Dec. 7/99
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Alex Alex was over collecting last night, Alex our neighbour who comes just this once a year makes his coffee last, we know that now and give up early. Alex chronologer of every birthday, deathday and grudge since 1914. His mother dead at 90 years, five months, three days, contracted spinal meningitis eight years back and lived to tell the tale, one chance in 100. These many emptied farms are peopled with the ghosts of his aunties, Scotsladies hunched over woodstoves lighting pre-dawn fires for porridge, against the frost, of children and cats, awakened by that comfortable crackle, of farmers and horses and cattle, heavy boots, clanking buckets, porch doors creaking shut. Alex keeps beef himself, fixes chain saws, makes syrup in the spring, he does all right. Doesn't understand why their children have gone, their houses still sturdy, made 'em to last back then. Skin smooth, eyes clearer than my children's, he shrinks each year towards them, one day I fear to vanish in the patchwork of our kitchen linoleum, taking with him his mother and ninety-nine dead old ladies, those proud Scots families, their children and dreams, and leaving behind only his battered straw hat and a book of Canadian Bible Society tax receipts. - Bobbie Jean Huff
