As the annual TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival is right around the corner, I’m glad this year in-person gathering outdoors is open, and Tim and I have booked a few concerts including two on July 1. Last year due to the pandemic, there was no physical gathering for the festival. Coastal Jazz organized an online celebration by collecting some stories. How Tim and I met was showcased their page from 2020. You can find it at this link.
Here’s us, in 2019 on the blanket where we met, as the story told in Chapter 2 of Carol’s Lives: Blanket Speaks.
An excerpt from Page 20 – 21:
The band finished. The emcee was announcing the next show, which was due in about 40 minutes. People in the crowd started to get up and move around. But I was ready to sit down after all my Canada Day window shopping. Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a blanket like those lying there, so that I could sit and enjoy the sun with my book? As if through magic, to my right I spotted an unoccupied, big, light purple and white checked blanket lain out on the grass. It looked so inviting; lovely and lonely, just waiting for me to take my seat on it in the sun. I found it hard to resist its pull. But I was resisting.
- – No. This must be someone else’s blanket.
But nobody is there now. And my feet are tired. I need to sit on something just like that.
- – You don’t really want to steal a blanket, do you?
If I don’t take it away, it’s not stealing. It’s borrowing.
- – But how can you call it borrowing without the owner’s permission?
Maybe the owner has already abandoned the blanket. Maybe someone just didn’t bother to take it back home after that last act.
- – What if the owners just left for a while and they will come back? That would be really embarrassing.
If they come back … then … maybe, I will make a friend or two!
Strangely, the prospect of making new friends excited me more than sitting on the blanket itself. To date, I had not made friends with strangers in Canada easily. Or, so I thought. I still cannot explain why the idea of making new friends thrilled me so much that sunny Canada Day in David Lam Park.
I want to wish you a Happy Canada’s Day!
