The Squall

As I open the old journal, an aroma flutters from its pages - not mold, not must, but love gone sour, the ripe odour of hate. Yet the book seems untouched: its pages as white and pristine as the snow falling outside. Riffling, I glimpse his scrawl in the middle, and there it is: the stench of his inky invectives.

I can see him, many years ago, cigarette burning between ochre fingers, deflowering this journal with his sordid descriptions of his wife, my mother. His cigarette's long ash falls onto the page. He brushes it off, just as he'd brushed her off, but not before he'd also deflowered her: snatched her innocence and stole the roses from her cheeks.

Out the window, it could be Siberia, the blank whiteness of it all, but it’s Chemanis on Vancouver Island. A bundle of Gortex goes crumping through the ivory landscape, an unbuckled trapper hat flapping about his ears. For a moment, I'm terrified it's my father. Then I remember. He died yesterday.

I want to toss his besmirched notebook into the fireplace where I’ve been burning all his get well cards. Or perhaps I'll shred the offending page and bury the pieces under fallen icicles, where they’ll freeze like Dr. Zhivago’s eyelashes.

Instead, I tear the page out and roll it up like a mini diploma - Congrats on surviving Daddy's icy hellfire - then throw it into the embers. I take up a pen to write sparkling affirmations in his-old-but-my-new journal.