Summers
Whenever anyone asks about my childhood memories, they almost invariably go back to visiting Cape Breton during summer vacation. Wandering my aunt's town, pilfering rhubarb from her father-in-law's garden, putting coins on the tracks so the trains would flatten them, collecting lumps of coal that fell off the trains, the smell of my aunt's house. Those are warm, comfortable corners in my life. They were safe, peaceful, relieving. My grandfather was an alcoholic, and it was good to get away from that for a time. I have good memories of him too, but the stain of his alcoholism coloured everything.