I loved summer camp as a kid. Horseback riding. Cavorting in the lake. Fashioning tacky crafts from macaroni and matchsticks, paper plates and plaster of Paris. Gathering round campfires singing Clementine, Kumbaya and my favourite, Dat’s vut I learned at da school, yuh, yuh! That one began (hand on head) …
I once interviewed a Canadian who had twice summited Mount Everest. “I wasn’t trying to get to the top,” Dave Rodney said, remembering the most perilous portions of the climb—crossing ladders placed as bridges over almost bottomless crevasses. “…Just to the next rung on the ladder.” Everest climbers surround us. …
Scene 1. OutsideWal-Mart. December, years ago. A loaded buggy rolls down a slight incline towards me. We collide. “Whoa!” I grab its side to stay upright. A cherubic face peers from among piles of bags and boxes. Wide eyes meet mine. They belong to an infant. “I just got run …
The grandbeans bring me broken things. Threadbare stuffies, dolls with dangling or severed limbs, shoes with separated soles, a broken lamp. I deposit the smaller items in an old blue pottery bowl that sits on a chest in the dining room. A wandering line of hardened yellow glue reveals that …
