Carpe diem - Book 1
Prologue -- Annabelle's story
Sept-Iles is a mining community in the North of Quebec. Because of its relative isolation, it's a tight-knit community where friendships, once formed, are a strong long lasting bond.
Angéline Taylor loved her five boys dearly. Last of a long line of farmers' wives, she knew the value of having extra hands to help around the farm. However, she secretly longed for a daughter she could cuddle and to whom she could pass the knowledge of her ancestresses.
Annabelle's birth was cause for great celebration in the Taylor family. As much as her mother loved her, she was the darling of her father and brothers who spoiled her outrageously.
She could easily have become a brat in such a protected environment, but Ann was a loving, vivacious little girl, an inexhaustible bundle of energy and a sponge for knowledge, to the fascination of all.
Angéline was delighted with her little helper. Far from being underfoot and a nuisance, Ann was a serious young girl eager to learn and always ready to help. Where other girls would play with toy household tools, she insisted on using the real ones. Her father resized some for her until she could use her mother's.
When she was five, she asked him to build her a stand so she could reach the kitchen sink. From that day, her mother never touched dirty dishes. Little Ann's brothers took to helping their baby sister by drying the dishes while she washed them. If here was more splashing than washing at first, everyone took it in stride and with much laughter.
As soon as she was big enough to be safe, she took to following her father around.
Up at the cock's crow, she helped him and her brothers milk the cows. It was her sacred responsibility to pick the fresh eggs, feed and water the hens, and keep the chicken coop clean. Ann's proudest moment was the day the veterinary visited and commented to her father that he had never seen a hennery in such great shape.
Out on the farm, the days were filled with chores. This didn't mean it was a harsh life. Angéline and her husband, Robert, went out of their way to make sure their children had a happy childhood by creating as many occasions as they could for them to play and expand their young minds.
In the summer, every occasion was reason to celebrate. The farming families would get together often. The women shared the cooking, each trying to outdo the others. Thanks to the proliferation of cook books and then the internet, there were always new and exotic recipes to be tried. The men exchanged the latest farming information and shared the results of their experimentations with the various plants they tried to adapt to the northern climate. But all the adults took turns organizing games for the kids.
In the winter, Robert maintained an ice rink complete with wooden boards the other fathers had all chipped in to build. He used the snow he pushed when clearing the private road leading to the house to make mounds for the youngest ones to slide on.
Robert had been a young mining engineer at the Arnaud Mine before he fell in love with Angéline and farm life. Unsatisfied with the simple life of a farm girl, Angéline, for her part, had earned degrees in Agronomy and Botany. She was sought out for her wide knowledge and innovative solutions to farmers' problems.
They encouraged their children to read and learn, to develop their full potentials.
Annabelle couldn't wait to go to school. Helping her mother around the house and her father on the farm kept her busy enough, but she missed her brothers during the school year.
Annabelle was proud as a peacock the morning she boarded the yellow school bus for the first time. She was a big girl. Her brothers cleared a place for her in the older kids' section. There were some who didn't want her there but the argument was short, if intense. The Taylor boys were cut from their father's oversized mold, so, when the five of them put their foot down, dissention quieted rapidly.
The excitement at the prospect of learning new things soon paled for Ann.
She didn't understand why the other children couldn't read and write. At first, she did the exercises the teacher insisted she do, finishing them in a fraction of the time it took the rest of the class. She would then take out her books and read.
Very soon, she became bored and grew sullen. She started acting out, disrupting the class by her resistance to the slow rhythm of learning. She couldn't wait for recreation and lunch time when she could run out to play with her brothers. She even took to borrowing their school books to take with her in class.
By then she had gradually moved from the front of the class where she wouldn't miss anything the teacher would impart to the back where she could tune her out and read in peace.
Ann dreaded her parent's return from the first parent-teacher meeting. She knew she had a poor reputation with her first grade teacher. The only reason they hadn't taken disciplinary action yet was her near perfect grades.
Angéline insisted she drive back home. She had never seen her husband so angry. She was afraid he would vent his rage by driving too fast and they would get in an accident. She could well understand him though. She herself had to resort to an old mantra to hold on to her temper when the teacher told them that their daughter had a bad attitude and kept the others from learning properly. When the teacher told them Ann would need to see the psychologist and would probably be prescribed Ritalin for her ADD, Annabelle followed her husband who had already left.
She had suspected what her daughter's problem was long before the meeting. For weeks, when asked how her day at school had gone, Ann's answers were vague, often mono-syllabic. Angéline had already investigated alternatives in case she was proven right. Unfortunately, the options offered gifted students in the region were very limited.
Ann saw his father storm out of the family car and walk around to the back. It was a bad sign. She didn't go check if he had gone to the wood pile where he usually took out his anger. She stayed at the window and watched her mother sit with her head pillowed on her arms on the steering wheel. Another bad sign.
She had been taught to face difficulties because they only grew worse when you put them aside unresolved. She went to sit at the kitchen table to wait for whatever punishment would befall her.
What Ann hadn't expected was for her mother to sit beside her and pull her in her lap.
"Everything will be all right, baby." Angéline told her daughter. "Don't cry. You did nothing wrong. Nobody is angry with you."
"Daddy..." She sniffed.
"Daddy is not angry with you. Only with your teacher. You should have told us you were unhappy in school."
"But you said I had to listen to the teacher and do what she says, mommy."
