It s 1987, and I’m living in East York when I first hear this song. At the time, it registers simply as another love song to add to my growing collection. I didn’t yet know how many kinds of love a person could collect in a single year.
That was my only year of high school in Canada, and I was quietly building a new life. I started playing badminton twice a week at the local club that used my school gym the first of two sports I would take up that year. The second was basketball.
Basketball changed everything. Two months after I arrived in Canada, a Trini family friend from New York came to visit. I drove him around to see some of his friends, and in that orbit I found something unexpected: a bond with a group of older Trinidadian men, most of them already with families. I’d played a little basketball back in Houston, but with these guys, I found a deeper love for the game.
We played every Friday night. Even after I started university, I came back every Friday to run the floor with them. The ritual never changed –play hard, then head out for food. Real Chinese food, of course. There we were, a group of non Chinese-speaking men, confidently eating our way through authentic Chinese dishes, loud and happy and very much at home.
That group stayed together for over fourteen years. I was the youngest when I started; the next youngest was Frank, who would become my best friend. After our very first game together, he invited me to his 21st birthday. Somewhere between those Friday nights and shared meals, I found my first real social circle in Canada people who knew my background, who understood where I came from.
With them, our Trinidad accents no longer needed hiding. We were liming again. And looking back now, I realize that while the song spoke about romantic love, 1987 taught me something else entirely: I had been in love before with community, with belonging, and with the feeling of finally being known.
