractive and easily accessible by transit, but it may not be a very good fit for younger daughter's particular blend of social and learning deficits. The other is a three-bus-commute that will take a two-hour bite out of younger daughter's day and a four-hour bite out of mine. It's rather grim and will cost twenty-five hundred dollars more than the other school, but seems to be aimed at students like younger daughter and is recommended by the developmental psychologist who has done two of her assessments, including the latest one. We can't really afford either, but we can't really afford to abandon younger daughter into the special hell that is the public middle school.

Anyway, this will be my last post with NaBloPoMo, at least for now. It's certainly been an interesting exercise in forcing me to write the equivalent of a short essay every day. My readership has gone up, although I harbour no delusions of grandeur about that. According to my site reader, most visitors stay less than a second. A depressing number of them are looking for that photo I posted of Princess Diana (with my fifth cousin India Hicks, name-drop, name-drop), let her go, girls..., and every winter, the Alice Munro short story "How I Met My Husband" is evidently a literature requirement in learning institutions across the eastern half of the United States. Others are really looking for Post-it Notes in various colours and shapes (including "rude-shaped"). Yesterday someone entered the search term "girlfriend wants to be tied to posts and gagged - youtube", but that's not exactly representative...

However, more and more, over the past six months most of the search terms have been variations on "post-it notes from hades", so dare I hope some people are searching for me? During this NaBloPoMo month, there have been more links to my blog and a few more regulars.

On the other hand, I'm not crazy about being a slave to my blog. It seems a good chunk of my time over the past four weeks has been spent planning and composing posts. I think my comfort level is about two posts per week. It's been instructive to push past that boundary for a while, but I need to get back to actual living and trying to accomplish things in a more tangible environment. The house is a mess, for one thing...

Will I try it again? Possibly. Hard to know when. Having tackled the shortest month, the logical next step would be one of the four "thirty days hath". April is birthday month madness; June is end-of-school insanity; September is beginning-of-school hysteria; and November is the beginning of the slippery slope to Christmas.

I'll think about it. In the meantime, I'll be checking at NaBloPoMo to see who's posting there.

Avoiding Obama

So Barack Obama hit town yesterday, and it was all over the news: how he picked Canada for the first foreign visit (very diplomatic of him, George Bush kept forgetting we were there); how he dropped into the Byward Market for treats and souvenirs, and picked up a personally-made "Obama Tail (a variation of the Beaver Tails I was dissing a few posts ago).

The excitement accompanying this visit has been described in the media several times as being "rock-star-like", particularly considering the cruddy weather yesterday with large wet flakes plopping in an ankle-deep slushy mass on the sidewalks. Indeed, the Resident Fan Boy and I have been cudgeling our brains to recall a similar response to a foreign dignitary. Certainly not George Bush, who remarked at an Ottawa banquet that he was pleased to see people waving at him and using all five fingers. The Resident Fan Boy noted how close Obama had been to his government office and mourned at missing Obama again

Of course with most of the downtown core blocked to traffic, this was the very day that we needed to: view a possible school for younger daughter way the hell over in Nepean; attend an appointment at the Civic Campus of Ottawa General to check the state of the Resident Fan Boy's shoulder which was separated the same time his head was concussed by a cyclist last November; escort younger daughter to her weekly drama lesson; and meet elder daughter's second semester teachers. This involved:

