The Peacock 873

 I am in the back seat behind Carl and Francois shares the front with him.  There is another seat behind me, so there should be room for everyone whenever we are all ready to return here together.  Francois was going to take the back seat, and I really don't now why he felt that he had to, so I simply beat him here. I really struggle in some ways when it comes to negotiating space and order with a person of colour.  I imagine that centuries of bigotry and bad treatment and stigma could influence him to instinctively accept an inferior place, but then I have to remind myself that Francois is authentically African.  Or should I say a near first generation Canadian who was conceived in Rwanda, and he carries in his genes and DNA none of the horrors of New World slavery.  But from the recent genocide that nearly took him and his mother both while he was still in her womb who only knows what kind of trauma he would be carrying,  plus I want to sit in the back because I want space and time to think, to reflect, to ponder, to plan and simply to not feel under any pressure to have to carry a conversation.  But I find him comfortably assertive and confident, and see in him a superior being who will teach us, Carl and I both, a  lot.

"Your sister does not want you to leave", says Francois suddenly.

"She isn't that possessive.  But Melissa has Asperger's and that makes her dependent on established routines.  Since I have become the most constant presence in her life, she is going to respond to my leaving for even a few days as a betrayal.  She's always been like that. So that is why I stay in touch with her every day when I'm away, and especially under the current circumstances with things being so upended as they are right now for all of us."

  Just now we are passing the diner, and I can't help but feel a twinge of guilt that we will be depriving them of much needed business during this time away.  I am hoping that Sarah and others pick up the slack anyway and keep going there.

"How about some music", says Carl.  "Maybe something with a little Latin flavour.  Ska Cubano anyone?"

And now the idiosyncratic beat of the most eclectic Latin music I have ever heard is flooding the interior of this van....