what i remember

Setting: Ascension of our Lord Church, Westmount, Quebec, 31 December 1992.  The weather sucked, as I recall; Stan and I arrived at the church only about 10 minutes before the ceremony, thanks to the road conditions.  Lynn was already in the vestibule, waiting, and there was a Wardrobe Malfunction: the train, which was designed to hook on to the back of the dress with a row of hooks & eyes, was not staying on properly.  Lynn was (no! couldn’t happen!) in a panic, and when I walked in I got caught in the whirlwind of “We’re trying to hook this thing ON but it won’t STAY there and it keeps flipping OFF and it’s going to come off as I’m going up the aisle and we’re just trying to get it FIXED but it’s almost TIME….”  You get the picture.

So, as the Official Seamstress to the Bride, my role was clear.  I must fix this catastrophe.  I did not, unfortunately, have any useful tools of the trade at hand.  However, Mother Nature always provides, so I resolved to use my teeth to squeeze the hooks into a narrower loop, so that they would hook and stay hooked.

Where Was The Camera???  This is the question we must ask ourselves.  In this epitome of Kodak moments, there was no-one to record it.  Some guests may remember it, because I know people were still entering the church as I fixed the problem, and they all gave us quizzical looks… for there was Lynn, facing the wall and braced against it with her arms, and there I was, crushing hooks with my teeth as the train was partially attached to her dress – so, to all appearances, gnawing at the bride’s butt.

I am happy to say, the train stayed on.

After we married and before James was born we moved from the third floor apartment at forty-eight hundred Decarie to a lower duplex on 5^th Avenue South, across the street from the Hormel intersection, in Roxboro, the address may have been the number 60.

It was a nice little place and in many ways it was our first grown up home though we had both lived on our own for quite some time. We bought a twenty-six cubic foot Whirlpool refrigerator from a wholesaler in the east end and the stove, washer and dryer we bought from Eaton. These were our first possessions as a couple as opposed to having just merged our meager fortunes in marriage.

We lived in this lower duplex for the first few years of our marriage. Lynn created a nursery for James in the room across the hall from our bedroom; another room was used for storage/computer space though in truth it was more storage than computer. It was in that storage room that James got his first taste of video gaming as he sat on my knee while I played the first version of Doom. The living room was small but roomy enough for a television couch and arm chair it also had a door out onto a balcony which overlooked the driveway which dipped down into a garage beneath the living room. There was a kitchen/dining room adjacent to the living room which was where I walked the floor with James when he had colic. The garage we rented separately as an additional storage space. It was a decision that we ultimately regretted as the garage flooded one spring.

A few years after James was born Lynn started making noises about getting a house. The plan was simple enough: Lynn had been contributing to RRSP’s for quite a few years and while we didn’t have any savings our debt to income ratio was still manageable. For my own part I did not want a house, I thought it was a bad idea, that it would cost too much and that ultimately we would be locked into the suburbs for the rest of our lives.

Being in the suburbs for the rest of our lives was exactly what Lynn wanted. She had grown up in what most would consider to be a semi-nomadic kind of life. Her family moved more often than most and never owned a house. For Lynn a house, a home, represented the stability that she always wanted and hoped to one day have. Once she was motivated to do something Lynn was a force of nature and we started shopping for houses. We looked exclusively in the West Island and mostly in the Pointe-Claire area near Sue’s house because Lynn wanted to be close to her best friend Sue.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that at the same time we were looking to buy a house Sue’s family was putting their parent’s house on the market. Both of Sue’s parents had died in a relatively short space of time. Sue and her siblings were already married with families and houses of their own so they decided to put their house in Dorval on the market. That is probably simplifying things a mite but that was our take on things.

The details are a little vague but I seem to recall that the house never actually hit the market. As soon as Lynn heard that it might be available our fate was sealed: Lynn wanted that house. At the time I thought that the urge to buy and to have that house was motivated by the great deal we got on the house. We bought it for a very good price, the oil tank and oil were included and there was no dickering back and forth on the price. They told us what they wanted for it and we countered (based on what we knew was the maximum we could afford as a mortgage payment) and the house was sold to us.

In no small part we have a house because the Heather family chose to sell the house to Lynn. It was only much later in our marriage that it became apparent that it wasn’t the price which so motivated Lynn to buy the house, it was the house itself and the memories it held for her. Some of the happiest moments of Lynn’s life were in the Heather house. She told stories if Sue and Karen  and Sue’s mom as if they were the family she grew up with and in many ways they were. There is no one who could make Lynn light with laughter the way Sue could and there was no one who was a finer and more loyal friend. When we bought the Heather house in more ways than one Lynn was finally at home.

