MonkeyPants

Tuesday Flash-Back-A-Decade Blogging.

Above the ragged sentries of trees marching past, the sky is the milky blue of my grandmother’s eyes. There is no longer any heat in the sun. It starts to ebb in mid-August, and it’s generally gone before I pack my car and head south down Highway 19, back into University and my term-time life. Now, a clear day is merely a gift, a respite from the unrelenting rain.

I am so tired I cannot focus on a thought for more than a moment or two. Probably I shouldn’t be driving, but there’s no other way to get back to Port Hardy from Coal Harbour, where I have been substitute teaching, even without a license.

I grin at the fireweed as it flashes past, the last, violently pink blooms giving way to the ragged wedding dresses of the seedpods. For the first time, I have lasted longer up here than the fireweed. I am not just about summer anymore. I am teaching, during the school year! Granted, I teach at Coal Harbour because they are desperate for warm, adult bodies, but it’s still a little victory.

I want to get home fast, for a nap before I start work at the Country bar. I am a cocktail waitress there, some weekdays. The take sucks, but it means I can pay my rent. The locals don’t understand why a University Girl is staying there, beyond term time. I’m already too old and too educated to be there, but I tell them it supports my teaching habit. They laugh, because I am eccentric. I like it that way.

For now, though, there is only me, the curves and dips of the wolf-coloured highway, the snaggletoothed trees, and the high, wide blessing of blue sky.