She’s sixteen, and the baby she is holding is a newborn. Her teenaged face is a little fuller, less mature than the face I knew. She has a gap between her front teeth, something I only just discovered. Her smile is real. She didn’t smile a lot, but when she did, you knew it was genuine. You could see it in her eyes.
A good resume is a must when we first start out looking for full-time employment. Often though, that first resume is thin in terms of experience – especially relevant experience. On my first resumes I proudly listed under “Previous Experience” jobs such as ‘Organizing Birthday Parties’, ‘Globe & Mail Paper Route’, and ‘Snack Bar Attendant at Cinema.’
The job I had that was hardest to describe on a resume, but the one that made the biggest impact on my life, was a four-year stint as a volunteer. It started with an announcement at high school. A local organization was looking for volunteers to travel to Smiths Falls, Ontario on Saturdays to the Rideau Regional Hospital School.
My grandparents’ farmhouse was a curious place for a young child in the late 1950s. The rickety, falling-down, two-storey shack was nestled at the bottom of a very steep hill, in a picturesque valley in the most beautiful part of Ontario.
Memories of that farm are overshadowed by my grandfather’s presence.
First recollections of him go back to age three. His first name was William. According to my dad, on a good day you could call him Sweet William, but on a bad day he was Poison Bill.
I only remember Poison Bill.
My father schooled me in the game of baseball. The lessons started when I was four. While the action happened before my eyes, he became my personal play-by-play announcer, colour commentator, umpire, scorekeeper, statistician, and rules-master, all rolled into one. Summer evenings at a city-owned baseball diamond, we’d lie in the grass, out of the way along the third base line – ‘best place to watch the game’ – and watch men’s fastball. He’d nudge me, nod silently and I’d follow his gaze to the left fielder. Dad would whisper “watch his feet” and eventually I knew that meant the left fielder was anticipating where the batter would hit, and the placement of his feet was a ‘tell’ on which direction he would run to field the ball.
Dad (on the game): Baseball is a game of nuance, subtlety, and precision. It’s not fast-paced; but it’s magical. It’s more than balls being batted over the outfield wall.
Aggie looked it up – the odds of falling in love at her age were one in 57,000. But – it was love at first sight. So that set her to wondering about those odds – falling in love at her age and it being love at first sight. After a while she decided that rather than task her brain figuring it out, she would be content knowing that it was a very huge improbability. Yes, hugely improbable. In her mind, Aggie decided the odds of it happening must be one million to one.
Something white floated past the window and moments later it flew by again on a return trip. It danced a little on its second pass, caught on an upward draft. Lily did a double-take, blinking, staring, concentrating, willing the strange apparition to return a third time. The sunlight coming through the window strained her eyes, and she finally closed them.