On progress

It was freakishly gorgeous here yesterday – 5 or 10 degrees above freezing, sunny, calm. So Vivi and I decided to walk from my office to dad’s coffee shop for the grand end-of-lunch hand-off.

Up University Avenue we went, into a stream of students heading the other way for the first day of the term. She walked along with her bow-legged, stiff-kneed prance, and I followed behind her with a fist full of hood, in case of sudden nosedives onto concrete, darts into traffic, or attractions to mud.

I felt as if I were bearing her train. The students parted around her and she smiled and burbled at them all, and lifted her arm and waved. I could just hear her saying: “Hello, my loyal subjects!”

The small pink queen in a crowd of black coats.