Memories of a childhood

***A quick, no spoilers thought on Game of Thrones before the blog***  

     Game of Thrones came back with a vengeance last night. They didn't really answer any of my burning questions, but I'm thinking they'll be touched on in episode 2. That said, there were some big things that happened, and that absolutely stunning reveal at the end of the episode. I'm not going to get into that today though. I know some people didn't watch last night, and I'm not going to spoil anything for them.
       This Monday's post is going to be a bit of a cop-out. I'm going to share a short autobiographical piece with you.

I always get the strangest urge to write the story of my life. I have no idea why, who would want to read about my life? It’s nothing incredible or even out of the ordinary. And yet the urges persist in tormenting me when I could be doing something else. So it goes, I guess, the story of me.

I don’t remember terribly much about my birth I am ashamed to say, but I suppose no one really does. It was in February, it was snowing, the dangerous and wet kind that the people living by oceans know and love, and it was in the morning. All this I know from people telling me. I should never have been born, and that sounds really depressing, but medically speaking I should not be here. Doctors told my mother she was incapable of having children, and nine months later I was an emergency caesarean. I started my life by almost dying. I wasn’t as well versed in etiquette as I am now and had no clue that dying at one’s own birth was frowned upon. As I said I don’t recall much from those early years. Snippets of a half-forgotten memory, a snapshot of a snapshot. I remember the wooden floors of our house in Nanaimo, the Disney wallpaper in my room, spinning around in circles until I would almost collapse. The sun. The grass. Oddly enough I don’t remember the rain. You would think that would figure prominently in the memories of one from the Island, but not until I was older. I remember my mother, and the neighbour girl.

Ahh the neighbour girl. My first love, my first kiss. All at the tender age of three or four. We spent almost every day together in the eternal sunshine of childhood. Eternity lasted until I was four and we moved away from her. I did not see her again for fourteen years.  The memories I had of her stayed in the back of my mind, forgotten, all those years only to spring forward when we got back in touch. The mind remembers more than we know. We may remember the sting of a thorn, but the mind always remembers the smell of the rose. 

I had a friend who burnt his feet on a pile of coals that someone had carelessly left on the beach. I can barely remember his face, I can’t remember the sound of his voice, but I can remember his poor feet. He had to wear moccasins for the longest time afterwards. He was my best friend back then, and I can’t even remember his voice or what we would play. I remember his feet. The mind is cruel. It torments us with half memories and half people. And burnt feet.

I had another friend, a girl with long, wavy brown hair, whose mom used to bake me cookies. She used to write me love letters. I have this vague memory of her face and this profound feeling of beauty. All I can actually remember is her hair. And, strangely, her kitchen. I spent time there, not a lot, but it stuck with me. All of a sudden I miss her. There is a strong ache in my heart where she used to be. In this time of upheaval and responsibility, I just want something simple. Something like a forgotten girl with beautiful hair on an island in the ocean.

Out of all of my experiences in British Columbia, a discussion about roads is the thing that stand out the most and has the greatest effect on my life. I was at the local Kid’s Club, mainly because one of my friends got an amazing stuffed bear from it, where I heard a talk about roads. The pastor stood up in front of us and began to tell us about the two different roads that were open to us. He said there was our way, which led to hell and damnation, and God’s way, which lead to the opposite. This simple statement has stayed with me stronger than anything else. Those words have shaped my entire existence. Everything I have done and am, hinged on this statement. Why? Why did a simple statement have such a deep meaning for me? “There are two roads you can take in life: your way, or God’s way!” For my entire life I have dealt in absolutes. Right and wrong. No grey areas, no middle ground. You’re in the right or you’re wrong. You can’t grow up believing that. It seriously messes you up inside. I’m still messed up from it. I'm not straight, and part of my mind still believes that I am going to burn in hell for that reason alone. Black and white. Only thing is though, absolutes don’t exist in real life.

