The Swine Club

Lara cannot for the life of her figure out why her parents have come to the conclusion that getting herself and her little sister involved in the agricultural version of the 4H clubs is a brilliant idea.  The home making ones are tedious enough, although cooking and sewing and fixing up your clothes closet could just possibly be useful things to know at some far distant moment in her future, but how exactly is raising a pig going to turn out to be a life enriching experience?

She also fails to understand why Ainslee seems quite excited by the prospect or why she’s always loved to muck about in the barn, wearing rubber boots and sometimes getting right into the pigpen with the dog and getting him to bark and harass the pigs, risking getting herself stomped on and trampled into the manure in the ensuing pig stampede.  Their dad does frown on this particular activity, saying it’s not a good idea to get the livestock all crazy.  Maybe he’s hoping Ainslee will believe this if it comes from someone else.  And maybe he’s hoping Lara will learn how to distinguish a pig from a cow or a horse.  God knows she’s never shown much interest in anything even remotely connected to the barn or farming in general.  Lara wonders if maybe he’s embarrassed by both his agriculturally impaired daughters, for whatever different reasons.  Neither one of them really has any choice about it in the end, they’ve both been enrolled and the Swine Club is about to become a part of their formative years.  It’s definitely an experience that neither of them will ever be able to forget.

The first thing they have to do is go on a pig shopping expedition, where the girls are more or less just along for the ride.  Lara thinks getting a dog or a cat would be a lot less tedious, and Ainslee sees a goat that she likes, but what they come home with are two little pink piglets.  They are not allowed to name them.  These are animals that will go to market and they are definitely NOT pets.  Ainslee thinks they’re beautiful, and Lara thinks they stink.

The first 4H meeting they attend is run by real live farmers and made up predominantly of farm boys.  Ainslee is immediately best friends with all of them, but Lara keeps her distance.  If she doesn’t get too close maybe she won’t ever have to know for sure whether or not they also stink.  They are given a bunch of swine related reading material, and growth and feeding charts that they are supposed to fill out over the course of their pigs pre-market lives.  Since neither of the girls see the pigs again until it’s time to show them at the fall fair, these have to be completed creatively by their father before they can be handed in.  He seems pretty sure that no one reads the damned things anyway, but just in case, he makes sure they’re not identical.   The rest of the book work they do on their own, also quite creatively.  Which you could also call ‘making things up to fill in the blanks because no one reads it anyway’.  When one of the boys at one of their meetings misreads the word “stunted” as “stunned” they have to look away from eachother or risk falling off their chairs laughing.  Apparently a pig’s growth can become “stunted” for all manner of reasons.  If this stuntedness also makes him stunned, you are in deep trouble.  No one wants to hear about that, never mind actually having to come face to face with a stunned animal, pig or not.  They work hard at home after the meeting coming up with a list of dos and don’ts to keep in mind so that you never have to blame yourself for making your pig a stunned mess unsuitable for bacon.

On one of their meeting nights the group travels around to four different barns to put into practice some of the things they have learned from their avid reading of the information that’s been passed out to them.  Unfortunately, Lara and Ainslee have never read any of it, or if they did skim over it they can’t seem to recall whatever they were going on about,  so the judging of livestock is a whole new concept for both of them.  At one barn there are four holstein cows in a stable, for all intents and purposes looking to Lara to be identical except for the numbers taped to their backs.  Each 4-H club member is required to put them in order from best to worst and then be able to tell everyone the reasons why.  Ainslee contemplates the animals and then begins to fill out her paper.  Lara is confused and nervous and has no idea at all how to procede.  They all have heads and ears and necks and stomachs – okay, that one has a kind of droopy gut, and that one has sticking up hip bones.  Are those bad things for a cow?  The udders look udderly.  She has no clue what everyone else could possibly be scribbling diligently away at.  So she jots down a few inane comments, puts the numbers in random order and hopes to God nobody wants to see or hear about her conclusions.

When they are asked to reveal what order they have placed the animals in, the reasons she’s hearing still make little sense to her.  A shiny coat?  Surely that one was made up.  Head carriage, body length, strong legs, hoof wear and tear, topline.  They might as well be speaking Greek.  Even Ainslee comes up with wide rump and muscle definition.  So she has obviously been cheating and paying attention behind Lara’s back.

