ABSTRACT
M y city slowly moves away from me, folding into the converging embrace of railway tracks that glide from beneath our train’s last car. I am 8 years old and excited about moving to Ontario with my family, yet I feel worried to realize I may never see Saskatoon again. I press my palms to the window on either side of my face and try to inhale the memory of each escaping scene: the downtown buildings; the Saskatchewan River, where we picked luscious Saskatoon berries in summer; our neighborhood of wartime houses; the Canadian National Exhibition grounds that held so much excitement; my uncle’s farmlands of sensory adventures; the scruffy woods where my grandfather showed me how to nd mushrooms. Remember this. My body resonates with an urgency to preserve these memories, an urgency imbued with a sense of anxious and ancient sadness. It is 1959. Years later, I would understand how these feelings came to be part of me before I was even born.
