More Than the Cards You're Dealt

My high school was built in the middle of a swamp close to that place called nowhere. Seriously. There was nothing around but bulrushes and bugs. A few kilometers up the Trans-Canada highway there was a tiny town with a gas station, a trucker style restaurant, a convenience store, and a church or two. But that was it. I think it was built there so isolation could be used as a means of keeping kids in school.

When you had a spare from classes there wasn’t much to do outside the school. You had to find things to do inside. You could tell who was who based on what they did during their spares. The jocks joined the intramural games and jumped and grunted throughout their spares. The nerdiest geeks hung out in the music room and played Risk or Dungeons and Dragons. The smokers and metal heads hung out in the smoking area and discussed the parties they passed out at last weekend. And the rest of us, those without a label, formed small groups in the main cafeteria playing cards or studying. We did anything to keep our eyes down and our heads low. Best to not make ourselves conspicuous targets. 

I don’t really know how it happened. Somehow in Grade 12 three friends and I started meeting with a teacher on our spare to learn how to play the card game bridge. This teacher was not gregarious so I seriously doubt he was the one who suggested it. But then again, maybe it was him in one of his bellowing bursts when his utterances surprised him as much as the rest of us. He was brilliant but not a conversationalist. Nonetheless, there we all were, four teenage girls sitting in an empty classroom shuffling a deck of cards with an eccentric teacher.

I think he scared us as much as he intrigued us. He wasn't well-dressed or attractive. We did not join him for cards because we had crushes on him. I think we met with him because he let us escape from the glares and stares of others.

Bidding conventions, winning tricks and trump, finesse and card counting - he taught us bridge thirty minutes at a time. We soaked it up as a welcome distraction from our teenage inadequacies and self-loathing. And it also stimulated our busy minds that wanted to race and reason through things but that were slowed by the pace of curriculum, standardized lessons, and angst.

He was not alone in having a passel of students around him. Most of the high school teachers had a crowd of kids that congregated around them during their breaks. I am sure there was a teacher’s lounge where they could have hid out from us but most teachers were found interacting with kids during their spare time too. Some organized the intramural sports, some ran laps on the track, and some joined in the board games in the music room. 

When I look back now I see that these teachers were filling a gap for so many kids. There was nowhere for us to go during our spares at a high school in a swamp. We were apt to get into trouble or ruminate too long on our teenage woes. These teachers provided a stabilizing force. In their presence, we found role models without anyone having to make it so clear.

Our card playing teacher in his awkward gruffness let us know that we could find our way. There was a place for everyone in adulthood and that you could fully be yourself there. But he didn’t have to tell us that. Instead he taught us what a “One Club” bid was, that "third should play high," and how to finesse a few more tricks with a queen. We learned that your life could be more than the cards you were dealt. You just had to know how to play them.
 

Fair-weathered Friend

As a child I spent a lot of time outside. I suppose parents in the 70’s needed their space. They had figured out that a little fresh air would not only tire us but it would allow them time to recuperate before we barged back in on their bliss.

I remember tumbling out into the yard to see who had arrived to play. You see, the weather was merely a playmate and brought along her special toys. She was sometimes the brooding child who pouted, stormed, and sobbed but who brought along puddles and sidewalk worms. She was sometimes the bright and shiny child who kept you out of breath and sweaty as she beckoned you with her tall grass, wildflowers, and leafy trees. She was sometimes the wicked child who pinched your cheeks but who you forgave because she brought along giant mold-able mounds of snow. She was an ever changing companion who added a special something to your fantastic games.

We didn’t wish the weather away we embraced it. In the sunshine we squinted into the sun and let it kiss our skin. We laughed while we blistered and then lazed under the shade of a tree when our skin was too tender to take more rays. We let water run over our boots and down our necks and into our shirts. We gulped at the wind and ate the gusts filling our lungs and snorting out dragon puffs of air through our noses. We wondered at a snowflake on our mitts and the glint of light as it caught a crystal in snowbank. We knew weather as a best friend and let her into our lives as she was.

Sometimes you noticed the weather when it came up beside you. There was a breeze before the clouds moved in that ran alongside you and whispered wet nothings into your ear. You could feel its humid breath and you didn’t know why but you no longer felt like biking further from home. You turned around and raced the wind back to your yard. The wind didn’t yet mess your neatly coiffed hair or spoil your freshly raked leaves. It was a rival to be raced and a co-conspirator of secrets.

 
In winter you stuffed yourself into your snow clothes and lulled around like a stiff legged zombies. Your knees just couldn’t bend with all the extra fabric and the weight of your over-sized boots made you shuffle like the walking dead. But you could fall exhausted into the open arms of a snowbank and lie there eating snowflakes falling from the sky or suck ice balls off your woolen mitts. Cold wasn’t cursed yet, it was just a different playmate - one that let you fashion tangible representations of your imagination into forts and friends. There was never enough time to build everything you thought of in the time you could knead and pat together the snow between pee breaks and short days. 

You didn’t yet curse autumn as the harbinger of winter to come. Fall was a pungent, ripe, and spicy child whose freckles and wild tantrums made you laugh and romp in the leaves. She had a kind of perfume that still makes me think of maple trees, first frosts, and pumpkin pie. It felt so good to slip a sweatshirt on over your over-tanned skin and snuggle into bed on the crisper evenings. We still swam in the lake but the cooler air would cause you to run for a towel or quickly dive back down into the soupy warm water for another underwater dip. The seeding flowers were our wishes to the world, dried bouquets for imaginary weddings, and batons for our long parades. 

Rain was another friend altogether. She beckoned us to come out and feel her oily slickness wash our arms and legs. We let her thunder rumble in our chests faces turned to the sky and then we turned and played in the puddles and rivulets she left for us. Rubber boots, splash suits, swimsuits, and bare feet. She didn’t care how you showed up. She showered you with her sweet nectar just the same. The beads of her love dripping from the wet strands of your bangs or off the rim of your hood. She’d find a way to send shivery fingers into those cozy places.

Weather wasn’t a forecast on the news we scorned. She was just a playmate that showed up that day - sometimes the warm and cozy girl next door, and sometimes the breathless and raging girl who never let you rest. Whoever you stepped out onto the doorstep to find, you welcomed. You just clasped their hand and skipped off on an adventure together. 

Then somewhere in the miniskirts and heels or the too-cool high tops and jean jackets we began to shun her. We refused to adjust to her whims and wanted her to adjust to ours. We sneered at her wintery winds and pouted at her blue clouds. We created separation between us and her and drove our friendship apart. 

But I wonder if we still had knitted scarves our grandmothers made out of our favorite colours or brightly painted rubber boots would we romp with her more joyfully? When we are hiking or camping we can feel her familiar presence and a piece of her friendship seeps back into our souls. She comes alongside us and whispers into our ears again. This is why we feel nostalgic around a campfire and at peace alone in the woods. We are with a long lost friend and are laughing again at her childish fancies.