Ainslee is quite delighted that she picked the right animal for number one, but she put the second place animal last.  HA, says Lara, so much for your rump theory.  But Lara has them in the exact reverse order of how they are supposed to be placed for no great reasons other than the fact that she felt one of them had kind of a nice face.  Ainslee wonders if anyone else in the history of 4H has been this stupid, and can’t imagine it’s very likely.

When fall fair time finally rolls around, both Lara and Ainslee are equally surprised at what enormous brutes their little piglets have become.  You might even say they are rather STUNNED by the change.   They know their fellow 4H club members have been bathing their animals and sprinkling them with baby powder and practicing ‘showing’ them by leading them around in a circle for all the fall fair patrons to gawk at.  So they roll up their sleeves and scrub them down and powder them up and try to get a hang of walking beside the silly things without getting stepped on or left behind or worse yet, not being able to get them to budge.  It’s all way more work than either of them bargained for.  Their dad reminds them that their older brother placed first in showmanship at a previous fair.  They wonder what his secret could have been, because these pigs appear to be obstinate stubborn fools with no sense of direction.  He tells them you don’t ever try to lead or guide a pig, you just follow it around, tap it with your stick a bit and pretend wherever it’s headed is exactly where you wanted it to go.

There are twelve swine club members in the competition from various locations in the county and ten of them are dead serious about the whole thing.  Lara can’t keep her stupid pig clean and smudge free and finally gives up trying and Ainslee uses so much baby powder that hers looks like an albino.  When it’s time to go into the ring they both can’t stop glancing at eachother and grinning like demented maniacs, although to do so is to risk losing your pig in the crowd or laughing out loud and probably embarrassing your father in front of all the other (much prouder) farmers.  Plus neither of these things is likely to impress the judges.  Who in the end have not been favourably impressed or fooled at all.  Ainslee’s pig places twelfth and Lara’s is awarded eleventh place.  Poor things, but somebody has to be last, and it’s possible that the judges put them there because they rightly sensed that their particular owners were the least likely to care.

For showmanship, Ainslee is eleventh and Lara is dead last.  Lara thinks this placement could be in part a reflection on her unfortunate choice of footwear, among other things.  Sandals and pig rings should never be mixed.  At least one lesson learned.  Despite the dismal results their dad seems to be quite pleased with them both and assures them that second last and last place is still fine pork and tastes as sweet.  A rose by any other name in pig latin or something.  He never brings up the option to them of joining the next 4H club, and they don’t mention it to him either.  Two stunned pigs from his farm being quite enough for this lifetime perhaps.

Poetry in Motion

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, on a dark and stormy night, there lived a little girl who decided she could write hilarious poetry.

All you really needed was an opening to get you going – like, ‘once upon a time’, or ‘it was a dark and stormy night’.  Her head was always filled with stories and rhymes and a lot of nonsense.  And thinking up various ways to make her little sister laugh occupied a great deal of her time.  Turned out she’d never ever have a better, more receptive, more forgiving audience.  So poetry did not, surprisingly enough, turn out to be her vocation in life, even though she kept taking stabs at writing it for years without ever getting any better.

“What are you gonna to do with a drunken sailor?” Ainslee sings to herself as she slowly weaves up the gravel laneway, tentatively taking one hand and then the other off the handlebars, learning to ride her bicycle hands free.  Watching her, Lara decides she doesn’t ever want to learn this skill.  For one thing it’s incredibly difficult, (as evidence, behold the skinned knees) and for another, she can’t see any sense in it.  What do you do with such a talent, except maybe show off, and only dumb boys would ever be impressed by that kind of dexterity.  So why bother?  Ainslee’s song drifts into her head.  And immediately her head wants to give the lyrics a much needed boost.

“Put him in a big brown padded mailer”, Lara sings back at the top of her lungs from the veranda where she has been scribbling in her little black notebook.  “Make him buy a suit from your favourite tailor.  Lock him up with grandma for his jailor.”

“Er-lie in the morning,” they conclude together with fits of giggling.   Ainslee pumps the bike hard to make it up the slope of the lawn and lets it fall on the grass, wheels still spinning, as she plunks herself down on the steps beside Lara.  “What are you writing now?” she wants to know as she looks over her shoulder.  Lara reads what she’s got so far.

