[Reflect]

“So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you’ll wait for me, hold me like you’ll never let me go…”

This is a time of year for reflection, it seems. As the ice forms a mirror on the water, it’s hard to see just who you are today despite its best efforts. Tomorrow is also my 19th birthday, a coming of age in a way, since it’s the legal drinking age and the last year of my teens(isn’t that scary???). That makes this an even more appropriate time to do what I’m about to do. As the new year approaches it’s time to look back and ahead. This is my post to do it.

“This year is gonna be incredible, this year is gonna be the one”

“Baby before you, I was bad news, you let me love you, I think I could get though”

My life so far has been quite good, I think. I was born into a great family, immediate and extended. Most of the people on my father’s side of the family live quite close to me and I’d see them all often. They were all amazing people and I’m really thankful to still have them all but two still in my life… When I was 5 or 6 my grandfather passed away… I didn’t understand it fully then. Now I really wish that I had known him better. The few fragments I have are pleasant though. The one person I was closest to then was my grandmother. She was a just the center of what I thought was good back then.
My early years were spent the same as most kids in the sticks… watching TV, playing with toys, watching ‘toons. The 80’s had some great toons… Seeing photos of myself back then I can’t help but think I looked far too goofy.
School for me in elementary was mixed. I did quite well in school acedemically. I was a quite shy, though…. and a lot of my memories of that time were of being picked on. I had a few friends, though they weren’t real ones.
By grades 5 and 6 that had mostly faded… My best friend then, his name was Josh, had just moved there and we were both very much into comics. So it wasn’t long before we were both making a comic book every night and had our own “company”, A&J Comics. lol I never had much talent but he could really draw. We had some interesting characters… all drawn on lined paper. We wasted so much class time doing those too…. It wasn’t a problem for me because I always got A’s. Then Josh’s parents split up and he had to move away. I never heard from him again.
Between grades 5 and 6 I went on a summer-long road trip with my parents. We went from here in Nova Scotia to Victoria, down to Cali and back again, stopping in various places and roaming over the map.

Memorable Places From 1994 Roadtrip:
The Butchart Gardens – Victoria, BC(beautiful gardens!)
Royal London Wax Museum – Victoria, BC
Frank Slide – Alberta(burried a town, creeped me out to be there lol)
Butterfly World – Victoria Island, BC
Columbia Icefield – Banff, Alberta
Dickson Dam – Alberta
Rideau Canal – Ottawa
Parlament Buildings – Ottawa, Ontario
The Rocky Mountains – Alberta
Cave and Basin Springs – Banff, Alberta
Queen Elizabeth Park – Vancouver, BC
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology – Alberta
Niagra Falls – NY side
Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden – Lethbridge, Alberta
Alberta Birds of Prey Center – Coaldale, Alberta(I fed and held a Harris Hawk on my arm, one of the best things that happened on the trip)
Information Center – Idaho(lol I loved the potato pin)
Science World – Vancouver BC(I was totally impressed with the omnimax and startrek stuff)
National Gallery of Canada – Ottawa, Ontario
Geographical Center Pioneer Village Museum – Rugby, North Dakota
Nevada-Cali border – ahem (the sign was filled with bullet holes and we were travelling on a deserted highway… very comforting)
Native Heritage Center – DUncan, Vancouver Island, BC
Trees of Mystery – Klamath, California(some kid kept hitting Blue’s stuff and the talking Paul kept telling the kid to stop it…. in character…. very amusing)
International Peace Garden – Dunseith, North Dakota / Boissevain, Manitoba
Lake Shasta Caverns – Between Portland and SanFrancisco, Cali
All of Oregon’s Coast – Oregon(it was just a great place…)
There were many more but those are the ones we have brochures for 😉

That was easily the most memorable summer of my life… so many little pieces of memories from that time still float around.

“But tonight I just want to stay and be with you”

The End of Part One