This is another passage cut from the original draft of A Fine Ending.
I spent a few days up north at my parents country-place in the Laurentians. It was nice reliving some of my youth with my nephews. They loved this sailboat I’d built when I was eleven or so, carved out of a two-by-four, complete with a mast, sail and keel. We sat on the dock and set it off, letting it sail slowly out until the fishing reel we’d tied to it almost ran out of line. It was chilly up there, but the air was very nice. You could smell the fallen leaves all around.
It’s so different from my life living downtown, so quiet. There’s almost no man-made stimuli, yet it’s much more dense with things to notice and to react to. As a kid, there was never a lack of things to do out there, whether it was gathering strawberries or raspberries by the road, running through the woods, or just sitting on a step whittling wooden sticks with a penknife.
Even in the city when I was growing up, we were always drawn to the barren fields that are now covered with apartment buildings. They were much more interesting to us than the kid’s park. We’d crawl around these overgrown lots with a jar, looking for caterpillars, competing with each other to see who could find the most colourful and fuzzy ones. Sometimes we’d come across an actual snake—really small ones, but still, snakes! We discovered that spraying water on spider webs made them shine with colour. We’d press our small hands against the center of them when the spider wasn’t there, and feel how strong the web was.
Springtime was the best time, of course. We’d pick dandelions after school, flicking the flowers off at each other, or bring a bunch of them home as a present for our moms. (My dad always wanted the dandelion leaves, which he would put in salads, but they tasted so bitter to me as a child that I couldn’t understand why anyone would eat them.) Towards the end of spring, we’d grab the spore-filled dandelions by the handful and blow them into the wind before chasing them.
Going up north was always the biggest treat, though. Before I was old enough to go fishing, my older cousins would always get me to dig for worms for them. Every time I’d turn a rock over, I’d be amazed at the variety of life living underground.
It was a real thrill to start fishing myself. The fish were so alive when I’d catch them, I’d have to squeeze their gills tightly to take the hooks out of their mouths. If they were too small, I’d give them a look of mercy before sending them flying through the air and splashing back into the water.
I imagined that afterwards, the fish’s friends in the water must’ve stared in astonishment, perhaps saying, “What a jump!”
And maybe the fish would reply: “I saw God, man.”
The house up north is set into a hill, and this time, I stood looking out the window at my nephews playing on the lawn below. It reminded me of a time when I was about ten, playing with my younger cousins on that same lawn. We were always drawn to the far end of the lawn, where a patch of woods and a creek separated us from our neighbours. We’d always find worms, flowers, and strawberries around this big intriguing wooden box that sat there. It was filled with all sorts of mysterious grown-up stuff: broken paddles, empty gas cans, old life-jackets, lengths of rope, wood and metal scraps. That time, the three of us had climbed to the top of the box and sat on it.
“Okay, we’re going to pretend today,” I’d told them. “This is the last time I’m going to do it, though, because I’ll be in grade five soon.” I climbed onto the box, which had a sloped top that tilted sideways. My two cousins scrambled up after me.
Soon, we were all sitting on a ship, trying to avoid the huge whales which constantly threatened to topple us over. And they often did, sending us tumbling or falling off the box and then clambering back on with real fear, afraid that the whale would get us. The box had a sloped top, so it was easy to pretend that our ship had been hit and was tilting sideways. We could also hear the creek running a few feet away in that thin stretch of forest, and pretended that it was the sound of the waves.
At one point, I looked up at the house and saw my parents watching us play. I immediately just sat down on the box and let the whales disappear.
“What was going on down there?” I remember my father gruffly asking me afterwards, with a smile playing on his lips. “Aren’t you getting a little old for pretending?”
I didn’t answer, still feeling embarrassed about them having seen me.
My cousins were still down there, still playing. So that was the last time I’ll ever play pretend, I remember thinking, somewhat reluctantly. I immediately felt nostalgic, yet was sort of repulsed by the nostalgia. I felt as though I were seeing a close friend for the last time, but had no way of saying goodbye.
It wasn’t the last time, though.
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