Sunshine Girl

She's on the verge of being a mother, 8 months in on what will be a new path for the rest of her path, raising a child. In the same way that we all get hyped up making for a vacation to some exotic corner of the world, my friend Damaya is getting read for the end of vacations for, in my reckoning, AT LEAST the next 12 years.

I met her, as I tend to meet most of the enduring people in life, at a global issues event. In this case, it was Summerland's Fair Trade fair, to which I'd been invited to go to buy, celebrate and operate a table for Amnesty International. My first impression of her was of one of a game of tag, when it is not clear how one is supposed to transfer being "it" to another person. Colourful and blending in with the hippie/alternative lifestyle/saving the world types around her, I thought I'd found her in her element. I don't recall much of that day, I seem to recall playing catch with her with someone's juggling balls...

A couple of years go by. I run into her sometimes, always like "I remember you, you're Ben's friend," or some other equally dead end way of opening up to someone, where you're not entirely sure where to go next. I guess at some point we got past the simple recognition phase, and actually got to know her. What I found was an artist, in the sense that she was entirely honest about portraying what she thought about things in odd shapes and colours, and how hard it is to hold down a job when you're only options are for work that you can't mentally get your head around. At some point, I actually tuned in to what was going on in her life, about the time she went off on the home-grown Canadian Katimavik exchange, and started following her blog.
It seems a long time ago that happened, I kept running into her as I joined the local music scene, open mics and spoken word performances. I reckon that life has moved quickly since then, having found her now, fiancee, Stephen, and with a baby on the way, things seem to get more exciting daily, especially with her nightly requests to play Scrabulous, a game on Facebook with me.

I like my friend Damaya.