Tues., Nov.2, 2004
8:59 a.m.

I am reading Gerald Durrell’s book, My Family and Other Animals, set on the Greek island of Corfu. Such a way he has of describing the antics of small beasts and insects, of displaying his appreciation of them, that suddenly I understand their fascination to some people. As a boy he saw them as distinct characters in the carnival of outdoor life, and was their faithful observer.

His descriptions of the members of his family and their domestic interactions are equally charming. I’ve considered typing out an excerpt, and one day I might, but right now I’m too lazy. I’ve yet to eat and dress, and then will probably go over to Mom and Dad’s for the rest of the morning.

We had a generous dump of snow yesterday, but it was melted by three. I stayed indoors and wondered if the driveway would be slippery, and how the van will manage the steep inclines on slippery days this winter. Before we left for the bus stop today, I got out the boys’ winter coats and my gloves. I didn’t need the gloves though; Everett had started the van and it was already toasty by the time I got out there. Emil wakes me around eight now, and I start my coffee and throw my jacket over my pyjamas and head straight out the door to chauffeur them. It’s the life o’ Reilly, I tell you, with them so independent in the mornings.

I had lain there in my warm bed, thinking about the dream I’d woken from. In the dream I’d left my infant in a roadside picnic area for travellers, and gone running across the highway, distressed for his safety, to reach him. He was still in his carseat in my vehicle, warm and sweaty from the heat of the day, but my Uncle Bob was sitting in the front seat with him. I changed the baby’s poopy diaper and Uncle Bob told me to deposit the diaper in a garbage can down the road somewhere, not leave it at the picnic grounds, because it was going to get ripe. Then he was gone.

Uncle Bob, Grandma’s brother, has been dead for about 20 years. He was a small man and had a distinct limp; one leg was shorter than the other because of polio as a child, and he wore a brace and one shoe with an extra-high heel. He played a wide variety of old-time tunes on his guitar and his fiddle and was well known around my home town area as an entertainer at all the local functions. He had a raspy voice, rather unique, but his efforts were appreciated anyway. It was his fiddle that I took a lesson on after he’d died, making Mom roll on the floor laughing as I made my first attempts to play Red River Valley.

Scott has experienced some peculiar happenings back at the farmhouse. At five in the morning he awoke and saw a circular glow near the woodstove, where there was no fire left. He got up and went toward the light and it moved toward the stack of wood, then disappeared. He thought he must have imagined it or perhaps a vehicle had gone by out on the road so quietly that he didn’t hear it, and somehow its headlights had shone into the window.

He distinctly remembers setting the Bic lighter on top of the stereo speaker closest to the woodstove. He went out to the shop to spend several hours working on a vanity counter for his 95-year-old grandmother. When he came back to the house around 11 a.m., the door was locked. He was sure he hadn’t locked it and that no one had been there (he can always tell, as he notices any new tire tracks on the driveway; a girl would never get away with having clandestine suitors who drive over to see her). When he went to start a fire in the woodstove, the lighter was nowhere to be found, though he looked everywhere.

“Maybe it was Herb,” I said. His buddy Herb passed away last month.

“Yeah, maybe he was playing a prank on me,” Scott surmised.

“He did like a good joke, didn’t he?”

“Yep.”