Catching-Up

My college friend Mark was in Vancouver for business. Thanks to Faced-book, we had recently hooked up again and had been shooting emails and start-ass status comments back and forth for a while – but this was the first time we’d seen each other face-to-face in about 25-years.

A lot had changed in that quarter century. Fatter (me). Less hair (me again.) Same rapid-fire pop-culture-laced conversations we had started in the eighties. To be honest it was like no time had passed at all.

But there was something else we had in common now – we were fathers. Specifically, we had daughters. Mark’s little girl is just three-months old. Abby is nearly six-years old. And there’s another thing – we both conceded that we really looked forward to The Talking Years. Mark has a bit of a wait. I’ve been in my full conversation-Abby-glory for a while now.

I always envisioned my relationship with Abby sort of mimicking the final season of “Mad About You” with Paul Reiser’s ‘Paul Buchman’ sitting with his daughter Mabel making fun of all the people that passed by on the street. Abby and I aren’t quite to that level of debauchery quite yet. For now, it’s just the two of us at a McDonald’s Play Place on a Sunday afternoon chatting about the important things in life: Build-a-Bear, Scooby-Doo and how she beat me playing Uno… again!







It was good to sit down and reminisce and catch-up. And it was good to connect with someone who I could go all goo-goo-daddy with over a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at White Spot. Next time we’ll have to bring our daughters – though I doubt we will be able to get a word in edgewise.


*Photos made of Laura Zeke of the Digital Photography Program at VanArts