It was a dark and stormy night, Filled with blood and gore and fright.  Alice couldn’t eat a bite, As she waited for the light.  But the vampire saw her plight, And though she put up quite a fight, She was wrong and he was right, Six foot eleven was his height.

“I think that last line needs some work” Lara muses with a frown but Ainslee appears to be suitably impressed nonetheless.  What happens next, she wants to know.  She gets bitten and she dies?  She gets eaten up by flies?  Lara explains that the whole point when you’re a vampire is that you don’t ever die, but she’s tired of the dark and stormy night thing and ready to move on to something completely different.

“Let’s do one of those limmerick things.  There once was a lady named…”

“Elizabeth!” Ainslee offers.

“Well if you can think of a rhyme for that, you go right ahead.  Sheesh.  How about Liz? Or better, Lizzy.”

There once was a lady named Lizzy, Who guzzled some pop that was fizzy.  She tried to keep busy, Without getting dizzy, And fell off a cliff in a tizzy.

Ainslee loves it.  Except she wants to know if Lizzy died from the fall.  Lara rolls her eyes.  She tells her no, the fall didn’t kill her, but she broke both her legs and then she died of exposure because later that day it became a dark and stormy night.  Ainslee begs for something with a happier ending.

Lara writes.  There once was a lady named Ains.  She never had aches hurts or pains.  She biked with no hands, And loved pots and pans, And named her kids Gertrude and James.

It’s pretty much perfect, except for the Gertrude part.  Ainslee can’t imagine having a baby with such a gruesome name.  Unless it’s really ugly and she hates it.  Lara tells her if that happens she should just throw it off a cliff.  Nooooo, Ainslee wails.  This is supposed to be a happy one!

Lara thinks for a minute and begins again.

Ainslee rides her bicycle, All up and down the lane.  Without her hands, She never falls, She truly is insane.

For this effort Lara wins a solid punch in the arm, but also an invitation to go for a ride back to Chip and Cherry Lane, the romantic name they’ve given to the old tractor path that meanders down the side of a field next to cherry trees and boulders.  They’ve never seen a chipmunk there, only squirrels, but they’re ever hopeful.  What rhymes with Chipmunk, she wonders aloud as she hauls her own bicycle out of the shed.  Dip Skunk, Ainslee says, is the only thing she can possibly think of.

Lara tells her she’s not thinking hard enough then.  Because there’s Flip Chunk and Grip Trunk and Hip Stunk.  She stops short of giving herself a headache and holds one hand up in the air, waving it in the sunshine and the gentle breeze.  One handed bike riding is enough of a stunt for her as she follows her sister through the gate and across the field of yellow flowers waving in the wind.  What rhymes with butter cup, she yells ahead.  Shut up! her sister yells back.  So she smiles and she does.  Fuzz, was, buzz, cuz.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

 (Sir Walter Scott)

When Lara first reads this quote she thinks she must somehow be related to Sir Walter Scott on her mothers side.  Scott is her mother’s maiden name, and she knows the truth of Sir Walters statement because she lives it, so it must be in her genes.   How else can you explain her compulsion to exaggerate the truth, embelish it, twist it until it’s unrecognizable, never mind that she often tells the odd random outright lie that has no basis in truth whatsoever.

Her mother has read them the story about crying wolf, but all she gets from that is that boys are stupid if they keep trying the same trick over and over.  No wonder he didn’t get away with it.  Her own brother, on the other hand, is not stupid at all.  He is a very convincing liar, and can make people believe he is completely innocent of whatever crime he’s just committed.  Lara would dearly love to have that talent, but the only person she can get to believe some of the bizarre things she comes up with is her little sister Ainslee, who hangs on her every word and always wants to know more.

So for Ainslees entertainment, she makes things up.  The three bears sleep in their parents clothes closet.  Best to tiptoe when you pass it or you’ll wake them up.  And mama bear might not always be able to convince papa bear that little girls are not that good to eat.  So Ainslee tiptoes.

She tells her that at night a fox climbs up on the roof beside their bedroom and looks in at them through the window and the only thing that will make him go away is if he can’t see them.  Ainslee pulls the covers over her head.

