A Love Story

I was raised by two people who met in my mom’s kitchen in the early 1970s. Beth was living in Toronto at the time and had been asked so politely to leave university for her demonstration of entrepreneurial spirit (out of her locker on campus). Beth had a brother who had a friend who needed a place to make candles (his entrepreneurial spirit) to sell and earn a living with. The brother volunteered my mom’s kitchen, without actually asking her, and so Walter, the friend, set up his candle-making business in her kitchen. When she arrived home to a great big mess, the rest is history.

They actually dated for less than a week before deciding that this was IT, they had both found THE ONE, and moved in together for good. They are still together, minus a few bumps in the road, after 38 years.

In the next year or so, the timeline in my family tales is a bit vague, Walter and Beth read a book. It was about a community – commune-ish it seems to me – where the ideals and dreams that they hoped could be a future for humanity were being lived by a group of hippies in Northern BC. So the lovebirds sold everything they owned, bought a VW van (without the psychedelic daisies and such – this is real life, folks, not tv), and packed up to drive northwest.

Just days before leaving they found out that they were expecting. That was me.

If you have kids of your own, or grandkids, you can imagine just how excited their parents were to discover that they were going to become grandparents to a child that was going to be living on the other side of the country. But, the grandparents were already working through their issues with the fact that Beth and Walter didn’t need any government or church to give them a piece of paper to make their commitment to one another real or lasting. Their commitment spoke for itself.

If you remember the generation who raised the hippie generation, or you are part of that generation, you can appreciate that the grandparents were having a hard time with this attitude of throwing off the shackles of traditional society. But, with half the country about to be between them, this didn’t seem like a huge obstacle for Beth and Walter to deal with.

It wasn’t. There were much bigger obstacles to come on their journey.

Please note that this is based on the stories told to me over the years as I was growing up. It is loosely true - perhaps read it as historical fiction. If it makes you more comfortable, read it completely as fiction. But it might help some of you understand me a little better. I hope it will help me understand me a little better.