By Cynthia BigriggThe drive from my small mountain town to Edmonton, the booming capital, reminds me so much of Ontario. No majestic mountains, no spread of prairies, just gently rolling hills of sprawling farmland, now covered in a thick layer of untouched snow. Occasionally the speed limit dips from 110 to 80, and I slow to admire a whitewashed one-room town hall in the middle of nowhere, or a blink-and-you-miss-it settlement on my path. These places remind me of the scenes from my mother’s Robert Bateman calendars. Songs of my adolescence and teenage years – country music from the late ’90′s and early 2000′s – play on the radio and I turn them up loud and sing joyfully along. There’s nothing quite like driving through the country listening to those songs. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good because it feels so familiar. It feels like “home.”
At this exact moment in time a year ago, I was preparing to give up and get going. I was depressed, unmotivated, and I felt hopelessly stuck. And now I am here. Far away and practically drinking up my small success. I feel like the polar opposite of my former self, but I feel close again to the self I was before that. Close, but better. Different.
I know I won’t stay here forever, though I grow more and more attached to my job by the day. I will stay years, yes. I will stay long enough to make a notable difference, long enough to get a good chunk of experience. But not forever. This place is just a little bit alien to me. It is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, but I don’t fit quite right here, try as I might, and I know it. I know I will always be “not from here” no matter how long I stay. I know that as long as I am young-ish, no matter how much good I do, there will still be a handful of people here who will not entirely trust me. Of course, that will give me the drive to do my best.
It’s funny to me how, when I am determined to be independent of all things Ontario, this town is my home. And I am attached to it – if you have read any previous posts, I don’t have to convince you of that. But when I ache for my family and old friends and the support that comes so easily with them, ache for country roads and evening walks and the heavy smell of rain, ache for the old kind of adventures that will welcome me unquestioned and unguarded, then, Ontario is home.
I know one day i will find my place, but I also know that I won’t have to spend my whole life searching: if home is where the heart is, then I have plenty.
Write a novel. Your prose is enchanting.