Another week
has come and gone. This one, however, was the most pivotal in most people's lives
as they grew up. Yes, the last day of school and the start of the summer break for
kids in elementary school it was a time to spend at the pool or playground and
play to your heart's content. The parks, safe and free from bullies by the city
parks staff, were always a refreshing relief from the daily schoolyard bullying
that many face tragically too often in a place where you should feel safe and
secure. It was this reason that I hated my elementary and junior grades and
turned to multiple venues of escapism to try to run from problems that should
never have existed for any child in the first place.
In 1975, I
would find myself taking the money I had earned from working after school and
buying a plane ticket to Toronto, committed to the idea of never returning to
the hell I was going through. This, of course, would not last, as I was made a
missing person as a juvenile and quickly rounded up on the streets of Toronto,
and sent back to a hell I so desperately wanted to rid myself of. What my
mother and stepfather did not realise is that at night, instead of the party
scene to which they thought I was participating in I was in night school
through the Catholic system so as not to make my mother the wiser of what I was
doing. The miracle was that I would be finished Grade 12 the same year I
completed Grade 10, and I left home for good, never to return.
It's hard to
say sometimes that I never had a fancy Graduation with a Tuxedo and prom. Laughably,
I received my diploma six months ahead of my older sister, who was also living
out the same nightmare. Looking back, I didn’t need to be there; there were
many other graduations far more critical than that of a diploma being presented
on a stage that I didn't want to cross. Basic Training in the Navy would be the
first of many successes I can count in a life that I never wished for or
believed would be full of so many dramatic turns.
Life,
surprisingly, would put me back on the corners of Yonge and Gould, where ten
years earlier I was arrested and sent back to a life I did not want. A love
that I could not share and a dream that I could not see ahead of me. This, for
me, was the Alfa in my life; it was the beginning of the adventure, and all
else could be left behind.
As I
approach the Omega, I find that our past successes become increasingly less
relevant to what we are doing today. So, the graduations most remembered are
those of my children, and the success they are achieving in their own lives.
Now Karen
and I seek out newness and life together and separately. Surprisingly, neither
of us knows where it truly begins or ends. Still, one thing is certain: both of
us look forward to gathering up our memories and fearlessly attempting the new
portholes, leaving all else behind.
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