Our Story: We aren’t experts.

1988 not 1985

We were 12 years old in September 1985. He’d rolled in on a Greyhound bus from the Kootenays, with a dream to play hockey for a fancy club in Burnaby. I’d been in Canada just a short while after moving with my family from South Africa. As naive as they come. Mr. Hilborn’s class, in the doorway he stood, little pink tie, light blue checkered short sleeved button up and a sandy blonde bowl cut. I was his. Forever. He just didn’t know it yet.

Fast forward through summers flirting in the complex pool at Glenrobin Townhouses. We lived just doors apart. I was fascinated by how cavalier and confident he was. Just smitten.

1988. May 21st. We’d were 16, Zed had finally asked me to dinner and a movie. Red Robin and I think the movie was Return to Snowy River. He asked if I wanted to “go out” with him. Meaning date. Exclusively. My heart soared. Yes of course! We were tied at the hip until the end. Endless nights and weekends in freezing hockey arenas watching his games, movies in his parents basement. Bliss.

But life has a funny way of interrupting ‘forever.’ We parted ways near the end of high school, raised kids lived decades of lonely ‘in-between.’ But on the weekend of May 21 2022, the currents shifted and pulled us back into each other’s orbit, exactly as intended. We traded the freezing hockey arenas for our home back in the Kootenays, and the messy, beautiful reality of homesteading (still lots of movie nights!). We aren’t experts, but if you ask the ducks, they’d say we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.