You told me so
Sheila, don’t say, “I told you so.” It really isn’t polite. Or good friendshipspeak. Don’t do it.
Because even when you looked into your friend’s face for the first time, hanging out in a chocolate shop in Sherbrooke, and saw that he was a guy who was hurting, and that over time, even though he was easily surrounded by companionship and various forms of love, that part of him felt terribly alone, “I told you so” isn’t really helpful to hear, almost a decade later, when everything is different.
Whoever said that guys and girls can’t really be friends was a goof. If I hadn’t been able to be friends with guys, I’d have had almost no friends for a good chunk of my life – in a neighbourhood swarming with lads (including the two brothers I grew up with).
When I was a single mum and wondering if anyone would ever even contemplate a love connection with me again, feeling that I would just live the rest of my adult life surrounded by all the Lego and laundry that two sons can produce, my friend Vincent (the guy from the chocolate shop up there) told me that everything was going to be okay. That I was going to figure things out.
And I told him that he was going to find the girl for him. He was going to marry her and have a family and a home – to go through the steps of life that he deemed sacred.
We laughed together. Really hard sometimes. We played music with friends. We went night-swimming even though I was scared. He gave me a hug, or listened over the phone, when I cried a few times. We talked about mistakes we had made. We moved forward. We encouraged each other to keep growing, and keep slogging away on the days where that’s what life felt like.
When I met my boyfriend, I’m pretty sure that Vincent told me that he “told me so”, and he definitely told me that he liked my guy right away. Our mutual friend Alex was there too – and hearing these two special guy friends of mine encourage me was reassuring.
Vincent pushed himself to do all kinds of spectacular things, impressive things, since we became friends – like visiting Africa with a small band of arborists like himself, and competing in (and winning) at the arborist games. (If those stories sound familiar, it’s because the stories were featured in a DH column of the past. He and four friends climbed the tallest trees in Africa, and measured some of the widest ones.)
Then, a few years ago, he began talking about a girl. He spoke differently about her than any others he had spoken of, and when I met her I could see that she was up for the challenge of our musical woodsman, the occasionally stubborn debater, music lover who saw himself as a little damaged.
On a cold day in March of 2017, he and his wonderful Sara were married. It was a thousand-trillion degrees below zero, but nothing could warm us more than that cosy little Hatley reception hall. I may have said, “I told you so.”
I may have felt that if you aim for the good things that you want in life, and persist in looking after yourself, if you acknowledge when you’re slacking off in that realm and make an effort to get back on track, if you remain open to real and true love, and the hard work of it, then sharing life with someone to love can happen.
Here we are in February of 2018, and in some ways it’s becoming a new world. There are a lot of changes taking place with regards to women and men, and how we treat each other. There’s a lot of support for growth and change, and healthy relationships.
And into the world of Vincent (the middle of three brothers) and his wife Sara, has come Elana – born as babies all are, first to the small collection of people in a room (or a place), and then through telephone lines, and today through text messages and shared images.
Elana is a name of Hebrew origin, meaning “tree”.
How appropriate, that Sara and Vincent, a champion arborist, would name their daughter after this shared and acknowledged passion.
No, today I won’t say “I told you so” – I’ll say “You told me so.” You told me so, so many times, in so many ways, that what you hoped for, in your own sacred wishes, was a woman you could love and respect (and who could handle your debates), to build a home with, and found a family with. And here you are. You did tell me, and it was true. You worked towards it, and you committed to it, and here I am to witness it.
Your family tree is a brand new one, in February of 2018, when the world is as strange as ever. Elana has arrived to change our lives with her presence. She will have powerful dreams and missions in this life too – and in no time, she will begin to tell us so.
Welcome Elana Shelby Jolin, and Congratulations Vincent Jolin and Sara Brière!