The Christmas of 2010 was the last Christmas Lynn spent at home. In 2009 she spent Christmas in acute care at the Montreal Neurological Institute and in 2011 she spent Christmas in West Island Palliative Care and died a few days after Christmas. In 2010 the decorating process started early and it was frequently directed by Lynn who had always been responsible for all special family occasions. It is no secret to anyone who knew her that Lynn held Christmas dear but also had a deep commitment to making New Year’s Eve, Saint Valentine’s Day, The Oscars, Easter and birthdays as special as she could make them.

Lynn liked spruce trees so once again we had a spruce. The decorations were brought down from the eves of our son’s room and Lynn and Katharine worked on decorating the tree. We got a short tree that year because we wanted to have Lynn put the star on it and that worked out just fine. Despite the restrictions of being in a wheelchair and having expressive aphasia and apraxia Lynn was able to accomplish almost everything she wanted…almost.

From the front door of our house when you enter there is a short corridor which has an entranceway to the living room immediately to the right as you enter. To the left of this we put the tree but because there is no electrical in the corner where the tree is we have to run a wire up and over the entrance and mask the cord with decorative cardholders. We thought that this had been done well but not, apparently, to Lynn’s satisfaction. With her very limited vocabulary and the ability to only speak two or sometimes three words at a time Lynn tried to direct me to fix the problem. Katharine, seeing that I wasn’t quite getting it, started to try and help but to no avail. Finally James stepped in and all three of us were moving stuff around the entranceway constantly asking “ Like this?” “Is this it?” “Over here? “ with Lynn pointing, twisting her one good arm and hand around gesturing and answering with “No.” or “Like that” or “Over”.

In a moment of what must have been complete exasperation Lynn blurted out “Why are you all so stupid?” It was the longest sentence she has spoken in months and we all dissolved into laughter and hugs. We never did get the problem of the entranceway solved but we have a memory in our hearts of Lynn’s spirit and humour because of it.

Lynn loved Vermont almost as much as she loved New York. For our first holiday together though Lynn chose Vermont. There was no way that anyone could possibly have known ahead of time the kid of preparation that Lynn would put into a simple Canada Day weekend excursion to Vermont. The breadth of preparation was simply astounding to someone for whom preparing to go to the US for three days simply involved converting some currency and filling up the tank before leaving. This was in the summer of 1990 so all you needed to get across the Canadian – U.S. border was a drivers license and a destination so little thought was actually required to leave the country.

The Vermont trip was the first time Lynn introduced the Canadian Automobile Association Triptik to our relationship. The TripTik became a staple of every trip we took. A TripTik is a travel planner a collection of spiral bound maps that have accurate notations on road conditions and construction going on during the specified period for which they are ordered. Once we had decided that we should take a holiday together Lynn was off to CAA to get a TripTik and waxed poetically about their usefulness when queried as to what exactly a TripTik was. Planning, any kind of planning, was close to Lynn’s heart.

We left on Friday night in my Suzuki Sidekick and promptly got stuck in traffic heading south for the weekend across the Champlain bridge. It was while we were on the bridge, enjoying the summer heat, James Taylor on the tape player, that Lynn revealed that we had an agenda for the weekend. We would be staying at the Hampton Inn in Burlington and eating breakfast at Libby’s Blue Line Diner in Colchester. An aside here – Libby’s Blue LIne Diner closed in November 2011 the same month that Lynn entered palliative care. The Hampton Inn was chosen for its proximity to Libby’s and their Big Diner Breakfast which was second only to Ihop Rutti Tutti Fresh and Frutti Breakfast in Lynn’s love of restaurant breakfasts.

Breakfast, especially while on holiday, was a big deal for Lynn she loved breakfast while on holiday. Other than on Sunday breakfast was a nonevent while at home. Lynn liked to leave the house early without eating and grab a muffin or a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee for breakfast at her desk at the Centaur.

