Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together: A Memoir

An exuberant and highly engaging graphic memoir weighing in at 496 pages, and I read every page, in spite of the fact that it is essentially a coming-out story, but get this: Maurice Vellekoop grew up a decade after me in the (Dutch) Christian Reformed Church in a suburb of Toronto. This is a smallish Calvinist sect I also grew up in, but my early life was in Dutch western Michigan. And what he establishes is still true, that the church condemns homosexuality, and is fracturing today as a result. My family fractured over these issues a decade ago and are now very much fracturing again over this very issue, I sadly report. Making profession of faith, Calvinist Cadets (like Boy Scouts but with The Bible as guide, instead of the Boy Scout Handbook; I was allowed to be in the Scouts, because the Cadets would not allow Sunday camping and my parents agreed to allow me, though the kids in my family could not swim or bike on Sundays; movies were frowned on by the church, no dancing, and so on).

VelleKoop loves three women more than anyone in the world, his mother--featured with him on the cover--his sister, and Carole Burnett (where his title comes from, the closing of the Carol Burnett Show). A lot of love and energy in his early life, in spite of his father's raging.

Maurice/Mo manages to leave his gray CR life find color as an illustrator and lover of the arts--films, opera, art museums, fine food, travel, a successful career in illustration--and the vibrant colors are splashed throughout his book. It ends with a pretty moving series of therapy epiphanies with regard to his mother and father that reminded me of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Are You My Mother? There's a parade of friends and laughs throughout and some depression that requirestherapy, but ultimately he celebrates his life and honors his family.