The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2001, Blaðsíða 27

Vol. 56 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
109
she put her arms around me and kissed me
and that was pretty hard to expect but it
felt great, and I lost track of time, thinking,
this is silly, but you know, not caring, and
anyway that’s what she did and then we
said goodnight and I walked home.
We spent a lot of time together. We
went to movies, a couple of plays, and for
walks down by the river. Winter came
knocking. We were strolling down the
riverwalk one night when we were assault-
ed by a frigid gust of wind.
“Does it always get this cold in
October?” she asked, shivering against me.
“No, sometimes it’s colder,” I said. “It
usually snows at least once before
Hallowe’en.”
She was silent a moment. Then she said,
“You know, I used to go sailing on Lake
Ontario a lot. Last year, my cousins and I
went out at night. We went way out, away
from the city; it was just a swarm of lights
on the shore. There was just enough wind
to keep us going. It can get really cold out
there at night, so we had blankets. And the
sky ... it was so vast, no clouds at all, just
stars—millions and millions of stars. More
than I’d ever seen before; more than I ever
knew were there. And then, they started
falling. First one, then another, then a
whole group of them—it was so beautiful I
couldn’t believe it was really happening.
One of my cousins said we should each
make a wish ...” She lapsed into silence.
“What did you wish for?” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “If I told you, it
wouldn’t come true.”
We kept walking.
“Do you miss Toronto?” I asked
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “I had my rea-
sons for leaving, but it’s where I come
from; it’ll always be a part of me .. . even if
I’m apart from it.”
“Do you have a lot of friends there?”
“You’ve got a lot of questions tonight,”
she said. I felt a bit embarrassed, but then
she smiled. “Most of them live there.
There’s my family, too . . . but it was just
time for me to move out. I have some rela-
tives here I hadn’t seen for a long time, and
they helped me get settled. Once I had a job
and a place to live, I felt a lot better. I knew
I could make a go of it.”
We walked for a few more minutes
without speaking.
“I hope you stay here for awhile,” I said.
She pressed up against me. “I think I
will,” she said.
“Do you like Winnipeg?” I asked.
“So far. Do you?”
“Well, yeah ... I live here.”
“But you could live anywhere. What
makes you stay here?”
I thought for a bit. “Well, I’ve been
other places, you know. Nice places. But
what you said about sailing reminds me of
what I like about this place, the sky. I don’t
think any other place in the world, maybe
in Africa somewhere, has a sky like ours.
It’s so overwhelmingly huge that you just
have to look at it . . . but that’s not all; it
changes so quickly that one look isn’t
enough. I look at the sky a lot. There was
one time, just last August, when I was
around here actually, and the sun was
going down behind that bridge. The sun-
sets are always amazing, but this was some-
Pickerel • Salmon
Shrimp • Goldeye
Lobster • Crab
Hardfiskur
and more!
We pack for travel
596 Duffer in Avenue
Winnipeg, MB
589-3474
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