Coming Home and Going Away- The Life of Jane

                            Chapter Eight - The Life of Jane


           A still young Jane Sinclair got off the bus in downtown Fredericton in August 1961. The 24 year old graduate of King's College in London looked around her small home town and sighed. Yes it looked like the same old place, a small outpost of commerce in a land of forests, massive distances and extreme weather.
     Jane had come back from England with a degree, somewhere between a Master of Arts and a Ph.D.
Her thesis ran to 175 pages and was titled 'Metaphysical conceits in John Donne's poetry'. "Metaphysical conceits," Jane would tell anyone who wanted to liasten, "bring together images and things that seem unlike."
      The problem was no one it seemed wanted to listen. Everyone Jane met after her return to Fredericton were busy with their own lives. The women of her own age that Jane ran into in the streets, the hairdressers salons or the supermarket, were all married. Some of them pushed prams in which inside were their babies, often their second child. Others proudly showed off their growing offspring.
      The young men Jane had known in high school were now working to support their growing families. Others had left, or as Maritimers used to say "were away",  working in Toronto, Halifax, Calgary or even far off Vancouver.
     "Oh Bob Taylor is living in Toronto," Maureen Ross, one of Jane's high school classmates told her about someone who they both had gone to school with. "He's married like me with two kids, I think."And so it went, as Maureen reeled off name after name of young people of roughly their own age. It seemed nearly everyone they'd gone to school with, were married or had left town or had done both.
      "And what about you Jane?" Maureen, a medium sized woman with brown hair asked as she held hands with one of her very young daughters. "Are you getting married soon?" Jane shook her head and said goodbye to Maureen who had just come out of a downtown meat store. "Shopping for the family," she'd told Jane as she said goodbye too. "We're all big eaters in the Ross family and this  is the day  when I fill up the fridge and the cupboards."
       Jane felt shaky after a few meeetings with people of her own age. Even in Fredericton, she saw the turnover of generations and the passage of time.