On stage

Seven girls, three boys, maybe nine years old, lead by their portly female adult comes in the park, leave their water in a grove of multi-colored tall plastic bottles, and proceeds into the cemetery which abuts the park with particular boundary between. In the distance among the graves I see them go, marking, prancing, skipping, dawdling, now one, now three, now almost all disappear in the distance beyond the plodding adult.

Are they a daycamp? A summer school? Do they go to view graves of the famous people of the small community of Cap Pele and hear stories of their virtues? Is there ice-cream somewhere beyond park and cemetery?  

I, sitting on a bench, trying to eat a juicy fourneau Acadien, a compote of apples, raisins and cranberries baked inside a bread dough 'oven', think: is car  trouble what it took to get me to stop, sit, watch, and see a little of the life of the place in the high spirits of these children. (Sticky droozlings on hands, arms, bench...)

The park, built on the site of the Joli Coeur school (happy heart?) I learn from the plaque, has a small theater, a war memorial with a statue of a soldier holding an absurdly small rifle, and so many names, all of them privates, the grunts, a small gazebo, and a small sculpture called Se Faisant. All around the buzz of men on tractor movers keeping it all trim. 

Back they come but to the stage where they immediately congregate and jump around. I want to intervene and say, 'Let's try this: Once there was a little girl with a red hood...', just to encourage their imagination, but I was clearly not needed. They soon had something going which involved cartwheels, high-stepping, lots of consultations, running onto the stage and off, shouting, synchronization, and all manner of similar business. One seemed to be a director, then another. There was rush for the water, an amble back to the stage, and finally, at the behest of the adult, a gathering to leave. 

You lovely life-forms, you star-bursts of arms, legs and shouts, you theater theatering, you gathering of growth, how this stranger on the bench was grateful for the opportunity to witness your exuberance on this superlative day.