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the front door opened the minute we pulled up to the neat green and white bungalow. I had a hazy recollection of the place when I was last here as a teenager, but a family room and extra bedroom had been added, changing the shape of the house.
    Uncle Lawrence met us on the front steps. He was a short, bald, pudgy man who laughed too quickly and too long to have a real sense of humour. He shook Dad’s hand and went to shake mine before I gave him a polite hug, squeezing another laugh out of him like an accordion. “Doug and Lenny were here yesterday with their families. Too bad you missed them.”
    â€œLenny too?” I asked, immediately regretting I had shown my preference for one of his sons. Lenny piloted small planes out of Prince George and had an easy way about him. Besides Dad, he was the only relative on either side who made me feel short. Doug was foreman of a sawmill in Campbell River and a replica of his father, so by standing here talking to Uncle Lawrence I had not missed seeing Doug. Because Mom and Dad had waited almost ten years for my arrival, I was much younger than all my cousins — a grand total of four. Doug and Lenny were in their forties, and the two daughters of Mom’s older sister were more like fifty. They each had families and successful careers as a lawyer and bank manager in Toronto. Of course.
    â€œBest to go to the hospital about 12:15,” Lawrence said. “She’ll have had her lunch and they’ll be done their procedures. We can get something to eat at the cafeteria partway through the visit. She can rest that way.”
    We declined Lawrence’s offer of coffee, but accepted his tour of the garden. A retired electrician, he kept busy in winter making Christmas candles out of fluorescent light bulbs for friends and in summer and fall, experimenting with prize-winning pumpkins. Janetta’s pansies, gladioli, roses, and marigolds rimmed his rows of corn, peas, beans, carrots, and potatoes, and he walked us around the whole plot. “I killed a hundred and twenty-seven potato bugs this morning. Three hundred and fourteen yesterday.”
    Back in the house, I looked at the photos on the dining room wall. A close-up of me in a brown Stetson and red serge hung among duplicates we had of weddings — Sara and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Janetta and Lawrence, Lennie and Doug and wives. Sara’s antique tea wagon and silver tea service had ended up here as well as some framed petit points and Royal Doulton figurines that were once part of her apartment. Besides these pieces, the order and organization of this household were familiar to me. Filling my nostrils was a special aroma I had not inhaled since Sara died — a clean, yeasty mixture of freshly-baked bread and Sunlight bar soap. My head insisted I did not have the connection with this house my senses were transmitting. For one thing, the large puffy sofa and recliner in patterned velvet were completely alien to the contemporary furniture I had grown up with or the period style Sara liked. And the absence of original paintings on the walls got rid of any further notion of déjà vu. Uncle Lawrence broke into my thoughts, reminding me among other things that my dizziness was gone.
    â€œMight as well get going. They eat early in the hospital. We’ll take our car.” He led us through the kitchen to the garage. Dad sat in the front seat with him and I sprawled in the back, a luxury for me. As he backed out, I waited for the usual joke from someone new. “I’d better watch my speed, eh? I hope you won’t give me a ticket.” I managed a laugh for the ten thousandth time.
    We reached the hospital in less than ten minutes so I did not get much of an impression of Nanaimo. Vancouverites have to fight the urge not to feel superior to their island cousins — or to anybody anywhere — and I had opened my mind to a task that never presented itself.
    Dad and I marched through