1. Being stranded in the Queensway Transitway stop, which is in the middle of bloody nowhere, when the bus scheduled in the online OC Transpo Travel Planner simply failed to materialize;
2. With ten minutes remaining until our scheduled interview at the prospective school, our frantic grabbing of a possible bus which took us all the way to the bloody Baseline station, where we frantically tried to phone a cab, only to discover we had no quarters and were offered a cell-phone by a young man who asked me for bus tickets (which I was only too happy to give) and kept chatting on while I tried to help my husband describe where we were...
3. Being fifteen minutes late for the interview;
4. Failing to use the facilities before leaving the school;
5. Tramping for twenty minutes through aforementioned ankle-deep slush in leaky boots over bridge crossing the godforsaken Queensway;
6. Which is a highway, for those of you who don't know Ottawa;
7. Catching the eternal and endless #85 bus which crawls up Carling;
8. Which deposited the Resident Fan Boy for his appointment at the hospital which was delayed for more than two hours;
9. While I stayed on the crawling bus, contemplating about a dozen firetrucks blocking Bronson Street and the bus was detoured over the MacKenzie King Bridge due to downtown being closed off to protect Barack Obama;
10. Not being able to catch the next connecting bus because I had to trek deep into the Rideau Centre to use the washroom (see #4);
11. Getting off the bus several stops early to buy bite-sized brownies for younger daughter because I always get some for her when she's on the way to drama lessons;
12. Dropping off and picking up stuff at house before climbing the slushy hill in my leaky boots to retrieve younger daughter from school and escort her to her drama lesson;
13. Learning that the Resident Fan Boy was stuck at hospital, reading him the list of elder daughter's teachers, while instructing elder daughter when and where to pick up younger daughter;
14. Getting back on the bus to race downtown to elder daughter's school where the meet-the-teacher event was scheduled to start at 4:30;
15. Realizing at 4:15 that the bus was going to be rerouted because of Obama's visit, and so abandoning the bus at the Laurier Bridge;
16. Trying to run like stink against a wall of people walking the other way who had given up on their buses.
17. Arriving at 4:31 to discover that the scheduled teacher would not be coming because of being held up in traffic.

And so on. You know you're tired when you find yourself sleepwalking in the same crosswalk in which your husband was knocked down and concussed by a cyclist three months earlier. I got home and asked elder daughter what her English teacher was doing stuck in traffic when he supposed to be at school when I'd run across the Laurier Bridge to try to meet him, she fixed me with that looks that sixteen-year-olds do so well, and said: "He lives in Chelsea, Mom. He was picking up his kids." Oh, all right...

Elder daughter, incidentally, had gone over younger daughter's spelling words with her and younger daughter got a perfect score today. And David Tennant was on TV in Blackpool. We bought the DVD last December and our local educational channel is showing it uncut this month...

Lament from school project Hades

♪Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?♫ - Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

So, this morning, I sat in a large classroom teeming with Grade Sixes buzzing around their exhibits for the First Nations/Métis/Inuit Fair, and watched the second hand of the clock go so slowly, it was damned near going backwards.

Okay, I admit it. I'm a ba-a-a-a-d mother. I loathe field trips, sports days, student-led conferences, parent-teacher interviews. I go to them because I have to. Because I believe visible parents are a good reminder for teachers. Last night, I spent the better part of an hour concocting so-called Arctic Paradise Punch from a mixture of cranberry juice, orange juice, lemonade and ginger ale. It was from a recipe that appeared in The Vancouver Sun not long after the Northwest Territories Pavilion was one of the hits of Expo '86. Frankly, I doubt the Inuit of yore had much access to cranberries, oranges, lemons, or ginger ale, but what's good enough for the official Northwest Territories Pavilion is good enough for my daughter's Inuit exhibit, dammit.

And I woke up this morning with the mantra: "It'll be over in two hours; it'll be over in two hours..." much in the fashion I got myself through presenting seminars to ESL student teachers after I got my Master's.

It took three goddamn hours. I spent the first hour helping younger daughter pour and pass aforementioned punch. I spilled it; she kept telling me "I'm twelve years old, Mom...." The next half-hour was spent trailing judges and having younger daughter recite the two-paragraph write-up she'd memorized. (Refused to read it, because she'd memorized it, then spent agonizing seconds trying to recall the next sentence while her audience assumed she'd finished and asked questions, thus throwing her off more...). Then that half-hour watching the clock inch along. The next half-hour waiting for the judges to show up, go on and on about what a good job everyone had done, say several things about each of the dozen exhibits, then get into a debate about announcing the winners which culminated in the kids' being sent to lunch with instructions to return and find out who won...