Libby’s was only part of a weekend that involved quite a bit of shopping and eating most of which is lost to the mists of time. There were two other events which stand out. The first was while we were driving to Barre, Vermont. We took a break for an early lunch at a town the name of which I cannot remember. In part we stopped to visit a local garage sale but we saw a small diner and decided to stop for a bite to eat. The meal itself and even the diner were not particularly memorable what was memorable was the woman who came in twice while we were eating looking for a man in the diner. We couldn’t know if it was someone who worked at the diner, ate there regularly or owned the diner but we could tell that the woman was anxious to see him. This woman inspired Lynn into theorizing about why the woman was anxious to find the man. She was the man’s mistress and needed to see him for some reason. Why she arrived at the conclusion that the woman was the man’s mistress is still beyond me but we had a good laugh about it as Lynn spun and incredibly complex story about the theoretical relationship. Lynn loved a good conspiracy theory as her later love of the X-Files would show.

The other memorable experience was our visit to Hope Cemetery in Barre. Lynn called it the Stone Cutter’s Cemetery because many of those buried there were stone cutters who worked the granite in the Barre area. It was an odd place to visit for our first holiday together but it was a wonderful experience. Lynn always had her camera with her and we still have all the pictures Lynn took of the cemetery. In retrospect the holiday was a bit of a test to see how well we travelled together – spending all day together for four days – she must have thought that we passed the test.

Lynn has featured in my life for almost 40 years, and I am extremely grateful for that. From first meeting her, I have admired many qualities which are awesome when possessed individually but when combined make for a dynamite individual. Lynn is that ultimate individual, gifted with a keen intelligence and remarkable senses of self, humour, loyalty, love, family, fun, laughter, steadfastness, spirituality, friendship, conscience, and confidence.

Of course, after almost 40 years, stories are numerous, and choosing one to write about is formidable. And so I have simply decided to write about when I first got to know Lynn at the shared tender age of 12 when I had been painfully plucked from where I had recently lived in Fort William/Thunder Bay Ontario- surrounded by both sets of grandparents and other extended family and dear childhood friends- and plunked in Dorval’s Joubert, at the time a Junior High School housing Grade 7′s and 8′s. Displaced, shy, and terrified, I was relieved and happy to be welcomed by the finest league of adolescent friends one could hope for, beginning with meeting Lynn, Cathy Susy, Heather, Sue, Cristina, and Linda and becoming instant and lifelong friends with them. We are The Beebs and are proud of it, and because of one another, we thrived in High School in our own way. Whenever we all or a combination of us are together we remember why we became friends and why we have remained friends.

Early in 1974, as I recall in February, I have my first distinct image of 12 year old Lynn and I discussing the new release Terry Jacks’ “Season in the Sun,” a song, about a young dying person saying goodbye to a loved one. I distinctly remember Lynn and I discussing life and death, and a dreadful disease called Cancer. We were sitting at a table in Joubert’s cafeteria and eating our lunches, significant to me as that was the only year I ate lunches at school with friends instead of at home with family. We never ever truly considered that anyone of our tight-knit friends, or for that matter anyone else that we knew, would ever face the challenge of such a disease or anything more traumatic than the 12-year-old challenges of making and keeping friends, surviving the cruelties of adolescence which includes skin trauma and boys, and perfecting that essay or scoring well in that math test the next day. Not long after and throughout the decades following, we all would take turns facing and therefore sharing unfathomable pain and challenges, and at this moment are confronted with the cruel painful challenge of losing one of our own. Terry Jacks’ lyrics are haunting now, but these were the lyrics that spoke to us then and unfortunately speak a reality to us now (albeit taken out of context of the true meaning of the song):

“Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We’ve known each other since we’re nine or ten.
Together we climbed hills or trees.
Learned of love and ABC’s,
skinned our hearts and skinned our knees…..
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun……”

Lynn, we fellow Beebs loved you then, we love you still, and we will love you Forever.

Lynn and I worked together at the Centaur many, many moons ago. I think she had just taken over as box office manager when I went to work for her. I was in my early twenties, with visions of a stage career dancing in my head, so as you can imagine, I wasn’t the most reliable or focused employee. But Lynn didn’t give up on me, and I eventually learned to do things her way, also known as The Right Way.

We box office babes were an exuberant, slightly unbalanced, virtually unmanageable crowd – mostly young women, mostly performers – but Lynn was a great manager. She gave us all kinds of latitude to joke, tell stories, run through our lines, plan parties and sing at the top of our lungs, as long as at the end of the day, the reservations were tucked away and alphabetized in their snug little envelopes.

