Warning: This editorial may get sappy ahead; if you don’t want to get covered in the stuff, you might want to skip. I have a few not-sappy things to say in column four. Otherwise, you have been warned.
It was about six years ago that I realized that, as of June 9, 2018, I had been married exactly as long as I had been unmarried. Or, to put it another way, I had spent exactly half my life married to the same person.
I have now spent more of my life married than I did single, and I’d not have it any other way.
And soon—as of July 9, 2024—I’ll have been married to her for 30 years.
30 years seems like a long time sometimes. At other times, it seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. I suspect that might just be my memory starting to go. I am getting old, after all.
And if I have been married for more than half my life, we have spent more than half our lives together here in Tumbler Ridge. Indeed, we have spent most of our lives together here, having moved here six years after getting married.
We moved here so she could go work at Cameron’s restaurant, back when what is now Joe’s Pizza Stone was Cameron’s.
She worked there for the better part of six months before Doug decided that he really didn’t want to run the restaurant anymore, and so shut it down.
But by that time, we had put the down payment on a house. This was back during the housing sale, so even if neither of us were working, we could still afford to make payments on the house.
Sigh. Those were the good old days….
Since then, we’ve grown and changed, as the town has grown and changed. The town didn’t have any active coal mines when we moved here, and we didn’t have any kids. Now the town has one mine and we have two kids, the first of whom is just wrapping up their college education, the second who is almost done high school.
And despite an ankle that doesn’t like it when I run, and the near-hourly pee-breaks, I don’t feel like I’ve spent 24 years in Tumbler Ridge, 30 years married, 54 years alive. I still feel like that 18 year old kid who moved to Tumbler Ridge after high school.
Despite our best efforts, life goes on. We can try and fight it, or we can hold on and enjoy the ride. And I gotta say, it’s been one heck of a ride, full of ups, downs and all arounds, just like a roller coaster.
As long as it doesn’t just sit there and spin, like a Tilt-a-Whirl. I get dizzy real easy….
Colette, on the other hand? Loves spinning rides. I know, she’s blonde, so it feels a bit cliche, but there you have it.
Somewhere along the line, she decided she was going to be the stable one. She’s described our relationship as a game of tetherball. But we’re not the players. No, we’re the tetherball game itself. She’s the pole, firmly planted on the ground.
Me? I never touch the ground. I’m just swinging this way and that, chasing this dream or that. I play in a punk/rock band. At 54. Still looking for my big break as a musician.
I am still working on getting a novel published. I’d have to get it written first. Or maybe a movie script. I’ve got one of those.
Or maybe I’ll make it as a photographer. Yeah. Let’s do that.
And she just smiles, and goes back to her painting. Even after all this time gives me space to dream dreams.
Even this, what you hold in your hand, is a dream, blessed by Colette and allowed to take flight, as best it can.
As is usual, I find myself, when needing to express myself, turning to music. In this case, a song written by an obscure fellow named Terry Scott Taylor, who wrote a song called Blowing Smoke, which I think sums it up pretty well:
When I’m blowing smoke
She’ll be laughing at my jokes
She could always get the joke
I’ll tell the world I love her
When I lose my place
One foot in the human waste
Gentle understanding heart
Will move me back again
To my lover and my friend
When I’m blowing smoke
When I’m at the end of my rope
She cuts the line and offers me hope
No shame to say I need her
Here’s looking forward to another 30.
Errata: There’s a bunch of things I’ve been wanting to write about, say, but they aren’t really long enough for a full story, so I’m just going to toss them in here.
Is it just me, or with the whole Cottonwood/dandelion season upon us, has more white, fluffy stuff fallen on the ground than this entire winter?
Speaking of white fluffy stuff on the ground, it is Husky shedding season. I apologize for all the white fluffy stuff on the ground….
If you carry a co-op cardlock card and you haven’t noticed yet, the Tumbler Ridge cardlock station is currently down, and has been down since June 27. According to reports, Federated Co-operatives Limited was victim of a cybersecurity attack. Rather than pay the script kitties who perpetrated the hack, they appear to be taking their time to recover access to their system, but it means the Tumbler Ridge Cardlock remains down for now.
Finally, I wanted to take a moment to remember former TR resident Ellyanne Spinney. I don’t really know what to say about that; my sister (Jerrilyn, who wrote the story about Harry Prosser) is much better at these sort of things than I. Her parents—Doug and Lorrie—were key members of the community for the longest time, and are still loved by many, including me, though they moved away a decade ago. I can’t even begin to understand the grief they must feel, and my heart goes out to them.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
