The dodo, the slice of apple ... Happy Birthday Dad 
Illustration: If I read a long time, you've probably already seen, since I posted here, December 2, 2007, an extract from this text that I wrote in 1996. Today, I offer you the full, direct from my bottom drawer. If you had a father as wonderful as mine, I hope you bring your most memories. If you have not had that chance, I would like to share a little of all this love that I received.
The dodo ti,
slice of apple,
the sublet and the white horse
Sometimes an object, a smell, a song, a book or a picture comes back instantly instead magic of our childhood ... For me, the roundness of an apple red evokes unequivocally all the tenderness of the world, laughing in the complicity of a loving father and his beloved little girl: me!
the days of home range VII and throughout our family life, La Sarre, Matagami, Noranda, Dad was always at least three jobs, a main to support our family and at least two in the sale, which enabled him to meet lots of people and we pay little treats. He sold cars at Auto Nicol, snowmobiles, jet skiing, furniture Lapierre removals Labrecque, tires Abitibi Nylart nylon stockings, industrial products Mica, clothes tailor Tailoring Stephen, Amway products, Coke, Vachon cupcakes and I forget. Dad was not as she said, a good seller. He loved the world and thought hard as iron in customer service. I always thought he was above all a great communicator, able to convince when very satisfied himself.
In this swirl of life around him and us, it happened to be a father very far. I even think that it was he who invented the concept of quality of presence.
When he finally returned home, exhausted but happy, all lit up with his warm smile. I ran toward him as if he were my savior. Then, his blue eyes became even more blue and I snuggled in my little circle in the arms of the strongest man in the world, certain that nothing could ever happen to me, only because he was there.
Sometimes, when he was very tired, he told me: "Come rock a little before ti ti sleep". And then I discovered it was for he makes a DODO IT, IT. Still nestled against Dad, I listened to his heart beat regularly and loudly. Was normal, he had a big heart. His chest rose and resumed his position with a regularity and a calm had me thinking once again beyond a doubt that nothing could ever happen to me as he would be there. When I raised my head to watch him sleep, he always had that smile, even with eyes closed. It definitely lacked something but I never risky move at all for fear of breaking the spell. I admired her sleep, while smiling, confident as can be in four years that I was the maker of his happiness.
One day I turned 5, I was fortunate to have my first little brother. Although I content, I also realized that he had become the new focal point of the family ... It was the day of his baptism I think, anyway, there were plenty of people around the cradle of the child. Dad came and sat with me in the lounge with a beautiful red apple all plump and a small knife. Without saying a word, he looked at me and then looked at the apple. He smiled all the time. His eyes crinkled more. It seemed he would burst out laughing. I knew he would give me the best slice of apple, first, when he had finished the peel. But you should not say, that I felt, it was unwise to say ...
More
knife walked methodically wheeling on the apple, the more he looked at me intensely and we both had a wild desire to laugh. It seems to me that in the end it slowed a bit, to take this complicity between us. There he produced a moment of grace. He cut the first slice, all white, I placed it in front of my eyes and offered it as if it were the most precious stone. Still without saying anything, I accepted a gesture as dramatic, and I finally tasted while he ate the rest of the apple. We were there, both alone in our universe, this house full of people, to eat our apple in silence, with the satisfied air of happy people who do not even call into question their happiness.
often over the years, he repeated the gesture complicity between us but it was the New Year's Day 1996, still in his house full of people, where I was again very touched. He came to offer me the first slice of apple and I accepted with the same eyes that dazzled as a kid. There was a long time apple did not taste as good and again, we did not say anything. Not one word. Just a glance and a smile, with an urge to giggle. Besides, we never speak, neither he nor I understood it was because we knew it could break the spell.
I must have been about 10 years when Dad started building a cottage in Bay Dunlop, Matagami Lake, this cottage that has left us memories even if they never lived. I went to complain to him that was boring, no friends, no music, nothing to read, nothing to do. He said: "Wait a minute, it goes without making music, Dad will make you a sublet. What a mystery. A sublet?
With an energy that was calling me to follow him, he went to the tiller of alder in the small wood behind the cottage. Still without saying a word, he cut a small branch after having evaluated all. I was intrigued, I did not understand at all where he wanted to come but I gave him my full confidence and that was unconditional. As if a genie had appeared to him to whisper words and gestures to make, he said, gravely and mocking at the time: "Here, if you want it to work, your sublet, we will have you sing all the time that I do. There, you'll never stop you sing the song of the sublet ... Listen ...
peeler peels my sublet
Never worry'll regret
When my Tom Thumb peel
With application and determination, I sang in reproducing the words as well as its emphasis madelinot while he, with application and determination as he did weird things with his knife on the small branch of alder.
