![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As a girl, she’d allowed herself to imagine a future of adventure in the arms of her friend Freddy Pender, whose chin bore a Kirk Douglas cleft and who danced the cha-cha divinely. This is not at all how Joyce expected her life to turn out. Today, she occupies a bed in what she knows will be her final home, a shared room at Chestnut Park Nursing Home where she contemplates the bland streetscape through her window and tries not to be too gruff with the nurses. “There isn’t anything on earth you can’t find your own backyard,” her mother used to say, and Joyce has structured her life accordingly. Joyce Sparks has lived the whole of her 86 years in the small community of Balsden, Ontario. I almost believed in a version of myself that had long since faded away. I was out of my element amidst my kitchen cupboards and self-hemmed curtains. In spite of its garishness, I was surprised by how I felt: glamourous, special. I wore that necklace throughout the rest of the day. He called me Elizabeth Taylor and I laughed and laughed. Is this what my boy thought of me? I wondered as he fastened it around my neck. “It’s beautiful,” I said, even though it wasn’t my style. ![]()
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