My younger son travelled to Alberta with me last week, in part because he wanted to visit Hay Lakes, the village where I lived for the first six years of my life.
We decided to drive there from Edmonton on the Sunday after we arrived.
Let's attend a church service in the church where I was baptized, I suggested. That way we can see the inside of the building.
My cousin Elizabeth drove us.We parked in the parking lot next to the church and headed in.
There was coffee - and homemade cookies - before the service, so I introduce myself to the group of people who had gathered in the foyer:
When I was a child, I lived on Main Street, in an apartment above the garage my father owned, I told those who had come over to welcome us. And my mother was a teacher in the Hay Lakes School. I mentioned their names.
I remember your dad, one man said. He sold me a car.
Your mother was my fifth-grade teacher, said another man with a walker.
I remember walking down the road from Main Street to play with a little girl who lived in a farm on the right side of the road, right where the road splits, I told them.
When I mentioned the year I was born, the man with the walker said: That would have been my sister, Marlene. I grew up on that farm and I had five sisters.
We stayed for the service and chatted again before heading out to wander around town.
I was elated to discover that there were still people living in Hay Lakes who remembered my parents - 70 years after they had been a part of that community.
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