CNF: Opera

by Sara Cassidy

 

The day of the neighbour’s death was given to shovelling his wide driveway following a deep snow – the first snow of the year, on Valentine’s Day, in a city that goes some winters with no snow at all. We spent hours in the whiteness, lifting water and hurling it to the side. Other neighbours came and went, even children, understanding the task and pitching in. One neighbour, from Colorado – who mentioned as we shoveled that she was a glass-half-full person — had expertise, a closeness of blade to pavement, a clean scrape. Shovelling is like digging, but above ground, and the matter ephemeral, its displacement itself ephemeral, especially in this part of the world where warmth and rain will make it all a memory within days – so much work for nothing. I am learning finally that every day is an opera – some long, some short, some poor, some great – with ephemerality being the singing. Of course, you are no longer the lead, the way you were when you’d regularly sit for an hour on a roadside or read for a few hours in a field, not heading anywhere, and not coming from anywhere either, would pull up a blade of grass and coax a bullet of sweetness from its end, using your teeth to pinch and squeeze, and deliver. The teenager leapt out of bed to help shovel – he’s so tall now he could brush the snow off the top of the car without even reaching. This tallness is built of birthdays, on each of which the neighbour has given him a double-litre of ice cream, all for himself, even when he was three. Can you imagine a small child owning that much ice cream, lifting the lid to that frosty landscape of selfish delight? An overwhelming gift. Our neighbour always had a laugh and a joke, a light-hearted, albeit non-committal, response to anything that was said. But neighbours being what they are, defined by boundaries, now that he is permanently on the other side of the fence, I wish, of course, that I’d gotten to know him better, had been a little bolder, worked harder – so what if he read the National Post? As we’d shovelled the driveway, his wife was miles away, sitting by his side, listening to his breathing, while the neighbours and I learned more about each other than we ever had, the mysteries of our houses given shape. That night, once we were all in our beds, our neighbour’s widow arrived home, and walked up the dark stripe of driveway, up the bare stairs, into the silent house, and fell asleep, exhausted – so she reported to me – then woke ten minutes later and watched tennis all night, not seeing any of it.

 

Sara Cassidy’s writing has been published in Barren Magazine, and in Canada’s Geist Magazine, Malahat Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, CV2, and other literary magazines, and she has won both a National Magazine Award for non-fiction and the Atlantic Writing Competition for poetry.

 

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