I was fond of Lynn in those days, but she was still my boss, so when, a couple of years in to my box office stint, I came out as a lesbian, she wasn’t the first person I told. As a matter of fact, I was a bit scared to tell her, possibly because around the office she was affectionately known as Captain Catholic. I had never known her to push her beliefs on anyone – unless you count making us listen exclusively to Christmas music for the whole month of December – but I was chicken. In the end I think I got Johanne Pomrenski to come out to Lynn for me.

Had I known Lynn better at the time, I’d have been less surprised that, rather than shocked or

disapproving, she was delighted. I think Lynn always knew the importance of living according to your true nature; if someone didn’t like your taste in music, or your religion, or your sexuality, that was their problem, not yours. Suffice it to say I wasn’t quite there yet, in 1988 or 89, but Lynn didn’t give up on me. As a matter of fact, Lynn went out of her way to be supportive of me, and the two other box office babes who came out in the space of a year.

Now, this happened to be around the time she met Denis. I may be getting the details wrong, but as I remember it, she had gone on a jaunt to New York and had brought back little pink triangle pins and earrings for me and the other girls. So, picture this: she’s just back, and these items are sitting on the mantel in her apartment, and she invites Denis over for the first time. He walks over to the mantel and notices all these pink triangles. She sees him looking and wonders if he even knows their significance. Oh, he knows. And he’s suddenly asking himself, am I some sort of experiment for this girl? Is she going to toss me aside and go back to women? Well Denis, if you were an experiment, I think we can conclude you were a rather successful one.

Lynn brought it up with me, not long ago, how I had been afraid to come out to her. She was still a little hurt about it. All I can say, Lynnie, is, back then, I didn’t yet know the bigness of your heart. We’ve gone through many phases of our lives since then. I know there were times when you wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. And there were years when we didn’t see each other at all. But I’m so grateful for the laughter, and the good times, and that, thick as I was, and still am sometimes, you never gave up on me.

Unbeknownst to almost everyone Lynn and I had nicknames for each other. Lynn was “my little Passat” and I was her “Eggplant man”. The origin of these nicknames is not particularly unusual. Eggplant man was lifted directly from the comic strip Adam which ran in the Montreal Gazette for years. In the strip in question the main character Adam is doing the laundry and ties a towel or blanket around his neck then regards himself in the mirror. Looking at his doughy physique Adam dubs himself Eggplant Man. Lynn’s nickname was a little more involved and came about on a drive out to St. Jean sur le Richelieu to visit her grandparents. It was a sunny day and we were just chatting about nothing in particular when I saw a Volkswagen Passat which was a new car at the time. I really liked the car and we started talking about it Lynn as always wanted to know what specifically I liked about the Passat. I said that I had always liked small cars and this one was small, cute and had a big trunk. Lynn quipped that it sounded a lot like her and from then on she was “my little Passat”.

Lynn would always argue that she never said these things but she never offered a different version of the events to anyone.

The exact time of year is a mystery to me. It may have been in the fall of 1990 but it was definitely before 1991 had started as a year. Lynn said that I could ask her to marry on one of three days: Valentine’s Day, her birthday or Christmas Day but if I hadn’t asked her to marry by Christmas then I would have to find other accommodations because she wanted to marry and have a family and she wasn’t going to wait around. Those were not the exact words but the words were to that effect. Well Saint Valentine’s Day was just too close so that wasn’t going to happen and the birthday thing never struck me as a starter. That left Christmas.

Along with many of the plans Lynn made over the years this plan involved compulsory activities which didn’t actually make sense. This time it was shopping for an engagement ring together. It was a surprise that, according to Lynn, this was the correct way to shop for a ring otherwise the woman might end up with an inappropriate ring or worse one which she did not like. We started shopping, just looking around really, at jewelry stores which were part of the Trans American Trade Exchange which was a barter group of which The Frame-In Place was part. We went up to a mall in Laval and found a very nice small sapphire ring that Lynn kind of liked and better yet it was very reasonably priced. We did not buy it – part of the plan was that the ring had to be purchased in secret so it was ultimately a surprise to the woman. (Really she had a way of making it sound reasonable). We also did not stop shopping and looking around.

There was a kind of jewelry epiphany one day when we were in Fairview shopping center in Pointe-Claire and walked into the Doucet jewelry store on the second floor of the concourse in the middle of the mall. There, under glass, was a tiny heart shaped ruby surrounded by tiny little diamond chips. Lynn absolutely fell in love with the design and tried on the ring – she fairly glowed when she put it on her finger. It was not inexpensive despite its diminutive size though in the realm of engagement ring pricing it was actually dirt cheap. For us the price was more than a month’s rent at the time so it was up there.

