Squirrels

No, there's no way to put down this messy pocket of time. Just hope to leave traces. No need to map out all the corners of this here and now. For one thing, there's the squirrel or squirrels running around in the walls in our room at night. It's not practical in the long run, but so far their presence simply feels festive. They wake me up and I lie listening to them. They scramble around so earnestly and urgently. And what are they really doing, running back and forth in the dark like that?

There's a sort of quiet joy and thrill in things like using Canadian money again (which looked like a foreign currency to me at first), going to Tim Horton's and Canadian Tire, and talking in my Eastern Shore dialect again.

The first bike ride on the new bikes we passed through the starkness of scrubby growth and said something about the Canadian Shield and really being out in the wilderness. The usual discussion followed about the pronunciation of wilderness, which is so charming said as wild-erness. Then it started to rain in the quiet first few drops way, and we went faster and faster home as it started to pour. In the moment of racing down the hill of the Shore Road there were all the moments racing there as a kid. The wind rushing past your ears and whipping your hair around until you're going so fast nothing can stop you, and you might fall but you don't and you'll coast the last bit home and then you'll be home and home is still there having arms in that way it has arms.