As he drove, Tom hummed along with the music and allowed his mind to drift over memories of airport arrivals and departures of the past decades. He and Ida used to enjoy travelling together. Every few years, Ida had taken an extra trip on her own to visit her sister in Medicine Hat. In the early nineties, at the end of one of Ida’s visits west, Tom closed his shop and arrived early at the airport to pick her up. She’d been away for two weeks and he missed her. He’d vacuumed the house, and bought yellow freesias for the dining-room table and arranged them in a Satsuma porcelain vase shaped like a lantern—an exciting find he’d come across while she was away. At the airport, he checked the arrivals board and drank coffee and still had a half hour to wait. He stood idly and watched people crowd around one of the luggage belts. Two flight numbers lit up the signboard, and the belt creaked and wheezed and began to circle. A group of eight or nine welcomers—until then, they’d been off to the side—came close and began to chant. From their hoots of laughter, Tom could tell that they were practising so they could sing out when the person they were greeting appeared. Because of their numbers, they were brazen and gleeful and raucous. When the inner door finally opened and the arrivals streamed toward the moving belt, one recognizable passenger strode ahead of all others. He carried a worn leather briefcase, had no luggage to pick up and headed directly for the taxi exit. The man was no other than Peter Gzowski, the popular host of the CBC Radio show Morningside.

The welcoming group was taken by surprise to see this well-known figure, and to their credit, they rallied quickly. As their own expected traveller had not yet appeared, they began a loud, laughing chant and substituted Peter’s name:

Yay, Peter! Yay, Gzowski!

Yay, yay, Peter Gzowski!

Peter, with a grin, kept his stride. He gave a wave to the group of strangers and carried on, knowing that the welcoming party wasn’t for him. Nonetheless, there had been a feeling of cheer in the place because of Peter’s response.

At the time, Tom had laughed good-naturedly along with the others. Now, in the car, he was wondering what it would be like to experience an impromptu reception like that. Out of the blue, a surprise, his name called out with affection. Tomas Ollery wouldn’t exactly fit into a rhyme, but his schoolboy nickname could be used and sung unabashedly:

Yay, Tom! Yay, Olley!

Yay, yay, Tom Olley!

What nonsense. Why would any group be at an airport to greet him? There was no fame attached to being Tom Ollery. There would be no one to chant if he arrived from some unknown place. A place he couldn’t imagine going without Ida. But Ida had died. She’d been dead for eleven months.