a look back meme
20 years ago
I was a high school drop-out, high on this and that and yes plenty of those too. I worked a 12 hour shift as a desk clerk at a motel on the edge of town that catered to oil field workers or as we called them and they called themselves, rig pigs where I had to remember to turn on the porno movies at a certain hour. I worked an 6-8 hour waitressing shift at a restaurant in town and yes, I realize that left me a grand total of 4 free hours of which to party my ass off but my weekends were free for drunken escapades and wild bush parties, naked beach running into cool waters under moonlight acid trips.
(i can’t believe i am sharing this!!)
I was in the process of leaving my boyfriend of a couple of years for what would become my new boyfriend and having a bit of fun flirting with this one and that one.
I was working my way through shakespeare and enjoying all the philosophy books I could get my hands on. I had a lot of time to read during those long 12 hour nights manning the night shift.
15 years ago
I was living in the city (as us small town homies like to call it) and working on my english degree in university. I had hung up my lifeguarding flippers to work as a morning baker at a convenient store called happy mart (it was filled with other university students and was indeed quite happy) and was done work by 2:00 pm every day giving me plenty of time to plan my wedding and hang out with my fiance.
I had left the previous boyfriend for the shiny new fiance not quite a year before. I had just moved out of a house of many shared accomodations, it seemed the party had come to an end and moved into a high rise apartment in the heart of downtown.
(gosh, i had abs back then ~ this was just before i dyed my hair blonde)
My hair was dyed blonde and my skin was a lovely shade of brown and I looked a bit like a barbie doll having somehow managed to abandon my hippy ways and my red hair. It was my one and only stint as a blonde and I found it extremely annoying that I was suddenly being hit on right left and centre. I was bouncy happy and a little freaked out by all the sudden changes.
10 years ago
My son turned four (did I mention that I got pregnant on my wedding night?) that July and I we had just moved into a big two story house in a beautiful neighbourhood near the university. We had a big old apple tree and a boat and a car and I was happily back to my red hair and patched jean hippy ways. I wasn’t even freaking out about turning 30 as I was happily working on my education degree, working here and there as an admin assistant and enjoying my family. I was doing a writing workshop and spewing poetry to whomever would listen and was writing a play which was later performed at our city’s fringe festival.
(technically, this was taken when i was 31, about a year in a half from this point but i think it represents the period well)
I biked everywhere and did yoga 3 nights a week. I even purchased rollarblades and enjoyed blading to school and around. I would get drunk on too much beer and wine, friends and laughter, intellectual discourse and chattering banality and loved to walk barefoot along the dew danced grassy side of sidewalks from the Avenue to home. Looking back, I can see that it was quite the idyllic summer and I couldn’t have predicted at this point that it was all going to fall apart though I can see the frayed edges if I look closely and see how lonely and confused I felt inside.
five years ago
A lot can happen in five years as it turns out.
I was living in the downstairs of an upstairs/downstairs house with my a son who had just turned nine. My landlord lived upstairs and she too was divorced and sharing custody with her ex-husband and she had three boys all around my son’s age. In fact our little street was quite the divorce central and filled with boys running up and down the yards, playing street hockey and enjoying the end of our street which turned into a ravine and led to all kinds of parks.
I should have been reeling by the fact that in five short years, I had been separated, discovered myself as a single woman, danced through the dating scene and ended up engaged to a boy nine years younger than me. I had watched my sister die and decided that I couldn’t get married again and then somehow ended up in a relationship again.
I had been dating my love, duke, for nine months and we were so completely committed to each other that we had just moved in together. My ex-husband had a house about 12 blocks away and my ex-fiance lived 3 blocks away. I somehow managed to stay friends with all involved. I had just gotten a promotion from research assistant to project coordinator and was managing a major fund and flying here and there and there and here.
I was contemplating quitting smoking but wasn’t quite there yet. I had been making a few fun project films and was craving still life so I had just ordered a brand new sony dsc-f717 camera which was the best digital that I could afford at the time.
Oh and … *blush* as of tomorrow, I posted my very first post though I had really no idea what the heck a blog even was … my first time
3 years ago
I was still living in the upstairs/downstairs trying desperately to save to buy a house of our own. My son, had just turned 11 and duke and I were so very much in love and so very happy together.
I had quit smoking for a year and was really into photography, it became my new addiction and I shot with every kind of film camera I could get my hands on.
(photo by paul ‘duke’ paetz)
That July, I shot my first roll of medium format film in my holga.
I was contacted about having one of my photographs published in a book and there was discussion of a photo show. I shot my first band photo shoot, all in film I might add as I was pretty much shooting exculsively in film in those days.
I took my first helicopter ride and spent 2 fun filled weeks road tripping across southern alberta with my boys. It was an amazing wonderful summer.
one year ago
My son officially became a teenager, hello 13. We celebrated the fact that we had been in our very own house for a year now and we were enjoying our first garden. It had been just over a year since our beautiful twin boys had died in our arms and we were still feeling fragile but were doing a lot of talking. We headed to the coast and vancouver island to spend some time with Duke’s brother who had lung cancer and are glad that we did as he passed away in October. We spent a lot of time reading buddhist texts and discussing whether we would try and have another baby.
I learned how to twist up jewelry and we decided to become vegan. we spent a couple of beautiful whirlwind days with my best friend and her beautiful family as we met up in Victoria.
and we were also lucky to meet up with another beautiful talented jen for breakfast.
yesterday
I worked through lunch, worked through coffee breaks but managed to make a whole lot of headway with the papers on my desk. I have less than two weeks before vacation so am trying to get things in order. I biked to work and biked home in the burning hot sun. I watered our garden and flowers and marveled at how far we have come with it all. We went to bed early because I was exhausted and listened to the rain pour down as lightning lit the sky from the wide open windows and the breeze lulled me to sleep as the fresh scent of grass and trees and flowers fragranced the first good night sleep I have had in days.
Today
I am not working through coffee, clearly, and am doing this fun meme that I found on a lovely friend’s blog. This morning I biked through the most incredible storm light, darkened skies highlighting downtown’s skyline as I biked through trails lined with grafitti to booming crashing thunder and emerged into the inner city downtown core to large raindrops cooling me. It was beautiful. The sun is out again and I am looking forward to biking home and then perhaps eating and walking over to the fairgrounds as I would like to see Joan Jett play at edfest because she was my hero when I was 12.
tomorrow
bike … work … gym … work … bike … home … hang with my baby and who knows what else, every day is a new possibility.
in the next five years
well. if i look back over the past 20 years, even the snippets that i have done here, i really hate to predict because so much can happen, so much can change and so much of that we have absolutely no control over.
I hope to see my son graduate high school and turn 19, I hope to enjoy five more beautiful years with this beautiful husband of mine. I hope that our house continues to be filled with the sound of his drums, music and laughter, the smell of paint and more photographs that I can keep track of. I hope our darkroom is fully functional in the basement and I envision my yard and garden to be so much fuller than it is. I would like to be working on my masters in fine art and I would like to be doing more traveling. Five years is a blink but it is also a lifetime.
At the end of the day, I hope that five years from now, I am enjoying the sunshine and my heart is full of love and that I am happy.
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