Life is Your Story

 I’m 16, hopping fences, one backyard to the next. It’s Fall and the air is hinting that winter is on its way. It’s one of those nights when you can smell everyone’s dinner cooking. It’s dark out, earlier than the previous month and the kitchen lights are on. I can see entire families seated at the table, eating, talking, enjoying the end of another day together. I see single people alone, watching TV, eating slowly, stepping outside of themselves, wondering, when this became their nightly routine and how they ending up alone. I reach my house and enter the back door that we keep open because I am always losing or forgetting my keys. There are meals prepared for the week by my mother. My parents are both working, and my brothers are nowhere in sight. I warm up some chicken and rice and I am just about to chow down when the phone starts ringing, back in the day when everyone had a “land line” and if you were talking and someone else was trying to reach you, well they got a “busy” signal

  I remember the sound of the ball coming in contact with the bat. The wood bats had a hallow kind of smack, while the aluminum had a ping. I remember the lamplights turning on, slowly, hesitantly flickering before reaching their full strength, the moths dancing in the warm spotlight. I grew up in a small white house, along with my two brothers, on a one-way street called Wentworth. The park was our backyard. It’s where we learned how to play basketball, baseball, hockey and how to look out for one another. Our parents worked several jobs to make ends meet. We lived a simple yet fulfilled life. We were kids with 3 baseball diamonds, two basketball courts, a shack to play “wall ball” against, a jogging path behind Diamond 2, a playground beyond that, and our very first school, Wentworth School across the street, beside yet another landmark, Blossom Pool. We had a neighbour who talked to the bus drivers, whose rest stop was in front of our house. His name was John “Babe” Learie. He also

·           Someone who makes you feel like 2 cents. ·           Someone who makes you feel like a million dollars. ·           A friend who never grew up. ·           A friend who never had the chance to be a kid. ·           Someone more successful than you. ·           Someone in need of a hand up not a hand out. ·           A co-worker who makes your life impossible. ·           A co-worker who enriches your life. ·           A mentor. ·           Someone for you to mentor. ·           A teacher who changes the course of your life. ·           A lover you are addicted to and can never have. ·           Someone who will hurt you because they have been hurt. ·           Someone who teaches you how to love yourself by loving you first. ·           An offensive, unpleasant, aggressive individual who upsets you to your very core. ·           A warm, engaging soul who nurtures you in every way and makes you whole. ·           Friend

The friendships you create and nurture when you are younger are different than the ones you establish later in life. The friends who grew up with you knew your entire family. They played in your house and sometimes their siblings and your siblings and a whole gang of neighbourhood kids joined together for a game of baseball or hockey or just to hang around in the park doing nothing and doing everything. They also knew things that friends you meet later in life will never know like the smell of your house/family. You know the way every family has their “smell” They also knew if your mom was a good cook and enjoyed her best meals and desserts and they knew what type of food was in your fridge and in your pantry and how much of it they could get away with eating without feeling uncomfortable. There was that one house where everyone hung out either because the parents were away often or they just didn’t care if there were 20 kids in their basement doing whatever they were doing.