—for Paula
Remember when we did jigsaws at your kitchen table during the pandemic?
You were part of my bubble and I was part of yours.
Remember when I’d come over late on Monday evenings, after yoga, when I was too jazzed on adrenaline to go home?
I can’t recall if we drank wine or tea? Can you?
Remember when you moved to town and Barb and I adopted you into our Wednesday night supper group?
You made pilaf and bangers and mash, and we laughed well-past bedtime on a school night.
Remember when we hauled a busful of teenagers around Scotland and it snowed in the highlands?
You took a shine to Charles Rennie MacIntosh and danced a jig at the ceilidh.
Remember when my husband left and you spent an evening folding his coats carefully into boxes?
When you came to every fire I had that summer to burn all his memories: the photographs, the Canadian Tire Money, my trousseau?
Remember when you taught me to be single again?
You drove me to the coast because I couldn’t sit still.
Remember when you took me to the mountains to learn how to breathe again?
You picked up discarded cans on every hike and introduced me to the wonders of hotsprings.
Remember when you flew across the country to help me scatter my mother’s cremains?
You let me reminisce and cry and toast every memory with rum and Coke.
Remember when you taught me how to paddle, and coaxed me to camp?
You were generous with equipment, expertise, relishing every experience.
Remember the afternoon we lay on the hot dock and watched the ospreys circle against a storm-laden sky?
You’re there now, wheeling free against the spiraling steel clouds.
KENDRA WHITFIELD lives and writes on the southern edge of the northern boreal forest. When not writing, she can be found basking in sunbeams on the back deck or swimming laps at the local pool. Her poetry has been anthologized by Epistemic Lit, Beyond the Veil Press and Community Building Art Works.
