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|   Get to Know Her Describe what a typical day is like for you. On a typical weekday in the winter I get up early and go out to milk one of the cows and carry in wood for the stove. I like that time with my dad -- just him and me, all alone. The I walk to school with Jasper. The schoolhouse is in the village and it only has one room and an outhouse. I love listening to what they're learning in other grades, and watching the bigger boys flirt with the older girls. After school, if there isn't too much ironing to do, I go coasting with the kids or skate on the pond behind Mr. Jollimore's barn. My brother's too young to be very useful, so I have to do some snow shoveling and other boy stuff. But I get stuck with girl stuff, too, like dish washing and hemming the blackout curtains. I do my homework by lamplight on the kitchen table. Who is the most important person in your life? I guess the most important people in my life are my parents. They're the ones I want most never to die. But I spend a lot of my fun time with Jasper. Sometimes he looks on the gloomy side of things and doesn't always move as fast as I do, but he's still my very best friend. What thing do you love most in the world? The thing I love most in the world is the view of the sea out of my bedroom window. There's an island and a point and some great reefs. The sun rises over this part of the bay, and I can see the men's lobster boats moving around on that path of light in the early morning. What is your greatest wish? At the moment, my greatest wish is that the war would hurry up and end. I know there are submarines out there, under that beautiful view, and we sometimes see things (I don't know what) exploding on the far horizon. I wish we could take off the blackout curtains and let the moon in. I'd light every lamp in the house and put them really close to the windows. Then everyone would know the war was over. What is your greatest fear? My greatest fear? That's easy. I'm scared my dad will have to go to war. Then I'd get even scareder that he might get killed or have terrible wounds. What do you do for fun? In the summer, we play in the boats when the fishermen have come home for the day. We go exploring in them, and pretend to be pirates or brave sailors in the war. We go to the beach and look for special shells and for treasures that get washed up during a storm. About once in a million years we get to drive up to Halifax and see a movie. What aspects of the twenty-first century do you think you would love the most? There are a lot of things I'd like about the twenty-first century. I think I'd like to watch the Discovery Channel on TV and see all those whales and crocodiles and snakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and mountain climbers. I can't imagine being able to see those things from my own living room. I'd like to travel to far places in huge airplanes. I'd like knowing that there were antibiotics to save you from things like pneumonia, which often kills people today. I'd like to have my very own electric lamp beside my bed so I could read all night. I'd like milk to come out of bottles instead of our cow at six o'clock in the morning. And I know I'd like a tap better than a well and a bucket. What aspect of the twenty-first century would you dislike the most? I don't really want to live in the 21st century. There'll still be wars, so there'll continue to be a lot of things to be scared of. There won't be as many fish in the sea, so a lot of people will have to leave fishing villages and move to the cities. I'd hate that. The only city I've seen in Halifax and it's a very exciting place. But I don't think I'd want to be in the middle of all that rush and roar and racket all the time. And parents won't let their kids go off to play by themselves. They'll be driving them places, and staying with them and watching them. Not for me, thank you. I'm free as a bird in 1941 and I want to stay that way. |
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