Making bread on a cloudy morning, and the soreness in my forearms during kneading surprises me. How long has it been? I remember breakfast and quickly fry some leftover rice, garlic, crack an egg on top. I make the first cup of coffee after a long weekend of illness. CBC Radio is on in the background, the Calgary morning show, which I haven’t been able to stop listening to despite the fact I don’t live […]
My dog and I run through the rain, down the street I grew up on. Our feet are the loudest sound. I’m carrying a bag full of crab shells to dispose of in the garbage can at the end of the road, by the community mailbox. A family sees me do it and I imagine how peculiar I must look. On the way back I’m taking big sniffs, the kind that are like gulping, and
An elderly man at the next till says cheerfully to the cashier, “Hallo Fräulein. Wie geht’s dir? Do you know what I just said?” She giggles and says no, and that it sounded funny. He takes it in good stride. I turn to look at him and he is smiling, wearing a cardigan I actually would like to own myself. Later, in the rain, another elderly man, this one in a trenchcoat, waves at a
Amazing how silent the world can be mere metres from one of the busiest streets in the largest city in Canada. Just birds, birds that trill, that laugh, that shout, and the full faraway sound of an airplane, and the cars in the distance that sound like a river. But mostly the birds, and the whole other world sleeps.
Walking home along the frozen river. I had thought I would be cold in my skirt, thick tights and legwarmers but I was fine. Snow was falling down lazily and sticking to my wool coat, my eyelashes and the tips of my hair. Someone was cross-country skiing on the river. I kept pace with her and watched her, noticing her movements. My mother used to cross-country ski in Finland. I thought I would like to try
I stand on my parents’ driveway waiting for my friend, who has forgotten what house I am after so many years away. It’s so quiet and I remember many other nights like this in high school, waiting for some boyfriend or friend under the light, looking up at the sky and thinking those thoughts all teenagers think about the stars. There’s a tree in the way now. She finds me and we go to our
Two men are sitting diagonally from each other debating the economy. One is getting more wound up than the other. He has a slight French accent and is wearing shorts with white socks pulled up tight. He is giving analogies about “the old days.” He is picking up the newspaper that lies on the table and tears off a corner in support of one such analogy. The other man has a British accent. He tries
A man who is balding but also growing his hair long comes into the coffeeshop with a girl who could be his daughter. They sit on the couch in front of me and both pick up a section of the newspaper that is in front of them. The girl reads the front section and the man reads the sports. They share a bagel, barely speaking. After a while, the girl puts her paper down, crosses
Other people, 2007 Read More »
When I was a kid, I knew I’d love being an adult. But more than being able to stay up late and eat cake for breakfast if I wanted to, what I didn’t anticipate was how great it would feel to spend time with old friends, and their parents, sitting tightly around a table and eating good food and passing good drinks around, and laughing and having several different conversations at once and feeling like
move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass Read More »
Best background noise to read to. This was a few days ago. Last night there was rain, but there was intense thunder and flashing lightning, too, all around us, all the time. All summer I’ve been longing for a really good thunderstorm and then I got what I asked for, one so great it scared me for the first time since childhood (well, the tornado risk scared me, anyway). Yesterday I also went on roller