The winners got medals, the honourable mentions didn't, and everyone who didn't get a medal is apparently pretty cracked up about it, including my daughter. Also, I think I heard them say that the honourable mention groups will be accompanying the winning groups to the Regional Fair in April. No-o-O-O-O-o-o.....

Hallowe'en in Hades

Ottawa, unlike other Canadian cities in which I've lived, tends to treat most holidays like Christmas. There's a long run-up to Canada Day which, I suppose, is only natural in a city that is, and constantly refers to itself as, The Nation's Capital.

However, the first thing I noticed when we moved here in the autumn of 2000, was the long Christmas-like anticipation of Hallowe'en. Around the Thanksgiving long weekend, the pumpkins are parked on porches and front steps, while other spooky decorations begin adorning the neighbouring houses in early to mid-October. This year, the pumpkins were caught outside in a snowstorm, so we've been passing some odd juxtapositions this week:

Mind you, this is not all that odd; I doubt there are all that many Canadian kids who have not experienced at one time or the other the fantasy-dampening sensation of wearing a winter coat and boots (even, gawd help us, ski-pants) under a costume when going trick-or-treating. (We sang out "Hal-lah-ween-ah-puls!" on the frozen prairie of my youth; do they do that anymore? "Trick or Treat!" is so lame...) However, today is sunny and reasonably temperate for the time of year. The snow has plummeted from the flash-frozen golden leaves and (mostly) retreated from the grass. There's a promise of cloud cover for the evening which should hold in what warmth there is like a blanket.

The Resident Fan Boy carved the jack o' lanterns last night, according to his daughters' design. Here's elder daughter's:
... and here's younger daughter's.

Madness has reigned at younger daughter's school all week. There's talk of teachers in Toronto changing October 31st at school to "Black and Orange Day", presumably to fade the religious (or not-so-religious) implications of Hallowe'en. However, this is unlikely to ease the stress at younger daughter's school where Hallowe'en merely precedes the massive Book Fair held in early November, and the ambitious and annual Remembrance Day play, complete with uniforms and dance numbers. The special ed teacher is fully tentacled this morning, but has lost her voice. I've packed up younger daughter's vampiress costume (complete with good set of fangs; second-class fangs on reserve at home), because her teacher has decreed that costumes may not be donned until after lunch. I hand over Old Dutch potato chips and our traditional Hoot Owl cookies before stashing the costume in younger daughter's locker and checking that she knows where her fangs are. (She'd probably like to bite me by that point.) I'm inches from a clean getaway when I realize that her lunch hadn't made it into her packsack (gawd, I love Hallowe'en). Still, the extra two-kilometre walk is probably a good idea, given that I'm on my way to the grocery store to pick up the chocolate bags for shelling out tonight. (I don't dare have that stuff in my house before the day...)

The cashier is dressed rather attractively in a sea-foam two-piece top with a beaded necklace. It takes me several minutes to realize that this is her costume; to me, she looks ready for a nice night out. "What are you?" I ask. "Retro," she shrugs.

We get a lot of teen trick-or-treaters like this. When challenged on not wearing a costume, they declare: "This is my costume; I don't usually look like this!" I am prepared for this kind of malarkey, because to my mind, dressing in a different style from your normal day-to-day wear is not true trick-or-treating; it's merely a fashion statement. I smile pleasantly and remark: "There's a traditional term for treat-or-treating without a costume, you know."
"What's that?"
"Begging!!"
I then hand over Witches Fingers instead of chocolate bars to these interlopers. (They look gross, but are actually quite delicious and quite easy to make.) I haven't been soaped or T.P.-ed yet, but it's only a matter of time. May you make it through to All Saints' Day in one piece. Happy Hallowe'en indeed...

