Another old friend

[velvetpage]

The summer I turned sixteen was the year I moved to Hamilton. It was also the only year I went to the Salvation Army's music camp for older teens and early twenties, known as the National Institute of Music, or National for short. It happened - still does - every year at Jackson's Point in the week right before Labour Day.

That year, I hung out a fair bit with yet another Peter. (How many of those do I know?) Also with his girlfriend, whom I believe he was in the process of breaking up with at the time, named Rebecca. She and I corresponded for a while before falling out of touch. What can I say, it was the age before the internet. Anyway, this Peter was an officer's son like me. His younger sister was good friends with my younger sister, as they were about the same age, and his parents were among the Toronto-area officers who didn't shun my parents when they left The Work two years before. (There were a surprising number who never spoke to my dad again.)

It was a summer of transition, and I don't know if I was at all memorable as a companion. I was painfully shy to my own perception, and awkward, especially about boys. It would be two more years before my snail-mail romance that led to my marriage.

Anyway, pvenables friended Piet a while back. I'm not sure if he realized that Piet's much-lauded wife is an old friend of his. So, Hi, Peter! It's Erin! How's life been treating you?

Comments

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Heya! When Piet added me I had no idea that I had met his wife already!

I think my memory of you has less to do with whether or not you were memorable and more to do with what may have been going on in my life at the time. That was one of the only times I went to National as well. I'm not sure I went more than once, even. As I spend more time thinking back some memories flow but still lack much definition.

Nonetheless, I'd be happy to talk more about our first meeting to recall those times more clearly.

Feel free to drop me an email sometime as well-- I feel it would be nice to have a reunion as it's been some time since I saw either of you. (pvenables at gmail dot com)

:)

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

If I knew your then-surname it might jog something in my ol' tincan-brainpan...

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Page. I put it together with my favourite and longest-running D&D character to get my username.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Some photos from roughly that period of history!
(http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/ZkqeyywWQDrL4lubhlGH2g?authkey=Gv1sRgCOG-oJDQ2dq3gwE&feat=embedwebsite)

(http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/mfHnAfw0zhDi92zFce2D-Q?authkey=Gv1sRgCOG-oJDQ2dq3gwE&feat=embedwebsite)

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

That's doing it! I definitely remember that face!

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Thank you Piet. And more to the point, thank you, Erin.

*gets little hearts for eyes*

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You realize I was underage in both those pictures, right? Actually, maybe not the second one - it was in Piet's parents' house, and I started dating him when I was eighteen.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Doesn't mean you weren't beautiful. Just admiring, is all.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Ask your parents about the Pages - they might be able to trigger your memory. But you weren't living with them by then, I think - you stayed in London when they moved to Toronto. I think I remember you as much through Val as anything else, since she and Heather were so close for a while.

And yes, we should definitely arrange some socialization. :)

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Now it all comes together. Valerie spent a lot of time with Alanna-- you have an even younger sister named Alanna, right? They were really really close friends in Scarborough as I recall.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Yep! She's married with a small son now. And it was Alanna she was friends with - Heather was still very young when we left Toronto. Wasn't it your family that Alanna went to Florida with when she was about nine?

[pvenables.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right but I wasn't there then.

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

Odd that I too friended your husband before discovering he was married to you as well.

Another set of co-incidences.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

But I gave you a much harder time about not remembering me immediately. :) OTOH, Peter knew me for a week, you knew me for a year. :)