At the Co-op store in my home town, the clerk says to me “You should go over to Mom and Dad’s sometime, they’d like to see you.” Her sister, four months younger than me, died 30 years ago on May 11 at age 10, just before her 11th birthday.

“You’re just a few months older than her, aren’t you?” she said. “Your birthday is in January, right?”

Laurie died of leukemia after a two-year struggle with the illness. We were neighbours and playmates, and I am surprised Judy remembers when my birthday is.

Back at Grandma’s, I decide to phone over to her parents and see if they’re up for a visit. “Oh sure!” Bill says. “Come on over!” Everett wants to stay with Grandma, so I prepare to leave again.

I pull on my ski pants and walk toward their little house, which I have not set foot in for many years. The wind stings my ears as I pass in front of the old school, now presenting with a huge hole in one of its classroom walls. I can look right inside, so I do, but keep moving. My ears, my ears!

Their small house is very warm. They are both in their eighties. I settle in at their kitchen table, snug against a south-facing window. I point to a curtained-off bedroom at the back of their living room and tell them I remember how Laurie and I sat at a little table and chairs in there for what seemed like forever, tying toothpicks into bundles of 10 to take to school for arithmetic classes. This is how we learned about the decimal system apparently.

Merle makes coffee and serves it in teacups, along with three tiny plates filled with cheddar cheese slices, snack crackers, and chocolate-covered cookies. I drink mine black and Lord, it tastes good. We talk about old people around town, death, health, the struggling healthcare system, my mom and dad and where they are, where all my siblings who don’t live around here are, mountainous roads, Bill’s time overseas in Italy during a war, his blindness now and how he misses reading the Regina Leader-Post every day like he did for years.

We talk about Merle’s brother, who is a friend of Manful’s and is also in his eighties. We talk about dirty politicians, long funerals, church. Bill tells me a memory he has of me as a child, walking a stray dog we had taken in and sic’ing it on Merle’s hens. Merle brought their family portrait to the table to show me their grandchildren. A tiny portrait of Laurie in Grade 2 is stuck into the frame in the lower right-hand corner.

Surely when they see me, even now, they can’t help but think of their own little girl and what she might have been like if she had lived. They can’t help but remember we two little girls 30 years ago, one of us lucky, the other not. They, too, remember that January is my birthday month.

“You’re not like your sister!” Bill comments. “Karen. She’s usually pretty quiet.”

“I guess she’s the shy one,” I say. “But then, she gets up onstage and sings all by herself to a roomful of people all the time. I still won’t to do that. It takes more guts than I’ve got.”

We talk as if we are running a race, one sentence after the other in rapid succession. Merle says “You sure look like your dad. You’re a Johnson, that’s plain to see.”

“He must look like his mother, because I’ve been told I resemble her.”

“She had a very serious face,” Merle says, “did Edna.”

“Me too!” I say. “People are always asking me what’s wrong when all I am thinking about is what to make for supper.”

I must make a point of visiting the old folks around my home town who are always asking me to go over to their houses. And it isn’t only old folks; there are many lifetime acquaintances and relatives whose company I would really enjoy for an afternoon. I’ve lived back here for a year and a half already. What am I waiting for?