10:47 a.m.

For days I have been on the run. On Thursday we drove an hour or more to look at and buy a 2000 Dodge Caravan.

On Friday I loaded Don and Barney into the new van and followed a schoolbus, packed with Don’s classmates, to Batoche. As we drove over broad fields I kept thinking of the settlers, both European and Métis, who had ridden in wagons and on horses over this land, more than 120 years ago. I imagined I was seeing what they might have seen, although of course I was not, for the landscape would have been almost solid bush back then, not these wide swaths of open field.

Batoche has a fascinating story and they’ve done a great job of dramatizing it with a short movie at the beginning of the tour. Shivers went up and down my spine as we sat in the theatre and watched the story of the Riel Rebellion unfold. The Grade 9’s, however, were not as appreciative as I. Some of them seemed irreverent and unaffected by the history that had occurred right under their feet. I suppose at their age, as opposed to mine, there is much less sense of awe or empathy for what happened at the site.

Here is the plain, called Mission Ridge, where the bulk of the battle took place. In the distance you can see what’s left of the village.

I rejected the notion of putting Don in a wheelchair for the walking part of the tour, which I was told would be a stroll of only 3/4 to 1 mile. It turned out to be a lot longer than that and he trailed far behind the group of classmates that scurried along with the tour guide. Not that it mattered to him. He had no more concern for the battle that took place there than the rest of the class did; all he cared about was doing what the other kids did. It was good exercise for him, at any rate.

I’d like to go back sometime and go through the place without being hurried. There was a heavy potency in the old rectory there, as if unseen spirits were all around, and even the antics of the kids couldn’t detract from the magic of the place.

This is the old cemetery on the hill, not far from the battlefield. These wooden crosses were not marked and I didn’t get to hear if the guide said who was buried there, but the impression I got was that it was men who died in the battle.

From there the boys and I went on to Saskatoon, where I dropped them off with their dad at the hotel and continued on to Petra’s. The next day I accompanied her to her hairdresser’s to see if the woman had time to cut mine; she did, and I let her talk me into dyeing it red.

“You have such blue, blue eyes,” she said, “and the red will make them jump right out. Besides, your natural haircolour makes your skin look washed-out.”

Bored with my hair and willing to have a little fun with it, I told her to go ahead. What the hell; if I hated it, it wouldn’t last forever.

While she was rinsing the dye out of my hair some time later, she said to me “I think you are really pretty; how old are you?” and I said thanks and told her my age (the same as her mother’s!) and thought to myself that obviously she was not seeing what I had just moments ago while pacing back and forth in front of the salon mirrors, with white paper squares stuck on my head. I was not pretty, but homely, with my one-sided smile and pushed-in front tooth. Still, hers was a compliment my vanity could live on for quite some time, and I accepted it with glad surprise.

The hairstyle I chose is short and spiky, and as she cut it she turned my chair so I couldn’t see the mirror, and said “Don’t look!” She was more excited about the transformation than I was. When finally she swivelled my chair toward the mirror, she said “What do you think?” and I agreed that it was quite a change, and that I liked it. And I do. So did Petra. Farmbeau, no. He told me apologetically several times that day and the next that he prefers my natural colour, that the red makes me look paler than ever, and older, and that he hoped I didn’t mind him saying so.

“Not at all,” I replied. “I like it, and that’s what matters.”

I won’t colour my hair again, though, as I find myself slightly embarrassed for doing something phony, as if my own hair wasn’t quite good enough — which is silly, as I love my own haircolour: a shiny ash blonde that glints gold in certain light, and that, even as it fills with more silver, I still am very comfortable with. But I feel almost as I imagine I might if I’d betrayed my own body by getting breast implants, or betrayed my own pride by taking a man’s name at marriage. Kindof ... like a silly girl who forgot who she was for a few weak moments of trying to be someone different or better, and now has to live with it for a while, where everyone can see it.