Len and Norma Lose a Body

Chapter 2

Lauren's hometown was small enough that you knew every house on every street, but it was big enough so that you didn't know everything about everybody, or so Lauren thought. Lauren hadn't always lived here, and didn't plan to stay forever. She spent her first three years of life two hours north in Regina while her mom finished university and her dad stayed home with her during the day, and worked in an agricultural supply store in the evenings and on the weekends. They lived on the 6th floor of an apartment building. The idea of living in an apartment seemed very cool to Lauren; like people on TV. Characters on all her favourite shows always lived in apartments, but there were no apartments here.

The time that Michael and Lauren had spent together during the first three years together had created a bond that was usually reserved for mothers and daughters. Michael had never thought of himself as a stay at home dad while Sharon was attending school, but day after day of adopting daily routines and habits together had solidified them as a team. Michael used to call Lauren his "sidekick" and he had taken her everywhere. Michael had taken to being the main caregiver easier than he had expected: changing diapers, baths, feeding, and suspected it was because he was two hours away from any of his friends back home that would have teased him mercifully about being Mr. Mom. Michael didn't have to act cool around his beautiful baby girl; Michael didn't have to try to impress anyone. Michael at the tender age of 20 was a devoted and doting father.

Lauren thought about her years in Regina although her memories weren't her memories at all. She desperately wanted to remember what it was like to live in the city, but all she had were borrowed snippets of her father's memories that she had collected and organized in the back of her mind. She took great care of them; visiting them frequently and getting what she needed from them before folding them back up and neatly storing them back into her mind waiting for another piece of information to be added to the collection.

Lauren had been looking at the magazine on her gramma's table. She had started flipping through it out of sheer boredom, but had become intrigued by the photos of apartment makeovers. She took in the details of each photo critiquing and evaluating what her apartment would look like. One thing was for sure, it would be better than all of her friends' and everyone would want to hang out at her place, and although she loved her friends she would probably have a real artsy roommate that she would meet and become fast friends with as soon as she moved to the city. Oh my God, Lauren thought in the back of her head, her farmy friends would be so embarrassing, and Lauren more and more frequently left them out of her future social plans.

She had registered the information that her gramma had passed on to her from her perch at the sink, but she had been too engrossed in visualizing a life beyond her small town. It wasn't until she had heard the familiar rumble of her dad's diesel truck that she had let her concentration be broken, and before gramma could report her sighting, Lauren was already closing the magazine and getting up from the table to go home for supper.

"Bye gramma, see you tomorrow," Lauren called as she was slipping into her shoes. "Don't forget your backpack, tie up your shoes..." Lauren stopped listening as she ran through the motions, ticking off all the boxes on gramma's to do list before she was able to leave the house and walk the 50 meters to her own front door. "Yeesh gramma it's like your sending me off to war," Lauren teased as she completed final inspection and was shooed out the door with a kiss on the forehead. Lauren didn't have to look back to know that her gramma was watching her through the storm door which annoyed Lauren to no end. There wasn't another soul around, what could possibly happen? Diane wouldn't shut the outside door until she saw Lauren open the front door to her own house. She knew it was silly, but one day soon Lauren would stop coming to her house after school everyday. Each day that went by was another day that Lauren was getting older and more responsible. She didn't know when it would be, but Diane knew that their days of 3:30's would soon come to an end.