Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

Remember when we watched that solar eclipse? I asked her. You came to my school and dragged me out of Gunner’s English class to watch it with you.

Yes, she said. It was so cold.

Well, it was winter and we were lying in snow. In a field.

Wearing welding helmets, she said, weren’t we?

Yeah. Where did you get them from?

I can’t remember. I guess some guy I knew in town.

Wasn’t it amazing? I asked her.

The eclipse? It really was, she said. The path of totality.

What? I said. Is that what it’s called?

Yeah, remember what dad said? She dropped her voice. The path of totality passed over Manitoba in the early afternoon.

Oh right, you mean when he said it in that super serious tone?

It was so funny. She laughed.

The next one’s not supposed to be for another fifteen hundred years or something like that, I said.

Then I guess I’ll miss it, said Elf.

Yeah, I guess I will too.

Maybe not, said Elf. Who knows?

There was a skylight over our bed and we could see stars. Elfie took my hand. She put it on her heart and I felt its strong and steady beat. We had an early appointment the next morning. Elf said it was like getting married or writing an exam.

It’s torture to have to wait all day, she said. Let’s just get up, shower, and go.

END

With regards to the writing of AMPS , I’m deeply grateful to my agent, Sarah Chalfant, and to my editor, Louise Dennys: serious pros. Whoah. To my oldest friends, Carol Loewen and Jacque Baskier, who continue to save my life and who will find this “acknowledgement” ridiculous. (And to Winnipeg, city of my dreams.) To my Toronto friends for rolling out the welcome mat. To the Rutherfords for their collective embrace! To my kids (you all know who you are — there aren’t any others, don’t worry, ha) who simply will not stop calling me on my bullshit. To my mother, Elvira Toews, Life Force! To Erik Rutherford for his sharp pencil, countless readings, and especially for his blind love. And finally, to my beautiful sister, Marjorie Anne Toews: comic genius, badly missed.

MIRIAM TOEWS is the author of five previous novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness (winner of the 2004 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction), The Flying Troutmans (winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize) and Irma Voth , and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life . She lives in Toronto.