That's me
on the left.
Heather is
in the middle and Wendy is on the right.
They lived
2 doors down and were my earliest friends.
As I was
working on this picture I started to smell their house.
It smelled friendly
and comfortable, like toast.
Other
memories of three little girls who were loved and protected
surfaced as
I sat at my drawing table.
But I was
also aware of the shadow that was looming over us that day.
It got into
bed with me later and I tossed and turned for hours reliving ugly
events that
I still don't like to think about.
In those
days divorce was illegal and very rare in Canada.
Their
father took his new wife to Ohio in the USA and raised a second
family.
The girls
and their mother eventually moved away from Merritton
when I was
about 10.
It was the
beginning of the end of my childhood.