She tells her she was probably adopted from someplace far away , like China maybe, because how else do you explain all that blonde curly hair when both her older siblings have hair that is dark brown and straight as a poker.  Ainslee sighs and wonders if she can go to China someday to find her real family.  Lara says they’ve moved somewhere else by now, and nobody knows where.  Could be Hollywood.

Lara explains to her that it’s a good idea to leap off her bed as far as she can to avoid whatever is under there grabbing her by the ankles.  So what IS under there?  Best not to make the mistake of putting your feet down too close to the edge or you might find out.  Ainslee leaps.

When Ainslee eats all her peas and green beans and asparagus, Lara tells her she is risking having her skin turn green if she keeps it up.  Ainslee has never seen anybody with green skin.  Lara tells her frogs eat green beans every day so how do you think the green skin happened to them?  She tells her the dog will die if they feed him cake.  Cake is a lethal dog poison.  Don’t even let him lick your fingers.  Cows live for about a hundred years.  Don’t worry if you cut all the hair off your dolls head, it will grow back.  But it takes a long time, so you just have to be patient.  Ainslee is patient.

Eventually her little head is so full of strange information that she can’t help herself and passes it on to their mom and dad in little bits and pieces.  Who told you that, they want to know.  The answer is always Lara.  They try to explain to her that Lara doesn’t always get the facts exactly right.  If its hard to believe, maybe she shouldn’t believe it.  They strongly recommend to Lara that she stop telling Ainslee such ridiculous stories.  But Lara has gotten surprisingly good at it, and sometimes she is almost able to convince herself that what she’s saying is true.

Like the time they’re playing in the hay in the barn and their dog comes bounding up the steps to join in the fun.  Lara screams and runs for the ladder urging her sister to do the same.  Hurry up before the dog gets you!  He’s got rabies!  Ainslee is petrified of foxes who could have rabies (especially the ones that look in their bedroom window at night) and she knows that dogs can get bitten and get rabies too.  At first she’s skeptical, but Lara is so freaked out, climbing up out of his reach, demanding that Ainslee get up there with her right now, hurry hurry hurry!  Ainslee climbs up the ladder and they both look down at their smiling panting dog who doesn’t look the slightest bit sick or sinister.

It’s the very early stages, Lara explains.  See how his eyes are kind of glassy, and there’s drool on his mouth?  When that turns to foam, we are in big trouble.  But how are we going to get down from here then, Ainslee wants to know.  They decide they will just have to wait him out and maybe he’ll wander off.  Or their dad will come to do the chores and rescue them, or he’ll go to sleep and they can sneak away without waking him up.  Ainslee loves the dog and is almost weepy with sadness.  Her arms are aching from holding on to the ladder but she is terrified to let go.  The dog looks at them, tilts his head, sits down.  It’s a weird game but he’s fine with playing along.  Did you see what he just did with his head?  That means his brain has gotten all lopsided from the rabies.  Pretty soon he’ll be walking around with his head tilted that way all the time, and then he’ll just fall over and …..

Lara stops talking and listens for a minute.  Mom is calling them for dinner.  We’re coming! she yells back.  Then she jumps down from the ladder and walks over to the steps as if nothing in the world is amiss.  The dog jumps to his feet and follows her.  Ainslee is sure she is about to watch her sister die.

But Lara just turns around and tells her to come on.  The dog hasn’t gotten to the biting stage anyway.  He might never get there.  You just never know.  Ainslee wants to hit her.  She jumps down and hugs their dog and buries her face in his furry neck.  He licks her face and drools and Ainslee tells Lara when that turns to foam she’s going to make her eat it.  Lara just laughs and takes off for the house.  But she knows she’s gone a bit too far this time and it’s the beginning of the end for filling Ainslees head with bunk.

The next week at school, Ainsley gets in trouble for telling her best friend that she was adopted.  From some place in China.  And that her real mother is a movie star.  Lara rolls her eyes and tells her sister she’s got to get better at this if she wants to be taken seriously.

Their dog never does sucumb to the final stages of rabies.  He works his neck muscles hard every day so that he is able to keep his head on straight, and no one is any the wiser.  It’s a well known fact that dogs who come over from China with adopted babies have a built in immunity to all kinds of things.