A kind of September

Try to remember a kind of September/ When life was slow and oh so mellow

Listen, does this describe any one's September? Even if you're out on the farm, aren't you madly harvesting? Furthermore, I think most of us, with or without children, in school or long since graduated, are still bound inextricably to the rhythm of the school year. September means a re-shouldering of burdens, and, at our house, a few false starts at getting the hang of the new schedule.

Younger daughter and I have resumed the daily pilgrimage up the hill to school. We join the parade of parents-determined-to-not-drive-children-to-school (at least until the first big rain or snow, not an option for us, not having a car in the first place); parents-determined-to-bike-with-their-tykes-to-school (usually with parent on road and tyke on sidewalk; parent reminding tyke to ring his bell to signal you to leap out of his way); and dogs accompanying both aforementioned categories, much to younger daughter's delight.

After leaving younger daughter to the tender mercies of the staff and her schoolmates (please, dear God, some kindness this year), I make my way down the suddenly much emptier streets, encountering later rising dog walkers and large, sidewalk-encompassing strollers containing blond children pushed by Caribbean or Philippina ladies. It's that kind of neighbourhood. Occasionally a line of black SUV's with tinted windows slips by me. It's not a funeral cortege; it's the Prime Minister, off to work after dropping his vote-winning children off at school. (Gosh, I hope he loses this election, but I'm not holding my breath.)

When you were a tender and callow fellow...

Mid-afternoon, and I climb the hill again. Occasionally, I encounter the principal for some cheerful words about the weather or a spot of micro-managing: "It's looking pretty good for (younger daughter)," he informs me. "Has she told you that (Dutch Girl) has moved? No? Well, (Guardian Angel) is still here, so that's good..." I don't tell him that Dutch Girl actively snubbed younger daughter and Guardian Angel for the second half of the last school year when she took up with Unkind Russian Prodigy who besides instigating the snubbing, thought filling younger daughter's boots with snow was a huge joke and is the prime suspect for the Case of the Disappearing Indoor Shoes of last winter. What would be the point?

...When no one wept except the willow

And each afternoon, younger daughter and I descend the hill, being narrowly missed by sidewalk cyclists (fully helmeted of course, although we're not). Sometimes we're witness to after-school mini-dramas: 1) Two young boys sprint past us, slowing now and then to scan the horizon behind them with wide eyes. Not long after this, another young boy, clad in a camouflage tee-shirt with a huge red back-pack, trots by us, not exactly like Pepé Le Pew, but with a relaxed sort of speed. He catches up with the fleeing duo about half-a-block ahead of us; cuffs one and yanks the ear of the other, before almost serenely resuming his trot down the hill. Anxious duo (one rubbing his cheek, the other gingerly fingering his ear) balances on the curb of the street which is busier than usual with after-school pickups and school buses, before crossing to hurry down the other side. They vanish around the next corner. Seconds later, Pepé Le Pew emerges from around the other corner where he has evidently been lying in wait, and trots after them...

Without a hurt, the heart is hollow...

Or: 2) As the sky turns a greenish sort of grey, various clusters of homeward bound kids and families hurry past us. I glance down the hill and see the storm moving toward us, heralded by leafs whirling like protons and neutrons. Beyond, I can see the horizontal rain, a gift from the tail end of Hurricane Ivan which is now exhausting itself over Eastern Canada. I push younger daughter into a driveway to search out and hoist our umbrellas, out of the way of rushing pedestrians, and a large dog indignantly barks at us while a lady restrains him and calls an unheard reassurance over the howling wind. Younger daughter shrieks in delight as our umbrellas twist in our hands. Some of the family groups who had passed us earlier are taking shelter against fences and under trees. The wind changes directions and ambushes us from behind. My blouse is clinging icily to my back when we make the haven of the front porch. Even our underwear needs changing. Our heads, however, are dry....

Although you know the snow will follow...

Nice song, that. From the musical The Fantasticks. However, I have to wonder what Messrs Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones were on about. The September they describe is like no September I've ever remembered...