I whispered this recording because it’s so early talking doesn’t feel right, the sun hasn’t come up yet, and this is a whispery sort of story anyway. It’s fiction but there’s a lot of truth to it, the way I used to have to go find my dad and the Quality Street and the basement smell and the kitchen window over the sink where I can picture my mother staring into the dark yard like the apple of her eye was missing. It’s about longings and what ifs. I hope you like it…

Well so much for the whispery recording. I went to listen to it, it wasn’t there so I just re-recorded it, it’s afternoon now and I am not whispering, I decided to record this outside, thought you might hear some birds but there’s a chainsaw instead and a couple of planes, but if you really listen you can hear the chickens.

Have a great weekend everybody and thanks for being here.

The Edge of Nowhere by Sherry Cassells

Wawa, Ontario isn’t even in the middle of nowhere – it’s on the edge – and I’ve still got twenty more miles like a silent movie, the pine forest so seeped it registers black.

My mother said to come before dark and I got maybe fifteen minutes left, the sun’s leaving just a few scraps across the thin road now and as I swing through one familiar curve after another I zone out until suddenly there’s the driveway into which I pull through the darkness. The curtains are still open, my mother’s leaning shape hurries away. She doesn’t want me to know she’s watching for me, still stinging I guess from the teenager I was.

I have come here, in part at least, to show I understand now. Some of it, anyway.

I have just a small bag, almost nothing. I run to the door where my mother feigns surprise which gets in the way of our happiness and our relief. Oh goodness she says I’m so glad you made it and I know that she is still afraid of me, I sense the fear I used to bark so wildly, almost joyfully, against.

My father does not come upstairs and as usual I have to go find him in his burrow, the certain smell although he’s given up both pipe and scotch it’s still there in every cushion, every seam, the dark beams he nailed across the ceiling.

He calls me lass and offers a whiskery kiss and a Quality Street both of which I accept with a smile before I escape to the kitchen, over-chewing the stale toffee like I am yelling, and there she stands, my mother.

I catch her before she knows I’m there.

The real her.

She stares out that black kitchen window above the soapy sink into nothing – and this is what I meant about understanding – because I know that the dark forest is where she’s packed her disappointments, the monumental thisses and thats of her life. The window is where she goes to survive, to make it through, to let herself – once in a while when nobody’s looking or expecting – imagine what if into the black-on-black landscape.

Her body still leans into the window but she turns her head and looks at me, gives me a little nod and I return everything about that look, which she fully sees, she flickers an acknowledgment, but still there is a care she takes when she asks what’s new? like she pours it, and this time I tell her.

We sit at the kitchen table and I tell her about work and neighbours and friends, my struggles with eating healthy I whisper through the warm residue of toffee, my money problems and then right away I show her on my phone the new boots I bought online, and I show her Andy with whom I have had two dates, he looks nice she says, and I touch gently – and this one is only ever between mothers and daughters – on my hovering-but-improving self-esteem and she whispers back practically choking on love good for you.

But I don’t tell her about the disappointments I packed into the forest those last twenty miles, the ones I will eventually search for through my own kitchen window.