Episode 2: Grandma Audrey

TRANSCRIPT

Friday, September 25, ‎2020
Vancouver, Canada 📞 Vancouver, Canada

GRANDMA AUDREY:
I’ve always wanted to write up a chapter about that because what happened was that whenever new year’s eve came round when I married your grandfather, I said I want to always spend New Year’s together, you know, and bring in the New Year’s, and it’s important to me. Fine, so that was all lovely. And on this particular occasion, Mom and Dad were, ahh mom and Brad, were probably three and five, maybe anyway about that age and he phoned up to say that he’d been offered this job, and $100 in that day and age, which was the 1960s would have been a lot of money. And he said, he’d been offered this job to go for a house party to play the piano. And I said, Oh, well, I guess you turned it down or something like that, he says, No, I took the job. He said, because I thought, well, in the morning, you’ll feel much better about it when you get the money. Hahah I can’t remember what I said or anything. I’m sure I slammed the phone down probably. But I phoned up my girlfriend who lived not too far away from me. And I said, you won’t believe what’s happened! Oh, crying away. And she said, Oh, she said, I’ve got a babysitter coming tonight. She said I’m going out. Pete and I are going out at the airfield where he was instructor, an instructor for a flying club for private planes. And she said, Pete and I are going out and we’re going to have a babysitter in so she said just pack the kids into the car. She said come right up and stay overnight. 

So that’s what I did. And wouldn’t you know, I went to this dance. And I think honestly, we always said it was almost like, you know, love at first sight, whatever yeah. Just like that. His wife was heavily pregnant at the time, actually, she was probably seven or eight months pregnant. She was sitting at a bar, at the bar. And in those days, we didn’t realize how important it was not to drink too much, you know, but anyway, she was she drank too much anyway, Lys unfortunately. But she was sitting at the bar, and certainly wasn’t dancing, that’s for sure. So it was lovely. So and then I got home that night, and I’m just taking my stuff off, coat and everything. And I found this phone number in my pocket. And I said to Joan, I said, you know, who’s phone number is that and she looked at it and she said that’s Herb’s phone number. 

ALEXANDRA:
Oh my god. 

GRANDMA AUDREY:
So I thought well, well he was he was smitten as I was smitten, because I mean really when you’re dancing you don’t do much talking do you? You know, you’re sort of, Just generalities. Anyway. So that was the first time I ever met him… She was still in high school, I think, yeah, when I, when we decided to get together and the rest is history, as they say, we got married, and unfortunately, he died. But I still think I lived more in that sort of 10 years that we were together than most people do in a lifetime. You know, we just made every minute count. It was wonderful. And yeah. So you can’t always meet your soulmate the first time around can you? Haha

ALEXANDRA:
Hahah wow, and did you keep in touch during like, after you met him?

GRANDMA AUDREY:
But Joan was a friend of his you see because he was, he was being taught to fly by her husband. That’s how he was at the airport for the dance. And so she, he and Joan and Pete were quite good friends and Lys his wife, you know, but they never really liked his wife very much. I don’t know why but anyway. But they you know, so Joan would always tell him when I was you know, going to be around whatever. He’d popover but it was, it certainly wasn’t as satisfactory as it would have been living with him a lot longer you know? But…these things don’t always happen that way. Do they?

ALEXANDRA:
Wow, that’s pretty crazy.

GRANDMA AUDREY:
Yeah, You hadn’t heard that story before had you? So that song, that across a crowded room. That some enchanted evening? You will see a stranger…

ALEXANDRA:
Mmm maybe yeah.

GRANDMA AUDREY:
From across a crowded room. It’s always been a very big favourite of mine. Still is Yeah. 

ALEXANDRA:
Awww that’s so cool. 

GRANDMA AUDREY:
Yeah. Thank you.