It was a few weeks before Christmas when I applied for a Doucet credit card. The approval process in those days was weeks as the application was mailed off to somewhere and then you would get a letter in the mail a few weeks later either approving or saying that you had been declined. It was getting close to Christmas with still no sign of a letter of approval or refusal when I started to panic and formulated a plan to save Christmas. Since it seemed like I would not get the Doucet card in time for Christmas I would go to Laval and buy the sapphire ring as the engagement ring then if the Doucet card came I could always return the sapphire ring and buy the ruby ring.

Getting the time to accomplish the relatively simple task of buying a ring was easier said than done. Lynn liked to know where I was at pretty much every moment of the day. It was a control thing that most of the time I didn’t mind but occasionally chaffed and made doing things in secret almost impossible. Fortunately The Frame-In Place did have a delivery service and it wasn’t much of a stretch to say I was out on an after hours delivery as they did happen once in awhile. That allowed time for a trip to Laval on a wet winter’s day to buy the sapphire ring.

The Doucet card arrived in the mail a few days before Christmas. Christmas was in the middle of the week that year which allowed for a very narrow window of opportunity. At that time Lynn spent a lot of time in the box office around vacation time dealing with what seemed like a never ending series of crises. This usually meant that she was in on Saturday mornings to take care of the matinee crowd and it was that which allowed for time to get to Doucet and buy the ring.

Then there were two rings. The option to return the first ring was the obvious way to go but when we are young the obvious is not always the chosen path. It seemed like it might be fun to play a little joke on Lynn and manage a proposal at the same time. The sapphire ring was boxed and wrapped then reboxed and rewrapped and then put into a huge box and wrapped again. The ruby ring was left in its small box and wrapped in an unassuming paper without a bow or even a card. Both were put under the Christmas tree next to the faux fireplace in the livingroom of our third floor apartment on Decarie.

Christmas morning 1991. Lynn was wearing pink satin pajamas and a fully white terry cloth robe. We were sitting on the big, high sided, white sofa in the living room taking turns opening presents when Lynn started opening the big box. She sorted through the newspaper and found the next box and opened that one, then found the smallest box and the expression on her face said it all: she knew there was a ring inside. Lynn opened up the smallest box and looked at the sapphire ring. It was not what she was expecting but more importantly I said, “Do you like it? It can be your Christmas ring.” Lynn replied, “It’s very nice…but it doesn’t mean anything?” It was more of a statement than a question but the question was there. Lynn contained her disappointment and gave me a present to open up next and what if was is lost in the mists of time but I made certain the next box Lynn got was the small unmarked box containing the ring she really wanted. As she opened the box she was clearly happy and I said as I slipped to one knee on the floor infront of her,  “And this is your engagement ring.” Lynn put the ring on right away and gave me a big hug and a kiss.

Some hours later while she was making Christmas dinner in the kitchen and I was in the living room watching television I heard Lynn yell out “Wait a minute! You didn’t even ask me to marry you!” It’s true, I never asked her to marry me.

All stories have a beginning as does Lynn’s but not all beginnings are the same. Born in Ottawa, baptized in Otterburn Park, Quebec and growing up in Otterburn, Dorval, Tracy and back to Dorval Lynn’s early years involved a lot of moving about and changing school. She always wanted to settle down and have a place to call her own.

When we met we were both in our late twenties. Lynn had just come back from Europe and came into the Frame-In Place the small picture framing store at 4960 Decarie in the Snowdon district of Montreal to get a picture framed. The picture was a small, brightly coloured painting of the Eiffel tower. It had a bright blue background and the tower itself was painted in a deep yellow/gold. Lynn wanted to frame it in a natural wood frame, pine or basswood but she let me convince her to frame it in a bright white Italian lacquer which I thought offset the blue nicely. I made her a deal: if she didn’t like it I would not charge her for the framing job. When she came back to get it I could tell that she didn’t like it but she insisted that it was okay. We met halfway and I heavily discounted the frame and she took it home. It was a small thing and whenever it would occasionally crop up through the years of moving she would say to me “See I told you a wood frame would look better.” She seemed to keep hoping that I would change my mind about the framing job but I did not and neither did she. She knew what she liked and fortunately one of those things she liked was me.

