LEAVING HOME BEHIND

Leaving Home Behind

I’d say I grew up in an average middle class 2 parent family in Calgary, where mom stayed home when she needed to and also worked at times. Living in the same neighborhood growing up and attending one school from grades 1-8 and another for grades 9 - 12, life was very stable. Our stable environment also included all our friends and neighbors. Nothing much changed in our world.
So what do we do after graduation! My friend, Donalee, and I decided we wanted to leave home. We settled on moving to Banff. So off we went, well armed with care packages from home, on our first adventure into the big wide world.
We found a lovely cabin to rent and we both got jobs at the local bakery after promising the owner that we would not up and leave without giving him notice. Had many a breakfast of a jelly donut we’d fill with extra jelly. I bought my first pair of blue jeans. Many hours were spent listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy St. Marie, and Joan Byez records. My parents would come to visit, always bringing more care packages from home. Life here was stable.
In September we started talking about moving on. Our first plan was to stand on each side of the Trans Canada Highway and whoever got a ride would be the way we would go. We settled on hitchhiking to Vancouver. So on September 30, we told our boss that we were leaving at the end of September. We boxed up our belongings and shipped them to Vancouver by Greyhound. Traveling light, we made it to Vancouver in 2 rides. The second ride was with a traveling salesman who took us on his sales route each day through the interior of B.C. Each night he would drop us off in Kamloops at the Y.W.C.A. where we would hand wash our clothes. Five days later we arrived in Vancouver.
We got a room at the West Pender Hotel. There was a wonderful place we were told about where people spent all night listening to music. They feed us peanut butter and jam sandwiches for breakfast. Once there was a band that played Heh Jude where the drummer did a 10 minute solo.
We got to know the hotel clerk and his friend. One day we were sitting in their room drinking scotch and then beer. Boy did I get sick, all over his friends bed. All the while denying that anything was wrong, I never get sick I said.
Donalee answered an ad for a room for rent and moved. In December, traveling by train, we went back home for Christmas. In tow was Andy, a boy I had met and was taking back home for Christmas. There was a guy playing a guitar on the train that made the trip memorable.
Andy was warmly welcomed by my parents. In January he continued on his journey never to be heard from again.

In January Donalee decided to stay put. I still wanted to return to Vancouver. So, off I went. I rented the room in the house that Donalee had lived in. I got a job at a printing company. A few months later I answered an ad on a bulletin board at a laundry mat for room and board. That’s when I met Ruth and her family that included a boyfriend, her two boys, her father and his girlfriend. She worked at the Penthouse Club as a cigarette girl. They lived in a big old house on East Broadway, closer to my job.
I started dating Ray, a guy at work. One night he stood me up and Ruth suggested that I should go to the singles dance as I was all dressed up anyway. After 1 dance, the first guy that had asked me to dance, Edward, reappeared with his drink and sat down. I noticed another guy a couple tables away laughing at us. He motioned to me asking if he should come over to rescue me. That is how I met Walter, my future husband. We were married August 1st, 1970 in Calgary. We moved from Vancouver to Squamish and then to Port Alice on Vancouver Island. A marriage that was supposed to last till death do us part, lasted 2 years.
I now found myself running back home to my parents in Calgary. I got a job at a bank data center and eventually rented a room a few blocks from home, in the house of a co-worker who lived with her parents. After a couple of years I took the train to Toronto to visit with my cousins and old neighborhood friends for the summer. I would spent a few days with my dad’s cousins in Scarborough. Marg cooked and baked from scratch. Left over’s were kept and used in the next day’s meals. Then I would spend a few day’s with Win, Ket and Jimmy in Etobicoke. There any food left over after a meal went into the garbage. That is until I stopped them from throwing out the left over Kraft Dinner one night. I loved eating Kraft Dinner cold the next day, even for breakfast.
I used to babysit Ket and Jimmy when they lived next door to us in Calgary. Now Ket and I became great friends. We took a train trip once to Quebec City for the Winter Carnival and the bunch of us stayed at the Hotel Frontenac. But I get ahead of myself.
Summer over I went back to Calgary, to pack up and move to Vancouver. I got a temporary, till I found something else, job with the Vancouver office of the Market Research company that ‘Auntie’ Marg worked for in Toronto. This was the beginning of a long career.
A couple of years later, I ended up driving east in January with Marilee, who was moving to Toronto to go to University. That journey is a whole other story in itself. Maybe that’s the one I should be telling.
My life in Toronto, a whole other story in itself. Marilee and I rented a suite on the top floor of a house. I went to visit my ‘Aunt’ at her job and started working there that day. A few years later I met Alan and moved to Quesnel, B.C. but first moving back home with my parents in Calgary.
So I ask, do we ever really leave home behind!


December 1, 2008 Memoir Writing Homework > Young Adult Story 1