40

Forty years ago, with the assistance of a midwife, a small teenage girl in an off-grid log house built by her new husband gives birth to a healthy boy with a full moon in the sky and

and love

The young parents nurture the infant into a curious, thoughtful boy and give him two sisters to love. Together they attend church and raise goats. Surrounded by tall New Brunswick pines and birch he explores the vast world until he is sent to a one room school where he discovers an equally wide world of numbers and letters. A former nun keeps him in check and fosters his love of calculating.

Catastrophe. Fire. Displacement. Alberta.

A western church school with rough kids who teach him how to play sports until sunset. He finds his place in the music room and in living rooms rolling Monopoly dice and on a paper route.

Uproot. Transplant. Church planting. Summer camps and francophone school and crushes and the Atlantic Ocean and Lord of the Rings and closer friends and Stanley Cups and math contests and guitar lessons and neon clothing. Boarding school and kissing and heartbreak and alternative music.

He finishes strong. His family breaks apart.

He begins again with his mother and sisters across  the continent. A year with friends on a Pacific island he teaches and learns to love and wises up. University classrooms and library halls and concert halls and heavy textbooks and computers and history lectures and loud trombones and Friday night singing and

and love

She smites him with a smile and all is lost. And all is found. She is tall. She is strong. She is a northern beauty.

A wedding. A blue collar city. A job at a church. A job at a school.

A move. A cosmopolitan city. They teach and they reconsider beliefs and they discover alcohol and more friends. Fireworks and another move west and

and love

A son. This boy is quiet and cheerful and thoughtful. A call south, further south among the Poqomchí and Mestizo. They learn Spanish. They support change and growth and life and

and love

A daughter. This girl is joyful and strong and charming. A call north, near mountains. Mortgage and a new school. Reconnection with family and new connections with community and church and deeper friendships and enterprise and heavy loss and change and sharing a home with 8. Rich summers of heat and travel and delicious beer and big conversations and marathons and trans-Canadian travels. Long winters and birthdays and films and children and board games and math lessons and concerts and books and brewing and

and love