Narrative 8:

The field behind the house:

I remember being young there was behind our house a huge field of perhaps half a mile long until a dense forest not really inviting.

I played very often in this field. Alone, with friends or with my sister M. There’s a picture of her with Grandma G. immortalized standing in this large field with grass up to his thighs for my grandmother, to the neck for my sister.

I loved walking in this field.

I loved running in this field.

Sometimes I lay in the grass and watched the sky. Sometimes, after the rain, when there was a rainbow in the sky, I ran with a friend to reach it and we would go so near the end of the field, very close to the dense forest. I then turned back walking backwards to avoid having my back to the forest.

I always had a great sense of freedom in this field, like in a movie cliché or in a novel’s stereotype.

Nothing untoward happened in this field filled with ordinary grass, wild flowers and fireflies some summer evenings.

In the morning when I looked out the kitchen window, I embraced it. At night just before the darkness, I threw a last glance of tenderness and a desire to join it.

I liked this field as one loves a person.

Thank you my friend...

Narrative 4

Letter from Jehan, eight, to Jehan, thirty-eight.

Dear, thirty-eight years old Jehan,

How far away! Drat! That’s so far away being thirty-eight years old!

Do you still have fun, or you’re too old? Do you still know all our friends? Do you have a family? What a lot of things you must have done since now! You’re thirty years older than me; it’s as old as dad and mom. You must have become somebody important.

Do you still play outside? I hope that you have good friends. I look forward to being your age; then the big ones will listen to me … But it’s good to be young and with my friends. I won’t be afraid anymore of others at your age; I’ll be older.

You must be very busy! I hope I’ll still know lots of people at your age and to feel good, too. I’d love to organize, create games and all that and to be paid for that. That would be good, isn’t it? Does that kind of work exist? Will I have new friends? Will I have a friend like C. later?

That seems so very far away thirty years …

Am I going to play games, do things, in the meantime, or what! I look forward to all this, but I am o.k. right now: I don’t want to be suddenly very old tomorrow morning! I’ll be thirty years older, but I want to go there slowly, OK?

I hope you’re a big guy, and you’re nice. Is mom very old? And dad? I have nephews and nieces? I hope I’ll still have plenty of fun at your age. It is hard for me cause the big ones don’t listen to me. Nevertheless I’m on good terms with my friends.

School’s nice sometimes, but other times I’m bored. I like the drawing course, visual art course and all the things like that.

I may tell you that I love you, right? Even, if you’re a boy? I love you, be kind, and I wish you many, many friends.

See you soon,

Jehan, eight.

 

Narrative 2

I remember the military parade at the top of the hill, on 1st Avenue, near the former Igloo, the ice cream counter. I was two years old.

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I remember around three, four years old, being at the cabin of a friend, who lived the neighboring house of mine, and trying to look through a hole, below the outhouse, where my friend had gone to the toilet, to see his booty!

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I remember, also, squabbling with a friend and then running to catch him up, when he wanted to leave, angry, to apologise and when I got out of the house, I stumble on the threshold, which was, like, one and a half-inch thick, and although I tried to hang on to the door frame, I fell on the corner of a metal tank, which was upside down, that mom used to soak the linen in, and I split open my right eyebrow and the skin over my nose. I remember crying a lot, blood flowing like water on my face and my mother carrying me in her arms to daddy's big old truck. Then dad in turn carrying me in his arms up the hospital’s staircases instead of waiting for the elevator which was too long to come.

(It’s strange, but I can feel, right at this moment, how they must have been worried for me I’d lose my eye or I’d die. Twenty years later, maybe they would wish I die, after all…)

I remember the doctor putting a sheet over my head, with only one hole for my eye. I remember the needle entering in and out of my skin. I had the feeling that the hand of the doctor was entering along with the needle and going in and out of my head. I remember, later, sitting on our stairs outside the house, my friends coming to see me, and feeling almost proud to show them my stitches. I was about four, five years old.