ONLY THE NAMES ARE CHANGED

It’s My Life And I Am Not Ashamed

Memoirs 1 — Once upon a time in a land far away …

I’ve tried telling this story before and it all came to a crashing end before the story was told. I tried using real names and therein lay my problem. I needed some distance in order to be able to tell it like it was. I’ll just leave my name René [Ray, Rainy — the way English people pronounce the name]. Everyone else, the guilty and the innocent get a pass.

Before I begin, I will just have a few things to say. I came from a poor family. We became poor when my father was a youth, the result of an accident which destroyed his father’s business. Alcohol was involved. One positive result was my father refused to drink alcohol when he became an adult.

As a result of the family’s poverty, there were very few photos of me while I was growing up. I didn’t need photos as my memory is still crystal clear. I first wrote up my story ten years ago, a 25 page effort, a story where the simple act of telling it caused me incredible anguish, It also opened upa doorway to healing. My wife was beside me and emotionally supported me while the story unfolded. Now, it’s time to tell the whole story.

I want to start telling my story with how I came to be born. My parents met each other when they were teenagers. My mother told it her way, and my father added his version with only a few additions.

It was at the end of the summer of 1948. My mother, Bev, a pretty dark-haired girl with pale skin, was fifteen years old. While walking down a street where a building was being constructed, she noticed a virile young male not much older than her, but obviously very much a man, a very strong young man.

That man was my father, a dark complexioned and dark-haired man who was seventeen. I have to admit that he was handsome though all I have to go by was two old photos. Women found him attractive and he revelled in that attention. I have a number of half-siblings as a result. But, I am getting ahead of myself here. Back to the story. His name, sigh … this is still hard … think for god’s sake … His name was … Lou.

While climbing a ladder with a heavy stone lintel on his shoulder, this dark young lad of seventeen called out a compliment. Lou was working with his father, G. Lou had just finished high school and was now his father’s helper in the summer of ’48, in Ottawa.

It was love at first sight for my mother, as she told it. According to her, it was one of those Romeo and Juliette kind of stories. For my father, it was more like lust at first sight, a normal male response for a seventeen year old male when a pretty girl flirts with him. Like all teen-aged young men, Lou was all about himself. It was a character flaw that never disappeared.

My mother made a point of passing by the work site at least once a day hoping to catch the eye of the dark young man who had won her heart. Eventually, the “Hello’s” gave her enough courage to eventually say more.

Lou could hardly believe his luck in catching the eye of a girl like Bev. It was obvious to him that she came from a well-to-do family, an English family. She was from a different social class.

For my mother, Lou’s powerful arms and muscled torso, captured her attention and her imagination. Here was a man who would protect her. It was only in my adult years, when I learned why wanting to be protected was so important to her, important enough to cross cultural and social barriers.

With her infatuation with him, my father risked the forbidden fruit denied to him by both race, religion, and class. The French and the English were constantly at war with each other in Eastern Canada. The English had the power and the social status. The French were the peasants who did the real work.

Reason had nothing to do with the magic that swirled in the air. Lou noticed my mother staring at him and flexed his young muscles to accentuate them. It didn’t miss his attention that she was beautiful and petite, as well as being a flirt.

Loving the attention and the flattery, Bev continued to visit the work site over the next few weeks. And, like all “boy meets girl” love stories, she walked around in a daze at home. The school year resumed and she couldn’t help but steal every opportunity she could to pass by the site and spend some time with my father.

Together they would sneak into various dark corners of the building site when my grandfather was busy, and explore their dreams, their bodies and revel in being in love.

Like all young, love-struck girls, she talked to her mother about the handsome young man who had entered her life like some knight in shining armor. It wasn’t long before Bev’s father found out about the Catholic French-Canadian boy and how Bev had been skipping classes to be with him.

My English grandfather was adamant that the meetings would have to come to an end. He commanded her to never see the papist boy again. Bev feared her father and his temper. But, she was in love and hopeful that Lou would save her from her father, so she found ways to continue meeting with my father.

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