Dog Lips

The air inside is stuffy, the music is loud, and the place is packed with high school kids.  Lara feels awkward as she makes her way slowly through the crowd until she comes across some girls she knows from class where she can safely stand around for a bit, waiting for something to happen.  Ainslee is long gone, who knows where, but it’s SO not cool to hang around with your kid sister at one of these dances.  Never mind the fact that Ainslee knows everybody and everybody knows her, and that Lara could never keep up with her anyway.  She decides to be the older and the more sophisticated of the two, and wonders why that idea feels too stupid for words.

She has reluctantly agreed to join in a little all-girl group and gyrate to the music when she sees Douglas across the dance floor.  He has his hands in his pockets and is deep in conversation with one of his friends, and it’s kind of embarrassing when he catches her staring.  But he smiles and points at her and winks and then he’s walking over and touching her on the shoulder and asking her to dance.  It’s kind of a relief to be rescued and she wonders if boys think girls dancing in a group is weird.  Gawd knows they’d never be caught doing it with their friends.  The next dance is a slow one, the Beach Boys, Little Surfer Girl, and he hums along with it in her ear, his cheek gently touching hers.  Do you love me, do you surfer girl?

She’s no surfer girl, that’s for sure.  More the kind of beach lover who never gets her bikini wet.  She likes Douglas.  They’ve been seeing eachother lots lately, sort of on dates, meeting and doing stuff together.  But they’re not going together.  At least Lara doesn’t think you could call it that.  Although they have been teetering on the verge of it.  Several times Douglas has fiddled around with his school ring when they’re talking, slipping it up and down on his finger, saying maybe he should give it to her.  Let her wear it.  Wondering if she wants it.  But he never takes it off and she never knows what he wants her to say.  It’s become kind of a joke.  And she really hasn’t got a clue whether she’d actually take it or not if he finally really offered it to her.  So it’s all just up in the air.  But he’s a nice guy and he’s good looking, and he smiles all the time.  And he always asks her to dance.  Or go with him to the movies.  Or walk with him to class or come for a ride in his car which he drives too fast.  Despite that he makes her feel comfortable and she likes spending time with him.  He kisses her and it doesn’t feel all weird.  Even though Ainslee has started to refer to him as Dog-lips just to tease her.  Dogs should be so lucky to have lips like that.

It’s a normal thing for kids to go steady for the school year and then break up for the summer in this little town.  The tourists from the big cities are just too tempting and the summer flings on the beach are too much fun.  Maybe because they both know this is bound to happen to them when they get their summer jobs, they’re being cautious about pretending there’s anything permanent between them.  No guilt if there’s no promises.

Later Lara sees Ainslee dancing with Gerhard.  Lara sits beside him in chemistry and sometimes they’re lab partners.  His german accent and his white-blond hair and incredible blue eyes make her kind of crazy and nervous.  But he’s always polite and aloof.  He doesn’t have a girlfriend.  He doesn’t say much.  Trust Ainslee to bring out the fun side of Gerhard – who knew he even had one.  Ainslee waves at them, and when Gerhard turns around to look, she makes a face and points to his handsome head as if to say “Shit!  Do you believe who I’m dancing with?”  Douglas laughs.  Gerhard looks confused, as if he’s trying to remember where he’s seen them before.  Or what he’s doing here.

On a bathroom break before the last dance Ainslee grabs Lara by the arm and tells her excitedly that she’s just done her the hugest favor of her entire life!  Lara feels herself start to cringe at whatever is coming next.

“When I go out there, stay here for a couple of minutes, okay?  and when you come out Gerhard is going to ask you to dance and you’re going to say yes and finally admit you’ve had a mad crush on him forever!  There’s no time to explain the rest, just do this, it will be SO MUCH FUN!”  None of this makes much sense or results in Lara feeling any less nervous.  Ainslee’s idea of fun seldom jives well with her own.  But she knows better than to not follow instructions when Ainslee has a plan.  One way or another, she is sure to regret it later.

Sure enough, when she exits the washroom, there is Gerhard, stiff smile on his face, saying he would like to dance with her.  She smiles stiffly back and he takes her stiffly into his arms.  He is not called Ger-HARD for nothing.  Then when she thinks of all the possible implications of that observation she blushes madly and chokes back her laughter by loudly clearing her throat.  Gerhard becomes suddenly mesmerized by something on the other side of the room.  Scared that she might actually say something to him?  Or maybe just giving himself a moment to think up a safe topic.

