It’s a pleasant walk most of the time. But today as we set out for the Marché Jean-Talon the weather was perfect. Low humidity, fitful breezes, a cloudless blue sky and the thermometer at 21C. We always take the shortcut through the hole in the fence and over the CPR tracks, rather than using the underpass. Unless of course a string of freight cars blocks our way. Or the ice and winds of winter make it precarious for old folks like us.
After that we cross diagonally through the Parc de la petite Italie which lives up to its name. Often retired men gather there to play cards, swap news from back home, or chat, no doubt, about the years of their youth. When they left their sunny homeland to work in the post-war construction boom in this once foreign land.
A small leaf caught my eye, lying as it was face down on the cobbled walkway. Yes, the red tinge showed through from its obverse. Face up, it became a messenger of things to come. A sign, or perhaps, a portent. I picked it up.
As we dropped in to Milano to get a block of Parmesan Grana Padano Parmigiano, I was mulling these two words over. They are both delicious, magic, and Biblical in their import. But could a little pinky red leaf be a sign or a portent? If Joshua were here might he trumpet, “That this may be a sign among you.......”?
I decided that signs and portents are much in the eye and the mind of the beholder. For me, the little red leaf tells me that in a few weeks I may have to take the underpass on the way to the market.
