On the day I turned four, my parents took me out. The ground was covered in brown and yellow leaves and the air stung, both my cheeks and my lungs. I wore a coat the color of a cat's green eyes. The Chinese symbol for good luck and fortune were embroidered on the pockets.
I wished it snowed.
It was a small town and I walked with my parents to main street. The wind rustled in my father's hair, musing it. "Tornado hair" he would call it. My mother carried the squirming bundle that was my sister. I stepped carefully on the paved stones. Someone in my kindergarten class had told me the rhyme, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back."
The main street was a ghost town, but I thought it normal, as the stores closed every Sunday. The street ran down a hill, stopping at a park. And there was the pale St. Lawrence and gray, cold clouds. An elderly lady in a dark cloak and black cap stood at the corner with a box. Wisps of her white hair escaped her braid, but she didn't stop to brush it away from her face. Instead, she reached into the box to give away red velvet poppies and silver pins.
My father helped me pin the poppy to the breast of my jacket. I reached up to touch it. The poppy was fuzzy and faintly scratchy under my finger tips. The old woman's eyes were rheumy, but they were sharp. Her hands were gnarled like the pair of oaks next to our house. My hand wandered down the smooth fabric of my coat and finally to my warm pockets.
