velvetpage: (blue canary orange me)
velvetpage ([personal profile] velvetpage) wrote2009-04-17 04:31 pm
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Another old friend

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, [livejournal.com profile] 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?

[identity profile] pvenables.livejournal.com 2009-04-19 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] velvetpage.livejournal.com 2009-04-19 02:47 pm (UTC)(link)
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?

[identity profile] pvenables.livejournal.com 2009-04-19 02:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Sounds about right but I wasn't there then.