This afternoon as I languished upon a chaise longue by the serene pool a wind gust suddenly blew over me. The welcome zephyr instantaneously dried the burning solar heat, replenishing my commitment to Buttonwood Bay and its assuaging mixture of azure sky and subtropical climate. Only moments before in the shade of the pergola I had concluded an evocative and unusually prolonged conversation with Mrs C in which, among other things, we reaffirmed my latest proposition regarding the similar heritage of Americans and Canadians.  Her husband’s mother (St. Pierre) was of French Canadian stock (as is my mother) and her own family is of Polish ancestry (as are my brother-in-law and his immediate family). As a child she also attended a Catholic school governed by nuns as did my own mother (though pointedly Mrs C remembers the nuns more magnanimously than did my mother who frequently reported of their strict control and ofttimes corporal punishment).

Of equal amusement to me was that Mrs C  (when in college at about age 19 or 20) wrote a children’s article or column for the The Detroit News. Mrs C preceded this disclosure of her literary past by suggesting to me in a forthright manner that I should adopt a more concise style of writing in order to avoid what she described as “too much”.  She added that my latest “blurb “ (as she is mischievously wont to call it) was prolix (though I have to say she herself waffled the alleged long-windedness with similar distinction). Such however is her level of courtesy. We ended our confab on a decidedly agreeable note amid mutual utterances of our anticipated pleasure at a subsequent reunion (which in fact transpired about two hours later upon my departure from the pool and Mrs C conducting her afternoon walk along the laneway from her place to the centre pool and back).