Tuesday, September 6, 2011

With summer two weeks from autumn, our warmest weather yet. But not all-round warm. Not warm coming out of the morning shower warm, or standing in the shadow of a building warm. Warm at bedtime warm, yes, but those coldnesses!

When was it, 1976? Sitting in Mrs Winters’s English 9/10 CanLit class on the third floor facing south, cooking in the wools our mothers bought us (with January in mind, not a hot September), the room damp with hormones, and Mrs Winters reading aloud “significant bits” from Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Whither Mrs Winters? I remember how angry you looked when we goofed around, how you shook -- and that thing you did with your neck! Yet I also remember the glimmer in your eye that told us you had seen our kind before, that you knew us, and that you knew what we were going through.

No comments:

Post a Comment