Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Yonge Line, coming back from a long lunch

Caucasian woman, early 30s, with silver hoop earrings, wearing a black jacket, turquoise blue sweater, brown dress pants and brown leather shoes. Her lips are the same strawberry as her hair.

An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks (Vintage Canada)

Page 7:

It was not just that colors were missing, but that what he did see had a distasteful, "dirty" look, the white glaring, yet discolored and off-white, the blacks cavernous--everything wrong, unnatural, stained, and impure.

She waits at the back of the doctor's office, holding his laminated number card and trying to keep his attention off the woman in the mask. She hopes she won't cry this time. Four years of injections and she still cries. There was a time when it would be done and over with before he even knew where he was. Now they have to wait thirty, sometimes forty-five, minutes in a row of other screaming children who may or may not have an egg allergy. God, she thinks. How could a mother know? She grabs him by the elbow and pulls him close for a wet kiss on his ear. He looks up at her, beaming, and points his chubby finger at the end of her nose, his scrunched up in his best sour puss.

"You have an apple eye!" She shushes him.
"You...You have an orange eye!" He squeals.
Alright now. Okay then, she says. Come sit on mommy's lap. He pulls away, running to the woman in the mask.
"YOU! I'll give you a water face eye!!!"
She looks at the woman and shrugs. She's tired and had to take the afternoon off for this. He can run around if he damn well feels like it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you certainly have a way with capturing life's little moments.

Julie Wilson said...

Thank you. It gives me satisfaction. Otherwise, all these details would be stuck upstairs in my head. I consider myself lucky that I have such a rich outlet!