One Year
One year ago today, at 5 o'clock in the morning, we got in our car and we left.
It was a nice morning. The iPod was full of good tunes, the highway was beckoning, and the west coast gleamed warm on the horizon. The future skimmed along the road in front of the windshield, and the world yelled out, reminding us that something new was just around the corner. But as we crossed the MacDonald Bridge and drove towards the border to New Brunswick, my heart was heavy in my chest.
Every day since then, a bit of that sadness has skirted the edge of my vision. I've caught glimpses of it every day for a year.
And what a year it's been.
I saw Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I saw the Canadian shield and the Prairies and the Rockies and the beauty of our cities and the diversity of our people. We drove through one sad and dying small town after another. We passed tree after tree after tree after tree. The clouds in Saskatchewan sat like sculptures in the air.
After 12 days of driving, we finally hit the Pacific and got on a ferry that would take us to the end of the line – a new place to call home, at least for a while. After 11 years in one city, I learned to love a new one. Not as much, perhaps, and not the same – but lots, and differently, and in new ways every day.
I spent a lot of time by myself. Days and days and sometimes weeks. Some times it was lonely, but mostly it was fine. I learned to see things differently.
My dog and I took walks in all directions. We peered through fences, and gawked at huge houses, and stopped to smell the roses. Every once in a while, we walked all the way to the beach and I let him off leash and he chased seagulls through the surf. Sometimes, the mountains across the Juan de Fuca Strait were as clear as day, and sometimes they were hidden in the clouds.
I listened to some music. I took a ferry to another country and watched a couple of legends playing under the stars, while people all around me waved their lighters in the air. I watched a man singing songs about getting older that he wrote way back when he was still young. I clapped my hands and stomped my feet with everyone else to music from the deep south at a church in the true north. One evening I stood for an hour on the sidewalk in my new neighbourhood, as a crowd gathered at the edge of someone's yard. Together, we listened as a dozen or more people pulled all their instruments and voices together and played bluegrass so sweet and so sad that you'd think it was coming all the way from the hills of West Virginia.
Every day things things changed, and every day things stayed the same.
Some friends I've known since we were kids had children of their own. Other kids in my life kept growing up, kept getting older, and guess what? The rest of us did too. Every day for a year.
My grandmother passed away. As a little girl, she was given pennies by soldiers returning from WWI. At my age, she was waiting for her husband to come back from WWII. She lived every day for more than 99 years. A few weeks ago, a close family friend died, well before his time. Every day I spent with both of them was a gift.
I saw more homeless people this year than I'd seen in my whole life. A group of tired young teenagers, their belongings in plastic bags, clustered together outside a shelter, cracking jokes, bumming smokes. No doubt wondering every day where to eat. A bunch of cheerful wanderers building a driftwood city on the beach, tying bedsheets and tarps onto weather-worn redwood branch teepees. Sad lost souls, wandering the streets drunk, or stoned, or just confused. Talking to ghosts in their heads.
This year in Canada we had an election. I didn't love the outcome, but I'm free to complain about it, and I'm free to do something about it. This year in many other parts of the world, people died in the streets for those same rights.
Every day I ate three meals, and every night I slept in a bed. Every day I was lucky.
Every day this year, I tried to write. And when one day turned into ten days turned into eighty days, I realized that I had a book. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but it felt right, so I tried again. I know now that I'll keep trying every day until I die.
Every day this year, I missed the east coast. I missed my family and my friends and the people I worked with. I missed my island and my hometown and the city I lived in for more than a decade. I missed the sound of the Atlantic, and the October leaves in Cape Breton, and the wind on the South Shore. Sometimes, I even missed the winter. For the first time in my life, I missed Christmas at home.
Every day this year, I shared everything with the perfect companion. Some days we spent together, and many days we had to spend apart. But every day that was more than enough, because every day he was all that I needed.
Every morning of this whole year I woke up and it was a new day. Every day, that's as good a place as any to start.