“So.  You are Ainslees sister.  You do not look alike.”  She feels like she should appologize for not being Ainslee-gorgeous.  But she just agrees with him that yes, they’re very different.   How does she like the chemistry class he wants to know.  She tells him she hates it.  Chemistry is too boring for words.  He looks at her like she’s suddenly grown two heads.  Someone bumps into them and when she looks around there’s Ainslee, grinning like crazy, dancing with a smiling Douglas.  What the hell is he smiling about now,  she wonders.  Then she feels mean.  And a little bit miserable.

“Gerhard!” Ainslee shouts above the music.  “Did you tell my big sister yet that you’re driving her home?  I’m catching a ride with Douglas!”  Lara doesn’t know whether to feel mortified or miffed or a little bit of both as Ainslee and Douglas dance off in another direction.  She looks up at Gerhards incredibly handsome face and sees him gazing wistfully after Ainslee.  But he seems to be stoically resigned to his fate and willing to do whatever Ainslee wants.   Lara just feels gawky and graceless and wonders what good can ever come of all this.  Maybe some of the girls who have been drooling over Gerhard for months will see her with him and be jealous.  Other than that she can’t think of anything at all.

As usual, Douglas drives too fast and gets Ainslee home first.  As Gerhard and Lara pull into the driveway, both equally relieved that their stumbling attempts at conversation are finally coming to an end, they are stunned to see Ainslee under the porch light putting her hands on both sides of Douglas’s face and pulling him towards her and kissing him smack on the lips.  Then she smiles and waves her hand at them and disappears into the house.  Gerhard is mumbling should he walk Lara to the door and she hardly lets him finish before saying no, thanks, see you, and has barely managed to get herself out of his car with the door closed behind her before he’s pulling away and driving off into the night.

Douglas has his hands in his pockets and a brilliant grin on his face as he meets her halfway up the walk.

“Your sister is a bit crazy” he offers, as if he’s telling her something she doesn’t already know.  She agrees that sometimes Ainslee does weird stuff.  He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, but he’s still smiling as he asks her if she’d like to go see a movie tomorrow night.

“Oh.  Well. Ummm.”  She stammers and then manages “Yes,okay.”  He says over his shoulder that he’ll pick her up at 7:30 and then he hops into his car and drives away.  She watches as his headlights disappear and then she turns around and goes into the house.

Ainslee grabs her in the dark and she gasps and wants to scream but is able to stifle it.  Even though there’s more than one reason to be screaming.   She listens to her little sisters excited loud whipsering prattle.  “Was it awesome?  Did he kiss you?  MY LIPS touched DOG LIPS!  Ewwwww, can you believe that?  I kissed old Dog Lips on the lips!  What happened with Gerhard, Lara, does he want to take you out?  Do you not just love how I did all that?”

“Geez Ainslee, shut up.  You’ll wake everybody up.  Let’s go to bed.”  But she doesn’t stop asking questions until Lara finally tells her that Gerhard is not the slightest bit interested in her big sister.  He’s interested in Ainslee.  And no amount of being shoved in Lara’s direction is going to change that anytime soon.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’re just going to have to go out with him yourself Ains.  Pretend you like chemistry.”  Or not.  She scarcely thinks it matters.

“Oh man” Ainslee sighs.  “I guess you’re stuck with Doglips.  Can’t say I didn’t try to save you from that.”

Lara sighs herself and pulls the covers up to her chin and closes her eyes.  And smiles in the darkness.  There are worse fates, she thinks.

My Hero

Lara likes to talk about the things she remembers.  Often out of the blue for no good reason.  Ainslee and her mom have their confused and frowning faces on as they sit and sip their coffee, but she is not deterred.  Her memories of the day she’s thinking about are larger than life and perfectly vivid.  She is staring out the kitchen window at the snow as she talks, so she doesn’t really notice when they start to look bemused.

“Remember when Ron and I went all by ourselves away across the fields by the riverbank to go toboganning when we lived on that farm beside grandmas?” she asks her mom.

