I'll tell you why I'll never get used to it.

Tonight after a meeting (at which I did not particularly belong) I took a cab because it was raining and later than I expected it to be, and I do not like driving downtown because driving prevents me from thinking. I never know whether I am meant to sit in the front of the taxi with the driver or in the back seat. I chose the front. The driver immediately started talking to me in French. About the rain, about the threat of winter in the air.

I asked him, in English, why he assumed I could speak French and he answered in French, Because I know you. You are the girl who wants to cry. I had no idea what he meant and I did not know what to say. I wished I had chosen to sit in the back seat. I wished I was home. I said nothing.

Then he told me that we met once before, years ago, just like this but in Montreal. Did I not remember? He had been driving a taxi and just like now, I was taking a ride downtown at night. At first I did not remember but he was insistent. And the timeframe was exactly right. (Still... it made no sense to me that he could remember a fifteen minute cab ride more than five years ago. Who has a memory like this?) He had enough details of the encounter that I began to remember it, however, vaguely like fragments of a dream-- and coming sharper into focus.

The mutability of memory always alarms me because I like to think my memories are sacred unchangeable -- which they are not.

I sat in the back seat that other time, that other cab ride. I was a newcomer to the city then and I was tired the way you feel tired when you have recently moved and cannot find the street you are looking for, cannot find a job you want to do, cannot find your underwear and cannot find your favourite teacup. I was so tired.

I asked him something like... what he would say if I just asked him to drive around in circles for awhile so I could cry a little before going home. I remember now he turned off the meter and said he would drive until I asked him to stop. And then, because he was so kind, I no longer needed that at all. I was fine, I was just tired. Sometimes I have no real idea what I need.

It seems backward that this memory is his instead of mine, backward because this seems like something I should have remembered sharply. Backward because he should not have been able to recognize me more than five years later, in the dark and the rain on the other side of the country and completely out of context. Backward because it was he, not I, who had behaved remarkably. I am grateful this man gave me back this memory because it was one I should not have lost, one I should have been thankful for in the first place and treasured. Instead he saved it for me -why?- all this time. And then gave it back. He said, No you are not the girl who wants to cry anymore, and I said, No, I'm not.

And then we talked about Buddhism and Colin James and his children. I had nothing to give him in return for his gift. He would not let me pay his fare. I gave him the loose tea and silver ball I had just bought downtown, still wrapped in tissue paper, and the full-minus-two package of cigarettes in the pocket of my raincoat, and he let me touch his cheek for a moment - so this time I will remember.



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