Suddenly he threw at me a look that meant it was when ever not stop singing. He sang with me the last time the magic verse ...
peeler peels my sublet
Never worry'll regret
When my Tom Thumb peel
Instinctively, we are silent. These few seconds before the miracle lasted a century. And if it does not work? However, it was well sang the song sublet. Make a musical instrument was not easy but I knew Dad capable of all miracles since he did regularly.
With dignity near the devotion he brought to his mouth branch of alder, which emitted a pure sound, strange and beautiful, who had to agree to the bay to the mouth of Dunlop Bell River, without a shadow of a doubt. In the middle of nowhere, right in the woods on the shores of lake Matagami, my father came again with the same chemistry, give me what was best: a little of himself!
Among the memories of childhood, it is one that still serves me in the bad moments of my life. A panacea for a rainy day or general pain. A miracle cure that is similar to what we call self-healing, visualization, and perhaps also positive thinking. It's called "The white horse."
When I hurt your ears, teeth, I took a search by bicycle, he spoke of the white horse. If we made fun of my accent, I lost pieces of the puzzle, or that I had missed my sculpture clothespins, he also told me his story of the white horse, so much so that I ended up really see. It always began same. He told me to close my eyes, he took his soft-spoken, calm, serious and thoughtful, and he told ...
"Think of a beautiful white horse ... It is beautiful, white horse there ... It's loud and proud, he runs through the meadow, the mane in the wind, free as air ... It is a beautiful white horse happy, thinking nothing but his heureusité to run fast and strong in his meadow ... Oh it's so beautiful, a beautiful white horse ... "
And then I forgot but what I remember is that it worked all the time. No pain, physical or moral, no trouble, great or small, could resist the white horse. When I became a teenager, and later a woman, he never told me the story of white horse but I always remembered it was me, and I kept saying to me as necessary, until the day when ...
I was 29 years. For eight years, I wanted to become pregnant and finally, I was, but I was bedridden from the beginning of my pregnancy, sick, unable to feed me, weak and worried about losing this baby awaited, if desired. Inevitably, I ended up losing a lot my joy. The physical was eventually rub off on morale. As I more or less trapped at home or in hospital, I saw only the people who visited me because I, I could not move.
This morning, Dad had stopped at the house for no reason. Lying on the sofa, I only had not even opened the door he had entered simply to stealthily, silently. He sat in the rocking chair next to me. Without saying a word. I was not the conversation I either.
He was lying on the coffee table of old white boxes and scissors. He wanted to pick it to help me. Mechanically he began to cut into the cardboard, without seeming to know where he went. Then he asked me how I was.
While I told her about my worries of losing this baby, my doubts whether I could go to term a healthy baby, he cut as he always listened. When I had finished answering her, he had finished carving. He got up to carry the clippings in the trash and I noticed a small rocking the white form lying there. I went to fetch her and I took in my hands a beautiful white horse, the most beautiful white horse in the world. He smiled and said: "It is not successful, I had no model, but look, he has a little paunch and still, he looks strong enough and it still stands ! "
I told him:" It's white horse when I was little! Do you remember when you told me Dad ... And in his little boy embarrassed laugh, I felt two things clear: First, yes, he remembered exactly, and secondly, that it, it was unwise to say. So I kill because that is not expressed prints and then we both smiled because we knew all the wonderful hiding in this little white horse box.
was the greatest gift he could offer me. I put it on the mantel where I watched so often until the end of my pregnancy in bed. Of course, this is the first thing I put in my bag when leaving for the hospital. My little white horse followed me to the delivery room and then, on my bedside table.
When he came to see me in the hospital with Mom and get acquainted with his first granddaughter in full health, he saw " our "white horse on my bedside table. He smiled, perhaps even more fondly on that day.
I wanted to tell him all the beauty of my childhood, all the magic he had created in my life as child and adult, all hope I had to make even for my little girl.
I wanted to say many thanks especially for this panacea, this child would be happy for my whole life a guarantee of happiness, or rather, as he himself says, "to heureusité" but I said nothing and I smiled because that's for sure, it was not say. It could break the spell.
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December 2, 1996 This marks your 69th birthday. This text, I did not intend to offer it to you just because they value the tacit complicity between us. Literary Café in November, several men told me it was terrible to think that thou didst not ever read. Mom who I consulted suggested I offer it to you at your party. She had a tender smile when she told me that she, too, you often was offering the "first tranche" of your apple.
So here's what I hesitated to text you to read if this complicity can be diluted in any way in the future. And come what may, I trust we! What I have written a few pages, at bottom, I could sum it up in two words: "I love you, Dad." Happy Birthday!