The second time we met the Frame-In Place had moved two doors down from its original home to 4952 Decarie right next door to the Snowdon Post Office. We were only half a block south of the third floor north facing apartment Lynn had at 4800 Decarie that second time Lynn came into the store. With her she brought a poster advertising Cat On A Hot Tin Roof starring Kathleen Turner. Lynn had seen the performance and loved it and naturally fell in love with Kathleen Turner. We had a brisk discussion about the relative merits of Kathleen Turner as an actress – Lynn was more impressed than I with Turner but I admitted that her work in Body Heat and Crimes of Passion was impressive. The job was a simple lamination onto particle board so there wasn’t anything to argue about when it came to getting the poster ready for hanging. The actual timing of when I asked Lynn out on our first date is a little vague to me but I am certain it was in April of 1990 shortly after the Carribbean death by drowning of a dancer from Les Grands Ballets Canadien. Remembering the timing thusly might seem a little macabre but it explains why our first ever date was a night at the ballet. At the time I knew a former Les Grands dancer who was married to a dancer who at the time was still with the company. Both were friends of the dancer who died. They wanted a nice memorial picture/plaque and with their input I made a custom memorial and did not charge for the job. They in return offered orchestra seating for the ballet which were accepted and precipitated my asking Lynn to go with me.

It was a nice first date. It started with my picking Lynn up at her place. She was in the process of moving and just about everything she owned was in boxes – a state which I later learned was almost permanent since not everything could possibly be unboxed and still leave room for people to live in an apartment. We went to Place des Arts and watched the Balanchine performance then later went up St. Laurent street to get a bite to eat at Lux. Eventually we ended up at the lookout at St. Joseph’s Oratory of all places. Why there was ever a second date I will never know because in retrospect I can scarcely believe that anyone would have had a second look after my being me for several hours but Lynn seemed to find something worth a second go. Lynn once asked me why I asked her out and I answered honestly that it was because her ankles were cute. Actually it was more than that it was also that she wore a denim jumper with a white t-shirt, ankle socks and white Keds and wore a straw sun hat. It was everything including her strong opinions about acting and actors. We moved in together about a month after our first date. Probably quicker than either of us would have thought possible and no doubt something we would both object to if our children did it but that is how it went and there’s no point in pretending it didn’t happen that way. After our first date we were together for the next twenty and a half years.

Cheryl Morrison was the first girl that became an obsession. Of course at five years old she had to compete with G.I. Joe, tag and the hokey pokey but that probably was not of concern for either of us. Less clear in recollection but still of enough import to be fondly recalled was a girl named Claire (spelling might be wrong). Claire inspired me to walk to school in the morning so I could wall up Eleanor street and walk her to school. This was no mean feat as I was in grade two at the time and the walk from my house to school was about two kilometers plus another five hundred meters or so up and down Eleanor to walk with Claire. The entire walking/talking relationship lasted at least a week. Really those are the only two girls who stand out from Kindergarten to grade three.

Grade four brought us to the “big” school. There were two Mountainview Elementary schools at the time one for juniors and one for seniors (grades 4-6). The class I was in, in grade four was Mrs. Howarth’s and the most momentous moment of grade four was the arrival of Angela Jackson. Angela, the name fairly filled the air with visions of angels and her long blonde hair and near angelic beauty did nothing to dispel the spell she unknowingly cast on all the boys in grade four. Boys will be boys and since all of the boys fell in love with Angela simultaneously we had a meeting where we were informed that Stephen Pennell was going to be Angela’s boyfriend and that was that. Stephen was the best at everything and if he had set his cap for Angela all the rest of us could do was to step away or get run over.

Grade five was spent in Mr. Halverson’s room. It was an interesting class because Mr. Halverson always had something interesting to do. He manage to get us to learn while really keeping us excited about what we were doing. The only girl for me in grade five was Dawn Hamilton-Browne. Curly brown hair and an almost ever present smile she like Angela, Claire and Cheryl before her fit a pattern which I only recognized when I was in high school: she was much smarter than me and she was pretty. The following year, grade six, it only got worse when the absolutely ephemeral Michelle Graham appeared. Waist length brown hair and a whiz at math! Aside from a few class projects and arguing with my teacher that light had to be a wave not a particle (yes we actually had that argument in grade 6) and being beaten up simultaneously by Kevin Marler, Bobby Matthey and Gordie Hines,  the only thing I really remember about grade six is Michelle Graham.

Puppy loves are funny. They are so short lived they should not be recalled but they are so intense remnants of the feelings still linger on years later.