SS #120 -- Ghosts

Single White Ghost

You cannot ever see me
but you know I'm here.
I'm the thoughtful one
who put the soap in your beer.

My body's just a shadow
but my humour's still intact.
However else could you explain
your manic running cat?

I have such strong stage presence:
you know I'm in the room.
But beauty's such a challenge
when my make-up's shade is "Moon".

Still, it can get lonely
As I walk through door and wall
I'd like to go out dancing ...
Please just give me a call.

SS #104 -- Out of this World

Eight years old, when all the universe was just one big possibility, and everything was a giant book waiting to be read.

Tomas lived in the apartment building next door to my duplex. We were two of only six grade threes mixed into a classroom of grade fours. Since all six of us had different ethnic backgrounds, we had just finished a social studies unit on our respective heritages. He was Spanish. I was Danish. We were both Canadian, and, it would turn out, both curious residents of Planet Earth.

It was a spring evening, and it had finally grown too dark to continue playing two-person soccer baseball. Neither one of us had won, but, then again, neither one of us had lost. (Strangely, it was the same result every night.)

"What's that?" Tomas asked, pointing up to the sky.

My gaze followed his outstretched finger to a set of lights slowly moving across the darkening sky. "That," I announced, "is an airplane."

"No, it's not. Look at the way it's moving."

He had a point. The lights weren't going in a straight line, but seemed to be making an arc. The lights weren't the usual colours, either. Instead of red, or white, or amber, they appeared to my eyes as a sort of aquamarine. But this was Tomas - my next door neighbour, best pal, worst enemy, first love ... and there was no way I was going to agree with him.

"Airplanes don't have that many lights," Tomas argued. "I think it's a UFO."

"A UFO?!" I started laughing and made the outline of a flying saucer in the gravel at my feet at about where home plate had been. It was too dark to see either. "There's no such thing as UFOs."

The lights seemed to be getting closer, though -- or at least bigger. We watched in silence for several long minutes, mesmerized by the strange pattern of colour against the black. We must have made for a strange picture ourselves: two small children, one holding a half-inflated ball, both with heads tilted at the same angle, and neither one moving even to breathe.

"Do you think they'll abduct us?" Tomas burst out. "You're a girl. I'm a boy. It would be one of each. You know -- for their zoo."

A cold chill went over me. That would make sense.

My fear was broken by the sound of my front door opening. My mother was poking her head out, calling my name. It was, after all, dark now.

"Definitely a UFO," Tomas decided as we walked towards our respective homes. "Airplanes don't look like that."

We muttered a bit back and forth for a few more steps, then went our separate ways. I reached my front door at the same time he reached the entrance to the apartment building.

"Hey, Tomas? That is an airplane," I shouted across to him. "I know, because I took one to Winnipeg last summer."

Grinning, I shut the front door behind me. There -- I had played my trump card. Surely he would see the error of his ways -- and even if he didn't, I couldn't hear his response.

(And yet, to this day... I'm not entirely convinced I was right.)

SS #94 - Fellow Travellers

fellow travellers

like a transcontinental train
on a minute-by-minute schedule
year after year
the earth makes her way
around the sun

at different points along the way
new passengers board
others detrain

every so often
we get new seatmates
make new friends
make new enemies
fall in love
have our hearts broken

all the while never really knowing
when the Conductor
will tap our shoulder
to tell us
it's our stop.

SS #93 - "The Date"

I was in my first year of university, and he was in my Pleistocene Geology class. He wasn't particularly handsome, and he was pretty quiet. But he had a nice sense of humour, and he knew his way around a topographic map. And I was feeling brave.

When he met me outside of my residence, I was pleased at the look of surprise on his face. Evidently the effort I'd gone to to shed my jeans and sneakers had made a difference. (Heck, I'd even put on make-up.) We made awkward small-talk as we walked through campus and to the movie theatre.

I offered to pay, as I'd asked him out, but he wouldn't hear of it, so we settled for splitting it. The silence between us seemed interminable as we waited for the movie to start. I knew he was shy, so I tried starting a few conversations that went nowhere. When the movie began, we sat watching in silence. But the film wasn't very good, and I spent most of the time trying to figure out what was going so desperately wrong.

I guess, I thought as we walked back to my residence, that this is what they mean when they say it 'didn't click'. Not having a whole lot of experience at this dating thing, and it being the first time I'd asked a guy out, I really didn't know. All I knew was that the movie had been awful, and that I might as well have gone alone for all the social interaction my date was providing.

