My New Life
User Story
By Lisa Holmes
My Edmonton story began on my day one—February 22, 1980. After a couple days of long and hard labour (by my mom), my parents welcomed me into the world at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. The doctor that smiled as he handed me to my mom for the first time probably didn’t know that 27 years, 10 months and 3 days earlier, his dad, also a doctor, had smiled the same way at my grandmother as he handed her new daughter, my mother, to her. Both of us born in the same hospital, maybe even the same room. My mom told me that as I was born she could remember watching airplanes flying by on their descent to the City Centre Airport. And days later they took me home to their first home – a townhouse in the west end that had a great view of a big open space that reminded my dad more of the town he grew up in than the city he lived in. They joke now that Edmonton knew I was coming along and built the world’s largest shopping mall across the street as a gift – and to remind my dad that he wasn’t a small town boy anymore.
New job opportunities came and our time in Edmonton in my early life was short. But over the years the connection to Edmonton and family was always there. And when the time in my life came to choose a place to start my life again, as a young adult and student – Edmonton was the natural and only choice. It was like coming home. My husband and I were married on a beautiful June day at the Royal Alberta Museum. He had proposed on a park bench downtown overlooking the river valley. We bought our first home in Castle Downs and settled in to begin our life together.
23 years, 9 months and 11 days after Edmonton welcomed me, I found myself in a room at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, gazing at my new son. I looked up, saw an airplane flying by on its way to the City Centre Airport— and I smiled.
