I'm having an affair.
Well there it is, out in the open. Truth be told, there's nothing new about this. It began many, many years ago. I was smitten from the moment I first looked up into those gleaming gold highlights. I was wooed by dark mysteries, gargantuan body parts and promises of travel to faraway places. In my university years our late afternoon trysts were soft transcendent moments of comfort and joy. Marriage and the arrival of children demanded only a few modifications of our rendezvous but no change in ardour. In fact my love came into full flower -- at the entrance to THE BAT CAVE.
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| photo taken summer 1977 |
And now you know! This object of my affections for most of my life and half of its, is the Royal Ontario Museum - The ROM. My dear paramour turned 100 years old yesterday at precisely 3pm. I am as enamoured now as I was when my eight year old feet first stepped through the big doors on Avenue Road and into the awesome rotunda. The golden Murano glass mosaic on the ceiling still takes my breath away, as do the gargantuan dinosaurs in the new Crystal.
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| Photo courtesy of the ROM |
The promise of travel to other lands and other times is still very much alive and well. Case in point is current special exhibition: the The Forbidden City - an amazing glimpse inside the court of China's emperors - and an especially timely display as we will be in Beijing in less than a month's time.
Thank you ROM for so many years of delight:
for encouraging me to look up, way up, to see the bigger things in life,
for giving refuge when university stresses threatened to overwhelm me,
for taking me to faraway places and long ago times,
and thank you ROM for THE BAT CAVE, which provided hours of shrieking entertainment for our children.
Happy 100th Birthday!
(We'll carry on meeting in the usual place...)
©2014 April Hoeller
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