Legacy-the old door


 One night the blue painted door leading to their kitchen saw her lean over the balcony, attentive to her husband’s movements below. The poor soul who had managed to get his car stuck in the snow was going to have a hard time of walking home. But if it was going to be like this, his only chance of saving the monthly provisions was for her husband to help him carry them back to the edge of town to his family’s home. She and her husband could not afford a car so trip after heavy trip, her husband walked back with him- carrying sacks of flour, parcels of meat, bags of canned goods, all the while chatting chummily with the guy. Her husband had stayed up past three a.m. last night working on toys for the kids and had worked all day before putting up wood for his parents. He made her feel young. How could she not be in love with this light he shone on others.

  One morning she stands at the balcony before that door in a filmy lilac cotton dress, Laurette in her arms- this is her last day here. Her little family is moving. She looks at the light moving through the trees and shadowing the lampposts, that light which carries them in its inexorable race for the next moment, the next beautiful moment. Through her travels on this balcony here in Québec- under the duvet of her bed, on the windowsill of the living room where the light pauses and waves for a moment- she has learned about her home. The home she hardly knew as a child only through her mother. She learned the French aromas and the headiness of the countryside, the folk music drifting from open doorways, the architecture handed down from long ago, painted over by time and life. The markets and fresh yeasty loaves, the antique dealers and their patter, like a fervent prayer to the beauty of another time and bantering at a café lazily, making people laugh. A thousand good books enjoyed only with very strong sultry coffee. It was in all these people’s hearts all the time. It was in the eyes she got from her mother, in the steam of the coffee that rose in that way just for her, in the way the lilacs smelled stronger when she was around and in the fact that people all over the world have picnics. And now that she is past comparing and fretting- they can go.

“Can I go to the park, maman?” Laurette quizzes.
“Laurette, not today, remember today is the day we move, we’ll be living in France now”.
  She shields her eyes and thinks “After all I’ve worried about, this doesn’t feel like I’m leaving something behind.” Someday people might look up on a night where Aznavour is in the air and say, “Do you see it? That one, that narrow door” - and move away with the unmistakable feeling that a happy woman lived there and that it is just possible that there are more happy women to come.


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