Hetero lifemate

Robert Shanks is my hetero lifemate, which is to say that he is the same gender as me and I have known him all my life. I said, in my first post, that I would say more about Rob later, so here is my piece.

Robert and I met when we were 1 year old (or not quite yet) at mothers and tots swimming. In a speech at my wedding, Rob tried to explain our attraction, and it might have been that we floated well together. I think it may have more to do with both of our mothers being of the chatty variety. Before long, our mothers were meeting for tea on weekends, and Rob and I would crawl around together. A friendship was built, as well as many forts, many lego devices and many elaborate plans to keep our mothers chatting and drinking tea long after our afternoons were said to be over.

I've known Rob longer than both of my younger siblings, which carries with it a special weight. We went to different schools; Rob in the English public system, and me in the French Catholic and public system. But weekends were our time. When we lived down the street from each other, our favorite activity was playing in these huge boxes in his basement. When Rob's parents moved in, they furnished the house with a new fridge, washer+dryer, freezer and who knows what else, and the boxes were preserved. We pretended the boxes made up the Millenium Falcon, and that we were Star Wars characters. We easilly spent three years worth of weekends in those boxes.

After highschool, we would go to different universities. I stayed in town so as to not have to pay rent on campus, whereas Rob left town and went to Waterloo. We don't see so much of each other now, but we stay in touch. Our paths are different, and I don't think we'll be having many more weekend sleepovers. I didn't have much of an orbit when I was young, so I tended to gravitate around Rob. He remains my hetero lifemate... we could get together and fall back into the same comfort that characterized our weekends in highschool. Emailing and blogging have now become the windows we use to look in on each other now.

Good luck with wherever your path takes you, Rob!