Nonfiction from Rachel Laverdiere

Photo: George Pagan III

For the Love of (Dis)Order

“We adore chaos because we love to produce order.” – M.C. Escher

I sandwich the pillows that were yours between the bed and the wall, inhale the scent of freshly laundered sheets and wait for sleep to descend. Eventually, I stare out the window. Attempt to decipher patterns amongst the stars, but all I see is the possibility of something more. The promise of glittering gems.

In my dream, two-dimensional faces blur into geometric shapes. Oval faces contain round eyes, triangular noses, rectangular mouths. I stifle a yawn and continue my review of basic geometric terms.

“Madaa-aame, why do we have to learn this?” Though I can’t see him, I recognize the voice of an unruly kid from a decade ago. His spirit was much like my son’s.

Rather than admit I’m as bewildered by the question as he is, I respond, “Geometry is important. Pay attention and you’ll see shapes everywhere!” My false enthusiasm makes me cringe.

Poof! A map appears on the dusty chalkboard. “Notice that Saskatchewan is in the shape of a trapezoid. Repeat: tra-pa-zoid.” The students obey robotically.

“We live in a geometric shape. Pretty cool, hey?” Circular arcs form beneath scalene triangles. I wonder if they see a crescent moon smile above my cylindrical neck. If they understand that I’m incongruent with the geometric principles I spew.

On the walls beyond the students, art projects hang askew. Rows of desks bend into theatrical arches. The only lines that are straight and sharp in my beloved Saskatchewan are those created by cartographers. Yet I hold my tongue. 

I don’t rebel. Don’t throw the Mathématiques 7 text out the window or declare that the angle of the clock’s hands indicates it’s time for Phys. Ed. Instead, my mind transitions to the coulees and valleys of my youth. To the rolling hills and towering rock piles that lay toward the northern boundary of my childhood pasture.

I wake drenched in sweat, the anvil of regret crushing my chest. I quit teaching Grade 7 years ago. Maybe these dreams are penance for not protecting my students while I could. I should have warned them to trust based on actions rather than words.

In my dream, I was trapped in a classroom in which I no longer belong, teaching concepts I no longer hold valid. Like the airless cage of my marriage.

Perhaps I impose order to make up for my tendency toward chaos. I was as unruly as the prairie wind before teaching and marriage shackled me.

—§—

“What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.” – M.C. Escher

The projector drenches my students in an icy LED glow. I click through aerial photographs of the pristine native terrain of northern and central Saskatchewan.

As I shuffle toward the lower third of our province, where human manipulation grows more evident, my heart pangs. I yearn to tell the kids, “From a bird’s eye view, it’s shocking to see how humans have transformed the more ‘desirable’ sections of Saskatchewan into a grid. Like the pioneers before us, we continue to impose straight lines on nature, on our cities. Our rectangular yards are sprawling into the countryside.” Instead, I clear my throat and say, “If a prairie falcon were to pass over southern Saskatchewan, its shadow would cut across a patchwork of perpendiculars that divide our rolling grasslands into tidy parcels. But the falcon ignores the right angles the cartographers etched into the landscape. It finds its way home by scanning the coulees and sloughs.”

As the classroom’s theatrical rows transform into parallel lines, I jerk awake. Outside my open bedroom window, a family of magpies chatters. A trapezoid of sunlight splays across my quilt.

If I could re-enter the past, I’d tell those kids that nature ignores perpendiculars. I’d teach them the importance of following their hearts rather than their minds. Logic doesn’t always lead to happiness. Just because a man is your father doesn’t mean he has good intentions. The same goes for husbands who, after you sign the dotted line, spread their clutter around your tidy home and life. Another person’s dysfunction is not your responsibility.

I learned best from the lessons I taught.

—§—

“My work is a game, a very serious game.” – M.C. Escher

I’m teaching in my sleep again. This time, I dream up a game that uncloaks the predicament Saskatchewan’s native flora and fauna face. In large block letters, I scrawl the names of endangered species on photocopy paper. Fauna on pale green sheets, flora on yellow. Eventually, even those I leave out will perish, but I struggle to choose which to sacrifice for the sake of this game.