Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Let me tell you a story.

Monday, June 13, 2005
8:05 p.m.
I was reminded today of when I met a woman I had once worked with a very long time ago. Hubby and I had deposited the kids with his parents at the beach so we could take a little holiday. We opted for one of those three-day specials at a fancy resort on the recommendation of my brother-in-law, not realizing at the time that it catered to the golfing set, a sport in which neither Hubby nor I have the slightest interest. We did have a gorgeous room with an enormous bed, a gas fireplace, a whirlpool bath (that was fun) and a pseudo-bearskin rug, and the meals in the dining room were included, although we began to tire of the menu after a while (being vegetarian, there isn�t that much choice in general).

As I said, we are not golfers, but Hubby had just started learning tennis and was anxious to play. There was one outdoor court in the parking lot surrounded by a chainlink fence, so we hit the ball around in there. I managed at one point to knock it over the fence where it rolled into the wild area beside the parking lot, and we started looking for it in the grass and weeds. I was about to put my foot down when I heard a rattling sound. That was interesting. I was about to investigate when I heard it again. Without really thinking about it, I decided to look elsewhere, and eventually did find the ball and play was resumed. It wasn�t until afterwards that I realized I must have been about to step on a rattlesnake which warned me off just in time.

In the area in front of the well-appointed gym at this hotel, there was a little aesthetician�s shop called �Elaine�s� where, for a fee, one could obtain various beauty treatments. Never having had availed myself of these luxuries in the past (and never since), I thought �what the hell� and made an appointment to have a facial and bikini waxing one afternoon. The woman who greeted me was petite, with long black hair tied in a pony tail, about 10 years my senior, and the first thing she said was, �I know you from somewhere.� As far as I was concerned, I had never seen this woman before in my life, but she was so absolutely sure that she knew me, not someone like me, but me personally.

As she proceeded to rip out my pubic hair (I can�t believe that women subject themselves to this torture on a regular basis. I was left with giant red welts where my hair follicles had been violently removed from their resting places, and there was no way I was going to wear a bathing suit in that condition, which was what the bikini waxing was supposed to assist in the first place.) she tried to find out where we might have met before. I asked her what her last name was, but I didn�t recognize it and it didn�t help. She asked me if I had ever studied interior design (I hadn�t) or if I had worked at a distress centre (I had, but not at the same one nor at the same time as she), and then as a last resort she said, �Did you ever work for lawyers?�

Suddenly the lightbulb went on, I sat up and took her by the shoulders and said, �You�re Elaine!� My very first job as a legal secretary (from 1976-77) was at a father/son law firm in Toronto. Originally hired to be the son�s secretary, I eventually went to work for the father because he would not dictate into a tape recorder, but instead had his secretary sit in his office with her steno pad and take down his letters in shorthand. Having mastered the art of Pitman shorthand (120 w.p.m., thank you) while at business college, I was able to take over when his own secretary left for greener pastures and the woman who came in to work for the son was Elaine, a friend of the family and an experienced legal secretary.

She was petite, had short black hair, dressed very stylishly and expensively, and was always having beauty treatments done. Though divorced, she went by her married name (which is how I knew her) but was living with an older man who was in the process of divorcing his wife. It was his name that she told me during the bikini waxing which, while I then remembered that she had been with him, I had not associated with hers. I remember she told me once that she had been in a very serious car accident as a teenager. She and her then boyfriend were driving in a small sports car and a large truck came around a corner and practically drove right over them. Her boyfriend lost both his legs. She had her legs and all her ribs broken, and much of the windshield glass entered her face, evidenced by much scarring.

After I left the law firm (my boss died on the golf course within a week of my quitting--I sure as hell hope that was just a coincidence) she married her lover, they had twin boys who were at university when I met her again, and she was a widow, having lost her husband to cancer a number of years before. But she had a �gentleman friend�, as she referred to him, this shop where she performed beauty treatments, and access to the golf course. I caught her up on my life, my having studied music, my husband, my kids, and it is unlikely that I will ever see her again. However, none of this would have happened if she hadn�t recognized me. Why? Because I have not changed, not my name, not the style of my hair, nothing. Our friend from Newfoundland remarked when he entered our house on Saturday that I am the one person he knows who does not change, to which I replied, �I�ve got it down to a fine art.�

My brother emailed me a bunch of photos he took while we were visiting. From left to right: my brother the painter, me, my mother, and Hubby.

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