We moved again. This time we moved far away from my ocean, my islands, and my mountains. I never imagined a place could exist where I could not see the mountains. So to educate me on my fallacies of thought, my parents moved me to Saskatchewan. My bright blue and green oceans were replaced by seas of wheat, my mountains replaced by the combines on the horizons at harvest. My friends were replaced with ignorant strangers who thought I was an American only because I was not from around their “parts”. I didn’t have many friends that first year. I was picked on because I was a stranger, bullied even. I started to gain weight from the stress and the hurt, which only led to more bullying. Little children are vicious bastards, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I’m done. Writing all this in chronological order? Who actually remembers things in order? I sure don’t.

Spinning around. The hard wood floor flashing around me. A childlike smile of glee plastered to my little face. The world tottering around my little body, the floor getting closer and closer with each revolution. Of course reality came crashing down when I did the same. I have vague memories of getting in trouble for this, and I’ve never enjoyed the feeling of being dizzy since then.  

My first friend, with love and loss

     My question mark is working... who thinks I can go through a whole blog without using i... this is not promising.
     My last two blogs have been fairly serious. One was about narcissism and art, the other was about terrorism and the negative affects upon society that hate has. This one should probably be less serious.
      Maybe I should go with something funny and lighthearted! Technically I should've used a question mark there, but I went for a dramatic effect instead. Don`t question it, I`m an artist.
      Instead of any of that, I am going to share with you a section from my memoir, which is what I am currently writing. The following section is about my first real friendship, and how it shaped my entire life. Ashley was the first person to read it, and she loved it. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Ashley was my first best friend. Probably my first friend period since we were the same age and neighbours, but saying she was my first best friend doesn’t sound as sad. I mean, I don’t want people feeling sorry for me yet. That’s reserved for future chapters!

Ahem. Back to the topic at hand: Ashley. Ashley was a lot like me. We even kinda looked alike (sorry Ash): wavy light blonde hair, bright eyes, our families dressed us alike, it was uncanny. I have a habit of showing people a picture of Ash and I when we were around three and asking them to point out which one I was. Much to the belittling of my already belittled ego, they often point at Ashley. I’m sure I would get a much different answer with a more modern picture (at least I’m sure Ashley hopes I would), but I enjoy my little game that allows people to take shoots at my fragile male ego.

(this is the picture. I’m on the right. I think)

We were neighbours with her grandparents, and through some stuff that is none of anyone’s business, she often stayed with them. All this time with her grandparents allowed us to spend copious amounts of time with each other. We would run around the backyard, eat cookies, drink lemonade, and everything else proper southern children were supposed to do.

Don’t look at me like that. Nanaimo is pretty south for Canada.

She was always there, and for those few years in Nanaimo, we grew up together. The foundations of who we would become were laid in our time spent together, and it would be evident, years later, that both of our foundations were fairly similar. We would both grow into the people that we are today based on the experiences and lessons we learnt together at that young age. She was my first best friend, she is my oldest friend, and to this day she is still my sister.

On a weird segue from that emotional paragraph, into something which may seem slightly incestuous now: she was also my first kiss. She says I initiated it. I’m pretty sure she did though. I was, and am, a gentleman and a scholar, and would never dream of kissing a lady without her express permission.

I was… three? Sure. We’ll say three. Ashley and I were hanging out in the massive backyard, sitting on one of the Harleys. I was looking fly as hell (as fly as anyone could in the early 90s) with my khaki shorts, white sun hat, and yellow framed shades (possibly the same ones I stared that cop down with). I was sitting in front, it was my Hog after all, and she riding behind. She looked nowhere near as fly I did. It would have been physically impossible for anyone else to look that fly in that close of proximity. Probably would’ve caused an explosion or something. I was looking back her, chatting it up, playing it super cool, when she had the nerve—the audacity!—to lean forward and give me a quick peck on the lips! I was flabbergasted! I was quite literally gobsmacked! She smacked me right on the old gob!