By the time we reached my door, I was beginning to get annoyed with my silent partner. An evening of meaningless, monosyllabic answers had definitely taken its toll. But I was determined to still be polite.

"This was nice," I said, doing my best to smile. (It was a small geology class. No point in making things awkward, I thought.)

He looked at me for a long time, then finally spoke his longest sentence of the evening.

"I only went," he said, "because I thought you were someone else."

SS #90 - Holiday Memories

Any time someone asks me to remember a "holiday memory", or mentions the phrase "the magic of Christmas", it always comes back to me, and brings a smile to my face.

I was a child, probably about seven years old, and it was Christmas Eve. We were spending Christmas with my godparents in Welsford, and it was snowing. Then, as now, I was having trouble sleeping, literally shaking with excitement. My younger sister lay beside me in the pull-out bed, snoring softly, and I was staring at the ceiling, trying to will away the night so that it would be time to get up.

"Our room" was the sun porch which, over the years, had been winterized and integrated as part of the house. Five tall windows took up two of the walls, and I could see the snowflakes coming down in the light in the schoolyard across the road. I tried counting them, hoping that snowflakes would work as well as I'd heard sheep would, and gradually I drifted off.

I began dreaming of Santa and his sleigh. I dreamt I could hear them on the roof, the jingling of the bells. I snapped awake and was amazed I could still hear them, the metallic tinkling faint but distinctive. And I froze.

What if it were true? What if Santa were in the next room? Would I get in trouble for going to look? Would he give me coal for doing that? Terrified of making Santa mad, I did not move until the bells, which only lasted a few seconds, had long faded away.

The next morning I told my mother what I'd heard and she scolded me for lying on Christmas morning. And now, looking back on it with adult perspective, I think what I might've heard was not bells, but the jingling of the chains on the tires of the salt trucks as they made the roads safe in the snow.

But I still remember that thrill of excitement mixed with sheer terror.

And part of me still believes in Santa Claus.

I Carry (Sunday Scribbling #85)

Hefting my purse onto the teacher's desk, I hear the thunk and the inevitable question: "What do you have in there, Mrs. McLean?" And, because I got to class early and I'm actually ready to start and we have about seven minutes left in the break, I decide to play show and tell.

It's not technically a "purse", but is more like a travel tote, a square piece of manufactured black nylon that is nearly as thick as it is wide. It is my constant companion.

"Well," I begin, opening up the back pocket, "here's my wallet, and my keys, a few Advil Migraine, and a leftover mint from Boston Pizza ..."

The student is staring at me, as if she can't quite believe that I'm really doing this. After all, aren't teachers bound by some sort of sacred vow, to remain mysterious? Aloof? Don't they really just lurk around the school after the last bell of the day rings?

I reach into one of the "hidden" pockets and pull out a requisition for blood tests, conveniently forgotten due to my intense phobia of sharp metal objects jabbing into me, and bundled in with it is a credit card slip for a scrapbooking magazine. Figures. Surprised I only bought one, actually.

The zippered pocket on the front flap is definitive teacher territory: seven pens (some working and some not), two mechanical pencils, and an ominously-empty open plastic lead refill container. There are also two buttons that proudly proclaim, "I'm a McLean!", a small zippy bag of Tylenol, and my classroom keys on a lanyard.

Under the front flap is the main section of the bag. In the pockets on the side are my cell phone (always with the ringer off -- I never remember to turn it on at 3:20 pm) and yet more pens.

And then ... Opening the zipper at the top reveals the Inner Sanctum and The Three Things I Will Not Leave the House Without.

"You have a camera in there?" The student is beginning to believe that she is witnessing the real life incarnation of Mary Poppins' carpet bag.

I nod, putting my Panasonic FZ-5 on the desk, trying to keep my face neutral, per the Secret Society of Substitute Teachers. "Yes. And this is my computer." I pull the Palm LifeDrive out of its faux-leather sleeve and turn it on, and then, slowly, savouring the sight of the student's bulging gaze, I unfold the wireless keyboard and put them together. (I always love that part.)

"You never know what you might need, or when you might need it," I explain.

The student nods slowly, then turns away, leaving me to decide if this has been a "teachable moment", or merely a glimpse into my own fabricated insanity. Either way, the bell is about to ring.