“You went by yourselves?” her mom says, but it’s more like she’s challenging that fact rather than trying to verify it.

“Well I don’t remember anybody being with us, or even close by.   Ron had a new toboggan and we pulled it across the frozen river and up a steep bank.  He’d find a good place to slide and I’d get on behind him.  He told me there was no way I could be in front because I was too little to steer.  It was SO much fun, climbing up, sliding down.”

“Lara, if it was at the old farm you and your brother would have been no more than four and seven, probably younger, and I would never have let you go to the river by yourselves.  You must mean the creek beside the house.”

“Oh,” Lara concedes, still staring out into the snow.  “Well anyway, Ron found a place with a really steep drop off and he set the toboggan at the top of it, he got on, I got on behind him and we were teetering on the very edge.  Then he leaned forward and WHOOOSH!!  We went straight down.  We hit the bottom, I banged into Ron, he cracked his face on the wooden front, and I went tumbling off into the snow.  When I got up there was blood everywhere!  I started to scream blue murder!”

“Well I sort of do remember that now.   Ron had a rather bad nosebleed.”

“Yes!  Blood all over the place!  And I kept on howling, even when I saw dad coming to rescue us.  Ron was really quiet, holding his snowy mitten over his nose.  I think I felt like I had to make enough noise for both of us.  Dad thought I was the one that was hurt.   He picked both of us up, one under each arm,  and headed for the house.  I didn’t stop wailing because now I was watching my dad’s boots crashing across on chunks of ice over the raging river.”

“Lara,” Ainslee interrupts.  “Mom said it was a creek.  Creeks are like six inches deep.”

“You weren’t even born yet, so you could not possibly know anything about this.  Or if you were, you weren’t there.  I know what I remember.   Because much later when I saw a picture of Paul Bunyan in a storybook I couldn’t help thinking, wow.  That’s exactly what my dad looked like the day he saved our lives.”

Ainslee snorts and mom clucks her tongue at her.

“What?  That’s how I remember it!  He was my HERO!”

“Your dad IS a hero honey, and that’s a really great story,” her mom tells her sincerely, and Lara decides she’s imagined that bit of a smirk on her mother’s face that mirrors Ainslees.  ”You should tell it to your children some day.”

Lara gives them both one of her own very best snarky smirk looks and tells her mother that she will do just that.  Paul Bunyan image, raging river, blood all over the place and everything else. Because that’s exactly how it happened.

A Wild Goose Tale

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Lara who went to visit her grandma.  Grandma lived in a big old house with a sprawling veranda on a farm at the top of a hill.  All around the house there was a fence covered in vines and bushes.  There were lots of flowers, and some lazy cats and a woodshed where bad things lurked in the dark.  Outside the fence was the rest of the farm – the barn and the tractor, wagons, cows and horses and other scary stuff.  Grandma was always yelling at people to close the gate, but it was fun to open it and swing on it if you forgot.

On this particular sunny day, a big old gander wandered into the yard through the open gate and waddled right up onto the veranda.  At first Lara was delighted with the company.  She wanted to know his name, and grandpa told her it was ”Christmas Dinner”.  Then grandma came out with a broom and tried to shoo him off the porch and out of the yard.  The gander was understandably insulted and miffed and refused to go.  The harder grandma tried, the more stubborn he became.  Perhaps he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  Finally he became quite annoyed.  He spread his wings and ran towards Lara with a horrifying HISSS.  She squealed and tried to back up, but suddenly found herself plopped down on the ground with her arms around her head and then she started to cry.

It’s good to know that every child has a fairy godmother hanging around just waiting for a chance to be helpful.  Lara’s Aunt M. suddenly appeared out of nowhere and snatched her up into the air.  She dried her tears and kissed her face and then told Lara that she would help her get the goose to the other side of the fence.  It seemed impossible.  And dangerous.  But you don’t say these things to a red headed aunt whom you adore and who has just saved your life.

The two of them went to the outdoor pump and together they filled a dipper with water.  Aunt M. said they would coax the gander out of the yard with this.  Lara was skeptical, but the thing with fairy godmothers is that you have to believe in them.

And guess what?  It worked like magic.  The gander followed the dipper out through the gate, and there he took so many drinks of water that Lara thought maybe they had saved his life too.