Of course, if you ask her, she will say that I kissed her, and probably a tomes worth of other vile lies about my character. Like that I thought Theodore the Tugboat was cooler than Thomas the Tank. Thomas the Tank for life son! Although… Theodore the Tugboat was pretty ballin’.

My time spent with Ashley was probably the most significant and important part of my early childhood. I’m not kidding about that. After we moved to Gabriola Island in 1994, I didn’t hear from her for nearly fifteen years. This was the 90s. Calling people on a different island was hassle and expensive, the internet was barely public, and even mailing letters was hard to do. So we fell out of each other’s lives.

And for fifteen years I forgot how important she was in my life. How integral she was to my state of being.

 Then, one night in grade 12, I was sitting at my computer chatting with friends on MSN (MSN was like Facebook chat, but way cooler) and Facebook, when I got a friend request and a message from some girl. The message was basically this: “Hey. My aunt says that we knew each other when we were kids.”

Enticing. So I added her, and we began messaging back and forth. As we messaged all the memories came flooding back. The fact that I called her Ash and she called me Yak. The time spent outside in the perennial sunshine of our childhood. The fact that we hadn’t seen or heard from each other in a decade and a half was not a hindrance. We were as in sync as we had been when we were four. We began calling each other, and would just spend hours chatting, catching up on the past fourteen years. My parents and I went out to Vancouver that summer (2008) to spend time with family, and Ashley and I made plans to meet up and hang out for the first time since we were four.

She was still living in Nanaimo at the time, so she came over on the ferry with her grandma, and her aunt (the one that found me on Facebook), and we all reunited at Horseshoe Bay.

I don’t know how to explain that afternoon. When we saw each other, it was as if those fourteen years had never happened. We were as comfortable with each other as we had been all those years before. Our minds were in sync. We made the same jokes. We liked the same kind of pop culture. Listened to the same genres of music. Had the same opinion on all important matters (Harry Potter and Star Wars). We acted the same as each other. We even were dressed in the same colours (honestly, it was not planned).

We were like two sides of the same person. We even liked and disliked the same foods. It was uncanny how alike we were.

We spent that afternoon making obscure pop culture references, and some not so obscure, that neither of our families got, but we understood each and every one.

When I said that those early years laid the foundations of who we would become, I wasn’t being over dramatic, or exaggerating, I was simply stating a fact. We spent almost every day of our toddlerhood together, and then the next fourteen years apart, but when we were reunited we were almost identical. Those first four years of my life were not just the foundation; they were the complete blue print of my life. Everything that I would do, everything that I would come to love and enjoy, everything I am stems from those times spent with Ashley.

Which seems like an incredible burden to place on a four year old.

I felt like a whole person that afternoon. Like all my separate parts were rejoined. That evening, when they had to get back on that ferry, we said good bye. It’s an odd experience having to say good bye to someone that you haven’t seen in so long. Someone who shaped your very being, and then was lost for over decade. How in the cosmic realm is one supposed to say good bye to that person?

With ice cream cones.

Ice cream cones answer most of life’s most pressing and existential questions.

We got ice cream, slowly walked over to the boarding area, and tearfully hugged goodbye with promises to stay in better contact.

Saying other half sounds like I’m being romantic, but that is not the case. I have no memories of my early childhood that do not include Ashley, no important, life defining early age event that did not include her in some way. She was part of me, in the same way that siblings are part of each other.

Ashley is such a fundamental part of who I am, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually told her that. To be honest, writing this chapter, short as it is, was extremely difficult. All kinds of emotions came into play, and I was flooded with old memories and more recent regrets.

We kept our promise for a while. Texting every day, calling once a week, but life, as it always does, tends to get in the way. Contact began to come more sporadically, it’s always there, but it’s a rare occurrence now. We needed to be in each other’s lives as toddlers, and we needed to be reunited on the cusp of adulthood, and we will eventually need each other again. But for now, we’re just stars in the night sky: always in sight, but never in contact.