He likes me! she said, astonshed.  Aunt M. just laughed.  And then the gooose toddled off to new adventures, on the other side of the fence.

What Will You Remember?

“What do you want to be remembered for, Ainslee?” Lara asks the countryside flying by the bus window.

“Why, am I dieing or something?” Ainslee pouts and frowns at her sister. “Why are you asking me that?”

“We’re all going to be gone someday, I was just wondering what memories you’d like your girls to carry with them for the rest of their lives. What kind of mothers you’ve inspired them to be. What things about you Matt would cherish forever.”

“Pfffft. Matt is NOT going to outlive me, so that’s nothing to waste my time worrying about, how he’ll pine away missing me. He’s got so damned much life insurance it would be a crying shame if I didn’t end up collecting it. And the girls becoming mothers? Man, I can’t even picture that. Dani is so headstrong and bossy and independant, who could live with her? And Allie with her portable medicine chest. A hypochondriac mother is just wrong on so many levels. She worries herself to distraction about her silly cats. Maybe that’s all the responsiility she can handle.”

“But Katie is the most like you used to be. Wild and a little crazy right now, but she’ll get over that, just like you did. Someday she’ll have children her grandma will love to distraction. What kind of legacy would you like to leave for all of them?”

Ainslee frowns and sighs and forces herself to consider. Lara is always trying to make her think about stuff and it just goes so completely against her impulsive nature to sit down and thoughtfully consider things for no reason that she can fathom. Unfortunately, at this particular moment she must remain in her bus tour seat and is at Lara’s inquisitive mercy.

“I would like them to remember that I was fair, and giving and happy and that I loved them. I was a good mother. But that I was a person first, with an interesting life quite apart from them. That I went off to Scottland with my sister and sat in a bus and hardly thought about them at all except when I was forced to agonize over my imminent death and their uncertain futures.”

Lara laughs and nudges Ainslee with her elbow. It’s a good answer, she thinks. And now Ainslee insists on hearing her answer, which is only fair.

“I guess I just would like my sons to remember how much I loved them. I think that would be enough.”

“Loved them?” Ainslee snorts. “You spoiled the little buggers rotten is what you did. It’s a miracle they turned out so close to normal. I bet their wives curse you daily though, for what those boys must have come to expect from the women in their lives.”

Lara looks stricken and Ainslee laughs at her and tells her she was only kidding her. Lara knows how true it is though. She always felt Stan overdid it with the discipline, needing to be seen as the strong and stern parent so that she felt bound to offset his harshness with her own softness. And yes they got away with a lot behind their father’s back.

“And what about Stan?” Ainslee prods her.

“What about him?” Lara rolls her eyes. “He’ll have a couple of rums and tell a couple of stories and then he’ll forget about me and get on with his work and his life.”

“Are you kidding? You are Stanley’s ROCK Lara. He’ll be positively adrift without you!”

It’s Lara’s turn to snort. “I’m more like a boulder around his neck I think. My gravestone will read ‘here lies Stan’s Albatross’. The woman who spoiled his sons and didn’t like to dance.”

“I think that’s entirely too much information to be putting on a headstone, unless it’s ten feet tall. And you just couldn’t be that ostentatious if you tried. Oh My God Lara!” Ainslee practically screeches as she leans around Lara to peer out the window, her eyes like saucers. “SHEEP!”

And indeed, there they are, hundreds of them, more than they could have imagined all standing around looking bored with their little black feet planted firmly on a rolling green field. Although they have been on the lookout for sheep ever since they crossed the border into Scotland it’s still an amazing sight to see all those cottony white dots scattered everywhere.

Ainslee sits back in her seat and announces that they look like maggots from this distance. Crawling maggots on a dark green lettuce leaf. The image makes Lara laugh and she makes a mental note to pass that one on to Ainslee’s daughters for posterity.

“I was so excited to see them and then there they are looking positively gruesome. Let’s get some pictures!”

They snap a few blurred shots through the window as the bus speeds away. In a few days the sight of sheep will be so completely ordinary and repetitive to them that they will not feel bad at all when they sit down on their hotel beds one evening to begin the arduous task of deleting them from their memory sticks. Getting the images out of their heads is another thing altogether.